Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life

“Being a Creator, at its deepest level, means that you create your life. Being a Creator, at its deepest level, means that your life is your work of art.”
– Christine Kane

This past Sunday I crafted an almost perfect day. A quiet morning with a period of brief meditation and journaling, a long winter walk in the afternoon followed by a good book before a blazing fire, a meal of homemade aromatic stew and delicious healthy muffins, and a soul nourishing visit with a very special friend. Nothing extraordinary, just a whole lot of wonderful ordinary thoughtfully placed upon my canvas – a work of art…

Read Full Post »

Youtube offers a presentation delivered by Marsha Linehan at the Awakening To Mindfulness conference on mindfulness and DBT skills. You can watch the remainder of the lecture by following the associated links following the first segment of the lecture.

There is also a wonderful online resource for developing DBT skills here

Read Full Post »

Youtube offers a presentation delivered by Marsha Linehan at the Awakening To Mindfulness conference on mindfulness and DBT skills. You can watch the remainder of the lecture by following the associated links following the first segment of the lecture.

There is also a wonderful online resource for developing DBT skills here

Read Full Post »

Following is a list of crisis line numbers that can be useful to have on hand if you or someone you care about is in crisis.

National Crisis Helpline:

800-999-9999

National Suicide Prevention Hotline:

800-273-TALK

Calling a warm line

1-800-314-2680

Mental Health Crisis Line:

800-222-8220

Grief Recovery Helpline:

800-445-4808

Crisis Hotline for the Physically & Mentally Challenged

800-426-4263

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
1-800-203-1234

Cocaine Anonymous (CA)
1-800-347-8998

Narcotics Anonymous (NA)
1-800-627-3543

Read Full Post »

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7967001&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Nick Unger – CBHC Annual Meeting from Campaign for Better Health Care on Vimeo.

Above is a powerful 14 minute speech delivered by Nick Unger on the health care reform bill. He asks a question that each and every one of us needs to answer, “what kind of country do we want to be?” You can read a transcript of the speech at the Universal Health Care Action Network website.

Read Full Post »

In The Five Stages of the Soul, author and executive director of the Brookdale Center on Aging at Hunter College, Harry Moody, describes an exercise he periodically asks his students to complete. First, he requests that students compile a list of the significant problems that currently confront them. Next, students are asked to number the problems in order of severity, and then to read each problem while asking themselves the following questions as they move through the list:

“Is this problem really as dire as I imagine it to be? What are its potential good points? What is the worse that can happen to me? What is the best?

How can I use this problem, these feelings of dejection or loss or futility, to understand myself better? What are these feelings really telling me? Suppose I were to think of this problem as a messenger standing at my front door with a letter. What does the letter tell me about my life, my needs, my possible course of action?

Think back to previous similar problems. Now that the pain and suffering associated with them is past, would you avoid the suffering that they brought if you knew you would be deprived of the insights such experiences provided? If so, why? Or why not?

What hidden messages are there in this for me to learn from? How can I take the suffering that life has handed me and use it as a tool for spiritual growth?…”

These are extremely helpful questions to ask when one is attempting to gain perspective, harvest experience, and formulate a course of action.

Read Full Post »

In The Five Stages of the Soul, author and executive director of the Brookdale Center on Aging at Hunter College, Harry Moody, describes an exercise he periodically asks his students to complete. First, he requests that students compile a list of the significant problems that currently confront them. Next, students are asked to number the problems in order of severity, and then to read each problem while asking themselves the following questions as they move through the list:

“Is this problem really as dire as I imagine it to be? What are its potential good points? What is the worse that can happen to me? What is the best?

How can I use this problem, these feelings of dejection or loss or futility, to understand myself better? What are these feelings really telling me? Suppose I were to think of this problem as a messenger standing at my front door with a letter. What does the letter tell me about my life, my needs, my possible course of action?

Think back to previous similar problems. Now that the pain and suffering associated with them is past, would you avoid the suffering that they brought if you knew you would be deprived of the insights such experiences provided? If so, why? Or why not?

What hidden messages are there in this for me to learn from? How can I take the suffering that life has handed me and use it as a tool for spiritual growth?…”

These are extremely helpful questions to ask when one is attempting to gain perspective, harvest experience, and formulate a course of action.

Read Full Post »

I watched one of my very favorite movies this weekend, Harold and Maude, which was released in the early seventies. I try and watch it at least once a decade and always with friends.

Harold is a depressed and death obsessed adolescent who meets and falls in love with Maude, an elderly free spirit who is about to turn eighty and will teach him a tremendous amount about life and love and the wonder of it all. Among the many junkets of wisdom she shares with Harold is, “A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. *Reach* out. Take a *chance*. Get *hurt* even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.”

If you’re willing to overlook the ending, and travel lightly with the two zany main characters, then it’s a very special movie. It reminds us that life is to be savored at any and every age and that as Betty Friedan asserts, “Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”

Read Full Post »

http://www.youtube.com/v/BHekCJdQUHE&hl=en_US&fs=1&

I watched one of my very favorite movies this weekend, Harold and Maude, which was released in the early seventies. I try and watch it at least once a decade and always with friends.

Harold is a depressed and death obsessed adolescent who meets and falls in love with Maude, an elderly free spirit who is about to turn eighty and will teach him a tremendous amount about life and love and the wonder of it all. Among the many junkets of wisdom she shares with Harold is, “A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. *Reach* out. Take a *chance*. Get *hurt* even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.”

If you’re willing to overlook the ending and travel lightly with the two zany main characters then it’s a very special movie. It reminds us that life is to be savored at any and every age and that as Betty Friedan asserts, “Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”

Read Full Post »

According to a study conducted at the University of Warwick and published in “Health Economics, Policy and Law,” psychotherapy may be significantly more effective at fostering happiness and well being than either getting a raise or winning the lottery.

Study author, Chris Boyd wrote, “Often the importance of money for improving our well-being and bringing greater happiness is vastly over-valued in our societies…The benefits of having good mental health, on the other hand, are often not fully appreciated and people do not realize the powerful effect that psychological therapy, such as non-directive counseling, can have on improving our well-being.”

I’m reminded here of psychologist and author, David Myers observation that “We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger.”

Study after study concludes that material wealth is not correlated with emotional, physical or spiritual health, and retail therapy offers far less in terms of satisfaction and well-being than psychotherapy. Even a poll conducted by the Roper organization, commissioned by Jean Chatzky, financial editor of the Today show and columnist for Money magazine in 2003, concluded that personal happiness is not connected to how much money you have to spend. If you want to be happy, your best bet is to invest in your relationships and the health of your mind, body, and spirit rather than in gold, stocks, bonds, or your bank account.

Read Full Post »