Category: Blog
Blog: Listening to the Sacred Earth
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
If we listen, the earth has much to tell us. When humans lived closer to the earth, they understood that great wisdom was held in the trees, the plants, the rocks and the sea. They communicated with the earth, and learned ways of listening to the wisdom she had to offer. For example, the shaman of a tribe is often described as talking to the plants to learn the nature of their medicine. Ways of gathering this kind wisdom are still preserved by many indigenous cultures. The vision quest and the shamanic journey are just two examples of these processes that are accessible to us today.
Blog: Healing Your Mind by Dropping into Your Heart
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Sometimes people come into my office struggling with a problem, and whenever they try to address it, they find themselves stuck in “mind loops.” Mind loops are characterized by sequences of labyrinthine reasoning containing dead ends and knotted thoughts that fold back on themselves without producing the hoped-for clarity.
People who experience this type of mental confusion are usually viewed as having a high level of intellectual intelligence, and tend to work in professions that require the use of their intellect. These people are able to generate logic sequences that make them valuable contributors at work. This capacity, however, can often send the same people into mental traps when they try to apply these logic sequences to experiences that do not necessarily respond to logic.
Blog: Repatterning Life Transitions and Initiations
By Isa Gucciardi PhD
Within each of our lives, we have important moments of transition, which we experience in our bodies, that can be understood as initiations into a new way of being. Birth, death, puberty, the sexual encounter, becoming a parent, and for women menstruation, menopause, and giving birth, are all potent initiations we experience in our lifetimes. Each of these initiations holds powerful information and the possibility of transforming long held patterns that no longer serve us.
Blog: Safeguarding Birth, Invoking the Sacred
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
From the moment we are born until the moment we die, women are constantly engaged in the processes of creation, creativity, and change. For much of our lives, through our monthly cycles, our bodies create forms to prepare to receive new life, and if that new life is not received, a process of destruction of those forms takes place.
When we give birth, in the process of becoming a mother, our old sense of self as an independent being falls away, and, in defining ourselves, we include the needs of another in a very real and intimate way. As a woman goes into labor, however, the new definition of self as a mother who includes the identity of her child as part of her own self-identity has not quite gelled, and the old definition of self as a single, unitary being is challenged. As this challenge occurs, the power that was binding together the old form – the independent woman – is released. This power is then available to create the new form – the mother.
Blog: Conscious Parenting Part 6: Learning from Our Triggers
By Joanna Adler, Psy.D.
Editor’s note: Joanna Adler, Psy.D. is a certified Depth Hypnosis Practitioner and licensed clinical psychologist. Her two-day workshop on Conscious Parenting will be at The Bodhi Center in Bainbridge Island, WA on the weekend of April 28-29.
Life throws so many difficult things at us as parents. It’s important to find enough time to support ourselves so that we can be resilient and offer that same support to our children. We know this, but sometimes it can feel like yet another thing to do. The good news is that there are practices we can cultivate for when we encounter difficulty in our relationships with our children, practices that allow us to get out of the way and offer the child what is truly needed in that moment.
Blog: Conscious Parenting Part 5: Interview with Joanna Adler, Psy.D.
Editors’ Note: We’re delighted to publish this interview with Joanna Adler instructor of the Conscious Parenting workshop that will be offered at The Bodhi Center, Bainbridge Island, WA on April 28 and 29. Joanna Adler is a licensed clinical psychologist and certified Depth Hypnosis Practitioner. She has studied extensively in the fields of Depth Hypnosis, Buddhist Psychology, Shamanism, and Energy Medicine at the Foundation of the Sacred Stream. We asked Joanna about how she helps people with the dizzying array of choices parents face on a regular basis, what the word “discipline” means to her, and what interests her most in her work with families.
Q. How do you work with parents that may be struggling with knowing how to best support their children when there are so many choices, so many potential ways to respond in a given situation?
Blog: Conscious Parenting Part 4: Cultural Context
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
In the first post in this series on conscious parenting, I touched upon how important it is for us, as parents, to know what we value, because our values become the structures within which our children learn to express themselves. Then I discussed how we can foster the authentic expression of our children’s highest potential and how to get out of the way of this expression. Because the cultural context can have a significant influence on our children’s expression, it is also important for parents to determine how well this context is contributing to our children’s highest potential. The cultural context, for the purposes of this post, consists of the values and priorities of the society in which you live.
If you have values that are different from the surrounding society, it will be even more important for you to be clear about what your own values and priorities are, and communicate them clearly to your children. If you don’t, your children may absorb the values of those around them by default, and that may put you at odds with your children.
Blog: Conscious Parenting Part 3: Getting out of the Way
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
The last post in this series on Conscious Parenting addressed how to recognize our children’s highest potential and why it is important to move out of the way of its expression. The question we were left with was, “How do I get out of the way?” One of the best ways to get out of the way is to look at your attachments to having your child be a particular way. Those attachments are probably a function of something that did not work in your own childhood.
Blog: Conscious Parenting Part 2: Children’s Highest Potential
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
If I had to define one goal that we, as parents, must do our best to attain, it would be to protect and cultivate our children’s highest potential in the world. Naturally, every child’s highest potential has its own expression. Every child has a set of gifts that she brings into the world that resonate with the child’s deepest calling. You will find that I use the phrase “highest potential” interchangeably here with “a child’s deepest calling,” “the child’s most authentic expression,” and “the child’s gifts,” because each of these offers a different view and definition that points to the complexity of the deepest aspects of our children.
But how do we support our children’s authentic expression in the world?
Blog: Conscious Parenting Part 1: Six Essential Questions for Parents
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
I am a parent of two children, and I have been counseling and teaching families and individuals for more than twenty years. Over the course of the last ten years, I have seen many of the central issues around parenting shift drastically, mainly due to the more central role that technology now plays in the family.
The challenges that parents face today in raising children are very different from the challenges their parents faced. Not only do parents have to figure out how to function on less sleep, they also have to determine the role they want technology to play in their children’s lives. As parents find themselves with less time than they would like to be able to devote to parenting, they have to come up with clear strategies for enrichment, discipline, and many other important issues. This is difficult when people find themselves trying to navigate the issues around work-life balance, and face down issues such as self-doubt and guilt about the choices they must make.
Blog: Mindful Leadership Part 2: Finding the Leader Within
An Interview with Hal Adler
Editors’ note: Hal Adler is a certified Depth Hypnosis Practitioner and Executive Coach. His daylong workshop on Mindful Leadership will be at the Sacred Stream Center on February 3. In this second installment of a two-part post on Mindful Leadership, we talk to Hal a bit more about his coaching work and the upcoming course.
Blog: Mindful Leadership Part 1: Leading with Intention
By Hal Adler
Editor’s note: Hal Adler is a certified Depth Hypnosis Practitioner and Executive Coach. His daylong workshop on Mindful Leadership will be at the Sacred Stream Center on February 3. In this first installment of a two-part post on Mindful Leadership, Hal addresses the relevance of the self-transformation models of Depth Hypnosis and Applied Shamanic practice to people who lead others.
When people decide they want to grow and develop themselves in their careers, the skills they usually start building first tend to be externally focused. People might want to be hirable in new ways or in new industries, and they also may want to help more and be of service more. Eventually, what people come up against isn’t the challenge of the work they are doing but the challenge of themselves:
Blog: A New Year’s Resolution: Manifesting a Life You’ll Love
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
One of the biggest hurdles in manifesting what you want in your life is creating clear intentions. When it comes to setting goals, many people have a conscious yes operating along with an unconscious no. I often find this to be true of people who say they want to be in a relationship, but cannot seem to manifest one. These people spend lots of time and money on self-help books, dating services, even therapy, but still find themselves alone.
Blog: Why Homeopathy?
By Corey Weinstein, MD
Editors’ note: This guest post is by Corey Weinstein, MD, a recently retired physician and leading practitioner of homeopathy in the SF Bay Area with 42 years of homeopathic medical practice. Corey will be teaching Homeopathy in the Home, a course on how to use homeopathic remedies effectively and safely for common conditions, on February 7. The course will be offered in-person in San Francisco and as a live conference call. Following is his account of how he was drawn to the field of homeopathy.
I began to study homeopathy because of love. In 1970 I had just finished by internship at San Francisco General Hospital, where I had helped organize a free medical clinic for poor people in the neighborhood.
Blog: Lori Nairne and Homeopathy Part 2: Teachings
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Sacred Stream Board Member and instructor, Lori Nairne, who died last summer, has been in our hearts and on our minds since. Lori was our physician and teacher and as a tribute to her, I would like to share some of her teachings, and also, some teachings from one of the important influences in her life, Samuel Hahnemann.
Hahnemann was trained as a physician in Germany and Austria in the late 1700s, but he abandoned his practice because he thought many of the medical practices of his day (like bloodletting) did not actually help people.