10/27/09: Seeking the Balance October 16, 2009
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October 27, 2009
Time/place on sidebar
Mary Mansfield, Executive Assistant to the Dean of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, will present Seeking the Balance: My Dance between Spirituality and Science. Drawing from her own life experiences, she will share how she has sought ways of creating a balance between her spiritual and physical worlds, especially in times of trials and tribulations.
Mary has lived many incarnations in her present life and has come to the realization that life continually gives you what you need, within the many realms of existence, to help you move forward and grow. In 1999, she received her B. A. in Contemplative Psychology from Naropa, a Tibetan Buddhist University in Boulder, Colorado. Mary left Boulder in April 2003, when Austin, Texas gently “called” to her. She currently works as an Executive Assistant in the Dean’s Office of the College of Natural Sciences, Division of Research and Facilities, at the University of Texas at Austin. Her knowledge and love of wine has brought her to conduct wine tastings, and she has written several articles for the Texas Wine and Food Foundation’s online publication Plate & Vine.
Mary’s first words were “ What’s that?” Her questions became deeper and by the age of 12, she began questioning her religious background in Catholicism. A synchronistic meeting with a family friend would steer Mary into the direction of mythology, Eastern philosophy, astrology, numerology, and the power of positive thinking. After a near death experience, with the birth of her first son at 17, her thirst for spiritual knowledge deepened. She studied Mind Psi-Genics and Transcendental Meditation, which was her first introductions of the mind, body and spirit connections, and throughout 1970’s Mary acquired much of her knowledge reading the limited number of books available in her fields of interest. During this time she also began her 30-plus years of dream journaling and interest in symbolism.
Mary met Dr. Michael Shermer (founder and publisher of Skeptic magazine, Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, and a monthly columnist in Scientific American magazine) when she enrolled at Glendale Community College in 1986. In Psych 101, her interest in the brain and hard science was sparked. She became a member of Dr. Shermer’s “History of Science” study group. For several years she considered herself as an agnostic until life provided Mary with a series of very difficult circumstances. She needed more than scientific data to help her thorough.
Living in Los Angeles, she had access to the Philosophical Research Society, where she was fortunate to attend lecturers by Manly P. Hall, who wrote and spoke on integrating philosophy, religion, and science without boundaries. In 1992, Mary and her three sons moved to Boulder, Colorado. At the age of 40, she left her very successful career in Telecommunications to pursue her degree at Naropa.
One evening, inside a small church in September 2002, an elderly Spanish nun gave a talk (as she did every night) to the pilgrims who were traveling along the Camino de Santiago de Compostella. She explained to Mary and her fellow pilgrims that this was the halfway mark on their 500-mile trek and at this point many were contemplating the question, “Why am I doing this?” She explained that the Camino had called to them because they were all seekers.
Related Links:
http://cns.utexas.edu/
http://www.naropa.edu/
http://www.prs.org/
http://www.skeptic.com/
http://www.pacificzen.org/
http://austin.txshambhala.org/
09/22/09: David Lauterstein – A Life in Healing September 7, 2009
Posted by Gloria in Programs.add a comment
UPDATE:
Click here for podcast of September 22 program.
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Our first speaker in 1993, David Lauterstein returns to present what his 50 years in healing art and science have taught him about human structure, energy, and their role in conscious evolution. There will be a talk, slide-show, discussion, free handouts, and copies of David’s new CD and other items from the school. Four therapists will be in attendance with their massage tables to give free hands-on sessions of Zero Balancing at the end of the presentation.
Live interview with Chuck and Karen Robison of What If It Really Works?
Final video and audio transcript available here.
A Life in Healing
Until the last 30 years, academic learning concentrated exclusively on education through words, particularly aimed at the left-brain and the logical mind.
However, massage therapy and bodywork have dramatically revealed that the next step in our learning is an education that goes deeper than words, learning that is significant on the level of the right brain, the autonomic nervous and endocrine systems. Through its psychological and physical impact on these systems, massage therapy and bodywork dramatically stimulate learning on the level of the heart, the whole body, emotions, and spirit.
Bodywork has revealed the “technology” for making progress is not just with machines and in virtual reality. It reveals how we can make progress in our experience and creation of actual reality. Wholistic learning supports health for the whole individual and for the community and ecosystem in which we participate.
Lauterstein will present insights drawn from over 25 years of teaching therapists world-wide and 15 years of experience as a musician and composer. You will learn about the “fulcrum” as utilized in Zero Balancing and Deep Massage as a tool for engaging the whole system. We will also look at the body’s connective tissues as carriers of physical stress and also as psycho-spiritual sources of stress or, on the other hand, balance.
In the words of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, ” The body is not only a temple for the soul, it’s also a sage in the temple.”
Biography
David Lauterstein has been a massage and bodywork practitioner since 1977. He is Co-Director of The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School in Austin, Texas which he co-founded with John Conway in 1989. He is the former editor of the Massage Therapy Journal, author of Putting the Soul Back in the Body, the monographs, “What is Zero Balancing?,” “The Seven Dimensions of Touch”, and dozens of articles on the philosophy and practice of bodywork. He is certified in massage therapy (Chicago School of Massage Therapy, 1979), Structural Bodywork (through Rolfer, Daniel Blake, 1982), and as a Zero Balancing practitioner and teacher (Zero Balancing Health Association, 1993). Prior to bodywork, his studies were primarily in music composition and philosophy (B.A., Universityof Illinois, 1972). Mr. Lauterstein has presented trainings throughout the US since 1984 and in England since 1996. He is internationally known as an advocate for the art as well as the science of massage therapy and bodywork.
Lauterstein’s school was named “2009 School of the Year” at the World Message Festival, and he will be inducted into the Message Therapy Hall of Fame in 2011.
Related Links:
Lauterstein-Conway Massage School
Advanced Zero Balancing w/ ZB founder Fritz Smith, M.D. – 09/24-27/09
Book: Putting the Soul Back in the Body
Music: \”Roots & Branches\” by David Lauterstein
