Buddha And The Couch Buddha and the Couch focuses on the challenge of overcoming depression and anxiety, from both Eastern and Western perspectives. It covers a range of practical, detailed suggestions, as well as more theoretical ways of thinking about the problems and pains of these wild moods. Buddha and the Couch is updated weekly by Marty L. Cooper, a licensed psychotherapist in San Francisco, CA. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 0 2283

Articles from Buddha And The Couch

Taming wild moods and keeping them tamed 2007-08-13 18:34:00 I picked up a book called "The Zen Path through Depression," (1999) by Philip Martin, to read on the plane my last time I headed East (ahem). It's a very warm, humanistic take on depression, focusing on the application of Zen Buddhist philosophy and practice to the challenge of overcoming depression. It's well and simply written, and I think it's main virtue is the inspiration it might offer to those who are burdened by depression.But where it falls short, in my opinion, is in not putting itself within a more integrated model of how one actually tames depression. There is certainly nothing wrong with inspirational books; when you're flat on your face, it can be a great relief to know that others have gone through it and survived, that there's possibility and hope.The difficulty comes when one understands depression (and anxiety) as systemic problems, that get more so the longer they have existed. Depression lodges in the body, the heart, relationships, cognition, and relation ...

Depression and meditation 2007-08-07 01:33:00 Howard Cohn (link) offers a public meditation group every Tuesday evening in the Mission district of San Francisco. This last week I had, unusually, an evening off, so I went to sit with him and his students. It's getting into the meat of SF's winter, with a growing number of cold, foggy or overcast days, so Cohn took the opportunity to speak about depression and meditation.He began by throwing out the provocative assertion that perhaps 90% of individuals are walking around with some level of depression. Not meaning that so many people are disabled by depression, but that so many folks are suffering from extended moments of what might be termed a suppression of aliveness. This muting of the possibilities of connection and awareness stems from a largely subliminal belief in one's own insufficiency. We feel/tell ourselves to be lacking, and then the world looks either similarly bleak or impossibly better then us. Our physical energy disappears and our willingness to be engaged (who wa ...

Safety and Change: Take all the supports you can get 2007-08-06 00:12:00 Ok, here's a thought experiment. Imagine you've gotten a new motorcycle, and you're going to learn to ride it. A trusted friend who has experience with two wheels takes you to a empty dirt road and tells you the technical details--there's the clutch, there's the break, gas, etc. Then he has you sit on the bike and start it up, see how that feels. When you tell him OK, he tells you to experiment with first gear as he trots alongside. Then you practice turns. Then...How does that feel (assuming you've never ridden a bike--if so, then substitute something else that could be perilous, maybe hang gliding)? Try to really climb onto that bike with your friend and see what that's like.Now, at the other extreme: imagine you, still a newbie, get this same motorcycle, and the only place to learn is at the edge of a cliff dropping down to the ocean. It's windy and raining, there's mud and sand and you haven't got a helmet. And no one is willing to be there to help guide you. S ...

"You have to name it to tame it" 2007-07-30 16:15:00 Following on last week's post, below is Dan Siegel on the subject of how "mindful naming" might be working at the neurological level. This extended quote is taken from a teleconference he offered in the spring, based on his book The Mindful Brain. It's a bit technical, but has some very interesting things to say about how the calming function of naming might actually work. Enjoy.If those [right hemisphere processes] are really reved up and don't have the involvement of left hemisphere linear, logical, linguistic understanding then what you see can be is understood as an imbalance in bi-lateral integration. Let me be very specific about this....There's a discussion in the mindful brain about the importance of the mindfulness awareness facet of labeling and describing with words, and there are studies which are reviewed there which suggest that when a person is show an image of a very emotionally expressive state, their right sub-cortical structures, especially in the limbic area--th ...

Narration and Observations: The problems of storytelling and the power of naming 2007-07-23 19:17:00 When you get on in years a bit, it seems that accumulated stories start losing their moorings and gently float on the waters of memory. I'm thinking of the adage about the power of naming one's demons...and can't remember where it might have come from. When a Google search is fruitless, you just have to sigh and walk on...Anyway, I'm thinking about two aspects of the human mind (and brain, apparently) that apply very directly to psychotherapy, and specifically to the challenge of uprooting complex habits like depression and anxiety. (I use the word "habit" broadly, meaning sub- or unconscious repetitions of behavior. The body, for instance, can become "habituated" to respond to dim light with fatigue and listlessness, as the mind can reflexively respond to criticism with despair.)NarrationOne aspect, or function, is way in which the mind can make up stories about its experience: narration. As an example of this, think of times when you've seen, say, the street in front of your hou ...

Saying "No!" (and then, "No, thank you."): The skill of filtering experience 2007-07-16 22:57:00 Overcoming anxiety and depression has a lot to do with learning how to say "No!" then, "No," and eventually, "No, thank you." (There is much to be said about saying "Yes!" but I'll save that for another post.)There is a story about the Buddha:An old Brahman (of the priestly class in India) was feeling threatened by Buddha and his teachings, fearing that he would lose his congregation and income. He decided that the only thing to do was to go to Buddha's monastery split his skull. But knowing that Buddha was skilled at logic, the Brahman decided to not talk at all to Buddha, but just to go and commit his deed. So the Brahman went to Buddha and approached him while he was alone in his interview hall. The Brahman came shouting and cursing, and Buddha said, "Old man, come sit, tell me your problem."Here the Brahman steeled his will, wanting to not be swayed from his determination by Buddha's talk. He kept coming, cursing, and Buddha again said, calmly, "Come, sit, tell me what is upsett ...

Love frees the Guards: Partnering with one's own jailer 2007-07-09 19:45:00 One of the reasons why HBO's John from Cincinnati and Deadwood (see the post below) have so resonated with me is that they really (as the shows' creator, David Milch, has expressed explicitly) focus on the social body, made up of so many people playing their supposedly separate parts. They are all strong characters, independent, fiercely individual. And yet, it's not until they begin seeing themselves as parts of something large that they start to find some peace."As above, so below." Or for this post, "As outside, so inside." The same truth about external communities--of real people in real places--applies to our internal communities, the mix of personalities that compose our minds. The psyche mirrors the body; both are made up of discrete parts in relationship. And as with the body, when the parts or personalities of the psyche start squabbling, and pull away from each other (become dis-integrated), well, then you get trouble.Daniel Siegel, the neurobiologist and psychiatrist, has ...

John from Cincinnati: Life lived in a temple 2007-07-02 23:07:00 I've been quite taken by a new show on HBO, John from Cincinnati, which is created by David Milch (who also created NYPD Blue and the stunning Deadwood). On the surface, it's about the lives of a family of surfers and those closest in to their pretty dysfunctional inner circle, with John being the enigmatic character who seems to bring miracles with him from his arbitrarily assigned home of Cincinnati. Examples of the miracles so far: the patriarch of the family, Mitch Yost, finds himself levitating after a morning's surfing. A parrot is resurrected from the dead, apparently by Mitch's grandson, a surfing prodigy. Well, I won't give too many spoilers.There's no denying it's an odd and perplexing take on life. But what I find so moving is that this is not just another presentation of a struggling family. You could imagine the show going in any number of conventional directions: the slapstick comedy, the grimly realistic drama (e.g., The Wire), the sit-com, etc.What I see being of ...

Awe: an exercise 2007-06-22 15:49:00 Here is another exercise in the cultivation of awe:1) Get comfortable and give yourself a little block of time so you can be reflective, without feeling rushed.2) Think about something utterly mundane. E.g., the TV. The sky. A fingernail.3) Contemplate the object and describe to yourself how it works. Keep working through the levels of explanation. For instance, with the TV: you plug it in and push the power button. Electricity flows from the wall socket to the TV. Electricity comes from the local generating plant through copper wires. The plant generates energy by burning coal. Coal was formed by certain geological processes millions of years ago. Etc.4) Keep going until you start experiencing (not just thinking, but feeling) the sense of interconnection and bigness. That is, you begin experiencing some measure of awe.My example comes from recent readings of neurobiology: I am contemplating the image of this computer I'm using. The steps I can think of are: light is projected from th ...

Vacations: Effort and relaxation 2007-06-15 14:00:00 I'm out on a two week vacation, and will be back to this blog and my practice on June 25th. But I was thinking, while visiting with chickens and goats and various trees, about the relationship of effort and relaxation. When I get back, I'll flesh this out more, but basically the idea is that an essential problem with depression and anxiety involves the way they lock you into either under-efforting or over-efforting. As the Buddha repeatedly said, the middle way is the way of health, and here it means learning to be able to effort and then relax...and then effort.So that's what I'm away doing, practicing the relaxation pole to my life's efforting. Chickens make this much easier to achieve. ...

The astounding climb (pt.2): The uses of awe 2007-05-28 11:00:00 My last post (here) has gotten me thinking about the experience of awe, especially in how it figures into the project of dismantling depression and anxiety. (Actually, this also relates to another post (here) on how the human brain/mind becomes more closed as it ages.) So the question for this post boils down to: how does awe affect mood?Ok. If we start with a brief definition from Websters, we get:Awe: an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime. I like this definition because it's pithy, as well as, to my mind, expressive of the "layers" of awe that make up this complex emotion.Three layers of AweDread: this is where the individual ego perceives its smallness in the face of both what is vast, as well as what is impersonal. The small, personal self looks at that which transcends and includes it with dread. It fears its own destruction by mistaking its larger self--that which is sacred or sublime--as something ...

The astounding climb (pt.1): A meditation on development 2007-05-28 10:59:00 A very old and dear friend had a healthy, bouncing baby boy, now two weeks old. I had the great honor of being with him and his wife a few hours after the birth, when, despite the various upheavals of his arrival at the hospital, a deep stillness underlay all the family visitations and the coming-and-going of medical personnel.That stillness has not quite continued; the new parents are on a growth curve of learning to interpret "waahhaaahhaa!" and how to deal with sleep in two hour chunks. It all seems to be progressing fairly typically, with what appear to be standard amounts of happiness and pain.Never having spent so much time around a newborn, what it has unexpectedly surfaced is a deeper appreciation--not of the particular struggles of individuals, which I already have a deep empathy for, but of the "impersonal" struggles of human beings. Looking at this little being, with his animatronic-like movements, his inability to focus, his language of a half-dozen nuanced cries, his out o ...

Mindfulness and the Visceral Life: Why time speeds up with age 2007-05-21 18:59:00 I think it was just last week, while visiting family, that that perennial wistful complaint arose: "Why does it seem like time speeds up as we get older?" We all shrugged and shook our heads and considered the seeming constants of human life.But Daniel Siegel, in The Mindful Brain, actually gives an answer through the lens of neurobiology, and in doing so suggests why mindfulness practice is enlivening. He doesn't speak specifically of depression, but it might also be a way of understanding why mindfulness practice (via Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, see below) helps break up the feeling of "deadness" that attends depressive states.Siegel cites a 2005 study of the sense of subjective time which concluded that "information density" is the key to understanding the waxing and waning of this feeling of time. Information density is defined as "a certain amount of information being perceived and processed per unit of time," and this density increases when an experience ...

Nature and mood: using ecotherapy to treat depression 2007-05-15 19:58:00 Running in Golden Gate Park the other day, I followed a circuit that tracks major roads which, though not freeways, still have regular traffic in cars. As I ran, I paid attention to my mood and thoughts, partially to see how to make it ease-ier, and partially as an ongoing education in my own idiosyncratic experience of the effect of exercise on well being.At one point towards the end of the run, I had to decide whether to take another road-hugging route, or cut down a little path that was mostly surrounded by trees, with grass either close by or underfoot. I chose path #2, and as I entered that path, immediately I could sense something shift.Two analogies come to mind: if you have ever visited the chiropractor, and had an adjustment to some area that released tension you didn't even know was there...well, it felt a bit like that. Or: it was akin to what you feel when a storm is coming in, especially in San Francisco, as either a quick shift in temperature or barometric pressure. Exce ...

Review of MBCT: Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression 2007-05-08 18:30:00 Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression is a very interesting new-ish modality for treating chronic depression in adults. It was created by three researchers and clinicians (Segal, Williams, and Teasdale) who received a grant to develop a treatment to address the high relapse rate among sufferers of depression. According to statistics cited in their book (see resources, below, pg 12), patients with no history of depression had a 22% chance of having another major depressive episode; those with a history of at least 3 depressive episodes face a 67% chance of having another. Depression seems to be "etched in" to a person's psyche/body over time with more experiences, and this proneness to relapse is what MBCT was developed to address.Essentially, MBCT is an application of Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction work at the University of Massachusetts on the use of mindfulness practice (i.e., meditation) with patients suffering from chronic pain. Kabat-Zinn's wor ...