674th Week: Cultivating Gratitude for Greater Well-Being

674th Week: Cultivating Gratitude for Greater Well-Being

ByNancy Napier

Brain research offers many new insights into the impact of our everyday attitudes and ways of being affect us as we move through our daily lives. Recently, I heard an interview on NPR where a neuroscientist talked about recent research in gratitude and its effects on neurotransmitters. The upshot of the interview was that focusing on gratitude automatically generates increased dopamine and serotonin. Both of these neurotransmitters are part of our “feel good” chemistry.

What was both intriguing and encouraging about the information offered in the interview was that it didn’t take an enormous amount of effort to elicit this neurochemical change in the brain. It got me to thinking about… Read More “674th Week: Cultivating Gratitude for Greater Well-Being”

673rd Week: Living with “Wide Open Eyes”

673rd Week: Living with “Wide Open Eyes”

ByNancy Napier

Recently, I read an article by a man named Michael Edwards, about the mysticism of living with “wide open eyes”. Edwards is a social activist, so the meat of the article focused on social transformation. The part of his writing that related to these experiments in conscious living had to do with what happens to the quality of life when we experience ourselves as part of a collective life filled with mystery and beauty.

Here are some of the quotations drawn from that article: Read More “673rd Week: Living with “Wide Open Eyes””

672nd Week: Nurturing Compassion

672nd Week: Nurturing Compassion

ByNancy Napier

For this week’s experiment in conscious living, I draw from my book, Sacred Practices for Conscious Living, 2nd Edition, from the chapter on “Compassion and Lovingkindness: Living with An Open Heart”. Here’s a quotation from that chapter:

“For many people, the process of awakening to a greater sense of compassion initially feels overwhelming. A question many ask is, “What can I, one person, do in the face of so much suffering?” The answer is, perhaps surprisingly, quite a lot… Read More “672nd Week: Nurturing Compassion”

671st Week: Intentional Living

671st Week: Intentional Living

ByNancy Napier

Each week, I post an inspirational quotation and a photograph of nature on the Devadana Sanctuary Facebook page, as well as on the Devadana Sanctuary website. I never know which posts will touch people and which won’t. It’s a daily experience of choosing something I think will be inspiring, finding a photograph that, for me, resonates with the quotation and I never know what will touch people. I’m often surprised by the number of people who respond to a given post, and that was the case with what I’d like to share with you here.

Here’s a post from last week that ended up reaching many, many people. Read More “671st Week: Intentional Living”

670th Week: Generating Empathy

670th Week: Generating Empathy

ByNancy Napier

One of the things that has been very much on my mind these days is an awareness of the stunning lack of empathy expressed by public figures, particularly in the political realm. What feels so impacting is that this apparent lack of empathy resonates with so many people around the world, as reflected in news reports about the many ways in which we harm one another. Read More “670th Week: Generating Empathy”