* That is, unless mindfulness has become part of the curriculum in your local school, which is happening more and more throughout the country and in different parts of the world.

* See J. D. Teasdale and M. Chaskalson “How Does Mindfulness Transform Suffering II: The Transformation of Dukkha.” In: Mindfulness; Diverse Perspectives on Its Meaning, Origins, and Applications, J.M.G. Williams and J. Kabat-Zinn (Eds) (Routledge, Milton Park, UK, 2013) pp. 103-124.

* Another term, interoception, is now used by neuroscientists to designate the sense of the physiological condition of the entire body and its continual regulation to maintain inner balance, or homeostasis—if you will, an “inward touching,” giving rise to the condition of knowing how we feel.

* As an easily accessible example of how readily the mind drifts off into stories and mental noise and loses touch with the body and with the actuality of the present moment, I often suggest to people that the next time they are taking a shower, they might check and see if they are in the shower. It is not uncommon to find that you are not in the shower at all, but in a meeting with your colleagues that hasn’t happened yet, for instance. Actually, in that moment, the whole meeting could be said to be in the shower with you. Meanwhile you may be missing the experience of the water on your skin and pretty much everything else about that moment.

* Useful tip if sitting on a meditation cushion (zafu): sit on the forward third of it rather than dead-center on top of it. This allows your pelvis to tilt forward and encourages a slight but important forward-facing (lordotic) curve in the lower back.

* Let’s not forget that the very atoms of our bodies were themselves forged in exploding supernovae and, in the case of the hydrogen, in the aftermath of the big bang itself, approximately 13.7 billion years ago, once the conditions allowed for its formation.