Heaven or Hell?
On mornings when I’m lucky enough to have free time, I go to a yoga class taught by an excellent teacher, named Mark. Many of his students have been studying yoga for years and are pretty advanced. Today we began as usual with warm ups, accompanied by Mark’s explanations and his questions. Mark’s teaching practice is a bit unusual—he generally asks the class questions, some rhetorical, some not, as he explains the theory behind the practice.
The man on the mat next to me, whom I’ll call Harry, answered all Mark’s questions right away, with military precision.
“Why do yoga?”
“To... Read More
When Susan was growing up, she had a series of nightmares that were so familiar she knew when they were coming. She was scared to go to sleep and tried to stay awake to avoid them, but she couldn’t quite do it.
Instead she would fall asleep, have a bad dream, wake up, and find herself inside another bad dream. True awakening sometimes was as impossible as true sleep. This torture continued as she got older and didn’t go away until she learned that she needed help, which she sought; in psychotherapy, she learned just how scared she really was.
“How will therapy cure my fears?” she... 
Let’s talk about what it’s like to start therapy. Starting anything new is scary, and therapy even more so. How do you know who you can you trust?
A personal recommendation is always best; otherwise look for someone who is located in a convenient place and ask to meet so you can get to know each other. Different approaches abound, and that can be confusing, but what matters most is your gut feeling when you meet the therapist. Is this someone who feels right to you? Chemistry is important, for both the therapist and the person looking for guidance. I usually know sometime during the first... 
Sometimes people wonder how they will find true love. Partly you have to be ready with open eyes and hearts to see it and act on it when it appears. Then you need to hang out together and make sure it’s really love and not just a flash in the pan. Live your love for awhile, get confident, but don’t take forever before you make it permanent. Like all things, love can spoil or get stale if it doesn’t develop into the full catastrophe of making a life together—picking up socks or cereal in the supermarket, deciding where to go on vacation, or live, or how to spend your money. Whose money?... 
But home is far away
In the Dark, we can’t make out the sea.
No stars point our ways to the shore
Wind comes from all directions
Cutting our bones.
By Wang Ping
January is a time of brisk, crisp, sparkling skies and clean air— an inspiration to get outside and get some exercise. January is cold wind and early darkness that feels likes an assault.
Sometimes I revel in the snappy skies, sometimes I grouse about having to wear shoes and boots and socks and sweaters. . . It can be depressing. I’m thinking about those times when the glass is less than half empty— it isn’t even there,... 
In October, I wrote about going to China as a member of CAPA, the Chinese American Psychoanalytic Association, on a working tour of four main cities- Beijing, Xian, Chengdu and Shanghai. We lectured, visited schools and training institutes, and met individually with people who wanted private consultations. I knew I would miss my friends and family, and I was a little scared to go so far away.
I met many different people in a professional context - psychotherapists, psychiatrists, students, workers, and government personnel, but most revealing were the accidental encounters with the people who... 
On October 20th, I’ll be landing in China (Beijing, to be precise), accompanied by a group of psychoanalysts and therapists who have been teaching and supervising Chinese student analysts in training, using Skype and other distance learning methods. I am psyched. I will see, in person, students with whom I’ve developed warm relationships, and it is amazing how close people can feel even though they are far away from each other. We’ll be seeing each other for the first time. Or will we? It’s more accurate to say that we’ll be meeting in a different dimension than usual; the two-dimensional... 
