Neurodharma

Please consider these questions: What do you hope to heal in yourself? What would you like to let go of? What do you hope to grow in yourself? You can also practice for the sake of others as well as yourself. Holding them in your heart as you practice can feel really sweet. How might your own healing and growth be a gift to those with whom you live

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.

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

The five types of people are benefactor, friend, neutral person, oneself, and someone who is challenging for you.

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.

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

The “mind,” as I mean it in this book, consists of the experiences and information that are represented by a nervous system.

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

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?