Dr Dosti Regmi Blog

  @Pictures in the corridor, LeBonheur Children's Hospital radiology department, where I work.  

   Psychology Bites 1. You cannot think your way out of anxiety. Overthinking is often a maladaptive attempt to solve anxiety. Trying to reason your way out of it is like giving directions while you are drowning. What you need in that moment is not a TED talk—you need a life raft. Anxiety lives in the body: the racing heart, the tight chest, the sinking feeling in the stomach. So pause. Breathe. Move your body. Feel first, think later. 2. You cannot be calm and “zen” all the time. Emotions are part of being human. The goal is not to eliminate anxiety but to manage your relationship with it. Let anxiety sit in the passenger seat if it must—but don’t let it drive the car. 3. Practice thought diffusion. Name your brain. Give it a personality. This playful technique helps create distance from your thoughts. Instead of saying “I am a failure,” you might say, “Anxious Andy is catastrophizing again.” When you name the pattern, you step outside it. You are hearing the thoughts, not ...

  Reflection on the Journey of Mindfulness Mindfulness first appeared to me as something deceptively simple—just paying attention to the breath. Like many beginners, I assumed it was primarily a technique for relaxation or stress reduction. Yet as I spent more time with the practice, I gradually sensed that mindfulness was pointing toward something much deeper. It was not merely an exercise in calming the mind but a quiet inquiry into the nature of experience itself. The journey begins with the most immediate aspect of existence—the body and the breath. Sitting quietly and noticing the breath entering and leaving the body appears almost trivial at first. Yet this simple act slowly reveals a subtle world of sensations: the coolness of inhalation at the nostrils, the warmth of the exhalation, the gentle expansion and contraction of the chest, the steady rhythm that continues whether we pay attention to it or not. By repeatedly returning attention to the breath, the wandering ...

Many people who practice meditation deeply for years—especially within traditions rooted in Gautam Buddha's teaching and the introspective path of Ramana Maharshi —often report similar shifts in understanding. These are not mystical beliefs but experiential realizations that gradually arise from sustained awareness and self-inquiry . Here are seven of the most common and powerful ones. 1. Thoughts Are Not the Self One of the earliest and most liberating realizations is that thoughts are events in the mind, not the essence of who we are . Through meditation, practitioners begin to see thoughts arise and disappear like clouds in the sky. The observer—the awareness behind them—remains unchanged. This insight weakens identification with mental narratives such as “I am a failure” or “I am not enough.” Instead, one begins to recognize that the mind is simply producing stories. Practice tip: When a strong thought arises, silently say: “thinking… thinking.” Watch it pass rat...