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.

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.

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.

What are you longing for?

This was the main question that pervaded this past weekend, while I attended the Mind and Life Europe retreat, led by Martijn van Beek and Hanneli Agotsdatter. It was quite an amazing experience. The retreat was a contemplative way of reflecting on how we lead our lives as academics and practitioners. It was one of the most wonderful things I have done in a long time. There is nothing as joyful as pursuing something meaningful, even when it is hard. Let me share some aspects of the experience.

We started on Friday night with gentle meditation and yoga exercises, after which Martijn gave a short lecture on the idea of a "vita contemplativa", a contemplative life. This idea is about how we can bring a spiritual dimension into everything we do, not just a few minutes of meditation or mindfulness on the cushion. We ended the evening with a beautiful meditation practice in which we virtually connected our hearts to the middle of the earth and to each other.

The next morning, we continued with the meditation and yoga practices, but then deepened the contemplation into a question that was quite a bombshell: what am I really longing for? And in addition to that, what are my talents and on the other hand the things that I would like to cultivate. I realized that I had neglected this question about longing--being in a stable job for the last ten years. But also in my spiritual life, it is so easy to just get stuck with the practices you are doing, instead of thinking about why you are doing those. It is so easy to get caught up in the doing mode, rather than being aware of why you are doing those things and focus a bit more on the being mode. During the retreat we did quite a few journalling exercises to ponder these questions, and then we shared with each other in breakout rooms.

I was blown away by the wisdom in the group. I had many insights driven by these conversations. One of the things I was thinking about was that while I love ballet practice dearly, the physical feats achieved by this will never last. The only thing that is a meaningful product out of this pursuit is the mental work. But that in itself is not to be underestimated. Metaphorically, it allows me to connect with the wisdom in my body, and to dance with the open questions in my life.

In the afternoon of the second day, we had a good conversation about how to put these things into practice in our everyday work life. Stefano Poletti and myself got the precious opportunity to share our paths. It was amazing to reflect on what I have done over the years, and to realize the wealth of experiences I have had the chance to accumulate.

On the last day, we then brought back this richness of experience into the daily life. How can we continue this? For myself, I would like to really bring a few minutes of meditation practice in the middle of my day so I get the space to see what is going on, and tune in with any gaps that may be occurring (that is my personal biggest gap). I also hope I will be able to remind myself of loving kindness in the many meetings I have during the day, to make these contemplative values more of a continuum. Finally, I think I need to do this practice more often, and especially to do a short retreat to reflect on what projects I need to let go of, because I tend to overcommit myself. As Gabor Karsai wisely said: we tend to focus on the things we produce, but fail to notice the side effects of these productions--the effects on our health, the effects on our family that is ignored and so on. I ended with the reflection that when you are running too fast, you may miss the goal or the point of it all. Hopefully writing this down will help me to remember this a bit better.

Why is it so difficult to turn off? Investigating competitiveness

Logan slogan 35 is "don't be so competitive" (the next iteration in the #lojongchallenge). There is hardly a slogan that is more apt in today's competitive world. In the academic world I am part of, competition is part and parcel, because we constantly have to compete with colleagues to win grants and get our research published in the top journals. Of course there is also a lot of collaboration within science, especially in my department, in the end the evaluation and reward system is highly skewed towards recognising only individuals. A particularly powerful example of this are the Nobel prizes, which were awarded last week. These almost assume that science is done by individuals, rather than by a team, as it is in reality. Pretty much all universities require you to be in the top-whatever to survive as an academic (which obviously is impossible, because by definition not everyone can be the top). This is slightly problematic because science really thrives when you combine many different viewpoints and ideas.

Somehow I internalized the competition to such an extent that I find it difficult to turn off: there is always something more to do, and I find it very hard to give myself permission to rest. Of course it's easy to blame that only on the external world. Probably I myself am at fault at least just as much. But nevertheless, the external world really facilitates that. I think taking the time to be still and rest is almost a revolutionary act.

For me, working against this innate and external competitiveness is a constant struggle that requires a lot of vigilance to recognize these patterns creeping up, and to drop them. I found two things really helpful here: first, practising joy when someone else gets ahead or does something good. When you look at it, seeing someone else succeed and seeing them happy is actually really nice and pleasant, and it improves your relationship with them as well. In one of the ballet schools I take class at the students tend to applaud for each other when they do something well. A very nice gesture, I think. I also try to remember to tell other people what I like about them, and especially to appreciate my students. A little positivity goes a long way!

The other trick I use is to investigate again and again the effects of suspending competitiveness for a moment and just letting be. When I take a few minutes to just rest, I find that actually my performance improves, because I often recognize things that I had overlooked until that moment, and thereby make fewer mistakes. Moreover, it also really feels good. But somehow it's still so hard to do--to overcome the ingrained 'doing' habit. With this blog, I try to commit again to taking more moments of silence and being. Just another reminder...

How are you doing? Do you notice these kinds of tendencies as well? How do you work with competitiveness?

Broadening our perspective on success and other thoughts about leadership

A few weeks ago I attended the Pump Your Career meeting--a day of workshops organized for female academics to give them a platform to meet and work on professionalization. While the title of the event is a bit stereotypical, the content is usually very good.

The event started by a keynote by Pravini Baboeram which drew everyone's attention to the theme of diversity. While it is known that diversity tends to increase quality of work output, still there is a challenge in making workplaces friendly to a diverse audience. The speaker encouraged us to move from being colour-blind to being colour-brave. One important thing to keep in mind is that equal opportunity does not just involve providing the same opportunities for everyone, but more to provide circumstances such that everyone can make use of these opportunities. For example, having a network is great, but if someone does not know how to network, the network is of no use. In a sense, we need to think from not just our own perspective but from the other person's perspective.

Pravini Baboeram

Rana Dajani

This time I attended a workshop by Roel Breuls from the Centre for Academic Leadership which I enjoyed a lot. The workshop talked about the complicated feelings involved in taking a position of a leader, which I recognized quite well. For example: a leader cannot satisfy all. A very painful conclusion, but very recognizable. An inspiring quote that was shared was by Philip Massinger (1623): "Those who govern others first should be masters of themselves." Consequently, Roel introduced the concept of Personal Leadership, which means that to effectively lead others, you first need to be able to govern yourself, and realize your strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you are strong on vision, you may be weaker on implementing practical details, and if you have a tendency to control others, you find it difficult to go with the flow. Yet leadership tends to require us to go beyond the strong preferences and tendencies we have to endure the discomfort of working with our dominant tendencies such that they are reduced and balanced out by their opposites. It is quite helpful to reflect on your dominant tendencies and to think about which ones need work. Leadership is also a lonely position, because you have to do this work mostly by yourself: your team is not going to do it. However, friends and colleagues can help you power through this.

the leaky pipeline

We also talked about the complicated meaning of a team in academia. Usually a team is a group with a common goal, a common leader, and interdepency. While the common leader and interdependency are satisfied. the common goal is more rare with many different projects happening at any point in time. An insight from this discussion was that the tasks of a leader are to set boundaries and to protect her people. When there is too little nurturing or too little boundaries, disturbances can arise in teams. Leaders should strive to still create some coherence, such as creating a culture for working together. I realized I should probably create such a vision statement for my lab as well, following some wonderful examples from Candice Morey and Maryam Aly.

Other interesting factoids were that females tend to deal with uncertainty in different ways than men (in general, of course). While males tend to resort to hierarchy and competition in the face of uncertainty, females tend to resort to a lack of hierarchy. And guess what the academic world looks like? Pretty male in my book!

Finally, I also found the overview of leadership tasks very helpful. A leader is to endure loneliness, otherwise you cannot set boundaries. Moreover, they have to use power, using language such as "I want you to...", "I don't want you to...". I notice how I find that quite challenging. Also, the leader should leave the fate of the employee with the employee, and not do their work for them. Finally, the leader should be an example of success, which includes the ability to take criticism, which can inspire others to also dare more. While this is challenging, a good message was that "there is nothing great about making yourself too small." Good point.

Presentation of the LNVH monitor on females in senior academic
positions and salary gaps

The day ended with a keynote by a very inspiring woman: Rana Dajani, who presented herself as someone wearing five scarves, after a book she wrote. The five scarves represent her roles as mother, academic, advocate, and more. She mentioned that interestingly, in the middle east and India, there are more women than men in STEM. Why is this? Why is there na absence of leading females in STEM in the Western world? She proposed that this could be because success is defined mostly in male terms: fame and money. What if we redefine the criteria pf success? Maybe we can then have a much more creative and diverse workforce. I resonate quite a bit with those ideas. She encouraged us to persist, because the world needs us, and we can be role models for others. Yet, we also need support, and recommended mentoring. I highly agree--mentoring is incrdibly helpful. She also mentioned a website with resources of mentoring support: the three circles of Alemat. In short, a very inspiring day in which I learnt a lot!