Whether you’re new or old to mindfulness, you’ve likely heard the definition that it is a “intentional non-judgmental awareness of the present moment.” There’s a lot of confusion around the term non-judgment. Years ago, before I began being more intentional with a mindfulness practice I had a friend practicing meditation and he told me that he was practicing being completely detached from everything in a non-judgmental way. That didn’t seem too fun to me. Today, many of us can still be confused by this term, so what does it really mean?

A wise man once said, “Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your unguarded thoughts.”

~ The Buddha

I want to share with you an important “Now Moment,” the short action-oriented pieces that come at the end of most of the chapters in The Now Effect. This little instruction can be enormously helpful in bringing to light how to gain freedom from thinking and since thinking can be our number one bad habit, often launching us into increased stress or downward spirals of automatic negative thinking; it’s a good thing to loosen our grip on.

Now Moment:

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A while ago I walked into a particular publisher and saw every title of their upcoming books having “mindfulness” in the title and I was concerned that it was getting watered down. I couldn’t have been more wrong. As of today, mindfulness has evolved within America and has the potential to have a greater influence than we had ever imagined. Leaders around the country are implementing it in early child development, the military, education, politics, neuroscience, medicine, healthcare, business, the prisons, at-risk youth, and of course, psychotherapy. In this post I’m going to highlight a few key things that are happening that you may want to know about and how our culture is ripe for a second wave of mindfulness.

I recently led a workshop focused on helping us develop a wiser relationship to our technology (Smartphones, IPads, computers, television, etc.). In the beginning of the workshop I explained how as much as we feel that technology is a part of our lives, historically, we’re really just becoming acquainted with it. We talked about how in many ways, the people who came to the group were like “Digital Warriors,” at the frontier of optimizing this new wiser relationship to technology.

Here are a five benefits we found and one thing that surprised me most about what would come in life we practiced more digital awareness.

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When I sit and reflect on the neuroscience of our relationship to Smartphones, many ideas come to mind and I’ll list them out in a moment. As for the brain, it’s common knowledge that when we practice and repeat things in life, the habit formation is tied to an area of the brain the size of a walnut called the basal ganglia. We also know that dopamine is a chemical that drives motivation and pleasure. A message arrives and there’s a reward to going and checking it, so the dopamine drives our behavior to check. One thing we may want to consider is that alongside all the wonderful things technology brings, it also often triggers our stress response. In the emotional center of the brain is the amygdala or “fear circuit” that can be easily triggered out of some perceived danger of missing a message.  In other words, our Smartphones get linked to a biological stress or anxiety response.

At some point we have to pause and ask the question, “How’s this working for ya?”

One thing that most people would agree on is that at this point in time, technology, while being a great resource, is often controlling us more than we’re controlling it. It’s time to accept the reality of that and with this acceptance, step into a space of choice to build a more mature, effective and wiser relationship to it.

In a recent post I gave a number of ways to Optimize Our Relationship to Technology, but here is one more fun way you can do this in social settings.

Make it Social

All of us have an innate desire to heal our suffering and step into a wiser and happier life. Today it is my great pleasure to bring a favorite author, teacher and psychologist of mine who is at the forefront of integrating mindfulness into psychotherapy and our lives. Tara Brach, PhD is author of the recently released and the soon-to-be-a-classic True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart, bestselling book Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha, and many more. Tara has weekly podcasts from her Wednesday night sitting groups and is senior teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Communityof Washington. She embodies and emphasizes that beneath the turbulence of our minds and hearts is a loving awareness that as we learn to tap into over and again can reveal a source of resiliency, peace and genuine happiness.

Today, Tara will talk to us about her own journey through suffering that led to true refuge, the differences between true and false refuges, key practices to begin with this in our lives, how this applies to anxiety and depression and a final message for us to walk away with.  

Elisha: One of the aspects of your book that I deeply appreciated was your personal journey from suffering to find your true refuge. Can you share a little of that with us here?

As someone in the helping profession, I can attest to the weight at times of care giving and without mindfulness or a space to process this, I would be a high candidate for burnout. This is what many people in our helping professions face today. That is why I am pleased to bring to you a dialogue Mick Krasner, MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and has been teaching mindfulness to over 1400 physicians over 12 years.  He was the project director of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the efficacy of “Mindful Communication” with physician burnout. He speaks nationally and internationally on this topic. You can find Dr. Krasner live on May 11th for a daylong of Mindfulness in Clinical Practice: Our Patients, Ourselves.

Today Dr. Mick Krasner talks to us about the state of affairs of physician burnout, how the approach of “Mindful Communication” is effective in healing, and thoughts he might lend to us some of our wounded healers.

Elisha: Can you share with us the current state of affairs with physicians in regards to burnout, emotional stability, and stress?

Our brains are amazing, so amazing that even with all the wonderful advances in technology, neuroscientists are only still scratching the surface as to the way they work. But this fabulous brain can work for us and it can work against us stressing us out, sleepwalking into addictive behaviors or just leaving us feeling far away from any semblance of balance. But the moment we realize we’re out of balance is a moment where we have touched a glimpse of balance.

This space of awareness is a “choice point” to understand this nugget of wisdom and practice:

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There’s no getting around it, life is finite. Some people realize that earlier on and for others it doesn’t come until later. But for Lisa Napoli, author of Radio Shangri-La, that day came at the age of 43 when her mid-life crisis hit and she was confronted to come to terms with who she was. By chance she was invited to the landlocked state in Southeast Asia, Bhutan and what she found there are some nuggets of wisdom that can help the rest of us through our own moments of crisis and even be a path to happiness.

Today, I’m happy to bring Lisa to you answering what she learned about happiness, how it changed her life and some advice about how to deal with the inevitable challenges of suffering. If you’re lucky enough to be in the area, this weekend Lisa will be speaking on her transformational journey through Bhutan at InsightLA in Santa Monica, Ca on January 12th from 7-9pm.

Elisha: What does Bhutan have to teach us about how to be happy?

It’s been a week out since The New Year has set upon us. Whether you’re a resolution person or not, odds are there are some thoughts that you have about what you’d like to see unfold over this next year. In The Now Effect I call this “Paying Attention to Your Intention” and one of the best ways to do that is to intentionally carve some time out of your busy life and take a mindful look at how you’d like to be in this next year. Taking a retreat is a great way to create the space to do this. You can do a mini-retreat of blocking out an hour or more or go to an organized retreat for deeper connection.  This weekend, I’ll be at Kripalu in the Berkshires this weekend teaching The Now Effect Retreat to get the year started right. I’d love to see you there.

Whether your intentions for the year have to do with work, parenting, stress, relationships, procrastination, compassion or any other areas of your life, setting goals is an integral piece to making change. But often times when we do this we are rigid, it has to be a certain way or else we haven’t achieved success. But this rigidity only backfires on us.

The thought arises, “I’ve failed once again,” arises, leading to a sense of sluggishness and the next thought, “What’s the point?”

There’s another way.