Mindfulness in a Little More Depth

The Power of Mindfulness: What You Practice Grows Stronger. A beautiful talk by Dr Shauna Shapiro, in which she speaks about her personal experience with mindfulness and relates this to modern theories of neuroplasticity.

Mindfulness Meditation Taster with Jon Kabat-Zinn. A simple guided meditation.

Life is right now - Jon Kabat-Zinn on Mindfulness. A brief description of mindfulness with references some current scientific research

A talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn describing the 9 Attitudes of Mindfulness in a little more depth.

Other Amazing Talks

The following videos are only indirectly related to mindfulness, but are each astonishing in their own way. As it happens, several of these videos are about people who have experienced traumatic life events. I suppose we can learn a lot from coming through a time of adversity.

The TED Talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who observed in intimate, first-hand detail the events that unfolded in her own mind as she first suffered a devastating stroke and then managed her own recovery from that stroke. Fascinating, profound, and utterly inspirational!

Jill describes these events in more detail in her book, My Stroke of Insight, first published in 2008.

Another very popular TED Talk, this one by Brené Brown, who discusses how she personally experienced the power of vulnerability in her own life as she attempted to research the topic. This talk is important, touching, and very funny!

Brené has also written several popular books. Check out Daring Greatly - How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.

In this TED Talk, Amy Cuddy describes the surprising impact that our body language can have on others and on ourselves. The talk includes a very touching description of Amy's own experience of recovery following a car accident. Fake it 'til you become it! Inspirational!

Talking of traumatic life events, Anita Moorjani experienced an amazing recovery from being near the point of death, and is now working as a speaker and author, helping others to transform their lives. I love her presentation toward the end of this video on the Five Lessons she learned from her traumatic experience. This is worth watching, regardless of whatever opinion you may hold on near-death experiences.

Documentary based on the book The Brain that Changes Itself by Dr Norman Doidge. This documentary is about neuroplasticity, the (relatively) recently discovered fact that the brain is not fixed at the end of childhood development, as was once believed, but can continue to change until the day we die. Neuroplasticity opens up a whole new paradigm in medicine, potentially allowing people to recover from traumatic brain injuries (and other physical and mental illnesses caused by changes in the brain) that were previously considered untreatable.

Dr. Rick Hanson gives a very clear explanation of self-directed neuroplasticity, and how we can use our minds to change our brains to change our minds for the better.

Dr. Rick Hanson speaking about neuroplasticity. Also check out Rick Hanson's book Hardwiring Happiness - How to reshape your brain and your life, which explains "how to weave life's good experiences into the brain" using the principles of neuroplasticity.

Relaxation Response. Dr. Herbert Benson Teaches You The Basics. Dr Benson coined the term relaxation response following a series of research studies he conducted in the 1960's and 1970's that demystified Transcendental Meditation (TM). The relaxation response can be regarded as a simple, secular version of TM, which itself is regarded by at least people as a great complement to mindfulness. The Relaxation Response is also the title of a book written in 1975 by Dr Benson.

Happier in 5 Minutes. In this TED talk, Ida Abdalkhani gets the audience involved in a laughter yoga session. Laughter yoga involves laughing for no reason at all - and it works! Laughter yoga can be an effective way to release the neurochemicals associated with feelings of wellbeing.