By Dr. Ron Passfield
Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, in the Power of Awareness Meditation Training Course, identified a number of barriers that you could experience during a walking meditation. These relate to your internal thoughts and feelings and your physical balance. I discuss three of these barriers below and offer some suggested strategies to overcome them: Loss of … Continue reading “Barriers Experienced During Walking Meditation”
Having gratitude in times of difficulty can increase resilience and overcome depression, anxiety and despair. Gratitude changes the quality of life that we are living as we gain better control over our thoughts and feelings and learn to accept what is. As you develop this practice, you start to see things that you had not … Continue reading “Gratitude in Times of Difficulty”
You might identify yourself with one of the many roles that you have – mother, daughter, wife, sister, aunty, grandmother – or a past role, e.g. ex-wife. Alternatively, you might describe yourself in terms of your profession. However, you are more than your many roles or your profession. You might identify with a demographic characteristic … Continue reading “Who Are You Really?”
In the previous post, I focused on loving kindness meditation for ourselves. In this post, I will discuss extending loving kindness to others. Often, though, these two approaches to loving kindness meditation are combined so that you can extend loving kindness to others and yourself in the one meditation. Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education … Continue reading “Loving Kindness Meditation Towards Others”
In previous posts, I explored mindful self-compassion, the challenges in extending compassion to yourself and the power of self-compassion to transform yourself. I also discussed compassion meditation where we are extending compassion to others. In these discussion about compassion, we focused on pain and suffering experienced by ourselves and/or others. In contrast, in the loving … Continue reading “Loving Kindness Meditation Towards Our Self”
The movie, “Loveless” depicts the escalating costs of the vicious cycle of destructive criticism in a graphic manner. The movie is set in Russia and was directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev and co-written with Oleg Negi. The couple involved in the movie are separated and in the process of divorce but are consumed by anger, frustration and hatred … Continue reading “Break the Vicious Cycle of Destructuve Criticism with Mindfulness”
Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, in their online Power of Awareness Mindfulness Training, stress the importance of mindful breathing as a universal practice that is foundational to developing mindfulness. Jack not only leads participants in a mindful breathing practice, but also explains the rich rewards of this practice. Why practice mindful breathing? Mindful breathing is, … Continue reading “The Power of Awareness: Mindful Breathing”
In a previous post, I discussed how action learning and mindfulness can be mutually reinforcing in terms of building self-awareness. With action learning, the catalyst for self-awareness and redefinition of self and role are the external challenges that confront the limitations of your own sense of self. For mindfulness, the pursuit of awareness leads to the exploration … Continue reading “Mindfulness, Action Learning and Reflection”
Melli O’Brien recently interviewed Dr. Judson Brewer (known as Jud) who is Director of Research at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts and author of The Craving Mind. Jud is an acknowledged international expert in training people in mindfulness to overcome addiction. In the interview Jud explained the basic cause of addiction and … Continue reading “How Mindfulness Undermines Cravings and Addiction”
The incidence of postpartum depression in Iran is reported to be in the range 30-40 percent of women giving birth to a child. One suggested factor is the early age that Iranian girls become married and have children – understandably, placing them in a position where they are both physically and mentally under-prepared for the … Continue reading “Research Study on Mindfulness for Postnatal Depression”
