With so much going on in the world and in our communities, families and individual minds, hearts and bodies right now, it can feel hard some days to remain calm, centered and grounded. It’s often easy to get quickly swept away in feelings of overwhelm, worry, grief, shame and fear—feeling both figuratively and literally like you’re losing your footing. When in the throes of these moments, it can be helpful to remind yourself to take a pause, employ mindfulness and utilize your senses and grounding techniques to help you feel a little stronger and more stable.
Manifesting Change, Staying Hopeful And Reflecting On How Far You’ve Really Come
So often, in the throes of our busy lives, it’s easy to lose track of and/or overlook the small gains, which can be like guideposts, gently reminding us that we are progressing, that there is hope for growth, change and transformation, and that we’re on the right path. These periodic check-ins help us stay focused, motivated and can elicit feelings of satisfaction and joy, as well as aid us in staying hopeful. I think that these reflections and guideposts so beautifully offer us hope—as individuals and as a collective humanity—especially right now given all the dis-ease, conflict and trauma that is prevalent in the world.
Awakening To The Goodness That Abounds: A Simple Meditation on Receiving
Dissolving “Othering” And Healing A Fractured Humanity: Insight & A Meditation Practice
One of the most deeply-rooted conditioning in our world is that of “Othering,” the human phenomenon that compels us to look at anything that is ‘not us’ as ‘the Other.’ Othering, particularly “Bad Othering” occurs when we look at another living being—an animal, for example—and assume it is ‘not us’ so it doesn’t think or feel like us. When this happens, it becomes easier to rationalize that it doesn’t suffer and it doesn’t really feel pain.
Self-Compassion Practices & Meditations To Ease The Challenges Of Everyday Life
Cultivate Growth & Reduce Suffering: A Practice & Meditation to Plant New Seeds & Feel More Safe, Content & Connected in an Unsettling World
With so much violence, oppression, strife and pain going on in the world today, as well as a beautiful change into the spring season of rebirth and growth, I’ve been thinking about love and why it is that, in general, we don’t find ourselves infused with love and excitement about the miracles that are literally unfolding each moment, every day.
Letting Go Of Shame Through Compassion: A Journal Practice And Meditation On Kindness
Shame. It’s a loaded word and an emotion/experience that underlies so much of our individual and collective suffering. Unlike guilt, which is a belief that we’ve done something bad, shame is a feeling that we are bad. As described by Dr. Chris Germer, clinical psychologist and international expert in mindfulness and compassion, “Shame is an inner, invisible energy.” However, shame is certainly something we feel inside our heads, hearts and bodies.
Using Pause, Inquiry And Self-Compassion To Change Addictive Habits
Habits are conditioned responses that we have, well, habituated. And, any addiction that someone develops is, in essence, a habit. Whether that be as potentially benign as caffeine every morning or as complex as an alcohol or substance abuse disorder that is increasingly adding to personal and collective suffering, addiction, as extreme behavior, habitually pulls us away from the middle path or the middle way.
Embrace Your Inherent Goodness And Be The Light That Shines Through Dark
In my last blog, Using Wise Effort To Live As Your Best Self As We Move Through The Holidays And Into The New Year, I focused on applying a firm hand of kindness and wise effort as defined by the Buddha in the noble eightfold path to guide us in moving away from over-efforting, as so many of us do, while kindly and compassionately using a firm hand of kindness to help keep us accountable to those aspects of our lives that help us live as the highest version of ourselves.