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Coco Warner Reporting If you feel like you've been in hibernation this winter, we have a springtime project to suggest.As well as tackling the lawn, what if you also tackled your life?
All month long, Coco Warner is helping us improve the quality of our lives. And this morning, we're talking about self-improvement.
Today I look into an alternative therapy you may or may not be familiar with. It's designed to help people make the connection between their bodies and emotions, in order to heal.
It's called emotional or forgiveness therapy-- and facilitator Pam Robinson says it has changed her life.
"We use something called the process. It's a technique that helps bring emotions to the surface, so that we can move to a better state inside."
Pam Robinson is lecturing students enrolled in her Institute of Healing. She's helping them become certified facilitators of emotional or forgiveness therapy.
Pam Robinson/Dir. Institute of Healing Arts: "We help bring issues of the past to closure through forgiveness of self and others."
Pam uses muscle testing or kiniseology to help get information.
Pam determines Susan needs to address something that happened at age eight. Susan says her family moved nine different times around that age.
Pam Robinson: "How does Susan feel when she's eight years old about change?" Susan: "Well, the feeling I'm feeling is lost and scared."
This process involves guided imagery, role-playing and visualization, and for younger children, there's art therapy.
Pam has Susan imagine her eight-year-old self expressing her feelings-- and then letting go of the anger that surrounded the experience.
Pam Robinson/Institute of Healing Arts: "What I do is called psycho neuro immunology, and it's actually not psychology and it's not in the medical field. It's right in betwen, where we work on how the feeling affects our organs and our health."
Research supports, when we hold on to negative feelings, we release the stress hormone known as cortisol. And when we can let those feelings go, a chemical associated with calm, nitric oxide, is released.
How you feel emotionally affects how you feel physically.
Pam Robinson/Institute of Healing Arts: "We can't heal in stress, and so we need to be able to do things to help us find a place of peace."
Pam Robinson has written a book that details her own personal experience using this process called, "The Bright Red Bow."
Coming up on Thursday, I'm going to tell you about another kind of alternative therapy based in massage.
