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The Happiness Show Co-Hosted by Claudia Bassin

New York Psychotherapist Claudia Bassin will now be co-hosting The Happiness Show. This show is the world`s only happiness program on television. Bassin recently began taping episodes of The Happiness Show with George Ortega, producer and co-host. The entire collection of the show can be watched online. The program, which was launched in 2003, has just completed recording episodes 122 through 126 with the new hosts.

`I`m very excited about having Claudia with the show` said Ortega. `In addition to adding a `professional counseling` dimension to the show, she is eager to enliven its format by taking our cameras out into the wider world and interviewing people in different settings to discover what makes them happy,` he adds. The two also have plans to use the television program as a showcase for a weekly happiness how-to group they are developing. `It would be easy and fun for our viewers to learn from one another basic techniques on becoming happier,` says Bassin. `When people hang out together, brain waves are stimulated, concepts are inspired and philosophies are born, I call it an `idea party,` she adds. Bassin describes her neurological/cognitive-behavioral model for happiness as helping people to boost pleasure energy and diminish distress acuity.

A multi-talented personality, Ms. Bassin began entertaining in the late seventies as the lead singer and songwriter of the New York City band `Femme Fatale`. Ms. Bassin also taught aerobic dance and fitness classes until a back injury and several months of recovery in the mid-eighties lead her to launch a counseling career in the New York City schools. She then attended Columbia University, earned her Master of Science in Social Work, and began work with a high school substance abuse program. In the early nineties she started her private counseling practice in Westchester County, New York.