(((☼~LIVING HERO~☼)))
stress
Episodes
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.
Monday Feb 04, 2013
The New Worldviews Emerging Now ☛
Monday Feb 04, 2013
Monday Feb 04, 2013
Minds are malleable, sensitive and responsive to influence, pressures, shaping and conditioning by family, educational inputs, life stressors, advertising and media messaging, repetitious uses of language, and intensive social expectations and atmospheres.
This Living Hero show features numerous experts from the 2012 film Four Horsemen, plus the larger-than-life figures of George Lakoff and Jeremy Rifkin; and an extended interview on memes, otherwise known as value structures, cognitive maps, mindsets and worldviews, with consultant and educator, Don Beck.
Dr. Beck explains the Spiral Dynamics theory that says newly emerging human mindsets reach beyond egalitarian views to holistic, integrative and comprehensive understandings that "transcend and include" all past forms of knowing and can thus discriminate among them to find the wisest, most workable approaches in any given situation, depending on all factors and people involved, accurately reading the mindsets of the people in conflict and collaboration, and facilitating peace.
Under the intense global pressures of plutocracy and toxicity and as more people become literate about worldviews and the ways that minds are shaped, more perceptive, holistic and integrative mindsets are emerging.
Features music by Brian Eno and John Cale, Leonard Cohen, Laurie Anderson, Stephanie's ID and more . . .
For more information and to watch The Four Horsemen film, visit http://buy.fourhorsemenfilm.com/
To watch the full talk "The Empathic Civilization" by Jeremy Rifkin visit The Ross Institute for Advanced Study and Innovation in Education's You Tube Channel and The Ross Institute for Advanced Study and Innovation in Education.
Find out more about the work of George Lakoff and about George Lakoff's DVD How Democrats and Progressives Can Win.
And visit Spiral Dynamics and Don Beck.
TAGS: “value memes” “cognitive maps” “Four Horsemen” “George Lakoff” “Don Beck” “Spiral Dynamics” “frames of mind” “human development” “corporate media” “financial crisis” “predatory capitalism” “Ayn Rand” “mind control” “Gillian Tett” “progressive education” “depression rates” “Michael Hudson” “Clare Graves” “value systems” “models of good and evil” “human nature” “corporate media” “banking elite” “International Monetary Fund” Orwellian media “value systems” “Jeremy Rifkin” “Empathic Civilization” holistic integral
Wednesday Nov 24, 2010
Gabor Maté on Democracy Now
Wednesday Nov 24, 2010
Wednesday Nov 24, 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.
Monday Jul 19, 2010
Gabor Maté at The Rubin Museum in New York
Monday Jul 19, 2010
Monday Jul 19, 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
Saturday Aug 01, 2009
Interview with Stella Resnick
Saturday Aug 01, 2009
Saturday Aug 01, 2009
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! (The interview is about 52 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience!
Click through to buy Stella's book on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
Wednesday Apr 01, 2009
Interview with Allan Luks
Wednesday Apr 01, 2009
Wednesday Apr 01, 2009
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! (The program is 40 minutes)
Listen at your convenience!
Sunday Feb 01, 2009
Interview with Carolyn Raffensperger
Sunday Feb 01, 2009
Sunday Feb 01, 2009
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! (The program is 45 minutes)
Listen at your convenience!
Saturday Nov 01, 2008
Interview with Dr. Richard Davidson
Saturday Nov 01, 2008
Saturday Nov 01, 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! (The interview is about 25 minutes)
Listen at your convenience!
Wednesday Oct 01, 2008
Interview with Dr. Scott Baum
Wednesday Oct 01, 2008
Wednesday Oct 01, 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! (The interview is about an hour)
Listen at your convenience!
Tuesday Jan 15, 2008
Interview with Robert Stickgold: Sleep, Memory, Creativity & Dreams
Tuesday Jan 15, 2008
Tuesday Jan 15, 2008
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.
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.