Stress is toxic to our health, contributing to heart disease, depression, and many other physical and mental ailments. Research shows that mindfulness meditation is a powerful tool to help reduce anxiety, depression, and stress! The stress-reducing power of mindfulness is amplified when we combine it with self-compassion.

Try This Practice for More Calm, Less Stress in 2022

Practicing mindfulness in everyday life can help us feel less distracted, reduce anxiety, improve memory and concentration, and better manage crises like dealing with the pandemic, research shows. Could it even help us keep New Year’s resolutions?

I believe the answer is yes, when we make self-compassion part of our mindfulness practice.

Studies show that people who are compassionate toward themselves are more likely to try again when they fail to achieve a goal. They don’t see failure as a blow to their self-concept. They recognize that everyone fails, and view failure is an opportunity to grow.

The soothing S.N.A.P. method can help you meet whatever challenges the New Year brings with mindful self-compassion

According to one recent poll, more than half of people surveyed say one of their New Years resolutions will be to take more vacation time in 2022 than they did in 2021. That’s a wonderful idea to recharge, refresh and get more happiness and joy out of life.

There’s something else we can do to help us be more resilient in 2022 — even when the crap hits the fan. I’m talking about practicing mindfulness and mindful self-compassion.

Research shows that practicing mindfulness in everyday life can help us feel less distracted, reduce anxiety, improve memory and concentration and better manage crises like dealing with the pandemic. Mindful self-compassion can even give us a leg up when it comes to keeping New Year’s resolutions!

Studies show that people that are compassionate toward themselves are more likely to try again when they fail to achieve a goal. They don’t see failure as a blow to their self-concept. They recognize that everyone fails, and see failure is a growth opportunity.

Want to be more mindful and compassionate with yourself? Try the S.N.A.P. method:

How to Stay Calm When Things Go From Festive to Frustrating

The holidays are upon us. And along with family gatherings, gifts, and cheerful lights in the dark of winter, the season brings mixed feelings for many people.

There’s something truly heartwarming about the holiday season, when many of us gather with family and friends to celebrate and give thanks. What we may not realize, though, is that there’s no need to limit these warm, joyful feelings to a certain day or time of year.

Research shows us that being grateful can make us happier, and that “developing an 'attitude of gratitude' is one of the simplest ways to improve your satisfaction with life.” Now Stanford researchers have found a heightened sense of appreciation is among “silver linings” Americans are experiencing in the pandemic. So why not celebrate gratitude all year long? Let Thanksgiving inspire you to start a daily gratitude practice! Here are three easy tips to get started with.

Mindful methods to calm stress, strain, and worry

Have you found yourself posting funny memes, silly videos or amusing clips from TV or movies to share a laugh with your friends? Or have you made a habit of searching YouTube or TikTok for funny cat videos? Laughter is a great way to relieve some of the sadness and seriousness of these times, and reset your nervous system from stressed to calm. So is mindfulness.

Research shows that mindfulness meditation is a powerful tool that can help us:

• Reduce anxiety, depression and stress.

• Increase emotional well-being.

• Build more satisfying relationships.

• Maintain healthy habits such as diet and exercise.

Studies even suggest that mindfulness may reduce inflammation and improve immune system function — and reduce the harmful effects stress has on your heart and mental health.

Mindful Methods to Break the Cycle of Stress

Do you ever have moments when you feel like your thoughts have been hijacked by your emotions?

Living through a pandemic, along with the noise and negativity that now dominates our newsfeeds, it’s no surprise that we sometimes experience uncomfortable emotions such as fear, frustration, anger, and worry.

One reason we have survived on this planet for so long is that our brains have adapted to constantly consider “what if” scenarios. But in modern humans, “What if a lion is in this cave?” has been replaced with a never-ending playlist of fears, from worries about COVID-19 to apprehension over global warming and natural and political disasters.

Ages ago, checking to see if a man-eating feline was in the cave before we entered had real benefits for our survival. But today, constantly ruminating on things over which we have little control creates chronic stress that can harm our health and sap our joy in life.

Fortunately, there’s a wonderfully simple tool we can use to break the cycle of stress and refocus our attention on what’s most important to us. That tool is mindfulness.

Any time we pay attention to what we are thinking, feeling, and doing in the moment, we are practicing mindfulness. When we practice being present, observing and accepting our thoughts and feelings without judgment, we give our overworked nervous systems a break. This calms the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for processing fearful or threatening stimuli. By reducing the flow of stress hormones in our bodies, mindfulness also helps reduce inflammation and boosts the immune system.

For October, Emotional Wellness Month, here are some mindful methods you can practice throughout your day to help you stay calm in the chaos:

Skills to Build Mindful Self-Compassion Anytime, Anywhere

Just when we thought the pandemic was in the rearview mirror, cases are again surging along with stress over how to cope. Parents sending kids back to school or off to college, workers wondering whether to return to the office, everyone unsure what the future holds — who doesn’t feel worried, frustrated and disappointed?

September is Self-Care Awareness Month, yet many people don’t take the time they should to care for themselves. Maybe they think self-care is frivolous, time-consuming, or even selfish. Or they get so busy fulfilling the demands of making a living and caring for a family that they forget to put their own oxygen mask on first. When turbulence hits, they feel stretched too far and snap.

If you have been feeling stressed out, burned out, or beat up by circumstances in life, it’s time to start practicing mindful self-compassion.

Mindfulness is being able to face and acknowledge our difficult thoughts and feelings with a spirit of openness and curiosity. Self-compassion involves responding to these difficult thoughts and feelings with kindness, sympathy, and understanding so that we soothe and comfort ourselves when we’re hurting. Fortunately, mindful self-compassion is a skill you can practice anytime, anywhere.

Self-care comes in many forms. Some require you to stop what you are doing and take a break, such as taking a break to walk in nature, soaking in a soothing bath, or reading your favorite book at the end of the day. But there’s also another way you can practice self-care that only requires you to pause and evaluate what you need to feel better. I call this the SNAP system:

When we get married (or enter a committed romantic partnership), we hope for peace and love to rule the day, day after day and year after year. Because life presents difficulties, our peace can be shattered and our love may be in danger of dissolving. Just as mindfulness helps us to sit with the challenges of daily life and appreciate what is present, it can help us to appreciate our partners and sit with the hard moments that inevitably arise. Though we can’t avoid the problems, when we practice mindfulness in our relationship, we can handle difficult moments with compassion and love, rather than resentment and anger.


At first, practicing mindfulness in a marriage may feel uncomfortable or unnatural. Eventually, as you plug your practice into your daily routine, it may feel easy and wonderful! Just remember, there is nothing wrong with you if you have challenges in your relationship. When two people come together, there will always be places and moments in which they seem to clash. The objective is not to avoid problems altogether, but to create a practice that allows you to sit with these hard times and manage the difficulties together in compassionate connection, so that you can repair the rupture and move forward together with kindness and love.

It has been a long road through this pandemic reality, and even with some very promising corners turned, we are not through it yet. Many parents have been navigating these strange days simply by doing all they can to keep their children’s lives on track — even if that means neglecting their own well-being. If that sounds familiar, this article is for you. Your wellness matters, and putting yourself last all the time isn’t ultimately doing anyone any favors.

We all want our kids to be happy. We want them to thrive, and we want to protect them from undue strife or struggle any way we can. But here’s the thing: If we all lived by that saying, “You’re only as happy as your least happy child,” we’d doom ourselves to a lifetime of limited joy. Until we take our happiness into our own hands and unhook it from our kids, we won’t experience the grounded sense of peace and joyfulness we crave with any consistency.

4 Ways to Set Your Happiness Free with Mindfulness

Most of us wish we had more time in the day for the things that make us feel healthier and happier. It can be challenging to figure out where to squeeze in these things that we treat as “extras” — as wants more than needs. Consider this your official invitation to move anything that makes your experience of life better (aka self-care!) into the “needs” column. And while you ponder how to make that work globally in your life, I have an incredibly simple way for you to get started.

If you have 60 seconds, you have time to squeeze a mindfulness meditation into your day. Practicing mindfulness helps us go through our days with more calm, grounded energy and less reactivity when things get chaotic. It’s a beautiful, simple practice, and here’s the great thing: You can do this anytime, anywhere. 

Being out in nature might be most relaxing — and I highly recommend you make time in your life for that on a regular basis — but you can also do a mindfulness meditation at your desk in the middle of your workday, in traffic on the highway, or while making yourself dinner, just for example. 

We all lead busy lives, even in a pandemic (or for some, especially in a pandemic!). So when it comes to wellness practices we want to add to our lives, it can sometimes feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day to add one more thing. Well, I’ve got some good news: Adding mindfulness to your day is much easier than you might imagine. It’s as simple as adding it to your morning routine.

5 Ways to Bring Mindfulness to Your Morning Routine

Mindfulness is a simple, accessible practice that can help you stay calm and grounded throughout the day. The more you practice, the easier it gets to tap into mindfulness instead of reactivity when things get stressful. Here are five ways to build mindfulness into your morning routine without skipping a beat.

Each April, we acknowledge Stress Awareness Month as an opportunity to reflect on the stress we experience, and the tools we can use to ease it from our lives. One of the simplest, most effective, and most accessible stress reducers at our disposal is mindfulness.

Mindfulness is present moment awareness, without judgment. You might notice sadness, anger, or grief arising, and mindfulness allows you a little distance to feel the feelings. Then, you may choose to focus your attention somewhere else in order to ground yourself in a more wholesome state so that you feel less suffering and more ease. You can direct this mindful awareness toward anything! The key is that you are choosing what to focus your mind on, rather than allowing unbridled thoughts and emotions to take over and dominate your attention.

Caretakers the world over are all too familiar with feelings of being stretched too thin from time to time as they nurture, support, and protect those they care for. Many others, though, are experiencing similar feelings for the first time during the pandemic. Whether you’ve been stuck at home caring for children 24/7, caring for an elderly or disabled loved one, or even “caretaking” your colleagues and your business as we all navigate this unusual time, you may have hit a wall of empathy fatigue.

What Is Empathy Fatigue?

Love relationships are one of the most beautiful and complex experiences we can have in this human life. They can bring joy and ignite passion, and they can also challenge us to face ourselves and get clear about who we really want to be.

One tool that is nothing less than indispensable throughout the journey of love is mindfulness. It can help us create more peace and love in our partnerships, as well as more calm and balance within ourselves. Whether you and your partner are just starting out and want to connect more deeply or you’ve been together for years and want to rekindle that connection, call on mindfulness to support your relationship goals. You’ll be glad you did!

5 Mindful Tips to Support Your Partnership

“Did I miss something?” asked Martha, her hand raised in the Hollywood Squares of my Zoom mindfulness class.

“What do you mean?” I inquired.

“Well, we were having this relaxing and lovely meditation experience and now we are all of a sudden talking about death and dying, so I want to know… did I miss something?”

Wow. I looked at the faces of the human beings that have grown so close these last nine months as I listened to Martha’s question and imagined fear, maybe even anger arising in her. Although I had compassion for her discomfort, I had no problem answering her by saying, “Yes, actually. You missed loving connected presence. You missed the fact that we are here to support each other for whatever comes up.”

Loneliness around the holidays has always been an issue for some of us, but the coronavirus outbreak has widened the reality of this struggle to include more people than ever. Before the pandemic hit, a study reported that more than 60% of Americans grapple with loneliness. After lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were issued, about a third of Americans reported feeling even lonelier than usual.

Now, nine months into the pandemic, with the holiday season in full swing, coronavirus numbers are on the rise — and so are the stay-at-home orders to combat that surge. How can those who already struggled with loneliness in normal times deal with the increased isolation? How can people who usually rely on companionship with loved ones during the holidays cope with this new loneliness-inducing reality?

We all want to be loved and to give love

I’ve been grappling recently with how to communicate on social media with friends and acquaintances when they share inflammatory posts that are obviously designed to sow discord. You’ve seen them: posts that are premeditatedly conceived to get under the skin of a particular group.

Regardless of whether or not these posts are ultimately meant to jar those with opposing viewpoints into a presumed “wake up call,” as soon as the resulting anger and outrage arise, all critical reasoning stops. It’s simple brain science; we go into fight, flight, or freeze mode and our ability to respond rationally flies right out the window.

Other times, posts are shared that have elements of verifiably blatant lies. In these cases, I try to respectfully share articles that tell the truth, from non-partisan fact-finding sites. My liberal friends tell me not to bother.

In a liberal Facebook group that I love, I copied a post from a pro-Trump acquaintance and asked for help refuting her points, in case anyone already had the information about Trump and veterans’ healthcare. The replies were really interesting. They ranged from “Don’t bother; you can’t fix stupid” to substantive content that was super helpful.

Ups and downs are a natural part of life, but the roller coaster of emotional realities we’ve been riding lately calls for us to pay special attention to our well-being. If you don’t have a self-care routine in place, or you’re looking to refine or refresh the one you’ve got, allow me to recommend the simple yet powerful practice of mindfulness.

Mindfulness can help us offer ourselves some much-needed love, compassion, and peace of mind as we continue to navigate the realities of the ongoing pandemic. Here are five ways you can use mindfulness to comfort yourself, even amidst chaos.

6 Tips for Using Mindfulness to Navigate Grief

The world is struggling under the weight of grief right now; there’s no denying it. With the renewed fight to end racial injustice and the lingering realities of the coronavirus pandemic and all its implications, we all have a lot on our emotional plates.  

As of this writing, around 119,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States alone, and numbers continue to rise. People are grieving loved ones lost to the pandemic, lives destroyed by racial violence, and dreams crushed by cancelled graduations and weddings. Grief takes many forms, and it happens when we are in mourning for someone or something lost to us that has a huge impact on our lives.

If you are grieving, you are not alone — and you don’t need to suffer in silence. Mindfulness is a gentle and effective tool any of us can use to lessen the weight of grief as we navigate it. Give yourself a little present, right here and now, and try one or more of these mindfulness tips. As the saying goes: pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.