Meditation & Psychotherapy

Weekly Meditation Groups in NYC - with website links

Donald — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:13:43 +0000

Here is my listing of weekly meditation groups in NYC, together with website links for further information. I”ve arranged it by day of week. Most are in Manhattan, so I’ve boldfaced the groups in Brooklyn and Queens.

Please contact me if you know of additional groups.

Daily 7:30-8:30 AM - JCC, 334 Amsterdam Ave @ 76 St, Manhattan, Makom Center http://www.jccmanhattan.org/simplesearch.aspx

Daily 5:45-6:45 pm - JCC, 334 Amsterdam Ave @ 76 St, Manhattan, Makom Center

Weekdays 5:30-7 pm, Shambhala Meditation Center, 118 West 22 St, 6th floor, Manhattan http://ny.shambhala.org/index.php

Sundays 9 - 12 am, Shambhala Meditation Center, 118 West 22 St, 6th floor, Manhattan http://ny.shambhala.org/index.php

Sundays 6:30-8:30 Community of Mindfulness in Church of the Gethsemane, 1012 8th Ave @1oth St, Brooklyn http://www.communityofmindfulnessnewyorkmetro.blogspot.com/

Sundays 4:30-6:30 Community of Mindfulness at Walter’s home, 48-19 44 St, Apt 2, Queens, http://www.communityofmindfulnessnewyorkmetro.blogspot.com/

Tuesdays 1:30-2:30 pm Yoga Sutra, 501 Fifth Ave @42 St, Manhattan, http://www.yogasutranyc.com/

Tuesdays 7-9 pm New York Insight Meditation Center, 28 West 27 St, 10th floor, Manhattan, http://nyimc.org/index.php/site/sittinggroupsweekly/

Tuesdays 7-9 New York Insight Meditation Center, 386 First St, 6-7th Aves, Brooklyn http://nyimc.org/index.php/site/sittinggroupsweekly/

Tuesdays 7-9 pm Dharma Punx, 302 Bowery, #2, 3rd floor @Houson St, Manhattan, http://www.dharmapunx.com/sdates/default.asp

Tuesdays 7-9:30 Community of Mindfulness in Riverside Church Assembly Hall, 91 Claremont Ave @120-22 Sts, Manhattan, http://www.communityofmindfulnessnewyorkmetro.blogspot.com/

Thursdays 7-9 New York Insight Meditation Center, 28 West 27 St, 10th floor, Manhattan, http://nyimc.org/index.php/site/sittinggroupsweekly/

Thursdays 7-8 Dharma Punx, 302 Bowery, #2, 3rd floor @Houson St, Manhattan, http://www.dharmapunx.com/sdates/default.asp

Thursdays 12:30-2 Community of Mindfulness in Rutgers Presbyterian Church, 236 W 73 St, 1st floor, Manhattan, http://www.communityofmindfulnessnewyorkmetro.blogspot.com/

Announcing April Workshop: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Donald — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:33:39 +0000

The spring workshop will begin Monday April 12 at 6 pm. This first meeting takes the form of an orientation, then we will have 8 consecutive Monday evenings for the workshop itself.

The recession pricing continues. The price for this entire workshop, the materials, and the Day of Practice is $250.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions or comments.

Rethinking Happiness - This Emotional Life on PBS

Donald — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:23:30 +0000

This is a groundbreaking exploration of happiness. hosted by Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness. He provides the latest wisdom on sources of happiness and on finding happiness, based on common sense and research.

Daniel Gilbert brilliantly illlustrates two common threads: the importance of human connection, and the importance of how we approach things.

I teach mindfulness meditation for people with long struggles with depression. Many people I see aren’t seeking happiness so much as wishing to reduce the depression, or keep it from coming back. Yet the show sheds much light on this work, to, covering important research on the effects of meditation on brain waves, research that is encouraged by the Dalai Lama. How we focus our attention, and how we relate to our thoughts and feelings really matter.

Meditation and mindfulness are among the tools that help people get to happiness, along with good health ,exercise, and…. human connection.

Thank you Daniel Gilbert, the people who inspired you, the people who funded you, and the many scientists and wise people who did the hard work of really looking deeply into happiness.

I offer an 8-week workshop teaching mindfulness meditation. It begins February 1, 2010. You can learn about it in the posts below.

A GIFT FOR YOURSELF or a friend… the gift of mindfulness

Donald — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:28:17 +0000

Hi!

Why not a gift of mindfulness to yourself, or someone you care about?

I’m already into the holidays…. feeling happy, but also rushed, frustrated, anything but serene. I’m stopping, pausing to breathe, a lot. How about you? Why not stop right now, pause briefly, and take a breath or two.

I teach mindfulness to people who want to have a different relation to their feelings of depression or anxiety. The work is called Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, or MBCT. It runs 8 weeks, in mid-town, and begins February 1. This post and the post after it give you some of the details, and from there you can also go to my website, www.DonaldFleck.com.

I’ve priced this group way below the current cost of $475. For this winter, the group only costs $240. That’s recession pricing. The group will be somewhat larger, but the teachings will be the same.

The research for MBCT continues to be very strong, Depression relapse rates are as much as 50% lower after the workshops. People can maintain their meds or not, it doesn’t matter. If you want to review the academic research, just visit PubMed.gov.

Other research is remarkable: One study found that trying positive self-talk when people really don’t believe what they’re telling themselves can actually make people worse. Sorry Norman Vincent Peale! Mindfulness, in contrast, teaches people healthy ways of being with all of their experience, both the liked and the unliked. The research, published in the journal Psychological Science, was discussed and related to mindfulness in a Time Magazine article this summer.

A decade ago Dean Ornish showed that people could avoid heart by-pass surgery if they got serious about meditation, exercise and yoga? The results were great, but most Americans found it too hard to carry out the regimen. The operation was easier. (And more profitable.) Well, now there’s more research showing that simply meditating, without the other elements, can reduce heart attacks. This was discussed in The New York Times last month.

I hope I don’t sound too much like a proselytizer. You’ll understand that mindfulness isn’t for everyone. But for the right people, in the right situations, it can be really helpful.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you,

Take good care,

Donald

Want info from my web site? Press here.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) group starts Feb. 1, 2010

Donald — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:02:26 +0000

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

For those with a long history of depression

(Also helpful for generalized anxiety)

♦Offered by licensed psychotherapist.

♦University researched – can reduce the risk of depression relapse by 50%.

♦Learn to deal with your negative thoughts… before they take you down.

♦Improve self-esteem.

♦Increase your ability to cope with emotional pain and stress

This 8-week course is for those with a long history with depression or generalized anxiety. After 3 or more experiences of major depression, the risk of relapse is high. The methods taught in MBCT were shown in research to reduce the risk of relapse by 50%. While MBCT has not been fully researched for generalized anxiety, there are indicators that it is also helpful there.

MBCT is created out of the renowned MBSR program developed by Jon Kabat Zinn at the University of Massachusetts over 25 years ago, and modified 8 years ago by psychologists Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale to bring a focus onto long-term depression. MBCT can bring you relief from the powerful negative thoughts that are so destructive to your attempts to keep depression and anxiety at bay. MBCT can bring lasting change in the way you relate to your life, as well as improved self-esteem and increased ability to cope with emotional pain and stress. Participants may or may not be on psychotropic medication for this workshop, the material is useful either way.

The basic elements of MBCT are the practice of mindfulness and using cognitive-behavioral methods to change the way you relate to your negative thinking. It is offered on 8 Monday evenings, plus there is a half-day of practice on a Saturday morning.

Participants need to have recovered sufficiently from their most recent depression to be able to do the home practice that is a critical part of MBCT.

A free screening session is required, to answer your questions, learn a bit about you, and help determine if this would be a good fit for you.

Save 50%, reserve your space now

This workshop begins February 1, 2010 costs $240. This may be partially or fully insurance reimbursable.

The normal cost is $50 per 2-hour class and the half-day of practice, plus $25 for the 3 CDs and workbook, a total of $475. That is reduced to $240 for this February group only, so that those affected by the recession also may participate. Class size may be increased somewhat, but the teachings offered will be complete. Payment is accepted when you register.

Class begins February 1, 2010, and runs 6:00-8:30 pm. The cost also includes a half-day of practice on a Saturday or Sunday. The class is held at 44 East 32 Street in Manhattan, New York City.

Call soon to reserve your space in the group.

Want to get details at my web site? Press here.

For more information call 917-202-5148, or e-mail Info@DonaldFleck.com.

Mindful/Proper Parenting

Donald — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:53:35 +0000

(I wrote this is response to a question from a member of my meditation group about parenting.)

He had referenced a New York Times article ( http://www.nytimes. com/2009/ 09/15/health/ 15mind.html? _r=1&scp= 2&sq=parenting& st=cse) that suggested unconditional parenting was a better thing than parenting involving withdrawing and giving love according to the child’s behavior. While we might at first say that’s a slam dunk, because withdrawing love would harm any child, the article makes a case that even time-outs and using positive rewards verge on giving and withdrawing love. I recommend the article because it is very thoughtful.

Dear Friends,

This is a subject close to my heart. My children are all raised, pretty much in their 30’s. I can look back at many things I would have done differently in parenting them. Important things. Yet, they have come out wonderfully. I am so proud of them. Two teachers and a social worker. All with close friends and important relationships. All living responsibly, caring about the future of themselves, their friends, and the earth. Actively engaging in good works… the kinds of good works that require immense personal sacrifice.

So, first, when I look at the research and its measures of ’success’ it seems to measure none of the above. My children are normally neurotic, which is to say they’re not perfectly happy. How could they be? They are fully engaged in life, and in wanting the earth to be better cared for, for example, and it would take a boddhisatva to want that change and also not to feel frustration at the indifference often found in society. Also, I know they love me and their mother, and also that they have criticisms of us. That seems to me healthy and normal. Measuring success of parenting based on attitudes to the parents seems somewhat imperfect, yet that is how the parenting researched was evaluated.

So, second, I don ‘t believe there’s a perfect way to raise anyone. Conflict is normal. Learning from experience, even mistakes, is normal. Even in a healthy sangha there is discussion, there are differing views. If not, there would be no need for planning meetings! Or for our teacher to give us all those books to read!

Third, I believe that raising a child depends a lot on the child. When I started learning the craft of therapy I often blamed parents for faulty parenting. Only after some years of experience and wonderful supervision did I better understand that children are born different from one another, even siblings with so much shared heritage and genetics. Just look to your own siblings, or those of your friends. As children are different, so are their needs. To take an easy example, a child tending towards hyperactivity might need a firmer approach, with more clear boundaries, than another child. And a child fully hyperactive, who perhaps starts fights, or pushes his or her younger sibling around, needs even firmer guidelines. That child might need a lot of positive reinforcement to learn, more than another child. So, I tend to ask people with ‘universal’ sounding approaches involving human behavior to look deeply at different sorts of people, and attempt to understand how each different person might respond, and to include comments on applying their method to different sorts of people.

Finally, there is the issue that parents ourselves vary enormously. The research looked at mothers who themselves were raised with conditional love, weren’t too happy with it, then did the same thing with their children. In learning theory this might be called over-determined, where something is so imprinted it is kept despite the problems. I have led a number of parenting groups, and have found again and again that parents tend to parent as they were parented. Creating change on the surface isn’t too hard, but sticking to it is something else altogether. To have lasting change, parents tend to need to change how they relate to themselves and their pasts, something that can take a lot of sitting, learning, understanding.

Rasing my children, one of many things I learned from their mother the importance of being who you are. The opposite would be reading a parenting book and deciding to be someone else. Children are quite perceptive, and a parent whose natural inclination would be to use method A, but who slips into method B whenever Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired (HALT– is that familiar to anyone?) is in itself very upsetting to a child. It is important that our children have a solid base of who we are to grow around. Eric Erickson talks about the first basic task being to learn if the world is a safe place or not. It is definitely not safe if a parent is acting out a role inconsistently.

So……. the best parent, as Thich Nhat Hanh has written, needs to breathe deeply, be really present, listen deeply, speak after realizing deep understanding. In other words, becoming a great parent is as much about developing the self (of the parent) as it is about using technique with a child.

I hope that this might be helpful.

donald

Radical acceptance of the good, and the not so good

Donald — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:23:48 +0000

Tara Brach lays out a way to deal with painful feelings, and to live life more fully. Her book Radical Acceptance, Embracing Your Life with the Heart of A Buddha, lays out her thinking.

Tara Brach is a clinical psycholotist, meaning she practices psychotherapy. She’s also a student of Buddhism, including mindfulness meditation. She has a lot to contribute to mindful psychotherapy.

The idea here is to embrace all of life, the good, the bad, and the boring. Want to eliminate suffering in your life? Forget it. Want to only experience joy? Forget it. The way of mindfulness is to be with all experience, not to chase it away, even if it is unpleasant. It just takes too much energy to chase away experience. Avoiding knowing experience is a little like living in delusion.

The book’s title, Radical Acceptance, comes from the idea that it’s radical to accept negative experience, radical because in this society we’re brought up to minimize the bad and maximize the good. It really is radical to say that when we’re experiencing something unpleasant, we should allow ourselves to ‘be’ fully in that experience. This doesn’t mean going out looking for unpleasant experience; just being with it when it comes. Why practice this radical acceptance? Because it works.

The Buddha was raised in luxury, his father a King, yet he wasn’t happy. He wanted to find enlightenment, and like many Hindus of his day began by depriving himself of all comfort: nearly starving himself, living the life of a homeless person. That didn’t work either, he nearly died, not at all the better of having lived in suffering. Living in luxury hadn’t worked; living in suffering hadn’t worked, either. He struggled to make sense of life, finally resolving to sit under the Boddhi tree until he understood things more deeply. He realized the idea of embracing whatever experience came to him, the pleasant, the unpleasant, and the neutral (boring). Life always included elements of happiness and elements of sadness. Enlightment meant accepting all of experience, even as a child does, without preference.

This is a rather large teaching moment in Buddhism, and also for Tara Brach. She sees how we lead so much of our lives trying to avoid pain and suffereing, seeking after comfort, to no avail. The difficulties just keep on coming.

The change she teaches involves accepting all of experience, as the Buddha did.

It plays out like this: The prime dissatisfaction for many of us is the sense that we are unworthy. We aren’t enough, we don’t do enough, we don’t have enough. We live in a trance of unworthiness. It’s a trance because the pain of KNOWING the unworthy feelings is rather deep. So we keep really busy, so there’s no time to sit and feel. We embark on self-improvement projects to try to be good enough. We avoid risks to avoid more pain. We withdraw from knowing our current experience. We become self-critics. And like most self critics, we also become critical of others. Doing all this activity just to live in the delusion that everything should be pleasant. And to avoid knowing what’s life is really like.

Being caught in the trance means losing sight of the self who’s connected, whole, in the ‘fullness of being.’ Breaking the trance of unworthiness involves being in close touch with the self that’s fearful, wanting, feeling alone and separate.

Brach’s way out? “When we learn to face and feel the fear and shame we habitually avoid, we begin to awaken from the trance.” (p. 57)

A principal way for the beginner to do this is with the sacred pause. It’s a way to stop running from experience. Brach lays out in clear detail how to learn the sacred pause, although for many it is better learned with the aid of a professional helper, as the feelings that come out can be strong. The sacred pause is sort of like saying, “Here I am, (name your experience)…. let me feel it fully, let me be with it, regardless of how I feel about it.”

Having learned the pause, readers are encouraged to practice it often. The book introduces vipassana or mindfulness meditation to come into contact with experience, and metta or loving-kindness meditation to develop compassion for the deeper self that comes clearly into view.

People of all walks of life can gain from this book. Each chapter ends with the text of a guided meditation to practice and directly experience her teachings.

For professionals: In the process of describing Radical Acceptance Brach lays out an approach to mindful therapy that reveals itself only through the accumulation of examples she uses. But revealing it is, and worthy of study by the psychotherapist. For the professional psychotherapist who wants to learn more, Dr. Brach has also taught workshops on Radical Acceptance for professionals. I studied this with her, and found it most helpful. With some of my psychotherapy clients it becomes the focus of our work.

Using Radical Acceptance with Trauma

Donald — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:20:43 +0000

Tara Brach has an article on her website titled:

The Power of Radical Acceptance: Healing Trauma though the Integration of Buddhist Meditation and Psychotherapy. You can read it at: http://www.tarabrach.com/articles/trauma.html

Techniques described in the book Radical Acceptance can be adapted for cases where there are overwhelming feelings, but this must be done carefully, to avoid re-traumatizing the victim of trauma. This article describes how Tara used her method with one client.

Finding a Psychotherapist

Donald — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:53:52 +0000

Finding a psychotherapist can be a challenge. Ideally someone you know can make a recommendation. If not, find out how much experience the person has, that’s a good starting point. Then, give them an outline of your problem and listen carefully to their responses. It can be helpful to state the problem in exactly the same way to several people, and to take notes on their responses. This can give you good guidance in choosing. Finally, it matters greatly that you simply feel comfortable with the person you’re talking to.

You can talk to me. Don’t hesitate to call. Talk to me, evaluate me relative to a few others.

You can also get details of my background on the psychotherapy page at my website, http://www.donaldfleck.com/psychotherapy.html .

I have an office in Chelsea (25 Street near 6th Avenue), and an office in Brooklyn Heights (Court Street near Montague Street). Both are easily accessible.

If you would like to discuss an appointment, or if you have any questions for me, please just call me. You can call me between 8 am and 9 pm at 917-202-5148.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely, Donald Fleck DCSW

Practice Mindfulness Meditation Weekly

Donald — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:11:05 +0000

25 Street and 6th Avenue, Chelsea, NYC

Tuesdays, 12:30 – 1:30 pm

Suggested contribution: $10

Come learn about meditation and mindfulness. Each week there is meditation instruction…. an opportunity to practice meditation and mindfulness with the group…. and a time for discussion and learning.

Experience stress just dropping away. Feel what it’s like to just ‘be’ in your body. Learn another way to be with thoughts and feelings, a way that allows you to watch the flow of the senses. The effort is well worth it.

One moment you’re ‘doing’, then you shift to ‘being’. Nothing changes on the outside, nothing’s visible, but on the inside you know something important has shifted, right then, at that moment. You might see your situation in a new light, or you might see new possibilities, for example.

I began meditating for the same reasons as many others: to deal with overwhelming stress. In my case, it was working on Wall Street 30 years ago. Over the years I increased and broadened my practice, learning non-spiritual meditation, then a spiritual approach, then Vipassana meditation to deepen my experience.

For the past decade I have learned ways to make meditation and mindfulness useful for my psychotherapy clients. This has been very helpful in a variety of circumstances. Currently I offer an 8-week treatment for people who have had long-term struggles with depression and anxiety. It is a scientifically authenticated method that combines mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy. I also facilitate a group of therapists meeting monthly to exchange ways of helping our clients with mindfulness.

What is your story? What brought you to this interest in meditation and mindfulness?

Why not try out meditation now, come to me to renew your practice, or to advance your skills?

This is a new group, so please contact me before coming.