“Friendship is the single most important factor influencing our health, well-being, and happiness.
” - Robin Dunbar
If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion. Dalai Lama
I wrote yesterday about a couple of 'notes of caution' when using mindfulness approaches and the "The bus driver metaphor". I pointed out that many primary emotions & constructive thoughts help energise and direct us towards healthy goals. I also mentioned the importance of integrating head & heart in mindfulness practice. In today's post I want to extend the head/heart integration to include 'gut' as well, and also talk a little about the importance of sometimes using 'emotional processing' methods with some of our most persistently troublesome 'freeloader bus passenger' inner voices.
"A consultation is when the room disappears." David Reilly (physician)
On Saturday I went to a course called "Meeting at relational depth: a research workshop". I have already written a first post outlining the day. After staying overnight in Glasgow with a friend who was also coming to the course, we cycled over to Jordanhill Campus the next morning. There were a couple of dozen or so participants on the workshop - a pretty good turn out.
“ Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. ” - Henry Thoreau
I posted last week on the first meeting of this "Opening up" group. The reflection sheets everyone had filled in after the initial meeting had been copied and sent to all participants, so we already had more material to work with as we started this second session. I've experimented with different ways of beginning interpersonal group meetings over the years. In peer groups I usually bid to start with a few minutes of silence. I find it seems to help people "arrive" and then to engage more deeply, more quickly - it certainly does this for me.
“ And now, let us believe in the new year that is given us - new, untouched, full of things that have never been. ” - Rainer Maria Rilke
For many years I have run two kinds of "training group" for clients. One teaches what can loosely be thought of as "stress management skills". The latest version of this is the "Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing" course that I have been describing at some length in blog posts over the last three months. The other kind of group that I regularly facilitate focuses on relationships. As this group has evolved over the years it has been given various titles. For quite some time I called it the "Relationships & emotional intelligence" group. It was an accurate description of what we focused on, but it was kind of clunky as a label. I've now reverted to simply calling the course "Opening up&
I posted last week on the first meeting of this "Opening up" group. The reflection sheets everyone had filled in after the initial meeting had been copied and sent to all participants, so we already had more material to work with as we started this second session. I've experimented with different ways of beginning interpersonal group meetings over the years. In peer groups I usually bid to start with a few minutes of silence. I find it seems to help people "arrive" and then to engage more deeply, more quickly - it certainly does this for me.
For many years I have run two kinds of "training group" for clients. One teaches what can loosely be thought of as "stress management skills". The latest version of this is the "Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing" course that I have been describing at some length in blog posts over the last three months. The other kind of group that I regularly facilitate focuses on relationships. As this group has evolved over the years it has been given various titles. For quite some time I called it the "Relationships & emotional intelligence" group. It was an accurate description of what we focused on, but it was kind of clunky as a label. I've now reverted to simply calling the course "Opening up". The publicity leaflet reads:
