Posts tagged with 'meditation'
Paired meditation deepens interpersonal connection: how to go about it
6th May 2017
Yesterday I wrote the blog post "Paired meditation deepens interpersonal connection: Tania Singer's wonderful ReSource project" which introduced & overviewed the recent, very impressive ReSource Project. I also discussed the associated JAMA Psychiatry research paper "Effects of contemplative dyads on engagement and perceived social connectedness over nine months of mental …
Paired meditation deepens interpersonal connection: Tania Singer's wonderful ReSource project
5th May 2017
Yesterday I was skimming through the JAMA Psychiatry journal and I got hijacked by Kok & Singer's recent article "Effects of contemplative dyads on engagement and perceived social connectedness over nine months of mental training: a randomized controlled trial". The abstract reads - "Importance Loneliness is a risk factor for …
Practising "being": remembering to wake up, appreciate & be open to surprise
24th September 2014
In her wonderful poem "The summer day", Mary Oliver wrote: Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean - the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my …
Birmingham BABCP conference: first day - decentering, compassion, insomnia, social anxiety, sp/sr & barbecue (3rd post)
24th July 2014
This is a quick overview of the first full day of the annual BABCP summer conference in Birmingham. I intend to return to some of the key learning points in later posts. I've already written about the pre-conference workshop I went to on "Emotion regulation" in a couple of earlier …
Could increasing our compassion for others be even more "therapeutic" than increasing our self-compassion?
13th February 2013
"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." Ralph Waldo Emerson "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They …
Recent evidence highlights the value of monitoring practice quality during mindfulness training
13th January 2013
Is it helpful to monitor the quality of one's mindfulness practice ... and, if so, what should one be monitoring? I've raised this question with experienced mindfulness teachers before and been answered with the concern that monitoring practice quality might increase an "achievement orientation" state of mind that could actually …
"To reach the other shore with each step of the crossing": a brief embodied cognition meditation exercise (3rd post)
30th December 2012
(This blog post is downloadable as both a Word doc and a PDF file) When I get to heaven they will not ask me, “Why were you not Moses?” Instead they will ask “Why were you not Susya? Why did you not become what only you could come?” Susya, a …
"To reach the other shore with each step of the crossing": linking this with embodied cognition (2nd post)
28th December 2012
(This post & the previous one in the series are downloadable combined into a Word doc or a PDF file) "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes." Proust "Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds …
"To reach the other shore with each step of the crossing": zazen, associative thinking & value-driven behaviour (1st post)
26th December 2012
(This post & the next in the series are downloadable combined into a Word doc or a PDF file) "But the future is the future, the past is the past; now we should work on something new." Shunryu Suzuki In 1970 I started to learn meditation with the Cambridge Buddhist …
Going back for a university reunion: emotional archaeology unearths a treasure trove of insights & new directions (6th post)
18th September 2012
This is the sixth and final blog post about going back to my old university for a reunion dinner. I wrote three posts last month and a further couple earlier this month. In the first post of the series, I said: "I've never been back for any kind of reunion …