March 1, 2011

HealingHeartPower Newsletter

Reclaiming the Power of the Heart
In This Issue
Middle Class As Underclass
Healing Presence
The Dangers of Perfectionism
Join Our Mailing List!
About Linda
Me and Flora

Linda Marks, MSM, is pioneer in body psychotherapy who has developed, taught and practiced Emotional-Kinesthetic Psychotherapy (EKP) for more than two decades.

Author of LIVING WITH VISION and HEALING THE WAR BETWEEN THE GENDERS, she co-founded the Massachusetts Association of Body Psychotherapists and Counseling Bodyworkers and is the founder of the Boston Area Sexuality and Spirituality Network. She holds degrees from Yale and MIT, and has a vital 15-year-old son.

To find out more about Linda . . .


HealingHeartPower Calendar
.
Would you like to learn how to do Emotional Kinesthetic Psychotherapy
(EKP)?
  

If you would like to apprentice in EKP, you may want to consider participating in a half-day EKP workshop or be part of the Community As Healer group.

The Sunday night EKP Therapy Group has room for new members. If you would like to be part of a committed long-term group using EKP, this is a very special group. An interview and one EKP session are required to apply. Contact Linda if you are interested at LSMHEART@aol.com  

 

Now
Sunday Night EKP Therapy Group
seeks new members
6 - 8 pm
 Newton, MA
   
February 20
Community As Healer
1/2 day workshop
1 pm - 4 pm
Newton, MA

March 20
Community As Healer
1/2 day workshop
1 pm - 4 pm
Newton, MA

June 2011
Healing and Nourishing Your Heart
Emerson Hospital
Concord, MA 
    
2011
EKP Apprenticeship Program accepting applications. 

EKP opportunities in Newton include:
* Being a guest client in the Student Clinic
* Apprenticing in EKP

If you would like to sponsor a Healing the Traumatized Heart workshop, a Community As Healer workshop, or have a group of people who you would like to bring EKP to, please contact LSMHEART@aol.com.


To find out more . . .   
 


With all the unrest in the Middle East, it is easy to question how power structures are defined and sustained in so many realms of the world. 

People need tools for healing and empowerment more today than ever.  Building a team of heart-centered healers who help bring "Community As Healer" experiences out into the community, where people need them.  Though healing in a 1-on-1 setting can be poignant, experiencing healing in community adds another dimension.  

Our next Community As Healer gatherings will be in Newton on March 20 and May 15.
Together we can create safe healing space in the larger world, and  empower people to literally, "lend a helping hand."

If you have an organization, community group, school or other situation where members might be interested in learning these skills, please let me know.

I have created a new Community As Healer group on Facebook, for people who want to be part of or support this healing work.  http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Community-As-Healer/192746177418410

The long-standing Thursday night EKP group has transformed into a Sunday night EKP group.  The group meets from 6 - 8 pm in Newton. We have room for a couple new members.  The group is a wonderful way to do deep healing work in a safe, community space, and work on vision and goals as well.  

In June, we will schedule another workshop in Emerson Hospital's innovative Health and Wellness Program.  I will announce the date for "Healing and Nourishing Your Heart:  The Physical-Emotional Connection," when we know it.
    
This issue's articles are "Middle Class An Underclass," looking at how the gap between rich and poor has not only grown over the past three decades, but has actually swallowed the middle class,  and "Healing Presence," which draws from reflections from the Community As Healer group. 
  
I have also included a link to a blog article written by my colleague, Hillary Rettig, on the dangers of perfectionism.  Sadly, perfectionism, too often, is held out as a standard in our popular culture.  We all suffer from trying to serve this "false God."

You can also "like us" on our HealingHeartPower  Facebook page. By "liking us", you will be notified whenever a new blog post is published.
376924925048
  
 

Your comments and feedback are always welcome!    

Heartfully,

Linda  


What is EKP?
EKP is Emotional-Kinesthetic Psychotherapy, a heart-centered, body-centered psychotherapy method Linda Marks developed and has taught and practiced for nearly twenty years. Working with the heart, touch with permission, the wisdom of the body and the intuitive guidance of the spirit, EKP creates a special sense of intimacy that deeply touches and transforms most all who participate.

Participants can be "client," witness or helper as an individual group member has a "turn" to do deeper heart-centered, body-centered psychospiritual work in the center. Since the electromagnetic field of the heart extends out 10 - 12 feet from our bodies, as we go deeper and open our hearts, we are all touched.

EKP helps restore our capacity as organs of perception. The skin is our largest organ, and a source of soul deep knowing, perception and expression. When our hearts and hands can work as one, we move beyond defenses safely and respectfully and find freedom, connection and expression.
 
Find us on FacebookTo read the rest of this article...Middle Class As Underclass

   

I remember reading Lou Dobbs' book, The War on the Middle Class, and feeling as though what I had been noticing, sensing and observing for so long was finally being named.  Over the past three decades, the gap between

rich and poor has grown steadily.  But as the very rich have gotten richer, it is not just the poor who have gotten poorer.  The layer of people who emerged with new opportunities during the Industrial Revolution and continued to thrive until "the music stopped" beginning in the Reagan era, "the middle class," have lost standing over the past three decades and have now emerged as an underclass.

 

When I was a kid, plenty of of my peers defined success as "having more than their parents had."  While that might have been possible for past generations, for those who are parents today, it is far more difficult to accomplish.   According to an article on money.cnn.com/2011/02/16/news/economy/middle_class/index.htm, in 1988 the average American tax payer had income of $33,400 adjusted for inflation.  In 2008, the average income was still just $33,000 according to data from the IRS.

 

On the other hand, the richest 1% of Americans, those making $380,000 or more, have experienced a 33% growth in income over the last 20 years.  The gap between the richest and everyone else has grown, while the middle class, trapped with stagnant income in the face of rising costs of living, has experienced a decrease in their standard of living.

 

I remember a friend of mine from Europe commenting that the United States was well on its way to becoming a 3rd world country, while what used to be known as 3rd world countries were gaining new wealth thanks to globalization.  As American workers watched their jobs move overseas, with nothing to fall back on, workers in India, China and other 3rd world companies found themselves with new opportunities.  Corporations took advantage of cheaper labor in other countries to cut costs and increase profits, and found new markets in the countries they were "developing" their new workforce in.

 

The article also notes that with the decline of unions and other labor protections, American workers had no voice and no power.  Add to that anti-regulation that loosened rules governing banks in the 1980's, barriers between commercial and investment banks dissolving during the Clinton era, the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which weakened oversight of complex securities and the Bush era tax cuts that benefited the most wealthy, and the pathways for the wealthy to become "the ruling class" broadened and deepened.

 

To read the rest of this article.... 

 

Copyright 2010 Linda Marks

Find us on FacebookHealing Presence
What does it mean to be a healing presence?  And how is this different than what we experience in our ordinary interactions with other people in the day to day world?

These are two questions I posed to the February Community As Healer group, and a deep and thoughtful discussion emerged.

Being a healing presence is:

A space of being, more than doing.  It is who we are and how we are with another human being. By truly being with someone, emotionally, physically and spirituality, the other can feel safely held.

Opening to a space of receptivity.  This allows you to become a space or a container.  Your receptivity to self, other, the moment and spirit creates a very special quality of being.

Providing your full, present special attention to another.  This involves listening closely, without judgment, but with sincere interest, caring and curiosity.

Allowing oneself to become a vessel or a space for healing.  The divine energy can come through.  There is on ego, but a surrender to a higher power.

Coming to another person with a positive intent.  Wishing to do no harm and to welcome whatever healing is needed can be felt in our presence.

Bringing no agenda to the work at hand.  Being open to whatever needs to emerge is key.  Only then can what is really needed emerge!

For healing presence to take place, we need to slow down.  Modern life asks us to go so fast we miss what is deeper or felt.  Healing presence brings and evokes qualities of safety, trust and respect.  All are important qualities for healing.  Sadly, healing presence is a rare experience in our daily world.

Community is part of healing presence.  It feels different to do healing work with a group of committed others rather than alone or with just one person.  I think of Paul Stookey's "The Wedding Song," where he writes, "the union of our spirits here has caused him to remain...for whenever two or more of you are gathered in his name....there is love."  I believe these sentiments apply just as fully to healing spaces as to weddings.

In a community healing space, we experience a feeling of connection, and with this connection can come a feeling of unity.

©2011 Linda Marks      Share your thoughts on this article . . .


Find us on FacebookThe Dangers of Perfectionism
 
Last month's newsletter featured an article looking at some extreme parenting styles that were presented in Wall Street Journal articles over the month on January.  One of the articles, "In Defense of the Tiger Mother," by Amy Chua, advocated a harsh and perfectionistic approach to parenting that turned mother more into bully than nurturer.
  
My colleague Hillary Rettig wrote a very interesting blog post looking at the dangers and limitations of "Perfectionism."  Hillary notes that while perfectionism is often promoted in popular culture, its damaging effects may not be equally attended to.  "The King's Speech," which won Oscars for best picture, best original screenplay and best actor,  illustrates one of the painful side effects that can spring from being raised with too harsh an environment for a child:  stuttering.  Hillary notes that most children raised in a perfectionistic manners underperform in adult life.
  

My first blog at www.heartspacecafe.com/blog will still be active, but it is built in forum software, which many people find more cumbersome to use than official "blog" software.

In an effort to cultivate more dialogue in more contemporarily relevant ways, my new blog at HealingHeartPower.blogspot.com is user friendly, and even something you can subscribe to.
Please let me know what you think of this new blog.

Heartfully,


Linda Marks


email: lsmheart@aol.com
phone: (617) 965-7846
web: www.HealingHeartPower.com