|
Our ability to help people overcome self-defeating emotional patterns, achieve higher
levels of psychological well-being, and open their spiritual sensibilities are
accelerating at an extraordinary pace. This program introduces you to a powerful
development within this unfolding story.
The biochemical
underpinnings of awareness—of sensations such as pleasure
and pain, drives such as hunger and thirst, emotions such
as anger and joy, and “higher” states such as
awe and spiritual inspiration—have been identified.
“Informational substances” such as hormones, peptides,
and neurotransmitters find their way—in one of nature’s
most stunning designs—to receptor molecules that are
on the surface of every cell in the body.
Even though the “molecules of
emotion” have been precisely mapped throughout the brain and body, their actions are
highly dynamic, not at all static. When emotions flow, informational substances move
to receptor molecules, learning occurs. A person’s mental and emotional state
can also be influenced by synthetic informational substances—medications designed to
target specific receptors. Whether natural or synthetic, the molecules of emotion
shape mood and thought. Significantly, it is a two-way process. Emotions and
thoughts initiate a series of cascading chemical events that are the basis of other
emotions and thoughts. Some studies suggest, in fact, that meditation may be as
effective as medication in alleviating anxiety and depression.
Energy Psychology
Interactive is a synthesis of practices designed to deliberately shift the molecules
of emotion. These practices have four distinct advantages
over psychiatric medications. They are non-invasive, highly
specific, have no side effects, and they are free. Energy
interventions are rooted in an emerging paradigm that is still just outside the embrace of
Western science, though it has long been central to the worldview of Eastern medicine and
spiritual disciplines.
These practices focus on the body’s
“energy system,” which includes the familiar electromagnetic spectrum and is
also believed to encompass so-called “subtle energies.” While not well understood, subtle energies can be
operationally defined as energies that cannot be measured using
existing instrumentation but which, like gravity, are known for
their effects. Energy is also hypothesized as being somehow involved
in the elusive link between chemistry and consciousness. There is much
interest now in understanding this connection in Western scientific terms. One
hypothesis, for example, emphasizes the rate of the molecular vibration of receptors and
their ligands as a key to understanding emotional energy. The program you are about
to begin teaches you how to influence these energies to shift patterns of emotion,
thought, and behavior that are blatantly dysfunctional, or simply limiting.
Energy Psychology Interactive is
designed for psychotherapists and other health practitioners who are interested in
psychological issues. It is an early formulation of a new field, bringing unfamiliar
methods into the therapist’s office, using tapping as much as talk, aiming for energy
integration as much as insight. The procedures, as you will see, can seem
quite strange. The range of appropriate clinical and other applications is still
being debated, but my personal impression, based on my own experience, is that it is
enormous.
The “state of the
art” within energy psychology is characterized by four contradictions. First, a
flood of reports coming from reputable, well-credentialed psychotherapists claiming
clinical results that are unusual in their speed and in their effectiveness, even with
recalcitrant problems, raises both interest and suspicion. Second, this substantial
body of anecdotal evidence is not yet backed by controlled clinical investigations. Third, if research were to verify the clinical outcomes claimed by the field’s
proponents, some of
the mechanisms involved may well lie outside of
established explanatory models. Fourth, the enthusiasm of the field’s
proponents has been met with the strong misgivings of authoritative credentialing bodies.
Enter Energy Psychology Interactive.
David Feinstein was conducting research on psychotherapeutic innovations at the
Department of Psychiatry of the Johns Hopkins University Medical School in the 1970s, the
same time I was there doing my early work on the opiate receptor. Thirty years later his
focus has turned to the intersection of psychotherapy and energy medicine. While he
has practiced as a clinical psychologist during the intervening decades and in fact
pioneered a powerful system for helping people transform their guiding myths, he has also
accumulated some unusual credentials for a psychologist, not the least of which is that he
is married to one of the world’s most renowned energy healers, Donna Eden.
With Energy Psychology Interactive,
Dr. Feinstein has culled through the wide range of practices being used by at least 5,000
psychotherapists whose work explicitly focuses on the body’s energy systems. In
consultation with Dr. Fred Gallo, author of several of the pioneering professional books
on energy psychology, and Donna Eden, who provided the perspective of energy medicine, he
identified the procedures that seemed the most promising, and he organized them into a
systematic approach for introducing the field’s basic methods to clinicians who are
new to energy psychology. He then submitted this formulation to an
Advisory Board of
24 of the field’s leading thinkers and acknowledged innovators with the question,
“Does this program cover the essential methods that clinicians who are new to energy
psychology would need to know in order to incorporate its methods into their
practices?” Because the field, new as it is, already has many factions, the
critiques of the 24 people who form the Advisory Board led to literally hundreds of
changes in the program, large and small, until the presentation represented a consensus of
techniques and explanations.
Energy psychology is a
leading edge therapy and Energy Psychology Interactive is a leading edge way to
learn it, combining print and electronic media to provide a thoroughly engaging,
self-paced experience. Its teaching style includes a Socratic question-and-answer
format, video demonstrations that appear with the click of a mouse, multiple practice
sessions, and hundreds of links to other parts of the program and to auxiliary papers,
charts, diagrams, and relevant websites.
Energy psychology has rapidly become one of
the hottest areas of what I call “New Paradigm Medicine.” Research is
accumulating which suggests that healing the emotions is not only a gateway to a happier
and more fulfilling life, it is a gateway to healing the body of virtually any physical
illness. Until more extensive research is available examining energy-based interventions
for psychological issues, Energy Psychology Interactive is the most
authoritative introduction available to clinicians who wish to incorporate this highly significant set
of innovations into their practices. I am personally committed to conducting research in
this important area, but as with so many effective treatments in medicine, the current
lack of understanding of its mechanisms should not prevent people from benefiting now
by applying the procedures presented in this program.
Return
to Contents
|
