By David Whyte - According to poet David Whyte, the focus of psychotherapy is restricted to the individual’s biography—a good start but too small an arena for the capacious human soul. In the following excerpt from Whyte's Consolations, he urges us to move beyond the edge of our familiar, known world.

By Kristin Neff - An impressive and growing body of research demonstrates that relating to ourselves in a kind, friendly manner is essential for emotional wellbeing. More pointedly, research proves false many of the common myths about self-compassion that keep us trapped in the prison of relentless self-criticism.

In his address at the 2016 Psychotherapy Networker Symposium in Washington DC, Rick Hanson delivered a moving speech in which he described how becoming more mindful of our body, thoughts, and the linkage between the two can make us happier and less fearful of life's uncertainties.

By Jared DeFife - It’s time for a new year and a new you, right? Unfortunately, some old acquaintances aren’t too soon forgotten, and our bad habits tend to follow us into the New Year. Rather than try to change them outright, New York Times reporter and bestselling author Charles Duhigg says we should pay more attention to analyzing and diagnosing what he calls The Habit Loop.

Increasingly, therapists are looking for alternatives to the office-bound rigidity of traditional private practice. In the following interview, The Center for Mind-Body Medicine's Sabrina N'Diaye shares the takeaways from her work, and what it means to be a therapeutic "peacebuilder."

By Diane Ackerman - Despite all the seeming connectedness, we’re not the most socially connected we’ve ever been. Generation by generation, our brains have been evolving new networks, new ways of wiring and firing, favoring some behaviors and discarding others, as we train ourselves to meet the challenges of a world we keep amplifying, editing, deconstructing, and recreating.

By Oren Jay Sofer - Dialogue is a lot like dancing. It takes time to learn the basics, but when we’re conversing smoothly with someone else, it can be magical. We find a flow as we shift attention back and forth, hearing one another and allowing things to settle.

By Ann Weiser Cornell - Clients need to tell their stories, of course. But when the stories manifest habitual categories—ways of labeling and explaining experiences—the process can get stuck. The formation of a felt sense is a breakthrough moment, in which we slow down and form a new bodily awareness of some life situation.

Our survival brain has hundreds of strategies for resisting emotional pain. But according to Tara Brach, clinical psychologist and renowned teacher of Buddhism, resisting pain only increases our suffering.

By David Whyte - Human beings are creatures of belonging, and our sense of belonging and not belonging is lived out by most people through three principal dynamics.