A Mindful Week #17
Your weekly dose of mindfulness, creativity & insight. Curated by Nikolas & the Art of Meditation team.
Your weekly dose of mindfulness, creativity & insight. Website / Blog / Club
01 Inspiration
Steve Jobs explains “Skin In The Game”: A 2 min excerpt of the 1.5h lecture Steve gave at MIT, which we also recommend.
02 Inspiration
Naval Ravikant Podcast: Nominated “Podcast Episode of the Year” in 2015 this one is a gem. Naval talks about the habits and philosophy that helped him to become successful (and happy).
03 Eating
Nutritional Framework: It’s rare to find an unbiased overview that can guide our eating decisions. Peter Attia breaks it down for us by focusing on this triptych of nutrition: What you eat, when you eat & how much you eat.
04 Health
Electric Toothbrush Review: The biggest impact to your health is achieved by employing well thought out daily routines. Start with the basics: have you thought about updating your toothbrush recently?
05 NFT
The 69 Million Dollar Artwork: Why would you pay 69 million for a picture you can just copy of the internet? A great overview into the emerging trend of NFTs.
06 Music
Deep Into The Void Playlist: Soundscapes, wormholes and deep voids. Alexis created this playlist with the idea that this would be his go-to music if he would fly in space.
07 Quote
Quotes that inspire us and make us think.
If you haven’t joined the club yet.
08 Meditation Club
In our Art of Meditation Club a dream team of meditation teachers and coaches support a community of curious minds in their quest to living an examined life.
This week at the Mind Club
09 Weekly Insights
Beyond Mindfulness - New approaches for Mental Training
Dear fellow mind explorers,
With all the talk of making us more stress-resistant and more productive we often loose the focus on what matters. A reflected life starts where simple formulas end.
With the increasing interest and study of mindfulness in Western science, it is important to be precise in how it is defined & where it leads us to a dead end.
The term mindfulness has many meanings; this is a reflection of its popularity alongside considerable misinformation and misunderstanding, but also shows a general lack of methodologically rigorous research.
During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being used as a replacement for psychotherapy, as a tool of corporate well-being and a widely implemented educational practice. We even see it pop up in absurd places, that make meditators blush: for example when we read that mindfulness is "key to building more resilient soldiers."
It is often unclear then what mindfulness actually means. The MBSR program, for instance, consists of multicomponent treatments and employs both meditative techniques (body scan and yoga) and amindfulness technique (sitting meditation). Yet, all three of these interventions require different attentional styles. So what role does “mindfulness” actually play?
Misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulnes can lead to harm and confusion. Addressing such concerns, we need to also explain the difficulties of defining mindfulness. We need to talk about what we are missing out when we are using mindfulness as a go to term for the complex mental training practices we refer to as meditation.
In our classes we therefore refer to mindfulness as one of four mental qualities that can be trained. I will share our concept in the next weeks (club members already know it). To begin I would like to set the stage with providing context and praise to the scientists driving our understanding.
This week I want use this space to share three of my favourite papers paving the way to a much needed update of talking about mindfulness.
Mindfulness, Interoception, and the Body: A Contemporary Perspective
Reconstructing and deconstructing the self: cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice
There is so much yet to discover that helps us make sense of our mind. A reflected life also means updating what we once thought was true with better maps of reality.
The papers I share above help us enlarge our horizon of human experience to include new insights into cognition, the body, and the self.
Wishing you a great week,
Nikolas
10 This Week in our Club for Curious Minds
On Mindful Monday
Nikolas will invite you to use your imagination in a meditation inspired by modern mindfulness icons.
On Zen Tuesday
Former Zen Monk René will introduce you to meditations and insights from old wisdom traditions.
On Loving-KindnessWednesday
Hannah will explore the self-healing power of training compassion and loving/kindness practice.
On A Mindful Life Thursday
Nikolas will introduce mental models that help to bring more awareness in everyday life.
On Deep Mind Sunday
Sascha will offer a space to deepen your meditation practice.
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