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| A Quarterly Newsletter from
the Foundation of the Sacred Stream |
ISSUE 17 |
JANUARY
2010 |
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| Note from the General Manager |
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 Thanks for
reading our first newsletter of 2010. We
are looking forward to an exciting year and it begins with the launch
of our Certificate
Programs. Certificates
will be
offered in thirteen fields. Classes begin in January with the Introduction
to
the
Shamanic
Journey, a Dreams
Teleclass, Buddhist
Psychology
Studies and a Journey
Supervisory class (for
those who would like to deepen their
journey practice). We will also be offering, for the first time, a Depth
Hypnosis
Supervised
Practice
and
Homework class to help
students seeking
certification develop their skills and
meet the requirements for certification. We will be offering two
remarkable
Destination Studies courses, one in Mesa Verde and the other in Hawaii.
See our Spotlight section below
for more
information on Mesa Verde.
This issue of
the newsletter contains an article by,
Evan Bissel, Art as a Transformative Dialogue, about his
project with children who have
a parent in
jail and using art as creative dialogue to facilitate transformation
individually and societally. Also in this issue you’ll find a client
case study
using the shamanic journey, Ask Isa
(on the nature of initiation) and our Featured Practitioner,
Grace Furst. Also, don’t miss our
monthly podcast.
January’s podcast is on Dreams - download it for free or stream it live
in our
store.
Wishing you well,
Laura Chandler, CHT
General Manager
Foundation of the Sacred Stream
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| Announcements: Certificate Programs |
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We now offer
certificates in thirteen fields of
study, including certification in hypnotherapy and Depth Hypnosis
Practitioner
Certification. Additional fields of study include Integrated Energy
Modalities,
Buddhist Psychology, Relational Counseling, Transition Facilitation,
Applied
Shamanic Practice, and Huna.
The Certificate
Programs are designed to inspire
personal growth and augment professional growth as students move into
deeper
understanding of themselves and the environment in which human
experience takes
place. These programs are designed to foster students' active
engagement and
provide meaningful application to their lives.
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| Spotlight:
Kachinas
and the Ethnobotany of Mesa Verde |
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"Mesa Verde completely
changed my life. The class
profoundly deepened my connection with nature the earth, and myself. I
highly recommend
this class to everyone." James K., LAc
 Mesa
Verde is a mysterious place. It is a beautiful land high above the
plains of southwestern Colorado. The Ancestral Puebloans who lived here
over a thousand years ago left striking evidence of their life and
culture, from complex water systems and terraced farming, to the
remarkable dwellings carved into the cliffs, some of which housed
several hundred people. Little is known of these people, except that
they were able to thrive in an arid and often drought-like environment
and that they appear to have had an advanced calendar system and
understanding of the movements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars.
In this Destination Studies Retreat, Kachinas
and the
Ethnobotany of Mesa Verde,
participants stay at beautiful Far View Lodge (the only lodging atop
the Mesa) where they study the relationship of the Ancestral Puebloans
to the land and sky. Students learn about the intelligence and
adaptability of plants and explore their own relationship to the plants
of this high desert region, learning about the function and ways of
preparing these plants for nutritional and medicinal use. Some hiking
is involved, though not strenuous, and many archeological sites will be
visited. For more information, please go to our website or join our
free teleclass on January 18. The following is an
excerpt from one of the teachings of the class:
The Ancestral
Puebloans tuned themselves to the land, and tuned themselves to the way
the plants that
grow on the mesa adapt to the land, in order to survive. They had to
understand the plants’ priorities and requirements for surviving in
such a harsh environment. In this way, the Ancestral Puebloans lives
were formed, shaped, and directed by the intelligence of the plants
they cultivated. The Kachinas are known as the “life-givers” and are
associated with the wind, sun, soil, and weather. The Ancestral
Puebloans worked with the Kachinas, which were an important part of the
process of attuning humans to the seasons and the soil with which the
plants are in a never-ending dance.
The
intelligence of plants is interwoven into the lives of all living
organisms. They produce the chemistries all life needs to live and they
nurture and heal other living organisms that are in need. It
takes intelligence, skill, and subtlety to tune into the world of
plants and to really understand who they are and what role they play in
enhancing and maintaining life on earth and in healing other beings.
The intelligence of plants is a demonstration of the profound
intelligence of the Earth. And it is this intelligence that sustains
all life on earth. Through the plants, we are offered a key to this
understanding.
(Isa
Gucciardi,
Ph.D., Mesa Verde, June 2008)
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| Featured
Practitioner: Grace Furst |
I am proud to
be a Depth Hypnosis Practitioner
and an Ordained Minister with the Foundation of the Sacred Stream. I
have
always been drawn to a healing path, and that path has taken me many
places.
I was a junior
high school teacher in the New York
City Public School system for many years. When I came to San Francisco,
over 20
years ago, I fell into teaching for a short while, but I realized that
was a
career that had run its course. I was encouraged by my husband and some
new
found friends to pursue my passions, which were mostly alternative in
nature -
alternative medicine, alternative healing, alternative reality. Those
passions
had been so buried within me it took some work to get back in touch
with them
again.
I learned
about chakras, and I took different
workshops in healing with crystals and energy, which was a great source
of
humor for my relatives in New York. I realized I had a natural gift for
working
with stones and healing and I enrolled in a doctoral program in
clinical
parapsychology. I also took a 300-hour elective course in hypnotherapy
and
studied past-life regression with Brian Weiss. I combined energy work
with my
hypnotherapy practice, but was somewhat unsure of myself until the path
led me
to Depth Hypnosis - and every other class at the Sacred Stream.
I have been a
certified hypnotherapist for almost 15
years and I have been using Depth Hypnosis within that practice for
five
of those
years. I am fortunate to have an active Depth Hypnosis practice and I
enjoy
working with clients on all kinds of issues. Whatever the issue,
be it
physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual, the client has the
opportunity to transform their suffering through their willingness to
look more
deeply into themselves. Depth Hypnosis offers a method of
self-exploration that
is effective and empowering for the client.
I am grateful
for having stayed on the path and to
have experienced my own transformation and deepening of my personal
power with
Depth Hypnosis. It is an honor to be able to offer these tools to
others.
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| Journey
On It..." 'No Journey' Can Be the Perfect Journey" |
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By Kristin Nemzer, MFT,
CH
The shamanic journey is a
method of working in an altered state and is achieved by using sound,
such as a
repetitive drum beat. It is called "shamanic" because working
in an altered state in this way is found in most indigenous
cultures.
However, it is not limited to shamanism. The journey can be
described as
an active form of meditation and is very useful in exploring the psyche
and
enhancing personal growth. Our purpose in offering this column is to
create a forum,
where people engaged in a shamanic journey practice may deepen their
work with
the journey, and their understanding of the journey as a tool for
healing.
Please feel free to send us a journey for publication to info@sacredstream.org.
The journey for this
newsletter is a client case study
submitted by Depth Hypnosis Practitioner Kristin Nemzer, MFT. Working
with the
shamanic journey in this way is part of the innovative methodology of
Depth
Hypnosis.
 I have worked with many clients over the
last 11
years who
have wanted to learn tools that could help them find meaning and
solutions to
the issues they struggle with in their lives. One tool I have
used for
the last ten years in my personal and professional life is the shamanic
journey. The following is a case study demonstrating how the journey
can be
used in working with clients. In this particular case, it was the
experience of
not being able to journey, at first, which led the client to a deeper
understanding of her issues and eventually led to a breakthrough in her
healing. The client’s name and
many details have been changed in order to maintain confidentiality.
Sherry
was lost. She had just found out
that her husband of over twenty years was having an affair and before
she knew
it she was divorced and living alone. She had always assumed that he
would be there to support her and she
had
never had much self confidence. Her children had been her life’s focus
but once they grew up and moved
away she felt directionless. Sherry felt such a deep void within her
that I thought she might
benefit
from learning the shamanic journey.
After
I taught her the basics of journeying, Sherry was ready for her first
journey. She started her journey
and all she saw was blackness. She
felt like she was moving but she didn’t see anything other than
black.
She went through a range of emotions –
frustration, fear, sadness, despair. She started to blame herself for
not being able to do anything. She expressed that how she felt during
the journey was exactly how she has felt since her husband left and she
was
coming to therapy to get away from that feeling. She was lost.
Read
On
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| Art as a Transformative Dialogue |
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By Evan Bissell
 California is 46th in
the country on
spending on
schools and first on prisons, which in money means we are spending
$115,000 per year per juvenile inmate and $8,000 for a student in a
public
school. But funding is only one
part of the issue, a symptom rather than the root. There is an
uncomfortably close relationship between the
schools that are failing young poor people of color and the rapidly
expanding
prison system. If you look just a
bit deeper you would see that in this country, 11% of black men ages
25-34 are
incarcerated, you would see more than seven million children who have a
parent
under the supervision of the criminal justice system, you would see the
clause
in the constitution that outlines prison as a legal form of slavery.
And because of the hand in glove
relationship of schools and
prisons, I began to think more deeply about the culture of authority,
of
punishment, of the absence of healing in education. I began to
question why I was not equipped, as a teacher, to
begin where my students were, to begin from their places of
imperfection, while
also being able to share my own. I
began to question why I, as the teacher, must project an air of
perfection in
order for someone to listen to me, or trust me, or learn with me.
Because we have all wronged people or
made mistakes. Most of us have cut
class at least once, but the question is this: what then? There
are no blank slates to begin
from.
Read
On
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ASK ISA: This
Month's Q & A Addresses
"The Power within Vulnerability"
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You have said that there
is power in the vulnerability inherent in major life transitions but I
have a hard time understanding how that is possible. Would you explain
this more?
 I
think most of us do not really understand the true nature of
vulnerability. Most of us think that avoiding being vulnerable is the
right course of action and we feel justified in doing whatever we need
to do to keep ourselves from feeling vulnerable. Naturally, there are
situations where we should take any action necessary to keep ourselves
from being hurt – such as when we are actually physically attacked.
But, most of the time we are engaged in social interactions where our
definitions of vulnerability are less dramatic than in situations where
our physical safety is at stake.
In such interactions, being
vulnerable often involves feeling defenseless against actions others
might take toward us. Those actions might involve another person
determining whether or not we get a job we want or whether we get to go
out on a date with the person we are attracted to. We fear others will
keep us from having what we want. Then, we start feeling vulnerable and
we start defending against anything that might keep us from getting
what we want or keeping what we want. Under these conditions,
vulnerability becomes defined as the uncertainty of being able to have
or achieve what we want.
Read
On
Do you have a question
you'd like to ASK ISA?
Email info@sacredstream.org
with ASK ISA in the subject line and we will select one question each
month to include in this column.
Isa
Gucciardi,
Ph.D., is the Founding Director of the
Foundation of the Sacred Stream and the primary teacher for the
Foundation's programs in Depth Hypnosis, Applied Shamanism, Buddhist
Psychology, Integrated Energy Medicine, Transpersonal Studies, and
Destination Studies.
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Winter/Early Spring 2010 Calendar
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San Francisco Bay Area
Events:
Annual
Depth
Hypnosis Practitioner Meeting and Minister Ordination Ceremony
Sunday, January 17
Meeting: 1:00pm to 3:30pm
Ceremony: 5:00pm to 7:30pm
Berkeley, CA
Spring
Equinox
Drumming
Circle
Sunday, March 21; 6:30pm
Free
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
Please RSVP to info@sacredstream.org
Free
Teleclasses:
Teleclasses are
interactive distance learning courses similar to a
conference call, and taught by Isa Gucciardi, PhD. Each participant can
just listen and absorb, or engage in the discussion. You do not need a
computer to participate in a teleclass. All you need is a telephone and
you can call from anywhere!
What is the Shamanic
Journey
Wednesday, January 20; 6pm PST, 9pm EST
What is Buddhist
Psychology
Thursday, February 4; 6pm PST, 9pm EST
Energy Medicine: Medicine of the Spirit
Wednesday, February 17; 6pm PST, 9pm EST
Ethnobotany and the Kachinas of Mesa Verde
Thursday, February 18; 6pm PST, 9pm EST
What is Depth Hypnosis
Wednesday, April 7; 6pm PST, 9pm EST
To register, contact info@sacredstream.org
or
415-333-1434.
Distance
Learning Classes:
Depth Hypnosis
Supervisory Teleclass
Tuesdays, January 26, February 23, March 23,
& April 27
6:00pm to 8:00pm PST (9:00pm to 11:00pm EST)
$225; Early Registration: $200 by December 26
Working With Dreams
Teleclass
Tuesdays, February 9, 16, 23, & March 2
4:30pm to 5:45pm PST (7:30pm to 8:45pm EST)
$145; Early Registration: $135 by January 9
Relationships I
Teleclass
Mondays, March 8, 15, 22, & 29
4:00pm to 6:30pm PST (7:00pm to 9:30pm EST)
$295; Early Registration: $275 by February 8
Special Discount:
$525 for Relationships I and II by February 8
Relationships II
Teleclass
Mondays, April 12, 19, 26, & May 3
4:00pm to 6:30pm PST (7:00pm to 9:30pm EST)
$295; Early Registration: $275 by March 12
 Destination Studies:
The Ethnobotany of
Mesa Verde
June 9 - 13
Mesa Verde, CO
$1345; Early Registration: $1250 by April 9
Huna
I:
The Spirits of Hawaii
August 9 -15
The Big Island, HI
$2150; Early Registration: $1995 by May 7
Huna II: Manifesting
the Spirits of Hawaii
August 17 -23
The Big Island, HI
$2150; Early Registration: $1995 by May 17
San Francisco Bay
Area Training
Programs and Workshops:
Introduction
to the Shamanic Journey
January 30 & 31
10am to 4pm
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
$250; Early Registration: $225 by December 30
This course is a
prerequisite to many of our workshops!
Buddhist Psychology Studies I
Thursdays, February 18, February 25, March 4, & March 11
7:30pm to 10pm
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
$295; Early Registration: $275 by January 18
Special
Discount:
$525 for Buddhist Psychology Studies I & II by January 18
Shamanic Journey Supervisory Group
Mondays, February 22, March 1, March 8, & March 15
7:30pm to 9:30pm
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
$95
Tracking Spirit in the
Birth Environment
Saturday, February 27
9am to 9pm
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
$295; Early Registration: $275 by January 27
Integrated Energy
Medicine
March 12 - 14
Friday: 6pm to 10pm
Saturday & Sunday: 10am to 7pm
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
$595; Early Registration: $560 by February 12
Buddhist Psychology Studies II
Thursdays, March 18, March 25, April 1, & April 8
7:30pm to 10pm
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
$295; Early Registration: $275 by February 18
Working
With
Dreams
Sunday, March 21
1pm to 6pm
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
$145; Early Registration: $135 by February 21
Moon Lodge:
Initiations of the Sacred Feminine
Saturday, March 27
9am to 9pm
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
$295; Early Registration: $275 by February 27
Initiations of the Sacred
Masculine
Saturday, April 3
9am to 9pm
Sacred Stream Center
Berkeley, CA
$295; Early Registration: $275 by March 3
To register, contact info@sacredstream.org
or
415-333-1434.
 New
England Classes and
Events:
Spring Equinox Drumming Circle
Sunday, March 21; 6pm
TBA, Rhode Island
For details, please contact Katharine Rossi
Summer Solstice Drumming Circle
Sunday, June 20; 6pm
Free
For details, please contact Katharine Rossi
Free Talk:
Healing Techniques in Shamanism
at All That Matters
Thursday, July 8; 6pm
315 Main St., Wakefield, RI 02879
Introduction to the Shamanic Journey at
All That Matters
Thursday, July 8; 7:30pm to 10pm
Friday, July 9; 10am to 6pm
$250
315 Main St., Wakefield, RI 02879
Register at info@allthatmatters.com or 401-782-2126
Applied Shamanism Immersion Workshop
at All That Matters
Saturday & Sunday, July 10 & 11; 9am to 9pm
$795
315 Main St., Wakefield, RI 02879
*Prerequisite: Introduction to the Shamanic
Journey or equivalent
Register at info@allthatmatters.com or 401-782-2126
Integrated
Energy
Medicine
Immersion
Workshop
at
All
That
Matters
Saturday & Sunday, July 17 & 18; 9am to 9pm
$795
315 Main St., Wakefield, RI 02879
*Prerequisite: Introduction to the Shamanic
Journey or equivalent
Register at info@allthatmatters.com or 401-782-2126
For more information
on upcoming classes, please
visit our calendar page.
Please visit our websites for more information:
www.sacredstream.org
www.depthhypnosis.com
www.hunaspirit.com
Many thanks to Deborah Hall
for her photographs of Mesa Verde, Colorado (Tower and Tree, View from
Cliff House, Inside Dark Kiva, Petroglyphs, and Yucca Bud). To see more
of her work, please visit her online at A Woman's Eye Gallery: http://www.awegallery.com/
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