I was really struck by my dear friend Krishna Pendyala’s recent article on Mindful Choices this week. After visiting his mother who suffers with Alzheimer’s disease, he had a huge insight: If we can spend two minutes on dental hygiene twice a day, why can’t we spend the same amount of time on our mental hygiene? He goes on to…
If you’re over 40, you’re not going to like this (and if you’re not yet 40, get ready for a reality check): Early in your fifth decade, researchers believe, your cognitive brain performance peaks. From there, it’s a downhill slide for the remaining years of your life. The good news is that the brain is highly adaptable; it responds to…
My biggest lesson: People don’t belong to you
My teenager is home on break from college and my husband quit his job to freelance, so now we both work from home. I love having them around, so I couldn’t figure out why I’d been feeling stressed out. Then I went for a long walk alone and immediately understood what I’d been missing: talking to myself. I talk to…
The value of mindfulness for promoting compassion for others and ourselves has drawn a lot of attention in recent years. And few have done more to help people bring self-compassion into their lives than Christopher Germer, Ph.D. A founding member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, Dr. Germer has led countless mindfulness workshops and is the author of one…
Valentine’s Day has always been about rituals. The holiday has its roots in an ancient Roman fertility festival called Lupercalia, which celebrated early spring, fertility, ancestors, and love. Single girls would write their names and place them into an urn. Each bachelor would pick a name out of the urn and then spend the year with that girl—thus ensuring fertility…
