Dear Listeners,

Welcome to this second entry of a two-part series featuring our dear heart friend, the Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. We will be listening once again to his teachings on tsewa—a Tibetan term which most closely translates in English to “love.” If love is an aspect of life in which you find any value and in which you’d like to gain more clarity, you’ll want to hear Rinpoche’s gentle, open-hearted, and very practical guidance. And if you’re listening from the perspective of someone interested in mental health, this is all about the radical mind health that’s abundantly available to us as human beings.

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Dear Readers,

Tsewa is a Tibetan word that we explored in WJ Entries 009 & 010 with the guidance of Buddhist teacher Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. Tsewa can be most simply described as the warmth and tenderness we feel toward others. Rinpoche encourages us to see Tsewa as an experience we should cherish and one we should learn to trust as the skill most responsible for assuring our own happiness and the happiness of others. Kongtrul Rinpoche’s thoughts and instructions on the topic are far from simplistic, but rather deeply reasoned and profoundly potent in the face of the polarity, conflict, distrust and meanness that many of us perceive in today’s social interaction.

Rinpoche’s book on the subject of tsewa, Training in Tenderness (Shambhala Publications, 2018) is both friendly and powerful. It understands and remedies the pitfalls of modern life and how we often confuse cynicism and survival instincts as somehow being a necessary force behind our personal defenses. The book’s sub-title, The Radical Openness of Heart That Can Change The World, is the title we’ve taken for this Journal Entry, and is a particularly appropriate description of the book’s concluding chapter, The World and the Future, which we have excerpted here.

We hope you find it as inspiring and personally empowering as we do.

TSEWA!

Michael Velasco

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Dear Friends,

In one of our earliest Journal entries, 005, we introduced the existence of four principles as the core of the Windhorse approach. That entry focused on the first principle: the notion of Basic Sanity—and any mental health challenge as an overlay to that sanity. In our most recent entry, #022 – “Creating Environments of Sanity”, Chuck Knapp brought us to the second principle: We are inseparable from our environment. 

Here, Chuck hosts fellow Windhorse psychotherapists and team supervisors Gabrielle Bershen, Marta Aarli, and Jack Gipple in a discussion about this principle. You might notice that this podcast is a bit longer than usual. Our participants start by laying some necessary groundwork about basic sanity (and relatedly, basic goodness) of the individual, drawing on a variety of metaphors. The key point is that, at Windhorse, a client is not viewed as a constellation of symptoms or problems. Instead, that person is accepted as fundamentally sane, which may be obscured in various ways due to their confusion.

That paves the way for our participants to consider environment, and our inseparability from it. The Windhorse approach places home as the locus of recovery. Thus, creating an environment that rouses the health of all, through the most mundane tasks and daily schedule, is critical. Gabrielle, Jack, Marta, and Chuck offer insights and examples of how working this way—from the outside in—can reach clients who need time to develop trust in their particular team before opening up about their deepest struggles. These senior clinicians also address how the state of the home at any given time provides a window into a client’s mental world.

We hope these ideas resonate with you as you reflect on how environment either supports or obstructs your own clarity and calmness of mind. And we welcome your comments.

Thank you for listening,

Lori S. Heintzelman

 

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Dear Readers,

Beginning in the admissions process at Windhorse, when we first meet a potential client and their family, we often encounter a blizzard of variables around how someone’s extreme state experience came to be.

We attempt to understand this from their perspective, doing what we can to learn the language of the individual and family system, all with the intention of determining whether we think we can possibly be helpful to them—whether or not they become our clients. Of course, at the same time, our potential clients are trying to figure out if we look reliable, whether we know what we’re doing, and if they’re interested in being in this kind of relationship with us. For these people looking for help, naturally flowing through this conversation is intense hope, fear, and uncertainty. And stated or unstated is always the question, “How does this work?” [Read more…]

Dear Friends,

In our previous post, WJ 020, we shared an excerpt from the recent book, The Logic of Faith, by Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, Buddhist teacher/student, writer, and long-time friend of Windhorse Community Services. Because of our contemplative roots, we often seek out the wisdom of those who ardently pursue the spiritual path of Dharma (i.e. teachings of the Buddha) to provide inspiration for our work.

This post features part 1 of a conversation about that word “faith”—the discomfort and misapprehension it gives rise to. Elizabeth is joined by Gretchen Kahre (Windhorse Senior Clinician, and Elizabeth’s fellow student and close friend), and Chuck Knapp (Windhorse Co-Director). Besides allowing us to hear about Elizabeth’s initiation and evolution as a student/teacher of the Dharma, the dialogue invites us to reconsider our understanding of faith. It implicates faith as an essential component of Windhorse work; what appears unreliable about the world and our own minds is something we take up with our clients. As Elizabeth and company address the interdependent relationship of all things, the way to engage with the complexities of extreme mind states is illuminated.

Thank you for listening, and in this holiday season, we wish you joy and peace.

Lori S. Heintzelman

Elizabeth has studied and practiced Mahayana Buddhism, as well as the Vajrayana tradition of the Longchen Nyingthik, for over 30 years under the guidance of her teacher and husband, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. She has been intimately involved with Rinpoche’s work in bringing Buddhist wisdom to the West, in particular the development of Mangala Shri Bhuti, an organization dedicated to the study and practice of the Longchen Nyingthik lineage. She is also a founding member and teacher of the Wilderness Dharma Movement and on the advisory boards of Prison Mindfulness Network and the Buddhist Arts and Film Festival.
Elizabeth has an academic background in anthropology and Buddhist studies. After many years of solitary retreat, Rinpoche appointed Elizabeth as Retreat Master at Longchen Jigme Samten Ling, Mangala Shri Bhuti’s retreat center in southern Colorado. Elizabeth is the author of The Power of an Open Question and The Logic of Faith. She has edited Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche’s two books, It’s Up to Youand Light Comes Through, and teaches the Buddhadharma throughout the United States and Europe. When she is not traveling, she enjoys riding her horse through the vast planes of the San Luis Valley in Crestone, Colorado. For more information please go to: https://www.elizabethmattisnamgyel.com/

Gretchen earned her master’s degree in Contemplative Psychotherapy from Naropa University in 1989 and has been licensed as a professional counselor in Colorado since 1994.  She served as adjunct faculty at Naropa University for 5 years.  Gretchen has been part of the Windhorse community, practicing this approach since 1990, and has held several positions in the organization. She also has a private practice in Boulder, CO.