Recently I wrote a post about the second wave of mindfulness, moving from an approach to support us individually, to something that is being applied throughout multiple sectors in our culture including education, politics, government, business, the military, our prisons, and is at the forefront of healthcare and science. This is where we’re headed. Recently, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg put out a challenge to the cities of America to find solutions to our most entrenched challenges. Santa Monica, California put out a compelling response, forming for the first time a “Well-Being Index” that measures the well-being of an entire city.

What would be different if we moved beyond our awareness of personal well-being and could see the well-being of an entire city? How would this inform decision making at a governmental level? This is the piece that is missing in helping people make change. It sounds fascinating to me.

Here’s the short video they made that lays it out:

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.

One of most essential relationships in life is with the food we eat. What we bring into our bodies affects our level of energy, ability to pay attention, and general well-being. That is why being mindful in our lives has to integrate the food we eat. Brandt Passalacqua, author of the audio program Being At Peace With Food, is also a speaker who discovered yoga and meditation after struggling with his weight, food and substance addiction, and serious illness. Since founding Peaceful Weight Loss™ Through Yoga, his personal journey has served as an inspiration to countless others looking to make peace with food. You can also check out his webinar here.

Today, Brandt talks to us about what our most impactful bad eating habits are, how he developed a healthy relationship to food, a meditation to get us started and a little advice at the end. 

Elisha: Hi Brandt, to get us started tell us what some of the most impactful negative eating habits are that affect us today?

It’s a dreaded day for some and a joyous for others. Whether we like it or not, Valentine’s Day is around the corner. Since the 11th century it’s been a time representing romantic love and by the 15th century it was a day to express love with flowers and greeting cards of some kind. But maybe there’s even another evolution that this day can take. Can it be that we can include romantic love but even make this day a day of greater meaning that transcends and includes romantic love?

In my mind it’s the case that all people, if not all beings, at the core want to feel like they belong and that they’re loved.

Why not make Valentine’s Day a day for all people in the greater relationship of humanity. This is a day where if you’re in a relationship you can have your romantic version and also a wider Valentine of all humanity, enhancing intimacy and compassion.

Here’s a rich three step Valentine practice for the couple, yourself, and for all people:

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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

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?

One thing we’ve learned about the brain over the last 15 years is that it can form new neural connections throughout the lifespan. This is called neuroplasticity, you may have heard of it. Neuroplasticity occurs when we practice and repeat doing things and eventually it just become automatic, like a habit. We see this in walking, talking, learning new car routes, playing an instrument or even meditation. When it comes to the enormous repetition of a constant connection to our technology, you have to assume, or likely you’ve experienced that the brain is strengthening that habit often times with a stressful cost.

Technology is great, but we’re just infants with it and we have to begin evolving with a wiser relationship.

Not too long ago humans had many uninterrupted spaces in their lives. If you were sitting at lunch with a friend the focus was on the conversation and there weren’t many things that would intrude. Now the brain has rewired to constantly monitor beneath your awareness any incoming messages and if there is a sign of one, a knee-jerk reaction occurs to check it.

Sherry Turkle from MIT and author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, has been studying this for decades. She talks about

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.