Welcome
About Heart Lab
ABOUT THE HEART LAB BOOK
ABOUT THE HEART LAB BOOK
Thanks for coming to our website. Here we hope you'll learn about the Heart Lab book as a personal guide to the practice of Mindful Compassionate Trauma-informed Recovery and Awakening. Heart Lab lays out a path that is fully integrated with the practices of Mindful Self Compassion. You'll also have a chance to learn about using Heart
Thanks for coming to our website. Here we hope you'll learn about the Heart Lab book as a personal guide to the practice of Mindful Compassionate Trauma-informed Recovery and Awakening. Heart Lab lays out a path that is fully integrated with the practices of Mindful Self Compassion. You'll also have a chance to learn about using Heart Lab as a system in groups that wish to practice Mindful Compassionate Trauma-informed Recovery & Awakening.
Whatever your interest, we thank you for considering Heart Lab. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already come a long way on your journey. And, you may be in search of something to tie together some of the threads of wisdom that led you here. We care that you find whatever you need and hope to share some of the cornucopia of healing wisdom, which has been so helpful for us.
ABOUT THE HEART LAB BOOK
ABOUT THE HEART LAB BOOK
ABOUT THE HEART LAB BOOK
The Heart Lab book lays out a path of recovery and awakening that is fully integrated with the practices of Mindful Self Compassion. It is a personal guide to the practice of Mindful Compassionate Trauma-informed Recovery & Awakening. It can also be used as resource book for groups who wish to practice Mindful Compassionate Trauma-infor
The Heart Lab book lays out a path of recovery and awakening that is fully integrated with the practices of Mindful Self Compassion. It is a personal guide to the practice of Mindful Compassionate Trauma-informed Recovery & Awakening. It can also be used as resource book for groups who wish to practice Mindful Compassionate Trauma-informed Recovery & Awakening. Here are some of the topics and practices we explore:
Stabilizing When Life is Hard
Learning the Sacred Pause
Soothing and Grounding Practices which Work with Breath, Body, and Mind.
Knowing & Growing our Window of Tolerance
A Toolbox of Grounding Practices for when Anxiety is Triggered
Understanding and Practicing Mindful Self-Compassion.
Mindful Self-Compassion is the central practice of Heart Labs’ pathway from recovery to awakening. We have found it to be a missing ingredient in our “modern” world and in many of the support circles we have known.
We need to be very kind to ourselves as we do our best to live a loving and authentic life.
it's not easy being a human being! Yet practicing self-compassion can give us all the soothing, acceptance, and encouragement that we need to face what's difficult in our lives.
In fact there's a simple metaphor for the way Awareness and Compassion work together on the mindfulness path. We call them the two wings of awakening. Awakening, turning courageously towards the realities in life, can be hard! But practicing Mindful Self Compassion builds the true friendship with ourselves that our hearts have always longed for. We can find the companionship and love we've always longed for right inside where it can always be counted on.
Mindful Self Compassion nourishes us to be more fully at ease and present in our lives. Combined with the wisdom to accept life on life's terms and the support of wise community, we have what we need to trust exploring our present moments. We can live more and more in the birthright of our Compassionate presence.
Becoming Trauma Informed
Understanding and Accepting What happened to Us
Learning How to Heal After Adverse Childhood Experiences
A Snapshot of a Recovery Pathway from Trauma
Describing Our Path of Compassionate Inquiry, Understanding, and Healing
Mindful Recovery
Wise Mindful Recovery: Welcoming Difficulties and Truly Accepting Life as it is.
Scientific Research Yields Certain Evidence that Meditation Works
Key practices of Mindfulness and Recovery
The RAIN Mediation Process: a Dependable Pathway for Returning to Self
Wise Mindfulness Practices for People with Addictive Personalities or Trauma
Wise Advice about how to Relate to Suffering and our Aversion to it
A Toolbox of Meditation Practices Specifically for People in Recovery
Practices for Recovering from Codependent Behaviors
What is Codependency + Other Useful Ways of Naming and Describing it
A Compassionate Personal Inventory of our Codependent Patterns
What is the Rescue Triangle and How to Escape It
Evaluating our Own Codependent Patterns
Integrating the RAIN Meditation to our Practice of Recovery from Codependency
Thriving and Awakening Practices
From Surviving to Joyful Thriving
Recognizing and Celebrating What's Working on our own Spiritual Path
Ten Tasks for Healthy Adulthood
Mindful Compassionate Trauma-Informed Awakening
Mindfulness and the Practices of Awakening
Mindfulness Practices and the Eightfold Path of Buddhism
The Four Noble Truths
The Noble Eightfold Path
Unraveling the Hindrance of Doubt to Reach the Oasis of Awakening
The 16 Steps of Mindfulness of Breathing
From Codependency to Real Authenticity and Belonging
Letting Love Melt our Fears of Connection
Practices to Cultivate Positive States
Recovery, Awakening & Leadership Within a Dysfunctional Culture
Recovery and Awakening within an Addictive Culture
Awakening from Empire Consciousness
Facing the Challenge of Climate Change with Grieving and Action
Resources for Groups
Includes Complete Heart Lab 10-week Coursework Materials
Meditation Scripts and links
Additional Resources & Curriculum
Strategies for Managing Uncertainty and Stress in Challenging Times
Commiting to All of Us; Principles for Civic Discussion and Action that Help to Unite Us
Freeing our Minds from the Culture of Empire
Heart Lab guides the reader through a personal journey of the 3 stages of Awakening:
*Stabilizing
*Understanding
*Awakening and Thriving
ABOUT HEART LAB GROUPS
How to Use Heart Lab in Groups
How to Use Heart Lab in Groups
Heart Labs liberating pathway for mindful, compassionate, trauma informed awakening and recovery works well in peer support circles.
Why we're unique
How to Use Heart Lab in Groups
Heart Lab’s unique contribution is to bring four separate disciplines into one awakening/recovery path that is peer led.
1. Each of Heart Lab’s 3 primary recovery focus areas may already be familiar to many. Heart Lab’s unique contribution is to bring together these separate disciplines into one awakening/recovery path that is shared an
Heart Lab’s unique contribution is to bring four separate disciplines into one awakening/recovery path that is peer led.
1. Each of Heart Lab’s 3 primary recovery focus areas may already be familiar to many. Heart Lab’s unique contribution is to bring together these separate disciplines into one awakening/recovery path that is shared and led by peers.
1. Practicing Mindfulness, Self Compassion, and Compassionate Inquiry
2. Healing from Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences
3. Recovery from Compulsive Behaviors Espeecially the Habits of Codependency.
We also focus on becoming mindful of the addictive culture’s influence and committing to become sober from it.
How it Works
How it Works
Heart Lab materials may be used in any peer support or recovery group. People can also join or start a Heart Lab support group. All the materials needed can be found in the Heart Lab book and on this website. New Heart Lab groups can start out with members going through a free 10 week on-line introduction course together. These are fac
Heart Lab materials may be used in any peer support or recovery group. People can also join or start a Heart Lab support group. All the materials needed can be found in the Heart Lab book and on this website. New Heart Lab groups can start out with members going through a free 10 week on-line introduction course together. These are facilitated by people with experience in the Heart Lab network who are themselves a part of their own ongoing Heart Lab support circle. Each Heart Lab group becomes self-governing and determines it's own process for welcoming in new members.
Why Heart Lab?
You'RE NOT ALONE
WE KNOW A LOT MORE NOW
Our Intention
We support each other to practice mindfulness and self- compassion as we heal and grow into our full hearted selves. Some of us are also recovering from compulsive behaviors like codependency, substance misuse or other long term effects of trauma. Using curriculum taken from the The Heart Lab Book and other sources, Heart Labs are circles of friends supporting each other in our practices. Together we hope to learn more about releasing embodied trauma, effective soothing, meeting unfinished inner business, changing destructive false beliefs, deepening spiritual connections, becoming increasingly liberated and joyful plus giving back in ways that reduce suffering.
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WE KNOW A LOT MORE NOW
WE KNOW A LOT MORE NOW
Why are new approaches to recovery still needed?
Modern addiction recovery systems now have long histories. Since those early days, we have learned much about what is generally helpful and not helpful in these systems. For example, medical research since the early days of recovery has discovered that the effects of trauma stay in the body. So, recovery must include understanding how our nervous systems work and also employ physical remedies, not just talking. In Heart Lab our intention is to take what we like and leave the rest from several recovery systems and bring them together in one Mindful and Compassionate support system. Heart Lab is a new support curriculum for mindful, compassionate, trauma-informed, recovery and awakening.
YOU'RE ON A JOURNEY
YOU'RE ON A JOURNEY
The importance of using mindfulness and self-compassion practices in our recovery
Practicing mindfulness and self-compassion in our recovery is essential. Over and over when we work to share Mindful Self Compassion practices to people in recovery, we hear them say, “this has been the missing ingredient!” Self-compassion is almost never taught as a central pillar in recovery systems. People with compulsive personalities almost always come from trauma backgrounds and always almost always have shame-based personalities. Mindful self-compassion is a vital core of soothing and self-accepting practices to actually begin a relationship or friendship inside. This internal friendliness is the foundation upon which real thriving and wholeness can be built.
Healing Trauma
Understandings of Trauma and Recovery
Vital Understandings of the Word “Recovery”
Studies show that virtually all of us who are recovering from compulsive addictions are also recovering from the effects of trauma. The experience of repeated trauma without support leads to embodied trauma and post-traumatic stress. It's also known that people who suffer from embodied trauma and post-traumatic stress are many times more likely to be susceptible to addictions and compulsive behaviors.
And so the word recovery is used to refer to both recovery from the effects of trauma and from compulsive behaviors. That's why Mindfulness practices are often just as efficacious for survivors of trauma who may not also self-identify as addictive personalities. It's important to include both of these understandings of the word recovery because each of these understandings points us towards specific components of an effective Mindfulness and Recovery practice.
"You need to recognize the suffering within you—and to see the ways it carries within itself the suffering of your father, your mother, your ancestors, and your people." —Thich Nhat Hanh
"We untangle these knots by intimately exploring the conditions that made them and then by spending time in deep meditation, allowing them to be metabolized and hopefully discharged... If we can break the habits and patterns of inherited karma, seven generations before us and seven generations after us will feel the release of this karma. The frozen places within ourselves, which are the effect of collective trauma, can begin to melt. This belief has given me some hope." -- Judith Ragiir
I no longer need to be afraid of what is arising within...that by facing it I need fall off into overwhelm. When I turn towards the suffering within from my Essence, with trusting patient compassion, it can move, heal, and be transformed in the miracle of rebirthing. I am holding myself with love now. This anxiety is just excitement without breathing. Consciously breathing I turn towards what is difficult and find Spaciousness, Love, and Intrabeing. -- The Heart Lab book
Kindly questioning our thoughts
When you're stuck in a thought or emotion try kindly questioning.
Is this thought true or not true?
Is it pleasant or unpleasant?
Is it wholesome or unwholesome?
Is it connecting or separating?
Is it permanent or impermanent?
What else might be true that's empowering?
Also notice and be grateful for how those thoughts were trying to keep you safe.
Finally, be grateful for how you are developing a separate sense of awareness from your passing thoughts and emotions.
About Mindful Self Compassion
Compassion is usually understood as a kind response we have to others' suffering. Self-compassion is when we give the same understanding and generosity to ourselves. The Mindful Self Compassion Workbook by Dr. Christopher Germer and Dr. Kristen Neff is one the books that Heart lab utilizes. www.selfcompassion.org