Category Archives: Body Psychotherapy

20 trillion life forms

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You, (the spirit you) live in a walking breathing community of 20+ trillion cells, that are all working together to create your body. They are co-operating at a phenomenal rate passing messages to each other. Each cell is a living, breathing, feeding life form, being. It moves, it hurts, it plays, it does the job it was built for, it feels. The entire makeup of your body literally, is made up of 20 trillion alive beings, all working together (for the most part) to give you a body, a vehicle to move around in, on planet earth.

We take all this for granted day to day. So much so, that when something goes wrong with our body, we forget how to access it directly in order  to heal the problem.

This is where mindfulness meditation for self healing and the body process-based therapies comes in. This work is designed to reignite the connection to your subconscious body’s 20 trillion cells and assist and guide them to heal. Now it is very difficult to home in on one cell. What normally happens is that we home in on a group of cells, maybe 200,000 of them that make up a muscle fibre in some part of your body. That you can feel. 200,000 expressing a sensation/pain can be felt.

If you take the time to listen to these groups of cells each day, you will find (as you get good at it) that your cells are communicating to you all the time.  Especially the ones that need urgent attention. Giving them this attention is what I help people do each day in my private practice and then watch as amazing things unfold and old problems, issues and pains begin to drop and melt away.

Healing Trauma Naturally

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One of my specialty areas in my therapeutic work is helping with healing trauma. Traumas that are anxiety and panic creating within you that won’t switch off. Many people have such places within them, reactions that can’t be switched off easily and that can be triggered at the slightest hint of an unsafe situation or reminder of the original cause of the fear.

I attended a seminar recently that updated on the latest neuroscience research. One thing that perked my ears was hearing that scientists are working on discovering what causes this reactive fear in people and finding a way to switch that off. It was labeled as an ‘old brain’ reactive part carried over from our ancestral heritage that isn’t useful to us in this day and age.

My view is a bit different to this. I don’t think this ‘old brain’ piece of programming within us is such a bad thing. What we really should be looking at is why this reaction was created in the first place. And that takes us back to the cause of the problem, an old traumatic event where we couldn’t protect ourselves adequately enough, leaving unfinished the fight/flight response.

So what we should really be looking at is, asking the question – how can we access and complete this flight/fight response in the body and mind? This is the work and research that I do everyday. Finding better ways to access and release this old fear/trauma response in the body. It is done naturally, and in a holistic way. This work fills the missing experience that the person did not have at the time of the trauma.

Once it releases a client will comment, (a real example:)
” I feel I have unlocked some part of me that hasn’t rested in a long time.”

That says it all. Some part has finally rested and relaxed for the first time in a long time. And a big fear and anxiety has just melted away permanently. No need to find a switch and use chemicals/medications to ‘switch it off.’

Anxiety and panic reactions are there for a reason. It is the body saying, ‘HELP! I’m scared!’

It is not advisable to go around switching this alert response off.

This is what medications/drugs do. Numb out a persons feelings so they don’t feel the body’s cry for help. The anxiety is covered over. Unfortunately there are side affects and other feelings get covered over too. Resulting in a lower quality of life and aliveness. This is not a solution – walking around half alive.

When a client releases a trauma naturally, they feel the difference within them, they feel the relief, the freedom, the lightness. They feel more alive, more authentic and more human again.

Working with the body, mindfulness and subconscious carefully enough, creates these types of results regularly.
This is the ‘real thing’.

A little about ‘Acceptance’

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I’d like to say a little about ACCEPTANCE that can be very beneficial to remember.

In the mindfulness classes (as well as the private therapy sessions) I often talk about acceptance. Sometimes people think that by accepting their problem, that it means that they will be stuck with the problem forever. That’s how it feels to the intellect. There is a feeling that you have to keep fighting this disease, ailment, pain or negative behaviour pattern, to get rid of it or else it will never go away, or ever heal.

This is not the case.

If you can stop and feel what the problem is and its location in your body, and actually stay with it, accept that it is there and not try to fight it, it then has the space to release properly. But acceptance is the hard part because it means accepting exactly how it feels in your body right now, and that’s not always pleasant to allow. But if you can take the step to let go judgment and just fully allow the problem to be in your body, then amazing things happen.

In classes and personal sessions, you have the opportunity (for an hour or more) to stay with and accept parts of you that you have denied, hated and avoided for a long time. And when this allowing happens, your body then has the freedom to actual heal the issue in ways that your intellect could never fully understand.

Stillness

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Who we are I believe, correlates more with the state of stillness than it does with our intellectual thinking. Your ability to feel stillness, to just be with yourself, the world, nature, or with others, is a greater indication of your maturity and level of humanity.

Stillness is not reading a book while lying on a beach or watching TV numbed out on the couch. Stillness is being comfortable with silence and doing seemingly nothing in that moment for a period of time. Whether with yourself alone, or with another.

So in Body Psychotherapy and in fact with all the work done in a session with a client, once the initial talking is done and we move to deepening, there is a lot of stillness time. The stillness can be quiet or active, but there are few words if any, it is simply still. The thinking becomes less important and the attention moves to the body and the inner workings of the subconscious.

Stillness breathes in fresh air to a crowded over thinking, over worked mind and gives the body a chance to speak and heal itself in areas that had been locked and pushed away for far too long.

This is why Mediation is a good practice. To meditate you need to accept stillness.

Combining Powerful Therapeutic Approaches for Better Results

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I reminded myself again today just how well my therapeutic work, specifically the P.S.H. Therapy and the Body Psychotherapy work combine so well together.

One is a great tool to bypass the intellect and drill down straight to the feeling cause of a problem (PSH) and the other is a great tool at keeping a person in their body present enough, for this to happen effectively.

Most people do the P.S.H. Therapy three session process first. If that process isn’t showing results within a month or two, then I bring in the Body Psychotherapy work to help them stay in their body better, to clear the original cause more effectively. The original cause of a problem very often releases in a minute. Once that release has occurred, then you give your body time to work through all the adjustments and renovations required to clear it out of your system fully.

It can be hard to tell if the cause has been released, which is why I give the person at least a month to see what changes arise. After the month, the client rings me for a follow up call, a stock take, to work out what has happened. From that call, there a number of ways things can go. Some of the typical options:

If things are…..
1. Going amazingly well! – Give it 12 months for the full effect, no more sessions required
2. Noticing some improvement, going okay – Give it another month and check in again
3. Not quite 100% – Book in a fourth session
4. Still very stuck – Move onto the second stage, Body Psychotherapy three session process

Sadly, some people do not ring back after a month, and then ten months later, I receive my questionnaire back from them with feedback that the sessions didn’t help them much. If only they had rung and went that next step. Most of the people that do ring back when there is little shifting, make big breakthroughs when they move onto the Body Psychotherapy process. Like one client commented after their stage two sessions, “Yep, that did it George!”

Ask the therapist: “Have you had sessions in this work yourself?”

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The theme that arose a bit this past month from a number of people and therapists that I have been talking to has been about the well known fact that the best therapists are normally the ones that have had a major problem/health issue that they healed in themselves before becoming therapists.

Why is that?

My three reasons:

1/ The therapist has been in your shoes. They have been a client and have sat in that other chair and know what it is like. So there is a greater empathy and care. The therapist doesn’t ‘look down’ on the client.  The relationship is more equal.

2/ The therapist believes in the work they trained in, because it helped heal them. So there is a high confidence that ‘you too can be helped’. It’s not just theory. They ‘know’ it can help the client. And many clients certainly need some hope that they can get better. It rubs off easier when the confidence is real.

3/ The therapist healing themselves most likely means that they have received an adequate number of personal  therapy sessions. Which means they are more clearer, less reactive and calmer when working with people. And the client feels that. The client tends to feel safer in the therapist’s presence. The technical work can be performed with more professionalism and care.

So it is always a good question to ask a therapist you are interviewing on the phone or in person: “Have you had session in this work yourself?”

The answer is a definite yes for me. And (surprise surprise) the work helped me so much that I decided to change careers completely and become a Body Psychotherapist. Originally I was a qualified accountant (with a University Honours Degree in Economics). I worked as a computer programmer /IT consultant for 12 years (in my 20’s) before switching, (saw my first client just before my 30th birthday.)  I was a client myself for about 500 sessions in Radix Body Psychotherapy. Plus many sessions in other body based therapies too. Amazing work. Completely transforming.

I also did the P.S.H. Therapy early on in my P.S.H. Therapy two year training. That had a remarkable effect also (See my story on my website My personal Story).

Now each year I am wise enough to see a body based therapist for a number of session (normally 3 to 10) to help maintain and improve things further. So nothing is allowed to ‘stick’ for too long. In the sessions I always discover something I had been carrying/holding onto that was weighing me down that I didn’t realise was there. Doing such maintenance work actually helps me feel better every year. Lighter, freer, calmer, happier.

“Learn to live with it”

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I’ve heard this line many times. A statement made by well meaning therapists to clients of mine who were seeing such people in the past.

I heard this line again recently from a client referring to a friend of theirs who had been seeing a psychologist and getting CBT for their anxiety.

“Learn to live with it.”

I’m glad my client wasn’t happy hearing that. And needless to say nor was I.

With what’s available in the body based therapies now, anxiety is completely healable. What I can’t tell you is how many sessions it may take.

I’ve lost count as to the number of clients I have worked with over the years, who now have no, (or virtually no) anxiety to speak of. They have no anxiety that needs to be “lived with” for the rest of their lives. It’s gone. Finished. Completed. No more. In fact many even forget that they ever had it.

There are very advanced therapeutic methods available now that help completely heal anxiety and panic. The key –  is that they are body (nervous system) based, not cognitive based. Go to a cognitive based therapist and they can only really help you to “live with it” because they are only cognitive based trained. And this has it’s value too.

My aim with every client who wants it, is to heal the anxiety completely, 100%. And I don’t care how bad it is or how long the person has had it. It is healable completely.

In fact once it does heal the person is rarely the same again. They frequently end up even better than before. Transformed.

This is very transformative work.

“You’re a Lid Popper!”

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At a recent Women’s Trauma Release group I am co-leading one of the participants after her individual session said with a laugh, “George, you are a lid popper!” We all laughed. And I agreed. What a great phrase I thought. A lid popper.

The Body Psychotherapy work, (especially the Radix Work) is excellent for helping people ‘pop their lids’ (in a  safe way of course.)

What are all the past pains and hurts and emotions that you have put a strong lid over to cover up and not feel ever again? Some people have many lids – and that can get very tiring, draining and create exessive thoughts quizzing around in your head. Not to mention the behavioural limitations and reactions they cause, and long term, if not addressed, disease.

“I never knew that was there!”

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This weekend (August 21/22 2010) I just completed running another Energy Body Psychotherapy Workshop with eight amazing participants. (Plus one fantastic assistant.) The bond, safety and caring created by the whole group was beautiful to be part of and experience. And the releases that each and everyone of them freed up in themselves was powerful and deeply moving.

One of the comments that came up regularly after a deep process was “I never knew that was there”.

I’ve heard this a lot over the years from clients. And it again highlights how well we as human beings are able to suppress and hide deep emotional wounds, from ourselves. So we go about our lives thinking we are okay because we are functional, but deep down the nagging problems, behaviours, dramas, reactions and diseases that we can’t shake off, are still there.

Accessing this core material requires much deeper work, and it requires getting deeply in touch with the body inside. Doing this with just talking doesn’t do it for a lot of people. To get deep inside your body, you must engage it fully. That means adding sound, movement, feeling, touch, energy and contact with the intellect thinking.  Doing this means often, we are awakening the inner child within. Accessing and awakening the younger part of your nervous system so you can finally heal yourself where it counts.

So if you do still have nagging problems after many years of working on yourself. Just know that deep within you there is a layer or two that is still active and still influencing your current behaviour. And it may be time to go much deeper.

Energy Body Psychotherapy Workshop

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Another Energy Body Psychotherapy weekend workshop completed recently that I ran on July 24/25 2010. The workshop was booked out with the maximum of eight people. It went very well. All eight were able to let go and release some very deeply held repressed parts of themselves which stopped them from feeling fully alive and embodied.

The workshop starts with some education on how we block feelings and what happens when we release them. I cover in detail the process the body goes through and why people develop deep unconscious blocks over time which leads to – feeling less authentic in their life and, if left untreated for too long, disease.

This is followed by paired exercises to help participants begin to feel comfortable with each other as well as begin to deepen into themselves. The Sunday is more enlivening and more expressive with more paired work as we go even deeper. The Sunday afternoon I work with each participant individually with the support of the rest of the group.

This is very deep and powerful work and very life transforming. I always feel deeply blessed to be part of a person’s journey as they take the courage to let go and free themselves.

The workshop combines all my background in Radix work, Somatics, Trauma Release Therapy, Energy Healing and other training and techniques brought in as required. Needless to say I highly recommend it!