29
February
2012
Hankering for a whole new world? Well, Dr. Marcy Axness' Parenting for Peace: Raising the Next Generation of Peacemakers is your ticket: it highlights all that's amiss in how we currently raise children in America and models an emerging holistic worldview in which human beings can blossom into confident, benevolent people.
Dr. Axness reminds us that "we are the soil in which our children grow." Are we spiritually developed and psychologically mature enough to provide the conditions that truly nourish our babies and children?
Discussing every aspect of parenting from how biological life unfolds to how teenagers can be respectfully supported in their pressures, challenges and growth, Axness' brilliant synthesis makes it clear that parenting must be front and center in any successful movement for widespread social wellness. By "taking responsibility for how we invite in, welcome and incarnate our next generation" we engage in social action, and put ourselves in charge of change.
This witty, poetic, fact-loaded and wise book reveals and exposes all the ways people are currently damaging youth, specifically in contemporary Western-style society. It also suggests just how swiftly and comprehensively mothers and fathers who are parenting for peace can revolutionize our world through a conscious, concerted approach.
You'll also understand the details of why we must revise the way we carry, birth, and engage with children at every stage of their development and, to do so, how we must swim against strong social currents that have deliberately undermined the holistic health of children to make for good workers and consumers, to ensure social stability for a corporate state.
Dr. Axness' deep, comprehensive and effective questioning of contemporary medical, educational, and ideological social mores and establishments calls upon parents to turn the tide.
Axness acknowledges that parenting for peace is the most important and challenging job of your life; "this ideal of parenting for a generation of peacemakers is so demanding, so sophisticated, and demands such a level of maturity, we are culturally only now barely up to the task."
And yet, in many ways, this daunting and demanding task calls upon us merely to be more loving, aware, easeful and natural. Axness teaches us how to gauge ourselves in the midst of our greatest challenges. At the end of each chapter, there are age-specific tips for embodying and practicing the central principles of her teaching: presence, awareness, rhythm, example, nurturance, trust, and simplicity (P.A.R.E.N.T.S.).
By the end of this paradigm-busting book, you will know that every opportunity to bring physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual security and well-being to a child is a powerful action in service to the living world.
Listen to our interview with Marcy (September 2008) here.
She also appears in our special program Where's the Imagination?
©2012 Jari Chevalier
Paperback: 443 pages
Publisher: Sentient Publications (January 30, 2012)
ISBN-10: 1591811767
jari 
psychology, holistic health, consciousness, insight, education, future, maturity, human potential, human development, feminine values, culture, wisdom, books, holistic, parenting, love, body, mind-body, global forces, mental health, values, empathy, vision, power, America, childhood development, early childhood, peace, neurobiology, neuroscience, human nature, societal health, civilization, patriarchy, dysfunction, counterculture 
1 Comment » |
25
April
2011
Narcissists and Sociopaths live to dominate and thrill to win. They can excel marvelously anywhere ruthlessness is rewarding.
And recent research brings us new understanding of just what these serious emotional disabilities are; what causes them, how prevalent they are, and how studying them helps us to draw the connections between psyche and society.
Join host/producer Jari Chevalier as she talks with experts Dr. Nina W. Brown, Dr. Linda Martinez-Lewi, social worker Lisa Charlebois, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Gabor Maté, MD, Dr. Sandy Hotchkiss, Dr. Scott Baum, and Dr, Martha Stout. Narration includes in-depth research and synthesis of the work of these and many other researchers and healers.
Learn just how and why narcissists and sociopaths might be a bigger part of your life than you imagine. We focus on the many factors of unreality inherent in these personality structures and how they spin unreality into the world.
jari psychology, consciousness, maturity, human development, narcissism, parenting, conscience, love, mind-body, feeling, addiction, mental health, empathy, self-esteem, health, reality, childhood development, early childhood, human nature, societal health, abuse, dysfunction 8 Comments » |
8
February
2011
Recently I said to someone, “People self-confront to the level they’re able.”
Well, get ready, because A Question of Values is a confrontational book—question is, can you handle it?
Dr. Berman is a shrink/shaman diagnosing contemporary societies. And just as the most damaged individuals will not likely admit they have a problem, the most atrocious societies aren’t exactly lining up to get themselves deconstructed and straightened out.
Page one of Berman’s Preface portrays the home of the brave as “a callous place with a death instinct hanging over it like a dark cloud.”
Through this worldview, shaped by vast erudition and a rare integration of intellect, embodied life, and sage consideration, we see the United States in the process of dying stupid, irritated and depressed. It is seen as a social organization that has nowhere to go but to crumble on down, because it lacks, and has lacked from its early days, societal value structures that foster cohesive communities engaged in their own genuine welfare.
“Our contemporary political life of hysteria plus inertia,” as Berman puts it, is the inevitable outcome of underlying structural values governing the country since Jeffersonian democracy was adopted as a way of life, values that favor individual “success” and competition, at the expense of the common good.
“From Milton Friedman to Condoleezza Rice, drowning in crap is regarded as 'freedom,' with virtually no dissent on the subject from the American people,” he tells us. You sense that Berman has exhaustively researched the terrain of how we’ve gone wrong, pointing to whatever and whomever can help make his case, share his vision. For instance, he excised a quote from Richard Easterlin’s Growth Triumphant, “In the end, the triumph of economic growth is not a triumph of humanity over material wants; rather, it is the triumph of material wants over humanity.”
History, psychology, literature, personal experience, and pop culture weave in and out of these essays, in service to his teaching, that indicts all that is ugly, shallow, false and narcissistic, whether he’s looking at foreign policy, film, the Seinfeld show, or domestic trends. The book is sprinkled and laced with warnings about how close we are to ruin, telling us that “Tocqueville made it clear that democracy ultimately wouldn’t work if the population wasn’t too bright” and after Hobbes, after Shakespeare, warns that “hell is truth seen too late.” And yet his very last words hold out that it is perhaps not quite too late.
In spite of the secular nature of this book with its photo of pillars, like those before our state houses and courts, on the cover, the court we enter when opening A Question of Values is a court of heart, soul and conscience, a moral and spiritual court, if you will.
Berman’s eloquent voice is booming and echoing in there, as he argues against ignorance, immaturity and hubris, suggesting that we, the people, are getting away with murder. But, I’m afraid that the courtroom is scantily attended. A few people are out in the halls, filing their nails, ordering fast-food take-out and playing games on their cell phones. The judge is you, whoever you are. The case is you too and even if you close the book, the case is not closed, just as when someone elects not to enter or stay with therapy for their ills, that does not cure them.
About our endless expansionism, Berman says, “We don’t get it, that when you fight the ecology of a system, you lose, especially when you ‘win’.” You lose when you win, people: now that’s one tough double-bind to confront and unravel.
©2011 Jari Chevalier
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24
November
2010
Living Hero Gabor Maté, MD appeared today on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. This conversation focuses on the explosion of ADD and ADHD in children within the past ten years.
Follow this link to the interview.
And here, again, is the interview we conducted for the Living Hero program earlier this year and the article we published about Dr. Maté's live appearance in New York at The Rubin Museum of Art in July.
He delivers a crucial message to all of us about how the structures of contemporary Western society are doing damage to the developing brains of children, injuring our humanity and causing rampant mental/emotional disturbances.
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3
November
2010
" . . . understanding this problem [sociopathy] creates an entire paradigm shift in the way we view human nature."
--Dr. Martha Stout
This episode of our program brings you an interview with Dr. Martha Stout, clinical psychologist and bestselling, award-winning author on the subject of sociopathy. For twenty-six years, she served as a Psychology Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and also taught at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, Wellesley College, The New School for Social Research, and the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Stout has worked at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Psychiatric Hospital. She is author of The Mask of Sanity, The Paranoia Switch, and The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us, a National Bestseller and winner of a Books for a Better Life Award.
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 30 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience!
Download this episode (right click and save)
Mac users may need to use the "Play in Pop-up" function, below the purple player.
Leave your comments about this program here:
Thanks for listening!
jari psychology, consciousness, interviews, insight, maturity, human potential, human development, culture, wisdom, conscience, love, feeling, addiction, global forces, mental health, values, empathy, vision, power, health, reality, America, childhood development, neurobiology, neuroscience, human nature, societal health, civilization, abuse, control, dysfunction 7 Comments » |
2
November
2010
Living Hero Suzi Gablik is composing a new blog post and asking friends and fellow writers this question, which I received yesterday:
Last night, instead of trick or treating at the neighbor's house up the road, I watched 60 Minutes instead, a program of interviews in towns and with people who have tragically lost businesses and jobs. It was very painful to watch. I have seen quite a bit of this kind of media coverage done across the country. The people being interviewed can't stop crying, including even the men. Parents who can't send their kids to college. The bleakness in people's eyes is excruciating. And then $3 billion dollars (repeat, 3 billion) just spent on election attack ads. Has the human race always been this way? What do you think? How do you suppose Tutu and the Dalai Lama manage to chuckle over human foibles and frailty? Do you believe the human spirit will ultimately prevail? Or are we, as Derrick Jensen says, f-ed? (Sent on the eve of the invasion of the body snatchers.)
Quote by Desmond Tutu from my blog:
Now 79 years old and ever cheery, another world-renowned black leader, the Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, recently told Time magazine that the chief lesson he has learned is that "the texture of our universe is one where there is no question at all but that good and laughter and justice will prevail...In the end, the perpetrators of injustice or oppression, the ones who strut the stage of the world often seemingly unbeatable--there's no doubt at all that they will bite the dust." And then he roars with laughter: "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Wonderful!" So what do you think? Has the Archbishop Tutu discovered the culminating secret of the universe, or is he just singin' in the rain?
Full blog post containing Tutu's quotation, 10-30-10 http://virgilspeaks.blogspot.com/2010/10/waiting-on-big-flip.html
Here is my response to Suzi:
In truth, everybody’s is right and nobody knows anything.
Derrick Jensen is right that we’re f-ed, Tutu is right that goodness will prevail. You are right to worry. And I am right to see things in the context of very vast pictures. For instance, this very second people are being tortured somewhere(s) and elsewhere(s) people are having fantastic orgasms looking into each others eyes. Right this second planets are being born and stars are blowing apart: end of an eon.
In our own lifetimes on Earth, in the 20th-21st centuries, extraordinary, beautiful, and heartwarming happenings of many kinds have taken place; some people have behaved in magnificent ways to one another. And at the same time horrible, sick, twisted, maniacal and catastrophic events have taken place and people have been cold, punitive, destructive to one another. Tears of sorrow and tears of joy flowing, flowing all the time. At some point there will be no more humans here. There will be something else going on. This universe cannot and will not be otherwise.
We don’t know much about the nature of our existence; for example, if there is anything more to luck than blind luck, or if we can have any influence whatsoever on whether or not we could miraculously survive a carpet bombing, running through with mind serene and coming out unscathed by heavy shrapnel.
The mind can be all defended or all relaxed or very nimble and flexible. What difference does it make? I have seen that it can make a lot of difference, so I cultivate my mind and body to be healthy, strong, resilient. And still, I could be hit by a truck later today or ravaged by microbes two months from now.
We can reliably cultivate ourselves so we could be wise, helpful, comforting, even when others are in panic, rage, or icy authoritarian rigor. We can help soothe those whose luck has run out. We can share what we have that is good. We can expand our minds and hearts to have many choices of apertures and ways of looking that we can access to stay wise, helpful, and comforting. It’s worthwhile doing that.
For some singing in the rain is only natural, for others it is very annoying to watch.
This world, the big picture world is forever in states of flux of dark and light, forever turning itself inside out through both creation and destruction. Sometimes we find ourselves in the midst of the destruction: it’s in the nature of things. Why shouldn’t we? Who are we to escape that part of the universe forever? Every polarity we can think of love-hate, light-darkness, good-evil, miraculous-impossible, is always simultaneous in the whole. It’s all flickering and flowing and moving as one and we are part of that. It’s all congruent and necessary. There is always peace somewhere; don’t forget that. And depending how you look at things 3.141592 . . . is a numeric linearity that just will not stop: and this could frustrate a person’s desire to see an end to it. But to someone else it is a marvelous expression of how every single simple circle that ever was has an outline that you can continue to follow around and around without end. Or not. Ugh, big deal. Or yes, a very big deal.
William Blake said that “a fool sees not the same tree a wise man sees.” To my reckoning, it is wholesome for our souls to see things in vast terms, to be expansive, and also to be very humble.
Nobody knows what a tree is. Can anybody tell me how the seed of a tree knows how to unfurl and grow up out of itself and form wood and bark and self-organize systems that circulate water and sap, that can draw nutrients up from the soil and turn light into energy for itself to carry on and thrive? Does anyone know what all this stuff is growing up out of the stuff? It’s all a giant mystery and here we are in that mystery together, some snatching and fighting, some giving and holding hands.
What do you think about these things?
Leave comments here:
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
©2010 Jari Chevalier
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18
July
2010
Living Hero Gabor Maté, M.D. appeared on July 7th at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City to kick off a seven-part series of live events related to The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Dr. Ramon Prats, curator of the contemporaneous Bardo exhibition, conversed with Dr. Maté on stage and then invited questions from the audience.
Dr. Maté is author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. He explained that the hungry ghost realm is a symbol for a state of being, part of the Wheel of Life, described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. This is a state of unquenchable longing and craving, a state well-known to the addicts Dr. Maté treats in Vancouver, British Columbia’s downtown eastside.
Maté began by stating that 2500 years ago Buddhism presaged almost every discovery of contemporary neuroscience. For example, it has been scientifically corroborated that neurologically there is no abiding self to be found in body or brain. This is one of the central teachings of the Buddha. What we perceive as a continuity of self is but a stream of micro-second mind-states, which can be remembered; electrical information that follows patterns conditioned by former mind-states.
These brain circuits were fundamentally conditioned by our earliest experiences. Maté says that the “anti-infant North American ethic,” which permits a parent to just let their infant cry and cry to exhaustion, conditions that infant to become a human being resigned to a world that “just doesn’t give a damn.”
The addicts he works with have all been severely abused, and without exception all the women have been sexually abused. These people’s minds and brains have been deeply conditioned to expect to live in a hostile, dangerous, uncaring world.
Gabor Maté says there are two fallacies currently operating in the treatment of addicts in our society and that both of these fallacies erroneously take society off the hook of responsibility. The first one is the fallacy of choice, the idea that addicts choose to be addicts. They don't, he says, and the whole legal structure, the systems that punish them would have to come apart if you correct this fallacy.
And the second fallacy is the genetic disease fallacy. Addiction is not a result of genetic potentiality, but of the combination of nature and nurture, of genetic potential and the conditioning forces of the environment.
All of Dr. Maté’s various books underscore the importance of early attachment relationships in the formation of human lives. A healthy attachment in early life brings about a self-regulated, satisfied, and socially connected adult. In the abused child, these circuits don’t form properly and the person is then likely to replace those necessary healthy attachments with self-destructive ones.
The Buddha taught that habit energies wrestle the untrained mind. And so, strengthening the mind with the training of concentration, of self-observation, gives people an opportunity to perceive their own thinking-and-feeling processes and thereby realize that there’s more to us than our conditioning.
The consistent observation of one’s own mind can have the power to create new neural circuits that can override the conditioned patterns established in early experience. Based upon actual self-awareness, such mindfulness helps to create emotional balance, spiritual ease, and an increased capacity for self-regulation.
Dr. Maté reminded the audience that Christ had said: you can do everything I can do; and that Buddha nature and Christ nature are actually human potentials. What makes these potentials realizable is getting the conditioned mind and false attachments out of the way.
One of the questions posed by an audience member was about free will. “Freedom of choice is relative and it’s conditioned,” Maté said. What promotes free will? What liberates people? When it comes to individuals working on their own, what promotes choice is awareness; among people it is compassion. Stress hormones, on the other hand, interfere with our power of choice.
In the spirit of compassion, Dr. Maté acknowledged the difficulties people, especially Westerners, have in cultivating mindfulness. He confessed that he, himself, has not sustained a meditation practice and admitted that he is actually terrified of his own mind because of the traumas he endured as an infant.
Speaking further of Western culture, he referenced Sogyal Rinpoche, who wrote The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, based on the traditional Tibetan Book of the Dead. Sogyal Rinpoche says that Westerners, in general, have an active form of laziness, one in which they cram their minds so full of stimuli that there’s no time at all to confront their relationships.
Maté turned things around a bit and asked the audience a question, “What would you think if someone in your life kept on boasting: ‘I’m the greatest; I’m the most creative; everyone wants to be like me’? You’d think this person is really insecure! At the heart of the American dream there’s a terrible insecurity.”
Can we get over our vain insecurity? Both Dr. Prats and Dr. Maté spoke of how the term “rebirth,” found in Buddhist literature, refers to a process of recreating ourselves (our patterns of thought and perception) moment by moment. The Buddha taught humanity how to not rebirth that same pattern of self; how to free our minds; how to die without dying, to let the painful conditioning of our minds die back as our bodies live on, so that we may realize a liberated state and live out of our deeper nature.
How common it is to live without living. But to die without dying is rare.
©Jari Chevalier
jari consciousness, insight, meditation, human potential, human development, stress, parenting, mind, mind-body, addiction, self-destructive, mental health, empathy, freedom, health, reality, America, childhood development, early childhood, neurobiology, neuroscience, human nature, societal health, civilization, abuse Comments (0) » |
1
February
2010
Know anyone who keeps doing things everybody knows aren’t good for them, others, or the environment? Our guest for February, Anne Wilson Schaef, is an expert facilitator in overcoming multiple addictions. Anne takes an unconventional, whole systems approach to awakening and healing people in light of their familial heritage and societal context.
“I think that a part of our work as human beings in this life is to bring as much as we can of our unconscious into consciousness so that we know what we're dealing with and we have the opportunity to heal it . . . ” says Anne Wilson Schaef in this interview.
We talked about:
Leaving psychotherapy behind ● Process addictions and substance addictions ● Surprise! Our society is an addict ● Addiction and schizophrenia ● A progressive and fatal disease ● Can we recover? ● The elements of a successful intervention ● Wisdom and native humility ● The way of science and technology ● The pseudopodic ego ● Escape from Intimacy ● Political dimensions of dysfunction ● The crucial question on the planet ● The trouble with dualism ● The twelve steps and power ● Can billions of people heal?
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 an hour and 7 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 Anne Wilson Schaef's books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
Visit:
Anne's Boulder Hot Springs Inn & Spa at Boulder, MT
And her website: LivingInProcess.com
jari psychology, interviews, insight, feminine values, culture, wisdom, addiction, self-destructive, mental health, values, power, Native American, America, childhood development, science, societal health, radical, technology, patriarchy, abuse, control, dysfunction, recovery 3 Comments » |
4
December
2009
“Death costs a fortune, but life is free,” writes Living Hero Terry Riley, in a lyric for his composition Missy Gono. Riley is a true original, recognized worldwide for first bringing minimalist musical composition into circulation in 1964 with his now classic In C and thereby influencing a new generation of avant garde composers and acid rock bands. Dedicated to a life of deep listening, composition, and inspired performance, Terry joins us to share his insights into art, a healing spirit and life.
We talked about:
The inner experience of originality ● Terry’s Time Lag Accumulator ● Dipping into a sound current ● Music and altered states ● Creativity, discipline, spirit and nature ● Psychedelics and spiritual practice ● Our world and our path to healing ● Urban sound and sensitivity ● Raising kids in a creative household ● Terry's ongoing relationship with his works ● His creative influences ● Imagination as an aspect of intelligence ● Music as philosophy and a model of the world ● The story of Missy Gono ● 6500 pipes in the wee hours at Disney Hall
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 40 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 Terry's CDs on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
Visit Terry's website at terryriley.net
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1
November
2008
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 » |
1
October
2008
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.
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1
September
2008
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, early childhood, peace, neurobiology Comments (0) » |
17
June
2008
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 9 Comments » |
4
June
2008
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.
©2008 Jari Chevalier
jari holistic health, maturity, wisdom, philosophy, meaning, conscience, love, tension, feeling, environment, mental health, values, power, health, sex, reality 2 Comments » |
16
April
2008
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 » |
11
March
2008
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 Chevalier, 2008
jari culture, wisdom, financial reward, holistic, conscience, economy, mental health, values 2 Comments » |
29
February
2008
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 plug into, a social structure, rather than encouraged to discover and display our distinctive gifts.
I often imagine a world of people brought up to shine as one-of-a-kind, creative expressions of humanity and wonder what such a world would be like. Each child would be approached with utter curiosity and a sense of reverence for the unforeseen gifts they might bring to both family and society. Their sui generis idiosyncracies would be nurtured by parents, teachers, leaders and the culture at large.
Would this approach help to bring about whole and fulfilled people, people who feel unashamed, confident, and appreciated for who they truly are?
Most kids have jumping-for-joy natures, abounding life energies and strong emotions. Yet, their unusual thoughts and insights, self-love, love of pleasure and of life are considered, at best, adorable in the cute way, rather than the worthy-of-adoration way. They are asked, in so many instances, to conform to what’s expected of them, to apply themselves to finding their place (a.s.a.p.!) in existing models, roles and societal structures, rather than to engender new systems and create new forms.
We may, in fact, be asking children to thwart their natural love of life to better fit 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. What tools do we provide them for dealing with their feelings about such ironies and inconsistencies?
When children object to societal emotional confusion, in their immature sui generis way, their rebellions are often attacked, shamed, 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, unwilling to look 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, canned vegetables and water chestnuts held together with corn starch, invented in America and passed off as Chinese.
Do American adults turn their children into Chop Sui, while worrying that the Chinese are taking away their opportunities and wealth, spoiling their American Dream?! Would the children, if they knew what the choices were in our world, even choose the values of the American Dream?
The futurist author Daniel Pink details Six Senses needed in the coming generations in his book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future. These senses are Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. I believe Empathy is the most important one of these senses to encourage and develop in the lives of children. Empathy is the ability to feel what another is feeling, to really meet other people and other creatures 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, right from the way children are conceived, carried and birthed!
Imagine how that value of tenderness and care would naturally change the nature and aptitudes of their imaginations and contribute to the sensitivities of their other senses. And extend this imagining to how the products and services that drive the economy would also, organically, change in response to increased and concerted empathy in mass culture.
Imagine how a robust sense of empathy would influence the questions each individual would be asking about society; such as: Just what are we putting ourselves in service to? Are our enterprises honest and caring? How are we making and interpreting meaning in our educational and media presentations? How are we putting all the informational pieces of our society together? What are our fundamental narratives about? What are we designing and for what purposes?
In the presence of pervasive and abiding empathy, all our activities are in service to a healthier, more integrated way of life. And, I might dare to add, true empathy is what makes it possible for the sui generis nature of each face, each individual, each living thing, to truly shine and be held dear.
©2008 Jari Chevalier
jari holistic health, consciousness, education, future, human potential, culture, a whole new mind, creativity, stress, parenting, conscience, feeling, mental health, values, empathy 3 Comments » |
