Healing Arts Report
Practices for an Evolving Life
They Don't Tell You How
“You need to love yourself more.” “You shouldn’t feel that way.” “Always put other people first. Don’t be selfish.” The one thing that is missing from all this good advice is telling you HOW to do it. We introduce you to practical tools using your own character traits to support you in creating practical answers to those questions. Read more here.
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Two memoirs tell about times of extreme personal growth in the author’s life. Sunny Side Up is a window into the early 70s when certain young adults were searching for a way to head off society’s path bent on materialism. The Transparent Feather tells of a dying author passing the torch of writing to her new friend cum student.
Mission
You can love yourself and other people as well. At Healing Arts Report we explore fulfilling personal development that at the same time serves to create the shift to a peaceful new world paradigm.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ―C.G. Jung
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What is Education? Part II
What is Education? Part II (continued from Part I) Bennett’s course was designed to educate the students with skills that would make them able to make uncompromising observations and then significantly strengthen themselves to work for the common good, not only for personal gain. He did this through an emphasis on several techniques: Self-Observation, Practical Work, Decision, and Meditation. Self-Observation was achieved through meditative exercises that increased one’s ability to focus on and accept seeing things as they are. These experiments allowed us to struggle with our own attitudes and ...read more
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In 1972-73, I attended a ten-month residential course designed by the English philosopher/physicist, J.G. Bennett. His school allowed about one hundred students, including me, to experience his educational philosophy and learn first-hand by living it how it differed from the education most of us had growing up. According to Bennett, there are two ineffective prevailing ...read more
I am lamenting to my energy medicine friend, “I think I’m developing a frozen shoulder. It hurts especially when I reach up or behind me.” “You have to go for physical therapy.” “I thought so because it seems like everyone my age has a frozen shoulder or a torn rotator cuff. But I’m ...read more
As often happens in counseling, I recently had three clients whose most demanding issue was similar despite their outer circumstances being quite different. What they shared was a relationship to a controlling organization that forced each of them to behave in ways that weren’t consistent with their own values and ideals. They worried about what ...read more
And I Don’t Mean From Dragons By Prince Charming. I Mean From Themselves By Themselves. As often happens in counseling, several new clients had shown up around the same time with similar issues. Each one was in love. They love the guy they describe only in terms of the unpleasant behaviors he acts out—jealousy, ...read more
Soul colleague, Beth Raps, of Raising Clarity, asked me to write a blog post for her site. I include her comments because they provide history and enthusiasm.
BJ Appelgren (also known as Barbara June) offered help in an online forum that was so HELPFUL I asked her permission to offer it on my website: ...read more
First thing I was told in social work intake practice was to always take a history, but when I once again heard a new client sigh deeply then rattle off events from long ago with a tone of both boredom and impatience, I figured there would be time enough to gather it while engaging in ...read more
I’ve often had people tell me a diagnosis they have given themselves, without confirmation from a psychiatrist or psychologist. What I find useful is whether accurate or not, the characteristics of the diagnosis resonate with the client, and the person can describe events or attitudes that are relevant in great detail. Energetically, through our attention ...read more
I’ve surprised myself with a new activity. That’s the part I like about my propensity for becoming distracted. I never would have gone looking for exercising in a swimming pool. Exercising?!! Worse yet, in water?!! I’d even tried it once when visiting a friend. She took me to her gym that had a huge pool ...read more
As a child I thought being a detective would be the most satisfying life, which, strangely enough, did not include the idea of solving horrendous crimes. In my mind, it was the idea of figuring out why people behaved the way they did. And the image I had wasn’t of Sherlock Holmes examining clues with ...read more
Recently an acquaintance wanted to know who I would recommend if they were seeking help. After I named a couple of our peers the person asked her real question, “Who do you go to?” My choices are so personal I can’t imagine that anyone I know would find my favorite advisors useful for them. Nor ...read more
lonely/engaged, inert/unfolding, rigid/adaptable, limiting/expansive, exclusive/inclusive, one answer/many paths, opposing/striving together ...read more
A friend told me a story yesterday about changing her attitude. When her children were still young enough to be living at home, she worked two sixteen-hour shifts at a hospital on weekends. This schedule allowed her to be home during the week with her children while her husband was at his job. She described ...read more
I had a client who at times mentioned wanting to die. This was a person whose attitude toward the possibility of viewing his life differently reminds me most of my young self. Every barrier looked immovable to me. The word ‘challenge’ meant ‘impossible.’ Our family outlook was pessimistic, but also rooted in a history that ...read more
Yesterday I was telling a friend that in my sporadic attempts to clear out the accumulating “stuff” that George Carlin described so well, I gave away a really cute decorative stuffed snowman. I was so proud of myself for sending an item I was fond of to new living quarters that I actually patted myself ...read more
I ignored my childhood hunger for stories for years. So it’s taken me by surprise that late in life I’ve become an enthusiastic listener to them on the radio. It turns out that there are numerous non-fiction story-centered shows on our public radio station. Each organization that sponsors them has a different focus. However, the ...read more
It’s been my practice lately to wash, eat breakfast, and then, before getting into my intentional mental gymnastics of the day, to sit for a short time to meditate, doing nothing. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of trouble sitting quietly. This morning before entering my studio I decided to go outside in the now-settled ...read more
How can a story be so much richer a way to learn than through lectures and grades? Unlike stories that have a single correct answer or moral to them, more compelling stories are akin to the little known literary form called teaching stories. Teaching stories are a tradition from the Middle East and Afghanistan introduced ...read more
As an artist who’s in love with words, I am delighted when I find arising in myself an immediate sense of the spiritual coming from purely visual impact whether I understand the symbolism or not. That’s how I felt the moment I saw the exquisite chapel pictured in this article, built by designer Mary Watts. ...read more
A couple of months ago, my friend Nancy inspired me to start a new raised garden bed by saying she’d used all kinds of garden waste to build up the underlayers. Thinking I could do a nice organic shape, I made the curvy bed without any boards to support the sides. When my Swiss chard ...read more
While listening to an interview of two Buddhist teachers, I was struck by what they spoke of as “the intelligence of anger.” I grew up being taught that we should neither express anger nor react to it. Those solutions seemed too passive. What I observed growing up was that a lot of people didn’t express ...read more
Last week when Beth Raps, author of the Raising Clarity blog asked me to give some guidelines about writing an ethical will I researched others’ ideas about how to do so and found a website called Celebrations of Life. Their motto is “Live your life as you wish to be remembered.” The site touches on ...read more
I was fascinated by the idea of leaving behind an ethical will, sometimes defined as a description of a person’s hopes and dreams and thoughts about contributing to the world. In contrast to the material possessions bestowed in a conventional will, the ethical will challenges us to articulate the values that have meant most to ...read more
A couple of weeks ago when I was thinking about the challenge us humans have regarding change and brain plasticity, I was reminded of Marilyn Ferguson. She was one of the first popular non-scientist authors to write about brain/mind research and the physics of consciousness. From 1975 until 1996, 12 years before her death in ...read more
For those of us living in a small town once surrounded by family farms, this is headline news. No one stays down on the farm. And when I was growing up in Chicago, just on the edge of the city, we were only minutes away from many family farms. By the time I finished high ...read more
Despite decades of research, what I heard as a child is still a popular notion–that once a person has matured the brain can no longer replace cells or change. That idea first came into serious question when it was observed that many individuals who lost the functioning of large parts of their brain due to ...read more
Many patients are looking for supportive therapies because the conventional system treating them is so impersonal and not geared to providing daily support. Patients find themselves isolated from resources that could give them nutritional, meditative, spiritual, and medically integrated or alternative choices. Here are three organizations that provide supplementary or alternative suggestions from respected, experienced, ...read more
(Continued from Part I) After school, I phoned the humane society, asking discreetly if they had anyone who was a specialist in raising baby birds. I purposely didn’t tell her what kind of bird it was, assuming that knowing it was a pigeon wouldn’t create much sympathy. She gave me Lou’s phone number. When I ...read more
I was relieved to find the store easily because I had my pigeon Rusty with me. We were in one of the charming old neighborhoods of Chicago. Most of the commercial buildings were from the 1920s—many of them only one story high and sometimes faced with cream colored sculptural ceramic tiles. Storefront buildings that were ...read more
I often hear people say that they aren’t creative. In general, I simply don’t believe them. Why? Because, for several years, I taught an art/psychology class to people who had not signed up to participate. They didn’t know they were going to have to attend as part of a meditative self-observation course. The course was ...read more
Just saying the word meditation often calls forth an image of exotic monks sitting perfectly still forever. This image is daunting. In our world of constant movement and sound, too many people cannot imagine such emptiness or what it could accomplish. And even those of us who have experienced the peace it brings, just forget ...read more
Life is hard enough for people without purposely discouraging them. I call it emotional abuse when an adult responds to a child’s or another adult’s wish for a creative experience with something like: “You can’t make money doing that!” “What do you want to do that for?” (see thirteen-year-old’s story) “You have no talent for ...read more
I love to find things that make me laugh, and it’s healthier than eating. Humor was the way many of us coped with depression and sensitivity as children. It is a natural antidote. As I aged I learned that there was at least some scientific evidence for what I knew by feel. According to Cliff ...read more
[br]The first time I was aware of a healthy and meaningful shared experience was in high school orchestra. Those conflicted teenage years often had me feeling so sad and alienated that I often felt being in orchestra was saving my life. The students I met there were different from the ones I grew up with ...read more
Sherri came to her appointment unable to stop crying since she broke up with her boyfriend several days before this meeting. She explained her current situation. She was so upset she felt physically ill, wondering if she needed to be hospitalized. “I had it with him. He was always inconsiderate. The relationship was never as ...read more
As I described in the previous blog post, feelings are often complex and sometimes even contradictory. Most of us have already learned many bad habits regarding feelings such as: your feelings don’t count so you may as well not express them. This belief isn’t helpful or healthy because it doesn’t stop you from having feelings. ...read more
My client says, “You mean I’m not evil?” She has a look of surprise that quickly transforms into relief. The release of her tension is palpable. That’s some of the stress she’s been complaining about. We are each tapping on the energy points of our own faces and chests while she’s been telling me about ...read more