What are some of the latest trends or innovations in mindfulness research and practice?

The act of mindfully eating is the simply the paying attention to your bodies hunger and satiation cues. Take the time to check-in before mindlessly grabbing that snack or noticing that you are eating to manage an emotion or stress. Also when you eat mindfully, your really savor the food your are consuming and pay closer attention to taste, texture and the joy of the meal.

I am grateful to be part of a nonprofit mindfulness retreat center that creates community around mindfulness and social justice. At The HeartWell Institute, co-founder and mindfulness trainer and consultant Zayda Vallejo and neuropsychologist and educator Dr. Bertha-Elena Rojas have created an experiential curriculum that combines mindfulness tools with racial and cultural literacy: "Mindfulness as a Catalyst for Equity and Collective Healing." Data show that participants leave the five-day, seven-and-a-half-hour per-day training, reporting increases in thoughts of mindfulness and self-compassion and higher levels of cultural competency. Participants in the training include mental health providers, educators, activists, and retirees.

For the past 5 years I have had the opportunity to work in under resourced schools teaching mindfulness and social emotional learning. I have seen the benefits mindfulness can provide to students and families who are dealing with increase stress and social inequities. Bringing mindfulness into the curriculum, schools can enhance the individual well-being of students but also contribute to creating a more just, empathetic, and inclusive society. This is beneficial for children facing social injustices, as it equips them with the resources to persevere and thrive despite challenges. Mindfulness offers a pathway to equip the children with the emotional intelligence and social awareness needed to address and navigate social justice issues.

I find neuroscience fascinating, especially when it relates to mindfulness. The idea that mindfulness and meditation can change the structure of your brain through neuroplasticity is incredible. A steady mindfulness practice can increased gray matter density in areas related to memory, empathy, and stress regulation, such as the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, and decreased gray matter in the amygdala, which is involved in fear and stress responses aka fight, flight and freeze response. Mindfulness practices activate the parasympathetic nervous (rest and digest) system, which helps reduce stress, improve memory and enhance mental and emotional well-being. Mindfulness can lead to lasting positive changes to the mind and body!

Mindful greening and gardening. This is the art of bringing the natural world into everyday life. Feng shui and Vastu are traditional arts of architecture, design, and placement for bringing nature into the home and work. As we advance in technology it is even more important to find a balance of nature in everyday life.

Through the use of my Parent Coaching Cards, children are coached by parents and teachers in how to employ self-calming self-talk and other self-regulation strategies that provides a framework for understanding and integrating mindful life skills.

Mindfulness is an active practice of living meditation and has much more to offer than physiological benefits, with two immediate benefits of decreased blood pressure and resting heart rate. This means a reduction in stress, an effective way to prevent many physical/mental disorders, dis-eases and illnesses. It's the stress that causes illness. The less stress we produce and absorb, the better our body and mind will treat us. Mindfulness also has psychological benefits, but the main reason it's still in practice after thousands of years and is more popular than ever today is for spiritual reasons. In this way, it produces a clearer way of perceiving and living life, and it creates more loving, kinder and compassionate human beings.

You can do just about anything mindfully by focusing on how that experience is being received by all the senses you are also engaging in a form of self-care. For example: you can drink hot tea watching TV or you can drink tea mindfully. One way of doing this is to turn off the TV and put down the electronics. Hold the tea cup with both hands. Feel the warmth of the cup, how it sits in your hands. Smell the aromas and how the steam rises from the cup. What do you hear? Take a sip and feel it in your mouth and sliding down your throat. Pay attention to how it feels in your belly. By taking the time to be in the moment you have amplified the mental health benefits of a task you would be doing anyway at no extra cost!