Re-evaluation co-counseling is a peer counseling system. RC has been very helpful for a lot of people. I consider it to be a “big chunk” tool. It lets you know that tears, thrashing about and shaking are not “bad” but are natural ways the body discharges emotion. I have seen it work miracles. Continue reading Re-evaluation Co-counseling (RC)
Category Archives: Psychology
Lester Levenson, The Release Technique & The Sedona Method
Lester Levenson, was a physicist and engineer who lived from 1909 to 1984. He inspired The Sedona Method, and the Release Technique. At age 43, he was told he only had weeks to live. He lived 40 more years because of what he learned about healing himself.
Lester, like us, liked simplicity. He said “KISS” means Keep It Simple, Sweetheart. And he did it. There is nothing complicated about what he taught — and yet it is extremely powerful and helpful. Two people took the ball for a touchdown after Lester died: Larry Crane and Hale Dwoskin.
Larry Crane of the The Release Technique, writes,
In 1952, after being sent home by his doctors to die, Lester realized two truths that literally saved his life. The first was that his own feelings were the cause of all his problems, and not the world or the people in it, as he had previously thought. He also realized his own feelings were what he had struggled so hard and long against. And this struggle was what had destroyed his health and caused him to suffer in every way.
The second truth he discovered was that he had the inborn ability to let go of his feelings. He discovered how to completely discharge them and their negative influences from his life. Instead of struggling with them by suppressing, coping and venting as he had previously done, he discovered how to totally release them. This put an end to his struggle! He found permanent happiness. And, he found the more he released his feelings, the happier and healthier he became. In fact, within three months he was completely well, and he stayed well for over 40 more years!
The Release Technique is the most wonderful little 24-minute audio with Larry Crane and Lester Levenson. Listen very closely. Listen again. You can apply this simple understanding to all the fear in your life and release it easily, painlessly. As Lester says in this talk,
This thing called love is your basic nature. All the love in the universe is in your basic nature. You will discover that happiness — your happiness — equates to your capacity to love, and conversely all your miseries equate to your need to be loved. Just love, love, love and you will be so happy and healthy and prosperous.
Remember, you merely need to let go of your non-love feelings.
The Sedona Method is a series of CDs and books that Hale Dwoskin developed, based on Lester Levenson’s work. First, you find an issue or uncomfortable feeling that calls for attention. Then you ask yourself these three simple questions:
Could I let it go?
Would I let it go?
When?
Give each question sincere thought and an honest answer. There are no right or wrong answers.
The firstand second questions can be answered either “yes” or “no”. The third question can be answered with “now” or whatever time is true for you. If you are not ready to let it go “now”, repeat the questions until you reach a point where you no longer wish to hold on to it. You may find yourself laughing out loud on the third or fourth repetition of the questions. Of course, if you get really stuck with a difficult issue, you can always work on it later.
Another statement by Lester Levenson:
One of the things that happened in my process to love all was I discovered my identification with others. I saw that we are all related, we are all interconnected. Each mind is like a radio broadcasting and receiving station; that we are all tuned into each other unconsciously — that we are just not aware of it. I also saw that life was meant to be beautiful… meant to be happy all the time with no sorrow. And to be with perfect health. And so after reaching that high point of understanding in 1952, I have wanted to help others to discover what I had discovered.
Feeling Good – Cognitive Therapy
Please read this free article by Aaron T. Beck who developed Cognitive Therapy and read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns.
Circumcision & Human Behavior
The emotional & behavioral effects of circumcision
by George Hill
Psychologists now recognize that male circumcision affects emotions and behavior. This article discusses the impact of male circumcision on human behavior.
Contents
Introduction
Medical doctors adopted male circumcision from religious practice into medical practice in England in the 1860s and in the United States in the 1870s. No thought was given to the possible behavioral effects of painful operations that excise important protective erogenous tissue from the male phallus. For example, Gairdner (1949) and Wright (1967), both critics of male neonatal non-therapeutic circumcision, made no mention of any behavioral effects of neonatal circumcision.[1] [2]
The awakening
Other doctors, however, were beginning to express concern about the behavioral effects of male circumcision. Continue reading Circumcision & Human Behavior
The Importance of Feeling Good
Don’t do anything that you don’t really want to do.
Keep yourself in a place of feeling good.
Reach for the thought that feels better —
and watch what happens.
Abraham*
According to Abraham-Hicks, it is in the place of “feeling good” where grace occurs. A Course In Miracles would say that we have only two emotions: love and fear — and that love would be the place of “feeling good” and fear would be feeling less than love, anything less than comfortable.
Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.
To have a human body means you will encounter pain — you will stub your toe or bump your head or experience any number of things that distract you from feeling good. But to dwell on the pain and remain in the pain, to bring yourself back to the pain over and over again in your mind, to rehearse the pain and to dwell on it, is abusive to your self. And that is not what we really want. What we really want is to feel good.
So now we can decide — coming back to the quote at the top of this post — to not do those things we don’t want to do or to not feel the feelings we don’t like to feel. Knowing we have an option, we may become determined to learn to release, let go, feel good in any circumstance. We learn to surf the waves of emotion, to walk on water, so to speak.
Imagine the implication for our world. Nobody would be following in the footsteps of Job… yet everyone would be helpful, because that is the nature of love. The world as we know it would change in a twinkling.
The importance of reclaiming the feeling that feels good jives with everything I’ve learned and have personally experienced. A Course In Miracles calls it love or forgiveness or releasing fear, Dr. Hew Len of ho’oponopono calls it cleaning. He makes it clear that cleaning is an ongoing activity. Mary Baker Eddy says, “God is Love… God is the work of eternity, and demands absolute consecration of thought, energy, and desire.” Our real job, our real work, is to reclaim our fundamental nature, which is pure, unconditional love.
Observing the judgmental voice between the ears, clearing, releasing, letting it go… getting back to “zero” or “neutral” or “feeling good”… that is our work and that is our fate, because since only love truly exists forever, our return to it is inevitable. Something called Knowledge is the “know how” of how to go directly to the love that we are.
*From the workshop in Boston, MA on Sunday, October 10th, 1999 #563. This quote and much more at Abraham-Hicks Publications
Genital cutting tied to later abuse risk
And remember, dear friends… anything that affects a female who has been circumcised surely will affect a circumcised male as well. Trauma is trauma – no matter the gender. And the worst part of circumcision is not the physical cut, but the psychological repercussions.
Protect your child from adults with knives and he or she will grow up to be far more peaceful, trusting and happy than someone who has been grievously injured unnecessarily due to fashion, superstition or to assuage any other adult fear.
—
By Amy Norton, Reuters
September 24, 2012
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women who underwent genital cutting as young girls may be at increased risk of physical, sexual or emotional abuse from their husband, a study of women in Mali suggests.
The study, of nearly 7,900 women, found that 22 percent of those with genital mutilation said they’d been physically abused by a husband or male partner. That compared with 12 percent of women who’d never been subjected to the procedure.
It’s estimated that more than 130 million women worldwide have undergone genital mutilation, also known as female “circumcision.” The centuries-old practice, which involves removing part or all of a girl’s clitoris and labia, and sometimes narrowing the vaginal opening, remains a common practice in some countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.
It’s well-known that genital cutting has long-term consequences for women – including sexual dysfunction, childbirth complications, incontinence and psychological disorders.
In the new study, researchers looked at whether there’s a link between genital mutilation and a woman’s odds of suffering abuse from her partner.
In Mali, where the vast majority of women have undergone genital mutilation, the government has taken steps to raise awareness of the consequences of the practice. But genital mutilation has not been outlawed.
The difficulty is that genital cutting is widely seen as an important cultural tradition, rather than a form of abuse.
“If something is entrenched in a culture, it is difficult to change,” said Dr. Hamisu Salihu of the University of South Florida in Tampa, the lead researcher on the new study.
On the other hand, physically abusing your wife – though common in Mali and other African countries – does not have that cultural acceptance, Salihu told Reuters Health…
READ MORE: YAHOO! Health
SOURCE: BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, online August 24, 2012
Depression is not irrational – Suicide is not a solution
I was depressed from an early age. As a child, I always wanted to be dead. Life didn’t seem worth living. One night, when my parents were asleep, I went to the kitchen to get a knife to cut out my heart, but I was too small to reach the sharp knives – I didn’t even know where they were kept.
When I went back to my bed that night, I heard a voice say, “What makes you think it would be any different if you were to die?”
I had to admit I had no guarantee. But I saw the implication was that I would have to live through those early childhood years again – no way! – and so I have stayed. My teen years and early twenties were no better. But after that, each year my heart has grown more full and rich and happy. I have no external possessions to brag about, but peace of mind and joy are my priceless treasures.
Depression is not irrational, it is an accumulation of legitimate, yet unreleased fears, angers and sorrows. Much of our society does not allow grieving and does not offer anything much better than “You are born. Life is for suffering. Technology advances. And then you die.”.
Religion often makes life on earth sound like a prison sentence, a valley of tears, after which – if you are perfect (and who among us could claim that?) – at any rate, if you are perfect, you get to go to “heaven” and experience something that might or might not be all that much better than what you have known on earth… but there are no guarantees and there are many hoops to jump through.
What finally brought me out of my depression was the discovery that when I was very very quiet, I could feel my heart.
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer… no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. ― Albert Camus
Another way to say that is, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” It is! And it can be known NOW. But only one thing can exist in one place at one time, so as long as we hold on to negative feelings from the past, we do not feel that beauty that already exists in our own hearts.
I came to understand that I had something important to do here on planet earth. Until I released all that old baggage, until I released everything that was blocking me from feeling my heart, I might just have to come back over and over and do it all again. What a horrible thought that was! And so I began to do my work and began to let go of that old and ugly fear, sorrow, anger… and am still engaged in that process.
We are fortunate in this age to have lots of help – from people and healing systems like Jed Diamond, Byron Katie’s “The Work”, Gary Craig’s “EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique”, Hale Dwoskin’s “The Sedona Method”, and many others. It’s all about healing – letting go of fear/anger/sorrow. It’s why we’re here and why “stuff happens” – so that we feel the old stuff and release the past – to “forgive”, which is “for giving ourselves peace of mind, joy and health.” Feelings got stuck when we held our breath in fear. So whatever feelings come up, breathe into them… that’s how we tell ourselves that we’re safe here and now.
Release one little fear, tension, today, here and now. You will be so glad you did. Then move to another… and let it go… until all the fear is gone and only love remains.
Emergency help for PTSD
Trauma happens. Daily. To many. Those of us who have been suddenly exposed to terror, horror and shock, those of us who have lived in it for extended periods of time, all of us suffer at least some degree of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The two videos in this post demonstrate emergency relief for anxiety using acupressure points for stress. This might come in handy as you are reading, learning, practicing, addressing issues, and releasing them. Get these two helpful stress-release tools under your belt and then scour and devour the rest of the healing methods here on this site. Any one of them might be enough to heal all your wounds. But one might “speak to” you more than another. Try them all.
As we release fear, we feel safer; as we feel safer, others will feel safer around us.
Sufferers of PTSD — even veterans — are not always correctly diagnosed and are even more often not treated. However, those who do receive attention do not always reap sufficient benefit from conventional treatment.
Sometimes it takes a child to say what no adult will — the emperor has no clothes and the medical field has no cure for PTSD. The conventional mental health system offers diagnoses and medications, but the mere labeling and numbing of symptoms does not equate to genuine healing. Terror and horror persist in the hearts and minds of victims and witnesses, both. The good news is,
All healing is essentially the release from fear.
Healing is always certain.
We can do it ourselves. Fact is, we must. No one else can. Here is where we start. Here is where we learn to release the fear that has tied our minds and bodies into knots. Here is where we learn how to let go of fear.
We learn the principles of self-healing. We practice with ourselves and one another. We address one memory, one pain, one tense muscle at a time. Soon we are free of the shudder, the revulsion, the horror, the past. We feel real peace again. We have taken back our lives.