About Anu
[This
page is part of Anu's first attempt at a website.
Please
go to the new site.]
Anu de
Monterice studied psychology at Duke University and obtained an MD from
Case/Western Reserve University School of Medicine. In medical school he was
especially interested in biochemistry and nutrition and did research on aspects
of iron absorption. After internship he practiced medicine and psychiatry in
the US Air Force, then completed psychiatric training
at the State University of New York, Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. There
he worked with maverick psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, on
the issue of the political misuse of psychiatry.
Anu
treated medical and psychiatric patients in Sonoma County, California from 1975
to 2001, using both conventional and alternative approaches (diet, exercise,
psychotherapy, meditation, herbs and supplements).
In 2001,
under duress by the medical board, Anu gave up his license to practice
medicine, and turned to Personal Life Coaching. He completed training in
Co-active Coaching at the Coaches Training Institute in San Rafael, California.
Anu is
pleased to apply the concept in coaching, that clients are creative and
resourceful and don’t need to be “fixed.” It’s a refreshing antidote to the
medical, illness model.
A
proponent of physical – as well as mental –
fitness, Anu is a member of USA Track
& Field and the American Medical Athletic Association.
Anu’s emphasis is on
encouraging and teaching people to promote their own wellbeing and personal
& spiritual growth -- and that of the folks around them as well. He helps
clients to pursue their lives in a purposeful manner rather than to
automatically follow their habit patterns.
Since 1993
Anu has been teaching meditation. He was turned on to Vipassana or Insight Meditation by the Thai ex-monk Dhiravamsa in
1970 and took courses on the Buddha’s teaching at the Nyingma Institute in
Berkeley, California. He was reinspired by Shinzen
Young starting in the later 1980’s. Joseph Goldstein has also been an important
influence. See the meditation
page for more information.
Handling
Emotions Skillfully is Anu’s
class which applies meditation tools to the experience of sadness, anger, and
fear, teaching how to ride the waves of these turbulent emotions; the newer
class, Promoting Positive Emotions, teaches how to be happy by
inducing and encouraging loving kindness, compassion, gratefulness and other
positive states. (See Classes/workshops).
Anu is
actively concerned with issues of peace and social justice. He’s been an ACLU
member for decades, since being on a subcommittee on the rights of mental
patients with Tom Szasz in the 1960’s. And he is a
member of the activist group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, as well as the
Buddhist Peace Fellowship.
Only by
working simultaneously on bettering society and ourselves – eradicating our own greed,
hatred and addiction to our narrow self-interests –- can we develop the
peaceful world that we yearn for and that will allow all of us to develop our
full creative potential.
