A Soulful Life

Frank, Mill Valley, 2013

The word used for soul in Ancient Greek is psyche, the word found in our words psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy. Imagine if we restored the original sense of soul to those fields, how we might deepen them and make the necessary connections between psychology and spirituality. If we neglect our souls, we lose both our humanity and our individuality and risk becoming more like our machines and more absorbed into a crowd mentality. 

I invite you to follow the example of the great teacher of soul, Socrates, and do something concrete to introduce soul into your life. Socrates writes about the Greek therapeia, which means either "care" or "service." He says that it's like the care you'd give a horse on a farm: you feed it, brush it down, exercise it, give it water, and clean its stall. That's the model for therapy of the soul. It's an everyday attention to specific needs, not a cure or repair after things have fallen apart. Its goal is not to make life problem-free, but to give ordinary life the depth and value that come with soulfulness. 

Distinguishing Soul from Spirit
Spirit directs your attention to the cosmos and the planet, to huge ideas and vast adventures, to prayer and meditation and other spiritual practices, to a worldview and philosophy of life. Spirit expands your heart and mind, gives you vision and courage, and eventually leaves you with a strong sense of meaning and purpose. 

Soul is more intimate, deep, and concrete. You care for your soul by keeping up your house, learning how to cook, playing sports or games, being around children, getting to know and love the region where you live. Soul allows you to become attached to the world, which is a kind of love. When the soul stirs, you feel things, both love and anger, and you have strong desires and even fears. You live life fully, instead of skirting it with intellectualism or excessive worries. 

There are certain things that the soul needs: a sense of home, deep friendship and casual friendliness, a poetic and metaphorical appreciation for words and images, attention to night dreams, the fine arts, an intimate relationship with the natural world, acquaintance with animals, memory in the form of storytelling or keeping old buildings and objects that have meaning. We can do many things to care for the soul such as reconciling our sexuality and spirituality, caring for children, finding work that we love, incorporating play and fun in everything we do, dealing effectively with loss and failure and inadequacies. The shadow, or the unconscious part of our personality that we remain ignorant to, is an important aspect of the soul. 

How do you make a soulful life for yourself? 
1. Serve the soul rather than the surface needs of life. If your soul is suffering neglect, you will have symptoms. You may feel depressed and your relationships may be hurting. You may notice you've been buying a lot of stuff lately. You may have neck or stomach pain. Know the difference between deeply caring for your soul and temporarily solving problems. Instead of immediately looking for routes to happiness, give time to exploring the needs of the soul to be sad. 

2. Your symptoms are the raw material for your soul-making. Look closely at your emotional struggles, diet, body pains, mindless habits to see what your soul is missing. Symptoms are painful and in need of tending and refining, but they contain the essence of what you are looking for. For example, if you drink too much, what is your soul looking for in the alcohol? If you eat too much, what part of your soul is in need of nourishing? Think poetically and resist responding on a surface level. 

3. Take time for reflection. Don't be quick to make decisions and go into action. In my opinion, the most important element of a soulful life is time alone in silence. It can be in the shower, in your car, washing the dishes, on a walk, in meditation. What is going on inside of you? Without the din of constant stimulation, what do you hear? What is your body trying to communicate to you? Often, you will intuitively know the answers to these questions, but find that you have been avoiding them. 

In Practice
Every day you have choices. You can do things that wound your soul, like being dominated by the work ethic or compulsively seeking more money, recognition, and possessions, or you can be around people who give you pleasure and do things that satisfy a desire deep inside you. Find those activities and resources that will nourish your soul: make/build/design/create, experience nature, bring art into your life, write down your dreams, journal, be physical, listen to music, play, tend your home, tune into animals, find community, pursue curiosity/learning, garden, cultivate generosity, get out of your routine, do new things, explore, spend time on your own... 

The essence of spiritual experience is our recognition of the infinite mysteries that abound in life like those surrounding love, death, illness, meaning, work, and home. Respect for the mysterious is, to me, the heart of spirituality. Have fun knowing that you don't know what's going to happen to you, that you can't possibly know what's going to happen to you. It's not your job to know! Rather, what's important is to keep investing in a soulful life and have faith that whatever does happen, that YOU WILL BE OK. 

Make this soul care a way of life, and you may discover what the Greeks called eudaimonia -- a good sprit, or, in the deepest sense, happiness. 

Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

Getting Past Your Past With EMDR

Mount Tamalpais, CA

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

The human body possesses an enormous, astonishing, and persistent capacity to heal itself. When you cut your hand, this process will automatically kick into gear. Just as the body is not able to heal a wound when there is debris in it, the brain often cannot process a disturbing experience and becomes like a blocked wound. In order for it to heal, we must clean it so the body can do its job.

EMDR unlocks what is natural within each of us. It is our innate healing process that has been blocked and can be unblocked with EMDR. There is an inherent wisdom within each person that is already whole, it is just obscured by negative images, feelings, and beliefs. Our job as therapists is to help clear the blockages so that our clients can have access to their natural states of well-being and emotional balance. 

Major traumas, such as war, assaults, rape, abuse, natural disasters, accidents, and loss can understandably cause disruption and blockages. However, a person does not have to undergo an overtly distressing event for it to affect them. An accumulation of smaller “everyday” or less pronounced events can still be traumatic: conflict in relationships, insecurities, humiliations at a tender age, work dissatisfaction, having a child, financial difficulties, racial / sexual discrimination, verbal abuse, social media, that "look" your Dad gives you. In addition to specific upsetting memories, EMDR can help you overcome persistent negative beliefs like, "I don't belong," "I have to be perfect," or "I'm worthless." 

In EMDR, we activate the brain processing  systems by asking you to focus on a "target" related to the trauma, such as a memory with the image, emotions, body sensations, and negative beliefs associated with it. Through this target we are attempting to stimulate the memory network where the trauma is stored. After stimulating the memory network, we add alternating eye movements ("follow my fingers with your eyes to the left, right, left, right") or other bilateral stimulation (gently tapping on your right knee, left knee, right knee, left knee ; listening to a sound in your right ear, left ear, right ear, left ear). Bilateral stimulation activates accelerated information processing, a multidimensional free association of thoughts, feelings, and sensations that enables you to tap into insight and understanding in a previously inaccessible way. Forgotten memories, fragments of images, beliefs, seemingly random connections, body sensations pass through rapidly. Everyone has his or her own unique processing style. 

Each set further unlocks and unblocks distressing information and accelerates it along a path toward natural healing. The emotional charge is reduced or eliminated and there is an objective understanding of the event: "It's over," "This happened to me and it wasn't my fault," "Now it feels like I'm reading about it in a newspaper." EMDR helps get you in touch with a felt sense of freedom and truth. 

How does it work?

In truth, no one knows how any form of psychotherapy works neurobiologically or in the brain. EMDR seems to have a direct effect on the way that the brain processes information. The process of bilateral stimulation is similar to what occurs naturally during dreaming or REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. It is during REM sleep, which is characterized by "rapid, jerky, and binocularly symmetrical eye movements," that the brain's memory systems are programmed. We can't possibly store all of the information we receive in a day, so REM discards, filters, and files data into our memory banks. Therefore, when we re-enact this process with bilateral stimulation, we are going directly to the source. 

EMDR therapy is an eight-phase treatment. Bilateral stimulation is used during one part of the treatment. The therapy involves attention to three time periods:  the past, present, and future. Focus is given to past disturbing memories and related events. Also, it is given to current situations that cause distress, and to developing the skills and attitudes needed for positive future actions.

The Proof?

Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years. More than thirty positive controlled outcome studies have been conducted on EMDR therapy. Some of the studies show that 84%-90% of single-trauma victims no longer have post-traumatic stress disorder after only three 90-minute sessions. Another study, funded by the HMO Kaiser Permanente, found that 100% of the single-trauma victims and 77% of multiple trauma victims no longer were diagnosed with PTSD after only six 50-minute sessions. In another study, 77% of combat veterans were free of PTSD in 12 sessions.

There has been so much research on EMDR therapy that it is now recognized as an effective form of treatment for trauma and other disturbing experiences by organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Over 100,000 clinicians throughout the world use the therapy.  Millions of people have been treated successfully over the past 25 years.

Please get in touch if you're interested in giving it a try!

EMDR Institute
Getting Past Your Past by Francine Shapiro
Tapping In by Laurel Parnell
 

How to Create Chemistry

Sue, Rancho Rico, Big Sur. Photo by Nicola.

SEXUAL POLARITY
Polarity deals with the flow of energy between opposite poles: the North and South Poles of the Earth create a force of magnetism; the positive and negative poles of a battery create an electrical flow. Polarity creates energy. Consider how a magnet is nothing more than a lump of metal if both its poles have the same charge. It is when the poles are charged with different energy that a magnet gets its irresistible power. 

When we take the principle of polarity to the sexual arena, we see the importance of Sexual Polarity. These poles can be called different names: yin/yang, lunar/solar ... in modern language, we usually use the words feminine/masculine. 

Your biological gender does not dictate whether you "should be" more masculine or more feminine. Everyone has both energies within them and they both are important to develop. A person can be more of one at any given moment and two people who are flirting with each other are going to be doing both during that process. This is true between two women, two men, two transgender persons, or any other combination thereof. 

Of course, sexual polarity is only part of the reason a person feels chemistry. We also are attracted to similarities, which play a big role in creating the foundation where love can grow. What makes the relationship stable is what you have in common and what gives the relationship passion are your opposites, your polarity. Thriving relationships need both to work. 

Knowing where you sit and possibly making adjustments on the feminine / masculine scale will give you more clarity and confidence while dating and will help keep a longterm relationship passionate and alive. Maybe try these ideas the next time you meet a potential romantic interest!

MASCULINE ENERGY GIVES & FEMININE ENERGY RECEIVES
This is where it gets interesting because there are some powerful misconceptions here. (Note: I'm going to use the gendered terms "man" and "woman" here, but remember these energies can be in any person and are not gender-specific). 

Often times, in our society we think of masculine as macho, controlling, and aggressive and of feminine as passive, weak, and undervalued. These characteristics are partly true, but they only describe the dark energies of each. The light masculine energies include the energies of protection, giving, support, and doing. Yes, GIVING, is not a feminine energy, it is a masculine energy! Light feminine energies include those of nurturing, receiving, and being.

Yet, women have been taught to caretake, to be selfless, to put others' needs above their own. It can actually be quite difficult for a woman to allow herself to receive - she questions whether she's worthy or believes she has to give something in return. Allowing oneself to receive is allowing oneself to be nurtured. Is there anything more feminine than letting yourself be taken care of? And yet doing so requires willingness to relinquish control (that is, your masculine energy).

You maintain control when you make the plans and do everything for him, like calling his doctor, picking out his clothes, buying his mother a birthday gift, cooking delicious dinners, flooding him with affection and attention. In this relationship, there is not much room for him to offer any of these to you. When you invest so much, when you give up yourself to accommodate his needs he may rather see you as a mother or a friend instead of a lover.

If you are only giving and doing, you are neglecting your feminine side. When are you allowing yourself to just be and to receive? When's the last time you felt cherished? How would it feel to be lovingly protected and deeply cared for? To feel treasured? To know that your partner values you and holds you dear. What you have to do is to be open and willing to receive love from a man. And you also have to give something back: appreciation for everything that he is doing for you, respect for who he is and gratitude. 

With your partner you can practice being receptive to his intention, energy, and love expressed in various forms. It may show up in a form different than the one you’re wanting in that moment. Rather than leave him feeling like he did it “wrong” because it wasn’t the expression you really wanted, try gracefully to receive his love, in the masculine form that it came. In being received, his masculinity will automatically be validated & he will want to be closer to you.

I’m not suggesting you ignore your own wants or be denied the type of care you’re craving. The masculine gets to become skilled at giving to his feminine in the ways she craves. I am suggesting that you don’t use your masculine energy against him; to block him, push him away or do battle, especially during a time where he is trying to give to you. 

Being rigid about how things should be done is a masculine trait. Its feminine counterpart, allowing, helps you to be flexible and flowing. The perfect balance, then, is to insist upon what you want (masculine) but be open about how it is delivered (feminine).

In general, we need the qualities of both energies. There are times where we want to do, give, and be active. And there are times when it is more helpful to be receptive and nurturing. If we give all the time, we can get depleted. If we are simply being all the time, we won’t get much done! We all need both masculine and feminine energies. We need to engage in both in order to be balanced.

Men have their own set of struggles. They are raised to be tough, to be non-emotional, to be bread-winners, sacrificers. Young men are programmed to compete with each other. It takes some special attention to learn to be deeply masculine without being macho, to be forceful and direct and mighty without being brutal. It takes some practice and honing to learn to be connected to emotion and have an open heart without being a “soft male.”

You can picture the light masculine energy as an unconditionally supportive, protective, enabling energy. This energy enables you to feel safe, secure, and supported in going after your dreams. It’s like the energy who watches over you. The masculine is supportive in what you want to do, without stepping in to do it for you. And in the flow of exchange, he gets to feel respected, honored, and admired by his partner. She brings pleasure, beauty, love, spirit, relaxation, calm, and ease into his life. She supports and trusts him and encourages his growth. 

The Masculine - goes after, gives, serves, does, protects, achieves, is driven, pursues, focuses on one thing at a time, simplifies, contains, quiet, a pillar of strength and safety, provides, is an aggressor, warrior, requires freedom, is predictable, solid, fearless, and is determined.

The Feminine - receives, allows, accepts, magnifies things, opens, flows, storms, nurtures, radiates, is creative, multi-tasks, focus on pleasure, soft, willing to be vulnerable, is emotional, talkative, compassionate, loving, requires safety, unpredictable, surrenders, feels deeply.

FIVE SIMPLE WAYS TO ENGAGE THE LIGHT MASCULINE ENERGIES:

Give something freely, without expecting anything in return. This can be volunteer work, your time, your attention, a gift, or even money.

Take on challenges. You build self-esteem not by necessarily winning or succeeding in your challenging moments, but just the fact that you tried to challenge yourself tells your brain that you believe yourself worthy and capable of being challenged in the first place. So set goals, and run after them. Whether you succeed or not is secondary to the fact that you are out there doing something.

Offer protection to someone. Picture yourself protecting and giving to that person, financially or otherwise. Maybe it’s a dream or a wish they have. Without telling them what to do, just give them the support, protection and energy they need. Then watch over them as they do their work without stepping in and telling them what to do or how to do it.

Do something you enjoy. This can include working out, riding your bike, working your garden, or driving up the coast. Any activity that you enjoy that requires “doing” will work for these purposes.

Give yourself permission to go first. Don’t sit back and wait for permission, an invitation, or everyone else to speak before you make a move. What you have to say deserves to be voiced, so be confident in your power to go first and get things moving.

FIVE SIMPLE WAYS TO ENGAGE THE LIGHT FEMININE ENERGIES:

Simply receive. Whether it is a nice smile from a stranger, a compliment, a gift, a kind gesture, simply allow yourself to receive without having to give back.

Say “yes” the next time someone offers to do something for you. Allow yourself to receive and be nurtured! And don’t step in to “fix” it if they don’t do it “right.” For example, if your partner offers to fold laundry or do the dishes, don’t say yes, and then go back and rearrange the stuff or refold it. Simply receive what they are giving!

Be nurturing. Care for and encourage the growth or development of your loved ones, but don't take over and do it for them. Help them see themselves through your supportive eyes: strong, capable, confident, good, whole, steady. 

Engage your creativity. Dress up, draw, paint, dance, sing, however you want to engage your creativity, do it!

Nurture your body. Take a bath, eat healthy foods, rub essential oils on your skin, wear soft & flowy fabrics, slow down instead of rushing, enjoy the litheness of your body as you move throughout your day. Simply engage the senses and nurture your body in a way that feels good to you.

I'm excited for you!!

Dr. Pat Allen, "It's a Man's World and a Woman's Universe"

David Wagner, "Backbone: The Modern Man's Ultimate Guide to Purpose, Passion and Power"

Coach Violetta, Embrace Your Femininity

Why You Should Not Have Sex With Him

Faye Dunaway & Steve McQueen, "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968)

Ladies, hear 83-year-old feisty relationship expert Pat Allen: No sex without commitment! 

Women who are interested in a longterm relationship must signal men before sex that they are moving toward that, or too often the women will be hurt and time will be wasted. 

Most liberated, sexually active women believe they can maintain control over their emotions after sex. What they may not realize is that casual, non-committed sex for many woman can trigger a bonding that verges on physical addiction. This is due to a sexually stimulated hormone called oxytocin. 

Oxytocin is a pleasurable, bonding hormone released when you are on your way to orgasm, and when you orgasm. It increases the feelings of love, well-being, peace, affection, nurturing, security and attachment and causes humans to want to stay together and organize as family units. Since it is released in a man's semen, it literally is the glue of the family structure. 

Men and women both have oxytocin, but women have much more and it affects them differently. A woman will bond to her man after one instance of good sex. A man may feel bonded too, but he can easily go off and bond with other women as well.

Women get attached to the man's smell, his touch, the sound of his voice. If you keep contact with these things, you can stay bonded to a man for a year or longer, from one sexual encounter, as long as you keep getting a fix, even if it is only via his voice.

Other brain chemicals also play cupid during this time. Whether you like it or not, neurotransmitters are highly involved in your sex life and your romantic passion is largely a function of your own endocrinology. When you're thinking about him to the point of obsession, you're soaked in a cocktail of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine more potent than a martini and similar to the chemical combo found in obsessive-compulsive disorder. A jigger full of dopamine gives you the same high as that from alcohol or drugs. 

So what is building is a chemical connection with the emotional g-force of an atomic bomb. The chemical portion alone is enough to super glue you to this guy. According to Dr. Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and and Chemistry of Romantic Love, "These are truly intense and insane attachments that produce a crazy energy drive, emotional elation, mood swings, emotional craving, separation anxiety, childlike possessiveness and total madness."

All of this can set women up for heartache. You think that if you're easy-going, cool, not needy, that the guy will want to be with you. However, giving yourself to a man too early, if what you want is a monogamous, committed, sexual relationship, could leave you longing for a man who can't give you what you want. 

To alleviate this epidemic, try drawing a line and NOT having sex with men unless you have a commitment. This commitment is for continuity, longevity and monogamy. You want to know that he has time to spend with you, intends to be here for an extended time, and will only sleep with you.

Getting to I Do by Dr. Pat Allen

Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love by Dr. Helen Fisher

Women Who Love Psychopaths by Sandra Brown

True Belonging

Lake Elsinore, CA

The present moment of your life, when you really stop and notice it, is filled with constantly changing conditions. Of course, there are the changing conditions and situations around you: sights, sounds, smells, people, and so on. None of these lasts. You cannot hold on to them. And also the closer, more intimate experiences - those in your inner life of mind and body - are always in flux. Yet, much of the anxiety in our lives comes from the fact that we cannot hold on to anyone or anything. When things are good, we fear change. We cling to people, trying to assure that they'll never leave. How can we ever live happily knowing that nothing lasts? Perhaps the secret lies in learning how to become more at home, at ease, accepting, and wise about the truth of constant change. 

In the midst of constant change, perhaps what must stop is you? Is it possible that the only thing that could stop is you? Or perhaps, some part of you, a part that can be known, is already stopped and is merely waiting to be found? Could it also be that, when you stop, you notice and appreciate the amazing array of interconnections continuously maintaining your life and linking you with so many others? Learning to look more closely at threads of interconnection and interdependency operating in each moment could become a strategy that supports you in times of stress or loneliness. 

For example, imagine that you are about to eat an apple. As you look closely at the apple, what do you see? How did that apple come to be in your hand?

The apple represents the growth of a seed into a fruit-bearing tree that was nourished by light, moisture, nutrients, and many other things. The tree bore fruit that was picked and prepared by someone and transported somehow to a market or fruit stand, where you likely purchased it with money you had earned from doing something for someone else in another series of relationships. Once the apple is in your hand, the different systems of your own mind and body become involved to bite, chew, swallow, and digest the apple and absorb its nutrients. 

And that is only part of the story. Where did the apple seed come from? How did you learn to do what you did to earn the money to buy the apple? How did you get to the place where you bought the apple? 

On one level, all this can seem like an abstraction, but on another level, if you look deeply enough, can you envision the seed, the sunlight, the workers' touch, and all of the other elements in the long body of events behind the apple you are now holding? Without any one of these elements, the apple would be different or would not be there at all. 

Learning to stop, rest, and flex your view in this particular way - noticing the interconnectedness in experience that is changing every moment - could mean learning how to keep your heart open to any experience, or anyone. 

When you trace the essential elements of life - water, soil, air, sunlight - you begin to see how closely linked you really are with all living things. You share in the sources of life with so many others. 

- Jeffrey Brantley and Wendy Millstine, True Belonging