Mindfulness

As odd as it may sound, we truly can’t love others unless we first love ourselves. It’s a bit like math. The depth to which we connect with others correlates to the degree to which we love our selves.

Kids are small. Imagine the emotional impact of someone twice your size yelling at you on the regular? Maya Angelou captured it when she said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget…

Being open to who we are, exactly as we are in this moment, requires a stance of gentleness toward ourselves. This is what it means to befriend the self. We treat ourselves with the same sweetness we would a friend.

It takes courage and heart to face pain. During difficult times, these qualities can be a challenge to find. In such cases, it is not unusual to borrow another’s compassion until we are able to resource it within ourselves. Therapy is good example of this type of “borrowing”, as is reaching out to a friend for comfort.

Before entering the field of therapy, among a variety of careers, I was a whole/living foods chef. I use the term “chef” loosely, as I was really just a passionate self-taught, health-nut who was lucky enough to get paid to do what she loved.

As we grow older, it becomes clear that balance is the key to health. The hope is that our inner and outer worlds gradually come into alignment and whatever emotional healing that needed to occur to live happy, productive lives will have happened. At least,…

Loving-kindness meditation is a technique used to condition one’s habitual responses, emotions and mind states toward greater warmth and caring for self and others. What we feed grows. By increasing our daily diet of love, compassion, and other positive emotions we nourish character development and psychological growth.

Feeling cared for, accepted and having a sense of belonging and affiliation with others is fundamental to our well-being. Unfortunately, not everyone was raised in such an environment.

When attention is strong, we can simply do what we are doing, moment to moment. If we are peeling an orange, we may notice the stickiness of the juice, the smell of the orange oil, and a host of other sensations

Mindfulness, a mental state of relaxed awareness of the present moment, marked by openness and curiosity toward your feelings rather than judgments of them, is a powerful tool for experiencing happiness when practiced regularly. (See “Ten Deep Breaths“) If you can bring mindfulness to bear…