All posts filed under: Social Engagement

Leading with Genuine Care: An Interview with Rob Dube

Published by dmcblog

Rob started his first business in high school selling Blow Pops out of his locker. For the last 30 years, he’s served as co-founder and co-CEO of imageOne, ranked as one of the Top 25 Small Businesses in America by Forbes. Rob has been an avid meditator for over 15 years. He’s also the host of the Leading with Genuine Care podcast where he’s talked with mindful leaders including Jon Kabat-Zinn, Sharon Salzberg, Shantum Seth, Dr. Andrew Weil, and more. Rob is the organizer of the Leading with Genuine Care Leadership Retreat, author of donothing: the most rewarding leadership challenge you will ever take, and a senior contributor for Forbes. We recently had the opportunity to interview Rob and learned more about how we might “slow down so we can speed up.” Rob also shares his experience of how we can “practice the pause” in all manners and relationships, how to work with the moment between stimulus and response, and how it can affect us and those around us, in all areas of our lives. *Originally published August 11, 2021. Updated February 8, 2022.

Karuna Training: Cultivating Intimacy through Compassionate Exchange

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By Melissa Moore We live in a time where we connect within a second of space and time around the world. We can connect with millions on social media platforms simultaneously! And still, person to person, family to a family member, lover to partner to spouse, friend to friend; we possess a deep longing to be seen, heard, understood, and authentically met in a heartfelt, compassionate presence. As a practitioner of Contemplative Psychology and as a teacher, I’ve seen how we are starving to death for genuine heart connections. We’re forever seeking a mutual exchange versus regular exchanges encountered daily, fraught with jockeying for position, domination, and status. You know the interactions I’m speaking about, where we or someone else is vying for position, importance, confirmation, and approval. This jockeying for status can be subtle; we notice how someone tells us about their excellent plans for the weekend at work; all the while letting us know how their projects are so exotic or expensive. Or we can sense when a family member makes non-verbal assumptions …

Aprendiendo a Meditar en Español

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Por Bruno Límenes // La vida es hermosa, dolorosa, divertida, confusa, es una amalgama de distintas experiencias. De ahí la pregunta: ¿qué tan seguido estoy presente con toda la gama de vivencias que el día a día me brinda? Esa fue la pregunta que dio a luz mi interés por la meditación. Quería entender cómo permanecer abierto a mi vida, y apenas empecé a buscar, noté que quería algo que además se sintiera como una herramienta aplicable a la cotidianidad. No quería algo que solamente funcionara mientras lo practicaba, sino que al levantarme del cojín de meditación la atención se mantuviera a lo largo del día. Eso fue lo que encontré al llegar a mi primer retiro de meditación en el pequeño pueblo de Tepoztlán, en mi natal México. Una práctica que terminaría adquiriendo una cualidad parecida a la de bañarme cada día o lavarme los dientes, algo no tan ajeno a mi vida cotidiana. Aquello formaba parte de la manera cómo me relaciono con mi cuerpo, con mi mente y con las emociones. A …

What is Karuna Training, and Why Should I Do It?

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By Melissa Moore // Chögyam Trungpa designed Maitri Space Awareness to be a portal into meeting energetic space directly and waking up to blessings that constantly descend in one’s life. “Buddhist psychology is based on the notion that human beings are fundamentally good. Their most basic qualities are positive ones: openness, intelligence, and warmth” Chögyam Trungpa, The Sanity We Are Born With Karuna Training is rooted in Buddhist teachings and offers an up-to-date trauma-informed curriculum that invites students into deep psychological processes. Karuna Training serves to anchor the teachings directly into each individual’s life. If you’re someone who aspires to look into yourself within a kind-hearted community, then Karuna is the place for you. During the pandemic, when in-person programs ceased, I contemplated closing the North American branch of Karuna Training. However, the Albuquerque, LA, and Baltimore students requested that we continue meeting online, and so we did. They said, ‘if we ever needed Karuna, it is now more than ever.’ Along the way, we learned that pieces of the Karuna curriculum landed better in …

The Top 10 Scientific Benefits of Gratitude

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Matt O’Grady Gratitude–a state of thankfulness–is not a new concept. Ancient texts and scriptures highlight the importance of this unique human emotion in contributing to the richness of our communities, families and inner lives. As Plato pointed out over 2,000 years ago: “A grateful mind is a great mind, which eventually attracts itself to great things.” In the past 20 years, scientists and psychologists have really buckled down to examine the measurable scientific benefits of gratitude. What they’ve discovered will change your life. It turns out, feeling grateful isn’t just a self-help cliché. The practice of gratitude actually produces myriad mind blowing benefits that extend from our psychological to physiological well-being. As a disabled veteran, I was badly suffering from depression and pain after my medical discharge. I attribute so much of my subsequent healing and improved well-being to a daily gratitude practice. Gratitude has been the gift that keeps on giving in my life. I’ve compiled a list of the top 10 scientific benefits of gratitude, so you can experience the transformative effects of this …

Strong Mental Health In Five Practical Steps

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// By: Blake D. Bauer Step 1: Express Your Emotions Honestly and Kindly Our mental wellness is intimately connected to our emotional health. And our relationship to our emotions directly impacts our mind and thought processes far more than we realize. A significant amount of our unhealthy or negative thoughts are in fact symptoms of repressed emotions. These overwhelming or imbalanced thoughts are alerting us to the deeper feelings, needs, and desires that we’re ignoring or internalizing. Throughout a given day we’re either aware of what we’re feeling and then expressing it honestly and kindly, or we’re not. When we internalize our emotions regularly, we literally create a build up of inner tension, which then causes physical stress and an increase in cortisol levels. This leads to further psychological stress, negative thinking, a lack of tolerance, limited patience, and the kind of unhealthy reactions that hurt both ourselves and the people around us. Over time, internalizing what we feel very literally causes depression and leads to further struggle in all life areas. Every time you …