Some days we can feel completely buried by the responsibilities and obligations we carry. For some of us, when we get in this place, rather than acknowledging the magnitude of our burdens we can become self-critical and beat ourselves up for our perceived failure to "man up" (a phrase I hate, by the way).

The acronym RAIN is shorthand for a simple method to deal with overwhelm and self-criticism.

Recognize what is going on;
Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
Investigate with kindness;
Natural awareness, which comes from not identifying with the experience.

Tara Brach is a well-known spiritual teacher and the author of several books and audio teachings, including True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (2013) and Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha (2004).

Feeling Overwhelmed? Remember "RAIN"

Four steps to stop being so hard on ourselves.

By Tara Brach | Mindful Magazine


Illustrations by Michael Woloschinow
When I was in college, I went off to the mountains for a weekend of hiking with an older, wiser friend of twenty-two. After setting up our tent, we sat by a stream, watching the water swirl around rocks, talking about our lives. At one point she described how she was learning to be “her own best friend.” A wave of sadness came over me, and I broke down sobbing. I was the furthest thing from my own best friend. I was continually harassed by an inner judge who was merciless, nit-picking, demanding, always on the job. My guiding assumption was, “Something is fundamentally wrong with me,” as I struggled to control and fix what felt like a basically flawed self.

Over the last several decades, through my work with tens of thousands of clients and meditation students, I’ve come to see the pain of perceived deficiency as epidemic. It’s like we’re in a trance that causes us to see ourselves as unworthy. Yet, I have seen in my own life, and with countless others, that we can awaken from this trance through practicing mindfulness and self-compassion. We can come to trust the goodness and purity of our hearts.

In order to flower, self-compassion depends on honest, direct contact with our own vulnerability. Compassion fully blossoms when we actively offer care to ourselves. To help people address feelings of insecurity and unworthiness, I often introduce mindfulness and compassion through a meditation I call the RAIN of Self-Compassion. The acronym RAIN, first coined about 20 years ago by Michele McDonald, is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness. It has four steps:

Recognize what is going on;
Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
Investigate with kindness;
Natural awareness, which comes from not identifying with the experience.

You can take your time and explore RAIN as a stand-alone meditation or move through the steps in a more abbreviated way whenever challenging feelings arise.

R—Recognize What's Going On
Recognizing means consciously acknowledging, in any given moment, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are affecting us. Like awakening from a dream, the first step out of the trance of unworthiness is simply to recognize that we are stuck, subject to painfully constricting beliefs, emotions, and physical sensations. Common signs of the trance include a critical inner voice, feelings of shame or fear, the squeeze of anxiety or the weight of depression in the body.

In order to flower, self-compassion depends on honest, direct contact with our own vulnerability. Compassion fully blossoms when we actively offer care to ourselves.

Different people respond to the sense of unworthiness in different ways. Some might stay busy, trying to prove themselves valuable; others, fearful of failure, may become discouraged or even paralyzed. Still others may resort to addictive behaviors to avoid facing their shame and fear. Any of these strategies can lead to either defensive or aggressive behavior with others, or unhealthy attachment.

Some of us are at war with ourselves for decades, never realizing how our self-judgment and self-aversion keep us from finding genuine intimacy with others or enjoying our lives. One palliative caregiver reports that a key regret of the dying is not having been true to themselves. Rather than listening to and trusting our inner life, most of us try to live according to the expectations of others, which we internalize. When we inevitably fall short of the mark, we condemn ourselves.

Though it may sound depressing or overwhelming, learning to recognize that we are at war with ourselves is quite empowering. One meditation student described the trance of unworthiness as “…the invisible and toxic gas I am always breathing.” As he became increasingly mindful of his incessant self-judgment and feelings of inadequacy, his aspiration to free himself from his painful inner prison grew.

A—Allowing: Taking a Life-Giving Pause

Allowing means letting the thoughts, emotions, feelings, or sensations we have recognized simply be there. Typically when we have an unpleasant experience, we react in one of three ways: by piling on the judgment; by numbing ourselves to our feelings; or by focusing our attention elsewhere. For example, we might have the sinking, shameful feeling of having been too harsh in correcting our child. But rather than allowing that feeling, we might blame our partner for not doing his or her part, worry about something completely different, or decide it’s time for a nap. We’re resisting the rawness and unpleasantness of the feeling by withdrawing from the present moment.

We allow by simply pausing with the intention to relax our resistance and let the experience be just as it is. Allowing our thoughts, emotions, or bodily sensations simply to be doesn’t mean we agree with our conviction that we’re unworthy. Rather, we honestly acknowledge the presence of our judgment, as well as the painful feelings underneath. Many students I work with support their resolve to let it be by silently offering an encouraging word or phrase to themselves. For instance, you might feel the grip of fear and mentally whisper yes in order to acknowledge and accept the reality of your experience in this moment.

Victor Frankel writes, “Between the stimulus and the response there is a space, and in this space lies our power and our freedom.” Allowing creates a space that enables us to see more deeply into our own being, which, in turn, awakens our caring and helps us make wiser choices in life. For one student, the space of allowing gave her more freedom in the face of urges to binge eat. In the past, whenever she felt restless or anxious at night, she’d start thinking of her favorite food—trail mix—then mindlessly consume a half pound of it before going to bed, disgusted with herself. Learning to recognize the cues and taking a pause interrupted the pattern. While pausing, she would allow herself to feel the tension in her body, her racing heart, the craving. Soon, she began to contact a poignant sense of loneliness buried beneath her anxiety. She found that if she could stay with the loneliness and be gentle with herself, the craving passed.

I—Investigating with Kindness

Investigating means calling on our natural curiosity—the desire to know truth—and directing a more focused attention to our present experience. Simply pausing to ask, what is happening inside me?, can initiate recognition, but investigation adds a more active and pointed kind of inquiry. You might ask yourself: What most wants attention? How am I experiencing this in my body? Or What am I believing? What does this feeling want from me? You might notice hollowness or shakiness, then discover a sense of unworthiness and shame masked by those feelings. Unless you bring them into awareness, your unconscious beliefs and emotions will control your experience and perpetuate your identification with a limited, deficient self.

Poet Dorothy Hunt says that we need a “...heartspace where everything that is, is welcome.” Without such an attitude of unconditional care, there isn’t enough safety and openness for real investigation to take place. About ten years ago I entered a period of chronic illness. During one particularly challenging period of pain and fatigue, I became discouraged and unhappy. In my view I was terrible to be around—impatient, self-absorbed, irritable, gloomy. I began working with RAIN to recognize these feelings and judgments and to consciously allow the unpleasantness in my body and emotions to just be there. As I began to investigate, I heard an embittered voice: “I hate living like this.” And then a moment later, “I hate myself!” The full toxicity of self-aversion filled me.

Not only was I struggling with illness, I was at war with the self-centered, irritable person I believed I had become. Unknowingly, I had turned on myself and was held captive by the trance of unworthiness. But in that moment of recognizing and allowing the suffering of self-hatred, my heart began to soften with compassion.

Here’s a story that helps to describe the process I went through. Imagine while walking in the woods you see a small dog sitting by a tree. You bend down to pet it and it suddenly lunges at you, teeth bared. Initially you might be frightened and angry. But then you notice one of its legs is caught in a trap, buried under some leaves. Immediately your mood shifts from anger to concern. You see that the dog’s aggression sprang from vulnerability and pain.

This applies to all of us. When we behave in hurtful, reactive ways, it’s because we’re caught in some kind of painful trap. The more we investigate the source of our suffering, the more we cultivate a compassionate heart toward ourselves and others.

When I recognized how my leg was in a trap—sickness compounded with self aversion— my heart filled with sorrow and genuine self-care. The investigating deepened as I gently put my hand over my heart—a gesture of kindness— and invited whatever other feelings were there to surface. A swell of fear (uncertainty for my future) spread through my chest, followed by an upwelling of grief at losing my health. The sense of self-compassion unfurled fully as I mentally whispered, It’s all right, sweetheart, and consciously offered care to the depths of my vulnerability, just as I would to a dear friend.

Compassion arises naturally when we mindfully contact our suffering and respond with care. As you practice the RAIN of Self-Compassion, experiment and see which intentional gesture of kindness most helps to soften or open your heart. Many people find healing by gently placing a hand on the heart or cheek; others, in a whispered message of care, or by envisioning being bathed in warm, radiant light. What matters is that once you have investigated and connected with your suffering, respond by offering care to your own heart. When the intention to awaken self love and compassion is sincere, the smallest gesture—even if, initially, it feels awkward— will serve you well.

N—Natural Loving Awareness

Natural loving awareness occurs when identification with the small self is loosened. This practice of non-identification means that our sense of who we are is not fused with any limiting emotions, sensations, or stories. We begin to intuit and live from the openness and love that express our natural awareness.

Though the first three steps of RAIN require some intentional activity, the N is the treasure: A liberating homecoming to our true nature. There’s nothing to do for this last part of RAIN; we simply rest in natural awareness.

The RAIN of Self-Compassion is not a one-shot meditation, nor is the realization of our natural awareness necessarily full, stable, or enduring. Rather, as you practice you may experience a sense of warmth and openness, a shift in perspective. You can trust this! RAIN is a practice for life—meeting our doubts and fears with a healing presence. Each time you are willing to slow down and recognize, oh, this is the trance of unworthiness… this is fear… this is hurt…this is judgment…, you are poised to de-condition the old habits and limiting self-beliefs that imprison your heart. Gradually, you’ll experience natural loving awareness as the truth of who you are, more than any story you ever told yourself about being “not good enough” or “basically flawed.”

A friend of mine was sitting with her dying mother while she was in a coma. At one point the mother opened her eyes, looked at her daughter with great lucidity, and said “You know, all my life I thought something was wrong with me.” She closed her eyes, sank back into a coma and died shortly thereafter. For my friend, her mother’s words were a parting gift. They inspired her to dedicate herself to the mindfulness and self-compassion that frees us.

We each have the conditioning to live for long stretches of time imprisoned by a sense of deficiency, cut off from realizing our intrinsic intelligence, aliveness, and love. The greatest blessing we can give ourselves is to recognize the pain of this trance, and regularly offer a cleansing rain of self-compassion to our awakening hearts.

* * *

~ Clinical psychologist Tara Brach is the author of True Refuge: Finding Peace & Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart. For guided meditations and talks, visit Tara Brach's website.

• This article also appeared in the August 2014 issue of Mindful magazine.
• Subscribe to Mindful's print edition or digital edition.

Would you like to feel more focused? More emotionally aware? More confident? Be a better lover?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you can benefit from taking up a mindfulness practice.

Elisha Goldstein, PhD, is the editor of A Mindful Dialogue: A Path Toward Working with Stress, Pain and Difficult Emotions (Kindle only), The Now Effect: How a Mindful Moment Can Change the Rest of Your Life, co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler: Quick Exercises to Calm Your Mind.

Five Reasons Why Men Should Start Practicing Mindfulness

By Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.
June, 2014

From my experience the gender that is overwhelmingly attracted to mindfulness is women, men aren’t quite as attracted to it. Why is this? In the early days, the man’s greatest responsibility was to protect the tribe. Our brains have been crafted over thousands and thousands of years to guard against vulnerability. The problem with mindfulness for men is that the practice of it asks us to look toward and open up to vulnerability because that is where the gold is. We are also asked to relate to it in very feminine language like with “warmth,” “tenderness,” and “gentleness.” However, the physical threats that men were guarding against in the past, in most cases, are no longer the threats of modern day. But the brain hasn’t figured this out yet and treats emotional vulnerability as a threat, keeping men from truly reaching our highest human potential.

But things are changing! There is an evolution afoot as more men are starting to see the benefits of integrating mindfulness into daily life.

If you’re a man or you know one, here are five reasons why I think men should give mindfulness a try.

1. Increase Focus – George Mumford taught the Chicago Bulls and the Lakers mindfulness enroute to their string of championships. Sports psychologist Michael Gervais stepped in to the Seattle Seahawks locker room and taught them mindfulness giving them a boost to their first Super bowl victory. AETNA embraced the Mindfulness at Work® program that thousands of employees have taken because Mark Bertolini, the CEO, knew the value it could bring to their organization and corporate clients. Other companies including Google, Apple, Edmunds, McKinsey, Yahoo, and so many others now have meditation rooms in their offices). Now the military is on board to stay calm and focused out in the field. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, when we intentionally practice and repeat paying attention to an intended object of awareness, of course, it would follow that we would get better and better at paying attention to what matters.
2. Improve Performance – Usually if we’re able to focus better this would increase our performance as is evident by the integration of mindfulness into business and sports. A study in the Journal of Occupational Health showed that The Mindfulness at Work® program saved employees 69 minutes per week in productivity. In a world where we’re trained in multitasking with a continuous fractured attention it’s a slippery slope to get confused between what is urgent and important and what’s not. What’s more important, the Facebook notification on the phone or the project in front of me? Is it the recent sports score update or listening to my coworker? My brain seems to side with the updates, but in reality it’s likely the least urgent and important. There’s nothing mystical about why we can be more effective at what we do if we’re training our brains to pay attention to what matters over and again.
3. Build Emotional Intelligence – Emotional intelligence has been shown to be a cornerstone of effective leadership (not to mention an essential component of mental health and healthy relationships). If we’re constantly guarding against vulnerability, guess what? We’re also guarding against the most critical decision maker in our brains – our emotions. The brain makes decisions based on our emotional state most of the time, so we don’t want to be in the dark about what is happening in our internal world. Our brain goes particularly haywire when it comes to uncertainty and fear. Mindfulness teaches us how to approach these triggering emotions in a particular way so that we not only no optimal responses, but the emotions themselves become our greatest teachers. It’s incredibly important to lean in and start to get curious about our emotional lives, understand the information they are conveying and develop the courage to embrace vulnerability. In doing this we start to feel more grounded, stronger and ignite a sense of trust and self-reliance.
4. Be a Better Lover – The practice of paying attention, on purpose, also has to do with getting increasingly better at tuning into other people in our lives. There is a lot of dissatisfaction that occurs in relationships because people are not tuned into the needs of each other. As we learn to focus and cultivate emotional intelligence we also build the strength of empathy. This is the ability to put yourself in your partner’s shoes and better understand his or her needs. You can learn to be less defensive, more receptive, a better listener and more physically present and responsive which also makes for a better sex life. The insula is a part of the brain that makes us more able to tune into the sensations of our bodies. We learned a long time ago (9 years to be exact) that mindfulness is correlated with a larger insula. In this case, bigger is better. As we learn how to tune into our bodies and are more present for our partners, everyone is more likely to get their needs met emotionally and physically. If you’re not in a relationship, this is good for the future and a fantastic reason to start practicing.
5. Train Confidence – It feels good to get increasingly better at something. We’ve all experienced this with walking, talking and driving a car (to one degree or another). This a part of the brain that records procedures in life and it gets stronger as we practice. This is no different. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell noted it takes 10,000 hours to experience true mastery. What if you could get increasingly better at all of the benefits of mindful awareness? We can learn to experience more confidence with our focus, performance, emotional intelligence and in our relationships. Of course as we intentionally practice and repeat all of this, the changes that we experience begin to open up a much greater gift than any of this. We start to realize that mindfulness is about far more than this, it’s about experiencing the insight into who we truly are and a sense of freedom arises.

As we practice, something else wonderful happens, we begin to inspire others and this continues to have ripple effects across all the people around us. This may even be the most important motivation to practice.

Why not get started now?

Be well,

Elisha Goldstein, PhD

PS - One way to get started, reconnect or deepen your mindfulness practice is to take the 28 Day Challenge with the new online program Basics of Mindfulness Meditation: A 28 Day Program. Enjoy!

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is author of The Now Effect, co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler: Quick Exercises to Calm Your Mind, the premier eCourse Basics of Mindfulness Meditation: A 28 Day Program, the Mindful Solutions audio series, and the Mindfulness at Work™ program currently being adopted in multiple multinational corporations. Join The Now Effect Community for free Daily Now Moments, Weekly Updates and tips and free access to a Live Monthly Online Event with Elisha Goldstein, PhD. He is a clinical psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles.

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Christopher Bergland - Can Meditation Make Us More Compassionate?

From Christopher Bergland's The Athlete's Way blog at Psychology Today, this is a nice post on how meditation can help us become more compassionate. If we all could be even slightly more compassionate with ourselves and the people we encounter in daily life, the world would be a much safer and kinder place.

Can Meditation Make Someone More Compassionate?

Meditation can reshape neural networks linked to compassion

Published on December 29, 2013 by Christopher Bergland in The Athlete's Way

 

Researchers have discovered more proof that meditation can reshape neural networks linked to compassion. Compassion is a step beyond empathy because it involves a deeper and more visceral connection to another person’s suffering. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center recently studied how doctors relate to their patients and identified three main elements of compassion:

1) Recognition of suffering.
2) Emotional resonance.
3) An effort to remedy the suffering.

Although meditation and mindfulness are often secular and do not require religious ties, the Buddha might sum up the ideas of loving-kindness meditation (LKM) by saying, “I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.” For Buddha—as for many modern spiritual leaders and secular meditators—the ultimate goal of meditation is to foster compassion and reduce suffering.

Through meditation you gain a heightened control of mindfulness which opens your eyes to the suffering of people around you. Systematic LKM may actually blur the lines between oneself and others by dissolving the rigid differentiation of suffering between: me, you, us, them, friend, or foe at a neural level.

While doing a basic LKM you go through a checklist of directing compassion to: loved ones, people with whom there is tension, strangers, and yourself. This type of meditation allows you to grasp the interconnectedness between your own suffering and the suffering of others from all arenas of your life.

Compassionate Bedside Manner

A December 2013 study titled “In Search of Compassion: a New Taxonomy of Compassionate Physician Behaviours” was recently published by the journal Health Expectations. The Rochester researchers believe they are the first to systematically pinpoint and catalog compassionate words and actions in doctor-patient conversations. By breaking down the dialogue and studying the context, scientists hope to create a behavioral formula that will guide medical training and education.

"Good to see you. I'm sorry. It sounds like you've had a tough, tough, week." That statement was from a doctor to a patient and used as an example of compassionate behavior as observed by a University of Rochester Medical Center team.



The researchers evaluated tone of voice, body language and overall bedside manner that conveyed tenderness and understanding, and other ways in which doctors gave reassurances or psychology comfort to patients. Researchers also observed non-verbal communication, such as pauses or sighs at appropriate times, as well as speech features and voice quality (tone, pitch, loudness) and other metaphorical language that conveyed certain attitudes and meaning.

"In health care, we believe in being compassionate but the reality is that many of us have a preference for technical and biomedical issues over establishing emotional ties," said senior investigator Ronald Epstein, M.D. His team recruited 23 oncologists from a variety of private and hospital-based oncology clinics. The doctors and their stage III or stage IV cancer patients volunteered to be recorded during routine visits. Researchers then analyzed the 49 audio-recorded encounters that took place between November 2011 and June 2012, and looked for key observable markers of compassion.

Compassion unfolds over time, researchers concluded. During the process, physicians must challenge themselves to stay with a difficult discussion, which opens the door for the patient to admit uncertainty and grieve the loss of normalcy in life. "It became apparent that compassion is not a quality of a single utterance but rather is made up of presence and engagement that suffuses an entire conversation," the study concluded.

The New Pathway: Training Doctors to Be More Compassionate



In the 1980s, both of my parents (who were going through a horrible divorce at the time) worked at Harvard Medical School in very different capacities. My father was the Chief of Neurosurgery at the Beth Israel Deaconess and my mom was part of the team working to create the New Pathway (NP) Curriculum. Among other things, the New Pathway was designed to make doctors more compassionate.

The New Pathway curriculum was designed to improve fluid and emotional intelligence. The program is a problem-based approach to medical education that emphasizes small-group tutorials and self-directed learning, complemented by laboratories, conferences and lectures. The emphasis at the New Pathway is placed on the patient-doctor relationship, and takes into account the broad social context and problems of modern medicine and health care.

Although the New Pathway does not directly emphasize meditation, it is interesting that the concept was incubating at a time when many other people at Harvard and around the world were inspired by Herbert Benson. Benson pioneered the “Relaxation Response” and the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine that continues to this day at Harvard’s Mass General Hospital.

Can Meditation Make You More Compassionate?

A recent study by Northeastern University's David DeSteno, published in Psychological Science, takes a look at what impacts meditation has on interpersonal harmony and compassion. In this study, a team of researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard University examined the effects meditation would have on compassion and magnanimous behavior.

This study invited participants to complete an eight-week training in two types of meditation and then tested participants in a real-life situation designed to measure compassionate responses to a stranger's suffering.

Sitting in a staged waiting room with three chairs were two actors. With one empty chair left, the participant sat down and waited to be called. Another actor using crutches and appearing to be in great physical pain, would then enter the room. As she did, the actors in the chair would ignore her by fiddling with their phones or opening a book.

The question DeSteno and Paul Condon—a graduate student in DeSteno's lab who led the study—and their team wanted to answer was whether the subjects who took part in the meditation classes would be more likely to come to the aid of a person in pain, even when everyone else was ignoring her suffering. "We know meditation improves a person's own physical and psychological wellbeing," said Condon. "We wanted to know whether it actually increases compassionate behavior."

Among the non-meditating participants, only about 15 percent of people acted to help. But among the participants who were in the meditation sessions "we were able to boost that up to 50 percent," said DeSteno. This result was true for both meditation groups thereby showing the effect to be consistent across different forms of meditation.

"The truly surprising aspect of this finding is that meditation made people willing to act virtuous—to help another who was suffering—even in the face of a norm not to do so," DeSteno said, "The fact that the other actors were ignoring the pain creates as 'bystander-effect' that normally tends to reduce helping. People often wonder 'Why should I help someone if no one else is?'"



These results appear to prove what the Buddhist theologians have long believed—meditation can lead you to more compassion, love, and committed to end suffering for oneself and others. Although the researchers don’t know exactly why meditation heightens compassion there are two likely explanations. The first is that meditation and mindfulness improves attention and ability to focus one's attention to specific things in the environment.

The other possibility is that meditation creates neural pathways that allow the meditator to see the interconnectedness of all human suffering regardless of the relationship. Regular loving-kindness meditation builds self-love, compassion and human connection on multiple levels. If you'd like to read more on this, check out my Psychology Today blog post, "Neuroscientists Confirm That Our Loved Ones Become Ourselves."

The psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and colleagues found that a feeling of affiliation or connection between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the neural barriers that put people in different bins based on ethnicity, religion, ideology etc.

Compassion Can Be Cultivated

In a final study from May 2013 researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published by Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, found that training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.



"Our fundamental question was, Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?'" says Helen Weng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. Adding, "Our evidence points to yes."

In the study, the investigators trained young adults to engage in compassion meditation using a traditional Buddhist technique of meditation that includes methods designed to develop loving kindness and compassion for oneself and for others.

"People seem to become more sensitive to other people's suffering, but this is challenging emotionally. They learn to regulate their emotions so that they approach people's suffering with caring and wanting to help rather than turning away," explains Weng.

To increase caring feelings for people who are suffering the compassion meditation participants were trained to increase feelings of sympathy and altruism for people who are suffering by envisioning a time when someone has suffered and then practiced wishing that his or her suffering was relieved. They repeated phrases to help them focus on compassion such as, "May you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease."

Participants in the study practiced focused compassion towards four different categories of people. First, they focused on sending compassionate thoughts to a loved one or someone whom they easily felt compassion for, like a friend or family member. Secondly, they practiced compassion for someone they had a conflict or tension with such as an ex-partner, in-law, a backstabbing co-worker, difficult boss... Thirdly, they focused compassion towards a random stranger or group of people who were suffering. Lastly, they practiced compassion and forgiveness towards themselves.

Conclusion: Flex Your Compassion Muscle Every Day

"It's kind of like weight training," Weng says. "Using this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion 'muscle' and respond to others' suffering with care and a desire to help."

If you’d like to read more on this topic, check out my Psychology Today blogs:

• “Mindfulness Made Simple”
• "Meditation Has the Power to Influence Your Genes"
• “The Neuroscience of Empathy”
• “Compassion Can Be Trained”
• "Too Much Crystallized Thinking Lowers Fluid Intelligence"
• ”How Does Meditation Reduce Anxiety At a Neural Level?”
• “Can Mindfulness Backfire?”
• “The Neurobiology of Grace Under Pressure”
• “Mindfulness Training and the Compassionate Brain”
• 'Meditation May Slow Age-Related Cognitive Decline"

~ Follow me on Twitter @ckbergland for updates on The Athlete’s Way blog posts.

Noah Brand - The Choices We Make Are Not Our Own

This article by Noah Brand appeared over at the Good Men Project a couple of weeks ago. Brand is arguing that a lot of the decisions we make our made outside of our complete control - we are often not even aware of what has influenced a particular choice or decision.

He suggests an answer for how we make some of our decisions:

The usual answer is microaggressions. All the ways that one’s identity, and one’s status, is reflected back over the course of a day. All the ways we’re made to feel less, all the ways we’re reminded of who we’re supposed to be, all the ways we’re put in our place, whatever that place may be. For men, it tends to be little hints that you’re only valued for your money and success, little digs at your masculinity, little reminders that you’re supposed to be in competition with all the other men, and you have to always win.  

. . . . Microaggressions tend to give rise to microinequities, all the million little unfairnesses, the ways one gets the short end of the stick.

There is more than a bit of truth in this. We are constantly exposed to messages that shape and misshape our self-esteem and self-concept. Brand wants us to learn to forgive ourselves (and others) for being at the mercy of influences we cannot identify.

I want to also suggest that we are not fated to live this way. We have a choice. That choice is based in mindfulness. If we can learn to become mindful of our thoughts and feelings, we are much better able to exert conscious control over our decisions. [Download a free copy of Mindfulness in Plain English.]

The Choices We Make Are Not Our Own

AUGUST 14, 2013 

BY NOAH BRAND

What influences your decisions? Are you sure you know? 

Have you ever watched a cat trying to make a decision? He’ll crouch there, trying to decide whether to jump up on the sofa, his tiny little brain balanced on a knife-edge of choice for a surprisingly long moment. And anything that happens during that moment will visibly tip his decision one way or the other. If the human on the sofa shifts their weight, if another cat enters the room, even if there’s just a soft sound in the distance, that is what makes the cat’s decision for him, whether to leap up on the couch or run off and hide. Cat owners, naturally, learn to manipulate this effect for their own entertainment.

This process is so visible in cats because the operating system their brains are running is so simple. Humans have a much more complex operating system, but we’re subject to the same effects. Indeed, because we’re so complex, ours are much weirder and more subtle.

Take, for example, a recent study at Ohio State University resolved an old conundrum in surveys of campus sexual behavior. For a long time, such surveys have turned up a mathematical problem: women consistently reported a significantly lower number of past sexual partners than men, to the point where the math tended to look rather fishy. The recent study added one factor that had been previously omitted: some participants were hooked up to what they believed was a lie detector. In that test group, the discrepancy between male and female reporting vanished, mostly due to women’s number of partners rising.

That’s interesting, not just because of the data in the new study, but because of what it tells us about the old studies. All those women, knowing perfectly well that the survey was anonymous, knowing that the data was being collected for useful scientific purposes–but still, in that moment of decision where they wrote down a simple number, something consistently swayed them, made them round it down by a partner or two. In that moment, over and over across a statistically significant sample, they’d remember a nasty joke from sixth grade or something their grandma said once, some little thing that made them change their minds.

♦◊♦

This effect shows up across a lot of things. It’s even got its own name: stereotype threat. Short version: people will behave like they think they’re expected to behave, in subtle but consistent ways. Remind black students that black people are assumed to be dumb, and they’ll do worse on tests. Remind Asian students that Asians are supposed to be good at math, and they’ll do better at math. Hell, you can make white or black people better or worse at golf  just by picking which stereotype they’re afraid of. None of those examples are made up.

We have the data on this: people’s decisions can be tweaked by small assumptions and stimuli. (If you don’t believe that, watch this video.) So where do these assumptions and ideas come from?

The usual answer is microaggressions. All the ways that one’s identity, and one’s status, is reflected back over the course of a day. All the ways we’re made to feel less, all the ways we’re reminded of who we’re supposed to be, all the ways we’re put in our place, whatever that place may be. For men, it tends to be little hints that you’re only valued for your money and success, little digs at your masculinity, little reminders that you’re supposed to be in competition with all the other men, and you have to always win. For women, it’s little insinuations that you’re not attractive enough, little assumptions about how your looks are your primary form of value, little jokes structured around the idea that you’re not quite a whole person, you’re just a woman. Any one of these isn’t so bad by itself, but they add up, and up, and up.

Microaggressions tend to give rise to microinequities, all the million little unfairnesses, the ways one gets the short end of the stick. As Jackie Summers wrote, you never know when prejudice is making someone else’s decision for them. You don’t get told at the interview “I would never hire you because of my deep-seated prejudices,” you just wait for the phone to ring and it doesn’t.

Microinequities arise from tiny decisions people make based on prejudices they don’t even know they have. The problem isn’t the people who say outright “I sure do distrust black folks,” it’s the ones who vaguely recall stuff they’ve seen on TV and things their peer group sort of takes for granted. Those people would say, and believe, that they have no problem with black people, but somehow when it comes time to make a decision about what to say or who to say it to, that decision gets tipped the wrong way.

♦◊♦

We can’t control the factors that stack up in our minds. We can’t control the stereotypes we got taught from the cradle on. We can’t control the pressure of what we think other people expect us to be. We can mitigate it, we can correct for it, we can try to unlearn our bad habits and wrong impressions. But we’re all fallible, and our brains are all running Human OS, and we know that that OS is buggy as hell.

So we need to learn to forgive ourselves. Our choices are not made in a vacuum, and that means they are not and can never be wholly our own choices. We tell the lies we’re trained to tell. We make the mistakes people expect us to make. We fall into the patterns that have been built for us. Recognizing those patterns will help us fall into them less, but nothing can totally free us from a lifetime’s training.

Harder still, we need to forgive others. Their choices may be obnoxious, may be stupid, may be downright ridiculous, but they’re not wholly their own either. We must encourage people to work against their worst impulses, and hold people accountable when they don’t even make an effort to break their toxic patterns, but ultimately, we must be as merciful to others as to ourselves.

That idiot who just did something completely asinine is trapped in what people expect of him, what he thinks he’s supposed to be. Cut the poor guy at least a little slack. After all, you’re only judging him so harshly because you were raised that way.


Photo—EliJerma/Flickr

Five Ways to Make Mindfulness More Manly (Greater Good)

From UC Berkeley's Greater Good blog comes this article by Kozo Hattori on how to make mindfulness more appealing to men and boys. It seems men are not drawn to mindfulness as much as women, and those who are don't stick with the training programs.

From my own experience, it seems that the problem is in the presentation - too touchy-feely or something (Hattori addresses this is point 5: Make compassion training manlier). Here are the bones, the five ways to make mindfulness manlier:

1. Use pop culture to teach mindfulness to boys
2. Give boys role models of mindfulness and compassion
3. Start with boys in school
4. Meet men where they are
5. Make compassion training manlier

Here is the whole article.

Five Ways to Make Mindfulness More Manly

By Kozo Hattori | June 25, 2013

Many more women than men enroll in mindfulness and compassion training courses. How can we change that?

The men are gone.

That’s what I realize on the last class of the Cultivating Compassion Training (CCT) course at Stanford University. We’ve spent nine weeks strengthening our attention, building awareness of our bodies, and learning to confront pain in ourselves and in others—and throughout the course, male students were dropping out like 12th-seeded teams in the NCAA basketball tournament.

The author's younger son striving to achieve the same "inner peace" as his hero, Kung Fu Panda.

This gender imbalance was not unique to Stanford’s CCT. Two-thirds of students at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California, are female, according to teacher Gil Fronsdal, an ordained Soto Zen priest who was also a Theravada monk in Burma. Elad Levinson, the director of programs at Spirit Rock Mediation Center, says, “The sociodemographic of Spirit Rock consists of primarily women.”

All of these programs integrate mindfulnessmeditation—the practice of focusing attention on our thoughts and feelings without judging them. That might not sound like much, but study after study finds that practicing mindfulness can bring a host of physical, psychological, and social benefits. More recently, evaluations of programs like CCT are finding that mindfulness is a very effective way to cultivate compassionate intentions and behaviors.

Is that something that boys and men need? “Men tell you what is on their minds, but not what is in their heart,” says Levinson, who has 40 years of psychotherapy and 20 years of leading men’s groups under his belt. Perhaps not coincidentally, boys and men commit the vast majority of violent acts, from domestic violence to murder. Many struggle with expressing empathy andcompassion.

The problem does not seem to center on mindfulness. Men practice high levels of mindfulness in a variety of arenas in our society. At military boot camps and police academies, men learn to control their breathing and focus on a target before firing a weapon. Sports are a great training ground for mindfulness: Basketball players are taught to clear their mind by going through a routine when shooting a free throw. Being in “the zone” is active meditation in its highest form.

Notice, however, that in all of these mindfulness practices, compassion is removed from the equation. These boys and men are being trained for win-or-lose competition. “It has been historically dangerous for a man to be vulnerable,” says Elad Levinson, who suggests that men’s resistance to explore interior emotions like compassion is the result of hundreds of years of conditioning.

While some argue that this is the result of a biological predisposition, contemporary research inneuroplasticity, by scientists like Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, Madison’sCenter for Investigating Healthy Minds, finds that even short-term compassion meditation training (30 minutes a day for eight weeks) alters the brain activity in regions associated with positive emotional skills like empathy. That is true for both men and women. As Davidson says, “Compassion is indeed an emotional skill that can be trained.”

We understand the benefits. The need is there. But how do we get men to participate in mindfulness and compassion training? Here are five ways to plant the seeds of compassion in boys—and cultivate its growth in men.

1. Use pop culture to teach mindfulness to boys

When my wife and I tried to teach our sons how to meditate, they immediately sat down “crisscrossed apple-sauce” and closed their eyes. “What are you thinking about?” I asked my five year old. “Inner peace,” he replied.

It turns out that he learned this technique from Po in the movie Kung Fu Panda. I wasn’t surprised: One of the reasons I was attracted to meditation at an early age stems from my love of the Japanese anime Ikkyu-san, based on the historical Zen Buddhist monk.

“If every eight year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation,” says the Dalai Lama. Some might argue with that point, but given research showing how mindfulness meditation leads to greater compassion, perhaps portrayals of meditation in action belong in the Netflix queues of young children.

Shows like Kung Fu Panda and Avatar: The Last Airbender feature characters that gain power—as well as peace of mind—through meditation. The Jedi Knights of Star Wars consistently preach mindfulness to each other, specifically as a way to foster compassion and restraint.

Parents can watch these hugely popular movies and shows with their kids and discuss the real-world roots of these practices.

2. Give boys role models of mindfulness and compassion

I meditate every day. Sometimes I meditate in my sons’ bedroom, which gives them a sense of security. “Daddy, will you ‘medtate’ in our room, please?” is a common bedtime request of my three year old.

Our sons also practice Kristen Neff’s self-compassion techniques daily. Whenever they say, “thank you,” they put their hands on their hearts and bow deeply. My wife and I want them to connect with what Bruce Lee calls the “emotional content” of their actions. Some parents at our son’s kindergarten have noticed this pose of gratitude and taught their children the gesture.

Although these actions seem trivial, research in neuroplasticity has shown how the consistent daily practice of any activity alters the brain structure of the practitioner. This is a matter of building habits—ones that will hopefully last a lifetime.

3. Start with boys in school

In a world where bullying, school shootings, and sexual violence threaten all our children, isn’t it about time that compassion training became part of the curriculum of every school?

Vinny Ferraro (center, wearing hat) of the Mind Body Awareness Project leads a workshop at a juvenile hall in the Bay Area.

The Oakland-based Mindful Schools program takes training straight to the kids. Co-founder and co-director Megan Cowan has shared a story about how a mindfulness training she led in an inner-city school engendered compassion in the students for victims during a lockdown.

Another program in Oakland, the Mind Body Awareness Project (MBA), “work in juvenile halls, detention camps, and at-risk schools in California, serving young people with histories of violence, substance abuse, and deep trauma,” as Congressman Tim Ryan writes in“Toward a More Mindful Nation.”

These programs are springing up all around the country, as Jill Suttie describes in “Mindful Kids, Peaceful Schools.” There’s also Stressed Teens in Oakland, BREATHE in Pennsylvania, the Holistic Life Foundation in Baltimore, InnerKids in Los Angeles, the Impact Foundation in Colorado, and the Lineage Project in New York City. Many of these programs teach mindfulness to at-risk and incarcerated teenagers.

Scientific evaluations of many of these programs are finding that they boost academic achievement and reduce behavioral problems. As Congresman Ryan writes:

These people and many others all over America and the world are changing the way we approach chronic poverty and disconnection. These programs reveal to our children that a negative and dangerous life is not their only option. With mindfulness skills they see that they have choices and the wherewithal to overcome the adversity in their lives. As these programs grow and lead to deep, systemic change, our country will be a safer and healthier place because of it. 

4. Meet men where they are

Rather than try to get a few good men to attend compassion training, why don’t we find areas where men are a captive audience, and teach compassion there?

Mindfulness meditation has already been incorporated into the US military’s Marine Corps. At the Quantico, Virginia base, soldiers are offered an eight-week mindfulness course in order to better deal with anxiety, stress, depression, and insomnia. “I can’t think of any aspect of my life that it hasn’t helped me with,” reports Major Jeff Davis.

Mindfulness programs are also working in prisons. The Prison-Ashram project, started in 1975 by Bo and Sita Lozoff with Ram Dass, has lead thousands of meditation workshops in more than 500 prisons. They also distribute free books and audio CDs to any inmate who requests them. Bo Lozoff’s book, We’re All Doing Time, which covers yoga, pranayama, and Tonglen meditation, has become “the convict’s Bible.” Bo, who passed away in late 2012, claims that every inmate in prison has one thing in common: “A lack of compassion.”

“Change really can happen,” says Sita Lozoff, reflecting on three decades of teaching mindfulness practices to prison inmates. “You become more peaceful.” When asked about how to get more men who are not incarcerated to practice mindfulness and compassion training, Sita simply stated, “Change the role models to make compassion something attractive.”

“Prisoners are such great role models for the rest of us,” says Jenny Phillips, director of theDhamma Brothers, a documentary about the beneficial effects of Vipassana meditation practices administered in an overcrowded, understaffed, maximum-security prison for men outside of Birmingham, Alabama. “The Dhamma Brothers suggests the possibility of freedom from that which imprisons us all,” writes Phillips in her director’s statement.

Phillips plans to release free teaching curriculum for schools to teach The Dhamma Brothers. The curriculum includes not only guides to teach and discuss the film and its companion book, but also experiential exercises on mindfulness, meditation, and cultivating loving-kindness.

Catching boys in the home, children at school, kids in front of the flat screen, and adults in institutions might just start a revolution that will end the gender imbalance of compassion.

More on Mindfulness

• Watch Jon Kabat-Zinn talk about mindfulness and compassion.
• Learn more about mindfulness and the science behind it.
• How mindful are you? Take our quiz!

5. Make compassion training manlier

Finally, we might try to make mindfulness and compassion training more attractive to men.

Part of the struggle is to simply encourage men to lead other men into mindfulness. “Men tend to go deeper when they are not with women,” claims Elad Levinson. Gil Fronsdal notes that when he taught a meditation retreat without a female co-teacher, his gender ratio sometimes reached 50-50. So maybe having male teachers leading a class for men-only would help.

We can use examples of mindfulness in military, sports training, and popular culture in order to illustrate the concepts and build credibility among men. Levinson argues that compassion trainings need to be “culturally relevant, delivered by credible people who can relate to men, and learning accessible.”

Self-Compassion pioneer Kristen Neff tells a story about how Chris Germer, who co-developed Neff’s self-compassion workshop with her, teaches a male version of her active self-soothing technique. While Neff gently puts her hands over her heart as an example of self-soothing, Chris Germer adapts the hip-hop gesture of thumping a fist on one’s chest over the heart.

The trouble, of course, is that this type of gesture doesn’t appeal to all men—and catering to male culture can be gimmicky or even part of the problem, if taken to extremes. We are just starting the discussion about how to involve men in mindfulness and compassion training, and we are still struggling to discover a language of the mind and the body that can lead them toward mindfulness.

How would you cultivate compassion in men? Please join the discussion.

Jules Shuzen Harris, Sensei - Holding Anger

Anger is - unfortunately - still mostly a male issue. Women are trained as they grow to feel almost anything but anger, while men grow up being taught that any emotion other than anger is girlie. But we - generally - have an uneasy relationship with anger.

For many men, anger is equivalent to aggression or even violence. But these are separate responses. Anger is a natural response to feeling wronged. Aggression and violence are how we turn anger against others (or sometimes ourselves).

Anger is most often experienced as a product of someone or something else, but certainly not us. We project its cause outside of ourselves. Yet we have a choice as whether or not we get angry, and if so, how we use that energy.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Buddhism sees anger as one of the "three poisons," something to be transmuted  or overcome in some way. I believe anger is a very useful fuel for creating change, in our own lives or in the external world.

Holding Anger

We must develop a measure of psychological insight along with our meditation practice.

Jules Shuzen Harris, Sensei
Tricycle Wisdom Collection

Anger hinders our liberation from suffering. It takes its toll on our spirit and our health. Stress levels are on the rise. The Harris Poll in 2002 recorded that tension levels in almost half of Americans had worsened over the preceding year. According to the American Institute of Stress, 75 to 90 percent of doctors’ visits are for stress-related ailments. Psychological distress such as anger, anxiety, and depression seems to be a good predictor of high blood pressure, heart attacks, and sudden death. But what is missing from this research is the “first cause,” the damaged self—a belief that manifests as anger projected for the most part onto others. On one level, this projected anger is a defense against one’s “bad self.” On a deeper level, it represents our feelings of vulnerability.

Over 2,500 years ago the Buddha identified anger as one of the three poisons that hinder our progress toward liberation from suffering. In the Anumana Sutta, a teaching on self-observation, the venerable Mahamoggallana, one of the Buddha’s closest disciples, counsels bhikhus against angry thoughts that lead to disparaging others. The bhikhus are instructed to refrain from unruly behavior such as hypocrisy, mercilessness, jealousy, and selfishness, to name a few examples. In the Lekha Sutta the Buddha asserts that there are three types of individuals in the world and three ways they manifest anger. First, he refers to the individual who is like an inscription on a rock. His anger stays with him for a long time. It is not effaced by wind or water. Next, the Buddha compares an individual who is often angered, but whose anger does not stay with him for a long time, to an inscription in soil that is effaced by wind or water. Lastly, the Buddha describes a person who is like water. When this individual is spoken to roughly or harshly, he or she remains congenial, companionable, and courteous, just as an inscription in water disappears immediately.

After more than 30 years of working first as a therapist and later a practitioner of Zen, the poison that stands out the most to me is anger. And while I believe that meditation has some transformative power, as a former psychotherapist I believe that teachers and spiritual guides need to address the role that small mind plays with regard to anger. Meditation enables us to see the transparency of our anger, and this is a good start, but we can still remain blinded to the mechanics of our anger. The Buddhist teacher and psychologist John Welwood asserts that “most of us live caught up in prereflective identification most of the time.” In working with dharma students, teachers must address the deeper wounds from which anger has sprung. We must enable students to see the anger they project onto others as a defense against old story lines, such as “I’m damaged, I’m unlovable,” and so on.

Anger is “habit energy,” to use Thich Nhat Hanh’s term; karmic in its origin, it is deeply engrained and deeply rooted. As Welwood says, we imagine that our thoughts and feelings are an accurate portrayal of reality and therefore justified. If we are to be effective in transmuting our anger into prajna (wisdom), then we must develop an additional measure of psychological insight along with our meditation practice that focuses on the cyclical relationship between thoughts and our body.

I saw chronic episodes of anger manifest when I trained former criminal offenders in counseling techniques that they could use to redirect youth caught up in the criminal justice system. The anger the ex-offenders projected onto their clients was cloaked in their judgmental attitude toward them. They were hypercritical of behaviors they themselves once engaged in. This behavior points to an aspect of anger that we don’t usually think of. We typically attribute the source of our anger to someone or something outside of ourselves: “I am experiencing great displeasure because it is the ‘other’ who is at fault.” The ex-offenders didn’t see their shadow beliefs and resisted addressing them. Their anger toward clients was a defense—it allowed them to distance themselves from their “bad selves.”

In order to work on anger, we need to employ an approach that incorporates psychosocial strategies in the service of spiritual development. This approach embraces the transpersonal, personal, and interpersonal. Mindfully held anger is a step in the right direction. This approach requires that we contain our anger—that we meditatively attend to our anger with an emphasis on neither suppressing it nor acting it out. Being present with our anger enables us to witness the process of it, which includes all three levels of awareness. On the personal level, we witness the felt sense of our anger, along with its cognitive and perceptual dimensions. On a social level, we witness the effect our shadow beliefs have on our interaction with others. On the transpersonal level, we witness the “I,” or who it is who is angry.

Another approach to dealing with anger on the psycho-social-spiritual level is mind-body bridging. This technique enables us to see the impact that thoughts have on us viscerally. The prime mover behind the impact thoughts have on the body are our requirements: how we should be, how other people should be, and how the world should be in order for us to feel acceptable. This approach begs the question of how to bring compassion to our anger. It is not easy to refrain from repressing or indulging our anger. Our challenge is to embrace it with mindfulness and genuine caring.

We must become intimate with anger to clear the way to our connectiveness, to our vulnerability and an aliveness to everything. In the end, our anger is transmuted to wisdom, which in turn gives rise to compassion.


~ Jules Shuzen Harris Sensei is a Zen teacher in the Soto lineage and the founder of Soji Zen Center in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.

In the following audio teaching, Jules Shuzen Harris Sensei walks us through the Mind-Body Bridging technique. Samples of the four Mind-Maps (in the order that you will create them) can be found by clicking on the links below. Throughout the week, Harris will be available to answer questions about Mind-Body Bridging. Post a comment and he will get back to you.

• Trouble Map
• Requirement Map
• Depressor Map
• Fixer Map

Know Your Shadow (Robert Augustus Masters) and Master the Neuroscience of Change (Kelly McGonigal)

I don't generally endorse products on any of my blogs, other than books in review, but this is a little different. One of the things I promote and try to embody in this blog is the receptiveness to change and personal growth that can open and make tender the masculine heart.

Each of the Sounds True offerings below are excellent tools for that kind of transformation. If you are a professional, CEUs are also available.

First, integral psychotherapist and teacher Robert Augustus Masters offers a course on Knowing Your Shadow, designed to help each of us "discover and cultivate intimacy with the endarkened aspects of yourself including core wounds and difficult emotions." I've been reading Masters' work for many years now and I can recommend his teachings without reservation - he offers essential tools for transforming ourselves into better men, better human beings.

The other recommendation is for Kelly McGonigal's The Neuroscience of Change, a course in personal transformation based in mindfulness and self-compassion. She explains how to "nourish the seeds of change and transformation by working with inner experiences as the key to making outward change through willingness, self-awareness, and surrender." This feels like a very useful melding of the work of Kristin Neff (mindfulness and self-compassion) and Dan Siegel (mindfulness and neuroplasticity).

If you would like to support this blog, and these courses feel useful to you, please order them through the links below, If you do so, I will make a little coin to buy more of these programs (and books) so that I can recommend for you the ones I feel are most relevant and useful to readers of this blog.

Knowing Your Shadow
Becoming Intimate with All That You Are 

Robert Augustus Masters

from Sounds True

Description

“Why are the people around me so difficult?” “Why do I keep getting in situations like this?” Our shadow side, teaches Robert Augustus Masters, contains the emotions and desires we've disowned, neglected, or hidden from ourselves. If not skillfully worked with, it can easily direct our lives on every level. With Knowing Your Shadow, this acclaimed psychotherapist and author shows us how to illuminate and wisely engage with the endarkened aspects of who we are. Join him to explore in depth the areas where shadow work can most benefit us, including:

• Discovering and cultivating intimacy with the endarkened aspects of yourself
• Identifying and healing your core wounds
• Working effectively with anger, fear, shame, guilt, and other difficult emotions
• Understanding how your shadow influences those around you, often beyond conscious awareness
• Guided practices, meditations, and exercises for developing more authenticity and wholeness in your personal and workplace relationships, your sexuality, and your spiritual path

Our moods and relationships often seem to have a life of their own. Knowing Your Shadow offers exceptional support for taking charge of your life at a deep level, providing expert guidance and instruction to discover and make wise use of what lies hidden or otherwise neglected within us.

Learn More About:

• Becoming intimate with your shadow
• Relating wisely to shame and guilt
• Ending your suffering by entering your pain
• Exploring the presence of your past
• Freeing yourself from your inner critic
• Working with fear, anger, and other darker emotions
• Bringing sex out of the shadows—how we eroticize our unmet needs
• The signs of spiritual bypassing
• Healthy spirituality
• Becoming intimate with all that you are

Music by Diane Bardwell

Knowing Your Shadow - Session Titles

Session 1: Becoming Intimate with Your Shadow
Session 2: Becoming Intimate with Your Reactivity and Pain
Session 3: Relating Wisely to Your Inner Critic, Shame, and Guilt
Session 4: Becoming Intimate with Your Darker Emotions
Session 5: Bringing Sex Out of the Shadows
Session 6: Spirituality's Shadow

6 CE credits available!
» Learn more
» Calculate how many home study hours are allowed per renewal period

Want to buy the CE credits only? If you already purchased this title, you can purchase the CE credits separately.

NOTE: CE credits are available for US customers only.

Course objectives:

• Discuss how to discover and cultivate intimacy with the endarkened aspects of yourself including core wounds and difficult emotions
• Explain how your shadow influences those around you, often beyond conscious awareness
• Define the signs of spiritual bypassing versus healthy spirituality
• Discuss how to free yourself from your inner critic
• Summarize how to become intimate with all that you are
• Utilize guided practices, meditations, and exercises for developing more authenticity and wholeness in your personal and workplace relationships, your sexuality, and your spiritual path

* * * * *

The Neuroscience of Change
A Compassion-Based Program for Personal Transformation 

Kelly McGonigal

from Sounds True

Description 

Personal Transformation Based on Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

What's your most important goal? Why does it matter so deeply? How will you overcome the obstacles? Answer these questions with sincerity, proceed with mindfulness and compassion, and you have just set in motion a revolutionary method for personal change that is supported by both the latest science and traditional wisdom. On The Neuroscience of Change, psychologist and award-winning Stanford lecturer Kelly McGonigal presents six sessions of breakthrough ideas, guided practices, and real-world exercises for making self-awareness and kindness the basis for meaningful transformation.

Practical Methods to Retrain Your Brain to Support Your Goals

Our understanding of the incredible power of the human brain is at an all-time high, with the emerging fields of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and psychophysiology opening new possibilities for greater health, happiness, and freedom from suffering. Drawing on her training as a research scientist and longtime practitioner of meditation and yoga, Dr. McGonigal reveals these startling findings—including the clinically supported methods for training the mind away from default states and negativity that no longer serve us and establishing behaviors and attitudes aligned with our highest values and aspirations.

The First Rule of Change: It's Already Happening

As the world's wisdom traditions teach and science is now verifying, our lives are in fact defined by constant change. Whether you're looking to change a behavior, improve your health or other circumstances, or simply for a way to bring hope and resilience into your life as it is, The Neuroscience of Change will help you trust yourself and unfold your true capacities for personal transformation.

Highlights

• Willingness, self-awareness, and surrender—how to nourish the seeds of change
• Focusing on the process, not the outcome
• How to overcome the “trigger-to-instinct” reaction
• The proven benefits of meditation—and how to start practicing yourself
• How to transform self-criticism into self-compassion
• Why your mind creates habits—and how to consciously create new ones
• Making values-driven commitments
• Visualization and the principle of “encoding prospective memories”
• The power of the vow
• “Deep activation” and the danger of rejecting what is
• Working with inner experiences as the key to making outward change
• Six hours of breakthrough science, practical wisdom, guided exercises, and mindfulness meditations for making positive change that lasts

6.5 CE credits available!

» Learn more
» Calculate how many home study hours are allowed per renewal period

Want to buy the CE credits only? If you already purchased this title, you can purchase the CE credits separately.

NOTE: CE credits are available for US customers only.

Course objectives:

• Discuss how to nourish the seeds of change and transformation by working with inner experiences as the key to making outward change through willingness, self-awareness, and surrender.
• Explain how to transform self-criticism into self-compassion
• Discuss the value of vows, "encoding prospective memories," making values-driven commitments and how to overcome the "trigger-to-instinct" in the process of transformation and change.
• Practice guided reflections based on breakthrough science, practical sensibility, and wisdom traditions, including exercises and mindfulness meditations that for making positive change that lasts.