Category Archives: Radix Body Psychotherapy

Changing your Deep Subconscious Auto-Pilot Habits

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“Our brain captures the strategies that work to keep us safe, connected and respected as possible in our early life environment, and then puts those behaviors on autopilot.”
(Amanda Blake, Your Body is Your Brain, 2018)

The behaviours you have that are on autopilot are hard to change because they have been buried deep down very efficiently. They are on autopilot so that they can run automatically when needed without thought.

When you need to be safe and connected, you don’t want to have to think it all through. Stopping to think for too long can be the difference between life and death, or connection and no connection with others.

So how do you change something that’s deep and not part of your conscious thinking intellect? You need to turn inward and put the intellect into the back seat for a while. Body Mindfulness work helps you to do this. You scale back the rate of thinking by focusing on your inner body, mostly from the neck down, away from the seat of the intellect. That brings you closer to the automatic patterns that you deemed early on as the best way to live.

I like Amanda Blake’s explanation of the there brains. The lower Cerebellum Brain is geared for safety. The middle Limbic Brain is geared for emotional connection with people and the Cerebrum (top brain intellect) is geared for Respect. This gearing or wiring are strategies that are on autopilot were created long ago, mostly in childhood.

Things change as you grow up and into adulthood. But very often these deeper autopilot patterns do not update. What burned them in place was so strong (probably traumatic) that you decided there is no way you are going to let that affect you in that way again. So that patterns is locked in deep to protect you. To keep you safe. To keep you connected and to keep you respected by people.

“George, how do you remain so calm and balanced all the time?”

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An executive client (while I was on location at a corporate client site) recently asked me ‘George, how do you remain so calm and balanced all the time?’ He had observed me over a six month period while I was working there with a variety of issues and employee behaviors and stresses that I had to deal with and help with.

That was a very good question that I’d like to answer a little bit here and give some insight into with four major points.

How was it that the whole time I was working with that client I never stressed out, complained, got impatient, got reactive to another employees behaviour, but was always calm, balanced and fully available?

On one level it’s a great testimony to this therapeutic work, meditation, mindfulness and body psychotherapy.
You can walk into a place and pretend to keep your cool and try hard to not react and stay balanced, that’s an interim step to the real thing. But what you really want is to be so present in the moment that normal stresses just flow through you, creating a little bit of a wave maybe, but pass through you and the present moment. Or if you do react, the reaction completes very quickly and flows out of your system so you are back in balance very quickly, within seconds sometimes, with very little lingering on.

So here is part of what keeps me in that balanced state the majority of my day:

1.
Do your personal work. Preferably Body based Psychotherapy (my bias).
Having had a lot of personal sessions over the years has been the biggest foundation to being able to be more present than ever before. When I first started having sessions for some issues, I didn’t realize just how much I had buried within me. So as it came out, more arose that I became aware of. So I began a number of years of flushing out the past build up. Without that flushing out, (if you have a lot buried within you) it is very hard to stay present and calm in the face of reactive people that trigger your past unfinished business. So this foundation step is not a quick fix. It took some time which has paid off for itself handsomely over the past 20+ years.

2.
Meditate every day.
Preferably every morning. Each time I arrived at that client’s site, I would stay in my car for 10 minutes, close my eyes, engine switched off, doors locked and I would meditate, centre myself, arrive, get more present. Let any stress from the drive there release.

3.
Be mindful of the present moment – often.
During the day, stay in mindful touch with your body sensations where ever you are at. This helps to keep you out of your head and more embodied in the present moment. You can’t be responding to the present moment appropriately if you are off thinking other things in your head other than being with what is in front of you in the moment.

4.
Be in the Zone.
People who do their job well, professionally, usually have mastered doing the work ‘in the zone’. That’s another way of saying – only be in the present moment now. So my client who wondered how I always stayed that relaxed was seeing me working ‘in the zone’ doing my job, focused, present, attentive, there to accomplish a goal. That’s different from the more casual state that you can be in outside of work hours, where you let your hair down. That professional ‘zone’ produces quality output.

So there you have four major points for how I stay calm and present when I’m busy and/or in a challenging environment.

Joseph Campbell – That ‘still’ place

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I was reading a little of Joseph Campbell recently. For those who don’t know, Campbell was a very highly regarded American Professor and writer who specialised in the fields of comparative mythology and religion. A brilliant man and observer of life.

From his book ‘The Hero’s Journey’ Joseph Campbell talking about his early years as a very good fast track and field runner says:

“There has got to be a still place in there and the movement has to take place around it. I lost two races that were very important to me because I lost the still place. The race was so important that I put myself out there to win the race instead of to run the race. And the whole thing got thrown off.”

This is such a great explanation of what often happens when you lose that still centered place within your body and you allow life and thoughts to take over. Whenever you work ahead of yourself, (already at the destination in your head) that you lose sight of the present moment in your body now, things don’t work as well. You lose clear creative thinking and the quality of your decision making drops. Why? Because you are not operating in true present reality and you are not operating from the still quiet place within you and your body.

MIndfulness Mediation and Body Psychotherapy work helps to change this.

For when you run the race mindfully (staying and responding to your body in the present moment along the way,) it increases your chances, that by the finish line, you’ll be up front and in the winning position

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.

“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!