No longer posting here, I have moved my blog.

I'm no longer posting to this blog. I have moved my blog to: Spirituality, Psychotherapy and Positive Psychology
Hope you'll visit me there.

Study Proves that Psychotherapy Saves Lives

CNN Health reported on a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine last week indicating that group cognitive behavioral therapy appears to "have the ability to protect people with heart disease from dying of their illness. On the other hand, almost a decade ago the largest study ever to examine whether antidepressants have the same long-term, lifesaving effects in people who have had a cardiac event came up negative...the group CBT intervention focused on the following five goals: education, self-monitoring, skills training, cognitive restructuring and spiritual development."

University of California Television has made a highly informative lecture entitled, "Coping With Stress: Cognitive-Behavioral Stress Reduction" available that you can view via the youtube video above.

Each Day is a Gift

On this grey, bitterly cold day, I take a deep slow breath and remember the following words of wisdom...

"May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder."
~John O'Donohue~

Poem for a New Beginning by John O Donahue

I just read a wonderful poem at the Awakening Awareness Blog
A poem that speaks to so many wonderful people whom I travel beside...

Poem For a New Beginning

In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
~john o donohue~

Awakening The Dreamer, Changing the Dream

What will it take to create a world that is environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just? The Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream symposium addresses these questions and more. Watch the above video and then check here to find out where the next symposium will be in your part of the world. On January 29th I'll be attending the symposium in Portland, Maine from 10:00 to 4:00. If you're in the area, I encourage you to consider registering to attend.

The symposium is described as, "an interactive transformational workshop that inspires participants to play a role in creating a new future: an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on this planet." Symposium facilitater, Maggie Cheek wrote, "In our 4 hour symposium we aim to wake people up and create Change Agents in a state of Blessed Unrest who are inspired, equipped and empowered to spread our commitment to changing the dream of the modern world." I'm looking forward to the 29th.

1,000 Amazing Things

The Book of Awesome: Snow Days, Bakery Air, Finding Money in Your Pocket, and Other Simple, Brilliant Things


The late nineties were rough years for Neil Pasricha, and after his wife told him that she no longer loved him and a close friend committed suicide, he came home from work one day and in an attempt to cheer himself up he started a tiny little blog he called, "1000 awesome things." In a TED talk he explained, "I was trying to remind myself of the simple, universal, little pleasures that we all love, but we just don't talk about enough -- things like waiters and waitresses who bring you free refills without asking, being the first table to get called up to the dinner buffet at a wedding, wearing warm underwear from just out of the dryer, or when cashiers open up a new check-out lane at the grocery store and you get to be first in line -- even if you were last at the other line, swoop right in there." And this sweet and simple little blog eventually won a webby award and launched a bestselling book.
We all need to be reminded of those tiny and all too often uncelebrated pleasures in our lives. So I think I'll start with just 10. Let's see...

1. warm towels
2. Baked bread
3. Birds flying in formation
4. The smell of the forest in spring time
5. A puppy's kiss
6. Pumpkin pie
7. The first sip of hot coffee in the morning
8. That feeling that comes right before you drift off to sleep
9. Absorbing the warm sun on my face
10. Being moved by a piece of music
11. Laughing so hard my muscles ache (oops getting carried away here, only supposed to write 10.)

Yup. I feel better. Your turn. Try it. Just list 10....

9 Choices Extremely Happy People Make

In How We Choose to be Happy, authors Rick Foster and Greg Hicks identify 9 choices that extremely happy people make. What are those choices? The happiest people:

1. Consciously choose happiness over unhappiness
2. Choose to accept full responsibility for their thoughts, actions, and feelings
3. Choose to look deeply inside of themselves to determine what makes them uniquely happy vs. looking to others to learn what should make them happy
4.Choose to keep what makes them happy cenral in their lives
5.Choose to convert problems into opportunities and find meaning in even the most painful times
6. Choose to be open to new opportunities and remain flexible and ready to adapt when the unexpected occurs
7. Choose to possess a deep and ongoing appreciation for all that is good in their lives and to stay present focussed
8. Choose to give of themselves generously and without expectation of being rewaded
9. Choose to be honest with themselves and others

I'm going to spend some time reflecting on the exceptionally happy people that I know and consider how closely this criteria fits them. Does it fit the extremely happy people you know? First of all, who are those people in your life? Have you identified them yet? What do you think makes them so genuinely happy?

The Great Bell Chant and the End of Suffering

A Warm Embrace - The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) from R Smittenaar on Vimeo.

Need to feel centered, grounded, at peace? Take a few slow and deep and deliberate breaths and then watch the video above while continuing to breath slowly and gently. It is a meditation spoken by Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh accompanied by the chanting of Phap Niem and absolutely beautiful visuals. A feast for the eyes, ears, heart, and soul...

Brene Brown on Courage, Connection, and the Power of Vulnerability

Last night I wateched a funny, touching, and oh so wise talk by Storyteller and researcher, Brene Brown, on vulnerability and what she describes as "living whole heartedly."

Brene asks, "How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough – that we are worthy of love, belonging, and joy?" And she observes, "“Our lives are a collection of stories – truths about who we are, what we believe, what we come from, how we struggle, and how we are strong. When we can let go of what people think, and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness – the feeling that we are enough just as we are, and that we are worthy of love and belonging.

If we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and have to hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. Our sense of worthiness lives inside of our story. It’s time to walk into our experiences and to start living and loving with our whole hearts.”

Brene reminds us that each of our stories are filled with beauty, and strength and wisdom, as well as pain and loss and vulnerability, the quest in part becomes about honoring all of it, even the hard stuff, and loving the story still...

On Blessing This Day, January 1, 2011

Life Lines: A Daily Journey

Today is a quiet reflective day, while anxiety swirls all around me, I find peace and comfort by the warmth of the fire and meditate on Linda Faltin's wise words in "Life Lines: A Daily Journey."


"Now
Who knows how many
Years lie ahead of me?
What they will bring?
What I have is now
Who I am
What I have learned
Through living my life.
And a gift for words
My own ‘voice”…
Creative Spirit, inspire
Me to begin anew with
This new year…
To re-order and re-new
And re-energize…
To open myself to the
Holiness & wholeness of my life,
However it plays
itself out.
I wrap my arms around,
embrace, accept
the gift of this day.”

I will accept and bless this day, this gift, this life, this moment, this now...

Christmas Wish Lists and a Life to Love

David Myers wrote, "We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger." He wrote those words during a time of economic prosperity, long before the economic peril we are experiencing now. Today, far fewer of us celebrate the prosperity he was referring to while still longing for connection and purpose.

Today I am haunted by the memory of a woman I saw in the grocery store last night. She looked tired to me, tired and unspeakably sad. She was turning over the hams, one after another, and she seemed to be noting the price of each one. Eventually she moved away from them, her shopping cart still empty. I am thinking right now of the far too many people who I picture wandering around the stores this holiday season, surrounded by plenty and taunted by all that they can't have, can't give...

Today far more of us worry about how we will make a living in order to support ourselves and those we love, when now more then ever it seems we need to consider how we might make lives we can more readily love...

Craig and Marc Kielburger, brothers and authors of "Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World" observe, "In the struggle to meet deadlines, impress clients, and advance through the ranks, it's easy to become so focused on accomplishing specific tasks that we lose sight of how our actions impact our personal well-being, not to mention that of those around us. Many of us fall into a trap and work long hourrs because of a sense of responsibility to others, not being able to say no at work, or trying to provide 'only the best' for our family. We make these choices with good intentions, but in the end they are not the best for our family, or ourselves. We get sucked into a way of life that does not fulfill us."

Our Christmas wish list's are all too often filled with material goods that might stroke our egos or fill our time, but do very little to fulfill our souls. Now, more then ever, it's time to ask new questions and create new lists.

Places to Visit:

http://www.saintnick.org/

http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/index.html

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_84/celebratingchrismas.html

Life, Lessons, Death and Love

My mother is tiny, fragile, and bald. From the moment I learned that she had lung cancer, it seems that the volume on my life has been turned up. It is a strange thing to feel with such immediacy the beat of a fierce and imperfect love in your heart along with the tight cold specter of death in your chest. The simplest things seem poignant and almost sacred - a gathering of birds, the soft, vulnerable, hairless top of an infant's head, the memory of my mother's hand reaching out for my own, an old song on the radio...

When the tiniest cracks make our most well protected surfaces vulnerable, the depth and mass of what begins to filter in can all too often threaten to overflow and perhaps even break out, break through, break us open....

Author and cancer survivor, Michael Dowd, asks readers of his blog, "Can we tell our own personal stories in a mythic sense, with a flourish? Can we find a way, in hindsight, to evoke gratitude even for the disasters in our lives?"

When I am enmeshed in the details of this particular chapter of my cstory, I am acutely and profoundly aware of the pain and the peril presently flowing through it. And yet, when I breathe deep, step back, and widen my lens, I am able to witness and absorb the beauty and the possibility (even now) that lives within it.

We learn from every single experience of our lives and each time I look back over the landscape of my own life - over my own mythic story - I am reminded again and again of how much I have learned of purpose and meaning, resiliency and strength, and of love and light from sharing and daring the dark...

Andrew Solomon on his book, "The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression"

Despite the poor quality of the introduction, this lecture by Andrew Solomon, author of , "The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression," (based on his own struggle with major depression) is well worth the time it takes to listen.

Following is a quote from Solomon's book:

"Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason."

On the PBS special, "Depression: Out of the Shadows" Solomon observes,

"I always say that the opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality, and that depression has to do with finding all of life totally overwhelming...

...clinical depression really has to do with the feeling that you can't do anything, that everything is unbelievably difficult, that life is completely terrifying, and a feeling of this free-floating despair, which is overpowering and horrifying...

...So that's the real message of hope, is that you can get better. And when you do get better, not that you'll look back on it with great longing, but you may look back on it and think, 'I learned a lot by going through that. And I'm a better person because I did it.'"

Why Gratitude Matters

Thanks!: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier

This year as Thanksgiving approaches I am more aware than ever of the importance of practicing gratitude and thought it might be helpful to share some particularly good resources on the why's and how's of cultivating gratitude starting with a 4 minute youtube video clip of Robert Emmons, author of "Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier."

Other resources I'm particularly appreciative of include:

Gratefulness Org

I Am Thankful

Spirituality Practice's collection of pages on gratitude


Yesterday I was sent the following quote by Melody Beattie, "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." I am working to tap into the enormous potential contained within a sustained gratitude practice.

A Reality Show Worth Watching on Happiness

In the process of developing a psychoeducational course entitled, "The Art and Science of Happiness" I was referred to the first episode of a new reality show entitled, "Making Australia Happy" http://makingaustraliahappy.abc.net.au/episodes.php?watch=1 which is based on a research project that yielded impressive and hopeful results. The website introduces the project with the following:

" The experiment begins in Marrickville, the heart of an area recently identified by Deakin University's annual wellbeing index as one of the unhappiest in Australia. As we meet the eight volunteers, we learn that their happiness levels are way below the national average. The team of experts has just eight weeks to change the volunteers' scores, and their lives.

How will socially phobic Cade cope with the challenge of connecting with strangers at the local mall? Can mindfulness really help stressed-out real estate agent, Tony? Will gratitude help father-of-four, Stephen, strike that elusive work-life balance? How can the youngest of the volunteers, Ben, benefit from writing his own eulogy?

Science claims that happiness is easily within our reach, but how will these scientifically validated techniques play out in the lives of ordinary Australians? The results are more than startling."

You can watch the first episode by following the program link above.

The Present Moment

A very special person sent me the following meditation by Taoist poet, Chade Meng.

"A lifetime is not what is between
the moments of birth and death.
A lifetime is one moment
Between my two little breaths.
The present, the here, the now,
That's all the life I get.
I live each moment in full,
In kindness, in peace, without regret."


A perfect message here and now....

Gail Sheehy and Passages in Cargiving

Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence

   Harper Collins promotes Gail Sheehy's new book, "Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence" by pointing out the following: "Forty-four million Americans care for an ill or elderly person in their homes. Yet until now, there has not been a single resource they can turn to for direction, support, and inspiration to cope with this bewildering and complex new role. Adapting the appealing format of her phenomenal bestseller Passages, Sheehy identifies the nine crucial stages of caregiving and offers insight for adapting and successfully navigating each. With empathy and intelligence, backed by formidable research, and interspersed with the poignant story of her own experience, Passages in Caregiving addresses the needs of this enormous and growing group and is sure to become the touchstone for this challenging yet deeply rewarding period in our life journey."
  
   During an interview on the Today show Gail describes eight "turnings around the  labyrinth of caregiving" which are:


1. Shock and mobilization ("where time speeds up and you are working off adrenaline day and night... Your emotions run wild. You may wake to the first light of morning in a sweat, convinced you never slept.")



2. The New Normal (" You are living with a new uncertainty, and you are not going back to the old normal.")


3.  Boomerang ("Everything has settled down into a new normal routine...You're handling it, thinking OK, I can do this. And suddenly, BOOMERANG! A new crisis erupts.")


4. Playing God  ("By now you’ve become a seasoned caregiver.  You’re good at it... People say you are heroic, and you are beginning to believe it. You are Playing God.")


5. I can’t do this anymore!  ("...one day, a year or two or three later, you break into tears, totally fatigued. Same thing the next day. You’ve given up so much. You’re cracking.")


6. Coming back  ("This is the crucial turning. It now becomes clear that your loved one is not going to get well and will become more and more dependent and needy. You are approaching the center of the labyrinth... You may touch the depths of despair. ...it is here that caregivers...begin the effort of coming back to life.")


7. The in-between stage ("This is a momentous turning point for those who care for the chronically ill. Your loved one cannot be cured...but he or she is not ready to die—and may live on for years."


8. The long good-bye ("This is the last turning. No one can answer your most burning question. How long? Inevitably, there will be times when you see your loved one suffering that you will likely feel: Why can’t you die? ...Then, of course, you’ll feel guilty for thinking such a thing.")

   As one of those forty-four million caregivers and as a fan of Sheehy, I'm looking forward to reading her book.

Getting Through Tough Times with Positive Psychology

   During this journey through my mother's lung cancer I am relying heavily on the concepts of positive psychology to help us get through. In "Happiness: Lessons From a New Science," Richard Layard wrote, "cultivate the sense of awe and wonder, savour the things of today; and look about you with the same interest as if you were watching a movie or taking a photo.  Engage with the world and with the people around you.  In one sense, as Leo Tolstoy said, the most important person in the world is the one in front of you now."
   We leave before sunrise each week day morning to make it for mom's radiation treatment on time.  Yesterday, while pulling out of the drive way I noticed how incredibly beautiful the full moon looked hanging in the pre dawn sky.  I pointed it out to my mother and we stopped the car and savoured it.  Within a few moments I began to feel my breathing deepen and my body relax as I allowed myself to drift toward the pull of the moon.  We hadn't needed to venture into the wilderness, or even stroll through a park, all we had to do was to simply pause and look up to be connected with something vast and beautiful and transcendent.  I reached out and took my mother's hand and allowed myself to fully take in the blessing of it all....    

Love, Cancer, and Reclaiming Body and Soul

  

   For the past two weeks I've spent ten hour days at a major cancer center where I've been exposed to and touched by suffering, heartbreak, love and beauty on what often seems like a moment to moment basis. One moment I am sitting at a table of patients and artists beside a pale and exhausted looking teenager hooked up to an iv  who is working on an intricate and truly beautiful collage while completely ignoring the rest of us. On my other side is a fragile looking middle aged man with kind eyes who has dropped by the Arts in Medicine room before his chemo infusion.  When he begins to describe the puppy he is considering adopting and asks us what we think he should name her, the teenager looks up, takes us in for what seems like the first time, and suggests that he name the puppy, "Hope."

   The next day while sipping coffee in the radiation center waiting room I am joined by what is beginning to feel like a sisterhood of mostly bald headed women who huddle together for a few moments each morning to compare side effects, symptoms, laughter, and reassurances.  This capacity of shared trauma for so quickly fostering authenticity and intimacy is remarkable to me.

   That same afternoon while at the infusion center I notice a husband and wife sitting across from me and am struck by the fact that while the wife is the one receiving the chemo infusions, it's he who looks ill and absolutely terrified.  I smile at him reassuringly and He lifts a trembling hand to wave at me.  I very much doubt that this wan and stoop shouldered man has seen his thirtieth birthday yet.

   I see pain everywhere.  And I see love all around me.  And I see fear and courage and despair and hope.  This just may be the most terrible, beautiful, most real world I have ever landed in.  I've had several long and heart felt talks with complete strangers, and  ocassionally I ask them what they've discovered thus far that has surprised or encouraged them.  A common response to my question alludes to the acts of kindness cancer patients and their loves ones have experienced from strangers and how significant even the smallest gestures have felt to those who were feeling frightened and vulnerable.  "Maybe it is love that does the most healing," one breast cancer patient shared with me.

   In her book, "When the Heart Waits," Sue Monk Kidd observed that “…a split of the head from the heart is common in our culture. Along with this goes another painful splitting: the severing of our body from our soul. As we separate from our feelings, we tend to separate from our bodies as well.”  In this culture of cancer I have repeatedly heard stories that describe in one form or another a kind of reunion of body and soul.  They are never happy stories, instead they contain pain and suffering and fear, and yet, they are so often transformative.   Stories that begin with one person's abrupt and often savage introduction to a body that he or she had been living with for a life time and yet never known.  Dramas that present crisis and pathos and uncertainty, and encounters that cannot possibly be prepared for because they involve a confrontation with the wildness of one's very soul.  For days now I have sat saddened and spell bound by stories that throb with both pain and love and ultimately seem to lead to the 'awful grace' of a hard won and weary wisdom. 

Failure, Imagination and J.K. Rowling

I hear a great deal about fear and failure these days from both adolescents and adults who come to me for support, reassurance, direction and (gulp) wisdom. I think when appropriate I'll begin referring them to J.K. Reynold's wonderful address to Harvard Graduates where she shared..."So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive..."

Failure, while always painful and never welcomed, is often a pathway to possibilities that we seldom recognize in the beginning.

I encourage you to watch her speech and enjoy the opportunity to both laugh and be inspired...