A person can make himself happy or miserable regardless of what is actually happening outside just by changing the contents of consciousness”  -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

How you feel about life and living, and your happiness in general – ultimately depends on interpreting everyday experience. Your mind shapes every experience you have, and trying to be happy by exerting more control over external forces is futile. You need to spend time on ordering your inner world.

This podcast is about doing just that.  

My guest is Loch Kelly.

Loch is an author, meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of the  Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn, and NYU to study how awareness training can enhance compassion and well-being. As a licensed psychotherapist, Loch has been teaching seminars, supervising clinicians and practicing awareness psychotherapy in NYC for 30 years. 

He has authored two books on meditation, Shift into Freedom The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness and The Way of Effortless Mindfulness A Revolutionary Guide for Living an Awakened Life, which is the touchstone for our discussion

Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, and ancient wisdom traditions, the book is a practical guide to what he calls the next stage in the ongoing mindfulness movement: effortless mindfulness. 

On the show we discuss these topics and more 

• • Defining meditation
  • Defining awareness
  • Suffering and managing emotions
  • Why meditation can be hard 
  • Who meditation is for
  • Terminology
  • Explaining Flow states and how it can be elicited in meditation
  • Differences between mindfulness meditation and effortless mindfulness
  • On effort and effortlessness 
  • Types / Methods
  • Multiple “selves” and the mini-me
  • Glimpse practices

 

Resources / Links

• The Way of Effortless Mindfulness, A Revolutionary Guide for Living an Awakened Life
• lochkelly.org
• Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience