Valentine’s Day can bring up such triggers for women and perhaps a few gay men. For most of the rest of the population ( straight men) it is completely insignificant unless they have a partner and will have hell to pay if they forget this holiday. Case in point: last year when my publisher and I were deciding when to release my first book, I mentioned that given that it is not a relationship book, I wanted to do it after Valentine’s Day. He said, “When is Valentine’s Day, March?”

For a woman however who has any love addiction issues and is not in a relationship or is with a man who hates holidays, this can be a painful one meant to simply get through. Ala, my LifeQuake Model, I thought this might be a great opportunity to use a holiday to transform that longing into an experience that is healing. And men, all men could benefit from these tips as well!

By definition, a LifeQuake involves cracking open outdated beliefs and programs so that the organism can be authentically real. This relates to individuals, organizations, a society, and yes, even a holiday.

I propose we crack open Valentine’s Day and expand out of this notion that it belongs to lovers. St. Valentine was a priest and the legend around him came out of all the cards that were sent to him in prison by the local community in protest for his arrest and subsequent martyrdom. So, this was originally a humanitarian gesture. What if we were to make it a day for giving love, period. All kinds of love. Well, in order to truly experience this day with love, it begins with ourselves.

1) Instead of buying a box of chocolates that the cashier thinks is for your mate and starting your day with sugar sedation, try stopping at a juice bar and give yourself a smoothie chocked full of anti-oxidants. The energy it will give you will make you feel vibrant. As they say, each action begets the next action. With plenty of energy, you will feel empowered to go to the gym or do an exercise routine that will get your endorphins going, high endorphins are great love chemicals!

2) With this physical support, you will be brimming with self love. You’re on a roll. Buy yourself the flowers you would have wanted from a mate. I have found that most Valentines Days that I spent in a romantic partnership, I was less than impressed by the posies brought to me by my beloved. I like yellow roses, white roses, and lavender roses but I do not like red roses so buy them yourself.

3) Call all your single friends and wish them Happy Cupid Day. A phone call as novel as it may seem, far exceeds a text message or an email in extending a sincere holiday greeting.

4) Call your mother or an elderly woman you know who doesn’t have a husband and make her day. And yes, of course you can extend this to your dad, brother, or grandfather. (Those of you who are in romantic relationships need not be told to reach out to your lover… hopefully)

5) Everyone’s first experience of Valentine’s Day was as a child, giving home made or Hallmark valentines to your first grade class. We rarely think of the fact that there are children right here in this country whose families are too poor to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Keeping in the spirit of the LifeQuake Model stage seven, part of altruism is giving love on a large scale to a non-profit organization. One such organization focuses on The Appalachian children right here in this country where one in five children live in abject poverty. “Actress, author and mother Julianne Moore today announced a special initiative with Save the Children that will allow people across the nation to print and email custom cards to friends and loved ones this Valentine’s Day in return for a donation to the charity. The initiative comes on the heels of Moore’s visit to see Save the Children’s work in one of the poorest, most remote communities in the mountains of Appalachia, where Save the Children has worked for more than 75 years.”

6) When we smile, we increase both dopamine and serotonin in our neurotransmitters so we get the benefit and the hunger for love is transformed by the giving of love. Make eye contact with strangers and extend the non-verbal universal sign of love. And then, do it again on Feb 15, Feb 16th, Feb 17… you get my drift…

Dr. Toni Galardi is a public speaker, psychotherapist, columnist, and the author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive Not Just Survive in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. She can be reached through her offfice at 310- 712-2600 or http://www.LifeQuake.net.

I have often been asked to summarize my own personal journey that led to writing The LifeQuake Phenomenon. Although most of it is revealed in the pages of this book, I decided to share just my story here in my blog. I warn you: it is the length of reading three blogs or about 5 pages of a self help book.

The LifeQuake Model was birthed after my third near fatal experience. I say near fatal rather than near death because NDE’s have a particular phenomenology highlighted by traveling through a tunnel and seeing a whitelight and family menbers or spiritual beings.

My near fatal experiences did not take me out of this life and in fact were characterized by long periods IN the tunnel, stuck between cycles of my life.

In the LifeQuake Model there are seven stages. Prior to my first near fatal experience when I was 21 years old, I was working on skid row fresh out of undergraduate school. I had moved to California six months before and finding a job had been difficult. However, having grown up in a white, middle class suburb the exposure to the mean streets of downtown Los Angeles proved to be quite the education I hadn’t received before. At first, I was fascinated by this subculture of people and their actual preference for living on the streets. There were doctors who had become alcoholics along with your usual addicts. But soon, this novelty wore off and I became bored with my job, feeling unchallenged by the work. Boredom is the first stage of a LifeQuake. Around this time I met my soon to be husband and he suggested I leave the job but I was fiercely independent and didn’t want him supporting me so I stayed. And when you don’t change your life at this stage, you enter stage two – the dying of the old life that is often characterized by depression. I started dreading going to work. I had to go to bed at 9 in order to be up at 5 and at work at 6 AM.

And then stage Three hit – the crisis and radical severance from the old cycle. One day, an addict got through reception high on PCP. I didn’t know he was on drugs. I just observed that he was causing a commotion with other patients in the facility and I went over to talk to him. Suddenly, he flipped out and started choking my throat. Everyone was stunned and paralyzed by fear except for one woman. She had been a doctor in Russia and had emigrated but had been forced to work as a phlebotomist in this facility. She was a big woman and began pulling on his arm. PCP infuses one with super human strength, unfortunately, so he threw her in one direction and me up against the wall and then ran out.

I was rushed to the hospital with hand print bruises all over my neck and began a three month course in rehabilitation. During this time, I began having nightmares in which the assault was taking place all over again. I had entered stage four. I was in a void. No job, no clue as to what to do next. My fiancé suggested I get therapy. During the course of my therapy, I started asking the therapist questions about her work and where she went to school. I had mentioned that as a kid my father nicknamed me Dear Abby because my friends would often ask for my advice. She suggested that perhaps I take a course and see if it was for me. I enrolled in graduate school and took one course. I loved it and started full time in the fall. This began Stage Five of my LQ. In stage five, you apprentice at what you discovered as your calling in stage four. Although I went on to be very successful as a psychotherapist and owning a beautiful home with two offices, stage six and seven as I came to know them did not crystallize for me until my next LifeQuake. In the LifeQuake model, stage six is the stage in which you experience life as abundant no matter how it shows up and it is this perception that creates wealth as you would have it. Stage seven is characterized by quantum altruism where the individual experiences that out of helping those they serve they themselves are served. This has a quantum effect and leads eventually to the entire planet having this consciousness of oneness.

My second LifeQuake began four years later when once again the cycle of my life was completing and I was afraid of making the change. I started feeling bored and unchallenged once again and I tried to quell the boredom with weekly shopping trips to South Coast Plaza and multiple glasses of wine every night after working all day with my patients. When this didn’t work, I started to feel like a zombie, dead man walking through my life. What ended stage two this time was a series of three car accidents in six days. In the second of the two accidents, my car spun like a tea cup at Disney land across four lanes of an eight lane interchange and stopped facing Friday night traffic. It was in the middle of this one that I surrendered my life for the first time and asked that my death not be painful.
But it didn’t fully wake me up until the third accident two days later when it now involved other people and I wasn’t even driving the car. Once again, during my recuperation, I realized my life in Orange County: my marriage, my career, and my home were all structures I needed to leave.

When I entered stage four this time, I had moved back to Los Angeles and had begun a serious search to discover who I really was. In this void, I meditated and waited to be shown my next calling. I was given these seven stages for helping me to overcome the fear of change by providing a context for holding my experience. However, this time around Stage Four was more complex. It was as though a Pandora’s box of diseases began to manifest: Epstein Barr, Hashimotos thyroiditis, candida, and a host of allergies.

I ran through all the money from my property settlement trying to find medical help for the physical challenge du jour. As I struggled to support myself, my body began to go through yet another kind of challenge. My electrical system had become extremely sensitive. Energy would shoot through my body like lightning bolts sometimes for hours at a time. I could feel earthquakes before they hit, I felt a body blow the day before 9/11 that put me in a fetal position on my sofa on Sept 10, 2001.

What I learned through the years though was to begin to notice when change was coming. So in 2001 I had my own internal tower of inferno through out the year leading up to my third near fatal experience. I had become very fatigued and was developing respiratory challenges and then unexplained rashes. I mentioned to my acupuncturist who was treating me that I noticed grey stains forming on the linoleum in my kitchen. She suggested that perhaps my symptoms had a geopathic origin. In other words, my house was making me sick. I called in an environmental consultant and was told that everything in my house was contaminated by the most virulent, toxic fungus there is. Everything would have to be torched that could not survive a 50% bleach solution.

I had to walk away from everything I owned once again. But this time there was no resistance. I walked out the door and lived in a motel for two months and it would be another year of healing and recovery and dim prognoses from doctors who did not know how to treat neurotoxins. I applied some of the visualizations I gave to my patients and began to cooperate with my own healing abilities, choosing to hold a different prediction for my health than what the medical community could provide. I realized that I had chosen at a soul level to walk the path of a wounded healer: that every illness I encountered I had to heal myself without medical intervention. Having this context to hold my journey in allowed me to surrender. I chose to hold my time in transition without my health, a partner, family to depend on, or monetary resources as a time of great prosperity and eventually it did turn.

Although I would never say I have mastered change, I have become very observant and agile, aware that it can all change in a New York minute. I notice when anything in my life is no longer viable, and that includes beliefs along with lifestyle.

Each major change has taught me to listen, observe, and adapt, listen, observe, and adapt. By listening and observing where change is happening subtly, I have learned to prepare for bigger changes coming. When you are prepared, nothing has to be experienced as a crisis. As I write this, I am aware that a big change is coming again. I am being shown through my sleeping dreams, people I am meeting, and environmental disruptions ( my house was hit by a run away car) that change is afoot and that I must detach from my life as I know it.

This road, however steep, has also taught me the true nature of impermanence– things, people, my body all will eventually disintegrate and what really matters is how I spend this moment. Am I risking telling the truth in this moment, even if it requires facing the fear of loss? Telling the truth in my career and relationships has liberated me to reveal a new life blueprint that is constantly evolving and not encased by the faulty layers of cultural programs I inherited.

Mastering the building elements of the seven stages of my book The LifeQuake Phenomenon reconstructs the foundation of your body, mind, and spirit so that it is adaptable to change and what emerges is an authentic connection to this moment.

7 Steps For Dealing With the Current Economic Disaster
By Toni Galardi, Ph.D.

Americans alike are struggling with the current economic disaster. No one group of people is immune to the financial woes this country is currently facing.

Dr. Toni Galardi, better recognized as The LifeQuake™ Doctor, has been consulting her clients on how to cope with these massive multilayered changes since this domino effect began infiltrating our economy. She developed a seven-stage model for preparing for economic insecurity and loss to be used as a tool for creating positive change in tough times. This model has helped thousands of frustrated people reframe their financial and career anxiety as an opportunity for a personal rebirth.

1) Mastering the first stage of a LifeQuake™ requires developing the power of observation. Greed blinds people from seeing when a bull market is beginning its decline. Developing keen observation allows you to anticipate when the tide is turning in the market.

2) Take an inventory of what is now ‘DEFUNC-TIONAL’ and get rid of it. What aspects of your life are you spending money on that are no longer life giving?

3) Detach. What are you holding on to that could bring loss or crisis to your life? Let go of unneeded things before you are forced to.

4) After your life has gone through the radical change you feared, there is an opportunity to examine what security means to you. What beliefs do you hold about yourself that are being challenged by economic loss?

5) Design the new blueprint. We need to design our psyche so we have emotional retrofitting that helps us adapt to the rapid changes of 21st century. Create a lifestyle that has simplicity in both good and bad times.

6) Practice an attitude that every loss has opportunity within it. The people who became wealthy during The Great Depression practiced this by not buying into the cultural conversation and instead asked the question, what do people need now?

7) When we fear future loss in the middle of an economic crisis, stress can lower your immunity to illness. Create a vision, declare that you and those close to you are going to come out of this stronger, healthier, and happier people and then go out and make a change in the world through a random act of kindness.

Her new book, The LifeQuake™ Phenomenon, provides readers with The LifeQuake™ Questionnaire followed by the step-by-step body/mind/spirit information that accompanies all seven stages of the LifeQuake™ Model. Readers are given unique tools to help build a secure inner foundation for adapting to change moment to moment. Visit http://www.lifequake.net for additional LifeQuake™ information and to purchase the book.

Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor
Dr. Toni Galardi

As we embark upon the completion of the opening decade of the second millennium, I urge you to take the first two weeks of 2010 to reflect back on the last nine years and write about what you have learned. Where were you in your consciousness at the turn of the century and where are you now? What have you mastered and what still scares you? The subject of addiction since the death of Michael Jackson and the revelation of Tiger Woods’ behavior has provided an opportunity for us all to look at what substances, thoughts, and beliefs we ourselves are addicted to.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I am a 47-year-old executive and I’ve been married to a woman I love for 10 years. Ever since the Tiger Woods story broke, I have been questioning myself as to whether I am a sex addict. I don’t have a bunch of mistresses, but I do spend at least three cumulative hours a day at work looking at porn on the Internet. I am not having an affair with any real live women but something tells me that this isn’t kosher. I was eating lunch in my favorite restaurant near my office when I picked up this magazine and started reading your column. You seem to know something about addiction so I decided to write you.

Should I be worried? Is the mere watching of porn without my wife’s knowledge a problem? And do you qualify to be a sex addict if you are having sex with yourself?
John L.

Dear John:
The greatest thing about celebrities being busted for addiction issues is that it really opens up a dialogue about forbidden subjects. Inherent in what makes addiction so destructive is the secrecy it often entails. This brings me to you and your wife. The first step in healing any addiction is admitting you have a problem. As long as your wife is in the dark, there is most likely some shame you have about this behavior.

What makes this sex addiction is not the presence of a real woman, but the absence of honesty. Having sex with yourself is not the issue. Spending three leisurely hours on the Internet during a workday indicates that you are not passionate about your work and are displacing that need for professional passion through a sexual release.

I encourage you to work with a career coach and/or an addiction therapist who can assist you in getting to the root of this compulsion and explore the feelings you are avoiding through sheer pleasure seeking. It might also lead to marital counseling to rebuild the intimacy in your relationship that may have been lost through this addiction.

I also would like to recommend a book that has become the seminal work in the addiction field called Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction by Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., It can be obtained at http://www.amazon.com/Out-Shadows-Understanding-Sexual-Addiction/dp/1568386214

Dear Dr. Toni:
As the year closes, I have been thinking about my life. I know they say that in order to change your life you need to have a new vision of it. I am not a visual person and am having trouble seeing myself inside new circumstances. I contracted an illness as a child that rendered me visually impaired. It has been a hard road but I want to change my belief that my life is doomed to never have a relationship. I would like next year to be different for me. Your thoughts?
James H.

Dear James:
Rest assured, James. There are many people who do not process life visually. There are three dominant modes of taking in the world: visually, auditorially, and kinesthetically. People who are predominantly auditory tune into the world through their ears. We see this in musicians or people who have visual impairments. If you process through your hearing, you will listen for messages in how people speak or how your own intuition comes to you. If this is your dominant mode, perhaps the way to experience a new possibility for 2010 is to listen to CDs from people like Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Deepak Chopra or my own that is called The LifeQuake Method. If you are a music lover, listen to your favorite songs and let them inspire you to hear yourself six months from now telling a friend about all the changes you’ve made in your life since the beginning of the year. This begins to override the old program.

If you are kinesthetic, you process your world through your body. You feel your perceptions on a sensory level. If this is your dominant mode, you might try noticing what experiences in your day-to-day life feel uplifting or energizing. Keep a running list for three weeks and then begin to replicate those experiences more often every day. When you think about changing your life in 2010, think about all of the experiences you have had in your life that brought the feelings you want to have in this new year. Spend five minute a day remembering them and allowing for those feelings to be felt as intensely as possible.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a psychotherapist, career coach, public speaker, and author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive Not Just Survive in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. If you have a question you’d like answered, please write to DrToni@LifeQuake.net. For personal consultation, call 310.712.2600.

Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor
Dr. Toni Galardi

Dear Dr. Toni:
The holidays are coming and I am alone again. It isn’t enough to go and volunteer at a homeless shelter. My body is aching to be touched and massage is not enough. I need to feel passion through touch but I don’t want to just go out and have casual sex with a stranger. I have been turning to food as my lover…a lot. What do I do?
Jonesing For Touch

Dear Jonesing:
My heart goes out to you. You are not alone in your experience; at this time of year when people are with their families or a partner, it is particularly poignant if we are without intimate connection.

Because most of us were not raised to give love to ourselves on a physical level, the opportunity here is to learn how to have a sacred sexual relationship with yourself.

How do you like to be touched? If you don’t know, experiment. Begin by touching your arms lightly, stroking them from your shoulder all the way to your hands. How does that feel? Notice what comes up emotionally as you touch different parts of your body. Allow for tender or scary feelings to come up. Most importantly, cherish yourself. If you feel inclined during this process, allow for self-pleasuring in whatever way you need and give that gift of presence, safety and acceptance.

Now, sit in front of the mirror with a candle in the dark and make eye contact. Allow yourself to deeply connect to your soul through your eyes. After about 10 minutes, go back to lying down and imagine you have a lover next to you. Turn to that imaginary lover and look into his or her eyes and feel the connection—the one you had to yourself when you were sitting in front of the mirror. Now imagine he or she is touching you exactly as you would like to be touched. Go through the entire scenario from a place of deep intimacy.

The last step is to bring that connection to your day. Be in your sensuality as you do the dishes, drive your car, eat your lunch and I dare say, as you interact with others. You can be very loving and sensual even with children and animals in a very sacred way if you are in that space with yourself.
Have fun with this!

Dear Dr. Toni:
I am dreading Christmas. I can’t afford to go home and visit my family. My kids want gifts and I don’t have the money to buy them much this year. I’m not sleeping at night because I am self-employed and business is down. Can you enlighten me as to a way to salvage this holiday so that my kids don’t think I’m the L.A. scrooge?
Eager to Transform Bah Humbug

Dear Eager:
Many people are experiencing the same frustration you are this year. If this were the holiday of getting I would say that you are truly handicapped, but it is not. If I could, I would put up a big billboard in every town in America that says, “Remember, the point of GETTING the Christmas spirit is BEING the Christmas spirit.”

The gift of Christmas doesn’t come in a beautifully decorated box with a bow. It is being in the presence of love for yourself and a great model for your children. If you go to LifeQuake.net/media, there is a five-minute video from “Good Day LA” where I talk about how to inexpensively model for your kids the true spirit of the holiday through giving back to those who have even less than you do.
We are in a massive evolutionary shift on our planet. It is requiring us to leave behind the old tribal mores for love. This economic contraction is here to assist us in releasing our old ideas of what makes us happy. Something needs to change if we are going to evolve. Transforming our old inner concepts of Christmas that reek of a Hallmark TV afternoon special into our own version of It’s a Wonderful Life (watch this film if you haven’t seen it) allows us to see that our value to our children is in who we are, not what toys they get from us.

Your children take their cues from you. If you clear out the guilt you are feeling about not being Santa Claus and choose to stand for being love, not doing love through material buying, they will get it and follow suit.

When we are brave and break from cultural programming, it is only then that our creativity can blossom. For example, go through the events section of your newspaper and find out what free concerts or other Christmas-themed events are happening that are geared toward kids. Make it a family project to go through old toys and clothing that are no longer being used. Donate them to a charity that supports homeless families and take your children with you so that they can experience the contribution.

To all of my readers: Create a new Norman Rockwell painting in your mind’s eye for the possibility of who you and your children can be this holiday season.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker, and the author of her new book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (Not Just Survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. Dr. Galardi works by phone internationally with people in transition and can be reached at 310.712.2600. To submit questions for “Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor,” contact DrToni@LifeQuake.net.

I have often been asked in interviews on the book tour for The LifeQuake Phenomenon how I came to write this book. The story behind it is quite dramatic but more than an actual book, the twenty year journey behind it not only radically changed me but called me to my mission. If you are floundering right now as to what your life purpose is, begin to notice what drives you. What over the course of your life have you been most inspired or passionate about? You may find your life’s most passionate moments form a theme.

Long before my LifeQuake journey began, in my second job out of college, I was hired to teach students, women’s groups, nurses, etc. tips on how to negotiate the world that would assist in preventing sexual assault. This idea of crisis prevention would follow me all my adult years even when I seemed to be unable to prevent massive crises in my own life.

If you are in career transition or confusion right now, take some time to notice what do you care about? Is it rescuing animals from lab testing, providing resources for the homeless, or simply getting behind advocacy on issues you care about.

The holidays can be a great time to not just volunteer but discover what is your driving desire that has nothing to do with a sale at Bloomingdale’s or having the perfect Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving or Christmas.

For me, when I lose touch with what I am truly passionate about, food becomes a great lure. You may find that you too have addictions you turn to when you’re bored, frustrated, or depressed.

If you are experiencing economic contraction or loneliness once again this holiday season, the best way to stay out of the “lack conversation” is to sit quietly and ride the wave of your feelings. Where are they stuck in your body? If you stay with it and not go to outer distractions, it will dissolve more quickly.

Once you release the anxiety or depression, take 15 minutes a day to sit quietly and ask the question, ” What is the opportunity that this time alone or career challenge is presenting, what am I being called to do now that I wouldn’t have considered if I were still in that job or relationship?” You may find that as you go about your day, the answer will show up in what you care about or an opportunity may come in that is a step in the reinvention process. I am including here a link to my latest blog that was an interview done with me on my journey to finding my mission and ultimately writing a book. http://www.lifequake.net/2009/11/20/the-lifequake-phenomenon-interviewed-on-fascinating-authors

The holidays can be more than great food and an exchange of gifts. Mindfulness can offer the greatest gift of all: your next life purpose. Happy Thanksgiving!

Sincerely,
Dr. Toni Galardi
“The LifeQuake Doctor”

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What excites you most about your book’s topic? Why did you choose it?

Author: What excites me most about my topic is that I created a model for helping people overcome the fear of change that can have a global effect as well. If we learn to anticipate when cycles in our lives are ending, we don’t have to bring in catastrophe to motivate us to change. We can end such disasters like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina if we change how we negotiate change in our own lives. It also excites me that I have been able to use this model with individual clients, public seminars, in big business, and as a relapse prevention model in chemical dependency treatment facilities. I want people to be saved from the unnecessary suffering I went through to get this message.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: How long did the book take you from start to finish?

Author: The book itself took three years. The journey of writing the first proposal began twenty years ago.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What aspect of writing the book did you find particularly challenging?

Author: Editing out stories I had collected from all the interviews I had done to keep the number of pages manageable.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What surprised you the most about the book writing process?

Author: How much of it is editing.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Did you have any favorite experiences when writing your book?

Author: Up until 2008, every time I wrote a book proposal from 1990 to 2007, my life would go into another LifeQuake and the depth of the book would expand.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What do you hope your readers will gain from reading your book?

Author: I hope they will feel inspired to experience their LifeQuake as a rebirth not a disaster and that with this seven stage roadmap, it will get easier and easier to anticipate when to make changes and become more agile when dealing with sudden changes.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What projects are you currently working on?

Author: Most of my writing involves blogging, articles, media interviews to promote this book but I have an idea for my next book which has to de with redefining sexuality in America.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Is writing your sole career? If not, what else do you do?

Author: I am a career coach, psychotherapist, advice columnist, corporate trainer and public speaker.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Did you do any research for your books, or did you write from experience?

Author: Both. I did a lot of research into evolutionary psychology, conducted over 100 interviews, and read what had been said about mastering change in order to show the distinction in my model that addresses reconstructing the whole human at the body, mind, and spirit level. And I shared my experience.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: How did you come up with your title?

Author: I needed a word that was a metaphor for the process that interfaced humans and the earth: The earth has a core. We have a core. The earth has layers around it with faultlines running through it. We have layers of faulty programs from the old tribal paradigms. So when the soul wakes up and demands living authentically, it creates pressure in these fault lines that can translate into outer crisis if the person’s ego resists making changes. I called it The LifeQuake Phenomenon because this awakening is taking place globally. We are in a massive, collective shift that looks like economic collapse.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What books have influenced you the most?

Author: Pema Chodron’s “When Things Fall Apart” to explain the importance of resting into groundlessness and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning that teaches one to have a soul filled context for suffering and loss that give one’s life meaning.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Who was your publisher and why did you choose them?

Author: My publisher is Wheatmark Publishing and I chose them because I wanted a free hand in writing my book while getting guidance where I needed it. They provide great hands on assistance and graphic designers for the cover. I was very pleased with how the book looks aesthetically to complement the content.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Tell us a little bit about your book.

Author: The LifeQuake Phenomenon is a body, mind, and spirit method for overcoming the fear of change, eliminating crisis as a catalyst for moving on, and learning how to thrive not just survive radical upheaval.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What inspired you to create a work of nonfiction?

Author: My life and the lives of the 100 people I interviewed. “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What did you do to prepare for writing your book?

Author: I experienced physical challenges, financial ruin, and confronted addiction issues. I took a journey that Jungians call “the descent into the abyss” that involved three near fatal experiences and a birth into my authentic self. I lived this model and wrote 7 versions of a book proposal over the course of 20 years.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: How did you develop your idea for this book?

Author: I saw that there was a pattern of how change occurs when a cycle in our psyche and lives are coming to a close and a construct for developing one’s new life purpose out of the chaos that ensues. I interviewed people on a talk show I did for two years, spoke on the subject of crisis and change at conferences, conventions, and workshops and did live radio as a guest. The feedback I received confirmed I was on the right track.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What can we look forward to in your next book?

Author: It is still marinating inside of me but I am musing the idea that we have a very schizophrenic approach to sexuality in this country and it has taken a toll on our body images. The shadow side of our Puritanism is the proliferation of pornography and child sexual abuse. We need a new model that has more respect and nurturing paid to the physical body.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Is there anything we haven’t covered that you would like to include?

Author: We are in an exciting time. What looks like chaos, ie. climate disasters, economic contraction, and the rise of addiction are all part of an evolutionary shift on the planet that will truly unite us as a global family. Everyone I interviewed shared that without their LifeQuakes they would never have expanded their consciousness into the awareness they stepped into. However, people need a road map and an inspiring context for holding the chaotic transitions going on in their lives so that they choose evolution over trying to hold onto the past. The LifeQuake Phenomenon delivers that model and roadmap!

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Thank you for taking the time to be part of this interview!

To learn more about the book and author, please visit: http://www.lifequake.net/

Second acts
Some find upside in downsizing, as layoffs open new doors
New York Post
By VICKI SALEMI

Last Updated: 9:17 PM, November 2, 2009

Posted: 1:41 AM, November 2, 2009
When life handed lemons to Courtney Adams and Chris Merritt, they didn’t make lemonade. They made lasagna instead. Downsized within one week of each other last December and three weeks after signing their lease, the Harlem couple — she a former brand director in the music industry and he a former employee of a company that produced conferences — concocted an idea: Why not develop a business around Adams’ love for cooking?

“If there’s a passion you’ve always wanted to pursue, I can’t imagine a better opportunity to do it,” says Adams.

“You can’t spend 24 hours a day looking for a job, so you might as well make the best of your time trying to make some money on your own.”

So they created a business plan, developed a Web site and launched Uptown Comfort (“Good Food for Bad Times”), a comfort-food catering business with favorites like barbecued chicken sliders, lasagna and cornbread.

“Being unemployed has been a truly defining experience,” says Merritt. “After so many years working with many parameters and expectations, you suddenly are free to define those parameters for yourself.”

For Dan Nainan of Chelsea, a former strategic relations manager at Intel, getting the ax meant being free to hang up the corporate suit and pick up a mike. He’d started flexing his comedic muscles by performing on weekends, as his job took him around the world doing technical demos in front of large crowds. After he was given the pink slip, the action plan became a no-brainer: Nainan pursued stand-up comedy full-throttle.

Since then, he’s been booked solid. He’s performed at the Democratic National Convention, did three Obama inaugural events in January and just shot a commercial for Apple, to name a few. And he owes it to an event that at the time seemed anything but a boon.

“I loved my job and wouldn’t have had the guts to leave on my own,” he says.

Not every layoff victim ends up finding a blessing in disguise in a pink slip, but such experiences are a lot more common than one might think, says Rachelle J. Canter, president of the executive coaching firm RJC Associates and author of “Make the Right Career Move.”

“How many of us have been miserable in jobs but afraid to make a change because we don’t know how to land a new job and are often too scared to try?” she says.

When she did a survey several years ago of employees who’d lost jobs, “the vast majority said losing the job was the best thing that ever happened to them because they needed a kick in the pants to find jobs they liked much more.”

On a roll

For Michael Dolan of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the kick in the pants came the day he was downsized from his job as a publicist for a technology software company in SoHo.

“I was totally blindsided,” he said. “Things seemed like business as usual and then, boom! No job.”

Disillusioned and worried about paying the bills, he nonetheless realized he’d been given an opportunity to focus on his love for bicycle racing, something his intensive work schedule hadn’t allowed.

“For the past six months I’ve been training two hours a day and racing competitively on weekends. I’m in the best shape of my life, completely destressing and having a blast,” he says.

And biking has done more than tone his thigh muscles — it’s opened up a possible new career.

Having discovered a love for taking photos of bike races, Dolan recently landed his first paid photography gig, and is considering pursuing that line of work full-time.

“I’ve been shooting as many events as I can, sending out my photos to magazines and Web sites, and improving my post-production skills by learning Photoshop and Lightroom,” he says.

“Getting laid off feels like you’re being pushed off a cliff. I figured I would just make the best of it. Put yourself out there and you may discover a hidden skill.”

Whether he knew it or not, Dolan was following the advice given to pink-slippers by psychotherapist Dr. Toni Galardi, the author of “The LifeQuake Phenomenon,” which addresses taking advantage of times of crisis to make life changes. If you’ve got a hobby or an outlet that you enjoy, pursue it; if you don’t, find one.

“The key during career transition is to stay passionate,” she says. “The vibe you give off will attract opportunities if you’re doing something you love every day besides job searching.”

For Suzette Banzo, being able to follow her bliss was exactly what was missing from her life during the 16 years she spent working for Verizon, first in quality assurance and then doing budget analysis.

“It was impossible to get time off from my job to pursue anything of interest to me,” she says.

Getting downsized took care of that issue, and it led her in an unexpected direction — modeling. It started when she was approached at a fund-raising event by the owner of a training program for plus-size models, who suggested she could do well in the business.

“I thought she was crazy,” says Banzo — but soon she was on the catwalk. Since then she’s shot a commercial for Kodak and walked the runway for Full Figure Fashion Week, which landed her a gig as a signature model for Hearts Desire Jewelry, and a role as the company’s East Coast sales representative.

“The designer tapped into my marketing degree, and we now collaborate on promotions and marketing strategies,” she says. Once frustrated as a “creative person in a finance job,” she says, “I’ve spent the last year being everything I had put on hold for far too long.”

Even for those who are content in their careers and aim to return to their industry, a layoff can provide an opportunity to do something meaningful.

Rob Morrison, a former NBC news anchor, learned this when he was bought out of his contract last year, and found “an unexpected gift” in staying home with his 3-year-old son Jack.

Something else unexpected came out of it, when the 20-year veteran of broadcast news launched a popular blog on Huffington Post called “Daddy Diaries: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Anchorman.”

“To have an outlet like that was key, and gave me a break from Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse,” says the Upper West Sider. Plus, he notes, it was a great way to keep his name out there.

Back on his feet, now with CBS2, Morrison looks back at his 16-month sabbatical as a mitzvah.

“I logged a lot of playground hours and got to watch my toddler turn into a little boy,” he says. “It was fascinating.”

His blog came to an end when his unemployed days did, but he’s since been contacted by a filmmaker who’s doing a documentary on the recession, and is interested in featuring Morrison, and possibly using him as a writer or narrator.

Shifting gears

As the job market opens up, what happens to blossoming side gigs? In some cases, like Morrison’s, they may fade into the background. Merritt of Uptown Comfort landed a new job at Macy’s as special-events manager, but is still helping out with strategizing for the catering business.

Adams is still on the hunt. And she hopes her experience starting and running the business is an extra selling point on her resume, where it’s listed in the skills and achievements section. In an interview, she says, “I’d present it as a learning experience that culminated from not being employed and needing to direct my talents to do something productive.”

Such ambition and drive is likely to impress a prospective employer, notes Canter.

“Is there an employer who dislikes initiative or who prefers candidates that lounged around the house or perfected their golf game while laid-off?” she asks.

While Adams hopes to keep the business going even should she land full-time work, she says she’d be quick to tell a potential employer that she’d hand over management to one of her consultants or fold the business if there were a conflict.

For her part, Banzo hopes to continue finding ways to use her marketing skills within the plus-size modeling business, and is trying other things as well, including writing for a trade magazine that covers the industry. She’s not entirely sure where this new road is headed, but has no doubt it’s a detour she’s glad to have taken, even if it wasn’t initially by choice.

“I feel like I’m finally living my life,” she says.

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When life handed lemons to Courtney Adams and Chris Merritt, they didn’t make lemonade. They made lasagna instead.

Downsized within one week of each other last December and three weeks after signing their lease, the Harlem couple — she a former brand director in the music industry and he a former employee of a company that produced conferences — concocted an idea: Why not develop a business around Adams’ love for cooking?

“If there’s a passion you’ve always wanted to pursue, I can’t imagine a better opportunity to do it,” says Adams. “You can’t spend 24 hours a day looking for a job, so you might as well make the best of your time trying to make some money on your own.”
SALAD DAYS: Laid off from the music industry and looking for a job, Courtney Adams decided to parlay her love of cooking into a catering business.
Lorenzo Ciniglio/Freelance
SALAD DAYS: Laid off from the music industry and looking for a job, Courtney Adams decided to parlay her love of cooking into a catering business.

So they created a business plan, developed a Web site and launched Uptown Comfort (“Good Food for Bad Times”), a comfort-food catering business with favorites like barbecued chicken sliders, lasagna and cornbread.

“Being unemployed has been a truly defining experience,” says Merritt. “After so many years working with many parameters and expectations, you suddenly are free to define those parameters for yourself.”

For Dan Nainan of Chelsea, a former strategic relations manager at Intel, getting the ax meant being free to hang up the corporate suit and pick up a mike. He’d started flexing his comedic muscles by performing on weekends, as his job took him around the world doing technical demos in front of large crowds. After he was given the pink slip, the action plan became a no-brainer: Nainan pursued stand-up comedy full-throttle.

Since then, he’s been booked solid. He’s performed at the Democratic National Convention, did three Obama inaugural events in January and just shot a commercial for Apple, to name a few. And he owes it to an event that at the time seemed anything but a boon.

“I loved my job and wouldn’t have had the guts to leave on my own,” he says.

Not every layoff victim ends up finding a blessing in disguise in a pink slip, but such experiences are a lot more common than one might think, says Rachelle J. Canter, president of the executive coaching firm RJC Associates and author of “Make the Right Career Move.”

“How many of us have been miserable in jobs but afraid to make a change because we don’t know how to land a new job and are often too scared to try?” she says.

When she did a survey several years ago of employees who’d lost jobs, “the vast majority said losing the job was the best thing that ever happened to them because they needed a kick in the pants to find jobs they liked much more.”

*

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/jobs/second_acts_NgA55jRydcHTeGjNqgeFGO/0#ixzz0WBWhBuIn

Ask the LifeQuake Doctor
November 2009 Column
“Whatever is flexible and flowing will tend to grow. Whatever is rigid and blocked will wither and die.” from the Tao Te Ching

Dear Dr. Toni:
I don’t know if you work with interpreting dreams but I have been having a dream that keeps repeating itself. I am in an old house and some of the rooms are closed off and some of the rooms are scary. They have dead bodies in them. There is however, one room that is like an attic that is also closed off but there is light peering from under the door. I seem to be afraid to open it, though.
In my waking life, I work in the helping professions but am in burnout. I don’t want to do it anymore and yet am clueless as to what to do next. Is there a connection with this dream? Can you help?
Deborah

Dear Deborah:
Actually, in my private practice I do work with dreams. I was trained as a Jungian therapist and Carl Jung believed many of our fears and aspirations are played out in the dreamtime. So, let’s look at this dream. When you analyze a dream, before you get into figuring out who the people represent, an important character, you might say is the landscape. In your dream, it plays a very predominant role but even when it is mere back drop, it is important.
The landscape here is an old house. The house represents the self. The cellar is often the unconscious, the main floor the conscious, and the attic or upper level is the super conscious mind. Then there are individual rooms that can represent places we store memories particularly if those rooms contain dead bodies as this does.
I would suggest that you do this exercise: sit quietly, spend five minutes breathing slowly in and out to get centered. Now go back into the dream’s first scene. What feeling did it evoke? As you proceed to recall the dream, notice if the feeling tone changes. When you open the door that has the dead bodies, go intot he room if you can and ask the body what it represents. What is dead that you have kept stored away and haven’t properly buried? Venture into the kitchen and see what is there. The kitchen represents how we nourish ourselves. Is the refrigerator full or empty. Does the stove work? This can represent how much fire we have inside to make any changes.
Now walk up the stairs to the room that has a light under the door. Ask to be given a spiritual guide and a key to open the door. The guide will be with you throughout the process and keep you safe. Whatever you see and feel when you open the door is a key to your future. This dream has come to inspire you to take action – confront the skeletons in the closet and connect to your soul’s purpose. Be courageous and allow a passionate life to emerge through risking opening the door to lighten your consciousness.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I don’t know if you can help me. My problem is not like most of the people who write you. I know what my calling is, I just seem to be dried up creatively.
I am a writer in recovery. While I was drinking, it was easy for me to access the muse. Now that I am sober, I find that I have a chronic writer’s block. My career is in jeopardy if I don’t get past this. I am not meeting my deadlines. What should I do?
Dry and Dried Up in L.A.

Dear Reader:
There is an expression in A.A. – “terminal uniqueness”. When an addict thinks their problem is special, not like other people’s or if they don’t feel they can relate to coming to AA meetings because their addiction is unique.
You don’t say whether you go to A.A. meetings but if you did, you would find you would be in good company, especially around those who are new to recovery and think their imagination, like a genie, emerges from a bottle. When you speak to writers who have been in recovery for a long time and who work the twelve steps, you will find that they often discover that not only can the muse come clean and sober but that they find they have become more productive not less.

I am not saying that Alcoholics Anonymous is for everyone but I would suggest that if you got sober by yourself, that you attend a yoga or meditation class that can show you how to use your breath to expand the mind and open to universal consciousness. When we go beyond our limited minds and surrender to this vast intelligence, so much more is possible. A daily ritual before you go to your computer is to open to possibility and call in the muse with reverence. Asking to be shown what to write creates a humility and a surrender to the “gods of imagination”. I also recommend a book – The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It is a great book for any artist suffering from creative blocks.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker, and the author of her new book: The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. Dr. Galardi works by phone internationally with people in transition. For those seeking private consultation, she can be reached at 310.712.2600. To submit questions for “Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor”, contact Dr. Toni Galardi through her email address: DrToni@LifeQuake.net.

In the past four days I have been contacted by three people who all were in vehicular accidents: two auto, one motorcycle. In the midst of this I was a guest on a television talk show called View From the Bay. see
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=view_from_the_bay/everything_else&id=7079894. I referenced having had three car accidents in 6 days and have certainly referenced it in my public speaking and other blogs. I realized however, that although I go into more depth about the symbolism of car accidents in my book The LifeQuake Phenomenon, I haven’t discussed in greater depth what they can symbolize in my blog.

Have you ever had a dream where you are the driver of a car and the brakes go out at high speed or you are a passenger and the driver is navigating recklessly all over the road? The first of these can mean you feel your life is out of control and moving too fast. The latter can mean you feel that someone else is in control, recklessly in the driver’s seat of your life. Cars in dreams often symbolize how we are moving through our lives. In the second stage of one of my client’s LifeQuake, he received four parking tickets in a two week period and then his car brake disengaged while parked and rolled into the street. My interpretation of this was that he was over parked in his life and needed to move on from a career he no longer wanted.

In my case, I needed to leave my marriage and was hit from behind three times to push me forward. You really know you need to move on when you think the answer is to stop driving and then get hit while you’re a passenger in the back seat! This was the third and final experience that got me to realize I was holding onto a life that was over.

In a city like Los Angeles, people are very identified with their cars. A car accident can represent a structural change. When a person incurs a back or neck injury, they see a chiropractor unless it requires the medical intervention of an orthopedic surgeon. The opportunity that seeing a chiropractor during a time of great transition provides is that you have to get off “the hamster wheel” and lay still while someone re-aligns your neck and spine three times a week for six weeks. The combination of this pause and restructuring can be used to contemplate the meaning of your accident and what it is trying to tell you.

I would suggest that any illness can be used to turn inward and ask what the function of this is for your life. Besides car accidents, I have found that when I’ve had the flu or a head cold that kept me in bed, I would do this little exercise.
Imagine there is a beautiful ball of light three feet above your head. Breathe in this light through the top of your head. Focus its energy on your neck and spine if you’ve had an accident or are in pain there. If your chest or head is congested ( such as in a cold) focus the light there. For five minutes, just breathe a warm, golden light into your body and then bring your awareness to your heart. Breathe the light into your heart. Now, once you feel a little peace and quiet there, imagine a spiritual guide that you either see or feel the presence of. Ask the guide this question, ” what do you want me to know right now? What is the next step I need to be taking in my life? And then listen patiently for the answer. It may come immediately and it may come at a later time when you least expect it.

When you are back on the mend, you will now be more awake and pro-active. The key to no longer needing wake up calls like car accidents and illnesses is to develop a daily practice of turning within and asking this question: what is my next step? and then decide. Everything comes from your decision. It is all you need to know because it is all you can do next.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, transitions coach, and public speaker. She works with people all over the world by phone. 310-712-2600.