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Advice

May 19 to 26, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

Battle Zones, Gangs, Practical Needs and Personal Responsibilities

Greenhouse3 I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve been traveling through a metaphysical battle zone lately. I feel grateful and blessed that I have a home that is not in foreclosure. I don’t live in a flood zone, on a fault line or in a location subject to tornados, tsunamis or hurricanes. I don’t live close to a nuclear power plant. I’m able to somehow manage to pay our monthly bills, buy good, nutritious food and prepare it in the style of the slow food movement. We’re in the process of building a greenhouse to extend our painfully short high-altitude growing season and I’m currently nurturing tomato and basil starts for my luscious, delicious culinary future. I do work that I love, maintain a daily spiritual practice, I’m healthy and happy and living each and every moment of my precious life. Bottom line: my life is good, and yet, inside and outside, the battles rage.

20 May, 2011 /

[click "Play", Dr. Paul Hokemeyer talks with Susan about meanness on TV]

 

 

By Dr. Paul Hokemeyer

Dr. Paul Hokemeyer Dr. Hokemeyer is a nationally recognized expert on Eastern philosophies, relationships, and emotional healing. A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, he holds a PhD in psychology, as well as a doctorate in the law. A part-time Telluride resident, Dr. Hokemeyer is based in the New York City office of the Caron Treatment Centers. He is also a weekly contributor to "The Dr. Oz Show," CNN’s "Headline News," and other media outlets, including "Good Morning America," "truTV," and "Oprah Radio." His new column, Shrink Rap, is scheduled to appear at least bi-monthy on Thursdays on Telluride Inside... and Out.

If I see one more angry, surgically altered middle-aged woman screaming at another angry, surgically altered middle-aged woman, I am going to throw my television in to the Hudson River. Isn't there enough meanness, narcissism and  in the world as it is. Why glamorize such hollow values?

13 May, 2011 /

May 12 to 19, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter 
Evening: Saturn

Aries Courage & Will + Taurus Earth Beauty and Bounty

Fool The recent alignment of personal planets Mercury (mind), Venus (love & money), Mars (motive and ego) with generous Jupiter (beliefs and spirit) and revolutionary Uranus (freedom and liberation) in primal Aries (attention ME!) has given us all a series of lightening-bolt jolts and radical new awakenings via our personal and collective relationships and experiences. And yet, it all comes down and back to – guess who? Me, myself and I. No matter what we do or where we go, we are the center of our own personal universe, viewing life from our own perspective, filtering events through our own optical lens and physical, emotional senses. People and planets rotate around us, throwing rocks or tossing treats our way, appearing and disappearing like ships in a proverbial storm. Sometimes, we can see them coming a long way off. Others times, they pop up suddenly, “out of the blue.” Amidst the chaos, drama, beauty, grace, trauma, joy and mystery of life, we are and will always be our own unique and individual selves, captive souls in physical bodies, ethereal spirits in material realities, living and breathing in the here and now.

12 May, 2011 /

May 5 to 12, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

“It is known that all bodies such as the Sun and its satellites are charged bodies and are surrounded by a magnetic field. In any magnetic body having two poles (the Sun and its satellites are such bodies), the magnetic currents circulate from the north to the south pole, become neutral at each 90 degrees and reach a maximum intensity at each 45 degrees.”
    T.O. McGrath in his book Timing Business Activity and the Sun

Astro Wheel One of the year’s four cross-quarter days – days halfway between the solstices and equinoxes – takes place this week on May 5th @ 15º Taurus – Cinco de Mayo. In the Northern Hemisphere this marks the midpoint of our seasonal spring. In the neo-pagan year it heralds the beginning of summer. The Celtic calendar honors this time with the holiday of Beltane, one of the eight fire festivals of their year. In all cases and calendars, it is a time of fertility, celebration and reverence for the Mother Earth. The sleeping seeds and dormant life of winter’s slumber, awakened by the primal thrust of early springtime, nurtured by melting snows and sleeting rain, have taken root and are sprouting with renewed vigor and fresh life. 

May Day and maypoles, Mother’s Day and a plethora of flowers, brunches and cards are what we associate with the first week of May in America today. Garden centers are busy and gardeners are out in their gardens, cleaning, raking, tilling and planting. We touch the soil, breathe the air and feel the energetic magnitude of this powerfully charged point in our seasonal solar year, whether we realize it consciously or not. We are electromagnetic bodies and are subject - as are all electromagnetic bodies – to the push and pull of electromagnetism. And the point of maximum electromagnetic intensity in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun takes place when the Earth is exactly halfway through the zodiac signs of Aquarius, Taurus, Leo and Scorpio, on the four cross-quarter days of the natural year. This is when the Earth and Sun are at the point of 45º maximum intensity in relation to each other and the Earth/Sun is at 15º in the fixed signs of the Tropical Zodiac.

05 May, 2011 /

April 28 to May 5, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

A self-fueled, self-indulgent, self-obsessed Aries rant...

I’m going to make this short. After all, with most of the planets in self-fueled Aries, why not be totally selfish and self-indulgent? [Aries]

Aries Suddenly I don’t have patience for others and I’m consumed with all the things I have to do. [Aries] Everything seems to be an interruption to my agenda. [also Aries] On the other end of the proverbial scale [Libra], I’m feeling the heavy weight of transiting Saturn [in Libra] conjunct my Sun and natal Saturn. S.O.B.E.R. - son-of-a-bitch, everything’s real. [Saturn] It’s a veritable balancing act [Libra] of time [Saturn], energy [Aries], money and resources. [Venus-ruled, and therefore also associated with Libra] And I can also feel the stress of currently transiting Pluto in Capricorn [ruled by Saturn] as it squares the Aries/Libra [self/others] polarity on its journey of expose and expulsion through the mass terrain of global economic realities, government bodies and ruling hierarchies. [Saturn/Pluto/Capricorn] Social, political and economic establishments and traditions [Saturn/Capricorn/Libra] are crumbling [Pluto] under the overwhelming pressure and power of evolutionary change [Pluto] and we feel it personally [Aries] as well as in our relationships [Libra].

Libra And so what do we [I] do? Feel irritable, restless and discontent. A little overwhelmed by all the things I can’t control – which, let’s face it, is just about everything! – and I find myself getting angry and wanting to act out. [Aries…] Rumblings from deep inside [Pluto] remind me that as much as I might like to think inner peace [Libra] is a choice, I realize – for the zillionth time – that it’s a practice. [Saturn] It’s time to take care of what’s right in front of me, focus on the present and simply do the best I can, one day and one moment at a time.

How’s that for a self-obsessed Aries rant? Onward Cosmic Traveler, forever moving forward…

29 April, 2011 /

[click "Play" to hear Dr. Paul Hokemeyer's conversation with Susan about sexting]

 

 

By Dr. Paul Hokemeyer 

Hokemeyer Dr.  Paul Hokemeyer is a nationally recognized expert on Eastern philosophies, relationships, and emotional healing. A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, he holds a PhD in psychology, as well as a doctorate in the law. A part-time Telluride resident, Dr. Hokemeyer is based in the New York City office of the Caron Treatment Centers. He is also a weekly contributor to "The Dr. Oz Show," CNN’s "Headline News," and other media outlets, including "Good Morning America," "truTV," and "Oprah Radio." His new column, Shrink Rap, is scheduled to appear at least bi-monthy on Thursdays on Telluride Inside... and Out.


My mother frequently says she doesn’t know if she could have survived raising a teenage girl: with my bother and me, she only had to worry about two penises. With a girl, she’d have to worry about thousands. Now imagine my mother’s anxiety if her worry about her sons' sexual behavior were compounded by a technology she could barely comprehend. What if she had to worry about a new trend in teen flirting. What if she had to worry about sexting?

28 April, 2011 /

April 21 to 28, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Venus  Evening: Saturn

Mother, Father, sister, brother...

Mother&Child Families are funny things, and we all have them. And mothers. Even abandoned children have mothers - somewhere, somehow – on the planet, dead or alive – a woman carried a child in her womb and gave birth to new life. Just like the Mother Earth - from life to life, from dust to dust…

Springtime is the preeminent time of birth in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Christian holiday of Easter has been branded as the time of “resurrection.” It’s no mistake that Easter and springtime coincide. The pagan rites of spring were supplanted by the Catholic’s holy rituals of their savior’s crucifixion, entombment and miraculous return. For me, spring and Easter evoke memories of childhood, my Mother and my family. I am filled with the poignant emotions of joy and sorrow, hope and wonder in the recurring seasons, the eternal cycles of birth and death. The gentle wind, the greening grass and the ever-present natural phenomena of change stir something deep within - questions and quest, combined with a sense of acceptance, humility and grace.

22 April, 2011 /

April 14 to 21, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Venus   Evening: Saturn

"May God bless and keep you always, may your wishes all come true..."        Bob Dylan, Forever Young

RZ horse3 Spring has sprung and throughout the Northern Hemisphere we see the season emerging in shades of green. Budding trees, flowering bushes and melting snow respond to warmer days and increasing light. Solar rays are more direct. The Earth’s matrix of rocks, minerals, plants and animals awaken from winter’s slumber and burst forth in the evolutionary process of rebirth and renewal. Here in the West End, days of howling wind, spitting snow, slanting rain and embracing sun remind me that nothing is permanent, everything changes. Forever and always, revolutions around the Sun, returning seasons and revolving cycles – forever young, life here on Earth – as we see it, as we know it. Right here, right now, today...

This week, on April 17th @ 8:44 pm MDT, the Sun and Moon form the exact opposition aspect of a full "super" Moon in the late degrees of Aries/Libra. Three days later, the Sun moves into Taurus. The bridging time between Aries and Taurus is one that takes us from the primal fire of instinct and survival to the earth-centered land of primal nourishment and sustenance. The seed thrust forth in the fiery passion of Aries creation seeks fertile Taurus soil in which to take root, be nurtured and grow. Inherent in every seed is the map, the plan, the DNA of its potential. But without food, shelter and a safe place to develop and eventually blossom, the seed will never bear fruit.

14 April, 2011 /
[click "Play", Dr. Hokemeyer talks about Anxiety with Susan]

 

by Dr. Paul Hokemeyer

Dr. Paul Hokemeyer Dr. Hokemeyer is a nationally recognized expert on Eastern philosophies, relationships, and emotional healing. A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, he holds a PhD in psychology, as well as a doctorate in the law. A part-time Telluride resident, Dr. Hokemeyer is based in the New York City office of the Caron Treatment Centers. He is also a weekly contributor to "The Dr. Oz Show," CNN’s "Headline News," and other media outlets, including "Good Morning America," "truTV," and "Oprah Radio." His new column, Shrink Rap, is scheduled to appear at least bi-monthy on Thursdays on Telluride Inside... and Out.


Recent events in Japan and the threat of a government shutdown serve to underline a fact of life: We live in difficult times, which can translate to scary. On a minute-by-minute basis, we are asked to find joy as we face growing threats of environmental, economic, and physical collapse. Some anxiety is a natural byproduct of these harsh facts of life, but when that anxiety persists and crosses a line, it morphs into a full-blown, paralyzing disorder. When that happens, what steps can we take to tame and contain an anxiety disorder?

13 April, 2011 /

April 7 to 15, 2011
Visible Planets: Morning: Venus  Evening: Saturn

The Primal Power of Aries: Season of the Emerging Self

Sneffles Springtime off-season has officially arrived in Telluride. The ski mountain has closed and blustery days of howling wind, spitting snow and sleeting rain now fall upon mostly empty streets. The local exodus to Mexican beaches and tropical islands is in full force. To the west, greening pastures embrace newborn calves and baby lambs; the mountains rise above in shades of snowy-white and deep, dark-blue. To the east, over the Dallas Divide in Ouray, daffodils, tulips and hyacinths greet visitors coming and going to the town’s Hot Springs Pool. The primal thrust of new life and rebirth is in the air; the warming earth, the melting snow and the restless weather herald the season of resurrection and renewal.

Ouray Pool1 The first week of the Aries lunar cycle delivers plenty of power in its punch, but due to the retrograde motion of mental messenger Mercury – also in Aries - the energy is somewhat redolent, and at times, even redundant. We find ourselves reviewing the past against the canvas of what was then and what is today, considering our actions and examining the consequences. And with realistic Saturn now moving in partner-oriented Libra, we seem to be most frequently reflecting upon ourselves in the image-rich mirror of our relationships. This is a poignant and powerful time to review and identify “our part” in our personal emotional reactions to and interactions with others. Are we feeling resentful, angry or hurt by another? If so, how did we assist in the creation of our own suffering?

08 April, 2011 /