Your Mind is Powerful. It Can Make or Break Your Life.
Are You Its Master or Is It Mastering You?
Play with Me to Find Out...
Just Imagine...
About my fascination for the
Brain and Mind
The brain and the mind (why we act and think the way we do) have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, to help people who had mental illnesses (lobotomies were in vogue), or had become quadriplegic.
The financial of such lengthy studies put too much pressure on my family, so I turned to psychology. I attended my first conference when I was 15, and ended up speaking with the presenter, a psychologist/psychoanalyst, who took me under his wings. He opened doors for me to study in his Institute in Nyon, Switzerland, and with the Institut Français de Culture Humaine in Paris, France.
At age 20, I was certified in grapho-morpho-psychology, with training in psycho-analysis. I was studying the Silva Mind Control and parapsychology. The mysterious, i.e. the unexplained, attracted my inquisitive mind.
In 1996, my doctoral thesis was on "The Power of the Mind in Healing." Later on, InterActive Guided Imagery taught me how to dialogue with the subconscious mind.
EP-Energy Psychology, hypnosis and NLP-Neuro Linguistic Programming (sensory communication), were added to my chest of tools for rapid and lasting transformation.
Evolution and Integration of Body-Mind Empowerment Techniques
Psychology- Psychoanalysis
Freud, Adler, Jung, Baudoin, Lacan... the first ones who dealt with the sub/unconscious.
It often took years to get to the root cause of a problem, and to accept it... without solving it.
InterActive Guided Imagery
1900s: Research showed that images could trigger responses in the body. Guided Imagery helped solve health issues and InterActive Guided Imagery got treasures of wisdom and solutions by dialoguing with the subconscious mind.
Energy Psychology
Starting in the 1980s, Energy Psychology entered the picture. Intertwining acupressure with psychotherapy resulting in fast resolution of fears, phobias, addictions, and even "old" pain.
Hypnosis and NLP
Forget hypnosis media hype and NLP unethical marketing. Hypnosis and NLP are two of the most powerful techniques for rapid and lasting transformation. You direct your mind to change brain wiring so you can enjoy an empowered life.
Self-Empowerment
This is my goal for you.
1. To help you get rid of issues, restore confidence and awaken your Inner Champion.
2. To train you to use powerful techniques so you can empower yourself when new challenges arise.
What Is Holding Us Back AND What to Do About It
Programming
When you buy a computer, programs are already installed in it. It is the same with us. We are born with a unique set of programs which may, or may not, be useful.
From birth to about age 7, we are like sponges, gathering as much data as we can, without much rational thought. We are thus further programmed by our parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, our environment and the media.
Later on, critical thinking develops, and we start to realize that our thoughts, habits and behaviors may not lead to the life we desire. Are we stuck?
NO! Just as with a computer, we can delete programs that do not serve us, and add more empowering ones.
Our mind wants the best for us. We need to lead it in the right direction.
ANTS-Automatic Negative Thoughts
Of course, positive thoughts are more empowering than negative thoughts... or are they?
If your mind brings negative thoughts to your attention, it might be for a reason. Just pushing them down does not solve the problem.
Gently following the thread of where they come from can bring resolution, without facing strong opposing resistance.
You would not go in your garden, saying, "There is no weed, there is no weed." You would notice the weeds, and act appropriately. Some weeds are actually very nutritious. Finding and transforming the root cause of negative thoughts, habits or behaviors can be amazingly liberating and empowering.
Addictions, Fears and Phobias
Oftentimes, addictions cover an uncomfortable feeling. We don't want to let it rise, so we shut it down with a behavior (alcohol, drug, food, video game, shopping...), whatever is necessary to "not feel that." Like lead into gold, it can be transmuted into an empowering behavior.
Fears and phobias usually have their origins in an event that happened before the age of 7, which evolved and transformed over time. Let's find the sensitive event, and release the energy that keeps you reacting.
Guilt, Shame, Grief and Lack of Confidence
We drag guilt, shame, grief and other heavy feelings like balls and chains that prevent us from living or lives fully.
How confident are you when you feel guilty? How confident are you when you feel ashamed? Is unprocessed grief keeping you in a state of depression?
If you are ready to release disempowering feelings that drag you down, I would be happy to guide and assist you with tools and techniques that have proven to work quickly and efficiently.
Isn't it time to release these balls and chains?
"Old" Pain
We experience 2 types of physical pain.
1. The pain that says, "It's time to go to the dentist," or "Get an ambulance, you need help asap," or anything to that nature. It means, "Something is wrong; do something about it NOW!"
2. The pain that lingers. You have taken care of the acute pain, yet it is still there.
There may be an emotional root that needs to be dug out, or the body-mind is simply "protecting" you (or so it thinks) from a potential recurrence. In most cases, this "old" pain can be dealt with and released.
How will you feel without it? How would your life change? What would you be doing?
Stress and Trauma
There are 2 types of stress: Eustress (the good kind) and Distress (the "bad" kind).
You experience Eustress when you are getting ready for a vacation or going to an especially longed for event. You need to get ready... it's a type of stress that gets you "in gear."
Unfortunately, we also experience a lot of stress that negatively affects our health. For this type, it is necessary to learn tools and techniques to mitigate its nefarious effects. There are many easy to use and apply tips that work almost instantly. Ready to learn? Contact me!
We will all experience trauma during our lives. I was fortunate to have an array of tools at my disposal to lessen the impact of C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) when I was faced with it. I keep learning different ways to alleviate and dissipate the agony of traumatic experiences to better serve my clients. The memory of the trauma may be accessed, yet it will become flat, with no emotional intensity. Be FREE!
You Subconscious/Unconscious Mind sends you thousands of thoughts, pictures, images, ALL DAY LONG (and at night too). However YOU have the POWER TO CHOOSE which ones you will allow to nest in and shape your life. You can program your mind to do YOUR bidding. Ask me how...
Let's Go Deeper:
What Can Your Mind Do For You?
Imagery
The most powerful language of the 21st century
What is Imagery? It is a flow of thoughts that can be seen, heard, felt, smelled or tasted in one's imagination.
Imagery has been said to be:
- the language of the right brain
- the language of the nervous system
- the language of the emotions
- the language of the unconscious and
- the interface between mind and body.
Imagery can help us understand what is going on at a deeper level by letting us access information and resources stored in the body.
Like any other language, it can be learned and mastered.
Imagery has been recognized as one of the most effective alternative therapies available. It is a powerful technique using the untapped resources of the mind.
Your Unconscious Affects Your Daily Life
Since guided imagery has powerful physiological consequences and also conveys important and otherwise inaccessible information from the unconscious mind, there are virtually no limits to the number of situations where it can be used in health care settings (for acute/chronic pain or to prepare for surgery), for fitness training, stress reduction/management, to resolve PTS(D) issues, to improve sports performance, and/or to find meaning and purpose in one's life.
Therapeutic guided imagery allows clients to enter a relaxed state of mind, and then to focus their attention on images associated with the issues they are confronting. For example, one can invite an image to form that represents a particular medical symptom, and then initiate an imaginary dialogue with the image to ask why it’s there, what it wants, what it needs, where it’s going, and what it has to offer. The information obtained from such a dialogue can often be more directly helpful than even the most sophisticated medical diagnostic tests.
By using an interactive, non-judgmental, content-free guiding style, experienced imagery practitioners can encourage patients to tap their latent inner resources to find new and creative solutions for their own problems. The consistent emphasis on inner resources and solutions lead to minimal transference, greater opportunities for effective client self-care, an enhanced sense of self-efficacy, and the rapid development of patient autonomy.
How can Imagery Help?
Imagery can help by revealing the source of the problem or symptom, and by giving insights into the situations we are facing. It can help us relax, relieve stress, slow down heart rate, stimulate the immune system, reduce pain, eliminate side-effects, change the levels of hormones and neurotransmitters in the blood... It can help us cope with chronic and life-threatening illnesses, balance emotions, stimulate healing, resolve problems and conflicts, sharpen intuition, and become more effective at setting and reaching goals.
It has powerful physiological consequences, which are directly related to the healing systems of the body.
Emotions and creativity have often been suppressed and locked up in the body. They may surface years later as uncomfortable symptoms, allowing them to be released.
Who Can Use Imagery?
Everyone uses Imagery all the time.
Do you ever worry? That's a kind of imagery... the negative kind.
If I were to say "Don't think about an elephant!" What would you see with your mind's eyes?
If I were to ask you to close your eyes and describe your living room or a home you lived in as a child... you would be using Imagery.
We do it all the time, without using the word "Imagery". However, we have not been trained to use it to our advantage.
Different Kinds of Imagery
1. Image Streaming is a technique developed by Win Wenger, Ph.D., (described in detail in his book The Einstein Factor) that merges the qualities of imagination which Einstein possessed with the descriptive methods of Socrates. It consists of briefly focusing on a problem, taking an object in hand or in one's imagination and describing it out loud, for several minutes. The insight to the problem will be found in the description of the images that arise. Leonardo da Vinci found his inspiration in a similar system "It should not be hard," did he write in his Notebooks "for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which... you may find really marvelous ideas."
2. Guided Imagery is found in many disciplines, and consists of a practitioner leading a patient/client through a usually prepared script.
3. InterActive Guided Imagery(sm) is a technique perfected by Dr. Martin Rossman, M.D., and David Bresler, Ph.D., in which the practitioner elicits images from the patient/client. Those images are very unique and personal, arising from the patient/client's life experience and stores memory.
In summary, we all think in images. Nothing has ever been created that was not first imagined. We all seem to know how to worry or "awfulize", which is nothing less than negative imagery.
Let's turn this around, and use positive imagery, to heal ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Little is known about the healing system of the body. We just know it exists, as do the digestive system, the nervous system, the cardio-vascular system, etc. The healing system is accessed through images. Dialoguing with the images often bring solutions to seemingly unsolvable, frustrating problems.
Problems are nothing more than challenges to conquer, and opportunities to grow into the person we were meant to be. Imagineering is a powerful method to move through obstacles in a quicker, more elegant manner, a tool to help us build the life we desire.
Examples of Imagery
From the book "Healing Yourself" by Dr. Martin . Rossman, M.D.
Published by Awareness Press (used with permission)
While yours is the most important image, a few examples of images that others have created might help you realize how different and personal imagery can be and still be effective.
Consider 3 people with back problems.
An orthopedic surgeon friend of mine had a severely herniated lumbar disk. He was a very progressive surgeon who had used hypnosis to help his patients recover quickly from surgery, and he believed in the power of the mind to assist healing. He doubted, however, that imagery could help repair a ruptured intervertebral disk, but he wanted to do anything he could to avoid surgery. He was able to visualize the disk quite well, since he had seen so many of them in his work. He described it as a fibrous sack, whose contents had "blown out" and were now pressing on a nerve in his back. He couldn't imagine a satisfactory way for it to be repaired without surgery, and became increasingly frustrated. Finally, he decided to relax very deeply and see if the image could change by itself. Suddenly he saw a vivid image of the center of the disk being sucked back into the sack, and the tear sealing itself up like the diaphragm of a camera. The image was so clear it startled him. He was even more startled to find that after this session he was greatly relieved of pain and was able to walk without pain down his leg for the first time in weeks. He went on to recover completely without surgery, a fact that has both pleased and amazed him since.
Another friend and patient with a recurring back problem would imagine a huge rope knot representing the muscle spasms in his back. As he relaxed, he could visualize the knot loosening and found that his back muscles completely relaxed by the time he was able to imagine the knot untied.
A third patient with a one-year history of severe unremitting back pain imagined a knife stabbing him in the back. In guided imagery, he was asked to look at who put the knife there, and he saw his ex-business partner who had stolen from and ruined their business. A brief course of counseling sessions helped him express and come to terms with the feelings of anger and loss that he had been holding inside, and his back pain disappeared as he worked through his feelings.
The point here is that a similar problem may produce different images in different people, and may lead in different directions for healing. Sometimes, active imagery will suffice to relieve pain and stimulate healing, while in other cases receptive imagery will point to physical, emotional, or situational problems that need resolution before healing can proceed.
Let's look at some other images that patients of mine have created of their illnesses and their healing processes. Remember, while "create" is not quite the right word - "receive" might be better - these images came from concentrating on the problem and being receptive to the images that formed.
Inflamed Wrist
A man with a painfully inflamed wrist imagined his wrist bones having sharp, jagged edges that grated on each other as he used his hand. In contrast, the image of his normal wrist included round bones, with rubber and cotton cushions between them, allowing smooth, painless movements. In his Healing Imagery, he imagined gently placing cushions and supports between the bones of the painful wrist and was able to greatly reduce his discomfort as his wrist healed. His imagery was not anatomically correct, yet it was effective in reducing his pain.
Ulcerative Colitis
A young man with ulcerative colitis had been having painful abdominal cramping and bleeding from his rectum for two months. Medication was not helping, and he wanted to avoid cortisone if he could. He imagined his colon being red, raw and irritable. He said it seemed "uptight" and "oversensitive." As he relaxed with his hands on his abdomen, he imagined his hand melting into his body and lovingly stroking and massaging his colon. He imagined his colon relaxing and resting in his hands. At the same time, he felt a pleasant sense of warmth in his belly, and imagined fresh, healthy blood flowing to his colon, refreshing, cleansing, and healing it. In two days he was free of symptoms. Three weeks later, his gastro-enterologist said his colon appeared to be completely healed
Herniated Disk
A sixty-five-year-old retired heavy equipment operator with a herniated disk in his back imagined a tiny work crew inserting house-lifting jacks between his vertebrae. He then imagined them clearing out the old "busted" disk and installing a fresh one, which he visualized as a small, very tough rubber ball. When the "work crew" lowered the top vertebra, the ball flattened into a cylindrical shock absorber, which maintained the space between the bones. He even imagined it cushioning the joint as he walked. He found this image to be a consistently effective way to relieve his back pain and sciatica.
Peptic Ulcer
A fifty-two-year-old businessman with a peptic ulcer visualized spraying the inside of his stomach and intestines with a cooling white foam three times a day between meals. He was able not only to relieve his pain but heal quickly, discontinued the ulcer medications, and remained free of ulcers through several stressful years.
Sinus Headache
A mother of three with a week-long sinus headache focused on her pain and saw a large eye with wings on either side. As she watched it, it suddenly flew away, and a large glob of mucus fell into the back of her throat. She was surprised to sit up and find that her headache was relieved. Neither she, nor I ever understood the significance of the symbol. It seemed as if the imagery itself produced relief.
Stress
A twenty-seven-year-old junior executive was having anxiety attacks at work. As he relaxed and asked for an image for his anxiety, he saw a frenetic honeybee, flying about in an agitated state. The bee seemed scattered and didn't seem to have any pattern or direction in its movement. The image for healing that came to him was a rose. He imagined holding the rose out to the bee, and it came over and began collecting nectar. The bee then seemed more relaxed and content, and so did the young man. He found this simple visualization calming and centering and used it for a few minutes at a time whenever he began.
Let's Look At How My Clients Solved Their Challenges Using InterActive Guided Imagery
