Practice: Show Simple Affection
Do you shy away from hugging family or friends? From putting an arm around someone's shoulder or showing affection to your husband, wife or partner in front of your children? Many of us like to receive affection. A hug, a pat on the back, a smile and squeeze of a hand can generate good feelings. Still, social conventions and fear of what people may think can stop us from expressing our feelings in simple physical gestures.
Over the next month, try showing more affection to your family and friends.
The Wisdom of Cherishing Sentient Beings Everywhere
Jacques Verduin is a subject matter expert on mindfulness, restorative justice, emotional intelligence, and transforming violence.
Deconstructing Our Culture of Violence
Jacques Verduin is a subject matter expert on mindfulness, restorative justice, emotional intelligence, and transforming violence. A father, community organizer, and teacher, he is the founder of GRIP (Guiding Rage Into Power), which helps prisoners and challenged youth create the personal and systemic change to transform violence and suffering into opportunities for learning and healing. In this first of two posts, Jacques shares insights about the roots of violence in our culture.
Practice: Planning Gratitude
Create a Gratitude Calendar in your datebook, email program, online calendar, social media profile, etc., and use it to remind yourself to say blessings. You might have a different focus each month:
Practice: Visualize Forgiveness
It can be useful to rehearse an act of forgiveness by practicing visualization. This exercise is adapted from Robin Casarjian's Forgiveness: A Bold Choice for a Peaceful Heart. Take a few deep, relaxing breaths. Bring to mind a person with whom you are in conflict. Recall what the real issues behind this conflict are for you. Recall what you are feeling about this person. Recall what you feel is still workable for you in this relationship. Breathe in and feel the wholeness within your own being.
Practice: Journaling
This is one of the most popular and accessible personal enrichment tools. Writing regularly in a journal encourages you to see life experiences and emotions more clearly, to better understand your own behavior, and explore your attitudes. Here are some journal exercises to get you started exploring love.
Practice: Generosity
Giving is one way we express our love—to those close to us, to our neighbors, to animals and plants, and to the Earth. We are encouraged to be generous at certain times of year—holidays, birthdays, at year's end for tax deductions—but spiritual practices can help us make generosity an everyday activity.
Practice: Hugging
This hugging practice is recommended by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh in his Plum Village Chanting and Recitation Book. It is a perfect ritual to do with the ones you love.
Tarjetas de Conversación
Incorpora más amor, perdón y compasión en tu vida a través del pensar, discutir y actuar. Utiliza estas tarjetas cuando estés solo o cuando tengas la compañía de tus amigos, familiares, estudiantes, compañeros de clase o colegas. Selecciona una tarjeta. Lee la cita en voz alta; luego voltea la tarjeta y encuentra las sugerencias sobre qué discutir y cómo actuar. También disponible en Inglés: Conversation Cards.
Descarga, imprime (en ambos lados en papel de 8.5 x 11 pulgadas), y corta.
Practice: Letting Go
Is there a hurt or thought you keep replaying that you’d like to release? We’re thrilled to relaunch our popular and updated “Letting Go Practice.” Use this interactive resource to help let go of a hurt, injury, or issue in your life. Like forgiveness, it may be something you’ll want to revisit again and again. Take a few minutes to try it and let us know what you think.