By Anneli Rufus A total stranger about whose business establishment I had written an article emailed me the night after it was published, alleging that my article was “mostly erroneous.” For a horrified split-second I wondered how this could be, as (1) I’m a conscientious professional—not perfect, sure, but too careful after having written thousands of articles to get one…
When Bob Dylan turns another year older on May 24, the usual gaggle of journalists and Dylanophiles will report the news with the same sense of head-scratching, how-can-it-be wonderment they’ve expressed on Dylan’s birthday ever since America’s rock ’n’ roll poet laureate hit middle age. It’s as if, as a nation of nostalgia hounds, we simply can’t get our minds…
Balancing spirituality and science, the lineup for last week’s FACES conference in Washington, D.C., was remarkable: Roshi Joan Halifax, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Kristin Neff, Barbara Fredrickson, Frank Ostaseski, Christine Courtois, Tara Brach, John Briere, and Chris Germer. I was worried that mindfulness had been talked about a bit too much of late, but the speakers brought fresh insights and research to…
By day, I’m a calm, mild-mannered middle school teacher who would do just about anything to motivate my students to do their best work and fall in love with learning. I praise their achievements and efforts, not just their high scores, and then watch those scores improve. When they stumble, I help them see how to pick themselves back up…
I turned 63 this year. How can this be? In my mind, I’m perpetually 30. When I was 30, my innocent look and ageless skin meant I’d still get carded. I was living like a free spirit—taking weird jobs…standing buck naked in the middle of a room full of clothed people. Really. My joke to myself was that every morning…
Once upon a time, when stationery was pastel and melon-scented, I closed all my correspondence with “love.” An unexpectedly fastidious gene prevented me from making the transition to “Luv ya!” a few years later—a failure that pretty much describes my entire middle school experience, socially if not academically. My pre-Internet-age education did ensure that I’d graduate knowing the proper way…
Like so many people, women in particular, I was never very comfortable in my own skin. But my discomfort had less to do with wanting to be a blonde instead of a brunette or wishing for blue eyes instead of hazel. Though I did of course occasionally covet different physical traits than the ones I was born with, it wasn’t…
The day my father died, suddenly, of a heart attack, I wanted to be the one to tell my son, who was six years old at the time, what happened. I sat down on the sofa, took Truman’s hands in mine, and told him his grandfather had died. I explained what that meant—that we wouldn’t see him anymore but would…
The value of mindfulness for promoting compassion for others and ourselves has drawn a lot of attention in recent years. And few have done more to help people bring self-compassion into their lives than Christopher Germer, Ph.D. A founding member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, Dr. Germer has led countless mindfulness workshops and is the author of one…
