The Courage to Be Present

Ancient wisdom from Buddhism for today's therapists and clients.

Karen Kissel Wegela, Ph.D. is a professor at Naropa University and the author of The Courage to Be Present. See full bio

Working Mindfully with Anxiety

A Buddhist-based mindfulness approach to working with anxiety suggests a couple of things. First, of course, if there's an easy way to relieve one's anxiety-a way that doesn't involve masking it or just distracting oneself-that should be used. The second approach is to work with anxiety by bringing mindfulness to our actual experience. For most of us, this feels counter-intuitive. We want to get rid of our anxiety, not get to know it better! Read More

Inter-Connection: "Exchange" Goes Both Ways

When you're feeling upset and in need of some company, who do you want to be with? Sometimes when I feel troubled, I choose to be with someone who can offer me wise counsel. Other times I pick someone who can help me figure things out for myself. I find, though, that most of the time when I feel unsettled, anxious or worried, I want to be with someone who just feels good to be around. Read More

"Exchange": Whose Feelings Are These?

Have you ever had an experience when you seemed actually to feel what another person was feeling? Maybe you were with someone sad, and you began to feel sad. Or you were listening to someone who was angry and you began to get angry even though what they were talking about didn't seem to you to be worth getting upset about. Read More

Finding Balance in Mindfulness: The Technique of "Touch & Go"

In mindfulness practice both "on the cushion" and in the rest of our lives, how can we find a balance between the extremes of too earnestly concentrating on (or even getting stuck in) our experience and too casually letting things go? It is valuable and important to learn both how to touch into our experience and also how to let it go again. Read More

Mindfulness and Self-Acceptance

In the Buddhist tradition, mindfulness and awareness practices lead to knowing ourselves really well. At the same time, this self-awareness can lead to unconditionally accepting ourselves just as we are. Read More

Practicing Mindfulness Without Meditating

As a Contemplative Psychotherapist, one who bases my psychotherapy practice on the Buddhist understanding of mind, I am especially interested in helping my clients to develop mindfulness. While the most direct way to cultivate mindfulness is the sitting practice of mindfulness-awareness meditation, not everyone is ready for, or interested in, doing that. Read More

Should Therapists Teach their Clients to Meditate?

The question of whether therapists should teach their clients how to meditate is not as simple as it might seem. On the one hand, of course we'd like to share this powerful and practical technique with others who are suffering, but on the other hand lies the question of the appropriateness of therapists serving as meditation instructors to their clients. Read More

How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation

Cultivating mindfulness is the key to overcoming suffering and recognizing natural wisdom: both our own and others'. How do we go about it? Read More

A Gradual Path to Discovering Our Brilliant Sanity

The first three Noble Truths taught by the Buddha parallel the ancient Indian medical model of diagnosis, etiology, and prognosis. With the fourth Noble Truth, the last one, we come at last to the treatment. What did the Buddha prescribe? Read More

Ending Suffering: Tuning into the Present Moment

As we have seen, most of the time we are not in touch with our fundamentally awake, compassionate and open qualities: our “brilliant sanity.” Instead, we are apt to withdraw into a narrow sense of ourselves, preferring the familiar to the unknown. Read More