Freedom Center brings you FREE Auricular Acupuncture Clinic

Every MONDAY 430 pm -6pm Quaker Space, 43 Center St. left side entrance up stairs second floor downtown Northampton, MA

Map to Northampton clinic

Oregon Mental health counselor Ron Unger discusses his experiences with altered states of consciousness, and how cognitive behavioral therapy can be a useful alternative to medication and mainstream psychiatric treatment. Ron is a longtime organizer with the human rights organization Mindfreedom International, and his website is http://www.recoveryfromschizophrenia.org/blog/

Clinical Psychologist David Lukoff talks about his madness experience and the spiritual transformation it triggered. David went on to become a leading figure in the field of Transpersonal Psychology and works to bring greater spiritual awareness into mainstream mental health practice. http://www.spiritualcompetency.com/

UK video activist and writer Mel Gunasena on her mystical experiences and forced psychiatric hospitalization. Mel is the director of Evolving Minds, a documentary film about spiritual experiences and what gets labeled "psychosis" by the mental health system. She also discusses the art therapy project in Sri Lanka she helped found to assist traumatized tsunami-affected children. See a trailer for the film at www.undercurrents.org/minds and check out the Sri Lanka project at www.art-2-art.org/.

Recovery leader and survivor Ed Knight talks about Zen, Insight, and Christian meditation and "schizophrenia," including discrimination against people with psychiatric labels at meditation retreats, the link between spiritual awakening and madness, and living beyond "managing symptoms." www.professored.com
and www.recoverycircles.org.

Warsaw Poland psychologist Bogna Szymkiewicz discusses "wounded states of consciousness," what the mind and body do when trauma is activated, as well as how trauma affects our relationships and what we can do to recover. www.bogna.info.

Counselor and teacher Joe Goodbread discusses his more than 25 years experience working with madness and extreme states using Process Oriented Psychology, an innovative approach based in the work of Carl Jung and developed by Arnold Mindell. Joe describes listening to the meaning in experience, helping people unfold their states, taoism, dreams, rank differences, and working with the body. Joe is a senior faculty at the Process Work institute and author of The Dreambody Toolkit and Radical Intercourse. www.aamindell.net, www.processwork.org