Mindfulness for a Happier Brain

MINDFUL.ORG

FEBRUARY 2019mindful.org

Self-Compassion • Your Creative Brain • Good N

ews about Being W

rongFEBRUARY 2019 • volum

e 6, number 6 • m

indful.org

Manoush Zomorodi

host of the podcastZigZag, on living

smarter with technology

Self-CompassionWhy being kind to yourself is the most powerful thing

you can do

+LET YOUR BRILLIANCE SHINE

M I N D FU LN E SS T H AT WO RKS • T H E GOO D N E WS A BO U T B E I N G W RO N G

U N LE A SH YO U R CR E AT I V E B R A I N • 3 WAYS TO B R I N G M O R E M E A N I N G I N TO YO U R LI FE

APRIL 2017 mindful.org

Make Peace with Your Aging Body

LOVE AS PRACTICE

TARA BRACH

Will Kabat-Zinn: Why "Bad" Meditation Can Be Good

The Science of Self-Control

7 ways to calm your Anxious Mind

Meditate with Your Five Sensesand tap into the vivid world around you

GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD… +

Gretchen RohrLaw Professor

and Mindfulness Instructor

RADICAL HONESTYHow to have a difficult conversation

Healthy Mind,Healthy Life

Discover practical ways to find calm in times of stress, let go of your inner critic, and reconnect with your best self.

Subscribe Today & Save

mindful.org

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 2

5 Science-Backed Strategies for More HappinessSeveral exercises to help you make the most of the International Day of Happiness. By Kira M. Newman

Did you know that happiness has its own holiday?

Four years ago, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed March 20 to be the International Day

of Happiness. It’s easy to understand why they see happiness as something to celebrate: Happy people are healthier; they get sick less often and live longer. Happy people are more likely to get married and have fulfilling marriages, and they have more friends. They make more money and are more productive at work. Based on decades of research, it has become clear that happiness is not just a personal issue; it’s a matter of public health, global economics, and national well-being.

But it doesn’t come easy, as most of us know. Disappointments and annoyances grab our attention like gnats, and even the good things

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 3

in life seem to lose their luster over time. Add to that a crammed schedule and mounting obligations, and happiness might just seem out of reach—achievable for other people, perhaps, but not us.

Fortunately, research suggests that happiness is something we can cultivate with practice. The Greater Good Science Center has collected many happiness practices on the website Greater Good in Action, alongside other research-based exercises for fostering kindness, connection, and resilience. Below are 11 of those happiness practices, grouped into five broader strategies for a more fulfilling life.

1. ACKNOWLEDGE THE GOOD

If we don’t feel happy, it’s tempting to look for things to fix: the job that isn’t prestigious enough, the apartment that’s too cramped, our partner’s annoying habit. But focusing on all the negatives isn’t the surest route to feeling better. Instead, a simple way to start cultivating happiness is by recognizing the good.

In the Three Good Things exercise, for example, you keep a journal devoted solely to the positives in your life. Each evening, you write down three things that went well and add some detail about each, including how they made you feel. For example, you might recall a heartfelt thank you from a coworker, a quiet moment drinking tea, or your daughter’s infectious laughter. Importantly, you also briefly explain why you think each good thing happened—which focuses your attention on the enduring sources of goodness that surround you.

A 2005 study invited participants to do this practice daily for a week, and afterward they reported feeling happier and less depressed than when they started. In fact, they maintained their happiness boost six months later, illustrating how impactful it can be to focus on the good things in life.

Many of those good things lie just outside our doorstep, and we can practice noticing them on a Savoring Walk. Here, you take a

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 4

20-minute walk and observe the sights, sounds, and smells you encounter—freshly cut grass, an epic skyscraper, a stranger’s smile. Each time you notice something positive, take the time to absorb it and think about why you enjoy it. On your subsequent Savoring Walks, strike out in different directions to seek new things to admire.

In a study by Fred Bryant of Loyola University Chicago, participants who took Savoring Walks daily for a week reported greater increases in happiness than participants who went for walks as usual. “Making a conscious effort to notice and explicitly acknowledge the various sources of joy around us can make us happier,” write Bryant and Joseph Veroff in the book Savoring.

If you have trouble seeing the good that’s already around you, another strategy is to create some. In Creating and Recalling Positive Events, you carve out time for yourself and fill your schedule with enjoyment.

When you have a day free, don’t rush around doing chores; instead, try three different happy activities:

• Something you do alone, such as reading, listening to music, or meditating.

• Something you do with others, such as going out for coffee, riding your bike, or watching a movie.

• Something meaningful, such as volunteering, helping a neighbor in need, or calling a friend who’s struggling.

If your go-to happiness practice has been Netflix and a bowl of ice cream, this exercise can reconnect you with different sources of satisfaction. These three activities should offer you a sense of pleasure, engagement, and meaning, all viable paths to a satisfying life. A 2014 study found that even psychiatric patients with suicidal thoughts found value in doing this exercise, reporting more optimism and less hopelessness afterward.

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 5

2. ADD HAPPINESS THROUGH SUBTRACTION

Even after we identify the positives in our life, we’re still prone to adapting to them over time. A good thing repeated brings us less satisfaction, until it no longer seems to contribute to our day-to-day mood at all; we take it for granted. That’s why, sometimes, it’s a good idea to introduce a little deprivation.

In Mental Subtraction of Positive Events, you call to mind a certain positive event—the birth of a child, a career achievement, a special trip—and think of all the circumstances that made it possible. How could things have turned out differently? Just taking a moment to imagine this alternate reality creates a favorable comparison, where suddenly our life looks quite good.

In a 2008 study, participants who performed this exercise reported feeling more gratitude and other positive emotions than participants who simply thought about past positive events without imagining their absence. Mental Subtraction seems to jolt us into the insight that the good things in our lives aren’t inevitable; we are, in fact, very lucky.

If imagining absence isn’t quite enough for you, what about experiencing it for real? In the Give It Up practice, you spend a week abstaining from a pleasure in order to appreciate it more fully. This pleasure should be something that’s relatively abundant in your life, such as eating chocolate or watching TV. At the end of the week, when you can finally indulge, pay special attention to how it feels.

In a 2013 study, people who gave up chocolate savored it more and experienced a more positive mood when they finally ate it at the end of the week, compared with people who ate chocolate as usual. This exercise may not only open your eyes to a single pleasure (like the miracle of cacao), but make you more conscious of life’s many other pleasures, too.

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 6

3. FIND MEANING AND PURPOSE

Creating and Recalling Positive Events reminds us that pleasure isn’t the only path to bliss; meaning can also bring us happiness, albeit a quieter and more reflective kind.

In the Meaningful Photos practice, you take pictures of things that are meaningful to you and reflect on them. Over the course of a week, look out for sources of meaning in your life—family members, favorite spots, childhood mementos—and capture about nine or ten different images of them. At the end of the week, spend an hour reflecting on them: What does each photo represent, and why is it meaningful to you? Jot down some of those thoughts if it’s helpful.

Amid the chores and routines, life can sometimes feel dull and mundane. Reigniting our sense of meaning can remind us what’s important, which boosts our energy and gives us strength to face life’s stresses. In a 2013 study, college students who completed this exercise not only boosted their sense of meaning, but also reported greater positive emotions and life satisfaction as well.

We can also boost our energy and motivation by fostering a sense of purpose, and the Best Possible Self exercise is one way to do that. Here, you journal for 15 minutes about an ideal future in which everything is going as well as possible, from your family and personal life to your career and health.

In a 2006 study, participants who wrote about their Best Possible Selves daily for two weeks reported greater positive emotions afterward, and their mood continued increasing up to a month later if they kept up the practice.

This exercise allows us to clarify our goals and priorities, painting a detailed picture of where we want to be. This picture should be ambitious but realistic so that it motivates us to make changes, rather than reminding us how imperfect and disappointing our lives are now.

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 7

When we reflect on our future this way, we may feel more in control of our destiny.

4. USE YOUR STRENGTHS

Just as we hunt for things to fix in life, we also tend to obsess over flaws in ourselves; our weaknesses loom large. But what if we put more time and attention into our strengths and positive attributes?

The Use Your Strengths exercise invites you to consider your strengths of character—from creativity and perseverance to kindness and humility—and put them into practice. Each day for a week, select a strength and make a plan to use it in a new and different way. You can repeat the same strength—directing your curiosity toward a work project one day and toward your partner’s interests the next—or work on different strengths each day. At the end of the week, synthesize the experience by writing about what you did, how it made you feel, and what you learned.

In a 2005 study, participants who engaged in this exercise for a week reported feeling happier and less depressed, and that happiness boost lasted up to six months. Use Your Strengths may help us transfer skills between home and work—applying our professional creativity to our children’s school assignments or our domestic kindness to our co-workers—and give us a confidence boost all around.

5. CONNECT WITH OTHERS

The practices above invite us to turn inward, tinkering with our attitudes and the way we view the world. But decades of science also suggest that turning outward and connecting to the people around us is one of the surest routes to happiness.

As a first step, you can try an adapted version of the Best Possible Self exercise for relationships to give you insights into what kinds of social

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 8

connection you desire. In an ideal life, what would your relationships with your spouse, family, and friends look like?

One way to feel an immediate boost of connection is through Random Acts of Kindness. Random Acts of Kindness don’t have to be flashy or extravagant; they can be as simple as helping a friend with a chore or making breakfast for your partner. You can also extend your circle of kindness to strangers and community members, feeding a parking meter or offering a meal to someone in need.

In a 2005 study, participants who performed five acts of kindness on one day a week for six weeks reported increases in happiness. (This didn’t happen when they spread out their acts of kindness across the week, perhaps because a single kind act may not feel noteworthy on its own.) Researchers also suggest varying your acts of kindness over time to keep the practice fresh and dynamic.

Some of your acts of kindness may involve giving, and the Make Giving Feel Good practice helps ensure that giving does, indeed, bring happiness. Researchers Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton, among others, have found evidence that being kind and generous does make us happier, but they’ve also found that acts of giving are most effective when they meet these three criteria:

• It’s a choice: Give because you choose to, not because you feel pressured or obligated to.

• You connect: Giving can be an opportunity to make connections with the people you’re helping, so choose activities where you get to spend time with recipients, like helping a friend move or volunteering at a soup kitchen.

• You see the impact: If you’re donating money, for example, don’t just give and move on. Find out what your money will be used for—like new classroom supplies or a cooking stove.

In a 2011 study, participants were offered a $10 Starbucks gift card to use in different ways: They either gave it to someone, gave it to

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 9

someone and joined them for a drink, or used it on themselves while drinking with a friend. The ones who gave the card away and spent time with the recipient—connecting with them and seeing the impact of giving—felt happiest afterward.

Of course, the pursuit of happiness isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and mugs of tea and smiling children. Sometimes we need to tackle our insecurities and weaknesses, and we can’t just ignore our draining jobs and nagging relatives. But the practices here represent the other side of the coin, the one we often neglect: seeing, appreciating, and mobilizing the good.

This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

KIRA M. NEWMAN

Kira M. Newman is an editor and web producer at the Greater Good Science Center. Offline, she is the creator of CaféHappy, a Toronto-based meetup that gathers monthly to discuss how to be happier. A former tech journalist, Kira has been published in outlets including Social Media Monthly and Tech.co. She spent four years traveling around the world and loves speaking French, swing dancing, and exploring local cafes. Follow her on Twitter!

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 10

The 5 Major Mind Traps that Hinder HappinessThese roadblocks keep us stuck in the depression loop: caught up in negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as the brain anxiously rehashes past events and simultaneously rehearses a hopeless, catastrophic future. Here are some ways to avoid falling into these traps. By Elisha Goldstein

These voices keep us stuck in the depression loop. One of the keys to cultivating an antidepressant brain is realizing you are not these thoughts or the stories they tell. Here are some ways

to avoid falling into these traps.

DOUBT

Whenever you hear advice about how to work with challenges you have, you might notice the voice of doubt: “This might work for some people, but it’s probably not going to work for me.” The motive of this voice is to keep us safe from failure or disappointment, but ultimately it keeps us away from new experiences that can be supportive.

GIFT FROM

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 11

EMPTINESS

Longing to be elsewhere, our minds settle on the belief that the current moment is never enough, we’re not enough, or we can’t do enough, it’s all so empty. The problem with this kind of thinking: When the awaited event does occur, happiness may not come with it. This motive of trying to fix the current moment leaves you in a perpetual cycle of dissatisfaction.

By focusing on the idea that you’re not where you “should be,” your brain is constantly reinforcing the message that something is wrong with you, which then highlights a gap of deficiency that only grows wider as it tries harder. The root problem is not what you don’t have, but the fact that you really don’t feel whole or complete.

IRRITATION

Someone might be walking down the hallway at work humming his favorite tune, and thoughts come up: “Does he think everyone wants to hear him? Uh, what is he so happy about anyway?”

Meanwhile, who’s suffering? We’re the ones in pain, but our brains think if we project our irritation onto another person, we’ll find relief from the pain. If these voices continue to come up in our relationships and aren’t discussed, the feelings turn into resentment that inevitably eats away at the relationship like a cancer. But voices of irritation can alert us that something isn’t right and, with awareness, we can use this information to be constructive.

SLUGGISHNESS

Have you ever had the idea to do something that’s good for you—hang out with friends, exercise, meditate—but you hear this voice: “I want to do it, but I’m too tired. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

If we’re actually tired—maybe we haven’t slept enough or had an exceptionally taxing day—we need to listen to our bodies and rest. At

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 12

other times, these sluggish voices are just another sign we’re avoiding being with ourselves because we fear that it will be uncomfortable. If we can recognize it, we can face it and when we can face it, we can work with it and break free.

RESTLESSNESS

These days our brains are being trained to be noisier, busier, and more distracted. You’re sitting alone waiting for a drink. Your eye catches your phone: “I wonder if I received any new messages. Nope, not one since a minute ago. What about Facebook, anything there? Some new updates, not that interesting. Twitter? Ah, that’s an interesting tweet. I wonder when the drink is going to come?”

When there’s a space empty of doing, restless voices rise up. We feel compelled to fill the spaces, but we don’t realize that in these empty spaces, we have a choice between doing and being; it’s where possibility and opportunity emerge, and where there is a chance to make changes for the better.

From Uncovering Happiness: Overcoming Depression with Mindfulness and Self-Compassion. Reprinted by arrangement with Atria Books, Copyright © 2015 Elisha Goldstein.

This sidebar is part of a larger article titled “Uncovering Happiness” that also appeared in the April 2015 issue of Mindful magazine.

ELISHA GOLDSTEIN

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and conducts a private practice in West Los Angeles. He is creator of the 6-month online program A Course in Mindful Living, author of Uncovering Happiness: Overcoming Depression with Mindfulness and Self-Compassion (Atria Books, 2015), The Now Effect (Atria Books, 2012), Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler (Atria Books, 2013), and co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook (New Harbinger, 2010).

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 13

Three Simple Practices That Can Help Boost Happiness at WorkThese brief practices can help you bring some well-being into your work day. By Pearl McLeod

For too many of us work is associated with stress, unhappiness, and anxiety, but world-renowned neuroscientist Richie Davidson and his colleagues show TODAY that through a few

simple steps, we can increase our well-being.

Davidson works to find connections between the brain and our happiness, and his research has shown that we can intentionally change our brain and learn to be happier. Davidson explains:

“By focusing on wholesome thoughts, for example, and directing our intentions in those ways, we can potentially influence the plasticity of our brains and shape them in ways that can be beneficial.”

GIFT FROM

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 14

THE 5-3-1 PRACTICE

One method for learning to be happier that Davidson and his colleagues at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) recommend are three daily tasks that are simple, easy, and rewarding.

1. START WITH FIVE MINUTES OF MEDITATION EVERY DAY.

This can help you go into your work day feeling more energized, relaxed, and ready to tackle the day. You can check out our Getting Started page to learn more if you are interested in starting a meditation practice, even if it’s only five minutes.

Shilagh Mirgain, a senior psychologist at CIHM and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, mentions that people who did this kind of practice for 20 minutes a day for approximately 30 days had gained new gray matter in their prefrontal cortex, which is the area associated with attention, emotion regulation, and executive decision-making.

2. MAKE A LIST OF THREE GOOD THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN YOUR DAY.

They can be anything from a really good cup of coffee or a compliment from your boss. By listing good things in your day, you are focusing on the positive aspects of your work, which can help you feel happier.

3. PERFORM ONE RANDOM ACT OF KINDNESS.

Not only is this step helpful in making you feel happier and more rewarded at work, but also gives someone else a hand and a smile to cheer up their day.

To learn more about Davidson’s groundbreaking work, you can check out this infographic about all the different spheres that his research

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 15

has influenced, including early childhood education, PTSD treatment, and treatment for individuals who suffer from depression.

PEARL MCLEOD

Pearl McLeod is a content creator for Mindful.org. She is a student at UC Berkeley interested in history, sociology, and linguistics.

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 16

How Happy Brains Respond to Negative ThingsRecent research provides a whole new understanding of the brain’s amygdala—and suggests that happy people take the bad with the good. By Summer Allen and Jeremy Adam Smith

You drop a glass while making breakfast. You get stuck in traffic on your way to work. Your boss yells at you for being late. Congratulations! You’re having a bad morning. It happens to

everyone, at one time or another. But how we react to the bad things in life reveals a lot about our brains.

It might seem to go without saying, but people with sunnier dispositions are better able to regulate their emotions than people with gloomier personalities, who are more likely to be thrown by unpleasant events. Why is this?

There are several possibilities. One is that happier people wear metaphorical “rose-colored glasses” that allow them to focus on

GIFT FROM

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 17

positive things and filter out negative ones. Another possibility is that happier people are just better at savoring the good things and allowing them to lift their mood, while still seeing the bad.

Why does this question matter? Because of its implications for the way you view your life. Is it better to ignore the negatives and setbacks altogether, or to strengthen your ability to zero in on the good without glossing over the bad?

One way to test these hypotheses is to look at activity in the amygdala—a small, almond-shaped brain region—in people with different emotional styles. For years, neuroscientists have thought of it as the primitive “fear center” of the brain, always on the lookout for potential threats. In some people, increased amygdala activity has been linked to depression and anxiety. However, less is known about how the amygdala responds to positive stimuli—and how this activity might relate to feeling positive emotions.

That’s what psychologists William Cunningham at the University of Toronto and Alexander Todorov of Princeton University are exploring with their colleagues. In a series of recent studies funded by the John Templeton Foundation (which also supports the work of the Greater Good Science Center), they’ve discovered a whole new amygdala—one that’s implicated in human connection, compassion, and happiness. According to their research to date, the happiest people don’t ignore threats. They just might be better at seeing the good.

WHAT IS THE AMYGDALA FOR?

A wild zebra must constantly be on the lookout for lions and other predators, even while it is in the process of pursuing a goal, such as looking for water or a mate. Scientists have traditionally tied this looking-out function to the amygdala. However, recent research suggests that the amygdala is also active when people are trying to meet so-called “appetitive goals,” like our zebra’s interest in drinking, eating, and mating.

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 18

Because threatening situations can have lethal consequences, it makes sense that the amygdala would be tuned to react to all fearful stimuli. But does the amygdala respond to all positive stimuli as well? Would our zebra’s amygdala activate every time it sees a watering hole, even though it’s a good thing, not a bad thing?

Cunningham and colleagues took on these questions in a study published last year in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. They displayed a series of side-by-side images to study participants—15 people in total—while recording their amygdala activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The pictures varied in their emotional content (positive, negative, or neutral) as well as the extremity of the emotion they evoked.

From the fMRI data, Cunningham and colleagues found that negative images did provoke amygdala activity, as expected. The positive images did as well—but only when the participants were explicitly told to focus on them.

Humans have a negativity bias, a tendency to focus on threats. But this research suggests that people may be able to compensate for it by consciously trying to focus more on the positive. As the authors put it in their paper, “while people do automatically attend to negative stimuli, given the proper ability and motivation, they can show the same sensitivity to positive stimuli.”

Another study by a team that included Cunningham and Todorov—to be published this year in the forthcoming book Positive Neuroscience—found that the amygdala “may also be at the heart of compassion.” The researchers scanned participants’ brains as they viewed pictures of people who might be useful in pursuing a goal—or in need of help. The team found that amygdala activity spiked when participants perceived people in need. Not surprisingly, this was especially true for participants who scored high in empathy.

As the authors note, other research has linked the ability to connect with and help others to personal well-being. Taken together,

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 19

these studies suggest that humans possess a subconscious “compassionate instinct”—an urge to help people that exists even in parts of the brain that are sometimes referred to as “primitive” or “reptilian.” The paper concludes:

This research project builds on the idea that our evolutionarily older brain systems are not solely a source of immorality and selfishness, but when tuned by our goals, can contribute to moral and just behavior. Thus, human flourishing does not come from the suppression of aspects of the self, but rather through the integration of all relevant processes together into a unified response.

HAPPY PEOPLE TAKE THE GOOD WITH THE BAD

But this research raises another question: Does human happiness depend on filtering out the negative things in life? Or in brain science terms: Do we want to avoid the stress of amygdala activation, even when it comes to perceiving people in distress? How do happy people respond to the dropped glass, traffic jams, threats from the boss—or even the sight of homeless people on the street?

That’s the question tackled in another study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, where Cunningham and Ph.D. student Tabitha Kirkland sought to determine whether the amygdalae of happier people respond differently to positive and negative stimuli when compared with less-happy people.

Cunningham and Kirkland recorded the amygdala activity of 42 participants as they viewed series of positive, negative, and neutral pictures. Participants also filled out surveys to determine their subjective happiness levels. Was there anything distinctive about the way happy people’s brains responded to the different types of photos?

Indeed, when compared with less-happy people, the researchers found that happier people had greater amygdala activation in

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 20

response to positive photographs. But they did not have a decreased response to negative images, as would be predicted by the “rose-colored glasses” view of happiness.

In fact, the researchers found that “amygdala activation among happier participants was equally high for positive and negative stimuli.” According to the paper, this suggests that “happier people are not necessarily naïve or blind to negativity, but rather may respond adaptively to the world, recognizing both good and bad things in life.”

This is a particularly interesting finding because it suggests that being able to sense and respond to negative information may actually be an important component of happiness. The authors’ conclusion from this study: “Happy people are joyful, yet balanced.”

The upshot of this research is that our amygdala can no longer be viewed simply as the brain’s fear center. Instead, it seems that even at a very deep, instinctive level, we are wired to see people in need and help each other out—and that doing so might help us to be happy.

This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

SUMMER ALLEN

Summer Allen, Ph.D., is a science writer based in Providence, Rhode Island.

JEREMY ADAM SMITH

Jeremy Adam Smith is editor of the Greater Good Science Center’s website and author of the book The Daddy Shift.

A GIFT FROM

mindful.org Mindfulness for a Happier Brain | page 21

Looking for more? Dig deeper and get the best from Mindful in the pages of Mindful magazine. SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Mindful is a mission-driven non-profit. We’re dedicated to inspiring, guiding, and connecting anyone who wants to explore mindfulness—to

enjoy better health, more caring relationships and a compassionate society.

A GIFT FROM