The Challenges of the super talented
By jennagriffiths | June 22, 2011
This month in Earth School we’ll be exploring the challenges of the multi-talented or super gifted.
How to manage mutiple talents
Are you or your child highly gifted but not living your potential?
What if you have extraordinary talents that are in conflict with each other?
If this is you, what to do?
What one quality do you need to enable you to live your potential?
Next week, we’ll be exploring this theme from a hand analysis perspective with Richard Unger,
the man who first identified gift markers in hands.
More about these calls here plus illustration of the 17 gift markers visible in hands.
Topics: super talented | No Comments »
Unicorns a power animal?
By jennagriffiths | June 22, 2011
I was really surprised on saturday in the workshop with Itzhak Beery when my power animal was a unicorn.
I always thought of power animals as real. But then maybe this is why the unicorn.
‘Well, now that we have seen each other,’ said the unicorn,
‘if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.'”
-Lewis Carroll; Through the Looking Glass
there has to be some belief in the magic, however small, for any world to survive.
~Terry Brooks, The Black Unicorn
Topics: What's on in Zurich | 1 Comment »
What to do with kids in Zürich this weekend
By Jena Griffiths | June 16, 2011
Rainy days are always a challenge on weekends. What to do that’s different, interesting or inspiring, especially when you can’t go hiking or swimming in Zurich’s beautiful lakes.
This Saturday morning 18 June 2011 is different.
Why not try Itzhak Beery’s 3 hour indoor adventure to find our power animals.
Saturday morning’s worshop is specially for kids, parents and the young at heart.
The experience will be similar to the Friday night but Itzhak will draw on all his years of experience
bringing this exciting workshop to schools and colleges in the USA.
This is a very empowering experience, helping to build confidence and self reliance.
Some kids choose a tiger or a lion or a panther. Others chose a rabbit or a deer or a bird.
Usually the animal represents the quality they most need in their lives right now.
Last time Itzhak was here my power animal was a caribou! Gosh knows how that happened.
It’ll be in English and translated to German.
To take part book via email
Here’s more info.
Topics: Fun, What's on in Zurich | No Comments »
Finding your power animal. Talk in Zürich this Friday
By Jena Griffiths | June 12, 2011
Itzhak Beery will be in Zürich this Friday evening giving a talk on Power Animals at the American Women’s Club of Zurich.
After the talk and questions, Itzhak will lead those people who wish to stay on a guided journey where each person gets to find their power animal.
Talk Fr 20. –
Talk and journey Fr 60. –
Children are welcome at the power animal journeys. Mother healing is for adults only.
Saturday morning with kids and young adults
To book or find out more contact us
Testimonials from US schools: https://ear-thschool.com/poweranimals
What happens in a workshop with Itzhak?
Accompanied by drumbeat, participants learn to journey to the animal energies and shape-shift into them, allowing each person to find those qualities we need most in this world, but which are often hidden, or repressed.
“Itzhak really helped me last time he was in Zurich. I fully endorse all his work” Jena Griffiths
More information on power animals. Listen to the interview with Itzhak
More information on Mother Healing. Listen to the interview.
Topics: What's on in Zurich | No Comments »
Healing our relationships with our mothers on a soul level – Interview with Itzhak Beery
By Jena Griffiths | June 5, 2011
Healing the relationship between us and our mothers on a soul level.
Itzhak Beery will give a workshop on Mother Healing in Zürich on Saturday 18 June 2011 at 1pm at AMCZ
What’s this about?
How you separate between your physical mother experience and her soul experience?
Is it possible to heal it?
If I heal it would I still love her?
Why is it important to work on this issue?
How our mother relationship is tied up with our every day life and relationship with nature?
Listen to this call
Click here to download…
Two other interviews with Itzhak Beery
Burnout and depression from a shamanistic perspective – access here
Power animals. access here
The relationship with our mothers, either alive or gone, shapes our intimate relationships, our trust with others, our confidence and self worth. Their voices keep guiding us throughout our lives.
Healing our relationships with our birth mothers will dramatically change the relationship we have with Mother Earth. It will allow us to live more authentically, powerfully, and harmoniously.
There are many things we never dared saying face to face to our mothers that really comes from deep in our hearts. So many truths we withheld from them. There are so many things our mothers never allowed themselves to share with us. We hold all those feelings in our physical bodies and they are imprinted in our souls. It has great impact on whom we become.
Itzhak Beery’s European tour
Itzhak will be in Europe in the coming weeks.
In all cities offering teachings as well as personal healing session (Learn More)
Topics: Relationship problems, self esteem, spirit, What's on in Zurich | No Comments »
Teenage suicide. Are Swiss kids more at risk?
By jennagriffiths | June 3, 2011
Recently I interviewed Polly Young-Eisendrath on her latest book, the Self Esteem Trap.
Raising confident and compassionate kids in an age of self importance.
Polly maintains that modern parents are sabotaging their children with too much praise, too much help solving problems and too much focus on their needs and “specialness”.
She says that this style of parenting actually has the opposite effect of what is intended.
Instead of raising confident kids we end up raising young adults who are dissatisfied with life, fear humiliation and are self absorbed with why they aren’t as famous as their parents led them to anticipate.
Polly advocates a need for adversity (allowing a child to face and solve his/her own age specific problems) and learning from negative feedback,
nurturing compassion and the practice of being ordinary,
Even though most European cultures are not as self absorbed as North America, still
I think Swiss kids have an especially tough time because the school system teaches one to be socially responsible at the expense of individual expression.
If parents then focus on specialness and follow a parenting style that focuses on the child’s need to individuate, the child is really pressured from both sides.
Add to this the stringent exam process that only allows a small percentage of middle school children a pre-university education.
All those that don’t make it need to look for an apprenticeship within a few years of high school.
Great for the economy perhaps but an enormous pressure on children who are struggling with adolescence and radical hormonal changes/ imbalances at the same time.
Symptoms of the Self-Esteem Trap:
Excessive fears of being humiliated.
Pressures to be exceptional.
Unrealistic fantasies of wealth, power, celebrity, or achievement.
Feelings of superiority and/or inferiority.
Unreadiness to take on adult responsibilities in an imperfect world.
Obsessive self-focus.
Restless dissatisfaction.
Dr Polly Young-Eisendrath’s solution?
The extreme parenting makeover. Get this free workbook for parents and educators from her website.
Topics: Dealing with the inner critic, Depression Cures, self esteem, suicide | No Comments »
Are you killing your kids with kindness? Interview with Dr Polly Young-Eisendrath is today
By Jena Griffiths | June 1, 2011
Why do children who seemingly have everything kill themselves?
The Earth School interview with Dr Polly Young-Eisendrath, author of The Self Esteem Trap. Raising Confident Kids in an Age of Self Importance.
If you miss the call a replay is available on the same link.
More information on how to change your parenting style.
In her book The Self Esteem Trap
Polly Young-Eisendrath discusses the importance of being ordinary!
She says, when we’re continuously told
we’re special this puts undue pressure on us
to be exceptional. The results are shame,
alienation and feeling defective.
We’ll discuss her solution for getting ourselves or our kids out of the esteem trap:
The extreme parenting makeover. Here are the 10 main points you need to know.
More about Dr Young-Eisendrath visit her site.
Polly’s insight helps shed light on the rising incidence of teenage suicide in affluent societies
and also on causes of depression, alienation, delusion and grandiosity.
Topics: Burnout cures, Dealing with the inner critic, Depression Cures, Relationship problems, Responsibility vs irresponsibility, self esteem | 2 Comments »
The Self Esteem Trap – are we sabotaging ourselves and our children? Interview with Dr Polly Young-Eisendrath
By Jena Griffiths | May 28, 2011
This is your personal invitation to join me next week, Wednesday 1 June 2011, in Earth School Free Auditorium
for a in interview with Dr Polly Young-Eisendrath, author of The Self Esteem Trap. Raising Confident Kids in an Age of Self Importance.
Polly is a Jungian analyst and psychologist and author of 13 books which have been translated into 20 languages. She has a full-time practice in Vermont and is clinical associate professor at the University of Vermont. She’s also a consultant for leadership development at Norwich University.
What will we discuss?
We’ll be looking in depth at what Polly calls “The Self Esteem Trap”.
How modern parenting styles, designed to build self esteem, actually have the opposite effect.
Why children who have everything including the full support of their parents
feel blocked, dissatisfied and unable to tap into their talents or genius?
We’ll be discussing solutions.
What to do to overcome the self esteem trap.
How to build a new kind of confidence.
in yourself and your children.
Dr Polly Young-Eisendrath’s 10 points for an Xtreme parenting makeover.
More about Dr Polly Young-Eisendrath visit her website
To preview some of what we’ll be discussing, read my previous post on weird, special vs ordinary.
Topics: self esteem | No Comments »
Are you weird, special or ordinary-extraordinary?
By Jena Griffiths | May 25, 2011
My son is busy harvesting zombies
so that he can launch an invasion
…..to eat the brains of the “bad guys”.
Should I be worried?
Granted this is “just” an ipod game.
Still what’s this really about?
Am I bringing up the next Genghis?
Are our children being trained
behind our backs? Or
systematically desensitized
to …..what?
“Mama you think too much!”
is my son’s answer.
But do I?
We humans are pretty weird sometimes
and the same is true of our fingerprints.
Every now and then one comes across
a fingerprint that breaks all the rules.
This is known as “a weird sucker.”
What do these unusual fingerprints mean?
We’ll be discussing weird suckers and other
unusual fingerprints in our call with
Richard Unger next week.
But what if you don’t have unusual fingerprints?
Is ordinary a bad thing?
In her book The Self Esteem Trap
Polly Young-Eisendrath discusses the
importance of being ordinary.
She says, when we’re continuously told
we’re special this puts undue pressure on us
to be exceptional. The results are shame,
alienation and feeling defective.
This leads to a sense of entitlement and
dissatisfaction with our lives.
We get caught up in obsessive self focus
along with extreme fears of being humiliated.
Polly asks, are we setting a trap for
ourselves and our children by focusing
on the need to be special or famous?
“Basing our lives on the importance of being
ordinary….is a whole new approach
to self confidence” she says.
The key to happiness is mutual support;
being a member of the human community.
I’ll be exploring Polly’s ideas on how being ordinary
builds confidence in a future post.
Here’s her 10 point Xtreme makeover for parenting
In the meantime, wishing you no zombies
but lots of zeal about being real,
ordinary-extraordinary,
alive and well on this beautiful
planet of ours.
If you’d like to join us for the forthcoming
Earth School class on composite fingerprints
go here. The date of the topic call has been
changed to Tuesday, 31 May.
The advanced threading call on this topic will be
on Thursday 9 June.
Topics: rollercoaster life | No Comments »
Are you a floppy surfboard?
By Jena Griffiths | May 14, 2011
Last week on holiday we spent quite a bit
of time gurgling in the sea, snorkelling
and body surfing.
One day in the surf my son broke
a cheap bodyboard that he’d picked up
at a local beach cafe –
it was really just a piece of polystyrene
covered with a reinforced material.
He kept using it for a while but soon found
he couldn’t stay in a wave as long as
the rest of us any more.
It’s an image that’s stayed with me all week.
A floppy surfboard.
What does this mean?
Is this what happens to us when we give up
on our dreams?
Or when we stop living with conviction?
We turn into pleasers?
Can this be fixed?
A surfboard only works because it resists
rather than yields.
Yet here was Marina Borrusso in her
workshop on Wednesday saying:
we need to surrender to life.
To what exactly?
Whatever is happening to you right now.
While she said this
I kept thinking of the broken, floppy surfboard.
But then Marina said, surrender doesn’t mean
“give up”
It means: to say “Yes” to what is.
So, in this case, surrender to the wave means
to say yes to the wave. And to ride it fully.
But how can you cure a floppy inner surfboard?
I think, by going back to and living our convictions.
How about you? What do you think?
The theme this coming month in Earth School
is all about a different kind of ride
– the roller-coaster.
One minute you’re on a high,
the next you’re in the pits.
Then you’re up again. Soaring.
Can you get off before
the next dive?
Would you even want to?
How does this show up in hands?
If you have one or more composite fingerprints
in your hands or fingertips it’s time to
prick up your ears.
We’ll be exploring this topic in Earth School
the coming weeks.
In the meantime, may you surrender fully to whatever
your weekend has in store for you.
😉
Topics: rollercoaster life | No Comments »