Category: Isa Gucciardi
Article: The Unseen Teacher
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Teaching and learning have never been separate for me. As a learner, I have always been keenly aware of the fact that I am being taught from within as I try to master a skill. I can feel the internal teaching change me in a different way than the external learning changes me. I remember being taught how to sight read as I was learning to play the piano. My piano teacher taught me the concept of matching the notes on the page with the notes on the keyboard, but when I read the notes on the page, I could feel an unseen teacher aligning me with the music. I was being taught how to play the piano, but I was also learning a new alignment to the world.
The experience of participating in learning in the external educational environment and receiving teaching from within simultaneously is a phenomenon that has revealed itself to me in different ways bit by bit over time. This experience has many facets to it, but it is always present in every teaching situation regardless of the subject being taught or whether or not I am ‘officially’ the teacher or the student.
Podcast: Episode 82: Spiritual Emergency
On this episode, Laura Chandler talks with Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. about Spiritual Emergency, a type of healing crisis that can occur when a person has an encounter with psychological, emotional, or spiritual states that lie outside their usual ways of organizing experience. There is a spectrum of response that people who have with Spiritual Emergency – from a state of collapse to a state of acceleration and everything in between. Based on her years of clinical practice, Isa offers her perspective on Spiritual Emergency, examining its causes, and offering helpful suggestions on how to navigate it. Isa is the author of two books, and the creator of the spiritual counseling model Depth Hypnosis. She is also the Founding Director of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream.
Article: To Weave a New World: Shamanic and Tantric Practice
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
To enter the world of Tantra is to enter a world beyond the ordinary. Through a series of catalytic processes, the spiritual seeker is drawn along a path that promises nothing less than the revelation of the nature of reality. This is a promise that also lies at the heart of shamanic practice. Yet the ‘reality’ that reveals itself when the shamanic initiate steps beyond the threshold of ordinary awareness is conceived of differently than that of Tantra.
The reality that is the focus of Tantra lies in the understanding of the human mind. The reality that is understood through shamanic practice emerges through an intimate interface with the unseen powers of the natural world. These two realities are not exclusive from one another, but the thrust and focus of these two practices are at least initially different.
Both systems provide stages of development to educate the initiate as they deepen their understanding about the nature of reality. These stages of development constitute the heart of the practices. Let’s explore these wisdom traditions further and deepen our understanding of how these two paths cross and separate in the process of providing an education about the nature of reality.
On the Air: Wellness Wednesday with Andrew DeGroat, ND: Season 3: Episode 20: Thomas Johnson, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., Laura Chandler, and Peirrce P. McCoy
In this episode of Wellness Wednesday, host Andrew DeGroat, ND recognizes National Cancer Prevention Month and National Heart Month and welcomes an amazing line up of special guests, including Thomas Johnson, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., Laura Chandler, and Peirrce P. McCoy.
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.
On the Air: Kindred Media: The New Return to the Great Mother with Isa Gucciardi
In this interview, Kindred Media’s editor, Lisa Reagan, talks with Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. about the seven life initiations needed to move into our full state of wholeness and our full potential for thriving – and what happens when these initiations are broken, interrupted, or culturally unacknowledged. Isa shares her considerable insight into how we are thwarted from completing our seven initiations, and how we can reclaim, and even heal, our innate paths to flourishing.
Podcast: Episode 80: Shamanism and the Inner Experience
On this episode, Laura Chandler highlights an excerpt of a talk given by Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. called Shamanic Paths to Inner Experience. Traditional shamanic cultures have long held an understanding of nature, spirit, and non-ordinary realms of being that contemporary cultures have lost touch with in the larger mainstream of experience. In this fascinating talk, Isa Gucciardi explores some of the ways healers from indigenous traditions have accessed larger aspects of consciousness and the realm of the unseen, for guidance, healing, and insight and speaks about their relevance for us today.
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.
On the Air: Birth Ease Loss Support Podcast: Episode 24: Grief, Loss, and The Great Mother with Isa Gucciardi
In this interview with Birth Ease Loss Support Podcast host Michelle Smith, Isa Gucciardi provides insights from her over twenty-five years of experience in supporting the bereaved. She shares the initiations that women experience throughout their lifetime which include our own birth, puberty, menses, the first sexual experience with another person, giving birth, menopause, and death. Isa explains the Great Mother as a source of wisdom, creative intelligence, and nurturing that can bring comfort and healing into the journey and complexity of grief. Isa and Michelle also discuss holistic ways to support the grief process such as plants, herbal sprays, homeopathic remedies, and meditation.
On the Air: Our Birth Journey: The New Return to the Great Mother
On the Air: Our Birth Journey: The New Return to the Great Mother In this conversation with Our Birth Journey, Isa Gucciardi discusses the topics covered in her newest book, The New Return to the Great Mother, which include understanding birth as an important initiatory moment and understanding the importance of a connection to inner […]
Blog: Reflections on the Fall Equinox
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Around the fall equinox of 2018, as I was doing the fall garden clean up, I realized that a small California Live Oak had planted itself in the center of the garden at the Sacred Stream Center. I was very excited to have the oak choose our garden, but everyone else was worried that the oak would get too big and block out the other plants. I knew there was no way I would interfere with the oak’s plans, as we are visitors to its habitat – not the other way around.
Only 200 years ago, the land on which the Sacred Stream Center sits was covered in California Live Oak. The hills throughout California were dotted with these majestic trees, which can indeed grow very tall and spread their canopies widely. An oak taking up residence in that patch of ground would have had the flowing water of Strawberry Creek nearby and lots of laurel and bay trees keeping it company.
On the Air: The Birth Ease Podcast: Episode 100: The Great Mother with Isa Gucciardi
In celebration of the 100th episode of The Birth Ease Podcast, host Michelle Smith and Isa Gucciardi discuss Isa’s new book, The New Return to the Great Mother: Birth, Initiation, and the Sacred Feminine. Isa shares about her experience of meeting the Great Mother while giving birth to her child and how she became an early advocate for birthing women.
Isa’s passion is to help women understand that birth is one of many biological initiations that she goes through over the course of her life. These initiations include our own birth, puberty, menses, the first sexual experience with another person, giving birth, menopause, and death. Birth is the movement of the seen and the unseen and the Great Mother mediates all creative processes. Isa explains how everyone can connect with and perceive the Great Mother as this source of wisdom, creative intelligence, nurturing, and healing and bring this awareness into everyday life.
Podcast: Episode 74: Isa Gucciardi: The New Return to the Great Mother
On this episode, Laura Chandler is joined by writer, teacher, and co-founder of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, Isa Gucciardi Ph.D., and they are talking about her latest book, The New Return to the Great Mother: Birth, Initiation, and the Sacred Feminine. The book is an updated and expanded version of Isa’s acclaimed book, Return to the Great Mother. In this new edition, Isa offers a fresh perspective on birthing as a sacred initiatory process. She takes the reader on a journey to rediscover the transformative feminine power at the heart of childbirth and teaches methods of tapping into this ancient wellspring of power to create a birthing experience that is deeply intuitive and empowering. The book is filled with inspiring true stories, and helpful tools and exercises for connecting with the wisdom and power of the Great Mother.
Blog: Summer Solstice and the Light of Potential
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
It seems fitting as we approach the longest day of the year that an opening into larger possibilities might be extending toward us. This is particularly true because of another celestial event that is happening in the sky this week. This is the moment in its orbit when the planet Venus is closest to the sun. Venus is the planet of beauty, love and possibility in western astrology, With the potentials of this influence enhanced by its proximity to the sun, we soon may be able to step into a new collective experience, beyond the constrictions of the pandemic.
This new potential has certainly been evident in the sanctuary at the Sacred Stream Center. Thanks to donations from last year’s fund drive, we have been able to begin the restoration of the three stained glass windows that grace the room.
On the Air: Chitheads Podcast: Episode #133: Isa Gucciardi on Birth & Initiations
In the mid-nineties, Isa Gucciardi began developing Depth Hypnosis as she entered into clinical practice. Her studies, both in academia and in the field of cultural and linguistic anthropology, comparative religion, and transpersonal psychology formed the basis of her approach with clients and students. As the body of work that grew out of her clinical practice became larger, she began teaching others so that more people could benefit from the techniques she had developed. In order to accommodate the number of classes that grew out of this process, she co-founded the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, which is now a school for consciousness studies in Berkeley, California, serving hundreds of students each year. Isa teaches and speaks nationally and internationally, and she has published numerous articles, podcast episodes, videos, and the books Return to the Great Mother and Coming to Peace. She maintains a private practice with institutions and individuals in Depth Hypnosis and Coming to Peace processes. Isa speaks five languages and has lived in eleven countries. She is the mother of two children and lives with her partner in San Francisco.