Deep healing and transformation. A manual of transpersonal regression therapy

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Deep Healing and Transformation

A Manual of Transpersonal Regression Therapy

Hans ten Dam Tasso Uitgeverij

CONTENTS Foreword by Trisha Caetano Preface by the author

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CHAPTER 1. THE QUEEN OF THERAPIES 01.1 Characterization and history 01.2 Goal-oriented, problem-oriented and symptom-oriented 01.3 Ten unusual principles 01.4 Exploration, development and therapy 01.5 Reasons to go for regression 01.6 Suitable and unsuitable clients; limits to therapy 01.7 Past-life therapy 01.8 Personalities and subpersonalities; the holographic soul 01.9 Research to date

11 11 16 19 24 25 28 33 36 38

CHAPTER 2. THE BIG THREE: REGRESSION, PERSONIFICATION AND ENERGY W ORK 02.1 Basic interview technique: connect, follow, deepen and focus. 02.2 Clarifying the storyline 02.3 Clarifying unclear or confusing episodes 02.4 Retrieving forgotten and repressed experiences 02.5 Reframing without falsifying history 02.6 Dissociating and associating; bodily sensations; trance; breath-work 02.7 Energy work and aura exploration 02.8 Personification of problems, causes and solutions 02.9 Inner children

42 42 45 47 48 49 50 54 60 65

CHAPTER 3. DEALING WITH CLIENTS; EXPLORATIONS 03.1 Presentation; intake 03.2 Professionalism 03.3 Closing contracts, working purposefully 03.4 Winding up and follow-up 03.5 Verbal explorations 03.6 Regressions with children 03.7 Personification of third parties: remote sessions

73 73 77 83 89 92 98 99

CHAPTER 4. TYPES OF PROBLEMS IN PRACTICE 04.1 Trauma: fears and psychological wounds 04.2 Hangovers: aftereffects of depressing periods 04.3 Character postulates: fixed conclusions and decisions 04.4 Prenatal experiences and birth traumas 04.5 Charged and uncharged ideas and experiences 04.6 Blocked emotions 04.7 Neurotic roles 04.8 Superiority and inferiority: impaired sense of self 04.9 Presence and absence

102 102 106 109 113 115 118 121 124 130

CHAPTER 5. ANATOMY OF A SESSION 05.1 An example session with analysis and comments 05.2 Microstructure and macrostructure

134 135 145

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CHAPTER 6. INDUCTIONS 06.1 The somatic bridge 06.2 The emotional bridge 06.3 The imaginative bridge 06.4 The verbal bridge 06.5 Choosing and combining bridges 06.6 Oracle bridges 06.7 Relaxation, visualization and classic hypnosis

148 150 152 154 157 165 172 175

CHAPTER 7. CATHARTIC RELIVING 07.1 Processing psychological trauma 07.2 Resolving hangover-charges 07.3 Detecting and negating character postulates 07.4 Finding, healing and freeing hurt children 07.5 Exploring choices 07.6 Anchoring positive experiences 07.7 Experiences outside the body or without a body 07.8 Existential fears and experiences 07.9 Integration and closure

177 177 181 183 186 188 191 192 194 195

CHAPTER 8. BODY W ORK IN REGRESSION 08.1 Accidents, violence, fainting and surgery (ATR) 08.2 Working through pregnancy and birth 08.3 Exploring and integrating body parts 08.4 Collapsing anchors 08.5 Touch and massage 08.6 Back pressing or muscle pressing 08.7 Verbal body explorations 08.8 Robot visualization 08.9 Muscle testing

199 199 210 212 214 219 220 226 228 229

CHAPTER 9. THE TRICKS OF THE TRADE 09.1 Structuring sessions 09.2 Choosing methods and blending methods 09.3 Outwitting initial blocks 09.4 The optimal trance depth in reliving 09.5 Untangling emotional knots 09.6 Opening recursive knots 09.7 Avoidance by fear or shame 09.8 Psychologic blindness and deafness; shut-off commands 09.9 Farewell to confusion and madness

232 232 233 235 237 239 240 241 242 243

CHAPTER 10. YET BEING SOMEONE OTHER ... 10.1 Imprints, internalizations, and attached energy of others 10.2 Internalizations from or through the mother during pregnancy 10.3 Identifying and integrating dissociated energies and subpersonalities 10.4 Attachments of deceased acquaintances 10.5 Family legacies through generations 10.6 Attachments of deceased strangers 10.7 Obsessive energies

245 245 248 249 250 252 256 260

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10.8 Evil influences 10.9 Parasitic thought forms

264 269

CHAPTER 11. REPERCUSSIONS OF PAST LIVES 11.1 Restimulations 11.2 Finding, liberating and integrating traumatized lifetimes 11.3 Through the death experience 11.4 Finding, liberating and integrating hangover lifetimes 11.5 Working through traumatic, confusing and unconscious death experiences 11.6 Personification, liberation and integration of pseudo-obsessors 11.7 An integrative session

275 275 277 279 282 285 288 293

CHAPTER 12. EXPLORING PAST LIVES 12.1 The immediately preceding life 12.2 Dying well; the life retrospect 12.3 Life preparation, life prospect and life planning 12.4 Karmic lives; karmic decisions 12.5 Dharmic lifetimes 12.6 Powerful lifetimes 12.7 Short, weak and shy lifetimes 12.8 Extraterrestrial lifetimes 12.9 Non-human experiences

299 299 302 302 304 311 312 314 315 317

CHAPTER 13. THE LARGER PATTERN 13.1 Ways to reincarnate: unplanned, educational and free. 13.2 The karma/dharma balance 13.3 Ferreting out role patterns through lifetimes 13.4 Recurring themes through lives; polarities 13.5 Karmic polarities and karmic dilemmas; square sessions 13.6 Persistent bonds: karmic transactions, karmic relationships and karmic obsessions 13.7 The line through lifetimes: stitch sessions 13.8 The circle through lifetimes: circle sessions

322 322 323 327 337 339 342 345 351

CHAPTER 14. PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION; SOUL W ORK 14.1 Sessions, therapy, personal development, soul growth 14.2 Origins and prehuman experiences; kinds of souls 14.3 The alien body: problems of incarnation 14.4 Soul retrieval: identifying and integrating lost soul parts 14.5 Lost no more: homing sessions 14.6 Core issue sessions 14.7 Higher-self interventions 14.8 Working with the Shadow 14.9 To cap it all: deep integrations

363 363 372 379 381 383 384 389 391 393

Glossary Bibliography Index Referrals to therapists, training programs and associations

398 405 408 416

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Foreword to the 1997 edition by Trisha Caetano

In the fall of 1992, at a convention in the United States, it was my good fortune to sit next to Hans TenDam at the speaker's table. I was impressed by his innovative and grounded approach to pastlife regression therapy. W hen I started visiting the Netherlands regularly, our acquaintance devel­ oped into friendship and now our conversations explore the unlimited possibilities of the universe and beyond. With an impressive background, vast experience, dialectic reasoning and wry humor, Hans brings his creative, inquisitive and open mind into the text of Deep Healing: A Practical Outline o f Past-Life Therapy. Much more than an outline for therapy, this book provides a paradigm for the entire application of past-life work to modern therapy. It includes philosophy, theory, a priori evidence, solid tech­ niques, new language, case histories, examples, traditional and alternative methods, healing tech­ niques, soul work and H ans’ unique brand of humor. A multidimensional man, Hans TenDam owns a management consulting business, has a private therapy practice and continues to offer a two-year Past Life Regression Therapy training program. Hans and his former students trained most of the past-life therapists in Holland, and he trained approximately one-third of the past-life therapists in Brazil. His writing ranges across the spectrum of literature. He has published everything from man­ agement help to exploring intuitions and inspirations, from children's books to professional busi­ ness analysis, from the practical to the subjective to the mystical. His beautiful book, The Rose Window is a modern equivalent to the I Ching. Politics, Civilization and Humanity, with unique insight gives a long-term view on the social, political and economic dynamics of today's world. This eclec­ tic background gives comprehensive scope to Deep Healing. In the past, the concept of rebirth was primarily limited to religious and mystical experience, and today it remains a fundamental aspect of most Eastern religions. Hermes Trismegistus describes reincar­ nation in the Egyptian Hermetic Fragments: The Soul passes from form to form And the mansions o f her pilgrimage are manifold. Thou puttest o ff thy bodies as raiment; And as vesture dost thou fold them up. Thou art from old, O Soul o f man, Yeah, thou art from everlasting. For centuries there have been heated debates on whether reincarnation was fact or fantasy. It was most often agreed that it was a belief with no empirical evidence to support it. It remained intangible. My purpose here is not to discuss whether reincarnation is a reality, or if rebirth is a sound hy­ pothesis. Copious books have been written on this subject and are available to those who seek de­ bate or deeper exploration. Deep Healing doesn't use the reader's time discussing the theoretical possibilities. It simply gives background information and research findings; then it informs, giving the when, where, how and with whom to use the past-life techniques in the therapeutic setting, im ­ parting deep healing to the individual doing the work. I became interested in past life work as a therapeutic possibility and began doing past life re­ gression therapy in 1970. Then I had no particular belief in past lives as a fact and to this day I have not invested in this belief one way or the other. I have also found that past life regression therapy is not a panacea for all life's issues or problems. Still, many clients have returned to the past to reclaim the present life. I have worked with clients who tried all the conventional and alternative medical

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practices available to find relief from devastating migraine headaches. As a last resort, they tried the unconventional technique of past life regression and found permanent cessation of the migraines. Patients have resolved illogical relationships, freed themselves from addiction, depression, compul­ sion and obsession. They have returned to positive lifetimes learning the power of truth, the essence of life and the magnitude of the soul. Therefore, the question whether past lives are real is moot and irrelevant. The internal experi­ ence of awareness and the external expression of freedom become reality. In my experience, past life regression therapy remains one of the most powerful healing tools available in the therapeutic process today. A precedent to new and innovative therapy has been proposed. In the introduction of his book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the psychiatrist Carl Jung states, only what is interior has proved to have substance and a determining value. Later in the same book he writes, Prejudice cripples and injures the full phenomenon o f psychic life. . . . Rationalism and doctrinairism are the diseases o f our time; they pretend to have all the answers. But a great deal will yet be discovered which our present limited view would have ruled out as impossible. Our concepts o f space and time have only approximate validity; and there is therefore a wide field for minor and major deviations. In view o f all this, I lend an attentive ear to the strange myths o f the psyche, and take a careful look at the varied events that come my way, regardless o f whether they fit in with my theoretical postulates.

Recently, Thomas Moore wrote in his book Care o f the Soul, Psychology and spirituality need to be seen as one. In my view, this new paradigm suggests the end o f psychology as we have known it altogether because it is essentially modern, secular and ego-centered. A new idea, a new language and new traditions must be developed on which to base our theory and practice.

Hans TenDam develops new ideas, new language, a new paradigm and he lends an attentive ear to the strange myths o f the psyche. His book realizes this precedent with his innovative therapeutic techniques. More and more psychotherapists are using past life regression as a therapeutic tool. With curi­ ous synchronicity, several psychotherapists in the early 1980s found themselves working with cli­ ents who were presenting material that obviously was not related to a present-life. Was it archetypal material or did it come from the collective unconscious, symbolic representation or psychodrama, or was it possible that these experiences were actual past life memories? Realizing that this phenomena must also be occurring with other therapists, a support group was formed that has evolved into a large, international organization. The Association fo r Past-Life Research and Therapies, Inc., has members in countries all over the world, provides the Journal o f Re­ gression Therapy, a quarterly newsletter, national conferences and an international information and networking system. It is presently based in Riverside, California. On his own, having already researched and used past life concepts in a therapeutic context for several years, Hans TenDam published his first book on the subject in 1983, Exploring Reincarna­ tion. At the same time he was conducting his first past-life regression training program with Dutch students. Hans is a pioneer in establishing practical, specific tools for using past-life regression as a viable, therapeutic method in the healing process. The rationale and application of these tools are the foundation of Deep Healing. Throughout the book, Hans compares his work with that of his contemporaries. He gives them credit where due, at times amalgamating their methods with his own to present comprehensive and effective ways of doing the process. Into past life therapy, Hans blends subpersonalities, family sys­ tems, archetypes, roles we play, Transactional Analysis and Gestalt. He explains how to integrate alternative methods such as Touch for Health and simple acupressure. Vast in scope, the reader ex­ plores everything from being an effective therapist to working with the soul.

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Hans makes therapy simple by showing how to take what the client gives and working with it di­ rectly. He suggests minimal inductions where possible and stresses cathartic reliving followed by deep healing. His respect for the individuality of the client and his specific methods for staying with the client are impressive. He stays open-minded and objective. Many sentences begin with phrases such as, M y experience with past-life therapy indicates . . Personally; I never . . ., M ake careful note o f . . . , 1 don't recommend . . . A new science must have a new language. Hans creates and defines words that clarify and make more efficient the communication between him self and the reader. He addresses areas of working with the human psyche that are often neglected by other therapeutic models. For example, many conventional therapies address trauma, as does Hans, but in addition he provides us with the word hangover*. He proposes that repeated abuse in the form of rejection, lack of affection, coldness, repression, etc., results in feelings of hopelessness and heaviness, exaggerating the "false self" and diminishing the psyche. He shows us how to recognize and work with these debilitating feelings. Of great value is his client-centered approach to therapy, his way of showing unconditional cli­ ent regard. "If people don't tell the truth right away, they have reasons for that choice. We are not prosecutors, but therapists." Hans says that therapy is based not on sympathy but on trust and stay­ ing with the client. At one point he writes, The beginning o f each session is trust. The end o f each session is catharsis. The process o f each session is musical. This book invites us into the mind and methods of the man. H ans’ grounded, practical techniques are simple and clearly defined. His humor, veracity and wisdom thread through the book. In what­ ever language or however it is said, truth is universal and at the same time deeply internal. Deep Healing expresses internal truth. It encompasses all levels of past life work, but most of all, it is a practical "how to" guide for using the past life model.

Trisha Caetano studied at the University o f Oregon, Portland State University and the University o f Califor­ nia at Carl Rogers. She was six years president o f the American Association fo r Past-Life Research and Ther­ apy and led the training in the United States. She works as a teacher in the United States, the Netherlands, England, Australia, Japan, India and other countries.

PREFACE at this enlarged and completely revised edition

This book is the clearest possible statement I could make about a beautiful and weird profession. In therapy or coaching, there is nothing that helps as tangibly, as quickly and as deeply. It is not a panacea, it doesn't always work, and not with everybody. But usually it does, often surprisingly, sometimes incredibly so. People regain their resilience and their initiative. A free spirit, a free soul and a free body, however the weather, whatever the season is, whatever challenges life brings. The insights keep coming. - A client. I didn't know it was possible to feel like this. - A client. The impact on the work I do with clients has been incredible. - A therapist.

This profession is for resourceful therapists with an open mind, yet with their feet on the ground, if I might say so. It takes courage and wisdom. Especially practical wisdom, common sense. And it never gets dull. It is a profession to fall in love with: transpersonal regression therapy. That's just a name. Regression is reliving half or completely forgotten experiences. Transper­ sonal is everything that transcends the boundaries of the personal self: sensing someone else's ex­ periences, seeing yourself from the outside, accepting disembodied viewpoints, experiencing and meeting past lives. It is not at all about symbols and interpretations. It is all about concrete experi­ ences, whatever, however, whenever, wherever. I came across this field by accident, during weekends that were intended to help people remember past lives. It soon turned out that therapy was more important and interesting than explorations that were done simply out of curiosity. In 1983 appeared Exploring Reincarnation, my general study of reincarnation in Dutch. It appeared in English in 1990 and later in Portuguese and in Turkish. In the eighties I felt the need to further develop and publicize the methodology of regression and rein­ carnation therapy. Ever since that accidental start, I have developed my own methods, first in the family circle, later in weekends and with individual clients, still later in teaching. This book provides the meth­ ods that I have developed over more than 30 years. It was a runaway hobby, that has turned into a real profession. By now, I have presented these methods in many European countries, in the United States, Brazil, India and Japan; everywhere they prove to be as effective and efficient as in the Neth­ erlands. Obviously, I have not invented every method myself. Sometimes I found that certain practices already had been around for quite some time, sometimes I found topics in books. The verbal bridge is inspired by the work of Morris Netherton, and personification* by reading about the egostate therapy of John and Helen Watkins in Gerald Edelstien's work. How I work with regressions to ac­ cidents and surgery comes straight from Paul Hansen. General insights come from Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler and Transactional Analysis of Eric Berne and Thomas Harris. Fortunately, I knew little of clinical psychology and psychiatry when I started. So I didn't need to unlearn a lot. I tend to dismiss my academic studies in psychology and pedagogy as irrelevant, yet it’s also easy to underestimate background knowledge. Anyway, I have learned at the university to think statistically and methodologically. Each explanation is provisional. Anything can prove to be more complicated than we thought - or simpler. This investigative mode I certainly have carried into in my therapy approach. I call that the detective side of our work. At the back, in the bibliography, I give the recent editions of these sources, as well as several books of my colleagues.

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This book is practice-oriented. It is not equally detailed throughout. I cover not all varieties and ex­ ceptions and special circumstances. But I wanted the reader to see the wood for the trees. A book, even a manual, doesn't replace personal instruction, though a experienced, resourceful and intui­ tive therapist can go a long way with this text. In the present text I use course materials in many places. Many people have contributed to these materials: most of all Marion Boon; further Trisha Caetano, Len Fokkens, Anneke Klijn Velderman and Yvonne Piggen. I am thankful for their contributions. Many recordings were transcribed by Al­ ice Schoemaker. Also, thanks to Janine Booij, Ina Wulff, Bert Smit and Liesbeth Lagendijk who have critically read the original manuscript or portions of it. Eva Groeneweg has gone over the transla­ tion and polished the English. Each profession has its own language. Less common words and phrases I have marked with an as­ terisk (*) at their first occurrences. You may find the explanation in the glossary at the back of the book. Cited books and authors can be found in the bibliography, along with other books that I con­ sider to be worthwhile. Those interested can find at the back of the book information about professional associations and training courses in regression therapy, including my own. I hope that reading this book will contribute to the transformation of the readers and their clients. And, who knows, to the transformation of our profession - basically psychotherapy. Transpersonal regression therapy is psychotherapy - but uncommonly more effective and much faster. If you’ve never seen a laser, you don't know what light can do.

Hans TenDam, Netherlands, summer 2014

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CHAPTER 1. THE QUEEN OF THERAPIES

Regression therapy is based on two radiantly simple premises. Which even seem to work in practice. The first premise is that nothing falls out of the blue. Every problem started somewhere. If we find out where, when and how, we can do something about it. As our current situation is usually different from then, and we are older and more experienced now, reliving of the original situation creates both understanding and distance. Especially when we are helped by a wise therapist. The second premise is that time doesn't heal all wounds - especially no wounds we keep scratching. If we understand how and why we do that, we can start doing something about the wound. Like healing, for example. Sometimes, reliving the beginning of the problem is enough. Other times, we find a rather triv­ ial beginning. Then resolving it is more about breaking a pattern, a vicious circle, a survival mecha­ nism. Then it less about how it began and more about how we maintained the pattern. Still, it al­ ways helps to understand how a major problem can grow from a small beginning. Wherever an ass falls, there he will never fa ll again. We need to find out why we fell in the first place - and why we kept falling nonetheless, not being asses. Every healing starts with facing and understanding the facts. A few times that's enough. Al­ ways it's a good start.

1.1 Characterization and history Ours is a strange profession. It has evolved by chance. It began with experiments in hypnosis*. When going back in time, experimental subjects were suddenly reliving past, often forgotten emo­ tional experiences, leading to a deep sense of relief after the sessions. In therapeutic sessions, clients were unintentionally propelled, by an open instruction of the therapist, into situations of apparent past lives. Usually this involved reliving a traumatic death experience with an unexpected, power­ ful therapeutic effect. Many unprepared psychiatrists discovered this field thus by mistake. Am eri­ can examples are Robert Jarmon and Shakuntala Modi. And the most famous of all: Brian Weiss. Discoveries. W hen regression analysts and regression therapists gathered and exchanged suffi­ cient experiences, they started to realize that these were not about reliving isolated incidents. Pat­ terns emerged in experiences across different past lives, which were intertwined with the childhood of the present life. Past-Life Therapy or past-life regression therapy (PLR) is regression therapy which accepts that when we go back to the causes of problems, experiences from apparent past lives may surface - and it even accepts the apparent reality of experiences after death and before birth. To a layperson this may sound incredible or whacky, but it does happen and, what is more important, it usually works very therapeutically. For many problems regression therapy is more effective and efficient than many other forms of psychotherapy. And past-life therapy is more effective than regression therapy which rejects past-life, after-death and pre-birth experiences. Past-life therapy also reduces the risk of false memories. In a session, the client can relive, for instance, experiences of sexual violence that predate the present life. Therapists who don't believe in past lives, assume that these are repressed memories from the patient's childhood. O f course, such false childhood memories have a very negative impact on clients and their relationships with their families. We can indeed repress a lot, yet complete suppression of memories requires a deep level of self-hypnosis which few people are capable of.

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So it turned out to be possible to resurface experiences from earliest infancy, even in the cradle, or even birth itself. Also pre-birth experiences in the womb, and even outside the body, became acces­ sible in therapy. Clients who could check apparent facts with their parents, could almost always get confirmation. Parents often were baffled when their children came up with things that the latter could impossibly have known, like a hushed-up abortion attempt. These were not the only findings. There was more. For example, if a child felt rejected by the father immediately after birth, a simple instruction like Now you get an impression o f what your dad feels and thinks right now, was sufficient to get concrete in­ formation about the situation. This often contained the key to a liberating experience. Like many colleagues, I discovered that it was possible to let people look at their own body in a way that we used to think was reserved to psychics and clairvoyants. The less clients know about auras and chakras and the more open-minded they are, the more concrete they often see things and the more effective the therapy is. I discovered that people can walk around with thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations of other people. These energies are often from family members, but also from the deceased. Initially, as a sensible person one is hesitant to take this seriously, but when the results of a therapy that takes all this seriously are often much faster and far more spectacular than ordinary recollections, then it be­ comes difficult to continue to ignore this. It is reassuring to find that therapists who have started just as hesitantly with this on the other side of the globe, have similar experiences, discover similar patterns and get similar results. But there was more. People sometimes sense ’’holes" in or near their bodies. If you give them the instruction to seek and experience what has been there before, you get both immediate regressions and 'energetic' answers, i.e. they see the missing part as a substance or energy with color and shape. To see how those gaps came about, and then visualize that the holes are filled and the depleted resources refilled, com­ monly leads to powerful healing. That last part of our work appears to resemble shamanic practices, and therefore is also called soul retrieval, though very few regression therapists use shamanic rituals. Releasing energies of the de­ ceased resembles earlier exorcism, though fortunately our methods differ radically from the latter. The big difference with such classical, spiritual interventions is that we let clients discover and handle things by themselves. A common result of regression work is that we do make our clients less dependent on us and on others, that they don't find solutions outside themselves, but inside themselves. There is no psychic, no shaman, and no exorcist required. All that's needed is a supervisor who fundamentally assists rather than directs the process. Transpersonal. Altogether, we are dealing with a transpersonal* psychotherapy: •

in which people effortlessly relive things outside their normal memory, things they should not even be able to remember: experiences from before their first memory as a child, the birth process, the time of pregnancy and apparently past lives; • in which people put themselves effortlessly in the shoes of others with whom they have ever been in contact before; • in which people can experience events from the outside or from the point of view of others as easily as from their own point of view; • in which people can relive both physical and non-physical experiences;

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• •

in which people can loosen energies they have absorbed from others and even return these back to them, to great effect; and in which people retrieve and integrate energies, talents, strengths, and apparently even whole soul parts they have lost.

Hypnosis and trance. Trance spontaneously happens in daily life when we are absorbed in some­ thing. It may be a book, a movie or music, or it may involve sex , or football, daydreaming, reverie or recollections. Our focus narrows and our sense of time changes. Suddenly you feel your wife touches your arm and saying she has already called you three times to tell you she's made coffee. You were so engrossed in your book that you didn't hear her calling. Or you are completely in­ volved in your work and only during a break or after finshing you find that you have a gash in your hand. And only after you've noticed it, it starts to hurt. Classic hypnotherapy uses trance sometimes for exploration and understanding, but mostly to make therapeutic suggestions more effective. Classic instructions are twofold: they bring clients or subjects into a kind of sleep, and then they bind them to the hypnotist, possibly until the hypnotist can lead the subject wherever he likes. In the modern approach, the hypnotist doesn't give instruc­ tions to sleep, but to dream, to visualize. Hypnotherapists who accompany regressions use relaxa­ tion and visualization more than classical hypnosis, but it’s still a really artificial and unnecessary induction. When we raise the right issues in the right way, the client automatically becomes absorbed in his flashbacks. That evoked, but also natural process, is often so strong that even the modern hyp­ nosis instructions seem artificial and redundant compared to that. Trance is preferably not the product of a special intervention, but the byproduct of properly fo­ cused work. Catharsis. Regression is reliving. Reliving is therapeutic when the client experiences a catharsis*. It is often an emotional release that leads to emotional peace. Usually it is also a mental catharsis that leads to mental peace, to understanding, insight and overview. Acceptance is both emotional and mental peace. That peace is not passive, but vital, being aligned with the circumstances and with yourself. And - very important - catharsis is often physical. It changes the bodily feelings, some­ times dramatically. People feel more loose, more relaxed, more vital. Physical catharsis has often collateral benefits: ineffective medication becomes effective, physical discomforts lessen or disap­ pear, the immune system calms down, recovery speeds up. In regression therapy, as this book will discuss, the goal of every session is catharsis: emotional release, physical relief and increased understanding and insight. Effective psychotherapy with lasting results is generally insight-oriented therapy, not purely behaviorial conditioning. Even if new conditioning dissolves problematic habits, it helps us to expe­ rience and understand how the habit started. We should access the shadows, the knots and the sores of the past, the burden and the poison of the past. We can also gain access to locked-away joy and locked-away light and locked-away power of the past. Sometimes that is more the order of the day. Usually it’s like with a car: if you acciden­ tally kick the accelerator and the brake at the same time, you should not give full throttle, but first take your other foot off the brake. Removing burdens comes before regaining energies. But feeling deeply how something lost is being regained, is as cathartic as feeling deeply how a problem is solved. Catharsis is often accom panied by tears, but catharsis is not a crying game. Being weepy is not a liberating state of mind. Catharsis can also express itself by laughter or by a burst of re­ gained energy.

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The present. During regressions we go back to the past, but that is only a figure of speech. Regres­ sion is making contact with the parts of the past that are living inside us right now. We're not going back to previous experiences and past lives, but we open the remnants of the past that we are still carrying today. We are not time-travelers, but detectives in our inner video library. And surgeons in our psyche. In a session we may go back to the third year, because something of the three-year-old child is now inside us, locked in an em barrassing situation with all its feelings and thoughts. The prob­ lem atic past we carry with us as unresolved shadows and undigested residues. A therapeutic re­ gression assim ilates the past by processing* and integration*. That's exactly how clients free them selves from their problems. Som ething undigested was burdening our soul* or darkening our mind, usually with a precipitation in our body - and now we digest it and we assimilate it. It no longer haunts us. We carry everything we have ever experienced within us. Not as the collection of alH he details of all experiences we ever had, but merged into more general memories, attitudes and abilities. Mathematicians call this merger integration, accountants talk of consolidation. Not every detail of the past is always resonating inside us. Only a part is turned into who we are, how we think, feel, and act. And other parts are haunting us. Regression is not going back to the past, but it's the opening up and releasing the past that we carry today in our minds, in our souls, and in our bodies. Catharsis is a now-experience. It is the liberation of the past that is making us sick and weak now. Also the present can make us sick and weak: problems with relationships, financial problems and health problems can be part of our current situation. For those issues regression therapy doesn't help. At best it works indirectly, by helping us to become clearer, calmer and energized. At worst it may be escapism. Then we delve into our past lives, in our early childhood instead of facing our current situation squarely. A regression therapist must know how to do regressions, but also must have common sense. And be good in counseling. And know when to refer. Unprocessed painful experiences can be restimulated much later by usually weaker, but some­ how similar experiences. Also, our reactions to earlier difficult circumstances may continue in the present, even when they are no longer adequate. Such reactions may be generalized, become com­ pulsive, and distort our perception. A regression therapist doesn't replace a medical doctor, not a relationship therapist, not a financial consultant, not a counselor, not a priest, nor a good friend. A regression therapist just guides people to the roots of their problems to find the solution of their problems. Challenges. As the queen is the most powerful piece in chess that combines the movements of other pieces, so is this therapy, often labeled with the cumbersome name of past-life regression therapy, the queen of therapies. (And the client remains king.) She goes deeper and is certainly more versa­ tile than other therapies. Her many possibilities not only coexist next to each other, but are com­ bined during one session. The problem is no longer, as in the early days of regression therapy, how to get someone to re­ live a former experience. The problem today is rather how we compose our session, in line with the client and the issue of the client. Even when the issue and the entry point of a session are clear, a two-hour session may contain easily twenty moments when the therapist must choose which path to take and what method to use. W hat kinds of signposts do we have in this multitude? First, there is of course that of experience. Apart from the experience of the individual thera­ pist, there's also the accum ulated experience that therapists have shared with each other over the years. 14

Second, this experience must remain well rooted in the results. This goes without saying, but is sometimes difficult to keep sight of. That a client blissfully leaves our practice, doesn't guarantee that the problem is definitely resolved. The reverse also occurs: people leaving the practice uncer­ tain and doubtful, hardly able to imagine that they got rid of their problem. Only after a while, they feel confident about it. (Especially the elderly, the highly educated and men tend to underestimate the results of the first sessions.) Also, people can make a big step in solving some part of the prob­ lem, yet fail to celebrate and nurture the solution, or even may undermine their healing through still pervasive, persistent feelings of guilt, or fears, inhibitions or insecurities. Be as it may, eventu­ ally we should rely on the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of our clients. The third signpost in the multitude of possibilities is analysis: insight in what we are doing, when different methods work and why they work. Experience, results and analysis are the pillars of our profession. Of any profession, of course. Is this the therapy? No. First, its versatility puts high demands on the therapist. Not all psycho­ therapists and psychiatrists appear to be qualified, able or willing to become well-versed in this field. The number of amateurs seems only to increase. Some therapists drift from one approach to the next, and combine regression with all sorts of 'm ethods' from alternative and spiritual circles. Many people do this, and they may produce interesting sessions, but often they seem to forget the essence of psychotherapy: the self-healing of the client. W hen it is no longer the client who is doing the work, when the client no longer grasps what is happening, you’ve missed the bus as a therapist. Many training courses in this field teach a plethora of methods to prospective therapists without understanding the basics of self-healing. Second, not all clients are suitable to do deep processing. Many don't respond to this method and many respond too well: they are not grounded enough, have insufficient boundaries, too much ego or not enough ego. They may lose track of themselves. We'11 deal with this subject further on in this chapter. This field is still evolving and the effectiveness and efficiency of the therapy is still increasing. But every speedy development has drawbacks. One downside is losing oneself in the wealth of possi­ bilities and the premature accumulation of interventions, while the therapist (and the client) no longer sees the wood for the trees. When the therapy was still in its hesitant early days, the biggest weaknesses were bungling visualizations without head or tail, and tourism, especially into past lives. Now, however, while the m ethods are becom ing ever more effective, the problem has shifted from ineffective explorations to false detours and confusion. Concerning the latter, the two mortal sins in this therapy are integrating non-self energies into the self and exorcising true parts of the self. Any effective method wrongly applied or misused may lead clients from the frying pan into the fire. Among professionals a battle raged for quite some time between the proponents of ’regression ther­ apy’ and those of 'past-life therapy' (PLT). It is obvious that the label on a bottle must describe the content. Yet labels are less important than content. The term regression therapy refers only to the method, and only to half of it, as our reflections on personification and energy work* will show. The term PLT or reincarnation therapy indicates how far the therapy can reach, but also this doesn't truly cover the content. Many effective sessions are not about past lives. Think of the victims of war, violence, abuse or severe mistreatment in their present life. Our therapy has much to offer to those people, more than any other therapy actually, and rarely do past lives come into it. Our field has evolved from PLT to a more general, encompassing regression therapy and further into a new kind of psychotherapy: cathartic, integrating, transforming, transpersonal.

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1.2 Goal-oriented, problem-oriented and symptom-oriented Two things have influenced my approach: my work as a management consultant and my study of general semantics by Alfred Korzybski. General semantics is a methodical approach to language, thoughts and emotions as abstractions of immediate experience, and the experience as an abstrac­ tion of reality. General semantics teaches us to think calmly and lucidly and become aware of levels of abstraction. This led to more concreteness in my therapy, and a linguistic sensitivity which I later, sometimes better and sometimes worse, found in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), which is partially inspired on Korzybski's work. General semantics has made me concrete and specific, my consulting work has made me pragmatic and goal-directed. There is little worse than endless therapy. Unless that’s what you want. Purposeful. What has been the influence of my consulting work? If a customer enters your prac­ tice, it costs money. You have to perform. That has nothing to do with being tense. You can achieve a good result by working calmly in two hours, or work furiously for six hours to no avail. But each session ought to have results. Not all the work will succeed all the time - we are human - yet we usually succeed if we keep our eye on the ball. Our clients have not become perfect when they walk out of the door, but given the circum­ stances they are singing and whistling. Somewhat like in a hospital: people arrive horizontally and leave vertically - that's the idea anyway. Some clients are distracted and disoriented for a few days after a successful session. One feels confused, another lies awake and muses about the past, a third gets a bad cold. In my experience, such repercussions* disappear within a fortnight after a good session. If not, the session missed something, which yet has to be properly worked through in therapy. Sometimes it seems as if the subconscious* is bubbling to bring up more stuff. In itself this is a good sign. Almost invariably, however, peace and satisfaction with what has already been accom­ plished will dominate. A therapy consists of one or more sessions until the shopping-list with which a client entered your practice, has been fully dealt with. A female client for example tells: I still have a major conflict with my father. I get sick if I just think o f him, let alone when he is on the phone. 1 also have anxiety attacks that I don't understand where they come from. And 1 have trouble witn my knee which the doctor can't explain. Oh yeah, and I feel incredibly lonely at times. The therapy is ready when those four items are resolved. She is able to think of her father with­ out becoming queasy; she has no longer pain in her knee; her fears are gone; she feels connected to others. No more and no less. She now understands where these problems came from, and she got rid of them.

Shopping list. The four items from this example, assuming the client confirms she want to work on all four, are our shopping list. If we have a shopping list, we have to agree with the client which item we are going to work on first and what the precise purpose of that work is. That is the contract of the session. There are only two types of contracts: exploration contracts and therapy contracts. An exploration is to find something out, therapy is to solve something, to change something. Ther­ apy usually involves exploration. We want to understand where our uncertainty the last year comes from. And we want to get rid of it. W hen the question is answered, the problem is solved, the contract is met and the session com­ pleted. We can go to the next item on the shopping list. When the shopping list has been finished, the therapy has been completed. In my case, in almost 40 percent of the cases after one session. My average therapy takes two, three sessions, over five sessions is a rare thing. Only if the first session according to both the client and to me at least has some results, I’ll continue the therapy. The longer the therapy lasts, the less successful it is likely to be. When we need eight, nine, ten sessions, I rarely

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reach a complete solution. Afterwards I usually feel that we'd better ended it after the first session. A waste of time. What is good, comes quickly. Usually, at least. During the therapy, especially if it goes well, there may be new things coming up to work on. Anyway, first complete the agreed shopping list. Or define a new contract. Then a new therapy may begin. I often suggest to take a three months pause. In that time, people can find a new balance. If a handicap disappears, we may stand clumsily on our feet, like a newborn lamb. Session results must get time to settle down. If you have always run with a piece of lead bound to your leg and that weight is removed, you walk clumsily and unbalanced for some time. Some processes take time, sometimes years. It is common that people call in again one and a half years after a successful ther­ apy. Then a new round begins. Development continues. How fast a successful session makes itself felt in daily life is very different. It may be immedi­ ate, it may take two weeks. Some processes take more than a year. Resistances can delay healing and even breakthroughs can be explained away, by clients or by the people around them. Goal-oriented. Goal-directedness in the session comes down to sticking to the starting point. We fol­ low the client. We always tie in with where someone is and what someone says. We also keep the original point in mind. What was it all about? What was the work to be done? What was the con­ tract? Where we started, we need to finish. When these two criteria seem to be at odds, tie in with what the client just said and connect that explicitly with the starting point. How is this feeling o f lone­ liness (just mentioned) related to your hydrophobia (contract)? Usually clients know. If they don't, you instruct to release the recent feeling. To that loneliness we can come back another time if you want. Now go back to ... (the last story element or the last sensation or impression still directly associated with hydrophobia). If they don't want to go back to the starting point, interrupt the session. Maybe the client wants to change the contract. Accept that - only once. If the client changes that second con­ tract, stop the session. My experience is that continuing the session will lead you nowhere. If clients shift the starting point, they often do so to wrestle the initiative back from the thera­ pist. They may have little confidence in the therapist, too little self-confidence, or they are simply control freaks. Not so simple to do regression work with them. W hatever the cause, there is some­ thing wrong. As mental wrestling may be interesting, as a therapy worthless. Not to stick to the starting point is perhaps th^ most common problem of uncertain novice therapists. Be serious and attentive in making the contract and stick to it. That is the first test of your pro­ fessional integrity. D on't let clients tinker with the contract - and don't do it yourself. Only if you really find it necessary - and only once in a session. Problem-oriented. We work not only goal-oriented, but also problem-oriented. We start with the problem as jointly established in the intake. Of course our clients decide what they want to work on, but it should also be clear to us. The client suffers from anxiety - he says. W hen we probe a bit, it only plays at the start of vacations or other trips. Involuntarily, images of collided cars and crashed aircraft occur. Talking about that, the word 'travel anxiety' hits a nerve. Yes, that's it! But what is the problem exactly? Tensions, cold sweat, frictions with travel companions, nervousness and arriving exhausted at the destination. And the general feeling of being out of control. It makes the client feel small, immature, stupid. We can already in the interview get the impression that some childhood trauma* may be behind this anxiety. Every problem can be viewed at different levels. We may conclude that it comes down to a lack of confidence. We may also find that the main fear is a fear of flying. How general or how specific do we close the deal? We do it at that level that appeals the most to the client, which gives the re­ sponse, Yes, that's it exactly. In any case, we want to get an idea of the severity and extent of the problem mentioned. So we ask when and how often a client suffers from it. And how bad that is.

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Problem-oriented also means that we deal with factual problems. If the client indicates that he has a fear of failure, the question remains: so what is the problem? After all, few people have hope of fail­ ure. 1 am often uncertain. So why is that a problem? Have you ever met people who are always sure of themselves? Would you like to be like them? Problem-oriented further means: in terms of a concrete problem of the client. A problem with a partner who is spoiled by his mother doesn't lead to therapy. The problem is seen as a problem of the partner and its cause as a problem of his mother. Before we know it, we are taling about Adam and Eve and the original sin. The problem should be formulated in terms of properties and behav­ ior of the clients themselves. We can only help the client to change, not absent people, not society, not human nature, not the creation. Problem-oriented finally means that we don't drift off into vague, more or less symbolic stories, but stay with concrete, specific experiences. Concrete experiences take precedence over each lesson or conclusion we may draw or have drawn from these experiences. Concrete experiences, or reality, are things we see, hear, touch, smell or taste. Reality means our feelings, our body smelling and feeling the cool grass. Reality means a location in time and place. If the client sees a door that will not open, the therapist rather asks what the door looks like, than asks (or worse: tells) what a closed door means. Experiences and stories are concrete, lessons and symbols are abstract and have to wait until reality is explored. A client feels abandoned and senses this in her breastbone, behind her eyes and in her belly. She sees a hut in winter. She is up there alone, in the dark. Everyone is gone. She walks to the door, and feels the frost outside. Does she hear a wolf howling far away? She feels confused, scared. Her thoughts grow cold. Maybe this experience has a deeper, more comprehensive meaning. It may be a metaphor for the soul that discovers that she is alone in a cold world. But meanings and interpretations come later. First we engage the specific, concrete experience. Abstractions and metaphors have to wait. Concrete experience is the only anchor for abstract thoughts. Symbols and metaphors are fa­ vored by cowards, sloths and free-floaters - and swindlers. Ten seconds in that cold hut mean more than two hours of metaphysical consideration about coldness in human life. Stay in that cabin, stay in that freezing cold with the client. Until the story continues. Freezing to death is also a continua­ tion. Stories never stop. They blend into the present. And the present doesn't stop either. Symptom-oriented. We must guard against generalizing a concrete problem of the client to inner in­ security, fear of intimacy, lack of spiritual awareness or whatever. We work symptomatic. Any prob­ lem can be considered as a symptom of an underlying problem. Someone got malaria because he was stung by a mosquito. He is stung by that mosquito because he slept without a mosquito net. And he slept without a mosquito net because he was stubborn. And he was stubborn because he was the youngest at home and had to compete with his older sisters. For a doctor treating malaria, those sibling relations are irrelevant. Only when the next therapy contract is to explore being stub­ born and maybe becoming less stubborn, that issue may come up. If the problem of the client is travel anxiety, manifesting itself in nervousness and chills, we ful­ filled the contract when nervousness and chills no longer occur - and if nothing worse came in its place, of course. If the client has become much more confident, but nervousness and chills are still there, the contract simply hasn't been fulfilled. The contract is sacred until fulfilled - unless it is re­ defined by mutual consent. If we discover that there is something bigger at stake, something wider, deeper or more funda­ mental, fine. But we only go there if that proves necessary to fulfill the contract. We may regress to the very beginning of this life, or to the to the very beginning of the soul. But only if that's necessary to solve the specific problem. We go as deeply as is necessary, but not deeper. It often happens that clients discover a broader or deeper problem during the therapy. Leave it to them if they go into that. Only if you have concrete evidence in the session of an underlying 18

problem, and you suspect the contract problem may resurface soon because the underlying prob­ lem is not resolved, you can hint at that. The contract is sacred. The symptom is also sacred, and it's the therapist's best friend as I'll explain.

1.3

Ten unusual principles

1. The problem is the solution; the solution is the problem. We tend to perceive a problem as something that must disappear. If we succeed in this, we tend to call whatever made this happen - or the way this happened - the solution. This tendency of ours is understandable - yet not justified. It is possible to look at problems and solutions in a different way. This other viewpoint opens new avenues. Take burnout. Typically a problem for which people seek a solution. Yet we can say just as well that burnout is less of a problem than a solution to an underlying, more serious problem: just carry­ ing on and on, driving ourselves crazy and perhaps others too. Forcing ourselves to push on: be­ cause we do bite off more than we could chew, or we keep doing things we actually loath, or at least are reluctant to do, because we never have dwelt on how we actually feel about what we do, or be­ cause we continuously let the urgent squelch the important. If all other signals fail, our body says, 'enough is en ou g h ,' and goes on strike. That is not a problem; that is a solution. Not a pleasant one, but still. Suppose an assassin, troubled by his conscience and no longer able to pull the trigger and get the job done, seeks help from a therapist. Hearing the voice of his conscience then is the problem. Here the problem is pretty much the solution. Is fear a problem? Not if we fearlessly and rashly would do stupid things otherwise. A popular manager who succeeds in everything he undertakes, becomes increasingly dissatis­ fied with his job, for no reason at all. We discover that as a five-year-old boy he had dreamed of becoming a world-traveler, an explorer. The little globetrotter inside him, neglected and com­ pletely forgotten by his adult self, is fed up - however successful the adult has become. This 'inner child' yearns to hike, to travel! The growing disgust throws a spanner in the works. A primitive solution, at least pointing the way to the solution.

Even a depression often is an invitation by something within us, our soul (for the more simpleminded among us: the subconscious), to finally pay proper attention to something urgent, even de­ bilitating if it not addressed, and stop to live on so blockheadedly - I would nearly say: subcon­ sciously. To perceive a problem as a solution is being respectful towards the problem; it is surpris­ ing, enlightening and sometimes even liberating. If we stop perceiving the problem as the enemy, then it will stop its hostility to our attempts to help the client. Often, solutions are problems. Committing suicide, joining a sect: solutions worse than the problems they solve. Even officially endorsed solutions create problems. The new medicine has awkward side effects. Psychiatric diagnoses keep many clients ill and weak. Johnny, who often is rowdy in class, nowadays carries the burden of having ADHD. Mood swings, that only robots and psychopaths lack, may be labeled a 'bipolar disorder.' In more objective terms: a problem is part of the current situation, and thus part of the current balance. We must start to really understand and accept the situation as it is right now, and take it from there.

2. The problem is the gate - and that gate is ajar. Actually, the gate is usually wide open. It's our eyes that are closed. According to the first principle, the solution resides in the problem itself. The right focus on the problem equips us for the next step.

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Fully experiencing the problem is already the first step, a major step indeed. The current problem is the gateway to the underlying problem. We just need to enter. This book shall show and explain many times how to do that. If there is sufficient trust between client and therapist, identifying the problem is often the only thing required to find the solution. The problem is the solution in an immature, twisted and annoying, form. The problem is the solution not yet transformed. The problem is the Aufforderung zum Tanz, the invitation to dance. The problem calls us: hey, here I am\ It often calls in vain. It is almost funny to see how people who are really tense, are asked at the beginning of a session to relax, through verbal suggestions, with music, with lovely colors or nice smells. As soon as they are finally relaxed, they are asked to find the source of the tension! It is like leading someone search­ ing for water from moist soil to a higher, dry plateau, to seek water there. Many therapists believe that relaxation is necessary to bring clients in a trance. The tension that is already there is the trance, dummy! As some rightly have observed: effective hypnotherapy is dehypnotizing. Relaxation takes us out of the trance of our problems instead of deepening them. It's probably the therapists who seek to relax themselves. 3. The heavier the problem, the lighter the solution. Beginning therapists don't believe this. They start with lighter problems. When students start with their own therapy, they don't trust themselves or their therapist to work on heavier issues. This lack of confidence, next to sheer inexperience, is the main reason why these sessions often proceed hap­ hazardly and only half-satisfactorily. Your PC may sometimes slow down. If you type a couple of words quickly, the text appears character by character, with quite some delay, on the screen. Saving a document sometimes takes a frustratingly long time. Why is that? Because too many applications have been opened, using up the com puter's main memory. You don't see those applications on your screen at this moment, yet they are there 'lurking' in the background of your desktop. If we delay a difficult and unpleasant talk we need to have with someone else, it consumes a large part of the hidden 'desktop' in the back of our head. It consumes attention, even if we don't realize it. Sometimes we feel tired and annoyed, and suddenly realize we still have this disagreeable task to do. Often, this just increases our resistance. Subconsciously, we feel queasy, as this unpalatable task keeps lying undigested on our mind. Meanwhile, the mental and sometimes emotional energy reserved to deal with this issue, remains on standby. All the unfinished and unresolved things that we carry with us cost us mental energy and drain our resilience and presence* of mind. As if we are pregnant with a number of babies who refuse to be bom. No, we don't wish to give birth to those! If we go with clients to their biggest, heaviest, gravest problem, the client's subconscious re­ laxes. Finally! This is what's all about. Most energy is released by tackling the heaviest problem. Perhaps the client may not yet realize it, but his inner self is already mobilized. Imagine being all geared up for a war of liberation, and to wait in vain for months or years, not able to do anything. You would go crazy, w ouldn't you? This is how your subconscious self may feel right now. We drive ourselves crazy by ignoring our main issues. The principle to start with the heaviest problem or challenge has one simple exception. A client may first need to get used to the therapist, or to regression work, or to both. Then the successful resolution of a secondary problem can lay the ground for tackling the primary problem next time. There are some other exceptions to the rule, but these are better discussed elsewhere. And they don't undermine the principle. Somewhat less absolute and ambitious, we may formulate this prin­ ciple as: Always begin with the heaviest problem accessible. 4. Diagnosis is the result o f therapy. Treatment plans are for the ignorant - and scaredy-cats. We work step by step. Working concretely and practically clashes with the widespread bad habit of the anamnesis. Anamne­ ses in psychotherapy, especially when extensive, are unhealthy. A patient's file acts like an impressive

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desk with a large desk chair - to create distance. How did you grow up? When were you toilet-trained? Any history o f madness in the fam ily? Psychotherapy has evolved from psychiatry, and psychiatry has grown from medicine. If you know that someone suffers from malaria, you know what to do. The anamnesis helps with the di­ agnosis, and the diagnosis determines the therapy. Yet psychiatric diagnoses don't lead to therapy. I read many psychiatric reports when I was working with mentally handicapped children. First, these reports concluded in medical jargon that the children were mentally handicapped. Well, we knew that already. Some had a 'hysteroid personality structure.' In other words, they were easily excited and rowdy. It is wonderful when you know this, especially in highfaluting words. What follows from this? A preference for a certain medicine, maybe. Nothing more. There are even diagnoses telling us that there is no real diagnosis. Minimal Brain Damage (MBD), for example, a damage that is so small that we can't find it. Thus once Borderline amounted to the same thing - this person is psychotic*, but not quite. Or intermittently only. Suppose that a judge wants to know if a suspect is mentally accountable, and the psychiatrist reports: 'marginally.' And what to think of children who have to go through life with the label 'atypical disorder'? Some­ one once told me that her daughter was, according to the psychiatrist, 'near borderline.' Hard to beat, that one. A diagnosis is useful when it indicates the therapy. In our profession, we don't care about our clients' personality* or history, what hobbies they have or what 'abnormalities.' The information we need will come out during the regression anyway. Or not - and that doesn't necessarily hinder the therapy. Another disadvantage of an extensive in take- especially when clients already have consulted many professionals - is psychobabble. They tend to tell a ritualized and professionalized soap op­ era. These clients have talked about themselves and their problems so often, that their stories have become habitual, jaded and dull - stuck in the rut. They say that they suffer from a fear of failure. Well, who doesn't? Few people have hope of failure. Or they can't connect with their 'true' feelings. Oh, my! People may mean they can't be un­ restrained and spontaneous. So what? What is the actual problem, and what do they want to do with it? Avoid glib talk and torrents of words, and go for practical and concrete consequences. Spe­ cific body sensations are also great to stop endless storytelling. What do you feel in your body right now? We can work from there. Someone feels heavy and gloomy. Does she feel gloomy and therefore heavy? Or the other way round? W hat came first? Maybe she doesn't know herself exactly. If she wants to get rid of this heaviness and gloom and if we start with these sensations, then we will find out during the session where they come from and which was first. By the end of the session or sessions we will know what was really the matter. In psychotherapy, diagnosis is the fruit of a successful therapy, not the other way round. Treatment plans are even worse. These are routes for journeys in a territory we don't know yet to destinations we don't know yet. Once I helped someone to resolve a problem within half an hour. His insurance company wanted to know what my diagnosis and treatment plan had been. Why make a diagnosis, why make a treatment plan if you could spend the time in solving the problem? Time is limited; energy is limited. Take the road that opens itself. Don't take roads based on your own diagnosis, and certainly not based on your own curiosity. D on't wander into all and sun­ dry that seems interesting. Marshes are intriguing environments, but they lack road-signs. Worse: you may get stuck in them. A regression is the story of the client, not ours. We work goal-oriented, and after each step the next step shows itself. Sometimes, we may choose between two roads that open. Then we use our experience, our knowledge, our horse sense, a very preliminary assessment of our client. Or we simply ask the client which road to take. That's all.

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5. Therapy is like a tango that begins as implacable exploration and ends as friendly tuition. The metapfior of the tango indicates that we come very close to the client and at the same time care­ fully keep our distance. We don't mind to lead the dance, but we strictly limit that to the agreed contract. This pacing always takes place against a more fundamental, non-directive backdrop. It always remains the process of the client. Even when we lead, we follow. Finding out things is important, especially at the beginning of the session. After all, we must find out where we must be, what has happened and what has been done, how it has been registered and why and how the problem still remains. Confusion must be clarified, misperceptions must be corrected, gaps must be filled, and riddles must be solved. Once everything is clear and the story has been fully relived and the client feels liberated and satisfied, tired yet happy, then we may point out to the client possible lessons and possible applications of what just has been discovered, and what this can mean for daily life. Each successful regression teaches us how we can avoid things or handle them better. We learn to live better, sometimes we learn to die better, and sometimes we learn to be born better. 6. Blocks don't exist; there are just multiplicity and recursiveness. If the therapy fails, the therapist knows why: client resistance. Also the client knows why: therapist incompetence. Imagine what may happen when an unwilling client meets an incompetent thera­ pist. One shudders at the thought. Obviously, there are many clients who are difficult and uncooperative, and there are quite a few incompetent therapists. Yet as therapists we must refrain from assuming client resistance. That would disqualify clients and turn them into some sort of enemies we must overcome. It is more use­ ful to see clients as people like anybody else: with many sides. Some sides honestly seek healing, some other sides want to maintain the problem at all cost, and other sides again are hardly inter­ ested in the problem. This is what I mean with the multiplicity of the client. Before supporting those sides that seek a solution, we must understand all sides. Sometimes it is sufficient to call up two opposing sides: the side that is the most motivated to solve the problem, and the side that most strongly resists. To accept both these sides, and make these confront each other, could already pro­ vide half the solution. Personification and energy work are more or less dissociative methods, and thus ideal to come to grips with these situations. I will return to this issue in explaining the last principle, and in the next chapter I will elucidate these ideas and their practical consequences. Recursiveness* means here that a problem hinders its own solution. Fear of failure as a problem is recursive. Someone with a fear of failure will also be afraid that the session shall fail. People who feel guilty and thus feel that they ought not to feel free and happy, will thus believe that the therapy ought not to succeed as well. The same is true for desperation, for severe depression, for mental exhaustion. People can be so exhausted that they no longer find the energy to overcome their ex­ haustion. Victimhood is recursive; narcissism as well. I am so wonderful that I even find it wonderful that I have an irresolvable problem, so why would I try to resolve it? It's a sign of me being special. The strongest recursiveness is no problem for therapists, because those clients just don't seek therapy. Recursiveness is a key concept in therapy. To detect this during the intake is one of the most impor­ tant tools of the therapist. In the next chapter we spend a whole section on this issue. 7. Children before God W hy? Because God can take care of Himself. Children can't. They shouldn't. If we meet a hurt inner child*, in this life or in a past life, then the healing of the child takes precedence, even if is not di­ rectly related to the contract. You need to explain this to your client. Clients may ignore that. They can, but then I interrupt the session, perhaps even end the therapy. If we have done inner child work and the client appears to have neglected that inner child, then I usually stop the therapy. With such clients I don't wish to work. They have to find another therapist.

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8. What we have lost and what has entered us, is on the whole, wobbling, equal With personification and with energy work we often find that energies from other people have en­ tered us, such as rules, convictions and emotions from authoritarian parents. We find that loosening and removing such energies is not sufficient, and certainly not durable - unless we find the com­ plement: the part of ourselves we have lost. And the other way round: if it turns out that clients have lost a part of themselves, then eventually influences of others enter and fill the empty space. If we lose a great part of our zest for life, this will eventually be filled by something from outside. Nothing 'alien' can invade us without losing something of ourselves. If a girl is being raped, then usually the rapist penetrates her not just physically, but also psychically and mentally. She then will lose something of herself. We shall give many disturbing examples. Quite often, both processes occur simultaneously, but some time may elapse between the proc­ esses just as well. That is why I speak of wobbling. 9. Incompetent and uninformed therapists seek help and support from outside the client. They don't know the richness o f the soul, the almost unlimited resources inside. Many spiritual therapists call on the higher self*, or worse: guides and angels and 'the Light.' They may give Reiki, they offer unsolicited information and observations, like their own psychic impres­ sions about the causes of the client's problem, they hang crystals on the client, or they draw a natal chart. In over 90% of the cases all that is superfluous, and in at least three-quarters of the cases it hinders clients because it keeps them from finding their inner resources. In a certain sense, the same is true regarding the prescription of pharmaceutical drugs for peo­ ple who are not psychotic and have lighter psychiatric syndromes. Even methods like biofeedback are distracting, because those don't stimulate clients to deepen their understanding about what the problem is all about. Such remedies may help to lay a temporary bottom under the problem, yet the doctors and psychiatrists prescribing them should limit their use to getting clients encouraged to begin real therapy. Generally, healing* is done too often and too soon, particularly by people who have plenty of sentiment and are short on insight. Then healing is like whitewashing a wall while the wall is still dirty and greasy, full of old paint-flakes. At first sight the result is impressive, yet a few days later flakes and cracks will reappear. Empathy and intuition can be very effective, but often betray a personal need by the practitioner. Frequently we offer the client that what we yearn for ourselves. Numerous therapists 'heal' clients too much and prematurely because they are themselves not sufficiently healed. This is why many tense beginners and insecure amateurs have so much relaxation in their inductions. Some hypnotherapists give posthypnotic suggestions that cover the problems under warm blankets rather than resolve them. Other therapists want to be priests rather than doctors. Spiritual healing, like Reiki, is a valuable tool in our bag, yet we should use it sparsely. Psychotherapy is a craft in which the client has to do the work. If you really wish to help people, then become a doctor, work for the Red Cross, or join the Sal­ vation Army. Then it's your actions that make a difference. Many alternative therapists use Reiki or consult spiritual guides and get good results. So much the worse. These therapists solve problems by mobilizing external resources instead of internal ones. Using external resources makes people less self-reliant instead of more. Self-reliant people - our best clients - should use external resources only as complements - when necessary. The essential question remains: how can we better be safe than sorry? By assuming self-reliance or not? To evolve backward, or forward? In good sessions, clients heal themselves, especially with traumas. Reliving and understanding the trauma, the natural turning point arrives: the catharsis. We may need to support that, but

23

lightly, modestly. It happens while we watch - sometimes in wonder, often with awe, always with respect. If you are doing the healing of the client, you usually have taken a wrong turn somewhere. 10. Psychotherapists just need three methods: regression, personification en energy work. That is true, provided that they master a general, underlying methodology: counseling - above all the art and craft of non-directive counseling. We do that only in a very limited way: we help clients to enlighten themselves. We help them to figure out what really is bothering them, what they really want, what talents and capacities they really possess. During the intake and the closure counseling stands in the foreground. The intake and the clo­ sure are counseling. And in conducting the regression and particularly doing a personification, counseling is part of the game all the time. Some moments are pure counseling. This book pays little attention to counseling. Not because this is unimportant - it is even essential. But because there are already many good books and courses on the subject. Apart from counseling, we can be fully effective with just these three methods. We continuously choose amongst, and shuttle between, these methods. I don't know any good, cathartic session that lacks one of these elements. I don't know of a demo in class that didn't entail a combination of these methods. Mostly, the main track is regression, energy work strengthens the catharsis, and personifi­ cation plays in the integration towards the end. Yet any sequence, even the other way round, is pos­ sible, as we shall see. 1.4 Exploration, therapy and personal development Therapy is healing, exploration is finding out. A therapeutic contract is to solve something, to bring about a change in an actual problem. An exploratory contract is to satisfy curiosity. A complete session may be exploratory. Wanting to know the cause of something is exploration. Wanting to know your main problem is exploration. Wanting to know your life plan is exploration. Wanting to know if you have a life plan means exploration. The result of an exploration is information, insight. Exploration may also precede therapy: if people don't know what they want to work on, be­ cause of vagueness, confusion, uncertainty or a plethora of problems. Finally, exploratory episodes during therapeutic sessions are necessary to better enter the story, to get a hesitating story moving again, or to get a meandering story back on track. Nearly all so-called LBL sessions (Life Between Lives) are exploratory. Wanting to know if you’ve ever lived before in Africa, means exploration. Wanting to know if your back problems have a karmic* origin, means exploration. Exploration is weaker than therapy. It is more shallow. Therefore often more uncertain. You dis­ cover you once lived in Africa. But is it true? You can increase the chance on authenticity asking for body feelings and emotions. The main confirmation is when the regression also answers unasked questions. The session explains why you can stand heat so well. Or you discover that your daughter also was there and you understand suddenly why she digs black people. Therapy gives stronger confirmation, especially if a problem completely disappears. Collateral benefits confirm the validity even more. Not only a phobia disappears, but you also can suddenly stand sunlight much better. Do problems disappear by fantasy stories? Not really. We only can ex­ pect temporary relief. If you’ve just imagined your problems and their solution, there is obviously a reason that you can't get to the real experience. If you relive a tournament in detail where you score an unexpected victory over a tough opponent, and everything is just the projection of a conflict with your domi­ neering father in your present life, then it means that you still can't face the conflict with your father squarely. The prognosis is not really good. The session was at most a run-up. A run-up can help, but also help from bad to worse. It may be an excuse to avoid the real thing. You think you have dealt with the problem and feel complacent.

24

You can also do sessions in the context of a broader personal development. You want to become more conscious and more judicious. That usually starts with therapy: tracing the inner conditions hindering that: the sources of unconsciousness and the sources of wrong judgment. After that we may open the sources of consciousness and judgment further, for example by finding and reliving our most conscious lifetimes and our most judicious lifetimes. Also in such a more general development process, we can find a deeper theme underneath, for example an aversion against the primitiveness and disorder and narrowness of earthly life in gen­ eral. Usually we not only explore past lives, but also the process of living, the life retrospect and the next life prospect. Personal development then transforms into soul development. Such processes contain both therapeutic sessions and exploratory sessions. Transpersonal regression therapy has special exploratory techniques that will be discussed in this book: verbal explorations, body explorations, and so-called aura explorations. Almost every ther­ apy includes exploration. Almost every personal development includes therapy. And soul devel­ opment includes personal development. What would be the meaning of soul development if it didn't have consequences for daily life? Some people want to keep the two worlds separate. They usually talk about spiritual development or en­ lightenment as a process that doesn't have immediate consequences for everyday life. This book is not written for such people and for therapists who want to guide such people. If you just want spiritual development, limit yourself to explorations. Even better it is to end your life. No body, no disturbances, nobody bothering you. Everything hassle-free. No more daily life struggles: simply delicious free spiritual awareness. For those tired of life and for the people who think themselves too good for this world. Don't bother the rest of us with all that.

1.5 Appropriate reasons to go for regression Why would anyone visit a regression therapist? If you have a headache, you go to a doctor. If you feel stiff, you go to a massage therapist or a physiotherapist. If you are afraid of an aggressive neighbor, you go to the police. But if the doctor can't find anything or drugs remain ineffective, if the cramps continue, if you remain afraid although the police has warned the neighbor, or even if the neighbor has moved, then it may be sensible to visit a regression therapist. Some people want to overcome negative aspects of their life situation by focussing on the posi­ tive aspects. Others really want to go and deal with the problems. This difference of approach is a fundamental one. William James, in his superb The Varieties o f Religious Experience, speaks of the once-born and twice-born. The former want to find the light by ignoring and so leaving the darkness, the latter enter the darkness to come out on the other side to find the light. The first go for enlight­ enment, the second for transformation*. In terms of Jung: the twice-born confront the Shadow. And the troubling thing about the Shadow is that we have it deep inside. Now there are noble and well-meaning people with a pure heart who suffer from the Shadow of others. If even they have little dark spots on their souls, these must be removed immediately by dedication to the sublime, eventually the divine. Regression therapy is fo r shadow workers. We help people to face, to confront and work through their problems. Light workers (if I may contrast these two kinds of people in a simplified way) usu­ ally don't seek out regression therapists. And even if theydo, it is for exploration, or to reaffirm the Light they've found already. They prefer LBL-sessions. While those certainly may help and stimu­ late people, they easily bypass the shadow side of things - first of all the shadow side of the clients themselves..

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What have I found in my practice as appropriate reasons to seek regression therapy? I have met at least ten. To avoid the jargon of clinical psychology, I have used more imaginative terms. Then I give to colleagues in the more usual terminology the reasons that have been found in several studies. •

•

•

•

•

• • •

• •

Old psychic pain: crippling anxiety, screaming despair, waves of grief. It's like looking at a small waterfall and suddenly blood appears in the falling water. We follow the stream back with regression till we find the original bleeder. These are old traumas that we usually de­ tect and treat with regular regression. Being stuck. Seeing no longer a way out. Impotent rage building up. Like chopping up crates with an ax without feeling any better. Besides ordinary regression, back-pressing and ener­ getic interventions (to be discussed later) are in order, until freedom is regained and the dammed energy is flowing again. Loneliness and desolation. It's like shivering while you are walking on an empty plain in the night. You feel lost. Here it's about regression to the beginning of these feelings and before these. Sometimes it's about homing*. Inhibition. Never being and feeling easy among people. Being an observer, an outsider. Feel­ ing awkward, shy, withdrawn. Like being huddled in the dark, looking through a crack to a sunny marketplace where people are confidently and merrily going their way. Personifica­ tions, especially inner children are suitable here. Often real or imagined guilt plays an im­ portant role. Submission and subjection. Excessive adaptation to others. Lack of assertiveness. Feeling powerless. As if people are constantly bumping into you, and you're being slapped for be­ ing impertinent, however apologetic, defensive and hesitant you do. This can worsen into losing yourself completely. Being lost or not knowing which way to take. What to do with the rest of your life? Like be­ ing with a map and a compass in the dark, but without a flashlight. The body obstructs. Physical ailments without a clear cause and without effective treatment. Like sitting slumped on a donkey that refuses to go on. Barren insight. You already know what's the matter and what needs to be done. But for some reason, nothing happens. As if you walk around with your natal chart and still peruse the lucky stars section in the magazines. Relationship problems. Being entangled with another. Solution attempts have so far proved fruitless. Two goats stand on a barren, stony piece of land their horns interlocked. Self-discovery. Finding undiscovered sides and unsuspected talents of oneself. Wanting to surprise yourself. Curiosity. Like seeing yourself as a big jawbreaker. For this we use free explorations.

What are the reasons for general regression therapy? A survey in 1988 among members of APRT, then the professional association in the United States, gave the following as main reasons:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Affective disturbances: worries, moods, depressions. Relationship problems. Addictions: drugs, alcohol, etcetera. Phobias. Problems at work. Obesity. Physical ailments Violence and sexual abuse. Sexual problems. Obsessions and compulsions. Power and control.

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12. Eating disorders: anorexia and bulimia. A survey among members of the Dutch Association of Reincarnation Therapists, found in 1991: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Fears, phobias, insecurities. Relationship problems. Physical complaints. Sexual problems and incest. Depression

An analysis of my own client list in 1993 resulted in: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Anxiety, nervousness, mental instability. Physical complaints. Depression, isolation, suicidal thoughts. Relationship problems. Inhibitions and blocks. Need for self-knowledge. Sexual problems and sexual identity.

The thesis of Rabia Clark (1995), a survey among a large number of therapists, gave as most cited reasons for past-life therapy:

1. Relationship problems. 2. Phobias. 3. Physical symptoms, including headache. 4. Depression. 5. Sexual problems 6. Obesity and eating disorders 7. Identity problems (multiple personality) 8. Addictions Reasons of a more exploratory nature were: 9. Meaning of life, finding the life purpose. 10. Wanting to retrieve memories of past lives. 11. Recurring dreams they want to understand. Regression therapy scored best with problems related to the meaning of life or the life purpose, rela­ tionship problems, phobias and memories of past lives. The therapy was least effective with obesity, addiction and depression. If I summarize these lists, then to me the big four reasons for regression therapy appear to be: 1. Fears and phobias 2. Relationship problems 3. Depressions 4. Physical complaints The next three are: 5. Sexual problems 6. Addictions 7. Obesity and eating disorders The idea that regression therapy is relatively less successful with obesity and addictions, especially physical addictions, I can confirm from my experience. I disagree that we are less successful with

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depression, although depression comes in many shapes, and has many different causes. Further­ more, I point out that 'physical' must be taken in the broadest sense. With modern, vague syn­ dromes such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, low back pains, whiplash, etc. we have surprisingly good results. Even with migraine we score well (25% disappeared, 50% diminished in severity and frequency, and 25% with no result). Also in other cases that are usually regarded as neurological, such as phantom pains, dyslexia and Tourette's syndrome, we do pretty well. One reason that seems to increase substantially, is people wanting to know what their life purpose or mission is. This is reinforced by the emergence of LBL sessions, Life Between Lives regressions, to the incorporeal state before birth. Experiences with these methods are mixed, ranging from in­ creased vitality to increased spiritual fuzziness.

1.6 Suitable and unsuitable clients; limits to regression therapy. The first condition for successful regression therapy is that you can connect well with the client. Even if you're good at it, you will not succeed with everyone. Why not? To start with, we can't do psychotherapy with clients who are severely mentally handicapped, or are under heavy medication or drugs, or are so psychotic that they no longer follow their own thoughts and experiences, or are autistic. I mean really autistic, not people who are so stickerlabeled. For regression therapy, we need people who can explore their thoughts and feelings and know the difference between reality and fantasy. Few psychotics qualify. There is also another limitation to the therapy, something that is almost taboo: it requires a rea­ sonable degree of intelligence of both client and therapist. Of course, I know examples of limited therapists who are naturals and get impressive results. I also know examples of clients who are very limited with whom wonderful things have happened notwithstanding. But in a general, statistical sense, this therapy puts high demands on the intelligence of both client and therapist. So much happens in a session, there are so many possible links, sometimes things play in different realities along and across each other, that quickness of mind is required. Intuition is important, but intellect even more so, and above all the interplay between the two. Almost all colleagues realize that regression therapy is not for everyone. Roger Woolger, an English colleague, found that working with past lives proves to be too intense for many people. He believes that they have no need to open raw areas in their psyche, but first need a personal thera­ peutic relationship to build their trust in life and their self-confidence. Others find it difficult to visualize and work with their inner selves. According to Morris Netherton, an American colleague, it is possible to treat schizophrenics, but only within an institution. He begins with imaginative experiences and gradually turns to true regressions. It works well, but remains limited. With autistic children he had no success. According to him, alcoholics need to be around three days free of alcohol to be treatable. People who use barbi­ turates or other tranquilizers, should do a detox before they begin a regression therapy. Garret Oppenheim gives as contra-indicators: •

Severe and acute psychotic symptoms.

•

Clients who want to quit smoking, want to lose weight or want to improve their perform­ ance on the golf course. Such goals can be achieved usually without digging deep.

•

Clients with strong religious beliefs, who reject reincarnation.

•

Macho clients (including women) who dismiss as nonsense everything that smacks of mys­ ticism or paranormal phenomena.

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Stay practical. With people having a heart-condition I w ouldn't do an emotional regression, or I would at least mute the emotions. With someone who has just had a hernia surgery, you do no back-pressings. D on't be afraid of intense physical reactions during sessions. The worst I’ve ever experienced is someone who relived choking to death in a swamp. He rattled and squirmed, turned purple. Difficult to watch, but it receded spontaneously, without the need to call an ambulance. He is still alive and kicking. (I just googled him to be sure.) To what extent can we as regression therapists work with psychiatric patients? What are, by the way, 'psychiatric' cases? They are people who have problems that can't be dealt with by ordinary psychotherapists, at least according to doctors and psychiatrists. In the worst case, they are people who are permanently non-communicative or ingrained with their psychiatric history. W hen they talk about themselves, they talk about their symptoms and their treatments, all of which have be­ come part of their identity. The labeling of DSM-V, I consider both theoretically and practically irrelevant, because those labels are not linked to any particular explanation and therapy. This is in almost complete contrast to the classification of medical conditions. In the medical profession, there are clear links between diagnoses and treatments. As a tool for communication between therapists and between therapists and clients, labeling works, but only when the labels at least are applied unambiguously. This is not at all the case in practice. From the letter of a client: The regular healthcare professionals did only produce diagnoses such as multiple personality disorder, borderline, schizophrenia, anxiety attack, psychosis, narcissism, and physical sensations. 1 was a hopeless case, terminally ill. With a pitiful look and a box o f sickening pills I was sent packing - with the offer o f a course for my family on how they could best deal with me.

Diagnoses vary per country, even per university and are subject to fashion. As in any field where professionals stand empty-handed, progress is being suggested by regularly modifying the labels. Hyperactive becomes ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), MPS (multiple personality syndrome) becomes DIS (dissociative identity disorder). And nothing changes. All these well-known labels are of little use. Even the chairs of the task forces who drafted DSMIII and DSM-IV do regret in hindsight the fake diagnostics contained in those handbooks. Allen Frances, who was responsible for DSM-IV, says that DSM-V labels even more rather normal condi­ tions as disorders. Even if something is a serious disorder, it doesn't help to label it. Psychiatric di­ agnoses are no diagnoses. Still, clients themselves come up with such labels, so we do need to know their purported meaning. Psychiatric diagnostics distinguishes anxiety disorders, mood disorders, psychotic disorders and personality disorders. Anxiety, mood, and psychotic disorders are episodes. Personality disorders are continuous. Schizophrenia is somewhere in-between. Schizophrenic people repeatedly suffer from psychotic episodes, and after each episode they return to normal, although often at a lower level than before. Regression therapists often come across anxiety disorders, many of which are eminently treatable. These include panic attacks, agoraphobia and claustrophobia, other phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Mood disorders: depression is treatable, manicdepressive people are usually not treatable. Psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and delusions are generally unsuitable for regression. During a psychosis*, regression therapy is hardly possible and should be avoided in gen­ eral. The boundaries betw een inner and outer reality are gone. Psychotics can 't distinguish be­ tw een the here and now and the there and then, betw een the internal and the external reality.

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Everything cobbles together. Also, they often have lost the sense of contact with their own body. Yet after a psychotic episode, when the boundaries betw een self and others, betw een in­ side and outside are restored, regression therapy becom es possible - except for schizophrenics who have also w eak ego-boundaries. Of course, psychiatrists and psychologists usually dismiss psychic impressions as hallucina­ tions. But if the people who have such impressions, understand that others don't see what they see themselves, we can often work well with them - sometimes even remarkably easily so. Often we are the first people to take their experiences seriously and concretely respond to these, and often we resolve problems that have run on for years, such as 'hearing v o ices,' in just a single short session. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DIS), formerly known as multiple personality disorder, occurs among traumatized people who have experienced so much pain in their lives (by physical, emo­ tional or sexual violence and abuse, sometimes for a long time), that they have developed subper­ sonalities*. It is a healthy response to very unhealthy conditions. With motivated clients having DIS, we can work to great effect, with unmotivated ones not at all. Medication often suppresses energetic charges* and so generally complicates regression. In gen­ eral, suppressed emotions complicate regression. Depressed people usually can't feel their anger, and psychotic people usually can't reach their fear. Work energetically and on insight until the medication may have been phased out or worn off. Only then let clients access and relive their em o­ tions. It also gives people confidence in themselves that they can handle it themselves, without re­ sort to medication, if you work in this way. However, let people only reduce their medication under the supervision of their doctor! With many psychiatric patients we can do regression therapy. Don't be blinded by the label, but know what it may indicate. More important are ego-boundaries, willingness to take responsibility, and some common sense. Are they fairly well present in their body? Can they focus? Are they mo­ tivated? People diagnosed with personality disorders may be poorly suited for regression therapy. They take those problems into the therapy setting itself. These problems are recursive. The paranoid, schizoid and schizotypal disorders exhibit strange and erratic behavior. People with antisocial, borderline, hysterical and narcissistic disorders behave theatrically and emotionally. The avoiding, dependent, compulsive and passive-aggressive disorders are accompanied by anxious behavior. •

•

•

•

•

The paranoid personality is always suspicious and tense. They harbor the notion that people are after them to get them. They interpret the behavior of others as deliberately humiliating, threatening and unfair. The partner may be a victim of pathological jealousy. The schizoid personality seems indifferent, shows little emotion. Every intimate relationship, including family, is avoided. They say they have no need for it. Sometimes they can achieve a lot in their isolation. The schizotypal personality has strange ideas and exhibits strange behavior in the eyes of or­ dinary people. They think magically and are open to non-physical realities. They often as­ sume erroneously that conversations or situations are about them. This diagnosis is often made for people who are paranormally sensitive. If they are otherwise normal people, we can work very well with them, especially if we get them in an early stage. The antisocial personality lacks empathy and transgresses socially accepted standards of be­ havior. They often came into contact with law and order. They have little or no sense of guilt or remorse about the impact of their actions on others. They may be violent. They have many conflicts with colleagues or bosses, and don't stay long at the same job. The borderline personality is unstable in moods, relationships and self-image. They are often affectively neglected, or physically, emotionally or sexually abused. They now want ever

30

•

•

•

•

•

•

more attention, but at the same time can't stand attention. They react strongly to (alleged) abandonment, are highly emotional, often have suicidal tendencies and sometimes psy­ chotic symptoms. They are sensitive to the weaknesses in others. Relationships are all or nothing. They idealize people, and after a small incident can despise and drop them com­ pletely. They tend to be unrestrained, get easily addicted to gambling, alcohol or drugs, or drift into prostitution. They have weak ego-boundaries and refuse to take responsibility. They are rarely suitable for regression therapy. Drug addicts usually can get inner images, but these are both chaotic and tough to work through. It seems as if the records of experi­ ences got confused and entangled, clutter together. The theatrical personality continuously and excessively demands attention and reassurance, affirmation and appreciation. They are extremely emotional and mainly want to be seen. Lack of attention makes them restless. They quickly form friendships, but are dominant, demanding and authoritarian, and yet also dependent. They have little individuality and self-knowledge. The narcissistic personality exhibits hubris in thought and action. They have little empathy, are hypersensitive to judgment and quickly offended. They need attention and admiration all the time. They respond to criticism with anger or shame or mask these feelings by indif­ ference. They are obsessed with externals like money, power and appearance. The elusive personality is timid and shy. They are upset at the slightest rebuke and extremely afraid of negative judgment. They are afraid to say something wrong, and seek uncritical acceptance. They try to avoid problems. They undertake nothing and exaggerate problems and risks. They suffer from their inability or difficulty to establish relationships. The dependent personality is submissive, let others take the initiative or make a decision. They deem themselves to be inferior and stupid. They submit themselves to others, even if they believe the other is wrong, for fear of being rejected. They do unpleasant things hoping oth­ ers will like them. They avoid being alone and having to work independently. The compulsive personality is perfectionist. They are sensitive to authority. They are preoccu­ pied with rules and procedures, and lack overview. They avoid decisions, for fear of making errors. Their relationships are distant and businesslike. The passive-aggressive personality resists social demands and the need or expectation to per­ form. They express this reluctance indirectly. This results in discord at work and in social problems. They delay things, are stubborn and forgetful. They often fail to do their share of the work and so irritate others. They are displeased, irritated, dependent, and ultimately lack self-confidence and self-esteem.

Personality disorders are structural problems, the problems are persistent and they are recursive. Addressing the issue raises the issue itself. What specific problematic qualities are contained in the above lists? • • • • • • • • • • •

excited, incoherent, chaotic, paralyzed, numb, no body sensation, pathetic victimhood, suspicious, insecure, dependent, erratic, lack of empathy, lack of feeling, delusions,

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• • • • •

sensitive, easily hurt, perfectionist, forgetful, obstinate, reluctant, seeking attention and affirmation.

All these qualities disrupt the therapeutic process of joint exploration and processing. If these quali­ ties are rather permanent traits or strongly present during therapy, we can do no regression therapy. We can only work with these traits if clients acknowledge and talk about them, as something that they only partially have. If they merely look them as external factors, as a virus infection or an in­ herent handicap, we get nowhere. They want to get rid of it, as long as they don't have to change. It is actually not their problem, but the problem of limited doctors and therapists or of their inconsid­ erate fellows. If on the other hand they can't or don't want to deal with them, we also get nowhere. Many of these patterns are reactions to traumatic childhood experiences. If we can get at these ex­ periences, we may get some results. If we can't get at these, the therapy will be very frustrating for both parties. Regression is only effective if people recognize their problem and want to solve it, and just need assistance. This is more important than whether someone is often severely depressed or has ever been psychotic. If you haven't got ground under your feet in the second session: Stop! Watch out if clients are overly confident in you or praising you excessively, to bind you to them. Avoid those clients, unless you're doing anti-therapy. You are my last resort, my last chance, I've heard so many good things about you. Or: The first time I heard your name, 1 already knew: That one is going to heal me. Or: A clairvoyant saw your name in my aura. These are not expressions of trust, but of manipulation. Even people with delusions or hallucinations that are considered truly psychotic (such as seeing or feeling or hearing apparitions), we can help quite well, provided they are talking about these experiences sensibly, so we can work with them and their apparitions. Sometimes we only find madness in others, even psychiatrists, who approach them with apprehension, derision and incom­ prehension. As long as a healthy part reviews one's own ill-health or strangeness, and that part is willing and able to communicate with us, then we can work with people, even if they just came out of a closed institution. W hen people approach their own mind in an unhealthy way, even if they are completely normal and well-adapted in all other respects, regression can do nothing for them. Who are impossible clients? Those who have made their problem and thus the treatment a part of their life. Then, as a therapist, you become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. They need you, but they don't want to change. They can't change, remember. They are pitiful, cursed, handicapped, right? We therapists must change: becoming ever more understanding, ever more skilled, ever more persevering, ever more loving. Until the dam bursts, for the umpteenth time. Again, the simplest indicator of suitability for treatment is how clients talk about themselves. Often they say they are hopeless, but maybe interesting to you. They talk about their problems as if they somehow exist apart from themselves, or as if they are their own problems. Or they complain extensively about their experiences with previous therapists. They carefully assess you, to ascertain whether you can be trusted. Taking responsibility is the first prerequisite for any insight-oriented therapy. This is impossible with people who don't want to be patients and with people who want to stay patients. In both cases, people play games and are not doing therapy. Don't take clients who know better, or clients who are dependent and want to stay victims. Clients may be neurotic*, they may tremble, hear voices, have multiple personalities; they may be depressed, suicidal or homicidal. As long as they want to work, as long as they take responsibil­ ity, we can work with them. And, with some luck, achieve great results.

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1 .7 P a st-life th e ra p y

If experiences arise during regressions that apparently are not from the present life, and if those experiences are therapeutically explored, we speak of reincarnation therapy or past-life therapy. Regression is going back, going back to the forgotten origins of problems. Reincarnation therapy is regression therapy which accepts that origins may lie in past lives, and allow those experiences or even seek these experiences. How often do clients get into past lives? About a third of my clients comes after an open sug­ gestion in a previous life, about a third remain in this life, and about one-third come in childhood experiences that appear to be related to past lives. Brian Weiss found that about 40% of his clients had to go to their past lives to solve their problems. Shakuntala Modi found that among her more challenging clients, who struggled with more serious problems, 70% had symptoms that came from past lives. Some clients revel in past lives to avoid dealing with painful feelings and experiences of the present life. Working in the present life is emotionally more taxing; working in past lives is mentally and physically more taxing. The latter is often due to reliving traumatic death experiences. Naturally, the first question is whether apparent past life experiences are real. The second question, if the first question is answered affirmatively, is whether they are people's own experiences. I en­ dorse what Thorwald Dethlefsen answers on the first question: 1 hold the interpretation of reincarnation as being psychodrama for untenable. Psychodrama is created by the projection of problems> whether they are conscious or unconscious. Yet subjects tell historical details with amazing precision and accuracy. If one takes a person through several lifetimes, the individual incar­ nations are so different that they can hardly be considered as a projection from the present life. The descrip­ tions of past lives are not conglomerates of problems, conflicts and cliche representations, but contain so much personal, time-specific testimonies and skills, that the explanation of psychodrama is not sufficient. Subjects tell us how long it took to travel a certain distance with a stagecoach, how people baked bread in the seventeenth century, and how people stemmed the bleeding of wounds with herbs in 1687. The second question is somewhat harder to answer. The most important indication is when just one session to a past life entirely solves persistent problems that one has struggled with for decades, and makes these problems intelligible as well. This is even stronger the case when it solves seem­ ingly unrelated problems and make them fall into place. It is common after a session that the in­ sights keep coming, leading sometimes to an epiphany. A man has inexplicable fits of rage at his partner. At the end of the session these fits are not only gone, never to come back, but he's also freed from his internet addiction (looking at pom) and his feelings of being capable of nothing and being worth nothing (after many years of successful entrepreneurship) are also explained and dissolved. One past life turns out to explain all these three seemingly unrelated problems, and the catharsis healed those. More pennies dropped: why he and his girlfriend have lately spoken so intense, but also so anxiously about having children. A police officer was never taken seriously. If he said something in a meeting, people kept on talking, no one listened to him. We do a session. The man doesn't believe in past lives and did not intend to go to one. He was bullied at school when he was 10 years old and that was it. Next session he sees himself being hanged in the Wild West. He's accused of stealing a horse, but he has bought that horse from the thief. The real thief thinks: Oh God, he may tell from whom he bought the horse, and then I'll hang. He points to the boy as the thief and the boy is hanged in bewilder­ ment. Some months after the session, he tells that he has got promoted and that all is well, but that his wife was surprised when he came home still wearing his tie. He never could stand wearing ties before the session. He now wears them without feeling constricted or suffocated. Collateral

benefit.

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In practice, it is very difficult to maintain that we deal with fantasy stories. Most regression therapists - sometimes quite reluctantly - come to believe in reincarnation. Others just take it as a useful hypothesis and don't think about the possible reality. Generally, those therapists are less effective, because the most frequently looming problem from a past life is, after all, a traumatic death experience. That requires a careful reliving of both physical details and the first experi­ ences after death. We can't guide these properly, if we don't take both experiences seriously. In the last example above, the death experience was essential in the session.

Past-life regression therapy (PLR) is amazingly efficient. It is usually the quickest therapy, though the sessions are longer and more intensive than in usual psychotherapy. Denys Kelsey, who could compare past-life therapy with his previous work as a psychiatrist and the work of his colleagues: In a maximum o f twelve hours o f regression therapy, I can accomplish what will take a psychoanalyst three years. And Kelsey worked really slow. PLR is not just the liberating experience of reliving an apparent past life, often a death experience, it is also examining why and how this undigested experience did wake up in the present life and what its consequences have been. If you once had to watch powerlessly how your house burned down while hearing the screams of your children, you’ll rarely come back in a new life with such nightmares from the start. Rather the nightmares start after you see a fire, in real life or on televi­ sion. Seeing this fire, or worse, smelling it and hearing the crackling of burning wood, we call res­ timulation I distinguish six views, six ’sch ools,' of past-life therapy. 1.

PLR as an oracle. Reliving is actually unnecessary. You just need to know what happened. If you yourself can't remember it, another can see it for you. The new knowledge is incorpo­ rated religiously: a sermon, praying, forgiving others and yourself, etc.

2.

PLR as enlightenment. Reliving you must do yourself, but may be kept superficial. Clients only need to understand what happened. If it, God forbid, becomes exciting or painful, then we take them out of it or let them relive it from a safe distance. As I heard an American say: Reliving trauma is only retraumatizing.

3.

PLR as talking out. Reliving may be intense, but if it proceeds smoothly, it already is healing in itself.

4.

PLR as extinction. Intense reliving is the beginning, repeated reliving is needed until the original painful experience can be relived smoothly.

5. PLR as catharsis. Intense reliving is necessary, but such a discharge also requires new under­ standing. The original experience is understood in a new light: it no longer burdens us, we are no longer encumbered with it. 6. PLR as necessary. To really solve real problems, we always must go through past life experi­ ences. Problems are, after all, always symptoms of broader problems or themes, themes that always run through several lifetimes. Gender issues, for example, we usually can only solve by going back to different male and female past lives. The first view, PLR as an oracle, is actually not therapy, but a psychic consult where people get to hear w hat they have done or experienced in their previous lives that causes them to feel un­ happy now. This can then be supplem ented by psychic treatm ent like Reiki, aura healing or chakra healing. For people who can 't engage in regression properly, like infants, autistic people or psychotics, this may be a solution. For people who don't want to w ork them selves - passive clients and

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consum ers - it is a nice escape. For people who can and want to explore them selves, it is a de­ tour. And som etim es a handicap, as it may prejudice their own regressions. A variant is exploring past lives by kinesiology: testing the arm or an other body part. Kinesiol­ ogy uses the body of the client as an oracle. I don't believe that such testing automatically brings out the truth. Many questions are imprecise and ambiguous. We also may access different parts of the subconscious computer. Kinesiology is not therapy, but an alternative induction. This method is especially suitable for people who see nothing during a session. Afterwards it comes down to re­ gression anyway. Many therapists of the second school, PLR as enlightenment, call up the higher-self of the client or spiritual guides. They introduce their own guides in the session and let the clients call their own guides. Obviously, the sessions are frequently about attachments* and the deceased. These guides don't present themselves as superior beings, but as friends and acquaintances from past lives and sometimes as a deceased relative from the current life. Remember, a guide that tells you what to do or - worse - give you orders, is no guide, but an intruder. Real problematic cases you can't help with this second approach, because it provides little, if any, psychotherapy. And you can't deal with evil this way. If it works, though, it works quickly and easily. Especially the sessions with children are beautiful. A good example of the third approach, PLT as talking it out, is Many Lives, Many M asters by Brian Weiss about the hypnotic sessions he did with one of his clients. He follows the emerging stories, but didn't fully follow them up at the time. He listened with interest - and amazement. An example of the fourth view, PLT as extinction, is Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. Episodes of impaired consciousness, physical pain and painful emotions are stored in so-called engrams. Later similar experiences restimulate rekindle the engram, and make it grow. Each engram is discharged by reexperiencing the episode repeatedly, starting with the most recent one and working back to the first experience. Approaches that couple PLT to behavioral therapy, are in one way even more primitive. The charge is being released by sheer repetition, while Scientology, the denomination founded by Hub­ bard, puts the emphasis on facing and taking responsibility, be it in a mechanical way. Stanislav Grof is an example of the fifth school, PLT as catharsis. Typical of his approach is the strong physical induction (forced breathing) and strongly physical processing. Other therapists are mainly focused on the mental processing. Occasionally, strong mental processing is complemented by strong physical processing, while the actual emotions remain unfelt. Real catharsis means work­ ing and achieving results are at four levels: mental, sensory, emotional and physical. Among the best examples of this school I count Morris Netherton and Roger Woolger. I myself belong in this school too. The sixth school, PLT as necessary, is a specialization of the fifth. The difference doesn't lie in the basic idea that life problems have their place in a process of soul development and that themes run through different lives, sometimes run through many lives. The difference lies in whether the therapist always needs to go to the root causes in past lifetimes, or that it is sufficient when the problem as perceived by the client has been resolved. Evidently, therapists of the sixth school usu­ ally call themselves past-life therapists, not regression therapists. Sessions where past lives emerge, especially if a client has had several, also have effects besides the healing of psychological or psychosomatic* problems. If clients have experienced themselves in dif­ ferent lives, it often has one or more of the following consequences:

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• Fear of death diminishes or disappears. • A sense that you were not born by chance in your family, and that there can be such a thing as a life plan. • A more relaxed and at the same time more respectful relationship with one's own body. • Sexism, nationalism and racism disappear. People experience themselves in different bod­ ies, different roles, different cultures, different religions. It makes people less dogmatic. • Rigid beliefs dissolve. People can suddenly become pacifist or actually shed their pacifism. • Looking with other eyes at pregnancy, at babies and young children, at education. Children are no longer genetically determined creatures who need to learn everything from scratch. Children often have something mature about them in their responses, considerations and decisions. Just as adults have inner children, so children have inner adults. A past-life therapist takes these inner adults seriously and discovers in them past lives or conclusions from previous lives made between death and rebirth. • To put it rather solemnly: past-life therapy very often leads to increased self-knowledge, increased understanding of people and living better lives. There are also clients who become overly enthusiastic and begin to detect past lives in or behind everything. Usually, that wears downs over time. Past-life therapy can be combined rather well with other insight-oriented therapies. During ses­ sions, it will become clear to which extent past lives are involved and to which extent the present life. At times it is necessary to go through a traumatic death experience of a past life first before working on problems in this life, but the reverse is probably more common.

1.8 Personalities and subpersonalities: the soul as hologram W hat are subpersonalities? We all have different sides. We behave differently to our colleagues, to our neighbors, to our children. And sometimes we feel and act childish ourselves. In personification, we evoke parts of ourselves as if they are more or less independent persons. Once, when we were a toddler, we lost our parents for almost an hour. We thought they had aban­ doned us, they no longer cared about us. We felt let down and lost. That toddler we can evoke in a session. We can communicate with it, we can comfort it. This is an important aspect of inner child work. To what extent is that frightened, abandoned toddler a subpersonality we have carried along throughout our life and to what extent have we created it in the session? Both appear to be possible. The difference seem s to lie in the depth or intensity of the original experience. Full subpersonalities originate in experiences where we go into shock. We freeze. It resem bles m ak­ ing a 'still' from a video, a picture stored separately. Or we leave our body and don't fully come back. That this is more than ju st a thought, is shown by the frequent spectacular effect that oc­ curs w hen we have people im agining that some part of them is floating above them; they see that part and absorb it back into the body. We come across that in regressions to accidents, head injuries, concussion and fainting. Also in other m om ents of fear and shock, as sudden hum ilia­ tion or d assault. In other words, we produce subpersonalities at times when we are partially dying. Just like real death, that can happen also gradually: the gradual loss of vitality, self-confidence or self-esteem. In regressions we not only discover inner children as causes of problems, but also apparent past lives. Usually lives in which we didn't die well. We call this pseudo-obsessors*. The past lives that

36

still haunt or join us in the present life. Upon further investigation, they often are subpersonalities from previous lives. Partly we died well and went to the light, and partly they are still stuck in the darkness of closed-mindedness and unprocessed emotions. How do we know that all that is really us? That we didn't make it up or that it isn't created by the therapy process itself? The answer is in how wonderful and strong and vital we feel after heal­ ing and integrating those parts. Now you're a man and you happen to have brought along a certain anxiety from a painful female past life. That woman is healed and integrated. The anxiety has gone. Do you now feel the urge to wear a dress? Fortunately not. That something is integrated, doesn't necessarily mean that it is com­ ing to the fore. As a man, my feminine sides are in the background. Except when I need them or can use them well. For example, to understand my daughters. By responding adequately when my wife suddenly starts to give birth while the midwife hasn't arrived yet. By holding a baby properly. By paying at­ tention to nonverbal signals when that is useful. Subpersonalities must be integrated. That doesn't mean that they blend completely with the rest of our personality, but that they assume their right place inside us. Sometimes we don't experience our feminine side, or our adventurous side, or our decisive side, or our creative side. Sometimes we experience ourselves as deeper and wider and higher. We feel our­ selves stronger than we have ever felt while feeling unbounded. Time and space no longer feel as limitations. These are peak experiences, mystical experiences, experiences of the higher self, soul experi­ ences. Just as our personality includes our subpersonalities, but also includes more (not everything in us has ever been dissociated), so includes our soul the current personality and the personalities of past lives, but also more: the part that has never been incarnated, that often existed and was selfaware before the first incarnation. After death we may get stuck in a subpersonality, but also be free, i.e. becoming aware in our soul. We are aware on a soul level. The life retrospect is not different from, though much more com­ prehensive, than integrating an inner child. When we arrive at the soul level during our life, we experience this as a religious or mystical experience. It is a peak experience. We feel more or broader or higher or deeper or more intense or more objective than we feel normally. We feel more concentrated while sensing no limits. During therapy we can come at that soul level during a particularly deep catharsis. That all may seem very complicated. As if we are not an individual, literally: undivided, but a large multidimensional house with an extended family. Yes, it is very complicated indeed. At the same time it is very simple - if we see our soul as a hologram. A hologram is composed of parts that each contain the information of the whole, to a certain extent are that whole. The parts of a hologram called holons. Each holon is a hologram. Each hologram is a holon within a larger hologram. Our personality is a holon within our soul. We are our soul, but in a cer­ tain way, in a certain configuration. Between our personality and our subpersonalities is a holographic relationship: each subper­ sonality is a printout of the complete personality, in a certain color Each subpersonality is in a sense a caricature of our personality. And our personality is a caricature of our soul. In extreme cases, subpersonalities may fragment* into smaller parts. The lost six-year old can be divided into fragments of many traumatic situations and moments of inner decisions. Not important is the theoretical model, but the practical application. W hen integration meets a practical need, there was factual disintegration. Our personality is strong or robust ('we are our­ selves') when all subpersonalities, especially the inner children, are integrated.

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A similar relationship exists between our soul and personalities of past lives. We don't have a soul, we are a soul. Our personality manifests our soul, but in a particular way, shaped by upbringing, culture, body, gender. Each past life is a 'sub-soul.' Our soul is the great hologram and we are in our daily self the small hologram. A time that still didn't know about holograms spoke of ’higher self and ’lower self.' Each of our subpersonalities is in a sense a caricature of our personality. And we are in a sense a caricature of our soul. Some traits are larger, some smaller, some standing out, others withdrawn, a few suppressed, locked away. Maybe some traits are no longer relevant or not relevant yet. Or we have forgotten them. Or it is dangerous to show them in the place and time we live. Or simply be­ cause we dislike them. The holographic model of the soul, as I describe in this book, is an empirical model, an incomplete model. It may be less engaging than current religious, mystical or spiritual models. It is also more, because it is based on experience, because we book practical results: people that become more un­ derstanding, more empathic, more vital, more versatile. People who continue to develop. W hen solving a problem, we find, heal and integrate the relevant holon, the relevant subpersonal­ ity. It finds its proper place, even if it seems weak and difficult. Imagine if we had only strong traits. We would lose empathy with weak or insecure people; we would become insufferable. And we would make big mistakes. Our uncertain sides make us doubt and so we are more aware of risks and dangers. We are fully developed in this respect, as our certain and uncertain sides are in bal­ ance; both having their own place and can interact. Or our male and female side are in balance and can interact, just to mention an example. We encounter this holographic principle in many places in this book: in personification, in inner child work, in pseudo-obsessors, in the Great Integrations, but also in regression to accidents and surgery. Of course, as therapists we need to have experienced these things intellectually and even viscerally - sometimes literally. How far should we go in this? Until we are not afraid of disintegration in cli­ ents, and not envious of the successful integration of clients. To be a little bit afraid is allowed. To be a little bit envious too. Don't show it. And be happy for the client. 1.9 Research to date Upon what is regression therapy based? On the accumulated experience of the therapists which they share in workshops, conferences, articles and books. On little research, alas. Therapists are rarely researchers, and few academic researchers dare to get their fingers burned on such a contro­ versial topic. Still, we do have some findings. Hans Cladder examined the effectiveness of regression therapy. He concluded that the therapy was certainly effective with phobias, and less so with compulsive disorders (Cladder 1983). In Brazil, Ney Peres, also in 1983, analyzed the results of the first attempts there at past-life therapy. There were 43 clients in the Brazilian study: 35 relived a previous life, 8 didn't. Thirteen treatments were successful after an average of 17 sessions, three treatments ended with no result after an aver­ age of 6 sessions, 11 clients broke off the treatment after an average of 3 sessions, 13 were still in treatment at the time of the study. A statistical analysis yielded few significant results. Only one conclusion is interesting: there was no correlation between believing in reincarnation and whether or not reliving a previous life (more than 95% certainty).

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Winafred Lucas showed that for effective PLR both the client and the therapist exhibit a brainwave pattern that is high on simultaneously beta and delta waves, and low on alpha and theta waves. Hazel Denning, one of the founders of the Association fo r Past-Life Research and Therapies, analyzed the results of eight therapists with about a thousand clients between 1985 and 1992. Many clients sought regression therapy after they had fruitlessly tried other therapies. Results were established shortly after the therapy, after six months, after one year, after two years and then after five years. Of the original 1000 about 450 clients could still be traced after five years. The score 'sym ptom s completely disappeared' increased over the years, while the other positive scores went down a bit. Denning found that after five years 24% of the former clients reported that their symptoms were completely gone, 23% reported significant improvement, 17% reported no­ ticeable improvement and 36% reported no improvement. In 1994, Ronald van der Maesen of the NVRT published as part of his PhD thesis another large study. He examined the results of PLR with over 400 clients from 32 therapists. Also this group con­ tained many difficult cases. Most clients had already tried everything else before they started with PLR. Six months after the end of each therapy, over 50% reported that their problems had largely or completely disappeared. This percentage was slightly higher than what was reported immediately after the therapy. About 25% reported some improvement, while about 20% didn't improve. These results were achieved after an average of 15 hours of therapy over 6 sessions. In 1994 I analyzed the results of 80 therapies from my own practice. Of these 80, 9 ended prema­ turely. Of the 40 returned evaluation forms (3 months after therapy), 20% reported that they were very satisfied, 40% were satisfied, 15% were moderately satisfied and 20% were not sure. My clients mentioned most of all mental results (65%), slightly less frequently emotional out­ comes (40%) and least of all physical results (25%). These results were achieved with an average of two sessions (together 5 hours of therapy). Therapy that lasted more than two sessions, generally gave more mental results. Emotional outcomes increased when work on previous lives was com­ bined with work in the present life. Shakuntala Modi is an American psychiatrist of Indian origin. Once she got a suicidal client with panic attacks. To M odi's surprise she described how she was buried alive in a past life. After the session not just the suicidal tendencies and panic attacks had disappeared, but also the claustro­ phobia that she had had all her life. Thus Modi discovered PLR. A while later she received a 45-year-old woman who described scenes from a previous life as a man, and told that she had died in 1964. That was impossible, as the woman was born in 1952. On M odi's direct question who he was, he replied that he was the father of the client. He had come to her while she was grieving immediately after his death. He wanted to help her and then could not get out. To her question whether there were more in there, he replied that there was a whole bunch. So Modi discovered what we call attachments. With an other woman, Modi discovered that her husband's spirit was inside her. He looked like the man he was at the time they were dating. W hen she asked what he was doing there, he replied that he wanted to make sure she listened to him. He w asn't too successful in that, incidentally. She sent his attached part back to the husband. The woman also had a part of her surviving mother at­ tached. Modi also let that piece be sent back to the mother. Later she discovered that people also could have lost parts of themselves. So she discovered successively PLR, attachments and loose soul fragments. Modi registered her treatments and the results of her first hundred clients. She distinguished be­ tween primary symptoms: the reasons people sought therapy for, and secondary symptoms: problems

39

that bothered people for a long time, but were not serious or urgent enough to seek therapy for. Tertiary symptoms she called complaints that came to the fore in therapy after the first session and had to be treated. Percentages in the following paragraphs are always percentages of the total num ­ ber of clients. Modi found that 90% of the primary symptoms were caused by attachments and lost soul frag­ ments, and 10% came from past lives. Secondary symptoms were in 30% of the cases due to attach­ ments and lost soul fragments and in 70% came from previous lives. Physical symptoms were 30% from attachments and 70% from past lives. In total 92% of clients had attachments, 70% had problems from past lives and 59% had loose soul fragments. M odi's figures concern clients with psychiatric symptoms, on average heavier than what we come across in our practice, but not to the extent they had to be institutionalized. Some other percentages: Primary psychological symptoms: 94% severe depressive symptoms 91% sleep disturbances 91% of chronic fatigue 90% concentration and memory disorders 43% suicidal tendencies 87% general fears and anxiety 43% panic attacks 24% psychotic symptoms (hallucinations) 17% voices in one's head 7% voices from outside 9% visual hallucinations 9% paranoid delusions 9% feeling possessed by spirits 18% manic-depressive symptoms 18% repetitive-obsessive thoughts 11% strong mood swings 14% fears and phobias Secondary psychological symptoms 73% fears and phobias 40% psychotic symptoms 14% sexual problems What kind of attachments did Modi find? 92% attachments 12% one attachment 80% multiple attachments 81% symptoms taken over from the attachments 50% attached family members 28% attached parents 2% attached children 2% attached spouses 37% attached grandparents and other relatives 77% attached strangers 16% attached miscarriages or abortions

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Other key findings of Modi: • Personality disorders come almost exclusively from past lives. • Secondary psychotic disorders are rarely a symptom of genuine psychosis. They are usually the impressions that paranormally sensitive people have of attachments that bother them. • Tertiary symptoms emerge because attachment lie in layers. After some attachments are removed, a second layer of attachments may be released and cause fresh symptoms. Also problems from past lives may be released after attachments have been removed. Even new attachments can come in because the original problem, often from a past life, is still unre­ solved. Attachments, according to Modi, enter through unprocessed traumas, usually from past lives. To prevent regressions being done on the lives of attachments, she regards spirit releasement - the freeing of attachments - as a precursor of regression work. Regressions are still needed to resolve the underlying problems. Thelma Freedman summarized published research, including mainstream research, in 2002. In Por­ tugal, Mario Simoes did research on the changes in hormone levels during regression sessions (cor­ tisone, growth hormone and prolactin). These changes were practically identical to those in actual experiences. Ronald van der Maesen received a doctorate in 2006 on his earlier research, supplemented by re­ search on client satisfaction in Surinam, with research into the treatment of people 'hearing voices' and sufferers from Tourette's syndrome. In the Surinam research, regression therapy turned out to achieve significant results in an average of 4 sessions of 2 hours each. Even with people 'hearing voices' the results were significant. With some, the voices disappeared completely, with most others the problem diminished considerably. For sufferers of Tourette, both motor and vocal tics were al­ most halved, even a year after the therapy. His dissertation is the only one that can be called scientific. That of Hazel Denning and even more so that of Rabia Clark were essentially surveys, even though quite interesting as such. What we have of research up to this date confirms that regression therapy and past-life therapy work, and particularly that they work fast. The study of Modi suggests that depression and chronic fatigue are mainly due to attachments and lost soul fragments, and that specific phobias, psychosomatic problems and specific personality disorders or character problems mainly come from past lives. What further research may make the most sense? Finding out which interventions are most effec­ tive for which complaints. But the most important research remains what we do in each session with each client: finding out where problems come from and what kept them unresolved.

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CHAPTER 2. THE BIG THREE: REGRESSION, PERSONIFICATION AND ENERGY WORK

What does a transpersonal psychotherapist need? General interview skills and counseling skills, of course. Otherwise only three general techniques are needed: regression, personification and energy work. Based on what do I say that? On experience, of course. Basically, these three methods bring you anywhere. Not always, not with everyone, as the previous chapter has explained. Some clients may need other methods. I don't exclude classical hypnosis, and medication may occasionally play an essential role in therapy. Inability and unwillingness of clients also set limits. With these three techniques: regression, personification and energy work, we can achieve in many people surprising, sometimes spectacular results. These three approaches are alternatives to some extent, but mainly they complement each other. It is useful to know when to apply what tech­ nique, both at the beginning and during the session. This know-how is a matter of methodology, but also of intuition. And intuition is a matter of experience, attentiveness, attitude and alignment with the client. Regression remains the first of the big three. Therefore, this chapter begins with regression techniques. Within that, we start at the beginning: the transition from ordinary conversation (by connecting) to full reliving (by focusing and deepening).

2.1 Basic interview techniques: connecting, focusing and deepening Much of the following is general interview and counseling technique. The rest is applied general semantics of Alfred Korzybski, who I mentioned before. There is a lot of misplaced concreteness, but there is much misplaced abstractness too. Concretization and specification may be the most impor­ tant tools of regression therapists. Connecting Connecting is following, focusing and deepening are leading. The first rule of the connection is: adopt the vocabulary of the client. D on't change an apartment into a flat, don't change a coast into a beach, don't change a lorry into a truck. This is especially important with possibly emotionally charged words. Don't change fury into anger, don't change sadness into sorrow, don't change rela­ tives into family, don't change a husband into a partner. Respond to ’my class’ with 'your cla ss,' not w ith’ that cla ss,' and vice versa. Work toward a clear story, a chronological narrative with clear transitions and clear stages: the players are clear, the decor, and some of the before (how it all came about) and after (the main consequences). Connecting is helping clients to come to a clear and comprehensible story without gaps and incomprehensible transitions. We do connect by simple interventions: • • •

Invite: after hesitation. (tell me, go on) Confirm: after hesitation (of course, clearly, that is understandable, etc.) Open questions to go to the next step (what happens, what do you do now, what do you think, what do you feel now, how do they react?) • Questions: to remove ambiguities and fill gaps, (how did you get there; do all o f you have a boy­ friend; what kind o f man; what does the road look like?) • Completion: I'm angry. With whom are you angry? What for?

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• Summarize to give some respite and to show that you have listened well. (So you and your sister had toiled fo r an hour; your father refused to take a short break, your face did hurt o f sunburn and you vowed this would be the last day trip ever with your parents.) • Suggest a possible different angle to get a different point of view. (how would you look at that today; what would a professional have done, how does your brother look at your new girlfriend?) When the client talks about despair and the therapist asks about hope, that is connecting, as it is a precise opposite. W hen the therapist talks about pessimism without the client has mentioned either optimism or pessimism, that doesn't connect. If a therapist doesn't connect, his interventions usu­ ally show a pattern. The therapist may be more distant or abstract or professional or formal or dra­ matic than the client. The best way to find out if you really connect, is to listen afterwards to a re­ cording session with an experienced colleague. We usually 'under-adapt' to the client and clients usually 'over-adapt' to the therapist. Focusing Focusing is concentrating on what matters, on the most important. This is particularly important to define the subject and the angle of the session, and to bring the session back on track when the cli­ ent start to digress. Regression is not digression. Focusing is done by: • • • •

•

•

•

•

Asking for first impressions (which are never random, but always meaningful). Zooming in on emotionally charged words and peculiarly repeated words and phrases. Asking about what feels good and what feels bad. Concretize: I've had enough. You had enough o f what in particular? It never stops. What doesn't stop? Nagging people. Who is nagging? Pay especially attention to dangling reference words in short sentences, like: there, there, the, one, that, that, this, this, they. Go from the general to the specific: People are nagging. Who in particular? Family. Who o f your fam ily in particular? Uncles and aunts. Which uncle or aunt is nagging the most? Uncle George. Go to a place and a time where his nagging was the worst. Which situation are you in now? Use the superlative. If it was a hot day: You get an impression o f the hottest time. If something was bad, What was the worst? W hen talking about a group of creepy boys, Who was the biggest creep? What was most creepy about him? Asks what feelings were the strongest, what im­ pressed most, and so on. Rank-order story elements in order of importance Or ask for three wishes. Or after a com­ ment about an annoying brother and sister, Who was more annoying, your brother or your sis­ ter? Or put in chronological order. What came first, what next? From early childhood I was withdrawn. I preferred books. What came first? Did you withdraw and then started to read books? Or did you start to read books and became withdrawn after that? Confirm probable postulates* by repeating them or have the client repeat them. Just repeat: I am abandoned again. And again.

The easiest way to simultaneously connect and focus is to specify abstract reference words and to concretize the most charged words and phrases, directly tying in with the words the client just This is the simplest there is; yet we find it sometimes violated from the beginning to the end of the session. Feel a detective who wants to get the real story straight. Or someone who wants to film the story. C: I came up with one o f my first friends at home. Fairly innocent. It really was nothing. Since that day, I feel a curse on my relationships. T (wrong): Go to the next important situation.

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T: (good): Who puts a curse on you? See and feel the moment that happens. Where are you and who is doing it? Hear the words o f the curse. Curse is the most loaded word. However you go further, your reaction must contain that word. There you need to go. (T stands for therapist, C for client.)

Look into session reports to the most loaded words and the vague reference words in statements of the client. See if the therapist refers to the most loaded words and the vague reference words. Ex­ amples: Vague: C: Those girls are standing around me and laugh at me. I give up. T: What do you give up? C: I realize that I can't expect anything o f my family. T: What can't you expect? Later: From whom can you expect the least? Loaded: C: Such people drive me crazy. C: I feel betrayed by my cousin. C: I didn't see a way out. I was embarrassed. I wanted to just die. C: I saw my mother lying with blood on the floor. The neighbor was shocked when he came in. The para­ medics were very friendly. One gave me a chocolate bar. Now don't ask if C liked chocolate or what flavor it had.

In a session C said that he considered to take his own life when he was sixteen. T didn't find it nec­ essary to respond and continues with his aunt. T was my student and I considered to take my life as a teacher. Deepen How to deepen a recollection to re-experience? • Let clients lie down if they want. • Let them close their eyes, to be less distracted. • Question and repeat and speak in the present tense, unless the client continues to refuse to copy that, then go with the client. • Ask for concrete descriptions of specific situations. • Ask details. • Ask for body sensations (touch, heat, cold, itching, stiffness, tension, motion, posture, heaviness, etc.) • Ask for sounds, touch and smells if they seem relevant. • Ask for feelings and (usually only afterward) thoughts. • Ask for encounters with people and how they look. • Let clients identify themselves with others present. • Ask for hopes and fears. In the beginning of a reliving, when images are yet vague and static, you can give the client choices. Always ask for the first, so intuitive impressions. • • • • • •

Are you somewhere inside or outside? If outside: what's the weather? Is it light or dark around you ? What's your age then ? Is it cold or warm? Is it dry or wet? Feel your body. Are you a man or a woman ?

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• • •

How is your posture: in motion or at rest, standing, lying or sitting? How is your body feeling: good, relaxed or strained, or co/d? Are you alone or with others ?

Of course it is possible that the client says that it's half-dark, or that it is half off, or that it just is not cold or hot. A mistake many beginners is that they want to connect, don't know exactly how to go further and then just repeat what the client says. That's parroting and doesn't demonstrate empathy and under­ standing, rather a lack of empathy and understanding. How do you connect better? That depends on where you are in the session and w hat's it's all about: the contract. If the client has ear problems and the doctor couldn't find anything and the story is now about someone screaming, then the best way to connect is: Hear the screams! We may ask who is screaming. If it is a kid, we suggest to get an impression of what happened to that kid. If there is a fire, we can suggest to get an impression how that fire started. And we ask what was the worst moment in that situation. We keep the story moving. So don't parrot, don't ask for the sake of asking. Ask for the next step in the story. For example: Where is that rock hitting you exactly? Often that proves to be a place where the client is suffering in the present life. Then: You get an impression o f the consequences. The client probably couldn't get away and died. Less likely, he was found and lived on as an invalid. 2.2 Getting the story straight Therapists are just like detectives, journalists or novelists. The first question is always: What's the story? What is it about? Who is it about? If clients are angry, we want to know angry with whom and why. Even if they don't know that, we want to know how long they have been angry, what arouses the anger, what are the conse­ quences of that anger. Regression is about reliving the beginning of this anger. Why someone was furious and with whom. Why couldn't she adequately express anger and why didn't that anger solve anything? W hat did one do? In what way is the client still carrying that rage with her? W hat happened? How did that go? How did that feel? What was she thinking then? How did the others react? How long did it take? The story is complete when the plot is clear: the facts, the causes and consequences. We keep on asking to get the story straight. For the client, but also for ourselves. To get the story straight, we ask questions and give suggestions. The smoother we do that, the easier we proceed, the better it is. And the story has to be clear to both the client and us. Otherwise we don't know what we are doing and what we need to do next. We won't know what to do, if we don't understand what happened. We need to get four stories straight. We can jump back and forth between them, but the less the better. 1. 2. 3. 4.

What happened? What the protagonist did and thought and felt? Which conclusions and decisions were registered? How did it carry over in the present life?

Elaborate each situation until it is clear where someone is, what happens, what one does, sees, feels and thinks, and the relationship and interaction with key others are clear. Ask how the situation started: You now get an impression o f how this fight / these tensions / this relationship / did start. Or: You get an idea o f the main cause / result o f this situation.

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If necessary, ask for the aftermath of the situation: You now get an impression o f the main result o f this situation /how it continued /how it ended. The simplest sequel is: You get an impression o f the next (big) change in your situation /your life. Or: What is the next important that changes in relation to ... (the theme)? Instruct with an important aspect of life, such as work, wealth, poverty, loneliness or disability: Go to a place and time that were decisive fo r your emigration /your captivity /your career. Go to the day that decided the rest o f your life. Where are you? What is happening right now? For developments that happened passively or gradually: I f there has been a moment o f choice, you now get an impression o f this. What is the first thing that comes to mind? After knowing what actually happened: You get an impression o f what would have happened if you would have made an other choice. At defining moments of the life or the death: You get an impression o f the decisive moment. It's like the movie continues in slow motion. What exactly is going through your mind? What exactly happens to your body? How others respond to you exactly? You go as slowly and precisely over it, till you understand what is going on. Ask with death experiences about the exact injuries and the exact cause of death, discover any poisoning, anesthetic, confusion (head wounds!). Ask for the strongest impressions and emotions and sensations (blood loss!). Is the wound is dirty or clean? How do they look at you? Do they say any­ thing when you die? Sometimes hurt means you're still alive (battlefield deaths with recurrent fainting) and some­ times breathing means you're still alive (drowning, gassing). Situations should be as clear and understandable as can be, and so part of a story The outer story (what happened and what one did) and the inner story (what one thought and felt, concluded or decided). The first story tells how the problem arose, the second story is about why the problem has persisted since then, the third story is why the client is seeking therapy. And then there is the story behind the story: what does this all say about the client? Each story is a chapter in a bigger story. But we only go as far as necessary to solve thepresent­ ing problem to the satisfaction of the client. Now the client may discover a question behind the question, but that is a new contract and thus a new therapy, at least a new therapeutic episode. An excellent preparation for this side of our work would bey a scriptwriting course. Imagine a scriptwriter interviewing someone whose adventurous life he wants to film. W hat can we do when during a session the story seems to become incomprehensible? •

Have the confusing episode summarized and put in a framework of place and time: where one lived, worked, went to school at what age.

•

Labeling and if necessary dissecting the different feelings.

•

First memory that comes to mind, possibly feeling by feeling. Clarify the situation by ask­ ing: What is happening? (passive) What are you doing? (active)

•

If others are involved: who is or who are the most important there?

•

Who is where?

•

What do you sense about them? How are the eyes? How do the voices sound?

•

What do they do and how do they interact?

•

What's in your mind?

•

If several charges are present: ask the start, the strongest moment and the end of each charge separately.

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•

In general, but especially in confusion and uncertainty, rather suggest to get impressions than use questions like: Why? What? How come? You get an idea o f who triggered this, often works better than, who triggered this?

•

Asking for or suggesting impressions works better than asking what one sees or knows.

•

If it is too confusing or threatening: switch to dissociation*: seeing from above (the so-called bird's eye view). High enough to get an overview (implies calmness and clarity) and close enough to see and understand what is happening.

•

If it remains confusing or unclear: switch to energy work: feeling the confusion or ambigu­ ity or the cause (of anxiety/stress/vagueness that someone still feels) as a substance in the body, and see and feel how that substance leaves body and goes back to where it came from.

•

If someone says something that seems to indicate a resistance to see something, switch to personification: You will now see the main cause of resistance entering the room. Or possi­ bly the cause of the confusion/ uncertainty/tension.

2.3 Clarifying unclear or confusing episodes An unclear memory may mean the experience itself was vague. There was little to do, we didn't care what happened because we were with our attention elsewhere, or we just didn't understand what we saw or heard. Sometimes we were stunned, sometimes we were drugged. Why should we help people clarify? Vague memories means unimportant, seemingly unimpor­ tant or suppressing the important. We try to discover the important in the seemingly unimportant. Why open up a can o f worms? the supposedly wise ask. Well, because we are the can and the worms are crawling inside us. We want to get the worms out. We don't do sessions to wander around in vague memories. Why should we? When a question or suggestion triggers a vague memory while exploring a real problem, that vague memory almost without exception contains a meaningful message. Only with more or less psychotic people who have a difficult relationship with their inner self, it doesn't work this way. Looking from the outside or looking from above, is a form of dissociation, identification is a form of association*. We switch between both. Whatever is necessary to move the story forward. In some cases we switch hardly, in other cases we do that often. Clarification always means concretization and specification.

Specify always to a specific moment. No general memory of the home of the grandparents, but a memory of a specific experience there. Where are you in the house? What time o f day? What age are you here about? Again: we want to get to a specific place at a specific time. We leave it to the subcon­ scious of the client to find a telling or important moment. An exact time is more important for specification than a precise location. Why? Because we may have been over the years many times in a certain place, but at a precise moment we have always been at a precise location. Right after the instruction to go to a specific moment, we ask for impres­ sions of the place, because these are more concrete. Concrete means primarily detailed shapes and colors, and complementing it with sounds, occa­ sionally with scents, with thoughts and feelings, and above all, with body sensations. It is mainly the body sensations that make the difference between remembering and reliving. The heat on our face, the pain in our big toe, and the abrasive belt on our left shoulder. People with weak body sensations are more difficult to regress. In my experience, men have on average fewer body sensations than women, older people have fewer than the young, and highly educated people fewer than the less educated. But an older, highly educated man can naturally

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have more body sensations than a young, poorly educated woman. In general, the more rational people are, the less body sensations, and vice versa. Rational people are relatively more dissociated and people with much body sensation more as­ sociated. What is best? To be able to switch freely between association and dissociation. More com­ monly, people are too dissociated from their body Another cause of vague memories is that the original experience was confusing. Too much hap­ pened, it happened too fast or we simply didn't understand what we saw or heard. In misunder­ standing, in bewilderment, in shock we don't register clearly. Also when we are famished or have a head injury or have lost a lot of blood, we don't understand what is happening to us or around us. We also find vagueness in reliving birth experiences because the mother was under anesthesia dur­ ing childbirth. Memories may remain unclear because the original experience has been deeply locked away. In a previous life this means there was no clarity after death. If memories remain confusing, we have several options. Especially if it's about something long ago, we suggest that the client with his present consciousness enters and perceives the situation. The current adult can understand the argument between mom and dad than the drowsy toddler back then. Or we have the present adult look at the situation from above. Or if it went too fast, we ask to see everything in slow motion or to freeze the image. Everyone has seen movies; no one has trouble with such instructions. All of this means a certain degree of dissociation. In general, in confusion dis­ sociate. Only after understanding and review are reasonably restored, we continue associated. Finally, our memory may be vague and slow, syrupy, if we touch a situation that was m isunder­ stood at the time. A classic example is the fetus in the mother's womb. Maybe someone yells to the mother and the child thinks it refers to him.

2.4 The retrieval of forgotten and suppressed experiences We do forget experiences that are uncharged. Remembering is the easiest with experiences that were charged positively or negatively, especially if they are linked to inner conclusions or decisions. Your sister-in-law ignores your invitation, rattling on with the neighbor. You conclude that you are nothing to her, confirming again an older conclusion that you don't matter to people. This experi­ ence is in the drawer 'Rejection by Inlaws' with a copy in the older and larger drawer 'Disappoint­ ments With Other People.' The latter forms part of the cabinet section 'My Life sucks.' If we muse, we screen those cubbies and sink into dark thoughts about life in general, people in general and about us and our life in particular. Many people hardly have m emories from early childhood. Perhaps because childhood was boring, but mostly because childhood was sad or painful. We retrieve forgotten memories just as we retrieve vague m emories. We need only one clue: a feeling or a thought, sometimes a body sensation. The first reason that we forgot something is that we didn't record it clearly at the time. We were sleepy, numb, under the influence, severely weakened or malnourished. More often, we were in shock. Let's assume that someone seriously fell as a child, and had broken an arm or a leg. There may have been a moment of mortal fear. Usually clients can remember things from just before or just after the accident. We can focus on the state of mind that is often troubling the client and go back from that charge to the painful experience that caused it. Or we look at the memories just before and just after. Starting with the last clear memory, we anchor the client in that memory and then proceed step by step until we eventually arrive at the next well-remembered situation.

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Of course, we must not replaced the problem of forgotten and suppressed memories by the problem of false memories. However powerful our suggestions are, we should never assume, never prompt. So we always give open suggestions or an open-ended menu to choose from. It can be day or night, but also in between. Or you're somewhere inside with lamplight and you don't know whether it is day or night. If clients are not forced, they can test the different options and sense in what direction the real memory lies. Rarely, people seek therapy not to recover a memory, but to free themselves from a memory A traumatic event, that is stuck in replay-mode, driving the person crazy. We retrieve forgotten memories and deepen them to reliving. Or we open feelings and body sensa­ tions to retrieve repressed experiences and so free the memory. Curiously, retrieving forgotten memories does vitalize, regardless of the content of the memory. Retrieving suppressed experiences is more intense. Sometimes, retrieval is simply liberation, but usually more is needed to get there. Reliving difficult experiences requires an understanding guide to reach catharsis. The rest of this book will teach how we may help our clients with that.

2.5 Reframing without rewriting history: Renovation* means renewal. Every successful therapy session is renovating. An effective session restores the ego that went to pieces during a traumatic experience, nearly collapsed under the mortgage of a hangover, handicapped by incomplete dying, trapped in the armor of a character postulate, or consumed by longing for a better world. Renovation often goes a step further: it rewrites history, a w idespread vice, also outside our therapy practice. Rescripting* is m ake-believe: pretending things happened differently, that we acted differently. Rew riting is a trick to avoid facing the facts, it is substituting a dream for waking up. Only rescript as an intermediate step, a breathing space, towards facing reality. The acceptable variant of renovation is called reframing. Facing what factually happened, but from a different angle, a new understanding, also about our own role. There is a wonderful expression: Abandon all hope fo r a better past. Wounds we heal, but scars we w on't deny. We don't have people fantasizing that an amputated arm grows back again. We are personal physicians, not tailors of em­ perors' clothes. After cathartically working through a traumatic life, the quality of that life often changes. We see it in a new light. In the next regression, the sadness or emptiness of that life may have disap­ peared. We now may discover the pleasant or interesting aspects of it. Reframing changes our view on what happened, not what factually happened. It is rather dis­ covering what factually happened, removing screen memories, polished memories that molded themselves into our mindset. Papa is made into a worse monster to justify our abhorrence of him. Our own role is exaggerated so we don't need to be ashamed, and so on. Reframing helps to get through covers and repressions, till the truth comes out. Guilt is probably the biggest cover. After understanding and acceptance, the echoes of an ancient history, sometimes an entire previous life, improve. To help clients reframing is a basic technique of counseling. We do this during the wrap-up and evaluation, sometimes already during the session. During the session, in trance, we don't suggest a change of view and even less how they could or should change their views. We don't moralize, we don't advise. We rather say: You get an impression o f how your daughter looks at you when she dies. Or: You get an idea o f what you would have seen if you hadn't mind sitting closely. Even more generally speaking: You get an impression o f the situation that you didn't have then.

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Or: let's look back at the situation from the after-death clarity o f the Place o f Review. There we find wider or deeper meaning of experiences: maybe as a karmic compensation, as a life lesson, as a service between souls. How do we free an inner child frozen in a traumatic childhood experience? How do we liberate a past life still somewhat in shock because of a horrifying experience, or having died in misery, con­ fusion or despair? Sometimes simply reliving is already liberating, sometimes someone lapses dur­ ing the reliving in the same state of mind as then. Then we have the current adult entering the situa­ tion of the child, or the situation of the after-death confusion of the past life. How we do that ex­ actly, I describe in the sections on inner-child work and healing pseudo-obsessors. We don't deny what happened, but we get people out of their mental prison. When the current personality has taken care of the dead body of a previous life and has provided a final resting place, it can help in two ways to integrate the previous personality yet: • Help to reach a peaceful place of review, or enter into the Light. • Integrate the previous personality: the two personalities slide into one. Watch what happens spontaneously; otherwise let the client choose. If the client has no preference, always suggest integration into the present personality. Don't pretend something bad hasn't happened, don't pretend we have done something good that we did fail to do: it brings people from bad to worse. Especially in trance, imaginary memories may seem real. The client feels better after the session, but over time the original problem comes back, often somewhat worse. Reframing sometimes occurs spontaneously, sometimes under the guidance of the therapist. Good reframing makes us freer; reframing within a moral, metaphysical or religious system, makes us less free. And rewriting - changing history - is a crime.

2.6 Dissociating and associating; bodily sensations; trance; breath work Associating means making observations more concrete, asking for feelings and especially bodily sensations. Connecting a thought, a perception with a feeling of a bodily sensation we call anchor­ ing, in this following Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Unlike NLP, we use it not only for links that we make during therapy, but also for existing associations with bodily sensations. Associ­ ating means ultimately identifying with the past experience, almost as if it is happening now. Anchoring connects perceptions and emotions with a somatic*: sensing something at a specific location in the body. Visualizing or touching reinforces this. In a wider sense anchoring is the con­ necting of something temporary, noncommittal, ephemeral, something less tangible, with some­ thing permanent and tangible. Associating during reliving is particularly important at the beginning, when the client may still not be fully 'in i t , ' or with rather rational clients, particularly with control freaks. NLP uses anchoring mainly as a technique to make new insights and new feelings more real. In NLP anchoring is the conscious, almost hypnotic associating of a positive or negative charge of the client with a place in the body or with an act of the therapist ('the anchor'). Because of this, these charges can be elicited at the proper time. Choose an anchor that is exactly repeatable. With a touch, you take a spot that you can reach easily and you can touch exactly: a knuckle, a kneecap, a mole, and so on. The pressure of your touch you repeat as precisely as possible. W hen you anchor with a word or phrase, you repeat the intonation, tone, rhythm and accent.

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I work with anchors somewhat differently. A knuckle as an anchor for example, I consider artificial. If someone has a sore throat at the beginning of the session and feels that his throat is constricted, the throat is the natural anchor point. Healing can then be measured by the condition of the throat and by anchoring on the throat. The classic hypnotic finger signals are artificial as well. Use as a signal the physical symptom itself. If a sore throat constitutes the beginning of the session, then the fact that the throat feels good, is a sign that the session is completed. If you doubt at the start whether you should go to A or B, use that sore throat as a point of departure. If a client thinks of A and the throat doesn't respond, yet he feels stabs or other pains at the throat when he thinks of B, then you must continue with B. The problem is its own solution. The wound produces its own healing. Therefore choose an anchor that is specific and directly related to the problem, no handshake or a pat on the back, for example. Artificial anchors like touching elbows or knees, or expressing key words or phrases, are hypnoti­ cally constructed triggers. If you forget to neutralize these, they may behave as posthypnotic sug­ gestions. Your client eventually hurts his knee and immediately gets a positive or negative re­ sponse. Why create something artificial while something natural is present? Why tie solutions to acts of the therapist rather than experiences of the client? Therapists should not play God, except by default, when all else fails. Let clients touch themselves. D on't create an artificial spot if you can just ask which spot, or if the natural spot presents itself. Where is that feelin g in your body located? W hy use magic*? Keep it simple. However, we may create hypnotic anchors in complicated and chaotic cases like working with drug addicts. If the somatics jump and you sense that someone is still serious, artificial anchors work well. How do we anchor the results of relived experiences? • • • • • •

touch by the therapist, supporting and affirmative; letting clients touch the therapist when they seek support (not too often); letting clients touch themselves, empowering or concentrating; letting clients touch an 'am ulet'; letting clients take on the body posture during the initial trauma; breathing through the traumatic experience;

• • • • • •

inner feeling; inner sight; inner seeing from the outside; inner feeling of contact with another part of oneself; inner touching oneself from the outside; inner feeling of contact with another.

The last six anchors imply that the client can visualize well. Whether to touch clients is a sensitive issue. It is a matter of style, even of culture. Always ask per­ mission first, if you consider this. I use few physical contact, but when I do, I usually do so firmly. Use your intuition, but avoid grabbing, stroking or cuddling. Clients may become demanding, for example asking for a hug, because they have gone through a traumatic childhood experience. Then you may act paternally or maternally for a while. In general, some physical contact confirms that you are there and remain committed. A light touch on spot is sufficientfor this.The firstchoice re­ mains that the adult client hugs the inner child.

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Exude intimacy - if you feel that - but don't get personal. The only form of physical contact that I apply frequently, is holding the feet or pressing the feet soles with my thumbs. Often people have difficulty with grounding. Sometimes cold feet are di­ rectly related to the story: loneliness or cold or whatever. Physical contact should anchor, not distract. So keep it limited and focused. Are strong fears involved, I occasionally lay my hand flat, strongly or lightly, on the solar plexus. In this way I com­ municate: I'm with you. I'm not going to shy away from it. We go through this together. We dissociate during the reliving when experiences are too intense or too confusing. Clients are so engrossed in it that they no longer understand what is going on. That could happen with very emo­ tional and overwhelming experiences, but also with experiences in which the brain stops functioning properly, by a head injury, a concussion, blood loss, starvation or being mentally handicapped. Or by anesthesia or drugs. Or because a child is so young that it can't understand what is happening. Dissociating is the opposite of associating: it is parting, separating of what was joined before. Spontaneous dissociation, witnessing the events aloof, from the outside, may weaken the regression because we miss the charges. Let clients, when they see their body from the outside, enter their body. If this doesn't work, then ask to which part of their body they feel most attracted. Then enter­ ing through that part often works. The strongest association is identification. Clients can identify themselves so much with certain charges from the past that inducing the reliving or the reliving itself falters. Dissociate when a fear seems paralyzing, or when confusion or madness disable proper reliving. Emotional catharsis always presupposes association: identification with the charge from the past. Mental catharsis often presupposes dissociation. Understanding often requires overview, and overview requires distance. Use dissociation when associative methods don't work because there is no charge to work with, or do so with a recursive or inaccessible charge. Especially with mental charges, dissociative techniques work well. There are five different dissociation techniques: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Experiencing from a distance: like an other person who once experienced something some­ where. Seeing from above, in 'bird's eye view.' Witnessing the story as a movie on a monitor or screen. Personification. Aura exploration.

The first two techniques are simple dissociations that we can employ as episodes within an essen­ tially associative reliving. The third technique we do only if it clearly can't be done otherwise. The latter two techniques replace ordinary regression. In personification we project our problems, so we can face them, possibly talk to them and work with them. With recursive charges, such as fear of failure, fear of fear, fear of losing control and all mental charges, we com m unicate with the part that doesn't dare or want or is unable, or the part that is confused. For example: I don't see anything. I want to, but I’m too scared. Let the part o f you that is so afraid to see anything, now enter your room. Use personifications especially with ambivalences. Aura exploration (see 2.7) releases people from persistent repercussions, especially when they are still stuck in a trauma or hangover. The cause of chronic fatigue has been found, for example. The fatigue has faded away, but part of the physical charge, a stiff back, has remained.

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Ad 1. The simplest dissociation is following the session in the past tense and continue to talk about 'he' or 'she' instead of T or 'me/ C: I'm so scared, 1 don't dare to look. T: She was afraid, OK. What was she afraid of?

Don't do this too quickly and not too often. Ad 2. 'A bird's eye view' goes one step further. If clients no longer see or understand the relived situa­ tion, you suggest them to see it from above, at a distance that gives overview or understanding. T: What happens now? C: I don't know. It's so confusing. There are people, but I can't see them well. I don't understand it! T: Take some distance. See it from above, as if you are floating above it. C: Oh, now I see! There is a battle going on. I'm right in the middle o f it.

This intervention also helps when strong emotions hinder the reliving. C: Oh, this is terrible! T: What's happening? What do you see, feel, hear? C: Oh! (The emotions become so strong that the client no longer utters anything and shows non­

verbal signs of severe anxiety, pain or sorrow.) T: Take some distance, enough so you can handle the grief and fear, take more distance.You float above it and see what happened. You remain involved in what was happening, but the fear and sadness are now at a level that you can handle. C: I'm beaten! Oh, I get beaten!

Let the situation be associatively re-experienced at a later stage with he charges that directly belong to it. Don't make it too intense. Getting overview and insight is sometimes more important than squeezing the last drop of the emotions. Regression into intoxication or anesthesia clarifies little, because someone relives being drunk or drugged. Seeing from the outside is better. Let the client look at what happened and how it came about, otherwise 'detoxing' the original condition or experience will be almost impossible. Ad 3. Dissociating can also be done with the help of representations or visualizations. Imagining a motion picture is the best-known technique. You lead clients out of the personal reliving and let them look at the events as if they watch a movie. C: Oh, I feel such a pain in my legs, such a terrible pain. T: You feel a terrible pain in your legs. What is happening? C: I can't see anything any longer. I just feel the pain. T: Take some distance. You're no longer in the situation with the pain in your legs. You only look only at it, like watching a movie. You stay involved in what is happening, but you now see it from the outside. C: My legs are gone!

If the story continues again, we associate once more and let the client go through the experience. The movie dissociation can be a way to jumpstart a regression, but never a way to finish it. Movie images alone don't lead to catharsis. Some clients see only film images and don't relive and truly process the traumatic experience. They are afraid to lose control or don't want to avoid responsibility. They rather stand by the sideline than join in the fray. Then associating becomes a component of therapeutic seduction. Use this art sparingly. Even if it succeeds, it can weaken the relationship of trust between therapist and client.

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2.7 Energy work and aura exploration Regression is going back to the cause of a problem or a trait. Energy work is visualizing the prob­ lem or the solution and experiencing it as a substance or energy within or near the body. First a simple example. C: I often feel guilty; but 1 don't really know about what. T: Can you sense that guilt feeling right now? C: Yes, I feel this all the time. T: What do you feel about it in your body? C: A pressure, a heaviness. T: Where do you feel that especially? C: On my chest, rather high up, near my throat. T: Imagine that there is literally something weighing on your chest, near your throat. What does it look like? C: A large flat boulder. (Begins to breathe haltingly, feels uncomfortable.) T: How did that boulder come on your chest? Did it fall on you? Was it placed on you? C: I don't know. T: Go back to the first moment when you feel this pressure on your chest and see how the boulder does arrive on your chest. C: Someone is doing it. T: Look at the hands that put the boulder on your chest. Are they male or female hands? C: Female hands. (Surprised.) T: Now you see the arms beyond the hands. Sleeves or bare arms? C: Rolled sleeves. T: Now you see the shoulders, neck and face o f the woman who does it. What kind o f woman is it? Do you know that woman ? C: She reminds me o f my grandmother, the mother o f my mother. (Very surprised.) The therapist asks about the age of the client at the time when the stone was placed on his chest. He turns out to be four years. There follows regression and inner child work. Then the grand­ mother must take away the boulder - if that hasn't happened automatically during the regres­ sion. T: You now get an impression o f what you've lost through all those years by that boulder on your chest. C: My spontaneity and my vitality. T: What does that spontaneity and vitality look like? C: I see a beautiful light green with little silver stars. T: Now you see and feel all the light green with little silver stars that you lost coming back to you. C: It comes out o f my grandmother. A stream o f light becomes a kind o f ball. It touches my chest. It enters my chest and travels upward to my throat. T: How does that feel? C: Fantastic! We let the four-year-old inner child enjoy that returning light and we strengthen the body feel­ ings that accompany it. Perhaps it now flows through the whole body. The client feels reborn. Weeks later the client tells how he still feels reinvigorated, like a different person.

Such a session lasts half an hour to an hour, depending on the severity and complexity of the expe­ rience of the four-year-old child. In this case, a feeling of guilt is experienced as a boulder. And the lost sense of an uninhibited zest for life is experienced as a green light with little silver stars. Clearly, energy work and regression can complement and strengthen each other. Energy work in regression differs in two significant essential respects from energy work that many alternative therapists and healers use: • •

The client does the work, not the therapist. We find out what the visualized problems and solutions mean to the client; their history is explored and understood.

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Energy work facilitates regression or anchors the regression or both. Energy work can also be used as an induction method instead of regression, even if there are no somatics. This technique I call aura exploration. I describe it a little further in this section. The overall function of energy work is visualizing, specifying and localizing abstractly named charges, such as an ill-defined feeling of guilt as in the example described above. Why is concretizing essential? To leave the fuzziness. The only thing we can do with fuzziness, is general and inefficient talk-therapy. In regression we avoid this. The function of talking, counsel­ ing, is only relevant in the discussion afterwards. Then we at least know what we are talking about. Complaints that people bring up, can have the most various causes. For example, someone says that he feels heavy and downcast. What could be behind such feelings? • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Reluctance Monotony, boredom, dull routine Repressed anger Pent-up grief Guilt Despair Negative thoughts about others, especially envy and jealousy Accumulation of various frustrations Constraining circumstances, feeling stuck Taking over such feelings from others Aggressive obsessor* or somber attachment Too little sunlight and open space Wrong eating habits Gloomy colleagues or housemates

With energy work we have the charge visualized as an energy or substance. This accelerates the exploration and the therapy. We thus let our clients imagine charges as substances (sometimes objects) or energy (plasma would be a better word), in or directly around the body. These energies have certain colors and reside in certain places in or around the body. W hat is negative or non-self is removed; what is lost is re­ gained. Often, we exchange energies with people with whom we are connected or entangled in a complicated or unpleasant way. It only makes sense to do so, if the client understands what kind of charge it's all about and is experiencing or has just experienced this charge. It makes no sense to undo or send back something if it is unclear when and how and why the foreign energy has entered or one's own energy has got­ ten lost. If clients experience the problem as energy or substance or object, then we suggest going to the first time this came into the body. Where? When? What exactly happened? Where did it come from? How did you feel when it entered? How did the other person look at you when it happened? Then we instruct to see and feel how that substance now leaves the body. Usually back to where it came from. If the clients sense a hole or a void somewhere in their body: Now you get an impression o f what has been in there. And: See and feel how that is coming back now. Often something first left, after which something else soon took its place. What is ours, we typically experience as energy, as a kind of light of a certain color. W hat is not ours, we usually experience as a thing or a substance, sometimes sticky or heavy or dark or dirty. Tar and mud are common. Reliving how and when such substances have entered, tells us what these substances represent.

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It is often assumed that losing self energy and absorbing non-self energy happen at the same time, but that doesn't need to be so at all. There may be days or weeks or longer in between the two. Finally, it ain't necessarily so that we must exchange energies with each and every person who has done something bad to us. If someone dies in a bombing, then no energy needs to be exchanged with the one who opened the bomb hatch. If someone faces dies before a firing squad, no energy need to be exchanged with the sharpshooters. Not even if there is only one sharpshooter. Som e­ times it must happen with the one who gave the order, but even that is not always necessary. Even with a gang rape, it is frequently unnecessary. We only exchange energy with people who personally have exchanged energy with us. And that only happens when there has been a personal interaction: if people have looked each other in the eyes, if people have said something personal to each other. If someone is killed by a neck shot in front of a trench, no energy needs to be exchanged with the executioner. Just stick to what energy the client lost - and retrieve that, whenever and wherever that was lost. Limit energy exchange to personal interaction. Hissing a threat may be personal, a gang rape may be impersonal, or personal interaction may have been limited to the leader or the first rapist - or to the one who betrayed the victim just before. What may be required, is disentangling energies in collective deaths, like in massacres or natu­ ral disasters. Especially if there has been common panic, and everyone hears each other, or if people have been packed together at the moment of death. Think of fires in theaters, a sinking ship, a gas chamber or a common grave pit in mass executions. Only after instructions to retrieve one's own energy or to go back to the time when one was still oneself, clear boundaries between the enmeshed energies of the traumatically deceased will emerge. More generally even: with confusion and with numbness we work first energetically and only then enter regression. Energetic techniques are all methods in which we let visualize positive or negative charges, and let these sense and locate in the body. Generally, energy work is a 'dessert' after the regression. In aura exploration it is an appetizer before regression. Energy work may also be the main course, and re­ gression just one ingredient. Aura exploration is not just a dissociative technique, but also an energetic technique. Also with successful regressions, an energetic roundup can be effective, and deepens and strengthens the re­ sults. A personification is highly effective as a completion of a regression to either childhood experi­ ences or past lives. Sometimes we devote an entire session to consolidation and integration, as the crowning of a series of sessions. I warn against the experimental use of energetic techniques in group sessions, without individ­ ual supervision. Especially mediumistic people with weak boundaries may go from bad to worse. I have learned to be cautious in this. I've learned that inversions of positive energetic interventions are effective in damaging people. Energy work can also be used negatively to make people sick rather than to make them better. Hence it is discussed only summarily in this textbook. If we look at people energetically, we find five types of negative ’transformers' that convert positive or neutral energy into negative energy: • Negative thought images • Negative subpersonalities • Pseudo-obsessors • Attachments, obsessors and inserts • Holes (lost soul fragments) Each subpersonality is a copy of the main personality, with:

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• • • •

its own emotional and energy charges its own mental structure (program) its own turn-on switches (triggers), and its own turnoff switches.

The basis of a subpersonality is a basic emotion or basic postulate. Negative subpersonalities are found in at least five neurotic types: • Victims (suckers) • Perpetrators (oppressors) • Bystanders (suckers) • Prosecutors (oppressors) • Helpers (oppressors) Suckers suck energy, they are too weakly present; oppressors are too strongly present. Guilt: blam ­ ing themselves or blaming others may be present in all five types. Resentment is typical for a victim about to turn into a prosecutor. These five types of neurotic reactions also apply to pseudo-obsessors and to some extent to the other negative transformers. Thus there are in us 5 x 5 = 25 possible types of negative transformers, 25 ways to convert our energy into negative energy, to obstruct or distort our normal experience and healthy development. Each has its own turn-on switches by association at the time of their emergence. We deal with all human transformers by personification. We deal with the others: holes, inserts and mental images, primarily with aura exploration. Aura exploration is, just as personification, also an induction technique and a cathartic technique. It is a way to detect and treat charges. As induction, it combines the imaginative and the somatic bridge. Aura exploration is a method that I have developed myself. I have never had to change it. T: Seek a place where you feel at home. The easiest is your own bedroom. You see yourself lying there as you feel lying here. You are at home alone. It's the end o f a beautiful summer's day. You see twilight. Slowly the night falls, and you lie relaxed on the couch or on the bed, just like you're lying down now. If you see that, you say 'yes.' You're lying down in your own room. The darkness deepens until you can hardly see anything. If you can see this, say 'yes.' Now you fall asleep. You fall asleep and the next thing you notice is that you are in the room outside your own body, as if you are floating near the ceiling. If you look down you see the vague outline o f your own body. I f you can see that, you say 'yes.' You come a bit closer and as you get closer, you see a luminosity emerging around your sleeping body. If you can see that, say what color it is. Focus on that sleeping body. You descend till you feel standing next to your sleeping body, like a visiting doctor or nurse looking at a patient. C: Yellowish. (For example.) T: Pleasant or unpleasant yellowish? C: Not altogether pleasant. T: Your attention is drawn to the part o f your body where that yellowish light is the least pleasant. Where is this? (If the issue is a physical problem, you let the client's attention be drawn to that body part.) C: At my head, especially at my temples. T: Now you're going to see something in the yellowish light that has to do with . . . (the issue being worked on). You stand there like an attentive doctor or nurse. What becomes visible in that light?

I call it aura-exploration because the shine noticed in the beginning is a kind of aura - without the pretension that we are perceiving a transcendental body. People often see things on chakra spots, but never really something that looks like a chakra. In the induction I never speak of an aura, but of a shine, a glimmer or a light. I suspect that it has something to do with the etheric body*, but that's

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not important here. People see what they see. The light is an effective, conducive imagination. Usu­ ally they see the shine around the body has a light, pleasant color and problems reveal themselves as dark spots or simply the absence of light. Stay within their experience. Never tell clients what colors they are going to see, ask them. Ask whether these colors are light or dark, strong or weak, pleasant or unpleasant. Is the color unpleas­ ant, ask what is unpleasant about it, like flickering, false, shrill, dull, and so on. Then ask where around the body that unpleasant light is the strongest. There lies the problem. If the color is pleas­ ant, then tell them to look where that color is weakest, or where there's a different color, or some­ thing dark. What the client sees, can be anything: a dark spot, a hole, a wound or injury, a diverging color, a symbol, a thing, a piece of stone or metal, a person, an animal or a figure. The standard questions are similar to those with personifications. Does it belong to you? Should it stay there? When did it come to you? How did it come to you? Why has it come to you? How do you feel about it? Sometimes the client, by answering these questions - one by one, of course - goes automatically into regression. Otherwise ask about the corresponding emotion and then induce the regression. Go back to the time and place when this came to you, and you felt this way. If clients during the introduction don't see the room getting dark, there is usually some unresolved fear. The situation must remain under control. If the experience remains vague and unsettled, then switch to personification. Let whatever it is which makes the client tense, enter the room. If the emerging charges are too strong, or if they can't detach themselves from their body, then switch to normal regression. If they see no shine around their body, there's typically a major depression caused by an obsessor, a pseudo-obsessor or an undiscovered illness. Let the room become brighter, while they remain outside their body and then let them look again at their body. If people now do see some radiance, but nothing special in it, then we have not focused properly. What was the reason for the explora­ tion? Not: Try if you see anything, but: Now you will see something that has to do with ... If there's something in the body that seems dirty or dangerous, especially if clients see a pest or parasite, I let them visualize that there is a silvery white light em anating from their hands. At the right hand (if they are right-handed) that light turns into a silvery white, metallic glove that pro­ tects the hand. On the other hand the same light turns into a laser beam with which they can shine into a hole, clean tissues, loosen something that's stuck, and eject anything that doesn't be­ long to the body. If the m anipulation of the light beam turns out to be more important than the use of the gloved hand, allow the laser beam to come out of the dom inant hand. Isolate everything that seems dangerous, with silvery white light, grab it with the gloved hand and place it in a container of glass or transparent plastic. If it is harmless, then just leave it laying on a table or put it on the ground. With a dark spot ascertain what kind of dark it is: a dark object, dark mass, dark liquid, dark smoke or a dark hole? Instruct hazy, smoky, vague, wispy forms to take on their original shape; if neces­ sary, dry it or compact it with the silvery light till it assumes a recognizable form that we can deal with. Or ask who or what produced that mass, liquid, or smoke. A dark hole indicates a loss or a trauma. Let clients shine into the hole with the silvery light. Is there something in it, let them take it out. That in itself can be liberating already. If the hole is empty, yet clients see the bottom, we suggest them to see whatever once belonged there, what once has been there. Somewhere, wherever it is, there's something that belongs there. Once it has appeared, let it be absorbed and fill the hole, and anchor it emotionally, visually and somatically. Do a short

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regression to the time and place where the client once lost it. Then suggest, Imagine that opposite the hole there's something else that doesn't belong to you, and remove this. If the hole is bottomless, then let clients make themselves very small and descend in it. If they don't dare to do this, then let them take the silvery white light with them, to illuminate their de­ scent. If the light disappears, then lend them a little, 'sm art' silvery star. The darker it gets, the stronger this light will glow. W hen the bottom is finally reached, there appears to be the original traumatic situation. We handle this as a regular regression, and let them check the hole afterwards. Often, the hole has dis­ appeared by itself. Let clients remove and separately lay or put down objects such as stones, weapons or shards. If something is stuck, then first surround and loosen it with silvery light, until a thin layer of intense silvery light surrounds it. Let clients flush the mass with the light-beam or take out chunks of it with the silvery white gloved hand. Ask when it seems valuable, what should be done with it. Clean, absorb, bury, burn, wash away? If this is still unclear, then put it temporarily in a large tin. Liquids the same: let it flow in a bucket and later in a drain or a sewer. Let blood never run away! Let it return to and be absorbed by the person or animal from whom that blood came. Is there emerges a hand, a weapon or a tool: Whose is it? Who holds it? See the hand that holds it. From the hand to the arm, shoulder, the face to the eyes. Ask with other objects to whom they belonged. Where and when has this charge or thing entered you? What does this mean to you? A word or phrase comes to your mind. Sometimes the extracted presences or objects turn out to be layered. A book turns out to be the Bible. From it emerges the minister who treated you so nasty. From the minister comes a bear. From the bear comes your father. Your father was overwhelming for you and forced you to keep attend­ ing the Sunday school led by that nasty minister. From the mouth of your father slides a snake. If you protested, his sarcastic words paralyzed you. As long as an open wound is not yet clean and serene, let it first be cleaned and closed. Cleanse and heal it with milky silvery white light, sometimes with a tinge of pink or yellow to make it more comforting. Let the hole shrink and heal itself by making circular movements above it, usually with the right hand. Aura-exploration is the most universal method, in the sense that we can detect spiritual, mental as well as physical problems with it. Regression is going back to the past, reading the traces of that past. In therapy, you work on the unprocessed charges of that past. Aura exploration visualizes and locates those charges. If you apply this method too frequently or too easily, the therapy may remain superficial by neglecting the emotions. Aura exploration is especially recommended for: • • • • •

Psychosomatic complaints that are not directly present at the start of the session and have no actual emotional charges either. Physical pain, especially localized pain, insofar the pain during the session is not so fierce that the client may have difficulty to dissociate. With cancer patients aura exploration works quite well. There is a gradual transition to the visualizations of the Simonton therapy. Hangovers that are hardly reachable by ordinary bridges. Aura exploration locates vague charges and brings them into focus. Persistent ambivalent feelings. The two sides of the feeling can then be associated with differ­ ent parts of the body, each having its own color, shape or substance. It is then an alternative to

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•

•

•

•

personifications. Personification works easier, but aura exploration often has the advantage that people stay closer to themselves, and involve themselves less with the other. Recursive mental charges that block normal regression. We put the whole situation on hold, let everything grow dark until a radiance appears around the client's own body and around the body of the opponent. Then we let the client see what is in that light, what happens mentally and emotionally in it. This is instant clairvoyance by the client, and that is far bet­ ter than constant clairvoyance by the therapist. During a regression, we can always switch to aura exploration to deal with an emotion and a bodily feeling. The somatic we use for the aura exploration, and the emotion to keep in touch with the experience, so we can switch back and forth between aura exploration and regression. We remove the effects of confusion, poisoning, hypnosis, shock or fainting be­ fore we continue with the regression. A regression that keeps lingering, only leads to partial relief. Someone has had a tiring life. He has gained insight into it, and much of that fatigue has gone. Only my pelvis is still stiff. Do aura exploration at the pelvis, let the client see what's the matter there and remove the sludge or hardening or whatever residue else of the past. Almost invariably, we do a short regression to find the origin experience that created the residue. Seeking out hidden or semi-dormant talents and finding out what inhibits and obscures these talents.

Ascertain at the end of the session that all dirt, poison, alien objects or parasites are indeed gone. Suggest imaginations that confirm this, for example by dropping something visibly and audibly into a depth, like a rusty piece of iron that tumbles tinkling down along a rocky slope, or a boulder that splashes into the water. Check at the end of a complicated session the series of energetic interventions from back to front, starting with what you have done last and thus working backwards until you reach the first intervention. Conclude the session with: • How does the body on the bed look now? • W hat is the atmosphere in the room? • How do you feel? If there is something left to work on, one of these three questions will bring it to the surface. Con­ firm healing, regained energy, liberation, in terms of the attractive and invigorating colors men­ tioned at the places in the body that the client has mentioned. Let these see and feel; feel and see. Later in the book, many examples will be discussed of how to choose and to combine regression, energy work and personification. Readers can verify what they physically experienced when read­ ing this section. That undoubtedly leads to pointers for yourself.

2.8 Personification of problems, causes and solutions Personification is one of the Big Three in transpersonal psychotherapy, one of the three royal roads along which the subconscious enters the conscious without forcing itself or the conscious. A high­ way many times more direct and reliable than months of dream interpretation or years of free asso­ ciation. Even faster and more direct than the waking dream or active imagination. The many applications and variations could fill a whole book. I confine myself here to the out­ lines. The methodology will be discussed in this book many times. Personification is an ideal method, at least for people with a rather healthy ego. A robot can't do anything with it, a flutterer goes in all directions. Dissociated people may get worse by it. Also for

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them personification can be a powerful technique, if used in a limited and disciplined way. This particular application is beyond the scope of this book. A client has a fear of failure and wants to get rid of it. He can't clearly feel this fear right now. The therapist chooses personification. T: Imagine that you are home alone. You want some time for quiet reflection. What's your favorite place to sit quietly? C: The couch in the living room. T: OK. Imagine that you are sitting there right now. It's the end o f a beautiful day. It starts to grow dark in the room. As soon you can see this, you say yes. C: Yes. T: Can you see the door to the room? C: If 1 turn my head a bit, yes. T: You muse over your fear o f failure, where it comes from. Now you see the door to your room opening slowly and the main cause o f your anxiety now enters the room. What is your first impression? Who or what is entering? C: A small, stocky, rather hazy figure. A small man who doesn't want to look at me.

In this example, an apparently frightened person enters the room. It is also possible that a very dominant, judgmental and condescending person enters the room who makes the client insecure. It may be a familiar person, such as a family member, a former teacher or a current boss. It may be an unknown person, it may be a symbolic figure, it may be a part of the client. There may appear an animal, an angelic or demonic shape, a dragon or another fairytale creature. There may appear a figure that is so indistinct that it is not clear whether it is an adult or a child, a man or a woman, a human or an animal. There may be a gray mist or a black cloud entering the room. Or the door opens and the doorway remains empty. Then the client must get up and go see what is behind the door. Or the door remains shut. This means that the client is not ready to con­ front the cause of the fear of failure. Or he doesn't trust the therapist. Or he doesn't trust himself. Or this method is not the correct way to go forward for this client. Some apparitions hide their face, as if they don't want to be recognized. Sometimes a baby ap­ pears, or a fetus, an embryo. A terribly mutilated lion with a terrifying expression may be almost demonic, but inside there may be a frightened child, a past life of the client, once torn apart by hor­ rific violence or devoured by a real lion, a child who has surrounded itself with this thought form. A salamander may hide a cunning priest, who once dominated the client so much that the client still feels dependent. Usually it is a past life of someone the client knows today. If an apparition is human, we can dialogue with it to find out what it is. Eventually there is usu­ ally a regression instruction to find out when this apparition - or rather that which this apparition represents - first appeared in the life of the client and how that presence triggered fear of failure. There are many subtle variations possible. We can suggest that the cause enters the room, or the source, or the main reason; or we call up the most anxious part of the client. Or we call up two fig­ ures: one representing the main cause of the fear of failure and one the main element the client needs to overcome this fear. With deep and prolonged doubts we can personify the two sides of the issue. A client often feels defiant and doesn't know how to handle that. We evoke someone or something representing the defiance. Let's assume a woman enters the room. The client associates her with the phrase 'the prostitute of Babylon.' She is rebellious, strong, proud. But she is also alone and disap­ pointed in people. She turns out to be revengeful. From how she calls herself, we may assume she started out as a form of resistance against an overly rigid biblical education. Perhaps a previous life is lurking inside her, a woman accused of witchcraft or other heresy, humiliated and executed by church authorities. Let the client see and describe the apparition concretely. A man or a woman, young or old, strong or weak, dark or light? Standard questions are:

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• • • • • •

W hat is the attitude of this figure? How are the eyes? W hat is the mood of this figure? W hat does it want? W hen did this presence come to you for the first time? Why did it come to you now?

One of the first things we want to find out is whether the apparition personifies a part of the client, a subpersonality, or that it represents an opponent or an external influence. Many subpersonalities are born from a character postulate, a firm belief about oneself, in response to a trauma. They are mobilizations. A girl of sixteen is in danger of being assaulted. Suddenly a businesslike Madame wells up in­ side her that makes the assailant slink away. At that moment, a past-life personality may have taken over. Why was that personality asleep till then? Because she was not needed before. Subpersonalities frequently arise by inner contradictory reactions to an overwhelm ing, often traum atizing situation. Som eone is afraid and angry at the same time. If the fear is stronger or if anger is a forbidden emotion, the anger will be repressed. After several of such experiences, the repressed anger may have grow so large, that the client has become afraid of his own anger. In personification a raging, frightening figure may enter the room. Especially if anger and other unwanted em otions have been repressed for religious reasons, a devilish figure may appear. Therefore, we should always find out first who or what the figure is, before we are going to help the client - and possibly the apparition. Therapy is then about understanding, soothing and inte­ grating the raging part, i.e. helping clients to deal with and wisely handle their anger. Anger m anagem ent this is called nowadays. Complete subpersonalities in Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD, now DIS), are usually split across different traumatic experiences, often with strong postulates, rarely with hangovers. A sub­ personality typically arises when we are about to succumb. The soul mobilizes a part of itself that takes over at that moment, and tends to lead a life of its own. Separated subpersonalities are more common among women. Men are more likely to have an other reaction pattern: turnoff switches, just ceasing to feel things. This also lessens the chance that they will seek therapy. Personification is the most powerful technique to disentangle doubts and ambivalences. Some people abhor something, but are fascinated by it as well. Or they love to do something, but feel guilty about it. Or they yearn for something, but feel paralyzed. Whenever clients feel divided, hesitant, ambivalent, personification is a suitable method. Keep a completely open mind who or what may enter the room, and only then try to find out what the figure represents. We accept the possibility that personifications sometimes are no part of the present personality, but past-life personalities. With addictions we use aura exploration. If this doesn't work, then let the most addicted part enter the room. Continue, if necessary, with other addicted parts. Each part will prove to have their own charges on the addiction. In this way, we deal withe problem part by part, rather than address­ ing it as a single, large lump. We can continue with the part that resists most strongly the addiction, the part that is most afraid of addiction, and maybe even with a part that doesn't care about the addiction. Eventually there may be a part that is able and willing to help and solve the addiction. People repress parts which they are ashamed of. Parts that can't handle a situation, pull them­ selves back on their own accord. Or active parts withdraw themselves because the weaker parts have already given up. Such repressed or withdrawn parts remain secretly present.

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Quite frequently past lives appear, usually as carriers of the problem, sometimes as carriers of the solu­ tion. The problem carriers must be healed, the solution carriers must be integrated. Often past lives that are healed after regression and catharsis, are integrated as well. More on integrating past lives later. Occasionally, more or less human figures appear with whom we are unable to communicate. All they want, is to grow bigger or more powerful. And then? Becoming even bigger or even more powerful. These are usually thought forms that the client has once created, often as compensation fantasies. This happens with people who have a potentially powerful mind, but feel weak and powerless in their current life situation. These thought forms grow at the expense of their creator, and become parasitic. They must be deconstructed and emptied, so clients can regain their original strength of mind. Sometimes a whole group appears. If the members of the group are similar and seem to belong to­ gether, there has been an experience with the group. Clients once could have been attacked or abused by this group, or they have failed those people and still feel guilty about that. If the members are diverse and appear to have nothing to do with each other, then usually the starting point of the personification hasn't been focused enough. Or the original problem, anxiety or depression or insecurity has multiple, mutually independent causes. In both cases, we do the same. We suggest that the most important figure comes forward and the rest take a step backwards. We then can deal successively with these various presences. Therapists who seek to avoid unpleasant confrontations don't evoke the causes of problems, but go straight to the solutions. Most novice therapists want to solve problems before they are properly processed and understood. You now will see something or someone enter the room that can help you to solve the problem. Even worse: ... that can solve the problem fo r you. Why is that bad? Because the prob­ lem is not yet clear in its origins and ramifications. How did it come about? W hat's the story? What has been the client's own role and perhaps responsibility? Without exploration no realization - and no recognition. Maybe a teacher once did humiliate you before the whole class and you have consequentially become insecure. W hat preceded this? Why did the incident have so much impact on you? Maybe you were already insecure because your father had undermined your confidence much earlier. This you prefer to forget. It is easier and more comfortable to blame it all on the teacher. Apparent helpers may appear on the scene, especially when the therapist had suggested that a resource would enter: wise men, loving women (occasionally loving men or wise women) or an­ gelic light forms. These lead to wonderful sessions where clients leave happily and feeling reborn, and therapists look back deeply satisfied. Unfortunately, the actual problems remain unresolved. The sure path to the light leads across the darkness. Instead of helping the client to heal and become strong and complete, the therapist teaches clients to seek solutions (and hence also problems) out­ side of themselves, instead of within themselves. This is unprofessional and bad psychotherapy, but unfortunately a widespread practice in alternative and spiritual circles. If such helpers appear unasked, on their own accord, the probability that they are sane and reliable is somewhat bigger, but still far from certain. Sometimes deceased parents or other family members appear, who try to take care of the adult client as if he or she were still a child. Much helpfulness turns out to be selfishness, and even well-intentioned helpfulness may confirm the client's depend­ ency. There are simple suggestions to quickly find out what we see before us. In my experience, there is always help if we really need it. That's rare. If we rarely or never ask for it, it will only appear when it is really necessary. Strange as it may sound, we always treat any apparition with respect, even if it is dark or difficult or aggressive - certainly in the beginning - and we always start cautiously to any positive figure. As

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therapists we're like detectives, not to cross-examine everything and everyone, but to help the client get to uncover and understand the full story. The truth sets us free. As long as we realize that every truth is a partial truth. Each story is a chapter in a larger story. Stories are holons: parts of a larger hologram. If your father has undermined your self-confidence and you now understand where and when and how and why that happened, then you can always wonder how and why you became his child. More often than not there's another story behind this. Should we always go back to Adam and Eve? No, we go as far back as clients need to solve their problems. We may discover that we were born to this father because he had once belittled us in a previous life and that we must learn to win back our self-confidence despite his presence and influence. Maybe behind this, we have had an even earlier life in which we belittled or humiliated whole groups ourselves, and needed to learn empathy with vulnerable people. Behind this lies a story that explains why we were harsh and prejudiced to begin with. And so on. We begin to approach every appearance as a real person. We ask how it feels, what it wants, what kind of relationship it has with the client. What about animals or silent figures? Then we say to the client, You now get an impression o f what it really wants, or You now get an impression o f when and where and how it came to you, or something along those lines. W hat do you do when a female client is afraid of men, and there appears a cruel, murderous sadist with eyes like burning coals? We don't need to ask what he wants. But we want it to be said openly. T: You now get an impression o f what would make him satisfied. C: That he rapes me and tears me to pieces. T: You now get an impression o f how he would feel if he would have done this.

If he is quiet afterwards, then it's about personal revenge. If he would go to the next victim and so on, and is never satisfied, then it's crazy. You now get an impression o f how he was before he was crazy and violent. And so on. In a good training course (like ours, just to name a random example) you will learn how you can handle such cases in a number of ways. Frequently a child enters the room as the cause of the problem. Usually it is the client himself or herself at the age when the problem arose. That child we must heal and eventually integrate in the current adult self. This we call Inner Child work. Sometimes we get there easily, by a regression in­ struction. Especially experiences that lie deeper, are more threatening, can better be reached and dealt with by personification. If the insecurity began when the client was very young, the experi­ ence contains childish fear and childish incomprehension, and recalling the experience brings the client back to childish fear and childish incomprehension. The client then gets bogged down and doesn't regress. Personification in this case works as a bypass, because then the frightened and con­ fused child enters the room and the client remains better anchored in the current adult self. If deceased people enter the room, the session gets some resemblance to a spiritist seance. Sometimes it seems the real presence of the deceased, other times it turns out to be a memory image of the client. The distinction between the two is probably gradual. Again, we always approach the apparition as a real person. Classic psychiatrists are afraid that we may strengthen delusions in this way. Practice shows quite the reverse: it creates clarity and eventually strengthen ego-boundaries. Personification is a methodology that plays a role in many forms in psychotherapy. In Transactional Analysis and Psychosynthesis these are often theoretical constructs such as Parent, Child and Adult.

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Or the Responsible and the Irresponsible are called up, or the Smoker and the Non-Smoker. In Voice Dialogue* and especially in Gestalt therapy* the personifications are more diverse and open-ended. In Gestalt, and even more so in family constellations, the client personifies problems and solutions or third parties personify the people (often family members) or factors in the situation of the client. Particularly Gestalt and family constellations may support transpersonal regression therapy - and the other way round. In regression therapy, personification is one of the key entries, but it is also a crucial consolidation technique at the end of a regression. After each regression, we let the child or the past life enter the room and ask if it still needs anything, or if it's ready for completion. T: That man who died then, you see coming in now. C: He comes in, beaming. T: How does he react to what you just did? C: Well, he loves it. T: How does he feel that you've seen this entire history? C: Finally you woke up!

This deepens the catharsis. Let the present personality for a moment step into the past personality. How does that feel? Eventually the other way round: the former person steps into the present per­ son. There's an additional reason for this: to definitely verify whether it was a truly personal expe­ rience. It must feel right as the other steps into you, and it should also feel right as you step into the other for a short while. Thus we prevent integration of attachments. If you hesitate about this dur­ ing the regression, personification may give a definite clue. Personification, even more so than en­ ergy work, helps to distinguish between self and non-self. A combination of both methods works best of all. Just step into that figure. How does that feel? Especially in Inner Child work, we switch many times during a session between regression and personification - and energy work plays an important role in those moments. Personification works very powerfully and quickly, and durably, as long as we combine it with regression, and thus with understanding of the causes. The main challenge for the novice therapist is to learn to distinguish between self and non-self energies. Is that wolf a representation of the cli­ ent's own aggression, or is it really something wolf-like that comes from the outside or from others? As energy w ork is often beautiful at the end of the session, so is personification often moving at the end. Most people have no inkling of how close healing can be: just on the other side of the door.

2.9 Inner children If courage and wisdom are the two major virtues in life, then damages to these virtues in early childhood are main reasons for therapy. Alfred Adler called discouragement the core of every neu­ rosis. If we add to this confusion and misunderstanding, we already cover much of the misery peo­ ple may suffer from. With traumas in early childhood, we always look out for possible discourage­ ment and misunderstanding. A discouraged child no longer wants to grow big or even no longer wants to live. A child is con­ fused by confused or confusing adults. Incomprehension is a staple ingredient because, after all, small children can't grasp the typical frustrations of adults, such as money problems. And sex and power, to name a few.

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Childhood discouragement and incomprehension affect how we experience and register later trau­ mas in our teens or adult life. That's why in psychotherapy we usually encounter, eventually, child­ hood traumas. Inner child work means that the present-day adult meets the personified child of back then, just after or just before the childhood trauma. When we have repressed any childhood experience, these inner children already exist before the session. They are parts of us that are split off from the adult personality. They are dissociated parts of ourselves that have lost much of their vitality. Usually, we can talk with inner children only with difficulty, because they are stuck in incomprehension, in reluctance, and often in fear. Therefore, inner child work is a very large chapter in regression therapy, a book in itself. Even to a larger extent than other aspects of regression work, it essentially combines regression, personifica­ tion and energy work. If we regress to a childhood experience, it is often necessary to have the cli­ ent's current adult support the child and provide understanding. If we discover an inner child by personification, we must help the adult client to communicate with that child in the right way and lead that child out of its discouragement and incomprehension. If this succeeds, that's not only sat­ isfying, but also touching and energizing. Inner-child work is a mental and sometimes even bodily rejuvenation. A state of incomprehension complicates later understanding, and so leads to more misunderstand­ ing, incomprehension and bewilderment. A small child frequently doesn't understand what is hap­ pening and often draws incorrect conclusions, or internalizes harsh judgments of adults. If discour­ agement is added to the mix, the child withdraws deep into itself, and dissociates during shocking experiences. A part of the soul no longer wants to be physically present and leaves the body. The child dies a little. W hen being neglected or abused, it often thinks it must be so bad as to deserve this. Otherwise why is he or she so unloved? With sexual abuse it often ceases to understand any­ thing at all. Or it gets mixed messages: on the one hand, it experiences intimacy and tenderness, on the other hand it experiences pain and disgust. And it is told that it must never say anything about this, or else ...! Perhaps the most simple and the most serious trauma is feeling unwelcome and rejected at birth. This can damage the will to live and the lust for life well before life has truly begun. Childhood traumas may awaken undigested traumas from past lives. We call this restimulation. This can always play a role, but we must be especially mindful when the response of the child goes much deeper than the situation at first sight seems to warrant. There are thus three typical complications: • • •

The child doesn't understand what is happening. The child dissociates. A past life can wake up.

If a past life wakes up, it usually is an old wound that reopens, an old conclusion that is confirmed. Sometimes this is even why we experience something painful as a child. We have been unable to cure a wound in a previous life. We died before we could. Apparently, many psychic wounds we can heal only if we have a body. The child appears to overreact to an angry look, a cold rejection or a devastating remark. The restimulation of the older trauma is no punishment or fate, but a new opportunity to find a solu­ tion. Yet it overburdens the child that is not yet capable to deal with it. Consequently, it carries the unresolved problem with it into adult life.

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In some cases, a positive past life awakens. The child responds more mature than could be ex­ pected. That's fine, but it can cause a child to grow oldish too quickly, or it may lose confidence in adults. Sometimes, children of five or six years old have already realized that they can't rely on their parents. They may even decide to help mom and dad. It's called parentification. The world upside down. This may lead to an Atlas-complex: the feeling that you carry the world. Although the child grows stronger from the experience, it loses its joyful, playful, spontaneous, uninhibited side. Smart children frequently withdraw 'into their heads.' They become overly rational, introverted or even autistic who can hardly feel or express anything, even if they want to. In regressions into childhood traumas we thus have a complex task. Inner child work brings the current adult in contact with the child of back then. The aim is to heal the child, to integrate parts that have been locked-away or left out and to integrate the healed child into the adult - without los­ ing its youthfulness. Inner child work is a balancing act between the therapist, the adult client and the inner child. It is essential that the current adult substitutes for the parent who was absent or negatively present. As therapists we never play daddy or mommy. We help the client to do this. Often there is a silent understanding between therapist and child, while the current adult client is still busy. This is as far as therapists should go. Clients who don't take their own inner children seriously, during the session or after the ses­ sion, are not suitable for this therapy, irrespective of the reason they do this. Personally, I don't want to continue working with them. In my work, children always come first. If we integrate the forgotten, neglected or frozen child, we know and feel how we were back then. These experiences are now accessible again. If the child is integrated, we occasionally feel as a child again. Although the adult and the child would be wonderfully integrated, there are moments in our lives that the child should stay in the background, as we just need to deal with something as an adult. At other moments the adult may just stay in the background. Suggest at the end of the session, I f you feel frozen again (for example), then check where the child is and how it does feel. I f the child needs you again, be therefor it. Why do we integrate an inner child? Because it's a part of ourselves. We need to be whole, to feel fully present with our entire personality; so that we don't have an autonomous part we don't control, causing energy loss and a standing invitation for obsessive energies. If you let yourself remain fragmented, you mistreat yourself. If you let your client stay in a fragmented state, you should choose another profession. The four key questions that we often ask in inner child work are: 1.

W hat has been the conclusion of the child? During or just after the traumatic situation the child consciously or unconsciously draws a conclusion. Such conclusions could be: Adults can't be trusted, I'm unimportant; I have to be quiet; I have to be nice.

2.

What did the child decide before that? What decision does it make to deal with the traumatic situa­ tion? For example: I'm small. I better hide. I'm not going to do anything. I'll always do what they say.

3.

How does the child do this? How does the child act in practice? By keeping its mouth shut, by crawling away, by pretending it's small and doesn't know, by keeping quiet, by following meekly? How has that affected the later life? Not wanting to grow up, not developing, withdrawing one­ self in work and relationships, putting oneself in the last place, having no opinion of one's own, and so on.

4.

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W hat are the basic options in Inner Child work? The first variant is simply regression: reliving the original experience in a liberating way until the catharsis. How we do this and how to get there, the following chapters will tell. If this succeeds, we personify that child, and when that child feels fully liberated, we integrate it into the adult. Of­ ten the child appears as it was just before the trauma. It is the isolated part, split off or withdrawn. The integration is done by embracing, or with very small children taking on your lap or on the arm. Typically, this gives a warm feeling in the chest or abdomen, and in this feeling that child is, so to speak, absorbed. With younger children, it is often at the abdomen, with older children usually at the chest or heart. Be as it may, follow the client in this. When the personified child that enters still feels bad, we ask what it needs. Usually it's some kind of support, acceptance, appreciation or love that was lacking back then. If the current adult can give this, that will suffice. Frequently, we must do some more regression. It appears we have not yet worked through some particular aspect of the original experience, such as anger or loneliness. If the child doesn't know what it still needs, the simplest solution is to suggest that the door opens again and that what the child still needs, now enters the room. If the incoming child remains hesitant toward the adult, we suggest that the part of the adult the child distrusts, steps out of the adult. Then we usually discover an internalization or attachment that must be removed before integrating the child. The second variant is to start with personification. The problem is, for instance, separation anxiety. The cause enters the room: a four-year-old child that felt abandoned in a hospital. Then we can do regression. If the child is too anxious or confused, or too much in shock, regression won't work that well. The child wants to forget. Then the current adult must help the child: by reliving the experi­ ence together with the child, and stay with it. Or the adult tells the child: You don't have to remember anything, I'm going to do that fo r you. If the child has experienced something horrible, the adult self can intervene and defend the child. It is crucial that the current adult does this, to avoid rewriting history. The intervention is then registered as an experience of the current adult. The time-track is not mixed up and the original ex­ perience remains unaltered. Only the blocking disappears. Also milder forms of intervention are possible: the adult as an invisible observer who remains just be­ hind the child, or whispers some encouragements to the child. If the trauma contains mostly incompre­ hension, the comments of the current adult (as a 'director's commentary') can take away the confusion. The presence of the adult at least takes away the child's loneliness during that traumatic experience. In other regressions we can restore overview by bird's-eye view, in inner child work we do it this way. If the influence of an other person has been internalized in the traumatic situation, usually the child has lost something to the other. We have to undo this energy transaction during the session. This happens best in the personification room of the current adult. In this case, the client sees the opponent entering the client's own space and energies are exchanged under the therapist's guidance. In summary, there are five different levels of Inner-Child work between the two poles: regression and personification. Thus we have seven options: 1. 2. 3.

4.

Pure regression: reliving the traumatic experience as a child. The adult is present as a silent witness during the reliving, looking over the child's shoulder. This helps if the situation for the child was too bewildering or incomprehensible. The current adult accompanies the child as supporter and mainstay of the child during the reliving. The adult can reassuringly whisper something or touch the child. The adult stands behind the child; for example laying hands on the shoulders of the child. The adult accompanies the child and intervenes. This helps particularly if the child was mo­ lested or humiliated. The adult encourages the child to do what it has always wanted to do, but at the time could not or didn't dare. Possibly, the adult does what the child had wanted to do. Often, there is repressed anger, even impotent rage.

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5.

The adult takes the child out of the situation and brings it to the personification room, leaves the child in this protected environment and returns to see and relive what the child was unable to handle back then. After that, he reports back to the child. This especially helps if part of the child's consciousness disappeared in the situation, due to shock or un­ consciousness.

6.

The adult leaves the child in the personification room and relives the situation him self or herself. The adult confronts the domineering, overwhelming people in that situation. This is necessary if the original situation involved malice or cruelty.

7.

The child enters the personification room and everything is handled there through dialogue and interaction, without going back to the original situation: pure personification.

Eight-year old Jeanette is groped by a boy next door. She tells her mother, but the latter doesn't listen and says: go wash yourself, you're dirtyl If she tries to say more, she gets a smack. Jeanette is confused. She is angry and sad, she feels dirty - by the hands and expression of the boy and by the words of her mother. She doesn't understand the sexual charge the boy brought with him. Confused, she stays in her room. She hasn't washed herself and as mother finally comes, the latter again becomes angry and reinforces the idea that she looks dirty and is naughty. In the session we let the adult self appear in the doorway of the child's room (level 4). I'm Jeannette from today; I've already grown up, I've come to help you, to get out o f here. Then the adult and child sit together on the bed. The therapist suggests the adult to ask her What have you decided at that mo­ ment? That I'm dirty - 1 don't understand this - that I'm not important, that I don't dare to be a girl. What do you do with those beliefs? Withdrawing myself, keeping my mouth shut, not wanting to put on nice dresses. How has that worked out in your later life? Let the insights come to you. No proper job, not standing up for myself. Also keeping my mouth shut in relationships, feeling unworthy, always feeling confusion. The adult must win the confidence of the child. I will not let you down, because we belong together! I'm now big, so now I can help you. It has really happened, but it's really over now, it's over. Together, the adult and the child look at what exactly happened (level 2). That gives clarity. This is a partly dissociated and partly associated reliving that won't traumatize the child further, because the current personality looks at it with adult eyes and the mature understanding of today. In this way it becomes clear what exactly happened. What did the boy actually do and say? How did she feel about that? Till today, male attention is threatening and makes her feel dirty and guilty. Here we found that the boy had bothered her before, but she was afraid and didn't dare to tell this. Together with the adult self, the child confronts the mother and the neighborhood boy (level 3). Energy exchange with the boy: threat and fear are returned to him, his words you feel good, are cleansed from her mind and returned to him. Innocence and daring to be a girl are restored. Not listening and finding her dirty, and the feeling of being not important are returned to the mother. Mother gives back self-confidence as a girl, and self-esteem and self-respect. If everything has become clear, the adult baths the child and pampers it, to be sure that she doesn't feel dirty anymore. Then the adult self embraces the inner child and integrates it into herself.

Functional and dysfunctional fam ily relationships. There are unwholesome, traumatizing families. We usually call these families dysfunctional. They give children hangovers or traumas, often both. That is no longer about traumatic incidents, but about a permanently traumatizing situation. The quick­ est way to deal with such extended periods is to ask with every problematic charge for the first time and the worst time. Dysfunctional families suppress or distort emotions, there are no positive relationships between family members; each relationship contains control or manipulation; rules are based on shame, guilt or fear. Children who grow up in dysfunctional families are not taught how to live well, they don't learn how to relate healthily with people, or how they can remain themselves among others who are also true to themselves. They are stuck in a destructive system. Often they sense this, but they don't know better. They stick to the self-destructive role they had to play since childhood.

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In dysfunctional families, children are not allowed to express their feelings. They should not cry or be angry or afraid, because Mommy can't handle all of that, or Dad becomes angry. If Mommy is always emotional and suffering, the child can never be emotionally suffering. If Daddy is the only one who may express unrestrained anger, then the child can never get angry. And so on. They have to obey judgments and rules. Dad is never satisfied with or proud of what they do. Mama thinks they dress dull and if it's not dull, it's slutty. It's never right. Don't cry, be quiet, don't make a scene all the time! You always do this; you should do this or that. This is often accompanied by physical and emotional abuse: punishment, disregard, neglect, etcetera. The result is twisted and subconscious behavior as an adult: reactive coping mechanisms, injured and withdrawn inner children. A girl of just two years old gets little attention and hugging. There are five other children. This girl has a teddy bear. She is attached to it and drags it along wherever she goes. She eats with it, sucks on its ear, chews on its foot, and takes it with her to bed; she has vomited upon it. The next day, her mother says: Give me that thing over here, it stinks. She throws it in the washing machine. That girl sees her life support disappear in the washing machine. For her, the teddy bear is alive. She feels like she's dying. That bear filled a gap inside her, comforted her. Now there's no more bear. Her mother says: Don't worry, the teddy bear will come out again in twenty minutes. You dry it on the radiator and you have it back again. But her feeling says: I'm dying, I'm dying. She panics, but Mom says: Stop crying. You are ridiculous. Go to your room. Or you're three years old and your brother is born. I have to be nice to him, otherwise mommy rejects me, but I hate that kid. At school you have to deal with the opposite sex. You're not worth to be loved. You're only wor thy, if you are perfect. When you grow up further, it turns out that you can draw well. Your fa­ ther and mother, and your teachers appreciate that. You go to art school, you become an artist. Then you have your first exhibition and the reviews are bad. You fall back into the old black hole: I'm not worth anything.

In functional families, each member is allowed to feel and express anger and sadness. There is sup­ port and understanding; things can be freely discussed and asked for; constructive relationships are formed; there is safety and protection. Children who are raised thus, play, laugh and enjoy. They learn to be responsible, to organize things, to set realistic goals. They have flexibility and spontane­ ity, have empathy and are helpful. The teenage years add to existing coping mechanisms or accentuate an already existing inner child. Because the body has grown, teens can express anger and experiment with sexuality more easily, and can take some control. Maturity brings its own traumas, frequently in relationships that trigger old dysfunctional fam­ ily patterns. Having children oneself triggers old parent messages and authority patterns. There are traumas such as the death of a child or a divorce. In short, events in adolescence and adulthood are experienced through our programming from childhood. The earlier the program, the more power­ ful the imprints on mind and body. A functional convivial relationship between adults is exclusive, prolonged and continuous: both partners invest in the relationship, the home and the family; both tolerate differences; both commu­ nicate and consult with each other, give and take, support each other; both take account of each other; both are capable of intimacy; both share experiences, build enough mutual trust to be best friends; touch, hug, kiss and hold each other; express their feelings and are sexually matched. Functional relationships are built up gradually. They not always begin with an intense, purely sexual relationship. There is no sex out of guilt or obligation. Expectations are reasonable and realis­ tic. Mature people don't let their happiness depend on finding the ideal partner, but attract some­ one on their own level of development and mind set. They are honest to each other and accept each other as they are.

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Their relationship is free from control and manipulation, they don't always have to walk on eggs in what they say or do. In positive relationships we deal with conflicts rather than avoid them. Func­ tional relationships have no cycles of pleasure and pain, disillusionment, blame and desperate ac­ tions. Mature people know how to end a relationship responsibly. People are only free in a relation­ ship if they know how to step out of it, if it's necessary. A client doesn't know what to do with himself and with the rest of his life. He pleases others, espe­ cially women. He begins the session with: I don't even know what I want. This sentence brings him to an experience when he was seven years old and staying with a favorite uncle, far away in the South. In the kitchen his uncle accuses him of something. He can't hear what, cringes. He must go to his room, and the next day he is passed to a trucker who will drop him off at his home. Along the way, the driver stops and stays away for a long time. The driver turns out to be nice, but even asks nothing and explains nothing. The boy arrives in the dark in his own city, and must walk home. His mother asks: Why on earth have you done this? He doesn't even know what he has done. We let the adult self go to the room where the seven-year-old child is sitting. The child and adult later watch together what has really happened. One by one the uncle, aunt and mother are in­ vited in the personification room. Mother is afraid of her brother and can't stand up for herself. She didn't like it at all that her son had to travel so far on his own. Aunt has her own thoughts. She doesn't agree with uncle, but she does nothing. Uncle is angry, but says nothing. He turns out to be the only man in the client's childhood, be­ cause at the age of four the client's father left the family. The children had played at the home of the parish priest. The priest called to uncle, accusing the boy of having stolen a statue and telling he must be picked up and sent home. If you don't admit to this, I have a liar at my table, said uncle to the boy. If a child has stolen a statue, he knows it. If an­ other had stolen it, he would know that too. The body and the hands of the client become restless. What did in fact happen? The priest wants to be touched by the children. He has nothing under­ neath his dress. He says: give me a hand, but his hand is under his dress. The children in this re­ gion are like their parents: submissive to church authority, so they do what he says. The child from the big city finds this weird and shows that. The honorable priest was afraid his little game would come out and invented the story of the stolen statue. Only after energy exchange with the priest a catharsis is reached. Feeling dirty appears to have had the greatest impact. Lost inno­ cence is retrieved. We ask what uncle would have done if he had known this, if he had seriously asked the boy about what happened. Then he would have stood up for me. Then he would have stood before me and protected me. Finally he is protected by the man in the family, and respected! The client lies quiet in a deep catharsis. Uncle didn't think the priest could be lying! After all of this, the child regains cheerfulness, courage, self-esteem, sexuality, pride and shares it with the adult. The client seems to grow. At the end of the session, the therapist asks him to re­ peat: I don't not know what I want. He gravely responds: That was then,but I know very well what I want! Do what I want, say what I want!

The more we experience, the more we repress. We have unlearned to cry or get angry. We keep lids on our fears, our grief, our anger. W hen we are forty years of age, we knock on the therapist's door. We have no longer control over our lives. To heal these wounds, we regress back to the original painful events and the emotional re­ sponses to these events. Guide your clients inward, to their own feelings. Let them cry the tears they wanted to shed, feel the feelings they were not allowed feel. Their survival mechanisms made them look outside over and over again. Will they hurt me? Am 1 dying? If the client doesn't find the trauma yet, respect that. Work with an older inner child or with a past life, until the burden lessens and the situation is safer. The vulnerable parts begin to trust there is someone who takes care of them.

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Do they work silently, then just stay with them. If you keep asking what is happening, you may dis­ tract them. Possibly they can't or won't describe what is happening, but they feel it. As long as clients sob, as long as there is movement, as long as they occasionally sigh, something is happening. After­ wards, they can tell about it. Simply say: Let me know when you're ready, and then we can continue. Don't do this work if you have not personally experienced it. You can't help your clients if you are not calm and mature and empathetic yourself. You can't if you have not integrated your own inner children. If you ever want to work with children, make sure you first master inner child work. See and feel the inner children inside adults; see and feel the inner adults in children. See and feel your own inner children.

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CHAPTER 3. DEALING WITH CLIENTS; EXPLORATIONS

If a client calls for the first time, you wonder what kind of person he or she is. The client wonders the same thing about you. If the client enters your practice for the first time, you ask yourself the same question again. And the client as well. Everything starts with the intake. Who is this client and what does he or she want? Is regression suitable for this client? Am I suitable for this client? Can I build a relationship of trust with this client? The challenge is to answer these questions critically and at the same time to build up that relationship of trust - if possible. It begins with how we present ourselves: on the internet, in a brochure, in emails or phone calls, during the first encounter. It begins with how clients present themselves. It goes on by determining whether the client is suitable for us and our therapy, and whether we are suitable for the client. It is up to the client to determine that, but we ourselves do this as well. W hat do we want to know and how we do find this out? 3.1 Presentation; intake W hether a client is suitable for regression therapy and for us, already shows during presentation and intake, and during the beginning of the initial session. First we check whether the client seems suitable. The general counter-indications already have been reviewed in the first chapter. W hat are the counter-indications for ourselves? If a client evokes personal reactions in ourselves from the very start, ranging from annoyance and disgust to wishing to prove ourselves to a re­ nowned client or finding the client very attractive. I ask before the first session four questions: 1. What problem does the client want to solve? 2. How long has the client already suffered from this problem? 3. What has the client already tried to do about it? What did these attempts yield, if anything? 4. How did the client find me? That last question gives us feedback about our marketing, although sometimes prospective clients are persuaded by others to contact us. These questions also make it clear to the prospective client that I am not in the endless-therapy business, but work practical and focused. Be careful with clients who tell you straight away that they only want you as their therapist, that you are their last chance, or are singing your praises before anything has been done. Novice therapists who still need to prove themselves, easily fall into this trap, and get stuck in a chess game with such a client. People who want to remain patients like to play games. I don't know if you can heal me, but 1 want to try. Do you think I am a suitable case fo r treatment? If you confirm that, you make the therapy your problem instead of their problem. What we need to know before we start? Only the subject and purpose of the first session. More im­ portant is building mutual trust and picking up signals that promise to be suitable starting points for therapy. We also need some practical information, such as the client's address, telephone number and email address. It is customary to keep an extensive intake about the client's history and back­ ground. Many therapists spend their entire first session on intake. I cannot emphasize enough not to do this. When we allow clients to indulge in stories about their childhood and their current family circumstances, and even write this down, we create distance.

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Many professionals increase this distance by sitting behind a desk and visibly compiling a file on the client. Making yourself look important is one thing, building trust is entirely different. The simplest intake is asking clients to tell what the problem is they want to get rid of. Why is the problem a problem? W hat goes practically wrong in their work or life? If the problem is fear of fly­ ing, why is that a problem? Maybe someone can't make promotion, maybe it burdens a marriage because the spouses can never go together on holiday. Perhaps people simply feel they shouldn't have this problem. It may turn out that the real problem is not a fear of flying, but feeling like a misfit, or not living up to your own expectations. So where do your expectations come from? We can even suggest a choice: What would you rather resolve: having a fear o f flying, or feeling like a misfit? Diagnosis is the product of therapy, not the other way round. Only during the session it be­ comes clear how the problem arose and how it has grown. Therefore we never know in advance what information is useful and what isn't. This becomes evident only during the session, possibly supported by informative questions in between, such as: is your mother still alive? Or: Since when have you been living on your own? What is always wise to ask and say? • Name, address, phone number, email-address. • Previous therapy? Previous experience with regression? • Cost, payment method, possible compensations. • Possible data for statistical analysis: age, occupation, education; references by other doctors and therapists? • Use of medicine, alcohol or drugs. • Heart problems, epilepsy, neurological disorders? • Pregnancy? (We don't want the fetus to get affected by a traumatic regression.) The simplest way to complete the intake interview: Is there anything else that is important fo r me to know before we start? If such a bare intake makes you uneasy, ask about the composition of the family in which the client grew up and about the current family situation: partner? children? And ensure that client expecta­ tions are realistic: • Remove ambiguities and misunderstandings about regression or trance or hypnosis, about the alleged necessity of belief in past lives, about the length of therapy. • Ask for the client's wishes and expectations. • Emphasize the importance of taking seriously one's own first impressions, however vague or strange they may seem at first, and tell about them. The critical mind doesn't go blank, rather not, but it needs to stay on the back seat. • Indicate you will discuss the experience afterwards, and that there might be a follow-up. By listening and asking, we build a trust relationship of trust. I call this the square o f trust because it involves more than just the confidence of the client in the therapist: • The confidence of the client in the therapist, • The self-confidence of the therapist, • The self-confidence of the client, • The confidence of the therapist in the client. Any successful session strengthens this square of trust. At the beginning of a session the selfconfidence of the therapist is most important. At the end of the session especially the selfconfidence of the client should have increased. Mutual trust is a temporary expedient. With every

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good session, confidence and cooperation will grow. If you have had a good session with someone, you have become attuned to each other and that should make the next session go smoother and more to-the-point. The first enemy of trust is an energy leak. Don't take clients who in one way or another drain you. That affects your self-confidence and reduces your trust in them. That depends not only on the client, but also on yourself. Anyway, it hinders good work. Also avoid clients that make you close down a part of yourself. If clients are physically repellent - or attractive - refer them to a colleague. Inexperienced therapists shouldn't demand too much on their self-confidence, and shouldn't take very difficult or challenging clients, nor very insecure clients. There are plenty of good people who have a strange and ill-understood problem, who are willing and able to explore it and resolve it, if only they would know how. Those are ideal clients to begin with. Every beginning is simple. Start simple. Start with where you are, how you feel, what you have confidence in. A trustful relationship is the womb of the session. Don't overanalyze whether you can handle a specific situation, note how you feel! If you feel nervous or tense with a possible client, don't do it or express your doubts. Sometimes, hesitations recede after they have been expressed. Sometimes they increase. Don't force anything. Building trust starts with a professional presentation: not amicable, not unkempt, not clumsy. Of course you need self-confidence - and you must trust your client. You observe and you listen well. You're interested, but you're not nosy. You can put a shy, insecure, or troubled clients at ease. You are not easily rattled. The rest is mainly a matter of aligning with the client. You don't talk academically with a su­ permarket cashier, you don't talk slang with someone from an elite neighborhood. You don't make sexist remarks to an emancipated woman - neither to others. Alignment is not just a matter of lan­ guage, but also subtle adjustment to the appearance and behavior of a client. Being able to switch between being more direct or more indirect, being more formal or more casual. All this without overdoing it, and becoming like a chameleon. If a tension arises, don't attack and don't defend. Acknowledge and correct mistakes. You don't need to be liked as a person, as long as you are respected and trusted as a therapist. Mutual trust is a temporary expedient. The best start for a session is the mutual trust gained through the preceding session. Initially it is based on hearsay or on first impressions, but not yet on having worked together. So the first session is the most sensitive. Then trust and respect can only depend on hearsay and on first impressions. With every good session mutual trust and attuning grow. Essential for the confidence of the therapist in the client is the belief of the therapist that the client is self-regulating. That is to say that nothing comes up that the client cannot handle. This is not true for psychotic people. The notion that a regression is emotionally a risky undertaking, that may overwhelm the client is generally unfounded. People don't go in regression if they sense they can't handle it. Only people without ego boundaries don't have such an inbuilt safety mechanism. Has the client got enough confidence in you? Must you do or say something to reinforce that trust? Do you have enough self-confidence? Some clients unwillingly undermine your selfconfidence. Someone enters your practice - uncannily resembling your mother. If you still have is­ sues with your mother, you are handicapped in working with that client. Or you need the intake to break this association. For example, she says things your mother would never have said. Also the trust that you put in the client, plays a role. If you, rightly or not, doubt if the client truly wants to solve the issue, this may handicap the session. Other people tire you. They have

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hardly arrived, and you already feel your energy starting to drain away. Or someone scares you. Another excites you. Even if that is mutual, don't do a session, at least not a therapy session - and don't accept payment for it. Ron Hubbard first checked the perception, the memory and imagination of the client. He asked questions like: What were we talking about in the beginning o f our conversation? And What was the pic­ ture on the book that I just showed you? The client remembers, has forgotten, or exaggerates. Hubbard spoke of 'lie factories' that produce false and worthless material during sessions. In­ deed, people can chatter away - after all, even some therapists do. But to presume this, reflects dis­ trust of the therapist in the client or lack of self-confidence of the therapist. Don't start a therapy with a cross-examination. If you like doing that, become a detective or a lawyer, but stay out of the treatment room. Building trust is necessary for each counselor, coach or psychotherapist. What is specifically needed for regression? First, recognizing emerging charges during the intake: apparently charged body sensations (somatics) and apparently charged words and phrases (postulates). Second, having an open mind. Not deeming anything strange, accepting unusual experiences and comments. Not getting stuck on preconceived ideas. Third, not being afraid of shocking and chaotic, even horrifying experiences. Being robust enough to stomach it, and bold enough not to let the client escape into vague and beautiful stories. Recognizing and understanding and accepting the pretexts and circumventions of clients, but not going along with these. Novices in past-life regression therapy (PLR) are baffled when they witness for the first time people plunging into a full and detailed past life within a minute. They associate leaving a room with breaking down the wall, rather than just turning the doorknob. If we go looking for doorknobs, we might find a whole wall full of those. Which doorknob be­ longs to the door of the room where we need to be? Don't worry, the client knows which, with the surety of a sleepwalker. T: What do you want to talk about? C: 1 don't know exactly. . . I grew up as a girl in Indonesia. I remember one time I've been to the dentist. Well, that was a bloodbath ... (This she repeats a little later, unsolicited.) T: Close your eyes. Go back to the place and time when you experienced a bloodbath for the first time. The client contorted her face, shook with her arms and legs and immediately found herself in a previous life. Here I used that one heavy word 'bloodbath' as a verbal bridge. It turned out there was another massacre in another life, which provoked a second regression.

People are essentially self-healing, but they often need a catalyst. We don't do the intake to build a case file, but to connect with the client and establish trust. The secret of effective therapy is to be a conscious sleepwalker. If you don't believe this, read the study of Winafred Lucas (1989): it appears that in effective regressive sessions, beta brainwaves (alertness) and delta brainwaves (deep sleep) occur simultaneously, in both the therapist and the client. Catharsis and peace of mind can only come from catharsis and peace of mind. At the outset there already is a diluted catharsis and peace of mind: the square of trust. Keep an intake short. If it is necessary to bring the client into the here and now, then do it. If the in­ take anchors the client in the there-and-then, shame on you! Lengthy stories are usually an escape, for the client or for the therapist. W hat really matters is the contract. What do you want to work on? O.K., say when you're ready for it. Begin. The straight and simple start in the here-and-now, con­

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tains as an oracle the actual problem and even the actual solution. In this respect, the session is about making the implicit explicit, to unlock what was locked up, to elaborate and clarify what is knotted and dark, to complete the incomplete. How I start and finish a therapy has everything to do with being present in the here-and-now. I use whatever comes up at that moment. That's what's it all about, not case files or long, ritual weepies. The client knows his own story already, and I am not interested. Not yet. If clients are ab­ sorbed in their stories, they are no longer in the here-and-now, but in their story. But what do they want now? What do they feel now in their body? If we as therapists are mentally elsewhere in the beginning of a session - with another client, a bill, our holiday, a neighbor, or the situation in the Middle East - then the intake helps us to come back to the here-and-now. Once we're there, further talk is unnecessary. How to close the contract, we'll discuss later. It involves questions like: What do you come for? What do you want to work on? What do you want to accomplish? I f you could do three wishes about yourself what would you wish for? Further possible questions before we begin the session: How do you feel right now? Do you want to know something else? Do you need anything before we start? In summary, the first function of the intake is establishing rapport, mutual attuning and trust. The second function is to pick up signals: charged phrases and somatics that can be used as a bridge into the regression. The third function is define the contract, determining the purpose and entry point. The fourth function is to bring clients in the here-and-now and take them out of the there-andthen. Concentrate on the contract and take an actual entry point: phrases that clients have just used; bod­ ily sensations that they brought in or that arise when the clients talk about their problem. Often both at the same time. Again: keep it simple!

3.2 Professionalism What do you need to be a successful therapist? First, having some talent for it. Anyone can learn to play the piano, but not everyone becomes so good that it is bearable to listen to, let alone that peo­ ple are willing to pay for listening. Furthermore you need to be well-trained; to be able to properly advertise yourself; to professionally deal with your clients; to have some business acumen; to be wise. And to have some luck. How about your wisdom? In part this is a question of character, in part this is a question of un­ derstanding people and understanding yourself, hopefully the fruit of your education and training and practical experience. It boils down to knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, and know­ ing what problems, which methods and which clients suit and don't suit you. So to knowing your strengths and your limits. A good training program stimulates you to find these, and to find your own specialty in the field, but ultimately all that depends on yourself. And luck? The ancient Romans said: The Lady Fortune favors the bold. Provided of course that they are not too unwise. Positive thinking helps, although there is much unfounded optimism on this. In any case, negative thinking doesn't help. People of goodwill, but without a free, independent mind, will wear themselves out, because they feed others at the expense of themselves. W hat about your professional and your business qualities? Therapists are rarely businesslike and businesslike people are rarely therapeutic. Business acumen cannot be learnt in a few days, but there are certainly do's and don’ts to avoid pitfalls. In this book, this subject w on't be discussed. Nowadays, there are swarms of coaches and consultants who can teach you that.

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What does professionalism further amount to? Being customer-oriented, but not too much. Customer-oriented means doing what a customer wants and needs. Professionalism means doing this responsibly, within the framework of what is sensible, ethical and correct. We don't go along with everything. Professionalism is nowadays often just a fancy word for being competent, but in fact it means that you have a code of conduct. That you don't do just anything the customer wants. A medical doctor prescribes no medication to a patient because she wants the same drugs as her neighbor who also had abdominal pain. He can take her abdominal pain seriously and diagnose it, but does not indiscriminately prescribe the same medication simply because the patient wants that medication. He remains within the boundaries of what is professionally responsible. In therapy pro­ fessionalism has to do with the sessions, but also to what happens before the session, to the intake, and to what happens after the session. We can see professionalism in the context of the tension between leading and following. That ten­ sion especially is true for the session, but it applies before and after the session. As a professional you lead. You know how to do an induction, you define a contract, you lead the way, you lead in deciding what to skip and what to elaborate. On the other hand, as a professional you follow. All the time you respond to where the client is. For most people following is more difficult than lead­ ing, but leading all the time is not good. The better you follow, the better you lead - and the other way round. If you put the client on the right track, it will be easy to follow the client. Professionals know their limitations without feeling insecure. If you're a perfectionist, don't work with other people. A client who's a perfectionist, is a handful as well. I distinguish five aspects of the interplay between being professional and being client-centered: 1.

During the intake, we may find that this client with this complaint needs something else outside regression therapy, e.g. see a physiotherapist. Maybe after physiotherapy, the client will be ready for a regression. Just like someone may be ready for physiotherapy after psy­ chotherapy. (professionalism)

2.

Defining the contract is primarily following the custom er's wishes (customer-orientation).

3.

Leading during the session. Once you have a contract, you decide which road to take (pro­ fessionalism).

4.

Following during the session. On this road, the client comes up with all kinds of things and we follow these (customer-orientation).

5.

By following the client, we sometimes seem to get lost, so we refer back to the contract. Oc­ casionally we redefine the contract (professionalism).

Quite some clients can lead themselves. That's the best thing you can have as a therapist: you just need to deepen, to stay connected, to support whatever is happening. It goes wonderful, clients come to a catharsis and now understand everything and a burden has fallen away from them. You fall sobbing into each other's arms at the end of the session. (I might explain later that this last be­ havior is not really professional.) At the other hand, the client may run away with the session, going into all kinds of directions except the right one. Then the therapist has lost control and may just desperately try to keep up with the client. If we wonder if the customer is evading or projecting or fantasizing, it is our job to find out. A regression therapist is a detective, of course in the service of the client, but it is also serving the cli­ ent to verify whether the client is still on track. Often we don't know for sure at the start whether the unfolding story is true, but we continue and test until we know. Leading means keeping the client stick to the contract, not running around without direction, without a purpose.

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Why are leading and following both essential? Because we're dealing with often emotional, some­ times spiritual, but always very personal matters close to people's hearts, touching their deepest convictions. Deep matters surface during our sessions. We must handle these with care. Even in counseling we are not going to automatically accept everything that clients say, but ask dip­ lomatically how they got doubtful information or arrived at a doubtful conclusion. According to my information this is not true, hut how did you get your information? Sometimes people are dishonest. Sometimes the confrontation shows there is no square of trust. We can't help everyone. People may not be ready for us. Perhaps we are not ready to help them. We must be able to trust the client. I once conducted a survey among students who were about to graduate, to find out which aspects of dealing with clients they found difficult. Eight problems they mentioned. We already discussed half of these. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

What are counter-indications during the intake, in the first session, and occasionally after the first session? W hen and how do we refer to other professionals - or to other professions? How do we respond to requests for information from family members, physicians, psy­ chologists, social workers or colleagues? How do we respond to clients who behave dependency? How do we ensure that we will not get exhausted by a client? W hat is the right balance between involvement and detachment? How to respond to clients who come to see the therapeutic relationship as a personal one (transference)? What do we do when our own emotions like anxiety, annoyance, pity, disgust, attraction, pride, vanity, hubris get involved (countertransference)?

How do we respond to requests for information from family members, physicians, psychologists, social workers or colleagues? We never divulge the content of the sessions, nor the content of con­ versation before and after the sessions. At most you can give a general recommendation based on your work with clients. If they agree to that. The only exception is if clients may get violent, aggressive or otherwise dangerous to themselves or others. Confidentiality for professional psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists is much less absolute than is commonly assumed. The fourth and fifth items are about setting limits, boundaries. Boundaries are essential in ther­ apy. It begins with respecting the boundaries of the client. Furthermore, we don't impose beliefs or practices on our clients; we respect their beliefs; at most we let them see when these beliefs could be related to their problems. We don't make clients dependent; we value their own responsibility and autonomy; we stimulate them to find their own answers. We're also not going to passively follow clients who are behaving dependently. Clients will quickly sense this. Unfortunately, they may like that. Or we feel exhausted by a client. If in the next session we can't find and close the leak, we better stop the therapy. If we cannot feel involved while the client remains aloof, or if we feel overly involved and can't keep some distance, we better end the therapy, and possibly refer the client to someone else. Boundaries before the session. Agree on the estimated duration of the session, and about the cost and method of payment. Provide a quiet place: the phone disconnected or mute, a 'don't disturb' sign on the door, and no one entering during the session. Provide a pleasant and comfortable environ­ ment where clients can sit or lie down. Always ask what clients want, instead of instructing them to sit or lie down.

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Boundaries during the session. Respect your clients. Often it has already taken courage to come to your practice. It takes even more to expose their pain and their problems. Our clients are on their own journey; we are to support them and to guide them, not to judge them. The order, speed and manner of their steps we may suggest, but not decide - or judge. It's their quest. It is an honor that we are asked to walk with them. W hen clients become extremely emotional, then simply suggest to experience everything to the end. Speak calmly, quietly and firmly. Stay with them and let them continue the experience as fully as possible. It is essential to complete powerful cathartic experiences, to release all repressed emo­ tions and feelings. If you haven't processed your own fears, grief, anger, despair or loneliness, you may get rattled and unable to properly guide your client. Do your own work! If you are nevertheless shocked, ground yourself and stay in your center, breathe slowly and deeply, stretch your back and put your feet on the floor. We don't abort a session simply because we don't know what to do. We keep talk­ ing and working through the block or difficulty at hand. Stay centered and help your client to relive the experiences, to heal and to let go. Impressions can be so frightening or threatening, that clients want to stop the session. Encour­ age them to complete the experience, but don't force it. Never abort a reliving in the midst of in­ tense feelings. Let them view the situation from above, if necessary. If there is no other way, suggest them to view it on a screen or monitor. Or suggest that they view it first without feelings and then work through the situation one charge at a time. At times it helps to touch the client. Would it help if 1 touch your hand? Or: Is it okay if I touch your shoulder? Never touch the client without having obtained permission first! If someone is not grounded and doesn't come fully back into the body, we may ask: Can I put my hands on your feet? Avoid sexually suggestive gestures and expressions! Never evaluate for the other and don't fill in the blanks for people about what they should think or feel. Avoid compelling instructions like: I want you to ... or Tell me .... In general: don't impose your energy, will or control on the client. Boundaries at the end o f a session. If the time runs out or if people get tired and we cannot finish what we have been doing, then we may conclude the session provisionally, by parking the unfinished business, leaving an inner child or another subpersonality at a visualized safe and pleasant place. Or leaving unpleasant things in closed boxes or something. Try to minimize this. With very anxious and unsettled people and with psychiatric patients 'parking' won't work at all. We cannot work with clients who don't take their inner images seriously. Neither should we regress people who cannot control their inner images. Disconnect the energy link between you and your clients when they come back into the here and now. Sit back and take slow deep breaths. Sometimes your clients want to tell you all about their experience, about the connections with the present life and what they all feel, but the time is up. Or people come at the last minute with a new idea, a new pain or another problem. Mostly because they don't want to let go of you. Be friendly, but firm. Tell them to allow themselves some time to perpetuate the process after the ses­ sion. Recognize the pain, complaint or idea and tell them to stay with it until the next session. Tell them to write down what they just have told you, so that you both remember this at the next ses­ sion. Suggest the client to take a walk or make a cup of tea, so that the process can percolate a bit longer. Suggest that they can write down everything else that comes to mind. Suggest that they can tell more about this next time, if they want to. Usually they don't. There is a therapeutic concept called touchpoint: the right distance between therapist and client. Not too close, not too far away, the optimal distance. What is optimal, changes all the time. I often use a chair with wheels. At the end of the session I'm wheeling backwards.

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Sometimes we get close during the session to anchor physically, but especially with new clients or female clients (in the case of a male therapist) don't be too close. Mentally, the right distance clause counts too. The proper distance is bing close at the maximum distance. If you're close, if you touch the client, do this with sufficient inner distance. We want to show commitment, but also to respect the client's space. Everything depends on our words and attitude. Keep, with all your empathy and friendliness, the right distance. During one session that's easy, during an entire therapy that's harder. If you see each other a few times, this inevitably creates some bond. The major problems of classical psychoanalysis, transference and countertransference, we know much less, because we work so much shorter. Touchpoint is the constantly changing optimum distance between two parties. By being in touch with yourself you avoid to project and manipulate. By finding touchpoint between you and an­ other, you avoid becoming rigid to stay in control. The more you are aware of your own controllers, the places in your body where you store emotions and tensions, and why you use them, the more you can keep moving, feeling safe without becoming rigid. Then you can watch and contact the client freely without being threatening. This also prevents you from getting enmeshed in the feel­ ings of the client. Controllers are mainly the breathing, and further the eyes, voice, mouth, knees, ankles, and other joints. If we consciously release a controller, we usually compensate this somewhere else in our body. Locate that other pole and release that one as well. Locate the following compensation. Finally we come to our deeper fears and the adjustments that keep these fears bearable: neuroses, survival mechanisms, character postulates. These adjustments lessen our flexibility and responsive­ ness. What don't you do? Which responses you don't allow yourself? Any tension we feel, is a re­ sponse to something that we should do, what we ought to do, or what other people expect us to do. Where we are tense, we are vulnerable, because we are less in contact with this body part. W hat do you lose if you lose your balance? How do you become susceptible to manipulation? How do you manage? W hat do you switch off from yourself? Can you handle your own feelings? If not, what's the price? Look at w hat's not moving, what's stuck. Without becoming aware of this, you keeping fighting against yourself, against others, against your client. The looser and freer you are, the better you accept and process your own emotions. And the other way round. Neurotic patterns frequently arise because we could not respond adequately at the time. We were overpowered, we were too small, we were afraid to be rejected, etc. We don't need to solve every­ thing in one go, but we need to know our problems, be aware of them, otherwise we unconsciously start to manipulate ourselves and others. As therapists we should avoid that! Never force anything. Our resistances have once been our life preservers. There's much pain in those memories. To feel and process pain we must be well-grounded; have our feet on the ground and stand tall, in contact with our own strength. If we mobilize our energy, conflicts emerge. Resistances are knots of energy. Feelings are locked away in tense muscles. We must release these and focus on positive things. We must move rather than stay frozen. So we temporarily accept the rigidity to meet our separated or repressed parts. If our body becomes alive again, the same emotional triggers have less impact on us. The more rigid we are, the safer we think we are. Whatever still threatens our stability, is then stress. We must continuously adapt to avoid such stress. Too much security gives standstill. The therapist is a guide toward this awareness, showing how to move and become responsive again. The therapist asks simple questions: What are you doing? Do you know what you're doing? Do you actu­ ally want to do that? I f not, how can you change this and start doing what you have always wanted to do? There is a position between opening-up and closing-up ourselves that is precisely right for us. At that point we are in touch. Then we are exactly who we are at that moment, given the situation however neurotic that may be.

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At intake, during sessions, in conversations, you notice things of the client. How do you handle that? Describe what you see. Do you also see it that way? If not so: So how do you see it? Is that typical fo r you, do you do that at home as well? We look for patterns. Are you satisfied with that, do you want to leave it that way? If not: Would you like to change this? If so: How else could it be done? Would you like to try this? We don't interpret too quickly. We don't use normative words. Appropriate questions and sugges­ tions in relivings are: • • • • • • • •

What do you see? How do you feel about that? What do you want to do with it? Do something with it. How do you f e e l now you've done that? What life-changing decisions have you made? Or: ...d o you wish to make? Do you still want to be there? What is the first step you can make to get moving again ?

Imagine that you as the therapist walk somewhat behind the client, with your hand on his back. If he halts, you halt. Hey, you've stopped, what's going on? This is again: This is what I see and how do you feel about it right now? Wait until the client takes you on a walk again. If it's quiet for a while: What's happening now? Clients may become reluctant. Do I have to go there again? They are not sure whether they want to do something or not. If they don't, let them say, I don't want this. Do you feel relieved now? If they do want: Are you ready to do this? Would you like to hold on to it? What's so bad about that? But also: What's so good about that? How did it save your life? What do you avoid (or overcome) by it? Do you want to let go o f it? How? What are the consequences? The first role of the therapist is to be present. Never to decide or tell the client what to do. Be there. Never say: I know what's good fo r you. People have heard that all their lives. Then the paternal­ ism of the therapist replaces that of the parents. Help them to become more aware. Encourage. Sug­ gest, without pressure or judgment. Also consider the other side of the issue. Do you need anything? Imagine that you look at all this from a distance (or in a close-up). If you're afraid of monsters, you're not present when clients meet monsters. You may want to prevent them being eaten, rather than ask how they want to deal with it. You can give suggestions. What happens if you are going to feed the monster? Indicate if the cooperation does not run smoothly, if clients don't work seriously, if they dodge questions, ignore suggestions or neglect to do their homework. Try to find a solution together, once, at most twice, but set a limit. Otherwise schluss. Transference and countertransference are a kind of emotional contamination. Another kind of rela­ tionship is projected into the client-therapist relationship. Bert Hellinger calls this in family constel­ lations 'false lighting.' Transference happens when clients start to see, for example, a parent in you, and countertransference when you tend to regard a client as your child. If you meet once a week, for years on end, while the subjects are more intimate than you gener­ ally share with others, it becomes almost impossible that anything else than a personal relationship arises. If the therapy is going well, the distance diminishes. People who begin to feel better after a few sessions, are often truly grateful. And you feel truly satisfied. Gratitude and satisfaction easily make a foggy bottom. Personal attraction or repulsion are quite natural, but as professionals we have to damp those. Sympathy does not belong in the treatment room. Empathy does, the ability to sense and under­ stand someone else's pain, sufferings and challenges. If you like somebody, you easily step out of your professional role and start to lose your edge.

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If you don't like a client, you have to get over it or just not start with the therapy. Losing edge holds for antipathy just as much as for sympathy. Thank heavens we have subpersonalities. It is possible you like someone, but inwardly say: but that's another matter, I'm now into the professional part of myself. I'm not advocating to be a cold fish. That doesn't work either. But you should keep an eye on your sentiments. Sympathy is already tricky, romance and sex are unacceptable. W hat's important in any relationship is respect, acceptance and trust. These you may feel and express towards clients, and clients may have and express these towards you. Respect, by the way, lets you keep the right dis­ tance. You must have a certain self-respect, and the client must have a certain self-respect as well. Beware particularly of dependence, admiration, gratitude, and awe. These emotions are al­ lowed only sparsely and in small doses. We are as therapists halfway between a close friend and a businesslike robot. Maybe we are intimate robots or businesslike friends. Sometimes we need to go over the session again to see when and where there's been transference and how and what about. Clients may have felt during the session they had lost control and wanted to take it back. In regression therapy, the risk of transference is both greater than usual and smaller than usual. It is larger because it is more personal and emotional than more cognitive therapies. It also tends to have 'spiritual' aspects to it, so that a therapist can become all too easily a kind of spiritual guide. The risk is also less as our therapy is usually too short to elicit personal feelings. Therapies that last only one session, are no exception. Few regression therapies take longer than five to eight ses­ sions. In practice this problem is less common than sometimes assumed. But if the therapy is going to last longer, the risk is there. An additional reason to keep it short! What if it is going to last long, for example because the client is using sessions for a longer-term process of personal and even spiritual growth? Then only discipline of the therapist will save the day. It helps if the therapist has done his own work and harbors no unfulfilled needs for intimacy, influence or valuation. Avoid transference, countertransference and projections by staying businesslike. Don't play Helper or Rescuer - or even worse: Guru or Initiate. A sense of humor helps. A satisfying private life too. Incidentally, those two things often go together. 3.3 Closing contracts, working purposefully We are not in the interminable analysis business. We want results. That has nothing to do with im­ patience. You can travel calmly in a jumbo jet across the ocean, and you can do the same tensely in a frigate. To work efficiently and effectively, we must have a concrete and specific point of departure that reflects what the client actually wants. In this section we explain how to find this starting point, how to choose among topics and how to define what we try to achieve with that topic. W hat are better objectives: negative or positive ones? Having no more fear or being self-assured? How do we know that what clients say really is at the top of their mind? How do we find the most natural, appropriate starting point? How do we stay connected and focused to this point during the session? Hitting the road without a destination is no problem if you just want to tour around. For a bike ride or a car ride we have a map or a navigator and we know where we ultimately want to be: back home. In a session, we should know where we're going to avoid just drifting around and getting lost. Sometimes, we can start a session open-ended to explore what it should be about. If we find that topic, we explicitly ask clients whether this is what they want to work on. Even if it seems ob­ vious, we still ask confirmation to be at the safe side.

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C: I'm terribly unsure about what people think of me. T: Do you want to get rid of that? C: I want to understand why. T: OK, but is that enough? Or do you want to get rid of it as well? C: Of course. T: OK, this session is thus about finding out how your uncertainty came about, and to get rid of it. C: I don't know if we get there. T: Me neither, but we will try. Agree? C: Agree.

Sometimes the issue is worse than unclear: it's arbitrarily defined by the therapist. C has told about her stepfather who hit her, her stepmother who is jealous of her, and her boyfriend who doesn't understand her. She talks about her feelings of inadequacy, not meeting expectations, not being taken seriously, her uncertainty and her growing reluctance to have sex. She's rather frustrated, she thinks. T: OK. Go back to a time when you were full of impotent rage.

This session will go absolutely nowhere, even if the therapist correctly gauged impotent rage as the prime emotion. The two major mistakes in defining contracts are assuming too quickly hat you know what it's all about, and summarizing the problems in your own words instead of the client's. A brief talk may be needed to identify and focus the problem correctly. C: 1 am often rather vague. It seems I'm no longer there. I'm in a sort o f trance. That in itself doesn't bother me, but there are times that I should stay focused. I would like to be able to switch easily from being dreamy to being alert. If I need or to respond to a request. T: But you aren't bothered by the trance itself? C: That's nice. It comes natural to me, but being alert requires effort. T: What role does that play in your life? C: It gives me peace and quiet, but to others it's chaotic. If my children need me and I'm in a dreamy mood, ten minutes later I've an angry child on my hands. T: There's an exhausting clarity and there's a pleasant haziness. Suppose that you're able to get into both states o f mind equally easily and that you could easily switch from one to the other, would that satisfy you? C: Yes. Now my right eye bothers me. Even physically, that vagueness bothers me. T: What are you feeling there now? C: Also vagueness. T: Anything else that you experience? C: Tension in my jaws. It wants to discharge itself. T: Discharge in vagueness ? C: No, in clarity. Actually, I know exactly what I want. But it differs from reality. Everything becomes hazy again.

These are two sides of C. She does not want to be here, in a world that puts demands on her. She wants to retire into her own private world. At the end of the session, those two sides must be recon­ ciled with each other. Apparently, some part of her is not truly incarnated. Not wanting to be in a body, is located in the right side of her body. When she was talking about the vagueness, her right eye widened. We have alertness, beta waves, and we have daydreaming, alpha waves. Tricky when your left brain is in alpha and your right brain in beta. I suspect that we will find a past-life trauma. Why? Because she mentions tense jaws. Being alert and tense and wanting to be away from the body are two si­ multaneous responses to heavy trauma. We all have more than one shadow from the past, more than one traumatic episode, more than one character issue. So the question is: what do we take first? Fortunately there's a simple solution: you leave that to the client, right at the start of the session. You simply ask: What shall we start with? What do you want to deal with first?

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Sometimes a client hesitates. Then we take the problem that is weighing heaviest on the client's mind right now, that is the most urgent or the most troublesome in daily life. The problem that con­ tains the most energy, that has the highest charge. If the client doesn't know that either, look at which problem resonates the most when spoken out loud: the one that makes the client the most emotional or gives the strongest physical reaction. Physical reactions are generally even better indicators than emotional reactions, as these are less influenced by client deliberations. W hen dealing with multiple problems, make a shopping list and rank order the items. Which one first? Perhaps the first problem requires several sessions, perhaps we can solve two problems in the first session. Perhaps some problems turn out to be interrelated; by solving problem 1, we solve problem 2 and 5 at the same time. Maybe problem 5 then suddenly takes precedence over numbers 3 and 4. We'll see. Someone suffers from migraines and made an appointment. Along the way her thoughts circled around her father. Ask what she wants to work on right now. If she remains undecided, take the most actual one: in this case her father. Or take what gives the strongest physical reaction. Start as concrete as possible, as simple as possible. Every beginning is simple. Even if many issues come up: take one at a time! Remember that the cause you're looking for is here and now present within the client. Otherwise there w ouldn't be a problem at all. Don't search for the entry point, enter! Even a complicated and far-reaching problem is like a slowly changing or moving iceberg or moving mountain-scape below sea level. At any moment, only one top is the highest, one piece of the undigested past is the most active right now. At one point of the past comes up first, and you grab that point. Grab whatever comes up first. The most important thing in a regression is to find the right starting point. The client is like a haunted house, and we go straight for the most haunting room. Maybe the darkest, maybe the smelliest, maybe the dirtiest, maybe simple where the wailing sound is coming from. There's only one thing that will claim the most attention, even if the client tries to suppress or distort it. Look, listen, smell. As a student once said: the secret of regression therapy is the hunting instinct. If only a small peak emerges, for example simmering anger from the last few hours, you may work it to a mini-catharsis within twenty minutes. After a break, you take the next issue raising its head. After solving a problem, the configuration of remaining problems may change. We repeat the question: What do you want to work on now? after each cycle. If the client really does not know or feel which problem to tackle next, you may do an open in­ duction. For example, using personification. You see your biggest problem (or biggest handicap) now entering the room. Who or what is entering? Your first impressions. This you can also use for a client who has listed scores of issues and doesn't see head or tails in the chaos. W hat doesn't work well as a contract, is taking something a psychic or a sensitive has said as a point of departure, even if it would be true. Then the client isn't focused internally. Return to some­ one's actual situation with its concrete problems. C: Someone told me that I have done black magic in a past life. T: How do you feel about that? C: I don't know. T: Then 1 suggest we let it rest for now. What does bother you most at this moment in your life?

Once we know the subject, we only need to define the goal: what we want to achieve. There are only two possible types of goals: exploration (finding something out) or therapy (solving a prob­ lem). Therapy usually includes exploration. Most clients for regression therapy also want to under­ stand where their problem came from.

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Frightened and insecure people hesitate to commit themselves to any goal. Narcissistic people and professional clients want an interesting experience, not difficult, uncomfortable or painful stuff. They avoid therapy and prefer exploration. A good opening question is therefore: What do you want to work on? Thus, you indicate that you expect work and, worse, that you expect that they are going to do the work. Objectives can be either defined as ending an undesirable condition, or reaching a desirable one. Especially American writers want us to believe that positive statements always work better. It ain't necessarily so. What works best is what most stimulates the client. With one it is getting rid of insecurity, with another its becoming self-assured. I don't want to feel uncertain any longer. I want to feel confident. Let the client repeat both sentences several times and find which is the most charged one. In my experi­ ence, the sentence that says what someone wants to get rid of is frequently more powerful than the sentence that says what someone wants to achieve. Occasionally either works. Sometimes there is a big difference in meaning: if there is an intermediate state between the negative and the positive. No longer being unhappy, is a more modest goal than to become happy. Many clients include reservations in their goals. They want to avoid disappointment, so they qual­ ify and weaken what they want. They don't want to feel vital again, they want a little bit less tired and not feel so depressed all the time. We never know how far we get with a session, but a contract should hold no reservations or consideration of feasibility. The contract is: No more humiliation. Not: Being sometimes a little bit less humiliated, if possible. The fastest way find out what people really want, is to ask them what they would wish, if every wish could be fulfilled. I f you could make wishes about everything we've talked about so far, what would be your first wish? And your second? And your third? Wishing opens up a wider field than wanting. There is an association with fairytales. Most people thus come closer to what they really want. So what would your first wish be? When that wish is fulfilled, what is your next wish? And what's your third wish after that? How do we know if we have the right shopping list with the right wording in the right order? Be­ cause the client becomes calm and reflective, already enters in a trance, just by reading out the wish list - even if there is a certain nervousness, especially with someone without experience with this way of working. If that calm is lacking, it may be good to narrow down or to deepen the contract. What is behind the question? What is the essence of the problem? Then it's about followup questions and focusing, as we typically do during the session. For example, we ask about the feeling of a feeling. How does it feel to be inhibited? Lonely. How does it feel to be lonely? Lost. How does it feel to be lost? Yeah, I don't know, then I feel inhibited. Do you recognize that lost feeling? Yes, I do! Then the client touches base - and the therapist as well. The contract then is not about 'becoming less in h ibited ,' but about feeling lost no more. We also focus during the intake, by looking for somatics and charged expressions. C: I sometimes feel inferior. In the last session, I felt guilty that I was wasting time o f my fellow-students. Actually it was a good session. T: What is inferiority exactly about? C: Not being allowed to be important. I have no self-esteem. T: You want to get rid o f that feeling o f not being important. You want to feel self-worth. Is that feeling o f not appreciating yourself always in comparison to others? C: It often has to do with others, but it comes from me. It's like I want to cut myself down to size. When I feel like this, I don't really want to be seen.

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T: What is the worst way people look at you? Dismissive, threatening, something else? C: Dismissive! T: You want to get rid o f the feeling that you aren't important, inferior. A feeling that's triggered by dis­ missive glances.

What was the most revealing expression? Cut down to size. An additional advantage is that it this expression involves the body, so that we easily evoke a somatic. Possibly a life where the client has literally cut down someone, may be by beheading; or where he him self has been cut down or be­ headed. Or it has simply to do with his childhood, where he was a head shorter than the rest of his class, and kept out of their games. Then it's about choosing the best route to get to the essence and origin of the problem. Re­ gression would w ork perfectly for this session. How does it feel to be unimportant? Go back to the first time when you are being cut down to size. You can add a somatic. What do you feel in your body, where do you feel it? Or more directly, and of course more suggestively: How does it feel to be cut down to

For each process applies what physicists call 'H am ilton's principle.' Every natural process occurs with minimal action. Action is energy multiplied by time. So each natural process consumes during its entire duration as little energy as possible. We try to approach that: do everything as quickly as possible and especially as effortless as possible. Instruct as little as possible to search for something. Use the charges that present themselves. Clients who trust themselves and the therapist, and who have a problem that is awake when they enter the practice room, go into regression the moment they lie down and close their eyes. The sim­ plest, most direct and shortest induction gives the highest chance of success. Prolonged searching and arduous detours rarely lead to Rome. The correct way is the straight way. Regression therapy is for rich but simple minds. The longer I'm working in this field, the easier it turns out to be. But to go straightforward, you need to have self-confidence. False self-confidence of the therapist leads to pedantry and filling in the questions for the client. Trisha Caetano (1985) hits the nail on the head: One of the gravest sins in therapy is telling clients what they suffer from, what their problem is, and what they need to do to get rid of it. Immediately after that, the gravest sin is pushing cli­ ents to where the therapist thinks the problem is. The fundamental truth is that clients know exactly what the problem is because they have lived through their cause. As they know the cause, they also know the solution. It is our job to bring the clients to this yet conscious knowl­ edge so they can solve the problem. The cornerstone of this approach is to ask and listen without value-judgments until the 'interview' is ended. The basic rule is: don't give comments, views, opinions or suggestions; confirm nothing and question nothing, force nothing. Ask.

The type of therapy that this book stands for, resembles in this respect non-directive therapy. Also the meticulous monitoring during the reliving fits into this approach. In other respects, however, my approach resembles directive therapy. We work on specific, well-defined goals that correspond to the specific complaints that people come up with. Furthermore, we let ourselves be pragmatically guided by what works for a client. If you can't close a contract, then don't do therapy. Or make an open contract. The contract is then: to make a shopping list. T: You see the first problem entering the room. (Then: your second problem, and so on.) C: I see a frightened, sobbing girl o f four years old. Ghee, that's me.

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Thus we get, for instance, five problems. That's our shopping list. Another way to do this is by ver­ bal exploration with the list: My first problem is ... My second problem is ... And so on, until there's nothing left. We could do this also through an open aura exploration. Or we do a verbal exploration with a standard list of incomplete sentences. We fish with a wide, neutral net and w e'll see what we catch. We start broadly and then focus on whatever seems to be charged. I call that zooming in. Occasionally, clients have no clear starting point, but a general feeling of unease. Or there are so many issues and possible starting points that the choice is difficult. Some clients even don't know yet if they need or want therapy at all, other clients just want personal exploration, go on a journey of self-discovery. In such cases, the session starts with an open-ended exploration, either listing all issues to be explored or solved, or zooming in on the one thing to explore or solve. Listing collects possible starting points for therapeutic sessions. The result is a therapeutic shop­ ping list. We will work through this shopping list in the order in which the clues have emerged, or in order of apparent intensity. Take what is the most emotionally charged or most concrete first, and so on. Or walk through the various elements and the charges that may emerge. Zooming aims to find one single starting point, only for the current session. We leave it to the subconscious of the client what comes up first. Inventory explorations are: • • •

General verbal exploration: standard list of incomplete sentences. Specific verbal explorations, e.g. anxiety list, I-am list. Oracle-bridges, using cards with phrases or images (see next chapter).

Zooming explorations are: • • •

• •

Open aura exploration. Open personification: You see entering the room whatever is most bothering you / which would be most helpful to you. Open imaginative bridge: descending, ascending, traversing something, walking through a fog, going to sleep and leave one's body or waking up elsewhere; being in one's own space, taking off clothes or putting these on different clothes (see chapter 6). Pressing the back (see chapter 8). Open entrance: breathing faster and deeper.

If you have a shopping list, find the sequence that requires the least energy and frees up the most energy. So start with the listed items that appear to have the highest charge. Choose from these first the ones that seem recursive, such as confusion, paralysis and guilt. Then go to suspected attachm ents. Som etim es, traum as may emerge first, or hangovers may do so. In any case, ask what feels the most urgent. If there's still too much material, then just take the items in the order they came up. If the client blocks before a contract is made, take the block itself as the starting point. Remember the principle 'the problem is the solution.' C: I'm afraid that nothing will emerge. T: Why not? C: All those people around me.

Then propose 'being bothered by people around me' as the starting point. Or the client is bothered by the light. If you cannot turn off the light and there are no curtains on the windows, then take that

as the entry point of the session. That is more specific than it might seem. The client suffers from light. Others may suffer from background noise or cold feet. T: You are bothered by the light? OK, concentrate on that. Say five times aloud: The light bothers me. C: The light bothers me. (5 x)

If nothing evokes a charge, then none is awake or all are suppressed. Prepare for a tough session. Or don't do a session at all. Chaotic clients and weak clients find it hard to focus on one subject. So you may take the inabil­ ity to focus as the subject. Resolving that will greatly help any further therapy. Prior relaxation or hypnotic suggestions may be called for. Or try to identify the disruptive influence and park it for later treatment. There is for example a chirping voice at the back of the client's mind: Girl, this is crap what you're doing. That is the inner critic or censor. T: That voice o f the censor, is that o f a man or a woman? C: My, it's my mother who's nagging.

First remove the jam m er and put it aside to come back to it later. Let the client for instance visualize that mother and park her in another room. If she refuses to leave, then do a mini-session with the mother. Some therapists try to cover the jam m er with hypnotic suggestions. I don't work that way, but it can be useful. Working goal-oriented in the session simply comes down to keeping the contract in mind. If the connection is not immediately clear, then ask what the last experience has to do with the starting point. During the session we follow and connect to what the client sees, feels, says and experiences. In all our wanderings we keep the red line in sight. The contract provides that line. W hat if we gradually discover that the real issue is something else, something more fundamen­ tal? Then w e'll adjust the contract: explicitly. What if that second contract also runs aground? That only happens if the client doesn't want to deal with his or her problem - or if the therapist is incom­ petent. Or both - horrible thought! W hatever the case, gently break off the session.

3.4 Winding up and following-up The afterbirth is less important than the birth. But a birth is only finished when the umbilical cord is cut and the placenta is out. Then most of the work of motherhood still has to come. A good session is more important than the talk afterwards. Still, there's more Usually, after the original trauma, num erous restim ulations have made the problem grow. Once we heal the original trauma and have made its consequent survival m echanism obsolete, the secondary charges lose their moorings and get adrift. The emergence of secondary effects only requires therapeutic help with clients who still are or feel weak, but must still be processed. Each problem that have becom e accustomed to, is part of a balance. Solving a problem disturbs the balance and for some time we need to find our bearings again. We are clumsy like a newborn lamb hat doesn't know to hold it legs properly. Therefore, particularly the fear to lose control hinders problem -solving. Warn clients that real change often includes a few days or a few weeks of turbulence, sometimes complicated by misunderstanding of others who aren't always happy with a more clear-minded and independent client after the therapy. Also, the body often reacts, and long suppressed emotions may surface even after the session. Tell clients it's a sign of healing, even though it is sometimes may feel like a roller-coaster.

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A good closure may reduce the unrest afterward, guide it in the right direction. For example, ask at the end of the session: How has this trauma o f being abandoned affected your life ? You can also look for­ ward with the client: Notice how the session keeps affecting you. You will notice that related thoughts and feelings will arise, things will fall into place, things you will become sensitive to. Say this before you stop the session, so you benefit from the natural trance of the session. An even stronger wrap-up is what NLP calls a future pace. Visualizing a future situation that normally would trigger the problem, to see and feel whether there's difference now. The talk after the session can be brief. We verify how the clients feel when they come fully back to the here and now. We may have some comments or suggestions we could not address during the session. We usually tie in to the intake conversation. Maybe the clients themselves have any ques­ tions. Clients may be surprised, sometimes even shocked, and it helps if we can say that their expe­ rience is not as uncommon as he they may think. Homework can promote processing. Suggest clients to record how the session results mature. Let them write things down and sort these out, to discover patterns. Especially with personifica­ tions and pseudo-obsessions it works very well to sort experiences, feelings, contacts, etc., accord­ ing to subpersonalities or past lives or themes. For instance, three subpersonalities emerged. Let the client make a column for each subpersonality, a column 'don't know' and a column 'none of the th ree,' and allocate characteristics, interests, and abilities over these columns. Especially unfocused, absent-minded clients we encourage to register and analyze. Control freaks we encourage not to register and analyze too much. What do we as therapists record and what not? The study of Rabia Clark (1995) shows that most therapists (86%) make tape recordings. Some keep the recordings themselves: to listen and re-listen, to write them out for the client, and as insurance against clients who might falsely accuse them of sexual harassment or other improprieties. The vast majority of therapists (90%) take notes during the session, and many (67%) afterwards. Most past-life therapists (74%) combine past-life work with other forms of therapy. The most frequently cited are NLP, hypnotherapy - including Ericksonian hypnotherapy - and Gestalt. Most therapists (80%) believe that they themselves are in a certain trance during the session. This corre­ sponds with the results of the brain mirror research by Winafred Lucas. Making notes afterwards helps to come out of the trance. Some therapists clean their workspace after a session by imagining a cleansing glow, usually white. I don't like cleansing visualizations, because they imply that clients may be dirty or therapy may be dirty. Therapy is more like assisting a delivery. It may be dirty or involve disgusting and painful details, but the process itself is clean, loving and joyful, because the result is like that. Normally, I limit myself to stretch my legs and take some fresh air after a session. But if you feel the need to cleanse: do it. If you feel heavy after a session, think of something light; if you feel exhausted, think of vitality and energy flowing in; if you feel nervous, think of tranquility. Whatever you visualize, see and feel yourself as the source. Or see yourself in a secluded, lush place with fresh water, surrounded by your favorite animals. Don't tell anyone where that is. Remember that regression therapy is more intense than almost any other therapy. Like clients, therapists must recover as well and emotionally and mentally process what just happened. Often, certain feelings and thoughts have affected you. After all, as a human being you have the same strings that can be touched. These strings should vibrate themselves out, so to speak. As a therapist you work with complex charges. These should fade away, unwind themselves. Or we need to re­ cover from a particular client. Or a client's catharsis has touched you so much, you just need time to

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process. Or a problem or feeling has been restimulated within yourself. Then you need time to re­ cover as well. After an intense session, the next client may sense something, pick up something of the previ­ ous one. For this reason alone, have sufficient breaks between sessions. Each client deserves your undivided attention, without any aftereffects of the preceding session. A session usually lasts two and a half hours with me. I reserve a full half-day for this. In this way, I have space to prolong the session, if necessary. I start at ten o'clock or two o'clock. I don't need to make a living out of it, so I preferably conduct one session in a day, because this work requires much of us. After more sessions on one day, I'm no longer able to do any creative w ork in the evening. Keep at least an interval of half a session before the next client arrives. Realize that this work takes more hours than the sessions only. Preparing and processing take time, so do phone calls or emails. For each hour of actual session you need an extra half hour. How much time do we plan between sessions? After an incomplete session or incomplete explora­ tion continuing the session the next day is all right, but after cathartic work give clients from a week up to a month to process. My usual interval is a fortnight. Effective sessions need this time to be processed properly. If people have to travel far, I plan two or at most three sessions on consecutive days. Once the original contract is fulfilled, when all immediate ramifications are explored and re­ leased, let the client come back after three months at the earliest. A therapy is a contract between two people. With a clear and present starting point and with confi­ dence - and some luck - we often achieve excellent results in one session. Even with a deep trauma, we can get a complete catharsis in one session of two to three hours, provided it's a relatively iso­ lated problem. If the problem is part of a larger problem area, then try to carve the problem up in clear slices and bring each session one sliced to a catharsis, even if it's only relief. Get at least a harvest in each session. As mentioned, one session is often sufficient. If three sessions have given no significant im­ provement, it makes little sense to continue the therapy. A complex theme may last five sessions. For a full 'house cleaning' eight sessions seems to me the limit. If it's still incomplete by then, you missed the bus somewhere. For example, a client presents three themes. One theme is clearly at the top. That becomes the contract. In the first session we already do regression, a first exploration of the problem, we identify the main charges, we begin to see the contours. Then we do the main work in a second session, and complete the contract in the third session. It simmers a couple of months, until everything is proc­ essed. After some time something new may come up. Clients may come for a problem, feel after the session that they have benefited a lot - and come back next time with a laundry list of things they want to resolve. They find it 'such a nice approach.' Someone wants to stand up for herself and get rid of fear of flying and she has something to resolve with her father, her previous husband and one of her children. But if you really have gone through something and if it really has been beneficial, made a difference, you want some time to savor the results before taking any other session. If a baby is born, you don't yearn for another baby next week. Some clients want contact between sessions, to discuss their experiences in between sessions. Agree on this before the client leaves. As a therapist you may contact the client to ask how things are going, but do so sparingly. Don't make a habit out of it. Then one problem is solved and another created: dependency on the therapy or the therapist.

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The intake of the next session ties in with the review of last session, especially when there is a series of connected topics, like different fears or different forms of inadequacy. Another direct connection occurs when solving a problem leads to the discovery of a deeper problem behind it. Solving a weakness can lead to fear of one's strength, leading to guilt and then to fear for one's anger. Even that anger may have a story behind it. Such a more complex process may occur in the context of a progressing therapy, but also in the context of personal development. And finally in the context of soul growth. Chapter 14 will discuss these issues more extensively.

3.5 Verbal explorations Fully exploring and analyzing an issue, by completing incomplete phrases, without going into re­ gression, I call a verbal exploration. A verbal exploration is a dance between therapist and client, in which the therapist repeats the same incomplete sentence until clients fall silent or repeat them­ selves. Or the therapist comes up with a new, but directly connected incomplete sentence which triggers the client to express a connected thought. The first form of verbal exploration is making lists. Examples are lists like: I'm afraid o f ..., I'm annoyed by ..., I'm mad a t ..., I feel guilty a b o u t..., and so on. Such lists we make when a client is bothered by such feelings, but cannot directly specify these. By making such lists, images, emotions or somatics may surface with certain statements. Sometimes that happens spontaneously, sometimes it happens when repeating several times a completed sen­ tence, sometimes using peel-down chains. More about this later. The function of verbal exploration is finding charges, and use these to enter the session. If there is a general theme, like uncertainty, it is often helpful to explore both poles: uncertainty and certainty. Uncertainty may be an issue, but also certainty can be. Then we can let the client complete both sentences repeatedly. Repeat and complete: I'm uncertain of... Repeat and complete: I'm certain of...

The simplest example of a focused verbal exploration is a fear list. T: Lie down. Are you ready? OK. What do you want to work on? C: On those fears. T: Can you now feel fear right now? C: No, not now, I feel comfortable. T: Do you feel anything in your body? C: Neither. T: Repeat out loud five times, with increasing attention: I'm afraid. The client starts breathing quietly, no charge appears. T: Repeat and complete the sentence with the first thing that comes to mind. 1. I'm afraid o f ... water 2. I'm afraid o f ... snakes 3. I'm afraid of... something white 4. I'm afraid o f ... men 5. I'm afraid of... men with clubs 6. I'm afraid o f ... heat 7. I'm afraid o f ... cold 8. I'm afraid of... mist 9. I'm afraid of... becoming crazy 10. I'm afraid o f ... my grandmother 11. I'm afraid o f ... werewolves 12. I'm afraid o f ... nothing 13. I'm afraid o f ... cold

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The client repeats exactly the same completion, so we stop. Speak calmly. I always repeat the entire completed sentence. That gives me just the time I need to write the sentence down. I bring rhythm into it. That's also why I compare it to a dance. The quiet rhythm and soothing sound of the voice of the therapist create a certain trance that makes it easier for clients to respond intuitively and leave their everyday thinking consciousness on the reserve bench and listen to their own completions. If charges em erge, I note these in single words: w aterfall (im age), tear (em otion), cramp (som atic). Encourage the client to speak aloud the incomplete sentence first, and only then intuitively complete it aloud. This reduces the tendency to think rationally doing it. We continue until nothing comes up or until a literal repetition occurs. Now we have our shopping list. Or a completed sen­ tence brings such an emotional and physical charge that regression already kicks in. If any sentence triggered an image, an emotion or a somatic, then we use that phrase as a verbal bridge to start the session. Or we find a charge by having the client repeat every completed sen­ tence three times, and ask if that triggers anything. Say with increasing attention three times: I'm afraid o f water. Does anything come up? There will usually be images, emotions or somatics. If repetition deepens the trance, but still triggers no charge, you work on the sentence with peel-down chains, about which more later. A particular application of the verbal exploration is the exploration of body parts. For example: T: My feet a r e ... C: My feet a r e ... cold. T: Repeat and complete: my feet are ... C: My feet a r e ... ugly. And so on, until nothing comes up or follows a literal repetition. Then elaborate each sentence further: T: Repeat and complete: my feet are cold because ...

For a general body exploration when we don't know yet what to focus on an aura exploration works faster. Yet if an aura exploration yields a dark patch on the shoulder, for instance, without the client progressing with it, then change to: M y shoulder is ... W hen a client has specific physical symptoms, no actual somatic, there are two ways to start: M y stomach aches because ... and M y stomach is ... . With diverse problems with the same body part, the second way works best. A client always had problems with his legs: M y legs a r e :... dead; ... o f wood; ... strong; ... stunted; ... the most important things I have. These responses point to different charges. Death and stunted may have the same charge. Usually we work through these answers in the given order, unless one of them immediately appears to be heavier charged than the others. M y eyes are ... M y hands are ... Then we uncover charges from different past lives, from both negative and positive experiences. What haven't we done with our hands in all our lifetimes? What haven't we seen with our eyes? Let clients repeat and complete the sentences until they fall silent or until they repeat them­ selves exactly. On such lists we can get between five and one hundred completions. We may end with sixty answers about our hands, twenty referring of the current life with eight different charges, and the rest may concern thirteen previous lifetimes. We often identify patterns that traverse through many lives, often with character postulates. If we do this for different parts of the body, we find cross-connections and chart lifetimes and charges. Taking the body as point of departure is one of the best ways to systematically explore past lives. This works especially well with spiritually-minded clients and with rational clients, as both tend to forget their body.

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The most existential verbal explorations are additions like: I am ..., My body is ..., My soul is ..., and My m ind is ... . Make sure the client is already at a deeper level before you tackle such general mat­ ters. Otherwise you get mired into philosophical babble. The broad, all-encompassing nature is the primary strength, but also the primary weakness of the verbal exploration. You easily weary your­ self with secondary things and you may get lost on side-roads. Staying on the straight and narrow requires both intuition and discipline. Verbal explorations can be even broader: without any specific subject. General verbal explorations like the one on the next page find postulates and emotional or physical charges, from which we only then choose a topic for the regression. Next is shown a list that I use for this purpose. The same list, but then in the past tense, may find the footprints of a past life. If sentences are not yet clearly charged, we can follow them up with peel-down chains. I use the following: • The because... chain • The if ... th en ... chain • The if ... then I feel... chain • The especially... chain • The is... chain Below a fictional example of a relationship problem to illustrate the different peel-down chains. I'm angry with Jerome. I'm angry with Jerome because ...h e has left me. He has let me down because ... he I drove him crazy. I drove him crazy because ... I demanded so much o f him. I demanded so much o f him because ... I felt unhappy. I felt unhappy because ... I actually always feel unhappy! I always feel unhappy because ... The client stops completing and begins to cry. Then we can go into the session. Or we let the phrase I feel unhappy repeat five times as a verbal bridge. (See section 6.3) If I'm angry with Jerome then ... I get pain in my stomach. If I get pain in my stomach then ... 1feel pa­ thetic. If I feel pathetic ... then I get angry with Jerome. A circle, so stop. The sentence, I have pain in my stomach, I'm mad at Jerome, can be a good verbal bridge. If I'm angry at Jerome, I feel that I stand up for myself. If I stand up for myself, I f e e l ... strong. If I feel strong, I feel ... myself grow. If I grow, then I feel ... liberated. If I feel liberated, then I feel ... liberated.

Repetition, so stop. I am especially angry with Jerome when ...h e looks past me. He especially looks past me when ... I'm mad at him. Circle. Another attempt: If I am most upset with Jerome then ... I can spit fire. I spit most fire when ... I have to roar. My worst roar is ... when I'm going crazy. My worst madness is ... when I lose my legs. The client now sees an image of a pair of torn or shattered legs and is stunned. Time for

regression. I'm angry with Jerome. Anger is ... taking up space. Taking up space is ... selfish. Selfishness is ... narrow. Narrowness is ... terrible. Terror is ... demonic. Demonic is ... makes helpless. Helplessness is ... the end. The end is ... the end o f everything. The end o f everything is ... terrible. Now, a regression to a terrible

end of everything shall probably expose the deepest root of the anger. Ten to one in a previous life. Jerome probably played a role in this. The worst that can happen if I'm angry at Jerome is ... that he leaves. The worst that can happen if he leaves, is ... that I stay alone. The worst that can happen if 1 stay alone, is ... that I'm going crazy. The

client burst into tears. We can go straight into regression. Let the client complete all sentences and explore these then with the peel-down chains. Exploration is not therapy, but more often than not sessions with inquisitive clients get a therapeutic twist.

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GENERAL VERBAL EXPLORATION

1.

I see . . .

2.

I sense . . .

3.

I h ear. . .

4.

I like . . .

5.

I don't like . . .

6.

I don't a ccep t. . .

7.

I a ccep t. . .

8.

I don't h o p e ...

9.

I hope. . .

10. I am not afraid of .. 11. I am afraid o f . . . 12. I don't tru s t. . . 13. I tr u s t. . . 14. I make . . . 15. I seek . . . 16. I find . . . 17. I th in k . . . 18. I e x p e ct. . . 19. I don't believe . . . 20. I believe . . . 21. I have t o . . . 22. I am not allowed to 23. I am allowed to . . . 24. I c a n 't. . . 25. I can . . . 26. I don't w a n t. . . 27. I w a n t. . . 28. I am dreaming o f . . 29. I go . . . 30. I sh a ll. . . 31. I am n o t ... 32. I am . . . 33. I . . .

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If one peel-down chain falters, try another, preferably following on the last completed sentence. We 'm ilk' the problem, as it were. We follow all the associations and branches, until we findthe root. Moving elegantly from one to the other peel-down chain requires creativity, improvisation and ex­ perience. T: Can you imagine a feeling you can't feel, something you can't do? C: Be angry. T: I start with a sentence and you complete it with the first thing that comes to mind. When I get angry, the worst that can happen is ... that they become angry at me. If they are angry at m e... I'll die. If I die, then ... I'm no longer there. If I'm no longer there, then ... there's nothing anymore. To make them not angry, I must... be nice to them. To be nice to them, I must... be a sweet girl. To be a sweet girl, I must... be quiet. To be quiet, I must b e ... invisible. To be invisible, I must... disappear. I fl disappear, I fe e l... lonely. If I feel lonely, then ... I want to cry. I fl cry, then ... I want someone taking care of me. To make someone take care of me, I must... scream. If I scream, then ... I'm afraid. If they're angry, the worst that can happen ... gives the fears. To make them not angry, I must... gives the survival strategy. When we work on disappearing, we come to a frozen child thatceased to grow.The child keeps itself invisible - when daddy sees it, he beats it. Freezing is asurvivalresponse. Feel nothing. And breathe as little as possible. During a trauma we are tense. Tears and other forms of release reduce the tension. How often aren't we told: don't cry, shut up, go to your room? That implies: don't exist. Or: get dressed, make your­ s elf pretty. Or: Be a man - whatever that may be. Don't cry. There's nothing to worry about. It's not that bad. The feelings of the child didn't count. The child froze, shut off everything. Also here, we continue with the verbal exploration until the client falls silent - or we don't know anymore how to proceed, or there is a repeat, or a full circle. Or the charges that emerge are so strong that we can go into regression right away.Below an example of a verbal exploration which drifts into a past-life regression. T: Close your eyes and say five times with increasing attention: I can't do this. C: I can't do this. (5 x) I cannot. I cannot (emotion). I can't! T: What's happening? C: I cannot cope with life! (Emotion and gasping for breath) T: You cannot cope with life. Can you cope with death? T jumps to the opposite pole to surprise the client and avoid ending up in a groove. A more common continuation is: I cannot cope with life, because ... C: Easily. T: Say quietly: I can cope with death. C: I can cope with death. I can cope with death. T: Repeat and complete with the first thing that comes to mind. I can cope with death, because ... C: I can cope with death, because everything is all right. T: Everything is alright, because ...

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C: Everything is alright because everything is black. T: If everything is black, then ... C: I disappear into nothingness. T: If I disappear into nothingness, then ... C: I'm black. T: If I'm black, then ... C: I don't stand out. T: If I don't stand out, then ... C: I'm nothing. T: If I'm nothing, then ... C: I don't stand out. T: OK. How does it feel when you say: If I live, I stand out. C: Afraid. T: Say it again: If I live, I stand out. C: If I live, I stand out. T: If I stand out, then ... C: If I stand out, I die. T: And if I die, then ... C: Then it's enough for me. (Emotion and panting, so time for the regression.) T: Go back to a time and a place where you die because it's enough for you. C: I see a figure with peculiar jewelry. A man, I think. T: Is that you or somebody else? C: It's me. T: What is most striking about your appearance? C: A hat, perhaps with a cross, flat and hard. The robe is wide with hanging jewelry, also perhaps with a cross. T: How does it feel to be so dressed? C: Empty, but powerful. T: Secular power or spiritual power, or both? C: Both. T: Are you a high priest or a bishop? C: Rather a high priest. I'm on a stand. I see a circus with lions. And so on.

Lists or explorations with peel-down chains can thus lead to charges that provide excellent entries for regressions, but they can also produce new insights by themselves. Occasionally, this is so liber­ ating that no further session is needed. So verbal explorations produce excellent material for regres­ sions, but may also have value as eye-openers. Verbal explorations are suitable for clients who remain vague or general or abstract during the in­ take about why they seek therapy. Especially for intellectuals with general problems of life orienta­ tion and self-knowledge, a verbal exploration is an appropriate step toward regression. If a client during the intake expresses different postulates, shows different emotions or comes with different complaints, that may or may not be related and from which the client cannot choose, it makes sense to first explore the outlines of the problem. Sometimes we find various problems during the intake, several suspected postulates, several somatics, but nothing with sufficient charge. We then must continue to focus some more. Then a verbal exploration may help. Occasionally, we do a verbal exploration during a reliving, to clarify the situation. That may easily distract clients, get them out of trance. Preferably, if a description of a previous life remains mental and general, we go to bodily feelings, but if that fails, a verbal exploration can help. Blocks we can tackle by antidote, but also by fully following the modus operandi of the client. Do whatever works.

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We don't wake up anything during a session that we can't complete during that session. Lists we work through to the end. If that cannot be done in the current session, then in the next. Therefore, verbal explorations are especially suitable for clients who plan to come back several times. Verbal exploration is a method you need to get the knack of. You can practice this method even with peo­ ple who don't seek therapy. They will find out something interesting about themselves. Record, un­ less you note down everything. Then write it out afterwards develop and send it to the client. Verbal explorations have another advantage: they teach you to write better. Short and simple sentences. It ought to be standard in training for professional writers. So if the therapy practice is disappointing, but verbal explorations work for you ...

3.6 Regressions with children In the study by Rabia Clark (1995) 26% of her respondents also did regression therapy with chil­ dren, from the age of about eight years. The main problems were fears and phobias. Other reasons for going into therapy were bedwetting, dyslexia, depression, anger and hyperactivity. How do we work with children? Talk briefly with the child and the parents together, then do an intake with the child alone and do the sessions preferably without the parents. Only when we have gained the confidence of the child, we can work with the child. If we accept the child as a human being, it often turns out that an adult resides within the child. Then the child dares to tell us what it doesn't dare to tell the parents. We don't find it odd or crazy what the child says. We don't judge, condemn or disparage it. Let the child decide at the end of a session what to tell his or her parents. Make it clear to the parents that in this they must respect the child's decision. In sessions with children we need more intuition and more tact. Since the square of trust is more fragile, we must first create a safe space. The square of trust often has two weak links with children. First, as with many adults, lack of self-confidence. This mainly depends on the duration of the problems and on the reactions of the parents. Second, lack of trust in the therapist. After all, the therapist is an adult, and the child usually has received much criticism from adults. Therefore, connect to the child's need for security and accep­ tance, ensure that this need is satisfied or at least acknowledged - and don't behave too much like most adults. Show that you trust and respect the child. Let the child tell you in its own words why it believes it has come to you as a therapist. W hen the starting point is clear, you will, particularly with young children, 4-8 years of age, easily arrive through the imaginative bridge to the situation that is key to the problem. To an angry child who throws things when in a tantrum, you ask for example: If you had ever lived before, what would be the reason fo r your anger? You can also make it into a game. I f you had lived in another country in an­ other time, then what had made you angry or sad? Sometimes the simple question Why is your mother angry? leads to a birth-regression or a prenatal experience. Or let them spin out a persistent image or a recurring dream. Dissociate, if this is needed to make the session less threatening. Let the child bring a favorite doll or cuddly animal, and let it tell the dream as if it happened to the doll. Ask what should happen to make the doll feel better. Ask children who read, to take their favorite book with them. Talk about the main characters in the book. Choose the character with whom the child most easily identifies, and let that character relive dream situations, for example. When sufficient trust has been built, and it seems to need support, don't touch it unless you have asked and it has given you permission. Or let children imagine themselves to be in the environment of the story and let them have adventures in that world, with or without the help of the hero of the story, to look for the cause of their problems.

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Drawing also works well, especially with personifications. Let anxious children draw their tor­ mentor and then let them draw something or someone not afraid of the tormentor. Along with this fearless hero you contact the cause of the fear. Whole comic book stories sometimes appear while the fear diminishes and eventually disappears. Or let them bring their favorite cuddly animal or doll and let them imagine a story around it. As in this case about stuttering: T: Imagine that you bear wants to tell you something and he can't tell you. How do you think he would feel? C: Angry and sad. T: That anger; can you point where your bear feels that? C: In his feet and his belly. T: In his feet and his belly. Imagine that you feel what the bear feels like when he wants to say something and has angry feet and angry belly. C: H e . .. I want to kick, but I can't. There are ropes around my feet and they pee on my belly.

Or let the child operate on the bear to see what is the cause of his stuttering. You then apply an ex­ tra dissociated aura-exploration. You could also use the animal or doll as a helper or as one who possesses all the qualities needed to tackle the problem. With an unclear starting point, the verbal bridge often helps. For example: Repeat and complete: When I was big, I was ..., I was allowed ..., I didn't have to ..., I could ..., I f e l t ..., I knew ..., I th ou g h t..., I came a t ..., and so on. When I grow up ..., then I am ..., may I ..., I don't have to ..., I can ..., I know ..., I th in k ..., I come to ..., and so on. W hen children sense that you trust them, they often come up with solutions themselves. Chil­ dren are surprisingly flexible in digesting strong emotions and somatics and capable of remarkable renovations. With children you usually reach results in just a few sessions. Don't underestimate them.

3.7 Personification of third parties: remote sessions One remarkable method is to do remote sessions, also called telepathic sessions, surrogate sessions or resonance sessions. A representative of the client is doing a session because clients themselves cannot do so. Usually it concerns small or very problematic children, or even unborn children. Sometimes it concerns adults who are too sick or too weak or otherwise unable to work themselves. Think of people with Alzheimer or people in coma. A remote session only works reliably if the representative who is doing the session has a direct link with the absent client as a family member or friend. It comes down to personifying the client, dia­ logue with it, and work energetically. At times, a spontaneous regression occurs. To outsiders, this seems hocus-pocus, but the actual results speak for themselves. I give a few examples, I try to explain why these telepathic sessions may work and I indicate what to me seem the limits. Those limits are important because some therapists become so enthusiastic that they want to conduct such sessions for all and sundry. Sessions for children usually are done by the mother, otherwise by the father or a grandparent and starts with personification of the child in a room that is acceptable to both the child and the mother. The child is not present at the session. We invite the child. Typically the representative steps into the child, to experience the situation from the child's viewpoint, including its own role. This works very well, even if the mother or other adult has never undergone a session before.

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Instead of the child itself, the cause of its problem may enter the room: a female neighbor, a de­ ceased grandfather, a handicapped beggar that could be a past life of the child. Sleeping disorders are by far the biggest reason for remote sessions with children, often together with tantrums, low concentration and poor listening. The usual cause is a deceased, often a de­ ceased grandparent, sometimes an earthbound spirit that was around long before the child. In this way, practically all sleeping problems are completely resolved within 1-2 weeks. Often there is also behavioral improvement: happier, calmer, doing better in school, better expressing itself, or being more accessible. Other common reasons are being bullied and eating disorders. Three-quarters of the problems are largely or completely resolved after just one remote session. Frequently, the whole family senses a positive effect. About half of the children notice that something is happening, even if they don't know that a session is done. The youngest become quiet and introvert, the slightly older become busy and nerv­ ous. It seems that their mind tries to understand what's happening. Also after resolving other prob­ lems, children sleep for 1 or 2 weeks longer and deeper after the session, giving the impression that they are processing the matters in their sleep, because we also take this as a normal period for after­ effects of a session with adults. For remote sessions I keep the age-limit around 13 years, simply, till puberty. Personifications with older children usually don't work as well. And why should we do try to work behind their back? If they are older and unable: we can try. If they are rather unwilling to work themselves, forget a re­ mote session. Reluctance, resistance and skepticism must be respected. A colleague did regressions with teenagers and for a few days afterwards with their mothers. The mothers were only told the topic. If the mothers did a regression as a representative of their child, the emerging charges turned out to correspond exactly with those in the sessions with their children, but the stories about the causes hardly or not at all. The chance that a mother and her ado­ lescent child hit the same place and time, appears very small to nil. The regressions of the teenagers were almost exclusively in the present life. And for children who are not yet teenagers? When does a session with the child have preference and when a remote session? I would say that if it is possible to build a relationship of trust with the child, a session with the child is always preferable. The front has preference over the back door. We only take the back door when the front door is locked: with unborn children, babies, infants; with very troubled, chaotic children; with severely ill children; with strongly autistic children; with seri­ ously handicapped or mentally retarded children, with children in coma. The last categories are also valid for adults. The least distant remote session is a session with unborn children. The reason is usually a prob­ lem with the pregnancy, a looming miscarriage or a considered abortion. In the next session, a pregnant woman personifies her two unborn children and her husband. A young mother of two is pregnant with twins of 30 weeks who have stopped growing. She must go to the hospital if the twins haven't grown by next week, and she wants to avoid that. She doubts whether her husband - whom she considers very sweet, but not very sure of himself - will be able to handle all of this. She is afraid that the twins know she has considered abortion. She also feels guilty about her stepsister who can't have children. The therapist asks the mother to place her hands on her belly. Which of the two wants to say something first? One begins. She originally wanted to be born with the stepsister. But the father is an alcoholic. So the baby decided to come to her, but then the two of them, with one as a help for the other who is very timid. The first always speaks, while the second one is quieter. She ap­ pears to be afraid of her father. The father is personified in the session. The mother gives him the children in his arms one by one, as if they were already born. He is touched, but he's afraid that his wife will not be able to cope: two little ones more and she's already so busy with the first two children. That's why he

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thought about abortion. For her! This insight moves the mother. They both wanted that abortion to relieve the other, but not for themselves! Now we invite the shy fetus to express her fears to her father He takes her lovingly in his arms, until the fears fade away. When both twins feel good, the mother takes the children back again. From this moment, the fetuses started to grow again, and the mother didn't have to be hospital­ ized. The twins let her know their names and said they would come a little early, but with a good weight. And so it happened.

That people can do sessions for others is not so surprising when we consider how we are all part of larger fields of systems. Family constellations and organizational constellations show this clearly. They work w ijh representatives as well, even with representatives who are entirely foreign to the situation, and so know nothing about it. If the cause of a problem is personified, and for example an ex-wife enters the room, or a father, then it often happens that this person exhibits unusual behavior within a few days after the session, such as calling for the first time in fifteen years out of their own volition, or making an apology for the first time Sometimes ripples go through an entire family or an entire department, after a session with personification and energy work. If we help people by doing a session for them with a representative, and we see that it works, it is satisfying. We can feel extra special because it happened through a spiritual, telepathic route. I have met several benevolent ladies who conducted these kinds of sessions for all their friends and rela­ tives. Or even worse: for their partner. Who then were told that there was a black cloud removed from them, or a childhood trauma was resolved for them. Or once they told that something went well for them lately, this was attributed to the session done for them. Understandably, and quite rightly, many people object to such practices. Seeking to spiritually heal people without notifying them or asking for their permission, is ama­ teurish, superficial and almost unpalatable, even harmful. And it's a violation of privacy. Kindly thinking of people, wishing them the best, and offering help when sincerely requested, is really good enough You should also not bear the thought that someone is rifling uninvited through your diary - and correcting it! Let alone that someone is messing around in your energetic diary. And with good in­ tentions, so it is even harder for you to become angry at them and defend yourself. W hat if people are seriously ill or in a coma? Or ended up on drugs or in a cult? You must first be truly connected with them, and be bearing some responsibility for them. At the same time you have to keep a certain distance, without any judgment. You do such a session once, as good as you can. Then you leave it. Who does the work? W ho reaps the benefits? Who pays? If this concerns two or three different peo­ ple, such as in remote sessions, we have to be extra careful. If Betty does the session for Chantal, and Charles pays, we have three clients. Usually they're family. That only works if the family sys­ tem is in reasonable good shape. Usually Mom works with us, her child benefits and Dad pays. That's OK, but stay vigilant. If Mom works with us because Dad and their child don't want to work with us, you only help to confirm the problems in the system. Stick to working remotely at a proper distance. Stay professional, don't become a shaman. Un­ less you want to. Then you should read another book. And there is still the question of ethics.

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CHAPTER 4. TYPES OF PROBLEMS IN PRACTICE

In regressions we go back to important moments and sudden life changes: discoveries, break­ throughs, accelerations; breakpoints, closures, stagnations, disappointments and setbacks. They punctuate our development. They enrich and delineate general psychological insights in how peo­ ple develop. The accumulated experience of regressions allows us to better focus our regressions, and make our questions and suggestions ever more to the point. The right dot. On the right i, of course. D er springende Punkt. Hitting the nail on the head; strik­ ing at the heart of the matter; taking the bull by the horns; hitting the jackpot. And hitting the right note. Therapeutic regressions go back to earlier experiences to finally process still unprocessed repercus­ sions These repercussions I classify as follows: • • • • • •

traumas; hangovers; postulates, including character postulates or even character neuroses; pseudo-obsessions; attachments and obsessions; alienation.

The approach of each type differs. Thus, personification, dissociating into subpersonalities, works for all types of repercussions, but is necessary for pseudo-obsessions. Energy work is necessary for hangovers. For postulates, regression is required: if we don't understand why we decided or con­ cluded something, we can't let go of that decision or conclusion. Also for alienation, regression is required: to reach and reclaim the lost sense of home.

4.1 Trauma: fears and psychological wounds Traumas, or traumata, are wounds. W hat is the first thing we need to know when we are going to treat a physical wound? We need to know where it is. To treat a psychological wound, we need to know where it is in place and time, in which situation it arose. Typically traumatic situations are: • • • • • • • • • • • •

fire; surgery - especially misunderstood hospitalization of young children and operations with insufficient anesthesia; complete isolation or rejection; death of a dear one; serious accident (mutilation); violence and abuse; miscarriage and abortion; being suspected while innocent; drug overdose; divorce; being responsible for someone's death; rape;

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• • •

humiliation; suicide or suicide attempt of family members; suicide attempt.

The most common traumas in the present life are: • • • • •

being rejected, ridiculed, harassed: psychological; death of another: psychological; separation: psychological; violence: psychological and physical; rape: psychological and physical.

Except for torture, rape is most completely traumatizing, because it is experienced most intensely physical as well psychological. Traumas that are both physical and psychological, always prejudice or damage the relationship with our body. The primal responses to imminent violence are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

mentally shutting down, going into shock, leaving the body; hiding or freezing: becoming numb, playing dead posturing mobilizing oneself: defense, attack, or flight

The repercussions of a trauma depend on how we register the physical charges, the emotional and the mental charges. This registration depends on what happens to us (situation), how we are (age, perceptiveness, energy level, stamina and character) and how we see things (perspective, culture). A psychological trauma is an unresolved residue of an experience, an unhealed wound. In previous lives these are often very painful death experiences: disasters, shipwreck, warfare, bombings, mas­ sacres, torture, mutilation, execution. Life was usually much worse back then, but the less severe experiences have been processed in a more radical process than cathartic therapy: dying. In war situations the most serious trauma is not always being maimed or witnessing the death of a comrade, but having ourselves killed someone, as David Grossman convincingly illustrates in his book On Killing. Such a trauma is a purely mental wound. It results in a feeling of guilt, and fre­ quently in an incessant replay of what happened, sometimes in slow motion. We understand a trauma less by not knowing how it was caused, but more by knowing why it w asn't healed. Processing is remembering in a way that it loses its horror, that the original wound fades, losing its sharpness; or it is learning to look at it with more detachment; or it is the getting to view the experience in a different light: reframing. The processing after death is the life retrospect. So either the life prospect was limited or absent, or not all residues of the experience could be proc­ essed by truly understanding: because of the essential involvement of the body, because of an en­ ergy exchange with others that we couldn't meet during the life retrospect, or because of a loss of energy related to the physical world. In therapy we imitate the life prospect. With less awareness, but with a physical body. With traumas in the present life, we take an advance on the life retrospect. With traumas from past lives, we compensate for a life-overview that was incomplete or omitted. In one respect, every life retrospect is incomplete. After death, we can mentally and to a large extent emotionally process our experiences, but not physically. At that stage, we can't really process and release the physical aspects of the trauma. Despair we can solve after death. But if that despair is

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connected to cold and fatigue, without a body we can't solve that lump completely. We need a physical body to process physical charges. Always look for the physical charges of traumas, espe­ cially from past lives, because that's where they're anchored. Each catharsis remains suspect when there have been no physical charges released. The better we review and evaluate our lives, the less we will have to process later on. W hat can't we process in everyday life? Not only that which was too shocking to absorb and deal with at the time, but also experiences of unconsciousness and anesthesia. Hence that we should not only be on the alert for shocking experiences, but also for periods of numbness, anesthesia or uncon­ sciousness. We are detectives in the service of the client. In regression therapy we usually look for the ex­ planation of problems with forgotten or repressed origins. Occasionally, a client comes for overcom­ ing amnesia. Some come for the opposite: to forget a maddening episode that keeps replaying itself in the mind. Someone starts to shake and sweat when she has to give a presentation. Where does that come from? W hen did she lose her calm and confidence in these situations? Regression uncovers an expe­ rience as a four-year-old girl when her mother mockingly shows her drawing to her birthday visi­ tors and everyone chortles. Inner child work is needed to restore her self-confidence. At times, displacement and overexposure coexist. A man keeps seeing how, on a Sunday after­ noon, his mother gives him at the age of eight to a man who paid her money to abuse him. It turned out to be a pederast, a man who likes young boys. He continues to hear the words of his mother who wishes him a lot of fun and to see the look on her face when she tucks away the money. That scene is overexposed because what follows (and followed many times) has to re­ mains underexposed as horrible memories. It is also overexposed because it is the moment of explicit and ultimate betrayal.

During a trauma we lose ourselves. The ego collapses. We become a frightened animal or a dazed and faltering robot. At particular moments that trauma resurfaces. Each sensory, emotional or verbal element of an experience can, by association, reawaken the charges of that trauma, even when we do not remem­ ber it consciously. You've heard a horrible screeching, a blow, screaming and crying children. You look back and see an upturned car with a family inside. There's petrol leaking from the car! A passerby screams at you Beat it before that thing goes up in flam es! Later you see how other passersby pull out a pale, limp woman out of the car. Dead? And that crying of the children! How does this experience percolate later on in your life? It may be that years later, you still feel sick whenever you hear a screeching sound. Crying children rattle you. The smell of petrol para­ lyzes you. You hate women with pale faces, especially when they are a bit hunched when they're seated. When you hear that scratching sound, the memory jogs back. Why you cannot bear crying chil­ dren, you may already have forgotten. That pale women are so repulsive, is simply because they are repugnant, you tell yourself. We say that those impressions re-stimulate the original trauma. Petrol gas, crying children or pale women are in this example the restimulants. W hen in therapy we solve the origin of the problem, the chain of possible restimulations are not immediately gone, but the anchor is loose.

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Frequently, charges break loose during chaotic, intense emotions. That's a good sign, but prepare your clients for the possible afterbirth of an intense session: mental, emotional and physical turmoil. That rarely lasts longer than a fortnight. Traumas arise from specific episodes with a precise starting and ending point. In the regression of a traumatic situation we can exactly determine the beginning and the end of the traumatic period during which the ego collapsed. TRAUMATIC SITUATIONS Abandonment Accident Assault Being chased Being crushed Drowning Execution Fire

Humiliation Imprisonment Injury Inquisition Mockery Murder Mutilation Rape

Robbery Starvation Suffocation Suicide Surgery Terror Torture Victimhood

The list above probably covers 95 percent of the traum atic situations that we come across in pastlife regressions. Traumatic periods consist of a sequence of these situations. It may begin with a chase and continue with imprisonm ent, torture and inquisition, and finally execution. Or a woman is stopped on the market, mocked, hum iliated, and finally raped and abandoned. Or you get lost in a forest; alone, disheveled and dirty, you stumble and break your ankle and eventually starve to death. An essential element in traumas is pain: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. The emotional charges we come across most often are fear, grief and rage. The most common mental charges are confusion, misunderstanding, unconsciousness and guilt. TRAUMA CHARGES

Astonishment Blinding Confusion Detachment Doubt Despair Envy Fear Grief Cold Cramp Deformity Discomfort Disgust

Mental charges: Drugs Exteriorization Fascination Guilt Hypnosis Emotional charges: Hate Loneliness Powerlessness Rage Physical charges: Exhaustion Pain Filth Heat Hunger

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Misunderstanding Numbing Paralysis Unconsciousness Trance Resentment Sadness Shame

Paralysis Revulsion Stench Thirst Ugliness

Each traumatic situation contains a cocktail of related charges. In any trauma there is a primary charge and the rest attached to it. As we work through the primary charge, the rest usually moves along. We find the primary charge when keep asking how a feeling feels. C: I feel like having to compete against the whole world. T: How does that feel? C: Deadly tiring. It kills me. T: How does it feel to be dead tired? C: Then I hate myselffor letting it get this far. T: How does it feel to hate yourself? C: I'm ashamed. T: How does it feel to be ashamed? C :... T: OK, so it's all about shame? C: Yes.

Mental charges complicate the exploration and processing of emotional and physical charges. Other complications are closers like guilt and shame, and the clotting of contrary charges, such as an ex­ plosive and an implosive emotion. The most common one is an anger-grief clot. You are left in the lurch. Under your grief simmers anger. A fire of anger, wrapped in a pool of sorrow. You can't be­ come soft and express your grief, because your anger keeps you tense. And that anger is not ex­ pressed because you're sad. If it comes out together, you start whining when the sadness prevails and roaring when the anger prevails. With men, grief is more often repressed, and with women, anger. Many men walk around with sadness wrapped in anger, and many women with anger wrapped in grief. In a clot thus at least two emotions work strain in opposite directions without neutralizing each other. Another example is an anger-guilt complex. You feel guilty about what you once did when you were furious. Consequently, you suppress angry outbursts. Your guilt has closed off your anger. A lust-pain clot is less common. Lust may be associated with displeasure: pain, shame, failure, envy, disgust. A girl is afraid of a nocturnal encounter, but trembles with excitement about the ex­ pected enjoyment of the scary or somewhat disgusting things that are about to happen. Lust is a positive emotion, but so primitive that it easily clots with negative emotions. People look for their thrill to horror movies, or engage in sadomasochism. Probably that releases such inner contradic­ tions. It feeds the clot as well. Intertwining of emotions that reinforce each other, I call accelerators or boosters. Anger and get­ ting outside yourself produce rage. Emotional fear and mental helplessness produce panic. Des­ peration feeds fear and fear feeds desperation. As a therapist, always ascertain with knotted charges which charge is most accessible: what someone feels most easily. Often knotted charges have to be released bit by bit until suddenly both break loose at the same time. The more confused the client is at that moment, the calmer the thera­ pist should be. We may expect traumas behind unexplained or irrational fears, with panic attacks, in tics, with strong physical tensions; with sudden attacks of nausea, dizziness or cramp, that just as unexpect­ edly cease as they started.

4.2 Hangovers: aftereffects of depressing periods Hangovers grow gradually and are less distinct than traumas. A hangover is no wound, but an in­ distinct burden or a depressing haze, the result of long frustration. I call them dirt skirts: general depressed feelings, making life colorless, slow, sticky, heavy.

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Coming home unexpectedly and finding your husband with a young girlfriend flagrante delicto is painful. Having a faithful husband who three times a week reads the free local paper from cover to cover, and wants to return to the same dull hotel every summer holiday, is not attractive either. The first example produces a trauma, the second a hangover. For many women, work is no career, but es­ cape from boring duties in a boring home with a boring guy. For many men it's something similar. We wake up in the morning and feel dazed and tired already; we don't want to get out of bed and go to work. We even don't try to have some fun, to break free. The growing hangover discourages and paralyzes us. The dirt skirt thickens, the boredom is stifling, we stumble along, the burden feels like lead. If all goes well, it becomes a full-blown depression. Depression may end in apathy. Our energy may become so low, that we have no energy left to change our situation or even to worry about it. Hangovers are exacerbated by lack of incentives. Boredom also affects our energy. Hangovers arise in situations that are annoying. The ego doesn't break down, but languishes. Prolonged fa­ tigue, gloom, stress and lack of perspective slowly batter it until a 'bonzai-ego' remains. People with little energy often suffer from hangovers. The charge of many hangovers is powerless­ ness, sustained by resentment. By nurturing our resentment, we continue to play the victim, feel sorry for ourselves (wallow in self-pity), and do not see the need to change our behavior. We anchor the hangover in a postulate, like it will never work. Besides the dirt skirts of powerlessness, frustra­ tion and resentment, the most common dirt skirts probably are: gloom, heaviness of heart, exhaus­ tion, emptiness and meaninglessness. We solve the ordinary, everyday hangovers by relaxation; by jogging or doing something that we really enjoy. We prevent hangovers by doing things that we enjoy, or challenging and meaning­ ful. Functioning well, having Funktionslust, drain our psychological waste products. You come home from work and you're tired. You have a hangover from that working day: the squabbling in the office, the uncomfortable chair, the unpleasant smell of the carpet, a tedious pro­ ject, a nagging colleague, and a fussy boss or any combination of all the above. Or worse: the work no longer appeals to you, you've become fed-up by it. You need half an hour or an hour to recuper­ ate. Once maybe with slippers, a newspaper, the cat on your lap, a pipe in your mouth, by the stove. Now maybe with a game on your iPad or surfing the internet. Or you jog for half an hour with rock music on your iPod and then take a hot-and-cold shower. Thus you restore yourself, getting rid of the fatigue and irritations of that day. Also sleeping and dreaming help to digest the dregs of everyday experiences, especially if we awaken fresh the next morning. The hangovers that interest us as therapists, have not been re­ freshed in daily life. They may come out of a dull or unhappy childhood. Sometimes from a boring or unhappy past life. Often both. Sleep is the small regenerator. The interlife, the period between lives is the large regenerator. Few things refresh us like a good sleep and nothing like a good death. Just as we may wake up feeling broken, with a thick head, so we may enter a new life, weighed down by the residues of past lives. A hangover grows gradually. It doesn't destroy deus, but it diminishes us: it makes us smaller, less energetic, slower, heavier, gloomier. A trauma begins and ends at specific moments. There's a dis­ tinct episode of negative emotions, such as fear and pain, when the ego collapsed. But prolonged darkness or heaviness or boredom or somberness produces hangovers. Possibly the most typical feelings accompanying hangovers are disgust and fatigue. Feeling demotivated and tired for a long time, reduces our ability to feel deep emotions, even of feeling hurt. Then even a successful regression to a traumatic situation won't produce catharsis. This is be­ cause the trauma is embedded in a grey, heavy, amorphous residue: the dirt skirt.

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HANGOVER-CHARGES Emotional charges:

Physical charges:

Mental charges:

Annoyance Aversion Bitterness Disappointment Disgust Distress Gloom Grayness Indifference Listlessness Passivity Unhappiness Unwillingness

Fatigue Heaviness Hurt Revulsion

Boredom Cynicism Distrust Futility Impatience Incompetence Incomprehension Insecurity Hesitation Hopelessness Senselessness Suspicion

Cold can be a trauma charge, but a hangover charge as well. You may be attacked and wounded, left behind in a forest; you're in pain, you're cold and you feel lonely. That's something else than a life or a marriage that always lacked warmth. Dying of hunger differs from having been hungry throughout your whole life. HANGOVER-SITUATIONS Being handicapped Compulsion Desolation Duty Emptiness Incapability

Isolation Loneliness Luxury Monotony N arro w-mindedness Obligation

Poverty Repression Rejection Prostitution Slavery Tedium

Helen Wambach had subjects who looked back with repulsion on lives full of superstition and op­ pression. Such lives leave behind hangovers. An unmarried woman in 13th-century Germany had become pregnant. She was beaten with sticks. Clearly a traumatic situation. Yet she experienced it dazed and numbed. For her, that beating was a culmination of something that was always there. You were always put under pres­ sure, you always were cursed and beaten, you were threatened with punishment by others or by the church. She felt crushed under the weight of continuous abuse and suppression. It was one grey, numb, disgusting life.

We find such disgust also in lives of prolonged sexual abuse. Or serfdom that doesn't know alterna­ tives. Any possibilities to escape you can't seize, as you don't see them anymore. Traumatic mo­ ments of revulsion, pain or humiliation are embedded in overall fatigue and drowsiness. If a trauma is so painful that it breaks us, that we lose the will to live, the rest of our life will be a hangover. Once mired in a hangover, any following trauma will be less painful, a reason why many people wish to hold on to their hangovers or even are addicted to them. The ultimate hangover is worse than being depressed. It is being apathetic, zombie-like.

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Hangovers are underestimated in regression therapy, and in psychotherapy in general. Untreated hangovers are the main cause of slow and laborious sessions. In regressions we must not first try to remove traumatic charges, we must first clear hangover charges. That enhances the energy level, and we can better deal with the traumas afterwards. Resolving traumas cathartically belongs to the easier things in therapy. As long as you've prop­ erly focused and you haven't wasted time, attention and energy at the beginning, or made detours later on, it may at times go almost automatically, with hardly any effort or steering on your part. A hangover is more cumbersome, especially if a postulate is involved. Following the energy isn't wise here, as the energy is low and the client becomes increasingly drowsy. When dealing with a hangover, energy work is essential. By the way, what's the most unfortunate form to resolve a hangover? Making the therapy bor­ ing and tedious. To be paid by the hour is no excuse.

4.3 Character postulates: inflexible conclusions and decisions Postulates are inflexible conclusions, inflexible assumptions that shape how we see things and how we react to things. They determine how we feel, think or act. They are program lines in our mental computer. They define how we see ourselves, other people, and the world. They betray themselves in charged phrases that we typically utter whether appropriate or not. I'm always unlucky. People have only their own interest at heart. The world is unfair. Or they are seemingly ordinary phrases we often use when we talk about ourselves. I don't get it. I'm stuck. Often these postulates are generalizations containing words like: always, everywhere, everyone. Generalizations stop experience and reflection. Postulates hinder us in taking account of the cir­ cumstances. Postulates that we come across in therapy, are generalizations that give a false sense of certainty and thus are limiting. For example: Men are all the same. Does such a postulate work well or badly? Well, many men have many things in common. But as far as men differ, that postulate is dysfunctional because it generalizes, oversimplifies. And men do differ. (Really, ladies!) For instance you have the following postulate: People can't be trusted. Now you have a new partner who you may trust, as it turns out. But your general mistrust continues to fester. Postulates are imprints, engraved judgments, stubborn attitudes. All neuroses and many psychoses contain postulates. Postulates are often linked to deeper, underlying postulates, forming persistent structures that may continue from life to life. If people constantly say, I don't get it, they can't get to the cause of that postulate either. Many postulates are recursive: they tighten themselves. How do we generally get stuck in postulates? Through painful and shocking experiences that need an explanation, any explanation. Through experiences that repeatedly confirm a conclusion, by repeated intense imprints that we have come to believe in, by things we think or hear at times we are in trance. A mother beats a boy that has done nothing wrong. That child doesn't understand why he is beaten. If it happens again, the child can draw the conclusion: I'm obviously not good.Otherwise mommy wouldn't be mad at me. I'm bad. Or a child early on concludes: M y mother is crazy. This can extend to: women are crazy. Especially women who resemble your mother. A rather shy girl tries to start a conversation with a nice-looking boy, but she gets nowhere. She withdraws, disappointed. She wonders if she'll ever be successful with boys. After three weeks, she tries again with another boy and it fails again. Then she stays home three months. She tries it again; it doesn't work again and now she knows for sure. She may conclude, Boys don't like me. Or: I'm not

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attractive. Or: I'll stay single. The result is a conviction that reinforces itself. If she makes her conclu­ sion definite, she has programmed herself. She got a postulate Our imprints and engravings usually have three stages: • For the first time: 'in p en cil,' • First confirmation: 'in ink'; • Final confirmation: 'etched in stone.' It has become a fixed part of our world view: a postu­ late. Or a fixed part of our identity, our self-view: a character postulate. Postulates can be etched, not because we've said them to ourselves, but because others said them to us and we believed them. If your parents say to each other and to others repeatedly that you're a bad boy, you are going to believe this at some point. You internalize it: I'm bad. Girls are sometimes weak in mathematics because they were told that mathematics is not femi­ nine. You're masculine when you're good at math. Even if talent for science and technology would be found more often among men than among women, that doesn't make a woman with such talents less feminine. Yet with such a gender prejudice, that talent is easily ignored, even remains unrecog­ nized, and is locked away. I don't want to be unfeminine, so I'm not good at math. In a past life, a house went up in flames and your child perished in the fire. Any fire can restimulate this trauma. You felt guilty because you were too late. If you would have generalized that experience in, I can't make it, possible restim ulations are endless and the charge will proliferate like cancer. The postulate then triggers its own confirmations. Perhaps you see your child cross­ ing a busy street and then it flashes through your mind: Oh God, again I'm too late to make it! That paralyzes you for an instant and you'll indeed be too late. You didn't make it. Then the postulate eats deeper into your soul. Postulates are the main reason that incidental events have large and lasting repercussions. Postulates are not only inscribed in traumatic moments, but also in moments of rapture. A previously mentioned example illustrates this. A man has a top management position with the police. When he comes to me for counseling, he is standing in for a colleague who's on sick leave and is leading a national project that's a full-time job in itself. He has three full-time jobs at once. And he handles all of them well. His colleagues appreciate him, his bosses sing his praises, his subordinates run away with him. Everybody loves him. I don't know what it is, but fo r whatever reason, I'm coming to work with increasing aversion. Close your eyes. Go back to a place and a time that explain your recent aversion. I couldn't be more vague than that. Nothing comes to mind. There's always something. Well, but that was nonsense. He saw the screen of an old-fashioned radio. He did not know what to make of it. Just imagine yourself looking at it. Now, detach yourself backwards from yourself so you see yourself and you see where you are. He's right there. He's five years old and he's staring at that radio. It has a glass plate with all these radio stations inscribed on it, from Beromunster to Moscow. At that moment he realizes for the first time how big the world is. With all these countries and all these different languages on the radio! He's delighted. He calls to the kitchen, where his mother is capping beans: Mom, when I grow up, I want to go to all those countries. To which she retorts in her innocence: If you work hard and do your best, you can go there. He opens his eyes and says: Oh my God, I've forgotten the second part o f the sentence! What was programmed, was working hard and doing your best, but he had forgotten what for. It was misfiled, probably because she said there instead of all those countries. Close your eyes again. You get an impression o f what would have happened if you had remembered the second part o f that sentence.

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He sees himself, almost twenty, leaning against a bollard. He's in the port of Valparaiso in Chile and sees sloshing water and smells the harbor. Delicious. It's the life that he has missed. The session has lasted less than fifteen minutes. Now what? We could only find two things. First, to make his work as international as possible. Second, to retire as early as possible and then travel the world. In a sense he went home tragically. The five-year-old in him had started to protest. That caused his growing revulsion to go to work each day. This postulate did neither come from some trau­ matic experience, nor from what someone else made him believe. It is a deep imprint of a real desire, stored in a state of trance.

If you want to say something ugly to someone, it's best to do this when the other is in a happy trance. Then the person is open and vulnerable, making the negative remark hit home and hurt deeply. Again, in an intense, overwhelming experience we seek a conclusion that seems to make sense. That conclusion we draw ourselves, or we adopt it from others. A Jewish woman has suffered from feelings of inferiority all her life. As a child she constantly heard from Nazis that she was a dog and a pig. After a while, once you have been humiliated enough, you start believe this. After all, how could this happen to you otherwise? That is an in­ ternalization.

We learn from our experience. But when bad experiences, when similar traumas and hangovers repeat themselves, often with a vengeance, even over lifetimes, then they have become anchored in a postulate. We have programmed our subconscious and the program runs its course, whether it's beneficial or not. Habits do show in how we behave, but also in how we think and feel. Our habitual reactions to frustration, ambivalence and conflict shape our emotional character. There are two primal responses to frustration: self-pity and aggression. Postulates habituate these responses. Other postulates pat­ tern our responses to ambivalence: vacillating, delaying or choosing blindly. Ultimately each postulate says something about ourselves. The most consequential programs are character postulates. They tell us how we see ourselves, how we define ourselves. For example: • • • • •

It never comes my way. I see no way out. I don't care. Nobody loves me. Everybody loves me.

Character is destiny, Character is structure. Character postulates are the building blocks. Character is the total of habits of thought, feeling and doing with which we identify, which have become part of our self-image. We no longer say: 1flare up often, but I'm short-tempered. Don't judge the character traits of clients morally, but pragmatically: how do they work out? Someone is short-tempered. Maybe he lives in circumstances in which that works well and in which it is justified. Irascibility is only a compulsory reaction if he can't choose another response and if this irascibility works against him. Many postulates are defenses against disappointment and preventions of failure. For instance: I'm too good fo r this. I won't get involved with it - a superiority complex. Or: I abhor cheap success. I can only play on a white piano. I could paint if I had no headaches. I'm so gifted that I could do anything, but unfortunately I'm lazy. We typically speak of a strong or weak character, or of a good or bad character. A good character consists of effective and good, human habits; a bad character of ineffective or bad, inhuman habits. Even good habits are easily rigid. Therefore, the cornerstone of a truly good character is the ability and willingness to be open-minded, to learn and to change.

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Carl Rogers, the well-known psychologist, suggested that if people have a strong conviction, something is awry. Because nobody looks at us sternly and says with full conviction: And tomorrow the sun will rise again! Powerful beliefs are needed to drown doubts and uncertainties. The easiest way to avoid postulates is thus to accept uncertainty. Interrelated character postulates form character neuroses. Neurotic character traits include submis­ siveness, aggressiveness, self-hatred, inferiority, superiority, vanity. These traits are anchored in a few interrelated character postulates. While these are easy to detect, they're difficult to treat. Such traits typically persist through lifetimes. Often, they have been solutions that created their own problems. You may be so strongly convinced of I'm my own boss, that you attract situations in which it's almost impossible to be your own boss. If successive lifetimes are in some respect opposites, for example, alternately a poor life and a rich life, then there's a negative postulate about property. The simplest negative postulate is: That never again! You bleed to death during the birth of your child, the child dies, your husband becomes mad with grief and drowns himself. Never again! It may be that you incarnate as a man next time, or you're infertile, or you get a lump in your uterus, or you become lesbian or gay. Anything is possible, depending on the rest of your character. Indeed, this postulate gives no direction, it just says: Not this, I don't want this. What do you want? If you really don't want something, stop this and instead ask yourself what you do want? There are also character postulates of the second order, which determine how we interact with our habits. For example: I am who I am. Then all other postulates about ourselves do not need to change. That can be a cheap excuse to ignore or reject justified comments, expectations and demands of other people. Even that postulate may originally have been functional. People tried to mold and change you till you said: That's it, that's enough. I will no longer listen to you. This is who I am and this is how I stay. It was a great step, but now, three lives later, you're constrained by it. Many conclusions and decisions are rushed, even invalid. Why do we do that? Because having no explanation, having no direction is even more frightening than having a bad explanation or a bad direction. How people do react when a girl they know has been raped? What girls are most blamed for what happened to them? The most innocent ones. It is so terrible that rape may just happen to an innocent person, that we must have an explanation. That explanation may be utterly wrong; that explanation may cause death and destruction; that explanation may devastate someone's life, but having no explanation beyond bad luck, is too threatening to consider. If you are relig­ ious, you can throw it on the unfathomable decrees of God.

Inner uncertainty, which we all have, makes us look for stopgaps and crutches. Postulates occur mainly in insecure people who can't accept uncertainty and need self-protecting armament. If a house remains in scaffolds, because it would collapse otherwise, it must have a very weak structure. Ironclad opinions drive out the devil of doubt and confusion with the certainty of Beelzebub. One of the most sensible conclusions is: I don't know or I don't know yet. I have insufficient information to judge. If something is important enough and emotive enough, it is difficult to stay open-minded. Then we tend to conclude one way or the other. Often a postulate is not only deeply engraved, but also got a metaphysical or even religious tinge. Then we arrive at the limit of what we can deal with as therapists. A postulate requires a certain strength of mind. People who think little, if at all, may do stupid things at times, but have no postulates. A postulate is a stupidity that only people with a developed mind have. A simple soul usually learns faster than a more evolved soul. Why? Because a grizzled and pocked and marked soul has amassed many mental responses during many lifetimes. If a child does something and it doesn't work, it thinks, oh, I should obviously do it differently. An old hand, however,

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thinks: This may be a test. That it doesn't work means 1 must try it again. I'll just fall again at the same spot. Before you know it, you have a whole philosophy about falls and right and wrong places to fall down. Hypersensitive and psychic people frequently have a postulate that prevents them from barring influences of others and the environment in general. A priestly training in a distant past often in­ doctrinated them that they should always stay open (and obedient). The more you open up, girls, the better it works fo r you, and the sooner you will be ordained as a priestess. As a therapist, be suspicious of metaphysical conclusions about people, the world and reality. We can think too little, but also too much. Wisdom lies in the middle. In regression therapy, postulates play a role during the intake. Apparently charged phrases make an excellent verbal bridge. In the actual regression, postulates link experiences that stubbornly repeat themselves, or experiences that swing from one extreme to the other extreme. Mental catharsis only comes after possible postulates have been identified and invalidated. More on that later. Pay particular attention to postulates of people who analyze a lot and harbor many beliefs and convictions.

4.4 Prenatal experiences and birth traumas If clients regress to the causes of their problems, they may at times arrive at birth or even before birth, when they're still in the womb. The method then is similar to reliving childhood memories. Often they don't immediately recognize the situation, but find themselves in a dark space or in a cave. If we ask them to feel the walls, we usually learn quickly that they're in a womb. After all, caves have hard walls and are usually cold to the touch. If the walls are soft, often warm, then they are in the womb. W hat's it like there? Rarely quite right, because we generally are looking for the cause of a problem. If it would feel right, we strengthen that sensation and ask for the first change that follows. If it doesn't feel right, may be something has entered from the outside, or that fetus is feeling hamstrung, imprisoned. If something enters from the outside, it's usually an unpleasant or painful experience of the mother. If the fetus feels stuck, it usually resists coming into a body again. Then we go even further back, to the decisive moment for coming back into this new body. Apparently, people easily identify with their mother before birth. The mother may be criticized for being pregnant and the child feels that its own existence is criticized. Now as an adult, the client is constantly bothered by the criticism of others. Or the mother stumbles and hits the floor and is anx­ ious for her child. As the child grows up, it is easily frightened. Another woman is jealous of the pregnancy, and the mother wants to be invisible. The growing child is withdrawn, and fears the jealousy of others. Identification with the mother occurs especially when an incident restimulates unhealed pastlife traumas. If you died falling off a scaffold, you panic when your mother stumbles and falls, al­ though the injury is slight or absent. In practice, the extent to which fetuses distinguish themselves from the mother varies strongly. Some hardly distinguish between 'm e' and 'm o th er,' others feel the difference loud and clear. If the mother becomes very emotional, the fetus is washed in it anyhow. In the regression, it's essential to energetically separate the thoughts and feelings of the client from those of the mother. Some therapists insist there is no own personal, individual consciousness before birth, even no identification with the mother. However, hundreds if not thousands of cases show the contrary. It's very common that clients describe in detail what the mother experienced and has never told her child. And clients can usually indicate what they themselves thought and felt.

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T: You now get an impression o f when that feeling o f terror begins. C: My mother is shopping. 1 think she's in the sixth month o f pregnancy. She slips and falls on the side­ walk and the fear that she'll lose me, flashes through her. T: See and feel how that fear comes into you. If that fear were a substance or an energy, what would it look like and where does it enter you? C: I see a cold, blue-gray blob, rather translucent, coming in through the umbilical cord. (Grabs her stomach.) Ugh, what a nasty feeling! I now see a kind o f vapor o f the same color that enters my head straightaway. T: See and feel the blob and vapor in your body now. C: Yes. I know this feeling. I wake up with it each morning. T: See and feel how everything o f that blob that was actually your mother's, now pulls out o f you and goes back to her. C: Yes, it's gone. But now my mom feels bad. T: If there's something which isn't hers, you get an impression o f that now. C: I hear screams. It's her mother screaming! I see her now as a young girl walking next to her mother. That screaming is in her ears. In mine as well, by the way. T: Let this fear of mother and child return to the grandmother. That really will make you and your mother feel better. (The grandmother was overly concerned about her daughter and was constantly haggling around her.) C: She didn't even fall that hard. She sank to her knees and only fell down the final part. T: You now get an impression o f what made this incident give you such terror. C: I see myself now walking on a scaffolding at a building. I'm not very astute and I slip ... and so on.

Problems during our lifetime have so often precursors during pregnancy, that therapists like Morris Netherton conclude that each restimulation begins during pregnancy. Consequently, Netherton al­ ways fully screens the client's birth and pregnancy, both for incidents that the client knows already and for incidents that are uncovered during the regression. Even if we do not do this, it is wise to at least suggest: I f something happened at birth or before birth that has to do directly with ... (the problem), you get an impression o f this now. Just as it is a good rule with past-life regressions to carefully explore through the death and the after-death experiences, for present-life regressions it is a good rule to carefully explore the birth and the pre-birth experiences. W hat feelings and thoughts are there and how and when did these start? And how have they affected the current life? Always do this when the client wants more than just resolving one particu­ lar problem. For clients with a strong maternal bond, who discover that as a fetus they strongly identified with the mother, go to the moment just before the cutting the umbilical cord, and confirm that eve­ rything belonging to the mother goes back and stays with the mother. Wesuggest that the client puts his or her hand on the belly The therapist may add: Breathe fo r yourself. We may even ritually cut the cord again. W hen do we send clients to explore the prenatal stage? • With deeply ingrained fears with postulates. • With persistent problems with their mother. • With problems that have been haunting them all their life. • If they make or keep themselves small. Some clients even assume the fetal position. There are also direct traumas of the child itself. The most serious is an abortion attempt. Another grave trauma is a complicated birth with much tension in mother and child - and in the midwives and other attendees. And a psychological birth trauma that happens far too often: not being wel­ comed at birth. Or the baby is treated indifferently. Or the mother does not want to look or is un­ conscious, such as after a caesarean. Or the parents feel anxious rather than happy. Or the father is unexpectedly absent. Or the midwife makes worrisome or critical comments about discoloration or malformations of the baby. Much can go wrong at the start of life. 114

A general consequence of many a trauma before and during birth is a diminished will to live. At times we find a resistance to enter the body, an urge to stay out of it. Helen Wambach found that six months into pregnancy, up to 90% of souls were not yet fully descended into the fetus. They are connected but not yet fully in the body. Then the will to live has been weak from the beginning. What do we do with clients who are pregnant? Regression can be very emotional. That can be con­ fusing, even traumatizing the unborn child. Do this only if your client can communicate with her child. If she can't, you have to teach her that before starting the sessions. Help her, often after con­ sultation with the unborn child, to bring on extra protection. Sessions with a pregnant woman may reduce depressions and anxieties, especially anxiety or doubt about pregnancy, birth and motherhood. Explore the birth and prenatal experiences of the mother, so she doesn't transfer her problems to her own child.

4.5 Charged and uncharged ideas and experiences Thoughts are free; feelings are deep and real. In therapy we prefer emotions and somatic reactions to superficial mental chatter. Reliving is more important than remembering. Feelings are deeper than thoughts. Or is it the other way? Thinking governs feeling, right? Aristotle already argued that strong feel­ ings were no excuse for questionable actions, because when we change our thoughts, our feelings will change. People who justify their actions by appealing to their feelings, do manipulate. I just feel this way, is a sign of laziness - and of arrogance. The theosophists placed the mental body above the emotional body. All theories about positive thinking and affirmations assume that strong and repeated thoughts change our mind, our body and even our external reality. Are thoughts stronger than feelings or the other way round? The horse may be stronger than the rider, yet the rider dominates the horse - if the rider is competent. In practice, our feelings may run like wild horses, dragging the rational 'rider' just with them. More commonly, the horse goes where the rider wants to go. So it is with our mental self and our emotional self. Some thoughts and feelings come and go, others are persistent and durable. Some thoughts and feelings are blocking us, others are liberating. A new insight may free us from old feelings. Before this, the same thought meant little to us. That thought has acquired a charge since then, however. Thoughts tend to remain uncharged, feelings tend to become charged. But some thoughts consume us and determine our actions. And many feelings pass away without leaving a trace. There is a difference between infatuation and true love, just like between fantasy and reality, or between playing with a thought and being firmly convinced. If we feel something for someone else, that person may instinctively react to this or not notice it at all. Others think of us without us hav­ ing an inkling, but we can also turn around suddenly because someone is watching us behind our back. Someone thinks evil about of us and we get a stabbing headache. Another finds us a piece of humbug, but it doesn't bother us. One story that you read, deeply moves you and another story doesn't make any lasting impres­ sion at all. One speaker captivates a spellbound audience, while another speaker bores the audience and make the audience grab their cellphones to check the latest message or play a game on it. Some rituals are empty, others are meaningful. Affirmations like Coue's every day I do better and better, at times work wonderfully and most other times not at all. You then affirm until you are blue in the face, but nothing happens. All these examples show the difference between charged and uncharged conditions. In thoughts, in feelings, in what we hear, in what happens and what we see. There are charged and

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uncharged statements. There are charged and uncharged thoughts. There are charged and un­ charged feelings. There are charged and uncharged somatic phenomena. There are even charged and uncharged imaginations and ideas. Our uncharged past we do remember - to a large extent. Our charged past lives in us. Karma and dharma* are durable. They don't change overnight. They're charged, they're real. O bservations can be charged as well. For example, you react strongly to the smell of burning, be­ cause you've once experienced something terrible with fire. People, especially men, can get sexu­ ally aroused by images. Fetishists (also mostly men) might go out of their mind by a w om an's shoe with a high heel. The idea or image or direct observation of a pump is for them erotically charged. We all have charged perceptions. The image of a horse or seeing, hearing or smelling a horse can evoke a feeling of joy and a sense of freedom. It may also evoke sadness, weakness or fear. Re­ ligious symbols are charged: the cross, the crescent, the yin-yang sign. A Christian who meditates about the cross, and notes in a wall two perpendicular beams, can feel a deep emotion. Real sym ­ bols are charged, meaningful performances. These charges stay usually within us and rarely in in­ animate objects - though such objects are probably highly charged as well. Postulates are charged phrases. Other charged statements are oaths, blessings, curses and hypnotic instructions. Charismatic people charge their words, but also their actions, their expression, the tone of their voice, their glance and their hand gestures. A woman has a good marriage with a nice man who does everything for her. Yet the marriage oppresses her. She doesn't understand that, because she has nothing to complain about. In a regression to the origin of that suffocating feeling she relives a previous life with the same man in which they had sworn to remain together. She now understands her feeling and after the ses­ sion is free from the inexplicable pressure she felt before.

Don't underestimate the importance of openness, freedom of engagement. If we make plans, it's nice to view things from different angles, and to be able to revise our plans if necessary and possi­ ble. If you say you hate your mother, you can sincerely believe that at that moment, but it doesn't need to be charged in the sense that you hold on to that statement or that you wish bad things to happen to your mother. Thinking: I'd like to kick that witch, may just be to blow off steam, if it's a passing thought and a transient feeling sentiment. But if it's intense and if you truly curse her, it becomes charged, dura­ ble, and you're stuck with it. (And your mother probably as well.) Until you discharge it. Mental, emotional and somatic charges tend to coalesce. In the brain, for instance in the hypo­ thalamus, mental and emotional responses are inextricably mixed. What applies to the body, also applies to the soul. Robert Crookall has very plausibly proposed there aren't separate mental and emotional bodies, but that both are aspects of what he calls the psychic body. If we get hold of a real charge in therapy, we touch all aspects. Whatever came first: the physi­ cal, the emotional, sensory or verbal charge, it eventually gets all other aspects. A mature karmic charge, but also a ripe dharmic, positive charge is an energy with a mental aspect, a sensory aspect, an emotional aspect and a somatic aspect. How come that we still carry charges from past lives, even in our current body? How do we carry these with us? W hat are those charges made of and where are they located? Not in our physical body, because the previous one died. So in something supra-physical. I call this the energy body. Part of it apparently dies with the death of the physical body and part of it remains and is taken into the next life.

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There is little real research in this field. One of the few undertakings that comes close, is the work of Robert Crookall. He concludes from an analysis of spontaneous out-of-body experiences, death experiences and near-death experiences that there are two im material vehicles: the psychic body and the vehicle of vitality. We are exclusively in the psychic body when w e're fully out-of-body or when we fully died. The psychic body is a vehicle of consciousness. Crookall finds no split be­ tween the mental and the emotional. The vehicle of vitality, which approxim ately corresponds to the idea of the etheric body of the theosophists, is the interm ediary of the psychic body with the physical body. W hen we leave our body during our life, we can do so with the psychic body only, but we also could take a piece of the vehicle of vitality with us. With that filter around us, we arrive in a dark atmosphere, we remain dreamlike or we stay in contact with the physical world. If we lose that en­ ergetic shell, the material world would disappear completely from our consciousness. At death we leave our physical body, while part of the energy body, the vehicle of vitality, re­ mains behind in the physical body. The connection forms a stretched, elastic, energetic wire, the 'silver cord.' If that snaps, we can no longer go back in and we have died irrevocably. Subsequently, the psychic body gradually loosens itself from the vehicle of vitality. That may take a while, but also may go very quickly. In incomplete dying we remain stuck in an etheric shell. All forms of incomplete dying occur because we linger in the denser remains of the vehicle of vitality. We have a gray haze around us. Fully dying disconnects our awareness from the etheric body and so from the physical world and from karmic charges. We descend into the remaining etheric organism, when we return to the next life, before or during pregnancy, at birth or in our childhood. Apparently, a portion of the vehi­ cle of vitality remains connected, without surrounding us. If we have died well, our consciousness is free from it. If we go back to earth, we pick it up and contact the new physical body that's grow­ ing in new mother through the vehicle of vitality. So the energy body is much more than an intermediary between the psychic body and the physical body. If we develop capabilities in or through it, if we can stay inside it, we are between lifetimes not only consciously, but also acting. Then our decisions have energetic consequences. If affirmations remain purely psychic psychological, nothing happens, but they may acquire energetic reality. This applies to all thoughts and feelings. Karma and dharma are energetic realities. Catharsis is an energetic process. If we are embodied, energetic processes always interact with the physical body. Talking that is not energized can clarify and relax, but doesn't solve energetic problems. Talking is psychic, 'working' is energetic as well. We notice this because it involves the physical body. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

A trauma is an energetic wound or ulcer, constipation or hole. A hangover is an energetic grime or slime or dirt skirt. A postulate is a structure in our energetic brain. A pseudo-obsessor is a previous personality of ourselves, who not only has its own psychic reality, but also an own energetic shell that disturbs the rest of our energetic body. Homing is the restoring or enhancing of the energy bond with our soul origins.

A karmic charge, but also a dharmic, positive charge is an energy with a mental aspect, an em o­ tional aspect, a sensory aspect and - when we are embodied - a somatic aspect. New charges do not always possess all aspects, but mature, older charges acquire all four aspects. The mind is our consciousness that can think and feel everything, can identify with everything in and outside of ourselves. The soul is our durable energetic reality, our microcosm. The physical body is our diving suit in the material world - and so our gear, our limitation and our development matrix as well.

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Our mind can identify itself with our body but also with our soul. We can feel and perceive our­ selves as an energy being. Experiencing ourselves as a soul, eventually means sensing our origin. In the course of our evolution, we might have developed much, but we did start somewhere - and that's the soul. Just as embodiment is a possibility inside the soul, mind is a possibility that lies in the soul. No body without a soul and no mind without a soul. Yet a soul without a physical body is possible: thus we are in-between lifetimes. Also a soul without a mind is possible: a sleeping, still uncon­ scious soul. One of the main functions of returning time and again in a human (or maybe other sen­ tient) body is to develop mind for souls still asleep. Be as it may, how do energetic realities play in the practice of therapy? How do we know that we're dealing with charges? During the session this shows in the interplay of mental, emotional and so­ matic experiences. W hen repeating a phrase, we get emotional and sense body reactions. W hen we focus on a bodily sensation and feelings, images and thoughts arise, then that bodily sensation is carrying a charge. It's a somatic. Modern people tend to remain rational. So the main indication of an energy shift is the surfac­ ing of sentiments and somatics. A catharsis that's mentally enlightening, but not supported by somatics, is suspect. Another, even stronger indication of the reality of an energetic shift is a subsequent significant change in the client's life. Other people with whom we live or work, behave differently or react dif­ ferently, even though they don't know anything about the session and even though there has been no contact with the client meanwhile. The same occurs with successful family constellations or or­ ganizational constellations. Hence also remote sessions can help. Apparently, our energetic reality is holographic.

4.6 Blocked emotions Emotions are scary. Remember the metaphor of the half-tamed horses. We are plagued by them. We may go crazy by them. Emotions are charged, intense states of mind. They arise in situations that move us, that make us emotional. W hen we're sad, we withdraw and cry. If we're afraid, we dive away and hide until the danger has passed. W hen we're angry, we swear, we hit or kick or attack or punish until the cause of our anger retreats, runs, flees or gives us satisfaction. When we're happy, we laugh, we sing and dance. That is, when we express our emotions uninhibited. Usually we don't. We keep our anger in check because we're powerless, or because we don't want to expose ourselves or we don't want to go berserk and do evil deeds. We restrain our sorrow because we don't want to look weak. We may hide our fear because we might invite the danger we want to avoid, or because we want to look strong in the eyes of others. In regressions, we often come across repressed emotions. Repressed to the extent that the client can no longer express that emotion, or at times even cannot feel it anymore. Situations that evoked such emotions are conveniently forgotten. If we've tucked away enough emotions, we can't feel any emotion at all anymore, because to become emotional may unleash all other buried emotions. With repressed grief we can't laugh freely. Neither with repressed anger. In the end, all emotions may get blocked. People then react robot-like or zombie-like, or worse: enlightened: free from all human emotions. What a relief! In less severe cases, only certain emotions are blocked. Machos who have a short fuse, but are unable to shed one tear. Hypersensitive women who are in tears and in indignation about all and sundry, but are unable to say no. Both can't laugh easily when relaxed.

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In a civilized world, we do act out our emotions without restraint. We even may not express our emotions freely. We blink away a tear, we swallow our indignation, we pull ourselves together. Some emotions we discharge indirectly, in more appropriate moments in more acceptable ways. The rest we suppress. How do we generally process our frustrations? By relaxation, or concentrat­ ing our minds on other things. Through music, through sport, by hanging out with friends, by hob­ bies. And by chewing on them, to come to terms and understanding, seek compensation and so re­ store our balance. Painful experiences typically leave psychological scars. But some psychological wounds don't heal, and fester. In therapy these wounds burst open and finally true healing may take place. If it goes well. The trick is to reopen the old wound, to release the pent-up tension and heal it without any more fester­ ing. The contamination should really stop. Suppressed, hidden charges are expressed and trans­ formed through a catharsis: a processing so compressed and intense that it looks like a birth. We do not want to repress, we do not want to amputate, we want to regenerate. When a negative emotional response is stronger than the factual circumstances warrant, then usu­ ally repressed charges come into play. A friend made a nasty comment behind your back and you feel so betrayed that you're miserable for weeks on end. You understand why you react this way, but not why you react so strongly and so lasting. The answer is restimulation. Inside of you, you had a forgotten feeling of being betrayed. A rather insignificant incident restimulates an older betrayal that may have cost you your family, your position, your happiness, your life. Regression therapists are familiar with the mechanism of restimulation, but usually regard it as something that makes the client's life difficult. Then they miss the essence: old feelings resurface, be­ cause they want to be acknowledged and resolved. We get carried away by our emotions or pull ourselves together and regain our balance, sup­ pressing still usually more. Or we face and resolve our lasting charges. If we have suffered a recent betrayal, we may increase the existing reservoir of 'feeling betrayed, ' but we may also reduce it. Apparently overly emotional moods like misunderstood anger, or sadness, loneliness, powerless­ ness or gloom offer new opportunities. When we grow out of such sentiments, reduce them to rea­ sonable proportions, we use the opportunity. Then we're better off instead of worse off. When repressed feelings re-emerge and temporarily consume us, we may think we fall back in our personal development, while we actually may process these feelings. What seems to be the dis­ ease, could be the cure. A well-known way to reduce stress is venting: expressing your grief, your anger, your frustra­ tion. If you vent at the wrong people, if you don't recognize or refuse to recognize the root of the problem, if you don't understand the reasons for your stress, then such a discharge is just blowing off steam. That creates new problems. Venting is only useful as a prelude to the real thing. Stopgap measures work for a while, but don't cure. The best way to digest emotions is immediately after the relevant event. This requires courage and presence of mind. Being courageous and realistic, using your mind and curbing your self-pity are even better than doing regression therapy eventually. These abilities differ among people. They are strengthened by good upbringing and weakened by bad upbringing. Therapy is not just processing after-the-fact, but also healing and strengthening courage and real­ ism in general. We suppress em otions and delay processing them because we are reluctant or we are hardly aware of them. Or because we carry repressed experiences and emotions of an even earlier time with us. Indigestible experiences have the nasty habit to accumulate, to cluster* and grow. That's why m ost of us heal slowly, if at all, even with the help of a good therapist. Unfortunately, many

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forms of psychotherapy are inefficient and, what is more important, many therapists are not ef­ fective. Even so, many clients are dragging their feet, and a seemingly positive attitude may well stubborn resistance. Believers in reincarnation quickly point to karma when a client fails to get better. Edith Fiore has already suggested that when a client progresses little over time, guilt feelings are to blame rather than karma. Guilt hinders or immobilizes us. That has its advantages. For one thing, we don't need to change and do not run the risk to fail or to be ridiculed for our efforts. In regressions, some people observe traumatic and horrific past events objectively and unemotion­ ally. They describe in detail what's happening and say for example: I know I'm the one to whom this happens, but I don't feel anything. Then they analyze the events and relate them to their current prob­ lems. Even without emotional release, their symptoms sometimes may disappear after the session. Others relive all the physical and mental pain. In a painful reliving, instruct the client to go through the pain and explore the meaning of the experience. Frequently, general feelings of guilt, sadness or grief aggravate and retain the pain. Just as Go back to ... is a basic instruction in our therapy, so Go all the way through the ... is a basic instruction in our therapy as well. Those two instructions imply, after all, that you mustn't keep standing in front of it and that you m ustn't linger in it. W hat does regression therapy teach us about having emotions? What has it taught me anyway? W henever old feelings emerge, feel them, 'live' them. Don't run away from them, don't express them haphazardly, feel them. Feel the fear, feel the anger, feel the grief. But also: feel the joy, feel the love. Feel! If images arise in these emotional states: fine, so much the better. Provided this doesn't detract from the feeling. If people start to rattle during the regression, they may avoid the essential experience. Even in mortal fear, even with grinding madness in your head: feel it! If it's no longer possible to express the original emotion to the right people in the right condi­ tions, then nothing else remains than just feeling, as directly, as raw as possible. Also outside therapy: don't swallow and pile up and complicate feelings. Don't be angry at your fear, don't be afraid of your anger, don't be irritated about your irritation, don't be disheart­ ened by your jealousy. Recognize that they're there and feel them. Curiously enough, this quite naturally leads to transformation. As so often: the problem is the solution. If we let it. The simplest way to express what you feel, is saying without ado, without embellishing, without di­ minishing. Without shame or blame. Yes, I'm desperate; I'm angry, I'm insecure, I'm confused. I'm glad, I cannot help laughing, I'm happy. Associating happiness with stupidity and superficiality - as many peo­ ple do who consider themselves deeper or higher than most others - can negate their own feelings of happiness. People who associate trust with folly, can't trust others, not even their nearest. Expression further is found in laughing and crying, in moaning and groaning, in dancing and fighting. Particularly forms of anger we can hardly express if we want to remain civilized. But the more we repress our anger, the harder it is to express it eventually without becoming childish or brutish. Civilized anger begins by expressing it explicitly and clearly and by quiet, unyielding pres­ ence. And there's something like wrath: civilized rage. C: I feel a terrible fear. T: Very good. Feel thefear. As deeply and as fully as you can. Go as calmly as possible into the fear, an ever deepen­ ingfear. Feel the fear in your entire body. Immerse yourself in this fear. Stay with your fear. Stay with it.

Regression therapy can be that scary. But that's why it works so well. We stay with it. We free and heal ourselves and others.

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4 .7 N e u ro tic ro le s

Past-Life Regression Therapy (PLR) attracts spiritual and altruistic people. Their mental health is not necessarily better than that of others. If they pursue enlightenment, it often masks feelings of inferiority or superiority. Mercy, compassion, and altruism may mask aggressiveness. Whoever wants to play rescuer, has often been a victim, but almost as often a perpetrator himself. Therapists who badly want to help people, may wish to make amends for something in their past. If they do their own work, they often discover that they've been aggressors and abusers in past lives. Neurotic people have strong ideals so they can denounce other people. Every neurosis has an opponent. To identify this person, consider who suffers most under the client's condition. Usually it's a family member. And who is blamed? Often the same family member. Or society, or even more abstract: the system, the structure. If we press to specify, it's usually the successful people in society: the establishment, the elite. To many spiritual people, successful people are superficial and materi­ alistic. They themselves are the opposite: noble, spiritual, suffering and misunderstood. We all want to get rid of our problems, yet the fear of losing our self-esteem is usually larger. Alfred Adler already said: people who feel that they live in a hostile world, and that they're too good fo r this world, only think o f themselves and their own problems. They don't think about what they could do fo r others. Sane people are willing to set aside what they want and believe - at least for a while - and acknowl­ edge the world as it is, as unbiased as possible. Neurotics prefer their fiction. They rather suffer from their neurosis than having to face that they can't solve their problems. Neurotics have little sense of humor, especially when it comes to themselves. Without realistic acceptance of our limita­ tions, our efforts to develop and perfect ourselves will remain neurotic. The surest mark of neurotics is that they're discouraged. Discouragement usually begins in child­ hood. Four types of children tend to lack life courage: 1. 2. 3. 4.

children with physical weaknesses or deficiencies; rejected or hated children; anxious children with absent or unpredictable, sometimes psychotic parents; spoiled children.

Parents are responsible for their children. The other side of the coin is that many adults don't solve their problems, so they can continue to blame their parents or others. They complain about what their parents or other family members have done or refrained from doing. Even if they're right: complaining doesn't help, it merely ensconces the problem. No neurosis is simply the effect of cir­ cumstances. Nobody is forced to become neurotic. Neurotics have allowed themselves to be tempted into their problems. We always can act differently. Character is destiny, but that destiny is the result of our own choices. In the past, we molded our­ selves in a certain way. Today, we have the choice whether or not to continue being that way. We can just continue, addicted to our problems. Regression can discover and understand this addiction. The next step is up to the client: continue or not? As therapists we try to cure people, we don't con­ vert them. We’re definitely not preachers. We bring the horse to the water and encourage it to drink, but that's all. There are six neurotic roles we find in sessions, roles that help us to understand dynamics within lives; even dynamics between lifetimes. The triangle Prosecutor, Victim and Rescuer comes from Transactional Analysis, developed by Eric Berne. In 'gam es people play' w e'll keep encountering these roles, often mutually interchangeable. Morris Netherton has added to this the Perpetrator. I add the Bystander to this list, and, less frequently, the Wobbler or Flipflop. Bystanders have supposedly nothing to do with the game, but follow it closely. They form the necessary audience for the others. They resemble the curious sightseers at the scene of a disaster,

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shaking their head and mumbling how bad this all is. Wobblers or Flipflops change roles all the time, don't want to be pinned down on anything. Whatever position they take, they tear themselves loose from it whenever they have the chance. When they notice that they are conspicuous, or that they can be addressed or held responsible for anything, they will dissociate quickly. They avoid, they run away, afraid to walk into a trap, but their neurotic desire for freedom has become a trap itself. All roles are connected with guilt and penance. Prosecutors blame anyone but themselves. Perpetra­ tors blame themselves or the weakness of their victims. Victims are obviously innocent and blam e­ less. They can't help it. The evil perpetrators have done it and the Helpers and Prosecutors are not good enough, the Bystanders and the Wobblers are useless. The Helpers tell the Victims and, if you're not careful, the Perpetrators as well, that they can't help being what they are. Bystanders don't even apologize for their inaction, as they didn't do anything and can't be expected to do any­ thing. The Wobblers go from one extreme to the other, making everyone crazy, themselves included. The most common neurotic role is that of the Victim, as we happen to be born as children: smaller, weaker and more ignorant than the adults who call the shots. Clients who feel themselves Victim have a sense of inferiority, usually compensated by what Adler called 'Cinderella fantasies.' This is an ideal base for people to imagine past lives in which they were beautiful princesses or no­ ble knight, who unfortunately were misunderstood and suffered so much. They use the inexperi­ enced therapist to give their current state of being misunderstood a deeper echo and then claim the therapist to reverse this unjust state of affairs. Bystanders remove themselves from a situation, and deflect all responsibility to others. I don't be­ long on this planet. I'll just see how it works here and then leave as quickly as I can. I am just a passerby. The Perpetrator has postulates like It's all my fault, or I'll get them (revenge). The Prosecution blames others: I cannot help it: the world is wrong, the government doesn't do anything, and my father was dominant. If you can recognize these six roles, they'll help to keep an eye on your client - and yourself. The Vic­ tim role is the most common we come across with clients. Therapists easily assume the Helper or Res­ cuer role. Many of them together with their clients blame the parents or society for the client's problems. Of course, not all victimhood is neurotic. Someone who lost a child in a car accident, is a genu­ ine victim. Someone loaded in a wagon to a concentration camp is a real victim. Helping people is not necessarily neurotic either. A woman rightly blaming her father for having committed incest with her, not necessarily plays the Prosecutor. Her grievance is legitimate, her reawakening asser­ tiveness is legitimate. Unless she becomes addicted to victimhood or to blaming, gets stuck in selfpity or anger. Only lingering in blaming and scolding, and doing nothing to overcome the trauma, deriving comfort from it instead, makes her neurotic. Continuous blaming is not a way out, it is a trap itself, an excuse to express aggression in an insipid way. Passive-aggressive is the common qualification for such behavior. Lamentations (Victim), reproach and indignation (Prosecutor), guilt or anger (Perpetrator), un­ solicited help (Helper or Rescuer) and staying on the fence (Bystander) are all useless, potentially self-destructive roles. They allow us to shirk responsibility and take action, and thus avoid change and learning. Being responsible lies halfway between noncommittal and 'innocent' on one side, and guilt on the other side. People shift easily from one role to the other. If you're Victim, but you're still angry, you easily become Prosecutor. From there, growing indignation and anger can turn into Perpetrator. Perpetrators may even blame the victims, because they're so very annoyingly feeble; they don't deserve any better. Though most people switch between these neurotic roles, some stay put in one of them. The simplest role is that of Victim, as people need the least energy for that role. The first response to frustration is self-pity. In psychotherapy, persistent self-pity has been named auto-psychodrama (APSDR) or selfpity complex. That's nearly the same as what I call patient mentality: people that apparently want to stay patients. They never heal. If all symptoms have disappeared, they will create new ones.

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Neurotic Victims seek out neurotic Rescuers. If they find them, they idolize them. After becoming disillusioned they become Prosecutors. Therapist, beware! Refuse pedestals. Establish mutual trust and enjoy success together. Then move on. I once had a client who had as a postulate: Men are ruining my life. As male therapist - and not contemplating gender change for her sake - 1 had to make sure not to be positioned as her Rescuer. A pedestal is a tool in the game of the client. It gives them the power to pull it away from you. 'Hosanna' often leads to 'crucify him!' The one easily blends into the other, because the core is the same: they don't take responsibility for their own life. A husband who plays the Helper of his wife, or vice versa: nothing good will ever come out of it. Because equality is missing. The false element in the Rescuer role is that you're on a pedestal. If you're standing on a higher position, you make the other smaller. Listen to me, baby; put on that dress tonight, and everybody'll like you. Or: George, please remove that ridiculous tie. You would embarrass yourself! The Helper frequently harbors repressed aggression. Helpers choose a superior position, if they are or aren't aware of that. I'm better than the others; I'm smarter; I've better taste; I'm further evolved; I come from a higher planet; I've come here to help people. An inner voice tells you you're special. If the actual circumstances don't confirm this, you easily go into the other pole and feel inferior. To compensate for this, you opt for the role of Helper: a father or mother, a teacher, a priest, an older brother, a guru, an understanding uncle. You get your satisfaction from helping other people, to get them started on the right road. Helpers credit themselves for successes, and blame any failure on to oth­ ers or circumstances. The results of their efforts may be paltry, but their intentions are so good! If you feel more sensitive than others, you'll get into situations where you're annoyed at the be­ havior of others. They're so dense, they still don't get it. If irritation builds up, you can, impulsively or deliberately, become aggressive and humiliating. You then take on the role of Perpetrator or Victim. Again, they haven't listened to me. Now they just have to deal with it themselves. Now they'll know! Neurotic roles trigger complementary roles by others, thus creating a game that's hard to break out off. The great contribution of transactional analysis is that it enlarged the idea of neurosis from an individual state, to a field between people. (Playwrights seem to have known this all along.) Parents scrmped and saved to get their children to college and now they're ungrateful! They were pushing and micromanaging their children, and when the latter try to break free, they feel like Perpetrators for doing so, and the parents feel Victims first and Prosecutors later. Someone must watch helplessly how his daughter is raped and tortured to avenge his resistance. Being tortured is hell, and that father may live on for another twenty years with that hell en­ graved in his mind. He feels guilty, he feels victim of the most hellish experience one can imag­ ine. He could do nothing to stop it, because he was gagged and shackled. He can't assume the Victim role, as that position is already taken by the daughter. He thus freezes into that of By­ stander.

In the case of incest between father and daughter, the mother is often Bystander. I couldn't do any­ thing. M aud never told me, and John neither. Isn't it terrible? As many Germans and others said after World War II: Wir haben es nicht gewusst. We didn't know it. If we haven't resolved a problem, we often change roles in successive lives. Netherton has shown that Helpers frequently have been Perpetrators. Perpetrators may become Victims and Vic­ tims may become Perpetrators. Roger Woolger (1987) gives an example of someone who after hav­ ing been victim in several past lives revels in violence and omnipotence. We ride on horses and start hacking into them. They're poorly armed. My men behead a number o f them. I slay a couple o f women. They herd the remaining together into houses and put these on fire. Now I'm fac­ ing a woman. I rape her. It's great. Now I cut her throat. It gives me a strong and powerful feeling that I am a master over life and death.

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This feeling of omnipotence is exactly the opposite of the vulnerability that the client had in previ­ ous lifetimes The Victim has become Perpetrator. Victim-experiences do not automatically make us perpetrators. We may want to avenge ourselves, but revenge is not the only possible response. We can stay victim or blame others. The choice depends on our character, if we respond more instinctively, or more thoughtfully, the actual circumstances and our energy level at the traumatic moment. Vengeance requires more energy than victimhood. Blaming others requires more energy than blaming ourselves. Compensation through feeling superior costs more energy than feeling inferior. Overcompensation requires even more energy. Plenty of choices we take semiconsciously because we've already programmed ourselves with pos­ tulates like I'm pathetic, they're always after me. Or: They're big and I'm small, and that's unfair. Such postulates disable our assertiveness, not to say aggressiveness. We may've switched it off because we fear our own aggression, and that fear may be based on an experience when our aggression got out of control. It's also an excuse to remain passive. I'm a victim, so I really can't develop myself. Or: I'm better, gentler than most; 1 don't belong on this coarse and primitive planet. You may lead clients through many traumatic experiences without resolving anything, as long as their own programs keep them in Victim mode. To tackle such a problem as a therapist, you must have a broader contract with the client than just helping to resolve a specific problem. Catharsis remains elusive if the client stays in any of these roles. Clients need to understand their role playing; they need to take responsibility. Common sense helps. Even a sense of humor may help. Common sense of the therapist helps too. Don't make it worse than it is. And no better than it is either. Face the facts! Perhaps the most important function of regression is getting to the bare facts of what happened and peel off all the accumulated and ritualized explanations and rationalizations.

4.8 Superiority and inferiority: impaired developments of the sense of self As children we are less strong than adults. We are dependent on them. So we want to become big, adult ourselves. This urge is sometimes strengthened, but usually undermined when a child feels weaker than other children or weaker than expected by adults. This creates a feeling of inferiority. This tendency is reinforced or impaired when parents excessively protect a child and keep it small, or belittle it. Wanting to become big it gets spoiled when adults are hostile to a child, ignoring or rejecting it, being harsh or mean or frightening. Physical defects and physical or mental retardation easily produce feelings of inferiority. Mock­ ing, but also spoiling or responding unpredictably to the child creates fear of failure. Hostile behav­ ior against a child leads to victimhood or eventually to aggression and oppression of the weak by the grownup child. Inferiority erodes our sense of self, so we mask it, preferably by a posture of superiority. Superi­ ority leads to excessive aspirations, excessive ambitions and to new inferiority and new fear of fail­ ure. This shows in constantly comparing ourselves to others, comparing others with others, in sus­ picion and nervousness. As we grow up, we become less powerless: we can do more, we know more, we are allowed to do more. How we develop our self-esteem, or lack of it, determines our lifestyle. Our experiences, es­ pecially as a young child, shape our character. But we always have some degrees of freedom in how we respond. As adults, we always have the choice between a healthy or a neurotic lifestyle. As Freud found lust and satisfaction essential to understand people, Adler found achievement and success essential. These are crucial for our self-esteem: how we see ourselves and how we feel

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about ourselves. As a child, there is little we can do. Our sense of self is still weak. To strengthen this, we want to perform, achieve success, get recognition. According to Adler, opposite the sense of self is the sense of community: wishing to belong to others, feeling welcomed and part of a group, seeking to contribute and help others. Selfishness is unhealthy, yet effacing ourselves for the sake of others is unhealthy too. By the way, effacing ourselves is a roundabout way to gain self-worth. Look at me, how noble, how disinterested, how loving, how self-sacrificing I am! Sane adults with a healthy sense of self-worth don't need to constantly prove themselves to themselves and to others. They derive their sense of self from meaningful relationships with others, from meaningful challenges and meaningful achievements. The best thing is when we feel our soul. Then we don't even need achievement and recognition anymore. W hen we're born, we are small and helpless. The adults live in a world where we aren't yet able to participate in. They judge, applaud, criticize and correct us, they control us. They do all sorts of at­ tractive and interesting things that we can't do yet, aren't allowed to do yet, or can't understand yet. Once we're grownup we no longer need to ask for a treat. Then no one says what time we must go to bed. Then we can take the subway ourselves. Then we make money and buy things. Then we're important and strong. Parents and teachers who encourage children to want to grow up, can do this in healthy, but also unhealthy ways. For instance, they make us understand that w e're too small for something. Once you're grownup, not now. Or if we do something that they appreciate: Aren't you a big boy! They emphasize that we're small, or they exaggerate how big we already are. Or they may discourage us to grow up. Thomas Harris points out in I'm OK, you're OK, that practically all of our communication contains some positive or negative judgment. The implication for a child may easily be that it's not-OK. Even if it grows up with understanding and well-meaning parents, it receives many signals of inade­ quacy: doing things wrong, misunderstanding things, having wetted the bed, being vulnerable. As children we compare ourselves with grownups, and it's not too bad if the comparison is to our disadvantage. It stabs us more if we lag behind other children, brothers, sisters, classmates. Al­ though the oldest child in a family tends to compare itself with the adults, younger children are more likely to feel inferior. Not allowed to join the play as they're too small, older brothers and sis­ ters who reprimand them. At school, mutual comparison is the order of the day. Children who lack behind in school per­ formance, consider precocious children as showoffs and teacher's pets. He's better in math, but I can easily beat him up. Children belittle the things they are weak at. All this is defense, protecting a weak sense of self-worth. Superiority is a defense against looming inferiority. It's natural to want to grow up and natural to feel already big occasionally, or to play as if you're a grown-up. Children play mummy and daddy, soldier or doctor - the shortest summary of the adult world. Yet children may also escape into daydreams. For example, intelligent children who are out­ casts at school or at home, who feel hurt, are rejected and ejected by the group or are bullied, seek refuge in the imaginary world of stories in books. Thus they feel older and wiser than their peers. They read the classics earlier, but have their first kiss later. Frequently, such children are intellectu­ ally precocious but emotionally inhibited. They have less contact with peers, what keeps them in other respects childish. At the same time they interact more with adults, which makes them oldish. They may miss out on the common life experiences that fit their age. Inferiority and superiority feelings come down to the same thing: a fragile sense of self-worth that lingers in continuous comparisons with others. If a woman stands in front of a mirror and she feels comfortable, she looks good and feels well-dressed, then this reinforces her sense of self-worth.

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That sense of self may be healthy or unhealthy, depending on how she compares herself with others. Men have this with their cars or their women, or women with their husbands. Look at my catch! M aking others jealous, showing off, vanity. Superiority must constantly be confirmed and supported. Inferiority feelings can also give the response: I can't do it, I'm unable to do it, I'm unable to manage it. Self-pity can result in I don't want yo grow up. It's unimportant to grow up. This attitude we also en­ counter among alternative, spiritual types: social success, making a career is for superficial people. They make failure harmless by making success unimportant, even desirable. Life isn't about getting degrees or how much money you make. It's not about how famous you are, as long as you're really nice. That could be a healthy attitude towards life, but all too often inferiority and envy lurk behind it. At the same time, such people feel themselves superior. I see through illusion, humbug and makebelief. I'm above all that. Ordinary, materialistic people don't know better. It's all about enlightenment, about spiritual growth. Inferiority feelings may also lead to: Just you wait. Later, when I'm big and strong, I'll make them remember me. Then you need and want and shall be big. For children who feel inferior, growing up may seem the solution to all their problems. Growing up then becomes the long, slow preparation of a revenge expedition. Most people who enjoy power have suffered as children under hostile, op­ pressive or abusive parents. Adults can belittle children by harshness and humiliation. Belittling is for example: I knew you couldn't stay dry at night! Normal eight-year-old children don't wet their bed. Belittling is too: Don't worry, it doesn't matter that you wet your bed. You are a big boy and will always be mummies dearest! The first response highlights the failure and leads to self-pity or aggression. The second response smothers self-respect and confirms dependence. Fear of failure may have three causes: mocking parents, spoiling parents, and unpredictable par­ ents. First, parents mocking when something embarrassing happens. You won't manage. You cannot even pee in the potty. You cannot say anything without stuttering. I f you jump rope, you'll fall flat on your The second cause is the opposite: being so spoiled and pampered that you never meet chal­ lenges, that you never know the sense of achievements. Others take everything out of your hands. That leads to fear of failure, hidden behind a screen of superiority. You feel yourself too good for everything and thus don't need to do anything. The third cause is the unpredictability of others, especially of parents. One time they applaud you, then they humiliate you. One time they are micromanaging you and are all over you, another time they ignore you completely. You never know. This leads to performance anxiety. You aren't so much afraid you fail, but you are unsure of what success and failure constitute in the eyes of others. Especially mocking by peers, and pampering and unpredictable adults, make us avoid achieve­ ments, while feeling inferior and superior at the same time. Victimization by parents, in ignoring, rejecting, belittling, terrifying, being harsh or cruel to children, is even worse. It leads to tormented and anguished children, to passivity and sometimes masochism. Or to the reverse. The child intimidates and hurts even smaller children, or animals. It may even become sadistic. Parents may reject a child because it was unwanted at birth or because it is an unwanted stepchild. Or a boy should have been a girl or the other way round. Or mom lost her graceful hips or her beautiful breasts because of pregnancy and breast-feeding. That's 'w hy' dad has a girlfriend and 'w hy' mom hit the booze. Their bitterness they direct at the child, whom gets to hear on a daily basis their misery is due to him or her. Particularly psychotic parents who are hostile, unpredictable and incomprehensible, terrorize their children. Just read in Sybil what havoc a schizophrenic mother who's not held in check by a weak, neurotic husband can wreak on a child.

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Neurotics, psychotics and psychopaths haven't all had a bad childhood. And, more important, not all people with a bad childhood become neurotics or worse. Still, if you want to bet whether a child later ends up in jail, prostitution or the madhouse, the best odds are with a sadistic mother. Some fathers may also be up to par in that department. A girl will have her seventh birthday the next day. Her father wakes her and gives her a doll for her birthday. He tells her that he will commit suicide on her birthday so she'll know the rest of her life what she did to him. Thus happens. One of the many psychiatrists whom this woman visits later in life, told her that she actually had wanted to have sex with her father. Adding in­ sult to injury. A father puts his nine-year-old son on a high, old-fashioned kitchen cupboard. Jump down, I'll catch you. The boy, a timid type, jumps after much hesitation. Dad steps back and lets him hit the stone floor. Boy, let this be a lesson fo r life. Trust no one. A girl grows up lonely in a doctor's family before the war. On the street she's unable to play with anyone. As an adult she frequently suffers from irrational fears. In regression she sees as the beginning of that fear her former nanny. She starts to tremble, but she doesn't know why. With great difficulty, the suppressed memories surface. As the nanny took her to the bathroom, this nanny turned out to be a pedophile who dressed up as a nanny. He abused her while she had to stand with her feet in a basin of cold water. He hissed repeatedly: If you ever say anything, I'll kill you.

Such experiences erode the will to grow up into an adult. The will to grow up snaps, or is poisoned with hatred and revenge. Most child abuse and child rape is done by family members and close relatives. Your body grows, you learn something at school, but healthy development is under­ mined. Neurosis, depression and suicide may derive from this. With the more resilient, it may lead to aggression and crime. The ordinary, reasonably healthy way to compensate for a vulnerable sense of self-esteem, espe­ cially in puberty and early adulthood, is swagger. Swagger by boys compensates for a weak sense of self. There is much posturing going on, both by boys and girls. Posturing may degenerate into bullying. Children can be mean. They can be violent, even cruel, but that rarely comes out of the blue. Pulling out legs of insects, blowing up frogs. Three thirteen-year boys pulling a nine-year-old boy of his bike. They terrorize and injure, they seek power to compensate for their own feeling of nothingness, hurt or self-hatred. Terror, sadism and torture as sport compensate for lack of self­ esteem, a lurking sense of inferiority. Growing up positively reinforces our sense of self and our independence. We then can act with­ out this being at the expense of others. That fosters self-acceptance, self-respect and self-confidence. With a positive drive, we want to develop ourselves, employ and hone our talents. We want to face challenges, become better, richer, broader and wiser. We want to have meaningful achievements. We grow up by overcoming our powerlessness and fear. We dare to take risks and to accept responsi­ bilities. 'Getting things done' gives a satisfaction that few other acts or activities can match. Freud saw satisfying achievement as a sublimation of sexual gratification. Getting something done then is a sub­ limation of an orgasm. According to Alfred Adler it's the other way round. Male pride about erection and ejaculation stems from feelings of inferiority. Real satisfaction we find by doing something mean­ ingful in the world. Someone who beats a few prisoners to a pulp, increases his sense of self. He doesn't need to take any­ thing from anyone or answer to anyone. Perhaps he was a little pipsqueak in his youth who was regu­ larly beaten by older or bigger boys. Or he was rejected, humiliated, or harassed in a different way.

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Now he humiliates others to feel his own strength and power. It is revenge, but it's also something deeper and simpler: I exist, because I use my fists. Who can still ignore me? The compensation of inferi­ ority is superiority. The compensation of worthlessness is omnipotence, no more need to take ac­ count of anything, playing God - or in this case - the Devil. Yet without victims such a bully is like a king without subjects or a leader without followers: he's a nobody. His worthlessness is a black hole, a vacuum that threatens to absorb him. As others are afraid of death, he is afraid to reflect about himself and look in the mirror. Multatuli, a Dutch writer: Be yourself, I said to someone. But he couldn't, he was no-one. To boost our self-esteem, we have, in summary, the following strategies, from good to bad and worse: 1.

Personal growth: overcoming powerlessness and fear of failure, developing ourselves, daring to take risks, accepting responsibility, expanding our social circle. Self-development. 2. Assertiveness: averting being harmed by others or circumstances; firmness; withstanding, ig­ noring or avoiding criticism, malice, slander, and attacks. Or simply defending yourselves. 3. Keeping down people: keeping people in the dark, not helping or encouraging them, keeping them under our thumb. Keeping others dependent. 4. Diminishing people: restricting freedom of movement, pinning others down, belittling, moth­ ering, making others dependent, offering fake sympathy. Oppression. 5. Treating people like robots: bearing no contradiction, giving no response, ignoring, withhold­ ing information, having no consideration; plagiarizing intellectual property; perpetuating meaningless situations; holding people at a distance and compelling them to do what you want. 6. Making people into puppets: imposing mandatory, oppressive rules; misuse, cheat, manipulate, abuse. 7. Making people ill: make people doubt themselves, insinuate, unsettle, frighten, threaten; make them stumble; mock, deprecate, blame, besmirch. 8. Making people crazy: declare people insane, making people believe they are to blame, declare people mentally incapable; double binds, responding unpredictably; doubting factual statements or observations; isolating people, letting people down suddenly. 9. Breaking people: force people to act against their deepest feelings and beliefs, losing their self-respect, forcing them to do inhuman, humiliating, disgusting things, make them (and others) desperate. Destruction. 10. Tormenting people: enjoying torture and humiliation, at times to the death of the victims. Sadism. As therapists, we help people to realize strategies 1 and 2. And we help them to cure the ill-effects of 3 to 10. We can distort our self-image to the extreme, assuming an identity that has a non-human aspect. I have come to distinguish seven non-human identities. Earlier I mentioned six neurotic roles: Victim, Perpetrator, Bystander, Prosecutor, Helper and FlipFlop. To these I add seven inhuman, psychotic roles: Angel, Devil, Plant, Animal, Stone, Thing and Robot. Non-human Identities Angel

Devil Human

Plant Stone

Animal Thing

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Robot

A well-known Thing-role is the medium or channel. I'll talk, but not really: it speaks through me. You de­ clare yourself a mouthpiece, a thing. Normal people are responsible for what they do and what they say; not the medium. Being a Channel is even better than being Victim, Bystander or Helper. It's a Helper that allows himself to be erased. The real art is to communicate with 'above' while remaining yourself. In terms of brain waves: next to delta also beta. Learning to channel yourself is quite interesting too. As a Robot we aren't responsible either, we do not have to think and even better, we do not have to feel. We follow the program. Daily life is full of routines. If we drive to work, we do that for 95 percent as a robot. There's nothing wrong with that. If we never want to be a robot, if we want to do everything consciously, we would never arrive at our destination in one piece. The Robot as a role becomes transfixed once we don't ask ourselves what we want, if we no longer follow our feel­ ings or our intuition, if we do no longer anything new. 'Robotized' aspects we encounter when we search for character postulates. Routine programs lead to mechanical attitudes and behaviors, sometimes lifelong. ROBOT-POSTULATES I am just the way I am. Everything is predestined. I do my duty. I do everything according to plan. I follow my inner voice. I live according to the law. I do as I promised. Some people cannot accept there are things they cannot deal with. So they decide to become perfect. They draw a screen or a cylinder around themselves. In a religious, sacred atmosphere, without our own free will, we turn into Angel or Plant. We're pure, without ego. Thy will be done. We are crea­ tures without conceit or desire and thus we don't make mistakes. That's what many people hope to find in churches and spiritual movements. Being an Angel frees us from criticism, from uncertainty and doubts, from personal failure, from responsibility. People who want to wrap themselves in uni­ versal love, assume this role. It's also easier to love the world than your neighbor. Dogmatic people consider themselves to be Angels, but operate as Robots: unbearable to ordinary people like the writer and readers of this book. ANGEL-POSTULATES I never swerve from the straight path. I seek the Truth. Ordinary people don't understand me. This is my last life on earth. Piety is its own reward. I always look fo r the good in people. I strive fo r Enlightenment. With my positive thinking I help the world. I look fo r purity in all things. People as Angels have recreated their identity - if they succeed, it's almost fatal. Almost, because life has plenty of experiences in store that make us stumble in or deviate from our role. Sex, to name but one. That is seen as an animal imperfection or seduction. Before you know it, you consider yourself as a Beast or Devil. If we push ourselves to the ex­ treme in one direction, the part we ignore becomes orphaned and runs wild. A monk who tries to

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overcome his carnal lusts, who vainly prays and chastises himself, is not as bad off as when he would succeed and wallow in angelic pride. An unsuccessful identification is painful and confus­ ing, but learning at least goes on. Simpler souls who want to do good and interpret that as doing nothing wrong, become Plants. They want nothing for themselves and put their self-consciousness on the back-burner. People who just do whatever they like, identify with the Animal. Pleasant as an in-between holiday, but if it takes too long, they degenerate. The Devil is the perpetrator that despises ordinary, conventional people and is proud of its own hardness. No rules apply to me, no shame, no restraints. I'm bad, I'm evil. In everyday life such people are more palatable than Angels, but in times of war and violence they create nightmares for others. Angels we meet in our profession the most. Few clients and remigrants are animal-like or de­ monic, or vegetable-like. So our human identity must develop among these seven possible non-human identities: Angel, Devil, Plant, Animal, Stone, Thing and Robot. For people assuming any neurotic roles of Angels, Devils and some Robots, personification is essential. For the remainder, some form of auraexploration and energy work is essential. How do we remain human? Nietzsche said it beautifully. The first man is like a camel, someone who carries everything. The second man is a lion, who follow s his own will in all things. The third man is like a child, 'a wheel rolling out o f itself, a first movement. Being human certainly includes remaining a child. Don't suppress anything, not even your repressions. Accept facts, even those you cannot or wish not to accept. Knowing calm in your movement and movement in your calm. Being able to handle uncertainty, being able to handle imperfection, being able to empathize with almost everything and everyone without losing yourself. Taking responsibility without losing your freedom; being free without being irresponsible. A Human is a sovereign Child.

4.9 Presence and absence Presence and absence* are central ideas in mental health and mental weakness. I discovered the im­ portance of that polarity in my management development seminars. What is leadership? How do you teach people to be leaders? Employees almost invariably complain about bosses, usually un­ derstandably so. Typically, employees complain that the boss is not there or shows no interest. Or the boss is protected by a firewall in the form of secretaries and assistants, or is absorbed in external obligations. Leadership presupposes being physically and above all mentally present, manifesting personal awareness and interest. Bureaucracy tends to be the opposite. Counters, procedures and formalities create distance. People write emails to each other as if they're on Bermuda rather than just across the hallway. Pick­ ing up the phone, let alone talking face to face, has decreased. During my training courses, I have managers list in what circumstances they are more present and when they are less present. Keeping order in a classroom also has to do with presence, absence or mock presence. Pupils re­ spond immediately to absence or mock presence. Pupils, like employees, have a built-in BS-meter. Reasons to be not fully present are many. We don't accept something, we push something of our­ selves away. So we are less present. If we struggle, when at work, with a personal problem, it dis­ tracts our attention from where we are and what we're doing. Or we're lost in our thoughts, maybe about our next holiday, or winning the jackpot. Or we daydream about imagined or actual love. We would not really like to be here, but somewhere else - with someone else. All hope and fear tend to make us absent-minded.

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We pretend to be present when we for example copy the confident demeanor of our father or our boss. It seems we're present, but that's a pretense. A sense of superiority produces a mock presence; a sense of inferiority diminishes our presence. Repression and exaggeration make us less present and so more vulnerable. We puff ourselves up, but that makes us a walking invitation: deflate me! Why do we puff ourselves up? Because we feel small, insignificant. And why do we feel small? Because we have lost a part of ourselves. Or we compare ourselves all the time to others; we do that only if we aren't our true selves. People who are themselves don't feel small or big and rarely com­ pare themselves with others. Therapy helps to change absence and mock presence into real presence. We're fully present when we are ourselves without escaping or daydreaming. Presence, to be in the here-and-now, is the general precondition to: • • • •

be responsible; be authentic; pay attention and remain interested; have time for and allow space to others so that they can be present as well.

Being present means feeling at home. Not feeling at hom e means we would rather be elsewhere. Being present may spread to feeling at home in our body and at home in this world. In PLR we regularly deal with people who don't want to be in this world, or are uncom fortable in their body. Some feel too good for this world. Society is all wrong and 1 walk around here lonely and misunder­ stood. W hen we regress in this life, we find a childhood problem like feeling rejected or abandoned. Such children may fantasize that their parents are not their real parents, but they are a foundling of royal descent. Nowadays, people remem ber during superficial regressions that they came from higher planets to help the people here. Few people are w aiting for pedants from outer space who tell us what we can do better - and thus imply that what w e're doing is wrong and primitive. Issues with wanting to be or not to be present, frequently originate from problems during birth and pregnancy. Before we were born we were already consciously present to some degree. With each life, birth restim ulates our first life on earth and, if we ever lived elsewhere, our first time in a hum an body. Maybe problems of being present already started at the very beginning. And were we welcomed when we were born? Did we get an entry ticket to our life? Did we get a seat we feel is ours? Or do we still feel like stowaways? Betw een presence and absence lies wavering presence, oscillating betw een wanting to be there and wanting to be elsewhere. This precarious state results from conflicting desires (like wanting adventure and security), conflicting feelings (I hate you - please continue!), or conflicting desires of dependence and independence (I wanna be with you - 1 wanna go my own way). The deepest fluctuation is betw een joy of living and death wish. The whole culture of Rom anticism is built on contradictory feelings. Other forms of flickering presence are: • • • •

Anxiety-courage flares Pleasure-displeasure flares Hope-despair flares Anxiety-anxiety flares (e.g. the fear of running short by others against the fear of falling short to others).

Mock presence is pretending we are present, but being elsewhere with our mind. Gosh, how nice you tell me this, how interesting, we say, but we are quite somewhere else with our thoughts. This is the

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opposite of Romanticism, this is the world of empty politeness, of what they then called philis­ tinism. We nowadays speak of bores. Distorted presence is a playing a role that doesn't fit us. Someone pretends to be the confident, relaxed man of the world, while feeling insecure and tense. A middle-aged woman who plays the coquettish, dependent girl, complete with pout and tight sweater. An adolescent guy who behaves like a pedantic old male. We can define therapy as guided self-healing, and self-recovery as restoring personal presence. Be­ ing present is a mental issue, but at the same time an energetic issue. Presence is power, absence is weakness. We're absent when we're with our attention elsewhere: in a story, musing about the past or mired in dreaming about the future. Being present is often called (and rightly so) being in the here-and-now. We can be more or less present and thus more or less absent as well. In addition, we can have mock presence (hidden absence) and even mock absence (hidden presence). Finally, there's the am­ bivalent or vacillating, flickering presence. We thus can look at our main classification of problems in this way: • • • • • • •

Trauma: a temporary absence, creating a hole. Hangover: being gradually pushed or sucked away; diluted or smothered presence. Pseudo-obsession: a not really present (undead) subpersonality pushes the current person­ ality aside so that the latter is less present. Character postulate: robotized presence. Alienation: feeling not present here; not grounding, losing contactwith 'hom e.' Obsession: a strange and disturbing presence. Attachments: smaller, lighter, occasionally transient obsessions.

The earlier mentioned neurotic roles: Victim, Perpetrator, Helper, Prosecutor and Bystander are im­ proper forms of presence. A Helper therapist for a Victim client aren't really present. The expression is with good reason: games people play. Opposite the human being as an individual, as indivisible, as a whole, stands the swarmed-about or interspersed human, the multiple human. We are energetically swarmed about by presences and absences or holes. There are holes that are empty, and there are holes in one place that are balanced by inserts in a different place. If we lose something of ourselves, there's often something from oth­ ers that fill the empty space. We may be full with norms and rules and how-to-behaves, while our true, more spontaneous self is gone. Our head is full, our heart isempty. Other holes seem empty, but - whether or not hidden - are filled or even inhabited. Holes we feel as emptiness, invaded presences we feel as pressures or tensions or weights. W hat makes us empty, I call parasites or 'su ck ers,' what invades us, I call 'compressors' or oppres­ sors. In karmic transactions we lost something, we were cheated out something us or we squan­ dered something. On the other side, things or entities have been imposed on us, sent to us, or they have invaded us. Together, five transformers reduce our psychic energy or exchange it with others: • • • • •

Negative subpersonalities, frequently largely lost or frozen inner children. Pseudo-obsessors: compressing or sucking undigested personalities or subpersonalities of past lives. Intruders: imprints, inserts, invading energies, attachments and obsessors. Holes Mock presences: thought images that got a life of their own.

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Each subpersonality is rooted in a basic emotion or basic postulate, usually both. Each subpersonal­ ity distorts our perception and vantage point, and our freedom of movement. The negative trans­ formers or subpersonalities may occur in any of the neurotic roles: Victims, Bystanders, or FlipFlops (leachers) and Perpetrators, Prosecutors or Helpers (oppressors). Each negative transformer is defined by five aspects: • • • • •

A copy of the main personality Energetic substance and thus both emotionally and physically charged Mental program: one or more postulates (program) On-switches: triggers that activate the subpersonality Off-switches: triggers that deactivate the subpersonality.

Thus there are many types of negative transformers in our system that hinder or distort our experi­ ence and reflection and so our personal development. Each has its on-switch through association. The accesses to these transformers are the associative procedures: particularly the four bridges, and the dissociative procedures: personification and aura-exploration. How a session starts, has everything to do with being in the here and now. We take w hat's present right at that moment. That's the entry point. Not general musings, soap operas and other dramas, or semiprofessional biographies. W hat do clients want now, what do they feel now in their body? W hen we are really present as a therapist, we get all the information we need. The beginning shows the actual problem and the problem will show its own solution. Every good beginning is an oracle of the next step. What am I saying? Every good beginning is an oracle of the end. Therapy gradually blends from solving specific problems into personal development. We increas­ ingly become ourselves. We become ever more conscious and alive and authentic and effectively present. That enriches our lives - and those of others.

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CHAPTER 5. ANATOMY OF A SESSION

If you want to learn how to conduct a good session, it would be best to follow a course on scriptwriting. A good session is a good story, with a good plot and a good buildup (the macro structure), and with good dialogues and good stage directions (the microstructure). The big difference with scriptwriting is of course that we do not make up the story. It's not our story, but the client's. But with our guidance, that story comes alive, gets color and structure, and provides new insights. Clients may be surprised, because they realize for the first time how rich and deep and vibrant and layered their story really is. A good session is symphonic, a beautiful piece of music, like a successful jam session of two players. Usually a session proceeds in distinct stages, from the interview and induction to the actual therapy, completion and occasionally an extensive review afterwards. Something should precede the induction, something that's sometimes underestimated and even more often forgotten. Many therapists even haven't got the faintest idea that it exists: finding and capturing and agreeing on the starting-point, i.e. the exact, actual topic that shall be the focus and purpose of ih e session. I speak about the contract: the contract between therapist and client. Each session is a complete therapeutic cycle. One session can even consist of several cycles. You can pause after one-and-a-half hours, because you've completed one cycle. You've completed the theme or issue in question, or a saturation point has been reached. You notice when the client has reached such a point, either you or the client need to take a break. Then you may still deal with an­ other issue in any remaining time left. Each cycle ends when the contract has been fulfilled. Each cycle has a clear starting-point and a clear end-point. Without a clear start, there won't be a clear finish. The simplest cycle is symmetrical and consists of seven stages. The middle stage, the fourth, is the actual work: the regression (and/or working with subpersonalities). The stages are:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The intake The contract The induction The actual regression, resulting in a catharsis The consolidation and integration Checking results and open ends, and closure The review together

Obviously, this is just like all models, a simplified view of reality. Most sessions go through multiple smaller cycles. Though it may turn out that the integration isn't yet possible, because a large piece of the story still needs to be told and dealt with. Or at the conclusion of the session, it becomes evi­ dent that we skipped an essential part of the story. With me, the intake takes between five minutes and half an hour. The contract is the outcome of that conversation. To define we rarely need more than a minute. The induction may take a few minutes in exceptional cases, but usually this is already too long and half a minute ought to do the trick. The session itself lasts between fifteen minutes (very rarely) and around three hours (rarely); usually just over an hour. Consolidation and integration might take fifteen minutes, checking off and closure half a minute, and the review together between five and twenty minutes. A slow process tends to dilute the results of the session.

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5.1 An example session with analysis and comments The following exposition is an example of a regression to a small and at first sight harmless car ac­ cident that someone has had years ago. It is a demo session during the Tasso training program. It illustrates how to discover and resolve the aftereffects of accidents. We call this approach, after Paul Hansen who first described this method, ATR or Accident Trauma Release. I have changed some details in the session to ensure anonymity. A SIMPLE COLL1SON T: C: T: C:

T: C:

T: C: T: C:

T: C: T: C: T: C:

Please describe the situation o f the accident. I was working, I was a medical representative, I was in the car. How long ago, about? Almost nine years ago. It was winter. I had parked in the driveway o f my parents' home. There I had a cup o f tea, because I had to go to a town near Amsterdam and visit the hospital there. I had an ap­ pointment with three doctors at the same time, two o f whom 1 didn't know. My parents lived near that town at a narrow country road. I'm standing at the lane's exit. (Starts to talk in the present tense!) My cell phone rings and you shouldn't call in the car, unwise way to do that anyway. I'm on the phone and after a while I think I really have to drive away now to be on time for the appointment. I think I already had my foot on the accelerator. Unfortunately, from the right a truck appears that's traveling rather on the wrong side o f the road and hits the nose o f my car. I'm on the phone and I haven't seen anything, my head hits the car and gives me a whiplash that way. I remember you said you've had a whole list o f accidents, right? Why have you singled out this one? Because after that accident I couldn't work for two years. These other accidents gave concussions. I've had three concussions, one by one piece o f brick that fell off a roof I had an umbrella. Before I cycled into the street, I was thinking, Shall I close my umbrella, as the rain has stopped? I kept it open anyway in case something would drop from the sky. Then something actually drops from the sky - that brick from the roof. And the umbrella absorbed some o f the impact, apparently. Yes. 1 still have a dent in my skull here. The umbrella made the brick just hit the side o f my head. I f it had hit the middle o f my head, I'd be dead. That umbrella is now in a museum ? I did keep it for a while, yes. My first concussion happened when Iwasaround six years old. I was enjoying myself at a youth camp. We had just arrived and we startedplaying soccer and one male su­ pervisor played soccer rather too well. I tried to head the ball, but it came too hard on my head. The last concussion happened when I was lying in a hammock with my son. He was lying on my stomach and I was happy and then I went down, hitting the ground. Did you fall forwards or backwards? I was lying across the hammock. But you were probably more worried about your son. I was indeed. As long as he didn't get hurt. But then you fall on your behind, if you fall down that way. That's interesting, I don't know. I know I got hit on the head.

One of the functions of regression is to restore memory loss. T: OK, but do you want to get back to that car accident? C: Yes. I was on the phone, talking with a colleague, I do no longer remember what we said. A female col­ league with whom I got along quite well. A few months before I had changed from one company to an­ other, and she came to work there as well. I had my boss on the phone and he said, fhere's someone next to me who wants to talk to you. T: And that was a nice surprise? C: That was a nice surprise. T: What's the disadvantage o f nice surprises? That you may be distracted. Anyway, that whiplash is the most important thing that happened, apparently. C: Yes. I still feel it in my neck and elsewhere.

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All of this is still the intake. The most important information she had told before, was that she couldn't work for two years after what appears to have been no more than a mild whiplash. H ow­ ever unclear the cause of this lengthy convalescence, she indicates in the last sentence that she still seems to suffer from it. I ask a few questions to clarify the situation, as well as her state of mind just before the accident. T: Why did you go to your parents to have a cup o f tea? C: I was nervous about the coming meeting with those three doctors at the same time. T: What in particular made you nervous? (Focusing.) C: Meeting three men at the same time whom you haven't met before, while you've only ten minutes to make your sales pitch. T: How long have you done that work? C: One year. T: It was not new to you? C: No, but I had just changed to a new firm. T: Did you sell a particular product? C: A number o f products. You need to bring products to their attention, some manipulation is involved. T: In front o f three men at once. At a new company. C: I was excited. T: I know enough. I understand the situation.

The contract is implicit: to understand why she was so much affected for two years by the slight accident, and getting rid of any remaining physical tensions. The contract does not need to be ex­ plicitly mentioned here, as the purposes of such ATR-sessions were discussed in class just before the demonstration. T: What time o f day is it? (Present tense.) C: Afternoon. T: What's the weather? C: It was winter, foggy and humid. My parents live across meadows, there the fog keeps hanging about. T: Close your eyes. You walk out the door to your car. Describe how you walk, how it feels, what you see.

Here begins the induction. It consists of little else than talking in the present tense, suggesting the client to close her eyes and asking for concrete details of time and place. Notice how her first de­ scription is already useful for a scriptwriter. The first reaction of the client is still in the past tense, but I keep asking and suggesting in the present tense. This works, as becomes evident in the follow­ ing part. Note that it begins with I believe that ... but then is immediately followed by sensory im­ pressions: the scrunching sound of gravel. C: I believe my father is walking with me. It is a gravel path, crunch, crunch, crunch. A heavy bag. I have it with me now too. I need to go through a gate at my parent's place. T: Feel and see how you pass that gate.

This is standard operating procedure in guiding reliving: ask for the sensory impressions, and si­ multaneously about what is going on in one's mind. C: My car is at the front. I walk on the gravel path to the car. T: Is the gate open ? C: Yes. T: Can you see the car before you? C: Not really-on ly dimly. T: Do you see how you get into the car? C: I feel I'm sitting in the car, phoning my boss. T: Go back a bit. The car was vague. What is the last thing you clearly see? You hear the gravel crunching apparently.

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This is also a standard intervention. Be mindful when some impression remains indistinct. There's always a reason for this. Someone may relive an absent-minded moment or something happened or was done or thought which is now being suppressed. C: Hm. T: Are you talking to your dad or something? (It is essential to add 'or something' to avoid pushing the client in the wrong direction.) C: It may be that my mother also comes along. That is too much, confusing. I believe that she remained behind. My father walks with me a little further. T: Can you feel the bag?

It's still absolutely unclear why the presence of her mother might be too much and confusing, when walking with your father to your car. I have no idea what's behind it. If I try to focus on it, I may cause only confusion and get her out of the still vulnerable reliving, get her to think about it instead of reliving it. So I choose to ask for sensory impressions and try to get her in by touch. C: I think I had the bag on my shoulder. T: Feel that. Apparently you can hear sounds and can feel your bag. You have bodily impressions, there's confusion about your father and your mother. That car you don't see at that moment.

This summarizing repetition seems trivial, but isn't. It implies that the therapist accepts that things are still confusing and hazy and that she even doesn't see clearly something like a car. She's not be­ ing interrogated. C: No. I think the meadow's beautiful. I like the view o f that meadow. T: You're looking at it maybe. C: I think so, yes. T: You had rather linger in that meadow, than step into the car and perform your sales pitch before those men.

You better shouldn't do that as a beginner, to speculate like that. But C has confidence in me and I have confidence in myself. Incidentally, I stay with my assumption very close to what she said. I also say it without any charge, just as an assumption. If I'm wrong, she can easily correct me. But if I hit bull's eye, this strengthens the rapport between T and C. Fortunately, my assumption turns out to be correct, as evidenced by her reaction. C: Yes, that's what I think: openness, space, freedom, nature. T: A desire inside you; a connection you feel. C: Yes. I think there's something wrong with my cat. 1 had a cat that stayed a while with my parents and 1 think about it. He usually tells me goodbye. He's always standing on the gravel path. T: And now? C: That cat isn't there. 1feel sorry about that. T: Meadow, mist, cat. Now you're in your car. What's the first thing you notice? C: That bag beside me; the wheel; a small space, not nice. T: No, not after that large, wide meadow. C: Yes, 1 must leave that behind. T: What's the first thing that happens next?

Already feelings have come up having to do with her job and her life at that moment. Each situa­ tion that we fully and precisely relive is a microcosm, a reflection in miniature, of the macrocosm, the whole life situation. At least, that always seems to be the case in situations that come up in a regression. After her almost mystical lament that she must leave that behind (the scriptwriter can easily imagine and describe the scene), I decide to cut away from the scene and her ruminating on it, and get her to the next scene.

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If we reconstruct not an accident that might have lasted five minutes, but a whole life (e.g. the ten years that someone spent in Australia) or an entire lifetime (e.g. a previous life among Roman farm­ ers), we give as suggestion Go to the next important thing that happens. C: The phone rings or I myself called. T: Do you have the phone in your hands ? C: Yes. I'm nervous. It's my boss. He's also just new. T: What do you think o f that boss?

I could have asked here, perhaps even better: Who else is just new? C: He's nice, but I cannot figure him out. He shows little o f himself He's OK, but he has something mys­ terious. T: How do you hold that phone? Against your ear or at a distance? C: It's a cell phone; I hold it to my ear. T: What's the next thing you hear? C: Yes Will, I have a surprise for you. Oh, what? Tell me! Lucy was a colleague o f mine who was on a job interview there that day. I really hoped she would join our company. I ask: Did Lucy get it? He says: Wait a minute. Here she comes. 1 think: Yes, but wait a minute? I cannot wait, I have to drive. Otherwise, I'll be late. Half past three I have an appointment. T: See what happens when I say: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What do you feel? C: My stomach; I feel queasy. T: I don't know if we should pursue this, but this has a charge. C: I get goose bumps. T: That sentence Wait a minute is charged. You want to hurry and he says: Wait a minute. Just feel what it does to you. Wait a minute. C: Then I feel grief coming up. T: What kind o f grief? C: I don't feel it any longer. T: This sentence is something you need later to have a look at. There's some grief surging through you, although you may not have realized it. C: No, I didn't realize it at the time. T: But you feel a reaction in your body when someone says, wait a minute, here she comes. What hap­ pens now?

One way to check if something is charged - we say, if anything has a charge - is to repeat a phrase a few times. Here I did that because I wasn't sure it had to do with the session's topic and I didn't want her to delve too deeply into it right then. If it has a charge, an emotion or a physical reaction comes up. I think this is important, but I'm not sure how this fits into the rest of the story. After all, I don't know the story yet. I know from experience that the mixture of feelings and moods and thoughts on the moment of a major physical shock can get deeply ingrained in the body. She has said that she was traumatized and was dysfunctional for two years, so presumably there are impor­ tant issues to discover here. C: I like it. Hey Lucy, you got the job? She's excited. Nice. We're now colleagues again. Something like that she says to me. T: How does that feel? C: I like it. T: A flurry o f grief went through you and now is the opposite: nice, fine. C: Yes. T: The next you feel or see happening now. C: I accelerate. I think: quick, I need to put the phone down. I have to drive to my appointment. I want to finish the conversation. It's a mixed feeling: It's fun, but it can't continue now. Mixed feeling.

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First the meadow she had to leave behind, perhaps consternation about the cat that wasn't there, now something heartening she doesn't have the time to dwell on. Life consists of many moments when life is passing us by. T: Feel that strongly as well. Now you accelerate. C: Right after I accelerate. I think, I can still do two things at once. 1 don't really know if 1 really go for­ ward, then the impact from that side. T: What's your first sensation? C: I feel myself like swerving aside and I'm baffled about it. It doesn't hurt, it's just boom! T: You're going aside, being baffled. C: My head flips knocks aside, but I'm strapped in the belt. T: What's your first sensation in your body after you head knocks sideways? C: This arm waves a bit along with the hit. And this arm is stretched, tense, the one I hold to my ear. T: And you 're baffled. C: Yes. Everything stops, everything stands still.

Of course, the car is stationary, but her brain is also stationary for a moment. Apparently she can't do two things at once. T: We'll see what happens. I touch you, here. What happens if I do this? What do you feel? (Taps to the right side of her head.) C: My neck here. T: The first reaction you feel in your neck. I just said in class that if there's a shock wave, your neck tries to absorb it. C: Now I felt my shoulder first. T: Just imagine that the shock wave hits you now. Where does it go? C: Here and here. T: From the shoulder to the neck and here where the skull begins. C: A little higher. T: OK, here. How does this feel?

This is standard in ATR and sometimes we do that in other regressions: evoking the experience of then in the body of now. Now something happens that doesn't belong in a police report, but awak­ ens the interest of a screenwriter: the impact awakens her grief that she previously just glimpsed. As always, we locate the emotion in the body. To enhance the experience, but also to prepare the discharge, the catharsis, later. C: Hey, I feel sorrow. T: Is this the same grief? Or is it other sorrow than what you felt before that? C: The same. T: Where does that sorrow come from? From the inside or from the outside?

Another 'w eird' question from a regression therapist that may puzzle you. We assume, supported by our experience that people may internalize the mental states, including the feelings, of others. I try to find out whether this sorrow is really hers, and wakes up, or is picked up from someone else. This sorrow travels in the body at the moment of the blow. C: From inside. T: Where was the grief located before you felt it here? C: In my stomach. That feeling was there and it went away again. I recognize it now. T: Here, here and then here? C: Then my head hit the door jamb. T: That's the second blow.

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I give her a light tap, on the spot where her head slammed into the door jamb. Standard in ATR: let the client really relive the shock waves going through the body. C: When you just did that, 1felt it go from here to there. T: Then that door jamb. Feel the impact. Feel just where the shock goes from here. C: Again this spot. T: It goes to the same spot, but back. It goes from right to left, and now it goes from left to right.It goes back and forth. If it comes again here, does it go somewhere else? Or will it stay here? C: I thought I felt it shoot downward, but that was intuitive. This area has been stiff for a long while. T: How does this feel when I do this. (Pushes.) C: Sorrow again. T: Did it traverse onwards to somewhere else, or has it remained here? C: This shoulder, this tense area here, there it still remains, I believe. T: We will shake it loose in a little while. First, let's check it. Your head knocks this way, thensnaps back that way, then the shock goes to your shoulder and your back. What's the next you experience after your head hit the door jamb? What do you feel now? C: Disbelief and 'so this is it.' T: This is it. Say it again: so this is it. C: So this is it. T: One more time. C: So this is it. T: One more time. C: So this is it. T: And again. C: So this is it. T: And one more time. C: So this is it. T: What do you feel when you say this? C: I see people all around me. It is not o f this life, I notice. I feel sadness and disbelief. T: This is like an old situation? C: Yes. T: Just sense the essence o f the situation. What is happening here? What gives disbelief and sadness? C: I think I'm being accused o f something. There are people around me. I think I've done something. T: So this is it, sounds like a judgment. C: It's probably expected. Now they are coming to get me. Something like that.

So we have found an older sorrow, apparently from a past life. T: Go back to your car. Disbelief. So this is it. Sadness. Then? What's the first that happens next? Is there an aftershock? C: No. I recover quickly. I say: Hey Lucy, I had an accident. I have to hang up now. I throw the phone away. No one should see it. It's stupid to phone in the car. I look and I see the truck standing still. I step out o f my car and I'm ashamed. T: Feel the shame. How do they react? Who are with you first, by the way? The driver or your parents? C: There were two men in the truck. They are scolding me. What are you doing? Didn't you see us! I didn't look around properly, but there are some garbage containers. You cannot freely see the road past them. I wasn't on the road. I was still on the path at my parents' place. T: And the road was narrow. C: There's a ditch on the other side. T: If anything else o f importance happened there or anywhere else, you get an impression o f this now. Oth­ erwise, it remains as it is.

The last suggestion is also a standard intervention. C: My father comes out. Maybe he thinks I've come back for more tea. Now my neck hurts again.

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I do not ask more questions about the father right here, because she feels her sore neck again. How­ ever important the storyline is, the body in principle goes first. Now we start to discharge the shock energy. It seems as if the body still harbors the shock wave of that impact. This might be due to the older emotions that woke up by the physical impact. T: I suggest that we first discharge what's in your neck. We start with the end. Where was it in your neck somewhere about? Here? C: A little higher. T: What do you feel if 1 press this? C: That disbelief again. T: We may soon go back to that disbelief but first what do you feel here in your body? C: It's a little more down. It's really that vertebra. T: This one? C: Yes, but on the side here. T: Oh, the place is good, but the angle is not good. C: I think that's it, there. You have to push that side. Yes. T: What happens now? C: I feel that everything from that point shoots to my head and my whole body. T: Pleasant or unpleasant? C: It feels pleasant. T: You tell that spot that it can let go o f everything that's still in it. That all energy that's still in there flows back to where it belongs. As if it relaxes. C: It becomes hot. T: I no longer need to hold on to anything. I can let go o f everything. I push on it three times and then you try to let go o f everything that's in there. (Push, push, push, discharge.) All the remnants flow off.Eve­ rything that doesn't belong there. C: I feel that it's going out through my fingers. I do get a headache here. T: One spot at a time. How does this spot feel now? C: I don't feel it anymore. T: The head. About here? C: Here, behind the ear. This side o f the whole area it is. T: (Gives some counter-pressure.) How does this feel? C: This will be the death o f me.

That is what you call a charged statement, which presumably refers to the same past-life experience. I don't see how we can go into that and complete the regression of the accident in the same demo. In an ordinary session in my practice, I would have considered to deal with the older experience in the same session, or at least say: we'll come back to that later, or: we'll come back to that next time, if you wish. Here I firmly leave it aside. Typically a crossroads decision. T: Tell your head, tell your body, that it can let go o f all pressure that's still there. I feel it strongly just one more time, and then I let it go. It's in your neck too, right? One, two, three, go. What do you feel now? C: Glad. There I go.

Feeling glad is the opposite of feeling sad. This happens regularly in a catharsis: a bad feeling trans­ forms into its opposite after it's discharged. T: Feel how some energy moves back and forth and gradually returns to its proper place. C: It feels like as if it's reversed. It keeps turning. T: Is that agreeable? C: On this side it's nice, but on the other side it's not pleasant. It reminds me o f a merry-go-round. T: Imagine that it's a rotating energy. I touch you for a second without pressing. Here it was about, right? Imagine that something tolling is allowed out through my fingers. That it calms down. C: It's stuck at this spot. T: Let it go. (Keeps lightly tapping on that spot.) C: Pooh, my head is clearing up now, wow.

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I say as an aside to the students: I do not know exactly what we're doing, but I stay close to her. The tap­ ping is to loosen and release the charge. If something is stuck, you can tap or knock on it. C: Unbelievable, but it's true. Something is on that side still glued to my skull. Like bubble gum. T: What's the color o f that bubble gum?

You have to believe me, but I haven't the slightest interest in the color of bubble gum. It's about making the experience concrete. Maybe that color is significant, maybe not. If it's important, it will show in the rest of the story. C: Pink. T: Let it come loose. I tap here and then imagine that a channel opens and it all comes out and goes back to where it came from. Let it go. It comes out. C: I see the meadow. T: Feel like you're walking on that meadow. It should now be easy. Everything out. The calm returns. Can you say, I feel beautiful?

I take a word she used to describe that meadow. I let her use that word now to describe herself. Tat tvam asi, as the Sanskrit expression goes: that's you. It's obviously not about that physical meadow in the mist, but what it means to her. C: I feel beautiful. T: One more time. C: I feel beautiful I feel radiant. T: Is it true? C: It's true. T: Then you say: I'm radiant. C: I'm radiant. T: And how does it feel to say: I'm radiant again?

I imply that she has sorrow because she had lost her radiance once. Probably that has to do with the accusation made by all the people around her. Something that led to her death. If we think of the absent cat, we may think of being accused of being a witch. The scriptwriter must restrain himself so as not to make a Hollywood movie out of it. C: That sorrow comes up. T: Once, you 've lost that radiance. C: Yes, I was locked up. When I'm in a car, it feels the same. (Restimulation!) T: The feeling o f being trapped. You can lock yourself in if your story becomes verbally, but also literally, real. You make yourself small and compact. Imagine yourself in a shrunken, hunkered-down, sad ver­ sion o f yourself Where is that in your body? C: I feel it in my belly and it rebounds upwards. T: Is this the moment to let it out? C: My first answer is yes. But I don't like to do it. T: I think a first answer is the most important. Lay a hand on your stomach. Then 1 put my hand on your hand. Tell her that she can get out. Let her come up. Let her come out. What comes out? C: I see a little girl and at the same time a black crouched figure. They have nothing to do with each other. T: But these are the two sources o f your sorrow. C: I don't know.

This means I've spoken prematurely. Oops, my mistake! T: Tell that black figure that you'll come back to her later. How does she respond? C: Yes, I hear she says. T: Can you see her eyes? C: She looks at me like a little dog. The girl is timid. I cannot hold on to that impression. T: I think it's too much now. But don't forget the two o f them.

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C: Yes. T: //you look at the collision again. How do you look at it now? C: I get a headache. T: Does that have to do with the accident, or with that woman? C: With the black woman. T: We have said that we'll come back to her. Tell your head: You don't have to help to remind me. I get back to it. Can your head relax? C: I'm getting white inside. T: With that white you come back to the here and now. At your own pace, in your own way.

This is a rather artificial ending, but when exploring we found there to be many more threads con­ nected to this accident than we can deal with in one go. This is the 'de-shocking' of an accident: Accident Trauma Release. In Chapter 8 , 1 describe the gen­ eral method in detail. In principle, this method involves in three steps: 1.

2.

3.

You first go through, relive, the experience associatively. You are in your body. What hap­ pens? W hat do you see? W hat do you feel physically? You detect and discharge bodily inju­ ries, physical pain and physical shock waves. You can do this in several ways. The second step is to go through the experience dissociating. You let it be viewed from above. Then you experience interesting complications. I haven't yet discussed these. We can endlessly work on it in this session alone. The third step is the energetic step.

I couldn't see it from above. The bag was too heavy. That's because of how you felt about your job at the time. Part of her wants to go that meadow. Per­ haps the sad part. Probably the black, bent figure is the woman who was accused. That may prove to be so in a next session. That part of her doesn't want to be a medical representative. That's why the job is a burden. Not that she has chosen the wrong profession, but a part of her finds it burden­ some. Imagine a woman accused of witchcraft, i.e. drug peddling. In step 2, the dissociated experience, she looked at it from above (not in the abbreviated version in this book). What did this perspective achieve here? W hat she did not see coming then, she now sees. Hey, they're talking to each other and their truck is wandering on the road from left to right and back again! She was ashamed that she had been so stupid. Now she sees the other half of the story. T: What did you feel when you saw that? C: Some o f that accusation that they leveled at me, I can give back to them. So I feel relief. We've both been stupid, the truck-driver and me. T: They scolded you and you didn't scold back? C: No, I'm well-educated girl. That boy was afraid o f that ditch. T: You said there was a feeling o f softness, o f empathy inside you. C: Something popped out and then you said: Let what came out, come back again.

I know what works. And I generally know what to apply and when to apply it. But if I say, let it come out and see what comes back, I have no idea if something comes back,and whatever comes out should come back. I'm as surprised as you when she called it softness. I just think: it goes well; she pulls a happy face saying it. I can imagine it. If softness comes back, there was once an experience with hardness. That's okay. Then I con­ tinue with the next step. Good things are happening. On numerous occasions in a session things happen that you didn't expect and foresee. We can ask her what hardness and softness mean to her. You bet something significant hap­ pened then.

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The third step of the ATR is the energetic step. Given the limited time remaining in the session, I skipped that step, but it partly transpired on its own accord. The full step is done as follows. Again, imagine it by going back to the beginning of the situation. You walk to the car and you enter it and you again see it from above. Now imagine that night falls instantly. It becomes pitch dark. There's nothing left to see. Now you see around yourself, around your body in that car, a lu­ minosity appearing. It's an aura-exploration applied to this situation. For instance, she might have seen little dark pink spots. That's because on the one hand she likes talking to her colleague, and on the other hand she's tense. Go to the first moment when that color changes. She sees, for example, a pale yellow flash and then someone typically sees shock waves traversing the body. You may detect a residue that hasn't been fully removed the first time. We do the energetic step to check three things: 1. Has anything left the body that shouldn't have left and that hasn't returned? Is it being locked out? The client sees for example a yellow flame leaving the client's body from a par­ ticular spot and then everything goes dark. W here's that yellow flame now? It may be a piece of your soul that's no longer anchored in your body. That flame we must re-anchor in the client's body. 2. Second, it may be influences coming from outside. 3. Third: you may sometimes see genuine helpers. In practice, few people come for accident trauma release, because they don't know what the effects of accidents could be. And what regression can do to resolve these effects. I feel as if my body has grown big and supple. 1 still have a pain in the neck though. Probably different experiences, of different blows, are fixed in that part of the neck. More often, the subconscious thinks: Can it, at last? Then I have some more! Please, take this out as well! What do you do as therapist in such a situation? Are you going through with it or park it fo r another session? That depends on the time and energy. Clients who don't have clear boundaries, are insatiable in this respect. If you give them the time, they easily make a session of four, five hours of it. My rule of thumb is: the longer a session lasts, the less result. Let's recapitulate the structure of the session. What have we done exactly? What are the results? How do we go from there? W hat we did: 1. Intake: confirms her choice to work on the car accident. 2. Contract, given it being a practice-example for students: to explore the consequences of the accident she had had years ago, but still was effected by it for two years. Implicit in the con­ tract was the agreement to deal with any aftereffects of that accident, to properly process these. 3. Induction: the memory through reliving deepens by talking in the present tense, by detail­ ing, specifying, by enriching the perception, by asking about feelings and bodily sensations. 4. Then comes the actual session. a. Tapping on the affected body-parts actualizes the shock of the collision. This intensifies the reliving. b. The emotional charges of the experience are uncovered: grief and disbelief. c. Further deepening of the emotional charge by repeating apparently charged phrases, leading to glimpses of the tragic end of a past life. d. We discover a secondary charge: shame.

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5. Start of the catharsis: We 'de-shock' the body from the impacts that are still lodged in the affected parts of the body. Grief turns into joy, vertigo disappears from her head. a. We let a serious, charged thought alone for now: This is it (the end o f me). b. The catharsis continues till feeling beautiful and radiant. c. Then we find two subpersonalities that are still unable to feel beautiful and radiant: a little girl (an inner child) and a dark and huddled female figure (a pseudo-obsessor). These personalities we 'park' for a next session. Normally, we would have treated them right away. The results so far: • Being sad and locked-up are partially transformed into happy, beautiful radiant, free. • A clearer and calmer head. Future steps: • Help the inner child. • Help the past life full of passivity, sorrow, imprisonment and death. Suppose that we do inner child work in the next session, and a regression to the end of the pre­ sumed past life, and that she becomes fully happy, liberated, beautiful and radiant, then the thera­ peutic process has been properly completed. Again, a session is part of a therapy. A therapy is over when the contract is fulfilled. This may be after just part of a session, after a full session, or after several sessions. In general, there is a rest and reflection period, between and after all the sessions. Then a new therapy with a new contract be­ gins. Or not. After all, life is more than just therapy. Sometimes the therapy is so satisfying, so liberating, that the client comes up with new prob­ lems out of pure enthusiasm, before the solving of the old problem has been properly enjoyed, processed and internalized, and made durable. Then we must seek to rein in the enthusiasm of the client, and interlace the session and therapy with sufficient pauses. W hat if delay leads to tomorrow never comes? Then apparently the other problems are not so urgent after all. We could have fewer clients for a while. Is that bad? Only when we are financially or emotion­ ally dependent on our therapy work. That doesn't make things easier. At worst, we may have to go into therapy ourselves. One last remark: not all medical representatives have been witches in a past-life, though they are hired to bewitch modern doctors.

5.2 Microstructure and macrostructure So a regression session develops like a story develops. The story has chapters or episodes: the macro­ structure. Within each section there is dialogue: the microstructure. The quality of the microstructure depends on therapist skills we explored already: connecting, following, focusing and deepening. In regression, the first episode is usually discovering and exploring the initial impressions of the root experience. Our suggestions and questions are to guide and stimulate the client in an openminded way to find out what is happening as natural and unobtrusive as possible. When we have found out, we may need to explore the antecedents and the consequences of that situation. To understand a situation and its long-term impact we often need to know the event came about and what kind of things resulted from the event. We help to complete the experience: when the description is distant and objective, we often ask for thoughts and feelings. W hen the presence of the client remains vague, we ask for bodily sensations.

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If the situation remains vague, we may ask either-or questions to help to condense the impressions into clearer perceptions. And we need to do that without pressurizing the client. Is it more dark or light around you? And, of course, in-between answers are completely acceptable. It could be twi­ light, or there seems to be light and darkness intermittently. Does it feel more like being somewhere inside or outside? It could be in a door opening, at a porch, or in walled-in space that is roofless. Are you alone or with others? Clients may sense that they are alone, but that some people have just left. Or are nearing, or about to come in. You now get an impression how many people. Etcetera. The main difference with, for instance, Jungian analysis, is that we always, without any exception, are trying to uncover real situations. We don't care about symbols, we don't care about fantasies. Real problems had real beginnings. Maybe our fears started when we were watching a horror movie when we were nine years old. We then want to know where the client was watching that movie, with whom, in what room, at what time of day. We even may be interested in what the client was wearing - that is, when it helps to have the client enter the situation fully. Once the root experience has become clear in its setting, we move to a new chapter, a new point of view. You now get an impression of the exact moment that the fear began that is still plaguing you today. We want the client to find out why that experience had such a long-lasting effect. Some­ times that is immediately clear, sometimes it seems incomprehensible, almost impossible. Then we usually suggest the client to assume that watching something in this movie woke up an older fear. Feel something waking up inside you. We use that impression, that emotion, that somatic to trigger a previous experience: the root below the root, so to speak. Usually we enter in a past-life scene that fully explains the birth of the fear. More often than not, death follows soon, so we also understand why that trauma was never healed. The next chapter is healing the trauma. Sometimes we just accompany a strong emotional and somatic release that sets in naturally. Sometimes we need to find the inner conclusion or decision that locked in the original trauma. Sometimes the present client needs to help the inner child or the past-life personality. That means we are going to combine regression with personification and al­ most always also body work* and energy work. So, microstructure is how we dialogue and interact with the client, macrostructure is moving the story into a new chapter, a new point of view, a different place and time, before or after. It includes many interventions, like switching from history to what-if history. You now get an impression when you would have decided to try to escape. You now get an impression of the main consequence of that possible decision. Or you induce the client to see the story from another perspective. You now get an impression what your wife thought of your decision. Or: You now see what happened to your family after you had died. Sometimes we decide to start with personification, then continue with energy work and then go to regression. Or in any other order. Those are macrostructure decisions. Generally, first get your microstructure skills in order. It's no use to be able to decide cleverly on the big steps, when you can't do the small paces. In writing a story, we may work from the story line to the details. In regression we can't do that, as we have to discover the story while going. We are ex­ plorers, not authors. So, dealing with the macrostructure involves the following aspects: •

Sensing when the situation needs more elaboration or when the situation is clear enough to take a next step.

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• •

The client should be seduced to the next step, by somehow summing up where we are, and the client should be slightly surprised by the next step, but immediately sense the logic. The macrostructure starts with the contract, continues with choosing the road to take, ex­ ploring the initial impressions and ultimately understanding the residual tensions in the present-day life, releasing those residues and checking the release.

In the beginning of chapter 9 we will come back to the structure of sessions. In this chapter we go over a large part of a session in detail, mainly showing the microstructure and showing and ex­ plaining the many choices of the therapist. Regression therapists have to think on their feet. Clear­ mindedness helps, so does attentiveness. And intuition. That grows with experience. Remember: our intuition should enable the self-exploration of our clients, not interfere with it.

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CHAPTER 6. INDUCTIONS

How do we get where we should be? How do we dig out the roots of our problems? How do we regain what we have lost or forgotten, or what was robbed? By starting where we are right now. By responding to what presents itself right now. Which usually has already presented itself before the session. Which sometimes has presented itself for years. What is still presenting itself at the start of the session. W hich door of all possible doors do we have to go through? The open door of course. The door that's already knocked on, the door that we cannot close however hard we try. As I said before: the problem itself is the portal, the gateway. And that gate is open. Induction leads from the starting point to the actual regression. In the old days, we first induced a general hypnotic trance or a general relaxation. Nowadays we go straight to the topic at hand. We look for the emotional or somatic charges present. We specify, anchor and enhance them, and use them as a bridge to the past. If there isn't an actual charge, we evoke it by a visual or verbal bridge. We end the induction with the instruction to go back to a place and a time where this charge started. We never past lives. After all, childhood or birth experiences may come up, or pre-birth ex­ periences, disembodied experiences or symbolic images. Always leave the instruction open. All mental, emotional and psychosomatic problems come from the past, except problematic people and problematic circumstances in the present - and problems caused by the therapist. Our clients are suffering today from yesterday. They visit a therapist to deal with that: problems of yesterday, the day before yesterday, last year, and maybe of five lives back. These remnants of the past are troubling now, so they are present now. Induction is contacting and waking up the half-sleeping past. The idea of induction comes from hypnotherapy, and it means there bringing the client or subject into a trance before the actual work begins. If we start at the right point and if there is mutual trust, the trance comes naturally, on its own accord. We do not need the cook in a restaurant whispering to us that the food will be deli­ cious. We do not need a writer telling us in the preface of the book how great the story will be to us. A good meal will satisfy us, like a good book will captivate us. Enjoy your meal, madam or Chapter 1 The carefree years o f childhood is sufficient. Good induction is frugal and succinct, i.e. minimal. For example: Go back to the place and time when you felt this fear, with throbbing temples and sweaty hands, fo r the first tune. Good sessions are like good meals or good books: they don't need to prepare people in advance. This chapter explains and illustrates the general principles of induction and then the four main bridges: the verbal, the imaginative, the emotional and the somatic. In practice, we often combine two or more of them. The most certain combination is that of a body sensation or somatic (S) with an emotion (E). We also use verbal elements (V), words or phrases, and imaginative elements (I), memories, dreams or fantasies. With the verbal and imaginative bridge we must find an E or an S or both before we start the regression. Bridge techniques directly tie into the main problem or question at hand. They provide gradual deepening from the first sensations. This avoids an unnecessarily deep trance, making it easier for clients to maintain overview and attain insight. Morris Netherton advised to mobilize the subcon­ scious without shutting off the conscious. The research of Winafred Lucas showed that this combi­ nation is possible and effective. Precisely this 'elliptical consciousness, ' a consciousness with two generally equally strong centers, enables the client to connect past and present.

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Prior relaxation in the therapy is just a detour. It makes little sense to take away a tension first, only to evoke the tension later to deal with the source of the problem. There is one exception to this rule, however. People who cannot stick to the core issue or their core self, or have no self-disciplining boundaries - such as people who are borderline, who are al­ coholics or drug addicts, or may becom e psychotic, need prior anchoring and often relaxation as well. For them, a classic hypnotic induction may be required. Bridges are no general avenues to a deeper awareness or a spiritual enrichment; they lead di­ rectly to the karmic charges that we want to open up and release. If we relive the experience that caused the charges, we reprocess the experience and release the charges. Re-experiencing torture, however bad, is incomparably less so than the real torture that happened then. The relived experi­ ence is diluted, is bearable - and because of that brings overview and insight. W hat we did not un­ derstand back then, if only because of pain, sorrow, hunger and cold, we do understand now. We can only deal effectively one thing at a time. Usually, the client already subconsciously knows what that thing is. If there is trust, you only need to look at clients and ask, Shall we start? and they immediately go into regression. That may sound farfetched to inexperienced readers, but 'instant regression' is the rule, not the exception. Make it simple and keep it simple. Not all beginnings are difficult. Only a complicated beginning is. Let clients sit or lie down, whatever they prefer. Just tell me when you're ready. W hat do people con­ sider being ready? They seem to know quite well what this entails. Clients may come in with one topic in their mind, but when they lie or sit down, a quite different theme may pop up. Usually this is the most urgent problem that needs to be dealt with first. The present, the here-and-now domi­ nates the past, even the immediate past. Even if there's a whole queue of past lives waiting to be heard, the decisive moment is now. When you sit in front of a client you want to work with, and the latter wants to work with you, then the client's part of the past you need to work with is already present. That part of the past you do not have to evoke, you just need to contact it and work with it. Karma and dharma are 'nearer than hands and feet.' With karma I mean all the aftereffects of unresolved experiences, even those from one's present life. In induction and other techniques in regression therapy, it makes no difference whether the charge is from a present or past life. Induction is thus the process of reaching karmic charges or structures. After a group session someone told to have experienced nothing. Further questioning revealed that he had experienced a black space, a hole. 1 went down and came back up, more or less. That was all. Because he had said more or less, he was still in there, and so I knew we already were where we needed to be. With the sentence 1 sink, the client didn't respond. The sentence It's dark around me, however, he couldn't utter a second time, so emotional was its effect. We were in the regres­ sion before we knew it.

If the subject is known, the simplest induction is: Go back to the situation that caused... That may well work. Phrases like: Do remember th a t ... Try to remember what it was like ..., work poorly. The basic in­ struction to the computer of the subconscious is: Go back to ... Connect to the topic that's current to the charge that's current. Someone visits a therapist to overcome fears. But he has just had a couple of frustrating experi­ ences and is still furious about those. At the start of the session, that anger boils up and his fears are forgotten for the moment. Or he no longer feels any problem, like a toothache that miraculously disappears on the way to the dentist. The reason to visit the therapist can be pushed aside at the very moment we ask for the starting point. Clients may visit the therapist to deal with shyness, and when we ask what they want to work on, they say they suddenly think intensely of their father.

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Some people are confused and need help to choose a starting point, the issue they want to work on first. We do not wish to talk extensively about problems, we want to solve them intensively. And we solve them one by one. If we zoom in correctly, the rest goes quite naturally. Induced relaxation is necessary only if we need to calm confusion in order to detect that one crucial starting point. All the past is present, but some elements of the past are more present than others. We focus on the item that is the most awake, the most conspicuously present. If clients come to you looking wild and frightened, then that look may already be the element in which the past surfaces. Should you let them relax first? Of course not. T: How do you feel? C: Restless. T: Where in your body? C: My stomach's trembling and my feet become cold. T: Do you sense that more often ? C: Yes. T: Shall we start with that?

A client says she's often shy. While she says it, she is shy. The past is already in the present. T: OK, lie down or sit down, whatever makes you comfortable. You feel shy, right? C: Yes, I feel especially shy when I lie down.

Avoid relaxation, because then the shyness gets lost. Rather strengthen the shyness - not by making the client shy, but by having her becoming increasingly aware of her shyness. We could then say: Go back to the moment you first felt this shyness, and then count backward, though typically we need to go into the regression more gradually. After all, shyness affects the trust that's needed between therapist and client. Chances are that the therapeutic situation itself restimulates and so reinforces the problem and makes it recursive. Such restimulation is fine, because it wakes up the past, provided there's sufficient trust in the therapist to compensate for any recursion The reliving consists of a series of inner pictures and sense impressions, accompanied by emotions, bodily experiences and mental experiences (thoughts, insights, understanding and misunderstand­ ing). The starting point always lies in one of these four aspects. The four bridges correspond to the four sides of experiences: thoughts, perceptions, feelings and bodily sensations: Verbal bridge: repeating and complementing short sentences Imaginative bridge: calling up and elaborating pictures Emotional bridge: calling up and elaborating emotions Somatic bridge: calling up and elaborating bodily sensations. This list moves from the general to the specific, from the abstract to the concrete. The verbal bridge is the most versatile and general bridge, the somatic bridge the most concrete and specific one. We start our discussion of bridges with it.

6.1 The somatic bridge With the somatic bridge we take an actual salient bodily feeling as the starting point of the session. Someone feels cold. Where? It feels like it's in my bones. Which bones in particular? My arms and legs. Then we have a somatic. Deepen a weak somatic before giving a regression instruction. Feel the cold

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in your arms and legs deepen. OK. Go back to the first time when you felt this cold in your arms and legs. Important is the word 'this.' In about one-third of the cases this is enough to get into a regression. It works more securely and therefore we usually do this - if we also call up the related emotions. In practice, the S bridge is thus usually an S + E bridge. Someone always has a tense throat. What emotion accompanies that sensation? Typically, feelings like sadness, resignation, despair, or anger. When resignation is the strongest emotion: Go to the first time when your throat was tense and you felt like giving up. Another example: You feel pressure on your chest. Your legs become cold. You no longer have the will to go on. Go back to the first time when you felt this pressure on your chest, you felt the cold creeping into your legs and that you no longer had the will to go on. 54-3-2-1. You no longer have the will to go on. Where are you and what is happening? Your first impressions. If there are many different bodily sensations, then ask for one that's strongest at the moment. More than three somatics makes one lose focus. C wants to work on different issues. There is the feeling of numbness on the left side of the body and the almost obsessive attention the ex-partner still occupies in her mind. C wants to under­ stand the reasons for both and how to get rid of those. C: The skin o f my left arm, above the elbow, is tingling. The same feeling is left around my left knee. The skin is irritated and there's a hint o f chill over it. At the top o f my back there's more o f a burning sensa­ tion inside the skin. T: What more do you feel? C: Tension down below in my neck. And a heavy stomach, but that's the food. T: What feeling requires the most attention, is most manifest? C: The burning sensation in my lower neck. T: OK, we'll go first to the neck. Do you feel the burning sensation there now? C: Yes. T: What kind o f feeling does that tension give? (Has S, asks E.) C: Like it's broken there. T: And what kind o f feeling is that, to have a broken neck? (Gets an I - because feeling is a vague word. Good, but keeps asking for an E.) C: Wanting to hold on, at all cost. As i f l willfully keep my head upright. T: Make that feeling even stronger. Feel how you frantically try to keep your head up. (Wants to enhance the signal, but the induction already was sufficient and C goes into regression.) C: I cannot. I cannot hold my head up. (Moans.) T: What's happening? C: I cannot move. It's snapped. T: Is it light or dark around you? C: Dark. 1 can breathe only with great difficulty. T: How many years are you there? C: I'm now so much. (Raises five fingers. And so on.)

Alternatively, you ask an open question about the somatic: What do you associate with that? Or: What does that mean to you? Someone answers: As if I'm an empty water surface. Or: The word fear comes to mind. Can you feel the fear? As you ask this, my heart starts pounding. Thus you catch a second somatic and you can use both. C: I've been suffering from terrible headaches for months. T: Now, at this moment too? C: Yes, although it's bearable for now. T: Good, just focus on that headache. C: Yes, but then it gets stronger. T: If you want to find out where the pain comes from, you have to go through that pain to some extent. Would you wish to try? C: (Sighs.) Yes.

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T: Good. Go with your attention to that pain in your head. What kind o f pain is it? C: Heavily oppressive, as if I have a helmet on. (We get a new I, a new image.) T: Heavily oppressive, as if you have a helmet on. What emotion comes up with it? C: Especially fear, I think. T: Especially fear, you say. Are you experiencing other emotions as well, then? C: Also sadness, 1 believe, but mainly fear. T: Mainly fear, but also sadness. Where do you feel that fear in your body? C: Only in my head, it hurts. T: And that sadness, where's that? C: (Pause) I get a thick throat. T: You're scared and you have a pressing headache It seems you wear a heavy helmet. You have a thick throat o f grief. Go back in time to the first time ... And so on.

Somatic charges of hangovers like fatigue and heaviness also can manifest themselves at the begin­ ning of the session, often not in just place, but throughout the body. We may also use such hangover somatics as bridges for the induction. We can intensify the somatics through breathing more deeply. Typically, the charges come up even faster that way. I rarely use this technique, but many colleagues work regularly with it.

6.2 The emotional bridge With the emotional bridge we take an actual feeling, an actual emotion as entry point. If the contract already concerns a feeling, such as fear, gloom, insecurity or impotent rage, then call up that feeling and locate it in the body. T: Where do you feel that impotent rage the most in your body? C: In my throat and in my arms. T: Describe those sensations. C: My throat is closed, as if it's being squeezed. My arms are stiff. I hold my upper arms against my chest. T: Go back to the very first time when you felt this impotent rage. Your throat is being squeezed and your upper arms are stiffly pressed against your body. 5-4-3-2-1. Where are you? What's happening? (Es­ pecially with passive feelings.) What are you doing? (Especially in with active feelings.) Your first impressions.

If betrayal is felt: How do you feel when someone betrays you? Or: What do you feel when you think o f be­ trayal? Then go on to the next step in the session. If it is about losing control: How does it feel to lose control? Then continue with, for example: Go back to the very first time you felt so bewildered and feel that maddening pressure inside your head. You are betrayed! 5-4-3-2-1. Tell the first thing that comes into your mind. If several feelings are involved, ask for the strongest feeling at this very moment. My rule of thumb is that dealing with more than three emotions tend to make the session lose focus. If no emotion is actually felt and no evident somatic comes to the fore, then ask to recollect an in­ stance of that emotion or call up a picture that triggers that emotion. Do not go into the story of that recollection. Right now, the issue is whether the emotion or the somatic can be experienced. A dream may help as well, or even a book or a movie or a story that has struck this chord. Then we should avoid even more going into these stories, but ask about what feeling they arouse in the pre­ sent. We invoke an I to get to the E. More about this when we are discussing the imaginative bridge. If we start with an emotion, the quickest and surest way to continue is to find a somatic with it to have a full induction. The use of the emotional bridge or affect bridge we find in the literature on

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hypnotherapy, on of the first times in Gerald Edelstein's Trauma, Trance and Transformation (1981). He starts with hypnotic induction, but practice has shown that this step is unnecessary. In practice, E + S is almost without exception sufficient: an emotion that the client can physically feel at that moment. For example, in the case of shyness: T: Do you feel your shyness now? C : Yes. T: Is that shyness strong? C: Yes. T: Where do you feel that shyness in your body? Describe it precisely. C: Warm at my cheeks and as i f l hunch my shoulders. I breathe with difficulty. T: OK. You feel shy, it is difficult to breathe, your cheeks blush, you feel as if you hunch your shoulders. If I count back from 5 to 1 you go further and further back in time, and when I say 1, you've arrived at the moment when you had this feeling fo r the first time; 5-4-3-2-1. What is your first impression?

Another client wants to work on the relationship with his father he feels very bad about. He lies down. The therapist has forgotten to ask the client to specify the bad feeling. T: Tell me when you're ready. When you're ready, say yes. C: Yes. T: Do you experience anything? (In other words: will we try a bridge or will the bridge come to us?) C: I feel cramps in my calf (The client starts with a somatic. Then S + E works quickest, so the therapist tries to couple it to an emotion.) T: What kind o f emotion do you associate with these cramps? C: As if I've been sitting in a wrong posture for a while. (An impression comes up first.) T: Is there an emotion connected with that? C: Yes. Being forced. T: Concentrate on your calf You feel increasingly forced into something. If you feel that, say yes. C: Yes. T: OK, we go back to a situation where you had cramp in your calf and you felt forced. I count back and at 1 you are in the situation that caused this feeling.

The most simple, the most pure induction is E + S or S + E. That emotion, where do you feel that in your body? Feel it. Then we go back to the beginning of this, or when the client first felt all this, or when this feeling had just emerged. When there's an emotion and a somatic, then that's usually enough to go back to the original experience. 5-4-3-2-1. All other starting techniques are redundant. T: Do you feel that guilt now? Where do you feel in or on your body? C: It's here, it hurts. T: What kind o f pain is it? C: Cramp, stinging, pressure. T: OK, feel that right now as intensely as you can. We go back to the origin o f that feeling. I count back from 5 to 1 and at 1 you are in the situation that you felt this guilt and these hurts for the very first time. 5-4-3-2-1.

That counting backwards is actually unnecessary hocus pocus. But for newbies it looks even stranger without it. You can't just go back to your childhood or your birth, let alone to past lives, right? Yes, you just can. Counting back puts the client at ease: it seems a process. But the past is already there: it's in the present. We are dealing with the residues, the storage of that past. That storage is alive, churns, and even protests at times. T: Can you feel that loneliness at this moment? C: Yes. T: Where do you feel it in your body? C: I get tense behind my eyes and I feel a lump in my throat and a tremor around my belly.

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T: OK. We go back to the first time you felt this loneliness, while you felt this tension behind your eyes, this lump in your throat, and this tremor in your stomach. I count backwards from 5 to 1 and when I'm at 1, you're there. Five, four, still further back, three, for the first time you felt this loneliness, two, with this tension, this lump and this trembling, one. Where are you and what's happening? Your first impressions.

Ask after the countdown when it concerns victim feelings, what's happening? W hen it's about anger, what are you doing? If you don't you know, ask: What's happening? What are you doing? If there are an emotion and a somatic, clients invariably go into regression. If they say they don't see anything, then it was dark, they were blindfolded or blind or they were afraid to say anything. They're always somewhere. You can establish the place quickly with just a few questions. A child can do it. Sometimes, the problem is a body condition with a strong emotional charge, like deafness or limp­ ing or a terminal illness. If clients are unable to talk about a physical problem without becoming emotional, then we take the emotion and ask where they feel that emotion in their body. Someone whose right leg is amputated, for example, feels desperate. That despair he feels behind his fore­ head and on his shoulders. To those somatics we turn, not to his leg stump. It's not necessarily the obvious emotion that gives the entrance to regression. Netherton had a client with a paralyzed arm. He asked him what was his greatest fear about that arm. The man replied that he would be told he would never be able to use it again. Netherton then asked If you could use your arm again, what would you be most afraid o f then?

Instructions to intensify an emotion without locating it first in the body, are like turning the radio louder before you've tuned it to a proper channel. First locate it, only then strengthen it!

6.3 The imaginative bridge The imaginative bridge is indicated when someone already has a picture, like a frightening mask or a gloomy landscape. The imaginative bridge is particularly suitable for visual people. Ask auditory people if they associate a sound with their problem. Ask kinesthetic people directly about bodily sensations; any of which leads to the somatic bridge. In the intake we may find out to which type the client belongs, by being attentive to how they describe their problems and needs. However: the imaginative bridge alone is hardly ever sufficient. We use it mainly as an indirect way to get to emotions and somatics. There are three sources of imaginative bridges: memories, dreams and visualizations. If we call up memories that have to do with the problem, we start with the last time clients experienced their problem. If an emotion arises, we ask for the body sensations accompanying it: I + E + S. If no em o­ tion arises, we ask about the worst time or in the last resort the first time. If no memories are re­ trieved, the memory bridge remains closed. We have to try one of the next options: dreams, visuali­ zations - or the verbal bridge. Clients can mention a recent or an impressive dream. Or we ask whether they have ever dreamed about their problem. Ask for the dream that had the most impact on them. Frequently, emotions or somatics arise which we can use in our induction. We also may use the dream as the main course rather than the starter. We let the client play out the dream more or less like we guide a regression. We are then dealing with a waking dream or psychodrama. Or we ask which element of the dream made the biggest impression and let the client

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(as in Gestalt therapy) talk to it or identify with it. W hatever you do, don't interpret the dream! Dream interpretation is for amateurs. You don't explain dreams, you let client relive the strongest elements of those dreams and discover their meaning for themselves. The following three examples are dreams of adult clients. In each of those nightmares the clients experienced themselves as a child. In all three cases, the most powerful dream-image was used as an imaginative bridge. Somatics appeared straightaway. Client A: I'm in a shed behind cows and I am feeling very uneasy. Client B: Large adults are all around me, coldly looking at me and wanting to hurt me. I feel fear and suspicion. They can't be trusted. Client C: 7 run away across a meadow full o f blooming flowers. I'm scared. People are out to destroy me.

The first dream leads to a regression to the life of a farmer who dies of a stomach hemorrhage in the cowshed. His attachment to the animals is so great, and the promise to his father to take care of the animals weighs so heavily on his mind, that he keeps lingering in the stable after his death. Because his farm is remote, the animals eventually starve. The phrase I've been remiss in my duties, gets en­ graved in his mind. After his death he did not dare to face his father. The second case appears to be a French female courier in the resistance during World War II. Betrayed by one of her group, she is captured and eventually dies after prolonged torture. The third case turns out to be a Polish-Jew ish girl of fourteen years in Auschw itz. She is regularly raped by Germ an guards, sneakily in a laundry room or guards stand, or openly dur­ ing drunken parties. Each tim e she is being raped, she pretends not to be there, im agining her­ self to be in a sunny m eadow full of flow ers. She is fifteen w hen an officer beats her to death with a belt. Such cases are why regression therapy has come into the world. To open the darkest cans with the darkest worms. To let out the worms, so the cans are transformed into something everlasting - like gold. Regression therapy is transmutation, is alchemy. Finally, there are numerous ways to approach a past life through an imaginary journey: descending stairs, going through a tunnel, ascending from the physical body, taking a lift, crossing a river or a sea, climbing a mountain or diving into a lake. I use these kind of images only in open explorations and in group sessions. For individual therapy-sessions these are usually detours. There's much literature on this topic. The 'Christos exp erim en t,' described by Gerald Glaskin, uses an elaborate imaginative bridge. It simulates an out-of-body experience by manipulating the body-scheme by ballooning, by suddenly being somewhere else (at your front door, etcetera) and finally by going upwards into the sky until you see the horizon curved. Then you return to earth, to another place in another time. This is a safe method. The dissociation is step-by-step with repetitions and safety valves. Also making it day or night is a built-in fuse against fear of the dark. The last test is whether the client feels a slight shock under their feet when they land. If you do not personally guide the client, like in group sessions or people listening to tapes, the individual moments of block during visualization provide important indicators. Typical blocks are: I couldn't leave my body, or: M y feet extended, but my head didn't, or I remained stuck in my head. I found that going up and coming down, and feeling your feet touch the ground, work so well that I frequently use these in group sessions. Visualizations also can be used as inventory explorations: clients enter a cave or a room or a house where all their problems or all their talents or their past lives are. This way, one client comes to the following experience.

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C: 1 sit cross-legged in front o f mud or clay, and I'm doing something with my hands. T: What do you feel while doing that? C: I don't know, indefinable. T: OK. You've an indefinable feeling. (We repeat and confirm what a client says.) Are there feelings involved, or does a thought or a word pop up? C: Effort. T: OK, effort. There's effort in that picture. Can you feel where that effort is in that picture? C: I don't know T: Does it have to do with your hands? Imagine that you are working with your hands in that clay. C: No, it's not strenuous, rather dirty, but not unpleasant. T: Where's that effort then? Look at your body. C: I feel as if I'm in a position where I can't get out of. I'm stuck.

Then we work with the emotions and somatics appearing in that imagined situation. The best way is to go from the situation through an emotion to a somatic. Can you feel being stuck now? Yes. Where do you feel it? If we have the emotion, we call up the somatic by locating the emotion in the body. If we ask for memories that are related to the problem, we start with the last time the client experi­ enced this problem: for example, not daring to leave the house, or feeling shy, guilty or absentminded. Once the emotion connected to that memory emerges, we ask for the accompanying body sensation: I + E + S. The memory bridge we typically use with phobias such as fear of heights, fear of speaking in pub­ lic, fear of wide, open spaces or fear of animals. The memory of the last time that fear was felt, usu­ ally triggers it (E). Once we have an E, we seek the S. C: No, that fear o f dogs I don't feel right now. Only if there's a dog really near, 1 have this fear. T: When did you last had the fear o f dogs? C: As recently as the day before yesterday. I crossed a bridge and there was a dog standing there. It scared the hell out o f me. (Memory.) T: Re-experience that moment. Feel how you're crossing the bridge. What happens? C: Oh God, a dog! A large one! He growls and he snarls. T: What kind o f feeling does that bring? C: It scares the hell out o f me! T: Where do you feel that fear in your body? C: It hurts in my stomach and I start to tremble. (Trembles.) T: What happens next? (The client trembles increasingly.) C: Nothing. 1 keep standing still, frozen. I'm so afraid that he'll bite me. T: You're scared (E) in your stomach (S) and you tremble (S). OK. Forget this situation, but hold on to those feelings. Go back to the very first time that you experienced this fear exactly like this in your body.

We do not want the client to remain stuck in the recent experience, we just want to use it as a bridge to the yet unknown original traumatic experience. If the instruction to go to the last time is insuffi­ cient, then let the client go back to the strongest experience of the emotion. The surest way is from recollection to emotion to somatic. The best recollections to wake up the emotion arerespectively the last time, the worst time and the first time. Some people, often men, tend to ignore their emotions or even suppress them. Then pay close atten­ tion to physical symptoms during the recollection: change in breathing or frantic, cramped move­ ments, shaking. Ask clients what is happening in their bodies. They get cold, their skin begins to tingle, they get a heavy feeling in their head. Then ask about the feeling, the emotion, that accom­ panies any of these bodily sensations. Then we have I + S + E and we can go into a regression.

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If necessary, let clients assume the bodily position that belongs to their problem and let them do the breathing that goes with it. A client is sitting hunched in a chair as if doing a difficult exam, barely breathing. Or someone moves nervously back and forth and breathes fast and shallow. This elicited somatic easily triggers the relevant emotional charge. Visualization also is crucial in the dissociative techniques that we already have discussed before, such as personification and aura exploration.

6.4 The verbal bridge Mental and emotional problems, being unadjusted or overly adjusted, inhibitions and many other limitations may all betray themselves in the words and phrases we use. Our language may reinforce our problems. The relationship between language and mental and psychological health has been extensively analyzed in the general semantics of Alfred Korzybski and in neuro-linguistic pro­ gramming (NLP) that has been derived from it. With a verbal bridge, we let a client repeat a charged short sentence. If you found a charged phrase, make it into a simple sentence and ask the client to repeat it until it triggers the emotional or so­ matic charge. Then use E + S to go back to the experiences that formed and confirmed the postulate in question. The verbal bridge is the most versatile bridge and the last resort when feelings, thoughts and ideas remain elusive. If a client doesn't feel emotions or somatics and the memory bridge doesn't work, possibly because the topic is too broad or the experiences too numerous, or if the client has difficulty in visualizing, try the verbal bridge. Sentences, phrases, even single words can be charged when they have become tied to life-changing events. Even if there was no logical connection. If someone confidentially bends over and whispers: 1 have to tell you a secret, and at that very moment two trucks hit each other nearby, a man curses and a child cries or a woman screams, that sentence later can evoke intense tensions or fears every time it's uttered by anyone. If someone happens to say several times: I'm stuck, or I can't reach it, don't immediately conclude this is a postulate. But when this phrase keeps coming back, chances are it is one. Most charged phrases are postulates, heavy conclusions or decisions about ourselves, about people, about life. We try a verbal bridge when we've noted likely postulates during the intake: generaliza­ tions, absolute statements, intense statements, phrases that are being repeated. Repeating a postulate, as a verbal bridge, leads to a regression. Phrases that the client utters with intensity or repeats, often point to postulates. Also during a regression we may discover a postulate. The most suspicious ones are generalizations: Women can't be trusted. Textbooks are beyond my league. In London pubs you have to watch your wallet. I don't feel at ease among people. Absolute statements are kindred to generalizations. You recognize these by their absolute: all, eve­ rything, nothing, everybody, no one, always, never: 1 will never be happy. Nothing goes my way. Gen­ eralizations arise from the long duration or repetitiveness of the originating experience, or from

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programming a certain self-image or worldview. Sentences with words like always, never, no one or everyone may betray hangovers, but mostly character postulates. Everything people do is about self-interest. I'll never be happy. I'll always keep bearing this burden. No one understands me. No therapy will ever really help me. About my childhood 1 remember nothing. I'm absolutely devastated. In contrast to these are an overdose of qualifications, putting things in contexts and perspectives, especially personal feelings. Sometimes you feel, like everyone may experience occasionally, a feeling o f sadness or melan­ choly on the background. (I'm deeply unhappy.) Oh well, no human being is ever fu lly satisfied. (I'm so dissatisfied I'm choking on it.) One hopes at times that there'll be a kind o f end to it. (Will it never end?) How do you handle these statements as a therapist? You suggest the most simple and direct refor­ mulation of the statement at hand, and see if there's a charge on the new statement. Use direct, sim­ ple sentences. Don't let the client repeat: I frequently find that men are bastards, but rather: men are bas­ tards. It's not about the nuance, but about the basic charge. In the examples above: Say five times aloud with growing attention: I'm unhappy. Say five times aloud with growing attention: I'm dissatisfied. Say fiv e times aloud with growing attention: It won't end. The basic technique of the verbal bridge is repeating a short sentence several times. Repeat with in­ creasing attention... Five times is about the maximum number that doesn't require conscious count­ ing which would digress from rather than regress into the experience. If you have to check many sentences, limit repetitions to three times. Another common type of corrupt language are statements that seem to be concrete, but actually represent incomplete thoughts. As therapists, we need the client to complete these statements be­ fore going into regression or any other meaningful process. Below examples of how to complete thoughts. I'm angry (at. .. because...) I'm jealous (of... because...) I'm afraid (of... because...) I'm better (than... in.... because...) I think that's important (for... because...) I have to ... fr o m ... because...) I'm not allow ed... (by... because...) I feel compelled (by... because... to...) I'm disappointed (in... because...) I feel beaten (by... because...) I'm in two minds (between... and... )

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Often these phrases are in the you-form: You can't... Usually these appear internalizations: conclu­ sions and judgments of others that people have adopted as their own. Also be mindful of state­ ments about what should be. By whom? And why? I must behave. Who told the client to behave? If such sentences are charged, they once must have been internalized in an intense situation or in a trance. Examples are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

A thought or statement heard at a moment of shock, often when dying. Repetitive thoughts: affirmations, or a 'broken record' by others. Emotionally charged thoughts, by sexual or religious energy, or through intense selfconfidence. Will-charged thoughts, thoughts charged deliberately: curses, expletives, intense decisions, blessings, oaths. Hypnotic statements by others in situations of helplessness, submissiveness, confusion, emotion, rapture. Thoughts during peak experiences and ecstasy.

The most promising phrases that can be used in the verbal bridge contain the words "I" or "m e" and express a feeling or imply an event. For instance, They drive me into a corner. Keep the sentences in the present tense. After all, we want to expose a part of the past which is still active in the pre­ sent. So do not ask, What happened? but What's happening? I'm stuck. I cannot move anymore. I'm trapped in my work. The relationship with my wife is bogged down, I'm cut o ff from my children, even my friends I don't see anymore. I don't know how to get out o f this. These expressions may indicate captivity in a distant past. Repetition of the phrase I'm stuck easily leads into that old experience. If clients feel unhappy most of the time, but not at the time of the session, you can let them repeat aloud I feel unhappy. If that fails to yield a clear response or result, you can try I'm unhappy. Or you let it supplement with: I feel unhappy because ... or I'm unhappy because .... I feel probably indicates a hangover. I feel unhappy implies that something is making you feel unhappy. If repetitions and addi­ tions fail to work, try: I always feel unhappy. If the simple repetition of a phrase doesn't yield an obvious charge, we may resort to a verbal ex­ ploration (see 3.5), mostly with the because-chain and the if-then-chain. Thus we explore the causes and consequences of a thought or impression. Continue with these chains until you catch an emo­ tional or somatic charge that appears tied to the thought. If peeling down a chain starts to produce only general and abstract material, stop. Otherwise, continue until it bogs down, or until you get a paradox or a circle - i.e. returning to an earlier statement. Or till you have enough charge to give a regression instruction. With lists, ask the client, after repeating a statement once or several times, what comes to mind: pic­ tures, emotions or body sensations. If pictures are mentioned, ask for emotions. If emotions are mentioned, ask for body sensations. Keep fishing for an E and S. Postulates may come up during the regression as well; simply letting the client repeat such pos­ tulates may deepen the experience. Be aware of your own language guiding the session, reviewing the session, and especially in any suggestions or advice. Use the words and expressions of the clients, but make them direct and simple.

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Morris Netherton is the champion of the verbal bridge. He lets the client repeat the charged sen­ tences as a bridge into the regression and as a deepening and anchoring device during the session. In his approach he distinguishes five steps: 1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

Detecting key sentences during the intake and later during the session. Repeating these key phrases, so that the client's subconscious responds while his or her consciousness remains switched on. Carefully reconstructing the pain and emotional traumas that have created the postulate. This is vital. Without experiencing sadness and other emotions we w on't be able to over­ come and resolve them. Loosen the trauma by letting the client repeat the key phrase over and over again. Putting the experiences in the right perspective, and understanding the relationship between the past and the present. Going to the prenatal period, birth and early childhood to unearth restimulations of the original charges, and work through those.

If Netherton has caught a charged phrase during the intake, he himself repeats it several times aloud to induce or anchor the subsequent reliving regression. I let the client repeat the phrase, be­ cause we can infer a lot from the way the client pronounces that phrase. Note the tone of voice and observe the physical reactions while the client speaks them. Surprisingly often, the simple repetition of sentences triggers a strong E or S. Sometimes a client directly goes into regression. T: Tell me when we can start. C: We can start now. T: Repeat carefully and calmly five times the sentence: I'm stuck. C: I'm stuck. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. T: What do you experience now? C: I'm getting scared, it stifles me! (The first S.) T: You're getting scared, it stifles you. Let that suffocating feeling become clearer.

c-PJffT: Where do you feel that suffocating feeling especially? C: On my chest. (S) T: You feel cramped, especially on your chest. Let it become strong as possible. C: I feel it clearly enough now, thank you! My goodness, it's like something is on top o f me, something heavy. T: And what do you feel with that? C: I'm furious, but also afraid (E). T: There's something heavy on your chest. You are furious, but also afraid. Go back to the first time you experience this. I count from 5 to 1 and at 1 you are back in the situation where you first have that feeling. C: Oh my God! Something has fallen on me or been thrown at me. I cannot move, I'm stuck.

If clients have many fears that they want to get rid of, we first make a fear-list. It is one of the many 'shopping lists' we can make through a verbal bridge. This kind of zooming in already works therapeutically by itself. Clients may already feel liberated a refreshed once they have repeatedly and loudly pronounced their fears, however long the list. We continue completing a phrase until nothing further comes up or until an exact recurrence or till the client enter into regression, even without our instruction through images, emotions or somatics. Making such lists lies between a verbal bridge and a verbal exploration. T: What sounds stronger: I'm afraid or I'm scared?

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C: I'm scared/ C: Say five times with increasing attention: I'm scared. C does this five times. T: Repeat, and complete it with the first thing that comes to mind. I'm scared of... C: I'm scared o f commitment. T: I'm scared o f commitment. I'm scared of... C: I'm scared o f failure. T: I'm scared o f failure. I'm scared o f ... C: I'm scared to let myself go. T: I'm scared to let myself go. I'm scared of... C: I'm scared o f violence. T: I'm scared o f violence. I'm scared of... C: I'm scared o f being rejected. T: I'm scared o f being rejected. I'm scared o f ... C: I'm scared o f pain. T: I'm scared o f pain. I'm scared of... C: I'm scared o f emotional pain. T: I'm scared o f emotional pain. I'm scared of... C: I'm scared to let myself go. T: That we had already. Here we stop.

After these completions we can repeat individual sentences or we first explore them further with peel-down chains. Peel-down chains are supplementary sentences that logically follow each other in consecutive order. As a first example, there's the 'because-chain.' I feel lonely. I feel lonely. I feel lonely. I feel lonely because ...no one cares about me. Nobody cares about me because... they don't have a high regard o f me. They don't have a high regard o f me because ...I'm ugly. I'm ugly because... 1 was born with an unattractive mother. I was born with an unattractive mother because I ...

Here it falters. We let the client repeat the last sentence five times. I was born to an unattractive mother. We ask for emotions and somatics and do a regression, probably to the birth or the choice of par-

The second peel-down chain is: 'if ... then...' The because-series explores causes, the if-then-series explores consequences. I f I feel lonely, I skulk away. I f l skulk away, then it gets dark. I give as an exam­ ple the exploration of elements from the above anxiety list, with comments afterwards. T: Do you want to further explore those fears? C: Yes. T: Tell me three times, I'm afraid o f commitment. C does that three times. T: I'm afraid o f commitment to ... C: I'm afraid o f commitment to relationships. T: I'm afraid o f commitment to relationships because... C: I'm afraid o f commitment to relationships because it may lead to emotional pain. T: I f it leads to emotional pain then ... C: If there's emotional pain then I lose ground. T: I f l lose ground then ... C: I f l lose ground then I lose my self-confidence. T: I f l lose my self-confidence then ... C: I f l lose my self-confidence, then I get anxious. T: I f l get anxious then ... C: When I get anxious then I'm afraid that I let myself go.

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T: If I let myself go, then ... C: If I let myself go, then I have no control over myself. T: If I have no control over myself then ... C: If I have no control over myself I may become violent. T: If I become violent then ... C: If I become violent I may inflict physical damage on others. T: If I inflict physical damage on others then ... C: If I inflict physical damage on others then I feel that I've failed. T: If I feel that I've failed then ... C: If I feel that I've failed then I no longer feel human. T: If I no longer feel human then ... C: If I no longer feel human then I feel lost. T: If I feel lost then ... C: If 1feel lost then life has no meaning. T: If life has no meaning then ... C: If life has no meaning then it has no meaning for me anymore. T: If it has no meaning for me anymore then ... C: If it has no meaning for me anymore then I'm useless. T: If I'm uselessness then ... C: If I'm useless then I dissolve into nothingness. T: If I dissolve into nothingness then ... C: If I dissolve into nothingness I don't fulfill the reason I'm here. T: I'm here because... C: To experience and live through things that are important fo r my developm ent.

The primary sentence was: I'm afraid that I let m yself go. The male client did not let himself go. He kept control. This sentence was therefore recursive. I usually take: I'm afraid o f but I asked which word was most charged for him and that was the word 'scared/ I continued with an if-then chain. It's important to repeat each supplementary sen­ tence that the client said. W hatever is said, continue calmly and evenly with the peel-down chain. I'm scared o f emotional relationships, because it may lead to emotional pain. In a regression you send a client back to a relationship in which he felt that emotional pain. If he loses ground, he loses his self-confidence. Then he becomes anxious and then he may be­ come violent. At that moment we get new information. The following sentences are charged less. The terms become more abstract. He talks about 'physical damage.' Neat. Too neat. If he inflicts physical damage on others, he feels he has failed. Now norms and values come in. Then a couple of sentences follow which essentially say the same thing. Then uselessness. Another norm - about usefulness. Then he feels he failed. That's a heavier statement, but still a moral judg­ ment. I tried because-series, but then we came back in abstract moralistic talk. The real charge, therefore, is being afraid of his own aggressiveness. I didn't start with: I'm afraid o f commitment because... , but I specified it first. I asked about commit­ ment to ... The phrase I'm angry you do not first complete with I'm angry because ..., but first with I'm angry at ... . Only then the because-chain should kick in. Also never start with I'm afraid because ..., but with I'm afraid o f... Only then follow up with because .... I'm scared o f commitment in relationships. Such sentences are insufficiently charged. Commitment and relationships are both semiprofessional words. Normal people talk differently. Emotional pain: even more professional jargon. Then 1 lose ground. That's the first good one. We can let the client repeat this sentence. We can also switch to the visual bridge. Imagine that you lose ground, what do you feel? Just imagine it, and see and feel what happens. As in a dream, a nightmare: You lose ground. I'm at sea, I fall overboard, I'm drown­ ing. Sometimes you're right back into a past life.

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Then I lose my self-confidence. That's a dodge. Of course you lose your self-confidence when you lose the ground under your feet. It says the same thing, just weaker. Not a sentence to use in an in­ duction later. Once I lose my confidence, then I get anxious. That's kicking in an open door. We already started out with anxiety anyway. Then I'm afraid I will lose myself. In principle that is stronger than I lose ground, but it is more ab­ stract. Ground under our feet we can picture, even feel, and is thus a better bridge into a regression. Yet this sentence is also suitable as a verbal bridge. I f I lose myself, I have no control over myself. He means: then I lose my civilized, normative self. Then I may become violent. That's new. Do you then let the client repeat five times I'm violent? You can, but I'd rather visualize. Imagine that you become violent. Or: Go back to the last time you became vio­ lent. Why? Because I assume the client is still unwilling to face his violent side. 'Inflicting physical damage' on others is jargon again, avoiding the emotional charge. Then 1feel that I've failed. That's important. Then 1 no longer feel human anymore. A strong statement, but ab­ stractly formulated. How does it feel to be no longer human? Then I feel lost. Then life has lost its meaning. I'm lost is even heavier. He repeats it again, but more specific and somewhat weaker. Then I dissolve into nothingness. Bingo. A gem of a sentence. Fear of death, probably religiously inten­ sified. Or a bad after-death experience. A part of him drifted into nothingness after death. He still is connected to that lost part. We may evoke this pseudo-obsession, and heal it. We must first descend into that abyss. We say friendly and calmly: Just dissolve into nothingness. What part o f yourself starts to dissolve first? The hands may go first, or the feet, or the head, while the rest is still there. Weird, unnerving stuff - but you must keep at it. Or: Just go back to the last time that a part o f you dissolved into nothingness. Or: What do you feel in your body when you say: I dissolve into nothingness? The sentence I'm afraid to let m yself go, may be recursive. It's difficult to do regression with someone who during the session is afraid to let himself go. But here the sentence may not be recursive, as he later said that he was afraid to become violent. Thus take sentences like I lose ground or even better: I dissolve into nothingness. If you take such a phrase, you let the client repeat that phrase three times and check whether you can start the regression with it right away. Well, just feel how you dissolve into nothingness. Tell me when you've dissolved. I'm in a dark emptiness that stretches out forever. Then we may end up in a past life in which he felt empty after he had died because he had done something bad, something vio­ lent. He was accused, sentenced and executed. Or he killed himself in his remorse. Or he didn't feel guilty about what he did, but about leaving his family behind, unprotected. His children were taken away and sold into slavery. If we have conducted that session well, at the end we may check again the first sentence. Say three times: I'm afraid o f commitment. Then the client may discover that he no longer feels anything disturbing, and he relaxes. There's no charge on it anymore. If we have time, we may check the other sentences as well. T: I'm afraid o f failure. C: We did this. T: Vm afraid o f being rejected. C: We did this, but not quite all o f it. I feel something else with it. T: Just concentrate on this. Repeat: I'm afraid to be rejected. C: Vm afraid o f being rejected. T: I'm afraid o f being rejected by ... C: By people. T: I'm particularly afraid o f being rejected by ... C: I'm particularly afraid o f being rejected by Pete.

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T: I'm afraid o f being rejected by Pete because ... C: I'm afraid o f being rejected by Pete because he thinks I'm mean.

The latter is an example of another peel-down chain: the specification-chain. 1 feel especially lonely when ... Ife e l small. I feel especially small when ... I'm being looked at. I'm especially looked at when ... I'm different. Or: I especially hate men who ... are unreliable. Men are especially unreliable when ... I show my fem inine side. I especially show my fem inine side when ... Ife e l the need fo r it. I especially feel the need fo r it when ... I'm feeling good. I especially feel good when ... I've achieved something. And so on. Another peel-down chain is the equivalence chain. Loneliness is ... horrible. Horrible is ... dark. Dark is ... cold. Cold is ... wet. Wet is ... lonely. The circle closes, so we give a regression instruction. We evoke the loneliness (E) and the cold (S). Go to a place and time where and when it was horribly dark, cold and wet and you felt lonely. Or: Anger is: dangerous. Danger is: wounding. Wounds are: painful. Pain is: maddening. A woman thinks of her youngest son who always gives her trouble, and is wearing her down. I let her repeat and complete the sentence: My youngest son is ... . The sixteenth completion is: My youngest son makes me powerless. She bursts into a deep emotion. She gets a burning sensation in her head and feels a hole behind her eye, as if a spear or lance is rammed into it. She experiences a traumatic death with the following charge: I cannot move anymore. She's literallypinned to the ground at the moment of death. She turns out to be a man who unsuccessfully triedto reach his family to warn and protect them. The feeling of powerlessness about her present son triggers the older powerlessness from that past life, related to having a family. After three quarters of an hour, the problem with her son is still there, but her feelings of intense, maddening powerlessness that he triggered are gone forever.

You need to get a knack to work with peel-down chains. The because-chain is the simplest. The 'b e­ cause' deepens. It finds out what's behind or before or beneath it. NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) advises against the use of why-questions, because these are associated with interviews and examinations and tend to lead to rationalizations. You won't come across this problem with having the client complete because-phrases. I'm scared because: I'm alone. I'm alone because: I'm abandoned. I'm abandoned by: my friends. My friends have abandoned me because: they no longer did trust me. They no longer trusted me because: they thought I had betrayed them. They thought I had betrayed them because: someone told them so. Someone told them so because: he wanted to cross me. He wanted cross me because: I did not trust him. I did not trust him because: he always looked at to me in an odd, scary way.

How do we go from here? He looked in an odd, scary way at me, because .... Then chances are w e'll get: Because he did not trust me. So we take: When he looks at me that way, then I f e e l ... tense. When Ifeel tense, then: I start shaking. Then in exploring consequences a somatic charge arises. We can use that to go into regression. That's the second peel-down chain: if... then..., or if... then 1 feel... When I feel this, I feel that. I mainly use the if... then I fe e l... chain to peel down to the basic emotion. This is useful if numerous emotions have been mentioned already at the beginning, or if emotions are worded in abstract and distant terms. One or two basic emotions focus and anchor a session much better than a vague col­ lection of charges. Frequently, we use both the because-chain and the if-then-chain. We let the client explore the causes as well as the consequences of a thought or feeling. Continue peeling down until you hit on an emotional or somatic charge that opens into a situation. If the chain produces only general and abstract material, then stop. Otherwise, continue until it stalls, or until you can start the regression, or until you reach a paradox or a full circle.

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The sentence: I'm trapped because I'm locked out, touches a fundamental point and is contradictory at the same time. You would expect being trapped when one is locked in. Paradoxes are usually charged and thus are good entries into regression. I'm afraid o f crowds because then people are no longer themselves, can refer to a real experience. Yet People are beside themselves because they are themselves, is a (misan­ thropic) postulate. I get cold by heat, is a psychotic postulate. Or even worse: Everything is nothing. A circle is: I hate men because they're brutes. Men are brutes because I hate them. Or: I feel scared be­ cause I'm alone. I feel alone because no one can comfort me. No one can comfort me because I'm scared. Catch the two ends of the circle in one sentence and use that as a verbal bridge: I feel afraid; nobody can com­ fort me. Sometimes it's enlightening for the client to discover these circle runs. Sometimes we map the problem before or even without going into regression. Mapping can be easy. I'm unhappy at work, because .... You let them complete this a number of times and for instance four or five reasons will emerge. W hat in conventional therapy is the main wash, for us is the prewash. Completing sentences is an excellent way to distinguish and separate interrelated charges. Someone says: I always feel weepy. She may feel it now, but she can't locate it, regression seems not yet feasible. Possibly, because multiple, diverse causes lie at the root of her sentimentality; different rivers end­ ing up in the same lake. Then we must first identify the separate rivers and find their sources. We let her complete repeatedly: I feel like crying because ... . This may result in, for instance, eight distinct responses. We work through them one by one, and we may find, for example, one childhood trauma and two past lives, so three rivers that fed her sentiment. Sometimes, a purely verbal exploration already solves the problem. I'm afraid o f men. I'm afraid o f men because ... they cannot be trusted. They cannot be trusted because... they are afraid o f me. They are afraid o f me because ... I'm afraid o f them. What am I saying? Strange, I feel myself still trembling, but my fear o f men is suddenly completely gone.

Then a regression after this is not the main course, but the dessert. The fear is already gone, but she wants to know where that strange mutual fear between her and men came from. That means re­ gression to a life in which this fear was mutual. That insight confirms the disappearance of that fear. The verbal bridge seems the easiest - just letting the client repeat a phrase - but may be the most difficult. Mainly due to the many available options. Knowing which sentences to let the client repeat and how to explore them, requires verbal intelligence, thinking on your feet and some expe­ rience. W hen do we go for a complete verbal exploration? In this section we have provided sugges­ tions for this, but it remains a tricky issue. If we use the verbal bridge too frequently or haphaz­ ardly, it may become counterproductive, leading the client out of experiences instead of into them.

6.5 Choosing and combining bridges We have now discussed four types of bridges: the verbal bridge, the imaginative bridge, the emo­ tional and the somatic bridge. A complete induction may contain all four aspects, though that is rarely necessary. In practice, the combination of an emotion with a somatic is usually sufficient (E + S or S + E). A woman always feels annoyed for no particular reason. Can she feel that annoyance now? Where does she feel that in or on her body? If that is clear, that is sufficient for the regression. You instruct the client to go back to the first time that this emotion was felt in that particular place in or on the body.

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Working with bridges is, again, like seeking a radio station on an old-fashioned radio. First, you tune into the station, only then you turn on the volume. In regression, especially the S helps us to fine-tune the signal before we give the regression instruction. So how do we choose between the four bridges? Usually, we don't choose, but observe what comes up. Often the client indicates the choice by verbal and nonverbal signals. • • • •

With a clear emotion, take the emotional bridge. With an actual physical complaint, take the somatic bridge. When the client already has a clear picture, or when emotions arise only under specific cir­ cumstances, take the imaginative bridge. With charged word or phrases, take the verbal bridge.

We can use any bridge for any problem, but the emotional bridge is the most common entry into traumas, the somatic bridge for dealing with pseudo-obsessions and the verbal bridge for character postulates. The imaginative bridge is the most gradual, and the verbal bridge the most versatile. The simplest approach remains S + E or E + S, an emotion with a somatic. If you don't reach the emotion right-away, then use the imagination to get at it. If you don't get to the emotion through the imagination, then use the verbal bridge. If we meet obvious postulates, we immediately use the verbal bridge. The imaginative and verbal bridges are occasionally sufficient, but usually we use these to evoke emotions and somatics. When the evoked pictures or repeated phrases arouse an emotion, even without a somatic we can go into regression (I + E or V + E). When they produce only a so­ matic, we also may go straight into the regression (I + S or V + S). If we have a V + I + E + S, we surely will get there. A block that arises at the beginning of the session is often not a true block, but a manifestation of the problem itself. In the parlance of this book: the problem is recursive. Or the therapist made a false start, by offering a picture that didn't come from the mind of the client. A therapist suggests the cli­ ent to imagine a fountain, but the client sees a coffin floating by. He tries in vain to forget that coffin to imagine the fountain. Is that a block? No of course not, as that coffin is obviously the starting point. D on't worry when client say they can't see or can't do something. 'Cannot' is usually a matter of don't want or don't dare. If the client says: I cannot close my eyes, ask, for instance: Why don't you want to close them? Or: What's the worst that could happen if you would close your eyes? C: I'm here because o f a feeling o f guilt, but now I see something that I've dreamt once. I'm in a strange landscape, the sun is shining and I'm standing near a well.

That beginning is an imagination, an impression of something that may have truly happened once. We tie onto it and use the imaginative bridge. What is strange about the landscape? The beginning can also be a feeling, an emotion. C: I right now just feel unhappy. On the way over here, to you, that feeling became stronger. I'm rarely bothered by it, but today I am. T: Can you feel it right now? C: Yes.

Then this emotion constitutes the start, and we use the emotional bridge. The start can also be a word or a phrase that suddenly and strongly comes to mind. Then we have a verbal beginning and we take the verbal bridge. The beginning can be a somatic as well.

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C: I'm ready. T: What do you notice in or on your body? C: My feet tingle and my heart is pounding.

Here we have two somatics and may use these jointly as a somatic bridge. The golden rule is: start with something that has already started. Again, keep it simple. If the contract is made and the client is lying or sitting down, the easiest thing to say is: Just say when you're comfortable. Or: Tell me when you're ready. When they're ready, we can begin. If they aren't ready, we suggest them that they take their presenting complaint as the starting point. Even without that, we often can enter into a regression without any ado. C: I feel uncomfortable. Something keeps bothering me. I feel cold. T: Where? C: Somewhere inside. T: Where do you feel this cold that is bothering you the most? In your feet? OK.

Go to the emotions, if necessary through images or thoughts. A simple and open question is, With what do you associate it with? Or What does that mean to you? C: A feeling like I'm being dragged into cold water. The word fear' comes to mind. T: Can you feel this fear? C: Now you're asking, my heart starts pounding.

Thus we get, through the emotion, a second somatic in the shape of a pounding heart. Imaginative beginnings can be pursued imaginatively, without going into regression. We then work with a waking dream or psychodrama. Verbal beginnings can be verbally developed into complete verbal explorations that by themselves can lead to disentanglement and insight. Both approaches can be useful when regression is too intense for a client. In this book, these two avenues are not fur­ ther explored. Here, we focus on concrete experiences that lead to concrete understanding. A client is frequently bothered by strange, vague fears. Can you feel these right now? I'm restless, but I don't feel anything else. The emotional bridge seems closed, the somatic bridge is weak, so we work with the imaginative bridge or the postulate bridge. What the postulates are in this in­ stance, we don't know, so we ferret these out by letting the client repeatedly complete the phrase I'm afraid o f ... . Or we let the client first repeat aloud five times, with growing attention: I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid. Then we ask what happens an if nothing happens yet, we go for a fear list.

Often they're still busy with this repetition when their eyes are already closing and fluttering, a sign of incipient trance. If the client cannot repeat the sentence, then you hit the jackpot. Everybody can repeat a trivial sen­ tence. Only with charged phrases people stall, get bogged down. Such a block easily translates into emotions or somatics. Breathing falters or they feel a lump in their throat. We can use a verbal bridge with a somatic, when asking for an emotion yields nothing. For in­ stance, someone has had a bother with her legs throughout her life. You let her lie down. How do your legs feel now? Rubbery. Then we let her repeat five times, for example: M y legs feel rubbery. Some­ times someone already goes in regression at the second repeat. Or you continue with: My legs are rubbery becau se.... A verbal bridge can evoke an emotion if it's specific enough. A sentence like I feel sad is too gen­ eral - generally. Let the client first complete and specify it. I feel sad when ... it rains. I feel sad when it

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rains because ... Ife el lost. Then let the sentence It's raining; Ifeel lost repeat five times. This sentence is now much more concrete and emotional than the initial one. Emotions and somatics will surface and often the situation opens without any regression instruction. Or a client may say: Ife e l a sting in my throat and tears well up in my eyes. OK. Go back the first time you feel this sting in your throat and these tears welling up in your eyes. With emotions and somatics you may ask: I f this feeling could talk, what would it tell you? You sup­ plement an E or S with a V. This may help mental clients to stay with the feeling. T: You just told me that you feel sad from time to time. Can you experience that sad feeling right now? C: A little. T: Gobd. Experience that sad feeling. Let it come up. C: It becomes stronger. I ... (Cries.) T: Good. Let it come, let that sadness come, feel it. Where’s that grief especially in your body? C: (Still crying) I don't know exactly. Everywhere, I believe. T: How do you know you're sad? C: I ... my eyes. I have to cry. T: Your eyes. Are there other places where you feel this grief? C: In my stomach, I believe, and my eyes. T: How does that feel in your stomach? C: Like there's a stone in it. T: You're crying and it's as if there's a stone is in your belly. (Regression may start, as E + S are evi­ dent. Go back in time to the first time when you cry and you feel this stone coming in your stomach.

Occasionally, clients do enter in spatial experiences in which they feel faint and no longer feel their body. Such disembodied states we don't explore through somatics, but through emotions or thoughts. Use the verbal bridge. When I feel faint, then Ifeel: lost. When Ife e l lost, then Ifeel: alone. I f I feel alone, then Ifeel: wide. I f I feel wide, then Ifeel: lost. This is a circle, so combine the key charges in a regression instruction: Go back to a place and time where you felt faint, lost, alone and wide. If the verbal bridge directly leads back to the starting point, then a part of the client is caught in a circle. The circular reasoning is the rational brother of an imprisoned, frozen emotion. Denys Kel­ sey calls it 'the spirit of the event, ' a part of your own spirit, your own soul, that is imprisoned somewhere, somehow. If it becomes evident that 'feeling faint' carries a significant charge, you look for examples of it. I especially feel fain t when: • I've just eaten; • I'm facing an important decision; • Ifeel guilty. And so on. A few times the initial story of a client provides many possible starting points. Someone complains, for example: My mother is almost daily on the phone and asks when I'll come by. When I come by, I'm sick. I'm ex­ hausted when I'm back home. Which bridge do you use? Go through the imagination to the emotion. Imag­ ine the last time this happened to you. That feeling o f being exhausted, can you feel it now? If the client doesn't feel that, use the verbal bridge: Ifeel exhausted by my mother because... Until you touch the emotion. What if a client starts a session with the following complaint: I have the oddest thing happening to me over the last few years. I f I'm honest: I always feel unhappy. I have a nice job, a nice wife, nice kids, we have a good life together, but deep down I'm actually unhappy. Be cautious with something like that, because it can be a drama story of 'poor me.' Drama sto­ ries are talking about it, not reliving it. If clients are honestly puzzled and really have no idea where it comes from, what do we do? Do we start with the emotional bridge? Rather not, as the feeling is amorphous, and long-lasting. It looks hangover-like. With such a vague, yet pervasive theme, the verbal bridge is the best way to start.

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T: Repeat five times, with increasing attention: 1feel unhappy. (C does this.) T: Watch your body. How do you feel now? C: My feet are cold. (The verbal bridge has caught a somatic.) T: That cold in your feet, where's that exactly? C: Near my ankles. T: What kind o f cold is it? Numbed or sharp? C: Rather sharp, I think. T: With what can you compare it? C: As if my feet have been chopped off. T: 1 count backwards from five to one and you go back to a situation where you're unhappy and your toes have been chopped off. C: I see a shunting yard. It's night. (And so on.)

If nothing else immediately becomes clear, but the client still has cold feet, simply wait. Don't get nervous and try to do something else. There is an impression, but she's shying away from it. That shunting yard, for instance, she finds strange, nonsensical. She hesitates to go there. Frequently, people have a certain expectation about a regression. Or they see something obscene that, at first sight, has nothing to do with cold or chopped-off feet. If they don't want to say it, they w on't say it; then that's it. Maybe the session falters unfinished there. Do not try to go around the block, because there's always something significant in that silence. There's no empty space, also in human consciousness. There's always something. Or say something completely unexpected: What do those chopped-off feet want? Don't change something specific into something abstract. Stay concrete. If someone speaks about feeling 'p ack ag ed ,' have them see a package (imaginative bridge) of feel inside a package (somatic bridge). Imagine that you're home alone. The door opens and someone delivers some packages with your emo­ tions in it. How many are they? What size? Unpack them one at a time. So we take a word or phrase like 'packaged' literally. Or: You now get an impression where your packaged emotions are. They're in the attic. Go on from there. If clients describe their pain and use words like suffocating or being abused, then these are ver­ bal labels for somatics. You make a verbal bridge of these by having these words repeated or you make peel-down chains out of them. I feel suffocated or I'm suffocating or It's suffocating because ... W hen the client starts to rationalize, the emotions are diluted in abstract labels. So ask: That suf­ focating feeling, can you feel it now? If someone answers: No, I don't feel it, we use the word 'suffocat­ ing' in a sentence that we let the client repeat out loud. Ask what clients feel in their body when they utter those phrases. Continue with the sentence that produces the strongest somatic. For ex­ ample: I'm suffocating; I suffocate; they suffocate me, or It's suffocating here. The phrase that evokes the strongest reaction, we let the client repeat five times. If that isn't enough, then we continue with: It's suffocating here becau se.... Here follow a few examples. As an exercise, try to detect what kinds of problems these seem to be, which bridges you would try, and in what order. Write down your answers before continuing with the main text. •

Fear to leave the house

•

Inability to cope with a death in the immediate family

•

Changing abdominal complaints

•

Impotence or frigidity

•

Someone who keeps getting fired. The company folds or they don't need him anymore, or the department is disbanded or he gets accused of something by a misunderstanding.

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Fear to leave the house is not yet sufficiently concrete. We still don't know what it's about. A verbal bridge would be: I'm afraid to leave the house, because .... That's an unfortunate beginning. Something like I'm afraid o f cats, because ... would be more specific. The imaginative bridge allows one to catch the relevant picture and then zoom in. If a client has agoraphobia (a fear of wide, open spaces), start with the imaginative bridge, un­ less you get a positive answer to the question Can you feel that fear right now? A fear to leave the house - w hat's that probably: trauma, hangover, character-postulate or pseudo-obsession? The most likely cause of fear is a trauma. So go through pictures (such as memories) to the emotion and then to the somatics. Ask for the last time, then if necessary for the strongest time, then if necessary to the first time - until you hit the emotion. The second example, a deceased fam ily member, is clearly a trauma. Occasionally it's an attachment by the deceased. That often happens with parents who've died. Especially with strict upbringings and troubled relationships that never have been properly, fully, openly discussed, remain unresolved problems and produce ambivalent feelings burdening the surviving relative. If you evoke an imagination here, the emotions could spin out of control. Imagine how he looked like, as if he enters the room now, would be a tricky way to go about it. The emotion, after all, already is there. The traumatic loss of a family member is like an open wound. Guilt, shame and other feel­ ings may have attached to it. It may have restimulated older feelings of loneliness and abandon­ ment. Anchor the emotion in the body before you zoom further onto the emotion. So first, What do you feel with this in your body? With varying abdominal pains the somatic bridge is the natural starting point. What do you feel in your belly? How does your belly feel right now? That may be sufficient for regression, but often it's advisable to find an emotional charge with it. How do you feel about these belly cramps? Like I'm being put under pressure. How does it feel to be put under pressure? It makes me desperate. Despair is a basic emotion. There' we have despair, wrapped in pressure, packaged in abdominal pains. What do you do without a somatic? I've always had stomach pains, but right now I don't feel any­ thing there. The toothache stops when you ring the dentist's doorbell. If there's no anxiety about the therapy itself, there's usually a shutdown command in the mind, a postulate that shuts something down. The shutdown command implies that this exploration ought not be done, that one shouldn't talk about it, or that this is dangerous and should be avoided. How do we then get at the source? When it's about a trauma and these abdominal pains are triggered by particular circumstances, then suggest Go back to the last time you felt this. Often it re­ mains amorphous. Different types of complaints occasionally arise and recede under different cir­ cumstances. Occasionally I sense stabs in my stomach, almost certainly points to a trauma. I often feel pressure on my belly fo r weeks; it goes up and down, indicates a hangover. When it was finally OK, and the doctor said I could go home, two weeks later I fall down the stairs and I fall exactly with my stomach on that chest. With that belly there's always some trouble, always some­ thing different, indicates an obsession or a pseudo-obsession. Some women with uterine complaints keep having problems even after dilatation and curettage, or phantom pains after removal of the uterus. This also indicates pseudo-obsession or obsession. If a body part like the abdomen fre­ quently causes problems, but currently there's no charge, then we do not yet induce regression, but use aura exploration instead. With impotence or frigidity we use the imaginative or memory bridge. We ask for the last experience. The answer to that evokes the feeling and through emotion we try to get to the somatic. The crucial twist is always, and that surprises many clients, to switch to: Where's that feeling in your body? The somatic of an emotion that's related to sex is not necessarily located at the genitals.

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Using the verbal bridge is possible, but be careful. Avoid stories. Story telling is not to prepare for the real work, but to avoid the real work. That's tiresome, consumes energy and your first session ends fruitlessly. If you want to know something, stick to the point. How does it feel to be impotent? As if I'm worthless. How does it feel to be worthless? Like shit. OK. Feel like shit. Feel as bad as you can. Where do you feel that in your body? Impotence can be complex, it may be or it may be not related to almost anything else. Aura exploration is particularly suitable here. Go see what makes you impotent. Ugh, just above my shoulder there's a crab. Well, you'd better remove it. Only then we let the client go back to the moment when the crab, whatever it may represent, appeared on the shoulder for the first time. Then clients typically regress spontaneously, usually to childhood, sometimes to a past life. If you let repeat or complete a sentence here, with which sentence do you start? I f I'm having sex, then ... presumes that impotence emerges only when someone has sex. W hat if one masturbates without issue? Minimize assumptions into the phrases to be repeated. Simply start by letting the client say five times with increasing attention I'm impotent. That by itself may already evoke emo­ tional and somatic charges. Pay particular attention to bodily reactions. Of course. If the voice be­ comes emotional, ask after the emotion and continue through the emotion to the somatic. If that fails, try for example: M y penis is ... Then, for example, follows: M y penis is a toy. Who is toying with it? I'm a little Roman slave boy, and ... If no situation appears, and you keep searching for the emotion through the verbal bridge, then use: When I'm impotent, I f e e l ... Then Ifeel like shit. I f I feel like shit, then ... Then I tend to crawl away into a corner. I f I crawl away into a corner, then ... Then Ife e l small. I f I feel small, then ... Then I want to crawl away into a corner. OK, say three times: I'm small and I want to crawl away into a corner. Let that feeling come up. It's always interesting where the client ends up. Then ask: Where's that emotion in your body? Impotence or frigidity, what kind of problem could be behind that? It's rarely a trauma. It may be a hangover, there may be a pseudo-obsessor or obsessor, and often postulates are involved. It's non­ specific. Impotence may cause relationship problems, and relationship problems may cause impo­ tence. It may have a symbolic significance. Charges on body parts are often symbolic. The general feeling of being unable to perform may have led to impotence. The conviction I'm not ready, may lead to impotence, even coming from an experience that had nothing to do with sex. For example, the client once was caught unprepared in a disaster and died. Impotence and frigidity may be resolved in one session if they are not part of a larger pathology. Finally, the fifth example: someone keeps getting fired. Start with a verbal exploration. Why not an imaginative bridge? Because there' are too many different situations, too many memories to focus properly. Zoom in with a verbal analysis to the most relevant, essential charges. Rather not start with: I keep getting fired because ... Rather take: I f I get fired, then I f e e l ... Answer: frantic. What kind o f feeling do you get in your body when you feel frantic? As if my knees are buckling. They become cold. Regress to the cause of that, even when at first sight unrelated to being laid-off. OK, your knees are buckling, you get cold. Go back to the time when you had this feeling fo r the very first time. This situation you explore, you solve, and then go back to the situation of being fired. Induction is the introduction to reliving an experience by the client. In the reliving itself we always follow the client. Confidence and proper induction help the therapist to tune in with the client. First attune, then follow. We can always use each type of bridge, though the hit rate varies. But there's in every situation just one 'royal road.' Just one dance is the best. One music the most appropriate. One road goes without effort, nimble, precise, surprisingly effective, across swamps and scrubs to touching and impressive vistas. The right way heals the legs and the feet while going.

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6.6 O ra cle b rid g e s

With an oracle bridge we work with a deck of cards containing either images or phrases. We let the client first consciously select these cards, and at the end draw a card blindly. W hen do we use an oracle bridge? Especially with people who aren't familiar with therapy and think it scary. With an oracle bridge the client is free to go into it more deeply or not. Also, we can find out from it whether the client is sensitive to bodily sensations and emotional impressions. If not, we continue with counseling. I use it primarily as a preliminary exploration. For example, to identify the subject of a session The client shuffles the cards. Washing the cards is inconvenient because then many cards are turned upside down. The client takes the pile with the sentences upwards, reads them and then divides them into three stacks: • Left: cards that trigger emotional reactions, either positive or negative. • Right: cards that don't trigger any reaction. • Center: cards that give vague or doubtful reactions W hen all the cards have been distributed across these three stacks, the client takes the center stack and distributes its cards again in the same way. The cards that end up again in the center stack are turned downwards and shuffled. Half of them are blindly chosen by the client and put at the left stack. The rest goes at the right stack. First I give an example of a set of cards that I developed. This set consists of about 70 cards with platitudes. Later, I tried to assort these sentences, and I arrived at the six neurotic roles, already dis­ cussed in 4.7: helper (H), culprit (C), victim (V), prosecutor (P), spectator (S) and wobbler (W). The cards on the left stack are shuffled and again taken one by one. We now ask clients to read each sentence aloud and ascertain whether they feel anything in their body. Again, there'll be three stacks: yes, no, doubtful. If the center stack is still more than ten cards, then rework the stack one more time in the same way. Turn over the remaining center cards, shuffle these, and again blindly select half of these cards to put these on the stack on the right. This stack is shuffled and the client blindly pulls a card from it. This card will be the starting point of the therapy session. The rest of the stack is set aside. The client turns the selected card and gives initial reactions. Then let the clientsit or liedown with eyes closed, repeating the phrase five times with increasing attention. From then on it's just the verbal bridge. Once the emotions or somatics are strong enough, these can directly be taken as a bridge. After the session, the cards of the last stack are turned upwards. The client indicates which other sentences are related to the session's subject and which indicate different charges that still need to be dealt with. A heavy presence of one of the six neurotic roles may lead to a counseling session. If the remaining independent cards still feel charged after the session, then write their contents down and use them to embark on a following session. T: On these cards are short sentences written. Read them one by one, silently (so as not evoke too many different charges), and lay them in three little stacks. • At the left: phrases that touch you, either positive or negative. • At the right: phrases that say or mean nothing to you. • In the center: doubtful, ambivalent, hesitant cases.

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Just be fairly quick and divide them into three stacks. There are more than ten doubtful cases, so I ask you to do the same procedure again with these cards. The right stack we put away for now, the left stack goes on the center stack, and now six doubtful cases remain. From those you blindly pull 3 cards that will remain in play. OK. Now I ask you to do the same with the remaining cards, but now I ask you to read the sentences aloud. If you feel anything in your body while you do this, you put the card on the left stack. If you don't feel anything in your body, then you put the card on the right stack. If in doubt, you put the card on the middle stack. The cards are distributed among the three stacks again. The right stack is taken out. The left stack remains. O f the six doubtful cases, you may again blindly pull three cards that remain in the game. The other three go out. I suggest that we don't go into a session yet, but that we explore the life situation. We shuffle the remaining cards on the table. Take one card blindly. Imagine that this card is the most important one for today. Read its sentence aloud. Speak it aloud five times with increasing attention. C: Why do they make such a fuss about it? (5x) T: What do you feel when you say that? C: Irritation. T: Where do you feel that in your body? C: Here on my back and in my head. T: Do you want to know where it comes from? Just close your eyes. Just go back to the very first time you feel the irritation in your head and under your shoulders. Why they make such a fuss about it? Go back to the first time you feel the irritation at these places in your body. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Where are you and what's happening? Your first impression. C: I'm playing in the sandbox. I'm building something. They're afraid o f something. I don't understand what's going on. I'm afraid that something bad will happen if I keep playing in the sandbox. Why do they make such a fuss about it? T: How old are you here? C: Five. T: What are you making? C: A hut, in our backyard. T: Who else is there or who's coming? C: My father followed by my mother. T: Are they agitated about something right now? C: My father especially. T: What's he agitated about? C: He's bothered about what I'm doing. That I may get hurt or something. T: He's worried. C: Yes, but he has nothing to worry about. It's a good construction. (Here speaks the inner adult!) T: How does that feel, that reaction from your father? C: Irritating that he doesn't have confidence in me. T: So this is an irritation. I propose that you get one more impression. Why is it that the irritation o f the 5y ear-old is still in you? The first thing that comes to mind. Why is the irritation still there? You see or feel or you hear an explanation. C: I see a beautiful schoolbag. My schoolbag. One has to go to school to learn. T: And people are worrying about that? C: Yes, why do they make such a fuss. Leave me alone. T: Where does that fuss come from? C: It's just my father's insecurity.

Instead of these sentence cards you also can use an image oracle, a deck of cards with pictures. I use for this the so-called OH-game, a card game from Canada, with watercolor pictures. These images

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are a bit blurry, so you can project a lot into it. Avoid images with fixed meanings, because clients should be able to project their own meaning, their own story in it. The Mythic Tarot I consider one of the most suitable tarot games for this. Possibly also the colored tarot of Waite. The fairytale Inner Child cards are suitable as well. I myself have produced a series of photo pictures that I usually work with. Do not use standard meanings in oracle games, but ask clients what they see on the final drawn card, what kind of feelings they have with it. Then use it as an I + E-or I + S bridge. Otherwise, let the client visualize and enter the situation presented on the card: the I-bridge. The use of sentence cards is a variant of the verbal bridge, the image cards are a variant of the imaginative bridge. The client has made the first selection of image cards and says with each card the word that first comes to mind. The cards are again divided into three stacks. The expressed keywords are: recollection silence injustice understanding always renewed hope mystery and memory contrast injustice security, mysticism forcefulness totality hidden beauty, mysticism I don't have a word for it right now

attentiveness, unity memory, also attentiveness, injustice desperation unity connection spontaneity cherished recollection recollection beauty unity romance

T: (We continue with the cards that had a charge.) OK, I put all remaining cards face down on the table and shuffle them. I'm going ask you to draw just one card. Just imagine that the card you now pull from the pile represents an important issue that you're grappling with right now. Tell me what you see and what you feel with it. C: Past. Attentiveness. Affection Compassion. Togetherness. T: What do you feel when you say these words? C: I'm deeply touched. T: Where do you feel that in your body? C: Here. T: We won't go into session now; but we could use that emotion as the starting point. O f course, you can regress also with a good feeling. Does it feel like something from the past or has it remained part o f you for a long time? Is it something contemporary, something old or perhaps even more ancient, deeper still, this emotion that you feel now? C: That's double. It's present, and at the same time it has always been there. Those terms that I've said before, were a kind o f wish. A wish that's being fulfilled at present. T: I suggest that we don't go into this right now, as long as it's clear to yourself what it means. So this is the theme. You can do a session on it, but you can also talk about it, in a counseling session. Now I ask you to lay all other cards under the main card that you feel belong to it, and put the other cards simply on a pile. Emotion, compassion. C: A few cards belong to it. T: OK. Then I suggest that you arrange these cards in a kind o f story at the card that you've chosen. Fol­ low your feeling.

If I use these cards for a session, then usually I let the clients do a session about the final, primary card that they have drawn blindly, sitting, with their eyes closed. Then that's the entrance of the session. What I do if there's little time left, I let the client put all the cards that have to do with compas­ sion under the card that was drawn randomly.

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T: What do you call this theme? C: Love, life and death. T: What would I do if this would become a real session? Descend into your body. Where lies the love, where lies life and where death in your body? See and feel the connections between those things. You don't need to answer this, but would you be able to? C: Yes. T: 1 leave that for now. The other cards with a charge, you could write these down and keep them fo r the next session when you could draw a card from that stack. How did you experience this? Did you like to do this? C: Rather emotional I had not expected this. T: When did you become emotional? C: When you asked: Where do you feel it in your body?

The whole process, therefore, amounts to a progressive deepening. Deepening already begins when the images pass by, but particularly when the client is asked to assign words and feelings to them in the second round. Generally, I prefer images above sentences, because you can interpret and respond to the former more diversely. Still, many people respond better to sentences. It probably depends on whether people are more verbal or more visual. The process of gradual deepening is important. If that doesn't occur, don't start with therapy.

6.7 Relaxation, visualization and classic hypnosis For completeness, we should also say something about these classic therapeutic inductions. Before 1978, when Netherton published his book, these were the usual roads to regressions. Classic hypnosis is the oldest road. Clients are put into a trance and then backward-counting instructions regress them to ever earlier ages from adulthood to childhood, possibly before birth and even further back. Later, lighter forms of trance-induction became popular: relaxation instructions, relaxing music and relaxing images. That usually culminates in suggesting inner pictures that ought to lead to a transition into an earlier time: waking down a winding path, descending a staircase, stepping into an elevator, going through a door or gate. Often, the suggestions are interspersed with hypnotic instructions, such as With each step you go further back in time. These methods are often used by practitioners who are more interested in exploration than in therapy. Although explorations often lead to valid experiences, they may just as easy lead to roman­ tic identifications and illusory travels, because there is less focus and anchoring. Properly focused and conducted classic hypnotic inductions lead to more reliable results. I refrain from these cumbersome induction methods. They take time and the resulting relaxation may move people away from the essential charges instead of towards them. But for some clients they are undoubtedly appropriate: • • •

For clients that have difficulty to visualize. For clients that discount the impressions they are getting. For clients whose imaginations meander into all directions, as with borderline cases, drug addicts and psychotics. They need to be anchored particularly well in their bodies.

There are many books and tapes that offer both therapists and do-it-yourself clients relaxation tech­ niques and standard visualizations. According to a Portuguese research the most relaxing visualiza­ tion - the quickest to produce alpha-waves in the brain - is imagining yourself on a sailboat along a sunny coast in a light afternoon breeze.

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Then we have to sail to the cause of the problems - if the client still feel like it. This chapter has shown a more direct way to proceed than the classic induction methods. A particu­ lar or remarkable body sensation whereby someone feels an emotion (S + E), remains the simplest entrance gate. Imaginations and key phrases may be necessary to get to that entrance. That may require some searching, but surprisingly rarely.

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CHAPTER 7. CATHARTIC RELIVING

Why should we relive a deep humiliation? A deep loneliness? A deep despair? An overwhelming guilt? A burning shame? Utter powerlessness? As said earlier: Why open up a can of worms? Well, as we are the can: to let out the worms, of course. Because we never just experience it exactly the same as we did then. Because we relive it in the present. And that can be done with compassion and understanding. Especially if therapists encour­ age these. Especially if they remain calm and neutral in all their compassion and understanding. If we relive a past experience, we sense it in a diluted way, but at the same time sense it in a highly concentrated form. In fifteen minutes or half an hour we re-experience the low points of something that maybe lasted a week. The grief and bewilderment kick in, but without the full pain. We trav­ erse the experience now while our ego remains intact and so we're able to digest that experience, to process and resolve it. The fact that we decide to do the reliving on our own free will, practically guarantees that we w on't get stuck. As long the therapeutic guidance is right, of course. The content of the reliving consists of a series of recollections, pictures and impressions: what we saw and heard, what we physically felt, sometimes what we smelled and tasted. The more concrete and the richer the sensations, the more effective the reliving will be. If that reliving is to be liberat­ ing, cathartic, then those sensations should be coupled with emotions, insights and bodily reactions or 'som atics.' Ordinary memories are usually pictures interspersed with thoughts. The emotional, mental and physical intensity of the regression decides how deep we traverse it and how thor­ oughly we solve the aftereffects. We continue until the problem is solved and the energy is freely flowing again. That we experi­ ence as liberation, catharsis. If the experience was stuck because of ignorance or misunderstanding, then to understand it now will be enough. But almost without exception it goes beyond that. People start to glow almost literally, acquire a different complexion, start to look beautiful and serene. At times they even feel better than they've ever felt. I didn't know one could feel this way!

7.1 Processing psychological trauma Catharsis is the liberation of undesirable and debilitating charges that constrain and weaken the self. A complete catharsis releases the primary charges, the ones defined by contract at the intake, and the secondary charges, those that have emerged during the session. The nature of the catharsis is determined by five factors: 1) what the primary charges were, 2) the interplay between the charges (like anger-grief clods), 3) the personality of the client, 4) the style of the therapist and 5) the degree of trust between client and therapist. Many • • • • • •

roads lead to Rome. Many ways of reliving lead to catharsis. Following a naturally unfolding story. Going through it repeatedly, one charge at a time. First relive it while dissociated (many variants). First understanding it, only then seeing and feeling it. First seeing and feeling it, only then understanding it. Relive it while being physically anchored.

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• • •

• • • • • •

First removing the effect (aura exploration and then energetic work). First anchoring a positive experience before entering the negative, traumatic one. First looking back on it from a calm and positive experience or vantage point (e.g. the Place of Overview* after death) and grasping all the relevant connections, the further causes and further effects. Removing the consequences (ill-effects) from the body while reliving it. Going over it repeatedly. Going through it repeatedly, one subpersonality at a time. Going through it in slow motion. First feelings without images and images without feelings. First going through it superficially.

How do we, for instance, therapeutically work with feelings of failure, inadequacy, being disap­ pointed in oneself? If no complicating charges have been added to it: 1. Let the client relive the original experience of failure. What, where and when? 2. Let the client experience why and how people in general fail, by what causes and under what circumstances. 3. Ascertain whether and how failure could have been prevented. Were there moments of real choice? 4. Possibly release unjustified, rigid conclusions, i.e. postulates and heal the remaining wound. Digesting an until now undigested experience does not happen in the 'picture show' during the regression, the series of images, but in the inner responses. We always go for all three kinds: mental, emotional and physical responses. If one of those aspects is missing in the reliving, usually some unresolved issue will remain unattended and we only get half the results. There are exceptions. One therapist had a client who got no clear visual impressions, only the distinct sensation of a knife against his throat. He saw nothing and thought nothing. He couldn't say a word, but bod­ ily an intense catharsis took place. He was sweating all over his body. After ten minutes, a bur­ den had left him. He gasped for breath and only could tell then that a man suddenly coming from behind, had hid behind a curtain and held a knife on his throat, whispering with hate dur­ ing those minutes and then had slit his throat. Apparently that shock of the past was still only anchored in the body. This implied that after his death he had understood everything. The client changed from a pessimist to an optimist. He became a different person - what pleased his wife, as she afterwards told him over the phone. 1 don't know what you did to him, but I have the man back 1 married fifteen years ago.

In all of this, we anchor the general in the particular, the abstract in the concrete. We anchor words in concrete pictures, pictures in emotions, emotions in bodily sensations. Short-circuiting is com ­ mon, like the repetition of a sentence evoking a direct emotion or a direct somatic. Experiences in­ clude thoughts, but thoughts easily lead to other thoughts and before you know it someone is talk­ ing metaphysics instead of experiencing physics. If the first impressions of the past come up, we explore the initial situation in detail. What, whom, where, how, why? W hat do you feel and think? How do you look? How does your body feel? All this is intended to get 'into i t , ' to get anchored in it. The main line remains seeing, feeling and understanding the contract charges. If someone comes to you with complaints of fatigue, then we instruct to go back to a tiring situation. From there we go back further to a moment when the client wasn't fatigued yet. Then we go to the beginning of the fatigue. Then we continue with the worst fatigue. When the charge is re­ cursive, we first go to a positive condition just before the fatigue began. Clients may be so tired that

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they lack the energy to re-experience the tiring situation that caused all this. Go back to a time when you were still fu ll o f energy. How do we process fatigue or any other negative charge if there are additional charges? We take as many steps as there are charges that add to the fatigue. Go to the next moment when any extra feeling comes into play. What kind o f feeling is it? Feel it, see it, understand it. There may, for instance, succes­ sively arise guilt, sadness, helplessness, despair and shame. We write down these charges in the precise words the client uses. They form your shopping list. We dig into the past using the emo­ tional and somatic charges we contractually agreed to deal with, and now we find out what other charges are involved. Why do we deal with these secondary, additional charges? Because each of them requires its own mini-catharsis. Each charge is linked to specific aspects of the experience. We relive that expe­ rience in a particular mood, from a particular point of view. Each charge is anchored differently and must be released differently. Particularly charges that complicate or inhibit each other, we need to handle one by one, not simultaneously. If fatigue has led to despair, we may be too desperate to be­ lieve we can overcome the fatigue. Then despair must be dealt with first. So usually we first discharge the additional charges, and only then the primary charge. If the process seem to falter, you consecutively deal with the charges in the order you deem to be most natural or logical. There's therapy that just mentally, cognitively deals with the problem, and there's therapy that also deals with the emotional and somatic charges. That's between cognitive therapy or counseling, and real psychotherapy. Through counseling, people can land back on their feet, may become or regain calm, may acquire overview and new insights, but still energetically little or next to nothing may hap­ pen. The main difference between different forms of psychotherapy is between therapies that don't work energetically and therapies that do work energetically: talk therapy versus work therapy. We can communicate purely mentally, without exchanging energies. As regression therapists, however, we are primed to find and process the charges related to the problem. We ask for emotions and anchor these in the body. We ask for somatics and tie these to thoughts and feelings. This en­ sures that we are not dealing with symbolic or even delusional stories, but with real experiences. Does something energetic happen or not? Catharsis is energetically discharging and recharging. So regression therapy is energetic. The entrance is most often psychological. In back-pressing (see Chapter 8) the entrance is physical, but we still look for energetic charges. We usually look for nega­ tive charges to process, but we can also look for positive charges and anchor those. In 'karm ic transactions' between people these are directly complementary: we send attached charges back to others and retrieve lost charges back to the client. In self-active psychotherapy, in which the client is active and ultimately leading, energetic work means letting the client visualize the charges as a colored energy or substance in or out of the body. Then we let the client feel how that energy leaves or enters the body, or how it is present in and af­ fects the body. In aura exploration this is done most immediately. We work energetically by aura exploration and body work and by combining these with regression and personification. We go to the heart of the matter, to the heart of darkness, without ado. We have to - otherwise we get lost in endless possibilities. I often feel insecure among people. We look for the charges that characterize, explain or accompany this feeling. When we don't find any charge, we're still in talk therapy i.e. counseling. At best that provides rational insight. In energetic work, we may suggest clients to see a silvery light emanating from their fingers, with which they can deal with the negative charges. We start with an imagination, and hope that it

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will become so accurate and powerful that it turns into the real thing. How do we know it works? Because something changes mentally, emotionally and physically for the better. Aura exploration, complemented with body work, is the most direct approach to deal with dharmic and karmic charges from past lives. Regression restores the story, energetic work restores the consequences. Energetic work owes its strength to the same principle that gives regression its power: making the abstract concrete, bringing the vague, the hazy into focus. It outlines and clarifies what is vague and dreamlike, leading to new awareness and new vitality. Configuration is transfiguration. In therapy we usually work on negative charges. We release them in one way or another, usually transform them into positive charges, or at least give them their rightful place in the soul. In a group session with collapsing anchors, in which two opposites are brought together, a client integrates strength and weakness. That weakness doesn't disappear, but nests itself inside the strength. It makes the strength smooth and accurate, so that the client could use his strength more effectively. It was not about getting rid of that weakness, but about that weakness assum­ ing its proper place.

Someone who's only powerful, or someone who is just full with love - how unpalatable! Hate may turn into love, but hate can also go to its proper place. Why should you lovingly forgive people who are about to rape your daughter or club to death your son? Consolidation and integration energetically bring a polarity in balance. This polar integration can take many forms: • • • • • •

Equilibrium between two opposites; New balance and interplay between opposites (from or-or to and-and); Liberating turbulence (a swirl that dissolves tension and cramp); A short-circuit that eliminates tension and cramp; Switching back and forth between the poles; breathing, Yang and Yin; Accessing and mobilizing strengths and talents.

An important integration technique is role-reversal through personification or aura exploration. Possibilities are: • • • • • • • • • •

The patient becomes the healer. The child takes the adult along. The passive one takes the lead. The humiliated one takes the seat of honor. The lost one becomes the guide. The stowaway becomes the host. The culprit becomes the benefactor. The accidental one becomes the essential. The marginal one becomes the central. The zombie becomes the life-giver.

Keep letting the client see and feel what happens during these shifts in and around the body. One of the most recursive charges is self-pity. You notice soon enough whether the client harbors self-pity. Self-pity and client mentality (I'm pathetic; others should help me) hinder healing and self­

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liberation. People may feel they never succeed in anything, that no one understands them, that again they won't succeed. Other people pour their heart out and wait peevishly until the therapist comes up with a solution. If they are not saved, they can at least lay the blame elsewhere. Beware of self-pity, also in yourself. Clients may suffer from wrong, incompetent or even mali­ cious therapists. And therapists may suffer from wrong, dramatizing or even malicious clients. Avoid any form of scapegoating. D on't blame yourself for a session that was in vain - and don't blame the client for it. Do your best, choose your clients wisely and accept that you do not always score bull's eye. A good batting average is what matters. Don't pity your clients. Pity smothers keen sight in sentiment. An overly compassionate thera­ pist feels more, but sees less - and feeds self-pity in the client. For everything there's a time and place, even for crying in tandem, but don't make a living out of it. It's our task to heal wounds, not to join the sobbing. Empathy, perceptiveness and trust are the jewels in the crown of our profession. Pity isn't one of them. Compassion is - occasionally. Preferably after a successful session.

7.2 Resolving hangover-charges Chapter 4 illustrated hangover experiences and hangover charges. How do we resolve hangovers? Traumas are the wounds from harrowing experiences. Hangovers are the residues of long peri­ ods of unhappiness. These are heavy, but indistinct charges; moods rather than emotions. Ever heard of depression? Or worse: apathy? During the intake or at the beginning of the session hangover charges may betray themselves through vague, heavy, persistent and unpleasant body sensations, and by slow gestures and slow shifts in posture. The problem is, as so often, recursion. W hen we explore prolonged periods, re­ gression easily becomes drawn-out, meandering, dreary. So we need to focus on the essentials, stay crisp and to-the-point. How do we do that? We have three tools for this. First, going per charge to the beginning, to the worst moment and to the end. Often there is no end. The client is still in that state. With hangovers from past lives, it means the client died in that mood and stayed in it. If the death was liberating, the hangover charge may still linger, but is troubling only on and off. It may flare up at times, for days, weeks, or even months. Second, energy work: somatizing the charges, letting the client see and feel these as substances in, on or around the body. We then can remove these substances, after which the client is happier and brighter, and thereby better able to explore the origins of the problem. Third, asking for decisive moments of choice. Oddly, discovering these moments or finding out that there haven't been any are both liberating. In the first case we discover to our relief that it wasn't predestined fate, there were alternatives. In the second case we discover to our relief that there was nothing we could do and we thus needn't feel guilty about it. That may seem an easy optout; yet in practice I've met in both cases a strong sense of relief. It even is part of the catharsis. To resolve a hangover, go through the following steps: 1. 2. 3.

Get a general impression of the depressing period. When and how did it start? W hen and how did it end? Ask for the main charges of that period, such as boredom, fatigue, gloom or hopelessness. Do the following three steps (3, 4, and 5) for each charge separately. Explore the beginning of each charge. What's happening? Why and how does it happen? How do you react? If C doesn't hit the story at the beginning, then go first to a time and place when everything was still fine and then to the time and place when all that changed.

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4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

Explore the worst moment of the charge in the same way. Go to the last experience of the charge and explore that situation. If C doesn't find the end, let C feel this charge in the body here and now. Isolate the charge and decouple all its con­ nections with body organs and body tissues. Let C see and feel how the charge leaves the body. This is ordinary energy work. With a hangover from a past life, let C go to a Place of Overview and ask for additional in­ sights. Let C find decisive moments of choice, if there have been any. If there were no moments of choice during the hangover period, ask for the last free choice before the hangover and the first free choice after it. Suggest C to see what the outcome would have been of the other choice. This always is liberating, whatever C finds. Ask if C needs to see anything else to fully understand and digest this unhappy period. The following example is about a young woman from the first century AD. She's attracted to a Roman commander, but he must move on. She feels revulsion to the man whom her father has sought out for her as her prospective husband, and she flees from home. She joins a sort of circus troupe, rejects the advances of the troupe's leader and is killed. It hardly affects her. Since the departure of her true love her life has become a hangover anyway. She's glad it's over T: You live in a village. Is it big? C: A small village. T: How old are you? C: About twelve. T: Go to the next important moment. What happens then? C: She meets that man, that Roman commander. He cannot stay there. T: What would happen if he did decide not to go away? C: They would incarcerate him. He also wants to go. His men need him. T: Is it a secret relationship between the two of you? C: It's not even a relationship. We see each other and we both know. T: How old are you there? C: Nineteen. T: Do you see him ride away? C: They ride away in the dark. A while later my father starts looking for a husband for me. He finds someone. With a drooping eye. T: Do you tell your father that you don't like him at all? C: He doesn't care at all about how I feel. T: Is your mother still around? C: Yes. But she has no say in it, or in anything else for that matter. T: How do you solve this? Do you have a girlfriend or a friend or someone else you can confide in there? Or a sister or a brother? C: One of the servants helps me to escape. T: Aren't you seen or heard? C: I had hidden my clothes. T: How do you feel now? C: Liberated. Defiant. I'm going my own way. T: Is that something you recognize in your present life? C: Yes. T: How do you express or realize: I'm going my own way. C: Walking away, moving as far away as possible. T: Go to the next important moment. C: I’m in a town. I try to find work. T: What do you do for a living? C: Sewing clothes. T: Just go to the next important moment. C: When I join a circus troupe, a few years later. It’s fun. Music. Colors. Beasts.

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T: Are you invited? C: Because I can sew clothes and carry out all household chores, they ask me if I want to join them. T: How old are you there? C: Around twenty-six years. T: And what do you do then? C: Caring for the animals, washing clothes, taking care of the food. T: Go to the next important moment. C: I'm sleeping outside. The man asks if I'll share his bed with him. I don't want him. T: And then? C: He grabs me by the back and ties me down with a rope around a pole, my arms pinned to my body. The next day I have to get up. They're screaming at me. These men must see what I've done: I've scratched his face open. They lay my head on a log and cut it off. T: Does that same man do it? C: He lets another man do it. Otherwise his hands get dirty. T: What is your last thought? C: At last!

7.3 Detecting and negating character postulates Repetitions of a problem in different circumstances or even different lifetimes, reveal a program, and thus a postulate. For instance, someone once arrived too late, with traumatic consequences. That's worked through well in one session. It gave relief, but no true catharsis. Work on a different problem reveals that being too late turns out to be again the central event. Again, 'cleansing' is cumbersome and incomplete as long as the apparently underlying postulate remains intact. Emotional lumps can grow in size and complexity. For example, a volcano of rage, smothered in grief, jointly wrapped in guilt. Envy hooks on to it and the whole package is armored by postulates like: That always happens to me. People can't be trusted. People abandon me. Anger - grief - guilt - envy, surrounded by postulates is a typical built of a karmic ulcer. Often this entire lump is topped by a creamy sauce of self-pity. Be mindful of possible postulates during the intake, even in the letters or emails they sent you. Look for words, phrases, expressions or entire sentences they repeat. Especially what doesn't seem to fit fully in the story. Thus you may discover charged phrases. These phrases are often metaphori­ cal, but can be taken also literally. If the client says a couple of times: I'm stuck, the original experi­ ence could be that someone was literally stuck. I don't see it. Someone could literally not see it. Suppose someone says a few times: I have a hard time. Close your eyes. Say fiv e times: I have a hard time. What happens in your body? Ife e l heavy. Go back to the first time that you experienced this feeling o f heavi­ ness, having a hard time. Even without this instruction, just by letting repeat that phrase, the client enters into regression. I cannot reach it. Or: They're always after me. 'Alw ays' is an absolute expression. Then you can be sure that this expression has been highly salient for quite some time. I never finish anything. What feeling lies behind it? A tense, 'unfinished' feeling. This may relate to an experience in your child­ hood when you hadn't emptied your plate. Or when you had to leave before you had finished your sandcastle. Or it refers to a life that ended 'unfinished.' We may suspect postulates during or even after the session. When catharsis fails to occur. Or the client feels relieved, but in the end little has changed. This is less common, as a character postulate usually prevents any catharsis. Probably, everything that's labelled in psychiatry a personality disorder, is anchored in character postulates. Even when we succeed in negating a postulate, it takes some time before the ingrained

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habits of thinking, feeling and acting are fully and truly gone. During that transition time, people may benefit from counseling and 'm ainstream' psychotherapy Regression therapists give the instruction to go back to the experiences that caused these conclu­ sions. That is the best thing we can do in these circumstances: reconnect an abstract conclusion to a concrete experience. Now the client has had an experience, but is no longer programmed. In dealing with postulates, we ask, like with hangovers, for the first time, the moment of essen­ tial confirmation and when and how the postulate became definite. In this way, we trace the devel­ opment of the postulate. First it was written in pencil, then in ink, and then it was engraved in stone. Only in an ecstasy, in a mystical state, in a deep trance, a conclusion may be formed in one goUpon confirmation we know for sure, any doubt falls away. 1 am indeed on my own. In the final engraving it has become part of our self-image, our identity. Vm someone who's always and everywhere on my own. The problem doesn't repeat itself; the problem is permanently present. Permanent pos­ tulates are therefore recursive by definition. If they always apply, they also apply in the therapy situation. This therapist can't really help me, because Vm always, and thus also right now, on my own. The best bridge with a postulate is the verbal bridge: let the client repeat the postulate phrase a few times. It's also a test whether the phrase contains a charge. I fail refers to a concrete situation. Go to a time and place when and where you fail. First you do something and you fail. You conclude: I've failed. Later still you conclude: Vm a failure. Or: Everything 1 do, fails. This postulate is recursive: this session will therefore fail as well. Also I don't understand, is a tough one, because it hinders the regression as well. The client doesn't understand his impressions, doesn't understand the story. That slows down the whole process. Where can incomprehension come from? From what kind of experiences? Perhaps from a mentally retarded lifetime. Partially handicapped, because if you are severely mentally disabled, you w ouldn't have realized that you didn't understand. Nobody tells me what to do. What would you take as the starting point? You go back to a time where the client was forced to listen and obey and was furious about it. Never again. That can refer to a defining moment in this current life, but such a postulate often comes from past lives. I never do it right. 'N ever' is absolute. You break this by specifying the 'it.' What don't you do right? Or: What especially don't you do right? I can't do it. What is 'it'? I would do a verbal exploration. What can't you do? I can't do ... this. 1 can't do ... that. I can't do anything, you let the client repeat this aloud until an emotion, a feeling, an experience surfaces. Or: what emotion do you feel when you can't do anything? Sadness. Anyway, it's again recurl'm not good enough. With such an apparent postulate you can go two ways. You can verbally explore it, making it concrete or specifying it with supplementary sentences. You try to clarify it. You look at what's attached to it, what's involved with it. Or you use it as a bridge. You try to get an E and an S. Intellectuals among us tend to take the verbal tour, very interesting - and postponing the regres­ sion to the original experience. When someone says Vm afraid o f everything, I start with completing incomplete sentences. I'm afraid o f..., Vm afraid th a t... and so on. That list is finite. Could we also ask: What happens if you're not afraid o f anything? Of course we can. Then we may discover that the fear has a function, like acting as a brake on latent aggressiveness.

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A nice one is to turn the statement around. I always control myself. What's the worst thing you could do if you would no longer control yourself? You could also ask: What is controlling you? Or, Where in your body do you feel the part that needs to be controlled? It never stops. I call such a phrase a perpetuation. Reliving the original experience may not stop, unless we intervene. Recursion again. We must sometimes force clients out of the experience. The most painful thing I've ever experienced in a session, was someone reliving being tortured and interrogated by the Gestapo. He has electrodes on his fingers, his toes and his genitals. He gets electroshocks all the time. The client really is shaking violently, spasmodically. It never stops, it never stops! Then you must take the client out of that experience. Don't say: Just relive it all, go through it. Because it's registered that it will never stop. How did I haul the client out of it? A hard blow on his plexus with my flat hand, brought him right out of it. He felt pain in his fin­ gers, his toes and genitals for one-and-a-half hours. I would do it quite differently today. I would dissociate him and release the somatic residues energetically.

A verbal exploration is useful if the client suffers from many fears, for example. We simply list the fears by completing the sentence I'm afraid o f ... until a repetition of an earlier phrase occurred and nothing else came up. Then we may tart with the first sentence: I'm afraid o f dead birds. Now you can say: Repeat three times: I'm afraid o f dead birds, but probably nothing will happen. Rather use: I'm afraid o f dead birds because ... Then you do a peel-down chain till nothing new comes up or there is no exact repetition. You pick the phrase with the heaviest charge. What do you feel with it? What do you feel with that in your body? Go back to the first time when .... So how do we negate postulates? Once regression has exposed the development of the postulate, the embedded conclusion or judgm ent is no longer on autopilot, it has become tied to specific situa­ tions in the past. Quite often that's sufficient. The postulate's negation is verified by repeating the sentence in question again a few times. Is it still charged or not? Sometimes the client just laughs or shrugs. The sentence doesn't mean anything anymore and now seems ridiculously over-the-edge. We can further anchor the postulate's negation by letting the client express the opposite. In this 'inversion' of the postulate, we must be careful not to use the wrong opposite, one that may create a new postulate. If we make men can never be trusted into men can always be trusted, we simply jump from one generalization to the opposite. A correct inversion would be: men are not always to be trusted. Even more correct: people are not always to be trusted. But that can make it so wide-ranging, that it becomes too far removed from the original postulate. If it's about rightly sensing whether some man can be trusted, the best inversion is: some men cannot be trusted. Now, the reader might wonder whether the author of all these marvelous insights can be trusted. The answer to this is surprisingly simple: a resounding yes. A more surprising inversion is the one between T and 'the others.' Men are not to be trusted then be­ comes I'm not to be trusted. Repetition of such a reversed phrase quite often opens interesting leads. Also, a double inversion is possible. People are cold, stupid and conventional, then becomes I'm warm, intelligent and unconventional. Bingo! If a regression to the postulate's beginning and hardening seems insufficient, energy work is still needed. Some postulates arise as internalizations. I'm worth nothing, may be the internalization of a father or a stepmother or a few classmates who kept telling us that we were worth nothing. Then the postulate carries a charge from another person. This charge must be felt and visualized and re­ turned to the one that attached it to us. Postulates internalized from others always require personi­ fication and energy work.

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7.4 Finding, healing and freeing hurt children Regression therapy is not about helping people to say goodbye to an unhappy childhood. As a col­ league reportedly hung at the door of his practice: Who enters here, shed all hope fo r a better past. We do not concern ourselves with a difficult past, but with the difficult present. We are con­ cerned with problems that people suffer from today. We want to know as precisely as possible what troubles our clients, and what they want to do about it. Almost always it is to get rid of the prob­ lem. Sometimes just understanding causes and effects brings the needed relief. A client is depressed. How exactly? With what thoughts and feelings and - important! - with which physical symptoms? There is not just misery about relationships gone sour or opportunities missed, but there is also a heaviness in the shoulders, or on the throat, the chest, the legs, wherever. We may use all aspects for the induction. The problem itself is the gateway to the solution, as we have explained earlier. Someone feels misunderstood by others. Before at home and at school and now at work. Even frequently by friends. We don't let the client wallow in example after example. That is but a waste of time and energy. No, we let the client tell exactly what he feels and senses when he feels misunderstood. Lonely and weary. Weak and heavy arms and legs and a constricted feeling within the skull. T: Go back to the first time you felt misunderstood, feeling lonely, your arms and legs weak and heavy. Where are you? What happens? What are you doing? About what age are you here? C: 1 have to think back to when 1 was around four years old. (The client does not go directly into re­ gression.) T: OK. You're about four years. Where are you? (And so on.) We might ask if the client was somewhere inside or outside; alone or with others; what time of day; with whom. What are you wearing? How do you feel?

Of course we are not interested in clothing, time of day, etc. We are interested to arrive at a concrete experience. Problems do not grow on trees. (Not since Adam and Eve anyway.) They grow in con­ crete experiences. Once you have experienced misunderstanding and loneliness, you will in a simi­ lar experience later, carry the shadow and ballast of the preceding experience already with you. Therefore, the first experience is always the most important one. Occasionally, we ask the client after that first experience to go to the worst experience of being misunderstood. Perhaps later in the session also to go to an experience of being understood and appreciated. What traumatic childhood experiences we come across in sessions? • • • • • • • • •

Prenatal trauma's: unwanted pregnancy; abortion attempts; identification with painful ex­ periences, thoughts and feelings of the mother. Difficult births; not being welcomed, especially by the mother; absent or distant father; in­ sensitive treatment by doctors or midwives. Hospitalizations as a small child, feeling abandoned; tonsillectomies. Tensions and conflicts with siblings. Unexpected absence of the mother; departure of the father; conflict-ridden separation and divorce. Feeling lonely at school; being bullied. Strict upbringing; being discouraged, sometimes humiliated. Drunk parents; rows between parents; domestic violence. Sexual abuse by family members, neighbors or strangers.

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• • • • • •

Uncomprehending tensions of adults: money matters, relationship matters. Unrealistically high expectations from parents. Sectarian isolation of the family. Family traumas by serious accidents, serious illnesses, deaths. Disabilities and severe or prolonged illnesses of the child itself. The world upside down: the child taking care of the parents (parentification).

Invariably, we go to concrete situations, let the client relive these, but now with adult understand­ ing of the other players in the drama and of the reactions of the child then. Often, the original expe­ rience contains childlike incomprehension. Then the current adult has to provide the comprehen­ sion. Eventually, we want to understand how the problem originated and developed. Especially with persistent problems, regression is finding out three things: 1. How did the problem arise? W hat happened? 2. W hat have been the consequences? 3. Why is the problem still unresolved? How is it maintained? The third question is particularly important when the original occasion was trivial. After the regression comes personification. We call the inner child of about four years and let the adult self converse and interact with it. That child must be helped till it is brimming like a happy four-year-old child, and it feels protected and understood and loved by the adult self. The paragraph on inner child work has given examples of this. If the child is still not happy and free, the client often needs to work energetically to heal the child. If the father was harsh, we let the client see and feel the energetic effects in the body, and re­ turn everything to the parent. This may be as a harsh substance, or asa harsh object. For example, the client feels a stick between his stomach and his throat. If this is taken out, it appears to be a small baseball bat. This we let return to the father. If the father refuses to accept it, it often helps to say: You now get an impression o f how your father has gotten that stick. Then it turns out that the stick came to him due to the harshness of his father. The latter got it from the army, in the war. Or the client sees a somewhat similar stick in the hand of a slave-driver at the beginning of the 19th cen­ tury. Then this may represent a tie-in with a past life. The child - or the current adult representing it - now asks the father to return to the child what­ ever it lost because of his harshness. Usually, this is an energy with a certain color, sometimes in a particular form. If this energy is absorbed in the child's body, it turns out to represent spontaneity, or trust in others, or self-confidence, or something similar. The healed child is embraced and often does integrate spontaneously into the body of the adult. Small children often in the abdomen, slightly older children often near the heart. Personification and energy work are bedfellows. Together with regression they make a stable and happy marriage a trois. Working in this way often gives positive side-effects. I call that 'collateral benefit.' The client now understands where his strange sore throat comes from and why he so often had trouble swallow­ ing. After a few weeks those problems turn out to have disappeared as well. Obviously, the main thing is that the feeling of being misunderstood has dwindled. It is very common that the client feels like a different person at the end of the session. Also common is the fact that the session results become even more pronounced in the course of time. We work focused and effectively. Yet this approach has another side to it. Once we have evoked the four-year-old child, that child takes his whole personality and baggage with it. If someone stuttered

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at that age and was terribly ashamed that he bed-wetted, those parts may wake up at the same time, and we have to deal with the inhibition and shame as well, to truly heal that inner child and integrate it with the adult self. If we have an inkling that the client easily blames everyone else, we may need to enhance under­ standing of and sympathy for the father in the case described above. We may let the client look at the child through the eyes of the father. The client may find that he was quite a handful as a child. We may let the client go a bit further back, now that he already identifies him self with his father. You now get the impression o f how the harshness o f your father did start. Sometimes we must also figure out why the mother couldn't protect her children against his harshness. You now see the situation through the eyes o f your mother. How does she look at your dad and how does she look at you? If the client already has experience with regression and personification, you can work more gener­ ally and at the same time more specifically. You now see entering your most unhappy inner child entering your room. For beginners: You see yourself entering the room at the most unhappy moment in your life. Or: Go to the time and place where you were most unhappy as a child.

7.5 Exploring choices In all traumatic experiences in which our own response also influenced the course of events, the question is whether things would have turned out differently if we had responded differently. To what extent have we brought down our own doom upon us? Could we, for instance, have avoided our capture and imprisonment? Was there in a life of slavery ever a chance, an opportunity to es­ cape? In such cases, we ask what would have happened if ... You now get an impression what would have happened if you had joined the breakout attempt o f your comrades. We explore choices especially with hangover experiences: prolonged periods of unhappiness, at times without a clear beginning or end. Prolonged passivity, helplessness, despair, and isolation make us fatalistic. Fatalism is often a serious mental illness. Yet it can also be the healing of the op­ posite mental illness: the excessive, one-sided conviction that we can shape our lives ourselves; un­ limited self-confidence easily leading to self-centeredness and arrogance. There's the conscious choice and there's the instinctive choice. In creative choices these two kinds of choices coalesce. From above, the power source is the mind, the fountainhead of our consciousness. That gives grip on things. The power source from below I call, for lack of a better word, free or autonomous will power. That kind of will, to overcome resistance, to make tough and fateful deci­ sions, we rarely need in the spiritual world. The will to create, that we may use also over there. In­ carnated will is an animal force. The pleasure of being present, of taking up physical space. The pleasure of being here and wanting to be here. Producing offspring. Much powerlessness is due to a lack of willpower, a lack of instinct, a lack of animal power. In getting a grip on things, in essential, life-changing choices, in genuine responsibility, these two basic forms of mind-power join: mind and will. For those who believe in that: the upper and lower pole of kundalini. In regressions, we first explore choices in which a conscious decision seems to lack: ill fate or appar­ ent ill fate. With hangover experiences we first seek to ascertain whether one, due to circumstances, really fell in them or whether one could have avoided them or extricated oneself from them. I f there has been a moment o f choice, you get an impression o f this now. Remarkably and surprisingly, such ex188

ploration is invariably liberating to clients, irrespective of what they find. It's liberating to discover that we had no choice. This dissolves guilt and self-doubt. It's also liberating when we discover we did have a choice. Then the sense of powerlessness dissolves. But we need to understand why we missed the choice, why we were so passive. Second, we explore choices that turned out badly. W hat would have been the better alternative? You now get an impression o f what would've been the main consequence o f that other choice. Third, we explore choices which we came to doubt or question afterwards. A life in a small village in North Africa is as dull as dull can be. An orphan grows up with an indifferent, single aunt. As an illegitimate child he's being shunned. As a young boy he starts to work at the local bakery. Eventually he himself becomes the baker, but he remains lonely and dies before the age of forty. He looks back on a meaningless, uselesslife. If there has been a moment o f choice, you get an impression o f this now. He is about sixteen. A traveling merchant asks him if he wants help to lead his donkeys to the next village. He declines. All villages are the same: dull. He now gets an idea of what would have happened if he had taken up on the offer. Just before the next village, a girl is working in a field. They look at each other and they instantly fall in love. The client is stunned, shocked. You now get an impression o f how it she has gone on living without him. Without realizing it, she waited a few more years and then married another. But she always sensed she missed something. Then we explore the connections with the current life of the client. Somewhere in the Middle East two youngsters fall in love. She's the daughter of the tribal chief, he's an ordinary guy. They'll never get permission to marry, so they decide to elope. They perish in the desert from hunger and thirst. You now get an impression o f what would have happened if you had remained in the tribe. They would have get caught together and the boy would have been exe­ cuted while she had been forced to watch. Forced to marry an older man, she would have killed herself. What has been the main difference? Now they remained intimately connected after death; otherwise they probably would have missed each other after death. Sometime around the late 17th or early 18th century, two sailors get into a brawl on a ship an­ chored near an uninhabited little island. The captain who's fed up with the recurrent fights be­ tween the two, says that the loser will go overboard and has to swim to the island. The loser jumps into the sea, swims to the island, later builds a raft and perishes at sea from hunger and thirst. The search for what he could have done differently, brings little. Not jumping overboard, not fighting, not mustering on the ship: all of it remains bleak yet indistinct. The essence, as it turns out, is that before this event he as a boy of eight saw his little sister fall in a well and drown. What could he have done differently? If he had quickly gone for help, she'd survived. But he was frozen in shock. He feels guilty. They shouldn't have been there. That shock and the follow­ ing guilt turn out to be the defining moment, the rest follows from this. For catharsis it's neces­ sary he hears again the screams of her drowning and then meet his personified little sister.

How do we find out if someone had a choice? What are the main instructions? 1.

2. 3. 4.

If you've had a moment of choice, you now go to the moment of the most important choice. Let the client put that choice in words. If there was no choice: What do you think and feel when you realize now you had no choice? I f you could have done anything differently, you now get an impression o f this. If there is no impression, then apparently C had no choice. W hat does C think or feel when he or she realizes this? If there was a different choice: You will now get impressions o f the consequences o f that other ch o ice... What do you think and feel about these consequences? 189

5. 6. 7.

If these consequences would have made no difference, there was no real choice. What does C feel or think when he or she realizes this? If the impact of the alternative would have been worse, C didn't make a bad choice. What does C feel or think when he or she realizes this? If the consequences had been better: You now get an impression o f why you made a poorer choice. This can lead to acceptance: C didn't or couldn't know better. Or it leads to the realization that behind the wrong choice lurks the influence of an earlier past life, or the influence of another person. Is that influence still with you or inside you? If so, let C personify the other lifetime or person, let C now return that influence to the latter - and recover from the latter the lost energy, power or anything else that's properly C's.

If an entire life was passive and unfree, we try to go back to the client's life plan. If we find no life plan, we go back to the moment decisive for the hangover life. If that moment doesn't entail a clear choice, then we go back even further. Go back to the last time you were lucid and had freedom o f choice. There lies the core, the essence of the story. That choice somehow and eventually led to the loss of choice. Overview is a magic word. It indicates a state of clear-mindedness. After a life or before a life or during a life. Only with overview can we find and understand when we've lost overview. Then we get overview about our lack of overview. Then we can untie and straighten the rest of the tangle. W hen explorations becom e vague, unclear, tangled, sticky, anchor the client in the last mo­ ment of clarity. If people want to find out why they got such weird parents, don't instruct them, go back to the time when you chose your parents. Perhaps they didn't or couldn't choose them or had little say in the matter, or maybe they just chose their mother. You'd better say: Go to the last mo­ ment o f choice. Som etim es the last moment of free choice occurs just half an hour before the death in the preceding life. Then the mind of the client has entered in chaos and has stayed there ever since. If you want to know how the present life began, say: Go back to the moment that was decisive fo r the present life. For personal growth it's essential that we can get back to a position where we had a real choice, where we had the lucidity, the mindfulness, to make a choice. It may be that we're clear-minded, but still naive, young and inexperienced and that we need assistance by others with life-retrospect after death and such, but still we may be lucid, clear-minded. It only means that we're new, that we're beginners in the game of reincarnation. But in clarity we can apparently communicate with other souls. There're more paradoxes in choosing. We can choose to become or stay passive or surrender our freedom of choice. Or we find a lack of freedom of choice due to a pervasive sense of guilt. Then we go back to the time and place when that the guilt arose: by what we did, by what we didn't do, or because we were accused of something. Maybe someone has been sulking for ages. It implies blaming others. If it runs through multiple lifetimes it's usually about blaming The Lord Himself. Then one doesn't want to choose. After all, life is unfair, people cannot be trusted, society is wrong and where's God when you need Him? In all these cases, our work is not about exploring choices, but about exploring the absence of choice. Finally, people may not want or can't choose because they're afraid of the consequences and the responsibility for those consequences. In regression we explore the origins of that fear. We can also explore current choices: You now get an impression o f the main consequences if you choose A. You now get an impression o f the main consequences if you choose B, and so on. A certain trance is neces­ sary to make these impressions sufficiently specific and insightful, even surprising. Otherwise, cli­ ents remain trapped in their existing thought patterns. 190

7.6 Finding and anchoring positive experiences Why do we seek positive experiences? First, why seek only negative ones? Second, to anchor the catharsis of a session. Third, to create balance when reliving the negative experience has brought relief and understanding, but no positive breakthrough. Fourth, to muster energy and courage be­ fore confronting a particularly heavy or difficult problem. We anchor primarily through personification, energy work and integration. Occasionally we may add what NLP calls a 'future pace.' After the traumatic childhood experience has been proc­ essed, we personify the child. Some energy work may be required as well. If the child had become hesitant and timid, we let the client visualize confidence or assertiveness as an energy or a light that returns to the child. Then the inner child might be integrated with the present adult. Or the adult already has retrieved the energy and the child can be integrated now. A future pace is a progression, a confirmation to clients that they can react differently, move more easily in a situation that has been daunting so far. We especially do this when the result of the session is clear, but the client is still left with more general uncertainties. I use a future pace particu­ larly with uncertainty toward another person they'll soon meet again. But a client who's happy and relieved and is radiating and feels 'reb o rn ,' doesn't need a future pace. It would weaken the cathar­ sis, rather than strengthen it. Another way to work with positive experiences, is to go to the first positive experience in the pre­ sent life. We do this for clients who tend to linger in negative experiences and reflections. If the birth went well, then the first positive experience is being welcomed. If this isn't the case, it's all the more important to go to the first positive experience after birth, even if it's a long time after. Finally, we may go the most positive experience. This will only happen if the client is well en­ gaged in the session, as this instruction is not linked to a specific E and S. A different way to work with positive experiences is to seek specific positive experiences. First, ex­ periences of wisdom, mental clarity and understanding. If that doesn't work right away, we ask clients how they would feel if they would feel perfectly lucid, and especially which bodily sensa­ tions go with that. We evoke this mental state, and instruct to go back to the time and place where this condition was felt most. A similar approach is possible for emotions, by asking for the strongest experience of intimacy and friendship, the strongest experience of joy, the strongest experience of satisfaction and the strongest experience of compassion. Each time we energetically anchor these relivings in the body. Finally, it's possible to evoke the strongest experiences of: • presence, strength and courage; • skills, competence; • respect, acceptance and trust. A very special one is reliving moments of luck, when we felt lucky or blessed. Even those expe­ riences can be physically anchored. The art of guiding clients into positive experiences, is the same as that of guiding clients into nega­ tive experiences: making them as concrete and exact as possible, and anchor these in the body. As always, regression, personification and energy work are each other's alternatives and can reinforce each other. So we can suggest to call up the happiest subpersonality, or the most lucky one. If the opposites of these positive experiences have not yet been dealt with, it may be wise to first evoke and process the negatives. If we can't sufficiently evoke the experience of satisfaction, we go to the still unresolved experiences of dissatisfaction. If satisfaction later got lost, we do a regression to the exact moment when it got lost. 191

Although it may sound strange, working through experiences of joy may not only confirm the ear­ lier processing of grief, but sad experiences may also anchor joy. The safest, most effective approach is working with polarities: happiness and sadness, trust and distrust, self-confidence and lack of confidence, and so on. Nothing transforms so well as the thorough processing of opposite poles.

7.7 Experiences out of the body or without a body In regressions we meet five types of intangible, out-of-body experiences: • Experiences of the soul before the descent into the embryo, often including a life prospect or life plan, or at least glimpses of it. • Nocturnal experiences ranging from nightmares to lucid dreams in which you know that you're dreaming. • Periods of unconsciousness due to severe concussion, shock or anesthesia. • Experiences after a past-life death and generally between lives. These experiences may pass into prenatal experiences. • Experiences before the first life in a physical body. To make these experiences liberating, it's important to relive them as clearly and completely as pos­ sible, and at the end anchor them well into the body. Frequently, this integrates soul parts that have remained outside the body for a long time. Most frequent in our work is working through the after­ death experience. After death, everything depends on the level of consciousness. Possible levels of afterdeath consciousness are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Super-lucid. Lucid. Seemingly unchanged: cheerful and unobstructed. Seemingly unchanged: quiet and peaceful. Seemingly unchanged: alone and self-obsessed (gloomy, angry, confused, etc.). Numb: gray, misty, hazy, slow. Very numb: apathetic; almost unconscious.

Liberating reliving here is mainly clearing the mind, dissolving dullness, turbidity and haziness. How do we go from unobstructed to genuinely lucid after a past-life death? 1. Go to a Place of Overview. 2. How did you look back on that life? 3. How do you look back on it now? 4. You now get impressions of how that life has affected your current life. 5. How did you look forward to the next life? 6. What do you see now when you look at that next life? The afterdeath experiences will be extensively discussed later. The transition experiences are relived in all essential details: 1. Ask for the last thoughts, feelings and sensations in the body. 2. Ask for first impressions after the soul leaves the body. 3. Ask for the last thoughts, feelings and sensations before the soul enters the new body. 4. Ask for first impressions after entering that body. Be alert to fragmentation just before and during dying. Often, one part leaves the body as quickly as it can, and another part lingers in a negative emotion like shame, guilt, or despair. Sometimes one 192

part leaves in anger or hate and doesn't want to leave the physical world, but rather would avenge itself. Also before or during birth, loose soul parts (undigested past-life personalities or subperson­ alities) may attach themselves or even enter as pseudo-obsessors. What did Helen Wambach find in the first major study (1978) on life preparation? Percentages are of those respondents who had clear impressions (about half of all her subjects). GENDER SELECTION 76% chose its gender 24% had no choice or no interest REASONS TO INCARNATE 27% came to help others and grow spiritually themselves. 25% came to gain new experiences, in addition or as correction to former experiences. 18% came to develop more sensitivity and compassion. 18% came to work out personal karmic relationships. 12% came for all kinds of particular reasons. DESCENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE EMBRYO 11% in the first six months from conception 12% at the end of the sixth month 39% in the last three months 33% before or during birth 5% shortly after birth EXPERIENCES AFTER THE DESCENT 78% outside the embryo 11% sometimes within and sometimes beyond the embryo 11% inside the embryo 86% aware of moods, emotions and thoughts of the mother 14% not aware, probably because they entered the fetus at a later stage. If a client worries about the meaning of life - especially of the present life - or simply doesn't get any impressions, then uncover the life preparation by: • •

Go to the place and time which determined that you came back and how you came back. Go to the place and time which determined where and to which parents you came back.

The best known method to go to the prenatal and incorporeal existences between lives, are Michael Newton's Lives Between Lives (LBL) sessions. From a therapeutic point of view, his method is rather rigid and the emerging impressions are also categorized rigidly. The study of Wambach, though much more limited, shows the great variety in at least the pre-birth experiences. In practice, the most important nonphysical experiences in regression are the partial out-of-body experiences during psychological and especially physical traumas.

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An ambitious and successful manager is hit from behind while waiting in his car for a traffic light early in the morning. His main response is that he didn't see it coming. He cannot stomach this. Now for the first time in his life he sits at home, unable to work and says he's lost the grip on his life. If I let him see the accident from above, he sees to his surprise his car very far below him, even smaller than a toy. When I suggest that he descends slowly until he sees his own head, and can come back into it, he suddenly opens his eyes and says: I'm back! He regains control over his life and can get back to work. A woman who always feels weak and uncertain, relives an experience as a child in a hospital, between two and three years of age. Mama's gone! Why isn't she here? The fear in the little dark hospital room at night becomes so intense that the child freaks out. Looking from the outside, the client sees a bright, cloudy copy of herself come out of the child's body and shoot upwards. She only calms down in a luminous haze, very far from Earth. Here at least it's safe. The client follows the disembodied soul part, and succeeds in taking it back to Earth by saying sweet noth­ ings, and promising safety and giving a close hug, eventually reintegrating it into the body. The client is now sobbing of happiness and feels for the first time whole, and really, strongly present. In the following weeks and months she feels like a new person.

In Chapter 10, we elaborate on the recovery of dissociated subpersonalities and in Chapter 14 on the finding and reintegrating of whole soul parts. This methodology is a modem variant of soul retrieval as shamans did - and still do. Incorporeal prehuman experiences are also discussed in Chapter 14.

7.8 Existential fears and experiences Regressions can be very intense. Especially into the heart of darkness, when deep fears and horrors break open, when we see into the face of evil*. Evil we suffered - or evil we perpetrated. What are those fears and horrors? First, of course, the fear of death. The fear of dissolving into nothing - and nevertheless continue to experience this nothingness in one way or another. Fear of absolute emptiness, absolute darkness, absolute solitude, abandoned by gods and men and good old existing things. Bodily fear doesn't provoke the fear of being dead, but the fear of dying. The fear to choke, to be stabbed, torn, ripped apart, devoured by gnashing teeth, broken, crushed to pulp; the fear of terri­ ble pain, of powerlessness, of despair. Such fears may already arise in childhood, but apart from children who are subjected to sadistic and demonic rituals, those fears are older. Almost without exception, these fears originate in ex­ tremely traumatic death experiences: falling into an abyss, drowning, being strangled, being trapped in a coffin, a burial chamber, a dungeon, slowly dying on a battlefield without limbs or with spilled guts. A second form of horror is to see how our loved ones die in appalling conditions, while we're powerless and feel guilty because we've put them in that situation or didn't prevent them getting in that situation. A child that's hit by car, a wife who's raped and bleeds to death with a cut throat, entire families who perish in a fire, gas chambers, grave pits, being thrown alive into a fire, being sacrificed, hearts cut out, eyes gouged out. And so on. As regression therapist we are specialists in horrors, in all the gory psychological and physical details A third primal fear is the fear of becoming mad, when our spirit breaks and we see grinning demons and monsters or our own demonic face in the mirror. When we are overwhelmed by the chaos of our own darkened mind. The cause is usually that we once went mad and died insane in a previous life. Fear of madness has to do with experiences of bewilderment. Our brain got unstuck. Or almost unstuck. This may also happen with experiences that are so new, surprising and shocking that we cannot fathom them, that they're going beyond our comprehension. There're no words for it, they

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can't be communicated, they can't be deliberated. We lose our ego. We lose the connections with fellow humans. Mentally, these kinds of terrible experiences can be regarded as premature or failed transformations or initiatory experiences. Many psychoses are more or less permanent states of a wrenched, unrav­ eled mind. An initiation is a tremendous experience, shocking, shaking, wrenching, an experience that we mentally survive, but not without being changed, changed for the better. Thereafter we're no longer the same. And we can't change back into who we were. Transformation is successfully survived deformation. Liberation is escape from of a mental prison. That liberation can happen in an Apollonian way, like entering into a new space, a new world. It can also happen in a Dionysian way, like being dragged into something greater and more powerful than us. It can also happen in a Faustian way, as a destruction of what w e've always considered to be right and good. Then the question remains whether we've sold our soul to the devil - or sold the devil to our soul. This brings us to the fourth primal fear: the fear of becoming irrevocably evil. That is part of some psychoses. Or the fearless conclusion of a successful psychopath. Fear of death and madness can go together. When we are tortured to death or see others being tor­ tured to death. If we are burnt alive after humiliation, interrogation, mockery and mutilation. Then people are monsters and the god which we so fervently believed in, is conspicuously, glaringly ab­ sent. Not an absent father, but the Absent Father. Then sadness, anger and incomprehension break loose at the same time, as a multidimensional ulcer. In regressions, we continue to couple all those wild charges to actual events in factual circumstances. We not just let the client see that a hand is cut off, but also with what, and whether the ax or sword was rusty. And who wielded the weapon and how he looked and what he thought and felt while he did it. Or what he said, or how he screamed. Falling from a cliff or in a dark chasm, we let the client see how the body fell and came down, for example how and where exactly the back broke. That means we have to work with strong associations and strong dissociations, in rapid alterna­ tion to or in close cooperation with each other. We as therapists must not avoid the horrors, and must maintain unshakable calm. Like a rock in the surf, as in the time-honored expression. We cannot go further, however, than what the client can handle. And the client cannot handle more than we can handle. Only the precise reconstruction of the actual experience puts that experience where it belongs: in the past. Then comes an almost overwhelming epiphany: about why we did what we did, why we felt what we felt, why we thought what we thought. Then the inner horror crystallizes, morphs into a wonderful new understanding and peace of mind. Darkness into light, panic into unshakeable calm and everlasting peace. Then we rediscover what's eternal, inviolable and indestructible in ourselves. Working on existential fear and horror and insanity is the high art of regression work. Because it mentally and emotionally puts the highest demands on the therapist. There may be a limit to what people can relive and what we can heal. But I haven't found it.

7.9 Integration and closure A session is a symmetrical process. We descend into by steps and we ascend again by steps. The intake and review, the entrance and the closure, the induction and the consolidation, symmetrically embed the actual regression. A therapy session is an improvised duet in seven stages.

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What is crucial in the integration and consolidation? How do we deal with this stage and what kinds of techniques and options do we have? Sometimes, the actual session proceeds so smoothly and the catharsis is so complete that we don't need to do anything else. However, many sessions change from a meagre C- to a solid B+ by proper consolidation and integration. This stage is the most creative part of the session. The added value of your presence and guid­ ance as a therapist lies especially here. The integration or consolidation is the dessert of the regres­ sion, like the induction is the starter. Induction knows templates, consolidation knows creativity. Regression therapy is an art and a craft. The start of a session requires craft. The end requires art. The induction and the integration show the therapists' mettle. Even in the closure, we respond to what clients provide: their impressions, their feelings, their own words. Empathy helps, but follow­ ing and connecting with what clients come up with remains the backbone of the session - including the integration. The simplest structure of a session is symmetric. Consider at the start where you may end up with, and reassess at the end where you did start, in principle in the reverse order. If someone first gets palpitations and then cold feet, check at the end the cold feet first and then the palpitations. How do your feet feel? They feel warm. Then we go to your heart. Do you still feel palpitations? I said 'in princi­ ple, ' because if the client takes a different order, then follow it. One session began with fear of water. Water is deep, water is dark. In the deep, dark water a scary monster waits. The session is worked through and at the end we let the client repeat: I'm afraid o f water. C: My fear's gone! T: OK, you're at the sea board, with a beautiful beach, the water is clear and beautifully blue-green. You walk into the blue-green water. It becomes deeper, ever deeper, it comes up to your chest, it comes up to your throat, it goes over your head, and now you're swimming deliciously in it. It becomes deeper and darker around you until you hit the bottom. Everything is dark and beautiful. There is great peace here, deep, slow, strong, hidden life. Then we let the client come up from the depths and resurface. How we do this exactly, we make up on the spot. It's an imaginative trip that may stand somewhat apart from the content of the regression, but confirms that this piece of the past is now clean and healed. Use the material the clients themselves provided: their words, their pictures, their feelings, their somatics. We can turn these around, we can connect these with their opposites, we can dress the catharsis in rich or even funny paradoxes, we can invite family or loved ones, we can evoke their favorite places.

The consolidation uses the session's material creatively, artistically. The other stages are more me­ thodical, technical. If you compare a session with a musical composition, here at the end is a ca­ dence that you may improvise. You respond to the themes that surfaced and you make your own variation on them. The integration is a fundamental part of the healing process. It's no longer about the problem, but about the newfound solution, the newfound freedom. If catharsis resembles a birth, the integra­ tion amounts to cutting the umbilical cord, washing, wrapping, welcoming and cuddling the child. Including baptizing and naming the child. Being stuck in the past is always isolating, making us lonesome, withdrawing into ourselves; and the liberation is radiant and - well - liberating. The first person standing there after the ordeal, is the therapist. The therapist here has the function of the parental figure who takes care of you after birth - or after death. The consolidation brings the client back in the oecumene, the community, the inhabited world. The simplest closure is checking off the original charges. No, my feet are warm now. Or: I f I now say T m on my own' I feel it's nonsense. A female client suffers from jealousy, to take just one example. After the regression, you let her again repeat the phrase I'm jealous, a few times. Now she may real­ ize that's not true anymore. I'm no longer jealous. I cannot feel it anymore! Then you let her repeat I'm not jealous anymore. Until she gets tears in her eyes from the relief. 196

Or we take the opposite charge. Just say: I get great help. Or: Where do you feel warmth now? This we've called inversion. The completion or closure after the integration phase is coming back to the present and consciously shedding the remnants of the past. It is the time of final, definite cleaning, the realization and con­ firmation that the charge has gone indeed. The closure restores trust in the world of humanity, and thus reduces or dissolves the loneliness of being stuck in the past. I always end with: You come back to the here and now, at your own pace, in your own way. W hen someone can't come back - very rarely - then simply ask What's holding you back? Typi­ cally something which still needs to be resolved, has been ignored or at least remained unattended. Sometimes a picture or a memory or a phrase or a thought arises, which seems to have nothing to do with the session. Then ask: Can we keep this fo r the next session? If there seems to be nothing stop­ ping the client from coming back to the here and now, or your question remains unanswered: Why don't you want to come back? If someone just wants to remain in the afterglow of an epiphany or ca­ tharsis, tell how much time there's left for it, and at the end of it haul the client back to the present with the standard instruction. A simple closure is connecting the regained feeling, the regained insight to the current life situation. What has that cold meant fo r you in your present life? What does this newfound warmth mean to you now? The healing is confirmed by doing a progression with the client, or a future pace, as it's called in NLP. Where do you want to go now with those new warm feet o f yours? Or, Imagine a situation in the near future, the kind which gave you cold feet until now. What happens now? Can you still hold on to that warmth there? How does that feel? How does it affect others, how do they respond? Preferably, you send clients to a future situation that they almost certainly will come across, and which would normally trigger the old problem. Place yourself in that future situation, and notice how you react and in what respect that differs from your past behavior. Clients experience how they may re­ spond, and this makes it more likely they will do so. If they don't, probably you've been too hasty and your work is still unfinished. Then there's still more to re-experience and process. You can take up to three future situations in different circumstances. Check whether the inter­ vention has had the desired effect, and whether unwanted side-effects pop up in one of these imag­ ined situations. Integration means that the reconciled and healed past is incorporated into the present, that the in­ ner child is incorporated into the adult, and generally that opposites are reconciled. Unwanted side-effects may be imagined when a trembling mouse morphs into a roaring lion. Strength and weakness have both their place and time. We may feel powerful when appropriate or necessary. We may feel weak when appropriate or necessary. And we feel neither in situations where strength and weakness are irrelevant. Integration doesn't mean that everything is meshed together into the same slurry or soup. The two poles should be able to interlock or unlock, couple or decouple. It's neither about letting the client leaving the therapy room as a masculine woman nor a feminine man. No, the male and fe­ male must be in contact with each other, in a dynamic balance. Only when you have both poles standing strong, open and free to each other, you are genuinely free in this respect. Being continu­ ously masculine and feminine at the same time, complicates some things in life, relationships e.g. Unless you find another like yourself perhaps. Inner children we integrate by letting the client pick them up and embrace them until they merge, as it were, with the client's adult self. An integrated child is often felt at the heart or in the belly. The youngest children generally in the belly, and the older children more often around the heart, it seems. A previous life can be embraced, but usually I let it stand with its back to the client and then stepping back, as it were, into the client. That should feel good. Otherwise let it step out 197

again. Or the client stands behind the previous life, embraces it and takes it into itself. If that doesn't feel good, that life hasn't been completely processed, or it isn't a true past life of the client. Then there's still some detective work to do. Usually, the therapist has dropped the ball somewhere and let the client relive a wrong story: of a fantasized past life; a past life through the distorted view of a pseudo-obsessor; or a past life of somebody else, often an attachment. This easily happens in unequal relationships between people. The killer identifies with the victim to avoid his own brutality. Or the slave identifies with the mas­ ter to avoid feeling his own weakness. The therapist easily may miss this. We can't all the time dis­ trust and question the development of the story. If in doubt, personify and possibly even test how the client responds to an integration. If clients feel that a previous life seems overwhelming, then instruct them to grow until they can handle and eventually integrate this past life. Never let the current self step into the previous life. The present always remains the dominant actor in all of this. We take the past into the present, not the present into the past. Absorbing a subpersonality isn't always called for. Also pseudo-obsessions don't always need to integrate completely. Let the client ask the subpersonality: What do you want? What do you think should happen? It may want to crawl inside the client, another time it dissolves into a light, yet an­ other time it wants to stay close and occasionally visit the client. To completely integrate all positive subpersonalities is asking for trouble. They would greatly hin­ der each other. Your inner gladiator may get bored stiff during a course of intuitive watercolor painting. It's better to keep such an inner part dormant, till you are playing tug of war or you are about to be mugged on the street. Complete fusion would seriously limit our adaptation to different conditions and circumstances - within one life or across different lifetimes. The best approach is to use any subpersonality when it's required. When our subpersonalities know, accept and like each other, and when they can come in and leave freely, then we've achieved the best possible integration. Interaction between subper­ sonalities stimulates development; integration of all subpersonalities discourages development. Also, feeling whole comes close to feeling perfect. So beware! A cathartic reliving not only liberates us, it enriches us, makes us grow, change, mature. We become more vital, more alive, more sensible, wiser, braver, more humane. Until what or when? Until we rarely have to re-experience anything. Because we're fully present in most of our experiences. Then we live in Technicolor, in Cinemascope, in 3D. Then we live intensely, happily. Then we live great. Even to that blissful state we may get used, even bored with. Then what?

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CHAPTER 8. BODY WORK IN REGRESSION

Body work in regression therapy is the use of body sensations to induce the reliving, to relive physical traumas so to remove their effects or to get to the deeper psychological issues. Many peo­ ple have repressed or rationalized troubling thoughts and feelings so deeply, that we can only find these through the body. We start with ATR, Accident Trauma Release, a method originally developed by Paul Hansen.

8.1 Accidents, violence, fainting and surgery (ATR) Some people come to us with complaints that started after physical violence, accidents or surgeries. Or we discover during the intake or the session that certain problems began after such experiences. Accident Trauma Release, or ATR, is about 'de-shocking' physical traumas: accidents, violence and surgical and other medical operations. The big difference with other regression methods is the attention to the body and the touching or tapping of the body on places that were hit or injured or where a shock wave has been deflected or absorbed. This may be done to deepen the regression, but mainly to release the tensions still pre­ sent in the body. First I describe the overall method and will give an example. Then w e'll discuss particular as­ pects that may play a role. And I'll give some theoretical background. The methodical steps o f Accident Trauma Release 1. In this type of session you let clients sit, not lie down. Preferably on a stool without back rest, so you can touch the back too. Ask for the place of the first blow or wound. Restimulate it by tapping quietly at the precise spot, sometimes also at the right angle. Follow the shock wave through the body. Find out where it rebounds and where it finally dampens. Always check whether a shock wave went to the head or was absorbed by the neck. Ask for the next blow and repeat the process until all blows are worked through. 2. Go back to just before the first impact. W hat do clients observe, what do they feel and think? Restimulate then the first impact and again ask what they perceive, feel and think. W hat comes to mind, what do they feel, sense, in the body? Repeat the process for the next blows. 3. See the whole episode briefly, in a bird's eye view. This overview also may contain other people or things that played a role in the physical trauma. Note moments of unconscious­ ness. Seeing from the outside may offer new insights, complementing and completing the story of what exactly happened. If others said something during the unconscious period, let clients now hear the words and check whether these have been registered unconsciously. 4. Let clients see the situation just before the first impact. Let it grow almost completely dark while clients see a glow around their body. W hat color is it? Now the impacts and shock waves become visible in different colors. Is there any energy transfer? Any energy entering? Any energy leaking? 5. Touch the body at the spot of first impact and instruct clients to see and feel how any resi­ dues of that impact leave the body at that very spot. Imagine that it leaves at that spot; not that it enters your finger! If necessary, tap, quickly if needed. Sometimes it's necessary to discharge the spots of secondary impacts (where a shock wave was deflected), or the spot of final absorption. If the process goes slowly and haltingly, work in reverse order, from the point of absorption back to the point of original impact. 199

6. Repeat the process for the following impacts. 7. If at any time energy entered or left the body, follow exactly the same procedure. Except for attachments. Don't let these leave the body through the point of contact, but use personifi­ cation. 8. When a part of someone's personality or self has departed and remained outside the body, such as can be detected in the fourth step, and sometimes already in the third step, it's es­ sential to incorporate that part back into the body. 9. When an alien substance entered the body, such as anesthesia, then let clients visualize the reverse process. For instance, touch the point of injection (i.e. of the syringe), and say: All anesthetic still remaining in your body, now flow s back to this point. You see the syringe filling up again. 10. Sometimes the associated reliving (step 2) is so strong that clients can't immediately switch to the bird's eye view (step 3). Then we release the somatic charges (steps 5 and 6), before we go to step 3. The next session gives a practical example. C: I was around ten years old, and I was in the playground o f the Zoo. The slide was gone, but the stair­ case was still there. I was at the top with my girlfriend and I said: I bet that I can fly? That turned out to be so, if only for two heartbeats. T: What do you picture when you think o f that situation? C: I see myself standing at the top. I'm standing at the right and she at the left. It's about three, four me­ ters above the ground. On the ground there're rubber tiles, but that doesn't help a lot, as it turns out. T: How do you feel here? C: Powerful. T: Just let that feeling flow through you. Feel powerful. How does it feel in your body? C: As in a flow. T: From where to where? C: From my feet to the stars. I don't feel myself standing anymore on the Earth. T: What do you feel? C: Ifeel like a giraffe standing on its long legs like that. T: Go back to the last time you've seen a giraffe before you stand on the top o f that dismantled slide. Where are you and what do you see? C: I know there're giraffes at the Zoo. I see that place before me. T: If you look at the giraffes, what do they say to you? C: They say that if you're high, you can see more, but you must be careful. T: Tell me: I have overview. C: I have overview. T: How does it feel to say that? C: Powerful. T: You're up there. You've overview and power. You're standing high. If there's another feeling or another thought coming up, you get an impression o f this now. C: Panic. That's what comes after that. T: Right now you have overview and power. What's the next thing you do or that happens? C: I close the bet. I bet I can fly. T: Just feel that you're about to fly. It goes in slow motion. Do you leap? C: I'm already in the air. I don't need to leap. It goes all by itself. T: What happens to your body when you fly? Feel it, see it. C: It's painless. T: How does it feel when you come down, hit the ground? C: I lie there quietly and feel no pain. T: Let's go back a bit. You're up there again. You've mentioned the word panic. You now feel the panic part o f the experience. What's in your mind? C: This is the end. T: If the panicky part o f you falls down, where does it hit the ground? C: Right knee. The inside.

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T: Do you feel yourself hitting the ground. Rubber tiles. Still quite a smash, I think (gives a solid blow to the knee). Feel that shock going through you. Where does it go? C: To my face. T: What's the first next thing that your body experiences? C: Fear. T: What are you afraid o p C: That people become angry. T: Is there anything else that hits the ground, apart from your knee? C: No. T: (Taps the knee.) Let the shock go through you and feel where it goes. I do it one more time. Just feel what happens to your face. C: The blood rushes to my face. T: What kind o f emotion does that bring? C: Loneliness and shame. And nervousness. T: I touch you briefly. Is it about here? Imagine that all the loneliness and shame from this experience leaves your body through my finger. I tap three times and each time a piece o f it goes out. One, two, three. What'd you see or feel going out? C: It's like it's shifting. There's something that doesn't want to leave. T: Is that the ten-year-old boy, or is there another person or thing in it? C: I get the impression o f another person. T: Shame and a feeling o f withdrawal, right? Not wanting to be seen. Therefore loneliness. Can your mother comfort that ten-year-old boy? (Doesn't want to currently address the probable attach­ ment.) C: No. She's ashamed. I want to give it back to my mother. (So an attachment of the mother herself, it seems.) T: Where's your sense o f power and overview in your body? C: Here. T: Let it grow, so that the remains o f the shame are blown out o f your head from the inside. Is that better? C: Yes. T: You fell to the ground. Did you hurt yourself? Are you hurt? C: No. T: You've been quite lucky. C: I became a goalkeeper later. T: Let's go back one more time. You're with her on top o f the slide, on top o f those stairs. Imagine that you leave your body, and look down from above and see the two children standing there. When you can see them, say yes. C: Yes. T: What do you notice when you look down? What do you think o f it? C: Nice, that we're standing there hand in hand. T: You see what's happening from above. You see it in slow motion. You now see him jumping. What does he do with his hands and arms? (Now the jumper is a ’he’ to strengthen the dissociation.) C: He's already down. He looks up, to his girlfriend. The girlfriend looks startled: What are you doing? T: What kind o f face does he pull when he's in the air? C: An absent face. T: He's in a trance. How is his body posture while going down? C: It's kicking, looking for a hold. T: Your body seems surprised. What's this? Where's the ground? C: Yes. T: See the boy halfway the jump. The body's kicking. Imagine that the boy stops in midair and the ground comes to him. You see it the other way round. The boy remains suspended in mid-air and the ground comes closer. How does that feel? C: So be it. I think it's done - better accept it. T: You see yourself again standing hand in hand together. You see it from above. You see the boy and the girl holding hands. If you see that, you say yes. C: Yes. T: Imagine nightfall. It becomes dark and you see around that boy and girl a glow appearing. What color is that glow? What's your first impression? C: White. From the top around us, but with an opening at our backs. T: Now you see what happens with those colors at the moment you jump. Any shift in the color?

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C: That light remains hanging around her. T: Is there any light around the body that jumps or not? C: Nat much. T: Is she scared? Is her light changed or does it stay white? C: She's shocked, but she's confident and she's surprised. With her, I see red. T: The white light o f you, which stood next to her, is that still there? C: That's still there. (So a reverse out-of-body experience: someone stepped out of his own energy, which is left behind.) T: You now see the moment that part o f that white energy goes away. Where does it go? C: To the boy lying down there. T: If there's a part o f the light that hasn't come back, you get an impression o f this now. Otherwise, clearly all o f it has returned to you. C: It's all come back. T: You now get the impression that that light is in or around you. C: At my neck. T: What does it do there? C: It protects me. T: Does it feel right? C: Yes. But I'm not really happy about it. I see that it has come back, but I don't really feel it. T: Should it be around you or in you, or at another spot? C: It belongs somewhere else. T: There may be something in your head that has withdrawn itself, the ten-year-old boy maybe who felt ashamed. We have dealt with it, but perhaps not quite. There's something around that can't go inside. C: Yes. T: Tell that boy: It's time to get out. Then he can at least absorb that light again. If the light would come inside o f you, where would it go? C: In my head here and around my heart. T: Both your head and your heart? Does it have to do with overview and power C: I think so. T: Power o f the heart and overview o f the head. C: That explains the impulsive part o f me. T: Yes, wanting to fly. You've not really lost the bet. You've survived it and you have flown for a second. Just not the way you wanted it. You may ask the boy in your head if he wants to step outside for a mo­ ment. C: That white light enters me. My head's clearing slowly now. T: Let it grow brighter. T: Whatever happened to the girl next door that held hands with you at the Zoo? C: She's become a lesbian. But I now understand why I ’m always afraid when I get in an airplane.

To understand the importance of shockwaves and injuries, we need some background information. In our reactions to events, we can distinguish between the human level, the mammal level and the reptile level. In physical accidents two more primitive levels play a role: the simplest vertebrate level, the fish-level, and the invertebrate level: the jellyfish-level, the human being as a jelly bag. Let's briefly go through those levels, and then see their relevance in how we physically and men­ tally record accidents and violence. Large brains, the cortex, are especially highly developed in Homo Sapiens. Below it is the midbrain, with particularly the limbic system, we have in common with the mammals. Below that are even more primitive parts of the brain, which are dominant in reptiles. During embryonic development, there's a period we have fish brains, a period when we have reptilian brains, a period when we have mammalian brains and a period when we have human brains. The old saying is: ontogeny is phylogeny. The development of the embryo reflects the de­ velopment of evolution, from single-cell life to human life. Typical of our cortex are precaution, planning and rationality. In the limbic system below the large brains reside the emotions. Mammals have these too. Like attachment to offspring and vice versa. If 202

a human being's limbic system is triggered, waves of anger or other sentiments come loose. Relig­ ious feelings, altruism and self-sacrifice are all there too. That we have in common with mammals, although other, more rational considerations and another, rational perspective are added. If we do the induction in a session, we want people to activate not only their cortex, but also their limbic brains i.e. access their mammal self, and so their full emotions. Reptiles are low on emotions. Although crocodiles protect their young, turtles lay their eggs in the warm sand and make themselves scarce afterwards. Most little sea-turtles don't even make it to the water after they're born. Anger resides in the limbic system, aggressiveness resides in the 'reptilian' system. Aggressive­ ness is more primitive than anger. Anger expresses itself in aggressiveness, but people may be ag­ gressive without a trace of emotion. Such people we call psychopaths. Psychopaths directly link rational human functions to reptilian urges, lacking the mammalian emotions in-between. That's why psychopaths are cold. The reptilian complex contains also territorial instinct, ritualistic behavior and pecking order or hierarchy. Wanting to know where you stand, not as an emotion, but as an instinct. Sex resides in all three systems. Mammals feel lust, reptiles only drive or urge. People adorn (and complicate) lust by romance. Reptilian sex is pure urge, just like aggression and dominance. To the extent people are hierarchical and ritualistic, they are in their reptile self. People who like to keep everything informal, casual and 'nice' are in their mammal self. People who are reflecting about the past and planning the future, are in their neocortex, their human self. W hen we are talking about accidents, injuries and surgery, we are considering the body from much more primitive levels: the fish-level and jellyfish-level. If I am hit while I am sleeping or groggy or unconscious, my body may be hit like a blob of jelly with some bones in it. If we have right muscle tension, we react more resilient, absorbing shocks as much as we can. Let's go further back in evolution. For a floating single-celled organism, like an amoeba, there's no difference between left and right, between top and bottom, between front and rear. When a single-celled organism gets a tail or a flagellum to propel itself, like a sperm cell, there’s a difference between front and rear. The front is now more stimulated by the flow of the water. At the front the most is happening. Most nutrients and threats are arriving there first. More signals are going from front to back than the other way round. The front side becomes dominant. Multicellular animals have a nervous system, that begins as a spinal cord with a front (head) and a rear (tail). If you want to understand the human body in its evolutionary make-up, you need to drop it like an animal on all fours; to see the front-rear along a horizontal line. The ultimate front of humans is the forehead, eyes and nose, and the ultimate back our buttocks and anus. The most sensitive, most easily stimulated tissue that we have are our nerves. The nervous sys­ tem dominates all other tissues, because it's the most sensitive and most information-processing 'organ' throughout the human body. The most sensitive tissues on our outside are the fingertips and lips, but above all the eyes. There's no other organ that can absorb as many bytes per second as the eyes. The head contains most of the senses. The head has the highest concentration of the most sen­ sitive tissues, and is therefore the dominant part of the human body. Physical shock experiences are blows: through air or water; hitting the ground; being hit by fists, objects, or weapons. We experience them on two levels: • Jellyfish-level (as an invertebrate organism): shockwaves traverse our tissues and bounce back, reverberating through the body. When any shockwave reaches the head, the brain sloshes within the skull: concussion. • Fish-level (as a vertebrate organism): • cushioning through muscle-tightening, leading to cramps in the neck (whiplash), arms and legs; 203

• •

involuntary movements; vibrations.

What happens during an accident? The body is flung, from example, from a motorcycle. Does the body hit the ground like a sack full of hay, stones or other materials? No. The arms and legs move instinctively to protect the body and especially the head. Breaking arms and legs absorb much of the shock energy that the muscles couldn't absorb, shock energy that would still endanger the brains. Damaged tissue sends many nerve signals, because all aid must be mobilized towards it. Hence another gradient arises, besides the front-rear one (for the upright walking human: top-bottom). At the moment when my elbow shatters, I get a new orientation in my body. Besides the dominant head there comes a dominant elbow that nags and hurts and screams for attention. The information processing is still quite rudimentary, but the pain signals are so strong that we get a new center of awareness, a different orientation in our body. Having two centers of consciousness, invariably produces a certain trance. One of the classic ways to bring people under hypnosis, is to give them a headset with two wildly different programs of music or other sounds at the left and right. Brains are ill-equipped for multitasking. An injury that hurts, sucks some of our attention away. The result is a kind of trance. Any accident, any vio­ lent incident, creates a new gradient, thus disorientation, and thus trance. If we're in a trance and someone says something that touches, affects, or hurts us, for example, its impact may go much deeper than otherwise. If we fall on our hip, the shock wave traverses through the body and bounces back somewhere. That's the secondary point of impact, sometimes a secondary trauma. The body may have regis­ tered multiple secondary blows, whereby it has become disoriented. Both a low and a high muscle tone transport shocks without absorbing them. And muscle tone is not only physically determined. If you feel depressed, your muscles are weak. If you are angry, aggressive or otherwise alert, muscle tension is high. Our psychological state, our mental state affects how our body responds to a hit or blow. If our torso is hit from any side, the shockwave will make our extremities swing also our head. When the head swings, the brain sloshes against the skull and we either lose consciousness or be­ come dizzy and nauseous, seriously affecting our capacity to protect ourselves and to survive. Our brains are our most precious, internal jellyfish. The body reacts instinctively to avoid that. It absorbs any shock through the limbs, through the muscles in the torso and eventually in the neck. Wherever the blow comes, the neck tenses to ab­ sorb a blow to the brains. In ART we always check for neck tension. In all physical traumas we ascertain which shock waves went through the body, and how the tissues did respond. All this takes place at the jellyfish and fish levels, regardless of the psychologi­ cal effects of the blow. A shock wave may be entirely absorbed by the right shoulder. Then we just need to release the pent-up energy from the shoulder. But usually, the shock wave affected other parts of the body as well. We all walk around with a rather dimmed consciousness, partly due to the scratches of every­ day life, and partly due to the accumulated numbness because of the internal blows to the brain. Why are these blows internalized, are the shock waves effectively stored? Because a lot's going on emotionally and mentally as well. Because we are more than a jellyfish or a fish. It’s amazing how many people can rejuvenate, rebound, and regain their former strength simply by releasing physi­ cal trauma of many years ago. A blow to your head hardly traverses through your body. Your neck absorbs practically all of it. If your body falls down, your neck is often unable to sufficiently cushion the blow to your head. As the head has maybe one-fifth of the mass of the torso, the shockwave increases five times when it

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traverses the neck. Hence the limbs and neck frantically try to muffle the shock wave. Once the shock has passed the neck, our brains slosh in the skull. Concussion produces shock, produces trance, produces 'storage' of shock residues. If bones aren't damaged or broken, they simply propagate the shock wave and so overburden the joints. A young man of 19 years old sits in a car, next to a drunk friend at the wheel. The car crashes into a pole, he shoots through the windshield, over the hood, and hits the grass. The main blow is when his head hits the windshield. The thought that at that very moment flashes through his mind, is 'idiot!' Why did he accept his friend to drive, while the latter clearly had drunk too much? The residue that's still stored in the head after more than twenty years, he sees as a bunch of gray cotton balls. These gray cottons balls have slowed him down all these years. Each time he had to stand up for himself, this crippled him. Removing the cotton clears his mind and helps to save his business and his marriage. The mental charge, the thought and feeling that flash through him at the moment of the blow, fixate the physical trauma. And the other way round.

People sometimes hold on to their pain, because they are in mourning. The example session of chapter 5 is also interesting in this respect, because a light collision resulted in remaining somewhat confused and disoriented for two years. A physical blow is usually also a psychological blow. Also the body itself may hold on to the pain. It seems sometimes the 'fish, ' the body itself is angry that you still haven't thanked for its sacrifice and hard work. It's as if the body wants to hear an apology or a thank-you. It's your bloody fau lt that I'm so damaged, that I got so hurt. Is that supersti­ tion? I'm pretty sure it is. Yet I can only say that this superstition works. If you communicate with the body in such a session, treat it with deference and respect. That works out very well. Somehow, a respected fish swims better than a disrespected fish taken for granted. D on't ask me to explain. I can't. So, surprisingly, to communicate, to talk with body parts makes practical sense. We thank the broken leg, because its breaking has cushioned the blow and perhaps even saved our life. You now get an impression o f what would have happened if you hadn't broken that leg. Then the client would have hit her head on the asphalt. She sees blood seeping out of her ear. This is typical in the work we do, we suggest: You now get an impression o f what would've happened i f ... . I had this client thank her leg for its sacrifice. That leg tingled and its skin became warmer, smoother, healthier. As said before, we do regressions to physical traumas in the current life threefold: 1. 2. 3.

associated, in the body; dissociated, looking at it from the outside; partially dissociated as in aura exploration, seeing and feeling what's happening energeti­ cally.

In cases of losing consciousness, or feeling really bad in the body, we start with dissociation. See it first from the outside, from above: bird's eye view. We go to the associate reliving afterwards. In accidents and violent incidents when many things happen in a very short time, we instruct the client to relive it in slow motion, so that all the shocks and blows and injuries can be precisely followed. Seeing it from the outside is particularly important to see what did happen during shock or un­ consciousness. We should at least understand what happened and how. Go back again to the last mo­ ment you still were conscious. Now see yourself from above and watch what happens till you regain con­ sciousness and then till the end o f the accident and its immediate aftermath. Until you are calm and resting.

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To relive a dissociated experience, we may over-associate. You might have forgotten or repressed the memory that you fell on your behind, but your behind certainly felt it and it has been stored somewhere along the way. Feel your behind. Be there. I f anything o f that experience is still there, you are going to see and feel it. Another form of over-association is touching with your fingers the exact spot, pressing it firmly or tapping it repeatedly, and instruct the client to feel the shock wave traversing the body. Where is it reflected, where is it finally absorbed? Touch the spot where the shock did hit the body. Instruct the client: Now let go o f everything that's still here from that experience, and let it leave through this spot. Then ask for the spot where the shockwave bounced, and discharge the energy at that spot as well. Continue until you reach the spot where the shockwave was finally absorbed. At each spot, release the stored tensions in the tissues, usually muscles or joints. If shockwaves stop quickly, this is often due to an older block. You release such blocks by short regressions. Go to a time and a place where ... If there have been many old blows and shocks, use the standard method: the first blow, the worst blow and the last blow. Sometimes I go through it chronologically, but then I don't follow all the gradients in the body, because then there're simply too m any When the body has been literally rattled, there is always some loss of orientation, because of the effect on the organ of balance. Care­ fully assess the worst blow. If you've followed and worked through all stages of the shockwave, you may ask: What do you further feel in your body at this very moment? Besides shockwaves, other aspects of physical trauma may be: • cold and heat; • offensive odors or flavors; • bum s and other skin damage (by abrasions or chemicals); • crushing; • torn tissues; • nausea, dizziness, vomiting; • being blinded or deafened; • paralysis; • intoxication; • suffocation. Touching and anchoring are also forms of over-association. Physical anchoring knows three forms: touching by the therapist, letting clients touch themselves and letting the client assume the original bod­ ily position during the accident or other traumatic event. Hitting the spot of the original blow is even stronger. Use your flat hand or the heel of your hand. Avoid punching or any other aggressive gesture. W hen our consciousness leaves the body, there seems a kind of body consciousness staying behind. The body seems to carry its own emotions and thoughts. However deeply tucked away these may be, we can evoke them - with great therapeutic effect. We can speak with body parts, thank them, console them. As I said before, probably that's superstition, but it works like a charm. Reconciliation with our own body is one of the fundamental therapeutic interventions. The body is our client as well. The body must be healed as well. You can even ask: What did the body think when this did hit the breastbone, or when your shoulder absorbed the impact? If clients lay their hands on the spot of the blocked energy, most of it is released, flows away. Address the soul, the body as a whole and the body part in question separately. For example, ask: • •

What do you feel? What do you want right now? What does your body feel? What does it want right now?

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•

What does this particular body part feel? What does it want right now?

Further questions: • How did you feel before, during and after the traumatic episode? • Was there any psychological trauma? • Did you conclude or decide something in this experience? • Did any prior conclusion or decision (postulate) play a role in the experience? After associated reliving we go to reliving the accident dissociated, seen from above. That gives overview and thus often new understanding. Only now we understand exactly what happened. We see new details. We can zoom in on others who were involved, we can see what happened when we were unconscious. The third step is a form of aura exploration. We start again just before the accident. Imagine that nightfalls and everything occurs in the dark. You now see a kind o f luminosity around you that indicates how you really feel at this moment. Then we'll see what happens energetically during the accident. We then can ask if any energy from the accident still is stored in the present body. This may require addi­ tional energy cleaning. For example: Let all the gray energy that's still there leave your shoulder. Thus, visual people can better release charges than if they only feel them. Therefore, in all energy work we instruct to see and feel. With shock we preferably start with the third step: aura exploration. Pay attention in this third reliving to: • Has any of the client's own energy disappeared? • Has any energy from another person present been absorbed? • Has any alien energy been absorbed? • Is the event foreseen or planned? Globally or in details? • Is the event an integral part of a larger story? For example, it happened while you fled your fa­ ther. Then your state of mind may trigger the accident or at least influence how you register it. A three-year-old girl slips on a balcony, falls on her head and gets a concussion. In the reliving, the client has a fuzzy feeling, as if the head is stuffed with cotton. She identifies with the threeyear-old girl with dulling cottons in her head. Difficult to guide that. So we first do energy work and pull the cotton wool out. A woman is hit by a car. In the second reliving, seen from the outside, from above, we find that at that very moment her hands go up in surrender and go backwards, rather than forwards to cushion the fall on the road. Why? That gesture she made in a previous life when she prayed. At the moment of impact, those hands fled as it were to a different world, a world in the past. In the third reliving, the aura exploration, we may see that, while dark-purple shadowy shapes fleet all around, the hands stay in a golden light. The hands are unaffected. Then we can use her hands well in healing the aftermath of the accident.

Sometimes, clients see an out-of-body experience, and we need to find out whether a part of the personality never returned to the body. P: An orange ball flew out o f my chest, which I never got back. At that moment I lost my self-confidence. T: OK, just see that ball again before you. See it slowly coming back to you.

Sometimes we meet something that shouldn't be there. C: I see a leaden snake. It's not a real snake, more a like a waving movement, coming from the right and entering my belly. T: Where did it come from? See it in slow motion. Rewind. What's the source?

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C: Hey, it's my fellow passenger. T: You get an idea what it means. What is it? C: It's his fear. Oh, that's why I always feel so weird in my stomach. T: OK. Open your belly and let that leaden snake flow back to him.

Even worse, there might have come an attachment that has remained since. Occasionally, the attach­ ment caused the accident, sometimes it's someone who was killed at the same place by an accident. Sometimes clients immediately regress to a past life. The trauma restimulated a similar older trauma, often a traumatic death. Or an old reaction pattern is awakened. May be that old pattern even caused the accident. A girl loses her balance. She misses the railing of the stairs with her right hand, and thus falls three steps down on her buttocks. Fortunately, she falls on top of the hamper at the bottom of the stairs, instead of hitting the stone floor. The moment she grabbed for the railing, she didn't feel her hand. As we ask why, she relives a life without arms. She was pushed and mistreated all the time. She felt powerless. Now it happens again. That powerlessness paralyses her hand.

With confusion, mental or physical, we dissociate. We let the client at least once see from the out­ side what exactly happens. Thus we recover something of what was lost during the mental bewil­ derment. W hen falling down stairs, the blows disorient us. We don't have a clear gradient anymore. W hat's the point of being rattled? The more we have everything under control, the stronger our habits, the longer we fall down the stairs and the more we tumble - to shake us out of rigid control patterns. That's also why rock 'n roll is especially enjoyed by people who feel hemmed in by life. Shake, baby, shake! You live fresh and cheerful, frank and free, untrammeled. Bang! You're stopped in your tracks by an accident. Or you live restrained, in a fixed pattern, full of inhibitions. Bang! Something dramatic happens and you actually feel relieved. The trauma shatters a postulate or a solid hangover. A woman is driving a car that is crushed between two large, heavy vehicles, coming from the left and the right. Her pelvis breaks. In an ATR-session she relives in slow-motion what she felt at the moment her bones broke: relief. She is stunned when she discovers that. Then she under­ stands: she was immensely angry with her partner who had died a few months before from AIDS. Why couldn't he be more careful? Why did he abandon her? She had not allowed herself to feel the anger. Her grief was too deep.

You see a similar thing happening on the psychological level. Depression can manifest your present misery, but also it may be a sign that older, suppressed misery is surfacing. What was stewing in­ side you, now comes into the open. The gloomy mood is in that case not part of the problem, but part of the cure. Though this cure may worsen your condition. The real problem may not be that you're feeling bad, but that you have suppressed your feeling bad. People who tend to suppress their emotions, may need an accident or other traumatic event, a sudden inexplicable depression or a psychosomatic illness to get rid of their junk. Notice what hap­ pened in the client's life just after the accident or other traumatic incident. Did the client recuperate afterwards? Or did the client sink deeper? In a successful ATR-session, we anchor the physical catharsis by: • letting the client see and feel the charges (unconsciousness is also a charge!), and then re­ lease these; • conscious, slow, deep breathing; • helping the client by touching or pressing at the point of trauma, with the instruction to release everything that's still left in the body;

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• letting the client touch the traumatized spot, with the same instruction. This release restores the vertical head-tail gradient, the front-rear balance and the left-right balance, getting rid of the distortions in the body experience. We ask whether the body is feeling good now. We release the body parts that have taken blows when consciousness was fully or partially absent. This helps to integrate mind and body. Someone got a heavy blow with a stiletto heel. Let's assume that it was done deliberately, in hate. First the energy of the hate of the person who wielded that stiletto heel (usually a woman) must be released and returned to the perpetrator. If there was loss of blood, we have the client imagine and feel the cleaned blood flowing back and closing the wound. I often suggest silvery white light com­ ing from the fingertips, and make circular motions with that around the wound and seeing and feel­ ing it close up, heal. When words of hate or contempt were said in the event, then release the en­ ergy of those words as well. Each story is a chapter in a larger story. You now understand why you were hurt so deeply by those words. We continue until the client is healed, satisfied and feels good. If you sense there's another layer underneath, that the client seems to ignore, you may say: It's fin e fo r now. I have the impression that there's s t ill... which you could uncover and deal with. I f you feel that coming up later, you may call me. For now it's OK. Don't talk a client into a problem, even if you are sure there is one. The client may not be truly ready for the next level. Honor your side of the con­ tract, but otherwise keep your distance. We can try to hold up a mirror to a client, but that's as far as we should go. Lead the horse to the water, but don't force it to drink. With surgery, we find that usually the residual problem is not of the wound caused by the surgery, but residual effects of the anesthesia. Regression to the time of inhaling or injecting, often makes the client's body react strongly. W hen it was inhaled, the client now may breathe with difficulty or coughs. When placing the finger on the very spot where the needle entered, the client usually feels the pain again, and sometimes the fright as well. The client senses exactly where the needle came in, and even at what angle. We let the client im agine that there's still a residue of the inhaled anesthetic in the body, and instruct him or her to breathe it out or cough it up. With injections, we instruct the client to im ag­ ine that the empty syringe is plugged in again, and that it slowly fills up again. These instructions bring striking physical reactions and striking relief, however childish such instructions may seem to the reader. Of course, nothing of the anesthetic agent remains in the body after so many months or years. It seems, however, that there's still an energetic residue left of that agent, which we can remove. We use the same therapeutic procedure with drugs, psychedelic drugs, intoxicants and poisonous drinks. Sometimes such 'rem edies' have been used in abortion attempts. Energy work is essential in dealing with old surgeries. If body parts have been removed: tonsils, uterus, breast, arm, or leg, a dialogue with the missing body part (another childish intervention) is both mentally and physically healing. Possibly, the lost energy of it comes back. Those body parts w on't grow back, but a kind of energetic healing takes place, to which the body responds extremely well. I've seen so often that ATR revamped the client so strongly, spiritually, mentally and physically, that I tend to depart from my usual approach: to only address that which the client comes up with. I f there's time, money and will, I recommend to work through all serious accidents, all concussions and all sur­ geries and other medical operations, chronologically from birth to the present. We may even find restimula­ tions of past lives. The important thing is the immediate effect on physical health and vitality.

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8.2 Exploring pregnancy and birth Regressions to pregnancy and birth are much more than body work. Yet all psychological experi­ ences are, even more than after birth, intimately linked to and deeply ingrained in the growing body. Therefore, I discuss such explorations in this chapter. I've rarely sought prenatal traumas. I only got there when the client went there in response to my open questions or suggestions. Go back to the first time when ... . Morris Netherton specifically asks for traumas and incidents during pregnancy and birth. He finds those moments especially at conception, at the moment when the mother realizes she's pregnant, at the moment when she tells the father of her child or her parents, and of course during the birth itself. He also asks for any ill­ nesses or accidents of the mother during pregnancy. Netherton finds that very often at those mo­ ments traumas of past lives are restimulated, especially of traumatic death experiences. As with accidents and surgeries, I also tend nowadays to move away from the principle that we only evoke experiences if the client goes there after open suggestions. It's certainly worth consider­ ing to walk through pregnancy and birth chronologically for any traumatic experiences. Pregnancy and birth so often turn out to be a link between past-life traumas and the problems in this life, that regression therapists like Netherton believe that this link is necessary for later res­ timulations in this life. I suspect that restimulations during the present life also can happen without a prenatal link, but such a link certainly is common. So if in inner child work a past-life trauma sur­ faces, check if there's been a related experience during pregnancy. For instance, with the first anxi­ ety or loneliness as a child, you may suggest: I f you've had this feeling already in your mother's womb, you get an impression o f that now. The simplest and often the most important element of the birth experience is whether the child has been welcomed. Has it gotten an 'entrance ticket' for this life? Otherwise, clients may feel that their presence, their existence, needs justification all the time. By always doing their best or always being nice to everybody. The right to exist, to be, must be continuously won by being good, compliant, helpful or successful. They rarely succeed. Usually a persistent, nagging insecurity remains. If we've really been welcomed, we do not have those problems. Then we don't need to 'drink our own blood.' In therapy, we let the current adult receive and welcome the newborn self. That is without ex­ ception a very emotional and moving session. If a child has already been rejected during pregnancy, if the mother didn't want the child, if the fa­ ther or the parents reacted negatively, then surely older experiences of rejection from past lives will awaken. W hat's the most traumatic experience during pregnancy? An abortion attempt. By definition this attempt has failed, but for the embryo the violence and enmity felt during such an attempt is extremely traumatic. Sometimes it triggers an enormous survival instinct, which in later life be­ comes both a strength and a weakness. If the abortion has succeeded, the child may return very quickly, sometimes to the same mother. During that second pregnancy, a disruptive subpersonality or pseudo-obsessor of the aborted embryo may be present. That doesn't makes things any easier. Less serious, but also traumatic, is when the parents reckon on a son or a daughter, and the fe­ tus realizes they'll discover at birth that it is of the wrong gender. This frequently leads to a late or difficult birth (which may have other causes, of course). The following example comes from a session guided by one of my students. A young woman distrusts people. She has trouble in establishing and maintaining relationships and feels unhappy. She suspects her parents did want to have her, though she has no concrete indications of this. Anyway, she hates her father.

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After some childhood memories that gradually deepen to reliving, she finds herself in the womb. She realizes that her father is unhappy with his wife's pregnancy and wants her to abort the child. When her mother is seriously considering this, she becomes so angry at her mother that she be­ gins to poison her. The mother drops the idea of abortion, despite signs of pregnancy poisoning. She continues to make her mother sick until she realizes that this will injure herself as well. The catharsis comes by asking why her father pushed her mother to commit an abortion. Then she sees that her father feels insecure as the breadwinner. He feels himself too young for the re­ sponsibility, earning too little to support a family. When she finds out that her father has diffi­ culty expressing his emotions at her birth, but is really happy with her, joy flows through her. The hatred of her father instantly gives way to understanding.

The second problem that we frequently come across is that the embryo strongly identifies with the mother, adopting the problems and feelings of the mother. Or the mother is being rejected and the child thinks it's the one being rejected. The crucial part of many prenatal sessions is to separate the experience of the child from that of the mother: disidentification. Netherton says that there's no conscious mind present during the prenatal stage, that no independ­ ent thoughts exist and that the subconscious records everything that the mother thinks, says, feels, and how the environment responds to her. Indeed, much of that is unconsciously absorbed through the mother, but many people do experience how strongly conscious they are in and sometimes out­ side the womb. Remember that Helen Wambach found that nearly 90 percent of returning souls are not really in the fetus before the sixth month. Others find experiences going back to the conception. After reading the book by Karl Schlotterbeck, I've concluded that there are three registers: • the mental and etheric registers of the incarnating person; • an etheric register that the mother supplies to the embryo; • the physical register of the embryo which depends on the growing nervous system. When we die, our soul and our etheric body leave the physical body. But part of the etheric body seem to remain behind in the physical body. The connection between the two parts is elongated into an elon­ gated, etheric thread that eventually snaps: the silver cord. The part left behind dissipates. With a new incarnation, the etheric body of the incarnating soul, containing the karma and dharma of our past lives - stretches out to the etheric organism of the growing embryo. It makes a new silver cord. Do we receive emotional and mental charges of our mother through that connection? Not in­ variably, but easily so. I expect that nothing of the father's etheric body comes into play here, at most a slight part during conception. It has long been known that at a rebirthing and any other regression where the cutting of the um­ bilical cord is relived, this helps to separate remaining energy links between mother and child. Anyway, always ask with a feeling of the child in the womb how the mother feels at that moment. If necessary, suggest that all energies belonging to the mother go back to her. Sometimes a client doesn't want to do this because Mom has such a difficult time already. Parentification, the child as­ suming the parental role, thus can begin even before birth. Netherton ends each prenatal regression by saying to both the client and his or her mother that the problem is over. That's good practice. Ask whether anything has arrived before birth that isn't part of the self, or whether anything has disappeared that is part of the self. Such questions detect prenatal traumas and hangovers, and internalization of energies from the mother. If you want a strong and healthy body, or a good ear for music, you seek parents who can de­ liver these capabilities. Choosing parents seems to me an easier proposition than tinkering with genes. I do not exclude that possibility, but it seems to me rather com plicated. Perhaps we can

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create etheric force-fields that affect the splitting and recom bination of chromosomes. But that's pure speculation. Anyway, m ost souls seem to descend well after the conception. Only then we may affect the growth of the fetus energetically, either consciously or unconsciously. People who're from the outset inside the em bryo or at least connected with it, will look more like their previous life than people who incarnated at the last moment. We find in regressions that many souls descend into the fetus only when it is already several months old. Often they were already connected with it, but only occasionally entering. Even if we would finally descend in the seventh month only, we arrive into something that w e're already con­ nected with: an etheric organism from conception and a physical link from about the fourth month. Traumas and sensitivities from past lives may wake up when they correspond to experiences in the womb or experiences on the 'm other tape.' The three registers are interconnected only during the definite descent of the soul into the fetus. At that moment of connection, the etheric residues (karma) and the etheric harvest (dharma) from past lives are switched on. What restimulations from past lives are common during pregnancy? People who have long been in a dungeon, or died in a narrow space or when stuck in a collapsed building or mine, may experience restimulation when the baby gets stuck during birth. Hangings are easily restimulated if the umbilical cord gets around the baby's neck; suffocation is easily restimulated if the baby can't breathe. If people have an ancient hangover about being stuck in a body, descending in a body will al­ ways restimulate that. That birth problems may affect our later life, today is widely accepted. The most common aftereffect of prenatal and birth problems is reduced stress resistance. Lee Salk found in teenagers who com­ mitted suicide more diseases from the mother during pregnancy and more medical problems dur­ ing birth. Suicidal teenagers had had three to four times more often (Findlay 1985): • • •

Mothers with a chronic illness or disability during pregnancy, such as anemia, arthritis, high blood pressure, kidney problems, asthma, hepatitis or obesity. Breathing disorders in the first hours after birth. (With modern medical resources newborns are saved that once would have died. Mothers without prenatal care in the first twenty weeks of pregnancy. This may indicate an unwanted child and so an unwanted pregnancy.

According to Netherton, people who feel isolated or are autistic are often bom while their mother was unconscious (as was common during a caesarean), or they went into an incubator right after birth. He also found that people who were bom by caesarean section, tend to have more difficulty in later life to finish things, complete tasks, and more often feel unable to accomplish something.

8.3 Exploring and integrating body parts People who always have problems with the same body part, may want to find out why. I f I fall, I always injure my left foot, never my right. Or people suffer from concussions unusually often. Or sim­ ple surgeries go wrong or produce complications. A second operation is needed to solve the illeffects of the first. There's an infection, or a mistake was made, or the wound heals only very slowly or not at all. In our jargon: there's a negative charge on that body part. That's standard operating procedure for us: evoking the body sensation at that spot (the so­ matic), ask for an accompanying emotion, and enter regression. Or we instruct clients simply to go to a place and time where they first had a problem with that body part. Or we do aura exploration. What do you see in or on that part o f your body?

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Or we personify that body part and have the client talk with it. We rarely do this by inviting the body part in the personification room. It would be weird to imagine that your right leg or your liver would enter the room and start complaining - though not impossible. We usually let the client make inner contact with the body part. Or we say: I f your left hand had a voice, what would it tell you? And how would you react to it? The first words that come to mind. With migraine we go to the head, with general fatigue we ask where the fatigue is the strongest and zoom in on that part of the body. We are not equally aware of all our body parts. I remember a workshop where we were instructed during a visualization to see the body part we had neglected the most. I immediately saw a round escape hatch of a spaceship that was wide open. Into space small objects drifted away, out of the ships' shadow into the full white sunlight. Apparently, waste was being discharged. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was pointing me in a very civilized and sanitized manner to the anus. Later I've conducted group sessions where the participants felt their attention drawn to the body part which they had given way too little attention and to the body part which they gave the most, or even too much, attention. Or identifying that part of the body that was the least connected to the rest of the body, and the body part that was most connected to the rest of the body. Once someone has these kinds of impressions, then we follow it up with simple regression in­ structions like: Go back to the place and time when and where this body part lost contact with the rest o f the body fo r the first time. Usually this is because of a serious accident or violence. Some people even feel that a body part doesn't belong to them. They want their right leg ampu­ tated, for instance. We can do an aura exploration. Just imagine that you pull the leg and that another body, the body to which that leg really belongs is pulled as well out o f your own body. Almost without ex­ ception we find an obsessive attachment that we can handle as such. Chapter 10 will explain this. In an ATR, we may find that the breaking of a lower leg has absorbed a large part of the shock. If the leg hadn't been broken, there would've been blood coming out of the ear: a fractured skull. We have mentioned his example before. With that lower leg there might have been problems for over twenty years. After thanking the lower leg on behalf of the head for its sacrifice, the problems with the lower leg cease immediately, the circulation improves, it becomes warmer, and no longer gives any problems. We talk to individual organs, personifying them as it were, when they regularly give all kinds of problems, when they 'w hine.' We can talk to the throat, the liver, the right forearm. Speaking with the throat, it may turn out the problem is more specifically with the larynx, or the thyroid. Then we focus on those organs. Many colleagues speak of a cellular memory and speak to the individual cells. That's a bridge too far for me. I don't believe in the individuality of cells. They divide themselves too easily. I'll stick with body parts, organs and tissues, such as the subcutaneous tissue. Or we talk with the lym­ phatic system, even though that's spread throughout the body. The most global categorization is often the best: left-right, top-down, front-rear. Frequently, prob­ lems reside only in one half of the body. In personification, we imagine that we draw our reflection in two separate body images. Or we may do aura exploration and look at the dark half. With top-down problems, the problematic or dark part is most frequently found at the bottom. Sometimes only the feet, sometimes from the knees down, sometimes from the hips down, the waist, the diaphragm, or the throat. Sometimes even on the level of the eyes. With aura exploration many women see a metal plate splitting the body in two. If they have ever been vaginally or anally raped, that plate often is in the abdomen. On further inquiry, we find they've made this plate of in­

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sensitivity themselves. Have the breasts been manipulated, the plate is often just below the throat. If they have been forced into oral sex, the plate is half-way the face. In therapy it's essential to have, after a cathartic regression, to reconnect the disconnected part to the rest of the body. Energetically, everything should flow properly again, and the 'lost' body part should be fully integrated again. Often it needs first to be energetically cleaned, and the energy that was withdrawn from that body part has to return. Some books, written by psychics, consider the different parts of the body as distinct seats of particu­ lar psychological and spiritual qualities. One organ is the seat of self-confidence, another one the seat of empathy, and so on. Problems with the knees indicate stubbornness, and the like. Forget these books. In our work we find that the connection between spiritual and psychological qualities and body parts are individually determined. Even if self-confidence is frequently or even generally found near the breastbone, in others it may turn out to be located at the shoulders, the forehead or even the feet. With one individual mainly the toes, with another the entire foot. A third feels it at the ankles. Those books unduly generalize. After all, we can simply ask our clients. Feel secure. Feel how you feel this in your body. Feel where in your body you feel the most secure, the most confident. Feel and see the source o f this self-confidence. It's child's play. Our interventions are much more effective this way. And our work is more interesting for it.

8.4 Collapsing anchors Collapsing anchors is a concept from NLP. I frequently use a particular application in group ses­ sions about polarities. For example, certainty-uncertainty, strength-weakness, male-female, mentalphysical, sense and sensibility, individual and communal. In principle, you can use this method for each problem that is formulated as a polarity. An oscillation between certainty and uncertainty; un­ predictable alternation between cheerfulness and somberness; being on the one hand gullible, on the other hand suspicious. We may also use collapsing anchors to confirm the resolution of a negative emotion after a ca­ thartic regression. The technique is simple and effective. We trigger an anchor of a negative charge at the same time with an anchor of a positive charge. We achieve this by associating each with a body part, and by 'firing' both charges together. This triggers strong physical reactions: trembling, laughing, crying or confused grimaces. Sometimes the client enters a deeper trance. Sometimes one half of the face shows the one reaction and the other half the other one. These two reactions mo­ mentarily mix, producing grimaces, twists or shaking) and then the face relaxes, with a fresh com­ plexion and remarkably bright eyes. With collapsing anchors artificial anchors are less of a problem, as triggering both simultaneously neutralizes them both. For example: I often feel very uncertain. W hat's the opposite of that? We ask for that, because the cli­ ent might not say certainty, but determination, or assertiveness. Then the polarity is determination-uncertainty or assertiveness-uncertainty. We locate the relevant spot or part of the body, we let someone enter into it and you say: Feel assertive. Where in your body do you feel the most assertive? You anchor the assertiveness at one point in the body. Next you ask for the uncertainty and anchor it at another indicated point in the body. You alternate these two points and then 'short-circuit' them. This may produce an explosion, an implosion or turbulence. From that short-circuiting something may surface that remains to be dealt with. For instance, after the short-circuit some headache remains. Rarely, the body part where the uncertainty resided, may feel worse (painful, stiff, sore, etc.). We can use that as a somatic bridge into a session.

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Sometimes we can't get to the assertiveness. Uncertainty doesn't necessarily come from a traumatic experience. Many women have been brought up with: I f you're assertive, you'll scare men away. Thus if you want to feel feminine, you can't be assertive. And the other way round. The cause isn't a trauma, but a postulate. Regressing to a good past life as an assertive woman is the fastest way to break that program. The use of collapsing anchors is combined with future pace. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Evoke the charge of the unwanted condition. Strengthen a weak somatic by visualization or by touching or simply by suggesting to feel it more strongly. Anchor the charge. Search together with the client for the opposite, positively charged condition. Evoke the charge and anchor this one as well. Check each anchor separately. Are they about equally strong? If not, strengthen the weaker anchor. If both charges are weakly felt, this method won't work. Trigger both anchors simultaneously until the charges no longer crisscross each other, but are integrated into a new response. Let the client make up to three future paces. If there are any unwanted side effects, adjust or start over again. Trigger both old anchors one after the other to see if they still give any response. If that happens (rarely), probably the positive anchor wasn't powerful enough. Strengthen that again and redo the short-circuit.

The following is a form of collapsing anchors that I use frequently. You use both hands for this. One can do this unassisted as well. One problem has been worked through. It has become clear, it's resolved, but there isn't yet a catharsis. Have clients imagine that one half of their body contains the problem and the other half the solution. If the client can't choose, I suggest the right side for the problem and the left side for the solution. If the problem is loneliness, cold and darkness, have the client imagine one half of the body as cold and dark, and the other half as warm and light. Ask the client to see and feel both halves as strongly as possible. Anchor the problem by pressing the thumb firmly on the open palm of the hand on the 'prob­ lem' side of the body. (If you do it on yourself, press the thumb of one hand on the palm of the other.) Let the client feel how the sense of pressure remains after removing the thumb. That pres­ sure is then linked to the picture of a pillar containing all the problematic energy weighing heavily on the open hand. Let the hand move a little up and down, till the client clearly senses the weight of the entire negative charge. Do the same with the positive, resolving energy on the other hand. Clients now feel the two pillars of energy on the open palms of their outstretched hands. Then they rotate the hands inward until the two bars of energy merge into a solid rod of energy between the clients' palms. Ask them to reinforce this impression by imagining and feeling that the rod is glued to one palm and bumping it to the other hand a few times. If this visualized rod of energy feels real enough, clients imagine they move the rod slowly with the non-dominant hand (normally the left) into the dominant hand. Inside that hand clients see and feel an intense glow or an intense mill that grinds the energy rod into dust. The rod gets shorter and shorter until both hands touch each other. Then both halves of the entire body short-circuit, result­ ing in an implosion, an explosion or a general turbulence that slowly fades. Let's assume for the moment that you feel restless. Maybe you're traveling. Don't analyze what's the cause of your restlessness. Just accept it's there. W hat's your calm side and what's your restless side? Press your thumb into the hand with the restlessness and then do the same the other way

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round. You feel alternately turmoil and tranquility. Then you slowly short-circuit. Of course, you don't try to do this while driving. Both may dissolve into a new quality. Or each finds its proper place. Integration can be achieved in many ways. The following sample session is about feeling blameworthy and feeling blameless. This client often feels guilty and innocent at the same time, and this confuses her deeply. T: Be aware o f yourself. At which side do you feel guilty and at which side do you feel innocent? C: Right is guilty and left is innocent. T: With which side do you wish to start? C: Left. T: OK. (Presses with thumb on the palm of the left hand.) Keep your other hand down for now. Imag­ ine that all your innocence, all that's innocent inside o f you, rests upon your palm, Feel its weight and keep feeling it when I withdraw my thumb. Just imagine that all your innocence becomes a pillar o f energy or substance on your left hand. Do you feel the palm? Do you feel the pressure on it? Tell me, how big is the pillar, what color is it, what's its weight? C: A spiral o f light goes up. T: What color? C: Fluorescent green. T: A nice color? C: Yes. T: With what do you associate that color? C: A snake. T: An innocent snake. Feel its weight. It's light, it's green. Now turn around your hand, let it rest on your knee and turn your other hand palm upward. Now you feel all your guilt, all your self-blame resting on the palm o f this other hand. (T press firmly with the thumb on the 'guilty' palm.) All the weight you now keep feeling on your palm. What kind o f pillar do you see, how does it feel, what's its size, how does it look? C: The same structure as the other one, but black. T: And its size, its weight? C: Thicker and about the same weight. T: Feel how those two pillars feel. How the one feels, how the other feels. How's the weight distributed? C: Like this. (Shows the weight distribution as on a balance.) T: Good. You tilt these pillars towards each other and you imagine that these two substances, these two energies intermingle and form one stack, one pillar, one tube. Just imagine and feel that these pillars intermingle. What happens? C: They become one, dark green. T: See and feel the new tube between your palms. You'll go to digest as it were that tube. Are you going to do that in your right hand or your left? It seems you are going from left to right? C: Yes. T: If you bring your hands together, if you want to make the column smaller? Do you have to digest it with two hands? C: It easily disappears into my left palm. T: Just see and feel you press the column against the palm o f your left hand and that it's digested in your left palm. Now you try to move the palms together. Go slowly! That's it. C: That's hard. It hurts here in my right palm. T: Yes? Then push the other way: guilt into innocence. Imagine that if you push on it, it starts to digest here in your left palm. It's okay if it hurts. Just let it hurt. It may even be that the pain extends in your arms and shoulders. Accept you're guilty and you're innocent, both. Let it happen. The palms are slowly coming together. Let the column become shorter and shorter. Green and black meshed together. Yes? (The hands finally touch each other.) What happens, what do you feel? C: The tension is gone. It flows. In my entire body. Yes, everywhere. T: Let it flow until it naturally comes to rest. (C sighs.) Are you guilty or innocent or something else? C: It doesn't matter anymore. T: How does that feel?

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C: Peaceful. Beautiful. The next session isn't very successful, but does uncover the underlying problem. T: So you've taken the theme o f certainty and uncertainty. Close your eyes. Imagine that you bring all the certainty that you've in you on one side o f your body, and bring all the uncertainty on the other side. You choose between left and right. What's most natural? Which half is certain, self-assured? C: This is the certain half and this is the uncertain half. T: OK. Open your eyes again. (C rests her hands with palms upwards on her knees.) I press my thumb in turns firmly on each palm, and then I'll take my thumb off and then you'll imagine you still feel the pressure on both palms, as if there's a weight on it. Can you feel that? C: Yes. T: Imagine that all the certainty that you have becomes a column on this palm. Describe it: how heavy is that pillar, how high is it, what does it look like? It's generally good if you move your palm a bit up and down. To better sense the weight on your palm. All your certainty becomes a column o f energy. What does that pillar look like? C: Wide, high. T: Does it have a color? Is it made o f a particular material? C: Red. T: Red. Is it an energy, is it a whirl, is it a substance? C: It's a fixed column. T: Feel its weight o f your hand. Your certainty. A red, fixed column. Do you feel that now? C: Yes. T: OK. (Lays C's certainty palm down on C's knee.) Then you go to feel all youruncertainty in this hand. (T presses firmly on the other palm.) It becomes a pillar. Yes? Can you continue to feel that? C: Hm. T: How does this uncertainty feel? What does it look like? How big, how heavy? C: It's somewhat narrower and doesn't reach as high. T: Do you see a color or substance? C: Yellowish. T: What kind o f yellow? C: Dark yellow. T: If you compare the two weights - close your eyes again - which one is the heaviest? C: The confident side. T: How much heavier about more or less? C: Two-thirds for certainty and one-third for uncertainty. T: Soon you imagine that you have those two columns together. Imagine that those two columns become one. It may become thicker, it may become longer. When you feel the new column, you feel both ends on both your palms, so that the pillar is firmly between them. Now imagine that it sticks to your left hand, and you knock it against the right hand. Now you feel it sticking to your right hand and you knock the column against your left hand. How big is the new pillar? Just get a good feeling o f that certainty and uncertainty. Now close your eyes again. Very slowly bring the palms together and describe what hap­ pens, what you see happening or what you feel. C: The certainty is much stronger than the uncertainty. T: Let the certainty absorb the uncertainty in one way or another. Just as long the column becomes a single one. C: That red column is high, which must bow toward the other column. T: Just do that. At the moment when they are joined, say yes. C: Yes. T: Now bring your hands slowly towards each other. Imagine that in your left hand (certainty) there's a mill or something like it and that you push the column with your right hand into the palm o f your left hand and that it is ground to pulp there. Or is consumed, or burned. Keep at it until your hands touch each other. Close your eyes. Describe what you feel. What do you feel in your palms? C: This one is stronger than that one. This one is heavier. (C didn't succeed in making the two pillars into a single whole.) T: Try to reinforce the one. Try to grow your uncertainty until it is as strong as the certain one. Otherwise you have to reduce the certainty until they're about equal. Then you bringthem slowly together again. What does this column look like now, now it's mixed?

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C: Orange. T: Look how that orange column becomes slowly digested, pulverized or burned up. Slowly your palms approach each other. Feel what happens in your body when your palms touch one another. C: It makes my heart pound. T: Good. Let your body react. Feel your heart pound. Yes, yes, yes, short-circuit. What happens inside you? C: I'm trembling. I feel it in my heart. And in my head. T: Is there any red or yellow that's going through your body? Or something else? C: More red. T: Is the yellow still there? C: Just a little. T: If you must give a word to what you're now feeling in your body, what word comes to mind? C: Wobbly. T: Is wobbly certain or uncertain? C: Uncertain. T: Does the certainty still prevail or the uncertainty? C: It seems the uncertainty now prevails. That's strange. T: The energy o f red is stronger, but still the yellow prevails. Where's your certainty now? C: It's now mixed with that uncertainty. It is weakened by it. T: Do you still feel wobbly? C: Yes. T: You certainty was stronger than your uncertainty, but your uncertainty won. How can that be? The solution could be: you aren't insecure, you only think you are. You may have internalized the uncer­ tainty o f another. How does it sound when I say this? C: I think it's not so bad to be insecure, because then you stay eager to learn. T: Why have you taken that polarity then? C: Because the uncertainty sometimes takes over. Then I'd rather have that certainty. T: You're right, but it doesn't explain what happened. C: After a friendship o f thirty years I've rejected someone who didn't want to accept my inner changes. Yet that break is often in my thoughts. T: You've changed meanwhile. Has that person changed? C: No, not at all. T: That person is insecure and doesn't recognize that - or does that person want to make you insecure? C: That's what she always tried. We had friendship, but because I changed and she didn't, we had very little left to do with each other. I've broken off our friendship rather abruptly. I always thought that she was the confident one, but I see that differently now. T: Are you still energetically connected with her or are you free from her? C: I've tried several times, but it seems as if she's not free from me. That she pulls me to her, even though I don't want that. T: It happened in this session. How do you feel that to become aware o f this? C: I want to get rid o f it. T: Has there ever been something real between you? C: I don't think so. T: If it wasn't real, why has it lasted thirty years? A need or a fear in you? C: Yes, to bind myself to her. T: Why did you do that once, do you think? C: Because she exuded that certainty. T: In other words, you were looking for your own certainty. C: I've found it now, and now she doesn't need me anymore. T: I understand now. This what you've felt here just now, was that your certainty or hers? C: Perhaps also hers. T: That's what it's all about right now. It's about getting into your own energy. She radiated certainty. You needed that then. You started as a climber, but now you've become a tree yourself That did put pressure on the relationship, because she no longer had this function for you. What have you meant for her? C: She relished in my admiration for her. I always thought she was a strong, confident, amazing woman. T: Being admired is one o f the sources o f self-assurance. This certainty is your admiration and vice versa. Do you have to get her energy out o f your system, or do you need to recover the energy that you've vested in her?

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C: I think I need to recover the energy that I've vested in her. Because her certainty is no true certainty. T: The art o f life is to say goodbye decently and honestly. If the other person doesn't want this, you must do so within you, emotionally and mentally. This falls outside this demo session.

W hen to use collapsing anchors? At the beginning or end of a session? Though it can be both, rather at the finish, than at the start. You can read from it how far the integration has already been achieved, but also how far it still needs to go. The client may have worked on a theme for quite some time, has accomplished one thing or another, but it isn't really impressive or decisive. Some­ times the theme is energetically not completed and collapsing anchors may do the trick. Using the hands this way, is primarily intended for self-help. You can do it yourself. With clients you generally ask for the charged spots on or in the body. Ask them to touch the two polar spots at the end of the session themselves, and to connect these two points. We can use this method in several ways. How do we integrate for example a past life? As a per­ sonification in front of you, you can embrace it, and it can step inside you. We can also ask, espe­ cially if the previous life brings a quality that the client can use well: Where in your body do you feel that past life or that inner child particularly? And where in your body do you feel yourself most present? Then you ask the client to touch those two spots, or you as a therapist may touch those spots and instruct the client to see and feel how those spots connect. What happens when you short-circuit these two spots? Collapsing anchors is and-and. Good for either-or people.

8.5 Touch and massage W hen and where do we touch the clients? The general rules are: not too often, only when we've been given permission, and without any suggestion of intimacy. I would add to this: never when you feel aversion to touch and even less so when you feel attracted to the client. A universal rule in therapy is to refrain from doing anything that makes it unclear who pays whom and for what. If we touch, where and when? Some of the methods of touch have been described earlier, others are discussed later in this chapter: • Accident Trauma Release: while counting (usually up to three), tapping repeatedly and, if necessary quite quickly, on points of impact and at points where the shockwave was re­ flected or eventually absorbed. • Collapsing anchors, just described above. • Back-pressing or muscle-pressing uses strong touch as induction. The next section covers this method. • Muscle test or finger signals. Before the session begins, to focus the subject and finding the right entry, when that seems to remain vague or confusing. This method is also discussed in a later section in this chapter. Touching may deepen the reliving, the catharsis and the integration: • During massage, emotions may surface as well as spontaneous recollections. Body workers can apply massage to induce regressions. A simpler method is touching the most tense part of the body as induction. Curiously, touching the least tense part of the body works just as well, or even better. • Different touches to deepen and heal physical trauma, such as holding ankles or wrists to imagine shackles. This works even stronger if the client assumes the original body posture. If they were bound, they may now wrestle themselves free, etc. All this is regular Gestalt.

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• • • •

Or place a strong, straight finger on spots where weapons (or needles) have once been stuck in the body. To better connect with the body during or after the catharsis: press firmly with your thumbs on the soles of the client's feet, on the ball of the foot or slightly below it, so that they must put strength in their legs. Pressing with the flat hand or one finger on the chest or abdomen. To deepen the reliving. If they hold their breath, suggest then to breathe calmly and deeply, against all pressure. With the flat hand on the back or on the stomach, or both, supporting virtual vomiting. Focusing a charge on one body spot, one single thought, one single feeling: touch briefly and firmly and confirm verbally. W hen counting backwards in time, or counting forward (in a future pace): touching the up­ per arm or shoulder. This is rarely necessary, but may be helpful.

Touching can help to calm and offer to support the client, when he or she threatens to flip out: • On the shoulder or upper arm, to calm the client. W hen clients become scared or nervous and seem to go out of their body or when they become too absorbed in the reliving and for­ get the here-and-now. • On the forehead and closed eyes, very lightly: so as safely arrive in a disembodied or pre­ human experience. Finally, touch plays a crucial role when you are being physically assaulted by the client. This can easily be avoided by not taking on a clearly aggressive or otherwise unsuitable client - and by not being an extraordinarily incompetent and infuriating therapist. It remains also possible to apply physical pressure if the client refuses to pay. But under most circumstances, legal pressure is to be preferred in such cases.

8.6 Back pressing or muscle pressing Unprocessed charges we also may find in bodily tensions and pains. One way to detect them is by back pressing. Back pressing sessions are generally short, often twenty minutes, rarely more than half an hour. We also call it muscle pressing, because we can also use the leg muscles or arm m us­ cles. Don't press the soft parts of the body. We can use any body part with a firm tissue like muscles or bones below the skin. This way of working has certainly to do with muscles and muscle tensions, but probably with the subcutaneous tissue as well. Back pressing is, because it's purely physical, a suitable regression technique for people who are rational. In a successful session, no matter how much the sensitive spot may hurt initially, the pain and even the sensitivity are gone within ten minutes. It surprises clients how their body reacts, what's stored in their body and what comes out of it. Back pressing sessions often access experiences that differ from the ones we come across in or­ dinary sessions. We frequently come across physical injuries, often fatal wounds. And often with nonverbal or semi-verbal lifetimes, such as lives in the Stone Age, or lives of much toil and few talk­ ing: slaves, serfs, prostitutes. Take a life as a slave. You've bent your back your whole life. That's stored in your lower back. Then the whole area hurts. If we press the most painful spot, w e'll not get a death experience, but the hangover of forever walking and working bent over. By locating tensions through pressing with your fingers, the unprocessed charges surface in recol­ lected feelings and images. Back pressing is especially suitable for hangovers with physical charges. Probably even soft parts are suitable as well, though I only would press these parts if you have suf­

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ficient knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Press only lightly at the back with people who've had hernia. The harvest that we may collect in several sessions, revitalizes the client. Sometimes it's strenu­ ous work, if we come across charges anchored in postulates. This method can also be used to deal with the hangovers of everyday life. If you come home with reluctance or listlessness due to a bad day, you can discharge that 'dirt skirt' through back pressing. It may hurt for a moment, but then the fatigue is gone. You look for those spots with the tips of your thumbs, your index fingers or your middle fin­ gers. Clip your fingernails! I use only the back, although sometimes you need to go toward the but­ tocks. That's a bother, because you must press harder to get at the sensitive spot. Also pressing on the front of the chest may work well. Start at the neck. Slowly move your fingers left and right just beside the spine downwards, and then upwards again, a little further away from the spine. Continue until you find a point which turns to be sensitive, sore or painful to the client and explore the immediate surroundings by touch until you find the most sensitive point. Find the right angle at which to press. The more precise the sore spot you've located, the better the session proceeds and the less pressure you need to apply. I do not consider the meaning of acupuncture or acupressure points. I go purely by the reactions of the client. When pressing harder is necessary, I use my thumbs, and if the spot is large, an elbow. A sore spot often feels like a pea or ridge. Press firmly - but don't make a torture out of it - and ask the client for the emotions, impressions and thoughts that arise. Usually, a lot of bodily energy is being released. The client goes into a mini-regression, focused and anchored by our pressing on the sore point. You can do it on yourself at your neck and shoulders. As you press, you ask what kind of feeling it triggers. We create a somatic (S) and we look for the accompanying emotion (E) or an imagination (I) or a word (V). Typically, emotions arise like anger, despair, disappointment, frustration, guilt, betrayal and so on. Or there's the impression of an environment, like a dark forest, or a phrase like 1 hate those bitches. Ask with a forest for the em o­ tion. Then for impressions of what happened there. Ask with that phrase if one can feel that hatred right now. Then ask for impressions of the situation. While you press, you may also count backwards and let the client arrive at the situation that caused this stress or pain. Once the original trauma has become clear, let the client breathe calmly and deeply against the pressure on the back. Keep your arm stretched while pressing, or press with the tip of the elbow, though you miss the sensitivity of the thumb. If the client is about to escape from the relived experience, or hesitates about what's happening, then press a little harder. This is a good antidote against the continuous, noncommittal drivel that is usual in therapy. Of course, the square of trust may be put to the test. Especially tough, slow, protracted situations come up, like slavery or prolonged sexual abuse, often stored in the lower back. Or there're experiences from primitive lives where consciousness and mental abilities were dim or underused. Verbal methods are less suitable to get at such experi­ ences. Sometimes, the consciousness of clients is reduced when you press. They almost come out of it because you trigger an experience with fainting, hypnosis or drugs. The reduced consciousness is part of the regression. It's comparable to yawning during a regression, a boil-off*: the evaporation of ener­ gies of unconsciousness. Moments of drowsiness, yawning and occasionally dizziness during the ses­ sion often release residual physical and mental charges from earlier experiences with fainting. Keep talking during a boil-off: Just continue. You don't know exactly what's happening, but just stay with it.

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Release a residue by drumming quickly and gently with the side of your palms or with your fin­ gers. When there's a catharsis, the pain disappears. You then can press as hard as you like, the client just smiles. I finish with gently rubbing the spot. Back pressing is a form of exploration. You can start with a problem. You want to work on some­ thing. Why would you do that by pressing on the client's back? Because other bridges don't work, especially with rational people. And the body's back is a safe area to press firmly. We use the area from the neck to the lower back. As I said, I start at the neck and move from either side of the spine down. Then a bit further away from the spine back up. Then still further away from the spine back down. I press firmly. If a spot is sensitive or painful, the client says so. Then we seek for the exact spot. Below is an example: C: That hurts. T: Left or right? C: A little more to the right. T: A little more. More or less? (T uses a thumb, pressing near the right place, while he keeps ask­ ing.) More or less? C: More. T: Here about? OK. What kind o f pain is it? What do you feel? (T keeps pressing the sore spot.) C: Something cutting. T: Just imagine something is cutting. What's the first image that comes to mind? C: A knife. T: Just imagine that a knife has entered here. Where are you right now? C: In a cave. T: How deep goes the knife? C: Five inches, maybe six.

C turns out to be a man, in his late twenties, or early thirties. He stands braced against the cold cave wall, as if paralyzed. The knife is in his back, no longer held, but neither withdrawn. C can hardly breathe. He vomits. Then he becomes weak and collapses. The last thing he feels is darkness, cold, and despair. He realizes he's dying. He was hunting, far from home, had caught a large hare, made a fire in the cave and was pre­ paring his food. He is suddenly stabbed from behind. T asks for impressions of his daily life just before. There're a few small huts. He lives in one of them with a wife and two children. He hunts to feed his family. A forested area long, long ago. They don't even wear normal clothes. T: Go to the moment you die. What's your last experience in the body? C: Trembling. (Trembles with left arm.) T: The knife's still in there? C: Hm. T: Feel that the knife's still in it. (Presses still harder with thumb.) Breathe! Keep breathing! What do you want to do with the knife? C: It should be removed. T: Can you get to it? Just try it. I'll help you pull it out, but first see if you can do it yourself. Get out o f your paralysis. Come out o f it. Take the knife out. Take it out. Keep breathing. Come out o f your paraly­ sis. Feel that the strength is returning in your arms. Can't you do it? C: I can't. T: Then I'm going to pull the knife out for you. I count to three and at three I pull it out. 1, 2, 3. (Pulls away the thumb.) Let it just bleed a bit. Feel it's released. (Taps with fingertips on the spot.) Let it go. Keep breathing. What happens now? C: The trembling is gone. T: Good. How does this spot on your back feel now? C: Burning, sore. T: Say to that place that it can heal and slowly close the wound. I f there's dirt in it, you first see blood seeping out o f it. As if that wound cleanses itself.

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C: Hm. T: Is there anything you've seen or heard before the knife came in? C: 1just needed to lit the fire. It was ready to be lit. T: You now see it from above. You see yourself surprised that the wood is ready. You see yourself lighting the fire. Are you about to skin the hare? C: I'm first going to warm myself. Tilt's cold, apparently. C: Hm. T: Now you see it all from above. You now see someone with a knife. What's that person like? C: Some kind o f ugly, fat little man. T: Is he hunting as well or does he stay there, live there? C: He lives there. He's slowly approaching. He has cold, blue eyes. T: You now get an impression o f why he let the knife being stuck in your back. C: I turn around in a flash. I don't see him well, but he scares and darts away. T: And now you see how the young hunter dies there. Has he thought o f his home? C: Yes. T: What does he feel? C: Despair. He must keep breathing first. That's difficult because o f the pain. T: You now see the moment he died. Does that little man come back? C: He looks at the body and takes the hare with him. T: And that knife? C: That's still in my back. T: Does he leave it there? (T looks surprised. Knives may be precious in primitive conditions.) C: He walks in a curve around it. T: You now get an impression what's going through his mind as he does this. What kind o f thoughts does he have? C: He's obsessed with food. He takes the hare with him. T: You now get an impression o f what happened to the hunter's body. C: It' remains lying there. T: What would you do with that hunter? C: Making sure he gets warm. T: Just imagine that you're in your present-day house and see that hunter enter, cold and numb. Make him warm. Say: I've pulled out the knife. C: Hm. T: How does this place feel now? (T firmly presses the same spot and moves the thumb around it.) C: I feel nothing ... Ouch! T: What o f that experience is still here? C: Cold. T: Imagine that this cold slowly moves out o f it. (T taps with fingers on the spot and continues mov­ ing back and forth in circles with the thumb.) It already was cold before the knife got there, right? It was winter or something? C: Autumn. Cold and wet. T: Let all the cold o f that experience recede through here. T: Imagine that the door o f your present room opens and his wife and two children enter. (Holds the thumb still on the spot.) What happens now? C: Amazement. Joy. Sadness. T: OK, as long as the warmth is there. C: Yes, he doesn't need that plaid anymore. T: You had given him a plaid? Good. How does this spot feel now? C: I only feel your finger. T: Then it's all right. (Taps and rubs.) OK? Do you suffer from cold in this life? C: I always have cold feet... You pressed that spot and immediately I saw myself in that cave sitting by the fire. Remarkable. T: There's less occupying our minds in primitive life. We think and imagine less. It's as it is. O f course there're feelings like despair and paralysis.

Often the first thing you come across in back pressing is a mortal wound in the back. That can be from a bullet, a spear or a knife. A wound at the front you typically get in a fight. A wound from

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behind you usually get when you flee away or if one of your own people attacks you. In back wounds we often get to deal with betrayal. This was sneaky, but it had nothing to do with treason. W hat's also typical is that you get into a primitive life. If you die while the weapon is still in you, then you remain stuck in that feeling. It feels as if it's still inside you, and you have to pull it out. Usually, I let clients do it themselves. They must regain their power. Here that didn't work, probably because the back was too damaged. This applies only if the weapon is still stuck there. The weapon m ay've been broken off with a piece of it still embed­ ded in the wound, there may be poison in it, there may be dirt in it. If someone bled to death, you let the blood come back. These are things to be found out during the back pressing. Once you've found the most painful or sensitive spot and there's a reaction, you stay at that place with your thumb. If impressions arise, I keep my thumb on it without really pressing. If a signifi­ cant moment arises, like when the knife comes in, then I press harder. When I say: we pull out the knife, I press with full force for a few seconds. Then the effect is greatest once the pressure goes. Back pressing is exhausting. If you need to anchor for a while: keep your arm straight. Som e­ times you can use your own weight. You can use the tip of your elbow on the sensitive spot. The disadvantage of using the elbow is that you sense less of what's going on. Once the traumatic situation has been relived, I often tap on the sore spot and just around it to release any remaining tension. The client is in a fixation, often a death experience; moreover, tissues tend to close up tight around a knife or any other pointed weapon or instrument once it penetrates the body. Tapping on the spot of the original entry wound and immediately around it, helps to loosen the cramped tissues. Only if the client isn't very motivated, or has little bodily feeling, nothing significant may come up or everything remains vague. Sometimes you press on something and it hurts. You try to find the exact place and then it's gone, or starts to move. That usually indicates an alien energy, an attach­ ment. Occasionally, it's a kind of street urchin life of the client. You have those street urchins who survive on the streets, and their instinct is: never get caught. In such cases the sensitive spot is spread across the entire back. Also this is the case when people have been injured in different places, like being whipped or they are hit by a huge boulder or a blunt weapon. It runs, as it were, away from under your fingers. What do you do then? Then you press suddenly more firmly and say: And now you'll just stay here! Logically, this is or seems - as in many things we do - nonsense, but it really works. C: Betrayal is my theme. T: Let me know when you feel a spot that's sensitive or painful. (T presses with both thumbs along the spine from neck to lower back; goes a little further away from the spine from lower back to neck; then a bit further from the spine from neck to lower back, and back up again.) C: A little to the right now. T: More or less ? C: Less. Less. No. T: Not clear here? C: No. T presses further on back. Goes to both sides. C: Go again to the left. I felt something, but not really painful. No, where you were just now. No. No. If you press like that, yes, a sore point. T: More or less? C: About the same. There you must be. Hm. Yes. Here I feel something. (At the side.) T: What kind o f feeling is this? (T continues to press firmly on the spot till he says: just pull it all out.) C: A sharp sensation. T: Sharp. Is it a scratch or a stab or a cut? C: More like a stab.

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T: Just imagine that something stabs in here. What's your first impression? What sticks in it? C: A thin sword, a rapier rather. T: Feel it, and see where you are when the rapier enters. C: In a library. T: Do you yourself have a rapier in your hand right at that moment or not? C: Yes. T: Is it a duel or fight with several people? C: 1 get an impression 1 saw recently in a session. I got stabbed in the back. It was after a friendly contest that I had won. I turn my back and then the other picks up my sword and he stabs me down. T: How deep does that rapier penetrate? C: From my side through my heart into my throat. T: So it's been stabbed rather fiercely. C: Yes. With full force. I turn around to see who's behind me. T: Is the sword still in there? Or has he withdrawn it immediately? C: No, that sword's still in it, because he's scared. He runs away. I cannot do anything anymore. I fall to the ground. T: What's the last thing you feel in your body? C: Nausea. T: What's your last thought? Your last decision? C: I have to give up. I don't want to, but I won't make it. T: It's time to draw out that rapier. You try it. C: I can't reach it. T: Use your hands and arms freely. This rapier that you feel here, just pull it out. C: Yes. (Pulls on hand T.) T: Yes, pull it out. Yes, yes, harder. Is there blood coming out? C: It gushes out. T: Just close it immediately. Enough has gushed out to clean it. Now it should be sealed. Just imagine that it closes up. (T lays a flat hand on the spot of the wound.) C: Yes. T: Feel the relief and tell your body, the tissues there: it's gone: it's no longer there, it's out. C: Yes. T: What do you feel now? What's in your mind? C: It's OK, I can let go now. T: Imagine that from the point at your throat the inner wound closes up and slowly heals. C: Hm. T: Imagine that you now have that rapier in your hand, with the blood still on it. What kind o f feeling does it give you? C: Ifeel my strength returning. T: Just imagine that you clean off the sword, under a pump. T: It's already become clear in the earlier session what happened? C: Yes. T: Do you feel you need to do something more? How does this spot feel now when I press it? (Presses again on the same spot. Taps a little.) Is it still sore? C: No, it doesn't feel sore. No, it feels better. T: Can it cure itselffurther from now on? C: Yes. T: Is your throat free? C: Yes.

If during our dying there's something in our body that doesn't belong there, then we take this with us in our self-image and our bodily feeling to the current life. The bullet may still be in you. Often I press the spot where the bullet entered and instruct, especially if someone dies in despair or paraly­ sis, to get that bullet out now, to pull it out. This is a general technique that you don't exclusively apply in back pressing. Always verify if anything is stuck in the wound, when someone dies.Sometimes the weapon is withdrawn, but a shard or splinter is broken off and left in your body. In one way or another,that's there in the body scheme, as if it's still there. This may lead to a chronic backache, for instance.

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Similar wounds during dying in other parts of the body also account for 'unexplainable' psycho­ somatic complaints. Remarkably, we can also find in the body hangovers from experiences after death. Mostly it's prolonged fatigue or prolonged discomfort or pain, which you didn't shed after death, you still carry with you. A poorly completed back pressing session results in a sensitive spot and a whiny, tired feeling up to fourteen days after the session. A good back pressing session vitalizes both mentally and physically Some client once told me that her friend recently told her she looked so fantastic and radiant. It seems like you've come from a regression. Regression therapy is not only about telling soul stories. It's energetic and physical redemption work.

8.7 Verbal body explorations In an open exploration of the relation with the body we let the phrase My body is ... supplement over and over again until nothing new comes up. A tall woman, just over 35, is always at loggerheads with her body. She completes this phrase 45 times without hesitation before she repeats something: M y body is old-fashioned. With further elabo­ ration we find fifteen different lives and naturally many experiences in the present life. We solved many negative charges and confusions about the body. And we found resources for a better rela­ tionship with her body. My body i s ... 1. large 2. soft 3. uZhJ 4. woolly 5. sweet 6. strong 7. limp 8. bony 9. thick 10. supple 11. trembling 12. open 13. high 14. itchy 15. excited 16. awkward 17. long 18. misshapen 19. nice 20. female 21. girlish 22. male 23. angelic 24. fine 25. elegant 26. pleasant 27. sensual 28. my house 29. my refuge 30. my wing 31. my star 32. my dance

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33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

my income quite rural elastic flexible beautiful mine old-fashioned delicate aggressive my history like a painting badly drawn old-fashioned

You can elaborate any response with pull-down chains. Or you check immediately which sentences are charged most by letting the client repeat one by one three times and ask for impressions, feel­ ings and bodily sensations. Also note physical reactions and voice changes that indicate charges. Don't forget your inner detective. A phrase like my body is mine reveals that it hasn't always been hers. Or was in danger of no longer remaining hers. Below follows an example session with the sentence: My body is just a body. T: Close your eyes. I'm not going to do a complete session, just clarifying the meaning o f that sentence for you. My body is just a body. Say that five times aloud, with increasing attention. Watch what happens inside you. C: My body is just a body. (5x) T: What comes to mind? C: It's just a body. T: Imagine that you look at a body, with the thought: It's just a body. See that body and say: It's just a body. What kind o f body do you see and in what kind o f situation? What's the first thing that comes to mind? C: I see many different bodies. Big, small, fat, thin. Rows o f people. T: Yes. What do you think about them? C: The only thing I think about it is: seeing what's inside. T: Imagine that you ever had a deep experience in which you saw those bodies and thought: these are just bodies. Go back to a place and a time where you experienced that deeply. Where are you? C: I'm completely blank. I see nothing. T: Is that nice or isn't it? C: I want to experience something, I don't really like this. T: The word 'just, ' that's the point. Is that aloof or indifferent? C: Indifferent. T: When is a body just a body? C: I f you're dead. T: Just go to on an experience where you see a dead body or many dead bodies. Just bodies. An experience where you feel indifferent. C: I vaguely see myself as an Indian medicine man indifferent towards the body, only interested in the soul. T: At what point do you say: It's just a body. Is it about your own body or the body o f another? C: The bodies o f others. I see myself as a man and that's my way o f working. T: On what occasions do you say this especially: It's just a body. C: If it fails. If I have no control over the situation. If they don't heal. T: What do you feel when you do succeed? C: Then I tower above myself. Even above my body maybe. T: What do you think at that time about the bodies o f others? Just bodies? Ordon't youknow anything about that anymore? C: In myself I do know this. T: With what or whom are you busy if it fails, and you say: Just bodies? Or: Just a body. With whom are you busy?

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C: Also with myself. T: That's the core o f the issue then. C: I lose control, if it doesn't go right, if my work is ineffective ... I don't know what I wanted to say any­ more. O f course they do expect me to heal them. It's all a sham. T: Maybe you cannot stomach failure. C: Hm. T: So, either you rise above yourself, or you fence yourself with: It's just a body. What does it do to you if you say one more time: my body is just my body? C: My body is just my body. T: Are you anchored in your body when you say this? C: 7feel something strange in my legs. T: You're now going into your body and you experience now what your body feels when you say: my body is just a body. You feel as if it were the echo in your body. C: Then I feel it in my arms and my legs. T: What does the body think o f it when you say that? C: It gives tension. It's rather uncomfortable. T: The body is yet again disqualified. It's not abandoned, it's not abused, but it's treated as a second class citizen by you: just a body. Can you feel the reaction in your limbs? C: Yes. T: If you do not see yourself as a body, how do you see yourself? I am ... C: A soul. T: Tell me: I'm just a soul. C: Oh no, I'm not going say that. T: Well, you've got enough insight for now. Thank you. Your function is to heal and when you fail, you treat it like something insignificant. Your own body takes a dim view o f that.

We look at the relationship between our consciousness and our body. I do not claim that the body has its own consciousness, its own personality; I can only say that if in therapy, we personify the body as an entity in its own right, we can communicate with it and receive valid information. Typical for verbal body explorations is that we find both weaknesses and strengths, both handicaps and resources. My eyes are ... My chest is... My feet are ... Completing and exploring phrases like those can lead to most interesting and rewarding sessions.

8.8 Robot visualization A somewhat unusual way to explore the body and even heal it, is to visualize it as a robot. Obvi­ ously, this is a dissociation technique. It's even a double dissociation. You place the body like a ro­ bot outside of you and then you see the robot on a screen. I use this both in individual sessions and in group sessions. Clients imagine that they are in a small waiting room that's clean and modern. Very clean and very modern. There are no other people. They sit alone in a very modern, comfortable chair. Now they see the reason they're there: their personal robot is there for a general checkup.How does it look? How large is it? W hat's it made of? Metal? Plastic? A buzzer sounds above the door. Next client! With this robot they walk across a short hallway and now enter an ultramodern workshop with all kinds of equipment. The robot is placed behind a screen. The client goes to a control panel with a monitor. Next to it is a white button. If it is presses, the image of the robot appears on the screen. The robot is being scanned. Directly afterwards a flashing light indicates the most important spot where the robot needs upkeep. A red light indicates that a part needs to be replaced, a yellow light indicates a faulty connection and a blue light indicates the need for internal cleaning. We tell in advance to the client what the colors will mean.

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The client walks to the robot and opens the indicated part of the robot. All the tools or spare parts needed, lie ready at hand on a desk. The client now starts to clean or replace or repair it and does whatever is necessary to get back in prime condition. If the client is ready, he returns to the control terminal. There's a big green button. If he presses it, there appears a percentage on the screen, be­ tween 0% and 100%. This indicates to what extent the repair has been successful. The client again presses the white button. A new light flashes on a different spot on the blue­ print of the robot. The client now knows where the second most important troubling part is and what kind of intervention is necessary. This is the second part that needs to be cleaned, repaired or replaced. Again to the screen, pressing the green button again, and again a percentage. Then press for the third and last time the white button and do the third intervention, if neces­ sary. At the end again the green control button. The client sees for the third and last time what per­ centage of the last intervention has been successful. Optionally, everything is summarized in an overall condition percentage. Together with the refurbished robot the client leaves the workshop and the building. After the visualization, explore with clients what feelings or impressions have arisen and how they've interpreted these three maintenance jobs. Of course this method works particularly well with scientific and technical people, science-fiction buffs and slightly autistic people. Especially psychosomatic problems and their psychological aspects can be detected and at least partially solved.

8.9 Muscle testing Physical reactions are used for intuitively answering questions and more in particular for testing food or medicine. The muscle test, usually an arm test, is part of the Touch fo r Health method and of what's often called Applied Kinesiology. It's an alternative to finger signals used in hypnotherapy, but works more intensely and consciously. Errol Schubot gives a variant of the arm test that he calls Creative Source Therapy (Schubot 1987). In regression therapy the arm test gives the possibility to check regression material and anchor it. Is it real? Is it my experience? Is my impression correct? Are the impressions o f place and time correct? With the arm test clients are usually sitting, sometimes lying on their back, and we ask them to keep their left arm (the right arm for left-handed people) stretched. They focus on the relevant im­ pression, emotion or thought, while giving counter-pressure when we apply pressure on their wrist with our flat hand. If the arm goes down, this indicates an energy leak that has to do with the ques­ tion or situation they focused on. We ask what they felt during the downward movement or imme­ diately afterwards. Pain is often a signal for deep-seated charges. Stop using this method before fatigue sets in.The test can also be done seated. Some use the lying forearm which they try to lift with one or more fingers, feeling the force of resistance. Others test the force needed to separate the clients thumb and index finger. The arm test can be used to strengthen the client's sense of identity. Most clients attracted by rein­ carnation therapy are sensitive, sometimes even psychic. They easily identify with the experience of others. Often they doubt whether an impression or experience really is their own. In group sessions, the risk of mix-up is even greater. In such confusion and uncertainty, muscle tests may bring clarity. First test the statement I've experienced this myself. If the answer is negative, then test I've identified with someone else. If this answer is positive, we can find out with whom the client identified. Sensitive people who easily imagine things can see images that are projections of hopes or fears, or just are pictures of things they've heard about. Also movie images may contaminate impressions.

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The muscle test is somatic and so works well with intellectually oriented people with few or re­ pressed emotions. Other reasons to apply the test are: • • •

a blurred sense of self; mixed feelings and conflicting thoughts; uncertainty and fuzziness, especially after sessions that aren't properly finished.

If confusion remains, an aura exploration in combination with a muscle test may help. A muscle test can also excellently be used to answer the eight questions of LeCron. LeCron wielded standard questions to understand phantom pains, which can be used for other problems as well: • • • • • • • •

Is it the consequence of a trauma? Is it an expression of feeling guilty and punishing yourself? Is it symbol language? Is it a conflict between what you want and what you can? Is it a conflict between what you want and what you are allowed? Has this problem a purpose? To achieve something or to avoid something? Is it an internalization or imprint? Do you identify with someone else? Have you accepted a conclusion from someone else?

LeCron used finger signals under hypnosis. We can do better, at least more direct, using spontane­ ous somatics. If the client has a sore throat, use the throat. W hen after a question the somatic in­ creases, it means a yes. Decreasing or remaining the same is no. Nevertheless, regression remains the best way to find answers. If we doubt the veracity of an experience, we can test this in two ways. The first is to check all pos­ sible answers separately. For example: • •

This peasant life I've lived myself. This peasant life I haven't lived myself.

If the client holds his arm stretched the first time, but not the second time, the answer is clearly 'yes'. The advantage of this method is that four answers are possible. When the experienced life was partly real and partly imagination, then both tests yield positive responses. If both statements yield negative responses, there might have been no peasant life at all: that experience may've been fantasy or psychodrama. The disadvantage of this method is that clients may believe that after a positive response to the first question the second question must be answered negatively, and vice versa. This can affect the responses. Usually, therefore, testing only the positive statement is the best thing to do. When the arm re­ mains upright, this indicates that something is real, can be taken seriously. Even if the client expects something to be fantasy, the right statement to test is a positive statement like: this peasant life I've lived myself. Start the test by testing the procedure with simple questions about name, age and residence. Throw in one or two obviously false statements and see what happens. This pretest also shows the difference in muscle response between true and false statements. As the following example shows, the arm test can be used as an alternative to finger signals, with­ out the need for prior hypnosis. The stretched, powerfully resistant arm is also a good somatic an­ chor. We ask after each response what someone felt during it. Someone had experiences that he believed had belonged to a Celtic life. He isn't sure whether this experience, although concrete and convincing, is about the same lifetime which he dreamed

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of a decade ago. Or has that dream affected his regression now? Is his association with Celts and England an intuition he can trust? His older sister in that life reminds him of a recent girlfriend in his current life. Is this just an association or has she really been his older sister in the past? C: I've once really lived the life I've experienced in the regression. This is a general test of truth. His arm remains upright. He feels proud about it. He realizes now that he was a proud man in that life, and that he's proud of this proud life. And that this life is strongly present in his body right now. He feels happy about all this. C: I was a Celt then. He resists the pressure, but not quite. He has a tired feeling in his arm. Ap­ parently this statement is not entirely true. Why isn't it? He now remembers he had then travelled a lot in his younger years. Perhaps he came to live among the Celts at a later date. C: I lived as an adult among the Celts. His arm remains easily upright. Bingo! C: I was living then in the England o f today. His arm falls flat. He's disappointed. C: It was in present-day France. His arm remains upright, but not quite. Again he gets a somewhat tired feeling. Apparently this statement is not entirely true. He feels that he should better stop trying to locate this past life in present-day countries. Later he turns out to have lived in Brit­ tany, which still hardly identifies itself with France. C: Suzanne was then my older sister. (His arm falls flat. He feels a strange confusion. Was she someone else to him in that life? Or was she his sister in yet another lifetime? C: Suzanne was my sister in another lifetime. His arm remains strongly upright. He feels satisfied. At this moment he doesn't have to find out where and when that was. He realizes he still cares about her. He wants to ponder about that later.

Trust the physical reactions, but not as a mechanical oracle that faultlessly reveals the truth. Look for additional feelings, impressions or other bodily sensations. Try to get the total picture. We should say at the outset that one should trust one's arm, but not get fixated too much on it and not trust it blindly, unquestionably. Feel yourself calm and whole, curious yet relaxed. Muscle testing is apparently a valid method, but certainly not always reliable. That is, the in­ formation thus retrieved, could - as with all intuitive methods - yield surprisingly accurate and detailed information, but also produce noise or distorted information. The method must suit you as a therapist, you must gain experience with it, and you should always first check whether you can use it with the client at hand. Always pretest. The outcomes with simple, factual questions should be consistent and true. The body presents us with many challenges, but it also helps us to identify mental and psychologi­ cal problems. And it helps us to sort out those problems - and heal them. Yes, our relationship with our body. Whole books can be written about it - and are written about it. Between our mortal body and our immortal soul there's an almost impossible love. Even though it's just a story: think of the love between Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings. The deepest love is an impossible love. Even if we don't experience that deep love: mutual acceptance, respect and trust already may do us a lot of good.

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CHAPTER 9. THE TRICKS OF THE TRADE

There are experienced and inexperienced therapists, wise and foolish therapists, sensitive and in­ sensitive therapists, creative and mechanical therapists. Sometimes we're more one thing and some­ times more the other. In so far technique may make a difference, this chapter indicates useful tech­ niques. Techniques that may speed up the process, lessen folly, make interventions more elegant and creativity more likely.

9.1 Structuring sessions Each session should be a complete therapeutic cycle. One session may even consist of several cycles. After one and a half hours you may have completed a particular issue. Or you've reached a point of saturation, both for you and the client. You notice that the client or you yourself must take a short break. Then you can still head on another issue in the remaining hour. Each cycle ends once the contract has been fulfilled. Each cycle has a clear start and a clear fin­ ish. Without a clear start no clear finish. The simplest cycle is symmetrical. The middle stage, the fourth, is where the actual work is done: regression, personification and energy work. A good session is like a beautiful piece of music, like a successful jam session for two players. Usu­ ally, a session consists of intake, induction, the actual therapy, completion and a review. Something needs to precede the induction, something that's often underestimated and forgotten. Many therapists don't even have a clue it exists: finding and capturing the starting point: the precise, actual issue that should be the focus and objective of the session. I call it the contract. Once more, the seven stages: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The The The The The The The

intake contract induction actual session, resulting in a catharsis consolidation and integration closure review

Naturally, this is, like all models, just a schematic and simplified representation of reality. Sometimes we find during the integration, or even during the review, that an essential element is still missing - or simply was forgotten in the turmoil of the session. Something wasn't noticed or wasn't noted down. Do you have a contract? Then look for the most direct way into the regression. Beginners tend to postpone regression instructions endlessly. They tend to chatter and discuss and philosophize at the pool's edge. Just jump in! The water really isn't going to be less wet. The worst thing is when you're going to ask for a recent experience while there's already an E and an S. I t ' s like when a patient visits a doctor in extreme pain, and the doctor asks the client whether he or she can remember having had such pain before. The worst is when we're going to give relaxation instructions while the initial charges already appear before we've properly asked about them. As if you're going to search for water, the ground is obviously soaked or the water already wells up from the ground, and you instruct the client to first seek first high and dry ground to later search for water from there. Close your eyes. Do you feel that feeling now? Yes? Where do you feel it in your body? There? OK, 1 count backwards from 5 to 1 and you go back to the very first time you've felt this feeling

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on this spot. 5-4-3-2-1. Where are you ? What are you doing? What's happening? Your first impressions. If that scares you, start a little candy shop. Then you can sell sweets. And licorice. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

9.2 Choosing methods and blending methods Below I give a general menu for the choice of method at the beginning of the session. Which method is suitable under which circumstances? The following diagram shows this in detail. A + is a primary option, a 0 is secondary option

METHODS

BP

SB

EB

IB

OB

VB

VE

AE

1. Open exploraton

+

+

+

2. Self-knowledge

+

+

0

PS

MT

+

3. Directed exploration

+

+

4. Inzooming exploration

+

+

5. Mental - broad

+

- actual

+

- recursive

+

- latent

+ +

6. Emotional - broad

0

+

- actual - recursive

+

+

- latent

+

+

7. Somatisch - broadd - actual +

- recursive - latent

0

8. Suicidal/compulsive/DIS

0

+ +

+

9. Spiritual problem

0

+

10. Checking material

+

+ +

11. Controller 12. Passivity BP = back pressing SB = somatic bridge EB = emotional bridge IB = imaginative bridge OB = oracle bridge

+

VB = verbal bridge VE = verbal exploration AE = aura exploration PS = personification MT = muscle test

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0

In the diagram above, a + stands for a suitable method, and a 0 for a sometimes suitable method. If nothing is indicated, this method is usually not appropriate to dealing with this problem. Broad means that the problem is pervasive, but ill-defined, and has to be explored and pinpointed further. Actual means that the client is experiencing the problem during the intake, that it's present. Recur­ sive refers to charges that hinder their own solution, and latent means problems that the client doesn't experience right now, even when prompted to do so. Use an exploratory method for an exploratory contract: the oracle bridge, a verbal exploration, an aura exploration or an open personification. A special form of exploration is a prelude to a therapy: finding out which problem should be dealt with first. Then you could the muscle test also. With a somatic problem, use the somatic bridge, or perhaps back pressing, unless the problem is recursive (headache) or isn't felt at the beginning of the session. Then use aura exploration. With an em otional problem that's felt at the beginning of the session, you use an em otional bridge. You find and use a somatic with it, and then have the E + S bridge. If the problem isn't felt, or if it's recursive, you use personification. Som etim es the emotion isn't felt, but there's a clear somatic. Then see if you can get at the E by way of the S or try to go directly into the session with only a S. With a mental problem, the verbal bridge is the most appropriate method, possibly supple­ mented - or preceded - by a verbal exploration. With a highly recursive mental problem, such as confusion or incomprehension, you can use aura exploration. With heavy, complicated problems that are both mentally and emotionally charged, like suicidal thoughts, multiple personality, addictions and forms of obsessions or compulsions, personification is the best method, possibly supported by muscle testing to distinguish the different subpersonali­ ties from each other. Make sure at the start of the session that you're in contact with the sound part of the client, the part that wants to heal. Also in highly recursive problems like overall passivity or control freaks, personification is the best way to proceed. If clients resist a charge such as lust, let them visualize the block as a substance or energy in or at the body. W hat does it look like? W hat do you associate it with? For example, red dice appear. W hat they mean we don't know yet. Go back to the first time when these red dice emerged and entered your body. If the visualized charge is unpleasant or even frightening, for example a black swirling mass, a centipede or a sharp knife, then remove that first. We may continue with some more energy work. I let the client put whatever it is in a glass container, tightly closed if necessary, to come back to it later. With objects and things like boulders, we first try personification. You now get an impression o f who did place that on you / did stick it in you. It m ay've been the client himself. Then go to the place and time when that happened. Once we've identified the charges, but these charges conflict with each other or glue together, with which do we start? What do you feel now? Which feeling or thought is strongest? Go to the moment when you felt this thought the most intense. Follow the connected charges each back to their origins. In which order did they appear? Let the client go back to the last moment before the first charge. Then the next? And so on, one by one. When images emerge without emotions, we have several options. Ask for instance what clients par­ ticularly like, let them relive such a situation, and then suggest that this situation turns into its op­ posite. Inversions often trigger the repressed negative emotion after all. Or evoke the emotion through forced breathing. Suggest the client that this loosens the emo­ tions, or that every breathing in evokes a bit of emotion, and every breathing out releases some.

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9.3 Outwitting initial blocks There are blocks to aspects of the reliving and there are initial blocks: to enter reliving at all. Initial blocks bar entrance and later blocks hinder or even stop the experience. Blocks during the regres­ sion reveal themselves in the reliving becoming superficial, wavering, winding, skipping parts of the story, or rushing. Blocks either stop the reliving or let it go off track. What do you do when clients falter? First check whether that's because they experience nothing or that they have difficulty talking about it. Note how clients express their block. Use their wording as a verbal bridge. Usually, the client may resume the reliving quite easily. W hen people feel too tense to start, use the tension as the starting point. If they d on 't even close their eyes, accept that. Som etim es it is general stress or w orries: the hangovers of ev e­ ryday life. Then a preceding relaxation m ay ease things. A hypnotic induction can be effective as well. The only true con train d ication for a regression here is lack of trust betw een client and therapist. If people worry it w on't work, say: That's quite common. What do you want now? I want to try it anyway. OK, then w e ll try it. Fear of failure is usually due to both a trauma as well as a character postulate. It's most common among people with overly high expectations. They're so afraid of dis­ appointment, that they factor it in at the start. Or they're so afraid to be rejected, that they preemp­ tively reject others themselves. Since the therapist is one of the others as well, that makes for a diffi­ cult start. Clients may be ambivalent at the very start: one side of them says yes, another side says no. We separate the two sides with personification. If the client is ambivalent about the therapist, we have a problem. I really wanted to come here, and I'm glad I did, but still I felt doubt on the way over here. Such a client suffers from a reluctant or troublemaking subpersonality. If a client says: I have my doubts, o f course; 1 wonder whether you (so not me!) will succeed, then answer that you wonder whether the cli­ ent will succeed. A typical com plaint that makes a regression alm ost impossible, is 1 cannot reach my feelings. Usually they feel bad about that. Som etim es they sweat and groan with pounding heart, but sup­ posedly cannot reach their feelings. They mean they can't switch off their critical mind and be unreservedly em otional. They want to have at the beginning of the process, what may occur at the end. In the reverse situation, when em otions seem to drown the process, ask if they can cope with it. If they say no, ask Why not? What's stopping you? Or: What do you need to be able to cope? Your first impression. If someone doesn't know how to answer, Why don't you know? What's holding you back? Or: What's the worst that might happen if you could cope? Only when they answer a second time in succession, I don't know, we say OK, take more distance, see it from above. Rise until you oversee the entire situation. Don't opt for this too quickly If clients experience something that blatantly contradicts their current personality, ask him what they think of that. A health freak relives a past life as a potbellied bon-vivant, and is shocked to dis­ cover how he likes that. If he can't get over it, explore the roots of his current health craze. Find the charges related to it, either positive or negative. Below is a list of how to react to the different blocks - assuming the square of trust is there and your guidance is good, especially in staying connected and responding well to the client and to whatever comes. Insufficient trust is the first thing to check. Remember what I wrote about therapist incompetence meeting client resistance.

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• Impressions slow down or halt altogether, or a shocking impression or shocking thought; or an intense feeling of being lost. Go back to the last moment before the block and anchor it better. If that fails, do an energetic visualization. • If strong physical reactions distract from the content of the experience, get out of them by aura exploration, or get in even deeper and release them by body work before continuing the session. • Allow the client to dissociate when faced with overwhelming experiences, and become an invisible and neutral witness to whatever happened. • If a threat becomes immense and elusive, it's often a child's fear. Generally, if a child experi­ ence becomes too intense, then let the current adult self enter the situation as an invisible observer. • If a jammer interferes, a dominant and intrusive commentator who thinks all this is non­ sense, will not help, or is convinced that C cannot handle it or that the therapist isn't good enough, then personify the censor, critic or cynic and deal with the latter as an attachment, (see chapter 10) • If feelings become abstract, groundless and cosmic, if a fathomless darkness opens up: en­ courage the client to simply enter that space. •

If a tension becomes too intense, then encourage the relevant body part to release that ten­ sion and let the client picture what that tension looks like and how it is leaving.

•

If reliving becomes vague, ask: How do you feel now? and What's the last thing that still was clear to you? Or: Go to the first experience after this that's clear again. Netherton sometimes says: Open your eyes. Look at me! What do you hold back? What's holding you back? You still don't know? OK, just close your eyes and let it emerge.

• Ask: Do you miss something to move forw ard or is there something that bothers or hinders After an answer: You now get an impression who or what that is.

you?

• If the relationship between an impression and the contract remains unclear and the client jumps to a very different impression that does clearly relate to the starting point, then move on to that new impression. Check near the end of the session, whether the first impression still contains some relevant information that needs to be dealt with. When people become very emotional, when they are about to panic, to go crazy or to lose con­ sciousness, get them into a lighter state. If a dissociative episode becomes shallow and vague, then let the client associate by going deeper into the body and the involved feelings. Go deeper. The general principle is simple: I f an associative procedure blocks, dissociate; if a dissociative proce­ dure blocks, associate. When blocks surface during a regression, we normally solve this with dissocia­ tion, making use of subpersonalities, helicopter view, higher self-intervention, or aura exploration. If both association and dissociation block, then use ambivalence or paradox. Let the client re­ peat phrases like I keep going back and forth. Give paradoxical or ambiguous instructions, even dur­ ing induction. • • • • •

You feel free and protected, more and more free and protected. Go to where you don't want to go. Find out what you should forget at all costs. Concentrate on becoming ever wider and vaguer. Don't listen to me, but follow your inner voice.

Use ambivalent and paradoxical instructions sparingly, unless the square of trust is like a rock. Usually, a straightforward approach gives the best chance of lasting results.

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9.4 The optimal trance depth in reliving To properly go into reliving, we anchor the images in emotions and in bodily sensations. If someone is adrift at sea, we suggest the client to smell and hear and feel the water, feel the cramp and fatigue in arms and legs, and the sense of fear and despair. Inexperienced therapists often overdo this and ask where the client feels that fear or despair in the body. That is absurd and thus counterproductive. First, it doesn't matter at all in this experience. Someone is probably about to die. W hether the client feels despair in his kidneys or his big toe, is irrelevant. W hen do we ask to locate an emotion in the body? We do that during the induction, to deepen, strengthen, anchor the emotion. To get a mentally oriented person better anchored in his body. We do it also during the catharsis, to deepen the catharsis in the body here and now. If it's needed. If they're panting and writhing with relief and pleasure on the couch, then they're well connected with their bodies. Very much so. Then such questions amount to bad journalism. If strong feelings arise during the regression, we link those feelings to what's happening there, what the client is experiencing, doing, thinking, considering, deciding. We connect the feelings to the story, not to the body. Often, we don't need to bother. I see before my eyes how my kids are stuck in the burning house. Their screaming is terrible! Where do you feel that terrible feeling in your body? Such a therapist should be hounded naked (at least half naked) through the forest. Moreover, such questions often confuse clients, because they don't know whether they should feel this in the body of back then or their body now. Regression is about getting the story clear and right, and to get it 'live.' But when the client's body clearly responds during the reliving, when it strongly reacts, we ask about these body reactions. What's happening in your stomach? What do you feel in your throat? What do those restless legs want? I do a session with a female student. Oh no, not again the guillotine! I've been here four or five times by now. I don't want that anymore. I'm always returning to that guillotine. I try to find the reason. Something is bringing her back, something she should face, something she should understand, something she should remember. We go over he experiences of her last day in that life several times. Each time she notes yet other aspects, but we don't find the key. She experiences for the umpteenth time that she lays her head on the block. She feels the block against her belly. Then I ask: Are you maybe pregnant? That's the breakthrough. At the moment she dies, her mind falls apart in three pieces. One part remains in her head. Another part remains in her body and the third part goes to the unborn child. Always check when women die in a regression and they're between 15 and 45 years old whether they were pregnant at the time. That condition complicates the death experience.

W hat do you do when the client has trouble getting to relive the experience completely, remains too distant? • Passively observing. Ask what makes the client so passive. The answer may indicate a hango­ ver, guilt, fear of responsibility, refusal to face up to one's own role. Go through it again and focus on choices and decisions. Where and when could someone have acted differently? If necessary, first mobilize the client's inner power. What would you have needed to feel less pas­ sive? You now get an impression. • Skimming rapidly. The client feels involved, but as a spectator only. It's a bit like a spectator involved in an interesting match. Freeze the film, go back a little, and have everything seen in slow motion. Focus on emotional moments. This may bring the client back into the pastlife character.

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• This 'rush' you also find with hasty or intellectually oriented people. As a therapist you may lose the thread of the story as well. Rush usually indicates the client's wish to pass over a threatening or confusing experience. Stop the film at one image and let the client describe this 'still' minutely. Connect this image explicitly to the starting point. Assess the charges and go through the episode charge by charge. • Philosophizing. Quasi-existential contemplations, assumptions and cries for help, like Sir, I ask you, what could you've done as a human being in such a situation? Never respond to such statements and questions. Neither confirm nor deny. Bring the session back to the starting point and anchor it better. Light a pipe (mentally), or do anything else to relax and continue slowly and attentive with the session. • Associations with recent situations. Such associations are fine, but only after the regression. Ask: Does that have to do with ... (the starting point)? Yes? Then we come back to it later. No? Then we let it lie fo r the time being. Review the past life up to and including the actual death experience and the Place of Overview, before going to the present life. •

The client starts to provide explanations and commentaries. Also here: good that it happens, but only after the regression. Commenting clients often want to show they don't need the therapist. Don't respond to the comments and if they continue, tell clients they seem not to need you, and say goodbye.

• Sometimes the jumping from one topic to the next is an expression of a power struggle be­ tween client and therapist. You obviously get impressions quite easily. Shall we keep our focus on ... (the starting point), at least fo r now? For example, the client is about to beat someone up in the relived experience and at that very moment the image abruptly changes into a situation where he tenderly plays with a child. With such jumps to opposites, find the postulate be­ hind it and keep in focus. Ron Hubbard called postulates that tended to jump to opposite experiences 'bouncers.' When Ife el tense, Ifeel happy. Or: If I am among people, Ifeel lonely. De­ flecting is often caused by guilt. • Extensively dwelling on others. Ask: Which o f them have contributed to your ... (starting point) back there? How do you feel about that? • Back in the here-and-now. Ask what happened just before the client got out of the relived ex­ perience. Also this impasse is often due to the influence of a close contact. Use personifica­ tion. Who's stopping you to explore further? • Meandering. Check whether the client is well-anchored in the emotion and the body of back then. If so, you've missed something essential in the unfolding story. Tie in anew with the starting point. • Avoiding an episode. Talking about insignificant details, the wider environment, episodes be­ fore and after, life then in general. Ask: What does this have to do with ... (the starting point)? Or: Shall we go back to ... (that starting point)? If the client keeps straying, ask: Is there any­ thing stopping you from re-experiencing the event having to do with ... (the starting point)? Use the charges that may surface. • Getting stuck. Being stuck in a vague, ill-understood, but clearly unpleasant situation. No longer being able to go forward or backward. Dissociate the client to a Place of Overview or focus on the block: What is holding you? Then say: Go to the element you overlooked. Guide to­ ward gaining insight, if necessary clarify detail by detail. • Out-of-body experience. The client quietens and tightens, feels having lost oneself, and is less and less communicative. Even if you've lost yourself you keep in contact with me. However fa r away you go, I'll stay with you. Or the classic reassurance: You can always hear my voice. If an actual somatic becomes stronger after a question or suggestion, the answer is yes.

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•

False conclusions. Correct wrong or premature interpretations. Ask: Was that comment really intended fo r you? Or a child makes a small error or does something naughty, and at the same moment a bomb bursts, a fire breaks out, a volcano erupts or a ship sinks. Let the client see that there's no connection between 'cause' and 'consequence.'

•

Feeling cursed. Remaining attached to negative programming by others. For example: a vul­ nerable boy is scolded by an abusive parent or parental authority, and has accepted the negative judgm ent as a general truth. In this case, shift the attention to the abuser and his or her motives and limitations. The worst form is a curse or black magic. Suggest: Just let it go. Go to a place where you can be yourself again. Mobilize resources such as an object that gives support: a staff, a medallion, a power animal*. W hen the source of negative energy awak­ ens, like a dark mass or a dark figure, treat this as an obsessor.

•

Difficult somatics. A headache, for example, comes up. Use aura exploration and dissolve the somatics. When in doubt about whether the headache has to do with the starting point, add: Later it will become clear what this headache has to do with it.

•

Slow and tiring reliving. The contact with the karmic charges is too unnerving and exhaust­ ing. Deal with one charge at a time.

9.5 Untangling emotional knots Treat emotional knots methodically. Identify the constituent charges and go through them one at a time, sometimes in several steps. Start with the most accessible charge. If that doesn't work imme­ diately, let the client first experience and anchor each emotion at its particular place in the body. W hich emotion is most accessible depends on the energy level (grief requires less energy than anger) and role patterns (crying is considered less masculine than cursing). Anger emerges on its own accord. Fear and sadness slam inward, paralyze, freeze rather. Even so, simply start asking what the client feels the strongest. We evoke fears only if we give the antithesis of fear, namely self-confidence. If we evoke fear, there must be trust, but not so much so that the fear stays away. Trust is the bedding in which we call up the river of fear. Anger we evoke in a bed of calmness. Grief doesn't flow in a bed of joy, rather in a bed of melancholy. Melancholy gives sadness the space so that it can flow. Each emotion requires its own bedding. For knots made of opposite charges there's no simple bedding. So take the knots apart before you seek to solve them. W hen the going gets tough, then mute the secondary charge. Let that sadness in your throat be fo r now. We first go to the anger in your head. While you work on the anger, the sad­ ness may suddenly erupt in waves. Sometimes people start kicking and crying at the same time. That’s fine. Such a discharge loosens the knotting. Often an emotion seems straightforward, but is still hard to separate from other emotions, be­ cause there's an opposite emotion underneath it. We ask for that when we suspect it. What's under that anger? What's under that grief? Also mixed feelings like masochism tend to congeal, become lumpy. Something isn't pleasant and therefore it's pleasant. Letting go of pain thus means letting go of the desire. When such knots arise, clients either block or enter into a whirlpool or vortex. Usually don't try to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis, but we let the client face the two poles one by one. Enhance the block or enhance the whirlpool. Or both. The problem then will become its own solution. If an emotional knot includes fear, guilt, shame or indifference, then the emotion in question works as a closed valve, as a shell or an armor. Deal first with the valve. Go to its origins by regres­ sion. Then you uncover the root: a postulate.

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9.6 O p e n in g re c u rs iv e k n o ts

Recursion causes most complications. The problem is hindering its own solution. If someone has experienced at a young age his mother in a depressed stage of her life, during which she moaned I can't go on anymore, then one's subconscious can't go on to face this memory anymore. Another ex­ ample: I can't get to it. Such a postulate can result from an experience in which someone was vainly trying to get to something. According to Hubbard (1950) five types of recursive sentences in experiences make therapy extra difficult: • • • • •

Bouncers: Get out! Never come back! Stay away! Retainers: Stay there! Just sit still and think about it! I can't leave. Deniers: I'm not there. This leads nowhere. I can't talk about it. I can't remember it. I don't know. Groupers - as if all occurrences are in the same place on the time track: I'm stuck. Everything is happening at once. It's all about to overwhelm me. Deceivers send the client the wrong way: It is the fau lt o f others.

With recursive postulates you can also ask: How does that feel? or What do you feel about it? Another good question is: What would happen if you would be able to get out? (Netherton) Enhance recursive postulates through repetition, exaggeration or reversal. Shut-off commands constitute an important kind of recursive postulates. Netherton gives many examples of this. Woe if you talk about this! Remember that you have seen nothing! Character postulates can be shut-off commands as well. For example: I won't ever budge to anybody. Also use the verbal bridge here, or switch to personification. A part of the client wants to solve this problem, but an­ other part apparently doesn't. Call up the personality who doesn't want that, is reluctant to deal with it, doesn't want to budge. That can be a subpersonality of the client or an internalized external influence or even external presence. Aimless wandering may come from the content of the relived experience: when it's an episode of aimless wandering. Usually though, the client is reluctant to face the looming situation and begins to avoid, distract and circumvent. To overcome this, pay attention to the following eventualities during the reliving: • •

•

Deepening: moments when clients get in touch with charges, even though they don't yet mention them, change of voice or breathing, signs of emotion, surfacing somatics. Knots: moments when thoughts, images, emotions and physical feelings become intercon­ nected. Especially moments when postulates are created due to emotional and physical dis­ tress. Did you conclude or decide anything that has stayed with you ever since? Turning points: suddenly accepting or suddenly rejecting something, a sudden insight or epiphany, strong reactions by the client or in the client's body.

The following example illustrates how a remarkable experience can thwart its own solution. C: If I go back to past lives, I always arrive at a place where I've been to in this life, in Pompeii. Do I just make that up? Do I make up a story out o f it? T: But why would you make up a story out o f it? C: You reply to a question the therapist puts to you. T: But why would you give that particular answer? C: Because that's the first thing that comes to mind. It may also be a recollection from this life. That land­ scape, for instance. T: But why does that particular landscape come to mind?

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C: That's a tough one. I know though that I've seen it. T: Now you finally want to do a session with landscapes you've never seen in this life. C: Yes. So that I'm sure I've never seen it before. T: Then you can still think it may be fantasy. C: I don't see such clear pictures, such beautiful stories as some have, but I do have strong physical reac­ tions every time. They are quite something. T: Does such a physical reaction fit the story? If you come under lava, do you suffer from pressure or heat? C: Yes, it's suffocating. T: There are three possibilities: 1) You tend to be hysterical. Not impossible, but then you've managed to disguise that quite well in this group. 2) These are memories, and you didn't go to this place for nothing in your current life. 3) You're so sensitive that you absorb wandering souls everywhere you go. Not impossible, but whether they still hang around in Pompeii? A very long time to linger at one place. The second explanation seems the most likely one to me: that these are your own memories after all. How long ago did you visit Pompeii? C: Five years ago. T: How did you feel then? Did you think: I'll be relieved as soon as I'm back at my hotel? C: No! T: Exactly. So what are you complaining about? C: What do you mean ? T: It affects you deeply what happened there. You've been there when the eruption happened or you've once experienced something similar and this makes you identify yourself with Pompeii so well. Not every place that impresses, touches or otherwise affects us, we know from a previous life. It has not only af­ fected, but when you did a session about it, you got strong physical reactions. What do you need more to convince you? Some tattoo appearing spontaneously in your skin: It really happened? C: But it's possible that one confuses present-life memories with past lives, right? T: That's possible, but how likely is it that ordinary recollections give such physical reactions? C: That's my only grip on it. I recently had a session where I got a sword in my back in one mighty blow. I had only the feeling and the emotion, but I saw nothing. T: Your body pulls you into it and your head pulls you out of it. Such a divergence must hurt. C: That image I did come across: my head cut off, head away from the body. T: Now we come to something. This may be the core. Being pulled apart or beheaded, what was it? C: Torn apart and across in half I had to pull a child out of the corpses; it felt just like a doll, aflat charac­ ter and I had no legs. I've seen this image, not imagined or remembered it. But such strong images have been rare in the past two years. T: How you perceive your experience, manifests the problem on another level: being pulled apart. Your perception is pulled apart. That's the recursive problem. Emotional charges are sometimes recursive, mental charges are usually recursive. Emotional recur­ sion we can intensify till the pattern snaps. With mental recursion, use dissociation. Reliving a con­ fusing episode confuses clients. Or let clients go back to the causes or to the consequences of the confusing episode, instead of re­ living the episode. Aura exploration works best to detect and neutralize the effects. Remove the nega­ tive results energetically, and only then ask to experience how those consequences did come about. If people have died well, we can lead them through the death experience to the Place of Over­ view, to get a mental catharsis as well. W hat exactly happened and why did it have such longlasting effects? We have broken the magic circle of recursion and freed the client. Ordinary reliving is then possible again, but often needed no more. Some fears are recursive, especially fear of people (therapists are people too - though we forget that sometimes), fear of failure and fear of losing control.

9.7 Avoidance by fear or shame Fear of losing control is a common block. It may be fear of what may be discovered, of the trance, the therapist, or even of lying on your back and closing your eyes. Any kind of situation may have

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created this fear, in this life or in previous lives: bad experiences with narcosis, with therapists or doctors; abuse of hypnosis; rape; inattention that led to a disaster. Stay alert! Evoke the blocking anxiety as a subpersonality. In general: if the fear paralyzes, then dissociate with personification or aura exploration. Use hypnotherapy as a last resort. But don't try to do too much in one go. No square of trust, no cathar­ sis. Clients with whom we cannot build trust, for example due too much recursive anxiety, are not suitable for regression. Also with panic, dissociate, and find out what the client needs to be able to cross this river. Or use collapsing anchors. Failing that, get the client back to the here-and-now. Say that you'll come back to it, but this is enough for now. Check it isn't your own fear that makes you halt the session. Speak calmly and clearly, touch the client's forehead or stomach pit, occasionally the hands or feet. Sometimes clients may be not keen to remember exactly what happened. People don't necessar­ ily see or tell the truth. Memories and stories contain biases and distortions. In regressions less so, but they aren't free from it. We are therapists, not detectives. We assume clients are telling the truth, and if they don't, they must have good reasons for this. We must find these reasons only when they hinder the session's effectiveness. A client sees himself in a life as a farmer. His father had worked in a mine, but he himself be­ came a farmer. He tells proudly that he is the only one in the area who owns land. He doesn't remember the names of his children, but does know how many cows he has. Half of his children die, the other half walk away from home. When he dies, he hears the mewing of the cows that he can no longer help. But it was still 'quite a good life.' He's especially pleased that he had bought his land. But catharsis? No way. He keeps repeating that he had bought the land. An uncle had died and left him some money, he tells. Only later do we find out how he really got that money. As a young man, he pulled a bloke from his saddle after tripping the horse. The man broke his neck and happened to have a lot of money on him. Even in the third version he still denies that he was a robber - it happened by accident. A woman experiences in a previous life that farm hands abduct her, rape her and detain her. They shut her in the alcove of an old, thick wall when they leave during the day. She lies alone in the hay. Her allusions show that she did a game with cheese and rats between her legs - or that she fantasized about it. She's disgusted and ashamed about herself. Besides imprisonment and isolation there's disgust, lust and shame in that experience. The shame and confusion shut off the experience, which is hard to access and relive. A difficult session.

With sudden silence, when it apparently isn't an out-of-body experience, you ask: Do you experi­ ence anything? If the answer is Yes, then say: You don't have to tell me, but experience everything that has to do with ... (the starting point). It may be about intimate or embarrassing things, or shut-off com­ mands are involved.

9.8 Psychological blindness and deafness; shut-off commands Shut-Off commands frequently arise from experiences in which another person forbade us to say something or anything, threatened us with punishment or forced us to secrecy. Or simply said: You didn't see anything. Nothing happened. Other shut-off commands come from ourselves. We want to forget something because of fear, guilt or shame. We find these shut-off commands by letting the client repeat the relevant phrase, so charge it and we then give the regression instruction to the origin of this phrase. Or we let the client personify the person who said the phrase or expressed the threat. Clients may see themselves as a child or perhaps in a past life. Yet often it's a family member, sometimes a family member who passed away.

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Netherton has some smart questions and suggestions when the client doesn't see or feel anything: • • • •

If you could see something, what would you see? If you could feel something, what would you feel? If you could talk, what would you say? Just go on with it.

Seeing nothing may come because in the experience at hand the client sat in darkness, was blind­ folded or even blind. Or someone has seen something that w asn't allowed and is killed for it, or the eyes are gouged, pressed or scooped out. Or the tongue is torn out, so someone can no longer say anything. Or someone is blinded by the bright flash from an explosion - often numbed by it as well (shell-shock). Or even simpler, we lose touch with our clients when they are reliving a period ofunconscious­ ness. They m ay've been drugged or hypnotized. Let them dissociate and if thatfails,keep talking and keep in touch with the client's body. Touching with one finger is already enough. Aura exploration is always possible: I see a poisonous greenish gray that like a blanket has slowly wrapped around me. OK, unwrap it in reverse order. If a fog has come in through the nose, we draw it out again through the nose. If that doesn't work, we ask, Where do you prefer to pull it out from ? Or use personification. Let the current personality of the client come to the aid of the past-life personal­ ity who has been hypnotized or poisoned. Or go back to the last experience before the unconscious­ ness or blurring began. Sometimes the situation remains vague and static. This usually turns out to be an after-death experience of hanging around.

9.9 A farewell to confusion and madness If the client feels confused or talks confusedly, it's usually because the original situation has been confused. Maybe because of a confusing, bewildering situation, for example in calamities or battles, but usually because the person back then was confused. Children are confused when they no longer understand the actions of adults - strange creatures to begin with. Or someone has a concussion or head injury and hears shouting in an unknown lan­ guage. Also starving doesn't help. Low blood sugar makes it impossible to keep a clear head. W hen a client doesn't see anything anymore we may get a breakthrough by simply asking: Is some­ thing the matter with your eyes? So we may get good results in cases of confusion by simply asking: Is something the matter with your head? Especially when things become overwhelming, through circumstances or a weak physical con­ dition, let the client see it from above, in bird's eye view. Instruct clients to go high enough to get overview, but low enough to really see what's happening on the ground. The instruction to go through it in slow motion, takes away a lot of confusion as well. If everything seems to go too fast, slow motion is the obvious choice. And when everything is moving so slowly that nothing seems to happen? You now see and feel that whatever slows you down, moves out o f and away from you. If the client is likely to get lost in too many details: What's the most important thing that's happen­ ing here? What's the most painful? What's the most menacing? Asking for the most extreme, intense or consequential event, thought or event is one of our most important tools. And with people who are worrying about giving the 'right' answer, we give an immediate, forceful, simple suggestion: You now get an impression o f what you believe is the worst thing that's happening there. If drugs have been involved, everything can appear vague and slow, or strangely jump from one event to the next. Incoherent patches of images and impressions may flit by. Also psychotic

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people and people with a weak ego, such as borderliners, may jump wildly. With drugs, we still can instruct the client that the drug leaves the body along the same route as it entered. Addicts who've used different drugs tend to have muddled recollections. Probably you deal with one drug at a time: what charges are related in their use and what residues clients can visualize the client in their body. If you’re not trained and prepared for it, working with drug prob­ lems can be tiring. Less severe, but similar, are experiences with different, frequently opposite emotions. Work through these emotion one at a time as well, alternating between regression and energy work. Sometimes each emotion is tied to a different subpersonality. Another form of chaos occurs when the vestibular system has been damaged. The client experi­ ences twists, whirls and dizzying sounds and often becomes dizzy and nauseous. Also ask in such cases: Has something happened to your head? Confusion is the first station of madness. If clients have ever suffered from madness in a past life, especially when they died insane, then the disturbed personality, or at least disturbed subper­ sonality, is easily restimulated. Immediately dissociate and personify. If madness enters the session, the therapist won't walk away scot-free. You also will get confused, unless you dissociate the client immediately. It's a case of fighting fire with fire. Hence it's good to know that regression therapists are all wise, calm, and ultra-stable people. This chapter was about the art of navigation between the Scylla of block and the Charybdis of con­ fusion. The ancient mariners had to learn to navigate between them, preferably avoid them alto­ gether. We try to avoid these two as well. Yet sometimes we are forced to navigate properly between the two. So pray to Poseidon. We also have more interesting options: Just steer right toward that rock. Feel and see and hear the bang and how the ship breaks apart. Or: Let that whirlpool take hold o f you. Very good! All the way into the depths. Feel the irresistible force o f the water and surrender yourself to it. We do make even more interest­ ing voyages - and encounter even more interesting monsters - than the ancient mariners. The problem itself offers the fastest way to its solution. Just go into it completely. Just go on. All the way. In section 14.6 we come back to this approach when discussing core issue explorations. We don't need to travel safely. We can't travel safely. We need to arrive safely. Who travels safely will never arrive. Such is the fate of the human soul.

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CHAPTER 10. YET BEING SOMEONE OTHER .

W hat does it mean 'to be ourselves'? To be completely present, to know what we want, to feel free. Without copying anybody else. That's not to say that we're free from influences of others. Not being ourselves also means having lost ourselves, feeling weak; just reacting, often blindly. We're strongly related with and heavily influenced by others, for good and ill. If we are our­ selves and remain open-minded, we're enriched by others, and we are more alive. If we aren't our­ selves and open-minded, we burden ourselves with others and lose ourselves. If we are ourselves, yet closed-minded, we become bottled-up, stiff, and less alive. This chapter is about freeing ourselves from debilitating external influences and finding back what we've lost of ourselves.

10.1 Imprints, internalizations, and attached energy of others Even when we are ourselves, much of w hat's inside us we've acquired from others: in our thoughts, our attitudes, our doings and goings. We learn from others, consciously and unconsciously. So long as we adopt from others what suits us, it will enrich us. If we've properly digested, internalized, such external influences have found their proper place in us. But we aren't always ourselves. Sometimes we adapt to others while losing ourselves. Som e­ times others even don't allow us to be ourselves. They impose rules, they have expectations that have more to do with them than with us. People who have too much influence on us, we call domi­ nant. At times we may even subordinate ourselves without being asked to do so. Or ideas are propagated so convincingly that we've come to believe in them. Or we may so strongly identify with someone else, that we no longer stand on our own feet. We may identify with a parent, a de­ ceased family member, a popular girlfriend, a movie star. Absorbing outside content is a human propensity that's good in itself. Without it, we would become and remain autistic, solipsistic. We would be utterly locked up in ourselves and the outside world would remain a meaningless backdrop. We are open to others. When people talk and listen, they adopt ideas from each other. W hat's stranger, more remarkable, is the fact that people absorb feelings from each other. Thoughts may seem impersonal and feelings personal. But that ain't necessarily so. Many victims of rape walk around with the guilt that the rapist refused to feel. That guilt has been energetically transmitted, dumped on the victim. People who seem not to be bothered by their actions and their conscience continuously dump whatever could trouble them on others. The more we hesitate and are unsure, the more we may look up to confident people and the sooner we copy things that do not suit us. An imprint is an influence that others consciously exert on us, a message they convey, typically about how we should be or do or should think and do. An internalization is an influence that we adopt voluntarily. It may be copying someone we consider an example, it may be a doctrine we embrace. Sometimes it may be due to a misinterpretation. We think a statement is meant for us, but it wasn't. W hen evoking somatics and using aura exploration, we find such external influences as heavy or dark substances in or on our body, or we carry a boulder, or wear a harness that doesn't fit, or we experience it even as vermin or crawling insects. Everything 'non-self' we come across in this way we call in our jargon 'attached energy.' It can stick to us or may have penetrated us, but either way it doesn't leave by itself. It could be a distinct figure or a vague shape: for example, a gray cloud that later turns out to be a deceased grandfather. 245

Some people have lost so much of themselves that they're psychologically damaged: borderline or schizophrenia or addiction or depression. Typically they've lost much of their own energy, and they're full of attachments. Nothing can invade us if we don't lose or already have lost something of ourselves. Therapy is about removal of the non-self and recovery of the self. Let's start with the influences of dominant, authoritarian, and intrusive people. These could be par­ ents, older family members, teachers, doctors, bosses; they could be religious leaders such as priests, pastors, imams or gurus - if they're overbearing. When we lose energy to such people, they become powerful - they absorb our energy and add it to their own. Subservient people tend to be­ come ever more submissive, and dominant people tend to become ever more dominant. Likewise, sexually dominant men and women tend to conquer partners ever more easily. (Till age kicks in.) Something similar plays a role in the financial world: money flows easily from finan­ cially weak people to financially strong people. It is difficult to distinguish truly personal content from internalized content. The difference is essen­ tial, but also relative. No thought we've had, has come up all by ourselves. We constantly adopt and absorb things from each other. The difference lies in whether it is an open and honest exchange, or a sneaky intrusion. You can digest things, you can absorb things, making these your own. Some things you internalize more easily than other things, because they touch something of yourself. You can internalize things so that you have digested these at a certain time. Then these have become parts of yourself. As with food, you digest stuff that becomes part of your body and you excrete liquids that were part of your body and solids that never became truly part of it. People are wondering: Who am I really? What's really mine? W hat's yours is what you've made of yourself. To which you can say truly in peace and love and pride 'I.' Yes, that's me. But that self, that ' I , ' has grown out of many things, also from the outside. Some people think: Now 1 know why I feel bad. Because o f my parents, the church, entities. All that isn't me. Even if true, it always has something to do with yourself. What made it part of you, how could it intrude? W hat made it stay inside? Some therapists are not interested in attachments and obsessors. They focus on what they often call the 'retain er,' that which makes people allow foreign influences and hold on to them. An extreme, but healthy position. Plenty of people say: You see, it's all my father's fault. So it's not my fault. But each story is a chap­ ter in a larger story. Even if it would be your father's fault, there's another layer to explore, for ex­ ample why you accepted his behavior, attitude, abuse or command so easily, why you still hold on to it; ultimately, how you've got and possibly why you've chosen that person as your father. There is always another layer. How far do we go in peeling off those layers? Until we feel wise, brave and radiantly happy. Then we stop peeling. We may still be unsure at the end of the session whether the energy or entity in question was the client's own or someone else's. Usually you will soon know what's what. We have methods to find that out. Again: a large part of our work is detective work, especially at the beginning of sessions. Sometimes it w on't become clear. If you're not sure, leave it for the time being and don't take irre­ versible steps, like decisively integrating or dismissing any energy or entity. What do we do when during a personification, the cause of not being oneself usually enters the room, not surprisingly, as a dominant figure. That dominance can show itself in size, in superiority, in impassivity. An oversized figure may simply appear so because clients were at the time of first meeting literally quite small themselves. If they were as children half as large as the adult, then they may now see that person twice as big as they are now. So we suggest the client to see that figure in the true size it had back then.

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If authority figures enter, they often carry a sign or a garment indicating their authority: a teacher with a pointer, a grandpa with a watch chain, a pastor in his habit, we suggest clients to see them in ordi­ nary clothes, if necessary handing over their symbol of authority to you. Are they still inaccessible and do they refuse to talk, then it helps to see them naked. Take away their charisma, their personal power. Not to humiliate or punish them, but to compel them to communicate, to explain what they are doing inside the client. We want answers to questions, and we are entitled to those. That figure somehow resides in the client's system; chances are a hundred to one that it doesn't belong there. A second method is to compel intruders to give everything back they have taken away from the client. Why are people intimidating? Because others are in awe. Magistrates grow overbearing be­ cause of timid citizens. And citizens grow timid because of overbearing magistrates. People become frightening because they are feared. They become awe-inspiring because they are awed. Don Juans are filled to the brim with female energies from past conquests. So you can suggest the client: You will now see him as he is when in his own energy only. That may seem an odd instruction, but it works wonders. Clients see people before they began to swell: a frightened infant, a shy teenager, an angry adolescent, a skinny boy, whatever. Often someone w ho's been rejected just a few times too often, and in response became vicious. An effective alterna­ tive is: You will now see him as he was when he was just himself. The most efficient energy robbers are people we may call 'magical' for lack of a better word. These people know how to hypnotize and work with other occult powers. Mostly, they are only dimly aware of their powers, because they've developed these in past lives. Some are involved in such practices today. Especially people who come from Africa, Asia or South America, may do magic, black or white or in-between: Winti, Macumba, Tantra, or whatever it's called. If we make dolls representing each other and we stab pins in them, we do not die immediately from it, but it may make us sick. What happens in such cases doesn't depend on how often we think bad about each other, but whether such thoughts attain an effective charge. So-called magic is nothing else but giving something an etheric charge. Black magic is doing this with the intention to hurt, harm or even kill another. Evil thoughts are the black magic of everyday life. If a negative thought or emotion becomes charged and we don't know to send it to the intended recipient, it will hurt us instead. 1 have a cramp in my stomach. What's that? Hey, I'm furious about uncle Jim. Why doesn't uncle Jim get the stomach pain? Maybe because we are not only angry, but also afraid of uncle John. Or because, in our anger, we aren't making a sharp picture of uncle Jim in our minds. Or we are actually angry at someone else and mistakenly - or cowardly - direct the anger at uncle Jim. Or because uncle Jim is psychically so strong, that he just deflects everything back that's aimed at him. Ten to one he does this unconsciously, and ten to one he developed this ability in a past life. If you have a prominent religious function, then followers direct their deference at least par­ tially to you. A nice etheric perk to the job. In religious communities and sects, pay attention to what kind of energy the men and women emanate, especially erotic attractiveness. Does everyone look pale and dull, except the priests? Are the men vibrant, satisfied, relaxed and confident and the women gray, worn and unattractive? Or the other way around? Then you see who sucks energy from whom. W hole sects are based on the adoration of and the sycophantic subservience to the priests. They are 'so special, ' they have such charisma! However, people basking in their light, merely receive - as they say - something out of their own pocket, as they absorbed hat energy from their own followers. Gurus, spiritual leaders, are all too often obsessors of their followers. If they don't know that, they at least sense that. Frequently, a personified figure rem ains indistinct, not because the client is unable to visual­ ize, but because a large part of the energy of that figure still stays inside the client. W hen you in­ struct the client that everything belonging to the figure goes back into it, the client's visualization

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suddenly improves. Get it so distinct that you can ask: Is it someone you know? What do you think o f this man? I f you would meet this woman on the street, what would you think o f her? These are ways to focus, to get it clearer and be able to talk with it. Usually I say: Just tell them . . . o r ask them ... . How do they react? Because 'reaction' includes nonverbal responses, like looking aside or shrugging shoulders. Usually, dialogue will follow. If clients can't get their own energy back and feel weak and impotent, we must go back to the first time they lost a significant part of their own energy. That must be found to regain their own power. The most direct suggestion is: Now you see entering whatever it was that you've once lost. Then an en­ ergy enters the rooms, like a sphere of light of a particular color. Or a strong, almost radiant pres­ ence appears, or an innocent, spontaneous child, just before it lost its innocence and spontaneity. That's often touching, and in such emotion healing and recovering take place. Don't complain, Jane. Get it back, Jack.

10.2 Internalizations from or through the mother before birth We've discussed pregnancy and identification with the mother before. There are more reasons why unborn children lose some of their own energy or absorb foreign energy. These possibilities I've mentioned also before, but these I now discuss from the perspective of losing one's own energy and absorbing energy from someone or something else. First, there are reactions to being undesirable, unwanted, rejected: disappointment, disillusion, anger, misery, withdrawal, not wanting to live anymore. That loss of vitality and zest for life leads to ambivalence and weakness and opens the door to external influences. During an abortion at­ tempt the child may scream in dark desperation for help and unwittingly attract dark influences. W henever the will to live is undermined and damaged, eventually foreign energies will enter. A related, but entirely different aspect is the 'vanishing twin syndrome.' More common than previ­ ously thought, two eggs are fertilized and one fetus dies early in pregnancy. The mother usually doesn't notice this and the current client hasn't been aware of this. The surviving child experiences this as a terrible, inexplicable loss. That inner void eventually may be filled by something else. So even before birth, survivor's guilt may come to play a role. Feelings of guilt spur an inner retreat that almost invites foreign energy to fill the hole. Occasionally, the soul of the deceased twin fetus is envious of the surviving twin and becomes a fierce attachment in the womb. I have come across cases in which clients sense during a prenatal session a sinister, lurking presence in the uterus. If we explore this, it turns out to be another soul who intended to be born to the same parents, and feels bypassed by a hasty and powerful late­ comer who as it were occupied the empty chair, usually unaware of the former candidate. W hen the mother uses drugs during pregnancy, this not only brings physical, but also energetic damage. The severity of this isn't determined only by the type and the amount of the drugs, and the extent of the addiction, but also by the general state of mind of the mother. Also medications and injections, even just before birth, such as an epidural, appear in sessions to have much greater con­ sequences than just medical ones. At birth, the will to live may also be affected by a negative or absent mother (for example when an­ esthesia is applied during a cesarean), an absent or hostile father and possibly dismissive or even hostile other family members. The father may already be dismissive or hostile during the preg­ nancy, or the child senses the envy of an unmarried or barren sister of the father or mother; or it feels the jealousy of the mother of one of the parents.

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Jealousy of the father or of other children will usually only play a role in the time immediately after birth. All these influences are more strongly felt and more strongly internalized when the baby al­ ready hesitantly or reluctantly incarnated to begin with. If events like those mentioned above restimulate a bad past-life death experience, the child usually is very receptive to the negative influ­ ences of others. The less we want to live, the easier alien energies do penetrate us, the weaker we are going to feel and the more aggressively and improperly we may try to absorb strength from others. Then we jum p from the frying pan into the fire. How do we handle such cases in therapy? Regression to those crucial life-changing moments, personification of the source of the foreign, internalized energy and then energy exchange. WeTl come back to this later in this chapter.

10.3 Identifying and integrating dissociated energies and subpersonalities Practicing shamans saw - and see - the cause of many diseases and mental problems in the loss of soul parts. These soul parts must be retrieved. The shaman goes into a trance, going on an inner jour­ ney to retrieve the lost soul part. This is called soul retrieval. We do the same, but very differently. We guide clients to retrieve the lost soul part themselves. In the last chapter we shall discuss the retrieval of large soul parts, sometimes entire personalities from past lives, that we've once lost, maybe even in a distant past. In this chapter, we deal with parts of the current personality that we've lost during pregnancy, birth or childhood, and sometimes - in major traumas - as adults. Much of what formerly was called shell-shock and nowadays is called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is the result of having lost parts of our energetic organism that left our body and never came back. How do we know that all this is true and not a figment of the imagination? Because when we let clients visualize this and let them see and feel the return of the lost soul part into the present body, all sorts of physical and psychological problems melt away, never to come back, once the session is successfully concluded. How do we manage to do that exactly? How do we first detect and then integrate dissociated energies and subpersonalities? We ask clients if they sense a hollow feeling somewhere in their body. Hollow feelings may be felt in the head or chest. When this is felt in the stomach and abdomen, we first ask if they're hungry. If there's still a hollow feeling after a good meal, this brings us quickly on the right track. With limbs, it's not about hollow feelings, but feelings of being hangdog or worn down, or numbness, as if you're having a weakened arm or hand or leg or a foot. Often that body part is chronically cold and gets less blood flow. Or it feels like it doesn't belong there. With aura exploration, dark, lightless places appear that are typically seen as holes. Some holes are even bottomless. Clients may also have a general sense of loss or emptiness. Even if they know the cause of this feeling, I miss Dad so much!, we ask them to locate that sense of loss in the body. If the client men­ tions a death in the immediate family, or the death of a close friend, we ask how it feels and where it's felt in the body. Thus we seek to locate gaps and holes, and feelings of loss in general. What do we do next? There are several possibilities: • •

Go back to a time and place when you were still felt fu ll and whole. Now go to the moment this feel­ ing really changes. You'll now get an impression o f what has once belonged there.

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• •

You'll now get an impression o f what once left there. How does it look? How big is it? Where did it go? Follow it with your mind. The door opens and now you see whatever belonged there, enter the room.

This is almost pure energy work. Almost, because sometimes the client sees no energy or substance or object, but a person, often an inner child who's innocent and radiant. In some cases a sword en­ ters, or a wand, a book, a mantle. Maybe a power animal: a lion, a dog, a dolphin, a turtle, a shining serpent. Rarely, a mythological figure like a centaur, a dragon, a winged serpent, a giant or a dwarf. We don't seek explanations, we don't ask for meanings, we simply do regression: You now get an impression o f the place and time when you still had that wand, that robe, that lion. Where are you? What are you doing? What's happening? Now you get an impression o f the time and place that you lost that ... wand, centaur or whatever. Where are you? Feel, see and understand what's happening here. Now you get impressions o f how this loss has affected your later /current life. Just let the impressions come. We let clients fill the hole with what originally belonged there. The lion may lie down at the feet and the chest glows where there was emptiness before. Strong, often visible physical reactions are the rule, not the exception. Typical client comments are: I've never felt so strongly present before. I feel warm and strong from head to toe. 1 didn't know you could feel like that. A void has been filled, and rejuvenation of the client is included in the price.

10.4 Attachments of deceased acquaintances Attachments are sometimes projected energies and even subpersonalities of living people. Usually, these attachments are troublesome, often parasitic; sometimes intentionally so, but usually unintentionally. Possessive mothers and harsh fathers can continue to influence their grown-up children, even if those have left home a long time ago, and even if they've broken off contact with their parents. Par­ ents who aren't well-integrated, may even unburden whole subpersonalities on to their children. A woman is often overwhelmed by feelings of boredom, as if a gray blanket smothers her. It has to do with being a housewife and at first glance it seems to be the typical frustration of women who had wanted to do and achieve more and are bound to home and children, while hubby has a rather interesting life at work. When she regresses to the origins of these feelings, she arrives in a life as chatelaine in the middle ages. In that life, she marries against her will with a nobleman her parents have chosen for her. He's interesting and lively, they assure her. That liveliness turns out to be true, but not for her. He is a hunter and a warrior, and drinks himself senseless with his buddies when at home. She is only left with embroidery. Then they carry him dead into the castle, killed in a battle with a neighboring castle. The ene­ mies now invade and take over the castle. They dare not to harm her, because of her rather influ­ ential family. So they just shut her up in a tower room where she continues embroidering for the rest of her life. She's relieved when finally death arrives on her doorstep. The client is happy with the session. Now she understands where that feeling of boredom comes from. It gives her a sense of relief, but the feeling is not fully gone. Go back to the first time in your current life when you felt that gray blanket smothering you. She's three and wants to play in the sandbox with the other kids in the playground between the blocks of flats. She isn't allowed to, because she will besmear her clothes. Mother is busy vac­ uum cleaning, though there isn't a speck of dust in sight. The little girl feels suppressed, wants to throw all flower pots from the window sill, but realizes that this won't help. Life never will be fun, it will always remain like this. She gives up. At that moment she sees with the eyes of her current, adult self a gray, heavy cloud emerging from her mother, envelop her and enter her. It's the previous life of her mother, the chatelaine.

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Many clients suffer from what's commonly called the 'inner c ritic,' a quasi-rational little voice that continuously questions whether first impressions are really real. When we personify that voice, of­ ten an authoritarian, skeptical parent appears who belittled them as children and as adults. Or a critical ex enters the room. When at that moment we ask for body sensations, a heavy energetic residue may appear that is stuck in the head or elsewhere in the body. W hen a client tries to remove this residue, typically a strong resistance from the skeptic emerges. Such an attached energy is ob­ sessive. We speak of obsessive when attachments are aggressively selfish. W hen we force the attached energy back to its real owner, the client experiences a deep sense of relief and a clarified mind. Oddly, the other side usually is going to behave better and even to feel better as well. Having attached energy from others, increases the likelihood that they completely attach to you after their death. Then the client goes from bad to worse. Mother is dead at last, but the oppression only worsens. Attached energies from ex-partners often are inner children they've placed outside themselves. You can't free yourself from someone, even though you've really had it with him or her. Even after many years, when life went on, a sudden meeting or even a recollection can produce strong mental and physical reactions. Obviously, all of this handicaps new relationships. Some people repeat their error: the new partner turns out to have the same bad habits as the previous one. In such cases of energy attachment, forgiveness doesn't help, may even strengthen the bond. Without personification and energy work, to free oneself from such an attachment is a hell of a job. It’s not always about difficult relationships. Sometimes a loved one died. Shakuntala Modi, an American psychiatrist who practiced hypnotherapy and later regression for quite a while, did a session with a woman who regressed to the origin of her problems. She ar­ rived back in the sixties of the last century, in a car accident that shatters her knee and kills her. When did you die? She answers 1967. But she was born in 1955 in this current life. How can that be? Suddenly the client exclaims: OMG. When 1 was twelve, my father died in a car accident in which his knee was shattered. How can 1 be reliving the death o f my dad? Modi asked, puzzled: Where's your father now? He's inside me! Can 1 talk to him? Modi asks the father: What are you doing there? The first thing that the father says: Sorry, sorry, sorry. When I died, my daughter was sobbing in deep dis­ tress on her bed that evening. I wanted to comfort her and suddenly I couldn't leave anymore. Modi asked after some more Q and A: Where you are now, are there any others? He responded: Yes, five others. Those had come later, because the 'door' was left open.

The simplest opening for an attachment is another attachment. Many people who've just died, es­ pecially suddenly and quickly, don't know what to do, what they should and shouldn't do. They're still so attached to the material world through their etheric body, that when they come near a living physical body, they easily get stuck. Even more so, with close personal ties. Personification and energy work are essential in discovering attachments and dealing with them. Regression may work, but is less effective. Has your dad made you insecure, and later your ex rein­ forced that? Go to the first time you were made insecure. Relive that situation, to exactly understand what happened, factually, mentally and energetically. If it is difficult to get to the first time, go to the worst time. If that remains difficult, first return a considerable amount of absorbed energy back to the sender. So personification and energy work again. Each internalized charge of still living people, whoever they be and however they be, we eventu­ ally send back to them. But my mother already has so much on her plate! Even so, return everything.

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People invariably brighten up when they get back their own energy, even if that energy seems dark and heavy. Even attachments of children are possible. Some children are manipulative. Especially spoiled, addicted and psychotic children may feed on feelings of insufficiency and guilt, disingenuously promising that they'll change for the better soon. Family members who died traumatically, especially if they committed suicide, frequently attach themselves to others. We'll come back to that in the next section. Symptoms that started after the sudden death of a family member or close acquaintance, are suspicious. Therapists may pick up attachments from clients. Like with children, especially from manipulative, spoiled, addicted and psychotic clients. And sometimes from clients who adore us. Also many of our clients are very sensitive and may have picked up wandering souls. Many colleagues do cleans­ ing visualizations after sessions. Even better is to stop your own gaps, fill up your own breaches.

10.5 Family legacies through the generations Each prolonged intimate relationship creates also a psychic, an energetic bond. The one with the mother is usually the strongest. Your mother is the most common source of attached energy. Why? Because you've been nine months in her womb. You've probably been drinking her milk afterward, you have a strong psychic bond with your mother. If you have energy from your mother inside you or carrying her weight around your neck and your mother dies, the rest of her may follow: the whole personality of your mother can attach itself to you. Partners are more frequently attachments than fathers. Because there's such a thing as sex. Sex is an energy game. It ranges from lust to love and romance. A longer-term sexual relationship cre­ ates strong energetic bonds. It includes meeting and interacting and communicating frequently. When the relationship ends, the physical separation doesn't necessarily implicate energetic separa­ tion. The ex is a well-known figure in the therapy room. Other family members may strongly influence us, like dominant brothers or sisters, dominant and intrusive grandparents, uncles, or aunts. Attached energies from parents may have come from their parents. They may even be passed on through the generations. We call it the 'unhealthy family legacy.' A client often feels cramped, anxious and short of breath, and then has a blackout. Particularly responsibility is suffocating her. She remembers her grandmother talking to her mother while she herself lost her zest for life at that very moment. A miserable feeling comes up; 75% of it is from her mother. She doesn't want to return it, be­ cause her mother has a hard time already. But her mother actually welcomes it. Her grand­ mother impressed her mother with: Men can't be trusted. This is returned by grandmother to her mother and her grandmother, so four generations back. They all soften up and become friendly, loving and tender. The client feels her heart beating and a fire flowing in her body: zest for life. It's exciting and makes her a bit shaky. A client feels heavy. Go back to the first time in your life that you feel this heaviness. In the uterus a stone settles on her. Where does it come from? From her mother. Mother has gotten it from her father. She eventually traces it back twenty, possibly thirty generations from father's side. It did become a traditional set of convictions: life is tough and hard, work must be done, people are sinful. It's typical from an age-old religious culture. In the session we roll the stone, all the way back to its origin. It shrinks and disappears into the distance.

If it doesn't disappear in the distance, but disturbingly remains there, we evoke the ancestor who once produced it. Back then it wasn't a social darkness, like a negativist fundamentalism, but a per­

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sonal darkness created by individual acts. We may discover such an old family legacy during the session, or we have already detected during the intake that there are problems present in an entire family - or even clan or tribe. For instance, two of the brothers and sisters have been institutional­ ized. One of them never recovered and the other is in permanent medication. The other mental cases turn out to be an aunt and a cousin and the maternal grandmother. Obsessive forces may jump over from one generation to the next. Sometimes a grandfather stays on as an obsessor on his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A woman comes for her child. ADHD is a fashionable diagnosis, but this boy was the genuine article. She tells that her son's behavior worsens whenever her father is around. She has prob­ lems with her father anyway. She comes from a large family. I do a remote session with the boy through the mother. We remove attached energy of her father from her son and send it back to her father. A few weeks later she comes back. Let me tell you what the last session led to. Three days

after the session, my mother (83) put my father (84) out of the house. He's now in a retirement home, well cared for - and dumbfounded. He doesn't understand what happened to him. The buzz went through the whole family: mom has finally done it. Grandfather apparently was oppressing the entire family. We neutralized that influence.

The attached burden doesn't always need to be reabsorbed by the person that created or transferred it. If a kind of black tar comes out of a client and we return it, does the other accept it back? If that's the case, the other doesn't need to reabsorb it. It can be taken care of in different ways: burying it, dumping in the sea, or burning it. Tar burns well. If the other refuses this, it will go into their body at the same spot where the client carried it. After all, it's been their problem to begin with. It stays there until you look in the mirror. Even the worst substance: return to sender! It's their own energy. Strangely, they are better off, not worse off, if this happens. Don't return it out of spite, getting even. Simply state: Now you'll feel what it's like. It's all about mutual freedom. Respect and reconciliation may follow. In short, don't be afraid to send it back. One client returned an ugly black substance to her mother, feeling almost guilty about it. But meeting her afterwards, her mother was almost radiant and surprisingly nice to her. Such experiences are very common. We don't seek to trouble people, not even attachments. We wish them the best. But some refuse to reflect and look at themselves. If they hesitate to accept it back, or just refuse, my standard in­ struction is: Look in the mirror. When you really look in the mirror, you can let it go. Not before. Sometimes you can lead them to the mirror. You let them look in the mirror to face the facts, so they can become free again. The name of the game is avoid any blame. In families, energetic bonds between mothers and daughters are common. If the one suffers from something, the other senses that. This can be parasitic, but also symbiotic. One can take energy from the other, but there may also be a balanced exchange of energies. If the daughter internalizes part of her m other's strictness and the mother internalizes part of the impulsiveness of the daughter, both may benefit. The key is whether they respect each other's space. Co-depencency is always bad news. If a mother is a parasite of her daughter, there is typically jealousy involved. This was especially so between the sixties and the eighties of the last century. Many women of the earlier generations were frustrated both intellectually and sexually. Girls started to do studies and enter professions. Also oral contraceptives changed the world they were living in. Many girls who grew up at the time had a freedom their mothers and grandmothers had never known. Suppose a daughter enjoys her freedom in both areas. The mother either identifies with her daughter and energetically ties on to her daughter's freedom, or she opposes and criticizes her daughter to vent and so to transfer her own frustrations. That generation gap has been greater for

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women than for men. Added to that is the stronger energetic bond between mothers and children. And growing old is often more traumatic for women than for men. Mother-daughter problems mean heavy sessions. The daughter may feel guilty that her mother has never been really happy. Even if the mother isn't jealous, the daughter may constrain herself out of compassion. Likewise, a man may never become successful in his career because his father wasn't successful. They subconsciously find it disloyal to surpass their dad. What do we do about it? Free the client, loose the attachments. One of the reasons we become energetically entangled with others, when we mingle with them, is that we aren't energetically ourselves to begin with. When we are truly filled with our own energy, we don't invite attachments and we don't become attachments. Then we interact with inner freedom. A child that is miserable or in shock turns inwards, freezes, withdraws. It loses energy, it often leaves its body. This isolated subpersonality stops growing until it's adequately treated and inte­ grated into the adult self, usually during therapy. Children in need are weak and absent-minded; they become attachment-prone. They may at­ tract weak and absent-minded souls wandering around, or their cry for help is answered by some­ times well-intentioned, yet amateurish helpers. There are many Victims and would-be Helpers drifting about at the other side. A girl of thirteen has inexplicable knee pains since her ninth year. It turns out she has an obsessor, a man who died in a car accident. After the accident he wanted to go to his child who was home alone. On his way, his attention was drawn by another child who just had heard that her parents would divorce and was crying in bed, missing her father. The dead man comes too close, out of pity, and once attached, remained stuck. After the session (35 minutes on the couch in her living room), her pain was gone, never to come back. The dead father finally came home - at the other side.

If we lose energy, the resulting gap eventually gets filled up by other energy. 'Im aginary friends' can be true attachments. They don't belong to us. Foreign energy in your system makes you ill, al­ ienating you from yourself and working as a magnet for yet more outside energies. Also our own past lives may wake up and fill the hole, out of instinct or to be of help. Particularly, deceased relatives easily find access to the child. Grandparents are often mistaken for spiritual guides or guardian angels, but are often unintentionally parasitic and isolate the inner child from the adult self, keeping it young and dependent. Occasionally, a past life of a parent jumps over onto the child, like we have seen before. Or an inner child of mom or dad, which they can't or w on't face, may hop over when their child has the same age as their inner child. C sees, again, a dark gray shadow of a man with a big hat. He has a stern, harsh presence. He remains indistinct and stands with his back to her. T: Imagine that you have somewhere in your body a substance o f the same dark gray. Your body will open somewhere and this substance comes out. Which part o f your body opens up? C: On my back, somewhere between my neck and my waist. T: Does it come out as a smoke, a liquid or a solid mass? C: As the same dark gray smoke. T: Now send that smoke to him and you see it enter somewhere in his body. Instruct your back, your whole body, to let go o f everything that belongs to that man. While the dark gray smoke leaves you, that man becomes more distinct, more substantial. More and more smoke is leaving your body and he's becoming increasingly clear. Does a lot o f it come out? C: Yes. It's becoming whiter now, cleaner. I'm shocked, it's my father standing there. Apparently he hin­ ders me. I didn't expect this. T: Tell him: I didn't expect that you hindered me so much. How does he react?

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C: Hardly. I must think o f jealousy just now. T: Just ask him: Are you jealous o f me? He may nod or shake his head, but he must answer somehow. C: He's afraid o f the freedom. T: Just ask: Why are you so afraid o f it? What does he answer? C: I can hardly ask it. My mouth gets closed and cramped. He's intimidating me. T: Say: You're intimidating me. But I have a question and 1 expect an answer. Why are you afraid o f free­ dom? C: He doesn't want confrontations. T: Just ask him: I f you don't want that, why do you confront me in my space? You're a quiet, friendly yet tenacious interviewer. How does he react now? C: Because he wants to help me. T: With what does he wants to help you? C: With coming up in life. T: Just say: You may be well-intentioned, but you don't understand anything o f life. Freedom is part o f it. And sometimes confrontations as well. How does he react? C: He becomes smaller. There're now two boys standing there. One o f twelve and one o f six. The 12-year-old boy gets to hear from his mother that he isn't allowed to play soccer because he's supposedly too fragile for it. The 6-year-old boy has cold hands with gloves on them. His mother convinces him he is weak and sickly. The client's father gives the fear of his mother back to her. She stands amid smoke and the word 'secret' pops up. C gets a headache. Her grand­ mother is now a little girl of four or five with a strict father. All the smoke returns to her. T: Look your great-grandfather in the eye. How are his eyes? C: I see no eyes, only a shadow face. Like compact smoke assuming a form. T: Ask him: Are you afraid o f me? What kind o f reaction you get then? C: How dare you! T: Say: I think you're afraid o f me, because you don't want show yourself Apparently you don't dare to confront me. How does he react now? C: He becomes an old man with a cane, smaller and less imposing. T: He did become old, apparently. He has shrunk and walks with a cane. Just tell him: You must have found it terrible, growing old. C: Yes, he really found it terrible. He's leaning on the cane. T: Ask him: Do you know you've died? C: No. T: Go to the old man with the cane, stand behind him and put your hands on his shoulders. You turn him around a quarter turn, and now you see together how he died and how he was buried. What are your first impressions? He is quite old. He dies in bed. Only his daughter is at the funeral. He wasn't loved. His son was in America and didn't want to come back for the funeral. He understands it, but it hurts. He had been an imposing man, but there was nothing left of that, he says. Actually, he was mentally lazy. He's summoned to come out of his coffin and stand on his feet. T: Ask him: Has there ever been someone you loved? C: His wife. T: Did she die before or after him? C: After. T: Did she love him ? C: In the beginning she did, but eventually she didn't anymore. T: Tell him you want to see him at the age when his wife still loved him. C: Twenty-five. T: Is he now standing there as a twenty-five year old in your room? C: Yes. T: Again, put your hands on his shoulders so that you both look at the door. You see the door open and you see his wife enter. What happens? C: She's shy. She doesn't want to go back to that age, because then she didn't know much about the world, she wants to stay old. But he's allowed to come with her. T: Tell her: You may go back to that young age and still bring all your later knowledge with you.

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C: Now she's a ball o f light. T: How does he react to that ball o f light? C: Elated. T: Say: Look, that's her soul. C: He himself becomes a ball o f light. T: See them leave together. C: They become one single light. T: Just let them go back to where they belong now. Apparently, right now they don't remember that life; they are in their essence. If the ball o f light has gone, say yes. C: Yes. My great-grandparents are gone. T: How's does your grandmother look now? C: She's young as well. Twenty-five. Also my father is young, as I've seen him on a photo. She carries my dad as a baby. I think she wants to give it to him. T: Excellent! Watch what happens when he takes the baby. She hasalwayswanted to keephim as a baby, right? C: Now he understands how to be a father. T: Now they may say goodbye to each other. She knows where to go? Wish her the best. Just see her leave. How's your dad now, holding that baby? C: He feels ten years younger. T: Is there anything still left in you that belongs to him? C: Something on my shoulder is bothering me T: Just imagine that your father comes to you and lifts thatburden from you. Canyou feel thedifference? It is important to see what that burden looks like? C: I find it hard to let go o f that burden. I still hold on to it. T: Why? Do you like to carry that? C: A guilt feeling. T: To whom and why? C: To my mother, because I cannot take care o f her. She understands. T: Tell your father: I feel guilty because I cannot take care o f my mother. How does he react? C: That's what we have in common. T: How does it feel when he says that? C: He's crying. T: Just let him cry. Tell your father: I'm glad grandpa has been able to leave. C: He's too. Mom and dad now are ready to leave and the session is completed.

10.6 Attachments of deceased strangers The idea that mental problems may be caused by deceased entities is as old as recorded history. The ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks treated the mentally ill with electric fish. The resulting electric shocks were supposed to release the attached entities. Elsewhere, similar methods were plunging people into cold water or dropping newborn children from a considerable altitude on a banner. There are even more unpleasant rituals such as whipping or caning. Finally, there's exor­ cism, chasing away attachments as being demons by evoking Our Lord, angels, archangels and saints, reinforced by conjurations like Satan, be gone! The practice of exorcism should be exorcized. Avoid it like the plague. It's distasteful, stupid, rarely effective and often worsening the condition of the victim. Even when the entity is removed, it re­ mains unclear where it goes. Probably to another host. The core of what we do, is letting clients see and do everything themselves, enabling them to liberate themselves and gain understanding in the process. We find out how and why the attach­ ment did enter, and we help the client to heal this weak spot. Almost without exception we heal the attachments as well, so they can continue their proper journey instead of lingering, wandering or attaching themselves to living people.

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Attachments that are egoistic, more or less aggressive and cause a lot of trouble we call obsessors. W hen an obsessor takes over, we speak of possession. Attachments are intruders, obsessors are bur­ glars and possessors* take us hostage. We rarely come across possessors, as kidnappers and hijack­ ers don't drive themselves to the police station. Obviously, this aspect of regression therapy is controversial, possibly even more controversial than the notion of past lives. Our only excuse is that this therapy is even faster and more effective in overcoming and resolving persistent problems than 'norm al' regression therapy. Most attachments are lost souls. What makes so many souls wander after death? They linger on due to suffocating emotions, unfulfilled desires, confusion or lack of consciousness. Ordinary attach­ ments are passive monomaniacs - confused, not grasping what has happened to them, only dimly aware where they are and what they are doing. For example, a child has been killed in a bombard­ ment. She doesn't realize that she died and keeps crying for mommy. Allan Kardec cites the case of a miser who keeps an eye on his belongings. Why should we get involved in such cases? Can't spiritual 'guides' deal with them? However, embodied people are more credible to such lost souls. A family was suffering from the soul of a dead farmer who had hung himself in what was now their home. He felt he still hung there. When he was found and approached in the session, he complained of pain in his neck. The suggestion to remove the rope, startled him: But then I fall! The farm had long been renovated and the bar from which he had hung himself was no longer there, but in his view it was still there. When the farmer was asked if he had never seen light figures who could help him, he responded: You mean those ghosts who have been flitting around me? He saw the spiritual guides as scary, shimmering specters.

Often, an attachm ent is trapped in a 'frozen moment, ' an unchanging state of mind. N on­ obsessive attachm ents usually come to people because they feel familiar: they have known them or they sense a sim ilar emotion, a similar state of mind. A lost soul attaches easily to a lonely child on a playground who can't join the other children and feels lost. Children who die in a hos­ pital, in panic, without mom and dad, often cannot find the way back home because mom and dad apparently no longer loved them. Why else would they leave him in this alien, scary place? Such a deceased child easily attaches to another child in that hospital who cannot sleep at night and lies scared stiff in his bed. Deceased addicts often attach themselves to living addicts to continue to get their satisfaction. They also may create the desire in living people who w eren't addicts before. Deceased drunks easily piggyback on living drunks. Or - fortunately less common - they turn their victim s into drunkards. Releasing attachments is only the beginning. How come there is an attachment to begin with? There was an entrance, a weak spot, in the host organism. There was insufficient presence and selfawareness. Clients must retrieve something that belonged to the self and that they lost as much as remove something non-self. The next chapter, on energy work and karmic transactions, will elabo­ rate this issue. The following example shows how an attachment already arrived at birth and how the negativ­ ity came from negative energy that was attached to the attachment. Careful disassembling and dis­ tinguishing each attachment, and treating and resolving each of these step by step, brings excellent results. During a group session C sees an older woman, apparently from her mother's family, who tries to hide. The client feels choking. Tears well up. Could be sadness, could be something else.

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T: Say quietly and friendly but firmly: I'm sorry, but I see you anyway. How does she react? C: She cowers. She doesn't want to be seen. T: Walk over to her until you are standing in front o f her. What kind o f impression do you get about her? C: A frightened woman. Old. Shy. Shifty eyes. T: Ask her: How did you die? How does she react? C: In a bad way, which she doesn't want to be reminded o f again. T: Ask her: What do you really want? C: She wants to stay put. She feels safe with me. She wants to be protected from men. Men have belittled and kicked her to death. We ask whether there was anyone whom she loved. Her mother. That mother turns out to be a solid, robust woman. Her daughter felt small in her presence. We ask the mother: If you have taken strength from your daughter in some way or another, this is the moment to give it back. She gets back something brown. It becomes a monkey jumping in her arms. It makes her relaxed and cheerful. She now looks like a normal woman. T: You stand in front o f the house where you live right now.Take that womanalong inside, sit down somewhere and put her in front o f you. Tell her: Apparently men have harmedyou a lot,because you missed that monkey. You missed something of yourself. That happened sometime during her childhood, by something having to do with her mother. Does she understand that? C: Yes. T: Ask her: How did you die? Can she now take a look at it? C: She was burnt out, worn out, treated as a drudge. She slaved for her father and her husband. After her death, she continues to wander around in the area. T: Now you get an impression when she first came into your life, the moment when she first entered your life. Where are you and what happens? Your first impression. C: I'm in the crib. T: Where did she come from? C: Out o f nowhere. She's suddenly there. T: What's the expression on her face when she sees you lying in that cradle? How does she look at you? C: She wants to protect me. T: Feel what happens. C: I don't need all that shit from her. She supposedly wants to protect me from it. T: I suspect she has worsened it. C: I'm sure o f it. T: How close does she come? C: Inside me. T: How does the baby in the crib feel when she enters? C: Hard. Like I'm not myself anymore. T let C confront the woman. This attachment has made her distant and weak. C feels angry and disgusted. A mountain of black tar comes out of her, mainly from her chest. If T then presses her chest, C screams. The woman must burn the tar. Then she gives back the energy that she has deprived the client of. That appears to be pink: a balloon as big as an adult. C feels delicate, frag­ ile and soft. We pick up the baby of two months. She loves that baby and absorbs the baby into herself. T: How does that woman stand and look like there, now all that black is cleared up and that pink has gone from her? C: She cannot stand to look at me, me so delicate, so soft. T: That she has lost, right? C: Yes. T: Now you see her arrive at an age that she still had her own softness. The door o f the room opens and there a girl at the age when she still had that. C: Thirteen, fourteen.

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T: How does the old woman react when she sees herself as thirteen, fourteen girl entering the room? C: She's upset. T: You get one impression o f what happened to this girl. C: Her mother forced her to live with a man she didn't love or even like. T: Can she embrace that girl? C: Yeah, she's happy to see her. T: Just tell her: Even if you did forget, you can get back everything that belongs to you, is part o f you. You don't need to get this from another. She understands that now? C: Yes. She's surprised. She's angry about what has been done to her. T: Tell her she's right about that, but that out o f her anger she also has done wrong things to you. C: She didn't know where else to go. T: Can she apologize? C: Yes. T: Ask if she can step into that girl and be absorbed in her. Can she do that? C: Yes she can. T: How does that girl look now? C: Powerful. T: She knows the way? C: Yes. T: Wish her the best and see her leave. C still feels uncertain: anyone can do with her what they like. What does she need? A smiling image of a god appears. That becomes a bodybuilder, a nice guy. The baby lies calmly in his arms, so it's a part of herself. We let the bodybuilder step into her. She now feels warm and filled, gigantic. But a vicious, puny little voice keeps saying that all this isn't allowed. That ap­ pears to come from her parents, particularly from her father. The bodybuilder shows itself. Her father doesn't appreciate this. The bodybuilder puts him out the house. C now feels soft and powerful at the same time. Still something grey, smelly, choking lingers. Some old sore, from a previous life, not just hers. We do not go into it this session. It's being burned, consumed. Something sparkling golden re­ mains. She takes in her mouth. C feels it has something to do with her femininity. T suggests to swallow it deeper. Then it spreads throughout her body. C feels complete. With that feeling we end the session. Apparently, a past life shimmered through in which her femininity had been attacked. We only touched on it energetically, with the suggestion to return to it later and find out whatever is in­ volved with it. The baby was unprotected because for some reason that bodybuilder wasn't there. The bodybuilder represents male strength. Undoubtedly some past life of her.

There are attachments that hang about at the scene of an accident or in a house. They are not only earth-bound, they are place-bound, haunting one area or one house. There are many examples of this. A young woman lives in an attic in an old house in a historical Dutch harbor town. She has back pain, bad dreams, heaviness, depression. Personifying the cause, she sees a man. Yes, that's the presence who is in my room. She has seen a number of times. It’s an old sea captain. He had a young, blond wife. When he returned, his wife had died and he was inconsolable. He keeps hanging about in the house for more than three centuries. Now a similar young blond woman lives in the attic. At night he went to her to stroke her hair. He got stuck with her, and she got his depression. He attached on a lonely feeling that she had at the time.

Attachments can switch between people. So if you work with attachments, you have to know what you're doing. Especially if you have a family and you work from the home. Skilled therapists are hardly at risk, but even they have to beware of attachments jumping over to someone near. Some attachments aren't malicious, but are very self-centered, and thus seriously hamper and bother you, like 'sticky hangers.' Such sticky hangers are usually vague and drawn-out. A boy has from an early age a girl hanging around him who's sadly in love with him. What have you done, going down (i.e. incarnating) without me? That boy develops slowly and doesn't care about girls.

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The strangest stories may emerge. The following case is a woman who as a girl was sold by her un­ cle into prostitution. In the session we come across an attached deceased person, an apparently ex­ traterrestrial attachment, an obsessive energy from a living relative, and inner children of 4 and 18 years old. A Polish woman comes for therapy. Her postulate: I don't want to be here. Main reason: People are cruel. Where did this originate? She is around four years old and has seen Grandpa hanging in the barn. He had hanged himself. Shortly after she sees how her father beats a horse to death. She has caught the stare of the dying horse. She flees to the river and thinks: I don't want to be here. She looks into the water and thinks: If I jump, I will die. When she's eighteen, the Berlin Wall has just fallen. She wants to escape poverty and leave Po­ land. Her uncle takes her to Yugoslavia, supposedly on a vacation. He sells her. They take away her passport and hold her captive in a house somewhere in the mountains. She panics, but also feels a will to survive. We bring the client back to the staring horse eye she kept seeing in her mind. The horse is healed. Grandpa is freed and healed. Grandpa gives energy back. Then we integrate the child of four into the adult self. Finally, the obsessive energy of her uncle appears. This is removed and we integrate the eighteen-year-old girl.

The next section discusses how to deal with attachments and obsessors. Frequently, only during the session we discover what kind of meat is in the stove. Or what kind of spirit is in the bottle.

10.7 Obsessive energies Aggressive attachments we call obsessors. We encounter them in heavy, complex and intractable cases with mental, psychological and physical complications. Indications of strong obsessors are: • Sudden personality changes: in character, behavior or appearance. • Being overwhelmed by suicidal thoughts. • Physical changes: extreme power, epileptic seizures, freezing up and paralysis, voice changes, and insensitivity to pain. • Physical symptoms moving around in the body. • Sudden strong changes in opinions and judgments. William Baldwin (1983) gives practical tips for diagnosis and therapy: Recurring or persistent body sensations with no medical cause are suspect, especially if the feeling or sensation changes or moves around within the body while the client is in altered state. I have come to the same conclusion, although pseudo-obsessors give similar symptoms. The distinction between obsession and pseudo-obsession rarely is immediately obvious. Active obsessors evoke the severest symptoms: from waking up in pain and exhaustion, to overall confu­ sion and suicidal thoughts. Pseudo-obsessors may lead to severe phobias and neuroses as well, while passive attachments may cause relatively mild symptoms. The intensity of the complaint is in itself inconclusive. We need to determine the cause during the session. Winafred Lucas gives the following indications for obsession: • strong reduction of the level of energy, • chronic fatigue, • general physical ailments. As said before, attachments are intruders, obsessors are like burglars. Both may stay squatting. Against intruders we can defend ourselves by closing the windows and locking the doors. Against burglars we need to do more: good locks, special lighting and alarm systems. Once a house is broken

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in and doors or windows are forced, intruders may enter more easily An obsessor may open the door to others. Usually those are passive, attracted by chance. Often they leave when the strongest presence is released. Meanwhile however, they have exacerbated the problems. Also a powerful pseudoobsessor may open the door for attachments. Why do obsessors target us? • They aggressively want to continue satisfying their needs or addictions: like drink, drugs, sex or power. • They still have a bone to pick with us. They are motivated by personal hate and revenge. We may have either met them in our current lifetime, or in a recent past life. • They have a general hate: against men or women, against the rich and powerful, against the poor and dirty, against life, against everything. A study in Brazil found that 60% of the obsessors had karmic, personal reasons and 40% were driven by misanthropy general hatred of people. They m ay've once been abandoned, tortured and slain. Their hatred makes them target anyone alive they can find. No personal karmic bonds need to be involved. One obsessor hissed: I've already had sixteen and I'll also get this one. He had been leading people to suicide for two hundred years. A Brazilian doctor confronts an obsessor who resists strongly. The latter shows him the filthy cell, where he and his family starved to death. In his past life your client did this to me and now you want me to forgive him just like that?

A karmic obsessor deliberately targets a special person, usually a perceived or real enemy in a pre­ vious life. There is a famine. The family of a serf is starving. He says to his lord who rides past: You have to give us food. The lord beats him down. Doggedly, he again stands at the road the next day. When the lord sweeps past with his entourage, he grabs the reins and screams: You've plenty to eat, my family's starving, everybody's dying, we've worked hard for you, we want to eat\ They chop off his head. After his death, he haunts the lord's castle. He causes the lord's son to fall down the stairs, mak­ ing him a cripple. The lord eventually realizes who's haunting his castle. He should have tor­ tured that cocky serf to death, so he would have had less power to haunt him. In this present life, the former serf constantly worries about the welfare of his family. Attached to this is the contempt of that feudal lord that still paralyzes him in everything he tries to under­ take. The serf did something that nobody else dared to do, so he got guts. The opposite charges of courage and desperation cause shivering and trembling during the session. We guide the serf to the Place of Overview, meeting his family. Catharsis. We heal the usual way (see next chapter): head returned, blood returned, energy returned, all returned. Then we revisit what happened. He sees how he was haunting the castle. Let the current personal­ ity go to the castle together with the serf If there's still a part o f you hanging about there, go get it. Say, it's over. I understand why you've done it, but it's over.

We evoke the lord. He doesn't feel guilty. We have to make him see things. The healed serf and the healed lord confront each other. The serf apologizes too. It turns out he provoked the death of three descendants of the lord when he haunted the castle. The serf integrates into the current personality. It's over. He let his current son and daughter live their own lives, shedding his overprotective attitude.

Attachments and even obsessors can leave on their own accord. Like gnats that suck blood and leave again. For example, entities you may come across in supermarkets and department stores. Often they were poor wretches who died with envy and hatred of the uncaring rich. In countries

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with large income differences weTl find more of those. You're shopping and afterward you're ex­ hausted. Those 'gnats' take something from you, and they typically also leave the dirt of their ha­ tred or envy behind. Occasionally there's possession. Then the obsessor takes over. That gives complete personality changes. The Brazilian therapists, especially Inacio Ferreira, give spectacular examples of this con­ dition. Stories about exorcism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance exhibit the same characteris­ tics. When the obsessors told they had lived before, this was considered an attempt by the Devil to sow doubt. The clergy that tried to exorcize the 'd em o n s,' often became possessed themselves. A calm and judicious therapist can handle every obsessor, as long as there is a bond of trust be­ tween client and therapist. W hen in doubt, or when the client is too young, too frightened or too psychotic, visualize additional support. If the client can't see the obsessor and communicate with it - which rarely happens - you may need the aid of a psychic. Removing attachments and obsessors is methodically simple, but not for timid or agitated people. The following is a first introduction. Spirit releasement, as it also called, is a skill one needs to learn in practice, preferably under supervision. Usually, it's not immediately clear who or what the client is faced with. So walk calmly and m e­ thodically through the following steps: 1.

Let the client see the carrier of the disturbing charge enter the room and make eye contact with it. When a presence tries to hide, or evades eye contact, it's usually an attachment. Ask why the figure tries to withdraw. Respect that reason, but if necessary force it to look the client in the eye. Psychic contact is a two-way street. We always have access to whoever or whatever has access to us.

2.

Let

3.

If necessary, ask whether the figure is happy. That's never the case. This recognition facili­ tates communication, bot with pathetic and wretched figures as with overbearing and pos­ sibly malicious figures.

4.

Let

the client request - while keeping eye contact: When did you come to me?

5.

Let

the client then ask: Why did you come to me?

6.

If the answers make clear that the figure is another entity, then let the client ask whether it realizes it has died. If it doesn't, go to the dying moment and find out what happened to the body.

7.

Let clients feel that the charge of the figure is trapped somewhere in their own body. Let any residual charge anywhere in the body leave the body at the place where it once entered. Let the attachment return everything the client has lost due to its presence. Something opens in the attachment and a usually luminous energy flows back to the client and is ab­ sorbed at the spot where it once left. Where does it enter the client's body and how does that feel?

8.

Let the client ask whether the figure can reach on its own any people with whom he feels at home. If this isn't the case, let the client ask: Whom did you love most? That person will now enter the room. Let this person now guide the entity on its return. Say goodbye, and check the room. Is everything okay?

the client describe the expression of those eyes. W hat is the mood the figure is in?

It would take too much space to sketch the complete procedure for all types of attachments and ob­ sessors. Here I limit myself to some hints in how to deal with difficult ones. Cloudy figure. A presence may remain indistinct to hide itself or to appear more threatening. Or because its self-aw areness is blurred. Usually it wants to hide as it is afraid to have to leave the 262

host, and losing food, shelter and a connection with the known physical world. Many reactions are possible: •

Let the cloud condense, until the shadow of a figure becomes visible and delineate this fig­ ure step by step. • Let someone step out of the cloud. • Let clients imagine that the same gray or dark energy is in their own body, that it slowly leaves their body and is absorbed by the cloud in the room. The more this haze or dust leaves your body and is absorbed by the cloudy figure, the more distinct that presence becomes. Ultimately, the client is completely free from the cloudy energy and the figure appears clearly defined. Faceless figure. Cloaked and hooded, behind a veil, in the dark, or simply invisible. Usually, the same procedure applies. •

Let clients imagine that something of that figure is in their own head, and is beginning to leave and is being absorbed by the indistinct face of the figure. That face grows more dis­ tinct until its eyes can be seen. • Let the client stand behind the figure and see the back of its head. Usually this is easier. Then see it from the side, then slowly move to the front. By then, the face has become dis­ tinct. Wrapped in a cloak from head to toe. That's easy: take it off. Intimidating figure. A stem judge, priest, aristocrat or magistrate. Such figures act superior and aloof. They don't deign themselves to answer questions. You must strip some token of their superiority. Not to spite or humiliate them, but to compel them to respond. We are entitled to do that, as their presence is invasive. We've found a few tricks to deal with these cases: • Someone may have pronounced unjust death sentences, but still is unrepentant and refuses to comment or react. Then ask: What's the defining trait o f that judge? Harshness, for example. You now you get an impression o f what age he was when he wasn't yet harsh. He was six years old. Now you see that boy o f six years enter the room. The client compels the ruler, the judge or the executioner to look at that boy. Then they melt. Does that child know the way? It usually does. The child takes the harsh adult along, and they go to 'the light' or wherever. • You can also say: You'll now see him as he looks in his own energy, or in his true form , or when he wasn't yet harsh. That may seem an odd instruction, but it works wonders. Immediately they see the figure before it began to posture. • Or first let them give back everything they've taken from the client. Why are people awe­ some? Because they have received much awe. Once they have become awesome, they are awed more and become more awesome. • People who exercise power are never happy. And people who are unhappy, are pathetic. This realization makes an imposing figure less imposing. • Compel officials or priests in full regalia to undress themselves. If necessary until they are completely naked. Not to humiliate them, but to get them out of their pattern and ensure communication. Sometimes we only need to divest them of one symbol of their dignity: a crown, a necklace, a wand, a ceremonial sword. Resistant figure. Refusing to answer or respond in any way, refusing to communicate or to exchange. Force them to look in a mirror and if that fails, shut them in a space with surrounding mirrors. You can't get out till you have looked at yourself. This also works well with attached energies from living people.

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A giant figure. Suppose an oversized figure appears, looming three meters high. It has to duck to enter the door. What could this mean? Usually, the ratio of the figure's size with the client's size is the same as when the client was a child and that other person an adult. The client sees that figure in the same relative size, like about twice as high. From this ratio you can deduce how old the child was at the time of trauma. A godlike figure. Gods are usually huge. Often, they are not entering the room, but towering under the sky. Remember: awesome presences need our awe, feed on our awe. A real god is powerful, but feeding our power instead of feeding off our power. Such presences don't come forward in these kinds of sessions. The truly divine doesn't intimidate, but gives us the deepest sense of self, of be­ longing or coming home imaginable. So don't get overly impressed. Instruct clients to walk around the god figure and inspect its backside. They may see it is hollow or weak at the back. If it's empty, it may be treated as a thought form and either smashed or burned. Behind the imposing facade may be a priest or high priest is seeking to control people. Expose such people, place them back in their own energy only and send them away. Let the client feel all his own lost energy return. Stay calm if clients cannot handle the confrontation. Let them regain their lost strength first. Offer­ ing support is better than protecting, encouraging better than supporting. With our support, people win those battles. If needs be, evoke the 'w rath' of clients, until it emanates like a white glow from them. In the theory and practice of healing, enough! is the magic word. If clients can't find their strength, ask where the source is. Somewhere above my head. It shines dimly. OK. See how it grows and comes nearer. The return of the soul's vitality is the best there is. Don't give up when clients feel weak, exhausted or can't find the source. The source is there. Always. W hen we can't send away a figure, it's usually a part of the client's own self. We first need to clean it up. This may require regression: reliving the original trauma, often a death experience, before we can integrate the pseudo-obsessor with the main self. In the next chapter, when discussing how to personify, liberate and integrate pseudo-obsessors, we'll come back to this work.

10.8 Evil influences Some personifications may be frightening and dark, monstrous, beastly or demonic. These de­ serve special treatment. Darkness may come from a lack of light: low energy, fear, wanting to hide. It can also be a sign of malice. M alicious presences want to destroy. Out of envy or hatred, or out of lust. They may hate a person, a group, a whole category of people, even all people or all living beings. Sometimes these presences are crazed by suffering and grief and harm clients unintentionally. Others are expressions of deliberate malice, as in voodoo-like rituals, usually paid for. Sometimes demonic presences are old malevolence of clients themselves, wrapped in shame and guilt. These shadows contain rampant rage, rancor, envy or hatred of others who haven't been infected by the dark side. Ultimately, we may encounter pure, inhuman malignity in entities we call devils or demons. Meeting such darkness demands from the therapist calmness and firmness, and above all an inner detective who fearlessly finds out facts, causes and effects. After everything is peeled off and sorted out, even the naked demonic is a straightforward challenge. Discussing how to demobilize evil, it is difficult to avoid giving pointers to the opposite: how to mobilize. So I keep it rather short and general. Let the client ask dark or demonic presences whether they've always have been dark or have become dark. When they are surprised by the question, they once became dark, but had forgotten it.

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Then the recipe is simple: you tell the client Now you will get an impression how it was before becoming dark. Remember: any psychic influence is a two-way street. If the attachment has always been dark, you tell the client: Now you will get an impression when and how it contacted you fo r the first time. Send them back to where they came from. If they refuse to do this, have the client surround them with silvery light, and contract that ring or ball of light until the dark presence has become quite compact and no longer is able to resist. Then send them back to where they came from. Sometimes the dark presence appears to consist of different levels. A Dutch woman was abused by her father from age twelve till nineteen. She meets his presence under a tree in her garden. He is standing half in the darkness. We let her pull the light and the dark side apart. At the bright side stands her father, at the dark side stands an unknown SSofficer. Everything about him is cold and gray, especially his eyes. We find out that he was sta­ tioned in the Netherlands and shot himself in the head at the end of the war. Soon afterwards he attached himself to her father who was a young man, at the same age the German had when he began his training at the SS, and with similar looks. The German apparently wanted a new be­ ginning. The SS-officer is totally uncommunicative, refusing to talk. His eyes remain hard and cold. Pull out o f him what makes him hard and cold. That turns out to be a gray wolf, with hard and cold eyes. No ordinary wolf. Much scarier. Pull out o f the wolf what makes it hard, cold and scary. That turns out to be a ring of cold, gray energy. Where did that come from? From a cold and gray sphere surrounding the earth. We returned the ring of energy to that sphere. Now the wolf turns into a friendly sheepdog and the SS-officer gets tears in his eyes. During the SS-training, recruits were treated harshly to harden them. Each SS officer in training must tame a dog assigned to them. Any remaining feelings still left, are projected on the dog. At the end of the training they get their officer's pistol, and the first thing they must do is shoot their own dog. So the last remaining warmth and empathy is killed off as well. Befehl ist Befehl. This man later killed himself with the same gun. Her father, cold because of the obsessor, sought warmth with her and she became cold by her father. At the end of the session she stands in the warm sun and the last remnants of the cold melt away.

In this example, the darkness is not black, but gray and cold. Commonly, the darkness is seen and felt as black. If the dark figure stands in front of the client, we ask clients to feel and see in their own body everything that belongs to that dark figure. Often it's a black oil or tar, that only very slowly can be removed from the body. The only positive thing about it is that it burns well. Black, cold, sucking mud cannot be burned, but can be buried or dumped in a river. Also crawling animals fre­ quently emerge: worms, maggots, earwigs and woodlice, spiders, jellyfish, wriggling snakes and eels. We ask clients what should happen with all of that. Usually, vertebrates return to their natural habitat, vermin is burned. Visualized cleanings are: burning, burying or dumping at sea or in running water. Occasionally, flushing down the toilet or putting in the garbage. Incineration is the most definite. Let the client visualize a campfire glowing intensely under the night sky. Sometimes it needs to become almost white hot. Intense silvery white is the most hygienic cleansing glow. Occasionally, something valuable remains after the purification, like a ring or jewel. Clients discover it's something they once lost. Animals should be looked in the eyes. Any intelligence there? Anything strange? Keep eye con­ tact and forget the rest. Around the eyes a new figure will appear. The presence now shows itself in its original shape. Then treat it as a human personification. We use regression to find out where and when and how the client has picked up this darkness. Through living people or deceased souls. The most common malignancy people get from others are curses. You're just a fool. If that's said frequently and intensely enough, it effectively becomes a curse. With personification we summon the source of the curse, and let clients visualize and feel the presence of the curse as an energy or substance in their body.

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Even more stubborn than a curse from others is when we have cursed ourselves. Sometimes, we're our own demon. The ordinary recipe works best here: regression. Finding out where, when and how, and above all why we've cursed ourselves. Demonic figures come in many shapes and sizes. Emptiness. Eyes as empty holes, glassy eyes and doll-eyes indicate thought forms. Let the client shine a silvery light into those empty or dull eyes. If nothing happens, first find out when the thought form was produced and by whom. Then consume it in a silvery white glow. Or cleave it with a laser. Typically a person may emerge, often a child, who was hiding or captured in the thought form. Monsters. Often large, dark, hairy, more or less apelike. Usually they were children's fears. Espe­ cially if clients become childish in their fear, the easiest instruction is to ask your client to stand be­ hind the monster and seek a kind of zipper. Open it. What emerges? Perhaps an inner child. Or a frightened deceased child who was wandering around. Within this scary thought form the wander­ ing child feels safe. Hellfire. This may be the memory of a fire in which many people died, or of someone who was burned alive. Occasionally, the origin is closer to home. A woman suffers from horrible fears. Asked to describe the fears, she sees a horrible fire and thinks of the word 'hell/ We go back to the very first time of this fear. She's six. The family is having lunch. Her parents, strictly Catholic discuss that in the street a newborn baby died who wasn't baptized. It will burn in hell forever. The child pictures this: a sweet, innocent baby burned in a hell fire forever. What a horrible God! Her parents talk about it as if it is a natural thing! At that moment, the horror seeps into her soul. We tell that six-year-old girl that she was far more reasonable and humane than her parents. Her abhorrence at such an unimaginable cruelty was right. She was OK. Her parents weren't. Her fears ended.

Religion generally plays a role when the darkness shows itself as a classic devil. We first need to figure out if the devil is a part of the Shadow of the client, an other human being who's become demonic, or a demonic entity in its own right. We do this by asking: Have you always been like this or have you become like this? If they've always been like this, we're dealing with a genuine devil - whatever that may be. If they've become like this: You get an impression o f how it was before it became like this. Take a tiger. That tiger may devour us, that’s awful, but it is simply being itself: a hunter, a carni­ vore. A devil, likewise, has apparently as its primary task to bother, trouble, burden, weaken and harm us. By scaring us, by poisoning us and weakening us; by deceiving, confusing and seducing us. Ask: What do you want? Let's assume: destroying the minds, souls and bodies of people - or other liv­ ing creatures. Then we say to that devil: Well, you've been pretty successful. But now it's over and done with. We send it back where it came from. In 10% of the cases, they seem to be swallowed up into the earth. The other cases shoot into dark space or into dark moons. They may resist to go back to report a failed mission. When you were sent out, did they tell you that this could happen, that you could be stopped? No? Tell them when they reprimand you, I've been misinformed. That sounds absurd. Maybe it is. But this absurdity ends all sorts of extreme mental and spiri­ tual misery more quickly and thoroughly than anything else. It works. If it isn't true, it at least comes close. I've come across devils in only a few percent of severe cases. There are colleagues who claim to find dozens of demons among practically everybody. As black blobs flowing in the veins or lodged throughout the body. Once I've witnessed a colleague evoking demons and sending them, with their commanding officers and fellow-demons to the light. Ten thousand in just one session. The client was at the end even more dazed than at the beginning. It should be obvious to the reader what I think of such practices.

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That's even worse than classic exorcism, which is already an extremely conceited, biased and inef­ fective way of working. Most so-called evil spirits are just wandering souls and stubborn egoist ob­ sessors. Not a few are split-off parts of the client's mind, and need to be healed and integrated. (Preferably in that order.) The few apparently real demons, are ultimately just themselves. They feed on our own fear, our envy, our anger, our twisted lusts. We simply have to identify them and stop them. By personification we find out what's going on. By regression we find the story behind them often including the client's own role. By energy work we undo the consequences. A young woman in the Victorian age had to marry someone her parents had selected for her. She was in love with another. He agrees to ask her father's permission to marry her. He climbs the stairs to her father's office. She is waiting by the staircase. The father buys the boy off. He comes out the door, avoiding to look at her. Her father says the arranged marriage will go ahead as planned and that she should keep her mouth shut and do what she's told. She goes haywire and jumps off the stairs. Young men are all traitors! After her death, she seeks out the lover who be­ trayed her, makes him to be run over by a horse carriage, goes on to the next young man and kills him by a car accident. She has done this many times over, before we come across her, still enraged, as an obsessor with a male client.

Many therapists don't like to work with obsessors, because those may be quite aggressive. They are frightened. Partly because their own unresolved fears and their own dark side, and partly because they don't know how to handle the dark side. It's your destiny. Yes, but said by Dark Vader or by a Jedi knight? Negative energy is more often than not the corruption of positive energy. Many of us suffer from the residues of old past lives in which we were powerful and became fed up with the people we tried so hard to help. Add some experiences of abuse and cruelty and we may end up dark our­ selves. In a regression someone experiences herself as a man who during his training for priest is en­ closed in a small cave with a newborn child, and must stay there until the child dies and the body starts to decompose. The choice is either to harden or to become crazy. This hardness is tainted by isolation and hatred to those who didn't have to experience this ordeal. Afterwards it is easier for him to have contempt and to humiliate others. The experience creates a natural authority, but of a cold and cruel kind.

Many so-called initiations steeled the will by having to commit or at least to witness atrocities. There's a demonic side to such practices. There are more natural, more noble ways to harden peo­ ple. Like learning how to vigorously and professionally respond to dangerous situations. A sadistic personification looks human, but caricatured and gleeful. It is usually male and appears as a serial rapist and killer. Female sadistic figures are more catlike and snakelike. Let the sadist, the monster or the devil do what it wants to do and watch this from above. The client is usually dis­ gusted by it. So you say: Step out o f your body, so you're transparent, invisible. You float to the ceiling o f the room. Your awareness is up here, down there you see yourself and across from it that figure. Let that figure do anything it wants. It tears me to pieces with his claws, till my body becomes a horrible mess. W hen he's finished, you descend, tap on his shoulder and ask: Are you happy now? If that figure turns around and starts to do the same thing again? Before you begin all over, I can detach m yself again from m yself and hover above it, and then I '11 be behind you again, and I ask again if you're happy now. We can go on as long as you want. It's leading you nowhere. I want to have an answer to my question: Are you happy now? If they're satisfied after they've done I don't know what terrible things with you, they appar­ ently wanted personal revenge on the client. It's almost without exception karmic or something that 267

happened earlier in the current life, and that figure has already died in a previous life. It may've been a rival, it could be something from a past life. You obviously wanted your revenge. Yes. Maybe you've got a good reason fo r it, perhaps not. I don't remember what it's about. Please show me what you want revenge for. Tell me and show it to me. People who're angry at you, because you've done something bad to them, always want to tell you about it. Then you tell them that now you better understand them. You don't have to agree with them, but you understand it now. W hat may happen if the figure isn't satisfied? How m any people does he have to rape, kill, or m aim , before he is satisfied? Let's take the exam ple of a fierce w om an who wants to castrate a m ale client and chop him into pieces. How many times do you have to do this before you're satis­ fied ? If she says fo u r tim es, or six times, then four or six men did som ething bad to her - like a gang rape or children being slaughtered. Sim ultaneously, or during her life. A m ini-regression clarifies that. Another is only satisfied when all men in the whole world are castrated. Then she'll be busy fo r quite some time. Then they've gone berserk. And they are pathetic. Because they never will be sat­ isfied. In such cases I work energetically. I let the client stand behind that figure and remove with a silver-white laser beam the cause of the m adness residing in the figure's head or elsewhere in its body. (Yes, I know silvery-white laser beam s can't exist in reality, but they can nevertheless be visualized.) Then they come to their senses. Then a story may come up of why someone has be­ come this way. In some cases, if you remove what makes them mad, they shrivel until nothing substantial remains. They may also shrink to, for instance, a child of three; then the m adness struck when they were three years old. If they're smaller still and can't talk, I ask whether their father or m other or someone else can collect them and take them to a good place. Sometimes, a kind of angel appears. The worst evil apparitions are souls who've degenerated so much, have become so dark, that they cannot incarnate in a human body any longer. They can exist only as parasites, feeding on living people and to burden, harm and sicken and degrade them: serial killers, satanic cults, berserk sol­ diers. They appear in the personification room as a monstrous sadist or a bloated corpse. If they're caught, it's the end of the line for them. That's why they're so fierce. They try to frighten and mad­ den you as a therapist as well. If you're not careful, you may be stuck with such a dark, aggressive parasite. All us have been children once and we've all been afraid of the dark. None of us is com­ pletely 100% free from fear. So, be vigilant! As they have no longer true power in themselves, putting them in their own energy is so effec­ tive, because there's so little left. An alternative is letting the client draw a circle around it with sil­ very white light. Then you let the circle get thicker and harder and firmer and smaller. You constrict the circle, until the entity's power snap. It suddenly quiets down. The circle may become a silvery sphere. Let the client make the sphere reflective at the inside. Wherever they look, they inevitably see themselves. Often, I add: You can only get out after you've looked in the mirror. Can evil presences jum p over to others? They may. I w ouldn't try to remove obsessors if you prac­ tice at home and don't feel confident you can handle them. Always make sure that nothing of the entity remains behind. Check it out and send it back to where it came from. Cleansing visualiza­ tions are not sufficient in such cases. You must be able to be radical when necessary, yet calm, almost relaxed. Agitation is almost as dan­ gerous as fear, because darkness easily contaminates. Whatever happens, resolve everything before your client leaves. Check beforehand whether you trust the client and the client trusts you. If you suspect that clients may duck their own work: stop the session. Essentially, this kind of work only can succeed as a joint venture. 268

10.9 P a ra s itic th o u g h t fo rm s

Regular health care speaks of compulsive-obsessive disorders. These correspond to parasitic thought forms or result from disturbing subpersonalities or attachments. Compulsive-obsessive disorders are characterized by: • • • •

Recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses or images that are felt as intrusive and inap­ propriate and bring anxiety and discomfort. The thoughts, impulses or images are not about real problems. People try to ignore or suppress these thoughts, impulses or images, or to neutralize these with other thoughts or activities People understand they produce these obsessive thoughts, impulses or images themselves.

Obsessive thoughts are not about trivial worries and are no sign of hypersensitivity. People find them absurd and alarming. For example, a decent person has 'dirty' sexual thoughts. He finds that disgusting and immoral. Yet those thoughts keep coming up, however he tries to eliminate them. Or a sweet old lady keeps fantasizing about murdering her - dearly beloved - husband. For her it is incomprehensible that she harbors such shameful thoughts. Most people who suffer from this, know that these obsessions sprout from their own mind. Some say they come from ’the devil’ who torments them and punishes them, and they pray for de­ liverance from this tormentor. Obsessions are often about meaningless and nonsensical things; for example by grinding on about an insignificant event. Frequently they are unable by this compulsive thinking to do other sensible things. Someone always demands an apology from others, but for what nobody knows. Compulsions are characterized by: •

• •

Repetitive behavior (e.g. hand washing, checking, sorting over and over again) or mental activities (e.g., praying, counting, repeating silently) in response to an obsession or to rules people feel they must strictly adhere to. The behavior seeks to prevent or reduce discomfort or prevent a threat; however, such a response is not adequate. People understand that the compulsions are excessive or unreasonable.

With compulsions and obsessions we should first think of obsessors, and then pseudo-obsessors, yet they could also be more or less autonomous thought forms. Read the research of Ronald van der Maesen about regression therapy for Gilles de la Tourette, the tic when people inadvertently inter­ ject gross and obscene words. An attachment is animated, someone else is present in it. A subpersonality is animated. It is a part of yourself, a past life or an inner child. An obsessive thought turns out to be inanimate. It is an empty shell, an empty coat. When the therapist figures out together with the client what makes it tick, the energy will flow back to the creator of the thought form and its shape will disappear, dis­ solve or crumble. Deconstructing such a mental construct, we call resorting. This section is at the end of this chapter, because it is about a relatively new topic. Maybe we should have started with it. It is about conditions of not being ourselves, not because we have lost something of ourselves, not because we have internalized something from the outside, but because we have created something that is turning against ourselves. How can that be? Thoughts exist at different levels: •

Uncharged thoughts: casual thoughts and images like we have when we are thinking lei­ surely without particular attention or emphasis. 269

• • •

•

Charged thoughts: emphasized through conscious repetition. Emotionally charged thoughts and images: thoughts in shallow trance, intense wishful dream­ ing, intense fearful pictures, but also in creative arts. Will-driven thoughts and ideas: decisions, initiatives and enterprises, but also postulates and obsessions that may have energetic effects on the subjects of our attention, often ourselves; thoughts in deep trance. A major trigger for the creation of an obsessive thought-form is a deep sense of impotent rage. Autonomous will-driven thought forms: that are near-independent entities and parasitize on their creator - or the host they have been sent to. These thought forms lead a life of their own. They want to be nurtured and grow. Usually these thought forms appear as human-like, animal-like or something in between. Representations of angels, ghosts, monsters and devils fall within this category. Usually, such appearances have been created by human minds. We could call these thought-constructs Gestalts. 'False gods' are such collectively fed thought forms.

Gestalts have become quasi-living beings. Apart from the self and the non-self, we are dealing with autonomous thought forms: 'the former self.' There is yet another complication: strong thought forms, once created, easily may become inhabited. In those shells subpersonalities may reside, and occasionally even deceased souls or other entities. The Gestalt is then the living fur-coat or the en­ chanted armor. Insofar Gestalts are enveloping people themselves, the basic intervention is: step out o f it and look at it. Creative thinking is based on forceful will-charged thoughts. People who produce thought forms, have learned in a previous life to think creatively or magically. Magical thinking connects thought and will power, uses kundalini. In any real decision we also connect our will power to a projected thought. This makes it energetically a reality. For this we need an advanced mind or a mind that can produce mental images under extreme conditions over a long period. This means we have had at least one life in which we learned this skill and that we still possess this skill. We also may create positive thought forms. Imagine that you have an extra brain around your head - preferably well connected to your physical brain. Much of what is sold as positive thinking, is an amateurish kind of creative thinking. We create our own reality. A half-truth at best. Often it is the other way round: people becoming ensnared in their own unreality. Sensitive and intelligent children with a background (from previous lives) of spiritual abilities may, especially at the 'm agic age' (4 to 6 years old), create thought-images that haunt them for the rest of their lives: a true Comrade, a true Father, a true Mother and later a true Love. These projected personalities can continue to feed themselves at the expense of real relation­ ships with others. Or they create a Protector, typically cat-like with girls, often dog-like with boys. We also may create an ideal image of ourselves, which we charge with willpower. This hinders us to become who we are, because we have placed our strength in a mental image. We will defend and nurture this image at much cost, because it represents our ideal self. The stronger our ideal self, the weaker our real self. And the weaker we are, the stronger it becomes, assuming superhuman proportions. Usually we will blame others, society, the planet for not being able 'to be ourselves.' What is the simplest charge we can attach to something? What is simpler than will and concen­ tration, simpler even than prolonged repetition? Eroticism, sex. The simplest magic uses of sexual energy. If you’re a sex symbol, you are not constantly surrounded and permeated by sexual fanta­ sies of others about you. Most thoughts of most people don't leave the aura of the thinker. If we forcefully project a precise and conscious thought or mental image, that will have an ef­ fect. If you are a man who is attractive to women who have been witches in past lifetimes, you'd better hide. In any case, it is very difficult to be a sex symbol and have a stable private life at the same time.

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W hat is the simplest way to get into a trance? Music. Where did music start? Where people had to get into a trance: in war, in love and in religion, with Mars, Venus and Jupiter respectively. Music was born in armies, in festivals and in rituals. Rumbling drums, melodic tunes, enchanted singing and deep organ tones. Energetic processes occur in a trance, even without music. Sex in which nothing happens ener­ getically, is empty: a perfunctory quickie. The same applies to a religious ritual: without trance it's empty. A therapy session without trance is empty as well. Magic in the sense of doing something energetically that has an effect outside of yourself, often has to do with transfer of willpower, and thus with dominance and submission, even if it suppos­ edly is for someone's good. Dominance and submission are rampant in all three areas: war, sex and religion. Once you know how to energetically charge things, you can achieve a lot. But there are two risks. One risk is working with negativity. If you separate in a divorce with much hatred and envy, and you charge that energetically, bad things may happen. The second risk is simply that you may shape, design, create. That sounds very nice, but who’s going to create? W hat do you wish to achieve? Why do you think you know what’s good for you? If you are going to energetically create something, you will confirm yourself as you presently are. That may hinder your personal evolution. Therefore, the best thing that can happen is for the crea­ tive process to proceed sluggishly, with fits and starts, with failures and repairs, with coincidences and indistinct noise, because then at least you don't become rigid, one-dimensional and doctrinal. If we really could determine where and how and who we are, we would become solipsists, myopically real in an unreal world. Positive affirmations and programs like Avatar are not nonsense, but they are ultimately infantile. The main reason why positive thinking so often fails to be effective, is that the negative mental programs (postulates) are still unresolved. The best paint, however high its quality and however thick it is applied, will not endure for long if some surface is dirty and greasy. W hat do you wish? A fancy and expensive sports car? Or worse: spiritual enlightenment? How do you know that it is right for you? Even when you don't create anything negative or evil ('black m agic'), you always create something from your current, inevitably limited consciousness. That all your wishes come true, is perhaps the greatest danger that may ever befall you. Wishes are usually immature and misguided. Wishful thinking can better stay uncharged, unrealized. Compare this with the lamp of Aladdin, or with making factotums: machines or servants who do anything you tell them to. Norbert Wiener has explored this problem in his book The Human Use o f Human Beings. This book is about the consequences of making thinking and self-repairing robots. It is wonderful if you can give orders to machines, but it is rather unfortunate that they execute rather exactly what you instruct them to do. Wiener illustrates this with the story of the little monkey hand. In a shabby street lives an elderly couple. Their son works in the mines at a night shift. There is a knock on the door and they find an old sailor at the door. The men have known each other from long ago. He asks for a place to spend the night. The couple is hospitable and he is grateful. Un­ fortunately, I can give you nothing in return. The only thing I have is a little monkeyhand with magical powers. Any owner may wish three things. For the previous owner everything went wrong and it went wrong with me as well. You see the poor state I am in. Yet the elderly couple keep insisting that they want to have that little monkey hand. In the end they get it. The man wants two thousand pounds, but nothing happens. They discuss whether they have another wish, but they decide to wait what will happen. An hour later there is banging on the door. There is someone from the mine, looking grave. Your son has had a fatal accident about an hour ago. He fell into the shaft. We assume no responsibility, but in these cases we will pay 2000 pounds

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as compensation. Please take this check. The mother runs to the mantelpiece, picks up the monkey's hand and screams: I want my son back. After several minutes they hear banging on the door again. They become scared and peek through the curtain. They are horrified by the apparition of their son, an undead ghoul. The only thing they know to do is to grab the monkeyhand and wish that their son goes away.

The danger of the monkeyhand is that you get what you ask without knowing why reality is as it is, and what consequences an intervention into reality may bring. If you unlock and activate the pow­ erhouse of the energy body and you project something you want, it works all too well. You'll have a monkey hand. Thought forms thus can turn against their creator. In extreme forms they can leach on us and even affect our mind. In occultism the latter threat is known as the Guardian on the Threshold. What is the difference with postulates? Postulates are program rules in our mind, recurring phrases that define how we see things and react to them. Postulates are abstract precursors of thought forms. They are mechanical thoughts, not parasitic thoughts. Suspect parasitic thought forms in the following conditions: • • • • • •

Clients who regress fine, work fine, have achieved much, and yet somehow never succeed in something important. Conscious and spiritually minded people who suffer from increasing relationship and/or financial and/or health problems. Anorexia. Addictions (especially without substance addiction). Some forms of psychosis, schizophrenia and borderline. Possibly many autistic people.

How do you recognize a personification as being a parasitic thought form? • • •

It is constant. The only dynamics are maintaining itself and growing in strength and size. It is not fully animated, it has minimal consciousness or a simple awareness. If any inhabitant has left, it is an empty shell, just energy from its creator. It is a shell, a jacket, a casing. • In general, it resists being emptied.

How do we deal with parasitic thought forms? We discover them best by personification. In a ses­ sion we can empty the energy of the thought form by flowing back into the client: resorption. This we do only after we have filtered out the energy of others! Through regression we identify its ori­ gin, just as with recovering lost energy of one's own and removing attached energy of others. The key is finding why it is has been created. To find parasitic thought forms, we can look for things that the client has once, consciously or unconsciously, created. Then you can figure out which ones do bother the client. In the end you resorb the energy of the thought form, by calling up that part which has created that image, often an inner child, sometimes a past life. We place opposite something that calls itself big the smallest part of the client, opposite something that calls itself powerful, the weakest part, and so on. If we then allow the weak subpersonality to grow, the thought form will empty itself accordingly. We have called this resorbing. The recharged subpersonality can then be integrated into the main personality. What did we find so far in our practice?

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•

• • • • •

Artificial personalities, usually created by stillborn babies, miscarriages or abortions. These may be human, often distorted or have simple forms like a sphere or a vertical cylinder: a pillar, a totem, a tube. Guardians that seem to support the person: so-called guides, friends, helpers, angels. Guardians who truly keep the client from doing something wrong. Guardians who keep others at bay: guard dogs, lions, panthers, birds of prey. Artificial environments. Collective idols, 'false gods.' A demon appears to have been produced by a fetus which died unaware. The fetus doesn't real­ ize that its mother has died, and stays in an etheric cocoon and simply wants to grow further. It feeds on the mother's anger and hatred at the moment she is killed. It grows and grows and becomes a demon, full of absorbed hatred and anger. The produced thought form that the fetus developed, is not entirely human and disproportionately large. The demon and the fetus had to be separately reintegrated into the current personality of the client. The fetus was lovingly absorbed and the demon was politely emptied. The client has intestinal problems, Crohn's disease, and she often panics. She regresses to two past lives that woke up when her grandpa died. She was six years old and grieved a lot. The first past life is a baby who's being sacrificed. The baby is put into the pot. It has no idea what is happening, just feels the fear and sadness of everyone present. The child doesn't know that it has died and that its soul is still wandering around. The second past life is a man. His wife and children are beheaded because they belong to an­ other race. In his blind rage he chops off ten heads of the responsible people with an axe. Others overpower him and he is beheaded himself. We also meet a child who was born five years before the client was born. She feels that she was that child herself. When she was one-year old, she had a croup attack. The doctor had to be picked up by a boat, and by the time he arrived she had died. She didn't know that she died. After her death, she becomes a round shape and emits light. This form resides in the client's belly. She sees it as a skippy-ball. There is still an energy exchange between the ball and herself. The therapist puts the smallest part of the client in front of the skippyball and let it grow into the adult Z. Only a small ball remains, about the size of a one-year old girl. They explore the he life and death of that little girl. The client feels happy and she experiences a light feeling in her stomach. She feels that her intes­ tines have been in a fix, and that they now have regained their space. A woman wondered if there was something beyond God. She sought the answer during a soulregression. Near the place where she could get that answer, two static gatekeepers blocked her. They came from a life in the time of Jesus. She had critical questions back then. That became dangerous for her. She was a woman with children and if she was too critical, that could cost her life. She created the gatekeepers herself to refrain her from asking critical questions. Those thought forms still hindered her in her present life, even though she didn't need them anymore. A male client experiences himself as an aged female herbalist helping many people. She has a white figure with her since childhood. Her brother-in-law is after her money and reports her as a witch. She must go to the market square full of screaming people. She flies out of her body and the white figure dissolves. She is beheaded. She looks back at that life. The white figure turns out to be a guardian-angel she created herself from bubbles that emanated from her heart. We let the white figure flow back into the woman. Then she gets her god-spark again, and feels she is becoming whole. Then the client sees a para­ dise and he is both man and woman - and has a headache. The therapist asks whether he has created this world himself. This is shown to be the case. He calls them his imaginations. He real­ izes that the self-created world and the headache stands for megalomania. We go back to a life with delusions of grandeur. He is king of natives. He can do whatever pleases him. He did no longer see his own dark pieces sides. The client becomes very emotional. Ultimately, the king lost the connection with his soul, his body shrivels and he dies.

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When asked about his greatest strength, a young boy appears. The therapist suggests to put him in front of the self-created world and the headache. We let him grow to an adult. The self­ created, imaginary world and the headache dissolve.

Groups that think the same about something can create common thought forms. I suspect that such collective thought forms can get a life of their own and become parasitic. Frequently, these are relig­ ious thought forms, sometimes a kind of 'demons' (usually negative, sometimes benign), a secondary creation. So-called ’idols’ are examples of this. Collective thought-images are typically obsessive. First there is a group of people who share a faith, a belief or ideology. Then one of them creates a concrete figure, often in the likeness of an animal or a man which gains a life of its own: a deity, a demigod, a hero, an enemy, a demon. One more shape or Gestalt. Once that image is vivified, and receives energy and form, subsequent generations become fol­ lowers of a blind force, making eventually victims by their fanaticism. The living thought form is soulless and wants to be fed, wants to feel filled - alive. Consuming people's energy gives that feel­ ing of fullness. Sometimes we let the client shatter the thought form into thousands of pieces. Or we have it sent back to the its original creators. Once that is done, usually nothing of that thought form remains. We can help people to free themselves from everything, sometimes even from themselves, and re­ gain everything they ever lost. If the client has enough ego left and is sufficiently open-minded. And if the square of trust is sufficiently strong. This is more often the case than we may initially think. But it requires the development of our self-confidence as a therapist - justified selfconfidence. This means we must have done our own work. That we are ourselves. Really knowing yourself and still having self-confidence? Yep, it isn't easy. Or, actually, it rather is.

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CHAPTER 11. REPERCUSSIONS OF PAST LIVES

If people get disproportionally hurt by an experience, and we don't find a similar trauma earlier in this life, then a regression usually uncovers a trauma from a previous life that was restimulated by the incident in the present life. Only reliving and healing that original trauma then leads to a defi­ nite resolution. I've found in my practice that in one-third of the cases we needed to heal the past-life trauma, in one-third of the cases healing the present-life trauma was sufficient, and in one-third of the cases we had to work on both. My clients will not be representative of all clients seeking regression therapy, and certainly are not representative of the general population. Still, regression therapists who don't accept past lives are seriously handicapped. It also increases the chance of the False Memory Syn­ drome: unwarranted projection of traumas in childhood, often falsely blaming parents. They assume that when it isn't remembered, it must have been suppressed. Falsely accused parents then may need to seek therapy.

11.1 Restimulations Restimulations are more or less painful or shocking experiences that awaken earlier trauma. An innocent bonfire can evoke panic, because it reawakens an older experience of seeing someone be­ ing burned alive. Back then, we may have felt powerless and guilty because we couldn't prevent it. After seeing that bonfire, powerlessness and guilt may plague us. So past-life traumas may betray themselves by charges that have little to do with the actual ex­ perience of this life, but are connected to the previous life or previous death. If someone was ostra­ cized while he felt superior, superiority feelings can come up when an abortion is considered. If someone is hanged while being jealous of a brother who managed to escape, an umbilical cord around the neck might trigger envy towards everyone who's born easily and breathes easily. Hun­ ger or cold may awaken, unrelated to the present-life situation. Typical restimulations during pregnancy and birth are: •

•

•

• •

At the final stage of pregnancy, or during birth, when everything feels tight, past lives of captivity or death experiences of being stuck can be restimulated: under a collapsed build­ ing, in a mine, under a car. Or dying in an oubliette: a dungeon too small to sit or lie down. Such restimulations occur especially when the infant is ill or feels bad due to other reasons: depression or anxiety of the mother, or a mother who feels herself trapped in her life situa­ tion, and so on. Unwanted pregnancy, or a planned or attempted abortion which the infant survives, can restimulate lives of being rejected or ostracized. The same is possible if the mother feels re­ jected or ostracized. A difficult birth may restimulate experiences of choking to death. If the umbilical cord is around the infant's neck and it has been hanged in a previous life, that experience is inevi­ tably restimulated. If the fetus for whatever reason doesn't receive enough nutrition, a life of starvation may be restimulated. Being placed in an incubator right after birth can restimulate a life of isolation or abandonment.

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Typical restimulations in childhood are: •

• • • • •

Feeling lonely and misunderstood, first in the family, later at school (kindergarten!), can evoke past lives of alienation, but also experiences of after-death wandering in the nether­ world. Lonely souls then easily attach to lonely children. W hen children are pestered or bullied, past lives of being rejected or condemned, may wake up. Unjust and severe punishments, especially with being beaten and locked up, may awaken past lives of slavery and captivity. Fights with peers may evoke past lives of violence and aggression. Fiercely quarreling parents can awaken past experiences of riots, war, or revolution. Abuse and other forms of sexual assault may awaken past experiences of rape or forced prostitution.

Typical restimulations in puberty and adolescence: • Losing face in front of peers and being bullied can wake up experiences of inquisitions, po­ groms and other forms of persecution. • Rape can wake up experiences of deathly rape. • Popularity and visibility may lead to fears when they wake up lifetimes where visibility led to ostracism, banishment or death. • Emerging paranormal abilities may lead to fears when they wake up lifetimes in which such abilities led to ostracism, banishment or death. Typical restimulations in adulthood: • Fear of responsibility because of past-life failure to protect or take care of family members, like starving children, neglected and abandoned widows or orphans. • Fear of success because of past-life prominence that ended in failure or a violent end. • Loss of loved ones can wake up past-life losses. • Miscarriages, difficult births, and painful accidents may wake up past-life experiences of torture and painful deaths. This list may give the impression that about every difficult experience, and even positive experi­ ences, may trigger past-life trauma. It may, but not too often. We need only to consider the possi­ bility of restimulation, in the worst case the awakening of a pseudo-obsession, when the response to an event or circumstance is much more intense than one might expect, and when thoughts and feelings arise that are not logically connected to the event or circumstance. Particularly if a response tends to the psychotic. Many delusions and many depressions that arise from seemingly m inor incidents, are past lives waking up, more specifically: traum atic death experiences. People may become so unbal­ anced or even mentally unhinged by such restimulations, that external presences can easily attach them selves. An undigested past death triggers a diluted death experience: a part of the soul leav­ ing the body. The resulting hole easily draws deceased souls with a sim ilar experience or state of mind. This means w ork in twofold: releasing the attachm ent and healing the past-life death. Most pseudo-obsessions manifest fairly early in the current life: they wake up at the first res­ timulation. Children w ho're desired, are welcomed at birth, brought up well in a happy family, will have no restimulations, at most later in life during shocking events.

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11.2 Finding, liberating and integrating traumatized lifetimes Dying is often traumatic, but quite often people die passively, because they already were numb by previous trauma. Dying may also be a relief, a liberation. Below follow two examples. A young woman is taken from her family by soldiers, who abuse her as an army prostitute. At the first opportunity she escapes, and kills herself by jumping from a rock. Her soul leaves the body halfway through the fall and is happy that she's out of the body. She blames her attractive female body for being caught and abused. Then it became the soldiers' property. It's no longer hers. In the session we don't have to work on the death, but on the body. The body may have to be washed and cleaned first. It should be restored to how it was before the soldiers arrived. The client has to own and appreciate that body again. A woman feels confused in her head and thinks: here we go again. The confusion shows like a gray cloud. T instructs her to pull that gray cloud out of her head. That helps. Where does the cloud come from? She feels it already arrived before her birth. She took it with her. To whom does that gray cloud belong? She sees a man she already saw in an earlier session. C: He has the same paralyzed feeling as I've got. T: What happens to him? C: He floats on a raft in the Indian Ocean. He's dying because he has no food and water. T: Go back to a time when everything is still fine with him. Where are you? C: On a ship. T: How old are you here? C: 38 years or about. T: What are you doing on that boat? C: Daily work like deck cleaning. T: Go back to before you got on that boat. Where are you now? C: I see a life that I've seen in the first session. A boy o f 18 left home and went to a city. T: Why? C: Because it is oppressing and suffocating. T: Why's that? C: My sister has drowned in the well. When he's eight, and his sister six, they want to fetch water from a well, although they're not allowed by their parents to go there. The girl looks over the edge. Her left hand slips and she falls into the well and drowns. He hears her screams and stiffens. Everyone is staring at him when his sister is buried. He has his lost candor, his youth and his zest for life. His father always ignored him since. He goes to town and starts to work on a ship, scrubbing decks and such. T: You now get an impression o f the nicest or the best moment o f that life. C: That's in the evening when I'm playing cards. Poker or whatever. But the zest for life has already gone. He argues, gets involved in fist fights. They fight for the best bed, the best cabin. The captain gets sick of it: Who loses, goes overboard and can swim to that island over there. He loses and is left on the island. T: Go back to the moment just before you jump overboard. You've lost. What happens? C: I push him o f me and I walk between the lads. I don't have any choice left. 1 push them aside. They're laughing. Then I jump in the water and I swim to that island. T: Do they look at you when they sail away? C: It's nothing to them. These guys are a tough lot. T: What kind o f feeling does that give you? C: Feeling dejected again. T: What do you conclude from this? C: It doesn't matter anymore. T: Are you bothered by this feeling in this life as well? C: Yes.

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C: I've made a raft there. I realized I wouldn't have any chance otherwise. A stupid move: believing that I would get washed up somewhere with such a raft. T: What's happened to the body after death? C: Nibbled at and eaten. T: Go back to the Place o f Overview. Now as a 38-year-old. There you meet yourself at 18 years and your­ self at 8 years and you now know how and why it all happened. Do you see them? C: Yes. T: The 38-year-old focuses on the sea, his fate, the ship with the men who jeered at him. You let all the charges o f their jeering return to them. The one you always had a row with, look him in the eye. What do your legs want? (She's moving her legs.) Feel it. What needs to happen? Feel your legs, what do your legs want? C: They want to kick his ass. T: Could you've done anything else? C: I could've negotiated, even after the fight, but I was too proud. T: Again. 38 years, 18 years and 8 years. Integrate them. Make them into a single person, in his own power. How does he look now? C: Strong and gentle. T: A strong and gentle man is strong enough to assert himself, and gentle enough to overcome his pride. C: At this moment many quarters are dropping for me. T: Can you play poker in this life? C: I am good at cards, yes. I'm now 38 years old, by the way. The last time I came across this boy, 1 saw his sister drowned in the well. About that raft I dreamed this week. It now becomes clear to me that all o f that belongs together. In the last session I've seen him when he was 18 years old and leaves for the city - now he turns out to be the same man as the one on the raft. I feel guilty easily. That guilt might come from that life.

W hat do we do when someone enters a traumatic experience in a previous life? We follow the cli­ ent's story line: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12.

First go to the day of death. Complete the story. After the death, go to the Place of Overview (PO). From there, look back: Go to the last time before death, when everything was still right. 'Business as usual.' Instruct to experience the moment when things started to go wrong. Go to the moment when the traumatic episode was over. Ask if necessary, Did you survive this? You now know that it happened before the trauma, you know how it ended, we just don't know yet what exactly happened. Suggest that the client can look from the PO at the life that ended. What happened, really happened, but it's really over. Go back to the moment just before the trauma, using bird's eye view. Let the client witness what happens down there. Then relive it in the body, because the body has its own memories and experiences. Focus on the worst moments, the worst experiences. Once everything is clear, go back to the PO. Let new insights come. Complete the loose ends. The client was separated from loved ones: now the client sees what happened to them. Often this results in meeting them right now, always a cathartic experience. Check all the identified charges to ascertain none remains active. W hat have been the repercussions in the present life from this previous life? Mental pro­ grams, physical ailments, or something else? At what moment in the present life did this past life start to play a role? Or: At what point, in which situation and at what age did it wake up? Where in your body are there still remnants o f that experience? Where in the current body are the residues o f the past-life experiences stored? This may have come up before when you've started with a somatic bridge Process any remaining charges.

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11.3 Through the death experience In reliving a past life, it's always important to go through the death experience. That is, the last ex­ periences before dying, the experience of dying and the first experiences after death. Often there are complications that lead to the past life not being properly processed and haunting the present life: a pseudo-obsessor. Even if there aren't any complications, it's advisable to explore the initial experi­ ence after death. In the after-death clarity at the Place of Overview it's possible to sense the whole lifetime just completed: its main themes, its main results. Steps in the reliving of death experiences are: 1.

2. 3. 4.

Understand the story like a detective: the transition from OK to not-OK, and from not-OK to the exact cause of death. Seemingly insignificant details can turn out to be substantial, such as blood loss and head injuries. If someone plunged into an abyss, was it by pushing, tripping or jumping? And so on. Find the most intense experiences, the deepest feelings and strongest thoughts. What are the problematic (not-OK) charges? Find for each charge its beginning, culmination and ending. Ask explicitly for the latest observations, the last feelings and the final thoughts at the time of death.

The first impressions after the soul's separation from the body: 5. 6. 7. 8.

Do they still see the body? Do they look back on the situation? Do they meet someone? Are they going somewhere?

Resolving complications of agonized, unconscious or incomplete dying: 9. 10. 11. 12.

Not realizing they died. Remaining bound: to the body, to the place, to people, to the physical world in general. Split consciousness: one part is outside of the body, another part still in it. If they didn't realize they died, or if they kept hanging or wandering around, then let the current personality retrieve the past-life personality. 13. Let them contact previously deceased friends and relatives - or in the case of pseudoobsessors: later deceased friends or relatives.

Sometimes people after death are fascinated, even obsessed with their own body, how mangled or wounded or broken it looks, lying there. Or they are unwilling to look at it. Then we have to do something about it. But if that ain't necessary, it ain't necessary. If they are free to go on, they are free to go on. It's always wise to ask: Is there anything that needs to be done with the body? If they say no, then leave it there. If you sense that reliving the dying remains too superficial, you may say: Just slow down. Experience everything in slow motion. Or: You get an impression o f how the body feels when your soul has left it. Sometimes we find that some consciousness remained there. People may want a Christian burial. That is not a physical, but a spiritual need. Then you let them imagine that. If it's OK to leave it as it is, it's OK. Be aware that clients may ignore and neglect it, because they don't want to look at it. The reliving must feel really good and free; if not, return to the body and to the death experience. It is certainly wise to check this. If we really die, our soul truly leaving the body, and going to the Place of Overview and so on, then it hardly matters what happens to the body afterward. But often there're complications:

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• A girl is nineteen and she's just found love. W hen she dies, she may find it difficult to leave her body, a source of newfound happiness and intimacy. Her mind is still connected to her body. Difficult to leave and to say goodbye to it. • Another rushes out of the body, away from this horrible world. A small part doesn't want to leave, for whatever reason, and remains behind. We must find it and retrieve it. Typically, something needs to be done with the body, before one can leave that lifetime completely behind. • In general: how did people feel in their body, live in their body? If they had a strong or complicated relationship with it, leaving it at death may be difficult or complicated. If we rush out of the body, but a part of our soul remains, then the two soul parts must be reunited. If we completely leave our body, we tend to leave it quickly. For example, we die during a fall from a precipice. The silver cord snaps. We're all out of it before our body even hits the ground. Then there's nothing more to explore or investigate regarding the body. Of course, we always ask the cli­ ent: Is it important to see what happened to the body? There are many reasons why a complete, sudden 'excarnation' doesn't happen at death. Maybe there's one part of us which absolutely doesn't want to die. Then that part may cling to the body, identify with the body. It may perceive the broken neck or the broken back, or how birds are pick­ ing at the eyes. Or how people find the dead body and how they treat it: with love, with respect, or with disregard or glee. But often, when we've left, we've left. Spiritual people, like priests, monks and nuns, shamans, witches or psychics may be accustomed to leaving their body at will during life. They tend to treat death as a trifle - they may even ignore it. Often, they have disregarded their body already during life. So they ascend rapidly. But two com­ plications are common: •

•

They didn't realize they died so they may not realize that they today lead a new life. It gives difficult, rather often arrogant clients who have a strong, gifted, but ill-integrated subper­ sonality. They have neglected a part of themselves, most usually an inner child, sometimes an inner adolescent. Even if they come after death into light and peace, they still lack the full clarity of the after-death life overview and meeting other souls thereafter. Then we must go back to the body and find the ignored soul part.

Some part of the soul may be hiding, afraid to be seen by family members, by people in general or, after a religious lifetime, by God. In some cases, this soul part hides in the dead body. To perceive that the body is eaten by maggots is a nightmare for most people, but for some it is comforting. Other people enjoy feeling the roots of a tree growing through the decaying body. They identify with the dead body because they don't want to identify themselves with anything else. They want to forget. The most complicated case I've ever experienced in a session, was a complete soul fragmenta­ tion of a victim being eaten alive during a sacrifice. Eventually we had to bring twelve different parts together. If in doubt, play it safe. Check whether anything needs to be felt in the body just before death, whether anything important happened with the body after death, wether anything needs to be done with the dead body, like proper burial rites. Again, if clients feel fine, they feel fine. There're few people who are still in their bodies after they fell from a great height, but some do. Then it seems as if they aren't one hundred percent dead. They still have to relive something of the fall, its immediate cause or its immediate effect, to fully close the last chapter of that lifetime. The following example explores the cause of anxiety to be excluded. It also uses a renovation, not to rewrite history, but to heal the repercussions.

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C: I'm too blunt, too outspoken. (If a Dutch person says that, you better believe it.) I can't keep my mouth shut, I'm afraid to be punished for being blunt, to be ostracized, excluded. Excluding me is what my mother did all the time. T: Do you often feel unsafe in everyday life? C: Yes, with other women. I want to get rid o f that fear. T: Close your eyes. Describe the feeling o f insecurity that you sense right now. C: I tumble around in a vortex and then disappear in it. T: That vortex, does it swirl horizontally or vertically? C: It goes straight up. T: If you would surrender to it, does your whole body go? C: Yes. T: Just do it. Just go straight up within the vortex. Let the vortex grow stronger, and feel yourself being sucked up into it. C: There's movement around my feet. It's bright up there, but I'm still in the dark. I can't get out o f it. T: How does that feel? C: Tight. T: Feel what makes it so tight. C: I'm wrapped up. T: Just imagine that you're wrapped up from head to toe, from your feet up. A tight coil around you. Is it also around your head? C: No. And it's dark. T: Are you standing or are you lying down? C: I'm lying flat. My hands are tied to my body. I'm suffocating. I'm growing cold. T: And what's your last thought? C: Never again. T: You now get an impression o f what's tying you up. You're tied from your feet. Where's the end o f that strip? Does it cover your head? C: Yes. It's like a tight bandage all over, from my feet till my head. T: Can I touch you? I'm going to untie you. Feel how the bandage comes off slowly. First your entire face comes free, now your shoulders, and your neck, your chest gets more space, your lungs are free again, your stomach, your hands are free again, very well, your hips come free, the bandages come off more and more, your upper legs, your knees, your lower legs, and the last part at your feet. Is there any mal­ ice in the coils, any will, or is it just bandage? C: Just bandage. T: You've always carried a tight, wrapped, dead body. And there's clearly much grief there. Go back to a time before all o f this happened; you see yourself busy while you're free and have no grief yet. Where are you and what are you doing? What are your first impressions? She's a girl of eight in ancient Egypt. Her stepmother is poisoning her slowly. She becomes ill. She gets convulsions. She tells her father about her suspicions. Her father and her stepmother quarrel. Then her stepmother succeeds in killing her. She's being mummified. Her heart is re­ moved. And when it's bled dry, buried. Her liver is cleaned and cooked and served at the table. Her stepmother, the children of her stepmother and her father eat it, her father and the other children without knowing what they're eating. The stepmother wants her energy, her soul. She turns the others into accomplices. We let the client spit out the poison. Then we personify the girl of eight. She's sweet, beautiful and naughty. What is her last thought? Never again. I shall fight back from now on. We personify the stepmother who looks old and wrinkled. C wrinkles her even further, into a prop. The prop turns into ashes. T: See the table where the liver is served. She's sitting at the table. Is she cutting and serving it? C: Yes. T: Just before this happens, intervene. C: I grab her by her neck. T: Very good. You tell the others whom the liver is from. How do they react? C: They're shocked. T: Keep holding her neck. Her heart starts to empty and her liver is starting to cook. Just look what is hap­ pening to her. You cook her liver and let her heart bleed dry. What happens to your wicked stepmother? C: She becomes utterly limp.

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T: You have to get the feeling that it's fully cleaned and cleared now. C: Only her empty dress is left. She puts her heart and liver back into her own body and buries it decently. The soul of the girl of eight comes back to her. She's satisfied. Her own heart and liver are feeling fine now. T: Do you have your entire body back? Yes? I would say to those who were sitting at the table: I know you didn't know what you were eating. Tell them all about what your stepmother did. Is your mouth free, are your arms free? Now you can do and say whatever you want. You can now give in to the urge of: and now I'm saying it anyway. There's a magic formula that the ancient Egyptians pos­ sibly didn't know yet: good riddance! (The real sentence used was stronger, but not fit for a book.) How's your stomach? C: Fine. T: Have you ever suffered from paralysis, numbness, convulsions in this life? C: When I was six, 1 had febrile convulsions. From eight to puberty, I had migraines. 1 let the migraine intensify until 1 had to puke and then it would be over.

Bleeding the heart and cooking the liver of the stepmother is a form of mirroring. Watch what hap­ pens then. The perpetrator may suddenly wake up from her evil trance and go back to a young age when she was still OK. Or she stays mean and full of envy and hate, but she is now imprisoned in it and impotent. That the dress here was empty, means that nothing is left of the soul presence of that witch. Her mind and he soul are now free from that ancient episode. This was a regression, starting with a somatic bridge. She felt a vortex, a coil around her. It was an S without E, because I didn't use her anxiety. She was bound in the dark and she saw light above her. So after death she couldn't go to the light, having lost her heart and her liver and being mummified, probably with some evil spell on her too. She couldn't get out, so we regressed her to an earlier moment in which she still was her­ self, the eight-year-old girl. The energy work was first loosening the swathes and later spitting out the poison. Later we had her restore her heart and liver. Instead of energetically carrying a dead, maimed, incomplete, swathed body in the dark, she now has the energy of a strong and healthy eight-year girl back. This is not only therapy, it is also rejuvenation. It's not only healing, but trans­ formation. Finally, to avoid misunderstanding: not all Dutch people have been mummified Egyptian girls in their past lives. Being blunt and outspoken can have other causes. There must be a lesson in all of this.

11.4 Finding, liberating and integrating hangover lifetimes A hangover is an overall, unfocused psychological infirmity, resembling a hangover after too many drinks. Hangovers come from languid periods or languid lifetimes. A traumatic experience has a beginning and an end. Trauma residues have a specific place in the body - have a clear S and E, and often also an M. The mental aspect is usually less important in the beginning, as too much thinking easily distracts from entering a reliving, unless there's a clear postulate (generalized conclusion or decision) involved. Trauma techniques are not sufficient to solve hangovers. I developed the idea of hangovers be­ cause they resisted trauma techniques. Catharsis remained weak and pale. Hangovers show in negative somatics spread throughout the body, as a kind of gray mist, producing melancholy, apa­ thy or depression, a mist swimming before one's eyes, a general sense of heaviness and tiredness, no clearly delineated S and E. I call the energetic residue of a hangover a 'dirt skirt.' After a traumatic event from which we don't bounce back, we may turn more or less zom bie­ like. We may have a hangover for the rest of our life. We have lost our vitality and ambition, our zest for life. A part of our soul withdraws, often even leaving the body. Actually, we die off a little.

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Some lives are hangovers from beginning to end: serfs, slaves, poor wretches who can barely sur­ vive; but also mentally or physically handicapped lives. Even dying itself can be hangover-like: slow, after a long, debilitating illness, slowly starving, or gradual loss of blood. The main aftereffect of hangover lives is a hangover life now. In complete dying, the etheric body loosens itself from the physical body. The personality, the incarnated soul part leaves for the Soul, which usually feels as light and free. The personality realizes that life is over. W hen people har­ bor pow erful thoughts and strong emotions just before death, they tend to hold on to the body; after a hangover life, thoughts and em otions are blurred, dampened and they often leave the body slowly. In both cases, part of their energy tends to stick some time to the dead body. The client often experiences an absence, feels that something is lacking - in such cases a soul part is left behind. Go to a place where you can survey the life that has just ended, is an effective instruction to gain clarity. The Place of Overview (PO) is an imaginary place; it's the clear state of mind after death. People can understand in that clear-mindedness what did happen, can evaluate it and bring closure to it all. This technique connects to that part of your soul that has overview. Going to the Place of Overview liberates the soul part that remained stuck. We then have four options: • Relive it while associated when the client starts to do so spontaneously. • Relive specific episodes or aspects while associated, to uncover essential details or particu­ lar motives of actors. • Relive it while dissociated, to survey complicated, turbulent or hazy episodes. • Relive it while dissociated to explore extreme suffering. W hat do people look like, just after death? Do they realize they have died? Are they still wandering around? Why? Perhaps they felt unable to say goodbye to their loved ones. On the PO you may let the client meet with them. That gives a catharsis on various levels: cognitive insight, release of ten­ sions, emotional release. Spiritual catharsis comes when we understand and feel how our souls have grown in height - and in depth. Someone who was captured and enslaved may've tried to flee or resist. Maybe he revolted, but he and his whole family were slain as a consequence. He may have died furiously and humiliated, but also deeply hurt. Feelings of guilt or shame for his rash act may add to all that. In this lifetime, the past-life trauma may burden and complicate the present life. A lifelong slave who doesn't know better than that he's insignificant, that it makes no difference what he says, does or wants, generally dies weak and exhausted, and takes the whole unprocessed hangover charge of that lifetime with him in the thought: It'll never stop. Such postulates perpetuate a hangover into the present life. Vague impressions, shallow feelings, heaviness, absentmindedness and loss of concentration slow down a session and drag down the therapist with them. Whenever you notice that you're becoming dazed during the session, that your energy is going down, there's probably a hangover, sometimes an obsessor or pseudo-obsessor. We have to find out before both client and therapist are drained and dispirited. Someone has the feeling that nothing succeeds, nothing works out. Effort is useless. Then the session won't work for him either. It doesn't make sense to listen to the questions and sugges­ tions of the therapist. It makes no sense that he's come to the therapist at all. The futility, use­ lessness, hopelessness is almost physically present: a big, fat hangover. He feels a heavy and tough substance, particularly in his head and in his tailbone. Are you stand­ ing, sitting, lying flat? I'm lying flat, no, I'm sitting, no, I'm walking. I have to walk. We've hit some­

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thing: I have to walk. First the life of an imprisoned and forgotten orphan emerges. What does such a starving child think before it dies? What am I doing here? I'm worth nothing. I don't count. It's better not to be here. Then a few other lives with similar experiences, but this child refuses to be personified. We evoke the main blockage. That's someone who's scared who doesn't want to be there, so it refuses to show itself. We let him take the posture that belongs to that feeling. He bends down, more and more. Some­ thing pressing the back of his head. There's a large, heavy basket on his back, with a band on his forehead. He's an Indian slave in the Andes carrying heavy stones. He keeps on walking, sink­ ing deeper and deeper into the muddy ground. Eventually, he's too exhausted to continue and falls down. Another picks up the basket after a while and they leave him dying there. He's not worth any attendance. This slave and the later orphan have melt together and live in the current personality. We first had to deconstruct the postulate: I'm not worth it. I do not matter. Only then we could per­ sonify these two lives and heal them.

Typical hangover lives are, apart from the already mentioned serfs, slaves and poor wretches, lives of luxury and wealth that were empty and boring. Especially women who weren't allowed a life of their own. Lives of futility, sexual frustration and intellectual frustration slowly strangle the mind. C: I zvas in a previous life a kind o f czarina. Everything is being done for you. Initially, that's nice. Even­ tually, I am highly annoyed with everyone continuously curtsying. I think secretly: For heaven's sake, cut out the crap! T: Tell me more about your annoyance. C: The main annoyance was that everyone kept bowing to me. I may've sat on a throne, but I thought, please act normally and carry on. T: Does annoyance play a role in your current life? C: I may get annoyed by inefficiency. T: It doesn't sound like a big issue, as you say, 'may.' What has seemed in your present life most like sit­ ting on a throne? What's the most prestigious, elevated position you've ever had? C: Director o f a large company. T: What was that like? In a few words. C: It didn't work out. T: Sitting on a throne gives you so much irritation, that you cannot hold a prominent position for long, when you've once renounced it. How do we know that? We don't seek for trauma in that life, but for a postulate at death, like: I never want to be highly placed ever again. C: That may well have been the case. T: So once you arrive at a position o f authority, resembling to that o f the czarina, you don't succeed. What are we looking for? I called it highly placed, but which words fit best? C: Status.

Let’s assume he used a couple of times the word 'status' during the intake. Go back to your oldest ex­ perience in which you had status. He had status or was the child of someone with status, or he was the humble servant of someone with status. Then we go to the situation when status recurred, became a theme. If someone has had two, three or more unpleasant experiences with the same theme, but in different roles, then something compelled him to return to this theme in whatever role in whatever context. That something is a postulate. A client is yawning, almost falling asleep. It seems the atmosphere becomes thick. To whom belongs this atmosphere? Pull it out o f yourself as a cloud or mass leaving your body. Clean it up. Maybe a dark cloud appears from which eventually emerges a neglected, nameless child. We heal this child. What's your name? Once, his mother might have called him Aaron. At four, he was taken away from her and became a nameless outcast. Why do we revisit 'insignificant' lives? In such lives, strength, hope and prospect of improvement have been lost. Undigested suffering and enforced passivity burden later lifetimes.

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A young, ambitious female program producer and presenter at an international television chan­ nel in India regresses into a life in Victorian times in British India. She wants to go into politics, fight for the independence of India, but those activities are forbidden by her parents and later by her husband. She hopes her children will be interested in politics. But they aren't. On her death­ bed, after a life she feel is wasted, she's glad it's over. This won't happen to me again. Her last thought is she wants to do a lot, accomplish a lot. That explains her current ambition. At the end of the session, the past-life personality and the present-life personality meet and embrace; the client feels an electric surge going through her whole body. From head to toe she's charged with vitality, a zest for life. She screams of elation, feels deeply moved and is overflowing with power. The television channel, of course, cuts this out of the program.

That was not a life of poverty, slavery or handicaps, yet it was limited: being wealthy, but not al­ lowed to do anything as a woman. Many people suffer from a general hangover of incarnated existence. Living in a body has its limita­ tions and its down sides: disease, hunger, fatigue, disability, pain; narrow-mindedness and routine. Sometimes a body may feel like a prison, life may feel as a burden. The general hangover of being incarnated is especially heavy when you've grown old and tired after a life of limitations. The body gives us a lot, but without it, many souls feel more at ease, more free. If you've been long under wa­ ter with an old-fashioned diving suit, it's wonderful to rise to the surface, throw off everything and stretch out. Dying well is the great catharsis of life. When we're born again, we normally have a new diving suit, with a filled oxygen tank of vitality to start on our long, arduous journey. But often we are burdened by an old 'm ortgage' due to the shade of past-life hangovers. Nothing is as refreshing then as liberating ourselves from the 'dirt skirts' of old.

11.5 Traumatic, confusing and unconscious death experiences After a traumatic and confusing death experience, the personality, or a subpersonality, gets stuck. This may dissolve slowly and gradually, but not when postulates are involved. In a new life, this past life is automatically attracted to the present one. A pseudo-obsessor is a past life that died poorly and haunts the present life - producing similar symptoms as those o f an obsessor. It's an almost alien pres­ ence. In therapy, we find out why that life got stuck, liberate and integrate it. This section covers mainly the regression work. That's more than reliving the death experience, it is completing the death experience, a kind of renovation. We help to digest the pain and the con­ fusion, to defuse the postulates and to complete the dying process. If we come across an 'undead' person as a personification, we call it a pseudo-obsessor. The next section will tell how to deal with such undead soul parts. Our soul reflects itself in every lifetime into a new personality. Some personalities are more powerful, others are more open-minded, and some remain isolated in the twilight zone. Pseudoobsessors are past personalities that have joined us without contributing to the present life. They are disruptive. Sometimes we took them deliberately with us because we planned to heal and rein­ tegrate them, but mostly these 'hitchhikers' are just there. They are trapped in a bad mood. After a proper death there's a proper life review and a proper integration into the soul. With an unprocessed, incomplete death, the past life remains uninte­ grated. There are many reasons why people don't die well, don't reach 'heaven.' They may have felt their energy drain away because they slowly bled to death. Consequently, their mind may have left their bodies in a weak, hazy and empty state of mind. Energy work in the session then implies imaginatively retrieving the blood that once was lost. Visualizing and feeling the blood streaming

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back into the body may seem a childish procedure, but it has an often astounding effect on restoring vitality and mental clarity in the client's life. Or something did penetrate the body during the last stages of dying, often causing the death, and this experience troubles the present life. A client in Turkey was speared in an eye in a life as a man. He sits on his horse and gets a spear right through his head. He is killed instantly. In a sitting position he slams on the ground. I never saw it coming, is the charged phrase. In the session she's sitting on the floor. In this life she has problems with that eye and she was born without a seating bone. We had to take the spear out and heal the head and the eye.

A common aspect of battle deaths is the difficulty to lucidly leave the body. Many combatants dur­ ing the battle are in a kind of trance. In a quick death, they often don't even realize they died. Par­ ticularly when after death they can't see their own body, e.g. hit by a grenade or stepped on a mine. Or they may suspect that their body has been horribly mauled, and they don't want to look back. Others go on fighting and only slowly realize they died - or don't realize that at all. Another reason not to look back on the past life is haste. This occurs mainly among young, vital and active people who want to reincarnate as quickly as they can. Evidently, not everyone views physi