Part 2: From Fight-Flight-Freeze to Attend-Befriend
How do we reconcile conflict when caught in reactivity sourced in trauma or deep wounding? This talk looks at the need for a larger field of belonging – a trusted other person or safe group – to engender the presence and compassion that enables us to relax and reconnect with our own wholeness and with others.
Guided Meditation: Listening to and Feeling the Moment
Awakening Through Conflict
As long as we are identified as separate selves, we will inevitably experience conflict with others. If we learn to release blame and deepen attention to our embodied experience, conflict can become a portal for more loving, alive relationships and awakening into the fullness of our being.
Blog: Reaching Out For Compassion
At a weekend workshop I led, one of the participants, Marian, shared her story about the shame and guilt that had tortured her. Marian’s daughter, Christy, in recovery for alcoholism, had asked her mother to join her in therapy. As their sessions unfolded, Christy...Guided Meditation: Breath as Homebase
RAIN – Cultivating a Mindful Awareness
The acronym RAIN is a powerful tool for interrupting habitual patterns of emotional reactivity and discovering the freedom of an awake, compassionate presence. This talk explores the components of RAIN, how it works, what makes it transformational and typical...Guided Meditation: Living Presence
Loving and Losing
The way that we relate to impermanence and loss shapes our capacity to live and love fully. This talk, drawing on Mary Oliver’s poem “In Blackwater Woods,” explores three elements in our response to this fleeting, precious life that are integral to our healing and freedom.
Guided Meditation: Connecting with Aliveness and Openness
Stress and Our Evolving Consciousness
The universal experience of stress (in Buddhism, called dukkha) is a message that we are not realizing, trusting and living from our true nature. Our habitual reactions to stress – grasping, aversion, resistance – deepen emotional pain and lock us in a...
Blog: Decide On Love
Jeff was convinced he’d fallen out of love with his wife, Arlene, and that nothing could salvage their twenty-six-year marriage. He wanted relief from the oppressiveness of feeling continually judged and found wanting. Arlene, for her part, was hurt and angry because...Guided Meditation: Relaxing into Presence
Planting Ourselves in the Universe
When we are lost in the trance of thinking, we disconnect from the aliveness, awareness and love that is our source. Mindfulness, a key capacity of our evolving consciousness, awakens us from an identification with thinking and enables us to inhabit a wider realm of Being. This talk explores the confines of conceptual mind and the simple yet powerful practices that cultivate mindful awareness.