Psychology + Zen = Philosophy and methods to relieve suffering and reveal happiness.
Psychology: We project onto others what we reject in ourselves. Some call it a Shadow. Healing comes from making the unconscious conscious, taking responsibility for our projections, integrating what is split off as our own thing.
Zen: There is no separate self. When we can be at one with every aspect, then we belong everywhere and we reject no one.
We heal the world by becoming intimate with our whole selves.
When something troubles me, I work with it, sit with it, and play with it. This video is a play on the question of help--taking help and giving it. Beautiful dancers, Justina and CJ, improvised on questions and phrases, and this is what emerged:
2013
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Updated on Friday, June 8, 2012 at 4:33PM by
Elena Taurke
My hips were already hurting as I was standing on the platform. I could almost feel the relief of the seat as I waited for the train…and waited…and… the desire intensified with the growing awareness of the delay, the imagined relief intensifying the pain. 
By the time the train pulled in, a crowd had gathered and I was terrified of the competition for seats. Naturally, there was exactly one seat in the car and the woman who pushed her way past me got it. In agony, I pondered: Was she disabled? My hips don't have a big sign on them and I'm not carrying any supports like crutches. Do I say something? What if she is mentally disabled and doesn't understand the subway protocol? If she gets angry and accuses me, do I understand her as limited or mean? What's the difference? Who deserves what?
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Have you ever had an electric toe? It's quite an experience, unlike any other pain. You step on it funny and suddenly a shocking, excruciating pain shoots through the toe into the whole body and the brain contracts in the instant. It goes away and you think, ok, that was that, and then it happens again. After several repetitions you become like one of those freaked-out lab mice terrified of the next shock, seeming to have no control. Except that then you notice that getting tense makes it happen more!
Like other life koans, this was impossible to grasp. How could I possibly relax into something that made my body involuntarily seize up?
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With all my might, I tried to open it. Impossible! So of course I had to drop everything I was doing and make make a video.
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