Simple Meditating Here’s a link to a recent practice tips article by Ken McLeod encouraging simple meditating. Ken is my one of my favourite writers on meditation as part of a spiritual or developmental path. I like Ken because he focuses on essentials. In this post he’s reminding us not to look for or value […]
What is psychotherapy all about- for individuals? What will you do to me? What is the process? How do I Answer? These, and more, are questions that people have asked, whether in casual conversation or when deciding whether or not to come to therapy. The way I’ve answered has changed a bit over the years but […]
Meditation, sports psychology, emotional intelligence and relationship counselling all give a central role to breathing for mental and bodily calm. Whether taking deep slow breaths, doing patterned breathing (like 4-7-8 breathing) or simply being aware of the breath, this basic bodily function is a gateway to calm. This is established practical knowledge in all the […]
If you are in, or have been in a relationship then you’ve most likely been angry and have had anger directed at you. And we’ve all been in relationships, even if the latest for you is child with parent. However, it may be that anger isn’t the main issue. Anger is painful, both for the person […]
Adverse Childhood Events Trauma Adverse Childhood Events Trauma is finally beginning to be part of a wider conversation about the effect of childhood experience on mental and physical health. Twenty years ago, the US CDC sponsored a large scale, epidemiological study on the effects of what the study called Adverse Childhood Events (ACE) on health and […]
This article in Business Insider is a look at a central finding from John Gottman’s research into the relationship glue that keeps relationships working. This research informs the relationship therapy that Vivian and I practice. Relationship Glue In our relationships we are always communicating or attempting to communicate with our partner. Critical to relationship health are the […]
In a recent interview in Tricycle, Dr. Willoughby Britton discussed the hype around meditation and mindfulness and emphasised that much of the research on which claims for the benefits of them are based are not as robust as they are often made out to be. She is also concerned about the claims for meditation as […]
The twin pillars of my internal life have been Buddhism and various encounters with psychotherapy, both as therapee and therapist. This parallels the frequent intersection of, particularly, Buddhist spirituality and psychotherapy in the wider world (e.g. Welwood, Epstein, Kornfield, Siegel in USA and Barzaghi, Dawson and others here in Australia). So questions as to similarities […]
No matter how or why we meditate, the process of meditation is made more effective as our capacity to intentionally attend increases. Many teachers talk about concentration as part of meditation and that is fair enough, however the word “concentration” frequently carries the sense of trying hard and bearing down on whatever we are concentrating […]
Human growth is a contradictory experience. We feel the boundaries of self expanding and the experience of humility growing at least as fast. Our humanity means we are the inheritors of strengths and weaknesses and some of the more embarrassing among those weaknesses is the tendency to overestimate our strengths. The explosion of psychological research […]