Active Pause

Merete Holm Brantbjerg talks about the deeply satisfying bodily experience of finding what sustains her.

Merete Holm Brantbjerg developed Relational Trauma Therapy, a psychomotor and systems-oriented approach. She is an international trainer, group leader, and therapist based in Denmark. See her website.

See other conversation with Merete Holm Brantbjerg.

Published March 2021.

Susan Rudnick talks about mindfulness within the broader context of Buddhism and the Zen tradition.

Susan Rudnick LCSW is a Focusing-oriented therapist in private practice in Westchester NY. She has a long-term practice in Zen Buddhism, and recently has been integrating this consciousness with her roots in Judaism. In her seventies, she wrote and published the memoir Edna’s Gift: How My Broken Sister Taught Me To Be Whole. It is the story of how her differently-abled sister was her life’s greatest teacher. As well she is a published haiku poet, one of which appears in the book New York City Haiku, from the Readers of the New York Times. See her website.

Published March 2021.

Evelyn Fendler-Lee and Serge Prengel have been exploring creative ways to think about thinking in such a way that it opens up new horizons. This process involves sharing some of what comes up as we proceed. We feel that the sharing broadens our exploration as it stimulates further thoughts in you. 

For a transcript, see my article in Medium: Thinking As Movement

Dr. Evelyn Fendler-Lee is an organizational psychologist and person-centered counselor. She developed the online course: “Playfully Engaging Uncertainty to Create Something Original.”  See website. 

Serge Prengel is the editor of Active Pause.

Published January 2021

Shelly Chauhan continues to reflect on her experience dealing with breast cancer. Our first conversation was after she had had her diagnosis. This second conversation takes place after the surgery and the first round of chemotherapy. Among other things, she talks about her experiences with pain.

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.

Published January 2021

Gregory Kramer talks about integrating Buddhist wisdom with our everyday life.

Gregory Kramer teaches, writes, and is the founding teacher of the Insight Dialogue Community. His primary focuses are sharing a relational understanding of the Dhamma and teaching Insight Dialogue, an interpersonal form of Buddhist insight meditation. He has been teaching worldwide since 1980.

In his new book A Whole-Life Path, Gregory invites us to see the noise, complexity, and challenges of today’s world as doorways to fully embodied Dhamma wisdom. Drawing on decades of meditation, study, and teaching, he explores the essence of each factor of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. He looks at modern life and offers to put all the Buddha’s teachings into practice—individually, relationally, and socially. More than 50 experiential practices allow us to test his guidance—right here, right now. See website.

Published December 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

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

How to overcome your biases by finding common ground

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 youmake 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

You can download a printable PDF transcript of this article. 

Reprint of the 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. 

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.