Try a “Microhit” of Mindfulness — Research shows the power of mindfulness meditation. But many people believe they don’t have time to meditate. Could brief periods of mindfulness be an effective solution? How much mindfulness meditation is “enough?” As part of the 200-hour meditation leader training I recently completed with Sage Institute for Creativity and Consciousness, I researched brief periods of mindfulness…

World Bipolar Day — In honor of World Bipolar Day, former Still I Run board member Nita Sweeney shares insights about bipolar disorder. I’d had the same psychiatrist, a woman I trust with my life, for years. I thought we’d covered all the ground. But a few years before I started running, dark, angry…

You might not be able to escape, but you can meditate — Jon Kabat-Zinn said “We can’t change the waves, but we can learn to surf.” Yes, leave the bad marriage, the wrong job, the “money pit” house. But the day will come when you cannot “leave.” …

An ancient meditation practice helped me love my neighbors despite our political differences (and their political signs) — Political signs dotted the yards. This was a presidential year and the nation was on edge. It didn’t matter which party the signs supported, they annoyed me. I longed for the green simplicity of empty yards. — Nita Sweeney, Depression Hates a Moving Target referring to the 2012 election.

A primer for the new author — Nothing illegal. Seriously. I cannot think of one single legal thing you should not do when you hold that very first brand spanking new copy of your very first, brand spanking new book in your shaky hands. Not. One. Legal. Thing. But what should you do? BEFORE you take 10,000 selfies or…

Meditation benefits creative thinking and improves focus — I sometimes surprise my students when I ask them to try meditation during my adult writing classes. “What’s meditation have to do with writing?” more than one has asked over the twenty years I’ve taught. When I first began to teach, meditation was seen as a hippie, woo woo, new…

How Running for Charity Helped My Mental Health — “I’m a private runner,” I told my sister when she invited me to the first annual Steps for Sarcoma 5k. She had signed up to walk the three-point-one-mile course in memory of her daughter, Jamey, who died at twenty-four of osteosarcoma. The race raised money for cancer research. …

Tiny Steps I Took When Silence in the Face of Racism and Privilege (especially my own) was No Longer an Option — I’m a white, middle-aged, middle-class woman who lives in an affluent central Ohio suburb. While I was in high school, growing up in white, rural Ohio, the first family of “colored people” moved into our district. They were Italian. Sigh. Despite my lifelong desire to reform racism out of myself…

I don’t remember which one of us decided to reclaim Mother’s Day, but it began with an impromptu day-long road trip. With little fanfare or notice to anyone except Ed, the #onehundredpercentgoodhusband, my sister Amy and I hopped in her convertible and drove north up Route 23 to Putnam County…