Mama Bear Your brain changes during pregnancy to prepare you for the awesome responsibility of carrying, giving birth to, and raising your child. In fact, after months of persistent activation of the “wanting” and “liking” centers of your brain, almost everything about your baby seems alluring because your brain will be baby-based (Numan & Young, …
Mindful Mowing Before taking a mindfulness class, Dr. David Deitch couldn’t wait to take “Mow the Yard” off of his To Do list so he could enjoy the weekend. After three weeks of practice, he noticed he had come to savor the time mowing. This is the story he shared about the transformation: I divide …
Many decades ago a friend of mine asked to watch me tie my shoes. As I tied my shoes I watched her watching my fingers and laces so intently. The moment I finished she was all smiles and excitement, promptly asking me if I would teach her son to tie his shoes. Apparently she had …
“What you focus on grows.â€Â Of all the simple, direct, and life changing concepts Dr. Maria Hunt taught me…this one resonated so deeply, so easily, so effectively for me. Moving from hindering to helpful, stuck to free, same old, same old to authentically me is a real life changer. A Beginner’s Mind Years ago, after …
Mindfulness has helped me see that sometimes we look too hard and too directly for that which we seek…and often don’t find. I had always believed it was most efficient to go directly to what I wanted, to seek exactly what I wanted, to identify what I wanted and look for exactly that. In my …
Are you familiar with the game I Spy?  While Scholastic® held a trademark for the printed puzzle, the children in our neighborhood created a version that didn’t require a subscription to their popular magazine. Like most games, we learned and created the rules on the fly, adding features and nuances fed by pure curiosity. Reconstructing the guidelines we used then, I …
Our lab came into existence in 2007 thanks to a generous grant from the Menorah Legacy Foundation of Kansas City. Since that time, we’ve been busy searching for the active ingredients in both Eastern and Western approaches to mindfulness practices, thanks to additional grants from the George H. Nettleton Foundation and the Missouri Medical Association …
Well… And sigh. I think I may finally see (and truly feel) that I cannot fool the laws of physics, myself, or any interaction between body and mind. I mean I know this. It has been my passion and my study. Yet somehow I felt I could skip the “taking care of myself” part and …
I recently returned from a trip to Taiwan where I taught AAA-Mindfulness at an International “Focus on Theory and Practice Exchange” workshop sponsored by National Taipei University School of Nursing and Health Sciences. Â The following is an email that I received from one of the participants, a counseling student completing her internship. Â She knew I …
My two year old daughter, Stella, just saw something she didn’t like on the Disney Channel and said “It scares my eyes.” I find that so fascinating but it reminds me of the AAA approach to mindfulness.  If we could be as aware as kids.  So simple and pure.  Such a direct connection between the absorption …
