How to Mindfully Appreciate Nature This article originally appeared in the June 2019 issue of Mindful Magazine. READ MORE Scott Rogers February 9, 2021 Heather Shayne Blakeslee March 25, 2021 Mindful Staff January 17, 2021 Christopher Willard December 15, 2020

Protecting and nurturing the functioning of your brain is important for your long-term health and well-being. You can make lifestyle choices that protect, exercise, and strengthen the physical brain, which in turn supports the complexity of all of your emotional, relational, and cognitive functioning. 1. Move It! Research in the last 10 years has made it abundantly clear—we need to move our bodies not just for the health of our heart, lungs, muscles, and joints, but also for the health of our brain....

Two Basic Belly Breathing Tips Breathe deeply. When you breathe deeply, your diaphragm at the base of your lungs pushes your belly out. This is belly breathing and is a natural way to breathe—you can see babies doing it. As you exhale, gently press on your belly. As you breathe in, encourage your belly to expand, and as you breathe out, allow your belly to contract. You could even gently push your belly in with your hand when you breathe out to help you to do this, if it doesn’t come naturally to you....

Understanding What Causes Your Panic Attack There’s no predicting when your next panic attack will occur. It might happen while you’re out running errands, interacting with strangers at the market or post office. Being in public may feel like the worst-case scenario for a panic attack, but it is also your cue to listen to your mind and body. Mindful inquiry will help you investigate what is driving your panicky emotions, in order for you to become free from them....

Everything is impermanent. It’s always changing, coming together and falling apart. And it’s frustrating to not be able to make things go our way. But paradoxically, when we can accept that everything is not up to us, and we stop trying to control what we can’t change or trying to predict what we can’t predict, then we can feel a lot more at ease and more open to the moment-to-moment unfolding of our lives....

This post was contributed by our honorary diva, Charlene. Here she is: We are a small family living on a college budget, so lets just say that we’ve eaten our share of Costco size bundles of Ramen noodles! But I have a secret….. Many have tried to guess and many have failed. You are dying to know aren’t you! Okay, here I go! It’s as simple as pie! Boil the water,...

Full stop. Though the Guardian article went on to provide more nuance, the reading public sees seven years of complex painstaking work by a large group of dedicated people reduced to a single conclusion in a headline. That is what is to be expected. As the old newspaper saying goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” When results are simplified to this degree, though, it helps if we can remember to dive deeper to see the specifics of what was studied, and what continues to be learned as a result....

Your Classic Swept-Back Ponytail, Reimagined

Sensations might include feelings of pressure and temperature at the points of contact of the body with the floor, or tingling, itching, pulsations, aching, throbbing, light touch from the air currents, warmth or coolness anywhere in the body, the possibilities are endless. They may also include significant degrees of physical discomfort or pain that might arise either from sitting without moving for extended periods of time, or from a particular medical condition....

Magee is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of San Francisco. In Mindful‘s June 2013 issue, Magee talked about bringing mindfulness into the legal field and noted that “the goal is to help lawyers develop the capacity to put themselves in the shoes of another, to listen more thoroughly, with as little judgement as they can manage.” This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners....

Exercise: Investigating Judgments If you allow critical judgments to remain unexamined, they can come to occupy many of your thoughts and emotions, and even your dreams. But if you examine them, you’ll find repetitive themes that are connected to earlier life events and discover that even your judgments regarding others are often rooted in self-judgment or events that happened earlier in your life—sometimes when you were very young. It’s a good practice to investigate all of your judgments, and this practice will help you do exactly that....

Yesterday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed new statistics indicating that nearly 1 in 12 Americans were diagnosed with asthma by 2009. The Vital Signs report found that people diagnosed with asthma in the United States grew by 4.3 million between 2001 and 2009. However in recent years, studies involving meditation and asthma have been promising in terms of helping control the chronic disorder. Recently Bob Stahl has also released a CD, Working with Asthma, COPD, and Respiratory Challenges, which offers an introduction to mindfulness meditation in the context of dealing with respiratory challenges....

Pro tip: It is important to remember that balance is key when wearing protective styles. You should be giving your natural hair a break in between using protective styles that involve extensions. Leaving a protective style with extensions in for too long, or having too many back-to-back protective hairstyles with extensions, may cause hair breakage. For the best results, most stylists recommend waiting 2-3 weeks in between wearing protective styles that involve extensions....

But there are plenty of variations that allow you to maintain a longer length as the focal point of the style, too. What better time to experiment with a bold style than right now, in the comfort of your home? Here are some inspo styles we have curated so you can show your hairstylist what vibe you’re going for with your bold buzzcut: 6 Bold Buzzcuts for Women 1. Side Shave The gradual shave is a great way to add texture to your side shave and make the transition from your longer hair to your shortest buzz....

How to Get Bouncy Natural Curls with Jill of Orange Green and Natural All Things Hair: Explain your hair type and the types of hair-related issues you deal with. Jilyian Kelly: Like most naturals my hair is made up of several different hair types. At the nape of my neck the curls are smooth, well defined coils, like 3B hair. At the crown of my head my hair is more 4B, a coarser texture and in front, the hair grows almost as it did when I relaxed my hair, not a curl in sight....

These braids were not your normal, small to medium-sized box braids, these were your jumbo braids that we’ve been seeing our favorite celebrities and street style stars wear. What’s more? Ursula made it a point to highlight that braids are for everyone. Read on to see how you can score bumpin’ braids runway look at home: Get the SS’ 19 Bumpin’ Braids Look According to Ursula, “Braids are for everyone; I love the unisex feel of this hairstyle....

What is better than a romantic love note made out of candy hearts? This year lets be creative and show our spouses how much we really love them. First you will need to go to the store and pick out a few of your sweetie’s favorite things. Make sure you remember candy hearts. I used the large ones and they are only $1. Then you can come home and make your candy card....

To get these Chocolate Chip Cookie Cup Sundaes going, you’ll want to print the ice cream shoppe place mats and table card that were just beautifully designed by Joanna at Cutify Creative. After that, you’ll just need to grab a few more items: Cookie Dough Ice Cream Muffin Pan Plastic Wrap Aluminum Foil Place Mat Printables Table Card Printable Spoons Cookie Dough Now, let’s talk about cookie dough. I am a baker....

Everything You Need to Know About Co-Wash Conditioners Co-washing, or “conditioner-only” washing, is when you skip the shampoo and only use conditioners to cleanse your hair. Sounds pretty obvious, right? It can be tough to wrap your head around ridding your hair routine of a product you’ve thought to be essential your entire life. But it can really be worth the shot, especially during the colder months when hair tends to get drier....

Although, for many, the crochet braids style seems to be new. It’s far from that. The hairstyle has been around for years. However, as of late, a lot of women are opting for this style for protective styling. Why? Unlike many other protective hairstyles, creating crochet styles on your hair by yourself is fairly easy — that’s if you know how to cornrow braid. Ahead we’re providing you with a simple explanation of how the style is created and a breakdown of other hairstyles you can achieve with the crochet braiding technique....