Topic Archives:
Grounding and Thanksgiving with Monique Gray Smith
Why We Need Contemplative Education More Than Ever: An Unfolding at Mind & Life’s 2025 Summer Research Institute
Mind & Life periodically invites guest writers to contribute to the blog as a way of deepening dialogue and understanding around key themes related to our mission. In this post, a participant at our 2025 Summer Research Institute reflects on her experience. I have performance anxiety. I thrive in groups of two—me and one other …
Digital Immersion, Technology Use, and Teens: How Can Mindfulness Help?
Today’s adolescents are growing up in an increasingly connected world. And while the daily grind of young adult life—like the pressure to get into the right high school or college—isn’t created by technology, its gears can be sped up by digital immersion and spending time absorbed in apps and surfing social media. For over a …
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Mansi Kotak—Seeding the Future Through Contemplative Gardening
Investigating Nature-based Contemplative Education
As in many countries, more children in India—up to 11 percent—are growing up with attention deficit disorder, often combined with hyperactivity. This can lead to behavioral difficulties and academic challenges. While enhanced diagnosis and awareness of mental health issues partially explain these trends, researchers also point to the isolation students experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic …
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Nurturing Equity in Academia: It Involves Mindfulness, Mentorship, and Community
This blog post was originally published online with Psychology Today. The academic landscape poses formidable challenges for people of color, who often experience systemic racism and microaggressions within the competitive and predominantly white environments characterizing higher education. Such challenges and inequity have been found to contribute to higher rates of depression and anxiety among BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) students …
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Indigenizing Mindfulness: A Path Toward Well-being for Native American Youth
For thousands of years, Indigenous cultures in America have engaged in sacred ceremonies and practices—singing, dancing, beadwork, prayer, basketmaking, drumming, running, and more—that nurture present moment awareness and a felt sense of interconnection. How can such practices be integrated into efforts to support the mental health and well-being of Native American youth today? With support …
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Sharing the Power of Nature-Based Contemplative Practices for Inner Peace and Collective Well-Being
In the northwestern United States, two interconnected upland wet meadows are surrounded by densely packed Douglas Firs, Western Red Cedars, Western Hemlocks, and other common evergreen flora of the southern Cascade mountain range. A group of youth take off from a nearby parking lot and are led through a restored grassland, the surrounding woods, and …
Combining Mindfulness Training with Climate Education: One Researcher’s Journey
In recent years, California has become ground zero for climate-related natural disasters in the U.S. from out-of-control wildfires and violent flooding to devastating drought. To equip students with the knowledge to better understand—and take action—in the face of climate change, the University of California (UC) launched a multidisciplinary curriculum, Bending the Curve, in 2017. The …
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