Faced with writing what seemed like an endless number of papers when I was in graduate school many years ago, I stumbled across a method for overcoming procrastination. Much more recently, in the November-December 2013 issue of The Psychotherapy Networker I came across an article that grounded my method in physiology. Eureka! I cried. (Well, […]
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Group Drama Therapy Session led by new MA in Psychology & Counseling student Sarvenaz Moshfegh Asiedu on April 1, 2014… “Coming from an expressive therapy program into a counseling psychology program, I am reminded how much I need to connect with people through embodied play. When we engage the body, we engage a […]
Art as a Daily Practice: a reflection by MA in Psychology & Clinical Mental Health Counseling student Jacqueline Overstreet: “I have almost hit the three-month mark and I am almost a quarter of the way through the biggest artistic commitment I have taken on so far in my life. On Monday, January 13, 2014, I […]
For artists’ whose vocation is the creation of works of art as well as persons who use artmaking as a vehicle for self expression, keeping a practice going can be a daunting task. There are times when the solitude of the darkroom is a balm for the pressures that come from living in the world. […]
Even though you can’t fail at meditating, meditating is all about failure. What I mean is this: Since you have this goal of focusing on the breath (or the sense of the whole body or whatever you’ve chosen) and since focused attention is, as the psychologist Steven Stosny says, “the most easily exhaustible and […]
Last October, my Jungian Seminar in New Orleans coincided with Halloween. So you can imagine the metaphysical and celebratory possibilities there were in NOLA at that time. Among the offerings was the Voodoo Music Festival with rock music, art, and of course food! Our hotel, the Best Western in Metairie hosted the Tattoo VooDoo Expo. I […]
These first images were produced for the course Trauma and Addiction. The first panel represents trauma. The images convey the different causes of trauma, childhood abuse, natural disasters, violence, war. The idea that I want to convey is that trauma shatters the inner world. Reality looks like a broken mirror, the images don’t fit, […]
As it turns out, if you meditate long enough the devils of self-criticism and fear may decide to make an appearance. In my reading about meditation I had come across allusions to this but I didn’t pay attention, in part because I couldn’t imagine it. Meditation had either offered me some gifts of clarity […]
If mindfulness was last year’s most popular phrase in psychology and self-help, this year’s word is bound to be neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity means that the brain and nervous system can change. Of course psychotherapists have always believed this, else what have we been doing all these years. Meditation teachers have known this, as have experienced members […]
On a recent trip to California, I headed to Santa Barbara to visit one of my favorite art supply stores, Art Essentials, and to see the exhibit of photographer John Divola at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Meandering down State Street I encountered four pianos, each a block apart, positioned on the sidewalk near […]