Lou Guadagnino

My Story

My life has been a fantastic adventure that has offered me many lessons. The first of two important lessons is that we need to understand how to work with our minds and emotions to accomplish anything we want to do. The second important lesson is that we need to trust ourselves if we want to feel confident and make the best decisions.

I began my adventure of working with people to help them improve their lives at the ripe-old age of fourteen years old. I volunteered for three years in one of the earliest substance abuse programs in New York.

Later in my early twenties, I worked with opioid addicts in San Francisco including Chinese gentlemen dressed in traditional Chinese clothes, who were addicted to the “opium pipe.” They didn’t know a thing about heroin or using a hypodermic needle and Fentanyl didn’t exist yet.

In 1986, I began a thirty-one year career at the University of Rochester, working with people who suffered from addiction and mental health disorders. I also represented the UR by giving public talks on addiction, and worked alongside an assemblyman to open the first treatment facility for women in Rochester, New York.

But all of what I have mentioned so far is only what I call my “external educational.” As valuable as all of it has been, I would never be able to use it in practical ways without my “internal education.”

My internal education was my spiritual education; the result of my interests in meditation, yoga, Buddhism, and Indian Philosophy. All of these ancient traditions encouraged me to study and understand my mind but they all insisted I study and understand my mind through my own experiences and not through a theology, theory or philosophy.

My spiritual practice gave me a direct method to observe my mind: how my thoughts and emotions originated, how they naturally faded away, and how they became habitual patterns that affected my life. But most importantly I learned I am not my thoughts or emotions; thoughts and emotions are transitory phenomenon.

I was fortunate. I was lucky enough to be a young adult when meditation, yoga, and buddhist traditions were first available in America. I met gurus and teachers from India and Tibet. Some did not know the English Language and required translators but our conversations were person-to-person.

This combination of working in clinical settings along with great minds and being taught meditation and spiritual wisdom from authentic teachers has given me a unique perspective and approach to working with my own life and with people.

Everyone has strengths inside they do not know they have and everyone has wisdom inside they have not discovered yet which can be used to manage life’s problems and challenges.

I currently work with people via Zoom and in our office in Rochester, New York. If you are interested in trying a different approach to improve your life, a different view through which you can discover yourself, feel free to message me through our contact section below.