The Taproot Therapy Podcast - https://www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Tamar Stone Interview: Voice Dialogue and Body Dialogue

J. Tamar Stone, M.A., C.H.T., is internationally recognized as a psychotherapist, consultant, consciousness teacher, senior Voice Dialogue facilitator, and the originator of The Body Dialogue Process. She is also the creator of Selves in a Box, an interactive card deck and manual for Selves exploration. Tamar is the daughter and stepdaughter of Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone, originators of Voice Dialogue. Tamar has taught at Pepperdine University, the Esalen Institute, the Omega Institute, Antioch University, Mile Hi Church of Denver, and Kanzeon Zen Center. She maintains an international client base comprising individuals, couples, and professionals seeking a deeper, more fulfilling sense of self.   https://www.voicedialogueconnection.com/meet-tamar/

The Psychology of Music with Tim Rutili of Califone

Tim Rutili is the lead singer and songwriter of the dream like mythological soundscapes of the band Califone. He sits down to talk about the depth psychology behind his life and work. His other projects include contributions to the bands Red Red Meat, Loftus, Ugly Casanova and the fil All My Friends Are Funeral Singers. I have been a life long fan of his projects and we are grateful for his time.   Buy Tim's Music at https://www.califonemusic.com/ & https://califonemusic.bandcamp.com/   Check out the podcast version of this interview at: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ #califone #music #psychology #depthpsychology #songwriting #mythology #sound #singer #singersongwriter #folk #folkmusic #folklore #redredmeat #modestmouse

Interview with Urban Planner and Architect, Andres Duany

This is the second part in our Psychology of Architecture series, where we explore the psychology of urban planning and architecture. Andres Duany is the best selling author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. He has also won multiple awards for the urban planning of Seaside, Florida; Kentlands, Maryland; and Alys Beach; Florida. Duany cofounded the Congress for the New Urbanism. Duany's firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company has worked on designs for hundreds of towns and planning codes.  Here Mr. Duany discusses the psychological forces that create, prevent and necessitate New Urbanism. Mr. Duany also discusses the archetypal elements of design and the effect of well planned towns on the psyche.    #Architecture #Architect #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #UrbanDesign #NewUrbanism #Congressforthenewurbanism #psychology #design #iopsychology #society #culture #SeasideFL #AlysBeach     Find more @ GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Don’t Block the Hearth Fire; Reclaiming the Soul of Therapy by Embracing the Awareness of Death

In my house, like in most houses in America there is a fireplace. My wife and I do not often use our fireplace. In fact, I am not even sure if it works. Now that there are more efficient forms of heating installed in most homes there is really no need for fireplaces, but they continue to be built all the same. Any interior decorator or homemaker worth their salt will tell you that whether or not a fireplace works it cannot be blocked, and furniture must be placed so that people can gather around it. The style of houses that we build today are still based on the same basic floor plan of the ancient Roman style of architecture. In Rome, houses were built around a lares, or hearth fires, where penates, ancestral gods of the family, were revered and guarded the home. Even though most Americans could not tell you why the hearth is afforded such significance, it is still agreed upon in western design language that the hearth is significant. The origin of the hearth idea in western architecture is one example of the many ways that the religious impulse indirectly recognizes a connection to our ancestors. As humans we long for transpersonal and trans-generational connectedness. Jungian oriented therapists help clients cultivate the transcendental and reflective skills that a well-developed spiritual dimension brings into our lives. Inhale, exhaleForward, backLiving, dying:Arrows, let flown each to eachMeet midway and sliceThe void in aimless flightThus I return to the source. –Japanese Death PoemGesshu Soko, died January 10, 1696, at age 79: Stephen Jenkins is a palliative care counselor and writer that I admire. In his writing, he makes the argument that western culture has an unhealthy avoidance of the reality of death. Jenkins writes that that the fear of death in our society has robbed us of a spiritual dimension and tools for everyday life that ancient civilizations have always had. Acceptance of one’s own mortality and acknowledging one’s ancestors are directly related concepts. Jenkins’ argument is that acceptance of death is what gives a culture the ability to make meaning and understand its own story. If we deny or disregard death as an important part of our human experience, then we can never make meaning of our own lives. We must embrace this important part of our humanity if we are to be able to make ourselves whole (Wilson, T 2009). As a society we hide children from the dying, and often even from the elderly; not allowing young people to understand this important stage in the life journey. We do not value the wisdom of the aged; we simply treat their cultural experience as out of date. It is our general cultural practice to pretend that we are immortal. We hide from death and all the trappings of death until it is too late. We wait until we are at the end of our life journey and we have not developed any tools to help us understand how to die. This practice is to our own deficit and the deficit of our culture. Jenkins argues in his interviews that our culture needs to embrace death and the process of dying in order to reclaim the spirituality our culture has lost (Wilson, T 2009). It’s your life. You don’t know how long it’s going to be but you know it’s got a bad ending. –Don DraperMad Men; Season 2, Episode 9 Spirituality in most religions contains a meditative or contemplative component used to orient one’s priorities, clarify goals and values, and discover one’s own personal identity and agency within the world. Although spirituality is a vague concept that can mean many things to many people, most therapists agree on the importance of spirituality in the therapeutic process. One of the major benefits of spirituality in therapy is that spirituality assists clients in understanding their place in the world, and helps clients accept their own finitude and mortality. This is true whether a person’s spiritual tradition advocates belief in an afterlife, a multi-layered reality, or simply a scientific materialist understanding of the world. Regardless of an individual’s spiritual tradition, an active spiritual life will help a therapist engage an individual in important reflective personal questions. Personal spirituality is different from organized religion. Developing one’s own personal spirituality distinct from the organized religion you participate in is important because it allows individuals to answer questions and face struggles unique to their own life. There is much diversity between different individuals’ life course trajectories. What works for one person may not work for another person. Developing one’s own personal spiritual dimension inside or outside of an organized religion increases an individual’s self-efficacy and individual human capacity for choice-making. A robust spiritual dimension allows individuals to solve problems that arise in the life course in the best way for them, according to their own strengths and weaknesses. This self-efficacy is an important protective factor for individuals as they develop throughout the life course. This protective factor can help individuals avoid many problems as they traverse the various stages of life. In the book The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker puts forth a hypothesis that won him the Pulitzer Prize, and changed the way many cognitive theorists thought about therapy. Becker argued that human cognition is a defense mechanism against the knowledge that we must die. Many drives within humanity are attempts to make ourselves immortal and find ways of obtaining spiritual immortality. Becker put forward the idea that anxiety, depression, and even psychosis can be attributed to the breakdown in our immortality seeking processes. Becker argued that human beings long for secular and religious accomplishments because we believe that these will make us immortal. Becker argued that cognitive problems arise when our culture lacks the spiritual and numinous dimension that allows us to understand death and accept our finitude (Becker, E. 1973). The part of Becker’s theory that is most applicable to therapy and social work practice is his idea of immortality. Becker’s idea of immortality is much more involved than simply an idea of an afterlife in popular culture and religion. In The Denial of Death immortality is the way that a person finds their significance, self-worth, and meaning in relation to the universe (Becker, E. 1973). We attain spiritual immortality when we have a well-developed spiritual dimension that allows us to feel connected to the past, others in the present and to future generations. It is this connectedness that allows us to feel spiritually immortal and come to terms with our mortality. In the ancient world heroic deeds and religious traditions were an attempt to feel connectedness to a numinous reality larger than the time ancients lived within. Becker argues that nothing but spirituality of some kind can give humans the connectedness to the fabric of our world and provide us the spiritual immortality we long for. One of the reasons that Becker’s theories were so successful is that they build on the basic assumption that all human beings know at a fundamental level that we will one day die. Because of this we are all in a sense already dead. This knowledge is an intrinsic part of our humanity that we must learn how to handle, or it will lead us to destroy ourselves. The reason that this is important to include in a discussion of spirituality in psychotherapy practice is that this theory of therapy makes spirituality an essential component in the therapeutic process. The problem of death in our own and in our clients’ lives must be solved in order to live a fulfilling life. This cannot be done without the transcendent quality of spiritual practice. In my own life I find Becker’s spiritual immortality in what will be preserved of me in how I change the world for the better. I personally have no interest in the concept of the afterlife in my own religious tradition, but I do not need that to feel motivated and important. Sharing love that changes the lives of those around me and the lives of those they will touch is where I find immortality. What will be preserved of me is the impression that I leave on this world through how I live my life and affect the lives of others. The presence of me will be preserved by people who likely do not recognize or understand what they are preserving. We are all released into the earth, and into the stuff of the heart, and the mind, the character of others, and the lives of everyone who antecedes us. A piece of the things that are part of me will become part of everyone whom I become a part of. The things that made me who I am did not come only from me; but also from those before me and how they shaped the world. The juice of ourselves was never ours, but something we borrowed from countless others. This is not something that would make sense to everyone, but it is what makes sense to me. Life is chaotic and overwhelming to the best of us. To understand it we need a lens to view our world in a way that makes sense to us. When we develop our own spiritual dimension it can act as the lens that lets us understand our world. Our personal spirituality tells us why we are unique and special. It gives us the immortality that Becker describes in a way that we decide is important to us. A robust spiritual dimension can help us live life intentionally, mindfully and effectively. Bibliography Wilson, T., Clarke, A., Lorber HT Digital, Alive Mind Media, & National Film Board of Canada (2009). Griefwalker. United States: Alive Mind. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Weil, A. (2005). Healthy aging: A lifelong guide to your physical and spiritual well-being. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Jungian Shadow Work Meditation for Integration

This is a meditation to get in touch with the shadow part of the self, that trauma or negative experiences have made us repress. Trauma and the shadow effect our physical posture and somatic response. This meditation is designed to help you notice the parts of your self that you avoid. Watch the video here: @ https://youtu.be/_FP6w_TapXE #depthpsychology #meditation #meditatie #integration #jung #carljung #psychology #asmr #trauma #healing #growth

Interview with Urban Planner, Architect, and Founder of New Urbanism, Leon Krier

Read the article on Mr. Krier's work here: https://gettherapybirmingham.medium.c... Leon Krier is uncompromising in his philosophy of design and philosophy of architecture. His vision of the past and future make him a controversial figure. He is one of the key figures in the founding of the new urbanism movement. Krier's architectural theory is fixated on designing permanent construction that will endure both physically and stylistically. His theoretical orientation is highly informed by the peak oil movement of the 1970's, but the implications are important for an urban and architectural future that is sustainable.

Brainspotting Changed My Life. Can it Change Yours? - www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

Yellow garden spiders have a fat yellow abdomen slicked with yellow and black stripes. They weave a tiny white squiggle in the center of their webs. I stare at the faintly milky zig zag as it sways when wind moves the web and stirs the iris sepals it hangs between in my mothers garden. I am biting on the seam of injection molded red plastic in a 1980s baby walker. I ponder the way that Alabama red clay cakes in the grooves of my tennis shoe and poke it with a stubby finger and later a small twig. My dreams were a miasma of detailed childhood imagery. I vividly re-experienced half remembered and seemingly insignificant moments from when I was a toddler in photorealistic detail. When I woke up my phone rang. “Did you have weird dreams?” asked a colleague “Everyone is saying their dreams are weird.”. I had just had my first session of brainspotting on my first day of brainspotting training. You learn brainspotting by having the brainspotting process done to you and by conducting the brainspotting experience on other trainees. The brainspotting training teaches clinicians to “hold” a patient’s experience without analysis or judgment. Clinicians are taught to turn off the impulse to try and teach the patient anything. Instead the patient’s own experience is what the patient learns from when the clinician can “make room” to let the experience unfold. Unlike cognitive models of psychotherapy, brainspotting does not train you to analyze your experience. It teaches you nothing. Brainspotting practitioners are taught to feel instead of understand so that they can “hold” the experience of patients who are doing the same. Brainspotting began as a branch of EMDR and quickly became its own modality. Developed to treat trauma and PTSD, providers quickly discovered that it works for just about everything else as well. The technique itself is extraordinarily simple; a clinician holds a pointer and a patient looks at it. Despite that, the nuances of the technique can be infinitely complex. Brainspotting helps most people get to know, and get comfortable with the parts of themselves that they are the most out of touch with. How does Brainspotting work? In trauma therapy teaching patients to let go of their cognitive “thinky” brain and experience the “feely” body brain is the name of the game. Our subcortical brain is the oldest part of the brain. It rapidly directs our use of energy for survival into fight, flight, and freeze responses. This process takes place before we intellectually or linguistically understand why we are thinking or what we are doing. Teaching patients to feel their unconscious emotions and their somatic reactions to trauma is the only way to get to the root of how trauma is affecting the brain. Our ego defends us against experiencing the unconscious parts of our being. It is threatened by the fact that parts of us that we do not understand can control us so deeply. The philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote that language was the house of being. He meant to that our words were all we were. Language is implied to be a confining prison. The philosopher René Descartes stated that “I think, therefore I am”. His assumption that cognition was the essence of what made us real underlies most of modern medical science. I wonder how the landscape of existential philosophy would have changed if these philosophers had ever had a brainspotting session. Our ego driven cognition does not want to turn itself off. It does not want to admit that there is a deeper and older part of the brain . Our mid and sub brains are arguably the most important component to our sense of self and understanding of the world. Some times called our lizard brain, they come from our reptilian ancestry and are responsible for our intuitive and unconscious snap judgements. Put simply we are not logic or rational creatures. A large component of our instinctual thinking occurs before we are thinking in words or with intellect. David Grand, the creator of brainspotting, made the point that our neocortex front brain thinks that it is all of us, but we must teach it that we have a mid and sub cortex that are part of us as well. Our brains feel before we think. It is our cognitive neo cortex brain that sometimes forget to be aware of the powerful energy our feeling and intuition holds. The reason that trauma therapy is difficult for patients and providers is that our ego defends us from the experience of the unconscious feeling and emotion. Teaching patients to let go of what they know is hard. Facing younger and traumatized parts of self in the deep brain is not something that our intellect can help us with. Even though we have an intellectual understanding of trauma and how it affects us, that does not help us loosen its effect on our lives. There is not a formula or even a manual for good therapy. Effective therapy helps you find and face the parts of yourself we avoid. What does Brainspotting feel like? Brainspotting is amazingly effective at this. Brainspotting strips away our defenses and plunges our awareness into the deepest and most recessed areas of ourselves. Brainspotting turns our gaze to the places that we most avoid. Brainspotting allows us to repair and rewire the damaged assumptions trauma makes us hold about ourselves, the world and our relationships. Cognitive therapy teaches us to train and flex our intellect. This is one of the reasons that cognitive therapy alone can not take patients to the deep roots of trauma’s effect on the brain. Somatic and brain based therapies can teach us to feel ourselves again. It is a common phenomenon that patients “lose” language during a brainspotting session and start to feel a deep emotion and intuitive self. It is normal to realize your body and emotional state is shifting and moving without your permission. Put another way our physical and emotional selves are able to be experienced without cognition interfering. This is similar to the way that is similar to how psychedelics reorient our consciousness. Brainspotting can help us feel the emotional states “under” our lives that we often run from and avoid. It can help us confront and repair emotional damage and unremembered pain.Carl Jung observed that symbols and metaphors are the language of the unconscious. This is perhaps why when we stir the subconscious brain with brainspotting it causes highly mythic or symbolic dreams. The two hallmarks of a brainspotting dream are vividly remembering minutiae from childhood in photo realistic detail and also dreams with highly allegorical narratives. Patients often remember “important” and “deep” dreams that they can’t quite explain or put into words. After the dream images from my childhood in my first brainspotting session I began to have dreams about shadowy wolf-like figures in the woods . They peered through the windows of Vestavia home to eye my children. During the brainspotting sessions I felt myself dropping down into a terrifying feeling of inadequacy and inferiority that had always underlaid my life. I hadn’t noticed it or confronted the feeling. I realized that wit, education, learning skills and even my career were nothing more than mechanisms for me to turn this feeling off and run from it. Brainspotting was the first kind of therapy that allowed me to not only identify the feeling that controlled my behavior from the shadows, but also to face it and master it. Social workers are often wounded healers. Therapy can become a crutch when therapists won’t do their own work. Therapists can become, unconsciously, obsessed with giving others the medicine that they themselves need. Many Brainspotting therapists, like myself and David Grand, began as EMDR practitioners. EMDR takes patients into the deep brain just like brainspotting. The difference between the modalities is that EMDR immediately makes patients analyze and cognitivize the experience of the deep brain. What you get in the room is what you get with EMDR. In a brainspotting session a therapist is simply opening a box in the patients brain. The majority of the processing takes place over several days while the patients brain decides with the experiences in the box that we have decompartmentalized. Brainspotting changed my life. I had been in many types of therapy for years and nothing else had this effect. After Brainspotting I was able to notice when I was reacting based on emotion while hiding in my intellect. I was able to feel the way that my body was reacting based on how I felt. I didnt need to hunch my back when angry. I didn’t need to twist my spine when I was sad. Instead I noticed the, previously unconscious, reaction and chose to do it or not. I was able to stop avoiding the problems in my life and deal with the deepest part of the emotional root of my own pain. Brainspotting gives us more time and room in our own head to react to how we are feeling. Brainspotting was the inspiration for the name Taproot Therapy Collective and the direction of my career and practice.Just like the technique itself the effects of brainspotting are subtle but profound. Before brainspotting, I thought therapy was about learning information or knowing something new. After brainspotting I realized that therapy was more than this. Brainspotting changed my life but afterward I didn’t know anything new. There was no big reveal or discovery. Brainspotting let me feel how big my own soul was and how much work I have to do in the project of finding and becoming that potential. If anything, brainspotting helped me forget. I forgot my ego and saw how much my own intellect was stopping me from experiencing who I really was. We absolutely do not exist because we think. We exist despite the fact that we are trying to think ourselves into existing. The mystic Simone Weil wrote that “The smart man proud of his intellect is like the prisoner proud of his jail”. Language is not the house of being. It is the house that we are trying, foolishly, to cram being into. We are so much bigger than we can think. Trauma makes us feel and act small but we are all bigger than we are able to know. Outside of our intellect lies a tremendous felt sense of creativity, intuition and a larger more whole self. We do not have to learn anything to find it. All we have to do is stop talking, stop thinking and begin to listen to who we are. “Behold your thoughts and feelings….there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage—whose name is Self.” -Friedrich Nietzsche #trauma #PTSD #dissociation #panic #anxiety

Brain Mapping and Neurostimulation Interview with Peak Neuroscience

Peak Neuroscience has clinics in Dallas Texas and Birmingham Alabama. Their Neuro stimulation and brain mapping treatment pairs neurofeedback EEG with a neurostimulation device that targets specific parts of the brain. Neurostimulation has been proven to reduce the symptoms of PTSD, Autism, Dissociation and many other disorders.  Find more @ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/