I did my class yesterday. I’m still in amazement that I screwed up the recording. I dropped the f-bomb in class. I’m not sure I should’ve done that. I don’t really want to be a person that curses in classes. I know it works for some people that I don’t really like it all that much even tho I do it all the time. What’s up with that. The class was SO good. I really liked the usage of hypnosis a couple of time. The first time was when I led the group thru hypnosis to instill the Buddha’s 5 main teachings that everything changes, clinging to change leads to suffering, our thoughts are not reality, all we ever really experience is the present moment, and everything is interconnected. I think that was really powerful especially since I got the opportunity to shed some light on the maligning of hypnosis by Hollywood, and possibly prove that it works if the session was good for everyone. Then, I got to use hypnosis again when Elizabeth brought that we need to create new neural pathways. I did a quick hypnosis on visualizing a well trodden path in the forest and created the desire to forge a new path because the way seemed clear in another direction and just felt right at a deep level, speaking to the learning of the subsconscious mind in a way that Richard Bandler talks about. I also merged that aware of awareness based on the GAP technique by John Stone with the labeling from mindfulness practice. I think that’s a really great bridge. Elizabeth brought up that she’s just telling her thoughts to stop. I told her that she could do that but the thing that I really wanted her to understand is that the process is to first:
- Acknowledge that you are not your thoughts or feelings.
- Notice your body and where the feelings reside.
- Use labeling on each thought and feeling.
- Focus on the space between thoughts.
You could try to just tell your thoughts and feelings to stop. But then, where are you? Can you now focus on the space between thoughts? What about the feeling of the experience in the body? Does that work better or not? And it might be individual to everyone.
Then I did the “I am that” technique which I think was really powerful because it touched on some psychological stuff when asked to be someone that they found challenging. Adriana learned a lot from it and found that she had to exercise compassion toward the person and even see things from their point of view. Jackie found that she was able to completely clear the experience that she chose to work from.
We started the class with the journey into the three minds. It was awesome. I want to recreate it. The 3 principles the emerged were:
- You are what you eat.
- You are not your thoughts.
- You are everything.
I hope I can make it as good next time. I think I want to write this out and make it really good. I know I can do that and make a great recording out of it. I talked a little about the imagination and I mentioned Bentinho Massaro’s interview where talked about imagination existing and we’re just tapping into it happening when we imagine. I may want to listen to that again actually so that I talk more about imagination before covering shamanism.
I didn’t talk about the whys of wanting to do meditation. What are the benefits. I also didn’t discuss how to practice. I just assigned homework. Maybe I’ll wait for feedback from people to discuss their challenges with practicing. Gosh, it seems like we covered such a little amount of the overall material I have! OMG!
