Making a U-turn from our thoughts to our feelings re-connects us to our own inner experience and creates the grounds for connecting with others in a more authentic way. It's a movement from head to heart.

I would say both Western psychology and Eastern paths would recognize that we get caught up in feeling like a separate self and an unworthy self.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns.

If you let someone know you appreciate him or her, especially when you're going to disagree, it gets that person's defenses down.

When caught in conflict and blame - make a U-turn and shift your attention from blaming thoughts to what's going on emotionally in your body.

When desire for a certain person's attention becomes an "I have to have" kind of grasping, then identity gets organized around needing that and it becomes very solid and sticky. That causes suffering because we're not inhabiting the fullness of who we are, we're fixated and contracted on life being a certain way.

But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.