Jonathan Stein is a 49-year old holistic psychotherapist, life coach and creative arts therapist with offices in both Northampton and Boston (Jamaica Plain, MA, USA). He has been practicing for over two decades. In this interview he discusses the benefits of holistic psychotherapy and how to achieve the breakthroughs you seek so you can live the life you want.
Voicu Mihnea Simandan: The health of the mind and soul is your passion. How did it all start?
Jonathan Stein: When I was in college, I had to decide between a degree in psychology or art. I decided on psychology because I knew I wanted to make a difference in the lives of people who were struggling and for years prior, my friends always came to me when they were having a bad day. I didn’t know about the use of creative techniques in therapy until years later but at the time, I trusted that I would figure out a way to integrate psychology with creative arts. Today, I use drama, dance, visual arts and talk therapy as part of my integrative health practice, helping individuals and groups of all ages and walks of life to feel better about themselves and achieve their goals.
VMS: Everyone seems to think that psychotherapy is only for people with major problems. When should people approach a psychotherapist?
JS: I like to think that the services and support that I offer people is a bit different than other therapists/coaches. While I don’t believe that everyone should be in therapy all the time, like some therapists, I think that it can be helpful to reach out for such support during challenging times but also for psychological and emotional health maintenance.
In my practice, I assist people in feeling better about themselves, meaning that they ultimately experience less fear, anxiety, depression, sadness, etc., and more joy and inner peace. My hope is that people learn to relax more deeply into being the amazing human being that they are, not what someone (family, culture, etc.) has told them they are supposed to be.
Depending on a therapists training, people look for this kind of support when they are confused, in emotional pain, are going through a rough life transition, need support to change habits, or as in my case, spiritual guidance and creative healing using the expressive therapeutic arts.
VMS: You offer a wide variety of psychotherapy services. How do you decide which kind of therapy better suits a client?
JS: As a therapist, counselor and life coach, I offer a wide variety of services to a wide variety of people. I welcome clients of any age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion (or non-religion), non-traditional relationships structures, and gender identification.
I offer purely holistic talk therapy, body/mind therapy involving theater, dance/movement/art, as well a breathing exercises, creative visualization and other techniques that I have developed on my own or picked up along the way. Since every individual is so unique, it’s important that I have a lot in my tool chest in order to be of greatest assistance to my clients. Mostly, I listen to what my clients are asking for. Some just want to be heard. Some need a safe place to express themselves and discover their voice; some need support and guidance on their path to manifesting their goals, and others still are looking for spiritual guidance to compliment their healing process. Like I said, everyone is so unique and there is no silver bullet approach to helping people.
VMS: You also have a strong belief in creative arts therapy. How can drama, dance and art help with the healing process?
JS: My own training as an artist as well as the spiritual guidance and training I have received over the years has helped me realize that the healing power of creative imagination is extremely undervalued and unrecognized in our culture. Generally speaking, we learn that the imagination is the realm of the fantastical, not really related to “real life”. And yet, in my paradigm, the imagination is likened to a doorway of possibility. If we are able to imagine something, that is the first step to creating it in the real world. Indeed human beings have never created anything in any other way. In the same way that the imagination plays an important role in inventing the light bulb or discovering that E=MC2, it also plays a vital role in the process of healing and personal growth. If we can imagine ourselves as being different, more whole and health, more creative, more confident, etc., that is the first step to becoming what it is we aspire to. This applies to both my approach to therapy and coaching.
The expressive arts therapy offers an incredibly powerful vehicle for not only accessing the transformative magic of the imagination, but if it is facilitated skillfully by a trained practitioner, it also has the ability to guide people into discovering what it means to be truly and deeply embodied, something that even many of the greatest yoga teachers don’t quite grasp. Most of us live subtly disembodied, disassociated lives because it’s hard to really feel everything about our lives, all the time. Life is hard. Nobody gets it easy all the time. Nobody. Yet the work I do using expressive therapies really helps people to discover a whole new level of acceptance about their human condition. This all ties in with my approach to offering spiritual guidance, a story for a different interview, I suppose.
VMS: These days it seems that the services of life coaches are becoming more and more popular. From your experience, who needs a life coach?
JS: Because we all have our own unique life challenges, I imagine we could all use a coach from time to time. The intention of a life coach is to provide a support system for people who want to achieve a certain expressed goal, whether it be finishing a degree program, building a house in a certain amount of time, or on a more esoteric level, becoming more of who they want to become, regardless of what kinds of material “things” they create in the world.
I think the first thing I want to say is that life coaching, at least from my perspective, must begin with a client recognizing that what they accomplish is up to them, and that they should only approach a life coach if they are really ready to commit to their own growth, including looking their own inner obstacles in the face and choosing to walk through them. This works well for people who have “rotted” out of feeling like they can tolerate not achieving what they want anymore. People who are most successful when working with a coach are the one’s who find it more painful to not reach their goal than to take the risks necessary in order to reach them. It’s a tricky balance, but once a person gets to this point, there can be no stopping them!
VMS: What are three things that people can do to lead a more positive life?
JS: I could say this:
1. Relax
2. Relax
3. RELAX!!
…but chances are that that isn’t enough. But the idea of relaxation is so pivotal to my work that it needs to be emphasized. I won’t elaborate on this too much now as there is a lot on my web site about this idea, and I’m happy to speak with people in person about it as well.
When I talk about relaxing, I’m not only referring to what most of us think of when we talk about relaxing (lying down, closing eyes, breathing deeply, etc.). Rather I’m referring to a process of learning to relax deeply into the very real and often painful and uncomfortable experience of being human; a limited, mortal chunk of meat that is always in the process of decomposing and dying. I know. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s a deep truth that most of us don’t really want to look at head on… and perhaps the most destructive to the planet and ourselves. I would venture to guess that the majority of human suffering in this time is a result of a subtle and mostly unconscious resistance to really “being here” because we believe that we should feel really good, blissed out, expansive and free at all times and if we don’t then, well, “there must be something wrong with us.
That’s not to say there aren’t other influences causing our suffering such as environmental and cultural stuff. There is! These are deeply painful realities to have to come to terms with, yet perhaps is makes sense to make a distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is what we feel when we are hurt. Suffering is what we feel when we are resisting feeling our pain. Does that make sense?
So most importantly, I would say that learning to relax deeply into ones experience, especially feelings and emotions, and to honor them deeply; not try to get rid of them, avoid them, escape or distract from them. But to just feel them, honor them, and love them (which is not to say that you have to like them!) It’s kind of like acceptance in the Buddhist sense of the word, but it’s beyond that too. It’s more like saying “yes!” internally to whatever you might be experiencing, the good feelings and the not so desirable ones, and acknowledging that it is normal. And there is nothing wrong. I could ramble on about this for a long time but I think I’ll stop here.
Quickly, two other things: Spending a chunk of quiet time in Nature (or in the company of a potted plant) is intrinsically healing; breathing deeply; spending quality time with friends and community; dancing; eating wholesome foods and getting lots of rest. Ok, so that was more than two! The important thing to remember is that all of these things (and there are others) have the effect of connecting us deeply with our own natural capacity to heal, to feel, and to be real…in our bodies, through the good times and the bad!
VMS: Where does self-empowerment fit in this advice?
JS: In my definition, self-empowerment comes first from re-discovering a deep sense of trust in Being. Most people derive confidence and a sense of empowerment from doing and accomplishing things. These are definitely important and should not be overlooked. However, too often people mistake confidence and self-empowerment with acts of doing and come to identify their self-empowerment with what they can do instead of who they are. This is what I mean when I say cultivating a deep sense of confidence in being, not so much doing.
The one who can relax deeply into and trust in his/her “beingness”, as their essential identification with self will make it quite a bit farther on a lot less gas than s/he who depends on feeling empowered based on more superficial, external sources.
VMS: You also contributed to a book about healing through drama therapy entitled, The Heart and Soul of Physiotherapy. Has your chapter been based on any of your cases?
JS: First, I want to say that this is an amazing book and I highly recommend it to anyone who aspires to use creative techniques in their healing work and to those who simply want to be wowed! By the incredible diversity and variety of applications of creative arts therapy to so many populations.
The chapter that I wrote was about the work I did as a drama therapist in a maximum security hospital with psychiatric forensics patients. My work has since evolved to include other modalities including eco-therapy so in a sense, the chapter is a bit outdated. Nonetheless, it was powerful work that I learned so much from and that in no uncertain terms grounded my conviction in the power or the arts and the imagination for healing.
The patients I worked with in that hospital were some of the most difficult to treat. They were admitted to the wing of the hospital I worked on because they had essentially failed to progress in any other programs throughout the system. In short, I can say that I was repeatedly blown away by the strides that this supposedly “untreatable” population was to the synthesis of interventions that I offered which included therapeutic improvisational theater, community building strategies, touch and eye contact exercises, and simple leadership skills. The chapter goes deeply into my experience and includes many of the activities and exercises I used in helping the patients there, as well as informative suggestions for working with challenging populations.
VMS: What is your modus operandi and how can people contact you?
JS: I encourage your readers to visit my website to learn more about the work I’m doing now in private practice. I offer in-person sessions as well as long distance sessions through Skype video. For reasons related to personal privacy and the negative, unhealthy and disruptive impacts that health insurance companies often have on the therapeutic process, I don’t accept health insurance. However, because I believe that everybody should have access to affordable mental health care, I have adopted a sliding fee schedule to accommodate a wide range of people who are seeking professional support at a price that won’t break your bank.
