By Holly Holmes-Meredith, D. Min., MFT, CCHT, Board Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, Hypnotherapy Topic Expert Contributor

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The practice of Hypnotherapy is interactive and directly engages the client’s unconscious resources through verbal and non-verbal communication while the client is in the hypnotic state. Therapy done in this expanded state is greatly enhanced and supported because the client is able to access information, healing, creativity, memories and insight that is not normally available when in the waking conscious state. Read the rest of this entry

By Kalila Borghini, LCSW and Ordained Yoruba Priest, Spirituality Topic Expert Contributor

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In a recent New Yorker profile of the playwright and actor Sam Shepard written by John Lahr (The New Yorker, February 8, 2010), I came across a section that struck me deeply. Discussing one of his plays, “Starving Class,” which has as its theme the impossibility of retreating “…from their legacy of self destruction,” one of the characters says: “It always comes. Repeats itself…Even when you try to change it…It goes back and back to tiny little cells and genes…We inherit it and pass it down, and then pass it down again.”

The article quotes Mr. Shepard as saying:

“Character is something that can’t be helped…It’s like destiny…It can be covered up, it can be messed with, it can be screwed around with, but it can’t be ultimately changed. It’s like the structure of our bones, and the blood that runs through our veins.” Mr. Lahr comments: …“His characters are doomed by their unconscious, which they can’t or won’t examine. In fact, they’ll do anything for an unexamined life.” Read the rest of this entry

By Michael Picucci, PhD, MAC, SEP, Focalizing Topic Expert Contributor

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In Switzerland, Carl Jung told a young American man suffering with alcoholism that as far as medicine and psychiatry were concerned, there was no hope for him. That was in 1931, and this still remains true in 2010. The single alternative left was a religious or spiritual experience — what Jung referred to as “a genuine conversion.” Jung had heard of such experiences helping alcoholics get sober, but admitted that such cases were “comparatively rare.”

In 1934, William D. Silkworth, a prominent physician specializing in alcoholism and drug addiction had a similar slant on the problem. He proclaimed that only a message of “depth and weight” could hold the interest of the addicted person. “In nearly all cases, their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if they are to re-create their lives.” Silkworth further stated that, “Unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.” Anyone presently familiar with addictions knows that it was out of these messages that the entire Twelve-Step recovery movement was born. Addressing the relief from out-of-control obsessive desires (alcohol, drugs and other addictions) and the need to create substantive lives, the Twelve Steps have helped millions of people throughout the world. It is also clear that while this movement continues its profound and rapid growth, at its core are controversy and mutations of the experience. A 1994 issue of Common Boundary magazine states, “On the eve of the 60th birthday of Alcoholics Anonymous critics are charging that the Twelve Steps are outdated and irrelevant. Others claim they’re the doorway to new forms of spirituality and social action. Read the rest of this entry

By Kalila Borghini, LCSW and Ordained Yoruba Priest, Spirituality Topic Expert Contributor

Click here to contact Kalila and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

What prompted this article was something I read recently in AARP Magazine. (I guess I’m dating myself with that one!).

“The older you are, the more likely you are to value religion, says a new Pew Research Center survey, ‘Growing Old in America.’ Do religious folks outlive their secular age-mates? Maybe. Earlier research indicates that people who worship regularly follow a healthier lifestyle and share a life-lengthening social network. And for some, faith grows with age: a third of those 65-plus said religion became more important over the course of their lives.” (AARP Magazine, November and December 2009). Read the rest of this entry

By Laurel Vogel, M.A., Ecotherapy / Nature Therapy Topic Expert Contributor

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Tu B’Shvat, a Jewish celebration of trees, begins the evening of January 29th, marking the time when the tree sap begins to rise in the region of the custom’s origin. During this time of appreciating and respecting life, celebrants eat tree fruit or nuts. If I was a Jewish celebrant, this evening after sunset I might take a pomegranate and savor its sweetness, feel its tang on my tongue, and imagine the dusty region my ancestors came from, how they may have tilled the earth, or walked or prayed or sang together, connecting through taste and spiritual practice to the earth and my people. Although I may now be severed from that place, in this way I would remember and acknowledge my ongoing rootedness and connection to it. Why might a practice like this be important for our health and mental well-being? While nearly every religion has been used to excuse a lot of harm and mayhem, religion also seems to hold much value for containing restorative practices that may actually nurture a sense of meaning and act in beneficial ways in our lives. The spiritual aspects of a religion hold true, even if some manipulate it for their own less than benign purposes. Read the rest of this entry