What is mindfulness?
Originally added on 28th September 2011
Last updated on 3rd November 2011
Last updated on 3rd November 2011
M: Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing, session 12
“ My house having burnt down, nothing now impedes my bright vision of the moon. ” - Zen saying
Yesterday we had the twelfth & final session of this "Life skills" evening class. There was scheduled to have been a bit less than a three month gap since the last - eleventh - session. However the heavy winter snow we'd experienced had resulted in this last session being postponed.
Antonio Damasio’s “Self comes to mind”: memory and the autobiographical self 1
Originally added on 10th January 2011
Last updated on 2nd February 2011
Last updated on 2nd February 2011
L: Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing, session 11
“ If in your head you undertake hatha yoga as a form of exercise or body building, you will end up with just what you reached for ... a more beautiful body. On the other hand, if you undertake hatha yoga as a form of yoga then it will, in a relatively short time, bring about a profound metamorphosis in your body calmness, sensitivity, and lightness ... all of which will facilitate your sadhana. ” - Ram Dass
K: Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing, session 10 (part 2 - therapeutic writing)
“ Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine. ” - Leo Tolstoy
I wrote yesterday about the first part of this tenth "Life skills" evening. I particularly discussed development of Goodwill practice - very much in the "Nourishing positive states" section of the "Four aspects" diagram (below). In the second half of the evening we moved on to the "Exploring & processing" section of the diagram with the introduction particularly of various forms of therapeutic writing.
J: Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing, session 10 (part 1 - goodwill practice)
“ Watchful like a man crossing a winter stream, yielding like ice about to melt, simple like an uncarved block of wood, hollow like a cave. ” - Lao Tzu
If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion. Dalai Lama
I: Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing, session 9
“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
” - J. K. Galbraith
Yesterday was the ninth evening of this "Life skills" training. I wrote about the eighth session last week. The sequence of regular weekly classes now moves on to increasing gaps between sessions - so it's three weeks until the tenth, a further five weeks until the eleventh, and then an additional eleven weeks until the final twelfth session. My hope is that we will be able to arrange occasional follow-up meetings even after that.
H: Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing, session 8
“ What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility. ” - Leo Tolstoy
G: Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing, session 7
“ Today we can walk around together, talk, eat, and be silent together. Later I believe we'll have the opportunity to act and suffer together. All that is necessary to 'make someone's acquaintance' as they say. ” - Rene Daumal
F: Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing, session 6
“ Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate ” - Barnett Brickner
Yesterday we had the sixth session of this twelve evening "Life skills" course. I wrote last week about the fifth session. A dozen slides covering material we explored are viewable/downloadable at slides 1-6, Powerpoint or slides 1-6, PDF and slides 7-12, Powerpoint or slides 7-12, PDF.
