“Those who do not have the power over the story that dominates their lives - the power to retell it, reexperience it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change - truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts.
” - Salman Rushdie
Description ...
I gave a talk today about Positive Psychology and suggested a couple of areas where there could be helpful synergies with psychedelics. Here is the full downloadable talk and below are a few of the slides ... initially just below are the first three:
"As you breathe in, cherish yourself. As you breathe out, cherish all beings." Dalai Lama
"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." Marcus Aurelius
“ Sapere aude! Dare to use your own intelligence! This is the battle cry of the Enlightenment. ” - Immanuel Kant
what is it? This course is ambitious. It aims to help us live longer, healthier lives that are more energised, happy and fulfilled. We will work to improve our knowledge and activities in three interconnected areas – optimising wellbeing, nourishing relationships, and living with health, energy & resilience. The course is constructed partly on the recent state-of-the-art, evidence-based ENHANCE intervention for building wellbeing, with ingredients that focus on our values, self-determination theory’s needs/goals/motivations, mindfulness & compassion, positive emotions & savouring, and the central importance of relationships.
A good friend & I have just been sorting out the practical details of running an 8 week course together on "Compassion, wisdom & wellbeing", starting in January. Some aspects still need to be tweaked, but the basic publicity information runs like this:
"If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion." Dalai Lama
"Wisdom, compassion, & courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men." Confucius
This is the fourth & last post in the sequence that starts with "Upgrading the 'breathing space' meditation, some research-based suggestions (1st post): mindfulness & naming" and then goes on to "Upgrading the 'breathing space' meditation ... (2nd post): touch & affectionate releasing" & "Upgrading the 'breathing space' meditation, some research-based suggestions (3rd post): embodied values".
“Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all.
” - William Temple
There are so many interesting issues that can be covered in this chapter, for example "Four aspects of inner focus" model. Mindfulness. Acceptance. Presence. Flow. Positive psychology findings. Importance of gratitude/savouring.
Taking our attention inwards can be done helpfully in so many ways. We can relax; we can be mindfully aware; we can use visualisations; we can deeply savour present time experience; we can process difficulties from our pasts or prepare ourselves for challenges in the future. There are so many useful ways of using our minds to help ourselves. In the diagram below, one can think of "mindfulness' as representing "content irrelevant" - it's how we're relating to mind-body content rather than what the mind-body content is that's important. "Exploring & processing" however is very much "content relevant" - whether one is gaining perspective by seeing what the content is and "naming" it, or seeing what the content is and learning from it (as in focusing).
I'm just back from a five day Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) retreat in Iceland with Chris Germer & Christine Brahler. MSC teaches a whole host of meditation practices, with three underlined as core meditations. These three are Affectionate Breathing, Loving-Kindness for Ourselves, and Giving & Receiving Compassion. In this post I talk a bit more about the initial core meditation practice - Affectionate Breathing.
I have already written a couple of blog posts "Upgrading the 'breathing space' meditation, some research-based suggestions (1st post): mindfulness & naming" and "Upgrading the 'breathing space' meditation, some research-based suggestions (2nd post): touch & affectionate releasing" where we have taken our attention inwards, noting & naming our internal state/our internal weather, and responding to this inner state with settling touch, self-compassion & relaxation. These posts have introduced nine suggestions that potentially upgrade a more standard breathing space practice.
