Active Pause

There are many ways to meditate. One of them is to think of meditation as an active pause. That is, a moment when we are not doing something in the conventional sense of doing something, but we are not passive either.

Our intention is to be mindfully aware of our experience, moment by moment. Specifically, our bodily experience, such as our breathing and our posture. It does not mean that there are no thoughts, feelings, or other distractions. Of course, there are plenty of those. It simply means that we use meditation time to practice being more in a sensing mode, i.e., directing our attention to sensations as opposed to thoughts. The thoughts, feelings and other distractions keep occurring, but we remember to keep bringing our attention back to sensing.

So, what is it that we sense? Generally, we notice what calls for our attention. That is, areas where we experience some sort of discomfort or tension. When we only pay attention to the squeeky wheel of experience, we miss out on a big part of our inner experience, the parts of our body that respond to stress by shutting down or collapsing.

A lot opens up when we start bringing our awareness to these parts. I invited Merete Holm Brantbjerg to talk about why it is important to pay attention to the parts of us that are silent and invisible, and how to do it.

Merete developed Relational Trauma Therapy, a psychomotor and systems-oriented approach specialized in including the invisible parts of us. She is an international trainer, group leader, and therapist based in Denmark. See her website and our other conversations .

You will get the most out of this 20-minute video if you actively participate, following Merete’s instructions, the way you would if you were listening to the presentation live.

Belo, you will find a brief recap of the video’s ideas, followed by an edited transcript of the video.

Brief recap

As you sit in your chair, you are sensing the contact of your feet on the ground and your sitting bones in your chair. Notice how your breating responds to your feeling more grounded.

Experiment with ways to bring energy to your collapsed parts:

* Sense both of your feet and then make a tiny little push with them, a tiny little push into the ground.

* Try the same thing with just the outside of your feet..

* And try it with just the inside of your feet.

* Put your palms together. Then, push your hands gently into each other.

* Instead ot the palms meeting, let the fingertips of each hand press gently against each oher.

* Let your elbows find the back of the chair and make q tiny little push.

* Shape your hands into hooks and pull with your fingers in each direction.

In everything that you do, experiment with dosage. Try gently, and even more gently.

Edited transcript of Merete’s talk

I have worked with trauma therapy for many years. That’s not our context today. When you work with trauma, you notice that some things are gone. They’re gone from memory. They’re gone from sensory awareness.

In this conversation, photographer Pablo Márquez talks about his meditative approach to photography. He describes how his art emerges from his being present. I hope this will inspire you to experiment with photography as a mindful practice.

Pablo Márquez is a Mexican photographer whose work has been exhibited internationally. His photography reflects his committed to the human spirit in connection with Nature. See website.

In this conversation, we talk about a gentle, inspiring approach to meditation practice and self-discovery.

Linda Modaro and Nelly Kaufer are the authors of: Reflective Meditation: Cultivating Kindness and Curiosity in the Buddha’s Company.

Linda Modaro is spiritual director and lead teacher of Sati Sangha, an online meditation community. She also mentors teachers and offers ethical reflecting for Buddhist teachers. Formerly an Acupuncturist and master of Qi Gong, Linda created a bestselling four-part Qi Gong video series, Discovering Chi (1995).

Nelly Kaufer is founder and lead teacher at Pine Street Sangha, a meditation center in Portland, Oregon. A psychotherapist in private practice, she integrates Buddhist psychology into her clinical orientation as well as in continuing education workshops for mental health professionals. Nelly has co-authored several books, including A Woman’s Guide to Spiritual Renewal (Harper, 1994).

See their website.

In conversation with Raja Selvam, we explore the practice of developing the capacity for emotions by making more room for them in the body.

Dr. Raja Selvam, PhD, who has taught in over twenty five  countries on six continents, is a licensed clinical psychologist from California, a senior trainer in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE) professional trauma training programs, and the developer of Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP), a science-backed, body-based, and emotion-focused complementary approach designed to reduce treatment times and improve diverse outcomes in all therapy modalities including existing body psychotherapy approaches. He is the author of the best-selling book The Practice of embodying emotions: A Guide for improving cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes.

His work is informed by older body psychotherapy systems (Reichian Therapy, Bioenergetic Analysis), newer body psychotherapy systems (Bodynamic Analysis, Somatic Experiencing), and bodywork systems (Postural Integration, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy). It is also inspired by Jungian and archetypal psychologies, Kleinian and intersubjective schools of psychoanalysis, affective neuroscience, quantum physics, yoga, Polarity Therapy, and Advaita Vedanta (spiritual psychology from India). See: www.integralsomaticpsychology.com. 

In this conversation with Seth Zuihō Segall about his new book, The House We Live In: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism, Seth talks about his journey, making sense of life through the practice of psychology, Buddhism, and philosophy. We talk about values, and the importance of pluralism in modern liberal democratic societies.

Seth Zuihō Segall, Ph.D. is a Zen Buddhist priest at Pamsula Zen of Westchester and a guest teacher at the New York Insight Meditation Center. He was formerly Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology at the Yale University School of Medicine, and Director of Psychology at Waterbury Hospital.

Seth’s most recent book is The House We Live in: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism (2023). He is also the author of Encountering Buddhism: Western Psychology and Buddhist Teachings (2003), Buddhism and Human Flourishing: A Modern Western Perspective (2020), Living Zen: A Practical Guide to a Peaceful, Positive, and Balanced Life (2020), and chapters in The Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation (2022) and the Handbook of Positive Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality (2022). He is a contributing editor for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, a review editor for The Humanistic Psychologist, and the science writer for the Mindfulness Research Monthly.

See also a one-minute excerpt of this conversation as “the mindful practice of pluralism.”

See also other conversation with Seth Zuihō Segall.

Maia Szalavitz blends personal experience and years of investigative research into an inspiring perspective on addiction. She eloquently makes the case that addicted people need to be understood on their own terms, instead of being further marginalized by constructs that reflect society’s biases.

Maia Szalavitz is the author, most recently, of Undoing Drugs:  The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction, which is the first history of the movement aimed at focusing drug policy on minimizing harms, not highs.

Her previous New York Times bestseller, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction wove together neuroscience and social science with her personal experience of heroin addiction.  It won the 2018 media award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and has written for numerous other publications including TIME, Wired, Elle, the National, and Scientific American.

The Proactive Twelve Steps: A Mindful Program For Lasting Change

We do our best to avoid anxiety, and in so doing, risk missing out on the best of the depth and mystery of existence. We also risk compounding the very anxiety we hoped to avoid and becoming destructive as a result. This conversation with Kirk J. Schneider, Ph.D., touches on a topic of great relevance to us as therapists, therapy clients, and human beings: Anxiety can be life-enhancing; how can we make it so? 

Kirk J. Schneider, Ph.D., is the author of the new book “Life-Enhancing Anxiety: Key to a Sane World.” He is a licensed psychologist and leading spokesperson for contemporary existential-humanistic psychology. Dr. Schneider is the current president of the Existential-Humanistic Institute (EHI), Council Member of the American Psychological Association (APA), past president (2015-2016) of the Society for Humanistic Psychology (Division 32) of the APA, recent past editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology (2005-2012), and adjunct faculty member at Saybrook University and Teachers College, Columbia University. A Fellow of the APA, Dr. Schneider has published over 200 articles, interviews and chapters. His other books include The Spirituality of Awe, The Polarized Mind, The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology, Existential-Humanistic therapy, Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy, and the Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy. His work has been featured in Scientific American, the New York Times, Psychology Today and many other publications. See his website.

How does the Polyvagal Theory affect our understanding of mindfulness? Blake O’Connor interviews Serge Prengel. This conversation expands on the article on Polyvagal-informed mindfulness.

Serge Prengel is a therapist, a co-founder of the Integrative Focusing Therapy training program, and the editor of Active Pause.

Blake O’Connor is the Education Director of the Polyvagal Institute.

Published February 2023

In this conversation, we talk about freeing meditation from the pressures of what we believe it should be and welcoming every aspect of our inner experience.

Dr. Elizabeth English began meditating as a student in 1983. Three decades later, she was appointed as Cambridge University’s first ever Mindfulness Practitioner. Her courses are the subject of research published in The Lancet showing significant benefit to students, and are now also offered more widely online. Elizabeth draws on four decades of personal meditation practice and her ordination within a Western Buddhist tradition, as well as her doctoral research at Oxford, where she studied Buddhist meditation texts. She is also a certified teacher of Focusing, Somatic Experiencing, and Nonviolent Communication. She spends much of her time singing and writing, both poetry and prose. Her first ‘gentle guide’ to meditation was published this year: Journeys to the Deep: A Gentle Guide to Mindfulness Meditation. She lives in Cambridge with her cocker spaniel, Cherub. For more information on her courses and her book, see her website.

Published July 2022.

Antonio Damasio described Nora Arikha as “a poet and a painter with the soul of a scientist.” Our conversation is informed by psychology and neuroscience. It is grounded in the firm intention to pay attention to the embodied quality of our experience and the context in which it emerges.

Noga Arikha is a philosopher and historian of ideas. Her The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind, was published by Basic Books (UK & US) in Spring 2022. Neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese called this book “a moving journey to the roots of the self, which uniquely combines the author’s deep knowledge of its neuropsychological foundations with a touching humanistic sensibility.” She is also the author of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours (2007). She is an associate fellow of the Warburg Institute and an honorary fellow of the Center for the Politics of Feelings, London, and a research associate at the Institut Jean Nicod, Paris. She is currently based in Florence, Italy. See website.

Published July 2022