Mindful Happiness

Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

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The Lotus Sutra and Meditation Practice

The Lotus Sutra and Meditatin Practice

The Lotus Sutra is one of the most important and sacred of Buddhist sutras. It is often considered a summary of The Buddha’s teaching, presented many years after he began to teach and share his experiences. The version considered here is the Kumarajiva translation,  as translated by B. Watson; it may also be known as The Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law. I will not present the many core teaching noted in this sutra; instead I will focus on the end, about How to Practice Meditation. Since this is such an important sutra, you are strongly encouraged to look into the vast content in it on your own. One important thing I will note is that in this sutra The Buddha notes a unified, single path to enlightenment.  In the past he noted that monastic practices, forest practices, and bodhisattva practices all held potential for all people to achieve enlightenment or awakening. Experts suspect that The Buddha taught this sutra in the 6th to 5th century BCE. Here, however, he emphasizes the bodhisattva path as the most important single path. Let us move now into the meditation instructions.

  1. Stand in prayer pose and circle the teacher three times. Another option would be to circle each person in your group; this fits well within the Buddha’s view that we all are buddhas.
  2. Bow, and kneel on one knee to signify readiness to pursue instructions on meditation practice.
  3. Close your eyes and sit (cross-legged) quietly.
  4. Remain in a dignified posture.
  5. Re-commit to your vow to reduce the suffering of others.
  6. Practice this meditation deeply. “Practice with…[your] entire mind…”(p. 370).
  7. As you sit contemplate how meditation is helpful in reducing earthly desires, especially six-senses contact conditioning.
  8. Imagine that your body holds 50 shades of white light.
  9. Make a profound assumption that this white light has healing properties.
  10. Now notice that the white healing light has taken on a golden-white shade.
  11. Feel this healing light in your body and on your skin. Notice how it sparkles.
  12. Imagine the golden white healing light coming to you from The Ten Directions (N, S, E, W, NE, SE, NW, SW, and UP and DOWN).
  13. Allow! Allow! Allow! Stay out of simple thinking. Just be!
  14. Feel inner joy, compassion for others/yourself, and tranquility.
  15. Simply allow yourself to be bathed in the healing golden white light.
  16. Now a big step: practice emitting the healing golden light from your inner body and into the room. This itself is a bodhisattva act.
  17. Add your own loving kindness.
  18. Do your best to detach from attachment, even attachment to this wonderful experience.
  19. Give repentance for any wrongs you are connecting with at this time.
  20. Improve your Karma by doing this as strongly as you can.
  21. Take refuge in The Buddha, in The Dharma, and In The Sangha.
  22. Now sit in utter silence for a longer period of time – just notice without any evaluation. Just be!
  23. When you hear the sound of the singing bowl, gently and slowly open your eyes, orient yourself, and prepare to enter a full conscious state
  24. The Buddha. (B. Watson, Trans.). (1993/1994). The Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law. New York: Columbia University Press,  pp. 369-396. Nichiren Buddhist Library.

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  

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New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

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Meditation for Managers and Helpers – Let Me Help Your Organization!

Meditation for Managers and Helpers 

Let’s Talk – Contact Me – Click Here

I am a Licensed Psychologist-Doctorate and a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor with 35 years of clinical experience in community clinics, schools, professional organizations, and universities (OSU, UVM, etc.). I have been the past Clinical Director of Howard Center, and Past President of the Vermont Psychological Association. I have provided clinical training on various clinical topics to therapists from all over New England, and as far south at Alexandria, VA and as far west as SanDiego, CA. I serve as the head teacher at The Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont, home of the Monkton Sangha. I have published numerous clinical articles, books and workbook. The most recent being Mindful Happiness…  I provide various posts for my blog,  mindfulhappiness.org. For many years I have served as a State of Vermont (DMH, ADAP, AHS) trainer in co-occurring disorders. I also train for NEIAS and AdCare New England. I have been practicing meditation since 1982.

This piece serves as an advertisement for local Vermont managers and therapists as well as a regular post on the blog. Below I will list the proven  benefits ( now thousands of studies on these) for managers and therapists who complete repeated meditation retreats and how the retreat process works. Managers and therapists who complete meditation retreats often report the following benefits. My own short retreats occur on a scheduled Saturday afternoon from 1 to 5/6 PM. Longer retreat periods are also available upon request. Participation is by invitation or you contacting me at anthony1@gmavt.net. My retreat costs are extremely affordable! More on retreat details after we review the benefits.

 Common Benefits of Meditation Retreats and Personal Practice –

  1. Expanded self-understanding
  2. Improved attentional focus
  3. Better focused awareness
  4. The personal experience of being present in mind and body
  5. Adjustments to silence and being without all electronic/digital devices (highly addictive)
  6. The possibility of noticed clarity
  7. Experienced forms of inner energy
  8. More centered calmness or activation
  9. Flowing with, complying or rejecting gentle meditation instructions
  10. Discovery of the many benefits of pure silence
  11. Letting go of day-to-day stressors and torments and simply settling into the “being” process – “choiceness awareness”
  12. Being open to unexpected emotions – could be joy, could be sadness, could be new, could be old, etc.
  13. Experience of staying with the arising emotions without attempts to flee them if unpleasant
  14. Ultimately improved emotional self-regulation
  15. With practice, improvements in anxiety, depression, trauma, and addictions (mainly emotion regulation)
  16. Noticing the phases:
  17. A) – Settling into the process and being at surface levels of awareness and experience; B) – Deepening into emotional realities of just BEING – deeper opening up to personal realities of past-present-future and not trying to escape anything positive or negative; C) – Slow re-adjustment to non-meditative experiences, and a readiness to enter into more typical personal experiences.

How I Manage My Own Silent Retreats (Typical Saturday Afternoon or for Longer Periods) –

  1. People arrive at 1 Pm for a brief social period and tea.
  2. At the sound of the singing bowl, we enter the living room and sit in a circle and listen to the day’s plan.
  3. Then we check in – voluntary. Do you wish to share your hopes for the day or share anything else with the group?
  4. We enter the retreat center for the Nine Bells Meditation, a brief meditation focused on any important person/s or relationship/s you have lost. It may also focus on something inside of yourself you feel you have lost.
  5. Loving Kindness Meditation follows the Nine Bells.
  6. We now do kinkin, or slower and silent walking meditation (outside weather permitting, inside if not).
  7. In warmer weather, we may add outside yoga, tai chi or qigong practices.
  8. We move back into the meditation room, where I lead meditations I have designed for your specific needs or retreat request.
  9. We do kinkin again.
  10. We sit in the circle in the living room again and write in our journals – voluntary. We are still silent. Bring a journal.
  11. We check out in our circle – voluntary sharing.
  12. You decide if you wish to take written copies of the meditation you experienced.
  13. You decide if you want meditation coaching from me at an agreed-upon, low cost.

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  

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New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

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Core Elements in Clinical Supervision

Core Elements in Clinical Supervision

In addition to what supervisors bring into group supervision and clinical training, the list below will be used for discussion about YOUR supervisory role. The order of content below is generally random. The content noted applies to clinical supervision; it could also apply to doing effective therapy. The skills and knowledges here make up a toolbox for effective clinical supervision. That said, it cannot include everything.

  1. DO NO HARM in all supervision modalities (individual, group, education/training)!
  2. Know your code of ethics, especially sections relating to clinical supervision, education/training, clinical relationship, and the role of technology.
  3. Understand how the past becomes the present – your own attachment and developmental history and experience. Your own “dragons.”
  4. Know how to use strong empathy and therapeutic alliance/relationship skills.
  5. Face the reality of co-occurring conditions in clinical practice. Even if your role is dealing with “the walking well,” there are most likely co-occurring conditions if not diagnoses.
  6. Know how to use and supervise 2-3 evidence-based therapies ( BT, CT, CBT, CBT-M, Process-Based CBT, DBT, DBT-S, MBSR, MBCT, MBRP, ACT, Narrative and Solutions-Oriented approaches, etc.
  7. Recognize that the EBTXs are the science behind the art of therapy. Client and supervisee  progress require both art and science.
  8. Experiment with creativity – but do no harm.
  9. Know how to use restructuring and reframing.
  10. Understand the science behind client-matching variables. Recognize the impact of anxiety, depression, trauma, addictions, etc.
  11. Do your best to use a bio-psycho-social-spiritual model. Pay attention to preferences of people you supervise. Never impose a narrow focus.
  12. Consider Quintiliani’s “neurotherapy” by using cognition, affect, behavior, sensory experiences (see, hear, feel,, etc.) as well as intuition, spirituality and relational variables and conditions.  Refer to the Attachment-CABS-VAKGO-IS-Rels model.
  13. Study more neuroscience and how it relates to cognitive and behavior change and the human mind-body system.
  14. Learn and use effective emotion regulation skills and practices.
  15. Focus on the impact of cognition (thoughts and deep structures), emotion, behavioral conditioning, social justice, marginalization, trauma (especially pre-verbal), addictions (include pesky cellphones), and mindfulness.
  16. Observe! Observe! Observe! (direct observation of the work) and Respect! Respect! Respect!
  17. Remain fully aware of possible transference and countertransference processes, especially projective identification.
  18. Know that context, personal aspiration, and personal values matter.
  19. Recognize parallel process from therapy to supervision and back again.
  20. Know that in most states the supervisor is 100% responsible for the actions of the people they supervise, even if those actions were not recommended or are unknown to you.
  21. Know how to use compassion in practical ways, especially with defensive ego-protective patterns in people.
  22. Never make identifications of the whole person as their clinical condition of diagnosis. In fact, add much more to the individualized interventions.
  23. As you observe and respect be a good mentor to motivate, but never forget client protection is the first priority. Their progress is a second priority.
  24. Know your roles: hire, fire, oversight, evaluate, train, support, organize, coordinate, and DOCUMENT. Know abut all HIPAA and 42 CFR Pt 2 requirements.
  25. Always use a written supervision contract/agreement, and recognize informed consent aspects as well as due process in it.
  26. In co-occurring work, seek a role for 12 Steps and/or peer recovery support.
  27. Keep strong BOUNDARIES in all aspect of this work.
  28. Pay attention to learning styles.
  29. Some of the work is a form of palliative care, in that counseling and therapy sometimes deal with life-or-death issues. It is a form of sacred work.
  30. Know about duty to warn and protect – and its various implications.
  31. Supervision (like therapy) needs to be structured but not rigid.
  32. Recognize that generic “talking” has very little empirical support for supporting change in serious co-occurring disorders.
  33. Be capable in dealing with conditions of potential suicide, self-harm, and harm to others.
  34. Supervision needs to be based on an agreement, a professional development plan, and change-oriented interventions, techniques, and processes. In the final analysis, the supervisor is in charge – final decision making re. competence of supervisees and protection of others.
  35. Look after your own self-development as lead clinicians and supervisors.
  36. All may fail if you do not attend to your own SELF-CARE and the self-care of the people you supervise.  Etc.!

Be well and reduce suffering!

 

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  

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New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

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Crisis Resilience Skills

Crisis Resilience Skills  – Mindful Happiness

Below I will list various interventions that have proven effective in reducing the level of personal crisis. The sources for many of these skills came from Burns (1980), Ellis (1995), Seligman (1988), Linehan (1993, 2015)), Hayes (2018), and Thich Nhat Hanh (various publications). The skills noted are for immediate application in crisis and/or post-crisis practice. Due to space limitations, I will not explain details; rather I will list skills with minimum directions. If interested in improving your clinical capacities to deal with crises, you can look up the details on your own. It is a growth process. It is always a good idea to have a clear and practical crisis response plan.

  1. Move to cognition as soon as possible – get out of body reactions and take over the thought process related to the situation. Practice Tara Brach’s RAIN skills (recognize, accept, investigate, and relate to non-self), complete a pros and cons grid (good and not-so-good things about staying the same versus making small changes – CT, MI, CBT). Also distant or distract yourself quickly. Distraction is not to be used in physically dangerous situations.
  2. Practice mindfulness core skills. Begin relaxation breath with deep, slow breathing (polyvagal impediments may exist especially if poorly treated trauma is a reality), use positive imagery, meditate, do yoga, pray, pay attention to non-crisis variables, and live within the realities impermanence.
  3. Practice self-soothing. Remember or engage in positive images, sounds, touch, smells, and tastes. Carry your favorite self-calming scent with you. Rub your hands hard and long until hot, then place them on your face and absorb the healing warmth.
  4. DBT-like skills are highly effective. Use “wide-mind” skills. Try ACCEPTS. Engage in alternative activities, contribute to others, compare downwardly with others, engage in opposite emotion, push away unhelpful thoughts and move away from the situation, engage in productive thinking about what to do now without emotional dysregulation, and improve your sensations. Although not part of DBT, you may wish to practice progressing counting (distractive); say to yourself or outloud consecutive numbers and imagine them in your mind’s eye. Continue to count until the emotional reactivity has reduced.
  5. Practice mindful movement. Do yoga, tai chi, qi gong in more vigorous modes until you notice that your body has experienced a reduction in emotional reactivity. Regular meditation practice is, perhaps, your best option here.  Do vigorous exercise.
  6. Do your best to reduce a “victim” self-image. Work on fear-based reactions and combat hopelessness and helplessness tendencies. Use your older, experienced self’s wisdom.
  7. If in therapy, be certain to process the crisis experience. If your therapist is competent, she/he will include such skills development as part of your treatment.
  8. Hope this quick review has been helpful to you.

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!

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Amitabha Buddha – Pure Land Meditation

Amitabha Buddha – Pure Land Meditation

The following meditation had been modified by me to make it a more specific self-healing meditation and to better fit the time we now live in.

  1. Sit quietly and complete 3-4 deep, calming breaths.
  2. Pay attention to the quality and density of the light you see outside of your body.
  3. Do your best to “feel” the presence of this light.
  4. Become familiar with using the light of the earth, sun, moon, and stars to heal.
  5. Notice closely the absolute boundlessness and emptiness of the healing light.
  6. Imagine taking in the full colored light of a rainbow as your breathe in and out.
  7. Do your best not to worry; be as content as possible with this experience.
  8. Go into your memory or do this on a clear day/night – see and internalize the healing light in the rising and setting sun, in the full moon, and in all the stars above you.
  9. Do whatever you must to transform this light energy into pure healing light. Let go of doubt, defensiveness, and resentment. Be one with the healing light.
  10. Use your imagination to see/feel the light entering all of your sense one by one. Notice! Take it in!
  11. See, hear, feel, smell and taste the beauty of this ever-healing light. Let it all in!
  12. Allow in the healing light and sense its unconditional love for you.
  13. Let it enter your mind, body, soul, heart – your whole and beautiful self.
  14. Work hard to radically accept the healing light’s gifts to you. Accept it!
  15. Be with and be the healing light without clinging to it, attaching to it, or seeking it.
  16. Now breathe fully and smile fully, allowing yourself to be lit-up by the healing light.
  17. Be one with it in your inner body and mind. Be open!
  18. Experiment: Let inner darkness represent your deep, personal suffering – then allow tears and feeling of the healing light to “bless you.”  Allow, allow, allow!
  19. Feel the healing light calming and soothing your afflictive emotional states.
  20. Relax into the light as it penetrates into you and your suffering mind and body.
  21. With each breath go deeper into your relaxation and appreciation.
  22. Feel and be the deep tranquility you are experiencing. Thank the healing light!
  23. Chant: “Om Mani Tabba Be.” Repeat the chant if you wish to do so.
  24. Now rest in complete healing light and inner contentment. Just be!
  25. For more information refer to DEMI (2010). Amitabha: The Buddha of Light and Life. See also Atone, J. (2011). The Promise of Amitabha Buddha…

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!