Heather Froeschl's interview with Dale L. Goldstein,
author of "Heartwork: How to Get What You Really, Really Want"
Heather: First let me say that it was a pleasure to experience Heartwork, and thank you for making it available to the public. Now, let me ask, how important has publishing this book been in your sense of accomplishment?
Dale: Heather, first let me say that I am honored to have you be the first person to review my book. Reading your review was extremely gratifying! In response to your question, I would say that publishing the book has been the apex of my professional life. It is the culmination of my life work – the completion of a particular journey, and the beginning of a new kind of interaction with people with the book as catalyst.
Heather: Do you feel confident that your typical reader can fully grasp the concepts you present? Should this be attempted without an overseeing therapist?
Dale: I did my best to convey both the concepts and the “tools for inner work” as clearly, simply and non-technically as possible. My hope is that, combined with the personal accounts of people’s experiences using the tools, the reader will be able to get a fundamental grasp of the material and incorporate both the understandings and the tools into their daily lives. Ultimately, everyone has to find their own way, and, ultimately, Heartwork is a tool that can help anyone willing to take the journey do just that.
Regarding the issue of having the assistance of a therapist, certainly this work reveals the totality of one’s being, including those aspects that have long been denied. It is always a wise idea when traveling into uncharted territory to have an experienced guide to help one navigate potentially difficult situations that will possibly arise. At some point in one’s journey, one has easy access to one’s own internal guidance – a sense of knowing/rightness. Until this inner guidance opens, it is most helpful to have a human guide. The possible problem with therapists as guides is that they have not personally explored the deeper aspects of their being, and will either not be able to understand where the person doing this work has gotten to and/or will get frightened and try to take the person out of their process. The possible problem with a spiritual teacher is that, if they have not done their own psychological/emotional work, they will not see the value in the spiritual journey of clearing out this layer of the psyche. So it is best if one can find human guides who have done their own inner work on both levels.
Heather: Does a reader of Heartwork need a prerequisite in other meditative or psychoanalytical practices?
Dale: I wrote the book in such a way that it would be accessible to all people: those who have never done any previous inner work, people who have been in therapy and are looking for something more than therapy can provide, and people who have had an active spiritual practice but perceive blocks in their psychological structures that prevent them from being fully present in their everyday lives.
Heather: Are there others who have combined the eastern meditative processes and western psychotherapeutic practices in similar offerings to the public? Are you the first?
Dale: I am by no means the first, although for many years, I searched for, but couldn’t find, anyone else who I felt was working in a similar way. It turns out I was looking in the wrong place – I was looking for a therapist who combined eastern meditative approaches with western psychotherapeutic techniques. One day, a friend told me that she had found a colleague. She had attended a workshop with Stephen Levine – a spiritual teacher whom she felt worked similarly to me. I ran out and bought all of his books and, sure enough, he was coming from the same place as Heartwork. I have long since incorporated much of his teaching into my work, especially some of his meditations, and I felt tremendously gratified that he was willing to write such a beautiful endorsement for my book. A couple of years later, my sister gave me a book by John Welwood, and I felt I had found yet another colleague. Then, a few years after that, another dear friend introduced me to the work of A. H. Almaas, called the Diamond Approach, which also comes from a similar understanding as Heartwork, but is much more thoroughly elaborated and discriminated. I’m sure there are innumerable others who have developed their own unique ways of combining the two approaches, but these are the three people whose work I have most resonated with.
Heather: Did you work closely with Richard Wehrman or did you give him the manuscript and let him create what he envisioned on his own? The work is exquisite.
Dale: Richard is one of my very best friends, whom I have known since 1982, when he came to practice at the Zen Center. We have been in a very small men‘s group together for 21 years. In addition to our close friendship, Richard has experienced Heartwork extensively, so that I gave him free artistic license to create his vision of the book. He clearly understands Heartwork from the inside. I am so grateful to him for the beauty he added to my writing. The book is truly the work of art I had wanted to create because of Richard’s artistry.
Heather: What is your greatest hope for this book?
Dale: That it will serve whomever it speaks to in finding their way home to their true self.
Heather: Do you have other offerings in the works?
Dale: I’m considering writing a book on the Heartwork of relationships. We all want simply to love and be loved, but so few of us know how to have that which we really, really want, even in our most intimate relationships.
Heather: Tell me about the Heartwork Institute.
Dale: The Heartwork Institute, Inc., is a not-for-profit educational organization founded in 1982 to assist people in finding their own paths to wholeness. The Institute offers a broad range of programs from individual, relationship and group counseling to personal (one or two people) and group intensives, retreats and workshops that vary from one to ten days in length. The Institute also offers one- to two-year transformational programs. Clients can do counseling in person or via the telephone.
All Heartwork experiences teach participants how to move through self-created barriers in order to open their hearts and minds. From this openness, each of us can find the peace, joy, freedom, aliveness and compassion that is our deepest truth and indeed our birthright. Ultimately, we become enabled to live deeply in this truth, in our life purpose, while in intimate relationships with others.
In addition to the official events offered by the Institute, a great deal of support is offered unofficially and informally by others in the Heartwork community. These people generously share their support, encouragement and guidance based on their own experience with the Heartwork process.
More information about the Institute and its offerings can be found on our website at www.awakentheheart.org.
Heather: Tell me about your experiences with the Omega Institute.
Dale: I was invited to teach at the Omega Institute in 1980, when I was practicing and teaching Polarity Therapy. It was at a time when my practice of Polarity Therapy was beginning to open in a way that deviated from the official teaching of that practice. I had found that what felt most “right” for me was to simply sit at the head of the person lying on the massage table, put my hands on their shoulders and simply be with them. (I emphasized the word “simply” because the word has profound implications in that one needs to be totally present with what is happening.) I found I would spend at least the first 10-15 minutes of a Polarity session sitting with a person this way, and sometimes the entire session. In the process, often the client would experience a healing on one or more levels of their being.
When I gave the opening demonstration at my 5-day Advanced Polarity Therapy workshop, a number of people present reflected back to me that when I was simply being with the person at the beginning of the session, they both witnessed in the “client” and experienced in themselves an opening that served them in their inner work. This “external confirmation” helped me trust what was evolving in my work.
As a result of this experience and the subsequent new concepts for the intention of my professional practice, combined with what was unfolding for me in my own inner work, Heartwork was born. The next year, when I returned to Omega to teach Advanced Polarity Therapy, it turned into the first Heartwork Intensive. A participant as a result of her work there wrote the poem, “The Descent,” at the beginning of my book, which so beautifully describes the Heartwork experience.
Heather: Please give us a brief biography.
Dale: I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, psychotherapist and workshop facilitator who has actively explored the uses of meditative and psychotherapeutic tools in the process of helping individuals, groups and organizations to heal since 1966.
I attended the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, where I received a Master of Social Work degree in 1969. In 1971, feeling a deep lack in my life, I moved to Rochester, NY, to practice Zen under the guidance of Roshi Philip Kapleau. In 1980, I changed to a self-inquiry/awareness meditative practice with Toni Packer, with whom I worked for eight more years. Since then, I have worked with various spiritual teachers, including Alia Johnson, a senior teacher in the Diamond Approach, with whom I have been working since 2000. I am currently engaged in the Diamond Approach Teacher Training Program. As a result of my own inner work, which included many years of psychotherapy, I saw a need to combine psychological and spiritual work in one comprehensive system. In 1981, I created Heartwork, a gentle yet powerful path for personal/spiritual transformation. Since that time, I have been the director of the Heartwork Institute, Inc., home to my private counseling practice and a variety of seminars and workshops that I facilitate internationally.
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Thank you so much for the interview! I just know Heartwork is going to touch a lot of lives.
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