People who are new to psychotherapy often wonder what they should be doing in the time between sessions. Anxious to grow and evolve, they’re unsure how to aid the process, and their appointment next week seems far off in the future.The psychotherapy sessions themselves are concentrated, intense 50-minute “hours” one or more times a week. They can be
He looked like Bradley Cooper but he didn’t have a job. At cocktail parties, I’m used to receiving a show stopper response when I reply that my profession is “therapist” or “shrink,” but this was a new one. “Psychotherapy,” he
People often consider their spiritual work to be a separate arena from their worklife. In truth, the workplace can function as an ideal environment in which you get paid to grow spiritually. Here are six ways:1)You have the opportunity to confront your grandiosity.The daily tasks it takes to become successful in business confront the glamor, fame, and wealth the ego feels is its due. On the career path, you
John Gottman, PhD is considered today’s leading researcher on what makes relationships work. He actually hooks couples up to electrodes and measures them when they argue and talk. Dr. Gottman claims he can predict with 91% accuracy whether a couple will make it after chatting with them for fifteen minutes.This fact from his research seems to surprise everyone: 70% of both men and
Months went by while I considered leaving therapy. It didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere. At times my therapist, of whom I was very fond, would say something insightful and I’d decide to stay. Then it’d be back to the same dilemma session after session, we’re not getting anywhere -- should I
One of the most formative moments in my life was in a tantra group in India when our teacher, Radha Luglio, was asked how to open more: to more love, more sexual pleasure, more life. Her answer still rings in me: “I don’t try to open more, instead, I become aware of where I am closed.”This is completely against how we conceive of things in the West. If something is broken, we want to fix it. If there is something we can’t do, we want to become able to do it. If we can’t speak Spanish, we will take Spanish lessons, or
We had ridden on the motorbike an hour to get there, to the little room inside a cave in India, far off the tourist track. When Peter opened the door, it was to freezing cold air, water dripping into a tiny pond, and the tinny sounds of a cassette tape of prayers sung in Sanskrit on continuous loop. The spirit of holiness was palpable, thick from years of chanting, decades -- who knows how long -- in India it might be millennium. The energy quieted the mind of its chatter, and still 
I’ve been thinking about the two earthquakes that happened a couple years ago. The one in Haiti got a lot of media coverage; the photos broke our hearts. The deadly impoverished country was devastated and still hasn’t recovered to this day.Many people weren’t aware that a quake of far greater magnitude shook Chile, the affluent nation running down the west coast of South America. The Chile quake was 501 times stronger than Haiti’s according to the Huffington Post, and yet we didn’t hear
Many of my single patients have lost sight of their humanity in the search for a beloved. Their list of criteria for a partner has become absurd. As soon as they meet someone who is as good looking as Brad and as sexy as Angelina, as rich as a Oprah and as unconditionally loving as the Dalai Lama, they will be able to let down their guard and love somebody.I send them to Match.com not to find a partner, but for an education:
Timothy Leary is remembered by many as a drug-crazed hippie freak, but he was a serious psychologist and passionate seeker of freedom for the exploration of the human mind. Exo-Psychology is an important book he wrote which posited 8 levels of human development. When I read it, it was the first time I had seen Western ideas about higher functioning, and ones that did not necessarily include