Search Results for: Sounds True – Page 188

Free, 12-part video series of self-acceptance

Access the Self-Acceptance Project free of charge

Self-aggression, self-acceptance, self-love, and issues of self-worth can be challenging for contemporary spiritual practitioners, even for those who have meditated or engaged in psychotherapy for years. There are many ways we can be unkind to ourselves, often subtle and unconscious, which can affect the way we perceive and engage in our lives, especially in interpersonal and intimate relationship.

In this free, 12-week video event series, I invited 23 psychologists, psychotherapists, neuroscientists, and spiritual teachers to speak with my friend and longtime colleague, Tami Simon, to explore these areas and how we might move toward the creation of a certain kind of holding environment in which we can grow, heal, and transform together.

All episodes of the Self-Acceptance Project are now posted and can be accessed as video or audio downloads, or can be streamed at no cost from the comfort of your own home. We invite you to join us for this pioneering series and look forward to sharing our discoveries with you – and hearing what you have learned. It is our intention that you benefit deeply from this work and that it guide you along your own journey of love and awakening.

Episodes include

  • Developing Shame Resilience with Dr. Brené Brown
  • Waking Up from the Trance of Unworthiness with Dr. Tara Brach
  • Turning Towards Our Pain with Dr. Robert Augustus Masters
  • Begin Exactly Where You Are with Jeff Foster
  • Taking in the Good with Dr. Rick Hanson
  • The Human Capacity to Take Perspectives with Dr. Steven Hayes
  • What if There is Nothing Wrong with Raphael Cushnir
  • No Strangers in the Heart with Mark Nepo
  • Transforming Self-Criticism into Self-Compassion with Dr. Kelly McGonigal
  • Faith in Our Fundamental Worthiness with Sharon Salzberg
  • Developing a Wise Mind with Dr. Erin Olivo
  • Embodied Vulnerability and Non-Division with Bruce Tift
  • Perfect in Our Imperfection with Colin Tipping
  • Staying Loyal to One’s Self with Dr. Judith Blackstone
  • Compassion for the Self-Critic with Dr. Kristin Neff
  • Curiosity is the Key with Dr. Harville Hendrix
  • Kindness is the Means and End with Geneen Roth
  • Healing at the Level of the Subconscious Mind with Dr. Friedemann Schaub
  • Embracing all of Our Parts with Dr. Jay Earley
  • Understanding Empathy and Shame with Karla McLaren
  • Integrating the Shadow with Dr. Parker PalmerLetting Life Be in Charge with Cheri Huber

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Staying Awake – with Mark Nepo

Most of us can remember a time when we felt completely awake—fully present, deeply engaged, our heart and mind wide open. We also know those periods of sleepiness when our purpose is unclear, we lose our way in relationship, and life’s challenges seem more than we can bear. In Staying Awake: The Ordinary ArtMark Nepo invites us to inhabit our truest selves “in all ways in all directions,” as we find our own voices in the One Conversation in which each of our lives is a story waiting to be told.

With a poet’s keen view of the vast and often hidden territory of the inner life, Mark Nepo talks directly about what a gift it is to be here and about the resources that the mysteries of being and experience reveal. Informed by his journey through cancer, he explores the lessons brought to us by the press of love and suffering. For each of us is born awake and yet it takes courage to stay awake, to remember that all we encounter is real.

Sharing his own rich poetry along with the inspired writing of luminaries across generations, Nepo guides us in the central practice of staying awake: to be who we are, no matter what we face, and to enter our days and moments to the fullest. We do this, he teaches, by holding nothing back—by bringing all of who we are to every situation, enlivening our connection with everything life has to offer. Using teaching stories and a series of exercises and reflections, Nepo invites us to listen to our own stories and to find our own wisdom.

Enjoy this short video from Mark on staying awake.

How to Meditate – with Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön is treasured around the world for her unique ability to transmit teachings and practices that bring peace, understanding, and compassion into our lives. With How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind, Pema offers her first book exploring in-depth what she considers the essentials for a lifelong practice.

More and more people are beginning to recognize a profound inner longing for authenticity, connection, and aliveness. Meditation, Pema explains, gives us a golden key to address this yearning. This step-by-step guide shows readers how to honestly meet and openly relate with the mind, embrace the fullness of our experience, and live in a wholehearted way as we discover:

Visit the How to Meditate page for more information, a free sample, and ordering instructions.

Free audio teachings from Pema Chödrön:

Embracing Intensity

Just Be Curious

Unconditional Confidence

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Mothering and Daughtering: Keeping Your Bond Strong Th...

Mothers and daughters share, and want, a bond for life—one that can remain positive and grow stronger with each passing year. Sil and Eliza Reynolds have designed a set of tools to assist you in nurturing that bond. If you’re locked in a clash of wills or fear the prospect of getting into one, with Mothering and Daughtering you can learn how to build the foundation for a deep and lasting relationship that is a source of support, joy, and love throughout your lives.

Offering you two breakthrough guides in one, Mothering and Daughtering was created to help you find and protect the unique treasure that is your relationship. For moms, Sil addresses the central task of stopping the cycle of separation and anxiety that plagues so many, drawing on her clinical expertise to nurture the skills of listening, boundary setting, mirroring, containing, and more. Turn the book over, and Eliza shares empowering advice to teens looking to keep it real with Mom while also finding strength in their own intuition, friendships, and dreams.

Enjoy this short video presentation from Sil and Eliza on their work and groundbreaking new book.

 

 

Love is Being Present

How do we stay truly present to whatever is happening in our lives?  How do we practice living from the deep gratitude that each of us has experienced in fleeting moments?  How do we remember, with every breath, the miracle of simply existing, the miracle of this body that sustains us from the moment we come into human form until the moment we go out again—while remembering also that our true being is not confined by the body, did not begin with birth, and does not end at death?

Truthfully, for me at least, it’s hard to navigate daily life from this place of grateful remembrance.  It’s hard not to get caught up in bills and deadlines, irritations and disagreements, until life begins to feel like a series of problems to be solved or tasks to be crossed off the to-do list.  Sometimes it takes the shock of the unexpected to open us again to a truer sense of who and what we are.

A month ago, my Uncle James came down with what he thought was bronchitis.  By Thanksgiving, he’d been given supplemental oxygen to cart around, but still no one knew what was going on.  A week ago, with breathing an increasing struggle, he went to the hospital in hopes of finally getting an accurate diagnosis.  After a series of biopsies and CAT scans, the news came back: idiopathic interstitial lung disease.  There’s no known cause and no treatment.  In fact, idiopathic means simply “arising spontaneously from an obscure or unknown cause.”  I guess one could say the same about life itself.

Today, my uncle is headed home to enter hospice care.  He’ll be surrounded by his sisters and brother, his nephews and nieces, grand-nephews and grand-nieces.  His kindness and his humor remain intact even as his body fails.  He’s not afraid, he says, of death—only of dying.  I have been through this before, with my father.  I know the strange stew of thankfulness, sorrow, love, regret, joy, loss and celebration that comes with the imminent loss of one you love.  In times like this, it’s easier to be absolutely present, knowing it might be the last moment we spend with someone dear to us.

But every moment could be the last moment, and every breath along the way is cause for celebration.  It’s an absolute miracle that we’re here at all; that there’s something rather than nothing.  These bodies, these lives, these relationships we have with other beings—all of it is miraculous.  That being pours itself unceasingly into existence to experience all this—as earth, sky, stars, wind, water; as you, as me, as my Uncle James—is miraculous.  And when we can remember this, even in the midst of the most ordinary tasks, then we really live the miracle of our own being, and know how vast we are.  Through all our losses, nothing is lost. Through all our changes, what we are is unharmed, unchanging, eternal.  The great German modernist Rilke captures this sense beautifully in his poem “Autumn”:

We all are falling. Here, this hand falls.

And see—there goes another. It’s in us all.

   And yet there’s One who’s gently holding hands

 let this falling fall and never land.

Whatever life brings, may we not forget those gently holding hands.

Postscript: James Mitchell passed away on Friday, December 27, surrounded by family.  He was 67 years old.

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The Perception of Separation – with Tara Brach

Excerpted from Meditation and Psychotherapy: A Professional Training Course for Integrating Mindfulness into Clinical Practice, Tara Brach offers a nutshell summary for why we suffer: we suffer because we’re identified as a separate self. Noting fear as the “primal mood” of the separate self, Tara addresses the deeply rooted perception that something is missing or is fundamentally wrong.

Learn more about the Meditation and Psychotherapy home study course, and guided meditations from Tara Brach.

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