Self Help: Quick Fix Suggestions

The Use of Dreaming Eye Movement and

Acceptance of Emotions in the Body in Processing Emotions

In shamanic training, students learn to process strong emotions by moving the

eyes back and forth identically to the natural eye movements made in dreaming sleep.

Psychologists discovered a similar phenomena and gave it the name EMDR, or eye

movement desensitization response.

When a Triggered Person [TP] experiences strong feelings and does not have

access to an opportunity to do a full Trauma Healing session, living the

questions is recommended. Ask yourself the following questions: “What is

happening right now?” and, “Can I be with it?”*

There is nothing unworthy of acceptance. If something is, it is. Not to accept

it is to live in denial, to remain trapped in resistance by our own choosing.

To accept something because it exists is not at all the same as making it

“okay.” Acceptance is the allowing and embracing of all experience. It’s all

about staying open, receptive, committing ourselves to continual surrender.

Surrender, we come to learn, is like a muscle. The more we work it, the

stronger it grows. The stronger it grows, the more present we become. Living

the questions, it turns out, is a practical invitation to bliss.*

To experience an emotion, place your attention directly on the sensation it

produces in your body. Keep your attention on that sensation until it either

dissipates or changes. Slow down and go deeper into the sensation.*

1. Remember that the emotion is located in the body and identify where the

tension of the emotion is, such as in the gut for example and 2. Accept the

emotion instead of resisting it, analyzing it, or acting it out. The feelings

may shift to other places in the body, in which case the attention goes to the

new location(s). Accept the feelings in the new location(s).

This often is enough to bring relief in a minute or so.

If further relief is desired, use of side to side eye movement, like the eyes do

in dreaming sleep, while feeling the emotion will also usually bring fast

relief. Keep the head looking forward and move the eyes from left to right, to

left to right, over and over while feeling the emotion. This can be done with

your eyes open or closed.

*Reference and recommended reading: The One Thing Holding You Back, and

Unconditional Bliss by Raphael Cushnir

Comparison between ‘Self Help Quick Fix’

And Complete Trauma Healing Process with Facilitator

In the Self Help Quick Fix Process, feelings are located as sensations in the

body, sensations such as stress or tension. Attention is placed on these

sensations in the body and the feelings causing them are accepted. Acceptance of

feelings, instead of resistance or acting out destructively, results in

therapeutic changes in the feelings themselves, as documented by Raphael Cushnir

in his series of books. In addition, the use of dreaming eye movement, moving

the eyes left to right to left to right, over and over again, while feeling

whatever feelings are present, also brings quick change to the feelings

themselves, exactly like eye movement does each night in dreaming sleep.

Since these two proven techniques bring about emotional relief and change

quickly, why use the complete Trauma Healing Process at all?

In the complete Trauma Healing Process long standing subconscious anxieties,

painful memories, and negative beliefs about life that erupt in extremely

painful feelings in present time situations are permanently healed. An

integration of the previously wounded and limited personality self with the

unlimited divine self occurs.

50 years of research in various scientific fields agrees with ancient sciences

of yoga: the brain speaks to itself in visual images.

In an experiment with subjects holding thermometers in each hand, being told to

make one hand hotter than the other, no difference in temperature was recorded

no matter how hard the subjects ‘tried’ and no matter what verbal commands they

gave their hands. When told to imagine a hot potato in one hand and a piece of

ice in the other, however, the hands registered different temperatures.

It is important, in healing painful memories, to remember that a memory is

composed of 3 things. This is known as PET = a still photo of the memory or

visual image, emotions, and thoughts. To effectively heal a painful memory, all

of these three components must all change.

This is done by first identifying the present time prevailing painful emotions,

and then using this constellation of emotions to identify prior times in life

when this same constellation was activated, then narrowing down which of the

memories has been subconsciously activated to cause present time emotional

distress. This memory is termed ‘the infected wound’.

The next step is to name this memory, determine the subjective units of distress

being experienced from it [SUDS} and identify what negative beliefs about

reality and life came from going through this experience. This is followed by

identifying the positive beliefs about life and reality that came from this.

This process causes a deep inner focus on another time. It is a mild trance

state that gets deeper and deeper. It is important for the helping person, the

facilitator, to not to break this trance by interrupting the process. The only

input from the facilitator is to gently guide the trance state deeper when

nonverbal cues are given by the triggered person. For example, when the

triggered person [TP] has a far away look, is in silence, or has the eyes

closed, they are in deep inner processing. This is when the healing is taking

place and should not be interrupted. When the TP needs help, he/she will look up

at the facilitator for instructions on the next step to take.

The step of identifying the negative beliefs reveals the thoughts that must

change for emotional relief to be permanent. [The positive belief list actually

begins the healing process, of healing the victim self image.]

The next step is to identify a still image, a ‘photograph’ of the memory, a

still snapshot that represents who, what, and when of the memory. Describe the

photograph in detail. This is the visual image that must change for emotional

relief to be permanent.

At this point the triggered person begins a tell/retell process, alternating

between telling the memory from beginning to end out loud, then reliving it

silently, then out loud, then silently, over and over until the SUDS reaches

zero [subjective units of distress, from 0 to 10 where 0 is no distress and 10

is the highest].

In the tell/retell process there are times when the triggered person [TP] will

express a question, or a desire to change something, or to express something to

someone else in the memory. At this point it is important to gently suggest,

guide the TP to actively carry out this desire in the mind’s eye, reporting what

happens when this is done.

For example, in one session the TP said, “I do not think that my mother wanted

me to be born, I do not think that she wanted her pregnancy to end.” It was

suggested that she silently ask her mother about this and see what her mother

replied. After a long silence with eyes closed, she opened her eyes and reported

that her mother explained to her that being pregnant had made her, the mother,

feel needed and important, and that she was very afraid of how she would feel if

she gave birth. This fear had made the birth several weeks over term, and

horribly painful for both mother and child. The TP then went on to forgive and

comfort her mother in her mind’s eye, crying tears of relief while embracing her

mother in love and forgiveness. This powerful healing image effectively rewrote

her previously expressed negative beliefs that those who love her hold her back

and that life is very painful. Because of this, before this healing session she

had never been able to form close ties with anyone in a loving committed

relationship. At this point the negative thoughts about reality have changed and

the feelings have also changed..

By taking the visual image of this embrace, and merging it with the original

still photo of the hospital room full of pain in which she was born, a beautiful

resolution image emerged of a joyful and happy birth. This step, merging the

final healing image with the original still photo, and watching them merge into

one healed image, is the final step of healing the original visual image. Now

all three elements of the memory have changed = the visual image, the emotions,

and the thoughts.

Dr. Schlosser’s clinical research, as director of the PTSD clinic at the VA

Medical Center in Tuskegee, Alabama, spanning 6 years treating combat veterans

with PTSD and later with civilians, has shown through follow up assessments that

these three elements must change for emotional relief of traumatic memories to

be permanent.

Below is the Trauma Healing form. Use when facilitating an emotional healing session. Print out and make copies. Leave the open spaces to have room to write out the answers. Print on one side of the paper only so that the back sides can be used for additional writing if needed. Feel free to share all of this with others.