My favourite podcasts about ballet and contemplation

Now for a more practical blog: what podcasts would I recommend? I have started to listen to quite a few podcasts that inspire me a lot! Many of them are about ballet, kind of obviously ;-) But I think also the ballet ones teach me quite a bit about life in general. Let me walk through my current facvourites, sorted by topic:

Picture  by Michel Le Photography 
at Morlaix Ballet camp

Contemplation

- Mind & Life podcast (I was super-honoured to be featured on this one myself!) in which people are interviewed that work on the intersection of research and contemplative practice. I find these always such fascinating conversations!

- Open Question by Elisabeth Mattis-Namgyel, an amazing Buddhist teacher who presents a no-nonsense approach to asking deep questions in life

- The kind heartfulness podcast by Gomde Austria, an interesting series of conversations with Buddhist teachers and practitioners.

Ballet

- A dancer's mindset by Isabella McGuire, who talks about the mindset that is required to be successful at anything, but especially from the perspective of ballet. Lots of good advice, although I don't always agree with everything. I think she forgets that not everything can be controlled

- Athletistry by Shane Wuerthner, another ballet mindset podcast, which is also useful to anyone engaged in a difficult pursuit, such as academia

- Ballet Rising by Casey Herd: fascinating stories about people trying to bring ballet to the communities that not always get access to it, e.g., ballet in India and Africa

- Hard Corps podcast by Romee Adair, who talks with guests about the general dance industry and especially challenges within it. It's fascinating to learn more about how the dance industry works.

- The adult ballet studio by Elisabeth Blosfield, a series of conversations with people trying to make a space for amateur adult ballet dancers. So inspiring!

- The balanced ballerinas podcast by Georgia Dostal, a series of interviews with so many amazing people in the dance world. Again, so many interesting things to learn!

- Artists Becoming, another series of conversations with dance professionals, but this one is specifically focused on bringing out the artists, and challenges to that

- Moving Moments by Alicia Graf Mack: more conversations with dance arists. I just love hearing the person behind the dance artist!

- The turning: Room of Mirrors: a really interesting deep dive into the ballet choreographer Georges Balanchine. Very interesting although this one is a bit on the sensationalist side

- Broche banter by Julie Gill/Leung: all things adult ballet, including interviews with adult amateur ballet dancers. Lots of insightful stuff about how adults learn ballet

Academia

- Degrees of freedom by  Tassos Sarampalis and Marcello Seri: lots of philosophy and practical tips about teaching in academia.

I hope some of these are inspiring to you, and maybe you find some new ones to listen to!

What is a contemplative life?

I wrote this blog when I just attended the Mind & Life Europe Retreat and the European Summer Research Institute (ESRI), also from Mind & Life Europe. Both events took place in Pomaia, Italy. For me, these events are always very good because they make me ask what the role is of contemplation in my life, and other big questions about being human.

In fact, this time I started to ask a lot of questions about my identity. When asked who I am, I usually say something like "neuroscientist" or "computational cognitive neuroscientist". Yet, in the MLE retreat, and more frequently this past summer, my identity has become also "dancer". Of course I don't get paid to do it, but yet, there is such a strong force in me that makes me dance, and I have in recent time been able to do more and more things with professionals. Then in the MLE retreat and the European Summer Research Institute, I suddenly also became a "contemplative", when I taught the meditation and contemplative dance practices. As someone who has been trying to follow the path of a scientist-practitioner, this was a really interesting experience, which I am still feeling into.

Picture from Morlaix Ballet camp
By Michel Le Photographe

What does it mean to be a contemplative? During the retreat we talked about "continuous practice". With my busy job, I don't have the time to spend hours a day practising meditation, although I certainly practise meditation every day. But there is much more that bringing meditation into your life can mean. For example, I try to be aware of my motivation for doing things, and where possible bring this into an altruistic motivation, intending that whatever I do be for the benefit of all beings. At the end of the day, I try to dedicate my efforts also to the benefit of all beings. In addition, I try to take short moments of meditation during the "lost moments" of the day--when walking somewhere, when waiting for the traffic light, and so on.

Inspired by the MLE retreat and ESRI, one of my more recent practices is also trying to bring awareness of interdependence into my action. There is this interesting concept of "enaction", which means in my limited understanding something like that whenever you take action, you are just moving around in the sea of interdependence, you are never able to have a fully independent action.

In addition to continuous practice, another feature of a contemplative is some amount of renunciation. In the old days, contemplatives would live in monasteries. However, monasteries are not so compatible with a modern life. Nevertheless, during ESRI Martijn van Beek talked about new alternative structures such as Vaekstcenteret where he lives in Denmark. And even if you are not entering a very specific community, you can also live a monastic life at home. For example, Misha Belien talks about being a monk with a family in this very inspiring documentary. Also I myself try to live a simple life, without too many distractions. The monks of yore would say "ora et labora" (pray and work), and in some sense, that is what I try to do.

Happy new year: let's make it the year of interconnection

 In the last few days I have been reflecting on the past year. I don't really like to list my achievements of the past year because I think it encourages an unhealthy comparison mindset. In today's society it's so hard to not forget that the most important is not what you do, but how you are. In the past few days, I co-led an online winter retreat, and in my part I taught analytical meditation. During these sessions we explored the idea of interdependence. I think today's world is more interdependent than ever (a beautiful quote by His Holiness the Dalai Lama about that: "In today’s highly interdependent world, individuals and nations can no longer resolve many of the problems by themselves. We need one another. We must therefore develop a sense of universal responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members, and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live." (from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Chapter 3).

interestingly, many people say they feel disconnected, while objectively speaking we are more connected than ever through the media, and through the evermore complex production chains of goods and services. So why do people feel disconnected? I think it is because we don't spend enough time being and reflecting on our situation. Another answer, offered by Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim last night was that we all consume (social) media that are so hyperpersonalized that we don't have too many common experiences anymore. And we are no longer so used to seeing things that we don't like.

Picture from Morlaix ballet camp by Michel Le Photography

Whatever may be the cause, my hope for the next year is that I will get to experience the deep interconnection of ourselves and others more in the coming year. Because I found that when I manage to experience the interconnection of myself with others, nothing can be an enemy anymore, and this reduces my stress so much. When things are overwhelming, it helps me a lot to focus on how they are all part of a web of contingent relationships that allows everything to appear and disappear. Moreover, when i experience the deep interconnection of myself and others, the competitiveness no longer exists either. The challenge is just not forgetting this...

Like with everything, not forgetting means to again and again try to remember, while the rest of life is trying to distract you. First you will forget most of the time, but the more often you remember, the more easily it comes. The trick is also to find "hooks", small reminders. I found a wonderful one recently in ballet class with Broche ballet, where Julie, the teacher said: imagine that you are massaging the floor as you are doing tendus. Thinking in this way frames ballet not as an activity that I do by myself, but rather as a cooperation with the floor, and of course the rest of the world outside it as well.

Every moment of remembering is a moment of mindfulness, and every moment of remembering also makes that moment sacred. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the notion of interbeing, where we see that the cow that brings the milk that produces the yoghurt that we eat produces the lesson we teach, and therefore the cow is in the lesson. In this way, everything is a seed for everything else. Every breath we take, we breathe in the oxygen produced by the plants, which connect us to the cosmos and to all other beings. If only I would not forget that, and if only more of us would realize that..

How to travel by train in Europe

 Since climate change is real and academics are increasingly starting to think about how to reduce their carbon impact, I have started to work on taking the train more frequently for trips within Europe. It is always an adventure but certainly not always easy. In this blog, I will describe the things I learnt so far.

Booking

• The first hurdle for train travel is booking. In contrast to flights, trains are not actually working with a unified booking system, which means that often for across-border travel you need to connect with various railway companies to book. I found that for the trips I have made, usually bahn.de has very comprehensive booking options. Another solution is to book with companies such as https://www.thetrainline.com I have not tried it, but someone I know has good experience with it. If you find that a ticket is not available with one railway company, it's often worth checking out whether it is available with another company. Some particular finds I have done in this department:
• in general, when a particular train is not available, try booking alternatives to find out what is and is not available. For example, what happens if you change the dates to further away and closer in advance? What happens when you change the booking to a different train station (for example, try one halfway the journey, because it may be you need to book the remainder with a different company)? This separate booking can allow you to find tickets. The reason this works is that different tickets of different companies typically become available at different times.  For example, for a trip to Poland I was able to book the intercity portion of the trip on https://www.bahn.com/en, and then had to wait to book the local tickets on the Polish website until only a few weeks before the journey. 
• to book an overnight train, you may need to book specifically with https://www.nightjet.com/#/home. I have now taken one of these overnight trains, booking an actual sleeping compartment, and the experience was veyr good. My compartment had a little sink, and a good toilet and shower were available in the wagon. There were separate male and female compartments, and the conductor was very nice. When you book these early, it's also quite affordable. The website also had good information about what train stations are and are not available and why. For example, when I tried to book Italy this summer, it was possible to go to Bologna, but not to some other Italian train stations due to engineering works. Once I figured this out, I booked the overnight train with  https://www.nightjet.com/#/home, the train further to the Netherlands with https://www.bahn.com/en and the trains in Italy with https://www.trenitalia.com/.
• When I tried to book a ticket to Poland, I had a lot of trouble: many of the websites I tried would show a trip, but then error out right before getting the ticket. Eventually I found that https://www.intercity.pl/en  allows you to buy intercity tickets in Poland. Although the website is only in Polish, you can use it in Google Chrome to automatically translate it. This still doesn't work for local trains in Poland, which need to be booked with https://bilkom.pl/
• One other booking hack is to make sure you leave plenty of time for important connections, especially when those involve different railway companies. This ensures that when there is a delay, you have less stress because you most likely will still be able to make it. And it also makes the journey more pleasurable, because you can visit some cities along the way and roam around a little or find a nice spot to have a good meal.

Travelling by train

• For travelling by train, I found it invaluable to download the apps of the respective train companies to my phone (for Italy I used the trenit app, which is in English, and gives detailed connection information). These apps give you information about whether the train runs on time, what platform you are arriving on or departing from, and what services are available at train stations. Importantly, when there are delays, these apps can allow you to find alternative connections (the bahn.de app is one that is particularly helpful for this. I also found this really helpful when travelling by train in India. Without an app (I used railyatra), finding the track is very hard, especially at New Delhi railway station, and with it, it's easy-peasy, and you even get real-time updates on whether the train is on schedule.
• Make sure you double- and triple-check the timing of the trains before you leave. Sometimes track works or accidents cause changes in departure times of trains. Often the railway companies warn you about this, but it may get lost and better safe than sorry. 
• Make sure to leave sufficient time when you arrive in the train station to find the relevant track. Sometimes the track organization is quite confusing, e.g., in Poland, but also some other stations such as Munich and Firenze.
• When making long train trips, it's also worth paying attention to whether there is food on board or whether you need to bring some. In the Netherlands there is pretty much never catering, but in the German ICE (high speed) trains the catering is quite nice. If there is no catering, it's worth bringing some food with you or buying it at a train station. In France you need to pay particular attention, because the catering services may be on strike. A positive exception of this is the Eurostar, where you even get served a small meal and a drink (at least in Standard Premier and up).
• Particular learning moment for Eurostar (train between Europe and the UK through the channel tunnel): they have some luggage requirements and actually scan your luggage similar to airports. I sadly lost a small knife, which I use to cut up fruits and vegetables, in this process. So if you travel Eurostar, check the luggage guidelines before you go. Other than that the train is a very pleasant experience.

• 

  ballet class on Berlin railway station

  Sometimes you need to break up your journey for a connection by bus or metro. For example, Paris has multiple train stations, and you often need to take the metro or RER to get to another station. Leave plenty of time for that because it often involves substantial walking. Bus connections are often due to track works. In my recent trip to Italy, this was quite confusing, but by asking people, I was able to work this out without a problem. It's actually a really nice way to meet people!
• When your train gets delayed and you miss a connection, this is where things get complicated. Often it's worth asking the train conductor what to do. Sometimes your train app also gives an idea. In France, I found that I needed to go to the SNCF office at the arrival station, queue up and get a ticket for the new train. In this case it was quite helpful to already have searched a new connection on the SNCF app so this could be handled very efficiently. For Germany, you technically also need to go to the Bahn.de office to get a replacement ticket, but in my most recent trip I just boarded the alternative train and explained my situation to the conductor, who proceeded to check the situation to verify my story and let me on without a problem. 

After the trip

• If you have been delayed, many companies give you some kind of reimbursment. In some cases, e.g., the French SNCF, this information is even given when you get delayed in your actual train app with a link to the form you need to use to claim compensation. 

Despite all the challenges, I just want to emphasise that travelling by train is a great experience. You actually get to move your body during the trip, meet interesting people, and I often find the train one of the best places to work (especially when I book a first-class ticket, which especially on the German railways is quite affordable when you book early). In one of the pictures you can see me doing a small ballet class on a train station in Berlin. Moreover, it's really fun to watch the landscapes change as you proceed on your train journey!

Me in my little bed on the nightjet train

Cross-training for an adult ballet dancer, aka, how did I get such big arm muscles?

I discovered I can do ballet on
my balcony here at IIT
Roorkee in India

 Today I am writing a bit of a different blog: one in which I discuss my cross-training regime as an adult amateur ballet dancer. This blog is inspired by some funny experiences I have had. For example, last Summer, when I went to the bloodbank to donate blood, the lady behind the desk asked me whether I go to the gym a lot because I have such pronounced arm muscles. I told her that I mainly do ballet, and actually never set foot in a gym (other than to do ballet when I am travelling). She probably was not quite expecting that answer, and the next time I showed up to the blood bank she remembered that I was the ballet person. But all jokes aside, I do know I have quite pronounced arm muscles, quite unintentionally actually. How did this come about?

I think the story started many years ago when I still took class with Kip Martin in Philadelphia and I took a conditioning class for dancers. I noticed I sucked at pushups, so I figured I had to get better at those I just had to practise them. So I started to do about 18 pushups every morning (don't know where I got the number from, but somehow this is the magical number). It's great for several reasons: first of all, it's good to do something you don't really like first thing in the morning--then it can only get better from there and it trains your willpower (although the science on willpower is shaky, so I don't want to make claims that are too confident). Secondly, it's a great way to quickly warm up your body, especially on a cold day. And of course, slowly you will get better at it, and develop some muscles. It's amazing how far a little every day can go. 

In addition to this, I also work on muscle strength with a weekly ZhemFit class. ZhemFit is a type of fitness developed by Alexander Zhembrovskyy, former principal dancer with Dutch National Ballet (among others). It's a very challenging class, especially because you repeat the exercises many times. This has the advantage that you not only work the muscles, but also have the time to figure out the mechanics of movements. I found it to be very helpful to learn to better control my legs. Note that these classes are not just for dancers--in fact when I take an in-person class it consists of mostly non-dancers. But I am very happy they now have a website where you can take video classes.

Apart from ZhemFit, I also regularly like to practice Kniaseff floorbarre. My teacher India Rose likes to say it's a bit like programming your body into the right patterns so they are there when you stand up and actually practise at the barre. Also in India's class I very much enjoy the fact that she repeats the exercises a lot so that you not only get warm, but also have the time to figure out the coordination, which she facilitates by giving lots of detailed instructions. India teaches Zoom classes, and she also has a few on-demand classes with Broche Ballet.

Finally, I like to do prepointe classes with Broche Ballet, even though I have been on pointe for many years. Prepointe teaches a lot about how to use your toes, how to strengthen your toes and ankles, and how to coordinate all of that, Sometimes I feel like it's such a long way from my brain to my toes, and it's fascinating how hard it is to figure out these coordinations. But of course, everything gets easier with practice. So there you have it: my cross-training regime!

My productivity routine

 As I always find I have too little time, I am also continually experimenting with my productivity routine. In case it is useful for others, let me share what I have currently converged on. The main trick with productivity is that you need to keep an overview of tasks on different time scales--years/months, weeks and days. For each of these time scales, I tend to use a different tool. Before diving into that, let me also mention that sometimes I cringe a bit by the term "productivity" because it has this strong capitalist focus that everything has to be completely efficient, forgetting the human dimension of things. Nevertheless, if you want to do good, productivity is important as well, because it helps you accomplish the goals you have and make the most use of your talents for the benefit of all. So productivity is also quite compatible with altruistic values.

The obligatory ballet picture ;-)

My weekly overview of tasks

Until this year, I felt quite happy with my data-to-day management, but I felt like I was losing an overview of the biggest tasks, so this is why I started creating a gantt chart (see picture) to keep track of large projects and events across the whole year. This also allows me to keep track of conference and grant deadlines. Then every week, I am using this "Eenvoudig leven agenda" (Simple Living Calendar) that I mentioned before. At the beginning of the week I check my gantt chart for the big picture tasks, and copy those in my weekly tasks section. I have subdivided those into 5 sections: organization, grants, supervision, teaching and papers, in line with the main requirements of my job. I enter tasks according to these subdivisions (see picture). For example, for organization I have every week "make planning". For teaching, it may include "prepare lecture" or "grade assignment 2". At the beginning of the week, I then try to plan those tasks in my calendar at times that I don't have other responsibilities. This allows me to have a reasonable idea of what I can accomplish. I also try to ensure that I have some "free time" every day in which email can be dealt with and unexpected tasks. One trick I really like is to reduce the volume of such unexpected tasks by asking students ahead of time when they expect to complete things, which would require my feedback. In then book slots in my calendar to give them feedback at those times. This benefits the student, because they have a more strict deadline, and it benefits me, because I won't be able to book that slot in my calendar with more meetings (and in my career stage, meetings are the things that tend to completely overcrowd my calendar--sometimes I feel like I am in a continuous fight against meetings, even though I also enjoy talking to my lovely students and colleagues. It's just that this makes it hard to get anything done). Then finally, at the beginning of every day I check what's in my calendar, what things did not get done previously, and I make a todo list for that day. The most satisfactory bit is crossing off things of my todo list!

Extract from my gantt chart, which is still work in progress. Different colors reflect different kinds of things: teaching courses, grants, PhD students. Every column in this Excel document is a week of the year. I so far have only done it for this year, but when I find some time I want to add more years so I can already write in commitments for upcoming years.

People who know me may wonder where ballet fits in all of this. So far I talked about work. This is very simple: ballet classes have been booked already in my calendar with the "repeat weekly" feature, so they are automatically scheduled as appointments with myself, which I pretty much never skip.

A related tip on time management is that I really like touse the toggl app. This is an app that runs on your desktop, and which you can use to track how much time you spend on tasks. This is very insightful to get an idea of how much time you spend on tasks (right now I am using it as well to see how long the blog writing takes). This allows me to improve the realism of my time estimates for tasks over time. I also use that at the beginning of every week to review the preceding week, together with the review pages of the calendar (see picture). In the review pages you write down how much you achieved your goals, what challenges you faced, and how that relates to your habitual tendencies, as well as how you feel about the preceding week. Last but not least, it reminds you every week to "take a moment to love yourself. So important!" This is especially important as it remains a continuous struggle to avoid overloading myself because I am just too interested in things, and also really enjoy being helpful. So it is important to keep a sense of humor and not give up.

The weekly review section in which you can reflect on the past week. Initially I would never do that because I felt I did not have time, but actually  it can be done in a few minutes. And taking a moment to reflect is really helpful so you can learn from your mistakes  but also appreciate what you managed to do.

Finishing the Lojong series with applause--or maybe not?

 I think we humans are hard-wired to look for other people's approval, maybe especially those of us on social media. This is where the last slogan of Lojong, number 59, is interesting: it encourages us to "do not expect applause". 

Waiting for applause at the end of this variation at
Morlaix ballet camp 
Picture by Michel Le

The reason that social media is so addictive is that by posting something we can accumulate other people's approval in the form of likes and probably dopamine in a way that is much faster and easier than other ways of accumulating people's approval that require actions in the real world. 

There is obviously nothing wrong with seeking approval--it is actually quite adaptive and when it does not work, it is associated with mental disorders such as depression (where the reward and reward learning system are blunted) and addiction (where rewards other than the drug of addiction are blunted). Yet, if we rely only on other's approval for our happiness then we are in shady territory because we cannot control it. This is why I very much appreciate the Buddhist idea of focusing more on motivation than on outcome (including the outcome of approval): you can control your motivation but the outcome is mostly outside your control.  I think that's also what slogan 59 encourages us to do.

Maybe sitting meditation itself is an example of a practice not focused on doing, waiting for rewards, but rather on being. We are encouraged to actively notice how a certain way of being makes us feel, so slowly the being rather than doing becomes more rewarding. Once you have spent more time paying attention to your own internal landscape, it therefore also becomes easier to motivate yourself based on your intention and the process itself than the outcome. Nevertheless, it does require quite a lot of self-confidence to ignore other people's applause, but if you keep practising, bit by bit, your confidence grows, together with your stable happiness that comes from inside. A beautiful place to end this series! Maybe next time you are hoping for applause, you can ask yourself: "do I really need it?"

Some tricks for managing strong emotions

 I think the next Lojong slogan, number 58, is the reason that the stereotype of a Buddhist is a very peaceful person. This slogan namely says "don't be temperamental." An important Buddhist value is being relatively equanimous, which means you don't easily get angry or display other strong emotions. Just like the previous slogan, I think it is important to avoid suppressing emotions, because in the long run, that is not going to fly. Nevertheless, it is beneficial to try to avoid getting too much caught up in the emotions.

The dancers of Morlaix Ballet Camp putting on 
a chuckle at the end of the first act of Napoli
Picture by Michel Le

In my previous blog I mentioned how Khandro Rinpoche talked about keeping it short when emotional reactions come up. For me there are two strategies I use to shorten when emotions come up. First of all, I literally dance with it, if I am in a place where that's possible. Secondly, I will use the Buddhist teachings on emptiness: examining the nature of circumstances you see how these emotions are just ever-changing manifestations in a continuous dance of things rising and ceasing. Whatever evokes the emotion is usually conveniently put in our mind as the only cause of our anger, but if you think about it, they are also at the mercy of all these circumstances, so it is actually quite unfair to point at them for being the only cause for these emotions. Probably somewhere in there we too are to blame as well. Somehow changing perspective this way really helps me create some mental space, and frequently a chuckle as well.

It is worthwhile to think about how to manage your strong emotions, because they can create a lot of trouble. For example, for me, when people get angry I get quite stressed, and cannot think so well anymore. There is interestingly also some research on this, showing for example how more angry managers in companies were associated with reduced ability to learn from failure. This is quite consistent with my experience, where an environment where a teacher explicitly says it is OK to fail helps a lot (thanks Julie Gill for mentioning it is OK, and even good to wobble and fall over in balancing class because this is how our body learns). In short, managing strong emotions takes quite some effort, but in the end it makes our life a lot easier.

From the dancer's face to the sticky mind

One of the interesting terms I learnt this Fall was "dancer's face" from a video by Allie Christensen. She referred to the idea that dancers have learnt to not show on their face how difficult the dancing really is. I very much recognize that. One funny sight at the ZhemFit classes (fitness classes with a bit of a ballet background) that I like to take is that you can easily tell the ballet dancers from the non-dancers in that they do not wince, no matter how hard the exercise, unlike basically all the other participants in the class. 

A clear case of dancer's face at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

This makes me think of Lojong slogan 57, which is "do not be reactive" or "do not be irritable" or "do not be jealous". In all its incarnations, the slogan reminds us to not react too strongly to what happens. Of course it is also important to not suppress emotions. So the amazing Buddhist teacher Khandro Rinpoche uses a phrase that I really like "keep it short." You can feel whatever you feel, but don't waste too much energy in it. Try to drop the emotion whenever you can. This is of course easier said than done. 

In my lab, we are very interested in studying this kind of mental reactivity, which I like to call "stickiness"--not letting go of thoughts of often emotional reactions. In fact, the most reliable way to induce such sticky thinking is to evoke people's hopes and fears, for example in a social stress test, which we have used here. We find that after a social stress intervention people have more trouble concentrating on a task than after a therapy intervention, and that they also tend to be more stuck thinking about the past. In another study we have been developing machine learning tools to help classify when a person is stuck in their thoughts. Interestingly, we found that on a person-level, classifying whether people are prone to this kind of sticky thinking can be done more productively on the basis of just 5 minutes of so-called resting state EEG (where people are just sitting there without a task) than on the basis of a specific task we have to measure mind-wandering. Hopefully this research will help us understand how our mind becomes reactive and sticky, so that we can find ways to reduce this tendency.

Don't forget to play!

 One of the most delightful things from my travels in the past year was hanging out in-person again with my Tibetan monk colleagues at Sera Jey monastery, and also at a Mind & Life meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The most important reason why I enjoy so much hanging out with them is that they have so much humor. In our interactions, you can see how they never take themselves too seriously, so they very quickly shift between intense concentration and laughter. We also see this when we study their monastic debate practice, where one moment you see them shouting angrily at each other, and the next moment their are joking. I think not taking yourself too seriously is a very helpful life skill, not only to make your life more pleasant, but also to allow for more mental flexibility. And this is the topic of the 56th slogan of Lojong: "Don’t take what you do too seriously."

Some playful movement at the conclusion
of the ballet Napoli at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

In fact, I think not taking yourself too seriously is also closely related to play, and as researchers are starting to investigate play more, they are finding that play is a very efficient way to learn. For this reason, I started to follow Julie Gill's advice in the Broche ballet classroom to play whenever necessary. It is very nice that some classes in the schedule are now even dedicated to play--for example playing with balancing in the centre, where it is OK to fall, because that's how our body learns, and playing with standing on pointe in the centre, shifting weight in different ways to get more comfortable with those sensations.

Meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama

This makes me think: would there be a way I can get my students to play more in my own classes? I feel it's increasingly hard, because students feel under so much pressure that they feel little space to play. Similarly, play can also be helpful on the spiritual path. Actually some visualisation practices in the Tibetan tradition could be viewed as a kind of play (I hope I am not insulting anyone here...), where you feel what it is like to embody a particular deity to try on those mental patterns. And for me one of the most helpful meditation advices is "be like an old man watching children play". Another good reminder!

Can you turn criticism into a prompt for exploration?

As a scientist, I like Lojong slogan 55 quite a bit, since it says "Gain freedom through discernment and analysis." Trying to analyze and discern is what I do on a daily basis. Having said that, of course most of my analysis is on the external level of phenomena outside myself, like a pattern of data, rather than my own thoughts and emotions, as this slogan is talking about. In a way, you could say the slogan encourages us to engage in analytical meditation. For example, rather than simply going with a feeling of stress, we can also investigate why we feel stressed, and try to look at it from many different angles and perspectives. What do we feel is making our life stressful? What would be the perspective of those people around us; our co-workers, our boss, our family and friends? Actually one of the things I often find when I switch perspectives is that the things that seem very dramatic to me are probably not even noticed by someone else, and besides, they're probably way too involved with their own drama! 

Lots of emotions in this image from Morlaix
Ballet camp by Michel Le

In general going in analysis mode is very helpful to go out of wallowing in self-pity, especially when you get negative feedback. A common occurrence for this is when, as happened to one of my PhD students today, you get reviews from a journal where you've submitted an article. Sometimes these can be quite negative and your first reaction is want to curse the reviewers and feel very sorry for yourself that they are so stupid they don't understand your brilliant work. Of course that is not going to make anything better, so another approach would be to explore whether you can see it in any other way. For the reviews that's actually quite easy because after being an academic for so many years my standard response is: congratulations, you have not been rejected, that is amazing! But for other rejections, such as grants, it can be a lot more difficult. Instead of focusing on the emotions themselves and all your justified reasons for feeling this way, you can also try to explore with curiosity what is really going on: how are you feeling? And what can you actually do about the rejection? Even if the reviewer does not understand your paper, other future readers may similarly misunderstand, so it's good to think about how to rewrite the paper to deal with that. Such an action-oriented attitude tends to feel much more powerful and is also more productive, although obviously it's important not to neglect your feelings. 

I also try to experiment with this approach in ballet class where every correction is a chance to explore how to tell my body how to get the movements right. It very much helps when my teacher Julie Gill from Broche Ballet phrases corrections in terms of questions: can you make your leg longer? Can you turn out more? In this way it does not feel like you are an impossible ballet student (it's easy to feel that way as an adult dancer with a body that is not always cooperating) but rather as a starting point for exploration and mindfulness of my body's sensations and possibilities. In short, this slogan is a great reminder to focus on learning and exploration rather than drama.

Happy new year!

 Happy new year! I hope you had a good celebration (if you celebrate) with loved ones. Now the new year has started and it's time for action. Yesterday I talked about setting intentions. Today--in my discussion of the next Lojong slogan, number 54, which says "train wholeheartedly"--we will move into action. The "Eenvoudig Leven agenda" (Simple Living calendar) that I mentioned previously starts the year with an intriguing question: what is your mission? I think it is having a clear mission that can allow you to train wholeheartedly, because you can work to ensure that what you do and how you are is consistent with your mission. 

Ladies on a mission at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

In the last few days I spent some time thinking about it, but I found it quite hard, because somehow your mission sounds like it has to be something grand like solving world peace or world hunger, and that is not something I can commit to. Today, during my morning run, I found that a better way for me to think about this is to come up with prayers, inspired by Roshi Joan Halifax's recent Facebook posts, such as "May I be able to inspire people with my combination of dancing and science", "May I be able to help my students reach their goals", or "May I be able to find some peace in myself." For the latter one, I find it very helpful to remind myself of this recent video by Mingyur Rinpoche, in which he says that in order to be of more help for people he decides to disappear for retreat for a while. I too have to think about how sometimes taking time away can actually allow you to be there more for others--it is not necessarily selfish. Coming back to your main mission can be really helpful to zoom out and make those decisions.

Finally, I want to leave you with a thought I have been playing with in the last days. Often it is easy to keep focusing on things that have to change, but interestingly this unrest is exactly what characterizes our vicious cycle of suffering. The hopeful message of the Buddhist teachings is that we all have a buddha nature right inside us, if we can only let it manifest. So here is an encouragement to trust this buddha nature and give it the space to blossom.

Habits of being rather than habits of doing

 New years are always a moment for people to make resolutions, but honestly, most of those fail. Why? Because to make real change, you need to do small things but consistently. Doing things consistently really only works when they have become a habit--part of your daily routine. So how do you build new habits? The easiest is to figure out how to connect things to your existing routine. For example, I tend to check the news in the morning at breakfast--so here news is connected to breakfast. If I wanted to build in some more moments of meditation in my day, I could try to also connect it to breakfast--although that may be challenging when I am in a rush. Even a short moment is helpful. In fact, Mingyur Rinpoche always says that the best way to meditate is not one long session of multiple hours but rather many short sessions of a few minutes. Because every short session remains fresh and leaves you wanting more. Moreover, interspersing meditation sessions--or whatever other habit you'd like to work on--with everyday life is also helpful because it integrates our memory of the habit with many different cues belonging to our daily life rather than only the cue of a single moment. This means that the habit can more easily spring to mind. I found that Mingyur Rinpoche's Tergar self-study program is also built around this idea with many short sessions that you can easily sneak in somewhere. Similarly, in the field of exercise I started to really enjoy the Hard Abs fitness youtube channel which has very short workouts that you can easily squeeze somewhere into your day (also helpful when you get cold while working because the thermostat is low these days...). 

Picture from Morlaix Ballet Camp by Michel Le.
 You can see us here on pointe, a ballet example 
of a skill that you cannot develop with only sporadic
effort--it requires consistent effort.

But why is it so difficult to build a habit? This is because our habits are already well-practised, so changing them is really hard. Professor Bas Verplanken found that the best way to change habits is when we do not have strong habits, for example when we move, or when we are travelling.

While what I discussed so far is about habits for things we do, but in Buddhism, the most important habits are about how we are. So instead of building an intention to do something like a meditation practice, you can also build an intention to have an intention--can you challenge yourself to cultivate more intentions of helping others rather than getting ahead? And even such intentions are most suitably cultivated by attaching them onto existing habits, such as remembering this intention when you do the planning for your working day. I will definitely try to reinvigorate that habit! But for now: happy new year!

Happiness is often not where we look

 Today was the last day of an online winter retreat that I co-facilitated. In the contemplation that I led, we investigated how we all want to be happy, but in searching for this happiness, we are misguided. We talked about the "8 worldly preoccupations"--specific sets of hopes and fears that we run after/run away from, For example running towards praise (hello social media!) and away from criticism. The problem with this is we put our happiness in the hands of others. This misunderstanding is also the topic of slogan 52 of Lojong" "Don't misunderstand." 

However, the slogan itself talks about six types of misunderstanding. First, mistaken patience. We have patience with our work--working long hours to only get money that we then use to buy leisure to get away from our work. Yet, we do not have patience with things that don't get societal recognition, such as the invisible work of being on a spiritual path. The same is true by the way for ballet, where not many people have patience with the slow boring exercises, even if they spend many hours doing classes with fancy jumps and turns. But it is often the most boring stuff that eventually makes life better because you are cultivating helpful habits.

Second is mistaken aspirations. I think society pushes us towards aspiring to have a good career, money, relationships, and so on. But do those make us happy? In the end real happiness can only be found inside--as it is said: there's no treasure like contentment. Third is mistaken taste. We tend to go for short-term pleasure, rather than long-term benefit. There are even psychological studies of a phenomenon called "inter-temporal choice" where people are asked to make decisions between rewards in certain time frames and it is a consistent finding that people tend to prefer smaller rewards when they can get them now over larger rewards for which they have to wait weeks or months. There is nothing wrong with enjoying some sensual pleaaures, but it's important to realize that they will never last. Even delicious chocolate (which  I am quite addicted to!) will become aversive when you have too much of it.

Fourth is mistaken compassion, which seems strange: how can compassion be mistaken? Nevertheless, compassion tends to be only for the people suffering, and not for the ones that are happy, but who will inevitably suffer later. Especially those people committing crimes right now are bound to suffer later--probably much worse. Buddhism teaches us to also have compassion for those. I personally find this a helpful practice because it humanizes that person and somehow therefore makes me feel less attacked by their acrions. Next is mistaken care, in which we encourage people to go after their self-centered aims. This is a challenging one as well, because we are invited to encourage people to put their spiritual practice over their career, which is not something that tends to make sense in society. However, supporting someone to find their happiness inside is probably a good idea in this uncertain time. Finally, mistaken joy is only rejoicing when we do well, but not when others do well. This is mistaken--the green monster of jealousy does not really help you feel better either. So cultivating joy in the good fortune of others is a recipe for resilience. Wow, that was a lot for such a simple slogan!

How to be lazy while being busy

One of the most challenging things for me is the concept of "active laziness". This is the idea that you do many things to avoid doing the main thing, which usually is also the most challenging thing. I think Lojong slogan 51 is also exactly about that. It says "this time, practice the main points." In the Buddhist realm, practising the main point would refer to making sure you don't forget to practise, and when you practise, to ensure the practice is about reducing your self-importance rather than for example showing off what a good Buddhist you are.

Picture of being busy with lots of mostly 
meaningless stuff in the ballet Napoli
at Morlaix Ballet Camp. Picture by Michel Le

But of course this idea also applies to academia, where it is extremely easy to spend all your time doing things that are helpful, such as reviewing papers or reading other people's papers or improving your lectures, but do not move your career ahead and do not move your research forward. I think it is really challenging to decide what the most important contribution is that I can make in a given day to science. Because even if reviewing a paper on the short term helps science, getting my own ideas into the world also helps science.

Also in ballet it is important to think about those things, because it is really easy to just follow ballet classes and hope you will improve. Because as Julie Gill says in this episode of her podcast, it is important to analyze what are the most important things for us to work on, and then target those more specifically. Sadly those things, which include posture and foot strength, are much less exciting than twirling around a big bright studio or a stage in a tutu.

Finally, I don't think main points are always the same. The trick for improving in any area of your life is to regularly ask yourself what your main gaps are and what small goals you can set to move closer to these goals. For example, in the Buddhist context rather than abstractly going for "enlightenment" and doing an indiscriminate amount of practices, you can instead analyze your main problems, e.g., being too busy, and then focus on regular short meditation practices to calm your mind, and commit to ending interactions with other people by wishing them well. And once you have made progress in those, you can move on to another goal that addresses the main point. 

Little drops fill buckets--in work, ballet and the spiritual path alike

Have you had the experience of saying that you would totally do something, if only you weren't so busy? I am totally guilty of that (including with writing this blog: I have been busy with this #lojongchallenge for quite a few years now (I don't even remember how many...). So the next slogan, slogan 50 of Lojong is perfect for that, since it says "don't be dependent on external circumstances". Of course it refers mostly to being dependent on external circumstances for working on yourself and engaging in your spiritual practice, but it applies equally to many other things in life.

Picture by Michel Le at Morlaix Ballet camp.
For me this is an example of little things (in this
case people) making up a much larger whole.

In the domain of ballet, I figured out this past year that I can do ballet even while travelling: there is no need to be dependent on external circumstances for that. When I am on a train station or in an airport, I can do a quick barre, for example in an empty gate or a quiet spot (especially Broche Ballet's technique deep dive barres are great for that, because they mostly involve standing and scanning your body, and not really making large movements). I can also do a quick prepointe workout (also from Broche Ballet) while standing or while sitting on a chair. I have also attended many an online ballet class from the hotel gym of the various places I visited this past year!

The same is true for my job. One of the most challenging things to do when you're an academic is getting into writing mode. But in reality, you don't really need much--if you can just find 15 minutes, writing is possible. For next year, I aspire getting into the 15-minutes-a-day writing mode, because so much can be written in that time.

Now most importantly, the spiritual journey of reducing self-importance. It is so easy to think you have no time for meditation and therefore no time for the spiritual path. But literally every moment is an opportunity. Even in the midst of a busy day (maybe especially in a busy day) you can pay attention to how you react, and check whether you react from self-importance or from a broader perspective that takes others into account as well. And even a few seconds waiting for a traffic light, you can practise meditation. I think nowadays this is so much more difficult because we have our entertainment of our phones with information to be processed always in our pockets. This means that making the choice to simply observing the moment is more challenging. However, the benefits of simply being present should not be underestimated--for one thing because it may allow you to be reminded of things you otherwise forgot. I had that experience many a time while I was practising the three-minute breathing space (from the MBCT intervention) at the beginning of my lecture, and this was so helpful (note: this Fall I started to begin my lectures with the three-minute breathing space, and so far I am liking it). So here we go: 2023, the year of being less dependent on external circumstances and not forgetting to turn my mind inwards as much as I can! 

Reminder to self: don't duck away!

If you are anything like me, you like to engage yourself mostly with things you like, and avoid those things you do not like. This is a bit of a problem because first of all, there is no way you can avoid what life throws at you, and secondly, it is often from the challenges that you learn most. This is what slogan 49 from Lojong is about: "Always meditate on whatever is most challenging." In our Buddhist study group we are now looking at turning suffering and happiness into enlightenment. It is a beautiful teaching showing that whatever we experience can be used on the path to enlightenment, and even on a more mundane level, everything is workable.

Picture by Michel Le from Morlaix Ballet Camp.
Clearly a bit of a challenge here!

Meditating on what is challenging can come in different versions. For me, one of the easier versions is in my learning of ballet, where it is always challenging to see the parts of my technique that are not pretty. Yet, it is exactly working on the non-pretty parts and the scary steps where you progress. And nothing beats the feeling of doing that. This is why during the pandemic I started videoing myself and posting (admittedly the prettiest) parts of it on instagram. In my work I have been focusing this past year on building the habit of regularly reflecting on what I am doing with my time. For some reason I find it always really difficult to make the time to review at the end of the day and the end of the week. This past year I managed to get into the habit of weekly reviews with my "Eenvoudig Leven agenda" (Simple Living agenda) which has weekly worksheets for reviewing the past week (and always reminds you to love yourself). That helps a lot, and for the coming year I am working on developing more detailed long-term goals with a gantt chart. Progress happens slowly but surely! The most challenging difficult thing is to face negative emotions of myself and others--for example being afraid for when they get angry. This is one I am still working on. This slogan is a good reminder to stop fearing the moment of facing the difficulties. Because as I tell my students: it is worse to let those things stay in the dark and know that they are there than to actually face them. So, remembering this slogan is definitely on my list of good intentions for the new year, so I am less tempted to duck away for difficult things, and instead just face the
m.

A key to resilience - learning to dance with whatever life throws at you

The next slogan in the #LojongChallenge is number 48: "Practice impartiality toward everything. Deep and comprehensive mastery overall is essential." I think this is such a good reminder. Probably for me the thing that most certainly makes me unhappy is to want things to be different from what they are. I got a lot of time to practise with this in the past 6 months in which I had the great good fortune to travel again. Traveling is especially one of these circumstances where you don't get to choose your circumstances. Sometimes things are pleasant, and sometimes they are annoying. For a Western European for example, it always takes some adaptation to go to countries where time is not so strictly adhered to, so things don't necessarily start at the assigned time. One possibility is to get annoyed about it, but a more adaptive option (albeit not always easy in practice) is to just go with the flow. When I was lucky enough to attend the Mind and Life meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala earlier this year. This was an amazing meeting, but also required quite a bit of flexibility. I particularly remember one moment when we were in the car on the way back from an excursion to the Norbulingka institute outside Dharamsala and suddenly the car stopped for a traffic jam up the hill. After waiting for a bit, we decided to get off the car and actually walk up the hill leaving the taxi behind so we could make it somewhat in time for the next excursion. In the end, we were still late, but the schedule changed and all was good. For a person living in a stable country like the Netherlands, it is easy to forget that things are not always predictable, and they naturally change, even if we don't like that. A similar experience occurred later during my India trip when I was staying in a hotel in Allahabad, where the staff seemed to have their own mind about when things such as breakfast would happen. My first reaction was to get very frustrated, but that does not really change things, especially when you are only staying in a hotel for a few days so staff won't change their habits. After a few days my more adaptive response was just to plan around it and to dance with whatever life was throwing at me.

Image of dancing from Morlaix Ballet Camp by Michel Le 

I think actually impartiality is an overlooked outcome measure of contemplative practices such as mindfulness, as was already suggested in an early paper by Gaelle Desbordes. In one of the papers we wrote in my lab this past year we started to look at people's impartiality more empirically by comparing how people's thinking would change after being exposed to either a social stressor or a positive mood induction. We found that after a stressor, people were more distracted and had more negative thoughts than after a positive mood induction. In an on-going study (we are still looking for Dutch-speaking participants!) we are looking at how a mindfulness and a positive fantasizing intervention for a longer period can affect these same thought parameters. Hopefully this will eventually allow us to figure out how we can train people to dance with whatever life is throwing at them, like in the picture accompanying this blog (from the Morlaix Ballet Camp).

Reflections on mindfulness

Picture by Michel Le Photographe from Morlaix Ballet Camp - when dancing together in the corps de ballet, you also need continued mindfulness of the body to ensure you move together as one team.

 It is the end of the year, and naturally a time to reflect, so I decided to take up blogging again, also to process how much happened this past year. Meanwhile, I still have a few slogans to go with the #lojongchallege, so let's see how far I will get. I certainly won't finish before the end of the year, but maybe I can make some headway in the first week, when things are still a bit more slow.

The next slogan on the list is slogan 47, which says "keep the three inseparable". With "the three", the slogan refers to body, speech, and mind, which are the three components of a person with which they can act in the world. According to Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche in his book Intelligent Heart, the idea is that we should keep these three--body, speech and mind--inseparable from mindfulness. It is an invitation to remain mindful of whatever actions we commit with our body, speech and mind. I think in the West, a kind of simplistic notion of mindfulness has emerged which is only about paying attention. In that notion very often mindfulness is also equated with doing things very slowly. Surely slowing down is good, especially for a busy person like me, but sometimes this is not practical. Here, instead, mindfulness refers to the ethical dimension: remain vigilant of the effects of your body, speech and mind. This sense of mindfulness is therefore not so much self-focused, and instead focuses on awareness of the impact of your actions on others. Funnily enough, I think this often can be quite liberating, because if you only focus on yourself, it can lead to so much hope and fear.

As I was running today, I was thinking about what I accomplished in the past year, and whether that was what I set out to do. I honestly could not really remember specific goals I set myself at the beginning of the year, short of possibly achieving promotion so associate professor. I sadly failed at that one. Nevertheless, I am actually quite happy at things I achieved, but mostly those things involve making an impact on those around me. I was happy with having been nominated for teacher of the year in our AI programme because of my concern for mental health of the students. I was happy that some of my students' papers were published, PhDs were finished, or almost-finished, students got jobs, and I was able to share my knowledge in a series of workshops for students in India. I think for me those mean more than titles or prestige, because they are the things that someone in the end may remember. Of course I still do my best to get grants, and to publish and all those things, but this is not the most important. The most important to me is being aware of the impact of all small actions of my body, speech and mind on others. For related ideas, see the preprint my colleagues and I recently put out in which we call for more kindness in academia: preprint

Opening the mind through travels

As I am finally able to travel again, I reflect on how amazing travel is. Even though I did not feel unhappy during the pandemic, I don’t think I realized how much I missed travelling. I am sitting here, writing this essay during my first trip to India in more than two years. The world has changed significantly, with not only a pandemic but also a stronger and stronger realization that climate change is real and a war raging in Europe. This makes me sometimes wonder whether it is still a good idea to travel. Is there even a reasonable argument to be made to spend so much kerosine for flying to other continents? I think there is, but at the same time I think it is critical to engage in sustainable travel. For instance, I have put myself on a flight diet, meaning that I will not fly to India more than once a year, and I will not fly to the Americas more than once a year. To allow for this, I try to make each trip longer and pack in everything I can think of, rather than flying back and forth. Yet, the reason that I think it’s still justified to travel is that it also provides a potential solution to many of our societal problems. Specifically, I think it can make significant strides in reducing the divisiveness in society that is currently magnified by the filter bubbles created by (social) media, and secondly it can help us become more naturally eco-friendly. Let me discuss each of these two in turn.

Visiting the Taj Mahal with Delhi By Cycle

Visiting the Taj Mahal with Delhi By Cycle

Travel can give us more understanding about other cultures and other viewpoints, by exposing us deeply to other people. An example of this was my trip with Delhi By Cycle to Taj Mahal, cycling through the small villages of India while learning about the life of Krishna, and the history that created Taj Mahal. In today’s filter bubble it’s so helpful to create deep experiences of unfamiliar cultures. For me as a rich Westerner, it makes me also acutely aware of the tremendous privilege I have: that water is coming from the tap, that electricity and internet are always there… Travelling in India, I experience, even as a tourist, what it is like that those things are not always there. And this has a profound effect on the mind as well, because it gives you a visceral experience of impermanence—that life is not always controllable or predictable. And realizing impermanence then allows you to appreciate what you have much more, and also helps you prioritize the most important things, since you don’t know how long it will last.

Near the Ganges in Rishikesh

The second reason travel is valuable is that it can make us more aware of environmental issues, when it allows us to experience nature in such a deep way that we feel in our body the need to protect it. I felt this very clearly last year when I saw an erupting volcano in Iceland last year, and also this year when I got to bathe my feet in mother Ganga in Rishikesh. These two experiences made me feel so tremendously connected to mother nature—almost as if you are touching mother Earth directly. As a result, paying attention to climate change comes much more naturally—not because I think I have to behave that way, but because it feels like it is the right thing to do.

In short, although in the short term, travel may be associated with some pollution, when engaging in sustainable tourism, such as taking tours by cycle and by walk, travel can do a lot to transform our minds and make our behaviour naturally sustainable.