Is there a person who has never known the eerie distance of isolation and separation, who has never suffered the pain of rejection or the loss of love? Loneliness is an aching void in the center of our being, a deep longing to love and to be loved, to be fully known and accepted by at least one other person.

- James Park 

Episode description: 

In this episode I speak with Emily White about her memoir Lonely: Learning to Live With Solitude,  in which Emily recounts her struggle to comprehend and overcome her chronic loneliness.

In the conversation Emily discusses some of the roots of loneliness and how the existing in the Western societies stigma around the state makes it harder for lonely people to batter loneliness. She also talks about the core differences between loneliness and depression, the difficulty of transitioning from loneliness and how it can be helped and touches upon how  experience of loneliness day after day can influence our physiology and behavior.

Episode description:

I continue the conversation with Dr David Van Nuys on dreams and how they can inform our waking life. In this episode Dr Dave talks about dream work in groups helps us to get to a deep level rather quickly and builds trust and intimacy through sharing dreams, how keeping a dream journal allows us to see how our dreams evolve over time and how nightmares can help us overcome the fears in our waking life. Other issues Dr Dave touches upon are the difference between the imaginary and the imaginal and Jung’s idea of the Big Dream.

Dr Dave also gives me some suggestions as to how I can continue working with the dream I share on the program, using the method outlined by Robert Jonson in his book Inner work. He also comments on my dream using the If– this-were-my-dream approach.

After the interview I share how not listening to the inner wisdom that came through another dream, led me to more unnecessary suffering and hurting. Because of the somewhat sensitive situation around the dream, I chose to not share it with Dr Dave on the show, neither did I take the time to work with the dream on my own. In the waking life I chose to remain passive and ending up in the exact situation the dream had been warning me for.

Episode description:

Do you ever get a feeling that your dreams are trying to tell you something important? Do you want to establish communication with the unconscious? In the next few episodes I talk dreams with “Dr Dave”,  also known as David van Nuys, Ph.D. Dr Dave is the host of the popular Shrink Rap Radio Psychology Podcast, taught the course Myth, dream and symbol at Sonoma State University for a number of years, has been a member of a dream group for over three decades and has interviewed many specialists on the fascinating subject of dreams on Shrink Rap Radio.

In Part One of the conversation Dr Dave sets up the foundation for talking about dreams providing the background on Freud’s and Jung’s contribution to the field and describing briefly how the two big minds explained the dreams’ language of visual metaphors and symbols that is sometimes hard to understand and take seriously. Dr Dave also reflects on where dreams come from and what lies at the roots of our thoughts.

After the conversation, I give a brief summary of how Freud and Jung saw the function of dreaming and take a few minutes to introduce other theories that try to give us some clues as to why we dream.

Featured music track:
Uppsala-bound (although not for much longer) Alex Tael brings into the show a tad of romantic melancholia with his own song Julsaga (Kommer du hem till jul?) (SE), Christmas fairytale (Are you coming home for Christmas?).

Bonus track:
We close the year and the season of Open Questions by J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio performed by the reward-winning a capella group from Sweden The Real Group and recorded during one of their live performances. Irina and Marian (guest on #OQ11) had it confirmed that TRG were as real and as fantastic as they were reported to be and enjoyed TRG concert at UKK in Uppsala on December 11, 2011.

Episode related resources:

Images of some of the paintings by Gözde Sütçü

Gözde Sütçü’s homepage

Natalie Roger’s homepage

The Real Group homepage

Related episodes:

OQ12: Making art, making meaning, conversation with creativity coach and author Eric Maisel

What can the teachings of Buddha offer to us, people living in the fast-paced Western world of today? How can the Buddhist practice of meditation help us build capacity to face the world as it is?

Contemporary Buddhist teacher and writer, best known for his secular or agnostic approach to Buddhism, Stephen Batchelor in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs: A contemporary guide to Awakening “ explains that what the Buddha taught was not something to believe in or understand but rather something to do. He writes: “The dharma is not a belief by which you will be miraculously saved. It is a method to be investigated and tried out. It starts by facing up to the primacy of anguish, then proceeds to apply a set of practices to understand the human dilemma and work toward a resolution.” (p. 18)

On this show Irina speaks with a long time Buddhist practitioner and teacher Ken McLeod. Ken began his studies in 1970 with the Tibetan meditation master, the Ven. Kalu Rinpoche and is one of the few people in the West who did two three-year retreats.

Ken is a translator from Tibetan and is the author of the books Wake up to your life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention and An arrow to the heart. He is a founder and the executive director of the non-profit Buddhist service organization The Unfettered Mind, which he established in 1990 and which provides instruction, training programs and guidance in Buddhist methods for being awake in your life. The tagline on the organization website reads – Pragmatic Buddhism.

Together with Dave Radden Ken developed an executive coaching and consulting practice, applying the skills and methods of Buddhism in the corporate environment. His clients included Volvo Design, ReadyPac, HBO, Warner Bros., TimeWarner, and others.

In this conversation Ken talks to us about the central question within Buddhism, explains why we are better off experiencing emotions rather than expressing or suppressing them, how meditation can help us bild capacity to see things as they are and how meditating on death and impermanence can help us understand and accept death as a part of life.

Featured music track:

We close the episode with Uma visita - the track by Brazilian-born musician Raphael Oliviera who can be heard playing the soft rhythms of bossanova in Uppsala and Stockholm, Sweden.

Episode related resources:

Unfettered Mind – Pragmatic Buddhism

Musings by Ken

Unfettered Mind Podcast

Unfettered Questions Podcast

Interview with Ken McLeod on Secular Buddhist Podcast

Martin & Stephen Batchelor’s website

In this episode Irina talks with Eric Maisel about the art of creating meaning in our life. Eric Maisel, PhD., is the author of over thirty-five published books, both fiction and nonfiction. Some of the titles are: Coaching the Artist Within, Fearless Creating, The Van Gogh Blues, The Creativity Book, Performance Anxiety, Ten Zen Seconds, A Writer’s San Francisco, and A Writer’s Paris. His latest book is called Brainstorm: Harnessing the power of productive obsessions. His new book Rethinking Depression is coming out in February 2012. Dr. Maisel gives workshops for creative professionals both in the US and Europe and also works as a creativity coach and creativity coach trainer.

Dr. Maisel holds that the time has come for us to switch from seeing meaning as something we need to search after to seeing it as only a psychological experience, something we can provoke ourselves by actively making meaning every day. Although we can make meaning in many ways, he believes that the meaning that makes us proud is value-based.

What makes you be in love with life? How do you translate your values into the everyday choices? What makes this life meaningful to you?

Featured music track:

We close the episode with Cepheus - the track by Uppsala bound musicians Larry and Fredrik.

Episode Resources:

Visit Eric Maisel’s homepage

Eric Maisel’s classes for creatives, including Your Best Life in The Arts and Noimetics: Bring Meaning to Life

Eric Maisel’s Podcast Your Purpose-Centered Life

Eric Maisel’s Podcast The Joy Of Living Creatively

Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life by Shelly Carson, PhD.

Interview with Shelly Carson on Shrink Rap Radio Podcast

WWOOFing in Sweden in 2009 on a farm near Strängnäs.

Upon reaching Stockholm/Sweden after cycling 3740 km from Karlsruhe/Germany (2009).

Marian as a cycle courier in Brisbane/Australia.

Cycle trip in Queensland/Australia. 

 Porridge breakfast before starting a day of cycling.

Towards Uppsala (2011).

 International hospitality communities like CouchSurfing and Warm Showers make it possible to travel cheaper and to meet people from other cultures in their homes, something that Irina’s friend Marian Voigt particularly appreciates. In this episode Irina talks to Marian about what made him quit his well-payed job in Germany and embark on biking trips in Sweden and Australia and how being on the road challenged him and helped his personal transformation.

Featured music track:

We close the episode with the song “Among the roads” by Clara Lindsjö. Clara is the winner of Rockkarusellen 2010 and represented the Nordic countries in Loop Station World Championship 2011.

Episode related links:

Award-winning a cappella ensemble from Sweden The Real Group, that inspired Marian take his first trip to Sweden in 2009.

WWOOF (WORLD WIDE OPPORTUNITIES ON ORGANIC FARMS)

Hornudden – the farm on lake Mälaren in Sweden where Marian worked as a “wwoofer” in 2009.

On CouchSurfing

Hospitality site for touring cyclists Warmshowers.org

Find out more about Clara Lindsjö’s music at www.myspace.com/claralindsjo

Other related resources:

Interview on Here on Earth Radio Without Boarders with Robert Penn, author of the book “It´s all about the bike: The Persuit of Happiness on Two Wheels

What is your organization’s unique role in bringing something creative into the world? What do you want its path to be? How can you get your own stuff out of the way? How can you achieve more voice and yet more speed and efficiency in the meetings? What happens when the structure of the organization ensures its differentiation from its owners?

This week Irina speaks with Brian Robertson, one of the developers of Holacracy – a fundamentally new organizational model that is based on the principles of dynamic steering. Brian has a background as software developer, entrepreneur and organizational expert. He is also the founder of Holacracy One. In this conversation Brian takes us through the principles and paradigm behind Holacracy.

Holacracy views organization as a liberated, differentiated entity with its own purpose in life, rather than as property or extension of the founders. One of the major paradigm shifts embedded in Holacracy is the shift from predict-and– control to sense-and-respond paradigm, that infuses every aspect of how we show up in organizations. Under the predict-and-control management, we try to keep our organizations in control with lots of upfront analyses, predicting where reality should be and then trying to control it in order to make it fit our predictions. This gives us an illusion of control. Sense-and-respond paradigm, on the other hand, requires that we respond to reality, rather than predict it.

Brian also talks about the way authority is distributed within the organization that runs with Holacracy and how the structure of the meetings prevents the founder of the organization from using their founder status to project and shut down the capacity of others to process their tensions. This also ensures that the founder is diffused from the organization. Finally, Brian shares some anecdotal evidence about the implementation of Holacracy in one of the organizations and explains how they at Holacracy One choose locations for their trainings and certification programs.

Featured music track:

We close the episode with Sofias escape - the song by one of Finland’s most popular accordeonists Maria Kalaniemi, here performed by the young Swedish band Morfis Bixur.

Episode Resources:

Holacracy One

Morfis Bixur Discography (SW)

Why is the assumption that we are supposed to achieve a 50–50 balance between our life and our work is not only unrealistic but also prevents us from being content with our lives? What keeps us stuck in the places we don’t want to be and from moving to where we want to go? What about failing that is so frightening to us?

In this episode Irina talks over Skype with Nicola Phillips. Nicola is an author and management consultant who has worked intimately with fear and the different ways of overcoming it, since 1981. She is the author of a number of book, the latest of which is “Fear Without Loathing: Why Life/Work Balance Doesn’t Matter But You Do”.

Nicola, who works with helping clients to stay with their fear without being panicky, believes that the place we are most fearful of is the place we probably need to be. When we are fearful about a particular situation, a good place to start is to ask oneself, “What stories have I told myself about this situation that make me frightened?”  Learning to deal with our fears is about learning to separate the fear we have from our reactions to it and from the actions we take as the result of it. It is not about doing something (defending against fear) but about being (experiencing fear, staying with it).

Nicola also talks about how our fears drive us towards taking decisions, rather than making choices in our lives. She finishes the conversation by sharing some points on how to deliver bad news in the non-negotiable situations.

Featured music track:

We close the episode with the song The Love Won’t Go Away by Uppsala-based band Automagic, that is quite international: its members come from the USA, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Episode Resources:

Nicola Phillips’ page

“Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress Related Diseases, and Coping”, by Robert M. Sapolsky.

In the second part of the two-part conversation, Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak shares the ideas she had in mind when designing the  technology of promession.  She hopes that the method, that allows the dead body to become part of life again, will also contribute to how we in the West relate to death and dying.

Susanne then reflects on the importance of studying nature by being in nature, observing and listening to the ways it works. In the concluding part of the conversation Susanne talks about the growing support for promession outside Sweden’s borders, while the Swedish authorities have been stalling the decision that would allow Promessa to start providing the service. Individuals and groups of people from over 60 countries contacted Susanne and Peter and expressed their interest in promession.

Episode references:

Promessa Organic AB

Promessa in UK, Cambridge

Carl Linneus’ biography at the Swedish Museum of Natural History website

This episode is the recording of Irina’s conversation with Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, biologist and founder of Promessa Organic, who was in Uppsala to participate in Uppsala Eco Fair.

Susanne started looking for ways to reduce the damage humans bring to the environment at the age of seventeen. In part 1 of this two-part conversation she shares about her path from composting the food remains and turning them into a well-smelling soil to the insight that humans, too, needed and could be included in nature’s cycle of life even after their death, which is impossible with the two currently predominant in the West burial methods. Susanne then talks about how this insight and her passion for gardening and composting combined with the engineering experience lead her to developing the technology of promession, an ecologically-conscious modern burial method, that more and more people in the West find appealing as it supports life even after our death.

Episode references:

Promessa Organic AB

Sky burial 

Zoroastrian burial (Tower of Silence)

Stiff : The Curious Life of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

(SWE)  Kroppens sällsamma liv efter döden : likets kulturhistoria av Mary Roach

In this second part of the two-part conversation, Andy McLellan and Erica Hamilton share some of the techniques they found useful in coping with the physical and emotional pain on their path towards healing.

Useful resources:

Vajra breathing technique

Guided audio meditations with the Buddhist teacher Tara Brach (including the loving-kindness/metta meditation)

The Practice of Tonglen

Written instructions for the practice of Tonglen (by Pema Chödron)

Video instructions on Tonglen  (by Pema Chödron)

A blog post on Tonglen by Andy McLellan

Turning Suffering Inside Out: A Zen Approach to Living with Physical and Emotional Pain by Darlene Cohen

This week Irina is joined with cherished friends Andy McLellan, PhD (via Skype from London, UK) and Erica Hamilton, PhD, currently living in Uppsala, Sweden. Andy and Erica also share how faced with a serious illness they had to learn to let go identifying with career and relationships and find a new way of being.

Andy’s career as a research biologist was cut short by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at the age of 25. His physical healing is far from complete but he is able to take an active role in raising his three children and often writes about Buddhism and healing.

Erica was 24 when she was diagnosed first with ulcerative colitis and later with Crohn’s colitis. There are no signs of inflammation in her body since 2006. She now works as a wellness consultant and teaches classes in meditation and qigong.

Both Erica and Andy has been long time Buddhist practitioners and meditate daily.

This first part of the conversation touches upon how our fast-paced life can lead to our disembodiment and pushing ourselves too far, the existing in the world of Western medicine dichotomy between the organic and the functional and how the absence of measurable cause of a medical condition influences the attitude of the medical establishment towards the patients. Andy and Erica also share how faced with a serious illness they they had to learn to let go identifying with career and relationships and find a new way of being.

Episode Resources:

Andy’s blog on recovering from chronic illness

Erica’s site

Erica’s healing blog Determined to Heal

Other related resources:

Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
Living Well with Pain and Illness by Vidyamala Burch
Beat Fatigue With Yoga by Fiona Agombar

Tara Brach - a renouned western teacher of Buddhist meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening.

Darlene Cohen’s site

This episode is recorded in Swedish.

Denna vecka besöker Irina tvåbarnsmamman, dramapedagogen och andningspedagogen Christina (Kicki) Boström i hennes mottagning i Hågaby, Uppsala. Kicki hjälper sina klienter att lösa upp spänningar och frigöra andningen genom att använda sig av olika andningstekniker, individuellt och i grupp.

Varför är det så viktigt att andas djupt och avslappnat? Vad händer när vi andas för högt upp, med bröstkorgen? Hur påverkar andningen balans och styrkan? Hur kan vi få tillbaka vår naturliga andning, den vi hade som barn?

Kicki pratar om de vanligaste anledningar till att vi som barn lär oss att andas med bröstkorgen och förlorar kontakten med diafragman. Hon tar Irina genom en enkel övning som kan hjälpa henne att ta reda på hennes andningsmönster och berättar hur vi kan genom att lägga märke till det, börja frigöra andningen och förbättra livskvalitén och våra relationer.

Låter för enkelt? Det är för att det är! Pröva själv!

Om du har frågor om Kickis utbildningar och föreläsningar, maila henne på kicki@livselixiret.se.

Resurser:

Övning i andningsmedvetande

Lägg en hand på magen, en hand på bröstet. Iakttag din andning. Vilken hand rör sig mest.

Ta ned “brösthanden”, fortsätt att iaktta din andning. Om du fortfarande andas med bröstkorgen, ska du aktivt försöka andas med diafragman. Det är ditt naturliga sätt att andas på.

Om du då och då gör dig medveten om att andas med diafragman, kommer din kropp att anamma den naturliga andningen.

Böcker nämnda i avsnittet:

Livets källa – om andningens kraft och förmåga att läka av Gunnel Minett.

The Breathing Book av Donna Farhi

Andra resurser:

Breathe! You are alive: Sutra on the full awareness of breathing av Thich Nhat Hahn

In this episode Irina is joined over Skype by Franklin Veaux. Franklin is a polyamory activist and maintains a large online site about polyamory with a lot of resources for people who are new to the idea of poly, who have questions about it and who want to develop the tools to make it work.

Polyamory (from Greek πολύ [poly, meaning many or several] and Latin amor [love]) is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

Franklin explores the myths about polyamory and the underlying them believes, deeply rooted in our Western culture. Where does the idea that we can only love (romantically) one person at a time come from? Why do many of us believe that we can only commit to one partner/relationship at a time? How can being compared to others be a good thing for a relationship rather than seen as a threat to it?

Franklin also offers practical communication tools that can be used to make any relationship better.

Do you have a question for Franklin? E-mail it to us or leave it in the comment to the post.

Find out more about polyamory on Franklin’s site.

Visit Franklin’s blog.

This episode is recorded in swedish.

I detta avsnitt besöker Irina den danskfödde konstnären och musikern Kirsten Holm i hennes ateljé i Håga by, utanför Uppsala. Kirsten väljer inte att provocera så mycket med sina bilder, mer med sitt sätt att leva. Hon berättar om det enkla livet i det gästfria grekiska samhället i början på 70-talet som inspirerade henne att söka andra sätt att leva livet på, om sin relation till mörkret, om månens betydelse för sin livsupplevelse och om det cykliska sättet att skapa både bilder och musik.

I sin musik inspireras Kirsten ofta av det fantastiska djurriket och ljuden som finns i naturen. Hon försöker hitta alternativ till electronica ute i det vilda och planerar att släppa ut en skiva med naturelectronica.

Vad har Du för funderingar kring fullmånen och huruvida den påverkar människans beteende? Skriv gärna en kommentar!

Resurser:

Var inte rädd för mörkret, ty ljuset vilar där. Vi se ju inga stjärnor, där intet mörker är.

I ljusa irisringen, du bär en mörk pupill, ty mörkt är allt som ljuset med bävan längtar till.

Var inte rädd för mörkret, ty ljuset vilar där. Var inte rädd för mörkret, som ljusets hjärta bär.

- Erik Blomberg

Kirsten Holm, Midvinter

Kirsten Holm, Dagen lin 6. juli (torrpastell, 40×50 cm)

Kirsten Holm, Dagen lin 1. augusti (torrpastell, 40×50 cm)

Kirsten Holm, Vårvinter

Kirsten Holm, Natten november

In this very first episode of the show Irina introduces the podcast and talks about how open questions can be used when we are stuck in one mode of thinking. She closes by sharing a simple yet powerful self-reflection technique.

Episode resources:

Find out more on the Socratic method.

Gabrielle Oettingen studied the effects of mental contrasting on goal achievement:

Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2010). Strategies of setting and implementing goals: Mental contrasting and implementation intentions. In J. E. Maddux & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Social psychological foundations of clinical psychology (pp. 114–135). New York: Guilford.

Naikan reflection is based on three questions:

• What have I received from _____________?

• What have I given to __________________?

• What troubles and difficulties have I caused ______________?

Other resources:

In this episode of Buddhist Geeks podcast Buddhist teacher Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel talks about the power of open questions. Elizabeth is the author of the book The Power of Open Question.