forgiveness

Today I attended a talk on campus by psychologist Frederic Luskin of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. Luskin repeatedly invoked the Dalai Lama’s assertion that his religion was kindness. Luskin advocated practicing kindness in small steps, starting with forgiving ourselves and “other people we like.” He knows that it is not easy, that we need to grieve first and that we need to protect ourselves, but points out that it works in even tough cases. For example, with six days of forgiveness-related work, he was able to show a 30% reduction in depression among mothers whose sons had been murdered.

Luskin pointed to the known cardiac benefits of positive emotion. He emphasized the power of the practice of gratitude on well-being. He discussed a happiness study that collected reports of thoughts and feelings at random times, which found a strong bias toward negativity. Ironically, people found things to complain about most of the time (70+%) pretty much regardless of what their experiences were. Luskin asserted that this is something we are wired for, because it is adaptive to be vigilant about danger and problems. He believes that although we cannot change that mandate, we are also wired for the “antidote,” which is “kindness, gratitude, and attention to good.”

We should therefore pay attention to the kind acts of others toward us, kind acts of our own (saying to ourselves, “this is what love is…”), and be mindful of the beauty of our surroundings and the miracle of being alive. He teaches diaphragmatic “belly” breathing, and uses brief mindfulness and gratitude meditations, as well as techniques such as asking our kind self how to manage our own stress. Mind and body are a “bi-directional feedback loop…we can intervene at either level.” Dwelling on the negative keeps us physiologically aroused, which we in turn may appraise as a further concern. Changing our thoughts and our perspective can calm our bodily responses, and learning to physically relax increases our well-being. Most of all, forgiveness is about “purging your heart of bitterness,” he said. Amen.