This month we wanted to revisit the attitudinal stance of curiosity in your mindfulness practice (and your life). Recently, I (Josh) got up way too early on a Saturday to drive my 8-year-old son to a soccer game an hour’s drive away. It was still dark outside as I fumbled with my coffee press. While I cleaned out the coffee grounds from the day...

This is our first post in several months - we consciously decided to let the blog go for a bit while we focused our energies into the weekly sangha, our private practices, and unexpected family obligations. Accepting our limits has been an important part of self-care, and we hope you all have been doing the same! Now that we're back at it, we're...

We're moved this month to discuss mindfulness in action. Mindfulness is an effective approach to looking within and seeing what work we need to do on ourselves. When talking about our thought processes, I have heard a few mindfulness teachers quoting Krishnamurti who stated, "You think you are thinking your thoughts, you are not; you are thinking...

It is incredible to think how the world and our lives have changed since our previous blog post. Our February post "Mindfulness and Community" rather ironically focused on the benefits of practicing with others. Never would we have imagined that sitting together a few short weeks later would not be possible. A timely reminder that the uncertainty...

As we make the transition to a new office and chapter, we've got community on our minds. As many who have taken a course and meditated with others might tell you - the experience of practicing alone versus with others can feel quite different. Why might this be? While this answer might be different for everyone, here are some of our observations...

The new year is around the corner. So, We dedicate this blog for anyone who has made it a New Year’s resolution to bring more mindfulness into their daily life in 2020. As we all know, New Years resolutions have a low probability of sticking throughout the year. We often aim a little too high, or life just gets in the way of us solidifying the...

This month we're continuing our theme on habit and behavior change with a brief discussion about "rule-governed behavior". Rule-governed behavior is pretty much just what it sounds like: things we do because there is some sort of rule that says we should do it that way. This can certainly be helpful - especially on a systemic level. Businesses,...

This month, our blog will continue with the theme of how mindfulness can help to change a habit. We thought it might be useful to take a closer look at one of the main components involved in habits, the brain. First, let's take a look at what's going on with this powerful organ when at rest in our skulls. A study done at Harvard in 2010 showed...

We don't know a single person who isn't trying to either establish a new habit that they know would be good for them, or break a habit that they know isn't serving them. It's really not easy! Changing our behaviors, even in small ways, can seem completely out of reach much of the time. We'll be spending a few blog posts looking at behavior change...

Children naturally tend towards curiosity.  Do you remember being a kid watching ants crawling in and out of that ant hill wondering what they were up to? Such a question, filled with genuine curiosity, might have led you to watching the ants for longer than you ever would today as they carried things in and out of a little mound of dirt....

When we practice mindfulness, we are sharpening several necessary and frequently underdeveloped skills - flexible attention, knowing what we're feeling, and observing our own thoughts - to name just a few. This month on the blog, we'd like to discuss the critical skill of beginning again. Whether we're sitting in meditation, or practicing...

This month we thought it would be helpful to discuss the differences between relaxation techniques and mindfulness meditation practices. Both have benefits. However, we (Erin and Josh) often find that people talking about mindfulness meditation, mistake it for another way to relax. The mistake is more than understandable since there is a lot of...

For many reasons, people often reject self-compassion as “not for me”.  This month on the blog, we’d like to look at several common myths about self-compassion, and provide some clarity around what self-compassion actually is (and what it is not).  Myth #1:  Self-compassion is weak.  If I’m not hard on myself, I’ll never get anything done. In our...

This month we’ll continue our talk on the topic of self-compassion, and explore some of the differences between self-esteem and self-compassion.  Self-esteem refers to the degree to which we evaluate ourselves positively.  Self-compassion, by contrast, refers to how we relate to ourselves when we’re hurting – with kindness and understanding (see...

This month on the blog, we'd like to introduce you to self-compassion - a topic we're sure to return to frequently. To boil it down to its essence, self-compassion is the stance of turning towards oneself as an inner ally, rather than an inner enemy - particularly in times of suffering and pain. Drs. Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer break...

This month, we’ll look at the connection between mindfulness and emotion regulation.  Several studies have demonstrated that mindfulness meditation training results in an increase in emotion regulation.  Emotion regulation, in general, refers to a person’s ability to effectively experience emotions.  Skills related to emotion regulation include:...

This month on the blog, we’ll be looking at the results of a very recent RCT (randomized controlled trial) published in the Journal of Human Hypertension, looking at the impacts of mindfulness meditation training on adults with hypertension.  In sum, the results of the study suggest that mindfulness meditation may offer adults with hypertension a...

Two Rivers Mindfulness Institute, LLC