San Francisco Shamans

See your star qualities and learn how to enhance them. We utilize video-taped sessions, to help you improve your presentation, to be more attractive, more successful, more powerful and self-confident in your relationships and career.

This unique program for individuals, couples, or groups is based on Dr. Karr’s years of experience utilizing video in training, and creating documentaries. This short-term therapy can focus on anger and stress management, executive coaching, social skills, and persona development. Sessions are filmed with Dr. Karr and Dr. Bolsheva. Then both therapists and the client watch the session together and discuss the client’s feelings and reactions.

The process helps clients to:

25 years of clinical experience

Dr. Karr has extensive training in utilizing video film as a therapeutic method in terms of cognitive behavioral therapy. In filming sessions with clients and then replaying the film with them, it has been his experience that it helps clients have a more accurate and intimate understanding of their own behaviors, emotional expressions, and personae. Most people's perceptions of themselves are fairly inaccurate. Through film therapy, clients are able to see their behavior patterns, mannerisms, expressions, and communications, and their effects upon other people much clearer when they see a film of themselves. Once people become more aware of their unconscious body's communication, a process can develop which can result in improved, more fully present expression of one's self.

Film helps clients to break through denial concerning their own behavior and thought patterns. A client who is very used to being negative, for example, constantly making negative statements about themselves or others, may not be aware of these patterns. The client often becomes much more aware of the patterns of negativity and how destructive it is by standing outside of themselves and watching themselves be negative. This video film process is particularly helpful in couples therapy because it facilitates the members of a couple in facing the reality of how they relate and communicate with each other. Film therapy is particularly helpful to see and understand subtle patterns of communication, body affect, posture, tone of voice and how these subtle yet important communications effect others.

Cost and Commitment
There are several options in terms of video film therapy and coaching, in terms of process and cost.

We are willing to see people for a one-time session, in order to experience the video therapy and coaching process. We recommend but do not require a commitment after the first session of six sessions.

Camera Eye on You!
Video Coaching & Therapy

My experience with videotaping clinical therapy sessions began over 34 years ago when I was a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle. The University of Washington Clinical Psychology Program is the premiere cognitive behavioral program in the U.S.A.; it was and is a place of avant-guard experimentation in new approaches to cognitive behavioral therapy. An essential part of clinical training for all graduate students was to have every therapy session videotaped and then reviewed by a clinical supervisor. My clinical supervisors allowed me to experiment with reviewing the video sessions with clients. I found this method as helpful for myself as a trainee as it was for the client’s own self-knowledge. During my one-year internship at the Seattle Veterans Administration (V.A.) Hospital inpatient alcoholism treatment unit, I received further extensive training in the use of video therapy. The therapeutic community was videotaped twice weekly. These tapes were then immediately reviewed by staff and clients. After completion of my V.A. internship and Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 1975, I came to San Francisco and became an Associate Faculty with U.C.S.F. Medical School Human Sexuality Program. Over the past 30 years, the use of videotaped sessions for clinical supervision has become common practice at many universities.

I, however, did not utilize video again until 3 years ago, when I began an extensive documentary film project concerning eco-spirituality. During this period of filming and reviewing videos of others, and myself I was once again struck with how powerfully transforming the whole process is. It is magical to see, hear, and observe oneself interacting and moving through the world. A year ago, my colleague, Natalia A. Bolsheva, Ph.D., and myself began exploring and developing a video coaching and therapy process based upon my previous clinical experience in Seattle and my documentary film experience in San Francisco. We have discovered that video coaching and therapy greatly enhances other traditional cognitive behavioral and depth therapy approaches. The use of video appears to speed up the therapy process and is useful for short-term approaches. Issues such as stress management, anger management, and depression as well as problems of self-presentation for workman’s compensation or the I.N.S can be more expeditiously remedied through the video therapy process. Relationship and family matters may also be effectively addressed through the video method.

The video therapy process utilized by Dr. Bolsheva and myself involves the following:

• We videotape a session with the client and myself.
• Dr. Bolsheva intensely observes and takes notes during the session. She later shares her perceptions with the client and me.
• Dr. Bolsheva and I review the video with the client. Immediately following the session, we discuss our observations with clients and help them explore their own observations of themselves on video.
• The client then takes the video home and observes it alone. The client is encouraged to discuss feelings and reactions with Dr. Bolsheva and myself at the next session.
• The videotape is confidential; it belongs to the client and remains with him or her. We do not keep copies of these confidential videotaped sessions.

The video process helps clients to:
• Develop a more accurate, positive self-image.
• Identify and change negative thinking and behavior.
• Develop greater empathy for themselves.
• Perceive themselves as a real people to be loved and cared for as they love and care for others.
• Develop a better relationship with their bodies and to see their bodies as themselves (many people identify themselves with their minds but lack a body identification).
• Become more aware of their unconscious communications. The emotional self and the body self are constantly expressing themselves to others without the person’s conscious awareness. Clients become aware of their unconscious communications by observing a video of themselves.
• Become aware that the outer world is far more privy to their inner world and emotions than they believe.

As stated, it has been the experience of Dr. Bolsheva and myself that clients come to very rapid and cathartic realizations about themselves while utilizing video coaching and video therapy methods. A recent example is a woman executive who was seeking coaching for an important job interview. While reviewing her video session with us, she became upset as she realized how very unhappy she was with her current job. She was not aware of how angry and victimized she looked and felt. The following week she shared that she had put in her resignation, recognizing how toxic she had become. Another video therapy client has made rapid progress in totaling shifting his relationship with himself and his body. He shared that he had always felt skinny, weak, and ugly. We were able to help him see, by way of video, that the years of growing-up and going to the gym had changed his body so that now he is a strong, healthy, and attractive man. Both these individuals had been in long-term therapy but did not make breakthrough realizations about themselves until encountering video therapy.

Dr. Bolsheva and I have been developing video coaching and therapy to help clients improve their presentation of themselves to the world, enabling them to be more attractive, more successful, more powerful, and more self-confident in their relationships and careers. Video therapy is useful in couple’s therapy as well, helping partners to see more clearly their interactions and communications with one another. Video therapy can facilitate more effective communication and interaction in a partnership. Additionally, video therapy is useful in groups to demonstrate group interactions and to teach clients more effective communication and social skills.

Coaching and Therapy for Attorneys and Their Clients

Dr. Bolsheva and I have realized that video coaching and therapy are particularly useful for attorneys and their clients who are involved in litigation. We are developing special services devoted to the needs of legal professionals and their clientele. Deposition and trial are emotionally traumatic for many clients. We provide coaching and therapy for attorneys’ clients so that they may feel more comfortable in a stressful situation and be able to present themselves positively and well, thereby helping them to better survive the trial process! Relationship counseling that includes video techniques can also help relationships survive the legal process. We also provide coaching for attorneys to help them improve their presentations and counseling for attorneys and clients who want to improve their relationship.

Dr. Bolsheva, myself, and other holistic healers have recently created the Monarch Bear Institute to bring various healers together to provide healing services in San Francisco, California. We are developing the video coaching and therapy programs within the Institute. More information about the Institute may be seen by visiting our website at monarchbear.org or by calling 415-931-1934 or 415-241-9855.

A goal of film therapy is to help clients become more conscious of their various communication patterns including, non-verbal, and body patterns. Many people are aware of the words they say but are not aware of their meta-communications including body posture, affect, eye movement, gestures, facial expressions, eye dilation, clothing, persona, etc. Film therapy is aimed at teaching people to be more consciously aware and in charge of these subtler meta-communications that they are constantly emitting and expressing. It is Dr. Karr's experience that many people's conflicts, relationship problems and work issues are often a result of communications involving such inner conflict.

Many people are not aware that their verbal communications are in conflict, maybe even opposite of, the messages that their affect, body posture, eye, and persona may be conveying. Practice with film therapy enables a client to become more fully aware of their communications and become much more adept at expressing their various communications in a manner congruent with their intentions. This greatly improves one's ability at communication with other people.

This method is not only aimed at learning control over one's verbal and physical expressions, although this is certainly one result that can be expected from this kind of therapy. Rather the real learning and depth to this approach involves the idea that much of human consciousness is unconscious and in a Jungian sense therapy is aimed at bringing as much awareness out of the unconscious into the consciousness. The film therapy process is very helpful in allowing the client to look at many of the aspects of their emotional and body consciousness that they may not be aware of.

It is the belief of many body psychologies that a good deal of one's psyche that is unconscious is stored in the muscles, bones and nerves of the physical self. The purpose of film therapy is to tune-in to observe and listen to the many non-verbal expressions of self that occur in unconscious regions of the body. This method enables the client to perceive, observe and come to a better understanding of their emotional body and self.

Many clients are depressed, anxious or angry and they are not conscious of these emotional states. They may be conscious of these emotional states but they believe that the outer world is not aware of their emotions because they have not verbally expressed them. This is often a fallacy in that the clients emotional affect, their body posture, their eye contact may be expressing clearly that they are depressed, anxious, or angry. Many clients are in denial at how much their non-verbal communication may be negatively impacting their relationships, their work, and the world around them. Often for example with passive- aggressive personalities, a person's words may be very nice and sweet, while their body language or affect is aggressive and hostile. Film therapy is an incredible tool for exploring the self and coming to a more accurate perception of self.

Film therapy is also useful in terms of group therapy. It is helpful in group therapy through enabling a group to watch and come to an understanding of group process and interaction. Film therapy is also very useful to develop better social skills and personae for dating and professional enhancement. It has been Dr. Karr's experience as a psychologist over the last twenty-five years that many clients are engaged in a good deal of self sabotage in their lives. This self-sabotage is very destructive in terms of personal relationships, professional relationships, and life success. Most clients enter therapy, they are not aware that their unhappiness and sense of failure in their life is being created and maintained by self-sabotaging thought patterns and behavioral patterns. Many of such self-sabotaging thought patterns and behavior patterns are mechanical in nature and are automatic and unconscious.

Many self-sabotaging communications are expressed on meta-communication levels. Meta-communications are communications we make that are greater than the words we speak. They include our persona, our affect, our body language, our posture, and all we convey through our bodies. Dr. Karr has found that some clients who have been in denial about their self-sabotage finally are able to perceive and admit to these patterns after observing them on film. It is useful for clients to be shaken out of denial that unresolved psychological issues are imperceptible to the outer world.

Film therapy helps clients to see the truth that their body and emotions are often telling a greater amount about them than their words do. Clients, as they become more conscious and emotionally healthy, become more congruent in terms of their verbal communications, meta-communications expressions and their inner life. It is the expressed goal of film therapy to facilitate this greater consciousness and congruence. It is also the philosophy of this approach that greater consciousness, communications, communion and success in the outer world can be achieved.