After surviving traumatic situations, we stay stuck in the muck of fears. In a state of anxiety,  we get hooked by our own emotions and the emotions of others. We feel as though we cannot move, sometimes not even breathe in the presence of others.

Self Healing Healing from challenges such as anxiety, trauma, and grief can be enhanced with the practice of attention. Often times we just react to our emotions instead of taking a moment to decide...

Many people get frozen by trauma. It reappears in various ways and often is re-lived over and over again in dreams. Individuals often carry around the memories and are triggered to respond as they...

Fear Can Be An Obstacle or A Resource Fear can be a destructive emotion when it causes us to freeze or get so flustered we feel lost. As Takehisa Kora explains it in his How to Live Well: Secrets of...

CREATE A NEW MESSAGE FOR YOURSELF My therapy clients struggling with abuse, whether sexual or emotional, initially seem to listen to external voices.  It is not uncommon for women and men sexually...

How often do we find ourselves dwelling on past events or mistakes we’ve made? The use of the term dwelling indicates that this is where we reside. When reflections become ruminations that carry us...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Watching the protests on the news carried me back in time to my protest days in the 70s and the inspiration I gained from Martin Luther King. His teaching, “Darkness...

Sitting on the deck of a small cabin in Vermont, I watched the setting sun on my last evening helping conduct a Naikan retreat at the ToDo Institute. Listening to the crickets begin to sing, I...

Longchenpa, a Tibetan teacher holds up for us a challenging path for living in his poem, Meditation on Afflictions. He captures how the challenges we face are truly gifts that guide us to liberation...