by sallyjfox | Aug 16, 2018 | Podcast
Many of us fear aging, out of concern for what might happen. But what if aging was about “giving birth to the true self” and the hardships which we may encounter, could be reframed as part of a path of initiation.
John Robinson’s book on The Three Secrets of Aging blew me away. Whereas many books on aging talking about holding on to your youth as long as you can, preparing for a healthy, affluent retirement, or how to deal with your worries around dementia, John takes a different path. He writes about wisdom and consciousness expansion.
He sees aging as a possible path of transformation through the process of aging.
He just doesn’t promise that it will always be easy but it can be joyful.
ABOUT OUR GUEST
John C. Robinson is a clinical psychologist with a second doctorate in ministry, an ordained interfaith minister, the author of nine books and numerous articles on the psychology, spirituality and mysticism of the New Aging, and a frequent speaker at Conscious Aging Conferences across the country. You can learn more about his work at www.johnrobinson.org.
His major works include Death of the Hero, Birth of the Soul; But Where Is God: Psychotherapy and the Religious Search; Ordinary Enlightenment; Finding Heaven Here; The Three Secrets of Aging; Bedtime Stories for Elders; What Aging Men Want: Homer’s Odyssey as a Parable of Male Aging; his first novel, Breakthrough; and The Divine Human: The Final Transformation of Sacred Aging.
John’s work has received praise from numerous visionary writers including Angeles Arrien, Arjuna Ardagh, Robert Atchley, Robert Bly, Allan Chinen, Matthew Fox, John Gray, Andrew Harvey, Gay Hendricks, Robert Johnson, Aaron Kipnis, Stanley Krippner, Malidoma Some, Harry Moody, Carol Orsborn, Kenneth Ring, Bernie Siegel, Jacquelyn Small, Jeremy Taylor, and Jonathan Young.
John’s growing audience comes to his work through talks and workshops at conscious aging conferences (e.g., Sage-ing International, Conscious Elders Network, 6th and 7th International Conferences on Aging and Spirituality, Creation Spirituality Communities Gatherings, Mankind Project in Louisville, Progressive Christianity Embrace Festival, and the United Church of Christ) and webinars with The Shift Network Summit, CSource, Unitarian Universalists, and Sag-ing International), a website hosted by the Authors Guild, radio and video interviews and presentations and five conscious aging books published by John Hunt Publishing. What is unique about his material is its mystical description of the evolution of a Divine Human in a Divine World via the profound and unprecedented dynamics the New Aging.
Highlights and quotes from the Show
“Aging is enlightenment in slow motion.”
“Aging is an initiation to another stage of consciousness.”
We start asking the big questions when things fall apart.
How to deal with the process of letting go of your old life…
“Aging is about giving birth to the true self.”
3 stages of aging:
Young-old – overcompensation against the fear of deconstruction that’s coming
The white water at this stage of life can be rough.
“We all lose it…the good news is it comes back.”
“Spirituality does not give you an end run around suffering.”
Why sometimes it’s useful to let go of thinking about purpose, or at least thinking about purpose from the head down.
Asky yourself, “What makes me come alive?”
Hear the interview with John:
And please leave a rating and review!
The Show Notes
Read The Three Secrets of Aging
and other books you’ll find on his website: www.Johnrobinson.org
by sallyjfox | Jul 30, 2018 | Podcast
Rachael Freed, MSW, LMFT, is an expert in the art of writing about your legacy and creating legacy letters. She’ll be a featured presenter at the 2018 Global Conference of Sage-ing International in Chaska, Minnesota. She’ll also be offering a webinar on August 8th, 2018 called The Value of Harvesting the Wisdom of our Lives. (Click here for more information.)
Rachael’s the author of six books including her most recent: Your Legacy Matters, Harvesting the Love and Lessons of Your Life and Women’s Lives, Women’s Legacies, Passing Your Beliefs and Blessings to Future Generations.
Subscribe to the show on iTunes to listen to upcoming episodes and hear all our conversations.
And please leave a rating and review.
Highlights and quotes from the episode:
We talk about this quote from the book:
“Aging has no ‘solution;’ rather, it is a river of experience through a mysterious land. The more we can share our experiences and support one another, the more we can understand, accept, and surrender to this final transformation. At times difficult, fun, surprising, painful, and amazing, aging asks us to stay involved, keep learning, and prepare for circumstances never before imagined.”
Hear the interview with Rachael:
And please leave a rating and review!
More about our guest:
Rachael Freed, founder of Life-Legacies, is a Senior Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality and Healing, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and an emeritus Marriage and Family Therapist. An inspirational lecturer and practical workshop facilitator, she provides legacy programs for religious, philanthropic, and health care organizations, for public and non-profit corporations, and for diverse groups of individuals experiencing life transitions.
Rachael has trained cardiac professionals internationally to support cardiac families. Her book and journal, Heartmates: A Guide for the Spouse and Family of the Heart Patient and The Heartmates Journal: A Companion for Partners of People with Heart Disease, are the only resources available supporting the emotional and spiritual recovery of families coping with heart disease.
The Show Notes
Visit Rachael’s website: http://www.life-legacies.com/
Sign Up for Rachel’s August 8, 2018 workshop for Sage-ing International here: The Value of Harvesting the Wisdom of our Lives.
To learn more about Sage-ing International click here
Check out Rachel’s book: Your Legacy Matters: a Multi-generational Guide for Writing Your Ethical Will
by sallyjfox | May 16, 2018 | Podcast
Marilyn Paul knows that miracles can happen when you take a day of rest.
Building on the Jewish idea of a Shabbat and her own life experience, Marilyn wrote An Oasis in Time to help anyone, regardless of faith or belief, tap the benefit of taking one day off a week.
In An Oasis in Time, she shows how we can recharge our juices in these heavily stressed, productivity-obsessed times.
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Marilyn Paul is an organizational consultant and the author of two bestsellers of An Oasis in Time: How a Day of Rest Can Save Your Life (Rodale, 2017) and It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys, named a best book of the year by Spirituality and Health Magazine and now in paperback. In Keys, she shares her pioneering model for making the journey from being disorganized and mismanaging time to a far more powerful life of being “organized enough” to go after your cherished dreams. In Oasis, Marilyn describes the path to a day off each week for what you love, and often don’t get to
With a Ph.D. from Yale and an M.B.A. from Cornell, Marilyn takes a unique approach that blends inner work and practical skills training. She has consulted to a wide range of companies and institutions around the world. In addition to her consulting work, she has taught on the faculties of Yale University School of Public Health, the Hebrew University School of Public Health and Colby College in Waterville Maine. Her work has been featured on national media including National Public Radio, The Chicago Tribune, USAToday, and CNN.
Highlights and quotes from the Show
Why taking a day a week can be life-saving and the antidote to a relentlessly stressed life.
The word Shabbat means “stop” and we can all put away our work once a week and stop.
Rest is the third best health practice we can develop, after food and exercise.
Rest gives our whole body a way to recover.
How preparing for an Oasis day can actually make you more efficient.
Our Oasis day gives a chance to be with people in deeply connected ways.
Hear the interview with Marilyn:
And please leave a rating and review!
The Show Notes
Check out Marilyn Paul at http://marilynpaul.com/about/
Check out her book An Oasis in TIme
by sallyjfox | Apr 25, 2018 | Podcast, Story Pros
Juliet Bruce, Ph.D., is helping people discover their legacies, and find more meaning, as they look at their lives through the lens of story, and specifically the Hero’s Journey framework.
For those of us who are aging, Juliet knows that even with its difficulties, aging can be viewed as another step in a heroic, transformational journey.
For twenty-five plus years, Juliet has been helping people understand how they live inside of stories- and can change those stories.
Combining her training in expressive arts therapy with her background in literature and journalism, Juliet has developed a unique way to work with individuals and groups. Her clients have ranged from trauma survivors, to members of our most marginalized populations, to those grappling with questions of life and aging.
Juliette holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Northwestern, an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Washington University, and a Ph.D. in Expressive Arts Therapy and Transformational Education.
In the wake of 9/11/2001, she founded Arts for Life, a non-profit organization that sent trained teams of storytellers, visual artists, dancers, actors, musicians, and expressive therapists into public venues to facilitate healing programs. She also founded a program to help New York City first responders who were continuing to experience PTSD.
She is currently writing a book, which draws from her moving experiences bringing the world of myth and story to clients including her work within a maximum security prison for criminally insane men.
If you can help transform lives through storytelling in that environment – anything is possible.
Highlights and quotes from the Show
How a cat helped Juliet start her own transformation.
“As soon as we begin to frame our experience as a story, as an adventure, everything changes, anything becomes possible, and we begin a transformational journey that leads up and out– ultimately to finding a gift or a strength in our circumstances and in ourselves that we can then share with other people.”
Transformation is the key to the journey – First, there’s a crisis, then a struggle, and finally, transformation.
“I wanted to use my writing to serve something good. I understood the power of story to change and transform, not just individual lives but community lives. To create wholeness where there was a shattered experience. I’m always in awe of what happens in a group of people who are sharing their stories. Not their victim story, but their hero’s story–the story of how they did things right in difficult times in their lives, and how they found meaning in moments in their lives that changed their lives.”
How so many people are incarcerated by their own limitations or by life circumstances.
How a group of men in a maximum security prison went from feeling completely victimized to understanding that they were undergoing a rite of passage in their Hero’s Journey.
“The truth of the hero’s journey is found in the darkest parts of the soul. The ‘all is lost’ moment is the moment before breakthrough.”
How aging, as we are confronted with our own dark night, has the power to be transformational.
Juliet on LEGACY STORIES
How Juliette works with legacy stories – asking story questions about what people want in their 3rd Act even as they face the limitations of life.
“Ask a person not to remember, not to talk in generalities, but to ask story questions about their lives. What was your wedding day like, tell me about your wedding day? Very specific scenes in their lives. What music played around the birth of your child? Get people into their senses, their sense memories and whole beautiful stories of decades emerge.
Using The Hero’s Journey paradigm people find that their lives were not a waste, in fact, they were very beautiful lives no matter how ordinary they were. They made choices that were the best choices they could make in the moment. They endured, they carried on, and they made it to this age. And now, faced with the frailties of the human body, and sometimes the mind, they still have great wisdom and a sense of continuity to share with younger people.”
How she is helping people, in their older years, reclaim their sense of adventure.
“You became a hero because you took the hard road. The Hero’s Journey is about someone transcending difficult circumstances and bringing it [what they learn] back to people, and serving people.”
How she asks people, “What are you doing to do with this gift?” “Who needs to hear your story?”
Why we need stories of people overcoming adversity. How Juliet works with people on the verge of deportation.
“Life wants to live and story supports life.”
Hear the interview with Juliette:
And please leave a rating and review!
The Show Notes
Website: JulietteBruce.com
Coming this year: Juliette’s book: A Write of Passage: A Storypath Home.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/livingstory
https://www.facebook.com/juliet.bruce
by sallyjfox | Apr 19, 2018 | Podcast
Bob Weber invites us to discover a new narrative about the possibilities that come with growing older while developing a deeper sense of self.
Robert L. (Bob) Weber, Ph.D., is a former Jesuit and clinical psychologist, on the brink of a happy retirement from his position as Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
For the past fifteen years, the principal focus of Bob’s work has been weaving together aging, spirituality and mental health, professionally and personally
He’s the co-author of the book The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker’s Guide to Growing Older with Carol Orsborn, Ph.D. They were awarded the 2015 Nautilus Gold Medal in the category, “Aging Consciously.”
Bob was the 2014 recipient of the American Society on Aging’s FORSA Award (Forum on Religion, Spirituality and Aging), given annually to outstanding individuals, programs and services in religion, spirituality and aging.
Bob lives in Cambridge Massachusetts and has a private practice with his wife, Pamela L. Enders, Ph.D., who is also a clinical psychologist.
Highlights and quotes from the Show
What interior spiritual life development goes on at this stage of life. What do you begin to see that you didn’t see before?
“As we get older and wiser we also need to get more childlike.”
How can we live with wonder and awe now that we can let go of some of our activities and strivings?
How our difficult lived experiences teach us about life and what matters that allow us to live life to the fullest.
Hear the interview with Bob:
And please leave a rating and review!
The Show Notes
Website: www.SpiritualityofAge.com
Email: Bob@SpiritualityofAge.com
by sallyjfox | Apr 5, 2018 | Podcast
Mary Campbell discovered the wonders of sensuality and pleasure in midlife and is helping women to do the same. She helps women find their joy again. As an intimacy coach and spiritual counselor she offers women a clear path back to loving their bodies and living again in their sensual nature, for themselves first. When love and acceptance radiates out into the world from within, nothing is more attractive.
Mary synthesizes practical wisdom from her years of raising a family, decades of tantra and qigong study and teaching, and inter-spiritual seminary training to guide women on a deeper quest toward reclaiming the joy of their embodied wholeness. The useful practices and perspectives she provides – whether on retreat with her worldwide, in her forthcoming book The Pleasure Playbook: 12 Paths for Awakening Joy or in private coaching – help women shift from making due to living the joy they were born to possess.
See her special offer to listeners below and receive a special free copy of “12 Tips to Revive Your Feminine.”
Highlights and quotes from the Show
“The joy of living is what attracts…And it’s an inside job.”
“We push ourselves hard and then steal catch-as-catch-can (usually unhealthy) pleasures instead of orienting our lives around the pleasure that is already and always here.”
Spirituality and sensuality are linked.
We’ve been trained out of noticing beauty but can renew ourselves by noticing what’s already around us.
“We are so busy earning our keep and proving ourselves. We don’t have time – or more likely haven’t learned – to see/hear/smell/taste/feel the delight that’s actually there.”
“Your body – and your five senses – are here to help you remember and receive pleasure — and then to share that with the world.”
“The feminine is about receiving. Receiving what’s already there. Noticing and appreciating the delights around us and the offerings of others.”
“I believe it’s a spiritual practice to re-orient toward the joy that is everywhere around us, and to develop a practice to invite it in.”
“Your pleasure matters…far more than you likely think.”
Hear the interview with Mary:
And please leave a rating and review!
The Show Notes
You can experience more of Mary by requesting to join her private FB group. Enjoy her blog archive at DiviningBeauty.com for inspiration to cultivate intimacy with yourself, others, and the wider world.
SPECIAL OFFER: Go to Mary’s website and receive a special FREE copy of “12 Tips to Revive Your Feminine.”
Also you can see Mary’s You Tube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkV6dQrPMg3_ObX7g3khuzA
