change therapy

if you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. thanks for visiting!

lin over at telling it like it is has an article on 10 ways to raise children to use drugs. examples:

• encourage insecurity by telling them to keep secrets from other family members or family secrets from others
• avoid touching, hugging, and taking time to interact with your children.
• disregard their physical needs.
• ignore their worthwhile and constructive habits

it’s a perfect prescription for unhappiness, period - a child who grows up in an environment like this may not necessarily get into drugs but will be guaranteed to have other problems.

it again reminds me of gabor maté’s book, in the realm of hungry ghosts - close encounters with addiction. as i’ve mentioned before, this canadian doctor makes the case that many problems with addiction stem from not only an unhappy childhood but also from pregnancy, where the brain undergoes its formation.

as a counsellor, i have worked with people with very, very serious addiction problems. there was not a one among them who did not grow up in a difficult environment.

conversely, people who grew up in an environment that would score well according to lin’s list: they’re not always angels, they may experiment with drugs for a while, they may have a bit of a brush with the law - but they always seem to be able to right themselves after a while, they seem to have a buffer that prevents them from reaching a bottom that isn’t really a bottom, it’s a neverending pit.

having said all this, we need to look at the parents. parents do not want to be angry all the time, give in to ridiculous demands, ignore the consequences of their children’s behaviour, show low self worth and all the other things on lin’s list. parents who behave like that are clearly unhappy people who need just as much support, encouragement, education and love as their children do.

it takes a village to raise a good parent.

(image by murplej@ane)

today is blog action day, a day on which bloggers worldwide post on topics concerning the environment.

what is “the environment”?

here is a merriam-webster definition

1. the circumstances, objects or conditions by which one is surrounded;
2. the complex of climatic, edaphic and biotic factors that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival;
3. the aggregate of social and cultural conditions that influence the life of an individual or community.

what do you notice?

“one is surrounded”
“factors that act upon”
“determine form and survival”
“influence”

it’s written in “us vs. them” language, it’s an “i vs. the other” definition. it’s also a definition that does not take into account how we act upon the environment.

this is at least partly what has brought us to the state where we are today, from species extinction, to rapid melting of ice in the arctic and antarctic, to violent meteorological changes.

i wonder whether humanity as a whole is going through the same developmental stages that individuals go through.

roughly, as small children, we are wholly dependent on our parents – our familial environment.

as we grow older and especially as teenagers, our developmental task is to assert our independence. that’s when “i vs. the other” is of tremendous importance.

we make sure everyone can see how different we are from our parents and other elders, and we also challenge the larger environment. on a societal level, for some it’s the only time of political activism. we even test and try the natural environment. (i remember a year of walking barefoot even in the coldest weather. just because it was cool and i could. never mind the bladder infections.)

following that phase, if we’re lucky (or determined, or get pushed), we mature into a sense of interdependence.

it looks like we’re still behaving like teenagers, and that patiently waiting until we mature into interdependence probably won’t work out. circumstances are pushing us to mature faster than we’d like to, and if we’re not determined to respond to that push, we may not be able to see humanity’s children and grandchildren grow.

paradoxically enough, even accelerated growth needs to be mostly organic and wants elements of gentleness and patience.

and since we’re all part of this big sea of humanity, it always comes down to individual action.

what action are you willing, able and happy to do today, organically and in all gentleness, to show your interdependence with the environment?

(this post was mentioned in the best of me symphony) 

image by petra voegtle

about 10 days ago, geert awarded me the brilliant web award. thank you, geert, especially coming from you! geert posts mostly in dutch (and i have a hilarious time trying to decipher it) but also in english once in a while.

so now my job, he says, is to nominate at least 7 more for this award. oh my. this is why it took me so long to write this post. how am i going to find 7 brilliant blogs when there are so many good blogs out there? seriously, this threw me into a tizzy. but i finally bit the bullet and culled out 15. i am still black and blue from trying to fight off the bad feeling for not including more. but here they are, at the end of the post.

awardees, when you receive this post, here is what you are invited to do:

1. add the logo of the award to your blog
2. add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3. nominate at least 7 other blogs
4. add links to those blogs on your blog
5. leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

and here they come.  drumroll!

• john – storied mind; an award for his brilliant insights on depression
• evan – wellbeing and health; an award for his brilliant thoughtfulness, always looking beneath the surface
• alex – our evolution; an award for his brilliant combination of images, news and spiritual quotes
• jacob - job mob; an award for his brilliant posts on everything careers
• andrew – good honest dollar; an award for his brilliant thoughts on corporate responsibility
• william – integral options; an award for his brilliant collection of posts on buddhism and psychology
• zee – black woman thinks; an award for her brilliant posts on being a black professional woman
• sojourner; an award for her brilliant “slave narratives”
• damien – riley central; an award for his brilliant, down-to-earth treatment of psychological topics
• maddy – whitterer on autism; an award for her brilliant way of writing dialogue
• raul – hummingbird 604; an award for this brilliant environmentalist
• karen - countably infinite; an award for her brilliant work on making public transit more important
• nancy; an award for her brilliant combination of money management and political astuteness
• jeremy – PsyBlog; an award for his brilliant reporting on psychological research
• ashok – rethink; an award for his brilliant, deep thoughts on politics, philosophy – and emily dickinson

and here is part 2 of this month’s buddhist carnival. part 1 is here.

exercise as practice
unapologetic genius discusses exercise as meditative practice, something i also enjoy tremendously. being present to my body, my body who is present to me at all times, can bring an exquisite experience of reality. in fact, i think it’s a fascinating topic, and am putting it on my (admittedly rather long) list of things to blog about. at any rate, here is a little excerpt:

instead of a scattered mind, fear, and unconsciousness, i bring consciousness with me to the gym. i close my eyes, focus on my body, being in it, the movements, and my breathing (which is usually the yogic ujjayi breath. but that’s not nearly as important as simply watching the breath). i’m there, moving and feeling my body and breath, present to each breath and movement.

what are you soaking in?
my twitter friend lisa rokusek has this interesting entry:

buddha said, “what you think, you become” what we soak in really makes a difference.

i can feel something changing inside me. this week i breathe easily, relax more fully, laugh with a deeper appreciation, and am feeling less angst.

it isn’t a lack of stress, i mean i have leapt from the cliff and there is no safety net in sight. the bills have to be paid, food must be purchased, and i forgot to put the wow account on hold and paid 15 bucks for an account we aren’t using. life goes on and a lot is sitting on my shoulders. it is scary - but i am starting to defrost from the panic i felt. i have to hustle, i have to pick up the phone, i have to connect with people in a very competitive business. so i do it. but, there is a seismic shift happening deep inside me and i honestly didn’t see it coming.

find out what she was marinating in, on her blog, the rhino and the buddha.

attachment and projection
“marinating” is such a great word to use to understand the related topic of attachment, which is something that urban monk talks about. in fact, come to think of it, “marinating” might be an even better word. “attachment” conjures the image of object A connected to object B with some sort of string, or if it’s stronger, perhaps through velcro. attachment is stronger still, though. most of the time we are completely entangled in it, steeped in it. and what keeps us in this marinade is often our projections:

when we become attached to something or someone, we do not see it or them as they are. often, all we see are our projections. we see them for what we think they can provide, or more accurately, what we think we lack. through a mansion, we seek the respect we feel we lack. through wealth, we seek security. by finding a lover, or by having endless sex, we think we have love and attention.

but a mansion is just a mansion, money just money. they only have the value we give them, and very so often, we project on to them a false and disproportionate importance. this is even worse when we project our needs on human beings – no longer do we treat them as human beings, but as objects to be used.

… and what does non-attachment look like?
go here for a famous zen story.

well, friends, that’s it for this round of the buddhist carnival.

what do you think? what’s your experience with all of this – with attachment, projection, practice? let me know, let’s talk!

and please come back for the next buddhist carnival, on september 15. any articles you’d like to see? submit them here.

(image by oceandesetoiles)

welcome to the 9th edition of the buddhist carnival. it’s only been nine months? it seems like a long time, and a good long time. i always look forward to putting this carnival together.

even though there are still problems with blog carnival, we have a very nice selection of articles on buddhism this month; in fact, i will give you thoughts and excerpts of all of them. as i often do in this carnival, i will to stick to the middle way and not burden you with too many links; rather, i’ll serve up the carnival in two portions. this is the first one; you can expect the second one by next monday.

let’s start.

what is zen? who teaches it?
lately, i’ve enjoyed starting this carnival with a buddhist poem. chris from martial development was kind enough to supply one, in both his and my ongoing (and probably futile) question of what is zen, really, and is there such a thing as real zen? he quotes a ch’an (chinese zen) master in his post zen habits of master hsuan hua

the dumb transmit to the dumb,
one is teaching but neither has any idea.
the sifu goes to hell.
where will the student end up?

does a teacher need to be enlightened?
if we want a teacher to be more than “dumb” – how much does she need to know? what are the requirements? tom stine discusses the difference between enlightenment and encountering the absolute:

a teacher is not lesser because he hasn’t fully awakened. there are still many, many people who need what he or she has to offer. the grave fallacy that so many run into, which probably leads to a certain amount of difficulties, is the notion that a teacher needs to be “done” to be a teacher. but it isn’t so. all that is required is honesty with yourself and those you teach and interact with. much can be learned, much can be shared.

meditating: like a cat at the mouse hole
this, for example, can be shared (and here is an interesting thought: to what degree are these blogs that talk about buddhism our teachers?)

sarah uses the disney characters tom and jerry to illustrate how our mind likes to jump around during meditation (and even more at other times but then we usually don’t pay attention)

the swami turban on tom’s head is no accident. don’t think for one minute that i don’t loooove sitting on my sage meditation mat which looks lovely against my orange curtains and green buddha, ready for instant enlightenment right here in queens. but after following no more than three glorious breaths in and out, millions of insane thoughts come tumbling down. they are as obnoxious and adorable as jerry in those little aladdin pants! how the hell am i supposed to ignore that?! in classic over-achieving, runner sarah mode, i try to attack the problem by blocking the thoughts. but no dice. jerry’s not going anywhere.

buddhism and art
from the art of walt disney to another art form: here in vancouver, we have a new exhibition by performance artist zhang huan.

a line running through zhang’s art is his enduring relationship to buddhism. in a 1998 performance, pilgrimage—wind and water in new york, he threw himself down repeatedly on gravel-covered ground, imitating the prostrations of buddhist pilgrims, to the sounds of tibetan buddhist music.

in his shanghai studio, he has produced immense self-portrait busts using ash gathered from burnt offerings and incense in buddhist temples. he has also created huge representations of the fingers and limbs broken off buddhist statuary during china’s cultural revolution. these works function as a kind of reclamation of belief and, through it, a declaration of freedom.

(image of zhang huan by designboom)

(image by estherase)

today we have a guest post from aliya, who has been very active in our anorexia recovery forum. she is a young woman who has been in recovery from anorexia for 7 months. she shares her struggles in the beginning of recovery from anorexia and how to overcome them.

well, having been in recovery for a few good months, now and firmly on my way, i can look back at the earlier stages and see just how hard they were.

when you first begin recovery, there are so many little struggles and hurdles that need to be overcome, once you do them, you are well on your way to recovery.

you begin recovery: after having starved your body, beginning to eat again is strangely hard. the first thing i ate when i came into recovery was a fruit salad. seems like nothing, doesn’t it? but for me, that was huge and i felt immensely full so soon after.

that was the first problem i encountered, my tummy used to get full so easily and quickly, and bloated. the way to overcome it is to eat small meals, often, to allow your tummy to adjust. i had a routine, that at certain times i had to eat so i don’t try to avoid any meals. the ana voice is strong at this stage and this makes it so difficult. i used to sit and cry after meals, cause i hated how hard it was to eat something. the thought of gaining weight is always going to be scary.

the other part of starting to eat again was, at the start, i had to make everything i ate and i had to eat certain foods. it was obsessive; i would make odd things like a baked potato with kidney beans. i had to make it though, and in time it goes away and you begin to try foods from other sources. this takes a lot of courage, and support.

there can never be too much support when you’re recovering from this disease. when i eat something that’s maybe different or eat more of something, to me it’s a huge achievement, and i always want it to be acknowledged. it’s like i’m telling the world, i’m getting better.

i think the second big hurdle is weight regain. for about 2 months, i gained about 2 pounds a week, even though i still wasn’t eating that much. i used to hate it. when you begin to eat more regularly, weight gain creeps in, and it’s hard to control. you keep gaining and gaining, until your metabolism stabilizes and from then on, weight gain is hard.

the best way to get over this, is to not weigh yourself. if you’re going to a counseller then do blind weigh ins, where you don’t know how much you weigh or if your not, then don’t take out the scales for at least 2 months. i used to be obsessive, about weighing myself, and weighed myself about ten times a day, and i hated how my weight fluctuated so much. as much as 6 pounds! so it’s definitely normal.

during this stage i would seriously not worry about the regain. it does even out eventually and then you have to eat more and more. it’s a hard and difficult phase, but honestly if you keep eating and fight hard you pull through.

the next hurdle was exercise. i felt at the beginning, when i started eating, i had to exercise, so i used to try and go for walks all the time, and it’s the obsessiveness again. in recovery i found i obsessed about things. i think you need to get rid of any obsessiveness in order to be fully recovered. the purpose of the walks was so you don’t ‘gain lots of weight’ but a walk should be taken when you feel like one. now, i don’t exercise at all, i don’t need to, and i know i shouldn’t. of course when i’m at my normal weight, then yes i can do some light exercise now and then, but when you start recovery, you really don’t need to.

i overcame it by saying to myself, why should i exercise just for the sake of ana? no, if i wanted to get rid of ana, i had to do it the hard way, and trying to burn calories is not going to get rid of the voices. i would honestly say that anyone in recovery should not exercise, because it becomes obsessive and the last thing you want to do is relapse.

once you get over the exercise, you adjust to food, and your weight is much more stable; you enter a nicer stage. i believe that’s where i am just now. right now, i truly want to get better, and get to that ideal weight range. it’s been about 7 months, and i’m at this stage where i feel hungry all the time and i eat a lot more. i feel comfortable eating, and trying new things.

the guilt feelings and ana voice still creeps in, but now when it does the way i defeat it, is eat. i eat so ana gets angry and goes away. it’s amazing what food does; it’s making my mind so much clearer. yes, i still see ”fat’ when i look in the mirror, but i know its false.

it’s a long journey but i know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, where i will have my old life back, and food won’t be such an issue in my life. i can’t wait for that, but i’m ready for any more obstacles that come my way.

at the end of the day, when you first begin recovery you have to truly truly, from the bottom of your heart, want to get better. when you can accept that, you will get through recovery. you have to want to get better for you.

the buddhist carnival is coming up again august 15, and i’m still having problems with blog carnival “getting it” that this is happening, and i don’ thave a lot of submissions yet.  so i’m taking matters in my own hands and am asking you: anyone with some interesting buddhist material out there?  please submit the article here!  thanks!

“to me, most of the current world civilization is a cult.” this is what my blogging friend alex said recently in a comment on one of my posts on cults.

is our civilization a cult? it’s an interesting question so let’s see what answers we can find. perhaps one way to start is to look for definitions of the term “cult”. the counselling department at caltech university offers this:

below are indicators that are found, to varied degrees and numbers, in all groups that are considered cults. to the basic question of ‘what is a cult?’, maybe the best answer is simply, a group in which there are many of these indicators:

extreme promises – e.g. unconditional, eternal love; financial security; complete certainty about life; answers to all questions

restricted freedoms - because these groups want control, they need to limit their members’ basic freedoms. this includes restricting physical mobility; forbidding doubts or questions; removing the right to choose whom to spend time with, and when; prohibiting the exploration of other ways of thinking and living.

assumptions of power - often restrictions of freedom can also become active abuses of power. the group leader, or others designated to have power, may require members to perform tasks, acquire money, perform rituals, and to provide sexual services. and rather than use outright authority, cult leaders will present these demands or requirements as “opportunities” offered to those in special favor.

a central leader - virtually all cults are headed by a single person (sometimes a couple or triad) who either claims special knowledge and status or who claims special access to it (contact with superhuman intelligence). a particular indicator of a cult is being told that this person knows what is best for you, regardless of your opinion or that of others you trust.

deception and totalitarian views are other components of cults. we may notice that what is told to “recruits” and “outsiders” is different than what is professed within the group. this sort of lie can be as basic as soliciting money for the group under false pretenses. also, “black or white” or “we and they” thinking is common.

alex referred to “most of the current world civilization”; i’d like to draw the circle just a tad smaller; how about the consumerist world as it is presented by mass media to the english-speaking western world. i’m talking about the images and narratives found in mainstream TV and magazines and their relatives on the internet. the world that a fashionably dressed, well worked-out, perfumed, sexy woman lives in, sitting in a car, ipod in her ears, on the way to stop by burger king for a quick big mac after a week’s work at IBM, later to meet with her buddies at a bar well-stocked with heineken and tequila. not an unfamiliar image, right?

extreme promises? you bet. we are all promised that we can either be or have that woman (let’s call her barb), complete with accessories.

restricted freedoms? that’s a tricky one. no-one forces me to wear the types of clothes barb wears, or forces alex to buy her a beer at the bar. in fact, freedom is one of the products that’s being sold here (in the image above, barb’s hair is probably blowing in the wind: clear evidence of freedom!) it’s just that – weeelll, if you want to hang out with that crowd and you don’t wear the right clothes or drive the right car, maybe you won’t get that many invitations to the next party. restriction by exclusion.

assumptions of power? our politicians and CEO’s certainly do require us to perform tasks (go to war), acquire money and perform rituals (e.g. spend the recently acquired money on ridiculously expensive weddings).

a central leader? that’s something that is absent from our culture. however, what we do have is an almost impenetrable web of power mongers and bureaucracies. they do NOT tell us what’s best for us – but they often act like it.

deception and totalitarian views? again, these words are harsh, and i would be crazy to say that we westerners live in totalitarian regimes. at the same time, deception is so much part of our system that we are as used to it as we are to violence on TV and video games. politicians, we say, “of course they lie to us!” TV and news? “of course it’s all made up!”

is our culture a cult? what do you think?

(image by fernando meyer)

today, august 7th 2008, is the day before the opening ceremony of the olympic games in beijing. on this day, millions of people from all over the world will light a candle and say yes to freedom in tibet! find out more here on the candles for tibet site.

i know, this is a bit of a repeat from my post yesterday but this is important enough to repeat it.  important things need to be repeated, and thought and talked about over and over again.

what i’m thinking today: yes, this is about tibet.  about lighting the candle of freedom in the black night of oppression.

it’s also about lighting the candle of peace activism in the dim chaos of war, aggression and lovelessness.

it’s about lighting the candle of thoughtfulness and reflection in the shadowland of olympic consumerism.

it’s about lighting the candle of beauty  amidst despair and bleakness.

and because it’s also about lighting the candle of healing in nights of pain and sorrow, i’d like to invite my fellow hosts from the carnival of healing to rise up together and each to bring healing thoughts and light to the world on this special day.

here they are:

jaelin k. reece
christopher stewart
evelyn rodriguez
lucy macdonald
elisa camahort
brendan mcphillips
jacob
scott k. smith
dr. deborah serani
edward mills
hueina su
cindy hebbard
katelyn at life without memories
cardin lilly routh
clara myers
meredith
tupten choepel (tc)
mary guarino kearns ramsay
debra moorhead
jessika d’arcy
sharmila
ife oshun
eric gray
astrid lee
lola fayemi
dee savoy
jacqueline
paula g
john robben
janet dagley dagley
daylle deanna schwartz
julie meyer
jenn givler
yael ernst
joe lasiter
tonie konig
cynthia quarta

tomorrow, august 7th 2008, is the day before the opening ceremony of the olympic games in beijing. on this day we aim to create the world’s greatest LIGHT PROTEST, when at least 100 million people from all over the world will light a candle and say YES to freedom in tibet! find out more here on the light a candle for tibet web site.

(image by crimsonsilk)

in a comment yesterday on my article on some research on adult children of alcoholics, CP stressed the importance of genetics in alcoholism.

i would like to contrast that with another point of view. gabor mate offers this theory in his book in the realm of hungry ghosts: close encounters with addiction

brain development in the uterus and during childhood is the single most important biological factor in determining whether or not a person will be predisposed to substance dependence and to addictive behaviours of any sort, whether drug-related or not.

this is shown, among others, by dr. vincent felitti, chief investigator in a landmark study of over 17,000 middle-class americans.

mate goes on to say that

to state that childhood brain development has the greatest impact on addiction is not to rule out genetic factors. however, the emphasis placed on genetic influences in addiction medicine … is an impediment to our understanding.

he makes the case that there are four important brain systems in addiction, and that they are all exquisitely fine-tuned and changed by the environment – and particularly by the environment that a human being experiences in the womb and in the first few years of life:

• the opioid attachment-reward system (involving endorphins)
• the dopamine-based incentive-motivation apparatus
• the self-regulation areas of the prefrontal cortex
• the stress-response mechanism (involving a decrease of opioid and dopamine receptors)

in other words, during pregnancy and the first years of life – and to some degree, on to teenage years - the brain grows and develops, sometimes at a dizzying rate (at times 250,000 neurons are added every minute!) the vast majority of brain development occurs during pregnancy, however. so what is often attributed to genetics can already have happened during pregnancy.

attachment – how we bond with others – is intimately linked to our reward system. going for addictive substances or activities is a misplaced attempt to reward oneself.

motivation is what gets us going. most of the time, we need an incentive to motivate us. if the right connections weren’t made in the brain when we were small, we might find addictive behaviours or substances more motivating than anything else.

our mood, levels of motivation, energy levels, and ability to withstand adversity need to be in a certain, well-tuned balance in order for us to function well. this is related to homeostasis, a type of inner thermostat or self-regulator that keeps all of these elements on a relatively even keel. again, this homeostasis depends on the brain having “learned” about it. if it’s out of kilter, we can do things like self-medicating with drugs – a (usually unconscious) attempt at reaching homeostasis. this is also closely related to our stress response mechanism.

(image by hive)

lately, i’ve been mulling around in my head the concept of delight. i am part of a small support group, and one thing my support people do is to phone me up on a regular basis and ask me, “what was delightful in the last 24 hours? what will be delightful in the next 12 hours?” this helps me focus on delight, something that i’d like to have more of in my life.

when i’m trying to understand something, i find it helpful to see what its opposite might be, and then to get a sense of what might be on the continuum between these two opposites.

for a while, one opposite of delight was worry; an opposite maybe not so much in terms of black being the opposite of white but in the sense that delight lives in a totally different realm than worry.

if we draw a line between delight and worry, what’s in the space between, then?

pleased, slightly anxious, or neutral might be on that continuum.

like any concept, delight has more than one opposite (a fascinating topic to begin with; had i used some of the material in the linguistics book i mentioned during the blogathon, i’d definitely have talked about the notion of opposites). one of them is, i believe, gratification.

gratification is self-centred, small, short-lived and junky (it’s easy to achieve quick gratification with a hamburger from mcsomething or a dip into the casino for a 15-minute tango with the one-armed bandit). delight, on the other hand, conjures up a long-lasting sweetness, a feeling of connectedness with the source of the delight, and openness.

which brings me to another set of opposites: receptivity vs. obsession. openness and receptivity are cousins, and so are obsession and gratification. obsession is “i must have it now”, “i must have this” and “i must have this”. there is not ifs and buts about obsession, no room to manoeuvre, you’re stuck in obsession.

receptivity stands there with open hands. “yes, i am ready”. we don’t know what will come, when it will come, there is patience and curiosity.

i haven’t written anything about journaling for a while, so i was very pleased when i got an offer to write a paid review for the progoff intensive journal® program. it was a particularly nice surprise because i actually own ira progoff’s at a journal workshop, the basic text and guide for using the intensive journal process.

this process provides active techniques that enable people to draw on their inner resources; it is, indeed, one of the early tools of personal growth.

progoff speaks quite poetically of the “tao of growth”, the intangible inner growth,

evanescent, like smoke going out the chimney. we now it exists, but its shape keeps changing. it has no shape that we can fix in our mind; we cannot contain it in any mold. we know it is real, but soon it as disappeared and is beyond us.

attempting to catch that smoke became like a zen koan to progoff. at this point, he says, he applied a procedure “of taking a problem we are dealing with on the rational level and converting it to the language of imagery. this is twilight imagery,” a technique that was to become part of the intensive journal process.

the benefits of journaling in this way are, according to progoff, not only of an intangible nature. thinking about this led him to recall

the phrase of william james when he describes the inner movement of our minds by saying that it is not a case of “i think it” but rather that “it thinks me.” the inner process works within the mind at the same time that it functions as a separate process and reaches beyond the mind into our actions.

i have never fully engaged with this journaling process; it sounds both intriguing and demanding. however, for a person who is at a stage where it seems necessary and desirable – delightful, even – to apply their time and energy to self-discovery, this is a goldmine.

the intensive journal process is an integrated system of writing exercises and therefore much more than a diary. it helps a person gain insights about personal relationships, career and special interests, body and health, dreams and imagery, and their own personal meaning and purpose of life. it brings fresh approaches to accessing creative capacities and untapped possibilities.

there are also rather inexpensive intensive journal inexpensive workshops available, in canada, the US and internationally. now i’m curious – maybe i should attend one …