'The (Premier Rental Retirement Community
24111 Civic Center Drive • Southfield, Michigan 48034 (810) 352-4316
Second Annual
The
Dog Days .of
August
Dog Show and Contest
Wednesday, August 21st
at 1:00 pm
Prizes and refreshment. Open to the public.
Carole Katz on the meditation bench, where it's best not to think.
Others are trying to deal with
health, not emotional, ailments.
Dr. Katz stresses that the Circle
of the Sacred Light is not a med-
ical-care center and that workers
do not offer medical treatment to
anyone. In fact, she has been
known to tell clients they need a
checkup with their physician.
D
"NICAILMIMIL. 91r0-
‘
DR. ERIC M. GOLDBERG
THE DETRO IT JE WISH NE WS
On Your New
Dental-Prosthodontic Practice
10
at
33750 Freedom Road
Farmington, MI 48335
810-474-6434
We Love You... The Goldbergs
Hersh & Marlene
Joey, Harry
Susan & Ted
7-
own the hall on the right is
a room with a waterfall.
It's a tiny waterfall, com-
pletely manmade, and con-
tained in a sculpture with smooth
rocks. The water pours over in a
gentle, calming rhythm.
The room serves as the offices
of Dr. Havi Mandell, who works
at Circle of the Sacred Light and
specializes in "creative energet-
ics," including polarity and cra-
nial sacral therapy.
She was born in New York,
then settled in California and
finally came to Michigan. De-
scended from the Ba'al Shem Tov,
Dr. Mandell is the daughter of a
Holocaust survivor. Her decision
to become a therapist was in-
spired, in large part, by her moth-
er's painful past. For years, Dr.
Mandell's mother practiced a
kind of self-therapy by working
in photography and stained-glass;
a blue-and-yellow mandolin she
created hangs in her daughter's
office.
Dr. Mandell said her goal is
"opening people to themselves
and encouraging them to live
their dreams." Her clients, she
said, include numerous victims
of abuse, individuals with multi-
ple personalities, and adults who,
as children, had been held in dev-
il-worshipping cults.
Yes, she's heard all the criti-
cism of late about "false memo-
ries."
But consider the Holocaust,
she said. 'People do awful things
to each other."
Dr. Mandell, who holds a mas-
ter's degree in social work from
the University of Michigan, also
did post-graduate work at the
Center for Humanistic Studies
and the Union Institute, a De-
troit-based school that allows stu-
dents to create their own
curriculum. She prefers a "hu-
manistic approach" to care and
emphasizes the client-therapist
relationship, eschewing the no-
tion of a psychiatrist who knows
all and a patient who knows noth-
ing.
Her doctorate, in clinical psy-
chology, focused on Holocaust and
child-abuse survivors. Their sto-
ries remain with her.
"I was so amazed," she said, "at
how they can still look outside
and say, 'What a glorious day.' "
Before coming to the Circle of
the Sacred Light, Dr. Mandell
worked extensively in foster care,
where she often made use of a
tool, art therapy, that she con-
tinues to utilize in her practice to-
day. Then she stumbled onto
"bioenergetic therapy," which fo-
cuses on healing the body as well
as the mind. She explains: "There
can be cellular memory of pain."
At the Circle of the Sacred
Light, Dr. Mandell works with
clients to decide which kind of
treatment she'll use. Some of it,
like cranial sacral (which, her
brochure states, "gently corrects
dysfunction in the bones of the
head, spinal column, sacrum and
connective tissue while facilitat-
ing the flow of cerebral spinal flu-
id"), involves subtle touching. Dr.
Mandell gently massages, in
wave-like motions that can be
barely perceptible, areas on the
scalp and neck. Even the most
skeptical client will have a hard
time denying that, at minimum,
it's relaxing.
Another of Dr. Mandell's tech-
niques is "polarity," which focus-
es on four aspects of the body: air,
water, fire and earth, each of
which reflects power, creativity,
thinking, feeling and movement.
The idea is to aim for balance, Dr.
Mandell said.
Her latest discovery is aro-
matherapy, using fragrances to
heal, and her office smells
warm, almost ethereal, of