Integrative Pscyhology
From a very young age I was a seeker needing answers to the big questions of LIFE. I needed to know, “what is it all about?” Life has to mean something, suffering must have a purpose. Otherwise how is it worth living? Yet in the face of the grandeur and beauty of the Living Universe something within me knew all is significant and purposeful. Something big is going on here; a great mystery that calls me to penetrate it. I found the Pathwork when I was 34. For 30 years now it has been my guiding light, helping me get the most out of every life experience I encounter and answering the burning questions in my soul. More than just a philosophy, the Pathwork* was a process that helped me learn to find the answers within myself through direct experience.
Winter is the time of resting in being and waiting. All nature knows this blessed state, even human nature, but in our modern culture we are lost in a great imbalance, idealizing and over-emphasizing the active, doing orientation in life. We have lost touch with receptivity and being. The initiating active principle is of course a necessary power and principle, but if it is not balanced by the receptivity of simply being, if our doing doesn’t arise out of our deeper being, then all our doing and giving and pressured activity drains us. The more we struggle against life’s storms and currents, the more we exhaust ourselves. .
Forest Therapy increases our intake of Vitamin N for Modern Nature Deficit Disorder and Stress related illness. Nature or Forest Immersion experiences are a form of recreational therapy that have a vast array of benefits for human health and wellbeing. Also known as Shinrin Yoku, or “taking in the atmosphere of the forest”, this proves to be the perfect antidote for our stressful modern life styles. 30 years of research in Japan has shown the beneficial effects on all our modern stress indicators; high blood pressure, pulse rate, cortisol levels, immune system balance, creativity and mental focus are all benefited. It is becoming a popular organizational luncheon workshop.
I am a deep student of the Medicine Wheel of life, and Winter Solstice falls in the North of this powerful mandala. This direction speaks of the deep stillness of earth, and a vast night sky that seems to make an endless night. The winter night sky is so present in the deciduous forests now, where the summer before the cathedral canopy of leaves gave us only peaks of sky in the breeze.. Now the branches of the bare trees seem to etch into the winter night lifting our gaze into the dark immensity. The stars grow brighter, more present.
