Living A Life That Matters

In working with my clients, I help facilitate how they can live a life that matters rather than living an un-lived life which dovetails into Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening:Having the Life You Want by being present to the life you have which speaks directly to the centerpiece of my work as a psychotherapist.  In this, his "wisdom" book, Nepo has an entry of wisdom for every day with an exercise.  It is way, a useful and mindful way, to greet each day with an affirmation about what should be valued in life.  


So much of us inherit lives and behaviors that we've adapted.  When we arise each day, there is a knowing we are NOT happy, there is no joy, there may be depression and often addictions commonly occur. Awakening to this often happens late in the game.  But never too late to seek help and support.  Life is not always perfect, we are met with pain and loss in a variety of ways.  How we respond is key to how we live our lives.


Being attuned with my clients, unlocking those gates of oppression and self doubt, insecurity and loss, they can be reunited with their core, to own their voice and to promote a sense of well being.  I enjoy being a witness to this unfolding process.  It is often helpful for clients to have a touch stone, something with which they can use or have each day as a reminder of who they are and how they want to live their lives.  Utilizing the motivational vignettes addressed in Nepo's book,  through his own experience of a life examined, his entries on love, loss, friendship, cancer, can be such a beginning and a companion to this process of becoming or awakening.


With my families my metaphor is the "team" and how everyone needs to participate on this team in order for it to function, prosper and be successful.  Working with couples, I model a process of attunement, helping them to "get" the other to truly see their partner with empathic responses, making their communication direct, getting out of your own way in order to healing the relationship, allowing love to re-enter.  It's amazing to see this shift in the room.  To be a witness to the epiphany that takes place is a gift.  With cancer patients and their families there's another gift of providing hope and helping them navigate the emotional terrain. No matter who I am seeing, the work is  a process which I find holy and am awakening more and more to each new day living a life that matters.

Cancer is Trauma for the person grappling with living and dying, for the kids, for the partner, for the community of friends and family. [excerpted from "nancy's list"]

In my experience as a woman who was diagnosed 7 years ago with breast cancer, a marriage family therapist and practicing in West Los Angeles I have many conversations with people living with cancer, their children, and their loved ones.

When I was diagnosed, I had the immensely good fortune to be treated by an especially wise team of physicians who understood the profound emotional roller-coaster facing this diagnosis.   Seeking the support of a capable therapist is vital in helping to facilitate navigating the emotional terrain.  Even with supportive family and friends, finding preferably the professional who had lived with cancer and who had endured the torment and ambiguities and deep core questioning, research has indicated, can be life enhancing and healing in extraordinary ways.

It is my hope that more people in the healing professions recognize the critical need and value of a professional psychological relationship

for their patients coping with the trauma of cancer.

I am a Marriage Family Therapist and my practice is about holding hands and hearts. Sometimes, the conversations are very difficult as we ponder the mystery and uncertainty and fear and sadness and disappointment.  Sometimes, oftentimes, our conversations are almost liberating and exhilarating as "my clients" discover how to bring meaning to their experience and how to consciously create their lives

so that they are “living a life that matters”.

My clients are from many parts of Los Angeles, many come to my office, many I see in their home or hospital(s), others call on the phone and some visits may be arranged on Skype.

Please consider the benefits for your patient or your friend (or you).

I appreciate your referrals.  Thank you for your trust.

Let's Be The Change

Rabbi Hillel said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?" Ethics of the Fathers

I AM an amazing film by Tom Shadyac creator of Bruce Almighty, The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar and Ace Ventura and now "the shift is about to hit the fan" because once you see this film, you will be, hopefully, changed for the good; or at least touched by humanity with your heart and eyes wide open.  This documentary illuminates the world as we have been taught, the world as we believe, the world as hypocrisy and the world as it should be and, hopefully, the way the world SHOULD be begging the question, what is right with this world...

Through a series of good luck, good role models, a bad accident, life as it was for Tom Shadyac shifted 360 degrees.  As an outcome of his healing and recovery from a horrific injury he shares through a series of interviews, research, belief and honesty a film about humanity from pre-historic times to the present.  A theme that runs throughout the film is how we are all connected and the philosophy of how the "power of one" is an effective element for change to occur.

This film is utterly engaging and entertaining posing two practical and provocative questions:  what’s wrong with our world, and what can we do to make it better?   Shadyac is on a quest.  In I AM, Shadyac steps in front of the camera to recount what happened to him after a cycling accident left him incapacitated, possibly for good. Though he ultimately recovered, he emerged with a new sense of purpose, determined to share his own awakening to his prior life of excess and greed, and to investigate how he as an individual, and we as a race, could improve the way we live and walk in the world.

Armed with nothing but his innate curiosity and a small crew to film his adventures, Shadyac set out on a twenty-first century quest for enlightenment.  Meeting with a variety of thinkers and doers–remarkable men and women from the worlds of science, philosophy, academia, and faith–including such luminaries as David Suzuki, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Lynne McTaggart, Ray Anderson, John Francis, Coleman Barks, and Marc Ian Barasch –  Shadyac appears on-screen as character, commentator, guide, and even, at times, guinea pig. An irrepressible “Everyman” who asks tough questions, but offers no easy answers, he takes the audience to places it has never been before, and presents even familiar phenomena in completely new and different ways.  The result is a fresh, energetic, and life-affirming film that challenges our preconceptions about human behavior while simultaneously celebrating the indomitable human spirit.

The pursuit of truth has been a lifelong passion for Shadyac. “As early as I can remember I simply wanted to know what was true,” he recalls, “and somehow I perceived at a very early age that what I was being taught was not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”  He humorously describes himself as “questioning and searching and stumbling and fumbling toward the light.”  The “truth” may have been elusive, but success wasn’t.  Shadyac’s films grossed nearly two billion dollars and afforded him the glamorous and extravagent A-List lifestyle of the Hollywood blockbuster filmmaker.  Yet Shadyac found that more – in his case, a 17,000-square foot art-filled mansion, exotic antiques, and private jets — was definitely less.   “What I discovered, when I began to look deeply, was that the world I was living in was a lie,” he explains.  “Much to my surprise, the accumulation of material wealth was a neutral phenomenon, neither good or bad, and certainly did not buy happiness.”  Gradually, with much consideration and contemplation, he changed his lifestyle.  He sold his house, moved to a mobile home community, and started life—a simpler and more responsible life –  anew.

But, at this critical juncture, Shadyac suffered an injury that changed everything.  “In 2007, I got into a bike accident which left me with Post Concussion Syndrome, a condition where the symptoms of the original concussion don’t go away.”  These symptoms include intense and painful reactions to light and sound, severe mood swings, and a constant ringing sound in the head.  Shadyac tried every manner of treatment, traditional and alternative, but nothing worked.  He suffered months of isolation and pain, and finally reached a point where he welcomed death as a release. “I simply didn’t think I was going to make it,” he admits.

But, as Shadyac wisely points out, “Death can be a very powerful motivator.”  Confronting his own mortality, he asked himself, “If this is it for me –  if I really am going to die  –  what do I want to say before I go?  What will be my last testament?”  It was Shadyac’s modern day dark night of soul and out of it, I AM was born.  Thankfully, almost miraculously, his PCS symptoms began to recede, allowing him to travel and use his movie-making skills to explore the philosophical questions that inhabited him, and to communicate his findings in a lively, humorous, intellectually-challenging, and emotionally-charged film.

But this would not be a high-octane Hollywood production.  The director whose last film had a crew of 400, assembled a streamlined crew of four, and set out to find, and film, the thinkers who had helped to change his life, and to seek a better understanding of the world, its inhabitants, their past, and their future.  Thus, Shadyac interviews scientists, psychologists, artists, environmentalists, authors, activists, philosophers, entrepreneurs, and others in his quest for truth.   Bishop Desmond Tutu, Dr. Noam Chomsky, historian Dr. Howard Zinn, physicist Lynne McTaggart, and poet Coleman Banks are some of the subjects who engage in fascinating dialogue with Shadyac.

Shadyac was very specific about what he was after, wanting I AM to identify the underlying cause of the world’s ills – “I didn’t want to hear the usual answers, like war, hunger, poverty, the environmental crisis, or even greed,” he explains.  “These are not the problems, they are the symptoms of a larger endemic problem.  In I AM, I wanted to talk about the root cause of the ills of the world, because if there is a common cause, and we can talk about it, air it out in a public forum, then we have a chance to solve it.”

Ironically, in the process of trying to figure out what’s wrong with the world, Shadyac discovered there’s more right than he ever imagined.  He learned that the heart, not the brain, may be man’s primary organ of intelligence, and that human consciousness and emotions can actually affect the physical world, a point Shadyac makes with great humor by demonstrating the impact of his feelings on a bowl of yogurt. And, as Shadyac’s own story illustrates, money is not a pathway to happiness.  In fact, he even learns that in some native cultures, gross materialism is equated with insanity.

Shadyac also discovers that, contrary to conventional thinking, cooperation and not competition, may be nature’s most fundamental operating principle.   Thus, I AM shows consensus decision-making is the norm amongst many species, from insects and birds to deer and primates.  The film further discovers that humans actually function better and remain healthier when expressing positive emotions, such as love, care, compassion, and gratitude, versus their negative counterparts, anxiety, frustration, anger and fear. Charles Darwin may be best known for popularizing the notion that nature is red in tooth and claw, but, as Shadyac points out, he used the word love 95 times in The Descent of Man, while his most famous phrase,survival of the fittest, appears only twice.

“It was a revelation to me that for tens of thousands of years, indigenous cultures taught a very different story about our inherent goodness,” Shadyac marvels.  “Now, following this ancient wisdom, science is discovering a plethora of evidence about our hardwiring for connection and compassion, from the Vagus Nerve which releases oxytocin at simply witnessing a compassionate act, to the Mirror Neuron which causes us to literally feel another person’s pain.  Darwin himself, who was misunderstood to believe exclusively in our competitiveness, actually noted that humankind’s real power comes in their ability to perform complex tasks together, to sympathize and cooperate.”

Shadyac’s enthusiastic depiction of the brighter side of human nature and reality, itself, is what distinguishes I AM from so many well-intentioned, yet ultimately pessimistic, non-fiction films.  And while he does explore what’s wrong with the world, the film’s overwhelming emphasis is focused on what we can do to make it better.  Watching I AM is ultimately, for many, a transformative experience, yet Shadyac is reluctant to give specific steps for viewers who have been energized by the film.  “What can I do?” “I get asked that a lot,” he says.  “But the solution begins with a deeper transformation that must occur in each of us.  I AM isn’t as much about what you can do, as who you can be.  And from that transformation of being, action will naturally follow.”

Shadyac’s transformation remains in process.   He still lives simply, is back on his bicycle, riding to work, and teaching at a local college, another venue for sharing his life-affirming discoveries.  Reflecting Shadyac’s philosophy is the economic structure of the film’s release; all proceeds from I AM will go to The Foundation for I AM, a non-profit established by Shadyac to fund various worthy causes and to educate the next generation about the issues and challenges explored in the film.  When he directs another Hollywood movie, the bulk of his usual eight-figure fee will be deposited into a charitable account, as well.  “St. Augustine said, ‘Determine what God has given you, and take from it what you need; the remainder is needed by others.’  That’s my philosophy in a nutshell,” Shadyac says, “Or as Gandhi put it, ‘Live simply, so others may simply live.’”

Shadyac’s enthusiasm and optimism are contagious.  Whether conducting an interview with an intellectual giant, or offering himself as a flawed character in the narrative of the film, Shadyac is an engaging and persuasive guide as we experience the remarkable journey that is I AM. With great wit, warmth, curiosity, and masterful storytelling skills, he reveals what science now tells us is one of the principal truths of the universe, a message that is as simple as it is significant:  We are all connected.  [excerpted from www.iamthedoc.com] 

Empathy and humanity are at the core of the paradigm Shadyac is suggesting we address.  If the heart runs our minds, then John Lennon's famous lyric "all we need is love", simplistic as it sounds, beginning with us, one person at a time, we CAN change the world.  Let's be the change we want to be and pay it forward.  All these cliches beg us to pay more attention to our hearts and to others.  If not now...when?

This is a MUST SEE film opening March 11th at the ArcLight Hollywood with in person Q & A with Tom Shadyac himself!  March 18 opening at Laemle Encino.

Is There an Injustice to Being Happy

Does one find happiness or does it find you?  Are you already wired with happiness from the day we're born?  Happiness has eluded me most of my life and it's been a quest to understand why one person is happy and another can be miserable.  In the recent film Another Year by Mike Leigh, this little story, with simple characters and small dialogue, begs this question.  "...Some people seem to have an inexhaustible, even superabundant supply of happiness, while others seem unable to acquire even the smallest portion?  Can happiness be borrowed, stolen or inherited?  Is it earned by meritorious works or granted by the obscure operations of grace"? A.O. Scott of the NY Times begs this rhetorical question.


It can also be likened to twins or siblings raised by the same parents, one exhibits an ease through life without drama or incident while the other is oppositional, finds something wrong in everything they do.  Where do we all come from?  Where do we all belong? to paraphrase Paul McCartney.  

According to Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin,  happiness is a combination of positive emotional states. It’s associated with being fully engaged and actively embracing the world.  Now for the 64 thousand dollar question...and why isn't everyone engaged in life and embracing it?  It is a complex questions peppered with irony.  There are studies being done with MRI mapping and EEG findings that show the electrical activity of neuronal circuits and how stress and thoughts, experiences and references impact one's ability to be happy.


Happiness 

is not just a vague feeling, but a physical state of the brain. More importantly, this physical state can be induced deliberately.  Is it a matter of choice?  This will be debated to the end of time but just knowing that we have the ability to shift this belief into positive experience.  Embracing this idea and with repeated behaviors or thoughts the synapses fire in a way and thoughts change.  Sandy Banks

in her recent LA Times column wrote about her mother Rene who lived her life as if a recipe.   She took the ingredients that she had and worked with them rather than dismissing an experience because it wasn't perfect or didn't meet her expectations.  Life doesn't always hand us the perfect ingredients, she said.  Some recipes are building from what you already have rather than what's missing; and there is irony in that.  We all have the right ingredients, we just have to find them.  The injustice to being happy is that it is color blind.  It matters none which side of the tracks we were born.  Its a matter of how are we going to get on the happiness train rather than the one that slows down and goes nowhere.  Maintaining a sense of justice serves as a cog in the soul’s primary function of leading a happy life.

Through Lynda's Lens: Pay Attention To Blessings

Through Lynda's Lens: Pay Attention To Blessings: "Today I awakened to the most stunning scene out my bedroom window with shadows dancing on the trees and rain water resting on the greener..."

Pay Attention To Blessings

Today I awakened to the most stunning scene out my bedroom window with shadows dancing on the trees and rain water resting on the greenery and the sun looking just like it should following the rain.  Our grown sons and their families will be coming over for what I hope will become known as the "french toast" sunday brunch at grandmas and papas.  We have six grandchildren, five girls and one boy, who's almost not a boy as he will be turning 17 in a few weeks and our youngest grandchild is now two months old.  Life is precarious and with each new day, we need to be present so we can see the blessings that shower us.  Of course good health is one of the key factors to being able to see the beauty and experience the blessings in your life.  I was diagnosed with breast cancer now almost seven years ago and it did change the way I view the world.  In some way I have little tolerance and other ways much more, but, I am aware.  I am aware of what I see through my lens, whether my eyes, my emotional lens, how I make sense of my experiences, and what I see when I am using my camera which I enjoy doing.  So, today, I will capture some of the goings on in my camera, the pictures will be a touchstone should my memory fail me.  In the meantime, what I see is....what is before me, in the moment and paying much attention to my blessings.