I have been a practicing therapist in natural healing (sometimes called spiritual or quantum healing) since 1991 and a member of The Healing Trust in the UK since 1993. I obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1998, a Diploma in Colour Therapy in 1995 and trained in Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) with two of the original EFT Masters in 2006/2007 and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) with various teachers including Tony Robbins and most recently with Saudi Aramco.
Each therapy session is tailored to a client’s needs and can include :
Natural Healing:
a very ancient, non-denominational practice found in all cultures throughout the world. Can be conducted locally or distantly.
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT):
often known as energy-based psychology or ‘needle-less acupuncture’, often bringing about substantial relief from emotional or physical symptoms. This is done by gently tapping on the acupressure points of the face and body. Can be conducted locally or by telephone or skype.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP):
is often described as the power of thought combined with verbal and body language, which affects our physiology, our success and well-being. Can be conducted locally or by skype.
(See below for more info.. as well as this, ‘It’s All Light’ offers an explanation of non-physical phenomena which are often seen in the complementary therapy field, such as healing effects, the movement of subtle energy and distant healing.)
Natural Healing
“What is Healing?
“Healing has been understood within all cultures and traditions for millennia. In contemporary terms, it is recognised as a holistic complementary therapy, which enhances health on every level of being, by helping to restore balance in body, mind and spirit.
By transferring natural energy through to the recipient, the healer is making a silent but deep connection with a process, which can have profound results on a number of levels.
Where does Healing come from?
Healing energy is believed to come from a limitless source, which has been described in many different ways. Some call it Universal Energy; some call it Divine Energy; others think of it as the most perfect form of Love and Wisdom. There are many words and many labels; it is the belief of all healers however, that this energy has the potential to help all, irrespective of personal perspective or philosophy. Nothing is asked of the recipient except perhaps openness to the possibility of change, and to whatever may emerge from within the energetic process.
Are people just imagining that healing works?
It has been suggested many times that the positive effects of healing can simply be attributed to what is generally referred to as the “placebo effect” – because someone believes that they’ll get better, then they do.
Positive attitudes are, of course, essential for any level of recovery, but there does seem to be more at work than this. People can often experience profound emotional, spiritual and physical benefits regardless of their expectations or belief in the treatment.
There have been a number of random controlled scientific trials with plants and seedlings, where healing energy has been shown to produce marked improvement in growth rates. Results of this sort can clearly not be attributed to the placebo effect.
What do doctors think?
The UK’s National Health Service officially recognises a number of complementary therapies including Healing. Anyone in hospital in the UK is quite free to ask for a healer and your General Practitioner is allowed by the General Medical Council to refer you to a healer. There are now more NFSH Healer members than ever, working alongside medical staff in surgeries, hospital wards, hospices and cancer centres. Some are paid directly by their NHS Trust and clinicians are increasingly recognising that healing can have a role to play in aiding recovery. The Healing Trust regularly welcomes nurses, doctors and physiotherapists on its courses and is also invited to address medical students as part of their background training in complementary therapies.” The Healing Trust, (founded in the UK in 1954. Training is available in 15 countries and across 4 continents). The Healing Trust was formerly known as NFSH (National Federation of Spiritual Healers).
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
Studies done at Harvard Medical School showed that EFT tapping on acupressure points reduced blood flow to the amygdala (the part of the brain that deals with fight or flight), which in turn increases endorphins (the feel good hormone) and greatly reduces cortisol (the stress hormone). This of course led to reduction or elimination of anxiety
A study conducted by the School of Medicine in Griffith University, Australia on 96 obese/overweight adults found that EFT Tapping reduced food cravings significantly, so much so that after one year the participants had achieved and sustained a decrease in their Body Mass Index (BMI).
A study published in 2003 in the Journal of Clinical Psychology found that, compared to conventional treatment for phobias, a study group of 35 participants with specific phobias achieved a significant decrease in their phobia after EFT Tapping, and after a nine months follow up study, the results had not only held but there had been further improvement.
The HeartMath Institute in California have replicated studies conducted elsewhere, showing that the practice of feeling love and compassion, which can be more easily achieved by EFT Tapping to clear negative emotions, caused DNA to unwind and increase in length. Love and compassion also caused brain and heart rhythms to come into alignment and become coherent, which creates a healing and centering effect. The significance of this is further discussed in ‘It’s All Light’.
How and why does it work?
A study reported in Shift magazine, November 2007, which is the magazine of the Institute of Noetic Science, gives scientific evidence of why labelling our emotions clears or diminishes them. The study correlates to other studies on mindfulness meditation, known to improve mood and health, which also labels emotions as a way of releasing them and concludes with a sound neurological reason why this is so. The correlation with EFT is exciting because in EFT we speak about the feeling we have, while tapping on the acupressure points, which brings relief and often complete cessation of symptoms.
The article in Shift magazine is entitled, ‘Neuroimaging Validates Ancient Buddhist teachings’. The study conducted by UCLA psychologists and reported in May 2007 issues of Psychological Science, showed that when a person sees a photograph of a hostile or angry face, the amygdala region of the brain which deals with the fight or flight response is triggered, but when the feeling is verbalised, for example simply by stating that ‘the face is hostile’ this reduces the activity in the amygdala. The study went further to show that when you label your emotions, this not only reduces activity in the amygdala but increases activity in another area of the brain called the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex.
As Shift goes on to explain ………“MRI showed that when simply a name or gender was applied to the photographs there was no reduced activity in the amygdala and it was only when the emotion on the face was named e.g. ‘angry’ or ‘hostile’ that the amygdala showed reduced activity. David Creswell, research scientist on pyschoneuroimmunology at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour at UCLA has drawn similarities between these findings and previous studies into the effects of mindfulness meditation, which is the practice of being fully present in the moment and letting go of emotions by naming them, e.g. by saying “I’m feeling angry at the moment”. He concluded “We found that more mindful you are, the more activation you have in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the less activation you have in the amygdala”, and “this is such an exciting study because it brings together the Buddha’s teachings – more than 2,500 years ago, he talked about the benefits of labelling your experience – with modern neuroscience.” Shift magazine, Institute of Noetic Science
Read further studies on the effectiveness of EFT here.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
NLP is often described as the power of thought combined with verbal and body language to affect our physiology, our success and well-being. It teaches effective communication and leadership skills and it is being increasingly used by companies, very successfully, to foster good employee relations and promote business growth.
NLP shows us that each person has a unique internal representation of reality and this is what we base our thoughts and behaviours on. The person who can ‘get inside the head’ of the person they are speaking to and speak to them using their representational system, will make the biggest impression and have the most successful outcome. We tend to lean towards one way of communication more than another, for example, it falls into three main types; Visual, Auditory or Kinaesthetic. A more visual person would say something like “I see what you mean”, an auditory type would say “I hear you” and the kinaesthetic type would say “I feel what you say is true”, as a typical example, though we can use all three systems or be a combination of them, but mostly we have a preferred, dominant way of communicating and making sense of the world around us.
A core skill in NLP is modelling successful people, holding them up as a goal to aim towards. Find out what works and then do the same. Since behaviour has a structure, it can be modelled and applied, to bring about a change in behaviour and often with it, a cognitive shift in perception which can lead to the required outcome.
NLP has various techniques to apply to troublesome memories or thoughts which can be the underlying factor in holding back success, or achieving a particular outcome. We all know about the five senses and NLP calls these modalities. Within each modality there are sub-modalities, for example, vision would be a modality and its sub-modalities would be things like, black and white, colour, movement, brightness, fuzziness etc. By helping a person to change the sub-modalities of the image inside their head, this can change their perception, thereby changing the way they feel about something with a resultant change in behaviour. This can also be achieved with EFT and for the most traumatic of memories, EFT can often collapse the emotions faster and more completely than anything else I have found. This is why I use a combination of EFT and NLP, depending on what the client presents with and how the session progresses.
