Core Transformation

Tale of the Day:
Core Transformation

I met over Skype (this was before Zoom) with a young woman living in Italy. Danielle told me, “I want to become more confident with myself and be more courageous in following my goals, and I want to get free from this blocking sensation that is preventing me from signing up for a study abroad program I want to go on.” I asked her how she would know when she had what she wanted. The first thing she said was, “I’ll sign up for the program tomorrow.” Then Danielle also added that she’d “feel it,” when things had changed.

In this first and only session, I guided Danielle through the Core Transformation process. I invited her to step back into a specific memory of when the blocking sensation occurred. Then I said, “You can relive this experience now, seeing through your eyes, hearing through your ears, and feeling the feelings you felt at the time. Since you didn’t consciously decide to have this blocking sensation, it’s as if some unconscious part of you generated it. You can begin to sense this part of you in your body or around you. Where do you sense this part?”

“In my hands and legs,” she said, opening and closing her hands.

“Great, now thank this part for being here, because you can trust that it wants something positive, even if you have no idea what it wants. Ask this part, ‘What do you want?’ Then relax and turn inward, and notice what response comes back from this part. The response may come in an image, feeling, sounds or words.”

“To be safe,” she said.

“Great, now thank this part for this response and invite it to step or breathe into what it’s like to already be safe, fully and completely.” She took a breath in, visibly relaxing. I continued: “And now ask this part, when you are safe, fully and completely, what is it you want through being safe that’s even deeper or more important?”

“Not to feel pain or get injured,” she said.

“Great, thank the part for this response, and invite it to step into what it’s like to already not feel pain or get injured, just the way it wants. Now ask the part, ‘When you already don’t feel pain or get injured, what is it you want through having this that’s even deeper or more important?”

“To run and Jump.”

“Great, thank it for this response.” I guided her to continue thanking this part for its responses, inviting it to step into having what it wanted, and asking it, ‘When you have this, what is it you want through having this that’s even deeper or more important or more core?’ Here are the rest of the answers Danielle received back from the part:

When Danielle’s part had the experience of necessarily cool fully and completely, and I invited her to ask the part what it wanted through having this that was even deeper or more core, Danielle said, “that’s the deepest.”

This interested me, because usually the deepest level is described as Peace, Oneness, Being, Okayness, Love, etc. We refer to these as Core States. What they all have in common is that they are states of being that can be experienced regardless of what happens or doesn’t happen. Necessarily cool didn’t sound to me like a Core State, but because English was Danielle’s second language, I suspected that this could in fact be a Core State that she was describing in English in the best way she knew how. Her experience was what mattered, not the words she used to describe it. So I asked her, “Is necessarily cool a state of being that just is? Is it a state of being that can be experienced regardless of what happens or doesn’t happen?”

“Yes,” she said. Her face was relaxed and her voice tone congruent, so in fact this was the Core State.

“Great. Invite this part of you to just enjoy having necessarily cool fully and completely as a way of being. Often our parts think that we need to first do certain things, or get certain things before we can experience a Core State such as necessarily cool. But the good news is that these Core States are states of being, not states of doing, and the best way to experience a state of being is just to step into it and have it, as this part is already experiencing now. So ask this part, ‘When you have necessarily cool fully and completely as a way of being, how does this make things different?’ ”

“Things are easy!” She said with a smile. “Life is like a natural flow.”

I continued guiding her through the next part of the Core Transformation process, inviting the part to discover how having necessarily cool as a way of being, transformed or enriched each of the other things the part had wanted. We went back up the list in reverse order until we got to: “And ask the part, ‘How does having necessarily cool as an ongoing way of being, enrich and support you being even safer than you were before?”

It did.

I guided her through the additional Core Transformation processes of Growing up the Part, Timeline Generalization, and Parental Timeline Reimprinting (all of which you can learn in the live-online Core Transformation Foundation Training.

A week later, on March 3rd Danielle wrote:

“Hey Mark, I’m good, you? It has been good! I booked for this summer and for another experience in the forest :): Really happy … I told my mom the session was really useful and I feel it’s working a lot and I’m so satisfied and positive!”

On March 23rd Danielle added:

“Hello, how are you? 🙂 I wanted to tell you that I really feel the changing. Thank you very much. Probably I’m gonna ask you for another session in a month to work on a new goal.”

[All names and identifying information have been changed to protect the privacy of my clients]

Tool of the Day:
Core Transformation Exercise:

 

Click here to learn about the live-online Core Transformation Foundation training.

Musical Performance Anxiety

Tale of the Day:

Eliminating Performance Anxiety

“I finished the audition and only when I walked out did I realize: I had no teeth chattering, no sweating, no shaking at all! It was just so crazy. I didn’t expect it at all!”

Let’s rewind back to when I first met Maya. She was a bright high school student who played trombone in a highly-competitive orchestra. She was a great musician, and told me, “The number one thing I care about is music.” Whenever she had to audition or play solo during orchestra practice, she got intense performance anxiety. She started sweating, shaking, and her teeth would chatter—not at all helpful when playing a brass instrument!

She was about to graduate and apply to music schools, where the pressure to perform and audition well would matter a lot. Understandably she wanted this solved.

Since she lived in another state, I met with Maya over Skype. During our first meeting I showed her the spinning feelings process. This got a great result for her. “This is like sorcery!” she said. But at our next meeting she told me, “When I had to solo twelve bars in orchestra practice, I couldn’t calm down quick enough. I can’t meditate for an hour before that type of situation; I need a quicker way.”

Though the spinning feelings process can be done quite quickly, in just a few minutes, I understood how it might be tough for her to focus while surrounded by people in the middle of a class. I asked her when the anxiety first started in the day. She said, “It’s here when I first wake up,” and she gestured to her sternum.

I decided to do some parts work with her. I told her the story from World War II about how Japanese soldiers were left on many different islands in the Pacific and told to defend the country no matter what. Isolated and cut off from their command, many of these soldiers continued to defend these islands long after the war was over. Now and then one would be found when he shot at a passing fishing boat. The last soldier was found some 18 years after the war had ended. All that time he had managed to survive, alone and isolated, while continuing to loyally fight to defend the safety of his country. The Japanese government could have laughed at him when they found him for continuing to fight when the war was over, but instead they thanked him for his loyal service, brought him home, held a ceremony in his honor. Only then did they begin to gently tell the soldier that the war was over, and he could now serve the country in other ways.

I told Maya, “We all have parts of ourselves that are like these Japanese soldiers, still fighting loyally on to protect us from a war that is long since over. And so we have an opportunity to thank them for their service and invite them back home.”

Maya gestured to her sternum again, where the anxiety had been, “Now it’s like there’s a plane there,” she said. “And it’s like there are tiny little Thors [Norse God of Thunder] getting off the plane. They started out one color, and as they got of the plane they turned to different colors: green, yellow, orange, red. It’s like all these tiny little Thors have new jobs.”

Well I hadn’t even started the parts work I had planned, and all this was already happening spontaneously. This is a testament to the power of telling stories. I could have simply communicated the conclusion of the story: “In NLP we have a presupposition that all parts of us create behaviors for some positive purpose, even if the behavior (anxiety) is causing us major problems.” If I had done this, it would have taken less time, but it would have only spoken to her conscious mind. Telling the story gave her an experience of the truth of the statement.

“There is clearly some nice shifting going on, and so you can already appreciate that, and be curious how the new jobs of these tiny Thors will benefit you,” I said. It would have been interesting just to leave it at this, and see what happened just from telling her the story. I gave her the option: “We could leave it at this for now, with the tiny Thors with their new jobs, that may be all that’s needed for this session. Or if you want to do more, we can explore something in addition to what’s already happened.”

“Let’s explore,” she said.

“Up until now [presupposition that it can be different in the future] you’ve had a part of you that has generated anxiety, and you’ve had another part of you that doesn’t want to be anxious, haven’t you.”

“Yep.”

“So you can notice, in your body or around you, the part of you that up until now has generated anxiety, and you can invite it out into one of your hands. This part of you will know which is the hand that it wants to be in.”

Maya nodded, “It’s like Thor, coming into my right hand.”

“Great. Thank this Thor part for coming into your right hand. From what you said before, this part may have already found lots of great new jobs to do. Or maybe those were other Thor parts that found new jobs, and this one still wants new and better ways of getting what it wants for you. Either way is fine and you don’t even need to know consciously which it is. Just thank this Thor part for being here.”

She closed her eyes and nodded.

I said, “Now you can also notice the part of you that doesn’t want to be anxious, and you can invite this part of you to come into your other hand. ”

She said, “It’s like Loki [Norse trickster god].”

“Great, now we are going to find out what each of these parts really wants for you. Turn to your right hand and thank Thor for being there, and ask him, ‘What do you want?’ Then relax and notice what he responds with.

She nodded and closed her eyes, then said, “Thor wants me to do the right thing, all the time.”

“Great. Thank him for this response, and invite him to step into what it’s like to already have you doing the right thing, all the time.”

“Ok,”

“Now ask Thor, ‘When I’m doing the right thing all the time, what does this get for me that’s even more important?’ ”

“Peace of mind,” she answered.

“Thank this Thor part of you for this response, and now ask him, ‘When I have peace of mind, what does that get me that’s even more important?’ ”

“Then I have a clear view of what needs to happen.”

“Great, so what this part really wants for you, is for you to have a clear view of what needs to happen. Is this something you also agree is worth having?”

“Yes, totally.”

“Great. Now turn to the Loki part in your left hand, and ask Loki, ‘What do you want?’ ”

Maya turned to her left hand and closed her eyes. When she opened her eyes again, she said, “Loki wants me to just speak my mind, and other people can just suck it!”

“Great!” I said, “Now thank Loki for this response, and ask Loki, ‘When I speak my mind, and other people can just suck it, what does this get for me that’s even more important?’ ”

“It earns me confidence.”

“Ok, great. Thank Loki for this response. So what Loki really wants for you, is to earn you confidence. Is confidence something that you also agree is worth having?”

“Of course!”

“Great, now invite Thor and Loki each to have a look over at the other one. Up until now, they have both been struggling with each other, but now we know that what Loki really wants for you is confidence, and what Thor really wants for you is a clear view of what needs to happen. Ask Thor if confidence will also help him with what he wants: having a clear view of what needs to happen.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Great. Now ask Loki if having a clear view of what needs to happen is in support of the confidence that Loki wants.”

“Absolutely!”

“So by working together, Loki and Thor can each get what they want for you much more easily. Go ahead and allow your hands to come together only as fast as Loki and Thor learn how to work together to support each other in getting what both want for you.”

“Yeah…” She kept her eyes closed for a while, clearly processing. When she opened her eyes she said, “Thor and Loki turned into Sherlock and Watson! It’s like they’re working together now, untying knots. Like solving the puzzles.”

“Wow, wonderful! Now go ahead and bring Sherlock and Watson into your body, so that they can integrate and become a natural part of you, working together in this new way.”

She did so.

Then I said, “Now, mentally step into a past situation where you used to have performance anxiety, and notice how it goes now, with this new way of being?”

“Now it’s just no big deal,” she said.

I then asked her to step into a future example, and she also said of that: “It’s no big deal.”

“Now,” I said, “It’s likely that some echoes of the old anxiety will happen in the future, but that they will become less frequent and less intense. If something comes back more intense, it’s just a sign that you have another part that also wants something positive for you, and also wants to be included.”

Before ending the session, Maya agreed she would continue to do the spinning feelings process at night when she went to bed, to help her relax for sleep (which she often struggled with, staying up really late).

The third time we met, Maya said the spinning feelings helped her go to sleep easily at night. “When I came back home from work I just went right to sleep,” she said, which was very different from her prior pattern of staying up late before managing to fall asleep.

As far as the performance anxiety, she hadn’t yet had any more auditions or solo performances, so we still didn’t have a real-world test of the work we’d done last session. Because of this, we focused on some other goals of hers. One thing she wanted was a solution to her headaches. She told me she sometimes got headaches that commonly lasted around three hours, making her feel numb, numbing her left hand, and causing her to temporarily lose vision in her left eye. I taught her the rewinding process to try for her headaches, telling her how much it had helped me with my Athsma-like condition that the doctors hadn’t been able to diagnose.

The fourth time I met with Maya was a week before a big audition for a local youth symphony. To test the previous work we had done, I asked her to close her eyes and imagine waking up on the morning of the audition. “Now just play through the day and find out how it goes.”

“It was like I was just practicing,” Maya said.

“Great. I know that you play beautifully when you practice, so if it can be like that, that sounds like a good thing to me.” To be thorough and find if there were any additional resources that would help her, I got even more specific, “Do you know where the audition will take place?”

“Yes.”

“Great, do you know the room?”

“Yes.”

“Great, now close your eyes and imagine going through this whole week, waking up on audition day and going to the place where it will be held and finding the room. Now, as you walk through the door, how does it feel?”

When she opened her eyes she said, “One fourth great, one fourth real, one fourth I don’t know, and one fourth get me out.”

We did Core Transformation with this remaining “get me out” fourth, and concluded the session.

When I met with Maya the fifth time, she was really excited to tell me what had happened the previous week: “Ok,” She said. “I have a lot to tell you. So when I went to my audition, first off I had the audition at 8:42, but I arrived at 8:00am. When I got there, my headache started, so I’m like, Seriously? Is this really happening right now? Anyway I did the rewinding thing you taught me, and it totally improved it, and the headache went away completely after about 45 minutes rather than the usual around 3 hours!”

“So anyway,” Maya continued, “not long after I did the rewinding I was called for my audition. For some reason they called me like 15 minutes earlier than my scheduled time! Normally I would have protested this, but I just went with it. Then on top of this unexpected timing, the judge was pretty grumpy, and I still had a little of the headache happening. Anyway, I finished the audition and only when I walked out did I realize: I had no teeth chattering, no sweating, no shaking at all! It was just so crazy. I didn’t expect it at all!”

We met a few more times after this, working on some other goals of hers. Since then I’ve tried to get long-term feedback on her experience with auditions and playing solo, but so far I haven’t heard back from her.

 

Tool of the Day:
Parts Integration (See the book Heart of the Mind for an in-depth version of this process):

  1. When you find yourself wanting something that you don’t yet have (especially if it’s a bit extreme), often there will be another part that wants the opposite. For example: a part that wants to exercise all the time, and a part that wants to be lazy and lie around all day; a part that wants to eat all raw, organic, grass-fed, omega-3 foods, and a part that wants to pig out on Doritos, soda, and pizza hut; a part that wants to be polite and friendly, and a part that just wants to say screw you; a part that feels anxious, and a part that wants to be calm.
  2. Notice where you feel each part, in your body or around you. Thank each of these parts for being here, because you can trust that they each have something positive they want for you.
  3. Open your hands, palms upward, and invite one part to flow into one hand, and the other part to flow into the other hand. It doesn’t matter which part is in which hand, though each will tend to go to the hand that feels right for it.
  4. Now start with one part and ask it, “What do you want?” Then relax, close your eyes, and notice what response comes back from that part. Thank it for this response, and ask it, “And when you get what you want, what does this get for me that’s even more important?” Thank it for this response, and continue this cycle until the part arrives at a value (such as happiness, peace, health, integrity) that is something you can agree on, and that the other part is likely to also agree is a good thing. (Hint: the longer you do this cycle, the more likely it will be that you arrive at a value that is also appreciated by yourself and the other part, so when in doubt, keep going.)
  5. Repeat step 4 with the other part in the other hand.
  6. Now invite each part to look over at the other part. Ask each part if it recognizes the value in what the other part is really wanting to get for you. If you have gone to a deep enough (or high enough) value, each part will recognize that the value of the other part is also a good thing, and not in conflict with it’s own value.
  7. Say to the parts, “Now that you both see and recognize what each of you are really trying to get, and you both agree that both of these values are worth having, how would you like to work together in mutual support of achieving these values?
  8. If the answer is “no,” first satisfy the objection, or look back at what might have been missed in a previous step. If the answer is “yes” (which it usually is), invite both of your hands to come together only as quickly as these two parts of yourself learn to work together in new ways—many of them unconscious to you—to achieve both values.
  9. Once your hands come together, bring them into your body wherever feels right, usually the heart or chest area, so these cooperating parts can integrate back in with you.
  10. Test back in the initial scenario and find out how it goes now, with the cooperating parts within you. If it goes well, great! If not, address any concerns or objections until it goes well.
  11. Step into future situations, noticing what is changed for you now that these parts are working together in this new way.

Sign up for a session with Mark at www.markandreas.com or call 303-810-9611 for a free 15-minute consult.

Communicating Through Mini-metaphor

Tale of the Day:

One of my favorite mini-metaphors

“But the fear keeps me safe!” “I can’t let go of the anger or I might get hurt.”

This is the kind of thing I hear again and again from clients experiencing anxiety, anger, fear or other emotions causing stress, sleep loss, or compromising their relationships, careers, and life in general. The side effects of the anxiety, fear, or anger often cause more harm than good (through health costs such as high blood pressure and lack of sleep, distraction from the true dangers of life, blah blah blah...). If I just tell them all this, it may be true, but it won’t help them. They already know this; it’s why they came to see me in the first place.

Here’s where it’s very useful to have some mini-metaphors in your back pocket that you can use to communicate in a different channel than rational thought. After all, words don’t change people, experience does. Nothing beats experiential learning. A mini-metaphor can evoke an experience for someone that will set the stage nicely before doing the NLP or coaching change-work you’ve decided upon.

So when I hear, “But it keeps me safe!” “I can’t let it go or I might get hurt!” I tell the fire alarm mini-metaphor that I learned from my aunt Tamara Andreas:

“Do you have a fire alarm in your house?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“And I bet that helps you sleep more soundly, knowing you’ll be woken up if there’s a fire.”

“Yeah, I guess it does.”

“Now imagine that the fire alarm was set in such a way that it went off constantly, blaring day and night. What would it be like to live in that house?”

“That would be awful.”

“You wouldn’t even know when there was a fire, would you?”

“No, I’d just be stressed out all the time.”

“You wouldn’t get much sleep, and if a fire did start, you wouldn’t have any specific warning and you’d have to deal with it without decent sleep for months.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Sometimes these parts of us that are trying to keep us safe are like fire alarms that are going off constantly. Of course the solution is not to get rid of the fire alarm. Instead we just want to make sure it’s set up properly so it will warn us when we really need to be warned. When we have it set up that way, then we can relax and sleep through the night knowing we have that protection quietly guarding our safety.”

Tool of the Day:
Creating mini-metaphors

1)   Think of a concept you want to get across to someone.

2)   Brainstorm possible simple mini-metaphors from day-to-day common experience that exemplify the concept. While brainstorming you may want to look up and to the right to help access the creative part of your brain.*

3) Try using your mini-metaphor to communicate your concept rather than rational argument. If it works, keep it around for future use. A good metaphor can communicate much more in much fewer words. Let me know what metaphors you find most useful.

Set up a session with Mark at www.markandreas.com or call 303-810-9611 for a free 15-minute consult.

*Though there are exceptions, this will help most people access the creative part of their brain.

Anxiety and Blood Pressure

Tale of the Day:
Bringing extreme blood pressure back into balance.

Diane came to me in late October of 2012 because of dangerously high blood pressure over the previous ten months. Her doctor had put her on medication (Labetalol) in an attempt to bring her blood pressure into the normal range, but even so her systolic blood pressure would spike nearly every afternoon, reaching as high as 210, and requiring additional emergency medication (Clonidine). An average of her highest reading each day over a period of four months was 181.

Diane told me she’d been living with a lifetime of anxiety resulting from being abused as a child. Traditional medicine and other disciplines were not working for her. We started meeting once a week, working together to transform and resolve each aspect of this issue. Her life was on the line, so it was important to work with this thoroughly. Each weekly meeting we took another step toward resolving issues from the past, changing ways of responding to stress in the present, and discovering/exploring how the new Diane wanted to organize her life for the present and future. After just one month, the highest reading of her systolic blood pressure each day came down to average 155 over the next 76 days, and soon she didn’t need the emergency med at all. We transitioned into meeting once every two or three weeks (with her doing NLP work on her own in between sessions). Things continued to improve for her, even during the Colorado flood which forced her out of her home and prevented us from meeting for two months. She recently gave me her average for the same 76-day period one year later (again using her highest systolic reading each day) and it was down to 134. She achieved an overall decrease of 47 points in her systolic pressure.

A psychiatrist colleague of mine asked whether Diane’s diastolic pressure had also come down. He wrote me, “The top number (systolic) is the one most immediately reflective of anxiety and of treatments for anxiety. Over the course of successful treatment of anxiety, the cardiovascular system would have less impact of the sympathetic drive and corticosteroid production that accompany stress and anxiety. So both numbers would hopefully decrease. The bottom number (diastolic) is the resting pressure of the system.” I asked Diane if there had also been a decrease in her diastolic pressure, so she calculated an average for the first 90-days we worked together, and another average for the same period a year later (the time of the flood when she was forced out of her home). The results were just as dramatic for the resting pressure of her system, which went from an average of 96.2 to 68.5, a 27.7 decrease (an even greater decrease by percentage than her systolic pressure).

A huge factor of Diane’s success has been her full engagement in using the NLP tools I taught her, and her use of them on her own between sessions. Below I describe what happened in my first session with Diane, as I taught her a very useful NLP tool as a first step. Try it out yourself for any area of your own life where you feel overly worried or anxious.

Tool of the Day:
Transforming Anxiety
(Adapted from a process developed by Nick Kemp. See Provocative Change Works Processes by Nick Kemp © 2008, www.nickkemp.com.)

When Diane first met with me, after I got to know her a bit I asked her, “What is the first thing you want to change?”

“The anxiety.”

I asked her if she was experiencing any anxiety right now. She said just a little bit. I asked her, if she felt comfortable doing so, to close her eyes and put herself back into a time when she felt the anxiety more than a little bit. I noticed her neck tighten and her face tense.

“And where do you experience the feeling of anxiety?” I asked. She said it was like a tight lump behind her breastbone. I asked her to tune into the sensation of the feeling and notice more details. “Where does it start and where does it go to?” I asked.

After a few moments she said, “It’s like it comes in through my nose and goes down into my chest and compacts right there.” (She gestured over the center of her breastbone).

“OK, great awareness. The feeling of anxiety goes in through your nose and down to compress in your chest area. This is the path of the feeling. Now, my next question may sound strange, and that’s because it is. As the feeling starts in your nose and goes down to your chest area, does it spin clockwise or counter-clockwise along this path?” To be extra clear I invited her to open her eyes as I gestured with my hand in front of my own body, showing the two options.

“Looking down from the top of my head, it goes counter-clockwise,” she said.

“Great, now close your eyes again, and notice the feeling in this counter-clockwise spin along the path starting at your nose and going to your chest.”

“Actually it doesn’t stop in my chest,” she said. “When it hits my chest it goes back up and out my mouth. It’s like it goes in my nose, spirals down like it’s compacting coal in my chest, and then the feeling comes up out my mouth leaving my chest all compacted.”

“Great awareness. So now, as you notice the spin along the path from your nose down to your chest and up out your mouth, you can allow the spin to begin to slow. Notice what happens when you allow the spin to slow a little more… [slowing my voice] until eventually… it will just stop for a moment… as if in limbo. And then it begins to spin in the new direction along the same path. Coming in through your nose and spinning in the new way down to your chest area and back up out your mouth. It can even speed up faster with this new spin, and then settle into the speed that’s most comfortable. As it does this you can notice if it would like to shift to a more comfortable color.”

At this point I could visibly see Diane’s neck and face relax, and she started taking bigger, deeper breaths. “Wow,” she said. “Now instead of compressing more coal down there, it’s like the new spin is sending down buckets that are digging up the coal and tossing it out my mouth!”

“Go ahead and give yourself as much time as you like to experience this new way, as things are decompressing,” I said.

After several minutes she took a breath, “I have a sense this is going to take a while.”

“That’s just fine. Now that it has this new direction, it can continue to operate with this new twist as long as is useful. Now, ask inside, ‘Is there any part of me that has any objection to having this new experience in place of the old anxiety?’ ”

After a few moments she said, “No. This is amazing. Now I realize my life has been chaotic and feeding this. I can change that.”

“Wonderful. Now, because all of you is happy to have this new way of being, you can imagine a future situation in which you used to feel the old anxiety. Go ahead and imagine that, and notice how it feels now.”

She closed her eyes and stayed visibly relaxed.

“It’s really different,” she said, breathing deeply.

“Great, now imagine another couple of situations, one at a time.”

She nodded when she’d finished.

“Now, it’s important to realize that this isn’t a process to use on your symptoms just like another drug,” I told her. “Some people use it that way and just get even more out of balance, continuing to do all the things that stress them out because they can get away with it for a little while longer. But there ends up being a high price. We don’t want that. Instead you can use this as a process to tune in more and more to the natural and important feedback your body is giving you about what it needs, such as the important feedback you already got about making your life a lot less chaotic. Once you learn to completely tune into and listen to your body’s feedback, you won’t need this process at all.”

She opened her eyes and nodded vigorously, so I could tell this made a lot of sense to her.

I invited Diane to practice this spin reversal process as a meditation each day, such as before drifting off to sleep, and especially to do it any time she felt anxiety starting to come on. I also gave her the task of tuning in more and more to her body so she could start to notice the barest hint of the anxiety. I suggested that once she got good at that she could see if she was able to notice the feeling that comes just before the feeling of anxiety. This way she could start getting the feedback her body was giving her before she ever got to the level of anxiety.

Note: Often people don’t believe this process will work until they try it themselves. Consciously, people often find this process doesn’t “make sense.” But our language reveals our unconscious internal experience all the time. People commonly say they are “wound up” or “spinning out.” Most of them simply don’t realize how accurately they are describing their internal experience. This process is one way to “unwind” and “put a new spin on things.” Email me if you want a step-by-step write up of the process described above.

Book a private session with Mark by visiting www.markandreas.com
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