The first in this series focused on stress. Anxiety and stress are closely related. Anxiety is central to our threat detection system and stress helps us to mount responses to potential threats. Like stress, anxiety gets a bad rap. Our culture feeds us the idea that we must eradicate all adverse feelings in order to…

Today, I will introduce a new series of posts with practical, mindfulness-based advise for dealing with common problems. These problems include stress, anxiety, depressed mood, pain, overeating, sleep difficulties, and more. Each post will provide principles and techniques for handling these problems so that they are no longer problems. If there are particular issues that…

I came across the title quotation–“reality is unforgivingly complex”–reading Anne Lamott’s bestselling book, Bird by Bird. This observation will be the basis for my reflections today. What does she mean by this? As a shorthand, we’ll think of reality as the things that happen to us–weather, accidents, medical events, how dinner turns out. I think we’d…

Having just written about the obstacles to practice, I would like to invite you, dear readers, to submit questions that are arising in your practice. My favorite way of teaching is responding to questions. The challenge of mindfulness is not understanding mindfulness–it’s easy in concept, difficult in practice: Pay attention to what is happening now…

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