Excerpt: from Teri Degler's article "The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of,"
in Why: A Magazine about Life, Summer, 1996
Dreams are more than just the random findings of our brain's overworked neurons. Most authorities think that understanding our dreams is an important component to maintaining emotional health and well-being. Properly known, dreams can tell us how to make good decisions, help us be more self-aware, and tap into our vast, unused creative potential.
How do dreams help our lives? There are three very practical ways, says Shirley Ma, an internationally respected Jungian analyst who teaches workshops and has a private psychotherapy practice in Toronto. They can alert us to something wrong in our psyche -- our inner self -- and tell us how to fix it. They can tell us if something is missing in our life, and point the way to our seeing what it is. They can also, says Ma, "connect you more deeply to the spiritual realm." Through this connection, we can get a clearer understanding of how to achieve our destiny.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Chinese Alchemy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Analytical Psychology
The contributions of Chinese Alchemy and Traditional
Chinese Medicine to Analytical Psychology
Excerpt from paper presented at the 13th International Congress for Analytical Psychology, August, 1995, Zurich, Switzerland
In most Western societies, the body is a discrete entity, separate from thought and emotion. Modern Western medicine views the body as made up of nuts and bolts; the doctor is a mechanic who fixes the body as if it were a machine. In China and other Asian societies, the body is an open system linking social relations to the self; emotion and cognition are integrated into bodily processes. The traditional Chinese view treats the body as a garden; the doctor is a gardener who cultivates the garden according to the cosmic forces in the universe.
In Chinese symbolic thinking, the psychic and material aspects of a person are not differentiated. To the traditional Chinese doctor, a change effected on the physical plane automatically has a corresponding effect on the psychic plane, and vice versa.
Chinese medicine as it has been practiced through the centuries takes the emotions into account when treating illness. Emotions can disturb the internal organs and consequently the harmony and movement of Ch'i and Blood. Each organ is believed to produce a certain energy which resonates with specific emotions. Anger resonates with the Liver, joy with the Heart and Liver, worry with the Lung and Spleen, fear with the Kidneys, and shock with the Kidneys and Heart.
Chinese Medicine to Analytical Psychology
Excerpt from paper presented at the 13th International Congress for Analytical Psychology, August, 1995, Zurich, Switzerland
In most Western societies, the body is a discrete entity, separate from thought and emotion. Modern Western medicine views the body as made up of nuts and bolts; the doctor is a mechanic who fixes the body as if it were a machine. In China and other Asian societies, the body is an open system linking social relations to the self; emotion and cognition are integrated into bodily processes. The traditional Chinese view treats the body as a garden; the doctor is a gardener who cultivates the garden according to the cosmic forces in the universe.
In Chinese symbolic thinking, the psychic and material aspects of a person are not differentiated. To the traditional Chinese doctor, a change effected on the physical plane automatically has a corresponding effect on the psychic plane, and vice versa.
Chinese medicine as it has been practiced through the centuries takes the emotions into account when treating illness. Emotions can disturb the internal organs and consequently the harmony and movement of Ch'i and Blood. Each organ is believed to produce a certain energy which resonates with specific emotions. Anger resonates with the Liver, joy with the Heart and Liver, worry with the Lung and Spleen, fear with the Kidneys, and shock with the Kidneys and Heart.
Heaven Can't Wait
Excerpt from Toronto Star article by Colleen O'Connor, May 9, 1996. Career women looking for fulfillment are coming up empty. So they're altering their lives to find nirvana elsewhere by Colleen O'Connor (Dallas Morning News) Special to the Star.
For baby boomer women, it could be the phenomenon of the 21st century: quitting corporate jobs to find work that feeds their souls.
MBAs and academics, doctors and lawyers, television journalists and investment bankers: all have abandoned promising careers to seek nirvana elsewhere.
Some trade 18-hour days for part-time work so they can devote time to yoga or art classes. Some choose more altruistic jobs. Some start their own small businesses. Some start families.
Fortune magazine recently surveyed 300 career women, about 94 per cent managers and executives.
"The extent of their angst was astonishing," the magazine reported.
"All but 13 per cent said they had made or were seriously considering making a major change in their lives. Almost a third said they frequently felt depressed."
"More than 40 per cent said they felt trapped."
Shirley See Yan Ma thinks she understands the trend.
Ma, a Jungian analyst whose office is on St. Clair Ave. W., believes the emptiness of many career women dates back at least to the '70s, when newly liberated women adopted cookie-cutter life-styles.
For baby boomer women, it could be the phenomenon of the 21st century: quitting corporate jobs to find work that feeds their souls.
MBAs and academics, doctors and lawyers, television journalists and investment bankers: all have abandoned promising careers to seek nirvana elsewhere.
Some trade 18-hour days for part-time work so they can devote time to yoga or art classes. Some choose more altruistic jobs. Some start their own small businesses. Some start families.
Fortune magazine recently surveyed 300 career women, about 94 per cent managers and executives.
"The extent of their angst was astonishing," the magazine reported.
"All but 13 per cent said they had made or were seriously considering making a major change in their lives. Almost a third said they frequently felt depressed."
"More than 40 per cent said they felt trapped."
Shirley See Yan Ma thinks she understands the trend.
Ma, a Jungian analyst whose office is on St. Clair Ave. W., believes the emptiness of many career women dates back at least to the '70s, when newly liberated women adopted cookie-cutter life-styles.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)