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TEACHINGS | EASTERN HORIZON 37

DOES MINDFULNESS

MAKE YOU MORE

COMPASSIONATE?

By Dr Shauna Shapiro

Shauna Shapiro is a professor, author, and internationally recognized
expert in mindfulness and compassion. Nearly one million people
have watched her 2017 TEDx talk “The Power of Mindfulness,” rated
top 10 talks on mindfulness. Dr. Shapiro has published over 150
journal articles and co-authored two critically acclaimed books
translated into 14 languages: The Art and Science of Mindfulness,
and Mindful Discipline. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street
Journal, Mashable, Wired, USA Today, Dr. Oz, the Huffington Post, Yoga
Journal, and the American Psychologist. Dr. Shapiro has been an
invited speaker for the King of Thailand, the Danish Government,
Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Summit, and the World Council
for Psychotherapy, as well as for Fortune 100 Companies including
Google, Cisco Systems, Proctor & Gamble, and Genentech. Dr. Shapiro
is a summa cum laude graduate of Duke University and a Fellow of the
Mind and Life Institute, co-founded by the Dalai Lama.

I attended my first meditation my first big realization: I was not in
retreat in Thailand in 1996. When control of my mind.
I arrived, I didn’t know very much
about mindfulness and I certainly I was humbled and somewhat
didn’t speak any Thai. distraught by how much my mind
wandered. I would attend to one
At the monastery, I vaguely breath, two breaths, maybe three—
understood the teachings of the and then my mind was gone, lost in
beautiful Thai monk who instructed thoughts, leaving my body sitting
me to pay attention to the breath there, an empty shell. Frustrated
coming in and out of my nostrils. It and impatient, I began to wonder,
sounded easy enough. So I sat down “Why can’t I do this? Everyone
and attempted to pay attention, 16 else looks like they’re sitting so
hours a day, and very quickly I had peacefully. What’s wrong with me?”