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WORKING WITH SPIRIT - Posting 3 of 3

2011-08-19T00:01:00.007-04:00

…After some other validations and a loving message,

I thanked Pat verbally for accepting my reading

and thanked her mother in my internal voice;

“Thank you Mom, for coming through and connecting with me so well”
I projected to the energy of her mother and I heard
“No… Thank-YOU… And I felt a kiss on my cheek!”

And as I walked back to the oak chair on the platform, I knew why I love doing this work…

Working for Spirit – Posting 3 of 3

Janet thanked me and Lena and stepped to the front of the platform.
I have seen Janet do readings during Sunday services
and years ago had a private reading with her.
She IS an amazing evidential medium.
So I was prepared to see her do a reading.

I expected her to do what she had been teaching her students for the past year.

Connect with a spirit communicator and get their
“Name Rank and Serial Number”.

I assumed she would give 8 – 10 pieces of evidence.

I assumed a few hands to go up in the audience, of those people who could accept all the pieces of evidence that Janet brought to them.

I assumed Janet would narrow the number of people wanting to make that connection down to one.

I assumed she would work with that one person
and give them one message.

I assumed Janet would “Wow” the congregation and me with more exact pieces of evidence. I knew that I would not be hearing
“I have your Daddy here and he says he loves you”.
I knew the evidence that we would be hearing would be impressive.

I assumed we would be hearing an uplifting and inspiring message.

Well as the old saying goes “When you assume…”

“I am aware of a man”… she started “he tells me he liked a ‘stiff shot of liquor’, but he was not an alcoholic”… No one responded.

“I feel this man is with a couple in this area,”
pointing to the large family group.

Still no one acknowledged the spirit connection.

“I am with this couple here”…
pointing to a man and a woman seated next to each other in the center of the group.

Still they shrugged looking at each other, the man looking uncomfortable.

She brought up a poker game.
“He is now showing me a group of men playing poker”.
Two woman in the group looked at each other and then at the couple that Janet was addressing with a puzzled expression on their faces. But not puzzled by Janet’s evidence, puzzled and exasperated by their family members who were not accepting any or all of the information.

This couple was experiencing “Psychic Amnesia”, a condition that happens when you are being given information from a Medium, that because you are so excited to be called upon; and wondering who this person is; and being taken off guard; and a hundred other conflicting emotional reasons, that you completely forget who this person is, even if they were the closest person in the world to you.

At this point I think I would have folded or
at least I would have started to profusely sweat.

Janet didn’t bat an eye. She is so confidant in her connection with the spirit world that she was not going to leave this couple until they said that yes, they could take this man.

But still they shrugged; actually the woman shrugged, her husband looked like he wanted to crawl under his chair. You didn’t need to be a psychic to read this situation. I pictured his wife telling him he “really needed to go tonight; our whole family is going; don’t worry honey, these people aren’t going to call on you…”

Well I think this man got a lot more than he bargained for and as it ended up he got exactly what he needed to get…

I love Janet!
If it were me giving this reading and this couple who I knew the reading was for,
completely rejected my connection,
I would be looking to crawl under my own chair.

But I am a long way from having the confidence that Janet showed that evening.

She folded her arms in front of her and I saw her connecting with her spirit communicator, I saw her nodding as she was processing more evidence.

“He says to mention a ‘Royal High Straight Flush’”…

And that was all it took.

It was as if 12 light bulbs went off over 12 different heads…
The whole family reacted with gasps, hands to the chest or mouth, smiles, awestruck faces…
The couple did not have to say anything the family’s reaction said it all.

Looking at the man again, Janet asked
“Who is Tom?”
The man’s eyes opened as large as saucers
as he pointed at his chest and whispered, “Me”

More gasps from the large family.

“Who’s Ruth?” Janet asked.

The man’s saucer eyes got even bigger

and his wife’s jaw dropped open he pointed at her with his thumb
as she ever so slowly raised her hand.

Her jaw wasn’t the only one that dropped.

Mine dropped with Tom and stayed that way for the rest of the reading.

“Who is Tony”, Janet asked and the stunned couple replied
“Our brother-in-law”.

“The one who liked to play poker on Thursday nights and got the Royal High Flush?” she asked with a broad smile on her face as the couple smiling and crying nodded as did their whole family.

The whole audience laughed and was clearly amazed by this reading; not only did Janet know the name of her spirit connection;
she got the names of the couple who the reading was for

through Tony who is in spirit!

Now at that point I would have said

“Wow! That was an amazing reading!”

And if Janet had given this couple a message from their brother-in-law,

it would have been perfect, but Janet wasn’t through yet.

I saw her take a breath as if her connector was giving her something more. But she was not smiling as she had before.
Her demeanor became more serious
and I felt that the next piece of evidence was going to be powerful and it was.

She looked at the couple again, they were still smiling and clearly impressed that their Tony came thru to them.

Janet took a deep breath and stated quietly and compassionately,
“You have lost a son; is that right?”

The woman gasped, nodding as she brought a handful of tissues to her face. Her family through their own tears were touching her to give her love and support.

Her husband, obviously holding back his own tears, handed her the box of tissues that was being passed around to their family.

Who is Joseph?” Janet asked quietly.

“Our son” was the whispered response from the woman,
at which point her husband could not control
his hardened façade any longer and with a handful of tissues,
buried his face in his hands and gently wept

as his family placed hands on his back for support.

“He says that he passed quickly and that he felt no pain…
He knows you have struggled with that;
He says he passed before the flames consumed the car…”

The weeping grew stronger and now their whole family was crying

along the rest of the congregation.

“He says he sees his nephew at school and at the play; that it was good to see everyone laughing again”

The crying slowed and was replaced with smiles and awe as Janet brought through more loving and healing validations and messages for Joe’s family.

After the service ended, Janet thanked Lena and I and Barbara the homilist. I felt driven to thank Janet for asking me to read, but what came out of my mouth, surprised me, I didn’t really think about it, the words formed almost by themselves.

“Thank you Janet for asking me to read” I started

“As your student and a Medium, I am comfortable with readings and love watching an accomplished Medium, do their work,

especially the tutors you have teach us from Arthur Findlay College…
But I have to say, watching you this evening…

Well, if we were your art students and you were our art teacher,
showing us the use of color and form; how to use perspective and shading; teaching us how to paint a sunset on canvas using light and darkness…
Sitting on the platform tonight watching this demonstration of Mediumship that you just performed, was like watching Da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa;
all I can say is WOW!”.

I could not have assumed we would be witnessing a reading like the one we saw. The interesting thing was that afterwards, after the evening was done and my jaw was able to close when I spoke with Janet about her reading, she seemed to be surprised by my reaction to her reading. She thanked me but to her it was her norm; her method of Evidential Mediumship. It is what each and every student in her class strives to do.

I watched as Janet did, on the platform what she had been teaching us for a year.
She asked for, received and presented
“Name, Rank and Serial #”.

She brought names, dates, how their loved ones passed,
specific validations that had tears and laughter simultaneously.

The closure, relief and joy that that couple received was priceless
and exactly what they both needed to hear.

And again it was validated for me why I love to do this work so much.

(Last month I went back to the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies for a week workshop with James Van Praagh again. The next posting will be about my AMAZING experiences there)

WORKING WITH SPIRIT - Posting 2 of 3

2011-07-29T12:00:00.013-04:00

I was ready.

Gone were the butterflies in my stomach.
Gone was that doubting voice in my head and I was ecstatic that I no longer heard it.
Gone was questioning if I could make a contact with a spirit.
Gone was the fear; of looking foolish; of failure; of public speaking
(that one I had been working on my whole life and now I did not feel it)

In my awareness even the congregation was gone.
All I wanted to feel was the energy of this woman
who I knew was a supportive loving mother;
I felt her and I focused on nothing but the connection
I had with her for only the briefest of seconds.

I have become accustomed to the physiological feeling I get when a spirit is close.
There is a tingling on the back of my neck,
almost like someone blowing on it.

This tingling which then runs up and down my spine,
is my first indication that I am connecting with a spirit.

Then the hair on my arms and if the spirit is strong enough,

the hair on the back of my neck will stand up.
This is when I begin a conversation with the spirit; in my head of course…

“I know you’re a woman” I asked.
I “felt” the affirmative answer more than heard it…

“I feel you were on your 70’s or 80’s when you passed”
Again affirmative response.

My next question was “How did you pass?”

I am clairsentient, I feel what the spirit sends to me and at that split second,
I felt a sharp pain in my chest and my left arm
and I knew she passed of a heart attack or a heart related issue.

She showed me smoking in her youth, but not as an adult.
I then heard “Kearney”…

All this information came to me in a split second and I felt confident
that someone in the audience could connect with this woman.
I felt that after someone said that they could accept this information,
I would be able to get more evidence, prove the connection and then get a message.

So, I began to relay this information to the people in the chapel and at the same time,
I was drawn to a mother and daughter who were part of

the large family group that I saw in the parking lot.

I felt that this woman in spirit was the mother and grandmother to these two women.
I offered what I was receiving to the people in the chapel…

“I have a woman here who passed in her 70’s or 80’s…” I stated.
“She was a mother and grandmother in this life…”
“She says that she smoked in her youth but quit a long time ago…”
“She hasn’t been gone for a long time, perhaps a few years…”
This information was new and came to me as I was giving the information that I had already received.

My awareness was again drawn to the mother and daughter in the family group. With each new validation I offered, they looked at each other smiling as if the connection I had was for them and I felt comfortable and confident that not only did I have a spirit, but I knew who it was for.

I continued, “She passed from either a heart attack or a heart related issue…” The mother and daughter looked questioningly at each other.

“I just heard the word ‘Kearney’, I don’t know if is the town, a name or maybe she is referring to a circus?”

To my surprise, as I gave the information about Kearney, they seemed to disconnect with me, sadly shaking their heads as if to say that, although they wanted to connect, unfortunately, the information was not for them.

Equally unfortunate, for me, was that I went into my head.
This is what happens, to all mediums that are starting to hone their craft.
Once your sitter can’t or won’t to take the information you are offering,
you think the fault lies with you.

You instantly doubt if you even had a connection at all.
Your confidence levels drop like a stone;
you begin to question yourself as to why you are even doing this…

You kick the door wide open to have your “Doubter Part” make it’s grand re entry!
Which was something I was determined not to let happen again.

This situation, like the “from me to me” dilemma, I have posted about http://hyp4lifellc.blogspot.com/2010/07/sometimes-you-win-sometimes-you-lose.html
can ruin a good reading/connection and destroy the fragile sense of confidence
that all beginning mediums struggle with.

I accepted that who I thought the connection was for, was not going to be the case,
I again asked the congregation if anyone could take any of the information and I repeated it once more…

"A 70 year old mother and grandmother, a smoker who quit early, who passed of heart issues, a connection with the word 'Kearney'”.
I looked around the congregation expecting to see a hand rise, but no one raised their hand.

My heart sank again…
No one…
O…M…G…
NO ONE??? I stared to sweat, something Janet taught us not to do…

“Always trust in your connection…” she stresses.
Easier said than done, though…

A bead of “flop” sweat formed at my hairline…
“Never let them see you sweat…”
“You are a professional, always stay in control”

I started to “stroke” my chest, which was something that is neither in my nature to do nor one of my stress management tools.
But doing that caught my attention.

As I stroked my chest, I felt a chain around my neck and a cross…

Almost to myself, but loudly enough for everyone to hear, I asked

“Why am I doing this?”, as I demonstrated stroking my imaginary chain.

“I feel a chain and a cross in my hand…
This woman is telling me that she was buried with her cross…”
The connection was back; In fact, it was never gone,
it was just my confidence that was temporarily gone.

Instantly I was flashed my symbol for “NOT”; a red circle with the diagonal line threw it.
When I am shown this sign it usually means I am either wrong or
I need to be shown something different due to my misinterpritation.

I said to the audience, “No Wait… She wasn’t buried with her cross…
Bare with me for a moment here…” as I tried to understand the conflict
between either being buried with her cross or not.

Symbols are a communication method that spirits use
to quickly relay information to Mediums.
For example, John Edward’s symbol for love is a yellow rose.
My symbol for Roman Catholic is a feeling of rosary beads
over my hands in a prayer position.

So when I received my “Not” symbol
when I said this woman was buried with her cross,
I asked and waited for clarification and I got it.

“No, sorry, she wasn’t buried with the cross. There was discussion about burying her with the cross but it was decided that her granddaughter should have it”

Immediately a hand went up in the back of the church, Carole a long time member of the congregation and an excellent Medium herself said
“Garry, you’re with me! You have my mother!”…

I could have jumped right off the platform,
run to the back of the church and kissed her!
The flop sweat instantly evaporated!
The knot in my stomach untied and I felt the connection again, only stronger.

When she said that I had her mother, I felt a surge of energy…
A chill went up my arms and my spine;
a feeling I have found to be my validation that I truly do have a connection.

After some other validations and a loving message,
I thanked Carole verbally for accepting my reading
and thanked her mother in my internal voice;
“Thank you Mom, for coming through and connecting with me so well”
I projected to the energy of her mother and I heard
“No… Thank-YOU… And I felt a kiss on my cheek!”

And as I walked back to the oak chair on the platform,
I knew why I love doing this work…

In "WORKING WITH SPIRIT - Posting 3 of 3" (scheduled for posting on 8/19/2011) I describe an amazing reading done by Janet

WORKING WITH SPIRIT – a 3 Part Posting

2011-07-07T00:06:00.000-04:00

Synopsis;
This posting would be too long for one posting so it is posted in three parts.
In Parts 1 and 2, I relay my experience of being on “the platform” at a “Spiritualist Church Student Service”; what being a “Psychic/Medium” feels like when you are in front of strangers trying to bring through messages from their loved ones who have passed away.
In Part 3, I describe observing Janet Nohavec my tutor, pastor and perhaps one of the top ten best Evidential Mediums in the world today. I describe the masterful way she brings evidence and messages to people who have lost their loved ones and the uplifting effect these messages have on those who were there.

WORKING WITH SPIRIT Posting 1 of 3;

On Sunday June 5, 2011 at 5:15pm, I was driving on Rt.287 North to the
Journey Within Spiritualist Church in Pompton Lakes where
I would be giving a Mediumship reading.
But this reading was going to be a new experience for me
and I am a big believer in the importance
of new experiences for the growth of your soul.

The Journey Within Church
http://journeywithin.org,
is a Spiritualist Church in Pompton Lakes NJ and is a member of the SNU,
The Spiritualist’s National Union
http://www.snu.org.uk

The Church’s Pastor, Janet Nohavec is a world renowned psychic/medium
and an amazing teacher.
She had invited me and about twenty other Mediums,
to join her school for Evidential Mediumship.
Her goal is to make us the best Psychic Mediums we are capable of being
and that means getting evidence, evidence and more evidence.

Saying
“...I have your father here…
Your father IS in spirit, isn’t he?
Well he is here and he says he is proud of you”...
will just not fly in Janet’s class.
Janet wants “Name, Rank and Serial Number”,
by that she means; she wants specific information from the spirit
that you are feeling, in a specific order
with no fuzzy fluff like...
“Your mommy says she loves you”...
Janet says that is not a “Wow” reading and
there is no evidence from that statement,
that you are actually in communication with a spirit.

A wow reading is one that when it is over, everyone there;
The sitter,
You - the Medium
and The spirits that are there say...
"WOW! that was amazing”

Janet is a tough teacher and I should know, being a teacher.
She also has one of, if not the most important attribute of a great teacher;
an absolute passion for her subject and in this case,
the subject is Evidential Mediumship.

I received a call from Janet about a week or two before,
asking me if I would be able to read at the Student’s service on Sunday evening.

I was so honored by her asking me
that I answered immediately with a resounding
“SURE! And Thank-you for asking”.

Which was just before the annoying voice of my doubter part said
“What are you crazy, what if you screw it up?”
I have learned to acknowledge that part of me
that is always causing self-doubt and
then try to ignore it;
perhaps it’ll stop one of these days.

In any event, If Janet had the faith in me, as a student, to “read” during the service, who am I to doubt her or say “no”.

So there I was driving on 287.

Having given myself extra time, I was cruising along at a slow 60 mph…
Just me and my increasingly annoying voice in my head.
Those of you, who know me, know that in my hypnotherapy practice,
I use Parts Therapy for many issues that trouble my clients.
Then, why, you may ask don’t I use it to treat this part of me that is so full of doubt.

Well the answer to that one would be a 10 part posting!
(Maybe at a future date)

As I entered the church’s parking lot with lots of time to spare,
I noticed that 4 cars had just pulled in and parked ahead of me.
There were about a dozen or so people huddled in a big group
animatedly talking with each other
and you didn’t need to be a psychic to know
they were all related and anxious about the experience they were about to have.

Once in the church’s beautiful chapel,
I met with two other students of Janet’s Medium school.
You could tell quite easily that we were all quite anxious and nervous.

Janet called us over to explain how the student service was going to work.

“First, Barbara, you’ll be the homilist and will speak to the congregation then you both” pointing to Lena and me, “will connect with a spirit and give evidence and a message to someone in the congregation and then I will give a message”

Before we walked onto the platform, I sat in the fourth row and closed my eyes.
Not only to center myself and get into the Medium mindset,
but to stop the old annoying frightened voice in my head
filling me with self doubts.
It seems to show up in my mind
as soon as I am about to read someone and always,
its timing is perfect to get me off my game.

“What if you don’t get a spirit? I felt/heard it say…
“You’ll look like a jerk, up there” it seemed to know exactly what I didn’t want to hear.
“…Mr. Wannabe Medium…” it said, spewing it’s venom and sarcasm.
“Why do you do this to yourself?...” the voice was relentless…

Finally another voice in my head chimed in…
“Shut-UP!” it said
“He wants to do this so stop hindering him!”
This conflict has been going on for years, if not decades.
But now I began to pay attention to this new supportive voice.
I liked his supportive energy.
It knew what I wanted to do and now I decided to only listen to him…
My supportive part…
And it felt good…
It felt right!

It wasn’t so much listening to this new part/voice in my head as much as it was deciding to do what Janet has been teaching us…

“Have faith in those spirits and they will never let you down.
Oh, and just say ‘screw it’ and have fun!”

Janet stood up and motioned to us to take our seats on the platform
and I began to put my supportive self to the test.
I also felt him sitting on top of my annoying doubter self.

So, the three of us,
Barbara, Lena and I stood and walked onto the platform with Janet,
sat down in the tall oak chairs on the platform
that were vibrating with the energy of the hundreds of Mediums
who had sat there over the years.

The service began with an address to the congregation by Janet,
who thanked all the people for being there
and explained what this special “Student Service” was;
that it was an abridged Spiritualist service
to provide experience to her students.
She went on to say that we would have a student homilist speak,
two students will give a reading each and
then she (Janet) would give a reading.

Janet had the music system cued up to “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles
and we all sang along with John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Honestly, it felt a little awkward singing on stage
with the feeling that all eyes were on you.
But by the second chorus of “All you need is love…”
my energy was definitely picking up as I harmonized with John.

Janet introduced the homilist, who began giving her homily and I hate to admit it but I was distracted.

The same ego driven concern popped into my head once again
but this time I had anticipated it and was able to ignore it.
Janet consistently told us that when the butterflies are fluttering
in the pit of your stomach, just say
“Screw it and enjoy yourself”
and that was my intention.

Since my introduction to Metaphysics ten years ago
at a week long Past Life Regression Workshop with Dr. Brian Weiss
which peaked my interest in psychic phenomenon,
I have had an ongoing internal conflict between my ego and faith/trust.
After these ten years…
finally, my trust and faith have won the battle and now,
to my surprise, I am comfortable on the platform.

As I sat on the platform, knowing I was going to be asked soon to make a connection, I asked my Spirit Guides to give me a hand.

“OK guys… Time to put up or shut up…”

I began getting that familiar tingle up my spine, the hair on the back of my neck started to stand up and I thought…

“Great! I have a link… thank-you God!”

I felt a woman, who had passed in her older 70’s or 80’s,
and was a mother and a Grandmother.

I thanked her for connecting with me and I asked her, if she could,
hold off until later when I am on the platform.

I began my self talk;
the set up I do prior to doing a reading.
Eyes closed now...
Slowing down my breath…
Expanding my energy out in front of and behind me…

Now I set my intention;

“I want to make a connection with a person in spirit
who wants to communicate with their loved one
who is sitting in this place of love and light”…

“I surround myself with the white light of truth…” I said my white light prayer.

“Our father who art in heaven…” I said the Lord’s Prayer.

Lena wanted to go first. Even though she was clearly very nervous, she did fine.

“Hi I’m Lena…” She said to the congregation...

“Hi Lena” the congregation responded.
I smiled as I pictured an AA meeting.

I thought that when it was my turn, I’d mess up and say,
“Hi I’m Garry and I’m an Alcoholi… I mean a Medium…”.
Then said to myself that there is a time and place for everything
and this was certainly not the time to be joking around
and this is not the place for comedy.

Lena made a connection with a woman in spirit who was “taken” by Jake, one of our fellow students in Janet’s class who came to the service to support us, his classmates.

After Lena’s evidence and message, she thanked the congregation and went back to her seat.

Janet walked to the pulpit and said into the microphone,
“Garry?” nodding towards me,
I stood up and simultaneously said to the spirit of this woman I had felt,

“Ok, mom… we’re up”

In WORKING WITH SPIRIT Part 2 of 3, I describe my experience of connecting with the spirit of a woman whose daughter was sitting in the congregation.

I'm BAAAACK!

2011-06-05T00:38:00.007-04:00

Synopsis;
In this brief posting, I apologize for being away for so long and update you on what has been happening during this past year

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned...
it’s been a year since my last Blog entry…”
and I have no one to blame except me and my laziness…
shame on me.

Although I could blame my laziness on my very busy schedule,
I really need to get back into the habit and discipline of writing every day.

Since I last did an entry, when I was planning on finishing my book and
although I did work on it over the summer,
I am still only 75% done and again,
I plan on finishing it soon or at least before I retire from teaching in 4 years..

Between teaching, hypnotizing, being a Psychic/ Medium and
the responsibilities that come with being a husband, father and grandfather,
the last thing on my prioritized “to do list” is the gym and writing…
OK who am I fooling,
the last thing IS writing.

Whether in my blog or my book, once I am done with all the “Have to do’s”, the “wanna do’s” like writing just don’t seem to get done.
But that will change;
that must change.

So that’s why this entry is titled “ I baaaack”.
Maybe by saying it I will be back…
writing again.

It is a great release.
Sooo…
This past year has been very busy and
quite interesting metaphysically speaking…

- Last summer I spent a weekend at The Omega Institute for Holistic Studies,
working with James Van Praagh.
That was my next to last blog entry.
This summer I will be back at Omega and work with James again for a week!
I am most definitely looking forward to it.

- I have taken classes with 4 different teachers of Metaphysics from
Arthur Findlay College in England.
Bet you never knew that there is an actual college in England
for Psychic/ Mediumship along with many other Metaphysical areas of study.
Actually the college is what the school in the Harry Potter series was based on! If you are interested, check their website at http://www.arthurfindlaycollege.org/
- I was asked along with about 20 other Psychic Mediums
to join a class taught by Janet Nohavec,
at her church to improve and hone our P/M abilities.
Janet is not only a world renowned Psychic Medium,
she is a true teacher in every sense of the word.
By that I mean, she is surely NOT doing it for the money
(all “true” teachers will attest to that, money is not the motivating factor in teaching, the motivating factor is the advancement and growth of your students.)
Janet teaches her students because she is driven to produce better evidential mediums; people who can prove to the public that we never truly die.
To prove to a cynical public that our consciousness is eternal
and after our bodies die, our consciousness is still “alive”
and aware of our loved ones who are still here.
An evidential Medium’s purpose is to assist the spirit in communicating with their loved ones on Earth and to prove to those loved ones that those who have passed away are truly still here.
Services at the Journey Within Church start at 10am.
Check out the services page on Janet’s website http://www.journeywithin.org/services.htm
I am proud and honored to be invited by Janet to “read” at the
“Sunday Night Student Church Service” this Sunday evening June 5th at 6:00pm.
I will let you know what it was like.

- I am doing many more “readings”. With each reading I learn more of how our loved ones in spirit communicate.
- I started a psychic circle that is still going strong

As the title “Spiritual Evolution - A Journey from Atheism to Spirituality” of my book implies, we are all on a journey and I will keep you informed of what I am learning along mine.
Until the next time…
This Journey continues.

Time to Buckle Down

2010-08-16T22:03:00.001-04:00

You know when you feel
like you have twenty irons in your fire
and you only have 2 or 3 charcoal briquettes left.

That’s the way I’m beginning to feel.

I’m not complaining, mind you,
I’m simply observing.

Actually, things are really going well.

My business HYP4LIFE is thriving.
I have lots of hypnosis and mediumship clients.
My Psychic Development Class seems to be a big hit
and I am setting up another Monday
so I’ll be presenting it bi-monthly now.

Thank God I still have my teaching position in September.
Considering the recent layoffs in New Jersey,
I should be and am really thankful.

My wife, kids, grandchildren and I are all healthy and happy…

So I am by no means complaining; I am thankful…
But.

I have been writing a lot in my blog
and although in the beginning of the summer;
June 23, 2010 to be exact;
at 10:43 am, I posted
“My Book”;
saying how I was going to finally finish it after 5 years…

Well, I have been blogging a lot more than writing in my book…

Oh who am I kidding?

I haven’t been writing in my book…
at all and I am pissed and frustrated with myself.

So I am taking out one iron from my slowly cooling fire
and I won’t be posting on my blog
until September or October

and I am going to attempt to finish my book…
finally!

I will keep you informed.

Sometimes You Win Sometimes You Lose - Part 2

2010-08-06T02:00:00.008-04:00

Synopsis;
this is the second of a 2 part article (please excuse the length) about how you can learn from losing, often learning more than from winning.
I describe my experiences at my weekend workshop with James Van Praagh http://www.vanpraagh.com/ and the lessons I learned.

So, after that reading (from Part 1),
I was wondering why I do Psychic/ Mediumship (P/M) readings at all;
I was that upset.
I considered taking down all my blog postings on P/M,
taking all references to P/M from my website and just give up.
I went home that night ready to cancel my weekend at Omega
and take down my P/M shingle for good.

I was that miserable.

Fortunately, I spoke with my friend Sylvia (an excellent Psychic/Medium),
who helped me tremendously.
he said, “Garry, picture a balance scale,
measuring all the readings you have ever done …
on one side sits all the good ones and the other all the bad ones.
What would this balance scale look like?”

As that image formed in my mind,
I saw the scale overwhelmingly heavy with good readings
and only a handful of bad ones.
I not only saw the good readings,
but the faces of the sitters who were so happy with their readings;
how their energy changed after their reading;
how light and good I felt after giving them messages
from their loved ones in spirit
and how I was aware of a feeling of appreciation and gratitude
from spirit, after a good reading
(I plan on expanding on this feeling of gratitude
from spirit in a future posting, suffice to say, we [P/M’s] work
for those in spirit more than for the sitters who pay us).

That conversation was just what I needed
to get me off the floor and back in the game.
Sometimes it seems to be necessary to get shot down occasionally
so that you know how to get up, brush yourself off and keep on keep’n on!
I thanked her for showing me this simple metaphor
and I realized that I had allowed these two sitters
to so negativity influence me that
I wanted to quit this work that I love to do.
I also realized that my ego was hurt and that was why I felt like quitting…
It hurts when your self-image is attacked.

After a good night’s sleep, I woke up and in the shower,
I washed off the negative energy that I absorbed the night before
and looked forward to the coming weekend
at Omega in Rhinebeck NY,
where I would learn from James Van Praagh himself.

I also planned to relay this experience
(of a reading where the sitter would not take anything I offered)
to him for advice;
I was not disappointed.

On Friday July 16, 2010,
I arrived at Omega at 6:30pm after a drive from hell,
287 North was closed for emergency repair;
one lane open and a 3 hour ride took 6 hours,
but the frustration vanished
with the smiles of the young people working at Omega.

If you get a chance to take a workshop there, you really should,
it will be worth your time.

After settling into my room,
I walked into James’ Friday night introductions.
We had about 125 people there
and we were all anticipating a great weekend.
James began by answering the questions of the participants
and I was able to ask him the question
that was praying on my mind from that Monday’s reading.

He had two helpers
running back and forth handing microphones to the questioners.
“James, I had a reading this past Monday”,
I said as the microphone was handed to me.
With a big broad smile, he said to wait for the microphone
so everyone can hear, as I continued…

“I was giving a reading to a woman and her 30ish year old son…”
I relayed how no matter what I said; no matter how strongly
I knew I had a good link with the spirit of their husband/father
they refused to accept anything.

His answer to me was understandable and simple,
but his follow up about the ego was profound and worth relaying.
He said that all you can do as a Medium
is to give the information that you are receiving
from a spirit to the sitter the best you can
and if your intention is coming from a place of love;
you are doing this work for all the right reasons;
your heart is in the right place
but your sitter is too closed off to accept it
or if they come to the reading with preconceived ideas
or if they want to hear from only a specific spirit
and not the one that is there,
there is nothing anyone can do.

I understood and accepted his rather basic response, but he continued…
“Sometimes”, he said,
“your ego gets in the way and you get upset because
the person you are working with doesn’t understand
that you are a wonderful P/M;
you are a loving individual
who is doing this work for all the right reasons;
they don’t see the work you are putting in
or the energy it takes to do this work…
They don’t know that you were a boy scout
and that you love puppy dogs
and you go to church every Sunday…

They misjudge you…

He then said something worth repeating…
often…

“What people think about you…” he said
“Is none of YOUR business!”

Now re-read that statement,
because it is simple, true
and is something a lot of us would disagree with.

It’s none of your business what people think of you!
Wow another Life’s Lesson!

Saturday at James’ workshop
was a great learning experience
and I met some great people and new friends.

I met Jali on Saturday morning and
we hit it off as if we knew each other for years (lifetimes?).

She is an amazing psychic medium from Maryland
her website is
http://www.psychicphotoreading.com/
we did a few psychic exercises together
and I was impressed with her dead – on (no pun intended) readings.

She was kind enough to send me a bunch of photos
and I will attempt to paste them onto this posting
(using my extremely limited computer expertise).

The photo below was by far the most interesting.
James did only one reading the entire weekend,
letting the participants gain a lot of
practical experience as opposed to
watching a pro (James) in action (doing a bunch of readings).

Jali emailed a photo of that reading,
when James was reading the energy of a spirit
for a young woman in the audience.
I’ll attach it below but the amazing thing was
that out of all the photos,
only this one when James was reading had some interesting…
well…
observers for lack of a better description.

No other photos I saw from that weekend had orbs like these in them…
I count 8!

On Sunday before we finished at 12 noon,
James said that he would be bringing up some of us
to “read” for the audience.
Talk about pressure!
Reading a group of Mediums
with James Van Praagh sitting behind you
and he is NOT an easy teacher.

He said from the start that he was going to push us
right out of our comfort zones,
and he did just that!

At first only one person raised their hand.
James said “Good!”,
that he had seen her work and that he would help her.

She came up and did he ever push her!
He was helping her refine
the information she was getting,
but by the time the reading was through,
she was exhausted
and I saw a lot of hands
that had been waving to get a chance to read,
quickly go down and some hands were being sat on!

I was torn between wanting to challenge myself
and embarrassing myself.
I knew that the challenge to do the work
was coming from my “higher self”; my sub-conscious P/M self
and the part of me that was afraid
that I would embarrass myself
was most definitely coming from my ego.

One of the important lessons James taught us
that weekend was the detrimental effect
of listening to your ego
over your intuitive (psychic) self.

I wanted to challenge myself
and decided to ignore my ego
although with that decision,
my ego got louder…
until…
I “felt” the presence of an older man in spirit
touch my arm.

As James was choosing who would be next to read,
my hand had a mind of its own!
It shot straight up
waving like one of my students
in High School
who had to really,
really go to the bathroom.

I felt as if the spirit of this older man
was standing behind controlling my hand!
But I truly wanted to challenge myself for a number of reasons.

First, I felt very comfortable
that I had a strong connection
with this man and after all is said and done,
we Mediums work for them.
If he needed this message to get to someone in the audience,
I felt it would be my honor, duty and pleasure to bring his message through.

Secondly, this was a place
and time where we were all supporting each other
and there were a lot of egos outside,
banging on the windows and doors,
mine included and
I made sure I had left my ego outside
with my flip-flops.

I was ready to do this.

Now, James had called up three other people
and my hand was shooting up
when each one finished
and I honestly felt that I was not going to be picked
and then the strangest thing happened…

I “threw it up to the Universe”
I said in my head to whoever was listening,
my spirit guides;
my higher self;
the spirit of the old man;
God…
“If I am going to do this work
and the time is right, it will work out.”
I felt a sense of calmness wash over me and I heard…
“You’ll be the last one up!”
I don’t know who it was,
but I heard it as clear as day…

“Calm yourself…”

“Prepare yourself…”

“You Will be the last one up…”

The calmness I felt continued…
James announced that he had a plane to catch
and that he had to leave at 12 sharp,
so he could only do a total of five readings
and picked the 4th reader…

I felt I would be next;
no fear;
no apprehension;
no doubt!

When the 4th reader stepped off the stage,
handing James the microphone,
James had his back to me,
looking at a sea of hands all wanting to be the last to read.

This memory will always stay with me.
He turned around, microphone in hand,
pointed it at me and asked if I wanted to read!

I can’t describe what went through my mind in one millisecond!

Yes!...
Hell Yeah! I want to read!
OMG! It really worked,
I asked spirit to help and they did exactly what I asked for!

They said I would be last and I am the last reader!

OK mister, ghost guy…I am all ears, talk to me.
Who do you want to connect with?
What relationship did you have with the person in the audience?
How did you die?
Give me more information…

Then another voice said…
“Holy crap you better do this right
this is THE James Van Praagh!
You better not screw this up,
like you did Monday!”

and I knew Mr. Ego was back in the house!

In my mind I pictured standing up facing my arch nemesis,
grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and his belt,
kicking the door open,
throwing him out the doorway
like John Wayne in every western he ever made…
and then hearing from the PA system…
in the voice of James Van Praagh himself…
“Garry’s Mr. Ego has just left the building!”
…and good riddance.

The reading went great!
I went up on stage
and sat in a chair
with James sitting behind me to my left.
He prompted me to calm myself…
to breathe deeply…
to allow an image to form…

“I have an older man here”, I started…
“Good”, said James, “describe him!”

“He is telling me that he drank and
that is what contributed to his death;
he is a father to a man who is not here,
but his wife is…
This is a woman’s father in law…
He was an educated man,
a professional, doctor, or lawyer...
A tough demanding father…
showed no love to his son.. your husband.. ”

I continued with some more evidence
with James giving me hints as what to ask him,
how to phrase my questions.

I felt that James knew exactly who it was I was connected to.

Finally two women raised their hands claiming this man may be for them,
one in the front of the group
and one in the back.

With some more evidence,
we were able to narrow it down
to the woman in the back of the room,
who was able to accept everything that was coming though.

Then it was time for the all important message,
which was short and powerful.
He wanted me to relate
that he was so very proud of his son,
that he was never able to show his pride
for his son while he was alive.

He was incapable of showing love
and alcohol only made his aloofness
all the more hardened and at times violent.

He said that he was asking for forgiveness from the whole family;
that this was the first time he was able to get through to anyone;
that he had been so difficult to live with that in spirit,
his whole family refused to hear him
as he tried from spirit
to communicate and to apologize to them.

But they heard now!
Through the openness of his daughter-in-law,
the message would finally be delivered to his son,
with the additional sweetness
of saying that his son
is a better person, man and father
than he had ever been
and he can finally relay to his son
through his son’s wife
that he is proud of the man he had become
and that he truly does love him.

There were few dry eyes,
including mine when this man had finished allowing me to help him get his message out.

I will always remember that weekend at Omega and the many life lessons I learned there.

Sometimes You Win Sometimes You Lose - Part 1

2010-07-26T00:06:00.004-04:00

Sometimes You Win Sometimes You Lose - Part 1

Synopsis;
This is a 2 part article about how you can learn from losing,
often learning more than from winning.

On Monday July 12, 2010, I had a Psychic/ Mediumship
reading scheduled for a woman and her son.
It was the Monday before my weekend workshop
with James Van Praagh at Omega
and I was excited about the weekend
and looked forward to doing this reading,
just as I look forward to every reading I do.

I view doing a “reading” with a combination of emotions;
from anticipation of the unknown
to dread of being inaccurate in the reading;
from the satisfaction of having people walk away from my office
happier than they were when they came in;
to the satisfaction of knowing that the work a Medium does,
is for those who are in spirit, more than those
who are still here on the earth plane.

This is how I looked forward to this reading.
I wanted to do the very best I could
for both the sitters (the mother and her son)
and for their deceased loved ones.

I have learned from years of classes and readings
that one of the biggest obstacles to a great reading is your own ego.
I learned that weekend from James Van Praagh
that EGO is an acronym for “Edging Out God”.

A new Medium is always concerned if the
images, thoughts, symbols, etc.
that they receive are from “the source”
or from their own mind or imagination.

I refer to this as the “From Me/ To Me” dilemma.
It is usually an ego conflict;
“Will I look stupid?”,
“Am I making this stuff up?”

These internal questions fade with experience and confidence.

The experience of doing more readings,
reinforces the perceptions a psychic has
as to where the information he is getting, comes from;

either from his own mind or imagination
which is in no way psychic at all
and is purely guessing, also known as “Cold Reading”;

or

the sitter (the person being read);
their mind, energy or aura which is the definition of a psychic reading;

or

from the energy of a spirit’s consciousness
which is the definition of a Psychic/Mediumship reading.

As a psychic does more and more readings,
he learns to distinguish between the “From Me / To ME” dilemma
and soon only focuses on the “To Me”
and can detach from the ego driven “From Me” thoughts.

With that distinction, he begins to gain the confidence he will need to do accurate readings.

I have witnessed incredibly gifted Mediums like
John Edward, John Holland and James Van Praagh,
stick to their guns, so to speak,
and refuse to be shaken by the denial of a sitter
to accept the information being offered.

At a demonstration of his Mediumship
with an audience of over 1000 people,
I saw John Edward stand his ground for a half hour,
until the light went on over the person’s head
and the sitter was finally able to accept
everything that John offered to him.

A novice would fold at the first “no”;
or at the first arm crossing over the chest
and the negative head shake
that we have all been aware of when being “dismissed”.

This situation is devastating to a psychic Medium
and was what happened on that Monday in July.

Unfortunately I don’t have the confidence of a John Edward.

Although I felt confident that the information I was receiving
was from a spirit that needed to communicate
to this woman and her 35 year old son.

They both just sat there,
arms folded
and even though I was giving them images that they could accept,
they acted very aloof;
no big deal about the information they were getting.
Almost every piece of evidence
I brought up was minimized and discarded.

They even said things like “Yeah, everybody has a dog!”
At one point, as I was giving the son
some additional evidence, when he said
“Yeah… So… I have a lot of friends who died on a motorcycle who also had lung cancer…
we all smoke”, shrugging and looking at his watch while rolling his eyes.

I was giving them the best I could do but they were totally unsatisfied.

Then I made a real mistake, I read them for another hour and a half!
because I truly wanted to work for their loved ones,
even though they refused to accept anything I was saying.

After a marathon 2.5 hour session, they left.

They did pay for the service… $100

That evening I received a very long email from the mother,
saying how they felt ripped off by my reading and
she went as far as saying that I was a fraud.

My reply to her diatribe was to simply
ask her for her mailing address and sent her a refund,
with a note saying that
I hoped that at least she no longer felt “ripped-off”.

Part 2 will be posted next week and
I will describe some of my weekend experiences
at Omega with James Van Praagh and
what I learned from this very uncomfortable reading.

Off to Omega Again

2010-07-15T23:35:00.002-04:00

"Off to Omega Again"

Well I am off to “The Omega Institute for Holistic Studies”, tomorrow.

For those of you who don’t know what Omega is, picture a commune of the 60’s updated to the 2010’s. It is a wonderfully relaxing place in Rhinebeck, NY, where I have gone for the past 7 years to take classes by amazingly gifted people.

I attribute my “Spiritual Evolution” to my experiences there
(nice how I dropped in the title of my book, even before it is published…
heck! Before it is even finished!... ) but I digress…

I have been to classes there with
Dr. Brian Weiss http://www.brianweiss.com author of “Many Lives, Many Masters”,
who I learned how to do Past Life Regressions from
and who’s week long class started me on my “Journey”;

Neale Donald Walsch, http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com
author of the “Conversations with God” series
who opened my eyes to the possibility that
you don’t have to be “religious” to be spiritual and believe in God;

Raymond Moody http://www.lifeafterlife.com who introduced me to life between and after lives;

Suzane Northrop http://www.northstar2llc.com/theseance author and Psychic/Medium who broke down my hard-core cynicism about all things that are new-age

and

Last but far from least, John Holland, http://www.johnholland.com author, teacher and psychic/Medium extraordinaire!
Who took me from skeptic
to believer
to a practicing Psychic/Medium.
John had the faith in me during 2 separate classes to bring me on stage to “read” (give messages to people from their deceased loved ones) for the class.
I was about as nervous as I have ever been,
but with his guidance, I gave fairly good readings, but more importantly,
I started to grow spiritually into who I am today

(if you read this, John… I will be eternally [and that’s a long time] grateful for your devotion to spirit and your expertise in not only Mediumship but in teaching [Kudos from one teacher to another]).
His new book “The Spirit Whisperer” is a must read for anyone who is the least bit curious about psychic phenomenon.

Sometimes, being at Omega makes me feel a little uncomfortable.
Being an old New Yorker and having everyone there,
walking around nodding and smiling at you,
the cynical, street wise, Ex-Brooklyner in me thought that
I was in a place where they must be putting Thomasine in the drinking water;
everyone was sooo mellow.

Eventually this old city boy chilled out and soon I was nodding and smiling, like everyone else.
I was walking around saying “Good Morning” to everyone;
the kids that worked there,
the other students,
the chipmunks, the squirrels, but when I said good morning to on old Oak tree,
I knew I had had enough and I’d better leave!

Well as I said, I’m off to Omega again in about 12 hours from now.

I will be having a weekend workshop with James Van Praagh, http://www.vanpraagh.com Author, Executive Producer of the TV series “Ghost Whisperer” and world renounced Psychic/Medium.
If I learn half as much as I have learned from John Holland’s workshop, I’m in for a treat!

Hopefully, I can put these new learning’s to good use and considering the last reading I had, I could use some new teachings.

The next entry will be a 2 part article titled “Sometimes You Win; Sometimes You Lose”.
It will be about the reading I have just referred to.
Suffice to say it was not the best work I have done but I sure learned from it.

I will keep you informed as to my “Mediumship” progress.

My Book

2010-06-23T10:43:00.004-04:00

Wow, it’s been 6 months since I’ve posted anything!
It’s been a rather busy six months and instead of looking backwards,
I prefer to look ahead…

I am hoping that my book will be finished this summer.

As I have said, one of the perks of being a teacher is having the summer off.
During the summer
I can devote my full attention to my 2nd job… hypnosis;
my 3rd job… being a Psychic/Medium;
my 4th job… writing, trying to finish my book and blog entries
and my 5th job… being Grandpa.

My book
“Spiritual Evolution- a Journey from Atheism to Spirituality”
is 3/4 complete.
It has been a work in progress for 5 years now and I wonder when I will feel it is complete.
I also wondered why it has taken so long, until I realized why;
the experiences that I have been going through over the past 5 years is an integral part of the book and needed to be lived out first and written about afterwards.

This “Spiritual Evolution” that I am documenting is the inevitable result of becoming… conscious (for lack of a better word).

My book is about my evolution from being a hard core atheist, believing that there is no god or “higher power” to being a "Spiritualist" (a person who believes in the continuity of consciousness after the death of the physical body and the ability to still communicate with that consciousness)

I saw only hypocrisy in organized religion. I was a Darwinist, believing in natural selection and that we were fortunately born as humans; you could have been born as a cockroach; we were lucky.

My view of after death communication (the ability of a Medium to contact the spirit of a dead loved one) was completely cynical.
Gypsy fortune tellers, taking advantage of the bereaved and when I saw Dionne Warwick on "The Psychic Friends Network", I was thoroughly convinced that this Mediumship stuff was a scam to take money from people who were very vulnerable.

But…
I could not explain my memories of the ghostly image of an old man in my room at night, which stopped being visible to me only after months of having to sleep with my head under my covers…
or
my ability to know what people were about to say before they spoke…
or
as I got older and after my father passed how I felt his presence or how he was able to prevent me from getting into car accidents; not once but many times…
or
how a person I met at a hypnosis workshop who "claimed" to be a Psychic/Medium, was able to connect with my father with amazing accurate validations.

She told me things my father said to me years ago,
that no one knew or could have known.
Things that were trivial in nature but just what I needed to hear
to challenge my disbelief
She continued with more validations and finally the message I needed to hear
from my father
that I had been waiting to hear since he had passed.

At that moment, I was instantly converted from cynic to believer.

I decided to take some classes to understand how this process works
with an internationally renowned author and Psychic Medium named
John Holland.
http://www.johnholland.com/

He opened a door for me which I choose to go through.
The experience of going through that door has not only
motivated me to write my book but has changed my life.

I strongly suggest that you put John Holland's latest book, titled
“Spirit Whisperer” on your reading list for the summer.

I will keep you updated on the progress of the book and my evolution…

New Years and Eating

2010-01-06T21:50:00.003-05:00

I am a big believer in the work of Edgar Cayce.
If you don’t know who he is, please Google him, it will be worth the effort.

Although I am a hypnotherapist, the one area that I could use some help with, is my own weight management.
I tell my clients, “do as I say, not as I do” and like all of us know,
that is the worst thing to say to someone.

I also don’t believe in coincidence, so I received some advise recently from different sources that I want to share with you.

The first came from The A.R.E. (http://www.edgarcayce.org) an organization based on Cayce’s life’s work.

Look over this reading that Cayce gave to a person who had a severe weight issue. You may have to re-read it a few times to see the truth in those words.

Edgar Cayce Reading 911-7

With the arising of rebellious forces . . . the body has assumed the attitude:
"I will break over this time, and the next time I won't.
I will eat this because it pleases me at the present.
I will take this, for I don't want to suffer right now, and next time I won't."
This has been done until self loses such holds on self as to become in a manner the slave to self's own indulgences, in mental, physical and material things!

These conditions, then, require that there be made by self a definite stand to be taken; that is:
"If there is given me a definite program to follow
I will… I will…I will adhere to it,
no matter what I may suffer mentally or physically!
I will trust in the divine forces innate . . .
within my inner self for the strength to endure,
for the ability to say “NO” when I should!"

This next advice I received was from a friend of mine who is in AA.
When talking about the stress in our lives, I laughed and admitted that I deal with my stress by eating.
He said that he had dealt with stress by abusing alcohol, but thankfully no longer
and a simple part of a prayer helped immensely.

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to Accept the things I cannot change.

The Courage to change the things I can;

and Wisdom to know the difference.

This short and sweet prayer says it all.

The Third piece of advice came to me by a hypnotherapist and I want to share it with you.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS ANYONE CAN KEEP
By: Ann Catherine Pawelczyk, C.Ht.

How do we help clients make a fresh start in 2009?
By showing them how to make "resolutions" they can keep!
Too often individuals on the path to self-improvement begin the
New Year with high-resolve and even higher standards that for the most part,
are darn near impossible to keep.

With human nature, when we set the bar high for ourselves-
and end up failing, (as we see as professionals in the self-improvement business all the time) -
what we're doing is actually keeping the cycle of negative reinforcement in action.

Negative reinforcement is a sure fire way to avoid reaching goals,
but it's a nasty habit many of us find ourselves holding onto and "unable" to release.

The way to ANY positive, lasting change is to set reasonable standards that are
flexible, and what we need to be flexible is a series of small manageable steps.
(I can hear you groaning already, but please, bear with me!)

Here's the key to lasting positive change:
When we start out small,
whatever changes we want to make have a much better chance of being integrated slowly and permanently into our lifestyles.

This is a concept we need to emphasize with our clients.

Then...we need to share the following with those we work with:
The barrier that keeps us from making changes in a "good" way is the fact we
often think the little steps aren't "enough".
So...we go for the gusto...and fail.

Hey - Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

Practice and Share these no-fail resolutions

ANYONE can keep & get moving on the good path:
LOVE yourself more this year than last year;
FORGIVE yourself for any areas you've been "stuck" in the past;
Be healthier by focusing on better balance instead of frequent fad DIETS;
Be more ACTIVE by doing fun things out-of-doors and bond with nature;
Re-member or discover something you love to DO;
Create daily affirmations and USE them to reshape your mindset;
Work to TRANSFORM one area of life from now through December;
Instead of seeing what's "wrong" with your life, focus on what's RIGHT;
VOLUNTEER your time to good causes;
SAVE as little as $5 per week and reserve it only for something fun;
Make it a point to GET TOGETHER with friends or family one night a month;
Clear the CLUTTER and go one space at a time;
Take each DAY as it comes;
LAUGH more, LOVE more, and make it a point to complain LESS.

The more realistic we make goals, the easier it is to obtain success,
which IS the positive reinforcement that enables us to achieve.
Try something new this year with yourself and with clients:

Make a list of 5 things you'd like to improve this year in order of importance.
Once you have your list,
break each individual thing down into the smallest possible steps
and get started.
Enjoy your success!

Remember - action follows thought so be sure to keep your thoughts positive for an unimaginably great outcome in any area!

Unfortunately, we all become experts in making New Year’s Resolutions
that are the same year after year.

Let’s try looking at them in a new way, so that we have brand new – New Year Resolutions
next year, with the feeling of success for those we set for ourselves this year.

Jack and Anger Management - Part 3

2009-11-25T17:39:00.004-05:00

Synopsis,
In my posting titled “Anger Management and the Adolescent Child” http://hyp4lifellc.blogspot.com/2008/08/anger-management-article.html
I introduced you to Jack. A fourteen year old adopted young man with many emotional problems, not the least of which, was the inability to management his anger.
In “Jack and Anger Management- Part 2” I described our last two sessions and my concern that I was not finding much success in trying to show Jack a better way to control his anger.
In this, the third posting, I describe how I changed my approach to help Jack in controlling his anger and why I went from directing him to accept his anger to using forgiveness to allow him to control and hopefully eliminate his anger.
I describe how, psychically I gained insight into what to do in Jack’s session.
I also found a new appreciation for the power of forgiveness.

From Part 2;

"… Jack looked up and nodded in agreement, in a way that I knew,
he agreed with my assessment of the situation.
I continued,
“Jack… Do you think that your mother would ever reject you?
Now don’t answer right away…
think about it…”
Without a second’s hesitation, he looked up at me,
then to Diane, shaking his head, saying strongly…
“NO! She wouldn’t”
“Your father?” I asked.
This time he hesitated a second, mulled over the question,
took a deep breath and said truthfully and definitively…
“No, he wouldn’t reject me either.”
“Do you absolutely believe that?” I asked
“You are not just saying that… It is what you truly believe?
Your parents WOULD NOT… EVER REJECT YOU?... Right?”
He quietly nodded “yes”
“If you believe that, then, do you know how much it hurt these two people”
referring to his parents “to hear those words from your mouth?”
As he looked up at them, tears were starting to form in his eyes
(along with his father’s, his mother’s and mine)"

“Jack and Anger Management – Part 3

I decided at that point,
I had to change the direction I was taking with Jack’s therapy.
But, how was I going to be able to get through to this young man?
How was I going to get him to understand and believe
that more than accepting his anger, he needed to get past his anger?
If he allowed his anger to fester like an infection of the soul,
he would never know true happiness.

He now has the opportunity with his adoptive parents, who love him,
accept him unconditionally and will never reject him,
to know what the love of a real family is.
His anger was blocking him from growing.

If he was unable to get past his anger at the world,
I knew he would be stuck in this angry stage for his entire life.
Unfortunately, we all know people like that;
angry at the world for pain suffered in their youth.
These people may never know happiness and
I would hate to see Jack turn into one of those sad and angry men.

As I have told you in many other postings,
being a psychic/medium has a lot of advantages.

When I communicate with spirit,
I don’t ask who is communicating with me;
I just appreciate the connection and listen to it.
It doesn’t matter if the information that is coming to me
is from a father in spirit that wants to help his child
or a spirit guide that needs to redirect their “student” in the physical world
or if it is my “Hypnotherapist Guide”,
who I ask for help from constantly and who has never failed me;
when I get information from that part of my mind I accept it unconditionally.

So when I knew I was in for a complex and complicated hypnotherapy session
with Jack and his family,
I asked my Hypnotherapist “Spirit” Guide,
to give me a little help with this one… and, as usual, he came through.

As Jack and I went into my room where I do the actual hypnotherapy sessions,
I felt Jack’s pain and frustration
caused by his inability to control that irrational angry part of him.
He sat in the recliner as he had so many times before.
He has become one of those perfect hypnotic subjects,
and went quickly, almost instantly, into “Somnambulism”
(the most productive state of hypnosis that you can be in).
As I usually do, I helped Jack go deeper into hypnosis
by putting on some new age-y type music.

I said to myself
“OK, now how are you going to proceed?”

When I felt a chill, up and down my arms;
to me that is the unmistakable feeling of contact with a spirit.

If I were doing a psychic/medium session,
I would have expected this feeling and would ask this spirit to come closer
so I could get validations and messages.
But this connection was unexpected and
Jack was absolutely not interested in any messages from dead people
from his past that he would probably be angry with anyway!

Also I was getting a different “vibe” from this spirit,
it was not connecting with Jack,
it was connecting with me, giving me messages;
messages of how to get through to Jack.
I had been questioning to myself,
as to how I was going to facilitate this change in his perception
from being the perpetual victim;
always the one being abandoned;
always feeling rejection, even when there was no rejection,
to a person who could forgive, and get on with his life.

“Change his perceptions and you change his view of his life”,
I wasn’t sure where that came from.
A cynic would say it came simply from
my experience as a hypnotherapist and from working with Jack,
but I felt differently.
Perhaps a spirit from his family did give me insight;
perhaps my Hypnotherapist Guide…
But who gave me that insight was totally unimportant,
the message and insight they gave me was!

“Change his perceptions and you change his view of his life!”

OK I got it… thanks, whoever you are.

At the same instant, a thought came to me that if his mother had kept him,
he would have never known this loving couple who truly are “his parents”.
I realized (or was shown) that if his birth mother had kept him,
with what little we know about her,
his life could have been considerably worse;
possibly eating out of trash containers,
living on the street,
being subjected to drug users or worse.

My feelings towards this young mother instantly changed.
Instead of anger towards her for abandoning her son,
I felt an overwhelming feeling of sympathy and sadness for her.

Instead of the cold hearted, drug addicted tramp, who abandoned her child,
coldly walking away from him,

I saw her as a young girl,
in over her head, in a life that she could not deal with herself,
not to mention trying to raise a child.
Her decision to give Jack up for adoption was not a selfish decision;
it was a heart-wrenchingly difficult decision that took three years to make.

Once she realized that for Jack’s own good,
for his health,
for his future, which she could not provide for him,
the decision to give him up was the only one she had.

And it was harder for her than Jack could have ever imagined.

She did not abandon him; she gave her precious son away for his own good although she cries herself to sleep even now!

If in my eyes, I could make a shift like that, what would happen to Jack’s attitude,
if he no longer looked at himself as a victim, abandoned by everyone who was supposed to be there for him?

If I could help Jack fundamentally change his self image and his view of the people in his life, there wouldn’t be a need to control his anger, there would not be this overwhelming irrational anger there to control!

The anger may just be gone with this change of perception.

If he could only accept that he was loved and cherished and given away because his mother was convinced that it was the only choice she had and she had agonized over the decision for three years, he might just forgive her.

And if he could forgive his birth mother, would he be able to forgive the rest?

If the first family that adopted Jack, only to send him back to foster care, had kept him, he would have grown up in a family that could or would not have shown him the attention, love and caring he needed.
If that first adoptive couple had “kept” him, he never would have met and been adopted by this loving and supportive couple who became his REAL parents.

That first adoptive family, in fact, like his mother knew he would be better without them.
If he could see that first couple for the realists that they were instead of the selfish self-centered people he had viewed them as, forgiveness would be possible there too.

The plan came to me in a second;
I knew exactly how to proceed.
I thanked my hypnosis guide and continued.

Jack was already in a very deep state of hypnosis.
At this point, he is so good at going into the “altered state”, as we call it,
I simply say, “Ready?”
he nods,
I say “SLEEP!”
and he is there, in deep hypnosis.
I take no credit for it, I don’t think of what a great hypnotist I am, I simply acknowledge that the more often you hypnotize someone, the easier it is to hypnotize them again.

The session worked great.
I asked his angry part to come out and speak with me, which it did often and easily.

His Angry part stated that although he knew he was wrong in saying those hurtful things to his father and it was sorry for saying them, it cannot apologize and can’t forgive.

I asked his Angry part why he can’t forgive and it said
“No one loves Jack, they all reject him, if he forgives, he’ll only be hurt again, they don’t care about anyone except themselves…”

I asked him to go back to the time he was three, his mother had him by the hand and walked him to the door of the foster care facility.
He agreed and as he sat visualizing the scene, I saw he was getting angrier.

I asked him to look at his birth mother and describe her.
“She’s angry,
she’s ugly,
she has hard eyes,
she is pulling me by my arm,
she shakes me and says to stay,
she rings the bell,
the door opens,
she turns away,
she doesn’t say goodbye,
she doesn’t kiss me,
she turns,
she walks away…
I never see her again”
All this said with an undertone of anger, teeth clenched his brow deeply furrowed.

After some relaxation techniques, I asked him to picture what happened from a different angle… From his mother’s angle…
he was initially resistant.
I explained that there are two sides to every story and this may be his mother’s version…

“She is crying,
she has tried for three years to provide for her son,
she lost her job,
she is going to lose her apartment,
she has no husband to help her,
decisions she made in her life were very wrong
but she knows that is not Jack’s fault, she realizes he didn’t ask to be born,
she takes responsibility,
she finally realizes that she cannot keep Jack and she goes to the foster care agency.

She walks to the house and can’t look at Jack,
her heart is breaking,
she doesn’t want Jack to see her cry so she turns her head away from him,
Jack is three…
a baby…
he doesn’t know what is going on…
She rings the bell,
her hands are shaking,
she considers picking up her baby and running, but to where?
The door opens,
she turns and takes a step away,
her heart feels so heavy she thinks she is going to die and she walks away,
she turns the corner,
her legs give way,
she falls to the ground,

she cries until there are no more tears left to shed…

This process is called “Reframing” where you actually change the perception of the memory.
It doesn’t change history, he was put up for adoption and he was adopted and then returned, he was rejected, but now his view of the villains in these memories changed.

No longer villains, they were victims also.
I found a new appreciation for reframing a person’s perceptions.
I also found a new appreciation for the power of forgiveness.

After the session was over, he seemed like a different boy.
He was smiling and happy.
His parents, who had just seen their son angry and hostile, were surprised to see him in such a happy mood so quickly.

I don't know what will happen with Jack.
I hope that between his loving family, his intelligence, his emotional growth, and continued counseling, he will learn how to forgive and to trust people again.
I do know that it has been a learning and growing experience not just for Jack and his family, but for me also.
It has also been an experience that I will remember and cherish;
being part of the evolution of this young man’s life.
After all, that is why we are all here on this planet...
to learn and grow.

Jack and Anger Management - Part 2

2009-11-09T00:14:00.004-05:00

Synopsis,
This posting is a follow-up to a previous article titled “Anger Management and the Adolescent Child”.
http://hyp4lifellc.blogspot.com/2008/08/anger-management-article.html
In this, Part 2, I review what has happened since Jack’s initial sessions and the two most recent sessions. I describe why I realized I had to change my approach to help Jack with his anger management issues. In Part 3, I describe how I went from directing him to accept his anger to using forgiveness to allow him to control and hopefully eliminate his anger.

In my posting titled “Anger Management and the Adolescent Child”
http://hyp4lifellc.blogspot.com/2008/08/anger-management-article.html
I introduced you to Jack. A fourteen and a half year old, adopted young man with many emotional problems, not the least was the inability to manage his anger.
I have seen Jack ten times since then and he is now almost 16 (“15 and ¾” according to Jack).

His anger has continued to cause major complications and problems in his life, his parent’s lives and the lives of those around him.

Our last session was in late October 2009, when we had what I feel was a major breakthrough.
I made a decision to change the direction I was taking with Jack in his attempt to understand, accept and control his anger. This decision to change my approach with Jack actually started in late August, when I received an email from his mother and I knew without speaking on the phone, that Jack and his parents were having a very bad time.

I scheduled our session for mid September 2009, right after the start of the 2009/10 school year. At that session, I found out the Jack had been having many uncontrollable fits of rage.

His mother, Diane told me on the phone, that while on vacation in August to the Grand Canyon, with the family, he had a meltdown; cursing, screaming and was totally out of control.
Jack’s parents did not know what triggered the explosion.
“One minute he was fine, not talking a lot, but fine. When Peter (Jack’s father) said that he couldn’t buy a trinket, he blew up! We had no clue it was going to happen. One minute everything was fine and the next there was complete bedlam.” After calming down, Jack realized that he was wrong, but realized that he was totally unable to control his anger and he asked Diane to set up an appointment with me.

She also relayed a recent incident that happened at school, which ended with EMS being called to transport Jack to the hospital for observation. At the school and in the hospital, he was totally non-communicative. He would later tell us at that session that it was his attempt to control himself so he wouldn’t explode again. His method to control the anger from erupting was to totally shut off, saying that if he had said anything, he knew he would again lose control and once again explode. He was showing control in the attempt, but I needed to show him another way of controlling his anger, but I was running out of ideas.

Our appointment was on a Monday and when Jack, Diane and Peter came into my office, Jack seemed very upset, biting his lip, very sullen, referring to his parents as “he” and “she”. His parents described what had happened the day before. The argument had gotten so loud and out of control, that Jack said it got physical, describing how his mother grabbed him around his throat.

After a discussion involving how there are two sides to every story or argument, I got most of the facts needed and unfortunately, I saw a side of Jack that I had never seen before and it really concerned me.

This was another fight over Jack hearing the word “NO”, but it went entirely out of control. His father who told him that he couldn’t do something (what the something was, in fact, was unimportant) and Jack again exploded. Throwing things yelling at his father and culminating with Jack screaming at both parents…

“You are not my parents and never will be!” as he stormed away from them.

Diane explained that, that is when she physically restrained him, in order to calm the situation down.

In our past sessions, I felt that if he was conflicted by his anger, he needed to accept his anger in order to control it. Now he was accepting his anger so well, he was using it as a weapon to hurt the two people in the world who had proven to him that they would never reject him.

And now he was rejecting them!

I realized that the direction I was taking with Jack; specifically the acceptance of his anger did him a disservice.
I knew that if we could help him eliminate the anger, there would be no need to control it.

Eliminating anger is always preferable to simply controlling it, but again… how?

I knew that he had to accept the pain of growing up and that what was done, was done.
There was no changing history and the only way he would be able to get on with his life was to forgive everyone who hurt him.

I knew that without finding that forgiveness for all the people in his life who had betrayed him, any time he felt the least bit of understandable or justified anger, he would explode, automatically releasing all the pent up pain, rejection, anger and fury inappropriately at everyone near him.

The two people who warranted that release of anger the least and who unfortunately received it the most were his parents.

“Did that happen?” I asked Jack, “Did you really say that your parents?”
He simply said, “Yes…” with no eye contact.

I knew he was apologetic and wondered if his parents heard a real apology;
not just a gratuitous, “sorry…”

I continued, “Do you really feel that way? That they aren’t your parents and never will be?”
He again simply shook his head, no and again with no eye contact.
His sadness was palpable.

“Jack” I said, “Sometimes when you explode, you don’t think clearly and you can say things, really hurtful things, like what you said to your Mom and Dad, but you don’t mean them.
When these things are said, you want to take them back, but feel that it’s too late. So you want to apologize but you feel you can’t. Do you know what I’m saying?”

He looked up and nodded in agreement, in a way that I knew, he agreed with my assessment of the situation.

I continued, “Jack… Do you think that your mother would ever reject you? Now don’t answer right away… think about it…”

Without a second’s hesitation, he looked up at me, then to Diane, shaking his head, saying strongly… “NO!, she wouldn’t”

“Your father?” I asked. This time he hesitated a second, mulled over the question, took a deep breath and said truthfully and definitively… “No, he wouldn’t reject me either.”

“Do you absolutely believe that?” I asked
“You are not just saying that… It is what you truly believe?
Your parents WOULD NOT… EVER REJECT YOU?... Right?” He quietly nodded “yes”

“If you believe that, then, do you know how much it hurt these two people” referring to his parents" to hear those words from your mouth?”

As he looked up at them, tears were starting to form in his eyes (along with his father’s, his mother’s and mine).

The next posting will be next week and will conclude this 3 part Posting, reviewing the change in the way I used hypnotic intervention in Jack’s situation.

Claustrophobia, Elevators, Hypnosis and Michelle Part 2

2009-08-28T23:21:00.003-04:00

Synopsis,
In Part 2 of this posting, I describe our hypnosis session and what was uncovered. Three days after our session, I spoke with Michelle’s mother who described the effects of our session. I offer my evaluation and comments on this hypnotic intervention.

Claustrophobia, Elevators, Hypnosis and Michelle Part 2

Michelle felt comfortable having her mother present during the session,
so the three of us moved from the waiting room in the front of my office
to my office to the back,
where Michelle sat on my recliner and her mother sat on a chair in the doorway.

The session began with new age type music;
Steven Halpern’s “Higher Ground”,
playing in the background.

I used a standard hypnotic “induction” called progressive relaxation and when Michelle allowed herself to relax and go into “the altered state” of hypnosis, I deepened her trance state by bringing her to a very safe place.

Michelle was a great hypnotic subject.
In a comparison to the general public,
regarding the ability to go deeply into hypnosis,
she is probably in the top 10 percent,
going very quickly, easily and deeply into “Somnambulism” (the most effective state of hypnosis).

When I work with a new client,
I must plan the session I will use with them, as we are talking.
The “small talk” is very important for me because I get insight to decide which hypnotic techniques from the hundreds available, is right for my client.

In talking with Michelle and her mother,
I decided that a combination of three techniques,
which I have used before, in cases like Michelle’s,
would probably work very effectively.

My plan for Michelle was to use
-“Parts Therapy” to identify the claustrophobic part of Michelle that was so fearful of elevators and once that part is found,
I would use;
-“Regression Therapy” to go back in time to the very first time this fearful part was formed.
This “First time” experience is known as the “ISE” The Initial Sensitizing Event and sets the foundation for the fear to grow;
and finally
-“Gestalt Therapy” to change her perception of the fear itself,
in order to eliminate the fear completely and permanently.

After Michelle was in a deep hypnotic state, I had her seek out that claustrophobic part of her subconscious (Parts Therapy).

When that part was found, we worked together to get in touch with how Michelle physically felt when in an elevator.
We followed that feeling to earlier and earlier times in her life
(Regression Therapy), until we found the ISE.

Her ISE was when she was four years old in Disneyworld.
She recalled being in her father’s arms as they were entering an elevator.
He reacted to the thought of being in an elevator with a powerful panic attack, running out of the elevator.

She realized that that was why she became claustrophobic.
Her father, who was her protector, demonstrated that there is something to desperately fear when in an elevator.

She was shown, exactly how and why this fear was accepted by her four year old self (Gestalt Therapy)
and with a little more insight,
she realized that the fear was not truly hers,
but an adopted fear that was no longer necessary.

Her hypnosis session went absolutely perfectly!

When the session was over, Mary said that she remembered the elevator experience but never realized that it was that experience that caused Michelle’s fear.

Michelle said that although she now remembers the experience, the memory had been repressed.

We went back out to my waiting room to discuss the session in greater detail.

I wanted to know what concerns Michelle still had.

For people who have just experienced hypnotic intervention for the relief of a phobia, the greatest concern is the “What-If’s”.
Specifically, What if it didn’t work?

When I brought up the “What-if” concern, both Mary and Michelle said that that was their largest concern.

My response to the What-if’s, is that she must challenge herself.

My suggestion was to go directly to the Rockaway Mall and go into every elevator in the place.

Challenging herself to gain back the control that she had lost.
To challenge herself to gain control and not let the fear control her any longer.

When they left my office, I felt absolutely confident that Michelle was going to be fear free and would gain control back in her life.

Three day later, I received a call from Mary.
“Garry, I have to tell you…”

Her tone of voice concerned me, quiet and serious.

“Damn” I thought,
her tone of voice sounds as if the fear that Michelle had was still present.
I was truly surprised.
Michelle’s session was picture perfect.
I would not have changed a single thing about the session; it was that perfect!
So why did I get the feeling that I was going to hear some bad news about the results of our session?

I was overreacting and wrong…

“I can’t express to you the results of your session with Michelle”
Mary started,
“Except to say, Thank you so, so much!”

I felt as if a weight was removed from my shoulders!
I was relieved, happy and curious as to how they knew so quickly that the phobia was gone.

“As you suggested, when we left you we went straight to the Rockaway Mall.
We went into every single elevator there and guess what?...
Not only did she have no fear at all,
but she was actually laughing in the elevator.”

When someone with fears similar to Michelle’s,
has had a lifelong phobia and gains their control back,
it is not uncommon for them to laugh
when they are in a situation that would have caused a phobic attack.

Laughter is the indication that they are aware of the fact that they are no longer controlled by their fear.
The laughter is the release they feel when the fear is replaced by a sense of control.

I always appreciate feedback from my clients. Some email me and I am thrilled to post their comments on my website.

When I heard how good Michelle was doing, I felt thankful that I was able to help a young person eliminate a fear that had been ruining her life and had brought her such heartache.

Even though it was Michelle who obviously gained the most from our session, each and every session I have, where I can contribute to someone’s happiness, I also gain.
I am thankful for that opportunity to participate in a situation where there is mutual joy and closure.

If you are interested to learn more about fears and phobias, look at my 3 part article “PHOBIAS A to Z”

http://hyp4lifellc.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

http://hyp4lifellc.blogspot.com/2009/05/phobias-from-to-z-part-2.html

http://hyp4lifellc.blogspot.com/2009/05/phobias-from-to-z-part-3.html

Claustrophobia, Elevators, Hypnosis and Michelle- Part 1

2009-08-09T18:13:00.003-04:00

Synopsis;
This 2 part entry is about Michelle (not her real name) a 19 year old High School graduate who is going to be attending college in the fall of 2009. She has claustrophobia which manifests specifically in a fear of elevators and enclosed spaces. In Part 1, I describe in general, my experience with working with people who have phobias; getting a call from Michelle’s mother; my first impressions and the specific plan I decided to use to help Michelle eliminate this phobia and be able to fearlessly get on with her life.

Claustrophobia, Elevators, Hypnosis and Michelle Part 1

The elimination of fears may be one of my most favorite hypnosis sessions.
I do believe there is no other type of intervention that has such a powerful and immediately positive result as hypnotic intervention for the purpose of eliminating a phobia.

When people come to my office for the elimination of fears or phobias, it is as if they are sitting there in the waiting room, with a dark cloud over their head. Phobic people are consumed with their particular phobia.
If they are not currently in the midst of a phobic attack, which can manifest from a mild discomfort to a full blown panic attack, they are constantly dreading and anticipating the emergence of the symptoms.

Very often fears or phobias take on a life of their own;
compounding, strengthening and sucking the joy from the person’s life.
Often the phobic person’s fear has been ruining their lives for as long as they can remember.

There are many different types and causes of phobias (see my blog posting “Phobias from A to Z”)
http://hyp4lifellc.blogspot.com/search/label/Phobias

There are also many commonalities between people with phobias.
-These fears are very often lifelong fears.
-They tend to become stronger over the years and manifest in other areas in the person’s life.
-The victim of a phobia feels hopeless and helpless against their fear.
-They feel alone in their fear; that no one truly can understand how the fear affects them.
-That no one takes their fear seriously; saying thing like, “just deal with it” or “Get over it, you’re such a wimp!”
-Often their self respect is negatively affected and they feel weak and helpless against it.
-The phobia itself becomes a tangible entity always present, ready to pounce and steal away what little joy the victim has left.

But, perhaps the most common and debilitating commonality is the “Tag Team” of “Anticipatory Anxiety” and the “Self-Fulfilling Prophesy”.
I call them a tag team because that is how they work; in tandem.
Anticipating the phobia, sets the stage for it to happen and unfortunately it almost always comes true.

Michelle’s mother Mary (not her real name) called me with many concerns for her daughter.
Mary said that Michelle would be attending college in the fall of 2009 and there were elevators in the dorm.
When Michelle saw them her phobias went into high gear.
Mary also told me that Michelle had been coping with the fear of elevators and enclosed places, by avoiding them.
She had sought therapy, but it didn’t help and she was curious if hypnosis could help her daughter.
We made an appointment for the following week.

In the office, my first impression was that Michelle was an attractive eighteen year old who reminded me of my daughter, when she was a senior in the same high school.

As I normally do, I began the session with introductions and a brief biography about how I became involved with hypnosis; how hypnosis works; the conscious and sub-conscious mind; etc.
The reason for this small talk in the beginning is for many and specific reasons.
It allows people to get comfortable with me and it allows me to decide on which of the hundreds of hypnotic interventions available for me to use, is right for my client.
I allow extra time for what may seem to be “small talk” but in fact it is critical, so everyone is calm and relaxed, before we begin the hypnotherapeutic part of the session.

I observed that Michelle was a bit nervous, which is very common and normal, but there was more.
She wanted it to work so badly and wanted to get right to the hypnosis.
Some people, who come to see me for the first time, may be a bit nervous and want to talk before the hypnosis session begins.
Michelle seemed distracted and I sensed that she did not want to talk at all. My sense was that she wanted to get right on with the hypnosis; small talk was unnecessary.

I asked her if my hunch was correct…
that she was OK with hypnosis,
that she felt and hoped it would work and that she just wanted to do it and hopefully she would be “cured” of this fear that has taken the joy from her life.

After explaining that I needed to know some more information from her, she relaxed and became less anxious to begin. I told her that we could get started as soon as I had all the information I needed.

Michelle relayed to me how the fear ruined her life;
How she had an opportunity to see the taping of the Tyra Banks TV show
and as soon as she saw the elevator she couldn’t go in the building,
causing annoyance to her friends and fear, embarrassment and frustration to Michelle;
how her boyfriend is losing patience with having to adjust his social life to accommodate her fears,
along with a few more situations when her life was negatively impacted by her fear.

I then asked her if she always had this fear and if anyone else in the family had similar phobias. She said that her fear was present for as long as she could remember and Mary offered the (important) fact that Michelle’s father and she had similar phobias. With a half smile, Mary suggested that perhaps “Michelle got it from us”, meaning her parents.

I explained to them both that phobias are not genetic or hereditary; they are environmentally started.

I felt that the fear started with a panic attack her father or mother experienced when Michelle was little and the fear imprinted in the subconscious of Michelle’s young mind.

I described to both Mary and Michelle, what I planned to do.
Under hypnosis, I would have Michelle enter “The Hallway of Her Mind”,
seeking the “Part” of her that is frightened of enclosed places like elevators.
Once we allow the memory to come out of the sub-conscious,
I can then do a process called “Reframing”
where I actually change the way Michelle felt about the memory.

The important thing to remember is that we do not eliminate the memory…
we can’t.
But we can change the way the person feels about the memory and thus, eliminating the fear associated with the thing that is frightening them so badly.

In the next posting
“Claustrophobia, Elevators, Hypnosis and Michelle Part 2”,
I will describe how the hypnosis session went and what was uncovered.
Three days after our session,
I spoke with Michelle’s mother who described the results and my evaluation and comments on this hypnotic intervention.

Our Changing Times - Our Amazing Times

2009-06-20T18:42:00.003-04:00

It is Saturday 6/20/2009 and it’s raining…
It has been raining now for three straight weeks in a row and it feels like three months in a row. I feel like a moldy wet rag and I can’t wait to see blue sky and the sun again.

My wife is at work and I have the house to myself.
I have been struggling with a two-month-old writers block, but I have recently been feeling the urge (need) to write.

So here I sit, at my kitchen, looking out into the wet, grey sky. Feeling blah…

I have my laptop on the table, open to my book,
“Spiritual Evolution- A Journey from Atheism to Spirituality”…
I notice that for whatever reason, I am distracted.
I have the TV on CNN and I am engrossed by what I am seeing.

Iran… What had been the “Axis of Evil” ...our enemy…
Is in the midst of another revolution.

The first thirty years ago was bad for the US but worse for the world.

Religious extremism of any type… Muslim, Christian, Jew is simply wrong.

Now images of young Iranians putting their lives at risk in support of their freedom are on CNN and I can’t break away.
I see the bodies of young Iranians, lying bloody; being carried by their friends and relatives and my thoughts and prayers go to these young freedom fighters.

I ask myself, Why is it that one small group of people who are in control of a larger group, always seem to resort to violence to keep that control?

And I think of how sometimes, I take the precious gift of our freedom for granted.

The rain outside my window suddenly seemed less dreary;
the clouds seemed less grey.

In comparison to what was happening half the world away I feel embarrassed by my own selfishness and self centeredness.

I am brought back to the early 1960’s with JFK as our president when I was a naïve, idealistic pre-teen.
The way I felt about our great country was to be challenged when that great man fell.
With each shameful act of violence to keep control, my idealism faded and my cynicism grew.
Robert Kennedy,Martin Luther King,
It seemed as soon as there was someone to believe in, someone else was there who didn’t believe and resorted to violence to stop any new hope.

Again, my hope returned with the promise of the Clinton administration,
only to be disappointed by the man himself, but not his message.

Now I am sitting at my same old kitchen table,
watching my same old TV and trying to write in my book,
but I am witness to an amazing change in a country thousands of miles away
that will not allow me to do anything but sit and watch change, in action.

This change for freedom is being accomplished by the voice of the Iranian people and I am brought to the recent change in our country.

Our change was peaceful, organized and a polar shift from the previous administration, with no violence.

How great is this country?

And I am once again an idealist no longer naïve; too much life experience in these 59 year old bones, hardened by too many “What could have been’s”.

But here I am again,
Mr. Idealist and proud to be one.

Now, always the optimist, even when I have been disappointed so often, I look at the TV and think of the “What If’s”.

I think back to the time, seven months ago on Election Day 2008 (Another memory that will always remain with me).

10 pm watching MSNBC and thinking
“He might actually do it! Obama may be the first African American president of the United States of America”.

I remember thinking that this man, may be “The One…”
The one that Kennedy could have been, given the chance.

But, Obama is different than all the rest or at least it feels that way to me… This time I don’t think I will be disappointed.

I gave myself the audacity to think... “What if”.

And at 11pm when Keith Obermann said
“MSNBC now projects that Barack Obama IS the next president of the US”, with my jaw agape and a tear in my eye, I thought “What if?”

What if he can change the view the world has of my country?
What if he can bring us together?
What if this was just the beginning of the changes?

"What If" there is the same change in Iran?
And now I am sitting at the same old table…
In the same chair…
Watching the same TV… on the same channel,
But the world could be very different tomorrow…
What if we could actually have World Peace, for our children?!

This is certainly an amazing time to be alive on this planet.

PHOBIAS from A to Z - Part 3

2009-05-10T23:59:00.002-04:00

Synopsis;
In this, the third posting on Phobias, I write about how hypnosis can help with the removal of phobias; the hypnotic method I use to control and eliminate phobias and a case study of a client who had a lifelong fear of the water but no longer has Hydrophobia - Fear of water.

How hypnosis helps

There are many “tools” a hypnotherapist has at his disposal. I tend to combine different tools to make the most effective therapy for each client.

No two people are the same, so through combining different proven therapies and techniques, I offer each client an individualized plan of action; this is at the core of “Transpersonal Hypnotherapy”.

I have found that the most powerful and effective method of eliminating phobias is to combine two different hypnotic techniques; “Parts Therapy” and “Regression Therapy”.

Parts Therapy, is a technique developed in the 1950’s by Charles Tebbetts, a hypnotherapist who found that you can have a dialog with a “Part” of a person’s subconscious.

Regression Therapy is a hypnotic technique used to have a person go back in time to where the fear started.

Combining the two works very effectively to find the memory that caused the phobia and then with other therapies, eliminate the fear and give back control to the person.

Under hypnosis, a person with a phobia is directed to a comfortable place and given the suggestion that they are safe and have survived whatever caused the fear.

Once I determine the source of the phobia and more importantly the person remembers what had been a repressed memory, the power and fear the memory had had is greatly diminished.

Case Study on Hydrophobia - Sue

This is a case study of a young woman who was able to overcome her lifelong fear of the water with one hypnosis session.

Sue (not her real name) called, asking about the effectiveness of hypnosis for stopping a phobia of water. She described her fear as “not afraid of showers, but I never take a bath!” Her voice shook as she even mentioned a bath.

She continued describing how she never goes in a pool or the beach, that she can’t swim and was deathly afraid of being on a boat.

We made an appointment for the following Monday. It would be our first and only session.

At the beginning of her session, she relayed how the phobia was being controlled by avoiding the places where she would be around water.

“I have been able to deal really well with the fear, I just don’t go in a pool, a lake, the beach or the ocean. I take showers instead of a bath. I never put myself in a situation when I would take a cruise or be on the water. So I felt that I didn’t need any help, I dealt with the fear by avoiding water and I was fine. But I now have a major problem and it will ruin my life if I can’t fix it.”

She relayed to me that she is a single mother of a nine year old boy.
She is engaged to a wonderful man who loves her and her son.
Her fiancée wants to marry her and adopt her son.

She described a perfect relationship and then informed me of the majorly huge hurdle in her life.

“He has a house on Lake Hopatcong, with a dock and a speed boat” she said as if telling me he had a terminal disease.

“He loves his boat! He is on the lake every weekend and all summer long!
His friends, who I love, all have boats!
Our whole social life is on the water!
My son loves being there with him and he wants me to go out so badly, but as soon as I step foot on the dock, I start to shake!
Once he actually had to carry me off the dock!
PLEASE, PLEASE HELP ME!”

I told her that hypnosis can help.

Fortunately, she was an excellent hypnotic subject, who went almost immediately into a very deep state of hypnosis.
As I described earlier, I brought out her “fearful part” and had that part of her “Regress” - go back in time to the very first time she was aware of her hydrophobia.

Without going into great detail, I had her go to a time when she wasn’t afraid of water and then “Progressed” her to a time when she was fearful.

As I observed her, a memory reflected through the expression on her face.

“I was 9 years old…” she said in a faint whisper.

“My parents wanted me to learn how to swim, so we went to the lake (Hopatcong) and they hired a lifeguard to teach me…”

“Oh my God, I see it all so clearly…” she said, her eyes closed, yet I could see her eyes moving left and right.

“We went into the water which was up to my neck. The lifeguard held me so I was on my stomach. He told me to breathe when he said I should and he held my face in the water and turned my head up yelling

‘BREATH!...
HOLD!...
BREATH!’

He kept holding my head underwater, pulling me out only when I was choking!...”

Whispering, “I never remembered that until this very moment”, tears streaming down her face.

I then did some hypnotic techniques called “Reframing” where she gained back the control that had been taken from her.

After the session, she thanked me and I told her the only way she will know for sure that she is phobia free is to test herself on the boat. She agreed, with the comment, I'll call you for another appointment if it doesn't work.

That weekend my phone rang and it was Sue, she was on her cell phone.

There was a lot of noise in the background.

“Garry?” she said.

“I wanted to thank you for saving my life!”

I think she was exaggerating, but the feeling you get when you realize a joy-draining phobia is eliminated can make a person exaggerate a little.

“I am calling from the boat!"

"Me and my new family we are on the lake! I can’t believe it… It is so much fun! Thank you so much!”

If you are plagued by a phobia, you don’t have to deal with it, you can eliminate it and realize how much better your life can be phobia-free!

PHOBIAS from A to Z - Part 2

2009-05-02T22:58:00.003-04:00

Synopsis; In this, the second posting on Phobias, I write about how the natural process of the primitive part of the brain contributes to the acquisition of phobias; how phobias form; the hypnotic method I use to control and eliminate phobias.

In the last posting “Phobias from A to Z – Part 1”, I describe how the primitive brain effects the “Fight or Flight” instinct.
In the cave man example, you can see how, because it was so necessary to react instantly to perceived threats, the functioning of the primitive brain was essential for survival of the human race.

Keep in mind, that the cause (the killing of a clan member) of the Fight or Flight instinct would be repressed.

The horror of witnessing the killing of a loved one would be blocked from the awareness of the young clan member by their subconscious.

However, the reaction to seeing a jaguar (the symbol of the horror) would result in an immediate, critical and unthinking response.
You may say that the young clan member had a phobia of jaguars.

In modern society, the threat to your survival is much more complex than those of ancient times. Say what you will, the society we live in today is obviously more civil than that of primitive times. The human brain has also advanced, but still, at its’ core is the same primitive brain stem that helped our ancient ancestors to survive and become the modern day human being.

Our subconscious has many functions, not all are yet known to us. It is a protector, a servant, and the storehouse of knowledge, memories, emotions, habits and much more.

Referring again, to the caveman analogy from Part 1, you can see why the function of repressing the horrific memory, while automatically causing a fight or flight reaction, was critical to survival.

However, in a society where we are not threatened with life or death on a daily basis, the function that was essential to the survival of a primitive man is now, in a modern society, contributing to the manifestation of so many phobias.

How do phobias form?

Generally speaking, phobias can form in two ways.
In an adult, a phobia can form after a severe traumatic experience, such as a plane crash or a life threatening accident. In a traumatic experience, you can understand how a phobia could start. These phobias are usually temporary and fade with time.

Phobias formed in childhood are much more common and devastating.
When a child, between two and seven is witness to a traumatic experience (or a perceived traumatic experience) their primitive brain stem reacts the same as a primitive man; repressing the specific memory and triggering the “Fight or Flight Response”.
The memory of the traumatic incident is buried or repressed, again, by the subconscious, but the reaction to seeing the symbol of the trauma is reacted to in the same way our ancestors did.

Each time the repressed memory is stirred, whether by seeing or experiencing something that would stir that memory, the phobic reaction is stirred.
The reaction stirred by these repressed memories present themselves as phobias, each time the repressed memory is stimulated.
The phobic person will feel a variety of emotions, from mild discomfort to a full-blown panic attack.

Phobic Commonalities

“…I always had the fear of public speaking. Every time I needed to speak in front of people, my face would get red hot, I’d sweat… my voice would shake, I couldn’t breath. I assumed that I had ALWAYS been that way. I didn’t know any different. Then when I was hypnotized, the memory of my 2nd grade class came to me, my teacher and the kids in the class laughing at me; it all came back… I finally remembered and understood why I had the phobia. And it stopped! I couldn’t and still can’t believe it, but it worked!...”

a quote from Phil, a Police Captain with a severe public speaking phobia.
One common feeling many people with phobias have is the lack of knowledge or understanding of where and why they have their particular phobia.
Many people, who have had hypnotic intervention for the relief of a phobia, have told me that they remembered how and why the phobia began, only after being hypnotized.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy of a phobia.

“…Sometimes I think I will get an attack, and it happens, I’ll be fine until the
thought of chocking comes into my mind and then it happens…”,

a quote from Mary, a 47 year old who had a fear of chocking her whole life.
Very often sufferers of phobias will actually predict an attack happening.
This self-fulfilling prophesy aspect of phobias are common to all phobias.
Unfortunately, when you allow a thought to come into your mind, it is an exercise in futility to get it out. When you anticipate it happening it will happen.

The Anticipatory Anxiety factor; the third commonality…

“… I live with the phobia, I stay inside, but I also live with the fear of when it will happen; it can be worse than the fear itself… I live 24-7 with either the fear of seeing a bird or the fear of the phobia of seeing a bird”,

a quote from Karen, a 50 year old hairstylist with a fear of birds.
The fear of the phobia becomes worse than the fear itself. When a phobia is so ingrained, a person has no joy in their life because it (the phobia) is all they think of.

When you are in the midst of a phobic attack, you feel that you are alone in your fear and there is nothing that you can do!

It controls you and you are powerless to take that control back.

It takes on a presence of its own. All too often, people who have phobias will try to simply, avoid any chance of being where their phobia may be activated.
If you have a fear of birds, like Karen, you stay indoors.

If, like Phil, you have a public speaking phobia, you would never put yourself in a position to be speaking in front of a crowd.

However, what if you must deal with a phobia?

You can go to “Talk Therapy”, where you can discuss where and when it started and if you find the cause, you can find closure and cure.

You may learn coping strategies to “live with” the phobia.

However, if the function of the subconscious is the protector that will block the painful memory that causes the phobia AND is the store room for all your memories, it becomes quite difficult to determine where and when it started.
The place, the subconscious, which has the information for you to understand why you have a phobia, is the same place that is designed to keep that information from you.
I call this a phobic’s “Catch-22” and it is no joking matter.

I combine two hypnosis processes for the elimination of phobias. Combining Parts Therapy with Regression Therapy, works very powerfully to allow the sufferer of a phobia, get their life back.

In the next posting, titled “Phobias A to Z - Part 3” I will describe how hypnosis helps a phobic person eliminate the phobia and describe a case study about Sue, a single mom with a lifelong phobia of water- hydrophobia.

Feel free to make a comment on y blog, I will be happy to post it.

PHOBIAS from A to Z - Part 1

2009-04-10T00:20:00.003-04:00

Synopsis;
In this posting I cover the subject of phobias. There is a listing of many phobias in alphabetical order and a lighthearted and serious view of phobias. I also give definitions of phobias, the brain the functioning of the sub-conscious and its effect on the conscious mind and how the brain forms phobias.

Phobias from A to Z

Fears and phobias have been with us since we first walked the planet.
They have been the subject of stories around a campfire, of books, of short stories, movies, radio shows, television and more.

As you can see from the following list, there are hundreds of phobias;
some seem understandable like Lilapsophobia – the fear of tornadoes;
some seem silly like Dendrophobia – the fear of trees;
some seem obvious like Aichmophobia – the fear of needles;
some seem bizarre like Octophobia – the fear of the number 8;
some seem strange like Barophobia – the fear of gravity;
some seem exhausting like Somniphobia – the fear of sleep;
some seem redundant like Phobophobia – the fear of phobias;
some make sense like Atychiphobia – the fear of failure
and
some seem common, like the number 1 phobia in the world...
Glossophobia - Fear of speaking in public.

Below is an alphabetical listing of just some phobias…

Achluophobia - Fear of darkness.
Acrophobia - Fear of heights.
Agliophobia - Fear of pain.
Agoraphobia - Fear of open spaces or crowds.
Aichmophobia - Fear of needles or pointed objects.
Amaxophobia - Fear of riding in a car.
Androphobia - Fear of men.
Anginophobia - Fear of angina or choking.
Anthrophobia - Fear of flowers.
Anthropophobia - Fear of people or society.
Aphenphosmphobia - Fear of being touched.
Arachnophobia - Fear of spiders.
Arithmophobia - Fear of numbers.
Astraphobia - Fear of thunder and lightening.
Ataxophobia - Fear of disorder or untidiness.
Atelophobia - Fear of imperfection.
Atychiphobia - Fear of failure.
Autophobia - Fear of being alone.
Bacteriophobia - Fear of bacteria.
Barophobia - Fear of gravity.
Bathmophobia - Fear of stairs or steep slopes.
Batrachophobia - Fear of amphibians.
Belonephobia - Fear of pins and needles.
Bibliophobia - Fear of books.
Botanophobia - Fear of plants.
Cacophobia - Fear of ugliness.
Catagelophobia - Fear of being ridiculed.
Catoptrophobia - Fear of mirrors.
Chionophobia - Fear of snow.
Chromophobia - Fear of colors.
Chronomentrophobia - Fear of clocks.
Claustrophobia - Fear of confined spaces.
Coulrophobia - Fear of clowns.
Cyberphobia - Fear of computers.
Cynophobia - Fear of dogs.
Dendrophobia - Fear of trees.
Dentophobia - Fear of dentists.
Domatophobia - Fear of houses.
Dystychiphobia - Fear of accidents.
Ecophobia - Fear of the home.
Elurophobia - Fear of cats.
Entomophobia - Fear of insects.
Ephebiphobia - Fear of teenagers.
Equinophobia - Fear of horses.
Gamophobia - Fear of marriage.
Genuphobia - Fear of knees.
Glossophobia - Fear of speaking in public.
Gynophobia - Fear of women.
Heliophobia - Fear of the sun.
Hemophobia - Fear of blood.
Herpetophobia - Fear of reptiles.
Hydrophobia - Fear of water.
Iatrophobia - Fear of doctors.
Insectophobia - Fear of insects.
Koinoniphobia - Fear of rooms.
Leukophobia - Fear of the color white.
Lilapsophobia - Fear of tornadoes and hurricanes.
Lockiophobia - Fear of childbirth.
Mageirocophobia - Fear of cooking.
Megalophobia - Fear of large things.
Melanophobia - Fear of the color black.
Microphobia - Fear of small things.
Mysophobia - Fear of dirt and germs.
Necrophobia - Fear of death or dead things.
Noctiphobia - Fear of the night.
Nosocomephobia - Fear of hospitals.
Obesophobia - Fear of gaining weight.
Octophobia - Fear of the number 8.
Ombrophobia - Fear of rain.
Ophidiophobia - Fear of snakes.
Ornithophobia - Fear of birds.
Papyrophobia - Fear of paper.
Pathophobia - Fear of disease.
Pedophobia - Fear of children.
Philophobia - Fear of love.
Phobophobia - Fear of phobias.
Podophobia - Fear of feet.
Porphyrophobia - Fear of the color purple.
Pteridophobia - Fear of ferns.
Pteromerhanophobia - Fear of flying.
Pyrophobia - Fear of fire.
Scolionophobia - Fear of school.
Selenophobia - Fear of the moon.
Sociophobia - Fear of social evaluation.
Somniphobia - Fear of sleep.
Tachophobia - Fear of speed.
Technophobia - Fear of technology.
Tonitrophobia - Fear of thunder.
Trypanophobia - Fear of injections.
Venustraphobia - Fear of beautiful women.
Verminophobia - Fear of germs.
Wiccaphobia - Fear of witches and witchcraft.
Xenophobia - Fear of strangers or foreigners.
Zoophobia - Fear of animals.

The one thing that all phobias have in common, (actually, there are many more than “one thing”) is that they are no laughing matter for the millions of people who suffer from them.

A phobia that may seem silly or insignificant to you may be ruining the life of its victim.
People who suffer from phobias are in a constant state of apprehension and fear.
They are haunted by their fear both day and night,
by what is causing it;
by when it will happen again;
if they will ever be able to control it;
will they be embarrassed by their phobic attack?

Their lives are controlled by their particular phobia
and they are helpless to control their fears
and because they are helpless, they become hopeless.

Fortunately, I have found a very effective tool to help people with phobias gain control over their fears
and with this control, comes hope and finally a life free from debilitating fear.

The tool I am referring to is Hypnosis;
specifically PARTS Therapy.
Started in the 1950’s by Charles Tebbetts, this therapy goes directly to the “part” of the subconscious where the phobia resides, or more accurately…hides.

In order to understand and overcome the debilitating effects of a phobia, we first must thoroughly understand exactly what a phobia is, how it works from the subconscious and how it was formed.
Then, armed with that understanding a person with a phobia has the tools to overcome it;
to live a happier, normal fear-free life.

So…

“What is a Phobia?”

“Medline Plus” describes a phobia as

“…a type of anxiety disorder. It is a strong, irrational fear of something that poses little or no actual danger. There are many specific phobias. Acrophobia is a fear of heights. You may be able to ski the world's tallest mountains but be unable to go above the 5th floor of an office building. Agoraphobia is a fear of public places, and claustrophobia is a fear of closed-in places. If you become anxious and extremely self-conscious in everyday social situations, you could have a social phobia. Other common phobias involve tunnels, highway driving, water, flying, animals and blood...”

Wikipedia has a longer description and describes a phobia as

“…a morbid fear; an irrational, intense, persistent fear of certain situations,
activities, things, or people. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive, unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject. When the fear is beyond one's control, or if the fear is interfering with daily life it is considered a phobia… "
"...Phobias (in the clinical meaning of the term) are the most common form of anxiety disorders. An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 8.7% and 18.1% of Americans suffer from phobias. Broken down by age and gender, the study found that phobias were the most common mental illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25...”
"...Most psychologists and psychiatrists classify phobias into three categories:
Social phobia,
also known as social anxiety disorder - fears involving other people or social situations such as performance anxiety or fears of embarrassment by scrutiny of others, such as eating in public. Social phobia may be further subdivided into generalized social phobia, and specific social phobia, which are cases of anxiety triggered only in specific situations.
Specific phobias -
fear of a single specific panic trigger such as spiders, snakes, dogs, elevators, water,
waves, flying, balloons, catching a specific illness, etc.
Agoraphobia -
a generalized fear of leaving home or a small familiar 'safe' area, and of possible panic attacks that might follow.,,"
The human brain is the center of the human nervous system and is a highly complex organ. It has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over five times as large as the "average brain" of a mammal with the same body size. Most of the expansion comes from the cerebral cortex, a convoluted layer of neural tissue that covers the surface of the forebrain. Especially expanded are the frontal lobes, which are involved in executive functions such as self-control, planning, reasoning, and abstract thought. The portion of the brain devoted to vision is also greatly
enlarged in humans.

The brain is the physical home of the conscious and subconscious…

OK…

We can (and I have) researched the heck out of phobias, but I can never find in my research, where they come from…
How and why they form…

Through working with many people with phobias,
I have found my own method of helping phobic people
and it doesn’t include months and months of talking sessions.

If you have no idea where it came from, what is the point of talking about phobias endlessly?
I feel it only strengthens its hold over you.

As I have described in other posts, the subconscious is the servant to the conscious mind, but by some of the complications it causes, you may disagree with that statement.

Picture this…

You are a caveman,
living a hunter/ gatherer existence.
You are primitive, living with your clan
and you are also hunted by other larger predators.

In order to survive, you must react instantly to a perceived threat.
But how do you instantly react?

Your primitive brain comes into play with the “Fight or Flight” instinct.
But it is not a true instinct, it must be learned…

So, there you are in the forest,
with your clan,
hunting rabbits,
picking vegetables etc.

You are 5 years old walking behind your mother.
Suddenly a large Jaguar leaps on your older brother,
dragging him screaming, bleeding and dying into the bush!

Your tribe instantly reacts!
The men throw their weapons!
The women grab you and the other small ones and run!
The image is burned into your mind, permanently!

To survive, they reacted instantly…
Fought and Fled and survived.

But, so that you never remember the horror of seeing the death of your brother,
your subconscious mind repressed and blocked the image of the scene from your conscious awareness.

You can’t recall your brother’s death,
but to survive,
it also lets the emotions of the event react in your mind,
each and every time the image of a Jaguar comes to you.

When seeing a Jaguar, from that moment on, you would either fight or flee,
without thought…

reaction MUST be immediate, without thought…
to survive.

So when a Jaguar is seen,
you like all your clan, react immediately almost instinctively,
but you will never remember why you react the way you do;
and you and your clan… survive.

This response is hard wired in our brains right now, from our distant past,
but… what was a survival mechanism then, is now causing phobias.

Webliography
Google
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/phobias.html
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain

In my next posting titled “Phobias A to Z - Part 2”
I will be describing how this survival mechanism from our past, causes our phobias; how phobias are formed; and commonalities between many phobias.
Please feel free to make comments.

Past Life Regression as a Therapy

2009-02-21T22:59:00.000-05:00

Synopsis;
This article is about the therapeutic use of Past Life Regression, a definition of what a Past Life Regression is and how experiencing a Past Life can help you understand yourself better, as taught by Dr. Brian Weiss.

Before reading about Past Life Regressions, it would be helpful to have a working definition of what a PLR is. The following definition is by Florence Wagner McClain of the Llewellyn Encyclopedia http://www.llewellynencyclopedia.com/article/169 and I find to be quite accurate.

"Past life regression is just remembering.
Stored in your subconscious mind are the memories of all of your experiences since you became a soul with the awareness of your individuality. Regression is reaching into those memory banks to recapture the events of past lifetimes.

It isn't so very different from trying to remember events that took place during your early childhood. At first, the memories may be dim and few, but each event remembered sparks another memory and another until it becomes easy.

In one way, you might compare it to an information storage system that has had little or no use for a long period of time. Some of the file drawers are stuck, or rusty. There are a few cobwebs here and there. Dust is thick and fills the air making it difficult to see. Some of the light bulbs have burned out, and the file clerk has taken an extended vacation.
But-a little attention here and there, putting the system on notice that you intend to make extensive use of it, and everything slowly begins to shift into gear. Shortly the system is running efficiently, retrieving the memories and information you request.

There are many ways to get the attention of your 'file clerk,' or gain access to your subconscious. Nearly everyone has experienced a form of spontaneous regression. For example, have you ever met someone for the first time, but felt an immediate kinship as if you were old and intimate friends? You probably were friends in some past lifetime, and the presence of that soul caused your subconscious to produce the proper emotion for that far-past relationship.

Perhaps you have traveled to some strange place only to find that it is familiar to you-you have a feeling of being at home. No doubt it was home to you sometime in the past. These are not uncommon experiences.

Very young children often have fairly clear memories of past lives. Sometimes these memories take the form of daydreams or are acted out in play. Occasionally past life memories are the basis for some of the fears of childhood. The child who is afraid of water may have memories of having drowned in another lifetime. The child who is afraid of the dark or can't bear to be in a confined area may have, at least, the emotional memories of the POW who was kept in the dark or confined in a small cage. Children usually forget past life memories rather quickly as they approach school age.

Some individuals have gained a certain amount of access to their subconscious through the practice of meditation. Probably the most familiar method of gaining access to the subconscious is through conventional hypnosis under the guidance of a trained Hypnotherapist".

Now, with a good definition you can imagine how the knowledge of a past life can affect your present life. If you are new to the concept of Past Lives (PL’s), I am going to confine this article to the basics of the concept. In future articles and workshops, I plan on developing a more detailed explanation of how PL’s can be a very useful therapy.

To be open to and explore the subject of PL’s, we need to make an assumption. You do not have to believe in PL’s, but you should be at least open to the possibility of reincarnation. Reincarnation is the bedrock for the belief in Past Life Regressions (PLR’s), so for the sake of argument, let’s assume that reincarnation is real. Your soul is immortal and uses the physical world as a school to learn, grow, evolve and assist others in their growth.

During a PLR, I will hypnotize you to visualize yourself going back in time, first, to a happy childhood memory.
Then, through the use of regressions we will go back to an earlier time in your life and finally I will have you sense yourself in your mother’s womb.
Next, with the permission of your higher self, we will go back to a place and earlier time that your soul was in another body.
There you experience various significant events in that life, which are affecting your life, now. You will experience your death in that life, which may sound scary, but is really enlightening because it proves to you, that death, is not as permanent as you may have first thought.
After your “death” in that life, your soul goes into “the light”, where you visit with the souls of family that has passed.

Past Life Regression Therapy (PLRT) is the therapeutic use of a past life regression to determine what experiences your soul had in that past life, which is now affecting your current life.
You gain insight as to why certain unexplained thoughts, fears, angers, etc. had bothered you, which suddenly, now make sense.
The therapeutic use of PLR was perfected by Dr. Brian Weiss (www.brianweiss.com) among others; PLRT has helped thousands of people with issues in their current life that could not be helped by more traditional therapeutic techniques.

I had the pleasure and honor to be taught by Dr. Brian Weiss in a week long Past Life Regression Workshop and Advanced PLR workshops that included “Future Life Progression”
(I will be writing and having workshops on that in the future).
At this PLR Workshop there were 150 therapists, doctors, hypnotherapists, teachers from all over the world to learn the PLRT techniques as taught by Dr. Weiss.
As you can imagine there were many, many questions posed to Brian and he answered them all in the loving nurturing way that is so his manner.

I will list some of the more popular questions and give the answers Brian gave.

Do I have to be “Very Deep” in hypnosis to have a PLR?
Not really. If you understand that issues from past lives can affect your current life, then those memories must be very close to the surface, readily accessible, even in a light trance.

How do I know it is a “real” past life experience and not my imagination?
This is a very good question. Therapeutically speaking, if the person has a better life; better able to function in society, with less stress and a better understanding of who he is and the purpose of his life… If he is better able to cope, in general, from the information he receives from a past life…Does it matter if it real or imagination? Of course it didn’t matter…And as Dr. Weiss said… But it IS real!”

How do you know PLRT is real?
I know from experience. As always, I will state that my belief in PLR, along with everything else on my website is my opinion. However, if you want to discuss the subject of real vs. imagination, contact me or enter a question unto this blog.

Can “Bad things” happen from a PLR, like in the movie “Stir of Echo’s”?
PLR is safe and enlightening. The only contraindications for any PLR or regression therapy are in the case of serious mental or emotional conditions. A person should NOT participate in PLR, regression work or hypnosis if they have been diagnosed by a medical practitioner as clinically depressed, bi-polar, manic/depression, etc.

For more information look at my website www.HYP4LIFE.com
More interesting sites

Carol Bowman's website;
http://www.childpastlives.org/

Webliography.
http://www.llewellynencyclopedia.com/article/169
www.brianweiss.com

Group Hypnosis and Telephone Psychics... Buyers Beware

2009-02-12T21:56:00.009-05:00

Synopsis;

This article is about the concerns everyone should have when deciding to participate in a group hypnosis workshop or seeking a psychic. There are links to online reports of misrepresentations by unscrupulous hypnosis and psychic practitioners. How everyone should keep a healthy skepticism and the best method of finding a hypnosis or metaphysical practitioner that is right for you.

All hypnosis is good for you.
A very strong statement, but one I stand behind.
No hypnotist, no matter how gifted, experienced or deceitful can make you do something that goes against your better judgment.
Even if you saw your best friend, making a fool of him or herself during a hypnosis stage show, you should know that they would be that goofy in the right situation and the hypnosis just let them let their hair down a little quicker.
Stage hypnosis is a double edged sword.
On one hand it demonstrates how powerful hypnosis is and at the same time it frightens away many people from taking advantage of a very beneficial therapeutic technique.
During a hypnosis session (group or individual) you will feel relaxed and your body will totally de-stress, your blood pressure will be reduced, time will fade away with your stress.
Sounds good, huh?
That’s ‘cause it is good.

Speaking in general, group hypnosis during a seminar or workshop can help people quit smoking or lose weight but, can never be as effective as a private session.
The reasons are many and obvious.
During group hypnosis, the hypnotist must adjust his technique for the average participant. Some will be deeper than others and so their hypnotic experience will be better,
while other participants will never experience hypnosis at all.

There are however, many benefits to attending a hypnosis workshop.
They are an inexpensive way to experience hypnosis
and understand what it feels like to be in hypnosis.

If you are in the 10 percent of the population that are extremely good hypnotic subjects,
you may walk out of the workshop and be perfectly happy and satisfied with the results.
Perhaps you will never smoke again or begin to control eating urges and
in general, most group hypnosis workshops are happy with a 10 % success rate.
I am not.
That is why my group hypnosis workshops are 4-5 hours long.
The reason why my group sessions are so long is because,
I want all participants to have the best shot at a great experience.
The workshops that I am doing now are,
"Smoking Cessation",
“Introduction to Hypnosis”,
“Past Life Regression”,
“Stress Management” and
“Hypnosis and Meditation”
In each group workshop, I will conduct at least three hypnosis experiences,
each one progressively more deeper than the previous one.
The reason is I want you to have a thouough experience
and not question if you were hypnotized.
The more often you experience hypnosis,
the deeper you go and your questioning if, in fact, you were hypnotized
becomes a moot point.
I want to feel comfortable that when you leave my workshop,
you will be satisfied, although I still admit,
group hypnosis can never be as effective as a private session.

There is a big difference between cynics and skeptics (I used to be a cynic)
no matter what proof you had,
if I didn’t believe in what you were “selling”,
I wasn't buying.
Period.

It didn’t matter if the proof was beyond doubt,
I was a non-believer and nothing would or could change my mind.
If that sounds like you, and nothing will change your mind,
you are not allowing a lot of joy and amazement into your life.
Consider challenging your disbelief,
you may be pleasantly surprised at the results of letting your
disbeliening guard down a little.

I am now a skeptic. I now will accept that anything as possible,
but I hold off, true belief until I am completely convinced.
Those things in life that I do not believe in,
I still allow myself the option of changing my mind,
should stronger proof come along.
I think I am a healthier person now than before.
I consider myself a “healthy” skeptic.

As in all professions, there are practitioners who are honest,
professional and totally reputable, but unfortunately,
there are those that are not
and give their profession a bad name.
With hypnosis (other than the types of group hypnosis seminars cited below)
there are hypnotists that are better than others,
but an extremely small percentage are fraudulent.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the field of Psychic/Mediumship.
The few fraudulent psychics have terribly besmirched
the reputation of practioners of this age old art and ability.
But in this case you MUST keep your healthy skepticism on high,
because in this field,
where people are so open and vulnerable,
the possibility of being a victim is higher than when looking for a hypnotherapist.
I suggest reading my blog article titled, “Metaphysicality”.

Here are a few articles from the internet about some, less than honest hypnosis smoking cessation and weight management programs and call in psychics.
You should always remember to thoroughly investigate any group hypnosis program, hypnocounselor/hypnotherapist or psychic.
Advertising in newspapers, radio and TV is fine,
but remember that word of mouth and referrals
are always the best way to find a reputable practitioner.
Ask for referrals and always, always keep your healthy skepticism!

*********************************************************************************

New Jersey Company That Markets Hypnosis Seminars for Smoking Cessation and Weight Loss Agrees to Settle FTC Charges
http://www.casewatch.org/ftc/news/1994/gorayeb.shtml

Florida Company That Markets Hypnosis Seminars for Smoking Cessation and Weight Loss Agrees to Settle FTC Charges
http://www.casewatch.org/ftc/news/1994/aihc.shtml

BBB of Texas report on fraud in hypnosis seminar
http://us.bbb.org/WWWRoot/SitePage.aspx?site=113&id=1869d6a9-82aa-49a1-8419-40a8251fa916&art=2934

IHI Settles FTC Charges over Stop-Smoking, Weight-Loss Claims
http://www.casewatch.org/ftc/news/1994/ihi-clinics.shtml

Lawsuits mount over “Miss Cleo”
http://www.slate.com/id/2063700/

Metaphysicality Part 5; ESP and Psychic Abilities

2009-01-18T00:01:00.007-05:00

Synopsis,
In the 5th posting of the series, I define the seven psychic or Claire-senses we have. I describe the "Paranormal and some good links.

ESP and Psychic Abilities

The term clairvoyant is used commonly and interchangeably whenever people discuss the subject of Extra Sensory Perception – ESP. I would like to bring in a definition of each extra sense we possess. A definition for the seven “Claire” senses can be helpful.

Clairvoyance
Or "Clear Seeing" is the ability to see anything which is not physically present, such as objects, animals or people. This sight occurs "in the mind’s eye", and some mediums say that this is their normal vision state. Others say that they must train their minds with such practices as meditation in order to achieve this ability, and that assistance from spiritual helpers is often necessary. Some clairvoyant mediums can see a spirit as though the spirit has a physical body. They see the bodily form as if it were physically present (This is Bill’s strength; Bill, Jill and I have an ongoing psychic circle, called “Connecting with Loved Ones in Spirit, which meets every Tuesday evening). Other mediums see the spirit in their mind's eye, or it appears as a movie or a television program or a still picture like a photograph in their mind (which is a good way to describe the way Jill and I “see”).

Clairaudience
or "Clear Hearing” is usually defined as the ability to hear the voices or thoughts of spirits. Some Mediums hear as though they are listening to a person talking to them on the outside of their head, as though the Spirit is next to or near to the medium, and other mediums hear the voices in their minds as a verbal thought.

Clairsentinence
or "Clear Feeling" is a condition in which the medium takes on the ailments of a spirit, feeling the same physical problem the spirit person. The medium also takes on specific mannerisms and attitudes. People have stated that a Clairsentient medium at times even looks like the person who they are in touch with (I have been told exactly that by some of our sitters).

Clairalience
or "Clear Smelling" is the ability to smell a spirit. For example, a medium may smell the pipe tobacco of a person who smoked during life. I have smelled Chicken soup, so strongly I had to ask if anyone else smelled it. When asked about chicken soup, our sitter said that her (pased- grandmother would always sit over a bowl of home made chicken soup. Jill, smelled the strong odor of cleanser, which was a strong validation to our sitter.

Clairgustance
or "Clear Tasting" is the ability to receive taste impressions from a spirit but this is a rare ability.
Clairsentience
or "Clear Sensing” is the ability to have an impression of what a spirit wants to communicate, or to feel sensations instilled by a spirit.

Claircognizance
or "Clear Knowing", is the ability to know something without receiving it through normal or psychic senses. It is a feeling of "just knowing". Often, a medium will claim to have the feeling that a message or situation is "right" or "wrong."

As I stated before Bill, Jill and I have a psychic circle on Tuesdays evenings. We bring into our circle from one to five people to give psychic/medium readings to. See my website for more information http://www.hyp4life.com/

Bill’s predominant senses are Clairvoyance and Clairaudience. He also reads auras and energy.

Jill’s predominant senses are Clairaudience and Clairsentinence. She has an ability to separate and sit with spirit to gain information and messages.

My predominant senses are Clairaudience and Clairsentinence; I allow the spirit to make me feel what they had felt in life. People have told me that when I am communicating with their loved ones I actually “look like them”.

All three of us are Claircognizance and Clairsentinence.

There are some people who call what we do “Paranormal” implying weirdness or not normal. Let’s look at the word first, before labeling our work too quickly.
There are various definitions for the paranormal, Beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation: “such paranormal phenomena as telepathy; a medium's paranormal powers”.
http://www.ask.com/web?q=dictionary%3A+paranormal&content=ahdict%7C9513&o=0&l=dir

Paranormal is a general term that describes unusual experiences that lack a scientific explanation, or phenomena alleged to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure. In parapsychology, it is used to describe the potentially psychic phenomena of telepathy, extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis, ghosts, and hauntings. The scientific community, as referenced in statements made by organization such as the United States National Science Foundation, contends that scientific evidence does not support paranormal beliefs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal#Skeptical_scientific_investigation

What is paranormal?
We are often asked, "What exactly does paranormal mean?" The term paranormal is used to describe a wide variety of activity and phenomena. According to the Journal of Parapsychology (a quarterly publication devoted primarily to the original publication of experimental results and other research findings as published by the Parapsychological Association), the term paranormal describes "any phenomenon that in one or more respects exceeds the limits of what is deemed physically possible according to current scientific assumptions." The actual word is derived from the Latin use of the prefix para meaning "outside or beyond" what is considered normal.
http://www.milwaukeeparanormal.com/What-IS-Paranormal.html

There has been much research in the field of Mediumship. In Britain, the Society for Psychical Research has investigated some phenomena, mainly in connection with telepathy and apparitions. According to an article in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, in some cases mediums have produced personal information which has been well above guessing rates.

The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona, run by Dr. Gary Schwartz, was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or identity) of a person survives physical death. Studies conducted by VERITAS have been approved by the University of Arizona Human Subjects Protection Program and an academic advisory board. Gary’s book “The Afterlife Experiments” is on my reading list.

References and Links;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediumship
http://veritas.arizona.edu/
http://www.nsac.org/
http://www.lighthousespiritualcentre.ca/Churches/churchengland.html
http://www.edgarcayce.org/.
http://www.ask.com/web?q=dictionary%3A+paranormal&content=ahdict%7C9513&o=0&l=dir
http://www.isd-sparta.org/
http://www.sethlearningcenter.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal

Metaphysicality - Part 4; Mediumship

2009-01-11T00:01:00.008-05:00

Synopsis;
In the 4th posting in the series, I discuss the new popularity of psychic mediums; a history and definition of Psychic Mediumship; what to look for, be aware of and be concerned about, when using a medium to connect you with passed loved ones and give some insight as to what my partners and I do during a psychic circle.

Mediumship

There are TV shows like “Ghost Whisperer”, “Medium” and more Psychic shows, from psychic detectives to pet psychics than ever before. The subject of Psychic/Mediumship is once again, very popular.
I say “once again” because contrary to current thought it is by no means “New Age”;
Mediumship is and always has been Age-less.

The ability that Mediums like John Edward, John Holland Lisa Williams, and others demonstrate are as inherent to human beings as their other five senses. People are beginning to believe that in fact, we are all psychic.

In fact, it was watching John Edward on TV that first aroused my curiosity about how Mediumship works. Through various synchronicities (which I attributed, at the time, to coincidence) I went from being a cynic to a skeptic to a believer and after many classes and effort to becoming a psychic/medium.

A Definition and a Brief History of “Mediumship”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediumship

The term "Mediumship" denotes the ability of a person (the “medium”) to apparently experience contact with spirits of the dead, spirits of immaterial entities i.e. angels, spirit guides, ghosts etc.

The medium generally attempts to facilitate communication between non-mediumistic people (the “sitters”) and spirits who may have messages to share.

A medium may appear to listen to and relate conversations with spirit voices; go into a trance and speak without knowledge of what is being said; allow a spirit to enter their body and speak through it; relay messages from the spirits those who wish to contact them with the help of a physical tool, such as a writing instrument.

Mediumship is also part of the belief system of some “New Age” groups. In this context, and under the name channeling, it refers to a medium who receive messages from a "teaching-spirit".

There is a long documented history of Mediumship. Attempts to communicate with the dead and other spirits have been documented back to early human history.
One of the most well-known is the story of the Witch of Endor, who was said to have raised the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel to allow the Hebrew King Saul to question his former mentor about an upcoming battle, as related in the Old Testaments’ First Book of Samuel in the Jewish Tanakh.

Mediumship became quite popular in the United States after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date to the mediumistic activities of the Fox sisters in New York State in 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on the subject in the mid 1800s. Mediumship was also described by Allan Kardec, who coined the term Spiritism, around 1860.

After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers, Mediumship fell into disrepute, although it never ceased being used by people who believed that the dead can be contacted.

From the 1930s through the 1990s, as psychic Mediumship became less practiced in Spiritualist churches, the technique of channeling gained in popularity, and books by channelers who related the wisdom of non-corporeal and non-terrestrial teacher-spirits became best-sellers amongst believers.

For some mediums, a spirit guide is a highly evolved spirit with the sole purpose of helping the medium develop and use their skills. They assist mediums in following their spiritual path. For other mediums, a spirit guide is one who brings other spirits to a medium's attention or carries communications between a medium and the spirits of the dead. Many mediums claim to have specific guides who regularly work with them and "bring in" spirits of the dead. Some mediums believe that spirits of the dead will communicate with them directly without the use of a spirit guide.

In Spiritualism, a portion of the services, generally toward the end, is given over to the pastor, or another medium, who receives messages from the spirit world for the congregants. This may be referred to as a "demonstration of Mediumship." A typical example of this older way of describing a mediumistic church service is found in the 1958 autobiography of C. Dorreen Phillips. She writes of the worship services at the Spiritualist Camp at Chesterfield, Indiana: "Services are held each afternoon, consisting of hymns, a lecture on philosophy, and demonstrations of Mediumship."

Today "demonstration of Mediumship" is part of the church service at all churches affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches 'NSAC'.
These types of services are held each Sunday at The Institute for Spiritual Development in Sparta NJ. Their website is http://www.isd-sparta.org/

Mental Mediumship is communication of spirits with a medium by telepathy. The medium mentally "hears," "sees," and/or feels messages from spirits, then, directly or with the help of a spirit guide, passes the information on to the message's recipient(s). Trance Mediumship is often seen as a form of Mental Mediumship.

Some mediums remain conscious during this communication period, while others go into a trance, wherein a spirit uses the medium's body to communicate. Trance Mediumship is defined as a spirit taking over the body of the medium, sometimes to such a degree that the medium is unconscious.
“Part trance mediums” are aware during the period of communication,
while “full trance mediums” pass into an unconscious state in which their physical and mental processes are completely controlled by the spirit communicator.
Because the typical trance medium has no clear memory of the messages conveyed while in a trance, a medium of this type generally works with an assistant who writes down or otherwise records his or her words.

A good example of this kind of relationship can be found in the early 1970’s in “The Seth books”. Full Trance Medium Jane Roberts channeled “Seth” an advanced spirit guide, while her husband Robert Butts transcribed the sessions. Her website is http://www.sethlearningcenter.org/
Edgar Cayce, known as “The sleeping Prophet” is another example of Trance Mediumship. Mr. Cayce has an extensive library in Virginia Beach, Virginia of thousands of recorded full trance medium readings covering all aspects of human life. For more information on Edgar Cayce goes to http://www.edgarcayce.org/.

In Spiritualism, psychic senses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently than in other paranormal fields. The term clairvoyance, for instance, may be used by Spiritualists to include seeing spirits and visions instilled by spirits, whereas the Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information derived directly from an external physical source.
***

In my opinion, it is extremely important for anyone, seeking the use of a Medium to contact deceased loved ones, to understand how the process works and to always keep their healthy skepticism.

Some important things to keep in mind;
- As in all professions, we all have varying degrees of proficiency. Mediums are no different, you will find some that are amazing and some are less; Most are 100% ethical and unfortunately some are… less.

- The best way to judge any professional is through word of mouth and referrals.
Listen to friends and family that have been to a Psychic/Medium (P/M). You would be amazed by how many people, who you would not expect to go to a P/M, that do. You would be equally amazed about how many people, some that you know who are Mediums or have great hidden mediumistic abilities.

- Most P/M’s are scrupulous but unfortunately there are those that are frauds.

People who so desperately want to hear from loved ones that they let their guard and common sense down are most vulnerable to fraud. They are unaware of or choose to ignore that there are those supposed “Mediums” who are fraudulent and are doing this to steal from the most vulnerable of us.

When seeking a Medium be aware of and avoid any who,
- seems to be fishing for information, or coming up with many very general impressions. If they are more focused on your reaction, if they are reacting to what you are saying, rather than what they perceive from spirit, they are probably doing what is known as a “Cold Reading” and is either not an experienced psychic or perhaps a fraudulent one.
A Medium should always be more concerned with what spirit is telling them than what you are.

- Asks you to return with more money. If the P/M suggests that you should come back for more readings, because your loved ones are requesting you to do so, along with asking you for more money, they are frauds and you should leave as soon as possible! Messages that you receive from a loved one is as important for the loved one in spirit to get to you as it is important for you to receive it.
All those in spirit want to get their message to you immediately, completely and always from a place of love. They will never say “I will have a message for you on your next session”, if a medium says that they want you to return for additional readings, you should know that it was not your loved one’s message, that message is coming from a fraudulent medium. That is just not how spirit communicates. Please keep a healthy sense of skepticism.

Many people want to hear from loved ones so badly that they can be easily scammed.

There is nothing wrong with going back for additional readings as long as it is you who wants to return and it is your request. Most P/M will suggest that you wait a while before scheduling an additional session.

If you plan to come for any P/M work either with me or with our Circle, PLEASE tell us nothing!

It is not that I (we) don’t want to know who you want to contact.

The information, validations and messages MUST come from them, your loved ones in spirit. As soon as we think about who you want to come through, we are using a different part of the brain. When a P/M begins to think with the logical part of the mind a situation arises that I call “From me/To me”.

I can get mixed messages if I am confused by a message coming “From me” which is based on assumptions, guesses and are usually wrong.

This is also connected with “Cold Readings”.

What we do want is information “Coming TO me”. Information coming from spirit will not make sense to us, but the validations, information and messages are not for us, they are for you.

After a session is over, I/ We will ask for you to validate the information that we did bring through.

I hope that this posting was informative.
Please feel free to post a comment or question and I look forward to replying.
The next posting will be on 1/18/2009 and will be titled,

Metaphysicality – Part 5; ESP and Psychic Abilities.

Only in America!

2009-01-04T23:30:00.001-05:00

No matter your political views; Democrat or Republican; Liberal or Conservative; Moderate or Extremist, we can agree that only in America can what just happened in November, happen. Furthermore, I'd like to thank President Bush for making it possible for Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States. Those who know me will be very surprised that I am thanking President Bush, considering my opinion of his performance in office over the past 8 years (that comment will be a long posting, all by itself). The reason I am thanking President Bush needs to be looked at from a recent historical point of view.

If Gore had been President, the events on 9/11 would, in all probability, have happened as they did. However, we would not be in Iraq, we may still be in Afghanistan, but the world would be very different. Certainly, the environmental issues that we face would be happening, but the response by our elected officials, headed by a president like Gore would have been much stronger. Our reliance on foreign oil would probably have been the same, but there likely would have been more governmental request and support for more environmental friendly energy sources. Research and development on solar energy and stem cells would be 8 years further than they are now. And I know, that there would be no necessity for a debate on the legality of "Water boarding" as an acceptable method of torture in the United States of America! (That WILL be a posting for another time).

The political climate in the U.S., probably would have been very similar to the way it was under Clinton...

If Kerry had been elected and started to bring the political direction of our country back towards the center as compared to the far right swing by Bush/Cheney during their first 4 years, the majority of liberals, Democrats and moderate Republicans would have become complacent once again. The war in Iraq would have been viewed as it is now, as a mistake (a very costly, counter-productive, mismanaged, ill-conceived and poorly planned mistake... sorry for the editorial comment) and would have been ending. Environmental issues would have become once again important to our government, as stem cell research and solar energy would.

And once again, the political climate in the U.S., probably would have been very similar to the way it was under Clinton...

So then... Why, you may ask, am I thanking President Bush?

Because it took our country to be in the situation it is in now...
- Two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq;
- Our climate changing, causing floods and draughts;
- Corporate greed out of control ie. ENRON, AIG et.al.;
- The possible bankruptcy of our automobile industry;
- A class struggle between the "Haves and the Have-Nots" that we have not experienced since the 1920's (and the 1st Great Depression)
-and of course lets not forget the current financial disaster...
to put racism, prejudice and fear behind it and use the courage that it has always had...
It came through and showed the world what we Americans have always done.
We did the right thing...

WE elected a true American!
No where in this world, no other country could this happen!

When I say "True" American, I mean just that.
Look at him...
He is not Black or White... He is BOTH.
He is Christian, but with a Muslim name who supports Israel's right to exist.
He comes from a poor single parent household and raised by his maternal Grandmother.
He put himself through college.
He graduated Harvard and was the first Black man to be the President of the Harvard Law Review!

He could have done anything!
How many Wall Street Corporations must have salivated over the prospect of a Barack Obama!
How much would a prestigious law firm have offered him to join them?
High six figures? You Bet!

As a Harvard graduate, he had the world at his feet and could anyone blame him for taking that big brass ring?
Or going for the money?
He sure put in his dues... He sure worked hard for it.... I'm sure a lot harder than some others...

But he didn't...
He became a community activist...
The type of person that works for people who are poor and have very little political clout...
the type of person mocked by Sarah Palin (OK I'll stop editorializing for now) a low paid community activist vs. a high paid lawyer...
says a little about the man's character... don't you think?
I don't know if I would have gone for the big bucks either.
Oh who am I kidding...
I would have jumped at the chance for big bucks over community activism...
But that's me...

How many men have had similar upbringings as our new President and have gone down a much different path?

If you wrote a screenplay about his life, it would be rejected because he would be too much of an "everyman".

There is a little piece of each of us Americans in Barack Obama and maybe that is why we can all identify with him so... that little piece of each of us reflected back to us in his eyes, his smile.

He is calm, confident and focused in the face of a job that is...
well, challenging doesn't quite describe it now does it?
and in actuality, why anyone wants to be President is beyond me, but... Barack Obama does...

And I think, after listening to him....
he just may be the one American that can get us out of the mess we're are ALL in.

I for one will, along with my prayers at night, add a little addendum, for our new President...
Who know... if we all put a little prayer out there for him, even if you don't believe in prayer'
(I never used to) he and we will turn this messed up world around.
Peace!
Garry

Metaphysicality - Part 3; Metaphysical Counseling

2009-01-04T00:01:00.016-05:00

Synopsis,
In the 3rd posting in the series, I offer a definition and my philosophy on Metaphysics and how I have developed it into a therapeutic tool.

Metaphysical Counseling –

“Metaphysical” is defined by various dictionaries as “beyond the physical or beyond physics, dealing with the nature of being”. It deals with the exploration of what reality truly is. It suggests new, challenging and alternate realities than those generally held by the general public.

What is reality anyway?
Is it not simply your perspective of what you believe the “truth” to be?

Isn’t "reality" the truth that is believed by the society you live in?

What IS a truth anyway?

Lots of questions, I know, but that’s what teachers, good teachers do…
ask more questions and give less answers.
If I ask you and you determine what the (your) truth is then I earned my paycheck, until the next question comes and we start again…

Let’s look at a “fact”…
The Earth is in an orbit around the sun, PERIOD. A Fact!

There are nine planets including ours that orbit our sun which is a star in the Milky Way, PERIOD. A Fact!
ooops… They just demoted Pluto (not the Disney Cartoon dog) the planet, is no longer a plant it’s… errr… something else…

“Ok kids, you know our science books that we have had since your parents were here in our school? …
Lets just disregard the fact about Pluto…”

Get my point?
Six hundred years ago the world was Flat, PERIOD. A Fact!
Then it took Columbus to turn the world A-round.

Can your reality change when viewed through a different set of eyes?
And so, introduce to you a “newer” truth?

And If this new truth, makes more sense than your old belief and you feel better and happier with this new belief…

Well, isn’t that what education, growth and maturity is all about? Becoming aware of and the acceptance of new ideas (truths).

Many regard Metaphysics as a spiritual philosophy of life. It can be more accurately regarded as a spiritual exploration, which focuses on discovering who you truly are; an immortal soul, having a human experience.

There is no conflict with your religious belief, it simply allows you to expand your religious beliefs to grow and encompass more of what your soul is all about.
Religion doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be so restrictive and inflexible as to prevent your soul from the growth, knowledge and advancement it came to the physical world to experience.

Metaphysics embraces and respects all religions and belief systems and is based on the underlying common belief inherent in all religions, which is that there is a greater power than us.
However, there are times when the “human factor” can have a negative impact on religion in general. This conflict between religion, politics, relationships, the stress of physical life and the inner truth that is part of each human soul is where Metaphysical Counseling is so beneficial.

Unfortunately, in human society, with so much indifference, poverty, disease, genocide, war, prejudice, crime and man’s inhumanity to man, it is not surprising that so many people doubt the existence of any “God”.

Equally unfortunate is how more and more people have become so callused and hardened to the existence of a higher power. Questions like,
“What can one person do?” or
“If there is a God why would he allow (fill in the blank) to happen?”, reflect a growing feeling that there is no God, no soul, no heaven.

It becomes easier to simply believe that when you die, you’re gone, in the ground… dust to dust and that’s it. That view of what “it” is all about can lead to severe depression. Put very simply, Metaphysical beliefs state that each soul comes into the human body as a child goes to kindergarten, to learn.

We are living in a very exciting time of spiritual transformation and evolutionary changes in human consciousness. It is important to feel that you are supported, encouraged and nurtured as you discover your own spiritual awareness and the growth that this awareness promotes.

I have combined the therapeutic use of hypnosis and Mediumship into this process that I call “Metaphysical Counseling”.
In a session I may use one of the following different hypnotic techniques including,

“The 4 Parts of Self”
While in a hypnotic state, you are directed to your “Spiritual Sanctuary”, where you sit, facing four chairs. In each from left to right, your Physical, Emotional, Intellectual and Spiritual Self, each in turn, tell you what you need to hear for your happiness and well being.

“Seeing the Spark”
While in a hypnotic state, you become your own Medium. I have you sit in your Spiritual Sanctuary. In the distance you become aware of a spark of light that comes closer and forms the shape of the past loved one that you want to contact and allow them to give you their message to you.

“Hearing Your Higher Self”
While in a hypnotic state, you have a conversation with your own higher self, to ask him/her questions and learn your life’s purpose.

I combine these hypnotic exercises with a Mediumship reading, similar to the “Connecting with Loved Ones in Spirit” Workshop and/or Circle. When Metaphysical Counseling is combined with hypnotherapy, the results can be inspiring.

For more information on Metaphysical topics, look at my Reading List http://www.hyp4life.com/reading_list.htm in particular, the work of authors Dr. Brian Weiss- (Many Lives, Many Masters), Neale Donald Walsch - ( Conversations with God ), James Redfield- ( The Celestine Prophesy ) and Jane Roberts- (The Seth Books)

The next posting, Metaphysicality - Part 4; Mediumship will be posted on Sunday, January 11, 2009
Post a comment, I’ll be happy to reply

Metaphysicality parts 3-5;

2008-12-30T00:16:00.008-05:00

Metaphysical Counseling, Mediumship and ESP

On my website http://www.hyp4life.com/, I have a page titled
“Metaphysical Counseling and Mediumship”
http://www.hyp4life.com/metaphysical.htm

I have broken that page into 3 separate postings in the Metaphysicality Series.

I felt that the subjects on that page needed more explaination, so I will expand upon three subjects;
-Metaphysical Counseling,
-Mediumship and
-ESP/psychic abilities.

The third posting in the Metaphysicality series titled
Metaphysicality- Part 3; Metaphysical Counseling,
will be posted on Sunday January 4, 2009.

The fourth posting in the Metaphysicality series titled
Metaphysicality- Part 4; Mediumship
will be posted on Sunday January 11, 2009.

The fifth posting in the Metaphysicality series titled
Metaphysicality- Part 5; ESP and Psychic Abilities
be posted on Sunday January 18, 2009.

Metaphysicality - Part 2;

2008-12-29T00:00:00.009-05:00

“We Are All Psychic”
Synopsis;
This is the 2nd posting for the Metaphysicality article. In this posting I discuss that we are all psychic. How we can lose our ability and how I lost my abilities at five. How we all actually have six senses, not just five and how we are all six sense human beings. How I began to regain my psychic abilities.

Metaphysicality Part 2 – “We Are All Psychic”

“We are all psychic!”
How often have you heard that? Often, right?
Usually it is from someone who is (or claims to be) psychic. Well it’s true. It is as natural as the ability to sense with our five senses. However, many people who are cynical about Extra Sensory Perception feel that if there is no sensory organ involved, like an eye or ear, then what we perceive cannot be “real”, they would attribute psychic perceptions to imagination or fraud and trickery.
My argument would be that our (human) eyes can only distinguish a very narrow band of the light spectrum. We cannot see in the infra-red, for example but that doesn’t mean those colors (vibrations) are not there; it is simply that the human eye can’t see it. A dog’s sense of smell and hearing are much more sensitive than a human’s, but we don’t deny that they can sense better than we do or deny their ability.

So, let’s assume that some of us have a more developed Extra Sensory ability commonly known as ESP. We assume that these individuals are in some way more advanced, enlightened or “special” than we are. They are viewed in different ways, from being “gifted” to being viewed as different or weird. I have to tell you that we are all human with all the same sensing abilities.

You may say that there are ONLY 5 senses because there are only five sensory organs; the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. However, I am a firm believer that we have been unaware of a very important sensory organ. We all have one, but we do not recognize it as a sensory organ. It is located in the middle of our forehead and it is attached to the most amazing and complicated organ on the planet; the human brain. It is even referred to by many as an organ and it is called our “Third Eye”. Through this organ we can perceive more than the five senses we are comfortable with. In the 3rd Metaphysicality posting I will go further into what makes us all psychic.

Children are born with their third eye, wide open. They go through their early lives (birth through about three) with the ability to sense spirit easily and naturally. It is usually the society (and family in particular) the makes the children feel as if it is not normal to communicate with spirit.

As I said in my first posting, I lost my psychic abilities at the age of 5. When I was seeing an old man in my bedroom every night and I can tell you I did not want to be psychic. I would sleep with the pillow over my head, praying that the spirit of the old man would not be there when I awoke.
Then over a period of weeks, he wasn’t there any longer. You may have heard that young children are unaware of the difference between the living and the spirits of those who pass. This is true. I did not want to see spirits any longer and my desire to no longer see them along with the spirits’ acceptance of my desire stopped the visions from happening. The process is called “veiling over” and every one of us who are no longer able to communicate with spirit, have veiled over.

I was very happy from the age of 5 until my early 50’s being a cynic. I laughed at anyone who even mentioned the existence of a soul. I was content in my Darwinian existence; that there was nothing after we die except blackness and our bodies simply turn back into the dust that they came from. Then there came a time when I became curious about ESP. I was watching John Edward on the TV and could not explain how he fooled his audience into thinking and actually believing that he was talking to their loved ones in spirit. But the more I investigated the more convinced I became that my cynicism was unnecessary ant misguided.
After working with Dr. Brian Weiss at a weeklong workshop on Past Life Regressions and meeting a few gifted mediums, I decided to see if I could get the abilities that I ignored and dismissed for so long, back. I soon learned that psychic abilities never truly leave. The ability to communicate with spirit, that I simply attributed to my imagination came back quickly (because I never lost them).

I have only accepted that I am psychic over the last 6 years. I began with basic psychic development classes and was amazed with the images and feelings I was receiving. I was able to “read” perfect strangers with an accuracy that actually shocked me.

In Metaphysicality Part 3- "Metaphysical Counseling and Mediumship", scheduled to be posted on 1/10/2009, I will describe how I feel, hear, see and communicate with the spirits of the people who come to our circle and how I sometimes hear them when I am not really trying to ( in classrooms, and restaurants, etc.) I have been to the many psychic development workshops offered at Metaphysical churches such as the ISD in Sparta ( http://www.isd-sparta.org/ ) and the Journey Within in Pompton Lakes ( http://www.thejourneywithin.org/ ) and will continue to develop this natural ability we all have.

Metaphysicality - Part 1

2008-12-07T22:28:00.007-05:00

“Metaphysicality”
Part 1 of a continuing article

Please keep in mind that everything written in my blog is my opinion and not necessarily fact. This statement could be an interesting posting all by itself. I could argue that there is no such thing as a “fact”… The fact is that all facts are simply opinions held by the vast majority of a given population, waiting for a challenger to be an agent of change, arguing against a current paradigm and trying to make it “shift”. How about this fact… in the late 1400’s it was a “fact” that the world was flat, all it took was one man who challenged that given fact to turn the world “A-Round”. Think about it. But I digress…

Synopsis;
This is the first part (Part 1) of an ongoing article covering a variety of metaphysical topics. The main thread will be about my psychic and medium experiences but I may digress (which clearly, I often do). I am titling the article “Metaphysicality” which, although is not a real word, is fairly appropriate and accurate. According to my dictionary it means things related to Metaphysics. Some areas of Metaphysical interest that I plan on posting will be covering,
- Psychics and Mediums (like John Edward);
- Synchronicities;
- ESP;
- The “Claire” senses;
- Experiences at our “Connecting with Loved Ones” Psychic Circle (you can find more information on the circle on my website http://www.hyp4life.com/);
- How we are all psychic;
- How to develop your latent abilities;
- How I began to develop my abilities;
along with many other topics that are right now in the planning phase.
If you have questions about anything on my blog (or website), please post a comment and I will reply or I will write an article on the subject if a short reply is inadequate.

“Metaphysicality" - Part 1-

If you read my recent 3 part article “A Smokers Story”, which is about hypnosis and smoking, you learned that I have been involved with hypnotherapy for over 25 years and it is a passion. I can say that because, I feel no one would raise an eyebrow about that statement.
So, I am passionate about hypnotherapy…
You could say, "That’s fine, it’s his business, hypnotizing people for a variety of reasons and he loves what he is doing… more power to him."

Then why do I have such a hard time admitting to people about my “other” passion?
In the past, it has been very difficult for me to tell people that I am a Psychic/Medium.

So here goes… I’m a Psychic/Medium!

Wow that wasn’t that hard. Heck, It’s something I am passionate about so why the apprehension about telling people?
Anyway, there it is, I admit to it and not only did a say it but I wrote in my blog for you to read.

I have heard a lot of less than supportive comments, when I did admit to being psychic and perhaps that’s why I am reticent to tell others. I still feel that there are some eyebrows going up out there right now in cyber space. I can almost hear you (because I’m psychic, you know :) ) and I have heard a lot of this before.

“Yeah right! Your psychic… So what am I thinking?”
“Psychic!?... How about Psycho!?"
"You’re not a psychic... you are crazy though. Don't you know, there is no such thing as psychic”
or one I really love...
“I know how those guys work” as you put your hand to your forehead, “I have someone here… an S name, like Sam or Sol… No S?
I mean an R name like Robert or Richard… No R?
OK how about a T name… Somebody with a T name must have died! What’s wrong with you?”

Yes, I have heard it all and more. No wonder I am hesitant to tell people I am a Medium.
Let’s make a golf analogy about psychic/mediums…
John Edward is to Mediumship as Tiger Woods is to golf, both are at the top of their game; Sylvia Browne is Arnold Palmer, still can play but has gotten well… old.

Me? I am a really good amateur golfer. I shoot pars fairly consistently, but I need way more practice to go pro. My goal is to be like Tiger but par golf right now is feeling really good.
Know what I mean?

My psychic awareness started on the first night I slept in our new house. I was 5 years old when my parents bought our home and I was going to sleep in my new room for the first time. Just before I fell off to sleep, I became aware of an old man standing at the foot of my bed. As any child would do, I screamed at the top of my lungs and I do believe my neighbors a block away were woken out of a good sleep. My parents were in like a flash and for weeks told me no one was in my room, yet every night just before I fell asleep, I would become aware of someone in my room, only to open my eyes and once again see this old man.
Eventually, after many nights sleeping with my head under my pillow, I stopped seeing this old man. That is not to say he was not there, I just stopped seeing him.

For all you parents out there. If you child says he or she is seeing “someone” or “something”, don’t automatically assume “imagination”. There are many more psychic children in the world lately. Ask them questions about what they perceived. Ask open ended questions, i.e. “What was this man wearing?” show support, concern and acceptance instead of annoyance, fear or apathy. Just because you don't see the spirit your child is seeing, doesn’t mean your child is imagining it, more than likely he/she is truly psychic, as we ALL are.

I plan on more entries on “Metaphysicality” the next posting will be titled “Metaphysicality Part 2, We Are All Psychic", look for it before Christmas.

"A Smokers Story; Trying Hypnosis” part 3 of 3

2008-11-16T03:01:00.003-05:00

Synopsis;
This is the third of a 3-part article, which is about my battle with smoking. In this posting, I describe why I decided to try hypnosis to quit smoking; how I became aware of the part of me that was responsible for smoking. I describe my hypnosis experience and the amazing results; the complete elimination of my desire to smoke.

"A Smokers Story; Trying Hypnosis” part 3 of 3
- My Last Cigarette -
The last cigarette I ever smoked was on February 6, 1985 at 1:45pm, in front of an office building in Huntington, Long Island, New York.

I looked at the directions on the piece of paper that was on the seat of my car. "Long Island Expressway East to Rt. 110 North, Huntington..." During the hour and a half drive from Staten Island to Huntington, Long Island, I had smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Although I was determined never to smoke again, a part of me was very resistant to this healthy decision. I pulled into the parking lot, parked the car and got out. Pacing and smoking in the parking lot, I was all too aware that it was 1:45 pm and my appointment was at 2:00.

The chill of that February wind was cutting through my parka and I thought how nice it would be, not having to go outside to smoke these cursed things any longer. However, until then, I was going to smoke the hell out of them. As I took my last drag from my last Marlboro Light 100, I felt many emotions all at the same time. These were conflicting emotions. The thoughts going through my head were equally conflicted. I felt that I was about to lose my best friend. My cigarettes were always there for me.

They were consistent in a very inconsistent world.
They always looked the same.
They always smelled the same.
They always tasted the same; I could always rely on them.
When I was nervous, they calmed me.
When I was hungry, they took the edge off my appetite.
When I was stressed, they relaxed me.
When I was bored, they gave me things to do with my hands.
They told people not to mess with me, "I’m a smoker, I’m a tough guy".

Nevertheless, I also knew that these "friends" killed my father, who died of lung cancer after years of smoking. I was intelligent enough to know, that given time, my cigarettes would kill me too. I knew that I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without wheezing. I started each day by coughing for five minutes, until I coughed up the yellow mucus that was stuck deep down in my lungs. I knew that I couldn’t handle this ordeal of trying to stop this habit any longer. I knew that the past year had been the worst year in my life and it was all because of my friend, Mr. Marlboro Light 100’s.

However, most importantly, I knew that I had made a promise to my son Aaron and I had visions of the tears in his eyes. Similar to the tears that welled in my eyes, fourteen years earlier as I saw my father die, after lung cancer ravaged his body.
I could picture Aaron in front of my coffin, the same way I had stood in front of my father's.
I could feel his pain… his anger!
His anger with me, that I continued to smoke while knowing it, was going to kill me.
I could feel his anger at me because I chose my addiction to, my love of tobacco over the love of my family!
The same anger I felt at my father for never listening to me, when I pleaded with him to stop smoking.
The same helplessness I felt, to see the strongest man I knew shrivel up like the cigarettes he smoked.

You might ask, how stupid was it for me to witness my father’s death from lung cancer and still became a three pack a day smoker… how do you explain that. I don’t know if there could be an adequate explanation. It is a testament to the ability of the American Tobacco Companies, who were able to get me to become a three pack a day smoker, after seeing what smoking did to my father.

I decided at that moment that this hypnosis stuff must work... would work! I pictured myself driving home to Staten Island, later that day as an ex-smoker. I would not put my son through what I went through. I would quit today. I exhaled the smoke from my lungs, looked at the filter of that Marlboro Light 100, my "friend"… dropped in on the concrete sidewalk, in front of that office and crushed it under my foot.

As I walked up the stairs to the second floor, I did not know what to expect. I had a basic understanding, that hypnosis works with the part of your mind that makes you smoke. I had no idea how the experience would change my life so profoundly and in so many different ways.
The door to the office was open and I walked in and hung my parkas on the coat rack.

The office waiting room was 15’ X 20’. There were a few chairs and a few coffee tables. As I walked around the office, I noticed that the walls were covered with thank-you letters. Some were type written, some hand written all describing the results of their hypnotic experience. It seemed that Al (the hypnotherapist) did more than help people stop smoking; he used hypnosis for a lot more. Although the majority of thank-you letters were from ex-smokers, there were many letters from professional golf players, nail biters, and stutters, along with articles about hypnosis. The information I read about hypnosis made me even more curious and impressed with the subject of hypnotherapy.

This would be my first experience with hypnosis and the questioning and doubt about the hypnosis process started in earnest. The doubt and concern was caused by a part of my subconscious that I now call the “Smoker Part”. This part began to strongly let its presence known, making me doubt if hypnosis would work for me. The inner voice in my head urged me to stop this useless attempt to quit smoking. It was threatened by this process and would do whatever it could to get me to either stop or fail in my quest to quit smoking. I was quite used to my smoker part. Over the past year, I had tried to quit multiple times and it was this smoker part that consistently pushed me back to smoking. That was its job; keeping me smoking and he did it oh so well.

The office was quiet except for the muffed sound of voices from the other side of a door. Behind that door, Al was hypnotizing another smoker and my smoker part and I knew we were to be next. I had mixed feelings with the decision to quit smoking. The logical, intelligent, reasonable part of my mind wanted me to quit, but the smoker in me still refused to let me become the non-smoker I wanted to be. Then the door opened and a woman walked out, thanking Al for all he had done. Al walked out behind her, saying that a thank-you was nice but a letter for his wall would be even nicer.

Al was about 5’5” and 220 pounds. He had a long scraggly beard and wore a “Harvard” sweatshirt. He introduced himself to me after his previous client left and we went into his back office where I was directed to sit. We spoke for an extended period about hypnosis, smoking, addictions and more. He asked me to sit on a recliner with new age music playing in the background. Then it was time for hypnosis.

I pushed back on the recliner and got into a comfortable position enjoying the softness of the leather, as he began to describe relaxing my body, starting from the top of my head. As Al asked me to relax the muscles in my face, my mind had a different idea; it was not going to oblige. Relaxation was not what it wanted; tension was.

“Who is this guy?” the voice in my head said, referring to the hypnotist.
My smoker part was not going to give up this addiction without a fight. As in the past, it threw up more and more walls, trying to make me ignore the truth; that I wanted to and needed to quit.
“Don’t listen to this weirdo!” My smoker part screamed in my head.
“If he is such a great hypnotist, why doesn’t he hypnotize himself into losing some weight?”
“A real professional!” sarcasm dripping from the voice.
“A sweatshirt?”
“Really!”
“How about a shirt and a tie?”
“What if he is a weirdo? I’m not going to close my eyes!”
The sound of the smoker in my head was drowning out Al’s voice.

Then it got even weirder. Instead of one voice in my head; the smoker telling me to continue to smoke and get out of the office, another voice came into my mind.
“Shhhh…” it said,
“You just spent $350 on this. It worked for Nick. You have an opportunity to end your year from hell, right now… and what about Aaron?”
This new voice calmed me; I stopped fighting and doubting.
“Give Al a chance to help you quit; you know it’s what you really want” it said.
This new voice helped me remember what I truly wanted… to finally and permanently quit smoking.

I finally quieted the smoker part of me, and as soon as I did, I felt a wonderful feeling of confidence and resolve wash over me. This new voice replaced the smoker’s voice. It was the voice of my “Healthy Part”, it was very welcome and I embraced it, listened to it and followed its direction.

I quickly started to feel as if I were falling asleep. The more Al spoke the harder it was for me to keep my eyes open. Although I felt a slight tingling feeling and I was slightly cold, I was very relaxed, my thoughts were drifting but I heard everything being said. I found it curious that Al had said that I could not open my eyes and although I tried to open them, I couldn’t. He said I could not raise my arms and again, I tried but couldn’t. I was beginning to believe that it could…. would work.

Being in hypnosis was not what I had expected it to be. I was expecting a feeling like general anesthesia. I expected to feel… different. I expected…
Actually, I did not really know what to expect.

Very soon, I was totally involved in the visual world Al was describing. He had me see a beautiful beach in the summer. I was alone sitting on a chair looking at the horizon.
He then had me see my future as a smoker and it wasn’t pretty.
After what seemed to be ten minutes (which turned out to be fifty) he said that he was going to bring me out of hypnosis. He said that when he said “five” after counting from “one”, my eyes would open and I would be wide-awake.

Amazingly, on the count of five my eyes did open. The process dumbfounded me. I was also concerned that, although I was relaxed and it felt very good, I actually doubted that I was hypnotized; I had heard everything said. I was expecting hypnosis to be a lot more impressive than it turned out to be. I prayed that it had worked, but I was dreading that it did not.

Driving home after the session ended, I was anxious.“When will the urge hit?” I had never driven by myself, in this car without a cigarette burning. Now I was cruising along the Long Island Expressway Westbound, on my way home and I dared to let myself think…
“Can I really be an ex-smoker!” The thought thrilled and scared me at the same time.
“Can it be this easy?” And it was.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“What if an urge comes? Does that mean it didn’t work?”
The “What-if’s” were being asked all the way home.

I turned onto the entrance to the Verrazano Bridge and as I did a truck without using his signal, cut me off. As my road rage exploded, I felt my blood pressure jump, I cursed, I did a nasty gesture at him with my middle finger and yet, I found two minutes later, that I was laughing.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror and realized that for the first time in years, I did not light up a cigarette when I was stressed. The urge just wasn’t there! It was not that I was repulsed by having a cigarette; I just didn’t have the urge!

I was an ex-smoker!

Over the next few days I started noticing the ashes, the burn marks on the seat of my car, the yellow haze on the windshield but most of all I noticed the smell in my car. When I got in the car, I realized what I had been subjecting my wife to. I began to realize how discourteous I was as a smoker. I also allowed myself to dream that I actually was an ex-smoker.

That weekend I cleaned my car and the ex-smoker that I am today, was born. To be honest, I had a few urges for a cigarette over the following weeks, but they were easy to resist and by the end of the month, I can say that I did not even think about smoking again. It has been almost 23 years and I can honestly, easily and confidently say that I will NEVER smoke again.

It was my first experience with hypnosis but far from my last. Again, this was before the Internet and I began to read all I could from the library on the amazing topic of hypnosis; the centuries old process that finally cured me of my tobacco addiction.
Little did I know at that time that in fifteen years, I would be going to hypnotherapy school and start a business called,

HYP4LIFE- Improving Your Life Through Hypnotherapy.
If you are a smoker and would like to quit smoking by using hypnotherapy, call me at
(908) 852-4635

"A Smokers Story; the Smoker’s Wall" Part 2 of 3

2008-11-09T03:01:00.003-05:00

Synopsis;
This is the second of a 3-part article, which is about my battle with smoking. In this posting, I describe how the decision to quit was helped by my son. I describe what “The Smoker’s Wall” is and my first attempt to quit smoking. Describing my year from hell as I go through a year of repeatedly trying to quit and continually failing. And how, through a synchronicity, a twist of fate, I learned of hypnosis. How I found a hypnotherapist in Long Island, NY who finally helped me to permanently quit smoking.

"A Smokers Story; the Smoker’s Wall and my Year from Hell" part 2 of 3

A wall forms between a smoker and his loved ones each time they raise the subject of smoking cessation. They want him to quit and be healthy because they love him and even if he knows the dangers associated with continued smoking, the part of his subconscious that is designed to smoke, throws up his "Smoker's Wall". This wall is tall and thick, growing taller and thicker with each plea from a loved one to stop smoking.

My wall was reinforced with each fight over smoking between my wife, Chris and I. She was as aware of the dangers associated with smoking cigarettes as I was, but Chris was a non-smoker, someone who never smoked. My "smoker part" was so strong, that no matter who spoke to me about quitting, Chris, my mother (who quit smoking after my father died), my sister, my son, even if it was my own thoughts about quitting smoking, the wall went up immediately.

That wall is strong, immovable, and impenetrable however, in one loving, unexpected, non-premeditated conversation with my son, in the hallway of our apartment; my smoker's wall came crumbling down. I slowly turned to look at my son; his eyes darted from the cigarette, burning in my cupped hand to my eyes and back again.
"But you smoke, Daddy" he said "and if you get cancer and die, I won’t have anybody to play with". He put his small, soft hands on my cheeks with tears welling up in his perfectly blue eyes, looked into my eyes, shaking his head and said, "Please, Daddy, don’t smoke any more."

I found my "Last Straw". I stubbed out the cigarette I was smoking, took my pack of cigarettes out of my pocket, crushed it into a ball and said,
"For you Aaron, I’m gonna quit, 'cause I love you'".

A smile came across his face as he took my hand and dragged me into our apartment and at that moment I truly felt that I was going to quit.
"Mommy!" he shouted enthusiastically to my wife who had just finished cleaning the dishes in the kitchen,
"Guess what?… Daddy is going to quit smoking! He promised!”
Chris dried her hands and picked up my daughter, Amy who was joining in on the excitement gave me the smile that always made me melt. The whole family was jubilant with my decision to quit. Although I thought I saw a bit of skepticism reflected back to me in the eyes of my wife.

Before Aaron went to sleep that night, he ran over to the recliner I was sitting in and jumped up on my lap. It was late so I picked him up and carried him into his room. Amy was asleep already. As I usually did, I tossed him on his bed as he put his arms up for his "kiss goodnight". As I leaned over him to kiss him on the forehead, he threw his arms around my neck and said, "I love you, Daddy… Remember you promised …no more smoking… OK?"
With a kiss to his forehead, I said, "Promise!" and I meant it!

I closed his door half way and walked into Amy’s room. The stuffed animals seemed to be smiling at me as I quietly kissed my baby daughter goodnight. She was sleeping with her thumb in her mouth and I stood looking down at her. A feeling that every father of a little girl knows, enveloped me. This feeling of love, protection and pride filled me as I thought of not being there for her. I had to be there for my little girl, the way that my wife's dad, who died of a heart attack due to his smoking, was not able to be for his little girl.
Going to sleep that night, many things went through my mind.
“I really HAVE to quit…
I really WANT to quit…
I CAN do it…
I will never smoke again!”
This determination lasted 8 hours, until I was in my car driving to work the next day…

-“My year from Hell”-
I had finally decided to quit smoking but I didn’t know how I would be able to do it. The drive to work the morning after my decision to quit smoking was sheer torture. I was thinking of nothing but smoking and that torture continued for a year. The year was 1984, which was not only a very scary novel, but was also what I called, “My year from hell”. That year I became a professional “quitter”, I must have quit smoking 100 times, I was miserable and I thought the misery would never end.

I was at work at Pathmark one day towards the end of my year from hell and was speaking with Nick, the produce manager. We were both in the same situation, smokers who were married with kids and both desperately wanting to quit. We were both in the break room and as I usually did, took my cigarettes from my pocket and offered Nick one. He refused, saying that he had finally been able to quit!

“What!” I said with a shocked look on my face…
“How?”
He looked at me and with a smirk and a shrug, quietly said, “Hypnosis”.
“What the hell is Hypnosis?” I said, thinking it could be a way I could finally end this painful year.

“My cousin”, Nick began to say, “smoked for 25 years and just like you and me has been trying to quit for years. He heard from his friend, about a guy, who uses ‘hypnosis’ to help people, like us, quit smoking. He said that he went to this hypnotist and he quit smoking in only one session. I waited a month” he continued, “to see if my cousin would go back to smoking, like you and I always do but he hasn’t smoked in over a month and he even said that he’ll never smoke again! So, I got this guy’s number and got hypnotized! And Ga… I swear to God, I don’t even miss them! I haven’t smoked in almost two weeks, but the real crazy thing is that I really believe I won’t smoke anymore!”

I need to digress here a little…
At the time, I had not even heard of a synchronicity, which is, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity)
“the experience of two or more events which are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by their meaning. In order to be synchronistic, the events must be related to one another temporally so as to rule out direct causation.”
Now, what does that mean? A coincidence may be just that, a curious connection between events, a synchronicity is a coincidence that presents itself to you, for a purpose. That said…

My awareness of hypnosis was stirred, I had heard from a very reliable source, my smoking buddy, that he and his cousin were hypnotized to quit smoking, and it worked. So, my thought process was, if it worked for them, it could… hopefully work for me. However, this was well before the internet. Now you just Google, “Hypnosis + smoking” and you have a thousand hits to choose from. Then I looked in the yellow pages and found nothing.

So, when my niece informed me that she was going to a hypnotist in Long Island, to quit her smoking habit, I almost fell off my chair… What a coincidence! (NOT! No such thing as a coincidence… synchronicity yes; coincidence, no. This was the second.)

My mother won a small NY lotto; her ticket had 5 out of 6 numbers and paid $2000. It was the day after I told her about the hypnosis coincidences and she called and said that she knew I didn’t have the $350 for the session and that she was insisting that I should make the appointment and that she would love to pay for it; it would be my belated birthday gift. It was also the third “coincidence” and I was curiously amused by the weirdness of it all.

The next day at work, I went next door to the pizzaria for a coke and a slice and to look at the magazines Pete, the owner had behind the counter. Waiting for my slice to heat up, I flipped open an old Playboy it opened to a page with a quarter page advertisement which read;
“Learn Hypnosis and get all the girls you want!”
I wasn’t interested in “all the girls”, but the word “Hypnosis” seemed to be twice as large as the other words. I could not believe my eyes. This was the fourth time in so many days that I had been hit in the head by this hypnosis stuff! Now I may be a little thick headed sometimes, but even I had to acknowledge that something I didn’t quite understand was behind this.

I called my niece’s hypnotherapist and made an appointment.

The story continues next week…11/16/2008
"A Smokers Story; Trying Hypnosis” part 3 of 3

"A Smokers Story; the Decision to Quit" part 1 of 3

2008-11-01T03:01:00.014-04:00

Synopsis;
This is the first of a 3-part article, which is about my battle with smoking. How and why I became a smoker, the causes of my desire to and difficulties with quitting smoking; The frustration and anger dealing with the process of smoking cessation along with my contempt of the American Tobacco Companies. The cause for my final decision to quit smoking.

"A Smokers Story; the Decision to Quit" part 1 of 3

The decision to quit smoking may very well be one of the most important decisions in the life of a smoker. This decision may also be the start of a horribly demanding, miserably frustrating and a very necessary step, if they want live longer. Every smoker who wants to quit, has had an incident, his “last straw”, which causes him to change his mind about the habit of smoking. Suddenly he wants to quit, his decision is not caused by his mother, wife or child, the decision is and can only be made by him, the smoker. If a loved one of a smoker wants him to quit, but the smoker is not committed to the quitting process, it as a forgone conclusion that the smoker will continue to smoke. The most important part of the quitting process starts quite simply with the decision to quit and this decision must come from the smoker him or herself.

I have found from personal experience as an ex-smoker and from the stories related to me by the many smokers I have hypnotized, that there are very common scenarios when a smoker makes that all important decision to quit.

Whether for physical reasons, such as an inability to catch their breath or emotional reasons as wanting to see their children grow, smokers come to a critical juncture in their lives when the decision to quit smoking is made. Some smokers have no problem stopping the habit of smoking. They make the decision, throw their cigarettes away and never look back… but they are in a very small minority. The vast majority of people trying to become healthy by quitting smoking have an incredibly difficult time. They feel deprived and are angry all the time.

If the smoker, after deciding to quit, cannot, the anger he feels may be directed inwardly, towards himself. He feels that he is weak, with no willpower and is continually angry, frustrated and disappointed with himself. When he does try to stop smoking, "Cold Turkey", his anger and frustration increases, becoming redirected towards the world and unfortunately, towards those who love him and who have been asking him to quit. Therefore, with this decision to quit firmly planted in his mind, the smoker who wants to quit is now in for a wonderful journey of anger, frustration and stress 24/7.

If the smoker is a stress smoker, it is doubly hard to quit, since the stress generated by trying to quit only increases. Moreover, because stress had always been dealt with in the past by smoking more cigarettes… Well, you can see the problem. This situation is a smoker's "Catch-22", Damned if you do (quit smoking) and damned if you don't.

- My Story –
In 1983, I was working as a Customer Service Manager at the Pathmark Supermarkets in the Middlesex Mall in South Plainfield, New Jersey. Long story short, I was a three pack a day smoker and after indulging myself for 11 years, I found that, although I was smoking, I truly wanted to quit. I was all too aware of the dangers inherent in smoking; my father died from smoking related lung cancer, yet my addiction was so strong that I could not picture my life without having cigarettes in it. I was married and had two small children, who were the light of my life. As a smoker in a job that I hated, I did not care if my life was shortened by smoking. However, that feeling had changed after my children were born. Now, that I had the strong desire to quit, I found that I could not stop the addiction designed by the American Tobacco Companies to ensnare me (and all smokers) in this life shortening habit. Although I consciously knew how bad smoking was; I saw my father die of lung cancer nine months before I was married, I couldn’t even try. I couldn't imagine in my wildest dreams that I could function without my Marlboro Light 100's.

- My "Last Straw" –
It took twelve years of smoking before I was ready to consider quitting. I would never let my children see me smoke. Although they could smell it on me and could hear the arguments between their mother and I over smoking, they never saw me actually smoke. One evening after dinner, I was having my "after dinner smoke". As was my habit, I went into the hallway of our apartment with my cigarette and ashtray, sat on the step and surrendered to my addiction. As I took a deep drag, filling my lungs with smoke, I heard the doorknob turn and my son, Aaron unexpectedly came into the hallway. Hearing the opening of the door, I transferred my smoke from my right hand to my left cupping it, out of sight by my left leg. My son walked over and sat on the step next to me in a huff. Earlier that day he had been playing with his friend Mike and Mike's grandfather.

"How come Mickey has two Granddaddies and I don’t even have one?" he asked, questioningly tilting his head and looking a little angry. "Lot’s of my friend's talk about their Grandpa's… How come I don’t have a Grandpa, Daddy?” I believe in telling your children the truth, so when he asked the question, my response was truthful and sincere.
“Well, Aaron, both mommy’s daddy and daddy’s daddy died”.
“How did they die", he asked, looking deeply into my eyes, his expression turning from anger to curiosity. I considered a "white lie" to soften how they died and to ignore the obvious similarities between his Grandfathers and his father. I had never lied to him before and thought better about it, deciding, although it would be obvious and painful, the truth was my only option.

I said, looking down at my feet, trying to avoid eye contact,
"Both your Granddad's smoked, and that’s how they got sick and died… Smoking causes a lot of diseases" still looking down at my feet, I felt the gaze of my seven year old burning into the side of my head and I tried not to look at him. I explained how my father smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and how his mother's father, my father-in-law smoked heavily. I tried to rationalize to him and myself about addictions and how self-destructive they can be;
how they cause children to lose their parents;
how grandchildren can grow up never knowing the love of a granddaddy.

The more I explained to Aaron, how he became grandfather less, the more I realized that I needed to quit smoking. The more I tried to rationalize my addiction the less the argument had any validity. The more I avoided eye contact with my son, the joy of my life, my reason for smiling, the more my defenses fell…

The story continues next week…11/9/2008
"A Smokers Story; The Smoker’s Wall" - Part 2 of 3

Anger Management and the Adolescent Child

2008-10-01T03:01:00.008-04:00

Synopsis;
This article is about Jack, a high school freshman who was adopted after years in the foster care system. At 15, he and his adopted family are concerned with his inability to control his temper. Using hypnotic intervention, I was able to assist Jack in understanding why he had problems with the control of his anger. We uncovered that rejection was the cause and that the inability to control anger is very common with the adopted child. I also discovered my frustration, with how many people failed to do what was right for Jack.

***

Anger Management and the Adolescent Child

The phone call from Jack’s mother started the same as many others had. A mother, concerned about her adolescent son and his inability to handle anger. “My son has anger management issues”, Diane started the conversation with the anxiety, fear and helplessness many mothers of adolescent children have. After talking with her for ten or fifteen minutes, I felt that hypnotherapy could help. I told her that anger management goes with pre-teens as peanut butter goes with jelly. She laughed but after hearing the stories of his overreaction to minor social frustrations, I sensed that there may be more to Jack’s anger management issues than that of a typical High School freshman. We scheduled our first session on Monday, January 7, 2008 at 5:30.

When I meet a new client, our initial conversation is very important; it sets the parameters and gives me the information I need to design the specific hypnotic process that would be the most effective. This initial conversation gives me insight into the cause of the issues that the person has and allows the person to address any concerns they may have. These concerns can include if they can be hypnotized, if hypnosis can help, can I as the hypnotist have the skills necessary to help, etc. Although we spoke on the phone, I did not know any specific information about the problems Jack was having, except that it pertained to his inability to control his temper. I knew that I must find what was causing his excess anger, in order to minimize, eliminate or assist him in controlling it. I say “excess” anger, because as I would later discuss with Jack, there is nothing wrong with anger; it is a necessary part of our psychological makeup, which is actually necessary if we are to survive in this culture. Problems arise when the anger becomes excessive. When a child overreacts with uncontrollable anger, the results can be obviously devastating to those around him and to the child himself. This is where the use of hypnosis can be so beneficial.

“How does this anger manifest itself?” I asked, looking at Diane. She proceeded to tell me how Jack had a problem in school with some of his fellow students. I asked Jack, who was sitting patiently and quietly, to join our “adult” conversation. As our discussion got into more detail, I learned how he reacted to his perceptions of being rejected, which seemed to be a exceptionally sore spot for Jack. In my mind, I decided to explore why rejection was so painful for him.“Does Jack see a counselor, therapist or school psychologist?” I asked, curious if Diane had tried traditional therapeutic intervention. Her response made me even more comfortable with her decision to see if hypnosis could help. “The psychologists I have sent him to have not worked and he is getting worse, not even a little better. He seemed angrier with this therapist. That’s why I wanted to try you”. She continued to relay the results of Jack’s therapies; saying that talk therapy and drugs did not seem to help and only would make him tired and irritable. As we spoke, Jack was intent on our conversation, quietly listening, occasionally nodding with approval; he did not seem agitated at all.

Jack is a 15-year-old, 5’10”, high school freshman with dark blond hair and bright eyes, which were intently focused on me. I knew that I was being evaluated; was I going to be just another adult social worker, just like all the rest? On the other hand, will I be able to help. I decided to turn the conversation around to Jack and involve him in the discussion, but I did not get the chance.
“Those guys [the therapists] didn’t care about me, the more we talked the madder I got,” he said staring at his feet. “They kept telling me that I shouldn’t let the other kids bother me… That I shouldn’t act this way or that way and the pills they gave me just made me tired…” He continued explaining how the past therapeutic methods were useless. I realized that both mother and child agreed that there was a critical need for intervention but had not found the right one…yet.

I was impressed with the mature and rational way Jack was discussing thedifficulty he had controlling his anger. One question puzzeled me… As we spoke, it was obvious that Jack had two supportive and loving parents. I learned that there were issues with his father, but nothing that was abnormally intense. They were the typical altercations between a father and his adolescent son. I asked Diane when she had noticed that the anger issue had started. I wanted to determine if the problems causing his anger might have been formed in his youth, from a repressed traumatic experience that was manifesting now. Yet I also felt that he was too young to have such repressed memories. Diane answered my question as to when the anger issues started…

“He’s adopted… and when he…” She was speaking but I stopped hearing as soon as I heard the word “adopted” that word made many flags go up and I instantly knew the direction I needed to go with Jack. I asked Diane to wait as I began to write down notes to myself as to the questions I wanted to have answered. I asked Diane to start from the beginning… his birth.
Diane told me Jack’s history. His birth mother gave him up for adoption when he was three years old. Jack told me she walked him up to his first of many foster homes, rang the doorbell, turned and walked away. Jack never saw her again and the last memory he has of his birth mother, was of her back as she left him with complete strangers. He was in foster care for 4 years. Jack would relay to me that he was shuffled around for those 4 years (which we call his “formative years”, I would wonder what was forming…perhaps, anger?). He was sent to live with different “nice” families. He told me that he would come home to find his (foster) “sister” had left and he had a new (foster) “brother”. When he was almost 7 years old, having spent 4 years in foster care, he was about to be adopted! He was elated! A family was going to adopt him! However, his new mother after a few months, informed the adoption agency, that she couldn’t “bond” with this little boy and he was sent back to foster care.

Within a year, another couple, looking to adopt, was again considering him. Diane and Joe finally adopted Jack. At 7 years old, he was finally adopted by the loving family he is with now. Now, eight years later, I am sitting with Jack and his mom, trying to find out why he has anger management issues. I thought that I would be much more surprised if he did not have anger management issues.

In the past 5 years, I've had three other clients who had children with anger management issues and all three children had been adopted. Unfortunately, I found that trying to work with adopted children with anger management issues could be a bumpy and frustrating two-way street. Two of the three did not respond well to hypnosis, while one young man was adopted at birth and was younger that Jack. His anger management issues were not related to adoption and were merely coincidental (even though I do not believe in coincidence). The two other adopted children had almost the same backgrounds as Jack and I was apprehensive that we might have similarly negative results. In both previous cases, the young men who were adopted in their early teens were so used to trying to manipulate their life situations, that they could or would not allow themselves to be hypnotized.

They feigned being hypnotized, which I was easily able to observe and after a few sessions, I told their parents that although I would be more than happy to continue working with their sons, the boys were not willing to allow themselves to be hypnotized. Although the boys protested and claimed that, they were hypnotized, I explained to their parents that I felt that they had become so self-protective, that they could not give up their perceived control. I suggested that hypnosis could be an effective method for rapid change, but that they initially needed a professional, licensed therapist for long-term therapy.

Now I had in a very similar situation. An adopted boy with anger management issues, with a very disturbing childhood. The comparison between Jack and the two other boys was obvious and I was not very optimistic that the results would be different. I would learn that the expression “third time’s a charm” has a certain amount of truth to it. There were many similarities between these three children and a few huge differences. Jack really wanted to control his anger. He was not being forced to come to me because his parents wanted him to control himself; he wanted to control his anger. He was sincere, involved, concerned and very involved in the process. He did not use a façade to feign hypnosis while trying to manipulate his environment as the other boys did.

After we had discussed the issue that instigated his bouts of uncontrolled anger, I knew what the common factor was. In retrospect, it was so obvious, but it was only obvious to me. I was not a family member who was so very involved with Jack’s well being, I was an impartial, rational and totally objective hypnotherapist. The common factor that initiated all Jack’s bouts of uncontrollable anger was rejection.

The normal pressures on adolescents are intense. These pressures contribute to rage in even the most well balanced child that comes from a nurturing family life. Mix the pressures of adolescence with the life experiences that Jack has had and when he is rejected in any way, by anyone; whether the rejection is actual or only in his perception… Jack explodes. After Jack, Diane and I spoke a little longer, I felt that I had enough information and I wanted to try hypnosis. I was still concerned that Jack, as the two prior adopted boys, would not allow himself to be hypnotized. Jack was very interested and involved and my concerns began to diminish and very soon would be completely gone.

Jack said he would be more comfortable if his mother were not in the room. Diane and I agreed, but I did tell Jack that the door to the hypnosis room would have to be open. As he settled into the recliner, I knew I needed to begin with addressing the subject of rejection.
“I know that what I am about to say may hurt,” I began, “but realize that I am not saying it to hurt, I am saying it to bring it up so you are aware of the problem…” I looked at him and said, “So take a deep breath, I don’t want you to comment right away, I want you to first think about what I’m about to say and then I’d like you to tell me what you are feeling… OK?… ready?”… Jack nodded and I said,
“When it comes to rejection, there is no one that knows more about it than you.” He took a breath, not really knowing how to react. I described to him what I thought he was feeling. I described feelings ranging from anger to sadness to hopelessness, he agreed with my observations. We began a long discussion on what he felt was the shortcomings of his past therapies. We were beginning to be comfortable with each other and I felt he was willing to try hypnosis. He was now able to trust me, which was a huge leap of faith on his part, considering his past; I was surprised he could trust anyone. After the first attempt to go into hypnosis met with a small amount of resistance, which is normal with boys his age and to my elated surprise on the second attempt he went relatively deeply into hypnosis.

He became a great hypnotic subject, not only going into hypnosis easily and deeply, he was looking forward to our sessions. This is not usually a big deal, but in Jack’s experiences with therapies, which only made him angrier, the fact that he actually wanted to return for additional sessions, demonstrated to me that the direction I was heading was the correct one. While hypnotized, Jack began to open up and understand his feelings about rejection. He was now, remembering his rejection in a different way. In the past, his memories of his rejection were unemotional, detaching from emotions was the way he was able to cope with the excruciating pain of rejection. However, when he was rejected, the energy needed to keep is anger in check was not enough; the result was an explosion of anger. He was also now allowing the emotions associated with those memories to be accessed.

He was able to accept that he had every right in the world to be as angry as he wanted. He started down a new path, one in which he could accept himself for who he is. As I worked with Jack, he began to accept, along with a better understanding of the cause of his anger, that he had no responsibilities for his situation and the frequency and severity of his bouts of anger began to decrease noticeably. I am optimistic about his ability to control his anger. I had been concerned that he wouldn’t allow himself to go into hypnosis. Now he is an excellent hypnotic subject.

In the past my experiences with adoptive children were not successful, now with Jack, I relished his success. The other children in his situation were not willing to be hurt again and thus, would not allow themselves to trust anyone, stagnating their personal health, development and growth. Jack had learned a wonderful life’s lesson; that he can allow himself to trust again.

I noticed a surprising amount of anger in the room, but it wasn’t coming from Jack. I realized that I was very angry! My anger was a general anger not directed at any one in particular. I was incensed that this sensitive child had been dealt a very raw deal, which was wrong in so many ways that I could not even start to list. How many people failed to do what was right for Jack?

Was it, his birth parents?
Yes, of course, if they were a loving average couple, I would not be writing this; Jack would be just the average kid with the average kid-type problems, in the average school, blissfully unaware that his average life could have been much, much different.

Was it the foster care system?
Somewhat, an overburdened system being run by overworked, underpaid, hopefully good meaning bureaucrats. It would be hard to point a finger at people who are working under the difficult conditions that they are. I suppose we could point a finger at politicians, but that would be too easy and would be futile.

Was it the adoption agency?
Sure, an organization that is making a profit from the desire of couples who cannot have a child and want to adopt, along with a child who has no one and wants to simply to be in a family that loves, respects and wants him.

Or was it his first adoptive family?
Let us look at the preceding sentence, “His First adoptive family”. Was Jack a puppy that was too much trouble to bother to “housebreak”? What could they have possibly be thinking? How could a couple who want to adopt a child, make the colossal decision to adopt that child only to “change their mind” and send the child back to the agency? How could anyone be that cold as to raise the hope of a child and then send this young boy back to the shelter as if he had no feelings or any rights?

The strange thing is that although they were at perhaps the top of the list of whom to blame for Jack’s anger management issues, they may have done him the largest of favors. For if he had stayed with these people who were so insensitive that they would have sent him away, Jack would never have met Diane and Joe, the wonderfully loving parents that he fortunately has now.

I am thankful to have met Jack and his family and hopeful that the difficult childhood that Jack has had, will no longer negatively affect his future. It had been a few weeks since our last session and I was curious as to how Jack was doing. I called and spoke with Diane who said that Jack is doing much better; he had an incident, which had caused him to be angry, but he controlled it well. I mentioned that we all get angry, it is part of life, but it is the method we use to control that anger which is so critical. When Jack had that recent angry incident, Diane had asked him if he wanted to make an appointment to see me. He said that he felt confident that he could handle it himself.

His response reminded me of the old addage about the fisherman and the fish. “Give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. After we spoke, I felt quite confident in Jack’s ability to handle his anger and I felt privileged to be the person to give Jack his “fishing pole”.

Reflections on a Past Life Regression Workshop

2008-09-28T23:00:00.005-04:00

Synopsis;
This article gives you an overview of what happens during a “Past Life Regression Workshop”. My workshop is base on one offered by Dr. Brian Weiss, author of the non-fiction bestseller “Many Lives, Many Masters” and as seen on Oprah.

****

I presented another Past Life Regression Workshop on Sunday 9/28/2008 at The Institute for Spiritual Development in Sparta, New Jersey. My workshops are usually scheduled for 4-5 hours and I suppose the cliché is appropriate, when I say, “Time flies when you’re having fun”. Today’s was no exception; we had a lot of fun and the time just flew by.

The day was miserably rainy and dark with many people cancelling. Due to all the cancellations, we had a very small workshop with only five participants, which made it warm and personal. All through the workshop, there are many questions and answers and everyone was very involved.

The agenda for my Past Life Regression Workshop is,

There is a brief introduction period, where we meet each other. As we all settle in, I encourage people to share any experience they may have with hypnosis or their views about past lives.
I introduce myself, giving my background and how I became interested in hypnotherapy and Past Life Regressions, including my workshops with Dr. Brian Weiss, Neale Donald Walsch, Paul Aurand, Suzanne Northrup and John Holland. I also share my views on and have a discussion about the subjects of the soul, reincarnation, your life’s purpose, beings in “The Light”, ESP, psychic/mediums and more. I reinforce my belief in all of my workshops, that this entire discussion is based on opinion… not on verifiable facts; that when it comes to metaphysics, no one truly knows the truth. The only way we will truly know the actual “truth” about these subjects is when we are out of our bodies and in “the light”.
We continue with an in-depth discussion about how hypnosis and a PLR work.
Participants view a DVD about the true story of a young boy who experiences memories of a past life as a fighter pilot during WWII and the way his family assists him.
I then introduce the participants to three experiences with hypnosis. The first is a hypnotic induction called “Heavy Hands”, where I have the participants picture a yellow page book placed on one hand while imagining helium balloons lifting up the other. We then discuss that experience. The purpose for this exercise is have the participants feel what hypnosis is and to ask questions about their experience, so that they don’t question hypnosis during their regression. The second is called, “A Deepener”. It is to allow a person to go deeper into the hypnotic state; the more often you are hypnotized the easier you can be hypnotized. The third is having participants experience an actual past Life Regression.
At the end of the workshop, I ask if anyone would like to discuss and share his or her experience.

A few interesting things happened today, that I would like to share with you. During the “Heavy Hands” exercise, all participants hold their arms out, extended from their bodies. People react differently to the experience, but all learn how the mind can affect their perceptions in powerful ways. After the exercise, which lasts a few moments (during which time, the participants are sitting with their arms extended out in front of them), most people feel a tension in their shoulders. I noticed Roger, a participant, was rubbing his shoulder, which seemed to me more than the others did. I asked him if he was all right and he told me that he has bursitis in his shoulder and that the exercise did irritate it. I was concerned and wanted to help, if I could. I asked him if he wanted to try a hypnotic technique to see if it might help with the pain. He agreed and I did a procedure called a “instant induction” and then did pain relief management, using a healing technique called “Reiki”. I am pleased to say he was quite pleasantly surprised with the positive results of the 5-minute intervention.

Then during the third hypnotic experience, which is the actual Past Life Regression component of the workshop, all the participants are hypnotized. I access the depth of the hypnotic state of each participant and decide on the speed in which we go through the life that they were visiting.
Joann, a married woman came to the workshop wanting to understand how a Past Life Regression works. She came to the workshop with a certain amount of healthy skepticism, not cynicism. Being a cynic, a person refuses to change their mind about a current believe, even after undeniable proof to change is offered to them. JoAnn was not a cynic. Because the group was so small, I was able to spend more time in deepening everyone in the group and I observed that JoAnn was having a very powerful experience. At first, during the beginning of the regression she was smiling and happily involved with the images she was receiving. Soon after her expression changed, becoming more somber and very soon tears flowed from her eyes. After the regression ended, she needed a few moments to compose herself. When she felt more comfortable, she shared with us that the regression explained many deep-seated problems and answered many questions that she had been dealing with for years. I thank her for sharing her experience with us.

Although I have conducted dozens of PLR workshops, they are always different and I am always awed by the power to heal that Past Life Regression Therapy can offer.

I want to thank Joann for her email testimony, which she has sent to me and can be found on the testimonial page on my website http://www.hyp4life.com/

9/11 Post Script

2008-09-12T23:00:00.002-04:00

This is a postscript to yesterday’s posting “911 a Remembrance and a Sharing”.

Yesterday was 9/11/2008 and I had hoped that there would have been an assembly in our school to remember the tragedy and honor the victims and heroes on that day. Instead, we had what has turned out to be the standard and obligatory “Moment of Silence” at 9:00 am. I am frustrated and angered that seven years have passed and no politician has proposed a National Day of Remembrance. Although I know that we will never forget, we need to honor those 2,948 innocents who died that day. We must honor and acknowledge the heroes… Not only the NYC firefighters, police officers and EMT’s who valiantly gave their lives to save their fellow New Yorkers, but those in Washington DC at the Pentagon and those amazing, courageous, civilians on Flight 93, who sacrificed their lives to stop the fourth attack on our soil, by crashing their plane into a Pennsylvanian field.
For the past two years, I have been teaching US History, so it seemed appropriate that in our US History classes, we would do a memorial to 9/11/2001 on September 11, 2008. I was impressed and quite proud of my students, most of whom were 8 or 9 years old on that day, seven years ago. I shared my experience and those students, who were willing to, shared theirs. I then showed a PowerPoint presentation to the class, who were quiet and respectful. If the government will not designate yesterday as a day of remembrance, I sure will.

During the Christmas holiday 2001, my wife and I went into New York City to see a Broadway play, which has been our holiday tradition since I became a teacher. We refused to allow terrorists to take that tradition from us. I was aware of the fear of terrorist attack in the eyes of the people around me and within my own heart when I saw military personnel in combat uniforms, carrying M-16 rifles in the streets of NYC. We walked through the streets that we both knew so well; being Brooklynites, walking through NYC was a normal experience. However, that evening was different. As we walked by a firehouse, the lights and sirens went on and the large red garage door opened. As the fire truck started to inch its way out of the firehouse, everyone standing, waiting began to applaud the firefighters; our heroes. New Yorkers, who are noted for their impatience, aloofness and abruptness, embraced their heroes and here we were, showering these firefighters in the appreciation they so rightly deserved, an appreciation that was non-existent before 9/11. The memory of being a part of a group of strangers cheering for those firefighters in Manhattan has stayed with me for these past seven years. But then, the feeling faded. The heroes are still there but we went back to our own lives. The cheers stopped… The applause quieted down, like the clapping at the end of the last act of a Broadway play, just faded away. We just stopped noticing and acknowledging them.

Although I am new to bloging, I will attempt to attach some PowerPoint presentations of the attack and the aftermath on this posting, not for those of us who have become more or less hardened to their subject matter. Becoming “hardened” may not be the right description, but I feel, in order to keep from crying continuously, we need to become a little… hardened. The PP presentations I will be attaching are for those children who, like my two beautiful granddaughters, were born after 9/11/2001, whose life, through no fault of their own will be described as the “Post 9/11” generation. The beauty of the web and blogs is that these PP presentations will be around (hopefully) long after we are all gone. So that future post 9/11 generations will have accurate sights and sounds of the attack that changed the world, in order to always remember. And hopefully the old adage will come true… “Those of us who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”
The PP presentation that I plan to paste onto this blog may just soften you and if you are by yourself with no one around, and you feel a tear or two well up… let them flow… it’s OK to cry.

9/11/2001 - A Remembrance and a Sharing

2008-09-11T03:01:00.004-04:00

Whether it was the assassination of JFK or the explosion of the Challenger, there are those experiences in your life that become indelibly etched into your memory. Even more than weddings, birthdays, graduations etc. these life altering, shared, catastrophic experiences stay in your memory, your psyche for your entire life. You remember every detail, every emotion, where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. When a catastrophic event happens, your experiences surrounding the event will always stay in your mind. Even after 45 years, I could tell you, in detail, my experience as a 13-year-old living through the assassination of a president. Those who have had the events on 9/11/2001 be their first experience with a shared, catastrophic event, will realize in their future, just how long the memory will last… forever.
We will always remember that day.
In the sharing of our mutual experiences on that fateful day, we can, along with the experience, share our fear, pain, anger, frustration and profound sadness. In so doing, find that the memories of that day can become a little more bearable.
On that note, I would like to share with you, my experience of 7 years ago, today.

It was a perfect morning; the sky was a beautiful pale blue without a single cloud, the temperature was in the mid to upper 70’s and there was a comfortable breeze.
My day started like any other and ended with the death of the innocence of the American people.
As I drove to my school on Foothill Rd. in Bridgewater NJ, I may have been driving a little fast when I saw the lights in my rearview mirror. The officer was a graduate of the Voc-Tech and let me go with a smile and a suggestion to slow down.
I entered my shop and turned on the equipment and the lights. My shop was the Supermarket Careers Program at Somerset County Vocational Technical High School, where I taught special needs High School students, supermarket skills. Tuesday was the day for our Herr’s Potato Chip delivery and Eddie our driver was right on time, but he wasn’t smiling.
“Did you hear the news? A plane hit the World Trade Towers!” he said as we went into my office. I turned on the radio and my jaw dropped when I heard the first reports of what had happened.
The fear was in the voice of the DJ, but he was in control. “I thought it was a small plane, but I am seeing it on CNN now, it was a commercial plane a big one! Oh MY God! Another plane just hit the other tower! … my God”
I went numb.
I decided to take my students to the library as the announcement came through the PA system into the room. “Please stay in your classrooms we will have information soon.” “Let’s go to the library,” a student said, “there’s a TV there”. I decided to ignore the announcement to stay in class even before my students asked me to leave. In the library, many teachers and students stood, sat on chairs and the floor around the TV. CNN was on and the videos of the explosion in the first tower and the second plane hitting the second tower were playing repeatedly. Then a live, shaky picture showed the first tower collapsing.
Silence… mouths agape and everyone gasped.
I was in shock and distracted by the events that were unfolding and to my responsibility to my students. Seeing the first tower fall made me realize that I had at least four family members working in the shadow of the World Trade Center. True panic seized me. I took out my cell and frantically started calling family members but the lines were all busy. The family members I was able to reach had no news.
The last bell rang and the busses took the students home, the faculty and staff said their good-byes and I slowly walked through the parking lot to my car. I thought that although I had walked to my car the same way for the past eleven years, this walk was very, very different. The school is located under the flight plans for Newark Airport and there are always planes flying overhead. The plane-less sky would greet me for the next few mornings and was an eerie feeling foreboding of the many more changes that were to come.
Driving home, I noticed how light the traffic was and quickly noticed the first American flag on a home next to the school, then another and another. I didn’t know where they had all been stored, but it seemed that every house was proudly flying the red, white and blue. It filled me with a powerful connection with every other driver on the road, every pedestrian, every other American. Yes, they were able to hit us hard. They hurt and killed us, but the sight of all the flags gave me a feeling of closeness, connection and a communion with every other American I passed. We were in this together.
I turned unto the street where I live and my neighbors were out waving flags and screaming at passing cars. It was a surreal feeling, no traffic, no planes in the sky, no one on the roads, until I turned the corner and it would seem that my neighbors had gone completely insane. But these were insane times; I parked my car and went into my home hugged my wife a little longer than usual, called my kids just to hear their voices and let them hear mine and tried to find out if my family working at ground zero were… alive.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I couldn’t eat, I just wanted to go to sleep to wake up and realize that it had only been a nightmare but I couldn’t sleep either. Lying in bed till 3:00 am watching the news, seeing the planes repeatedly hitting the towers, seeing the towers repeatedly collapsing, I could not stop nor did I try to stop the tears and finally, I slept.
The next day at school, the fear continued. The Principal asked me to order an emergency delivery of food that could be stored at the school to feed students and faculty for at least a week. Plans were made to be able to quickly move all students and staff into the gym, where there was plastic and duct tape to seal us inside in the event of chemical or nuclear attack. The food in the supermarket and additional supplies, delivered over the next weeks was stored in the school. The plan was that in the event of another terrorist attack, we (students, staff and faculty) would use the plastic and duct tape to seal ourselves into the gym, where we could survive on the stored water, cup-o-noodles and potato chips. The plan was that we would stay, all together in the gym for the duration. Thank God, it had not become necessary to determine if plastic sheets and duct tape could have saved our lives.
Over the next few months, fears subsided and so too did our pride and connectedness.
That Thanksgiving, our family got together for that most traditional of American holidays. For the prior twelve years, I had made a speech before we all ate our meal. My speeches were always filled with humor, inside family jokes and more importantly, the things we should be thankful for over the past year. As tradition had it, I was prepared with a speech on this less than traditional Thanksgiving… this Thanksgiving was very different. My speech that day was considerably shorter than usual. It started; “I’d like to thank God for allowing ALL our family to be here” and I named those family members whom, we were all so concerned about and who were now sitting around the table. “This Thanksgiving” I continued, “we can be so thankful that all of our loved one are here and healthy. But, I would ask for a moment of silence for the over two thousand families whose Thanksgiving was so cruelly taken away.” We ate our food and dried our tears.

9/11/2001; 7 years and a lifetime ago
I believe there is something cathartic in the telling and sharing of this experience. The fact that others feel the way you do and have similar experiences can lessen your fear and anger. I would love to hear from you and be able to post your experiences in the comments section.
Thank you.

I Hate(d) Labor Day

2008-09-07T01:22:00.001-04:00

Well it’s September and I am back at school. I used to hate Labor Day; the end of summer, felt almost like death. Before I started teaching, I was an assistant manager at Pathmark Supermarkets (A supermarket chain in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area). For 12 very long years, I struggled with the pain and frustration of working at a job, which paid the bills (barely), but was not what I wanted to do. The main problem was that I really didn’t know what I did want to do. So that was my life, I was in a dreadful career situation; knowing that I did not want to do what I was doing but not knowing what I did want to do. My only respite from depression (other than my family) was the summer, which gave me the rest, recreation and vacations that took my mind off my depression.
I would look forward to the summer the way a child looks forward to Holidays, their birthday and playtime all rolled into one! Memorial Day was my favorite holiday, it was the beginning of summer and I hated Labor Day, the end of summer; the two holidays that represented birth and death to me.
After leaving Pathmark and teaching for 17 years, the depression I felt towards the end of August, had turned to a sad melancholy, which I still had at the approach of Labor Day. Hey, don’t get me wrong, one of the perks about teaching is having the entire the summer off (more to come about teaching) and I know I get no sympathy (nor do I expect any) about the sadness associated with the end of summer. After all, I did have it off. But, something happened this year that was different. Perhaps the change was due to my daughter’s wedding on Labor Day. Her wedding was as perfect as anyone could have prayed for. The weather was perfect. The anticipation of the wedding and its coming to perfect fruition may have also helped. I don’t know the cause, perhaps it was due to the ability, after 17 years to let the past (Pathmark) go; or the changes that come with maturity (a nicer way of saying “getting older”); or the final realization that I now, truly know what I want to do with my life. Whatever the reason was, the depression / sadness / melancholy I have felt over many years, has seemed to stop.
I have a passion and a love of teaching and I incorporate it in not only my profession as a teacher, but as a hypnotherapist, father, grandfather, husband, uncle, friend, etc. etc. etc…

It’s September and I’m looking forward to working with my new students. At the end of the last school year, I took off my teacher’s hat (I never truly take that hat off) and put on my hypnotherapist hat. I have spent the last two and a half months hypnotizing people for everything from uncovering their past lives to eliminating their phobias; from breaking their addictions to cigarettes to improving their golf games; from helping them understand why they overeat to why they have low self-esteem and much more. Now it is time to put back on my teacher’s hat and keep my hypnotherapy hat ready for evenings.
I now know how to remove depression from your life. It is simple really. Get passionate about something… anything that gets your interest stimulated. My passion started with teaching special needs high school students, supermarket careers. Once I became involved and passionate about what I was doing, every other good thing in my life followed and quite suddenly, I realized that my depression is now, a thing of the past.

Dancing with my Baby at Her Wedding

2008-09-01T21:17:00.005-04:00

I love Billy Joel!
His music and lyrics resonate with me, so when he released his "River of Dreams" album http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_of_Dreams in 1993, I couldn't wait to buy it. It was my third year as a High School teacher and my daughter had just turned 13. Which is a tough age as an adolescent or for the parent of one. On the way home from school, I stopped at K-Mart, bought the latest Billy Joel cassette and listened and sang along with my favorite piano man. I enjoyed the first 6 songs and then "Lullaby" came on. At first I listened to the melody, Billy's voice and the musical backgrounds. Then I heard the lyrics; I replayed it 3 times. I did not understand why my vision was getting blurry until I felt the tears in my eyes run down my cheeks. Listening to, memorizing and singing along with it helped me deal with the pressures of raising a 13 year old girl. With one line of the song, memories of holding my baby in my hands when she was a week old; another brought back stroking her forehead before kissing her good night; another calming her after a nightmare. And I was more able to deal with the sometimes, irrational behavior of a 13 year old (she fortunately grew out of that stage relatively quickly). During rational times with her which were actually much more than the irrational times (although it seems that you remember and dwell on the trying times more than the good), we would drive together in my car and my daughter and I would sing to the cassette. She would look at me in the way she does and comment on the sweetness of the song. I am not being boastful to say my daughter has a beautiful voice and after singing Lullaby, I thought at that time, I would be dancing with her, to "Lullaby" at her wedding.

And I did.

I didn't know if I would get through the wedding without crying and the odds in my family were 20 to 1 that I would be a blithering idiot. But, although I did get misty eyed, I didn't cry; my baby cried for the both of us and as I dried her eyes I sang in my head...

"Then in your heart there will always be a part of me"

Those fathers of daughters out there know what I'm talking about and I'm sure you mothers do too. Read the lyrics and see if you don't get misty eyed... I dare you

I double dog dare you...

Tile :Billy Joel - Lullaby (Good Night My Angel)
This is lyrics from http://www.lyrics007.com/
*Verse 1*
Good night my angel time to close you eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you've been asking me
I think you know what I've been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
And you should always know
Where ever you may go
No matter where you are
I never will be far away

*Verse 2*
Good night my angel now it's time to sleep
And still so many things I want to say
Remember all the songs you sang for me
When we went sailing on an emerald bay
And like a boat out on the ocean
I'm rocking you to sleep
The water's dark and deep
Inside this ancient heart
You'll always be a part of me

(Musical Bridge)Do do do do...

*Verse 3*
Goodnight my angel now it's time to dream
And dream how wonderful your life will be
Someday your child will cry
and if you sing this lullaby
Then in your heart there will always be a part of me
Someday we'll all be gone
But lullabies go on and on
They never die
that's how you
and I
will be

You cry?

I do

Every time!

My Baby is Getting Married

2008-08-27T15:16:00.002-04:00

Although I am a novice at "Blogging" I am getting the idea of it. I have recently viewed other blogs and spoke with some knowledgeable friends about blogging (Thanks Bill and Steven). I suppose I'll look back at these early postings and smile at my naivete. In actuality, I am still uncertain as to the direction I want to take this blog. Perhaps a diary of my feelings and experiences of life in general (which may be boring) or more a record of my experiences involving hypnosis, teaching or metaphysical subjects (psychic, ESP, mediumship, past lives etc.). At this point I will reduce my stress by planning to attempt to post all of these choices, for at least a little while.

My baby girl is getting married in 3 days, 15 hours and a few odd minutes; 28 years, 9 days and a few hours after the first time I met her. But, these numbers mean nothing. Your age, your income, your SS#, your phone #, your weight, your height... all pointless numbers. What isn't pointless is knowing a person that makes your heart sing each and every time you see them. That is what "it" is all about. Knowing and being with people who can make your heart sing. Usually they don't try or even know what they do to make you feel that way and that is perhaps why your heart sings so loudly in their presence.

I remember when she was born as if it were yesterday. Being our second child, I was not nearly as stressed as I was when her older brother was born. Now THAT was not a fun experience for me and a whole lot worse for my wife. His was a 20 hour posterior birth marathon. I am surprised that my wife was even willing to have another child, but I am so appreciative that she chose to. My daughter's birth was a easy as her middle name... Joy. Her middle name pretty much sums up my experience with my daughter... a joy.
From the first time she said "Da-da", to her smile that lit up her face and everyone around, to the pain and concern of seeing her off to Kindergarten, to the "Joy" of having her run to the door and jump into my arms after a hard day's work, to the pride we felt seeing her acting and singing in school plays, to the mixed emotions of meeting her "first date" after being pleaded with not to embarrass her, to the heart wrenching feeling of missing her after dropping her off in North Carolina after an 8 hour drive at Elon University and wanting to stay with her to be the overly protective father I was so used to being, to the happiness and pride in seeing her graduate, to the fatigue in helping her move to her apartment, to being introduced to her boyfriend who she told me in confidence, would be "The One"... the love for a daughter simply grows. And then last August, just before her birthday, this very nice young man, asked my wife and I, while sitting at our kitchen table, "I would like to have your permission to marry your daughter" and we were overjoyed. We realized that our family just grew by one. But... Where did the time go? My daughter is engaged to be married! It's so corny, but the song from "Fiddler on the Roof" rings through my head... "Is this... the little girl I carried... Sunrise, Sunset... Sunrise, Sunset... Swiftly fly the years" I never truly appreciated the truth of that song/play; where has the time gone? So, in about 87 hours from now I will walk the Joy of my life down the aisle; but who's counting. I can't guarantee that I won't be a little (lot) teary eyed (crying my eyes out), but I know they will be tears of... JOY!

Your "Path"

2008-08-22T22:48:00.001-04:00

Everyone has their own path. This sounds like a very simple statement; a "yeah, sure, so what else is new", sort of statement. But it is not at all simple. What is a path anyway and do you know, first... that you are, in fact, on one and secondly where it will take you? Every time you ask a question like that; "where is the path you are on taking you" and the answer comes from where ever answers come from, you are inevitably going to ask more and more questions. Why is there a path anyway? Does everyone have a path? Are paths different for each person? Can I fall off my path? Who decided that I should be on this (my) path? and on and on...
Our path begins when we are born. Or does it? Perhaps our paths are formed before we are born and we decide to go down this path or that path... to learn along the way.
Lots and lots of questions. And that is what we are all here for... to ask questions, to get answers (from others or ourselves) to learn and then... to ask more questions.
I said in the summer of 2003 at a week long Past Life Regression workshop run by Dr. Brian Weiss at The Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck NY that my life's path had changed. I "saw the light" I realized what I wanted to do (at 53). I wanted to take everyone I knew "into the light" with me on my path. I tried to convert every family member and friend to my new way of thinking and believing and tried to take them with me down my path. The more I pulled the more they resisted. The more energy I expended draging them towards my path, the more they expended resisting. I realized that although I completely believe in this, my new view of what life is all about, no one has the right to force anyone else onto their path. I plan to be writing more on paths, just one more thing... You never change the path you are on for a different path. Your path doesn't change it simply expands to incorporate new beliefs and understandings...
But then again, that's just my opinion :)

First Posting

2008-08-21T23:42:00.000-04:00

Hi and welcome to my blog. This is all new to me and to be honest, I have never even been on a blog before, but I believe that the purpose of life is to learn as much as you can, so here I am starting a blog and learning as I go.On this blog, I will be posting interesting facts about hypnosis, hypnotherapy, the subconscious and more. I am in the process of writing a book and plan to use parts of my book as articles I plan on posting. I will also be posting my experiences with more "New Age" and metaphysical topics that will include ESP, psychic development, mediumship, the soul, Past Life Regression Therapy and many other areas that you may be interested in. It is absolutely NOT my intention to try to convince you that my view of what life is like is the right and only correct view or that you should believe what I do. Actually I believe in the opposite, that we all must find our own way or "path" in this world. If what I post makes you uncomfortable, I apologize in advance. My intent is to suggest to you that we all need to challenge our beliefs even those that include religion, in order to grow. No one has the right to tell you what you should believe, only you know what resonates as truth in your own soul. If it feels right, if it makes sense, if it feels truthful to you then believe. Keep your healthy skepticism... not cynicism. Cynics believe only what they have always believed in, even when presented with irrefutable evidence that they may be wrong. Skeptics may be difficult to convince, but they are open to new truths.If you have come to my blog through my website http://www.hyp4life.com/ , you hopefully have a lot of questions about the information found there. You can contact me thru the site or post a comment and as soon as I figure out how, I'll reply. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks to Wayne and Steven for helping me set up my site.