It is no secret that we spend a lot of time working — whether we work-from-home or go to an office. With a majority of time spent at work comes a lot of anxiety, stress, and poor health. People have less time to exercise, eat healthy, or sleep properly. The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated these […]
Why Focus on Workplace Wellness? Read More »
What is happiness? Most of us know when we feel it, but how do we go about defining it? Is it a generalized word to describe a wide range of other positive emotions like joy, contentment, and overall positive well-being? Or is it a philosophy of life and thus our conscious decision to be happy
Defining Happiness in Daily Life Read More »
“Every thought has a propellant, and that propellant is an emotion.” – Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True. Mindfulness meditation helps us delve deeper into the mind and reflect openly and honestly about our thoughts and emotions. It also has tremendous benefits for improving things like attention span, pain tolerance, and emotional reactivity. Mindfulness involves
Mindfulness Meditation – Intention, Attention, Attitude Read More »
We are often our own harshest critics and that can get exhausting. Constantly talking down to ourselves can start to tear us down. Furthermore, we tend to not show ourselves the same compassion that we show others. It is easy to get caught up in the rat race of everyday life but we should remember
Loving-Kindness Meditation: Spreading Positive Energy Read More »
Imagine you are sitting at a desk over your laptop with your neck bent, your shoulders tense, and your back hunched over the screen. Well, you might not even have to imagine this. It could be you at this very moment. Due to the pandemic and social distancing, we have all been spending more time than ever shackled to our desks in a variety of bad postures with more stress than usual. In fact, you might be so focused on the other distractors or stressors in your life that you do not stop to think about how all of this is impacting your body. As humans, our bodily states are very much connected with our emotional states. This can mean that if we are stressed, our body is stressed, but that is not something we pay attention to very often.
Body Scan Meditation: Focusing on You Read More »
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” – Lao Tzu Over 2,500 years ago, the great Lao Tzu encouraged us to take a step back and watch
Meditation as a Vehicle for Change Read More »
Guilt and shame are two of the most powerful emotions in our culture. They can be extremely negatively valenced in the mind and body, and I observe that they affect people’s mental health to a great degree. In this post I will describe why people can tend to get caught up in unhealthy patterns of feeling excessive shame and guilt, and give you some pointers on how you can overcome these patterns.
Overcoming Patterns of Guilt and Shame Read More »
We are all different. No one disputes that. We come in different colors, shapes, and sizes. We express ourselves in different ways as well. Some people love to talk, others enjoy painting, some like to write, and others love to sit alone. One of the biggest things we express as humans are emotions. In our
Different Expressions of Emotion: Neurodiversity Read More »
It is easy to get wrapped up in our identity, and the story of our life. Identity cuts to the core of who we are, so naturally we are extra concerned about it. In reality, our identity is more of a social construct than we think. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a leading psychologist studying emotion, has
Constructing Identity: We Make Ourselves Read More »
In school, we are taught math, history, science, literature, and so on. This is all useful information but when it comes to knowing more about ourselves, our education system is lacking. We are not taught about our emotions. Popular culture and the classical view of emotions would have you believe that emotional intelligence is about
Get Smart: Emotional Intelligence Read More »
