Tiny Buddha: Wisdom Quotes, Letting Go, Letting Happiness In

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Paul Jun

“Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

One morning I woke up and noticed a few, strange red bumps on my arms—bug bites, I thought.

Then, the next day, more bumps. Within one full week, my skin went from being clear and tan to being covered with red, scaly, teardrop spots all over my body, including my face.

My self-esteem and confidence were thrown out the window; my comfort zone reduced to about the size of a prisoner’s cell.

I went to the dermatologist, avoiding any possible eye contact or bright office lights, and made my way into the office. The doctor came in and I watched her eyes go straight to my arms and hands. By the look of it, she immediately knew what it was.

I’ve had Psoriasis before but nothing this excruciating. She explained to me that I had Guttate Psoriasis. In short: no magic pill to cure it. Creams alleviate it (although they never worked for me, ever). Light therapy helps, but the ultimate cure: meditation and believing that I would get better.

Just put yourself in my shoes for a second and imagine your skin completely shifted gears on you over the course of one week, and the only answer that you get from a professional with a foreign-sounding name, holding an iPad, is meditation and belief. Sounds like a load of crap, right?

But when you’re in the mercy of the unknown, and you literally feel like jumping out of your own skin, you will do anything to get better.

I’m not here to complain or give you a medical testimony on Psoriasis: I’m here to tell you how my skin alleviated tremendously in about two months by being mindful of my actions and thoughts, harnessing the effectiveness of words, and exercising the practice of meditation. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Kate Swoboda

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” ~Pema Chodron

By the end of 2011, I was trying my hardest not to see it: burnout.

I’d been going full steam ahead since I turned my part-time business into a full-time vocational mission, back in 2009. When people remarked that I was doing a lot, I would wave away their comments and say facetiously, “Well, you know—I’m a Sagittarius with three planets in Virgo.”

Part of the reason I didn’t want to really look at what was going on was that 2011 had been a banner year. After years of hard work, I was (finally!) starting to see the benefits that come with it: increased traffic, more clients, and more requests to collaborate on projects with people I admired.

But the burnout was obvious: not looking forward to Mondays, not wanting to check email, feeling perpetually tired and overwhelmed, and sometimes, resentful.

I really wanted to be away from the computer, away from email, and definitely not getting distracted with social media. This thought was always followed by an immediate fear: “I can’t do that! I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for!”

But as Chodron says, fear is what happens when we move closer to the truth.

My truth was that I wanted a complete digital break. So finally, from December 15^th 2011 through January 15^th 2012, I took one.

Since so many people have asked me “how” I could possibly run a business and take thirty days away from being online, I’ll share what I learned. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene

Note: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to receive free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The winners:

• Katy
• Ashley
• Dan
• Annie
• BMiller

If you read this site regularly, odds are you’re familiar with mindfulness, and you may even meditate regularly.

It’s a simple practice that can dramatically improve our physical, mental, and emotional well-being, since it helps ground us in the present moment, and frees us from the burden of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.

Whether you’re new to mindfulness or not, you’ll likely find some helpful tools in The Mindful Manifesto: How Doing Less and Noticing More Can Help Us Thrive in a Stressed Out World. Straight-forward and comprehensive, the book offers detailed instructions to retrain our minds—and be kind to ourselves in the process.

Mindfulness teacher Ed Haliwell, who co-authored The Mindful Manifesto with Dr. Jonty Heaversedge, took some time to answer a few questions about the book; and he generously offered to give away 5 copies to Tiny Buddha readers.

The Giveaway

To enter to win 1 of 5 free copies of The Mindful Manifesto:

• Leave a comment below.
• Tweet: RT @tinybuddha Book GIVEAWAY & Interview: The Mindful Manifesto http://bit.ly/H7vMTw

If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still enter by completing the first step. You can enter until midnight PST on Friday, April 6^th.

The Interview

1. Tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to teach mindfulness?

I came to mindfulness practice when I was experiencing a lot of stress, depression and anxiety. I kept searching for ways to change how I was feeling, and several people suggested learning to meditate. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Ana Barcelos

“If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” ~Oprah Winfrey

I’ve often compared myself to others and imagined that they have a better life than I do.

The youngest of eight children, I grew up with a mother who often said, “So and so must really be happy! Look at them! They know how to live life.”

Becoming a widower at the age of forty with eight children to raise was not easy on her, which is why she constantly wished her life were different. And somehow, those thoughts and words stuck with me.

I’ve frequently felt that I’m not enough, despite being a professor and researcher, having published books, and having presented at conferences in Brazil and abroad.

No matter how much I’ve done and accomplished in my life, I usually catch myself looking at other people´s lives and thinking they´re better off (despite all the webinars, self-development books, self-improvement mp3s, and meditations I have done).

I compare myself to people who somehow “seem” to lead a more fun life. In the beginning of my career, I thought that other researchers were always “producing” more than I was.

This type of thinking also manifests in the suspicion that I could be living another life.

Let me explain: We sometimes get stuck, thinking the past, or our “lost opportunities,” as we like to label them, are better than the present.

Our thinking might sound like this:

“If I had done such and such, I would be living my dreams.”

“I could be living this adventurous life in another city doing something else.”

“I´d be so happy if only I had…”

This is where the problem lies.

Lost opportunities happen when we are nowhere instead of now here.

We are nowhere when we live in the present lamenting the past, dreaming of a future that may never come if we are not mindful about our present, about the now here.

No one can be happy if not in the present. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by David Singer

“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

A person I work with recently left me an article about the unproductiveness of multitasking. On it was a sticky-note saying, “I think you’ll like this article. I wish I could do better in this area. I find it difficult, if not impossible, to not look at e-mail for a couple of hours if I’m at my desk.”

I immediately thought of my dad. He and I had met for lunch a few days earlier. He’s in his mid-70s and still loves his career, continuing to work nearly full-time.

At one point in the meal it occurred to me that unlike everyone else I know (myself included), he wouldn’t be receiving a call or a text message during our time together. He has a cell phone, but he always turns it off when he’s meeting with someone, whether a business meeting or a personal get-together.

He doesn’t put it on silent. He doesn’t put it on vibrate. He turns it off.

What a nice feeling for me, to be with someone who was totally present—and what a nice thing for him, to be living fully in the present moment.

My smartphone isn’t set to notify me when I get a new e-mail, but I regularly feel the temptation to check it, particularly in moments when there is a “lull in the action.”

For example, I recently checked my email (under a jacket so as not to disturb anyone else) when I was bored during a movie. That’s just the kind of thing that caused me to hold out on making the move to a smartphone in the first place—the concern that I would let the ease of access to things like e-mail suck me in at times when I previously would have been happy to do without.

Back to my eating with my dad. Here’s another thing that anyone who has a meal with him will notice: He’s an incredibly slow eater—likely the slowest eater you have ever met. He chews for a long time, and he savors every bite.

He eats mindfully. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Roo Mulligan

“Begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.” ~Seneca

“Where do you envision yourself in five years?”

This is a common interview question. Managers like to find employees who set goals for themselves. They think it is a sign of a person who is motivated and wants to get ahead in life.

I used to believe this too. I constantly badgered myself, “You should be further along in your career.” “Everyone else your age is in management positions, why aren’t you?” “Maybe I should get an MA so I can get a better job and be more qualified.”

There was constant pressure on me to be more, to achieve more, to do better, to be better than what I was right then. I put that pressure on myself. American society idealizes the upwardly mobile, outwardly wealthy, ambitious person.

When I was in my 30s I had a Director position with a good company, a husband, two kids, and a nice house in Florida. I was living the American dream. If asked my five-year plan in an interview I would have said to continue to move up in the company, to earn a higher salary, go back to school to get my Master’s Degree, send my kids to the best schools, and build an extension on my house.

All my goals were exterior driven—to do, strive, angst and work, work, work, work harder. But life happens and you can’t control or predict what will be thrown your way. 

In the next five years the economy tanked, and my husband was in danger of losing his job, so he wisely found another—in Indiana. We moved to the Midwest where I had never even had the slightest inkling of desire to live. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene

Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to receive free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The Winners:

• Amber
• Cris

Have you ever felt like the present moment is passing you by while you’re caught up worrying, analyzing, planning, and trying to protect yourself from pain and loss?

It’s one the pitfalls of the human condition: we often paralyze ourselves in the pursuit of happiness and abundance, and in the process, miss out on the joy right in front of us.

Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche has devoted his life to helping people live joyful, mindful lives, free from the burdens of their minds.

In his new book, Living Fully, Finding Joy in Every Breath, Rinpoche summarizes his teachings in succinct, easily digestible sections. The result is a guide for living in the moment, peacefully, connected to the people and the world around us.

The Giveaway

To enter to win 1 of 2 free copies of Living Fully:

• Leave a comment below
• Tweet: RT @tinybuddha Book GIVEAWAY & Interview: Living Fully (comment on the blog to win!) http://bit.ly/ydAMit

If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still enter by completing the first step. You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, March 11^th.

The Interview

1. You were trained to be a Lama from the age of four. Did you always feel certain you wanted to be a spiritual teacher?

Even though I was trained in the most ancient Tibetan Buddhist spiritual tradition from a very young age, I personally never intended to become a spiritual leader. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Cathy Taughinbaugh

“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” ~Marianne Williamson

Are you a dog lover? I know I am.

Animals of all kinds can bring us so much joy, not only when things are going well, but also when we feel pain and are suffering.

“Man’s best friend” can be our true and faithful companions through thick and thin. We look to our pets when we are ready to play and laugh, and they instinctively know when we need their support.

I’ve had a dog most of my life. From purebreds to mutts, I’ve loved them all. It has always felt comforting to me to have a dog around. The joy dogs provide is well worth the effort.

We all have struggles and challenges in our life, and it’s during those times that our pets can really come in handy to help us find our joy.

One of my most stressful challenges was discovering my daughter’s addiction to crystal meth. I felt blindsided by this discovery. I knew she was struggling, but this was something I had never expected.

I learned from this experience that the time I have spent working on myself, as opposed to the time I have spent trying to fix her problem, has been the most meaningful and the most productive. Despite having addiction in my life, I could find my joy again.

For parents in the midst of addiction with their children, it can be emotionally exhausting for long periods of time. It’s easy to let the stress of the situation overtake you.

I am one of the lucky ones. My daughter has gone on to seek recovery for her addiction. She has grown and matured in ways I would never have expected.

We have both learned life lessons, and have evolved into new and hopefully better people. We both know to take it one day at a time.

From this experience, I found I needed to change. I needed to approach life in a new way.

As I watch my dog go through her day, I realize the lessons are really right there in front of me if I care to pay attention.

Here are some of the ways I can be the person my dog wants me to be, and be the person I want to be as well. I know that whatever life brings me, joy is still always there for the taking. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Laura Fenamore

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

With 2012 just starting, New Year’s resolutions are on everyone’s mind.

I’ve never liked the word “resolution.” As defined in the dictionary, resolution means “a firm decision to do or not do something,” and anyone who’s ever done, well, anything knows that life rarely works like that.

I prefer to think of my January decisions as New Year’s Solutions. Defined in the dictionary as “a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation,” solutions are useful and practical. Thinking about them now helps us find peace in whatever may happen in the year ahead.

The best solution I can think of, and one that is especially helpful after the excess of the holiday season, is letting go.

As a Body Image Coach, I often hear stories from people who decide at the beginning of a year that this will be the one when they’ll be able to fix their bodies.

They want to “fix” themselves; they want to look like their high school pictures or their super fit best friends or whoever’s on the cover of Vogue.

My feedback for all who are constricted by a negative diet mentality: let go.

This seems counterintuitive, ironic, cruel, and maybe even ridiculous. You’ve just connected with a powerful desire about what you want your life to be like, and now I’m going to tell you that you have to move forward completely unattached to the outcome of whether you’ll get the life you want and will now be working toward.

The crux of this philosophy is that in order to get that which we want, we must let go of our need and desire for it.

This may sound impossible, unattainable and completely contradictory; however, this is where freedom lies.

I know firsthand that letting go is the path to freedom and joy. My struggle with weight started when I was a toddler. When I got older, I thought that if I could only lose the extra weight, I would be happy.

I did lose the weight—100 pounds—between my 24^th and 25^th birthdays. I had finally achieved what I thought was my goal; I was thin, so I should be happy, right?

I was more miserable than ever. I was so worried about gaining the weight back, so scared that I might relapse, that I couldn’t enjoy my newfound health.

I was stuck living in fear that the future would not be what I wanted, that I would lose control, that my hard work would be for naught.

It was only when I figured out how to live in the present, how to be focus on the now and not concern myself with worrying about things that had not even yet happened, that I was able to be happy.

After learning to do that, not only was I content for the first time in my life, but I also was able to keep the weight off without worrying about it. I have kept that 100 pounds off for 24 years.

We achieve the life we desire when we begin living for the moment, in the moment, and because of the moment. Finding happiness in this New Year will not be an outcome or a result. It is doing; it is being.

How can your foster this way of being in your life? It begins with looking at those things we desire most and finding the bliss in working toward them in the present—not in achieving them in the future.

Achievement is still the goal, but ironically, you only get there by letting go of the need for it. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Henri Junttila

“Of course there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.” ~Arthur Rubinstein

I used to be a big fan of working hard, really hard. I still work hard, but I do it from a place of inspiration and peace, instead of fear and must.

In the past few years, something has shifted within me. It is both confusing and wonderful. I cannot put my finger on exactly what is going on, but it seems to be happening in just the right way.

Like Arthur Rubinstein says in the quote above, there are no formulas for living the life you secretly dream about, because if you simply accept and welcome life, it’ll reveal itself to you.

It is not through effort that you mold the universe to your liking, but from allowing the universe to mold you, and show you the way.

When I began doing what I love, which is showing people how they can be more fulfilled in their work, I thought I had to take a predetermined path to my destination.

And it almost stopped me, because I didn’t believe in myself. I saw so many others doing what I wanted to do, and they were more accomplished, had more knowledge, and were more successful.

Or, so it seemed.

I almost didn’t take action, but I’m glad I did.

The Biggest Pitfall

One of the biggest mistakes I made was trying to find the answers outside of myself when the answers were always inside.

I’m not saying you should abandon learning and research altogether, but for me, it reached a point where I had to listen to my heart, and feel where I should go.

I resisted going down this path for a long time, and I still sometimes do, because I’ve been a big fan of the mind, of logic.

However, I’ve realized that I don’t know it all, and when I listen to my heart, I seem to be led to more happiness, peace, and freedom in my life.

The early days were a struggle, but as I began seeing results, I started trusting my heart more and more. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene

Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The Winners:

• Adam Ertur
• James Cuzella

I read a lot of books about mindfulness; this was by far one of my favorites. In his book Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time, Rick Hanson offers practical, daily practices, backed by the latest in brain research, to help us avoid stress, improve our mood, enjoy life more fully, and develop emotional resilience.

This is not merely a book of mindfulness exercises; it’s a guide that helps us rewire our brains for increased happiness and overall well-being. I highly recommend Just One Thing to anyone who’s felt overwhelmed by disempowering, negative thoughts.

The Giveaway

To enter to win 1 of 2 free copies of Just One Thing:

• Leave a comment below.
• Tweet: RT @tinybuddha Book Giveaway & Interview with Rick Hanson: Develop a Buddha Brain http://bit.ly/rW3u3N

If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still enter by completing the first step. You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, December 11^th.

The Interview

1. Your work is based on the idea that meditation and mindfulness can change the brain. Can you expand on this?

Actually, I’d put this a little more broadly: my work—and that of many other scholars and clinicians—is grounded in the general fact of “experience-dependent neuroplasticity,” which is the capacity of mental activity to change neural structure.

For example, researchers studied cab drivers who must memorize London’s spaghetti snarl of streets, and at the end of their training their hippocampus—a part of the brain that makes visual-spatial memories—had become thicker: much like exercise, they worked a particular “muscle” in their brain, which built new connections among its neurons.

Similarly, another study found that long-term mindfulness meditators had thicker cortex in parts of the brain that control attention and tune into one’s body.

In the saying from the work of the Canadian psychologist, Donald Hebb: “neurons that fire together, wire together.”

Fleeting thoughts and feelings leave lasting traces in neural structure. Whatever we stimulate in the brain tends to grow stronger over time.

A traditional saying is that the mind takes the shape it rests upon. The modern update would be that the brain takes its shape from whatever the mind rests upon—for better or worse. The brain is continually changing its structure. The only questions are: Who is doing the changing: oneself or other forces? And are these changes for the better?

In this larger context, my focus is on how to apply these new scientific findings: how to use the mind to change the brain to change the mind for the better—for psychological healing, personal growth, and (if it’s of interest) deepening spiritual practice. I’m especially interested in: Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Roger Horn

“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

I heard this story recently while listening to a favorite radio show of mine. It was about this homeless man who was detailing some of his experience with homelessness.

He told stories of sleeping outside in the rain and waiting for hours to get into an overcrowded shelter. He even told a story about another homeless man, who could speak no English, who told him about how he had spent a sleepless night in a trash compactor because he felt safer and was drier than sleeping out on the street.

He didn’t get much sleep however, because all night he kept worrying that someone might press “the button.”

The single story he told that stood out in my mind, however, was the story of the time he was offered the job of house-sitting for a friend.  As you could imagine, the thought of existing somewhere safely, of being sheltered from the weather, of being able to relax on a couch and watch TV was overwhelming for him.

He was excited like a child might be excited before being told that his parents had decided to go out and buy him a brand new bicycle.

There was no doubt that he was thrilled about all these things, and he certainly had a right to be. With all that he was about to experience, however, the thing that he looked forward to the most was sleeping. 

Really? Sleeping? I wondered, how could he be excited about sleeping when he had a house all to himself?

The thing is, sleeping in a warm bed, to most of us, is something we take for granted. Something we don’t ever think about. But, as this man detailed, sleeping is tough when you’re homeless.

You don’t get much sleep when the cold and wet are invading every inch of your body. Most of the time, when you do sleep, you sleep with one eye open for fear of having something stolen, or being attacked.

So when he first fell like a rough heavy stone into the softness of his friend’s bed that first night, all he could do was lay there looking at the dark quiet ceiling and feel grateful. Then he said something that was special to me. Something that resonated inside me like the assertive crisp ring of a bell.  Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Angela Marchesani

“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse

We’ve all had moments when life’s demands left us feeling stressed and scattered. In these moments, it’s helpful to have some simple tools to help us gain composure and come back to our center.

Let me paint a picture for you of a scene from my daily life at its most overwhelming.

On a recent Tuesday, I drafted my evening’s “to-do” list, which contained the following items: Go clothes shopping for my son, get groceries, cook up some dog food, cook dinner, give my son a bath, put laundry away, walk the dog, and prepare for a workshop that I was to present that weekend.

Like most working parents, I have to fit a lot of tasks into a brief period of time on weeknight evenings.

Clearly all of those items weren’t going to get accomplished. But I felt compelled to try.

And then, mid-afternoon, a feeling of illness began to creep over me, starting with a headache and progressing into nausea and profound fatigue. By the time I got home, I had revised my list, and whittled it down to: Bathe my son.

I felt incapable of anything else.

Still, even with a truncated list, my evening became chaotic very quickly. Our newly-acquired dog was dripping blood all over the house, including the white slipcover. She was not sick—she was in heat.

As I tried to attend to the mess, my son called to me from the kitchen. He held his cupped hand out to me, and proudly exclaimed, “I caught it so it wouldn’t fall on the kitchen floor!”

I will allow you to draw your own conclusions about what his hand held, but I’ll give you a hint: He’s potty training.

In the mean time, my head was throbbing, my stomach was retching, dishes from the previous day were piled up in the sink, laundry from the week sat haphazardly on my bedroom chair, and the workshop I was to present in four days had not been planned or prepared for. Not to mention, I had a hungry child and dog to attend to.

Sometimes, when external factors like these seem overwhelming, we feel unable to remove ourselves from the situation long enough to gain perspective and compose ourselves in order to move forward.

Very often, these external factors become internalized, and our minds start reeling. “I’ll never get it all done, my life is spiraling out of control, I can’t get myself together…” The internal loop can be loud, persistent, and ultimately paralyzing. And once it begins, it is hard to stop. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene

Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to receive free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The Winners:

• Maggieodle
• Tiffani
• Shirlena
• Ali
• JLO

Last year, a representative from More Than Sound reached out to me to share the publishing company’s new mindful driving CD, Awake at the Wheel.

As someone who frequently deals with Los Angeles traffic, I especially appreciated the opportunity to hear and share a CD focused on making the roads more peaceful.

Recently, More Than Sound connected with me again to introduce their latest offering, a CD by emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman titled Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share it with you and offer 5 free copies as a giveaway!

The Giveaway

To win one of 5 free copies of Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress:

• Leave a comment on this post.
• Tweet: RT @tinybuddha Giveaway – Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress http://bit.ly/vr9r6O

You can enter until midnight PST on Friday, November 11th. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still enter by completing the first step.

About Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress

Chronic stress can disrupt almost all of your body’s processes. It’s been shown to increase the risk of numerous health problems including heart disease, sleep issues, digestive complications, fatigue, depression, anxiety and obesity.

Daniel Goleman, Harvard-trained psychologist and author of Emotional Intelligence, developed Relax, a 45-minute audio program to help listeners effectively and naturally reduce stress. Since there’s no one universal antidote to stress relief, Dr. Goleman’s guided session offers several exercises to suit a variety of personal preferences:

• Deep breathing exercises
• Deep muscle relaxation techniques
• Guided auto suggestion exercises
• Relaxation countdown
• Breath focus and tension release techniques
• Breath count exercises

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Amanda Cook

“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Flour. Salt. Water. Yeast. As I push the warm, soft dough against my palm, I feel the cold stone countertop underneath. I feel my hips leaning up against the cabinets. I hear my breath inside my head.

As I knead the dough, it changes. The dough becomes more elastic and flexible, ready to rise and be baked into a crusty loaf.

As I make bread, I change. My thoughts go quiet. I come into the now.

I have struggled with an inconsistent meditation practice for months. In those moments when I successfully meditate and clear my mind, I feel such a sense of accomplishment and peace.

But as any beginning meditator knows, those moments are few and far between.

Usually, my scattered mind is split between keeping track of the time, trying to quiet the voice in my head, and chastizing my body for fidgeting. 

I struggled and pushed myself to meditate properly with little success, until I realized that any act can be a meditation.

I discovered this fundamental insight through books by Eckhart Tolle and Thich Nhat Hanh. It is not so important to sit with a perfectly erect spine for 20 minutes per day in meditative bliss. What is important is to be here, in the now. Living your life. Noticing what is. Noticing life.

So often throughout our days we are lost in our thoughts. We may be on the train or in the shower, but in our heads we are already giving that important presentation, having the difficult conversation, worrying about and planning for what might happen next. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Henri Juntilla

“To be alive is to totally and openly participate in the simplicity and elegance of here and now.” ~Donald Altman

Five years ago, my life was a mess compared to now. I was anxious, worried, afraid, and running away from my feelings—I was running away from the present moment.

So, what happened?

I started applying what I knew, which were really simple things, such as breathing, visualization, and being aware of my thought patterns.

I haven’t found the Holy Grail, I simply took action. I had no idea how much my life was about to change, I just knew something had to change, because the way I was living (and feeling) wasn’t cutting it.

I’d had enough of suffering. I wanted more. I’m not perfect, no one is, but I’m moving forward. If you’d like to do the same, I recommend:

1. Breathe.

What would an article about being present be without breathing at the top?

I stumbled onto old Buddhist texts early on in my life, and they emphasized breathing, so I started doing that.

At first it was hard, because my mind was racing all over the place, but after a while I became aware of the muscles and subtle energy sensations in my body.

When I focused on one part of my body, I started noticing a tingling of energy there. When I anchored myself into this very moment through my breath, I felt good, sometimes amazingly good. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene

Update: The winners for this giveaway have been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to learn about future giveaways!

The winners:

• Threethirty
• Jann
• Christina
• Alison
• Caro

As you can likely tell from the number of author interviews/giveaways I’ve posted during these last few weeks, I’ve been receiving and reading a wide selection of books lately. One-Minute Mindfulness is now sitting on my coffee table, where I know I will refer it often.

The full title reads One-Minute Mindfulness: 50 Simple Ways to Find Peace, Clarity, and New Possibilities in a Stressed-Out World. It delivers on its promise.

From the Amazon Description:

In this book, Donald Altman brings the benefits of mindfulness down to earth and into everyday life. With fifty exercises and practices to build awareness and center attention, you will discover how to savor routine pleasures, build fulfillment in your work, enhance and heal relationships, change unhealthy habits, and connect to peace even in the midst of chaos or uncertainty.

The Giveaway

To enter to win one of 5 free copies of One-Minute Mindfulness:

1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. Tweet: RT @tinybuddha Giveaway and Interview: One-Minute Mindfulness by Donald Altman http://bit.ly/mQfaHA

You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, September 25th.

The Interview

1. In your book, One Minute Mindfulness, you offer a variety of practices to create mindfulness in 60 seconds. It’s an accessible practice, since everyone can find a minute here and there throughout their day. Do you find that integrating these practices into a daily routine creates more mindfulness overall?

In my mind, there’s no question that this increases the level of overall mindfulness. This is actually in line with the Buddha’s teachings—that mindfulness is used every possible moment. And it’s why mindfulness is considered to be a path to enlightenment.

Each next sixty seconds holds the potential for anyone to open with spaciousness to whatever is happening, to see the truth of that moment. You can only do that in the next minute that is right before you, which is why a one-minute mindfulness practice is so valuable. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Lynn Zavaro

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” ~Helen Keller

Ever since I can remember I liked to travel. It does something to me, something strange and oddly uncharacteristic: I am suddenly very laid back.

When I travel I’ve got the right mind-set. I know I will stand in lines, have to schlep heavy bags, or perhaps have delays. I know that I will be eating at restaurants for the first time, without knowing if I will like them.

At home, when I am stressed out and worried, my mind likes to give me lists of things to do that I can’t keep up with. It juts me way out into the future, compels me to question myself, and stops me from being present with the task at hand.

The trick for me is to do one of the following:

• Not believe my mind
• Acknowledge it, and then put my attention on something else
• Remember how much I like traveling

When I travel, I expect the unexpected and have faith in the fact that things will not always go my way. This is part of the whole adventure.

I often wonder when traveling with my husband if he thinks to himself, “Who the hell is this person?” He must wonder it because I wonder it myself.

Travel is just the most obvious place for me to accept that I do not have control. I relax because I realize I never have control over anything anyway, so why not anticipate or even marvel at the ways my vacation may be going “wrong”? Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Loran Hills

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”  ~Pema Chodron

It’s tempting. Staying in the nest means life feels safe and we are protected. If we get thrown out of the nest we either stretch our new wings and fly or plummet to the ground.

Flight poses new challenges. How do we embrace spaciousness when we desire solidity? How do we stay aloft and open?

A friend of mine recently showed me a nest of robin’s eggs. Beautiful, blue like the sky, and full of bright possibility, we admired the eggs.  Sadly none of the chicks survived.

Life can be harsh and unpredictable for little chicks and humans. How do we recover when we are thrown out of the nest?  How do we awaken?

In her book, When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron talks about there being no safety net, only spaciousness.  At first this concept frightened me. I didn’t understand what she was talking about.

Spaciousness is the wide blue sky with no clouds. Spaciousness is a trip to a far away galaxy. In order to fly we must embrace the openness without clinging to the nest.

Spaciousness in common vernacular can mean “going with the flow.”  If we don’t cling or attach to results but stay in the moment we can experience spaciousness.  Life will feel less constricted and less anxious.

The world appears to be concrete, but it’s not solid. As many people around the world know from tragic circumstances, your home can disappear in a split second. Your life can change in an instant.

I can have my day timer filled with appointments and meetings, but what if I get a flat tire or get sick? It’s a scramble to reschedule. These are only minor events that can cause stress.

There are so many distractions in our daily lives, as well—phone calls, emails, TV, kids fighting.  It’s a challenge to stay calm. No wonder we’d prefer to just stay in our warm beds in the morning!

If I take time to breathe, to become aware, to experience spaciousness or flow, then disruptions in my life do not feel so overwhelming. Once I understood that spaciousness could give me a sense of freedom, I was no longer frightened. I was relieved.

Waking up in the morning and taking off in a flurry of activity after a cup of coffee is not equivalent to being completely awake. It takes practice to calm down, slow down, and become more aware. I’ve been taught that success comes through small actions repeated many times.

As creatures of habit, we all tend to move through the day on automatic, sticking to a schedule and a plan. Have you ever arrived at work without quite knowing how you got there? Have you eaten your lunch at your desk and not even tasted it? Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Toni Bernhard

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” ~Socrates

In April, NPR ran a story titled, “The Slow Internet Movement.” It reported that hipster cities, like Portland, Oregon, are sprouting Internet cafés that only offer dial-up access to the web.

These cafés give customers, “Slow pours and slow Internet. Here, you can order your coffee and spend four hours checking your email, all for $.99 an hour.”

“Wow,” I thought.” That’s just my speed!” (No pun intended.) But the story didn’t just run in April. It ran on April 1^st and was NPR’s little April Fools joke at the expense of gullible people like me.

It got me thinking, though. Life would be much less stressful if I embraced the spirit of the Slow Internet Movement. So, here are four tips for slowing down:

1. Double the time you think it will take to complete a task.

How often do you clock in at or under the time you’ve allotted for a task? I rarely do. Take my raised ivy geranium bed. Periodically, the geraniums spill over onto the walkway and I need to cut them back.

Every time I assess the task, I estimate it will take 20 minutes at most. But it always takes at least twice that long. By the time I’m done, due to chronic illness, I’ve used up my energy stores for the day. I’m “trashed” as we call it my household.

Inspired by The Slow Internet Movement, when I tackled the task a few weeks ago, I doubled my 20-minute time estimate. Forty minutes is more than I can handle at one time, so I cut back half the geraniums on Saturday and the other half on Sunday.

Sure, the box looked odd for 24 hours—like half of a buzz cut—but no one seemed to notice. Not only did I spare myself burnout, but I truly enjoyed the activity both times. Click Here to Read More…