Dru: What prompted you to write "BirthQuake?"

Tammie: My own BirthQuake experience, although I wouldn't have called it that when I first encountered it. The rumblings of my own quake I think began with a growing dissatisfaction with my life, an awareness that I wasn't being true enough to my deepest values, and a haunting sense that too much of my life was moving on without me. I knew that I needed to not only explore how I was currently living my life, but that I'd also need to make some significant changes but I didn't really want to change, I just wanted to feel better, so I tried to keep living on automatic pilot for as long as I could.

And then, when I was about 35, I developed back pain that eventually just became so intense that I could barely move. And so for days I was laid up in bed with very few distractions, it was essentially just me and the pain, so I was trapped, and the only place that I could go was inward, and so that's where I went.

Ultimately my inward journey led me to make significant changes. and many of the initial changes involved loss - the loss of my psychotherapy practice, my home, my life style, and then, remarkably, the loss of my pain. So living through my quake has been hard, and I know that it's not finished with me yet, but I also believe that it's leading me down a path that feels right.

Dru: You mention in your book that while exploring the meaning of your life, you realized one day that you'd had it backwards all along. Can you talk a bit more about that?

Tammie: Sure, For years I questioned what the meaning of my life was, why was I here? I could think of a number of reasons to live, and could imagine more than one purpose to devote my life to, but ultimately I never felt that I was clear about what the meaning of my life was.

Then one day it occurred to me that maybe I'd had it backwards all along, that instead of focusing my energy on finding some purpose and meaning to my life, I needed to make my daily life more meaningful. So ultimately, I needed to forget about the questions, and live what answers I had. So I decided to focus on shaping my every day life in ways that reflected my personal values, time with my family and friends, time in my garden, time in service to others, and time for myself.

Dru: You describe life as art. What do you mean by that?

Tammie: Mathew Fox, Episcopal priest and author, describes life style as an art form and he urges each of us to create life styles of "spiritual substance." When I look back at my "pre-quake" life style, I'm struck by the opportunities that I missed, and the countless precious moments that I was too busy to really appreciate. When we view our lives as a work of art, each of us then becomes an artist, and each day becomes to a large extent an opportunity to create our very own masterpiece.

Michael Brownlee, editor of Cogenisis, defined life as "that which creates." If your alive, than you're automatically a creator, and it makes enormous sense to me, that we each acknowledge our significant power to create, as well as take responsibility for what we chose to produce.

Dru: You identify three phases of a Birthquake in your book, could you briefly describe them?

Tammie: The first phase, which is triggered by our quakes, is the Exploration and integration phase. This phase typically involves a great deal of introspection.

It's here that we begin to examine our personal stories. We look more closely at our inner selves, our emotional and physical selves, as well as at our life styles. We also begin to identify our needs and our values, and to evaluate our choices. Tom Bender, author and architect, wrote that "Like a garden, our lives need to be weeded to produce a good crop," and that's what we begin to do during this phase, we look at where in our lives that we need to weed, and also, where and what we need to plant, and to cultivate. Bender also maintains that in order for both a person and a society to be healthy, there needs to exist a spiritual core, and that the spiritual core involves honoring. I believe, that an important question to ask ourselves during the exploration and integration phase is, "What do I truly honor, and how does my life style reflect that which I honor."

It can take years sometimes to shift to the next phase, the movement phase. It's during the movement phase that we begin to earnestly make changes, and the changes are usually small at first. From an alteration in diet, planting a garden, beginning to meditate, - to more life altering changes, maybe a shift in career, leaving or committing to a significant relationship, or actively participating in a spiritual, or political movement

The movement phase typically involves growth and change at a personal level.

The final phase of a BirthQuake I call the expansion phase. Those who've entered the expansion phase, are not only changing their own lives, they're also reaching out to help others. It's this third phase that truly involves wholeness.

Dru: How does the expansion phase involve wholeness?

Tammie: Most of us have heard that wholeness relates to the mind/body/and spiritual aspects of a person. And while that's true, I think that this description misses a major aspect of wholeness. From my perspective, Wholeness extends beyond the individual, and encompasses the world in which we live. So for me, true wholeness not only includes attending to the needs of the mind/body/and spirit, but also requires that we connect to the world of which we're each a part.

There's some research that indicates that there's a significant correlation between mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety and substance abuse, and too great of a preoccupation with the self. Another study found that a necessary ingredient of happiness, seems to be to possess somewhat of an outward focus.

So those individuals who reach the expansion phase of a Birthquake, who actively look inward but also reach out, extending their caring and concern beyond their own self-interests, enjoy a sense of greater well-being. They also, on average, tend to live longer too.