Creative Thought Case Study: Daniel

Daniel was seven years old when his mother, Carolann, asked me for help. Mealtimes had become a frustrating battle for their family as Daniel took longer and longer to finish his food. Breakfast especially was a problem. Carolann's morning routine of getting Daniel and his older brother Thomas ready for school and heading out the door at 7:40 sharp was deteriorating as every day, Daniel sat in front of his soggy cereal and cooling toast, refusing to let Carolann take the food away, but also refusing to eat any faster. Carolann would ask, demand, beg, coax and cajole Daniel to finish up so she and her boys could make it to school and work on time. She actually resorted to getting Daniel and herself up 45 minutes earlier each morning in an attempt to maintain her schedule. Carolann was running out of ways to keep herself and her boys on time.

Cause and Effect:

I asked Carolann about Daniel's birth. Birth script is a crucial part of who we are and how we view the world. Birth is our first experience of change and of aliveness, and has a huge impact on how we handle both of those issues as we grow and develop. Although our birth experience is pre-verbal, each of us remembers vividly how we were viewed, treated and handled as we emerged from our mother's womb into independent life.

Daniel was an induced birth, meaning that Carolann's obstetrician had given her a drug to start her labor and hurry the birth process along. Daniel's first experience of change, therefore, was of being suddenly forced out of the womb, down the birth canal and into life on someone else's schedule. An authority figure, in this case the obstetrician, had imposed his own timing on a process that belonged to Daniel. At the same time, since the inducement resulted in Daniel's arrival into the world, he now believes that inducement and aliveness go hand in hand. 

But no one likes to be forced. Daniel's natural inclination to rebel against inducement of any kind is in direct conflict with his belief that nothing can be accomplished without it. He now faces the double bind of disliking and distrusting authority figures and schedules to the exact degree that he believes he needs them. At the age of seven, his beliefs are expressed by disrupting his mother's timing and doing a little scheduling of his own.

I advised Carolann to speak to Daniel briefly and directly, telling him that his timing is perfect and that no matter how long he needs to finish any task, she loves and respects him. This was all it took to give Daniel ownership of his mealtimes. Carolann reported back to me that Daniel not only finishes his food in a reasonable amount of time, but has become willing to ask for either more or less food, something he would never do before. Carolann continues to teach Daniel that his own sense of timing is important and they are learning together to respond to situations in present time, rather than react to past conditioning.

I will be presenting more information on birth scripts in the near future.

I Should, I Should ... Oww! My Shoulder!

If a painter paints and a  knitter knits, someone who "shoulds" all the time is ... hmmm?

Shoulders are right up there with necks when it comes to where we hold our tension. In fact, some people are one big block of pain from shoulder blades to skull. Most people hold their most negative thought in the muscles and tissue between their shoulder blades, so this part of the body is extremely vulnerable to stress, tension and pain. 

Let's talk about adrenalin for a moment. Whenever our bodies go into "stress mode," our adrenal glands release adrenalin into our bloodstream. Adrenalin is one of the most caustic chemicals produced in the body and it is meant to be used and then discarded through respiration. When we overproduce adrenalin (i.e., when we are under stress all the time) or when it hangs around too long in our blood, it has effects such as suppressing the immune system, interfering with digestion and decreasing blood supply to the skin and certain muscles.

When negative thoughts and/or emotional trauma are held in muscle tissue it contracts, and blood flow decreases. Poor blood flow causes adrenalin to build up in muscles and causes partial atrophy of the muscle tissue, which contracts further. A nasty repetitive cycle now takes place as the muscle becomes more rigid and painful. The icing on the cake is that when you go into "stress response" you probably hold your breath, further decreasing your body's ability to burn off the adrenalin.

In addition to your most negative thought, many people also hold their beliefs about obligation in their shoulders. Are you a "should-er?" Are a lot of your thoughts centered on "I have to?" This leads to your thoughts about choice -- how familiar is it to believe you have no choice? These few words and thoughts produce crippling results for so many people, especially women. Do you feel you are totally stuck in obligation and lack of choice? How about guilt? Sometimes when you decide you're not going to take it anymore and just say "No" it creates a feeling of guilt that is often felt right in the middle of the back. You may feel like your body is divided into two halves, upper and lower, with a painful hinge in the middle.

Shoulders also often hold thoughts about receiving -- is it safe, is it acceptable, is it selfish? Those who are poor receivers are usually called "control freaks" because they are trying to control their environment by keeping everything away. This typically is the result of lots of negative receiving as a child in the form of abuse (both verbal and physical) and chaos in their homes (big families, substance abuse, moving from place to place.) A child may make a decision to stop receiving, keeping everything away, in attempt to control their immediate environment. As adults, receiving means losing control and brings up fear, sadness and resentment.

Offshoots of control and receiving issues include beliefs about getting what you want. The conflict between getting what you deserve versus receiving what you desire can cause intense physical effects. Do you measure what you do in order to afford what you deserve? Is your ability to to enjoy yourself in direct proportion to what you produce? Do you have to struggle and suffer to have fun? Do you feel guilty if something is too easy? If you receive more than you give are you uncomfortable? Do you trust simplicity?

If you're like most people, you have come to the end of this post hunching your shoulders and holding your breath. You didn't even notice it, did you? Relax your spine, let your shoulders drop and take a deep breath. Exhale.  Your homework assignment is to go through an entire day without telling yourself "I have to." This is mandatory. You have to!

Creative Thought Case Study: Cynthia

Cynthia is the kind of friend everyone would like to have. She is always there with a kind word and a helping hand, lends money, helps people find jobs, never forgets a birthday, keeps an eye on her elderly grandmother and takes in stray animals. She works fifty to sixty hours a week in the leasing business she and her husband own.

You've heard of "the straw that broke the camel's back?" One day in January shortly after 1999 turned to 2000, Cynthia reached for her computer's "On" switch and fractured her first and second lumbar vertebrae. She was hospitalized for ten days and sent home with strict instructions for bed rest in order for the bones to heal. Armed with her laptop computer and cell phone, Cynthia continued to work 50 or more hours a week and kept up with as many of her other obligations as possible short of leaving her house. Ninety days later, her doctor pronounced her healed and Cynthia was cleared to resume her normal life.

Things did not go as planned. Cynthia's pain did not get better; in fact, it began to get worse as she threw herself back into her life. Her parents asked for her help in their retail business and Cynthia began to spend evenings and weekends doing the books. Her grandmother's health took a turn for the worse and Cynthia made a 150-mile round trip every Saturday to cook and clean for her. Cynthia took over IRS negotiations for her self-employed brother-in-law who had not filed a tax return in six years. She also began staying overnight with a longtime friend who was in the end stage of breast cancer. This was all in addition to keeping her own business up and running.

As Cynthia's pain worsened, her doctor prescribed progressively stronger medications, finally putting Cynthia on Methadone shortly before her 40th birthday. Periodic MRI scans indicated that her spine was deteriorating. Osteoporosis was setting in and she had the beginnings of scoliosis in her lumbar spine. Foreseeing a grim future, Cynthia started looking for the connection between her thoughts and the condition of her body.

Cause and Effect:

Cynthia does not remember a time when she felt supported. Growing up an only child with parents whose business demanded most of their time, Cynthia was responsible for getting herself ready for school on her own from the day she started kindergarten. Beginning with her after-school work in her parents' business, up to and including the busy and prosperous truck leasing company she and her husband own, Cynthia's knowledge, skills, talents, contributions, hard work and extraordinary marketing ideas have remained unacknowledged. She had made herself indispensable and obligated herself to so many people and projects that any words or gestures of gratitude are lost on her.

It took a while for Cynthia to recognize her role in the endless whirlpool of obligation her life had become, and a while longer to take responsibility for it. Cynthia learned that the constant motion and action she created were keeping her safe from feeling her emotions and dealing with the pain they caused. As she gradually became a "human being" instead of a "human doing" she learned to focus on her feelings and process negative emotions and trauma. Cynthia acknowledged her sadness, anger and fear at having spent the first 45 years of her life "bending over backwards" and "breaking her back" by taking on not only her own, but others' burdens with no support whatsoever.

Today, Cynthia is still working on asking for what she wants, whether it is support, attention, acknowledgment or assistance, and has gotten pretty good at saying "no." Oh, and she no longer takes pain medication, her back pain having diminished to approximately 10% of what it was a year ago. Her most recent MRI shows an increase in bone density and a decrease in the degree of rotation of her spine. Cynthia is confident that as she continues on this path, both her osteoporosis and scoliosis will continue to improve.

Necks and Their Thoughts

The human body is incredibly plastic. Every one of its 70,000 trillion cells are in constant motion, responding to the demands placed on them. This includes the demands created by our thoughts. It's been well established by modern science that stress has negative effects on the body, but it's possible to go further and see that specific emotions and thoughts tend to attack certain parts of the body. Although there are no absolutes, there are generalities that can serve as jumping-off points for you to increase your understanding of the relationship that exists among your thoughts, emotions and physical body.

Let's take a look at necks. Necks are hotbeds of emotional holding and physical complaints. For many people, neck trouble starts at birth. Think about the position of a baby in the womb for nine months, give or take. The baby's spine forms a continuous curve in one direction. Her trip down the birth canal is the first time her spine changes from that curved position and starts to straighten. Most babies are born head first, and it's common for their head and neck to be manipulated by the obstetrician during delivery. Some babies even have forceps or suction applied to their heads to force them out of the birth canal. That's a lot of neck trauma!

Since the obstetrician is a baby's first experience of an authority figure, and that authority figure may have caused the baby pain in her neck, a lot of us grow up equating neck pain with authority figures. Does your neck tighten up, do you get tension headaches or tight shoulders when dealing with authority figures (parents, teachers, bosses, cops, etc.)? How about your jaw or eyes? What is your body doing right now as you read this?

Communication between the brain and muscles happens in 1/2500th of a second. Between birth and about age seven virtually all of our brain to muscle pathways are set for life. But in addition to sending commands to move muscles, the brain also learns to send emotional content to muscles, as well as to organs and glands throughout the body. As our coordination and movement patterns are developed, so are the ways in which we hold unresolved emotions in our bodies. Just as the brain's command to walk follows well-worn pathways of nerves to muscles, so the brain's processing of certain thoughts and emotions follow the same paths over and over.

What else can be going on in the neck besides a conflict with authority? How about stubbornness? You've heard the expression "stiff-necked" to describe someone who won't budge, right? Other typical issues that show up in the neck are disappointment, anger, obligation and fear. But let's go a little further and notice which side of the neck is affected. Problems on the right side are often concerned with males (either with a male or as a male), or can be about the past; those on the left may be female (either with a female or as a female), or about the future.

But don't stop there. Like the old song, the "neckbone's connected to the headbone." Tension headaches, jaw and vision problems, and ear/hearing issues can originate in the neck. So can shoulder problems. Take a look in the mirror -- is one shoulder higher than the other? Is one side or the other pulled in closer to your body? Right or left side? If you have right side problems, it might be caused by overgiving and too much obligation in your life. If the left side bothers you, think about whether or not you are a good receiver, and if you feel you have enough support in your life.

The body never lies. You can rationalize all you want, but the body will always tell the truth. After all, your thoughts are the cause, your body is the effect. So, what's going on in your neck?

Creative Thought Case Study: Marguerite

Marguerite is a delicately pretty blonde with a heart of gold and a wicked sense of humor. As a child in Belgium and the Netherlands she grew up speaking three languages and, as the product of a convent education in Paris, she hides a razor-sharp mind under her modest manner.

At 32 she is the mother of five and dutiful wife to a man she doesn't really like. Her marriage was arranged when she was a child and when she left home for London to be married her father's parting gift was a brutal rape.

Marguerite has little sweetness in her life. She will not complain openly about her parents but speaks matter-of-factly about their long absences running the family's gemstone business, one of the reasons she spent a good part of her childhood with the nuns in Paris. She once tried to confide in her husband about the sexual assault committed by her father and her husband's response was anger that his new wife was "damaged goods." Marguerite knows that somehow she is capable of creating a better life for herself but does not know where to start.

Leaving her husband is high on Marguerite's priority list. She has already enlisted the financial support of her parents to make this change. While there is no social stigma for Marguerite in wanting to separate from her husband, she feels a deep moral failure. On each of the first two dates she and her children were ready to leave their home, Marguerite ended the day in the hospital with pancreatitis. On her third attempt to "absolutely walk out," she fell on some stairs and broke her ankle.

Cause and Effect

Marguerite thinks she is not good enough and deserves to suffer. Her evidence is that her parents showed no obvious interest in her, to the point where they sent her to live in another country for most of her young life. The arranged marriage is evidence that she has no value or function outside of a traditional subservient role and cannot even be trusted to make her own choice. The rape by her father sets the tone for her marriage to an angry man whose ambitions and interests lie outside their home and who barely speaks to her.

The pancreas makes chemicals that affect sugar in the body's cells and bloodstream. Problems with the pancreas are usually the result of little or no sweetness in life. Marguerite's pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas, point to her belief that her life lacks tenderness, compassion, regard and respect. Impersonal male authority figures in the form of doctors are in control of her future, replaying her father's and husband's roles.

Marguerite's final attempt to leave her husband is cut short by an accident that makes walking impossible. Our bodies obey our thoughts. When Marguerite's conscious mind said "walk out," her stronger thoughts of failure and prohibition conspired to create a situation in which the literal result was "I can't walk."

Today, Marguerite lives separately from her husband with four of her five children (her oldest child lives at college in another part of the state.) She has learned to disconnect from her past in a constructive way. Marguerite is on her way to letting her natural gifts and abilities shine through, and allowing her deep spirituality to blossom into a living energy that guides her daily actions. She has earned an advanced teaching degree and works at a local private school teaching young teens. Her lively intellect, calm manner, and that keen and ready sense of humor make her the most popular and effective teacher in school.

Marguerite still spends part of every day practicing her present time skills, and working her way through a reading list to help her develop a deeper understanding of how her mind, body and emotions work together. She is happier than she has ever been in her life and acknowledges her specialness and perfection every chance she gets.

Recommended reading: Healing and Holiness, Sondra Ray, Celestial Arts, 2002

Patrick Collard

I slept and dreamed that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service.

I acted and behold, service was joy.

     -- Rabindranath Tagore

On Wednesday morning I received news that Patrick Collard had passed away. Patrick came into my life in August of 1995. I was in Philadelphia attending Patrick's "apprenticeship program," a 10-day personal growth and bodywork seminar. I had enrolled in this program purely on faith, never having met Patrick or even heard of him.

I stepped into the hotel elevator, already occupied by a single man in an Armani suit and shiny black cowboy boots. He acknowledged me with a nod and later, as I sat in the seminar room waiting for the day's activity to begin, the same man strode to the front of the room and began to speak. I had just met Patrick Collard.

On the first day of the apprenticeship I was a massage therapist firmly rooted in the "real world" and sure of all my scientific knowledge about the human body. On the last day, I was still human, but everything else about me had changed. I had just spent ten days hearing the truth for the first time in my life, and I felt as new and powerful as as the earth's first sunrise.

What was the big deal? What did I learn in ten days that could make such a difference in my life? The better question is "what did I unlearn?"

I discovered that I am not a self-contained, finite individual, but rather a precious part of a shining whole, connected to others with every breath I take, and that true knowledge is every moment of present time. I learned that even though I have assigned the function of seeing to my eyes, true sight is trusting myself and surrendering to my unlimited nature. I found that power and strength are sometimes opposites, and that what I am made of, and what I am, are two different things. Most of all I learned that I am, in Patrick's words, "doomed to perfection."

Fourteen years as Patrick's student provided me with tools that released me from the past, encouraged me to embrace my essence as a strong female authority figure and taught me the power of receiving. Patrick supported me in all I did and respected me enough to invite me as a co-teacher for some of his bodywork seminars. Those opportunities to teach with Patrick will remain in my memory as some of my life's highlights.

Patrick touched tens of thousands of lives through his music, writings, seminars and private sessions. In his presence I experienced some of the greatest moments of my life. He gave me my vocation and, by extension, my happiness. Patrick Collard was my teacher, my mentor and my friend. I will miss him forever.

Creative Thought: Basics

The fundamental concept behind everything I believe and teach is: Thought is Creative. It is the single truth that all results follow. What I think, I create. What I focus on expands. I am the thinker, therefore I am in control. I have to be aware of my thoughts and take responsibility for them. 

This goes for both conscious and unconscious thoughts. If I understand that thought is creative, then I understand that my positive thoughts create positive results, and negative thoughts create negative results. "OK," you say, "but how can I control unconscious thoughts?" That's when you have to look to your results for answers. 

Results are the effect of thought, which is the cause. Show me your result, and I'll show you the thought that created it. Therefore, finding the unconscious thought that created a result is fairly straightforward. What if your result is the direct opposite of what you know your conscious thoughts to be? Then either your unconscious thoughts are more numerous (and therefore stronger) or your conscious thoughts are not as positive as you think.

I said above that what you focus on expands. Too often, people who are trying to create a positive result have a negative outcome because they are focusing on the wrong thing. For example, you are unemployed and want a job. Your "positive thoughts" might go something like this:

I really want a job

I want the perfect job

I am searching hard for my perfect job

I want a job that will pay me $100,000 per year

I don't want to work at McDonald's

I no longer accept crappy jobs

My perfect job is waiting for me

The result of these "positive thoughts" is that you will continue to want a job, search for a job and want good money. Your perfect job is still waiting ... and waiting. You will continue not working at McDonald's and not having a crappy job. You are focusing on the wrong things. You might try:

My perfect job comes to me now

My perfect job comes to me easily and quickly

I now receive a job that pays me $100,000 per year

Acme Widgets now offers me the perfect job and I accept gratefully

However, this is only part of the equation. The other part is your "response column," the little voice that pipes up as you affirm your positive thoughts. "My perfect job comes to me now" might be answered in the back of your mind by the thought, "I don't really deserve it." When this happens, take action to expose these thoughts to the light of day. Write down each and every "response" that your mind drags up as you put your positive thoughts in place. By getting the responses down on paper you can deal with them in present time and see them for what they really are -- past references dressed up as the truth and served to you by the part of your mind that is afraid of change.

Results always tell the truth. If you don't like your results, change your thoughts. It's that simple.

Did I say simple? Yes, simple ... but not easy.

Think of all the years of practice you have had at creating poor results. Overcoming the habit will take some doing but, like all habits, it can be replaced with a healthier practice that you can be proud of.

This is the first in a series of Tuesday posts in which I will present case studies and other lessons to help highlight some of the techniques that I write about. Fridays will be devoted to ongoing information to help you get the most out of Living in the New Age.

It's .... Present Time!

OK, so maybe you've recognized what your Most Negative Thought might be. Since "I'm not good enough" is one of the most common, I will use this as my example.

Close your eyes for a moment and recall the last time you felt not good enough. Really feel it in detail -- what happened, who was involved, even what you were wearing. Go ahead, I'll wait............

Got it? Now answer three questions:

• What am I thinking?
• What is my body doing?
• What emotion do I feel?

These three answers are they key. They are the mental, physical and emotional patterns you repeat over and over. They are how you do I'm Not Good Enough. Go back over your answers and notice how familiar they are. Notice especially how you are dwelling on past mistakes. This is no longer about the current problem. You are remembering every time you have done something similar in the past and using that to beat yourself up.

To make real change and break free of this cycle, you need to stop using the past as a reference and stay in Present Time. This means you must catch yourself in the act of recreating the same mental, physical and emotional reactions, and replace at least two out of three with Present Time responses. Let's say your answers to the above questions are something like:

Mental: "Oh, great, I've done it again. When am I going to learn? Why does this happen to me? Why haven't I taken steps to fix this? I should have known. Etc., etc."

Physical: Tightness in shoulders and neck.

Emotional: Sadness

In Present Time, you could take the following steps:

Mental: "Stop. Take a breath. What is happening right now?"

Physical: Move your shoulders and neck. Shift your weight from foot to foot.

Emotional: What emotion is real right now? Is it really sadness, or something else?

If you can change two of your usual reactions, you will be well on your way to breaking this cycle of unhappiness. Real life, a.k.a. reality, is about Present Time, not about spending all your time paying for past mistakes. Present Time is all we ever have, and it is the Universe's gift to us. All we have to do is reach out and take it.

Most Negative Thought

Our neighbor "Ron" stopped by the other night to chat. Ron is not well-liked in the neighborhood. He is constantly drunk, loud and rude. He joins conversations uninvited and expresses his opinions at top volume. He doesn't know when to leave. He probably urinates in the community swimming pool.

I see the eye rolls and sideways looks directed at him. I can almost hear people thinking, "can't he see he's not wanted?"

Um, yeah. That's the whole point. Ron is collecting evidence to support his Most Negative Thought -- "I'm not wanted."

Whatever you choose to call it, Core Belief, Personal Lie or Most Negative Thought, it runs our lives. We spend huge amounts of time proving it. 

Your Most Negative Thought might be something like:

• I'm not good enough
  
• I'm bad
  
• I don't belong
  
• I'm not wanted
• I'm not good enough as a female/male

There are others, but these are the most common. 

Humans will do almost anything to avoid change. This is a survival mechanism that has been part of our brains since we lived in caves and threw rocks at our enemies. However, it is often a huge obstacle in our modern desires for health, happiness and spiritual fulfillment.

Let's get back to Ron, obeying the unconscious need to avoid change. If Ron's result in all life situations is "I'm not wanted," then he has successfully dodged change. Things are the same for Ron, and will stay the same as long as he has plenty of evidence to back up his belief.

What is your most negative thought, and how do you perpetuate it? Do you understand that as much as you may dislike this about yourself, you also need it? Can you recognize that feeling of comfort in your body as you run on the treadmill of past thoughts? Do you want to change?

If so, watch for my next post. If you can change your thoughts, you can change your life.