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Monday 8am - 5pm Tuesday 8am - 5pm Wednesday 8am - 5pm Thursday 8am - 5pm Friday 8am - 5pm

Justin Ehrlich, San Diego, CA (2025)

10/14/2023

Feeling grateful for all the birthday wishes. Thank you!!!

07/24/2023

In this free course, you will learn the number one thing I teach ALL of my clients to help them stop fighting and start reconnecting immediately! I guarantee you will get results if you apply what you learn.

07/22/2023

I’m excited to announce the launch of a new free course designed to help you stop fighting and reconnect with your partner.I was inspired to create the course by so many of my clients who struggled with painful repetitive arguments.

In it, you’ll learn the number one communication strategy I’ve been teaching my clients for the last 13 years. It will help you learn how to stop fighting, reconnect with those you love, and rebuild the intimacy and connection you’re looking for.

You’ll learn how to actually understand each other rather than just trying to make things ‘peaceful’.

The best part? It’s simple, it works, and you can learn to do it in minutes. My clients are consistently surprised how well this approach works.

The course covers,

- Why this approach is so effective for the important but difficult topics

- The three keys for the speaker to entree they are actually understood by their partner

- The three keys for the listener to guarantee they actually understand what their partner is trying to communicate

You don’t have to waste years in therapy to learn how to do this. You can learn it today.

Link to the complete course in Linktr.ee above.

https://courses.justinehrlich.com/opt-in-free-course

05/09/2023

Death is the inevitable destination we all face. Most of us aren't ready for it yet, I'm certainly not, but not being ready for it and not being at peace with it are two very different things.

Can you feel that difference within you? I mean that as a serious question.

Have you thought about what it would take for you to truly die at peace?

Or maybe, can you see where your fear of death and your suffering in life cross paths? Can you see how they are related?

Can you see what you're holding on to? What would change if you knew were approaching your last breath?

Do you see where your thoughts and stories keep you from seeing the shared beauty and freedom of both life and death?

True healing brings us towards love. Life brings us towards death. It is no coincidence they are the same...

If you know you can't seem to let go of stuff, I encourage you to get some help. It IS possible to heal and move on and you don't need to wait until your last breath to do that.

04/25/2023

Most of us learn to run from scary thoughts, difficult feelings, and painful memories at an early age. We fear they will overtake us, kill us, if we don't run and hide from the monsters in our minds.Maybe we don't think they'll kill us in a literal sense, but our patterns of avoidance certainly prove the truth of our fears. We all have beliefs and memories we just can't engage with or walk away from.

But what if what we thought would kill us could become a path towards liberation? A path towards truly living.

Spiritual and religious traditions speak of this death. The death of our identification with our fears, beliefs, and stories. This is what I read in Bukowski's quote.

Are you willing to let your beliefs and stories about your identity die? I mean this as a serious question, not an academic one.

Who would YOU be if you didn't have all of your stories?

Can you see how the death of your false identities is actually a gateway to really living? Can you see how the challenges (past and present) of your life are invitations for you to die to what was never really you, to begin with?

04/11/2023

Jung gives us something interesting to reflect upon here.The tree, spreading its roots, discovers hell while it simultaneously grows upwards towards heaven.

Heaven is where the tree is free to grow in all directions. Hell is where the tree is compressed, trapped, and controlled by all that is around it.

Can you see this within your own life? Where you are free and where you are controlled. Where do you feel your life is heaven and where you feel your life is hell?

And yet we must also face the obvious paradox here... while the soil surrounding the roots is 'hell' it is ALSO the nourishment that allows the tree to grow towards heaven. The tree cannot grow without the soil.

It is the same for us. Our pains, our sufferings, our hells are also the nourishment for our souls to grow towards heaven.

This the essence of Inner Alchemy. The transformation of poison into medicine.

Are you ready to transform your poisons into medicine? Are you ready to explore the chance that your deepest struggles might also be your path towards heaven?

03/28/2023

Sometimes my clients ask me, "Why do I have to go through all of this?"The Stoic's point to the answer with this famous saying. Memento mori - Remember you die...

I know that sounds rather morose but, at least within my understanding of Daoism, it's actually very relevant to the whole reason we 'cultivate'.

We will all die. Someday. We don't know when. That's for the Dao/God/Divine to know. All we can do is to prepare for the inevitable.

So how do we prepare for death? What would YOU need to be able to die at peace?

I mean that as a serious question. Have you ever thought about it? I mean REALLY thought about it?

Death is the ultimate 'letting go', the ultimate exhale. We can't do that peacefully if we're still holding on to needs, desires, regrets, Heart Pains, traumas, etc. Death forces us to let go and we suffer if we try to keep holding on.

This is WHY we do the work. To let go. To heal. To move away from our hurts and attachments so when that inevitable day comes, we can actually let go of our last breath with a sigh of relief and peace versus regrets and pains.

Can you see where you're holding on to stuff? Can you see where you wouldn't be able to die at peace right now? What's stopping you from letting go, from healing?

The interesting thing, that ALL my clients experience when they let go, is that they live more completely. The reason for this should be fairly obvious. We can't live free nor die peacefully if we're carrying around a bunch of painful memories and luggage.

If I had to encapsulate what I do with clients in a short explanation, I'd say I help them to free themselves from their own bonds so they can live and die with freedom and peace in their hearts.

03/14/2023

Inner Honesty perpetuates pain and trauma if it's not rooted in compassion.This is why Inner Honesty and Inner Judgment cannot be separated.

When my clients are lost in judgment, they speak critically of themselves and others. It's a tell-tale sign. They're either fighting something or a victim to something.

When they find a balance between criticism and compassion, their language changes completely. The way they describe their experiences, their needs, their fears, and their desires changes.

Psychospiritual healing can only happen when we find a balance between these two. If you don't develop a compassionate inner critic, you'll either just beat yourself up or never hold yourself accountable.

When you do find a balance, you'll begin to express firm but loving boundaries for yourself and others.

More important, however, is that this balance opens an inner doorway to true self-discovery and healing.

Can you see where you struggle to find this balance?

02/28/2023

Anger is the natural response to the violation of a boundary. It doesn't matter if the boundary is physical, emotional, or spiritual. Your anger rises up and inspires you to take action.

Regrettably many people don't have a safe route to release their anger. When that happens you suppress your anger inside yourself. This is both dangerous and unsustainable in the long run. Anger needs to be expressed; it needs to move.

However, if you are able to slow down and stay fully present with what's really there when you do express your anger, you have an amazing opportunity to discover something else - compassion.

The first thing you have the chance to discover is compassion for yourself, your feelings, and your experiences. You have the chance to tend to your Heart, your inner world. To be there for the part of yourself that was violated.

If you can do this, you'll have a chance to explore the second layer of compassion - compassion for the person who violated your boundaries. To be clear, having compassion for someone who has violated your boundaries isn't easy - and it absolutely doesn't mean giving them permission to repeat the violation. Rather, it's the invitation to try and understand what drove their actions and behavior.

Learning to have compassion for the people who have violated your boundaries, is a powerful and necessary step in forgiving yourself for all of your own failures in life. If you can have compassion for those that have hurt you, you can have compassion for yourself for having hurt others.

Your compassion for yourself and others can't be separated.

This is a deeper level of healing work and something I explore with all of my clients who are working to heal trauma or just establish better boundaries in their lives - two other things that can't be separated.

02/14/2023

We seem to be moving in a direction of more and more judgment and anger towards the 'other', and further away from the idea of being an integrated society. Sometimes the 'other' is a different political party, sometimes it's a different part of the country, sometimes a different gender or ethnicity, and sometimes a different vaccination status.

Somewhere in all of that, we seem to be losing track of how to see the bigger picture (society) and focusing more on the smaller picture (ourselves).

Aristotle raises a useful point to reflect upon here. I would argue that when we 'obey from evil', we are doing something from a purely selfish perspective. When we 'obey from love', we are willing to step out of thinking of just ourselves to that of society as a whole.

Of course, there is no absolute here. Following society can be just as wrong as not following society, and there are plenty of examples of that in human history. I'm not talking about blindly following society but rather that we should think of others and not just ourselves.

Can you see what is driving your decisions and how your decisions might be impacting those around you or society as a whole?

We're interconnected. Society works by people working together. Societies fall apart when people don't.

It's really that simple.

01/31/2023

When we face all of the drama between humans and society, we always have a choice.

We can stay locked in our triggers, our beliefs, our ego... we can make it all about ourselves.

We can also choose to consider the experience of others, to own our triggers as our responsibility, to calm our ego...

We don't live in a bubble. We exist WITH others. We exist because of others and this is easy to forget when we're lost in our stories about right and wrong.

I encourage you to take some time today and reflect on the experiences of those you have the least compassion for. Can you find some kindness for even them?

If you can't, why is that? How can a society exist without each of us finding some compassion for the other?

01/17/2023

We are all surrounded by countless things we cannot control - the weather, the economy, politics, the virus, even the person sitting next to us in a coffee shop.

When my clients come to me wanting to change parts of their lives, one of the first steps we take is to identify what they can actually change and what they cannot.

The second step is to help them understand why those things are significant to them. This is important because it helps them to find meaning in the things they cannot change. Without this, they would remain a constant victim of things they cannot control.

Being a victim of what you cannot control is a choice. Can you see where you choose to be a victim?

The other choice is to use the uncontrollable to discover who you want to be and to take action from there.

It's your choice.

01/03/2023

How often do you worry about failing?
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One of the core concepts of Daoism is that of 'cultivation'. I like to call cultivation - Conscious Evolution.
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Literally, everything is evolving according to the Daoist worldview - Humans, plants, animals, minerals, the universe. However, not all of us are doing it consciously.
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This is why it's so important to 'fail better.' The path of cultivation never ends, we just keep learning and evolving.

Stop looking for some big moment where it all ends with some big bang of enlightenment. Buying into that lie of a storybook ending just creates unreal expectations and stress.

Cultivation is a path, it only ends when you choose to stop trying - and that path doesn't lead to happiness or healing.

12/20/2022

Most of the pain my clients are looking to heal is not from the traumas in their history, even though that's what they initially think they're coming to me to work on.

For those of you reading this who have experienced serious trauma, please read the next lines gently. I don't mean to minimize the impact of any trauma or violation anyone has experienced.

Trauma, big or small, creates scars. Sometimes those scars are physical, sometimes they're emotional, and sometimes they're spiritual. In severe trauma, all three layers are affected.
Scar tissue, whether it be physical, emotional, or spiritual, is hardened. It is less flexible and less mobile. Because of this, scars often become prisons of their own.

Historical trauma is just that, history. Scars, on the other hand, are still here in the present. Scars and their limitations are what most of my clients are looking to heal from.

12/06/2022

If there is one theme that I have seen over and over with almost all of my clients, it's the need to lean into their inner truths.

When you struggle with the same problem(s) over and over in your life, it's inevitable that there is a truth you're either not seeing or outright avoiding.

However, just because you don't see something in your life, it doesn't necessarily mean you're avoiding it. There's no need to judge yourself, or others, in that way.

My goal is always to help my clients to see themselves, their history, and the world around them in new ways - with more honesty and more compassion. The most common reaction I get from clients when they connect the dots and succeed is one of shock for not having seen or admitted their truth(s) earlier. So often, the answer to their struggles was hiding in plain sight.

A good coach or guide should help you to see the world differently, to see yourself differently. They should help you to lean into the shadows of your subconscious so you can emerge from the cave of your social and traumatic programming that has been keeping you trapped.

There's no need to be afraid to lean into these deeper inner truths. With the right guidance, this can be one of the most rewarding and inspiring experiences of your life.

11/22/2022

Blooming could be considered a rough translation of hua (華). This is an important concept in Daoism.

Your journey, your life, is about hua. It's about the blossoming of your soul through the experiences of your life.

Cultivation is about how you learn to use the experiences of your life - ALL of them - to support your blooming.

It is about becoming who you are meant to be so that you may feel some degree of completion in this life. So that you may feel some degree of satisfaction in a life well-lived.

Can you embrace even the darkest of your days?

Can you see how they have helped you to become who you want to be? Or, do you feel like they have made you into something else?

The choice is truly yours.

11/08/2022

This is one of my favorite quotes from the Stoics.

How often do you find yourself resisting your life experiences? Are you a 'victim' of your life events? Maybe you're the 'warrior' fighting against your life events?

Can you see how neither of these is actually embracing what life is?

To truly live you have to choose to co-create with life. To do that, you have to embrace the reality of what you experience.

This doesn't mean you have to agree with all of life. You just have to agree that this IS what you are experiencing. From there you can decide who you want to be.

You are not a victim of your fate and you need not fight it.

Embrace it, it's there to help you figure out who you want to be.

Justin Ehrlich

10/14/2023

07/24/2023

07/22/2023

05/09/2023

04/25/2023

04/11/2023

03/28/2023

03/14/2023

02/28/2023

02/14/2023

01/31/2023

01/17/2023

01/03/2023

12/20/2022

12/06/2022

11/22/2022

11/08/2022

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Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm