January 16, 2017 By Admin

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Safety: Mindful Candle Gazing Meditation Practices Candle light and candle gazing are common in many spiritual and religious practices. After many fire-related losses, religious organizations have found ways to maintain the practice and reduce liability related to accidental fires. The National Candle Association is also quite aware that their products include some risk. Therefore, the […]

Poem on Nature – Haiku-Like As I sat peacefully by the westward window of my sunroom at my retreat center, I noticed! I noticed the restless, natural movement of a tormented sky trying to calm itself. Here is my poem. “The Sky, the Lake and the Mountains” Sitting at our home, alone – […]

How We Make Habits – An Understanding Twenty-five hundred years ago the Buddha reportedly taught how humans make habits. The insights of this earliest Buddhist Psychology sheds shame on the West, with its almost-the-same version of this view in the 20th century. One must wonder if B. F. Skinner or N. Chomsky knew about Buddhist […]

The “I AM THAT” Meditation Elena Brower’s new book, Practice You: A Journal (Sounds True, 2017) has many thoughtful suggestions on how to connect with the true inner self, and – more importantly – how to improve your self-views and the experience of your deep inner self. Below I have modified her presentation of the “I Am […]

Advanced Meditations – Middle Way -Wisdom Path Between Extremes These meditation practices are advanced, and combine complex ideas from Nagarjuna (Indian Master), T’ong-Kha-Pa (Tibetan Master), and The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso). In keeping with the mixed secular nature of my meditation center, I have decided to present these complex ideas with several of my […]

Mindful Leadership Skills: How to Lead in Wise Mind Ways Researchers dealing with leadership skills have noted several acquired characteristics of effective leaders. These same skills may be used in spreading “the word” about how mindfulness and wise mind practices reduce stress reactivity, enhance compassion, and expand the possibilities for human happiness, inner peace and […]

Practice: Yogi Deep Meditation on Inner Listening Carl Jung noted: Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakens. The Katha Upanishads (800-400 BCE) noted: One path leads outward and the other inward. [The] way inward leads to grace. The Mind Cave Focus instructs us to close our eyes and expand your third-eye space to the back of […]

Are You Happier Yet? Use Practical Mindfulness Skills Two recent books offer sound advice about YOU becoming a happier person. L. Cypers Kamen (2017) Are You Happy Yet: Eight Keys to Unlocking a Joyful Life. New York: MFJ Books and D. Altman (2016) Cleansing Emotional Clutter… New York: MFJ Books offer practical ways to improve your personal level of happiness. […]

Gratitude Practices to Improve your Emotional Mood The following fourteen suggestions may improve your emotional mood. One reward from practicing gratitude is that we tend to feel a little better no matter what our causes and conditions are at the time. Here is the list. Make a habit of thanking people. “Thank you.” Appreciate […]

Mindful Happiness: Joy is Within Reach – It is Up to You to Choose It! We all live in a very troubled world with lots of greed, hate, warfare, and danger. Many of us use distractions (addictions, cell phone habits, eating, gathering, games, etc.) to make it through the days. This is true! However, […]

An Advanced View on Meditations on Emptiness An earlier post on the Dalai Lama’s book, Meditations on the Nature of Mind, ended with suggested meditations (my own personal contemplation’s) about emptiness. I will first review those contemplations. Contemplate deeply on what emptiness means personally to you. Contemplate about a time when you received a glimpse of personal emptiness. […]

Mindfulness Expands the Art of Journal Writing T. Merton, J. Kerouc, I. Progoff, J. Upton, and others have helped to expand the art or journal writing practice. This type of practice can become your mindfulness practice. You will need to write on a daily basis (even if briefly), and you will need to be highly […]

A Buddhist Sutta on Your Desires and Suffering This post is about the Buddhist Sutta called The Gilana Sutta (SN 35:74). It is a touching story about a young monk, who became very ill. Another monk informed The Buddha of the young monk’s health conditions. Buddha visited and hoped he had improved and held on to […]

Helper Burnout in Today’s Healthcare System Helper burnout is a very common problem in all healthcare services and at all levels of professional training and experience. Helpers from recovery-oriented peer counselors, state employed case managers, and licensed counselors/therapists all the way to physicians are reporting record high levels of reactive stress and compassion fatigue. Psychiatrists are […]

How to be Happier in a Relatively Unhappy World In today’s fast-paced, digitized, unstable world – with it uncertainty, childish tweets from on-high, and general dissatisfaction with things as they are – how may one become a happier person. It is clear that isolation will not work; it is clear that aggressive actions in opposition […]

Inner Workings of Self-Medication Process To continue our discussion about the self-medication process we will first turn to the human brain. The human brain is the most complex system known to science. Here, my comments will be basic. Self-medication often has roots in the quality of our earliest childhood experiences (attachment and object relations with […]

Mindful Walking Meditation: How to Walk by Thich Nhat Hanh – A Powerful Short Book of Wisdom In my opinion, Thich Nhat Hanh and The 14th Dalai Lama are the two most important and wise teachers of mindfulness, meditation, compassion, and Buddhism in the 21st century. Below I will offer my interpretation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s […]

Participate in Groups for Meditation, Problem-Solving, and Task Completion Meditation With The Sangha Among regularly practicing meditators and various meditation traditions, the sangha is the social, emotional and spiritual collective that continues to support ongoing serious practice and progress along the Path. Given that so much has been written about the many benefits of practicing […]

Setting Emotional Boundaries from Work to Life Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC Sometimes setting emotional boundaries from the psychotherapy room to your life outside of work can be a difficult thing to do. Shifting from “experience near empathy” (Kohut), “unconditional positive regard” (Rogers), “hovering attention” (Freud), “the holding environment” in “intersubjective space” (Winnicott), and compassionate […]

Self-Reality Checks Are Needed in Your Mindful Clinical Practice It is highly important for helpers working in the co-occurring conditions field to become keenly aware of their own realities in practice and life that impact clinical effectiveness. Below I have listed four areas that show up in clinical surveys and added four more that I […]