Category: Empowered Living
Blog: Ask Isa: Aging and Radical Self-Acceptance
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Question: When it comes to maintaining one’s aging body, where is the line between self-love and self-loathing?
I don’t consider maintaining your body an act of self-loathing unless you are doing it in response to some kind of negative view or thinking. You have to look at the motivation behind what you are calling maintenance.
Blog: Ask Isa: Vulnerability
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Question: You have said that there is power in the vulnerability inherent in major life transitions but I have a hard time understanding how that is possible. Would you explain this more?
Blog: Ask Isa: Overcoming Guilt as a Reaction to the State of the World
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Question: I feel very guilty about the state of the world and my relatively good life. I have so much and others are in such pain and have so little. My response is to over-give in an effort to help, but it never seems to be enough and I just end up feeling worse about myself and about the state of the world. How do you live with the knowledge that so much is wrong in the world and then not do something about it?
Special Announcement: Sacred Stream’s Summer Parenting Series
Sacred Stream is committed to helping build more conscious families. Our Empowered Living programs are all designed to help you understand yourself and others better. This summer, our Summer Parenting series can help you begin at the beginning – to understand birth from a new point of view with Tracking Spirit in the Birth Environment. And help you all the way to the end – by offering you resources to help you through all the years of parenting with the Conscious Parenting workshop.
Article: Relationship as a Vehicle for Consciousness
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Relationship forms the core of our experience as humans. We define ourselves and are defined by the nature of our relating. The Buddhist concept of interdependence affirms that nothing exists independently. Everything exists interdependently. In relationship, we do not and cannot exist independently of one another.
It is through relationship that we come to know ourselves. It is through relating that we hold up a mirror to others for them to come to know themselves. Others do the same for us, providing us with information about ourselves that we could not see without the lens of relating. In this way, relationship provides us with a path of revelation. As we learn more about ourselves, our experience takes on richer meaning.
Blog: Finding Power in Powerlessness
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
The roots of anger, and indeed, the roots of many potentially destructive emotions, lie in powerlessness. Most people would not choose destructive emotions as a way to gain control over circumstances if they could learn to tolerate not having control over the situations around them.
It is important to be gentle with yourself and have self-compassion as you learn to be present with your anger. It is easier to be compassionate with yourself if you can trust your ability to take responsibility for any way you may have harmed yourself or another with anger. In this way, you won’t look for the easy “out,” but instead learn everything you have to learn from the way you have related to your anger. In this way, you can understand the roots of your anger more fully, make amends where needed, and honor the information contained in your anger.
Article: Forgiveness
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
True forgiveness is serious business. To forgive or be forgiven is a complex and stirring process that requires each party to dive deeply inward in order to restore peace. To reach a place of true forgiveness, we must set our sights on the heart of the conflict and begin the necessary work of self-examination required to find and release our attachment to the offense. Only then can we truly be free from our pain.
Podcast: Episode 30: Working with Teens
Depth Hypnosis Practitioners approach working with clients who are teens with respect for the initiatory process the teen is going through. In today’s episode, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. talks about working with teens in this way.
Article: Reflections on Loss at the Winter Solstice
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
We are gathered here this evening of the winter solstice. This is the longest night of the year, and it is honored by many traditions as a sacred and rich time. In Latin, solstice means sun set still and winter solstice is the great stillness before the sun’s strength builds, and days grow longer. It is a time when everything lies dormant in the silent night. At this time of year, the earth reaches into the darkness of the winter night and our experience is driven by that darkness. The days are shorter and shorter as the nights invite us to focus more deeply inward, to reach more and more fully into the deepest recesses of our psyche.
Article: Personal Responsibility: A Buddhist Perspective on Relationship
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Relationship forms the core of our experience as humans. We define ourselves and are defined by the nature of our relating. In Buddhism, there is a concept called “interdependence” which postulates that nothing exists independently. Everything exists interdependently. Applying this concept to relationship implies that we do not and cannot exist independently of one another.
Podcast: Episode 26: Ho’oponopono
Ho’oponopono is a mediation technique found in the Huna tradition, which is generally used in community or family groups to bring peace or harmony to a situation. It is a simple, direct and profound way of working with conflict. In today’s episode, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. discusses Ho’oponopono and its role in our Relationship and the Inner Self workshop as a process for mediating internal conflict.
Podcast: Episode 23: The Sacred Earth
In the West, most people have lost connection with the earth. In this episode, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. describes a way to relate to the earth as sacred.
Podcast: Episode 21: Perspectives on Grief and Loss
In today’s episode, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. discusses some common ways people relate to grief and to loss and some of the effects of these ways of relating. She also discusses the relationship between grief and loss.
Article: The Path of Service and Initiation
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Thank you for inviting me here this evening to speak to you. I have known about your group for many years now, and I have always appreciated the efforts you have made to change the way women and families experience birth in the Bay Area.
I think it might be easy for us in the Bay Area to take the kind of resources and alternatives to birth that each of you provides for granted. But all we need to do is to listen to the news to understand how women’s reproductive rights are under siege both in this country and abroad.
Podcast: Episode 19: Understanding 2012
In today’s episode, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. discusses the 2012 era in terms of the evolution of human consciousness.