Active Pause

Francesca Maximé talks about how to find mindful, embodied responses to racialization and racism.

Francesca Marguerite Maximé is a Haitian-Dominican Italian-American embodied antiracism educator, somatic psychotherapist, award-winning poet/author, certified mindfulness meditation teacher. She also hosts the ReRooted podcast on Ram Dass’s Be Here Now Network focusing on neuroscience, trauma healing, social justice, and the creative arts. Francesca integrates secular mindfulness wisdom practices on gratitude, forgiveness and compassion with Buddhist psychology, attachment theory, modern neuroscience, psychoeducation, positive neuroplasticity, Nonviolent Communication, Focusing, narrative expression and somatic “bottom-up” approaches. She’s certified in Relational Life Therapy for couples, Somatic Experiencing, Focusing-Oriented Therapy, Indigenous Focusing-Oriented Therapy, mindfulness, and has also completed Brainspotting 1 & 2 and several Coherence Therapy trainings. She practices privately seeing adults, couples and groups around the country and world as an antiracism educator and somatic coach through her Maximé Clarity, LLC offerings, also working with a group somatic psychotherapy practice in Brooklyn, New York: Brooklyn Somatic Psychotherapy. See website.

Published November 2020.

Shelly Chauhan reflects on her experience dealing with breast cancer: “As a psychologist and coach, being diagnosed with breast cancer has enabled me to experience, first-hand, the transcendental power of emotional regulation, self-compassion, and mindfulness. Without the ability to restore a feeling of inner peace and emotional comfort, or the ability to accept, without anger, what life has brought my way, these past few weeks would have felt infinitely more distressing. I feel so much empathy for those people who are dealing with trauma or difficulty without the healing quality of compassion or the tranquillity and ease of simply being present in the moment.”

Shelly Chauhan MSc CPsychol  : As a London-based chartered psychologist and executive coach, Shelly has coached hundreds of clients on resilience, leadership, stress management, and emotional intelligence. Shelly works in an integrated way, combining deep, intuitive insight into human behavior with sound scientific knowledge. Drawing on years of research into the neuroscience of connection and wellbeing, along with practical, contemplative exercises such as mindfulness and compassion meditation, Shelly helps clients develop their capacity for emotional regulation, resilience, wisdom, wellbeing, and connection. This approach enables transformational changes across a range of areas including managing anger, anxiety, and stress levels, enhancing self-confidence, self-acceptance, decision-making, and perspective, and building meaningful relationships. Shelly’s approach has a positive impact on the parenting style of her clients, something that led her to write a book, Heartfelt Parenting, published by Robinson in 2020. Shelly’s breathing exercises, based on her four-stage method of emotional regulation, are available on SoundCloud. See website.

See also 2nd conversation with Shelly Chauhan.

Published November 2020

The topic of this conversation is different from usual. We discuss how the past of Sing Sing prison gives us perspective on building a fairer society. Brent Glass is the Executive Director of the Sing Sing Prison Museum.

Brent D. Glass is Director Emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the world’s largest museum devoted to telling the story of America. A national leader in the preservation, interpretation, and promotion of history, Glass is a public historian who today provides management and consulting services to museums, historical organizations, and cultural institutions throughout the United States and other countries. His most recent book, 50 Great American Places (Simon and Schuster, 2016) explores the power of essential historic sites and how they illuminate core themes in American history. Since 2011, Glass has served as a senior advisor to more than 70 cultural and educational institutions.  He is currently the Executive Director of the Sing Sing Prison Museum. See website.

Published December 2022

To be effective, therapy has to address the implicit pressures that shaped our clients and continue to shape them. This includes the implicit messages people derived from their upbringing (e.g. parent implicitly encouraging child to act out while explicitly not doing so). This also includes the social milieu which exerts implicit pressure for them to keep conforming.

David M. Allen, MD, is professor emeritus of psychiatry and former director of psychiatric residency training at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, TN. He has carried out research on personality disorders, is a psychotherapy theorist, and is the former associate editor of the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. He is the author of “Coping with Critical, Demanding, and Dysfunctional Parents: Powerful Strategies to Help Adult Children Maintain Boundaries and Stay Sane“, “How Dysfunctional Families Spur Mental Disorders” and other books, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Published October 2020.

Jan Winhall and Serge Prengel talk about making meaning. Or, rather, feeling it, sensing into it.

Jan Winhall, M.S.W., R.S.W., F.O.T., is a psychotherapist in Private Practice and Director of Focusing On Borden, a centre for teaching Focusing and Focusing Oriented Therapy. Jan is the author of “Addiction From The Bottom Up: A Felt Sense Polyvagal Model To Treat Addiction” to be published by Routledge in June 2021. Jan teaches internationally and is a lecturer in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. See website. See website.

Published October 2020.

Richard Gillett is the author of It’s A Freakin Mess: How to thrive in divisive times. Here, we talk about how personal and social divisiveness manifests and its huge costs to our physical and mental well-being. We talk about how to change the pain of polarization, and how we feel so much better and become so much more effective when we do so.

Physician, psychiatrist, keynote speaker, and author Richard Gillett received his medical degree from Cambridge University, England, and is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. His work is based on a lifelong personal and professional quest—what does it take for a human being to lead the best possible life, even if circumstances are rough? This quest took him all over the world—he has lived on four continents—and led him to settle in New York State in 1991, where he was granted residency as a “professional of extraordinary ability” before he naturalized as a U.S. citizen. He came to the understanding that much of our suffering is created by a common habit—divisiveness—a mindset that is relatively easy for us to change once we see how we’re doing it. He wrote the book: “It’s A Freakin’ Mess: How to thrive in divisive times.” See website.

Published October 2020. See also:

How to depolarize political conversations

Political conversations tend to bring out activation and polarization. This is not a reason to avoid them. To avoid falling into the pitfalls of polarization, use a mindful approach that fosters curiosity. Instead of defending a position, make it your goal to know more about each other through the discussion. This talk describes a format that helps you make this a more satisfying experience:

* Explicitly commit to building safety and trust

* Put the issue into a personal context

* Ask a meaningful question

* Discuss lessons learned

See related article on Medium: How to depolarize political conversations.

This approach was inspired by the structured process developed by Kirk Schneider, President of the Existential Humanist Institute, author of “The Depolarization of America.”

Published September 2020. See also related article: Understanding social myth: Why it’s so hard to find common ground & how to do it. 

The other day, I saw a poster. It’s the iconic picture of Rambo with bulging muscles and a bazooka. But, instead of the head of Sylvester Stallone, it has the head of Donald Trump. The caption goes, “No Man. No Woman. No Commie Can Stump Him.”

My first reaction was to think of it as satire, making fun of Trump’s exaggerated opinion of himself. But, no, given the context, this was meant as a prideful statement by one of his followers.

Do his followers not know that he is obese and averse to exercise? Is it possible that they don’t know that he avoided the draft? How could they believe in something that is so far from the truth?

Pausing for inner experience

I pause a moment as I ponder these questions. I pay attention to my inner experience. I notice that what this brings up for me is some mixture of outrage and smugness. Outrage: How dare they represent something that is so far from the truth? Smugness: the sense that I am more in touch with reality than these people.

I know that, if I stay with my sense of outrage and smugness, all I do is reinforce my preconceptions. So I try, for a moment, to shift into a different perspective. I tap into a sense of curiosity about what this picture might mean to the people who proudly display it. Does one need to take it as literally true to be inspired by it?

Probably not. We, human beings, have the ability to use symbolic thinking. We use metaphors. Sometimes, the metaphors we choose are very carefully related to the topic. Occasionally, we voluntarily choose metaphors that present a stark contrast to highlight an aspect that is especially important to us. For instance, I remember how Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa liked to use the metaphor of warriors to reflect the quality of courage. Mindfulness practitioners are certainly not warriors in the typical sense of the term. They are not belligerent, far from that. The warrior metaphor serves to draw attention to their hero quality.

But what if the metaphor is so over the top that it loses any power? When Vladimir Putin displays pictures of himself bare-chested, it is consistent with his background as a sportsman, and a judo practitioner. But what could the man who avoided the draft because of bone spurs possibly have to do with a Rambo-like figure?

Calvin & Hobbes

To better understand this, I find it helpful to think of one of my favorite comic strips, Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin is a little boy, and Hobbes is his tiger. Clearly, for Calvin’s parents and all the other characters in this strip, this is what Hobbes is: a stuffed animal, a toy. But, whenever Calvin interacts with him, Hobbes is represented as fully alive. A magnificent, powerful tiger. More than that, a tiger who is also able to speak and play with Calvin.

You could say that all of the stories take place in Calvin’s imagination. So what? Saying that misses out on what gives these stories their charm. They don’t just talk about the fantasy world of the kid. They draw us into it. To enjoy the story, you suspend disbelief that this is a stuffed animal. You see and experience Hobbes as a full-fledged character, not a toy but an animal. Actually, an animal who is also a person. But also a stuffed toy, because the story works on many levels. You have to follow it on all the levels as it unfolds.

The story that unfolds does not have an “as if” quality. It would be boring if it were possible to reduce it to what’s happening in Calvin’s imagination. What makes it captivating is that it is also happening in our imaginations. The power of good stories is that they draw us into the w...

The other day, I saw a poster. It’s the iconic picture of Rambo with bulging muscles and a bazooka. But, instead of the head of Sylvester Stallone, it has the head of Donald Trump. The caption goes, “Trump. No Man. No Woman. No Commie Can Stump Him.”

My first reaction was to think of it as satire, making fun of Trump’s exaggerated opinion of himself. But, no, given the context, this was meant as a prideful statement by one of his followers.

Do his followers not know that he is obese and averse to exercise? Is it possible that they don’t know that he avoided the draft? How could they believe in something that is so far from the truth?

Pausing for inner experience

I pause a moment as I’m pondering these questions. I pay attention to my inner experience. I notice that what this brings up for me is some mixture of outrage and smugness. Outrage: how dare they represent something that is so far from the truth? Smugness: the sense that I am more in touch with reality than these people.

I know that, if I stay with my sense of outrage and smugness, all I do is reinforce my preconceptions. So I try, for a moment, to shift into a different perspective. I tap into a sense of curiosity about what this picture might mean to the people who proudly display it. Does one need to take it as literally true to be inspired by it?

Probably not. We, human beings, have the ability to use symbolic thinking. We use metaphors. Sometimes, the metaphors we choose are very carefully related to the topic. Occasionally, we voluntarily choose metaphors that present a stark contrast to highlight an aspect that is especially important to us. For instance, I remember how Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa liked to use the metaphor of warriors to reflect the quality of courage. Mindfulness practitioners are certainly not warriors in the typical sense of the term. They are not belligerent, far from that. The warrior metaphor serves to draw attention to their hero quality.

But what if the metaphor is so over the top that it loses any power? When Vladimir Putin displays pictures of himself bare-chested, it is consistent with his background as a sportsman, a judo practitioner. But what could the man who avoided the draft because of bone spurs possibly have to do with a Rambo-like figure?

Calvin & Hobbes

To better understand this, I find it helpful to think of one of my favorite comic strips, Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin is a little boy, and Hobbes is his tiger. Clearly, for Calvin’s parents and all the other characters in this strip, this is what Hobbes is: a stuffed animal, a toy. But, whenever Calvin interacts with him, Hobbes is represented as fully alive. A magnificent, powerful tiger. More than that, a tiger who is also able to speak and play with Calvin.

You could say that all of the stories take place in Calvin’s imagination. So what? Saying that misses out on what gives these stories their charm. They don’t just talk about the fantasy world of the kid. They draw us into it. To enjoy the story, you suspend disbelief that this is a stuffed animal. You see and experience Hobbes as a full-fledged character, not a toy but an animal. Actually, an animal who is also a person. But also a stuffed toy, because the story works on many levels. You have to follow it on all the levels as it unfolds.

The story that unfolds does not have an “as if” quality. It would be boring if it were possible to reduce it to what’s happening in Calvin’s imagination. What makes it captivating is that it is also happening in our imaginations. The power of good stories is that they draw us into the world of fantasy. What makes a story enjoyable is not how closely it hews to literal truth. It is how it captures something compelling that literal truth cannot capture as well. It is akin to how a simple drawing can capture a sense of a p...

 

See the audio recording below the text.

Today, I am going to describe to you a one-minute practice. Now, when I say one minute, it could be 50 seconds or five minutes. We’re not timing it.

You sit on a bench or a chair, with your feet touching the ground. If you are on a chair, your back is not touching the back of the chair.

Your hands are in front of you.  You touch the fingers to each other so that each finger touches the corresponding fingers on the other hand. You rest your arms on your lap with the fingers facing forward and the thumbs facing up. You close your eyes.

As you gently breathe, you feel the fingers touching each other with gentle pressure. As you feel this gentle pressure, you feel the elbows moving away from each other. You keep gently breathing as you do this.  You notice that, as you gently push the fingers together and move the elbows away from each other, your spine will probably tend to gently straighten up. To gently elongate.

And you may also notice that your shoulders might tend to open up and gently make more room in your chest. As you stay with this, you see the quality of allowing as opposed to forcing.

When it feels right, you stop.

What do you notice?

Often, the kinds of things you notice as you’re doing this, or afterward, are very subtle.

And that’s what a pause does. It’s a slowing down and getting into a different rhythm, which includes noticing things that we would not necessarily see when we’re not in a pause mode.

But we’re also talking about noticing. That quality, together with the allowing, is what makes the pause active. It’s not just an interruption. It’s an active pause.

You can do it once a day. You can do it many times throughout the day. I’m inviting you to play with it, with an attitude of curiosity. And notice what happens, moment by moment, and over time, as you experiment with this practice.

Inspired by Merete Holm Brantbjerg. See other one-minute mindfulness exercises.

Published August 2020.