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Two recent items show that meditation continues to move to the mainstream:

Suze Yalof Schwartz, a former Vogue and Glamour editor, opens what she hopes will be the first in a chain of meditation studios on the west side of Los Angeles. It's named Unplug, and she calls it “a SoulCycle for meditation,” a reference to the exercise-and-empowerment chain. Her slogan is “Hurry up and slow down.” Inventing a Drybar for Meditation

“The people who need to meditate are lawyers and bankers and stressed-out mommies,” she told me, smiling sweetly. “And those people get turned off by the Buddhas and sage and all the woo-woo talk. I wanted Unplug to be meditation for Type A personalities: clean, modern, secular, effortless to attend.”

The Times also offers a story about people using meditation groups for networking, How to Find a Job With Meditation and Mindfulness. 

There could not be two less compatible concepts: the quiet of the ancient practice of meditation and the heart thump of striving New Yorkers looking for the next opportunity. Now, meditation studios and conferences catering to Type A Manhattan careerists are becoming a new hub for networking without the crass obviousness of looking for a job. It is hard to quiet the mind in a city where competitive cab-hailing is a blood sport. So why not look for a little stress relief, or start-up financing, among empathic meditating friends?

...What makes meditation palatable to entrepreneurs and executives these days is that it is perceived as a tool to help increase productivity. A quiet mind more easily recognizes unexpected business opportunities and is poised to react more astutely.

Meditation is a tool, certainly, but expecting it to increase productivity or to bring business opportunities is to miss the point. In fact, if you expect it to bring you instantly to a state of mental relaxation, you may be disappointed. Many new meditators notice instead how busy their minds are -- which is the first step toward watching thoughts instead of being pushed around by them.

What you find in meditation is yourself -- the self that is spacious, clear, and kind, first of all to yourself. You have to be willing to be with that person before you look for an investor or a mate at your meditation class.

Meditation promotes creative thinking

Meditation doesn't just create a sense of calm -- certain meditation techniques can promote creative thinking, even if you have never meditated before, according to a study by cognitive psychologist Lorenza Colzato and Dominique Lippelt at Leiden University, published in Mindfulness.

The study is a clear indication that you don't need to be an experienced meditator to profit more from meditation. The findings support the belief that meditation can have a long-lasting influence on human cognition, including how we conceive new ideas. Besides experienced meditators, also novices may profit from meditation.

The study found that after mindfulness meditation -- "being receptive to every thought and sensation" -- study participants' developed multiple solutions to a problem. Concentration meditation, or focusing on an object, didn't have the same result.

Read more here

Mindful City: Winooski, Vermont

When you go on a retreat, there's always a talk near the end about transitioning back to "the real world." You've been in a place where people are mindful and intentional, less stressed by the details of daily life. You're about to re-enter the rat race, and you're not up to speed.

But what if life could be more like retreat? What if people in ordinary life were mindful -- present and attentive and grounded in the situation ... how would life be different?

Winooski, Vermont, is out to find out.

The Vermont Community Foundation has awarded a grant to the Center for Mindful Learning to teach mindfulness to core institutions in the city, Vermont's public radio reports.

Mindful City Project Consultant Lindsay Foreman said community support is the key to the project. “Mindfulness gives us the skills and motivation to care for ourselves, each other and the planet." she said. "It is not easy to do, so we need a community to support us."

The Center for Mindful Learning will work with the Winooski Police Department, the Winooski School District, and Centerpoint Adolescent Treatment Services to implement the citywide mindfulness initiative. Mindfulness training -- does that mean meditation? -- will also be available to parents, community members, and businesses.

The initiative came about after CML did a yearlong mindfulness training program at one elementary school in Winooski.The Modern Mindfulness program uses an online curriculum that guides teachers and students in a five-minute daily mindfulness practice, CML says. One third-grade teacher told CML the program has been "life-changing for my students and myself.” 

The middle and high schools wanted to follow suit, and the idea came up to extend the program citywide.

The effort started in October. You can follow its program on CML's blog.


Image shows a poster at JFK ELementary School in Winooski, Vermont

Should you meditate?

Yes.

Time summarizes the reasons here

“Basically, meditation helps your brain get out of its own way,” adds Dr. Judson Brewer, a Yale School of Medicine psychiatrist. “It helps you escape from worry.”

Or read this handy chart

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Seeing the forest in the tree

Autumn in New England is justifiably famous for its spectrum of colors -- the leaves on the (many) trees turn hues ranging from soft gold to intense scarlet. Think postcard or calendar views of a church with a white steeple surrounded by hillsides covered in a tie-dye of yellows, oranges, reds, and golds.

Or you could look at it differently.

Christopher R. Martin, Connecticut's official state forester and director of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection's division of forestry, offers a different perspective:

When out for a look at the fall foliage, enjoy the overall display of color, the panoramic big views, but don't neglect a good close look at a single showy tree at the peak of its fall color.

"Don't miss the moment in front of you," Martin said. "Individual trees can be as spectacular as a 30-mile view."

Look at one tree, and see how not all leaves are the same color. Look at one leaf, and see the perfection of that. See variations in color, veins, position, size. Without cataloging it, just appreciate that it is both perfectly unique and part of the totality of the tree and the environment.

You can bring that same attention to your breath. Each breath is part of your own living organism, but it's also part of the environment of your body and of existence. Your breath and the tree inter-are, giving each other the type of molecules each needs.

Can you look at one leaf? Can you be with one breath? And you see the whole forest in that one tree, the totality of existence in that breath.

It's there.

If a tree falls

I often tell meditation students that there is no perfect place to meditate. We meet in a beautiful, serene room -- where we hear yoga students "ommming" in the studio next door, the beeping of the crosswalk sinal, and the skateboarders in the parking lot.

But last weekend I was in a place that was as good as it gets: A former Shaker mill in upstate New York. The room where we practiced had wide, worn wooden floors and large windows that opened onto a view of trees whose leaves were kissed with yellow. A brook flowed down the hill, providing the constant -- yet constantly changing -- sound of water flowing over rocks that spas and therapists try to simulate with fountains to borrow its calming effect.

We were doing body-centered practices, relaxing into the earth, listening to the voices of nature, feeling our toes, one by one, and it was as smooth as the floors that had seen a hundred years of wear. We went outside for walking meditation, filing silently to a relatively level place beside the brook. And we were met by the buzz of chainsaws.

People on the neighboring property were cutting down trees, massive trees that had stood for years and years. As I reached one end of the path, getting ready to turn back, there was a mighty crash as a tree hit the earth. Before we went back inside, another tree was down, thudding its weight into the ground.

Back on our cushions, the leader dinged a bell. "Chainsaw meditation," he said.

People obviously had strong feelings about what happened. Some simply stopped and stared at people with the chainsaws, angry expressions on their faces. My feelings were mixed. We'd just taken down a tree at our house that was dying (and planted a new one), and I'd gotten in the habit of noting dead branches on trees as I moved through the world. There was a tree along the stream that was dead and dry and undoubtedly will fall into the water this winter when the weight of the snow settles on it. That, in turn, will change the stream in some way.

I'd been to this same center in the spring -- the teachers and other students were all different, the water in the brook was higher, the leaves were new, not getting ready to die.

Everything changes -- the yoga class moves on to stretching silently, the crosswalk stops beeping and traffic moves, the chainsaws finish their work for the day. Meditation is about becoming aware of what's there in the moment -- the external phenomena, the internal thoughts, and the interplay between the two -- and resting in the awareness that says, "right  now, it's like this." That's where calm and wisdom abide.

When we speak of "calm abiding," we are not referring to a calm situation, such as meditating in a quiet, beautiful place. We are speaking of a mind that stays steady in the midst of fluctuating circumstances. -- Yonge Mingyur Rinpoche

Mindfulness eases migraines in study

Meditation might be a path to migraine relief, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

“Stress is a well-known trigger for headaches and research supports the general benefits of mind/body interventions for migraines, but there hasn’t been much research to evaluate specific standardized meditation interventions,” said Dr. Rebecca Erwin Wells, assistant professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study published in the online edition of the journal Headache.

The study was designed to assess the effect of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, a meditation program, in adults with migraines.

The study was small, only 19 people, but it found measurable differences in headache frequency and severity between those did the MBSR training and those who did not -- 1.4 fewer migraines of shorter duration. Meditators also had increases in mindfulness and self-efficacy -- a sense of personal control over their migraines, Wells said. There were no adverse events and "excellent adherence.”

"For the approximate 36 million Americans who suffer from migraines, there is big need for non-pharmaceutical treatment strategies, and doctors and patients should know that MBSR is a safe intervention that could potentially decrease the impact of migraines,” Wells said.  

Read more here.