Resources

Urban Mindfulness at PsychologyToday.com

At PsychologyToday.com, Dr. Kaplan maintains a blog on the practice of mindfulness and meditation in urban settings. While some of the posts are similar topic-wise to what he discusses here, he also has many unique entries. Generally speaking, these posts incorporate more scientific research, too.
Click here for the blog:

Urban Mindfulness PT blog

Exercises

Here are some downloads to help support your mindfulness practice. The handouts are provided in “pdf” format.

Meditation

Mindfulness of…

These handouts are free for use by individuals, though not for groups or commercial purposes. Please contact UM if you want to use them in a different way: kaplan@urbanmindfulness.org. We welcome your feedback and suggestions, too.

Recommended Blogs and Websites

UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center
Sure, we might be biased because Dr. Kaplan earned his doctoral degree from UCLA. But, this is still a wonderful institute devoted to providing education and conducting research on mindfulness and meditation. They also have mp3’s of meditation exercises available free for download.

Psychotherapy Brown Bag
An active blog that reviews research related to the science and practice of psychotherapy. It provides a thoughtful critique on many therapy-related issues.

Mindfulness Bell Website
As a reminder to mindfully check-in with your breathing and posture, you can set a bell to ring periodically at predetermined or random intervals. This is a nice way to fold mindfulness into your work at the computer: simply set the timer and minimize the browser window. It will operate in the background and ring each time expires.

Happy Days: The Pursuit of What Matters in Troubled Times
Sponsored by The New York Times, this blog includes contributions from authors, artists, and psychologists concerning the search for happiness and inner peace.

Shambhala Times
This is an online forum for the Buddhist Shambhala community. It includes news and blog posts.

Wildmind
Run by the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, this website provides instruction on meditation, including online classes.

Zenhabits
This is a blog written by a man in Guam who made significant, difficult life changes (e.g., becoming vegan, running marathons). His writing style is very accessible and his advice is pretty sound from behavioral and motivational perspectives.

PsychConnect
This website seeks to provide a full-service resource center for NYC-based mental health professionals.  Here, you’ll find announcements for training, ads for therapy space, and job opportunities.

Recommended Books

Urban Mindfulness has a virtual store at Amazon where we provide reviews and recommendations of our favorite books. Check it out here:

Urban Mindfulness Amazon Store

Disclosure Statement:

Urban Mindfulness strives to provide recommendations with integrity, devoid of any potential outside influences. Accordingly, we do not receive any money, kickbacks, goods, or services in exchange for listings on our site. None. Zero. Nada. You might have noticed that we don’t allow any advertising either! Banner ads are not consistent with our mission to reduce distractions and promote awareness. Plus, they create the potential for bias or a conflict of interest (e.g., if someone is paying you money for an ad, then you’re less likely to be objective about the product). So, that’s why we don’t have any ads. We do receive a percentage of the sales generated through our Amazon store, however. So, if you do want to support UM and our mission, please feel free to buy a book through our linked store. It helps you and it helps us!