Featured Therapist (Feb 2010)

Anita Baisley, MA Ed/ Admin*

During the past sixteen years I’ve worked and lived on the Apache, Navajo, and the Zuni Reservations.  I am currently a high school principal with students ranging from 14 to 21 years old, because many on the reservations have had serious social, emotional and legal issues that interfered with their course of studies. I’ve seen oppression, victimization and hopelessness in these people as well as violence and substance issues.  Effort is being made in schools and different mental health agencies to break this cycle, but it is a very slow process and is generally more in dealing with legal consequences and temporary intervention than focusing on prevention, as WHEE could do. 

I have just completed a course in WHEE: Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT at Energy Medicine University.  I had used both EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) on myself and others in the past.  I found that although EMDR was effective in releasing emotions, I was uncomfortable with the sometimes intense emotional releases that occurred.  The EFT was also effective but I found it a bit too complicated for myself and students to remember.  I much prefer the simplicity and the effectiveness of the WHEE method.

I have been exploring self-healing methods such as Reiki, herbs, homeopathy, affirmations, meditation, aromatherapy, acupressure, polarity, chakra and auric healing, pranic healing and Buddhist empowerments, to name a few, for over twenty-five years. Although all techniques can be effective, my personal experience was that they either helped me temporarily or just couldn’t completely get to the core for a complete healing.

Through the course content and assignments, I learned the WHEE technique, personal and clinical applications of WHEE, how to write a case report of WHEE sessions, and potential applications of WHEE through treatment of pain, both physical and psychological, and of prevention.  I feel that emphasis on prevention is essential because WHEE can be used in everyday life, families, relationships, groups, and in the home and workplace.  WHEE can be used very effectively in self-healing and helps bring about an awareness of the mind/body/soul connection that is so important in holistic healing.

WHEE is a simple holistic technique of using affirmations and a right/left brain tapping exercise, SUDS (Subjective Units of Distress Scale), replacement positive statement, and then SUSS (Subjective Units of Success Scale).  WHEE is simple enough that it can be used for self-healing by children, and effective enough to be used by health practitioners and therapists.  It can be taught in groups and is quickly effective for all sorts of pains.

In beginning the WHEE course, I began by using personal applications of WHEE.  I worked on myself at least daily for the first several weeks.  One session led to another session and I was continually clearing old blocks.  I addressed a number of issues involving grief, pain, anger, anxiety and stress, and was amazed at how quickly the WHEE sessions cleared areas that I had been struggling with for years.  I also worked with daily life situations and work-related situations that seemed to continually be synchronistic with the WHEE lessons.  I’ve found that grounding myself with a few cleansing breaths and a grounding visualization is helpful to me before the session because it seems to strengthen my focus.  

My timeline of life events that we composed at the beginning of the course was very helpful in opening a door to the many childhood issues I could address with WHEE.  I had been aware of many of them through the years and had been able to clear some with various self-healing techniques, but not completely.  I began making a list of areas to address from my life timeline which included grief, trauma, phobias, pain and stress.  

I hadn’t realized that I carried so much grief until I started doing some WHEE sessions.  Several sessions that started out working with anger, guilt and stress turned out to be connected to grief of losses in my childhood and relationships in my adult life, grief of things I wished I could have and should have done, and grief from the feeling that life had let me down.

I recently used a WHEE session on myself when encountering some insomnia during a particularly busy time with work involving report deadlines and overloading my brain with thoughts and computer contamination.  After several nights of waking up several hours before the alarm clock and being unable to go back to sleep, I finally did a WHEE session on my insomnia.  It was a fairly simple session, and instead of going into childhood issues, it was more focused on being angry because I couldn’t sleep and tired of being tired. I noticed after the session an immediate change in my thought processes.  Instead of all the chatter and the feeling of not being sleepy, my brain felt like it does in meditation, almost sedated, and I promptly went back to sleep and slept two hours longer than I normally do

I’ve noticed that since I’ve been using WHEE for stress, I am much more focused and I rarely get overwhelmed anymore when I have several time sensitive projects due.  In working on day-to-day stressors at work, I began to see a connection to many things from my childhood i.e. feeling inferior, criticized, inadequate, and always blaming myself for something. 

Life’s synchronicity and issues that I needed to deal with continually seemed to present itself i.e. an irate male parent at work reminded me of my father’s angry outbursts.  Although I calmly defused the situation, I began to shake from the inside out after the parent left, and it took a couple of WHEE sessions to actually get to the core belief of being a helpless, victimized, stupid girl.  There were also a couple of weeks in September and October where there were a rash of fights, drug busts, and parent conflict at my school (not uncommon at our school due to the gang and drug problems).  I handled them all and cleared myself with the help of WHEE, and again marveled at the synchronicity of the timing of this course and a new job involving these stressful situations.  I noticed that as I built up my self-confidence and looked at conflict differently, I began to respond calmly from the inside as well as outside, and the school climate is calmer since November.

As I became comfortable using personal applications of WHEE on myself, I began working with others as a treatment for fears and phobias, pain, depression, cravings, grief, and anxiety.  I don’t use this as a formal practice yet; just more on friends, family, and people I encounter at work requesting assistance.

In reflecting on using WHEE as a preventative intervention, I see it as a solution for a myriad of inflictions and illnesses – both physical and psychological. WHEE could prevent illnesses, epidemics, psychological issues and dysfunction, not to mention saving a fortune spent on pharmaceuticals, medical bills, and therapeutic costs simply by balancing the mind, body and soul. Using WHEE in schools, in family settings, and workplace as a preventative to address issues like stress, worry, anxiety, fears, hectic work schedules and deadlines, grief, depression, PTSD, major life changes such as birth, death, moving, changing jobs, divorce, etc. could actually prevent many illnesses from occurring.

Preventing emotional stress through WHEE could help build the immune system as well, thereby acting as a preventive for many illnesses. 

My school and home are in an area where substance and alcohol abuse is very prevalent.  I’ve worked closely with addicts, psychologists and counselors, sent students to treatment, observed AA programs, and although some are successful, the majority of interventions only touch the surface of the problem.  Since addictions are usually a result of lack of love and depravity, most socioeconomic groups such as those on the reservations are affected in some way. Young people coming from homes with any habitual family emotional expressions such as fear, anger, apathy, guilt, etc could develop energetic depletions leading to addiction.  This is another good reason for using WHEE at an early age, particularly in dysfunctional settings.

With the exception of some private schools, gang affiliation in various ways is prevalent in most schools, particularly on the reservations. Effort is being made in schools and different mental health agencies to break this cycle, but it is a very slow process and is generally more in dealing with legal consequences and temporary intervention than focusing on prevention, as WHEE could do.  If WHEE was implemented in all elementary and early childhood school systems, then prevention intervention could begin at an early age in formations of self-healing habits, attitudes and beliefs.  WHEE used at middle school level could help shape the formation of principles of morals lacking in many young adolescents, and in developing new positive habits.  WHEE used at high school level could assist students with deeper ingrained issues as well as how to deal with future life crises. I see many high school students who already are carrying a tremendous amount of baggage such as depression, violent tendencies, victimization from violence, aggression, anger, hopelessness, and addictions. WHEE would also be a great preventer of teacher-burnout, which I see all too often.

Implementing WHEE in groups and with large numbers of people could benefit the collective/group consciousness of our current societies.  The use of WHEE to address our mental, emotional, spiritual and psychological issues allows people to work with the cause and could actually prevent illnesses by healing the cause and preventing the disease.

In Summary

Personally, the WHEE has been a turning point in my spiritual growth because I’ve been able to let go of blocks that were preventing my personal development.  In essence, I was able to get out of my way and move forward, and I see a tremendous possibility for others striving to do the same.Although WHEE may not be a cure-all for everything, I feel that used as a preventative intervention, our race will eventually get to the point where the focus will be more on a mind/body/soul connection than being blind to our purpose because of the many issues that have clouded our spiritual development

*This is an abbreviated version of my term paper written for a course at Energy Medicine University.