Lifestage provides workshops, groups, and training seminars focused on creativity and the healing process, holistic approaches to personal health and well-being, and the intersection of individual and society. 

Training Group in Action Methods and Creative Group Work

for Therapists, Educators and Counselors

Wednesdays 8-10 p.m.

Starting September 24, 2008

                     Trainer: Nick Wolff, LCSW, BCD, TEP

Professional Training in:

• Action Methods in treatment and learning settings
• Psychodrama
• Group Process
• Creative Thinking in the Consulting Room

An interview with the trainer is required for admission into this group. To schedule a meeting call Nick Wolff at 631-366-4265.

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW:

Finding Transcendence at a Teen Bereavement Camp 

        By Nicholas Wolff, LCSW, BCD, TEP

           Life for teens these days is a world apart from anyone over 30. Without being too specific about my own age, let's just say I hail from the Age of Aquarius. The technology teens have now, which they randomly whip out between classes or conversations or at any lull in the action, would be like magic to those of us who remember the 1968 Democractic Convention. Still, even with all the sophistication and superficial connection that Ipods, Iphones, IMs, and myspace make possible, teens today have the same social, emotional struggles as any in history and twice the pressure.

            Teens are heavy on my mind as I write this because I just completed a week-long stint running groups at a bereavement camp for kids between 12-19, created by a not-for-profit organization called Time For Teens. There is a sense of dislocation that comes with the kinds of losses every one of these kids is going through, which can significantly inhibit their openness to people who are just passing through. But even though we began the week as strangers, a few days later - in a perfect reflection of the camp's theme - we found it hard to say good-bye. 

            Grieving teens bring a unique combination of an almost unstoppable desire to act on their feelings and a sense of powerlessness over what has happened to them, a mix that can easily turn their energy to seeking excitement and escape through any number of dangerous forms of acting out. Because of that struggle, I feel real empathy for adolescents, and I feel tremendous love for the kids who attended the camp. It may seem a long time ago that I was an adolescent myself - and some of my friends might say I still am in some ways - but I easily recall the tensions, the energy drain of hiding one's interior life in so many social situations, the craving of situations where I could drop the posturing and pretenses. That is why I look back on this camp with such a sense of transcendence. Because we were able to create a space in which these kids could be themselves and they entered into it fully. They came together, everyone's broken heart on their sleeve, caring for each other in astonishing and awe-inspiring displays of openness.

              As a trainer, I am once again reminded how well experiential work, well, works.

Read more.

                        STRING THEORY

             Jude Treder-Wolff, LCSW, RMT, CGP

"One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty." Edward Witten 

    My Dad bought a Sears and Roebuck folk guitar with his first paycheck, when he was 14 years old. Those were times when boys became men much earlier than they do now. If the family needed money, boys dropped out of school and went to work, growing up quickly, giving up dreams. This boy's family was fragmented by then, his mother dead by the time he was 7, his father remarried and moved in with the new wife, leaving an older, married sister to look after the younger boys. Born in 1913, he grew up with the automobile industry, when the momentum of new technology set in motion the cultural transformation that continues today at ever-increasing speed. A brilliant mechanic who knew cars the way Yo-Yo Ma knows his way around the cello, my Dad's aspirations to higher learning took a back seat to practical needs. There was money to be made building roads, and out of that money my father got himself a friend for life.

           What's nice about a guitar is its mobility. It's ready when you are, for the most part. It was an ideal friend for a boy on his own too soon, in the company of men. A boy with a strong, vibrant baritone, a natural ear and a love of performing. My Dad's massive hands had a delicate touch on the narrow neck of that guitar and it was clear they had a unique relationship. An understanding, a history. His repertoire of cowboy and folk songs spoke of beautiful girls pure of heart, the open sky at night, love, loneliness, the way things come and go in life, crazy characters in the old west, big dreams, hardship that grinds hope into dust. When he sang these songs for us, we had a glimpse of his life before we were born. Even more so, and what I was able to see only as an adult looking back, he revealed his talent as a singer and story-teller. 

            Music moves. It doesn't wait while you struggle to find the fret, or place your fingers just so. You can get the formation of a chord just right, but in a few seconds have to get another one with the same precision. To play guitar well there has to be an effortless  transition from chord to chord, something that comes only through muscle-memory developed through repetition and discipline. Once the chords are in your hands, you can start to make music. 

            A mechanic's hands take quite a beating in the course of a day. My Dad's fingers would swell from reactions to the chemicals he worked with, his skin blackened from constant exposure to grease and oil. If a machine had moving parts, he could figure out how it worked, and if it was broken, he could fix it. He labored in punishing heat to repair vehicles he could not afford to own. He had the respect of countless people higher on the socioeconomic food chain than he, which was to him, in many ways a defeat. An intellectually gifted, immensely creative man with an elementary-school education, eight kids and a mortgaged farm, he had dreamed of being a surgeon but spent his life restoring machines and fighting frustration over all the social forces beyond his control.

            I learned to play my Dad's guitar, partly to connect with him, also because it was cool. Using a book with vivid pictures of hands fingering basic chords I quickly learned to sing and play just about any song using 4 chords in the key of G major. Musically, it was a little redundant, but good enough to supply my fantasy of performing "Both Sides Now" for screaming millions in my backyard.  The chords sounded all right once my fingers were in position, but learning to move from one to another was not going well. It required a great deal of pressure on the neck to get these chords to sound remotely in tune. The steel strings cut painfully into my fingertips, and each chord seemed to require a different posture in my arms and back. It was impossible to make those steady transitions which give life and flow to the music. 

      When I asked my Dad for help, he was stern, tense, critical. 

       "I don't know what you're trying to do," he'd bark.

        "What am I doing wrong?" I asked. He was generally silent in response, and I probably only ventured to ask  him once or twice.   READ MORE          

The New G.I. Bill was passed by Congress and signed into law. Whether we have a member of our family in the military or not, the future of our veterans is important to all of us. We owe them the very best we can give, and as a society are at our best when we honor them as they deserve. Click here to learn more about what this means for veterans.

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