Embracing the Healing Wisdom in Anger and Shame Online weekend workshop at California Institute of Integral Studies with Karla McLaren, M.Ed. Saturday and Sunday, December 3 & 4 from 10am to 2pm Pacific Anger and shame are essential emotions, yet most of us have been taught to either suppress or overexpress these emotions, even run from them. This is tragic, because both of these emotions … Read More
Discover Your Emotional Body! A Somatic Mini-Workshop at Empathy Academy Saturday, December 10 from 10am to 12:30pm Pacific Talking and reading about emotions is a good way to learn about them, but playing with them can help you understand and work with them in healing new ways. By accessing your body’s wisdom, you may find that you’re already working skillfully with your emotions, or you … Read More
Learn How to Access the Healing Genius in Your Emotions Starts Monday, December 5 at Empathy Academy 8 week online course – $165 This is the perfect time to learn how to work with all of your emotions in a relaxed, self-paced course with no Zoom meetings. Your emotions — all of them — are vital to your intelligence, your social skills, and your ability to … Read More
We’re all empaths In my earlier career, I identified as an empath, but I stopped doing so because the term got to be really troubling. An empath tends to be seen as some kind of magical psychic, and that’s nonsense. Empathy is a human trait and skill, but it’s also a trait in many animal species, so there’s nothing magical about it. We’re all empaths, because … Read More
Hello emotional kids and parents! (That’s all of us, you know.) Emotions are at the center of all learning, thinking, and behavior, and you can learn how to work with them directly and skillfully. Kids especially love learning about their emotions, and we’ve made a 2-page chart for kids that includes emotional vocabulary words and helps kids understand exactly what their emotions do and what gifts … Read More
Hello, Emotional People! That’s all of us, you know. Emotions are central to everything we think, every idea we have, and everything we do, but most of us haven’t learned how to work skillfully with all of our emotions. Luckily, we can learn to work well with our emotions at any stage of our lives. One of our licensed Dynamic Emotional Integration® professionals, Jennifer Asdorian, created … Read More
How Do We Celebrate Our Mothers? A real-world poem for Mother’s Day How do we celebrate our mothers — The ones who are here and the ones who aren’t? The ones who gave their lives for us, And the ones who walked away. The ones who lovingly directed our lives as if we were art projects, And the ones who never knew how to welcome us … Read More
Your emotions aren’t the problem As I was writing my 2020 book, Embracing Anxiety: How to Access the Genius of This Vital Emotion I thought a lot about two emotional mistakes that almost everyone makes: We blame emotions for causing problems, when in fact, emotions arise to help us deal with problems We blame emotions for people’s lack of emotional skills I call these the emotional … Read More
Your judgments have value and purpose When I grew up in spiritual groups, I was taught that judgment was forbidden, and wow, was that a colossal mistake. This no-judgment rule is still infecting a lot of communities, however, so it’s worth looking at again. This essay is from my 2010 book The Language of Emotions. When I refer to judgment, I refer to your capacity to … Read More
Welcoming the gifts of the Sadness Family In times of upheaval, loss, and trouble, many emotions will step forward to offer their gifts and their unique forms of genius. If you don’t know this, you may mistakenly respond to multiple emotions as if they’re problems in and of themselves. You don’t have to; there is another way. All emotions bring you help and support, and all … Read More