Barn Life Blog
Introduction to Dream Work
Personal and Reflective of the Collective Unconscious This week we will be starting a 4-week series on dream work and dream tending. Freud and Jung both played a significant role in the depth psychological emphasis on the importance of dreams and dream work. However,...
Typology: Archetypal Insight and Interpersonal Understanding
Opening the Darkened Caverns In Integrity In Depth, Jungian Analyst and Typology Specialist John Beebe suggests that therapy engages typological functions of both the therapist and the patient. When we use typology and work with the 8 functions to understand ourselves...
Nurturing the Unique Genius of the Soul
… All I did was give him a look of confident expectation. An infant learning to walk, you know he can learn to walk, but the infant doesn’t know. You give the infant the confident support of your expectation. – Milton Erickson Trust only movement. Life happens at the...
Weekly Theme: the 21 Day Challenge
This week's theme is going to focus on two things. First, we are going to piggyback on our recent “Future Selves” blog and focus on how to create what each of us wants in our future lives. In short, how we create good habits. We want to encourage everyone to take a 21...
Weekly Theme: Our Future Selves
The Closest of Strangers As we speak, at this very moment, there is someone very close to you whom you will never meet. You might feel this nearness at all times. You may catch the essence of this person as a scent in the wind. Perhaps, if you look hard enough, you...
Weekly Theme: Grief and Loss
When we deny the full expression of our grief, it lays like a weight on our hearts, causing emotional pain and physical ailments – bell hooks Processing Grief and Loss No person who comes to Barn Life to heal is a stranger to grief and loss. Whether it be a...
Weekly Theme: Fear and Self-Doubt
The Identified Problem Fear is part of the human experience and unanimously felt. However, our fears are also deeply personal and rooted in lived experiences. We believe there is a threat to be feared. We believe this whether the threat is physical, such as fear of...
Weekly Theme: Gratitude
“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson Positivity Psychology...
Weekly Theme: Shadow and Vulnerability
It goes without saying that this year presents a difficult task for all of us. We all have questions about our place in this world. How does the vocation of healers come into contact with the evolving and unpredictable circumstances of a global pandemic? Furthermore,...
Weekly Theme: Shadows and Halloween
Our Celebration of the Macabre “To confront a person with his Shadow is to show him his own light…anyone who perceives his Shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.” – Dr. Carl Jung, Good and Evil in Analytical...
Weekly Theme: Athena
This week we explore the qualities of Athena. Namely, her hero-favoring nature and her commanding and tempered presence. With Athena, we accomplish our goals with spear-pointed precision and our vulnerabilities are well armored and protected. Born from the head of...
Weekly Theme: Aphrodite
Aphrodite is one of the better known Greek deities. As goddess of LOVE and BEAUTY, her charms, jealousy, and refreshment capture one of the most powerful and one of the most treacherous domains of our psychological lives. In keeping with our series on the inner...
Weekly Theme: Hestia and the Hearth
For 5 weeks we have engaged with Greek mythological figures that help us to identify significant aspects of our inner life. First, we looked at the myths of the father and qualities of masculinity. Last week we started to explore the transitional or progressive...
Weekly Theme: The Great Momism of Psychotherapy
One of the greatest disparities of our modern day is the supremely undifferentiated nature of feminine archetypes. By feminine, I, of course, do not refer here to gender. So many depth psychologists are guilty of funneling femininity into the category of women and...
Weekly Theme: Hades
Daimons of the Unconscious We can no longer deny that the dark stirrings of the unconscious are active powers and that psychic forces exist which cannot be fitted into rational order. The layman can hardly conceive how much his inclinations, moods, and decisions are...
Weekly Theme: Poseidon
In my years as a clinical therapist and program director, I have encountered many Poseidon problems. Clients express that they feel over-possessed by the unpredictable waters within them. They feel overcome by the surfacing and powerful waves of buried emotions. Why...
Lightning Innocence: Zeus and Olympus
As we begin our work with Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, it is important to also differentiate the realms in which they oversee. We must better understand the role of different aspects of masculinity through these archetypal figures. To do this, we have to also take the...
Soulful Attendance to Myth and Fairytale
Magical consciousness has to accommodate shadows or it has immediately made its potency finite. Some vital energy is drained from us when we disconnect from moon-like rhythms of visibility. Certain thoughts are out like boomerangs and are not to accomplish themselves...