[Download] (Week 1) – January 6, 2008

[Download] (Week 2) – January 13, 2008

[Download] (Week 3) – January 20, 2008

[Download] (Week 4) – January 27, 2008

[Download] (Week 5) – February 3, 2008

[Download] (Week 6) – February 10, 2008

[Download] (Week 7) – February 17, 2008

[Download] (Week – February 24, 2008

[Download] (Week 9) – March 2, 2008

[Download] (Week 10) – March 9, 2008

[Download] (Week 11) – March 16, 2008

[Download] (Week 12) – March 23, 2008

[Download] (Week 13) – March 30, 2008

[Download] (Week 14) – April 6, 2008

[Download] (Week 15) – April 13, 2008

[Download] (Week 16) – April 20, 2008

[Download] (Week 17) – April 27, 2008

[Download] (Week 18) – May 4, 2008

[Download] (Week 19) – May 11, 2008

[Download] (Week 20) – May 18, 2008

[Download] (Week 21) – May 25, 2008

[Download] (Week 22) – June 1, 2008

[Download] (Week 23) – June 8, 2008

[Download] (Week 24) – June 15, 2008

[Download] (Week 25) – June 22, 2008

[Download] (Week 26) – June 29, 2008

[Download] (Week 27) – July 6, 2008

[Download] (Week 28) – July 13, 2008

[Download] (Week 29) – July 20, 2008

[Download] (Week 30) – July 27, 2008

[Download] (Week 31) – August 3, 2008

[Download] (Week 32) – August 10, 2008

[Download] (Week 33) – August 17, 2008

[Download] (Week 34) – August 24, 2008

[Download] (Week 35) – August 31, 2008

[Download] (Week 36) – September 7, 2008

[Download] (Week 37) – September 14, 2008

[Download] (Week 38) – September 21, 2008

[Download] (Week 39) – September 28, 2008

[Download] (Week 40) – October 5, 2008

[Download] (Week 41) – October 12, 2008

[Download] (Week 42) – October 19, 2008

[Download] (Week 43) – October 26, 2008

[Download] (Week 44) – November 2, 2008

[Download] (Week 45) – November 9, 2008

[Download] (Week 46) – November 16, 2008

[Download] (Week 47) – November 23, 2008

[Download] (Week 48) – November 30, 2008

[Download] (Week 49) – December 7, 2008

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[Download] (Week 51) – December 21, 2008

[Download] (Week 52) – December 28, 2008

MN135 Culakammavibhanga Sutta

Info

• File Type MP3
• File Download
• File Size (MB) 30
• Category Sutta Study
• Teacher Ajahn Brahmavamso
• Date 2010-03-07

- happiness is worth striving for
- 50 percent of a given human’s happiness level is genetically determined (based on twin studies), 10 percent is affected by life circumstances and situation, and a remaining 40 percent of happiness is subject to self control

The strategies offered in the The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want are designed to target the 40 percent of happiness that is subject to manipulation.

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. She is often quoted in news articles about positive psychology and happiness. She is also an associate editor of the Journal of Positive Psychology.

The How of Happiness has spawned an iPhone application called Live Happy, produced by Signal Patterns. Lyubomirsky is on the company’s scientific advisory board.[

Sense Of Community And Friendship – Ajahn Brahmavamso

Info

• File Type MP3
• File Download
• File Size (MB) 18
• Category Dhamma Talk
• Teacher Ajahn Brahmavamso
• Date 2010-04-16

Introduction 5.4Mb

Coarser Hindrances 6Mb
- Learning & Antidoting

Finer Hindrances 4.6Mb
- Subtleties & Absorption

Santikaro Bhikkhu talks on Anapanasati & 4 Foundations of Mindfulness
Part 1 4.0Mb Part 2 4.1Mb

Anapanasati & 7 Factors of Enlightenment
Part 1 3.7Mb Part 2 3.9Mb

Suffering & the Quenching of Dukkha 6.4 Mb

Suffering, Quenching, & Conditionality 7.6 Mb

Your Most Pervasive Forms of Dukkha & Craving 6.2 Mb

Chapter 1.2 Balancing The 5 Controlling Faculties etc… (22:28)

Chapter 2.1 How To Develop Four Element Meditation (23:09)

Chapter 2.2 How To Analyse Rupa Kalapas (17:45)

Chapter 2.3 The Fifty Four Types Of Materialiy In The Eye (18:16)

Chapter 2.4 Charts To Discern Materiality From Eye Door To …(12:02)

Chapter 2.5 Detail method For Developing Four Elements Meditation (28:50)

Chapter 3.1 The Dhammas That Must Be Comprehended By One P (9:49)

Chapter 3.2 Twenty Eight Types Of Materiality (15:57)

Chapter 3.3 The Nature Of Materiality Three Kinds Of Compactness Of Materiality (14:22)

Chapter 3.4 The Purification Of Mind (20:41)

Chapter 3.5 Insight & Momentary Concent etc… (16:04)

Courtesy of http://paauk-latvia.org

Talk 1 – Part 1 - 14 MB

- Part 2 - 13 MB

Talk 2 – Part 1 – 28 MB

- Part 2 - 14 MB

Talk 3 – Part 1 - 12 MB

- Part 2 – 14 MB

Talk 4 – Part 1 – 16 MB

- Part 2 - 10 MB

Talk 5 – Part 1 – 16 MB

- Part 2 – 11 MB

Talk 6 - Part 1 – 32 MB

- Part 2 – 12 MB

Talk 7 – Part 1 – 9 MB

- Part 2 – 10 MB

- Part 3 – 12 MB

Talk 8 – Part 1 – 8 MB

- Part 2 – 6 MB

- Part 3 – 13 MB

Talk 1 – Viriya Part 1 -  21MB

Talk 2 – Viriya Part 2 -  21MB

Talk 3 – Viriya Part 3 -  18MB

Talk 4 – Viriya Part 4 -  18MB

Talk 5 – Viriya Part 5 -  21MB

Talk 6 – Viriya Part 6 -  19MB

Talk 7 – Viriya Part 7 -  21MB

Talk 8 – Viriya Part 8 -  15MB

Talk 9 – Viriya Part 9 -  20MB

Talk 10 – Viriya Part 10 – 18 MB

Talk 11 – Viriya Part 11 – 21MB

Talk 12 – Viriya Part 12 – 21MB

Talk 13 – Viriya Part 13 – 19MB

Talk 14 – Viriya Part 14 -  14MB

Talk 15 – Viriya Part 15 -  18MB

Talk 16 – Viriya Part 16 -  19MB

Talk 17 – Viriya Part 17 -  15MB

Talk 18 – Viriya Part 18 -  19MB

Talk 19 – Viriya Part 19 -  24MB

Talk 20 – Viriya Part 20 -  19MB

Talk 21 – Viriya Part 21 -  21MB

Talk 22 – Viriya Part 22 -  21MB

Talk 23 – Viriya Part 23 -  19MB

Talk 24 – Viriya Part 24 -  18MB

Talk 25 – Viriya Part 25 -  17MB

Talk 26 – Vi

Ajahn Passano on Anapanasati

Talk 1 – Turning to the Formal Practice – 20 MB

Talk 2 – Preparing the Mind to Receive the Dhamma – 19 MB

Talk 3 – Being Present With Pain, Pleasure, and the Neutral – 20 MB

Talk 4 – Recognizing and Relinquishing the Hindrances – 14 MB

Talk 5 – Working Further With the Hindrances- 11 MB

Talk 6 – Nourishing and Starving the Hindrances – 11 MB

Talk 7 – Silence, Composure, plus the Hindrances – 27 MB

Talk 8 – Sitting, Walking, and the Hindrances – 19 MB

Talk 9 – Working With Mind Objects – 19 MB

Talk 10 – Experiencing the Mind – 21 MB

Talk 11 – Gladdening the Mind – 19 MB

Talk 12 – Concentrating the Mind – 21 MB

Talk 13 – Releasing the Mind – 22 MB

Talk 14 – Contemplating Impermanence, I Breathe In  – 24 MB

Talk 15 – Investigating Dispassion – 20 MB

Talk 16 – Death and Dispassion – 20 MB

Talk 17 – Attending to Cessation – 15 MB

Talk 18 – Relinquishing the Defilements – 19 MB

Talk 19 – Backbone of the Practice – 20 MB

Talk 20 – Simplification  – 19 MB

Talk 21 – Getting Out of the Cage – 21 MB

Talk 22 – Developing the Good Heart – 23 MB

Talk 23 – Through the Lens of Suffering – 21 MB

Talk 24 – Looking for the Sweet One – 26 MB

Talk 25 – 400 Ducats – 17 MB

Talk 26 – Magha Puja – Purify the Heart – 21 MB

Talk 27 – Patience and Steadfastness – 23 MB

Talk 28 – There Must Be Some Way Out of Here – 23 MB

Talk 29 – Sense Gratification – What a Scam – 18 MB

Talk 30 – Doors to the Deathless – 25 MB

Talk 31 – Keys to the Cell – 22 MB

Talk 32 – Give Our Self a Break – 19 MB

Talk 33 – Right Solution for the Right Problem – 19 MB

Talk 34 – Unraveling Suffering – 19 MB

Talk 35 – The Simile of Ducks and Chickens – 19 MB

riya Part 26 -  25MB

Read more about The Power of Now – A New Earth – Eckhart Tolle

Read more in the The appreciative inquiry – The appreciative inquiry book PDF.

Brain homunculus sensory cortex

At the first gate we ask ourselves: are these words true? If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go.

At the second gate we ask: are they necessary? If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go.

At the last gate we ask: are they kind? If so, we speak; if not, back they go.

Our life will always be filled with challenges. It’s best to admit this to ourself and decide to be happy anyway. Happiness is the way

Let’s treasure every moment we you have and treasure it more because we shared it with someone special, special enough to spend our time with… and remember that time waits for no one.

So, stop waiting
–until our car or home is paid off
–until we get a new car or home
–until we go back to school
–until we finish school
–until we get married
–until we retire
–until summer
–until spring
–until winter
–until autumn
–until xyz

There is no better time than right now to be happy.

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

Let’s take the time to live !!!

This eBook is just the beta version a path we hope you’ll decide to walk together. We briefly mention here some topics which could have complemented this book, we look forward for the many more which will come only if you decide to provide us your feedback and share your happiness story with us. The next version of this eBook will be substantially different, your contribution in terms of content and inputs is vital to make it relevant to your happiness story.

Starting a paradigm shift: degrees of appropriateness
In an analogical world, it was efficient to think digitally. That is, in a world without our current technological know-how, people preferred to reduce accuracy in favour of thinking in terms of right and wrong, discrete values, 0 or 1. In a digital world, it is effective to think analogically. That is, in a world where specialization is wide-spread and processing power easily available, people can improve accuracy and think in terms of degrees of appropriateness, with continuous values. Many debates are floating in the air, including the ones about SWB, where different schools of thought aim to prove they are totally right, and everyone else totally wrong. The paradigm shift is to think inclusively: given one opportunity to analyze, its values may tend towards one direction in a specific context, and towards another direction in another context. By pooling together our experiences and expertise, we can discuss which course of actions are more appropriate, or which outcomes more likely to occur, instead of thinking in terms of right or wrong, 0 or 1.

Being happy is a choice
A recurrent theme in this eBook, and a fact for everyone who is taking happiness seriously: living joyfully is a choice. We can partially control what happens with us, we can totally control what happens within us.

Free-will is a fact, if we are mindful
We are free to act and we can take charge of our lives, as long as we are mindful. If we just act based on reflex and instinct, then we are bounded to “fight or flight” behaviour.

SWB has implications for public policy
Politicians can no longer focus only on monetary indicators when designing and implementing their policies. Subjective well-being is important for voters, often when they are not even fully aware of it. For example, environmental conditions influence voters’ moods: what is the point of a few points increase in GDP, or local business turn-over, if the cost for that is measured in parks being wiped away, with much lower air quality etc? This is not to say monteray indicators are not important, this just means they are not enough and need to be integrated with SWB indicators, like the ones provided by Gallup. Also, with proper research which estimates the savings of SWB policies on the health-bill (for example, “it is estimated that $ XYZ are saved every month thanks to policies which facilitate healthy living”), and improvement in results, of Countries, it becomes easier for policy-makers to take fact-based decisions.

SWB has implications for international relations
Subjective well-being plays leading role in 21st century public diplomacy: would you be greateful to a foreign Country, whose traditions and current infrastructure allows you to improve your health? China and India, with their TCM and Ayurveda, are especially well placed to contribute to the SWB of people around the World, both in terms of incoming tourists who are visiting clinics etc. and foreign citizens who can benefit in their home Country from the expertise of Chinese and Indian expatriates, and their students.

SWB agents, objects, actions can be classified as hot, mild, cool
There are “agents”, “objects” and “actions” facilitating SWB: agents are the providers/producers/facilitators of a given SWB object; an object is the physical substance, or the approach/procedure, of a SWB action; an action is what is required by a person to embrace a SWB object. To make some examples: a meditation instructor, or a pharmaceutical company, are agents; a given approach to meditation, or a pill, are objects; the act of meditating, or taking/being given a pill, are actions. Agents are often subject to public policy; objects, to industry/regulatory agencies standards; actions, to the common sense of the person performing/receiving them.

“Agents”, “objects” and “actions” can be classified based on the different degrees of participation they require from the person who embraces (or is prescribed) them. “Hot” indicates an object which require little participation from the person choosing it; it is usually a silver-bullet solution to address one specific issue, often appropriate in life-threatening situation. Medicines are often “hot” objects. “Cool” indicates an object which require considerably greater participation from the person choosing it; it is usually a holistic solution to address a wide range of aspects, often appropriate when immediate results are not the main goals. Improving one’s eating habits is an example of “cool” object. “Mild” indicates an object, or a bundle of objects, which require average participation from the person choosing it; it usually brings a mix of immediate and long term results.

Being happy together: multilevel happiness
People can be wealthy while other people are starving, unfortunately that occurs quite often. But we cannot be happy in a vacuum, joyful beings who are an island to themselves; as mentioned, happiness is social and contagious. We also find the idea of Multilevel happiness appropriate. When it comes to multilevel marketing, often early the first movers (the ones at the top of the scheme) are the one profiting, while others are just feeding them; multilevel happiness creates joy for all, and sometimes the last to join even benefit from aggregated experiences and happiness of the friends who preceded them. Let’s be agents of happiness!

Being happy together: without dependency
Sometimes, we may think that, by carrying other people on our shoulders, we are going to make their lives better. In reality, we are just contributing to making them dependent on us. There are exception, but in most of the cases, people can usually take them of themselves, and are happier when they do. We should be generous with all, without making them dependent on us. We should help in case of emergency and for long term projects, but making other people dependant on us for their daily living presents dangers: to them, because they no longer feel empowered: to us, because it grows our ego, by making us feeling so important for others.

Lasting happiness
Provisional happiness can be influenced by external short-term events; lasting happiness, is influenced both by objective (genetics and natural predispositions) and subjective (educating our emotions; ensure that, if they crystallize into moods, they are positive ones) personal factors . By knowing better how to develop our subjective factors, and how to maximize our objective factors, we increase our happiness.

Happiness is a way of living
Happiness is the result of what we think and do. Happiness is not a target to aim to, nor a place to reach and blissfully sit there forever. If we are concerned only with happiness, we are going to miss it; if we live our lives in ways appropriate the context, we are happy.

Happiness is like a garden: it comes in different shapes, sizes, colours; it grows on different soils, under different weather conditions; it brings different flowers. What’s common about our garden of happiness is that it needs to be understood and nurtured, cultivated and loved. And there is no such thing as cultivating our small fenced garden in a vacuum: it depends on how other gardens are, which seeds are carried around by bees, etc.

Power of context
We also need to understand strengths and weaknesses are never absolute, and always contextual: a shy person makes an ideal listener, and maybe not the most performing social butterfly. For this reason, shy people may put themselves in the contexts where they can facilitate happiness for them and other people; and also let themselves go in more social situation. Still, happiness is more building in strengths, and not force ourselves in filling what we see as voids.

We can change: Neuroplasticity and Neurogenesis
Science discovered that our brain can be rewired (neuroplasticity). And not only that, new neurons can be generated (neurogenesis). At any age, and in almost every condition. Of course, there are some stages of our lives, and certain conditions, where neuroplasticity and neurogenesis are facilitated more; still, how we think and what we do rewires our brain, and the way our brains are wired influence how we see the world and what we do. We can make this a virtual circle, supporting our growth as individuals and member of society.

Being aware of awareness: consciousness matters
Scientific research made giants steps toward a deeper understanding of consciousness. While we do not all need to be experts in neuroscience, an understanding of its discoveries can facilitate our happiness, making us more aware of how our awareness works .

Evolution explains a lot about our instincts
Why, as individuals, our behaviour may be so unpredictable, but as “crowds” patterns are easy to spot? Because, among other reasons, there was an evolutionary advantage in following the wisdom of the crowd, especially in situations of emergency: if a member of the tribe was suddenly running, chances he/she spotted a potential source of food, or a predator who was ready to attack; and, in a relatively small community, it was easy for peers to know the odd case of a tribe-member who was always running for no reason.

Why is sex so often present in our minds? Because most of the beings with low libido are, well, extincted due to lack of off-springs.

Meme explains a lot about our customs
Meme is a label used to identify units of cultural ideas, symbols or practices; meme are, by their own nature, transmittable from one mind to another. This means that customs which are easily transmissible in a given context, are likely to stick around for long regardless of their degree of truthfulness, sometimes even when they are objectively detrimental to the people implementing them.

The need for more research
Science already made remarkable discoveries in the field of subjective well-being, this justifies investing more resources in research, both longitudinal (across time) and latitudinal (across different demographics).

The need for more wide-spread awareness
Initiatives like the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index are extremely important to spread awareness about SWB, and remind to policy makers the importance of keeping SWB into high consideration. We hope these kind of measurements will become even more prominent.

The need for critical thinking
Subjective well-being requires, among other things, to act accordingly to our interpretation and evaluation of data, information, communications, and argumentation. It requires us to quantify a degree of confidence with which we embrace, or decline, the different options available. Considering the importance, and number of stakeholders, active in SWB, we do need to think critically about what we do; there are several good points made by researchers and thinkers about the pitfalls of a society which, instead of a genuine interest in SWB, develops a superficial “feel good” approach to life. We’ll suggest some of them, in new releases of this book.

About religion, metaphysics, spirituality and ethics
Religions include several aspects, like theology, metaphysics, spirituality, ethics, etc. Many religions deeply differs from each other about theology and metaphysics; even more in the way they label and describe them. Spirituality and ethics can be a subset of a religion, with many similarities across different traditions; or they can be a way we relate with ourselves and all the beings, outside a religious framework.

Religious choices, based on what we believe, are not a subject of this eBook. Spirituality and ethics, based on what we experienced as appropriate in given contexts, will be discussed further in future releases.

About opportunities, challenges, and problems
Everything is as it should be, given the current components of the present context. If we want to change the outcome of the situation, then we need to take action. In the case of opportunities, the upside for us is the most evident. When we see challenges, we are focused on the question marks raised by a situation; still, by taking action, we can overcome them. When we see problems, then the focus is all on the threats; problems cannot be solved with the same mind-set which created them, they demand a brand new approach, otherwise they would not even be problems in the first place.

Happiness to be found East?
Rudyard Kipling’s line from the “The Ballad Of East And West” is mentioned many times: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”. Unfortunately, the rest of the quotation is often omitted: “But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!”.

East and West, North and South, they can all meet and share the fruits of their cultures and understanding. It is important to say that, all along the history of the “West”, there were voices who had a more holistic view about life and happiness; also, from the East, there were dual doctrines. That means to look East is not necessary to live joyfully, even if of course the wealth of wisdom developed in the East can facilitate us. There were philosophers, like Epicurus, who hinted to ways of living happily; unfortunately, these voices were not considered supportive to the ruling classes and status-quot, and so were ignored, misrepresented or even repressed.

What’s in an eBook title?
We like to write about our experiences and opinions in this blog. We also hope other people can read them, add their own take and benefit from them. This means the blog need to be found, and search-engines are the way information is found nowadays.

Being found by search-engines means using appropriate keywords in titles, descriptions etc. This bring one challenging question: are these keywords really an appropriate way to describe what we write about? For example, self-development and self-help are popular search terms. They are also contradictions in terms Most of us do not really need to strenghten the self, most of us benefit from focusing on real awareness.

To make another example: the word happiness is inflated. It is used a lot, often to identify pleasure and other feelings which aren’t really happiness. Still, people perform happiness-related searches on Google et al, and a fair amount of friends visit us thanks to such searches.

How did we decide to balance these different opportunities, for now? We keep happiness in our posts and tags. We also mention self-development from time to time. And we also add what we believe is appropriate to describe the formula to a happy life: living joyfully. And also living joy fully. Because, based on our personal experiences, happiness is a way of living: acting in appropriate manners (because we really are all on the same boat, and we all deserve respect; and not because we know only because that makes us happy) creates joy, here and now, for all..

Future releases
This eBook is currently in beta version. Future publications will include new releases, and also “plug-ins”: short pamphlets, usually focused on one topic only. If you want to provide suggestions etc. please send them to http://www.iswb.org/contact-us/

This is part of “Happiness Formulas. How to assess our subjective well-being? How to live joyfully in the 21st century?”. This free eBook can be downloaded from
http://www.iswb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/happiness-e-book.pdf or from the home-page of the Institute of subjective well-being: science of happiness .

Day 1: Exploring the Historical and Theoretical Dimensions of Arts-Based Inquiry/Crafting
Facilitators: Susan M. Cox and Darquise Lafrenière

Morning – Theory and concepts
Increasingly, researchers in a variety of disciplines use arts-based methods of inquiry for generating and interpreting research data and representing research findings.  In this opening session, we will make use of examples from many different fields to explore the history and theory of arts-based modes of inquiry, and compare and contrast the varied contexts in which they are employed.

Afternoon – Experiential activities
We will explore, through a series of short presentations, dialogue and practical exercises, several approaches to the use of poetry as a means of understanding and expression as well as a tool for conducting and representing social research. Using your own or a provided data set, we will also create and display ‘found’ poetry.

Day 2: Considering the Ethical and Social Implications of Arts-Based Inquiry/ Inquiring Through Visual Arts
Facilitators: Susan M. Cox and Darquise Lafrenière
Guest Expert: Vjeko Sager

Morning – Theory and concepts
As is the case with many forms of research, arts-based approaches have significant ethical and social implications for participants, researchers and artists-creators. In this session, we will make use of examples from many different fields to unpack some of the issues commonly encountered in using arts-based methods of inquiry in various settings. A DVD featuring an experimental performance using four different arts-based methods will prompt reflections and discussion about the creative process and the issues it raises.

Afternoon – Experiential activities
During the afternoon, Vjeko Sager, an active artist and accomplished educator, will guide us through a series of approaches to using images, visual art and related techniques for arts-based inquiry. There will be an opportunity to experiment with photographic images, drawing, painting and collage and consider various modes of display.

Day 3: Examining Challenges and Opportunities Emerging from Arts-Based Inquiry/Identifying and Developing Topics of Interest and Seeking Advice on Projects
Facilitators: Susan M. Cox and Darquise Lafrenière

Morning – Theory and concepts
The field of arts-based inquiry has flourished in the last decade.  There are, however, many new challenges and opportunities associated with such rapid growth.  In this session, we will examine some of the most controversial issues (such as assessing the quality of arts-based work and competence of arts-based researchers) as well as some of the pressing concerns related to obtaining funding and support or networking in the area of arts-based research.

Afternoon – Project development
This segment of the workshop will be tailored to your specific needs and interests.  Throughout the first three days of the workshop,  you will be invited to submit any arts-based ideas or topics that you would like to discuss and develop further.  You may want to take the opportunity to seek  advice on an arts-based project you are currently working on or planning to design. Or you may wish to develop specific skills. Time will be allocated to meeting your specific needs.

Day 4: Performing Arts-Based Theatre/Preparing your Arts-Based Inquiry Project
Facilitators: Susan M. Cox and Darquise Lafrenière
Guest Expert: David Beare

Morning – Experiential activities
We will explore with David Beare, a talented performer and educator, theatre as a performative method of inquiry. We will participate in theatre games and hands-on exercises to develop practical skills in transforming our understanding or observations of the world into a dramatic form. Dialogue will allow us to focus on how this works and what the process has to offer researchers in various fields.

Afternoon – Integration of learning
We will use the second portion of the day to work on an arts-based project.  There will be plenty of opportunity to experiment with your own research or other data or to work with data that will be provided for you. The project may involve the creation and display of poetry and visual art and/or a dramatic performance or perhaps a blend of all three.

Day 5:  Presenting your Arts-Based Inquiry Project
Facilitators: Susan M. Cox and Darquise Lafrenière

The final day will centre on sharing and discussing the projects you are engaged in creating. Using whatever forms of presentation or performance you wish, you will present to the group your arts-based project (whether complete or in-progress), and have the opportunity to reflect, with your co-participants, on practical, ethical or theoretical dimensions of the work. The session will conclude with a celebratory lunch.

More information on http://www.lifeandcareer.ubc.ca/summer/

Experienced instructors in the fields of emotional intelligence, conflict resolution and motivational interviewing will engage you to think differently about disputes and your reactions to them. Interactive learning and practical tools will support the development of new insight. Learn to deal with resistance and manage the emotional climate in creative and constructive ways.

LC 602 S10A  Thu, Jul 22, 6-9pm, Fri-Sat, Jul 23-24, 10am-4pm; UBC Robson Square. $295+tax

PROGRAM DETAILS

Day 1: Changing the Emotional Climate
Facilitator: Ann Rice

Managing difficult conversations begins with you and your own emotional management. Emotional Intelligence provides a framework to understand how your emotions can make the difference between a calm response and over reaction. Discover the basics of the emotional brain and the impact of emotional hijacking on your intentions, values and responses. Learn the EQ competencies of self-awareness and managing impulses as you prepare to assert yourself more confidently in charged situations.

* Learn about “emotional literacy” and how it helps you to regulate yourself in tricky conversations
* Explore how understanding yourself helps in understanding others
* Listen assertively to move the conversation forward
* Monitor emotional cues to read others and fine tune your responses

Day 2: Dealing Effectively with Conflict
Facilitator: Gary Harper

Improving your ability to respond to conflict is a core competency in building effective workplace teams and stronger relationships. Managing the emotional climate, a theme of the previous session, sets the stage for dealing with defensive behaviour and uncomfortable emotions such as anger or fear. Learn how underlying beliefs and hidden assumptions can fuel conflicts. Develop the awareness and skill practice to be able to calmly probe and not back away from tense interactions. Apply techniques such as breathing, self-talk, assertiveness scripts and empathy to manage your emotional triggers and those you interact with.

Day 3: Changing the Conversation: From Persuasion to Possibility
Facilitator: Cristine Urquhart

In these times of social turmoil and economic upheaval, the topic of change can provoke mixed feelings. Understanding the process of change and how language influences outcomes can support the success of these difficult conversations. A Motivational Interviewing perspective provides an understanding of how motivation and resistance happen in relationship. Learn to identify change talk and shift the momentum of the conversation. Recognize when you are on the wrong side of the conversation, and understand how your approach can either increase resistance or enhance the motivation to change. Use key strategies to strengthen collaboration and practice guiding the conversation toward positive change, whether its peers or staff.

More information on http://www.lifeandcareer.ubc.ca/summer/#EDGE

Specific academic credentials are not required but participants should be comfortable reading, writing and communicating in English at a third year university level. An informal interview with the LCC Director or other member of the Peer Certificate Selection Committee will also be required.  More information can be found on http://www.lifeandcareer.ubc.ca/peer/

8.0 Disclaimer
Scientific research about happiness provides a wealth of information, and facilitates substantially to live a happy life. It makes accessible to all the aggregated experiences of many other human beings, who are daily living their lives in the best way they can. It also provides several valuable inputs to policy makers, not just individuals.

Some important points to consider, in order to make the best out of the positive effects that scientific research has on living joyfully:

- self-fulfilling prophecies: with “exact” sciences like physics, describing a phenomenon doesn’t change it, even if of course it influences the way we look at it. Regardless of what we measure as the value of the gravity law, the speed at which stones fall is not affected. Research about happiness, and what makes people happy, is bounded to influence happiness-reinforcing actions.

- diminishing returns and intentions: what facilitate our happiness today may have lower positive impact in the future, because we get used it; this is especially true with pleasant activities; lasting happiness is about our outlook about the present, not only about what we do. Also, intentions count a lot: sharing time and resources with other people makes us more happy than buying something for ourselves; this is what both our experience and scientific research tells us. Still, just based on this, we would give everything away an expect to become happy for ever, we would be in for disappointment. Sharing facilitates happiness when we feel the importance of sharing, and not when we pursue sharing like a task to egoistically enhance our well-being.

8.1 Defining happiness and subjective well-being

Eudaimonia is a classical Greek word, commonly translated as happiness. Consisting of the word “eu” (“good” or “well being”) and “daimōn” (“spirit”, used by extension one’s fortune), it often refers to human flourishing. It was a central concept in ancient Greek ethics, along with the term “arete” (“virtue”) and phronesis (practical or moral wisdom). Webster dictionary defines happiness as “A) state of well-being and contentment, joy. B) a pleasurable or satisfying experience”.

These definitions show that the different aspects of happiness are given different importance by different people; the meaning of happiness in the ears of the listener. For some, it is an inflated term plastered on self-help books; for others, a way of living achieved by living in harmony with ourselves, events, conditions, people and environment around us.

Subjective well-being is not the same as happiness, even if such terms are often used as synonymous. Subjective well-being, as defined by Ed Diener, covers “a broad category of phenomena that includes people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgements of life satisfaction. Subjective well-being consists of two distinctive components: an affective part (evaluation guided by emotions and feeling), which refers to both the presence of positive affect (PA) and the absence of negative affect (NA), and a cognitive part (information-based appraisal of one’s life, evaluated using expectations and “ideal life” as benchmark). It is commonly abbreviated as SWB.

The usage of the term “subjective well-being”, or even the term “joy”, is much less widespread then the one “happiness”. For this reason, while we use happiness in the title of this eBook because that is what people search for online and it is widely mentioned in the field of positive psychology, a suitable way to rephrase it is, in our opinion, is “living joyfully” (when referred to the ordinary meaning of the word), and to use the already mentioned “subjective well-being” which is the accepted standard when it comes to scientific research.

8.2 Measuring subjective well-being
We have already covered some approaches to measure SWB in the previous seven chapters. There are several ways SWB has been measured, both on a collective and individual basis. Often, countries are ranked by their happiness, and cities by how liveable they are.

This ranks how well nations combine level and differences in happiness, for the period 2000-2009, as reported by Veenhoven, R., World Database of Happiness, Erasmus University Rotterdam (available at: http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl accessed on July 7th, 2010):

Costa Rica
79
Denmark
78
Switzerland
74
Finland
73
Netherlands
72

The Economist Intelligent Survey ranks the most liveable cities in the World, the list is available on http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2009/06/liveable_vancouver

8.3 Maximizing subjective well-being

Since social-sciences This is a selection of scientific findings about SWB; as every selection, more could have been add, and we can discover more about it by reading in full the books of the authors mentioned here, and their colleagues.

Mindfulness: as reported by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, study participants who appreciate positive moments of their day, “showed significant increases in happiness and reductions in depression”.

Money aren’t everthing: researchers Tim Kasser and Richard Ryan found that “The more we seek satisfactions in material goods, the less we find them there. The satisfaction has a short half-life—it’s very fleeting.”. Money-seekers also score lower on tests of vitality and self-actualization. These findings are consistent across nations and cultures.

Have Meaningful Goals: this has been a recurrent them along the eBook. “People who strive for something significant, whether it’s learning a new craft or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. As humans, we actually require a sense of meaning to thrive.” say Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener. “Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable” according to Tal Ben-Shahar.

Exercising matters: exercising delivers a sense of accomplishment, plus opportunity for interaction with people and environment, releasing endorphins and boosting self-esteem. And, under the supervision of a doctor, it may be very effective in healing depression.

Positive outlook: “Happy people…see possibilities, opportunities, and success. When they think of the future, they are optimistic, and when they review the past, they tend to savor the high points,” say Diener and Biswas-Diener.

8.4 Sustaining subjective well-being
If we pursue a meaningful life, or flow, happiness tend to be sustainable, and even self-reinforcing. But if we are on the hedonic treadmill, running here and there but in reality always being at point zero in terms of living joyfully, then in reality we are just aiming at pleasure (with its hedonic adaptation which results in declining value in how we perceive the same activities other time). And, in this case, variety doesn’t really help us; as Daniel Gilbert (Harvard Professor of Psychology and author of “Stumbling on Happiness”) says: “Research shows that people do tend to seek more variety than they should. We all think we should try a different doughnut every time we go to the shop, but the fact is that people are measurably happier when they have their favourite on every visit – provided the visits are sufficiently separated in time”. As Daniel Gilbert (Harvard Professor of Psychology and author of “Stumbling on Happiness”) says: “The main error, of course, is that we vastly overestimate the hedonic consequences of any event. Neither positive nor negative events hit us as hard or for as long as we anticipate. This “impact bias” has proved quite robust in both field and laboratory settings”. He also adds: “We are often quite poor at predicting what will make us happy in the future for two reasons. First, we have been given a lot of disinformation about happiness by two sources: Genes and culture. Both genes and cultures are self-perpetuating entities that need us to do things for them so that they can survive. Because we are interested in our own happiness and not theirs, both entities fool us into believing that’s what is good for them is also good for us”. Does this mean we should relay only on scientists to know more about our happiness? Surely not, but we also to be aware of the effects gene and meme have on our assumptions about happiness; assumptions and beliefs are formulated when we do not know, let’s live joyfully so we can then evaluate by ourselves what are appropriate ways to act in each situation.

8.5 Subjective well-being and generosity
Elizabeth W. Dunn is assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, and is well-known for her research in the field of happiness, self knowledge, affective forecasting, implicit social cognition. In the conclusions of her paper titled “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness”, she wrote “While much research has examined the effect of income on happiness, we suggest that how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn. Specifically, we hypothesized that spending money on other people may have a more positive impact on happiness than spending money on oneself. Providing converging evidence for this hypothesis, we found that spending more of one’s income on others predicted greater happiness both cross-sectionally (in a nationally representative survey study) and longitudinally (in a field study of windfall spending). Finally, participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves.

8.5 Subjective well-being and social networks
Human relationships are consistently found to be the most important correlation with human happiness. Happier people tend to have good relations with family and friends, as said by Diener and Biswas-Diener, who also add that “We don’t just need relationships, we need close ones” that involve understanding and caring. Studies, including the one published on the British Medical Journal, reported that happiness in social networks may spread from person to person. Quoting its conclusions: “While there are many determinants of happiness, whether an individual is happy also depends on whether others in the individual’s social network are happy. Happy people tend to be located in the centre of their local social networks and in large clusters of other happy people. The happiness of an individual is associated with the happiness of people up to three degrees removed in the social network. Happiness, in other words, is not merely a function of individual experience or individual choice but is also a property of groups of people. Indeed, changes in individual happiness can ripple through social networks and generate large scale structure in the network, giving rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals. These results are even more remarkable considering that happiness requires close physical proximity to spread and that the effect decays over time.

Our results are consistent with previous work on the evolutionary basis of human emotions and with work focusing on the fleeting direct spread of emotions. In addition to their internal and psychological relevance, emotions have a specifically social role: when humans experience emotions, they tend to show them. Like laughter and smiling, the emotion of happiness might serve the evolutionarily adaptive purpose of enhancing social bonds. Human laughter, for example, is believed to have evolved from the“play face” expression seen in other primates in relaxed social situations. Such facial expressions and positive emotions enhance social relations by producing analogous pleasurable feelings in others, by rewarding the efforts of others, and by encouraging ongoing social contact. Given the organization of people (and early hominids) into social groups larger than pairs, such spread in emotions probably served evolutionarily adaptive purposes. There are thus good biological, psychological, and social reasons to suppose that social networks (both in terms of their large scale structure and in terms of the interpersonal ties of which they are composed) would be relevant to human happiness.

Our data do not allow us to identify the actual causal mechanisms of the spread of happiness, but various mechanisms are possible. Happy people might share their good fortune (for example, by being pragmatically helpful or financially generous to others), or change their behaviour towards others (for example, by being nicer or less hostile), or merely exude an emotion that is genuinely contagious (albeit over a longer time frame than previous psychological work has indicated). Psychoneuroimmunological mechanisms are also conceivable, whereby being surrounded by happy individuals has beneficial biological effects.

The spread of happiness seems to reach up to three degrees of separation, just like the spread of obesity and smoking behaviour. Hence, although the person to person effects of these outcomes tend to be quite strong, they decay well before reaching the whole network. In other words, the reach of a particular behaviour or mood cascade is not limitless. We conjecture that this phenomenon is generic. We might yet find that a “three degrees of influence rule” applies to depression, anxiety, loneliness, drinking, eating, exercise, and many other health related activities and emotional states, and that this rule restricts the effective spread of health phenomena to three degrees of separation away from the ego.

Our findings have relevance for public health. To the extent that clinical or policy manoeuvres increase the happiness of one person, they might have cascade effects on others, thereby enhancing the efficacy and cost effectiveness of the intervention. For example, illness is a potential source of unhappiness for patients and also for those individuals surrounding the patient. Providing better care for those who are sick might not only improve their happiness but also the happiness of numerous others, thereby further vindicating the benefits of medical care or health promotion. There is of course a tradition of community approaches to mental health, but this longstanding concern is now being coupled with a burgeoning interest in health and social networks. More generally, conceptions of health and concerns for the well-being of both individuals and populations are increasingly broadening to include diverse “quality of life” attributes, including happiness. Most important from our perspective is the recognition that people are embedded in social networks and that the health and well- being of one person affects the health and well-being of others. This fundamental fact of existence provides a conceptual justification for the speciality of public health. Human happiness is not merely the province of isolated individuals”.

This is chapter Eight of “Happiness Formulas. How to assess our subjective well-being? How to live joyfully in the 21st century?”. This free eBook can be downloaded from
http://www.iswb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/happiness-e-book.pdf or from the home-page of the Institute of subjective well-being: science of happiness .

7.1 How to calculate it?
There is no exact quantitative definition of GNH, but elements that contribute to it are subject to quantitative measurement. Med Jones, President of International Institute of Management, introduced an enhanced GNH concept, treating happiness as a socioeconomic development metric. It tracks socioeconomic development in 7 areas

- Economic Wellness: measured by direct survey and statistical measurement of economic metrics (consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio, income distribution, etc.)

- Environmental Wellness: measured by direct survey and statistical measurement of environmental metrics (pollution, noise, traffic, etc.)

- Physical Wellness: measurement of physical health metrics (severe illnesses, etc.)

- Mental Wellness: measured by direct survey and statistical measurement of mental health metrics (usage of antidepressants, rise/decline of psychotherapy patients, etc.)

- Workplace Wellness: measured by direct survey and statistical measurement of labour metrics (jobless claims, job change, workplace complaints and lawsuits, etc.)

- Social Wellness: measured by direct survey and statistical measurement of social metrics (discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates, etc.)

- Political Wellness: measured by direct survey and statistical measurement of political metrics (quality of local democracy, individual freedom, and foreign conflicts, etc.)

7.2 What does it mean?
Gross national happiness (GNH) was coined in 1972 by then Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. GNH is based on the premise that some forms of development are not measurable in monetary terms (a concept that is advanced by the nascent field of ecological economics) while conventional development models stress economic growth as the ultimate objective.

7.3 Where are references and further information?

http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/

“Gross National Happiness (Buthan)” is chapter Seven of “Happiness Formulas. How to assess our subjective well-being? How to live joyfully in the 21st century?”. This free eBook can be downloaded from
http://www.iswb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/happiness-e-book.pdf or from the home-page of the Institute of subjective well-being: science of happiness .

6.1 How to calculate it?

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index measures health and well-being in USA. For at least 25 years, the Well-Being Index will collect and measure the daily pulse of US well-being. Survey respondents are asked an in-depth series of questions associated with health and well-being about:
- Life Evaluation
- Emotional Health
- Physical Health
- Healthy Behaviour
- Work Environment
- Basic Access

As reported on their site http://www.well-beingindex.com “The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index segments the data for respondents in both adverse and optimum situations according to household income, location demographics (based on zip code), and personal health status. The results are reported in continuous daily, weekly, and monthly averages. The survey methods for Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index relies on live (not automated) interviewers, dual-frame random-digit-dial (RDD) sampling (which includes landlines as well as wireless phone sampling to reach those in wireless-only households), and a random selection method for choosing respondents within a household. Additionally, daily tracking includes Spanish-language interviews for respondents who speak only Spanish, includes interviews in Alaska and Hawaii, and relies on a multi-call design to reach respondents not contacted on the initial attempt. The data are weighted daily to compensate for disproportions in selection probabilities and nonresponse. The data are weighted to match targets from the U.S. Census Bureau”.

For corporate use, the same organization designed the Healthways Well-Being Assessment. It is administered by Healthways to employers, health plans and other organizations, leveraging Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index questions for a baseline comparison against the nation and geographical areas. It emphasizes employee health, employee productivity, work environment (including job stress, satisfaction with benefits, employee engagement), a culture of health assessing the organization’s support of healthy lifestyle choices. The Healthways Well-Being Assessment also contains additional depth of measurement on health risks and employee productivity.

6.2 What does it mean?

By helping Americans understand how work impacts life and health and conversely how life affects work and health, Gallup-Healthways aims to work together to improve well-being for a better way of life.

6.3 Where are references and further information?

http://www.well-beingindex.com/

http://www.well-beingindex.com/newsroom.asp

5.1 How to calculate it?
Facebook itself calculates the index, by automatically and anonymously analyzing the number of positive and negative words in status updates for selected Countries. Of course, this means that, even when facebookers are just passing along a story, the words contained in a breaking-news can influence the index. For example, the Australia’s index was lowest on Feb. 13, 2008, the day Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized in Parliament to indigenous Australians, reflecting the 4 percent of Aussie status updates containing the word “sorry.”
Data is aggregated in graphs, containing several metrics. GNH, represents Facebook measure of Gross National Happiness. Positivity and Negativity represent the two components of GNH: the extent to which words used on that day were positive and negative. Gross National Happiness is the difference between the positivity and negativity scores, though they are interesting to view on their own. The same model is applied separately to each country analyzed. Each model is thus calibrated differently, which eliminates effects due to differences in the countries’ population and language use. .

5.2 What does it mean?
These are some findings, as published on March 2010 by Facebook Data Team:

* Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day are still among the happiest days for all of these nations, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday are happiest days of the week.

* Canadians are happier the day before Canadian Thanksgiving (a Sunday) than on the actual Canadian Thanksgiving Day (a Monday).

* Happiness levels in the UK seem to have the least variation, with the fewest large peaks among all the graphs due to holidays.

5.3 Where are references and further information?
Facebook GNH

http://apps.facebook.com/gnh_index/

Google Insight: a tool similar to Facebook GNH, to show where (please keep in consideration people mainly use native language to search online) and what people are searching for when it comes to Happiness  http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=19&q=happiness&date=1%2F2010%2012m&cmpt=q

This is chapter Five of “Happiness Formulas. How to assess our subjective well-being? How to live joyfully in the 21st century?”. This free eBook can be downloaded from
http://www.iswb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/happiness-e-book.pdf or from the home-page of the Institute of subjective well-being: science of happiness .

4.1 How to calculate it?

Below are five statements that you may agree or disagree with. Using the 1 – 7 scale below, indicate your agreement with each item by placing the appropriate number on the line preceding that item. Please be open and honest in your responding.
1)7 – Strongly agree
2)6 – Agree
3)5 – Slightly agree
4)4 – Neither agree nor disagree
5)3 – Slightly disagree
6)2 – Disagree
7)1 – Strongly disagree
____ In most ways my life is close to my ideal.
____ The conditions of my life are excellent.
____ I am satisfied with my life.
____ So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.
____ If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

4.2 What does it mean?
The SWLS is a short 5-item instrument designed to measure global cognitive judgements of satisfaction with one’s life. The scale usually requires only about one minute of a respondent’s time.

30 – 35 Very high score; highly satisfied
Respondents who score in this range love their lives and feel that things are going very well. Their lives are not perfect, but they feel that things are about as good as lives get. Furthermore, just because the person is satisfied does not mean she or he is complacent. In fact, growth and challenge might be part of the reason the respondent is satisfied. For most people in this high-scoring range, life is enjoyable, and the major domains of life are going well – work or school, family, friends, leisure, and personal development.

25- 29 High score
Individuals who score in this range like their lives and feel that things are going well. Of course their lives are not perfect, but they feel that things are mostly good. Furthermore, just because the person is satisfied does not mean she or he is complacent. In fact, growth and challenge might be part of the reason the respondent is satisfied. For most people in this high-scoring range, life is enjoyable, and the major domains of life are going well – work or school, family, friends, leisure, and personal development. The person may draw motivation from the areas of dissatisfaction.

20 – 24 Average score
The average of life satisfaction in economically developed nations is in this range – the majority of people are generally satisfied, but have some areas where they very much would like some improvement. Some individuals score in this range because they are mostly satisfied with most areas of their lives but see the need for some improvement in each area. Other respondents score in this range because they are satisfied with most domains of their lives, but have one or two areas where they would like to see large improvements. A person scoring in this range is normal in that they have areas of their lives that need improvement. However, an individual in this range would usually like to move to a higher level by making some life changes.

15 – 19 Slightly below average in life satisfaction
People who score in this range usually have small but significant problems in several areas of their lives, or have many areas that are doing fine but one area that represents a substantial problem for them. If a person has moved temporarily into this level of life satisfaction from a higher level because of some recent event, things will usually improve over time and satisfaction will generally move back up. On the other hand, if a person is chronically slightly dissatisfied with many areas of life, some changes might be in order. Sometimes the person is simply expecting too much, and sometimes life changes are needed. Thus, although temporary dissatisfaction is common and normal, a chronic level of dissatisfaction across a number of areas of life calls for reflection. Some people can gain motivation from a small level of dissatisfaction, but often dissatisfaction across a number of life domains is a distraction, and unpleasant as well.

10 – 14 Dissatisfied
People who score in this range are substantially dissatisfied with their lives. People in this range may have a number of domains that are not going well, or one or two domains that are going very badly. If life dissatisfaction is a response to a recent event such as bereavement, divorce, or a significant problem at work, the person will probably return over time to his or her former level of higher satisfaction. However, if low levels of life satisfaction have been chronic for the person, some changes are in order – both in attitudes and patterns of thinking, and probably in life activities as well. Low levels of life satisfaction in this range, if they persist, can indicate that things are going badly and life alterations are needed. Furthermore, a person with low life satisfaction in this range is sometimes not functioning well because their unhappiness serves as a distraction. Talking to a friend, member of the clergy, counsellor, or other specialist can often help the person get moving in the right direction, although positive change will be up the person. 5 – 9 Extremely Dissatisfied Individuals who score in this range are usually extremely unhappy with their current life. In some cases this is in reaction to some recent bad event such as widowhood or unemployment. In other cases, it is a response to a chronic problem such as alcoholism or addiction. In yet other cases the extreme dissatisfaction is a reaction due to something bad in life such as recently having lost a loved one. However, dissatisfaction at this level is often due to dissatisfaction in multiple areas of life. Whatever the reason for the low level of life satisfaction, it may be that the help of others are needed – a friend or family member, counseling with a member of the clergy, or help from a psychologist or other counsellor. If the dissatisfaction is chronic, the person needs to change, and often others can help.

4.3 Where are references and further information?
Ed Diener, Robert A. Emmons, Randy J. Larsen and Sharon Griffin as noted in the 1985 article in the Journal of Personality Assessment

Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE)

http://www.psych.illinois.edu/~ediener/SPANE.html

Flourishing Scale

http://www.psych.illinois.edu/~ediener/FS.html

3.1 How to calculate it?
Martin Seligman, leading positive psychologists, offer a wealth of questionnaires in their books and websites, more information are provided in 3.3. Considering such questionnaires are self-calculated using their online version, here we just provide extremely simplified versions:

Happiness (Seligman) = Pleasure + flow + meaning

Simplified version = [(Hours spent doing pleasant activities) + (Hours spent in total immersion) + (Hours spent doing meaningful activities)] / Number of days considered

For simplicity, you can calculate this by adding the average amount of hours you spend in one day doing what brings you pleasure, what starts a flow and what really gives a meaning to your life.

For example: 30 minutes spent eating + 120 minutes spent speaking on the phone with clients + 60 minutes spent volunteering

Or you can have a more detailed view, for example by keeping a diary for one month where you write the way you allocate your time daily, and then divide it by the number of days in that month.

3.2 What does it mean?
Martin Seligman, thanks to four decades of research in the field, found there are three main pillars for happiness. Pleasure is the most commonly experienced, and also the least lasting; for example, the pleasure derived from eating an ice-cream, with declining marginal benefit derived from each bite. Flow is about total absorption in a specific task, which can be as short as writing an important email or as long as working on a book. Meaning is the life with a purpose which, for its own definition, is not happening often and is the longer lasting.

Another positive psychologist, Sonja Lyubomirsky, offers an equation where Happiness = Genetic Set Point + Life Circumstances + Intentional Activities.

3.3 Where are references and further information?
About Martin Seligman’s research:

http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx

http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande271/onlinetools/LearnedOpt.html

About Sonja Lyubomirsky’s research:

http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~sonja/

2.1 How to calculate it?

The Questionnaire is also available on http://www.meaningandhappiness.com/oxford-happiness-questionnaire/214/ This whole chapter is copied verbatim from it. Instructions: Below are a number of statements about happiness. Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with each by entering a number in the blank after each statement, according to the following scale:

1 = strongly disagree
2 = moderately disagree
3 = slightly disagree
4 = slightly agree
5 = moderately agree
6 = strongly agree

Please read the statements carefully, because some are phrased positively and others negatively. Don’t take too long over individual questions; there are no “right” or “wrong” answers (and no trick questions). The first answer that comes into your head is probably the right one for you. If you find some of the questions difficult, please give the answer that is true for you in general or for most of the time.

The Questionnaire:
1. I don’t feel particularly pleased with the way I am. (R) _____

2. I am intensely interested in other people. _____

3. I feel that life is very rewarding. _____

4. I have very warm feelings towards almost everyone. _____

5. I rarely wake up feeling rested. (R) _____

6. I am not particularly optimistic about the future. (R) _____

7. I find most things amusing. _____

8. I am always committed and involved. _____

9. Life is good. _____

10. I do not think that the world is a good place. (R) _____

11. I laugh a lot. _____

12. I am well satisfied about everything in my life. _____

13. I don’t think I look attractive. (R) _____

14. There is a gap between what I would like to do and what I have done. (R) _____

15. I am very happy. _____

16. I find beauty in some things. _____

17. I always have a cheerful effect on others. _____

18. I can fit in (find time for) everything I want to. _____

19. I feel that I am not especially in control of my life. (R) _____

20. I feel able to take anything on. _____

21. I feel fully mentally alert. _____

22. I often experience joy and elation. _____

23. I don’t find it easy to make decisions. (R) _____

24. I don’t have a particular sense of meaning and purpose in my life. (R) _____

25. I feel I have a great deal of energy. _____

26. I usually have a good influence on events. _____

27. I don’t have fun with other people. (R) _____

28. I don’t feel particularly healthy. (R) _____

29. I don’t have particularly happy memories of the past. (R) _____

Calculate your score:
Step 1. Items marked (R) should be scored in reverse:

If you gave yourself a “1,” cross it out and change it to a “6.”
Change “2″ to a “5″
Change “3″ to a “4″
Change “4″ to a “3″
Change “5″ to a “2″
Change “6″ to a “1″

Step 2. Add the numbers for all 29 questions. (Use the converted numbers for the 12 items that are reverse scored.)

Step 3. Divide by 29. So your happiness score = the total (from step 2) divided by 29.

I recommend you record your score and the date. Then you’ll have the option to compare your score now with your score at a later date. This can be especially helpful if you are trying some of the exercises, and actively working on increasing your happiness.

2.2 What does it mean?
This part is copied verbatim from http://www.meaningandhappiness.com/oxford-happiness-questionnaire/214/

I suggest you read all the entries below regardless of what score you got, because I think there’s valuable information here for everyone.

1-2: Not happy. If you answered honestly and got a very low score, you’re probably seeing yourself and your situation as worse than it really is. I recommend taking the Depression Symptoms test (CES-D Questionnaire) at the University of Pennsylvania’s “Authentic Happiness” Testing Center. You’ll have to register, but this is beneficial because there are a lot of good tests there and you can re-take them later and compare your scores.

2-3: Somewhat unhappy. Try some of the exercises on this site like the Gratitude Journal & Gratitude Lists, or the Gratitude Visit; or take a look at the “Authentic Happiness” site mentioned immediately above.

3-4: Not particularly happy or unhappy. A score of 3.5 would be an exact numerical average of happy and unhappy responses. Some of the exercises mentioned just above have been tested in scientific studies and have been shown to make people lastingly happier.

4: Somewhat happy or moderately happy. Satisfied. This is what the average person scores.

4-5: Rather happy; pretty happy. Check other score ranges for some of my suggestions.

5-6: Very happy. Being happy has more benefits than just feeling good. It’s correlated with benefits like health, better marriages, and attaining your goals. Check back – I’ll be writing a post about this topic soon.

6: Too happy. Yes, you read that right. Recent research seems to show that there’s an optimal level of happiness for things like doing well at work or school, or for being healthy, and that being “too happy” may be associated with lower levels of such things.

2.3 Where are references and further information?
Hills, P., & Argyle, M. (2002). The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire: a compact scale for the measurement of psychological well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 33, 1073–1082.

Oxford Happiness Questionnaire is chapter two, of “Happiness Formulas. How to assess our subjective well-being? How to live joyfully in the 21st century?”. This free eBook can be downloaded from
http://www.iswb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/happiness-e-book.pdf or from the home-page of the Institute of subjective well-being: science of happiness .

Explanation of variables:
A: Aware (being) of each other and couple’s feelings, thoughts, needs and wants
M: Meditating together, or at least sharing thoughts
A1:Active (being) together, do things together
R: Respectful (being) of each other and couple’s feelings, thoughts, needs and wants
E: Eating properly and support each other healthy lifestyle, and also feed the relationship with positive feelings and thoughts
(…): if there are additional aspects considered too important to be included in the rest of the formula, they can be weighted and graded here

For each variable, please specify:
w: weight, importance given to each aspect (sum of all weights should be 100)
g: grade, rating given to each aspect (each grade is a value between 0 and 1)

If you want to use a spreadsheet, where you can insert the values and see them automatically calculated, you can use: http://spsh.amareway.org/.

1.1 What does it mean?
AmAre formula is meant to be descriptive and preventive, but not predictive. That is, it quantifies the current situation, and the strengths and weaknesses we should be aware of and act upon. Regardless of what the number says, we are always responsible, here and now, for our happiness, so a high result means we should keep building our happiness as we have successfully done so far, and a lower result means there are aspects to act upon to improve our lives.

One of the formula’s strengths is its unlikeness to reach One, the perfect score, or Zero. This formula is useful so we can improve our awareness about the situation so far, and build a better present. Once the formula served its purposes, we can move on. Because the ultimate happiness is not reaching number 1, it is in finding and renewing the appropriate life-dynamics. If we can accept the way life is, and the fact that different people assign different weights and grades to the pillars of their happiness, and still respect and care about all of us, doing our best for the mutual happiness, we are on the way to build together a lasting happy living.

This is a scale to interpret the overall result of the formula:

0-0.3: This is a very unlikely result, so please double check each values inserted. If values are correct, it is very likely the perception of your SWB tends toward emphasizing the non-positive aspects, or that you had a short-term serious issue. This means there is a need to work on all your priorities to make them more satisfying to you in the medium term.

0.31-0.60: Your level of SWB could be higher, if you are closer to 0.31 result. If you are closer to 0.5, you are near an exact average value where you perceive the same value of positive and non-positive components in your life. In both cases, by working on the AmAre variables (starting from the ones with higher weight and lower grade), you can substantially improve your well-being.

0.61-0.90: You tend towards an optimal level of SWB. You feel happy, and likely experienced most or at least many of the happiness “fringe benefits”. You likely live joyfully everyday: no matter the ups and downs we all have, you can make the best of them for yourself and the people around you.

0.91-1: This result is very unlikely to be reached, so please double check each values inserted. If values are correct, you achieved the maximum level of SWB.

To interpret the value of each AmAre variable, you can use the same scale. If a variable is high in weight, and low in grade, then it requires attention and action to improve it. If a variable is low in weight, and high in grade, then you may ask yourself if its grade is slightly over estimated.

We suggest to calculate your AmAre Index once per week for the first 5 weeks. Then, to calculate it once per month. Please make sure to start from scratch at each calculation, meaning you should not check values assigned in the past; after calculating your current AmAre Index, you can then check what changed compared to the previous calculations. If you want to be reminded about monthly calculation, you can register the AmAre newsletter at the top of the page.

Dear friend,

our goal is to make you think about what happiness means for you; it is also to make you consider how the different variables (mentioned in the described happiness formulas) facilitate your joyful living. These are, in a nutshell, the main points emerging from our research:

- being happy is a choice we make right here and now, by living joyfully. It is not a place to reach in the future.
- there are ways we facilitate happiness, they can be summarized with the acronym AmAre: being Aware, Meditating, being Active, being Respectful, Eating properly.
- there are ways we measure subjective well-being and thinking about what such formulas mean for us, is even more important than the numbers we get out of them.
- we get happier by making other people happier, living joyfully starts from each of us, and materialize with shared happiness
- there are several “fringe” benefits to living joyfully, for example happier people are more sociable and energetic, more caring and cooperative, better liked by others, more likely to get married and stay married, to have wider social networks and receive support from friends, show more flexibility and creativity in their thinking, are more productive and work, are recognized as better leaders and negotiators, and so earn accordingly. They are more tenacious when times are not pleasant, have stronger immune systems, are healthier both physically and mentally, and live longer.

The eBook is distributed for free, what we would like you to consider to do:

- share this book with at least 8 friends, who are interested in living joyfully. Support the only Multilevel Happiness (MLH) program!
- share your opinion and input for future releases, by write us (http://www.iswb.org/contact-us/). We look forward for additional material to add, etc.
- localize this eBook, and make it available in your native language. Some chapters may need to be expanded, some to be removed because not so relevant to your country. Please get in touch with us (http://www.iswb.org/contact-us/) if you are interested.
- adapt this eBook, to fit specific purposes. Would you like to edit a “Happiness formulas for expats”, “Happiness formulas for sophomores”, etc? In this case, too, please get in touch with us (http://www.iswb.org/contact-us/).

And, above all, let’s take a big breath, and start living joyfully right here and now!

frank

This “Letter to the reader” is an introduction to “Happiness Formulas. How to assess our subjective well-being? How to live joyfully in the 21st century?”. This free eBook can be downloaded from
http://www.iswb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/happiness-e-book.pdf or from the home-page of the Institute of subjective well-being: science of happiness .

please find below an announcement of the free eBook “Happiness Formulas: How to assess our subjective well-being? How to live joyfully in the 21st century?“. More information coming very soon. THANKS for your feedback and support along the months necessary to write this eBook!

frank

The Institute of Subjective Well-Being releases a free eBook today, summarizing scientific research about happiness, how to measure and improve it. It describes several formulas for subjective well-being, including Oxford Happiness Questionnaire, Satisfaction With Life Scale, Gross National Happiness (Buthan), reviewing the work of Ed Diener, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Martin Seligmann, etc. ISWB also advocates why understanding happiness requires a paradigm shift (thinking in terms of degrees of appropriateness) and shows why SWB has strong implications for public policy and diplomacy.

VANCOUVER (Canada) – The Institute of Subjective Well-Being (http://www.iswb.org/) released today a free eBook titled “Happiness Formulas: How to assess our subjective well-being? How to live joyfully in the 21st century?”. This guide to measure and improve happiness, offers an intuitive way to assess subjective well-being using Positive Psychology questionnaires. It also reviews benchmark of social happiness, like the Facebook Collective Happiness Index, Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, and the Gross National Happiness introduced in Buthan.

The eBook also reviews AmAre Way (http://www.amareway.org/), a formula to measure happiness, and a way of living joyfully. AmAre is an acronym which stands for: Aware (being), Meditating, Active (being), Respectful (being), Eating properly. AmAre is an Italian word which means “to love”, and in English it sounds like interconnectedness: (I) Am (we) Are.

“Happiness Formulas” eBook summarizes some of the main findings in recent research about subjective well-being, and raises points of its own, including:
- being happy is a choice we make right here and now, by living joyfully. It is not a place to reach in the future.
- there are ways to measure subjective well-being and thinking about what such formulas mean for us, is even more important than the numbers we get out of them.
- we get happier by making other people happier
- understanding happiness requires a paradigm shift: from a digital (right or wrong, true or false) way of thinking which belonged to analogical times, to an analogical (degrees of appropriateness) way of thinking which belongs to our digital times
- SWB has strong implications for public policy and diplomacy
- SWB agents, objects and actions can be classified as hot, mild and cool
- there are several “fringe” benefits to living joyfully, for example happier people are more sociable and energetic, more caring and cooperative, better liked by others, more likely to get married and stay married, to have wider social networks and receive support from friends, show more flexibility and creativity in their thinking, are more productive and work, are recognized as better leaders and negotiators, and so earn accordingly. They are more tenacious when times are not pleasant, have stronger immune systems, are healthier both physically and mentally, and live longer.

The Institute of Subjective Well-Being (http://www.iswb.org/) is a non-sectarian, non-political institute devoted to sharing both established and pioneering research in the field of subjective well-being, more commonly known as happiness. Subjective well-being is a suitable way to refer to happiness: subjective, because it is in the eyes’ of the beholder; well-being, because it is always in progress and not a place to reach and hold for good. Membership is free and open to researchers, meditators, philosophers and the public at large. ISWB publishes pamphlets and white-papers, freely available on their site; it also edits a newsletter for media experts who want to receive updates about developments in the field of subjective well-being.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Institute of Subjective Well-Being
Phone: +1 206 792 9887
Website: http://www.iswb.org/
Email: info@iswb.org

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Learning Objectives:
(a) To learn the structure and importance of sleep.
(b) To learn how sleep enhances learning and memory.
(c) To learn how education can optimally take advantage of the “sleep boost.”

This talk was given at the conference “Brain Development and Learning 2010 Meeting” in Vancouver. It was an interdisciplinary conference devoted to improving children’s lives by making cutting-edge research in neuroscience, child psychology, & medicine. Further information available on http://www.interprofessional.ubc.ca/bdl.html

Studies of the neurobiology of love have provided a deeper understanding of both mental health and mental illness. Infants suffering from childhood neglect suffer from reduced oxytocin and vasopressin levels into adulthood. There, the absence of love leaves a biological scar, which is then passed down inter-generationally.

Learning Objectives:

(a) This presentation will define concepts such as “social monogamy” and “love” from a scientific perspective.
(b) The endocrine causes and consequences of social bonds and related social behaviors will be examined using evidence from humans and other monogamous mammals.
(c) The mental health implications of sexually-dimorphic hormones such as oxytocin and vasopressin will be discussed, using autism as an example.

This talk was given at the conference “Brain Development and Learning 2010 Meeting” in Vancouver. It was an interdisciplinary conference devoted to improving children’s lives by making cutting-edge research in neuroscience, child psychology, & medicine. Further information available on http://www.interprofessional.ubc.ca/bdl.html

Learning Objectives:

(a) Describe experimental work that shows that people from East Asian cultures tend to perceive, categorize, and reason about the world using holistic strategies, whereas people from Western cultures tend to rely on analytic cognitive strategies. Critically evaluate the proximal and distal explanations for these cultural differences in thinking.
(b) Explain in what ways western, educated, industrialized, rich, and developed societies (WEIRDs) have a psychological profile that is argued to be unrepresentative of humanity.
(c) Think about how these cognitive differences may contribute to cross-cultural misunderstandings, and what can be done to address them.

Learning Objectives:
(a) Implicit biases are pervasive; most Americans and most people all over the world show them.
(b) People differ in levels of implicit bias; at least three factors that produce this variation. First, we favor our own. Second, those who come from less-advantaged groups do not show the same level of ingroup bias. Finally, the degree to which our immediate environment allows or disavows bias also influences behavior without our being aware of that influence.
(c) Implicit biases predict behavior. From simple acts of friendliness and inclusion to more consequential acts such as the evaluation of work quality and deservingness, those who show higher implicit biases have been shown to display greater discrimination. One of our own studies showed that doctors who harbor more implicit bias against African Americans (as a group) are also less likely to offer African American patients a cardiac procedure called thrombolysis.
(d) Implicit biases can be changed. Implicit biases are learned and therefore can be unlearned. This knowledge allows organizations to develop strategies for change. Implicit biases have the paradoxical property that they are not amenable to change from simply willing them away and yet they are quite malleable in the face of appropriate interventions.

This talk “The Human Mind and the Social World: Implicit Biases are Learned and can be Unlearned” was given at the conference “Brain Development and Learning 2010 Meeting” in Vancouver. It was an interdisciplinary conference devoted to improving children’s lives by making cutting-edge research in neuroscience, child psychology, & medicine. Further information available on http://www.interprofessional.ubc.ca/bdl.html

This is confirmed by personal experience: while I have been trying different sushi rolls, eating my favourite gives always the best sensations

Dr. Kabat-Zinn will review the work on bringing mindfulness meditation practices into the mainstream of medicine and mental health through mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). He will describe specific clinical applications and outcomes across several medical and psychological conditions. He will also describe mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), its use in relapse prevention for depression, and the similarities and differences between MBSR and MBCT. His talk will address optimizing the therapeutic relationship, and the cultivation of greater self-awareness, self-compassion, and emotional balance.

In “Mindfulness-based Stress and Pain Reduction (MBSR)”, Dr. Kabat-Zinn will review the work of him and colleagues on bringing mindfulness meditation practices into the mainstream of medicine and mental health through mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). He will describe the intervention, specific clinical applications and outcomes across several medical and psychological conditions. Jon Kabat – Zinn is a much sought after speaker and the author of several best-selling books, including Full Catastrophe; Wherever You Go, There You Are; Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting (co-authored by Myla Kabat-Zinn); & The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness (co-authored with Williams, Teasdale, an Segal). His books have been published in over 30 languages.

Jon Kabat-Zinn received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from MIT in the lab of Nobel Laureate, Salvador Luria. He has received numerous awards, including Founding Fellow of the Fetzer Institute; a Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine; the Art, Science, & Soul of Healing Award; the Trailblazer Award for “pioneering work in the field of integrative medicine” from Scripps, an Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and the Pioneer in Integrative Medicine Award.

This talk “Mindfulness-based Stress and Pain Reduction (MBSR)” was given at the conference “Brain Development and Learning 2010 Meeting” in Vancouver. It was an interdisciplinary conference devoted to improving children’s lives by making cutting-edge research in neuroscience, child psychology, & medicine. Further information available on http://www.interprofessional.ubc.ca/bdl.html

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was born in Italy where his father was serving as a consul for the Hungarian government. During WWII as a pre-teen child, he witnessed the crash of European society and wondered why grown-ups had not found a better way to live. The quest to understand how to improve life led him through religion, philosophy, literature and art, before coming to rest on psychology.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi came to the US in 1956 with $1.25 to his name and almost no English. For his ESL class he wrote the first of two autobiographical short stories that were published in the New Yorker. He taught at the University of Chicago for 30 years, eventually becoming Chairman of its Psychology Department.

With his talk ““Creativity and Flow: Making Life and Learning more Enjoyable”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that children are born with an enormous desire to learn. Unfortunately, formal schooling has never been successful in leveraging this desire. Research on the flow experience has begun to offer ideas for how to make learning more enjoyable.

Children are born with an enormous desire to learn. Unfortunately, formal schooling has never been successful in leveraging this desire for the purposes of education. In the past few decades, research on the flow experience has begun to offer ideas for how to make learning more enjoyable. Prof. Csikszentmihalyi will describe the components of flow and its implications to education

Learning Objectives: Develop an understanding of the flow experience, how it can help learning, and how it relates to existing pedagogies (e.g. Montessori education).

This talk was given at the conference “Brain Development and Learning 2010 Meeting” in Vancouver. It was an interdisciplinary conference devoted to improving children’s lives by making cutting-edge research in neuroscience, child psychology, & medicine. Further information available on http://www.interprofessional.ubc.ca/bdl.html

Social Pediatrics has developed progressively over the past 20 years in 2 underserved communities in Montréal with community support. What started as the small project of one pediatrician to better serve under-served children has become an innovative model of developing global preventive and curative services for children’s needs and rights with the active participation of families and communities. Five new Social Pediatrics Centers are opening in the Fall of 2009 and more than 20 others are in preparation.

The approach is based on respect, comprehension, and the mobilization of different sectors (health and social, education, youth protection, law, media and business) to work together to sustain children in need (no children should fall through the cracks and fail to get the support they need).

Networking, empowerment, children’s rights, and innovation are strong values of the approach. Social Pediatrics involves widening the lens through which one views a child’s health, and diversifying the players. Medical conditions and social conditions are closely intertwined. Social Pediatricians realize that environmental, socio-economic, and family conditions contribute as much to health and illness as do genes and germs. Social Pediatricians also realize they cannot do their job alone. They work closely with communities to develop a local system of integrated services. Social Pediatricians view health as thriving as opposed to simply the absence of sickness, and see prevention as critical.

Learning Objectives:
(a) To understand social iniquities as a severe threat to child health and development globally
(b) To define community actions on how to sustain children and families
(c) To be aware that interdisciplinary action is a powerful tool for empowering the child, the family, & the community (e.g., Medical Legal partnership for implementing children’s rights)

This talk “Social Pediatrics: A Powerful Approach to Sustaining Child Development in Underserved Communities” was given at the conference “Brain Development and Learning 2010 Meeting” in Vancouver. It was an interdisciplinary conference devoted to improving children’s lives by making cutting-edge research in neuroscience, child psychology, & medicine. Further information available on http://www.interprofessional.ubc.ca/bdl.html

Prana Yoga and Zen Centre Vancouver
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MokSana Yoga Victoria
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3HO Kundalini Yoga Vancouver
7 month Teacher Training
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604-732-9642

www.semperviva.com – (604) 739-2009
(Semperviva Sun Yoga Studio Vancouver)

www.yyoga.ca – (604) 684-3334
(YYoga Vancouver)

www.exhalestudio.com – (604) 689-2446
(Exhale Yoga Pilates Vancouver)

Bikram’s Yoga College Of India
www.bikramyogavancouver.com – (604) 662-7722

Exhale Yoga Pilates Vancouver
www.exhalestudio.com – (604) 689-2446

Open Door Yoga Vancouver
opendooryoga.bc.ca – (778) 371-8179

Radha Yoga Vancouver
www.radhavancouver.org – (604) 605-0011

Semperviva Sun Yoga Studio Vancouver
www.semperviva.com – (604) 739-2009

Yaletown YYoga Vancouver
www.yyoga.ca – (604) 684-3334

West End Community Centre Vancouver
www.westendcc.ca – (604) 257-8333

Open Door Yoga Vancouver

http://opendooryoga.bc.ca

Open Door Yoga was started in Jan. 1999 as a drop-in yoga class. In Sept. of 1999, the school changed to offering a variety of passes to accommodate the growing student population. Classes were hatha style classes, linking asanas in a flow-like sequence with emphasis on breathing and alignment.

Open Door Yoga remains a predominantly hatha yoga studio, power, restorative, prenatal, parent & baby and kids yoga are part of the schedule as are many yoga and other workshops. Currently, Open Door Yoga has expanded to 4 locations: Main Street @ 15th, Main Street @ 14th, Commercial Drive and Arbutus @ 16th

Semperviva Vancouver yoga

http://www.semperviva.com

Semperviva believes yoga and its experiences are for Every Body! That’s why we offer a life transforming yoga experience unparalleled by any other. With five unique yoga experience studio locations, and one retail location, ‘The Lifestyle Store’, there’s enough flexibility to meet everyones’ needs. Our offerings include six forms of yoga teachings: Ashtanga, Hatha, Kundalini, Power, Prenatal and Yin Yoga. Our expertise is founded on the excellence of over 40 exceptional leaders, who will guide you through each yoga session, improving and building on your internal strengths. Over 145 yoga classes each week really does offer something for Every Body!

Our Lifestyle Store compliments our workouts with additional feedback, nutritional elements and overall health practices to help you reach your ideal goals. Our specialist team can work with you to ensure you achieve the balance you are looking for.

If your ambitions reach further than simple exercise in Vancouver, we offer a number of global yoga retreats throughout the year, in both local and exotic locales. Or more so, if you wish to guide others through your own personal yoga experience and help others reach the satisfaction you’ve been able to obtain, we offer internationally recognized yoga teacher training programs in Vancouver and Greece and weekly workshops. We are here for your entire yoga experience.

YYoga Vancouver

http://www.yyoga.ca

YYoga Vancouver is a group of individuals passionate about yoga, health and wellness. With community at the center of all we do, we make yoga fun and accessible to everyone and every body. We live each day with passion and purpose, doing what we love and endeavor to inspire others to do the same.

He is the author of the international bestseller Stumbling on Happiness, which has been translated into more than 25 languages and which won the 2007 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books. As reviewed by Reed Business Information, Stumbling on Happiness is not a self-help book, but instead mounting a scientific explanation of the limitations of the human imagination and how it steers us in inappropriate directions in our search for happiness, Daniel Todd Gilbert draws on psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy and behavioral economics to argue that, just as we err in remembering the past, so we err in imagining the future. “Our desire to control is so powerful, and the feeling of being in control so rewarding, that people often act as though they can control the uncontrollable,” Gilbert writes, as he reveals how ill-equipped we are to properly preview the future, let alone control it. Unfortunately, he claims, neither personal experience nor cultural wisdom compensates for imagination’s shortcomings.

In concluding chapters, he discusses the transmission of inaccurate beliefs from one person’s mind to another, providing salient examples of universal assumptions about human happiness such as the joys of money and of having children. He concludes with the provocative recommendation that, rather than imagination, we should rely on others as surrogates for our future experience. Gilbert’s playful tone and use of commonplace examples render a potentially academic topic accessible and educational.

After birth, the most important decision a newborn must make is whether his or her world is safe or unsafe. If “safe,” a calm developmental state is expressed; if “unsafe,” a stress state focused on survival follows. A caregiver’s presence (or absence) & particularly skin contact (or its absence) are the primary and possibly sole determinants for an infant deciding he or she is safe or not. Autonomic nervous system activities dynamically chart this when infants are separated or in skin-to-skin contact. Separation produces an initial state of vigilance (that looks like sleep but is not), followed by freezing and dissociation. Skin-to-skin contact results in calm and regulated autonomic activity with sleep cycling, feeding preparedness and approach-oriented frontal lobe activity. It used to be thought that KMC was only appropriate for stable infants. However, a Randomized Controlled Trial, comparing low birth weight babies stabilized in incubators versus those without incubators in “skin-to-skin contact from birth,” provides clear evidence that skin-to-skin contact produces results far superior to those without incubators, and smaller babies actually become more unstable in incubators.

Learning Objectives:
(a) Provide the scientific evidence base for or against the use of incubators.
(b) Explain the effects of maternal-infant separation on brain infrastructure and development of maternal-infant physical togetherness.
(c) Describe the essential functions of the newborn autonomic nervous system.

This talk was given at the conference “Brain Development and Learning 2010 Meeting” in Vancouver. It was an interdisciplinary conference devoted to improving children’s lives by making cutting-edge research in neuroscience, child psychology, & medicine. Further information available on http://www.interprofessional.ubc.ca/bdl.html

“Good” rat moms (those who more frequently lick and groom their pups) produce offspring who, throughout their lives, explore more, are less fearful & less reactive to stress, perform better cognitively, and preserve their cognitive skills better into old age. It is the mother’s behavior that produces these effects rather than genes: Pups of ‘good’ moms raised by low-licking-and-grooming moms do not show these characteristics, and pups of low-touch moms raised by high-touch moms do show this constellation. Here’s an example of early experience (nurturing touch, or its absence) producing enduring, life-long effects.

Rats tend to raise their offspring the way they were raised, so these effects are transmitted intergenerationally, not through the genes but through behavior: The biological offspring of low-touch moms, cross-fostered to high-touch moms, lick and groom their offspring a lot, and thus the diminished stress reactivity and cognitive enhancement is passed down through the generations.

Maternal behavior produces these behavioral consequences through altering gene expression. Not all genes in an individual are expressed. Many are never expressed. Experience affects which genes are turned on and off, in which cells, and when. For example, lots of touch by rat moms turns on (for life) the glucocorticoid receptor gene in offspring, hence lower circulating glucocorticoid levels, so they feel less stressed.

Learning Objectives:
(a) To understand how experience can affect gene expression (epigenesis).
(b) To understand the profound effect parenting can have on cognitive and emotional functioning throughout life and through succeeding generations.
(c) To understand that most of our genes are not expressed and to understand something about the mechanisms that turn genes off and on.

This talk was given at the conference “Brain Development and Learning 2010 Meeting” in Vancouver. It was an interdisciplinary conference devoted to improving children’s lives by making cutting-edge research in neuroscience, child psychology, & medicine. Further information available on http://www.interprofessional.ubc.ca/bdl.html

Examples of the impact bias include over-estimating emotional reactions to elections, movie clips, Valentine’s Day, football games, etc. Reasons for the impact bias include focalism (people focus too much on the target event, ignoring peripheral activities that may later occupy their attention and impact their emotional state) and immune neglect (people tend to neglect the role their coping resources will later play in ameliorating distressing affects). As such, those with effective coping strategies are actually more prone to biased affective forecasts.

Example of citations about Affective forecasting:
How we forecast our feelings, and whether those predictions match our future emotional states, had never been the stuff of laboratory research. But in scores of experiments, Gilbert, Wilson, Kahneman and Loewenstein have made a slew of observations and conclusions that undermine a number of fundamental assumptions: namely, that we humans understand what we want and are adept at improving our well-being — that we are good at maximizing our utility, in the jargon of traditional economics. Further, their work on prediction raises some unsettling and somewhat more personal questions. To understand affective forecasting, as Gilbert has termed these studies, is to wonder if everything you have ever thought about life choices, and about happiness, has been at the least somewhat naive and, at worst, greatly mistaken.
—Jon Gertner, “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness,” The New York Times, September 7, 2003

People are generally unaware of the operation of the system of cognitive mechanisms that ameliorate their experience of negative affect (the psychological immune system), and thus they tend to overestimate the duration of their affective reactions to negative events. This tendency was demonstrated in 6 studies in which participants overestimated the duration of their affective reactions to the dissolution of a romantic relationship, the failure to achieve tenure, an electoral defeat, negative personality feedback, an account of a child’s death, and being rejected by a prospective employer.
—Daniel T Gilbert et al., “Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting,” Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, September 1, 1998

SUSAN FISKE: Can we become more accurate in affective forecasting?

DANIEL GILBERT: Probably, but first we should ask whether or not we want to. It’s very easy to see somebody making a logical error and say, “Well, you ought not to have made it.” But logical errors can serve an important purpose in human cognition. Imagine a world in which some people realize that external events have much less impact than others believe they do. Those who make that realization might not be particularly motivated to change the external events. But one of the reasons we protect our children, for example, is that we believe we would be devastated if they were harmed or killed. So these predictions may be very effective in motivating us to do the things we as a society need to do, even though they might be inaccurate on an individual level. Anyone who wanted to cure affective forecasters of their inferential ills would be wise to measure both the costs and benefits of forecasting errors.
—”Forecasting the future: why our inability to predict emotion may be beneficial,” Psychology Today, November, 2002

Academic research about Affective forecasting includes:

Dunn & Laham.doc – A typical paper on affective forecasting

“The research reviewed in this chapter underscores the importance of everyday emotional time travel. People’s predictions about how they will feel in the future shape many of their decisions, though under certain conditions people place surprisingly little weight on their affective forecasts in decision-making. Supporting the validity of decisions that are based on affective forecasts, most studies suggest that forecasts do reliably predict experiences, though we know relatively little about when, why, and for whom the relationship between forecasts and experiences is stronger or weaker. We do know that specific biases in forecasting can be readily eliminated, and there is a smattering of recent evidence that some people may be better forecasters than others. Finally, while common forms of affective forecasting errors may not interfere with the survival of our species, the shortcomings of emotional time travel have important ramifications for individual, interpersonal, and societal well-being.”

Decisions and Revisions: The Affective Forecasting of Changeable Outcomes

People prefer to make changeable decisions rather than unchangeable decisions because they do not realize that they may be more satisfied with the latter. Photography students believed that having the opportunity to change their minds about which prints to keep would not influence their liking of the prints. However, those who had the opportunity to change their minds liked their prints less than those who did not (Study 1). Although the opportunity to change their minds impaired the postdecisional processes that normally promote satisfaction (Study 2a), most participants wanted to have that opportunity (Study 2b). The results demonstrate that errors in affective forecasting can lead people to behave in ways that do not optimize their happiness and well-being.

Other pubblications from Martin E. P. Seligman include:
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (1975). Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-0752-7 (Paperback reprint edition, W.H. Freeman, 1992, ISBN 0-7167-2328-X)
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (1991). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-671-01911-2 (Paperback reprint edition, Penguin Books, 1998; reissue edition, Free Press, 1998)
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (1993). What You Can Change and What You Can’t: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-679-41024-4 (Paperback reprint edition, Ballantine Books, 1995, ISBN 0-449-90971-9)
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (1996). The Optimistic Child: Proven Program to Safeguard Children from Depression & Build Lifelong Resilience. New York: Houghton Mifflin. (Paperback edition, Harper Paperbacks, 1996, ISBN 0-06-097709-4)
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-2297-0 (Paperback edition, Free Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7432-2298-9)
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (2004). ‘”Can Happiness be Taught?”. Daedalus, Spring 2004.
- Peterson, Christopher, & Seligman, Martin E. P. (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 987-0-19-516701-6

These are some reviews about Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth as provided by Amazon.com:

“Ed Diener [says], ‘Happiness is not a set of desirable life circumstances. It’s a way of traveling.’ Diener’s new book, written with his son, Robert Biswas-Diener, a life coach, offers guidance for those interested in taking a road trip. As the Dieners synthesize the latest research … they challenge the conventional party line on well-being.” (O Magazine)

“Among the recent glut of books about happiness, this one shines out. Highly readable and entertaining, its authors are perhaps the pre-eminent researchers on the subject … The advice on how to gain an appropriate level of happiness is way ahead of that offered by most self-help books.” (New Scientist)

“If you’re looking for one thoughtful, comprehensive book to help you understand the science of happiness better, this is exactly what you’re looking for. It’s also a good read, accessible, concise, and even funny, which isn’t true of all such books, and there’s a lot of information I hadn’t seen elsewhere.” (Happiness Project)

“Happiness challenges the present thinking of the causes and consequences of happiness and redefines our modern notions of happiness. It shares the results of three decades of research on happiness, and covers the most important advances in our understanding of happiness.” (Adolescence, April 2009)

“Happiness is a process, not a place. That’s one of the key concepts that leaps from Happiness: Unlocking The Mysteries Of Psychological Wealth by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas- Diener.” (Diana’s Blog: Quirky Words and Book)

“Happiness challenges the present thinking af the causes and consequences of happiness and redefines our modern notions of happiness. It shares the results of three decades of research on happiness, and covers the most important advances in our understanding of happiness. It also offers readers access to the world’s leading experts on happiness, and provides ‘real world’ examples that will resonate with general readers as well as scholars.” (Family Therapy)

“In their sweeping new book Diener and his son, Robert Biswas-Diener, distill the results of worldwide research into happiness and come up with an explanation, a recipe, for a sustained state of good feeling, psychological wealth, as they call it.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 2008)

“The authors write in a that is clear and accessible to a general audience; furthermore, they frequently infuse humor into their work. I certainly respect Diener and Biswas-Diener as well as admire the amount effort they have each put into their life’s work.” (Metapsychology, November 2008)

“Pioneering researchers Professor Ed and his son Robert Biswas-Diener explain … why most things we’ve been told are wrong.” (Psychologies, November 2008)

“This book is absolutely a delight to read. [The authors] have made the science very accessible and practical. You will love the stories they weave into the text. The Dieners take us along on their adventures around the world. We tag along as they unlock the mysteries of happiness. As you read the book you come to understand why Diener is known as the ‘Jedi Master of Happiness’ and why Biswas-Diener has been called the ‘Indiana Jones of Psychology.’ Get the book, settle into a comfortable chair, buckle your seatbelt, and enjoy the ride.” (Positive Psychology News Daily)

Happiness, for Matthieu Ricard, cannot be found in fleeting experiences of pleasure—the joy of a sunny day, the refreshing taste of an ice cream cone, the ecstasy of sex—but only in the depths of an individual’s being. Happiness is not self-interested, but rather compassionate, seeking the well-being of others. If we are truly happy, writes Ricard, we can change the world because of our compassion for others and our desire to end hatred and bring happiness even to those we don’t like. For Ricard, happiness is a deep state of well-being and wisdom that flourishes in every moment of life, despite the inevitability of suffering. Individuals can, however, learn to minimize suffering in life by practicing moderation in all things, as well as meditation. Meditative exercises that individuals can practice to achieve happiness appear in each chapter.

Pepe Danza is a spiritual musician, expert in sound and vibration. His meditative playing expands our hearts beyond mind and thought, connecting us to the sound of the inner muse herself.

Even though it is not mandatory, organisers would appreciate confirmation by email: info@pranayogacollege.com or by phone 604-676-8812

Open to all by donations.
Location: Centre for Peace (1825 W 16th Ave)
Free parking available

Turn vegetarian on Dalai Lama’s birthday: the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress and Regional Tibetan Women’s Association, Bylakuppe, will celebrate the 75th birthday of the Dalai Lama on Tuesday, in a unique way this year, launching a campaign inviting people to turn vegetarians. According to the president of the Youth Congress, Pema Tsewang and Women’s Association president Tenzin Wangmo, turning to vegetarianism would be a befitting birthday present to Dalai Lama, who always advocates love and compassion to all, including animals.

Selected Dalai Lama quotes: This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the principal source of success in life. Since we are not solely material creatures, it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone. The key is to develop inner peace.

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DALAI LAMA! Peace and metta.

Speakers list include:

THICH NHAT HANH
One of the best known and most respected Zen masters in the world today, poet, and peace and human rights activist, Thich Nhat Hanh (called Thây by his students) has led an extraordinary life. Born in central Vietnam in 1926 he joined the monkshood at the age of sixteen. The Vietnam War confronted the monasteries with the question of whether to adhere to the contemplative life and remain meditating in the monasteries, or to help the villagers suff ering under bombings and other devastation of the war. Nhat Hanh was one of those who chose to do both, helping to found the “engaged Buddhism” movement.

His life has since been dedicated to the work of inner transformation for the benefi t of individuals and society. In Saigon in the early 60s, Thich Nhat Hanh founded the School of Youth Social Service (SYSS), a grass-roots relief organization that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, resettled homeless families, and organized agricultural cooperatives. Rallying some 10,000 student volunteers, the SYSS based its work on the Buddhist principles of non-violence and compassionate action. Despite government denunciation of his activity, Nhat Hanh also founded a Buddhist University, a publishing house, and an infl uential peace activist magazine in Vietnam.

After visiting the U.S. and Europe in 1966 on a peace mission, he was banned from returning to Vietnam in 1966. On subsequent travels to the U.S., he made the case for peace to federal and Pentagon officials including Robert McNamara. He may have changed the course of U.S. history when he persuaded Martin Luther King, Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War publicly, and so helped to galvanize the peace movement. The following year, King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Subsequently, Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace
Talks.

In 1982 he founded Plum Village, a Buddhist community in exile in France, where he continues his work to alleviate suff ering of refugees, boat people, political prisoners, and hungry families in Vietnam and throughout the Third World. He has also received recognition for his work with Vietnam veterans, meditation retreats, and his prolifi c writings on meditation, mindfulness, and peace. He has published some 85 titles of accessible poems, prose, and prayers, with more than 40 in English, including the best selling Call Me by My True Names, Peace Is Every Step, Being Peace, Touching Peace, Living Buddha Living Christ, Teachings on Love, The Path of Emancipation, and Anger. In September 2001, just a few days after the suicide terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, he addressed the issues of non-violence and forgiveness in a memorable speech at Riverside Church in New York City. In September of 2003 he addressed members of the US Congress, leading them through a two-day retreat. Thich Nhat Hanh continues to live in Plum Village in the meditation community he founded, where he teaches, writes, and gardens; and he leads retreats worldwide on “the art of mindful living.” Thich Nhat Hanh’s key teaching is that, through mindfulness, we can learn to live in the present moment instead of in the past and in the future. Dwelling in the present moment is, according to Nhat Hanh, the only way to truly develop peace, both in one’s self and in the world.

He will make his first visit to Malaysia when he delivers his Keynote Address on “Living in Harmony: When Things Fall Apart” during the World Buddhist Conference on Sept 25-26, 2010 in Kuala Lumpur.

WEI WU
Venerable Wei Wu was born in Penang and had his studies at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree in 1973. He worked with Hewlett Packard in Malaysia as a Quality Manager before starting his own consultancy company in 1987 to serve many multi-national companies including Procter and Gamble, Philips, Fiat, and Astec in Asia, Europe and the United States of America. Venerable Wei Wu was ordained as a Buddhist monk in the Mahayana tradition in 1992 and established the Than Hsiang Foundation in Malaysia and Thailand and the International Buddhist College (IBC) in Hatyai, Thailand.

He is currently the President of the Than Hsiang Foundation and the Council Chairman of the IBC with its main campus in Southern Thailand, and a new branch campus in Korat, Thailand. He is also Abbot of Tham Wah Wan Temple in Kuala Lumpur where many IBC courses are being conducted for participants in the central region of the country. Venerable Wei Wu is also very active in social welfare projects, having established homes for the poor, as well as kindergartens throughout Malaysia.

JOAN HALIFAX
Joan Halifax Roshi, an anthropologist by training, is the Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has worked in the area of death and dying for over thirty years and is Director of the Project on Being with Dying. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work. She is also Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. She was appointed Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University, and has taught in many universities, monasteries, and medical centers around the world. Recently, was appointed a distinguished invited scholar to the Library of Congress and the only woman and Buddhist to be on the Advisory Council for the Tony Blair Foundation.

Her teachers included Zen master Seung Sahn, and she was also teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on engaged Buddhism.
TEJADHAMMO BHIKKHU
Venerable Tejadhammo Bhikku was ordained by Venerable Tanchaokhun Phra Visalsalmanagun in Phuket, Thailand. Bhante has a background in Western Philosophy and Theology, and has studied and taught at Silpakorn University, Thailand. Although ordained in the Theravada tradition, he has also studied with Tibetan and Mahayana teachers and has a commitment to the Dharma that he believes encompasses all traditional expressions of it.

Bhante is the Spiritual Director of the Association of Engaged Buddhists founded in 1993, and senior resident monk at Sangha Lodge, Sydney. The Association aims to foster a more active engagement of all Buddhists within the local community. Apart from teachings and retreat activities, Bhante works with those seriously ill in hospitals, hospices and their homes in Sydney. Bhante is also a founding member of the Australian Monastic Encounter which seeks to promote inter-religious and inter monastic dialogue.

Bhante does a great deal of teaching for other Buddhist groups as well as Adult Education groups in Sydney and throughout Australia. Healing Meditation practices are also taught by Bhante to groups and more particularly to individuals needing special assistance.

DAVID ROBERT LOY
David Loy has held the Besl Family Chair of Ethics/Religion & Society at Xavier University in Ohio, USA, since 2006. He has taught as professor at Bunkyo University, Japan, and at National University of Singapore. David received his B.A. from Carlton College, Minnesota, M.A. in Asian philosophy at the University of Hawaii, and Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Singapore. His main research is in comparative (East-West) philosophy, especially bringing Buddhist perspectives to bear on contemporary social issues such as terrorism and violence, restorative justice, economics and globalization, biotechnology, environmental crises, and “the clash of civilizations.”

David authored several books on philosophy including “Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy, Yale University Press, 1988”, “Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism, Humanities Press, 1996,”, “A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack, SUNY Press, 2002”, “The Great Awakening”, Wisdom, 2003)”, The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons”, Wisdom, 2004)”, and “Money, Sex, War, Karma, Wisdom, 2008.”
David is an authorized teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen where he completed formal koan training under Yamada Koun Roshi.

The call-in instructions are easy, and even include free calling options:
1) Dhamma conference from Skype (totally free)

Call Skype number: +9900827048980674 to be a participant.

Please note that this Skype out number is completely free. Please ensure that you include the leading “+” when you dial this number using Skype’s Call Phones feature. (In most cases, depending on your e-mail client, you will be able to just click on the above Skype number and invoke the Skype call.)

2) Dhamma conference from a regular phone:

Calling from the USA/Canada call:
USA Phone# +1-201-793-9022
(long distance costs apply).

Conference Room/ID Number is : 8980674 (Participants using Skype may now be required to enter the Conference Room Number before entering the Security Code.) followed by # when prompted

Security Code: 342662 ( or DHAMMA) followed by # when prompted

Participant Commands:
*2 – Mute/Unmute your own line so other people can’t hear you talking

More information and download of previous Dhamma talks are available on: http://dhammaconference.org

Everything can be improved (by us), everything has an end (even if we cannot see it), everything is in progress (even if it looks permanent).

Being found by search-engines means using appropriate keywords in titles, descriptions etc. This bring one challenging question: are these keywords really an appropriate way to describe what we write about? For example, self-development and self-help are popular search terms. They are also contradictions in terms Most of us do not really need to strengthen the self, most of us benefit from focusing on real awareness.

To make another example: the word happiness is inflated. It is used a lot, often to identify pleasure and other feelings which aren’t really happiness. Still, people perform happiness-related searches on Google et al, and a fair amount of friends visit us thanks to such searches.

So, how did we decide to balance these different opportunities, for now? We keep happiness in our posts and tags. We also mention self-development from time to time. And we also add what we believe is appropriate to describe the formula to a happy life: living joyfully. And also living joy fully. Because, based on our personal experiences, happiness is a way of living: acting in appropriate manners (because we really are all on the same boat, and we all deserve respect; and not because we know only because that makes us happy) creates joy, here and now, for all.

As indicated in their abstract, “their work suggests that self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source. Laboratory tests of self-control (i.e., the Stroop task, thought suppression, emotion regulation, attention control) and of social behaviors (i.e., helping behavior, coping with thoughts of death, stifling prejudice during an interracial interaction) showed that (a) acts of self-control reduced blood glucose levels, (b) low levels of blood glucose after an initial self-control task predicted poor performance on a subsequent self-control task, and (c) initial acts of self-control impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, but consuming a glucose drink eliminated these impairments. Self-control requires a certain amount of glucose to operate unimpaired. A single act of self-control causes glucose to drop below optimal levels, thereby impairing subsequent attempts at self-control”.

Please consider that consuming sugar is not the only way to increase blood glucose levels:  eating protein or complex carbohydrates offers better long-term results.

In their concluding remarks, it is stated that “It has long been known that action consumes energy. More recent evidence has indicated that some brain and cognitive processes likewise consume substantial amounts of energy—indeed, some far more than others. The “last-in, first-out rule” states that cognitive abilities that developed last ontogenetically are the first to become impaired when cognitive and physiological resources are compromised. Self-control, as a relatively advanced human capacity , was probably one of the last to develop and hence may be one of the first to suffer impairments when resources are inadequate. The present findings suggest that relatively small acts of self-control are sufficient to deplete the available supply of glucose, thereby impairing the control of thought and behavior, at least until the body can retrieve more glucose from its stores or ingest more calories. More generally, the body’s variable ability to mobilize glucose may be an important determinant of people’s capacity to live up to their ideals, pursue their goals, and realize their virtues”.

The research is available on: http://tinyurl.com/38ktkws

We also provide a selection of comments on the research. Quoting from http://neuroanthropology.net

“Galliott et al. published a 2007 article entitled “Self Control Relies on Glucose as an Energy Source: Willpower Is More Than Self Control”. Recently Vaughan at Mind Hacks and Dave at Cognitive Daily have taken up the topic with some creative posts.  Vaughan writes that Resisting Temptation Is Energy Intensive, focusing on the role of attention and the prefrontal cortices.  Dave posts on Practicing Self-Control Takes Real Energy, and includes a recreation of the research procedure (with video) and an informative summary.  I also mentioned some of this research in a previous post on Willpower as Mental Muscle.

[...]

Diets are often marked by periods of effortful weight loss, followed by a slide back, where weight is regained.  That pattern is not simply a matter of mind over matter, of willpower so we can match a cultural and cognitive ideal.  It’s hard for people to maintain sustained mental efforts, it costs energy, and there’s little evolutionary reason to expect everybody’s brains to suddenly begin cooperating with what our culture tells us we should be able to do.”

Quoting from http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/03/practicing_selfcontrol_consume.php

“Research led by Roy Baumeister has found that people who’ve resisted eating cookies gave up sooner on a task requiring persistence compared to those who succumbed to temptation and ate the cookies. Other research has associated low blood glucose levels with poor performance on the Stroop task — another task that requires people to avoid reading. Is it literally true that the sugar in our blood fuels our ability to control our impulses?

Matthew Gailliot, along with Baumeister and six other researchers, asked 103 psychology students to fast for three hours before watching a video like the one I showed above. Half the students were told to ignore the words, while the rest weren’t required to exercise any self-control. Blood glucose levels were measured before and after this task. The students exercising self-control had significantly lower glucose levels after watching the movie, while the other students did not. In another experiment, students performed the Stroop task after watching the movie. The students who had to resist reading the words performed significantly worse on the Stroop task; their lower blood glucose levels after watching the movie and avoiding reading seemed to impair performance.

In another experiment, a new group of 62 students watched the movie, again divided into groups who watched normally or controlled their attention by avoiding reading. Then everyone was offered a glass of Kool-aid lemonade. Half the lemonade was sweetened with sugar, while half was sweetened with Splenda, which does not affect blood glucose levels. Since glucose takes about 10 minutes to be absorbed by the brain, everyone was given a 10-minute distractor task, then given an 80-item Stroop task.

[...]

when the students consumed glucose, they performed just as well on the Stroop task, whether or not they had had to exercise self-control while watching the movie. But students who didn’t consume any glucose performed significantly worse on the Stroop test.

Gaillot’s team repeated these experiments several times, with tasks ranging from avoiding displays of racial prejudice to dealing with thoughts about death. In each case, the results supported the idea that self-control literally relies on glucose. When blood glucose is depleted, we’re less able to exert self-control. The researchers say that the brain has a limited reserve amount of glucose, which allows us to handle the initial task demanding self control, whether it be watching a movie without reading accompanying text, or avoiding fattening snacks. Once that glucose supply is depleted, self control becomes much more difficult, across an array of different tasks.”

Transcripts from past lectures (but only up to 2007) at the Bodhi Tree bookstore are available on http://www.bodhitree.com/lectures.html

As reported by the LA Times, “the founding owners of the Bodhi Tree Bookstore are dealing with the closure of their L.A. institution as only spiritualists can. “In our best Buddhist sense, we try to incorporate the idea that things always change,” says Phil Thompson, who, along with Stan Madson, opened the Bodhi Tree 40 years ago. Through the years, their cozy Melrose Avenue shop became a nationally known, much beloved center for Buddhists, astrologers, psychics, yogis, swamis, acupuncturists, naturists and others seeking enlightenment.

Thompson and Madson decided to sell the property to a local business owner who leases space to several other nearby retailers. The store will be closed within a year, they say”.

Banyen Books also organizes several interesting events, both on its premises and around Vancouver. A detailed schedule is offered on http://www.banyen.com/events.htm

Banyen Books and Sound Hours of operation:
10a-9p M-F, 11a-8p Sa, 11a-7p Su, Closed: Dec 25, 26, Jan 1 & Labour Day

Sensory homunculus, cortical homunculus, Motor Homunculus

Always on McGill University website we find the explanation: “Dr. Penfield‘s experiments in stimulating the cortex enabled him to develop a complete map of the motor cortex, known as the motor homunculus (there are also other kinds, such as the sensory homunculus). The most striking aspect of this map is that the areas assigned to various body parts on the cortex are proportional not to their size, but rather to the complexity of the movements that they can perform. Hence, the areas for the hand and face are especially large compared with those for the rest of the body. This is no surprise, because the speed and dexterity of human hand and mouth movements are precisely what give us two of our most distinctly human faculties: the ability to use tools and the ability to speak.”

Another way to portray this map is with a 3D human body,  with disproportionately huge hands, lips, and face in comparison to the rest of the body. Because of the fine motor skills and sense nerves found in these particular parts of the body they are represented as being larger on the homunculus. A part of the body with fewer sensory and/or motor connections to the brain is represented to appear smaller.

Sensory homunculus: cortical homunculus, Motor Homunculus

This model shows what a man’s body would look like if each part grew in proportion to the area of the cortex of the brain concerned with its sensory perception. The cortical homunculus is a visual representation of the concept of “the body within the brain” that one’s hand or face exists as much as a series of nerve structures or a “neuron concept” as it does a physical form. This concept relates to many neuro-biological phenomena including “phantom limb” and “body integrity identity disorder”.

Quoidbach, J., Dunn, E.W., Petrides, K. V., & Mikolajczak, M. (in press). Money giveth, money taketh away: The dual effect of wealth on happiness. Psychological Science. ( doc )

Dunn, E.W., Ashton-James, C., Hanson, M. D., & Aknin, L.B. (in press). On the costs of self-interested economic behavior: How does stinginess get under the skin? Journal of Health Psychology. ( pdf )

Huntsinger, J., Sinclair, S., Dunn, E. W., & Clore, G. (in press). Affective regulation of automatic stereotype activation: It’s the (accessible) thought that counts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. ( pdf )

Anik, L., Aknin, L. B., Norton, M. I. & Dunn, E. W. (in press). Feeling good about giving: The benefits (and costs) of self-interested charitable behavior. In D.M. Oppenheimer & C.Y. Olivola (Eds.), Experimental approaches to the study of charitable giving. ( pdf )

Aknin, L., Norton, M. I., & Dunn, E. W. (2009). From wealth to well-being? Money matters, but less than people think. Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 523-527. ( pdf )

Kawakami, K., Dunn, E. W., Karmali, F., & Dovidio, J. F. (2009). Mispredicting affective and behavioral responses to racism. Science, 323, 276-278. ( pdf )

Dunn, E. W., Huntsinger, J., Lun, J., Sinclair, S. (2008). The gift of similarity: How good and bad gifts influence relationships. Social Cognition, 26, 469-481. ( pdf )

Dunn, E.W., Aknin, L.B., & Norton, M.I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319, 1687-1688. (Datasets: Correlational Study, Longitudinal Study, Experimental Study, Predictions Study) ( pdf ) ( letter )

Dunn, E. W., *Forrin, N. D., & Ashton-James, C. E. (2008). On the excessive rationality of the emotional imagination: A two systems account of affective forecasts and experiences. In K. D. Markman, W. M. P. Klein, & J. A. Suhr (Eds.) The handbook of imagination and mental simulation. New York: Psychology Press. ( pdf )

Dunn. E. W., & Ashton-James, C. (2008). On emotional innumeracy: Predicted and actual affective responses to grand-scale tragedies. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 692-698. ( pdf )

Dunn, E. W., Brackett, M.A., Ashton-James, C., Schneiderman, E., & Salovey, P. (2007). On emotionally intelligent time travel: Individual differences in affective forecasting ability. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 85-93. ( pdf )

Dunn, E. W., & Laham, S. A. (2006). A user’s guide to emotional time travel: Progress on key issues in affective forecasting. To appear in J. Forgas (Ed.), Hearts and minds: Affective influences on social cognition and behavior. (Frontiers of Social Psychology Series). Psychology Press: New York. ( pdf )

Wilson, T. D., & Dunn, E. W. (2004). Self-Knowledge: Its limits, value, and potential for improvement. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 493-518. ( pdf )

Wilson, T. D., Wheatley, T. Kurtz, J., Dunn, E. W., & Gilbert, D. T. (2004). When to fire: Anticipatory versus post-event reconstrual of uncontrollable events. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 30, 340-351. ( pdf )

This is a selection of media articles about Elizabeth W. Dunn:

Globe and Mail. January 15, 2010. “Got a complaint? Sing it out.” ( Read )

The Globe and Mail. October 22, 2009. “Flirt away, it’s all in the name of healthy jealousy.” ( Read )

National Public Radio. March, 2009. “Money and Happiness.” ( Listen )

CBC. January 8, 2009. “Racism not as strong as we think, study says.” ( Read )

The New York Times. December 25, 2008. “Your friends need money. Do they have references?” ( Read )( Read )

The Wall Street Journal. November 7, 2008. “Do wealth and well-being go hand in hand?.” ( Read )

Maclean’s. May 5, 2008. “It’s official: Money buys happiness.” ( Read )

The New York Times. March 20, 2008. “Yes, money can buy happiness…” ( Read )

Forbes. March 20, 2008. “How to buy happiness.” ( Read )

The Georgia Straight. May 24, 2007. “Getting off your booty never felt so good.” ( pdf )

Global News . May 18, 2007. “Putting Your Best Face Forward .” ( Watch )

The Province. May 17, 2007. “Some enchanted evening, you may meet as strangers…”  ( Read )

Weather Network. June 2006. “Resolutions and Weather.” ( Watch )

CityNews. March 2006. “Affective Responses to Shark Attacks: A Case Study” ( Watch )

ArtsBeat. Fall 2005. “What makes you feel good?” ( Read )

Chronicle of Higher Education. September 3, 2004. “Rising Stars: How to be happy.” ( Read )

Arts & Sciences. July 2004. “The grad life”. ( Read )

A&S Online. May 2004. “Best foot forward.” ( Read )

Buddhist podcasts

A Buddhist Podcast, by Jason and Karen

http://abuddhistpodcast.com/

Dhamma Podcasts from Pariyatti.org

http://feeds.feedburner.com/dhammapodcasts

Diamond Path

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDiamondPath

Lama Marut, Buddhist monk, former University professor, popular teacher of Buddhism and yoga philosophy

http://www.aci-la.org/lama_marut_podcast.html

Practice Happiness, Mahasukha Center (Asian Classics Institute of Los Angeles)

http://www.aci-la.org/Practice_Happiness.html

Zen Buddhist Podcast of Shaolin Zen, Buddha Zhen lectures and chats about Chinese Chan Buddhism from the Shaolin Zen CyberTemple

http://www.zenbuddhistpodcast.libsyn.com/

Buddhist mp3

Mahasukha Center (Asian Classics Institute of Los Angeles)

http://www.aci-la.org/teach_marut.html

Shambhala Sun Audio, monthly updates from Shambhala Sun magazine

http://www.shambhalasun.com/sunspace/?tag=audio

Ajahn Sumedho‘s teachings are very direct, practical, simple, and down to earth. In his talks and sermons he stresses the quality of immediate intuitive awareness and the integration of this kind of awareness into daily life. Like most teachers in the Forest Tradition, Ajahn Sumedho tends to avoid intellectual abstractions of the Buddhist teachings and focuses almost exclusively on their practical applications, that is, developing wisdom and compassion in daily life. His most consistent advice can be paraphrased as to see things the way that they actually are rather than the way that we want or don’t want them to be (“Right now, it’s like this…”). He is known for his engaging and witty communication style, in which he challenges his listeners to practice and see for themselves. Students have noted that he engages his hearers with an infectious sense of humor, suffused with much loving kindness, often weaving amusing anecdotes from his experiences as a monk into his talks on meditation practice and how to experience life.

In this video, Ajahn Sumedho gives a Dhamma talk during his visit at Wat Atammayatarama in Woodinville (USA).

In this video, Ajahn Brahm talks about dealing with emotions.

The temple was founded by the disciples of the noted Thai meditation master, Luang Por Chah (1918–1992). Ajahn Sumedho is its abbot. Amaravati was created in 1984 when the English Sangha Trust purchased a residential school; it is linked to Cittaviveka (Chithurst Buddhist Monastery) in West Sussex, and to monasteries in Devon, Northumberland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Switzerland, North America and Thailand. Amaravati officially opened in 1985. In the late 1990s, a temple building was constructed. It was officially opened by the King of Thailand’s sister, Princess Galyani Vadhana, on the 4th of July, 1999.

More information can be found on http://www.amaravati.org

His Western students include:
- Ajahn Sumedho, abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire England
- Ajahn Khemadhammo, abbot of The Forest Hermitage Warwickshire, England
- Ajahn Munindo, abbot of Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery Northumberland, England
- Ajahn Pasanno, co-abbot of Abhayagiri Monastery, Redwood Valley, California, USA
- Ajahn Brahm, spiritual director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australian and Abbot of Bodhinyana Buddhist Monastery, Serpentine WA, Australia
- Ajahn Amaro, co-abbot of Abhayagiri Monastery, Redwood Valley, California, USA
- Ajahn Viradhammo, Abbot of Tisarana Buddhist Monastery Perth, Ontario, Canada
- Ajahn Mitsuo Gavesako, abbot of Wat Pah Sunandavanaram Kanchanburi Province, Thailand
- Jack Kornfield
- Ajahn Jayasaro, former abbot of Wat Pa Nanachat

Ajahn Chah – The Mindful Way BBC

Documentary about the Thai monk Ajahn Chah, The Mindful Way, broadcasted by BBC.