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PROJECTS

TRAININGS

ATLAS OF EMOTIONS

The Atlas of Emotions, AOE is an online visual map of emotions commissioned by the Dalai Lama and created by Eve and Paul Ekman with design support from infographic map makers Stamen Design. The Dalia Lama stated that “To find a new world, we needed a map; to find our way to a calm mind, we now need another kind of map.” The Dalai Lama requested that the Atlas represent current emotion science. Before creating the Atlas of Emotion, Paul designed, disseminated, and analyzed a survey for the top publishing researchers in the field of emotion. The survey sought to quantify the agreement across the field on which emotions are universal with a universal triggering experience, universal signals in face and voice, and universal physiology. Below is an analysis of the top emotion researchers’ responses that informed the content of the Atlas. 

 

“Compelling evidence for universals in any aspect of emotion was endorsed by 88% of the respondents. The evidence supporting universal signals (face or voice) was endorsed by 80%. There was less agreement about whether there is compelling evidence for universals in the events that trigger an emotion (66%), physiology (51%), or appraisal mechanisms (44%).

 

There was high agreement about the universal nature of five emotions: anger (91%), fear (90%), disgust (86%), sadness (80%), and happiness (76%). Shame, surprise, and embarrassment were endorsed by 40%–50%. Other emotions, currently under study by various investigators drew substantially less support: guilt (37%), contempt (34%), love (32%), awe (31%), pain (28%), envy (28%), compassion (20%), pride (9%), and gratitude (6%) (Ekman ,2016)

 

Please visit the Atlas here

RESEARCH AND WRITINGS

PASS Study UCSF Psychiatry
Phenomenological Qualitative Interviewing, Qualitative Analysis

The clinical trial “Psilocybin-Assisted Group Therapy for Demoralization in Long-term AIDS Survivors” is examining demoralization, complicated grief, depression, anxiety, quality of life, functional social support, post-traumatic growth, openness to experience, attachment security, mindfulness, global clinical impressions and ART medication adherence. The study, headed by Dr. Josh Wooley and Dr. Brian Anderson, includes group therapy sessions before and after an individual facilitated psilocybin treatment. Researchers Eve Ekman and Gabrielle Agin-Liebes are preparing, delivering the post-treatment interviews and leading analysis for the qualitative research arm of the study in collaboration with the PASS team. Main areas of interest in the qualitative research include embodied emotional experiences, feelings of compassion and connection and meaning-making.

Being Present Study UCSF Cancer Center
Mindfulness Curriculum, Teacher Training

Being Present is an online mindfulness, and meditation training for cancer patients and patient caregivers including webinars and guided meditations lead by Dr. Chloe Atreya. Participants enroll in an 8-week online webinar series and have access to daily guided meditations. Eve Ekman is providing expertise in writing scripts for new meditations, supporting curriculum development for the webinar series as well coaching/teaching webinar instructors.

FYD Study Against the Stream Meditation Center
Qualitative Interviewing, Diary Study Design, Qualitative Analysis

FYD is a pilot, community-based meditation study at Against the Stream Meditation center in San Francisco. Philippe Goldin of UC Davis is the study lead. The mixed method study aims to describe and explore experienced benefits the Feeding your Demons meditation practice for 60 Against the Stream meditation participants over the course of one month. The study uses a daily diary to assess craving, emotional state and visualization experience alongside a simple pre and post (meditation as usual) waitlist control design with validated survey measures of anxiety/depression/compassion. Eve Ekman will provide expertise in research design, data collection, and analysis of the qualitative component of the study.

Year Up Mindfulness Training, UCSF Osher Center
Qualitative Program Evaluation

Year Up is a training program that provides disconnected young adults in San Francisco with the skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through professional careers and higher education. Under the leadership of Forest Fein, MA, a curriculum director at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, a mindfulness program designed for Year Up students delivers tools to maximize health and well- being and efficiently manage the stress. Eve is involved in the program evaluation of this training with pre and post validated survey measured and qualitative focus groups which to identify potential benefits and impacts of mindfulness for this population.

EmoTrak Study, UCSF

Year Up is a training program that provides disconnected young adults in San Francisco with the skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through professional careers and higher education. Under the leadership of Forest Fein, MA, a curriculum director at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, a mindfulness program designed for Year Up students delivers tools to maximize health and well- being and efficiently manage the stress. Eve is involved in the program evaluation of this training with pre and post validated survey measured and qualitative focus groups which to identify potential benefits and impacts of mindfulness for this population.

SPRUCE, UCSF

The SPRUCE curriculum draws on Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) is an evidenced based training drawing from western scientific and eastern contemplative psychology that develops knowledge, theory and skills for sustainable emotional awareness. A CEB training targeted for residents will build healthy emotional boundaries that enable the practice of empathic, compassionate medicine while avoiding burnout.

CEB includes emotion skills, contemplative practices in compassion and mindfulness meditation training designed to improve emotional regulation that can provide stress reduction and enhance interpersonal communication taught through first person exercises, group discussion and dyadic exercises along side technology assisted daily emotion tracking and guided mindfulness practices.

Dissertation:Inside Insight, Opportunities for Meaning, Empathy and the Obstacles of Stress: An Exploratory Study and Pilot Training Among Juvenile Justice Officers

Human service workers care for vulnerable client populations across health care, education and criminal justice. These jobs require interpersonal interactions with clients who are often struggling and suffering. These interpersonally challenging jobs hold the potential to elicit feelings of reward and satisfaction but can also be emotionally draining and lead to chronic work stress. While research and intervention for their clients is ongoing, research and intervention to manage the burdens of chronic work stress still requires a great deal of attention. This dissertation studies the feasibility of a pilot stress reduction training developed specifitcally for Juvenile Justice officers working in San Mateo County.

Cultivating Emotional Balance, A Workbook for Transformation, Wisdom Publications
Sample from CEB Book

Why Embark on This Journey?

Because our emotions can make our life feel complicated and sometimes challenging, many of us try to avoid, deny, suppress, and distract from difficult experiences. Or we search for ways of living that we can avoid or get rid of triggers. Unfortunately, even if we can temporarily prevent or suppress our difficult emotions, it is not a long term solution. Sooner or later, we find our emotions breaking through our repression attempts, and we end up misdirecting caustic feelings towards ourselves and others. Repressing is harmful to our body and nervous system, creating stress and blocking our authentic feelings, as evidenced through decades of stress and emotion research. Alternatively, trying to avoid any triggers through crafting a world free from conflict and disappointment is profoundly limiting. It can’t account for the emotions triggered within our minds from thoughts, memories, fantasies, and anticipations of the future.

 

Modern psychological research in neuroscience, physiology, facial expressions, and vocal tones has improved our intellectual understanding of the universal experience of emotion. However, to utilize emotions as a path for cultivating personal and collective well-being we must rely upon a first-person approach for investigating, understanding, and transforming our emotions.  Nobody knows more about our emotions than we do.  As conscious beings we have a privileged access to what we are sensing, thinking and feeling in any given moment.  Even though psychologists may infer the presence of an emotion from our facial expression, vocal tone, or brain activity they cannot tell us why and how we are experiencing this emotion, nor can they control how we choose to relate and respond to our emotion.   In this way we are the experts of emotion and will either experience emotions as obstacles or precise indicators of  a meaningful life and deep-seated well being. To harness the full power of our expertise, it is necessary to blend contemporary scientific methods with the time tested scientific approach of self-inquiry through contemplative practice.  With contemplative practice, we gain access to tools for studying our emotions from the inside out. We become scientists of our experience; running experiments, closely observing emotions, and garnering transformative insights . It is this unique blending of wisdom traditions that characterizes the origin and application of Cultivating Emotional Balance, or CEB.