Mindful Happiness

Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

  • Home
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
    • About
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Contact

March 6, 2018 By Admin

Mindful Equanimity and Homeostasis

Mindful Equanimity and Homeostasis

Neuroscientist Antonio Demasio’s new book  The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Culture. (2018) New York: Pantheon Books notes the very important role homeostasis plays in human life and well being. In some ways homeostasis is about the arising, falling, and balancing out of all things important to human life. Homeostasis plays vital roles in human feelings and emotions, motivation for actions, identification of internal states, monitoring positives and negatives, and the realities of progressively positive human development. It is also important in experiencing joy and happiness. Let’s review some core characteristics of homeostasis; it will soon become clear that meditative equanimity and homeostasis have many things in common. Perhaps human homeostasis and equanimity have deep innate, naturalistic tendencies in some people. Here are some characteristics.

  1. Homeostasis is the ultimate balancer of all things, causes, conditions, and outcomes.
  2. It relates to all bio-psycho-social-spirtual conditions in life.
  3. This inner self-balance allows us to cope better with suffering, and also allows us to fully experience joy and happiness – all of which arise and fall, thus balancing out.
  4. From a survival perspective homeostasis enables the propagation of species. It is the key driver of our evolutionary processes and change. Impermanence is in place here.
  5. It enables us to evaluate positive/pleasant, neutral, and negative/unpleasant experiences.
  6. Such judgments become part of our on-going consciousness.
  7. Sounds somewhat like the Middle Way in Buddhist Psychology.
  8. It is the stabilization of all life systems – the master regulator of it all.
  9. Much of it in autonomic/unconscious, but eventually a good deal of it enters our consciousness.  We use it!
  10. In energetic ways homeostasis manages all our mind-body energies toward equilibrium, but it is beyond maintaining the status quo.
  11. It is a highly positive force working to maintain healthy life and development.

Now that you have a good idea about what homeostasis is, you may want to meditate on it and notice it in your mind and body. After that meditation, enter deeper practice and notice the homeostasis of your equanimity when you encounter it.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Filed Under: Balance, Equanimity, Featured, Homeostatis Tagged With: ANTONIO DEMASIO, BALANCE, EQUANIMITY, HOMEOSTATIS, MINDFULNESS

Twitter

Mindful Happiness -Currently in Production

Mindful Happiness Posts

The True Nature of Phenomena Here I will present common steps in the process of vipassana meditation.  My presentation will end with a brief discussion of nirvana (enlightenment). 1) It will be helpful not to have strong conceptual intention about your goal of attaining insight.  You will know when you have entered it via your […]

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. […]

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 […]

Mindful Loving Can Improve Relationships The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Pema Chodron, David Richo and many others have provided us with helpful advice about improving the quality of our significant relationships.  The Dalai Lama in various writings reminds us that to have true compassion for others – including those we love – we must […]

Personal Experiences When in Longer-Term Silence The luxury (or horror depending on your perspective and psychological structure) of being in long-term silence is a rare thing in today’s noisy, super-active and reactive world. The experience is difficult to describe verbally. The best we can do is count on our own experiences and the writings of […]

Expanded Lectio Divina for Self-Development In this post I will provide an expanded version of this process by combining information from Origen,  the Carthusian  Monk  Guigo II,   and  Augustine of Hippo.   The presented process of 12 steps may be used  to enhance internalization of sacred writing and/or to support internal healing of the participants. […]

Meditations and Mantra: Try Them Out in Your Practice There are many forms of meditation.  In most cases, the common meditation forms fall into one of two categories: Mindfulness and Insight.  There are also demanding concentration meditations, chakra meditations, and mantra meditations. Here we’ll deal only with the two forms noted above and the use […]

Our Brains React to Worry According to research by The American Psychological Association in 2015, some of the core sources of severe stress reaction for Americans are: financial problems, job-related problems, family problems, and health problems.  Our lives are complete only with joy/happiness, suffering and boredom – sometimes referred to as pleasant, unpleasant and neutral […]

Effective Clinical Supervision Perhaps other than the mental health status of the therapist and her/his ethical clinical skills, there is no more important variable in successful clinical work than effective CLINICAL supervision.  I emphasize “clinical’ because in today’s bureaucratic systems, so much supervision tends to be about required procedures like utilization level, reporting requirements, and documentation for services […]

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 […]

Today’s Troubled World Needs More Self Compassion and Compassion This is an interactive activity on contemplation between your executive brain, your conscious mind, and your emotional brain areas. Looking at the world today any aware person must admit the human race is in serious trouble.  This reality impacts the developing, industrial, and post-industrial cultures of […]

Vipassana Meditation Practice – Introductory Journey 1 This is the first of a series of posts on vipassana-based meditation practices.  The introductory journey set will not be pure vipassana; rather this set of meditations will be about practice with core principles and learning experiences in regular vipassana meditation. Rather than explain background information, I will […]

Liberate Yourself with Spiritual Energy Cultivating authentic inner and outer peace is the only way to a happy and good future. Learn to use your spiritual higher self to let go of self-centerednesss, greed, and entitlement. Work to free yourself from the endless grasping for material “things.”  Does it really matter what kind of car […]

Anahata – Heart Chakra Meditation Practice Rumi noted that to reach the sky we must use our hearts. The Heart Chakra is a very popular focus of meditation practice.  Here we will simply review some characteristics and then move on to a meditation practice. Specific characteristics: Green color, YAM sound (say at least three times […]

Self-Medication:  Is Your Hand-Held Device a  Dopamine Device?   Mindfulness Activities: Here is a simple activity that may inform you about your personal level of addiction to your digital/electronic devices. Simply click the link below to download the PDF Worksheet;   answer each question according to your personal opinions.  Dr-Anthony-Quintiliani_HandHeldDeviceActivity Be sure to complete the meditation activity […]

Using Meditation, Yoga and Breathing… You can Anchor your Choice Making A key outcome of serious practice is  that you now reduce auto-pilot reactivity to people, places, things, emotions, sensations, craving, and memories and at the same time notice your mind CAN BE in charge of your brain-body reactions.  Yes, regular daily mindfulness practice allows […]

America’s Opioid Problem-2020; A Brief Update Unfortunately, Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) is alive and well in 2020. Today approximately 150 People are dying each day due to opioid overdose. The CDC noted that from 1999 to 2017 approximately 399,000 people died in the United States from Opioid overdose. Related to chronic pain, this is one […]

Using Your Compassionate Mind in Psychotherapy For you to become a more compassionate therapist, follow the details noted below. These preconditions, skills, and practices are required as a baseline for  compassionate practice. You need the ability to access calmness in an environment of emotional suffering, chaos, or conflict.  Most people do this by breathing in […]

Expanded Information about Your Compassion Practices and Benefits Compassion Practice Tips and Exercises The Buddha noted that one should not dwell on the past, become too attached to future outcomes, but instead concentrate our mind only on the present moment of our experiences.  The Dalai Lama noted that compassion is a necessary condition for inner […]

Mindful Observation  Through Mindful Breathing The following guided meditation is a combination meditation from Asanga’s Grounds of Hearers, Jam-Yang-Shay-Pa’s concentration meditation on the breath, and the Anapanasati Sutta. These guided meditation instructions have been simplified and combined for contemporary use by lay meditators. Observation of Observation – Mindfulness in Breathing Contemplate breathing in and out with complete […]

Mindful Happiness Tags

THICH NHAT HANH MINDFUL MINDFUL TRAINING ACTIVITIES PRACTICE PRACTICES BUDDHISM WISE MIND VIPASSANA THERAPY. SUFFERING BRAIN ENLIGHTENMENT VERMONT ELEANOR R LIEBMAN CENTER SELF COMPASSION SELF MEDICATION COMPASSION SELF CARE CLINICAL SUPERVISION TRAINING ACTIVITY EXERCISES TRAUMA ADDICTION MEDITATION PRACTICE EMPTINESS CONSCIOUSNESS MINDFUL HAPPINESS MINDFUL MEDITATION SELF MINDFULNESS MBSR WALKING MEDITATION MINDFULNESS TRAINING SELF ESTEEM JOURNALING ANTHONY QUINTILIANI HAPPINESS DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI BREATHING PSYCHOTHERAPY VIPASSANA MEDITATION MEDITATION COVID-19

Mindful Categories

Mindful Happiness Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Site Map

Copyright © 2022 · Mindful Happiness