Saturday, April 30, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #220 - 30APR16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week on the Mystical Positivist, hosts Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick speak in the studio with one another about perspectives regarding spiritual practice that have arisen for us recently in meditation, in readings, and in conversation. Some of the books and topics discussed include:
    • After Buddhism: rethinking the dharma for a secular age, by Stephen Batchelor
    • An Arrow to the Heart: A Commentary on the Heart Sutra by Ken McLeod
    • The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving by Lisa Miller, Ph.D.
    • Julian’s Gospel: Illuminating the Life & Revelations of Julian of Norwich by Veronica Mary Wolf
    • Daughter of Fire, by Irina Tweedie
Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

Currently he’s collaborating with practitioners of many spiritual traditions to create the Conscious Family Festival, a community event scheduled for October 2016 in Santa Rosa, CA. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts.

Stuart Goodnick, the Mystical Positivist, has been a practitioner of Tayu Meditation since 1985 and a Tayu Meditation instructor since 1993. He holds degrees in Physics from Caltech and UCSC, and has been an engineering manager in the electronics and software security industries since 1989. Stuart has also been a student of the shakuhachi (Japanese Bamboo flute) under Master Masayuki Koga since 1996. In recent years Stuart has been applying the principles of spiritual practice and transformation in daily life as a senior executive in both Silicon Valley start-ups and global industrial manufacturers. He co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea with Robert Schmidt and Jim Wilson in Sebastopol in 2002.

A frequent writer and speaker on spiritual topics, Stuart maintains that rationality is no way the antithesis of deep mystical experience, but is in fact a necessary ally. He is currently working on a compilation of some of his essays and transcriptions of talks to be released later in 2016.

More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:

Saturday, April 23, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #219 - 23APR16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week the Mystical Positivist features an in-studio with Tatiana Ginzburg, a Breathworker and transpersonal psychologist originally from Russia, and the inventor of a methodology of integration and self-exploration called Igratechnica (aka Game Mastery). Born in 1971 in Leningrad, now St. Peterburg, she has been a professional breathworker since 1993, and was founder of the Game Mastery School in 1998. In 2004 she received a Ph.D. in transpersonal psychology. In 2015 she and others created the Russian House #1 self-actualization project in a restaurant at the mouth of the Russian River in Sonoma County, California. Tatiana is joined in the studio with her student and colleague in the Russian House #1 project, Polina Krasikova.

    Tatiana is the author of the concept of Knowability of the Human Psyche. This concept is an integration of the actual infinity principle created in a philosophy and mathematics towards new approach for the human development and transpersonal psychology basis.

    Based on the idea of Psyche Knowability described in her Doctor’s thesis, Tatiana created a methodology of integration and self-exploration called Igratechnica (Game Mastery). Igratechnica (Game Mastery) itself is the modern system of creating developing environment that provides its participants the maximum support for the personal growth. After going through the transformational process, depending on the personal free choice, he or she either discover a new quality of life or reinforce their current position.

    Igratechnica is the human development system that includes the self-awareness process and its actualization methods. Those methods present the collection of games, which individually configured for the participants who play those as the real process solving their current actual issue.

    Thus, Igratechnica is a methodology of the personal free will development and making free choice from potential the actual.
    The Basis of Igratechnica:

    1. The Conscious 7x7 matrix (diagnostics tool);

    2. System of games and practices;

    3. Game Master - the leader, who represents the model, technics and the transcendence spire.

    Tatiana is a Breathworker (Rebirther, Holotropic breathwork, Vivation, Free Breathing facilitator) from 1993. She is the author of a unique methodology of integration during the breathwork and of a unique breathing technique – DA-breathing.

    From 1995, she has been a professional instructor of western breathing technics. She is one of the founders of the European breathwork school www.breathe.ru.
More information about Tatiana Ginzburg's work can be found at:

Saturday, April 2, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #218 - 02APR16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week the Mystical Positivist features a departure from our usual format, as The Mystical Positivist, Stuart Goodnick, travels to Europe on business. In his place, co-host Rob Schmidt is at the controls, playing selections of spiritual music and reading wise and interesting words from a variety of spiritual sources.

    Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

    Currently he’s collaborating with practitioners of many spiritual traditions to create the Conscious Family Festival, a community event scheduled for October 2016 in Santa Rosa, CA. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts.
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at: