John's blog
Sunday 3-6pm. Mill Valley Community Center.
http://beta.integraltransformativepractice-international.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=67
Here is a video segment from PBS Newshour:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june10/mentalillness_02-10.html
Also, a good background article with useful links from the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/health/10psych.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/06/MNET1BEJQK.DTL
George hated Atlanta.... Smart guy!
Here he is, talking at a bookstore in Marin (for about an hour):
The Manual of Gestalt Practice in the tradition of Dick Price
is now on the Web, at:
http://sites.google.com/site/gestaltlegacy/
I loaded the Manual into a Google site in order to make Dick’s legacy more visible during the coming year. The printed version of the text will continue to be available because it is much easier to read and to use as a practice aid.
Thanks to everybody who purchased a copy. You played an important role in the project, by demonstrating that there is genuine interest in Dick’s legacy. You also own what may become a collector’s item! ;-)
The Gestalt Manual is now available as an eBook. Look at the bottom of the Lulu page for an explanation of the digital format. The reader software is available from Abode, installed for free, using a link on that page.
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/manual-of-gestalt-practice-in-the-tradition-of-dick-price/7972552

I'm actually excited by the technology. It was fun for me to load and publish the Manual as an eBook. As you probably know, Adobe provides software that supports the Flash Meeting we used for our book event. I love the way all this technology is coming together. It's a trip to think that the Manual can now be downloaded and read instantaneously, in Kabul or Key West, perhaps even as I'm typing this!
Gobi (male) and Batu (female) last month at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo.
So...they'll live in captivity, but they won't get poached.... A hard call!
Like the Neanderthal, for all our power, the human species could go extinct in a few decades, leaving behind the bizarre ruins of our cities and our horrible solid waste dumps.
Next to Mahler, Moby is my favorite composer.
I got a couple LOLs out of the last segment.
A Wall Street Journal Video? What's next? Trump sitting in the Zendo?
The Madoff scandal had a negative impact upon the Esalen community.
Here's the latest from CNBC.
Racial profiling doesn't only happen Back East!
The latest from Dacher Keltner and company....
This is a non-trivial thought experiment. You don't need to understand the mathematics of curved spacetime. If you can get an intuitive feel for how this can happen in "curved" spacetime, you will grasp the true nature of spacetime as a "connected" empty fabric, even when it is "flat." Read the article a couple of times and let the concepts "sink in" to your consciousness.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=surprises-from-general-relativity
I've actually been in Bloomington, Indiana. So I know it's a place that naturally inspires the urge to think distant thoughts. (Although I have to say that there are good library and opera programs at IU, I've never been a big opera fan.)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=an-easy-way-to-increase-c
Understand the biology of how rewards work in the brain.
Notice that there is an embedded link that will take you directly to the underlying PLoS Biology article.
My favorite part starts around 4.5 minutes.
Many psychologists have regarded the basic concept of evolutionary psychology as a "nonsense attractor."
Note the embedded podcast in the Newsweek article.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/202789
I respect Gil Fronsdal a lot because of his unique mixture of scholarship and teaching ability.
I particularly enjoy sitting at his relatively new Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City.
http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/
There is no video with this talk. But it deals with a very useful subject --
the difference between mindfulness practice and concentration practice.
p.s. There's another, low quality video presentation on Youtube
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0wWPOUGbjg
that shows the interior of the IMC. Check it out if you're interested.
I was happy to see that the Politics of Trust and, by implication, John Vasconcellos have a Facebook page. Besides being a former state senator from Silicon Valley, John is a genuine Esalen old-timer.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Politics-of-Trust-Network/44346317765?ref=s
A couple of our Esalen friends have become "fans" of the page just in the last day or so, since it became common knowledge. Check it out, maybe...
...for successfully finishing finals and another academic year. Looks like we might have another grad student on our hands in the near future!
A brand new posting of Beautiful Day. How appropriate!
Similar "happenings" appear at the end. (This one put a grin on my face, which is quite a trick!)
The Pennebaker writing exercise really works! Researchers are still amazed by the dramatic positive results they keep getting from follow-up studies.
http://books.google.com/books?id=rhBFnQJUwn8C&pg=PA223&lpg=PA223&dq#PPA223,M1
If you try it out, write for at least 15 minutes, at least 4 times, over a period of 3 days. You can write about your most distressing emotional experience. You don't need to show it to anybody for the exercise to work. It is perfectly acceptable if your writing is pretty incoherent the first time around. That's fine. Just dive in....
p.s. The two pages, at the link above, come at the end of a really good essay. In fact, the book is full of good essays. Check out the table of contents. Most essays are available in full on Google.

