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

Tips on Practice During These Troubling Times Some people are religious, and I am sure turn to those sources for support and hope. Others are spiritual, and I hope also pursue those sources for emotional stability and closeness to the “their” divine. Other people may  be Agnostic or Atheist; I am certain such people also […]

Being Mindful Of  Dr. Wayne W. Dyer Recently I receive a heart-felt tribute dedicated to Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, who died recently.  The tribute originated from Louise Hay, a long-time associate, colleague and publisher of Wayne Dyer.  To those of us who inhabit the spaciousness of the spiritual world, perhaps, no other person in recent […]

Stress in America – On the Rise – The American Psychological Association recently completed its national survey on stress in America.  Stress in America for adults is on the rise! I will review below a selection of reported percentages from the 2015 survey (published in 2016). 1)  Younger people are more stressed; Xers and Millennials […]

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 […]

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 […]

In Times of Uncertainty; Clinical Practice H. Colodro and J. Oliver provide sound advice in their new book, A Guide to Self-Care for Practitioners in Times of Uncertainty. This 2020 New Harbinger publication is loaded with helpful suggestions on surviving, even thriving, in our time of struggle. Their core questions include: What do my clients need most […]

How to Find & Choose an Effective Therapist Recently The Harvard Health Newsletter posted some interesting questions to ask while seeking out a psychotherapist. I will add a few more details and areas of inquiry in this post. Keep in mind that these questions and inquiries do not mean you will be happy and improve […]

Human Needs and Spiritual Experience and the Need for Supportive Rituals From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont Recently the Human Givens Blog in the United Kingdom presented a post about human needs.  I will paraphrase their information as well as information from other sources for Mindful Happiness.  Having such […]

Tonglen Meditation or Giving and Taking I have added various posts about many compassion practice.  Earlier posts have covered a range of practices – from super-easy to more demanding. Here, I will add a more advanced practice.  This Tibetan compassion meditation practice has been taught often in the Vajrayana school of Buddhism.  In my opinion […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Reality of Experience What is deep mindfulness?  Deep mindfulness is the concentrated awareness of all experiences, preferably without evaluating as pleasant or unpleasant. Deep mindfulness is pure awareness as it becomes part of personal consciousness. We humans, however, are always evaluating our experiences and phenomena as pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant – often getting hooked […]

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 […]

Trauma Informed Care – Avoidance Process Although more and more clinicians are learning about and using principles/practices of Trauma Informed Care, too few understand the behavioral dynamics of negative reinforcement in the avoidance of trauma-related cues (people, places, things, internal sensations, emotions and images). This post will give a very brief description of negative reinforcement […]

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 […]

Mind Training Over Our Impulses Mindful awareness of our impulses is a very important pathway to improved emotion regulation and, perhaps, more happiness in life. It can be unusually helpful to people suffering from anxiety, depression, and substance misuse. Vedana refers to the feeling tone in our body.  It is one of the foundations of mindfulness […]

The Holy Year of Mercy Like the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, Pope Francis in The Church of Rome, is sharing his opinion on compassion and mercy in life.  Although Pope Francis distinguishes compassion (a human action) from mercy (a divine action), the two positive conditions are quite similar in values, attitudes, and behaviors.  Pope […]

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 […]

Behaviors People Display When in Groups After more than 35 years of facilitating hundreds of classes, workshops, family therapy sessions, group therapy sessions, and work project groups it has become clear that we do some strange things when we participate in groups. It appears to me that many of these in-group functions serve both ego […]

Meditation on Ecodharma and Buddhist Ecology   Sit calmly and begin to breathe in and out deeply and slowly. Open your eyes to see and appreciate the natural environment you are in. Close your eyes now if you wish to do so. Know that this nature – the sky, clouds, stars, father sun, mother moon, […]

Mindful Categories

Mindful Happiness Pages

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

Copyright © 2023 · Mindful Happiness