PSYCHO SPIRITUAL SOMATIC THERAPY
What the heck is it, anyway?

It is a powerful form of therapy that incorporates many different modalities to affect change on all levels of a person's life" including physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. It is based on the idea that to affect change it must affect all of these levels or else you either get a partial healing, no healing, or it is so temporary as to frustrate both client and practitioner. My own move towards this form of therapy came about because I was so frustrated with the reversion rate to old behaviors or somatic conditions. I always felt as though I was engaged in an uphill battle to maintain changes that had taken place. I could affect change, but helping the client to maintain it was the hard part.

This led me to start looking into the reasons for this reversion rate. I had been trained in body work and I had been trained in hypnotherapy. Both were very valid and powerful therapies. I had practiced each for a long enough period of time to make some very interesting observations. I used my training in body reading to notice how my hypnotherapy clients moved and how their bodies were formed around their thought patterns and traumas. I saw holding patterns throughout their bodies from their heads to their feet. Using my training as a hypnotherapist to notice how the thought patterns were affecting the structure of my body work clients, I saw how it affected my work if work on the mental and emotional levels wasn't included. If ignored, the structure of their body kept reverting to its old pattern. When ignored, the physical and energetic problems of the hypnotherapy clients kept influencing the results in a negative fashion causing reversion to old behaviors or negative thought patterns. It was hard, if not impossible, to keep the new behaviors in place. Both forms of therapy need to add the spiritual aspect, as well, in order for a complete healing to take place, because most people need healing in that area, too.

I took a cue from my NLP classes. I saw a demonstration where the subject was asked to assume the posture of a depressed or sad person, complete with downcast eyes, drooping shoulders, and slumped over with the chest compressed. Within moments the subject started to feel depressed and sad. When asked to assume the posture of a confident and happy person complete with uplifted eyes, squared shoulders, and an open chest taking deep full breaths, the same person felt uplifted and confident. It only took moments for these changes to be felt and observed by the others in the class. The only thing done was a change of posture -- a physical move affecting the emotions. Also to be noted, when the subject was asked what they were thinking, it was dramatic too. When in the sad posture, the thoughts were of past and current sorrow. Very down and unhappy. In the uplifted posture, the thoughts were of success and new ideas were popping into the subject's conscious awareness. Change the body, change the mind, then the emotions follow.

A most overlooked area is the role of emotions. People give far too much power to their emotions. Emotions are looked at as the movers and shakers of a person's life. And that is partially right. Without knowing how one feels about something it's impossible to make a decision. Emotions are there as an indicator of how you feel about a situation in order for you to have information with which to act or not, but not to get so caught up in that you can't make that decision and take necessary action, When emotions become so important that everything else is overlooked we tend to make many erroneous decisions based on very incomplete information. It' s like watching the TV without any sound and surmising what is happening, then taking this information as absolute truth upon which a decision or conclusion is based. Later, when the soundtrack is added, they may find that it wasn't what they thought, and the conclusion or decision reached wasn't the best one. By balancing out the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies, one can make clearer decisions and take effective action, instead of being paralyzed by feelings conflicting with thoughts.

How do you clear the thought patterns? One way is through hypnotic suggestion. Speaking or writing affirmations, meditation, or conscious control through following a thought then eventually stopping it, can also affect change. But how long does it last? Sometimes it becomes permanent. Other times, all it takes is for someone to push the proverbial button and we revisit the same old thoughts as though someone has inserted a tape recording of the same old thoughts into our head. Or an accident can change the emotional state because of the physical state being altered, which also alters all the energetic systems (chakras, etheric, auric, meridians).

After 10 years of training, personal observation of clients and students and even myself, an idea started to form. A decision was made to approach therapy through the physical and energetic fields first and watch to see how the thoughts and emotions followed. They did. As clients were helped to release old holding patterns in the physical and energetic bodies, the thought patterns followed by becoming more clear and positive. The emotions took their proper place and no longer were overwhelming. This led to an overall feeling of well being because the person came to their natural center. Nothing was forced or imposed on the individual. Instead of working hard to change the mind by giving positive suggestions and hoping for the best, I already had my hands on the subconscious mind (literally). An awareness grew that the physical body is the subconscious mind.. As positive suggestions were being given through touch, a realization grew that the abreactions so talked about in the hypnotic community were really memory being released from storage in the cells of the physical body. In fact, the much talked about Emotional Release of my body work days, was actually a huge release of stored energy and memory of traumatic experience from the cells and energetic field of the client. The release from the cells allow the memory to come to conscious awareness, momentarily, then just become a normal memory that has no more energetic red flag attached to it. Release the body, release the mind. A more dramatic demonstration of the posture changing the feelings exercise.

This is all well and good you may say, but there has to be more to it than this, There is. Once you begin to change the physical structure, you are presented with a new hurdle. How to make the change permanent so the mind won't cause reversion through old thought patterns. Also, people, I learned, have many layers of experience. The older we are, the more layers there are to work through. The older we get, the further away from our original blueprint we get. Yes, we do have a blueprint of our pristine, beautiful body. Unfortunately, it becomes more obscured by each trauma that is experienced. Every time there is a trauma that affects us deeply, a new overlay is placed on the original. The body (read: subconscious mind) can no longer read the original through the layers. This poses a problem. How do we change that?

I had been taught a form of energy work called OrthoEnergetics, a very powerful modality that the more years I have used it, the more depth I found in it than I originally thought. It had much wider and deeper scope. It stabilizes the structure through the electromagnetic field. The more I worked with this modality, the more interesting things happened. Some clients had spontaneous past life and present life recall as each vertebrae in the spine was energetically worked on. And all this with a only a light touch. No manipulation of any kind. Just light touch. It also began to peel layers of memory away. Like getting rid of a dingy film over a window. Every time this modality was used, more of the dingy film left until there were no more layers left and they were back to their real self. The change is even visible to the people around them. A comment that is often made is that people around them (the client) notice the luminosity of their eyes. They notice the clarity of the eyes and remark that they are like the eyes of a child with a light emanating from within. They also make note that both eyes are now the same size and very open. They may also experience a reduction of strength in their lens prescription, or no more need for glasses or lenses at all. They are literally seeing the world through "new eyes".

One note here about the equal size of eyes. Most children are born with both eyes being the same size. That is normal. It is supposed to stay that way. Eyes only narrow down due to a narrowness of mind or the need be suspicious. When only one eye only gets smaller, you can tell what is going on with either the emotional life or the thought patterns. The more introverted a person gets, the narrower their eyes become. When a person becomes more extroverted and trusting of life, their eyes open right up.

Another tool used is Redecision Therapy. Many individuals experience several traumatic events over the course of a lifetime that shape their thoughts, emotions and eventually the body. In more severe cases, the will to live becomes broken. They find themselves getting worse and worse and no matter what they do, it doesn't get better. When I suspect this is the case, I test the individual to find out for sure. If it has happened, we take necessary steps to eradicate it. This therapeutic tool uses Applied Kinesiology, testing of 2 particular meridians (CSX and Heart), and the eye reflexes. The eyes are, indeed, the mirrors of the soul. If it is determined there has been a trauma of this sort, we write an affirmation according to a formula, retest to make sure it is correct, again through Applied Kinesiology, then it is taken home and used for a period of 21 days. At first, the individual may think there is no effect, then suddenly they start to feel the old stuff come up. This is why it is important to continue weekly or biweekly sessions during this time to facilitate proper and complete processing of the material that surges up and out of storage. People may experience a recurrence of physical symptoms, sometimes very dramatically, during the 21 day period. At the end of this time, there is a sense of relief and well-being that occurs almost precisely on the morning of the 22nd day.

Other modalities employed are Life Energy Therapy, Handwriting Analysis, Chakra Balancing, Aura Cleansing, deep tissue massage, Shiatzu, Ortho-Energetics, Crystal Singing Bowls, Color Therapy, AromaColorTherapy, a True Colors&E&P hybrid and hypnosis. Mixed and matched, all of these modalities can be matched to fit an individual's needs at any given time.

The deep tissue work is used to undo the fascia (the wrapper around muscle fiber bundles), release frozen memory, undo chronic holding patterns by hand, and bring balance to the structure of the physical body and deep relaxation to mind and body. Most people relax very deeply with a sigh of relief after the chronic tightness is released. Some individuals even have total visual recall of the memory being released, while others get the feeling of the memory that is being released. Some people don't get a memory recall at the time, but instead vent it out in a venting dream the next morning.

Handwriting analysis might be done during the first session to give guidance because it tells a lot about their basic personality and where physical, emotional, mental problems may lie; things the individual may not even be aware of, as yet, such as hidden talents or gifts. It even indicates if they are open to new ideas in the intellectual or spiritual realm. In subsequent sessions, it shows where changes have taken place.

Shiatzu, or acupressure, opens energetic channels called meridians that carry chi, or life energy. Many people have blocks in these very vital channels. Insufficiency leads to a feeling of low energy, low grade pain and, left untreated, disease. Shiatzu is very relaxing and helps to relieve stress.

Chakra balancing makes sure that the chakras (energy centers) are open and spinning in the correct direction. It is also necessary to make sure they are open from front to back. There are emotional and mental states associated with each of the chakras. From survival needs to spiritual enlightenment and everything in between. A blockage in a Chakra means a blockage in your life.

Hypnosis is another tool I use quite a bit. I use it to help reconnect people with their spiritual lives, balance their chakras, introduce them to their guides and for stress reduction. By stimulating the mind by stimulating their imagination and helping them to visualize or imagine better, and coupling it with other tools they are taught to use, they can regain control of their life. They discover how to create their life the way they want it to be this time. Yes, this time. It becomes as though the past happened to someone else in a movie, and it leaves them free to create everything all over again.

Life Energy Therapy was developed by Dr. John Diamond. It is based on his knowledge of Oriental Medicine. It utilizes meridian access-points, applied kinesiology, and special affirmations that are associated with each of the meridians to help rebuild weakened meridians and rebuild Life Energy. Each of the meridians is associated with an organ in the body and each organ is associated with both positive and negative emotional states. When the energy flow in a meridian becomes low or interrupted, the negative emotional state and the negative thought pattern associated with it, manifest.