A Journey
Into Altered States
Mary Lynn Adzema
An Essay Review of Winafred Blake Lucas’s (ed.)
Regression Therapy: A Handbook For Professionals,
Volume II:
Special Instances of Altered States Work
[Click
HERE to Buy the Two-Volume set today.]
With a shift now under way into a new therapeutic paradigm where
consciousness is king, Winafred Lucas’s anthology is at once a guidebook
for, and a breath-taking overview of, a rapidly expanding universe.
Special Instances of Altered States Work is the second volume
in her an-thology titled, Regression Therapy: A Handbook for Professionals;
her first volume being devoted to past-life therapy.
As in Volume I, Lucas provides the experiences, theoretical frameworks,
and techniques of a distinguished array of therapists, thus grounding and
documenting new areas of treatment which our expanding consciousness now
makes possible.
She is to be acknowledged for her courage in presenting a full spectrum
of therapeutic concerns, ranging from the still controversial areas of
pre- and perinatal psychology, the interlife, entity releasement, and death
and dying to such topical and mainstream-friendly therapeutic issues as
child abuse, sexual abuse, and abortion.
Her years of painstaking and thorough networking and research have
culminated in a scholarly and comprehensive survey and "textbook" to aid
professional therapists—many of whom have undoubtedly been working alone
and somewhat hesitantly in these controversial areas. The guides she has
chosen are each distinguished pioneers in their respective fields and include
Ronald Wong Jue, Ph.D.; Edith Fiore, Ph.D.; Barbara P. Lamb, M.S., M.F.C.C.;
Hazel Denning, Ph.D.; Roger Woolger, Ph.D.; Rob Bontenbal, M.A.; Tineke
Noordegraaf, M.M.; Barbara Findeisen, M.F.C.C.; Ernst Pecci, M.D.; and
Chet Snow, Ph.D.; to name only a few.
Winafred Lucas’s credentials are impressive. She is a diplomate of
the American Board of Professional Psychology. Her lifetime of academic
and professional training includes Jungian analysis in Munich; a doctorate
in psychology at UCLA under the Rorschach specialist, Dr. Bruno Klopfer;
a term as core faculty member of the California School of Professional
Psychology; forty-five years of clinical work with children and adolescents;
conducting workshops in holistic health and transpersonal issues at various
University of California Campuses; and more recently, a term as editor
of The Journal of Regression Therapy.
In Chapter I of her edited volume, "Regression to Prenatal and Birth
Experiences," Michael Gabriel describes therapeutic processes for healing
prenatal trauma. He relates a common theme—one that the other contributing
therapists, like Alice Givens, Hugh Harmon, Claire Etheridge, and Barbara
Findeisen, among others, shed additional light on from their therapeutic
perspectives. Basically the theme that Gabriel elucidates is that if we
stay trapped in the patterns of thought and feeling that crystallize in
us during our time in the womb we are "prisoners of our history, controlled
by a forgotten past" (p. 11). However, by bringing our prenatal memories
into consciousness, through the various forms of regression described in
this volume, we can actually be assured of liberation from those early
traumatic happenings and thereby experience increased self-governance and
a wider range of choices. By the time we complete our therapy, Gabriel
says, emotional blocks have been dissolved and our potential for personal
self-actualization has been greatly expanded.
Gabriel describes four steps for healing prenatal trauma and changing
the resulting behavior patterns: (l) recall of pertinent experiences,
(2) reframing or educating the infant within, (3) releasing emotions,
and (4) rescripting. In rescripting, the client is encouraged to
create alternative and more positive responses to allow for restructuring
of the negative emotional and thought patterns.
Also in this chapter is "Tracing the Karmic Source of Prenatal Programs"
by Roger Woolger. This chapter will be of great comfort and reassurance
to mothers who have been informed by pre- and perinatal psychologists that
their unborn babies "marinate" in the mother’s emotions and are totally
at the mercy of the mother’s subconscious Pain. This has been a heavy dose
of psychological truth to swallow: the realization that the mother’s world
exerts such a powerful effect on the vulnerable fetus, thus predisposing
her or him to a lifetime of neurosis. Woolger, in his article, acknowledges
the very important role of the mother, but he adds the karmic dimension.
From his thousands of experiences with clients, Woolger notes that
the unborn child appears to deliberately choose his or her parents with
their own positive and negative patterns so as to purposely ignite karmic
"flashpoints"—those emotional residues from many past lives that need to
be challenged and resolved. His contribution will go far to alleviate unnecessary
guilt in the many mothers, myself included, who look back to prior pregnancies
in the light of current knowledge and say despairingly, "I wish I could
have done better." In truth, Woolger is saying that the situation, however
stressful it may have been, is somehow "perfect" for the developing child.
He writes,
The mother’s consciousness during pregnancy
provides the occasion for the reactivation of psychic patterns or samskaras
previously laid down in the child’s psyche in a past lifetime. The incoming
soul is attracted to a mother and father who will help mirror his or her
unfinished karmic business during pregnancy and birth. A child is drawn
to a mother and father, not so much out of choice but because the life
scripts of certain parents will restimulate old karmic residues and provide
a new opportunity for their resolution. (p. 32)
Of course, none of this is to be taken as a rationalization by a mother
to do whatever she wants during pregnancy—the fetus be damned—and to act
however she wants toward her unborn or born child. Woolger’s rejoinder
is more in the way of saying that what has been done out of ignorance is
somehow also part of a grander—let us say, Divine—plan. Yet being aware
of pre- and perinatal psychology and of the effects one has on one’s unborn
child and striving to provide an optimal environment and a loving experience
for one’s child in the womb, as well as a welcoming birth, and a loving
and secure infancy, are also part of the perfection. As an Indian sage
once put it, "The world is perfect as it is, including our diligent attempts
to change it for the better."
Chapter III is titled "Child Abuse." Alice Givens remarks that even
with all the publicity today about child abuse there is still a lot of
confusion and ignorance and a lack of understanding about it. She adds
that there is a lot of hatred and hostility towards children not only in
our own society but in others as well. Just how prevalent is the abuse
and its terrible consequences is not recognized. Too many are of the opinion
that children actually exaggerate instances of abuse. It is small wonder,
when these events trigger the unfelt Pain of the adults observing them,
that adults are incapable of extending the empathy and understanding required.
(p. 143)
According to Afton Blake, the client retrieving a memory of childhood
abuse may first feel that he fabricated it—this because of the intense
fear of the abuser surrounding that incident or incidents. Thus, Blake
remarks, the abuser nearly always has instilled a "program of silence"
about his acts, and this succeeds in creating a wall of guilt and fear
in the client which may be most difficult to break down. The therapist’s
empathic attitude and unconditional acceptance create the safe environment
in which the crucial first breakthrough of sharing the trauma occurs. After
that it becomes possible for the client to share until the fear over betraying
the secret is released.
He concludes one particularly agonizing case history by commenting,
In situations of remembered abuse the therapist
plays a significant role, both in supporting the intense suffering of returned
feelings and in actively helping with reframing. One form of reframing
is forgiveness, wherein the memory of hate and hurt are transformed into
something easier on the heart. (p. 161)
In Chapter IV, "Varieties of Interlife Experience," Lucas continues
to break new ground, by boldly venturing into another controversial area.
Distinguished therapist, Dr. Joel Whitton, gives a lucid and compelling
minitreatise on the significance of this little known plane of consciousness.
By so doing, what was once terra incognita, reserved for readers
of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is now made "available" to growing
numbers of therapists whose troubled clients are forcing them, however
reluctantly, into this once scorned area of consciousness. Thanks to an
ever increasing and irrefutable mass of data now accumulating from hundreds
of these regression sessions, Whitton, Irene Hickman, Hazel Denning, and
other contributors to this chapter are leading many open-minded therapists
out of the darkness of taboo into the light of successful therapeutic
practice.
According to Whitton, the interlife is the fundamental reality, that
plane of consciousness to which each soul returns upon the death of the
physical body, and from which the soul launches forth on its successive
trials of incarnating. He says, "The state of metaconsciousness that characterizes
inter-life is one where the individual merges with the quintessence of existence,
but paradoxically in surrendering his own identity he becomes at the same
time more intensely self-aware" (p. 195).
In her own commentary in this chapter, Winafred Lucas explains the
inter-life as the unique opportunity for the soul to assess its status
on the evolutionary continuum by observing the justice of events in her
or his lifetime and reflecting on the lessons learned and those remaining.
This opportunity unfolds in a context of wise beings, one’s own former
family and friends, and the Light—in whatever spiritual form is compatible
with the soul’s belief system.
Lucas makes this exciting observation:
Recovery of interlife experiences may become
the spiritual thrust of the future. Like near-death experiences, they facilitate
a transformation of consciousness and encourage an attitude of compassion,
but unlike NDEs, they are under conscious control. Each traveler through
the interlife can obtain exactly what is appropriate for his stage of growth.
(p. 198)
Lucas maintains further that the interlife is always available. It can
be con-tacted through cosmic consciousness, profound states of meditation,
some psychedelic experiences, and via the holotropic breathing of Stanislav
Grof, to mention a few. She suggests, Why not encourage clients to enter
this dimension, which is always there, thus making an effective therapeutic
intervention and opening up a "pristine thrust in therapy"? (p. 200). She
then makes a statement which, by itself, I consider the bottom-line validation
for her entire anthology: To paraphrase, whether or not the interlife
is "objectively real" is not important if the experience of it holds healing
potential. She cites the example of one patient who is doing exactly
that after other forms of therapy have failed: "If the interlife is continuously
available and the brief sampling of its wisdom that often comes at the
time of a past-life death can be belatedly gained, for many patients this
may be a path of growth" (p. 201).
As if to confirm Lucas’s assessment of the value of interlife access
as a therapeutic tool, Roger Woolger, in his contribution to this chapter,
states what could be termed a common theme of interlife experience in the
following statement about one of his troubled clients:
He was shown a panorama of the entire spectrum
of responses to power and passion in these various lives, ranging from
utter powerlessness [in his present life] to the thoughtless abuse by the
bandit [he had been in a former life]. All extremes of the karmic complex
were faced, and in some sense known only to Milton [the client], were reowned,
accepted, and reconciled. (p. 228)
Perhaps the most startling case study in this entire chapter was the
excerpt from Dr. Samuel Sandweiss’s book, The Holy Man and the Psychiatrist,
which documents the miraculous resurrection from death of Walter Cowan
by his teacher, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. (This event occurred on Christmas
day, 1971, and has been fully authenticated through medical reports and
witnesses’ testimony, including that of the attending doctor and other
medical personnel.)
This may be the first and only existing description of the interlife
by an individual who actually died and went there as opposed to "regressing"
there under hypnosis. As such, Lucas is to be commended for selecting this
particular case study. She has given her fellow pioneers in consciousness
some much needed "ammunition." How? Walter Cowan’s example is valuable
because it serves to establish the validity of this plane of consciousness
and, indirectly, that of responsible hypnotic regression, Holotropic BreathworkTM,
and other forms of altered state work as legitimate means of helping clients
to access this healing realm.
Such ammunition is sorely needed given the fact that these modalities
are under increasing fire today from old-paradigm defenders who use the
bogey of "false memory syndrome" in an effort to discredit the all-too-successful
inroads of new-paradigm consciousness techniques.
As Sandweiss relates, Cowan, upon his resurrection some eight hours
after death, reported that when he died Sai Baba escorted him into the
presence of a "karmic board" of judges who proceeded to show him scenes
from hundreds of past lives—lives as a noble spiritual being. Indeed, so
impressive was this past-life "résumé" I could readily understand
why Walter was permitted to "come back" and share his experience with a
cynical world. It is as if the Avatar, Sai Baba, knew that Walter’s case
study would become a matter of record. At the risk of hyperbole, I would
speculate further: Perhaps the Avatar saw that Walter’s example would be
a critical one in the growing accumulation of case studies in consciousness.
No longer could they be dismissed as "anecdotal" and, having achieved "critical
mass," the so-called scale of observation would finally tip, permitting
the new paradigm to break through the solid wall of scientific prejudice
and arrogance and triumph at last!
In Chapter V, "Conversations with the Unborn," Claire Etheridge follows
the lead of David Cheek, David Chamberlain, and Thomas Verny—who have worked
hard to establish a scientific basis for consciousness in the unborn—by
introducing the idea of a dialogue process between the mother and the unborn
child in order to initiate early bonding (p. 260).
Therapists who encourage, in their practice, parents’ dialogues with
the unborn can give courage, recognition, and acceptance to the parents’
inner knowing in these matters, she maintains. By supporting a dialogue
between parents and the unborn child, therapists can encourage parents
to develop more flexible ideas about what life with their child may be
like, thus shedding light on their own underlying projections or expectations
and thereby bringing more harmony and empathy into the relationship with
their child. In these "dialogues," the unborn can be a "guide" and a facilitator,
if you will, of the parents’ healing of their own early wounds, thus generating
awareness of a larger framework of life. Perhaps her main point here is
that dialogues with the unborn bring participants naturally into contact
with the numinous—an inner experience of ongoing and connected consciousness.
And in her contribution to this chapter, Anne Hubbell Maiden asks,
"Do we as professionals, give permission to our clients to touch this connection,
so often forbidden in our culture? Do we welcome our responsibility to
help clients listen on many levels? Do we support their experience and
so become co-creators of an invaluable gift?" (p. 274).
And here again is one of the key questions posed in this anthology.
One might say it is the sixty-four-thousand dollar question, for it will
oblige many therapists now teetering on the cusp of commitment or noncommitment
to the therapeutic implications of consciousness exploration, to look at
themselves and ask, "Am I ready to commit, am I ready to give my clients
full support, wherever they may lead me?" The question Maiden poses is
just one more vivid example of the invaluable service this book renders;
for the issue she raises is one that we cannot afford to shrug off as we
struggle to give birth to a more humane, effective, and enlightened psychotherapy—one
worthy of the approaching millennium’s stresses and challenges.
Given the inflammatory debate ongoing between pro-life and pro-choice
factions in our society, several contributions to this chapter will be
of special interest as they concern new approaches to the sensitive issue
of abortion. For example, in "The Therapeutic Value of Talking With Aborting
Fetuses," Barbara Lamb, M.S., M.F.C.C., points out that, while pro-lifers
are busily reminding the mother of her responsibility to the life within
and pro-choicers are reminding her equally fervently of her right to her
own body, no one is actually listening to the fetus. She writes, "Inasmuch
as the developing embryo or fetus has a continuing conscious soul, it is
important to hear its thoughts and feelings, too" (p. 288).
As if to reinforce and at the same time provide a dramatic testimonial
for Barbara Lamb’s statement, Gladys T. McGarey, M.D., suggests a striking
new approach to abortion in which mother and unborn child dialogue with
each other to reach a resolution. In this dialogue, facilitated by hypnosis,
the needs of the incoming soul are carefully considered as well as the
needs of the mother. The mother may be persuaded to carry her baby to term,
but if her own needs cannot allow for the pregnancy, then the incoming
soul can—and in all cases known about thus far, almost always does decide
to—incarnate at another time. At any rate, as Dr. McGarey reports, in the
instances where she facilitated such a dialogue, the result was often a
spontaneous miscarriage. In other words, the incoming soul took it upon
him- or herself to gracefully exit, to bide its time in the interlife until
an
equally auspicious opportunity for incarnation would materialize, and thus
to lovingly resolve an otherwise painful issue for the mother.
As McGarey points out in the introduction to this chapter:
If we look at life as a continuum, which the
concept of reincarnation enables us to do, then a soul is not destroyed
when an abortion is performed. A soul entering into the earth plane at
this time is a being that has had prior existence and will have existence
after this. This is not the only life, and if an abortion is performed,
this is not the end for an entity, and it will not result in its losing
a chance to express itself. With that in mind, the idea of having an abortion,
though I would not personally choose it, is something that can be incorporated
into one’s concept of life, so that abortion does not make a murderer out
of the mother. This is a saner, more sensitive way to respond to the strongly
polarized abortion issue." (p. 262)
In her introduction to Chapter VII, "Death, Dying, and the Dead," Winafred
Lucas remarks that death is becoming known as a transition, not an ending,
as we gradually move into the new paradigm. This new conceptualization
puts the lie to our current cultural paranoia on the subject—a paranoia
which we act out by fighting desperately to keep those we love from dying
by resorting to extraordinary, high-tech means. We are finally moving into
an era when we can help each other make our transitions joyously and in
full awareness rather than as fearful, passive victims.
Further along in this chapter, in "The Transformation of Negative
Patterns in Past-Life Death Experiences," Roger Woolger focuses in on the
precious therapeutic opportunity that reliving past-life deaths can provide
to the individual who is seemingly stuck in negative patterns that carry
over from life to life without resolution.
He points out that working through a death experience in a past life
is good therapy because death, whether traumatic or not, is an accumulation
point of all the negative feelings, thoughts, and wrong-doings of a past
life. Woolger maintains that when it is properly handled, it can provide
a valuable ritual for healing the psyche because of its archetypal nature.
Undergoing a visionary death, with all of its fears and sublime qualities,
is so intense an experience that it permits the individual to detach consciously
from painful emotional patterns that have built up in that lifetime or
over many lifetimes. The person goes through a catharsis, an ego death,
by separating from the identification with this false self which has been
controlling or governing his or her thoughts and actions. (p. 430)
According to Woolger a second therapeutic windfall derives from their
regression, as clients can benefit from this opportunity to "rehearse,"
if you will, for the climactic event of their lives. By consciously working
through the death process involved in past-life experiences, they are being
given the chance to alleviate, if not remove entirely, one of humankind’s
greatest terrors—that of death itself. I could not help remembering the
famous dictum of Plato who enjoined, "Practice dying." It appears that
some two-thousand years later Woolger, among others who may or may not
be included in Lucas’s anthology, is helping his clients to do just that.
One of the more provocative areas that Lucas introduces in her work
is the concept of progression to the future, in Chapter VIII. By the time
the reader has reached this section he or she will have been well prepared,
by the extraordinary range of therapeutic experiences presented throughout
the book, to entertain such a possibility.
It appears almost self evident that linear time and space models
of reality simply do not apply to the subconscious mind, whose parameters
appear to be limitless; that is, capable of living beyond arbitrary boundaries
and, under the right conditions, to be able to view the future simultaneously
with the past and present in one coexisting whole.
Among the contributors to this section, Chet B. Snow, Ph.D., author
of Mass Dreams of the Future, and Ernest F. Pecci, M.D., both credit
the pioneering work in future progression to Dr. Helen Wambach. (Wambach,
by the way, is acknowledged by Winafred Lucas in her Dedication of the
anthology as the "innovative pioneer [whose] research revitalized and grounded
the concept of past-life experience.") During Wambach’s 1980s experiments
with clients, using hypnotherapy to induce the altered state, Dr. Wambach
discovered that many individuals appear to access the future as easily
as they do their past, and she became excited at the implications for healing
that this technique offered her patients. She found that the vivid picture
of the future as an inevitable consequence of the client’s contemporary
thought and feeling patterns aroused in them a determination to heal and
resolve their traumas, thus enabling them to persevere in their therapeutic
process in spite of difficulties.
Ernest Pecci uses future progression in his practice as a means of
helping those who are terminally ill to face death, especially when the
process of dying arouses fear, ambivalence, and doubt . . . as it usually
does. By inducing as deep a state of hypnosis as possible, he helps them
to progress to their death where, according to Pecci, they experience a
misty, white light and a plane of consciousness where they feel whole and
at peace. In this expanded awareness the client reflects upon his or her
life and is able to derive an understanding of the soul’s purpose for that
particular lifetime. The understanding gained greatly reduces, and often
removes entirely, the fear of leaving, which in turn relieves the pain
and stress for self and family, smoothing the way for a peaceful transition.
(p. 495)
In his contribution Chet Snow expresses the view that projection
into the future both complements and completes the results of past-life,
childhood, and perinatal age-regression work. All these techniques provide
tools for bringing about lasting personality improvements—both individual
and collective. He sees future life progressions as opportunities for his
clients to receive information about their own personal subconscious trends
and how they will bear fruit in the future. The technique provides an invaluable
means of accessing a more holographic view of their psyche, of seeing more
clearly the direction in which their particular inner path—as the sum total
of what they have become at this time—is leading.
Extrapolating from Dr. Snow’s findings, I found myself envisioning
a kind of networking among psychologists who are using this modality. A
sharing of this kind of information as it accumulates could perhaps serve
as an effective diagnostic tool for humanity as a whole. That is, these
"readings" as they accumulate would gradually coalesce into something greater
than the sum of the parts, an accessing of humanity’s collective unconscious
which would make clear on a collective level the very direction and possible
outcomes that our present course will result in.
This is all very exhilarating stuff. In fact, I would warn readers
who may have already experienced some of the powerful healing effects of
altered-state work that by the time they read this far they will probably
find it almost impossible not to make some heady projections of their own—to
see, for example, that metaphorical light-at-the-end-of-our-birth-tunnel.
And what is that light but a more conscious humanity, who, having applied
the kinds of information that this anthology is sharing, will be empowered
and motivated by their inner exploration and healing to do whatever it
takes to heal the human family and our planet.
The final chapter, "Synthesis," is devoted to Winafred Lucas’s own
process. In an eloquent and poignant manner she shares her overview and
a philosophical-psychological understanding which is based on her experiences
in Jungian analysis, psychoanalysis, and regressions to past lives.
She remarks,
The events of one’s lifetime often appear
to be accidental happenings, disconnected footprints on the sands of our
experience. But if one looks beneath the surface, connections appear, singly
at first and then in a tangle that, as it becomes sorted out, makes clear
that everything is interconnected. These interlocking events gradually
reveal a pattern, not exactly a cause and effect connection but an interrelationship,
so that early events time-wise become hooked into later events and vice
versa. (p. 517)
"Synthesis" is Winafred Lucas’s personal documentary wherein she traces
the roots of her unresolved issues—such as negative self-criticism and
a deep personal sadness—to a COEX involving several lives in which she
chose suicide because of experiences of rejection and abandonment. From
the perspective of her own past-life regressions, she is able to understand
her painful relationship with her father in this life, for example. She
acknowledges that her own process continues and shares her personal experience
with Sai Baba as perhaps the culminating healing event in her life.
In sharing her inner life with us, Winafred Lucas offers a fitting
conclusion to this anthology. As Carl Jung has said: "Each of us is a laboratory
experiment in truth." And as the Avatar, Sri Sathya Sai Baba, has said,
"The most meaningful thing you can share with another is your own experience."
In concluding, I observe that the above criteria apply not only to
Winafred Lucas as contributing therapist, editor, and compiler of this
remarkable work; but also to each one of the therapists who has shared
her or his experiences, techniques, and in many instances the fruits of
a lifetime of dedicated practice in order to fulfill this anthology and
to ground it in this pure gold I speak of above—the gold of personal and
professional truth.
At first glance some experiential therapists may question the validity
of the techniques set forth in this anthology or may be tempted to dismiss
the whole concept of exploring "inner space." Coming from modalities where
one simply drops into one’s feelings in the here-and-now, the idea of accessing
a past life, or the interlife, may seem like new-age fantasy material and
hardly of therapeutic value. But I would encourage the doubters and skeptics
to engage more deeply with the material to see for themselves the dramatic
results obtained in altered-states work. As Winafred Lucas observes, it
matters not whether you believe in past lives or the interlife, if the
experience of these states of consciousness holds healing potential. And
time after time the case studies shared by the contributing therapists
demonstrate that healing does take place, that the altered state facilitates
the very catharsis that is needed to dissolve defenses and deal with the
source of primal pain.
Finally I would observe that the content of Lucas’s anthology couldn’t
be more timely. For we live in an era—let us say, a "primal renaissance"—in
which there is a call to reintegrate our personal lost primal/spiritual
heritages by exploring all the realms of consciousness available to us.
For we acknowledge that aboriginal and indigenous peoples the world over
have used altered states for their own healing and visionary explorations
for thousands of years. Is it not about time that Western psychologists
took off their "blinders" and actually read a few case studies? As one
might observe, they have nothing to lose but their bias!
It remains to be seen how the value of this book will prove out over
time. Will it succeed or fail in its courageous effort to awaken therapists
to the exciting, now indisputable, healing potential of new-paradigm treatments
as documented in this anthology?
Be that as it may, I feel that this work does have here-and-now power
and value as a wake-up call to readers, therapists, and lay persons alike
to be about the business of self-healing. And if we do take responsibility
for healing ourselves, we can proceed with a confidence that is now grounded
in the sense of our interconnectedness as confirmed by the new physics,
the "hundredth monkey" hypothesis, and Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance.
All of these findings confirm what we all already know: that we are indeed
one planetary family, that the self-healing work of each individual has
the power to speed up the process for countless others.
In a word, do we choose healing or apocalypse? If we can assimilate
the full implications of Lucas’s work—and perhaps that is too big an if
for those who prefer to stay in denial—we will be able to acknowledge that
the choice to heal really is ours . . . and that the tools to implement
it are available to us.
Click
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NOTE: A version of this article
was originally published in Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal
Psychology, 1(2), Autumn 1995.
Copyright © 1995 by Mary Lynn Adzema
Biographical Note
MARY LYNN ADZEMA is a former journalist
and civil-rights activist, and currently a poet and author, whose writings
have appeared in a number of West-Coast, national, and international publications.
She has been a lecturer in psychology at World University in Ojai, California,
where she earned a Master's degree in Consciousness Psychology and an A.B.D.
in philosophy. She wrote a chapter for and co-edited a book about
the experiences of Sai Baba devotees titled Transformation of the Heart. Mary Lynn
has received training with Stanislav Grof in holotropic breathwork and with
various people in primal therapy. Having served with the International Primal
Association on it Board of Directors and as Assistant
Editor of the publications, Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal
Psychology, a professional journal of psychology, and Primal
Spirit: The Deeper Wave of the New Age, a magazine; she now serves as
Assistant Editor of those some publications in their reincarnation on this
website, and as consulting editor for Primal Spirit
website in its umbrella-role for those publications plus all its other
facets. Most importantly, she serves as Assistant Director of the newly
opened Primal Spirit Center for Human
Evolution, offering primal breathwork, primal therapy, a community of
healing -- to name its major intentions. Mary Lynn's extended bio can be
found at Mary Lynn Adzema's Writings. She can
be contacted at P.O. Box 1348, Guerneville, CA 95446-1348; phone:
(707) 869-9008; e-mail: marylynn@primalspirit.com.
