Go to nearly any self-help or psychology section in a bookstore these days and you’ll probably find books with mindfulness in the title. Below is a link for a handout I’ve written that provides a brief introduction to mindfulness. It contains information you might find useful if you are learning how to experience mindfulness in your life, including if you are beginning to practice guided meditations such as a body scan meditation.
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in Articles,Counselling Reflections & Skills,External Resources,Self-Compassion
This week, I would like to share a video I came across in the spring that I found interesting and inspiring. It’s a documentary of a pilot program that was run through Veterans Affairs in Seattle teaching to veterans mindfulness meditation, loving kindness meditation, and concepts related to compassion for oneself and for others.
The veterans in the group were all suffering in various ways, which you learn snippets of over the course of the video. The group members also experience positive changes over the program, Read more ›
in Articles,Compassion,External Resources,Mindfulness,Self-Compassion
For my German speaking and reading visitors:
Thomas Heinsius and Mirjam Tanner have just started a website on compassion in German to disseminate information on compassion-focused therapy and compassion-based psychotherapeutic work in German speaking countries. Read more ›
Recently, I read the book Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle (2010, Free Press). I do not remember how I learned of the book (I am thinking it may have been a library search) but for whichever way it came across my path, I’m glad that it did.
Gregory’s writing is filled with insights I could spend the next decade (if not the rest of my life) reflecting on and trying to live by and inspire. He is an ordained Jesuit Priest who worked for 20 years in the Boyle Heights of Los Angeles: Read more ›
in Articles,Compassion,Counselling Reflections & Skills,External Resources
Samples of my sources of bliss: being in wilderness, in nature, teaching, writing, reading, expressive arts, wholesome food, inspiring, caring, creating, listening to the songs of birds outside my window, sipping tea and watching the snow fall or the garden grow.
What are some of your own sources of bliss? While it may not be possible to inhabit them fully all of the time, could you carve out some time, even 5 or 10 minutes, to honour one?
in Articles
It is easy to be thankful
for the bundles of wild roses
ledged along the dune.
Is is as easy as if you were yourself a flower in the field,
the rain tossing you and tossing you,
until you are that flower—
as torn as muddy as golden as that.
—-
I have always loved those lines and remembered them, if not exactly, but their essence in my heart. Read more ›
A quick glance from afar and we might conclude something is spent, dried up, haggard. We might feel this way sometimes too — even as if there is nothing good or workable. Stopping and slowing and looking closely, we can still find a gem. Sometimes we need help from an outsider and their view.
As always for me, the star reminds there are many paths, many points that can lead to and support the same centre Read more ›
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Balance. There is a concept in exercise physiology that to get maximum benefit, we need to alternate activity with rest, that we need to alternate more demanding activity with lighter activity, and that we need to have varied activity that differentially supports the development of flexibility, endurance, and strength. This sounds to me like a lesson for life. Students and hard-working non-students take note: in general one extreme or the other isn’t generally helpful. Read more ›
in Articles
I imagine that the Forever inscribed and placed on this bench refers to the love and bond someone (or a group) has with another who is no longer living– a bond that will last forever. Encountering this bench made me feel quiet, and it made me also reflect on other bonds that we have and other commitments. Read more ›