Category: Mindful Moments

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Mindful Moments: Now Weekly!

Mindful Moments

Mindful Moments: Weekly Inspiration for Mindful Living

Mindful Moments are times to pause and reflect in our daily lives.

It is easy to become overwhelmed by constant distractions, unending to-do lists, and the pressures of daily life in modern society. Many people feel disconnected from themselves, their communities, and the natural world around them. To help address this growing need for grounding and balance, the Mindful Ecotherapy Center created a YouTube series called Mindful Moments.

Originally launched as a monthly offering, Mindful Moments has recently expanded into a weekly series, giving viewers more frequent opportunities to explore mindfulness-based tools for stress relief, resilience, and inner peace. With short, practical practices that can be easily integrated into daily life, Mindful Moments is designed to meet you exactly where you are, whether you’re new to mindfulness or an experienced practitioner seeking fresh inspiration.

What is Mindful Moments?

Mindful Moments is about bringing mindfulness into everyday life. Each episode provides viewers with simple, accessible practices rooted in mindfulness and ecotherapy. These practices encourage you to pause, take a breath, and reconnect with the present moment.

Unlike long courses or retreats that require a major time commitment, Mindful Moments episodes are intentionally short (usually five minutes or less) and approachable. The goal is not to overwhelm viewers with theory, but rather to share small, meaningful steps that can help cultivate peace, clarity, and resilience.

The series blends mindfulness techniques such as breathing exercises, grounding practices, and mindful awareness with nature-based wisdom. By drawing on the cycles of the natural world, Mindful Moments invites us to remember that we are part of something larger than ourselves, and that healing often comes through reconnecting with nature.

Mindfulness and Everyday Mental Health

One of the unique aspects of Mindful Moments is its focus on real-world mental health issues. While many mindfulness resources stay on the surface level, this series explores deeper topics such as anxiety, depression, stress management, and trauma recovery. Each episode highlights how Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy can support mental health and emotional well-being.

Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy is an approach developed by the Mindful Ecotherapy Center that integrates the principles of mindfulness with the healing power of nature. This approach is grounded in research showing that both mindfulness and time spent in nature can improve mood, reduce stress, and promote resilience. Together, they form a powerful combination that helps people reconnect with themselves, with others, and with the natural world.

Episodes of Mindful Moments often include practical applications of these ideas. For example, a session might guide you in noticing the sensations of your feet as they touch the ground during a mindful walk, or invite you to spend five minutes observing the cycles of nature as a metaphor for the cycles of your own life. These practices remind us that even simple shifts in awareness can have a profound impact on mental health.

Advocacy for Mental Health and Social Issues

Beyond individual well-being, Mindful Moments also emphasizes the importance of advocacy. The Mindful Ecotherapy Center has long been a voice for mental health awareness and social justice, and the series reflects this commitment.

Episodes may highlight broader issues such as:

  • Reducing stigma around mental health
  • Advocating for accessible mental health services
  • Addressing the impact of social and environmental challenges on psychological well-being
  • Building compassionate communities rooted in connection and mindfulness

By linking personal mindfulness practices with larger social and environmental issues, Mindful Moments encourages viewers to see the ripple effect of their actions. When we cultivate peace and resilience within ourselves, we are better equipped to contribute to a healthier, more compassionate society.

Why Weekly Matters

When Mindful Moments was first launched, episodes were released monthly. While this schedule provided valuable content, viewers expressed a desire for more frequent inspiration. Responding to this need, the Mindful Ecotherapy Center expanded the series into a weekly offering.

This change means that every week, you can expect a new episode filled with guidance, encouragement, and practical tools for mindful living. Regular practice is the cornerstone of mindfulness, and having fresh weekly content helps support consistency. By weaving these short practices into your routine, mindfulness becomes less of a concept and more of a lived experience.

How Mindful Moments Can Support Your Journey

No matter where you are on your journey with mindfulness, Mindful Moments offers something for you:

  • Beginners can learn simple, accessible practices without feeling overwhelmed.
  • Experienced practitioners can find fresh perspectives and new ways to integrate mindfulness into daily life.
  • Therapists and helping professionals can gain ideas for introducing mindfulness and ecotherapy techniques to their clients.
  • Anyone under stress can find a calming space to pause, reflect, and reconnect.

The series is designed to be practical and inclusive, offering tools that are adaptable to a wide variety of lifestyles and needs.

Subscribe and Stay Connected

Mindfulness is about the way we live our lives moment to moment. With Mindful Moments, you’ll find weekly reminders to slow down, breathe, and reconnect with what truly matters.

Subscribe to the Mindful Ecotherapy Center’s YouTube channel today and join us weekly for your dose of mindful living!

By bringing together mindfulness, ecotherapy, mental health awareness, and social advocacy, Mindful Moments offers a holistic approach to healing and growth, one short, meaningful practice at a time.

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE

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Healthcare Death Panels: 4 Reasons Saving Money Became More Important Than Saving Lives

death panels

Insurance companies are the real healthcare death panels. In 2020, after years of serving as a mental health professional, I made the heartbreaking decision to retire from counseling and therapy. I didn’t leave because I no longer cared for my patients or because the work had grown too difficult. I left because insurance companies were actively prioritizing profit over people—refusing to pay for life-saving medications that my patients desperately needed. The ethical weight of this reality became unbearable, as I found myself no longer preparing my patients for healing but instead preparing them for death.

This is the story of how a system that was meant to protect lives betrayed my patients, my profession, and my hope for a better future. It is also a story about why insurance death panels are driving health care professionals out of the profession.

Health Care Should Be About Saving Lives, not about Death Panels

As a mental health professional, I spent years working with individuals who struggled with severe depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other life-altering mental illnesses. Many of these conditions are not just debilitating—they can be life-threatening. Effective treatment often requires a multi-pronged approach: therapy, lifestyle adjustments, and, in many cases, life-saving medications. Since I worked in a medical clinic, I also saw patients with chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease that required medication to keep them alive. At first, I saw them because they had anxiety over how they were going to afford their medications. As the greed of the healthcare death panels grew, eventually I started seeing these people for depression because they could no longer afford their medications, and they knew they were going to die.

These medications are not optional. They’re not a luxury. For many of my patients, medications such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics were the only things keeping them alive—keeping them from succumbing to the darkness of their illnesses. For my patients with diabetes or other chronic ailments, medications like insulin kept them alive.

But the insurance death panels didn’t see it that way.

Insurance Companies: The REAL Death Panels

Over the years, I watched in frustration as insurance companies consistently denied coverage for essential medications. The process was infuriatingly familiar:

  1. Doctors and therapists recommend a specific treatment plan tailored to the patient’s needs.
  2. The insurance company’s death panel rejects it.
  3. Appeals are made. Hours are spent on paperwork and phone calls. Precious time that could have been better used for patient care is wasted.
  4. Patients are left in limbo, unable to afford the medications they need to survive, denied yet again by the healthcare death panels.

This wasn’t just bureaucracy—it was a death sentence. Many patients couldn’t wait weeks or months for approvals that might never come. They were living day-to-day, fighting to keep their chronic illness from consuming them. And yet, to the insurance death panels, their lives were reduced to dollar signs and cost-benefit analyses.

My Job Became Preparing Patients for Death

healthcare death panels when saving money becomes more important than saving lives

In my last few years in the profession, I began to notice a grim shift in my role as a therapist. Instead of helping patients work toward a brighter future, I found myself preparing them for an unavoidable end.

  • Patients who couldn’t get their medications began losing hope.
  • Therapy alone wasn’t enough to keep their suicidal thoughts at bay.
  • They would ask me questions like, “What happens if I don’t wake up tomorrow?” or “What do I tell my family when I’m gone?”

I tried to hold space for their pain, but it felt like shouting into the void. I could no longer offer solutions because the system had taken them away. I had to prepare my patients for the unimaginable—for the reality that their lives weren’t deemed worth saving because saving money was more important.

This was not why I became a mental health professional.

A Broken System That Costs Lives

Insurance companies are supposed to make healthcare accessible. Instead, they’ve become gatekeepers that stand between patients and their right to live healthy, fulfilling lives. While insurance executives enjoy multi-million-dollar salaries, real people are left to suffer, deteriorate, and die.

Mental illness is already stigmatized enough. Patients often have to summon immense courage just to ask for help. To then be turned away because insurance won’t cover the cost of their care—it’s cruel and inhumane.

The consequences of these decisions are real:

  • Patients left untreated face higher rates of hospitalization, incarceration, and suicide.
  • Families are shattered by preventable losses.
  • Mental health professionals are left burnt out, demoralized, and hopeless.

This isn’t just a failure of healthcare—it’s a moral failing of our society. If we judge our society by how we treat our most vulnerable members, what does this say about America?

Why I Had to Walk Away

Retiring in 2020 was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. I loved my work. I loved my patients. However, I could no longer reconcile my role within a system that failed to value human life. Every denied prescription, every preventable death, chipped away at my faith in a profession I once believed could change lives for the better.

My decision to retire was not about giving up—it was about refusing to be complicit in a system that prioritizes profit over people. I couldn’t continue to watch patients die when I knew that their lives could have been saved.

We Deserve Better

Mental health care is healthcare. Full stop. And healthcare is a human right. No one should have to beg for the medications they need to survive. No one should lose their life because an insurance company decided they weren’t worth the cost.

If we want to create real change, we need to hold insurance companies accountable. We need to advocate for reforms that put patients first—not profits. And we need to treat mental health with the same urgency and compassion that we give to physical health.

Final Thoughts on Insurance Death Panels

To those still fighting within the system—patients, families, and fellow mental health professionals—know that your work matters. Your lives matter. You are not alone in this fight.

I may have retired, but I will never stop speaking out against the injustices I witnessed. I hope that by sharing my story, we can shine a light on the system’s brokenness and inspire meaningful change because saving lives must always come before saving money.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, don’t hesitate to seek help. Resources exist, and your life is worth fighting for.

Share Your Thoughts about Insurance Death Panels!

What do you think? Have you ever been denied lifesaving medications or care by an insurance death panel? Share your thoughts in the comments below!


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Mindful Moments: Compassion

The first ‘C’ of mindful mood management is ‘compassion.’ Compassion is a re-examination of our core values by asking ourselves two questions, and answering honestly. The two questions are:

  1. What am I trying to accomplish by behaving this way?
  2. Will my actions and behaviors achieve what I’m trying to accomplish?

Emotionally aggressive people are passionate people. We care deeply. By channeling that passion into compassion, we can live the lives we were meant to live by focusing on our intentions.

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Mindful Moments – 7Cs of Family Resilience

All families encounter problems from time to time. When families go through a crisis, some fall apart, while others manage to “ride the storm out” and come through the other side relatively intact. Research has shown that families who manage to handle a crisis effectively all have certain characteristics in common. These characteristics are called resiliency factors. In this episode of Mindful Moments, we’ll discuss these resilience factors and the 7Cs of Family Resilience.

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Mindful Moments – The Emotional Aggression Cycle

We create our reality based on our assumptions and our perceptions about the world and our place in it. By making assumptions about the world, and using our perceptions, based on those  assumptions,  to  look  for  evidence  to  support  our  beliefs,  we  eventually  create  a  reality  that reflects those assumptions and perceptions.
In this episode of Mindful Moments will talk about how our assumptions and our perceptions influence our reality.

 

To be informed when new episodes of Mindful Moments are available, subscribe to the Mindful Ecotherapy Center’s Youtube channel. You may also subscribe to the newsletter. Future episodes will be announced in the newsletter as they become available.