I’m privileged to work in service to humanity, offering witness and guidance to those who have the courage to come face-to-face with their beliefs, wounds, misconceptions and disappointments in return for the opportunity to create a new way of living. And yet, I am always very clear that there’s still very important work to be accomplished beyond a breakthrough coaching session.
Get a Clear Vision
I always want a client to think about what long-term success looks like. Success starts with a vision, which is very different from setting a goal. Where a goal creates action based on a short-term, time-based focus — a vision creates a picture of the outer horizon that pulls the unconscious mind forward with a compelling and inspiring look into the future. I like to think of a vision as a potential living legacy. Creating a vision is never a pre-session assignment because most clients aren’t capable of creating a vision worthy of their full potential until they are unencumbered from the beliefs and rules that limit their ability to dream from a place of love, not protection.
Align Actions with Vision
Once a client gets clear on what they want, it becomes easy to gauge whether they are being the person and acting in accordance with the legacy they want to create. It couldn’t be simpler; if the vision states, “I am a woman who operates from a place of love, compassion, patience, empathy and grace so that I can nurture healthy and symbiotic relationships” — this person gets to ask herself with every thought, gesture, and behavior if she is honoring her long-term vision of success. When there’s incongruence, it’s an invitation to create short-term goals or examine our behaviors for beliefs in an effort to move closer to the vision.
Continue to Release the Beliefs
In a breakthrough session, I guide clients to clear out old unproductive file cabinets that contain limiting beliefs. Our focus is always in one area of their life — whether career, relationships, spirituality, health and/or fitness, etc. And yet, individuals have a lifetime of experiences. This means that the chance of us releasing all negative emotions and limiting beliefs is unrealistic. Therefore, I encourage clients to continue to release any beliefs that might surface beyond the session. This is probably the most important step, but the most neglected by clients.
The pathway to wholeness and self-acceptance is paved with awareness, accountability and a commitment to continued growth, and this should include a practice of letting go. (In fact, probably one of my most significant beliefs I’ve released was almost two years after my first breakthrough session, but more a
bout that later.) Once a client knows how to release a belief, the only task at-hand is to identify the belief. This should be as easy as following the feelings, which is why I always talk about following the emotion in my post-breakthrough meeting. This process should be a life skill. Just two weeks ago I had a post-meeting that exemplified this lesson.
The client and I had spent the first half of our meeting talking about how different she felt, how her body felt absent of the anxiety that use to reside in her abdomen, and how she was showing up differently in relationships. At some point, however, she mentioned an unproductive conversation she had in her head regarding a long-standing issue between her and her husband. We both decided to explore what belief was behind the judgmental comment, because we both wanted the progress toward growth to continue.
First, I asked her to reconnect to the emotion she was feeling at the time she made the judgmental comment. It was anxiety. Once she connected to the emotion, I asked her what was behind needing to judge her husband. She said, “I want everything to happen quickly. I don’t understand why he was so passive in his action.” I asked her how long she had this problem of wanting things instantly. Not surprising, she said all her life. I then jokingly said, “Did you walk behind your children saying…hurry up, hurry up!”
I could tell from the look on her face that we hit upon something significant; something that didn’t surface in our breakthrough session. I inquired about what I was sensing from her physiology and body language. She responded, “I could feel emotions of anxiety in every part of my body when you said that statement!?”
This example is a great reminder that beliefs can sometimes sound benign, but the emotion will tell us if we’ve hit the jackpot. She believes she has to hurry up. This belief creates impatience, directing behavior, rules for productivity, a sharp bluntness in communication…all in the name of expediency.
As we prepared to release the belief that she needed to hurry up through life, I asked her when this belief was created — before, during or after birth. She knew intuitively and instantly it was created during pregnancy. This was a good sign; the immediacy of her response tells me she is getting to the earliest experience that created this early belief. This information also tells me she is preparing to free herself from one of the oldest concepts that created the relationship problems she’s been experiencing. And, that is exactly what happened — she released…because there is always work beyond a breakthrough.
Showing posts with label Time Line Therapy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time Line Therapy. Show all posts
Monday, May 9, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Letting Go to Let Go
There are people who question whether alternative therapies work. What I’m finding is that once an individual experiences the process of releasing something — whether it’s a negative emotion, a limiting belief, trauma or phobia — it’s hard to argue with the results. Believe me; I learned this lesson the hard way.
My introduction to alternative therapies all started with the book NLP and the New Achievement of Excellence by Steve Andreas. I still don’t know exactly how I stumbled upon the book, but the opening pages promised that Neuro Linguistic Programming would take the difficulty out of behavioral change. After twenty-five years working in human resources and implementing various training programs that didn’t stick beyond the classroom, I was intrigued by the notion that there was knowledge out there, a philosophy and techniques that promised to help people to show up differently in a sustainable way.
The rational and intellectual part of me loved the philosophy behind NLP, so I embraced the self-discovery exercises to get clear about what I wanted out of life. However, I scoffed at the “techniques” which promised to release lingering unproductive emotions, old beliefs, traumatic experiences…even though the book explained that this process was key to removing old unproductive behavioral patterns. Because humans are creatures of unconscious habit and want to avoid pains from the past, Andreas was clear that becoming more adaptable and flexible would be difficult in the absence of letting old stuff go.
I was steadfast that the techniques Andreas described seemed too far-fetched, so I resisted. That is, until a professor challenged me to stop my nay-saying until I could speak from my own experiences. Ouch! I scheduled an appointment with a NLP practitioner and prepared to prove that instant change didn’t work.
The little basement office in Fremont seemed perfect for the clandestine hour-long appointment. The practitioner was an attractive young man in his mid-thirties who could have easily blended into the pages of a Nordstrom advertisement. Honestly, I had expected someone just a bit more woo-woo. We’d already talked on the phone so he was aware of my interest in trying out a specific technique, so he quickly got to work, “Do you have anything you are really upset about and would like to release? You know, maybe you are really sad or pissed off about something?”
That was easy. Months before, a situation at work had transpired that was fraught with injustice in my opinion. As a result, I was still harboring ill-feelings toward my manager. I could feel the emotions start to boil even as I explained the scenario. The practitioner seemed uninterested in the details and said, “Great. Let’s work with that situation.”
I wanted to specifically experience something called Time Line Therapy™, which is a releasing technique based on the premise that individuals store their unconscious memories spatially on a metaphorical track or time line that holds our entire lifetime sequentially. In this technique, you are guided by the practitioner to use visualization techniques to enter a past memory on your time line as a way to relive the full subjective experience. I was able to plug right into the scenario with all its judgments, beliefs and attachments, which were all bound together by my negative emotions.
Once you connect to the subjective experience, the practitioner guides you to use a series of visualization and somatic techniques that allow you to envision floating higher and further away from the event. As I moved further away in my mind, the practitioner would check on my emotional state. Nothing had changed. I was still angry. So, the practitioner used some methods to get me out of my head and surrender to the process. It seems I needed to let go of the need to rationally understand the process…before I could actually let go or release the emotion. Finally, I was guided by his words…until the emotion just disappeared.
The practitioner instructed me to enter the experience again on my time line and verify the emotion was released. Yup, the experience was starkly objective – what remained where only the facts and a sense of non-attachment. I felt no need to react or do anything further. There was no emotion present. In its place was a new sense of understanding, acceptance, and best yet, the process of letting go left me with a lesson. Not including the preparation and discussion before the process itself, this non-attachment transpired in less than 15 minutes. I didn’t have to visit an ashram or meditate for weeks on end. I just let it go.
It would take me another four years to get out of my head long enough to allow myself to experience letting go in more significant and profound ways. That’s right, you have to be prepared to let go of your love affair with cognition and old ways before you are prepared to surrender to the beauty of letting go. What I know for sure is that with every negative emotion, limiting belief, disempowering decision or significant experience I have released, I have been invited to show up differently in life. And, Andreas should be happy to know that personal change has never felt so easy.
My introduction to alternative therapies all started with the book NLP and the New Achievement of Excellence by Steve Andreas. I still don’t know exactly how I stumbled upon the book, but the opening pages promised that Neuro Linguistic Programming would take the difficulty out of behavioral change. After twenty-five years working in human resources and implementing various training programs that didn’t stick beyond the classroom, I was intrigued by the notion that there was knowledge out there, a philosophy and techniques that promised to help people to show up differently in a sustainable way.
The rational and intellectual part of me loved the philosophy behind NLP, so I embraced the self-discovery exercises to get clear about what I wanted out of life. However, I scoffed at the “techniques” which promised to release lingering unproductive emotions, old beliefs, traumatic experiences…even though the book explained that this process was key to removing old unproductive behavioral patterns. Because humans are creatures of unconscious habit and want to avoid pains from the past, Andreas was clear that becoming more adaptable and flexible would be difficult in the absence of letting old stuff go.
I was steadfast that the techniques Andreas described seemed too far-fetched, so I resisted. That is, until a professor challenged me to stop my nay-saying until I could speak from my own experiences. Ouch! I scheduled an appointment with a NLP practitioner and prepared to prove that instant change didn’t work.
The little basement office in Fremont seemed perfect for the clandestine hour-long appointment. The practitioner was an attractive young man in his mid-thirties who could have easily blended into the pages of a Nordstrom advertisement. Honestly, I had expected someone just a bit more woo-woo. We’d already talked on the phone so he was aware of my interest in trying out a specific technique, so he quickly got to work, “Do you have anything you are really upset about and would like to release? You know, maybe you are really sad or pissed off about something?”
That was easy. Months before, a situation at work had transpired that was fraught with injustice in my opinion. As a result, I was still harboring ill-feelings toward my manager. I could feel the emotions start to boil even as I explained the scenario. The practitioner seemed uninterested in the details and said, “Great. Let’s work with that situation.”
I wanted to specifically experience something called Time Line Therapy™, which is a releasing technique based on the premise that individuals store their unconscious memories spatially on a metaphorical track or time line that holds our entire lifetime sequentially. In this technique, you are guided by the practitioner to use visualization techniques to enter a past memory on your time line as a way to relive the full subjective experience. I was able to plug right into the scenario with all its judgments, beliefs and attachments, which were all bound together by my negative emotions.
Once you connect to the subjective experience, the practitioner guides you to use a series of visualization and somatic techniques that allow you to envision floating higher and further away from the event. As I moved further away in my mind, the practitioner would check on my emotional state. Nothing had changed. I was still angry. So, the practitioner used some methods to get me out of my head and surrender to the process. It seems I needed to let go of the need to rationally understand the process…before I could actually let go or release the emotion. Finally, I was guided by his words…until the emotion just disappeared.
The practitioner instructed me to enter the experience again on my time line and verify the emotion was released. Yup, the experience was starkly objective – what remained where only the facts and a sense of non-attachment. I felt no need to react or do anything further. There was no emotion present. In its place was a new sense of understanding, acceptance, and best yet, the process of letting go left me with a lesson. Not including the preparation and discussion before the process itself, this non-attachment transpired in less than 15 minutes. I didn’t have to visit an ashram or meditate for weeks on end. I just let it go.
It would take me another four years to get out of my head long enough to allow myself to experience letting go in more significant and profound ways. That’s right, you have to be prepared to let go of your love affair with cognition and old ways before you are prepared to surrender to the beauty of letting go. What I know for sure is that with every negative emotion, limiting belief, disempowering decision or significant experience I have released, I have been invited to show up differently in life. And, Andreas should be happy to know that personal change has never felt so easy.
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