Mindfulness and meditation can be powerful coping mechanisms. Tim and Congressman Steve Israel wrote an op-ed for The Hill about how they’re helping the next generation of leaders use these skills so, going forward, when things get difficult and we disagree with one another, we’ll look inside ourselves — instead of further entrenching ourselves on the left or right.

“Twelve years ago, before the MAGA movement emerged on the right and the streets erupted in progressive protest from the left, we noticed something troubling in Congress: Our colleagues and constituents were getting angrier.

We saw it in the flushed faces at our town halls. We heard it in expletive-laden phone calls opposing the Affordable Care Act. We felt its toll in the increasing turnover of our burnt-out, battle-fatigued campaign workers. Most of all, we sensed it in the changing behavior of our House colleagues, who drifted away from one another and toward their own moral high grounds.

Political anger is not a new phenomenon. The marble steps leading to the House Chamber are still splattered with the bloodstains of former Rep. William Preston Taulbee, who was shot there by journalist Charles Kincaid in 1890. The Old Senate Chamber is where abolitionist Sen. Charles Sumner was beaten with a cane by pro-slavery Rep. Preston Brooks.

But recent events feel different. An American slow boil is poised to erupt if we can’t turn down the heat.”

Read the full article here.