You may have seen the video and maybe it touched you in a way that brought you to tears. A forensic artist sat down and asked the woman sitting on the couch next to him to tell him about her face. He opens with the question, “Tell me about your hair?” and then, “Tell me about your chin. After one woman thinks about it she says, “It protrudes a bit especially when I smile.” He continues, “What about your jaw?” Another woman answers, “My mom always told me I had a big jaw.”  He then asks, “What’s your most prominent feature?” Taking a moment, she answers “Kind of a fat rounder face” or “I would say I have a pretty big forehead.” After he got his sketch he said thank you very much and left.

He didn’t see them again. But what happened next reveals a truth we each need to hear.

Picture this:

You have a big business meeting in the morning and you ask your partner to get home at a decent hour so you can both get to bed early. Your partner sneaks in a bit later and disrupts your sleep. You wake up in the morning a bit more tired than you wish you would be, make your coffee and while bringing it to the table your fingers fumble the cup. When it falls to the ground it breaks into a million pieces and the coffee shoots up ruining your outfit. The first words that come out of your mouth are, “Dammit Jim! Why did you have to get home so late?”

This is a story adapted from Brene Brown’s new audio program The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection, and Courage. This was her story, but in her version she was wearing white pants making it that much worse.

The fact is there’s always someone to blame. In Brene’s research on shame and vulnerability she says that blame is “A way to discharge pain and discomfort.” I loved hearing that

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.

No matter what time of year it is, stress will likely be a part of it. A little stress is good, it fuels motivation, but there’s a tipping point where it starts to have diminishing returns. When that higher level of stress hits, if it’s left unchecked it can lead to anxiety, depression, chronic pain, addictive behaviors, you name it. Today I want to give you something that you can BET on anywhere, anytime to help turn the volume down on the chaotic mind and bring you back into balance.

I’m a big fan of things that are short and sweet. Something I can remember that can help me in a pinch.

Here’s a short acronym that you can BET on throughout the day:

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Whether this is your first time you’re coming here or you’ve been around for the almost four years I’ve been writing The Mindfulness and Psychotherapy column, I want to share a personal moment of gratitude and say “Thank You” for being a part of this community. This was a big year for this column,  it will become 4 years old and is also the year that The Now Effect and Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler hit bookshelves. Now it’s my turn to give you some gifts of my favorite Top 10 posts of the year. In these posts you’ll read about the power of mindfulness, the importance of self-compassion in healing, the upside to embracing dark emotions, how to be alone, why multitasking is ineffective, many short practices and much more.

May they bring you a sense of insight, ease, peace and freedom. Enjoy!

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If you’ve been following recent news in the mindfulness world, you may have heard about a recent study by David Creswell out of Carnegie Mellon University that showed the wonderful effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) as a reduction on perceived loneliness in healthy older adults age 55-85.

Loneliness is something that most of us experience from time to time, caused and exacerbated by stress, anxiety, depression, addiction and trauma, but you may not have known how staggering the statistics truly are. A recent survey taken from the AARP showed over 44 million people are lonely and longing to connect with another living, breathing human being.

There’s a difference between being alone and lonely. The Buddhist Nun, teacher and author of “Taking the Leap,” Pema Chodron writes:

For those of you who don’t know Sharon Salzberg, she is one of America’s leading mindfulness teachers and authors and has played a significant role in bringing mindfulness and the practice of lovingkindness to all of us in the Western world.  She is co-founder of one of America’s premier meditation centers, Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts, and is the author of many books and CDs, including her classic “Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness,“ and her newest work, “Real Happiness.”

Today Sharon talks to us about the power of Lovingkindness, how to relate to difficult people, and some thoughts moving forward.

Elisha: Sharon, in your classic book ”Lovingkindness,” you begin by saying, “Throughout our lives we long to love ourselves more deeply and to feel connected with others. Instead, we often contract, fear intimacy, and suffer a bewildering sense of separation. We crave love, and yet we are lonely. Our delusion of being separate from one another, of being apart from all that is around us, gives rise to all of this pain. What is the way out of this?” Sharon, can you give us a glimpse into how you guide people out of their loneliness?

I’m often on the lookout for progressive new effective therapies. This led my wife and I to go check out Denim ‘n’ Dirt in Santa Clarita, CA when we heard of the advances in Equine Assisted Psychotherapy. I have to admit I was dubious that integrating horses and psychotherapy would be therapeutic, but putting my mindful hat on I walked in with a beginner’s mind and curiosity.

We walked up and met with Dr. B. Jane Wick and Steve Nelson, and without getting into too many details, by the end of a single session I was pretty amazed at the incredible overlap between mindfulness and equine therapy. I was also a bit blown away by the way the horses picked up on subtle cues and in ways that this unique form of therapy helped enlighten us to some important things that needed more mindfulness.

This is why it’s my pleasure to bring to you Dr. B. Jane Wick, a psychologist of 25 years, and equine assistant Steve Nelson of Denim ‘n’ Dirt to give us some more insight into the wonder behind this work.

Today Jane will be telling us what Equine Assisted Psychotherapy is, why it has such an impact in a short amount of time, a practical example of how it works and a tip and some thoughts on how we can go about finding this therapy for ourselves.

Elisha:  Equine therapy seems to be gaining a lot of interest as a way of creating change quickly; tell us briefly what it is and why you think it has such dramatic effects?

Throughout the course of 2012 in Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, we have interacted around topics on mindfulness, neuroscience, stress and media, Facebook, the Negativity Bias, addiction, technology, resiliency, parenting and so much more.

Thank you for all your wonderful interactions, here’s a chance to give back to you.

Here are the Top 10 Mindfulness and Psychotherapy Posts in recent months. Feel free to bookmark and come back to again and again: