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The Energy Odyssey. New Directions in Energy Psychology.
The Energy Odyssey. New Directions in Energy Psychology.
The Energy Odyssey. New Directions in Energy Psychology.
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The Energy Odyssey. New Directions in Energy Psychology.

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Psychological problems can get locked into the human energy system. This system, with its subtle energy patterns, can be influenced by stimulating the meridians and chakras known from Traditional Chinese Medicine and other ancient healing schools. These revolutionary discoveries have rapidly started to challenge and change the concepts and methods of traditional psychotherapy and counseling. This book contains a series of essays on the development of energy psychology in the early years.

In the first week of July 2001, a small group of enthusiastic psychotherapists, counselors and healers met in Fürigen, near Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, for the First European Conference on Energy Psychology. During three days they engaged in interesting presentations and discussions about this rapidly expanding field. This book offers a fascinating review of the amazing journey undertaken by these highly competent pioneers.

Some of the names will sound familiar in your ears: Dan Benor, Patt Carrington, Jim Durlacher, Donna Eden, David Feinstein, Phil Friedman, David Gruder, Dorothea Hover-Kramer, Greg Nicosia, Mary Sise, Larry Stoler and many others. This book offers a fascinating review of the amazing journey undertaken by these highly competent pioneers.

Willem Lammers is a psychologist, psychotherapist and trainer with a broad experience in many psychotherapeutic schools. He is a founding director of the IAS Institute in Maienfeld, Switzerland. He has been active in the field from 1996 and is one of the first professionals who have practiced and taught energy psychology in Europe.

The variety of presentations in this book is amazing. It appears to me that each author has presented a different facet, allowing the reader to get a full appreciation of this jewel called Energy Psychology. I enjoyed and learned from each paper.
– Thomas Narvaez, Ph.D., Registered Hypnotherapist

This book brings you a feast of self-healing approaches that can change your life, as they have changed mine. There is no need to suffer from many anxieties, fears, and old hurts that can take the good taste out of your life. Learn how to release whatever you no longer wish to burden you, releasing the struggles and replacing them with joy and healing.
– Daniel J. Benor, MD, Author, Healing Research, Vol. I-IV

This new-old knowledge, this new-old view on health and healing-processes presented in this book, has been needed in the western medicine since a long time. These new tools used with humility, respect, common sense, together with the tools we use today will bring about a wealth of healing options.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 1, 2016
ISBN9781311770271
The Energy Odyssey. New Directions in Energy Psychology.
Author

Willem Lammers

Willem Lammers, MSc, DPsych, TSTA, is a chartered clinical and social psychologist, a psychotherapist, and a consultant to people and organisations. He also certified as a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (TSTA) and as a Doctor in Psychotherapy by Professional Studies at Middlesex University. Since 1987 he has been leading a large training institute for coaching, counselling and supervision, ias AG, now in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland.In his training, practice and teachings, he spent many years on the interface of body, mind and spirit, in systems like transactional analysis, NLP, the Reconnection, the Monroe Institute, and Energy Psychology. In 2005, as a result of these explorations, Willem discovered Logosynthesis and has been developing and training it ever since.Willem runs a private practice for psychotherapy, supervision and coaching. His teaching activities are taking him to many countries in Europe and overseas. Willem is the author of five books and numerous articles in the field.

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    The Energy Odyssey. New Directions in Energy Psychology. - Willem Lammers

    α

    The Way Home

    Willem Lammers

    Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

    – Albert Einstein

    The first edition of this book was first published on the occasion of the First European Conference on Energy Psychology named 2001: An Energy Odyssey¹. Homer’s original Odyssey is the story of a man finding his way home.

    After a ten-year long siege, the proud city of Troy was finally conquered by the Greeks, with the help of an ingenuous stratagem. They built an enormous, wooden horse and put it near the city walls. Then word was spread it was a gift from the gods. The Trojans believed the lie, and took the horse into the city. The gift proved to be a curse: The horse was a hiding place for Greek soldiers. In the night they left the wooden structure and opened the city gates to let their army in. The war was over, and Troy was destroyed. The creative man who designed the horse was Odysseus, the sharp-minded king of Ithaca.

    Odysseus, or Ulysses by his Latin name, left the sacked city with his companions. On the way they insulted the mighty Poseidon, the lord of the seas. He took revenge, and it took Odysseus ten years to get home, to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachos. The story of his return to Ithaca was recounted by Homer in the eighth century before Christ, in the second work of Western literature, the Odyssey. The book is, according to Peter Jones (1991) rich in character, adventure and incident, reconciling reality with fantasy, the heroic with the humble, the intimate with the divine.

    In Western culture, the word odyssey has received two different meanings. One is the long journey through adverse circumstances, in which an individual shows amazing resistance to the challenges of the environment. We’ve seen this in Stanley Kubrick’s film from which we borrowed the title of the First European Conference on Energy Psychology. The second meaning of the word is far less spectacular compared to the demons, witches, giants and plagues of the first, but very interesting in an age in which people were seen as no more than toys of the gods. It’s the way home, and for the first time in the history of literature the home becomes the center of the world.

    Our own odyssey offers both options. In the world of energy psychology we have started a trip, of which we don’t know when, where and how it will end, and which already showed us a strange world. What we know is that in the end this trip will lead us home, a home within ourselves, within this world and within the universe.

    Human searching is often described as a way. In the Bible, the children of Israel followed the way out of slavery, through the deserts of experience, to the Promised Land. Islam regards the pilgrimage to Mecca as one of the five pillars of faith. Chinese spirituality expresses the paradox of the journey in the Tao. The Buddhists seek the Way to Enlightenment, the first Christians were known as the People of the Way, and Jesus identified himself as the Way (Silf, 2001).

    The Odyssey shows us first signs of a Western process of individuation, as Zeus complains to his god-colleagues: "What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny." (Homer, 1991, I, 33–35).

    Odysseus’ journey challenged him in many ways, and his journey is a metaphor for the human condition. Odysseus is in us, in each of us on our way through existence. Although, in our culture, the physical dangers have ceased for most of us, the challenge remains. As Joan Hitlin puts it in Chapter 3, at each edge, you can expect to find edge-figures – subpersonalities, shadows, demons, gremlins, introjects, inner children, archetypes – who are invested, for better or for worse, in keeping you from going past your edges. We are kept from our way home the way Odysseus was, and we have to find the way again and again, each of us in our own way.

    We all aboarded an odyssey for ourselves. We’re on our way to our spiritual home and that way surprises us with ever new adventures. The challenges requires the utmost of our creativity, our flexibility and our endurance.

    Note

    1 The First European Conference on Energy Psychology took place on July 5–8, 2001, in Fürigen, Switzerland. It was directed by the author and sponsored by IAS, the Institute for the Application of the Social Sciences in Maienfeld, Switzerland. This conference was co-sponsored by ACEP, the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology.

    References

    Homer(1991). The Odyssey. Translated by E.V. Rieu. London: Penguin Classics.

    Jones, P. (1990). Introduction. In: Homer(1991). The Odyssey. Translated by E.V. Rieu. London: Penguin Classics.

    Silf, M. (2001). Sacred Spaces. Stations on a Celtic Way. Oxford: Lion Publishing.

    β

    Creating

    Beate Kircher

    Since we have established the frame of Homer`s Odyssey to hold all the articles together, there is much space for individuality.

    – Email to the authors of this book, on April 16, 2001

    When I look at this book it is also a record of the creative joy of editing it. Somehow, 24 original articles have joined to resonate with Homer`s perennial winged words and I am delighted with this concert. Individual sounds have become one tune that accompanies Odysseus on his way home, to the place of his belonging. He is listening, and so are we.

    Embedding 24 contributions on energy psychology in the wider context of Homer’s great epic has somehow changed their meaning – it was like laying out bait for the radiant energies (Eden and Feinstein), finding the keyword that invited them to help weave the fabric of this book. Creating meant appreciating their presence and allowing them to work, by observing what would manifest rather than interfering with it.

    Calling upon an old myth invited its power into the creation process which became an odyssey of its own – Scylla demanded the sacrifice of texts and spring days that could have been spent outside in exchange for a safe passage. Charybdis appeared disguised as linear time, threatening us with the promise she would swallow the whole project if we spent too much time on details. All that is no longer there is also part of this odyssey.

    When I was attempting to write something significant on creativity, the authors` voices all of a sudden transformed into Sirens’ songs. I could no longer hear my own voice, an experience within a creating process that Joan Hitlin might term the Tooting Your Own Trunk Phase. In Dorothea Hover Kramer`s words, I had to heal into my true self by reclaiming my innate human inventiveness for personal creativity. Tracing my joy in the whole project brought me back on track. At some point, Poseidon’s winds stirred the seas against our computers and files were shipwrecked. However, Penelope kept on instilling into the project: her patience in weaving her shroud, and her trust in Odysseus’ arrival back home.

    Homer’s wonderful imagery and vivid, rhythmic language helped to structure the book in chapters and taught us to listen to the tone of each article. And some good gods appeared with precious gifts: one line or a whole passage by Homer that would contain a hint on how to proceed , that would contribute to a deeper understanding of issues. They connected the rhythms of energy psychology tapping to the rhythms of Greek hexameter verse in the insight that both help the bard remember his lines.

    On looking back, I see the floor of my living room covered with papers – all the articles arranged to form one circle. This is the more real image of their order – within this book this order had to be converted into something sequential. To me, the circle is still there. Originated by the Muse, the Guardian of Creativity. We honor her presence by asking her to speak first.

    The book starts with the alpha and finishes with the 8th Greek letter theta – a long way still from omega, with much space to be filled individually. And it closes with Homer – with the lines that are believed to be the final lines of the original Odyssey.

    Enjoy them!

    γ

    Quick Fixes and Creative Intelligence

    Willem Lammers

    The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

    — Albert Einstein.

    Energy psychology is becoming famous. It’s fast, it’s efficient, it doesn’t hurt. It resolves many psychological and somatic symptoms. It can even be fun! Roger Callahan’s (1997) case of Mary laid the foundation for this reputation. Since then, extensive case material has convinced many health professionals of its value for symptom treatment.

    Initially in this process much emphasis was placed on the treatment of relatively simple symptoms, like specific phobias and type 1 PTSD. Nowadays, more and more professionals are using energy psychology with clients who have complex issues. Correspondingly, our methods of treatment have also become more complex. Here we meet challenging boundaries. We have started on an Odyssey. Home will represent improved work with our clients.

    Many of us don't feel comfortable in the world of modern academic psychology and medicine. Our theories and our methods are difficult to understand within a materialist frame of reference, and may generate a lot of resistance from traditionalists. But: we live in the same world as the APA and AMA in the USA, the BMA and the UKCP in Britain, and the BDP in Germany. We need solid contacts with our colleagues in the world of academic psychology and medicine, with researchers and with all those who are also trying to do a better job treating and healing clients. We’re not the only professionals with that intention. Contact has advantages: We don’t need to invent the ship for our odyssey, and we don’t need to invent navigation. Whenever possible, it makes sense to map the unknown territory with the help of tried and tested instruments, but we must not be afraid to develop our own tools as well. If we stay in contact, we also avoid isolation, with its risk of becoming a cult, defining reality only through our own prophets. We protect ourselves against arrogance, narcissism, and even contempt, because we listen to find out where we agree and disagree, and we can develop common developmental paths.

    In ancient Greece, in Homer’s times, there was an understanding that one was required to worship all the gods and goddesses. You could have your favorites, but none of the remaining deities could be ignored. The god or the goddess you ignored became the one who turned against you and destroyed you. Maybe we don’t have as many gods and goddesses as the Greeks had, but the same law of respect might be valid for the people around us. We must respect the thoughts and opinions of others, and listen to them, without having to agree.

    Our goal must be to make our experience known to the world, in a language understood by our clients and by our colleagues. We must design a language to describe our experience on this energy odyssey.

    1700 years ago, St. Augustine said: Miracles don’t happen in contradiction of nature, but they happen in contradiction with what we know about nature. What do we know about nature? For more than two hundred years, Western civilization has been taking the divine out of healing. Science, beginning with Descartes, studies the body as if it were a machine-like organism. It studies the brain as if it were a molecular, biological computer. The subtle and spiritual dimension has been excluded as a subject, work has been concentrated on the wet mind, the biological substrate of consciousness (Kosslyn & Koenig, 1992). This model of the world was the one that has made physicists feel secure. Since Newton, they have imagined the universe as a perfect machine, with galaxies and stars and planets, with protons, neutrons and electrons neatly in place. The second law of thermodynamics described entropy, the disorganization of matter over time, as things become less structured and decay.

    The illusion of security was challenged in the course of the 20th century. Elementary particles appear to behave erratically and can’t be traced in the usual way. Ilya Prigogine (REF) has shown that if energy is introduced to matter, the disintegration process is reversed, and matter takes on a higher organization. Even concepts like the speed of light seem to have lost their everlasting certainty. Physicists now openly admit uncertainty as the base of their system. The leading edge physicist William Tiller has even said: We’re babes crawling at the floor of the universe.

    Most neurobiologists, however, still confine themselves to the checks and balances of dopamine and serotonine, to the narrow boundaries of DNA-directed molecules. They describe the chemistry and structure of organs and larger systems: circulation, digestion, and reproduction. The gene count has started, and has shaken the counting materialists: A rat has as many genes as a human, about 30,000, and a seemingly simple plant like rice has even 60% more! That knowledge, however, has not brought us closer to the nature of consciousness. Hunt (1995) writes: A better understanding of biochemical processes in the body has not explained man’s more subtle experiences in the material world nor in his inner world. (p. 40).

    Psychologists derive their scientific frame of reference from academic biology. They have learned to confine themselves to the three B’s: brain, behavior and biography. Our emotional household is seen as similar to that of reptiles, managed by the limbic system in the brain. ICD-10 and DSM-IV describe diagnostic categories of patterns of emotions, cognitions and behavior, which allow professionals to describe what they see happening.

    Modern academic medicine and psychotherapy describe us as complex socio-psycho-biological systems, defined and determined by the same three B’s. If something goes wrong, something is out of balance with the B’s and something has to be added, deleted or actively modified. Patients receive medication or a supplement, or surgery for diseases. Traditional psychotherapy analyzes the client’s biography and creates new understanding, or analyzes behavior and teaches new ways to cope with the challenges of life.

    In the Newtonian-Cartesian system of perceiving reality, consciousness doesn’t exist. Stanislav Grof was one of the first theorists to challenge this frame of reference with his holotropic view. Holotropic means: turned toward the whole, a well-chosen name in this context. He proposed the concept of perinatal matrices, cognitive/emotional reaction patterns, installed during different stages of gestation and birth. These patterns can lay the metaphorical foundation for the problems of the person in later life. He called them systems of complex experience, or COEX systems. The concept of COEX systems is comparable to Jung’s complexes: Amalgamations of experience that block people from being who they really are. Grof also suggested the idea of transpersonal material, in connection to past lives and archetypes.

    This is a short, and somewhat superficial, summary of the current mainstream of academic psychology and medicine. Let’s now continue with the energy concept. Energy is originally a Greek word, which means working within. The word came into use in our culture in the 19th century, as we learned how to create movement out of fuel, and to generate electricity from nature’s resources. Since then, our understanding of energy has extended from mechanical to electrical, and from electrical to electromagnetic. An important discovery of the 20th century was how we can use energy to store and transmit information, with the help of magnetic and optical carriers, both with and without wires.

    Science reaches its limits when energy patterns become personal and unique. To make observations, science has agreed on a reality in which phenomena and individuals are similar and behave repetitively. In recent years, the development of chaos theory has started to soften this long held position. In energy psychology, we perceive human beings as energy beings. To see them that way, we need two main expansions of the classical frame of reference of medicine and psychology. Many aspects of the old frame of reference are still valid. A paradigm shift doesn’t need to change the perception of every aspect of our environment. Even in a time of chaotic patterns and strange attractors, an apple obeys the same laws of gravity as it did in Newton’s time.

    Two expansions of the scientific worldview represent different stages of my own learning experience in the past few years. The first expansion is the concept of an energy body containing, or interacting with, the physical body. The concept of the body as a neurobiological phenomenon, a series of coherently functioning organs within a bag of skin, is replaced or extended by an understanding of the body as a complex energy system. In this system, disturbances in the harmony of the flow of energy can manifest as destructive or blocking beliefs, and as physical or emotional complaints. The second expansion of the scientific frame of reference is the addition of a spiritual framework, with a creative intelligence, a formative cause, beyond thoughts, emotions and feelings. This formative cause can generate every phenomenon in reality through intention. Other chapters in this book extend this conceptual system to past lives, and transpersonal and higher spiritual levels.

    The first expansion: We are an energy body relating to a physical body.

    We have an energy body, or even: We are an energy body. Our body cannot be defined as just atoms and molecules. Our body is defined by organizing patterns, or –in the words of complex systems theory– attractors. All these atoms and molecules obey only these strong organizing forces. These forces are coherent, intentional and relational.

    There is a simple demonstration of that: Think of your body now, feel it, feel the solid quality of it as it touches your chair and the ground. Then realize that 99% of the atoms that build your body now, were not part of that same body only one year ago. The atoms are exchangeable. The patterns, the organizing field, the attractors are not.

    Throughout history, psychics and clairvoyants have described an energy body. They assumed that the physical body functions at a certain frequency, and that parallel to the physical body there are a number of energetic bodies. They are usually called etheric, emotional and mental bodies. Gifted individuals can perceive them as an aura, with many layers. Within these bodies, a life energy, ch’i or Qi, flows through an intricate system of meridians and chakras.

    In modern scientific terms, some of these can still be described as electromagnetic phenomena. We find this way of thinking in three classic works: Becker and Selden’s The Body Electric, Richard Gerber’s Vibrational Medicine, and Valeria Hunt’s Infinite Mind. Hunt writes:

    Apart from the scientifically established electromagnetic systems of the body, visible as alternating currents in the brain, the nerves and the muscles, there is an electromagnetic system emanating from atoms and cells. This energy system is continuous and allows energy exchange between the person and the environment.

    We now know that the chakras are nodes of nerves; that healers send out electromagnetic energy 5000 times stronger than normal individuals; and that meridians and acupuncture points can be made visible. To confirm this, we can use the instruments of classical science, and we can demonstrate that such an extended energy system exists.

    Of course, there is resistance to acknowledge the existence of these phenomena. We feel more comfortable continuing to see the world as we’ve always seen it, excluding information that doesn’t match our familiar view of the world. If we want to build bridges to established science, we can make our colleagues aware of the discoveries of Richard Gerber and Bill Tiller, and some of them will become curious. We can assume that beyond the known and measurable forms of electromagnetic energy, there are other, more subtle manifestations of energy. They cannot be measured – yet – with the available equipment.

    However, these forms of energy can be perceived by especially gifted individuals, and they can be deduced from phenomena in the material world. Muscle testing (as developed in applied kinesiology), ideomotor responses (as used in clinical hypnosis), and the scratch pad of the radionics machine are some of the phenomena which point to these subtle energy manifestations. Within the current scientific paradigm, these methods are considered invalid, anecdotal, and even suspicious, and the data derived from these sources of information are said to relate only to single individuals, with reliability not guaranteed by the usual criteria. This area of energy psychology is explored by the founding schools, those therapeutic processes known by acronyms: TFT, EFT, BSFF, TAT and many more. You find a whole list in appendix B of this book.

    At this level of intervention symptoms are treated. We try to relieve the immediate suffering of the client. We treat a phobia, and if this phobia is rooted in one or a few single incidents, it will easily disappear. You can treat jet lag, a sick stomach, and fear of heights. A fear of spiders, however, may already be much more difficult to treat because of the presence of Grof’s perinatal matrices. The basic tenet of this type of intervention is that suffering can be relieved and that we have the means with which to relieve it. Possible existential causes of the symptoms are not discussed, the client’s definition of the problem is taken as the starting point of the intervention. An indication that this level of intervention doesn’t cover all the facts, is given by the topic of psychological reversal: The client is not able or willing to give up the symptoms (–> Carrington).

    The second expansion: We are creating ourselves as we go

    Many of us are locked into a perception of everyday life in which we tend to put the causes of our behavior outside of ourselves. The second expansion of the traditional frame of reference takes us even farther away from classical psychology and medicine. In this framework, there is a spiritual, creative force that is actually birthing ourselves from moment to moment. We can call this a causal body, or creative intelligence. This way of thinking redefines cause-effect relationships. Coming, as I did, from a classical frame of reference, the nature of this new framework is confusing and difficult to grasp. You might say I’m a slowly recovering Cartesian.

    Creative intelligence generates electromagnetic patterns we can measure with our equipment. It creates the mental, the emotional, the etheric and the physical bodies. This is what we really are. This is how we create ourselves anew every day. Our physical body can change. Our emotions can change. Our thoughts can change, but the causal body is there all the time, silent in the background.

    Descartes told us, a few centuries ago: Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. But if I ask you to go back in time, to the beginning of your career, to the first day of university or high school, to the first day of school when you were six, to go back even further... to kindergarten, to birth... Is there any moment in your awareness of your life, where you could not say I am?

    This force actively manifests. It’s the real you. It creates your thoughts, your emotions and your body. It realizes your intention, for better or worse. In the development of an individual’s consciousness there is a slow transition, from being created to creating, from fragmented to focused, from manifested to manifesting. David Hawkins has designed a logarithmic scale from 0-1000. On this scale, with the help of muscle testing, a score can be assigned for every concept and every being. Phenomena with a score under 200 are connected to evil and destruction. The higher realms describe the manifestations of compassion, unconditional love and pure consciousness. In this way of thinking, suffering and the causing of suffering are just stages of the development of consciousness on its way of becoming connected to the One Source.

    Pathology and Healing

    On the level of the first expansion, pathology is an imbalance in the energy system of the individual. Seen from the level of the second extension, the cause of suffering in our lives is the fragmentation of our identity in the face of the world. All illness is rooted in the mind, in the disconnection from the One Source, the One Mind, or whatever you might want to call it or Him. The fragmentation is directly connected to traumatic events, moments of excessive demands in which we do not feel supported. At such moments, our identity cracks, and we break up into different parts.

    Don Elium, our Californian colleague, compares this to a glass falling on the kitchen floor. We’re fragmented, and our parts develop separate lives, some in the foreground, others in silence in the background. We see fragmentation everywhere in psychology: Freud spoke about the Ego, the Id and the Superego. Erving Polster, the gestalt therapist, called us a population of selves, Eric Berne (1961) found many different ego states, caught in an eternal dialogue between Inner Child and Inner Parent.

    As soon as we’re fragmented, our consciousness is not focused anymore, and we lose the creative potential of the causal body, lose our contact with creative intelligence. We start to waste our energy in the internal dialogue: One part of us wants to stay, some other part wants to go. One part wants to work, another wants to play. One part wants to engage in a cause, another part wants to remain disengaged. This duality or fragmentation can make us sick, lonely, aggressive, bitter and unproductive. Focusing our energy, being our Selves, makes us healthy and loving, and allows us to develop and to grow, to create. Because of the way the material world is organized, we get disconnected from this self. That’s normal. The world of form can only be described in its differences, through its polarities. It happens all the time: We’re splitting ourselves between old and new, between Inner Parent and Inner Child, between top dog and underdog, between heart and mind, between I and Thou, between

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