Tag: healing

Book Reviews

We Are All Energy Workers (A Book Review)

Brian Balke

In The Women’s Book of Healing, Diane Stein presents both theory and practice for developing our natural skills to project healing energy.

In the theory, physical dis-ease (Stein used hyphens to emphasize the tendency of the being toward wellness) is the manifestation of energetic imbalances in the psychic layers that surround it. Those layers focus the emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of our lives. As Stein explains, the layers also host one or more chakra energy centers, each chakra having a corresponding color in the rainbow. Red is the color of the body, progressing outward to purple at the highest spiritual layer. Beyond that is the transpersonal layer, which as the source of all colors is white.

Obviously much of this is metaphorical – concepts built over milennia that humanity uses to access energies that reach all the down to subatomic realities. For that reason, there are some inconsistencies. As Stein testifies in discussion of practice, healers that honor the intentions of the “Goddess” can dispense with the metaphors.

Stein explains not only how to use the metaphors for healing, but how to heighten sensitivity through meditative practices. That begins with the ability to see the psychic layers as auras. Next comes color visualization as the healer scans upwards through the chakra centers in the physical body. In remote healing, dis-ease is imagined as blotches on the psychic layers. “Tinker Woman” work describes the development of personal healing metaphors (stapling cuts closed, putting in faucets and drains for blockages).

Laying on of hands is more abstract, dealing directly with energy flows. The book ends with chapters on crystal work, building and enhancing the color metaphors at the beginning of the book.

The resources of the earth is emphasized throughout as essential to grounding energies, thereby avoiding transference and to ensuring that both parties (healer and healed) are not left open to harmful invasion.

In talking about these methods, the book is generally light-hearted and generous. According to Stein, the ethic of the woman healer is to work without compensation. Respect for the autonomy of the dis-eased is emphasized again and again.

Where most fault is to be found is in Stein’s militant feminism. Matriarchy is good, patriarchy is evil. Conflation of patriarchy and allopathic medicine is rampant. Both serve to suppress women’s self esteem, seeing their bodies and intentions as foul and inferior. Male practitioners are recognized, but their contributes are cast as “finding the Goddess within.” Conversely, Stephen Harrod Buhner (The Lost Language of Plants) reports that many country doctors were intuitive herbalists.

I have reached out to Stein with the observation that the ethic she mandates is modern. Allopathic medicine (surgery and medicine) was pursued in part to guarantee that both patients and doctors were protected from psychic entanglements. Negative intentions can be projected in both directions. I know that a tender of money justifies abusive rage in clients that don’t receive the benefits they expect. But how else is a practitioner to stay alive? And how can we believe that those dependent upon their craft might not be moved to extort money from their clients?

The slipperiness of this slope is evident in one particular practice offered by Stein. This is the use of an imaginary “healing bag” to store negative energies collected during visualizations. These can be splotches on the aura or pools of negative energy. The practice, at the end of the session, is to imagine the bag burning up along with its contents.

But how did those splotches originate? Stein tends to the perspective that they all originate from patriarchal abuse, but I have met dragon ladies that fail to honor Stein’s ethic. Just as a healer can remove blotches, the dragon lady can tear pieces out of the souls of her victims. Those pieces never integrate properly, and so manifest as blotches that generate dis-ease in the dragon lady. Is it right to remove them and burn them up? Or should they be returned to their point of origin?

This contextuality is not acknowledged by Stein. It is non-trivial. Priests talk about predators the “lie with their whole being.” This is a practice used by abusers to hide their intentions behind the façade of victimization. (Their victims, after all, will naturally fight back against them.) Peering past that façade is safe only for practitioners that have progressed past the use of metaphors to work directly with the underlying spiritual forms.

When I was in graduate school, I met a massage therapist at a bar in Boulder. He troubled me with his difficulties clearing the negative energies he accumulated while working with Wall Street bankers. I finally told him “Look, don’t be an enabler.” Reading Stein’s work, I am concerned that she is unwittingly creating a culture of enablers. That concern is reinforced by the way my skin crawls every time she inveighs against “the patriarchy.” Damn it, Diane, their wives profit from that system as well.

So put away the hatred, and write a book that offers useful metaphors for transforming negative associations in the psychic layers. I’ll offer my own system in the near future.

And for those that wish to use the beautiful metaphors and practices collected by Stein: make sure that you know your clients well. To do otherwise is prideful, and leads down harsh and painful roads.

Basics

Personal Development: Part 7

Brian Balke

Healing and Trust

The doorway to adulthood opens in that moment when we realize that we don’t know how to be an adult. The years from infancy to independence only teach us how to express ourselves. They don’t teach us how to be a responsible member of society.

By the end of a successful adolescence, we have found a competitive niche. We have found strengths that command support from our peers. But behind those strengths lie unresolved deficits. The masterful video gamer can’t sustain a romantic relationship. The social butterfly overspends her credit card. The project planner at work doesn’t allow time for play at his 5-year-old’s birthday party.

I have found this definition to be helpful:

An adult understands power and love and has the wisdom and experience to know when to express them.

Clearly this is an aspiration.

But the first three steps on our pathway to maturity focus on power. In survival the guiding concern is “How am I?” With sex we focus on “What is my identity?” During exchange we shift to “What is my value?” At every step, however, the self is first. We assume that everyone else will be taken care of. They have parents, after all.

When separation from the home is complete, however, we confront directly a fact that we always took for granted: whatever benefits (even if scanty and begrudged) we received from our parents, we received due to their love. With that support removed, how are we to survive?

The strong choose the path of force – they impose their will on the world. This is the method of the Second Amendment absolutist in America. Not trusting in love, the armed zealot wants to carry a concealed weapon everywhere. The problem with this strategy is that intimidation works though fear, and people don’t like being afraid. It’s both psychologically and physically draining. They resist, which builds fear in both parties.

The second option is to reassess our strategies for living and rebuild our personality with love as a conscious choice.

In the competitive modern world, that second choice is not easy. The Christian psychotherapist F. Scott Peck recognized this in the title of his landmark book “The Road Less Traveled.” Learning to love involves owning up to your flaws, taking responsibility for past wrongs, and making a commitment to healing not only for ourselves but for others.

The primary venue for this work is the sanctuaries of the major world religions. For those seeking to undertake serious internal work, the challenge is identifying and scheduling time with a mature spiritual guide.

The magic begins in healing. We realize that what didn’t kill us made us stronger. When we begin, it feels as though our heart is going to break. But the heart is a muscle, and the more it is exercised, the stronger and more sensitive it becomes. We learn to trust in its strength, and that allows us to be more trusting of others.

The principal role of the therapist is to provide encouragement and support. In bearing witness to our internal work, our therapist helps us to recognize when we need to take a few steps back from the edge or pick up the pace so that we can jump the next hurdle. Sessions are also an opportunity to feel how we are doing in a process that almost always brings up resistance from friends, family and employers.

Hypnotherapy offers powerful practices to facilitate this stage of development. Journaling allows us to clarify our goals and priorities. The Kappasinian Mental Bank allows us to enlist the subconscious as we broaden our concerns. Guided imagery journeys can identify hidden resources that we can integrate into our lives and allow us to visualize the results of behavior change. Spiritual guide work bypasses the doubting conscious mind to connect us through ancestors and ethereal beings to the universal source of love that sustains us in our growth to maturity.

But none of this is meaningful without the change that occurs between sessions. We learn how to integrate concern for others into our lives, and to balance concern for self and others. We build deeper and more satisfying relationships. We surrender control of the process of exchange, confident in the knowledge that when we have need others will rally to our aid.

Part 1 || Part 6 | Part 8

Specializations

Hypnosis and Discomfort – 4 of 4

Brian Balke

Hypnosis and Chronic Pain Relief

Chronic pain may originate from medical causes. Every sufferer from chronic pain needs to be under a physician’s care.

Pain of any sort, however, is always a signal from the subconscious that our behavior needs to change. The subconscious is shouting, “Hey! Conscious mind! Why are you doing this to me?” When the commitment to change is clearly communicated, the emotional insult moderates – and often the pain.

A direct dialog between conscious and subconscious, of course, is the unique preserve of hypnotherapy.

As in all hypnotherapy, the process starts in discussion that prepares the conscious mind to accept responsibility and to act. The circumstances that created the emotional stress are identified and discussed.

Deep breathing exercises facilitate a healthier flow of resources through the body. Tying to our emotional state, positive anchor words are sought to counter negative mood. “Peaceful” may be substituted for “conflicted,” or “calm” for “anxious.” Both breathing and anchors are tied into the hypnotic induction and reinforced throughout therapy.

Once in hypnosis, rigidity challenges are used to focus stressful emotions and channel them into major muscles, simulating the strain of the fight/flight response. The ancient biochemical need is satisfied, and healing flows can be liberated.

Moving to recovery, the therapy offers healing imagery – light, sensation, or sound – to the affected part of the body. The sensations of self-love flow back from the tissue into the mind, reassuring the subconscious and strengthening it to release the original emotional insult.

Dream therapy can then be engaged to focus the subconscious to turn its energies away from self-protection and toward creating new behaviors that bring greater satisfaction – and increasingly joy – into our lives.

Feeling good is something that many chronic pain sufferers lose sight of. Hypnotherapy’s great strength is that it unifies the mind in an immediate experience of relaxation, release and restoration. As the deepest parts of the mind become accustomed to that experience, they unify in its realization – and almost anything is possible!

Specializations

Hypnosis for Discomfort – 1 of 4

Brian Balke

Hypnosis and Acute Injury

When my sons had a tumble out the playground, I would see them tighten up and suggest: “It’s OK. Just breathe, relax, breathe. Don’t hold on to the pain – let it pass through you.”

We all know that initial moment of physical insult. We stiffen up and try to figure out how serious the damage is. The body has reasons for that: as well as protecting us from further harm, a tight muscle resists the flow of blood. That limits bleeding.

But when the insult is over, that tension causes strain on the surrounding tissues. Not good. And eventually blood must flow to support healing. The sooner we release the tension, the faster we recover.

The sequence of reactions is managed by our subconscious. When properly prepared with hypnosis, those reactions can be fine-tuned for miraculous benefits. During surgery bleeding can be controlled, and the conscious mind focused on pleasing images that greatly reduce the need for anesthetics and pain medication.

In sports competition, anxious stiffness can be replaced with fluidity that allows maximum blood flow and thus maximum performance. And when an injury does occur, in hypnosis we can focus subconscious attention on the site of the injury. Soothing imagery (coolness, comfort, or control-room dials) can be used to release anxiety that heightens our pain. Healing imagery (light, warmth or harmonious vibration) can be used to prompt the flow of resources to promote recovery.

Part 2