Abstract

 Words are inadequate to convey the potency of love in healing old hurts and current fears. You cannot know a peach from "peach". You must see it and smell it and taste it. This article describes a potent guided self-healing technique focused on love, and shares the clinical experiences of the authors in using this method. It introduces a palpable experience of the transformative power of love.

Unusually potent methods for healing in psychotherapy were developed by Dr Dorothea von Stumpfeldt of Berlin and elaborated by the other authors of this paper. These methods, called EmotionalBodyProcess by their originator, introduce imagery of love, healing, forgiveness, and acceptance through which you can be guided to address your problems. Both physical and psychological problems may improve very rapidly with these methods.

The simplicity and efficacy of the approach suggests new understandings of how emotional and physical problems may be addressed within frameworks of self-healing, biological energy medicine, and non-local mind -- the interactions between the minds of participants in the therapy, including clients, therapists, and relatives of clients. Love and positive energies are clearly stronger than negative habits of perceptions and negative energies that we carry within us.

EmotionalBodyProcess suggests that non-local mind may be of vital importance to healing ourselves and our world, particularly through acknowledging and healing our projections of negativity. EmotionalBodyProcess helps to clarify the nature of non-local mind. It confirms preliminary research that has shown that love may be a potent intervention in dealing with various physical and emotional problems.

EmotionalBodyProcess is in its early stages of development. While we can explore its benefits for ourselves as self-healing, this method awaits more formal research of its efficacy.

Introduction

 Words are inadequate to convey the potency of love in healing old hurts and current fears. You cannot know a peach from "peach". To fully know a peach you must see it and smell it and taste it. You must plant its seed, see it sprout and grow into a tree, see and smell its fragrant blossoms, watch the fruit develop, and then taste the fruit in all its permutations from freshly picked to cooked, baked and juiced..

This paper describes a potent guided self-healing technique focused on love, and shares the clinical experiences of the authors in using this method. Simple directions are provided so that you can experience this yourself and know the potent transformative power of love personally.

Love-Energy Interventions by Psychotherapists Who are Healers

Three German women involved in psychotherapy combined with healing set out to explore how the two modalities could be combined in therapy. We believed that we had found a method that enabled us to soften, dissolve, and transform negative (even seemingly sinister) energies that are associated with psychological and physical problems. This method is very direct, invoking this simple principle: LOVE IS STRONG ENOUGH TO TRANSFORM ALL NEGATIVITY. We were totally loving and accepting of every negativity in our patients.

Over a period of three years we met weekly. We called this our Holy Fixed Day, for nothing would keep us from coming to this meeting. Together we pushed our search further and further in new directions. We now continue our explorations individually, as each of us lives in a different part of the world.

Initially, we relied on our strong intuitive powers in our therapy. The three of us slipped into a meditative state together and asked for guidance from the highest planes. Then one of us mentally approached the problem energy in the patient with whom we were working. The following discussion illustrates our work with lower levels of energy (rather than energy on a more sophisticated level) since this sort of energy is generally more familiar to healers.

As we began, the energy usually appeared visible to all of us as something dark, blurred, and intimidating. Occasionally it appeared as a geometric symbol, dark clouds, a black creature, masks, demons, black holes, black birds, dragons, huge brutes and the like suddenly emerging and threatening to devour us. Sometimes there were strong negative feelings such as hate and envy attached to the energies.

We believe that only two forms of energy exist within this level of imagery awareness. The first supports us. This is the positive, the higher energy, and love. The second demands something from us and wants to be supported by us. This is the black, negative energy. Though it appears malicious, it is really asking for love.

The ways we understand and deal with these energies evolved as we explored them together. Resisting our inclination (born out of fear and anxiety) to oppose these negative energies, we found we were much more successful if we were amiable, accepting and loving, and submitted to the apparently superior forces of the negative energies. If we offered to satisfy their desires totally, then something new would emerge. To put it another way: The positive energies offer something to us, whereas the negative ones demand an offering from us.

The common view amongst healers and psychotherapists is that one must not surrender to negative fears, emotions, images or energies. Energy medicine and imagery therapy practitioners often advise that we build subtle energy shields to protect ourselves from negativity, or fight off negative energies using powerful, aggressive, positive energy images. Our own views are precisely the opposite. We refused to believe that we were feeble or powerless when we surrendered to negativity, even when it seemed to threaten to invoke terror and to wreak havoc upon us. We did not suggest a passive surrender. We did not want people's suffering to continue, but we found that fighting fears and negativity only gave them more energies to continue their existence.

We explored treatment of an enormous variety of problems, always with the same principles. We communicated in this manner with every new higher or lower energy that revealed itself to us. With imagery of love and acceptance we confirmed our beliefs that all negativity is transformed by loving energies. Even the most disagreeable, difficult or frightening energies melted away with this process.

Dorothea von Stumpfeldt (DvS), one of the three originators of this method, introduced EmotionalBodyProcess to the other authors (DB and RB). We have all been developing it further over the past ten years, using it to deal with our own inner problems as well as those of our clients.

We have come to understand that the only reason we are frightened is that we believe someone could ask too much of us. We hold to this belief because we think we are limited. If this were actually so, then demands that are "too much" could completely drain us and we might cease to exist. In contrast to this fearful view, if we see ourselves as mediators between lower, primitive energies and higher, more evolved energy, then offering energies will never come to an end. The universe is without limit or end and when we draw from our connection with this infinite source deep within ourselves we can endlessly ask for love and pass it on.

Healing Methods

Our clients present their problems in terms and concepts relating to the physical world of their bodies and five senses, the psychological worlds of their thoughts and emotions, and their relational worlds of interactions with significant people in their lives. While EmotionalBodyProcess opens with a focus on "the problems" as defined by our clients in these conventional terms, we proceed to address the problems through imagery and subtle energy interventions.

If we consider physical, psychological, and relational problems as energetic patterns, we can then address them as such. When we take this perspective, problems appear very different from their appearance in other reality systems. We address problems as lower energy forms. They may appear as blocked energies that stagnate, fester, grow tentacles that intertwine with other negative energies. They may accumulate barnacles of resistances to change, and constantly feed on various fears related to the original traumas that caused the problems. Secondary layers of fears may then develop about experiencing the primary fears, along with fears of changing.

When we offer our EmotionalBodyProcess energetic interventions, the lower energy forms come to us with a readiness to contact higher energy forms through us. Often they do not seem to be able to do so themselves and thus need our mediation. What appears frightening, perhaps even evil, is therefore not in itself negative or malicious, but rather asks for something because it lacks love and light. So we suggest that you welcome whatever negative energy shows itself, in the sense of "It is not easy for me to like you, but it is alright that you show up," or, simply, "You are okay."

Next, you ask: "What can I/we do for you?" Even the most aggressive energy will pause and listen attentively. On repeating the question, "What can I do for you?" it could become a little aggressive, utter a wish, or answer something like: "Nobody has ever asked me!" or "I have been waiting for ages for someone to communicate with me!" If you don't receive an answer you might actively propose a gift, asking it what it wants. Often it asks for something simple, such as just to be allowed to speak and to be heard. Sometimes atrocious gifts are requested, such as: "I want your heart!" or "I want you entirely, completely!" or "I want to kill you!"

Our answers are always, without exception, "Yes, please. Here is what you want. Just take it. Take me, if you like. Kill me if it helps you."

In the worlds of imagery and energies, we can make such offers without danger that we actually will be hurt or killed. We always know that our human life is not endangered. Nothing can happen to you physically even if you allow yourself to be devoured by the monsters of your inner vision during a loving, healing, accepting, forgiving interaction with another imaged being. I have absolute trust in the intuitive guidance that supports my work, and further confidence from years of using this imagery.

The therapist/healer supports you in giving whatever is requested by the negative energy. When we do so, a change occurs within that energy. A huge dragon becomes a tiny dinosaur. An immense, menacing rat transforms into a small one. A prince emerges from a frog, as in a traditional German fairy tale. The therapist then guides you to repeat the same process, and the dinosaur, rat or other negative image dissolves and leaves, or may transform into a character that is supportive and delivers higher messages.

One time I (DvS) was dismembered and devoured during such a visualization for my own healing. During the meal, all of the creatures transfigured into my image. I knew they had taken in some of my energy, especially higher energy. Mine was the only form known to them as a model for their transformation.

A therapist who has the intuitive gifts to perceive your inner imagery may participate with you in your imagery drama.

Once I (DvS) encountered Black Magic attached to a South American woman. During her appearance on the visualized stage where we met, I suddenly suffered serious heart pains and saw a dragon who demanded her heart. I gave her mine and this gave her the courage to offer hers also to the dragon. But he wanted more. So she gave him another heart, and another, and another. I, too, gave her more and more of my numerous hearts. (With inner pictures, everything is possible, absolutely anything.) Slowly, the dragon began to transform. To begin with, he became less aggressive, then softer, smaller, and ever smaller, until he finally dissolved. The heartache was over.

Should any small residue of fear remain within me after such an encounter, I rely on people who are acquainted with my method to help me find a way out.

Self-Healing with Imagery and Healing Energies

Because we were cautious, the initial explorations of the originators of this process were made with several of us actively participating in the process of helping people to deal with their problems. Once we were confident that no harm would come to people through these methods, we adapted them to self-healing.

EmotionalBodyProcess is very simple and direct. You are told to speak out loud with your problems, acknowledging their presence. For instance, if you have pain or depression you might be told to say, "Pain in my (head), I feel you." or "Depression I feel you." You can then ask, "Do you want to tell me something?" As it speaks, the imagery will change. You then say "Hello" to the new imagery, inviting it to speak, and so on. Within moments there are likely to be surprising responses.

1. The acknowledged feeling may diminish considerably or disappear entirely.

I (DB) had been troubled by mild sciatica with mild aches and pains in my left buttock and the posterior aspect of my thigh for six years. Healing, the only treatment I ever sought, produced moderate but incomplete and impermanent relief.

I asked the pain what it wanted to tell me. I was surprised to hear an inner voice speak to me of a deep anxiety that I might not be worthy of being loved or accepted by anyone - a residual feeling from childhood that had eluded the probings of several courses of psychotherapy, including one involving body work. With this awareness came an immediate easing of the pain and tightness, further helped by an ongoing Jungian psychotherapy, and deeper layers of this anxiety peeled later yet in other ways.

Another example, from DvS:
During my first pregnancy I had severe back pain for several month. One day I asked the pain why it was there. It answered, "You need me because you think you can't carry the baby alone. I thanked it for helping and the pain disappeared immediately and never returned again, neither in this pregnancy nor in the two subsequent ones.

2. The feeling may intensify, often being expressed with tears. A series of feelings may unfold, revealing ever deeper levels of emotional hurts.

In either (1) or (2), you are encouraged to ask the feeling what it wants of you or wishes to tell you. You may hear the feeling explaining its underlying psychological dynamics. A headache may say, "I am hurting because you are overworking, taking on too many problems, and not resting enough."

The feeling may spontaneously take on the image of an animal, a monster or some other form. Formless images may arise, such as colors, swirling shades of light and dark, or simply body sensations like dizziness or whirling feelings. Formed images may be very demanding, as described above. You are encouraged and supported in imagining that you are freely giving absolutely everything these images demand.

In most instances even the most menacing and demanding images will very shortly transform spontaneously into friendly or meek and needy characters. They will then say something like, "I just want someone to love me and care for me." or "I've been waiting so long for someone to speak with me, to hear what I've been wanting to say." Given what they want, many times they will simply disappear.

"Mona", a psychologist and mother of two little children, came to see me (DvS). Since the birth of her second child two years ago she suffered from anxieties. She sampled a lot of therapies but still would go daily to a doctor to be reassured that she had no cancer.

In starting EmotionalBodyProcess, Mona closed her eyes and in an instant saw herself in an old tower watching a naked, hungry, little dog-like creature. I instructed her to ask: "What can I do for you". The creature responded: "Love me and take me in your arms." The creature wanted to kiss and then started to be absorbed into Mona's body. She felt pain and fear. Mona and I demanded that the creature speak and it told us it was an unloved part of Mona. So she had to give it love. As she started loving it, it became warm and bigger and stronger and at the end it was a part of herself, accompanying her and supporting her.

Still, she felt a rolling ball in her chest with aggressive looking cancer cells. When asked, they said that they wanted to spread out in her and to destroy her because she did not love them; that she had to die to learn about love. Mona started sending healing light into the ball, and the ball started to change. Then the cancer cells said that they don't want to continue to live as destroyers. They really prefer to be normal cells and to live a normal life, supporting her. They don't want to be suppressed in a narrow ball. Mona opened the ball and beautiful, healthy cells came out, finding the healthy way to the right place inside her.

Mona's fear has stopped but we have to wait some time to see if she is completely over her problems or if other problems emerge.

3. You may sometimes fear that you might be inadequate to meet the demands of the negative images because they appear too menacing, powerful or frightening. In such instances the following steps may be helpful.

The therapist suggests that you set aside the unpleasant images for a while. You are then guided to an awareness of a space within yourself where there is love, healing, acceptance, and forgiveness. (For brevity's sake, we will refer to this as the "love and healing space".) If this is difficult for you to sense, you might identify a place where you might hold a little child who tripped and fell in front of you. The child, frightened more than hurt, would only need you to hold them and give them love and acceptance. If uncomfortable with children, you might look for the place in your heart where you would cuddle a puppy, a kitten, or a doll. You are told to signal when you have a firm awareness of this space.

When it is anticipated that people may have difficulty in dealing with their feelings, it may be best to start EmotionalBodyProcess with this step. This might be the case when there was no previous experience with imagery work, when the traumas that brought you to therapy were severe, or if you have little self confidence in your abilities to help yourself.

It may be helpful to suggest, especially in the first few sessions, that you create an image to represent your problem. The initial step is simply to ask for an image to appear. If an image does not arise spontaneously, it may be suggested that you seek an image like a cartoon, a caricature, a character from a book or play or film, a name, a color, a tone, or whatever else would seem appropriate. If no images arise, then you can simply use the emotional feeling as a word or the physical feeling as that part of the body in which it appears.

You are then told to invite the negative feeling or image into this space. Once there, you proceed to interact with it as described in (1) and (2).

4. I (DvS) suggest that the client imagines s/he is painting a circle of 1 meter square on the floor and then sitting in the middle of it. Than s/he paints another circle, the same size, touching the first like a figure eight. You invite the person you want to contact into the other circle. Each person is safe in their space.

Then the client speaks. For example: "Thank you for coming. I see you. When I was a child, I felt so hurt when you. . . Did you know that? The other person then responds, and the client continues to dialogue. (It is essential to speak respectfully to the image of the other person, at least in the beginning. If the client shouts at the image, it may disappear and not return, and the opportunity for dialogue would be lost.

What happens is often wonderful. The client sees first time that this person is not hard and cruel but is too weak and fearful to act with love. The image needs love. The client might then
a. forgive the image
b. be forgiven by the image
c. forgive him/herself!

This process works particularly well with clients' parents, whether they are still alive or not. Within a short while, even after a long period without contact between families, the person with whom the client held the dialogue will spontaneously phone, saying something like, "I just want to konw how you are."

5. Imagery of healing energies to strengthen the love and healing space may provide the support needed to facilitate engagement in (3). This introduces aspects of energy medicine and spirituality.

It is suggested that you invite energies from the earth (Gaia, or Mother Earth if appropriate) to enter your feet, ascending through your body to your heart. Filling your heart with acceptance, love and healing, the energies then extend to every particle of your being, and especially to the love and healing space (created in 3), providing as much energy and support as needed to make this space strong in these qualities. You then invite energies from The Infinite Source (call it God, Christ, their higher self, or whatever you find most acceptable) to enter through your head (crown chakra if appropriate), passing through your upper body, filling your heart and continuing as with the earth energies.

This provides infinite support for the qualities present in the love and healing space. It enables you to meet any and all challenges you might face in confronting the images of your problems and conflicts - that you invite into this space as in (3).

Where it is possible to proceed in a stepwise manner through these exercises, you may be able to sense the differences between approaching your problems with imagery alone, with imagery that is addressed within a context of healing/ love/ acceptance, and with the extra support of energies or of a spiritual presence from beyond yourself. These imagery exercises can help you to connect with those inner parts that we call our core, our higher self, and our personal spiritual awareness.

I (RB) awoke with a severe pain in my back. Ordinarily I would have suffered with a pain like this for hours or even days, attributing it to a combination of stress, poor posture and tiredness. Mild pain killers would help, but only time and rest would release me from this severe discomfort.

Dan suggested that I speak with the pain. Now, I'm not a morning person and my eyelids had not yet gotten out of beddy-bye mode. I must admit that at first I felt he was not being sympathetic and was ready to argue with him that he should try his newest pet theories on other guinea pigs. Too tired to argue, I grudgingly centered my awareness on the space of love and healing within me. I said to myself, "Back pain, I feel you." The pain took the form of a swirling spiral. I asked it, "What do you want to tell me?" It answered, "You're taking on too much, as usual, and I'm worried that you won't be able to manage it all." I could relate very easily to my back's worries, having wondered how in the world I could meet my obligations to complete the writing up of my M.Phil. thesis, see my psychotherapy clients, meet the speaking and writing commitments I had agreed to, and still be able to give time to my 16 year-old daughter and this obstinate husband with his healing obsessions, not to mention nurturing myself.

"What do you want me to do about all these obligations?" I asked. "I want you to make out a work schedule," it responded, "and put it in writing. You're not very good at sticking with schedules." As soon as I promised to do this, the back pain abated completely. The whole process had not taken more than five minutes.

Over the next few days I sorted out a schedule in my head. The back pain returned and persisted for over a week. I had to show I was taking it seriously by writing down the schedule before my unconscious mind let up its vigilance and stopped giving me these reminders through my back.

6. Further self-healing approaches: You may be instructed to place your hands on the parts of your body where pains or tensions are felt, and to project healing to yourself. This often produces marked, rapid relief and can set the stage for proceeding with steps (3) or (4), or might reduce pain and anxiety generated during these imagery processes.

During her second type (3) visualization (the first a week earlier), 60 year-old "Elouise" became very anxious in dealing with the symbolic death images involved in her menopause. Anger was released but panic-level anxieties rose up within her. She had severe pains, with feelings of energies like pins and needles in her chest. She reported, "It feels like the cold hand of death is grasping my heart." I (RB) invited Elouise was to speak to her panic and chest pain. She immediately felt intense light, alternating with darkness flooding in upon her. She was able to accept the suggestion to welcome these and ask what they wanted, but nothing changed and her panic and pain remained severe.

Following the suggestion to place her hands over the pain in her chest, accepting it without condition, she immediately relaxed.

I, DvS, prefer not to instruct people to use their physical hands because this may bring them back into physical reality. Using your real hands has its place with healing in physical reality, but imagery goes much deeper. I find it is better to let people imagine they are putting their hands where needed. This helps you stay in whatever level of consciousness you find yourself at that moment.

The non-local inner realities are incredibly potent spaces for self-healing. You may invite an emotional or physical scar or wound to speak through images of their choice.

A man I (DvS) worked with who had problems with his voice reported a zig-zag scar all over his body in his aura. I might never have seen that, despite my abilities to resonate with clients through non-local mind in many instances. Had he placed his physical hand to his neck, he might not have seen the imagery that appeared.

Old traumas are best healed by your addressing them with whatever your inner self says is needed. If necessary, you can even picture that they are removing a leg or an organ and replacing it with a new one. If bones, tendons, nerves, tissues, or skin are not healthy or scarred, they must be visualized and invited to heal from within. A scar or wound always heals best from the bottom. Otherwise it might appear to heal on the surface but leave unhealed parts underneath. We help people to visualize these until no scar is left. The skin you finally image should be as clear as a baby's bottom in the end. This might take weeks, but you can look inward from time to time on your own to check on how the healing is proceeding.

We define health as inner peace, and healing as letting go of fear [I]f we choose to see another person as 'attacking', we will attack back and in that process attack ourselves. In our healing process, we choose not to see ourselves as victims, and to take responsibility for our thoughts and feelings. In that process, we learn that there is no one to blame.
                                                Gerald Jampolsky

7. When the "tamed" image does not leave spontaneously it is often helpful to it back into yourself. This may be experienced as a profound acknowledgement that the physical, emotional or relational problems were projected, previously disowned aspects of yourself. People feel a sense of wholeness and completeness upon doing this, accompanied by insights into how they have carried self-persecutory voices and habits within themselves.

"Peter", a middle aged computer expert, dreamed he could fly. "I was doing loops and swoops and enjoying myself. Then I felt I had someone on my back and could only fly low." His first association to this dream was a chronic fear of failing. I (DB) encouraged him to say, "Fear of failing, I feel you." This immediately brought up the image of a huge, snake-like monster. Asked what it wanted, the monster said it wished to devour Peter. Though initially anxious about allowing this, with encouragement he was able to proceed. The snake devoured him and wanted more. Peter was able to imagine that he presented himself again, and again and yet again to be devoured, until the snake monster was completely stuffed. It started to leave. Peter feared that it would just come back for more when it had digested this meal. At the therapist's suggestion, he was able to send it love. It immediately transformed into a friendly little pet snake.

With the therapist's encouragement, Peter invited the snake to join and blend with himself. He spontaneously came to helpful insights: "I keep myself from flying. I carry a lot of weights on my back. I have a partner at work who holds me back severely. I've always been afraid to 'go for it' on my own. I used to blame him for holding me back, but now I see that I must have chosen him to support my own fears."

Within weeks, with the help of further talking therapy, Peter sorted out his relationship with his partner in an amicable and productive way.

Peter's experiences also illustrate how imagery can shift rapidly when it is left to the client's own guidance. A therapist might be tempted to keep the client on a given track, perhaps staying with the imagery that was initially chosen. Often, the shifts to new imagery are richly productive and rewarding. At other times, shifts may be made out of fear and avoidance, and the therapist might be more helpful through keeping the client on track rather than fleeing. This is the art of therapy.

8. Relational problems may be addressed through imagery. You may be guided through imaginary conversations between yourself and your parents, for example. Your child self may say whatever it wants, focusing particularly on feelings. You might say, "I am so little and feel so hurt. Do you know how I feel?" "No," might answer your imaged father. The therapist would then guide you through clarifying dialogues. If the image of your father moves away then it may be that it is too painful for you, or your father may have been too frightened for himself. We then encourage you to ask in a different way. With several explorations of this sort, inner parents often respond from a much deeper level than that of psychological defenses - through which you had related to the images of your parents.

Amazingly, as the imagery work unfolds into greater understanding, acceptance, love, healing, and forgiveness, the relationship with your real father (or other person you are addressing) will often change. Even though your relatives may live hundreds of miles away, with no contact for years, they will "spontaneously" phone or write shortly after you do the inner work.

These examples of non-local mind healings within families are frequent enough to warrant research.

If your early relationships have been very unnurturing, or when there has been severe emotional trauma in childhood, you may be encouraged to nurture your own inner child. We would encourage you to imagine you are holding your inner child, giving him or her love, acceptance, forgiveness and healing, and promising you will provide all the protection needed. When it feels right, you asks what your inner child wants. Usually it is to go and play, and you, the adult, are encouraged to imagine this. Such interactions are deeply moving and often accompanied by tears. With loving self-healing the inner child can grow and heal, though this will occur at his or her own pace.

I (DB) have used gestalt therapy (Perls) and inner child work (Bradshaw) for years prior to being introduced to EmotionalBodyProcess. The addition of the imagery and energies of the love and healing space to these approaches enhances their potency considerably.

9. Giving thanks to your images, symptoms and difficulties for having worked very hard to protect you is a final, closing step in helping you to use acceptance, healing, forgiveness, and love to deal with your problems.

We come to see that even the worst monster wanted to protect us, however misguided or painful its ways of doing so might have appeared. When we look deeper, we see there is really no misguidance. The ways problems evolved and are resolved carry enfolded, profound lessons within them. EmotionalBodyProcess often reveals these inner lessons as the negativity is transformed.

The process of weaving imagery in EmotionalBodyProcess is very similar to dream analysis. It is best for the therapist to give minimal promptings, leaving clients free to develop and evolve their own imagery. The therapist provides support and reassurance, adding love, forgiveness, acceptance and healing as needed.

While EmotionalBodyProcess is excellent for addressing stress states, sessions are best conducted when clients are relaxed. Excessive anxiety may make it difficult to concentrate in order to engage in the imagery and healing awarenesses. At the opposite end of the spectrum, excessive relaxation may reduce cognitive focus and may make it difficult for people to utilize the imagery methods. One must also be alert to the possibility of introducing hypnotic induction with the relaxation. This would convert the process from a client-initiated process into a therapist-driven one.

DvS uses EmotionalBodyProcess as her core approach in psychotherapy. Sessions usually last one and a half hours and 1-6 sessions are often all that are required. With more severe and complex problems, such as schizophrenia, 20 to 40 sessions may be needed. Sometimes there is a remission from the schizophrenia, at other times further psychotherapy may be helpful (where it had would have been impossible before the EmotionalBodyprocess.

DB and RB use EmotionalBodyProcess as one of many approaches within both brief and long-term therapy, with sessions of one hour weekly over 6 weeks to 18 months or more.

Discussion

This imagery process is among the most potent self-healing intervention the authors have used. People are able to address their problems deeply, thoroughly and rapidly. The process quickly opens awareness into the core issues behind people's defenses. It facilitates awareness of projections of negative aspects of oneself and provides rapidly effective ways to deal with these. We were initially suspicious that anything so quick was likely to be superficial and of only transient value. This is definitely not the case. The inner changes are profound and usually are lasting. They are accompanied by insights and are followed by improved self image, enhanced self confidence, and changes in relationships. In some instances there are recurrences of the original problems or of related ones. Further explorations with EmotionalBodyProcess, often to deeper levels of awareness, can usually resolve these problems.

Comparisons and Contrasts Between EmotionalBodyProcess and Other Approaches

In many of the more conventional psychotherapies people focus on how their emotional defenses (that were established when they were younger) lead them to respond inappropriately to current situations (S. Freud; A. Freud; Fromm-Reichmann; Remen).

Let us consider an illustration of these processes.

"Sally" was so anxious when she was approached by men who were attracted to her that she would stutter and stammer severely. She was attractive and intelligent and had no difficulties in speaking normally in her university classes or with her women friends. Her friends could not understand why she should have such difficulties with men. In therapy she uncovered long-forgotten memories from her childhood of her father's violent behavior towards her mother. This had terrified her but at that time she had no one to talk with in order to clarify or release her severe anxieties. Little Sally's unconscious mind did the best it could, locking these fears firmly behind thick doors of forgetfulness deep within her so that she would not suffer the pain of feeling them. Her unconscious continued thereafter to protect her from remembering or feeling these buried hurts by keeping them deep beneath her conscious awareness. By putting up verbal barriers of stuttering, her unconscious mind felt it was guarding her from possible repetitions of such hurts with any man who got close to her. Sadly, the very defenses meant to protect Sally were in fact causing her more distress.

Most conventional psychotherapies take many weeks and months to clarify the roots of such defenses. The feelings that were buried behind the defenses were explored and released. Sally spent many sessions working through and releasing her fears by simply talking about them.

EmotionalBodyProcess does not analyze the reasons for your defenses. It helps you to engage immediately with your defenses and with the underlying feelings, dealing with them in creative ways: first, through imagery; and second, with an attitude of acceptance, love, forgiveness and healing.

Imagery introduces a myriad of new possibilities in therapy. An image can represent a problem in a much more condensed yet also more comprehensive fashion than words. The symbolic representation resonates with underlying emotional traumas, with related experiences and feelings, with the defenses around these buried hurts, and with any other aspect of yourself that is relevant to the problems being addressed through the imagery. By manipulating the images, you are able to shift your perceptions of problems and your relationships to them in all their permutations, many of which may not be within conscious awareness. The shifts in the images will resonate with all relevant experiential associations, feelings, and issues that could maintain and perpetuate the problems and the defenses around them -- resulting in far-reaching shifts.

Dealing with your feelings in the atmosphere the love and healing space can be a novel experience. Most people find it somewhat difficult to be totally accepting of their own defenses and to give love to them and to the underlying feelings rather than to push them away, fight them off, or flee from them. If you have had traumatic experiences like Sally did, with anxieties about men (or any other aspect of your life), you will reflexively do everything in your power to fight off the anxieties and to avoid experiencing the hurt feelings behind them. Enormous efforts are required to keep these unwanted feelings at bay. (As a illustrative exercise, do your best to not think of a purple camel and see how that camel fights your efforts to put it off.) It very rapidly becomes apparent that if you fight the negative images of your defenses and feelings, the images become stronger and nastier and fight back. In fighting your anxieties, you actually give energy to them and perpetuate or even strengthen them.

Holding your hurts and defenses in a space of forgiveness, healing, acceptance and love transforms them. Anxieties, angers, hurts, and guilts that may be perceived as all sorts of frightening monsters are transformed into gentle friends. These formerly negative attackers, animated in imagery, are enormously grateful to be asked to speak. They often say that they have been doing their utterly committed best to get you to hear them, hammering at the locked doors in your unconscious mind, often in desperately fearsome and painful ways. Your unconscious mind invests incredible efforts, doing everything possible to keep these doors closed and locked. It may divert your attention from becoming aware of what is going on inside, as in masking the buried terrors of a father's violent outbursts behind a fear of men in general. This struggle between buried hurts and unconscious defenses often begins in childhood, when burying the hurts is the best option available to you as a child. This defensive behavior continues into adulthood as your automatic response to stresses, usually well past the time when it is productive.

The space of love, acceptance and healing provides a sense of safety within which you can have greater confidence that you are capable of dealing with the challenges in your life.

Some people have enormous difficulties in giving themselves love. In such cases they may simply be asked to suspend judgment while engaging in the process.

There are additional ways in which EmotionalBodyProcess is helpful.

There is a subtle but very important element of self-healing in the visualizations that utilize the inner love space. When you engage in this imagery you place yourself mentally within this space in order to engage with the projected images of your feelings. Though you feel you are in the special space in order to deal with the images representing your problems, you place yourself as well within a space of healing, acceptance, forgiveness, and love. This opens you to a direct energetic experience of these qualities. Were you to be invited to place yourself in such a space for the purpose of feeling these healing qualities, there would be a strong element of observing yourself engaging in the process of helping yourself. This inner observing would weaken the experience by introducing a split of observer and observed parts of yourself. In EmotionalBodyProcess, being in the space to deal with your defenses, you simply are in the space and can freely experience its benefits.

This therapy also helps you to deal with projected negativities that have been disowned. For instance, anxieties and fears feel like they come from problems and challenges outside yourself. Angers and hurts are perceived to be caused by others. Once you believe yourself to be separate from them, you automatically defend strongly against having anything to do with these negative emotions -- in yourself or in others who may be expressing similar negativities. Being in the love and healing space together with your projected fears is also an experience of healing your split selves. You come to realize that these negative feelings are parts of yourself that you actually perpetuated and kept alive and strong through giving them further negative energy. When you stop feeding them this negative energy and bring them into a space of love, healing, acceptance and forgiveness, they are rapidly transformed.

Absolutely every negativity we have met up to this point, without exception, transformed through meditation and inner pictures to some degree. If we approached them and helped them with healing, loving, supporting-the-world energies, with unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, they asked us for their support and we were able to help them. Not every intervention results in complete resolution of the symptoms or problems. Some result in total clearing of symptoms, while others produce from modest to mild relief.

Skeptics may propose that any or all of the above may be elaborate effects of suggestion rather than intrinsically effects of imagery or processes of non-local mind. If so, this is still one of the most effective placebo (self-healing) processes the authors have encountered. Studies in which incremental additions are presented of the various elements described in (1-4) may help to clarify whether our clinical impressions can be validated in research.

Should you, stimulated by this article, want to explore this experience or transform negative energy, then you should do so in the company of a single trusted, supportive person or a small group. Even with the best of intentions and understanding, most of us need support to confront and deal with our inner fears. Once you are familiar with the techniques, you may use these methods on your own, as needed.

Do not believe in a sinister, destroying power, malicious from within itself. Your negative feelings and anxieties are forms of energy that ask you for love, despite appearing to be malicious at first encounter. You can be their agent for transformation. You can be the medium, the channel, bringing together the lower with the more superior forms of energy.

Spiritual Awareness with EmotionalBodyProcess

People spontaneously open to their personal spiritual awareness through EmotionalBodyProcess. The qualities of acceptance, love and healing are those of your higher self. The process of opening to the experience of these qualities opens you to resonate with your higher self, which introduces a conscious awareness of non-local mind.

Therapists who are gifted with healing and/or psychic modes of relating may sometimes be able to track people's imagery as they are experiencing it. This adds potent healing energies and additional spiritual dimensions to the interventions.

From these approaches we learn that our pains and suffering may be invitations and guides into higher awareness. This is not a new observation. EmotionalBodyProcess simply opens a door very quickly and directly into these awarenesses.

References

Bradshaw, J. Homecoming, New York/ London: Bantam/Doubleday/Dell 1992.

Frankl, V. Man's Search for Meaning, Boston: Beacon 1962, 24.

Freud, A. The ego and mechanisms of defense, In:, Writings of Anna Freud, Vol. 2, New York: International Universities Press 1967, Orig. 1953.

Freud, S. Psychopathology of Everyday Life, New York: Norton 1971.

Fromm-Reichmann, F. Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy, Chicago: University of Chicago 1950.

Jampolsky, G. Living and loving one second at a time, in: Carlson, R and Shield, B. Healers on Healing, London: Rideer 1989, p. 155.

Perls, F.S. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, New York: Bantam 1969.

Remen, R.N. Illness as an opportunity for healing, in: Carlson, R and Shield, B. Healers on Healing, London: Rideer 1989, p. 79.

EmotionalBodyProcess, Part II: Theories and Evidence on Combining Imagery, Energy Medicine, and Awareness of Non-Local Mind will be published in IJHC Volume I, No. 2

Contacts
Daniel J. Benor, MD
IJHC office

Dr. Dorothea von Stumpfeldt
Kiplingweg 6
D14055 Berlin
Germany

Ruth Benor, RN
19 Fore Street
Bishopsteignton
South Devon TQ14 9QR
England
rbenor@eclipse.co.uk