LIVING HERO

Interview with Derrick Jensen

“We need to bring down civilization, because it’s killing the planet,” says our guest, author and activist Derrick Jensen.

Formerly a college professor and a commercial beekeeper, Jensen’s prolific career as an author has given us A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Endgame, Listening to the Land, Strangely Like War and Walking on Water. He also co-authored Railroads & Clearcuts and Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control. He has written for The New York Times magazine, The Sun, Audubon, and many other publications.

In 2008 Derrick Jensen was named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.”

We talked about:

Preparation for truth-telling ● Above ground and below ground activism ● The only language destroyers understand ● The essence of Derrick’s philosophy and passion ● Normalizing insane behavior ● Reform or revolution? ● What do we need to do? ● Living in the culture of make-believe ● The relationship between eroticism and violence ● Collapse and the shape of things to come ● Hypocrisy in the environmental movement ● Owning prejudices and shifting alliances ● Do we need to harden our hearts or to open them? ● Discernment, compassion, compliance and fierce love

Visit: derrickjensen.org

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 52 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Click through to buy some of Derrick’s books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.

Warning: this podcast contains explicit language.

jari interviews, culture, politics, self-destructive, environment, values, heroic, expose, power, reality, America, policy, ecology, sustainability, civic engagement, societal health, civilization, radical, activism 2 Comments » | (0 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with John Taylor Gatto

State-run schools don’t educate; they inculcate. They dumb people down! John Taylor Gatto gives us a stunning synopsis of his tireless scholarship and long-term experience as an award-winning guerilla educator in New York City public schools.

John Taylor Gatto resigned from school-teaching in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal, the year he was named New York State Teacher of the Year. Since then, he has traveled three million miles lecturing on why we should abandon and subvert public schools, which deliberately ruin minds and mold lives of obedience to the system. Schools thwart imagination, self-reliance, and individuality and make good, dependent slaves of the industrial-consumer state.

Gatto is author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling; The Underground History of American Education and, most recently, Weapons of Mass Instruction.

We talked about:

The only thing anyone can teach ● The official outlook on human nature ● The chilling Western philosophical movements behind forced schooling ● Compulsory schooling and the University of Berlin ● Sacrificing justice and quality of life for predictable stability ● School, economics, and the social classes ● Overproduction and hyperdemocracy ● Power and the methods of power ● The crime of removing classics from the curricula ● How we will transform ● Superstar entrepreneurs who dropped out of college ● Liberty and the tyranny of measured time

Visit: johntaylorgatto.com

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or you may listen to it right here by clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 51 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Click through to buy John’s book son Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.

jari education, future, human potential, human development, books, global forces, values, freedom, power, reality, America, childhood development, human nature, policy, civic engagement, societal health Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Stella Resnick

Sex and pleasure expert, Stella Resnick, PhD joins us to encourage, inform and delight you! Dr. Resnick is author of The Pleasure Zone: How We Resist Good Feelings and How to Let Go and Be Happy.

She is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Beverly Hills, CA and currently serves on the faculty of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Formerly President of the Western Region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Dr. Resnick is a Diplomate of the American Board of Sexology and an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, CE Provider, and Clinical Supervisor, Stella has appeared many times on TV including the Oprah, Leeza, and Montel Williams shows, CNN Live, The O’Reilly Factor, KCBS’ Morning News, and UPN’s Evening News. Her seminar on The Pleasure Zone is featured in the PBS television series Body & Soul in the segment “Ode to Joy”.

Stella is frequently quoted in popular magazines; such as, Reader’s Digest, Women’s World, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, Self, Redbook, McCall’s, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Family Circle, Parenting, and the Utne Reader. She has written numerous professional papers, and authored cover stories for Self, New Age, and Psychology Today magazines.

We talked about:

Demonizing pleasure in a history of domination ● Fear of peace, fulfillment and pleasure programmed in our nervous systems ● The 8 Core Pleasures and how we resist them ● Pleasure and the stages of human and societal development ● Infant needs and our tenacious early experiences ● Societal health and childhood sexuality ● How we learn to be human ● Two kinds of discipline and your pleasure ● Relearning how to be sexual ● Of what is sexuality an expression? ● Bridging the gap between heart and libido in adult partnerships ● A role for conscious breathing in your life

Visit: drstellaresnick.com

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 52 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Click through to buy Stella’s book on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.

jari psychology, holistic health, interviews, human potential, human development, feminine values, stress, parenting, love, fear, relaxation, feeling, freedom, health, sex, fitness, childhood development, early childhood, libido, pleasure, societal health, childhood sexuality, conscious breathing Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Jonah Lehrer

Listen in on an illuminating conversation with science writer and author Jonah Lehrer as he shares insights on the work of eight historic creative geniuses and how contemporary neuroscience can lead us to more conscious and fulfilling lives. Lehrer is author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide and a frequent contributor to national magazines featuring his articles on what we’re learning about the brain and how our minds work. He also hosts the highly regarded blog The Frontal Cortex.

We talked about:

Insight, intuition and introspection: roads to discovery ● Self Comes to Mind: collaborative work among artists and scientists ● Some common ground among cutting-edge creative artists ● Truth in fiction ● Metacognition and its pay-offs ● Getting better at the marshmallow task ● Making better decisions ● Asking the right questions of contemporary neuroscience ● The right side of our kindergarten report card ● Torturous moral dilemmas ● How to kill a rat with pleasure ● Some of Jonah’s goals as an author

Visit: jonahlehrer.com and The Frontal Cortex

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 45 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

Click through to buy Jonah’s books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.

jari creative arts, interviews, insight, education, human potential, synthesis, creativity, memory, creative, mind, mind-body, addiction, innovation, reality, childhood development, neurobiology, neuroscience, science, moral dilemmas, introspection Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Caroll Michels

We are honored to welcome back artist advocate, coach and author Caroll Michels! Her classic handbook How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist: Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul, has just been released in its 6th edition by Henry Holt & Co.

We talked about:

What is new in the world of art marketing? ● Social networking sites ● Secret code pages on your site ● Print-on-demand ● Have things really changed in the art world? ● What are the odds of acceptance? ● Artists and authority ● Caroll’s dance immersion ● Multidisciplinary artists ● Professional fine art as a business ● The current leverage points for advocacy ● Picasso’s confession (which scholars revealed was not by Picasso) ● what is possible for the creative spirit ●

Visit: carollmichels.com and artisthelpnetwork.com

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 38 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

Click through to buy the new edition of Caroll’s book on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left. It’s an informative and empowering read, as well as an invaluable ongoing reference book.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [38:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Embeddable Player

jari creative arts, interviews, education, future, human potential, culture, books, creativity, creative, global forces, values, art, coaching, composition, vision, business, ecology, environment Comments (0) » | (0 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

1
May
2009

Interview with Jim Merkel

Radical Simplicity! The Living Hero program presents an interview with author, educator, and activist Jim Merkel.

Jim began as a military engineer. Just after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, Jim quit his job and took immediate personal responsibility for his own part in global problems. This meant taking radical actions to scale back consumption and deeply reconsider life in all its dimensions. He subsequently authored Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth. Merkel received an Earthwatch Gaia Fellowship to research sustainable living in Kerala, India and in regions of the Himalayas.

He founded the Global Living Project and was hired by Dartmouth College to serve as its first Sustainability Director.

Jim lives the life of radical simplicity—cycling hundreds of miles to give lectures and workshops at colleges , universities, and community centers. He is a homesteader, growing and preserving his own food, and living on about $5,000 a year. Jim has given hundreds of hours of his time as a volunteer to share his wealth of knowledge on the new good life of sustainable living.

We talked about:

• the present pulse of the sustainability movement • the real root of simplicity • engaging the heart • Jim’s childhood and influences • the real challenge of society: the common good • how radical simplicity crosses party lines • Jim’s revolutionary shift after Exxon-Valdez • what it means to exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth • what is an ecological footprint • Jim’s view of the economic crisis • living on $5000 a year in America • the roots of violence and fear • population control, women, and wisdom • falling in love with the Earth

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is around 50 minutes)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari interviews, education, human potential, feminine values, culture, wisdom, meaning, love, feeling, economy, values, money, freedom, reality, Native American, America, ecology, population, sustainability, environment Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Allan Luks

The healing power of doing good! The Living Hero program is honored to present an interview with author, lawyer, non-profit executive and altruistic leader, Allan Luks.

Allan’s steadfast commitment to improving the lives of disadvantaged youth in New York City, and his extraordinary contributions to the success of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of NYC, established the agency as one of the country’s most prominent mentoring organizations. Mr. Luks has received numerous awards, including Crain’s New York Business magazine’s “Public Service Leader of the Year,” and the national Lewis Hine award.

Allan Luks has developed programs to meet the special needs of NYC youth, including those affected by 9/11, teen mothers, youth with disabilities, and youth with siblings and/or parents in prison. He has successfully lobbied the New York State Legislature to pass “The Safe Mentoring Act.” Allan also created the BBBS Center for Training and Professional Development, in partnership with Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service, to bring the successful BBBS of NYC model to other city mentoring agencies.

Mr. Luks authored The Healing Power of Doing Good, which outlines the emotional health benefits derived by volunteers. He coined the term helper’s high,” used everywhere now in popular literature on volunteering. Allan continues to serve as a senior adviser to BBBS.

We talked about:

• alcohol and drug abuse and the necessary 12th step in AA • wherein lies Doing Good’s power to heal? • helping and its effects on stress • what is the underlying tension in the human, which needs relaxation? • the real challenge of society: the common good • finding the right kind of helping for you • the basic truth underlying our lives • the best ways to encourage helping • the creative process and getting your work done • the conception of Since I Became a Terrorist Target • what’s next?

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is 40 minutes)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari interviews, education, future, human potential, culture, creativity, stress, love, mind-body, tension, relaxation, addiction, economy, global forces, values, empathy, solidarity, power, health, America, human nature, volunteering, altruism Comments (0) » | (0 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Dr. Lauri Grossman

Integrative medicine as a creative force! The Living Hero program is delighted to present an interview with holistic health advocate, homeopathic practitioner, and healer, Dr. Lauri Grossman. Originally trained as a chiropractor, Dr. Grossman is an expert in integrative health care, specializing in homeopathic medicine.

She is a graduate of Cornell University, the New England School of Homeopathy and the prestigious Hahnemann College of Homeopathy in Berkeley, California, and is well-known and respected as a practitioner and educator. She has taught at Sloan Kettering-Memorial Hospital, the Hospital for Special Surgery and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and at New York Medical College.

Lauri Grossman developed the curriculum in homeopathy and has taught in the holistic departments of the graduate schools at New York University, the College of New Rochelle and the New York Chiropractic College.

She will serve as Chair of the Department of Medicine and Humanistic Studies at the American Medical College of Homeopathy, expected to open in Arizona in 2009.

Her film, Natures, produced with the assistance of the National Geographic Film Archives, highlights the philosophy of homeopathy and its connection with the order found in nature.

Visit her website at homeopathycafe.com for more information.

We talked about:

• Lauri’s life-defining emergency introduction to homeopathy • how homeopathy differs from other natural therapies • how a homeopath takes a case, makes a diagnosis and treats illness • how homeopathy heals • the scientific method and energy medicine • the politics and history of homeopathy in America • homeopathy on the rise • the disorders for which homeopathy is most effective • homeopathy, creativity and sensitivity

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is 54 minutes)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari holistic health, interviews, future, wisdom, creativity, body, mind-body, values, health, America, homeopathy, integrative health care 2 Comments » | (2 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Carolyn Raffensperger

The Living Hero Podcast proudly presents an interview with environmental lawyer and public health advocate, Carolyn Raffensperger. Carolyn is executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, where she has worked since 1994.

In 1982, Ms. Raffensperger left a career as an archaeologist in the desert Southwest to join the environmental movement. She first worked for the Sierra Club where she addressed an array of environmental issues, including forest management, river protection, pesticide pollutants, and the disposal of radioactive waste. As an environmental lawyer she specializes in the fundamental changes in law and policy necessary for the protection and restoration of public health and the environment.

We talked about:

• faulty assumptions underlying environmental decision making • the precautionary principle–what is it? • a new report on health, aging and the environment • reversing the burden of proof on the safety of industrial chemicals • corporate structure and your inalienable right to a clean and healthy environment • changing laws: rights of future generations and the commonwealth • reform: the biggest obstacles and the greatest opportunities • the essential nature of the arts and how they function in the process of change • genetically altered seeds, the sex of plants, and the farmer-scientist breeding project • “turning the Titanic,” ecological medicine and the economics of aging

Carolyn is co-editor of Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy published by M.I.T. Press (2006) and Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle, published by Island Press (1999). Together, these volumes provide the most comprehensive exploration to date of the history, theory, and implementation of the precautionary principle.

Carolyn Raffensperger is responsible for coining the term “ecological medicine” to encompass the broad notions that both health and healing are entwined with the natural world. She has served on editorial review boards for several environmental and sustainable agriculture journals, and on USEPA and National Research Council committees. Her bimonthly column for the Environmental Law Institute’s journal Environmental Forum appeared from 1999 until 2008.

Our guest has also been featured in Gourmet magazine, the Utne Reader, Yes! Magazine, the Sun, Whole Earth, and Scientific American. Along with leading workshops and lecturing frequently on the Precautionary Principle, Carolyn is at the forefront of developing new models of government, which will depend on precaution and ecological integrity, and guardianship for future generations.

For more information, visit the websites of The Science and Environmental Health Network and of Guardians of the Future .

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is 45 minutes)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari interviews, future, creativity, stress, environment, economy, art, vision, power, health, sex, government, policy, aging, ecology, science Comments (0) » | (0 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Riane Eisler

The Living Hero show is honored to present an interview with author, speaker and thought leader, Riane Eisler. She is recognized as one of the most original minds of our time, and has been included among the world’s 20 great thinkers and peacemakers. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies and is best known for her international bestseller The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. Riane holds degrees in sociology and law from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and has done pioneering and transformative work in the fields of human rights and relations, history, sociology, economics, psychology, and education. She is the author of over 200 essays and articles and five books.

We talked about:

• The redistribution and redefinition of power • What is the real wealth of nations? • Political ironies and transformation • Playing economics with a full deck • The psychological underpinnings of domination and control • Gender relations and notions of male and female power • Is human nature fundamentally flawed? • Riane’s own path of transformation • The neurochemistry of pain and pleasure • Creativity as a force for leadership and change

Visit Riane Eisler’s websites at www.rianeeisler.com and The Center for Partnership Studies (partnershipway.org)

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is 50 minutes)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari psychology, language, interviews, education, future, human potential, feminine values, culture, philosophy, politics, books, creativity, parenting, love, economy, global forces, values, power, sex, reality, early childhood, neuroscience, wealth, human nature Comments (0) » | (0 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Dr. Richard Davidson

The Living Hero program presents an interview with celebrated neuroscientist, Dr. Richard Davidson. Dr. Davidson is a William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He directs the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior where he conducts research on the short- and long-term effects of meditation practices on human emotion and the circuitry of the brain.

He holds a doctorate from Harvard University and has published more than 250 articles, chapters and reviews. The founding co-editor of the new American Psychological Association journal, EMOTION and he has also edited 13 books.

One of Dr. Davidson’s most valuable findings is that happiness and compassion are trainable skills that can be developed, just as we can learn to play a musical instrument; that it is possible to train a mind to be happy and peaceful.

We talked about:

• What prompted Dr. Davidson’s career path • Meditation as a path of transformation • The different forms of meditation • How meditation changes the brain • Meditation in health and in education • Long-term effects of meditation on brain function and gene expression • Meditation and Christianity • How to learn more about Dr. Davidson’s work

Numerous honors and awards of distinction have come to Dr. Davidson, including the most distinguished award for science given by the American Psychological Association – the Scientific Contribution Award. He has also received the Research Scientist Award and the MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH); and many other honors recognizing his groundbreaking contributions.

In 2003, Dr. Davidson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2004, to the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. In 2006, he was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine.

Davidson maintains a close, collaborative relationship with Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, the world’s best-known practitioner of Buddhist meditation. The Dalai Lama first invited Davidson to his home in Dharamsala, India, in 1992 after learning about Davidson’s innovative research into the neuroscience of emotions. Dr. Davidson has had the opportunity to study the brains of many of the world’s most advanced meditation practitioners.

Visit these websites for more information:

Waisman Lab website

U of Wisconsin Psychology Department website

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 25 minutes)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari psychology, holistic health, consciousness, interviews, insight, meditation, human potential, wisdom, stress, mind, mind-body, feeling, mental health, empathy, health, peace, neurobiology, neuroscience 4 Comments » | (2 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Dr. Scott Baum

The Living Hero podcast welcomes our distinguished guest, clinical psychologist and bioenergetic analyst, Scott Baum, Ph.D.

Dr. Baum is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology. He is also a certified Bioenergetic Therapist, and a member of the Faculty of The International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis. He has been affiliated with the DiMele Center for Psychotherapy since 1994.

Scott Baum views psychotherapy as an experiential, problem solving process. He believes that the deepest, fullest, and most complex understanding of a person’s problem yields the best, most creative and enduring results.

We talked about:

• The premise that underlies bioenergetic analysis • A more refined view of stress • How human beings are biologically organized • What goes on in a bioenergetic session • Males, fathers, patriarchal society, power and the unknown • The disparity between mothers and fathers • Why men don’t ask for directions • Healthy narcissism, narcissistic disorders and the true self • A dividing line among therapists • What’s possible with therapy • How to learn more about Bioenergetics.

Visit the website for the New York Society for Bioenergetic Analysis

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about an hour)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari psychology, interviews, maturity, human potential, human development, culture, wisdom, narcissism, stress, meaning, parenting, love, mind, body, mind-body, feeling, mental health, values, self-esteem, power, health, reality, psychotherapy Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Dr. Marcy Axness

The Living Hero show is very proud to present an interview with Marcy Axness, Ph.D.

Dr. Axness is an early development specialist who writes and speaks internationally on parenting, society, and the needs of children. She is an authority in such wide-ranging fields as neurobiology (brain development), prenatal and developmental psychology, attachment theory, and consciousness research. Marcy’s particular specialization is in very early development–beginning even before conception–and she is one of the world’s few experts in prenatal / neonatal issues in adoption. She is a professor at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute and has a private practice in Los Angeles, counseling parents and prospective parents.

We talked about:

• Raising generation PAX • Quantum parenting • The fundamental question every human is always asking • The peace-creativity connection • P-A-R-E-N-T-S, Marcy’s parenting To-Dos • The surprising single strongest predictor of a child’s healthy attachment • The dominant reality engine of our time • How to behaviorally reduce ADD and ADHD • What drives the viscious human cycle • Tapping into the unseen dimensions of experience

Visit Marcy’s website at http://www.quantumparenting.com

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time!

You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about an hour.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari psychology, consciousness, interviews, education, future, maturity, human potential, human development, feminine values, wisdom, parenting, love, mind-body, mental health, values, empathy, vision, health, America, childhood development, perinatal development, prenatal development, early childhood, peace, neurobiology Comments (0) » | (0 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Scott Parsons

At an old-fashioned soda-pop style lunch counter in Bowman, North Dakota, I met Scott Parsons. He was eating pie in black, white and pink spandex with a smattering of corporate logos across his chest. After he had learned that his friend’s daughter Mikyla had been diagnosed with Rett syndrome, Scott quit his job as Western VP of Sales with Georgia Pacific to ride his bicycle from San Francisco to Boston to help raise money to fund medical research for Rett Syndrome.

Our conversation covers:

• Scott’s motivations to ride • Information on Rett syndrome and the hope of a cure • Highlights of the great American landscape • Impressions of the American people • The goals for the ride and beyond

Learn more about Scott, his trip, and the cause for which he’s riding at Mikyla-Cure.org

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 25 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari interviews, future, human potential, culture, financial reward, creativity, meaning, body, environment, values, empathy, heroic, enthusiasm, money, solitude, solidarity, vision, freedom, Native American, America, fitness 1 Comment » | (0 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Morris Berman

With great pleasure the Living Hero program presents an interview with author and cultural historian, Morris Berman, Ph.D.

Our interview includes conversation about: ● What motivated Berman’s writing of the trilogy on human consciousness ● The mind-body split and the creative process ● The decline of America ● The dialectical principle in our lives ● A new monastic individual and the masses ● Progress, consciousness, and power ● What societies of hunter-gatherers and nomads had that we don’t have ● Berman’s sociological perspectives and suggestions ● Problems of “progress” and power ● American social conditions prompting Berman’s move to Mexico

Dr. Berman is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000). In 2000, his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. During 2003-6 he was Visiting Professor in Sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and has held endowed chairs at several other American and Canadian universities. Dr. Berman relocated to Mexico in 2006, and in 2008 was appointed Visiting Professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City. His most recent book is Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire. He maintains an interesting blog with related resources at morrisberman.com where you will also find his complete bio.

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 57 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari psychology, consciousness, interviews, future, human potential, wisdom, philosophy, politics, books, mind-body, global forces, mental health, values, vision, power, reality 5 Comments » | (5 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Silenced by Planet Earth: Sex, Surrender, Death and the L-Word

Sometimes the mind and tongue go quiet for a stretch, precipitated by an event or experience, or just because.

This time, for me, it was the BBC video series entitled Planet Earth, a monumental piece of work that brings us, as never before, into the wilderness areas of our planet, as they remain at this time.

Watching this series daily has left me quite speechless; and therefore, I have been inactive in my blogging or reaching out to people by phone.

I am poignantly aware that the very technological advancements required to visually record the Earth’s wild creatures in the far reaches of their habitats, such that they are not disturbed in the course of their natural activities, rode in on the trajectory of industrialization, which also gave us toxic pollution, mass extinctions, shrinking habitats, global warming and all the other threats human beings have posed in pursuit of information, understanding, and ostensibly, reality.

So, if it was necessary for worldwide human consciousness to behold this planet and realize our place in the family of living things, then we have hereby accomplished this. Done deal! Time to celebrate and to retreat! And, on the way, let us make amends to the native peoples we considered primitive, who had figured all this out already before we decimated them.

Pythagoras, who was born in 507 BC, is credited for coining the word philosophy (love of wisdom). To him, a “philosopher” was someone who “gives himself up to discovering the meaning and purpose of life itself . . . to uncover the secrets of nature.”

But, now we must go beyond this original definition of philosophy to find wisdom, to give ourselves up to something else entirely: to the recognition that our notions about discovering the meaning and purpose of life, or uncovering the secrets of nature, have been misguided ones.

We have seen the ends of the Earth now–mission accomplished–so, the question is: will we, the people, be willing to act with the wisdom actually called for in our time–to shift our systems and morph our power structures? Can we stop advancing and relinquish our strangling power over the land and its marvelous creatures, and instead withdraw, back down, give way, surrender to our hard-won larger view of life?

Do we have the larger smarts to put to rest all our fascinating illusions and fantasies of figuring things out through the human mind, our inventions and our instruments?

In the bookstore the other day, I stood before the shelves marked Western Philosophy and noticed how dominated those book spines are with male names. Nice try guys, thank you very much. But let’s have some feminine wisdom to guide our species now.

What if there is no meaning and purpose to life except to live it in a state of poise and grace? Maybe it’s kind of jerky and pathetic to keep believing that we will ever comprehend the hows, whys, and wherefores of the universe. It’s like an abused and jilted lover who just keeps calling and coming back for another kick in the head, or a neglected child who just cannot accept his parents’ indifference, trying in vain to get their attention, only to be hurt and dismayed again and again. There are instances where hope springing eternal is just stupid. The universe will never be ours. It’s not available for that. Can’t we get over it?! Why don’t we give up on nailing the universe and find fulfillment in the here and now with the aspects of life that are wholesome, available and satisfying?

I am suggesting that we set aside our childish things, to enter and consider lives of love (there’s that L-Word), craft, community and intimacy, rather than ideas and puffed-up, jacked-up enterprises built on myths, misgivings, and false understandings.

The whole scientific enterprise has surely brought focused and precise attention to unsolvable mysteries; such as, Pi, The Golden Ratio, fractals, the intricacies of body functions and sense-organs in living things; but we don’t, and never will, understand them or know why there is life here on Earth. All our efforts will only bring us deeper into the shapeshifting mysteries of life and death. We would do better to concern ourselves with conscience than with science.

Yesterday’s NY Times article on the latest extremely expensive scientific roundabout.

Rather than penetrate these mysteries, it would help us immensely to really understand something: that it is for us to embrace, love, protect and revere them, not to parse, categorize, compartmentalize and use them. Let us retreat from dissecting and theorizing about them, not with a sense of failure, but with a sense of maturation.

Do we really need more science? Do we need more technology? Consider that the answer is: no, we don’t. What we do need is greater mental and physical health, greater wisdom and intimacy. And we wouldn’t need a fraction of the hospitals, prisons, techno-medicine and machinery, if we were living healthier, more loving lives to begin with.

The healthiest and wisest people are psychologically strong enough to soften and be tender, to expose their vulnerability, to let down, give way, express their fears, longings, idiosyncracies . . . and to share themselves with another person, one whom they admire on many levels, to share the experience of spiritual and physical energetic surrender in the act of sexual love.

How are we doing with that? Do we have healthy sex lives? Have we lives with time for stillness, slowness, sustained attention, quiet, peace and pleasure? Or are we continually fooled, like a fish, by the next glittering thing out there–the next thought, idea, prospect, product, structure, icon, expert, or procedure?

Do we celebrate our world and the gift of life with simple gestures, recognizing the things that truly bring peace and pleasure; such as real care and affection, acting in all conscience and virtue?

As creative beings, have we cultivated our creative gifts? Do we know how to let down and enter a passive-receptive state that fosters imaginative power through wholesome means?

The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes the rituals and practices of a people dedicated to wisdom and peace. So much of their attention is focused on preparation for death, on having the spiritual fortitude to die in peace.

Sooner or later we all have to surrender to life, to mystery, to that which we don’t understand. Some will do so with grace, peace, and dignity, others will not.

If we truly want disarmament and ecological restoration in our world; if we are willing to take the path of health and sanity, we must learn the art, honor and pleasure of surrender, of laying down and relinquishing our misguided pursuits, our divisive attitudes and ideas, and our physical and mental tensions.

We also want to put aside our cynicism, which has arisen from the consistent thwarting of our breathless pursuit of impossibilities and illusions: dominating, classifying, and understanding nature, the psyche, or the universe. Instead let’s consider sentiment, love, and brotherhood not the naïve, embarrassing, and obsolete concepts we taint with our cynicism, but the very center of a salt-of-the-Earth, reality-based life that brings about health, contentment and satisfaction.

jari holistic health, maturity, wisdom, philosophy, meaning, conscience, love, tension, feeling, environment, mental health, values, power, health, sex, reality 1 Comment » | (3 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

An Interview with John Green: Imagine Driving an Ecofueler

Living Hero is pleased to present an interview with entrepreneur and inventor, John Green, who is domestically manufacturing an alternative vehicle, The Ecofueler, which runs at high speeds and extremely low emissions on compressed natural gas.

The interview includes conversation about: The Ecofueler’s economic, design and safety features ● The business history of the Ecofueler ● The mind of a perennially successful and indefatigable entrepreneur ● How to make any business work ● The power of positive thinking in ventures ● John’s goals for the Ecofueler ● The Ecofueler’s progressive business model ● Politics of the gasoline economy ●

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 45 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

Eco-fueler.net

Eco-fueler.com

Ecofueler.net

jari interviews, future, culture, wisdom, politics, environment, economy, global forces, values, power, business, innovation, invention 1 Comment » | (2 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Freedom or Power, What’s Your Will?

In our movement toward wholeness and maturity, perhaps the most fundamental challenge—and our goal—is the acceptance and embrace of our freedom. To live as sovereign individuals, so that our highest authority is our own sense of what is right, and knowing that we hold the wisdom to assess for ourselves the particulars of a situation, means that we fully trust ourselves and are willing to stand alone, if and when necessary.

Since creative people are so often ahead of their time, we must really know, as an experience deep in our bodies, that our assessments of relationships are right; and this deep, inner knowledge gives us the courage to be harbingers of what may one day also be discovered by the masses. Galileo knew he was right; Blake knew; Einstein knew; Walt Whitman . . . the great ones knew.

This type of innate knowledge comes through the experiences of intuition, inspiration, epiphany, and insight. These are spiritual experiences: understanding moves through you energetically, so that you see something and feel the rightness of it at the same time. This spirituality is fresh and personal; it exists apart from any particular theology or ideology.

Sadly, living without a personal spiritual connection to life and the freedom it supports is the grim lot of most people. Lives lacking a genuine, experiential spiritual foundation tend to oscillate between controlling others and being controlled. Without the spiritual ground of experience which is the very will of freedom, the prospect of freedom is just too much for people, and power is the woeful tether by which they aim to feel secure.

Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom explores the widespread aversion to freedom and persuades us that sadomasochistic tendencies underpin it. “It is always the inability to stand the aloneness of one’s individual self that leads to the drive to enter into a symbiotic relationship with someone else. It is evident from this why masochistic and sadistic trends are always blended with each other. Although on the surface they seem contradictions, they are essentially rooted in the same basic need. People are not sadistic or masochistic, but there is a constant oscillation between the active and the passive side of the symbiotic complex, so that it is often difficult to determine which side of it is operating at a given moment. In both cases individuality and freedom are lost.”

Later in his book, Fromm relates that these destructive tendencies to escape from freedom result from the thwarting of the individual’s sensuous, emotional, and intellectual expansiveness in childhood. These perversions are the torque our spirits take from the suppression of our exuberance, curiosity, and creative will in childhood and, which can continue all our lives. By continuing to suppress our natural tendencies to explore, move and stretch our bodies, imagine, try things out and invent, we perpetuate our pain and give rise to yet another generation of frustrated human beings stuck on a see-saw of power relations.

Here’s the remedy: reactivation of our creative and expressive pleasures goes straight to the root of perversions of spirit that we witness in our lives and our societies. Encouraging our children and each other to spend more time puttering and tinkering with things out of curiosity, creativity, and imaginative play, fostering our spiritual connection to life through observation, meditation, and the many means that help us to do this, and providing ourselves with the conditions for the experience of intuition, inspiration, epiphany and insight will all feed the hope of a new humanity that has the courage for real freedom.

jari psychology, insight, future, maturity, human potential, human development, culture, wisdom, philosophy, holistic, creativity, feeling, values, vision, freedom, power 5 Comments » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Solitude and Solidarity: To Be Whole and Healthy, We Need ‘Em Both

To live your life as a creative artist, everything you do and experience is invested into vision, meaning and insight; and in this, there cannot be a separation between self, work and life.

Successful creation is a distillation of many hours of time alone just sponging things in and then processing them with the light of solitude on. Solitude, a word that comes from the Latin “solus,” is akin to the Greek word “holos,” signifying whole, entire. An artist comes to wholeness in and through solitude.

You’d be hard pressed to find an artist who isn’t poignantly aware of her existential aloneness, and yet, like anyone else, she lives in relationship. However, often, instead of social relationships, she relies upon deep, abiding relationships with the ineffable intimations of her gift. There’s a sense of partnership with the unseen–the muse, the unconscious, the universe–to get her work done.

And so the artist working in solitude is not really “alone.” She is having intense affairs with aspects of the self and with the numinous. Henry James once told the journalist Morton Fullerton that the “essential loneliness” of his life constituted his “deepest” aspect.

The quality of relationship with one’s own inner dynamics, which are nurtured in solitude, provide the conditions for creation. The feeling arises, when you are creating, that you are doing what you are meant to do and it is sustained by the experience of being touched by something larger– a communion experience that one simply cannot explain, but instead must honor and serve.

But there is a big difference between solitude and isolation. To balance long stretches of unbroken solitude, an artist, especially a developing one, needs like-minded others, people who understand the passion and process of a creative person and who support him in his efforts, who welcome him when he finally does come out from behind the closed door. It helps to have a peer group or, at the very least, one trusted fellow artist with whom to share both the work and one’s life.

Solidarity means unity among people, a shared sense of purpose and understanding of what matters–values, feelings, sensitivities about things, qualities of life. Solidarity is every bit as crucial to the health, balance and survival of the artist as is solitude.

Some artists must or perhaps choose to find their solidarity without real-time contact with peer artists, but instead, through the works of more distant artists. In the words of painter and art teacher Robert Henri, “If the artist is alive in you, you may meet Greco nearer than many people, also Plato, Shakespeare, the Greeks. In certain books–some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.”

T.S. Eliot states something similar about our solidarity: “A common inheritance and a common cause unite artists consciously or unconsciously: it must be admitted that the union is mostly unconscious. Between the true artists of any time there is, I believe, an unconscious community.”

I wonder, are these qualities, which are so obviously critical to the life of the artist, not important to the health, balance, development and well-being of everyone? What do you think?

I have been traveling alone since the end of March, and also living among artists with long days of solitude in my studio and cherished connections at shared meals and walks through the Illinois prairie. I have now relocated temporarily to Austin, TX and I have been exposed to a great deal of art and culture along the way!

Since that last week of March I have seen: The Homer and Hopper exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago; Laurie Anderson speak at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The collections and current shows at The Milwaukee Art Museum; The current shows at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; The Kohler factory tour; Columbia College Book & Paper Arts facilities and the M.F.A. show there; A lecture by G. Edward Griffin at the University of Texas; The On the Road show at the Harry Ranson Humanities Research Center in Austin; I was also invited to spend an overnight as an all-expenses-paid guest at one of the exclusive private Kohler clubs.

Ask me about any of these–I have many notes and an abundance of memories! And I am look forward to hearing from you!

jari psychology, creative arts, integrate, culture, holistic, creativity, values, art, solitude, solidarity, vision 1 Comment » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Maria Nemeth: Seeing Life as a Hero’s Journey

It is my distinct pleasure and honor to present a conversation with author, coach, entrepreneur, speaker and process designer Maria Nemeth, Ph.D., MCC.

Maria is a heroic personality whose work actually centers around teaching and encouraging people to become heroes to themselves.

Our interview includes conversation about: ● The transcendent power of an open heart ● The story behind The Energy of Money ● Shifting your relationship with money ● Maria on Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett ● The distinction between physical and metaphysical reality ● The three most powerful words you can utter● Maria’s journey as a breast cancer survivor ●Taking your body to a couples counselor● The peduncle we’re in

Maria is a clinical psychologist with more than twenty-eight years’ experience, a former clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine, and a former columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal.

She is the founder of the Academy for Coaching Excellence where she trains other coaches in her program Mastering Life’s Energies, a personal and professional development seminar that supports people in shifting their relationship with money from scarcity to abundance. Her widely acclaimed work has recently been brought to the attention of a broader audience through an appearance on the Oprah Show.

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 45 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

jari psychology, interviews, future, human potential, wisdom, books, creativity, meaning, mental health, values, coaching, self-esteem, heroic, money 1 Comment » | (2 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Out of Chaos: Composition in Tranquility

I am writing to you from The Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, a lovely northern suburb of Chicago. Ragdale is an artist residency program that grants support to working artists by providing work/live space and meals (the chef is great here!) so they can concentrate on creating new work.

Immersing myself again in the making of visual art has been healing, surprising, and nourishing. I’m here for a month with other visual artists, fiction writers, and poets. Many of those here since I got here on March 27th will be leaving on Wednesday, opening the space for another group of ten whom I’ll meet, since I will stay on until April 23rd. I’ve met Anne LeClaire, Debra Darvick, Lucy Ferriss, Larry Thomas, Johnny Horton, Anita Garza, Katie Rodrigues, Rone Shivers, Lori Kagan and Amy Walsh. . . I am honored to be in this fine company.

Places like Ragdale acknowledge the need for free time and space to simply BE, to allow oneself to enter a passive-receptive state, a state of quiet engagement and inquiry, which provides the prime conditions for insight, intuitive leaps, and breakthroughs in composition.

You know, all artists are composers: it’s all about composition.

The artist combines and arranges elements to produce a harmonious whole through non-analytical means; a piece of work that has a formal coherence is born of synthesis (as opposed to analysis), which includes both conscious and unconscious layers of experience and that reconciles, in a fresh and new way, the multivalent human experience. This happens through the artist’s own visceral and emotional powers of deduction, which are cultivated with practice, enabling something ordered and fixed to be born from the most general, encompassing and ineffable aspects of existence.

Whereas philosophers and scientists seek to encapsulate themes of the human universe and experience through mathematical equations and contextual theories; artists do so through their compositions. In any case, the construct is meant to stand in, reductively, for that which is overwhelming and mysterious, yet ever-present.

Composition provides a resting place for the viewer or listener, a place of contemplation, recollection, absorption. It can do so because it represents and displays a synthesis of the artist’s own many hours of reflection, self-confrontation, and composure.

Works of art thereby become highly fertile common ground for fresh perspectives and cultural progress, not as objects in and of themselves, but as catalysts for insight and understanding: the artwork is where the strange seeds of consciousness, of both artist and audience, meet and take root. This is perhaps why dictators and tyrants seek to either squelch or use the artists.

But in the complicit tyranny of our society, people have allowed themselves to become so busy and distracted that so much of art goes unperceived and thereby rendered impotent and inconsequential. Because even the greatest music, art, books, and dances are nothing if no one is sensitively and receptively listening, watching, reading, and engaging with them. Artist and audience are of equal importance to the enterprise of realizing art. It is vital to take the time to compose yourself and reflect on what is real, true, and beautiful in life; it’s crucial to civilization and human care.

jari consciousness, insight, human potential, culture, synthesis, creativity, creative, mind-body, values, art, composition 2 Comments » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Are We In a Crisis of Faith?

The celebrated psychiatrist and author, Alexander Lowen, says that “the loss of faith is the key problem of modern man.” Are we in a crisis of faith? If we are, what are we supposed to do about it?

The astonishing scientific discoveries of the late 19th and 20th centuries have repeatedly shattered the ideological and theological constructs that guided human life for centuries. There’s no solid world out there anymore, no objective world; we now know the world only as we engage it; and so, as a people, we are unsure of ourselves and cynical about trusting or accurately evaluating anything.

In this sense, faith is an absolutely essential part of the life of an artist, a creative person, if his or her work is to successfully address the needs of our culture. But what kind of faith are we talking about here?

Notice the network of relationships among the words etymologically related to faith (from the Latin fides): fidelity, fealty, fiancé, fiduciary, confidant, confidence, defiant, diffidence, infidel, infidelity, perfidy, Fido.

A consideration of these words reveals that the issue of faith is one of trust; and trust is essentially tied to truth. You will trust an idea, a mode of being, an activity, a person, or life itself, if you trust its underlying reality and believe it to be true.

So, what is true for you? And how do you know it to be true?

If we are upset, bored, depressed or self-destructive, it is perhaps because we don’t know where to begin with ourselves, what to do. You can discover what to do by knowing what is sacred to you. So, the first move is to allow for more enthusiasm in our lives (from the Greek “en theus,” infused by God). Through genuine enthusiasm we find ourselves reeentering a state of grace, and of faith. In that state we don’t have to question what and who is sacred to us.

Now is the time to place greater trust in the truth of your own enthusiasm and to follow it with greater faith. You must keep faith with yourself now, to do what you feel enthusiastic about: what you set out to do in those finest hours when you know the energy in your mind and body is right. Have faith in the creative process and in the life force that pulses in you. Nurture it and draw upon it continuously.

jari psychology, maturity, culture, wisdom, creativity, meaning, self-destructive, values, enthusiasm Comments (0) » | (2 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Caroll Michels: Survive and Prosper as an Artist

With great pleasure and enthusiasm I bring you this interview with Caroll Michels, artist advocate, coach and author of How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist: Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul, now in its 5th edition.

The interview includes conversation about: Artist and art dealer relationships ● The self-esteem of artists ● Artists and ADD ● Art schools and career advice ● Caroll’s history as an artist ● The heroic nature of saying no ● Coaching and therapy ● Donations and taxes ● Fallacies of the art world

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 38 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

Click through to buy Caroll’s book on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left. It’s an empowering read and invaluable reference book.

jari creative arts, interviews, culture, books, creative, values, art, coaching, self-esteem, heroic, expose Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Hear No, See No, Speak No—What?

The question, where is your money invested? is experienced by many as a violation, a pointed finger jabbing at them. Well, this gets our backs up precisely because this is where we have compromised our hearts, where we really don’t want to look and listen, where the worm of hypocrisy squirms. It’s what we really don’t want to feel, talk about, and possibly be moved to address. Why?

Because it is still, generally speaking, more financially profitable (higher returns, less risk) in the short term to put money into the coffers of established companies and profiteers, engaged as they may be in disregard of land, people, health and wisdom, and every creature of the Earth.

And so we think we have our money working for us?! We give over our money, which, along with our work, is our most powerful instrument, voice and vote, to this portfolio of doom and Armageddon. And, the game is set up so that the players rationalize and justify detrimental business practices on the basis of having to satisfy their stockholders with high returns. This is a game where profit is the highest value in consideration. So, there you have it.

I was at the Whitney Biennial contemporary art show on preview day and it was a spiritual wasteland, very disappointing. The show mirrors a society that is imbalanced, disgusting, disordered, epically ugly, mad, stupid, broken, mean-spirited and sick. On the audio tour, Ellen Harvey, one of the artists whose work stood out to me, said: “You can’t win, so let’s just start off by failing as extravagantly as possible,” in speaking of her art process. A fitting line for our times. There was hardly a hint of transcendence or visionary attitude in that entire show; instead, despair and hurt and self-indulgence. Is this the best we can do? One wonders about the selection of this uninspired psychic display and what the mindset is there, the agenda.

The proverb “money is the root of all evil” in these materialistically driven times might just as well be “money is the root of all good”. Our money is what we get for the life energy we have expended and both our energy and our money can be put to good, evil or neutral work in the world.

Our money actually does invest us in that which we have invested, even though we are not always willing to look at it that way or to do the real math from a holistic perspective. So then, are we living behind our own backs? Are we content to be strangers to ourselves and each other? Are we actually saying: yes, here, do more of this with our world, kill it, destroy and decimate it, kill it all, just give me another cushion, don’t take away my addictions, and throw in the health insurance.

We have the power, if we have the will, to reform our civilization very quickly, and we can do it with our energy and our money, much more effectively than with our political votes.

If you haven’t seen the movie Zeitgeist yet, you can get to it through these links. It’s screening at non-mainstream theaters across the country this Saturday. The second link displays those theaters. Part three of this movie gives a historical view of the financial world that you might want to have a look at. I invite your comments on this.

Streaming Zeitgeist movie

Big Screenings on March 15th

Article by Javier Sierra, Sierra Club, “How to Tell Greenwashing from Real Corporate Responsibility”

jari culture, wisdom, financial reward, holistic, conscience, economy, mental health, values 2 Comments » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

The Quiet Station of Meditation

When you focus and hold your attention on a single object or on your own mind-body processes, you are meditating. An age-old metaphor for thought, captured in the phrase “a train of thought,” can be helpful in differentiating thought from meditation.

If you are riding inside a train of thought, carried along in it, you are thinking; but in meditation, you are watching multicolored train-cars passing through the station of your mind. You are observing thought, rather than being carried within it.

When you become adept at meditation, the station may be quiet for stretches of time: no trains. Sometimes you faintly hear a train approaching from a distance, yet it does not end up coming through . . . your attention dissolves it and it never arrives.

Why set aside time in our busy lives to recondition our minds through meditation?–To be awake, yet quiet, peaceful, aware and focused. Peace. Awareness. Focus.

So, why aren’t more people meditating? Well, actually, we are. But for those who aren’t, it may be because changing our habits is hard, even when new habits can mean the difference between life and death. For instance, in many studies of patients who have undergone coronary bypass surgery, only one in nine people, on average, adopts and stays with a new exercise and dietary program.

Trying to change our habits requires a lot of attention. At first, looking closely and steadily at things as they are, as one does in meditation, can lead to feelings that many people find uncomfortable. So they opt to avoid really looking. But, if you will persist, stay with yourself, hang in there and refine your observational abilities through the practice of meditation, you will find that the mind is, in fact, not as hardwired as you thought.

Aside from the many health benefits of meditation, which are now widely known and accepted, meditation strengthens your ability to modulate your own reactivity, so that you do not resort to self-destructive coping mechanisms; such as, drinking alcohol or other palliative forms of escape from the feelings that can arise while facing reality. You also are less reactive to others, kinder, more compassionate.

Meditation gets to the root of distress and equips you to live a more wholesome, meaningful, relaxed and insightful existence, even when uncertainty, hurt feelings, or doubt come through the station.

In a world of meditators, we would find many social problems dissolving and evaporating. Big-picture and long-view thinking, grounded in wisdom, would be commonplace. Consideration of and reverence for the natural world would be central. Enjoyment and fulfillment in life’s simple pleasures would be written on our faces. Appreciation of diverse cultures, habitats, spiritual expressions and perspectives would be manifested in steadfast investment in and preservation of them. A large-scale maturation of the human animal, a new evolutionary stage would be evident everywhere.

jari consciousness, insight, maturity, human potential, human development, wisdom, mind-body, relaxation, values 2 Comments » | (2 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Chop Sui Generis

Our fingerprints and faces tell us we are each “sui generis,” (one-of-a-kind), although most of us were raised to conform to, and fit into, a social structure, rather than being encouraged to discover and display our distinctive gifts.

I often wonder about and imagine what a world of people brought up to shine as one-of-a-kind, creative expressions of humanity would be like. Each child would be approached with utter curiosity and a reverence for the unforeseen gifts they might bring to the family and society, their sui generis idiosyncracies nurtured by parents, teachers, leaders and the culture at large.

Would that sort of approach help to bring about whole and fulfilled people, people who felt unashamed, welcomed and appreciated as they truly are?

Most kids have jumping-for-joy natures, abounding life energies and strong emotions. Their unusual thoughts and insights, their self-love, love of pleasure, and love of life are considered, at best, adorable in the cute way, rather than the truly worthy-of-adoration way. They are asked, in so many ways, to conform to what’s expected of them, to apply themselves to finding their place (a.s.a.p.!) in the existing models, roles and structures.

How confusing to be asked to thwart one’s natural love of life to better plug into a system that is stressful, unhealthy and inhumane. Young people, whose heart-intelligence and innate compassion are still very much in tact, are one day treated to a movie about how sweet and wonderful penguins are and the next day informed of the destruction of the penguin habitat due to human profligacy.

When children object to such confusion, their sui generis assertion is often attacked or undermined. I recently witnessed a young boy of about seven with his mother in front of a fish counter at Whole Foods. I saw him looking up at her and overheard her say, dismissively, not willing to look back down to meet his eyes, “There are plenty of fish in the sea, Johnny; it’s perfectly fine for us to eat them.”

The point is not the fish here, the point is this boy’s heart and how his mother responded to his heart’s cry. And we wonder how the steep rise of childhood mental health disorders, and all the consequences associated with them, could be happening in such a wonderful place as the suburbs of the United States.

The erroneously attributed Chinese dish named Chop Suey is a bland, overcooked, and unpalatable dish of cheap and canned vegetables and water chestnuts held together with corn starch, invented in America and passed off as Chinese.

America turns its children into Chop Sui and the worry of America’s next generation is supposed to be that the Chinese will take it all away from us, this glorious way of life, this American Dream!

Yesterday, I watched the better part of a video conference dialogue between a large group of 9th graders at Arapahoe High School in Colorado and author Dan Pink (whom I interviewed on Feb 19th–see below). The kids had prepared questions and were given the chance to talk about the future with a bestselling author, speaking with them about the future from his home office, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. One of the students asked: what do you think it would take for school to be like this all the time?

In considering Dan Pink’s Six Senses from his book, A Whole New Mind: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning, I believe Empathy is the most important one to develop. The ability to feel what another is feeling, to meet other people where they live, so to speak–just imagine what a world this would be if empathy were an aptitude highly developed and prized in society at large!

Imagine how that value of tenderness and care would change the nature of the other senses and of the products and services that drive our economy. Just what are we putting ourselves in service to? What games are we playing? How are we making and interpreting meaning? How are we putting it all together? What’s the narrative about? What are we designing, and for what purposes? All our activity would be in service to a healthier way of life, in the presence of pervasive and abiding empathy. And, I would add, that true empathy is what makes it possible for the sui generis nature of each face, each individual living thing, to shine and be held dear.

Here’s the link to view that video conference, set up by educator Karl Fisch.

jari holistic health, consciousness, education, future, human potential, culture, a whole new mind, creativity, stress, parenting, conscience, feeling, mental health, values, empathy 3 Comments » | (3 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Daniel Pink: A Whole New Mind at Work

Living Hero is pleased to present an interview with author and futurist Daniel Pink

• The increasing value of right brain skills and capacities • The global forces giving rise to A Whole New Mind • The one cognitive skill common among corporate star performers • Reckoning with unfulfillment • Dan’s own creative process and methods • The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

Enjoy the podcast! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 32 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the blue link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the blue link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

Link to Dan Pink’s Feb 2005 Wired magazine article “Revenge of the Right Brain”

Click through to buy his books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left. Don’t miss them!

jari interviews, meditation, education, future, culture, synthesis, a whole new mind, books, creativity, creative, mind, mind-body, economy, global forces, right brain Comments (0) » | (0 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Holic or Holistic? How’s the Love?

For the sake of this exploration, let’s just agree to use the word holic for an addicted, compulsive, obsessed individual. In spite of knowledge (a holic knows what is healthy, reasonable and good) she “loves” stuff that is ultimately self-destructive and cannot forsake indulgences for health or well-being, cannot manage, even through force of love or will to stop repeating damaging behaviors.

Now, let’s consider, in contrast, a holistic person. This person’s actions, whether they be in the realms of buying, eating, traveling, pleasure or work, are an integral part of a conscious life, borne out from the person they wish to be, the contribution they wish to make, and the world in which they wish to live. Such a person is capable of self-soothing and self-regard and lives with a genuine love of life. Such a person feels responsible.

People generally either soothe their existential angst and cope with life through a healthy selfhood (holistic) or through a set of defenses and fixes (holic).

Since I’m posting this on Valentine’s Day eve, I have some love questions for us:

Is it love to buy someone chocolate, if sugar decays internal organs like it does teeth? Is it love to send dozens of cut roses here and there, if tons of hydrocarbons are thus released into our shared strained atmosphere? How about diamonds and that whole business? How about greeting cards, the paper industry pollution involved, the shipping and trucking of all that? Fine dining on fois gras—does this force-feeding of geese to fatten their livers deliver a culinary treat for our true love?

A holistic person thinks of these things. A holistic person sees the inseparable connections among all things in reality.

The phrase Just Do It made famous by Nike, a corporation notorious for sweatshop labor practices and all manner of exploitation, has perhaps provided us with an apt mantra for our times: Just Don’t Do It!

If we have told ourselves to change our habits and yet haven’t—guess what?—we’re holic and the waters are rising, the world is heating up—and how are we going to stop ourselves from doing the self-destructive things we’re in the habit of doing?

Join me as I take this on and share what I’m doing on these posts from time to time. I am upping the ante on myself to be ever more holistic.

Please click through to this article and then write to me and let me know what you think—could this environmental nightmare really be true or is it some mistake, a gross exaggeration?

jari psychology, holistic health, maturity, human potential, human development, culture, wisdom, philosophy, holistic, meaning, conscience, love, mind-body, addiction, compulsive, self-destructive, environment 2 Comments » | (3 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

The Challenge Is: Embracing Our Imaginations

“. . . the greatest economic competition in the world going forward is not going to be between countries and countries. And it’s not going to be between companies and companies. The greatest economic competition going forward is going to be between you and your own imagination. Your ability to act on your imagination is going to be so decisive in driving your future and the standard of living in your country. So the school, the state, the country that empowers, nurtures, enables imagination among its students and citizens, that’s who’s going to be the winner.” –Tom Friedman (The World is Flat) from an interview with Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind)

We are a people longing to see beyond our current dilemmas and dangers to a future that is reasonable and sustainable. But we need more than reason to get to reasonable. We need imagination.

How can we become visionaries and nurture our visions in the reality of community? How can we recognize a vision worth pursuing when one comes along?

The world’s best and brightest leaders, philosophers, artists and inventors have always relied on imagination to envision a better future and to bring it to life through creative expression and invention.

Now it is time for all of us to actively put our imaginative powers to work, to open our minds and to face the imperative of envisioning a future that will truly work for the global community.

This means strengthening and nurturing a healthier balance of thought and feeling, which will bring more wisdom to bear as we imagine, work, create. Getting to this healthier balance in the midst of our high-pressured, busy days is a real challenge and we are all in this together.

Our next podcast (scheduled for late February) will feature futurist Daniel Pink talking with us about how he sees practices such as yoga, art and meditation contributing to the shift he describes in his latest book A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future. He’ll explain how he came to use the creative genre of manga (Japanese for “comics”) for his upcoming business book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, due to be released on April 1st.

He’ll also speak about the early adopters and also any resistors of the whole new mind he describes and share what’s on the creative horizon for him after The Adventures of Johnny Bunko.

To make the most of the podcast, please enjoy A Whole New Mind prior to listening! Get it right here!

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The Subliminal and the Sublime

In our language, we have two similarly named thresholds of awareness. One is the subliminal, “that which lies below,” that which we generally refer to as the subconscious. The other is the sublime, which we speak of mostly at times when we have briefly transcended that upper limit, when we are momentarily sent “over the top” with feeling, with awe, surprise or beauty, surpassing our usual realm of sensation and awareness. People have been known to faint from being unable to sustain the sublime.

We would not know these boundaries if we didn’t, in unusual states and circumstances, access what is beyond them. Symbols, metaphors and buried memories do break into consciousness from the unconscious. And we do have wondrous and sublime experiences in nature, through love, in beholding our own newborn child, in moments of discovery, and through the experience of insight.

These thresholds of awareness frame not where you have been and what you have done, but the range of perception and feeling you were fit to bear, whereever you went and whatever you did.

Our ability to access both the subliminal and the sublime is integral to our capacity to accept and bear their truth and their gifts. These thresholds in the self are not fixed. They can go from brick walls to accessible doorways to a mere change in the landscape within yourself. As you develop yourself as a human being and become someone more psychologically mature, of greater spiritual fortitude, your range of awareness and capacity to feel into both the subliminal and the sublime will grow. You will be able to experience more feeling without fear, awkwardness, overwhelm or discomfort. You will also be much more in touch with the tremendous creative and integrative forces that are within you.

How do you open the range of your awareness and enlarge your capacity to feel and know more of your own life’s forces and riches? The best ways I know involve yoga, creativity and meditation.

jari psychology, consciousness, creative arts, integrate, insight, meditation, maturity, human potential, human development, philosophy, creativity, creative, love, body, mind-body, fear, feeling 1 Comment » | (4 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Crazy Little Thing Called Anxiety

Control. Constraint. Inhibition. Constriction. Fear. Tension. Anxiety. Angst. Anger. Angina . . . these last four all share the same Latin root, angere, which means to strangle or choke.

Do you know how to release the grip, to relax, unbind, let go, let down, and “uninhibit” your mind and body? Let me ask this again: do you know how to relieve and relax your own mind?

I have discovered that we can learn to relax right in the midst of fear or pain and, in doing so, more permanently influence and change the state of our minds and bodies.

In the early 1990s I suffered from acute sciatica. The sciatic nerve is the largest bundle of nerves in our bodies and mine was severely inflamed. This ranked right next to childbirth in intensity of pain. I had to ice the area constantly and I lived on Vicodin (Tylenol with codeine) for days.

I had two of these severe attacks before I learned how to use yoga on a regular basis to prevent them, and also how to completely relax both my mind and my body whenever I first started to feel the nerve clenching up. Prior to this time, the nerve would tend to tighten up even further, then go into spasm and have me close to screaming.

But I taught myself to apply consciousness, awareness and intention to muscles and nerves. Then, having experienced the success of this in relation to the sciatica, I began applying this same technique, whenever anxiety and worry started tightening its debilitating grip on me. And I’m here to say that it works quite well.

I do credit this ability to the kind of awareness that develops through the practice of meditation. Meditation develops one’s sense of aliveness and attunement to mind-body processes to an extraordinary degree. We can catch ourselves thinking and feeling with quite a different sensibility than we used to have, or that non-meditators have. This provides a greater freedom of choice, moment to moment, on how life will go for us and those around us, and what we will experience.

In her book The World I Live In (which was out of print for nearly a century and published again just in 2003) Helen Keller says: “The sense of smell has told me of a coming storm hours before there was any sign of it visible. I notice first a throb of expectancy, a slight quiver, a concentration in my nostrils. As the storm draws nearer, my nostrils dilate the better to receive the flood of earth-odors which seem to multiply and extend, until I feel the splash of rain against my cheek. As the tempest departs, receding farther and farther, the odors fade, become fainter and fainter, and die away beyond the bar of space.”

I believe that just as Helen Keller could sense the coming of a storm through her sense of smell, we can sense the coming of anxiety through our awareness. And, before it comes on full strength, we can dissipate it so the storm doesn’t happen, or if it does, it may rain, but not be torrential.

Whenever you first sense anxiety’s presence and its encroachment into your mind and body processes, acknowledge it, take a full breath and, staying with yourself, let it out, relaxing completely. This, of course, will not remit the inner or outer conditions that may be giving rise to the anxiety or pain. But, you can head off the intensity of the debilitation in the moment and be better able to function, so as to discern, and then remedy or remove the inciting causes and bring yourself more peace of mind.

jari psychology, holistic health, consciousness, meditation, wisdom, stress, anxiety, mind, body, mind-body, fear, tension, inhibition, relaxation Comments (0) » | (4 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Integrative HealthCare and Your Conscience

The detrimental effects of cell phone radiation on sleep were reported today in the British paper The Independent. Here’s the ARTICLE

The Integrative HealthCare Symposium took place this past week (1/17-1/19) in Manhattan, which I attended on Friday. Bernie Siegel, MD (Love, Medicine and Miracles) shared the stage with Julie Silver, MD (After Cancer Treatment: Heal Faster, Better, Stronger) to deliver a Keynote entitled Physical and Emotional Healing: How They Intersect in Cancer Recovery.

Dr. Silver, a breast cancer survivor herself, delivered a message of hope for healing through a holistic mind-body approach. She also cautioned us all to be aware that there is long list of herbal remedies and foods that can interfere with the intended dosages and actions of many prescription medications. Her page at Revolution Health

Then, the highly entertaining and humorous Dr. Siegel demonstrated his warm, humanistic and holistic approach to treatment while showing us slides of his patients’ drawings and discussing how the story of their illness was depicted there, often signaling the prognosis, as well.

My notes from Dr. Siegel’s talk: If a hillbilly woman divorces her husband, is he still her brother? We must re-parent each other. Parents, teachers, clergy and doctors are the biggest problems in the world! You don’t treat a diagnosis, you treat an experience. Heal your life and it effects your physiology. Find your rhythm and live it. Keep your minds open—consciousness is not local. The question he asks himself in a quandary: WWLD—What would Lassie do? Self-induced healing: a clear conscience. Parenting is the #1 problem everywhere. Patients do not need information; they need inspiration. We know the future. Find your way of making people happy; give a tissue, not a stethoscope. Life is a series of beginnings. Keep the child in your patients alive. You can’t be afraid when you’re laughing. Nourish yourself and your life. Ask: how may I help you? If you’re cared for by your family, you’ll do much better.

I invite your comments on what I’m about to say: I am so often dismayed and left wondering why we rely on celebrated experts and costly scientific studies to tell us things that we ought to be prepared to readily discern via our own conscience, moral compass and compassion. Where is the common sense of our hearts?

We can all be lay physicians, healing ourselves and others. But this calls for a shift in priorities and values towards lives of greater meaning and deeper caring. This can be our future. Coping effectively with our own fear, anxiety, and stress is the rational first step.

jari holistic health, future, holistic, sleep, stress, meaning, parenting, conscience, love Comments (0) » | (2 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Robert Stickgold: Sleep, Memory, Creativity & Dreams

Welcome to the Inaugural Living Hero Podcast!

Sleep, Memory, Creativity and Dreams, an interview with Dr. Robert Stickgold

• How sleeps helps us learn • Creativity and stress • Meaning and insight • Deep sleep and consciousness • Sleep and meditation • Lucid dreaming • Symptoms of sleep deprivation

Enjoy the podcast! (you can download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players). The interview is 57 minutes. You can also listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below.

AND SOME BREAKING SLEEP RESEARCH NEWS: By demonstrating that worms sleep, David M. Raizen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neurology, in collaboration with other researchers at the Penn Center for Sleep have not only demonstrated the ubiquity of sleep in nature, but also propose a compelling hypothesis for the purpose for sleep.

They propose that sleep is a state required for the nervous system to grow and change, there must be down time of active behavior.

Other researchers at Penn have shown that, in mammals, synaptic changes occur during sleep and that deprivation of sleep results in a disruption of these synaptic changes.

Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the blue link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac: Control click or right click on the blue link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it when you like.

Listen whenever it’s convenient!

Want the 21-page transcript of this first Living Hero interview in PDF format? Just ask! Please use the questions/comments box on the right side bar and leave me your name and email so I can send it to you.

Wired magazine article on sleep

jari psychology, consciousness, interviews, insight, meditation, creativity, memory, dreams, creative, sleep, stress, sleep deprivation, meaning 1 Comment » | (1 ratings)  | Email it