Archive for the ‘Inner Theater’ Category

Emotional evolution the easy way

Do you know these awesome moments when you finally GET something?

I had such an experience recently.

I had a very disturbing dream of giving an old man a massage (I don’t give massages when I am awake), and he complained and said he would not pay me. Also, two massage therapists told me that I had done a very bad thing.

When I woke up feeling horrible, I did something I usually do with bad dreams: I finished the story, in this case by imagining that I got a letter and a $1000 check from the old man telling me that my massage has been wonderful after all, and that he feels absolutely great. That made me happy.

Time to go back to sleep. However, at that moment it hit me: What if ALL the bad, painful experiences in our lives are such “patterns interrupt”? Every one of them, no exceptions. Every single horror story is only a nightmare because we left it unfinished, and all we have to do is to finish the story.

That is evolution…

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How to overcome a barrier

Make yourself comfortable. Close your eyes and go into deep relaxation.

When you are ready, imagine a golden castle somewhere in the distance. This dazzling, glowing building is your vision, your goal, or your heartfelt wish, and just looking at it fills you with serenity and anticipation. Now start walking towards this castle - it is your burning desire to reach and enter it as soon as possible.

But there is a barrier, an obstacle.
What does it look like? Is it a wall, a fence, or something else? You may not see anything but suddenly feel an invisible resistance, like
an energy field or an electronic grid.

When you have identified the obstacle, start working with it in a symbolic way. For example; if it is a wall, imagine getting a piece of heavy equipment in to tear the wall down. If it is a field of energy, try to pierce it with a word, a song, or some electronic device that switches it off. Do what comes to mind, however weird it might seem.

In addition, you can tap (do EFT) on the obstacle itself, your emotions about it, and the body sensations that are coming up.

Work with this until you get the distinct feeling that you have overcome the obstruction.

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A perfect fit: Magical EFT and Inner Theater

Here is a guest article written by Pat Burns at www.seeking-serenity.com

From the very first time that I heard about Magical EFT, the idea intrigued me. “Are you ready for a new adventure? Are you eager to enter a deeper dimension of healing and inner growth?” asked Carna Zacharias-Miller, the originator of Magical EFT. Having been working on my growth and healing for quite a while, I was more than ready to give it a try, so I scheduled my sessions with Carna, and we went to work.

Carna served as my guide, in an inner world that I created for myself. She offered gentle guidance, but left the details to me. With a history of abuse, it was important to me to have a safe place, a special inner sanctum in which I had ultimate control over what happened.

In my inner world, I lived in a castle. What little girl doesn’t dream of that at some time? My special room was in a round tower that rose above the rest of the castle, with windows overlooking the land all around, and the forest, which played an important part in my story. My room was furnished with big overstuffed furniture, comfortable enough to sit and relax or to chat with a close friend. The rules for my room were that nobody entered unless invited by me, and nothing happened that I didn’t want to happen. Having those rules in place made me feel incredibly safe, and freed me up for the rest of my journey.

A critical part of my story was about my friend and protector, Windrunner, a silver wolf who lived in the forest near the castle and kept watch over me. Windrunner could speak, and he communicated with me regularly. His job was to keep me safe, and to handle the situations in which I felt scared or threatened. I found that it was easier to handle fear when I had a huge silver wolf at my side as a guardian.

As Carna worked with me to flesh out my story, it became more and more real to me. It was wonderfully empowering to have control over what happened in my world, in a way that I had never had in the real world. I came to recognize Windrunner as that strong, capable and confident part of me that could handle any situation. I embraced his strength as my own, and felt joyful to be able to do that.

As my time with Carna and Magical EFT drew to a close, she encouraged me to write down my story. For weeks afterward, I worked on that story, taking 5 or 10 minutes wherever I found it to write a bit more. I am deeply grateful to Carna for the sessions that we did and for the suggestion to write down my story. With any time I spent on my story, I was making that story more and more of a reality in my mind, and I felt Windrunner as a constant and powerful presence in my life.

I came away from my Magical EFT sessions with a feeling of inner peace, a lightness of spirit, and a feeling of being better grounded than I had been previously.

A number of months went by before I noticed that I was suddenly eating a lot more, especially in the evenings, and was feeling out of control. I had no idea what had triggered that compulsive overeating. At that point my intuition spoke loudly and clearly to me. “You need to work with Jade Barbee on this” was the message. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I needed to take action, so I contacted Jade.

At the beginning of our first session, Jade asked how I felt about using inner theater in our work. Since it was a technique that I was familiar with, and one that I felt was very effective, I agreed.

As Jade and I started our initial session, we discussed having what Jade calls a sacred space. I told Jade that thanks to Carna, I had a wonderful space that already felt completely like home. My room in the castle was the space where I started my work with Jade. I explained all about Windrunner, and throughout our sessions, my wolf was a constant and reassuring presence.

There was extreme trauma in my past relating to abuse, and while I did my best to avoid dealing with it myself, Windrunner stepped in and did the work that I was too scared to do. At Jade’s suggestion, during a session in which I was sitting in a very safe garden space, I sent my fear into a swirling cloud, which then turned into a small tornado. I knew that the process worked more smoothly when you didn’t question or try to analyze it, so I watched as the small tornado swirled faster and faster, until it finally condensed down into a lump of coal on the ground.

As we moved through the process, Jade encouraged me to tap on any issues that came up, which I did. At this point, Windrunner stepped in, and picked up the lump of coal, carrying it far away, to a place where I would never have to worry about that fear again. Once he’d taken the lump far away, and surrounded it with barbed wire and some troll guards, Windrunner came back to assure me that I was safe.

Jade continued to work with me on my feelings of safety, until I was able to easily slip into that safe space. My body, which had often been rigid with stress born of fear, became relaxed, and I felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders.

In the weeks that followed my sessions with Jade, I noticed that the out of control feeling was gone for me. I had found a new level of inner peace, and with that peace, I seemed to have lost the need to keep eating. Although I was trying to eat in a healthy way, I was not actively dieting, but over the next month I lost nearly 15 pounds. Apparently my feelings of not being safe were directly related to my eating, and once I felt safe and at peace, the compulsive need to eat was gone. For someone with a lifelong struggle with compulsive overeating and weight, what a joy to step on the scale and find that I’d lost another 2 or 3 pounds!

Fast forward several months, to a day when I received some extremely traumatic news. Suddenly the fear was back, and I was feeling powerless and frightened again. Making a number of phone calls about the new and scary situation did nothing except to reinforce my feelings of powerlessness.

It was then that Betty Moore-Hafter reminded me that she was holding a session for me “on account”, and I decided that there wouldn’t be a better time to schedule that session. Betty and Jade had worked together to develop the Inner Theater technique, and having attended all their classes, I knew that inner theater was a perfect place to go, given what was going on in my life.

At the start of our session, I shared my traumatic news with Betty, as well as additional background that would help her to better understand my current situation. As expected (and hoped for!) Betty suggested using inner theater in our session. I honestly don’t remember exactly how we got to a point in my session where there was a bear pacing around and around in circles, not knowing what to do. What I do remember clearly, however, is that bear morphing into Windrunner. He spoke to me, reminding me of my strength and power, and my energy and feelings started to shift.

With Windrunner at my side again, I was re-empowered. As we tapped our way through the session, the fear receded, and was replaced by confidence in my ability to handle the current situation. I was reminded that Windrunner was the strongest part of me, fully capable of dealing with whatever might come to pass. During that one hour session I went from tears of fear and helplessness to smiles and feelings of calm confidence, with inner theater as the stage on which that all played out.

Working with Carna in the Magical EFT sessions helped me to build a strong foundation of feelings of safety and the sure knowledge that I was a strong and capable woman. Working with both Jade and Betty in the inner theater sessions, we used that foundation for the work that we did, and built on it.

Magical EFT and Inner Theater are an amazingly powerful combination for healing, and as long as you can relax and trust in the process, the results can be profound.

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Let me ask you this…

If your mother were a tree, what kind of tree would it be? In what condition?

If your father were a tree, what kind of tree would it be? In what condition?

In case something unsettling comes up, you can tap on the images and emotions, or you can engage your imagination directly and do whatever you feel needs to be done.

Oh, by the way, what kind of tree are you?

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How to rewrite heirloom stories

Every culture has its ghastly stories, tales, nursery rhymes, etc that get mindlessly handed down through the generations. Imagine the negative imotional impact!

In Germany, it’s the old children’s book “Struwwelpeter”(Shaggy Peter) that is jammed with cruel stories demonstrating what happens to children who don’t obey.

In the English culture, I have problems with this:

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.

I heard that song for the first time when I came to the US in the early nineties, and it always disturbed me greatly. The carelessness of the parents!

So I changed the story: The mother put the cradle up in the tree (on a low branch) to protect the child from animals. The baby feels great up there, swaying in a gentle breeze, looking up into the blue sky. At the first stronger blow of the wind, the mother takes the cradle with the baby inside a house, rocks it in her arms and feeds it. The father comes in, and they look with great joy and pride at the baby. The baby feels safe, loved, and cared for.

Then I tested my emotional reaction to the song, and it was only mildly disgusted, not personal anymore. I still don’t like the song, so I rewrote the last two lines:

When the wind goes too strong,
Mother will come, get baby and all.

Of course, you can plug EFT into this process. If you do, ask yourself:
Why are my negative feelings so strong about this particular story?
What is the most intense part of the story? Why?
What does it remind me of?
Is this a pattern I encountered in my childhood?
What specific memories are coming up?
And off you go…

So, what’s your story?

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