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HeatherAsh Amara: Putting your True Work at the center...

HeatherAsh Amara is a spiritual teacher and the founder of Toci, the Toltec Center of Creative Intent. Drawing from a blend of traditions including Toltec wisdom teachings, shamanism, and Native American ceremony, HeatherAsh is the author of several books and audios. With Sounds True, she has most recently published Awakening Your Inner Fire: A Step-by-Step Course to Ignite Your Passion and Create the Life You Love. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and HeatherAsh talk about bringing our innermost values to our work. They speak on contemporary society’s unspoken assumption that we only have value in productivity, and how we can step outside this mindset to recognize our inherent worth. HeatherAsh describes how each of us can stoke our own inner fires, including the little-explored heart and spiritual fires. Finally, Tami and HeatherAsh discuss our “true work” in the world and how to bring a touch of the sacred to everything you do. (58 minutes)

Helen Riess: Seven Keys to Increase Empathy

Dr. Helen Riess is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. With Sounds True, she has published The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Helen about the development of the E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. program—a method for teaching and promoting empathy that draws on neuroscience and physiology. They talk about how Helen became interested in the science of empathy and why recent research into the subject has yielded such positive results. Helen walks listeners through each step of the E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. process, highlighting the benefits of more actively attending to every social interaction. Finally, Helen and Tami discuss the active training of empathy in education, business, and the medical community, emphasizing why these skills are necessary for the survival of human civilization. (64 minutes)

Tami’s Takeaway: A very simple technique that Dr. Helen Riess teaches for establishing empathic connection with people is to mentally note the eye color of the person when you first meet. This is a technique that she teaches to doctors and medical practitioners who are often moving quickly in a task-oriented way, not pausing to make genuine contact with the people they are serving. (Sound familiar, anyone?) My takeaway is to employ this technique in the office at Sounds True with the 130 people who work here. The early reports indicate that these experiments in noting eye color (even during hallway conversations and in meetings) have quickly created a sense of real connection—moments that I cherish.

What Causes Reactivity and How to Navigate it Skillful...

What Causes Reactivity Header Image

Our shadow-bound conditioning shows itself most often through reactivity. When we’re reactive, we’re automatically reverting to and acting out conditioned behavior, usually in ways that are emotionally disproportionate to what’s warranted in a given situation.

Reactivity is the knee-jerk dramatization of activated shadow material. Self-justifying and far from self-reflective, reactivity features a very predictable take on what’s going on, which we proceed with even if we know better.

The signs of reactivity include:

An exaggerated attachment to being right. If someone points out this attachment to us when we’re being reactive, it usually only amplifies our righteousness.

Emotional distortion and/or overload. More often than not, this behavior gets quite melodramatic. We may use emotional intensity to back up what we’re doing.

Using the same words and ideas from previous times we’ve been triggered. It’s as if we’re on stage saying our lines as dictated by the same old script. We’re acting and re-acting, even when we know we’re doing so.

A lack of—or an opposition to—self-reflection. The refusal to step back, even just a bit, from what’s happening fuels the continuation of our reactivity.

A loss of connection with whomever we’re upset with. Our heart closes.

A loss of connection with our core. We’re immersed instead in our reactivity.

Here’s an example of how to skillfully—and nonreactively—handle reactivity. Imagine you’re embroiled in a reactive argument with your partner or a close friend. You’re dangerously close to making a decision about your relationship to them that you vaguely sense you’ll later regret, but damned if you’re going to hold back now! After all, don’t you have a right to be heard?

Things are getting very edgy. Then, rather than continuing your righteous, over-the-top dramatics, you admit to yourself that you’re being reactive. Period. You step back just a bit from all the sound, fury, and pressure to make a decision about your relationship with this person. You’re still churning inside, but the context has shifted. You’re starting to make some space for the reactive you instead of continuing to identify with it. There’s no dissociation here — just a dose of healthy separation, some degree of holding space for yourself, perhaps even some trace of emerging care for the other person.

On the outside, you’re slowing down and ceasing to attack the other, saying nothing more than what you’re feeling, without blaming the other for this. You’re starting to allow yourself to be vulnerable with the other. You’re interrupting your own reactivity.

Your intuition begins to shine through all the fuss. You start to realize that, while you were being reactive, your voice sounded much like it did when you were seven or eight years old. The same desperation, the same drivenness, the same cadence. You were hurting considerably then and trying to keep your hurt out of sight, because earlier times of expressing it had been met with parental rejection and shaming.

You’re still on shaky ground, though, and could still easily slip back into your reactive stance. Just one more shaming or otherwise unskillful comment from the other could do the trick. So you soften your jaw and belly, bend your knees slightly, and take five deep breaths, making sure that you count each breath on the exhale. You know from previous experience that these somatic adjustments will help settle you; they are your go-to calming responses for stressful moments.

As the out-front reality of your reactivity is now in clear sight, you feel shame. Some of this is a beneficial shame, activating your conscience, letting you know that you crossed a line with the other and that a genuine expression of remorse is fitting. You say you’re sorry, with obvious vulnerability. Sadness surfaces in you. You don’t make excuses for your reactivity. Instead, you make your connection with the other more important than being right.

And a very different kind of shame also arises, one that’s far from beneficial. This shame activates not your conscience but your inner critic (heartlessly negative self-appraisal). It’s aimed not at your behavior but at your very being, taking the form of self-flagellation for having slipped—a self-condemnation that, if allowed to run free, mires you in guilt and keeps you from reconnecting with the other. You acknowledge the presence of this toxic shame, saying to yourself that your inner critic is present. It’s not nearly as strong as it usually is, fading quickly as you name it. You choose to address it in depth later on, outside of the argument you were just having, as part of your ongoing shadow work. Reconnecting with the other is a priority now, and it’s happening, bringing relief and gratitude to you both.

Excerpted from Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark: Breaking Free from the Hidden Forces That Drive You by Robert Augustus Masters.

Robert Augustus Masters

Robert Augustus Masters, PhD, is an integral psychotherapist, relationship expert, and spiritual teacher whose work blends the psychological and physical with the spiritual, emphasizing embodiment, emotional literacy, and the development of relational maturity. He is the author of thirteen books, including Transformation through Intimacy and Spiritual Bypassing. For more information, visit robertmasters.com.

Buy your copy of Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark at your favorite bookseller!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Judith Orloff: The Healing Power of Empathy

When we think about those special traits or abilities we consider to be “superpowers,” empathy isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. In fact, empathy is often seen as a weakness, not a strength. Through her bestselling books and her work training new psychiatrists, Dr. Judith Orloff is helping to change the narrative around empathy. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Orloff about her new book, The Genius of Empathy, and how we can each begin to cultivate an empathic style that supports a thriving life. 

Tune in now for their conversation on how empathy opens the heart and fosters healing, the beauty of self-empathy and how it differs from self-compassion, empathy overwhelm, the four styles of empathy and how to identify your own, boundary-setting tools for empaths, the empathy spectrum, empathy deficiency disorders, trauma and empathy, letting go of resentment and helping it let go of you, empathic attunement, the practice of shielding, transmitting empathic love to people and places in need, observing without absorbing, and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Caroline Myss: The Science of Medical Intuition

Tami Simon speaks with Caroline Myss, a medical intuitive who has the ability to sense and diagnose illness. She is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, as well as the Sounds True audio learning programs Energy Anatomy and Sacred Contracts. In addition, she’ll be hosting The Science of Medical Intuition, an 11-part online course with Dr. Norm Shealy beginning March 16, 2010. Caroline speaks about her abilities as a medical intuitive, how she cultivated these abilities, the process of refining our senses into a highly developed intuitive capacity, and the importance of understanding the chakras. (48 minutes)

Snatam Kaur: By Thy Grace

Snatam Kaur is one of the most recognized voices in the world of devotional chant. Snatam is an American artist who was raised in the kundalini yoga tradition and schooled in kirtan meditation and Gurmukhi, the Sanskrit-based language of Sikh scriptures in northern India. She is the lead singer for the Celebrate Peace tours and has released eight records. In this episode, Tami Simon speaks with Snatam about her bottom line in terms of daily meditation practice, what has been her go-to mantra in life, and how motherhood keeps her ego in check. She also shares three excerpts from The Essential Snatam Kaur, the Sounds True compilation of her favorite sacred chants for healing. (76 minutes)

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