Melissa Novack explains why mindfulness is foundational to their work: it reconnects kids and teens with their bodies, helps regulate their nervous systems, and builds inner safety. Rather than separating the mind and body, their approach invites both into the therapy space as allies in healing.

Carl Jerome, longtime mindfulness teacher and director of North Shore Meditation & Dharma Center, explains what mindfulness is—and what it’s not.

Why sit in silence? In this conversation, Carl describes how unguided meditation builds internal confidence. Without someone leading you, you begin to trust yourself to sit, stay, and return to the present.

Carl walks through what actually happens during a 30-minute meditation. The goal isn’t to achieve peace—it’s to stay with the practice, observe the mind, and return again and again.

What if we could step back from our thoughts and observe them? Carl describes how mindfulness cultivates metacognition—the ability to notice thoughts as mental events—and how this practice creates space between stimulus and response.