tenderlovingcups

Press Release: Suggestions for a good, better, best and bester-yet life

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 13:10:14 GMT

Here is a new, unusual book

Wholistic Healing for the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP):
A Mini-Encyclopedia of Ways to Develop and Deepen Wonder-full Relationships .
2019. 550 pages. eBook , Paperback , Hardback .

15-20% of people are Highly Sensitive People (HSPs). Surprisingly, HSPs may be 50% of those in psychotherapy. We can all learn from their experiences, described and explained in this book.

People can change waaay beyond ordinary expectations, within minutes, whether or not they are HSPs. This book offers rapid yet deep methods Dr. Benor has collected and developed for self-healing .

Sweeter yet, this book can help you build more positivity into every part your body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit.

It’s better to start supporting HSPs early in life. Children respond even quicker than adults, and then know how to manage stresses and build better lives.

These methods can also $ave bundle$ by reducing stress, thereby reducing doses of many medications, eliminating physical and psychological pains of all sorts, and lessening or eliminating many troublesome symptoms.

Beyond symptom relief, this book explores and explains how we develop our symptoms and problems, and how to clear them. Many case examples help you to understand the processes being discussed.

Dr. Benor, a psychiatrist who trained back when psychiatry was mainly psychotherapy , refused to abandon his chosen profession in order to just prescribe medications. He was forced to ask life-altering questions.

Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules. – Ashleigh Brilliant

The most important question has been how to find methods that are easy to use, yet quick and potent in their effects. This book summarizes years of gathering and fine-tuning such methods.

Dr. Benor has been able to help countless people in great part because he is a wounded healer himself. He knows what serious trauma is from his own experiences, as well as from helping others. He helps people sort out their problems, to develop the bestest life they can have.

Children respond particularly well because they are more open to exploring new ways of coping.

Dr. Benor explored many variations on the themes of healing , for every level of your being. He discovered that almost everything he’d been taught was in many serious ways only partially true, and in other cases was wrong. Medicine, psychology and psychiatry focus very separately and narrowly on disorders of body, mind, emotions and brain functions. Worse yet, problems are treated by separate specialists, isolated from help for other parts of their patients. No surprise that improvements are often limited in these segregated healthcare approaches.

Wholistic healing: Dr. Benor developed wholistic healing approaches , based on Energy Psychology and EMDR. These help people deal with their problems on every level of their being.

HSPs are often sensitive to subtle, healing biological energies and personal spiritual awarenesses, confirmed in research and reviewed in this book. These are not just religious beliefs or wishful thinking. These further major resources for healing, usually provided by clergy, have been largely isolated from other caregiving approaches. Wholistic approaches blend well with these bioenergy and personal spiritual approaches and enhance them.

How can we understand these new, rapid methods for helping ourselves and other to heal? Einstein’s theory, E = mc2, shows that matter and energy are two sides of the same thing. Few realize this applies equally to living physical matter and bioenergy (your body + the rest of you). This book also explains bioenergies, intuition, healing and collective consciousness, confirmed in research.

Further comprehensive details are available at Dr. Benor’s website , including details of self-healing practices and instructions on self-healing methods, along with testimonials from verrry satisfied clients !

Daniel Benor, MD, ABIHM, is a wholistic psychiatric psychotherapist, Editor of the open access International Journal of Healing and Caring . Contact: db (at) danielbenor (dot) com

U.S. Tel. 609-714-1885.

Which do we address first in wholistic care: body, emotions, mind, relationships or spirit?

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 12 May 2016 20:38:00 GMT

By Daniel J Benor, MD

Many people with acute pain simply want to be rid of it, without giving it much of a second thought. A pain pill does the trick and they move on with their lives. They see no reason to poke about and ask whether there are any deeper understandings to be had about the pain.

Most of the time, a painkiller for acute pain is a benign remedy for whatever hurts. Sometimes, however, it might be insufficient or even dangerous. A heart attack, twisted bowels, or appendicitis treated with strong pain killers could lead to delays in treatments for such serious problems, which could progress to fatalities if not treated in time.

With chronic pain it is a somewhat different story. These pains demand more than just a casual response. Backaches, arthritis, migraines, irritable bowel syndromes and other persistent pains interfere with our normal activities and demand more considered attention.

Addressing chronic pain is a challenge on many levels. Pain medication often becomes a problem when taken over a period of time. Side effects may develop, such as constipation, drowsiness, fuzzy-mindedness. Habituation and addiction may begin to loom as dangers. Fatalities from pain medicines properly used occur every year in significant numbers of users.

So chronic pain invites us to look more deeply at what might be causing the pain, so that we can address the underlying causes rather than just addressing the symptom. It is here that we may open doors to deeper understanding of the place of pain in our lives. Let us examine the various levels of our being and how they may be involved in pain and pain management.

Body

Conventional medicine views the body as a complex set of biochemical interactions, and within this framework a pain is a manifestation of some malfunction of tissues, organs and chemistry. When we can identify the physical malfunction, we can sometimes offer a cure.

Wholistic healing addresses body pains through preventive physical level strategies.

The above are items addressed well by Nutritionists and Naturopathic Doctors. Due to the indoctrination we receive from Western medicine, these may be the primary items we think of in connection with pain or any other body symptom. We tend to view the body as a physical object that needs physical or chemical manipulations.

Emotions

What we are feeling may be reflected in our body. If we simply ask our body what it wants to tell us, we may be surprised to learn that our unconscious mind is using the symptom like the ringtone on a telephone. Once we start listening, our unconscious mind can then turn the volume down on the ring.

Wanda suffered from backaches for many years. At first they were intermittent, but in the six years prior to seeking psychotherapy they were constantly present. They were worsened with prolonged sitting and with picking up anything heavy. Over the years, Wanda found herself using increasingly strong painkillers in increasingly heavy doses. She had to quit her secretarial job, both because sitting for more than two hours became unbearable and because the painkillers produced fuzzy thinking and she was making too many mistakes on the job.

Wanda was very surprised to have an immediate response from her unconscious mind when I invited her to ask it what its message was, behind the pain. What her inner self was wanting her to become aware of was her anger over feeling taken advantage of and abused on her job.

Wanda very quickly uncovered deeper layers of awareness. Her frustrations at work were only surface issues. Her unconscious mind was actually inviting Wanda to open her inner file drawers where all of her memories and feelings of being taken advantage of and abused were stored. What surfaced were memories that had been totally shut away from her consciousness. At age seven she had been sexually molested by an uncle during a summer holiday visit. When these issues were processed with the help of TWR, her backaches were completely resolved.

Relationships

Physical symptoms may be a form of communication in the context of our relationships, speaking to the person with the symptom or to those in relationships with him or her. A headache may be the unconscious mind inviting us to give our attention and healing to problems that we have been ignoring – consciously or unconsciously. A headache may be a complaint from our unconscious mind about a person or situation that ‘is a headache’ or nuisance in our lives. That same headache may serve double duty by also giving us the excuse to not have to do something we’d rather avoid; might invite others to give us more attention; or might make it easier for us to ask for help with difficult tasks.

Physical symptoms may be a message from our body that we are being poisoned by toxins in our environment. Stomachaches, headaches and general weakness are common messengers of this sort. All of these plus weakness and tiredness may speak to us in a chorus as fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome.

Spirit

Existential unrest and pain may put us out of sorts or may open us to problems on any level of our being as a way of drawing our attention to the need to alter disharmonies in our current situation or to redefine our life course or goals. Dissatisfaction with our role on the stage of life may predispose us to any condition or may worsen it if we enter a vicious circle of frustration and despair over our illness and its treatments.

Dale was a nurse who had trained to work in hospitals, motivated by her love of helping people feel better. The grateful smile or squeeze of a hand from a patient who thanked her for her tender ministrations was more important to Dale than the salary she brought home. On returning to work after more than a decade’s break she took from work to mother her three children, she found that the hospital was no longer a place where nurses were expected by the management to serve in the ways that had made her heart sing. Her family needed her income to build their savings towards the children’s educational future, and she did not see another option but to grit her teeth and do her best to still provide service with a smile.

This was too dilute a soup to nurture her soul’s desire to be of healing service. Tending electronic monitors was simply not rewarding in the same way that direct personal care had been. Though she pleaded with her supervisors to be allowed to spend more time in direct patient care, even bolstering her pleas with research articles showing that this would decrease many symptoms, reduce stress and shorten hospital stays, her words fell on deaf ears. Dale started having migraines that were so severe she had to stay home for several days, at least every other week.

When a friend who had learned TWR suggested that she talk with her headaches to ask what they wanted to tell her about her life, she was surprised at the clarity of the answer: “Stop beating your head against a brick wall!” Find another job where your good heart will be appreciated. Dale found a job as a school nurse and it was no surprise when her headaches cleared.

Pains may often be blessings in disguise in these sorts of ways. Through the suffering of our pains and through the spiritual people we find who help us to deal with them, we come to reconnect with our personal spiritual awareness. Having had to deal with our own pains, we become more able and open to empathizing with others who have pain.

Choosing the level of entry to wholistic healing

My personal belief is that the spiritual is the matrix for all of the others. I find that whatever I learn on any of the other levels has its deepest reflections, resonations and lessons on that level.

There is no right or wrong way approach our problems. Each doorway will bring its own lessons. Each doorway can also lead to all of the others. Click on the round icons at the top of this page for a discussion about how each of these levels is related to all of the others.

Being aware of all of these levels, and knowing that we can explore and learn healing lessons at each and all of them, our lives our infinitely enriched through explorations of our pains.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2008 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

In Wholistic Healing, the Journey Is the Destination

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:26:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Health and healing are not what we have been led to believe they are. Modern Western medicine and science tell us that disease is a scourge and that the primary goal of treatment is to cure it. In order to achieve cures, we fight illnesses with drugs; remove diseased parts; replace worn out parts; and are engaged in wars on cancer, heart disease and other ailments.

Prevention of illness is also an accepted approach, but one that in many instances is overlooked or ignored in Western medicine. A lot of this aspect of addressing illness has to do with issues of the economics and politics of healthcare that are beyond the scope of this article.

Wholistic Healing addresses body, emotions, mind, relationships (with other people and the environment) and spirit. Wholistic healing helps you

•    Explore the meanings of symptoms
•    Establish a more comfortable relationship with each level of your being
•    Address the needs of each level
•    Harmonize all of these levels of your being

Enhancing quality of life, particularly of consciousness, is the primary goal. A cure of symptoms or illnesses may or may not be part of this experience.

Exploring the meanings of symptoms

If we accept that the body is an integral part of our whole being, it does not seem strange to suggest that a physical symptom often is a message from our unconscious mind about disharmony in our lives. The body may speak with many voices: pains, tensions, twitches, palpitations, indigestion and other bowel dysfunctions, wheezing, urinary symptoms, menstrual discomforts are only a few of the many ways our body calls us to look and listen inwardly.

Headaches, neck pains and backaches are among the most frequent ‘ring-tones’ the body chooses to alert us to messages of buried, unexpressed angers, anxieties, fears and emotional hurts.

Sandy was a very hard working, conscientious high school English teacher. She loved helping her students learn about their place in the world through literature and poetry. She was surprised and distressed to find herself suffering from severe headaches in the middle of the school year.

Having attended a TWR workshop for helping students, she used this method (which addresses every level of a person’s being) on her headaches. First, she asked her pain to tell her what was bothering her inner self. She was surprised to hear that her unconscious mind was complaining that she was being taken advantage of by her principal, who had burdened her with extracurricular tasks.

Upon reflection, she had to admit to herself that although she enjoyed supporting the students in the annual seniors’ play, this was taking much more time than she had anticipated and was stressing her relationships with her husband and children. When Sandy renegotiated her time commitment for this and several other school projects, her headaches cleared completely.

Establish a more comfortable relationship with each level of your being

It may be a stretch for people to realize that a physical problem is not just an issue of biochemistry, physiology, or mechanics of various parts of their body. There may be issues of emotions, mind, relationships and spirit that are impacting the functions of our body.

For instance, what we eat – that which we put into our body – can influence any aspect of our being. We often crave sweets, salt or stimulants such as coffee or tea. Any of these can contribute to poor functioning of our gut, kidneys, connective tissues or brain. In order to address these nutritional problems, once we have identified them, we may need to deal with emotions and stresses that lead us to crave a sugar ‘fix’ or a caffeine ‘hit.’

The medical profession and pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that anxieties and emotions such as depression, and problems such as insomnia are biochemical malfunctions of our body that should be addressed with drugs. While pills may provide a quick fix, they do not solve the underlying problems creating the anxieties or depression; they may be habituating or addictive; and they carry risks of side effects, some of which can be serious and even fatal. Simple changes in diet or lifestyle – including exercise, choices in diet and activities – may alleviate or resolve many of these problems.

Our spirit may want us to engage in more nurturing or meaningful activities than the jobs or relationships we find ourselves in. When work or a marriage are draining rather than satisfying, the resultant stresses may produce symptoms that our unconscious uses to alert us to issues we have difficulty identifying or are reluctant to face, confront and resolve.

Addressing the needs of each level

Once we are aware that we have many facets of ourselves, we can plan to connect with and strengthen our awareness each, in turn, so that we can more easily access them for information about ourselves and to call upon their resources. While each functions with some autonomy, on ‘automatic pilots,’ so to speak, they work better for us when we have a conscious connection with them and regularly engage in activities that nurture them.

Our bodies function best when we provide healthy nutrition, regular exercise as appropriate to our age and capabilities, and adequate sleep.

Our emotions seek expression and we are generally happiest when we are in the company of others who accept us and with whom we are in good relationships. Emotions such as anger, fear, hurt and depression need expression even more urgently than feelings of happiness, joy and love. When any of these fail to be expressed, they may be buried inside ourselves and may fester, creating tensions and generating unproductive responses in future interactions with others. Seeking out and releasing such buried, unexpressed feelings is an important part of emotional hygiene.

Our thoughts need sharing in order to ripen and mature. Finding the company of compatible comrades at work, friends and family helps to nurture our thinking functions. Stimulating new ideas and critiquing old ones is refreshing and energizing.

Our relationships with other people may need cultivating for full enjoyment of their potentials. Similarly with our relationships and the rest of the world around us, particularly with nature.

Our spiritual awarenesses inform and enrich our lives. These may be watered through our religious affiliations and practices, and may find more frequent and deeper expressions through personal spiritual experiences.

Harmonizing all of these levels of our being

When we are in balance on all levels of our being, we can be in the flow of life and capable of handling whatever lessons we are given.

I have often marveled at the differences between brothers and sisters who were raised together in the same family but respond very differently to life challenges in the family. As a family therapist, I have helped whole families deal with losses of family members, major illnesses of parents and children, severe physical or emotional injuries and pains, and with financial and other crises. Introducing everyone to TWR, I often find marked differences in responses in family members who use TWR as recommended. Those who use it with a focus only on the primary presenting problem have limited benefits. For instance, with worries over financial issues, illness, or death, those who focus just on their anxieties feel less anxiety but may still find it difficult to sleep, to concentrate on tasks that used to be easily accomplished, and to deal with their other emotions.

Those who use TWR in more comprehensive manners have much deeper transformations. Not only are the primary symptoms of anxiety, stress or pains improved, but they find themselves feeling more at peace with themselves, with the challenging situation, with other family members, and with friends and colleagues outside the family.

The personal spiritual aspects of wholistic healing are particularly helpful to many people. We may still be ill or have challenging symptoms or situations in our lives, but we need not be suffering. One’s body may still be in pain but if we do not get up tight over it, in many cases the pain is reasonably tolerable. We even may be dealing with a life-threatening illness but if we have made a deep connection through our spirit with the Infinite Source, we may approach the end of our life with acceptance and equanimity.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Confidence Enhances Our Performance and Invites Success

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:24:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances.
-Bruce Barton

Addressing new tasks

We may have hesitations in approaching new tasks. Never having mastered them before, our mindset may be one of tentativeness or lack of confidence in our success.

I recently bought a bottle of skin moisturizer. It has a dispenser at the top of the bottle. For the life of me, I could not figure out how to get the dispenser to work – despite repeated twistings, turnings, unscrewing the top to see if there was a seal blocking it (no such thing!), pushing, pressing down on what appeared to be the plunger-dispenser, prodding, pondering and puzzling over this challenge. I gave up. And this is unusual for me, as I have a gift for pattern recognition and can usually look at a mechanism and figure out how it works. I finally approached Maria, one of my neighbors, who immediately twisted the top slightly to one side and squeezed the bottle, showing me how it operates.

Thinking back over this experience, I realized that I had never before opened a new dispensing bottle. I had used soap bottles in public places and in friends’ homes where a similar dispensing mechanism was a pump that required my pushing down on it to get the soap out. Someone else had set it up to work. My mind-set with the moisturizing cream bottle led me to expect this to be a similar mechanism, and I could not get it to work that way. I had twisted the spout around but had not squeezed the bottle at the same time. Being new to opening such bottles, I did not think of the mechanism that Maria showed me.

Confidence following success

I met a woman named Sheila in Findhorn, a community on the North Sea in Scotland where they talk to plants and get them to grow amazingly quickly and to amazing sizes despite a short growing season. We were sitting on a lawn for a seminar and Sheila chortled as she displayed the 4-leaf clover she had found. When we complimented her on her good luck, she responded, “It’s not luck. I can find one every time I look. The most time it has ever taken me is about an hour.” We were somewhat incredulous, but she explained that she could succeed every time because she absolutely knew she would succeed.

I’ve spoken with people who were similarly successful in making sales in various commodities – from books, magazine subscriptions, cookware and cosmetics, and on to bigger items like cars and homes. I’ve met athletes who seemed able to excel in any sport, and musicians who could pick up almost any instrument and play it passably well without prior practice. These people just knew they were going to succeed and so they did.

Confidence in using TWR: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively® is similar. As we find that it works, we have greater confidence and fewer hesitations about using it and it works even better, and can release increasingly difficult issues.

Over the years I have been teaching people to use TWR for pain and stress relief, my confidence as a therapist and teacher of therapists has grown enormously. TWR has surpassed all my expectations. I simply know that it will work, and it does.

Often, people ask me questions like,

“Is it better to tap on my eyebrows or on my arms?”
“Is it better to tap for a longer time at once or for several shorter periods through the day?”
“Is it better if I use the affirmation you recommend or the one that EFT recommends, since I’m used to those?”
“Is it better to focus on a single issue or to combine a bunch of related issues together?”

They are a bit startled when I answer such questions with a simple “Yes.” The fact is, TWR works best for each person in the way that is unique to their personality, life experiences, beliefs and disbeliefs, and so on. TWR works best when it is personalized to your preferences. And I want to encourage people to gain the confidence in their own abilities to explore and sort out the ways TWR works best for them.

However, I also recommend exploring a variety of ways of using TWR, so that you discover those which work best for you. It is also handy to know several different approaches with TWR because different issues may respond differently to the methods used.

As people use TWR, there are layers and layers of increasing confidence:

The more you use TWR, the more confident you get that you will be able to deal with any challenge in your life. Problems and challenges become invitations to learn more about yourself, to free yourself from burdens of buried feelings taken on when you felt incompetent to deal with them and therefore buried them in your unconscious mind – where they remain, festering and waiting for you to release them.

Case Example:

Trudi grew up in a strict Catholic home where her parents constantly criticized and discouraged her creative and artistic abilities as being frivolous and useless for earning a living. Her father was a very strict disciplinarian and did not hesitate to reinforce his rules with corporal punishment. Her parents pushed her into attending nursing school. While she earned high job performance ratings in the hospital and was acknowledged to be bright and to have a lot of potential, she never achieved the promotions everyone told her she deserved, and she never felt settled in this career.

After suffering for a dozen years, Trudi extricated herself from a marriage with a man who was physically and verbally abusive. She felt helpless to deal with her parents when they cut her off because of the divorce. She struggled for several years as a single mother for two young boys, and struggled increasingly with her lifelong issue of being overweight. She was enormously relieved when she met and married a very warm and supportive man.

She was surprised to find herself in a serious depression several years following her mother’s death – when Trudi had had almost no contact with her for years. She was further surprised to find that the feelings behind her depression were much deeper than the grief which had triggered her to seek help.

TWR felt to Trudi like peeling a very large onion. There were layers of hurts and angers towards her mother and father beneath the depression; feelings of being inadequate to meet her parents’ expectations; lack of self-confidence in her job performance; and, deeper yet, anticipations that no one would or even could really love her.

Though initially skeptical, Trudi was surprised at how quickly and easily the TWR relieved her festering depression, and at the other layers that surfaced – as she gained confidence in her ability to deal with difficult and painful feelings and self-doubts. As her expectations of success grew, her unconscious mind released deeper and deeper layers of hurts. Again, Trudi was surprised when she realized that as a child, her parents’ constant criticisms had led her to ‘armor’ herself with excess weight. Her inner child had reasoned that it was less painful to be rejected for being overweight than for being unlovable.

TWR was able to help Trudi deal with these deeper issues, much of the work being done on her own, with just a little guidance – once she understood the method and her confidence in using it grew and deepened.

The confidence gained in using TWR on themselves is one of the best ways for people to learn to deal with the inevitable layers of challenging issues in their lives. Another way to gain this confidence is through learning TWR in groups, where you can observe other people succeeding in dealing with their own issues. I am always grateful when teaching in classes and seminars, or when demonstrating on air, when a brave person volunteers in front of the group to deal with a difficult issue. This convinces others in the group or the audience that they can succeed in using TWR for their own problems.

You can watch the demonstration YouTube and listen to some of the radio interviews to experience some of these encouragements to succeed in using TWR for yourself.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Humor is Healing… Or Part Way to Healing

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:21:00 GMT

The Can of Peaches (Email passalong):

An 80 year old woman was arrested for shop lifting. When she went before the judge in Cincinnati he asked her, “What did you steal?”
She replied, “A can of peaches.”

The judge then asked her why she had stolen the can of peaches, and she replied that she was hungry.

The judge then asked her how many peaches were in the can.

She replied, “6.”

The judge said, “Then I will give you 6 days in jail.”

Before the judge could conclude the trial, the woman’s husband spoke up and asked the judge if he could say something.

The judge said, “What is it?”

The husband said, “She also stole a can of peas.”

From Martin Brofman

Unspoken resentments can build up in relationships. We may hold our tongues from anxieties about hurting the other person; angering them; being rejected by them; because our family, religious teachings or social culture discourage this; and for countless other reasons.

In some cases, silent resentments may be forgotten after a while – time being a reasonable healer. In other cases, buried resentments grow rather than diminish, particularly when they are repeated. Accumulated irritations tend to build up like pus in a boil, to the point that they are discharged in one way or another. Humor can be a harmless and accepted way to do this.

Festering resentments can come out in nasty ways. The unconscious mind may seek to discharge its tensions through open anger or passive aggressive attacks, as in the can of peas.

There are many better ways to handle unspoken angers and other feelings that we hesitate to express:

The first, of course, is to not swallow them down in the first place! When we are upset, hurt or angry with another person, it is probably best to take a deep breath or two before opening our mouth and venting raw feelings. By pausing for that brief time, we can let the first wave of our emotions pass, so that we can consider the best ways to respond.

We might respond by being silent and letting the issue pass – between us and the other person. We can then deal with our feelings as our own issue rather than as an attack to which we defend or counter-attack, which often leads to escalations and worsening of the feelings on both sides.

If we do respond, it is a healthy policy to use ‘I’ statements, such as “I feel hurt/ upset/ angered by what you said.” Better yet, if we can speculate or acknowledge we may understand why the other person said or did whatever upset us – before we let them know how we feel – they are more likely to listen with compassion for our feelings rather than responding with further hurtful statements.

Donna, mother of two teenage children, was hurt by her own mother’s sarcastically humorous criticism about how Donna was dealing with some challenging teenage behaviors. This was in the context of her mother having been critical of Donna all of her life. Taking a deep breath to postpone any reflexive, angry retort – which Donna knew would only lead to bitter arguments – she gave her mother a little hug, acknowledging she appreciated her mother’s concern. Using ‘I’ statements, she explained her plan of action, mutually agreed with her divorced husband, and promised to keep her mother’s observations in mind if their behavioral program did not succeed.

“I know you’re as concerned about the kids’ misbehaviors as I am, Mom. George and I have been following a plan of action that seems to be working, although I certainly wish it would work quicker! I’ll let George know what you’ve said and we’ll let you know if we decide to go in that direction – if our current program doesn’t work out.”

Realizing that no one can ‘make us angry or upset’ is another helpful awareness. If someone’s humorous but biting or critical remarks raise negative feelings, we can ask ourselves, “Now what pot of buried angers, hurts or other feelings is being stirred here?” When someone is poking fun at us it is their way of saying something they are not comfortable saying more directly and openly. If we focus on the message that they are giving us, ignoring the ‘how’ of their expressing it, we can leave them to sort out thier discomforts while we address the issues at hand. We don’t have to get tangled up in their emotional hangups.

Donna’s calm response was facilitated by several weeks of therapy, in which she had vented and cleared many years of accumulated angers towards her mother. Using TWR, she was able to do this surprisingly quickly, following which she installed positive feelings and awarenesses about the fact that her mother’s way of demonstrating caring was to nag and criticize. It was also helpful to Donna to be able to release some of her feelings in her mother’s presence with discreet uses of TWR – by tapping her feet on the floor – as she was calming herself down following her mom’s biting remarks.

Much of what tickles our funnybones relates to buried emotional skeletons in the closets and caves of our unconscious mind. Humor helps us release some parts of these issues, and can raise our awareness to work on them further.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Transforming Negative Beliefs and Expectations that Spoil Our Enjoyment of Life

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:17:00 GMT

By Daniel J Benor, MD

The expectation that something bad will happen stems from the belief that something bad has happened,
neither of which, on the most fundamental level, is true.
– Alan Cohen

Our childhood experiences often shape the rest of our lives. When we have suffered from neglect, physical or emotional traumas, or abuse, we often carry the burdens of buried childhood emotions for decades after the events. This is because we bury the feelings deep below our conscious awareness, often along with the memories, so that we don’t continue as children to suffer from them.

While burying these memories protects us as children, this leaves us carrying a lot of buried ‘stuff’ that is stashed away in our unconscious mind and in our heart. Our unconscious child mind sets up programs to prevent our being hurt by these buried burdens: it leads us to stay away from anything similar to what we experienced – lest we suffer again as we had suffered before.

Barbara’s mother, abandoned by her husband when Barbara was an infant, had struggled to get by as a single mom. She was always tired, embittered, and easily angered. Barbara learned to hold her feelings and needs inside, because expressing them to her mom only brought negative reactions. Barbara struggled through life with very low expectations that anyone could like her, much less love her. She never dared to let anyone close – fearing that her worst anticipations of being rejected and abandoned would be confirmed. Her fears and her low opinions about herself led her to ‘play it safe’ and not get into relationships where she was certain she would be rejected.

Trevor’s parents, both immigrants who had suffered much throughout their lives in a war-torn country, were always critical of him, saying that they had to point out his faults so that he could improve himself. Trevor grew up feeling constantly put down and never praised for anything good. He excelled academically and over-developed is thinking functions, completely suppressing feelings. He was a highly valued salesman because he never needed outside motivation, being strongly driven by his own self-criticisms to do and achieve brilliantly – but always worrying he wasn’t performing well enough, and at the cost of not being available for his family.

Our adult experiences may leave us with negative feelings as well. We have all had experiences that we wish had never happened. Who has not wished:

There are various ways that we may become aware of our residual negative beliefs and negative habits. Sometimes, we just get tired of behaving in ways that are counter-productive to our current situation and to our current wishes. We wake up one day and realize that ‘it’ is not just ‘happening’ to us. We must be behaving in ways that invite ‘it’ to happen.

Often it is our family and friends who make show-stopping comments or ask penetrating questions, such as: “How did you manage to find not just one or two, but your series of four of those people in a row – who all started out looking like such promising partnering material but then turned on you and became abusive?” or “Could there be anything in your presentations at work that is inviting all the criticisms you’ve had? This is the third position you’ve held where this has become an issue. Could there be something in the way that you put things to people that rubs them the wrong way?” These may at first appear to us to be criticisms, but when they are offered with love and care, and when we can see that our habitual behaviors end up getting us counter-productive, unwanted responses, we may pause long enough to re-examine our habits that are preventing us from enjoying and maximizing our potential in life.

When we begin to examine our beliefs and behaviors in such situations, we often find that we have inner life-scripts that tell us such things as, “I don’t deserve to be loved.” We may have anticipations like, “I’m sure they’ll find something wrong with my presentation.” or “The way to avoid being rejected for not being what people want me to be is to do something that will get them to reject me for what I don’t do right.”

Better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth
and utter one word – and remove the slightest doubt.
– Abraham Lincoln

Once we grasp that ways that we are feeling, believing and behaving, it is actually not that difficult to make significant shifts into better personal spaces. Once we no longer expect rejection and failure, we are much less likely to behave in ways that will bring us to that place which we fear.

Barbara came for TWR sessions after having attended a personal development workshop where she was astounded to see other people who also had fears of being rejected. It was easier for her to understand this problem in herself through the mirrors of other people’s similar beliefs, fears and behaviors. Barbara made excellent use of the TWR to clear her limiting beliefs. She was particularly responsive to doing inner child work, where she cleared her feelings while putting herself in the place of being ‘little Barbara’ – and not just remembering being little Barbara. The last I heard, she had not yet found a life partner, but she was enjoying participating in several social/ activity groups and had gone out on several dates.

Trevor was very surprised at how quickly he was able to make deep changes in his negative self-image and limiting beliefs with the help of TWR. Trevor responded well to the practice of imagined dialogues with his parents (as in Gestalt Therapy), verbalizing his more positive views vs their negative worldviews and using TWR to strengthen the positives. Within weeks he was able to shift his lifelong pattern of self-drivenness. He felt himself to be a new person, which was acknowledged by his family and by colleagues at work. He was setting more reasonable goals for himself and able to stop along the way to smell the flowers and chat with people as he never had done before.

In summary

Whenever we find ourselves blocked in our progress in life or in our enjoyment of life, be it in our personal, relational, professional or spiritual lives, TWR can help us to shift our negative beliefs and expectations. This then allows us to change our associated feelings and behaviors and to reshape our ways of relating to ourselves and others.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Painful Procrastinations are an invitation to look inward with TWR

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:12:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
– Pablo Picasso

Who has never set aside unpleasant, tedious or distasteful tasks, hoping that the need to address them might disappear, or that someone else would step forward to do the job? I can certainly look back on many times when I was inclined in this direction myself, both in my personal life and in my work as physician, psychotherapist, author and journal editor. Having a slight touch of ADHD made it that much easier to find distractions of every sort to take higher priorities than that job I knew would have to be done – but in which I simply did not relish investing my time.

The most common approach for managing pain of procrastination is to grit our teeth, bite the bullet and get on with it. Often, the threat of consequences for a failure to complete the task is the strongest motivation to finally take it on. And aaahhhhhh, the relief of competing it, putting it behind us and forgetting about it is yet another motivation.

Echhart Tolle would recommend simply staying in the present moment, which is no different from any other moment, and letting the tedious task become a part of our constant meditation on the Now. I must admit I find this distinctly easier to do with pleasant tasks, but managing pain of unpleasant ones is certainly a more rigorous training in Tolle’s meditative Now state.

TWR : Whole Health – Easily and Effectively® invites us to explore any present-moment issue that is painful and to ask, “What is my unconscious mind wanting me to know about this present moment? If I must attend to this task, why am I putting up a fuss about it?”

Digging below the surface

In managing pain or discomforts of any kind, the first step is to ask the pain or other symptom what it is wanting to tell us about our lives. It is the same with procrastination.

Here are some random samples from various people in my practice who asked their procrastination this question:

Twelve year-old ‘Billie’ found that her procrastination was helping her avoid assignments for her English teacher, who only responded to Billie’s spelling, grammar and handwriting. She ignored Billie’s pain-full stories of difficult experiences with her family, which was stressed by her mother having cancer. Billie found this incredibly distressing, but had no one to discuss this with.

‘Dorothy’ was a single mom with two children in elementary school, struggling to make ends meet on her secretarial salary plus irregular child support payments from her ex-husband. Though lonely, she found herself procrastinating in taking steps towards dating, which she had discussed in therapy. Her procrastination told her it was too dangerous to trust another man, after her very bitter battles over custody during her divorce.

‘Peter’ was an accountant who was nearly always late arriving at work and often late in completing tasks in his job. His procrastination told him he had let himself down in pursuing his accounting career, when his heart had been set on being a law officer. He had reluctantly conformed to his parents’ urgings but had never relinquished his original wish.

Once we identify the reasons behind the procrastination, it is much more likely we will be successful in dealing with it using TWR. Although we deal with thoughts about the issues, it is still the feelings that are the most productive focus in dealing with the thoughts.

Often, there are also related earlier-life issues, meta-issues and limiting beliefs that are associated with the issues raised by dialoguing with the procrastination. For instance,

Billie’s procrastination was really inviting help for more than just the school assignments issue. Her inner child was crying out for help in dealing with her grief and fears around her mother’s illness.

Dorothy’s procrastination was also sitting on unresolved feelings she had buried in childhood when her own parents had separated because her father had had an extramarital affair. Clearing with TWR is frequently more powerful when the earlier issues can be bundled and cleared with the current issues.

Peter, too, had childhood issues sitting in the same file drawer with his current dissatisfactions with his work. His mother had been very domineering, and neither his father nor Peter had ever been able to stand up to her and assert their own beliefs and needs. His mother had been afraid of the dangers involved in police work and couldn’t hear Peter’s wishes because of her own anxieties.

Installing positives to replace negatives

Besides clearing the issues identified during the explorations of the primary symptom of procrastination, TWR enables people to install positive feelings and cognitions to replace the negatives that they release. This markedly strengthens the effects of the TWR.

Billie installed positives relating to feeling OK despite her teacher’s insensitivity; knowing it was OK to let her mother know how much she was worried about her (after a family therapy discussion about these issues); and that her father was also willing to talk with her about her feelings (in this case, fears about her mother dying).

Peter installed positives about his being able to assert himself; about being different from his father; and about forgiving his mother for the ways she handled her anxieties.

As with any other symptoms, procrastination becomes a doorway into new personal insights and growth.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

TWR for Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS)

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:10:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

When parents separate or divorce, children are usually stressed. Even when parents separate amicably, children end up having to adjust to living part-time in each of two households. Single parents often note that children have problems with their attitudes, emotions and behaviors in the day or two prior to and following a visit to the other parent’s home.

I call these “re-entry problems.” They are related to the grief reactions of the involved children and their parents – over losing a family; over losing promises of good times shared together; over losing the comfort of a more substantial home and having to settle for lesser living accommodations and other belt-tightening adjustments; and on and on, as the reverberations of a major life change unfold.

Grief reactions include sadness, depression, anger and guilt. These feelings tend to come in waves, in no particular order or combinations, but often accompanied by distress. Children often feel responsibility and guilt for what happened between their parents, believing that they might have contributed to or caused the breakdown of the relationship. And grief reactions come in waves of greater and lesser intensity. Shifting from one home to another keeps reawakening the grief, rubbing salt in the wounds of all.

This is a baseline for much more severe problems that develop with Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), where one or both parents blame the opposite parent for the breakdown of the relationship and for the difficulties that ensue. When parents are in conflict, children may become pawns or soldiers for one parent or the other to manipulate in attacking the other parent.

A parent may act in this way out of anger at the other parent. Often, there is deep hurt behind the angers, but the hurts are buried outside of conscious awareness. Anger can easily blind a parent to the damage that they are doing to their children.

Terry was furious with Bram when he left her for another woman. She felt betrayed; deeply disappointed in Bram and in herself for having trusted and relied upon him; and embarrassed to have to admit the failure in their relationship to friends and co-workers who had known them both.

Terry blamed Bram for the failure of their marriage, telling her ten year-old son, Tom and fourteen year-old daughter, Elena, all the dirt she could muster about Bram, with considerable embellishments.

The children were resentful and angered by their mothers’ stories and vented their feelings on their father when they were with him. This soured further their already strained relationships with their father. Gradually, over a period of months, Bram and the children found increasingly frequent excuses to avoid spending time with each other, and they ended up visiting in a dutiful but very distanced manner with each other during major holidays, only a few times a year.

In the long run, both children suffered emotionally crippling consequences from the unresolved conflicts between their parents. Elena found it impossible to trust men, and never developed a satisfying, long-lasting relationship. She had two brief, unhappy marriages and then lived the rest of her life alone. Tom, in addition to having similar difficulties in developing relationships with women, was sorely lacking in self-confidence and never achieved the promises of his earlier successes in school.

This is the bad news: PAS may occur without deliberate incitements by separated and divorced parents. The strains of having to shift constantly between homes, and the re-entry stresses alone may be sufficient to sour relationships of children with either or both of their parents.

The worse news is that PAS also exists in intact families where the parents are in conflict. One parent may subtly and unconsciously or grossly and deliberately incite the children against the other parent. The results may be just as devastating as in a separation or divorce situation, and sometimes moreso.

The good news is that in a separation or divorce situation, the PAS is more likely to come to the attention of parents, extended family, schools, lawyers, legal authorities and other caregivers. It is also more likely to invite investigation, clarification and healing.

The further good news is that there are new methods for handling stresses that enable adults and children to release their angers, disappointments, depression and hurts. One such self-healing method is TWR: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively®. TWR is easily learned, rapidly and deeply effective, and available to people who are stressed whenever they may need it. TWR can also help to release earlier life traumas that often contribute to the difficulties between parents.

Gwen and Bob came for family therapy when nine year-old Sally, the youngest of their three children, was having difficulties with anger management in school. While the focus initially was on Sally’s behaviors, it very soon became apparent that Bob and Gwen were also struggling with issues of anger with each other.

This couple had had what appeared to be a good relationship for six years, until the children arrived. Bob had to work extra shifts to make ends meet, and was tired, cranky and generally unavailable to help with parenting. Gwen, resented having to bear most of the burden of parenting responsibilities and refused to return to work more than half time after her first child was born. Each parent carried resentments towards the other that they expressed in subtle and not so subtle manners. Arguments that reached crescendos of shouting matches were common, with Bob often slamming the front door on his way out to join his buddies in the bar.

The children, feeling the tensions between their parents, each responded differently. Sally sided with her father, berating her mother for angering him to the point that he frequently stormed out of the home. Eleven year-old Bert clammed up and retreated to his room when the atmosphere grew heated at home, and fourteen year-old Selma sided with her father and was increasingly fresh towards her mother.

Though Sally was the most overt of the children in letting people know when she was angry, the other children were also struggling with the stresses generated between their parents, each responding internally in their own way. Bert had grown silent and moody over the previous two years and Thelma was frequently on house restrictions because she had become sullen and disobedient and was staying out beyond her curfew.

Using TWR, all of the family members were able to reduce the intensity of their angers, depression and hurt feelings. More importantly, Bob and Gwen were both able to connect quickly through the TWR process with buried feelings from traumas in their childhoods that had left them with unresolved early hurts, fears and angers that were coming out in the marital relationship – stimulated by the burdens of parenting.

After two months of weekly sessions, the fires of angers that had been fueled by accumulated past hurts and fears in each of the family members, were no longer burning. TWR had enabled them to remove the kindling that had ignited in the heat of marital friction.

While this may seem to be a fantasy story of fairy-tale proportions, it is actually a common and often-repeated one. The new field of Energy Psychology (EP) is pioneering methods for stress release that are revolutionary. It is no longer necessary to suffer with PAS or other stresses and traumas. There are many tools and methods for healing these. The best news is that these tools are all in the form of self-healing, so that people who use them are able to release troublesome feelings on the spot – at the very moment when they are developing into what could be a current conflict.

Even better, the current issues become doorways into the past traumas that have contributed to creating and perpetuating the conflicts. EP transforms stress, worries, frustrations, anxieties, fears, angers, hurts and other negative emotions into invitations for further self-healing.

The guidance of a therapist is extremely helpful in learning and starting to apply these methods. It is often difficult for people to see how to apply these techniques because they are caught up in intense feelings that are overwhelming. They need the aid of a trained, neutral, outside observer/ coach/ therapist to be able to see their dysfunctional patterns and to choose alternatives to their habitual, self-perpetuating vicious circles of negativity.

Better yet: once learned, these methods are available for dealing with all future stresses. Over time, the stresses become windows and doorways of new opportunities to clear old issues as well as the new ones. People who learn these methods find them transformative.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

When the Problem Isn’t the Problem: Taking a Careful History

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:09:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

There are times when TWR does not bring the subjective units of distress scores (SUDS) all the way down for a given psychological or physical issue, despite having massaged the collarbone releasing spot (“sore spot”) and having tweaked the affirmation to be sure one is accurately and vividly connecting with the current feelings and issues. In cases like these, I find that reviewing the history will very often reveal other issues sitting in the file drawers of our memory banks. When these issues are identified and addressed, the problems can then be cleared.

Example of a psychological issue:

Pat was an outgoing 32-year-old secretary who lit up any group with her presence. She was popular in the company where she worked, in her church, and loved by her family, but could not maintain a relationship with a man for more than a few weeks. She would often find some reason to break it off, finding fault and blaming her boyfriends for one thing or another. With other lovers, she would be devastated when they left her after brief romances, over what seemed to her to be minor arguments.

Gradually, it dawned on her that it was rather unlikely that so many men would all be no good. Despite her best efforts, however, Pat could not break the pattern of souring her relationships with men till they split up.

Working on her current issues of developing tensions and finding incompatibilities with the men in her life brought the SUDS down only part way.

In the family history she related in her first psychotherapy session, there were very strong hints as to where the problems might have begun. Her father had been alcoholic, a binge drinker who was repeatedly unfaithful to her mother. Pat’s parents had divorced when she was 12 and her mother never remarried, remaining bitter and untrusting of men after her unhappy experience in marriage. After her feeling memories were cleared around these issues, Pat was pleased to find that she immediately connected with men who treated her much better.

This was a fairly straightforward case, and TWR was helpful in releasing Pat’s buried angers and hurts from having witnessed many arguments and fights between her parents. (This case is taken from “Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release,” where you will find many more such cases.)

Examples of physical issues:

‘Toby,’ a middle aged woman was experiencing urinary urgency when her bladder was full. Medical examinations showed no infection or other obvious cause for the problem, which persisted over many months. Tapping on the problem directly produced no results.

Returning to the earliest time in life that any such symptoms had occurred, we opened a file drawer with memories of urgency that occurred regularly at age 7-9 on walking home from school. The urgency would increase as she neared home, reaching intolerable levels as she approached the home of a girlfriend that was several blocks from her own home. Toby would regularly knock on her friend’s door and ask to use the toilet.

In the TWR session, as Toby tapped on the urgency she recalled as a child, she came into awareness of fears of returning home. These had to do with anxieties over childhood sexual abuse that had occurred in the home. Toby’s friend’s home was situated such that this was the place on her way home with the first view of her own home. Toby had worked on the issues of sexual abuse successfully in other therapies, but there was this residual memory of anxieties on returning home that had not been cleared. Using TWR on these early memories that involved urgency, and clearing further feelings of anxiety about her sexual abuse, the urgency in her current life cleared.

Casey , a 52 year-old businessman, had suffered with shoulder pain for several years. Dialoguing with his pain, he was quickly able to see that his unconscious mind was asking him to delve into emotional pains that had been buried and locked away from his conscious awareness. Just the fact of connecting with his shoulder pain led to an immediate reduction in its intensity. Not having to shout at Casey, the pain did not have to ‘twist his arm to listen,’ so to speak, quite as vigorously. However, this alone did not remove the pains entirely.

Having taken a thorough history prior to starting to use the TWR process, I knew that Casey had grown up being self-critical. He learned this habit because his parents were often critical of him and blamed him for misfortunes that were not of his making. Using TWR tapping and affirmations on this strong theme in his history led to immediate further reductions in his pain. (Casey’s treatment session can be viewed on a video available soon on this site).

While many therapies focus on the behavioral issues for searches through the file drawers of people’s memories, I find that TWR works best when searching through the feeling memories files. However, as with anything else in using TWR, there are no rules writ in stone. For some people the event memory files are the ones that connect from present issues to earlier ones.

What is surprising to most people is that they would never have made these connections on their own. The fact that they lived with these memories for so many years seems to have made the memories fade into the background of their awareness. The memories became part of the wallpaper of their existence, which was so familiar that its patterns did not register in their conscious minds. To the therapist, however, these patterns often stand out very clearly.

This is yet another example of the power of TWR for self-healing. The earlier feelings and memories clear with the same ease and rapidity that current life ones do.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Remember to Extend Love to Yourself

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:06:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

If you’ve got love in your heart, whatever you do from that moment out is likely to be right. If you’ve got that one true note ringing inside you, then whatever you do is going to be OK. It’s love, always love.
– Ken Kesey

On Valentine’s Day we focus on amorous love, seeking those special ways to express to someone close to us that we care for them. Oddly, loving and caring for others is often easier for many of us than feeling love and caring for ourselves.

Working as a psychotherapist, I have come to see and understand that this issue is often core to people’s overcoming their problems. Finding and strengthening love for ourselves is essential in finding our ways out of the deep holes of hurt we carry inside us that are frequently covered over with layers of fears, distrusts and angers. Love is one of the most powerful energies we can muster on our paths of recovery from our wounds.

The film, music and advertising industries, and pop culture in general have capitalized on our searches and struggles to find erotic love. This has been so successful that it has colored the word love in the Western world with overtones of sexuality that may get in the way of our even saying that we love ourselves, which could be misinterpreted into auto-erotic implications.

The Greeks had words for love other than erotic love (which they called eros), such as:

– agape : selfless love of one person for another without sexual implications, especially love that is spiritual in nature (The Free Web Dictionary by Farlex).

– philia : the (non-sexual) love one holds for a friend. Aristotle gives examples of philia including: “young lovers, lifelong friends, cities with one another, political or business contacts, parents and children, fellow-voyagers and fellow-soldiers, members of the same religious society, or of the same tribe, a cobbler and the person who buys from him” (Wikipedia).

English, lacking terms for sub-categories of love, hyphenates the word love in order to identify these or other variants such as motherly-love, fatherly-love and brotherly-love. What I am addressing here is self-love. This is the unconditional acceptance of oneself, with all one’s faults, foibles and issues that invite forgiveness of oneself.

Releasing resentments, angers and fears one holds towards others is a major challenge in therapy. What is often more difficult, however, are these same feelings one holds about one’s own feelings and towards oneself.

The commonest example is in grief over the loss of someone close. Grief includes mixtures of feelings of sadness, abandonment and emptiness; anger and resentment; and guilt. These feelings alternate and may cycle through many repetitions, in unpredictable order.

‘Betty’ lost her father when she was 15 years old. He had a single-vehicle accident late at night, hitting a tree on a curve while driving home on wet roads from the bar. At first, Betty felt all of these feelings in relationship with her father: anger that he had finally ended a life marked by many previous alcohol-related misbehaviors and mishaps; anger that he had, essentially, abandoned her; guilt over having angry feelings towards her now dead father; sadness and grief that he was no longer there, in his sober moments, for paternal support and guidance;

After several months of sorting through and releasing these feelings, Betty came to a place of needing to forgive herself: for things she had said and done that might have added to his stress levels and perhaps contributed to his drinking more, and guilt over not having done more to be supportive to him; sadness over not having told him she loved and appreciated him for the ways he had cared for her; and angers at herself for her own quick temper. These self-blame issues were harder for Betty to process and release than her feelings about her father’s behaviors.

In the end, Betty came to a place of acceptance of her father and of herself. A major help to Betty were repeated affirmations of love for herself, and a feeling that she was loved unconditionally by God, regardless of what she had done or not done, said or not said.

If you are working on problems of any sort, with approaches of any sort, you will find much benefit from adding affirmations of loving yourself and of being loved by others, including a sense of Divine love. Not all therapies include this, but it is a simple matter to develop affirmations of these sorts for yourself. TWR invites users to include affirmations about self-love and Divine love in their self-healing.

Above all, remember that you have the power of love to help yourself as well as to help others.

There are many other aspects of Wholistic Healing that can contribute to changes in body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit. In my 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist, I have found this to be one of the most potent elements contributing to self-healing.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Buried Hurts and Traumas: Crying for Release

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:05:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

I am repeatedly astounded by the ingenuity of the unconscious mind in its efforts to protect us from emotional pains – in myself and in people who come to me for help with emotional pain that is persistent or recurrent. Often, it appears at first that we are victims of a harsh or even cruel world. Looking a bit deeper, however, we may come to discover, like Pogo (the Walt Kelly cartoon character), that ” We have found the enemy and he are us!”

As children, our unconscious buries feelings and memories of unpleasant experiences. This is helpful, because children often have limited understandings of why they are suffering and a narrow range of options for dealing with painful circumstances. Children usually cannot alter their situations and cannot leave them.

The unconscious mind becomes very skilled at hiding the buried feelings and memories from our conscious mind. In many cases, we simply forget they are there, locked away in file drawers that sit in dark, shadowy caves below our awareness.

The pattern of running away from and burying distressing feelings becomes a habit that continues into our adult lives. Even though we have many more options, strengths and skills as adults, we continue to take the well-trodden path of burying our hurts and fears beneath our awareness and then diligently avoid looking at them.

At the same time that the unconscious mind protects us in these ways, it also festers over the buried feelings. This is much like when a thorn in our flesh generates pus from antibodies and white cells that surround it but cannot eliminate it. The buried feelings are a constant irritant and burden to the unconscious mind.

In its efforts to get us to remove the thorns of buried emotional hurts, the unconscious mind generates repeated current-life re-creations of the original trauma and buried hurts. By doing this, it is hoping that, as adults, we will make use of our greater coping skills to not only deal with the current stress the unconscious mind is generating, but will also dig deeper and clear out the original buried feelings from our file drawers.

‘Lana’ was an intelligent, good-looking secretary in her late 20’s who was getting increasingly frustrated in her search for a life partner. Every man she was attracted to or who was attracted to her turned out to be abusive in one way or another. While she quickly learned to avoid those who were physically aggressive, she could not understand how or why she invariably was dating men who were inconsiderate, selfish, demanding, and short-tempered.

In therapy, Lana uncovered memories about her abusive father. He had left her mother for another woman when Lana was seven. These memories were long-buried and forgotten until Lana learned to release anxieties, fears and emotional pains with TWR . As her unconscious mind absorbed the new lessons about being able to handle painful feelings competently, it started to release the buried traumatic memories.

Though her father had not been physically abusive to Lana, she had witnessed him hitting her mother, and he had been verbally and emotionally abusive towards both of them. Lana was able to release her past and current anxieties, fears and emotional distress around issues of abuse using TWR. She was then able to install positive thoughts, feelings and beliefs to replace the negatives she had let go of.

The precision with which the unconscious mind recreates our buried traumas continues to amaze me. When we have recurrent patterns of experiences in life, particularly interactions with people and feelings that are evoked repeatedly, these are clues to search through the file drawers and caves of our unconscious mind for earlier traumas that are calling for our attention.

The more we clear these, the more easy it becomes to catch ourselves with future issues that get triggered, and to clear these as well. The more we continue to succeed in clearing issues, the more confident we grow in our self-healing abilities.

TWR is particularly helpful in building positive feelings, cognitions, self-esteem and self-confidence because parts of the TWR process include repetitions of positive affirmations. These are used both to counteract the troublesome issues we are dealing with and to install positives to replace whatever negatives we have released.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

A New Meta-Positive: Compassion for Our Own Problems, Feelings, Inner Rules and Meta-Responses

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:57:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

There is widespread general awareness in the healing and spiritual communities that compassion is a strong healing approach. This has primarily been expressed as compassion to other human beings or to animals who are suffering.

Compassion has also been helpful in resolving people’s own feelings of anger, grief, betrayal and hurt. Through compassion we come into empathy with others. When we understand and resonate with their situations and the feelings they are experiencing then we can modify our feelings towards them.

I am finding that compassion with TWR has another way to aid us in healing and transformation. In addition to facilitating healing with other beings, compassion can enable us to transform our inner experiences.

Often, when we have conflicts and frictions in our interactions with other people, we develop distaste and annoyance about these experiences. These are negative meta-attitudes about the problems that arise. In other words, we become upset with ourselves about our negative experiences.(Meta-anxieties and meta-attitudes are discussed in my books, Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release and the TWR Workbook .)

These meta-negative responses to the negative experiences are upsets about our being upset. Such meta-negative responses tend to perpetuate and worsen our upsets. Whenever we find ourselves with the person towards whom we had the negative feelings or in the situation where we had the negative interaction, we are likely to anticipate that we will have further negative interactions. This creates tensions and anxieties in our relationships with that person or situation, which then makes it more likely that we will have further negative responses.

Other meta-responses to our negative feelings may include frustration and anger at ourselves:

– for being unable to control our feelings;

– for responding from a place of irritation, anger, blame or other negative emotion;

– for hurting someone through over-reacting or reacting inappropriately to something they said or did; or

– for having turned away from them when we might have offered our help.

– We may even develop meta-meta-upsets with ourselves, as we struggle with the meta-upsets.

Such responses generate more negative meta-responses within ourselves, which perpetuate and worse these vicious circles of hurt → anger → frustration → more negative behaviors → more negative meta-feelings → hurt → etc. → etc. → etc.
Holding a focus of compassion for ourselves

While releasing our negative feelings with TWR is a good first step when we find ourselves frustrated like this, we can go a step better yet.

As we install replacement positives for whatever negativity we have released, we can include positives for compassion – for ourselves. It is helpful to develop a rainbow spectrum of compassionate statements. For instance, we could acknowledge that we are

– still on a path of learning;

– still far from ideal states of perfection to which we might aspire;

– still working on clearing our negativity from current stressors;

– still working on clearing our negativity from old, buried stressors;

– grateful for the lessons in this situation;

– grateful for the opportunities to empty more, similar items from the file drawers where we bury negative feelings and memories;

– pleased to add another feather in our cap to acknowledge compassionate work well done – with ourselves as well as with others;

– your suggestions…

And there is no reason not to apply the system to its maximal potentials. We can install meta-positives around compassion. As we build on our successes, we can strengthen our appreciation for how well we are installing positives. We can acknowledge that we are:

– doing well at installing positives;

– holding a compassionate space for ourselves;

– staying in a place of peace as we navigate through stormy waters;

– your suggestions…

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

There Is No Such Thing As Cancer

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:55:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

It may seem a radical statement to claim that there is no such thing as cancer. But this is absolutely true.

‘Cancer’ is a creation of conventional medicine. Cancer is a convenient distillation of all the symptoms reported by and observed in people who have abnormal growths in their bodies – growths that continue to enlarge and may spread throughout the body. No one person has all of the possible manifestations of ‘cancer.’

This is equally true of all other medical diagnoses, such as ‘hypertension,’ ‘premenstrual syndrome (PMS),’ ‘heart disease,’ and a long list of other words applied to clusters of symptoms. It is equally true of the individual symptoms and broader labels identified and used by conventional medicine, such as ‘pain,’ ‘depression,’ ‘dementia,’ and so on. Each person has a unique combination of signs and symptoms that are typical of the named disease. The example of cancer will suffice, however, to demonstrate what I am identifying as a basic error in addressing the human conditions of health and illnesses.

The good news is that modern medicine has made enormous advances by gathering clusters of symptoms into medical diagnoses. This enables physicians to identify problems brought to them by people who have diverse lists of aches, pains and other objective and subjective problems, sorting these into named, identified illness issues. This then enables doctors to prescribe appropriate treatments.

The bad news is that modern medicine addresses the symptoms and illnesses the person has, rather than the person who has the symptoms and illnesses. This dehumanization of medical practice contributes to many distortions, miscommunications and embarrassments of interventions that do not address the true issues presented by most people who come for medical care.

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
– Sir William Osler (1849-1919)

Each person brings a unique set of symptoms that are framed by their unique genetic endowments, life experiences, diet, lifestyles, exposures to various infective agents and toxins (in food, water and environmental exposures), allergic reactions, metabolic abnormalities, physical traumas, emotional stressors and traumas, family relationships, degenerative and neoplastic (abnormal growths of cells) problems. Many of these factors are overlooked by physicians, who are narrowly focused on physical symptoms that they have been trained to cluster into recognizable syndromes labeled as diseases. The person who brings them the symptoms is largely ignored.

People’s most common complaint about medical care is that “The doctor doesn’t take time to listen to me.” This is the way that people experience the over-focus of doctors on their bodies.

These problems have promoted a thriving business in complementary and alternative care. These include acupuncture, homeopathy, therapeutic massage, Ayurvedic medicine, energy medicine practitioners, healers of all varieties, and other such practitioners. These therapists typically spend a much longer time listening to the people who come to them for consultation, recommendations for herbal remedies and supplements, healing diets and lifestyle changes. Many practitioners address the person who has the problem rather than just ministering to the body that is presented by the person. (See discussions of these approaches and more in How Can I Heal What Hurts? and Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing .) Sadly, a portion of these practitioners follow the medical model of addressing symptoms and disease clusters of symptoms (which sometimes differ significantly from medical syndromes) rather than dealing with the whole person.

My own experience of helping people as unique individuals to address their symptoms and illnesses is that when there is a physical problem it is a reflection and a message to people about their lives. When people are invited to look inward and ask their body what it is saying (through their symptoms) that it wants them to know about their life, most will get clear answers.

The clearest examples I have for this is through pains because pains respond immediately to people’s dialogue with them. When people take notice of what the body is asking of them, and when they promise faithfully to respond to the body’s requests, the pains are reduced immediately. Sometimes they are eliminated in this way altogether. The same is true of other symptoms and illnesses, though the feedback with these is usually slower.

Others have made similar observations. David Spiegel is a physician in California who founded support groups for people diagnosed with inoperable cancer. People in the support groups sometimes reached awareness that the cancers were an acceptable form of suicide – in situations where they felt trapped in employment or in relationships that they could not tolerate but also could not leave. Some of those who gained the courage to leave their intolerable situations found that their cancers went into remission. On the average, those in the support groups lived much longer than expected.

Why some people develop cancers and others develop arthritis, bowel disorders, skin diseases or other particular problems is as yet unclear. Just by addressing people as unique individuals, however, we can come to understandings of their individual needs and can help them deal with the unique stresses and issues in their lives so that their bodies do not need to ‘shout’ at them through various diseases and through pains and other symptoms.

My personal favorite approach in helping people to do this is through TWR , which invites self-healing on every level of their being : body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit.

Are Insights and Intense Emotional Releases Essential to Resolving Emotional Traumas?

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:52:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

There has been ongoing discussion on the value of intense emotional releases in resolving emotional traumas in the psychotherapy and broader, wholistic healing communities for decades.

The psychotherapeutic community, by history evolving from Freudian theories, initially tended towards a very strong recommendation for insight. It was considered absolutely essential to understand early life conflicts, as well as traumas from any point along life’s windy paths.

Intense emotional releases related to one’s memories of conflict and trauma situations are also viewed by many as essential to change. Without these, many therapists feel that deep change does not occur.

Some therapists today still adhere to these beliefs and practices. For instance, in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), various forms of Trauma Debriefing and Primal Therapies it is still felt essential today that intense reconnection with and releases of the original traumatic feelings is necessary for full resolution of emotional traumas. In the middle of the spectrum, many practitioners encourage people recovering from trauma to connect with the memories and feelings in more gentle or gradual ways, as in Systematic Desensitization and TWR .

In contrast, many practitioners of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focus primarily on the current life issues, encouraging people to desensitize themselves from the intensity of traumatic current feelings. While they may also include Systematic Desensitization, the focus is on accepting that people are living in the present moment, and on encouraging them to release their persistent, habitual focus on past issues and feelings.

Similarly, many bioenergy healers will focus almost exclusively on the bioenergy fields (biofields) for treatments, often shying away from emotional releases or addressing them, as well, using bioenergy interventions. Bioenergies are most frequently manipulated by the therapist, either by moving their hands through the biofield of the person needing trauma release or by mental intent/meditation/prayer to shift the biofields. In addition, people themselves may be encouraged to shift their biofields through various mental exercises.

TWR, which is partly derived from an Energy Psychology method called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and from EMDR, a psychological approach, sits between these alternatives and accesses the best of both. For those who have what I call ‘the eyes that look inward’ (which includes self-awareness, introspection, emotional and intuitive awarenesses), the conscious reconnections with emotional and memory residues from their trauma are important for clearing their traumas. For these inner-connected people it is helpful to re-engage with buried emotions, recollect and then release emotions and the associated memories.

Re-experiencing trauma does not have to be traumatizing. TWR enables people to do this more gently, rapidly and deeply than many other methods.

For those who are strongly oriented to outer world awarenesses and who have not developed their inner world consciousness, focusing on the present is more productive. Simply working on the symptoms is often sufficient to relieve distress.

Addressing symptoms may also be the first step before moving more deeply into emotions, when people have severe post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Relieving symptoms such as insomnia, panic reactions, fears and phobias and other troublesome symptoms may be necessary before a traumatized person has the strength and confidence to address emotional issues associated with the original trauma.

Because TWR practitioners track wherever a person is cognitively and emotionally at the time of the session, individualizing TWR to present-moment issues, TWR is very helpful and safe for those who only hesitantly engage in trauma release experience. TWR is used to address whatever levels of anxieties they have at the given moment.

TWR also helps people identify meta-issues that block releases and to deal with the meta-issues. For instance, with PTSD a person may have a meta-belief that relinquishing the symptoms of hyper-alertness and high readiness for fight or flight reactions could leave them vulnerable to harm. While such levels of anxiety may have been crucial for survival on the battlefield, and may seem essential to avoiding being raped, mugged or having an auto accident (or whatever the traumas were that precipitated the PTSD), in most everyday civilian situations these reactions are unnecessary, troublesome and retraumatizing.

Because TWR is individualized to the needs and preferences of each person, this is not a problem. In other methodologies, the protocols and theories are often designed to approach problems from either the ‘psycho-archeological’ perspective or from the ‘being in the now’ approach. TWR is a psychotherapeutic shoe that fits most feet.

Discussion

Are Conscious Awareness and Insights Essential to Resolving Emotional Traumas? This question is actually not a yes-no dichotomy, as it is unique to each individual who is addressing trauma. This applies to caregivers as well as careseekers.

Some have eyes to look inwards with emotional awareness, and for them it is helpful to reconnect and recollect and then release the memories. Doing this often provides rapid and deep relief of PTSD symptoms.

However, because some trauma release therapies such as EMDR, Primal Therapies and Trauma Debriefing can produce heavy emotional upwellings (abreactions), there have been concerns about encouraging people with PTSD to reconnect with their trauma memories. Some people undergoing these therapies feel that they have been retraumatized by revisiting their painful experiences – which had been buried outside of their conscious awareness in order to avoid their pain.

Others are more comfortable with addressing bioenergies as their way of dealing with stresses and traumas. Some of these appear to have this predisposition as a part of their personality – as has been explored in the Jungian/Myers-Briggs typologies ( web ref ). Others appear to be emotionality phobic, as a part of their meta-anxieties.

Re-experiencing trauma does not have to be traumatizing. TWR: Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT, a self-healing method, allows people to do this much more gently, rapidly and deeply.

Some prefer to work with energies, bypassing conscious awareness of the trauma. this is a healer-mediated intervention.

I prefer to teach self-healing because this is empowering to the person experiencing the releases and gives them tools to continue the work on their own; also to address other issues.

TWR: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively®
AKA
Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT

TWR is a self-treatment method that is simple to use and easily learned. Within minutes it can reduce physical and psychological pains, even when these have been present for decades.

TWR is also helpful with stress and distress that often contribute to pains and make them more painful and less tolerable. These, too, can be released within minutes.

TWR and Rules for Game of Life

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:49:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules.
– Ashleigh Brilliant

Many of us wander through our time on Earth without considering the rules by which we play the game of life. Everyone carries life programs that were installed in childhood. These are taken from our parents, other family members, friends, community, religious authorities, school, media and other social sources of learning. In addition to the informational content that we take on board (the ‘what’ of learning), we also have our childhood experiences of interacting with all of these sources of information and learning (the ‘how’ of learning).

Personal lessons

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
– Anonymous

If any of our life lessons were harsh or our life experiences were traumatic, we also develop meta-lessons about how to relate to the world. If our journey through childhood was pleasant and nurturing, For instance, if we had parents or teachers who were critical, we may internalize their critical voices and carry programs that are harsh or self-critical.

Example:

Gerri had a second grade teacher who ridiculed her in front of the class when she raised her hand to answer a question, and it became apparent that she hadn’t been listening accurately in class and hadn’t done her homework assignment. The teacher had no idea that Gerri’s whole family was severely depressed and traumatized because her mother had just had a stillborn child, and Gerri was feeling sad, frightened and neglected by her parents. Gerri, feeling very needy and vulnerable, was devastated when her teacher, whom she had previously viewed as a nurturing and supportive person, was suddenly so harshly critical.

Gerri’s unconscious mind, seeking to protect her from further hurts, made a rule for safety: Better to be silent than to risk feeling hurt. This strategy prevented her from experiencing similar hurts again in school. However, it also prevented Gerri from having positive experiences. Worse yet, this rule continued into her adult life and limited both her expectations for positive, happy experiences and her openness to accepting positives such as compliments, praise for jobs well done, and invitations to socialize.

Gerri was surprised at how quickly and profoundly she was able to release her core belief that she did not deserve good things in life. TWR enabled her in just three weeks to release her memories of her second grade trauma, along with her lifelong habits of avoiding anticipated rejections by holding back from actions and words that might lead to disappointment.

As I work with myself and with others to clear current stress, pain and distress, I am increasingly impressed that most of our troublesome issues in present time have had their births in earlier traumas. This is particularly true when the earlier issues were buried and the feelings associated with them were not processed and cleared. Buried feelings seem to fester like boils, accumulating emotional pus that seeks to be expressed and released. The unconscious creates similar situations in the present that draw our attention to the festering sore where the old issues related to the current situation are stored. In this way the unconscious mind gets us to do our long-neglected inner healing. TWR is a wonderful instrument for removing these old, buried issues.

Interpersonal lessons

It all started when he hit me back!
– Anonymous

When people are in long-term relationships, a blend of unconscious habits, participants’ personalities and conscious decisions lead to rules for family interactions. In the give and take of life, there are often hurts and angers that arise in one or both partners in a relationship, and between children and their parents and siblings. In most families, these are resolvable within their family system rules. In some cases, however, dysfunctional behaviors develop in one or another of the family members out of the family stresses and conflicts. Addressing the family rules with TWR may clear the problems.

Nine year-old Sam (Samantha) was brought by her mother, Monica, and father, George, for help because she had been uncharacteristically silent and withdrawn, and had stopped socializing following the death of Jasper, the family cat. Jasper had been killed instantly when she was run over in front of their home. Her parents could not understand why Sam had responded to this so badly, when she had never appeared to be that interested in their cat.

Sam was sullenly silent during the family session, but opened up gradually over several individual sessions in which she drew pictures and told stories about them. The stories were about people and animals who were afraid to speak out because they felt that those around them would not understand or want to hear what they had to say.

The true problem in this family was not the death of the cat or Sam’s silence. The problem appeared to me to be the family’s rules about silence ; and particularly about not expressing sad feelings . When I suggested this at the next family session, Monica looked long and hard at her husband, took a deep breath, and shared that she felt the whole family had turned sad since George’s mother had died several years earlier. George had been raised to ‘stand strong’ and ‘be a man’ when things were tough – as they often were during his childhood years of being raised by his single mother. She had been abandoned by her husband, who left one morning, saying he was going to interview for a job, and didn’t ever return. George had been very attached to his father, but ‘stood strong’ and never showed how upset he was, in order not to upset his mother.

TWR was incredibly helpful to each member of this family, in turn. George cleared his buried grief over his father’s disappearance and his mother’s death. The whole family then did several rounds of TWR to clear their rule of being silent when they were upset. Monica went on to clear her sadness, frustration and anger over her husband’s withdrawal into silence; and Sam cleared her sadness over Jasper’s death.

Unresolved grief is one of the most common emotional land mines that explode into symptoms when people re-experience a loss. Rules and walls are built up around the grief in order not to feel its difficult mixtures of pain, sadness, anger and guilt. Addressing and releasing the rules with TWR is an important step in the process of releasing the buried, walled off feelings.

Transpersonal lessons

The apparent goal of the journey is simply the carrot the universe dangles before you to get you to learn the lessons the adventure yields.
– Alan Cohen

Looking back on our lives, we can often see that what had appeared to be negative or even traumatic experiences evolved into growth-promoting lessons. However, there are times during our lives when we find ourselves in the midst of unfolding events – in relationships and situations – where we cannot comprehend how we got ourselves there, nor what good or helpful lessons could possibly come from our circumstances. Our travails and pains may feel as great as those of Job. We may question the reason for our being here on earth, or even rail at God for placing us here.

Returning to the US after 10 years in England, I found what appeared to be my ideal job at a new clinic – promoting research and consulting to medical centers on developing programs in complementary/ alternative medicine and spiritual healing. However, after half a year, the clinic folded, due to poor management. I had sunk the last of my savings into purchasing a home and very reluctantly had to return to my former occupation that I had joyfully abandoned on going to England.

To say that I truly did not relish writing prescriptions as a psychiatrist would be a gross understatement. I had trained when psychiatry was entirely about helping people with psychotherapy. Over the years, it had turned into the exclusive focus on medication management. Worse yet, the time allowed for patient visits was reduced from 1-2 hours per week to 15-30 minutes per week. I was not a happy camper! In fact, I felt stressed, depressed, and completely at a loss to understand why I had been guided to return to the US, to obtain the failed employment, and to end up writing prescriptions. I was even cross with God for letting me down in these ways.

Looking back from my vantage point of today, I can now see that these stresses led me to seek out potent, rapidly effective, brief therapy interventions that I could still offer in the very limited time frames available. This is how TWR was born.

This was a powerful lesson in patience and trust! And not the last lesson, either. I seem to be a slow student in this regard. My lessons in P and T have continued to this day. I feel I am making good progress, though, because now I am working on the meta-rules I adopted as a child – to not trust others because I could not trust my parents to be there to support me emotionally. And recently I have been working on my meta-rules about not letting go of the rules to do what is needed myself, without asking others to help – because the child in me would only be disappointed again, being undeserving of the care of others.

So when you are working with TWR on yourself or helping others work on themselves and the releases are very slow or blocked, you might find it helpful to explore the meta-rules about releasing feelings. These often respond rapidly to TWR, when they are accurately identified and phrased.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

TWR! Converting Anticipatory Anxieties into Trust in the Unknown – Part 3 of 3

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:48:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

TWR is a wholistic healing approach that addresses the entire spectrum of our being: body , emotions , mind , relationships and spirit . This is why responses to TWR show deep and lasting changes.

In parts 1 and 2 of this article, we examined issues of body, emotions and mind. While there are elements of the unknown in these levels of our being, our usual patterns of experience and behavior give us a reasonable sense of what to expect in these domains of our experiences. If I burn my hand in removing a casserole from the oven, I have a pretty good idea of how long it will take to heal. If I get into a stressful situation, I know pretty well what to anticipate about how I will sort out my thoughts and emotions.

When we have challenges in our relationships, there are greater elements of the unknown. We cannot be as certain of processes or outcomes in other people because we cannot fully sense or understand their mind and emotions, nor know all the aspects of their history, motivations, relationships with varieties of people, and the myriads of other factors that shape and influence their relationship with ourselves.

These uncertainties are the spice of life and relationships. Our anticipations are met with unending surprises. When our relationships are positive, they are rewarded by nurturing responses; but when negative, there are often the anticipatory anxieties over possible angry interactions, perhaps even threats of violence, all of which are attached to memories of past disappointing, hurtful and painful interactions.

TWR can relieve these negative thoughts, feelings and memories. TWR can also help enormously with relationships through installing and strengthening positive thoughts and feelings about one’s family members, partners and co-workers.

On deeper levels, TWR can help to resolve traumas that are inherited through the family collective consciousness. Family Constellation work ( web reference ) demonstrates that when there has been a severe conflict or bereavement that was not resolved in earlier generations, other family members may suffer from the unresolved feelings. For instance, the death of a child in childbirth or in a miscarriage or abortion may not have been grieved by the parents or siblings of the dead child. These feelings can then surface in a sibling of the child who died or in a grandchild of the parents. Unusually strong angers or unexplained depressions may occur in the living relatives, and may not respond well to conventional treatments. By becoming aware of the death in a previous generation and resolving the residual feelings in Family Constellation work, the angers and depressions often clear very rapidly.

In some cases, however, these feelings linger and do not clear with the Constellation work. TWR can help to clear the residual issues and feelings. This can then relieve misdirected attitudes and emotions in current relationships that are based on anticipatory anxieties inherited from earlier generations.

In the dimension of our spiritual awarenesses and healing, we are always on paths of life lessons – whatever is happening in our lives. Our challenge is to waken to these awarenesses and healings.

The spiritual level of our being can also be enhanced with TWR . As we gain confidence in our abilities to release the negativity in our life experiences and to install positive awarenesses, beliefs and feelings, our spiritual consciousness also expands and deepens. We can deliberately enhance our spiritual life through using spiritual affirmations .

Even more important, our confidence in the reality and validity of our spiritual awareness is strengthened as we experience the transformative power of the spiritual connections that we invite into our lives through our TWR self-healing process. Many people immediately sense the power of the transcendent in their lives when they add spiritual affirmations to the TWR process. The intensity of their pains, emotional distress or other negative issues that they are clearing diminishes more quickly and with a deeper healing as the spiritual affirmations are added to the process.

TWR offers us varieties of way to learn to trust our intuitive awarenesses. The feedback we get as our symptoms decrease during practice of the TWR process enables us to trust our intuitions from muscle testing, listening to our symptoms, inner guidance, and proxy (surrogate) healings.

In summary, we can see that wholistic healing, addressing body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit brings us more profound healings.

TWR! Converting Anticipatory Anxieties into Trust in the Unknown – Part 2 of 3

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:45:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

There is good news and bad news. The good news is that whatever you really, really, really want, you will get. The bad news is that whatever you really, really, really don’t want, you will also get because that is what you are thinking about all the time.
– Wayne Dyer

Looking back on my medical school experiences, I can see that I suffered from tensions and generalized anxieties under the stresses of the heavy academic and clinical pressures created by a very demanding program of studies. There was nothing I could do to relieve these stresses. I had no skills at that time to deal with my worries over memorizing massive amounts of facts and figures; over frequent written exams and oral quizzes by my medical mentors on the wards; over the heavy responsibilities for making decisions that could affect the illness, health and even the continuation of life of the people under my care.

One of my more stressful memories is of standing nearly twelve hours in my scrub suit, for much of that time holding a person’s chest open with a retractor so that the surgeon could do the cardiac surgery. The patient was ‘Ken,’ a 25 year-old young man who had rheumatoid disease that destroyed several of his heart valves and enlarged his aorta. While my role was a minor one in that drama, the seriousness of the consequences of this operation was a dramatic lesson in standing on the leading edge of medical advances – when cardiac surgery was in its early days of development.

I had spoken with Ken on his admission to the hospital. He was hopeful that these newly developed procedures could save his life, because it was clear from his flagging stamina under even the mildest of physical exertions that he could not survive much longer without the surgery.

Ken never woke up from the surgery. His heart gave out under the stress of the prolonged surgery and anesthesia. There was no one to help me with the distress and grief I felt over a person a year older than myself who had died as I watched, unable to do anything whatsoever to help.

It was no wonder that under these major general stresses I focalized my anxieties on the stomachache, the headache and the freckle (described in Part 1 of this article)! At least I could do something about these problems… So the worrying over problems I was capable of addressing helped me relieve some of my anxieties and gave me a small sense of being able to do something in a world where I was going to be expected to deal with problems that no one could solve… least of all myself…

How lucky we are today, just a few decades later, to have the extraordinary benefits of TWR for dealing with any and all of these sorts of stresses! Today, I am able to release any and all anticipatory anxieties within minutes. Worries are no longer burdens. They are challenges – to see how quickly they can be cleared, and how they point to other related issues that sit in the same file drawer – where they may have been languishing for years, just waiting for my attention and clearing.

Lessons learned:

TWR! Converting Anticipatory Anxieties into Trust in the Unknown. Part 1 of 3

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:43:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
– Thomas Jefferson

If you worry about all the bad things that might possibly happen to you, or to those you love, or to any greater part of this world we live on, or to the whole of Gaia, our planet Earth herself, then you are in good company. Almost everyone I know succumbs to some such sorts of worries at one time or another.

I, myself, have sometimes come up with very creative reasons to indulge in fretting and angst. For instance, when I was in medical school I remember vey clearly how I suffered from three very serious diseases: First, a gastric ulcer that turned out to be indigestible fast food; second, a brain tumor that turned out to be a severe pre-exam tension headache; and third, a malignant melanoma – with a report from the pathologist that read: VERY normal medical student freckle.

Over the years, I have managed to overcome much of this tendency. Two approaches have been particularly helpful. The first is my worldview, which has grown to include a belief in survival of the spirit – with several personal past life memories that feel convincingly real. This has eased my anxieties about death so that when something really bad comes down the pike towards me I no longer panic, having faced the worst fear I could imagine. Even more helpful, this view has helped me to live each day as fully as I can, enjoying whatever the Infinite Source choreographs into my life.

The second is TWR , the self-healing method I developed and use regularly for my own stresses and pains. I share with many people a second common ‘worst case scenario’ worry – that I might die in pain. TWR has helped me to release that anticipatory anxiety in two ways: letting go of the fear itself, and knowing that if I end up with a painful injury or illness I have a wonderfully potent, rapidly effective, immediately available method for dealing with any pain.

As I have used TWR over the past few years, I have come into a ‘meta-positive’ space of confidence that I can handle any anxiety whatsoever. Even better, whenever I face a challenge I now hold a curiosity about how quickly I can clear it and about what other, similar issues from the past I will find in the same internal ‘file drawer’ where the current issue is stored – and how quickly and deeply I’ll be able to clear these as well.

Resources – brief articles
7 Minutes to Natural Pain Release: TWR for Tapping Your Pain Away

Pain Is a Choice and Suffering is Optional: TWR for Tapping Into Self-Healing Resources

TWR For Healing the Environment: Reducing Medication Use and Medication Residues

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:40:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Environmental pollution is an increasingly serious problem. While the primary focus of environmentalists has been on industrial pollution, another major source of waste chemicals has been largely ignored.

The President’s Cancer Panel 2008–2009 Annual Report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now” notes:

Pharmaceuticals have become a significant water pollutant nationwide. Water filtration plants generally are unable to remove dissolved medications that enter water systems after being excreted or poured into household drains or toilets. Excreted pharmaceuticals (or their metabolites) are a substantial pollution problem that may increase as the population ages and a growing percentage of people are prescribed medications to treat acute and chronic health conditions. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a national sample of the U.S. civilian population, found that during the period 2001–2004, 46.7 percent of the surveyed population reported taking at least one prescription drug in the previous month; 20.2 percent reported taking three or more prescription drugs in the prior month. Among the human medications found in water supplies are antidepressants, medications for high blood pressure and diabetes, anticonvulsants, steroid medications, oral contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy medications, codeine, non-prescription pain relievers, chemotherapy drugs, heart medications, and antibiotics.

In addition, because unneeded or expired prescription drugs cannot by law be returned to the pharmacy, people have few options for disposing of them. Legislation has been introduced in the 111th Congress that would amend the Controlled Substances Act to facilitate the safe disposal of legally prescribed controlled substances by authorized facilities. If passed, it would help limit the disposal of these medications into the water supply and prevent their diversion into illegal sales.

The Federal government has not established limits on the amounts of pharmaceuticals in drinking water and does not require water testing to determine the amounts present. Scant research has been done on the long-term or synergistic effects of multiple drug exposures of this kind. Since medications are intended to have specific effects at very low doses, environmental scientists and others are urging increased research to identify both human and environmental risks and greater attention by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to this issue. One in vitro study showed that exposure to a complex mixture of medications at environmental levels can inhibit human embryonic kidney cell growth. The possible cancer-related effects of pharmaceuticals in drinking water are as yet unknown.

While the focus of the President’s Report is on cancer, the detrimental effects of drugs, their metabolites and their unknown interactive effects in the drug soups that we are drinking have many more detrimental effects. Here are some of the possibilities:

Allergic reactions to medications are very common. It appears highly likely that allergic reactions of unknown origin may be due to unidentified drugs in drinking water.

More than 100,000 people die annually in the US alone every year from medications properly prescribed and properly used (Classen, et al. 1997; Lazarou, et al. 1998). These deaths are from unusual, unpredictable reactions to medications that normally are beneficial. How many more deaths are there from medications and combinations of drugs and chemicals that are swallowed with our water?

More speculative possibilities:

Autoimmune reactions might be stimulated by drugs that weaken or alter our immune systems – in diseases such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis (MS), scleroderma that are acknowledged to be autoimmune problems and in diseases that may have autoimmune components such as Alzheimer’s Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

The explosion of Autistic Spectrum Disorders over the last decade, increasing in the US from 15,500 in 1992 to 293,000 in 2008 might be explained (at least in part) by toxicities or interactions of chemical exposures through drinking water.

Preventing the pollution

Most of the focus in dealing with these problems has been on how to dispose of unused drugs and of the drug metabolites in human urine and feces. This is a drug end-product contamination problem.

Prevention of the problem is a much better approach. There are many healthcare methods that do not produce environmental contamination. These are often highly effective and have only a few side effects – that are most often negligible, and virtually none of them lethal.

Looking at the diseases listed in the President’s Report, here are treatments that may be of help in reducing need for medications:

Arthritis:
Homeopathy – for pain, swelling
TWR – for pain and functional limitations

Multiple sclerosis (MS):
Spiritual healing
TWR for pain; depression; grief over lost functions and restricted activities

Antidepressants:
TWR
Homeopathy
Spiritual healing
Regular exercise

Medications for high blood pressure
TWR
Relaxation
Meditation
Biofeedback
Exercise
Spiritual healing

Medications for diabetes:
Homeopathy
Spiritual Healing
TWR for stress, emotional ups and downs

Steroid medications (in arthritis, Crohn’s disease, asthma):
TWR
Spiritual healing

Codeine, non-prescription pain relievers:
TWR
Spiritual healing
Hypnotherapy

Antibiotics (for children’s ear infections; viral upper respiratory infections):
Homeopathy
Spiritual healing

Multiple sclerosis (MS):
Spiritual healing

How TWR helps

TWR reduces pain, anxiety and stress reactions rapidly and deeply. When are more relaxed we feel less anxious and stressed; our muscles relax; we lower our levels of stress hormones; our body relaxes more; etc. This is the opposite of a vicious circle, which I call a sweetening spiral . Chronic stress is a drain on our immune system.

When our stress hormones are reduced, our immune system works better. Adrenaline and adrenal steroids are detrimental to the immune system, particularly when they are elevated for long periods of time. De-stressing harmonizes our body systems and strengthens our immune system.

TWR also enables us to install and strengthen positive thoughts, beliefs and feelings. This further strengthens our immune system.

On deeper levels, TWR also enables us to explore and identify unconscious issues and conflicts that are stressful and contribute to draining our immune system. Once we identify these, TWR provides the tools for learning the messages behind our problems and for clearing them.

Removing the need for medications

Symptoms and diseases are often messages from our inner wisdom – begging us to attend to stresses and disharmonies in our lives. When we listen to those messages, we learn what we need to do to restore harmony in our lives. This removes tensions, reduces stress, anxieties and pain, and thus reduces the need for medications.

Using less medications, we excrete fewer drugs into our sewage system. This reduces the pollution of our environment. This is a healing for ourselves and for our planet.

Resources – brief articles
7 Minutes to Natural Pain Release: TWR for Tapping Your Pain Away

Pain Is a Choice and Suffering is Optional: TWR for Tapping Into Self-Healing Resources

References:
Classen DC, et al. Adverse drug events in hospitalized patients. Excess length of stay, extra costs, and attributable mortality, J American Medical Association 1997, 277(4), 301-6.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/277/4/301

Lazarou J, Pomeranz BH, Corey PN. Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: a meta-analysis of prospective studies. J. American Medical Association 1998, 279(15), 1200-1205.
The President’s Cancer Panel 2008–2009 Annual Report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now” p. 108-109.
http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/pcp08-09rpt/PCP_Report_08-09_508.pdf

Creating and Holding A Space for Healing; Your Inner Self Knows the Answers

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:39:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

The careseeker often comes with the expectation that the caregiver will provide the answers to what is causing the problem and the best recommendations for what to do about it. This is particularly true in conventional medical care.

Even when they are ready and eager to share their experiences, views and opinions, careseekers often complain that their doctor does not want to listen to them. This is not an isolated complaint. A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 1984 reported that doctors listen to patients on the average for eighteen seconds before interrupting them.

This is not a new problem. Sir William Osler, at the beginning of the 20th Century recommended to his students and colleagues, “Listen to the patient. He is telling you the diagnosis.”

And the problem is getting worse all the time. Dr. Benjamin Natelson noted in a New York Times article in 2008 that “fewer and fewer doctors, constrained by time and the economics of our health care system, are willing to perform the fundamental task of diagnosing difficult or unclear medical problems.”

Modern medicine is symptom-focused. This is the effect of medication-based interventions, the most common offering of the medical profession, in addition to the problems imposed by time constraints. And this approach is becoming institutionalized and bureaurocratized. In Health Canada a recent rule was established, limiting patients to one problem per medical visit.

The same problems may be true with Complementary/ Alternative medicine (CAM) therapists. Indoctrinated by the conventional medical approach, many are focusing on symptoms rather than on the whole person. Again we might well heed the advice of Osler: “We must treat the person who has the disease and not just the disease the person has.”

Listening to the careseeker

I help people to find relief through self-treatment for pains of all sorts. Many who have had their pains for years are surprised to be invited to listen to what their pain is telling them about their lives. Within moments, most are able to come up with one or more inner messages.

Margie suffered from knee pains for more than ten years. She had participated very actively in school sports and had done a lot of jogging until her knee pains sidelined her permanently at age 34. X-rays showed her knees, particularly the right one, had damage to the cartilage.

Having seen research on the internet showing that knee surgery is no better than a placebo, Margie opted for non-invasive treatments. However, she was unhappy with the side effects of pain pills, and physiotherapy provided no relief.

Margie came for TWR because she wanted help to deal with her pain, expecting nothing more than symptom management for pain that was at a level of 6-7 on a scale of 10. She was surprised when I invited her to look deeper within herself by dialoguing with her knees to ask what her unconscious mind was wanting to tell her about her life.

She closed her eyes and it took but a few moments for her to hear her inner self speaking to her about needing to stand up for herself and to assert herself more on her job. She grew very thoughtful as she considered this message, admitting that she was so shy, her boss really hadn’t gotten a true measure of her capabilities. Her pain at this point was at 4.

Inviting her next to discuss with her pain what she could do differently in her job, again she quickly came up with suggestions she could readily implement in order to change the impression she was presenting at work. Her pain went down between a 1 and a 2.

Asking whether she was ready to release all of her pain at that point, she got a clear “No.” Her pain felt she would probably need reminders to stick with her new plan of action.

I could not have known with as much clarity, nor as quickly, what the problems were behind Margie’s knee pain. She was her own best therapist!

This is true of most people. Within minutes they can identify what the issues are in their lives that are needing attention. Just as quickly, they can see what they can change in order to be free of the complaints, requests and reminders their unconscious mind is sending them through their pains and other symptoms.

While there are times when the therapist can and needs to be of help in uncovering the issues behind people’s symptoms, very often they are very capable of discovering these on their own. One of the places where help is often needed is in connecting the dots to release inner child or past life issues that are contributing to current problems. This is the subject of another article.

I Can’t Believe TWR Can Work So Quickly and Deeply – 2

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:36:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Another consideration when people appear to be ambivalent or opposing a change is to explore whether the person is compliant or defiant. Most therapeutic interventions are based on the expectation that people will go along with the caregivers’ suggestions, recommendations and prescriptions. While this is generally true for the majority, there are significant numbers of people who are somewhere on the spectrum of “cussedly independent – oppositional – defiant.”

Another giveaway is a smile when people are telling you about how the change was short-lived or only partial. My experience is that confrontation over the smile works only with those who have been in therapy for a considerable time and who have a substantial capacity for self-reflection and insight. Insights offered in therapy are often denied, become the subject of disagreements and arguments, or are thoroughly and denied by those who are defiant.

For people like this I find it helpful to use what I call ‘mental judo’ – which is more often labeled ‘paradoxical interventions.’ Milton Erikson, one of the worlds best known hypnotherapists, was a master at this. I learned a lot of what I know about this from books written about his methods, in addition to training I had when studying family therapy at the Child Guidance Clinic in Philadelphia many years ago.

Were I to say to someone like this, “I think you might have let go of this too quickly, so that some part of you is uncomfortable and is wanting still to hold onto it,” their most likely oppositional response would be to say something like, “I don’t feel that’s right,” or “I really did my best and don’t feel that I want to hold onto this at all.” Further discussion would end up being an argument.

A better approach is to invite them to argue their way into a more healthy frame of reference and more positive responses. So, accepting that they are cussedly independent, I would say something such as “I have a suggestion for you, but I don’t know if you’re ready for this just now,” or “Maybe I made a mistake in suggesting too quick a change, what I’m hearing is that you’re saying your system just isn’t ready to change so quickly.”

These are clear invitations to oppositional people to argue back that they are ready to change, or at least ready to hear my suggestion NOW!” When they respond in the anticipated way to a judo maneuver, we have to be very careful not to switch into the compliant mode of discussion and relationship. If we were to say “OK, so let me tell you what I think…” then they would come right back in their usual manner and argue against my suggestions.

The more helpful way for me to respond to their request for immediate information is to hold back and express further skepticism about their readiness, so that they put even more energies into convincing me that I should at least give them a chance to hear what I have in mind. Again, my response will be best received if it is phrased hesitantly and skeptically, such as “I really expect this will be too much, too soon, but if you were ready, I’d be suggesting that you look for some sort of statement about why this isn’t working or can’t work – something your unconscious mind might come up with that you haven’t thought of consciously – like “If I change too quickly then … [you fill in the blank – IF you can, though I really think you unconscious isn’t yet ready for this] – and if you were ready you’d continue “and I still love and accept myself… etc.”

So I always maintain a skeptical attitude, which is the way to accept that they are going to argue against me. This way, the suggestions will be accepted and will help.

If they explore doing this immediately, in my presence, or if they return for the next session and report that they did it on their own and had a partial or complete success, then again I must express surprise and skepticism whether their unconscious mind is truly ready to let go just yet, and whether it won’t just come back all over again.

When I first learned this approach, I was concerned that these oppositional people would think I was making fun of them or playing around with them. The exact opposite has been the case. Most of these people have no idea how cussedly independent they are. What they experience is that people tend to argue with them a lot and they feel misunderstood and unappreciated, if not downright rejected in many interactions. Mental judo gives them the feeling that the therapist really understands and accepts their ways of being and relating in the world.

References

Rossi, Ernest. Hypnotic Realities: The Induction of Clinical Hypnosis and Forms of Indirect Suggestion , New York: Irvington/Halsted/Wiley 1976.

I Can’t Believe TWR Can Work So Quickly and Deeply – Part 1

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:25:00 GMT

Daniel J. Benor, MD

TWR works so quickly and deeply that it can be disconcerting and unsettling to people who find immediate, profound relief for seriously troublesome problems that have been present for a long time. One of the ways of dealing with this discomfort is to discount the improvements TWR has produced. Common statements I hear repeatedly are:

“There must be something more behind this [pain or other symptom].”
“It can’t be this easy!”
“I don’t believe this could last.”

The first is a clear invitation to ask, “So what might that be?” Following through with further rounds of TWR is indicated.

The others, which are meta-disbeliefs, can set the stage for a return of symptoms. Helpful responses to these resistances will depend on the degree of psychological awareness and sophistication of the person. A range of possible helpful responses could include:

“What does that belief do for you?”
“Is that a helpful or unhelpful belief?”
“Is that a belief you would like to keep or to change?”
“What part of you (e.g. inner child, inner parent) is saying this?”
“Who in your life might be disturbed or upset to know you’re on your way to completely letting go of this?”

TWR then allows people to work on the blocking meta-issues.

Using TWR for the Memory of Chronic Pain When the Pain Is Not Present

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:23:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

TWR is amazingly helpful in dealing with chronic pains of all sorts. Grateful users of TWR report that physical and emotional pains, even when they have been present for decades, can be released very rapidly.

Even with such long-standing pain there are underlying messages that the unconscious mind is working diligently to get us to address. The pain is actually a meta-messenger from the unconscious mind, like a telephone ring, to get our attention. After learning the messages that the unconscious mind wants to have us address, we can then use the TWR combination of affirmations and tapping to release even more of the pain.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promises only; to pain we obey.
– Marcel Proust

A problem can arise in TWR treatments when chronic pain is intermittent. A client may come for a session when the pain is not present and it may appear that without active pain to work on it is impossible to help. This is far from the case.

TWR works just as well when a person focuses on a previous episode of pain that is no longer being experienced in the present. Most people can readily return in their memories and can clearly reconnect with their pain.

In fact, this is one of the problems that make chronic pain such a burden. The memories of pain may be quite vivid, leading people to fear experiencing the pain again when it returns.

Fortunately for those using TWR, the memories of the pain are often sufficiently precise to allow them to do the entire TWR process by returning again and again to the remembered pain. They are thus able to dialogue with the pain to ask what it wants to tell them about their lives; negotiate with the pain over what it wants them to do differently in their lives; and use the affirmations and tapping to clear the memory of the incident of pain they are focusing on.

This method of dealing with the memory of chronic pain can be just as effective as working on pain that is present during the TWR session.

TWR and Transgenerational Healing: Affirmations for Deep Healings Part 3

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:21:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

I have had some phone sessions with John Payne, a Transgenerational Healing therapist, to work on residual issues of my own relationships with my deceased parents. I am pleased with the results – helping me to clear more layers of the onion of residues of difficult relationships I had with my parents, particularly as a child, but also into my adult life.

I very much identify with Payne’s observation in The Healing of Individuals, Families and Nations:

Family Constellation work bridges the gap between psychotherapy and shamanism, for in such constellations the dead are given a voice and resolutions can be found. The nature of the Soul is to evolve and grow; it cannot do so when its burdens are shouldered by others, especially if those others are descendants. (p. 111)

I have known that my own difficult relationships with my parents were not due to intentionally negative behaviors on their part. My parents’ problems were the result of their own difficult family relationships. In turn, the warps in their emotional structures were derived from their parents’ emotional problems… And so on, back into untold generations of troubled relationships and traumas, perpetuating emotional problems over countless generations…

Transgenerational Healing offers tools for us to neutralize and disconnect from such toxic residues, processing and clearing them within the workshop re-enactments of family constellations. What has been most helpful to me are what I call the ‘releasing affirmations’ employed in this process. Here is a sampling of several types of these affirmations:

The representatives of members in earlier generations acknowledge ownership of and responsibility for issues that were problematic and that left emotional residues during their lifetimes.

Examples:

The representative of the client, or the client herself/himself disengages from the issue, with an affirmation releasing responsibility for the problems.

2a. Payne to Client 1: Say to your Great-Great-Grandfather, “I respectfully leave it with you” and bow your head as you do so.

Having disconnected from the emotions and memories of these issues, the client then asserts positive affirmations:

These affirmations from Transgenerational Healing suggest helpful ways that affirmations can be developed for use in individual therapy with TWR: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively, both for use as focusing statements and as counteracting affirmations.

A dialogue enacted between the client and those with whom there were conflicts can be staged, with the client playing both his or her own role and then alternating playing the role of the other family member. This is often helpful in sharpening the focus around the issues and in helping clients to connect more deeply with the emotions that surround their issues and relationships. The process may be further deepened by having the client play each role while alternating sitting in one or the other of two chairs that face each other.

This two-chair dialogue allows the client to connect deeply with the role and emotions of people with whom s/he had been in conflict. When the client then uses TWR to release his or her own feelings, the release is accompanied by greater compassion for the person with whom there had been problems.

The replacement positive affirmations of TWR can include many of the types of positive affirmations suggested by Payne.

Payne, John L. The Healing of Individuals, Families & Nations: Transgenerational Healing & Family Constellations (Trans-Generational Healing & Family Constellations series), Forres, Scotland: Findhorn 2005.

Resources

More on TWR and Vipassana meditation

Click here for more information on Wholistic Healing

TWR and Transgenerational Healing: Affirmations for Deep Healings Part 2

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:19:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Bert Hellinger developed an innovative approach for clearing issues family that are transmitted transpersonally from generation to generation. He calls his method ‘Transgenerational Healing.’ I like John Payne’s writing on these approaches. He describes and illustrates with clinical examples how various traumatic experiences in one generation are re-experienced and re-enacted by family members in following generations.

Transcending ordinary consciousness, people in later generations resonate with specific traumatic psychological issues that were buried outside their consciousness by family members in earlier generations. These problems manifest these as habitual emotions and behavior patterns that cry out for release of the buried family problems. These manifestations of family issues go way beyond the commonly accepted example of a family’s social rules to avoid expressing feelings in general. The problems that are identified in Transgenerational Healing are psychically connected to the original traumas.

For instance:

‘Barbara’ lost a daughter in childbirth. She did not have the resources or support to process and clear her grief. She remained depressed, withdrawn and minimally available to her husband and her older, surviving children for the rest of her life.

‘Celia,’ Barbara’s younger daughter’s child (Barbara’s grandchild), who had never known Barbara in person due to Barbara’s early death, was moody and had a tendency towards depression for reasons that no one in her family could identify. No one else in her immediate family suffered from depression.

When Celia attended a Transgenerational Healing workshop at age 32, the therapist invited Celia to stage a representation of her family – including those who had died – using participants from the workshop (who knew nothing of Celia’s background) to represent her family members.

Each of the participants engaged in representing Celia’s family was asked, in turn, what they were feeling. The one representing Barbara, who had no knowledge of the family dynamics, reported she felt so sad she wanted to weep. The therapist, learning at that point from Celia of the death of Barbara’s newborn child, invited Barbara’s surrogate to tell her dead child how much she had wanted her and how devastated she had been at her death. The surrogate burst into tears as she did so. Celia also sobbed deeply. The therapist then invited the surrogate to thank the child for having done its best to come into the world – eliciting more tears in the surrogate and in Celia.

The process was repeated with a workshop participant representing the dead child. This person thanked the representative of Barbara for having invited her into the world, and apologized for the sadness she had been the instrument of generating.

This process brought about a very deep release of the lifelong depression that Celia had suffered. She was dramatically transformed.

These sorts of releases are the anticipated results of Transgenerational Healing therapy. This therapy can also be done in individual sessions, without a group to stage the family constellation. The person whose story is being clarified in therapy is invited to represent the key family members and to clear the unexpressed feelings for them.

John Payne ( in The Healing of Individuals, Families & Nations ) observes:

The dead never leave us and our ancestors are with us all of the time. Even in death, healing can take place when all are honored and held in our hearts. (p. 152)

The Soul is compelled to include that which has been excluded in order to bring the family back into balance. Once these imbalances have been healed through constellation work, individuals are free to live their own lives, instead of being led by subconscious impulses. (p. 102)

I have had some phone sessions with John Payne to work on residual issues of my own. I am pleased with the results. What has been most helpful to me are what I call the ‘releasing affirmations.’ More on these, and their relevance to TWR in Part 3 of this article.

Resources

More on TWR and Vipassana meditation

Click here for more information on Wholistic Healing

TWR and Transgenerational Healing: Affirmations for Deep Healings Part 1

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:18:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Family therapists are keenly aware of inter-generational issues that create problems within families. When intense emotions are bottled up and buried outside of conscious awareness, their effects can be visited upon future generations.

One of the more common examples is that of a grief reaction that is either too painful to process around the time of a death, or that feels overwhelming because of other pressing issues at that time. Grief carries a heavy mixture of feelings, including sadness, hurt, longing for the person who is no longer with us, depression, anger and guilt. When a person buries such feelings at the time of grief, the tendency is to leave them buried.

It may be difficult to repress these emotions because we are constantly opening the internal file drawers where they are stored – in order to insert our ongoing undesired feelings. So if we suffer disappointments at any time following the grief, when we open the sadness/grief file drawer to insert a new item, the old items call for our attention and it may require serious efforts by our unconscious mind to keep them from rising into our awareness and upsetting us.

The next defensive maneuver is to put a mental ‘KEEP AWAY’ sign on the file drawer. We might devise messages such as:

“DO NOT DISTURB!
THESE FEELINGS ARE GOING TO UPSET YOU
IF YOU OPEN THIS MEMORY STORAGE BIN.”
or
“WE’RE DOING FINE SINCE WE BURIED THOSE UNHAPPY FEELINGS
IN THIS FILE DRAWER.
LET’S LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE.”

Two serious problems result from these tactics. First, it is draining on our energies to have to constantly avoid the drawers on the one hand, and to keep the materials inside the drawers from building up pressure and bursting out of their hiding place on the other hand – as more and more similar issues and feelings get buried in the same drawer.

Second, as detailed further below, when we bury our feelings in these ways, it often influences others in our family to do the same. We may discourage others from letting out their feelings, or they may hold in their feelings on their own in order to avoid upsetting us. In either case, the repression of feelings spreads like a virus to other family members

TWR is excellent for dealing with unresolved issues from grief reactions. People report regularly that they are able to release the hurt, pain and sadness of missing the person or animal or life circumstances that are there no more; the anger; the guilt and other emotions. People are much improved even when they have been carrying their grief for many years.

Bert Hellinger developed another innovative transpersonal approach for clearing aspects of these issues, which he calls Transgenerational Healing. More on this in Part 2 of this article.
This article was slightly modified February 19, 2013.

Resources

Life Choices Through Series of Lifetimes

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:16:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say, “Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.
– Linda Hogan

Eastern religions, traditional cultures and healers around the world maintain that the spirit of man survives to an afterlife and returns to live again. Billions of people believe in reincarnation. While for some this is a part of their general religious beliefs – that is, a matter of faith as taught within their religion – for many others it is a matter of experienced reality.

Judao-Christian traditions included awareness of reincarnation through the fifth century, CE, as suggested by John 3:3, “Except as a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The Alexandrian school included proponents of reincarnation such as Clement, Justin Martyr, St. Gregory of Nyasa and Origen.

To many in Western society, this is an odd, if not alien, concept. I, myself, used to believe this was a fantasy, a wishful thinking born out of fears of the finality of death – which I perceived as an absolute and total termination of consciousness with the death of the physical body.

My survey of research in spiritual dimensions convinced me otherwise:

I review the reincarnation research in more detail:

Research on all of the above and more is carefully annotated and discussed in Volume III of Healing Research, Personal Spirituality .

TWR and past life traumas

There are times when the SUDS does not go down, despite collarbone tapping, revisions of the focusing statement, exploring for reasons to hold onto the problems, and searches for meta-anxieties. In such cases, it may be helpful to muscle test for the question, “Are there residual memories of feelings or experiences from past lives that are contributing to this problem?”

George was known all his life for his irritability and temper outbursts. He came for help when he lost his second job as a result of losing his temper at work. George made modest progress at first, clearing traumatic memories of suffering from his father’s verbal and physical abuses until George was eight years old and his mother left after being beaten severely herself by his father.

While he made modest gains using TWR, and had some increase in his abilities to control his anger, the intensity of both his angers in the present and his residuals from childhood angers never went lower than a 2-3. None of the usual approaches to tweaking the TWR process succeeded in budging these resistances.

When asked about past life memories, George mentioned several recurrent dreams and fantasies about having been falsely accused, incarcerated, and tortured to death. After he used TWR to clear his feelings around these apparent past life memories, his angers in his current life and childhood memories cleared completely.

Many people are surprised at how readily they can access past life memories. It used to be thought that this could be experienced spontaneously only in rare, exceptional cases – most often in young children or in adults, with the aid of hypnosis. My clinical experience and that of many other therapists suggests otherwise.

Believers will see George’s experiences as confirmation of reincarnation memories. Skeptics will suggest that these are purely fantasies. There is no way to prove either theory objectively.

What impresses me to believe the validity of these sorts of stories are the subjective and behavioral changes that occur, often with surprising rapidity, when the traumas of reported past life memories are cleared with TWR.

Subjectively, I can personally confirm what is commonly reported by others as well: These memories have a strong inner feeling of reality to them.

The wheel of life

With current life traumas, I find that when the emotional pains, angers, fears and other hurts are not cleared, the unconscious mind appears to invite people to clear them in a variety of ways:

All of these suggest buried traumas from earlier in one’s current lifetime that are asking to be cleared.

If someone betrays you once, it is his fault; If he betrays you twice, it is your fault.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

The same is true of past life traumas. In fact, past life traumas appear also to lead us to choose to be born into families where unresolved issues can be processed. A person who has unresolved abandonment, abuse or grief issues may be born into a family where they experience re-enactments of situations that stimulate the unresolved emotions and issues.

TWR users report that TWR has helped them to clear the underlying emotions and stop the recurring patterns – both with current-life and past-life issues.

More on TWR and these recurring patterns in Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release and in Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul .

Resources

More on TWR and Vipassana meditation

More on Wholistic Healing: Click on the round icons at the top of this page for an overview of Wholistic Healing
You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2008 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Why Would You Say ‘TWR’ When You Have Insomnia?

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:14:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky –
I’ve thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless…
                    – William Wordsworth, “To Sleep”

Have you ever struggled to let go of the cares of your day, to drift into the nurturing embrace of sleep? Most of us suffer from sleeplessness from time to time. Fighting to enter the gateway of sleep is one of the most exquisite and unfortunately common tortures that most of us endure.

Sleep is a symptom that invites you to explore what your mind is having difficulties dealing with. Paradoxically, when we pick and poke at the thoughts and feelings that plague our attention when we lay our heads to rest on our pillow, the pursuit of sleep has the same results as when we chase our shadow. The balm of sleep continues its tantalizing and frustrating evasion of our of grasp.

Insomnia…will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.
– Clifton Fadiman

Clearly, when you are worried about your job performance or about keeping your job or about your relationships or about whatever, the worries create a stormy sea that bars you from the distant shore of a restful night. We cannot shut off thinking by thinking about what is bothering us. We cannot shut off thinking by deliberately NOT thinking about what is bothering us.

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
– Charlotte Brontë

You might explore this in your waking state by simply not thinking about a purple camel. As soon as we set our minds to NOT thinking about something, our mind does exactly the opposite. The way to let go of a purple camel is to think about a cuddly kitten, a beautiful sunset or anything other than the camel.

While this may help you release a particular worry, it may not set your mind sufficiently at rest so that you can drift off to sleep. When you have started poking about in the ‘Worry’ files of your mental and emotional filing cabinets, there seem to be no end of items that will fester their way into your awareness.

This is the challenge of the insomniac.

Don’t fight with the pillow, but lay down your head
And kick every worriment out of the bed.
– Edmund Vance Cooke

So we count benign, unworried sheep; we divert our minds and emotions to file drawers with pleasanter contents. With sufficient persistence this will often allow you to drift off to sleep. Even so, you may have to wander across hill and dale with your sheep before your mind drifts off into the release of slumber.

And sometimes your mind perversely pursues your worries through restless dreams and nightmares… which may wake you… and then you’re back to the starting gate with your sheep…

There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night.
– Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

Conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical companies can help with varieties of sleeping pills and potions. The problems with these are that often they may have unpleasant side effects; they carry dangers of habituating or addicting us; and in some cases may even cause fatalities. There are also natural products such as melatonin that can help with insomnia. None of these, however, cure the problems that underlie our insomnia.

Inviting the insomnia to speak to us

Any change in our life, any symptom – be it insomnia, pain or anxiety of any sort – is an invitation to learn something about our life. Most often, our inner self will give us answers to the questions we pose to it.

Insomnia invites us to explore:
· What is going on in our life that the insomnia wants us to pay attention to?
· What do we say to ourselves when we’re lying there, struggling with sleeplessness?
· What was going on in our life when we first started having sleep issues?
· When have we suffered from insomnia earlier in our life?

If the insomnia is pointing to stressful or traumatic issues in the past, it may be inviting us to clear the emotions we buried when we suffered these unpleasant experiences.

TWR: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively® is an incredibly easy, quick, yet deeply transformative way for releasing old traumas like these. TWR helps you explore the traumas and to let them go, often within minutes.

TWR guides you to create personalized affirmation, combined with alternating tapping on the right and left sides of your body. This is usually all that is required. Once these buried memories and emotions are emptied from the file drawers where we stashed them away (to avoid suffering), then the insomnia has done its job. When we listen to what our insomnia is telling us, the insomnia will usually lighten, lessen or stop. It may be that simple, even when we have struggled with sleeplessness for months and years.

Example: Theresa was a single mom, working as a nursing aide in a clinic to support her two young children. Though she struggled to get by on her limited alimony and earnings, she was happy to see her children growing and developing into lovely young people.

For no reason that she could identify, Theresa started having difficulties sleeping. At first it was hard to fall asleep; then she would also wake up at two or three in the morning and couldn’t return to sleep for several hours. Her insomnia was marked by vague, obsessive anxieties about anything and everything that was going on in her life.

Theresa was not happy taking sleeping pills, because her daughter had asthma and she was afraid she might sleep through an asthmatic attack that she knew from her nursing work could even be fatal. But without a sleeping pill, she found herself dragging through the day, and became anxious on top of being tired because she started to make mistakes in her work due to weariness.

When she started to drink whiskey to help her fall asleep, and found herself on the slippery road of needing increasing doses, she came for a TWR session. TWR: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively® is a self-treatment method that is simple to use and easily learned. Within minutes it can reduce stress, distress, and physical or psychological pains, even when these have been present for long periods. TWR also works wonderfully well for insomnia.

The first step was to take a life history. Often, there are traumatic experiences earlier in people’s lives that cannot be processed at the time of the distressing event. Most commonly, people swallow down their feelings and put them outside their conscious awareness. While this works well to relieve tensions at the time, it leaves them vulnerable to eruptions of emotions later in life. So, as Theresa shared her story, I put arrows in my notes next to particular items for possible TWR interventions.

A prominent arrow pointed to this item: Theresa had been a cherished, only child. Her parents simply doted on her and loved to spend time with her. It was only when she had her own first child that her mother revealed that Theresa had had a sister, born several years prior to her own birth, who had died of unknown causes, diagnosed as ‘crib death.’

The second step was to invite Theresa to talk to her insomnia, asking it what it wanted her to know about her life. It told her that she needed to clear some old worries that were festering in inner ‘file drawers’ she had locked, years earlier. Theresa drew a blank in response to this message.

I invited her to use the next part of the TWR process, which is to tap on the left and right sides of her body while reciting a general affirmation about her anxieties about falling asleep. These anxieties decreased in intensity from an 8 to a 5 (on a scale of 0 to 10) but refused to diminish further.

I asked whether Theresa had any anxieties about her daughter (her second child) dying, like her older sister had died. She burst into a flood of tears, recalling how she had slept very lightly and restlessly during her daughter’s infancy.

She then realized that her insomnia had started after she attended to a girl in the clinic who had been rushed to the emergency room the night before, due to an asthmatic attack. This had triggered Theresa’s anxiety about her daughter’s asthma, and that anxiety ‘sat in the same file drawer with her memories of her mother’s story about the death of her older sister.

Once we had identified these specific anxieties, Theresa was able to use personalized affirmations along with the TWR tapping to dissipate her anxieties. She was then also able to use TWR to relax into sleep, and thus she cured her insomnia.

While this is a somewhat lengthy example, it illustrates how insomnia can very often be an invitation to clear issues that have been buried outside our conscious awareness. Once we do this, the insomnia abates – having completed its task.

May sleep envelop you as a bed sheet floating gently down, tickling your skin and removing every worry… Reminding you to consider only this moment.
– Jeb Dickerson

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TWR and Meditation for Wholistic Self-Healing

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:11:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Meditation is widely acknowledged as one of the best ways to improve your health. Research shows that meditation can bring you benefits in dealing with stress, hypertension, pains of all sorts, eating disorders, pre-menstrual tensions, and can enhance concentration and performance. It is also acknowledged as an aid in developing and deepening spiritual awareness.

I have meditated regularly for over 25 years. My intent to sit in silence daily at least once, and if possible twice, has been honored more often than not. Busy periods of work or family visits and travels are the main distractions that have made it difficult or impossible to keep this promise I’ve made to myself.

Over the years, I have explored varieties of meditation approaches, including counting my breaths (very helpful in learning to keep my focus); observing my breathing; mindfulness; visualizations; contemplation; and other variations of mental focus. Knowing a variety of approaches has been extremely helpful, as I found that methods that worked for a while might wane in their potency or efficacy in my practice after several months or years. In teaching meditation as a part of wholistic self-healing or for relaxation, it is similarly helpful for introducing audiences to varieties of approaches because no single method works well for everyone who is just starting on this path of mental and spiritual discipline.

I teach TWR , a potent form of wholistic self-healing for pain, stress and distress. TWR involves the alternating stimulation of the left and right sides of the body, while you recite personalized affirmations that focus your mind on the issues you want to change. Within minutes, TWR can reduce stress, distress and pains – even when these have been present for years. TWR also enables you to install positive thoughts and feelings to replace the negative ones you have released.

TWR can be a blessing to you if you are meditating. TWR can remove distractions that block your concentration. Meditators know that it is most difficult to NOT think about whatever is distracting us. See for yourself, for instance, how your mind works if I tell you, “Don’t think of a purple camel.” Even though you’ve probably never thought of a purple camel before, as soon as you tell yourself “I’m not going to think about this!” your mind does just the opposite.

When you have stress, anxieties and fears, it is ever so much harder to put these out of your mind. TWR enables you to do this, converting overwhelming worries into manageable concerns. This makes it possible to let go of your purple camels so that you will find it easier to meditate

TWR and meditation are powerful methods for enhancing wholistic self-healing, bringing wholeness to body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit.

Daniel J. Benor, MD is a wholistic psychotherapist, teaching wholistic self-healing for body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit; developer of the TWR method of wholistic self-healing; Editor of the International Journal of Healing & Caring http://ijhc.org; author of ‘Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release,’ ‘Healing Research, Volumes 1-3,’ and many wholistic healing articles.
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Pain Is a Choice and Suffering is Optional: TWR for Tapping Into Self-Healing Resources

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:07:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

You’re probably curious to know how I could possibly make the claim declared in the title of this article. You may be even more curious to ask how I also could suggest that pains might be released within minutes. Let me state my views and share my experiences with TWR (Whole Health – Easily and Effectively) succinctly: Physical pain is a choice our body makes when it needs or wants to get our attention. When we start listening to our pains, their intensity decreases.

With injuries or surgery it is obviously helpful to have reminders to be gentle with parts of our body that need to mend. With other problems, pain is usually a message from our body that we are under stress which we are not addressing.

Psychological pains are experienced with serious emotional disappointments or traumas. We may feel stressed, disappointed, distressed, hurt, angry, anxious, fearful, panicky, overwhelmed and/or depressed.

All of the above are perfectly natural reactions. When we pass through these feelings and release them, we can move on with our lives. However, if we hold onto them, any or all of these feelings may lead to even greater suffering. They sit in our inner ‘file drawers,’ closets and caves where they fester, draining our energies and leading us to behave in defensive ways – in order to avoid becoming aware of these buried pains, and in order to avoid anything in our current life that would stir these skeletons in our inner closets.

Physical pains have been treated in Western society primarily with medications. The goal of doctors is to fight and eliminate pains with pain killers . Drugs are rapidly effective but carry prices that may include side effects that are annoying, debilitating or even fatal, not to mention stretching our finances. Research shows that conventional medicine is now the third leading cause of death in the US, largely due to problems caused by medications, and almost certainly a leading cause of death in the rest of the world as well.

In the past several decades, people have turned increasingly to complementary/ alternative therapies because these are gentler and safer. These approaches are also more broad and deep in their effects. In addition, complementary therapists spend more time with people, listening to what they are experiencing in order to figure out together with them what their body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit are needing.

Psychological pains have had two main treatments:
1. Psychotherapy and counseling in numerous forms and variations were developed over the past century and a half. Until recently, therapies in this category such as psychoanalysis, psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral therapy have been the most widely used methods. These require many sessions to achieve pain reductions.
2. Medications have been developed to deal with anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and other psychological symptoms. Again, they may be effective in many cases but they also carry the dangers mentioned above.

In the past few decades, varieties of complementary/alternative therapies have been developed which may relieve physical and emotional pains. Many of these, such as hypnotherapy, acupuncture and massage, require the intervention of a therapist.

Varieties of self-healing therapies have also been developed. Of these, TWR is one of the quickest. Along with its rapid release of pains, TWR works very deeply and enables thorough clearing of physical and psychological issues surrounding pains.

Pain as a choice

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
– Marcel Proust

When strong emotions arise within us, the best thing for our wellbeing is for us to express them. However, there are many circumstances in which it may be inadvisable to let loose with intense feelings. There may be very negative social consequences if we cry or shout in public, or if we vent our angers by hitting someone – much as we may very much feel a need to let out some of our emotions in these ways. The better course of action may be to button our lips, unclench our fists, and bury the feelings somewhere inside us. Holding back our emotions is our first in a series of choices – setting the stage for pain to develop.

If we can release these pent-up feelings with physical actions such as jogging or other exercise, yelling a few choice words with our car windows rolled up on the way home, beating up a tennis ball, journaling, or moaning to our spouse or friends about our unhappiness, then these feelings may be released. If we develop no such outlets or if we fail to empty our emotional trashcans thoroughly, we may end up with bunches of feelings stashed inside. This is a second choice that moves us further towards more painful experiences.

When our stresses are not relieved, we get emotionally up tight. This often leads our body to become tense and up tight too. If muscles remain tight over long periods of time they may go into spasm, causing pain. This is how tension headaches, irritable bowels, asthma, hypertension and hosts of other problems may be precipitated and worsened.

In addition, stress hormones are released when we are up tight. These are helpful when they prepare us to deal with stressful situations by fighting or fleeing. They are unhelpful when we hold in our tensions because they lead to tiredness or even to exhaustion of our energies and put strains on our heart, kidneys, bowels and other organs.

Releasing pain is a choice

Using TWR, it is possible to release pains just by listening to the messages our aches and pains want us to hear. In many cases, their requests are very straightforward and can be addressed with practical changes in our habits and lifestyles.

Arlene suffered from knee pains for years. Her x-rays showed degenerated cartilage but she was reluctant to accept her doctor’s recommendation for surgery because her mother had died following complications of surgery. Listening to her knee, she heard that it was complaining about carrying too much weight – both literally and in the burdens Arlene was carrying in her life.

As a conscientious single mother, Arlene worked by day as assistant manager at a bank; was with her young children as much as possible till they were in bed; and managed an eBay business on line till late hours in the night.

She negotiated with her knee and promised she would allow herself some relaxing down time and attend to her being overweight by stopping her comfort eating. Her pain went down immediately from a 7-8 (our of a maximum of 10) to a 3-4.

Using the tapping and affirmations of TWR, she was able to bring the pain down to a 0-1. This also taught Arlene how to deal with her feelings of frustration that led to cravings that led to comfort eating.

Within a few weeks, Arlene was free of knee pains most of the time. If they returned, she was able to deal with them by using the TWR dialoguing and tapping with affirmations.

My book, Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release (with the same subtitle as the title of this article) explains in greater detail how to identify what it is we need to know in order to understand whatever our physical pains want us to know, and then how to release the pains – rapidly and deeply.

Meta-Issues Blocking Changes in Societal Consciousness

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:04:00 GMT

Holy Cow! There Are Meta-Beliefs Blocking Changes In Societal Consciousness

What is outrageous is not what you ask for. What is outrageous is what you settle for.
– Alan Cohen

Abstract:

Spiritual healing knows no limits. It is activated through intention. If we set the intention to clear the meta-issues that block releases of societal anxieties, fears and beliefs that are counter-productive, this can facilitate healing societal attitudes and beliefs that are impeding dealing with our global challenges that threaten our survival.
Dysfunctional societal beliefs block humanity from responding to current global crises

The world feels safer when we believe that our beliefs are real. We are very reluctant to question our basic beliefs, much less to change them. Meta-beliefs are locks we put on the doors that we shut to keep out questions which might make us feel uncomfortable about our basic beliefs.

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, the human mind is extremely uncomfortable with a conceptual vacuum, a gap in knowledge or an admission that we simply do not know the answer to an important question. To fill the gaps in our conceptual databases of explanations about the world, we develop myths. These are made-up stories that give answers to unanswerable questions.

For instance, every culture has its own creation myth. Wikipedia observes:

There are innumerable stories or narratives of origin. There also are many kinds of narrative that use the same general form and all ‘tell a story:’ history, biography, chronology, parable, allegory, fable, fairy tale, legend, epic, saga, myth, and cosmogony. Most of them contain an explanation that describes the beginnings of humanity, earth, life, and the universe (cosmogony), often as a deliberate act by one or more deities.

Many creation myths share broadly similar themes. Common motifs include the fractionation of the things of the world from a primordial chaos; the separation of the mother and father deities; and land emerging from an infinite and timeless ocean.

Some examples:

According to Shinto mythology, at the beginning of time the heavens and the earths were mixed together in a great cloud. The lighter parts rose up and became heaven, heavier parts descended and became an ocean of muddy water. A pale green sprout began to grow and, when the plant’s flower burst open, the First God emerged. This First God created Izanagi, the god of all that is light and heavenly and his wife and sister Izanami. The First God gave Izanagi the task of finishing the creation of the world. Standing on rainbow called Ama-no-ukihashi (the floating bridge of the heavens), Izanagi and Izanami plunged a jewel crested spear into the ocean. When they pulled it free, the water that dripped from the spear coagulated and formed the first island of the Japanese archipelago. Izanagi and Izanami went down to this island and, from there, made the islands of Japan.

The traditional account of creation by the Mansi people of Siberia involved two loons which dove to the bottom of primeval waters to retrieve a piece of the bottom and placed it on top of the water. From there the Earth grew. After a time, at the behest of his daughter, the spirit of the sky ordered his brother, the spirit of the lower world to create humanity. His brother made seven earthy, clay figures and which were quickened by the gods’ sister, Mother Earth.

(See numerous other creation myths from the Wiki collection from around the world.)

Whether we grow up believing that the Judao-Christian-Muslim God created the heavens and the earth or another cultural myth, each of these comes to have the feeling of ‘being the way it is.’ Anyone who questions such a myth is likely to be dismissed as an outsider who simply does not know the truth.

This is as true of scientific explanations for the world as it is for religious ones. In fact, this may be even more true of scientists, because they claim to base their explanations on methodical observations and measures of aspects of our world that serve as a rational basis for explaining how the world was created.

Unshakable social beliefs

If you always think what you’ve always thought,
You will always do what you’ve always done.
If you always do what you’ve always done,
You will always get what you’ve always got.
If you always get what you’ve always got,
You will always think what you’ve always thought.
– Roger von Oech.

Beliefs that are established in early years of our individual lives tend to have a feeling of truth and validity to them. In great part, this is due to the fact that these were the first beliefs we were taught, and we built our whole worldviews with these beliefs at their core.

On the positive side, this might include beliefs such as:

These beliefs, nested at the core of our life plan and guiding our path through life, would produce very positive relationships with others in all aspects of our behaviors and relationships.

On the negative side, we might find beliefs such as:

Such beliefs often lead to behaviors and relationships with other people, other living organisms and the environment that are exploitative and destructive.

Such beliefs, particularly the negative ones, are most often held with an unshakable certainty that they are correct. Any questioning of these beliefs is usually met with arguments, defensiveness and rejection.

Personal meta-anxieties and beliefs

In our personal lives we often experience traumas in childhood that leave emotional scars. We may hold anxieties, fears, phobias and beliefs many years after the original negative experiences, when they are – in and of themselves – no longer problems or threats in our lives. Very often, to our distress and detriment, we find ourselves unable to release these beliefs – along with the defensive patterns we have elaborated and continue to use, in order to avoid feeling these distressed feelings. The defensive patterns are activated in our current lives with issues that we could handle in much better ways with our adult awarenesses and more mature understanding of situations. However, because we have kept the childhood patterns for so long, we continue to hold onto our outmoded and most often unnecessary defensive responses.

In many cases it is possible to release such emotional residues using TWR and other therapies. As we recite affirmations while tapping on the body, the negative childhood feelings and beliefs rapidly dissipate in most cases.

In some cases, however, these residues persist despite all of our efforts to neutralize and let go of them. In such instances, there are often meta-anxieties and beliefs that hold us back from abandoning the lingering issues that are plaguing us.

For instance, we might be saying to ourselves:

These are meta-anxieties and beliefs about releasing the memories of the painful experiences we had. They are locks on the file drawers of our memories that prevent us from releasing them. Until we let go of these locks, it is difficult or impossible to release the painful issues that plague us.

TWR and related methods can be used to diminish the intensity of these meta-anxieties and to eliminate them. Once we have removed the meta-issue locks on our inner file drawers, then we are able to release the problematic residual beliefs and feelings.

Social meta-anxieties and beliefs

In similar ways to our individual meta-issues, there are social meta-anxieties and beliefs that prevent us from changing our collective beliefs and actions, even when these may be destructive to the extent of threatening a collective suicide. Helpful rules may have been developed early in the life history of a family; a clan; a social, racial or religious group; a local culture; or a nation. At the dates of their origins, they may have served very healthy, helpful functions. However, with the passage of time, with changing situations and maturing understandings of ourselves and our relationships with the world, we may have reached places where the original rules are outmoded and actually more dysfunctional and problematic than helpful.

For example:

Meta-anxiety: If they are right, then our beliefs must be wrong, and we’d have to admit [we’ve lived our lives under misguided principles/have acted unjustly towards others/are not the ‘chosen ones’ of the Creator]

More mature understanding: When we lived in a strictly local, pre-industrial society where travels were restricted and contact with ‘outsiders’ was very limited, we needed these rules to help us to co-exist. Now that travel and communications enable us to communicate with people all around the world, in cultures different from our own, we have much we can learn that is of benefit from other cultures. Not the least of our insights might be to discover those aspects of our traditional local teachings that are outmoded and do not serve us well in modern days. (See for instance a collection of deliciously unique words from diverse languages, each of which has no direct translation in other languages, in a wonderful book by C. J. Moore and Simon Winchester.)

Meta-anxiety: If we question the teachings of our religion or of our religious leaders, we will [burn in hell/suffer other Divine retributions].

More mature understanding: The words of Moses, Christ, Muhamed and other religious leaders held many rich teachings at the time they were spoken. A lot of their original meanings have been lost, due to language shifts and other cultural changes over the years, so that our current understandings have many layers of interpretations encrusted upon them over the intervening years. Some of the changes in fact may have been introduced by religious leaders along the way for purposes of keeping the sheep in the fold. The Creator speaks all languages. Each culture has interpreted the messages of the Infinite Source through its own unique understandings of the world. We may arrive at truer approximations of that which is beyond words if we look for the common denominators between religions rather than restricting ourselves to a single window of perceptions. I can work to overcome my discomforts with cultures and lifestyles that differ from my own so that I may harmonize with the urgent needs of our planet.

Meta-anxiety: Why should I/we cut back, however, if nobody else is doing so? My/our little excesses really won’t be that harmful, and I don’t know how we could get along without our accustomed lifestyle.

More mature understanding: We are living in a world that is facing unique challenges. We absolutely must develop new ways, as soon as possible, to deal with these. I, along with everyone else, can contribute to the highest good of all by learning sustainable ways of living, leaving a lighter footprint of wear and tear on this world – and perhaps even leaving the world in better shape for my presence in it.

Meta-anxieties: If animals other than humans have as much right to live as we do, how can we decide on planetary priorities that are fair? What will happen to human lifestyles if this is true? Which and how many of our creature comforts will we humans have to relinquish?

More mature understanding: Every living being on our planet is here by cosmic design and through its evolutionary harmonizing with every aspect of our planet. While it will take considerable adjustments – inner and outer – to achieve this, I will do everything I can to re-examine and adapt my understandings and lifestyles to harmonize with every aspect of Gaia: human, animal, plant, land, water and atmosphere.

Changing basic beliefs and releasing meta-anxieties

In many cases where individuals have released their meta-anxieties over examining or questioning their beliefs from frameworks outside their own, the first step towards releasing these locks on their beliefs was an experiential one. It is very common for teenagers, college students, and travelers to distant lands to start to wonder about their basic values. Next, they may start to question their meta-anxieties about re-examining or releasing these cultural rules – as they encounter others whom they like and respect but whose cultural and religious backgrounds are substantially different from their own.

Truth is compelling – not by argument, but by experience.
– Alan Cohen

I can share a few examples from my own life. :

Example 1. I had always enjoyed eating meat, poultry and fish. I thought that vegetarianism was a faddish affectation of those who could afford to eat at stylish vegetarian restaurants. These were behaviors and beliefs acquired along my life path. A 10-day visit to The Findhorn Foundation in Scotland brought about a major shift in my perceptions and behaviors. After eating tasty, simple vegetarian fare in this plant-awareness promoting community for a week and a half, I learned this was not only a possible but also an enjoyable diet. I have since then come to deepen my understandings and reasons for staying away from red meat (the untenable carbon footprint), and to make vegetarian choices far more often then before. As I deepen my awareness of my oneness with all life on earth, I am making these choices more and more often.

Example 2. Having grown up in a Jewish home in New York City, I distinctly viewed people from different religions and cultures, whom I knew for the most part only from passing them on the street, as ‘others.’ Living in Israel as an adult, and rubbing elbows with people who had national origins from Europe, South America, North Africa and Yemen was a very broadening experience. Making friends with people from diverse cultures led me to appreciate that there are many ways to play the game of life, and that mine wasn’t in many cases the best way. This is a lesson that broadened in its effects in my life, to include having married two non-Jewish women.

I probably would not have changed my perceptions or behaviors in these regards in as deep ways as I did, without the personal experiences. Lesson: To change awareness, emotions, beliefs, meta-issues and behaviors, experiential learning is desirable and effective.

Once awareness has shifted, then deliberate releases of beliefs, anxieties and meta-anxieties are possible. Again, an example from my personal experience:

Peeling the onion of life’s stresses and of locked away residues has become a part of my daily life. Most issues respond so quickly to TWR that I have come to expect that painful issues from the past that are stirred by current challenges will melt away and be replaced by positive, healing cognitions and feelings.

I once had a pain in my left hip persist despite using TWR after a minor fall. I probed more deeply and discovered a distant past life memory of dying a lonely death in the snow on a mountain. I had been left behind by my clan because of an injury to my left hip that made it impossible for me to keep up with the group that was on a long trek. I felt no resentment towards my clan, because this was how it had to be for the survival of all. But is was bitter towards God because I felt I had been let down unfairly when my wife had died not long before in childbirth.

My pain was an invitation to clear these old, buried hurts, resentments and angers. Again, however, the pain resisted release with TWR. It was only when I addressed my meta-anxieties and fears of relinquishing these negative feelings that the feelings themselves let go. The meta-anxieties were locks on the door to the inner cavern where the feelings had been buried. They were there to protect me against trusting the Infinite Source (the term I now use instead of God) again – because my inner self believed I would only be setting myself up for disappointment if I trusted again.

Lesson: When blocks to desired emotional releases and changes in beliefs are encountered in our individual work, we can often clear the blocks by identifying meta-issues and clearing them first.

Looking forward, considering where we are in the world

The immanent threats of global social and economic meltdowns and planetary destruction invite creative solutions. The classical wholistic, spiritual suggestion is to work on clearing our personal issues as the best contribution we can make to clearing negativity from the collective consciousness. However, in these perilous times, changing the big picture one pixel at a time does not appear to be a promising or adequate solution. There isn’t enough time, at that pace, to have even a small chance of reaching a turning point in consciousness or actions that will stave off, much less resolve, the multiple serious impending threats of monetary/ economic collapse; exhaustion of fossil fuels, water and food supplies; poisoning by pollution; threat of nuclear destruction; and global heating.

Without a change in consciousness, humanity will continue on its path to suicide – out of lack of ability to accept collective responsibility for dealing with each and every one of the threats to our existence.

I believe there are cultural meta-issues blocking the necessary shifts and awakenings. Several of these are detailed above, in my bulleted examples of beliefs, meta-anxieties, and more mature understandings.

In an earlier article, I suggested it is possible to send healing to any person in the collective consciousness of humanity who is in need of healing, as we engage in therapeutic healing for ourselves and with other individuals. (I also provided research references to support the effectiveness of such distant healings.) These sorts of healings can also be done with the intention that the healing should extend backwards and forwards in time. In another article I detailed how we can deal with individual meta-meta-anxieties , the secondary locks we put on the first layer of locks against experiencing our anxieties, fears and other issues.

Similarly, there is every reason to expect that healing directed to the meta-anxieites and of blocking meta-beliefs in the collective consciousness will be effective and helpful.

Here is a sample focusing statement:

I/We invite anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere, anywhen and everywhen, who is part of the collective consciousness of a group, to become aware of their blocks to releasing their [anxieties/ fears/ hurts/ angers/ sadness/ and any other feelings or beliefs] that prevent them from participating in planetary healing.

For the Replacement Positive statement:

I/We invite anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere, anywhen and everywhen, who is part of the collective consciousness of a group, to [vision/sense/see/hear] themselves confidently, easily and completely releasing their [anxieties/ fears/ hurts/ angers/ sadness/ and any other feelings or beliefs] that prevent them from participating in planetary healing

I invite you to suggest helpful affirmations to address some of the bulleted challenges to clearing the collective consciousness above. Responses please to my email .

Hopefully, if we can release blocks to our working on our issues about engaging in healing our planet, we may be able to become more active and to save our world from humanity’s suicidal and genocidal behaviors.

References:

Moore, C. J. Winchester, S. In Other Words: A Language Lover’s Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World . New York: Walker & Co. 2004.

Healing Global Conflicts and Levels of ‘Otherness’:

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 19:01:00 GMT

On Root Issues In Finances, Fishing, Fearfulness and Friendliness

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

I believe that a lot of our world’s conflicts derive from lack of trust of ‘others.’ This occurs between individuals; families; geographic, social, cultural and religious communities; and nations. As long as we maintain our ‘otherness’, we have a ready justification blaming anyone but ourselves for the problems we encounter in life, and for venting our displeasures upon them. These sorts of behaviors pretty well guarantee the perpetuation of the problems we are addressing rather than solving them. Politicians have recognized and exploited these attitudes and behaviors for millennia.

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind…

And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.

How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.

Our greatest challenges today are to survive the potential disasters of global heating (‘warming’ is really an unacceptable euphemism!); exhaustion and poor distribution of resources; pollution; and overpopulation. In order to deal with these issues, we must cooperate with people at every level of our interactions. Yet our leaders are dithering away the time available before we reach some unknown tipping point. Our elected representatives are influenced by the self-interests of industries and limited by their event horizons that do not reach beyond their next election.

How do we develop broad trust and cooperation?

Finances:
As individuals, we learn our lessons of trust and distrust through life experiences primarily in our families and local communities. Where social structures and economies are based primarily on local interactions, trust is predominantly based on personal experiences with other individuals. Trust is more solidly established when we have this sort of personal familiarity with all the people with whom we deal. James Surowiecki, in The Wisdom of Crowds , points out that the maximum capacity for such solid interactions is a community of 150 individuals. Beyond that number, we lose our capacity to establish familiarity with everyone in the community.

In larger, more complex and diverse societies, the treads of acquaintance become thinner, and in most cases may not exist at all. Lacking such familiarity with most of the people with whom we deal, we may feel vulnerable and at risk for mistreatment. So we come to rely on broad characteristics that give us some measure of promise of safety – looking for people who are similar to ourselves in social behaviors, dress, skin color, language and other characteristics. Conversely, we may tend to distrust ‘others’ who lack these characteristics.

Historically, politicians and religious leaders have played upon these social anxieties. More on this below.

You might think that the business world is the last place where strong trust would be developed, but this is actually not the case. I was struck by the observation of Surowiecki that our whole financial system is based on trust between people who are negotiating agreements around money issues.

In earlier times, people dealt mostly with local businesses, where there was a history of personal interactions upon which to clarify and establish one’s levels of trust. This began to be a challenge when many business opportunities opened up in more distant markets, where there was no familiarity between the negotiating parties. A more impersonal business ethic evolved among the Quakers in the late 18 ^th and early 19 ^th centuries, when local trade expanded dramatically in England, and international trade was beginning to expand significantly. Because the Quakers adhered to ethics of trust and honesty, they were readily able to negotiate deals with each other even when the business partners did not have a personal acquaintance as their basis of trust. Soon they became known as reliable business partners with whom non-Quakers could strike deals as well. Learning from this experience, other businessmen came to adhere to reliable promises in dealings with each other around the world.

Without this sort of impersonal trust, it would be virtually impossible to develop commercial relationships between distant buyers and sellers. This has come to be taken for granted over the many decades of international commerce. This applies to promises of delivery of goods in return for payments that must be made prior to delivery, or conversely, to promises of payment following delivery.

How would you live if you felt you could trust life fully? If you believed you were totally protected and secure, that forevermore your life would be filled with love and prosperity? Think of how your fears would dissolve, of how totally accepting of yourself and others you would be – it wouldn’t matter if they met your expectations or not. Think of how you would venture forth knowing you would succeed. Think of how your heart would open, of how free you would feel. How free you would be to love. All of this is the treasure that life offers us. We just lack the consciousness to experience it.
– Susan L. Taylor

Fishing:
You might consider this an odd topic to follow a discussion of finances, but please bear with me. I want to point out how the trend in international fishing is a polar opposite to what has been for generations the standard of trust in the world of business.

The world is facing a dire crisis in the oceans. Fishermen around the world have become so efficient at catching fish that the fish stocks are being depleted faster than they can reproduce. There are whole regions of the ocean now that are watery deserts – devoid of what used to be reliable sources of fish to feed people in nearby countries. If this continues, fish will soon be totally wiped out and billions of people will starve.

You might think that fish farming could replace ocean fishing, but this may not be the case. Farmed fish are fed by catching and grinding up massive numbers of ‘dross’ fish from the oceans that are not suitable for human consumption. These dross fish too are approaching the point of being wiped out in the world’s oceans.

Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught, will we realise that we cannot eat money.
– 19th Century Cree Indian

Why is this regional, national and international threat to human life being allowed to happen? Local, national and international commissions have been aware of these problems for over 30 years but have not succeeded in halting the over-fishing of our oceans. Why? Because there is a basic, pervasive distrust among the members of the fishing community. Fishermen complain that the governmental agencies which are legislating restrictions on fishing are relying on flawed scientific research that is not based in valid assessments of conditions in the fishing grounds. While this may be true to some extent, in most cases, the more basic problem is the short-sightedness of the fishermen themselves.

At every level of the fishing industry there is distrust: Individual fishermen, fishing companies that command whole fleets of modernized fishing boats, and national fishing agencies simply do not trust their fishermen counterparts – locally, nationally or internationally – to be honest in reporting their true catch or in abiding by restrictions on catches. The short-term gains of a boatful of fish are apparently irresistible and outweigh any long-term considerations about depletions of fish stock.

Fearfulness:
As noted above, politicians and religious leaders have played upon our social anxieties. They often target people who are obviously ‘others’ as scapegoats, blaming them for troubles in local communities, or instilling fears about these ‘others’ in order to manipulate the populace. It is easier to remain in power and enhance one’s control over the populace when one doesn’t accept blame for local problems. Instilling fears about ‘others’ also keeps the flock in the fold.

In time, the populace begins to wise up, and eventually they may rebel and establish a more democratic social and political order… Until the ‘haves’ again build up their power and establish unfair advantages over the ‘have-nots.’

Returning to observations on finances, we see that with time, Western commerce has developed largely into very impersonal interactions, often with communications via advertisements, letters, long-distance cable, phone messages and emails. While frauds and scams occur, they have generally been the exception to the rule. Recently, this has changed – and at such high levels in the financial world, that it is eroding the basic levels of trust required for facilitating the conduct of commerce with customers.

A case in point is the proposed governmental legislation in the UK to eliminate the labeling of foods in supermarkets to include their country of origin and miles-cost-added to the cost of the food. Similarly, the government is moving towards abandoning the requirement to label foods which are genetically modified. The government is clearly under the influence and sway of marketers’ interests rather than the interests of the public, or interests of controlling global heating (global ‘warming’ is an unacceptable euphemism). Films like Monsanto, Food.Inc and Michael Moore’s Super Size Me detail the processes that lead to such conflicts of interests. The customer is viewed and treated as a purchaser of products, with the corporate bottom line of profits taking complete precedence over the wellbeing and welfare of the consumer as a person.

The granddaddy of all examples of breach of trust at high levels was Enron, a financial house of cards from which the business and banking communities reaped mega-profits, at the expense of millions of once-trusting small investors, many of whom lost their life savings.

The more serious breach of trust is in the financing of governments through Federal Reserve loan systems that benefit the banks at the expense of the citizens of the country. These systems create a culture of unnecessary, perpetual loans that enrich the banks beyond any reason and limit the resources of the citizenry. The culture of living in debt starts at the top and is a house of cards that is a collapse just waiting to happen.

The above examples are but a tiny sampling of distancing and distrust between corporate and government entities and individuals in the public. Individual citizens have ever-increasing numbers and varieties of reasons to distrust the ‘others’ who are supposed to be their elected representatives.

This has very often been the case throughout history. The monetary and governing elite serve their self-interests at the expense of the populace. To keep the populace from noticing this, they channel dissatisfactions into the blaming of ‘others’ who are allegedly the causes of the problems at home. Wars are started from manufactured excuses, playing on fears that are deliberately created and fanned. This brings the populace to follow their leaders to battle against the alleged ‘others’ who are blamed by the leaders for causing the problems which are actually caused by the leaders.

President Bush and his cohorts were masters at these tactics. They took the US and other countries to war over phony stories of Weapons of Mass Destruction that were never found, and phony connections between Al Qaeda and Afghanistan woven of words rather than realities. By the time this became clear, the troops and the countries backing them were too embroiled in the battlefields to extract themselves, and too manipulated by fears of other sorts to call a halt to the wars. One wonders how many phony wars like Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan will be perpetrated before we as citizens get together, put our collective feet down, and say, “No more.”

Coming back down to personal levels of dealing with fearfulness, we find that there are now technologies to release stress, anxieties and distress.

Forgiveness releases us from the power of fear. It allows us to see with kindly eyes and rest in a wise heart.
– Jack Kornfield

Friendliness:
Wendell Berry notes that people have been exploring a return to local economies as an assurance to the satisfaction of their local needs and interests. There is now a network of local business networks called Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), which provides information and support for a growing web of economies that are community-based, green, and fair – local living economies.

I highly recommend Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest , a book that details the major ecological challenges that our world is facing. He doesn’t pull punches in describing the dangers of energy consumption, exhaustion of fossil fuels and other resources, pollution, governmental mismanagement, bad habits of consumerism, and above all the carbon emissions and global heating. I was startled to see the positive twist he puts on these problems. He points out that these threats to the survival of our planet and of every living thing on it have brought together people around the planet like no other problem has done in recorded history.

These crises are bringing people to work together for the healing of our problems. The internet is facilitating this in a big way. People are forging personal and organizational links with individuals and groups in diverse cultures around the world. This is, simultaneously, a step towards healing for the anxieties of dealing with ‘others.’ We are all on this ship that is sinking because people are punching holes in its hull, and because the ship’s officers are taking unfair shares of our global riches and depriving the crew of their due share of resources.

Releasing fears and building friendliness
TWR is an outstanding tool to help us as individual pixels on the big, global screen to release our fears. Imagine TWR taught in schools, so children could grow up without fears! Politicians and others who would want to manipulate them would have a much harder time doing so.

TWR (and any other healing method) can contribute to the clearing of collective fears, angers and hatreds as well. Whenever we are clearing negativity in ourselves or helping others to do so in themselves, we can invite clearing of similar issues in others – through the collective consciousness. A simple invocation can convert any individual healing into a doorway for clearings of others through the collective consciousness:

I/we invite anyone and everyone.
Anywhere and everywhere.
Anywhen and everywhen.
Who is ready to clear this [negativity/ anger/ hurt/ fear/ sadness/ grief/ etc] with me/ us, to come along and do so.

Resources:

Benor, Daniel J. My suggestions to clear the PTSD from humanity’s collective consciousness – hopefully to help us avert collective suicide:

Brief version
http://wholistichealingresearch.com/World_Healing_Collective_Consciousness.html

Full version
http://www.wholistichealingresearch.com/col_con_hooponopono_whee.html

Berry, Wendell. The Idea of a Local Economy
Orion magazine, winter 2001
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/299/

Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE):
Over 20,000 entrepreneurs building the new economy
The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) is North America’s fastest growing network of socially responsible businesses, comprised of over 80 community networks with over 21,000 independent business members across the U.S. and Canada.
BALLE brings together independent business leaders, economic development professionals, government officials, social innovators, and community leaders to build local living economies. We provide local, state, national, and international resources to this new model of economic development.
We´re showing that independent locally owned businesses can go beyond traditional measures of success. We’re proving that these businesses are accountable to stakeholders and the environment. We’re helping these businesses flourish in their local economies. And we’re leveraging the power of local networks to build a web of economies that are community-based, green, and fair – local living economies.
http://www.livingeconomies.org/

Hawken. Paul. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming , NY: Viking/ Penguin 2007.

Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds , New York: Anchor/Random House 2005.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Enhancing Emotional Awareness and Intelligence

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 11 May 2016 18:59:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

I often wonder what the human landscape would look like if emotional intelligence was taught and nurtured in schools – from the earliest grades and on into colleges and universities. Schools are natural places to teach listening and conversational skills; to build an emotional vocabulary; to learn conflict resolution and mediation skills; and to find and maintain a balance between thinking and feeling.

Children are wide open to learn these awarenesses and skills. The greater challenge would be to train the teachers to be able to instruct and guide the children.

Can you imagine a world in which children grow up with the ability to de-stress and release whatever negativity comes their way? We would not have to grow up struggling and suffering from problems of anxieties, fears, angers, hurts, embarrassment, insecurity… and many of the other challenges of life…

With lessening of negative life experiences – outer and inner – a greater wholistic awareness would develop. People would understand the messages of their body – rather than addressing them as symptoms to be eliminated. Fewer medications would be needed.

With less stress there would be fewer stress-related diseases; less conflict with other people – in the family, in the workplace, between communities and between nations.

People would learn to connect with intuitive awarenesses that often accompany body messages. Once people open to their intuition and enhance it, they are able to access their sixth sense in other areas of their lives. A sense of rightness and wrongness grows in decisions, relationships and actions.

Intuitive awareness often expands further, opening into a sense of oneness with other living beings and with all of Creation. When we experience this oneness, there is a growing sense of respect for all living things, as well as for the earth, the waters and the air. The prospect of polluting or harming any of these feels like we would be harming ourselves.

If you have not experienced the relief and release of negativity that is possible with techniques such as TWR , what I have shared here may seem just a dream. Having taught thousands of people to use such methods, I can assure you that this is a dream that can come true.

You needn’t just take my word on this. In just a few minutes of reading and personal exploration you can confirm for yourself how this works – for pains, anxieties, stress or negativity of any sort.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Transformational Potentials of TWR

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 21:18:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

TWR is so easy to learn that children often go home and teach their family to use it. here is an interesting report on this from a physiotherapist who has been using TWR with children who have neurological impairments:

I taught TWR to a 6 year-old child. She taught it to her mother. Her mother taught it to a friend. The friend taught it to her (adult) daughter. The daughter is writing a biography of a woman who is dredging up horrific images from her past so she taught the woman TWR to use while recording her memories.
Thanks Dan. You rock!
Jackie

While the methodology of TWR is very simple, it is elegantly simple. Because it works so rapidly, it enables users to quickly identify when there are meta-issues blocking their progress.

Carrie, a woman at a TWR workshop, was clearing distress over the breakup of a relationship. The intensity of her initial SUDS for hurt, sadness and anger was 11 on a scale of 10. Initially, she made good progress tapping and reciting her focusing statement and counteracting affirmation.

When the SUDS stuck at a 6 and did not go lower despite massaging the collarbone point and sharpening the focus of her focusing statement, we explored reasons Carrie might feel a need to hold onto the distress. She quickly connected with residual feelings of bewilderment, hurt and anger from childhood, when her parents separated and then divorced. When Carrie bundled these with the feelings from her current distress, the SUDS went down to a 3, where it again stuck.

Further questioning led Carrie to realize she was always expecting relationships to sour and dissolve. In fact, some of her defensive behaviors had the paradoxical effects of causing precisely what she feared would happen. Working separately on these meta-issues, reducing their intensity from 8/10 to zero, she then installed a replacement positive, “I can leave my childhood fears of abandonment behind me, and know that I can do better in my relationships than my parents did.”

This freed Carrie of her deep, limiting beliefs which had had pervasively negative effects in many areas of her life. This was immediately evident, when her SUDS for her current distress promptly responded to TWR and reduced all the way to zero.

TWR self-healing is transformative when people use it regularly. I often tell prospective workshop participants that they will look five years younger by the end of their day of learning TWR for personal uses.

Beyond the effects on individuals, however, TWR offers many promises for broader transformations:

How do we get to a world like this?

Future plans include research with brain scans to identify how TWR works; bringing TWR to schools and corporate settings where it can be implemented for stress and anxiety reduction, and for decreasing stress-related illnesses, absenteeism and other such problems in the workplace.

My most immediate plan in answer to this question is to offer many more people opportunities to enjoy TWR resources.

Through Thursday, December 24th we are mounting a campaign on line promoting my book, Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release.

Purchase a book for yourself
Or give the gift of healing to someone you know
for physical or emotional pains of all sorts…
for stresses of financial pressures, job worries, relationship issues…
for changing cravings and other habits…
and more…

Enter for a chance to win

visit http://www.paintap.com/ on December 17th for details

ALSO Get Hundreds of dollars worth of bonus offers, including:

Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release: Pain Is a Choice and Suffering Is Optional – TWR for Tapping Your Pain Away.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Choosing Love or Fear as Your Guiding Principle in Life

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 21:16:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire.
– Teilhard de Chardin

The opposite of fear is unconditional acceptance and love. This is very difficult to perceive, much less to accept, and much more difficult yet to adopt as a guiding principle by which to live. Yet releasing fears is not only possible but is actually relatively easy. It is also easy to build and strengthen love in our lives.

Problems and challenges that generate fear
When we are living in fear, we may be responding to real dangers that threaten our happiness, health, security and even to our very life itself. Under circumstances of privations, persecutions and growing global scarcities there is no lack of reasons to develop fears.

This easily becomes a vicious circle. When we respond from fear it is usually with anger, selfishness, vengefulness and even malice. These attitudes and behaviors generate further fear in others, which generates more negative behaviors towards us, which further raises our fear levels. Little wonder that our world is in the sorry shape we see today!

One would hope that governments and educational institutions would work for the benefit of the people, in ways that reduce fears, and that they would teach people to deal with them. One would think that employers would see that fear is damaging to workers’ emotional and physical health and interferes with their productivity. But this is far from the case.

Modern society is governed by leaders who are themselves in fear. Politicians tend to be motivated by personal gain and power. They fear losing control – over others and over their own lives. They distrust others in government, fear negative public opinion and fear loss of financial and voter support.

Leaders in business tend to be motivated by power and personal gain. They fear loss of power and loss of profits.

In all of these circumstances, a further problem is often at play. In western society we tend to favor thinking as our primary way of relating to the world. Logical, linear reasoning is a function that is the specialty of our left brain hemisphere (LH). Our emotions, which are the specialty of our right brain hemisphere (RH), are often outside our conscious (LH) awareness. We may be experiencing fear but might not even be aware of it. Our conscious mind may sense we are unhappy, anxious or irritable but may not understand why this is so.

I see hope in the Occupy movement. Many are waking up to the need to bring love back into our lives and to change the old ways of relating to each other and to the world.

Fear and love are contradictory. Love is reckless in giving away, oblivious as to what it gets in return.

Love wrestles with the world as with the self and ultimately gains mastery over all other feelings. My daily experience…is that every problem lends itself to solution if we are determined to make the law of truth and nonviolence the law of life. For truth and nonviolence are, to me, faces of the same coin. The law of love will work, just as the law of gravitation will work, whether we accept it or not…the more I work at this law the more I feel the delight in life, the delight in the scheme of this universe. It gives me a peace and a meaning of the mysteries of nature that I have no power to describe.
– Gandhi

Loving ways for dealing with our fears
There are many possible approaches. First, of course, is to identify that we are out of harmony in our lives and wanting or needing to do something about this. Next, we need to clarify what it is we are experiencing, and then to decide what we wish to do about it.

I have been helping people do this for over forty years. I have explored dozens of techniques for identifying and clearing stress, anxieties and fears. The combination of approaches I developed, called TWR (Whole Health – Easily and Effectively; AKA Transformative Wholistic Reintegration/ TWR) is the most efficient and effects method I have ever known. Within minutes, TWR can help to clear and transform anxieties and fears – even when they are quite strong.

‘Wilma’ was living in constant fear over the limitations of her 9 year-old son, ‘John,’ who has Asperger’s Disorder. As a single mom, she found it enormously stressful to sort out time off from work to be at school periodically when John got into behavioral difficulties. This was happening with increasing frequency, and Wilma was beginning to feel frustrated and angry with her son. She started to fear the loss of her job, and these fears interfered with her thinking and made it difficult to do her job. She was very pleasantly surprised and relieved to find her fears melting away with TWR. At the same time, she realized she had been increasingly irritable with John due to her fears, and as she calmed down, he did too, and consequently had fewer difficulties at school. The generic TWR affirmation that included “I love and accept myself, wholly and completely, and God loves and accepts me, wholly and completely and unconditionally” was enormously helpful to Wilma in releasing her fears.

‘Peter’ came for help because he was in conflict with his wife over her frequent drinking to excess. He was upset seeing her drifting into a serious alcohol dependency for dealing with stresses over her mother drifting into an Alzheimer state and needing but resisting a move into assisted care. In using TWR to release his anxieties and stress reactions, Peter found himself also reconnecting with, reaffirming and strengthening his love for his wife, his empathy with her difficult challenges surrounding her mother’s problems, and his impatience with his wife that resonated with his frustrations and impatience with both of his parents who had had drinking problems.

Again and again, both in helping others and in my personal life, I find that love is the best way through our difficulties – both large and small. TWR is a godsend in helping to identify and clear the blocks to letting love back into our lives and in strengthening this love so that we find he healings we need for our challenges.

At some ideas you stand perplexed, especially at the sight of human sins, uncertain whether to combat it by force or by human love. Always decide, ‘I will combat it with human love.’ If you make up your mind about that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force; it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it.
– Dostoyevsky

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

TWR for Pregnancy, Labor and Delivery – Part 1

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 21:14:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

A grand adventure is about to begin.
– Winnie the Pooh

TWR can be of enormous help in pregnancy, labor and delivery.

Having a baby is a very special event. For many people this is truly a blessed experience. There are all the joys of bringing new life into the world; bonding in new ways with a spouse or partner; learning ever deeper, positive lessons in life; finding deeper meaningfulness in living; and much, much more.

Having a baby may be a special experience in very different ways. Being pregnant may present many serious challenges. An unexpected child may be a strain on relationships, career, finances, health and nerves.

TWR in pregnancy

Pregnancy may stimulate varieties of anxieties, particularly if this is your first pregnancy. It is very normal to worry about any new experience that is of major importance in your life. There are many changes going on in every aspect of your being.

The pace and intensity of changes may be slow and gentle, or you may find them unexpectedly sudden and intense. If any of these are uncomfortable, you can ease your transitions through pregnancy using TWR.

Jessie was truly delighted to find herself pregnant. Although this had not been planned, she and Tom, her boyfriend of three years, found themselves comfortable with the prospect of having a child. They had been hesitant about getting married, but this brought them closer with each other to the point that they were committed to tying the knot.

Jessie was surprised to find herself fretting in her sixth month about whether Tom was firm in his commitment, and worrying about gaining more weight than her doctor recommended. When she started having trouble falling asleep at night, and started waking frequently in a sweat with nightmares about being alone and abandoned, losing her teeth, and losing the baby, she sought the help of a counselor.

She was greatly relieved to learn that these are all common experiences of women during pregnancy. With the help of TWR she was able to clear her anxieties and worries and was sleeping normally within two weeks. Jessie was particularly grateful that she had the use of TWR at any time she needed it, and that she could even use it in public without anyone knowing she was de-stressing.

The first pregnancy and impending motherhood include major changes in lifestyles, relationships and obligations. It is normal and natural to feel anxieties, worries and fears about such issues. Talking with other women who have gone through these experiences is also helpful – for practical advice and support.

More in TWR for Pregnancy, Labor and Delivery – Part 2

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

TWR for Pregnancy, Labor and Delivery – Part 2: Physical problems

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:45:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

TWR can be of enormous help in pregnancy, labor and delivery.

Having a baby may be a special experience in very different ways. Being pregnant may present many serious challenges. Increased appetite may lead to excessive weight gains. This may trigger toxemia or worsen hypertension of pregnancy. Carrying a baby shifts weight to the front of the body, which can lead to back strain and back pain. Emotional stresses of pregnancy may produce tensions in the body, contributing to headaches, anxiety reactions

TWR for physical problems in pregnancy

Women report that TWR is outstanding for relieving anxieties and stress reactions, as detailed below. Stress leads us to tense our bodies in preparation for meeting and dealing with problems and perceived dangers. This is helpful if we have to fight or flee from a situation. However, such tensions in the body may not be discharged through activating our muscles. They may accumulate tightness in muscles, tendons and joints that then lead to muscle spasm or worsening of joint pains.

TWR is helpful in several ways:

Dora was anxious during her second pregnancy. Her husband, who worked long hours to help make ends meet, had not given her as much support as she felt she had needed during her first pregnancy, when she suffered from nausea, excessive weight gain and backaches. Dora worried that she would have even greater difficulties coping with her second pregnancy and second child, on top of caring for her two year-old daughter.

In her second and third months of pregnancy, Dora was plagued by severe nausea and occasional vomiting. She learned TWR by reading Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release, anticipating she might benefit from using self-healing for the backaches she anticipated having again in this pregnancy. She was skeptical when she came across mention that Nausea could respond as well to TWR, but very pleasantly surprised when she had immediate benefits from using TWR in this way.

Dora was even more pleased when she was able to curb her appetite and prevent excessive weight gain later in her pregnancy. Her back pains also recurred, but were much milder. Following the recommended procedures from the book, she dialogued with her pain and dealt with the anxieties that were contributing to the pain by making her up tight.

I was pleased to have Dora’s thanks – through the mutual friend who had given her the gift of the book.

TWR is extremely easy to learn and to use. I often receive notes of thanks from people I have never met, after they learned and enjoyed the uses of TWR from the book, workbook or articles on my website.

Personal instructions in how to use TWR may enhance its benefits. For instance, had Dora contacted me about her nausea, I would have advised her to dialogue with this symptom. Just as people dialogue with pain, they can dialogue with any other body symptom, to learn and grow from what their body wants to tell them about their life.

TWR for Pregnancy, Labor and Delivery – Part 3: Labor and Delivery

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:41:00 GMT

Daniel J. Benor, MD

TWR can be of enormous help in pregnancy, labor and delivery. TWR is a self-healing method for dealing with stress, anxieties and pains of all sorts.

Having a baby may be a special experience in very different ways. Labor and delivery may present varieties of serious challenges. These processes can be stressful and painful. Anxieties about the labor and delivery tend to worsen the pains. Stress and anxieties may slow and prolong the labor and delivery and may increase blood loss. Bringing a baby out into the world sometimes ends in injury or death to child or mother.

Mothers report that TWR can be of help with such problems in varieties of ways.

The ease of learning and using TWR makes this an incredibly helpful self-healing technique.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

TWR for Trauma: Emergency Room Procedures for People Who Have Been Traumatized

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:29:00 GMT

Suggested by Lynne Namka, expanded by Daniel Benor, MD

Tapping for Trauma provides a gentle relaxation technique for people who have been raped, beaten, shot, wounded or injured in a car accident. It can also be used after surgery, which is a different form of assault to the body. Family members, friends, doctors, nurses and aides can use this approach to help calm people and help them reach a more relaxed state.

Such relaxation can promote better healing as well as improving people’s psychological states. Trauma often blocks energy flows in the body as people goes into emotional and physical shock.

This technique can be used at any time: sitting in the waiting room, while being examined by medical staff; while waiting to be examined or treated; and for self-healing after returning home. Tapping for Trauma was developed by Lynne Namka as a form of Emotional Freedom Techniques (www.emofree.com).

Method

TWR is a self-healing method in which people tap alternately on the left and right sides of the body, while reciting an affirmation that focuses the mind on healing.

People should start tapping as soon as possible after they arrive at a treatment center. By bringing their body into relaxation soon after the traumatizing event, less trauma memory will become encoded in their mind and body. The sooner people are helped, the fewer emotional problems regarding the distressing incident he will be experienced later. Tapping for Trauma may also decrease the possibility of developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Invite people who have been hurt to alternate tapping gently on the left and right side of their body, back and forth. They can tap with the fingers of each hand on their thighs; alternate tapping with one hand on either side of their nose; tap their feet on the floor; or alternate tightening their toes on their right and left foot.

People who have been hurt and frightened usually breathe shallowly, so remind them to take a nice, deep breath after tapping for a short while.

It is helpful to tap:

People may keep tapping until they feel peaceful and quiet. They can’t do this procedure wrong if they tap lovingly and breathe deeply. Just tap!

Pass this Tapping for Trauma procedure on to emergency rooms, paramedics, nurses, policemen and others who deal with people who are wounded. Keep a copy in your glove compartment of your car to use in case of an accident. Translate this procedure into other languages and send to countries that have experiencing war or a natural disaster.

Suuggested by Lynne Namka, Ed.D. www.AngriesOut.com

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Fine-Tuning Your Affirmations For Maximal Benefit

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:28:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

A recent study revealed that positive affirmations may actually make some people feel worse instead of better. Psychologists Joanne V. Wood and John W. Lee from the University of Waterloo, and W.Q. Elaine Perunovic from the University of New Brunswick found that people with low self esteem who recite affirmations such as “I am a lovable person” or “I will succeed” may end up feeling less lovable or less likely to succeed.

Wood and colleagues noted that in effect, heightening awareness about issues in which people with low self-esteem feel deficient simply makes these people feel more deficient. On the other hand, people with higher self-esteem find the reinforcements of positive beliefs helpful.

Affirmations provide a strong positive influence for changing our thoughts and emotions. Pairing a positive mental and feeling focus with a problem focus leads to diminishing of the intensity of the negative one. Generic positive affirmations are suggested in the use of TWR (Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT) to counteract whatever is troublesome in people’s lives that they wish to change. You can fill in the blanks with whatever is relevant to your situation:

Even though I feel ___________
When I think about ___________

And then you add a Counteracting affirmation, such as:

I still love and accept myself, wholly and completely; and/or
God (Spirit/ The Infinite Source/ My higher Self/ My family…INSERT WHAT FEELS RIGHT TO YOU) loves and accepts me, wholly and completely and unconditionally

The positive affirmation neutralizes the negative thoughts and feelings. The stronger the affirmation is perceived to be, the more potent it is in facilitating changes in the problem focus. Most people need to repeat this several times in order to completely neutralize the negatives.

Dolly suffered with migraines for years. Her headaches occurred several times a week and could last up to three days. They were markedly worsened by stress and during her menstrual periods. At times they were incapacitating and she was forced to retreat to her darkened bedroom for a day or two to recuperate. Medications provided minimal relief and were plagued with unpleasant side effects.

Dolly responded rapidly to TWR, as do most people with migraines. She found that adding “The Holy Spirit supports me on my path of healing” markedly enhanced her counteracting affirmation. TWR enabled Dolly to stop her migraines, particularly if she used it as soon as they started. After two months she was migraine free for the first time in over 10 years.

Problems with affirmations

Sometimes a person feels that the affirmation does not match their belief system. As noted in the research above, some people feel they cannot honestly say, “I love and accept myself.” Others find that their spiritual or religious beliefs are not strong positives, or may even be negatives for them. For them to say, “God [or etc.] loves and accepts me” may even be counter-productive, producing an even more negative feeling.

Greg was a twice-divorced businessman who struggled with a drinking habit for years. An auto accident in which he severely injured an elderly woman literally sobered him up to the dangers of his drinking problem. His childhood parental abuse had left him without much self-love, and his father’s hypocritical Bible-thumping insistence on strict rules for the children while he himself drank and womanized also left Greg with a dim view of religion and a disbelief in a caring God. The generic TWR affirmations were therefore totally ineffectual for him.

His saving grace in childhood had been his loving grandmother, who had done her best to offer love to Greg and his two brothers. She had to restrict her caregiving to times when their father was away on business, as he did not tolerate his wife’s family interfering in his strict child-rearing. Though she had died when Greg was only eight, he still had warm memories of sitting in her lap while she read adventure stories to him. This memory served well as Greg’s conteracting positive affirmation: “I know my grandmother loved and accepted me and did everything she could to help me.” Using this, he was able to control his alcohol cravings and to deal methodically with his memories of childhood abuses and low self-esteem.

Where people have no recollections of positive, nurturing experiences, it may be a challenge to find a strong counteracting positive feeling memory. In some cases, memories of being moved when listening to music or being in nature can serve these purposes.

Ever on the search for varieties of wholistic healing, I came across the following Russian YouTube item. It is wonderful to see how healing can be shared in a universal language. Watch patiently, as this is a slow starter… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ5boOTyz_4&feature=email
Several clients have found this a helpful positive memory for use as a counteracting positive.

Replacement affirmation

Having released the troublesome memories, it is helpful to install positive awarenesses around the same issues. This is a standard portion of EMDR treatment, from which TWR is partially derived. For instance, a person dealing with agoraphobia, the fear of being in strange, new, unfamiliar places and situations might say, “I enjoy being with new people in new places.”

Generically, this takes the form of:

[Positive statement _____________] that counters the negative, after it has been released. e.g. after releasing fear of [heights/ mice/ spiders/ your issue]:
I am comfortable [looking down from any height/ looking at, being near mice/ spiders/ your issue]
And I love and accept myself, wholly and completely
And God (or etc.) loves and accepts me, wholly and completely and unconditionally

Once the replacement positive is installed, the negative is far less likely to return.

In conclusion

To state that affirmations may make people feel worse is actually incorrect. When a positive affirmation does not produce a positive effect, it is an invitation to explore why this is so. Such explorations can then lead to deeper clearings of negative beliefs and negative self-image issues.

References

Benor, Daniel J. 7 Minutes to Natural Pain Release : Pain is a Choice and Suffering is Optional – TWR for Tapping Your Pain Away, Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2009 (2nd Edition)

Wood, Joanne V, Perunovic, WQ Elaine, and Lee, John W. Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others, Psychological Science , 2009, 20(7), 860 – 866.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

The Costs of Pain

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:27:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Pain is a burden not only to those who suffer it, but also to family members, co-workers and employers. Self-treatment for pain is effective, immediately available when needed, and very cost-effective.

A person who is laid up with serious backaches, neck pain, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, premenstrual and other pains often requires assistance from family members. Thus, the strains of dealing with pain extend beyond the pain sufferers themselves.

Case Example: George was a 35 year old divorced machine tool worker who slipped and injured his back on the job. His back pain persisted for six weeks before he was able to return to work. In the first two weeks, he was unable to have his two young children stay with him on the weekends and for either the Thursday or the Monday night. This left his wife, a nurse, with extra childcare costs that put a severe strain on her limited budget, as she worked several extra shifts on weekends and evenings in order to make ends meet.

Absenteeism in the workplace due to pain costs billions of dollars annually. In the US alone, “Costs associated with back pain are estimated to range between $50 billion and $100 billion each year. Medical care accounts for about one-third of costs, while the remainder includes lost wages, disability payments, and retraining costs. Only five percent of people with back pain become permanently or temporarily disabled, but these people account for 75 percent of back pain costs (Frymoyer and Cats-Baril, 1991).” Similar high costs have been tallied in Canada, England, Ireland and other countries.

Case Example (continued): George’s employer had to lean heavily on several of his co-workers, and had to pay them overtime to get them to work extra hours to cover George’s responsibilities. As George was the fourth person that year injured on the job, the insurance company insisted on detailed explanations regarding safety regulations and their enforcement in the workplace. George’s employer had several discussions with the union foreman about hiring someone new to replace George, as his recuperation stretched past the end of a month’s absence.

While George was cleared by his doctor to return to work, George was unable to return to his job because he had to take pain medications that clouded his consciousness and made it unsafe for him to be operating the equipment for which he had been responsible. His boss had to bite the bullet and retrain George for a job in which he would not be endangered, and to train a new person into George’s previous position.

Costs for medical care are rising in the Western world to levels that are unsustainable. The benefits derived from the high costs are not commensurate with the outlays. The US, with the highest medical costs in the world (more than 15% of gross domestic product, a greater portion than in any other United Nations member state except for the Marshall Islands), is ranked 37th in health care provision (web reference). By comparison, many countries with a national health service get much better ratings, e.g. France = 1st; Singapore = 6th; United Kingdom = 18th; Germany = 25th; Canada = 30th.

Suggestions
There are new, rapidly and deeply effective self-treatment methods, such as TWR: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively® , for dealing with physical pains of all sorts. These are easily learned and used. Better yet, once a person knows how to use them, they have this treatment available immediately, any time they need it.

Within minutes, even severe and chronic pains can be significantly reduced or eliminated. In addition, stresses that contribute to the pains and that result from them can also be reduced.

Researchers of treatments for pain would do well to examine cost savings as well as more direct, personal benefits of treatments.

Reducing pain

Reducing the use of pain medicines

Broader benefits of self-healing for pain

Cost/benefits of learning self-treatment for pain
The basic costs for learning to use TWR for pain are minimal – compared to costs of medications. Once learned, a person has the immediate use of TWR as needed.

Not everyone is ready to take responsibility for dealing with their own pain. The prevalent Western mind-set is to turn over one’s body to the doctor for diagnosis and treatment of pains or any other problems. Some people find it difficult to understand and engage in taking responsibility for dealing with their own problems themselves. Even when people do assume this responsibility, some do not have the patience or persistence to use self-treatment methods. They prefer the quick fix of immediate relief with pills. So in some cases, even after learning to use self-treatment methods, people revert to using medications

Those who use TWR often report that their lives are transformed. The pain becomes a teacher, an invitation to uncover inner stresses that produce the pain. People feel enormously empowered through using TWR.

Overall, the benefits of self-healing vastly outweigh the costs.

References
Frymoyer JW and Cats-Baril WL. An overview of the incidences and costs of low back pain, Orthopedic Clinics of North America 1991, 22: 263-272.

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) ranking of the world’s health systems

YouTube demonstration of TWR for pain

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

How’s Wrong With Me?

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:25:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

How many times have you made a simple little mistake or perhaps even a big serious one and said, “What is wrong with me? What made me do something so silly?”

These questions may actually miss the point. In searching for the ‘what’ of the mishap, we may be looking at this in the wrong way.

This is particularly true if we are dealing with interpersonal issues. It may not be what you said or did that set people off and gave you an unexpectedly negative response. It may by how you said or did something that triggered negative responses.

“I need your help right now!” may be an expression of urgency and stress, as when a toddler is getting into the washing machine area where caustic chemicals stored, just when you are frying eggs for breakfast. You may be frustrated or even angry at your toddler, but your partner or older children might assume from your angry voice that you are being critical of them – and respond huffily rather than with sympathy and support.

“You really upset me when you interrupted my phone call with your trivial request that could have easily waited till I put down the receiver!” may be entirely accurate. But your spouse or children may take this as a belittling criticism, and may respond with far more excuses and self-justifications than you feel the situation warrants.

“Take your feet off that table!” may be an appropriate order to sort out a young child, a teenager, a student or an employee who are out of line in their behavior. A firm tone of voice is clearly in order. But an angry tone of voice is likely to evoke a rebellious response that you didn’t anticipate.

In all of these cases, the how of what you said would have been the trigger for stronger responses than you would have expected in these situations – more than the what .

It is easy for such issues to escalate into mutual recriminations or arguments, particularly if there have been prior negative exchanges, with residues of unresolved feelings between the people involved. Taking a deep breath before responding is the quickest way to catch yourself – before initiating such interactions, or after the explosive response occurs.

Tapping your feet or alternating tightening your toes on your right and left feet is another way to de-fuse your responses and to bring some calm into the situation. This is a part of the TWR protocol that many people have reported is amazingly effective in reducing anxiety, stress reactions and anger in difficult social interactions. The more often people use TWR, the more effective they find the tapping becomes – even without reciting a focusing affirmation in the midst of the stressful scene.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Navigation through Negativity in Life: Mismatches, Mistakes and Mishaps – Travails or Teachers?

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:22:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

If you can learn from hard knocks,
you can also learn from soft touches.
– Carolyn Gilmore

Mismatches

Have you ever asked yourself, “What did I do to deserve [this family I was born into?… this partner/ child/ boss/ co-worker?… this run of rotten luck, no matter which way I turn or which choices I make?…”]

Often, when we experience frustrations in our relationships, we get impatient, hurt and angry with others. These feelings may lead us to be irritable and behave in ways that provoke further negativity in the relationships. This can happen even when situations are improving.

A classic example is the wife who greets her (ever so rarely sober) husband at the door on a sober day with, “So, we’re not drinking today, eh? Have you run through your entire paycheck already?” When confronted over her provocative negativity, she reported that she had built up so much frustration and anger on previous occasions, when he came home drunk and belligerent (when she dared not confront him), that on this occasion her pent-up feelings spilled over.

Our negativity then elicits further negativity from the other person, and we are soon embroiled in yet another argument. Looking back on our behaviors, we see that we are the ones who provoked the conflict, but we couldn’t help ourselves. Our pot of frustrations simply boiled over.

Mistakes

There is no learning without mistakes.
There are no mistakes without learning.
– Alan Cohen

Have you ever made a silly mistake, perhaps even repeating the same errors several times? In such situations, have you ever torn a strip out of your own hide in your anger and frustration over your carelessness or inattention to detail?

It is not uncommon for us to fester in our shame, guilt or self-criticisms in such situations. We may ruminate like ill-tempered camels over our stupidity, perhaps even calling ourselves several choice names and muttering unrepeatable words that we wouldn’t tolerate from our own children, and for which we might have received a spanking from our own parents.

Billy was bright but quite absent-minded. The frustrations of others – including his parents when he was growing up; his wife of over ten years; and his employer of longer than that – were nothing compared to his own annoyance with himself. He had been diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder, but medications did nothing positive for him, and some of them brought out a terrible temper.

He was lucky to be very intelligent, and able to catch himself after the fact at least some of the time, before others noticed his oversights and errors. But he still ended up frustrated and cross when he forgot his cell phone at home, his credit card in the bank machine, and was late yet again because he missed his turnoff.

It is simply terrible when we are our own worst critics. There is no getting away from our persecutor!

Mishaps

Just when you think you’ve graduated
from the school of experience,
someone thinks up a new course.
– Mary H. Waldrip

Does it ever feel like the universe is conspiring against you? Have you had the experience of doing everything right, but the outcome is still a disappointment? Have you complimented someone over her hair color – only to be told it was the mistake of her life to have gone to this new hairdresser, and she hates it? Have you taken a shortcut through back roads when you’re running late for an important appointment, only to find your way hopelessly blocked by road construction?

In such situations again, we may find ourselves with irresistible opportunities to let our anger boil over at ourselves and others. And then we have the outstanding opportunity to get angry at ourselves for having lost our temper!

Remedies

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself,
and know that everything in this life has purpose.
There are no mistakes, no coincidences.
All events are blessings given to us to learn from.
– Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

First and foremost, remember that no one can make you angry. Each of us is responsible for how we respond to any situation. Yes, people may behave in ways that are inconsiderate or hurtful. Yes, our expectations may be disappointed. Yes, our best efforts may not produce the responses we anticipate and would like. But how we react is our own choice.

Once we take responsibility for our reactions, many options open before us. We may choose to respond philosophically and spiritually: we can reassure ourselves that we have not been singled out for persecution by some malevolent entity and can look for the lessons in our experiences, or wait to see what unfolds in our lives as a consequence of what happened.

The apocryphal story of the Chinese farmer and his horse is an inspiration in this regard:

A poor farmer in China, a Zen practitioner, had a single horse. This horsewas essential to his work. It pulled his plow, brought his produce tomarket, and provided transportation for his family.

One day, the farmer woke to find the gate open and the horse gone. Hisneighbors came around to commiserate with him over his loss. He respondedonly with, “We’ll see.”

Two days later, his stallion returned with a herd of 20 wild mares. Hisneighbors came around to congratulate him on his wonderful good fortune.Again, he responded only with, “We’ll see.”

The next day, his only son was struggling to ride one of the wild mares andbroke his leg. His neighbors came around again to commiserate with him overhis bad luck. Again, he responded only with, “We’ll see.”

A week later, the local warlord came to their village, conscripting everyable-bodied young male. Naturally, he was unable to take the farmer’s son.His neighbors came around again to congratulate him on his wonderful goodfortune. Yet again, he responded only with, “We’ll see…”

Despite all of our good intentions, however, we may be overcome with negative emotions in situations of Mismatches, Mistakes and Mishaps. Under such circumstances, TWR can enable us to rapidly release our negative emotions. Then we don’t end up fretting and fuming and worsening our situation.

Better yet, TWR can help us install positives to replace the negatives we are facing, both – externally and internally.

TWR is easy to learn and simple to use, yet rapidly and deeply effective. Read more at http://paintap.com .

A New Meta-Positive: Compassion for Our Own Problems, Feelings, Inner Rules and Meta-Responses

Bullying can leave deep emotional scars

Further articles coming soon:

Attachment Addictions

Bullying

My Way Is Better than Your Way

Our Way is Better than Your Way

Discomforts, Dislikes and Deadly Fears of Being Wrong

Creative Clearing and Centering

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Attachment Addictions

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:19:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
– Carl Jung

Addictions are cravings for something we feel we need in order to feel better. With substance addiction there is a biochemical habituation to having a substance in our bloodstream.

Addictions are also possible to social interactions or to self-reinforcing behaviors without biochemicals. We may attach a value to having praise, success, high earnings, domination, submission, to experiencing a particular sensation, or to many other ways of behaving. These behaviors may assume the proportions and control over our lives that are no different from addictions to alcohol or drugs.

Bob would do anything to help anyone, without expectation of any compensation. He could neglect his work, his family and his health in order to be of service to others – even when this threatened his earnings and the patience of his loving wife and family.

Trudy had risen rapidly through the corporate ranks to become a department manager. She worked till all hours of the night, often took work home over the weekend and never took holidays, driven by her need to have an ever more prestigious position with a higher salary.

Jeff was a tyrant at home, demanding that his common law wife, Shauna, obey his every wish and whim without question. If his toast was not hot when he came to the table he would shout at her; if dinner wasn’t ready when he returned from work he would pour into the toilet whatever was cooking in the pots; and if he was drunk he might slap her around in the process.

After many years of being abused in these ways, Shauna left her home to live in a shelter while Jeff was at work. After several months, she met Fred, who was warm and supportive. She admitted to her therapist that while she liked Fred a lot, she felt she didn’t know if Fred really cared for her because he never shouted at her or hit her.

Richard came for therapy because he was worried that his habit of driving fast when he felt angry or depressed might get him or someone else injured or killed.

All of these people were unhappy with their behaviors but unable to change them. While some of them came to realize that they experienced temporary relief from stress, anxieties and other troublesome emotions through these behaviors, they were unhappy and distressed to find themselves unable to control their lives.

Transformations

We imagine we are addicted to food or alcohol or sex, but our primary addiction is to the mind. We think we are what we think. We suffer from a case of mistaken identity. We imagine that every voice every, every intention is in the mind, is all that is real. We buy into every advertisement that passes through consciousness. We are giant consumers of the mind. We are so easily fooled. We mistake a passing cloud for the immensity of the sky. We keep losing ourselves in thought.
– Stephen Levine

We are attached to our self-images. Our negative self-images are born in traumas, often very early in our life. These distressing experiences are held in our unconscious mind – where they can be hidden from our awareness so that we don’t suffer from their distress and pain.

Burying and hiding our traumas protects us from feeling overwhelmed. At the time of the trauma, burying our distress leaves us with more resources to deal with the emergencies that are stressing us. Over time, however, the buried memories and hurts, fears, angers and other feelings fester and drain our energies.

Dismantling and releasing the negative, self-defeating experiences and habits resulting from them is not as difficult a task as many might assume. People who have used TWR report great success in doing this.

When we want to be free even more than we want pleasure, when the source of satisfaction, rather than its mirror reflection, is our goal, our addictions become rungs in the ladder we climb to free the pain of our longing and enter the joy of our true nature.
– Stephen Levine

TWR can help to do this by:

The life force pours out of you through the holes you create in your life through what I call addiction. Addictions are ways we have of fooling ourselves. In fact, the more intelligent we are, the more we can trick ourselves. If we don’t smoke, drink alcohol, or take drugs, we think we’re just fine because we don’t have any addictions. But we may have addictions that may be even more insidious. Usually the worst are emotional addictions, such as addictions to sadness, to chaos, to a feeling that we’re not good enough.
– Lynn Andrews

Related articles:

Challenging Experiences Need Not Be Negative

How’s Wrong With Me?

Further articles coming soon:

Bullying

My Way Is Better than Your Way

Our Way is Better than Your Way

Discomforts, Dislikes and Deadly Fears of Being Wrong

Creative Clearing and Centering

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Fear of Speaking in Public

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:12:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Discomfort in public speaking is a very common experience. It can range from mild discomfort or embarrassment without a justified reason; escalating to high degrees of nervousness and anticipating disaster prior to a public speech; proceeding into sweating, palpitations, trembling hands, blushing and stuttering; and, at the worst, ending up totally fearful and unable to make yourself stand up to speak, or your mind going completely blank – even with the written speech right there in your hand.

In milder versions it might not even be identified as ‘a problem.’ You might have a demanding or crabby boss, a family member given to temper outbursts, or you could be unable to sing on key. Any of these or other situations might lead you to avoid uttering a word under specific circumstances.

I have been helping people overcome these sorts of speaking anxieties over a period of four decades, with surprisingly rapid successes. Many have found they are able to release their fear of speaking in a single hour’s session with the help of TWR , even when their problems were on the severe end of the spectrum.

As you are staring to use TWR, it is very important to look back over your life for any negative experiences you might have had with speaking in public. I have been distressed to see that many of these public speaking traumas occurred in school settings. Often, it appears in retrospect that the issues were minor ones, but it is clear that at the time, as children, there was severe distress because the teacher or classmates made fun them, belittled them or in some other ways embarrassed and distressed them.

In other instances the embarrassment happened at home or in a church setting, with parents, older brothers and sisters or a Sunday school teachers, nuns or priests who traumatized them. Occasionally people have done this to themselves, by setting their expectations too high or through excessively harsh self-criticisms.

If the trauma occurred as a single incident, which by far is the more frequent report, it is more likely to clear very quickly. However, even when there were repeated incidents of public speaking traumas, TWR can eliminate the current life difficulties with public speaking.

Approaches for releasing fears of public speaking

The majority of people I’ve helped report that the most direct method has been the most successful. They simply do the TWR tapping, focusing their mind with an affirmation that details the specifics of their experiences of fears when they are faced with having to speak in public.

If this does not relieve the problem immediately, then bundling the current issues together with the memories of the original trauma will do the trick. People are amazed to find that their memories of being criticized or laughed at start to fade, and the intensity of the feelings surrounding their memories of the traumas are completely eliminated.

I’ve had numbers of people report they were able to do this on their own, either from reading Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release or from participating in a workshop. They put together their affirmations on their own and tapped on themselves with immediate success. In some cases, however, they had more complex problems or simply needed a little coaching in using TWR for self-healing in order to free themselves of these awkward problems.

Related articles

Challenging Experiences Need Not Be Negative

A Place of Peace and Safety when Using TWR for Emotional Distress

Further articles coming soon:

My Way Is Better than Your Way

Our Way is Better than Your Way

Discomforts, Dislikes and Deadly Fears of Being Wrong

Creative Clearing and Centering

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

TWR for post election or post-any-event blues

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:11:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Lynne Namka suggested this topic in the context of post-election blues. It is certainly a common experience that when the person you voted for is not elected, you may feel frustrated, angry, anxious and worried about possible negative outcomes with the person you did not vote for taking office.

There are many other contexts, as well, in which similar post-event blues occur.

How many times have you walked away from a conversation, saying to yourself, “I could kick myself for having opened my mouth like that in front of my friend, my family member, co-worker, boss or class”?

How many times have you done the same number on yourself for having remained silent in similar circumstances?

How many times have you stepped on someone’s toes unintentionally, doing something you realized was hurtful or needlessly provocative?

Such recriminations may eat away at you, spoiling your enjoyment at the time of your misstep, and lingering for hours, for days or even longer after the event. You may be perfectly accurate in your assessment of damages done in such situations, or you may have been overly-critical and harsh with yourself.

An approach for dealing with such situations is to convert your worries and fretting – which are usually unproductive self-nagging – into more constructive and helpful forms of concern. Worry is turning the screws on yourself. Concern is sorting out the issues, considering you options and deciding on your best course of action.

For many of us, it is easier to make such suggestions than to follow them. Our worries seem to take on lives of their own and to plague us beyond all reason. It’s a bit like wanting to not think of a purple porcupine. The more we push away at such a thought or image, the more it seems to gather strength to pester and nag us.

A helpful approach in dealing with these sorts of issues is to decrease the intensity of emotions and vividness of memories attached to the experiences. This is easily and rapidly achievable with TWR , a self-healing method. By focusing the mind on the relevant issues and alternately tapping on the right and left side of the body, adding a counteracting affirmation at the end of the process, the negative self-perceptions and self-criticisms can be released quite readily. Then, using a similar process, you can replace the negatives with positive cognitions and feelings.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Self-Healing through Vipassana Meditation: a helpful contrast with TWR

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 02 May 2016 20:33:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

I have meditated regularly for 27 years. My intent to sit in silence daily at least once, and if possible twice, has been honored more often than not. Busy periods of work or family visits and travels are the main distractions that have made it difficult or impossible to keep this promise I’ve made to myself.

My introduction to meditation was in a workshop on LeShan healing, taught by the late Joyce Goodrich in 1982. Lawrence LeShan, a New York psychologist, had investigated spiritual healers from the vantage of a strong skeptic, but came away a strong believer. He has an awesome gift for pattern recognition and after observing a series of strong healers came to observe that the common denominators for healing are:

So a lot of the healing workshop involved the exploration of varieties of meditation approaches. Among other mind-focusing methods, we observed our breath filling our chest and emptying; pictured to ourselves that we were perched on our upper lip, noting the breeze of air entering and exiting our nostrils; counted our breaths; and did various imagery exercises as we observed our ever-shifting mind-chatter

At the time I found the counting and mindfulness visualizations the most helpful. I found watching my breath from my upper lip so silly, I had to restrain myself from giggling, as I have a mustache and thought to myself how tickly it would be to sit among those hairs to watch my breath.

In the intervening years, I practiced each of the above approaches, as well as many others. Having a very chatty mind, at first the visualizations helped me keep my focus more than other approaches. Later, simply feeling my breath coming in and out was the most comfortable. And yes, I even came to use the upper lip visualization and found it helpful for a period of time.

Knowing a variety of approaches was extremely helpful, as I found that methods that worked for a while might wane in their potency or efficacy in my practice after several months or years. In teaching meditation as a part of learning spiritual healing or for relaxation, it was similarly helpful to be able to introduce audiences to varieties of approaches because no single method works well for everyone who is just starting on this path of mental and spiritual discipline.

I should add parenthetically that my goal of developing my own healing gifts was realized through this and other methods, including Therapeutic Touch and Reiki. I have come to acknowledge this as a part of most of the work that I do.

I had of course heard and read of Transcendental Meditation (TM), mindfulness meditation, and other approaches, but was never inclined to study these. In 2007, a new friend and colleague, Eli Bay, invited me to attend his meditation course. I found this very instructive and helpful, as it includes body awareness and movements.

In that same year, a close friend and colleague, Mary Ann Wallace, MD, showed me a video of Vipassana meditation used in prisons in India. This had proved so successful that 80% of prisoners were able to be rehabilitated. In some prisons in India this is now a mandatory practice (Vipassana in Prisons). I was tremendously impressed by this and by the centeredness of Mary Ann, who had attended a number of silent Vipassana meditation retreats.

Vipassana meditation

It was only in August of 2009, two years after first setting my intent to do so, that I was able to attend a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat at the Ontario Vipassana Centre just north of Toronto. I found the experience very instructive and extremely helpful on many more levels than I had anticipated.

Vipassana meditation has been popularized by SN Goenka, a Burmese businessman. Goenka learned Vipassana in Burma, where it had been preserved as teachings very close to the original versions of Gautama, known today as the Buddha. Goenka’s business experience and gifts of pattern recognition and teaching served him in good stead, in that he has been able to found a worldwide organization to promote and teach Vipassana meditation ( http://www.dhamma.org/ ).

The format for the course included 1-2 hour meditations from 4:30 am – 9:30 pm, interspersed with silent bathroom breaks, meals, and times when students could ask to speak with the Assistant Teachers (male and female) conducting the course in person. Each day, groups of four students were invited during one of the meditations to come up to the instructor to review their progress. Some meditations were mandatory group meditations; for others, students could elect to meditate in the hall or in their room (shared with one other person). Men and Women were separated for meals and lodging, and sat on separate sides of the meditation hall. Time to stroll the gender-assigned portions of the grounds was available after lunch, if one was not queuing to speak with the Assistant Teacher. Meals were vegetarian, simply prepared, with the principal repast at lunch and only fruit and a drink at dinner time.

The course was conducted with videos taped in 1991 by Goenka, played in one-hour segments each evening during the retreat. Goenka is an excellent teacher, presenting his materials clearly, firmly based in Buddhist worldviews, illustrating them with numerous anecdotes, and most importantly, providing experiential ways of learning and validating these approaches.

General meditation process
The focus of the meditation is on the breath and on body sensations:

The above is not to be taken as an instruction in Vipassana meditation, as the process involves much more detailed directives that have been video- and voice-recorded by Guenka and are paced to facilitate students’ learning Vipassana to a very deep level of consciousness transformation. The above details are presented to stimulate considerations about elements that appear to facilitate psychological transformation.

My personal experience with Vipassana

I found the ten-day experience deeply transformative. I am naturally a very active, high-energy person. I enjoy tickling along many projects at once. I am in my primary retirement career of developing and promoting wholistic healing, in which I include:

Needless to say, I am by habit a person who is constantly on the go, enjoying the varieties of challenges and interactions with interesting people that the above provide. I also have a slight Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I am easily distractible, slightly impulsive, and at my best when I have the opportunity to be physically active several times in the day.

With all of the above, it is easy to see that sitting quietly for prolonged periods does not come naturally to me. Meditation has been an enormous help in calming me down and in staying centered – i.e. connected to my higher self.

The ten-day Vipassana retreat was an enormous boost in these regards. I have felt more inner peace and quiet than ever before in my life. When I ask myself what was helpful in the meditation retreat, a number of items stand out.

Just taking the time to be quiet was a blessing, in a setting where phones, emails and all other non-Vipassana communications were halted. My roommate, an experienced meditator, walked everywhere with a measured, slow pace. His presence provided a model for quietness with which I resonated, as I deliberately mimicked his way of ambulating. This was reinforced on days eight and nine of the course, during which we were all instructed to make every movement a conscious, deliberate part of our meditation.

Observing sensations in the body, and letting them dissipate as I focused on my breathing was a healing experience. I was initially struck by the helpfulness of observing the coolness of air on inhalation and warmth on exhalation. Connecting with the sensations felt to me a more centering focus than had my earlier practices of counting breaths or acknowledging “in” on the in-breath and “out” on the out-breath.

At first it was a struggle for me to remain concentrated for such long periods. On the second day, immediately after I was called up with three other students to briefly discuss our progress with the Teaching Assistant, my focus was dramatically enhanced. It was as though I had stepped into the energy pattern of focus, or a light switch had been turned on. This lasted till the end of the day, and had mostly dissipated by the next morning. My concentration slowly improved again after that, but not nearly to the steadiness of focus I had experienced on the second day. Mentioning this to the instructor on the fourth day, he said he could not explain this, and certainly could not take credit for having inspired or facilitated it. I continue to wonder whether I might have somehow resonated with him or with my roommate, who was one of the other students sitting with me in discussion with the instructor.

Another firm instruction was to not engage one’s mind with other body sensations. Aches in the back, neck, legs or buttocks with prolonged sitting can be a serious distraction. I was pleased to find that these aches almost always dissipated within a minute or two of acknowledging them but letting them fade into the background as I focused on the breath meditation.

Ignoring emotions and intruding thoughts as I meditated was also helpful when the these were of mild to moderate intensity. I was several times particularly surprised to see the emotions dissipate, as I focused on their associated body sensations, in the same manner as sensations alone dissipated, when they were not connected with emotions.

Intense emotions that emerged several times proved impossible for me to dissipate. At a few points they distracted me for hours from the meditation. Rather than continuing to struggle to focus on the sensations as a way to dissipate them, I used TWR. TWR produced releases of the emotions within about half an hour in each case.

Connecting with Buddhist teachings was promoted by:
Goenka’s lectures were richly illustrated with stories of Gautama; historical notes on the origins and development of Buddhist thoughts, practices and teachings; Goenka’s personal experiences as a student and teacher of meditation; and the experiences of his students.

The atmosphere of service was much evident. Instructors and their assistants, as well as staff in kitchen, grounds maintenance and other functions of a retreat center all volunteered their time. This is a core element in Goenka’s worldwide network of meditation centers. Students on this retreat were invited to repay the help we had received by contributing to cleanups at the end of our retreat, but more importantly, to return to the Center at later dates to serve others who were coming for retreats.

Vegetarian meals were served, with minimal spices and sometimes with no sauces. We were repeatedly encouraged to respect all living things and to kill no living beings (i.e. animals). This was at times a serious trial when the mosquitoes were seeking to feast on our flesh.

Theoretical issues

Personal, experiential validations of the teachings
Both Vipassana and TWR offer people many and varied personal opportunities to validate the efficacy of the methods. The differences and similarities between the two methods may be instructive.

Focus on body sensations vs. focus on emotions
I find it most fascinating that mental focus in Vipassana to deal with emotions is not on the emotions themselves, but only on the body sensations associated with the emotions. My personal experience validates that of several others on the retreat I attended – with whom I conversed (at the end of the retreat, after silence was officially broken) – and that of thousands of others taught by Goenka. Emotions dissipate when one follows this mental practice.

It is to be emphasized that one gives no attention or mental/ emotional energies to the troublesome emotions. One sets them aside as one focuses on one’s breathing and on the physical sensations associated with the emotions. And they dissipate.

TWR and other Energy Psychology approaches focus on the emotions themselves as the approach for dealing with troublesome emotions. This is true as well as numerous other psychotherapeutic methods. TWR and numbers of other EP approaches include body sensations as secondary items of focus that are associated with the emotions.

The TWR and other EP focus is thus in reverse priority to that of Vipassana meditation. TWR focuses first on emotions and for the most part, secondarily on the body sensations. Body sensations are theorized to be produced by the emotions, or to be linked to the emotions by psychological conditioning. My strong personal experience with TWR is that pains, for instance, are like the ring of a telephone – i.e. the body’s way of drawing attention to underlying emotional issues that have been hidden away, repressed in the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind appears to use the body as its way of drawing the attention of the conscious mind to the buried, problematic emotions and associated memories – so that the conscious mind can release these.

Pairing of a positive focus with negative feelings, thoughts and body sensations
Another aspect to these processes in both methods is the pairing of counteracting positive cognitions and feelings with the negative ones. It would seem that in the two approaches, both of which are successful, the holding of problematic feelings and thoughts in one’s consciousness, while engaging in a calming, relaxing, strongly affirming and supportive focus, leads to the dissipation of the negative feelings and thoughts. (This process has been thoroughly researched in psychological treatments called systematic desensitization.)

Rhythmic focus contributing to dissipation of negative emotions and thoughts
In TWR, a rhythmic, right and left tapping on the body helps to counteract negative feelings and cognitions. In Vipassana, one’s rhythmic breathing does the same.

Spiritual awarenesses contributing to diminishing of negative sensations
Both Vipassana and TWR recommend a spiritual focus as counteracting positive cognitions. In TWR, the stepwise introduction of elements enables people to validate the potency of this component. When people start with the affirmation “I love and accept myself, wholly and completely” they are able to get a sense of how well this works in diminishing a negative focus. When they then add, “And [God/ The Infinite Source/ Buddha/ Christ/ Mary/ your choice] loves and accepts me” many are able to perceive a significantly more potent counteracting effect.

Is one method better than the other?

I have no question that a ten-day Vipassana silent meditation retreat offers enormous benefits in deepening one’s spiritual awareness. I am personally attracted to Buddhist philosophy and practices of compassion and helping one’s fellow beings on this planet. It is clear that Vipassana can reduce personal negativity, witnessed by the impressive results demonstrated in reducing recidivism of inmates in prisons in India. The fact that there are growing communities of Vipassana meditators worldwide provides major support to people who are on meditative and spiritual paths.

I have no question that TWR is an incredibly potent method for releasing physical and psychological pains of all sorts – rapidly, easily and deeply. For dealing with residues of major traumas, I would recommend TWR as a treatment of first choice between the two. TWR also enhances personal intuitive and spiritual awarenesses. TWR goes further than Vipassana in advocating for caring for all beings, encouraging people to consider every aspect of the environment as being sentient and worthy of our compassion.

These methods are by no means exclusive. I encourage readers to explore both

References:

Vipassana

Doing Time, Doing Vipassana http://www.dhamma.org/

Phillips, Jenny. Letters from the Dhamma Brothers: Meditation Behind Bars, Periyatti Publishing 2008.

Vipassana Meditation As Taught By S.N. Goenka in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin http://www.dhamma.org/

General Meditation

Goleman, Dan. The Varieties of Meditative Experience, New York: Dutton 1977. ( History of classical meditative practice and analysis of types of meditation .)

Kornfield, J. The Healing Path, New York: Bantam 1993. ( Excellent on meditation & psychotherapy overlaps .)
LeShan, L. How to Meditate, New York: Bantam 1974. ( Excellent varieties of meditations. )

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Love Is an Important Part of the Psychotherapist’s Healing

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 02 May 2016 19:30:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Having no expectations enables us to love those who seem to unlovable, no matter what they have done. They need it. It enables us to love ourselves. We need it. We are much more than our achievements and our misachievements. In the end, healing is not some impersonal technique of running energy. What heals is love. Our essence is love, and it is who we really are. The rest is just insanity, but it’s only temporary.
– Deena Zalkind Spear

The healing practice of conscioiusly including unconditional love in one’s relationships can be an important part of the therapist’s side of psychotherapy. When I began training in psychiatry, the focus of this profession was entirely on psychotherapy – in contrast with today’s psychiatric practice that focuses almost exclusively on medications. The instruction included intensive supervision of the residents (trainees) in conducting one-on-one psychotherapy, in addition to formal lectures. I recall in particular a six-month seminar on the first four minutes of the psychiatric session, helping us to attend to every nuance of verbal and non-verbal language for guiding us in identifying the issues and assessing responsiveness to interventions in the people we were helping.

I was fortunate to have Joe Golden, a very wise individual supervisor in my first year of training. He advised me that I must always find something I love in the people I was helping – in order to really connect with them on the deepest possible levels. Without this, he observed, no true therapy is likely to occur.

Over the years, I’ve had numerous occasions to recall that advice. As a psychiatrist, I was often referred the most difficult of clients, after they had failed to respond to interventions of medical doctors, counselors and non-medical psychotherapists. At times it was a challenge to follow Joe’s advice. On more than once occasion, I had to seek consultations or supervision from mentors and colleagues in order to overcome a negative reaction or distaste for a client.

Early career lesson:

In my third year of psychiatric training, ‘Vance’ came to me for therapy. He was a 56 year-old executive with a drinking problem that was starting to impact this marriage and his work. He had had behavioral therapy, hypnotherapy, several visits to Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications – all to no avail.

I found myself utterly helpless to help Vance because his rigid way of dealing with any and all suggestions was some variation on the theme of “Yes, but…” In these early days of my work in psychotherapy, I was the eager beaver knight on a white horse, ready to help my clients do battle with any and all problems they brought for my treatment. Vance stopped me cold every time I suggested a tactic for dealing with his issues. He would not examine his feelings in any depth, saying: “I’ve explored that, and nothing came of it.” He blamed everyone else for his problems and was unwilling to take responsibility for causing or worsening them. Medications were out of the question because all of the ones he had used had unpleasant side effects. An on and on…

I found myself frustrated because my help was unwanted, and I became increasingly helpless and angry with Vance’s responses. My supervisor suggested I accept as an absolute given fact that Vance was never going to change or improve because of his resistances to taking responsibility for his issues. My best course would be to help him accept that the world is a difficult and negative place, and to suggest to Vance that my job would be to help him make his peace with being stuck and unable to change any of the external factors that were making him unhappy and frustrated.

While I had anticipated that Vance would take this as a rejection, I was surprised to see him responding like a cat being stroked in the right direction – after having been petted the wrong way for a long time. While my acceptance of his resistances did not open doors into new ways of understanding or reacting to problems, Vance experienced my acceptance of him as a caring, loving response. Feeling accepted on the one hand, and unthreatened and not attacked on the other hand, he gradually softened and was eventually able to consider some healthier alternatives.

Unconditional acceptance is one of the most important attributes of love. It is also very empowering and one of the most effective interventions to help people find the confidence and activate their self-healing capacities for change.

As my experiences of psychotherapy, life and spiritual awarenesses deepened, my encounters with negativities that made it challenging for me to hold a space of love and healing in therapy shifted in their impact and in my responses. Now, when I am able to hold myself and my client in a space of love and healing, then – in addition to the therapy that is focused on the presenting problems of the client – everything that happens between us is an invitation for me to learn lessons about myself, about the client, and about the processes of each of us changing and growing along our life paths.

Another avenue for enhancing healing is to invite people to use affirmations that embody statements of self-love, and of being loved and accepted – wholly, and completely and unconditionally – by significant others or by the Divine. This is one of the generic aspects of TWR . (This is not a prescription, but just an invitation to those who are open to these suggestions for using such positive statements to counteract the negative feelings and cognitions that they are working to heal.) Many people find such affirmations soothing, comforting and healing, in and of themselves. Repeating them in the course of using TWR makes their beliefs in these statements stronger.

Some find it difficult to say that they love themselves, or difficult to believe that others would love them. Even here, however, the therapist’s suggestions to consider these possibilities may open doors to exploring them at a later time.

Another possibility is that people can pause in addressing their presenting problems and use TWR to address their feeling unlovable. This is a deeper level of work that often has profound healing effects.

Holding a space of unconditional acceptance and love often opens into a deepening space of personal spiritual awareness for the therapist. And when the therapist can access this space, it is easier for the client to access it for their own personal development and healing.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Negativity Is Only Negativity If We Call It Negative: Out of negativity can come great positivity

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:24:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
– Shakespeare, Hamlet

Have you ever had a run of challenging experiences that led you to ask, “How could the Universe possibly be handing me such a raw deal?” Have you ever felt you are being singled out for a particularly challenging boot-camp in a battlefield called life? Have you ever despaired under stresses that seemed overwhelming? Well, welcome to the pendulum called life on Planet Earth.

You are not alone in these ponderings. There is a whole school of philosophy called ‘theodicy,’ which addresses such questions as: “How could God allow evil to exist in the world?” and “If there is evil in the world, can there be a God who is good?”

The answers to these questions are totally individual, decided through the life of each person. At one end of the spectrum are those who say, “Life is miserable and we must simply suffer.” At the other end of the spectrum, “Life is simply a series of lessons, and whether we make ourselves miserable over what life offers us or whether we hold a positive attitude about our life experiences is entirely our own choice.”

An old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
– Internet fable

Meta-frustrations

In working on myself and in working with clients to clear troublesome issues, I often find that the starting point is one of frustration and anger with negative feelings and negative situations. We are frustrated and unhappy because we are suffering and cannot see a way out of our troubles. Feelings that we have about other feelings are called ‘meta-feelings.’

Many times, the meta-feelings are so strong that they block us from releasing the primary feelings. It is only when we clear the meta-issues that we can fully focus upon and then clear the primary ones.

‘Sharon’ had a festering anger at her husband for his infidelity that had led to their divorce. She was acutely aware that her anger was prolonging her grief reaction over her separation and divorce, and making it difficult for her as well as for her husband and two young children. She had had several rounds of counseling with two different therapists, to no avail, and was very frustrated and angry with herself for making everyone’s life miserable – but unable to let go of her anger at her husband.

When Sharon came to learn TWR, she was surprised to have the recommendation that she work first on her anger at herself – rather than at her anger at her husband. Nevertheless, she was able to release her meta-anger within minutes. Her anger at her husband then released almost as quickly.

At the second and last TWR session we clarified that her previous therapists had addressed the primary angers at her husband rather than at her own anger at herself.

…by hating evil or one who is engaged in evil you contribute to the absence of Light and not to its presence. Hatred of evil does not diminish evil, it increases it.
– Gary Zukav

Negativity gives birth to positivity

All evil vanishes for he who keeps the sun in his heart.
– Hindu proverb

I have increasingly come to see that what appears at first to be negativity is very often a stimulus and invitation for positivity to develop. This is not to deny that negativity feels bad and can be painful, draining, wearying, despairing and even soul-destroying. Rather, it is to point out that if we can rise to the challenges of the negativity then it is transformed, and frequently we are transformed with it. This is as true for groups of people of any size – up to and including nations and our global village, as well as for individuals.

Here is an apocryphal story from Eastern traditions:

A poor farmer in China, a Zen practitioner, had a single horse. This horse was essential to his work. It pulled his plow, brought his produce to market, and provided transportation for his family.

One day, the farmer woke to find the gate open and the horse gone. His neighbors came around to commiserate with him over his loss. He responded only with, “We’ll see.”

Two days later, his stallion returned with a herd of 20 wild mares. His neighbors came around to congratulate him on his wonderful good fortune. Again, he responded only with, “We’ll see.”

The next day, his only son was struggling to ride one of the wild mares and broke his leg. His neighbors came around again to commiserate with him over his bad luck. Again, he responded only with, “We’ll see.”

A week later, the local warlord came to their village, conscripting every able-bodied young male. Naturally, he was unable to take the farmer’s son. His neighbors came around again to congratulate him on his wonderful good fortune. Yet again, he responded only with, “We’ll see…”

Our understanding of reality in any given moment is based on limited awareness of the larger picture. In the fullness of time, we come to appreciate that what we comprehended about a situation may have been partly or totally erroneous, based on the facts we had available for our consideration at the time. In hindsight, we might begin to appreciate that the apparent negativity of a misfortune or even of a tragedy turns out to have life-transforming benefits for us.

Again and again I have heard clients whom I’ve taught TWR report about transformations in their attitudes and beliefs as they released the negativity in their physical and emotional pains and other issues: “This painful problem has totally transformed my life. I’ve grown enormously in my understanding of my place in the world. I’ve met so many wonderful teachers and healers.

A man did some deep work with TWR over simmering, festering angers towards his parents for not having been there to meet his emotional needs when he was a child. He came into a realization that what had happened in this lifetime was an invitation to clear very deep hurts from a previous lifetime very long ago. He recalled being without parents in that lifetime, feeling unloved and unlovable. When he grew up, he found love in a woman who (for reasons he could not understand) suicided. He felt totally abandoned and bereft. He decided at that time that he would never allow anyone to be truly close with him again. Throughout many subsequent lifetimes he found himself unable to open to loving relationships, even when they were available.

With these understandings, he realized he had chosen to be born to these rejecting parents in this lifetime – as a way of stimulating him to clear his pattern of avoiding closeness, out of the fear of again being hurt by rejection and abandonment.

I regularly encourage people who come to me with hurts, fears, angers and other negativity to look beneath the surface of whatever arises, surrounding the circumstances that generated their experiences and feelings. Far more often than not, they discover that their current problems are doorways into understanding and clearing deeper negativities from earlier in their present lives, and sometimes from earlier lifetimes as well.

Bullying can leave deep emotional scars

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2011 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

A Place of Peace and Safety when Using TWR for Emotional Distress

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:23:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

TWR can be incredibly helpful with emotional distress of all sorts. Countless people are reporting that it helps them clear their anxieties over minor and major life challenges, phobias, distress over disappointments, lingering grief and bereavement, residues of serious traumas and more.

When clearing emotional distress there are times when people may become tired or may feel close to being overwhelmed. The most direct way to deal with anxieties about being stressed by emotional releases is to put aside the issues one is working on temporarily, and shifting the TWR tapping focus to the meta-anxieties about the intensity of the emotional releases. Once these meta-anxieties are released, and a replacement positive for these is installed, the issues that provoked the anxieties can again be addressed.

An alternative is to shift one’s focus first to images of being in a safe, pleasant place. A place of safety can be built from memories of an actual place or purely from one’s imagination. Here are several examples:

‘Bob’ had suffered physical abuse from his alcoholic father in childhood. His place of safety was in his maternal grandparents’ home, where he had visited frequently as a child and where he felt safe because they were doting and warmly supportive, and because his father wasn’t there.

‘Rose’ built a magical imaginary garden that she could visit by tapping her heels together twice and wishing herself to be there. A good fairy awaited her there and would comfort her over any stress or distress.

My own place of safety is in a bubble under the waters by a coral shelf. I enjoy watching the colorful fish and the play of light on the water surface above, as well as in the play of shadows and light on the sandy sea floor. This is a place where I don’t bring my worries and where I simply enjoy the peace and quiet that surrounds me.

Here is an example of how a place of peace and quiet was helpful during an intense TWR session.

‘Laura’ was 32 when she started using TWR for repeated sexual abuse she had suffered from an uncle in childhood. He had threatened to kill her and her whole family if she ever told anyone about it. Her anxieties were very high as she started to release her memories and feelings about the abuse.

We paused and Laura shifted her focus to her place of peace: a meadow full of flowers that she had enjoyed visiting while on holiday with her parents. This enabled her to set aside her anxieties until she felt ready to return and address them.

When Laura felt calmer, she then shifted back to using TWR on her high meta-anxieties about the releasing of the painful and frightening memories. Her uncle’s threats had terrified her when she was a child, and their intensity was at a 10 on a scale of 1 – 10 when she started to address them. After returning from her place of peace, they were down to an 8. Within minutes she was able to reduce these to zero with the TWR tapping, and to install and strengthen positive feelings of confidence and cognitions of competence to deal in present time with the memories of these threats and her childhood fears.

Your place of peace need not be solely a refuge from stress and distress. You are invited to visit there just for the sheer pleasure of its attractions!

Bullying Can Leave Deep Emotional Scars

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:21:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Bullying occurs in many settings. The most familiar is in the lower grades in school, where children are learning how to deal with their emotions and relationships as much as they are learning academic materials. It occurs as well in higher school levels, including universities and within the ranks of teachers and professors; in the workplace; and in families.

Bullying can be grossly obvious, as when one person taunts, belittles, threatens, or physically abuses another. It can be more subtle, as in teasing or putting another person down by putting oneself up.

Those who are bullied are often physically weak and unable to stand up against the stronger bullies. They may also be mild-mannered, polite, considerate and unaggressive.

Regardless of the intensity of the interactions, bullying is experienced as unpleasant and painful. It may also be traumatic, leaving emotional scars for months, years or even for the rest of a person’s life.

Why are bullies bullies?

Most obviously, bullies put themselves up when they put someone else down. At the mild end of the spectrum this is within the range of establishing a pecking order of dominance and submission. This is a way that groups of people sort out who is a leader or follower. Animals who live in groups do this as well.

Within gangs and in other competitive situations, bullies claim their ‘turf’ and defend it against incursions of others. This serves in addition to increase the profits from their businesses because customers will often prefer to deal with the stronger ‘boss.’

Bullying often serves other functions as well. It provides outlets for the bully to release angers, hurts, fears and aggressions. This serves as a distraction from their negative feelings as well as an avenue for venting tensions.

By demonstrating strength against weaker people, bullies create and maintain the illusion, for themselves and others, that they are strong and competent. In reality, they often feel just the opposite.

Very commonly, those who bully others have been bullied themselves. This is typical of trauma behavior, and is often a major component of post traumatic stress disorders. Re-enacting a traumatic experience is a way for the unconscious mind to bring buried feelings into conscious awareness – in the hopes of releasing the buried memories and feelings associated with the traumas.

Bullying is a behavior that is destructive to all participants. Not only are those who have been bullied traumatized, but the bullies are distracted away from dealing with their own issues that are leading them to behave in these ways.

What are good ways to deal with bullying?

It is the responsibility and duty of those who are in positions of leadership to establish a safe environment in which bullying is discouraged and is stopped if it occurs. This is an important responsibility of parents, teachers, principals, managers in the workplace and others who are in charge of groups of people.

When bullying occurs, the bullies must be dealt with firmly and watched to see that they do not repeat their destructive behaviors. Sadly, there are often weak leaders or leaders who themselves are bullies. This perpetuates and worsens the bullying.

For those who have been bullied there are trauma treatment approaches that can help them release their painful memories and feelings. At the same time, these methods can help them install a better self-image, self-confidence and positive feelings.

TWR is excellent in all of these respects. TWR is easy to learn and to use. It can be used discreetly, so that no one but the person using it is aware of it. What is particularly helpful is that once a person learns how to use TWR, they can deal with their issues and feelings as they arise. TWR provides ways to release fears, angers, emotions and memories of pains and traumas – all within minutes. TWR enables people to connect with and strengthen their sense of competence, confidence and safety.

TWR can also help bullies to release the traumas, fears and negative emotions that underlie these negative behaviors. Where there are family issues behind the bullying, TWR can also be of enormous help to others in the family.

A New Meta-Positive: Compassion for Our Own Problems, Feelings, Inner Rules and Meta-Responses

Further articles coming soon:

Attachment Addictions

My Way Is Better than Your Way

Our Way is Better than Your Way

Discomforts, Dislikes and Deadly Fears of Being Wrong

Creative Clearing and Centering

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Challenging Experiences Need Not Be Negative

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:17:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

This is an extension of the previous TWR article.

Who has not exclaimed, “Oh, my God!” or “Oy Vey!” when faced with unexpected and serious challenges? We may feel overwhelmed because the challenges are great or because we feel that our resources are too limited to meet them.

In either case, the OMG feeling in and of itself may cause or worsen our feelings of being overwhelmed. Within the TWR system, this is a meta-anxiety. It is when we are upset over being upset.

When in worry or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.
– Anonymous

Meta-anxieties like these may wind us up beyond our capacities to think clearly and to deal with stressful situations. They may lead us to make poor assessments of what is happening and poor decisions about what to do to resolve them.

Pausing briefly to do the TWR tapping and reciting an affirmation to focus our mind on the meta-anxiety can rapidly reduce our stress and anxiety levels. If you have practiced TWR, you may well be able to just tap to calm yourself. Meta-anxieties often respond to TWR much more quickly than primary anxieties.

The negativity we initially perceive when we are in challenging situations often dissipates as we work on our stress levels. We may then find that what had appeared to be negative was actually an invitation to grow and deepen our awareness, stress management skills, patience, trust in ourselves, and trust in the wisdom of our inner guidance that leads us into such challenging lessons.

With time and practice, we may even develop and strengthen our meta-positive awarenesses and beliefs. Challenges may cease to stimulate OMG responses. Instead, we may react to challenges with the confidence that we can deal with whatever difficulties we face and come out better on the other side. The OMG may be replaced with “I wonder what lessons this situation is going to bring me?”

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2011 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Letting Go: Using TWR for Thorough Self-Healing

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:15:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

When you have changed the thought that triggered the emotion that caused the aches, then keep it changed. When you throw out the garbage, don’t go fingering into it for bits around which to build your next meal. We do just that when we “dig up” those old hurts and fears and wallow in the miseries of the past. “Let the dead past bury its dead” while you go on to new glories.
– Alice Steadman

The good news is that changes people experience when using TWR can be Transformative. The bad news is that people may feel a measure of overwhelm because the changes are so rapid and so deep.

TWR very quickly releases negativity. It enables you to install positive thoughts and feelings –replacing whatever you’ve let go of. Some people are slightly disoriented when they actually succeed in doing what they came to do.

With anxieties where the consequences of overwhelm could be seriously incapacitating or dangerous, telephone support with TWR is highly effective.

Donna was struggling with exam anxieties in her second term in university. While she had breezed through high school on her high intelligence, she felt challenged to keep up with her classmates in university, due to the higher academic demands and to being among a select group at a much higher level of educational institution.

After a 15 minute series of TWR exercises, she no longer felt worried when she thought about studying for her exams, taking the exams or fretting over what grade she would get. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to study for and to take her next American history exam that was approaching in two weeks. But instead of being pleased at being free of her test anxieties, she was now anxious because she was no longer anxious.

These sorts of worries are very common. They are easily addressed by installing counteracting positive cognitions. Donna did a few rounds of Replacement Positive TWR statements on: “I see myself approaching my studies with confidence, competence and pleasure.” and “I see myself looking back on my previous test anxieties as a thing of the past.”

Sid had had similar test anxieties all of his life. He could not recall exactly when it had started, but couldn’t recall being a student free of such fears. With only twenty minutes of TWR found himself completely free of them. He became anxious that without his anxieties he would be unable to study as diligently or as well. His response was equally rapid when he used TWR on these meta-anxieties (anxieties about anxieties).

He phoned me several weeks later to report that his anxieties were now much more manageable. He no longer was so agitated when taking exams that he couldn’t recall much of the material he had studied. However, he kept worrying that he wasn’t studying as hard as he could and would not get the best grades he could achieve.

In another TWR session, these new anxieties responded only partially to TWR. His Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS) did not decrease past a 4 out of 10. Routine unblocking approaches did not help. When I inquired again at this point about Sid’s earliest memory of test anxiety, he was surprised to recall his teacher shaming him publicly in first grade for having missed several easy items on a spelling test. Clearing the negative associations in these memories with TWR, Sid found himself completely and permanently free of all aspects of his exam anxieties.

Sid was one of my early clients who taught me about clearing early memories as a boost to dealing thoroughly with current life issues. I routinely look for these now, and routinely invite people to clear the early memories along with the current ones.

Ted had had a serious auto accident in which an oncoming driver crossed the dividing line on a highway, hitting Ted’s car as he swerved to avoid the collision. Ted’s car was thrown off the road and rolled over several times, landing upside down in the ditch. The air bags and seat belt protected him well. He was shaken up and had a minor whiplash injury but recovered within a few days. The other driver was taken to the hospital unconscious and died a day later.

Ted was highly anxious when he had to drive on a highway after that trauma. Anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications did not help, and he didn’t like their side effects. His wife took over driving when they did any long distance driving, but Ted could see he would inevitably have difficulties at some point when she would not be available and his work would require that he travel to nearby towns, as it occasionally did.

Ted was able to release his fears of driving completely after half an hour of using TWR. However, he was anxious that his fears would return when he actually had to drive on a highway. He accepted my suggestion that he could have his next session over the phone, after driving his car to a highway at a time we both agreed upon. If he became anxious, he was to pull over and I would guide him over his cell phone in using TWR to release any recurrent fears.

To his pleasant surprise, no such fears recurred when he went for his test drive on the highway, then or in the six years that he remained in contact with me.

My meta-positive lessons with TWR, based on numerous success stories such as the above, have helped me to see that there is very rarely an issue that will fail to clear with TWR.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2013 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Grief: Waves of Recovery

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:11:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

While it is well recognized that in the grief process the stages of sadness, anger and guilt often come in waves, it is not often acknowledged that the final stage of grief, recovery, also may come in waves. TWR is absolutely wonderful for clearing the painful stages of grief . TWR is also outstanding for dealing with the trying experiences of waves that come in the recovery stage of grief.

Here are various ways in which waves of emotions may come over you during the recovery stages of grief:

Waves of unexpected residual sadness, anger and guilt may be stirred occasionally, well after the major portions of grief have waned . These might be triggered by an anniversary, a holiday or visiting a location where the person who passed on had played an important part in your life.

The stage of recovery is one of learning to live in a world that has changed for you . This is a world in which the person who passed on is no longer present. You may engage in a task or a recreational pursuit in which the departed used to participate. Your participation in these activities may be altered by this absence. Seeing a film or eating a particular delicacy may have been a shared pleasure that now is a pleasure only in your experience of the activity – and the missing piece, the absence of sharing, may trigger the wave of readjustment awareness.

You may look back upon a period of time or an activity in which you were fully engaged, with no awareness of the departed during the time in which you were gardening, taking a walk along familiar paths or listening to oldies and goodies. You may suddenly realize that you’ve moved on and are now able to do this with some measure of enjoyment on your own. The fact that you have moved into the stage of truly letting go of the departed may be jarring. You may feel twinges of guilt or sadness in thinking about these changes in your life.

Dreams may raise memories or unfinished clearing of emotions . This is your unconscious mind that is now opening doors behind which you hid away some of the bits and pieces of grief in the past, at times when they felt too painful to deal with.

A child in your life may have been too young to fully comprehend what death is at the time that the death occurred . Typically, children under eight years old do not have a full understanding of what death is, and they may not have digested the meaning of someone passing on. Or a child of any age may have been uninvited to the viewing or funeral, thereby missing the ritualized opportunity to digest, process and begin to clear their grief. Such a child may get triggered and that, in turn, may stir a wave of your own recovery awareness.

In any and all of these situations, TWR can help you to clear your residuals of the painful aspects of grief. Beyond this, what is particularly helpful is that TWR can also enable you to install and strengthen positive thoughts and feelings.

In much of western culture, grief is marked by personal and ritualized cultural expressions solemn, sorrowful mourning. The TWR process teaches us that there is no reason to avoid simultaneous celebrations of the positive memories of the departed. I am finding this increasingly common – as in people sharing some of their warm and humorous memories of the departed along with their sorrow, grief and condolences.

If this feels out of place within your cultural frameworks for grieving, TWR can be used in enhancing positives at a decent interval following the grieving process.

Resources:

TWR eBook for Clearing Your Grief and Bereavement https://danielbenor.com/product/ebook-whee-book-clearing-your-grief-bereavement-2/

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2013 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Labeling Liabilities – Ease of Navigation through Life, the World and Everything – Made Easier with TWR

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:03:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Our world is an amazing, wonder-full place. It is deliciously complex and endlessly changing in expected and unexpected ways, full of surprises and stimulating introductions to new ways of seeing and being – within ourselves, in our interactions with each other, and in our explorations of life, the world and everything. The mental maps we build are a great help in navigating our ways through life.

For those of you who are adventurous, who constantly seek new ways for understanding and interacting with the world, this kaleidascope of ever-unfolding experiences is an indescribably delicious delight. There are never-ending fresh and exciting nooks and crannies of natural wonders to discover; new patterns of relationships to explore; new ways of interacting with our inner selves and our broader Selves to experience. As I was growing up, National Geographic was one of my favorite windows into plants, animals, people and far places I would never have dreamed existed. Today, the Internet is a much fuller, richer, stimulating and interactive window into even broader horizons.

For those who prefer the comfortable environs of their familiar world, life’s pleasures are often found in different dimensions, and at a slower and more leisurely pace. What gives the most pleasure may be the well-explored chair in which a good read or a favorite TV series awaits a quiet moment at the end of a busy day; communal gatherings in church, school or volunteer groups; and the roads well traveled, with familiar sights, attractions and people along the way.

The good news is that these maps are always drawn with the intentions of pointing out the shortest roads to happiness and the safest paths through rough territory. The bad news is that these maps are often drawn when we are very young and not fully capable of understanding the world and its challenges. We may thus end up with maps in our internal GPS (SatNav in UK) that are outdated.

TWR provides tools for updating our navigational systems. It enables us to delete old programs and build in new and improved ones.

Wholistic maps

Whatever our preferences in styles for exploring and interacting with our world, we all have our personal maps to guide us along our way:

Body maps
We learn to navigate physically through the world around us. We build maps of pleasurable experiences and dangers that we can then move towards or away from when we are in similar territory in the future.

Mental maps
These are our most familiar ones, the images of the world we have built from earliest childhood. Each map is developed out of our life experiences, which are imprinted upon the software of our physical being and genetic personality.

Of necessity, we set up our mapping programs when we are infants and build upon them from that starting point. This leaves us vulnerable to misperceptions that bias our life-course maps and may lead us into problems that are of our own creation.

Jean’s parents were loving parents but often harsh in their criticisms when Jean misbehaved or when they thought she was not performing at her best. She internalized these criticisms, setting unreasonably high standards and demands for herself in her mental maps, which persisted into adulthood.

We also build meta-maps of zones of confidence and competence on the one side and on the other side alertness for danger zones, based on past experiences.

Sally was a well-liked and popular girl in school. Her parents were enthusiastically supportive and encouraging of her academic and social achievements. She exuded a warmth and charm that endeared her to her peers. She was able to share with them a lot of the nurturing she experienced at home. She just knew she was ok, and was able to help others connect with that inner ‘okayness’ as well.

Emotional maps
How we navigate through our emotional worlds will also be mapped out in accordance with our life experiences.

Bob was the second of five children in a family where his father was emotionally and physically abusive. He appeared surprisingly calm and unaffected by the stresses he experienced, which appeared to be similar to those of his four siblings – all of whom suffered from various forms of post traumatic stress disorders. On close questioning, it became apparent that he had developed two assets very early in life that provided him with protection of sorts. The first was a keen sense of when his father was going to become violent. This didn’t spare him the abuse, but he was emotionally prepared when it arrived. The second was the support of his very loving older sister, who favored him over his three brothers and provided comfort when he was distressed. This enabled him to feel that he could deal with the abuse, and so its effects were not as strong on him as they were on his brothers and sister. He simply knew he could weather the storms of his father’s tempestuous outbursts, having the safe harbor of his sister’s love as refuge and solace.

Relational maps
Our rules for relating with others are very strongly influenced by our personalities and our life experiences. To a very great extent these rules are shaped within our families and strengthened (both positively and negatively) through other social interactions.

George was a shy but likeable boy who enjoyed his parents’ love and support and a stable home. He was nevertheless hesitant to make friends and tended to be a loner in school, despite the fact that he was generally liked by his peers. When he went away to college, his shyness became a liability to him, as he felt very lonely without the supports of family and known peers. In counseling, he came to realize that bullying in his pre-school year had led him to live the life of a snail – retreating within his shell whenever he felt insecure.

Spiritual maps
For many of us our spiritual maps are borrowed from our family’s religious beliefs and practices. Often, we are asked to take these on faith and to not question whether any of the details we have been given are outdated or perhaps even mistaken.

Increasing numbers of people are learning from personal spiritual experiences that there may be better roads and destinations than they were taught to believe or disbelieve. This is why many are turning away from their religions of birth and family and exploring in their inner journeys the paths less traveled in organized religion, but strongly recommended by Eastern teachers and others who have awakened to gnowing the wonderful vistas and lessons to be found on these paths. Research is validating the universality and consistency of such reports.

Reprogramming your navigational systems

TWR enables you to release your habitual attachments to old, outmoded, or dysfunctional inner paths. Our habitual feelings and thoughts can be released in many cases very easily, through designing personal affirmations and using alternate tapping on the right and left sides of the body. New wholistic awarenesses and understandings can similarly be installed. TWR works equally well on emotional and cognitive issues.

In the examples above:

Jean was able to let go of her overly-high expectations of herself and of her self-criticisms, and programmed in a comfortable acceptance of herself and more reasonable standards for goals and achievements.

Sally became a therapist. She was delighted when she discovered TWR because this rapidly and deeply effective method enables her to help people develop self-confidence and ‘okayness’ very quickly and easily.

Bob discovered that his ‘okayness’ had been achieved at the price of burying his negative feelings and memories outside of his conscious awareness. Working in an emergency medical service, he found himself excessively upset when he had to help people who had been traumatized. His patients’ traumas resonated with the ones he himself had buried, which now surfaced to his emotional awareness, inviting him to release them. TWR was enormously helpful because he could use it discretely at work whenever someone’s trauma triggered a reaction in him. He was especially pleased because he could use TWR without anyone knowing he was doing so.

George overcame his shyness, building up his self-confidence through the installation of positive beliefs and feelings, after releasing his habitually shy maps for navigating through life.

Click here for more on TWR .

See Also:

Navigation through Life: Mismatches, Mistakes and Mayhem – COMING SOON

Attachment Addictions– COMING SOON

Bullying– COMING SOON

My Way Is Better than Your Way– COMING SOON

Our Way is Better than Your Way– COMING SOON

Discomforts, Dislikes and Deadly Fears of Being Wrong– COMING SOON

Creative Clearing and Centering– COMING SOON

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

I Can’t Believe TWR Can Work So Quickly and Deeply

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 23:59:00 GMT

Daniel J. Benor, MD

TWR works so quickly and deeply that it can be disconcerting and unsettling to people who find immediate, profound relief for seriously troublesome problems. This is particularly true with relief for issues that have been present for a long time. One of the ways of dealing with this discomfort is to discount the improvements TWR has produced. Common statements I hear repeatedly are:

“There must be something more behind this [pain or other symptom].”
“It can’t be this easy!”
“I don’t believe this could last.”

The first expression of doubt, which hints at issues underlying the symptoms, is a clear invitation to ask, “So what might that something be?” Following through with further rounds of TWR is indicated.

TWR works wonderfully well for meta-issues. These respond very rapidly to the tapping and counteracting affirmations. Once the meta-issue has been reduced to an intensity of zero, a replacement meta-positive is installed. Then the person will be ready to return to the primary issue.

Example:

‘Allan’ had suffered with backaches for several decades. He was never entirely free of pain, and often able to complete his day at his office job only with the help of a variety of pills for pain, muscle relaxation, anxiety and depression. He had to take these sparingly and not all at the same time in order to keep his head clear enough to concentrate on his work.

When his pain completely cleared in three rounds of TWR he was initially delighted. But then he became uneasy, doubting that he could really be entirely free of pain so quickly.

While I usually recommend that people with chronic pain pause after attaining a modest level of pain reduction, Allan had surprised me (as well as himself) when his pain dropped from a level 6 to a zero on his third round of tapping. I would normally have recommended that he pause when he reached a 5 or a 4, cautioning him to gradually get used to being a person with less pain. This caution would normally be in anticipation that allowing the pain to drop too quickly can be unsettling, especially when it reaches zero.

Allan used TWR on being disconcerted to find himself without pain. He also came to realize that he was a bit anxious about having no pain at all because he had gotten used to having concessions around some of his obligations at work and at home, such as having to lift heavy objects or take out the trash. Tapping on these anxieties was also helpful.

I cautioned Allan that his pain might return, though probably not at the intensity he had previously been experiencing. (This gave him permission to ‘keep’ a bit of pain if he still needed it.)

With more gradual reduction of pain and other symptoms, sometimes over a period of several months, people who have these sorts of reactions with very rapid changes tend to do better.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2013 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Couples Uses of TWR

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 23:03:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

I learned many ways to help families deal with stressful situations when I participated in the Family Therapy Externship program at the Philadelphia Guidance Clinic, 35 years ago. One of the most important concepts was to always view individuals as parts of the larger family wholeness.

It may seem on the surface obvious that each person belongs to a family, but the relationships and their influence upon each family member are actually incredibly complex and often quite subtle.

If you’ve been in a serious relationship, you will probably have found that making decisions about important issues often requires discussions, clarifications and agreement between both partners. Initially, such decisions may sometimes lead to arguments. Each partner has to get used to conceding some of his or her autonomy, and to acknowledging the rights of the other partner to input opinions, preferences and choices on the issues being decided.

Over time, the partners in successful relationships learn each other’s views, likes and dislikes, and such negotiations become easier. This builds into meta-awarenesses and meta-agreements (e.g. rules about how to make decisions and rules) about the generally accepted rules for maintaining harmony in the relationship. These mutual understandings are usually not spelled out directly, but are simply the ways the partners come to work together for a mutually satisfying and harmonious relationship.

Almost always, partnered people discover that each has come from a family that had rules for relating to family members that are different from their own family rules. Each family develops rules according to the personalities, preferences, choices, ancestral rules, cultural rules, and other models and authorities on relationships.

So that’s the good news. The bad news is that couples often get into arguments about whose way of doing something is right or better or best. Each person feels their way should prevail and such differences may become points of serious contention, even leading to ending the relationship.

Better ways to deal with couples’ differences

People who argue over their differences often get angry. Anger is a feeling that is often handled poorly. Things are said that are spiteful or hurtful. Angers may build resentments over time that worsen the arguments. Angers and resentments that are unresolved leave residues of negative feelings. People often stash these away in their inner filing cabinets, where they fester like dirt in a wound. Such buried angers may come out again during future arguments.

The intensity of many such feelings can be released with TWR . The process is simple to learn and easy to use, involving focusing statements and affirmations plus tapping on the left and right sides of the body. Once the resentments and angers are reduced to a lower intensity, it becomes possible to discuss issues with greater openness and readiness to compromise.

Case example:

Juan and Sally (assumed names) met in a university English class and dated for close to a year, finding themselves very compatible in their tastes for music, literature, films and spending time in nature. They were surprised, upon moving in to live together, that their relationship rapidly became very tense, punctuated by frequent bitter arguments over numerous minor and major issues.

Juan felt Sally was being unreasonably bossy when she insisted that he shouldn’t to keep papers and books spread out on his desk, nearby chairs and the floor; that he shouldn’t be eating snacks whenever he felt like it; that they should pool their financial resources; and that he shouldn’t take care to leave the toilet seat down.

Sally felt blamed, unheard and misunderstood when she asked Juan politely to be considerate in these ways and he not only refused to discuss these issues that she considered important, but became sullen, angry and argumentative. She was also upset that Juan refused to carry his fair share of the household tasks of shopping, dishwashing and cleaning up – even though both of them had jobs, in addition to their studies.

When they came for help in sorting out these issues, it quickly became apparent that there were significant differences in their family rules and meta-rules.

– Sally’s family had been living in the US for many generations and were very egalitarian in distributing in-home responsibilities between men and women. She expected to share decision making and chores equally between Juan and herself.

– Juan’s family had come to the US from Mexico shortly after his parents were married. In their family culture, women were in charge of the home and men were not expected to participate in attending to household duties. Men were more autocratic and expected to be in charge of many decisions within the marriage.

While knowledgeable outsiders (such as a therapist) would not be at all surprised to see such culturally colored challenges in this sort of relationship, Juan and Sally were disappointed, frustrated and angry with each other. Each was inclined to blame the other for the problems they were experiencing.

Simply pointing out the cultural roots of many of their differences was very helpful in relieving some of their tensions. Resourcing them with TWR then gave them tools to strengthen their awarenesses of the positive feelings they had for each other on the one hand, and on the other hand, to lessen the intensity of many of their negative feelings. This enabled them to negotiate solutions to their differences, establishing understandings and agreements around the issues that had brought them to seek outside help.

They both found TWR extremely helpful in the further unfolding of their relationship. Both were able to reduce the intensity of their negative responses when they encountered the inevitable further cultural, family and personal differences that parts of are the normal process of developing a new, long-term relationship.

See also TWR article on: TWR and Family Constellation Therapy of Bert Hellinger http://www.wholistichealingresearch.com/WHEE_and_Family_Constellation_Therapy.html

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2014 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

TWR and Family Constellation Therapy of Bert Hellinger

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 22:41:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

I’m finding the combination of TWR with Family Constellation focus is very powerful for me. Several years ago I had a couple of phone sessions with a very gifted intuitive FC therapist, John Payne. Recently, I attended a three day FC workshop with Francesca Boring Mason and several half or one day workshops with Heather Embree. All of these were helpful – as were Hellinger’s and Mason’s books.

Bert Hellinger is a wonderfully innovative psychotherapist who developed the Family Constellation method for helping people release interpersonal and intergenerational issues within families. In using this approach, the person who is being helped (I will use the term ‘focus person’ for brevity’s sake) states the issues needing help and then invites other participants in the workshop to stage a representation of her or his family members, including the spouse/partner, their children, and the focus person’s parents. Previous partners, any children brought into the family through marriage, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents and all significant others may also be included. Workshop participants are not familiar with each other, and very few details are shared by focus people about their families when the constellation is set up.

To this point, this method resembles the ‘family sculpting’ approach (Keeran; LeBlanc web references), in which the sculpture speaks for itself through the placements of the participants and the apparent relationships expressed in the human sculpting.

In Family Constellation Therapy there is a much more extensive and detailed exploration and unfolding of intergenerational relationships. The constellation facilitator asks each of the family representatives how they feel in the starting positions that the focus person has designated. Intuitively, the participants cue into the collective consciousness to respond – often with outstanding accuracy, as acknowledged by the focus person (and their spouse or partner if they are also present). The therapist then may invite participants to shift positions to where they are intuitively guided to more, or the facilitator may suggest various shifts in sculpted positions, asking for further feedback from the participants after each shift about how they feel.

For instance, a sculpted child may report feeling uncomfortable positioned next to one or the other parent. The therapist suggests shifts in position and in facing towards or away from other participants until more comfortable feelings are reported by all. In the process of sorting out the discomforts that are reported, in turn, by each family representative, many family relationship issues are clarified.

The facilitator may invite participants to state to each other how they are feeling, or may suggest statements that participants should make to others in the diorama. Through these and countless other interactions, conflicts and residues of old traumas and other feelings are rapidly cleared.

As a part of the clearing process, the therapist may suggest that the focus person take the place of his or her representative and make clarifying statements to various other members in the constellation. These seemingly simple interventions can be deeply transformative. Here are a few examples.

For a Laura whose brother-in-law had been a fireman who died on 9/11 in New York, and whose husband, James, was devastated by this loss:

Payne to James: Look at your brother and say, “The day you left us was terrible, it’s been difficult to let you go.” (p. 121)

Payne to Brother: Look at your brother and say, “You have a family, dear brother. This is my fate, and they need you.”

Payne to James: Now say to your brother, “I shall leave you with the dead and go to my wife and children.” (p. 122)

For a couple who were struggling with mother-in-laws problems:

To Sybil: Now, tell your mother, “This is my husband.”
Sybil: This is my husband.
Hellinger: “I have left my father and mother.”
Sybil: I’ve left my father and mother.
Hellinger: “I depend on him,”
Sybil: I depend on him,
Hellinger: “with love.”
Sybil: after a quiet pause with love.
Hellinger to Rathin: Now you tell your mother-in-law, “She is my wife, now.”
Rathin: She is my wife.
Hellinger: “I respect you in her.”
Rathin: I respect you in her. (Hellinger, p. 37)

Death of any family member may leave the living with unresolved emotions. This is also true when a child dies at birth or is miscarried or aborted. In the workshops, participants are volunteered to represent these children as well in the Family Constellations. Unresolved grief is often at the core of problematic issues in a family.

Hellinger: As a rule, an abortion is experienced deep in the soul as guilt. An abortion demands everything from the child, because the adults want to be free of the burden. It seems as though freedom is available, but the soul doesn’t agree to it and feels the guilt. Then, very often, the partners try to get rid of the guilt by atoning. They atone by letting themselves get into a bad place, and then often by not allowing later relationships to succeed. (p. 201)

Hellinger: Allow yourself to be looked at by this child, Then tell this aborted child, “Dear child,”
Martin: Dear child,
Hellinger: ‘Now I take you as my child,”
Martin: Now I take you as my child.
Hellinger: “I give you a place in my heart.”
Martin: I give you a place in my heart (Hellinger, p. 20).

One of the more fascinating aspects of Family Constellation work is that the actual members of the focus person’s family – who have no direct knowledge of what transpired in the workshop – may often experience changes in their relationships with the focus person. This is attributed to shifts that occur in the family field.

Hellinger may also suggest statements to be made directly to the actual family members of the focus person, or workshop participants may themselves decide to resolve issues directly with family members the troublesome, unresolved issues that had been festering for years (often for generations).

A few weeks after the seminar, she visited her husband in the nursing home. Although he was hardly able to understand what she said, she told him: “We were married and we have three children. I honor you as the father of our children and I will hold a memory of you in my heart. But now our marriage is over. I feel free.” As she said that to him, her husband beamed. That’s an appropriate action, and there’s a greatness in it for everyone concerned (Hellinger, p. 247).

Family Constellation work is a wonderful approach to healing through the collective consciousness. While it has been used for several decades, it is now increasing in popularity and increasingly available in North America and Europe.

TWR for family relationships

Many people are unable to attend a Family Constellation workshop, or end up with issues that have not been resolved during the workshop. Hellinger notes that the effects of a workshop may percolate for several years. TWR offers complementary approaches that can deepen the effects of the workshops; that can relieve stresses experienced with emotional releases; and that can open into deeper clearings of issues clarified and brought to consciousness in the constellation work.

It is possible to address unresolved issues with relatives in your family, using TWR in several ways. The first is to connect with the issues that are troublesome:

From my own experiences with this approach:

I have worked diligently over a period of years to release feelings of having been abandoned and betrayed by God – in past life experiences (as in being an orphan) and current life difficulties with my parents in early childhood. (Some of these are shared in Benor, 2009.) I had never considered the possibility of exploring my relationships with my grandparents. I met my maternal grandmother only once, and never met any of my other grandparents.

From information provided by my parents, I knew my grandparents had all experienced very difficult times in their lives. So I set aside meditation/ self-healing time to explore my relationships with each of them. Using sentences such as those shared by Payne and Hellinger in their books, and from several phone sessions with Payne, I cleared any burden of residual emotions that I was carrying from my grandparents and thanked them for the legacies of healing I bore from them – through my parents.

From my paternal grandfather there was a particularly strong feeling of love and acceptance. While these were characteristics my father had described for his father, there was a palpably strong quality to my experience in these communications:

“I thank you, grandfather, for the gifts of compassion and love I have received through you.”

“I know you had a very difficult life. I now leave you to deal with the burdens of grief from the losses of your children and wife and from other losses in your life.”

“I now move on to live out the lessons of my own life.”

Through these and similar statements with each of my grandparents, I felt a distinct lightening of my personal sense of beingness in this world.

I added several rounds of TWR to release feelings of responsibility and guilt over abandoning my helping role I had chosen on a soul level because of some of the suffering I brought upon myself in my life. I could sense that there may well have been a family legacy in these burdens I had volunteered to carry.

I also offered healing to my grandparents through the approaches of Ho’oponopono and TWR (Benor, Web references). In this adaptation of TWR, one offers one’s own experiences of feeling and clearing pain and healing as doorways for others to follow in their own clearing of similar experiences and feelings. Again I felt a distinct lightening within myself.

An adjunct for self-uses of these approaches is muscle testing. This is particularly helpful with clients, where both the client and TWR facilitator can use their intuitive awarenesses to validate the perceived feelings, memories and clearing of emotional burdens, as well as the installation of replacement positives to counteract any residuals of negativity that might remain or might be triggered out of habit.

My sense is that the combination of TWR and Family Constellation approaches provide enormous potentials for complementing and deepening the work of each of these methods as used individually.

References:

Benor, Daniel J. Brief version: World healing through collective consciousness http://wholistichealingresearch.com/World_Healing_Collective_Consciousness.html
Full version: Using any therapy as an opportunity to heal the collective consciousness and our planet: lessons from Ho’oponopono and TWR
http://wholistichealingresearch.com/col_con_hooponopono_whee.html

Payne, John L. The Healing of Individuals, Families & Nations: Transgenerational Healing & Family Constellations (Trans-Generational Healing & Family Constellations series), Forres, Scotland: Findhorn 2005. (See book review in the International Journal of Healing and Caring.)

Hearn, Jeff and Lawrence, Marilyn. Family sculpting: II. Some practical examples. J. Family Therapy 1985, (7)2, 113–131.

Hellinger, Bert. Supporting Love : How Love Works in Couple Relationships , Ithaca, NY: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen/ Cornell University Press Services 2001.

Keeran, Daniel. The use of family sculpture in group therapy
http://www.academia.edu/2049544/The_Use_of_Family_Sculpture_in_Group_Therapy

LeBlanc,Toby. Live Family Sculpting http://www.myacpa.org/comm/ccaps/09Nov-5.cfm

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2013 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

World Healing Through Collective Consciousness

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 22:37:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

(Revised January 1, 2009)
There is much unexplored potential in each human being. We are not just flesh and bone or an amalgamation of conditionings. If this were so, our future on this planet would not be very bright. But there is infinitely more to life, and each passionate being who dares to explore beyond the fragmentary and superficial into the mystery of totality helps all humanity perceive what it is to be fully human. Revolution, total revolution, implies experimenting with the impossible. And when an individual takes a step in the direction of the new, the impossible, the whole human race travels through that individual.
– Vimala Thakar

Each of us is a part of the collective consciousness of humanity. We connect with everyone else on our planet through our intuition.

I’ve been pondering what sorts of healng an individual can offer to the collective consciousness – in the context of global heating that is proceeding to some as yet unknown tipping point beyond which there will be no return, and humanity’s general indifference to our impending collective suicide – most likely taking with us all of life on this planet as we know it.

If you think I exaggerate about global heating, see
Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice
By David Shukman
Environment correspondent, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7417123.stm

What could an individual possibly do in the face of this impending global disaster? How could an individual make a difference, in the face of the prevalence in our society of personal self-centeredness and addiction to and/or aspiration to achieve unsupportable Western lifestyles – that are built upon the exploitation of the human and natural resources of the rest of the world? In the face of leaders of nations who do not see beyond their next election campaign or whatever other process keeps them in power? In the face of corporations that put monetary profits above human and planetary concerns?

I’ve come to believe there are significant ways that each of us can help.

1. The first is to clear ourselves so that each of us becomes a brighter and clearer pixel on the big world screen. Many healing traditions recommend this, and TWR is a process that can help each of us to release our own negativity and make this contribution. If enough people do this, then the screen will become clearer and more healing will come into our world.

While utterly essential, this is a slow process. There are further ways we can contribute to healing our planetary problems.

2. I’ve been impressed with the approach of the Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono.
In a capsule version:
Ho’oponopono recommends that we view anything and everything that occurs in the world as a reflection of something within ourselves. When faced with anything that stirs our negative feelings, be they anxiety, fear, irritation, ire, anger, hurt, hatred or whatever, we can look inward and ask, “What within me might have brought me into contact/ awareness/ interaction with this negativity?” We might take this a step further, and ask, “What within me might have generated/ contributed to/ created some part of this negativity?” or just, “…this negativity?”

Having connected with that awareness, we can say in our heart,
“I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you.”

How can we know whether this is an effective contribution to the ALL? People report amazing feedback they get when using this in response to interpersonal negativity. At the very least, our own negativity is released and transmuted. But much more interestingly, interpersonal conflicts resolve themselves. Healings occur for what had appeared to be insoluble conflicts. (See interesting discussions of Ho’oponopono at links below.)

3. In view of the collective homicidal and suicidal madness of mankind, it feels to me we might add to the process an invitation for healing of collective post-traumatic stress throughout the collective consciousness.

Maybe, just maybe, we can heal the collective post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of humanity that perpetuates the cycle of experiencing abuse –> hurt –-> anger –> perpetrating abuse on others –> etc.

I am incorporating these approaches into my personal and psychotherapeutic interactions with everyone I encounter. I invite others to do whatever might feel right to you. Here are invitations i have felt comfortable using:

I resonate with any and all such feelings in the collective consciousness of this world. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you.

I invite anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere, anywhen and everywhen to clear their issues that resonate with mine.

5. At times this process arouses feelings that make it difficult for a person to be wholly present and congruent with the Ho’oponopono process. There may be hurts, angers, fears and other residues of traumas that are difficult to deal with. For example, feelings from painful experiences in my childhood sometimes get in the way of my using Ho’oponopono. I may find myself angry and blaming others and uncomfortable asking forgiveness for contributing my own part to the collective negativity i want to clear in “others.”

If you experience anything similar, TWR (Whole Health – Easily and Effectively) is a self-healing method that can be helpful personally in dealing with these feelings. One might also use the adaptation from Ho’oponopono prior to releasing these feelings.

I would be pleased to hear any other suggestions you might have, and to have your feedback on how these suggestions work for you.

Healing through the collective consciousness is limited only by our beliefs and disbeliefs. There is no reason we could not extend this healing back to our common genetic ancestor, ‘Lucy,’ and beyond – to whatever and whomever might have brought her to be the survivor of some tragedy that wiped out all other genetic lines…

*For the full version of this article, which is the editorial in the International Journal of Healing and Caring , September 2008, click here

References and Resources:

THE ANCIENT HAWAIIAN TEACHING OF HOOPONOPONO: THE MARRIAGE
Ihaleakala Hew Len, PHD, Teacher of Ho’oponopono
http://www.hooponoponotheamericas.org/article3.htm
Other articles are also available on this site.

HO’OPONOPONO by Joe Vitale
http://educate-yourself.org/zsl/hooponopono25jul06.shtml
A doctor treats hospitalized mental patients by healing that within himself resonates with the problems of each patient.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Going Through the Void, Part 1. Cognitive Challenges

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 22:07:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

What happens when we find ourselves without rules? You might find yourself in this state if you engage in Transformative Wholistic Reintegration (TWR) and other approaches that bring about profound changes on many levels of your being.

We are all creatures of habit. We live by rules that make our lives easier, providing us with an automatic pilot that saves us from having to ponder each move we make, each interaction we initiate, each response that we give.

Some of your rules simplify your personal activities – like how to keep your clothes in order in your dresser and closet; where you put your car and house keys when you come home; which days do you go out to the market and for exercise; and all the other little routines of daily life.

You have rules for interactions with other people – with norms for dressing for formal and informal occasions; ways you speak with close friends and other ways you address your boss; ways you behave at a ballgame and ways you behave in a house of worship; and rules for driving safely.

You have inner rules for dealing with emotions – whether you let yourself cry if you’re sad; how you deal with making a mistake; when or even whether you cogitate on something you feel bad about until you feel you’ve come to a place of inner peace, or whether you bury your discomforts in a filing cabinet somewhere inside and move on with your life.

And then you have meta-rules and habits about how you make and change your rules. As with most people, you probably aren’t consciously aware of these rules about how you make and keep or discard your rules. This is because you develop these meta-rules when you’re young and just beginning to learn about how to navigate through this complex world. Most commonly, your initial rules are: “If it’s uncomfortable, it’s better to bury it and move on.”

This type of rule is really helpful to a child who doesn’t know what to do about uncomfortable feelings. Such a rule lessens distressing feelings so ypu have more energies, to cope better with your life challenges.

When you grow up, however, you tend to continue in automatic pilot mode and often are completely unaware of what your inner rules are, or even blind to the fact that you have these rules. This is unfortunate, because as an adult you have much broader and clearer understandings about life, and many more resources for dealing with problems.

Waking up

Stresses and challenges of life are often blessings in disguise. They invite you to re-examine your rules and the ways you relate to yourself, to other people and to the world at large.

Modest life changes will often push you to question your inner rules. You are pushed into these reassessments when you have to interact with new people or let go of relationships with close friends and family. Often, these changes involve significant shifts in relationships, such as relocating from one school, job or community to another; committing to a close, personal relationship; becoming a parent; or having an elderly, close relative pass on after a full life. Usually, such changes do not push you into major overhauls of your inner rules. You tweak and compromise your rules and learn new ways of coping. And life moves on with a modified set of rules.

Major life changes may be a different story, as when you have to deal with threats such as bullying in a new school or workplace; you discover major differences between yourself and your new partner and/or their family; you have to help a child who has physical or psychological challenges; or you lose a close family member unexpectedly. Inner changes may challenge you as well, such as having to deal with a serious illness or injury; becoming depressed or encountering stressful life challenges.

In these instances you may have to reassess and sometimes to make major overhauls to your inner rules. In essence, you may have to become someone new in order to deal with new situations, and the old rules no longer serve you well.

Tom was an easy-going boy who grew up in a nurturing, supportive home and suburban school environments. His family taught him, more by example than by instruction, to be considerate of others. When he arrived at university, he found himself among people who behaved very differently. Many of them were self-centered, competitive and aggressive. Tom was often ridiculed and bullied for being mild, meek and unassertive. Tom became depressed, found it hard to sleep and difficult to concentrate on his studies.

Tom was fortunate to find a wise counselor in the student health services. Joyce helped him to understand the different cultural backgrounds of the aggressive, bullying students who were so unlike himself. She taught him TWR, to provide tools for de-stressing and getting to sleep at night. Within a few weeks, Tom was able to ignore the bullying and make his peace with the differences in attitudes that had so distressed him.

Tom was lucky to have found Joyce as his counselor. Another counselor might have pushed him to become more assertive and aggressive, which would have required much greater changes in his inner rules in order to get along at his university. Tom was able to continue living within his own rules and navigate through his challenging social milieu.

Sheila grew up in a military family, where her father was relocated every two or three years. She was a sensitive, shy child and suffered greatly every time she had to say goodbye to her schoolmates and friends and start building a social life all over again. She sometimes was able to build friendships with one or two girls, but never found herself accepted as one of the crowd. She came to view and accept herself as somehow basically unlikeable to most people.

When Sheila was in her last year of high school and her father was again relocated, she decided she would stay on, living in a friend’s home in the Atlanta suburb where she had lived her previous two years. She had the great misfortune to fall victim to a date rape shortly before graduation. Ashamed to even speak about this to anyone, she withdrew inside herself, traumatized, fearful and increasingly depressed. She was unable to pass several of her final exams in high school, and decided to go to work as a waitress while she figured out what to do with her life.

Years passed, and though Sheila managed to get her high school equivalency certificate and became a court stenographer, she never managed to find a stable relationship with a man. She kept finding men who were abusive towards her, leading her to leave these relationships after several months. She became increasingly depressed, and did not tolerate the side effects of the several antidepressants her doctor prescribed. Frustratingly, she found it impossible to take off the weight she had put on due to the medications. This damaged her self-image further and increased her depression.

Sheila was a good-hearted person and had developed close friendships with several women. One of these, Gladys, urged Sheila to find a therapist to help her sort out her problems. Fortunately, her job benefits included generous coverage for psychotherapy. These longer-standing issues required major inner work to resolve. Sheila had developed a deep-seated lack of confidence in herself and her abilities to be liked by men and major doubts about ever finding a good relationship.

Sorting out Sheila’s issues required helping her to sense and come to understand her sensitive personality and the traumas she had experienced. This was, relatively speaking, the easier part. Using TWR , one of many Energy Psychology methods, Sheila was able to let go of her many trauma memories and feelings. She was then able to install positive thoughts and feelings to replace those she had released.

After feeling considerably improved, even to the point of not feeling depressed and beginning to lose weight, Sheila was surprised to find herself confused, and feeling a vague, emptiness that was an inner hunger for something that she couldn’t identify.

What Shelia was experiencing is what I call ‘the void.’ I first learned about this in the 1980’s, in articles by David (then Dennis) Gersten, another wholistic psychiatrist. The void is a place we enter when we’ve given up old ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us, but haven’t figured out what we want to adopt in their place. It’s rather like rowing out into a big lake, to the point where we can’t see the shore we left behind, and can’t yet see the shore on the other side.

This can feel very uncomfortable. It is a ‘meta-anxiety,’ which is a worry about how we’re feeling. In this case, it’s about not knowing who we are any more. We’ve left our old habits, self-image and rules for relating to the world behind us. We don’t quite know where we’re heading, and have no idea what the rules will be when we get there. TWR can also lessen the intensity of these meta-anxieties.

Sheila gradually started exploring new relationships with people who were different from her previous friends. Because she felt greater confidence in herself and held higher expectations of being liked and accepted, she also found herself meeting men who were not disparaging or abusive towards her.

Sheila had finally crossed the void, had reached the far shore, and found herself in a new self with a new life.

TWR is an excellent tool for life transformations, as well as a tool for addressing more focal problems.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2014 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Going Through the Void, Part 2. Emotional Challenges

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 22:04:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

We may enter an unusual inner space when we are faced with major changes in our lives; when we opt out or are forced out of our usual patterns of relationships; or when we have a life crisis that forces us to re-evaluate who we are and who we would like to be.

I first learned about the void in the 1980’s, in articles by David (then Dennis) Gersten, another wholistic psychiatrist. The void is a place we enter when we’ve given up old ways of being in the world around us, but haven’t yet figured out how to be a new ‘me’. It’s rather like rowing out into a big lake, to the point where we can’t see the shore we left behind, and can’t yet see the shore on the other side.

This can feel very uncomfortable. It is a space in which we don’t know how to respond to everyday situations because we don’t know who we are any more. We’ve left our old self-image and ways of relating in the world behind us. We don’t quite know where we’re heading, and have no idea who or how we will be when we get there.

Eddy was one of those boys who make mothers of challenging children jealous. He was cheerful, fun-loving, bright, friendly and very responsive to adult guidance. If he got upset he got over it quickly. He was one of the popular boys in his class.

Eddy was fortunate to have a stable home with loving parents. But when he was twelve years old, both his parents were killed in a car crash. Eddy and his younger brother and sister went to live with his uncle and aunt, who stepped in more out of duty than caring. Eddy ended up being a surrogate parent for his brother and sister.

His teachers noted that Eddy’s personality had changed. He became much more withdrawn, nervous and rarely smiled. After a year with faltering grades, Eddy picked up again academically but was never again his old, cheerful self.

Eddy did well academically, and with a state scholarship and hard work he completed an MBA. He was happily married and had two children, whom he and his wife doted on. However, when his wife succumbed in her mid-thirties to a rapidly growing breast cancer, Eddy fell into a deep depression that was unresponsive to antidepressants. His sister had to take over the care for his children.

The good news was that his sister and brother were enormously supportive. They not only helped with his practical needs, they also found him a therapist who helped him deal with his depression. Over a period of eight months, Eddy went through the worst of his grief over losing his wife. At the same time, he found he had several inner caves full of grief over the loss of his parents, of his teen years, and of his earlier, cheerful self.

As Eddy emerged from his grief work, he found himself in an odd, challenging inner space where he didn’t know who he was any more. He had let go of much of his hurt self, his grieving self, his abandoned self, his parentified child self, and of a part of his grief over his wife’s death.

This is an in-between place encountered by many people with major life transformations. They are letting go of old relationships; of major ways of perceiving themselves; of relating to other people; of trauma memories and feelings; of views about life and death; of spiritual beliefs; and more.

They have no clear sense of what to replace all of these relinquishments with; of who they are; who they want to be. They find it hard to know how to respond to family, friends and colleagues – all of whom may have no idea what this person in the void is experiencing. And even with people who are close to them, they may find it difficult to explain what is happening to them because they don’t fully understand this themselves.

Coming to the other shore and learning to live there can be a confusing and stressful time – not only for themselves but for those around them. Patience is in order on all sides.

Gradually, with time and with further processing of their memories, feelings and habits, they start to choose new ways of being and getting on in their lives. They may make major changes in their lifestyles and relationships; what they choose to do for work, recreation and companionship; commitments and goals; spiritual beliefs and practices; and in any and all other aspects of their lives.

TWR can be enormously helpful in clearing old feelings and traumas; reducing anxieties and stresses – in leaving the old shore, traversing the void, and exploring new territory. TWR is also helpful in lessening the intensity of meta-anxieties – those feelings of “OMG! What is happening to me? Who am I? Who do I want to be? How should I behave?”

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2014 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

TWR Lite and TWR Deep for Physical Problems

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 22:00:00 GMT

Daniel Benor, MD

People often come for help with physical problems such as pain, residues of injuries, infections, diseases and other issues. All they usually want is to be free of these problems.

TWR instructors are challenged to decide whether to simply address the symptoms directly, producing rapid relief, or to suggest looking deeper, to explore what information people’s inner selves might be wanting to bring to their attention. In addressing these options we are faced with conflicting possibilities. Which do we go for – the quick fix or the deeper delving?

The rapid release may be all that is needed to permanently relieve the problems. On the other hand, it might only provide superficial and merely cosmetic improvement that does not last.

The more penetrating exploration can addresses root causes and bring about more extensive healing. This can, however, be more time consuming, might be unnecessary and costs more.

While the choice is clearly that of the person who has the problem, the TWR instructor may be able to advise and suggest ways of deciding between the two options.

1. Explaining the options and possible outcomes is the first step.

2. Asking what the person who owns the problem prefers is the second.

3. If the choice between TWR Lite and TWR Deep is unclear, muscle testing (MT) can open up new insights. In doing this, caution is advised. How we ask the question is crucial to getting clearer answers.

Writing down exactly how we phrase the issues is important with MT because the unconscious mind that provides the answers is very literal. For example, “Is it for my highest good to go deeper?” could be a misleading question. It may be for my highest good to do this in another six months or a year but not good to do it now. So an MT answer of “Yes” to the question might lead us to an apparent failure of TWR to help on deeper levels, when it would have been a help at a later time. When we write down the questions, it is easier to spot such problems in our line of questioning.

4. Using TWR Lite may provide the answer, in and of itself. If people’s inner wisdom wants them to delve deeper, the intensity of the symptoms will either not go down at all, or will only go down part way. (Intensity is measured by the SUDS scale of ‘10’ = the worst it could be, and ‘0’ = no symptoms.) When the SUDS is not going down, this is often a helpful invitation from the unconscious mind to ask questions such as: “Have you considered that there may be good reasons to keep holding onto this issue?” or “Are people around you ready for you to change so quickly?”

Such is the art of self-healing. There are often several options we can choose, and with experience we learn which are the best for us.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2014 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

When Energies Aren’t Just Energies

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 21:47:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

In the Energy Psychology community and among many other complementary/ alternative therapists there are helpful discussions on biological energies (bioenergies) that can be shifted to promote healings for many problems. Therapists and clients regularly report enormous benefits from bioenergy therapies. A growing body of research confirms these clinical observations in Energy Psychology (Feinstein, 2012) and in spiritual healing (Benor, 2002; 2007; Web reference).

Researchers have been frustrated, however, in efforts to standardize assessments of bioenergy interventions. This has been frustrating to bioenergy therapists and to people who have benefitted from these therapies. This is one of the many reasons that conventional caregivers have been slow to accept the validity and value of these therapies.

The subject of bioenergies is enormously complex. A few of the countless factors that may enter into bioenergy interactions and assessments are considered here in the hope that this will shed some light on the state of practice and understanding of the bioenergy healing arts.

There are bioenergy fields around the body and in the body. Therapists may focus their interventions on:

The entire field around the body and interpenetrating the body
Specific layers of this field (starting from furthest away from the body)
Spirit
Personal spiritual issues, e.g. life purpose, past life residues
Personal direct awarenesses (‘gnowing’)
Religious issues
Personal direct awarenesses (‘gnowing’)
Personal beliefs (‘knowing’)
Relationships
The person him/herself + as a ‘cell’ in the body of all life on earth
Family, partners and close friends
Mind: genetic endowments + acquired life experiences, learned information and beliefs
Emotions: genetic endowments + acquired modes of expression, life experience residues
Body: genetic endowments + acquired patterns of being and functioning
Bioenergies within the body
The entire body
Meridians and acupuncture point pathways within the body
Craniosacral
Brain energy pulsation rhythms
Fascia energy pathways
Kinesiology
Muscle testing for bioenergy imbalances and balancing
Exercises for balancing bioenergies
Polarity therapies
Connecting specific points for specific problems
Connecting intuited points
Bioenergies of portions of the body, e.g. cellular (entire cell of sub-portions), tissues, organs, and of nerves and hormones that influence the entire body
Bio-electrical energies of brain, heart and other body parts

Bioenergy therapies are administered by people with varying levels of bioenergy sensitivity and varying levels of abilities and skills in administering the bioenergy intervention. Recipients of these healing interventions have varying levels of sensitivity and receptivity in accepting these energies.

Analyzing bioenergy approaches ‘scientifically’

The ‘scientific’ approach has been promoted as the preferred way to study health and illness. This has some advantages, but also has serious liabilities.

The above categories and sub-categories of bioenergy fields are all constructs of left brain hemisphere (LH) analysis. This reductionistic methodology has become the predominant focus in conventional western discussions of health and illness. This LH approach has also been adopted in the assessments and analyses of energetic harmony and disharmony.

This LH reductionistic approach makes possible the study of sub-sections of the entire biological system. Scientists can manipulate cells outside and inside the body; alter immune functions within the body; chemically alter body functions; and so on. Great benefits have come from these approaches.

Great harm has also come from LH approaches. By focusing narrowly on one problem, the functioning of the entire organism is often altered, with serious overall consequences. For example:

Antidepressant and antipsychotic medications can decrease some psychological problems. However, they have serious side effects, as in gaining weight, which often create diabetes, heart strain, backaches and leg joint pains, and many other problems.

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are treatments that kill rapidly-reproducing cancer cells. Unfortunately, they also kill rapidly growing intestinal cells and skin cells, and often make people feel very sick and unsightly. In some cases, they don’t prolong life, or prolong it only slightly, but they seriously diminish the quality of life in the person’s remaining days.

Over a period of ten years, 50% of drugs are withdrawn from the market due to serious side effects or interactive effects with other drugs. People using the medications thereby become the laboratory animals establishing their lack of safety.

While conventional caregivers tout the scientific method as the gold standard for research, in many cases they do not adhere to this standard. For example, Knee surgery for knee disk problems is very common. A double-blind, controlled study of mock (pretend) surgery showed that there was no difference between the actual surgery and mock surgery (Moseley, Omalley, Peterson, et al 2002). There have been no replications of this study, and the business of knee surgery continues as usual.

Many conventional caregivers dismiss the possibility of bioenergies because they cannot be objectively measured. They demand LH types of studies to confirm that this is a valid phenomenon. And in that they are correct. There have not been demonstrations of consistent assessments of bioenergy fields. Different observers often report different findings.

Analyzing bioenergy interventions through bioenergy assessments

The inconsistent observations of different researchers and observers is not a valid reason to dismiss the existence of bioenergy fields. Such differences may be the products of the differences in the observing ‘instruments.’ That is to say, the human ‘instrument’ does not exist as a standard product. Each human is unique. Each will therefore resonate with the bioenergies of another unique being in a doubly unique manner.

It is actually much more complicated. Each interaction between a different human observer and a single human who is being observed may produce a unique combination of bioenergy interactions that leads to a second layer of unique observations.

Laboratory conditions that may be standardized to the criteria of conventional research on biological systems may differ significantly when considered from bioenergy perspectives. There can be numerous factors that would influence a bioenergy study that would be ignored by conventional scientists. For example, the following may alter or disrupt bioenergy fields:

– The presence of electronic equipment (in the laboratory or from nearby facilities outside the lab)
– The psychological states , beliefs, expectations and attitudes of people being studied
– The psychological states, beliefs, expectations and attitudes of researchers and observers
– Influences of the collective consciousness
– Solar electromagnetic activity
– Lunar phase

These variables are often difficult to assess, even when researchers are fully aware of them. How much more so must this be when no attention is given by researchers to such influences on bioenergies being studied?

Personal reports of bioenergy therapies experiences

I believe that subjective reports are valid sources for useful and helpful information in assessing the healing potentials of bioenergy therapies. Right brain hemisphere (RH) awarenesses are at least as valid, if not moreso, than LH awarenesses (Benor, 2012; McGilchrist, 2009).

While these are often dismissed by conventional therapists and scientists, those who are open to exploring and accepting their inner awarenesses find them not only helpful but essential to assessing the value and validity of bioenergy experiences.

References

Benor, D.J. (2002) Healing Research: Volume I, (Professional Supplement) Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.

Benor, D.J. (2007) Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition) Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution . Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications.

Benor, D.J. Right and Left Brain Dominance: Thinking outside the box. International J Healing & Caring – On line 2012, 12(1), 1-24 .

Benor, D.J. Wholistic healing. http://wholistichealingresearch.com/srmeb.html

Benor, D.J. Lists of bioenergy healing research publications http://wholistichealingresearch.com/completelistrandomizedstudiesx.html

Feinstein, D. (2012) Acupoint stimulation in treating psychological disorders: Evidence of efficacy. Rev. General Psychology , 16: 364-380. DOI: 10.1037/a0028602

McGilchrist, I. (2009) The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. New Haven:Yale.

Moseley J.B. O’Malley K. Petersen N.J., et al. (2002) A controlled trial of arthroscopic surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee. New England J Medicine . 347(2):81-8. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12110735

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2014 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

WHEE Research

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 21:17:00 GMT

1. WHEE for Test Anxiety in University Students

A. Benor, Daniel J. Ledger, Karen. Toussaint, Loren. Hett, Geoffrey. Zaccaro, Daniel . Pilot Study of Emotional Freedom Techniques, Wholistic Hybrid Derived from Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and Emotional Freedom Technique, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Treatment of Test Anxiety in University Students, Explore , Nov-Dec 2009, 5(6), 338-340.

Objective
This study explored test anxiety benefits of wholistic hybrid derived from eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and Emotional Freedom Techniques (WHEE), Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFTs), and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Participants
Canadian university students with severe or moderate test anxiety participated.

Methods
A controlled trial of WHEE (n = 5), EFT (n = 5), and CBT (n = 5) was conducted. Standardized anxiety measures included the Test Anxiety Inventory and Hopkins Symptom Checklist-21.

Results
Despite small sample size, significant reductions in test anxiety were found for all three treatments. In only two sessions, WHEE and EFT achieved the same benefits as CBT did in five sessions. Participants reported high satisfaction with all treatments. Emotional freedom techniques and WHEE participants successfully transferred their self-treatment skills to other stressful areas of their lives.

Conclusions
Both WHEE and EFT show promise as feasible treatments for test anxiety.

B. Armstrong, Linda M. A Validation Study of WHEE as Therapeutic Intervention for Alleviating Test Anxiety . MA Thesis. Energy Medicine University, Sausalito, California USA 2015

Summary

This study validated the anxiolytic effects of WHEE on a group of college students who experience significant test anxiety. In addition, this study compared the effectiveness of WHEE with the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in relieving test anxiety in college students. Students attended two respective therapy sessions in either WHEE or CBT and continued using learned techniques for one semester. Reactive anxiety was measured using the Reactions to Tests scale (Sarason, 1984). Both WHEE and CBT effectively alleviated test anxiety in this pilot sample. Although more extensive experiments are required to accurately determine the benefits of WHEE compared to CBT, this study demonstrates that WHEE is a validated tool for relieving test anxiety among college students.

2. Study shows significant effects of WHEE plus a healer’s heart field

WHEE: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively®
AKA – Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT

I am pleased to share that the first of several studies including WHEE has been completed. Christine Caldwell Bair found that significant synchronizations were demonstrated between heart rates of healer and healees – the primary focus of the study. The volunteer healees came in response to an advertisement to learn a self-relaxation and healing technique that was part of a study. Both the control and treatment groups were also taught WHEE (Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT). The control group demonstrated a significant decrease in Subjective Units of Distress (SUDS) from before to after their practice of WHEE (p < .04), which was taught to all 41 participants simultaneously.

Subjects in the treatment group received the WHEE plus an intervention to demonstrate the effect of the bioenergetic field of the healer’s heart without any touch or specified technique. A HeartMath Freeze Framer earlobe unobtrusively monitored the participants’ heartbeats. The entire value of the research was in the significant difference in outcome as a result of ONLY being in the ‘strong’ range of the centered healer’s heartfield, which demonstrated additional significant effects compared to the control group who only practiced WHEE. “The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the healer’s heart field upon subjects during energy healing, as measured by synchronization of heart rates and scores on a Subjective Units of Distress (SUD) scale and Profile of Mood States (POMS) inventory. A nonequivalent pretest posttest design was used based on heart rate comparison of healer and subject, and correlated with pre-and post-test SUDs and Profiles of Mood States scores. The subjects included two populations: N = 50 who sat within the 3-4 foot ‘strong’ range of the healer’s heart field, the independent variable, while using self application of the WHEE energy healing technique, and N = 41 who completed the same process beyond the 15-18 foot range of the healer’s heart field. The dependent measures were heart rate, Subjective Units of Distress, and Profile of Mood States inventory. All subjects completed these measures within one hour. Statistically significant heart rate synchronization [p < .001] was found in the intervention population. Subjective Units of Distress and Profile of Mood States scores demonstrated more improvement than the control population, indicating additional benefit beyond the WHEE effect alone [p < .003].”

The researcher notes in private communications about WHEE: Anecdotally, I can report that almost all the folks I’ve had opportunity to teach it to actually USE IT because of it’s ease, unobtrusiveness, and effectiveness – very different than other techniques which work fine, but no one uses them because they can’t get off alone and find 15-20 minutes to do them, so they just don’t bother.”

Source : Bair, Christine Caldwell. The heart field effect: synchronization of healer-subject heart rates in energy therapy, (Dissertation) Holos University Graduate Seminary, Springfield, MO, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Theology 2006.
Download copy of dissertation at http://www.holosuniversity.net/abstracts.asp#bair
Also published as: Bair, Christine Caldwell. “The Heart Field Effect: Synchronization of Healer-Subject Heart Rates in Energy Therapy.” Advances in Mind-Body Medicine , Winter 2008-2009, 23(4), 10-19.

IJHC – WHR Observations (From eZine of IJHC – WHR October 2006)

It is helpful to have this objective research confirmation of the efficacy of WHEE.

The measurement of heart rates used in this study is of particular interest as regards the HeartMath intervention. Most previous HeartMath studies rely on sophisticated comparisons of electrocardiograms of healer and subjects. This study simply counted heartbeats.

The healer was able to add significantly greater decreases in the subjective units of distress of the experimental group compared to the self-healing effects in the control group. This is an important finding, providing evidence that healer interventions can add to self-healing treatments.

WHEE is particularly helpful in research for two reasons:

A. It is easily learned, easy and rapid to use, and very potent and effective. (I routinely offer a money back guarantee in workshops and have yet to have anyone take me up on this!)

B. WHEE taps into the research database of EMDR and is thus more easily accepted by hospital research boards and conventional medical and nursing researchers and clinicians. The efficacy of EMDR is gaining acceptance as equivalent to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for treatment of PTSD by growing numbers of authorities.

3. WHEE is excellent for pain relief. We are seeking clinicians treating people with pain who would be interested to conduct studies with WHEE.

Mental Influence on Genes, Mutation, and Evolution

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 21:15:00 GMT

Abstract

Rex Stanford’s Conformance Theory of psi (parapsychological) events, Schmidt’s work on random number generators, and recent theories of modern physics suggest that a fertile ground for psi events is a system in which random factors can be selectively acted upon by the psi process. A biological system in random flux is found in chromosomes undergoing meiosis, the process whereby reproductive germ cells prepare for division. This would appear to be a fertile ground for the introduction of psi influences, per the conformance model. The interaction of mind with living organisms (as spiritual healing) has been demonstrated in an impressive array of studies (Benor 1992; in press).

The work of Luther Burbank appears to support the conformance hypothesis in plant reproduction. Burbank (1849-1926) developed over 800 new varieties of fruits, vegetables, flowers, cacti and trees. Burbank had psi abilities which may have been a factor in his success in creating new plant varieties.

The Darwinian view that evolution is determined by environmental selection acting upon genetic endowment has been well supported by experiments on Mendelian inheritance of animal and plant characteristics, by identification of chromosomal abnormalities which relate to heritable diseases, and by recent genetic manipulations producing deliberate alterations in living organisms. This has led to the belief that the Lamarckian hypothesis of environmental factors influencing genetic processes is disproved. This need not be the case because these theories are not mutually exclusive. Both theories may be correct. That is, Darwinian selection of the fittest genes may coexist with Lamarckian influences. The Lamarckian hypothesis appears to be supported by Burbank’s work.

Hypothesis

The Darwinian hypothesis stresses selection of the fittest as the mechanism for the evolution of species. This has been supported by research on Mendelian inheritance of animal and plant characteristics, by identification of chromosomal abnormalities that relate to heritable diseases, and by recent genetic manipulations producing deliberate alterations in living organisms.

The Lamarckian hypothesis proposes that evolutionary changes in organisms can be produced by naturally occurring environmental influences upon the germ plasm of individual beings. This theory has been rejected for lack of other supporting theories and research evidence. This paper proposes both a scientific theory and some evidence from field and laboratory in support of Lamarckian processes of evolution.

Basic Assumptions

Parapsychological (psi) processes provide an explanatory mechanism in Lamarckian processes of evolution. I take the view that psi events are scientifically supported beyond reasonable doubt. Meticulous, replicated experiments (Edge, et al.; Nash, 1986; Wolman) have confirmed the existence of telepathy (one mind interacting directly with other minds), clairsentience (mind obtaining information about matter outside the organism), pre- and retro-cognition (mind obtaining information that transcends the present time), and psychokinesis ( PK ; mind influencing matter outside the organism).

Though there is as yet no explanation for how psi processes function, there is no reason not to invoke these as explanations of other observations in nature. Because we have strong evidence that psi processes occur, we can postulate that other processes may occur through the agency of psi effects.

Rex Stanford’s Conformance Theory proposes that needs of an organism may influence the environment via psi processes, acting most easily upon random events to bring about results more desirable for the organism (Braud, 1980; Stanford, 1977; 1978). That is, you can scan your environment using telepathy, clairsentience, pre- and retro-cognition, identifying people and opportunities that might be favorable to your needs. Then, using this information, you can use telepathy and PK to influence the environment in favorable ways to meet your needs.

Anecdotal reports abound on people showing up precisely when needed to help, a book falling off a shelf or opening precisely to the page to provide the precise information you are seeking, and prayers may be unexpectedly and dramatically answered. To those familiar with psi, these occurrences are welcomed synchronicities, coincidences that speak of a subtle, spiritual choreography in our lives that links each of us to the All.

Helmut Schmidt’s research on random number generators (RNGs) supports this theory, demonstrating that RNGs respond to psi influence (1973; 1974; 1975). Machines that function with perfect randomicity when left alone, generating ones and zeros in totally chance patterns, will deviate and produce significantly more ones or zeros when someone directs them to do so mentally. This has been repeatedly demonstrated with RNGs based on electronic, mechanical, and even radioactive mechanisms.

Recent theories of modern physics (Walker, 1974; 1975; 1982) also lend support to Stanford’s theory.

Biological Random Number Generators

A system in random flux is found in chromosomes undergoing meiosis, the process whereby reproductive germ cells prepare for division. In meiosis, sets of chromosome pairs in the nuclei of reproductive cells separate into sets of single chromosomes which are imparted to the sperm and egg cells. The distribution of genes among the various single chromosomes of each pair occurs in a random distribution. That is, any gene may be distributed to either one of the pair of germ cells (sperm or egg) produced. This would appear to be a fertile ground for the introduction of psi influences, per the conformance model.

Avenues for practical research in genetics and other areas are then suggested.

I was inspired to propose this possibility by the work of Luther Burbank, a nurseryman who was able to produce remarkable numbers of new varieties of plants in the early 20th Century.

The work of Luther Burbank appears to Support the conformance hypothesis. Burbank developed over 800 new varieties of fruits, vegetables, flowers, cacti and trees.

Ordinarily, it takes several decades of cross-fertilizations to develop a single new hybrid variety of a plant (or animal). Specimens with desirable traits are crossed and re-crossed until the desired trait is strengthened. It is considered a notable achievement to produce a single new variety of a given species.

Burbank’s was able to bring out new traits in plants in just a few successive generations, over 2-4 years (Burbank with Hall; Clampett; Dreyer; Tompkins and Bird; Whitson, John and Williams; Yogananda). His methods were based on more than just hybridization. Burbank would plant thousands of seeds. He would then select those plants with desirable new traits to inbreed until the new traits were breeding true (i.e. the plants were reproducing the new traits regularly and reliably). Thus far, the description sounds rather routine. Let me quote Burbank describing the rate at which he worked, in order to give some impression of his unusual abilities.

From the first it has been my practice to mark selected individual plants by tying a strip of old white cloth on; this means that the marked plant is sacred? Plants that I could see would add nothing to my experiment, by any possibility, came up at once, or else were marked by my making a line in the bed with the toe of my shoe so that the men could take them out later. . . Now, when I had a very large project going on — a field or bed with thousands and thousands of varieties of individuals in it –I would have two or three of my helpers follow me and I would simply drop the “neckties” on the superior plants or those suited to my purpose, and put a shoe-mark against the worthless ones, about as rapidly as a man could walk along, and the men would do the tying and spade out and burn the condemned plants.
(Burbank and Hall, 53)

Burbank’s neighbors thought him crazy, as he uprooted and burned large portions, sometimes the majority, of the plants he grew. One might think at first that Burbank simply developed his powers of observation to such a high acuity that he could work this rapidly. Indeed, he notes that his five senses were so acutely sensitive that he found some stimuli, such as certain music, painful. However, he himself adds:

Probably there is more to it than merely this sensory response in me – t may be a sixth sense, it may be purely intuitive (italics inserted) — but I know that even those who have worked with me longest and have been closest to me, learning my methods and watching me in the gardens, have been unable to duplicate what I have done as a mere matter of routine, and with no thought as to how I did it. Some of the men who have worked for me have developed into good, sound, original, and even clever and successful plant developers. But as far as I have been able to observe they have not been able even to approach my own natural ability to choose between plants, and to choose, not one from a dozen, or a few here and there, but at wholesale — thousands of plants in a day out of tens of thousands growing in my experimental gardens.

Even close friends and observers have said what you, perhaps, are saying to yourself now; that is that I was bound to be right part of the time and that there is no way of telling how many poor selections I made through error nor how many perfect ones I caused to be destroyed. My friends were wrong, as you are. I made some mistakes, of course, but considering the number of plants I have selected in the course of sixty years as a plant breeder they are negligible. On the contrary, I will tell you a story, out of many such that are available, to show you how complete my gift is. (ibid, 52)

Burbank proceeds to tell of a friend, a judge who expressed skepticism regarding Burbank’s ability to select plants correctly.

“Well, Judge,” I said, “this selecting isn’t being done by guesswork, though I suppose it looks like it. Why don’t you take half a dozen of those condemned (plum) trees and plant them down on your Santa Clara Valley place, and find out for yourself whether I am right or wrong?”
    He said he would like to make the test, and for good measure I insisted on his taking also six of the seedlings I had selected as the best varieties. So we dug the trees up carefully, packed them and shipped them to his home. (ibid. p. 54)
    When the trees were bearing fruit, the Judge reported, “Burbank, if any one had told me five years ago that selection could be done by a man almost at a trot, I would have said that he was crazy. . .”
    He went on to admit that he had been wrong and that I had been right in every single case. He said that he had ordered his men to take out and burn all of the six trees I had condemned as seedlings, five years before, but that every one of the six I had chosen had proved perfect trees with beautiful luscious, well-developed fruit and plenty of it. (ibid. p. 54)

One might hypothesize that Burbank was simply gifted with precognition. His feats of hybridization would therefore have been merely (!) an enhanced and accelerated process of selection of seedlings (prior to their showing any hints of the desired new characteristics, such as flowers or fruits). However, some of Burbank’s explanations for his success suggest that additional psi processes were involved.

. . . I have had as many as ten thousand separate and distinct experiments going on at one time. I have produced as many as five hundred varieties of plums on twelve trees in one short row. I have had in my gardens as many as eight thousand different varieties of roses, iris, or gladiolus. Every one of these was obtained by using natural processes or adaptations of them, and every one was there because I needed it in my search for a definite quality or characteristic. . . I took Nature’s mind and added to it my own, that knew exactly what it wanted and was in a hurry (comparatively speaking) to get it! (ibid. p. 44)

Burbank was a staunch admirer of Darwin and credits him with the inspiration for developing many of his techniques. Nevertheless, he believed in Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics.

I began with the cell, the fundamental unit of life: it was apparent from all I saw that the cell was influenced by environment, that those influences, if they persisted long enough – repetition, repetition, repetition – entered into the heredity, and that this heredity was the factor I had most to deal with in training plants to bend themselves to man’s greater good. . . (ibid. p. 88)

One might wonder whether by “repetition” Burbank referred merely to repeated generations of hybridization/selection. Although he does emphasize these mechanical processes (ibid. p. 76), he clearly goes further towards Lamarckian hypotheses in his beliefs.

. . . The fruit pit, bearing the seed, it is very difficult to break into; the soles of a man’s feet are tough and of thickened skin; in each case the reason is, originally, that the seed must be honed against destruction by birds, the feet armored against thorns and pebbles and a nail in the shoe! Do you think these natural provisions are the result of chance?
Not at all… (ibid. p. 95)

Burbank found that by cross-fertilizing between individuals of the same species (which possessed widely varying characteristics or which had simply been isolated geographically for long periods) he produced progeny in the third and later generations which were markedly more varied than the parent plants. This appears to be a possible method for increasing random options available during meiosis, upon which psi factors may operate to select new combinations for desired characteristics. In fact, his own words suggest that he was aware of this aid of psi influences:

Crossing is done to secure a wealth of variation. By this means we get the species into a state of perturbation or wabble , [italics inserted] and take advantage of the ‘wabbling’ to guide the life forces into the desired habits or channels. (Jordan, p. 204)

[C]ombining heredities, by cross-pollinization, and thereafter selecting those individuals showing the strongest tendency toward my purpose, was one of the chiefest methods in my repertoire. It was here that there entered the one important process I relied on and which I had never seen stressed by any one before me ? the repetition, repetition, repetition, of one influence on one plant for one purpose, time after time, day after day, generation after generation, patiently, tirelessly, without ever changing my idea or deviating from my plain course, until, in the end, the characteristic or quality or power I wanted in the plant was so firmly fixed in it ? in its heredity, you see. . . that it could no more be bred out or dropped out or lost than could the plant’s tendency to send its roots downward and its leaves upward. (Burbank and Hall p. 107)

Lest there be any doubt about Burbank’s intended meaning, consider the following quotes:

To Manly P. Hall, founder and president of the Philosophical Research society of Los Angeles and a student of comparative religion, mythology and esoterica, Burbank revealed that when he wanted his plants to develop in some particular and peculiar way not common to their kind he would get down on his knees and talk to them. Burbank also mentioned that plants have over twenty sensory perceptions but, because they are different from ours, we cannot recognize them. “He was not sure,” wrote Hall, “that the shrubs and flowers understood his words, but he was convinced that by some telepathy, they could comprehend his meaning.” (Tompkins and Bird, p. 133; similar citation of Hall in Kraft and Kraft 1959 p 131)

If we invite Mr. Thistle or Mr. Cactus into our gardens and patiently and earnestly teach and thoroughly convince him that all the marauding animals shall be kept out, it will not be very long before some members of his tribe will see fit partly to discard some of those exasperating pins and needles and put out a more civilized suit of clothes; and by further careful selection from this one varying individual others are produced which are absolutely spineless, to remain so as long as the marauding animals do not disturb them, often becoming useful members of our parks and gardens. It is great effort on the part of the plant to produce all these spines and when this effort is made unnecessary the plant will at once become more docile and pliable, and can be easily led into almost any useful occupation in which plants are employed.
(Harwood, p 662)

“You have nothing to fear,” I would tell them. “You don’t need your defensive thorns I will protect you.” Gradually the useful plant of the desert emerged in a thornless variety. (Yogananda p. 41)

[T]he structural always follows the functional; in other words, the necessity of a thing is exhibited as functional and afterward the structure arises. (Burbank with Hall p. 97)

Of note is the report that Burbank was a telepathic sender. He is mentioned as repeatedly being able to summon his sister from miles away telepathically. He also worked occasionally as a healer (Kraft and Kraft, pp. 126-129). He was apparently very reticent in discussing these aspects of his life, and the above are the only shreds of evidence unearthed relating to his psi abilities. It is probable that most people even had difficulty accepting him as a wizard, i.e. a man of extraordinary natural abilities, in plant breeding. He likely had no desire to increase their apprehensions by discussing matters that probably would have only gained him the added reputation of being insane.

It appears probable from the above that Burbank’s methods involved biological PK. He seemed able to influence the genes of plants through intention to enhance the production of new varieties. By increasing the range of variability, or randomness, of combinations of genetic materials (“wabble”) through cross-fertilizations, he may have been able to increase his psi influence over these processes, tipping the balance of plant reproductive potential in desirable directions.

Burbank lived at the time when railroads were opening new markets to farmers who previously had sold their produce locally. They wanted plants that could survive the time and traumas of travel from farm to distant markets, with no refrigeration. In response to their requests, he produced over 800 new varieties of plants to the orders of other nurserymen around the world, according to the desirability of complex sets of characteristics. These included: rate of growth; qualities of roots, trunk, height, branching, flowering, fruit (time of ripening, narrowness of range of individual ripenings within the group, size, shape, seed, color, texture, skin thickness, odor, flavor); productivity of plants; speed of reproduction; resistances (to colds insects, fungus); raw qualities (keeping fresh, surviving challenges of shipping); and last, but certainly not least, their cooking qualities. He was able by such methods to produce entirely new species, such as crosses between a plum and an apricot (a “plumcot”), which had previously been considered impossible to achieve.

His pet project was the spineless cactus. He hoped that this hardy plant would provide fodder for animals who otherwise were unable to eat it.

It is ironic that although most of Burbank’s new plant varieties continued to breed true indefinitely, the spineless cactus (about which he elaborated regarding apparent psi influence more than about other plants) did not. It reverted to producing spines in the decades after his death. Evidence has also been presented by skeptics that spineless varieties existed prior to Burbank’s and that his “spineless” cacti still had little sharp spicules.

It is considered a creditable achievement to develop even one new variety of plant in a botanical career. To develop over 800 is astounding. The closest anyone else has come through modern methods of selective plant breeding is to produce about 100 new varieties of plants. It seems a reasonable hypothesis, in view of the above, that Burbank was gifted with biological PK ability.

Further Evidence for Lamarckian Genetics

To build a thesis on the basin of one man’s work might seem rather precarious. Is there any other evidence for the ability of individuals to influence inherited characteristics?

Two papers in parapsychology relate to this question.

Carroll Nash (1984) tested the abilities of ungifted college volunteers to produce mutation of Escherichia coli bacteria from lac-negative to lac-positive forms in three culture tubes and to produce the reverse mutation in three tubes. “The mutant ratio of lac-positive to total bacteria was greater in the promoted than in the inhibited tubes, with two-tailed p < .005; less in the inhibited tubes than in the controls, with two-tailed p < .02; and greater in the promoted tubes than in the controls, although not significantly so. ” These results may also be interpreted to indicate selective growth of one type of bacterium over the other rather than mutation of one type into another. Were this the case, though this would still be evidence for a biological PK effect, it would be irrelevant in evidence for environmental influence on genetics.

William Cox hypothesized that in families where there were several children of the same sex there would be a motivation to produce a child of the opposite sex. Studying families with either four boys or four girls, to see whether there was a greater than chance occurrence of opposite-sex birth in the fifth child. He found a modestly significant greater incidence of boys born as fifth children after four girls, but the reverse did not prove significant.

The case of Paul Kammerer is worth mentioning (Koestler). Kammerer had an unusual ability to breed amphibians and reptiles in captivity. He succeeded in raising varieties which no other zoologist had been able to breed previously in captivity. This may suggest no more than patience or especially tender, loving attention, which has been demonstrated in other laboratory workers to enhance the vitality and resistance of laboratory animals (Dossey, p 61-2). However, inherent in such processes may be elements of psychic healing.

But Kammerer also explored the influence of environment on genetics. In simple experiments he placed salamanders with dark skins (with small yellow patches) in cages which had yellow earth. Over successive generations they developed increasingly greater areas of yellow on their skin, until they were soon mostly yellow. Conversely, in lizards which started with mostly light skin, he was able to bring about development of greater areas of dark skin in successive generations by placing them on black earth.

Many of Kammerer’s experiments were not repeated by others. He was discredited after World War I when a toad specimen from his laboratory was found to have been altered with india ink in a manner that suggested fraud. Kammerer suicided shortly after accusations of fraud were made against him.

No one disputed that Kammerer had an unusual gift for raising and breeding amphibians and reptiles in the laboratory. This in itself may represent a measure of psi ability. The production of the apparent genetic changes in the salamanders and frogs may have been due to psi talents in the experimenter which were not consciously utilized or even recognized by himself or others.

Discussion

The Darwinian view that evolution is determined by environmental selection acting upon genetic endowment has been favored because it has the support of theories and research evidence. This has led to the belief that the Lamarckian hypothesis that environmental factors may influence genetic propensities is disproved. These theories are not mutually exclusive. Both may be correct. That is, Darwinian selection of the fittest genes may coexist with Lamarckian influences upon them.

The Lamarckian hypothesis appears best supported by evidence from reports of Burbank’s work. The work of Kammerer is also suggestive, though clouded by questions of possible fraud. It is unfortunate that in these men’s time there were few who were open to exploration of psi phenomena. They had to work in isolation, eventually carrying much of their knowledge to the grave.

An alternative possibility to Burbank’s influencing plants via biological PK is that he was able to select precognitively or clairsentiently those specimens which contained the characteristics he sought. This does not appear a reasonable alternative hypothesis for Nash’s experiment or Kammerer’s work.

Several other scientists have proposed similar observations.

Stephen Gould suggests that the existence of a need in an animal species could lead to the development of physical characteristics that are of benefit to that species. In some instances there have, in fact, developed characteristics that are very difficult to postulate explanations for under Darwinian theory. Gould gives the example of the panda’s extra, sixth digit on its forelimbs that is highly useful in splitting the bamboo shoots which are the principal item in the panda’s diet. There is a very low probability of an extra digit developing by random mutations. A more likely hypothesis seems the mechanism of Lamarckian genetics.

Rupert Sheldrake proposes that a morphogenetic field could explain such phenomena. This is a psi field of species-specific, shared experiences. Individual of a given species contribute their personal life experiences to this field of awareness, which then becomes available to other members of that species. This could explain behaviors such as migration, and the appearances of physical characteristics such as the camel’s thick knee pads.

Further research is suggested to test the Lamarckian hypothesis

1. Cross-fertilization of plants, fruit flies, or bacteria can be used as a random system for psi experiments, where the object will be for subjects to selectively influence successive generations to produce more individuals with particular characteristics.

2. Refinements of Nash’s experiment should be sought, wherein growth vs. genetic influence can be distinguished.

3. The experiments of Kammerer can be repeated, with the inclusion of psi-gifted subjects who might inject the crucial ingredient of biological PK into the experiment. The abjection of conventional science that the experiment must be repeatable by anyone cannot be sustained when one appreciates that psi ability is not equally manifested in every individual. (In fact, there is evidence from the sheep/goat observations (Palmer, 1971; 1972; Lovitts) to suggest that skepticism may lead to a negative psi effect, so that scientists seeking to disprove the Lamarckian hypothesis may have been influencing their materials parapsychologically in accordance with their beliefs.)

4. Highly gifted botanists and/or biologists who produce unusual results in their experiments may be:
A. Studied for psi abilities, which might explain some of their gifts; and
B. Encouraged to develop their talents as useful gifts rather than reject them as aberrations.

5. Other experimenter effects appear worth investigating, with psi factors in mind (Rosenthal; Solfvin).

6. Highly gifted scientists in other fields may be similarly studied. Nikolas Tesla certainly comes to mind as an example of a scientist who might have been similar to Burbank.

References

Benor, Daniel J. (1984) Fields and energies related to healing; A review of Soviet and Western studies, Psi Research 3(1), 8-15.

Benor, Daniel J. (1985) Believe it and you’ll be it: Visualization in psychic healing, Psi Research 4(1), 21-56.

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volumes I-IV, Southfield, MI: Vision Publications (in press).

Braud, William G. (1980) Lability and inertia in conformance behavior, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 74, 297-318.

Burbank, Luther with Hall, Wilbur. (1921) The Harvest of the Years , Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Clampett, Frederick W. Luther Burbank. (1926) “Our Beloved Infidel,” His Religion of Humanity ; Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Cox, William E. (1957) The influence of “applied psi” upon the sex of offspring, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 39, 65-77.

Dossey, Larry. (1982) Space, Time and Medicine, Boulder and London: Shambhala.

Dreyer, Peter. (1975) A Gardner Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther. Burbank, New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan.

Edge, Hoyt L. et al. (1986) Foundations of Parapsychology , Boston and London; Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Gould, Stephen Jay. (1980) The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History , New York/ London: W. W. Norton.

Hall, Manly P. (1959 Winter) Philosophical Research Society Journal , cited in Kraft and Kraft p. 131.

Harwood, William S. (1906) A wonder-worker of sciences: An authoritative account of Luther Burbank’s unique work in creating new forms of plant life, Century Magazine 656-67, 821-837.

Jordan, David Starr. (1905 Jan) Some experiments of Luther Burbank, Popular Science Monthly 201-225.

Koestler, Arthur. (1971) The Case of the Midwife Toad . New York: Random House.

Kraft, Ken. Kraft, Pat. (1967) Luther Burbank, The Wizard and the Man , New York: Meredith.

Lovitts, Barbara E. (1981) The sheep-goat effect turned upside down, Journal of Parapsychology 45, 293-310.

Nash, Carroll B. (1984) Test of psychokinetic control of bacterial mutation. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 78(2), 145-152.

Nash, Carroll B. (1956) Parapsychology: The Science of Psiology . Springfield, IL: C. C. Thomas.

Palmer, J. (1971) Scoring in ESP tests as a function of belief in ESP. Part I: The sheep-goat effect. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 65, 373-408.

Palmer, J. (1972) Scoring in ESP tests as a function of belief in ESP. Part II, Beyond the sheep-goat effect. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 66, 1-26.

Rosenthal, R. Rubin, D.R. (1978) Interpersonal Expectancy Effects; The First 345 Studies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, 377-415.

Schmidt, H. (1973) PK tests with a high-speed random number generator. Journal of Parapsychology 37, 105-118.

Schmidt, H. (1974) Comparison of PR action on two? different random number generators. Journal of Parapsychology 38, 47-55.

Schmidt, H. (1975) Toward a mathematical theory of psi. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 69, 267-291.

Sheldrake, Rupert. (1981) A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation . Los Angeles: Tarcher; Rev. Ed. 1987.

Solfvin, Gerald. (1982) Psi expectancy effects an psychic healing studies with malarial mice. European Journal of Parapsychology 4(2), 160-197.

Stanford, Rex G. (1977) Conceptual frameworks of contemporary psi research , In: Wolman, B. B. (Ed.) Handbook of Parapsychology, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold 823-858.

Stanford, Rex G. (1978) Toward reinterpreting psi events. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 72, 197-214.

Tompkins, Peter. Bird, Christopher. (1972) The Secret Life of Plants . New York/ London: Harper & Row p. 126-134.

Walker, E.H. (1974) Consciousness and quantum theory , In: White, J. (Ed.), Psychic Exploration . New York, Putnam’s Sons 544-568.

Walker, E.H. (1975) Foundations of paraphysica1 and parapsychological phenomena . In: Oteri, L. (Ed.), Q uantum Physics and Parapasychology . New York: Parapsychology Foundation 1-53.

Walker, E.H. A response to criticisms of the quantum theory of psi phenomena. Research in Parapsychology 1981. New Jersey/ London: Scarecrow 1982, 68-72.

Whitson, John. John, Robert.Williams, Henry Smith (Eds.). (1915) Luther Burbank, His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application, Prepared from His Original Field Notes Covering More than 100,000 Experiments Made During Forty Years Devoted to Plant Improvement . New York/ London: Luther Burbank Society Vols 1-XII.

Wolman, Benjamin B. (Ea.). (1977) Handbook of Parapsychology , New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Yogananda, Paramahansa. (1983) Autobiography of a Yogi. Los Angles: Self-Realization Fellowship p. 411-417.

A briefer version of this article appears as:

Benor, Daniel J. Lamarckian genetics: Theories from psi research and evidence from the work of Luther Burbank. Research in Parapsychology 1987, Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow 1988.

Resources on spiritual healing

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007 (Orig. 2001)
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Professional Supplement)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2001.
Only the annotated, critiqued 191 randomized controlled studies and the pilot studies – described in much greater detail, including statistical information.

Resources for exploring messages from your body

WHEE: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively®
AKA
Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT
Potent self-healing method for releasing emotional and physical stress, pains, residues of traumas
Workbook WHEE for pain Articles

Resources for explaining the mind-body connection

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts? Wholistic Healing and Bioenergies,Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2005
Popular edition Explains self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) and bioenergies, and discusses ways in which you can heal yourself.

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality

You may quote from or reproduce this article if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1994, 2003. Reprinted with permission of the author Daniel J. Benor, M.D. P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@danielbenor.com

You may quote from or reproduce this article if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 2000 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@danielbenor.com

Hands-On Help

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 19:50:00 GMT

A considerable body of research shows that spiritual healing is an effective treatment.
Daniel Benor, M.D. reports on how healing is finding applications in clinical practice.

Anecdotes abound on the benefits of spiritual healing in acute and chronic conditions of all sorts (Benor, 1993; Krieger, 1979). Healers find that most patients will relax very quickly with healing. Acute and chronic pains of all causes are relieved, often within minutes. Healing is particularly helpful for conditions in which conventional treatments have limited results. Arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome (ME), multiple sclerosis and cancer are only a few of the diseases in which healing may produce beneficial effects. Nearly every ailment known to man has been reported to respond in some instances to healing. Only occasionally is the response immediate and total, in effect a “miraculous” cure. Far more frequently the response is one of gradual relief of symptoms and improvement in psychological and spiritual attitudes (Benor, Volume III, in press).

There are more than 8,000 healers registered with the major healing organisations in the UK, practicing under a unified code of conduct. More than 30,000 nurses in the United States practice Therapeutic Touch healing (Krieger, 1979).

Most healers claim that approximately 80 percent of their healees respond in some fashion, though these claims are largely unsupported. Surveys of healees show a high rate of satisfaction with their treatment (Attevelt; Benor, 1993; Boucher; Cohen; Harvey; Riscalla). Such studies are generally dismissed by clinicians. Spiritual healing is often viewed as a treatment of last resort, probably no more than a placebo but beneficial at least in the human caring and touch which are tendered by healers.

Few are aware of the considerable body of research published on spiritual healing, including more than a dozen doctoral dissertations, most of which were done by nurses. A review of 155 controlled studies of healing shows that healing can produce significant effects in humans, animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in vitro, enzymes and more (Benor, 1993). Since the clinical research wash, reviewed in an earlier issue of Nursing Times (Benor, Nursing Times, 1991), only a brief survey is presented here.

Healing has been shown to have significant effects on cardiovascular problems in hospitalised patients (Byrd, 1988), on wound healing (Wirth and Richardson, 1993; Wirth, 1990), blood pressure (Miller; Quinn, 1989), diabetes mellitus (Wirth, in press), pain (Keller; Wirth, Complementary, 1993), anxiety (Heidt; Quinn, 1982; Ferguson; Fedoruk; Braud, 1989), and haemoglobin levels (Krieger, 1975).

If healing were a medicine it would be available at the pharmacy.

Healing is safe and has no known deleterious side effects. Pain is occasionally increased temporarily in the initial healing treatments. This is actually a positive sign, usually indicating that a shift in the process underlying the pain is under way. With continued treatments the pain is usually diminished. A measure of the safety of spiritual healing is the cost of a healer’s annual malpractice insurance, less than ?5.

The UK is a world leader in the integration of healing with conventional medicine. Healing is being recommended by a growing number of doctors as a useful complementary therapy. There are healers working in GP surgeries and in hospital pain, cancer and cardiac rehabilitation centers. Some of the healers are paid for their services by their local FHSA.

Nurses and doctors are learning to develop their own healing gifts. Doctors are receiving Postgraduate Education Allowance credits for these courses. In the courses and workshops I lead, about 90 percent of doctors and nurses find that they have a measure of healing abilities. Healing is like most other gifts, such as playing the piano. It can be developed with practice. The Doctor-Healer Network provides a forum for doctors, nurses and healers to explore these clinical integrations and the development of their own healing gifts ( The Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter ).

In my practice of psychotherapy combined with healing I find that each method potentiates the other. The two in combination are more effective than either alone. Spiritual healing may alleviate some of the stresses and anxieties associated with therapy. Psychotherapy may help healees to integrate emotions released during spiritual healing. Nurses, doctors and many complementary therapy practitioners find that healing is a helpful adjunct to their clinical work.

Despite the research evidence and strongly positive clinical experience, it has been difficult for many carers to accept that healing might be an effective intervention. In part this has been due to a self-perpetuating vicious circle in publishing articles on healing. Because spiritual healing has been viewed as a “fringe” therapy, until the last few years professional journals have hesitated to publish articles on healing. This has limited the awareness of the efficacy of healing. In part this is due also to scepticism that a simple, gentle, laying-on of hands, combined with a mental healing focus, could produce benefits beyond placebo effects. Even with awareness of the strongly significant research evidence, carers generally remain sceptical until they have observed personally the clinical effects of healing — either on their patients, their family members, or themselves.

Sceptics reject healing as unpredictable or unreliable. This is no more true than with many other forms of therapy in which the outcome is unpredictable in a given percent of cases. Perhaps as health care professionals observe the work of healers more closely, patterns of illness which are predictively responsive to healing will be identified.

Some of the hesitation to use spiritual healing is engendered by confusions of terminology. A commonly used term is “faith” healing, implying that faith is required for healing to occur. This is clearly not an absolute requirement, as evidenced by the responses of non-human subjects to healing. “Spiritual” healing is not to be confused with “spiritualist” healing. Some hold the view that healing is, or should be, provided exclusively under the auspices of the clergy. Some religious institutions, in fact, teach that if healing is not given under their exclusive auspices it may be the work of the devil. This ignores reports that healing is given in every known country and society around the world, under every known religion. Spiritual healing often opens people to personal awarenesses of spiritual aspects of their lives.3 In serious or terminal illnesses, especially in the palliative phases of treatment, this is a major contribution of healing to health care ( The Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter , No. 4).

Spiritual healing is a multi-faceted treatment

The lack of a comprehensive and commonly acceptable theory to explain healing has also led clinicians to hesitate in accepting healing. After a decade and a half of study, my own view is that healing is a multi-faceted treatment. It has a definite component of suggestion. People come for healing with the expectation that something will improve. (Often there may be even exaggerated expectations, which may lead to disappointment if proper explanations are not given along with the healing treatments.) The controlled studies, including positive effects on non-human subjects, confirm that healing is more than suggestion.

There is a component of self-healing involved. Evidence is growing from the literature on psychoneuroimmunology that people have a vast potential to enhance the functioning of their own immune (Solomon) and cardiovascular (Ornish) systems and more (Goleman). Spiritual healing may activate these self-healing processes. There is also a component of biological energy medicine in spiritual healing. Albert Einstein proposed that matter and energy are interchangeable. Modern physics has amply confirmed this theory. Newtonian medicine has been slow to integrate that the body may be considered energy as well as matter. Healers have been saying all along that they are addressing the biological energies of the body. The considerable evidence from spiritual healing research and research on a broad range of complementary therapies supports this claim (Benor, 1994).

A measure of the efficacy healing is emerging in cost effectiveness studies. Dr Michael Dixon, a GP in Devon, has shown that having a healer in his practice reduced his medications bill and halved the numbers of visits of people with chronic problems which had not responded to conventional therapies (Dixon).

On the basis of the published evidence, if healing were a medicine, it would be available at your pharmacy.

References:

Attevelt, J.T.M. (1988) Research into Paranormal Healing, Doctoral Dissertation , State University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Benor, D.J. (1993) Healing Research: Volume I . Munich/ Oxford: Helix. (Rev. ed. Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, in press (2000).

Benor, D.J. (2000) Healing Research: Volume III . Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, in press.

Benor, D. J. (1991) Spiritual healing in clinical practice, Nursing Times 87 (44), 35-37.

Benor, D.J. (1993) Healing Research: Volume II . Munich/ Oxford: Helix (Rev. ed. Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, in press (2000).

Boucher, F.K. (1980) The Cadences of Healing: Perceived Benefits from Treatment Among the Clientele of Psychic Healers , PhD Dissertation, Univ. California, Davis.

Braud, W. Schlitz, M. (1989) A methodology for the objective study of transpersonal imagery. Journal of Scientific Exploration 3(1) 43-63.

Byrd, R.C. (1988) Positive therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care unit population. Southern Medical Journal 81(7), 826-829.

Cohen, J. (1990) Spiritual healing: a complementary role in general practice, Modern Medicine (Sep), 663-665.

Dixon, M. A healer in GP practice, Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter 1993-4 (Winter), No. 4, 6-7.

The Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter , No. 4, features articles on healing unto death and healing for bereavement.

Fedoruk, R.B. Transfer of the Relaxation Response: Therapeutic Touch as a Method for the Reduction of Stress in Premature Neonates , Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Maryland 1984.

Ferguson, C.K. Subjective Experience of Therapeutic Touch (SETTS): Psychometric Examination of an Instrument , Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin 1986.

Goleman, D. Gurin, J. (1993) Mind Body Medicine , Yonkers, NY: Consumer Reports Books.

Harvey, D. (1983) The Power to Heal: An Investigation of Healing and the Healing Experience , Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Aquarian.

Heidt, P. An investigation of the effect of Therapeutic Touch on the anxiety of hospitalized patients , Unpublished PhD Dissertation, New York University 1979. Summarised in: Heidt, P. Effect of therapeutic touch on anxiety level of hospitalized patients. Nursing Research 1981, 30 (1), 32-37 [19].

Keller, E. Bzdek, V.M. (1986) Effects of Therapeutic Touch on tension headache, pain, Nursing Research 101-104. (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Missouri 1983).

Krieger, D. (1979) The Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help or Heal, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Krieger, D. (1975) Therapeutic Touch: The imprimatur of nursing, American Journal of Nursing 7, 784-787.

Miller R.N.(1982) Study of remote mental healing, Medical Hypotheses 8, 481-490.

Ornish, D. Dean. (1992) Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease , New York: Ballantine.

Quinn, J. An investigation of the effect of Therapeutic Touch without physical contact on state anxiety of hospitalized cardiovascular patients, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, New York University 1982.

Quinn, J.F. (1989) Therapeutic Touch as energy exchange: replication and extension. Nursing Science Quarterly 2(2), 79-87.

Riscalla, L.M. (1982) A study of religious healers and healees, Journal of the American Society for Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine 29(3), 97- 103.

Solomon, G.F. (1985) The emerging field of psychoneuroimmunology with a special note on AIDS, Advances 2, 1 6-19.

Wirth, D.P. (1990) The effect of noncontact therapeutic touch on the healing rate of full thickness dermal wounds, Subtle Energies 1(1), 1-20.

Wirth, D.P. et al. (1993) The effect of complementary healing therapy on postoperative pain after surgical removal of impacted third molar teeth, Complementary Therapies in Medicine 1, 133-138.

Wirth, D.P. Mitchell, B.J. Complementary healing and insulin requirements for Type 1 diabetes mellitus patients, Journal of Scientific Exploration , In Press.

Wirth, D.P. Richardson, J.T. Eidelman, W.S. O’Malley, A.C. (1993) Full thickness dermal wounds treated with noncontact therapeutic touch: a replication and extension, Complementary Therapies in Medicine 1, 127-132.

Resources on spiritual healing

Resources for exploring messages from your body

Resources for explaining the mind-body connection

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II : (Professional edition)
Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2004.
Thorough review of research validating the efficacy of self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM), biological energies, and environmental interactions with bioenergies.
“Book of the Year” award – The Scientific and Medical Network, UK

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume I I : (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts? Wholistic Healing and Bioenergies,Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2005
Popular edition Explains self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) and bioenergies, and discusses ways in which you can heal yourself.

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality

Healing Research, V. 3
Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (November 2006)

Reaching Higher and Deeper
Workbook for Healing Research, Volume 3 : Personal Spirituality:
Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007

Published as: Benor, D.J. Hands-on help, Nursing Times , 1994, 90(44), 28-29.
You must contact Nursing Times, UK for permission to quote from this article . Andrew Heenan Editor, http://www.nursingtimes.net/ Tel. ++ 44 (0)20 7874 0453
After obtaining Nursing Times permission, you have my permission to quote all or part of this article if you include the following credits and email contact

Medical Student Health Awareness ‘THE LOUISVILLE PROGRAM’

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 19:25:00 GMT

Daniel J. Benor, MD

…If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. There is no middle road…
Oh Shinnah – Odyssey of a warrior woman
In: Steven McFadden – Profiles in Wisdom

A remarkable programme has been available at the University of Louisville Medical School since 1980. It introduces entering freshmen to concepts and approaches which, surprisingly, are not presented in many conventional medical school curricula. Included are nutrition, exercise, relaxations (using music, art, song and Tai Chi), social support systems with peers and upper classpersons, health maintenance and disease prevention, time management and specific study skills for medical school, awareness of professionals’ liability to substance abuse, and more.

This programme addresses the tendency of doctors to overlook their own physical and emotional health needs. Recent BBC television series have focused on the enormous strains encountered by student doctors. Their many years of training demand long hours of study and service in hospitals and clinics, often exceeding 90 hours per week. Few medical schools provide education in how to cope with such stresses. It is little wonder that doctors have the highest rates of any professional group for depression, alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide.

The Louisville medical freshmen are invited through a letter included in their registration papers to this four day voluntary programme which immediately precedes the start of formal studies. Over the past few years more than 90 percent have elected to participate, despite the extra investment in time and costs of lodging.

I was fortunate to be able to observe the programme for the class of 1997 (identified by their date of graduation from the four years of studies).

Second year students volunteer to be Health Tutors to groups of 10-15 freshmen. The Tutors are one of the most effective of the spectrum of aids available in this programme. In semi-formal panel discussions and in informal contacts they were very open in sharing their own anxieties and coping styles for dealing with the stresses of the gruelling course of medical studies. It is sobering to hear that most students find that they have only a few hours in the week for activities not related directly to studies or to household chores for survival. The Tutors described their individual preferences for relaxation, many mentioning physical exercise in some form. The school has responded to this by making available an exercise room and a volleyball court, both very popular and heavily used.

The Tutors meet with their groups daily during the programme and then regularly through the first year. They are also available for consultation on professional and personal problems.

Leah Dickstein, M.D., Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Associate Dean for Faculty and Student Advocacy, is the staff coordinator for the programme. She has specialised in counselling students over many years and is very obviously a most caring and concerned person, ideally suited to this role. She makes herself available to the students at any time, day or night, asking only that students not approach her with minor problems which might be addressed by other staff.

Other faculty members volunteer to lecture, to supervise student groups, and to be available for consultation to students over school and personal problems.

The caring, warmth and good humour of all participants set a very encouraging tone to four days devoted to stress prevention and management.

Doing is more impressive than talking about doing. This is immediately demonstrated by the breakfast awaiting the anxious students who start to appear well before the 8am time set for this nutritional greeting. Each day a series of healthy vegetarian (and occasional poultry) dishes are prepared under the supervision a nutritionist, Nancy Kupper, who manages the fine balance of being knowledgeable and informative while not sounding preachy. For the first three days the second year Tutors are the chefs. On the last day freshman volunteer for this task. The gastronomic introduction is reinforced with a lecture on healthy diet, with emphasis on counting the fat units which contribute to atherosclerosis and hypertension, some of the major causes of illness and death in western society.

A hefty pile of papers and booklets is handed out upon registration.

Prominent amongst these is a cookbook with many delicious vegetarian recipes and a table of fat contents of many common, store-bought items, including, of course, Kentucky fried chicken.

The red-covered MUSH (Medical Student Unauthorized Survival Handbook) outlines many of the points covered by the Tutors in their discussions. It recommends study practices, note-taking services, recourses when encountering difficulties in studies, etc. It also provides lists of popular local entertainment spots and ‘watering holes’. This volume is re-edited yearly by graduating first year student volunteers as a legacy to the next class.

Steps to Good Health is another ring-bound handout which provides more formal information about medical school requirements and expectations, as well as student recourses should they have formal grievances. It has suggestions for relaxation and other approaches to health maintenance.

Dr Dickstein leads off the lectures, pointing out some of the contributions of nutrition to health and disease. It is sobering to realise that over 450 milligrams per day of caffeine actually interferes with learning. (One cup of drip coffee contains 100 mg.) Other stresses are discussed. Dr Dickstein repeatedly emphasizes the importance of relaxation time for emotional and intellectual refuelling in order to increase productivity. Catnaps are highly recommended.

School policies support the approach of the health awareness programme. Examination marks are given on a pass/fail basis. Students are encouraged to cooperate in collaborative note-taking and studies and are discouraged from competition. The motto, ‘P=MD’ (Pass = Medical Doctor), is repeatedly mentioned. Several lecturers cited Bernie Siegel’s caveat that MD does not stand for Medical Deity .

Intellectual pursuits outside of medicine are encouraged. A librarian archivist briefly reviewed some of the local history of Louisville. A marvellous lecture on physicians as artists and an art show featuring works of physicians illustrated this avenue for relaxation. First prize at the show was awarded for a violin built by a doctor who was enchanted by this instrument when his girlfriend took him to his first concert a few years earlier.

Joel Elkes, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, is the co-founder of the Health Awareness Program. Though he was unable to participate in it personally this year, his presence was felt – particularly through presentations of the Arts in Medicine faculty. It is most difficult to do justice to the experiential presentations of these vibrantly alive people.

Adam Blatner, M.D. is the only psychiatrist in the U.S. specialising in psychodrama. He playfully introduced ‘The Talk Show Host Game’ with Dr Dickstein, in which one of a pair is designated interviewer and the other is free to be anyone or anything s/he wishes to be. The interviewers get to ask questions, and the guests must answer truthfully about themselves while maintaining their chosen identity. Imagine a two-ton truck or a refrigerator being interviewed! This was but one of the many opportunities for students to get to know each other.

Alice Cash, PhD, Coordinator of Music Therapy services, had students toning and explained and demonstrated the differences between this and chanting.

While emphasizing the positive and preventive sides of health care, the programme also encouraged open discussion of difficulties which might challenge medical students.

The dangers of alcoholism were highlighted with a film based on a true life story of a physician who slid into using drink too heavily as a stress reliever – ending in a divorce and professional censure. Several doctors who had overcome alcohol and substance abuse problems spoke openly of their struggles and mentioned the sorts of help which are available to doctors who find themselves in such difficulties.

The problems of people with AIDS and the adjustments of homosexuals in the medical professions were discussed by people who were dealing with these themselves.

Rev Kelley Milstead Woggon, a Baptist minister who is also a psychologist specialising in perinatal support groups, discussed aspects of faith which are relevant to doctors. She highlighted the World Health Organisation’s definition of health as the complete state of physical, mental, emotional and social wellbeing – not only the absence of disease. Here was the clear voice of a healer who championed caring over curing and who pointed out that death is not an enemy.

I found it personally jarring to have this lecture on healing followed by two discussions of campus security and safety issues. These are necessary because the hospital is located in a high crime area. Perhaps this unfortunate superimposition was an artifact of scheduling arrangements. Perhaps the bracketing of the anxiety-provoking with the spiritual and relaxing was intentional, as the municipal and campus police were followed by an experiential demonstration of Tai Chi. This Oriental form of exercise has been shown in China to be highly effective in preventing and treating numerous illnesses.

Issues of ethics along with professional and personal attitudes were discussed throughout the four days of the programme. I found it highly instructive to view a film on subtle sexual prejudices, in which attitudes normally expressed towards women were demonstrated towards men. For example, a hospital Consultant greeted two female doctors by their professional titles and surnames, while patronisingly addressing the male doctors by their first names. I hadn’t been aware of how insidiously pervasive these subtle sexual prejudices can be.

It was encouraging to find that women made up close to half of the Louisville Medical School class. Dr Dickstein emphasized that students should not tolerate stresses of sexual harrassment and pointed out the official recourses available to them should they encounter this.

Stress prevention through exercise was heavily emphasized through a lecture on relaxation therapy and through invitations to participate in daily athletics activities, including outdoors games and sports at several picnics. Several afternoons during the programme were left open for the students’ relaxations of choice.

Support groups for exceptional students (older, coming from non-science backgrounds, married, having handicapped family members, etc.), for students’ spouses and for children are excellent stress prevention and management resources provided as part of the programme. Here again the student Tutors were most helpful, demonstrating through their own successful experiences that it is possible to deal successfully with the stresses of medical school. Picture to yourself, for instance, a single mother of one or two or three children dealing with the burdens of medical training. I am personally in awe of these dedicated folk who find the ways to meet the demands of family life while putting in such long hours in studies. The school also provides tutoring for the exceptional students and for other students who find a particular subject difficult to master.

Why, you might ask, would the editor of this Newsletter invest so much time and effort in travelling to such a distant place and, more relevant, share such detailed information on these pages? If health care is to include more healing, doctors are a potential resource to provide this. Readers of this Newsletter might consider how to introduce more healing into conventional medical settings, few of which begin to approach the comprehensive programme available in Louisville.

You may quote from or reproduce these editorial clips if you include the following credits and email contact:

Aspects of Spiritual Healing and the Spiritualization of Matter

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 18:34:00 GMT

In our reductionistic Western world we are taught that reality is “objective.” We are led to believe that there is a constancy to the world and that it is consistently measurable by reliable scientific instruments. I will address these beliefs from the perspective of more than a dozen years of research in psi healing (commonly termed spiritual, mental, faith, shamanistic, bioenergetic, subtle energy, vibrational, psychic, divine, unconventional or paranormal healing).

First, let me define what I mean by psi healing and add a few words about the obvious confusion in terminology, a clear indication that there has been a lack of clarity in considering these phenomena.

Psi healing is the intentional influence of one or more people upon one or more living systems without utilizing known physical means of intervention. It is commonly practiced in two major ways: 1. With a laying-on of hands – the hands lightly touching or held near to the body, often combined with visualizations; and 2. With meditation, prayer, or other focused intent, again often combined with visualizations. The two are often used simultaneously. I shall use the term healing to mean psi healing, not to be confused with physiological process of healing.

Lawrence LeShan pioneered the investigation of healing, and laid the groundwork for scientific approaches to the study of healing. He points out that a common denominator amongst healers is the visualization of the healer being “one with” the healee and with the “All”. His book, The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist is highly recommended for a discussion of the second type of healing. Dolores Krieger pioneered the application of laying-on of hands healing, and her books on Therapeutic Touch are also highly recommended. My own books, Healing Research , Volumes I – IV consider these matters through the eyes of research.

I mention all of these because healing is, above all, an individual and subjective phenomenon. It is from the realms of experience we label noetic or ineffable. This means that we can know aspects of healing through inner awarenesses that are clearly perceptible but very difficult to describe in words. This is especially true in Western society, where our language is heavily biased towards the material aspects of experience. From that vantage point, we are led to believe that whatever is not perceivable by the outer senses and measurable with mechanical, electromagnetic or particle physics instruments is considered “non” sense or “im” material .

I shall return to some of these difficulties following further descriptions of what healing is – from clinical and research perspectives.

My personal introduction to healing illustrates the difficulties a Western person can experience in learning about healing. As a medically trained doctor with a Batchelor’s degree in psychology and specialty training in psychiatry, plus research experience, I was most skeptical about healing. I had years of study, omniverous reading and clinical experience in how people can innocently and unconsciously misguide themselves into believing nearly anything – about themselves and each other. When Walter, a new-found friend, asked my opinion about healing in 1980, I told him in no uncertain terms: “I am convinced that healing can be no more than suggestion, placebo or other self-healing effects, defensive denial of unwanted illnesses, wishful thinking, and sometimes even deliberate charlatinism.”

Walter challenged me, “Have you ever personally observed a healer?” I had to admit I had never bothered to study something so obviously attributable to self deception. Somewhat reluctantly, I accepted his invitation to observe Ethel Lombardi, a Reiki healing Master. This challenge changed my life.

Ethel brought about a physical change in a young man that was impossible according to all my medical and psychological understanding of how the body functions. A lump under his nipple started out measuring 1 x 2 centimeters, was rubbery-firm (like an eraser), was more fixed than one would like to see in any lump (suggesting it might be invasive), and was quite tender. Ethel treated him with a laying-on of hands, placing her hands over the chakras — the energy centers on the midline of the body. After only half an hour, during which time the young man cried vigorously — without explaining what he was experiencing (that bothered me as a psychiatrist!) – the lesion had changed. It had shrunk by a centimeter, was soft, freely mobile and not tender.

Fortunately, another physician was there with me and we agreed on our palpation of the lesion before and after the healing. Otherwise I am certain I would have let what we call retrocognitive dissonance convince me that I must have mismeasured or misremembered my perceptions — in order to explain away something that contradicted my expectations and understandings of what can happen with a lump under a young man’s nipple in half an hour.

Tremendously impressed with Ethel’s healing, I went to the literature to see what research had been published. This was the start of a collection of 155 controlled studies of healing that is now published in my book. These include studies of humans, other animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in laboratory culture, enzymes and more. Some of the studies were with touch healing, some with hands held near the studied organisms, and some were done from distances of several meters to several miles. More than half of these studies demonstrate significant effects.

There can be little doubt that healing works. Let us examine one of the 155 controlled studies.

Distant healing produced significant effects in patients with cardiac problems. Randolph Byrd, M.D. arranged for prayer healing to be sent to 192 patients on a coronary care unit, while another 201 patients served as controls. This was done with a double-blind design, where neither the patients nor the treating or evaluating physicians knew which patients were sent the healing and which were not. The patients were randomly assigned to either of these groups, and no significant differences were noted between the groups on many variables. Highly significant effects were found in the treated group, in which there were lower incidences of intubation/ ventilation, use of antibiotics, cardiopulmonary arrest, congestive heart failure, pneumonia, and the use of diuretics. The study was published in the respected, conventional Southern Medical Journal in 1988.

On the basis of this evidence from the many significant studies, and in view of the absence of negative side effects of healing, I believe that if healing were a medicine it would be on the market.

How can we understand healing, which seems to occur through intention and subtle energies?

Albert Einstein pointed out, earlier in this century, that matter and energy are interchangeable. Quantum physics has amply confirmed his theory. Conventional, Newtonian medicine continues to address the body primarily as matter. Healers have been saying for a long time that they are addressing the energy body when they do healings. Allopathic and energy medicine approaches simply represent the two sides of Einstein’s equation, E = mc2.

Why is it so hard for conventional medicine and science to accept healing as a valid and potent treatment?

Modern science has gone through a similar process in assimilating the observations and theories of quantum physics.

Some of the observations of quantum physics, that relate to the energy side of the equation, are counter-intuitive to conventional, Newtonian physics, and to “everyday, common sense”. In conventional physics and medicine, linear interactions are the rule. (Note another prejudicial term.) We deal with measurable forces that produce measurable effects in material objects or chemicals.

In quantum physics, it has been shown that non-local effects may occur. An electron may be understood both as a particle and as a wave function. Single electrons may bilocate when passing through two slits. Time may flow backwards as well as forwards. The universe is so intricately interwoven that every element in it is ultimately influenced by every other element. An event may be considered as both occurring and not occurring — until an observer intervenes and determines which is the case. In other words, the observer cannot be separated from the system that is being observed. Much has been made of the similarities between modern physics and psi phenomena in excellent books, such as Fritjof Capra’s The Tao Physics , so I shall not belabour these.

I am fascinated as a psychiatrist and healer to review the psychological and social processes in the assimilation of the new concepts of quantum physics. It took several decades of research before these observations, that run counter to our ordinary experiences of the world, were accepted. A similar process is apparent with psi healing.

There may be greater difficulty with the acceptance of healing, however, as this involves a shift in world views with far more personal consequences than the abstract and highly theoretical shifts with quantum physics. Many people find it threatening to learn that another person might influence them through thoughts or intentions. Rather than examine and deal with their discomforts, they prefer to reject the threatening concepts and to distance themselves from those who propose them. This is analogous to the ancient method of killing the messenger who bears bad news. People who advocate a belief in healing may be discredited and may suffer various discriminations against them.

It took several decades for scientists to accept these counter-inutitive observations of modern physics. The same is happening with healing.

The experience of integrating spiritual healing with conventional medicine in England is instructive.

In the mid 1970s British healers formed a healing organization that lobbied the government to allow healers to treat patients in National Health Service hospitals. With one governmental decision, 1,500 hospitals were opened to healers.

In the early 1980s, healers joined in organizations that standardized a code of conduct. The code of conduct was sent to various medical, nursing and midwifery associations for review and was given their approval.

Since 1988, the Doctor-Healer Network has provided a forum for doctors, nurses and other conventional health care professionals to meet with healers, other complementary therapists and clergy to explore how healing can be integrated with conventional medical care.

There are DHN regional groups in England: London; Yorkshire; Lancaster; Bath/Bristol and others. There are General Ppractitioners who have healers working in their offices, and some of the healers are paid under the NHS. Many more doctors are referring patients to healers at the healers’ treatment rooms. Some doctors are developing their own healing gifts. Doctors can obtain postgraduate education allowance credits for learning to develop their healing gifts. Two hospital pain centers, three hospital cancer centers, a rheumatology ward and a cardiac rehabilitation center have healers working there regularly. The Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter shares the experiences of healers and doctors between DHN groups and with interested subscribers around the world.

How has this been possible? Clearly, the National Health Service, with its centralized, governmental management facilitated this process. England is also a country where eccentricities are cultivated, so that an interest in healing may be more tolerated than in the States.

Is this transformation possible in the US?

I believe it is.

The research data is crucial to doctors in considering whether they would have anything to do with healing. However, the research alone will not bring about changes. In addition to convincing people at an intellectual level, they must be introduced to healing experientially.

On an individual basis, it is very difficult to change the view of health care professionals. Each individual is afraid of peer censure, that can be brutally vicious. Doctors, nurses and researchers may imperil their professional advancement, research grants and their jobs by advocating something that their employers, supervisors or peers do not accept. (In many ways this is akin to the treatments received by heretics who espoused beliefs that differed from those of their religious compatriots. This has led some to suggest that scientism is the religion of the Western world.)

Getting doctors and nurses together in groups helps them to deal with these concerns. When one doctor lets on that he’s seen a good response in a patient from healing, and a second allows that someone in his own family responded well to healing, the ice is broken. Each empowers the others to speak up. Gradually, with several meetings over a number of months, the process of healers rubbing elbows with health care professionals leads to greater mutual understanding and to cross referrals of patients.

On broader fronts there are further approaches that can be fruitful.

Chiropractors have lobbied successfully to obtain recognition for their treatments, with almost no research evidence to support their claims or explanations for treatments.

I believe the public is learning to appreciate healing much more quickly than the health care professionals. One of my favorite cartoons is of a patient standing before the receptionist’s desk, asking: “Does the doctor hug?”

The public, voting with their dollars, are bringing about greater acceptance of complementary therapies. David Eisenberg, M.D. published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine in January, 1993, showing that almost as many dollars were spent in 1990 on complementary therapies as on conventional medical care. It was not long after that numbers of medical schools, including Harvard, introduced courses for medical students on complementary therapies.

In England, money also speaks. A General Practitioner published a study showing that the healer working in his practice saved money by halving the visits of patients with chronic problems and reduced their medication bills.

This has been a popular item in the news media.

The safety of healing is also impressive, with no known serious side effects. Safety can also be measured by malpractice insurance costs. Healers pay under four British pounds annually for roughly the same coverage for which doctors pay over a thousand pounds.

Much of the foregoing related to the material world with which we are familiar. Perhaps even more important is the opening to spirituality that occurs with involvement with healing.

Healing opens us to our spirituality.

Spirituality is an awareness that has atrophied in our society. Western culture is something of an aberration when compared to the majority of other cultures, where the spiritual dimensions are experienced and conceptualized as normal parts of existence — not paranormal, mystical, or to be rejected.

Again we must clarify our terminology. When I speak of the spiritual I intend to address those realms or dimensions where awareness can visit without the body, where time future and past are all in the now, and where form and space are mental constructs.

In these dimensions our spirits continue their existence and development between physical lives. There is research evidence for this from a wide range of psi phenomena, including: remote viewing (sometimes called travelling clairvoyance ); out-of-body, near-death and deathbed vision experiences; apparitions (ghosts); channeling and other mediumistic phenomena; and reincarnation research. The research evidence from these diverse fields is, overall, consistent and produces a coherent picture. We haven’t the time to go through this, but it is summarized in Volume III of Healing Research .

Suffice it to say that the spirit appears to be an eternal entity that precedes and survives physical existence. Physical existence upon earth appears to be a lesson that is chosen by our spirit prior to birth. Our consciousness continues after physical death. Should we not get a “passing grade” or learn the lessons needed in one physical lifetime, we may return again until the lessons are learned. Lessons continue on ever increasingly refined levels until we attain dimensions of group consciousness. Eventually, as the mystics say, the sparks from the original fire return to the eternal flame.

From the vantage of the spiritual dimensions, our existence within the material realms of earth is an exploration, or digression, into the very densest levels of energy. The material body is like a garment taken up by the spirit in order to explore particular lessons for the advancement of the soul. In our lessons we are repeatedly present us with choices regarding relationships, attitudes and actions. If we make poor decisions, we may not graduate into the next levels of existence, but might have to repeat the class with other teachers. If we do graduate and leave physical existence, we might choose an elective tutorial, sticking around in our spirit bodies in order to help those still struggling in the physical classrooms. At some point, we move on to further personal spiritual development in universities that we cannot even begin to comprehend from the vantage of our earthly existence and awareness.

Treat VI Conference Keynote Address, Virginia Beach, Virginia, April 30, 1994

Resources on spiritual healing

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007 (Orig. 2001)
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Professional Supplement)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2001.
Only the annotated, critiqued 191 randomized controlled studies and the pilot studies – described in much greater detail, including statistical information.

Resources for exploring messages from your body

WHEE: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively ^®
AKA
Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT
Potent self-healing method for releasing emotional and physical stress, pains, residues of traumas
Workbook WHEE for pain Articles

Resources for explaining the mind-body connection

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Professional edition)
Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2004.
Thorough review of research validating the efficacy of self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM), biological energies, and environmental interactions with bioenergies.
“Book of the Year” award – The Scientific and Medical Network, UK

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts? Wholistic Healing and Bioenergies,Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2005
Popular edition Explains self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) and bioenergies, and discusses ways in which you can heal yourself.

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality

Healing Research, V. 3
Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (November 2006)

Reaching Higher and Deeper
Workbook for Healing Research, Volume 3 : Personal Spirituality: Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007

You may quote part or all of this article if you include the following credits and email contact
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1994. Reprinted with permission of the author, P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@danielbenor.com

Spiritual Healing and Related Evidence: Implications Beyond Individual Treatment

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 18:14:00 GMT

Updated 8/27/2001

Psi healing and related evidence: implications beyond individual treatment

This paper accepts the existence of spiritual healing (also called psi healing, mental and paranormal healing) to be an established fact. The author has found 191 published studies of healing (Benor 2001a, b). Close to two thirds of these demonstrate significant effects. There is thus more research on healing than on most of the other complementary therapies, with the exception of acupuncture, hypnosis and psychoneuroimmunology.

Spiritual healing demonstrates that the mind of a healer can alter the conditions of organisms, including cells in vitro, bacteria, yeasts, plants, animals and humans. In addition, there is evidence that healers may influence water, crystallization of salt solutions and enzymes. Some of these studies show significant effects of healing at a distance.

These studies have focused on the question of whether healing exists and whether healing may influence particular target organisms or other systems. There is evidence that healing effects may extend beyond an individual or single target system. Healing may influence groups of bacteria or mice simultaneously. Anecdotal reports and the author’s experience indicate that healing directed at individual persons’ problems may influence their relationships with others.

There is evidence from healers that unconscious or subconscious needs and/or wishes of healees may link them telepathically with healers or with a source of healing. Anecdotal reports indicate that healees may draw healing to themselves and/or that healers may send healing without conscious awareness or even without specific intent.

Healers, New Age people, members of various religions and some psi (parapsychology) researchers believe that minds may link telepathically in meditation, prayer and group activities such as sports.

Clairvoyants and telepaths appear able to obtain information from an undefined source about anything they wish to know. This extends to intuitive diagnosis in healing. The existence of “super-ESP” is suggested by numerous experiments These facts imply that psi may link us to a collective consciousness or that it may connect us with information on demand from anyone, anywhere in the world.

Many of the experiments forming the basis for Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphogenetic fields suggest that a collective consciousness may for a basis for species-specific memory.

There is a growing awareness of “Gaia” as a geo-biological ecosystem.

The implications of the above are that psi may link us as individuals with other individuals and with our planet as cells are linked with each other to form an organism whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A growing awareness of “Gaia” as a unitary organism suggests that parapsychology has much to contribute about possible mechanisms whereby the parts may function as a whole.

At least one simple experiment is suggested to forge a link in this direction. Rex Stanford’s “conformance” theory postulates that psi acts readily upon systems that are in random flux. Cells dividing for reproductive purposes (in meiosis) appear to go through a phase where the individual genes arrange themselves randomly within chromosome pairs. This would appear to be a system that could be readily influenced by psi. A Mendelian bean color experiment could be performed in which subjects seek to influence more white or more black beans to be produced (Benor 1987).

Relevant References

Benor, D.J. ( 2001a ) Healing Research, Volume I , Scientific Validations of a Healing Revolution, Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.

Benor, D.J. ( 2001b ) Healing Research, Volume I , Professional Supplement, Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.

Benor, D.J. (1987) Lama rckian genetics: theories from psi research and evidence from the work of Luther Burbank, Proceedings of SPR Conference, Edinburgh, August.

Resources on spiritual healing

Benor, Daniel J. (2007) Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications. (Orig. 2001)
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Benor, Daniel J. (2001) Healing Research: Volume I, (Professional Supplement)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.
Only the annotated, critiqued 191 randomized controlled studies and the pilot studies – described in much greater detail, including statistical information.

Resources for exploring messages from your body

Resources for explaining the mind-body connection

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Professional edition)
Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2004.
Thorough review of research validating the efficacy of self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM), biological energies, and environmental interactions with bioenergies.
“Book of the Year” award – The Scientific and Medical Network, UK

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts? Wholistic Healing and Bioenergies,Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2005
Popular edition Explains self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) and bioenergies, and discusses ways in which you can heal yourself.

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality

Healing Research, V. 3
   Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (November 2006)

Reaching Higher and Deeper
Workbook for Healing Research, Volume 3 : Personal Spirituality:
   Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007

Y ou may reproduce all or any parts of this article as long as you include credits as follows:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, MD, 2004. All rights reserved. An expanded version of this article appears as Benor, Daniel J.
www.wholistichealingresearch.com       db@danielbenor.com

You must also obtain permission from, German translation: Hagia Chora to reproduce this article.

Wholistic Integrative Care

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Combines
•   Complementary/ Alternative Medicine
•   Integrative Care
•   Wholistic Healing

Introduction

There is a heightened interest in integrative care – the blending of complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) with conventional medical practice. On the one hand this is motivated by patients’ demands for services that complement conventional medical care, and on the other hand by health care providers’ awareness of economic opportunities and to a lesser extent by their awareness of the benefits of complementary therapies.

Wholistic approaches empower patients to participate in their own health care. They enhance the integrity and the spirit of dignity in the healing encounter between careseekers and caregivers – who are increasingly under pressures of time and monetary constraints that are eroding their roles as caregivers. Complementary therapies introduce philosophies and methods of health care that promote whole-person care and acknowledge the place and needs of the caregiver in this process.

While a growing number of medical and nursing schools have courses on CAM, many presentations lack important elements of these approaches. For example, very few courses focus on wholistic approaches that consider the person who has the illness rather than upon the illness the person has. In addition, the courses often focus on complementary therapy methodologies (e.g. inserting acupuncture needles at certain points to control pain) without the associated CAM philosophies of health care.

CAM introduces five broad themes

1. CAM therapies are potent interventions that can enhance health and help to treat many illnesses that conventional medicine has limited means to treat. Illnesses that can be helped include allergies; arthritis; asthma; heart disease; backaches, headaches, and other pains; irritable bowel syndromes; menopausal problems, urinary tract dysfunctions; neurological disorders (including post- traumatic brain disorders, such as cerebral palsy and strokes); cancers; AIDS; chronic fatigue syndrome; and many more.

Members of the public are rapidly learning the benefits of complementary therapies and are voting for them with their dollars in a big way. Several surveys have shown that just about as many dollars are paid (out of pocket) for complementary therapies as are paid (mostly out of insurance) for conventional medical care. Public pressure has been a major driving force in accelerating the pace of development of integrative care.

2. Wholistic and CAM therapies offer ways to humanize medical care . Both health care professionals and the public often complain about the dehumanization of conventional medical care. In the name of efficiency, and under the combined intense pressures of information overload, departmentalization/ mechanization/ bureaucratization of medical care, and financial pressures, doctors and nurses are being limited in the types of treatments they can offer and in the units of time per patient allotted to provide them.

a. Patients are dehumanized by conventional medical care . Patients are stripped of their responsibility for their own care when they come for examination and treatment. They are expected to follow the routines, orders and prescriptions of institutions, of doctors and of nurses and hospital orderlies without question. Under this system, you are described as “the chronic backache in bed 7” rather than “the person with the backache in bed 7.”

Members of the public are also choosing complementary therapists because they feel that doctors focus too much on their diseases and too little on themselves as people. CAM therapists spend 30-120 minutes per session with their clients, compared to 10-30 minutes for visits to doctors. Conventional medicine focuses on your symptom and disease management of your medical or surgical problems, while CAM therapies focus on you as the person who has the problems.

Some nurses and doctors who are sensitive to this aspect of medical care take wholistic approaches – which they might identify as good bedside manner. However, very little of wholistic philosophy is taught in medical schools. Under financial pressures nursing staff have been eliminated and the work load of the remaining few nurses has been increased and has been shifted towards more administration and less direct patient care. Nursing schools are more sensitive to this, but many nurses find that they are unable to apply these principles because their jobs have been pared down to focus increasingly on mechanized ministrations to patients’ physical needs, with little time permitted in their schedules for attention to psychological and spiritual needs.

b. Health care professionals are dehumanized by conventional medical care. Medical and nursing students very frequently complain that their professional studies are stultifying and dehumanizing – discouraging and squelching their idealism and sensitivity to feelings in themselves and in their patients.

Excuses are given by medical educators that the enormous load of information that must be studied in medical and nursing school leaves no time for “inessentials” such as discussions of stresses and feelings. Nursing and medical students are expected to ignore their feelings about patients, such as anxieties about caring adequately for their patients, dealing with patients’ grief, and dealing with fears about their own mortality — again with the excuse of time constraints.

The same applies to doctors and nurses after graduation. The pressures of heavy workloads and clinical responsibilities are taken as excuses for not budgeting time for self-care. This is certainly a major reason why medicine as a profession has one of the highest rates of burnout, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide.

Wholistic healing emphasizes self-care of the cargiver as a preventiion to such problems. Self-care that includes wholistic integrative care introduces health care practitioners experientially to these approaches.

3. Wholistic, integrative care empowers you to assume greater responsibility for your self-care. Conventional medical care disempowers people from taking responsibility for their own health. Health care professionals are the diagnosticians and prescribers of treatments for problems.

Wholistic approaches provide whole-person care – addressing people rather than diseases, caring rather than curing, using all possible therapeutic modalities rather than a limited few, and empowering respants wherever possible to use self-care approaches and to be active participants in decisions regarding their health.

The very word patient suggests a passive person who patiently waits for treatment. Bernie Siegel proposes that we use the word respant , designating people with problems as responsible participants in their own care.

4. Wholistic integrative care awakens and nurtures intuitive and spiritual awarenesses .
The western medical model is mechanistic and reductionistic. It assumes that physical causes will eventually be identified for all illnesses, just as they have been with infectious diseases, hormonal, and genetic disorders. It is a linear, either-or model.

Wholistic and integrative approaches are both-and models. While they acknowledge the contributions of conventional western medicine, they also include contributions of emotions, mind, relationships (with people and the environment), and spirit as vital factors in health and illness.

Wholistic care introduces concepts and practices that include the body-mind and person-spirit aspects of health and illness.

The importance of intuitive and spiritual awarenesses extend far beyond the therapeutic encounters of individuals. These awarenesses are vitally needed to address the ills of society and of Gaia, our planet.

5. The philosophies of wholistic integrative care enrich the lives of health carergivers and respants . Wholistic care includes the cultural traditions and philosophies that accompany the complementary therapies. In many cases these suggest lifestyle changes – such as diet, meditation, yoga, and the like – that you may find pleasant and helpful.

Many clinics and hospitals now offer some CAM modalities. Growing numbers of medical schools are offering courses in complementary/ alternative therapies. For the most part, aspects of these therapies are transferred into the medical model and are presented as methodologies that address symptoms. For example, acupuncture, chiropractic, and osteopathy are used for pain; Chinese herbs for eczema; and so on. The rich theoretical and philosophical contributions of these therapies are largely ignored, as well as the understanding of dis-ease that contributes to disease.

Knowing that there is an alternative to the Western medical model, particularly as it is practiced under managed care, may alert you to new, productive, more satisfying options through integrative care. There are many such models and practices.

Guiding philosophy for Wholistic Integrative Care

Terminology informs, guides, and shapes the actions of therapists and public. Particular attention to terminology will be given to clarifying new ways of conceptualizing and approaching health care.

Integrative Care : Allopathic Medicine combining with CAM Therapies.

Allopathic Medicine : Conventional, Western medical care as provided in the average hospital, medical clinic, and private doctors’ offices.

Complementary Therapies : Term for therapies such as acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, massage, osteopathy, yoga and many more approaches. I prefer this term over the more frequently used Alternative Therapies . Complementary promotes collaboration of colleagues using allopathic and complementary therapy approaches, working as equals for the benefit of people needing help. This term is the essence of a both/ and approach to health care.

Alternative Therapies : Term most commonly used for what we are calling Complementary Therapies . Alternative suggests that people have to choose between types of therapies on an either/ or basis. I feel this term is divisive and promotes competition rather than collaboration. The term is also used to denote methodologies transferred from the various complementary therapies and applied for symptom management within allopathic medical frameworks.

Complementary/Alternative Medicine (CAM) : Synonym for Complementary and Alternative Therapies.

Wholistic Healing Approaches and Therapies : Approaches that seek to bring people to a state of wholeness in body, emotions, mind, relationships (with other people and the environment), and spirit. The “w” is inserted to distinguish these approaches from another usage for holistic therapy — the application of methodologies taken out of context from their rich philosophical and cultural frameworks and applied piecemeal as techniques for symptom management, without acknowledging or applying the guiding theories and philosophies that properly should accompany them.

Body-mind Therapies : Approaches that assume that the mind, emotions, and body are an integral unit in health and illness.

Spirit : That part in each of us that is known (and can only be known) intuitively, with an inner knowing that is immanent and transcends logic, that connects with the vast worlds of material nature and of noetic (beyond words), transpersonal/ Divine realities. The spiritual is invariably distorted when it is translated into words.

Soul: Term used by some to indicate an enduring aspect of life that survives physical death and incorporates the lessons the spirit learned into an enduring consciousness. (Others may reverse the meanings of spirit and soul as defined here.)

Bodyspirit Therapies : Approaches which assume that the soul and spirit incarnate for lessons in the school of physical life, and that illnesses, emotional difficulties, and relational challenges are such lessons.

Wholistic care
      – Addressing the person rather than merely treating
              her or his problems
      – Including body, emotions, mind, relationships,
              and spirit
      – Dis-ease is addressed along with disease
      – Health awareness and prevention of illness
      – Caring and curing are emphasized equally
      – The person who is the therapist is as important
               as the therapeutic modality used
      – The recipients of care are full participants in their
               own care and treatment

Wholistic care addresses the person who has the disease rather than the disease the person has.

Western medical practice has tended to specialize in treating various parts of people. Several factors have contributed to this trend:

First, the overload of medical information makes it impossible for any one practitioner to master all aspects of medical care. Specialists can master certain parts of medical knowledge and develop treatment skills to much greater degrees than generalists.

Second, greater technical skills and efficiency are developed when teams of health care professionals specialize in narrower aspects of medical and surgical care.

Third are the personal preferences of practitioners. Health carers may find greater interest in medical, surgical, psychotherapeutic, social, or spiritual aspects of their patients.

Fourth, medical training focuses heavily on physical causes of disease and often does not prepare health care professional to deal with psychological causes and concomitants of acute, chronic, and terminal illnesses.

While the sub-specialization of medical practice may suit the treatment preferences of practitioners and may promote efficiency in medical management, many patients complain, “There is no one who addresses me as a whole person. I am a person with an illness, not just an illness. And I have all sorts of problems around the illness that are a part of the illness and need addressing just as much as the physical part of the illness does.”

This is one of the main reasons why people are paying billions of dollars annually out of their own pockets for complementary therapy treatments.

Wholistic medicine addresses the whole person – body, emotions, mind, relationships (with other people and with the environment), and spirit , assuming that each component may need attention individually but that each is intimately related with all of the others. Emotional or relational problems may bring about stress reactions in the body. Physical conditions may influence psychological states and alter relationships. Spiritual upliftment may make difficult emotional and physical problems more tolerable. We tacitly acknowledge this in our language, as the origins of the word heal are in the Germanic and Old English roots of haelen, “to make whole.”

Many complementary therapists practice within wholistic frames of reference. For instance, acupuncture assumes that proper balances in subtle energies within the body and diet are vital to health. Homeopathic clinical histories may require two hours of explorations concerning a person’s personality, stresses, lifestyle, family history, and relationships, in addition to very detailed explorations of symptoms, history of illnesses, immunizations, and more. A broad range of hands-on therapies views the body and psychological states as a unity, sometimes referring to this as the body-mind. These include many types of massage, reflexology, Applied Kinesiology, Healing Touch, Therapeutic Touch, Reiki healing, and more. Some practitioners of these therapies also focus upon spiritual awareness in their interventions.

Clients of many complementary therapists are often as pleased with the fact that someone has taken the time to listen to them as with any of the specific therapeutic interventions they receive.

However, not all complementary therapists have a wholistic approach. Some apply various methodologies in a mechanistic manner, focusing primarily upon symptoms and not on the whole person.

Self-care is strongly emphasized in wholistic treatment. Diet, abstention from harmful substances, exercise, relaxations, meditation and imagery exercises may be prescribed as essential aspects of treatment.

The role of the wholistic health care professional is often that of a model, a counselor and a companion in the journey of life — as much as that of a therapist and advisor.

When you bring a problem to a wholistic therapist, one of the first questions you may be asked is, “What do you think this symptom or illness is saying?” This often leads to a discussion of stress factors, dietary and lifestyle considerations, and support systems that you may be able to alter in order to improve your condition. “Who is the pain in your neck?” or “What do you think your stomach is grumbling about?” may bring into focus some of the ways in which people somatize their stresses or unhealthy lifestyles.

De-stressing is a major focus of wholistic care, both as a treatment and as a preventive health measure. Learning to deal with illness is another focus.

Caring is emphasized more than curing. Although complementary therapies may add many options for treating illnesses, the wholistic approach emphasizes caring for the person as the highest priority. The caring and counseling skills of the therapist are often as important as their knowledge and skills in their particular therapeutic modality.

Death is accepted as a natural part of the life process. People are helped to understand and anticipate the process of dying, to make living wills in which they specify the measures they wish to have applied to themselves when their physical and mental health may be severely impaired.

The physical and psychological wellbeing of health carers is of great importance in wholistic care because the carers are themselves instruments for enhancing the wellbeing of patients. Wholistic carers believe that one of the most important ways of introducing holistic approaches is to model for their patients that which they wish to teach.

Wholistic carers often follow many of the self-care practices that they advocate, such as diet, exercise, and various ways of de-stressing.

Wholistic care encourages carers to find peer support and supervision that enables them to de-stress from the burdens of clinicalcaring. De-stressing enables carers to be more available for their respants, to deal with the responsibilities and stresses of clinical care, to empathize with patients’ emotional distress, and to model for respants how to deal with problems.

Wholistic care is much more a set of attitudes and ways of being than a set of methodologies. Those carers who have adopted wholistic approaches usually find that their lives are substantially enriched and their ways of coping with stress are markedly enhanced. However, this approach may not appeal to every health care professional.

You may quote part or all of this article if you include the following credits and addresses:
Copyright (c) Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1999
Reprinted with permission of the author, P.O. Box 76 Belmawr, NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@danielbenor.com

A Psychiatrist Examines Fears of Healing*

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 23:28:00 GMT

Abstract

The efficacy of spiritual (psi) healing has been reported for many centuries. It is claimed to accelerate recuperation from a wide variety of illnesses and occasionally to produce instantaneous cures.

Research evidence supports these claims. Out of 191 controlled studies of healing, 124 show significant effects — on humans, animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in vitro, enzymes and DNA. Selecting out the more rigorous studies, 25 show effects at p< .01 and another 12 at p< .02 -.05.

Despite this impressive body of evidence, healing continues to be ignored by conventional medicine, or worse, denigrated and denied to sick people who might otherwise enjoy its benefits. This paper examines some of the reasons spiritual healing has not been accepted by the Western scientists. The parallels with other psi (parapsychological) phenomena are obvious.

Background

Spiritual healing (which I shall abbreviate as ‘healing’) has been recognized as an effective mode of therapy in most cultures, with recorded observations dating to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. I define healing as the intentional influence of one of more people upon one of more other living organisms, without intervention through physical or chemical means. Healing may be done through the laying-on-of-hands or through mental influence alone. It appears to be effective form a distance of a few inches to thousands of miles.

I have identified 191 controlled studies of healing, of which 124 show significant effects — on humans, animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in vitro, enzymes and DNA. Selecting out the more rigorous studies, 25 show effects at p < .01 and another 12 at p < .02 -.05 (Benor 2001a; b).

William Braud (1989) considers 149 experiments with living targets. (He includes experiments on telepathic influence over movements of humans, mammals and fish, as well as imagery projections, all of which are bio-PK but outside the category of psi haling.) He finds that “53 per cent of these ‘bio-PK’ studies yielded significant outcomes, as judged buy the original experimenters.”

Despite these many experiments, dating back to the early 1960’s, there has been little recognition according to spiritual healing as an established phenomenon — even among parapsychologists. Healing continues to be viewed by most scientists as a ‘fringe’ phenomenon and most of them avoid having anything to do with it.
In part this derives from the practitioners of healing. Most healers are strong on intuitive faculties and weak on linear functions. They keep few, if any records, while making broad claims for their successes in treating any and all of the ills of man and other living things.

In part this shares a common problem of devaluation of all psi phenomena.

I am not saying that healing practice and research should not be criticized. Critical analyses of healers’ unsupported claims, of research methodology in healing, and of weaknesses in theories are salutary. As James Lovelock said, “Good criticism is like bathing in an ice-cold sea. The sudden chill of immersion in what seems at first to be hostile medium soon stirs the blood and sharpens the senses.”

I criticize those who reject healing out of hand. I hypothesize that many critics would cloud the evidence with any excuses to support their disbeliefs rather than examine either the phenomena or their own discomfort with them. In this paper I emphasize my area of expertise: psychotherapy, spiritual healing practice and research, leaving the reader to draw the parallels with the rest of psi research.

Fears of Healing and Psi

Various fears are aroused by the assertions of healers that they can perform accurate clairsentient diagnoses and that they can influence the body by touch or by intention from a distance:

1. Healing conflicts with prevalent paradigms , forcing us to re-examine our basic hypotheses about how matter, energy and mind interrelate (LeShan, 1974; 1976); similarly with psi (Tart, 1984). Healing suggests we may have to postulate new scientific paradigms which include information transfer and action at a distance without physical interventions.

Modern physics took several decades to demonstrate through experiments and mathematical formulae that rules of classical physics do not apply in the quantum physics domain — however counter-intuitive this appears when translated in to everyday language (Benor, 1994/ 2003; Capra, 1975). Healing is currently facing a similar struggle.

2. Our material culture shrinks from non-material interventions . Western medicine has been particularly stringent in avoiding Type I research errors, fearing to accept as being valid any treatments which might possibly be mere placebos.

Modern psychology, dealing in non-material, in intrapsychic and interpersonal problems and interventions, has denigrated parapsychology lest it have greater difficulty itself in being accepted by the dominant medical establishment. Parapsychology has been uncomfortable with healing for the same reasons.

We forget a truth elucidated by Francis Bacon: “…all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects…” This was restated by Albert Einstein: “it is the theory which decides what, we can observe.” A placebo actually represents a combination of clinical suggestion and of self-healing. Viewed in this light, it is not to be avoided, but rather explored, refined and utilized to maximum benefit — especially as it has no known dangerous effects.

3. Western materialistic beliefs exclude the possibility of healing . We are indoctrinated in our Western society, which is expert at manipulating matter, to believe that accumulation of material wealth is the primary goal and measure of personal success in life. We build elaborate safeguards around our material possessions, including our bodies. We see ourselves as existing only in the flesh and come to fear excursions outside of or potential intrusions into our bodies, be they through healing, psi, out-of-body and near-death experiences or death.

We have become separated and distanced from that which is not matter. (Even our language prejudices us, telling us that mystical and spiritual things are ‘immaterial’ and that things which are unimportant ‘do not matter.’)

Healing wakens us to the limited range of our material explanations of our world. It threatens our grasp on linear reality. Whately Carington (1946) speculated that people with a grounding in Cartesian, linear causality may fear that if psi is accepted (not having examined the evidence. and believing psi to be a magical belief) then a Pandora’s box of magical explanations will he opened for all science to he attacked on irrational grounds.

**4. It is human nature to resist change . Consensual descriptions of reality provide culturally comfortable norms for relating to our material, social amid psychological worlds. They provide a psychosocial constancy which saves on from frequent readjustments, but at the same time can become rigid and bind one into beliefs and manners of relating to the world which are eliminated, thus distancing one from reality and eventually stultifying. Our materialistic Western world discredits the world of healing and of the spiritual — to which healing opens experiential doors. Even many of those who might benefit physically from healing shy away from it when they sense it is starting to challenge their agnostic or religious beliefs.

Most people accept the word of authority figures rather than investigate matters themselves, it is easier to reject ‘paranormal’ evidence that to question accepted beliefs.

5. Cognitive dissonance is a perceived conflict between several perceptions or between perceptions and belief systems (Festinger & Bramel, 1962), which often creates discomfort in a subject experiencing perceived differences between reality ‘as it ought to be’ and reality as it is experienced. A person is strongly motivated (often unconsciously) to resolve such tensions. Once having made a choice between the dissonant possibilities, a person then tends further to reduce her anxiety by derogating the rejected option (Brehm, 1966)

Healing realities conflict with sensory reality. Any exposure of a person to such experiences creates cognitive dissonance, with its drive to reduce the inherent tension. The easiest path to a resolution is to reject evidence for healing. Jule Eisenbud (1983), who has studied psi and psychotherapy extensively, commented, “…Let something appeal to us and we will make sense out of it. Let something offend us, disturb us, threaten us and we’ll see that it doesn’t make sense.”

There was another physician with me when I observed a dramatic healing for the first time. Had the other doctor not been there, I might have allowed myself to resolve my cognitive dissonance by convincing myself that I had mismeasured the lesion (which shrank drastically in only half an hour) either before or after the healing.

6. As children we work hard to differentiate between inner and outer realities and then to integrate them (Freud, 1963). In crossing these boundaries, healing revives early childhood anxieties and conflicts associated with such confusions about these boundaries. Once having established a firm foothold in sensory reality, there is commonly a fear of getting lost its the cosmic ‘All’ of mystical experiences and other alternative states of consciousness (ASCs).

**7. Healing/psi phenomena occur without the conscious control of the individual (Garrett, 1949). This is frightening, as our conscious minds do not trust our unconscious minds. *

*8. Fears arise that others might not respect or might violate one’s own physical and psychological boundaries through a misuse of healing powers . With healing there are potential telepathic, clairsentient and PK invasions of our privacy, of out very being, by another person who may do this with the express intention of changing us. Reassurance that competent, ethical healers only produce positive results may be of little avail against such fears, especially if they are unconscious. We know from studies of non-verbal communication (Weitz, 1974) that in sensory reality people will respond to encroachment on their personal space with anxiety and withdrawal. How much stronger must this anxiety be with potential healing invasion of inner space on various levels of reality. It is far easier to deny and reject these fears than to face them (Eisenbud, 1983).

9. There is a fear of one’s own potential misuse or abuse of healing powers . Being unfamiliar to us, our intuitive and healing powers may appear potentially to approach omniscience and omnipotence. What mischief of nastiness might one’s angers be responsible for if they activate negative healing effects? We are aware (consciously or unconsciously) that our wishes and emotions may influence the world around us (Eisenbud, 1983). It is far easier to deny healing exists and then not have to deal with or take responsibility for one’s negative feelings.

Fortunately, modern societies protect the lives (if not Always the professional rights) of those who believe in and are involved with healing. In other times, fears of looking inward were projected outward and even led to torture and murder in witch hunts — as ways of eliminating sources of discomfort over these matters.

10. Sophisticated psychological defenses may be activated to deny healing . Michael Balint (1955) points out how researchers in healing may utilize the psychological defenses of projection and idealization in ways which are quite sophisticated — to protect the observer/participant from psychological discomforts of dealing with unconventional phenomena. Projection states that the uncanny power which produces parapsychological phenomena dwells not in us, everyday normal people, but in mediums, in healers, in waters, in woods and caves, or in God’s unfathomable grace. We research workers must be acquitted without any question, since we are only studying the phenomena, and not producing them. Our interest in them is entirely objective and has nothing to do with our own emotions, our instinctual gratifications, our unsolved problems, or our personal involvements.

…idealization, the second defense mechanism, comes into force… The working of these two defensive mechanisms can perhaps be demonstrated in the case of religious healing as at Lourdes. By invoking unfathomable supernatural forces, i.e. God’s grace, any human involvement is eo ipso excluded, and the religious or scientific research worker can get away with him ‘professional hypocrisy’ unchallenged. However, his guilt feelings compel him to maintain a hyperobjective attitude, demanding unrealistically strict standards…

Balint points out that unreasonably strict criteria have been required by parapsychologists for physical improvements to be accepted as true healing, including instantaneous recovery and permanence of changes….these criteria are grossly exaggerated, i.e. ambivalently idealized. They correspond only to very old and profound human desires, but never to reality…

Thus may researchers intellectualize their ways out of their own discomforts. By insisting, for instance, that healers perform on demand, researchers have assured themselves that they will be unlikely to encounter an event which might upset them.

It is a sad aspect of these defenses that has led parapsychology to respond to its critics’ intransigent doubting with intensified efforts to prove to them that psi exists. They appear to suffer from the same anxieties and activate the same psychological defense processes as their critics. I talked not long ago with a member of the Society for Psychical Research who has patiently searched over many years for evidence of spirit phenomena which would stand up to scientific scrutiny. He recently obtained a proof which no one has been able to refute. Rather than he happy with this, he finds himself uncomfortable! My impression from nearly two decades of association with parapsychologists is that many are not comfortable with psi and actually would rather find reasons to disbelieve than believe in it.

11. Carl Jung (l967) pointed out that everyone has a personality style which is dominant on one or two or four parameters which are paired in polar opposites. (See Figure 1.)

Most people who elect to study and work in academic or industrial scientific pursuits are superior in thinking and sensation functions. These are requisites for their work. This means that they will he uncomfortable with material which relates to feelings or intuitions, respectively, their inferior functions.

This can relate to haling in several ways. First, the thinking and sensation types will have difficulty grasping that which pertains to non-material interventions, and even more difficulties with spirituality, ineffability or noesis. If it cannot be spelled out clearly, measured and repeatedly and reliably reproduced, its existence for them is more than just questionable. It would demand the activation of their inferior (intuitive/feeling) functions to perceive and appreciate. It is thus hard for them to understand that such material has any validity. Second, they would not even want to invest of themselves in exploring these realms, as this would require the activation of those inferior functions with which they are uncomfortable. Third, since psi functions are present in everyone and seeping via unconscious channels into conscious awareness, they are likewise functioning in those whose superior functions are sensation and thinking. These types would then have to work extra hard (unconsciously) to repress and deny awareness of inner aspects of themselves which make them uncomfortable.

It is far easier to denigrate and reject that which a healer presents that to explore within why one is uncomfortable with it (Randi, 1987; Benor 1989).12. Left-brain dominance may prejudice one against healing . Selective openness to or rejection of healing may be associated with right- and left-brained styles of dominance. These have been better studied and validated that the Jungian polarities. The right brain is more specialized in intuitive functions and the left in linear ones. Left-brained dominance is common in males in our society and right-brained dominance in females. In my discussions over a decade with numerous people about healing, I find that women intuitively accept healing more than men, who demand logical explanations for it.

Studies in which the left brain was engaged (and presumably distracted) with a task during psi testing seem to suggest that psi may be a right-brain phenomenon (Broughton, 1976; Maher, Peratsakis & Schmeidler, 1979). The significant effects were found in males. This is consistent with my hypothesis that left-brain-dominant persons would have more difficulty appreciating psi phenomena.

Studies of C. Maxwell Cade and Geoffrey Blundell with the Mind Mirror (Cade and Coxhead, 1979; Blundell, 1990) show that experienced healers, advanced mediators and yogic adepts have balanced right and left brainwave patterns.

Healing may therefore involve either the right brain alone or the right brain in balance with the left. In either’ ease, the predominantly left-brain linear thinking person will be uncomfortable with healing

13. The lack of replicability of healing phenomena in experiments, and their irregular occurrence in clinical healing settings has been used as a reason to question their existence. In the physical and social sciences we presume we understand an aspect of nature when we are able to manipulate it so as to produce the same results repeatably and predictably under given circumstances.

Healers have not been able to produce results with reliable consistency. Effects are observed in some healing treatments but not in others, with little apparent regularity in the patterns of occurrences. The same healer might succeed a number of times and fail a number of times and we have not isolated the critical variables which can explain — much less predict — when healing will occur or not. Thus the physical scientists claim that healing phenomena are probably due to chance variations in the disease, ‘spontaneous remissions’ or other, unaccounted factors rather than results of healers’ interventions.

Healers claim that skeptical observers may inhibit the effectiveness of their treatments. Skeptics derisively object that healers are evading scrutiny with such hedges.

Though patterns of psi performance in the laboratory have been observed, these may have been discounted as evidence for psi because they do not occur predictably. It is not uncommon to find that the first few trials in a series produce positive results, while subsequent trials produce chance results,

Unusual patterns have been found in areas of conventional science as well (Collins, 1985). New processes for crystallization, developed in a particular laboratory, may be impossible to replicate in other laboratories — until the originator of the process visits personally to demonstrate how to do it. It may be that beliefs and/or disbeliefs of the experimenters facilitate or block the reactions.

It may be found that morphogenetic fields must be built in order to achieve this (Sheldrake, 1988). I believe with Bernie Siegel (1987) that “…all healing is scientific. The problem is science’s inability to measure or document what occurs.” The observed lawfulness of healing requires careful study and clarification on its own terms . My guess is that shifting factors of boredom, beliefs and needs of participants shape the results into these observed patterns, along with numerous external factors.

14. Healing has laws which differ from those of other sciences. Procrustean demands are made of researchers of healing. It is ludicrous than, scientists from other fields should suggest that their rules for evidence should be applied in healing — just because in their owns fields these are the rules that have helped to organize data into comprehensible and predictable units and gestalts. It would certainly he nicer, neater and less complicated if this worked. The fact that it does not work does not mean that healing does not exist or merely represents the esoteric fantasy systems of credulous people. Researcher’s have insisted, for instance, that some clinical studies must provide a ‘standard dose’ of healing, i.e. that healing be applied for a uniform length of time for each healee. It is assumed that giving healing is like providing a dose of medicine or of electrical current. Healers point out that their treatments are administered. intuitively, adjusted by clairsentient perceptions in the unconscious mind of the healer to the needs of each individual healee. Healers cannot say why the length of time required varies between healees and even from session to session for the same healee with the same healer (Quinn, 1989a). Though some studies with standard time-dose of healing have produced positive results (Heidt, 1981; Keller & Bzdek, 1986; Quinn, 1984), others have not (Quinn, 1989h; Schlitz & Braud, 1985).

In experiments of chemistry or nuclear physics, the results are usually given in rates of reaction and percentages of probability of occurrence, covering very large numbers of molecules or particles. If a nuclear physicist is asked about a single particle he is often in the same position as a healing researcher and cannot predict with certainty whether that particular particle will or will not act in a particular way. Even worse, there are aspects of physics which cannot he defined at all. An electron can be defined either in terms of its momentum but not its position; or in terms of its position, in which case its momentum becomes unknown (Capra, 1975). We simply do not apply classical physics rules to particle physics phenomena. As alien as this is to our sensory reality, we have come to accept that this is the way things are.

Since healing does not conform even statistically in regularly repeatable fashion, skeptics argue that claims for healing efficacy must represent chance variations rather than response to healing treatments.

The time has come to accept that healing is the way it is. It appears to be influenced by multiple factors — so many, in fact, that it is virtually impossible to establish a repeatable experiment in which all would occur in the same combination more than once (Benor, 1993). As it is difficult to control any one of these, much less all of them in concert, it is little wonder that only approximately equivalent t results have been obtained in experiments over numbers of trials.

We will have to be content without human limitations and settle for approximate results, measured in probabilities over large numbers of trials. No apologies are needed. These are the limitations of healing.

Hopefully, further research will help establish some minimal laws of healing. I suspect that one of them will be that we cannot know all of them in a given material world.

15. Healing has been practiced in religious settings which emphasize faith and denigrate healing outside of their belief system . Many have presumed that faith is a requisite for positive results in healing. Western science sees itself as weaned from the murky, magical thinking of mystical beliefs. Healing is rejected because science sees itself as dealing with facts, not faith. It overlooks that it, too, bases its beliefs on ultimately untestable axioms which are as questionable as any other.

It is fascinating that quantum physics is returning us through scientific experimentation and theories to awareness which mystics have reported through the ages (Capra, 1975).

16. We tend to be self-satisfied in our ignorance . As the economically dominant world culture, the West has presumed it possesses a more valid grasp on reality than the rest of the world. People forget that “All information is subjective: The word “fact” is merely another statement of an opinion as to the validity of an opinion” (Ellerbroek, 1980).

In many of the above mechanisms we see self-validating feedback loops. These feel comfortable, as we tend to associate with others like minds and confirm our beliefs and prejudices in their reflections of ourselves. We tend to avoid people with dissenting opinions.

We also have self-validating feedback hoops within our own minds. Francis Jeffrey points out,

A mind operates and defines itself by recurrently filtering out those patterns which are incongruent with its own structure…The principal mode of this behavior is selection of inputs by focusing and directing attention.

Our mind thus defined is essentially a paranoid system. It is a ‘closed system,’ in that its operation is primarily circular and self-referencing.

As a psychiatrist I have often dealt with paranoid patients. It is virtually impossible to change their opinions through logical discussion. An apocryphal story tells of a person who insisted he was dead. His psychiatrist, exhausting all ordinary arguments, asked whether he knew that dead men don’t bleed. He readily agreed they did not. He assented to the psychiatrist’s pricking his finger with a needle, which of course drew blood. “My goodness!” said the patient. “Dead men do bleed!”

I suggest that those who feel the rightness of healing do not spend a lot of time arguing with those who do not, but rather get on with giving, receiving and /or studying healing. This is, in fact, what healers have done. This has led them to distance themselves from a skeptical conventional medicine and science.

17. Careers and financial investments are built on world views . Research grants, professorship and products (such as drugs) are built on conceptual models. If these are threatened by competing models, funding might become scarce. Economic motives and political concerns therefore mitigate against investments in exploration of many new fields, not only psi and healing (Engelhardt & Caplan, 1987).

18. Healing touches upon fears of death . There is a dire cultural expectation of a steady downhill course in disease such as cancer and AIDS. We are led to anticipate that such diagnoses are death sentences. Not only is there little awareness of the newer techniques involving psychoneuroimmunology (which permit people to deal with their own cancers, improve their quality of life and prolong life) but there is also a resistance to even consider a possibility of success in these psychological approaches, much less in healing. This seems far to exceed the resistance generally accorded new therapeutic techniques. It is difficult to adjust to such a radical departure from the conventional attitudes toward cancer, perhaps more so that in other diseases. As an analogy I can suggest the experiment of saying goodbye to someone in an office, but then running into them again and finding it awkward to know how to relate. When someone has cancer, those around him may often start a mourning process (in effect, saying their ‘farewells’) as they watch the illness take it toll. This then makes it difficult for them to relate to the person if he lingers on, and more so if he frees himself from his illness. There is thus a social force against accepting healing and against encouragement of healers to treat these chronic illnesses.

Most therapists who have engaged in deep psychotherapy with people with cancers (and other serious illnesses) will attest to the frequent admission by patents that in many cases they are a socially acceptable form of suicide (LeShan, 1977; Levine, 1986; Siegel)

Healing raises fears of death in health professionals, who deal with their own fears of death by denial and repression, thereby colluding with patients having cancer, AIDS and other fatal illnesses.

19. Healing threatens to remove potentially useful symptoms. When people are confronted with their unconscious motives for becoming sick, many find that their illness is a blessing in disguise, in small and large ways. It brings all sorts of extra consideration and attention. It allows excuses for not doing many things. It may bring about more sincere and heart-felt communication and demonstrating of affection.

More than one person with cancer has said, “Strange as it may seem, I’m glad I’ve gotten cancer. This illness has forced me to face squarely my problems within myself and between myself and those I love. My quality of life is incomparably improved since I started working out my unconscious reasons for letting this disease develop.”

Conclusions

Some may object to my making speculative psychological interpretations based on people’s belief systems. Piet Hein Hoebens stated:

Being a moderate disbeliever in extrasensory perception, ghosts, flying saucers and life after death, I do not think that I will learn the ultimate truth about the paranormal by psychoanalyzing those people who are unable to share my skepticism. However well-founded, conjectures about the believers’ motives do not relieve the skeptic of the duty to evaluate the believers’ arguments. (It goes without saying that this also applies to believers’ conjectures about the motives of skeptics.)

I agree with Hoebens about the need to examine the evidence. My analyses have to do with those who a priori reject evidence for healing, believing the evidence must be wrong and unworthy of examination because it contradicts their belief systems.

James Fadiman points out:

A paradigm has hard edges and you can tell where the edges are because anything outside them is automatically suspect. Within the material model it’s fairly clear what is suspect: non-material evidence or non-material events.

Let me give you an example of what happens when you hold paradigms past the point of usefulness. They’re very handy unless you get stuck in one and can’t break out of the edges… A paradigm past the point of utility becomes solidifying, rigidifying, dogmatic and ultimately becomes a religious, and I mean that in the lowest possible sense, position. Meaning it is an act of faith to which no evidence can be admitted. And when there is evidence, that is called heresy.

We shall have to expect that resistances of the above sorts will continue until there is increasing exposure of the skeptics to demonstrations of the existence and legitimacy of healing and psi. To this end, I am promoting further clinical trials to explore the effectiveness of healing.

Acceptance by laypersons may come faster than by professionals. Average people have only a vague concept regarding their internal organs and the functions of these organs. If a new process such as healing is demonstrated, they have less sensory reality information to contradict the existence of the new process; less to relinquish and unlearn. Health professionals and many scientists, in contrast, know in great detail how things “are supposed to work.” It is far more dissonant for professionals to be exposed to new phenomena which appear to contradict or perhaps even invalidate processes they have studied and worked regularly.
With the questions raised by healing vs. sensory reality it is not a case of either paradigm of reality being exclusively right and the other wrong. Each is correct within the domains it describes. Healing describes a broader range of the cosmos than sensory reality accounts for.

If modern science is slow to loosen and revise its paradigms to include healing, then those who feel these are better descriptions of reality on which to base health care decisions in particular situations must simply pursue healing on their own. This will mean lobbying to convince those in government that freedom of religion should include freedom to practice one’s medical beliefs. We have the model of the Christian Scientists to present to them, so it should not be impossibly difficult.

References

Achterberg, J. (1985) Imagery in healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine , Boston and London: New Science Library/Shambala.

Baker, G.H.B. (1987) Psychological factors and immunity (An invited review). J. Psychosom. Res . 31(1), 1-10.

Balint, M. (1955) Notes on parapsychology and parapsychological healing. Int. J. Pscho-analysis .

Barber, T.X. (1961) Physiological effects of ”hypnosis’. Psychol. Bull . 58, 390-419.

Benor D.J. Review of Randi (1987) in JASPR , 1989, 83.

Benor, D.J. (1993) Factors in teaching healing, The Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter , Summer 11-13

Benor, D.J. (1994/2003) Spiritual Healing as the Energy Side of Einstein’s Equation , https://danielbenor.com/spiritual-healing-as-the-energy-side-of-einsteins- .

Benor, D.J. ( 2001a ) Healing Research: Volume I (Popular edition) – Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.

Benor, D.J. ( 2001b ) Healing Research: Volume I , (Professional Supplement) — Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.

Benor, D.J. (1990) Survey of spiritual healing research, Complementary Med. Res .

Blundell, G. (1990) Personal Communication.

Braud, W.G. (1989 rev) Using living targets in psi research. Parasychol. 20(6), 1-4.

Brehm, J. (1966) Post-decision changes in the desirability of alternatives. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 52, 378-384.

Briughton, R.S. (1979) Possible brain hemispheric laterality effects in ESP performance. JSPR , 48, 384-399.

Cade, C.M. Coxhead, N. (1979) The Awakened Mind: Biofeedback and the Development of Higher States of Awareness , New York: Delta.

Capra, F. (1975) The Tau of Physics , Boulder, Colo. Shambala.

Carington, W. (1946) Telepathy , London: Methuen (Cited in LeShan 1974.)

Collins, H.M. (1985) Changing Order, Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice , London: sage.

Eisenbud, J. (1970) Psi and Psychoanalysis , New York: Grune & Stratton.

Ellerbroek, W. (1980) Depression as behavior: A psycholinguistic approach. J. Energy Med . 1, 60-69.

Engelhardt, H.T. Jr. Caplan, A.L. (1987) Scientific Controversies- Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of disputes in Science and Technology . Cambridge University Press.

Festinger, L. Bramel, D. The reactions of humans to cognitive dissonance, in Bachrach, A.J. Experimental Foundations of Clinical Psychology . New York: Basic Books 1980.

Freud, S. (1963) Studies in Parapsychology . New York: Collier (Cited in LeShan 1974).

Garrett, E. (1949) Adventures in the Supernormal: A Personal Memoir . New York:
Garret Publications (Cited in LeShan 1974).

Hall, H.R. (1983) Hypnosis and the immune system: A review with implications for cancer and the psychology of healing. Amer. J. Clin. Hypnosis . 25(2-3), 92-103.

Harrison, J. (1984) Love Your Disease- It’s Keeping you Healthy . London: Angus and Robertson.

Heidt, P. (1981) Effects of therapeutic touch of the anxiety level of hospitalized patients. Nurs. Res. 30, 30-37.

Jeffrey, F. (1987) Working in isolation: States that alter consensus, in: Wolman, BB. & Ullman, M. Handbook of States of Consciousness . New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold 276.

Jung, C.G. (1967) Collected Works . New Jersey: Princeton Univ.

LeShan, L. (1974) Clairvoyant reality. Wellingborough: Thorsons (In US: T he Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist: Toward a general Theory of the Paranormal . New York: Ballatine 1976.

LeShan, L. (1977) You can Fight For Your Life: Emotional factors in the Treatment of Cancer. New York: Evans.

Levine, S. (1986) Who Does? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying . Bath: Gateway.

Locke, S.E. Hornig-Rohan, M. Mind and Immunology: Behavioral Immunology, 1976-1982. New York: Institute for the Advancement of Health 1983.

Maher, M. Peratsakis, Schmeidler, G.R. (1979) Cerebral Lateralization effects in ESP processing: an attempted replication, JASPR . 73, 163-177.

Quinn, J.F. (1984) Therapeutic Touch as energy exchange: testing the theory, Advances in Nurs. Sci. 6, 42-49.

Quinn, J.F. (1989) Future directions for Therapeutic Touch research. J Holistic Nurs. (a), 7(1), 19-25.

Quinn, J.F. (1989) Therapeutic touch as energy exchange: Replication and extension, Nurs. Sci. Quart. (b), 2 (2), 79-87.

Randi, J. (1987) The Faith healers . Buffalo, NY: Promethuis.

Schlitz, M.J. Braud, W.G. (1985, 1986) Reiki plus natural healing: An ethnographic/experimental study, RIP 17-18.

Sheldrake, R. (1983) A New Science Of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation . London: Paladin Grafton/Collins.

Siegel, B.S. (1986) Love, Medicine and Miracles: Lessons About Self- healing From a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients , Harper Row.

Siegel, B. Interview with Caduceus, Spring, 1990.

Simonton, O.C. Matthews- Simonton, S. Creighton, J.I. (1980) Getting Well Again . New York: Bantam.

Steadman, A. (1969) Who’s the Matter With me? Marina Del Rey, Calif: DeVorss.

Tart, C.T. (1984) Acknowledging and dealing with the fear of psi. JASPR 78, 133-144.

Wietz, S. (Ed.) (1974) Nonverbal Communication . New York; Oxford Univ.

Resources on spiritual healing

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007 (Orig. 2001)
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Resources for exploring messages from your body

Resources for explaining the mind-body connection

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality

*This article was originally published as Benor, Daniel J. A psychiatrist examines fears of healing, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 1990, 56(821), 287-298. It has been updated here with minor revisions reflecting more recent research. An expanded version of this article will appear in Healing Research, Volume IV.

**I am indebted in my discussion of this item to LeShan (1974)

You may quote from or reproduce this article if you include the following credits and email contact:

www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@daneilbenor.com

You must also obtain permission from Journal of the Society for Psychical Research to reproduce this article.

Spiritual Healing and Psychotherapy

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 21:14:00 GMT

Spiritual healers have been known for bringing about unusual cures throughout recorded history. Until recently, modern medicine has viewed such reports with great skepticism. They are often attributed to placebo reactions, spontaneous remissions of symptoms of ordinary illnesses, remissions of “hysterical” symptoms, or event to naive exaggerations or deliberate charlatanism.

As a doctor specializing in psychiatry, and with experience in research, it was my own impression as recently as a short decade ago that such reports simply had to be one of the above. When I expressed this opinion in no uncertain terms to a friend, he challenged me by asking, “Have you ever observed a healer?” I had to admit that I had not.What ensued from this discussion changed the course of my professional and personal life.

I was introduced to Ethel Lombardi, an American healer of the Reiki tradition. Ethel is a smiling, mischievous, Scotch-Irish woman with bright red hair and intense green eyes. She invited me to watch her work on Jerry, a young man of about 20 who had a lump under his right nipple. I examined him before her treatment, finding the lump to be one by two centimeters, rubbery firm, more fixed than I would like to see in a lesion of that sort, and quite tender.

Ethel had him lie down on a table and commenced with a laying-on of hands which addressed the chakras (energy centers along the midline of the body) rather than the lesion itself. Within a few minutes Jerry had tears streaming down his face. “You have some unfinished business in here with your father, don’t you?” she said. (I was surprised at this, because Jerry had not said a word about why he was crying.) He nodded, and began to sob heavily. Ethel looked up at me and winked, as though to say, “Let’s see you top that, Mr. Psychiatrist!”

When he finished crying after about 15 minutes, she continued her laying-on of hands, telling him: “Take in love and healing to replace the hurt that you have released.”

In another 15 minutes she declared the treatment complete and invited me to examine him again. I was astounded to find that the lesion had shrunk by a centimeter, was soft, freely mobile and no longer tender. I was more bothered, though, by the fact that she did not clarify what he was sobbing about, nor did she process any of his feelings with him.

This started me on a study of spiritual healing that has continued over the last dozen years.

Being a psychotherapist, I was most interested in what healing might do for emotional and psychosomatic problems. Healers I interviewed reported to me that people usually experience profound relaxation while receiving healing. Healees regularly sigh, flush, yawn and melt into their chairs — occasionally even dozing off. Pains of all causes are often relieved — sometimes instantaneously, but more often gradually. Hurts buried years earlier in the unconscious may be released spontaneously. Integration of the materials released in this way is much more rapid and less traumatic than might be expected by the intensity of the abreactions observed.

I found it hard to know how much credence to give to these reports of healers who had not been trained in psychotherapy. “After all,” I reasoned, “they could be misled by placebo reactions or any of the other sceptics’ objections (mentioned above).”

It took me two years of speaking with healers, observing some of their treatments, and reviewing the research literature before I ventured to explore the development of my own healing gifts. I studied the Reiki and MariEl methods taught by Ethel Lombardi, Therapeutic Touch as taught by Dolores Krieger, PhD, RN and Dora Kunz, and the meditational method developed by Lawrence LeShan and taught by Joyce Goodrich, PhD. Over the past decade I have integrated these and other, intuitive methods of healing into my practice of psychotherapy.

At first it was difficult to allow myself simply to be an observer of the effects of my healing treatments. Without realising it, I had been raised in a materialistic society, and had been thoroughly indoctrinated in medical school to believe that western science has the last word on explanations for physical and psychological problems. What happens when I work with healing does not fit within conventional paradigms.

Both I and people I treat frequently feel heat and tingling when I hold my hands over a part of the body which appears to be in need of healing. These sensations suggest that a transfer of energy may be occurring between us.

I also have developed a sensitivity in my hands to such sensations, and can “scan” the energy field around a person’s body to identify parts which might be in need of treatment. Other, more sensitive healers may perceive these energy fields as visual halos of color, or aura, around a person. They can identify from the various layers of colors the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual state of the healee they are examining. They also observe changes in the aura as people change with treatment.

My greatest difficulty in the early days was to let go of my linear, reasoning habits of analyzing what I was doing in order to let healing occur. I was ever so curious to understand healing, but every time I put my mind into thinking gear the healing would shut off. I had to learn to shelve my questioning until after the healing. Healing happens. It is not something that I do. This is one of the characteristics of healing which make it difficult for conventional scientists to accept. They would like to have healing be a treatment like massage, which one can apply at will for a deliberately determined length of time, in a regular, controlled manner. Healing simply is not like that. It seems to occur when certain complexes of conditions are present, but we have yet to identify all of the relevant factors. Probably, even if we succeed in identifying most or all of them, we shall still have difficulty controlling many of them.

Healing is a state of being in which one’s mind is centered, or focused, on the intent to help another person. Healing involves an unconditionally accepting, loving awareness of the person one is with. It brings one to feel one is part of a larger “whole” — a cosmic, transpersonal awareness. It is the latter which gives healing the label, “spiritual” healing.

One cannot be a psychiatrist and not question oneself when one has such experiences. I have frequently asked myself, “Am I imagining all this? Am I getting into fantasies of grandeur, believing that I can help another person without recourse to physical or social interventions?” And so on. At times like those I fall back on my knowledge of the impressive research evidence for the effects of healing.

I have been surprised to find that the 155 published controlled studies on healing constitute a larger body of research than has been mustered by most of the other complementary therapies combined (with the exception of hypnosis and psychoneuro-immunology). Though most were performed in rigorous fashion, with comparison groups to demonstrate whatever statistically significant benefits healing might have to offer, few were published in medical journals, due to editorial publication biases against this subject. More than a dozen are unpublished PhD dissertations, mostly by nurses practicing Therapeutic Touch healing in the United States. These and related anecdotal reports are summarized in a four volume review I have written on this subject, titled: Healing Research: Holistic Energy Medicine and Spirituality, the first volume of which was published by Helix Verlag GmbH of Munich (1992).

Of greatest interest to me are the doctoral dissertations on healing for anxiety and for pain.

Patricia Heidt, PhD, RN, studied Therapeutic Touch (TT) healing for the treatment of state anxiety in hospitalized cardiovascular patients. (It is well known to psychologists that one finds anxious patients regularly in cardiac units. Here they are supposed to be resting to recuperate from their life threatening illnesses – while being hooked up to panels of monitors which blink and bleep, interrupted periodically by emergency visits of “crash teams” when something goes wrong with one of the patients on the unit!) Some of the patients in Heidt’s study received laying-on of hands TT treatments while others had a nurse mimic TT treatments while doing arithmetic silently in her head in order to avoid entering a healing state. Highly significant reductions in anxiety were experienced by those receiving TT, and the differences between the anxiety scores of these and the control group were also statistically significant.

Janet Quinn, PhD, RN, repeated the above study with one variation. She arranged for TT healing to be given with the hands near to but not touching the body of the patients. Again, highly significant effects of TT were found, compared to the mock treatments.

Elizabeth Keller and Virginia Bzdek studied the effectiveness of TT in treating tension headache pain. People who had suffered a headache and were free of medication for at least four hours preceding the study were given either TT or mock TT. Significant reductions were found in pain immediately following TT in comparison with mock TT. Four hours after treatment the differences between groups were not significant. However, when the researchers factored out those participants who had taken pain medication (50% of mock TT patients vs. 15% of TT patients), it was found that again a significant difference was demonstrated in favour of TT.

David Dressler developed a “Light Touch Manipulative Technique” (LTMT) for spinal manipulation which he finds highly effective for neck and back pain. He found that “The mental attitude of the practitioner is crucial. …what is really necessary is to let the sensing fingertip lightly touch the edge of the bone [of the spine] as though it were a delicate leaf floating in a still pool, following its motion wherever it drifts, influencing its direction as little as possible.” “To let this happen, the practitioner’s attention is absorbed in the sensation of the fingertip, silently aware, with as little thought and will as possible.”

During treatment, warmth or tingling may be felt by the practitioner or patient. Dressler feels that LTMT activates the patients’ own healing abilities.

These studies helped me to trust my experiences with healing, along with the many studies which showed effects on human physical problems (including skin wounds, hypertension, coronary care), as well as on animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in laboratory culture, enzymes and water. Without this prop to my conventional, linear questioning, I might have wavered and not allowed myself to continue to experiment with giving healing along with my psychotherapy.

I find that healing is particularly helpful with what I call meta-emotions. These are the anxieties about the underlying problems, such as when people say, “If this stress continues I’m going to go mad!” Or in cases of depression, when people say, “I can’t see any way out of this black hole of despair. I might as well end it all!”

Healing also alleviates the anxieties that arise in conjunction with emotional releases, when long-buried hurts come to conscious awareness with all the intensity of the initial reactions to the traumas.

Healing, through the above processes, appears to shorten the time needed to reach awareness of underlying problems. By diminishing anxieties, it helps people to have more energies to deal with their problems.

The converse is true as well. Psychotherapy, in my practice, helps people to integrate the emotional releases and long-buried traumas which the healing and psychotherapy have brought to the surface.

I am puzzled by the practices of healers like Ethel Lombardi who leave the treatment of the releases to be managed through healing alone. I do not know whether this is just as effective as my way of therapy. Perhaps it has to do with differing levels and intensities of healing abilities in various healers. I worry, however, that in some manner a person may be left with unresolved problems or with lessons unlearned. Clearly such questions invite serious study.

People often ask me, “What sorts of physical problems can be helped by healing?” Spiritual healing can beneficially be added to the treatment of patients with many problems for which conventional medicine can as yet provide only limited relief. People with diseases such as arthritis, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, cancer and many more may be helped. Pains and other symptoms may be relieved. Again, I find that counseling or psychotherapy can also be helpful, both to patients and to their families. Healing also facilitates the resolution of family tensions and conflicts.

The UK is a world leader in the integration of spiritual healing with conventional medicine. There are now General Practitioner surgeries with healers paid under the NHS. Many more doctors are referring patients to healers at the healers’ treatment rooms. Some doctors are developing their own healing gifts and may get Postgraduate Education Allowance credits for this by attending approved workshops. Healers work regularly at hospital pain, cancer, and cardiac rehabilitation centers.

A Doctor-Healer Network is growing, with five regional groups where healers, doctors, nurses, other health care professionals, complementary therapists and clergy meet every 3-4 months to discuss patients (often those who are treated by doctor-healer pairs), as well as theoretical and personal questions and demonstrations of healing methods. This provides a forum and resource for sharing information and progress in integrating healing with conventional medicine. The Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter shares the experiences of healers and doctors between member groups and with others who are interested in healing of body, emotions, mind and spirit.

Spiritual healing opens people to awarenesses of deeper meanings to illness, which are then often amenable to psychotherapy. Illness can be a communication from a person’s unconscious mind to bring to his awareness various inner conflicts or old hurts that might be ready for release. Illness may be a communication with others, such as a statement of need for love and caring or a protest against stresses. Psychotherapy may then help people to address the root causes of their illnesses.

Helpful References

Dethlefsen. T. Dahlke, R. (1990) The Healing Power of Illness , Longmead, England: Element, (Orig. German, Munich: Bertelsmann, 1983)

Dressler, David. (1990), Light-touch manipulative technique, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 8(4), 19-20.

Heidt, Patricia. (1981) An Investigation of the Effect of Therapeutic Touch on the Anxiety of Hospitalized Patients , New York University: Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis 1979; summarized in: Nursing Research 30(1) 32-37.

Heidt, Patricia. (1981) Effect of therapeutic touch on anxiety level of hospitalized patients. Nursing Research 30 (1), 32-37

Keller, Elizabeth. Bzdek, Virginia. (1986) Effects of Therapeutic Touch on tension headache, pain, Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Missouri 1983, summarized in Nursing Research 101-104.

Krieger, D. (1979) The Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help or Heal , Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Quinn, Janet. (1982) An Investigation of the Effect of Therapeutic Touch Without Physical Contact on State Anxiety of Hospitalized Cardiovascular Patients , Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, New York University.

Quinn, Janet F. (1989) Therapeutic Touch as energy exchange: replication and extension. Nursing Science Quarterly 2(2), 79-87.

Resources on spiritual healing

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007 (Orig. 2001)
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Resources for exploring messages from your body

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality
Healing Research, V. 3
Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (November 2006)

Reaching Higher and Deeper
Workbook for Healing Research, Volume 3 : Personal Spirituality:
Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007

You may quote part or all of this article if you include the following credits and email contact
Original publication: The Therapist (UK) Winter 1994, 4(1), 37-39.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher and author, Daniel J. Benor, M.D. P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@danielbenor.com

Self-Healing: Brief Psychotherapy with WHEE and Other Approaches

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 19:53:00 GMT

*Revised 1/9/06

Clinical Explorations

When I learned about psychotherapy as a teenager, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I couldn’t imagine anyone actually getting paid to do something so fascinating. I studied psychology as my undergraduate pre-med major, endured the challenges of medical school, with a year’s break for an NIMH research fellowship in psychiatry and for regrouping my battered energies. I trained as a psychiatrist 1967-1973, (with two intervening years in the Air Force during the Vietnam War), when psychiatry was mostly psychotherapy. Over the years, managed care has squeezed psychiatrist towards medication management. While I’ve resisted prescribing medications exclusively, it is pretty difficult to do much psychotherapy in a 15-20 minute medication visit–the amount of time allowed under managed care.

Fortunately, I work mostly with children (in a clinic and a day hospital), and am allowed the “luxury” of 30-minute sessions because I have to speak with parents, teachers, school counselors, and pediatricians, in addition to pharmacists and managed care companies — all in addition to speaking with the children.

I constantly sought to develop ways of providing psychotherapy along with the medications, but was unable within my limited timeframe to use the psychodynamic approaches I was taught as a psychiatric resident. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR – see: www.emdr.com ) was a blessing to me, as well as to my clients. I was able to use EMDR with children who had post-traumatic stress disorders, as children respond very quickly to this approach — not having barnacles on their problems like adults do. I also used EMDR to de-stress myself.

With adults, it is recommended that EMDR should be done only during sessions with the therapist. This is to prevent being overwhelmed by intense emotional releases that can occur during treatment. I found that children rarely had such intense releases, perhaps because they had not kept their hurt feelings bottled up for as long a time, or perhaps because their emotional defenses are not a strongly developed. Another factor may be that I am comfortable doing this, having used EMDR for myself without the constant guidance of a therapist.

As I usually see children with their parents, I also taught the more stable parents to guide their children in doing the EMDR. If the children were mature and responsible, I encouraged them to practice the eye movements on their own, at home or at school, whenever they were upset. This was very helpful, for instance, with nightmares, when traumatic memories were stimulated by current stresses, or where excessive angers erupted. I still worried, however, that there might be intense emotional releases which could be traumatic.

I then learned to use the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) of Gary Craig ( www.emofree.com ) and other Meridian Based Therapy approaches . In EFT and related therapies you tap or press a finger at a series of acupuncture points on your face, chest and hand, while reciting an affirmation. Because it works more rapidly than EMDR and does not evoke intense emotional releases, it can be used as self-healing. (Affirmations are described below, under the WHEE technique.)

This works more quickly than EMDR and has extra advantages. Because it works rapidly and does not evoke intense emotional releases, I started offering “two (or three) for the price of one” introductions to EFT to children together with their mothers, including their fathers as well when they are present. This way, the children more often accept the therapy and comply with the recommendation to use it at home to deal with stresses. Parents are more confident of its therapeutic efficacy because they have experienced its benefits themselves, and therefore encourage their children to use it more often.

I had difficulty introducing EFT in my work settings. EMDR has an extensive research base to confirm its efficacy in treating post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSDs). On the basis of my certification in EMDR, I was able to obtain official permission (from the administrators of the child and adolescent clinic where I work) to use this with their clients. Because EFT has no research base, they would not grant me permission to use it. Giving this a hard think, I turned it around and now call it an “affirmation technique.” No one has faulted me for using affirmations in therapy, and never mind what clients do with their hands on their own bodies while they recite these. (Now, several years later, EMDR is recommended by the American Psychiatric Association as a treatment of choice for PTSD, considered an equally effective treatment as cognitive behavioral therapy. See: American Psychiatric Association 2004)

In an introductory workshop by Asha Nahoma Clinton on Matrix Therapy, Asha observed that alternating tapping the eyebrow points while reciting the affirmation works just as well as the entire series of EFT points. Ever conscious of my time limitations, I immediately started exploring this hybrid approach, that combines aspects of EMDR and EFT, which I now call the the Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT, or WHEE.

EMDR suggests the use of a “butterfly hug” as one of its self-treatment interventions, particularly for children: Your arms are crossed so that your hands rest on your biceps muscles, and you alternate tapping on each arm with your hands. Instead of tapping at the eyebrows, I often have children and parents use the butterfly hug with the affirmation. Many find the self-hug comforting, in addition to being highly effective in combination with the affirmation.

WHEE has been hugely successful for several reasons.

•   It takes a fraction of the time that EFT requires.
•   It allows for much greater flexibility in working on target problems within the session because it is so rapid. If the child is successful but the parent is not, or vice versa, there is plenty of time to explore alternative target symptoms or alternative methods of addressing these.
•   It is better accepted and the compliance outside the therapy room is much higher because of this simplicity.
•   It works marvelously well and rapidly on pains of all sorts, and is excellent for allergies, though it may take several days to be effective for the latter.
•   It is tremendously empowering, as it is so simple and so rapidly effective in self-healing.

Affirmation

Here is a generic affirmation from EFT: “Even though I have this [anxiety, panic, fear, etc. – be specific when filling in the blank], I completely and totally love and accept myself, and know that God loves and accepts me unconditionally [or use whatever strong positive statement suits you best at the time you need it].”

Prior to doing this self-healing technique, it is helpful to assess how strong the negative feeling is that you want to address. The most commonly used is the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS), where you rate it on a scale from 0 (not bothering you at all) to 10 (the worst it could possibly feel).

After tapping for a few minutes, check the SUDS again. It will usually go down. Repeat the assessing and tapping until it is zero. Then you can build up a positive affirmation to replace the negative, simply stating the positive as you tap.

If the numbers don’t shift after you’ve tapped, you can give yourself a gentle massage on the releasing spot , located just below the collar bone at its midpoint. No affirmation is needed here. Then return to tapping.

Teenagers would often refuse to use either of these tapping approaches outside of the therapy room. Their typical comment was, “Sure, dad! Like I’m going to tap my forehead or pat my arms in front of my friends! They’ll think I’m some sort of nut case!” I speculated to myself that if they alternated tapping with their tongue on their teeth on the left and then on the teeth on the right this should work just as well, and found that indeed it does. This has been received much better by those who are shy or uncomfortable with tapping in public.

A deep breath (drawn from John Diepold’s Touch and Breathe approach) following the affirmation facilitates releases.

Holding your other hand over your heart center (chakra) while you tap or touch your eyebrow points deepens the effects.

Reversals and blocks are effectively managed by massaging the sore-spot/ releasing point below the midpoint of the collar bone.

With adult clients I find the Sedona Method ( www.Sedona.com ) is an even faster approach. This involves simply asking clients whether they are prepared to let go of their problems and then inviting them to do so (with a structured series of questions that are trademarked by the Sedona teachers). I find that younger children don’t respond as well to this approach.

Clinical example of WHEE (assumed name, composite case):
Six-year old “Joe” had been seriously abused emotionally, physically and sexually by his mother from at least the age of two and probably earlier. He was removed from her home at age four, and had nine foster home placements before his latest foster mother suggested to the welfare worker that counseling might be helpful to him for his temper outbursts, fighting children in his first grade class and after school, inability to fall asleep till past midnight, frequent nightmares and night terrors, and bedwetting — his more serious problems. In addition, he was unable to sit still, was impulsive, distractible, constantly forgetting and losing things, and had no friends.

I diagnosed PTSD (moderately severe) and possible attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I prescribed small doses of Ritalin, as this acts within minutes and, if effective, could provide rapid relief for some of his problems. He responded well to the medication and was much better able to sit and attend in class, less impulsive, and less forgetful. His other symptoms remained. He also had counseling sessions weekly with a social worker at the clinic where I work, focused on issues of relating to his new family, multiple losses, and PTSD issues.

At the initial interview, I taught Joe and his mother to use the butterfly hug. Joe chose an affirmation about one of the bad memories he had of being left in the dark cellar by his mother. He was unable to count, so I had him show me a Visual Analog Scale (“VAS” — equivalent of a SUDS) with the gap between his hands representing how big his bad feeling was when he thought about being in the dark cellar. He opened his arms wide and said, “I can’t reach to show you how big the bad feeling is.” Within minutes of using the butterfly hug, his hands were touching in the VAS. He had reduced the bad feelings to zero.

Over the next several weeks, Joe (with the help of his mother) used the butterfly hug daily on various fears, difficulty falling asleep, and nightmares, as well as to calm down after he had temper outbursts.

Within two months, Joe was functioning at near-normal levels of behavior in school and at home. Counseling continued for another four months and was discontinued. I have followed him for Ritalin prescriptions for two years and we have all been pleased with his excellent academic progress in school, and with his good behavioral and improved social adjustments in school and at home.

I have also had excellent results with proxy use of WHEE. In proxy treatments, the person receiving the treatment focuses her or his awareness on another person who is intended to receive the treatment. Therapists may do this on themselves as proxies for their clients. (While this may seem far-fetched, it has an excellent basis in research as distant healing (Benor 2001). need healing research vol1 link

Clinical example : I visited a healer who was baby-sitting a six-year old boy who has developmental delays and may have mild autism. He was severely frightened by the healer’s two dogs, who were lively and playful, and nearly as frightened of her two cats. He had been in the healer’s home several times previously, and was constantly on the alert, if not alarmed, by any approach of the animals to within several feet. Within minutes of surrogate tapping for his fears of the animals, he was markedly less fearful, and within a few more minutes he was even able to pet the quieter dog. He had never been that calm before in the animals’ presence, and certainly would not have petted them.

Pain

Pain responds dramatically to WHEE. Pains from trauma, arthritis, migraines and other causes respond within minutes – even when they have been present for a long time.

A caution here, however. Pains often come to be a part of one’s life. Without the pain, a person may actually have unexpected difficulties in feeling comfortable in certain situations and in dealing with relationships WHEE can help with these problems, as well.

Because of these problems, it is sometimes important to reduce the pain gradually, even though one may be able to eliminate the pain entierly in a very short period with WHEE.

Re-entry Protocols

A particularly helpful application of WHEE is for people who are transitioning from difficult situations back into a more normal environment – as in personnel returning from a war zone; children transitioning from an environment of abuse; or children transitioning from one parental home to another. Click here for more information on WHEE protocols for these types of situations.

Clinical Efficacy

I find that 85-90 percent of clients obtain immediate benefits from WHEE When they practice this for their problems at home, there is almost universal success. (The last observation may be a matter of self-selection.)

WHEE and related approaches are rapidly and potently effective for post-traumatic stress, unresolved emotional problems (e.g. prolonged bereavement, festering angers, emotional/relational hurts, anxieties, phobias, insecurities, lack of self-confidence), sports problems in relationships, and performance enhancement. ..

WHEE is empowering. It gives you a clear way to deal with almost any problem you might encounter that raises negative feelings. It helps to clear the “bucket” of emotional dross – that place inside where we stuff unresolved feelings when we don’t know how to resolve a stressful situation.

WHEE helps to forgive others for their transgressions, helps you to forgive yourself for not having done better than your best at the time when you stuffed feelings into your inner “bucket,” and to accept that you did the best you could at the time and now are more competent to deal with the residues of the situation that left you with bad feelings.

Where it doesn’t work, the most frequent problem are:
1.   The client has not targeted the problem accurately in the affirmation.
2.   They are reporting that the memory has not faded. This is an incorrect expectation, as it is the negative feelings about the memory that fade, not the factual memory.
3.   They have forgotten to massage the releasing point when there is a block in the process.

If the above do not apply, the few remaining clients usually respond to the full EFT routine or other MBT approaches.

Many of my clients are children. I invite parents to use WHEE to explore and practice releasing old hurts and fears together with their children. I believe that when families work together there can be exponential changes for each individual in the family.

I have had enthusiastic feedback on successes from therapists who learned WHEE through ~~lectures~~ and ~~workshops~~ that I teach internationally.

Theoretical Considerations and Conclusions

I see a progression in meridian based therapies (MBTs, often called Energy Psychology ) towards greater and greater simplicity. Gary Craig, with EFT, has simplified the procedures of Thought Field Therapy (TFT). WHEE Provides a further abbreviated tapping procedure with affirmations. The Sedona method is simpler yet, requiring only the decision to release whatever the problem is.

There has been controversy and extensive discussion in MBT circles on whether the specific protocols of TFT are necessary, or whether the generic EFT protocol is adequate, with strongly held opinions on both sides. We can anticipate further discussion on the benefits and limitations of the hybrid and Sedona approaches.

EMDR has a solid basis in research, demonstrating its efficacy in treating stress related disorders ( www.emdr.com ). The MBTs are still in preliminary stages of organizing research. WHEE, drawing from EMDR (though clearly not following the standard EMDR protocols), can claim to have a research base to support its efficacy. See also extensive studies of EMDR with children summarized at http://www.childtrauma.com.

Two other aspects of WHEE (and of the other MBT approaches) deserve mention.

First, the person who is the therapist is an essential element for change in any therapy. We should expect that there will be differences between therapists in the results obtained with these methods.

Second, bioenergy interactions, summarized on this site and well documented in research (Benor 2001a, b), are invariably aspects of any therapy. Again we would expect that differences between therapists will be evident on this dimension of therapy.

Having advocated for the abbreviated procedure of WHEE, let me step back and add that I do not see this as a “cure-all.” I find that the MBTs are outstanding for addressing focal traumas, fears, pains, allergies, and beliefs. For many people, relief of these focal problems is all that they want to achieve.

I also integrate spiritual awareness and healing, along with many other approaches in my practice, matching the therapy to the individual needs of the client.

For some, deeper levels of work may be facilitated by a variety of more elaborate approaches. For instance, I have found Asha Nahoma Clinton’s Seemorg Matrix Therapy (chakra based) enormously helpful to me personally and to selected clients who want or need deeper levels of work, particularly when there is an openness to including spiritual dimensions in the focus of therapy.

I truly value the stimulating discussions within the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychotherapy (ACEP) that will continue to innovate and clarify the best ways to help people deal effectively with their problems.

Disclaimer : The techniques described in this article are intended as information for therapists, not for self-treatment. If you are having stress problems, you should seek the help of a therapist who can guide you in identifying and using the techniques that will best suit your problems.

Practical considerations : The MBTs have negligible research to support their efficacy. EMDR has considerable, impressive research showing it is effective in helping adults and children deal with PTSD. By using the hybrid the MBTs tap into the EMDR research database. (See selected samples below).

Comments

The most serious weakness of MBTs lies in the paucity of formal research to validate its efficacy. There has been only one controlled study by Steve Wells, in Australia, showing that EFT produced significant reductions in phobias to small animals (Wells et al 2003).

Countering this criticism is the personal research that anyone can do to validate that MBTs are effective in addressing physical and emotional distress. While TFT and EvTFT require tapping on various series of acupressure points that are specifically prescribed for problems, and in EvTFT following the explorations through Kinesiology to identify which are the correct points, there are other systems that provide generic points to tap on for any problems.

The system described above, WHEE (the Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT), is an extremely simple approach that anyone can use for relief of pains, stress and distress of all sorts. The first link below provides details of how to use WHEE for self-healing.

Further References by Dr. Benor

Benor, Daniel J. (2001) Healing Research: Volume I, Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, Southfield, MI: Vision Publications. Click here for details

Benor, Daniel J. (2001) Healing Research: Volume I, Professional Supplement, Southfield, MI: Vision Publications. Click here for details

Benor, Daniel J. Self-healing: Brief psychotherapy with WHEE, a hybrid of meridian based therapies and EMDR, other approaches, 2000: Articles/Selfheal.htm.

Wells, S. Polglase, K. Andrews, H. Carrington, P. Baker, A.H. (2003). Evaluation of a Meridian-Based Intervention, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), for Reducing Specific Phobias of Small Animals. Journal of Clinical Psychology , 59 (9). 943-966.

http://www.emofree.com/Research/wellsphobias.htm

See list of books, tapes at MBT references

Further resources

EMDR Research

EFT Gary Craig developed Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). An enormous series of problems successfully treated with EFT are described on his website ( www.emofree.com ).

You may reproduce all or any parts of this article as long as you include credits as follows:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, MD, 2005. All rights reserved.

You must also obtain permission from Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice to reproduce this article.

Spiritual Healing as the Energy Side of Einstein’s Equation

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 00:34:00 GMT

Revised 10/18/03 – See epilogue at end

If you conduct a study and the data doesn’t agree with your theory, the scientist throws away the theory. The quack, on the other hand, throws away the data.
– David Bresler

I am a medically trained physician specializing in psychiatry, practicing psychotherapy combined with spiritual healing. I speak from the perspective of more than a dozen years of research in spiritual healing (commonly termed psi, mental, faith, shamanistic, bioenergetic, subtle energy, vibrational, psychic, divine, unconventional or paranormal healing ).

First, let me define what I mean by spiritual healing and add a few words about the obvious confusion in terminology, a clear indication that there has been confusion in considering these phenomena.

Spiritual healing is the intentional influence of one or more people upon one or more living systems without utilizing known physical means of intervention. It is commonly practiced in two major ways: 1. With a laying-on of hands — the hands lightly touching or held near to the body, often combined with visualizations; and 2. With meditation, prayer or other focused intent, again often combined with visualizations. The two are often used simultaneously. I shall use the term healing to mean spiritual healing, not to be confused with physiological process of healing.

Lawrence LeShan pioneered the investigation of healing, and laid the groundwork for scientific approaches to the study of healing. He points out that a common denominator amongst healers is the visualization of the healer being “one with” the healee and with the “All.” His book, The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist is highly recommended for a discussion of the second type of healing. Dolores Krieger pioneered the application of laying-on of hands healing, and her books on Therapeutic Touch are also highly recommended. My own books, Healing Research , Volumes I – IV consider these matters through the eyes of research.

I mention all of these because healing is, above all, an individual and subjective phenomenon. It is from the realms of experience we label noetic or ineffable . This means that we can know aspects of healing through inner awarenesses that are clearly perceptible but very difficult to describe in words. This is especially true in Western society, where our language is heavily biased towards the material aspects of experience. From that vantage point, we are led to believe that whatever is not perceivable by the outer senses and measurable with mechanical, electromagnetic or particle physics instruments is considered “non” sense or “im” material . For these reasons, one must consider the observations of multiple researchers in order to arrive at a rough consensus of what healing might be.

In our materialistic and reductionistic Western world we are taught that reality is “objective”. We are led to believe that there is a constancy to the world and that it is consistently measurable by reliable scientific instruments. I will address these beliefs from clinical and research perspectives.

My personal introduction to healing illustrates the difficulties a Western person can experience in learning about healing. As a medically trained doctor with a Batchelor’s degree in psychology and specialty training in psychiatry, plus research experience, I was most skeptical about healing. I had years of study, omnivores reading and clinical experience in how people can innocently and unconsciously misguide themselves into believing nearly anything – about themselves and each other. When Walter, a new-found friend, asked my opinion about healing in 1980, I told him in no uncertain terms: “I am convinced that healing can be no more than suggestion, placebo or other self-healing effects, defensive denial of unwanted illnesses, wishful thinking, and sometimes even deliberate charlatinism.”

Ethel brought about a physical change in a young man that was impossible according to all my medical and psychological understanding of how the body functions. A lump under his nipple started out measuring 1 x 2 centimeters, was rubbery-firm (like an eraser), was more fixed than one would like to see in any lump (suggesting it might be invasive), and was quite tender. Ethel treated him with a laying-on of hands, placing her hands over the chakras — the energy centers on the midline of the body. After only half an hour, during which time the young man sobbed heavily — without explaining what he was experiencing (that bothered me as a psychiatrist!) — the lesion had changed. It had shrunk by a centimeter, was soft, freely mobile and not tender.

Fortunately, another physician was there with me and we agreed on our palpation of the lesion before and after the healing. Otherwise I am certain I would have let what we call retrocognitive dissonance convince me that I must have mismeasured or misremembered my perceptions – in order to explain away something that contradicted my expectations and understandings of what can happen with a lump under a young man’s nipple in half an hour.

There can be little doubt that healing is a clinically potent intervention in a variety of living organisms and laboratory systems. Let us examine one of the 155 controlled studies in humans.

On the basis of this evidence from the many significant studies, and in view of the absence of negative side effects of healing, I believe that if healing were a medicine it would be on the market.

Is there a theory to explain healing?

If it is true that in distant healing one person may influence another without known physical energies, and even from a distance, we have to change our theories and views about the world. Because this is strange within conventional understandings of the world, the evidence is generally ignored. It is easier to do this than to reassess our basic beliefs about the world.

Albert Einstein pointed out, earlier in this century, that matter and energy are interchangeable. Quantum physics has amply confirmed his theory.
Conventional, Newtonian medicine continues to address the body primarily as matter. Healers have been saying for a long time that they are addressing the energy body when they do healings.

Healers report that several interpenetrating, subtle energy fields surround the physical body. They claim that the physical body is an expression of the states of these energy fields, each of which is distinctly related to an aspect of being (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual). The fields are said to be hierarchically organized. The emotional and mental fields can therefore also influence the physical body.

These subtle energy fields extend to various distances from the physical body. Though only a few sensitive people are able to perceive these subtle energies as visual halos or auras of color around the bodies of living organisms and inanimate objects, many people can sense them with their hands. One has only to hold one’s hand’s near each other and then move them slowly apart and back together to sense these. About 90 percent of doctors and nurses I have instructed in workshops on healing are able to perceive these, and 25-75 percent of general audiences can do so as well. (The lower percents are among academics and others who have difficulties in letting go of thinking about what they are doing in order simply to do it or be with it and let their bodies experience these energies.)

The human body is a very sensitive instrument for the perception of subtle energies. This presents problems of “noise” in perceiving and interpreting human reports. There is also a wide variability in healers’ subjective experiences of perceiving and directing energies. Most people who are gifted with healing are not academically or research oriented. These problems have contributed to the difficulties of science in accepting reports of healers.

We can see that energy medicine and allopathic approaches simply represent the two sides of Einstein’s equation, E = mc2.

I am fascinated as a psychiatrist and healer to read about the psychological and social processes of paradigm shifts, as scientists assimilated the new concepts of quantum physics. It took several decades of research before these observations, which run counter to our ordinary experiences of the world, were accepted. A similar process is apparent with psi healing.

Why is it so hard for conventional medicine and science to accept healing as a valid and potent treatment?

Modern science has gone through a similar process with quantum physics.

Some of the observations of modern physics, which relate to the energy side of the equation, are counter-intuitive to conventional physics, and to “everyday, common sense.”

In conventional physics and medicine, linear interactions are the rule . (Note another prejudicial term.) We deal with measurable forces which produce measurable effects in material objects or chemicals.

In quantum physics, it has been shown that non-local effects may occur. An electron may be understood both as a particle and as a wave function. Single electrons may bilocate when passing through two slits. Time may flow backwards as well as forwards. The universe is so intricately interwoven that every element in it is ultimately influenced by every other element. An event may be considered as both occurring and not occurring — until an observer intervenes and determines which is the case. In other words, the observer cannot be separated from the system which is being observed. Much has been made of the similarities between modern physics and psi phenomena in excellent books, such as Fritjof Capra’s The Tao Physics , so I shall not belabor these.

It took several decades for scientists to accept these counter-intuitive observations of modern physics. The same is happening with healing.

England is a world leader in integrating spiritual healing with conventional medicine.

In the mid 1970s British healers formed a healing organization which lobbied to allow healers to treat patients in National Health Service hospitals. With one governmental (not medical) decision, 1,500 hospitals were opened to healers.

In the early 1980s, the major healing organizations joined in a Confederation which standardized a code of conduct. The code of conduct was approved by the Royal Colleges of Medicine, Surgery, Nursing and Midwifery.

There are DHN regional groups in various cities in England: London; Yorkshire; Lancaster; Bath/Bristol and others. There are General Practitioners who have healers working in their surgeries, and some of the healers are paid under the NHS. Many more doctors are referring patients to healers at the healers’ treatment rooms. Some doctors are developing their own healing gifts. Doctors can obtain Postgraduate Education Allowance credits for learning to develop their healing gifts. Two hospital pain centers, three hospital cancer centers, a rheumatology ward and a cardiac rehabilitation center have healers working there regularly. The Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter shares the experiences of healers and doctors between DHN groups and with interested subscribers around the world.

How do doctors change their beliefs about healing?

One would think that the observation of clinical changes in patients as a result of healing might be convincing, but it usually is not. Most doctors ignore such occurrences or dismiss them as either misdiagnosis or “spontaneous remissions” (which is a convenient vehicle for admitting ignorance while not having to re-examine one’s theories).

On an individual basis, it is very difficult to change the view of health care professionals. Each individual is afraid of peer censure, which can be brutally vicious. Doctors, nurses and researchers may imperil their professional advancement, research grants and their jobs by advocating something which their peers or supervisors do not accept. (In many ways this is akin to the treatments received by heretics who espoused beliefs which differed from those of their religious compatriots. This has led some to suggest that scientism is the religion of the Western world.)

I do not criticize people who are slow to assimilate new observations and theories. It took me two years after observing Ethel’s healing before I was ready to explore the development of my own healing gifts, and several years more before I integrated spiritual healing into my practice of psychotherapy.

On broader fronts there are further approaches which can be fruitful.

Osteopaths lobbied successfully to obtain recognition for their treatments, with almost no research evidence to support their claims or explanations for treatments. Their principal selling point with the medical and governmental authorities is that they have professional standards of conduct and peer regulation. Lobbying is a legitimate way to alter the status of healing and other complementary therapies.

The public is learning to appreciate healing and other complementary therapies much more quickly than the health care professionals.

One of my favorite cartoons is of a patient standing before the receptionist’s desk, asking: “Does the doctor hug?”

The public, voting with their dollars, are bringing about greater acceptance of complementary therapies in the US. David Eisenberg, M.D. published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine in January, 1993, which showed that almost as many dollars were spent in 1990 on complementary therapies as on conventional medical care. It was not long after that numbers of medical schools, including Harvard, introduced courses for medical students on complementary therapies.

In England, money also speaks. A General Practitioner in Devon published a study showing that the healer working in his practice saved money by halving the visits of patients with chronic problems and reduced their medication bills. This has been a popular item in the news media.

The safety of healing is also impressive, as measured by malpractice insurance costs. Healers pay under $4 annually for roughly the same coverage which doctors pay over $1000.

Much of the foregoing related to the material world with which we are familiar. Perhaps even more important is the opening to spirituality which occurs with involvement with healing.

Healing opens us to our spirituality.

Spirituality is an awareness which has atrophied in our society. Western culture is something of an aberration when compared to the majority of other cultures, where the spiritual dimensions are experienced and conceptualized as normal parts of existence — not paranormal, mystical, or to be rejected.

Again we must clarify our terminology. When I speak of the spiritual I intend to address those realms or dimensions where awareness can visit, where time future and time past are all in the now, and where form and space are purely mental constructs.

In these dimensions our spirits continue their existence and development between physical lives. There is research evidence for this from a wide range of psi phenomena, including: Remote viewing (sometimes called traveling clairvoyance ); out-of-body, near-death and deathbed vision experiences; apparitions (ghosts); channeling and other mediumistic phenomena; and reincarnation research. The research evidence from these diverse fields is, overall, consistent and produces a coherent picture. We haven’t the time to review this in detail, but it is summarized in Volume III of Healing Research.

From the vantage of the spiritual dimensions, our existence within the material realms of earth is an exploration, or digression, into the very densest levels of energy. The material body is like a garment taken up by the spirit in order to explore particular lessons for the advancement of the soul. In our lessons we are repeatedly present us with choices regarding relationships, attitudes and actions. If we make poor decisions, we may not graduate into the next levels of existence, but might have to repeat the class with other teachers. If we do graduate and leave physical existence, we might choose an elective tutorial, sticking around in our spirit bodies in order to help those still struggling in the physical classrooms. At some point, we move on to further personal spiritual development in universities which we cannot even begin to comprehend from the vantage of our earthly existence and awareness.

Presented originally as Spiritual healing as the energy side of E = mc2, Lecture at the 5th Mind/Brain Symposium of the Scientific and Medical Network, Institute of

Psychiatry, London, October 1994.

Epilogue 10/18/03

Nearly 10 years after writing the above, distinct though still modest progress can be seen in the growth of popularity and acceptance of bioenergy medicine.

David Eisenberg and colleagues published a second study of the use of Complementary/ Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies in 1998, showing a clear trend of greater use of CAM by the public and by healthcare professionals.

The revised edition of my book was published, now reviewing 191 controlled studies of healing. Of these, 34 meet criteria for rigorous standards of design and reporting and demonstrate significant effects of healing.

Newtonian medicine continues, on the whole, to be slow to absorb that the physical body, like any other physical object in the world, can be addressed either as matter or as energy. Nevertheless, growing numbers of physicians and nurses are learning to develop their own healing gifts and are incorporating many CAM modalities in their treatments.

Healing Research, Volume II , revised edition – Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing is in press, with estimated publication date January, 2004. This book discusses many ways in which self-healing is possible and reviews recent research supporting the claims of efficacy of Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Nutrition, Creative Arts Therapies and many more CAM modalities in helping many of the illnesses and dis-eases that Newtonian medicine is unable to cure and which it addresses primarily through medications. With the growing awareness that medications (properly prescribed) are responsible for over 100,000 deaths annually in the US alone, the safety of CAM therapies is clearly highlighted. There are very few serious side effects of CAM therapies, and almost no fatalities.

The Council for Healing is exploring ways of bridging between caregivers who practice diverse healing modalities. There is much to learn and to do through collaborations across disciplinary boundaries.

Spiritual awareness as an important aspect of life and health is also growing in acknowledgment and acceptance. Healing Research, Volume III – Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , is nearly complete and seeking a publisher. This volume explores research in spiritual dimensions, showing there is good reason to accept people’s reports that consciousness can extend beyond the body and can perceive and interact with other people and with the world at large.

Spiritual awareness is vital to the survival of our planet. Western society, pursuing domination over nature and exploitation of its resources, is destroying our planet. We need to reconnect with our awareness that we are an integral part of the earth and must seek the ways to heal its wounds and stop poisoning it as we would heal our own wounds and protect ourselves from being poisoned.

Spiritual healing can facilitate global healing. Spiritual healing is limited only by our disbeliefs. The spirit of Gaia can work with us in this healing.

You may ask, “So, where do I start on this journey of healing the planet?”

The best place to start is in healing the part of the planet you know best – yourself.

I wish you good healings.

References

Benor, Daniel J. (2001) Healing Research: Volume I, Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Benor, Daniel J. (2001) Healing Research: Volume I, Professional Supplement , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.
Only the studies — described in much greater detail, including statistical information.

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research Volume II: Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Coral Springs, FL, in press.

Eisenberg, David, et al. (1993) Unconventional medicine in the United States: Prevalence, costs and patterns of use. New England Journal of Medicine 328, 246-252.

Eisenberg, David, et al. Trends in alternative medicine use in the United States, 1990-1997: results of a follow-up national survey, Journal of the American Medical Association 1998, 280(18), 1569-1575.

LeShan, Lawrence. (1977) The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist , New York: Ballantine (UK edition: Clairvoyant Reality)

Krieger, Dolores. (1993) Accepting Your Power to Heal: The Personal Practice of Therapeutic Touch , Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co.

Resources on spiritual healing

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007 (Orig. 2001)
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Resources for exploring messages from your body

Resources for explaining the mind-body connection

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II : (Professional edition)
Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing, Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2004.
Thorough review of research validating the efficacy of self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM), biological energies, and environmental interactions with bioenergies.
“Book of the Year” award – The Scientific and Medical Network, UK

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II : (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts? Wholistic Healing and Bioenergies,Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2005
Popular edition Explains self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) and bioenergies, and discusses ways in which you can heal yourself.

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality

You may quote from or reproduce this article if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1994, 2003. Reprinted with permission of the author Daniel J. Benor, M.D. P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@danielbenor.com

Intuitive Assessments: An Overview

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 23:25:00 GMT

Introduction

Natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large except they be bounded in by experience.
-Francis Bacon.

Intuitives, including healers, are often able to obtain psychic impressions about people upon whom they focus their attention. These impressions may include information about the states of the subject’s body, emotions, mind, relationships and spiritual dimensions. Research on intuitive assessments is limited. This includes anecdotal reports, series of assessments by several healers, a qualitative study, and several modest attempts at controlled studies.

The development of intuitive awareness has far broader implications and applications beyond medical intuition. The process of knowing the world intuitively opens into an awareness of oneness with all creation, into realms that we have labeled as spiritual and mystical. This mode of knowing may be of enormous value in addressing some of the global crises challenging the continuation of our very existence on this planet.

Terminology

I suggest assessment is more appropriate than diagnosis for the intuitive impressions about health and illness that are discussed here. Reasons are presented in the discussion, below.

Anecdotal Reports

When I examined myself and my methods of thought, I came to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
-Albert Einstein

Reports abound of healers identifying problems present in healees. Many healers are able to intuit where to place their hands in order to give healing. Healees often comment on the fact that healers “find the right spot” without being told. Healers explain this in several ways. Some report they have an “inner knowing,” an intuitive guidance system that simply leads them to place their hands automatically where they are needed. Some healers feel or see the biological energy fields around people and are guided by their sense of touch or by the colors of the energy field to places that need healing. Some report they have inner guidance from spirits, angelic presences, Christ, other religious or healing luminaries, or God.

I have spoken with hundreds of healers and healees over two decades of healing explorations. I cannot count the numbers of stories I have heard of chronic pains, fevers, and diseases that eluded medical diagnosis and were clarified through intuitive assessments.

Methods of Assessment

Tactile sensations inform many healers, as they pass their hands around the body of a healee. Areas of pain or other dysfunction may feel hot, cold, sticky, gooey, or prickly (Krieger 1979; 1993). Other healers may see auras of color surrounding a healee. From the colors they can identify abnormalities in body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit.

Because auras serve as one of the most common avenues to diagnosis, I will discuss them in some detail.

Anecdotal observations on the aura have been published from early in the 20th century.

Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater (1925) wrote a classic work describing auras. Though they mention a few physical and emotional correlates of particular aura colors and shapes, their work is of limited help because it did not include medically trained researchers.

Walter Kilner (1965) used special cyanin dyes on glass screens to induce auric vision. He reported that physical states correlate with auric changes.

More recent explorations have refined these early observations. John Pierrakos (1987), a New York Psychiatrist specializing in bioenergetics, wrote a few words on his abilities to see auras. He notes that they correlate with states of health and illness. Sigrun Seutemann was a homeopathic physician-sensitive who lived in Germany. She reported she could detect changes in the auras of patients accompanying medical treatments and psychic surgery (Meek 1977). Clear correlations between aura perceptions and medical diagnoses are reported by Shafica Karagulla, a physician who worked closely with Dora Kunz, a gifted psychic (Karagulla 1967; Karagulla and Kunz 1989). Other excellent discussions on aura diagnosis are presented by Jack Schwarz (1980), a gifted psychic, and Barbara Brennan (1987; 1993), an astrophysicist who is now a teacher of healing. Brennan has worked with many doctors to clarify and confirm her auric observations. All of these support the claims that auras may provide assessments of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual conditions. Numerous other healers also mention that aura perception is either an occasional or a regular adjunct to their diagnosing and healing. For instance, Tony Agpaoa, the Philippine psychic surgeon, was said to be able to identify from the auras of patients which other healer had treated them (Meek 1977).

Only a few systematic studies of reports of aura diagnosis have been published.

Carlos Alvarado and Nancy Zingrone studied 19 people who are able to see auras. They found that a high percent of these people had very vivid visual imagery and imaginative-fantasy experiences, as well as a wide range of psi experiences.

Various colors have been described in the aura which typify particular physiological and disease processes. Individual perceptions of sensitives may vary so greatly, however, as to be puzzling and confusing to researchers. In a pilot investigation I studied eight healers who reported they see auras. They simultaneously observed, consecutively, four subjects who sat in the same room with them. The subjects had diagnoses which were known to the referring physician but not to myself or the healers. The overlaps in aura observations and interpretations were far fewer than the divergences between the sensitives. Yet the subjects felt that most of the sensitives’ observations were applicable to themselves. A replication of this pilot study, with four healers who are more sensitive and experienced, produced modestly better concurrence in impressions (Benor 1992, described in greater detail below).

Many healers and clairvoyants report that auric vision can be learned (Brennan 1987; 1993; Kilner 1965; Pierrakos 1987; J. Schwartz 1980). Most people can learn to sense the biofield with their hands (Krieger 1979; 1993). I teach this regularly to people who are interested in learning about healing.

Understanding Auric Perception

The auric field is reported to be a template, or programmer/ organizer, of what occurs in the physical body. This may explain how healers can treat by holding their hands near the body. The healers’ energy fields interact with those of the healee, which then can influence the body. Krieger reports that the process of passing one’s hands through the aura for diagnosis cannot be separated from the process of treatment. That is, at the same time that one is gaining an impression of the status of the healee, the interaction of the two energy fields may lead to alterations in both healee and healer fields. This may make it impossible to obtain consensual validation through serial examinations by separate healers of the same healee, as the healee will be changed by each interaction with a healer.

It is unclear whether auras are energy fields around the body or clairsentient perceptions which are interpreted by the healer’s brain in this way.

We must clarify whether (or to what degree) the visible aura corresponds with fields which are palpable and/or detectable on electromagnetic instrumentation. Pierrakos says the aura consists both of a variety of emanations from the body and at the same time is also a field or etheric body which is akin to a template for what transpires within the physical body. Pierrakos and other healers tell us that the biological energy body is the primary body of an individual, and the physical body is a secondary expression of what transpires within the energy body. This is consistent with a great body of research on survival of the spirit, reincarnation, and mystical experiences – all of which point to a spirit which takes on a body for a period of learning various lessons (Benor, unpublished). Some of these lessons have to do with the challenges of dealing with illness. There are intuitives who can read this level of the aura, bringing to consciousness past life traumas, soul-intents, and other issues that impact on states of health and illness.

It may be that radiations of energies recognized by conventional science, such as infra-red waves, produce many or all of the aura perceptions. Changes in these emanations may occur with altered physiological conditions (Bigu 1976; J. Evans 1986; Oschman 1997; Russek and Schwartz 1996; Schwartz and Russek 1999) and may provide information which can be interpreted by sensitive people to make diagnoses. The perceived aura may thus be a mental construct based on clairsentient perceptions and therefore subject to individual perceiver variations.

In support of this hypothesis are observations of some healers that they make intuitive assessments on the basis of smells.

Others (including myself) may perceive images that relate to the situation of the healee. These, however, could represent telepathic impressions or channeled information.

The individuality evident in aura perceptions of diverse sensitives might be explained in several other ways. Each sensitive may have limited, partial perceptions, differing from the perceptions of other sensitives because each focuses upon a different aspect of the subject. Sensitives may be viewing different layers of the aura without realizing it. More skilled or experienced sensitives might have more concurrence in their perceptions.

It is not clear whether the colors perceived by sensitives have any objective relevance or whether they are idiosyncratic constructs of healers’ minds. That is, it may be that the processing of various conventional or subtle energy perceptions, or of clairsentient impressions from unconscious ‘out-there’ events become translated to the conscious mind via color projections from sensory processing parts of the brain to the conscious mind or brain. This might be little different from visual images produced by the brain from stimulation of the retina by photons of various wavelengths. Such processes might explain some healers’ reports that they can see auras with their eyes closed (Gladden 1988; Worrall 1983), and that they can localize problems in the healee’s body by a murkiness, ‘break’ or other disruption in that region of the aura.

Why some see auras and others do not is a puzzle. Children probably see them more than adults in western society. James Peterson (1975; 1987) studied American children who said they see colors around people. Peterson was careful to present his questions in such a way that the children did not merely take suggestions from his inquiries and report colors to please him. He noted fewer reports the older were the children. He feels that children lose this ability primarily due to lack of acceptance of these perceptions by people around them. It would also be fascinating to look for possible differences in incidences of aura perception between sexes, by personality traits or preferred perceptual modes, and the like.

Reports that one can learn to see auras through various exercises are worthy of further study. Numbers of intuitives teach this.

Whether treatment is more or less effective in the aura compared to on the body is another question. The theory of those who practice aura healing is that it should be more powerful than touch healing because the aura is a template for the physical body.

Which manipulations in the aura are effective would be another question to examine. Practices and recommendations vary widely; similarly for what healers must do with their hands following treatments. Some say that on completing treatments they must shake their hands; others that they must wash them in order to rid themselves of adhering negative auric matter. These also warn that if they does not do so they may contract some of the healees’ symptoms (or even the diseases) or transmit them to others.

Further aura research promises to add many dimensions to our understanding of states and processes of health and disease. It must also clarify which reports of sensitives have consensual validation and which are specific to individual perceivers. It should further clarify whether there are differences in results of healings done by healers who perceive intuitive impressions (via aura imagery or otherwise) and those who do not. (More on this later.)

Great clinical benefits could be gained from diagnostic inputs of sensitives who seem able to diagnose illness based on what they perceive in the auras. This non-invasive method could be used for screening people in emergency wards and other medical units where diagnoses are in question.

I have developed my own healing gifts and use these in my practice of wholistic psychotherapy. Intuitive impressions often come to me as feelings. I might say to a client, “I feel a sadness behind your words.” They might not have been aware of their hurt or depression, and my feedback may help them get in touch with these underlying feelings. Such impressions could be due to visual or auditory cues, though I believe they are intuitive. I might perceive imagery that may make little sense to me but is very meaningful to the person I am working with. An image of an angry, threatening man once came to me as a woman was telling of her panic attacks on leaving the house. This resonated with her memory of an abusive father when she was a child, and of a rape she had experienced years earlier. She had had counseling to deal with the trauma of the rape, but unacknowledged and unresolved feelings remained, leading to her later panic attacks. I believe that intuitive awareness and healing combined with psychotherapy are far more effective than either alone (Benor 1994; 1996).

There are few instances in which reports of such intuitive abilities are verified by medical observations or laboratory studies. The results sound impressive, but are difficult to assess because of the lack of rigor in the assessments and reports.

Anecdotal reports are the basis for more systematic investigations. For instance, radiesthesia specialists suggest that the compass direction in which the therapist and healee are facing may influence the assessment and treatment. This sort of observation may help clarify some of the heretofore unexplained variability in research in intuitive assessments and healing.

We are clearly in the early days of investigating intuitive assessments. Much remains to be clarified.

Kinesiology and Ideomotor Responses

Intuitive information is available to almost everyone, as evidenced by extensive studies of psi (psychic) experiments (Edge 1986; J. Nash 1986; Radin 1997; Rhine 1964; L. Rhine 1961; 1967). Intuitive information is difficult for most people to access directly. It tends to appear as spontaneous “hunches” or to come in dreams, where it is often cloaked in metaphoric imagery (L. Rhine 1961; 1967).

Health caregivers, particularly in complementary/alternative modalities (CAM), have learned to access their intuitive awarenesses through muscle responses to questions held in mental focus. I present this as an exercise that you, the reader, can explore yourself.

Rub the index finger of one hand across your thumbnail of the same hand, as a bow would be moved across the strings of a violin. Think to yourself, “What does YES feel like?” Continue rubbing and ask, “What does NO feel like?” Many people will notice a distinct difference.
    If this doesn’t work for you, there are other ways to explore this.
    Hold the tip of your left thumb firmly against the tip of your left index finger, making a ring. Hook your right thumb through this ring at the point where your left hand fingers are touching and pull firmly until you “break” the contact of your left thumb and index finger. Now repeat this twice, asking each time, “What does YES feel like?” and “What does NO feel like?” Many people notice distinct differences here, too.
    If this doesn’t work for you, then close your eyes and ask you mind to put up an image on the blank screen that stands for YES. Make the screen blank and ask for an image that represents NO.
    If none of these work, you could get a friend to help. As you hold your arm out to your side, parallel to the floor, say out loud, “My name is (state your name).”At the same time, have your friend press down on your arm and note your strength as you resist the downward pressure. Then say out loud, “My name is (state any other name). Note your strength as you again resist downward pressure by your friend on your arm.
    Most people will note a distinct difference as they state their true and false names, or as they make any other true or false, YES or NO statement.

These techniques have been known for centuries in hypnotherapy as ideomotor responses. The classic way in hypnosis is to have the subject place his hands on his knees, suggesting that the unconscious mind will speak by allowing a finger of the right hand to rise as an indicator for YES, and a finger of the left hand to rise as an indicator for NO.

Applied Kinesiology, a derivative of acupressure, has developed this into a systematized approach to asking people to answer for themselves questions about their health and illness (Diamond 1978; 1985; Durlacher 1995; Gallo and Furman 2000; Whisenant 1994).

Reports on Series of Assessments

C. Norman Shealy, MD (1975; 1988), published an exploratory study of the abilities of eight psychics (including Henry Rucker) to diagnose 17 patients. Pooled diagnoses were “98 percent accurate in making personality diagnoses and 80 percent accurate in diagnosing physical conditions.” Too few details are provided regarding the procedures, diagnoses, and methods of assessing accuracy to validate the claimed successes in this study.

In informal testing, Shealy gave Caroline Myss, a gifted clairsentient diagnostician, only the names and birth dates of 50 patients. He found her to be 93 percent congruent with his own diagnoses. Shealy lists the pairs of clinical diagnoses but provides very little substantiating data.

In a somewhat more formal study, Shealy diagnosed a series of patients by his own physical examination and administration of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. A photograph was taken of each patient, and his or her name and birth date written on the back. Six clairvoyants were given the photographs, names, and birth dates; a numerologist was given just the names and birth dates. No other contact with patients was allowed. A professor of psychology, who made no claim to psychic ability, also guessed the answers on the basis of the photographs. Two major questions were asked: “Where is the difficulty or pain?” and “What is the major and primary cause of the patient’s illness?” Each diagnostician filled out a questionnaire.”

We had complete data on some 78 patients and at least one or more clairvoyant diagnosis carried out on almost 200. Two of the clairvoyants were 75 percent accurate and a third was 70 percent accurate in locating the site of pain. . . In determining the cause of the pain, the clairvoyants ranged from 65 percent accuracy down to 30 percent. Here there was only a 10 percent probability of obtaining the correct diagnosis by chance. (Shealy 1975)

The psychologist did not exceed chance levels with his guesses. Robert Leichtman, an internist who is a gifted clairsentient diagnostician, was 96 percent accurate in descriptions of patients’ personalities.

Again, very little substantiating data is provided.

Karel Mison (1968), of Prague, presents a brief note on 2,005 diagnoses each made by a physician (P) and by a “biodiagnostician” (identified as “subject” or S). Six P and eight S participated, practicing in six different medical centers. Distant diagnoses of 205 cases are not given individually, as they demonstrated an overall congruence of only 28.67 percent.
~~Table 1~~ shows which P worked with which S and the following data:

1. Number of processed dyads (x)

2. Number of congruent diagnoses

3. Percentage of congruency

This translated study indicates that in some instances clairsentient diagnosticians can achieve as high as 85 percent congruence with medical diagnosticians. Unfortunately, the report does not tell us whether the various diagnoses were validated by objective laboratory data. No controls or statistical analyses are presented.

Qualitative Studies

Daniel J. Benor (1992), with the help of a general practitioner, Jean Galbraith, invited healers who see aura to simultaneously observed a series of patients with known diagnoses. In the first series, each of eight healers drew a picture of the colors they saw around each patient and wrote down their interpretations of what they saw. Each one then read out their impressions. No one was more surprised than the healers to find that the divergences in aura observations and in their interpretations were far greater than the overlaps. It was like the blind men and the elephant. Each of the healers had previously believed they saw THE picture of what is going on inside their healees.

Next, each patient responded to their various aura readings. This was a second surprise. The patients resonated with most of the readings, different as they were. There was only one healer whose readings were consistently rejected by the patients.

It was apparent that each healer saw “A” picture rather than “THE” picture of the healee.

We repeated the procedure several months later with a more select group of four healers who had reputations amongst their colleagues for being very advanced in their aura perception abilities. These healers gave many more interpretations in the psycho-spiritual dimensions than the first group. They had the same results as with the first group. The differences were far more prominent than the overlaps, and the patients resonated with aspects of each reading.

David Young and Steven Aung (1997) studied three psychics’ abilities to diagnose the medical conditions of five people with known illnesses. Concurrence of intuitive and medical diagnoses were rated at 6-14% (mean 9%). They conclude that intuitive diagnosis is of limited value, not to be trusted. Kim Jobst, the editor-in-chief of the journal, criticizes their conclusions as being too narrow. Jobst raises many interesting and relevant questions, including the legitimacy of determining the value of intuitive assessment by the yardstick of medical diagnosis.

Controlled Studies of Medical Intuition

There are three very modest controlled studies of intuitive assessment:

Robert Brier, Barry Savits, and Gertrude Schmeidler (1974) studied recent graduates of a Silva Mind Control course for the development ESP. Many graduates who seem intelligent and sincere claim that they can diagnose ailments clairsentiently, given some minimum information about an individual, such as their name. Brier et al. performed two experiments in which a surgeon selected 25 cases and “identified each by first name and initial of last name, age and sex and divided them into five groups so that there was minimal overlap of symptoms among the five members of a given group.” Five enthusiastic mind-control graduates each received one group of data and made their clairsentient diagnoses. No significant results were found.

A slight tendency was noted for more positive results in more recent graduates of the Mind Control Program. A second experiment was therefore run with subjects tested on the day after graduation from training. Although the overall results were not significant this was misleading. “Two of the subjects were children, aged 10 and 12, and their readings were meager and uninformative.” One subject’s results taken alone were significant ( p < .05) and “If the scores of the three older subjects had been examined separately, they would have been significant.” Another graduate of the same course volunteered to be tested and also achieved significant results ( p < .05).

Alan Vaughan (1974) studied 21 people who had taken the Silva Mind Control course. He obtained from a physician the names of five patients with known illnesses. Subjects received patients’ first names, initials of last names, gender, age and city where they lived. Of the 105 readings, the physician felt that only one “bore a correct diagnostic statement.” The physician could not identify beyond chance which of randomized paired readings from two patients of the same sex and similar age belonged to which patient.

Nils Jacobson and Nils Wiklund (1976) studied a teacher (Mr. BA) of the Swedish Mind Dynamic method, which claims that its practitioners learn to diagnose illness at a distance from patients’ names and addresses.

In the first study, one of the experimenters, NW, gathered information on 10 sick male people. Two lists were prepared, each randomized independently. “One contained the names and towns of residence (but not street addresses), and the other contained correct diagnoses. . . .” Both lists, each in a sealed envelope, were given to the other experimenter, NJ, who conducted the study thereafter. N J did not know which name corresponded with which diagnosis. Mr. BA gave verbal diagnoses for each of the named persons, and then also matched the diagnoses from the list with the named persons.

In the second study, the above was repeated with female patients. In addition, NJ knew the correct matching of names and diagnoses. He did not reveal to Mr. BA that he knew them. NJ made every possible effort not to give out any cues. In actuality, the names and diagnoses were invented by NW This subterfuge was unknown to NJ at the time of the experiment.

A check was run on Mr. BA by asking him whether he knew personally any of the ten real people listed in Experiment 1, along with four people whom he presumably knew. He admitted only to knowing one of the latter four.

As he had in Experiment 1, Mr. BA expressed some disappointment that he did not reach his usual level of contact with the target persons. He showed distress and on two occasions asked for a rest. After three hours only seven target persons had been worked through. The work was terminated at this point, as seven trials was a suitable number for the intended statistical procedure. . . seven descriptions were matched with 10 different diagnoses. . . .

In neither experiment was there a correct diagnosis, which could occur purely by chance.

Mr. BA was highly motivated during the experiment. He complained that he usually knew the address of the patient and that the patient or someone who knew the patient was usually present when he made his diagnosis.

Dowsing

The use of various simple instruments held in the hands of the intuitive assessor may facilitate the transfer of information from the unconscious mind to consciousness. Pendulums and dowsing rods may also facilitate the learning of of intuitive assessments, acting as feedback devices that cue practitioners to attend to intuitive awarenesses.

Dowsers may ask their pendulum or other device to identify illnesses in people, animals and plants. They arrive at the answers through a series of yes/no queries or through swinging the pendulum over radially-distributed lists of problems, percents of deficits, doses of medication and the like. When the patient is not present they usually prefer to have a witness, that is any object closely associated with the healees in order to link with them. This may be a lock of hair, a drop of spittle, urine or blood on a piece of blotting paper, a photograph or an object belonging to the healee. Lacking these, the person’s name written on a piece of paper may suffice.

A contribution to energy medicine particular to dowsing is the identification of illnesses that are caused by underground streams or other sources of negative earth energies, called geopathic zones. These are said to stress people who spend time over them, such as when sleeping or working above a geopathic zone (Bachler 1989; Pope 1987).

Sensitive medical dowsers may develop powers of clairsentience so that they need their instruments less or not at all. They simply ask their questions mentally and the answers come to them intuitively.

Skeptics have suggested that dowsers may be well versed in geology and/or keen observers of various cues that they then translate into intuitive impressions projected for whatever reasons onto their devices. Others have hypothesized that dowsers may be extra-sensitive to various EM or other radiations of known type.

Research has confirmed in a modest way some of the claims made by dowsers. Studies show that they can identify earth energy lines and electromagnetic radiations. For instance, studies in Germany summarized by Ilse Pope (1987) showed that particularly negative locations identified by dowsers could be associated with development of cancers in up to ten people who lived successively at these locations.

Hand assessments of healing bioenergies
Energy field assessments involve the use of intuitives’ hands as instruments for assessing the bioenergy states of patients.

Susan Wright (1988) developed an energy field assessment (EFA) form to identify particular qualities during assessments of the human energy field. This study was set up to develop the validity and reliability of the EFA in assessing the location and intensity of pains, as well as in identifying generalized fatigue and depression.

Wright and an assistant each scanned the energy fields (a process of two to four minutes) of 52 people undergoing chronic pain of various sources. The two examiners noted with each scan sensations of heat, tingling, and cold, as well as any right-left differences in the energy field.

The subjects filled out a demographic questionnaire, the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) and the Profile of Mood States (POMS). The pair of healers sensing the fields were blind to any information about the people whose fields they sensed and recorded. Of primary interest in the BPI is a drawing of a person, front and back, upon which subjects indicated the locations of their pains by shading in the relevant body parts.

Significant correlations were found between the sensed field abnormality and pains in the neck, upper back, and lower back (high significance: p < .0008-.0000l).

There were not enough subjects with pains at other locations to reach the experimental criterion of p < .01 level of significance through the statistical analysis used. Of note is the additional finding that left shoulder pain assessment was significant at the level of p < .03 (modest significance).

It is very helpful to have a study confirming with high significance the validity and inter-rater reliability of the sensing of biological energy fields. One would hope to see replications of such a study before drawing any serious conclusions from it.

Unfortunately, there was a significant flaw in the research protocol, which could have allowed the healers access to information by normal sensory means. The report is also incomplete for the assessments of the second healer.

Gary E. Schwartz, Linda G. Russek, and Justin Beltran (1995) noted that various measurable energies of two people may interact when they are close together. For instance, electrical cardiac energy (ECG) interactions occur and may vary with the degree of openness of the participants to interpersonal information. The ECG patterns of each of two people sitting near each other appear in each other’s electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns.

The researchers also noted that the hands carry direct current (DC) skin potentials, as part of a complex, dynamic energy pattern around the hands and other parts of the body.

Two experiments were performed to establish whether ordinary people who were blindfolded could identify the presence of the hand of an experimenter which was held several inches above one of their hands. (Subjects had no claims to any healing abilities.)

In the first experiment, the subjects’ mean guesses were above chance (58.5 percent; modest significance: p < .02), while estimates of their own performance were 12 percent lower (not significant). Subjects’ mean confidence ratings were higher for correct guesses than for incorrect ones (high significance: p < .004). This suggests that they were partially aware of when their guesses were correct.

In the second experiment, guesses were 69.8 percent correct, significantly above chance (highly significant: p < .00001). Again, estimated performance was 12 percent lower than actual performance.

In the combined experiments, results were highly significant ( p < .00005). There were no differences between men and women in percent of successful guessing. Both groups also had higher confidence ratings regarding correct guesses compared to incorrect ones ( p < .007).

This study clearly demonstrates significant evidence that ordinary people can sense when another person’s hand is near their own. This supports the claims of healers to be able to sense an energy field around the body.

Schwartz et al. suggest that electrostatic and/or electromagnetic effects may contribute to these sensations.

The mystery of intuitive assessment is truly starting to be addressed through such pioneering work as that of Wright and of Schwartz and colleagues. It is only through methodical confirmations and eliminations of various hypotheses that we will come to understand the true nature of healing.

David Eisenberg et al (2001) studied the abilities of an intuitive diagnostician to identify the presence or absence of organ problems in a convenience sample of 28 infertile women who lacked physical findings and another 9 normal, fertile women. The diagnostician scanned the women with his hands held a few inches away from their bodies. The healer was unsuccessful in identifying the presence or absence of fertility disorders.

In contrast with the last three studies, the next one is of interest primarily for its publication in a prestigious American medical journal, and for its demonstration of the readiness of conventional medical journals to present what they perceive to be negative results of healing studies.

For a fourth grade science fair project, Linda Rosa’s nine-year-old daughter, Emily, did a study of 21 Therapeutic Touch (TT) healers’ abilities to sense biological energy fields (Rosa, et al 1998). Fifteen TT healers were tested over several months in 1996 at their offices or homes. The study was published in 1998 in the Journal of the American Medical Association under the title “A Close Look at Therapeutic Touch.”

In the study, healers laid their hands on a table, palms up, 25 to 30 cm apart. The experimenter sat opposite them, screened from sight by a tall barrier. Healers inserted their arms through holes at its base, with the further precaution of a towel placed over their arms so that they could not see the experimenter through the arm holes. Each healer was tested 10 times, being allowed to prepare themselves mentally for as long as they wanted before each set of trials. The experimenter held her right hand 8 to 10 cm above one of the healer’s hands (chosen by coin toss) and alerted the healer, who then identified over which of her or his hands the experimenter’s hand was located.

To reach a significance level of p < .04, healers had to identify the targeted hand correctly 8 out of 10 times. In the first series only one healer scored 8, but on a retest scored only 6.

A second series was completed in a single day in 1997 and recorded on videotape by a TV broadcasting crew. Healers were permitted to sense the experimenter field and each also selected which of her hands she would use for their test (seven chose her left hand; six chose her right). Healers identified which of their hands was being tested in 53 out of 131 trials (41 percent). The range of correct responses was 1 to 7.

The healers gave a variety of excuses for their failures.

The 123 correct responses out of 280 trials (44 percent) in the two series obviously did not support claims of healers to be able to sense the energy field. Rosa et al. note that if healers had responded correctly in 2/3 of the trials their results would have been significant at p < .05; if in 3/4 of the trials, at p <.0003. “However, if TT theory is correct, practitioners should always be able to sense the energy field of their patients.”

Accuracy would also be expected to correlate with the length of practice of healers. No significant correlation was found in this study between healers’ performance and their levels of experience.

Rosa et al. conclude that TT healers have no ability to sense the biological energy field because the 21 TT healers they studied did not succeed in identifying which of their hands was being tested. “To our knowledge, no other objective, quantitative study involving more than a few TT practitioners has been published, and no well-designed study demonstrates any health benefit from TT.”

George D. Lundlberg, M.D., then editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association , concluded that TT is useless as a therapy.

On the face of it, the study by Rosa et al. seriously challenges the ability of healers to sense energy fields. However, the study itself presents its own challenges. It is surprising, for example, that a study done by a 9- to 10-year-old girl would be published in a prestigious medical journal such as this. The standards for accepting research reports in such journals usually require that they must have been performed by a medical practitioner.

The first, third, and fourth authors of this article are self-identified skeptics, the last two being members of an organization called Committee for the Study of the Paranormal. This organization is known to be dedicated to discounting any evidence for the existence of parapsychological phenomena. The methods it uses are not always of the highest scientific standards, and to many observers appear to be deliberately misleading. Several examples of such methods are evident in the study of Rosa et al.

The article looks, at first reading, quite convincing in its damnation of published TT research. It would appear, however, that significant omissions and distortions in the presentation and discussion of the results contradict the authors’ and editor’s beliefs (Benor 2001a; 2001b). The sweeping dismissal of TT as a valid therapeutic method by the authors and by the editor of the journal, based upon the evidence of this limited research by a 9- to 10-year-old girl, is patently ridiculous. This study simply explored the ability of healers to sense the energy field of one experimenter under specific test conditions. In no way did it test healing abilities.

Related Research

Ganzfeld Studies

Charles Honorton and others developed the ganzfeld technique for enhancing psi expression. Bland sensory visual and auditory inputs enhance subjects’ abilities in intuitive awareness. Subject sit in a quiet room, viewing diffuse white light through plastic eyepieces and hearing a nondescript hiss (white noise) through earphones. Under these conditions, intuitive, psychic impressions occur more often. Statistical meta-analyses of series of ganzfeld studies show astronomically significant results (Utts 1991).

While the ganzfeld technique has not been used for this purpose, there is every reason to believe it could enhance medical intuition.

Remote viewing focuses largely on inanimate objects, but can overlap with intuitive assessments.

In remote viewing an intuitive sits in a laboratory with an experimenter. Another experimenter goes to a remote place that is randomly chosen from a pool of such locations and revealed to the outward bound experimenter after she leaves the laboratory. The subject then uses her intuitive abilities to describe as many aspects of this location as she can. This experimental format has repeatedly produced significantly positive results in a number of different laboratories (Jahn/Dunne 1987; Puthoff/Targ 1976; Targ/Puthoff 1974). The successful research on remote viewing supports the possibility that healers can diagnose illnesses from a distant location.
Remote viewing has been used for spying (Katra/Puthoff 1999; McMoneagle 1993). In this usage, a second person is present to guide the intuitive and record his perceptions.

This is another possible model for the enhancement of medical intuition.

Radiesthesia

Dowsers may use radionics devices (sometimes affectionately called black boxes) for diagnosis and treatment. These have assortments of dials and compartments for sample specimens from the patient. A rubber diaphragm on the earlier model of the box was rubbed with a finger until a particular sensation was felt, indicating that the machine was tuned to the vibration of the item being sought mentally by the dowser.

Devices with electronic dials plus visual and/or tonal outputs have ushered dowsing into the modern age. They may utilize sealed vials of toxic and medicinal materials instead of the dowser’s mental image as a focus for tuning. A person with chronic tiredness, for example, will be told to hold an electrode of such a dowsing device. As the dowser puts each of a series of vials of toxins in the diagnostic chamber, the operator places an electronic probe on an acupuncture point. The dial will give a reading indicating whether the person has the given chemical present at deficient, normal or toxic levels. Similarly, tests can be made for allergens, vitamin and mineral deficiencies and for predicting efficacies of therapeutic agents.

The operator appears to be an essential link with the instrument with all of these devices, though many dowsers who use them tend to project the responsibility for the results entirely onto the devices. This is patently impossible with the rubber diaphragm, as the boxes have no intrinsic circuitry that would do more than give mental focus and/or feedback to the operator. Some radionics practitioners hypothesize that these devices may, in and of themselves, hold and/or project energies (of as yet unclarified nature) once they are tuned by the practitioner.

Both dowsing and radiesthesia may be parcticed from any distance.
Further electronic elaborations on these devices have been popularized by Voll and others. It is difficult to assess to what degree these are operator-dependent or operator influenced, but my impression is that the operator is a significant factor in these systems. The very latest in these is postulated to operate through so-called scalar waves (Mercola 2001).

Lessons from Intuitive Awareness

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
– Albert Einstein

Variability between practitioners

It appears that intuitive sensitives resonate with partial aspects of the people they observe. Each sensitive appears to look into the subject’s inner dwelling place through a different window.

We are must therefore be cautious in accepting any intuitive perceptions as only partly true. It appears that intuitive information is filtered through the deeper layers of the brain/mind in a manner very much similar to how dream materials bring information to the surface of our awareness from our unconscious mind. The various bits are clothed in garments cut out of our personal histories, fantasies, wishes, and anxieties. The end product is quite individual to each of us.

In the modest qualitative experiment is a world of information. I am reminded of the Japanese film, Rashomon, which tells the stories of four witnesses to a murder. Each is so different that it almost seems they have seen four different murders. We have assumed that this is simply the psychological makeup of people which distorts their perceptions and memories of “objective” truth. If there were a film of the actual event, it would be possible to see what really happened. In the realms of subtle energies, it may be more difficult. Not only are there no films of events, but the perceptions of the events and possibly even the events themselves may be shaped by the beliefs and psychological awareness of the perceivers.

Terminology

“Diagnosis” is a medical term denoting a process of logical analysis of details provided through questions and answers, physical examination, and laboratory data. These details are organized into disease categories according to allopathic understanding of health and illness. They are used to rule in or rule out the presence of specific problems, for which specific treatments can be applied.

It could be misleading for an intuitive to presume to be making a diagnosis, unless s/he were trained in medical diagnosis or working together with someone who was so trained. Medicolegal questions could also be raised by the use of this term.

“Intuitive assessment” appears a more accurate and useful term.

Fears of Psi and Boundary Issues

Fears of psi can limit people’s involvement with intuitive assessment, as with any area of psi ( ~~Benor 1990~~ ; Tart 1986; 1994). There is often concern that intuitives might be able to read the minds of subjects and reveal their secrets.

Feedback

Medical dowsing appears to offer a feedback system that facilitates both the learning and practice of intuitive awareness. These devices are clearly dependent on the fine muscle movements of practitioners. When the string of a pendulum is held in a clamp below the hand of the practitioner, no motion occurs. These devices therefore appear to be variants on the theme of ideomotor responses (term from hypnotherapy), the movements of muscles under guidance of the unconscious mind.

We tend to think of medical intuition as something done only by highly gifted, psychic people. The truth is that everyone has some measure of intuitive abilities. There are simple exercises people can do to develop and enhance their own intuitive awareness. A simple one is to rub your index finger across your thumbnail like a bow across the violin strings, asking yourself, “What does Yes feel like?” and then repeat the process, asking, “What does No feel like?” Many people find this method can rapidly access their intuitive awareness. (Other such exercises are available, drawn from Applied Kinesiology and related practices.)

Practicing intuitive awareness in everyday life can enhance this ability. This can make it a natural part of life, available for times of serious need. It can also demystify it and remove fears.

Cautions

The unconscious mind is extremely literal. The answers you get are shaped by the questions you ask. Be specific, write down your questions verbatim, have several intuitives focus on the same question when serious issues are under consideration.

When asking for intuitive guidance it is important to specify that it should come from the highest possible source.
People who are seriously mentally unstable should not be encouraged to focus on intuitive awareness. This can be destabilizing.

Politics and Social Commentary on Intuitive Awareness

In England, radiesthesia and radionics (the use of black boxes for healing) has been accepted, along with other aspects of healing, since their development, early in the last century. In the US, such devices have been strictly prohibited by the Food and Drug Administration, and practitioners have been hounded for practicing medicine without a license.

I would have to suspect that there are financial and political pressures behind these discriminatory practices in the US. The radionics devices in particular hold promise for decreasing the need for medications and pesticides.

Radionics devices have been shown to eliminate pests from crops (Russell 1973).

Theoretical Issues

Intuitive assessments are testimony to the presence and action of non-local mind. They suggest that there are no boundaries, no limits to the reach of the mind.

All verbal observations on intuitive awareness must contain distortions, as they are translations into linear language of information, global impressions, imagery, and feelings that derive from other dimensions.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
– Albert Einstein

Even in parapsychology, which is the closest science to the heart of intuitive awareness, there is generally what is called in sociology an etic approach. Explanations are based on the Western convictions that modern science can provide “objective,” i.e. linear, reductionistic explanations for every phenomenon.

What is needed is an emic approach. Explanation should acknowledge that peoples from cultures other than our own, behaving in manners that are different from ours, and with their own ways of experiencing and conceptualizing the world, usually have their own cultural explanations for their beliefs and behaviors which are equally valid to our own.

Procrustean distortions of intuitive awareness will not bring us closer to understanding them. They will simply make us comfortable in our ignorance, less uncomfortable with the bits and pieces of observations and experiences that do not fit our paradigms (Benor 1990; Benor, in press; Tart 1986).

Ethical Issues

Respect for interpersonal boundaries must be considered in the ethical practice of intuitive assessment. Several of the healing organizations have developed codes of practice that include ethical considerations.

Broader Applications of Intuitive Awareness

Logical thinking, reified by Western science as the epitome of human evolution, has distinct limitations (to put it in very mild British understatement). Linear reasoning starts with hypotheses, often unstated; more often even unnoticed and unacknowledged by proponents of theories and plans for solving humanity’s problems. Intuitive awareness reaches into dimensions of wisdom where logical thinking often cannot begin to visit – first of all because it assumes it has THE answers rather than AN answer. Logical thinking is either-or. Intuitive awareness is both-and.

Intuitive awareness reaches into dimensions of consciousness that we have labeled as mystical and spiritual. Both of these terms carry connotations (within linear reasoning) that are pejoratively negative and dismissive. These are realms of creativity, inspiration, and guidance from wisdom that is higher than that of any individual, that reaches into the collective wisdom of man across space and time, and that also reaches higher than the collective of all of mankind.

This awareness, exemplified in the Native American tradition of considering the effects of decisions on the seventh generation in the future, holds a promise of helping mankind solve the problems that threaten our very existence on this planet.

Summary

This is but the tip of a very large intuitive iceberg. Many sleuths will be needed to sort out this part of the mystery. Yin and yang may be far more accurate ways of acknowledging the space between the notes, wherein realities are perceived and created every moment by each of us.

The applications for intuitive awareness are of enormous potential. Medical diagnosis can be facilitated significantly. Further research is sorely needed in this area.

Broader acceptance of intuitive awareness could contribute to transforming societal attitudes towards spiritual dimensions of life.

*Summaries on energy field assessments were taken from Benor 2001(a) .

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An abbreviated version of this paper was prepared for presentation at the conference, Bridging Worlds and Filling Gaps in the Science of Spiritual Healing, Kona, Hawaii, December, 2001

You may quote from or reproduce this article if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 2001 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099 www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@danielbenor.com

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Spiritual Healing for Mental Health

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 22:27:00 GMT

In: Shannon, Scott (ed), Handbook of Complementary and Alternative Therapies in Mental Health , San Diego, CA: Academic/Harcourt 2001, 258-267.
Posted 2/26/02

I. Overview
A. Introduction

Spiritual healing (abbreviated in this chapter as healing ) is probably the oldest known treatment. It has been practiced in virtually every culture in every part of the world, throughout recorded history. In traditional cultures, it is administered by shamans and medicine men, and is very much a part of the fabric of the culture. In the Western world, material interventions have been emphasized by conventional medicine and healing has been viewed with great skepticism. Most physicians believe (as I, myself, did) that this could be no more than a suggestion or placebo effect. Recent research suggests there is as solid a basis for accepting healing as a legitimate and potent treatment intervention.

Spiritual healing is defined (Benor, 2001a; 2001b) as “a systematic, purposeful intervention by one or more persons aiming to help another living being (person, animal, plant, or other living system) by means of focused intention, hand contact, or passes to improve their condition. Spiritual healing is brought about without the use of conventional energetic, mechanical, or chemical interventions. Some healers attribute spiritual healing effects to God, Christ, other “higher powers,” spirits, universal or cosmic forces or energies, biological healing energies or forces residing in the healer, psychokinesis (mind over matter), or self-healing powers or energies latent in the healee. Psychological interventions are inevitably part of healing, but spiritual healing adds many dimensions to interpersonal factors.”

Laying-on of hands treatments may last 15-60 minutes, and are commonly given at weekly intervals. Distant healing may be sent as a mental intent, meditation, or prayer by an individual or by a group of healers. Healing may be given more often for acute or severe problems, less often as conditions improve.

B. Varieties of Healing

Healing is given in many ways, under many names, through various traditions and schools. Here are a few:

1. Therapeutic Touch (TT)
TT was developed by Dolores Krieger, PhD, RN, Dean of Nursing at New York University, along with Dora Kunz, a gifted, intuitive healer (Krieger 1979; 1993). It is practiced by hundreds of thousands of nurses, other health caregivers, and laypersons worldwide. TT is given with a laying-on of hands, practitioners very lightly touching the body or holding their hands near to but not touching the body. Mental imagery may be projected by healers to focus and direct the flows of healing energies through their hands or within healees’ bodies.

2. Reiki
Reiki is derived from Japanese healing traditions, practiced by hundreds of thousands of lay and professional healers worldwide (Barnett, 1996; Rand, 1998). It may be given through a laying-on of hands, or may be sent as a wish/prayer from any distance. Healers hold the intent that whatever energy exchanges or transformations are needed should occur under the direction of a higher intelligence .

3. Qigong
Qigong healing, of Chinese origins, encourages the healee to practice meditation, gentle physical exercises, and imagery of shifting healing energies within their own bodies and in relationship to their environment. Qigong masters give healing as external qi (Cohen, 1997; 2000).

4. Prayer
Prayer healing is practiced universally, with uncounted millions of laypersons, clergy, and growing numbers of health caregivers sending healing to those in need (Randall-May, 1999).

Many prayer healers believe healing is granted through a religious figure or by the God to whom they address their prayers. Some prayer healers feel that healing is effective only when sins are repented and when sent by anyone outside of their own church is suspect of being the work of the devil.

C. Healing Treatments

There are no standard treatment effects with healing. Healing has been reported to alleviate almost every known symptom and illness in some people, some of the time. Various practitioners may elicit different responses in the same healee, and the same healer may find the same healee responding differently from one treatment to the next. Some healers are particularly successful with given illnesses but may have no response when treating other problems. Some healers have told me that diabetes mellitus does not respond to healing, while other healers report that diabetes responds regularly to their treatments. This unpredictability of treatment response has contributed to skepticism about the benefits of healing. Anyone working with healers should seriously consider consulting one or more opinions and therapists if no responses are obtained after a few treatments ( Benor, 2001a ).

The gifts of healing may arrive in many types of vessels. Most healers are warm, intuitive, supportive caregivers. However, I have known very successful healers who had quite limited social skills or were even gruff, lacking in emotional intelligence, and very self-seeking.

Healing is most often a holistic, global intervention rather than a treatment for specific problems. Many healers direct their treatments to the whole person. It is not uncommon for someone to come for healing — for instance, of an infection — and to find that there was only a limited improvement in their presenting problem, but a major response in another problem that was not even mentioned to the healer.

Healers and healees often report they experience heat, tingling, vibration, electrical sensations, or cold during treatments. These sensations suggest that an exchange of energy is occurring between healers and healees. However, no conventional energies have been identified that correspond to these sensations.

The term spiritual healing derives from spiritual awarenesses that may spontaneously arise in healees and healers during treatment. These may include a deep sense of peace, acceptance, and unconditional love; awareness of being a part of a collective consciousness; feeling one with Nature, a religious figure such as Christ, or God.

II. Relevance for Mental Health

A. Healing is an excellent complement to most forms of counseling and psychotherapy (Benor, 1994; 1996).

During healing, memories may surface of physical or emotional traumas that contributed to current problems, bringing about a cure for the symptoms.

John suffered severe neck pains for over a year, following an auto accident in which he was rear-ended at a stop sign. No physical cause could be identified that would account for the persistence and severity of his symptoms. Pain medications, muscle relaxants, and massage gave little relief, and side effects of medications were troublesome. He obtained the greatest relief in wearing a neck brace, though again there appeared no adequate justification for this. In his first healing treatment, John was startled to recall how frightened he had been at age seven when his father, an otherwise hale, hearty and loving man, had had a severe auto accident and came home with his leg in a cast and wearing a neck brace. From that day forward, he suffered severe neck pain and headaches, was irritable, and no longer cuddled John or played with him. Psychotherapy helped John understand the buried childhood hurts — of his father’s essentially having abandoned him — that had been awakened by he injury and by wearing a neck brace. Further healing helped him relax his tense neck muscles and relinquish his pain.

B. Healing may release emotional conflicts that then require sorting out in psychotherapy.

Donna, a 35 year-old nurse, came for healing of a backache that had not responded over two years to physiotherapy, pain medications, diaazepam, and musle relaxants. Chiropractic provided relief that lasted one or two days but the pain always recurred. In her second healing session, Donna recalled a period of repeated sexual abuse at age seven by an uncle. The pain was markedly reduced following this session, but sevral months of psychotherapy was required for Donna to work through her feelings of betrayal, and to deal with the revelation of these experiences with her family.

C. The opposite may equally occur. In counseling, intense emotions may be released . Healing can help people to tolerate intense emotions more readily.

Sam had a severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from Vietnam War experiences where he had participated in brutal jungle warfare. Brief engagements with various forms of psychotherapy over two decades did not diminish his night terrors, panic attacks, and disabling headaches. He repeatedly left therapy because his symptoms began to worsen after one or two sessions. When healing was introduced, along with self-healing techniques that helped Sam control the anxieties released by therapy, he was able to persist in treatment and obtained marked relief of most of his symptoms.

D. Healing may help to resolve relational problems.

This may occur spontaneously or when relationships become a focus for the treatment. Healing is limited only by the beliefs, disbeliefs, and intents of the healers and healees. The following is an unusual, but not uncommon, example of this class of effects.

Lorna left home and school when she was sixteen, lying about her age to obtain work as a waitress. She could not stand to live with the constant bickering and arguments of her alcoholic father and her bitter, long-suffering mother. She was further embittered by a marriage that ended with separation and an acrimonious divorce due to her husband’s drinking. Left unsupported with two young children, she struggled for several years to survive. She was plagued by endometriosis, which eventually led her to receive healing. She was surprised to find that the healing not only relieved her physical pains, but also brought about heavy sobbing, with releases of feelings of abandonment by her husband and of neglect and emotional abuse by her parents. Her pains recurred several times during the course of treatment, each time preceding an emotional release. Though she released much of her angers and resentments towards her parents, with whom she had kept contact only through a token Christmas card for over ten years, she was in no way inclined to contact them again. Two days after her last emotional release of angers towards her parents, as she was working on termination of therapy, she was utterly surprised to receive a call from her mother, telling her that her parents were separating and that her mother, contrite over having not been available to her in childhood, wanted to re-establish their relationship.

While this may sound like a mere coincidence, it is not unusual to find healing unexpectedly improving relationships, even when this was not a primary focus in the presenting symptoms. The fact that such shifts occur not infrequently in relationships without physical and social contact is further evidence suggesting the action of healing through non-local consciousness (discussed below).

E. Some healers have gifts of extrasensory perception (ESP).

Healers may perceive deeply meaningful experiences of a healee from many years earlier. Such experiences may contribute significantly to the healing. They may also address memories as bioenergetic entities within the person that they can heal, just as they might heal a disorder of functions in the physical body.

Tom, a 42 year old, twice-divorced father of three, suffered from severe, chronic, recurrent depressions that had not responded well to a wide variety of antidepressants or to several years of psychotherapy with two therapists. Electroshock therapy had been recommended but he refused. In his first healing, the healer reported an intuitive awareness that Tom’s mother had felt she had to marry his father because she was pregnant. She deeply resented the pregnancy and did not want the marriage, but her religious beliefs and family pressures left her feeling she had little choice. The healer addressed these issues both cognitively and energetically with Tom. Within a few weeks his depression was markedly improved.

F. Healing may awaken intuitive, spiritual, and healing awarenesses and abilities in healees.

Wise healers will encourage healees to connect with these aspects of themselves — often ignored, neglected, or even dismissed and disparaged in Western society. It is commonly estimated that only five percent of the capacity of the brain is available to the conscious mind. Intuition extends our awareness into this rich, untapped resource of repressed memories and creativity.

Intuition also reaches beyond the individual, into what is commonly termed a “higher self.” This is a non-physical, non-local aspect of consciousness where psychic and spiritual awarenesses can be accessed.

Healers often have intuitive gifts that help them assess the types and severity of presenting problems. They simply know, with an inner awareness, what is wrong and how to address this through bioenergy treatments.

For use in medical practice, intuition is a gift that requires experience, refinement, and thoughtful balance. I learned a lot from a pilot study in which I explored the degree of congruence of the intuitive diagnostic assessments of a panel of eight healers who simultaneously observed the same patients (Benor, 1992; 2000; 2001). These healers made their assessments through visual perceptions of aura (the bioenergy field) around the patients. Each healer drew the colors perceived, and wrote down their interpretations of these. Each then gave their interpretation of their perceptions to the patient.

No one was more surprised than the healers when they found their perceptions were like those of the blind men examining an elephant. Each appeared to be describing an entirely different patient. The second surprise came when the patients were asked for feedback and reported that seven out of the eight intuitive readings were relevant to their conditions. (The eighth healer was found by all patients to be describing depression that was not present.)

It was as though each were looking into the same house through a different window. My understanding of these findings is that each healer resonated with a different aspect of the patient’s biofield. The eighth healer seemed to be projecting here own depressed emotional state on the patients.

This is a caution to anyone engaged in healing to be aware that healers may resonate with only part of the presenting problem(s) and may be blind to others.

G. My personal experience in developing my own healing gifts

Spiritual awareness that accompanies giving and receiving healing has given me perspectives that are deeply meaningful and helpful to me in dealing with my personal and professional relationships. The practice of medicine and psychiatry under managed care can be soul-destroying. There are constant pressures to be efficient within constraints of time, budgets, and the regulations of treatment settings, insurance companies, and governmental authorities. Being aware of a broader, spiritual connection introduces a sense of meaningfulness and purpose in life, even when I do not have words to adequately explain or even to articulate how I know this or what the purpose of these frustrating and depressing situations might be. It also reconnects me with my original intention for becoming a physician and psychiatrist: to help people who are suffering from disease and dis-ease.

In my practice of psychotherapy combined with spiritual awareness and healing I explore these dimensions with clients and encourage them to find their own spiritual awarenesses and meanings for their existence. Problems take on a much less onerous proportion from such a perspective. Spiritual dimensions also introduce elements of intuition and creativity that help to understand, deal with and resolve problems.

H. The personal growth and development of the therapist is vital to the process of healing.

In healing, perhaps more than in most other therapies, the person who is the healer is the instrument for the treatment. There is no mechanical, chemical, or social intervention that can adequately account for many of the problems successfully resolved by healers.

III. Issues of Safety, Compatibility with Conventional Care, Contraindications

A. Safety

There are no known deleterious effects of healing.

Some people experience mild to moderate worsening of symptoms following their initial treatments. This is considered a positive prognostic sign, as it appears to represent a release of blocked energies, along with physical and emotional tensions.

B. Compatibility with Conventional Care

Healing is an excellent complement to many other therapies. Practitioners of massage, aromatherapy, shiatsu, reflexology, and the like may notice that their hands feel unusually hot during treatments. Many don’t even realize that in addition to their physical manipulations, spiritual healing is also occurring spontaneously. When this occurs, patients often report that their treatment felt particularly helpful.

Healing may markedly diminish side effects of medications. Sue, a British nurse, is a strong healer on an oncology unit. Her supervisor would not agree to her offering healing to the cancer patients because she felt healing that was not done in her church was suspect of being evil. As Britain has no Bill of Rights, and Sue didn’t wish to alienate her boss, she reluctantly did not press the issue. Frustrated, she meditated and prayed for inspiration. She was pleased when she was intuitively guided to give healing to her patients’ chemotherapy IV bottles. Her patients then had little or no nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches or other side effects from the chemotherapy. Other nurses, including her supervisor, noticed this and suspected she was not administering the medications correctly, but could find no such fault when they supervised her treatments.

Some healers regularly produce dramatically positive effects. They may note that people with diabetes need less insulin following healing. They have learned to caution diabetics and the doctors they work with that they may be at risk for insulin shock if they continue on their usual insulin dose.

Some healers caution that healing may lessen the effects of cancer chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as they believe healing strengthens the immune system. While there is early evidence to suggest healing can enhance immune system functions, I know of no evidence to support these cautions with cancer patients.

C. Contraindications

There are no medical contraindications to healing.

Some patients object to healing, either categorically or as offered within particular healing traditions.

Healing should not be given instead of ongoing conventional medical care without the consultation of a physician. Patients on insulin or steroids have occasionally suffered the effects of injudiciously stopping treatment in the belief that they were healed.

IV. Research/Experience, Level of Scientific Documentation

A. Overview of Research

Out of 189 randomized, controlled studies of healing, 122 demonstrate significant effects that exceed a probability of 0.05 or better (Benor, 2001a , 2001b ).

Until recently, medical journals routinely rejected studies and articles on healing and most healing studies had to be published in parapsychology journals. Fortunately, this is changing. In the past dozen years, some of the most impressive studies were published in respected medical journals. Here are a few of these.

Randolph C. Byrd (1988) explored intercessory prayer in a coronary care unit (CCU). This double-blind study included 192 patients randomized to the prayer group and 201 to the control group. “There were no differences between groups on admission in degree of severity of myocardial infarction or in numerous other pertinent variables.” The experimental group received prayer sent by Christians praying many miles from the hospital. The prayer group scored significantly lower ( p < 0.01) than the control group on a scale for severity of problems devised by Byrd. “Significantly fewer patients in the prayer group needed intubation/ventilation ( p < 0.002) or antibiotics (p < 0.005), had cardiopulmonary arrests ( p < 0.02), developed pneumonia ( p < 0.03) or required diuretics ( p < 0.05).” However, “the mean times in CCU and durations of hospitalization between groups were nearly identical.”

The results might be more significant than they appear because, as Byrd notes, some of the patients in the control group may have had outsiders praying for them, which presumably would have reduced the differences between groups.

William Harris et al (1999) replicated Byrd’s study in another randomized, controlled, double-blind, parallel-group trial of 990 consecutively admitted patients on a CCU. “There were 466 in the prayer group and 524 in the control group. No significant differences were noted in age, sex or in comorbid conditions between the groups.” Informed consent was not obtained and neither patients nor staff knew this study was being conducted. Prayers were sent in the 28 days following admission, covering the patients? entire hospitalization in 95 percent of the cases.

The researchers developed their own assessment scale because no standard scales exist for assessment of CCU cardiac status or progress. The prayer group showed significantly more overall improvement than the control group ( p < 0.04). No significant differences between groups were evident on the scale devised by Byrd, although there was a trend in favor of the prayer group. Again, no significant differences were noted between the two groups in length of hospital stay.

Fred Sicher, et al (1998) arranged a randomized, double-blind trial of distant healing on 40 volunteers (37 men, 3 women) who had advanced AIDS. They were classified in category C-3, including CD4+ cell counts of less than 200 cells, a history of at least one AIDS-defining disease, and taking prophylactic treatment against Pneumococcus carinii. “Volunteers were solicited through local advertisements. Diagnoses were confirmed by standard criteria for HIV+ disease. Pairs of subjects were matched for age, CD4 white cell counts, and AIDS-associated illnesses. They were randomly assigned to receive either distant healing or no healing. All received standard medical care from their own doctors, at several different medical centers.” The treatment and control groups did not differ significantly on demographic and study variables prior to the start of healing.

Distant healing was sent for ten weeks by 40 healers in various parts of the United States. There was never any contact of whatsoever between healers and patients. “Patients and doctors were blind to who received the healing and to when the healing was sent.” Assessment of severity of illness was also done on a blinded basis.

At six months following the initial assessment, the prayer group “had significantly fewer AIDS-related illnesses (p < 0.04) and lower severity of illnesses ( p < 0.02). Visits to doctors were less frequent ( p < 0.01), as were hospitalizations ( p < 0.04), and days in hospital ( p < 0.04).”

Mood, assessed on the Profile of Mood States scale, showed significantly more improvement in the prayer group ( p < 0.02). CD4 counts and scores on the other psychological tests did not differ significantly between the two groups.

The authors point out that the overall improvements appear to indicate “a global rather than a specific distant healing effect.” They suggest that measures of viral load and activity of natural killer (NK) cells may be more useful measures of healing effects than CD4+ counts.

Although treatments were given by different doctors in different medical centers, an accepted current standard of treatment was presumably followed. This factor was not examined by the authors of this study to verify that there were in fact no differences in treatments between the healing and control groups.

These are three of the best published healing studies. It is also of note that these were published in respected, conventional medical journals.

B. Healing for Anxiety

Of particular interest in this chapter are studies of healing for anxiety. Here are two classics in the healing literature.

Patricia Heidt (1979; 1981) studied effects of Therapeutic Touch on anxiety in 90 patients hospitalized on a cardiac intensive care unit. “State anxiety was measured prior to and following the interventions given to each of three matched subgroups: 1. Five minute healings that were given with the hands touching the body; 2. five minutes of mimic healings (“casual touch”); or 3. no intervention.”

Subjects receiving Therapeutic Touch experienced a significant reduction in pre- vs post-treatment state anxiety ( p < .001) and had a significantly greater reduction in post-test anxiety scores compared to those in the casual touch or no touch groups ( p < .01).

Other studies confirm healing is helpful in treating anxiety in a general medical practice (Dixon, 1997); in premature neonates (Fedoruk, 1984); hospitalized children (Kramer, 1990); post-hurricane stress (Olson, Sneed, et al., 1992); Veteran’s Administration psychiatric inpatients (Gagne & Toye, 1994); oncology patients (Guerrero, 1985); terminal cancer patients in palliative care (Kemp, 1994); institutionalized elderly (Simington & Laing, 1993); and in unspecified subjects (Ferguson, 1986);

C. Healing for Depression

Several studies have explored healing for depression. The most rigorous is that of C. Norman Shealy et al. This is also an interesting study because it examined the benefits of quartz crystals in focusing the self-healing abilities of depressed people, showing significant effects ( p < 0.001).

A study by Catherine Leb (1996) explored the effects of six sessions of Healing Touch (HT) on chronic depression over three weeks. HT is an extension of TT, including longer sessions and focusing on the chakras (major bioenergy centers on the midline of the body). As part of the assessment, the healer used a pendulum to check the degree of openness, which is taken to be a measure of health, of the seven major chakras (energy centers on the midline of the body). The pendulum is used like the dial on a meter. It amplifies minute, unconscious movements of the healer’s hand, thereby externalizing the healer?s intuitive impressions, making them clearer.

The Beck Depression inventory showed significantly greater decreases in depression for the treatment group ( p < .001), sustained at one moth post-treatment. Chakra pendulum assessment scores for change in all seven chakras were significantly higher for the treatment group ( p < .001).

Healing may also be of help in bereavement. Loretta Robinson (1996) studied a convenience group of 22 adults who had recently been bereaved. “She assigned them randomly to receive either three TT or three mock TT treatments.” The brief dissertation abstract states that a Grief Experience Inventory “confirmed that TT was significantly beneficial in helping people deal with grief.”

D. Healing for Pain

Pains of many varieties have responded to healing. This is the symptom that most often brings people for healing. Two rigorous studies (Redner et al.; Slater, 1996) and another seven of lower standards (Dixon, 1997; Dressler, 1990; Gordon et al., 1998; Keller & Bzdek, 1986; Meehan et al., 1990; Peck, 1996; Sundblom, Haikonen, et al., 1994) show significant effects of healing in treating pain.

Healing most commonly brings about immediate modest to marked reductions in acute and chronic pains. As with other healing effects, there may also be gradual and modest improvements that continue to accrue with repeated treatments over time.

E. Distant Healing

Distant healing, probably more than any other aspect of spiritual healing, challenges our credulity within Western scientific paradigms.

A meta-analysis of distant healing research was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine authored by respected researchers. Three types of studies were included: prayer, Non-Contact Therapeutic Touch, and other types of distant healing. Literature reviews of available databases through 1999 produced 100 studies of distant healing. “Of the 23 studies that met their inclusion criteria (including 2774 participants), 13 studies (57 percent) demonstrated positive treatment effects, 9 (39 percent) showed no effect, and 1 (4 percent) had a negative effect.”

“This meta-analysis is of great significance for several reasons. The reviewers were very careful in their selection of studies and in their application of methods of mets-analysis. One of the authors, Edzard Ernst, is known to be very conservative in assessing studies of CAM reports. Their conclusions that further studies of healing are warranted is a vote of confidence in the distant healing research they reviewed.”

This meta-analysis also lends credence to the anecdotal reports of a large number of people availing themselves of healing treatments and praying for healing, as well as the growing numbers of anecdotal clinical reports from doctors referring to healers. It suggests that they are engaging in a beneficial therapy, not just wishful thinking, religious ritual (as rote) practice, or placebo therapy.

In Healing Research (Benor, 2001a; 2001b), my analysis of 52 rigorous studies of both touch and distant healing found 39 (75 percent) demonstrating significant effects.

F. Surveys of Healees

While randomized, controlled trials are considered the gold standard for research, patient satisfaction with treatment is another important measure of its benefits. Reviews of five patient satisfaction surveys in England, Holland and Iceland showed that 79 to 91 percent of respondents felt healing was of some benefit. This clearly exceeds the percents that would be expected if healing were merely a placebo.

G. Non-Human Subjects

Skeptics may suggest that healing can be nor more than a placebo, despite the best human healing research to date. This alternative is difficult to maintain in the face of extensive studies of healing effects on animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in vitro, enzymes, and DNA, many of which show highly significant effects.

V. Simple Treatment: Common Treatment Approaches for Depression, Anxiety, ADD/ ADHD, and Addictions

A. General Summary

Clinical experience suggests that healing is excellent for treating stress states and anxiety. Healees almost uniformly relax during healing treatments. They may flush, doze, and lose their sense of time.

As discussed above, research confirms healing is effective in relieving short-term, state anxiety, pain, depression, and grief. Healing may also facilitate releases of repressed emotions that contribute to causing and maintaining anxiety, depression and pain.

My clinical experience is that healing can contribute to medication therapy by potentiating the effects of all medications and by reducing side effects. I often recommend to clients that they pray over their own medications as they are taking them. I have been pleasantly surprised at how well many people receive this suggestion. Part of its appeal may be in introducing a sense of empowerment and participation in a situation where many people feel powerless — even to the point of rebellion and non-compliance. In contrast, I have been disappointed (though not surprised) at the response of physicians and drug company representatives, whose preference in treating side effects of one medication is to prescribe other medications to control the side effects of the first one.

B. Healing for Anxiety and Emotional Trauma

I can share from my recent personal experience with severe hip and thigh pain after a fall from a bicycle, exacerbated by lifting a heavy suitcase. Healing helped directly to alleviate some of the pain. What was far more helpful were the memories, elicited through healing, of early childhood lack of attention from my mother. These feelings resonated with the anxieties I had after the hip injury, which required that I take several days of sick leave at a time when there was no one near to help care for me. I did not make the connection until I had the healing.

In my work as a psychotherapist I often find that behind current problems of anxiety, depression, and pain there may lie memories of earlier traumas that resonate strongly with the current ones. In some instances it seems very likely that patients allowed themselves to develop their current symptoms as a way to release the old, buried hurts. This is seen most clearly in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders. For instance, children who were sexually abused may exhibit grossly inappropriate, provocative sexual behaviors, obsessively and compulsively re-enacting their emotional traumas in various ways. With less intense traumas we may have similar experiences.

In retrospect, I can speculate that my unconscious mind contributed to my hip and thigh injuries as a way of releasing the repressed emotional pains from my childhood.

C. Healing for Depression

Early research of healing for depression is discussed above.

As with any treatment, there are always non-responders. One innovative English healer persisted with several patients who had not improved with healing from several different healers, over many months. He invited small groups of healers to send distant healing to these previously unresponsive patients, while at the same time the patients were also praying for healing. Most of these, including the wife of a physician who had been severely depressed, reported distinct improvement.

While I have no formal data to confirm this, my clinical impression is that prayer may reduce the incidence of side effects from antidepressants.

D. Healing for Addictions

While healing has not been studied extensively as a treatment for addictions, it is so frequently helpful for treating anxiety and depression — both found frequently in addicts — that it is reasonable to expect it should be of help in addictions. A study of absent healing as an adjunct to clinic treatment of alcoholism (Walker ) did not find beneficial effects on drinking behavior. However, a post-hoc finding was that the healing group had a significantly lower dropout rate from treatment ( p < 0.05).

E. Healing for ADD/ ADHD

I have not found healing particularly helpful with ADD/ ADHD, though it also appears helpful here to have prayers over the medications.

F. Healing for Pain

Healing is an excellent treatment for pain. Relief may be obtained within minutes in some cases, even with chronic conditions. In others, repeated treatments over a period of weeks and months may be needed to obtain maximal benefits. Occasionally, pain is increased in the first session or two. This is considered a positive prognostic sign by healers, who interpret it as a mobilization of stagnant or blocked energies that are on their way to being resolved. Healing may significantly reduce the need for pain medication. This is a blessing in itself, and may also reduce the side effects of pain medications.

G. When to Give Healing

Healing is often given as a treatment of last resort, after all conventional interventions have failed. This is regrettable, because healers uniformly state their treatments are more effective when given early in the course of an illness. It appears that bioenergetic interventions may be able to arrest the progress of an illness or even to reverse it before it becomes chronic. Once it has been present for a long time, it is much more difficult for healers to bring about definitive changes, although they may be able to provide symptomatic relief.

H. Safety

Healing is a safe intervention when used judiciously. There are no known deleterious or dangerous effects of healing. Testimony to this is the annual cost of malpractice insurance for healers in England, who pay less than 10 pounds Sterling for coverage equivalent to that for which physicians pay 1,200 and more pounds per year.
Used injudiciously, healing could be harmful indirectly. There have been instances in which people discontinued conventional therapies such as insulin or hormone therapies, believing themselves to be cured of their diseases by healing, with disastrous results.

Postponing known effective treatments while a course of healing is given might put a person at risk of their illness progressing beyond a point that the conventional therapy could be effective. With integrative care, combining conventional diagnosis and treatment with CAM therapies, this need not be a danger.

VI. Triage: Training, Certification, How to Recognize a Qualified Healer

Healing is a gift, like playing the piano. Some are born with strong, innate abilities; most may improve significantly with deliberate practice; others may never achieve success despite sincere desire and intensive efforts.

There is a broad spectrum of courses and schools for healing. At the rigorous end are schools that offer two to four years of instruction, with experiential and supervised learning. At the other polarity, there are weekend courses in methodologies with no supervised practice.

There are no broadly accepted standards for training or certification, and healing is not a licensed therapy in any state.

In healing, perhaps more than in most other therapies, the person who is the healer is the instrument for the treatment. Gifted, natural healers who have had no instruction whatsoever may be excellent healers. Graduates of the most rigorous programs may be mediocre healers.

Selecting a healer is very much like selecting a psychotherapist. It is helpful to have personal recommendations from people you know and respect. No type or amount of training can predict the subtle vibrational resonations that will be conducive to compatibility between healer and healee, nor do we have any way to predict which healer will be the best for any given person. Even healers with outstanding treatment records may have no response in treating some people. Conversely, the most inexperienced novice healer may occasionally produce outstanding results.

Again, as with psychotherapy, minimal or no progress with one healer does not say that working with another healer will produce no results.

Some who offer healing within religious settings claim that faith is required for healing. This may be true for members of these religions who hold to this belief. Repentance and absolution may be necessary for their healing. That this is not universally true is suggested by the highly significant healing effects in studies with mice, rats, hamsters, bacteria, yeasts, cells in vitro, enzymes and DNA.

Another issue raised by healers with spiritual beliefs is whether healing through an intent of “Thy will be done” is broader, deeper, or in some other ways better than healing expressed as “My will be done,” with a focused intent for a specific outcome. While it may be easy to conceptualize a study where the effects of healing by healers holding to these beliefs are tested in a controlled study, it may be extremely difficult to differentiate beliefs from healing expectancy effects.

VII. Summary

Spiritual healing offers a safe option for treating almost every known illness. Where there is no urgency for other interventions, healing may be a treatment of first choice due to its lack of side effects. Within the framework of holistic medicine, healing is an excellent complement to other conventional and CAM therapies.

References

Barnett, Libby. Chambers, Maggie. (1996). Reiki Enegry Medicine: Brining Healing Touch into Home, Hospital, Hospice . Rochester, VT: Healing Arts.

Benor, D. J. (1992). Intuitive diagnosis, Subtle Energies , 3(2), 41-64.

Benor, D.J. (1995). Spiritual Healing: A unifying influence in complementary therapies, Complementary Therapies in Medicine , 3(4), 234-238.

Benor, D.J. (1994). Spiritual healing and psychotherapy, The Therapist 1994, 1(4), 37-39, www.WholisticHealingResearch.com .

Benor, D.J. (1996). Psychotherapy & spiritual healing, Human Potential , Summer, 13-16, www.WholisticHealingResearch.com .

Benor, D.J. ( 2001a ). Healing Research, Volume I, Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.

Benor, D.J. ( 2001b ). Healing Research, Volume I (Professional Supplement), Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.

Byrd, R.C. (1988). Positive therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care population, Southern Medical Journal , 81(7), 826-829.

Cohen, Kenneth S. (1997) The Way of Qigong: The Art and Science of Chinese Energy Healing , New York: Ballantine.

Cohen, Kenneth S. (2000, May). Qigong as complementary and alternative medicine , Instruction manual, Workshop, Boulder, CO.

Collins, J.W. (1983). The Effect of Non-contact Therapeutic Touch on the Relaxation Response, (Master’s thesis) Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University.

Dixon, Michael. (1998). Does ‘healing’ benefit patients with chronic symptoms? A quasi-randomized trial in general practice, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine , 91, 183-188).

Dressler, David. (1990). Light Touch Menipulative Technique. International Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine , (England), 8(4), 19-20.

Fedoruk, R.B. (1984) Transfer of the Relaxation Response: Therapeutic Touch as a Method for the Reduction of Stress in Premature Neonates (Doctoral dissertation) University of Maryland.

Ferguson, C.K. (1986). Subjective Experience of Therapeutic Touch (SETTS): Psychometric Examination of an Instrument , (Doctoral dissertation) Austin: University of Texas.

Gagne, D. Toye, R.C. (1994). The effects of Therapeutic Touch and relaxation therapy in reducing anxiety, Archives of Psychiatric Nursing , 8(3), 184-189.

Gordon, A. Merenstein, J.H. D’Amico, F. Hudgens, D. (1998). The effects of Therapeutic Touch on patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, Journal of Family Practice , 47(4), 271-277.

Greyson, B. (1996). Distance healing of patients with major depression, Journal of Scientific Exploration , 10(4), 1-18.

Guerrero, M. S. (1985). The Effects of Therapeutic Touch on State-Trait Anxiety Level of Oncology Patients (Master’s thesis) Galveston: University of Texas.

Heidt, P., (1979). An Investigation of the Effect of Therapeutic Touch on the Anxiety of Hospitalized Patients (Doctoral dissertation) New York University.

Heidt, P. (1981). Effect of Therapeutic Touch on anxiety level of hospitalized patients, Nursing Research , 30(1), 32-37.

Keller, E. Bzdek, V.M. (1984). Therapeutic Touch: a review of the literature and implications of a holistic nursing modality, Journal of Holistic Nursing , 2(1), 24-29.

Keller, E. (1986). Effects of Therapeutic Touch on tension headache pain , (Master’s thesis) University of Missouri.

Krieger, Dolores. (1979). The Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help or Heal , Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Krieger, Dolores. (1993). Accepting Your Power to Heal: The Personal Practice of Therapeutic Touch , Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co.

Leb, C. (1996). The effects of Healing Touch on depression (Master’s thesis) University of North Carolina.

Meehan, T.C., et al. (1990). The effect of Therapeutic Touch on postoperative pain, Pain , (Supplement), 149.

Olson, M. Sneed, N., et al. (1992). Therapeutic Touch and post-Hurricane Hugo stress, Journal of Holistic Nursing , 10(2), 120-136.

Olson, M. Sneed, N. (1995). Anxiety and Therapeutic Touch, Issues in Mental Health Nursing , 16, 97-108.

Olson, M. Sneed, N., et al. (1997). Stress-induced immunosuppression and Therapeutic Touch. Alternative Therapies , 3(2), 68-74.

Peck, S.D. (1996). The Effectiveness of Therapeutic Touch for Decreasing Pain and Improving Functional Ability in Elders with Arthritis (Doctoral dissertation), University of Minnesota.

Post, N.W. (1990). The Effects of Therapeutic Touch on Muscle Ton e (Master’s thesis) San Jose, CA: San Jose State University.

Quinn, J.F. (1982). An Investigation of the Effect of Therapeutic Touch Without Physical Contact on State Anxiety of Hospitalized Cardiovascular Patients, (Doctoral dissertation) New York University.

Quinn, J.F. (1984). An Investigation of the Effect of Therapeutic Touch Without Physical Contact on State Anxiety of Hospitalized Cardiovascular Patients, Advances in Nursing Science , 6, 42-49.

Rand, William L. (1998). Reiki for A New Millennium , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications.

Randall-May, Cay. (1999). Pray Together Now: How to Find or Form a Prayer Group , Boston, MA: Element.

Redner, R. Briner, B. Snellman, L. (1991). Effects of a bioenergy healing technique on chronic pain, Subtle Energies , 2(3), 43-68.

Shealy, C.N., et al. (1993). Non-pharmaceutical treatment of depression using a multimodal approach, Subtle Energies , 4(2), 125-134.

Sicher, F. Targ, E. Moore, D. Smith, H.S. (1998). A randomized, double-blind study of the effects of distant healing in a population with advanced AIDS, Western Journal of Medicine, 169(6), 356-363.

Silva, C. (1996). The effects of relaxation touch on the recovery level of postanesthesia abdominal hysterectomy patients (abstract), Alternative Therapies , 2(4), 94.

Simington J.A. Laing G. P. (1993). Effects of Therapeutic Touch on anxiety in the institutionalized elderly, Clinical Nursing Research . 2(4), 438-450.

Slater, V.E. (1996). The safety, elements, and effects of Healing Touch on chronic non-malignant abdominal pain (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Nursing.

Sundblom, D.M. Haikonen, S., et al. (1994). The effect of spiritual healing on chronic idiopathic pain – a medical and biological study, Clinical Journal of Pain , 10, 286-302.

Walker, S., et al. (1997). Intercessory prayer in the treatment of alcohol abuse and dependence: a pilot investigation, Alternative Therapies , 3(6), 79-86.

Resources on spiritual healing
Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007 (Orig. 2001)
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Professional Supplement)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution ,
Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2001.
Only the annotated, critiqued 191 randomized controlled studies and the pilot studies – described in much greater detail, including statistical information.

Resources for exploring messages from your body
WHEE: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively®
AKA
Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT
Potent self-healing method for releasing emotional and physical stress, pains, residues of traumas
Workbook WHEE for pain Articles

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts? Wholistic Healing and Bioenergies,Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2005
Popular edition Explains self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) and bioenergies, and discusses ways in which you can heal yourself.

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality
Healing Research, V. 3
   Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (November 2006)

Reaching Higher and Deeper
Workbook for Healing Research, Volume 3: Personal Spirituality :
   Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007

Psychotherapy and Spiritual Healing

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 20:47:00 GMT

By Daniel J Benor, MD

The Names that can be given Are not the Absolute Names.
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Nameless is the Mother of All Things.
Lao Tsu

I find myself in a peculiar position where everything I am going to tell you is inherently wrong. Words and linear language are inadequate to describe the deeper psychological, subtle energy and spiritual experiences in the domains of healing. Even were they adequate, the fact that we will focus in this discussion on sub-sections of the whole will introduce severe distortions into our understanding of the complexities of spiritual healing. For healing, along with everything else in life, is not to be delineated by precise descriptions and definitions. Healing is both/and rather than either/or. Healing is the ability to let out anger and negativity but at the same time to forgive and accept the inevitable frailties of others, and even more difficult, of oneself. Healing is the finding of the quiet and simultaneously of the sublime spiritual song that lies between the notes in the discords and harmonies of existence, in the deep silence of the soul which knows that it IS eternal and that it is loved with an infinitely compassionate, unconditional acceptance that is so blissful as to be painful to the nerve ends that ache for a bit of this painfully sweet balm to assuage the hurts of earthly existence.

Nevertheless, as linear language is our primary mode of communication, I shall do my best to outline my understanding of how healing works, counterpointing the text with various observations that suggest poetic, humorous, and mythic perspectives that touch on the fringes of that which is beyond words.

I write from the viewpoint of a healer, medically trained doctor, psychiatric psychotherapist, researcher in healing, and grateful recipient of healing for physical and psychological improvements.

I believe that life is a lesson chosen before birth by the soul in consultation with very wise advisors. These advisors guide us towards spiritual growth – through the costumes of flesh we put on and the personality roles we assume in each lifetime on the stage of earthly existence. For life is an improvisational drama we choose to live through with other actors who agree to participate in the lessons we all have to learn and to teach. The choreographers for these plays are our higher selves, in continuous consultations with more advanced and refined spiritual advisors — on planes of awareness that we can barely perceive and cannot begin to truly comprehend while we are engaged in the performance.

Within this framework, life itself is a healing in the progress of the soul towards unity with the All. Not a single bit of life — no event or encounter, no so-called misfortune or episode of ill-health — is a chance occurrence if we are aware and awake to ponder it and to fathom its message.

Healing is the pursuit of wholeness in body, emotions, mind, relationships (with other people and with Gaia, our planet and everything in the cosmos that is a part of this wondrous stage for our play), and spirit.

Spiritual healing offers us help in dealing with all levels of our pursuit of wholeness. Often it starts with a focus on our physical selves – with symptoms such as a pain, a malfunction or a physical disease. These are messages from out body that tell us that something is out of harmony inside. Spiritual healing may help us to identify intuitively the causes for physical problems and to restore harmony and health to our bodies. Sometimes spiritual healing alone is sufficient to bring us back to a state of wholeness. At other times healing may be a complement to allopathic medical interventions, to counseling or psychotherapy, or to any of a variety of complementary therapies.

As I write this, I glance at my left ankle, elevated on two pillows on a chair, in a plaster cast, with the toes wrapped against the chill of winter. The cast protects the marvelous work of the surgeon who screwed the tip of my fibula back to its shaft, holding the ankle bones in place after I fell last week. Self-healing made pain medicine unnecessary in the ten hours prior to surgery.
I am grateful for the laying-on of hands healings Rita has been giving me, during that I felt intense warmth in the ankle and foot. This eased some of the discomforts of having to elevate the foot constantly.

Spiritual healing can help with psychological problems. Anxieties, fears, and emotions that result from current or past conflicts can be considerably relieved with healing. Healing facilitates the building of rapport between therapist and client, with immediate awareness of care and love that are a part of the experience of giving and receiving healing. The love experienced in healing is a deep, unconditional acceptance that is beyond words.

Healing can quickly open therapist and client to intuitive awarenesses of underlying psychological problems that may be buried in the unconscious, often brought into consciousness by the unconscious mind through physical and emotional symptoms. Healing facilitates releases of buried emotional hurts. Psychotherapy helps people to integrate the insights and emotional releases derived through healing.

My ankle fracture was the result of a slip of my bicycle, crossing an invisible patch of black ice on the road as I came down the hill from my village in rural England. Most people would simply call this an unfortunate accident. I consider it a message from my unconscious mind and higher Self. More accurately, it is a series of messages. First, to slow down from my Type A, driven personality style of pushing to complete the updates for the publication of the revised edition of this book, as I near the signing of the contract with my new publisher. Then, to begin to ask why I haven’t been spending more time meditating and communicating with my inner Self, so that it wouldn’t have to shout at me and trip me up in order to slow me down long enough for me to stop and listen to it. Next, to ask why my unconscious mind would agree to such a drastic communication, when I have generally enjoyed good health most of my life. This is serious business.

Spiritual healing deals with the biological energy body and is strongly rooted in a systemic approach to problems. For instance, the releases of an energy block in one part of the body free up the flows of energy throughout the entire body. Reductions in emotional tensions are accompanied by reductions in physical tensions. Changes in one member of a family very quickly reverberate with others in the family. In fact, if healing is consciously directed towards tensions between individuals, it can bring about healings in relationships as well as in the individuals involved.

I return to look at my throbbing foot (raised to a blessedly restful position again after a trip to the bathroom, when it swelled to the painful limits the cast would allow because it is irritated from the traumas of injury and surgery).
Spiritual healing from Rita, my wife, and absent healing from many other healers continues to help with pain, anxiety and emotional upset during my convalescence.
I ask myself, “What psychological and relational problems may have contributed to my allowing this “accident” to happen?” This begins to touch upon deeper layers of emotional hurts I have already spent some thirty years exploring through various psychotherapies. It resonates with a broken ankle at age 3 when I was left alone with friends by my mother while she attended some summer courses. It reverberates with the hurts of several sprained ankles along the way thereafter that — the last during a rough patch in my life when I felt lonely and abandoned and had no one to turn to, ending up swallowing many of my hurt and angry feelings. It was no coincidence that this current fracture occurred on the very day that Rita and my stepdaughter, Elizabeth, flew off to a week’s holiday in the Caribbean. So I have much to chew over and journal — awaiting the return of my Jungian therapist from her honeymoon holiday in India.
This raises all sorts of issues concerning my relationship with Rita, as well as other, unresolved dependency issues from my childhood relationships with my parents. I am certain that a part of my ankle’s healing will involve insights into these issues.

Spiritual healing opens people to intuitive, mystical and spiritual awarenesses. These are areas that our materialistic and reductionistic western society have largely rejected from the mainstream of accepted culture. Scientific methodology insists on measurable phenomena and therefore has difficulty in knowing how to address the subjective. inner awarenesses of spiritual healing. Easier to reject these than to question the basic axioms of conventional science. Easier to distance ourselves from that which makes us uncomfortable than to delve into why we feel uncomfortable.

Healers often introduce cosmologies of astrology, numerology, tarot or other forms of divination, and explanations including religion, reincarnation and the like. Such cosmologies reframe people’s problems, putting them in contexts much broader than their immediate hurts and illnesses. Hope is introduced because the passage of time brings new figures and relationships into the equations of numerology and planetary positions. Religion and reincarnation turn disasters into challenges to one’s faith and spiritual growth.

In my practice of psychotherapy I introduce as many ways as I can for people to view their problems from new perspectives. I find Transactional Analysis, Parent Effectiveness Training and a wide variety of books (I call this bibliotherapy) helpful for cognitive reassessment of problems and searches for new solutions. Gestalt therapy, dream analysis, hypnotherapy and analysis of transference and counter-transference bring in the emotional awarenesses needed for resolution of problems. Group, marital and family therapies, with systemic and paradoxical approaches, help with interpersonal relationships. Relaxation, meditation, breathing, imagery, and spiritual healing help to integrate physical, psychological and relational difficulties. Selected reading, prayer, a variety of meditations, energy medicine exercises and healing introduce spiritual dimensions to the therapy.

I am slowly, ever so slowly, adjusting to my frustrations at having to slow down and accommodate to this ankle. I am grateful for the time I now have for meditation and contemplation. I am pleased for the time it is giving me to read several remarkable books that have been beckoning to me from my “to read” shelf for several months, including The Alchemy of Healing, by Edward Whitmont, a remarkable Jungian homeopath, several excursions into the Kalahari with Laurens van der Post, and assorted books on angels for a chapter in volume III, dealing with spiritual aspects of Healing Research.
Most of all, I am grateful for the deeper insights into feelings of hurt from very, very early in life. I begin to touch the edges of a hurt that is beyond verbalizing, because it started before I had words to describe or the concepts to understand it. This is a hurt of knowing there was no one around who was sensitive to my needs, an ache so deep that it is beyond screaming out that I FEEL I AM ALONE ON THIS EARTH IN A VULNERABLE CHILD BODY, WITH NO ONE TO LISTEN TO MY WORRIES AND FEARS, NO ONE TO COMFORT ME PROPERLY.
This was the very early beginning of a determination to stand on my own. And now I have been forced for three weeks to lie helplessly in bed with my foot elevated to keep it from swelling, and to be dependent on Rita and some kind friends and neighbors to bring me the necessities of life so that I can keep my foot up and free of swelling. At age 54, for the first prolonged time in my life, I am learning to ask others to help me – rather than be stoically independent in order to avoid any chance of disappointment, with reawakening of the earlier feelings of having no one there for me.

Carl Jung had the wisdom to put much of this very simply. He pointed out that all of us have aspects of ourselves that are strongly developed and more within our conscious awareness. We also have polar aspects of ourselves that are very weakly developed and more within our unconscious awareness. For instance, we might be strong in thinking, in which case we are likely to be weak in expressing and dealing with our feelings; or we might have highly developed intuitional inner senses, in which case our polar aspect of outer senses might be weakly developed. Our weaker, unconscious aspects exist in what Jung termed our inner shadow. One of the greatest challenges and lessons in life is to bring the light of conscious awareness into the shadow. Because it is an unknown to us, we tend to fear and avoid the shadow. On an individual as well as on a collective basis, a deepening awareness of our shadow is one of the most important healings we can bring to our lives. When we ignore our shadow sides we do so at our peril (as I am learning with my ankle) Jungian approaches to this challenge are through psychoanalysis, with a focus on dreams and drawings that reflect not only the individual unconscious but also a person’s connection with the collective unconscious of all of creation. Marvelous as Jungian analysis can be, most Jungians stop short of involvement with energy sensing and healing awareness.

Even if we take all of the above and hold it in a collective, simultaneous awareness, this description doesn’t begin to touch upon the complexities of the entire picture as a whole. Our individual life dramas are merely sub-plots in a cosmic epic of such vast proportions that we are each as a single sub-atomic particle in an atom in a protein in a cell in an organ in a creature of which we are an intimate part but of whose life and purpose we cannot begin to have even the dimmest awareness. One of this creatures’ smaller sub-cellular organelles is the planet earth, that we are beginning to appreciate again as Gaia. We are doing well if we simply recognize our relationship to a something that we appreciate is vastly greater than ourselves, and seek to communicate with it through our higher Self — in respectful relationships with nature, in meditation, prayer and the like.

I have touched on psychic and spiritual awarenesses that can extend our perceptions well beyond the stage of our life, into the domains of the invisible choreographers and of the Producer. We are told by psychics, healers, meditators and mystics that the pursuit of this awareness is the most satisfying and rewarding of all human endeavors. I begin to believe this through my personal experiences, not just through intellectual awarenesses from lessons taught by experienced Masters of meditation, healing, prayer and religious practices.

When we engage in these awarenesses we begin to feel our participation in the All. The feeling of this connection transcends logical reason. It brings one into conscious connection with something that is intuitively felt to be the Self or higher self or core or whatever other inadequate name we give to this inner aspect of ourselves that connects us to the All.
…The world we live in is experienced and “created” in terms of the relationship between our minds and the universal information bank of the world mind. Our position in the world is not determined only by our conscious and unconscious volition, perception, feeling and rational understanding. It is determined also by our active relation to the cosmic “world awareness.” To this “world awareness” we relate as to an a priori potential, and unconscious superconsciousness.
The practical implications of this reciprocal relationship are staggering. They amount to nothing less than a new, all-encompassing ecology of everyday life, for science, for the healing arts, and for social ordering. We cannot structure our lives solely by the wishes and hopes of our rational understanding. We are cells and partial functions of that universal mind substance. We are mind interacting with Mind, cells interacting with and dependent on organism.
Edward C. Whitmont, The Alchemy of Healing:
Psyche and Soma, Berkeley, CA: Homeopathic Educational Services/ North Atlantic Books 1993.

Carers must be aware that they are not just there to be healers to those who come for their help. Clients are sent by the choreographers of life’s dramas to teach therapists lessons as well. If the lessons are not picked up the first time then a second and third client with a similar problem will be sent. Doctors, psychotherapists, healers and other carers often comment on the ‘coincidences’ of clusters of clients arriving with the same or similar problems. Such synchronicities are cosmic itches that invite us to scratch below the surface occurrences to get to the organic roots behind them, to bring our attention to lessons we are needing to learn ourselves, and to open our awareness to how we are a part of an All that is far vaster than our little selves.

When the teacher is ready, the right client arrives to further the teacher’s education
D.B.

With true spirituality, all of life is a spiritual experience, every little bit of it. The spirituality is in how we fetch the wood and carry the water, in the awareness and intentionality that we bring to each task and relationship. This spiritual awakeness may be simple to describe but it is most difficult to learn to practice. It can be earned through the disciplines of meditation and prayer, and may be a legacy from near-death and mystical experiences. It comes with being a human being rather than a human doing. Laurens van der Post (The Voice of the Thunder, London: Penguin 1994) has captured its essence beautifully in his descriptions of the Kalahari Bushman, who in the 1950s was sadly losing it as his stone age culture was being eroded by modern civilization:

The bows he now made were just for sale; but the one I first saw was a bow not only for enabling him to feed himself and his group but also an image of his urge to procreate and create beyond himself — the badge of the hunter on the spoor of meaning that leads to the self.

Resources on spiritual healing

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007 (Orig. 2001)
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Professional Supplement)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution ,
Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2001.
Only the annotated, critiqued 191 randomized controlled studies and the pilot studies – described in much greater detail, including statistical information.

Resources for explaining the mind-body connection
Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Professional edition)
Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2004.
Thorough review of research validating the efficacy of self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM), biological energies, and environmental interactions with bioenergies.
“Book of the Year” award – The Scientific and Medical Network, UK

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts? Wholistic Healing and Bioenergies,Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2005
Popular edition Explains self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) and bioenergies, and discusses ways in which you can heal yourself.

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality
Healing Research, V. 3
   Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (November 2006)

Reaching Higher and Deeper
Workbook for Healing Research, Volume 3: Personal Spirituality :
   Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007

You may reproduce this article if you include the following credits and email contact
Reprinted with permission of the author and publisher. This excerpt from Benor, Daniel, Healing Research, Volume I, Chapter 1 (revised edition), Southfield, Michigan: Vision Publications (in press) was also published in Human Potential (UK), Summer 1996, 13-16.
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1996 P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099
http://www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@danielbenor.com

The Mixed Blessings of Wishes for Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 20:40:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

I often cringe not just a little when I hear people offer glowing wishes for Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year. No, I’m not an old curmudgeon or Grinch in the disguise of a wholistic therapist. I’m a traveler on many paths of healing – personal, professional, global and spiritual.

I also hasten to add immediately that I would never discourage someone from bringing in the light and cheer of positive attitudes and wishes for joyous experiences on the occasions of holidays, points of transition, and other opportunities for smiles, warm fuzzies and celebrations. And I’m not just pointing out, as Tom Lehrer did in one of his pointedly comic songs about being kind to each other during American National Brotherhood Week, that we should be happy that it doesn’t last all year.

What bothers me is the gloss and glitter in our holiday decorations and well-wishing cards, internet communications and festivities, that seems to transfer into superficially glittery thinking about life, the universe and everything. By focusing on being happy happy, we set ourselves up with unreal expectations on the one hand, and create negative attitudes about the shadowy, plain, undecorated parts of our lives because they are not glitzy. This can contribute to holiday and post-holiday blues. I offer a few recipes here for what feel to me to be healthier holiday wishes.

Common problems and suggested antidotes

Possible antidotes:
Plan with our families and other celebrators that we will hold a moment of silence or prayer at some point during the festivities, to acknowledge those who cannot be with us for whatever reasons. By allowing ourselves an agreed measure of expression of sadness, we stop the festering process. It is also a common experience that a burden shared is only a fraction as weighty as one we carry on our own.

Use TWR, or any other self-healing method of our choice, to lessen the intensity of our negative feelings. This may even be a doorway into deeper emotional housecleaning – although not necessarily in the midst of a holiday meal or other celebration.

Possible resources:
Talk with family and friends about the problems you encounter. I have often found in my own life, as well as in the experiences of therapy clients, that just airing an issue puts new perspectives on it and makes it feel less onerous. Don’t feel you are being a burden to others in doing this. You would probably be willing to support them, were the roles reversed. Allow them to be there for you when you are feeling needy.

Again, TWR could be of great help, converting troublesome worries into manageable concerns. Emotional releases are not about forgetting your problems. They are about letting go of festering ruminations and then making lists of the issues and their possible solutions. Getting into anxieties over them is not going to solve them any quicker, nor will it make you feel any better. TWR enables you to do this reliably, quickly and deeply.

So I wish you the blessings of challenges that will stimulate you to see life in exciting and transformative ways in this holiday season and in the new year. And may your positive attitude contribute to the healing of other people and other living beings on this planet, and to our planet, Gaia, herself.

Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.
– Helen Keller

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Spiritual Healing: A Unifying Influence in Complementary/ Alternative Therapies

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:29:00 GMT

Updated 1/4/05

Abstract

Spiritual healing is viewed by many as one of the more “fringe” complementary therapies. This is related to: 1. Lack of awareness of 191 controlled studies of healing that substantiate that healing is an effective intervention (Benor, 2001a; b); and 2. Differences between conventional reductionistic medical theories and theories of subtle energy medicine (Benor, 2004; 2005).

The holistic approach and underlying principles of spiritual healing are common denominators amongst many of the complementary therapies (Krieger).

Spiritual healing is the intentional influence of one or more people upon one or more living systems without utilising known physical means of intervention. It is commonly practised in two major approaches: 1. with a laying-on of hands – the hands lightly touching or held near to the body, often combined with visualizations (Benor, 2001a; Krieger); and 2. with meditation, prayer or other focused intent, again often combined with visualizations (Benor, 2001a; LeShan). Visualisations may include seeing the healee as whole and well; applications of white or coloured healing light, clearing of cloudiness within the biological energy field around the body, and the like. The two approaches are often used simultaneously. I shall use the term healing to mean spiritual healing, not to be confused with physiological process of healing.

Out of 191 controlled studies of healing, 64 percent demonstrate statistically significant effects. These include studies of humans, other animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in laboratory culture, enzymes and more. Some of the studies were with touch healing, some with hands held near the treated organisms, and some were done from distances of several meters to several miles (Benor, 2001a; b).

There can be little doubt that healing is a clinically potent intervention in a variety of living organisms and laboratory systems. Let us examine one of the controlled studies in humans.

Randolph Byrd, M.D. arranged for prayer healing to be sent to 192 patients on a coronary care unit, while another 201 patients served as controls. This was done with a double-blind design, where neither the patients nor the treating or evaluating physicians knew which patients were sent the healing and which were not. The patients were randomly assigned to either of these groups, and no significant differences were noted between the groups on many variables. Highly significant effects were found in the treated group, with lower incidences of intubation/ ventilation (p < .002), use of antibiotics (p < .005), cardiopulmonary arrest (p<.02), congestive heart failure (p < .03), pneumonia (p < .03), and the use of diuretics (p < .05). The study was published in the respected, conventional Southern Medical Journal in 1988(Byrd).

On the basis of this evidence from the many significant studies, and in the absence of any known negative side effects, I believe that if healing were a medicine it would be on the market.

Is there a theory to explain healing?

As there is strong evidence that in distant healing one person may influence another person (Braud; Miller) or other organisms (Nash, 1982; Nash, 1984; Tedder) without known physical energies, and even from a great distance with no apparent diminution in effect, we have to amend the conventional, Newtonian theories and views about the world. Albert Einstein pointed out, early in this century, that matter and energy are interchangeable. Quantum physics has amply confirmed his theory.

Conventional, Newtonian medicine continues to address the body primarily as matter.

Healers have been saying for a long time that they are addressing the subtle energy body when they do healings. Healers report that several interpenetrating, subtle energy fields surround and interpenetrate the physical body (Benor, Vol III, in press; Brennan, 1987; 1993; Kunz). They claim that the physical body is an expression of the states of these energy fields, each of which is distinctly related to an aspect of being (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual). The fields are said to be hierarchically organised, successive fields being ever more subtle than the preceding ones. The emotional, mental and spiritual fields can also influence the physical body.

These subtle energy fields extend to various distances from the physical body. Though only a few sensitive people are able to perceive these subtle energies as visual halos or auras of colour around the bodies of living organisms and inanimate objects, many people can sense them with their hands. One has only to hold one’s hand’s near each other and then move them slowly apart and back together to sense these, usually as heat, tingling, vibration, or subtle pressure, as when two weak magnets come together. About 90 percent of doctors and nurses I have instructed in workshops on Therapeutic Touch and spiritual healing are able to perceive these, and 25-75 percent of general audiences can do so as well. (The lower percents are among academics and others who have difficulties in letting go of thinking about what they are doing in order simply to do it or be with it and let their bodies experience these energies.)

The human body is a very sensitive instrument for perceiving subtle energies. This presents problems of ‘noise’ in interpreting human reports. There is also wide variability in healers’ subjective experiences of perceiving and directing energies (Benor, 2001a; 2004; 2005). Most people who are gifted with healing are not academically or research oriented and have difficulty translating subtle energy perceptions into language comprehensible and acceptable to conventional scientists. These problems have contributed to the difficulties of science in accepting reports of healers (Benor, 1990).

Healing is an individual and subjective phenomenon. It is from the realms of experience we label noetic or ineffable (Benor, Volume III, in press). This means that we can know aspects of healing through inner awarenesses that are clearly perceptible but difficult to describe in words. This is especially true in Western society, where our language is heavily biased towards the material aspects of experience. From that vantage point, we are led to believe that whatever is not perceivable by the outer senses or measurable with mechanical, electromagnetic or particle physics instruments is considered, pejoratively, ‘non’sense or ‘im’material – rather than accepted as representing a different class of phenomena for which the measuring instruments of the reductionist, material world are inappropriate. For these reasons, one must consider the observations of multiple healer researchers in order to arrive at a rough consensus of what healing might be (Benor, 2001a; Cooperstein).

It would appear that energy medicine and allopathic approaches simply represent the two sides of Einstein’s equation, E = mc2. We are just beginning to appreciate how the laws of subtle energies differ from the laws of Newtonian physiology, much as the laws of modern physics differ from Newtonian physics.

Sadly, the prevailing reductionistic belief systems in Western society view spiritual healing as an alien belief system, and until recently have rejected the methods and practitioners of healing. In part this is a mirror of the view, promulgated by some religious groups, that healing should be done exclusively within their jurisdiction and only by their members. Such groups may even employ fear tactics to enforce their views, such as claiming that healing outside their jurisdictions may be the work of the devil. When viewed in the context of practices of healing that are found in every single culture around the world, this is clearly a minority view. More on this shortly.

Subtle energy processes are common denominators amongst many complementary therapies.

Homeopathy postulates that there is an informational or energetic patterning imprinted in the diluent used to convey the homoeopathic remedy. Without such an explanation it is difficult to understand how a solution could still be potent when it is so dilute that there can be no single molecule of the original remedy left in it (Barnard; Benor, Vol III, in press; Tiller, 1983; 1984). Although homoeopaths usually do not pursue this reasoning to the next step, to hypothesize that the energy patterning in the remedy influences the subtle energy body of the patient, this would appear a logical conclusion if one accepts the original homoeopathic hypothesis of the remedy as an energy pattern.

Healers have demonstrated that water to which they have directed healing will accelerate the growth of plants (Grad; Macdonald; Saklani). It would appear that the water may convey a healing energy or informational pattern. Water left in a church during prayers has similarly been shown to influence the growth of plants, but only during certain phases of the moon (Spiritual Frontiers Editor). Healers have also demonstrated that cotton wool can convey healing (Attevelt; Braud). Treated cotton wool placed in cages of mice on iodine deficient diets slowed the development of goiters (Braud).

Acupuncture describes lines of energy (meridians) running throughout the body, each associated with particular organs. Stimulation of specific points along these lines can release blocks to energy flows, slow down excess flows, or facilitate flows that are sluggish (Kaptchuk; Mann).

Healers often identify parts of the energy body in which they feel the flows of energies are blocked. Either through touching particular points, through the projection of energies or withdrawal of energies, they may redress the energy imbalances (Attevlet).

Seven major chakras (energy centres along the midline of the body) are commonly identified by healers as vital to the adaptation of subtle energies to the physical body (Miller; Motoyama, 1978; 1981). Chakras (‘wheels’ in Sanskrit) were described in Vedic writings many hundreds of years ago. Those who perceive the aura visually describe the chakras as wheels of colour when seen from the front or back, or as cones of energy originating near the spine when seen from the side (Brennan).

Derivatives of acupuncture theory and practice , including Reflexology (Segal), Applied Kinesiology (Thie) and the like employ touch and pressure as methods of stimulating the flows in the meridians. Polarity Therapy (Sills) and related forms of touch healing involve applications of pressure at particular points to balance body energies.

Craniosacral osteopathy identifies pulsations of energies – particularly around the head, spine and sacrum, but also along the entire body (Upledger, 1986; Upledger, 1983). Osteopaths postulate that the pulsations are due to flows of cerebrospinal fluid within the skull, transmitted via the bones of the skull to the hands of the osteopath. Pulsations may be sensed even at the extremities. It is postulated that the latter are mechanically transmitted from the central nervous system through the fascia (connective tissues). Craniosacral osteopathic treatments involve very light touch, combined with visualisations that the cranial bones are moving beneath the fingers. When abnormal pulsations are sensed, therapists may hold their hands still at the sides of the head while visualising that they are stopping the pulsation and holding it from beating for a few moments. Upon release of the therapeutic focus, the pulsation will often resume a normal beat. Such craniosacral manipulations are often more visualisations than mechanical influences of the fingers upon the bones of the skull (Benor, 1991).

It is a puzzle to me why healers do not report the pulsations identified by craniosacral osteopaths. I can only guess that the visualisations of the cranial bones attune the osteopaths to physical and/or energy pulsations in the head.

Alexander Teachers may extend their awarenesses from postural aspects of the physical body to include aspects of healing, that they commonly term ‘direction’. “Direction is the intent of the teacher to allow the life force within the teacher to be available to the life force within the student. Direction is best grounded by being still and doing nothing, letting the hands sense what might come through intuitively to the teacher and letting the hands rest lightly on the student’s body at whatever locations they are guided to intuitively…No physical manipulation is used, simply guided movement… During lessons the hands of the teacher may become very hot or vibrate and students often experience releases of emotions during the lessons (Hemingway).”

Bioenergetic therapy involves positioning patients in various postures that influence their awareness of tensions within the body and facilitate releases of emotions and alterations of character armouring that have become locked into the body (Lowen). John Pierrakos is an American physician who teaches Core Energetic Therapy, a variant of this approach (Pierrakos). He sees pulsations in the aura (biological energy field) around the body, and these change as a result of Core Energetic Therapy.

It would be fascinating to have comparisons of Pierrakos’ biological energy field pulsations with those of craniosacral osteopaths.

Rolfing , a very deep and firm massage, may release emotional tensions that become locked in the muscles, tendons and joints. Valerie Hunt is an electrophysiologist who has worked with conventional electromyograms, electrocardiograms and electroencephalograms. She had Rosalind Bruyere, a healer who is able to see auras, observe the rolfing treatments of numbers of patients. Bruyere was able to identify when emotional tensions were released through her observations of the aura (Krieger; Hunt).

The early hypnotists used ‘magnetic passes’ to induce very deep levels of trance – rarely achieved through modern techniques. While in these states, subjects obten could diagnose their own illnesses and demonstrated telepathic abilities. Telepathic inductions from a distance were repeatedly demonstrated. Many of these phenomena are similar to experiences reported under distant healing (Dingwall). Electroencephalographic evidence of entrainment of brainwaves of healers and healees suggests that there may be a resonance between healers and healees during healings (Cade).

Biofeedback may lead to spiritual awarenesses that are very similar to those reported by healers and healees (Green, 1984; 1986).

It would appear that there are numerous elements of subtle energy nature in common amongst a range of complementary therapies.

Why is it so hard for conventional medicine and science to accept healing as a valid and potent treatment?

Action through intent, that may be effective even from great distances, is considered strange within conventional understandings of the world. Therefore the evidence on healing is generally ignored or rejected. It is easier to do this than to reassess our basic beliefs about the world (Kuhn; Keller; Benor, Vol III; in press). The avoidance of new theories and evidence contradicting conventional beliefs is perpetuated through peer censure amongst scientists and through restrictive publication policies in conventional professional journals (Dreher; J Amer Med Ass).

The spaces between the lines may define the lines, just as the lines may define the spaces.
– D.B.

In quantum physics, it has been shown that non-local effects may occur. An electron may be understood both as a particle and as a wave function. The universe is so intricately interwoven that every element in it is ultimately influenced by every other element. In other words, the observer cannot be separated from the system that is being observed. Much has been made of the similarities between modern physics and mystical phenomena in excellent books so I shall not belabour these (Capra; Zukav).

It took several decades of research before these observations, that run counter to our ordinary experiences of the world, were accepted. A similar, slow process of acceptance is apparent in assimilating spiritual healing methods and theories.

There may be greater difficulty with the acceptance of healing, however, as this involves a shift in world views with far more personal consequences than the abstract and highly theoretical shifts with quantum physics. Many people find it threatening to learn that another person might influence them through thoughts or intentions. Rather than examine and deal with their discomforts, they reject the threatening concepts and distance themselves from those who propose them. This is analogous to the ancient custom of killing the messenger who bears bad news. People who advocate a belief in healing may be discredited and may suffer various discriminations against them. This is a serious hindrance to the funding and conduct of research in subtle energy medicine and publication of papers in this field.

England is a world leader in integrating spiritual healing with conventional medicine.

In the mid 1970s British healers formed a healing organisation that lobbied to allow healers to treat patients in National Health Service hospitals. With one governmental (not medical) decision, 1,500 hospitals were opened to healers.

In the early 1980s, the major healing organisations joined in a Confederation that standardised a code of conduct. The code of conduct was approved by the Royal Colleges of Medicine, Surgery, Nursing and Midwifery. Members of the Confederation offer healing as a complement to conventional medical care.

The Doctor-Healer Network (DHN)

The DHN has provided a forum since 1988 for doctors, nurses and other conventional health care professionals to meet with healers, other complementary therapists and clergy to explore how spiritual healing can be integrated with conventional medical care.

General Practitioners refer patients regularly to healers and some have healers working in their surgeries. A few of the healers are paid under the NHS. Doctors can obtain Postgraduate Education Allowance credits for learning to develop their healing gifts. Two hospital pain centres, three hospital cancer centres, a rheumatology ward and a cardiac rehabilitation centre have healers working there regularly. The Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter shares the experiences of healers and doctors between DHN groups and with interested subscribers around the world. Evidence is accumulating that healing is cost effective (Dixon).

Spiritual healing brings about a harmonisation of body, emotions, mind, community and spirit.

Healing is about treating the person who has the disease, not merely about addressing the disease the person has. This is a conceptual and methodological common denominator amongst many of the complementary therapies – when they are applied in the context of their theoretical bases and not merely as methodological techniques.

Spiritual healing brings about the easing of symptoms, the removal of blocks in energetic flows, the retrieval of repressed memories of emotional hurts, improvements in many illnesses, improvements in relationships and an opening into spiritual awareness. All of these may be achieved with no more than the laying-on of hands or the projection of healing from a distance. In essence, spiritual healing is a holistic therapy.

In my own practice of psychotherapy combined with spiritual healing I find that the healing facilitates the retrieval of emotional traumas underlying physical and emotional problems. Conversely, psychotherapy helps people to digest and process the emotional traumas uncovered and released through healing. My personal belief is that this combination of cognitive, energetic and spiritual elements offers a more thorough ‘house-cleaning’, but there are others who feel that the healing alone is sufficient or even that the processing of emotional materials is a waste of time or a resistance to the true aims of spiritual healing – i.e., the opening of oneself to spiritual awarenesses.

In conclusion , it would appear that the theories and practices of spiritual healing may offer a unifying theory and a unifying influence in the field of complementary therapies.

References
Attevelt, J.T.M. (1988) Research into Paranormal Healing , Doctoral Dissertation, State University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Barnard, G.P. Stephenson, J.H. (1967) Microdose paradox: A new biophysical concept, J Amer Inst Homeop 60: 277-286.

Benor, D.J. (1991) Int J Alt & Compl Med .

Benor, D.J. Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2001(a) .

Benor, D.J. Healing Research: Volume I, (Professional Supplement)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2001(b) .

Benor, D.J. (2004) Healing Research, Volume II: (Professional edition)
Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing, Medford, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications.

Benor, D.J. Healing Research, Volume II : (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts? Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Medford, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (in press for 2005)

Benor, D.J. Healing Research: Volume III. Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , Medford, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (in press).

Benor, D.J. Healing Research: Volume IV , Medford, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (in press).

Benor, D.J. (1992) Intuitive diagnosis, Subtle Energies 3(2): 41-64

Benor, D.J. (1990) A psychiatrist examines fears of healing, J Soc Psychical Res 56: 287-299.

Benor, D.J. (1991) Spiritual healing in clinical practice, Nursing Times (UK) 87(44), 35-37.

Benor, D.J. (1991) This impulse is quite palpable, Int J Alt & Compl Med (UK) 9(7): 18.

Braud, W. Schlitz, M. (1989) A methodology for the objective study of transpersonal imagery, J. Scientific Exploration 3(1) 43-63.

Brennan, B. (1987) Hands of Light , New York: Batam.

Brennan, B. (1993) Light Emerging , New York: Bantam.

Byrd, R.C. (1988) Positive therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care unit population, Southern Medical J . 81(7), 826-829.

Cade, C.M. Coxhead, N. (1978) The Awakened Mind: Biofeedback and the Development of Higher States of Awareness , New York: Delacorte Press/ Eleanor Friede.

Capra, F. (1975) The Tao of Physics , Boulder, CO: Shambala.

Cooperstein, M.A. (1990) The Myths of Healing: A Descriptive Analysis and Taxonomy of Transpersonal Healing Experience , PhD Dissertation, Saybrook Institute, California.

Dingwall, E.J. (1968) Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena: A Survey of 19th Century Cases, London: Churchill.

Dixon, M. A healer in GP practice, Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter 1993-4 (Winter), No. 4, 6-7.

Dreher, H. (1993) Mind-body research and its detractors, Advances 9(1), 59-62.

Grad, B. Some biological effects of laying-on of hands: A review of experiments with animals and plants, J Amer Soc Psychical Res 1965; 59: 95-127 (Also In: Schmeidler, G, ed, Parapsychology: Its Relation to Physics, Biology, Psychology and Psychiatry , Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow 1976.

Green, E.E. (1986) Biofeedback, Consciousness and Human Potential, Perkins J . 39: 22-31.

Green, E. Green, A. (1984) Biofeedback and Transformation, Amer Theosophist 72: 142-152.

Hemingway, T. (1993) Presentation at meeting of the Doctor-Healer Network, summarised in Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter No. 7, 27.

Hunt, V.A. (1977) Study of Structural Integration from Neuromuscular, Energy Field, and Emotional Approaches, Unpublished project report. J Amer Med Ass , Feature section, March 9, 1990.

Kaptchuk, T. (1984) The Web that Has No Weaver , New York: Congdon and Weed.

Keller, E. Bzdek, V.M. (1986) Effects of Therapeutic Touch on tension headache, pain, Nursing Research 101-104. (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Missouri 1983).

Kuhn, T.S. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , University of Chicago Press.

Kunz, D. van Gelder. (1991) The Personal Aura , Wheaton, IL: Quest/Theosophical.

Krieger, D. (1979) The Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help or Heal , Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

LeShan, L. (1974) Clairvoyant Realit y, Wellingborough, Thorsons,1974; US edition: The Medium, The Mystic and The Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal , New York: Ballantine.

Lowen, A. (1975) Bioenergetics , New York: Penguin.

Macdonald, R.G. Hickman, J.L. Dakin, H.S. Preliminary physical measurements of psychophysical effects associated with three alleged psychic healers, Research Brief, July 1, 1976; Summary in Res in Parapsychol 1976, Metuchen NJ/London: Scarecrow 1977.

Mann, F. (1972) Acupuncture: The Ancient Chinese Art of Healing , New York: Vintage/Random House.

Motoyama, H.(1981) Theories of the Chakras: Bridge to Higher Consciousness , Wheaton, IL: Theosophical.

Motoyama, H. Brown, R. (1978) Science and the Evolution of Consciousness, Ki and Psi , Brookline, MA: Autumn Press.

Nash, C.B. (1982) Psychokinetic control of bacterial growth, J Soc Psychical Res . 51: 217-221.

Nash, C.B. (1984) Test of psychokinetic control of bacterial mutation, J Amer Soc Psychical Res . 78(2): 145-152.

Pierrakos, J.C. (1987) Core Energetics: Developing the Capacity to Love and Heal , Mandocino, CA: LifeRhythm.

Saklani, A. (1988) Psi-ability in shamans of Garhwal Himalaya: Preliminary tests, J Soc Psychical Res 55(81): 60-70.

Segal, M. (1976) Reflexology , No. Hollywood, California, Wilshire Book Co.

Sills, F. (1989) The Polarity Process , Longmead, Shaftesbury: Element.

Spiritual Frontiers Editor. (1980) Research report: Setzer’s sanctuary effect, Spiritual Frontiers 12(1): 20-23.

Tedder, W.H. Monty, M.L. (1980-1981) Exploration of long-distance Pk: A conceptual replication of the influence on a biological system, In: Res in Parapsychol. 90-92.

Thie, J.F. (1979) Touch for Health , Marina del Rey, CA: DeVorss.

Tiller, W. (1983) Homeopathy: A laboratory for etheric science? J Holistic Med. 5(1): 25.

Tiller, W.A. (1984) Towards a scientific rationale of homeopathy, J Holistic Med . 6(2): 130-147.

Upledger, J.E. (1986) Craniosacrral Therapy II: Beyond the Dura , Seattle, WA: Eastland.

Upledger, J.E. Vrederoogd, J.D (1979). Craniosacral Therapy , Seattle, WA: Eastland 1983. Zukav, G The Dancing Wu Li Masters, New York: William Morrow.

Resources on spiritual healing
Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007 (Orig. 2001)
Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Professional Supplement)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution ,
Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2001.
Only the annotated, critiqued 191 randomized controlled studies and the pilot studies – described in much greater detail, including statistical information.

You may quote part or all of this article if you include the following credits and email contact
Published in UK as Benor, D.J. Spiritual healing: a unifying influence in complementary therapies, Complementary Therapies in Medicine , 1995, 3(4), 234-238.
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. Reprinted with permission of the publisher and author, P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@danielbenor.com

Re-Entry Protocol for De-Stressing with WHEE For soldiers, children after divorce, released prisoners, people involved in relief programs, and others in stressful, shifting and changing environments

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 18:18:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

(Updated 8/20/10)

Introduction

New approaches to dealing with stress are enormously helpful in clearing emotional traumas. The Wholistic Hybrid of EMDR and EFT (WHEE), briefly described below, can often reduce and even eliminate stress reactions within minutes.

WHEE invites the body to participate in releasing anxieties and stresses. You simply alternate tapping on the right and left side of your body while reciting an affirmation, and the negativity melts away. You can then use the same process to install positive feelings, beliefs and awarenesses – to replace the negativity you have released. (Benor 2000)

Wartime stresses

One of the clearest situations where WHEE can be effective is in wars and their aftermaths. Troops coming home from a war often suffer severe re-entry stresses. In going to war, they are indoctrinated by the military in ways that make them more capable of killing and more able to survive in very stressful situations. Being in a war zone, where they may have to kill or be killed, these lessons are often strongly reinforced by repeated frightening challenges. For instance, terrorist activities make it impossible for troops to trust anyone, because terrorists could attack at any time in any place. Soldiers may have to choose between shooting innocent people and risking becoming the victims of suicide bombers.

Upon returning from war, soldiers carry with them the residues of considerable stresses they were unable to process and had to ‘stuff away’ – in order to survive and function in as healthy a way as possible while in the war zone. This is a ‘survival mode’ of functioning, because all of their psychological resources must be available for combat duties. Soldiers cannot afford to be distracted by their emotions, even when these would otherwise be overwhelming. Therefore, soldiers end up carrying a bucket full of undigested stresses, anxieties and fears.

On returning home, their buckets of buried traumas may be so full that if any further stresses come along, the buckets overflow. Some may over-react to minor challenges and explode in tears, anger or violence. Some may be unable to focus or concentrate, may have memory lapses, and may feel grossly misunderstood and unaccepted.

Others may find it difficult to fall asleep, and powerful nightmares may waken them – in replays of the terrors they had to ‘stuff away.’ They may suffer flashbacks and periodical emotional overflows from their “buckets.” (Technically, much of this may be labeled as a “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.) These symptoms are much worse if the traumas involved participating in or observing the killing of enemies or comrades (McNair 2002; recent references below). A recent Wired.com article notes:

As many as 17 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, one congressional study estimates. Nearly 3,300 troops have suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI, according to statistics assembled last summer. And the lifetime costs of treating these ailments could pile up to as much as $35 billion …

Rescue workers’ stresses

Rescue workers who witness unspeakable horrors of natural and man-made disasters may have similar stress reactions. These may occur in the process of the rescue work, as workers may be unprepared for the magnitude of the disasters they encounter, or may also occur upon return to their homes.

Civilian stress situations

While we are perhaps more acutely aware of the dramatic re-entry problems of soldiers and rescue workers, others frequently suffer similar re-entry difficulties. I see this often in children and families I work with as a psychiatric psychotherapist.

Children who have been abused may have PTSD reactions of fears, sleeplessness, nightmares, and rages. Even on being moved to a safe home, they may exhibit all of the reactions that soldiers experience on re-entry to normal society.

Children who move from the home of one separated or divorced parent to the home of the other often experience repeated re-entry stresses, and may exhibit very similar behaviors for a day or more upon their return to one home, following their visits to the home of the other parent. They are often irritable, oppositional, crying and have temper outbursts.

Children who visit parents in jail often return home distressed over the visits, and experience overflows of feelings stuffed in their buckets.

Prisoners released from months in jail often have re-entry anxieties. Much as they are relieved to be out of prison, they are unused to being in an unpredictable environment. They may over-react to minor stresses, such as noises, motor vehicles moving near them, or having to sort out the requirements of daily living. Being questioned about their situation is extremely stressful to many who anticipate being criticized or rejected for their past misdeeds.

People who witness the horrors of war and natural disasters may experience stress responses – simply from seeing the horrendous images on their TV screens or through other media. There are people who still shudder to this day when recalling the sights of those who perished in the Twin Towers on 9-11. They may fear that they are no longer safe in their homes, unlikely as it may be that they would ever be targets of similar disasters.

Any life changes can bring about stress reactions. All of us may have re-entry challenges after going on vacation. We may experience stress re-entry problems on returning to work or to family obligations.

Even coming home from work or school at the end of a stressful day can be a re-entry challenge.

A rapid, potent method for de-stressing:

WHEE – Wholistic Hybrid of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

This method of self-healing helps release psychological and physical pains, enhances confidence, and improves work and sports performance. Very rapidly effective, it is like a vacuum cleaner that allows you to clear away old junk that you carry around with you from hurtful experiences.

WHEE can also transform attitudes surrounding stress – from annoyance, frustration, or despair to acceptance, forgiveness, and even to gratitude that you are being offered further opportunities to clear the bucket of “stuffed” junk that you carry with you.

WHEE can help to build up positive feelings and self-confidence.

WHEE essentially gives you the tools to reprogram your hard drive (which you let a little child program for you as you were growing up). Many of us carry unhelpful programs for dealing with stress – which are carry-overs from our childhood traumatic experiences. As children, we often run away from whatever is painful – either literally or by burying the feelings in our unconscious mind. These habits of stuffing our feelings become automatic. WHEE enables you to change these childish ways of dealing with adult situations.

WHEE is one of the fastest of the many meridian based therapies, and taps into the research database of EMDR.

Broader contributions of WHEE

Anger is a major component of many people’s buckets. This is a destructive feeling that can fester and spill over when current irritations stir more angers. Often, in the heat of our initial responses and in the relief of emptying our buckets of old angers, we don’t stop to consider that there might be better ways to deal with these feelings (Benor, 2003).

Practicing WHEE can offer us benefits in more and more difficult situations. While WHEE can be helpful for anger, as for any other emotions, it may be difficult for beginners to use it under stress – unless one has practiced using it before.

Having a way to deal with anger can be far more helpful than for just the individual person. Collectively, our society carries enormous quantities of anger. When attacked or threatened, we may respond with rage that is disproportionate to the attack.

Each drop of anger that we remove from our individual buckets is a drop less in the collective bucket – a bucket that can otherwise lead to wars and other unhelpful reactions to national and international stresses. If you have ever seen how quickly the drops from a dripping faucet or leaking pipe can create a flood, you will appreciate how removing drops of anger from the collective buckets can reduce the negative vibrations that flood our planet.

Individual examples (Composite cases)

Sal had serious temper problems after being released from a correctional facility, where he had spent six months after his arrest for drug-related offenses. The experience had been very stressful. He witnessed numerous fights and several stabbings. He had no support or counseling during his incarceration. While he was fortunate in having family support and in finding a job upon his release, he was so nervous that his hands shook if he was questioned by his boss over routine issues. He had difficulty sleeping at night, and was starting to struggle with cravings for the drugs that had gotten him in trouble in the first place.

WHEE not only helped relieve his anxieties at work, it helped him release his recurrent mental replays of the traumatic memories that plagued him. WHEE also gave him a potent way to deal with his cravings.

Gill, a 9 year-old girl who shuttled between her parents’ homes each week, was crabby, oppositional, tearful and easily angered upon returning to her mother’s home. Her mother was concerned because this was continuing two years after her parents had separated. Within two weeks of starting to use WHEE, Gill was no longer upset by the re-entry challenges she faced weekly. Her mother also found WHEE helpful in dealing with her own stresses of being a single mother to three children, on top of having to work and maintain their home.

The basics of WHEE are described in

Benor, D.J. Self-healing: Brief psychotherapy with WHEE, a hybrid of meridian based therapies and EMDR, other approaches, Articles/Selfheal.htm 2000

If you are not familiar with WHEE or other, similar approaches, you may find it helpful to read the above article before continuing below.

Re-entry issues for which WHEE may be helpful

Specific sensory memories of traumas (any and all of the senses may be involved)

Feelings associated with the image memories, such as fear, anger, helplessness, physical pain, emotional pain, despair

Feelings of betrayal by other people, authorities, God

Your own helplessness and inability to ‘fix’ the problem – at the time of the trauma or afterwards

Sadness, grief, bereavement over losses (other people who were killed or injured, your own former self, losses of functions or possessions due to the trauma)

Feelings of guilt for not having avoided, dealt better with, or believing you contributed to the problem

Frustrations with yourself and others that the problem is not being resolved more quickly, satisfactorily or completely

Worries about the future

Issues in the past that resonate with the recent traumas

Going deeper

WHEE is not about doing away with issues so that we can forget, ignore or run away from them. WHEE is a way to reduce the intensity of negative feelings and to reprogram negativity in general.

Once we have reduced the negative feelings – which can be so intense or persistent that they obstruct our normal functioning – we are then more able to function in the world. This may be sufficient for our needs and circumstances.

We may also seek further understanding, process our reactions, and come to acceptance and forgiveness. We may seek to work on difficulties in our relationships – past and present. Having cleared negativity, we will often find that we have much more energies and clarity in dealing with such issues.

These are topics for greater discussion than is possible here.

Other resources that discuss an enormous range of holistic ways for dealing with physical and emotional problems:

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Professional edition)
Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Medford, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2004.
Thorough review of research validating the efficacy of self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM), biological energies, and environmental interactions with bioenergies

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts? Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2005.
Explains self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) and bioenergies, and discusses ways in which you can heal yourself.

References

Benor, Daniel .J. (2003) Choices in anger: Emotions, mind and spirit (Editorial), International J Healing & Caring, 3(1), 1-20.

McNair, Rachel M. (2002) Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: the Psychological Consequences of Killing. Oxford, UK: Greenwood.

Other resources for de-stressing
Outstanding website of Gary Craig for Emotional Freedom Technique
www.emofree.com

Research database for EMDR, confirming it works for severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders
www.emdr.com

TWR for Meta-Meta-Blocking Anxieties and Core Beliefs

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 16:24:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

TWR is an outstanding self-treatment for pains, stress, anxieties, distress, cravings, limiting beliefs and more. It has been a blessing to me in my past practice of psychiatric psychotherapy and current practice of wholistic healing – addressing body, emotions, mind, relationships (with other people and the environment) and personal spirituality. It is easy to learn and simple to use, yet profoundly effective. You simply alternate tapping on the right and left sides of your body while reciting an affirmation.

People report relief of troublesome symptoms, memories and thoughts – often within minutes, even when these have been present for many years. However, as with other energy psychology therapies, there are times when the progress of releasing becomes blocked. The intensity of the issues being worked on refuses to shift any further. In these cases, the easiest approach is to massage the ‘releasing point’ (also called the ‘sore spot’), an acupressure point that is below the mid-point of the collarbone. Having done that, the issue will then continue to release with further rounds of TWR.

With a minority of issues, massaging the releasing point does not prove helpful. Several other possible steps are detailed in my book, Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release . If none of these work, you would then consider whether any meta-anxieties or core beliefs might be lurking in your inner file drawers from past traumatic experiences.

Such fears need not be extreme in their origins or severity in order to be very uncomfortable or even disabling.

Tom did well in his job at the bank because he was a perfectionist. It was rare indeed for him to make any errors. That was the good news for his employers. The bad news was that Tom was constantly hyper-vigilant about his job performance and his self-criticisms when he made the slightest error were excessively harsh. He did not accept the praises he received at work, and was always worrying about messing up in some way.

TWR was partially successful but failed to relieve more than just a little of his self-criticisms, reducing them from a 9 (out of 10) to a 7. None of the routine measures for dealing with blocks was successful, until we looked for meta-anxieties. Tom immediately observed that he had a core belief that if he let go of his obsessive worrying then he expected this would lead to his making more errors and being rejected – just like his father never accepted his best performances but always found ways to criticize Tom and ask why he had not done even better in some minor aspect of his achievements.

Using TWR to release his residues of anxieties of failing, established in his childhood experiences with his father, Tom then found that TWR completely cleared his obsessive concerns about making errors at work and about having to be super-perfect.

Once a core belief like this is identified, this limiting belief can be addressed with TWR. Once it is cleared, the primary anxiety itself will be released from what has locked a person into that fear, and it will then continue to respond to TWR until it is eliminated.

Meta-blocking core beliefs

Just as the meta-anxieties and core beliefs are at a meta-level to the original issues, there can be yet another layer of blocking beliefs that lock in the first layer of core beliefs and make it difficult for us to change them. I call these ‘meta-blocking core beliefs.’

You might be holding onto the caution such as, “If I don’t keep an edge of anxiety, I won’t study as hard and am bound to do poorly or even fail.” Or you might have had a serious trauma such as a mugging, auto accident, or rape that left you with fears of going certain places or of trusting other people. The cautions in such cases might be “If I go out in the dark, it’s dangerous.” or “If I get turned on with a man I might get raped again.” These sorts of inner cautions can produce serious anxieties or even disabling fears.

Going a step further, we may lock ourselves into the fear reactions by telling ourselves, “I’ll never put myself in danger like that again.” or “I can never trust myself to be safe if I let go of these worries and fears.” I call such cautions and fears ‘meta-anxieties.’ These are fears of letting go of our fears.

Here are a few generic examples:

“If I let go of these core beliefs or meta-anxieties I won’t be [safe/ accepted/ loved] by [in situations similar to the original trauma/ by my family/ partner/ significant others/ group of religious affiliation]!”

“If I don’t have these [anxieties/ fears/ negative beliefs] I won’t be the same person, and I couldn’t handle that.”

“[God/ Christ/ other religious figure] won’t accept me if I [change/ let go of] these beliefs.”

“I’ll [burn in Hell/ be excommunicated] if I [deviate from/ let go of] these [Laws/ Commandments/ rules].”

Once you identify these meta-meta-anxieties or meta-core beliefs, you can choose to address them in the same ways that you would address primary issues or core beliefs, releasing them with TWR.

Theo, a 42 year-old businessman, had been severely abused as a child by his alcoholic father and neglected by his very passive mother. Growing up in a rough neighborhood, he had to learn very early to defend himself from bullying and beatings by local gangs and rough neighbors. He was discharged after less than a year in the army after a variety of misconduct charges.

Theo was lucky to find an employer who had been a marine and who took an interest in helping him. This was the first person who had ever genuinely liked him, and Theo responded by giving his best to his job. In time, with the help of a loving wife as well, he set up his own business and was comfortably well off. Though he was known to have a quick temper, he was usually apologetic soon after he vented his feelings and was able to get along ‘tolerably well’ with business associates, friends and his wife’s family.

Theo was distressed to find he was unreasonably jealous of the attentions his wife gave to their children, to which he responded with uncontrollable verbal outbursts. Fearing that he might hurt his wife or children in anger, he came for help.

TWR helped Theo reduce his copious buried residues of angers, hurts and fears from his difficult childhood, but only to about a level 4.5 out of 10. We worked on his meta-beliefs that if he didn’t keep an edge of anger showing, he would not be safe in the world, and his negative load was reduced to a 2 but would decrease no further. It was not until we identified his meta-meta belief that he was ‘not a man’ if he wasn’t macho and didn’t stand up for his needs, and used TWR to clear this too, that he was able to release all of his remaining buried feelings down to zero.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised, as have many of my clients, to find that meta-anxieties and core beliefs, as well as meta-meta-anxieties and meta-core beliefs may respond to TWR with surprising ease. Often, they can be cleared even more easily and rapidly than the original issues that led to identifying these meta-level messages and obstructive rules.

In summary:

Meta-anxieties and core beliefs have been known to block releases of problems. It is helpful to be aware that in a similar manner, there may be yet another layer of blocking beliefs and disbeliefs that lock people into their first layer of such beliefs. It is also good to know that all of these blocks to being and becoming who we really are can be released with TWR.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed .

Dan
DB@danielbenor.com

Alternating Brain Hemisphere Activity and Bilateral Brain Stimulation with TWR*

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 16:00:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Experiments have shown that the functions of analytical, logical, intellectual thinking and expression of language are carried out largely in the brain’s left hemisphere. The right hemisphere performs intuitive, artistic, symbolic and analogical thinking functions. (See Table 1.)

Our brains tend to focus primarily on one hemispheric mode or the other when we are engaged in a specific task, and we tend to have personal preferences for one or the other mode of functioning. We are all familiar with extremes of such types – for instance, the typical left-brain character is unemotional, logical, and always analyzing what is going on, like Mr. Spock in Star Trek. STUDY ID# These are people who have difficulty answering when asked what they are feeling about a given situation, and they are commonly accountants or scientists by profession. Their right-brain preference counterparts, the emotional, intuitive, artistic folk, are commonly living in creative modes. In their more full expression of their passions they are poets, musicians or artists, but may have problems dealing with facts and figures.

Thank God for making reality, and for giving us means of escaping from it.
– Ashleigh Brilliant

There are simple ways through which to identify for yourself whether you have strongly divided functions between your left and right brain hemispheres. Think about a problem or memory that disturbs you (with feelings of hurt, anger, or remorse, etc.). Now, use your right palm to completely cover your right eye, and your left palm to cover all but a little of the ear-side of your left eye. This will allow a little light in from the left side of your left eye, which will stimulate and activate your right hemisphere. Spend a few moments exploring your feelings regarding the issue you have chosen to focus on. Then reverse the process and cover your left eye entirely, leaving only a little of the ear-side of your right eye uncovered, and spend a few minutes exploring how you feel about the same issue.

About 60 percent of people will notice a distinct difference, sometimes quite a strong one, between the responses of their right and left hemispheres to this type of stimulation while focusing on an emotionally distressing issue. For most, the left, thinking hemisphere is more rational and can sort out how to deal with the issue, while the right brain tends to be emotional, and when it is activated, they may feel quite upset about the issue.

Ultradian rhythms

Every 90-120 minutes (on average) the dominant activity in the brain hemispheres spontaneously alternates from one side to the other. Although Eastern meditation experts have known of these shifts for millennia, Western science has only recently become aware of them. When hemispheric functions are predominating on a particular side, the nasal passage on the opposite side is markedly more open. That is, when your left nostril is open, your right hemisphere is ‘in gear,’ and conversely for the opposite nostril and hemisphere. This is called the ultradian rhythm of the brain. (In some cases this rhythm can have cycles up to 8 hours.)

Creative ultradian possibilities

Maxwell Cade and Geoffrey Blundell, who developed a biofeedback device for brainwaves, found that certain people were more likely to have a balanced brainwave pattern, suggesting equally active right and left brain hemispheres. They found this balanced state present most often in experienced meditators, healers, creative people, and in those who were successful in their chosen professions. What has not been established, as far as I can determine, is whether meditative states can bring us into a balanced hemispheric state that is reflected in balanced, equal right and left nasal dominance. If this works, it might provide a feedback mechanism for developing a meditative state.

Milton Erikson, who was an outstanding hypnotherapist and observer of human behaviors, noted that in the interval of a few minutes between right or left dominance, when dominance was shifting from one side to the other, people were much more susceptible to hypnotic suggestions. He often conducted his hypnotherapy for 2 hours in order to be certain that he included at least one such shift during the therapy session.

I note from my personal experience that when I lie with my right ear down on a pillow, the left nostril becomes clear within a few minutes. If I turn over on my other side, with the left ear next to the pillow, the right nostril will clear within a few minutes. This regularly overrides the spontaneous ultradian rhythm. I can thus generate more frequent transition periods where both of my nostrils are clear, although the duration of the transition periods is only about 15 seconds.

I can extend the transition duration if I lie on my back a few seconds after the transition period begins. Both nostrils will remain open for 15-60 seconds, but then one or the other will start to narrow down. As the shift begins to occur towards one of my nostrils narrowing, I can re-open it within seconds by turning my head part way towards the pillow, in the opposite direction to the nostril that is closing. With a little practice, I have been able to keep both nostrils open for as long as I continue this procedure.

Subjectively, this is a state in which I find that working on myself with TWR achieves markedly deeper and quicker results than I otherwise experience. However, it requires a great deal of effort to maintain my concentration, when I am in this state. Without that effort, my mind drifts around along associative links more readily than normally.

I have found this process particularly helpful in clearing deep core beliefs and meta-emotions and issues.

This is an early note on a psychotherapeutic process that has not been explored systematically by anyone as far as I can find. I would add a word of caution that anyone with history of severe emotional trauma might want to do this only in the presence of a therapist who can guide them around blocks and through the releases of buried emotional hurts.

Resources
See excellent discussion of the ultradian rhythm:
Rossi, Ernest Lawrence. Altered states of consciousness in everyday life: The ultradian rhythms, In: Wolman, Benjamin, B. Ullman, M. Handbook of States of Consciousness, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold 1986, 97-132.

*The introduction to this article is taken from
Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Professional edition), Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2004, p. 74-79.

More On Ultradian Rhythms, TWR and Meta-Meta Levels of Issues

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 15:48:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

This is to update my previous TWR article on ultradian rhythms , so if you have not read that yet, and do not know about ultradian rhythms, you might want to read that first.

In brief, ultradian rhythms are the shifts that occur between right and left brain hemisphere activity, on the average about every 90-120 minutes. These shifts are accompanied by simultaneous widening of the nostril opposite to the hemisphere that is more active. That is, when the left hemisphere is active, the right nostril is more open, and conversely with the opposite hemisphere and nostril.

It is known from the work of the late Milton Erikson, one of the world’s most innovative hypnotherapists, that people are more open to suggestions for making changes in their lives at the point where the shift in ultradian rhythm is occurring between right and left hemispheres. This shift point is marked by both nostrils being open at the same time, which spontaneously occurs every 90-120 minutes.

I have found that it is possible to reverse the nasal laterality by placing my head on the pillow with the open nostril side down, next to the pillow. More on this in the previous article and below.

TWR and ultradian rhythms

TWR, the Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT, involves alternating stimulation of the left and right sides of the body while focusing with an individualized affirmation on problem issues we want to change. Users report that TWR is rapidly, deeply and permanently effective in relieving pains, stresses and distress of all sorts.

There are times during the TWR process when the problem focus issues do not diminish in intensity. One of the reasons for this can be a meta-issue that prevents us from releasing the problem issue.

Irene experienced severe emotional trauma when she was raped by an uncle at age 14. She was further traumatized when her mother refused to believe her. At age 32 she came for therapy because she found herself repeatedly in abusive relationships with men, despite doing her best to anticipate and avoid this.

She estimated the level of intensity of her feelings about the initial traumas at 50 on a scale of 10. TWR helped her reduce this intensity within minutes to 8, but then there was no further decrease in her Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS). Massaging the collarbone point, the most commonly effective way of overcoming such a block, produced no results.

With some probing, she realized she had a meta-anxiety that if she released her fears surrounding the rape, she might not maintain sufficient vigilance to avoid another such experience. Using TWR on this meta-anxiety reduced the SUDS to 3.5 but it again refused to release any further.

With further probing, a meta-meta issue became evident. This was a core belief that the world is not a safe place – based on Irene’s childhood experiences of growing up in a family where there was constant arguing and fighting between her parents. This belief prevented her from releasing her meta-anxiety about releasing fears around the rape. After releasing this meta-meta anxiety with TWR, the remaining anxiety around the rape went down to zero with just two further rounds of TWR.

In my personal experiences of clearing deeper issues, I find that using TWR during the shifting time between hemispheric ultradian dominance significantly facilitates emotional and cognitive releases with TWR. It is a bit of a juggle to keep my focus on maintaining equal nasal openness, while simultaneously saying the affirmation and doing alternating bilateral stimulation, but well worth the effort.

The ultradian process has surprised me by providing several types of unexpected feedback on the TWR process.

There are times when the laterality has been slow to shift upon putting the side of my head on the pillow that has the more open nostril. As I focused on various issues and started to use this method to get both sides of my nostrils open, I discovered that if I was anxious at a meta- meta- level about releasing a meta-issue, this interfered with the process of opening both nostrils. The opposite nostril simply would not open, or would open wide but then the first side would immediately narrow down. I find that as soon as I start to address the meta- meta-anxieties, both nostrils have opened readily.

There were also times when I did not identify the ‘key log in the logjam’ of issues that I was addressing. That is, I had bundled a variety of related issues together, but was focusing primarily on an issue that was not the key issue in whatever was distressing me. Again, the same difficulty with achieving the opening of both nostrils occurred. I find that as soon as I shift to address the key issue, the logjam releases and the TWR process flows smoothly.

This process gives new meaning to being able to breathe better as you deal with stressful and painful issues!
Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@danielbenor.com

The Ultimatest Most Inconvenient Truth of All

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 20:36:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

The pursuit of the truth shall set you free – even if you never catch up with it.
– Clarence Darrow

We all aspire to know and express truth in one way or another. We want to base our life decisions and actions, minor and major, on the best information possible.

The difficulty is that in many cases it is challenging to know what is the truth. A spectrum of options are possible:

Problems with ‘the truth’

Each of the above approaches has its benefits and pitfalls.

Faith in authorities may be a fraught and often fragile platform on which to structure one’s truth. Every person and institution of authority comes from specific family, cultural, educational, conceptual, philosophical, religious, life experiences and countless other influencing backgrounds that flavor their truths. How can we trust the truths of others, when our own specific family, cultural, educational, conceptual, philosophical, religious, life experiences and countless other influencing backgrounds, as well as the circumstances we live in, may differ from those of the authorities? We must also temper the truths of earlier times with considerations of the altered circumstances of today. What is or was right and true for authorities who provide truths to live by may be misleading and even dangerous for us to accept as true today for ourselves.

Religious faith has featured most prominently as a source of truths throughout history. I have been skeptical of these truths because even within a given faith there are many authorities whose truths differ from those of other authorities of that faith. Based on the teachings of illuminated teachers many hundreds of years ago, it is difficult to know the original teachings, much less to assess their independent truth through any process of reasoning. There has to be a strong suspicion that the original teachings have been altered through the years. This could occur simply through the drift that we can see in the children’s game that is called ‘telephone’ or ‘whisper down the lane’ – where a sentence is whispered by one person, who then whispers it to another and so on down a line of children. By the time the message gets to the end of the line it is often distorted to the point that it has little connection with the original statement. How much moreso can we expect to find distortions when these whispers occurred over hundreds and thousands of years.

There is also the factor of deliberate distortions of original truths within religious frameworks for the purposes of influencing the faithful in the flocks of followers. The most basic such distortion is the framing of the teachings of the wisdom from a Higher Source as exclusive to the faithful of a given religion; simultaneously declaring all other religious teachings as false.

An impressive example came to me just last week. I was startled to view the on-line free film, ‘Zeitgeist,’ in which a history of prominent religious figures dating back over 5,000 years is summarized: The Egyptian god Horus is described as having performed miracles, was called “the son of God” and “the light;” born to the virgin Isis on December 25; a prominent star in the East and three kings heralded his birth; was an acknowledged teacher at age 12; baptized at age 30 to start his ministry; was killed; buried for three days; and resurrected. Many of these elements were also attributed to Attis of Phrygia in Greek mythology (1200 BC); Mithra of Persia (1200 BC); Krishna in India (900 BC); Dionysus of Greece (500 BC). [If you choose to view this film, you might consider starting at 9 minutes, 40 seconds – to avoid being assaulted by very graphic, violent imagery at the opening of this film.]

Assuming these details are even partially true, this puts in question my belief in the truth of the story of the life of Jesus Christ as reported in the New Testament. This does not necessarily invalidate the teachings of Christ, although their original truths still may have become distorted through the years.

Media and political sources have to be taken with enormous cautions of skepticism, and can no longer be relied on for learning truths. Five decades ago, when I was growing up and learning to explore the world through school lessons, newspapers, radio and TV, there was a feeling that these sources of truth were to a great extent reliable. As I broadened my perspectives – particularly living in Israel for 6 years and England for 10 years – I found there were prevalent views and beliefs outside of the US that differed significantly from those I had taken on faith as I grew up and attended schools in New York and California. In recent years, these differences have become much more clearly defined.

For anyone living in the US who is not exposed to media from abroad, the following will feel somewhere between heretical to radical. While the US portrays itself to itself as a benevolent benefactor to the world, much of the rest of the world has for decades perceived the US as a selfish, aggressive exploiter of other nations’ resources and labor pools. In recent years, the US has also acquired the reputation of being a warmonger and a financially irresponsible profligate, unwilling to carry its share of the world’s burden for dealing with global heating – despite being the number one producer of carbon emissions.

There is a general consensus that the media have become purveyors of politically/commercially (the two now being inseparable) motivated infomercials rather than of reliable news. So our local and national media cannot be relied upon to build a factually true picture of what is going on that is important in our lives. What does emerge, however, is the meta-truth (the truth about truths) that truth is NOT to be built on media or politicians’ information.

Scientific evidence has been promoted as a basis for building true understandings of the world. Science has certainly enhanced our explanations for how the material world can be understood and ways in which it can be manipulated for our immediate benefit. Advances in every field of study, from astrophysics to zoology, have enriched our comprehension of how the world functions and how we can manipulate it to enhance our lives.

However, scientific so-called ‘truths’ have proven to come into vogue and fade in regular succession, much like the seasons of the year but with only modestly longer periodicities. In my first year of medical school I was cautioned: “Medical research is evolving at such a pace that 50% of what is taken to be true today will be proven wrong in ten years. Our difficulty is that we cannot know at this point which 50% that will be.”

Recently, we have also found that scientists may produce truths to order – depending on who is paying for research studies. For instance, studies of drugs that are funded by pharmaceutical companies have very often demonstrate or report greater benefits and fewer side effects than studies which are performed in labs independent of such funding.

So even the promises of ‘objective’ scientific research cannot be relied upon for immediate or for lasting truths.

Personal life experiences help each of us to build a repertoire of truths about our world. These often feel the most reliable because we can know from personal observations what happened and can draw our own conclusions about how things work or don’t work. Many people tend to trust the evidence of our own senses more than other sources.

While this works for a significant and important range of life experiences, it is both too narrow and too random a sampling for building a full and complete picture of the way the world works. Especially in the global village that this planet has become, we can no longer rely only on local wisdom to navigate the challenging times ahead. Global heating, exhaustion of natural resources, pollution and economic situations in other countries have rapid and sometimes drastic impacts upon our lives, and their nature and potential impacts cannot be assessed through local knowledge.

Feeling and intuitive inner guidance provide exquisitely sensitive and potentially far-reaching awarenesses that can help us navigate through life. As one develops one’s intuition, one comes into a place of awareness where truths and untruths have a different ‘feel’ to them. To some extent this may be a reading of non-verbal clues from the purveyor of the information, in addition to the consistency of the information with what we hold to be the truth.

Intuitive awareness of rightness and wrongness may go much deeper than this. Our unconscious mind can connect with the collective consciousness, giving us a much broader and deeper base for assessing the validity of purported truths. Hypnotherapy has known this for over a hundred years. In a trance state, people can be asked questions of personal memory or about information to which they have had no sensory access. They can be cued to respond with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ through automated (‘ideomotor’) responses of their bodies, such as raising the right index finger to indicate ‘yes’ and the left index finger for ‘no.’ Through such techniques, long-forgotten personal experiences may be recalled by most, and psychic information about the world may also be accessed by many.

Our intuition is mediated through the most complex and sensitive computer yet available in the world: the human brain. Skeptics reject this source as unreliable because it is subject to distortions of misremembering, fantasy, wishful thinking and the like. To this list I would also add that it is only partially effective even in the most gifted people. In other words, like any other sensitive instrument it is subject to the intrusions of extraneous information and distortions that are technically termed ‘noise.’

This does not mean that all intuitive information is unusable. It is simply a serious caution to always remember that intuitive information may be clouded with ‘noise.’ The more we use our intuition, the more we learn to appreciate how we can or can’t rely upon it. Even when it is only partially accurate, it can vastly expand and enhance our decision-making about what is true or not for us.

Our intuitive awarenesses also connect us with other living beings and aspects of our world. This is an enormous help in bridging the gaps between ourselves and ‘others’ that have divided humanity among ourselves and have distanced us from awareness of our onness with the environment and with Gaia, our living planet.

So what is the ultimatest most inconvenient truth of all?

From our human perspective, we cannot know THE truth. This is a truth that humanity has run away from for centuries. Just as nature abhors a vacuum in the physical world and will do anything to fill it, so the human mind squirms with discomfort in a space of not knowing reliable facts and truths. We rush to fill the voids in our knowledge and understanding databases with whatever helps us to feel less anxious. Religious leaders and politicians happily tell us their truths, and many grab at these rather than struggle with their discomforts.

If you have not explored and developed your intuitive awareness, I highly encourage you to do so. This can add many dimensions of healing to our lives.

TWR opens and deepens intuitive awarenesses through connecting with our unconscious mind with imagery and muscle testing. TWR provides immediate feedback on many of our uses of muscle testing through the reductions of the intensity of our negative issues when we have identified the issues that are problematic through our intuition.

TWR can also help us deal with our discomforts about not knowing THE truth!

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Right- and Left-Brain Functions

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:48:00 GMT

Left- and Right-Brain Hemisphere modes of relating to the world

In Western society we have been addressing many aspects of our lives through the part of the spectrum of reality that is restricted to the hue of logic/ reason/ linear deductions based on assumptions that are comfortable to our prevalent belief systems. Conversely, we have excluded from mainstream focus those parts of the spectrum that are colored by heart/ feelings/ intuition – declaring them to be illogical, unreasonable and unreliable. Note that in these criticisms we are simply saying that they are not logical/ reasonable/ linear in their processes. In the pejoratively negative connotations we have come to assign to anything that does not fit the left-brain hemisphere model of reality, we discourage ourselves and others from exploring and validating these right-brain hemisphere aspects of reality.

Each of us has a right and left hemisphere. Approximately every 90 to 120 minutes there is a shift from dominance of one to dominance of the other. This is called an ultradian rhythm. These shifts in the dominance of left and right cerebral hemispheres, reflected in corresponding shifts in nasal lateral dominance. If one’s left nostril is more open at a given moment than the right, then the opposite cerebral hemisphere is more active. These rhythms vary from about 90 to 120 minutes in different people. At the point of shift from dominance of one side to the other, people are more highly suggestible. It is as though they go into a hypnotic trance for that brief period of time.

Here are some of the functions of each hemisphere.

Look at Table 2. Then look back at the first one. Which feels more comfortable to you?

WHEE helps to integrate right and left hemispheres through right and left body stimulation as we recite our focusing affirmations.

The Missing ‘W’ in Holistic Care: Whole-Person Healing

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:41:00 GMT

by Daniel J. Benor, MD and Rita Benor, RN

INTRODUCTION

Holistic healing is a term which is becoming familiar through the increased acceptance of alternative and complementary therapies. There are several cautions for those involved in this process

HISTORICAL NOTES

Healing comes from the early English and Germanic roots of haelen, meaning to make whole. Holistic healing is actually a redundancy, brought about by Western society’s narrowed focus upon diagnosis and treatment of diseases rather than upon addressing the people who have the diseases.

We believe that holistic healing is the involvement of practitioners/ therapists in helping people to address disharmonies or blocks to their well-being as they seek to become whole in body, emotions, mind, relationships (personal and community) and spirit.

For millennia in Western society (as is still true in many societies which have not abandoned their ancient traditions) the world was a unified. mysterious whole. The feminine principle prevailed. Humans were integrally a part of nature. They felt themselves to be a part of the mysterious forces which guide and rule the wonderment of life (in every aspect of Gaia). our planet, and all the life forms and forces upon it, and of the vaster cosmos beyond. We understood the world through heliocentric and anthropocentric myths (Campbell 1972).

Gradually the masculine, logical principle came to dominate. The earth was the center of the universe and man was seen to have been created by God and to have been given the earth to rule. Thus began our separation from nature.

Many factors contributed to this process and the world has been demystified by scientific methods of observation. Copernicus and Galileo showed that the earth revolves around the sun; the body lost much of its mystery under the dissecting knives of the early anatomists: Descartes emphasized the divisions between body and mind; and the industrial revolution gave us the methods and tools to make our lives more secure through exploring. taming and conquering nature.

The same principles were extended into medical practice. Reductionist modern science hopes to explain the whole by analyses of its parts. The discovery of microbial and viral agents for disease, of vitamins and hormonal agents for maintaining health, and of numerous sophisticated medications lead to the hope that all disorders will eventually be treatable through addressing causative physical agents for disease and dis-ease. In line with the rest of Western science, we have been promised by medical science that eventually we shall understand the ultimate mechanisms which guide and shape our health (probably in terms of biochemical processes). and then we shall be able to develop the means to conquer all illness. Indeed, organ transplants, sophisticated prostheses, and genetic engineering would appear to present signs of early achievements in these directions. However, not all is rosy. The promises of antibiotics which would eliminate infectious diseases are proving to be false promises. Infectious agents are developing immunities to antibiotics at alarming rates (McTaggart 1996). Costs of health care and limited health care budgets are bringing about bureaucratic governmental reshapings of health care systems. Doctors and nurses are being forced to limit the time they spend with patients while budgets limit the amount of care according to diagnoses: again overlooking the individuality of the person who has the diagnosis. This is not to put blame on health caregivers who are working very hard to provide individually-focused care. They are simply unable to make the time available to do so under the present health care systems.

The influence of the masculine principle is subtle and pervasive in medical practice. Our very language shapes us to conform to separation from nature and urges us to participate in ‘battles which can be won’ if we only work hard enough at it. We suffer ‘heart attacks’, nervous breakdowns, and ‘organ failures’, and engage in aggressive treatments. ‘wars on cancer’. ‘conquering illness’, and .seek to ‘defeat death’. All of this hype focuses intensively upon the disease. ignoring the frailties and strengths of the processes of life and spirit. It also pushes away. rather desperately, from acknowledging the inevitability of death (Hocking 1994).

Even without these outside pressures. modern medicine has lost sight of the whole person in many ways. in the name of efficiency it divides people into arbitrary parts, treated for the convenience of the medical and nursing practitioners by different specialists in different departments. The objectively observable and measurable aspects of disease are the focus of attention. Doctors and nurses can often ignore the dis-ease attendant to being ill. Too often they overlook the psychological, social, environmental, and other factors which contribute to the development and perpetuation of disease. There is a tendency to minimize or even to deny the seriousness of the illness and to avoid discussion with the patient. particularly when death is possible or immanent (Hocking 1994).

With measurable disease as the focus of health care, people have come to focus upon health primarily when dysfunctions appear. Many people only become aware of health because they have lost it. They are not educated in health prevention and maintenance. Furthermore, there is very little awareness that total health is more than just being free of disease. Total health involves nurturing and harmonization of emotions, mind, community. and spirit. It also requires a positive focus on ways of being which are enjoyable and meaningful. Without joy in our lives we are more prone to illness, and even to serious diseases (Le Shan 1989).

The masculine principle now dominates, reducing and analyzing, seeking to extirpate and cure disease while the gentler, feminine, caring, organic aspects of ministering to people with illnesses are considered by Western medicine to be lesser and often unproductive aspects of ‘medical problems’.

Fortunately, the public is not as indoctrinated in scientific methods and thinking as health caregivers are. Growing numbers of people are seeking the help of other therapists, feeling that they deserve to have caregivers who listen to them and who address them as persons rather than as problems. In the UK, as in the rest of the world, this demand is bringing about a major return to whole-person care; most notably through complementary and alternative therapies.

Within the conventional caregiver community, many nurses are awakening to the limitations of the biomedical model and are gradually reintroducing a focus on whole-person care (Benor l996a, Pfeil 1994, Rankin-Box 1993). This is evidenced in holistic nursing associations in the UK. the USA, Canada. Australia, and Mexico. Nurses are increasingly in positions to influence this process as they are the largest group of health care practitioners to be embracing the wider philosophy and understanding of illness and health through the integration of whole-person care and of complementary therapies into traditional health care environments.

It is conservatively estimated that 40,000 nurses in the USA practice Therapeutic Touch (Benor l996b). Growing numbers of nurses use aromatherapy, reflexology, massage (Fraser & Ross Kerr 1993. Malkin 1994), and other forms of caring involving touch. Doctors are learning to incorporate homeopathy, acupuncture. and spiritual healing into their practices. In the workshops we do with doctors and nurses, it is the touching therapies which are most popular. How sad, in contrast, to find that in the defensive practice of medicine in the USA, psychotherapists in many states are forbidden to touch clients lest they open themselves to accusations of sexual misdoings which could lead to malpractice claims.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN WHOLE-PERSON CARE AND HOLISTIC THERAPIES

Whole-person care addresses body, emotions, mind, relationships (personal, community), and spirit. While we may discuss these individually, in reality they are inseparably interconnected with each other in a mutually-interacting manner. The question of whether complementary therapies are holistic is debated in this issue by Professor Pietroni and Professor Saks (p 4-11). Discussions such as these are important and an essential part of reflective practice.

The body is not merely a collection of chemicals, cells, and organs. The whole is far more than a sum of its parts. The body is a reflection of a person’s emotions and mind. Emotional tensions and mental worries alter muscle tensions, blood pressure, and hormonal balances. Chronic tensions may contribute to physical dysfunctions such as eczema, asthma, hypertension. migraines, cancers, and more. Conversely, physical dysfunctions may bring about emotional and mental instability, anxiety, and depression (Benor 1996a). There is a vast literature on body-mind interactions and interventions (Benor 1992, Dethlefsen & Dahlke 1983, Harrison 1984, Hay 1984, Rossi 1986). Relationships with family and community are reflected in the state of one’s health. For instance, losing a person who is close to us predisposes us to illness (Parkes 1964).

Spirit expresses itself through the body. We may become aware of spiritual aspects of our being through intuitive, inner knowing of the rightness or wrongness of what we eat, say, and do. Meditation and prayer may bring us into deeper spiritual awareness (Benor 1994). Spiritual healing may shift a painful experience of illness into one with spiritual dimensions (Benor 1992, Benor in press a). Hundreds of studies have shown a strong positive correlation between religious affiliation/practices and states of health (Levin 1994).

Complementary therapies may be offered in the spirit of whole-person care, Many people come for such treatments because complementary therapists spend time listening and counseling. This is in contrast with conventional medical practice. where doctors and nurses are encouraged to spend as little time as possible with people in the name of efficiency. However, research shows complementary therapies are potent and effective (Benor 1992, 1993) and are not just opportunities for people to have someone to speak with. Complementary therapies such as spiritual healing, Therapeutic Touch (Benor 1996b), Autogenic Training (Benor l996c), applied kinesiology, meditation, psychoneuroimmunology, and the like (Benor 1993. Benor in press b, Benor l996d). when practiced at their best, encourage people to take responsibility for their own health. They may also heighten intuitive awareness and spirituality. Styles (p 16-20) discusses the value of some therapies in the use of aromatherapv in hospitalized children with HIV disease.

So strong is the imprint of the medical model that there is a tendency to misuse complementary therapies. They may be given as partial methodologies which address symptoms rather than being offered as systems of diagnosis and treatment to enhance a person’s state of being.

Even when on offer as whole-person care, the offer may be available only to the affluent who can pay for such interventions out of their own pockets. However, this is a double-edged sword. The fact that so many people are willing to pay for complementary therapies is an incentive in the private sector (Eisenberg et al 1993). and a demonstration of public belief in their efficacy (Woodham 1994).

It is helpful when health providers model whole-person caring. sorting out their own wholeness so that they can be fully available to their clients. This can often be difficult in the current therapeutic milieu. Medical and nursing bureaucracies are insensitive to the personal needs of individual doctors and nurses. The good news is the growing acknowledgement of high levels of stresses by individual doctors and nurses, even though the ways of dealing with them have not yet been fully developed or instituted (Benor l996a, Benor 1995). This is such a new realization and so contrary to prevalent practices that many caregivers do not feel entitled to put their own needs forward. Involvement in holistic approaches is therefore often a covert statement of the caregivers’ own healing needs (Benor 1996a). All of these changes move rather slowly. We must be patient and draw support from one another in this journey towards wholeness.

CONCLUSION

Our language is important to our understanding and practice of health care. We should be moving towards integrated care: integrating complementary therapies with conventional medical and nursing practices: integrating awareness of the practitioner’s health needs in the provision of care; and helping people in integrating their bodies, emotions, minds, relationships, and spirit into a harmonious whole. Healing is a journey, not a destination.

REFERENCES

Benor, D. (1992) Healing Research, Volume I: Research in Healing . Helix. Oxford/Munich.

Benor, D. (1993) Healing Research. Volume II: Holistic Energy Medicine and the Energy Body . Helix, Oxford/Munich.

Benor, D. (1995) Medical Student Health Awareness: The Louisville Program for Medical Student Health awareness. Complementary Therapies in Medicine , 3(2):9 3-99.

Benor, D. (in press a) Healing Research, Volume III: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul . Medford, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (in press).

Benor, D. (in press b) Healing Research. Volume IV: A Synthesis of Recent Research . Medford, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (in press).

Benor, R. (1992a) Healing unto death. Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter , 4: 19-21.

Benor, R. (1996a) Reaching towards wholeness. European Nurse, 4: 240-249.

Benor, R. 1(996b) Therapeutic touch. British Journal of Community Health Nursing, 1(4): 203-205.

Benor, R. (1996c) Autogenic Training. Complementary Therapies in Nursing & Midwifery, 2: 134-138.

Benor, .R (1996d) A holistic view to managing stress. In: Fisher R A, McDaid P (eds) Palliative Day Care. Hodder Headline, London.

Campbell, J. (1972) Myths to Live By . Bantam. New York.

Dethlefsen, T. Dahlke, R. (1990) The Healing Power of Illness: The Meaning of Symptoms and How to Interpret Them . Element. Long mead, UK.

Eisenberg, D., et a. (1993) Unconventional medicine in the United States: Prevalence, costs and patterns of use. New England Journal of Medicine 328: 246-252.

Fraser, J. Ross Kerr, J. (1993) Psychophysiological effects of back massage on elderly institutionalized patients. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 18: 238-245.

Harrison, J. (1984) Love Your Disease – It’s Keeping You Healthy . Angus and Robertson, London.

Hay, L.L. (1984) You Can Heal Your Life . Hay House. Santa Monica, CA.

Hocking, D. (1992a) Denial in terminal care . Doctor-Healer Network Newsletter 4: 15-IS.

LeShan, L. (1989) Cancer as a Turning Point . Gateway. Bath.

Levin, J.S. (1994) Religion in Aging and Health . Sage. Thousand Oaks, CA.

Malkin, K. (1994) Use of massage in clinical practice. British Journal of Nursing 3(6): 292-294.

McTaggart, L. (1996) What Doctors Don’t Tell You: The truth about the dangers of modern medicine . Thorsons. London.

Parkes, C.M. (1964) The effects of bereavement on physical and mental health: a study of the case-records of widows. British Medical Journal 2: 274-279.

Pfeil, M. (1994) Role of nurses in promoting complementary therapies. British Journal of Nursing 3 (5): 2i7-223.

Rankin-Box, D. (1993) Innovation in practice: complementary therapies in nursing. Complementary Therapies in Medicine 1: 30-33.

Rossi, E. (1986) The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing . W W Norton. New York.

Woodham, A. (1994) HEA Guide to Complementary Medicine and Therapies . Health Education Authority. London.

An earlier version of this article appeared as: Benor, Daniel and Benor, Rita. (1997) The missing ‘W’ (in holistic care), guest editorial. Complementary Therapies in Nursing and Midwifery , 3, 1-3.

Resources for exploring messages from your body

Resources for explaining the mind-body connection

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Professional edition)
Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2004.
Thorough review of research validating the efficacy of self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM), biological energies, and environmental interactions with bioenergies.
“Book of the Year” award – The Scientific and Medical Network, UK
Paperback, CD-ROM or e-Book of Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing
(15% author’s discount on V2. Professional edition paperback and CD-ROM worldwide, and free postage in the US)

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality

Healing Research, V. 3
   Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (November 2006)

Reaching Higher and Deeper
Workbook for Healing Research, Volume 3 : Personal Spirituality:
   Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007

Resilience Boosters for Navigating through Life Challenges

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Fri, 22 May 2015 20:55:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

What do YOU do to promote your health?

Many readers of these articles are already incorporating healthy diets (free of pollutants, pesticides and additives), clean water and fitness routines. This will keep your body healthier.

Preventive health is also possible through self-healing exercises you can do for your body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit. (To see how all of these parts of yourself are closely inter-related, click here .) By attending to our self-care on a regular basis, we are more relaxed, less stressed and bothered with worries. We are then more available to respond fully in the present to whatever challenges come our way.

TWR (Transformative Wholistic Reintegration) can be enormously helpful for building resilience in many manners:

Example:

Sonya tripped on the edge of a throw-rug in her home and bruised her knee. Over the following days the pain increased, to the point that it seriously restricted her movement. Her doctor could find nothing that even warranted a scan or x-ray and prescribed a pain killer. A friend pointed Sonya to my book, Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release . Sonya was skeptical about my suggestions for dialoguing with her pain, but her friend suggested she had little to lose by exploring this. To her surprise, when she quietly asked her knee what it wanted her to know about her life, it immediately responded, “You’re constantly running in too many different directions. You’re always complaining you’re so busy that you can’t get many things done. Slow down and consider carefully what is really important in your life.” As Sonya absorbed this message, she was astounded to find that her knee pain was less than half as bad as it had been only a few minutes earlier – for the first time in more than 2 weeks. With further dialogues with her knee, her pain cleared completely.

Many of our physical problems can clear when we TWR away the underlying issues. This leaves us more resilient and free to enjoy life to the fullest.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2015 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Nausea Need Not Be Nauseating

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Tue, 19 May 2015 00:10:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

Mild to moderate nausea may be caused by common problems with relatively minor dangers, such as viral infections and spoiled foods, as well as by motion sickness, early pregnancy and dizziness or vertigo (from heights, fears and middle ear problems). When you have to vomit, this worsens the situation. Nausea and vomiting also occur frequently with chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Any of these problems can become more serious. Severe nausea and vomiting can lead to dehydration from vomiting and being unable to hold down any fluids. Food poisoning can make you dangerously ill or may even be fatal. Other causes of severe nausea, such as toxemia in later stages of pregnancy, may require serious medical or surgical interventions.

The unpleasantness of nausea and vomiting can also create a vicious circle of upsetting you, making you anxious, and then having the anxieties heighten the symptoms, which makes you even more nervous and worsens your nausea.

Medications are available to calm the stomach and decrease the nausea. However, drugs can be mixed blessings. Common problems with drugs include their side effects, costs and lack of availability when you have an unexpected onset of nausea. Worse yet, drugs can kill you. Over 100,000 people die every year in the US alone from medications that are properly prescribed and properly used.

It is no surprise that rapidly increasing numbers of people are seeking out complementary/ alternative therapies for dealing with their problems. These methods are safe, have few side effects, and often can be used as self-healing – as and when they are needed.

TWR is one of these methods. By tapping on the left and right sides of the body and reciting a simple affirmation it is possible to reduce or even eliminate most kinds of nausea.

Example

‘Sally’ (assumed name) was very pleased to be expecting her first child but very upset to find herself experiencing persistent nausea late into her fourth month of pregnancy. She was so nauseous that she would occasionally vomit, and felt so debilitated that it was hard for her to remain at work. This was all the more worrisome because her job provided almost half of the family income and both she and her husband were still paying off student loans.

While she experienced less nausea at night, her anxieties were beginning to interfere with her falling asleep and were waking her several times during the night and much earlier than usual in the mornings. She was absolutely opposed to taking any medications while she was pregnant, and this was causing tensions between her and her husband, John.

Sally was delighted to find TWR, which enabled her to reduce her nausea to tolerable levels all of the time, and sometimes to eliminate it completely. TWR also worked well to eliminate her anxieties, converting them into manageable concerns. With the reduction in nausea, staying on at work was no longer an issue, and the tensions between her and John were resolved.

This is a very typical report of the benefits of TWR. People are pleased to be able to deal with their nausea, stresses and anxieties without having to rely on medications. They are also pleased that TWR allows them to have a self-healing method that they is available whenever needed, and which they can use discreetly, without anyone knowing they are doing it.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2014 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Children’s Fears

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 17:40:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

Children at any age may be frightened by experiences in real life or through the media, particularly when they observe violence or injuries. They may easily misunderstand what has happened and may be scared that the same or worse could happen to them.

Adults may assume that the children are simply anxious for their safety, based on adult understandings of what was observed. The first tendency is to explain that the brutality happened somewhere else and that it is highly unlikely to happen where the children are located. While this may provide a measure of assurance, it is often far off the mark from the actual concerns of the children.

Here are some helpful notes on helping children who have been scared:

Once children understand what is involved, much of their anxiety may be allayed. Here is a lovely little video clip from Fred Rogers, giving his take on helping children when they are upset by tragic events in the news:

The above, however, relates mainly to children’s cognitive concerns. Emotional issues often need to be addressed separately.

Emotional stresses may leave various degrees of impact in children. Some anxieties may be allayed without emotional residues, just with the cognitive processing and parental reassurances of safety. In other instances, where the children are more emotionally sensitive or where the impacts are more severe and stressful, may require further processing.

Children who are raised in safe environments and who are unfamiliar with serious breaches of safety or even life-threatening situations may suffer emotional impacts that are potentially scarring. They may demonstrate new anxieties over issues or situations which they had earlier navigated without problems. When more severely traumatized, hey may become restless, edgy, clinging or tearful and may have difficulties sleeping.

The earlier they receive help following the traumatizing event, the more easy it usually is to prevent longer term effects. Without professional help, such children may become more withdrawn, socially isolated and hesitant about being in unfamiliar situations.

TWR is a wonderful way to help children release their emotional stresses. Children learn very quickly to tap away their anxieties and trauma memories. These are also released much more quickly by children than by adults, because children generally have not built up walls around their fears, as adults do over time.

Children also build up meta-positive beliefs and attitudes about handling stresses and traumas when they are helped in these ways to release them. They develop understandings and expectations of competence in dealing with life challenges, so that future challenges can also be handled with confidence, rather than with distress.
You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2013 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

TWR Can Help You In Your Work

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 22:50:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

Do you suffer from work-related stresses of heavy workloads? Deadlines? Abrasive co-workers? Impatient managers? Challenges with technologies that are new, changing or not functioning as they should?

Do you sometimes find yourself worrying yourself into several sorts of frazzles?

Are you hard-pressed to keep your work from infringing on your personal or family life? Too tired after a day at work to muster the energies to fully be there with your husband/ wife/ partner/ children?

A major problem with issues of these sorts is that we worry about them. Fretting and worrying then often take on lives of their own.

Do you worry about
•   Delays that are not your fault but that impact on your work deadlines reflecting badly on you?
•   Typographical errors you missed – that make you look silly or incompetent?
•   How to present a delicate problem to co-workers or managers who are often not delicate in their criticisms?
•   How to explain you’re running late – to someone waiting for you at home at the end of a day?

When you worry, you may get up tight. Your inner up-tightness may raise your stress hormones, which then make your body up tight. After a while, your body may start complaining – expressing itself through aches and pains. These can make you more up tight… And away you go – into a vicious circle of being more and more wound up, inside and out.

As if that isn’t enough, when you are all wound up you may become more edgy. This can lead to feeling irritated in your interactions with others, which again sets up other vicious circles of them irritating you and you responding in ways that irritate them…

Example (assumed names, composite report).

Patti was an average secretary who had done well and had been satisfied in her company. Over her 6 years of work for a middle-management boss, she had several times been acknowledged as “Employee of the Month.”

Following the takeover of her company, she was reassigned to a management secretarial pool, where she worked under the supervision of Josie, another secretary. Josie was generous with criticisms and stingy with encouragements and compliments. Patti found herself increasingly irritable at work and at home, started having headaches and backaches, and her work performance suffered noticeably. She made frequent errors in typing from dictation, was easily distracted, and distressingly forgetful at home as well as at work.

Patti found me through the TWRapp.com website. I helped her by phone and Skype to learn and use TWR (Transformative Wholistic Reintegration). She was able to rapidly reduce her anxieties, converting them more manageable concerns. As she became less tense, her headaches and backaches diminished. If she ever felt these pains starting up, she was able to use them as barometers of her tensions and as alarm bells that alerted her to identify issues that were making her up tight. She then used TWR to de-fuse the anxiety-producing issues, and reduced the pressures she felt building up inside her. This markedly improved her concentration as well.

All of this took only three sessions. In an email follow-up six months later, Patti reported she was doing so much better with her continued and expanding uses of TWR that she had just been acknowledged again as Employee of the Month.

TWR ( Transformative Wholistic Reintegration ) is a powerful tool for self-management of such stresses and vicious circle. This can be a tremendous benefit in your work and personal life.

You can TWR away your problems by:

For more detailed instructions, check out http://twrapp.com .

TWR for Allergies

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 18:05:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

TWR can reduce the intensity of allergic reactions and sometimes eliminates them completely. Intermittent exposure allergies clear more quickly and deeply than constant exposure allergies. You simply focus your mind on the allergy symptoms, identifying the allergen if you know it, and then recite the counteracting affirmation.

Example:

‘Hillary’ (assumed name) would get itchy and puffy eyes and a runny nose if she came near a cat. If she didn’t put distance between herself and the cat pretty quickly, this could proceed to coughing and wheezing.

I met Hillary at a party in the home of a cat owner, where she apologized in advance over having forgotten to bring her allergy meds and anticipated she would very shortly be in such a bad state that she would have to leave. The host, knowing about the benefits of TWR for allergies, asked if she would be open to seeing whether this could help her. When she agreed, he introduced us and I gave her a crash course in using TWR for her allergies.

Hillary tapped repeatedly on her body while listing her current symptoms of itchy eyes and the rest of her anticipated symptoms, adding the counteracting affirmation, “but I still love and accept myself, wholly and completely.” Within ten minutes she was symptom free, and remained so for the rest of the evening.

With prolonged or constant exposure to allergens it often takes about two weeks before the symptoms clear. It may require an act of faith to persist in tapping for 10-20 minutes, two or three times daily, with no immediate feedback on how it is working for you, or even whether it will work at all. However, perseverance is rewarded with at least partial clearing of symptoms in about three quarters of the people with allergies whom I’ve taught to use TWR.

TWR can also make significant contributions in reducing the severity of multiple allergy syndrome, where people are sensitive to a very wide range of substances (which can include foods of many sorts, perfume, gasoline fumes and other allergens).

With allergies, as with any other physical symptoms, it is also often helpful to dialogue with the problems to ask, “What might my body be wanting me to know about my life?” This is discussed in much greater detail in Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release .

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2013 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Combining Healing with TWR

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 17:51:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

Spiritual healing (the UK generic term for healing through biological energies, intent, prayers, and the like) can be an excellent combination with TWR.

People using Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch, Reiki and other healing methods have reported excellent results when adding TWR to their healing work. There are often times that emotional issues come to the surface of awareness when healers use healing to help people with physical problems, or people use healing to help themselves find relief from physical challenges. Our deeper selves find it helpful to bring buried and hidden emotional issues to our awareness through physical symptoms.

TWR offers tools for dealing with such emotions that surface during healing treatments. These emotions may feel a bit overwhelming, both because they come spontaneously and unexpectedly and because they may be of an intensity that is beyond our comfort zones. Healing has its own wisdom and brings about changes through our inner guidance – sometimes with an intensity that our inner self judges we can handle, but which our conscious self finds a bit overwhelming. TWR provides the tools to exercise our conscious judgment and wisdom in furthering the clearing of emotional issues.

With TWR we can deal with small parts of the problem at a time so that we don’t feel overwhelmed. This is called partializing a problem. It’s rather like addressing a brick at a time to do a remodeling job on our inner home. We can similarly choose to combine several pieces together to facilitate the clearing of problems. This is called bundling a problem. Many healers have also reported they are pleased to be able to teach TWR to healees so that they are able to go home and continue to clear their issues themselves.

Example 1

‘Ann’ (assumed name) came for healing for her chronic stomach pains that her family doctor had not been able to explain or treat successfully. She was weary of the many examinations, scans and lab tests and frustrated with the money she had wasted on various medications and on the side effects she had suffered from them.

Ann was surprised to find herself extremely anxious and restless as the healing proceeded. Previous healing treatments had been blissfully relaxing. ‘Meg,’ her healer, reassured Ann that this was actually a good sign, indicating that the healing was loosening up whatever imbalances in her life were tied to her stomach pains. Trusting Meg, Ann allowed her to continue with the healing, even though she felt she wanted to jump off the table and leave the treatment room.

Responding to Ann’s discomfort, Meg continued to let the healing flow through her hands as she introduced her to TWR. Ann dialogued with her anxious feelings and rapidly came to an awareness that some part of her feared she would be overwhelmed by the feelings locked into her stomach issues. TWR enabled Ann to release these fears rapidly, much to her surprise and relief.

Meg guided her next into talking with her stomach to learn what it was wanting Ann to know that was out of harmony in her life. Ann was surprised to have her stomach thank her, first of all, for listening to what it had been working hard to get her to pay attention to. Her stomach then explained that it was tired of her swallowing down her feelings of distress and anxiety over the escalating conflicts she was having with her boyfriend. As Ann connected with these feelings, she was further surprised to find her stomach pains going down – for the first time in many months.

Meg instructed Ann in using TWR as self-healing. This proved effective in releasing her pains, as well as in getting her more in touch with her body as an integral part of her being and not just as a vehicle for her brain.

TWR is outstanding in facilitating our dialogue with our bodies. Just initiating the dialogue will often lead to immediate decreases in pain and other symptoms, and will open up paths to healing our lives.

Coming from the other direction, TWR may bring people into places of discomfort that healing can help.

Example 2

Two weeks after his skiing accident, ‘Bob’ was frustrated that his ankle fracture still remained painful, despite having his cast changed twice. His doctors had no explanation for this. Bob was also tired of the side effects from his medications.

TWR helped reduce his ankle pain modestly but did not eliminate it. Adding healing to his self-healing with TWR, Bob came into memories of deep frustration and anger when his father had disciplined him as a child with frequent spankings. He had once kicked his father in such a fit of rage, only to receive a double dose of spanking.

The healing helped Bob connect with his general fears of letting his anger out, following these childhood experiences. He realized that his anger had been stirred by conflicts with his manager at work because this man also had a strong temper and was something of a tyrant to those working under him.

I am unable to explain with any certainty why TWR will work in some situations and healing in others, to help people overcome their blocks to dialoguing with their bodies, and to facilitate their understanding and clearing of their symptoms. But I encourage you to consider this combination if you find yourself blocked on your self-healing journeys.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2014 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Why Would You Say ‘TWR” When You Have Cancer?

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 17:49:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

Cancer is a frightening problem to deal with. Even when diagnosed in its earliest stages, there are always anxieties about recurrences. In later stages the treatments of chemotherapy and radiotherapy are debilitating and surgery can be painful and disfiguring. With these problems there are the additional anxieties, worries and pains to deal with, plus the side effects of pain killers and other medications. The treatments can often be more difficult to deal with than the disease.

And then there are the psychological issues of disability, pain, limitations in functions, missing work, needing support plus stressing and distressing other members of the family. Lucky is the person who has support for all of these!

Considering all of these problems, you might be wondering about the title of this article that suggests you might say “TWR” in this situation. Well, TWR is a self-healing method that is absolutely transformative. TWR can relieve pains of all sorts, reduce anxieties, fears and more. TWR is particularly suited for people dealing with cancer:

TWR is easy to use and rapidly effective. You simply alternate taping on the left and right sides of your body while focusing your mind on any issues you want to feel better about. You recite an affirmation that is calming. Within minutes, you will be feeling better.

Better yet, you can install positive thoughts and feelings to replace whatever you’ve released. Your experiences with cancer can become a journey of positive transformation, rather than one of suffering and misery. The TWR method is detailed at paintap.com .

Here are ways that many people report TWR can be of help:

While this description of how TWR can help you may seem simple, and the TWR method is easy to learn and to use, TWR is actually elegantly simple. TWR is designed so that you can use it for just about any imaginable problem, with equally rapid and profound success.

Composite Example

‘Sharon’ was a 49 year-old, married, high school teacher, mother of three, who was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. With cancer cells spreading to her lymph nodes, the prognosis for 5-year survival was about 50 percent.

Sharon was devastated. Her son and older daughter were in university and well on their ways to independence. Her 15 year-old daughter, ‘Dana,’ still needed a lot of support, as she had struggled with cognitive challenges all of her life – following a difficult birth. Tom, her husband, worked long hours at his carpentry shop and needed Sharon’s help both in continuing her work to make ends meet and to manage his books and their home and Dana’s special needs.

Sharon had been looking forward to an early retirement to lighten her load and to be more available to support Dana and Tom. Her diagnosis was a severe blow that pushed her to the edge of incapacitating depression.

While her family doctor and oncologist were very encouraging, as her cancer appeared to have spread only to her axillary lymph nodes, Sharon was petrified that she would suffer a long and debilitating illness and would become a burden to her family and then “abandon” them by dying.

Sharon was extremely grateful to the nurse who discussed her chemotherapy with her and suggested she could join a local cancer support group. Not only did Sharon find enormous help from the other people in the group, but they shared many tips on how to deal with her challenges – including surfing the internet to identify further approaches that appealed to her.

Some of the more helpful ones included: asking extended family members for help during the challenging periods of chemotherapy and surgery; changing her diet to include more organic and less processed foods; and scheduling time each day to do something she truly relished doing – just for herself.

On the internet she came across TWR, which proved to be a blessing in varied and often unexpected ways. She was able to eliminate her nausea during chemotherapy; release many of her worries – transforming them into manageable concerns – particularly when sitting in hospital and clinic waiting rooms; had almost no pain with her surgery and did not require pain medications (which she had never tolerated because of many side effects); fell asleep and slept through the night without waking; and was able to give back a significant measure of help to family members and friends who helped her – by teaching them how to do TWR for their own stress and pain issues.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2013 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Absence of Negatives Does Not Predict Presence of Positives in Our Lives

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 17:47:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

I was startled to read that “…positive and negative emotions need to be measured separately in research on well-being. It cannot be assumed that the presence of one indicates the absence of the other.” (Emmons, 2003, p. 44)

I find that people are able to rapidly release negative, bothersome thoughts, memories and emotions with TWR (Whole Health – Easily and Effectively). I find that most people will spontaneously come into more positive thoughts and feelings when they have released their negative issues down to the level of zero (on a scale of 10) or close to zero.

I had assumed therefore that through the reduction and then absence of negativity, people are freed up to shift into positivity. Conversely, I expected that people who have positive worldviews would be generally more free of negativity.

According to Robert Emmons (2003), research shows that this is not the case. People who are generally positive may be carrying considerable loads of negative emotions.

The good news is that TWR can help on both ends of the spectrum. I am increasingly impressed with the benefits of investing in installing and strengthening positive cognitions and feelings. People who do this regularly (including myself) generally feel happier and better resourced for dealing with life’s challenges.

Another good piece of news is that people often tell me that they don’t actually have to install positive cognitions and emotions by using the full affirmation + alternate right and left tapping. The tapping alone will frequently suffice to strengthen whatever positives they focus upon.

Reference:
Emmons, Robert A. The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns: Motivation and Spirituality in Personality. New York: Guilford 2003.

Related articles:

Challenging experiences need not be negative

Negativity Is Only Negativity If We Call It Negative: Out of negativity can come great positivity

A Place of Peace and Safety when Using TWR for Emotional Distress

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

My Way Is Better Than Your Way

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 20:00:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

Habits are pieces of our automatic pilot. Largely unconscious, they ease your navigation and passage through life.

Habits of perceptions:

Habits of behavior:

Meta-rules about perceptions and behaviors:

Habits make our lives so much simpler, saving us from having to make countless decisions. But at the same time, habits may restrict our adaptability in new situations. Close relationships and marriage are marvelous mirrors that help us view our habits of perceptions and behaviors anew. Invariably, two people raised in different families will have different habits of perceptions and behaviors. These may be experienced anywhere on the spectrum from funny to annoying or even to insulting or infuriating.

Dealing with the rubs of different habits of perceptions and behaviors

If your meta-rules about negotiating changes in your perceptions and behaviors are relaxed and you are open to changing your views and ways of doing things, then negotiating how to compromise around your differences with others may be no problem. However, if you find yourself uneasy or unwilling to compromise in the face of such challenges, this may be a challenge in your relationships with family, friends and at colleagues at work.

TWR can be an enormous help in lessening your anxieties, frustrations and angers in such situations. Tapping on the right and left sides of your body, while focusing your mind on something positive can lessen and neutralize the negativity in your responses to challenges to your habits of perceptions and actions.

You could tap on:

The aim is not to eliminate your disagreements but to reduce your anxieties, frustrations, angers and other disturbing feelings so that you are in a better place to negotiate your differences.

On the positive side, you can also use TWR to install affirmative, caring and healing thoughts and feelings about the person with whom you are engaged in sorting out your differences.

Many such conflicts can be resolved when we reduce or eliminate our negative feelings and habits of perception and behavior.

When feeling or habits remain strong and differences prove challenging to resolve, the help of a counselor or therapist can help you find your way through to positive resolutions of conflicts. Having trained in marital and family therapy and having practiced wholistic psychotherapy for several decades, I have found that these sorts of problems often can be resolved with the help of an outside mediator and counselor.

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2014 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

When One Shoe Doesn’t Fit All: Conventional Medical Research

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 17:55:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

Conventional medicine has asserted that the gold standard for research is the randomized, double blinded controlled study. Without such studies, and preferably ones with large numbers of ‘subjects,’ they claim that there is insufficient evidence to accept the efficacy of a treatment.

Conventional medicine largely relies on medications for treatments of most problems. They offer a standard ‘shoe’ (drug) that is available in different sizes (doses). For side effects, they offer other standard ‘over-shoes’ or ‘in-soles’ (other drugs) to counteract the problems created by the shoe that didn’t quite fit that person in the first place.

Conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical companies generally test how their shoes fit and how people get along with them in a modest number of people, over a period of 3-6 months. If these people find that the shoes fit reasonably well, the doctors and pharma then put the shoes out for everyone to use. Over a period of 10 years, about half of the shoes have to be withdrawn because it turns out that they cause corns or bunions or more serious problems, and even death. So we, the public who are sold these shoes with great claims for how they’ll help us walk better through life, end up becoming the experimental group for long-term benefits or dangers. This is one of the principal reasons that conventional medicine is now the third leading cause of death (after cancer and cardiac problems).

Not everyone likes the standard, store-bought shoes of one manufacturer. The nice thing about shoes is that if you don’t like the shoes in one store, you can find hundreds of different models in other stores.

Not so with pharmaceuticals. If you’re lucky, as with antibiotic shoes, when one doesn’t fit, there may be a limited number of others that do. But your choices are increasingly restricted by growing microbial resistance.

This is an idealized assessment of the conventional, standardized research protocol. We are finding increasingly that drug research may be unreliable in 30-40% of so-called scientific reports. Drug companies and many doctors paid by these companies will distort the results, the analyses of the results and the conclusions derived from the studies in order to make the drugs appear to be more effective than they are.

In my opinion, the reliance on drug therapies as the primary approach to dealing with medical problems is probably not the best choice.

Conventional medicine assumes that it is going to cure problems by addressing the foot the shoe is worn on. The medical shoe salesmen called doctors are trained primarily in selling the shoe that they – with an educated guess – believe will fit the foot presented to them.

Few doctors have training in recognizing other factors that might affect the person wearing the shoe, such as the posture, gait, diet, weight, allergies to materials in the shoes, behavioral habits, attitudes and aesthetic preferences of the wearer of the shoes, relationships of the wearer with others in their family or community, interactive effects of wearing several different in-soles, overshoes, and so on. All of these could influence how the shoe and the foot and the wearer get along with each other.

There are numerous other purveyors of completely different types of footwear, as well as those who teach how to strengthen muscles, increase flexibility, enhance balance, and to choose smoother terrain an avoid rough roads in order to walk a happier path in life. Others teach how to release old habits that were acquired through having had to journey through difficult terrains.

Energy Psychology (EP) is one of these alternative options, distributed under the broad umbrella of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), and showcased through the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology ( ACEP ). Transformative Wholistic Reintegration ( TWR , a rebranding of WHEE ) is one of the EP variants. In using TWR you alternate stimulating the left and right sides of your body while focusing your mind on emotions, thoughts and physical conditions that are troublesome in your life. A favorite method of many is to alternate tapping their feet on the floor, or alternating tightening their toes inside their right and left shoes. One can also use the alternating stimuli of walking or riding a stationary bicycle.

CAM approaches are helpful because:

That is the good news. The challenging news is that the high degrees of individualizing of the CAM tools makes it difficult to do randomized controlled studies. Such studies require standardized interventions for all of the study participants in the treatment groups. This is a serious problem. If you standardize the treatments, you are not really giving people the best chance for benefiting from the interventions. If you individualize the treatments, you are not adhering to the standardized protocol of the double blinded, controlled study.

Controlled studies are also very costly. Drug companies have enormous revenues and can afford these expenses. CAM practitioners have no such resources and are at a tremendous disadvantages on this playing field, particularly when cheating is widely practiced in the competitive sport of getting the public to buy into the use of conventional therapies.

I believe observational studies are a helpful intermediary research alternative. These are studies of series of people with the same sorts of problems, treated individually with the same CAM modalities. This is, in fact, the way that CAM approaches such as acupuncture (and its derivatives of Shiatsu, Reflexology, and related therapies), Ayurveda, homeopathy, and other treatments were developed through the ages.

Critics will say that such studies are unreliable, because:

There was no comparison/ control group. The concurrent control group is touted as the best, most neutral comparison group because it eliminates extraneous factors that might create differences between treatment. This is a highly fraught argument, because there is no way to know that the people in the control group did not differ significantly in many and varied respects in comparison with the people in the treatment group.

This last issue (3) is the most serious problem I see with concurrent control groups. It is absolutely inevitable that here must be countless unknown extraneous factors between concurrent control groups and treatment groups. The simultaneous, separate control and treatment groups are supposed to eliminate such differences between the treatment(s) being evaluated – because it is statistically probable that all the possible extraneous factors will be randomly distributed in and between each group and therefore will be less likely to bias the responses of either group. This is a problematic argument. The opposite may, in fact, be the case. When you have different people in simultaneous control and treatment groups, you have people living different lives, under different conditions, so there are actually far more extraneous factors that are likely to be present between the groups.

The best control group, in my opinion, is the self-control group, where each individual is observed for a period of time and given standardized tests at the start and end of that time period, and then given the treatment(s), with a repeat of the testing. This way we have each person as his or her own control – which eliminates enormous varieties of differences between groups.

Self-control groups are also far less expensive. This would go a long way towards leveling the research playing field between the mega-rich drug companies and medical establishment and the CAM practitioners.

A helpful step in the direction of self-controlled studies are observational studies. These are collections of reports of treatments of groups of individuals under standardized procedures but individualized routines for application of the procedures. Thus, for instance, in a study of homeopathic treatments for a particular type of pain the protocol might include:

Informal observational studies are in fact the way that most established treatments have come into use over the centuries. Acupuncture, Ayurveda, Tibetan Medicine, Native American Medicine, Shamanism and other traditional systems of treatment grew out of trial and error over centuries of explorations of what worked and what didn’t.

Most of the traditional medical systems are also much broader in their theoretical frameworks than conventional medicine. Traditional medicine almost always acknowledges that:

Conventional medicine is focused almost exclusively on the body, occasionally acknowledging psychological and social aspects of a disease but not investing much focus on anything beyond the body.

Within the broader frameworks of traditional medical systems, observational studies offer much more broad and flexible frameworks for assessing the causes of diseases, their treatments and the cures of the individuals suffering the problems.

There is no guarantee, of course, that the initial, control period of observation and assessment will be unbiased – relative to the following period of treatment. However, if the subjects for the study are chosen with histories of long-standing problems, and their control period data do not demonstrate a difference in assessments from their history or from their initial control period assessment, there is a reasonable expectation that the control period represents a valid comparison for the subsequent treatment period.

Permission to reproduce this article
You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2015 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM. All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

Inner Renovations for Hidden Rooms with Invisible Walls

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 19:02:00 GMT

By Daniel Benor, MD

Have you ever asked,

“Why do I do these silly things like snacking on junk food, when I really want to lose weight and keep it off?”

“Why do I explode in anger when my buttons are pushed, even after I’ve promised again and again that when I’m annoyed with someone I’ll take a deep breath, count to ten, and if I still feel the inner steam rising I’ll put off saying anything till I can say it calmly?”

“Why am I my own worst critic, picking at how I look, at the tiniest flaws in my work and in what I say, when everyone else says I’m pretty good looking and way above average in what I say and do?”

“Why can’t I let go of these old habits I’ve had for years, despite my annual New Year’s resolutions, and trying the best I can to stop [picking at myself/ criticizing others/ always worrying about the worst possibilities/ INSERT YOUR FAVORITE HABITS…?]”

My experience in 50 years of exploring various therapies – for my clients and myself – is that there are invisible inner walls that hide the answers to these gnawing questions from our conscious mind about such issues. We hide the reasons behind our troublesome issues for varieties of reasons. Primarily it is because the roots of our problems are traumas that were so uncomfortable to experience that we hid them behind these inner walls.

The memories and feelings generated by traumatic experiences are usually painful, frightening and overwhelming. We may be unable to resolve the trauma issues; may feel helpless to cope with the painful feelings and frightening thoughts; and may see no way to lessen or resolve the traumatic situations or our inner responses to them.

A very common way to lessen our inner stress and distress is to lock away the memories of the traumas and our feelings about them. This is an effective first aid for diminishing our distress. In childhood this is particularly helpful, because when we’re young we have limited coping mechanisms for dealing with traumas. However, while our conscious distress about what happened is lessened, we end up with burdens of trauma residues outside our conscious awareness that are locked inside ourselves.

This walling away of distressing and painful experiences and their residues becomes our default habit for dealing with traumas. We continue doing this throughout the rest of our lives.

Some of us build stronger walls or have greater tolerance for containing buried trauma residues inside ourselves. We live our whole lives this way.

If we have different personalities we may find that as we mature into adulthood, we have greater inner strengths to deal with distressing situations and don’t have to wall away the feelings and memories that distress us. We may be able to clarify our understandings of our relationships with other people and our responses to them so that the trauma residues are dissipated.

Even better, we may develop coping mechanisms to resolve our issues with other people and situations, so that we grow, mature, and become more capable at handling challenges in our lives. We then come away from traumas wiser and enriched by these experiences.

Many, however, continue to wall away our feelings and memories – to the point that our inner home becomes so cluttered, and we have to strengthen the walls where they crack from inner rooms that are so full to overflowing with trauma residues. We find ourselves with less and less inner space and energies to live a comfortable life. It takes ever-increasing psychological energy to keep our conscious mind unaware of the buried trauma residues. Having to stand constantly on guard and keep our inner doors to our storage rooms from popping open, and ultimately to keep our inner walls from cracking and crumbling drains our inner resources.

At some point, a wiser part of ourselves realizes we can probably do better than to continue the habits we developed as young children. This may be our inner observer of feelings and memories, our logical mind, our neglected fun-loving self, or our higher self – that part of us that guides us through the lessons of life. This part of ourself has the challenging task of waking us up to our bad habits that have been present and to some degree successful for years.

In the easiest case scenario, our wiser self nags at our conscious awareness until we wake up to new possibilities. Perhaps through the examples of others, perhaps through reading articles like this, or perhaps through the media, we come to see that we have more and better options for dealing with current and past traumas.

In other cases, our wiser self has to find stronger ways of getting our attention. It may lead us to create pains from muscle tensions; gut dysfunctions; allergies; asthma; arthritis; hypertension; or many other ‘telephone bells’ or ‘alarm bells’ to draw us into asking “What’s the matter with me?”

Many take this question to their family doctor, relying on an outside expert opinion and recommendations for treatments of the symptoms. In the vast majority of cases, the treatment will be medications that address the symptoms. Sadly, these medications do not resolve the underlying root causes of the problems.

Eventually, we come to ask, “Who’s the matter with me?” This is the start of realizing that we ourselves are creating many of the problems that are manifesting in our lives.

It is at this point that I often am invited to help. I am a Master Craftsman for Inner Renovations.

I will help you zero in on what most needs changing
My first step is to learn all about your life, focusing on issues from your earliest memories that may have given you the habit of stashing away your stress and distress.

Together we will identify what may be causing your symptoms. I will help you consider wholistic possibilities of body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit that could be factors in your problems.

I will introduce DIY tools for dealing with your issues
I can offer you DIY tools for exploring and remodeling your inner walls and rooms that have served you well by keeping your trauma memories and distresses hidden outside your conscious awareness. TWRapp.com is where you will find these tools.

Some people are naturally gifted at inner renovations and will be able to manage their inner remodeling and housecleaning with the help of the app user manuals at TWRapp.com

I can support you in using these tools
You may do better with a bit of instruction in how to use these tools. In just a few sessions I can get you up to speed (in person, in Guelph, Ontario; by phone; or by Skype).

You may do just fine on your own, but run into a difficult room or issue to clear. Your inner self may both want you to release the buried trauma but at the same time may have anxieties about letting your remember and feel what it locked away in an inner room. Again, I can help with a consultation .

I can guide you through a complete life makeover
You may decide that you want a major inner reconstruction, clearing all of the rooms you can identify. I can offer my expert advice and guidance in identifying the issues you can clear; in prioritizing which to address first; and in using many different tools that will help you dismantle your old, outdated inner walls.

Better yet, I can help you with these tools to install and strengthen positive thoughts and feelings in your life.

BOOK A SESSION WITH DR. BENOR NOW

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2015 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.

The Sweetening Spiral, A New Twist On Your Road to Wellness

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 18:33:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

What is the opposite of a vicious circle? Think about it! Isn’t it odd that we have no common term for this in the English language? German, Swedish and French have such terms, but we don’t.

I deal with this issue daily, as I help people release negative, self-defeating patterns of behaviors in my practice of psychotherapy, often in telephone sessions. The most common vicious circle is one in which outer stress → anxiety → tension → feeling stressed inside ourselves → more anxiety → more tensions → etc. → etc.

The most common way that many people deal with such vicious circles is to take medications that dampen anxieties and dull their stress responses. While this is a quick fix, it often also dulls consciousness and dampens alertness. Anti-anxiety medications may also be habit-forming or even addicting.

I help people to stop their vicious circles through various self-healing methods, such as relaxation, breathing exercises, imagery and meditation. My favorite is TWR: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively.

In working on their vicious circles, I found it frustrating that there was no term for building positive feedback loops. After much thought, with the votes of many clients, we came up with a “sweetening spiral.”

I like the spiral image better than that of a circle because we never really come back to the same place after working on our issues to relieve some part of the vicious circles we have fallen into. Each time we work our way around from anxiety → relaxation and de-stressing exercises → unwinding from tension → less anxiety → etc. we find ourselves in a new space.

When I first raise this issue with clients, many respond with a “Yes, but?”
“I’ve had this for so long, how could I change it?”
or “I’ve tried different therapies and none of them worked.”
or “If you lived with the boor [usually a less polite term]] I’m living with?”

My usual first answer is to introduce them to TWR. With a simple tapping on the body and affirmations tailored to the individual’s needs, we clean out the clutter of negativity in the inner emotional computer files and start to install positive replacements.

Almost invariably (I’ve had only one such case in nearly 6 years of using TWR), well before the end of the first session, we develop the beginnings of one or more sweetening spirals. Building the positives, in addition to softening and releasing the negatives, makes the whole process much quicker.

Once we get our minds around sweetening spirals, we often find it pretty easy to see new places we can apply these principles. I often suggest to clients that they can work their way into a sweetening spiral – as in offering acts of kindness, reaching out in love (sometimes as tough love), extending forgiveness, and moving into a place of acceptance. Positive actions beget positive reactions, which encourage us to again offer kindness, etc. etc.

I have puzzled over why we focus on the negatives more than on the positives in our society. Perhaps it is our “fix-it” mentality. We want to identify the problems so that we can correct them. We don’t focus as often on the positives, to build more positives. This seems to be a natural human tendency, as in being more attracted to violence and crime in the news media. News stories that focus on positive behaviors and events get little attention.

We give more attention to the weeds in our gardens than to the flowers. Practicing with sweetening spirals helps us to cultivate and enjoy the flowers.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Make Friends With Your Nightmares

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 18:29:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Nightmares – the kind that wake us with our heart beating wildly and our whole body tensed and ready to do battle with the baddies or run away – are often experienced as very frightening and worrisome.

Many want to forget their bad dreams as soon as possible. They don’t realize these could be missed opportunities for enrichment in their lives.

We may ask ourselves:

Did I see or hear something bad that is coming back to haunt me?

Is my dream warning me about someone who is out to get me?

Did I eat something spoiled for dinner?

Or could there be something more that I am not getting here?

The truth is, any or all of these and many more possibilities may be true. Dreams are imagery and storyline salads that our deeper self puts up on the screen of our awareness during the night. When we sleep, our conscious mind is resting. This allows our unconscious mind the space to chew on and digest whatever issues we have swallowed but have not yet sorted out during the day.

The ingredients in this salad may include

There are countless books for interpreting dreams. These may give us some general ideas about our own nightmares, but only we ourselves can say what our particular dreams mean. This is because we have concocted this imagery salad out of the unique ingredients of our individual, personal lives.

Example

From ‘Kate,’ a 35 year-old, single parent MBA:

I once woke in a sweat, having dreamed I was driving a car with a steering wheel I could no longer turn.

The first step in befriending our nightmares is to write down every detail and nuance we can recall, omitting no pixel of pictures, no nuance of feeling, or soundbyte of words, or intonations exchanged by the characters on that inner stage.

As I started to write, more details emerged. Not only was I approaching a curve, but there was a big truck approaching in the opposite lane. I kept fighting the wheel that wouldn’t turn, terrified as my car crossed the yellow line just in front of the truck. I wanted to scream but no words would come out of my mouth. I woke just before impact.

Next, we can scan our memories for what might have been a leftover from recent days’ experiences that was dropped into the salad.

I felt I was being driven by my financial needs to continue on a career path that I was unhappy to pursue. The atmosphere at the factory was terrible because I was being asked to do jobs that weren’t mine, due to several recent staff resignations. I was forced to stay late, compromising my duties as a mom to two young girls. I was having a hard time finding another job I wanted, and worried I could not hold up (might crash) under the stresses.

Examining patterns from the past that might be similar, Kate realized:

My father was forced into bankruptcy, due to a poor choice in business partners, when I was in my late teens. This severely disrupted our family and delayed my plans for going to university until I could pay my own way. I felt totally out of control when this happened.

Sorting out the meanings of the dream, one can explore alternatives that one might have overlooked in the dream and why these blind spots might exist.

I came to see I had struggled with the steering wheel but never thought of stepping on the brakes. The dream actually helped me understand that when stressed, I often felt panicky and out of control – when actually there often were choices I could make that would be under my control.

The nightmare can then suggest new ways we might approach our life situations.

I came to see that I could take a stand for myself and put on the brakes at work. I was lucky that the division manager was an understanding single mom herself and she supported me when I requested shifts in my duties.
Kate also found ways she could deal with the heavy feelings of hurt, anger and resentment she carried from her father’s bankruptcy, but that is another tale, to be shared in a following article.

In short, if we don’t run away from our nightmares or push them back into the fog of unknowing in our unconscious mind, they can be a rich feast for understanding ourselves better and for discovering creative ways to improve our lives.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
DB@paintap.com

Why Would You Say ‘TWR!’ When You’re Stressed?

accounts@cc94.com (Conscious Commerce) — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 18:28:00 GMT

By Daniel J. Benor, MD

I am a frustrated psychiatrist. I trained back in the years when psychiatry was all psychotherapy. I continue to have a passion to help people deal with their problems through talking therapy – but Psychiatry has changed over the years into being only focused on prescribing medications. To maintain my own sanity, and to be able to continue to help people who came to me with the sorts of problems described below, I develop TWR: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively.

TWR is a potent, new, self-healing method that relieves stress and distress within minutes. Once you know this method, you can de-stress any time you want to. Its effects are deep and permanent.

Here are some examples:

Tim is 15 and used to panic when he sat to take an exam. He was performing way below his potential because of this problem. After a half hour session of TWR, he no longer suffers from this problem and his grades have risen dramatically.

Alice could not drive on bridges or high overpasses because she would panic, fearful of driving her car off the road and crashing. TWR helped her discover her root fears behind this phobia – that she might die and leave her children without a parent to care for them – just as she had experienced when her mother died when Alice was a child. In less than an hour’s session, Alice, too, was free of her fears.

George was seriously stressed, working long hours at an insurance company. His wife, Barbara, was worried about his health because George was having difficulty sleeping due to his worries and he was losing weight. She was also stressed herself, but was struggling to cover it up in order to not add to his burdens, but sometimes had been breaking into tears following the birth of her first child. Barbara learned TWR and had immediate relief from her stress and gradual relief from her depression over a period of two weeks. She taught George how to use TWR and now he is able to manage his work load without stressing.

TWR can help you relieve stress and distress very rapidly and permanently. TWR is the Wholistic Hybrid derived from two similar therapies:

– EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), that involves stimulating the right and left sides of the body while focusing on an issue you would like to feel better about.
and
– EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), that involves tapping or pressing a finger at a series of acupressure points on your face, chest and hand, while reciting an affirmation.
TWR can be used as self-healing because it works more rapidly than EMDR and does not evoke intense emotional releases. (EMDR is recommended strictly for use in the therapist’s office because it can evoke heavy memories of past traumas that can be stressful.)

TWR has been hugely successful for several reasons.

– It takes a fraction of the time that other therapies require.
– It allows for much greater flexibility in working on target problems within the session because it is so rapid.
– It is better accepted and the used outside the therapy more frequently because of its simplicity.
– It is so simple, I teach it over the phone.
– Users also report TWR works marvelously well and rapidly on pains of all sorts, including headaches, migraines, backaches, stomachaches such as irritable bowel syndrome, post-injury and post-surgery pains, arthritis, cancer and for psychological issues such as post-traumatic stress, unresolved emotional problems (e.g. prolonged bereavement, festering angers, emotional/relational hurts, anxieties, phobias, insecurities, lack of self-confidence), problems in relationships.
– It is tremendously empowering, because it is so simple and so rapidly effective in self-healing.

About 90 percent of TWR users obtain immediate benefits. When they practice this for their problems at home, there is almost universal success. My money-back guarantee – offered if TWR is used as recommended and there are no benefits – has been claimed only 3 times in over 9 years.

I am now training other therapists to use TWR.

Read a full version of this article

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Blessings

Dan
DB@paintap.com