**Featured Practitioners** alphabetical by first name

AnnWaters

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ConnieFenty

As a physical education teacher, she organized numerous school-wide non-competitive Field Days featuring games that she designed to create respect for the Earth. She also created a peace curriculum called "Winning Solutions"to educate young children about respecting others, managing anger, and solving conflicts. Connie facilitated an annual Peace Week at her school and trained students to use the "Peace Maze," a labyrinth she painted on the school playground and used as a tool for solving disputes peacefully.

As founder of Your Nature Connection Seminars, Connie designs and facilitates workshops that remind her participants how time spent in nature can provide healing, wisdom, serenity, and wholeness. She has presented her workshops from coast to coast as well as in Europe. Whether facilitating a labyrinth walk, a retreat in nature, or leading a tour, Connie's programs are full of experiential activities and inspiring content.

As a member of the International Labyrinth Society, Connie has been an annual presenter at conferences held all over the country. She serves on the Society's Board of Directors. Her originally designed "Common Ground Labyrinth" was selected by the Labyrinth Society to be included in its entry to the World Trade Center Memorial Competition.

Connie's latest endeavors include teaching Yoga and leading European tours. She has developed a form of gentle Yoga practice that includes reflections on inner, outer, and world peace. Her tour of England's stone circles and historical sacred sites was praised as being "life-changing."

In all of Connie's efforts to create peace, her friendliness, compassion, enthusiasm, knowledge, and organizational abilities are evident. Participants in her teaching venues claim to feel "safe," "nurtured," and "inspired."

http://www.YourNatureConnection.com

http://www.LabyrinthSociety.org

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Danielle Bellosi

Danielle Bellosi is a Certified Professional Recovery Coach CPRC, Certified Professional Coach CPC, Trained Interventionist, and has been involved in the recovery community for 5+ years. Her credentials are NAADAC National Association for Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors and SAMSHA Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services approved. Danielle is dedicated and passionate about making a difference for individuals who suffer from the disease of addiction. She has experience not only working in the recovery field for 4years but also volunteering her time and participating in many different trainings and workshops. Danielle has facilitated groups, lectures, one on one coaching sessions and started a new group at the recovery center Pro-Act geared towards art therapy, she also painted a beautiful mural at the residential facility for women and children called Libertae.

We are excited to announce that Danielle will be joining our team starting this December. She will be offering support groups geared towards relapse prevention, art therapy, and healthy coping skills for men and women in early recovery. Danielle will also be offering one on one private sessions for individuals that are interested in the benefits of a recovery coach which include but are not limited to:

DanielleBellosi@lifecoachhub.com

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Donna Renzetti

Donna Renzetti is an intuitive crystal therapist whose metaphysical journey started over 22 years ago in Galisteo, NM and Sedona, AZ where she experienced past-life regression at the Light Institute with Chris Grissom and members of her staff. Although fascinated by crystals and stones from childhood, her passion and intuitive connection to crystals became increasingly fine tuned through workshops, lectures and studying with the authors of numerous crystal books (Melody, Ahsian, Simmons, etc).

Donnas love of travel has taken her to Europe, Peru, Mexico, Canada, throughout the United States and the Caribbean studying various metaphysical topics and gathering crystals. She is an ordained minister in the Order of Melchizedek, a Reiki Level II practitioner and is currently studying shamanism with a shaman in Berkeley, CA. As a co-founder of Omphalos in 1986, she holds a vision to continue a legacy inspired by her husband to help others clear space within to hold the highest vibrational frequency enabling them to come to their center.

http://www.CrystallineVisions.com

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Dorothy Welsh

Dorothy Welsh is a gifted Psychic/Medium and Spiritual Advisor whose incredible gifts were discovered at a very young age. She has developed these gifts into a professional practice for over 20 years with clients throughout the United States and around the globe.

During a reading, Dorothy connects with your angels and guides to deliver a reading that spiritually directs you along your specific path. She may also connect with loved ones that have crossed over for messages of love and healing. Dorothy provides knowledge and compassion to each individual circumstance. She not only gives you information, but allows you to see all the possible ways you can direct the outcome of your life. The tools she provides empower you with the confidence to make informed decisions about your future.

Teacher and Founder of The Psychic Development and Education Center in Bensalem, PA, Dorothy is also a Certified Hypnotherapist and Reiki Master/Energy Healer and a member of the Professional Association of Intuitive Consultants. She is the creator of the Psychic Development Series on CD, as well as Guided Mediations for relaxation and healing, Clearing your Chakras and Meeting your Angels and Guides. Her popular Healing Meditation for Chest and Lungs CD has been donated to Fox Chase Cancer Center and the University of Pennsylvania/Penn Presbyterian Medical Center for the healing of those undergoing chemotherapy treatments for chest and lung issues and is offered as a free download on her website to those in need at http://www.mymoonspirit.com.

She is dedicated to awakening the world to their psychic talents, balancing the mind/body/spirit connection, assisting others in developing their psychic and healing gifts and empowering you with knowledge to live the abundant and successful life you were meant to live.

If you have questions about your love life, finances, career, or family issues, Dorothy can help open your eyes to your unique situation and help you create possibilities for success.

http://www.MyMoonSpirit.com

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EagleSkyfire

Eagle Skyfire is a shaman with the Caney Circle who is well versed in Spiritual matters. Consultations or Readings as they are also called, are done in the Traditional Native American way as they have been done for thousands of years. No cards or candles are used, but rather a blessing is performed with a Prayer Fan. This blessing cleanses the person's aura and "pierces the veil" between this world and the next allowing the shaman to listen specifically to your Spirit Guardians & to hers. According to Native American beliefs, the Great Spirit gives us all Life Lessons to learn, but how we express them is up to us. Individuals have Power over their own lives and destiny. The consultations will focus on your Life Lessons, the different Paths ahead of you, and the Energy that surrounds you. With this knowledge, you can empower yourself & make you own best decisions.

http://www.EagleSkyfire.com

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Linda Elliott

Illumined One

Linda Elliott, known as the Illumined One, is a facilitator of Sun Source Energetics, a Quantum Life Force Energy that helps the body return to its naturalperfection. Her gift of being able to send ourSuns Energy remotely or in person to bring Balance and Harmony to your Mind, Body and Spirit. As a catalyst for these Energies, her clients accept, adopt and match these High Vibrational Frequencies which promote healing on all levels.

Clients identify the area and level of discomfort (giving a pain number 1 through 10, 10 being the most painful) andshe sends a healing transmission (typically 15 mins). That's it! Profound and simple.

Lindas gift began to open up after her daughters passing in September, 2012. She began receiving powerful activations of energy and soonafter became clear that these exquisite energies channeling through her were gifted from our Sun. She has remotely sent healing all over the world, workingwith people in South Africa, Portugal, Sweden,Canada,United kingdom, and United States.

Linda is also Founder and Creative Director of Tuesday Afternoon Outreach, helping the homeless through food and clothing drives. TuesdayAfternoonOutreach.org

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Maureen Groetsch

Maureen Groetsch, Biontologist - Biophoton Light Therapy with The Chiren

Maureen has transitioned from 35 years of accounting and finance to her true calling as a Teacher, Energy Healer and Intuitive. Most currently completing her course of study for the Chiren in May 2014.

Her interest in Energy Healing began when she was a Level Two Practitioner of Usui Reiki in the mid-1990s, and then became a Practitioner of Qwan Yin Magnified Healing. Maureen has an intense interest in Spirituality as it co-mingles with the Sciences, as well as, investigated many energy healing modalities, integrating all these into her own heart based practice. Maureen traveled to India in 2006 and studied and regularly practices Yogic Breath and Meditation. As well she has studied and traveled with Gene Ang Ph.D. She is a Nature Intuitive under the tutelage of Tracie Nichols, and has studied with Glenda Green, author of Love Without End Jesus Speaks and The Keys of Jeshua. She currently leads a Spiritual Discussion Group focusing on The Keys of Jeshua and how they apply to life now.

Maureens life work is dedicated to helping others through the Chiren - a perfect tool that embraces your light and heart wisdom supporting your being ... body, mind, spirit and soul.

For more information on Biontology and The Chiren go to http://www.biontology.com

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Rev. Robin V Schwoyer

Robin Schwoyer is an ordained Minister in the Episcopal Church. For over 15+ years she has provided pastoral and holistic care using various healing modalities and is a popular inspirational speaker. Robin is a Reiki Master Teacher, IET Master Instructor, Yoga Instructor, founder of Caring Circle, HeARTs for Autism, Pink HeARTs Wellness for Women, and Happy HeARTs Yoga.

http://www.happyheartsyoga.com

http://www.heartsforautism.org

http://www.pinkHeartsWellness.com

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Bobbylight

Bobbylight is a natural born healer. As a teen, he noticed when placing his hands on painful parts of his body, the hands would heat up and the pain would go away. In 2004 he was introduced to Usui Reiki and started helping his friends and family members feel better by channeling Reiki through the body and out his hands. He is a Usui Reiki Master Teacher and also an IET-Integrated Energy Therapy Master Teacher. During an energy session, he has many Guides and Angels that work through him. He has helped many people on their healing journey, please allow him assist you on your's.

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Sharon Stratton

Sharon Stratton is the Office Manager at STRATTON FAMILY CHIRORPACTIC WELLNESS CENTER, in Doylestown. She is a Rebirthing Breathworker for over 22 years, and Access Consciousness Practitioner & Facilitator, since July 2013. Sharon has been living in Doylestown, Pa. for 18 years, with her husband and daughter. Sharon is involved in local community activities, such as volunteering for the Doylestown Food Co-op. She participates in several Womens groups and Meditation events. Sharon graduated in 1978 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Fashion Design, from Drexel University; then received a Degree in Interior Design, from Moore College of Art, in 1990; both colleges are located in Philadelphia, PA. Visit her business Facebook page: BREATH 4 JOY

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Other Practitioners - alphabetical by first name

Ackbar

Ackbar was born Bruce Kostelecky in Tacoma, Washington. 17 years ago, Bruce began his transformation into Ackbar, a journey that still continues. He has become a Galactic Channel, Psychic Reader and World Teacher.

http://www.ackbarswebsite.com

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AdhiMoonien Two Owls

Adhi Moonien Two Owls is a traditionally trained Shaman and healer. Her formal background is in fine art painting and sculpture which she studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. Other major areas of her study include Sacred Geometry, Egyptian Biogeometry, Radiesthesia (vibrational dowsing), Medical Radiesthesia, Map Dowsing for water and minerals, Theoretical Physics, Quantum Physics, Tibetan Buddhism, meditation techniques, Qigong and Chinese Medicine. Her current research centers around expanding the human potential, in relation to the mind and the physical bodys recognition of patterns and sound.

Adhi facilitates community Shaman study groups and healing circles. Adhis vision is one of building healthy spiritual communities grounded in the practical application of spiritual principles, and living fully in this world. She lectures on the scientific aspects of dowsing/radiesthesia, Shamanism and many other esoteric practices. Adhi develops products to help people navigate the energy patterns in their lives.

Adhi offers private sessions in person as well as remotely, and teaches all over the world.

http://www.theNewGlobalShaman.com

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Adrienne Taffoni Morgado

Adrienne Morgado is retired from 34 years in the Public School System, this allowing her the time to pursue her Metaphysical interests! Adrienne has experienced the Robert Monroe Institute in Virginia, known for Remote Viewing and journeying to the many-dimensional realms and Out of Body Experiences. She has completed the three level mediumship course work that is offered by Janet Nohavec from the Journey Within Spiritualist Church in Pompton Lakes, NJ and in Lily Dale, NY.She has also trained in Mediumship with Janie Eauchus who is Doreen Virtue trained and certified. Adrienne has attended classes with Dr. Hank Wessleman, Alberto Villaldo, and Llyn Roberts at the Omega Institute in New York and is currently working with Bernardo Peixoto and his wife who are South American Shamrans, and Hannelore Christensen in Pennsylvania. She has taken Energy Dowsing and Balancing with Ahdi Moonien Two Owls (Scientific Radiesthesia). Adrienne is a Reiki/Master Teacher trained in Usui and Essential Reiki and has also completed the three levels of IET. She is an ordained Priest in the Order of Melchizedek.

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Angelo Rizzo

Angelo Rizzo is a producer, engineer, composer, and musician (guitar, bass guitar, piano, alto and soprano saxophones, didgeridoo, percussion and drums, Native American style flute).

Angelo has over 30 years experience as a professional musician. He was privately trained on a number of different instruments. His scholastic training and education was in music and also Radiation Therapy; a field he has worked in for over 20 years. He has played music professionally in many bands including Philadelphia's Changes and Unity Church, Mount Laurel, NJ. In addition, he has taught music to both children and adults and continues to give private lessons on guitar and piano. He holds a Certificate in Sound Healing from the Globe Institute, San Francisco, CA and has studied sound engineering and music production for over five years. He is co-owner of Sound Spark Productions LLC, a music production company, where he has produced CDs for other artists in addition to his own. Currently, he is doing sound healing and music performance with a group called Heart Space.

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CandyBatterton

Candy Batterton is a graduate of the Healing the Light Body School where she studied under Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. and has traveled to Peru and worked with the great medicine men and woman. She went on a spiritual pilgrimage to the sacred mountain of Sulkantay where she received initiation rites and participated in ceremony at the sacred sites. She also has been involved with the Lakota traditions and has participated in ceremony and is a carrier of the chanupa.

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Donna Sweeney

Donna Sweeney is an Usui Reiki Master Teacher and an IntegratedEnergy Therapy (IET) Master Instructor. Working with the highest vibration of Divine healing, as well as channeling messages from the Angelic Realm, Donna is guided to assist her clients in releasing energy blocks on the physical, emotional, mental and/or Spiritual levels. The gentle release of blocked energy and channeled messages allows for discovery and deeper access to ones True Self and an increased clarity and sense of purpose and directionwith his or her unique Spiritual path.

Her personal philosophy can be summed up in a few words We are One. We are All.

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Soulutions for Daily Living - Bios - Psychics, Healers ...

Guest Faculty Workshop #1:Potentials and Pitfalls on the Spiritual PathA 90-minute Audio Workshop with Ken Wilber

While many of us have some understanding of what a spiritual life entails, moving from an idea to a lived reality is a jump that many of us struggle to make. Ken Wilber, the worlds foremost authority on Integral and spiritual consciousness, will help us to better understand the obstacles that often prevent us from reaching the higher potentials were seeking to awaken.

In this virtual workshop, you will learn:

Ken Wilber is one of the most widely read and influential philosophers of our time, credited with creating a genuine world philosophy. Ken has a deep expertise with most of the worlds mystic traditions, and has explored academically and experientially the many states of consciousness that different spiritual practices produce. He is the author of 25 books, the founder of Integral Institute, Inc., the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc., and the Senior Fellow of Integral Life.

Meditation plays an indispensable role in our spiritual growth and evolution, but what happens when we get up off the meditation cushion and step into the world of action? From our intimate relationships to our workplaces, from making big decisions to navigating conflicts, the real fruits of our practice emerge in the day-to-day. How can we live an authentic spiritual life amidst the complexities and challenges of our increasingly chaotic modern world?

In this evocative workshop, Feminine Power founder Claire Zammit will illuminate how you can awaken to the evolutionary impulsethe powerful creative force that animates the universeand align with it so that your entire life is infused with deeper meaning and higher purpose. In practical yet inspiring terms, Claire will reveals how you can begin to access this vital energy and approach life through this empowering perspective. And shell offer specific practices that will allow you to begin cultivating an evolutionary relationship to life today.

In this LIVE workshop, youll discover

Claire Zammit Ph.D.(c) is a transformational teacher, leader, and mentor to women in more than 100 countries worldwide. She is the founder of the Feminine Power Global Community, which offers online trainings, advanced courses and coaching certifications that serve hundreds of thousands of women. Her mission is to empower women to fully express their gifts and talents by sharing the Feminine Power teachings that she created and which she credits as the source of her own fulfillment, success and impact. In 2014, Claire received Just Like My Child Foundations Womens Leadership Award in recognition of her contributions to funding The Girl Power Project thats now set to impact over 1 million girls with leadership and self-esteem trainings in the developing world. Claire is an active member of Jack Canfields prestigious Transformational Leadership Council and was the recipient of its achievement award. She is also a participant in Deepak Chopras Evolutionary Leaders Forum.

We have all been deeply conditioned to relate to the world from an assumption that something is wrong. In certain circumstances, this is useful because it helps us avoid problemsbut it too easily becomes pathological. It generates a fundamental neurosis that leaves us existentially uncertain in a world that feels inherently unsafe. During this LIVE workshop Jeff Carreira will share the meditation practice he calls The Practice of No Problem. You will be asked to just sit and not make a problem out of anything that happens. At first you will assume it will be easy, but soon you will realize that you have no idea how not to have a problem. You will see how your how your habits of control make life feel like a struggle and you will see how you bring these habits with you into meditation. As you learn to gradually give up control you will find yourself floating in a space of ease and simplicity that takes you far beyond fear, worry and self-concern.

Jeff Carreira is a contemporary mystic, a spiritual guide and a philosopher who teaches meditation and transformative philosophy throughout the world. As a spiritual guide, Jeff offers retreats and courses leading individuals in a form of meditation called The Practice of No Problem. Using this simple and effective orientation toward meditation Jeff has guided thousands of people on journeys beyond the confines of fear and self-concern into the expansive liberated awareness that is our true home. Jeff is the author of six books including The Miracle of Meditation, The Practice of No Problem, Radical Inclusivity and The Soul of a New Self.

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Practice of Direct Awakening - Meditation 2.0

Link yourself to heaven and earth; stand in the very center with your heart receptive tothe resounding mountain echo.

- Morihei Ueshiba / John Stevens The Essence of Aikido

A Spiritual Warrior is someone who moves forward in their spiritual evolution and Expansion, even in the face of very difficult choices. They do what they must to follow the path of spiritual advancement, no matter how hard it may be. The Spiritual Warrior lives from a place of non-attachment and will change everything in their life if need be in the pursuit of spiritual Expansion. I have found that once you seriously begin seeking the spiritual path, you will eventually be faced with the decision of graduating from a Spiritual Seeker to that of a Spiritual Warrior. It is only by passing through these stages that you can become a Spiritual Master. The Spiritual Seeker is one who is just starting or dabbling in spiritual or religious teachings. They read and attend seminars and workshops, practice many different systems and techniques and begin to make some real progress. Sooner or later though they will be faced with the decision to remain a Seeker without making any further discernible advancement, or to become a Spiritual Warrior, understanding what it is to rely on their own Divine nature for what they need. The professional Spiritual Seeker continues through life experimenting in this and that, going from one New Age fad to the next, lost in the fog in fear of truly discovering their Divine nature and personal power. They continue to rely on others to make their decisions for them and are easily thrown at the first hint of distress or improvement.

The Spiritual Warrior, on the other hand, forges ahead into the great mist of the unknown, doing what must be done in order to keep making progress. For the Spiritual Warrior, there is no stopping or stalling out, because they know that to stop or stall means to go backwards in their evolution. This is seen as simply unacceptable. They begin to gather all the techniques of value, the ones that really serve them, learning to rely on a base system that serves their greater progress. More than likely they are open to drawing from numerous systems of spirituality and religion as they grow enough to realize for themselves what is true and honestly helping them. Great respect for the truth of all systems is recognized and reflected in their personal practice. These are the people that shine brightly and gravitate toward tranquility and serenity instead of drama and egotism. The Spiritual Warrior develops the personal strength to take full responsibility for all their choices and actions, and applies their skills in ways that allow others around them to feel safe. The Spiritual Warrior diligently practices for their own advancement, as well as to protect others and offer help and healing to those who really need it.

While it is not necessary to be a martial artist or to even care about swords, the lessons from these practices can be applied by and be of great assistance to everyone. One translation of the Japanese term known as Bujin is Divine Warrior. This is seen in the martial arts organization of the Bujinkan, headed by Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi. This type of warrior never tires in their pursuit to create a clear connection to their Divine nature, their Higher Self, and their sense of oneness with the Universal Source. The symbol often used by these warriors and the ninja shadow warriors of Japan is the kanji or ideogram for Nin, which is loosely translated to mean patience, perseverance, or to endure. This Japanese character consists of two individual characters placed one on top of the other. The upper character is the kanji for blade, or more specifically, the sharp edge of the sword. The lower kanji means heart. Jointly, this refers to a sword being held over your heart.

One way to look at this is that together it refers to remaining strong and true to your heart when someone attempts to keep you from your path, even with a sword. To remain true to your heart is to remain true to your spirit. While there are a great number of interpretations of this, I have come to know it as the ability to keep a pure, sincere heart, even in the face of adversity; to remain true to what you hold in your heart, the seat of the original spirit, even under the threat of death. Here lies the paradox of needing the heart to be both immovable and free at the same time. Furthermore, I feel this speaks of the resolute strength that is required of the heart in the journey to spiritual growth and Expansion. Through my own training in martial arts and various spiritual systems, I personally hold the meaning to be found in the methods of muto dori (no-sword capture to evade, counter and capture the sword of an attacker when you are unarmed). When practicing the methods of being unarmed while another person attacks you with the sword, the challenge is to be able to evade the sword cut, neutralize the threat, and maintain a constantly open heart center filled with joy and love while you do so.

As you may well imagine, this is a monumental task, as the heart center typically closes upon threat of danger. In many esoteric systems the heart is referred to as a flower. Just as there are flowers which close in the darkness of the night, only to reopen again in the morning light, so too does the heart center react. Through spiritual training and growth it becomes possible for the heart to stay open even in the darkness, shining its light upon the world. To have the heart center remain open under potentially dangerous circumstances necessitates a supremely pure and unshakable heart. This is teaching the warrior to have the ability to move freely without tension, to receive without resistance, to evade without anger or the need for revenge. It is keeping the Divine connection at all times, no matter the circumstance, and living from your heart center without allowing it to be affected by negativity. Would you be able to remain light-hearted as you stared death in the eye? Could you smile a sincere smile even as someone was attempting to harm you? Would you be able to remain compassionate even though someone else meant to do you harm? I have come to know that the heart must come first. Even for the warrior, the heart is the most precious of gifts and developing the heart center is more important than developing the weapons skills. The warrior must establish inner balance by having solid spiritual practices in place alongside their fighting skills.

The methods of muto dori (no-sword capture) are said to be extremely high-level techniques. It doesnt take much to comprehend this, as truly having the skill to live through a real sword attack by a highly trained sword master seems to be the stuff of fantasy. It was, however, a real skill that was utilized by ancient warriors. I experienced the essence of having the blade over my heart both literally and figuratively by needing to go under the blade for emergency open heart surgery. A bit ironic isnt it? During my period of recovery, after my brain began to reconnect to my body and my nervous system adjusted, I drafted a letter to Grandmaster Hatsumi. I shared a couple of things with him from that experience that I have never shared with another living soul. I thanked him from the bottom of my heart for giving me the skills I needed to survive that experience. He responded by sending me a hand drawn picture of Kurikara, the sword of the esoteric Buddhist deity Fudo Myo-O (the Immovable Light King) along with a blessing of good health. It is now one of the great treasures in my collection of Divine artwork. This is the meaning of a spiritual or Divine Warrior. This is how I have come to know it through my own life experiences.

I didnt realize it at the time, but that experience was just preparing me for what I had to do next as a Spiritual Warrior. During my recovery, my perspective on life began to go through a major shift. It was here that I heard the voice of my Higher Self and the need to evolve spiritually to all new levels. It was clear to me that this calling was to take place now or never. Such a thing would require a complete alteration of my life; everything would have to change in order for me to experience the spiritual transformation that I needed. I recognized that this calling, this need to become the person I might be, was a direct result of the planetary evolutionary shift that is happening. After a few years of inner and outer turmoil I made the conscious decision to move forward, to answer the call of my Higher Self and to expand into who I might become. I know better than most that change is difficult, but I also know that it is the path for growth and the rewards are well worth the effort. Making serious changes in your life also requires the strength and resolve of a warrior.

Another aspect of the Spiritual Warrior is reflected in the twenty-second chapter of the Tao Te Ching written by Lao Tzu and is also reflected in the King James Version of the Bible. This idea is phrased well in the Bible (Matthew 5:5) and contains the most widely known expression, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. While there are many ways to interpret this statement, I would like to share my understanding of it. The meek are those on the spiritual path who have overcome their ego. Meek does not mean to be weak as many interpret it, but instead it actually refers to having spiritual strength, with the ability to live ones life in authenticity from the heart center.

As the Spiritual Warrior rises ever higher in energetic vibration, reaching upward toward that of the Divine, those around him with low vibration will be threatened by his very presence. Feelings of insecurity from their false beliefs and anger from being shown their shortcomings will consume their hearts, closing the hidden door even further. They are trapped in a vicious cycle where their lower vibrations cause negative emotions, and those negative emotions perpetuate the lowering of vibrations even further. In the mirror of the Spiritual Warriors heart, her bliss reflects their unhappiness, her love reflects their fears, her gratitude reflects their intolerance, and her divine truths reflect their ignorance. It is through the distaste of their own reflected image that they must decide to accept change and embrace growth, to allow their vibrations to rise and their hearts to open fully and completely, to be filled with true freedom, love, bliss and appreciation. After all, this is how the Spiritual Warrior began his quest too. This is the love and service of the Spiritual Warrior.

Develop The Strength Of The Warrior, The Compassion of a Healer and The Spiritual Wisdom of The SageThe Warrior, the Healer and the Sagethese are the three facets of a human being who has become complete. Most people fragment themselves to focus all their intention purely on one area of life. The truth is that human beings, men and women alike, are made to be all three at the same time. The development of all three areas of Being is a sign of a complete, open and honestly shared system, whether it be martial arts, a healing system, or a religious or spiritual system. The ancient fighting systems contained healing techniques, as well as spiritual teachings to help balance the warrior. Over time, these things were splintered; today people believe they are getting a complete system if they learn just one of these areas. The unfortunate truth is that they are not.

The healer learned their methods could be used to harm someone if the need was to arise; they referred to this as reverse medicine. Healing was directly linked to the Divine, so these ancient healers were generally spiritual in nature and had spiritual practices intertwined with their healing practices. Some spiritual practitioners, such as monks and priests, remained as purists and refused to fight as they knew it could lower their vibration to do so, but they usually had healing skills. These healing skills manifested as a by-product of many of the spiritual practices; examples of such things can be found in the monastic circle walking methods of many religions. The same circle walking methods can be found in certain schools of Pakua Chang, a Chinese martial art. Other monks were fierce warriors when need be, utilizing their fighting skills to protect the ancient teachings and the temples that housed them. Finding a balance in all three aspects of Healer, Warrior and Spiritual Sage allows you to live through the trinity and see the world through the three-fold lens. It also develops and gives free reign to your potential and power as a fully actualized human being.

In order to succeed on your spiritual journey, you will need the heart and spirit of a warrior. This will enable you to keep forging forward, even when life challenges your very core beliefs. As soon as you think you understand whats going on and what to believe, you may be forced to change those beliefs once again. Thats just how it works. In order to help you I will present tactics and techniques for transforming yourself into a Spiritual Warrior. Not as someone who goes out and fights to prove their way is the one right way, but to transform you into someone who simply does not know how to give up or quit. You will be powerful enough to keep moving forward and overcome any walls that rise in your way. Remember you will need to hold the compassion of a healer in order to be easy on yourself, evade frustration and allow your Self to heal. You will also learn to hold compassion in your heart for others around you. Once you let go of such judgments, your vibration will rise, as compassion is a product of the emotion of love. Throughout the process, you will be gradually unfolding the spiritual wisdom of the great sages within your Self. You will begin to understand the depth of the words of the worlds great spiritual masters throughout the ages. You will come to feel the truth of their teachings and embody them within yourself.

Overcoming the Symptoms of ChangeEarlier I spoke of the symptoms people are experiencing in this time of great change and transition. These symptoms are signs that things are changing. All of these symptoms are present to tell you changes are required in yourself and your life in order to effectively pass through this shift. Physical tension and resistance, negative emotions and internal energy blockages are just some of the afflictions that will make passing through this shift a very challenging experience. After my surgery I felt depressed and unsettled; I couldnt shake the feeling that the life I was living was not meant for me. Through the ability to hear the guidance of my inner voice or Higher Self, I came to know I needed to change. Id developed several poor behaviors requiring reversal if I were to make this transformational shift into a spiritually-based life. It is difficult on family and friends when they cannot possibly fathom the depth of what is happening, but I summoned my Warrior Spirit and did what I had to do. I hope after all the smoke clears and the dust settles, these people will be able to let go of undeserved blame and accept the truth of what has happened. This was necessary for me to become a better person and evolve as someone walking the path of personal transformation, in order to serve as a messenger to others in the world at this time when messengers are needed.

Many people are experiencing different varieties of symptoms at this very moment. The types of stress on the physical body are similar to the stresses on the mind from the amount of common computer usage. I will share some of the symptoms that I have encountered over the years with myself and others. You may argue these are things people commonly experience; however, there is a noticeable increase in their occurrence and they are happening for no detectible reason. I do recommend consulting your health care professional should you experience any of these effects. Do not merely dismiss them as energy symptoms that will subside in time; some of these things do, but others may manifest into or already be something much more tangible and potentially harmful. This is not medical advice or a diagnosis of any sort, but is offered as a way to understand what could be happening if any of these things are unusual for you. Ive often heard the phrase, The tests came back normal, we dont know whats causing this, when Ive pursued medical care in the doctors office. The exercises in this system will help you to alleviate these types of symptoms, assuming they are energy related. You need energy practices to counteract the effects of energy-based symptoms.

Human Health Symptoms of Impending Change: Physical Symptoms Increase in headaches, migraines, brain tumors, brain cancer Increase in body aches, fatigue, and feelings of being drained of energy Fibromyalgia Increase in vertigo Increase in sinus pain and pressure in the face and head Seizures or seizure-like activity Dizziness, sudden disturbances in equilibrium, passing out Pressure and pain in the joints; joints crack and pop excessively Difficulty moving quickly; walking is slow and labored Restless, irritating feelings in the extremities

MENTAL SYMPTOMS: Difficulty with mental focus and clarity Difficulty with memory Difficulty making choices and decisions Notable increase in mental illness and functioning mental illnesses Notable increase in violence for no apparent reason, followed by aimless wandering

EMOTIONAL SYMPTOMS: Increase in depression and depression-related illnesses Increase in emotional breakdowns, meltdowns and other emotional instability Feelings of needing to find your lifes purpose and live it Feelings of being easily overwhelmed, having too many choices Feelings of general uneasiness, uncertainty, being lost, empty, disconnected and unfulfilled Feelings of needing more from life

Planetary Symptoms of Impending Change Instability and unpredictability of the Earths electromagnetic field patterns and strength The feeling of familiar environments changing; things just dont feel the same Extreme weather pattern changes, global warming Fish, sea stars, abalone, birds and insects dying in large numbers for unexplained reasons The sky being washed out instead of bright blue in certain areas and times The loss of vibrancy of color in trees and plant life in certain areas The various alignments of planets, magnetic poles shifting, and other galactic events

Myths, Legends and Half-TruthsIn this section I will present you with certain myths that are floating around disguised as the truth. I intend to expose some of these myths to illustrate the new reality, preventing the deception that is so commonly accepted as truth in our world. Most of these myths or half-truths are perpetuated by the media; after being placed in front of the eyes and ears of the general public long enough, they become accepted as truth. This does not make them true; it merely creates and spreads false beliefs. After stepping outside the box of the accepted norm and separating myself from the herd mentality, I was able to see how these types of memes are spread and the danger they pose to everyone. A meme, in case you are not yet familiar with the term, is basically a thought, belief, or behavior that is spread throughout a culture from person to person. A meme can travel through thought, belief, gossip, media, social media, and other forms of human interaction. The awakened individual is able to think more clearly for themselves and not follow the mass control and cultural beliefs of the herd.

MYTH #1 You Have To Have A Near-Death Experience In Order To AwakenNo, of course you dont. Experiencing a near-death trauma is absolutely unnecessary to achieve substantial spiritual growth. Spiritual Expansion is about the celebration of life! While undergoing a near-death or severely traumatic experience may act as a catalyst in the awakening process, it is not needed or recommended. The challenges provided in the Expansion Mastery System will, when performed correctly and consistently, guide you through the process of rapid spiritual growth. Many of these exercises are designed to serve as a metaphorical death experience as well as a resurrection. Most spiritual systems have this concept in place in some safely guided form of symbolic practice. The simple nightly act of falling asleep is meant to serve this same idea.

The ancient Egyptians were very spiritually advanced, knowing how to take a person through a process that mimicked death in order for them to better and more fully appreciate life. The Egyptians had a set of rites they were taken through that were designed to allow them the experience of death and resurrection. The functions of such rituals were to open the persons heart and ignite their passion for life. It is of interest to point out, that within the pyramids there are three chambers that are aligned in the very centerline of the pyramid. The middle chamber is the one that resonates with the heart center when you chant the syllable Ah.

I have been taught that martial artists are supposed to experience a similar effect every time they get thrown to the ground, only to rise again and continue training (living). I set up a particular event for my martial arts students in a way where they had the opportunity to experience this and then apply that feeling to their daily practice. There seems to be something in our being that changes when we go through a truly life-threatening experience. Its much deeper than the simple recognition of our own mortality. Something shifts in the core of our being; a sort of mental-emotional, vibrational shift that allows us to see things differently, as if an encounter with death allows us to more vibrantly appreciate life and find our lifes purpose.

MYTH #2 In Relationships, Opposites AttractYes they do, in magnetic poles and in a larger sense to human beings. The Law of Polarity is a universal truth, applying to the grander scheme of the relationship concept as far as the attraction of male and female, or two different human beings. However, when we drill down into the actual details of a relationship, we see the Law of Attraction applies more readily. The concept of a harmonious relationship is then accomplished through the Law of Attraction, or like attracts like. The old world reality of Opposites Attract is simply no longer valid. Working hard at a relationship, engaging in arguments and speaking to one another in harsh, aggravated tones, putting up with the other person; none of these things have a place in a truly healthy, happy, and harmonious relationship. This may have been okay in relationships of the old paradigm, but it certainly does not apply any more. We are learning more and more how the concept of like attracts like is the way to best achieve the ability to manifest, as well as to create healthy, long-lasting relationships.

MYTH #3 It Takes Lifetimes of Meditation to Achieve This Type of ChangeWhile meditation is extremely valuable and serves a great purpose, there have been very few people whove attained enlightenment by sitting on their butt. The ancient Chinese knew this, which is why they applied circle walking and other moving meditational techniques. For the diligent practitioner, success will come in this lifetime if you are consistent in your efforts and have a great practice. I have found that sometimes this idea of impossibility is placed in front of a practitioner to help them let go of impatience. If you think that it cannot be attained, then you will not be impatient about achieving results. However, if you believe that it will not happen in this lifetime, chances are it wont.

MYTH #4 You Are Supposed to Stay Close to Family and Spouses, Even if They Are ToxicThis is completely unreasonable and untrue. Blood is thicker than water, right? Not when it is toxic. Remaining in a toxic family environment or toxic relationship is never good; it drastically lowers your vibration. There is no law saying you have to remain with relatives who treat you disrespectfully or behave badly. There is no good reason to remain in an environment where you are subjected to mental, emotional or physical abuse, nor should you remain in a relationship where you are kept from growing spiritually. While it is always a sad situation, separating yourself from toxic relatives or spouses is often the right move to make. Every single person has the right to be happy and to advance spiritually.

When separating yourself from someone, I have learned to always leave the door open for them in case they become willing to change their toxic behaviors and begin treating you with respect. At this point I do everything I can to welcome them back with open arms. In most cases, this will allow both of you to expand in the ways that each of you needs but cannot accomplish when your energies are closely linked. There is a saying that time heals all wounds, but I believe it should be stated that time and space heal all wounds. Allowing some space opens the gateway to the potential of the energy field all around us.

MYTH #5 You Should Think With Your Head and Not With Your HeartThis is true to the extent that you should do your thinking with your head. Leave the heart to do the feeling. The mistake made here is believing the brain in the head is the only source of intelligence in the body. Science has proven this to be untrue. Every one of the trillions of cells in our body has intelligence. The heart is considered to be a very intelligent organ and is also the seat for our sense of feeling. Your original spirit is connected to this center and listening to your heart is actually great advice. The key is to know when to use each of these. I hear some people claim that following your heart and emotions will get you into trouble; this is true only when you have no conscious connection to them and they are controlling you.

I cannot stress enough how significant it is to live from your heart center. It is essential to develop your sensitivity to the subtle energies around you. In the same way, you can feel if you should trust someone or if a certain place just feels bad to you; you should hone this ability to guide you. It is far more accurate than your intellectual reasoning. Making decisions based upon how you feel instead of what you think is the true approach of the human being. This sensitivity is designed to keep us safe and guide us to our lifes purpose. Always thinking without feeling will push you away from your purpose, back into the mentality of the herd.

Spiritual Speed Bumps: Obstacles Along the Path of The Spiritual WarriorYou will most likely discover the need to become a Spiritual Warrior as you walk the path of your own truth. This does not mean that you will have to practice martial arts or become a soldier, but it does imply that you will need to be resilient and stay true to yourself. All too often people around you will not be comfortable with you making advancements in your spiritual quest. This is not always a malicious objective, but simply due to fearing you might change and they might not have you in their life in the exact same capacity that you have been up until this point. Be as gentle as you can with the people in your life, but do not allow them to halt you on your journey. You must be strong enough and focused enough to keep going.

I have helped guide thousands of martial and meditative students around common mistakes that can result in lengthy delays and plateaus for long periods of time. It is common for the person doing their best to raise their vibration and become a unified being to not initially notice the effects it has on those around them. As you go through this process of self-actualization and unification, your vibrational frequency will begin to rise. This will not go unnoticed by those in your life, and you should expect two very different types of feedback. Eventually, you can expect random statements from friends and family members that you have changed, and hopefully they state that its for the better. They may praise you for the transformations they notice and may even encourage you to keep doing what you are doing, even though they dont understand exactly what you are going through.

It is a wonderful situation when you have a spouse or special person in your life who desires to expand with you. It must be noted though that if you do not have a similar spiritual foundation and your partner does not desire to grow at the same time, they cannot be coerced or forced to do so. You cannot force another to grow, they have to want it in their heart and desire it for themselves; and indeed they may not be ready for it. The person resisting growth will usually become angry and seek blame as the life theyve become comfortable with crumbles around them. While this is a difficult period for both people, it is important to stay true to yourself and keep going. Hopefully, such a scenario plays out to allow the other person to experience necessary life lessons to spark their Expansion while freeing you to experience your own. The common mistake is reconciliation out of guilt, pity, or to take the path of least resistance. Going back to that spouse or significant other will instantly halt your progress and ultimately result in an unhappy home life for you both. Once you acknowledge and commit to your call to expand, it is devastating to stop the process, and it is impossible to move forward with someone constantly pulling you back.

This same situation applies to family members. They may also give you positive feedback and support. If they have higher vibrations themselves, they will be thrilled for you and more than eager to support you. If you lack spiritually evolved siblings, parents, or children then you may run into a difficult situation. They may react out of fear as the family dynamic changes, feeling they are losing control over you and the family model they have created. This can cause siblings to exert their control and influence over you in an attempt to put you in your place. It may result in parents increasing their dominance, and when they realize they cant control you, they back away altogether to avoid dealing with it. The mistake here is the same. Giving in to the demands of your family members will stop your growth in its tracks. You need the freedom to walk your own path, and you know what is best for you better than anyone. Do not give in to the pressures that family members may place on you, but make sure they know you love them, keep them in your heart and always leave the door open for the future.

Be aware of distraction that may cross your path. The information age has presented people with a wide array of mindless distractions as a way to ease mental fatigue. These distractions, such as surfing the web, will prevent you from being as productive as you can be. Television and other forms of perceived relaxation will also serve as distractions, as does talking on your cell phone constantly or playing video games for hours on end. Beware of things that suck the life out of your productivity.

You will most likely find yourself going against the grain of the accepted social convention. This should not be a surprise when you look at the mentality of the herd. Are they spiritual expanding? Of course not, they are caught up in the mindless drama that keeps them from making any progress or even noticing what is happening around them. To me, it is reminiscent of the blinders they put on horses. Once you step outside the circus of mass control, you may initially find life to be a bit lonely. It is important to keep on your path and eventually you will attract other like-minded people to you that will encourage mutual support. Breaking free from social convention is quite an eye-opening experience; it can be a bit frightening at first, but soon you will be amazed how the world looks when you can see clearly and distinguish truths for yourself.

Fluid Beliefs, Fluid Nervous System, Fluid Mind, Fluid BreathThe higher levels of achievement in martial and spiritual arts include a sense of what the Japanese call nagare (flow). This sense of fluidity is extremely important and a quality held dear by masters and grandmasters. The ability for one to achieve a sense of continuous, relaxed flow in their physical movement is a desired level of accomplishment. To do this one also needs to develop kinesthetic awareness. To move your body this way is to flow with the energy currents that move the wind and water. The sharp, jerky style movement of most hard-style martial arts is a direct contrast to this concept. Tai Chi, Pakua Chang, Aikijujutsu and Budo Taijutsu are examples of martial arts that use this form of flowing movement. Some forms of dance and ice skating also rely on this fluid motion to display their grace and beauty.

Here I will be addressing the fluidity that you cant see, unless it is reflected in someones physical movement. I am going to address the fluidity of the mind, nervous system, breath and beliefs. Developing a fluid mind is crucial to your spiritual advancement. This mindset allows the mind to move freely about while retaining a sense of focus. Your mind does not focus so intently on one thing that you because oblivious of everything else in your immediate environment. The fluid mind allows you to move seamlessly from one position to another or one movement to another without pausing. It allows your mind to stay in a greater state of Expansion and respond to multiple points of attention instead of just one singular point. You are also able to clear and still the mind more quickly in order to hear the voice of the Divine. Achieving a level of fluidity in the mind allows you to mentally adapt to situations more quickly and easily as they unfold. This is extremely beneficial for martial, healing and spiritual applications.

The concept of a fluid nervous system is quite an in-depth topic. The fluid nervous system allows you to physically move without the tension that would result in hesitation or stuttering within your movement. A fluid nervous system permits you to physicaly flow with a relaxed sense of grace from one position to another. Today, it is common for people to suffer from a completely shorted-out nervous system. With all the over-stimulation, information and computer work, its no wonder that people are overly tense and easily overwhelmed. Moving with this sense of freedom is very difficult to attain, as there are only a handful of techniques that I am aware of which actually work to release the buildup of tension in ones nervous system. It is easy to tell when someone is suffering from an over-stimulated nervous system by checking the eyes. The eyes are said to be a gateway to the soul, but they also serve as a gateway into the nervous system. You can observe the tension through the hardness of the eyes or if they have become wide and protruding.

The breath serves as an activator for the nerves, so developing methods for breathing fluidly serves to assist the nervous system in becoming and remaining fluid. The first step in creating fluid breath is to avoid holding your breath. Try to notice when you experience any form of stress and observe your natural tendency to hold your breath. This is a good practice to learn to recognize when your breath is being held, to release it and breathe deeply to relax. The next step is to coordinate your breath with your body movement. Many top-rated professional speakers also learn to coordinate their breath with their speech patterns in order to flow and pause at the proper points in their dialogue. Learn to be able to move, jump, punch, and speak while coordinating your breath with those movements to act in a naturally synchronized manner. It is important to allow the body movements, the nervous system and the breath to work in conjunction with one another without needing to place conscious thought on the process. Once resistance is eliminated you will not only feel that you are moving more lightly and with purpose, but with a new level of grace, awareness and natural power.

I would really like to focus more on fluid beliefs. It is imperative for your beliefs to remain in a fluid state, open to alteration with new knowledge or experience, in order for you to grow and expand. Because your beliefs will be constantly challenged when you are involved in a true spiritual awakening, it is imperative to break persistent patterns of thought. Therefore, you cannot afford to have your beliefs be immovable; this will make certain you do not change, grow or expand. When a new experience or reliable knowledge renders your current belief obsolete, you must be able to adapt and flow with the new belief in order to make this transition less traumatic on the mind. Allow your beliefs to take form, yet not to become concrete and unchangeable. It is actually natural that your beliefs should change as you expand spiritually. There are so many things that we just do not understand, even through science. Fluid beliefs are important in both science and spirituality. By keeping your beliefs fluid you will find your mind can remain open, making your Expansion much easier. A closed mind results in contraction, as it keeps a person small and prohibits growth.

If a different perspective is offered and you become agitated or resistant, then your beliefs are not in a state of fluidity. You will immediately feel your nervous system, mind and breath become stressed. A belief is the result of a persons formed perception; their interpretation based on their current level of understanding. It only makes sense that a persons life experiences would bring about change in their beliefs as they continue to learn and grow. Beliefs should constantly require updating if you are learning new things. Just as the gentle river flows, bending and winding around the banks without interruption even when it encounters obstacles so too should your beliefs flow, with the same gentle, constant motion and ability to change freely.

In order to assist in keeping your thoughts fluid, it is imperative to keep a broader perspective and forming opinions based on your need to control and keep the ego feeling secure. It is more beneficial to realize that upon hearing something for the first time, you may only understand a small degree of the depth of the topic and you need to keep your mind open to new or additional information. The need to feel as though you know it all is nothing more than a cheap trick being played on the undisciplined mind by the ego. Beliefs can be very challenging to change once you form them. Be mindful of this.

There is a concept within the ancient martial and spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, called shoshin (beginners mind). Tracing this concept back we see that it had the original meaning of heart-mind. In Taoist practice, the heart is considered to be the seat of the spirit as well as the cognitive mind. The character for Xin (in Chinese) or Shin (in Japanese) literally means, heart-mind. This mindset teaches us to hold on to the desire to learn new things, to retain that insatiable thirst for knowledge that one has when they just begin something new and exciting. To keep this open frame of mind will help you to remain capable of growing and learning new things, even once you have become very accomplished. All too often in these traditions, shoshin is viewed as a beginners level concept. This is definitely not true; shoshin requires self-observation and a constant mindfulness of ones mental and emotional state. This aids in keeping the ego at bay and allows the practitioner to enjoy even those methods they have performed tens of thousands of times through keeping a fresh perspective on the exercise. It also serves to continue an excitement for learning so that you do not lose the enthusiasm you had when you first stepped foot on the path.

The beginners heart-mind is very helpful in creating a fluid mind and fluid beliefs, because you do your best to make no assumptions that you already know all the layers to everything. One popular statement that I hear thrown about is Been there, done that. This is an example of the opposite of shoshin. The mind that has been there and done that is closed and unable to grow, forever locked in its shallow understanding. In martial arts, the use of shoshin allows the warrior to move naturally and respond instead of reacting. It is this state of mind that promotes extended daily practice without the ego arising to either stop your progress or take credit for what has not yet been accomplished.

I learned through more than three decades of martial arts training that your level of understanding and sense of knowing will change dramatically from year to year, especially in the beginning. Look at how many things we have been taught to believe, only to find out later that they are incorrect. Everything that was believed to have been scientifically tested seems to change with time. As technology improves, we learn that the limitations of the previous technology did not allow us to make the valid discoveries that we thought it did.

I find it fascinating how various organizations from corporations to churchesattempt to influence and control our interpretations, perceptions and beliefs in order to control the sheeple herds. I am using the term sheeple here as a humorous yet accurate way to describe the masses who, out of fear and lack of knowing who and what to trust, mindlessly follow the trends, fads and whatever they are told to think or feel, without taking responsibility for themselves. Of course not everyone is being underhanded; our families, friends, teachers and others are simply sharing the best knowledge they have with what their perceptions and beliefs have to offer. In this manner, even though what they may have offered was not fact, it was well meaning and not at all maliciously deceptive. It is crucial to understand the difference. This is why it is extremely important for human beings to once again learn how to think, and more importantly, feel for themselves, stepping outside of such blatant misinformation.

No MindI would like to present a brief look at the concept of mushin (no-mind), which has been addressed earlier in this book. No-mind is a different state than beginners heart-mind. No-mind is usually understood as bringing the mind to a point where the thoughts become still. It is a moment when the mind is not thinking, not allowing the uncontrolled random thoughts generated by the ego to run rampant. When there is stillness of the mind, when it is void of thought, the ego is quiet and the heart can begin to be heard. It is during the suspension of thought that the consciousness of the heart-mind is free to assume the leading role. This is a good basic understanding, but it has layers of deeper meaning and greater skill. It is at this basic level that one beings to experience moments of inner peace and tranquility. This can be a highly profound event in itself, as so many people are burdened with the constant chatter running wild in their mind.

Another level of no-mind is to understand that once you still the mind, it is then possible to hear the Divine voice of your Higher Self, or of Universal Source. Martial artists may see it as a challenge to still move from this mindset, but when you drop the consciousness down into the lower abdomen, it happens as if on auto-pilot. Most spiritual practitioners do not have to address the issue of moving while in this state because they are most likely seated in their practice. Once the continuous, uncontrolled thought patterns are slowed down and brought to a still point, the loud voice of the ego becomes barely audible and the voice of the Divine can be heard. This level is all about communication with your Higher Self.

I want to share another, even deeper level that I have attained with this concept. When you clear your mind, still your thoughts and move with a more divinely inspired flow, you may find yourself aware of an entirely different plane of consciousness. I have experienced this several times with various masters, and it has allowed me to receive teachings that others do not normally receive, as well as special privileges. I have encountered this type of no-mind dimension while training in Japan with Grandmaster Machida, the result of which was to be the first recipient of an award regarding this skill. I also encountered it in China while practicing push-hands with Grandmaster Zhong Yun Long. Grandmaster Hatsumi is most often within this realm while he is demonstrating his incredible movement. Its difficult to put into words, but it is like moving in two dimensions at once. Its as if your physical self is moving in the time and space reality, and your consciousness and energy body is in another reality. It is here that you have the ability to fully understand someone elses intentions without the hindrance of language barriers or miscommunication. One way to know if this experience is real for you is that it happens to both people; it cannot be claimed by one person while the other is unaware of what just happened.

The level we are discussing allows for a teaching method that is referred to as jikiden (direct transmission). Grandmaster Machida refers to me as his jikideshi or direct transmission disciple. This application of direct transmission takes place from heart to heart, mind to mind, and consciousness to consciousness. Obviously, the student of the martial or spiritual arts must be open and receptive to this form of transmission in order for it to be effective. This level of teaching is rare to find, but it is the most effective form of transmission from one person to another.

Reprinted, with permission from Expansion Mastery by Robert D. Bessler, published by Morgan James Publishing, 2013

Photos pages 17 & 19 by Sandra Osbourne. Photos pages 22, 23 & 25 by Dahlia Gordon.

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By Thomas JoinerThe Washington Post

We may live in a culture of distraction, but mindfulness has captured our attention.

Books on the practice include guides to "A Mindful Pregnancy," "Mindful Parenting," "Mindful Politics," "The Mindful Diet" and "Mindfulness for Teachers." Corporations, sports teams, even the military and police departments provide mindfulness training to their employees. A bevy of podcasts offer tips for living a mindful life, guided mindful meditation and interviews with mindfulness evangelists.

Another sure sign of cultural saturation: You can order "a more mindful burger," at Epic Burger in Chicago, or an "enjoy the ride" trucker hat from Mindful Supply Co.

I was dismayed when mindfulness began to encroach on my field: psychology, and specifically the treatment of suicidal behavior. A psychiatrist colleague's proposal for a book on bipolar disorder prompted the feedback pre-publication reviewer "less lithium, more mindfulness" even though less lithium can lead to more death by suicide in patients with bipolar disorder.

Of course, we're all intrigued by interventions that show promise over the standard treatment, especially for the most difficult cases. But I wanted to know whether mindfulness had merit. So I soon found myself immersed in the literature and practice sitting shoes-off in a circle, focused on the coolness of my breath as it hit the back of my throat.

Beware the impostor

What we might call authentic mindfulness, I found, is a noble and potentially useful idea. But true mindfulness is being usurped by an impostor, and the impostor is loud and strutting enough that it has replaced the original in many people's understanding of what mindfulness is.

This ersatz version provides an excuse for self-indulgence. It trumpets its own glories, promising health and spiritual purity with trendiness thrown in for the bargain. And yet it misunderstands human nature, while containing none of the nobility, humility or utility of the true original. Even the best-designed, most robust research on mindfulness has been overhyped.

Although there are various definitions of mindfulness, a workable one, drawn from some of the most respected practitioners, is the non-judgmental awareness of the richness, subtlety and variety of the present moment all of the present moment, not just the self.

Mindfulness is not the same as meditation, although meditative activities and exercises are often deployed in its cultivation. Neither is it the emptying of the mind; far from it, as the emphasis is on full awareness. And it is not about savoring the moment, which would demand dwelling on the positive. Mindfulness recognizes every instant of existence, even those of great misery, as teeming and sundry. It encourages adherents to be dispassionate and nonjudgmental about all thoughts, including those like "I am hopelessly defective." Mindfulness wants us to pause, reflect, and gain distance and perspective.

Accepting one's thoughts as merely thoughts is very different from treasuring one's thoughts; one may as well treasure one's sweat or saliva. This is about recognizing that each thought is inconsequential and thus not worth getting depressed or anxious about. Viewing the mind's moment-to-moment products as of a similar standing as floating motes of dust myriad, ephemeral, individually insignificant is admirable and requires genuine humility.

But mindfulness has become diluted and distorted. The problem has somewhat less to do with how it's practiced and more to do with how it's promoted. People aren't necessarily learning bad breathing techniques. But in many cases they are counting on those breathing techniques to deliver almost magical benefits.

And, all the while, they are tediously, nonjudgmentally and in the most extreme cases monstrously focused entirely on themselves. That is troublesome for mental health practice and for our larger culture.

The inward gaze

At a mindfulness retreat I attended in 2013, the workshop leader exhorted us to remember the selflessness of genuine mindfulness and not to "fetishize" it as a cultist solution for self-enhancement. And yet we spent 90 percent of that retreat focused on our own sensations the minute muscular changes as we engaged in "mindful walking," the strain points in our muscles and joints during "mindful stretching."

The trendy version of mindfulness tends to be described in terms of what it can do for us as individuals. For example, a recent article on the website of Mindful magazine described "How mindfulness gives you an edge at work." Likewise, the book "10-Minute Mindfulness" promises: "When you are truly experiencing the moment, rather than analyzing it or getting lost in negative thoughts, you enjoy a wide array of physical, emotional and psychological benefits that are truly life changing."

It's true that numerous studies seem to support the benefits of mindfulness for a variety of life problems. Yet headlines tend to oversell what the studies show. Moreover, the effects of mindfulness seem to fade under the scrutiny of rigorous and tightly controlled experiments.

I have been particularly intrigued by the work of British psychologist Mark Williams and his colleagues, who have suggested that mindfulness interventions may be useful for preventing and treating depression. Unfortunately, their impressive 2014 study, which included a large and representative sample of adults, was not particularly supportive of a mindfulness-related approach. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy with meditation and without failed to outperform treatment as usual (with previously prescribed antidepressant medication) in preventing recurrence of major depressive disorder.

More specifically, about half of those in the study experienced a recurrence of depression, regardless of whether they were randomly assigned to the antidepressant plus mindfulness with meditation group, the antidepressant plus mindfulness without meditation group or the antidepressants alone group. (Because taking someone with major depressive disorder off medication can cause their depression to come roaring back, as famously happened with the writer David Foster Wallace, studying mindfulness therapy without medication in this population is not an ethically responsible option.)

I don't mean to suggest that we should thoroughly dismiss the potential of mindfulness. Some reputable studies have shown that mindfulness training can reduce mind wandering and improve cognitive functioning, as measured through GRE scores. But when many of the supposed effects of mindfulness fade in the hands of highly credentialed teams publishing well-designed studies in the best journals, we should be skeptical of the benefits promulgated by people and in outlets that are not as scientifically rigorous.

The joys of mindlessness

It's worth noting, too, that some research suggests that mindfulness may backfire. For instance, one study compared a group of participants who briefly engaged in mindfulness meditation with a group who did not. All the participants were asked to memorize a 15-word list; all the words involved the concept of trash (e.g., "rubbish," "waste," "garbage," etc.). A key point is that the list did not contain the word "trash." Close to 40 percent of the mindfulness group members falsely recalled seeing the word "trash," compared with about 20 percent of the control participants (who had been advised to think about whatever they liked). Ironically, being mindful meant losing awareness of details.

Mindfulness, as popularly promoted and practiced, can itself be a distraction. It purports to draw on ancient traditions as an antidote to modern living. Yet it exacerbates the modern tendency toward navel-gazing, while asking us to resist useful aspects of our nature.

Snap judgments and "mindless" but superb performance are two such elements of our evolutionary endowment. Our nervous system perhaps nature's crowning achievement evolved to discern figure from ground, to discriminate, to judge, often on an almost reflexive basis. And when we are fully absorbed in an activity, in a state of flow, it can be adaptive to lose self-awareness. A sure way to throw elite golfers off their game is to ask them to think aloud as they putt.

Interestingly, in contrast to much of the hyperbolic praise heaped on mindfulness, there is convincing evidence that the repetition of some activities, such as aerobic walking, even if done quite mindlessly, promotes health. Mere walking three times a week for 40 or so minutes at a time has even been shown to increase the volume of people's brains enough to reverse usual age-related loss by almost two years.

So, rather than reading books on mindfulness or attending retreats or ordering a mindful burger, you may want to consider taking a walk.

Thomas Joiner is a professor of psychology at Florida State University and the author of "Mindlessness: The Corruption of Mindfulness in a Culture of Narcissism," from which this essay is adapted.

Read more here:
MIND GAMES: Mindfulness has its place, but not as a quick mental health fix - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

We may live in a culture of distraction, but mindfulness has captured our attention.

Books on the practice are numerous, including guides to A Mindful Pregnancy,Mindful Parenting, Mindful Politics, The Mindful Diet and Mindfulness for Teachers. Corporations, sports teams, even the military and police departments provide mindfulness training to their employees. A bevy of podcasts offer tips for living a mindful life, guided mindful meditation and interviews with mindfulness evangelists. Another sure sign of cultural saturation: You can order a more mindful burger, at Epic Burger in Chicago, or an enjoy the ride trucker hat from Mindful Supply Co.

I was dismayed when mindfulness began to encroach on my field: psychology, and specifically the treatment of suicidal behavior. A psychiatrist colleagues proposal for a book on bipolar disorder prompted the feedback pre-publication reviewer less lithium, more mindfulness even though less lithium can lead to more death by suicide in patients with bipolar disorder.

Of course, were all intrigued by interventions that show promise over the standard treatment, especially for the most difficult cases. But I wanted to know whether mindfulness had merit. So I soon found myself immersed in the literature and practice sitting shoes-off in a circle, focused on the coolness of my breath as it hit the back of my throat.

What we might call authentic mindfulness, I found, is a noble and potentially useful idea. But true mindfulness is being usurped by an impostor, and the impostor is loud and strutting enough that it has replaced the original in many peoples understanding of what mindfulness is. This ersatz version provides a vehicle for solipsism and an excuse for self-indulgence. It trumpets its own glories, promising health and spiritual purity with trendiness thrown in for the bargain. And yet it misunderstands human nature, while containing none of the nobility, humility or utility of the true original. Even the best-designed, most robust research on mindfulness has been overhyped.

Although there are various definitions of mindfulness, a workable one, drawn from some of the most respected practitioners, is the non-judgmental awareness of the richness, subtlety and variety of the present moment all of the present moment, not just the self. Mindfulness is not the same as meditation, although meditative activities and exercises are often deployed in its cultivation. Neither is it the emptying of the mind; far from it, as the emphasis is on full awareness. And it is not about savoring the moment, which would demand dwelling on the positive. Mindfulness recognizes every instant of existence, even those of great misery, as teeming and sundry. It encourages adherents to be dispassionate and nonjudgmental about all thoughts, including those like I am hopelessly defective. Mindfulness wants us to pause, reflect and gain distance and perspective.

Authentic mindfulness is also humble in the sense that it places the self in its proper, minuscule place within each moments infinitude. The mindful person is attuned to the miasma of sensation that has nothing at all to do with ones own subjectivity, but rather concerns the features of the present moment surrounding ones own mind, in its minute detail and its vastness, too. And, in addition to attunement to this external moiling of sensation, one is also and simultaneously dispassionately attentive to the contents of ones own mind.

Accepting ones thoughts as merely thoughts is very different from treasuring ones thoughts; one may as well treasure ones sweat or saliva. This is about recognizing that each thought is inconsequential and thus not worth getting depressed or anxious about. Viewing the minds moment-to-moment products as of a similar standing as floating motes of dust myriad, ephemeral, individually insignificant is admirable and requires genuine humility.

But mindfulness has become pernicious, diluted and distorted by the prevailing narcissism of our time. The problem has somewhat less to do with how its practiced and more to do with how its promoted. People arent necessarily learning bad breathing techniques. But in many cases they are counting on those breathing techniques to deliver almost magical benefits. And, all the while, they are tediously, nonjudgmentally and in the most extreme cases monstrously focused entirely on themselves. That is troublesome for mental health practice and for our larger culture.

Authentic mindfulness has always been susceptible to this distortion because of its encouragement of an inward gaze. At a mindfulness retreat I attended in 2013, the workshop leader exhorted us to remember the selflessness of genuine mindfulness and not to fetishize it as a cultist solution for self-enhancement or for the affluents petty aggrievements. And yet we spent 90 percent of that retreat focused on our own sensations the minute muscular changes as we engaged in mindful walking, the strain points in our muscles and joints during mindful stretching.

It is easy to see how this emphasis could be misinterpreted. In moderation, self-examination can lead to a reasonable and unobsessed awareness of ones emotional tendencies, thought patterns, impact on others and blind spots. But to encourage an inward gaze among incredibly self-interested creatures is to court excess.

The trendy version of mindfulness tends to be described in terms of what it can do for us as individuals. For example, a recent article on the website of Mindful magazine described How mindfulness gives you an edge at work. Likewise, the book 10-Minute Mindfulness promises: When you are truly experiencing the moment, rather than analyzing it or getting lost in negative thoughts, you enjoy a wide array of physical, emotional and psychological benefits that are truly life changing.

Or consider this promotional language for a workshop this summer co-sponsored by UCLAs Mindful Awareness Research Center. Practitioners report deeper connection to themselves, more self-compassion, and greater insights into their lives. The emphasis is on the individual: connection to themselves, self-compassion, insights into their lives.

Indeed, self-compassion and self-care are intertwined with the popular concept of mindfulness. The notion seems to be that it is not selfish to tend to and even to prioritize ones own needs for care and understanding. After all, this line of thought goes, how can one be available for others unless one is fully present, and how can one be fully present unless ones own needs are met? The reasoning here contains a kind of trickle-down logic.

Of course, self-care in the sense of adequate sleep and nutrition is eminently sensible. But it seems that the most ardent fans of self-compassion focus on things like relaxing vacations, restorative massages and rejuvenating skin-care regimens. This preoccupation gives the impression that self-compassion is code, and a rationalization, for doing things people already find pleasant. Theres nothing wrong with pleasant activities, but those already have a name: pleasant activities. Calling them self-care adds little meaning and unhelpfully obscures that such activities are not essential to survival or health or caring for others and that they can be foregone in the service of sacrifice and honor.

What do we really know about what mindfulness can do for us? 10-Minute Mindfulness mentions advantages including reduced levels of stress, anxiety and overthinking, plus improved memory, concentration and sleep. And there is some mild scientific support for those benefits. Headlines regularly announce further breakthrough discoveries. In the past few weeks alone, weve heard that Mindfulness-based intervention significantly improves parenting, Mind-body therapies immediately reduce unmanageable pain in hospital patients and Mindfulness may lower blood sugar levels.

Its true that numerous studies seem to support the benefits of mindfulness for a variety of life problems. Yet headlines tend to oversell what the studies show. Moreover, the effects of mindfulness seem to fade under the scrutiny of rigorous and tightly controlled experiments.

Take a look at that parenting study, a fairly typical example of mindfulness research. The study, published by the Journal of Addiction Medicine, didnt look at parenting in general. Its target population was mothers enrolled in treatment for opioid addiction who started with a low level of parenting skills. Thats certainly a worthwhile focus, though narrower than one might have assumed based on the headline. The intervention was a bit of a mishmash. It involved mindfulness themes, such as attention and nonjudgmental acceptance, along with meditation and activities such as the creation of a glitter jar to settle the mind. The mothers also received feedback on how they interacted with their babies, and they learned about the impact of trauma on parenting. So what was the active ingredient that contributed to the observed improvements in parenting behavior? Its impossible to say. And because there was no control group, we dont know if the progress of their addiction treatment or showing up with their children at a treatment center for two hours a week for 12 weeks was what made the difference.

The pain study was more rigorous. Patients reporting unmanageable pain were randomly assigned to one of three 15-minute interventions: mindfulness training focused on acceptance of pain, hypnosis focused on changing the sensation of pain through imagery or a pain-coping education session. The study authors framed their research in the context of the opioid crisis, but their findings dont suggest that mindfulness willplay much of a role in its resolution. Only about a quarter of patients in the mindfulness group reported a decrease in pain substantial enough to be considered of even moderate clinical importance. And the mindfulness group didnt exhibit any meaningful decrease in perceived need for opioid medication. Here, as in the vast majority of well-controlled mindfulness research, an intervention related to mindfulness failed to outperform in fact, slightly underperformed an active comparison treatment (hypnosis) and exceeded only a very inert comparison group (education). Nevertheless, studies like this are held up by mindfulness enthusiasts as proof positive of its special power.

Given my own specialty area, I have been particularly intrigued by the work of British psychologist Mark Williams and his colleagues, who have suggested that mindfulness interventions may be useful for preventing and treating depression. Unfortunately, their impressive 2014 study, which included a large and representative sample of adults, was not particularly supportive of a mindfulness-related approach. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy with meditation and without failed to outperform treatment as usual (with previously prescribed antidepressant medication) in preventing recurrence of major depressive disorder. More specifically, about half of those in the study experienced a recurrence of depression, regardless of whether they were randomly assigned to the antidepressant plus mindfulness with meditation group, the antidepressant plus mindfulness without meditation group or the antidepressants alone group. (Because taking someone with major depressive disorder off medication can cause their depression to come roaring back, as famously happened with David Foster Wallace, studying mindfulness therapy without medication in this population is not an ethically responsible option.)

I dont mean to suggest that we should thoroughly dismiss the potential of mindfulness. Some reputable studies have shown that mindfulness training can reduce mind wandering and improve cognitive functioning, as measured through GRE scores. They have found that mindfulness mitigates sunk-cost bias when we resist abandoning an effort and cutting our losses. But when many of the supposed effects of mindfulness fade in the hands of highly credentialed teams publishing well-designed studies in the best journals, we should be skeptical of the benefits promulgated by people and in outlets that are not as scientifically rigorous.

Its worth noting, too, that some research suggests that mindfulness may backfire. For instance, one study compared a group of participants who briefly engaged in mindfulness meditation with a group who did not. All the participants were asked to memorize a 15-word list; all the words involved the concept of trash (e.g., rubbish, waste, garbage, etc.). A key point is that the list did not contain the word trash. Close to 40 percent of the mindfulness group members falsely recalled seeing the word trash, compared with about 20 percent of the control participants (who had been advised to think about whatever they liked). Ironically, being mindful meant losing awareness of details.

Mindfulness, as popularly promoted and practiced, can itself be a distraction. It purports to draw on ancient traditions as an antidote to modern living. Yet it exacerbates the modern tendency toward navel-gazing, while asking us to resist useful aspects of our nature.

Snap judgments and mindless but superb performance are two such elements of our evolutionary endowment. Our nervous system perhaps natures crowning achievement evolved to discern figure from ground, to discriminate, to judge, often on an almost reflexive basis. And when we are fully absorbed in an activity, in a state of flow, it can be adaptive to lose self-awareness. A sure way to throw elite golfers off their game is to ask them to think aloud as they putt.

Interestingly, in contrast to much of the hyperbolic praise that is heaped on mindfulness, there is convincing evidence that the repetition of some activities, such as aerobic walking, even if done quite mindlessly, promotes health. Mere walking three times a week for 40 or so minutes at a time has even been shown to increase the volume of peoples brains enough to reverse usual age-related loss by almost two years.

So, rather than reading books on mindfulness or attending retreats or ordering a mindful burger, you may want to consider taking a walk.

Thomas Joiner is a professor of psychology at Florida State University and the author of Mindlessness: The Corruption of Mindfulness in a Culture of Narcissism, from which this essay is adapted.

View original post here:
Column: Mindfulness Hype Can Drive You to Distraction - Valley News

In the summer of 2016, the New York Review of Books published a conversation between Marilynne Robinson and President Barack Obama. The details of their conversation were less memorable than the spectacle of a president unspooling long, substantive thoughts with a prominent novelist.

Obama and Robinson are linked by affinity, mutual admiration, and coincidence. Robinsons epistolary novel Gilead launched her back into the heights of American letters in the same month Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate following a masterful oratorical display at the Democratic convention. Two more novels set in the fictional Gilead and three essay collectionswhich sometimes commented assertively on current eventsfollowed during the years Obama served in public office. He cited her in speeches and awarded her the National Humanities Medal. She wrote about her vast admiration for him. It was not hard to see them working on congruent democratic projectshis on the large but tightly constrained stage of national politics, hers on the smaller but infinitely open theater of the page and its reader.

Yet Alan Jacobs, in a thoughtful and widely read essay on the decline of Christian intellectuals in America, took Robinson to task for her conversation with Obama, finding her chat with Obama overly genial. It may be poor form to use a conversation with a friend in order to speak truth to power, but I for one would have appreciated a dose of Cornel Westlike poor form, Jacobs wrote. He cited Obamas failure to close Guantnamo Bay as one topic she might have raised (Harpers, The Watchmen, September 2016). Robinson may well be the finest living American novelist, and at her best a brilliant essayist, Jacobs went on, but whatever her religious beliefs, her culture seems to be fully that of the liberal secular world.

Jacobs does Robinson some injustice in characterizing her as an auxiliary to liberal secular politics and in minimizing the role her religion plays in shaping her views of public life. But the question he poses is a good one: How does Marilynne Robinsons writing on religionand in particular her appreciation of the Calvinist traditionrelate to her political vision? And what does that political vision mean now that the Obama years are over?

Robinson believes that democracy has an ethos, and needs one. Her most political writing is seldom concerned with the institutional machinery of the democratic state, its shifting demographic trends, or its partisan composition. It is instead concerned with the culture, habits, and civil society institutionsmost notably schools, churches, and publicationsthat undergird American democracy, enabling or inhibiting its health and flourishing. When she does comment directly on politicians and elections, it tends to be through this lens of cultural interpretation.

The openness of experience and human potential are central to Robinsons fiction and nonfiction, and the political implications of her appreciation for Obama are clear: an experiment in democratic self-government will not long survive the closure of possibility, either among individuals, in the ongoing development of culture, or in ideology. This is classic American pragmatism, continuous, as Robinson regularly points out, with the literary tradition that includes Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, and Melville among many others. It is also implicitly theological, even if its theological roots have long been forgotten. Calvinism, on her account, is uniquely the fons et origo of Christian liberalism.

Robinsons characters are marked by yearning, but seem resigned to injustice.

That Calvinist influence, in turn, depends on the Old Testament and its uncannily generous laws. In When I Was a Child I Read Books, Robinson connects liberal in the American sense to the Geneva Bibles use of liberality rather than to the French libert, giving it the sense of generosity rather than the assertion of individual freedom. God creates the world freely and without constraint, and human beings reflect, in miniature, that unconstrained freedom. The laws honoring and defending that freedom for Israel require mutual support and open-handedness.

Consequently, the political history that most interests Robinson is the antebellum abolitionist movement and the era of Republican radicalism that gave America the Homestead Act of 1862, a piece of legislation she compares to Deuteronomy. There was nothing inevitable about the emergence of an American democracy based on mass small-scale land ownership rather than vast plantations. Our development of unprecedented systems of primary and higher education likewise expressed an egalitarian ambition: that access to schooling at all levels would transform people beyond anything envisioned in the more rigorously class-bound societies from which Americans emigrated.

In this perspective, John Ames, the prairie philosopher of Gilead and Lila, is not so much a moral or intellectual hero as he is an odd tendril thrown up by a culture that valued the office of country preacher and positioned him to learn from anything and anyone. An unlikely heir of the words of Moses, and a minor heir of the words of Calvin, Ames exemplifies the miracle of his own possibility and the world that bestowed that possibility with such a free hand.

For some of the contributors to A Political Companion to Marilynne Robinson, this story of liberality and possibility does not constitute an adequate conception of political life and its substantive goods. Ralph Hancock calls it a repudiation of teleology, a conception of human life so open and cosmopolitan that it cannot sustain the doctrine and the social order that created it. Ames, he notes, fails even the basic democratic test of using his influence to make Jack Boughtons biracial family welcome in Gilead. Taking an opposite tack, Christine Maloyed accuses Robinson of sanitizing Christian history to make it useful to progressive politics and making strawmen out of secular discourses like evolutionary theory (which Robinson identifies with the tendency to constrain or roll back the instruments of democratic potential).

Briallen Hopper, writing on the website Religion and Politics, builds an even sharper critique on a puzzling transposition in Home. In that novel, Boughton, secretly married to the African American mother of his child, expresses shock at racial unrest in Montgomery while describing much different events in Birmingham that took place years later. Whether the substitution of one event for another is a troubling oversight on the part of the author or a deliberate anachronism meant to throw her white characters into starker relief, it reveals a dimension of Robinsons fiction: she is not interested in telling the stories of people who fight their fate, alone or together. In hundreds of pages on a small town and its churches, citizens and worshipers barely make an appearance. At the heart of Robinsons work is not the achievement of justice or reconciliation but rather the nobility of yearning. The mere longing is enough, Hopper writes. It feels more satisfying than any real attempt at interracial community or racial justice could ever be.

These critics converge in finding in Robinsons work a disturbing complacency. Just as Jacobs laments that she pulls up short of a stern word to the president on Guantnamo Bay, Hancock finds her work lacking in the virtues and commitments required for the defense of the ordered hierarchy of family and society. For Hopper, Robinsons fiction is too Stoic and resigned to deal adequately with the reality of injustice. Robinsons intellectual generosity does not extend to modern white evangelicalism, which she treats in a summary and dismissive manner, and her considerable curiosity does not extend to the contributions of Catholic or Jewish social thought to Americas democratic institutions.

The critics are not wrong. To the extent that her readers have sought in Robinsons work a fully articulated alternative to ethnic nationalism, neoliberalism, or the Christian Right, they seek in vain. But Robinson has never claimed to offer such an alternative. Only the enthusiasm of her audience would indicate that she has one to offer, and only the parched landscape of modern thought could demand it of her.

If her relentless focus on interiority seems like a political cul-de-sac, and if her continual return to a humanism of awe and mystery seems inadequate for the hard-edged questions of our age, perhaps we should conclude that Robinsons politics are not strictly political after all. What is a community of inwardness, anyway? Ames unburdens his soul most fully in an empty church, or in a letter dropped into the stove. One can no more imagine him wearing out his congressman with phone calls than rousing the Israelites through the sea behind Moses.

Where Robinsons tart critiques and broad reveries do become genuinely political, fierce with unresolved grief, is in her defense of the institutions and habits that created lonely wanderers like Ames in the first place. When she talks about education or the conventions of literary and scientific thought that nurture or despoil it, we see a figure who is anything but complacent.

For all her optimism about human nature and possibility, Robinsons view of institutions is dire and forlorn. Her own University of Iowa, over 150 years old and long sustained by the generosity and good faith of hundreds of little farm towns, is being turned toward gruesomely antihumanistic and profit-seeking ends. It is as if the very idea of a people, a historical community, has died intestate, she concludes, and all its wealth is left to plunder. Built on land grants, subsidized by public budgets, and charged with building up a democratic culture, American universities have become resources to be extracted, endowments to be raided. Something similar is happening to primary education. Instead of equipping citizens for the demands of democracy, schools are training workers for the rigors of global capitalism. You would think from our rhetoric, she writes, that Americans lost the Cold War.

Calvinism and its American progeny, too, are now mostly distant memories. Gilead, set in the time of Robinsons youth, is in no small part a lament for the faded ideals of the abolitionist movement. The eldest John Ames, the narrators grandfather, a veteran of the Kansas unrest and the Civil War, and his comrades harbor a barely suppressed wild grief, Emily C. Nacol writes in the Political Companion. The black church of Gilead, a remnant of its more egalitarian history, was set on fire; its members moved to Chicago. Ames the narrator recalls this event with a discreditable lack of sorrow and fury.

But Amess complacencyand here the term is wholly appropriatewas the complacency of a white America that had long before agreed to put the war, its motives, and its radical potential in the past. It was tired of the rigor and heat of the old evangelical abolitionists, who were never popular enough to keep their printing presses from being destroyed and their leaders from being harassed or worse. Gilead survived, but without its past intact. The novels that document it, despite their aesthetic and spiritual astonishments, have a tragic hue.

What, in Robinsons telling, has replaced the Calvinism that so shaped American institutions and its secularized descendants? In the churches, she claims, nothing much. Outside of the churches, Puritanism has been replaced by what Robinson calls priggishness, a version of sanctity that awards or deducts points as viciously asand more trivially thanany Great Awakening revivalist.

In intellectual life and political ideology, the ideas that command the most prestige are reductive, harsh, and minimizing of human strangeness and possibility. Austerity in politics and economics turns us against the best of our public inheritance and against each other. In the social sciences, human experience is diminished to the flicker of fMRI data or the just-so stories of evolutionary psychology. When our dominant ideologies reduce us to the role of observers in our own collective actions, how could we remain committed to the clumsy genius of plebeian democracy?

In the lecture series published as Absence of Mind, Robinson notes the frequent use of the story of Phineas Gage in the scientific literature she finds so dehumanizing. Gage was a railroad worker who in 1848 survived a blast that lodged an iron rod in his skull. He remained remarkably intact, but his deportment was reported to have become rather poor and unreliable. This case is frequently cited as evidence that our personality traits are functions of our neural hardware. Robinson, however, asks, Did he have hopes? Did he have dependents? Gages afflictions, she suggests, might have shaped his profane and irreverent behavior beyond the damage to his circuitry. When our ideas reduce human beings to things, they require a new sort of mythology. The more we believe in this mythology, the more evidence we find to verify it.

I returned to this passage on Gage as the tide of 2016 election postmortems was at flood and a large swath of the American electorate was receiving a similar analysis. The now proverbial white working class Trump voters, limned in anecdote and aggregate data, were the test subject. What issue would bind them to Trump or pry them back to the progressive coalition? Which survey would chase their real motivations out into the open? What could explain their choices? Behind the questions was the assumption that people are inert; they merely respond to stimuli.

You would think from our rhetoric, writes Robinson, that we lost the Cold War.

This assumption may be true. Or at least it is being made true through repetition and by the scarcity of other claims for what a democratic society should or could be. That we have come to such a moment should not be a shock to anyone who has read Robinsons books. She has been unfolding its possibility for a long time.

The force behind the movement of time, she wrote in Housekeeping, is a mourning that will not be comforted. Memory pulls us forward and prophecy is only brilliant memory. It is easy for readers to lose this mournful theme in Robinsons work, deep and thunderous though it sometimes sounds.

John Ames, at the end of Gilead, prays that his son will grow up brave in a brave country and that he will be useful. Those wizened abolitionists whom he remembersthey were brave and useful. Their bravery and usefulness were a reproach and a warning to their lukewarm, forgetful progeny.

Fictional prayers for fictional children bounded by the page are poignant in their immunity to answer. The youngest Ames, had he existed, would now be eligible for Medicare. We can hazard a judgment on whether he would have grown up in a brave country. If these memories are to become brilliant enough to serve as prophecy in the wilderness of Americas retracting democracy, it will require something more and other than even our greatest living novelist can do for us.

A version of this article appears in the September 13 print edition under the title Liberalism and memory.

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Marilynne Robinson's vision for democracy - The Christian Century

Training is teaching, or developing in oneself or others, any skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability, capacity, productivity and performance. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of technology (also known as technical colleges or polytechnics). In addition to the basic training required for a trade, occupation or profession, observers of the labor-market recognize as of 2008[update] the need to continue training beyond initial qualifications: to maintain, upgrade and update skills throughout working life. People within many professions and occupations may refer to this sort of training as professional development

Physical training concentrates on mechanistic goals: training programs in this area develop specific skills or muscles, often with a view of peaking at a particular time. Some physical training programs focus on raising overall physical fitness.

In military use, training means gaining the physical ability to perform and survive in combat, and learning the many skills needed in a time of war. These include how to use a variety of weapons, outdoor survival skills, and how to survive being captured by the enemy, among many others. See military education and training.

For psychological or physiological reasons, people who believe it may be beneficial to them can choose to practice relaxation training, or autogenic training, in an attempt to increase their ability to relax or deal with stress.[1] While some studies have indicated relaxation training is useful for some medical conditions, autogenic training has limited results or has been the result of few studies.

Some commentators use a similar term for workplace learning to improve performance: "training and development". There are also additional services available online for those who wish to receive training above and beyond that which is offered by their employers. Some examples of these services include career counseling, skill assessment, and supportive services.[2] One can generally categorize such training as on-the-job or off-the-job.

The on-the-job training method takes place in a normal working situation, using the actual tools, equipment, documents or materials that trainees will use when fully trained. On-the-job training has a general reputation as most effective for vocational work[citation needed].It involves employee training at the place of work while he or she is doing the actual job. Usually, a professional trainer (or sometimes an experienced employee) serves as the course instructor using hands-on training often supported by formal classroom training. Sometimes training can occur by using web-based technology or video conferencing tools.

Simulation based training is another method which uses technology to assist in trainee development. This is particularly common in the training of skills requiring a very high degree of practice, and in those which include a significant responsibility for life and property. An advantage is that simulation training allows the trainer to find, study, and remedy skill deficiencies in their trainees in a controlled, virtual environment. This also allows the trainees an opportunity to experience and study events that would otherwise be rare on the job, e.g., in-flight emergencies, system failure, etc., wherein the trainer can run 'scenarios' and study how the trainee reacts, thus assisting in improving his/her skills if the event was to occur in the real world. Examples of skills that commonly include simulator training during stages of development include piloting aircraft, spacecraft, locomotives, and ships, operating air traffic control airspace/sectors, power plant operations training, advanced military/defense system training, and advanced emergency response training.

Off-the-job training method takes place away from normal work situations implying that the employee does not count as a directly productive worker while such training takes place. Off-the-job training method also involves employee training at a site away from the actual work environment. It often utilizes lectures, case studies, role playing, and simulation, having the advantage of allowing people to get away from work and concentrate more thoroughly on the training itself. This type of training has proven more effective in inculcating concepts and ideas[citation needed]. Many personnel selection companies offer a service which would help to improve employee competencies and change the attitude towards the job. The internal personnel training topics can vary from effective problem-solving skills to leadership training.

In religious and spiritual use, training may refer to the purification of the mind, heart, understanding and actions to obtain a variety of spiritual goals such as (for example) closeness to God or freedom from suffering. Note for example the institutionalised spiritual training of Threefold Training in Buddhism, Meditation in Hinduism or discipleship in Christianity. These aspects of training can be short term or last a lifetime, depending on the context of the training and which religious group it is a part of.

Compare religious ritual.

Instructor Guide (IG), is an important document available to an instructor. Specifically, it is used within a Lesson Plan, as the blueprint that ensures instruction is presented in proper sequence and to the depth required by the objectives. Objectives of a lesson plan:

Parochial schools are a fairly widespread institution in the United States. A parochial school is a primary or secondary school supervised by a religious organization, especially a Roman Catholic day school affiliated with a parish or a holy order. As of 2004, out of the approximately 50 million children who were enrolled in American grade schools, 4.2 million children attend a church-affiliated school, which is approximately 1 in 12 students.[5] Within the Christian religion, for example, one can attend a church-affiliated college with the intent of getting a degree in a field associated with religious studies. Some people may also attend church-affiliated colleges in pursuit of a non-religious degree, and typically do it just to deepen their understanding of the specific religion that the school is associated with.[citation needed] The largest non-public school system in the United States, the Catholic school system, operates 5,744 elementary schools and 1,206 secondary schools.

Researchers have developed training methods for artificial-intelligence devices as well. Evolutionary algorithms, including genetic programming and other methods of machine learning, use a system of feedback based on "fitness functions" to allow computer programs to determine how well an entity performs a task. The methods construct a series of programs, known as a population of programs, and then automatically test them for "fitness", observing how well they perform the intended task. The system automatically generates new programs based on members of the population that perform the best. These new members replace programs that perform the worst. The procedure repeats until the achievement of optimum performance.[6] In robotics, such a system can continue to run in real-time after initial training, allowing robots to adapt to new situations and to changes in themselves, for example, due to wear or damage. Researchers have also developed robots that can appear to mimic simple human behavior as a starting point for training.[7]

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Training - Wikipedia

Yoga Teaching in Santa Barbara

Paul Wellman

Jivana Heyman instructs a course at Santa Barbara Yoga Center.

A Mecca for Training Programs andPractice

Santa Barbara is a yogic place. Its not uncommon to see someone unfolding gracefully over a seaside bluff in dancer pose, or bending their back upon the crowning boulders of Lizards Mouth. Yoga is in our shared lifestyle and our worldwide brand. Our coastal city, whose mountains were likened to the foothills of the Himalayas by famed S.B. yogi Rishi Singh Grewal, has for more than a century drawn mystics, healers, and mind-body enthusiasts. [Santa Barbaras] splendid natural beauty arouses the desire in the individual to stay deeply connected to life, said Yoga Soup founder EddieEllner.

Now, with yoga more popular nationwide than evera joint 2016 study by Yoga Journal and the Yoga Alliance counted more than 36 million practitioners, a roughly 75 percent increase from the 20.4 million tallied in 2012Santa Barbara attracts more and more prospective yoga teachers, with at least nine different training programs offered in the city limits. The city is such an ideal location for yoga, in fact, that it is home to world-renowned master and creator of flow yoga Ganga White and his wife, Tracey Rich, whose influential co-teachings are felt in established studios such as Yoga Soup, as well as newer ones such as DiviniTree Yoga & Art Studio. And the citys instructors arent ones to sit on their laurelsthey continue to invent and innovate on the yogic front, with studios such as Santa Barbara Yoga Center and Let It Go Yoga teaching accessible yoga for the differently abled or branching into onlineteachings.

By PaulWellman

Yoga Soups Eddie Ellner hopes to free teachers from limitations. The more you can grapple with the attachment you have to your ideas of yourself, the less you indulge them, hesaid.

The origins of yoga date back more than 5,000 years, with philosophical roots grounded in a collection of sacred texts and songs developed in the Indus-Sarasvati civilization. Over thousands of years, the spiritual practice evolved to integrate physical movement; most of what we know as yoga is extremely recentlydeveloped.

It turns out yoga is really the result of the global brain, White said, adding that the British Armys occupation of India in the 1800s hugely shaped the practice. Before it was connected with the West, yoga was very rudimentary and simplistic. There is a pretty strong likelihood that many asanas [or poses] came from British burpees, and many of the poses in yoga have been shown to have come not from well-being practice but from circuscontortionists.

In the early 1900s, gurus such as Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda advocated the spiritual benefits to U.S. audiences, and by the psychedelic 60s, many Americans gazes were fixed firmly on the Eastern Hemisphere. Still, yoga wasnt popular the way it is now. You were always the black sheep in your family or neighborhood, recalled Rich of thatera.

In time, however, yoga became commoditized and is now a gigantic and growing industry. The aforementioned survey found that, in 2016, Americans spent $16 billion on classes, gear, and accessories, far surpassing the $10 billion counted four years before. This current era of yoga is also likely the first in its multithousand-year history that has a nonprofit overseeing the nations teaching community. The Yoga Alliance requires any prospective teacher to be certified through the organization, which entails a minimum of 200 hours of training. Thats where the teacher-training studios comein.

One of the first of its kind in Santa Barbara, White Lotus Foundation serves as the origin story for many area teachers. Opened in 1983 by Ganga White, the sprawling site, located on San Marcos Pass Road, encompasses a beautiful waterfall and swimming hole, quietly rustling bay leaves and chaparral, and sweeping views of the city and sea. The Chumash called this area Taklushmon: the gathering place. The ashram offers multiple retreats, and their training programs are intensive, where teachers-to-be liveonsite.

White was drawn to yoga long before he knew what it was. I definitely had the innate inclination to explore things and learn things, and thats why I was so attracted when someone told me yogis were making flowers out of thin air in the Himalayas, he said. But it wasnt until the turbulence of the 60s and everything melting down and the Vietnam War [that] it came into my consciousness that I should really look into this yoga that I had heard about. Whites studies began in 1966; by 1968, he organized and led what is likely the first yoga teacher training in the U.S.: The In-Depth Yoga and Teacher Training. Soon, he became a world-renowned yogi, appearing in Hollywood films, embarking on national lecturing tours, and hosting yogi gurus fromIndia.

By PaulWellman

Pictured sitting at one of White Lotus Foundations swimming holes, Ganga White and Tracey Rich offer a training based on their jointly developed flowsequence.

While he was a teacher in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, Ernst and Ruth Haeckel, two yogis from Santa Barbara, were among Whites first students. The German-born Ernst approached White and said, Young man, I have been doing yoga since I was a child in the 1920s. Use me as a resource. White took him up on his offer and visited the Haeckels at their 40-acre site, then a yoga ashram replete with bomb shelter (which is now a kiva for prayer). White one day dreamed of opening a yoga retreat center on a land likethis.

In the meantime, White taught yoga to hundreds of people across the country and on his journeys met his future wife, Tracey Rich, on Maui. We had a mutual respect, not only for each other, but for the importance of what yoga was in our individual lives, and that it was a very full-spectrum, deeply personal path of living, she said. We are both into the inquiry of the human mind and consciousness and living, and that remains something we teach and share. Together, filming on VHS in L.A., they developed a series of partner yoga videos, which further expanded the practice for manyyogis.

By the 1980s, the Haeckels yoga center had fallen into disarray, with squatters on the land and financial troubles rumbling. In 1983, White and Rich offered to take over the land, settle the Haeckels debts, and allow them to live on the property until their death, which they did. The couple passed away on the property they hoped would become something very much like what White Lotus Foundation istoday.

Courtesy

Summerlands Evolation has grown through a worldwide network of teachers, say founders. Mark Drost and ZefeaSamson.

Now, yogis live here among the trees, rocks, wind, and sky, for 16-day in-depth teacher trainings or shorter-term stays. You get to live the experience fully in nature, which we think is one of the greatest teachers, Rich said. Beyond that, they try to avoid teaching any one approach. You have two schools of thought: one that everything was mapped out in the past, and the other that everything is relativistic and evolutionary, White said. Were in the latter. We really try to teach people how to see forthemselves.

Using their incredibly influential flow serieselements of which can be seen in countless yoga classes todayand Whites book Yoga Beyond Belief as guiding points, the pair offer a vision of yoga as a complementary tool to understand and adjust to lifes ever-changing course. A lot of people hold yoga as a particular solidified practice concept or philosophy, Rich said. There is no one path, White agreed. Its relative; its a constant journey; its constantlearning.

White and Richs lessons trickled down the mountains into the minds and meditations of yogis who went on to open some of S.B.s most venerable studios, including The Yoga Studio, founded by Sue Anne and Jim Parsons in 1986. Not [a] very original [name], Sue Anne admitted, but at the time, it was very original, countered Jim. People had weird ideas [about] what yoga was, Sue Anne explained. They thought it was a cult, Jimsaid.

The Parsons family has developed its own style, Let It Go Yoga, a practice done entirely on the floor, and just about everywhere that offers yoga classes has a Parsons graduate, Sue Anne said. [Its] a style of hatha yoga, done lying down. Its all about surrender; learning where youre holding on and then releasing it, she explained. Let It Go is designed to be something you can do forever, Jimsaid.

Within the last year, the Parsons launched their inaugural online training course, which can be done at home over any length of time. The course teaches not only the Eight Limbs of Yoga (the guiding principles, of which asanas are only one facet), but also emotional-release tools such as instructions on how to write a love letter. This is just one way the family is innovating the yogic landscape. Their daughter Jessica Parsons is the first person in the country with Down syndrome to become a certified yoga instructor. Along with her sisters Lauren and Emily Parsons, also teachers, she has released a series of Yoga by Teens videos, among the first teen-focused yoga videos on themarket.

By PaulWellman

With both their Let It Go sequence and their online training course, Sue Anne and Jim Parsons offer yoga for any time ofday.

Another innovator in town is Yoga Soups Eddie Ellner, who is renowned as one of the most creative, distinctive, and even quirky teachers. A White Lotus graduate, Ellner came here, having witnessed the yoga explosion of the mid 90s in Santa Monica, when now-celeb-status figures like Bryan Kest and Steve Ross brought yoga to L.A.sWestside.

At Yoga Soup, Ellners classes sit on the borderland of playful and powerful, segueing from dance breaks to profound seriousness. As he explained, he likes to prod the mind that thinks it knows everything and has its preferences and is stuck in its ways. Ellner feels yoga, like a persons self-image, doesnt have to look any particular way; thats really the environment that we want to create here. When Yoga Soups inaugural teacher training begins in January 2018, Ellner will tell teachers to expect the unexpected. Training shouldnt just be a diploma mill of easy concepts; training should really challenge you and push your buttons and grow you in ways you never even imagined you couldgrow.

Studios such as Santa Barbara Yoga Center (SBYC), on the other hand, are offering yoga teacher trainings to people who, due to physical incapacities, perhaps never imagined they could do yoga, let alone teach it. In addition to its usual teacher modules, SBYC offers a course in Accessible Yoga Training through co-owner Reverend Jivana Heyman. Heyman and Barbara Hirsch took over the studio from founder Las Ribeiro da Silva, who opened the studio in 1992, making it S.B.s longest-runningstudio.

My vision is about making yoga accessible, Heyman said. He began practicing yoga while working as an HIV/AIDS activist in San Francisco. His best friend died of AIDS in 1995, and he taught me a lot about what healing really is. Theres physical healing, and then theres spiritual healing. When Heyman became a teacher, he wanted to share yoga with the HIV/AIDS community in San Francisco, and he began teaching at hospitals, which soon grew to teaching people with disabilities of all kinds. Now, SBYC frequently offers workshops and classes such as Yoga for Arthritis and Yoga for the Special Child. Heyman likes that yoga is down-to-earth, practical, and not dogmatic; in a way, you could say yoga is like the technology of spiritual practice without thedogma.

In the last decade, Santa Barbara has seen an ever-greater blossoming of yoga studios, practitioners, and teacher-training programs that fill a particular niche, attracting a broader, younger crowd with their variegated approach toyoga.

Yasa Yoga founders Stephanie and Ryan Besler moved their studio from Scottsdale, Arizona, to an astounding church-like structure on Mission Street in 2011, when Stephanie, a UCSB alum, wanted to return to the community she loved deeply. The Beslers style blends the ashtanga and Iyengar lineages, and they wanted to bring something new and different to the community. The Beslers co-teach, balancing masculine and feminine energy in the lessons. You get that mom-and-pop feel, Stephanie said of the training vibe. Beyond equipping their teachers with a tool belt of safe teaching methods and effective marketing skills, the Beslers emphasize a continual willingness to grow. Theres a humble confidence that is so importance in being a good yoga instructor, Stephaniesaid.

By PaulWellman

Yasa Yogas Stephanie and Ryan Besler balance their teacher trainings with a husband-wifeapproach.

Summerlands Evolation is also owned by a husband-wife pairthe word yoga does mean to yoke or unite, after allMark Drost and Zefea Samson, who both have a largely Bikram-influenced lineage. Nestled in a serene Summerland space, their white-walled shelter overlooks the blue Pacific in a mind-clearing oasis. Theirs is a small, hands-on, intensive 500-hour course founded in Bikrams and Iyengarsphilosophies.

The pair take and teach the principles and poses they found accessible and inspiring about Bikrama controversial hot-yoga brand known for its powerful effects, widespread popularity, and litigious founder, Bikram Choudhuryand transform it into something more. What made Bikram so successful its so simple. But we feel like you go in this narrow hallway or doorway of yoga; a lot of people are looking for more; [they want] to keep that simplicity but open a few more doors. Samson said Evolation creates a support system, and the teachers have gone on to spread the practice worldwide, from Madrid to Missoula toMalawi.

For many yogis, its all about the networks and community support, not just as a teacher, but as a resident of the world. At CorePower Yoga, which has locations in Santa Barbara and Goleta among 170 CorePower studios nationwide, owner and director Cara Ferrick said community-building is what keeps yogis coming back400 yogis a day in S.B., 220 in Goleta. At CorePower trainings, teachers learn a foundational vinyasa power yoga sequence, with classes offered on weeknights and weekends so as not to interrupt the flow of regular life. Theres a practicality behind it, said Goleta studio manager Tricia Cook of why she picked CorePowers part-time training schedule. I didnt need to drop everything for two months. You come out with a sequence, how to teach it, [how to] keep students safe intransitions.

Empowerment meets practicality at Power of Your Om, too, where owner Adrienne Smith provides a goal-oriented approach to handling lifes challenges. Smith, who used to work in product development for health-care-products corporation Kimberly-Clark, offers an open, fun environment with a power yoga sequence foundation where unpretentiousness is the key. She remembers her first yoga class giving her a buzzing calm and clarity shed never felt before, and she hopes her teachers-to-be come out clearer not just about what to teach, but about who they are. A lot of it is about personal power, passion, showing up as a yes and seeing whats holding you back from your authenticself.

By PaulWellman

Fostering a fun and unpretentious atmosphere at her Power of Your Om studio, Adrienne Smith provides a practical and empowering curriculum focused on power yogasequences.

Deep truths are all but inescapable to the focused yogic mind, said DiviniTrees Rachel Wilkins; they almost come crashing in. Its a deep churning and peeling back the layers. Youre totally raw, totally bare; you cant really hide when youre up there teaching. At DiviniTree, a very popular spot on East De la Guerra Street that offers teacher trainings this fall, White Lotus graduate Wilkins leads a training program that emphasizes creativity. A dancer whos always trying to channel a little bit of Bowie, Wilkins teaches her teachers a very organic, improvisational flow. Through her, the mountaintop teachings of White Lotus unfold in sensual, musical classes and art projects, with the flow series evolving evermore in electronicrhythms.

Yoga will no doubt continue to expand and to grow in Santa Barbara, a city now forever tied to the evolution of the practice. For yoga itself, as with its poses, there will always be adjustments, White said. The enlightenment of today can become the ignorance oftomorrow.

By PaulWellman

Rachel Wilkins encourages teachers-to-be to get creative in her DiviniTree teachingprogram.

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Yoga Teaching in Santa Barbara - Santa Barbara Independent

We may live in a culture of distraction, but mindfulness has captured our attention.

Books on the practice are numerous, including guides to A Mindful Pregnancy, Mindful Parenting, Mindful Politics, The Mindful Diet and Mindfulness for Teachers. Corporations, sports teams, even the military and police departments provide mindfulness training to their employees. A bevy of podcasts offer tips for living a mindful life, guided mindful meditation and interviews with mindfulness evangelists. Another sure sign of cultural saturation: You can order a more mindful burger, at Epic Burger in Chicago or an Enjoy the ride trucker hat from Mindful Supply Co.

I was dismayed when mindfulness began to encroach on my field: psychology, and specifically the treatment of suicidal behavior. A psychiatrist colleagues proposal for a book on bipolar disorder prompted a pre-publication reviewer to request less lithium, more mindfulness even though less lithium can lead to more death by suicide in patients with bipolar disorder.

Of course, were all intrigued by interventions that show promise over the standard treatment, especially for the most difficult cases. But I wanted to know whether mindfulness had merit. So I soon found myself immersed in the literature and practice sitting shoes-off in a circle, focused on the coolness of my breath as it hit the back of my throat.

What we might call authentic mindfulness, I found, is a noble and potentially useful idea. But true mindfulness is being usurped by an imposter, and the imposter is loud and strutting enough that it has replaced the original in many peoples understanding of what mindfulness is. This ersatz version provides a vehicle for solipsism and an excuse for self-indulgence. It trumpets its own glories, promising health and spiritual purity with trendiness thrown in for the bargain. And yet it misunderstands human nature, while containing none of the nobility, humility or utility of the true original. Even the best-designed, most robust research on mindfulness has been overhyped.

Although there are various definitions of mindfulness, a workable one, drawn from some of the most respected practitioners, is the nonjudgmental awareness of the richness, subtlety and variety of the present moment all of the present moment, not just the self. Mindfulness is not the same as meditation, although meditative activities and exercises are often deployed in its cultivation. Neither is it the emptying of the mind; far from it, as the emphasis is on full awareness. And it is not about savoring the moment, which would demand dwelling on the positive. True mindfulness recognizes every instant of existence, even those of great misery, as teeming and sundry. It encourages adherents to be dispassionate and nonjudgmental about all thoughts, including those like, I am hopelessly defective. Mindfulness wants us to pause, reflect and gain distance and perspective.

Authentic mindfulness is also humble in the sense that it places the self in its proper, minuscule place within each moments infinitude. The mindful person is attuned to the miasma of sensation that has nothing at all to do with ones own subjectivity, but rather concerns the features of the present moment surrounding ones own mind, in its minute detail and its vastness, too. And, in addition to attunement to this external moiling of sensation, one is also and simultaneously dispassionately attentive to the contents of ones own mind.

Accepting ones thoughts as merely thoughts is very different from treasuring ones thoughts; one may as well treasure ones sweat or saliva. This is about recognizing that each thought is inconsequential and thus not worth getting depressed or anxious about. Viewing the minds moment-to-moment products as of a similar standing as floating motes of dust myriad, ephemeral, individually insignificant is admirable and requires genuine humility.

But mindfulness has become pernicious, diluted and distorted by the prevailing narcissism of our time. The problem has somewhat less to do with how its practiced and more to do with how its promoted. People arent necessarily learning bad breathing techniques. But in many cases they are counting on those breathing techniques to deliver almost magical benefits. And, all the while, they are tediously, nonjudgmentally and in the most extreme cases monstrously focused entirely on themselves. That is troublesome for mental health practice and for our larger culture.

Authentic mindfulness has always been susceptible to this distortion because of its encouragement of an inward gaze. At a mindfulness retreat I attended in 2013, the workshop leader exhorted us to remember the selflessness of genuine mindfulness and not to fetishize it as a cultist solution for self-enhancement or for the affluents petty aggrievements. And yet we spent 90 percent of that retreat focused on our own sensations the minute muscular changes as we engaged in mindful walking, the strain points in our muscles and joints during mindful stretching.

It is easy to see how this emphasis could be misinterpreted. In moderation, self-examination can lead to a reasonable and unobsessed awareness of ones emotional tendencies, thought patterns, impact on others and blind spots. But to encourage an inward gaze among incredibly self-interested creatures is to court excess.

The trendy version of mindfulness tends to be described in terms of what it can do for us as individuals. For example, a recent article on the website of Mindful magazine described How mindfulness gives you an edge at work . Likewise, the book 10-Minute Mindfulness promises: When you are truly experiencing the moment, rather than analyzing it or getting lost in negative thoughts, you enjoy a wide array of physical, emotional and psychological benefits that are truly life changing.

Or consider this promotional language for a workshop this summer co-sponsored by UCLAs Mindful Awareness Research Center: Practitioners report deeper connection to themselves, more self-compassion, and greater insights into their lives. The emphasis is on the individual connection to themselves, self-compassion, insights into their lives.

Indeed, self-compassion and self-care are intertwined with the popular concept of mindfulness. The notion seems to be that it is not selfish to tend to and even to prioritize ones own needs for care and understanding. After all, this line of thought goes, how can one be available for others unless one is fully present, and how can one be fully present unless ones own needs are met? The reasoning here contains a kind of trickle-down logic.

Of course, self-care in the sense of adequate sleep and nutrition is eminently sensible. But it seems that the most ardent fans of self-compassion focus on things like relaxing vacations, restorative massages and rejuvenating skin-care regimens. This preoccupation gives the impression that self-compassion is code, and a rationalization, for doing things people already find pleasant. Theres nothing wrong with pleasant activities, but those already have a name: pleasant activities. Calling them self-care adds little meaning and unhelpfully obscures that such activities are not essential to survival or health or caring for others and that they can be foregone in the service of sacrifice and honor.

What do we really know about what mindfulness can do for us? 10-Minute Mindfulness mentions advantages including reduced levels of stress, anxiety and overthinking, plus improved memory, concentration and sleep. And there is some mild scientific support for those benefits. Headlines regularly announce further breakthrough discoveries. In the past few weeks alone, weve heard that Mindfulness-based intervention significantly improves parenting , Mind-body therapies immediately reduce unmanageable pain in hospital patients and Mindfulness may lower blood sugar levels.

Its true that numerous studies seem to support the benefits of mindfulness for a variety of life problems. Yet headlines tend to oversell what the studies show. And the effects of mindfulness seem to fade under the scrutiny of rigorous and tightly controlled experiments.

Take a look at that parenting study, a fairly typical example of mindfulness research. The study, published by the Journal of Addiction Medicine, didnt look at parenting in general. Its target population was mothers enrolled in treatment for opioid addiction who started with a low level of parenting skills. Thats certainly a worthwhile focus, though narrower than one might have assumed based on the headline. The intervention was a bit of a mishmash. It involved mindfulness themes, such as attention and nonjudgmental acceptance, along with meditation and activities such as the creation of a glitter jar to settle the mind. The mothers also received feedback on how they interacted with their babies, and they learned about the impact of trauma on parenting. So what was the active ingredient that contributed to the observed improvements in parenting behavior? Its impossible to say. And because there was no control group, we dont know if the progress of their addiction treatment or showing up with their children at a treatment center for two hours a week for 12 weeks was what made the difference.

The pain study was more rigorous. Patients reporting unmanageable pain were randomly assigned to one of three 15-minute interventions: mindfulness training focused on acceptance of pain; hypnosis focused on changing the sensation of pain through imagery; or a pain-coping education session. The study authors framed their research in the context of the opioid crisis, but their findings dont suggest that mindfulness will play much of a role in its resolution. Only about a quarter of patients in the mindfulness group reported a decrease in pain substantial enough to be considered of even moderate clinical importance. And the mindfulness group didnt exhibit any meaningful decrease in perceived need for opioid medication. Here, as in the vast majority of well-controlled mindfulness research, an intervention related to mindfulness failed to outperform in fact, slightly underperformed an active comparison treatment (hypnosis) and exceeded only a very inert comparison group (education). Nevertheless, studies like this are held up by mindfulness enthusiasts as proof positive of its special power.

Given my own specialty area, I have been particularly intrigued by the work of British psychologist Mark Williams and his colleagues, who have suggested that mindfulness interventions may be useful for preventing and treating depression. Unfortunately, their impressive 2014 study, which included a large and representative sample of adults, was not particularly supportive of a mindfulness-related approach. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy with meditation and without failed to outperform treatment as usual (with previously prescribed antidepressant medication) in preventing recurrence of major depressive disorder. More specifically, about half of those in the study experienced a recurrence of depression, regardless of whether they were randomly assigned to the antidepressant plus mindfulness with meditation group, the antidepressant plus mindfulness without meditation group or the antidepressants alone group. (Because taking someone with major depressive disorder off medication can cause their depression to come roaring back, as famously happened with David Foster Wallace, studying mindfulness therapy without medication in this population is not an ethically responsible option.)

I dont mean to suggest that we should thoroughly dismiss the potential of mindfulness. Some reputable studies have shown that mindfulness training can reduce mind wandering and improve cognitive functioning, as measured through GRE scores. They have found that mindfulness mitigates sunk-cost bias when we resist abandoning an effort and cutting our losses. But when many of the supposed effects of mindfulness fade in the hands of highly credentialed teams publishing well-designed studies in the best journals, we should be skeptical of the benefits promulgated by people and in outlets that are not as scientifically rigorous.

Its worth noting, too, that some research suggests that mindfulness may backfire. For instance, one study compared a group of participants who briefly engaged in mindfulness meditation with a group who did not. All the participants were asked to memorize a 15-word list; all the words involved the concept of trash (e.g., rubbish, waste, garbage, etc.). A key point is that the list did not contain the word trash. Close to 40 percent of the mindfulness group members falsely recalled seeing the word trash, compared with about 20 percent of the control participants (who had been advised to think about whatever they liked). Ironically, being mindful meant losing awareness of details.

Mindfulness, as popularly promoted and practiced, can itself be a distraction. It purports to draw on ancient traditions as an antidote to modern living. Yet it exacerbates the modern tendency toward navel-gazing, while asking us to resist useful aspects of our nature.

Snap judgments and mindless but superb performance are two such elements of our evolutionary endowment. Our nervous system perhaps natures crowning achievement evolved to discern figure from ground, to discriminate, to judge, often on an almost reflexive basis. And when we are fully absorbed in an activity, in a state of flow, it can be adaptive to lose self-awareness. A sure way to throw elite golfers off their game is to ask them to think aloud as they putt.

Interestingly, in contrast to much of the hyperbolic praise that is heaped on mindfulness, there is convincing evidence that the repetition of some activities, such as aerobic walking, even if done quite mindlessly, promotes health. Mere walking three times a week for 40 or so minutes at a time has even been shown to increase the volume of peoples brains enough to reverse usual age-related loss by almost two years.

So rather than reading books on mindfulness or attending retreats or ordering a mindful burger, you may want to consider taking a walk.

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Mindfulness would be good for you. If it weren't so selfish. - Washington Post