In my own experience with meditation, I’ve often wondered about the difference between reading a thoughtful analysis or set of instructions, listening to an inspiring teacher, and sitting on the cushion to practice. These varied activities represent different ways of integrating information into our minds and bodies—in short, different ways of learning. Is one mode …
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Working with Fears of Compassion
Our capacity to extend compassion is closely connected to our ability to receive compassion. To put it another way, our ability to “see others” is intimately connected to our ability to “be seen.” These capacities can be impeded or obstructed by fears of being vulnerable, strong feelings of self-loathing or dislike, and also by fears …
Fostering Communities of Care: Toward an Ecological Approach to the Development and Implementation of Contemplative-Based Programs
Fostering compassion and trust among individuals and groups is key to the success and sustainability of communities of care. A number of mindfulness and compassion-based contemplative interventions offer methods for enhancing connection, empathy, and care, yet these approaches too often focus on the development of intra rather than interpersonal skills. This is due in part …
Basic Benefactor Practice: A Relational Contemplation for Deepening in Trust
In many compassion meditations, the meditator focuses on growing and extending love and compassion for others. In Benefactor Practice, a contemplative application adapted from an ancient form of Tibetan devotional practice by John Makransky, we visualize receiving love and acceptance from a trusted other. Using memories from our real life, we relive “benefactor moments,” times …
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Call to Care: Vietnam
Call to Care: Bhutan
Concurrent Session 5 – First Findings from the ReSource Project: Training Mind and Heart
The ReSource Project is a large-scale, multimethod, longitudinal study investigating the effects of different mental training practices on subjective experience, behavior, brain, and physiology. Over nine months, 180 participants underwent a structured curriculum with three separate modules training: (1) attention and interoceptive awareness; (2) loving kindness and prosocial motivation; and (3) cognitive perspective taking and …
Concurrent Session 5 – Promoting Mindful Practice for Health Care Professionals: Quality of Care, Quality of Caring and Resilience
Physicians are trained with the explicit mandate of addressing suffering with compassion, yet mainstream medical training and the medical literature are largely silent about how to accomplish this. Through contemplative practice, written and oral narratives, deep listening, appreciative inquiry, and dialogue, our mindful practice programs were designed to enhance clinicians’ self-awareness, self-monitoring, and self-regulation during …
Concurrent Session 4 – Challenges in Teaching Secular Compassion Cultivation
Two important secular compassion training programs have been developedat Stanford and Emory Universities. Each of these programs derives largely from the mind-training tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. It is widely assumed that compassion is a good thing and that, by extension, such programs are therefore good. However, much more systematic attention needs to be directed towards …
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Concurrent Session 4 – Mindfully Walking the Path of Creating Conditions for Compassion to Flourish in Health and Human Service Organizations
The purpose of this interactive workshop is to introduce a contemporary contemplative pathway designed as an initial step to organizational change and development. In an effort to begin to re-found spirituality as a source of health and healing intrapersonally, interpersonally, and organizationally, a documentary film was created as a catalyst to courageous conversations about compassion. …
