A company is only as healthy as its employees. Mindfulness creates healthier and happier workers, healthier and happier people. As I state in my seminars, mindfulness at work isn't just a work skill or a life skill -- it is a new way of existing.

We just carve out a few minutes of our day to take long, deep, fluid inhalations and long, deep, fluid exhalations -- taking our bodies out of "fight or flight" mode -- and if we notice thoughts arising to consciousness we simply guide our attention back to our breaths. This is basic meditation.

Instructing somebody to meditate -- to release or dis-identify with his or her thoughts -- is like trying to instruct somebody to instantly sneeze, or like telling someone just not to think, when the mind but built to do little else but that.

By turning everyday activities into meditation moments, you can bring more mindfulness, clarity, and peace into your day while energizing yourself and reducing stress. Here are five opportunities to add meditation to your day without taking time out of your hectic schedule.

Mindfulness, something once practiced only in more closeted meditation circles, has recently become a greater mainstream interest. Perhaps for this reason, research on mindfulness meditation has increased considerably over the last decade.

Meditation is the new American pushup for the brain; it's a tool that helps us check in with ourselves throughout the day. It's a practice that should be embraced by all American corporations as a way to stay calm, focused, and productive through the day.

The benefits of mindfulness aren't all ponderous and weighty and Buddhist monk-y feeling things. It sweetens our moments, our days, our lives. Gosh, what if we lived more in soulful attunement to the exquisite preciousness of life as it presents itself moment by moment?

Mindfulness allows everyone to bask in his or her own faith, belief and wishes -- it opens the door to acceptance. It allows us to see our humanity and the bigger picture things that connects us beyond our titles, beyond our outward appearance, beyond our philosophies and dogmas.

The key here is to bring awareness and intentionality to the moments of our lives. Be aware when the brain is automatically judging a situation or a person, and we can pause and get some perspective.

When we meditate, we try to connect to that inner peace and serenity that transcends thought. For me, it's a type of stillness that feels like I am completely connected to timelessness, and that there is no beginning or end, it just "is." But why does that feeling have to be so temporary or elusive?

Cheers to America's new push-up for the brain! With all the scientific evidence coming in over the years, meditation is now becoming a practice that anyone from any walk of life can embrace.

My greatest failure ended up becoming the best thing that ever happened to me. About one year into my time in the brig, I started learning about mindfulness meditation and immediately noticed an increase in happiness.

Our self-defeating emotional habits distort reality. Mindful discernment helps us distinguish between how things seem -- the 'horse' -- and how they are -- the moose.

You've got to make time for yourself -- preferably every day -- to do something that refreshes you, centers you, and keeps you grounded. For me that something is meditation. It might be something else for you.

I sometimes see the world as one big dysfunctional family. At the collective level we can see the Us and Them dynamic at work -- unless we make the choice to join at the heart and emphasize the ways we are connected rather than the ways we are separate, revealing the natural principle of interconnectedness.

Mind whispering integrates mindfulness with habit change, which adds the strength of awareness to the mechanics of shifting our modes of being for the better.

I think the millions of Americans who exercise should be meditating before and after they jump on the treadmill. Why is this not possible? They adopted an iPod into their workout.

Take a few minutes to bring peacefulness and healing into your home by creating sacred space. It's not hard to do and has immense rewards. If you already have a sacred space, I'd love to hear about it. If I've inspired you to create one, I'd love to know how you made it meaningful to you.

You think if you stress would loosen its chokehold on you, then you could relax. But you have it backwards: If you learned to relax, then stress would recede. That's because relaxing is a practice, and like a muscle, and you need to use it -- or lose it.

My call to you, please think about encouraging mindfulness or simple techniques of awareness in your town, in your schools, in your community.

As yoga studios and meditation centers pop up on nearly every city block and mindfulness practices make their way into some of the biggest corporation...

Oh mindfulness meditation, how do we love thee? Let us count the ways. Even though the academic research on mindfulness meditation isn't as robust...