Mind/Body/Spirit

Researchers from Indiana University in collaboration with Dr Stephen Porges are interested in your perfections of and reactions to the COVID-19 virus.

Where do you feel like a captive of your world? is it that you cannot quit your job? your relationship? your way of being with your parents? Your health? Where does it feel like you have no power? Where do you feel like you can change everything else about your life, but this one thing and you’re stuck with it?

Have you experienced the pleasure of getting so close to your goal that you can almost taste success? Have you tasted the coppery flavor of fear or characterized an unpleasant experience as distasteful? Disappointment can be bitter; revenge can be sweet and babies’ feet are delicious. Getting something you want at the expense of something else can be bittersweet, and romance can add spice to your life. If capturing events and emotions in olfactory and gustatory terms heightens the felt sense of the feelings, why not make the yummiest emotions burst with metaphoric flavor? Take happiness for example. You most likely don’t need a formal definition of happiness since it can be argued that you know it when you feel it. But because happiness can occasionally slip by unrecognized, it’s worth knowing what the Dalai Llama says about this state of pleasure. "I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness." His Holiness explains.

Russell Delman’s dedication to the study of awareness and human potential began in 1969, when he was a college undergraduate. The main influences on his teaching are over 40 years of Zen meditation, his close relationship and training with Moshe Feldenkrais (he has helped to train over 2500 Feldenkrais teachers worldwide), a deep study of somatic psychology including Focusing, and his rich family life. Over the last seven years, his friendship with Gene Gendlin has illuminated his understanding of life and had a strong influence on his teaching. In this conversation, we explore the concept of “Beginner’s Mind” in a down-to-earth way.

My mother’s life was not easy. She dealt with and battled domestic violence, child abuse, suicide, and eventually mental illness. She was affected by and surrounded by the nature of mankind’s cruelty. And yet, she gave my siblings and I her gift of strength. In writing The Shattered Oak, I came to terms with her thought process and experienced her level of bravery and reliance. I finally comprehended her intense strength, courage, and determination by acknowledging her survivor skills and her deep love of faith that provided her comfort that she was never alone.

What can the theory and practice of somatic/body psychotherapy, ecopsychology and Buddhism offer to each other? For the past five years, Kamalamani has shared life and work at the confluence of these fields in her quarterly Bodywise articles for Somatic Psychotherapy Today, an independent international publication representing various modalities in body psychotherapy, somatic psychology, and pre-natal and perinatal psychology. This volume brings together these quarterly Bodywise articles. Kamalamani explores client work in embodied and relational ways, drawing upon her practice of Buddhism. With her characteristically warm, immediate, accessible tone, Kamalamani encourages personal reflection and professional consideration as she offers insights illuminated by traditional Buddhist texts along with personal and clinical anecdotes that range from birth to death, from meditating with character to Reich’s character structures, from trauma and terrorized bodies to diversity, embodied spirituality and pre-natal and peri-natal psychology.

Dr. Christopher Walling, PsyD, C-IAYT shared work he is doing at the Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation during his webinar sponsored by the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy. He presented current research outcomes regarding the delayed onset of Alzheimer's as well as age related cognitive decline and ways to incorporate yoga and meditation to offset the loss of memory and cognition. He shared the work being done with Kirtan Kriya, a 12-minute daily meditation that is yielding significant research results that involve the posterior cingulate gyrus (increases in blood flow that allow the brain to grow new brain cells), and improvements in concentration, focus and attention. You can experience this process by clicking the video link on our homepage.

Dr Kelly Flanagan, therapist, author of Loveable: Embracing What Is Truest About You, So You Can Truly Embrace Your Life, is offering a new, year long, weekly Facebook Live podcast experience to increase readers' experience with the intentionality of practicing growth transformation and acceptance of self. Beginning Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 9 am Chicago time, Dr Flanagan will read a chapter from his book and then talk about his companion book that offers exercises to deepen the practices offered in Loveable and in the digital companion book he wrote.

The Tuning Board is a somatic tool that addresses this problem of a non-resilient ability to return to a fluid vertical nervous system. It is increasingly known and used for this purpose in the SE community as well as among other somatic therapy practitioners. A unique balance board device, the Tuning Board gives the individual the task of relating to a comforting constant motion while the spine is in a state of vertical orientation.

Gravity matters. Not simply to keep us physically grounded here on Earth, but, at a fundamental level, our relationship with gravity affects our lives from start to finish. We start life floating in amniotic fluids. It's easy to assume a sense of buoyancy, free from gravity's impact. Yet, gravity is necessary for our physiological development during the second half of our lives in the womb.