Mindfulness Center of Atlanta

10/02/2026

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the hardest part of pain is not just the pain itself, but how desperately we want to get away from it? Mindfulness doesn’t take the pain away, but it can give us another way to be with it and to help prevent pain from becoming the whole story.

09/25/2026

Your body can be a shortcut back to the present moment. So if you ever want to get out of your head, turn your attention to your body.

09/18/2026

Does mindfulness involve humor? I think it has to. Because if you’ve ever tried to meditate, you know how quickly things can go sideways. But here’s the beautiful thing: mindfulness doesn’t ask us to get it right. It asks us simply to notice. And when we can notice ourselves with a little more curiosity and a little less judgment, there’s room for levity. Room to smile room to begin again. And that’s a big part of the practice being president enough to notice life in light enough to laugh at ourselves along the way. ❤️

09/11/2026

What if you didn’t need to find time for mindfulness? But instead, you simply brought mindfulness to the time you already have? Mindfulness can happen anywhere. Where does your life most often invite you to slow down and notice? Maybe that’s the best place to begin.

09/09/2026

Excerpt from this week’s’s Mindfulness for the Moment practice group: Walking Meditation

There are four traditional mindfulness postures: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. Adopting these four postures while meditating helps cultivate body awareness. During the practice, we treat the body as an anchor and do our best to maintain clear awareness of the body's disposition in each posture.

It’s helpful to explore present-moment awareness in the body by including each posture in your practice, either on its own or in combination with 2 or more others. So, today I want to highlight the formal practice of walking meditation.

Bhikkhu Anālayo, a contemporary scholar and monk, is one of the most careful interpreters of the early Buddhist discourses, and he emphasizes that mindfulness begins with the body as it is actually lived, not as an object of thought, but as the body known from within (Anālayo, 2003; Anālayo, 2013).
Regarding walking meditation, he says, “When walking, one knows: ‘I am walking.’” (Majjhima Nikāya 10; Anālayo, 2003)

Walking meditation is not described only in the mindfulness and Buddhist tradition.
The renowned teacher of Christian meditation, James Finley, who was once a monk and is now a psychologist, said in his book, The Contemplative Heart: “I experienced in the slow, mindful walking a rudimentary form of contemplation in action. In the walking, I discovered a way to allow the deep stillness fostered in sitting meditation to flow out, unbroken and uninterrupted, into bodily movement” (Finley, J., 2000, p. 118-119).

Kinhin is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese Buddhist term for walking meditation (Chinese: 經行; pinyin: jīngxíng). It refers to the practice of slow, mindful walking that allows for movement and concentration.

If we look at the root of the word Kinhin and the literal meaning, we see that the first part of the word, Kin (經), translates to passing through time and space. It describes a "stringing”; as in going through like the thread in a loom; it also suggests sewing and holding things together. The second part of the word hin (行), means “to go” or "to walk straight back and forth”.

So, in this meditation, we are just walking back and forth, as if threading a needle through a loom. The back-and-forth movement, and this sense of threading the needle, helps us become more aware of our relationship to all things. We connect with the thread of present-moment awareness that repeatedly notices when the mind has wandered and repeatedly brings it back to the moment. The intentional, specific movement during meditation helps us gather our mind and body, establishing connection and integration while giving us insight into life…

M4M is a free, 30-minute weekly live online communal practice group...

08/28/2026

Mindfulness doesn’t make impermanence disappear. Mindfulness helps us show up and participate or fully in the time that we’re given if you knew you didn’t have forever what would you stop putting off?

08/21/2026

If you are ready to move beyond simply managing stress and begin exploring mindfulness as a way of living, come practice with us. Join our upcoming, online, Tuesday evening, 8-week mindfulness course. Visit our website for more info.

08/19/2026

Mindfulness, Purpose, and Loving the World, by Mark Dannenfelser

…Mindfulness is often introduced as a way to reduce stress, improve sleep, lower blood pressure, or manage anxiety. And it certainly can do those things. Decades of research support the benefits of mindfulness for both physical and psychological well-being.

But mindfulness is also about something deeper than improving symptoms and conditions, as important as that is. It’s about living an intentional life rooted in love and compassion. It’s OK if that’s not why you are practicing mindfulness, but I want you to know that it does offer this way of living.

So, today I'd like to reflect on what it means to live mindfully in such a way as to live with more intention, purpose, and love for this one life we've been given. And if we can become more present and more compassionate in our lives, how might that allow us to give something back to the world?

There is a saying widely attributed to the theologian and mystic Howard Thurman: “Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

It’s worth considering what it is you have to give back to this world. And that doesn’t have to be grandiose. Your offering can be found in everyday experiences.

How can I bring more kindness into my family? How can I serve my community? How can I use whatever gifts I have to make the world better? How can I become more fully myself, not in an egoic sense, but in the sense of becoming the person I was created to be?

Another important question to ask is: What gets in the way of us looking at the big picture? What keeps us in a micro-view of our lives?

One way to look at it through the lens of mindfulness is that we get caught up in judgment, and judgment, by design, is a narrow field of view. Seeing the big picture requires an expansive view. I have said many times that the antidote to judgment is curiosity. Curiosity is an open-ended response rather than a narrow, knee-jerk reactive judgment. We move from a simplistic, dualistic approach that sees only left-right, up-down, black-white, to a broad field of awareness that is open to new possibilities and broader perspectives…

M4M is a free 30-minute live online weekly communal practice group....

08/14/2026

Try it and see. For one week, take five minutes each day & offer loving thoughts and wishes of kindness to yourself along with someone you love. Notice what begins to shift. And for an actual loving-kindness meditation, visit our website for last week’s recording of Mindfulness for the Moment. Every week we offer a free, online practice group. Sign up for information & join us!

08/12/2026

Loving Kindness Meditation, by Mark Dannenfelser

Mindfulness is more than a stress reduction program; it’s more than a relaxation technique or a medical intervention, though it can profoundly support physical and mental well-being. But at its core, mindfulness is a way of being; a way of living from a place of compassion so that we are better able to reduce suffering in ourselves and in others, and are freer to love unconditionally. Mindfulness is ultimately about love.

Extensive research supports the benefits of loving-kindness meditation. Scientific studies, including neuroimaging research, show that loving-kindness meditation activates the brain’s emotional centers, enhancing empathy, emotional regulation, and a sense of well-being (Lutz et al., 2009).

In the end, loving-kindness meditation invites us to a radical way of seeing and relating that takes us from judgment to acceptance, from separation to connection, and from hate to love.

M4M is a free 30-minute live online weekly communal practice group....