Blog
Mindfulness in Everyday Life
How many times have you gone through your day on automatic pilot - and then wondered where the day went? This happens to everyone in many ways. Maybe you had a conversation with a friend and realized you didn't even know what they had just said to you because your mind was somewhere else. You might have been driving and suddenly noticed that you missed your exit because you had been so caught up in your thoughts.
My favorite meditation book for women. And a meditation exercise to get you out of your head!
Playful and sensual - not words that you'd typically associate with meditation! But Camille Maurine and Lorin Roche, Ph.D. opened my eyes to different, more sensory and flexible ways to meditate and enjoy it. Meditation Secrets for Women is full of accessible meditations and practical ideas about how to incorporate meditation and a meditative state of mind into your daily life.
How does exercise fit with your values? The first step to committing to fitness.
HOW DOES EXERCISE FIT WITH YOUR VALUES?
If you are striving to make exercise and fitness a part of your lifestyle, you will certainly want to read this post about values and exercise! Connecting to your values and how they are intertwined with your fitness routine or goals will make it much easier to stick with fitness and all that fitness means in your life.
Mindfulness of Emotions Meditation
Want a new skill to practice that will help you feel less overwhelmed by your emotions? Try this mindfulness of emotion meditation. It's one way to practice making some room for unwanted emotions. When you allow difficult emotions to be present, they have less control over your behavior. The purpose of this practice is give you space to slow down and observe your inner experience. Emotions can be the scariest when you become focused on running away from them. In this exercise, you have the opportunity to practice doing the opposite. Over time, with continued practice, emotions or fear of emotions no longer have to drive your life!
Grief: An experience more common than you may think.
Usually when we think of grief, we think of death. And we tend to think narrowly and consider grief only in cases when a human that we love dies. But grief can be an experience, a process, that happens in a broad range of circumstances. For example, death or loss of a pet, an identity, a job, an idea or a vision are all experiences where grief may surface. When coming into our own identity and following our values, we may experience grief around how our needs were not met in the past. We may even feel the most grief when life is good and we feel loved - grief over what we missed out on before in our lives.
Are you concerned about your anger? Learn how ACT can help.
Anger is a commonly experienced human emotion that can cause significant suffering and requires compassion on the healing journey. Sometimes anger presents differently for women - it may be internalized more and taken out on oneself. In my work as a psychologist, I’ve found that “ACT on life not on anger: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Guide to Problem Anger” provides a fantastic framework for understanding and healing anger. The book is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which, in a nutshell, guides healing through 1) acceptance of thoughts and feelings, 2) valued life directions, and 3) taking actions based on values.
Women's fertility. It's not just about biology.
Trying to get pregnant can be quite a stressful endeavor. Perhaps just thinking about the "ticking biological clock" raises your anxiety. Or maybe you've actively been taking steps to conceive and finding that the harder you try, the more distressed you feel and the more difficult it is to conceive. Due to advances in society, medicine, and culture, women are waiting longer to start growing their families. In many ways, waiting to start a family can be empowering and beneficial for a woman. However, society has also evolved faster than biology. There are real limitations on women's reproductive capacity that occur over time. But it may not be as black and white as you think...
Mindfully eat chocolate. An exercise in mindful enjoyment.
As a follow-up to a previous post on the basics of mindful eating, I'm sharing a mindful chocolate meditation. Chocolate tends to bring up strong associations and sometimes strong emotions and/or cravings for individuals. What do you think of when you hear the world "chocolate" or are reminded of chocolate? How does it make you feel to eat chocolate? Chocolate may be associated with pleasant events or pleasant feelings. Or it may be associated with guilt, overeating, and overindulging. Perhaps it can bring up both for you.
Review of “Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype”
"Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a book I recommend to women at any point on their healing journey. Visit my full review published on allthingshealing.com, where I discuss how this book has impacted me professionally and personally.
Quitting smoking when you've had a trauma or suffer from PTSD: New research!
My colleagues and I just published a new pilot study on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for Smoking Cessation in Veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). If you've been trying to quit smoking and you experience some symptoms related to trauma, you may be having a more difficult time quitting. In the Veteran population, Veterans with PTSD are 2-3 times more likely to smoke cigarettes or tobacco products than the general population. This tends to be true, as well, for the non-Veteran population among those who have PTSD or some trauma symptoms.
Mind, Body, Spirit. Yes, it's all connected.
Have you ever experienced pain or an illness that just wasn't going away with physical medical care? There are many scenarios I can think of here. Perhaps you have chronic migraines and your prescription medication just isn't working. Maybe you live a busy life and tend to get colds or the flu easily and are unsure why.
The willingness to crave. TED talk by Jonathan Bricker.
I have followed and modeled some of my own work on Jonathan Bricker's research on tobacco cessation. Dr. Bricker recently did a TED talk on "The willingness to crave" which illustrates how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an effective intervention for quitting smoking and tobacco use. This also applies to food cravings! I wanted to share this here, as I think he does an excellent job demonstrating what Acceptance and Commitment Therapy looks like in the context of addictions and cravings.