Best practices

Hello MBZ1 listeners, Gena here.

If you were to ask me, “Gena, what do you think is more effective mindfulness?” I wouldn’t be able to give a simplistic answer. My answer would have many threads woven together. And my preference would have been to spend the time needed to unpack the questions while drinking tea together.

Within a tea-date context I could ask you some clarifying questions about what motived you to ask in the first place. This would allow me to tailor a response that gets to the heart of why you are asking. Perhaps I’d even be able to answer a more foundational question that you hadn’t thought to ask.

But we don’t have the luxury of that kind of tailoring within this email context, unfortunately. 1

So here’s a couple of ideas to chew on:

• More effective mindfulness requires vulnerability to changing your beliefs about yourself. It’s not all that effective if it doesn’t include change.
• More effective mindfulness includes having people in your life that you trust to sit next to you in amiable silence. The “more effective” part can’t be done at a distance.
  Sure, starting with an app can be fine. But I’m just saying that an app is a medium-to-low-effective way to start, not a more-effective modality.
• More effective mindfulness is best served by having people in your life that you trust to give you an outside perspective, and mirror back to you what they see happening for you.
• And then, IMHO, the most effective mindfulness requires having people in your life that you trust to call you on your shit (lovingly). But that kind of relationship takes time, and investment.

And then, if you were to say, “that’s all well and good, but I’m just looking for a few quick tips. Can you give me a recommendation for a new year jumpstart?”

Then, I have three recommendations. Join the studio’s monthly zoom calls,2 schedule a coaching call,3 and register for an 8-week MBSR intensive course.

I will not be teaching MBSR myself in 2026, so I am referring folks to Sunada Takagi’s classes in Arlington. She is starting on January 21st. (Very soon!) You must have an intake phone call ahead of time, so fill out the registration form ASAP in order to get a spot in her class in time. Links to her website are in the footnotes.4

At the end of the 8 weeks of the MBSR series, you will have developed your own answers to the “more effective mindfulness” inquiry in a much more profound way than anything I could describe to you in these words. So I really do recommend jumping in to an MBSR as soon as you feel ready.

And, if enough folks express interest, I will plan to offer a MBZ1 MBSR in Cambridge next year. Reply to let me know, or book an inquiry phone call with me.

I’ll see some of you at our January members zoom call at 3pm today. My plan includes recording a new guided meditation for the radio. (Or not.)

Take care,
Gena