change therapy

image by dongga

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the robert wood johnson foundation has joined forces with ashoka’s changemakers to launch “rethinking mental health: improving community wellbeing”, a competition for new ideas and practices that challenge the status quo in terms of how we think about and address mental health care needs. the foundation invites you to join this important conversation and put [...]

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after the post on happy questions last friday, i decided to ask some happy questions on twitter and it was a wonderful weekend conversation. you can find most of it by searching for #happyquestion on twitter. one of the questions was inspired by qrystal, one of the first people i ever followed on twitter (it [...]

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as you know, questions have a special place in my heart (see this post on encouraging questions, for example.) as i was preparing for a little workshop i facilitated today on solution focused coaching and counselling, i realized that my first discovery of the power of questions was not back in 1999, when i first [...]

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image by native american seals/logos

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early this year, i discovered haibun (through a blog whose name i forgot, unfortunately).   it is a japanese form of writing which can but does not have to have all the following characteristics: contains one or two haiku tends to focus on everyday experience somewhere between 100 and 300 words descriptive terse, poetic prose slightly [...]

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invisible illnesses are, by definition, not seen. there are two parts to this: the (un)seen, and the (non)seer. i’m not sure that invisible illnesses are in fact invisible. the man with chronic pain sits on his bed at 3:00 am, a gun in his mouth, ready to pull the trigger. he makes sure his wife [...]

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soft, these sounds steal again into my heart. how’d he do it? he played on the piano like he knew all about our souls. this is a little tanka – a short japanese poem – i wrote after listening to the CD of the wonderful sounds craig addy created when my friend and soulmate haedy [...]

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image by soylentgreen23

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welcome to the september edition of the buddhist carnival, where we showcase treasures from the buddhasphere. today we have compassion and helping hands, cockcroaches, sleep, returning to the centre and a bunch of (no)selves. as always, let’s start off with a poem: we dance around in a ring and suppose; but the secret sits in [...]

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a few semi random musings on parents … through my parents, a lot of challenges came my way. but through them, i also learned how to build the tools to overcome those challenges. for example, creativity was highly encouraged. parents irrevocably shape most of the way we view the world. some of that can be [...]

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like many of you, i am a victim of procrastination. procrastination has done horrible things to me. it has robbed me of many hours of sleep. it has made me feel less than, a loser. at the hands of procrastination, i have experienced embarrassment and hopelessness. that’s a true story. and. or. why not make [...]

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image by steven burke

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today is the last day of suicide prevention week. to honour those who have attempted suicide and survived, those who have lost loved ones, and the lives of people who have chosen this sad way out, i’ve collected a few worthwhile links on the topic. if we put them all together, here are some ways [...]

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a topic i think about a lot these days is acceptance. here are some words about acceptance, adapted from “for today”, a little book of daily meditations by OA. pain often comes from non-acceptance. if i find that i can neither change nor accept a certain reality, i let it go for now, knowing that [...]

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