THERAPIES

EMDR is a therapeutic technique that works very effectively with both adults and children for overcoming trauma, anxiety and stress. This includes trauma relating to major disasters to physical, sexual and emotional abuse, grief, phobia, panic attacks, sleep disorders, childhood trauma like teasing, bullying, negative reactions to divorce, getting lost etc, and for pain control.

EMDR was founded by Francine Shapiro and is recognised by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. The treatment is based on the Adaptive Information Processing model, the premise being that physical and emotional self-healing occurs automatically unless this process is interrupted. In this case, specific interventions, like EMDR are necessary in order to bring about adaptive information processing. EMDR is designed to address the emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, attitudes and behaviours to achieve a decrease in symptoms and an enhanced ability to function in life, without having to talk in detail about the trauma.

During the EMDR sessions the client is requested to concentrate on a disturbing part of the memory and then let their mind move to ‘whatever comes up” during the sets of eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation, such as taps and audio tones. The client may spend only a short period of time on the disturbing memory itself. Desensitization and a decline of distress are generally experienced at the end of the session, and new insights and understandings tend to merge.

The desensitization phase is followed by the installation phase, where the focus is on accentuating and increasing the strength of the positive cognition of the client. For example, the therapist would aim to install the cognition of “I am in control” for the client who felt powerless. The amount of EMDR required will depend upon many factors, including the client’s readiness to deal with emotions and the client’s personal history.

Psychotherapy involves both talk therapy as well as the use of various techniques in order to assist the client to explore and gain insight into his/her feelings, thought processes and experiences, so that the adjustment problem may be solved. There are many different schools of psychotherapy.

Gail’s approach to psychotherapy is aligned with the UK definition of psychotherapeutic counselling, where a trusting therapeutic relationship between therapist and client is critical. The client’s problem is explored holistically, paying attention to the body, mind and soul. Attention is paid to the wounding over the various developmental stages. Gail uses this approach mainly with adolescents and adults.

NLP was started by Richard Brandler who was assisted by his professor, Dr John Grinder. They studied and modelled people they considered excellent communicators, people who could connect well and who could bring about change successfully. Neuro-linguistic programming studies the connection between neurology (how we think), language (how we communicate) and programming (the pattern of our behaviour and emotions).

Today NLP is used widely by people from all walks of life in order to bring about new thinking, new choices, changes that support what the individual wants, without having to go into their past. It acknowledges that positive intention underlies all action.

Jon Kabat-Zinn is the founder of Mindful-based Stress Reduction. This is his definition;

“It is the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non-judgmentally in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.”

This is how Daniel J. Siegel describes it:

“Mindfulness in its most general sense is about waking up from a life on automatic, and being sensitive to novelty in our everyday experiences. With mindful awareness the flow of energy and information in our mind enters our conscious attention and we can both appreciate its contents and come to regulate its flow in a new way.

Mindful awareness, as we will see, actually involves more than just simply being aware. It involves being aware of aspects of the mind itself. Instead of being on automatic and mindless, mindfulness helps us awaken, and by reflection on the mind we are enabled to make choices and thus change becomes possible.”

Mindfulness is a conscious direction of the mind, paying attention to thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and the surrounding environment in the moment with curiosity, not on the past or future. The present moment is experienced as it is, non-judgmentally, without any attempt to interpret or analyse.

While mindfulness practice can be done informally as a way of life, formal practice typically includes meditation, either lying down, sitting or walking, a body scan procedure, and a set of simple yoga exercises.

Scientists are continually discovering more about a wide array of benefits Mindfulness offers, such as reducing stress, increasing joy, enhancing emotional intelligence and serving as a change agent for unwanted habits. Other benefits include:

• Reduces stress and anxiety

• Reduces depression

• Assists with insomnia

• Increases sense of well-being

• Effective for pain management

• Sharpens memory and increases focus and attention

• Improves emotional and social intelligence and develops empathy and compassion

• Improves relationships

• Improves health and boosts immunity

• Benefits on illnesses such as cancer and heart disease

• Creates clearer, more focused thinking

• Improves confidence and emotional resilience

• Reduces compulsive and addictive tendencies

• Helps with long-term weight loss

Leadership Embodiment was founded by Wendy Palmer. She studied the characteristics and non-verbal language of great leaders, paying particular attention to the posture and gestures of effective people. She noticed that these great leaders “shared common ways of standing, sitting and gesturing in relation to themselves and others, especially in challenging and complex situations.”. Her observations were enhanced by her non-aggressive martial art of Aikido and her practice of mindful meditation.

Upon further study of the underlying principles governing an individual’s ability to be effective in stressful situations, Wendy Palmer discovered how “the way we sit and stand can change the way we think and speak.”.

“Leadership Embodiment Techniques give us a way to access our creative abilities even in stressful circumstances. The LE model includes distinct ways of describing and analysing how we behave in stressful situations. Using LE techniques, we scrutinize our habitual behaviors, examine the way we sit and stand, and learn how to shift our state of being so we can give more skillful responses in our quest of uniting mind, body and spirit”.

The practice includes learning to bring about “inclusiveness”, “centered listening”, and accessing the empowerment to “speak up”.

Imago Relationship therapy is an effective, loving and compassionate approach for working mainly with couples, but also with individuals, parents and children who seek to enhance their relationships. The process was developed by Harville Hendrix PhD, who is the author of the bestselling book entitled “Getting the love you want”. This approach benefits couples who are dating, married, or on the verge of divorcing. It provides tools, knowledge and guidance to help transform even the most difficult aspects of one’s relationship into opportunities for growth, healing and joy. Imago Relationship therapy not only assists the couple to relate to each better, but also helps to heal childhood wounds.

Gail uses both Ericksonian as well as Heart-centred hypnosis depending on the circumstance. Hypnotherapy is simply the use of trance in order to access certain information in order to understand and change certain behaviour. It can be used for anxiety and phobias, depression, addictions of any kind, weight issues, anger, shame, difficulty with self-expression, fear of abandonment, loss and grief, trauma, abuse, PSTD, relationship and sexual issues.

Ericksonian Hypnosis:

Milton Erickson is considered to be one of the most influential hypnotherapists of our time. He deliberately used vague language, in order to encourage the client to fill in the gaps and to interpret the words in the most appropriate way for the individual. His Milton model (named after him) can be described as a set of language patterns used to take the individual into a trance state, giving access to certain information necessary to make changes and to solve problems. The indirect suggestions, usually disguised in stories and metaphors, are difficult to resist as the conscious mind often does not even recognise them as suggestions.

See Dr Milton Erickson Hypnosis Demo

Heart-centred hypnotherapy:

Heart-centred hypnotherapy was founded by Diane Zimberoff. It is a psycho-spiritual approach which addresses body, mind and spirit. It involves a number of modalities besides hypnosis, namely developmental psychology, humanistic psychology, behaviour modification, adult ego strengthening and energetic release work. Closed eyed processes and guided visualisation techniques are used to tap into the subconscious mind, in order to discover the nature and origin of emotional issues. Repressed emotions can then be released, while unhealthy beliefs can be reprogrammed into healthier life decisions.

Acupuncture has been used for thousands of years in the East to heal the body and block pain. According to Nick Ortner, the latest research suggests that acupuncture increases the body’s endorphin levels. Tapping is just a form of acupressure, which possibly explains why people feel good, calm and content just tapping, without working on a particular problem. Researchers have discovered that the Bonghan channels, tiny, threadlike, microscopic anatomical structures correspond with the traditional acupuncture meridians or channels. The Bonghan channels can be seen as a fiber-optic network in the body, which carry information often beyond what the nervous system or chemical systems of the body can carry.

Gary Craig, the founder of EFT, was able to apply the tapping method he learned from Dr Callahan and improve upon it.

These are the easy 8 steps of EFT tapping. Nick Ortner’s demonstration of the process can be seen on www.thetappingsolution.com/tappingvideo

1. Choose your most pressing issue (mpi)

2. Rate your most pressing issue using the 0 to 10 suds

3. Craft a setup statement, using your most pressing issue to fill in the blank; Even though …, I deeply and completely love and accept myself

4. Speak your setup statement three times while tapping on the karate chop point

5. Tap through the eight points in the EFT sequence while saying your reminder phrase out loud. Tap five to seven times at each point, starting with the eyebrow and finishing at the top of the head.

6. Take a deep breath.

7. Rate the intensity of your most pressing issue using the 0 to 10 suds

8. Repeat, or move on to a different “most pressing issue” (mpi)