Marc Bachrach is, or has been Marc Bachrach is, or has been, a:

  Cantor

  Comedy Hypnotist

  Clinical Hypnotherapist

  Musician and Singer

  Wedding and Funeral officiant

  Radio Talk Show Host and Producer

  House Concert producer

  Sunday School teacher

  Hospice chaplain

  Shakespearian Actor

  Synagogue Spiritual Leader

  Father

  Widower

  Devoted son and grandson

Marc’s Lived in 11 cities on both coasts and the MidWest, from Malibu to Manhattan

  And performed in 32 states and 7 countries for audiences from 4 to 4,000.

  He has been mistaken for the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia more times than he cares to count.

His topic today:

“Helping People Say Goodbye”: Celebrating Life while in Hospice

Seven Prayers That Can Change Your Life: How to Use Jewish Spiritual Wisdom to Enhance Your Health, Relationships, and Daily Effectiveness

by Leonard Felder PhD

Link: http://a.co/d/cf4qeaM

Leonard Nimoy talks about the Vulcan Greeting

A ruff transcript of our conversation:

I’m here with Cantor Marc,  Cantor Marc  I’m so happy. Well, that makes tools the happiness overflow. You know, we’ve been just so every just in all disclosure as I do. We’ve been trying to put this together for a couple of months and Mark was one of the first people that I talked to about this idea of getting it off the ground and I’m just so glad that we could finally get here.

Well, I’m sure that gratitude and exciting to put a real person his own voice and energy to what was just a couple of text lines on inside Timer app for well. That’s right. We met on inside timer was where we actually where we met the first time and well, you know, I’m just going to jump right into it.

The first question is. Why meditate my goofy answer is why not? I know one of my influences the Center for Spiritual Living is a rubber named Steve Rambo who some of you might be familiar with used to do the weather on Channel 2. Just a wonderful human being and he says, I don’t meditate for me I meditate for you because you’re going to have a problem.

If I don’t meditate I like that answer. Yeah, definitely in one of my purposes is to use it not only as a way of, you know, restoring my balance with all it is and coming into harmony instead of swimming Upstream all the time, but to rehearse a state of mind and a way of being. That ostensibly I want to bring out into the world more and more soon part of meditating is reminding myself.

There is this place to go to that I can drop into it almost effortlessly if I choose to and to remind myself over and over again. Hey, I have this choice we.  The Motto if you will again humorously of my mind skill center for hypnotherapy for 35 years now has been lightened up. For tighten up, it’s your choice.

And I mean that’s so sincerely meditation or self-hypnosis or any of the many labels, which is put on to achieving a certain State of Mind and Body relaxation and thoughtfulness or mindfulness all of them present us with the opportunity to develop a skill. The matter what is happening? We can drop back into that place and make better choices come from a deeper place of wisdom and authority and really live life fully instead of again swimming upstream or trying to pretend that what’s happening isn’t there all those wonderful things we.

Learn to do either by default or with direct instructions from our parents family and environment sure that kind of leads into the next question which is what is your definition of mindfulness and how do we live a more mindful life? Yeah, my initial response to mindfulness. I think it originated with Jon Kabat-Zinn or I̵...

Lisa has been teaching meditation and self-augmentation of extrasensory abilities since the 1980s. She learned First Nations meditations growing up in Canada from Elders, who also taught the traditional knowledge of food medicine, plant medicine, and planet medicine. In the 1980’s, her first India meditation teacher was Dr. Deepak Chopra in Los Angeles. In 1989, Lisa left North America traveling around the world writing about the impact of new technology on global culture, as well as studying traditional medicine healing, medical mantras and medical meditations held dear as wisdom teachings in many of our world’s cultures.  More on Lisa

Transcript of my conversation:

Hello, I’m with Lisa Atkinson meditation teacher and all those things that we just talked about. It just seemed like it. Just please tell me your relationship with meditation Beyond being a meditation teacher because first of all before we get into my first question just so that we have a basis.

I have been meditating since I was a child. I was born in northeastern Canada. Where culturally with First Nations people the indigenous people of Canada between the northern lights above us the Aurora Borealis constantly dancing beautiful colors of overhead and us having mythology and creation stories about our environment that we are in people naturally were internal.

And we naturally walked in the woods quietly observing and witnessing life around us Gathering medicine watching the change of seasons anticipating what we need to know for our Gardens that for us was meditation. We had practical meditations as well as far as sitting still meditations and visualization many meditations.

That was my natural introduction to meditation great. Great well with that and. And then you’ve also had a varied career in visual effects and in startups and right now working with what is the collaborative you’re working with is the name of that. We just finished a one-month experiment. It’s the first of its kind of the planet called the transformative technology.

Academy who put it on at Sofia University in Palo Alto and it was a cohort a community of like-minded people who are brought together from 60 over 65 countries to talk about artificial intelligence Ai and injecting mindfulness into technology. Because every technology has the next generation of its kind of course and so why not have in the Next Generation roll out of that technology the embedding of mindfulness or Consciousness?

Like why are we creating this does this make the world a better place? This makes people’s lives clear happier kind. Peaceful and so since we are all of us co-creating together the future and as a legacy leaving behind something for the Next Generation the next seven generations as a footprint.

It’s a great time on the planet to embed every technology that we birth incubate and seed with funding as something that is actually peaceful at the core. Promotes peace of the core and promotes mindfulness and Consciousness in people’s daily lives great. Great. I will add the link if that’s okay with you.

I will add the link to the website when we put this up. Yeah sure that people can find it. Yeah, see what I was just a member of the court. I was honored to be in you know invited into the cohort. You just sound like it was interesting when I looked at the website. It was interesting. Focus it was interesting what they were trying to do and what they’re continuing to try to do it is an interesting way to look at the thing.

Well, they’re looking at the data. It’s quite interesting for me because.  You know working with all these academics who are either studying mindfulness or psychology or somatic Psychiatry or therapy or Consciousness or brain and Consciousness studies? A lot of these people are looking at how to use...

Reverend Abbot Monshin Paul Naamon and his wife, Reverend Shumon Tamami Naamon, founded the Karuṇā Tendai Dharma Center in 1997, and oversee its growing number of officially recognized Sanghas.

In addition, there are a number of priests (soryo) and priests-in-training (doshu), aspiring to share the Dharma and spread the teachings of the Tendai Buddhist tradition.

Revs. Monshin and Shumon trained for six years in Japan under Rev. Abbot Ichishima Shōshin, Professor Emeritus of Taisho University and Abbot of Tamon-in Temple in Chiba Japan. The Tendai Buddhist Institute works closely with Rev. Ichishima and Enryakuji on Mt. Hiei, the head temple of the Tendai Buddhist tradition, to promote Tendai Buddhism internationally.

The authorization to teach and take students was granted in 2002, being designated the New York temple a Betsuin, indicating branch temple status, of the head temple on Mt. Hiei. This designation permits the NY Betsuin to train and ordain practitioners who have demonstrated a serious commitment, understanding, and an advanced level of practice.

Ask Alexa for “Why Meditate?”

A Transcription of our Conversation:

Hello today. I’m talking to Reverend Monshin Paul Naamon Abbot of the tendai Buddhist Institute out of East Chatham, New York and welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate you giving me the time. I’m just going to jump right into it and.

The question the first question is why meditate?

Yes. I think there’s a there’s a couple of ramifications to the question, but I’ll just go answer most directly. I think that we meditate. And let me preface everything that I say that I’m speaking as a Buddhist monk, you know, I as you know, I’ve taught at University at Albany and I’ve taught at Bard College Simon’s Rock for many years old.

Oh now I’m retired and in that situation, I might answer it a little bit differently, but I’m going to answer as a Tendai Buddhist monk and we meditate first of all too. Dispel some of the sufferings that we all experience in our lives second of all to make ourselves more human to make ourselves a greater contributor to our society meditation isn’t just about oneself.

It’s about oneself in relation to other sentient beings the Earth Etc. And if we think that we can make things better by meditating that means just the meditation itself is going to make us feel better. We can’t do that without changing the world around us at the same time, right? That’s what makes us feel better.

That’s what makes the world a little bit better and that’s ultimately what reduces human suffering overall. I mean that’s a pretty direct answer to address. Right right. That’s that and that’s what I’m looking for because I want the guy I’m looking at differences between each of the reach of everybody.

Like everyone has a little bit of a different answer to the question. Sure. The other the next thing is how do you define mindfulness and how would it look like to live a mindful life? Mindfulness is, to begin with, I think you know, there’s the found the four foundations of mindfulness were the first are considered.

One of the first discourse is given by the historical Shakyamuni Buddha. And the four foundations of mindfulness talk about recognizing the body as the body the sensations as Sensations and then the emotions which arise from Sensations and then the thoughts that arise from the emotions so that it all goes back to the body and remember that’s the four foundations of mindfulness.

So taking you. From you know,

Marvin G. Belzer, PhD, has taught mindfulness meditation for twenty years. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. For many years he taught a semester-long meditation course in the Department of Philosophy at Bowling Green St. University, where he was an Associate Professor of Philosophy. He teaches an undergraduate course at UCLA (Psychiatry 175: Mindfulness Practice and Theory) and teaches mindfulness in many different venues in Los Angeles.

 

Ask Alexa for the podcast “Why to Meditate?”

A Transcript of our Conversation:

Hello, I’m interviewing Marvin G Belzer PhD associate director of the Mindful Awareness the Research Center at UCLA. Thank you very much for meeting me my pleasure. And in all disclosure, I am taking courses from Marvin right now. So, you know, just so everybody knows what’s going on.

I’ve already explained to you why I’m doing this and where the questions came from. So I’m just going to jump right into the questions and we’ll go from there. The first one is.  Why meditate? Well, I love the question. I often teach college students and young people older teens and I love talking with him about this and so I’m kind of prepared here and I would kind of break it into three areas.

The first is. There are these very simple activities that we can do with our minds to cultivate calmness. And so there’s this package of qualities of clarity stability resilience kind of under that that heading of concentration or calmness and whatever else we can do in meditation. It’s it’s very clear that the central nervous system is such that paying attention deciding to pay attention to something really simple.

The in our experience does not make believe the mind naturally can settle become calmer more clear and so forth. And so I would conjecture that something like this is a part of all the meditation Traditions, maybe not all exactly but you know this just this cultivation of columnists and it’s not something we have to struggle to create.

It’s much simpler. It’s just directing attention to something. Simple like the breath and so forth.  Secondly, my area as you know is mindfulness meditation and so mindfulness includes that component for sure but it also includes a component of bringing awareness to what presents itself.  even as we try to keep the attention with the breath or something like that and.

Gets us to the second sort of reason to do this sort of meditation, which is in bringing awareness to whatever presents itself including physical pain, including difficult emotions, you know, the racing mind there’s something about doing this which gives us more freedom in our response to these ordinary States.

And so the kind of work with physical pain is maybe the most Vivid and so. If a part of my body is in pain, then we can practice mindfulness with this in a way that helps us manage the pain.  And what manage the pain means basically is having more freedom in our response to this difficult State.

And so the gist of it, of course, is really simple. We focus somewhere else like the breath the pain comes to mind. We include the awareness of the pain may be. Just for a few seconds. So it’s at that oscillating back and forth and there is something about the willingness just to be with the raw Sensations, even when it doesn’t reduce the intensity of the pain.

It gives us more freedom in our response. So the word freedom in might be a bit fancy, but for in my way of seeing it like the freedom that one can have relative to pain relative to it. I-80 also is a window into who knows how much Freedom we might have as human beings, right? And so there’s obviously much more to say about that.

But that that would be kind of that’s not as clear-cut to in my mind as the first a...

About

Learn More about Heather

Heather is an LA-based Mindfulness Facilitator works with a diverse range of clientele

including those in recovery, people coping with depression and anxiety, cancer survivors, men and women battling chronic health and pain issues, those suffering from PTSD, as well as fellow clinicians combating compassion fatigue syndrome. Her training began with Tibetan Compassion practices in 1998, traveling the world to learn under masters in both India and Europe. In 2011 she became a certified Mindfulness Facilitator at UCLA, where she also taught Mindful Awareness Classes as well as courses online. Currently, she’s co-creator and master teacher for The DEN Meditation Teacher Training Program. Her joy is watching her clients develop the tools necessary to tap into their own inner wisdom, enabling them to forge their own path towards healing and self-compassion. She’s been featured on E! as well as in publications such as Time, The Times of India and Femcompetitor. Her teaching on joy can be viewed on Mindful Magazine’s January online edition.

To find out more… 

Ask Alexa for the Podcast “Why Meditate?”

A Transcript of our Conversation:

I’m with Heather Prete.

Mindfulness facilitator. Yeah, and you have a you have a certificate from UCLA mindfulness and have worked with them a lot. That’s right. And I teach their courses as well. Right and you teach those over The Den in Hollywood. That’s where on the Brea. Yeah, that’s my Brea have to remember where we are.

Yeah that we’re at the Den on the corner of 4th and LaBrea, which is a wonderful space that has drop-ins which would be you can just come and meditate and get a little talk and sound Bast and I this is actually where I have my personal office for my one-on-one. Yeah, my one-on-one. It’s well, I want to thank you for meeting me and you talking about these things and just getting this whole thing rolling.

The first question I have is just really simple and I explain to you why where this came from and how we started but one of these questions was just really simple. Why should we? Hmm, why is it important? Well, I mean it’s funny because I don’t like to use the word should too much. Okay, because really it’s a choice, right?

And that’s that’s the essence of the practice is choice. We have more Choice more. When we have more clarity on the different aspects of self and how they work together and how they respond to our inner and outer worlds. So, you know, there are many different ways to get there quite honestly, there are many paradigms and some people are more.

Be mindful than other people. I know that I can speak for myself. So in my cage this practice was so important because I had a lot of suffering. I was dealing with it with quite a few very difficult emotions that we would call chronic that didn’t seem to rise and fall. Of course, they always do we just miss those moments that they’re not there, right?

But had really developed into a trait so a trade of anxiety or a trade of depression, right? I really identified with those and they seem to be my constant companions. And I didn’t know or understand that there was an aspect of the self that is meant to care for those emotions. Mmm. So I did the natural thing that everybody does which is to try to run away from them and we try to run away from them in many different ways.

And I tried them all and I’ll tell you it doesn’t work. We get something called we get tricked because we get something called a temporary cessation of suffering wh...

 About

Learn More about Heather

Heather is an LA-based Mindfulness Facilitator works with a diverse range of clientele including those in recovery, people coping with depression and anxiety, cancer survivors, men and women battling chronic health and pain issues, those suffering from PTSD, as well as fellow clinicians combating compassion fatigue syndrome. Her training began with Tibetan Compassion practices in 1998, traveling the world to learn under masters in both India and Europe. In 2011 she became a certified Mindfulness Facilitator at UCLA, where she also taught Mindful Awareness Classes as well as courses online. Currently, she’s co-creator and master teacher for The DEN Meditation Teacher Training Program. Her joy is watching her clients develop the tools necessary to tap into their own inner wisdom, enabling them to forge their own path towards healing and self-compassion. She’s been featured on E! as well as in publications such as Time, The Times of India and Femcompetitor. Her teaching on joy can be viewed on Mindful Magazine’s January online edition.

To find out more…