| The Law of Attraction |
Dr. Ray leads several groups in Santa Monica, Los Angeles area:law of attraction, singles and relationships, and a women and men's only support group.
At the law of attraction group, Dr. Ray discusses advanced principles from Law of Attraction and how they relate to all aspects of our lives. He combines the Western model with Eastern philosophy providing the bridge for metaphysics, spirituality, neurobiology, clinical psychology, science, and quantum physics.
Click Here to Join the Law of Attraction group today
Ray Doktor, Psy. D. also leads a singles and relationship support group. Dr. Ray lectures by using experiential exercises and examples to expand your conscious awareness about the psychology, neurobiology, and spirituality of relationships. He combines his clinical experience and spiritual perspectives when discussing issues. This group is designed to answer questions, provide exercises, and to share experiences. Topics include: sexuality, masculine and feminine polarities, attachment styles, communication, and the law of attraction.
Click Here to Join the Singles and Relationships support group today
The Spiritual Mens Empowerment Group is to support, guide, and educate renaissance men who seek deeper spiritual relationships, to understand the language of women and the feminine divine, including understanding their own feminine energy, to cultivate meaningful lives, to be in alignment with their purpose, to develop emotional intelligence and resilience, to be more grounded and PRESENT, to learn how to alleviate the stress and cultural pressures, to transcend beyond stereotypical male paradigms, to share gifts from the heart, to get out of the shadow of their parents, to transform their darker sides into love, creativity, and passion, to experience peace of mind, and to network and build friendships with other like-minded men.
Click Here to learn and join his men's only group
This WOMENS only empowerment group is to help guide women to cultivate their radiant, feminine energy, to better understand their bodies in relation to sacred sexuality and spirit, to help them feel more grounded and yet free, to liberate them from the collective consciousness of societal pressures and anti-feminine history, to develop healthy boundaries but remain vulnerable, to teach them how TO BE LOVE rather than always seeking it, to heal psychic wounds, to connect them to their powerful life force so they experience more meaningful lives, to help them become more creative and playful, and to bring more goddess energy to motherhood.
Click Here to learn and join his women's only group
All groups are in Santa Monica or the Los Angeles area. If you are interested in having Dr. Ray speak for a group, please contact him on the contact page of this website.
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| Services1 |
How can hypnosis, regression therapy, counseling or EMDR help?
- Attracting the Ideal Mate
- Sexual Dysfunction
- Motivation
- Weight Issues
- Fears and Phobias
- Artistic Freedom & Creativity
- Sexual Abuse Recovery
- Test Anxiety
- Rebirthing
- Life Purpose
- Past Life Therapy
- Confidence
- Family Issues
- Depression
- Success
- Couples and Relationship Issues
- Addictions
- Chronic Health Issues
- Surgeries
- Stress and Anxiety
- Changing Unwanted Behavior
Addictions
What purpose do addictions serve us? What is the addiction replacing? What does the addiction keep us from seeing or feeling? What would happen to our lives if the addiction were alleviated? These answers for these questions will hopefully look into the deeper meanings behind an addiction. Finding out the truth could be overwhelming, but a necessary step for a person to create positive changes.
Genes and adaptation seem to be the most popular beliefs behind alcohol or substance abuse. However, could there be a psycho-spiritual phenomena that drives one person and not another to addictions?
We are living in a technological age that puts its faith in the perfection of the computer. Human beings try to become like the god they worship, but unfortunately for us, our agony does not allow us to become perfect robots. However hard we try to eradicate nature it eventually exerts its own value system with a painful price. Furthermore, the technological age is propelling us into a space quite unrelated to our instincts. We have forgotten how to listen to our bodies; we pop pills for everything that goes wrong with us; we can have an intestinal bypass or we can have our stomach stapled. We can turn ourselves over to medicine without ever questioning what the body is trying to tell us. To our peril, we assume our bodies have no wisdom of their own and we attempt to fix our symptoms or physical ailments without making the necessary emotional corrections. We may temporarily succeed, but the body has a mind of its own and soon another symptom appears, attempting to draw our attention to some basic problem. Underneath our addictions might be the addiction to perfection.
Our natural being becomes repressed when performance becomes everything. We begin to live for an ideal because there’s nothing else to live for. But if we are living for an ideal, and driving ourselves as hard as we can to be perfect – at our job, as a mother or a wife, we lose the “self.” We could say that our society is being driven to addictions because there is no collective container for our natural spiritual needs. Our natural tendency for transcendent experience, for ritual, for connection to some energy greater than our own, is being distorted into addictive behavior.
Living life constantly under our personal and environmental pressure creates an inescapable stress. When we take a drug, drink, or eat food or have sex, the stress is temporarily alleviated or released. If we look at what purpose addictions serve neurologically, we attempt to use them to survive. Constant stress will produce the biochemical changes called the “fight or flight” mode. Drugs, alcohol, food, and even risk-taking behaviors will help temporarily alleviate this mode. Eventually our bodies develop a tolerance and the intervals of relief shorten.
Integrative Mindwork helps individuals develop better coping skills to stress. During the sessions a client will be given the opportunity to address both the root cause and the symptoms. In order for treatment to be successful, it is highly recommended that a client attend some type of 12-step program or support group in conjunction with private therapy.
Chronic Health Issues
Why do some people always have health issues? Is it normal to always be sick just because one is aging? What is normal? Why are elders in other countries healthier than Americans? Are there other ways to prevent sickness? Do I have to live in pain for the rest of my life? Why do I always get sick this time of the year? It seems like I always get sick when things are going well for me. Is there a metaphor behind a health ailment?
Most of the time our bodies will give us a fair warning that we need to slow down. Catching the common cold or experiencing a headache could be our first warning. We treat it like a false alarm – pop a few pills, and go on with our lives as if we were invincible. Some will argue that their sickness happened overnight or out of the blue. While this might be true for a few, most of us live our lives with inescapable stress and compromise our immune systems so we are more susceptible to sickness and diseases. Many people will go to the doctor frequently and never examine their diet, stressload or psychological make-up. There are a lot of us who are always sick and will blame our parent’s genetic coding for our health problems. Understanding, accepting, and being responsible for our own health are the only ways to control our own wellness and mortality. By honestly examining our lifestyles, emotions, and psyche minutely will help us identify alternative solutions for preventive care.
It has been reported that 70% to 80% of all illnesses seen in medical offices are caused by stress or made worse by stress. High blood pressure, anxiety, panic, depression, ulcer and other gastrointestinal diseases, headaches are well known even to the medical profession. However, many illnesses, which are stress-related disorders, are not considered by the medical profession to be related to stress. Illnesses and conditions such as recurrent colds and flu's, bronchitis, allergy, cancer, diabetes, asthma, skin disorders, multiple sclerosis, injuries, accidents, chronic fatigue syndrome, low back pain, neck pain, abdominal pain, recurrent vaginal infections, bladder infections, alcoholism, drug addiction, smoking along with many other illnesses and diseases which we do not have space to mention are often directly or indirectly related to stress.
If we have the ability to wear ourselves out and create sickness, do we have the capability to reverse the process into wellness? Every cell in our bodies is both structurally and functionally related to every other cell in our bodies. Similarly, all our thoughts, beliefs, fears, and dreams are dynamically connected within the structure and function of our psyche. Emotional experiences, psychological choices, and personal attitudes not only affect the functioning of the human organism, but also strongly influence the ways it is shaped, structured and behaves. This is not to say that heredity, physical activity, nutrition, and environment do not influence the mind/body; they unquestionably do. Rather, we are suggesting that when all these forces are merged in the creation of a human being, the force of the aware human psyche seems to be the most formatively powerful of all.
In conjunction with proper food and exercise, one has to change one’s attitudes for mind/body healing to take place. One needs to understand how one works from the inside out. The mind is working and integrating new experiences everyday, every minute, and every second during waking or sleep. Researchers are now able to link external influences to the biological change in one’s mental and physical state. Approximately 90% of all genes are engaged in self-regulatory, adaptive responses in cooperation with signals from the environment. Our bodies contain the best pharmaceuticals.
Integrative Mindwork recognizes the mind/body connection and incorporates these theories with the techniques. The unconscious mind has a vast repository of experiences and source material that can be employed to overcome almost any adversity. We all have unutilized knowledge and resources within us to produce change. Change first starts with the belief.
Surgeries
Surgery can be a very traumatic experience for anybody. It makes us think about our mortality and brings up our hidden fears around death. It is a time when we may feel our vulnerability most because we are putting our lives into the hands of another human being. Surgery forces our attention on issues in our lives that need to be resolved. It triggers a lot of emotional discord, thus enabling our bodies to finally get our minds to pay attention to it.
There is no doubt with all these reasons why surgeries can be life changing. A person is sometimes drastically changed after a surgery. To some, it’s a spiritual awakening while it’s a traumatic and painful experience for others. Some people heal very quickly and smoothly while others continue to suffer with complications – never heal and are emotionally tormented by the experience. Some of these people will end up back on the gurney for another operation for the same symptom or a new problem.
So why are some people’s experiences better than others? One’s emotional makeup is going to determine the outcome of how one feels after a surgery. Let’s face it – surgeries are trauma to the body. It can be a major event that will determine whether or not you live or die. A person who just had surgery might be experiencing unconscious and somatic disarray. If a person doesn’t have good coping skills to deal with stress, he or she is more than likely to have more complications with the surgery and recovery process. A person who has unresolved psychological issues has a higher chance of having a negative experience. How do you think the body is reacting when you are signing release forms, which indicate there could be complications or that the surgeon is going to make an incision on you? If your body were to speak, it might say “I could die.” Anesthetics that are given for surgical procedures often affect the memory and can cause amnesia. After recovery, a patient may vaguely recall some things, but only fragments. This is why many patients may appear confused and emotionally disturbed after undergoing even the simplest procedure.
It is very important for a person to take a good, accurate inventory of any fears that might surface before a surgery. There might be emotional residue from a person’s past that will make unconscious associations to a person’s current health ailment. Preparing for surgeries has proven to be an invaluable tool to help a person move through the surgery process with great success. Studies now that show that hypnosis reduces pain, reduces anxiety, reduces the amount of medication people need, reduces complications, and makes the procedures shorter, 17 to 20 minutes per procedure. If you are skeptical about hypnosis, find other ways to learn how to relax because too much anxiety causes tension; and tension increases pain.
Integrative Mindwork helps a person elicit the fears that person might have in regards to surgeries. It helps a person address and honor those uncomfortable feelings so he or she can create a process to help he or she move through surgery and recovery successfully. Integrative Mindwork will help a person develop relaxation and healing techniques to prepare him or her before and after a procedure.
Stress and Anxiety
When stressful situations occur only once in a while and they are resolved, no significant problem may be created. But if there is a string of challenging events or difficult situations recurring continuously without resolution, chronic stress may develop. Most often people think of stress as occurring only when important issues are involved. This is not entirely true, for stress can occur even with relatively minor issues. If you add a bunch of little stressors together, the mind/body will react to those little stressors as if it were one excruciating experience like a divorce, loss of work, death or traumatic medical condition. If such a conflict is left unresolved for months or years, and this ongoing conflict is left to act on us, significant physical, emotional, psychological or spiritual problems can arise. While stress itself is normal and a natural part of life, chronic stress is not. Chronic stress is the lowest level of a series of unhealthy conditions that can ultimately lead to illness, disease and even death.
The physical body responds physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. The symptoms: anxiety, confusion, feelings of hostility, alienation, loneliness, aggression, headaches, indigestion, abdominal pains, chest pains, raised blood pressure, and change of body weight. The individual may begin taking over-the-counter medications like Tums, Maalox, Excedrin, laxatives, Pepto Bismol, etc. These types of symptoms are what physicians usually considered normal aches and pains of life and they may not recognize the relation with stress. Even though more physicians are asking patients about their lifestyle to help address the root cause of their health issues, it is still a hypothetical guess. We have to listen to our own inner physicians to help find the root cause of our health ailments. Without any surprise, we might discover that the health issue was precipitated by stress. If a health issue or a stressful lifestyle is not addressed in a healthy way, the body might respond inappropriately and advance to the next level called Dis-Ease.
We ignore our body’s basic cues to pay attention and treat ourselves like robots. Science has discovered ways to alter crops, animals and fetuses. Physicians have figured out ways for us to momentarily beat death, but are not able to guaranteed the “quality of life.” The quality of life is something that is up to us to create and for our physicians to help us sustain. We assume our bodies have no wisdom of their own and we attempt to fix our symptoms or physical ailments without making the necessary emotional corrections or lifestyle changes. We may temporarily succeed, but the body has a mind of its own and soon our inner computer crashes.
The key is to recognize and understand our stress. Once a person understands the unconscious theme behind his stress, it will be easier for him to release it. If any of us becomes fully conscious of the reasons of our stress, we are able to see what purpose it serves us. We become the directors of our lives and can rewrite the script. Integrative Mindwork helps their clients tap into their inner self and bring out the artists in all of them. Our philosophy is to help a client become objective to their life experiences and not trapped in the subjective. It’s easier to eliminate stress and anxiety when we feel more in control.
Changing Unwanted Behavior
All of us have behaviors we would like to modify or stop. We might have poor coping skills and become angry over little things or get overwhelmed and cry. Some of us have difficulty communicating or expressing ourselves. Many of us get involved in unhealthy relationships over and over again. Some of us unconsciously sabotage ourselves with things that are going well for us, whether it is our job, relationship or diet.
If a person were to closely examine his unwanted behavior, he would probably discover that it stems from a much deeper place such as an old, unhealed wound. He might be aware of the pattern or vicious cycle, but not know how to stop. Unwanted behavior can be like trying to stop an addiction. Unwanted behaviors have similar ramifications as addictions. Most of us have been raised in families that were in some way dysfunctional. Whether we came from a family where there was an alcoholic parent – an overly religious mother – a workaholic father or were raised by foster or grandparents, we all belonged to some type of functioning family system.
Within such a system, individuals are tied to one another by powerful, durable, reciprocal emotional attachments and loyalties that may fluctuate in intensity and psychological distances between members over time, but nevertheless persist over the lifetime of the family. Each family system is itself embedded in a community and society at large, is molded by its existence at a particular place and time in history, and is shaped further by a multitude of interlocking phenomena such as race, ethnicity, social class membership, life cycle stage, number of generations in this country, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, the physical and mental health of its members, level of educational attainment, financial security, as well as family values and belief systems. All of these factors influence the system’s development, beliefs, and standards for acceptable behaviors.
These are the beliefs that have been instilled in our conscious and unconscious mind – teaching us that if we don’t follow these rules and beliefs we might not survive. Prehistoric man taught his offspring how to survive in the wild – keep from being eaten by a predator, and how to fight off outside intruders. This is no different than our society today. Our families help teach survival skills and beliefs that will be our colorful blueprint that we will share with our children. While some of these teachings are helpful and necessary for survival, there are usually a set of beliefs that might be convoluted and hold no truth to our reality today.
Our unwanted behaviors are a manifestation of our life experiences in our family system and community. Whether we learned these behaviors to adapt, to survive or they were passed down to us from generation to generation – if we do not want them, we don’t have to keep them. Integrative Mindwork helps a person to examine his unconscious mind and complex, family system from an objective and subjective experience. We can all reflect back onto our family and out the things we like and don’t like, but the process we use with Integrative therapy is exploring on an unconscious level. We focus on both the implicit and explicit memory.
Success
The word success is relative and has different meanings for every individual. In this context, when I speak of success, I am talking about career, achievement, performance, and financial circumstances. You could review what I wrote on “changing unwanted behaviors” or other areas to come up with your own hypothesis. If we came from a home where money was spoken of as an evil thing, we might unconsciously sabotage opportunities because of our fear of money. We might have come from a very wealthy family, but our father was so consumed with business and money that he was emotionally crippled. We might have low self-esteem and not believe that we deserve a raise. The last time we had a lot of money we got involved in drugs. When our career was going well we overspent, claimed bankruptcy, and lost everything. Whatever the case is, money or success is usually never the real issue.
How a person unconsciously views money or success is going to determine the outcome. Before a person gets a raise or gets a promotion, he has to have the capacity to receive it. Some people inherit money or get it in ways that didn’t take hard work. But we all have witnessed what has happened to people who had money and did not value it. Money cannot fix or destroy anyone. It can only amplify where a person already is. It can temporarily pay bills or buy us the freedom that we seek, but if we don’t find that freedom within, there will never be enough.
The first thing a person should do is to identify any fears in regards to money or success. If a person takes out the fears, this opens up the possibilities. Once a person can imagine and feel himself being successful, there are no limitations. Integrative Mindwork enables a person to open up the channels that will invite new conscious awareness in regards to money and success.
Past Life Therapy
We provide past-life therapy for those of you who believe in reincarnation or are just curious about the notion. Past-life therapy can be very helpful in addressing an array of issues. It has become a very popular in the West, especially after the book “Many Lives, Many Masters (1988)”, written by Brian Weiss. In 1980, Weiss, a non-metaphysical psychiatrist, began treating Catherine, a 27-year-old woman plagued by anxiety, depression and phobias. When Weiss turned to hypnosis to help Catherine remember repressed childhood traumas, what emerged were the patient's descriptions of a dozen or so of her hitherto unknown 86 past lives. Catherine's anxieties and phobias soon disappeared, says Weiss, and she was able to end therapy.
Brian Weiss’s book is well written and an enjoyable read, but it is a little nebulous with describing the process, technique, and how Catherine’s past-lives connect or correlate with her present life problems. Pioneer therapist, Dr. Morris Netherton wrote a book in 1978 called “Past Lives Therapy” that is more clinical and confronts specific issues such as claustrophobia, ulcers, male and female sexual problems, migraines, alcoholism, and incipient cancer. Netherton developed his technique in the early 1960s with his personal experiences when undergoing therapy. We utilize the “Netherton Method” to facilitate a past-life regression.
A belief in reincarnation is not necessary for Past-Life therapy to be effective. As long as one works with the process, the mind will function whether or not one believes in reincarnation. The primary goal of a practitioner is to help a client get better. We are not trying to prove theory, doctrine, truth or facts. We work with whatever the client brings us and allow the process to happen organically. We view Past-life therapy like any other technique. Call it past-lives, dreams, fantasies, symbols, synchronicities or what you will we are all multi-dimensional beings with a myriad of unconscious material that is just waiting for an invitation to surface.
In general, there is a universal hero or heroine in all of us that is powerful and god-like. We can vanquish evil in the form of dragons, serpents, monsters, and demons, and so on to liberate others or ourselves from destruction or death. Sometimes our problems feel and sound infinite as if we have experienced them before in another lifetime. Our experiences feel like déjà vu and that we are paying karmic debt without knowing what we are purchasing. Past-life therapy gives us the opportunity to clean up unfinished business. It’s like clearing and understanding karma on steroids.
Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense. Even though he understands his personality and how he has come to be through his childhood, the questions that may arise are: How did I end up with my parents? Why was I born in these circumstances? Did old karma play a role in my challenges? And what about the soul?
Family Issues
Your family can be your greatest source of support, comfort and love. But it can also be your greatest source of pain and grief. A health crisis, work problems or teenage rebellion may threaten to tear your family apart. Seeking a specialist to help your family is not a sign of weakness or incompetence, but a tremendous step in a positive direction. None of us were given a manual on how to solve and cope with family issues.
Therapy may help your family weather the storm. Therapy can help patch strained relationships among family members and improve how your family works together. Whether it's just yourself, your partner, a child or even a sibling or parent, there are tools that can help all of you relate more harmoniously.
Most mental health professionals believe that family issues are caused by: Poor communication, financial problems or job change, a lack of commitment to the family, a lack of conflict resolution skills, physical, sexual or emotional abuse, addictions and substance abuse, failed expectations or unmet needs, a death in the family, a move to a new location or a divorce. Even though I agree with these reasons, there are usually hidden themes and unconscious dynamics that exacerbate family issues.
When working with a therapist, you or your family members will examine your family's ability to solve problems and express thoughts and emotions. You may explore family roles, rules and behavior patterns in order to spot issues that contribute to conflict. Therapy may help you identify your family's strengths, such as caring for one another, and weaknesses, such as an inability to confide in one other.
For example, say that your adult son has depression. Your family may not understand the roots of his depression or how best to offer help. Although you're worried about your son's health, you have such deep-rooted family conflicts that conversations ultimately erupt into arguments. There might be your own issues from the past that are unresolved and surfacing without you not knowing what to do. You're left with hurt feelings, decisions go unmade, and the rift grows wider.
Therapy can help you pinpoint your specific concerns and assess how your family is handling them. Guided by your therapist, you'll learn new ways to interact and overcome old problems. You'll set individual and family goals and work on ways to achieve them. In the end, your son may be better equipped to cope with his depression, you'll understand his needs better, and you, your spouse and your son may all get along better.
Bringing happiness, resolution or understanding to you and your family is the primary goal of therapy. I will equip you with tools that will help you resolve current and future issues more harmoniously. You will understand yourself better, therefore enabling you to relate to your family better.
Depression
Depression affects different individuals differently. It can be disguised through anger, sadness, stress, overachieving and work or laziness and procrastination. Depression is sometimes mistaken for normal grieving or sadness over a death, divorce, or loss of job, financial stress or other existential crises. True depression is usually a chronic condition or repetitive pattern in one’s life.
A depressive disorder is an illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts. It affects the way a person eats and sleeps, the way one feels about oneself, and the way one thinks about things. A depressive disorder is not the same as a passing blue mood. It is not a sign of personal weakness or a condition that can be willed or wished away. People with a depressive illness cannot merely “pull themselves together” and get better. Without treatment, symptoms can last for weeks, months or years. Appropriate treatment, however, can help most people who suffer from depression.
Severity of symptoms varies with individuals and also varies over time:
Persistent sadness, anxiousness or “empty” mood
Feelings of hopelessness, pessimism
Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness
Loss of interest or pleasures in hobbies and activities that were once enjoyed, including sex
Decreased energy, fatigue, being “slowed down”
Difficulty concentrating, remembering, making decisions
Insomnia, early-morning awakening or oversleeping
Appetite and/or weight loss or overeating and weight gain
Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
Restlessness, irritability
Persistent physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment, such as headaches, digestive disorders, and chronic pain
No one should have to go through life feeling chronically depressed. Many people who suffer from depression grew up in a home where one of their parents was depressed. Some of these people believe that it a normal feeling or do not know that there could be something better. Depression can be seen as merely a symptom caused by poor coping skills or instilled negative beliefs.
I help clients explore new possibilities and beliefs that might better serve them. I combine relaxation exercises with positive reinforcements and new cognitions. Therapy can help clients resolve issues that might have precipitated the depression and provide new solutions. Therapy helps clients reframe their lives into more positive and productive direction.
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Ray Doktor M.A., based in Los Angeles, is a clinical hypnotherapist, past-life therapist, spiritual counselor, and life coach. He has a bachelor’s degree in human behavior and a master’s degree in Psychology. Currently, he is a pre-doctorate candidate in clinical psychology and working on his licensure.
Call now and receive your free initial consultation
This includes: Interview
Brief evaluation for treatment
Education and preparation
Tel: 310-201-2969
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| Locations |
Ray Doktor., Psy. D.
2511 S. Barrington Ave. Suite 100
West Los Angeles, CA 90064
Phone:
310-692-4866
Call now and receive a free initial consultation
This includes:
Intake and interview
Assessment for addressing issue
Education and preparation
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ABOUT RAY
