(((☼~LIVING HERO~☼)))
mind-body
Episodes
Tuesday Jun 17, 2014
The Dooryard interviews Living Hero Host/Producer, Jari Chevalier
Tuesday Jun 17, 2014
Tuesday Jun 17, 2014
Here's a conversation published this week in The Dooryard about how I help artists, writers and other creatives make original work with universal appeal, and liberate themselves in the process. http://www.the-dooryard.com/2014/06/its-very-enlivening-and-astonishing-tapping-the-innermost-voice-with-jari-chevalier/
Friday May 10, 2013
Michaels and Johnson ~ Expansive Hearts and Minds with Tantra
Friday May 10, 2013
Friday May 10, 2013
Bring heightened awareness and an expanded capacity for pleasure into every aspect of your daily life.
Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson are a devoted married couple who have been teaching traditional and contemporary approaches to Tantric sexual practices together since 1999.
Michaels and Johnson are multi-award-winning authors of The Essence of Tantric Sexuality, Tantra for Erotic Empowerment: The Key to Enriching Your Sexual Life, and, most recently, Great Sex Made Simple: Tantric Tips to Deepen Intimacy and Heighten Pleasure, which just won the 2013 Gold Medal from Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Sexuality/Relationships category.
They’ve also produced instructional DVDs and a meditation CD set: all of these and more can be found on their website tantrapm.com
Michaels is a lawyer, playwright and translator. He translated and adapted Goldoni's The Mistress of the Inn for the Roundabout Theatre Company, and co-wrote The Thrill of Victory, The Agony of Debate, which premiered at New York's Primary Stages. Johnson is a retired professional operatic soprano who toured as a performer throughout the United States, Europe, and South America.
Friday Mar 29, 2013
Concentrating the Hell Out of Mind: Jhana
Friday Mar 29, 2013
Friday Mar 29, 2013
Join some of the West's great adepts of Jhana, Concentration Meditation Practice. Jhana is an extraordinary human potential of the mind with deep and lasting rewards of peace, freedom, clarity, agility . . . and mastery. However, Jhana is especially exquisite in its preparatory role in the life of a meditator, bringing about capacities and factors of mind that prepare us for insight knowledge; direct, unshakeable experiential knowledge of the nature of reality.
Our jhana teachers and guides are, in order of their photographs, above:
Shaila Catherine, who has been practicing meditation since 1980, with more than eight years of accumulated silent retreat experience. She has taught since 1996 in the USA, and internationally. Shaila has dedicated several years to studying with masters in India, Nepal and Thailand. Shaila Catherine has practiced under the guidance of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw since 2006. She is author of Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity and Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana. Shaila Catherine founded Insight Meditation South Bay, a Buddhist meditation center in Silicon Valley (www.imsb.org). Click here for Shaila's schedule of retreats.
Leigh Brasington, a former computer programmer and now teacher of Jhana retreats, is currently at work on his first book, the working title of which is The Buddha's Jhanas. Click here for Leigh's resume and find all his resources and his retreat schedule at his website leighb.com
Dr. Judson Brewer, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and Medical Director of the Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, is a board-certified psychiatrist who has been investigating the neural underpinnings of Mindfulness Training and its clinical efficacy for disorders such as addictions. Dr. Brewer received his AB from Princeton University and MD/PhD from Washington University in St. Louis. After training in mindfulness meditation during medical and graduate school, he shifted his focus from animal models of stress, to the elucidation of neurobiological mechanisms underlying the interface between stress, mindfulness and the addictive process.
Tina Rasmussen, PhD, learned to meditate in 1976, at the age of 13. In 2003, she completed a year-long silent solo retreat. In 2005 she was ordained as a Theravadan Buddhist nun by Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw of Burma who later authorized her to teach. Tina is the co-author of Practicing the Jhanas (with Stephen Snyder). She has worked as a professional coach and OD consultant for more than 25 years. She completed her Ph.D. in 1995, and has authored several published books on humanistic business practices.
Stephen Snyder, JD, began practicing Buddhist meditation in 1976, and has had a daily meditation practice since. He practiced for 20 years with several Western Zen masters, participating in more than 50 retreats and receiving several ordinations. In 2005, he completed a retreat with Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw of Burma, who later authorized him to teach. Stephen is the co-author of the book Practicing the Jhanas (with Tina Rasmussen). Stephen has been a practicing lawyer and mediator since 1987.
Tina and Stephen are a married couple, and offer teaching and retreats to students worldwide. For more information about them, please visit their website at www.JhanasAdvice.com.
Thursday Mar 07, 2013
Solastalgia and Creative Response
Thursday Mar 07, 2013
Thursday Mar 07, 2013
Solastalgia is homesickness when you haven't gone anywhere; it happens when your home environment or habitat changes drastically and you lose your beloved familiar place called home. All over the world human beings and other creatures are suffering from solastalgia. This show is about the nature of care and the care of nature, about how sensitivity, aesthetics, emotions, mental health, societal health and activism come together in the understandings of these aesthetic philosophers who have the big picture in mind while staying in touch with their own deep humanity and interconnectedness with all of life. Enjoy this holistic exploration!
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Angela Manno is an internationally exhibited visionary artist who has been exploring the pattern that connects personal and planetary healing for over 30 years. Her award-winning art in a variety of ancient and contemporary media emphasizes the beauty and integrity of the human, natural and spiritual world. Her work is in private collections throughout Europe, the Americas and the Middle East and in the permanent fine art collections of NASA and the Smithsonian Institution.
Angela's teaching, writing and activism aim at cultivating a benign human relationship with the planet. Her courses blend cosmology with instruction in applying the creative process to this critical work. Her articles on art, non-violent direct action and ecological consciousness have appeared in The Ecozoic Reader, Befriending Creation and Friends Journal. Visit her websites: School of Living Arts and her fine art site AngelaManno.com
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Glenn Albrecht is a researcher, professor and director of the Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University in Western Australia.
He is a transdisciplinary philosopher with both theoretical and applied interests in the relationship between ecosystem and human health. He has pioneered the research domain of 'psychoterratic' or earth related mental health conditions with the concept of 'solastalgia' or the lived experience of negative environmental change. He also has publications in the field of animal ethics including the ethics of relocating endangered species in the face of climate change pressures.
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Suzi Gablik is an artist, writer, and teacher. She studied with Robert Motherwell, lived with the Magritte family, and hung out with Jasper Johns. In 1966, Suzi Gablik had a one-woman show of her collage paintings exhibited and catalogued in New York. She later brought a prodigious and caring voice to art criticism, as a respected reviewer of art in London for Art in America, and authored her engaging trilogy of scholarly writings on art and culture Has Modernism Failed?, The Reenchantment of Art, and Progress in Art. She also wrote Magritte, Conversations Before the End of Time, and her memoir Living the Magical Life. Currently, Suzi Gablik hosts a blog featuring her latest cultural and political essays at virgilspeaks.blogspot.com
Monday Jan 21, 2013
It's the Parenting, Dodo
Monday Jan 21, 2013
Monday Jan 21, 2013
Profound messages on parenting for peace with engaging and inspiring stories told by Arun Gandhi, the 5th grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, excerpted from his talk “Lessons From My Grandfather” with musical interludes in the first half-hour and practical evolutionary parenting guidelines of Parenting for Peace author Marcy Axness, PhD. Music from the Until the End of the World film soundtrack, from Bobby McFerrin’s Beyond Words, DJ Spooky, and from the Brooklyn-based trio, Archie Pelago.
Show produced by Living Hero Radio Show and Podcast producer,
Jari Chevalier.
Segment One :: first half-hour:
Features stories from Arun Gandhi’s talk “Lessons from My Grandfather,” with musical interludes.
Segment Two :: second half-hour:
Features a long excerpt from the 2008 Living Hero interview with Marcy Axness, PhD, with musical interludes.
Segment Three :: third half-hour:
Completes the interview excerpt with Marcy Axness, PhD and offers commentary by Jari Chevalier and music by the Brooklyn-based trio, Archie Pelago.
MUSIC CREDITS:
Segment One :: first half-hour Special:
Terry Riley. “In C” Bang On a Can, Cantaloupe Music, 2011. 45:30
Bobby McFerrin. “Pat & Joe” Beyond Words, Blue Note, 2002. 02:11
Graham Revell. "Finale" Until the End of the World, Warner Bros, 1991. 0:58
Bobby McFerrin. “Monks/The Shepherd” Beyond Words, Blue Note, 2002. 02:48
Graham Revell. "Love Theme" Until the End of the World, Warner Bros, 1991. 0:45
Bobby McFerrin. “A Piece, a Chord” Beyond Words, Blue Note, 2002. 03:46
Dj Rekha Presents: Sunil Sehgal. “Fakir (DJ Spooky Vocal Remix),” Fakir, E1 Music, 2009. 04:57
DJ Spooky. “Measure By Measure” The Secret Song, Thirsty Ear, 2009. 03:41
Segment Two :: Second half-hour:
Archie Pelago. “In the Room” Forthcoming release . . .
Segment Three :: Third half-hour:
Archie Pelago. “Archie Pelago Live Mix For Mary Anne Hobbs” Self-produced, 2012. 25:38
TAGS: Mahatma Gandhi, Arun Gandhi speech, parenting tips, parenting guidelines, early childhood development, radio, podcast, audio, commentary, Marcy Axness, interview, Archie Pelago, child abuse, exemplary parenting, Parenting for Peace, “Lessons from My Grandfather”, social change, social justice, attunement, prenatal care, pregnancy, birth, self-discipline, “anger management,” skip ultrasound, parental education, child care, infancy, nursing, stories
Monday Jan 14, 2013
Monday Jan 14, 2013
Listen as experts speak about how psychedelic plants found in rainforests are being used in the treatment of addiction in, Trips Beyond Addiction, featuring the voices and stories of ex-addicts, researchers and treatment providers sharing their experiences and fascinations with these medicines. Show produced by Living Hero Radio Show and Podcast producer, Jari Chevalier.
With Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis, Bovenga Na Muduma, Clare S. Wilkins, Brad Burge, Tom Kingsley Brown, Susan Thesenga, Bruce K. Alexander . . . and other important voices active in the field of healing with these native medicines.
Trips Beyond Addiction first aired as the first half hour of the inaugural Living Hero Radio show on WGDR-WGDH fm in North-Central Vermont on January 12, 2013. The complete 90-minute show is available for streaming here and on Soundcloud (search: WGDR Living Hero 01.12.13).
Trips Beyond Addiction has a score of tunes by Jari Chevalier, riffed on and performed by Cosmo D from the band Archie Pelago.
Also with music by The Cinematic Orchestra. The Living Hero station ID music bed is from the start of Terry Riley's In C. And musician Bovenga Na Muduma played the sample of the native Bwiti instrument the Mugongo.
INTRODUCTION: Ayahuasca and Iboga are rainforest hallucinogens. They are traditional sacraments used in the tribal cultures of the Amazon and of Central West Africa, respectively, and in the past, these tribal medicines were taken by many members of the traditional societies of the regions where they naturally grow.
Now, these same compounds, sometimes referred to as entheogens for their power to evoke "mystical experiences," spiritual awakenings, powerful self-confrontation and aroused conscience, are being investigated scientifically to gain understanding of their extraordinary power and efficacy in treating addiction in contemporary Western society.
Musical Works in Trips Beyond Addiction
Title Artist Album Label Year
All Things, The Cinematic Orchestra, Man with a Movie Camera, Ninja Tune, 2003
Needle and the Damage Done, Indra, In Between, Self-produced, 2012
Trips Beyond Addiction, Jari Chevalier ~ Improvisations and Performance by Cosmo D (unpublished/self-produced), 2013
Reel Life, The Cinematic Orchestra, Man with a Movie Camera, Ninja Tune, 2003
Dawn, The Cinematic Orchestra, Man with a Movie Camera, Ninja Tune, 2003
TAGS: ayahuasca iboga addiction psychedelics hallucinogens MAPS entheogens “Dimitri Mobengo Mujianis” “Clare Wilkins” “Bovenga Na Muduma” podcast “transcending dependence” “Brad Burge” “psychedelic research studies” sobriety healing “overcoming addiction” conscience “personal growth” wisdom “rainforest medicines” “shamanic medicines” “opiate addiction” “opiate withdrawal” “get off opiates” “spiritual transcendence” “pain medication dependence” “prescription opiate dependency” heroin oxycontin “drug addiction”
PHOTO CREDIT: Ashley Fisher
Friday Jun 22, 2012
Codes of My Kin
Friday Jun 22, 2012
Friday Jun 22, 2012
Image: As Above #4
©Jari Chevalier
Are you experienced? Sharing this personal essay about tripping as a teenager, which came out in Reality Sandwich this week. Bring back any memories for you? Thoughts? I wish to engage in dialogue with people about transcendent personal experiences. I find people are shy to speak of such things. But please do speak of them anyway!
Read it here
http://www.realitysandwich.com/codes_my_kin
Comment here or on the Reality Sandwich site.
Wednesday Feb 29, 2012
You Are Their World: Cultivating Global Peace With Your Children
Wednesday Feb 29, 2012
Wednesday Feb 29, 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
Monday Apr 25, 2011
The Unreal World of Narcissists & Sociopaths
Monday Apr 25, 2011
Monday Apr 25, 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.
Friday Oct 01, 2010
Conference Report:: Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics
Friday Oct 01, 2010
Friday Oct 01, 2010
Several hundred people gathered for the 4th annual Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics conference at the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South on September 24-26.
This conference surveys the current research and social issues in the field of psychedelics. Readings by John Perry Barlow from Birth of a Psychedelic Culture and Don Lattin, author of The Harvard Psychedelic Club, provided historical context and Cosmo D set the atmosphere with a performance of textured cello improvisation over original electronic rhythms to open the weekend.
Why has psychedelic research been discriminated against in academia? Dr. Torsten Passie took us through the reasons. He showed slides of tribal people lying back all together with their eyes closed: not very productive! A Western capitalist worldview, which requires relations with nature to be utilitarian and depth of feeling to be kept private is not likely to embrace the potential value of trance states, the sharing of dreams, or the hallucinogenic experience.
Furthermore, ecstatic experience through psychedelics can engender direct, unmediated experience of the divine in oneself and in all of nature. This does not comport particularly well with the teachings of the Christian church, which holds forth that each and every one of us needs Jesus Christ to mediate our salvation.
Psychedelics deconceptualize and deconstruct entrenched value systems and, therefore, authority over truth is destabilized. So let's add that those who socially engineer and control populations don’t much care for that sort of thing. It becomes a real problem for those in power when people tap into a larger, more satisfying and holistic sense of reality, endemic to their own true natures, accessed intuitively.
Dr. Passie does not expect interest in psychedelics to spread beyond a small, secret society in the foreseeable future.
Dr. Jeffrey Guss, who heads up a current study at NYU on psychedelics in the reduction of cancer anxiety with very positive psychospiritual results, agrees with Dr. Passie that psychedelics will not become mainstream in society and he doesn’t believe that they should, that they are not for everyone.
But, standing in disagreement with these men on this point is independent Manhattan and Sag Harbor-based psychologist in private practice, Neal Goldsmith, PhD. Along with organizer Kevin Balktic, Dr. Goldsmith facilitates the conference. His sense is that to move into an age beyond post-modernism, one integrating the Cartesian split, psychedelics may play an important role.
He speaks of his own transformation through psychedelic experiences and how it altered his personality theory and views on personal growth and change. He describes a step-wise developmental process with dramatic growth to a new level of development after periods on a plateau. In essence, he says the issue is not to change a pathology, but to form genuine trusting relationships through which his clients can re-identify with their core selves. The person you were born, before you “punted” to a compensatory Plan B, personality, to get by in early childhood, is who you really are. Healing is getting back to that core self.
He's seen that transformative developmental change takes a long time and is very difficult to sustain in this culture. A combination of transcendent and cathartic approaches are most effective, and in this, psychedelics can be catalysts to insight, although insight alone, he says, only goes so far.
The large-scale collective process of what he calls psyche-ology, the study and healing of soul, is really concerned now with successfully joining mechanistic, scientific and technological knowledge with the realities of human psychosocial needs.
Eric Davis, a current PhD candidate, author, speaker and radio host discussed inner and outer Cartesian dualities by way of a metaphor, a mobius strip on which the material at some point turns over into the spiritual, the secular into the sacred and vice versa, in a flow.
There is a hunger in our culture (with its resistance to all things mystical) for the ritual and ceremonial context in which the hallucinogen Ayahuasca is taken by tribal peoples from the rain forests of South America; and this is likely why Ayahuasca has become so popular in North America in recent years.
Davis also pointed to Roland Griffiths’ 2008 Johns Hopkins study which proved that the use of psychedelics gives rise to religious experience (“No shit, Sherlock,” he said, “we knew that!”) And so the open question is: what does a secular, materialistic research model do with this scientific confirmation? And does moving the psychedelic experience into the psychopharmaceutical, clinical environment of the lab, perhaps diminish its potential for healing self and society?
The scientific approach is valuable, Davis upholds, because of the nagging questions it prompts us to ask about the brain. For instance, if you’re going to coin terms like “neurotheology” as a way to account for the experience of God, then you must also account for déjà vu, clairvoyance, and many other experiences of the mind.
For scientists to be seriously engaged in psychedelic research they eventually must take the psychedelics themselves. And that could just stimulate changes in the scientific approach itself. We may find ourselves up against our culture’s addictions to limiting ideas.
Psychedelic use for the treatment of addiction was reported on by researchers Matthew Johnson and Mary Cosimano of Johns Hopkins University who are currently investigating psilocybin in the treatment of nicotine dependence.
Most striking was the presentation by Clare Wilkins, director of Pangea Biomedics in Tijuana, Mexico on the remarkable properties of Ibogaine, a hallucinogenic root from Gabon, Africa that reverses addictions to opiates; such as heroine and methadone, as well as to cocaine, methamphetamine, alcohol, nicotine, and all manner of addictive behaviors and neurotic thoughts.
Ninety-two percent of clients who enter the clinic leave free of their chemical dependency, and without any withdrawal symptoms. Eighteen percent are still living without their drug of choice after six months, and this is a remarkable liberation rate. The hallucinogen gives addicts a real chance at choice. While exactly how ibogaine works is still unknown, there is clearly repair to brain receptors and an adjustment in neurochemistry.
She describes Ibogaine as a “relationship interrupter,” accomplishing “shame washing, empowerment, and the reawakening of the body’s intelligence.” Ibogaine “enables you to look at your life and eliminate anything that is not serving you.” Self-harm becomes self-care. “You fall back in love with yourself, with others and with life. It brings love back into the equation.”
Several of the non-academic speakers praised visionary experience and its influence on art, music, fashion, film, eco-consciousness and the integration of Eastern and Western mysticism. Annie Oak spoke about her grant-making organization, the Women’s Visionary Congress, and how this multigenerational community of “psychedelic women” support one another in their ongoing catalytic work as artists, healers, activists and visionaries.
But some brought up the dark side and limitations of psychedelics. Associate producer of the annual Bioneers conference, J.P. Harpignies, reminded us that in the 60s many a psych-ward and hospital was packed with LSD casualties. And poet, Dale Pendell, while acknowledging that we have yet to complete the psychedelic revolution, that the Earth is in need of a deep and radical cure, also cautioned us to consider that psychedelics are not effective on narcissism. In fact, with their tendency to stimulate messianic fantasies in some people, psychedelics may have contributed to the rapid rise of Me-ism in society.
Jill Harris of the Drug Policy Alliance urged the Horizons audience to come out about their psychedelic experiences, to break the taboo and share stories. “They have been important to us; they have mattered.” Let’s be vocal about how transformative these drugs can be and about the fact that prohibition doesn’t work. At the 40th anniversary of the War on Drugs, “it’s time to set the exit strategy.”
Heading home through Washington Square park at twilight, the great stone arch with its bold, engraved quotation was all lit up:
“Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.”
Washington spoke those words to inspire his delegates to aim high in the writing of the Constitution of the United States. It was crafted, in this spirit, over the next 17 weeks.
And I thought, yes, here it is, the time Washington expected for the wise and honest to repair to those standards. And it will be, indeed, up to the wise and the honest to do the job.
“There are methods for changing social policies,” Neal Goldsmith tells us, “and we’ve got to power through, shoulder to the wheel, and do the work.”
©2010 Jari Chevalier