Collective & Personal Trauma: one family’s graceful end-of-life story
Bear Psychology Podcast
What does it mean to lose someone so close to you that your world will never be the same? What if this happens when the whole world is locked down during a global Pandemic, a collective trauma? How do we navigate terrible loss with great compassion and love? Journalist Mitchell Consky has something important to share with us about this based on personal experience. During the worst of the COVID pandemic, Consky received distressing news. His father had been given less than two months to live after being diagnosed with a rare terminal cancer. In his book, “Home Safe: A...
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Childhood Emotional Neglect impacts your life today
Bear Psychology Podcast
After 20 years in practice, Dr. Jonice Webb noticed the painful struggle of people who grew up in homes where they were emotionally neglected. She identified this neglect as an "invisible factor" that continued to affect adults often leaving them feeling depleted and dissatisfied or what she described as “Running on Empty”. In Dr. Webb’s books “Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect” and “Running On Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships” she shines a light on this invisible force of CEN. She discusses how to bring new tools, strategies and...
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Mind, Body and Yoga for Healing Trauma
Bear Psychology Podcast
Recovery from trauma is not simply about healing the mind but about healing the body as well. Often the approach when treating trauma is solely focused on the mental and emotional effects and fails to address the physiological imbalances that trauma leaves behind on our bodies. In Dr. Arielle Schwartz’s newest book “Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma Recovery: Applying the Principles of Polyvagal Theory for Self-Discovery, Embodied Healing, and Meaningful Change”, she guides the reader using yoga practices to help release the burdens of trauma and begin the journey of healing the...
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Healing from Emotional Eating
Bear Psychology Podcast
Every wonder why you make poor food choices? Have you ever tried a new diet just to end up miserable and eating even more than before? Kim Shapira will help us understand how to put an end to disordered eating habits and improving your health and happiness in the process. Shapira recognizes that unhealthy food habits can occur as a result of life stressors and old patterns of self-soothing. Her work focuses on getting back on track and using food for health. Kim Shapira, author of “This Is What You’re Really Hungry For”, teaches us how to develop a healthy relationship with our...
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Cultivating Core Creativity
Bear Psychology Podcast
I know you are creative and innovative at your core. However, most of us just don’t know how to access the deep wealth of creativity that sits inside. Dr. Ronald Alexander’s book “Core Creativity: The Mindful Way to Unlock Your Creative Self” guides you through using mindfulness practices to train your mind so that it more easily opens the portal to core creativity: the unconscious mind. I am really excited about this show as it focuses on opening up to a powerful element of our true nature. Listen to our conversation with psychotherapist & author Dr. Ronald Alexander as...
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Healing the World through Human Connection
Bear Psychology Podcast
Disconnected people have the tendency to gravitate toward power. When Disconnected people rule in positions of power societies trend toward patriarchal, hierarchical and warlike. In contrast, societies with connected leaders trend toward egalitarian, democracy and peace. Although most people have a deep need to be connected, life events/upbringing and trauma exposure can interfere in this profound human characteristic. A person’s “goodness” and capacity for compassion often results from connection, whereas cruelty often originates from a feeling of being cut off from others....
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Finding the courage to truly be yourself
Bear Psychology Podcast
We all want to feel free to be our true selves and live in a way that feel authentic. I want to live my life to the fullest and I imagine you do as well. Despite this, we can get sidetracked by demands and expectations that throw us off our true gifts and passions. Instead we might follow the preferences and aspirations that society, family, and friends have for us, rather than what we truly want for ourselves. Breaking free from self-doubt and discovering what it is that you truly want from life, demands that you grow beyond the obstacles that undermine personal goals, hopes...
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The Dangerous Relationship… loving a Narcissistic, Sociopath or Psychopathic
Bear Psychology Podcast
There are times when someone describes in detail a relationship that seems unkind, unhealthy and even dangerous. Or maybe we have experienced this personally in a relationship with a person we thought would be a wonderful partner to begin with only to realize after falling deeply in love that this person is self-centered, arrogant, attention seeking and lacks basic empathy and consideration for other people. An expert on NPD and psychopaths and the author of “Women Who Love Psychopaths: Inside the Relationships of Inevitable Harm with Psychopaths, Sociopaths & Narcissists”,...
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Untangling your Marriage
Bear Psychology Podcast
Across North America, almost half of all marriages will end in divorce or separation. Even though divorce is a complex process that requires legal, psychological and financial considerations, there may be ways to make it just a bit less painful. Nanci Smith’s book “Untangling Your Marriage: A Guide to Collaborative Divorce” attempts to dispel some negative messaging about divorce and show us that divorce can be achieved with dignity, mutual respect, integrity, and compassion. Listen to our conversation with lawyer & author Nanci Smith as we get an introduction to both the mindset and...
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Forced psychiatric confinement – Who is at risk?
Bear Psychology Podcast
We may believe that asylums are a thing of the past but practices of enforced psychiatric confinement continue today, much to our surprise. Author Wipond, argues that, now more than ever, North Americans are being forced into treatment and involuntarily committed supposedly "for their own benefit." Rob Wipond’s book “Your Consent Is Not Required” gives us a look into the psychiatric practices of forced interventions still in place today in some private and public mental health facilities. Wipond describes mental health institutions using psychiatric confinement to manage school children;...
info_outlineAre you interested in adding mindfulness, meditation or contemplative exercises into your life to help you manage the demands of daily living or better manage stress and anxiety? If your answer is yes, then this show will prove to be a perfect fit. I am excited myself. I have been a bit lazy with my meditation practice lately and looking forward to getting some guidance myself!
Carla is a lawyer by training but she made a big pivot to wellness and mindfulness teaching. In her mindfulness work, she brings her focused and precise mind to a creative and healing modality using a trauma-informed lens. In her teaching she integrates an awareness of science and neurobiology to help explain why what she is doing works so well.
Listen to our conversation with the remarkable Carla Weinstein (meditation and contemplative practice guide) as we explore with her meaningful work in delivering Trauma Informed Mindfulness practices.
Building on Carla’s extensive training in yoga, meditation and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, she has been offering programs through the TraumaPractice.org charity for community-based groups since 2020. Her group programs are the most highly ranked and attended among the charity’s participants. We follow up with her today to ask, what has made her approach to trauma informed meditation so useful for those attending her programs?
Carla will broadly cover some of the topics addressed in her course, to help us better understand her approach:
- The Power of Mindfulness: Awareness
- The Impact of Trauma and the Brain and Body + Meditation Through the Trauma Lens
- The Neuroscience of Meditation + The Power of Attention
- Emotional Awareness + Turning Toward
- Aversion, Avoidance, Resistance + The Suffering Equation
- Developing a Healing Attention
- Cognitive Hindrances, Mental Chatter, and Values
- Self Compassion, Resilience and Equanimity
Weinstein shares lessons on how we can each enrich our lives by building a meditation/contemplative practice and what she has learned herself from the work she provides through TraumaPractice.org
Links & Resources:
- For information about Carla Weinstein and her mindfulness work visit: www.thedropinproject.com/about-2
- What is mindfulness: www.thedropinproject.com/mindfulness
- Offerings from Carla: www.thedropinproject.com/offerings
Materials to Reference:
- Trauma Informed Meditation practices explained. Brother Phap Linh shares how to recognize trauma in ourselves and those around us (plum village): youtu.be/TOutCopkf3E
- Dr. Jeff Terrant, psychologist discusses trauma informed meditation practices and what it means to be trauma informed: youtu.be/qTYTciz3bM4
- Yoga with Adrienne provides a yoga practice for PTSD: youtu.be/TqVSwY8y3UY
- Dr. Bessel van der Kolk discusses 6 approaches to heal from trauma without medication: youtu.be/ZoZT8-HqI64