Cultivating Emotional Balance

“Knowing how to deal with emotions is a skill to be cultivated.

DENISE ROBSON

Cultivating Emotional Balance

ultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) is an educational program that offers resources for managing emotions. It was born from the dialogue organized, in 2000, by the Mind and Life Institute, in which His Holiness Dalai Lama, contemplatives, scientists and philosophers held a debate on “Destructive Emotions”. Because of the importance of the theme for both individual and social well-being, his holiness asked Paul Ekman and Alan Walace to create a secular educational program on emotions.

Emotions are an essential component of our life – the basis of how we feel and relate to ourselves and to others. We all want to have healthy relationships and achieve well-being. However, we know that our mind can be our worst enemy. Our emotions and relationships can be our greatest challenges. The development of emotional balance requires the cultivation of skills that allow us to have mental clarity and a fearless heart.

“In fact, people want to be happy, and most don’t want to be afraid, angry, sad. But we couldn’t live without emotions; the question is how to deal with them.”
Paul Ekman

Intention, attention, cognition, affection

Meditation

Cultivating the qualities of the heart:
love, compassion,
joy and equanimity.

The methodology of this program allows the individual exploration of our mental and emotional world, through meditative practices, knowledge about emotions and the development of Four Intelligences or Balances:

Conative balance — refers to discriminating intentions and desires and aligning them with the cultivation of the well-being of oneself and others.

Attention balance — is equivalent to attention training.

Cognitive balance — the intelligence developed here is to perceive, as clearly as possible, what reality is presenting us, identifying the role of the observer in the interpretation of reality.

Affective balance — our well-being is directly influenced by the quality of our relationships and vice versa. Here we cultivate a new look for ourselves and for the other.

Today, this program is taught in more than 21 countries, having been adapted for various contexts, including companies, prisons (guards and prisoners), schools, Meditation centers, universities, hospitals and much more.