Wade Cockburn PHD Blog

Decisions, Decisions

October 20, 2016 No Comments

A Classmate from the University of Santa Monica, where we studied Spiritual Psychology, emailed me the other day to ask my opinion. The question she asked was, “I remember in class, that [one of the leaders of USM] said changing your name is a big thing. I was wondering what your thoughts are about me using my middle name. I have never felt comfortable about my name. But of late, my middle name just seems to resonate with who I am becoming. Me, not what everyone else feels I should be, but me, the person I truly am.” Wow, I found this to be an interesting question! Partly because I well remember what was said in class and also remembered another classmate caught a bunch of grief when she changed her name in our second year, but she tamped down the criticism since she only changed to another common nickname variation of her real name. I also found it interesting that this classmate directed this question to me; I cannot remember if I ever told her that I had changed the pronunciation of my last name or if asking me was simply another amazing coincidence in my life! Whether this question or any question about a change that any of us might be considering, I think the key to the answer lies both in the timing of the decision to change and the origin of the solution. When addressing the timing, I told my friend that her decision now is

Non-Sexual Touching

August 30, 2016 No Comments

I was at the United States Association of Body Psychotherapy conference in Providence, RI, a couple of weeks ago and this year’s theme was “Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Body; The Art and Science of Somatic Psychotherapy.” I always enjoy going to conferences, getting reacquainted with classmates, professors, and peers and then meeting new people! Some of the offerings at conferences do not interest me, but most do; unfortunately, too often two or more sessions I want to attend are presented at the same time! At this stage in my continuing education, I have found that what I learn at conferences and workshops tend to follow a normal distribution or bell curve. The left tail represents information I knew, but had forgotten; the left half of the curve, the information I remember, but rarely utilize, so it is nice to have a refresher. And then the right half of the curve is information I know and use, but presented in a new manner that opens up new possibilities, and finally, the right tail represents new information! I was surprised to find so many breakout sessions at this conference that did not expound on the theme past what I learned in school. Probably the best was a pre-conference, half-day session entitled, “Is Our Access To ‘God’ Sourced In Our Loins? The spiritual call of sexuality and death.” What a mouthful! Had that session not been taught by a mentor and now friend, I might have gone to the other half-day just based

Yoga Festival Thoughts

August 10, 2016 No Comments

When evaluating my thoughts on a strange or different event I have witnessed or a subject I learned about from a client, I often wonder when an observation turns into judgment? This is especially true when the client is reporting something in them or happened that society seems “bad” or “wrong.” I try to keep in mind a Shakespeare quote from Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” This observation/judgment issue has come up quite a bit in the media these days, what with the political talk on both sides and how the other is “bad!” It also came up for me personally several days ago when my wife and I spent a few days at Lake Tahoe celebrating our birthdays. While driving around the lake, we read in a local rag about a yoga event happening in Squaw Valley called Wanderlust 2016. It bills itself as “Our festivals are all-out celebrations of mindful living.” Wanderlust offers education on yoga practice, classes, music, and food. We headed there on a Saturday and mainly walked around the booths, but also listened to a positive message rap band, interesting! The booths seemed to break down to about 50% clothing, 30% food, and 20% yoga equipment or art. What had me thinking if I was judging was the materialism of the clothing, equipment, and art; everything was quite expensive. So, is this a judgment or an observation? These entrepreneurs had to pay a fee and need to

Stored Body Emotions

July 5, 2016 No Comments

As you can see from my website, one of my specialties is Somatic Psychology, how issues are held in the body. Emotions are separate from our physical and mental bodies in that they are signposts that provide a window into our inner psyche, but that are also intimately connected to both the physical and mental bodies. This is somewhat easy to see for the mental construct, if we experience strong negative emotions about something, we will label it “bad” and try to not place ourselves in a position to experience those same emotions again and the opposite is true for positive emotions. Less well understood is how emotions are held in the body. I explain this by saying to imagine we are talking and, with no warning, I lunge at you. Naturally, your limbic brain will perceive this as a threat and before your cortex can interject that maybe I am playing some joke on you, your body will respond in a flight, fight, freeze, or feign death response, usually the former two unless the threat is perceived as too huge to even respond. Another example that I sometimes use is when we round a corner and a child jumps out and yells, “boo!” Either way, your body will tense up to either move away from or to absorb the seemingly eminent assault. Because the threat was not real, we will either end up laughing about it or you will get angry and yell at me; both responses involve releasing

No-No Words!

June 14, 2016 No Comments

No matter which side of the political isle you fall under regarding the current news story about transgendered people using the restroom of their choice, I am more interested in the fact that adult professional newscasters cannot bring themselves to use anatomically correct terms for male genitalia. I am not sure where this comes from, but I have a couple of ideas. What I am talking about is the use of terms such as, “male parts,” “male equipment,” and even, “male junk!” What is the big deal about saying the word “penis?” In describing almost any other part of the male body, newscasters and the general public use anatomically correct term; we say arms, legs, ears, and usually even buttocks. But when it comes to genitalia and their functions, everybody seems to hedge, whether talking about a male or female body! One reason is probably due to how we talk about our bodies to our children, especially very young children. We used euphemisms for many things, potty for bathrooms, beddy-bye for sleep, and, of course, peepee for urinating. Also prevalent are fingies, tootsie, footsies, etc. when talking with pre-verbal and very young children, but all the euphemisms gradually fall way after children turn five or six. So why do these culturally inoffensive words that deal with our genital also not fall by the wayside? Another reason probably is the puritanical history of our country, with strict codes of ethics and morality until the 1960s. I remember as a teenager growing

Binge Music Favorites

May 31, 2016 No Comments

Over the last few months, I have had an opportunity to engage in “binge” listening to some of my favorite performers. I do this usually when driving for many hours by myself and I will go through an artist’s entire collection that I have on iTunes. This first happened last year when driving home from the birth of my granddaughter and I listened to Chris Wall. Chris is a Texas singer-songwriter that writes what I call Texas country, but others call progressive country or Americana. Nothing like the pabulum that comes out of Nashville; in fact, he has a verse in a song that states, “I’d rather be a fence post in Texas than the king of Tennessee!” I agree! I once heard that the reason Nashville country all sounds the same is they market test every song on a scale from 1-5, throwing out all 1s and 5s; turns out those are people on the tails of the bell curve and tend to either hate or love songs, but not in between. I fall into that group! So, here I was in music heaven tooling down the highway listening to Chris and, ironically, stopped in his hometown of Austin about the time I finished all his albums! Despite his talent and repertoire, like another Texas singer-songwriter Ray Wiley Hubbard, he is known for one wacky, not-so-great (at least in my opinion!) song that another group got on the Country Top-40 chart! Speaking of my opinion, I know my tastes

Decisions, Decisions

Non-Sexual Touching

Yoga Festival Thoughts

Stored Body Emotions

No-No Words!

Binge Music Favorites

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