Let us undertake an inquiry into the spaces we inhabit. Take a look at the space you are sitting in. Look at the walls, if you are indoors. Look at their adamantine quality – how strong, impermeable they are. See how they enclose you from the space outside. See the light that comes in from the window, how different it is from the light that…
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Presence and absence in the body
Dear reader, As you sit and read this article, let us practice a few things with our bodies. Let us not be looking, for a bit, for a meaning, or an idea, that this article will propose. Feel deeply into your body. Be aware of how your lungs fill up when they take in fresh air, and then contract when they release air. You are…
Connecting in an over-connected world
As you look at these words, you have probably scrolled down here from somewhere else, and may be on your way to scroll further ahead to another set of words. Or perhaps a click has opened up this window for you, and the mind is partly edging towards where to go next. I request you to pause for a few moments and imagine. Imagine holding…
Progress in therapy, and similar journeys
The meaning of progress Therapy is a journey of continually expanding self-awareness – in relation to one’s own psyche, and also in relation to who one is with other persons. By practising being with emotions and sensations that emerge in us in the therapy session, we nourish our capacity to stay with uncomfortable emotions and sensations generally in life, both in our solitude and in…
Images of awareness
On a walk today morning, some images offered by various psychologists, spiritual teachers and artists came to mind. Coming to awareness is like taking a walk in the forest, where two friends walk together and talk of what matters the most in their lives. The aliveness and fullness of the forest offers them a space of infinite possibility – anything new can peek out from…
The body in therapy
Hello, how do you feel today? Let us do an experiment. Take a pause. And slowly feel how it is to be in your body. Feel your chest rise up and down with your breath. Feel your abdomen. See how your consciousness pours out from your eyes to these words on the screen. How the internet makes us so excessively visual. See how your mind…
“Do I have a mental illness?”
It’s the beginning of winter again. It is that time of the year when pollution levels in North India cross anything that is humanly acceptable. We breathe in up to ten times as much smoke as we should. We are all chain smokers, unless we have the financial resources to be cooped up in our rooms with air purifiers. Imagine you sit out on the…
A walk in the forest
The client and therapist are like two friends going for a walk in the forest, and in the peace of the forest, talking about what matters most to their lives on this earth. Surely, the client talks of his life, and the therapist listens. The therapist does not reveal a lot about his own life. Yet, the therapist is as present in this walk as…
The meditative life
Hello. Welcome to this page. How do you read this word? This one. And this one? Are you fully here, or are you thinking of the next click, the next glance, what you are going to do in the moment just about to occur? Are you thinking of what you want rather than what you have in front of you. Let us quieten down together….
On death and suicide
Facebook post on 15 June, 2020. A rising star dies. He has decided to end his life. My Facebook timeline fills up with shock and grief. With messages about that term ‘mental health’ which seems to be everywhere these days. In a month and a half, we have seen many beloveds from the cinema die. Irrfan, Rishi Kapoor, Yogesh, Basu Chatterjee. Now Sushant, who took…