523. Barbara & Charles Whitfield

Posted on November 11, 2019 by Rick Archer

Barbara Whitfield was a researcher at the University of Connecticut Medical School with psychiatry professor Bruce Greyson. Together they researched the after-effects of people who have had a Near-Death Experience. She taught at Rutger’s University’s Institute for Alcohol and Drug Studies School for 12 years, served on the board and executive board of The International Association for Near-Death Studies and was president of the Kundalini Research Network. She’s been a guest expert on Larry King Live (twice), The Today Show, Man Alive, Donahue, Unsolved Mysteries, PM Magazine, Good Morning America, Oprah, Joan Rivers, Sonya Freeman, CNN Medical News, and Alabama Public Television, Imus, and All Things Considered. She also writes self-help books and provides workshops and speaking engagements on topics of recovery, near-death experiences and natural spirituality.

Charles L Whitfield MD is a physician, psychotherapist, and internationally recognized expert on mental illness, behavioral problems, and recovery. He was an associate professor of medicine at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine for 4 years and then taught medicine and addiction medicine as associate professor of medicine, psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine for eight years. He has been on the faculty of the Rutgers University Summer Institute of Alcohol and Drug Studies since 1978, and in the private practice of medicine and psychotherapy since 1976. He has been voted by his peers as one of the Best Doctors in America every year since 1994.

Barbara and Charles have a private practice in Atlanta Georgia helping adults who have been repeatedly traumatized, who are having problems in living, who want to come off of psych drugs and/or opiates, and who may have had a spiritually transformative experience.

Books:

Website: barbara-whitfield.com

Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group.

Interview recorded November 2, 2019

Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

509. Georgi Y. Johnson

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Rick Archer

Born in Sheffield, England, Georgi has led a life of charm, intoxication, collision and perpetual re-awakening.

Having experienced her parent’s divorce and later her father’s death to alcoholism, Georgi was a born seeker for a stable home that was somehow prior to the broken home that she knew. As a teenager, she attended evening classes at the School of Philosophy in Belgium, that offered a ‘sanitized’ version of Vedanta. While it gave a lot, the experience became oppressive, and when she left to Oxford University, she instead delved into Jungian psychology and the application of psychoanalytic and feminist literary theory.

When she was 20, Georgi arrived in Jerusalem, in search of a midway point between the mysticism of the east and the decay of the west. She experienced a part of the earth that is charged with bliss. Yet it was also a country where it seemed that nobody belonged. In this, she found a sense of belonging (in the field of not belonging).
Georgi’s life in Israel would include a compulsion for conflict. She worked as an investigative journalist exposing lies told about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Later, she would undergo a high-conflict divorce in which she was condemned by rabbinical courts as a fake convert, a home-breaker and a naughty woman.

All this served to re-awaken her deeper purpose: the exploration of the mysteries of consciousness. After she met the love her life – spiritual teacher Bart ten Berge – this passion would express through escalating processes of liberation.Today, she is deeply fulfilled in sharing this journey with others through workshops, and one-on-one mentorship.

A free spirit, citizen of the world and a poet, Georgi is presently pioneering Nondual Therapy, which she sees as part of a paradigm shift in the evolution of psychology.

Books:

Website: perception.inner-growth.org

Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group.

Interview recorded July 6, 2019

Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

504. Kate Gustin

Posted on May 31, 2019 by Rick Archer

Kate Gustin, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her education from Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley; and has worked in a variety of settings over the past twenty-five years as a mental health practitioner: outpatient psychiatry, community mental health clinics, VA Hospital, college counseling services, and currently in private practice. Gustin integrates the science of positive psychology into her psychotherapy, teaching, and consultation, and leads classes and trainings for students, patients, and health care professionals.