consulting
MettaKnowledge for Peace is concerned with the health and well being of those who work to serve and protect those in need. Those of us who work in fields where we deal with the causes and effects of violence on a daily basis often do so because we care deeply about others’ well being. We wish to act with compassion and kindness 
and to have a positive impact. However, the realities of facing the effects of war, sexual and domestic violence, genocide, racism, illness, and myriad personal and collective traumas can wear away our reserves, our faith in humanity and the world. We may find ourselves frustrated, numbed out, burned out, angry, grief-stricken, or worn down. The insistent question of “Why?” in the face of so much suffering seems to remain unanswered.
Further, the pain in the populations we serve may be mirrored in our own lives and organizations as a whole. Many professionals working on the front lines of suffering may know very little about Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and about the cultural, sociological, neurological, and psychological causes and effects of dealing with suffering sometimes called Vicarious Trauma. In groups working with problems of violence and poverty, often compassion for the pain and suffering of the people served is put above compassion for oneself. Self-care is seen as secondary to caring for others, at best, and a search for self-knowledge is seen as selfish.
My research for over 20 years has been focused on how groups respond to individual and collective trauma and how to achieve healing. More recently, it has focused on the application of contemplative practices from Buddhism and other spiritual traditions, in particular those adapted from indigenous spirituality, in mainstream settings. I have done research and written on the most recent neurobiological studies of the effects of meditation on mental and physical health for the Garrison Institute and Buddhist meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg. I have used meditation and other contemplative practices in my own undergraduate teaching on the problems of violence and racism for over a decade. I have also brought these perspectives and tools to professionals working on the front lines of suffering in on-site trainings.
I am available to give talks and to develop on-site trainings in these topics and others tailored to the interests and needs of the organization:
- Definitions of Vicarious Trauma and its relationship to Secondary Traumatic Stress, compassion fatigue, and PTSD.
- An overview of the past decade of scientific research on the effects of meditation on health and wellbeing.
- The application of indigenous contemplative practices and ways of seeing in mainstream settings.
- How violence and suffering affects our spirituality in positive and negative ways.
from many spiritual teachings and practices from around the world evoking the human capacities of kindness and compassion to cultivate an open-hearted fearlessness in the face of pain. We combine this with the wealth of knowledge from the western sciences about the causes and effects of violence. The combination of metta (kindness) plus knowledge can be radically transformative and can dramatically shift an organization’s capacity to function in the face of enormous stresses.