The LifeQuake Blog

Who’d a thunk it.

The Academy Awards has become a humanitarian event. There was a real change, a real transformation in the focus of the Oscar. Everyone was so generous to their fellow actors and crew. I couldn’t help but think that the feeling in the country under our present leadership has trickled down to even the most egocentrically-oriented industry in the world: show business.  

Say what you will about our president’s first one hundred days, but he is a gracious, generous human being and his influence  showed on the night of all nights in Hollywood.

Something else was interesting as well.

With the change in the date of the Academy Awards in recent years to February, this was the first time that the holiest day in the Hindu calendar began while the Awards were being celebrated in Hollywood. The first new moon in February always kicks off Shivaratri. How ironic it was that the film Slum Dog Millionaire would win in a landslide of awards on this most auspicious night.

Further history was made on Oscar night when an award winner Jai Ho who won for Best Song, uttering what is considered the most powerful word in India, “Om.” 

Yes, there is a transformation occurring in America, but like a benevolent computer virus, this good will is traveling very fast across the globe. It just goes to show you that in our economic recession, we could learn a thing or two from the Indians across the ocean. The power of not having much in material possessions can develop the spirit and tenacity to never give up. The brown skinned people are getting their due.

Yes, change is coming to America and what happens here happens everywhere!

Dr. Toni Galardi has written a book dedicated to assisting people in overcoming the fear of change in their own lives so that their greatest destiny can unfold. The book,The LifeQuake Phenomenon:How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheavalis now available atwww.LifeQuake.net

Movies.

I love movies. They are truly my favorite art form. 

When a film stays with you long after, revealing multiple meanings the more you think about it, then that is a great film. Let me be clear here. I am a psychotherapist. I have no ties or investments to the film industry. Of all the great films that came out in 2008, The Reader struck me the most because it speaks to my favorite subject – change or the lack thereof.

In this film, we get to see the cost of refusing to act when it is the morally right thing to do. The film moves back and forth between the late 1950’s and the mid 90’s. The two main characters, both German encapsulate the mores of the German people. Both adhere to the tribe’s spoken and unspoken rules.

The character Kate Winslet plays, does what she is told to do as a guard in a concentration camp and the lead male character, complies silently 21 years later when he conceals information that could have saved her because it would have meant exposing himself as having fraternized with a war criminal.  She also refuses to save herself because it would have meant exposing a part of herself she was ashamed of.

Both pay a huge price for concealing their shame and we as viewers see the cost when one refuses to act independently from the tribe.  But something else happens. We then see their individual journey of enlightenment played out through the metaphor of books. The interesting but sad character is the woman whose mother was in the camps and refuses to forgive Kate’s character even after her death. Had this been someone who was a patient of mine, I would have directed her to Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning.  Frankl, a camp survivor understood that forgiveness is the only way to redeem tragic loss for one’s self.

My last thought on this film is this question: Where do you and I comply with the mores of your tribe at the cost of living a life of meaning and truth? This is my journey and the journey for anyone whose Grail is found through a LifeQuake.

Freud once defined neurosis as an unconscious conflict between two opposing forces. Our new president won on the message that change is coming to America. The American people want change and, yet, the biggest fear in the majority of individuals is the fear of change in their own lives. So what’s up with that?

Well, people want change to be out there. They want the government to fix our economy, end the war, and rebuild the education system. However, what we also know is that to exact a tipping point of real change in America and across the world is for every human being to choose to live within the means of their income, to choose peaceful resolution instead of strife within their families and communities, and to get more involved in the education of all  of our children.

When we demand of ourselves that which we expect of the “powers at be” who run our country, we have a chance to change the world exponentially. But giving up old habits, addictions, and just plain fear of the unknown is not an easy task for most people. The talk coming off the inauguration is great and it can be done, but we have to work with our fears not just one day at a time, but one moment at a time.

As 2009 progresses and the media touts the statistics on how many people are unemployed, how many points Wall Street fell, or you hear people talking about their fear for the future, it does not inspire pro-active service.

So, the real change comes in having the courage to speak out for a different reality in the face of the collective neurosis and speak it daily. If you work with your own emotions and clear out the anxiety, then and only then can you meet the call to action everyone is talking about. When you take on your own fears and make changes in your own life, you not only liberate yourself;  the whole world is freed.

I have developed a revolutionary body, mind and spirit technology for helping people transform the fear of change and create the life they have always wanted. My new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval will be out in late February.

Until then, I invite you to contact me personally for a free consultation on how to bring positive change to your own life. DrToni@LifeQuake.net.

“The times they are a-changin’.” Looking back now, Bob Dylan’s lyric is remarkable for its sense of understatement. Not only are the times a-changin,’ but they are doing so with increased speed, greater force, and deeper magnitude. Look at the world we live in—for most of us, there is a constant demand to learn new technology just to live and work at the most basic level. Travel has become a security-driven nightmare, and climactic changes are arguably reaching startling levels. Is there an aspect of your life that isn’t subject to wholesale change with all its attendant chaos? Given the current state of things, I find chaos a relevant topic, one worth examining more fully.

In ancient Greek mythology, chaos was the primordial womb from which the first gods and goddesses were born. Gaia, the first deity, emerged from this dark void space. Symbolically, she would come to represent Mother Earth, the very stuff from which we evolved. So, in a manner of speaking, you could say that chaos is in our DNA. In the world of quantum physics, once organisms reach their maximum structural potential they burst into chaos, only to reorganize at a higher level. A more readily visible example of this actually comes by way of the cycle of the four seasons: things that come to life in the spring flourish in the summer, only to die in the autumn. After falling to the ground, they decompose, fertilizing the very ground they came from. Yet when cycles end in our lives and things start to deconstruct, we resist the change and resultant chaos, even though it is every bit a natural part of life as the passing seasons.

So, what is the impact of that resistance? More importantly, how is it manifesting for you?

Well, maybe you’ve recently noticed a distinct shift in the nature of your relationships with others. Or perhaps you’ve become aware of a loss of passion and fire in your life, a feeling that, come to think of it, has been around a lot longer than you care to remember. Even more difficult, maybe what you’ve been feeling lately isn’t even that discernible, you might say it’s like a spiritual itch you can’t quite scratch.

These can all be early signs of what I call a LifeQuake™.

Hi, my name is Dr. Toni Galardi. I coined the term ‘LifeQuake’ to describe a phenomenon I have witnessed in both the lives of my clients and seminar attendees, as well as in my own personal life. I began to see symptoms that looked like clinical depression, anxiety, and addiction issues but were actually paradoxical signs of spiritual awakening – an awakening to a life led by your intuition with a career that’s a calling not just a job.

So, what exactly is a LifeQuake, and how does it show up? If we see ourselves as microcosms of the planet, then we too each have a core encased in layers. Your Wholy Self is in your core being, the highest manifestation of the person you really are. However, it is typically buried under layers made up of societal programs, familial indoctrination, and even religious beliefs, which keeps it from reaching full expression at the surface of your consciousness. When your Wholy Self stirs, your core starts to rumble, softly at first, but if left unattended, it does so with ever-deepening intensity. If you resist that intensification by ignoring it, pressure builds in the fault lines of your psyche. As in an earthquake, so it goes with a LifeQuake—the longer the quaking, the more devastating the fallout. When left to reach its most intense level of resistance, the tremors within you will bring catastrophe into your life from which there is no retreat—now you have to change, like it or not.

Can you relate to this? write to me about your experiences.