Category: Blog
Blog: Buddhist Psychology: A Path to Wholeness
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
In a world that often feels fragmented and fast-paced, the idea of wholeness can seem elusive. We may feel disconnected from ourselves, others, or the greater rhythms of life. Buddhist psychology, as integrated into Depth Hypnosis, offers a transformative perspective: wholeness is not something we achieve—it is something we rediscover within ourselves.
Unlike many modern psychological frameworks that focus on fixing problems or eliminating symptoms, Buddhist psychology centers on the idea that we are already whole. Through Depth Hypnosis, this wisdom becomes a practical tool for helping individuals embrace every part of themselves, even those parts they might avoid or deny, fostering deep integration and healing.
Blog: A Practical Guide to the Preparation and Integration of Plant Medicine
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Plant medicine holds profound potential to catalyze healing, transformation, and spiritual growth. However, its benefits are most fully realized when approached with thoughtful preparation and intentional integration. These two phases—before and after the experience—are as vital as the journey itself, shaping how we absorb the teachings of the plants and integrate them into our lives.
Blog: Healing with Depth Hypnosis Through Prenatal Regression
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
When people think of their personal history, they often start with memories from early childhood. However, the Depth Hypnosis model invites us to explore even earlier experiences—those that occurred before we were born. Prenatal regression is a profound process within Depth Hypnosis that allows individuals to access and address experiences from their time in the womb. This exploration offers unique insights into how early energetic, emotional, and even physical imprints shape our lives and can help resolve long-standing issues at their root.
Blog: Healing with Depth Hypnosis Through Past Life Regression
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Past life regression is one of the most intriguing and transformative aspects of Depth Hypnosis. While the concept of past lives may challenge conventional understandings of personal history, many who explore this process discover profound insights and healing by revisiting lifetimes beyond the one they currently inhabit. Whether or not someone fully embraces the idea of reincarnation, past life regression offers a symbolic and therapeutic framework for addressing unresolved issues and gaining clarity on recurring patterns in this life.
Blog: Healing with Depth Hypnosis Through Age Regression
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Life leaves its marks on us in countless ways. Some of these marks are cherished memories, while others are the seeds of unresolved pain that shape our behaviors and beliefs. Age regression in Depth Hypnosis is a transformative process that enables individuals to revisit earlier stages of their current life to uncover and heal the origins of these deeply ingrained challenges. By gently guiding clients back to these pivotal moments, this method facilitates the release of emotional burdens and fosters profound self-understanding and renewal.
Blog: Insights Gained on the Path of Service as a Depth Hypnosis Practitioner
By Sasha Star Goclowski
I have gained many insights, as well as a sophisticated form of mind-body wisdom around the nature of human consciousness and healing from facilitating Depth Hypnosis sessions. I receive this wisdom through a felt sense in my body, through the voices and energetics and visual guidance of my guides, and through my clients as they speak and heal in real time as I bear witness.
In the process of practicing Depth Hypnosis I have received the following insights:
• We heal together.
• We heal through facilitating and holding others in their healing.
• We hurt in relationship, and so we heal in relationship too.
Blog: New Beginnings, New Potentials at the Spring Equinox
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Since December’s winter solstice season, when the days were shortest and the nights the longest of the year, the days have been growing steadily longer and the nights shorter. Now, at the time of the spring equinox, they are of equal length. The spring equinox is always a time of renewal and rebirth as the earth reaches this point in its relationship to the sun.
In the Sacred Stream Center garden, there is new growth – and new members of the plant community. We have several new pitcher sage plants which are known for their powerful healing capacities in restoring health and well-being. Their beautiful purple flowers are always at the height of their bloom during the spring equinox season. This year, we celebrate their coming as we celebrate the renewal of the year along with the new moon which dawns just after the equinox on March 20.
Blog: Plant Medicine: Moving Between Worlds
By Sebastian Segovia
In 2005 I turned eighteen. My parents were getting divorced. We were about to lose our house with the bank and I was finishing high school and starting university. I was beginning to experiment with alcohol and recreational drugs. That is when my mom decided to take me to an Ayahuasca ceremony as my birthday present. This was the moment my world open to the sacred world of plant medicine.
I first studied plant medicine with the Kofan tribe of Putumayo, in Colombia. We have had an ancient tradition of plant medicine in our country for centuries, and this indigenous community was the first to share ayahuasca openly with non-native people, long before the plant became mainstream. Taita Querubín Queta Alvarado—108 years old now—was the first shaman (“Taita” in Spanish) I received yagé (ayahuasca) from. His lineage made it possible for ayahuasca to travel all over the world back then, and it was from his hands that this medicine touched my heart for the very first time.
Blog: Sacred Space on the Winter Solstice
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
One thing I do know is that the building has held sacred space for all of us during this complex time of change, dissolution and challenge. As I have continued to teach out of the sanctuary on Zoom, I have felt the power of this sacred space infusing the teachings and supporting students all around the world. In some ways, its role as a refuge and a reminder of the sacred has expanded. As I see all the notices for new condo developments about to rise just blocks away, I feel even more committed to safeguarding and cultivating the peace and heart of the land here.
With so many of the ways we find meaning challenged over the last few years, the importance of cultivating and understanding what is truly sacred to us has been highlighted. Everyone finds meaning in their own ways and everyone encounters the sacred on their own terms. The task is to seek that meaning and that encounter. Even though this is largely an internal exploration, we need reminders, touchstones, in the everyday world to point us inward. Churches and temples provide this.
Blog: Healing Post-War Anxiety with Applied Shamanic Practice
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
A young man named Jared had recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He was having trouble sleeping and felt anxious most of the time. Jared didn’t like talking about his experience overseas. He felt embarrassed that he was having such a hard time reintegrating into civilian life.
In working with him, I learned that Jared had some problems with anxiety before going to the Middle East, but they had gotten much worse since his return. He had tried a series of medications, but they made him feel “weird,” so he didn’t like taking them. The anxiety made it hard for him to focus. I suggested starting off with a more traditional approach.
Blog: The Lessons of the Equinox, the Earth, and the Sun
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
The fall equinox this year occurs just before the new moon, marking the end of a cycle of growth as the agricultural growing season comes to an end. This year, the growing season ends just as the new moon begins a new cycle of growth. The equinox, of course, is the moment in the year when the day is as long as the night. Just as the moon’s influence begins to expand toward fullness, the sun’s influence wanes as the days become shorter. The sun continues on its path toward the winter solstice, the shortest day.
The dance between the moon and the sun at this fall equinox is one of growth and completion, increase and decrease, promise and reflection. The complexity of this dance is something we must all learn to hold in our awareness if we are to understand what the Earth might be trying to teach us through the complexity of this moment. We are challenged to understand the duality each celestial sphere expresses in relation to the other as we seek to find the moment of balance between them.
Blog: The Light of the Summer Solstice
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
The sun is strong in the garden now, as it is everywhere else. It remains directly overhead for most of the day, leaving the stained-glass windows in the sanctuary to sparkle their own colors without the sun’s influence. From the depth of the blue, to the heat of the sun, everything is intense right now. The COVID surge here in the Bay Area is at its highest since the pandemic began. The news from Ukraine tells us that the fighting is at its fiercest since the Russians began bombarding. Political polarization is at fever pitch over the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court. For a time known for the vividness of the light that comes with the longest day of the year, this year’s summer solstice seems to be providing us with more intensity than usual.
Blog: The Shamanic Journey and Metaphor
By Clementine Moss
I understand metaphor. I have been blissfully falling into the written word since See Spot Run or something similar. When I learned to read, I remember the rising images from the page, pictures becoming alive because of what the words were spelling out.
When I learned to journey, I began to understand the symbols of my inner world.When we recognize that our stories are not our full identity, then we can release them from ruling us, along with the patterns and behaviors that weight them. I found Eastern meditation practices and discovered my identity beneath stories. I found Shamanism and learned to sneak up behind the stories, unravel them in a way that allows me to clear my perception and experience life, each moment, more fully.
Blog: Thoughts at the Spring Equinox
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
As I was untangling the new prayer flags to put up at the Sacred Stream Center for Losar, the Tibetan new year, I realized that the spring equinox this year falls right between the Tibetan new year in early March and the Khmer new year in mid-April.
Both of these celebrations were originally harvest celebrations in Tibet and Cambodia. They were also a time when people made offerings and affirmed their connections to the natural world and its cycles of time.
Within the rhythm of nature’s time, the spring equinox is the moment when the nights and the days are of equal length. It is a time when the sun rises directly due east and sets directly due west. It is the time of the year when the sun rises most quickly and sets most quickly.
Blog: Reflections on the Winter Solstice
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
As the nights have been growing longer as we approach the winter solstice, I have been reflecting on the relationship between light and darkness from a new perspective. We often think of light and dark as being opposite of one another. In some cases that is true. From one point of view, the light of day is the opposite of the dark of night. But from another vantage point, dark and light are moments of the same cycle of change. That cycle of change determines our experience of reality in utterly fundamental ways. The sun rising and setting is basic to our experience on earth. Yet, we don’t often think about the fact that the sun rising and setting dictates when and how we do almost everything we do. We may not often think about how our lives might be structured without this baseline rhythm the play of light and dark creates.