Health Journal Online

Category: Mental Health

  • 7 Creative Family Gratitude Practices That Make Appreciation Meaningful and Accessible

    7 Creative Family Gratitude Practices That Make Appreciation Meaningful and Accessible

    You’re sitting around the dinner table with your family after a long day. Homework is scattered across one end, someone’s still chewing the last bite of dinner, and you ask the question… 

    “What are you grateful for today?”

    Without even looking up, your oldest mumbles something about video games. Your youngest shrugs. The silence stretches just long enough to feel awkward before someone asks to be excused.

    Children need to see gratitude in action to really grasp the idea. They need to experience it with us. Only then does gratitude become real for our kids—when we live it together.

    We can’t expect our children to understand gratitude just because we ask them about it. The question itself falls flat because it’s abstract and repetitive. Kids end up saying the same things over and over (“my family,” “our house,” and “my dog”), and what could be a meaningful practice becomes just another item to check off before leaving the table. 

    Children need to see gratitude in action to really grasp the idea. They need to experience it with us. Only then does gratitude become real for our kids—when we live it together.

    Why Starting Family Gratitude Practices Early Matters

    There’s something powerful about introducing gratitude when children are young. Their minds are like sponges, absorbing everything around them—the good, the challenging, and everything in between. When we weave gratitude into their early years, we’re creating neural pathways that support resilience and emotional well-being throughout their lives.

    Early gratitude practice can shape how children see the world. It teaches them to notice the good alongside the hard, to appreciate the helpers in their lives, and to find joy in small moments. Research shows that gratitude contributes substantially to individual well-being, strengthens relationships, and helps people navigate adversity with greater resilience.

    And children are naturally receptive to new practices. While adults might struggle to shift ingrained patterns of thinking, kids can more easily develop habits that become second nature, especially when those activities are  fun, engaging, and done together as a family.

    The Power of Practicing Gratitude Together

    Kids learn by watching us. When we model appreciation (not just talking about it but actually living it) our children see what gratitude looks like in real life. Practicing gratitude together means actively engaging with each other, noticing the good in our lives, and celebrating it as a family. 

    By doing so, we’re building individual resilience in each family member while simultaneously deepening our relationships with one another. We develop a shared language of appreciation that helps our family navigate challenges, stress, and uncertainty as a team.

    The good news? This change doesn’t require hours of practice or complicated strategies. It just requires showing up together with intention and a willingness to notice the good.

    7 Creative Family Gratitude Practices

    So how do we move beyond the abstract question of “What are you grateful for?” and into practices that actually resonate with kids? The key is making gratitude something families do together rather than just talk about.

    Look for practices that are:

    • Part of daily life: Focus on real people, moments, and experiences that fill your days.
    • Concrete and tangible: Kids can see, touch, or create something related to their gratitude.
    • Fun and engaging: When practices feel playful, children (and parents!) want to do them.
    • Quick and simple: Keep it to five minutes or less, because who has endless time?
    • Varied and interesting: Different practices keep gratitude fresh and exciting.

    Each of the following seven practices focus on a different aspect of appreciation, from celebrating the people in our lives to noticing everyday comforts we often overlook. Try one that resonates with your family or rotate through them to mix things up!

    1. Family Appreciation Photo Walk

    Take a brief weekly walk together where each family member takes “mental photos” of things that remind them of someone they love. Maybe a certain flower reminds your daughter of Grandma’s garden, or a basketball hoop makes your son think of his best friend. As you walk, use your hands like a camera viewfinder and say, “Click!” to capture the moment in your mind. When you return home or gather for dinner, share your mental photos and explain the connections.

    Tip: Want to extend the practice? Bring a real camera along so you can capture and share actual photos later, talking about why each image reminded you of someone special.

    2. Helper Hero Cards

    Invite your kids to create simple thank-you cards for people who helped them during the week. These might be teachers, bus drivers, siblings, neighbors, or anyone who lent a hand. Include drawings, stickers, or just a few heartfelt words. Then deliver them together. This practice makes gratitude tangible and teaches children to notice helpful actions in their daily lives. 

    Tip: Keep a stack of blank cards or paper readily available so kids can create these spontaneously in the moment when a feeling of gratitude strikes.

    3. Mirror Moments

    This thirty-second daily practice is simple but powerful. Have your child look in the mirror and say one thing they’re proud of about themselves. It might be, “I was kind to my sister today” or, “I tried really hard in soccer practice.” The key? Parents should model this, too. Kids love (and need) to see adults appreciate themselves. This builds self-compassion, self-esteem, and confidence—for the whole family. 

    Tip: Make it part of your family’s routine by doing it right before or after everyone brushes their teeth in the morning or at bedtime.

    4. Memory Jar Magic

    Keep a jar in a common area of your home along with small pieces of paper and pens. Encourage family members to write down a favorite moment and drop it in the jar each day. These might be big moments (“Dad came to my recital!”) or tiny ones (“The dog made a funny face”). On tough weeks or at the end of each month, read them together and re-live the joy. This creates anticipation for good moments and helps families hold on to happiness during stressful times. 

    Tip: Decorate your jar together to make it special or use different colored papers for each family member.

    Make it a family practice to genuinely acknowledge and thank the community helpers you encounter during your regular routines. When you’re out running errands together, pause to thank the grocery store cashier, wave to the mail carrier, or say good morning to the crossing guard. The key is doing this together as a family so kids see you modeling appreciation and learn that gratitude can be woven into everyday moments. At dinner, share who you thanked that day and why their work matters.

    Tip: Challenge younger kids to remember one helper they want to thank on your next outing. Make it a game to spot and appreciate people who make your community work.

    6. Nature Gratitude Ritual

    Step outside together into your backyard or a nearby park, or even just look out a window. Each person should try to find one thing in nature they appreciate right now. Maybe it’s the way sunlight filters through leaves, a bird’s song, or the smell of fresh air. Share your discoveries without phones or distractions. Stay fully present with each other and the natural world. This practice works in any season and any weather! 

    Tip: Younger children might enjoy collecting their gratitude finds (a special rock, interesting leaf, or pinecone) to keep as a reminder of their appreciation for nature.

    7. Gratitude Detective Game

    Turn gratitude into a playful detective game where everyone searches for everyday things we usually overlook. Challenge your family: “I spy with my grateful eye… something that keeps us warm!” (blankets, the heater, or cozy sweaters). Take turns being the detective who gives clues about everyday comforts while others guess. Play during dinner, car rides, or before bed. This helps families appreciate the invisible infrastructure of daily life, such as running water, electricity, safe roads, and working appliances—in a fun, engaging way.

    Tip: Keep score if your kids are competitive or make it collaborative by seeing how many “gratitude clues” your family can come up with together in five minutes.

    Starting Your Family’s Gratitude Journey 

    Building gratitude practices when children are young gives them tools for lifelong resilience and emotional well-being. It shows them how to notice goodness even during challenging times, how to appreciate the people and moments that make life rich, and how to stay connected to what matters most.

    When families practice gratitude together, we create shared experiences that strengthen our bonds and help us navigate life’s inevitable ups and downs as a team. Remember, the goal here is connection, not perfection. You don’t need to do all seven practices, or even multiple practices. Even one practice done regularly makes a real difference. 

    Start with whichever one resonates most with your family right now. Try it for a week or two and see what happens! Through this simple act of practicing gratitude together, you’re shaping how your children see the world. That perspective will serve them throughout their entire lives!

    And that’s worth celebrating.



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  • What’s Good About Being You: How Mindfulness Helps You Get to Know Yourself

    What’s Good About Being You: How Mindfulness Helps You Get to Know Yourself

    The Connection Between Presence and Knowing

    The sitting practice of meditation is a powerful means to get to know yourself, to introduce yourself to yourself. Meditation is a discipline, a technique to transcend technique. You sit down on a cushion or a chair and simply experience yourself: your body, your breath, and your thoughts. You just be there, very simply.

    There are several aspects to meditation that are part of establishing friendship with yourself. One is mindfulness. Mindfulness is keeping track, or keeping a pulse, of being here, in a nonjudgmental way. There is no good or bad. Everything is allowed to be. Among other things, mindfulness is a stabilizing or pacifying influence. The panic of everyday life and every expectation laid on life can subside. This is a huge relief. It is called the discovery of peace.

    Awareness is being in a bigger space, recognizing that there is always an environment around our thoughts and feelings. When you begin to sense that atmosphere, there is both intelligence, or sharpness, and relaxation.

    Finding peace in the practice of meditation involves slowing down. Physically, you call a halt. You park your body somewhere, and you stay put. Your mind may continue to race for a while, maybe for a long time, but you become aware of the mind racing. Awareness is being in a bigger space, recognizing that there is always an environment around our thoughts and feelings. When you begin to sense that atmosphere, there is both intelligence, or sharpness, and relaxation. You begin to see things much more precisely and your native intelligence begins to awaken.

    The Courage to Be Aware

    Becoming more aware is a very courageous thing to do. You allow yourself to look honestly at your experience. And that solid sense of self—of who you are—is revealed as being not so solid. You begin to experience gaps, holes in your suit of armor. You realize that you are really more like Swiss cheese than Cheddar.

    When you are there, just there, without trying to hold everything solidly together, you also begin to find that you don’t need to sustain a storyline about yourself and your life. Who is it for anyway?

    When you are there, just there, without trying to hold everything solidly together, you also begin to find that you don’t need to sustain a storyline about yourself and your life. Who is it for anyway? You can afford to relax with yourself, get to know yourself. You don’t have to put on makeup for yourself; you don’t have to put on a smile. You can leave the mental toupee on the shelf and like yourself just as you are.

    There is something genuinely good about being you. You may not like every little thing about yourself, but overall you have an honest heart and you can connect with it through the practice of meditation. You have the courage to face yourself. From that connection with yourself and from actually liking yourself without conditions, you begin to see how brilliant and available life can be when it is without preconceptions or adornments.

    As you open yourself to yourself, you become more aware of the world you’re living in. The development of awareness here is a bit like having cataracts removed, or getting a hearing aid: you didn’t know your vision was so obscured until you finally see a brilliant yellow daffodil in the field. You couldn’t hear the first bird of spring singing in the meadow. You couldn’t taste the bitter onion flavor of chives by the stream. You didn’t see the face of your beloved, until you ran right into him. Then suddenly you begin to feel your world. You begin to understand love in an entirely new way.

    Noticing the Hall of Mirrors

    At that point, as you become more open, you also may begin to see where you’re stuck, how you’re often living in a hall of mirrors that you create for yourself. You see your speed and how that has produced panic. We may actually recognize and experience ourselves as the monkey bouncing off the walls in our house of mirrors. What you’re bouncing off of is often simply the reflections that you project. When you bounce off yourself, this can take the form of self-hatred or it can be twisted into some kind of false arrogance and pride. Unfortunately, your dearest friends, lovers, relatives, and partners are often the mirrors you project your reflections onto most intensely.

    We demand a lot from intimacy, often more than it can possibly deliver. We ask ourselves and our closest friends to confirm us by reflecting some things and not others. Essentially, we ask, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” And we expect the answer, “You, my love!” This a burden to others and to us, and ultimately it doesn’t work. The mirrors crack.

    If you want to live in a hall of mirrors, this is a disaster. If you’re willing to find a true relationship with yourself and others, this is welcome relief from your self-imposed isolation. It reveals the tremendous space that is there when the myth of satisfaction is seen to be a fraud.

    Facing reality is not creating something new. It’s allowing a barrier to dissolve.

    Over the course of time, if we are committed to meditation as an ongoing practice, then it can provide us with this honest feedback. Although we might try to filter information, if we sit long enough, reality wells up in us and breaks through. This is inevitable, because it is just discovering what is there and we can’t block what is there forever. Facing reality is not creating something new. It’s allowing a barrier to dissolve. It unlocks in us the power of loving-kindness and is the beginning of real warmth toward ourselves and others.



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  • Setting Intentions and How to Manifest Your Deepest Desires

    Setting Intentions and How to Manifest Your Deepest Desires

    If you want to be successful at anything, whether it’s being a more relaxed parent, quitting smoking, or running a marathon, setting an intention—and then concentrating on it mindfully—will give you the focus to help turn your dream into reality. Our culture often uses the terms goal and intention interchangeably. But they actually aren’t the same. In reality, intentions are the things that should be leading the way, and that’s why it’s essential that when you’re setting intentions, you’re aligned with your deepest, truest self.

    Intentions help you stay oriented toward your goal when strong emotions, exhaustion, boredom, or distraction threaten to throw you off course. Intentions connect deeply to your true heart’s desire, to what really matters to you, and use that rudder to set your course forward. 

    An intention isn’t a wish or a fantasy. It isn’t a proclamation of who or how you think you should be. It comes from truly listening to what’s important for you to feel most alive and, well, yourself. 

    Not an intention: I want to lose 25 pounds and fit into my old jeans. 

    Intention: I am listening deeply to my body’s desire to be healthy and active, and my heart’s desire to feel vibrant and whole. 

    We offer ourselves the greatest potential for easing our own suffering.

    Here’s where mindfulness plays an essential role. When we take the time to tune into ourselves, to learn our inner landscape, it’s easier to discern our truth from fantasy. It’s like when you investigate a sudden craving. Is it that your body needs chips right this minute to function, or are you looking for a distraction (a crunchy, salty, flavor-bomb of one) while you nervously await word from your publisher about your manuscript?

    Perhaps what you really want is to have fulfilling, creative, intellectually stimulating work, own a home you love, where friends and family will come to visit and where you have a place to garden, or learn to manage your stress better, and feel more grounded and happy. 

    From this place of deep knowing, you can craft a plan to achieve what you’ve identified. And when you veer off track—you’re tempted by the mind-numbing job because you’re scared no one else will hire you; you contemplate spending all your savings on a trip to Paris; or find yourself (again) stress-eating at 9 p.m.—you have something real and true to anchor you.  

    Saying Yes to Commitment

    Change isn’t easy. But it’s often exactly what’s needed. Knowing what really matters to us, and setting an intention that helps create the circumstances for that desire to flourish, also makes it far easier to commit to changing behavior or habits that keep us from our goal. 

    After mindfully reflecting on my experience with my stepdaughter, I realized that my deepest desire was to have a warmer relationship with her. I set the intention to be loving and warm toward her, as I am with other people I care deeply for. On a recent visit, when I felt myself becoming cranky and brittle, I recalled my intention. In an instant, I saw the extraneous stuff that wasn’t contributing to greater love or warmth but instead lessening my resolve to keep my intention. I recommitted to what I really wanted, not to the random thoughts and feelings that were triggered by, say, my low blood sugar or my petulance. And because it mattered—this is how I want to live—that commitment felt invigorating, and was easy. The rest of the day went beautifully.  

    Two things here speak to the power of intention: When you know what’s important to you, and you intend to honor that, your intention is an alarm that goes off when you forget what really matters. Then you can choose to chart a different way forward.  

    Saying No to Resolutions

    You may want to lose weight, get your real estate license, or be a better listener—but if you don’t know why you want this, you will quickly lose motivation and fall back into your old habits. However, discomfort and resistance are no longer insurmountable obstacles when we know what we really want and recommit to it again and again.

    I’ve never been able to diet. But I have managed to control my diabetes by setting the intention to stay alive through changing the way I eat. I tell people, “I’m not on a diet. I just don’t want to die-yet.” Once I focused on my intention of staying alive, eating healthfully was a breeze. 

    Intention can also, simply, help you align your values with the way you live your life, in ways big and small. Without it, life can feel a bit like a pinball machine, slinging you about, miserable, confused, never satisfied with what you have because you don’t know what you really want. In this way, intention becomes less about making wishes come true; it’s really about honoring who you are. 



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  • Bring Your Practice to Digital Work

    Bring Your Practice to Digital Work

    I’m fascinated by technology, yet I yearn for a calm, peaceful life. This dual interest led me to draw insights from both camps and experiment with a mindful way of being with tech, not against it. For my entire adult life, I’ve been trying to figure out how to live mindfully and love technology at the same time.

    This has been a very personal journey, but a big part of it is professional, too. I love sitting in silence when I can, but I’m also a tech designer and entrepreneur. I lead a fractional product team creating mindfulness-related technologies remotely from a laptop, so I know the struggle of finding balance with tech more than most. 

    It’s not easy to do your best work, think deeply, and be creative in this attention economy. 

    It’s not easy to do your best work, think deeply, and be creative in this attention economy. It’s even harder to stay grounded when the pressure is high and you’re swimming in emails, notifications, and demands. Here are a few of my favorite tips to mindfully fine-tune the ways you engage with tech at work. 

    1. Redesign Your Work Environment

    Recently, I had a big project that demanded a lot of focus. It was hard to even imagine, knowing all the requests that pull at my attention on any given workday. I reduced the burden on my willpower by installing my second computer monitor on a swivel and putting a big, comfy chair on the other side of my desk. 

    Now, whenever I need to focus on something (including as I type these words), I rotate my second monitor to face backward with nothing else visible. I sit on the wrong side of my desk and type on a wireless keyboard with no trackpad. I can’t reach my email, social media, and web browser. And they can’t reach me. 

    Those who create tech aren’t the only ones who can leverage the power of design. My physical setup provides me with the constraint I need to get into a flow without too much effort. I couldn’t redesign the operating system, but I did redesign the room in which it operates.

    This mindset also helps me park my phone outside of work hours. When I’m at home with my family, I try to leave it charging on my desk as much as possible. If I want to check something, I’m forced to politely excuse myself and walk over to my desk. Less convenient, but just enough friction to prevent me from habitually reaching for Slack or my work email while my six-year-old is trying to play with me.

    2. Be Intentional With Email 

    When I start my workday, the first thing on my calendar is a block of time to clear my inbox. I do this for a few important reasons.

    First, I don’t have work email on my phone, so I don’t see messages in the evening or early morning and feel like I need to catch up. On top of that, I like taking time to respond thoughtfully to people to prevent downstream conflicts and miscommunications. I even try to include something in every message that might make the receiver smile.

    Mindfully noticing patterns in how tech influences your state of mind will help you make similar skillful adjustments to accommodate your unique habits and idiosyncrasies.

    At the end of the day, I check my email one last time, but I try not to send any replies. If I do, I’ll ruminate on whatever I sent and compulsively check for replies in the evening. And if I actually get a reply in the evening, instead of satisfying me, it usually ends up with me sneaking back into my office late at night to follow up.

    This tip isn’t necessarily for everyone; it’s a nuance I’ve discovered about myself. Mindfully noticing patterns in how tech influences your state of mind will help you make similar skillful adjustments to accommodate your unique habits and idiosyncrasies.

    3. Reject False Urgency 

    Across both personal and professional information channels, there’s one destructive illusion that makes tech way more stressful than it needs to be: false urgency. Work messaging becomes much saner when you customize it to present with an appropriate level of urgency for the information being conveyed.

    Consider how urgent your current settings are, compared to how urgent they need to be.

    For email, team messaging, calendar alerts, project notifications, or any other information channels, you can consider how urgent your current settings are compared to how urgent they need to be. An alert on your phone notifying you that a critical system just failed makes sense. That same alert is unnecessary for a random email that can easily wait until tomorrow.

    It also helps to manage urgency with your team. At Still Ape, we have a communications charter that describes how urgently we expect each other to reply: Emails warrant a response within two days, work messaging within one day, a text within a few hours, and calls immediately. When we tag someone in a document, we don’t expect them to see it until they’re actively in the file. Not only does our charter protect receivers’ attention, it also prevents senders from anxiously waiting for immediate replies on a non-immediate channel.

    If you’ve been frantically refreshing your inbox, it might feel pretty uncomfortable to slow down. It’ll get easier as you form new habits and your team builds new expectations. Rejecting false urgency frees up a lot of mental energy for focus, creativity, deep thinking, and effective collaboration. 

    4. Use AI Wisely

    You can use AI apps to gather and assemble ideas quickly, but at least for now, you need to pause to verify facts, trim the excess, and edit for clarity and authenticity. For many tasks, AI is more like cruise control than autopilot; you still need to steer.

    By now you’ve probably seen an AI agent join a video call, listen to an entire meeting, and then email everyone an immediate summary. But did you actually read the summary? Probably not, unless a human being who understood the full context edited it down to what actually matters.

    Things are evolving quickly in this space, but as a rule, I recommend making sure it doesn’t take you less time to create something than it will for others to engage with it. If it does, respect your recipient’s attention by spending a bit more time reading it and refining it yourself. Something feels off about having ChatGPT whip up a 10-page report in two minutes and expecting others to read it in-depth when you didn’t even bother.

    Your work might look very different from these examples. It’s all good. People are diverse, and things change over time. What matters is that a mindful relationship with technology is all about paying close attention to how different tech affects you and using that insight to fearlessly experiment in your own life.

    Excerpt from Reclaim Your Mind: Seven Strategies to Enjoy Tech Mindfully by Jay Vidyarthi, published by Still Ape Press. Copyright © 2025 by Jay Vidyarthi. 



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  • Tap Into Ease with This Guided Meditation for Holiday Stress

    Tap Into Ease with This Guided Meditation for Holiday Stress

    Get the latest on everything mindfulness

    Our free newsletter delivers updates on the science of mindfulness, guided mindfulness meditation practices from leading teachers, special offers, and rich content to support your mindful growth.


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  • To Manifest What You Want, Passion Will Spark Your Intentions, Not Pressure

    To Manifest What You Want, Passion Will Spark Your Intentions, Not Pressure

    It’s draining to reach for what you want when you’re disconnected from passion. Here are 7 steps to investigate what drives you, so you can get clear on staying the course.

    What drives you? What gives you goosebumps? Makes you smile unexpectedly? What do you get lost in? Lose time in? Within the answers to those questions, you’ll find your passions. And when it comes to manifesting what you want out of life, a good place to start is gently investigating your passions.

    Here’s a simple, 7-step guide to help you bring life to new directions and to create a compelling sense of the why behind your intentions. I call it the RESOLVE practice.

    How to Manifest What You Want: RESOLVE

    R — Recognize a yearning for change

    So, you want to turn in a new direction? Then you’ve already got what you need to start making changes. Once you can see that you want more freshness in your life, you can kick your resolve into gear and make it happen.

    E — Engage all your resources

    As we learn to tune into the body, watch our thoughts, and become friendly with our emotions, we develop inner “resources” that we can call on to help us create a feeling of stability. Engaging your resources can include forming an allegiance with someone who is also seeking to strengthen their resolve. Anything that helps support you in your cause is a resource.

    Engaging your resources can include forming an allegiance with someone who is also seeking to strengthen their resolve. Anything that helps support you in your cause is a resource.

    S — Soften your need for speed

    Instead, make headway slowly. Impatience can be a tremendous drain on your motivation. You learn as you go, so adopt a more relaxed pace that allows you time to investigate and learn from what you are experiencing.

    O — Open up to why this matters to you

    Let yourself feel why this is worth the effort. Recall that you chose this route because you were determined to grow your resolve. Return to this initial inspiration whenever you need a boost of motivation.

    L — Learn to make allies of your obstacles

    If you take the time to stop, breathe, and examine your obstacles you might discover that some dissolve under inspection. We often fear taking a stand.  We may use catastrophic thinking or overly exaggerate a negative result. Sometimes the greatest obstacle is the fear of change itself. We can gently notice this too. Awareness will feed our resolve.

    V — Value your own efforts

    It takes determination, energy, and powerful intention to connect with our heart’s desires. No effort is wasted. All will serve to strengthen your ability to trust yourself and your ability to stand up for what you want.

    E — Enjoy the twists and turns

    Plans have a nasty habit of changing or veering off course. Learn to adapt your route as your resolve propels you forward. The curve balls and surprises are what make life such a titillating adventure.

    This article provides additional information related to a column that appeared in the February 2018 issue of Mindful magazine.

    How to Make a Mindful Resolution 

    Hard-knuckling it through our New Year’s goals can strain even the best intentions. Here’s a mindful strategy for less stress and more success in keeping your resolutions. Read More 

    • Elaine Smookler
    • June 5, 2018



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  • Why We Wake Up At Night and How Mindfulness Helps Us Sleep Again

    Why We Wake Up At Night and How Mindfulness Helps Us Sleep Again

    You’re awake, and the time on your nightstand shows 3:33 a.m. There’s no reason to be awake, but your mind has other ideas. Some nights it could be an overactive mind; other times, you’re fighting a hot flash or the urge to scroll on your phone, hoping to fall back asleep.

    Regardless of what’s calling to you in the middle of the night, the message you really need to hear: You’re not alone.

    Nearly 18% of U.S. adults report trouble staying asleep, and 30–50% experience insomnia symptoms, including difficulty falling or staying asleep. And yet, our initial response to waking in the middle of the night tends to lean toward frustration or anger rather than curiosity.

    Dr. Jessica Shepherd asks her readers to be curious about the patterns and symptoms we experience around wakefulness instead of moving towards “fixing” our sleep problem.

    What would happen if we chose to investigate our feelings around wakefulness with self-compassion and mindfulness, instead of pushing against our own discomfort with what’s unwanted? Understanding more about why we wake up at night can help.

    The Nervous System and Sleep Disruption

    When did 3 a.m. become the new wake-up call?  If you’ve slept soundly for most of your life, only to be suddenly confronted with a nightly routine that involves struggling to get back to sleep, know you’re in good company. These “wakeups” happen across ages, genders, and all life stages. Some of us (ahhem, menopause ladies, we see you) begin having some of these issues as a result of hormone shifts (we’ll get into that later).

    What you need to know is that waking in the night is not a personal failure.  Oftentimes, your nervous system responds to cues your body sends, both internal and external. Here are a few reasons why we wake up at night, and why your sleep may be feeling more fragmented:

    • Hyperarousal: Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline can trigger micro-awakenings. Even while asleep, your brain is scanning for potential threats.
    • Racing or overloaded mind: Daytime to-do lists, worries, or plans can linger into the night, keeping your brain alert.
    • Environmental triggers: Neighborhood noise, light, temperature swings, or even screens can subtly wake the brain.
    • Aging sleep architecture: As we age, our sleep naturally becomes lighter and more fragmented.
    • Hormonal shifts: As I mentioned above, if you’re in perimenopause or menopause, changes in estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone can significantly affect your sleep cycles. They can disrupt sleep when you’re experiencing hormone imbalances. Still, these shifts are a small part of the overall picture when we consider why many people experience nighttime wakefulness.

    Why starting with curiosity helps

    OB-GYN and author of Generation M, Dr. Jessica Shepherd, asks her readers to be curious about the patterns and symptoms we experience around wakefulness instead of moving towards “fixing” our sleep problem. Here are four questions she poses to help guide reflection: 

    • Is this wake-up due to hot flashes or night sweats?
    • Am I waking repeatedly or having trouble breathing?
    • Is my mind racing too much to fall asleep or fall back asleep?
    • Do I need to use the bathroom frequently at night?

    While Dr. Shepherd is a go-to source for menopausal struggles and solutions, these questions can be used to assess your symptoms, regardless of your age. Typically, mid-morning wakeup calls fall into one of these four categories:  mental overactivity, changes in body or room temperature, repeated environmental disruptions, or physical cues. When we understand the causes and conditions for our experience, we can cultivate a mindful response.

    Why Are My Thoughts Awake at 3 a.m.?

    The main culprit for middle-of-the-night wakefulness can vary from person to person. No matter what time you’re waking up, if it’s before your alarm clock goes off, it’s likely to feel unsettling.

    For those of you in perimenopause or menopause, the shift of our hormones (feeling hot flashes/night sweats) can make us feel very stressed out. As our stress levels rise, so do our cortisol levels. Typically, this stress hormone rises around 3 a.m. to prepare us for waking, but if our stress levels are too high, it can shift that baseline and cause us to wake up earlier than usual.

    Mindfulness offers a different way to approach these interruptions. It nudges us first to accept what’s happening in the present moment, and then to gently turn towards curiosity and self-compassion.

    For those of you who have surpassed that hurdle of menopause or generally have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, this time of night can feel so much louder than usual. When we’re alone with our thoughts in the middle of the night, our fears can feel heightened. Sleep deprivation heightens amygdala reactivity, making even small anxieties feel intense. Mindfulness can help settle our nervous system by guiding us towards practical tools that help us eliminate spiraling narratives.

    So, how can you shift your perspective when it comes to that mid-morning wake-up? Mindfulness offers a different way to approach these interruptions. 

    We’ve all heard the phrase, What you resist, persists, and you likely know from experience that it doesn’t work to fight sleeplessness or try to force yourself to go back to sleep. 

    Mindfulness nudges us first to accept what’s happening in the present moment, and then to gently turn towards curiosity and self-compassion. So perhaps the questions and phrases we could be engaging with might sound more like, “How can I offer myself compassion when sleeplessness makes itself known?” or, “What is this experience trying to show me?”

    Look for clues in your daily routines

    Sleep expert and author of Powerful Sleep, Shawna Robins, encourages people who have trouble navigating the “wide-awake” brain by taking a look at what they’re doing during the day.

    She emphasizes laying the groundwork for a healthy routine (meals, exercise, self-care) that supports hormone balance and your nervous system. For Robins, that begins with stress management, proper nutrition, and some form of physical activity. When we do these things, sleeping, and specifically “falling asleep” or returning to sleep after that three o’clock wake-up, can get much easier. Robins says, “Healthy sleep starts during the daytime with healthier habits. It’s not just about what happens when you get into bed at night.”

    Mindful Sleep Strategy

    What does a mindfulness strategy look like for cultivating good sleep? Think about all the tools you’ve developed over the course of your mindfulness journey and start putting them to use.

    Sleep supports the choices we make before bed.

    That means journaling, sitting regularly, mindfully eating and noticing the times you’re eating. It can also involve checking in with your physical body (think body-scan meditation or breathwork), coupled with daytime routines (yoga/gym workout, exercises you can do throughout the day at work/your desk, etc.) that will help create a stable space for you to reset your energy and recalibrate your nervous system. Sleep supports the choices we make before bed.

    If you find yourself up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, here are some different ways you can try to help yourself. 

    1.  30-Second Body Scan
       Redirect attention from racing thoughts to physical sensations, noticing each part of the body without judgment.
    2. Lengthened Exhale Breathing (4–6 breaths)
       Extending the exhale calms the parasympathetic nervous system, signaling the body that it is safe to rest.
    3. Thought Noting
       Label thoughts gently (“I’m worrying,” “I’m planning”) to create mental distance.
    4. Journaling
       Keep a notepad by the bed to externalize racing thoughts and reduce cognitive load.
    5. Gentle Somatic Grounding
      Release tension in the jaw, shoulders, or belly to help the body signal safety.

    Nighttime wakefulness often coincides with vivid or emotionally charged dreams. Sansan Fibri, founder of the app Wakefully.io, describes dreams as “our subconscious screenplay, where hidden narratives sometimes replay on repeat.”

    Wakefully is an AI-driven dream-analysis and journaling app that allows users to examine dream themes and emotions or reframe dreams with evidence-based techniques. For those who wake at night due to intense dreams or lingering emotional tension, incorporating tools like Wakefully alongside your mindfulness practice can help shift into a more reflective space, calming a reactive mind. With curiosity, gentle awareness, and practical tools, you can transform these moments into opportunities for connection with your body and mind.

    When we approach sleep with mindfulness,  we can meet moments of wakefulness with curiosity instead of frustration, helping us meet them in the middle of the night with presence and ultimately a sense of well-being.



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  • Alive, Together – Mindful

    Alive, Together – Mindful

    A letter from Mindful Magazine’s 2026 Editor, Amber Tucker.

    I read a quote recently that spoke to me, and to a key idea in this edition of Mindful: “We do not have to live as if we are alone.” (That’s writer and environmentalist Wendell Berry, quoted in writer and teacher Sebene Selassie’s Substack newsletter, Remind Me to Love.) I know I’m not the only person who feels alone, sometimes, in long hours hunkered over a desk, grasping for a sense of gosh-darn interconnectedness.

    At the same time, making a magazine is an inherently (and at the best of times, a joyfully) collaborative endeavor. Countless tiny yet critical steps involving dozens, even hundreds of people around the world, all counting on one another’s skills, knowledge, and dedication. Having worked at Mindful for more than seven years, I remain in awe of the ecosystem that brought into being the Trust Yourself issue you’re reading now.

    Like a healthy relationship, a meaningful project requires trust in others, and trust in ourselves. There’s a generative power in that. Trust that we’re more resilient than the sore back or disgruntled thoughts or horrific headlines or aching heart that may, right now, be overwhelming. Remember that we’re in this together, our feet planted firmly. As meditation teacher and author Kimberly Brown says, in Stephanie Domet’s article: “It does take time to become intimate with your body and your mind and become friendly with it. But when you can let yourself become familiar, then you can also start to trust.”

    The stories in these pages explore trust from numerous angles. Sue Hutton shares science-backed strategies to honor your unique brain wiring, while Misty Pratt investigates why the brain craves certainty and how to lessen anxiety about the unknown. Mara Gulens reckons with the grief of a changing body—maybe an unexpected path to wholeness. Sharon Ross extols the art of a simple invitation to help us break through loneliness and nurture community. And if you’re ready for a fresh start with mindfulness (at any age or experience level), turn to page 12 for a week’s worth of audio meditations, and to page 75 for a guide to your own daily practice: essential to becoming more familiar and friendly with you.

    I hope this issue of Mindful adds tools to your kit for this lifelong adventure of returning to ourselves and to one another. Amidst the chaos and pain and love of being alive, we are all we truly have. May we all find our way to trust in that.



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  • 2026 Annual Issue: Bonus Material

    2026 Annual Issue: Bonus Material

    Retreat Guide 2026

    Find space to pause, reflect, and reconnect

    Step away from the noise and return to what matters. The 2026 Mindful Retreat Guide curates a thoughtful selection of mindfulness retreats from around the world, chosen for their depth, integrity, and respect for both inner practice and place. Whether you’re seeking silence, nature, community, or renewal, this guide is designed to help you find a retreat experience that truly supports reflection, restoration, and meaningful time offline.



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  • A Meditation for Easing Pain and Inviting Joy

    A Meditation for Easing Pain and Inviting Joy

    This week, mindfulness teacher Vanessa Hutchinson-Szekely shares a tender meditation for those in the middle of pain.

    Sometimes seasons of intense suffering show up in our lives—no warning, no easy answers. 

    This week, mindfulness teacher Vanessa Hutchinson-Szekely shares a tender meditation for those experiencing pain. Based on her own experience with an extended episode of chronic back pain, she offers a moment of reprieve and caring attention to release tension and open to the possibility of joy.

    A Meditation for Easing Pain and Inviting Joy

    Read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.

    1. Take a moment to settle in wherever you are. You might be lying down, sitting comfortably, or even supported by pillows or blankets. Allow your body to find stillness. Allow your mind to arrive.
    2. Take a deep breath in through your nose. And a long exhale through your mouth. Inhale slowly, feeling your body expand. Exhale, letting go of anything you’ve been holding on to today. A space to soften, to breathe, to be with yourself in kindness. Continue at your own pace to take a couple more deep breaths in through your nose, and then to exhale slowly through your mouth.
    3. Notice how your body feels right now without judgment, without needing to fix anything. Maybe there’s a place that feels tight, inflamed or achy. Maybe you feel tired or heavy. Whatever it is, let it be here. We’re not fighting the pain, we’re meeting it with awareness.
    4. Now with each inhale, imagine you’re breathing in a soft golden light. And with each exhale, you’re releasing tension like a mist gently leaving your body. Continue to breathe, picturing that golden light coming in and washing all over you, and with each breath out more and more tension is released. Now feel that golden light travel through your body. From the top of your head across your face, softening your eyes, your jaw, your neck. Let your shoulders drop away from your ears. Unclench the muscles across your back.
    5. Now let the light move down your arms through your elbows, wrists, hands, and fingertips. Breathe into your chest. Feel your ribs expand, your heart open. Let your belly rise and fall gently, your breath like waves at the shore. Let that golden light move through your hips and down your legs through your knees, your calves, your ankles, and all the way to your toes. Your whole body is bathed in light, breathing, releasing, softening.
    6. Now bring your attention to the area that’s been calling for care where the pain lives most strongly. Breathe gently into that space. Imagine the air reaching every cell that needs relief. You’re not trying to push the pain away, you’re surrounding it with love, with breath, with presence. Visualize a soft light, perhaps golden, perhaps warm rose or calming blue, cradling that part of your body. You might even whisper quietly to yourself, I’m here with you. You are safe. You are healing.
    7. Now let’s shift our focus to sensations that bring joy. Think of something that makes your heart feel light. Maybe it’s a favorite place—the ocean, a mountain trail, a cafe, your cozy bed. Maybe it’s a sound—laughter, birds, a song that always lifts you up. Or perhaps it’s a taste, like warm bread, ripe berries, tea with honey. 
    8. Let one joyful image take center stage. See it clearly, feel it in your body, notice any warmth in your chest, a softening in your shoulders, a hint of a smile forming. That is joy. That’s your body remembering wellness. Now send that joy throughout your body to the places that feel good and the places that need healing. Let joy move through you like sunlight melting through ice. Repeat softly in your mind, I send love and light throughout my body. I am more than my pain. I am whole.
    9. Take a deep breath in exhale fully. Now bring to mind one thing you feel grateful for today, big or small. Maybe your breath, maybe a friend, maybe the courage to press play on this meditation. As you breathe, let that gratitude expand, filling your body from the inside out. Feel that gratitude travel beyond your body, radiating out like ripples in a pond to your loved ones, your community, the world, and quietly repeat, May I be well. May others who are suffering find ease. May peace grow in me.
    10. Now imagine your whole body surrounded by shimmering light, a cocoon of healing energy that holds you in safety. This light is gentle yet powerful. It’s recalibrating every part of your mind, body and heart. You are safe. You are loved, you are whole. Let your body soften into this knowing. Let yourself rest here for a few breaths. 
    11. As we close, take one final deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Inhale love. Exhale gratitude. Inhale peace. Exhale tension. Inhale light. Exhale release. As you slowly bring your awareness back to the room, remember you are not your pain. You are the light that shines beneath it, and that light is always there, ready to guide you back to joy. Thank you for showing up for yourself today. May your body rest, may your heart be light. And may you walk forward in peace.



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