New Dimensions

More and more of us spend enormous spans of our time captured, optimized, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily. We are caught in a dynamic where our value is determined by our productivity. Odell encourages us to contemplate the attention economy and notice how it is dominating cultures worldwide and how to resist it. Jenny Odell is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer based in Oakland, California who teaches at Stanford University. She has been an artist-in-residence at such places as the San Francisco dump, Facebook, the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department. She has exhibited her art all over the world. She is the author of How To Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy (Melville HousePublishing 2019)Tags: Jenny Odell, Morcom Rose Garden, Ghost Ship Fire, usefulness, uselessness, Chuang Tzu, Old Survivor Tree, birdwatching, attention, John Cage, siloed senses, Eleanor Coppola’s Windows art map, Applause Encouraged art experience, twitter, library, libraries, social media, internet, Thomas Merton, The Giving Tree, email, Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror, hyper individualism, Against Creativity, Oli Mould, Social Change/Politics, Art & Creativity, Philosophy, Technology, Money/ Economics

Nepo’s creative works, books, poems, workshops are all about creating a sacred place where the experience of honest truth can happen. Even in our deepest moments of suffering, he encourages us to seek out slivers of light seeping through the broad slats of darkness. His genius is to discover metaphors as a way of understanding and making meaning of our lives. Mark Nepo is the author of many audio learning projects and over 20 books including Reduced To Joy (Cleis Press 2013), Seven Thousand Ways To Listen: Staying Close To What Is Sacred (Free Press 2012), The One Life We’re Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your heart (Atria Books 2016), The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meeting (Sounds True 2016) and Drinking from the River of Light: The Life of Expression (Sounds True 2019)Interview Date: 8/10/2019         Tags: Mark Nepo, metaphors, cancer, grief, Gail Warner, Pine Manor Retreat Center, Doc Palmer, creativity, immersion, whales and dolphins, suffering, telling stories, Rilke, being present, ambition and dreams, making plans, Winston Churchill, assumptions, conclusions, Pandora music app, George Bernard Shaw’s tailor, Personal Transformation, Spirituality, Writing, Art & Creativity, Philosophy

Our brains are set with a negative bias. Hanson gives us a simple practice that resets our brains to more joy, fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind and heart. He is a neuropsychologist who writes and teaches extensively on personal growth and contemplative practice. He is a co-founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, and editor of the Wise Brain Bulletin. His books include Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom (New Harbinger 2009), Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time (New Harbinger 2011), Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence (Harmony Books 2013) and Meditations to Change Your Brain - CD Set(Sounds True 2009) Interview Date: 12/2/2013     Tags: Rick Hanson, Ph.D., brain, brain science, neuroscience, brain’s negative bias, negative bias of the brain, positive thinking, structure of the brain, limbic system, subcortex, brainstem, avoiding harm, psychotherapy, grasping, resisting, clinging, craving, satisfaction, safety, connection, anger, helplessness, avoiding harm, approaching rewards, attaching to others , Personal Transformation, Science, Health & Healing, Self Help 

Many explorers are seeking a depth of healing that is more experiential through expanded states of consciousness. Some modalities of this are sweat lodges, vision quests, breath work, and where is it legal, psychedelics in Mexico. Here we explore the experiential therapeutic applications of expanded states of consciousness that lead to healing and transformation. Françoise Bourzat is a consciousness guide and counselor. She has a master’s degree in Somatic Psychology and is a Certified Hakomi Practitioner. After traveling the world, she became an apprentice to an indigenous Mazatec woman leading healing ceremonies with sacred mushrooms in the high mountains of Southern Mexico. Drawing from years of her close apprenticeship with this Mazatec curandera, as well as her training in other indigenous traditions, Françoise has developed a comprehensive approach that bridges Western and indigenous modalities. She trains therapists and facilitators and teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She also lectures internationally. Shes the co-author with Kristina Hunter of Consciousness Medicine: Indigenous Wisdom, Entheogens, and Expanded States of Consciousness for Healing and Growth. (North Atlantic Books 2019).Interview Date: 7/6/2019   Tags: Françoise Bourzat, heroin, compassion, mushroom ceremonies, psychedelics, entheogens, hallucinogens, vision quest, sweat lodge, transdance, altered states, Ralph Metzner, MAPS, MDMA, PTSD, Roland Griffith, ibogaine, Julieta Casimiro, personal transformation, Indigenous wisdom, Shamanism, Health & Healing

Becoming an elder can be a time of great creativity and contribution.This deep dialogue explores what it means to be to be proactive in approaching aging and becoming an elder in the 21st century. Percy’s research points out that growing older does not mean we can no longer actualize new and healthier futures. These years may be our most influential ones yet. Percy is the author of  Becoming an Elder: Practicing the Wisdom Arts.Interview Date: 8/3/2019     Tags: Diana Percy, elderhood, eldering, mortality, obituaries, Sir Laurens Van der Post, meaning, Viktor Frankl, friendships, Matthew Fox, Order of the Sacred Earth, Intergenerational vision, volunteering, humor, personal mastery, Personal Transformation

Don Oscar tells us that ritual begets relationship, nature begets purpose, and Love begets life. This gentle shaman has captured the essence of how we can sustain our sacred earth walk by practicing the ritual of the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition. This powerful practice can serve to help us build a life-long relationship with the sacred dimensions of life and all our relations.He’s been a popular faculty member at numerous U.S. colleges and universities.  He originated the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition of cross-cultural shamanism, and is the founder of the Heart of the Healer Foundation.  His works and programs have been featured on CNN, Univision, A&E and the Discovery Channel. He is the author of Lessons in Courage, Peruvian Shamanic Wisdom for Everyday Life (co-author Bonnie Glass-Coffin) (Rainbow Ridge Publishing 2013) and Healing Light: An Apprenticeship in Peruvian Shamanism, A 6-CD Audio Set (Sounds True 2015)Interview Date: 8/26/2013    Tags: MP3, Oscar Miro-Quesada, sacred reciprocity, shamanism, Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, ritual, dark matter, Wednesday night link, Sixto Paz Wells, dogma, Heart of the Healer Foundation, Indigenous Wisdom,Spirituality, Personal Transformation

Lama Palden Drolma  presents the Tibetan meditation practice, Tonglen, in a way that is accessible to Westerners. It combines breath, awareness, imagination, and an energetic transformation process that opens our hearts to reveal and cultivate kindness, love, compassion and wisdom. This practice can be used in our everyday life in an “on-the-spot” meditation.  Lama Palden Drolma is the author of Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain into Joy (New World Library 2019) Interview Date: 7/16/2019         Tags: MP3, Lama Palden Drolma, Tonglen, Niguma, Dilgo Khyentse, Chenrezig, three jewels, Buddha, Sanga, Dharma, sin, Matthew Fox, mantra, Kalu Rinpoche, 16th Karmapa, Meditation, Personal Transformation, Buddhism

Here we climb the attic steps and kneel before an old trunk, lift the lid and allow ancient tales to rush out and pierce our hearts and souls with their wisdom. Our guide in this quest is Martin Shaw who invites us to look at folktales not as therapy, not as giving advice but as tributaries that lead us to the bigger river of essential truths that nourish our lives.His books include A Branch from the Lightning Tree: Ecstatic Myth and the Grace in Wildness, (White Cloud Press 2011), Snowy Tower: Parzival and the Wet, Black Branch of Language (White Cloud Press 2014), Scatterlings: Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia (White Cloud 2016) and The Night Wages: Bidden or Unbidden Initiations Come, (Cista Mystica Press 2019). Interview Date: 6/4/2019        Tags: MP3, Martin Shaw, Captain Beefheart, Robert Bly, Odyssey, Ulysses, Nostos (returning home), longing, Psyche and Eros, Medusa, Charles Eisenstein, Mythology, Philosophy

Having had two spinal surgeries and dealing with his own chronic pain issues, Dr. Hanscom describes three causes of pain: structural, soft tissue, and fired up neurological brain pathways. He’s developed a program that lessens the need for spinal surgery. It offers a way to cope with pain and the anxiety, depression and anger that accompany it. Hanscom is the author of Back in Control: A Spine Surgeon’s Roadmap Out of Chronic Pain (Vertus Press 2017)Interview Date: 4/13/2013       Tags: MP3, David Hanscom, chronic pain, back pain, surgery, DOCC, Defined Organized Comprehensive Care. Mind/Body Syndrome, sleep, stress, anxiety, anger, neurological pathways, Hoffman Institute, attitude, isolation, socially isolated, book Feeling Good by David Burns, anxiety disorder, writing, spine fusions, spine surgery, degenerative disc disease, meditation, habits, Health & Healing, Writing, Self Help, Meditation, Science