The Science of Happiness

What makes us happy? Watch BBC's The Happiness Formula What you learn may surprise you....

Psychotherapy as a Form of Spiritual Practice

     Marcia Hill wrote in "Diary of a Country Therapist, "A very expensive profession, psychotherapy.  Emotionally it has cost me dearly: in echoed heartache, in secondhand images of cruelty and sufferig.  But if psychotherapy has cost me the innocence of not knowing, it has also given me the keys to transformation.  It has been for me a form of spiritual practice." 
  
   Wikipedia defines spiritual practice as, "intended to develop an individual's inner life; such practices often lead to an experience of connectedness with a larger reality, yielding a more comprehensive self; with other individuals or the human community; with nature or the cosmos; or with the divine realm."

   When comparing psychotherapy to spirituality in In Search of Common Ground,  Frances Vaughan observed, "...many of the processes that contribute to psychological health and well-being contribute to spiritual growth as well."  Vaughan points out that the following are integral to both both psychological and spiritual development: telling the truth, releasing negative emotions, effort and consistency, authenticity and trust, integrity and wholeness, insight, forgiveness, awareness, liberation and love. 

   On his website psychotherapist Jim Moyers writes, "The Greek word, psyche, translates as "breath, life, or soul" in English. "Therapy" is derived from therapeia, the attendant who served both gods and humanity in the temples of ancient Greece. “Psychotherapy” can thus be described as the sacred work of attending the soul, carefully nurturing the most essential aspects of who and what one is. The idea that the psyche has its own regulatory system that strives for integration and wholeness is at the heart of my work as a psychotherapist, an "attendant of the soul... Psychotherapy as practiced by Jung and those who follow in his footsteps is, at its best, a means for reconnecting with a mysterious Something deep within that gives life purpose and meaning."

   While I am still reflecting on the ways in which doing psychotherapy intersects with spiritual practice, I am clear that being a psychotherapist has both fostered and demanded significant spiritual growth of me.

Martin Seligman on Positive Psychology

   What is positive psychology?  According to Psycholgy Today it's "the scientific study of what makes life most worth living. It is a call for psychological science and practice to be as concerned with strength as with weakness; as interested in building the best things in life as in repairing the worst; and as concerned with making the lives of normal people fulfilling as with healing pathology."

   Martin Seligman, the psychologist that brought the world positive psychology talks about it on TED here 

   Interested in attending an online course on positive psychology or a live workshop in Lewiston or in Portland Maine?  If so, contact us here

"Catch it, Check it, Change it": Tools for Fighting Depression

   All too often, when you're depressed, negative thoughts can take over; thoughts that you might have immediately recognized as false when you were feeling better can suddenly feel like cold hard facts.

   In Peaceful Mind: Using Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Psychology to Overcome Depression, authors Mcquaid and Carmona describe several techniques that are helpful for countering depression including "Catch it," "Check it," and "Change it."
  
   Using Catch it, Check it, and Change it (or the 3 c's) involves first noticing the thought that is creating difficulty (catch it), deciding if this thought is accurate (check it), and replacing an inaccurate thought with one that is more accurate and helpful.

   You can learn far more about how to begin using this technique by going here

   Our thoughts shape our experiences, our feelings, our very lives.  Norman Vincent Peale observed, "change your thoughts and you change your world." There's a tremendous amount of truth in those 8 little words, enough truth to change a life... 

A Mystic in Love with the Beauty of the World

I have been dazzled the last two days by the beauty that surrounds me, the flowers in my neighbors garden, the hypnotic reflection of sunlight dancing on the lake, the green, green grass on an open field with rolling hills that I drive by every day on my way to work. In an article
that I read this morning (I could not identify who the author was) the following is quoted from Matthew Fox:

"people are born mystics—we are all mystics as children, but it’s taken away from us as we grow older. It’s taken away subtly by education which trains the left brain and ignores the right brain. They take away your crayons right when you need them most — at puberty. When you should be getting to your cosmic soul they give you football and shopping-malls. And that’s what religion won’t tell you — that we’re losing the planet. We have everything to lose, it’s basic. And that’s why the only resolution is an awakening of gratitude and reverence for the planet, and falling in love in more than an anthropocentric fashion.”

Every day I need to remember to fall once again in love with all the beauty in the world and I invite you to do so too, this might just be our best hope for saving it and ourselves...

Is the Pursuit of Happiness Making Us Miserable? - Petrea King

The Hidden Spirituality of Men

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

Matthew Fox's book, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine" is Fox's attempt to assist men in opening their minds to a deeper understanding of the healthy masculine and to inspire them to "pursue their higher calling to reinvent the world."

I thought I'd offer a few quotes from this book as food for thought.

"In America boys commit 86% of all adolescent suicides."

"Global warming is also a global warning: a warning that we are not doing well as a species and as a planet. One out of four mammal species is dying out, and where are our leaders? Where are the elders? Where are the men?"

"...boys get shamed for their vulnerability at a very young age, right around Kindergarten, and that's the time at which they really learn to hold off from expressing their feelings and experience." (Mark Micolson)

"Many men are abused at work, some in their bodies, others in their souls."

"There's a difference between being a soldier and being a warrior..." If the warrior is distinct from the soldier, then there must be distinct ways by which the warrior develops his or her strength. If the warrior is the mystic in action, then let us try the following four steps on for size...

One: THE VIA POSITIVA
The Via Positiva is the way of celebrating life... This is the way of reverence, respect, and gratitude...

Two: THE VIA NEGATIVA
This way goes into the darkness, the wounds, the pain, and also the silence and solitude of existence to find what we have to learn there. It is a way of letting go and letting be, of emptying and being emptied, of moving beyond judgment and beyond control, of sinking and learning to breathe, to sit, to be still... It is the way of grieving. Without grief we cannot move on to the next stage, which is one of giving birth....

THREE: THE VIA CREATIVA
Having fallen in love with life often (via positiva) and having been emptied and learned to let go and let be numerous times (via negativa) the spiritual warrior is ready to give birth. Creativity is the weapon... of the true spiritual warrior... every warrior is an artist...

FOUR: THE VIA TRANSFORMATIVA
...Does the work I am doing pass the justice test? Does it benefit the poor and not just the powerful? Does it fill gaps between haves and have-nots or make the chasm deeper? Does it contribute to healing and empowerment of the powerless or does it merely reestablish the privileges of the few and the expense of the many?..."