“Evolution is speeding up, not time. Consciousness is evolving, becoming aware of itself as creation's mentor. Children are evolution's front edge. They push at boundaries... challenge the status quo...irritate convention. That is their job...to set free all that sullies the human heart and blinds the mind to the relationship between the Creator and the Created." ~ P.M.H. Atwater~
MY WORK ... MY PASSION
• Certified Transpersonal Hypnotherapist ; Past experiences: Dream Analysis /10 Years Experience •Psychotherapist / Use of Gestalt, Jungian, Zen, Reality and Energy Therapies /10 Years Experience •EMDR • Men and Their Journey: the neuroscience of the male brain, and the implications in sexuality, education and relationship • Women: Their Transformation and Empowerment • ATOD (Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs) / 21 years experience •Ordained Interfaith Minister & Official Celebrant • Social Justice Advocate • Child and Human Rights Advocate • Spiritual Guide and Intuitive • Certified Reiki Practitioner • Mediation / Conflict Resolution • “Intentional Love” Parenting Strategy Groups • Parenting Workshops • Coaching for parents of Indigo, Crystal, and Rainbow Children • International Training: Israel & England • Critical Incident Stress Debriefing • Post-911 and Post-Katrina volunteer
MSW - UNC Chapel Hill
BSW - UNC Greensboro
With immense love I wish Happy Birthday to my three grandchildren!
May 22: Brannock
May 30: Brinkley
June 12: Brogan
All three have birthdays in the same 22 days of the year ....what a busy time for the family!
"An Unending Love"
This blog and video is devoted and dedicated to my precious daughter Jennifer, my grand daughters Brogan and Brinkley, and my grand son Brannock. They are hearts of my heart. Our connection through many lives..... is utterly infinite.
The Definition of Genius
"THRIVE"
"ONLY LOVE PREVAILS" ...."I've loved you for a thousand years; I'll love you for a thousand more....."
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
We're threading hope like fire
Down through the desperate blood
Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
This disappearing world
I'll be by your side
Hit 'em 'tween the eyes
Through the smoke and rising water
Cross the great divide
Baby till it all feels right
This disappearing world
This disappearing world
"The degree of our enlightenment is the degree of passion that we will have for the whole world." ~The Greystone Mandala
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." ~ Winston Churchill
Kant: "We are not rich by what we possess, but what we can do without."
"A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires." ~ Paulo Coelho
“It is not the critic who counts,not the man who who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”Theodore Roosevelt
TECHNOLOGY..........
In “Conversations with God”, by Neale Donald Walsch, there is a warning I think of. I refer to it as the Atlantis passage, and I've quoted it a few times before." As I have said, this isn't the first time your civilization has been at this brink,"
God tells Walsch. "I want to repeat this, because it is vital that you hear this. Once before on your planet, the technology you developed was far greater than your ability to use it responsibly. You are approaching the same point in human history again. It is vitally important that you understand this. Your present technology is threatening to outstrip your ability to use it wisely. Your society is on the verge of becoming a product of your technology rather than your technology being a product of your society. When a society becomes a product of its own technology, it destroys itself."
Friday, January 29, 2010
~ Noam Chomsky ~
"Man must evolve....."
~ MLK~
Thursday, January 28, 2010
"The Inner Pain of Adult Children of Alcoholics"
Some of the hallmarks of the ACOA are:
1. Adult children of alcoholics guess at what normal behavior is.
2. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.
3. Adult children of alcoholics lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.
4. Adult children of alcoholics judge themselves without rational mercy. As a result, they judge others in that same rigid manner, completely overriding mercy, and understanding.
5 Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty having fun. Even when they claim to be "having fun", they generally display a false self, in that they cannot simply "let go" into an easygoing joyfulness. Those around them sense this without any problem, and the "air" is laden with anxiety.
6. Adult children of alcoholics take themselves very seriously, and lose a free flowing adaptability and acquiescence. Acquiescence for the ACOA is threatening to their core. They see it as a measure of weakness, rather than a serene acceptance of their foibles.
7. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty with intimate relationships, and often recreate the abandonment see-saw with ones who love them. Push-pull dynamics, ones that say, "Go away----come here", as well as passive aggression are most common.
8. Adult children of alcoholics overreact to changes over which they have no control.
9. Adult children of alcoholics constantly seek approval and affirmation.
10. Adult children of alcoholics usually feel that they are different from other people.
11. Adult children of alcoholics are super responsible or super irresponsible.
12. Adult children of alcoholics are extremely loyal, and even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.
13. Adult children of alcoholics are impulsive. They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsively leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.
"Music in Speech Equals Empathy In Heart?"
"Do Children Need Both A Mother and A Father?"
Sunday, January 24, 2010
How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation
In the Buddhist tradition and in Contemplative Psychotherapy training, we nurture mindfulness through the practice of sitting meditation. There are many different kinds of meditation. For example, some are designed to help us relax; others are meant to produce altered states of consciousness.
The sitting practice of mindfulness meditation gives us exactly this opportunity to become more present with ourselves just as we are. This, in turn, shows us glimpses of our inherent wisdom and teaches us how to stop perpetuating the unnecessary suffering that results from trying to escape the discomfort, and even pain, we inevitably experience as a consequence of simply being alive.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Therapeutic Hypnosis (Hypnotherapy) Defined
by Jack Elias, CHT
Conscious, subconscious, unconscious. These concepts pervade our culture, and we freely use them in talking about ourselves. To the degree that we do this without having contemplated the meaning of these terms in the context of personal experience, or to the degree that we haven’t determined the usefulness of labeling various kinds of experience with these terms, we really don’t know what we are talking about. We are merely engaged in hypnotizing ourselves by the very familiar process of sloganeering.
For example, the political slogan, “America! Home of the free!” has no specific, universal meaning, but can trigger strong emotional responses of varying kinds depending on the audience. Likewise, a phrase such as, “I know this problem is in my subconscious but I can’t get at it,” gives a person a false sense of knowledge that is really a state of confusion (i.e., a hypnotic state). The idea itself creates the dilemma.
Here’s one we all can identify with: “I know that intellectually, but I can’t stop…”. The phrase, “I know intellectually” is one of the most common supports of ongoing trance. Its most important characteristic is that it short-circuits the possibility of accessing or maintaining an awake state of openness, while affording a bit of comfort in seemingly knowing something. What “I know intellectually” usually means is not that we know something at all. (Knowing it would mean that it is alive within us, an actively available resource capable of facilitating change.) Rather, saying “I know it intellectually” indicates nothing more than our ability to pronounce the words, saying them over and over in our head like a lullaby, with little or no effect on our awareness.
I point this out in order to alert you, especially while you are a student, not to settle for this false kind of “learning.” It is what most of us are conditioned (hypnotized) to do. Bearing that in mind, here are a few of the definitions that successful, highly recognized hypnotists have applied to hypnosis:
“Hypnosis is the use of suggestion, whether direct or indirect, to induce a heightened state of suggestibility in which there is bypass of the critical faculty of the mind, and selective attention to suggestions given.”
—Dave Elman
“Hypnosis is a state of awareness dominated by the subconscious mind.”
—Michael Preston, M.D.
“Hypnosis is a ’shrinking of the focus of attention.”
—Milton Erickson
Can any useful sense be made of these statements? What is “the use of suggestion…to heighten suggestion”? What is “the bypass of the critical faculty”? And how can “a state of awareness” be “dominated by the subconscious mind”?
What are these expert hypnotists attempting to describe? Can you relate the terms they are using to your personal experience? First, it is helpful to recognize that such labeling, which we have all been trained (hypnotized) to do, dissociates us from the experience we are labeling and creates subtle and not-so-subtle limitations.
It is important to note the difference between labeling, which diminishes interest and awareness in ongoing phenomena, and descriptive activity, which keeps us engaged with the phenomena. When descriptive interest is reduced to labeling, something alive and vital is lost in the process. The ability to label is, nevertheless, valuable when used appropriately. Labeling is inappropriate in the learning process when it does no more than satisfy the urge to say, “I know that intellectually.” Because no sooner do we say it, than we have put ourselves into trance, and are living in the box created by our words.
We all do it. In fact, this tendency lies at the root of all our worldly difficulties, personal and political, social and cultural. For once we have created a label, a conceptual box we can hold onto, we will grasp it and defend it, even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. It is easy to observe this everyday phenomenon in the prejudices and politics of our times, but have you ever thought about some of your own problems from this point of view? Take a moment now to remember being in the grip of some personal limitation — one of those times when you act and feel like a helpless two-year-old, despite the truth of your six-foot-two-hundred-pound-body-having-taken-care-of-yourself-daily-for-years experience. That’s hypnosis!
The phenomena these men are trying to describe as hypnosis are marked by the same qualities that pervade our conscious functioning. There is no clear distinction between the two. Even the “critical faculty” is actually a trance state. From this perspective, it is not so important to create a neat label to apply to the phenomena, because that so easily leads to a lazy, and false, sense of knowledge. It is more challenging, and more helpful to the client, to develop and access more resourceful trance states that expand the client’s awareness of choice and power — to the point that, ultimately, they come into an awareness that is beyond trance states altogether.
Buddhism calls this the state of No-Mind.
In all trance states, the thinking mind is busy labeling and defining reality, whereas the No-Mind state allows the direct perception of reality without conceptual mediation. (That’s a euphemism for “distortion and interference.”) No-Mind is a state in which the heart/mind and the head/mind functions merge, releasing one’s true, clear intelligence. The mark of this union is one’s reliance on the spontaneous guidance of intuition, direct perception and recognition of identity between subject and object. This intuition of identity engenders an unwavering sense of spaciousness, luminosity, and love. It manifests in a person as the revived capacity to be moved by the beauty of a flower, to see the focus, love, and attention of the whole universe in the movement of a fly’s wings, and to care for the life of all beings as one’s own life.
I define therapeutic hypnosis as taking hold of the mental functions we use every day to contract our focus and numb our sense of being (or to maintain the status quo of an already acceptable contracted state) and using those same functions to expand our awareness of being organically alive. Therapeutic hypnosis releases this mental contraction, the nature of which is fear, into an expansiveness, the nature of which is love. As with natural medicine, we distill the very poison that causes an illness in such a way that we produce its antidote.
Using this as our working definition of hypnotherapy, there is no real or solid boundary between the conscious and the unconscious to get in the way. No borderline exists to stop our own mental processes, skillfully used, from destroying the hypnotic state that keeps us boxed up in the world of our words that prevents us from truly seeing the tree. If one understands this definition of therapeutic hypnosis, not as a label, but as a phenomenon being displayed by the mind, it becomes very delightful to do hypnotherapy. We do not have to be concerned about who can be hypnotized and who cannot be hypnotized. We need only develop the sensory acuity to notice how each person does it to themselves, how we do it to ourselves, and then make the kinds of adjustments that this course intends to teach.
To do this kind of work, we as therapists must place primary emphasis on our own daily practice. We must cultivate greater and greater awareness of our own habitual states, of when these states are triggered and what triggers them. And we must notice these states in ourselves with a growing capacity for spacious, kind-hearted acceptance of their presence. Our daily practice must include some form of body-mind coordination through physical activity. It must also include a meditation or contemplation practice, to develop the capacity to detach from the hypnotic turmoil of subconscious thoughts and feelings — the constant “internal gossip” that we all generally accept as a given and therefore rarely challenge in ourselves.
Hypnosis vs. Hypnotherapy
What is the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy?
First of all, it helps to understand that the subconscious mind is like a machine in some respects. Using the techniques of hypnosis, you can deliver an instruction to your subconscious such as “Don’t smoke,” and for a time you will stop smoking. However, we’re not just machines: we’re living beings motivated by needs. Bad habits are “bad” simply because they don’t really meet the need they’re trying to meet. If you give your mind a hypnotic suggestion to stop a bad habit, you may succeed in stopping that behavior for a time, but the pressure of the unanswered need will eventually bring that bad habit back, or create another, equally troublesome problem to take its place.
Hypnotherapy combines the power of hypnosis and hypnotic suggestion with therapeutic understanding. Hypnotherapy helps you connect with your genuine need and design an effective strategy to fulfill that need. Your bad habit or life problem is like a dandelion in your yard. Trying to solve it with hypnosis is like pulling off the top of the weed and leaving its roots in the ground. For a time, you won’t see a dandelion in that spot on your lawn, but as the rain falls and the sun shines, that dandelion will grow back. Hypnotherapy is like digging out the weed by its root so that it will never grow back again.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
"Soul Groups.....Soul Families"
"You May Be in An Abusive Relationship, If....." - Madelaine Watson, MSW, CIM's MySpace Blog |
The Wounded Healer
This immolation...this carving out....does nothing if it does not inspire personal depth, compassion, understanding, and appreciation and joy for every moment in which we live. Their has never been a patient or client whom I did not love, in the sense of human agape love. To be sure, we have irritated each other in one way or another, but that abiding unconditional positive regard to be a therapist who is allowed to be present on another's road of discovery, pain, joy, adaptations, love, family, work, play.....well, it is the most precious gift one can imagine. I see this time as a sacred gift...bringing me to my own sacred....to then share again. The teachings and gifts one receives in my field are almost ineffable....and always received with a profound sense of gratitude.
This video speaks to that known phrase of "wounded healer"...the phrase that, in itself, reminds us Creator works through us...in every moment of that therapeutic alliance.