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Joie Seldon possesses a unique set of skills,
training, and life experience that she brings to her groundbreaking
work as an emotion educator, presenter, and therapeutic counselor.Read a message from Joie.
 Somatic Psychology: Joie earned her Master’s Degree in Somatic Counseling
Psychology from John F. Kennedy University, and is a member of the California
Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (CAMFT) and the U.S. Association
for Body Psychotherapy (USABP). She has presented at the national conference
of USABP, East Bay chapter of CAMFT, and other therapist organizations. She has a private practice
in holistic therapeutic counseling.
Teaching: Joie has been a highly respected acting teacher in Los Angeles
and the San Francisco Bay Area for over twenty-five years. As a performer/director
of the L.A. improvisational theatre company Synergy Trust, she taught improvisation
in the company’s open workshops as well as at schools and universities throughout
California, and to psychiatric patients at UCLA’s
Neuropsychiatric Institute.
In addition to teaching acting at San Jose Rep, ACT’s Young Conservatory
and other schools, she taught film acting for eight years at San Francisco’s
esteemed on-camera acting school, Full Circle Productions (FCP). It was
at FCP that she developed her popular Accessing Your Emotions class, which
she created to help students become more truthful actors. She continues
to teach this innovative work at the San Francisco Acting Academy. Joie is also certified as a Speaking Circles® Facilitator, teaching presentation skills an on-camera coaching for business professionals.
Acting: Though no longer actively pursuing acting roles, Joie worked as
a professional actor for thirty years. The art of acting is a study
in human nature, and Joie’s extensive education and experience in
acting taught her a great deal about why people behave the way they do.
She remains a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation
of Television & Radio Artists, and has translated her acting skills
into presentations about Emotional Intelligence.
Message From
Joie
People who know me today have told me they see me as confident, creative, clear
about who I am, and passionate about what I do. They would never guess what an
absolute mess I once was. I was always deeply connected to my feelings, but had no understanding of how to manage them. As with most people, I only learned about emotions through the examples set by the people around me, most of whom were very unhappy. Yet, I had a sense that it was better to feel pain than to feel nothing at all. I would even say to myself, “Even though I’m miserable, at least I feel something. I’m not indifferent to life!”
In spite of my deep desire to remove myself from the painful circumstances of
my early life, I did not try to escape the pain itself. In the process of
learning how to be emotionally honest with myself, I found that I could not only
tolerate emotional pain, I came to value it. My pain is what motivated me to
grow as a human being. It was my feeling, not my thinking, that made me want a
better life. My pain tells me what is important to me, and I learned that if
I allow it to flow through me I become energized, inspired, and creative.
Long before Emotional Intelligence became a known concept, I was on a path of learning about emotions. My years of training and experience as an actor was a tremendous lesson in human behavior. As an acting teacher, I learned a great deal by developing ways of teaching my students how to become genuinely connected to their emotions. The impact of my work with actors is what inspired me to go back to school for my master's degree in counseling psychology. Throughout my adult life, I have also been on a personal growth path that has deepened my understanding of the purpose and function of emotions. Now, I find that what I have developed on my own is in alignment with what so many others are teaching about Emotional Intelligence, yet what I offer is unique. It directly addresses the definition and meaning of the specific emotions themselves, in particular seven primary emotions that are recognizable on facial expression across cultures. I see these as the true Universal Language. What I offer comes not from some course I took, but is a synthesis of my personal experience and years of study and dedicated work to understand the meaning of our purpose in life.
Life itself is ever a mystery, but what is no longer a mystery is
the profound significance emotions play in our lives. They are here to
guide us, not mess us up, to help us, not hinder us. Emotions are part
of our journey on this planet, the part that tells us we’re alive.
I invite you to come and experience the richness of life.
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Conflict
engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions, and like every other
fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that of creating light.
On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth brings everything
into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to ashes. But on
the other hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark
is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There
is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without
emotion.
-Carl Jung |
