Neurodharma

It’s really useful to be interested in how you make your own suffering.

For a day, or even just an hour, use only wise speech (that is, well intended, true, beneficial, not harsh, timely, and—if possible—welcome).

Compassion-focused meditation stimulates specific parts of the brain involved with the sense of connection, positive emotion, and reward, including the middle orbitofrontal cortex, behind where your eyebrows meet.

Please go at your own pace and, as a teacher told me many years ago, keep going.

Pick an area of your life such as work, or something more specific such as a project. Ask yourself these questions: Are my efforts aimed at what is truly beneficial for myself and others? Am I pursuing these aims skillfully? Can I be at peace with whatever happens?

As the interpersonal neurobiologist Dan Siegel summarizes it, the mind uses the brain to make the mind.

It’s helpful to extend your exhalations because the “rest-and-digest” parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) handles exhaling while also slowing your heart rate, so longer exhalations are naturally relaxing.

Every so often, slow down to recognize that life in general, and your body and brain in particular, are making this moment’s experience of hearing and seeing, thinking and feeling.

resting in fullness is about developing a bone-deep sense of peacefulness, contentment, and love—no small thing in itself—which