Russell Kolts Compassion Focused Therapy Interview
This is a summary (not a full transcript) of the interview with author and professor Russell Kolts
Russell began with an intense study of Buddhism; reading, meditation, and doing retreats after three years, he realized that a compassionate, mindfulness practice had been life changing.
He says that it was the birth of his child about how he was motivated to start a a meditation mindfulness practice after his son was born. He taught compassionate therapy, and since he struggled with negative emotions in his own life such as anger, and irritability. He observed himself not following his own advice. So he deepened his practice. He realized, “if you want your child to become a good parent, become the person you want your child to be”. What message do your children get from their parents? So he started doing meditation practices, and learning from Buddhist teachers like the Dalai Lama.
He was then later also more able to bring what he learned in his meditation practice and into his psychotherapy work work, by focusing on, “Compassion Focused Therapy”. He then had a scientific scaffolding for working with the mind.
Some examples of practices that would work for him in the moment during.
Mindfulness meditation helps notice what is moving in the mind, such as anger and irritation. This practice helped him recognize it earlier, so just by naming the emotion, it reduces it’s hold on the person.
Meditation and cultivation of compassion have gradually transformed his experience so that the destructive emotions came up less, due to ongoing work with with deep awareness.
Switching out from “that’s a bad emotion” and judgments, looking more deeply, what’s going on here, and other habitual responses.
Working with close family members shows that it is not easy to not be reactive.
Insight is hugely trans-formative
From a scientific perspective, those destructive threat emotions such as anger and fear where designed by evolution, so we can make a rapid response.
The compassion work is by seeing how the threatening person also wants to be happy and maybe our goals conflict at that moment. And at that moment. Shifting from judging and labeling to understanding.
Things don’t always go your way. It takes practice to react with compassion and understanding.
He brings mindfulness and compassion into his classes. He has a course on Compassion Focused Therapy, which involves compassion meditation and mindfulness meditation. Students are meditating in the class, because there is just no other way to learn about it.
He sees how it affects the classroom, students feel safer, they can think better, and more reflectively, and they can have dialogue, since there is a container there. It helps the students with difficult course subjects, helps them to center themselves. They don’t necessarily struggle with the problem, but more with the idea, a self-limiting belief. “There’s something wrong with me” is the most threatening idea, very distracting. Meditation helps you recognize these experiences that come and go in the mind, and not necessarily see them as real or true. Notice them, and let them go.
Slowing down their breathing helps the students. They’re not just techniques on the pillow, but at some point it needs to come off the meditation cushion. At some point it has to come into our lives, and begin to transform. It begins to happen behaviorally, and neurologically.
Other Benefits of meditation practices
Russell thinks that because the world moves so quickly, we’re constantly connected. When he was growing up there were just 4 TV channels, now hundreds, tweeting etc, is all wonderful and convenient. But we’re training our brains and minds to expect a certain high level of stimulation. And we’re not designed to function like this all the time. Just sitting and breathing is hard enough! We’ve trained our brains to expect this level of stimulation. To just sit and do only one thing. If you can’t even sit for 5 minutes, its a sign to learn to slow down and be here now, with full focus of one’s mind. And maybe that’s reading, listening, and be fully present is tremendously powerful. If you want to be really good at something, you can’t be dividing your attention. It’s too stressful to maintain that kind of fragmented attention.
We just need to learn to slow down. He orients students on the front end that this is going to be uncomfortable at first to meditate. Key is to start very small, may start with a minute or two minutes, and go up from there. One of the biggest impediments is expectations. Folks don’t realize that it is actually very difficult. So they get frustrated with themselves, and they give up. In the West particularly we move into this self-criticism.
1. One thing we’re doing is to stabilize our attention
2. Training ourselves to see mental experiences and feelings as mental events, and not necessarily the stuff of reality
3. Training ourselves to notice the movement in the mind. Mentions giving a ticker for a finger biter, which helps train themselves to notice when they start doing the biting. Same with mindfulness. From this perspective the distractions are not a problem at all. These are opportunities to notice movement in the mind.
Russell’s focus right now is Compassion Focused Therapy to help people with emotions like anger. He’s currently working on “CFT made simple”, to help clinicians help their clients. They’re doing more research to demonstrate it’s effectiveness. It really helps that the science is beginning to be there, they now have data to demonstrate it.
He’s starting to see increasing interest in institutions. Lots of misconceptions still about compassion, it’s not being “sweet and nice all the time”.
Being sensitive to suffering and help out in an enduring way. It is still hard to pursue compassionate agendas in politics, because the money is not yet going there. We can have both, compassion and a good bottom line.
If you’re interacting with compassion and mindfulness, you can spread that pro-social stuff.
Russell Kolts one tip for dealing with an oncoming destructive emotion.
When we notice, “I’m getting angry, anxious, etc”. Take 30 seconds to a minute. Slowing down the in-breath (in CFT it is called “soothing rhythm breathing”) and the out-breath. And after that ask yourself the question, “what would be most helpful in this situation”? What would I want them to understand? Slowing down the breaths doesn’t make the problem go away, it just softens, gives “that thread stuff”, gives it some space.
Mary Webster Vipassana Meditation Teacher Interview
This is a summary of the interview with Vipassana teacher and practitioner Mary Webster
Mary Webster talks about growing up as an introspective and day dreaming child. Later in life she picked a career in mental health nursing. She noticed her mind was in an either/or right/wrong mind set. And this black/white thinking bothered her, and h ow it affected her and raising kids. This is how she got into meditation, went into her first 3 day meditation retreat in 1995.
She joined a Vipassana tradition, called re-collective awareness, which is a form of Vipassana meditation. It is based on the 4 foundations of mindfulness. She talks about how it is an unstructured tradition, so a lot of thoughts come in. But then they look at it afterwards to examine conditioning. They look at the way the mind works in terms of habitual thinking, making assumptions, like “this or that” thinking.
She’s learned to be more open and nuanced in her thinking, and is better able to examine her thinking habit patterns.
She learned that it was a beautiful how not being so sure of one’s position allows you to open up and hear other people’s thinking. Which helps tremendously when communicating and dialog with others, such as your kids. It allows for a different relationship to develop.
It’s really an exploration what is going on in our minds.
Mary talks about some of the personal benefits of her meditation. For example being a lot less self-critical. Letting go of perfectionism, she could see how this is just a construction, this illusory goal of perfection. She could see through the delusion, that there is no such thing or state of perfection.
Her meditation practice opened her up to her humanness and her own suffering, which is part of being human. We each have our own, and meditation practice helps us deal and incorporate. She felt OK and learned compassion for herself to be a human being. Which in turn allowed her to be more compassion for those around her, to be more friendly, and more open to ideas.
She then talks about her role as teacher, and what she sees her students struggle. But she also sees how we all suffer in a similar way.
“Holding on to something so tightly, a sense of our-self, a sense of how things are supposed to be. That we somehow solidify our experience, and don’t allow for an exploration of the movement that is around that solidity. We tend to hold fast in a certain way.” (11 min)
The work with students is around what is held solid? So then they explore what the mind was doing with the student. What was exactly happening? A lot of this work is breaking down words. Like breaking down the word “perfect”. How does this example of a word show up in one’s life, how does it “hook” you. Breaking down the experience in less defined way, and more full of the experience, not to shortcut our life so much.
She talks about the stories, the narratives, we have made up about our lives (or life-sentences we give ourselves).
She says Buddhism is one huge investigation, a way of examining our lives. It calls into question everything. Meditation allows you to examine life at a gentler pace.
She talks about how our set ways we have, set us apart. This sense of separateness is setting up ourselves into a position, so everything becomes positional. In the flowing river of life, that would be the log that gets stuck in the middle, and then everything has to adjust around it. She talks about shifting that, working with the knowledge of conditionality, so we can take up and promote more wholesome conditions.
She also asks what conditions help us, what conditions do we put in our lives? What conditions help us continue our practice? Watching what we put into our minds and then noticing how this influences and affects us afterwards.
She talks about the importance of taking some time out every day for self-reflection and meditation. Retreats are even better.
What is production, is it only “work put out”? Or is it more than that? We get caught in thinking, “if I’m not producing something that shows, then it’s not worthwhile.” She uses the example of Einstein taking naps and end up more productive.
Mary Webster’s tips for starting a home meditation practice.
Being gentle with yourself
Trying various times to practice
Try to meditate like when most upset.
Read a little bit of Dharma (wisdom) every day if possible, just let the words enter in even if you don’t necessarily understand.
“Conditions are the companions you have along the way”
She talks about how it helps to discuss with fellow practitioners, to have a supportive group if possible.
If you can’t find companions, “be your own companion”, do journaling after your meditation, write down what you can remember, which also helps your memory. So we can be our own friend. The journals can also be shared with a teacher through phone, skype or other means online these days.
Hal Rowe Student of Zen Buddhism Meditation Interview
(Pictured above with his partner Debbie)
Hal Rowe is currently a student of Zen Buddhism. He serves environmental causes, loves the outdoors, poetry, and describes his path into a Zen practice through reading Alan Watts as a late teen.
He was influenced by Daoism and its appreciation of nature, Chinese philosophy, Tibetan Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism.
In this interview, Hal talks about how he started meditating, then got more consistent over time. He describes how he gets inspired.
He describes how his practice and understanding of being interconnected influences and informs how he consumes, how he deals with cravings, greed, and anger.
Hal then reads a few poems from the poet Cold Mountain and Matsu.
From Record of Matsu
If one wants to know the way directly:
Ordinary mind is the way,
Everything is the way
Mind – ground is the Dharma-gate
Mind-ground is the inexhaustible lamp.
He also talks about his environmental activism, and the interesting way he brought together and highlights how the two sides, of environmentalists and loggers have a lot in common.
Eala Ruby Heart Sitting and Walking Meditation Practitioner Interview
Eala has immersed herself in the healing arts since 1987, taking it up professionally in 1991 and has been a student and daily practitioner of meditation and what she calls, “human soul work” since 1992. In addition to her energy intuitive gifts she is also trained and certified in Massage and Bodywork, Acupressure, Reiki and Hypnotherapy. She calls herself a Holistic Health Practitioner because that encompasses all her skills and focuses on human health as a whole. From personal experience she also understands some of the impacts of abuse, trauma and chronic illness and the challenges of anxiety, depression and stress.
She writes, “I have learned that Energy-Well-Being is not a goal to achieve or a race to win and does not need to compete with others for it. I realize it in my own way and in my own time. These practices have certainly helped with her own healing and helped Eala stay consistent and true whenever she faces stress, anxiety or any of life’s challenges. Most importantly they give Eala a foundation for living my life with integrity, purpose and harmony. She believes each of us has their own path to follow as we seek truth, wisdom and enlightenment. “
Originally from England, I now live in Spokane with my husband Pat and a friendly dog called Mitzi (who’s breath you’ll hear during the interview). When she is not working she enjoys making jewelry, dance and all forms of artistic expression, practicing Nia, Breema and Yoga, writing, walking and spending time with my husband and friends.
You can visit Eala’s web site at http://www.energy-well-being.com/ If you live out of the Spokane area some work is available long distance via skype or phone.
Author and meditator Gail Storey hiked the Pacific Crest Trail with her husband Porter Storey
(Note: below is a summary, not the entire transcript of the interview)
Gail Storey has meditated since the seventies, and has also authored 3 books. The Lord’s Motel, was praised by the New York Times Book Review as, “a tale of unwise judgments and wise humor.” Her second novel, God’s Country Club, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. She has won numerous awards, and her fiction, poetry, and essays have been widely published.
The book that is relevant to the Meditation Freedom podcast, and in which she talks about her experiences with meditation, mindfulness as well as perhaps the most awesome trails in the US, called the pacific crest trail, is a memoir called, I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail. The book won a number of awards, the National Outdoor Book Award, Colorado Book Award, Nautilus Silver Award, and Barbara Savage Award from Mountaineers Books. It was praised by Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, as “Witty, wise and full of heart.”
I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail is the hilariously harrowing story of Gail and Porter’s hike of the 2,663-mile trail from Mexico to Canada over the highest mountains of California, Oregon, and Washington. In their fifties, they carried Porter’s homemade ultralight gear to climb and descend twenty miles a day, trudge across the searing Mojave Desert, kick steps up icy slopes in the High Sierra, and ford rapids swollen with snowmelt. Through the permeable layer between self and nature, they walked deeply into the wilderness of love, and the question Who am I?
A former administrative director of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, Gail now writes, hoopdances, and jumps out of cakes, not necessarily at the same time.
She writes:
“I have a hunger to hike the whole trail” , Porter (Gail’s husband asked her), “It’s been growing in me for years, intensified by the work with people living their dying. But what keeps you going?” [Gail writes] For once I was at a loss for words. What wanted me out here? Not my body, it was falling apart. Not my thoughts, alternately confident and doubtful. Certainly not my emotions, unreliable in their swings from high to low. I wanted to be with Porter, yes, but even more, I felt inseparable now from the vast green and blue and white of the wilderness. I looked out on the lake, shimmering under the moon. I was as sturdy as the trees. I flowed over obstacles like water over rocks. I was as solid as the mountains, as clear as the sky. The wind blew through my heart. I was what knew the wind. What knew the world was here in me, pulsing in the trees, water, rocks, mountains, moon
Questions asked in the interview with Gail Storey
I’d like to start with how you got started on a meditation path, what prompted you to start thinking of doing a meditation practice? and why Buddhism?
You did some long retreats, how did those retreats and practice help you in our daily life?
Moving on to a different type of meditative retreat, let’s talk about your book, “I promise not to suffer, A fool for love hikes the Pacific Crest Trail”.
When you and your husband Porter where thinking about this epic trip along the Pacific Crest Trail, you were initially not totally thrilled with spending time in nature, as you say on the first page of your book, you “never much cared for nature, or rather, thought it OK, as long as it stays outside”. Was it the sense of your own mortality, as well as the circumstances (Porter quitting his job) or also those years of practice influence your decision to join your husband? (since you couldn’t join him on the Appalachian Trail).
Besides spending alone time, and relief from stresses of career, was it also nature that was calling you?
As you went further down the PCT, your relationship with nature changed…
You also mentioned that you wanted to fully experience each moment, instead of the endless “Cartesian chatter” as you call it.
You wanted (as you mention on page 94) the wilderness to make such claims on my body that my thoughts would settle like silt on the bottom of a lake.
Maybe you can describe a bit the experience you had on the trail, starting with suffering. As the book said, you made a distinction between pain and suffering. Explain what you mean with that to the audience.
Where you no longer had a clear sense of inside/outside. Where your persona, your face (as you say), everything dropped away, and your relationship or identification with nature transformed.
How has this affected your sense of authenticity?
Your husband Porter called it a vision quest, what was the main insight he got from this trip?
