Library
Video: Navigating Coronavirus Fears: Part 3
In this video series, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. and Laura Chandler offer thoughts on how to maintain a steady course during the #coronavirus pandemic. In this segment, they talk about how to create internal structures for stability, parenting during these times, and creating greater communication pathways. Isa also offers a short meditation on kindness.
Video: Navigating Coronavirus Fears: Part 2
In this video series, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. and Laura Chandler offer thoughts on how to maintain a steady course during the #coronavirus pandemic. In this segment, they talk about how to create structures when you are feeling destabilized, and they focus on some of the positives arising out of this time.
Video: Navigating Coronavirus Fears: Part 1
In this video series, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. and Laura Chandler offer thoughts on how to maintain a steady course during the #coronavirus pandemic. In this segment, they talk about how to maintain patience, tolerance, and trust when the world around you panics.
Blog: Resisting Fear: Courage and Determination in Hard Times
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
These are difficult times for many people. Many of us have been increasingly distressed about the political situation, the destruction of the natural environment, the deterioration of social networks, and increasing financial insecurity. Now we have an invisible threat to our health in the form of the coronavirus that is spreading rapidly around the world.
Given all of the conflicting information about the virus, we are trying to discern what is real and what is not. It is difficult to make decisions about daily activities because the presence of the coronavirus and its effects are so unpredictable. It is in times like these that a spiritual practice is especially helpful because it provides a compass that is not dependent on external opinions or other people’s fears and hopes.
Video: How the Shamanic Journey Illuminates the Inner World
In this talk from Embodied Philosophy’s Virtual Empowerment conference, Isa Gucciardi describes the role of the shamanic journey in traditional contexts and how it can be adapted into the modern therapeutic setting to transform inner experience.
Podcast: Episode 59: Matthew Fox and Robert Thurman: Cultivating Peace in Difficult Times: Part 1
On this episode, we dive into the archives to bring you a historic conversation between Christian theologian Rev. Matthew Fox and Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman. This talk on Cultivating Peace in Difficult Times took place at the Sacred Stream Center in 2017 and was moderated by Isa Gucciardi. We will be releasing this talk in three parts over the next few weeks. In part one, Bob and Matt offer thoughtful and sometimes humorous ideas about how we can cultivate peace individually and collectively. They talk about what led them to their respective spiritual paths and how they have navigated obstacles along the way.
Blog: How Integrated Energy Medicine Heals
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Integrated Energy Medicine is the most subtle aspect of Depth Hypnosis, and also one of the most important features of the model. In addition to providing access to information about subtle experience influencing presenting symptoms, it is an important tool in healing.
With Integrated Energy Medicine, fields of light and sound can be focused by practitioners and guides to help clients move through resistance and blocks. These fields are used to support clients working at any level. They are especially helpful for those who are venturing into new and sometimes uncomfortable spaces within themselves for the first time. They can also be used to reconfigure and retrain patterns of experience and behavior arising from the deepest levels of the psyche.
Article: Breathing through Discomfort: What Yoga Taught me about Depth Hypnosis
By Denise Colby, Ph.D.
“Yoga saves your life.” It was my trademark phrase around the yoga studio, and what I offered to anyone who asked for my opinion on the practice. In my nearly 20 year engagement with yoga, I’ve found the practice to influence and mirror just about every aspect of life off the mat. Like my relationship to Depth Hypnosis, it started out as a tool I engaged with for a particular purpose and eventually became a way of life. These two practices weave themselves together into a beautiful tapestry of healing and transformation for this very corporeal, very human experience that we are all having. What I have found over the years is that there’s a lot of Depth Hypnosis in yoga, and a whole lot of yoga in Depth Hypnosis. A mindful dedication to this combination of practices creates a powerful vehicle of transformation to support the healing process.
In Depth Hypnosis, we are deeply engaged with the process of encountering ourselves in all of our darkest spaces. The shadow self is bravely and compassionately explored so that we can heal our trauma and unwind the false beliefs and patterns that we have held about ourselves and reality for much of our lives. Depth Hypnosis is a somatic practice that addresses trauma or energetic imbalance through the body itself, ultimately re-wiring our circuitry to bring about understanding and peace in our past and current experience. For those who have suffered bodily trauma or other experiences that have made the body feel like an unsafe place to be, a significant piece of the work of Depth Hypnosis is simply reestablishing safety and connection to the body. This is no small feat.
Blog: It Takes a Village
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
When I received an invitation to give teachings at a local dharma center, I was happy to accept. The center had faced some difficult times, and its members were trying to navigate a major reorganization. I hoped our collaboration might help them as they began charting new territory.
If you have ever walked into a room where people have been arguing, you might have felt uncomfortable – even if the argument is over and the people have left. This can happen because there is an unseen, but felt, imprint of the emotions and experience expressed in the argument. Imprints like these can stay in spaces for long periods of time after events have happened.
Article: The Language of Image in the Clinical Setting
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
The language of image is one we speak every night as we dream. It just takes a little prompting for us to be able to develop our latent facility with this language. Simple questions, such as “What does this image remind you of?” open the messages in the images in powerful ways.
People who listen to the images of their dreams find this out very quickly. In traditional societies where the journey was practiced, the journey practice was often paired with the practice of listening to dreams.
Blog: The Relationship between Tsongkhapa and Manjushri
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Tsongkhapa, a Buddha in the Land of Snows is Buddhist scholar Thupten Jinpa’s contribution to Shambhala Publications’ series, The Lives of the Masters, which seeks to memorialize the contributions of some of the most important thinkers in Buddhist philosophy. Jinpa’s book decisively puts Tsongkhapa on the map, not only as an outstanding philosopher of Buddhism, but as one of the great logicians of the last thousand years. This scholarly biography reveals Tsongkhapa’s life and teachings in a refreshingly accessible way. Tsongkhapa lived from 1357-1419 and is considered one of the greatest Buddhist philosophers and teachers that ever lived. He is known for his many accomplishments, not the least of which is his role in the Ganden Renaissance. The Ganden Renaissance brought new scholarship, new interpretations of traditional teachings, and established new centers of study in Mahayana Buddhism. An interesting undercurrent of this renaissance was the relationship between Tsongkhapa and the Tibetan deity, Manjushri.
Podcast: Episode 58: Dena Merriam: The Untold Story of Sita
On this episode, Dena Merriam, Founder of the Global Peace Initiative for Women (GPIW), joins Laura Chandler for an engaging conversation on diverse topics such as climate crisis, the Me Too movement, past lives, and the significance of the sacred feminine in the world today. Dena is the author of two books, including her latest, The Untold Story of Sita: An Empowering Tale for Our Time, a retelling of the Ramayana texts of Classic Indian Literature from the perspective of the primary female character, Sita. The book delivers an important message for our times, offering a new understanding of feminine wisdom and the intelligence of the natural world.
Community Event: The Four Immeasurables Retreat: Cultivating Vast and Profound Connection with Lama Tsomo
Join Lama Tsomo in an intimate weekend workshop in Berkeley focusing on the Tibetan Buddhist practice of the Four Immeasurables. This workshop is about transforming your life by learning to cultivate a limitless heart.
Love and compassion aren’t just feelings—they are capacities we all have the ability to cultivate. Yet the trappings of modern times often distract us. How can we open our hearts to experience an expansive sense of love and true connection?
Blog: The Inspiring Activism of Rigoberta Menchu
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
I find inspiration in the stories of people who have seen a need and tried to meet it. Be they healers, activists, politicians, leaders, or every day people who do the right thing in a difficult situation. These are people who stand up to oppression, or try to bring justice to places where none exists. For that reason, I have decided to create this series on Inspiring People.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is an activist for indigenous rights in Guatemala. She was born to a poor family of K’iche’ Maya descent in rural Guatemala at the beginning of the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. She became an activist against human rights violations committed by the Guatemalan armed forces during the war.
Podcast: Episode 57: 2019: A Retrospective
This episode is a retrospective of some of the highlights of the past year. You’ll hear excerpts from Laura Chandler’s interviews with bestselling authors Dawson Church and Christina Rasmussen, Grammy nominee Barbara Higbie, and renowned channel and author Paul Selig. Our featured music includes songs from Barbara Higbie, Dan Walters, and master sarod player Rajeev Taranath, as well as Sacred Stream’s very own Katie Rudman and her duo, Heddwen.