The whole curriculum is grounded in comprehensive training in mindfulness, compassion, and embodiment practices, including the deeper insight, compassionate motivation, and communicative skills that will enable you to apply them to your moment-to-moment life and work – where all our boundless potential for transformation lies waiting to be tapped.
Read MoreContemplative Psychotherapy is a hybrid therapeutic approach that blends the meditative insights, ethics and practices of Buddhism with the theory and application of Western neuropsychology, social psychology and psychotherapy. This amalgam may invoke cognitive dissonance for some.
Read MoreThe word karma, in its Sanskrit translation, simply means "action". In the Western context, it is often used to refer to fate or fortune. However, the Buddha explicitly mentioned that this was not its real meaning.
Karma refers to the natural law that describes the workings of cause and effect. Each action is defined by a series of previous actions that are interdependent – each action triggers a multitude of subsequent actions. It is the impersonal play of cause and effect that is continuous, inexorable and completely dispassionate.
Read MoreVipassana meditation was already known in India about 2,500 years ago. The syllable „vi“ in Pali means clear or manifold, „passana“ means to see. Vipassana is therefore often translated as insight. Vipassana meditation is therefore about spiritual development, about gaining clear insight into the true nature of things.
In order to understand and deepen the practice method, it is necessary to realise that body and mind are impermanent, that suffering is all pervading and that there is not such a thing as the autonomous, independent self.
Read MoreWithin the evolution of the mindfulness-based or contemplative healing, mindfulness is only the first of three great waves as we call them.
We are starting to understand the power of embodied approaches, such as imagery, narrative, transforming narrative, and self-expression, breath work, movement and body posture.
The Buddhist tradition spent 4,000 years exploring how to use these techniques in powerful concerted ways that allow the deepest possible transformation of the nervous system.
Mindfulness developed very early in the Buddhist tradition. Buddha was trying to take the meditation practices of his day and make them accessible to anyone, and essentially turn them into a science.
Rather than mixing mindfulness with Western cognitive therapy, the Nalanda Institute takes a close look at the foundational elements of early Buddhist science and psychology that promote self-healing.
Showing strong emotions, be it socially or at the workplace, has traditionally been considered inappropriate and misplaced. Especially displays of negative emotions.
Yet, emotions are an integral part of who we are: it would be virtually impossible to expect anyone to leave their emotions behind when they cross the office door or when they connect to their next online meeting.
Meditation is a tool for introspection, a kind of microscope for the mind. It helps focus the mind’s eye on its own content i.e. thoughts, emotions and sensorial perceptions and to look at it from a defused perspective. Same as the scientist in the lab observes the molecules through a microscope.
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