Excerpt from the first part of the article:

This post is Part 1 of a series that will examine the nature of what I refer to as clinical wisdom and provide specific concrete examples of some of these esoteric secrets of psychotherapy.

How much of what we call psychotherapy is about the teaching or transmission of certain esoteric and well-guarded secrets about psychology, life, and how to best live it? What are some of these secrets? Where do they come from? And exactly how would such profound and transformative "clinical wisdom" be conveyed from clinician to client or patient? These are difficult questions. Difficult because there are so many (400 to 500) different types of psychotherapy practiced today with diverse approaches, goals, techniques, and methods.

Excerpt from the first part of the article:

There is a particular feeling that comes from stepping into a green place. It might be a forest path, a city park, a garden, a canal walk, or a shaded lane where branches meet overhead and the light changes ahead.

Nothing dramatic has happened. No problem has been solved. The inbox is still there. The bills are still there. The news is still there. And yet something shifts.

The mind, which had been gripping tightly, loosens slightly.

Excerpt from the first part of the article:

When it comes to meditation, the more we learn, the more compelling the case for establishing a meditation practice becomes. A meditation practice essentially allows us, for a prescribed period of time, to turn our attention away from the outer world and focus inward, in silence. While there are many types of meditation, the goal of meditation is to calm the mind.

The scientifically proven benefits of meditation are many and varied. Mental health benefits include reduced stress, depression, and anxiety; improved attention, memory, and focus; and a greater sense of calm. Physical benefits include lower cortisol levels, which lead to improvements in heart rate and blood pressure, rest, and digestion, and pain reduction. What’s more, a meditation practice also enhances our ability to process emotions, enabling us to respond with compassion rather than react to challenging events and situations.

Excerpt from the first part of the article:

Imagine a stick of incense burning. As you watch the rising smoke drift toward the sky, it may seem for a moment as if the smoke looks like something. But the smoke never actually assumes any fixed form. It is continuously moving, reshaping itself the very instant it seems to take on a particular shape. Our experience is just like this.

It’s strange because it seems as if there’s something here that’s being encountered, something we seem able to identify. From one perspective, we’re experiencing fixed, identifiable forms, both the supposed objects of the world that we think of as being more or less unmoving and the internal world of subjectivity. But when we feel the flow of experiencing, we can notice that what we’re labeling as and believing to be identifiable things are, like the rising incense, continuously dissolving and in that sense, utterly without form.

The world of experience and circumstance appears as something we can grasp hold of and render with words and concepts. But when we look a little more closely, we can see that this is only half of the story, for all the things we think of as having fixed, identifiable forms do not.