I wrote a blog post about Art Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for the blog at Real Caring Integrative Therapy in Salt Lake City, UT. They are wonderful, and offer a wide variety of mental health services.
Author: Amanda Butler
Finding Presence Through Meditative Movement
RemedyWave®, created by Shannon Simonelli, is a type of ecstatic, free form dance facilitated in a supportive environment.
“The class is an outgrowth of a lot of different kinds of training that I’ve had. I have a PhD in Imaginal Psychology and Creative Arts Therapy, which is very much about experientially-based work,” Shannon said. “I’ve studied over 1500 hours of authentic movement, which is a very body-based, meditative journey related to getting in touch with your inner imagery and inner truths in the body, and how that relates to your psychology and I am trained in 5Rhythms Movement Therapy and have dance therapy training.”
The dance portion of the class lasts for 90 minutes. Each class has a theme, allowing dancers to explore concepts such as “light and heavy” through movement. Participants can then discuss their experience and insights during the 30 minutes of sharing that follows.
I walked into the class feeling upset after a difficult day at work, and worried that I’d be too tired to get through it. However, I was pleasantly surprised that I had enough energy to keep dancing, and within the first half hour I was feeling much better.
During the class, I discovered that it was easier for me to be present, rather than obsessing over things that were bothering me. It was a relief to let go, follow the music, and do whatever felt good. I felt free and peaceful, knowing that it was safe to be authentic, which was a pleasant change of pace for me.
According to Shannon, my experience is common among those who attend the class. “People start to build the ability to be more present in the moment in their daily life. They feel a greater sense of connection with their authentic self, and to the courage to really be that. People feel more in their bodies, they feel more willing and able to take risks. It’s very healing and very fortifying.”
No dance training is necessary to join the class. “The class is more about what’s true for you, what feels good in the body, what you’re discovering within the directive of the evening,” Shannon said. “I’m interested in what awakens in you and what that means for you in your life.”
“New movers come every week, it’s a safe environment to try something new, and new movers are supported and welcomed,” Shannon said. “We enjoy having new people join us and the group is growing all the time.”
Join RemedyWave at Vitalize Studio Mill Creek 3474 South 2300 East Studio #12, SLC 7:30 pm.
Projection: You Are My Mirror and I Am Yours
(I wrote the following post for the Jung Society of Utah blog.)
“Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face.”
– C.G. Jung
Projections are images we have of others, which are generated by the psyche and based in our own fears, desires, impulses, and unresolved issues, most of which are unconscious. Jung wrote, “We must bear in mind that we do not make projections, rather they happen to us.” Projection happens when we are “certain we know what other people think or what their true character is,” and interact with with them based on those assumptions.
We see others not as they are, but as we are
While the most obvious example of projection is seeing our own shadow traits in others, this can also be true of those traits we view as desirable, since the ego projects anything it is unable to identify with. An example of this could be someone who is jealous of a friend’s beauty or intelligence, but is unable to recognize those traits in him- or herself.
Photo by Kampus Production on Pexels.com
Additionally, when we feel certain we know what others think or what they’re really like, this may cause us to judge them or ourselves unfairly. It is likely that many of our insecurities are based in our own misguided perceptions of others, as well as our worries over how we believe they see us. Consider the things we keep to ourselves, the lies we tell, and the masks we wear in order to impress others or protect ourselves from them, based on whatever images we have projected onto them.
As an example of this, I recently had dinner with a friend, and an opportunity came up in the conversation to tell him what he truly means to me. But instead of honestly sharing my feelings, I froze and said something else because I felt worried about how he would respond—certain that it would be some form of rejection.
Withdrawing projections
The antidote to projection is authenticity, which I have heard referred to as “the highest form of spirituality.” When we are authentic, we are willing to risk being seen as we truly are, shadow and all, and we also become more able to see others as they truly are. In my experience, the willingness to take that risk is based in love, both for oneself and others, which creates a relationship that allows for reflection. Jung said:
“Now “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is really a very profound formula … You can never get to yourself without loving your neighbor—that is indispensable … You would have no means of comparison … So whoever insists upon loving his neighbor cannot do it without loving himself to a certain extent.”
With the self-knowledge and greater wholeness that is created through this love, we may begin to withdraw our projections. According to Jung, “The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our own shadow onto others.”
– Rumi
(Photo by Mariana Kurnyk on Pexels.com)
Embodiment: The Body as a Gateway to Presence
(It was a joy to interview Erin Geesaman Rabke and Carl Rabke for the following post, which originally appeared on the Jung Society of Utah blog. I also thoroughly enjoyed their presentation about “The Wisdom in the Wilderness of Your Body.”)
Erin Geesaman Rabke and Carl Rabke met in their early 20s when they both worked at the Oasis Cafe. In their first conversation they discovered that they had both been walking very similar paths—including practicing in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and studying Tai Chi and Yoga. After a few years of being close friends, they got together as a couple. Their love of embodied practices has been a shared passion all throughout their 20 year connection. They answer some questions below about embodiment and why it matters.
What is embodiment?
Embodiment invites a different relationship with our bodies—a rich one, indeed, where the body is no longer regarded as an object, but an intimate, living process. The body offers us a gateway to presence, as long as we’re alive.
Embodiment includes awareness of sensation, feelings, thoughts, and environment in a not-purely-mental way. Being embodied doesn’t preclude conceptual thought, but offers a grounded infrastructure through which we can have a different relationship with our thoughts. Embodiment is mindfulness not as a mental practice, but as a lived experience. “I’m here. I’m resonating with what is, and I’m aware of it.”
In our work, we learn to more fully inhabit our bodies with non-judgmental awareness. We learn to reclaim a way of sensing our selves that we knew as children. We learn to trust the organic intelligence of our bodies as an expression of nature. Living in this way can lead to a life that is curious, rich, respectful, and optimistic.
How embodiment relate to Jung’s ideas, especially with regard to individuation and wholeness?
There is a great story of Carl Jung meeting with the Hopi Elder, Mountain Lake in 1925. Essentially, Mountain Lake said, “You know why White people are so crazy? They think in their heads. We think here (gesturing toward his heart).” This interaction had a profound impact on Jung’s work.
In our embodiment, there is a need for differentiation and integration; another way to describe individuation and wholeness. Often, as modern western people, we lean a bit heavily in the individuation direction, holding ourselves as separate beings encapsulated by our skin. But our bodies are always in relationship with a larger whole—individuated and integrated at the same time. Our heartbeats and our breathing rates affect each other; our bones are being made in this moment through the force of gravity and the support of the earth; our breath puts us in relationship with the plant life in the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
We also tend to do this within ourselves—separating our wholeness into parts. We do this most intensely when there is some kind of pain or challenge. The sciatica, the migraines, the food allergy, the grief, the aging knees… these can seem to become solid things that we relate to. Part of our work with people is to help invite these parts back into an experience of interdependent wholeness. Not only is the back pain in relationship to what your ribs and jaw are doing, but also connected to what is happening in your marriage, your work, your relationship to your dreams for your life.
How has working together as a team been beneficial for you and those you teach?
When we teach together, it can be really valuable to have two voices and we often love to riff off of each other, even as we joke that we “share a brain” because we often think so alike about this work. We also find there is something beneficial in having the masculine and feminine presence teaching together. We adore each other and the work deeply, and we truly live this work in our relationship. Many people have said they’ve found it helpful and inspiring to see our relationship as a part of our teaching.
What can Jung Society guests expect from your presentation?
Well, what they should not expect is a lecture where we are in our heads talking and sharing information, and they sit in their chairs listening from their heads. We plan to share our understandings of principles in this work not just mentally, but to invite the guests into embodied experience. We plan on exploring together the question of “What is embodiment?” and “Why does this perhaps matter in your life?” We plan on keeping the gathering as experiential as possible, as opposed to simply sharing ideas. We hope to have a lot of fun.
Please join the Jung Society of Utah for this soulful evening!
Date: May 5th
Time: 7-9pm
Location: Downtown Library
210 East 400 South
Salt Lake City
Cost: Free, please become a member
Love and Individuation
(I wrote the following for the Jung Society of Utah blog. Click here to see it on their website!)
“Nothing is possible without love…for love puts one in a mood to risk everything.”
– C.G. Jung
Carl Jung used the term individuation to describe the “process of integrating the conscious with the unconscious for the purpose of realizing or fulfilling one’s talents and potentialities.” Individuation usually begins with a crisis, often death or some other loss. “The shattering, emotional power of such crises breaks down our ego identification, causing us to question our sense of self and our life’s meaning.”1
Love as a Crisis
That same “shattering, emotional power” may also be found in love. Jung considered Eros to be a “kosmogonos, a creator and father-mother of all higher consciousness.” He wrote, “we are in the deepest sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic love.” Falling in love “can shatter normal ego identifications. Through such experiences of ego death, we awaken to a more expansive way of being.”1
Our relationships may reflect contents of our unconscious. (Image via aestheticblasphemy.com).
A Mirror for the Soul
In The Red Book, Jung wrote that he found his soul again “only through the soul of the woman.”2 He later explained that unconscious contents are first met in relationship with a partner: “This urge to a higher and more comprehensive consciousness … if it is to fulfill its purpose, needs all parts of the whole, including those that are projected onto a ‘You.’”3, 4
Often, it can seem easier to love someone else than to love oneself. We may be more willing to see and accept both the light and shadow aspects of another than to acknowledge those same aspects within ourselves. However, Jung said, “We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life,” meaning that any light or shadow traits we see in others are merely a reflection of those traits within us.
Love can be a transformative process of mutual individuation. (Image: “Twisting Love” via paintinghere.com).
Both Are Transformed
Sometimes it is through loving another, including their shadow aspects, that we learn to accept and even love those same shadow aspects in ourselves. “If one’s partner is ‘truly loved,’ then that human being becomes a ‘representative of the unconscious.’ Love is a mediator, circulating energy both outwardly and inwardly.”4
This type of love, which breaks through “the illusory maya of unconscious projections,” could be considered “a process of mutual individuation.”4 If the tension of opposites can be held, a “third kind of relationship” can be formed, which Jung called a “Golden Thread.”4 He considered this type of relationship to be “the only lasting one, in which it is as though there were an invisible telegraph wire between two human beings.”4
Jung said, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” Through the transformative reaction of love, one may discover “the distinction between what one really is and what is projected into one, or what one imagines oneself to be.”4 Understanding that distinction contributes greatly to individuation.
Books Cited
- Lucid Dreaming: New Perspectives on Consciousness in Sleep, Volume 1. Ryan Hurd and Kelly Bulkeley.
- The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition. C.G. Jung.
- The Psychology of the Transference. C.G. Jung.
- Jung in Love: The Mysterium in Liber Novus. Lance S. Owens. PDF provided by the author here.
Andrew Harvey and Sacred Activism
(I wrote the following for the Jung Society of Utah blog about the marvelous Andrew Harvey, a gifted mystic, poet, and storyteller. I had the privilege of meeting him while he was in Salt Lake City for a lecture and workshop with the Jung Society of Utah, and he was remarkably kind to me. I still remember our conversation as I was leaving a wonderful dinner with him and some folks from the Jung Society. It was a freezing cold February night as we stood outside on the porch as he called me a “practical visionary” and emphatically told me, “Trust yourself!” (among other things). I have tried to take his advice to heart.)
“As the individual is not just a single, separate being, but by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship, it follows that the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation.”
– C.G. Jung
Carl Jung believed in the importance of both the individual and society. In Jung’s view, society is necessary for human existence and individuality, while individuals “express the subconscious aspirations of the collective of [their] time, giving conscious expression to the needs and aspirations of the society through [their] actions. The individual is indispensable for human accomplishment and for the development of the society.”
How does this idea apply to our world today, and how can we as individuals create positive change within ourselves and society as a whole?
A Force of Compassion in Action
Author, poet, and mystic Andrew Harvey offers an answer to this question though Sacred Activism, which he describes as “a transforming force of compassion-in-action that is born of a fusion of deep spiritual knowledge, courage, love, and passion, with wise radical action in the world.” Through Sacred Activism, concerned individuals can work together to address the economic, political, and spiritual crises the world is currently facing. According to Harvey, “The large-scale practice of Sacred Activism can become an essential force for preserving and healing the planet and its inhabitants.” He envisions “an army of practical visionaries and active mystics who work in every field and in every arena to transform the world.”
Divinity through Shadow
How can individuals become “practical visionaries?” Harvey has spoken of the importance of facing the shadow, both on an individual and collective level, in order to access the compassion and inspiration needed to face the global crises we are confronted with:
“You have to do shadow work and confront your own darkness. If you can do so with trust, humility and surrender, you discover another level of unconditional compassion…When light and shadow are united, we experience a passion of enlightened compassion that longs in every moment to express itself in radical transformative heart-filled, heart-inpired, just action.”
Harvey believes that through integrating our own shadow, we are able to realize the divine within us, and all around us, which empowers us to become effective agents of change:
“When you wake up to the Divine Consciousness within you and your divine identity, you wake up simultaneously to the Divine Consciousness appearing as all other beings… Only from a realization of the divine identity of all things can grow the kind of humility, the kind of tenderness, the kind of wonder, the kind of awe and the kind of respect that are necessary for human beings to live in peace with each other, for human beings to live in balance with their environment, and for human beings really to work with the divine forces of love and knowledge to recreate the world in the image of God.”
Sacred Marriage Weekend: Lecture and Workshop
In February, the Jung Society of Utah will welcome Andrew Harvey for a special Friday evening event and Saturday workshop. In the Friday lecture, Harvey will describe his vision of the Sacred Marriage drawn from Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Sufi sources. He will end his presentation with his vision of Sacred Activism, the most necessary sacred marriage for our time.
In the Saturday workshop, Harvey will share the tools that he believes are most essential to realizing the Sacred Marriage. He will present three sacred practices that enable the practitioner to experience union and unconditional compassion. He then explore the mystery of the shadow on both an individual and global level. The day will end with his vision of love and action, and the five forms of Sacred Service that need to be fused to empower individuals to become agents of change in our chaotic time.
Friday, February 5th: Evening Presentation at Libby Gardner Hall, 7:30 – 9:30 p.m.
Saturday February 6th: Workshop at the Officers Club building, University of Utah Campus, 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Purchase tickets here for this transformative weekend with Andrew Harvey.
Jung and the Inner World
(The following post was originally written for the Jung Society of Utah blog. As I was struggling with how to end this article, I randomly opened Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections and came across his quote about the importance of the outer world. It was a nice synchronicity.)
“This inner world is truly infinite, in no way poorer than the outer one. Man lives in two worlds.”
– C.G. Jung
In Carl Jung’s memoir, he wrote of experiencing an “other,” inner reality, in addition to the outer world. He believed in balancing identification with the external world by having inner experiences of the psyche, writing, “I can understand myself only in the light of these inner happenings.” But what does this mean? How did Jung connect to this inner world?
The Reality of the Psyche
Jung wrote: “What most people overlook or seem unable to understand is the fact that I regard the psyche as real.” He defined the psyche as “the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious,” and considered it a “self regulating system, just as the body is,” with a structure that is accessible through empirical methods.
Jung considered himself “first and foremost an empiricist.” He stated that, “the ‘reality of the psyche’ is my working hypothesis, and my principal activity consists in collecting factual material to describe and explain it.” In order to collect this material, Jung paid attention to things that seemed to be expressions of the psyche. This information included dreams, daydreams, fantasy, and things in the outer world that seemed to reflect internal situations. He later developed a technique called active imagination in order to further explore the inner world.
Dreams
Jung believed that dreams originate in the unconscious, and could provide information about conscious and unconscious mental processes. He said, “The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche…in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night.”
Lucid dreams may offer an even more powerful way to access the inner world. Dream expert Robert Waggoner says that lucid dreaming feels “like you have become an inner astronaut, exploring the inner space of dreaming.” He notes, “the lucid dream environment often looks, feels, and sounds just as you would expect in the waking world.” Through his years of experience with this inner realm, he has found that “the exploration of the psyche holds many of the same lessons for all lucid dreamers.”
Active Imagination
Jung shared the belief that there were lessons to be found in the inner world, and that it held information that was outside of his conscious awareness. He developed a technique he called active imagination as a way to consciously dialogue with the unconscious. Jung found that he was able to access “those contents of the unconscious which lie, as it were, immediately below the threshold of consciousness and, when intensified, are the most likely to erupt spontaneously into the conscious mind.”
Jung called active imagination “the royal road to the unconscious,” and made extensive use of it in his explorations of the inner world. As he did so, he kept a careful clinical record of his observations, compiled into what is now known as The Red Book.
Two Worlds
While Jung found inspiration in the inner world, he also valued the grounding and stability offered by the outer world, appreciating the balance it brought to his life: “When I was working on the fantasies…it was most essential for me to have…a counterpoise to that strange inner world. My family and my profession remained the base to which I could always return, reassuring me that I was an actually existing, ordinary person.”
As Jung found, interacting with the inner world can be a fascinating and rewarding experience. We can do the same by paying attention to dreams and daydreams, noticing what we imagine when our mind wanders, and being aware of synchronicities. What message might the inner world have to offer you?
Midvale History Museum Provides a Story of Community
It was fun to visit the Midvale Museum and learn about the history of the Midvale community. Museum volunteers shared some great stories about growing up in the city, and the meaning of community: “Everyone learned how to live together…that we’re all part of this human race, and we all breathe the same air, as President Kennedy said.”
Wheeler Farm Farmers Market Brings Community Together
It was lots of fun visiting the Farmers Market at Wheeler Historic Farm earlier this year and chatting with the vendors. If you are in the Salt Lake City area during June – October, this is an event not to be missed!
Meditation for Stress Reduction and Wellbeing
I got to attend a fascinating and inspiring workshop on meditation and write about it! Dr. Andrew Vidich talked about the many benefits of meditation. One of the things he said that really resonated with me was: “There is a consciousness within you that you can connect to so that no matter what happens to you, you remain in a state of bliss. Bliss is the state of who you really are. We are consciousness, knowledge and bliss.”
Alembic Publications 
