Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

I took a break from my normal working day to walk by the water in Sausalito, meditate, and do some of the strengthening exercises for my immune system. I noticed that I could not see San Francisco, Berkeley or Oakland because of the fog, but Sausalito was clear. The meditation period was quite nice, and I felt rather good to be doing the stretches again.

My surgery has been changed to 7:30 A. M. on Friday, May 9 and Julie Motz will attend!

In my session, today, with Leslie Davenport, I dealt with the anxiety I feel about the question of whether or not there is still cancer in my body that represents a threat to my life. She felt confident that this was a good session for more EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), and I thought it wise to allow her intuition to guide our work together. Several issues came up with regard to various stances about my current physical condition. The issues that were most prominent in my mind were the unattractiveness of radical cystectomy on the one hand, and the powerful healing session I had with Leslie on March 21 on the other. I needed to break through my resistance to allow the radical cystectomy to be part of my healing, and not seeing it as an invalidation of “healthy cells grow all by themselves.” In the end, I realized that I was doing my best to help my recovery, and that as long as I kept looking deeply into alternatives as they come to me, I don’t have to feel bad about anything I’ve done. It is this attitude that brought Julie Motz into my surgery, and gave me the opportunity to see Don Alejandro.

In the evening, I attended the “Life Threatened” group at the Center for Attitudinal Healing and my wife attended the “Care Givers” group. Our group was quite smaller than last week, and all but one person was there last week. It dawned on me how much worse off each of the other members were than me, and I was struck with a feeling of compassion for their suffering. When it was my turn to share, I offered a copy of Yellow Stream to the Center, and talked about Julie Motz. One of the people there had met her at the home where she is staying and said that she was pretty incredible. I believe her! I also spoke about Don Alejandro and my nervousness over next week’s biopsy.

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April 17, 1997 – The Ups and Downs of Cancer

This morning, I had the most wonderful massage from Elyse. This was the third in a series given to me by M. C. when she first heard about my cancer. The massage was sterling! Elyse did some amazing work on my back and abdomen. I feel that she may be one of the best around.

I had a different kind of session with Leslie Davenport today. She used EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) as a therapeutic tool. The technique involves random eye movements induced by the therapist while the patient is focusing on a troublesome emotional or physical problem. The goal is to desensitize the brain to the feelings associated with the event in order to allow the brain to reprocess the event in present time.

As for my session, I was dealing with five issues that came to light while I was reading Getting Well Again. The issues related to stress around losing a job in 1994 and changing from consulting to a full-time position. In addition, I have been undergoing therapy since then to recover my sense of personal power and have therefore come in to quite a conflict with my spouse, who always wants to be in control. The other two major stresses in my live have been in the area of financial worries and interpersonal relationships. During the therapy, I was aware of how all of these issues were interconnected, and that the missing ingredient was “unconditional love.” Leslie offered that she had found this through her spiritual practices and that I possibly could do the same. I left feeling a little depressed, but now that I’ve had a nap and a chance to write about my experience, I feel a lot better.

Later in the evening, I went to a meeting of my Evolutionary Circle. The meeting focused on healing, especially laying on of the hands, and other methods. We just had time to heal two members, neither of which was me, but I got a lot out of tuning into the other members and finding a way to offer my healing energy. I felt that B. M. needed energy around her thymus, and so I moved my hand in a healing motion around her thymus and then placed the ammonite fossil that Barbara Rose Billings gave me over her thymus. Then I touched and tapped her sternum. At the end of the healing, she shared that she thought that something was indeed going on with her immune system.

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