Today, on Higher Energy, we are joined by special guest Dr. Fred Luskin, a lecturer at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Senior Consultant in Health Promotion/Wellness at the Stanford University Health Center, and one of the world’s leading researchers and teachers on the subject of forgiveness.
He is the author of the best-selling books, Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness, and Forgive for Love: The Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Happy Relationship. His book Forgive for Good is the best-selling self-help book published on the topic of forgiveness.
Dr. Luskin founded and currently serves as Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects, a series of projects that have validated his forgiveness methods. At Stanford, he teaches classes on Positive Psychology, The Art and Science of Meditation, Forgiveness, Wellness, Flourishing, and The Psychology of Storytelling to undergraduate and graduate students.
He also conducts numerous workshops and staff development trainings in relationship enhancement, stress management, and positive psychology through the Stanford Be Well program, and teaches stress management, emotional intelligence, and happiness skills to corporate clients throughout the United States.
Dr. Luskin’s research has shown that the Forgive for Good forgiveness methodology leads participants suffering from a wide range of concerns to improved physical and mental health. His work focuses on the research-proven triad of a healthy and happy life: Enhancing interpersonal relationships, creating a positive purpose in life, and guided practice in appreciation and other positive emotions.
Dr. Luskin joins us today to explore forgiveness, its profound impact on our health and well-being, and how we can learn to forgive others in order to make peace inside ourselves and live with less stress in our lives. He shares the biggest obstacles that prevent people from being able to forgive and explains that forgiveness is about taking the action to no longer let someone or something have power over our lives, even if we do not desire reconciliation.
Dr. Luskin provides insight on the link between forgiveness and our emotional and physical health, and how an inability to overcome a victim mentality and self-regulate our disruptive emotions can manifest things like chronic stress and chronic pain. He shares how we can learn to develop forgiveness as a skill to heal emotional wounds, and regulate and calm our nervous system through the practice of meditation.
“Forgiveness is a taking of responsibility for our experience. It’s a conscious accepting of suffering without having to make anybody else suffer because we suffered, and then the active decision and practice to let go of the qualities in us that continue to cause that suffering for ourselves and others.” – Dr. Fred Luskin
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness by Dr. Fred Luskin
- Forgive for Love: The Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Lasting Relationship by Dr. Fred Luskin
- Stress-Free for Good: 10 Scientifically Proven Life Skills for Health and Happiness by Dr. Fred Luskin
- Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP)
More about Dr. Luskin:
Dr. Luskin’s forgiveness work has been applied in veteran’s hospitals, churches, in resolving legal disputes, with cancer patients as psychoeducation and in psychotherapy. He has helped people recover from the murder of their family members as a result of political violence in Northern Ireland, as an aftermath of the attacks on 911, in Sierra Leone after their civil war, and in artic Canada where native populations deal with the loss of their ancestral lands.
Dr. Luskin’s work has been made into a PBS pledge drive video called Forgive for Good. He has been interviewed many hundreds of times in worldwide media on forgiveness including the New York Times, O Magazine, Today Show, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Huffington Post, and CBS Morning News.
He is also the author of Stress-Free for Good: Ten Scientifically Proven Life Skills for Health and Happiness which emerged from his 10 years as a researcher in preventive cardiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His work showed the effect of enhancing stress management and positive emotion skills to help patients cope with congestive heart failure and arrhythmia. He also did some consulting work for Stanford Hospital nurses in managing their emotions.
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