Events

Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: Conversations on Shared Becoming

Friday mornings, February 4, 11, and 18, 2022, online

This short series will discuss “shared becoming” – a temporary expression we chose in order to refer, on the one hand, to the Buddhist concept of “conditioned arising” or “dependent origination”; and on the other, to interpersonal, relational processes that occur throughout our lives and participate in shaping our worlds.

Inspired by psychoanalytic, Buddhist and fine literature texts, as well as by meditative and therapeutic experiences, we’ll discuss first relations, trust and love. We’ll think about impermanence, transformation, fixation and creation. We’ll reflect on sensitivity and the ability to bear the links between pleasure and pain; and on the attempt to live a life full of meaning, introspection and vital connection, in a world that constantly overwhelms us with stimuli and information.

The Whole World Trembles: On Meditation, Psychotherapy and the Psyche’s Poetics

A talk with Dr. Assaf-Sati Elbar and Dr. Michal Barnea-Astrog

Friday, July 23, 10:00-11:30, online

How may the practice of Vipassana contributes to the freedom to create and to connect? How does it effect the understanding of the psyche and the therapeutic attitude of therapists who practice? What is the value of the multi-dimensional vision formed by integrating both psychoanalytic and Buddhist perspectives, provided they are not oversimplified, twisted or superficially merged?

In this talk, we’ll offer some of our thoughts on these matters, as well as others that are discussed in Michal’s books. We’ll talk about the transitions between inside and outside, and between imagination and present reality; and think about the relations between the universal, the collective and the personal levels, and between the transient and the enduring, the transmigrating, the seemingly eternal.

Migration: Book Launch

With: Mitchel Becker, Nitzan Stein-Mesika, Iris Rilov, Noa Raban, Uri Miles and Iftach Aloni

Spontaneous Gesture as an Interpretation: On the Leap from a Constructed Process to Intuitive Consciousness in Psychotherapy

Michal Barnea Astrog in a dialogue with Yorai Sella – in “Tandu Meetings”, MindBody Center and Dmut Institute

How do we use our theoretical and technical knowledge? How do we use the very acts of knowing, thinking and discerning? Do they assist us in coming closer to the other, to experience and to truth, or do they disengage and block us?

In this talk I will briefly present a few mental positions that shape our encounter with experience and with the other, and describe how certain modes of attention create growth supporting conditions. I’ll relate to these modes as manifestations of the combination between sensitive responsiveness to the other’s sensitivity (Eigen) and his or her spontaneous gestures (Winnicott), and the ability to bear, with patience and faith, states of instability and not-knowing (Bion). I’ll show how these modes function when we move along with experience in the Hakomi way of psychotherapy and in creative processes, and how the practice of Vipassana may nurture them.

Thursday, March 25th 2021, 20:00-21:45, Online.

More details (Hebrew) »

The Ecology of Mental Action: A seminar in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism

From March 20, 2020

Introduction to Hakomi

Tuesday, June 11 2019, 14:30-18:30, Kfar Monash.

Written in the Body: On Bodily Manifestations as a Connecting Tissue Between Present and Past, Conscious and Unconscious

In: First Person Plural: Lectures on Psychoanalysis and Buddhism

Tuesday, May 28 2019, 19:0-20:00, PsychoDharma, Tel Aviv

Our past experiences are registered in the psycho-physical system: powerful or chronic experiences are deeply engraved; light and fleeting ones leave lesser impressions, sometimes hardly noticed. This talk will address how skillful observation of bodily manifestations of these impressions can shed light on the habits and patterns that mold our lives, and even transform them.

As for the intrapersonal realm, I’ll refer to awareness of sensations in Vipassana meditation. Regarding the interpersonal and therapeutic realm, I’ll refer to attention to sensations in the context of projective identification and counter-transference, as well as to the view of the Hakomi Method on non-verbal expressions as a way into the exploration of the unconscious.

Introduction to Hakomi. What Passes Between Us: On the Attentional Environment in the Therapeutic and Interpersonal Space

With Bob Milone (Canada) and Michal Barnea-Astrog

Friday, March 1 2019, 10:0-14:30, Kfar Monash.

Evening to Celebrate the Publication of Psychoanalytic and Buddhist Reflections on Gentleness: Sensitivity, Fear, and the Drive Towards Truth

December 6, 2018, 19:30, Bookworm, Tel Aviv.

With Anat Levit, poet (We Were Cut From the Same Cloth), Dr. Boaz Shalgi, Dr. Roy Tzohar, Eilona Ariel, filmmaker (Doing Time, Doing Vipassana), Yifat Weltman, cellist, and Nitzan Stein-Messika.

Open to the public.

Although I Understand – Dialogues on Vipassana, Psychoanalysis, and the Depths of the Mind

What makes reflection into penetrating knowledge? What makes intellectual understanding into insight? Is awareness alone sufficient for real mental transformation? Can it alone undo repetitive, misery generating patterns? When does knowing lead to growth and when does it obstruct?

This is the first of a series of conversations seeking to touch on some of the questions that occupy those of us who regularly explore the mind – their own and others’. The conversations are conducted as associative dialogues, incorporating Buddhist and psychoanalytic perspectives, as well as academic theoretical thought with experience-based insights.

With Eilona Ariel (Doing Time, Doing Vipassana) and Dr. Michal Barnea-Astrog (Carved by Experience)

June 15, 2018, 10:30-12:00, Tel Aviv University

Open to the public.

Between Pleasure and Pain: On What We Do with Experience

In: The Mind that doesn’t Know – Conference on Psychotherapy and Buddhism

May 4, 2018, 8:15-13:30, Seminar Ha’kibutzim, Tel Aviv.