http://www.self-compassion.org/
Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges Stuart Bradford Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family? That simple question is the basis for a burgeoning new area of psychological research called self-compassion — how kindly people view themselves. People who find it easy to be supportive and understanding to others, it turns out, often score surprisingly low on self-compassion tests, berating themselves for perceived failures like being overweight or not exercising.
Meditation and Mindfulness Mindfulness is not thinking, interpreting, or evaluating; it is an awareness of perception. It is a nonjudgmental quality of mind which does not anticipate the future or reflect back on the past. Any activity can be done with mindfulness. Talking on the telephone, cleaning your home, driving, working, and exercising can all be incorporated into a mindfulness practice. Throughout the day, inwardly pause and become very aware of where you are, what you are doing, and how you are feeling.
Meditation Makes Us Act with Compassion You’re in a waiting room, seated next to two other people. There are only three chairs. A woman enters on crutches, a medical boot on one leg. She winces, checks her phone, sighs uncomfortably, and leans against the wall. Neither of the other people responds. How to Explore and Study Intention: 10 steps Edit Article Edited by George AP, Teresa, Flickety, Daniel and 10 others Intention is a surprisingly important, but rarely explored part of the mind, as its significance is only important after the fact. The Tree of Contemplative Practices The Tree illustrates some of the contemplative practices currently in use in secular organizational and academic settings. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. Below the Tree you will find links to descriptions of many of these practices as well as a more in-depth description of the Tree and image files for downloading.
How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code - James Somers The programming website Project Euler provides a plan for how to learn anything in fun, discrete steps When Colin Hughes was about eleven years old his parents brought home a rather strange toy. It wasn't colorful or cartoonish; it didn't seem to have any lasers or wheels or flashing lights; the box it came in was decorated, not with the bust of a supervillain or gleaming protagonist, but bulleted text and a picture of a QWERTY keyboard. It called itself the "ORIC-1 Micro Computer." Professional Education and Training - Mindfulness - UMass Medical School Oasis Institute began in 2001 as a school for a new generation of health care and other professionals interested in learning, from the inside out, how to integrate mindfulness, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), and other mindfulness-based approaches into disciplines and communities all over the world. While this is our primary focus, Oasis Institute has a more fundamental objective, which is to foster a direct, experiential understanding that inner experience, intuition, imagination, and non-conceptual awareness are as crucial and valid as objective, evidence-based knowledge to an understanding of the world. Oasis Institute is a rigorous forum for the development and integration of these mutually effective, interdependent approaches to knowing, caring, and serving. BECOMING AN MBSR TEACHER“Cultivating wisdom is the teacher’s path.
Paul Tough Saturday, August 25th, 2012 Bill Moyers on Times Magazine Article Bill Moyers comments on my Times Magazine article on Roseland, poverty, and Barack Obama. More here. Sunday, August 19th, 2012 Back to School Ira talks with Paul Tough, author of the new book How Children Succeed, about the traditional ways we measure ability and intelligence in American schools. They talk about the focus on cognitive abilities, conventional "book smarts." They discuss the current emphasis on these kinds of skills in American education, and the emphasis standardized testing, and then turn our attention to a growing body of research that suggests we may be on the verge of a new approach to some of the biggest challenges facing American schools today. Paul Tough discusses how “non-cognitive skills” — qualities like tenacity, resilience, impulse control — are being viewed as increasingly vital in education, and Ira speaks with economist James Heckman, who’s been at the center of this research and this shift.
Teaching the New Basic Skills Teaching the New Basic Skills Book suggest ways that schools can help students to meet demands of new economic environment By Bunmi Fatoye-Matory Special to the Gazette In 1979, a 30-year-old man with a high school diploma earned a yearly average of $27,000 (in 1993 dollars) but by 1993 that same man with the same diploma earned $20,000. This decline in wages becomes even more significant when you learn that in 1993 half of all 30-year-old men had not gone beyond high school. Levy, F. and Murnane, R.J.: The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market. As the current recession ends, many workers will not be returning to the jobs they once held--those jobs are gone. In The New Division of Labor, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane show how computers are changing the employment landscape and how the right kinds of education can ease the transition to the new job market. The book tells stories of people at work--a high-end financial advisor, a customer service representative, a pair of successful chefs, a cardiologist, an automotive mechanic, the author Victor Hugo, floor traders in a London financial exchange. The authors merge these stories with insights from cognitive science, computer science, and economics to show how computers are enhancing productivity in many jobs even as they eliminate other jobs--both directly and by sending work offshore.