 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||||||
|
CHAPTER SIXTEEN FIRST CONTACT, FEES, AND SCHEDULING When a person first phones me to ask questions about Rebirthing, I typically respond by saying, "I'll be pleased to talk about it for a few minutes and I also want to send you a brochure that explains what Rebirthing is and answers most questions most people have about it. Once you've received the brochure, I'd love to hear from you again and answer any specific questions you may have about either Rebirthing or about your life." I then ask the caller to give me his name and address, which I fill out on an index card to keep in my mailing list file, and which I also copy over at that instant on to an envelope containing my brochure, "Rebirthing-Questions and Answers," (Appendix A) and a business card. Immediately, I seal and stamp it so that it can be mailed off promptly. Even if the caller is not new to Rebirthing, I usually send him my brochure simply because I want him to be clear about the variety of services that I offer to people coming to me for individual Rebirth sessions. Once I've filled out the envelope, I usually proceed to say, "Rebirthing is simply a breathing exercise that allows people to change their consciousness about whatever difficulties they're facing in their life. What do you want changed in your life?" Then I spend enough time talking with him so I get a beginning idea of what's troubling him and how I feel about working with him. If the person phoning me tells me that he is in therapy with another psychotherapist, I ask if he has spoken with his therapist about wanting to try Rebirthing or try me, and I suggest that he be very clear about that with his therapist. I explain that I'm a clinical psychologist with all of the professional ethical responsibilities that my licensing in the state of California requires of me, and that I don't want to be regarded as being professionally unethical, as I would be if I saw somebody else's patient. If the caller has already Rebirthed with some other Rebirther, either years ago or currently, I also generally ask, "Why don't you return to such-and-such?" I usually refrain from further comments or questions. Most often, I find the caller Rebirthed many years ago, in another city, and doesn't even recall the name of the Rebirther. Usually he adds that he felt good and he felt his life benefited, and he'd like to get back into it now. I explain that during a first session, we'll probably spend a couple of hours talking about his life, what he knows about his birth, and what he wants changed. We'll be discussing appropriate affirmations that I want him to think about, and then we'll spend at least an hour doing a breathe, plus spending some time after the breathing session is complete while we talk about what went on during the session. So, I ask him to allow a good four hours so that neither one of us needs to feel rushed. He can choose whichever best suits his schedule: a morning appointment that would run from about 9:00 to 1:00, an afternoon appointment from 2:00 to about 6:00, or an evening appointment from 7:00 to about 10:30, 11:00. I try to be as flexible as I can be to meet his needs, so I'm open to setting the session time for his first appointment either in the morning, the afternoon, or the evening, and, if necessary, even on the weekends. I also suggest that he not have a heavy meal right before the session, simply so that he can feel alert and comfortable lying down flat doing the Rebirthing breathing, without needing to be propped up. I make certain that we discuss my fees during the first phone conversation, whether or not we make an appointment. My current charge is $260 for the first session, which usually lasts about four to five hours, and $160 for subsequent sessions, which are usually shorter, about three to four hours. I explain that I collect my fee from him directly at the beginning of our appointment, but that I will be agreeable to billing his health insurance plan if it covers mental health care, for eventual reimbursement to him. I also point out that I see most of the people I see only between three to seven times. I explain that my aim is to teach my client to do the Rebirthing breath by himself, without needing to be prompted or supervised by anyone, and that generally my client learns how to breathe very well by himself after about three to seven sessions. So the overall total cost is very modest, especially compared to conventional talk therapies. If asked, I explain that I only make one appointment in advance and I don't require any certain number of appointments. I want my client to feel free of ties. He need not feel any fear of being trapped into some treatment commitment. He can take it one at a time. After all, the umbilical cord that was indeed severed between him and his mother doesn't even exist between him and me, so why should I try to tie him to me? I don't want to take money from anyone who doesn't want to give it to me. So, if there is any sign of dissatisfaction on the part of my client at the end of the session, and if he doesn't believe he got full value from the session, I give him back his money immediately. I make the same provision with regard to workshops and trainings. My relationship with money is such that I only want to get paid happily and willingly for what I do, where the person paying me believes I deserve my wages. I don't want to get paid for not doing something well. Being a psychologist, my job is to help the other person; I believe that if that person doesn't feel helped in the immediate sense, right then and there, at the end of the breathing, that person shouldn't have to pay for being again disappointed. I know psychologists using other therapies can't operate on a satisfaction guaranteed basis, but being a Rebirther, I can and do. I simply deal with the issue of the fee on an ordinary professional basis, stating what I charge and leaving it up to the patient or client to accept or decline the invitation to use me as a therapist or as the teacher of the breathing exercise. I have reacted in a variety of ways when someone calls me who wants very much to Rebirth, but who cannot afford my fee. The very first year that I Rebirthed people, I was quite agreeable to allowing them to come to see me without needing to pay. That particular year I found that only one out of seven people I Rebirthed actually paid me for the session at my fee at that time, $35 for a session. That meant I was making an average of $5 per session, at an average of a little more than a dollar per hour! On an hourly rate, I was severely cheating myself. At the conclusion of the year, I realized that I was not making enough money from my practice to enable me to continue to live in the style that I had been enjoying with my two youngest children who were still with me, so I increased my fee up to $45 per session. Lots of negatives came up for me, but I did my best to ask people to pay "something" even if they couldn't pay the full fee. By being a little more adamant than I had been about needing to get paid, I was able to convince one out of three patients to pay me at least something for the session that second year, and that made a significant improvement in my own financial picture. Mind you, my salary for my position as a full college professor, teaching a full schedule of psychology classes, fifteen hours a week, is what I was living on primarily, not my private practice, whether it was talk therapy as it had been in the 60s, or Primal Therapy as it was for most of the 70s, or Rebirthing as it has been since 1978. The money made from my private practice has mainly been my "extra" money, not the money that I budgeted my life around. And it still is, although now I budget on a monthly retirement pension that's about half my former salary. The third year of my activity as a Rebirthing teacher brought about a significant change in my financial picture simply because of a rather interesting exchange in talking about this entire matter with Leonard Orr. I was at a workshop that Leonard was teaching, and I was participating essentially as an unpaid co-leader, volunteering my time handling some of the seminars. When Leonard called upon me to talk about what my money problems were, I said,
"My only major problems with money are simply, first, that a lot of people still don't pay me for their Rebirth sessions, and second, a lot of Rebirthers who borrowed money from me with promises of all sorts to pay me back in the very near future have been liars and simply have not paid me back. Otherwise, I don't have any problem living and handling all my bills and doing things that I want to do. I enjoy my work and I make an abundance of money for myself, working and teaching." And he replied, "Well, do you run a loan agency? Is that what you're doing? Are you a banker or a loan person?" And I replied, with some exasperation,
"Leonard, you know perfectly well I'm not. I'm a college professor, I'm a clinical psychologist, I'm a Rebirther. I don't make my living by loaning money to people!" He explained that when somebody asked me to loan them money, I could simply say,
"Look, I'm not in the loan business. If I wanted to give you the money, I would simply give it to you, and not necessarily expect you to pay it back. But I don't really want to give you the money. And since I'm not in the loan business, I'm not going to loan you the money. But I'll do my best to help you figure out some way of getting the money yourself, either from other people who are in a more favorable position to give you that money, or else, by creating the money for yourself out of your own efforts, doing some work." I had an opportunity to practice that approach only one day later, when a Rebirther I like ever so much phoned to ask if I would loan him several thousand dollars so that he could take the
"Loving Relationships Training" Rebirther Training. I used the opportunity to say to him,
"You know I love you, and you know I think it's really great that you're going to be doing the LRT Rebirther Training, so I'd like ever so much to help you. But I simply don't have that amount of money to give to you and that's all there is to it. And since I'm not in the loan business, it wouldn't make any sense for me to try to loan it to you, even if I had that money available to put out to loan, anyhow. So, all I can do is give you my loving support and to ask you if you've spoken with people who are in a much better position to give you large sums of money." Leonard's approach to my first issue of people asking for "freebies" also worked. Leonard asked me, "How many people have you seen that didn't pay you?" I estimated how many hundreds of people I had Rebirthed during the first two years that I was involved in it, and told him that figure. And he asked,
"Well, where is my tithe from all of those people?" I exclaimed, "You mean you want me to have sent you ten percent of what they should have paid, but didn't pay? You want me to pay you for the privilege of Rebirthing these people free?" And he said, "Yes!" Well, I thought about that for an instant, and then quick as a whip and witty- like, I said, "I tell you what! I will do my very best to collect at least a dollar for you from every single person that I Rebirth from now on, okay? If I get $100 a session, which I would like to be charging and receiving from every person that I Rebirth, that's fine, I'll send you your 10 percent. But if I don't get my usual fee, I'll still send you at least a dollar for each person I Rebirth. And you're going to have to just forgive whatever debt you think I owe you on the people that I haven't sent you a dollar on, all those who didn't pay me anything." Leonard laughed and that was that. During the next year, when people came to see me and told me that they weren't in a position to pay anything, and asked if I would be willing to see them free, I told them, "No, I'm willing to see you at a reduced fee, but I'm not willing to see you for nothing at all. I've promised to tithe to Leonard. And I want to give him at least $10 for every person that I Rebirth. Since I certainly care for myself at least as much as I care for Leonard, I'm really obligated to ask for at least $10 for myself as well." Generally speaking, after I made such an explanation, most of the people asking for freebies that I spoke with those years were agreeable to paying me at least twenty dollars, and many of them upped it a little by five or ten dollars. In any case, by 1981, after three years of Rebirthing people, I was generally charging $100 for a session and was receiving it most of the time. I had by that time conducted several dozen workshops, teaching people how to Rebirth. So I had a large number of former trainees that I could refer patients to when they first called, especially if they lived at a considerable distance from my office in my home. I told callers during our first phone conversation that if they could not afford to pay my fee of $100 for each session, I would be happy to refer them to other Rebirthers who had less experience than I and who would probably charge much less, but who were excellently trained. And I proceeded to do that. I made a separate list of the people who had attended my workshops at a very reduced fee or for free, and I referred people who couldn't pay me anything to them. I figured that people who couldn't pay me anything might just as well do their Rebirthing with other people who couldn't pay me anything so they could both work on their money negatives. Within a year or so, I found that almost everybody I was Rebirthing paid me the full fee for the Rebirth session, although I still was occasionally allowing a few people to come to workshops free here in Los Angeles. Since I found it much easier to increase my fee, it became $125 for a first session. At the rate of four to five hours per session, that meant I was making $25 an hour, a far cry from the professional fee that most clinical psychologists in Los Angeles usually charge and make, but an hourly rate which certainly beats making even less than the minimum wage, as I had been doing. I continued to charge $100 for subsequent sessions. In 1989, I once again found myself tending to feel sorry for myself for not making more money per hour, so I raised my fee for the first session to $150 and for subsequent sessions to $125. That kept me very content for the next four years. In 1993, I realized that I was putting as much effort and time into one individual at a first session as I would generally do at a workshop, for which twice the amount was being charged. So I raised my fee in the middle of '93 to $260 for a first session and $160 for subsequent sessions, explaining to people on the telephone that even at those rates, it was highly unlikely that they would be spending more than $1,000 to get to where their life took a dramatic turn for the better and they could Rebirth themselves without me. Currently, almost every person referred to me by someone who knows me personally makes and keeps a first appointment after our first phone conversation. People calling me who learned about me from such impersonal sources as the phone or advertisements in New Age publications have been less likely to make appointments unless they have had previous Rebirthing experiences. But overall, I'm contented with my practice and its rewards. PROCESS As people talk about their problems with their job, their health, their relationships, their parents, with sexuality, with energy, with whatever it is that troubles them, I generally listen carefully, asking questions to make certain I understand all complaints. I do not take notes or record the session. Occasionally I contribute some anecdote about a similar occurrence, either in the life of someone else I've Rebirthed or in my own life. After about a half an hour to an hour of such talk, I ask my new client what he knows about his birth: how long was labor? was his mother anesthetized? was his father present? which child in the birth order is he? were there any unusual complications that he's heard of? And I start explaining to him how the facts that he's speaking of might well be related to particular negative thoughts which need to be changed if he is to change the reality he has been creating for himself. I generally ask my new client to take some paper from the drawer immediately in front of him to write down affirmations I give him. I explain these affirmations will completely correct the problems he has been describing if he thinks the new positive thoughts as continuously as he has been thinking the old negative thoughts. And so we spend another hour or more writing affirmations that are specifically tailored to this particular individual's "case," as Leonard calls it, to the circumstances that he seeks to alter to improve his life. After such discussion, the new client has a good idea of how new thinking can alter the way he creates his life, and he's ready to try the breathing, to let go the old thoughts and feelings that he has been storing in his body, mind, and spirit. Before we leave my office to go to my Rebirthing room, I collect my fee. I regard all the talk that's led up to that point as free, for I charge only for teaching the breathing. Approximately a half dozen times in the last sixteen years, as I mentioned in the preceding chapter, I have gotten to that point and then realized that I didn't want to Rebirth the person I had been spending time with. When that happened, I explained that I really didn't think that it was going to work very well for me to Rebirth them, that I hoped they weren't terribly disappointed, but that I didn't want to Rebirth them. I also explained that there was no fee being charged for the session to that point. If they wanted, I referred them to someone else with whom I believed they would get along better. In two of those six cases, I was about to tell the person that I did not want to accept the check he was writing because I really did not want to Rebirth him when he stopped writing his check and said, "I don't really want to do this, I don't want to work with you, and if you don't mind I don't want to pay you anything." We agreed and they left. My refusal to Rebirth some particular person has never been cause for their taking offense or feeling hurt. This has never seemed to be a rejection and it has never been reacted to as a rejection. Generally speaking, only relief on both sides has been felt. After collecting the fee and entering the amount in my account book, we then repair to different bathrooms, empty our bladders, and then meet at the Rebirthing room, which is, in my case, on the second floor of my home. My Rebirthing room has two large windows, set at corners to each other, so there's great ventilation there. I always have at least one window partially open, even during cold weather. I explain we want to be open to fresh air, to new spirit. On the carpet on the floor I have placed several foam rubber pads and a thinsulite pad, with a lamb's wool pad and sheet on top, and pillows and a King-size comforter. The Rebirthee lies down and places pillows under his head or knees to make himself comfortable, and then I cover him if he wants. I offer the blanket even in the warmest weather because I believe that people feel very vulnerable lying uncovered on the floor. I explain to my new Rebirthee that we work on the floor so that he need not have any concerns about rolling and falling off of a mattress or a bed. This way he can focus his consciousness completely on keeping his breathing connected and on witnessing whatever is going on inside of him as he does the connected breath. I usually sit down on the floor facing the north window, near the client's right side, so that I can lean forward easily to tap him or shake him with my right hand if he starts to drift away from the regular breath. After my client agrees to that as well, I then conclude by saying, "I won't leave you at the end of an hour. I will stay with you so long as you're doing your breathing, if you're connecting your breath, but at the end of the hour I'm going to stop prompting you about your breathing. I won't nag you to remember to breathe, I won't ask you to breathe more fully or more slowly. I'll just sit here and be with you. Is that all right with you?" After my client agrees, we start the Rebirthing session. I almost always ask my client to breathe in and out through his mouth, because there is much less resistance in the air passages that way and he can much more easily take a really full, satisfying inhale. I watch my client's breath without making any comments at all for the first few minutes, because I want him to relax and not feel self-conscious about having his breathing observed. After approximately five minutes, I start asking him to take bigger breaths or slower breaths or whatever it is that I think needs to be done so that his breathing becomes optimal. As he pays attention to making his inhale sufficiently long for that kind of an energy journey to take place, he is automatically correcting the effortful extra blowing-off of carbon dioxide that is probably what has been making his hands and feet become numb or filled with
"pins-and-needles." So, by changing the focus of his attention to the inhale, he relieves the mistaken emphasis on the exhale that has been causing uncomfortable symptoms in his body. When necessary, I caution my Rebirthee to put the emphasis on his inhales and not to push the exhales or empty himself completely. With very few exceptions-only one or two people amongst a hundred- everyone says Yes, he wants to be allowed to drift off. And so, I keep my word: I prompt him and remind him to breathe the next time he drifts off. But the time after that, I don't prompt him to breathe. I simply sit back and relax and pay attention to my own breathing. He may remain in a state of breathlessness that lasts for several minutes. After two or three minutes of such breathlessness, I often very gently and softly speak out loud, reminding him that:
Very often, when a Rebirthee returns to breathing after a few minutes of breathlessness and absentness, his reaction is one of frantic anxiety. He may grab the air or even reach toward me. He may groan or exclaim loudly,
"Oh my God!" or "Help, help!" Gradually, he calms himself down. Usually by this time we've spent a little more than an hour at the breathing, and the person is bubbling with the desire to tell me what was experienced during that last extended period of breathlessness, especially what was experienced as he came back into the breathing.
I suggest that he slowly sit up, propping himself on an elbow or on his hands, so that in case he feels dizzy, he will feel that support. And then, facing each other on the Rebirthing floor, I hear from him what happened, what he remembers of the session. During the past two or three years, I've taken to writing affirmations that apply to the person I'm Rebirthing while I watch that person Rebirth. I write whatever comes into my mind appropriate to that person. By the end of the breathing session, usually there are two or three pages with perhaps six affirmations per page. Recently, I have been closing our session by asking my Rebirthee to read these affirmations out loud, taking a full, deep breath in between each one. There is almost always some further discussion about the wording and the appropriateness of the thought to my Rebirth client's particular situation. Very often, as a Rebirthing session nears completion, I notice that my body experiences a sudden filling of my bladder, an immediate urgency to urinate that may be so intense that I have to excuse myself. In that case, I lean over my client who is still engaged in the breathing and say, "I have to go next door because I need to pee, and I'll be right back with you. You are totally safe, breathing fully and freely. I'll be back with you in one minute. Just keep your mind concentrating on the connected breath." Then I run next door to my bathroom. I noticed this reaction soon after I first Rebirthed. It surprised me that my bladder filled after only an hour or so, even though I had made a point of emptying my bladder before we started the breathing session itself. I was especially surprised because I can generally lecture for several hours or engage in a consultation for many hours in a row without needing to urinate. I have concluded that my bladder is a channel through which flow the old negatives that my Rebirth client is letting go with each breath. Apparently it's my job to dump them. I figure the Rebirth is just about finished when that sensation of bladder fullness happens inside of me. Another phenomenon that I experience in my body, generally just after my client sits up at the close of the session, is one very abrupt hiccup. Again, I don't know why this happens. Perhaps the symbolism is that I'm "fed up" with all the old negatives that I've been absorbing or "swallowing." Perhaps my diaphragm contracts to facilitate my releasing them. I don't know. But again I think it's interesting. So far as I can tell, neither of these phenomena has anything to do with my posture or position while I'm Rebirthing a client. Usually, I sit cross-legged with my back unsupported. Occasionally I lean back against a pillow against the wall. Sometimes I stretch my legs out and lean on one elbow. But whatever my position may be, it seems as if I usually need to urinate and then hiccup when my client's Rebirth is complete. On a few occasions I haven't yet had those sensations when my client has said,
"Okay, I feel finished, I'd like to stop now, I really feel finished." Phil Laut has a saying about this which I think deserves to be repeated:
"Whenever somebody tells you that he's finished breathing before an hour has passed, that's your signal to know that he needs to breathe for at least another ten or fifteen minutes." All told, approximately four to five hours are usually occupied at a first Rebirth: I spend two or three hours talking with the person about himself and drawing up some affirmations before we breathe, I spend at least an hour with him on the breathing, there's a little down time for toiletting before and after the session, and then we spend another half hour or more discussing what happened during the session. If I'm Rebirthing somebody who is well-experienced with the Rebirthing breathing and with the theory that Rebirthing rests upon, a first session can take only little more than an hour and a half, because we can get down to cases immediately. That's also usually true when I travel to other cities or other countries where appointments for individual Rebirths have been set up in advance by my organizers who usually schedule appointments an hour and a half apart. In those circumstances, I don't need to explain the connections between birth, the breath, and Thought. So I say, "Okay, tell me one or two things that are wrong in your life right now that you really want to change and let's concentrate on them." My Rebirthee tells me whatever those aims are, I ask him how this might be connected with what he knows about his birth, and I help him develop his further understanding of that connection. Then, we set up some affirmations, and within about a half hour we are prepared to start at least an hour's breathing. Sometimes a client is late or other events occur that prevent us from starting the session promptly, but usually that doesn't affect the session itself. Unless the client wants to re-schedule, we go ahead per usual. I try to time our talking to leave a good hour for the breathe. If a later client shows up while the earlier one is still on the floor breathing, I have found that it works perfectly well to leave my first Rebirthee while I go downstairs, open the door to my arriving client, and explain that I'm still Rebirthing a previous appointment and that we should be completed in less than a half hour or so. My second client is free either to sit down and wait and read, go out in the yard, play with my bunnies, go back in his car, whatever, while I'm delayed. To date, I have never had anyone take offense to that, and so I find that my time anxiety with regard to individual sessions is handled essentially exactly the same way I handle it when doing workshops.
I have total content integrity and some time integrity. I guarantee that we will complete the Rebirth before we stop, and I like to start on time. But I can't always guarantee that we will finish by a certain time, so if my client absolutely needs to leave on the dot, I do my best to make sure we stop our discussions so we have time for the breathe. Otherwise, we re-schedule another time for a breathe, at no more cost. When that's not possible, I make the client responsible for keeping track of the time to start the breathe. As you have probably recognized by now, most of what I do during an individual Rebirth session is done because it allows me and my patient to feel the greatest degree of comfort and security. On a very few occasions, perhaps a half dozen times, I have even stretched out and concentrated on my own Rebirthing when I have been Rebirthing someone who is a truly expert, well-experienced Rebirthee. There's intense pleasure in connecting our breathing so that we're both breathing at the same rhythm and depth. A few times in all these years people have been upset about talking about their lives. They have wanted just to lie down and breathe while I watch them. When they have heard my way of conducting a Rebirth, some people at trainings and workshops, especially in other countries, have asked, "Why do you need to know any of this? Why do you even talk about any of this with your clients? Why isn't it all right for me to have people come to me and just lie down and do the breathing? It's their privacy, it's their concern, it's whatever goes on. I don't need to know anything about it. They don't need to discuss it with me afterwards or beforehand. All they need to do is do the breathing. What's wrong with that?" My response to that usually is, "Probably there's nothing at all wrong with that. I just don't like it as much. Maybe there's a large negative that I'm still running that accounts for why I don't want to do it that way. Or maybe it's just a habit from all my years of being a psychologist. But I like to be acquainted with the person I'm Rebirthing. It's your choice. You do whatever you need to do to be comfortable." I don't need to run my practice on an hourly schedule. I have enough time so that I can spend it with my client, getting to know him as a human being. None of the things that I've talked about so far are crucial-only the breathing is. For example, I had the experience of Rebirthing people in China and Japan; these were people who did not speak any English at all, where the translator who was present told them, "She wants you to lie down and breathe the way she tells you to breathe." With those people, I knew nothing about their background, I knew nothing about their troubles. All I knew was that they wanted to Rebirth. (At least, that's what the translator told me.) Even so, with those people, the connected breathing practiced for an hour led to amazing psychological phenomena, experiences which the people seemed to have been quite happy with. I still hear from a few of them and they have all been remarkably successful in their careers and marriages-well beyond their expectations before they Rebirthed that once. Since I don't make my main living from Rebirthing people, I don't have to run them through the Rebirth experience as quickly as possible, so that I can collect as many fees as possible during the day, in order to support myself. (Mind you, I don't know if that is the motivation of the people who do schedule hourly sessions. I am simply saying that since I usually have no necessity to push people through at a rapid rate, I don't.) I enjoy spending time with my Rebirthees. I enjoy it as much as I enjoy anything else that I do that's enjoyable (with the possible exception of making love or a few other extremely pleasurable experiences). Reading an interesting book is no more refreshing and pleasurable than listening to someone talk about his or her life. And watching somebody breathe, prompting them to make the breath as full and satisfying as possible, is as fascinating and pleasurable to me as being with my grandchildren, being outdoors, watching my bunnies play, looking at a sunset, listening to music, or doing other things that are ordinarily regarded as satisfying, pleasurable experiences. After all these years, Rebirthing is still totally enjoyable and fresh. Doing my work of teaching people about Rebirthing doesn't wear me out. So the only reason that I would have for wanting to compress the amount of time that I spend with a particular individual would be that there are other such individuals wanting to work with me. Where that pressure is absent as, essentially, it is in Los Angeles, I don't put any artificial time constraints around the session itself. As a
Rebirther, you'll decide for yourself how best to do things for yourself. There are no rules-I even know someone who Rebirths people while jogging with them. (Now that's really running a Rebirth practice.)
Don't come from scarcity thoughts, like, "I have to make a living, I can't spend that much time with one person," or " I don't want to take up too much of their time because they won't come back to me." If you feel better running your practice from an office that you pay overhead on, keeping a sizeable clientele you see frequently over an extended period of time, do it. I'm sure that the people who Rebirth with Rebirthers who manage their practices that way have been completely satisfied, just as the people who come into my more laissez-faire way of functioning have also been satisfied. I have Rebirthed with dozens of other well-practiced Rebirthers. I have always done my best to breathe the way they want me to breathe, and to operate within whatever time limits they have been using. So I have observed many differences in individual Rebirthing styles, and I've had some experience with several variations. I have also watched many other Rebirthers Rebirthing other people, and I've had many such opportunities to observe how different methods seem to elicit different responses. With the long, gentle, satisfying inhale I advocate, I find little drama comes up. Whatever pain the person experiences is quickly relieved by the next breath, and he experiences with me the opportunity to feel that letting-go old negatives is safe and effortless. With many other Rebirthers, I notice that the line between breathing to let go old, stale, useless negatives, and dramatizing those old negatives is very thin, indeed. So, when a person who has Rebirthed with another Rebirther who elicits drama comes to me for Rebirthing, I may need to remind him that my philosophy is that it is the breathing, not the talk or drama, which allows an individual to let go of, get rid of, and finish with old negatives. Conjuring them up into mind again to be responded to as if they had ever been true and real is a mistake. And so I seek to convince them to try my way. Generally speaking, whatever desire they have to cry or groan has been expressed while we've been talking face to face in the office. When the feeling of the desire to cry comes up during the breathing session, it's reasonably simple for me to tell my Rebirthee, "You can cry, here's a tissue, but you must keep your breathing going! It's really nice to weep and breathe at the same time, then you really let go. But don't sacrifice the breathing for the crying, because it doesn't work. If it worked, every person in the world who's cried a bucket of tears would be a completely emotionally-mature individual, and you know that's not true. So breathe!" I find that the more completely committed I am to the use of the breath as the vehicle through which we remove our old negatives, the less drama people who come to me for Rebirthing get into. They don't feel any implicit or explicit encouragement of the drama of emotional expression. It has truly been years since I've had anyone thrash around, throw himself around, and cry or scream more than a very little bit. Such behavior did occur fairly often during the first couple of years that I was into Rebirthing. Perhaps that was because I still had some allegiance to the whole idea of expression of primal pain. Perhaps, also, that was because I was following the example of most of the Rebirthers I had watched Rebirth others. They seemed to illicit a great deal of emotional expressiveness. But as I've thought through more about how Thought is Creative, I've certainly had to acknowledge that there's no point in paying attention to the old stuff that's being dredged up. The faster you go on to the next breath and let the old stuff go, the faster you're making progress in your life. He started to respond, "Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I want." Then I went into the second part of my slightly rehearsed speech, saying, "Of course, you understand that I used to charge a great deal as a Primal therapist, far more than you're paying me right now. So, if you want to move into doing Primal Therapy with me, then we're going to have to have a whole different set of time commitments and you'll have to pay me my usual Primal fee. Either that, if you want, or else lie down now, stop the drama, and concentrate on the breath. After all, there's no point in talking about surrendering to your breath, if you don't trust it enough to even do it without interrupting it with frequent shows of emotion." He stopped the thumping immediately and breathed the way I asked. He had a good Rebirth, but I found out later that he did, indeed, go back to Primal therapy where he could act out as much as he liked. When a client asks to make his next appointment, I pencil it into my desk calendar. If not, I say, "Why don't you call me in a few days to let me know how you're doing, and we'll see about setting up another appointment." My aim is to provide total freedom of choice, for him and for me. I think that's better than settling the next date firmly immediately after a session. After all, he may find that he is completely healed-so why try to keep him coming? A ritual that I've adhered to absolutely at the conclusion of every individual Rebirth I have ever performed is to hug my client when we part. A very few Rebirth clients have been almost embarrassed, but no one has ever refused the embrace. Generally they seem to welcome the opportunity to express affection through the medium of a long hug, very much the sort of hug that passes between me and my children or my grandchildren-warm, affectionate, no kissing, no suggestion of any sexuality. As mentioned previously, my aim is to teach a client to breathe fully and to think positively. Once he has shown that he can keep his breath connected for forty- five minutes or more without my prompting and coaching, once he has worked successfully with affirmations, he doesn't need me. Usually I see a client three to seven times before he gets to where he can Rebirth himself. I have no set number of sessions he must complete before he stops coming to me for Rebirth sessions. Everyone heals in my presence-and some people seem to do that in just one session.
|
The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath CHAPTER
TWO CHAPTER
THREE CHAPTER
FOUR CHAPTER
FIVE CHAPTER
SIX CHAPTER
SEVEN CHAPTER
EIGHT CHAPTER
NINE CHAPTER
11 CHAPTER
12 CHAPTER
13 CHAPTER
14 CHAPTER
15 CHAPTER
16 CHAPTER
18 CHAPTER
19 CHAPTER
20 CHAPTER
21
|
||
