Photo by Jenn Ocken Photography

More that just making a bad feeling go away.

That point in time when you can’t locate that pain you’ve carried and depended on for a point of reference is what I sought after.  For my own pain and now for others who I’ve helped walk through the EPTworks process for 20 years.  There is that definite point in the process when the pain ceases, and there is a relief.

But what comes after the bad feeling or pain is gone? 

               A new identity.

One woman I worked on who had carried a constant headache for over 25 years, said, “I’ll go home a new wife to my husband tonight.” She left in sort of a daze.  I was also amazed and intrigued that she never came to me again after that life-altering experience.  She paid her bill and left.  Emotions and the expression of love is the focus of EPTworks, not just the ceasing of pain.  Lives change when pain ceases.  When your pain has consumed so much attention, but now it’s not there is an odd place for many.

How you change your life in loving others is a completely new place when the pain ceases.  Some just go away because they used their pain to serve an internal need to isolate from intimacy in relationships.  Recognizing the resistance in myself to grow from

helplessness to helper;

self-justification to forgiveness;

limits on pleasure and gratitude to thankfulness in all things

is the greater shift away from pain.  This is more than letting go, but beginning something new and growing into a new experience that glorifies our Creator.  It feels great!  Seeing the process and going toward the points of resistance is important in EPTworks.  It becomes an amazing journey of self-awareness and courage to see that what I thought held me in it’s power no longer does.  Some statements for moving toward resistance to healing pain:

• I forgive myself for believing I can’t live without this pain.
• I forgive myself for using this pain as a block to my intimacy with others.
• I forgive myself for depending on pain to express what I am unable or unwilling to express verbally.
• I forgive myself for taking on pain as my expression of what I cannot make right for myself or for someone else.
• I give others permission to forgive me for using my pain to keep me from intimacy with them.
• I give myself permission to open up to a new feeling of compassion and intimacy with myself and to allow for the beginning of greater love and intimacy in my life and in my relationships.

Guest blogger: Sherry Hamilton

“In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before.  In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light.  At first, people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done–then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”
-Frances Hodgson Burnett from The Secret Garden.

EPTworks is this amazing healing tool that I use to help others and I teach them to help others the same way.  While this amazing tool involves some crazy, unconventional things like magnets, muscle response testing and guided forgiveness—-those things are just the “how” of what I do.

How this magnificent healing takes place is really insignificant to the “why” of what I do.  So it really boils down to this:

I heal broken hearts and I teach others to do the same thing,
SO you can be happier in your life.
SO you can love and accept yourself more.
SO you can feel better and live longer.
SO you can have better relationships.
SO you can make this world a more loving place.

Martin Rossman, M.D. Author of “The Worry Solution”, explains how to assess and direct your mental thoughts about worry so as to reduce unnecessary anxiety and stress.  He explains that imagination is a powerful, creative force.  Worry is that imaginative force gone awry or without properly guided direction.  Worry usually looks to the past or future to fuel it.  It can take over and direct our feelings cascading the body with chemical directives into fear, anxiety, and immobility.  When we understand how the brain learns and processes, then we can use that information to harness our own imaginative self and direct the feelings and the chemical responses that reduce anxiety and stress rather than encourage it.  This takes education of how the system works, practice of directed thinking and acknowledging new experiences of peace and calmness. 

Part of Dr. Rossman’s process is to separate “good” productive worry from “bad” futile worry.  He uses the “Serenity Prayer” in his speech, “How Your Brain Can Turn Anxiety into Calmness” as a guide to show a simple way to do this.  You make three buckets for your worry: 

• Bucket 1:  “Things I Can Change” 
• Bucket 2:  “Things I Cannot Change” 
• Bucket 3:  “Things I’m Not Sure About My Power To Change Or Effect” 

To access the serenity or peace, you have to also access courage and wisdom.  These things do not come when fear and anxiousness are in the mind.  Taking some rest time and using the imagination can clear your thinking.  Your imagination used with laser, focused direction can change the chemicals that are producing anxiousness into chemicals that are producing peaceful, calm feelings. 

Dr. Rossman gives the example that if you have a friend who is sick with cancer and you are worried about her possible death, you don’t know the outcome and there doesn’t seem to be any way for you to help.  So, your worry goes around and around.  He suggests that you might not help her, but you can help yourself reduce your anxious, futile worrying by using your imagination.  Think about what you want to happen with your friend and focus on your desired outcome.  Having a focus on a desired outcome will reduce anxiety in the mind.  The mind-body tends to go where you focus.  This is a disciplined approach to thinking especially if you have lived with or worked with a “worry wart.”  You know who they are, and you don’t want to be one!  If you are one, then have the courage to change your brain! 

EPTworks is an indispensable system used by trained practitioners to quickly clear the mind of unconscious or conscious clutter getting in the way of focused thinking.  It works on multiple levels of the emotional body at the same time, creating an efficient, effective, and multidimensional approach that causes chemical changes and emotional shifts.  That’s why people feel the good effects of EPTworks often in the very first session!  The book of James 1:5 in the New Testament states:  “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” Also in James 5: 16  “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

 Guest blogger Sherry Hamilton

Speech link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYJdekjiAog&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The Worry Solution link:  http://worrysolution.com/

Serenity Prayer link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer

A true-life example of the power of forgiveness made national news in 2005.

Columnist Jay Evensen tells the story:

How would you feel toward a teenager who decided to toss a 20-pound frozen turkey from a speeding car headlong into the windshield of the car you were driving?

How would you feel after enduring six hours of surgery using metal plates and other hardware to piece your face together, and after learning you still face years of therapy before returning to normal–and that you ought to feel lucky you didn’t die or suffer permanent brain damage?

And how would you feel after learning that your assailant and his buddies had the turkey in the first place because they had stolen a credit card and gone on a senseless shopping spree, just for kicks?

This is the kind of hideous crime that propels politicians to office on promises of getting tough on crime. It’s the kind of thing that prompts legislators to climb all over each other in a struggle to be the first to introduce a bill that would add enhanced penalties for the use of frozen fowl in the commission of a crime.

The New York Times quoted the district attorney as saying this is the sort of crime for which victims feel no punishment is harsh enough.  ’Death doesn’t even satisfy them,’ he said.

Which is what makes what really happened so unusual.  The victim, Victoria Ruvolo, a 44-year-old former manager of a collections agency, was more interested in salvaging the life of her 19-year-old assailant, Ryan Cushing, than in exacting any sort of revenge.  She pestered prosecutors for information about him, his life, how he was raised, etc.  Then she insisted on offering him a plea deal.  Cushing could serve six months in the county jail and be on probation for 5 years if he pleaded guilty to second-degree assault.

Had he been convicted of first-degree assault–the charge most fitting for the crime–he could have served 25 years in prison, finally thrown back into society as a middle-aged man with no skills or prospects.

But this is only half the story.  The rest of it, what happened the day this all played out in court, is the truly remarkable part.

According to an account in the New York Post, Cushing carefully and tentatively made his way to where Ruvolo sat in the courtroom and tearfully whispered an apology. ‘I’m so sorry for what I did to you.’

Rubolo then stood, and the victim and her assailant embraced, weeping.  She stroked his head and patted his back as he sobbed, and witnesses, including a Times reporter heard her say, ‘It’s OK. I just want you to make your life the best it can be.’  According to accounts, hardened prosecutors, and even reporters, were choking back tears.  (Taken from: Jay Evensen, “Forgiveness Has Power to Change Future,” Deseret Morning News, August 21, 2005, p. AA3)

You can read Victoria Ruvolo’s story in her book: No Room for Vengeance: In Justice and Healing

Have you ever been asked about a very touchy or hard family situation?  Maybe you came from a family that constantly yelled at each other.  Maybe you have gone through some horrible romantic break-up.  Maybe your best friend betrayed you when you were in Junior High.

Whatever bad may have happened to you in your life; you can bet you don’t want to go there ever again.

The truth is you never left “there”.  You are still living “there”.  You are attempting to manage the pain of an old memory by avoiding the memory.

EPTworks is an amazing tool that allows you to:

1. Let go of the pain of old memories
2. Relocate yourself into a life you create and love right here, right now.

The next time you have the thought, “I don’t want to go there,” realize you already are “there” and  now it’s time to forgive and let go so you can relocate your life where you want to be.

EPTworks Lifeworks Retreat is an amazing three days that allows you to “go there” and transform your life forever!

This is not where you thought you were going.  It’s so much better!

“I hate him and I’m over it!  Unfortunately, I still have to deal with this man because we share children.”

For many, divorce doesn’t make a difficult relationship any easier.

Putting your marriage relationship to death, doesn’t fix the pain, failure and frustration.

Long after the divorce papers are signed, you may carry the emotional scars of being deeply hurt and disappointed by the one you loved, trusted and made babies with.  Like death, with divorce there is a real sense of loss; an emptiness, failure and broken heart.

Three Steps to Heal After Divorce:

1) Let Go

2) Forgive

3) Open Your Heart

•       love myself and my children more.
•       attract more love into my life.
•       be happier and more confident than I have ever been.
•       trust love again.

Photo by Jenn Ocken

It is still amazing to me that there are people who seriously ask the question, “Why forgive?”  I suppose you may also ask “Why love?”.  Forgiveness, after all, is an act of love.  There is a deep underlying sadness that prompts the question, “Why love?”.  The deepest hurt in your life usually comes from those you love the most.  It is easy to understand why you would give up on love once you have experienced the pain from being hurt when you are loving someone.  Loving does not carry a promise that allows you to control the outcomes of your relationships.  People you love can still die, leave you or hurt you.  Without forgiveness, you are left with all the pain, loss and anger.  This negative energy takes up space that you could use to create more of what you really love and enjoy in life.  Why forgive?  When you forgive, you let go of all the pain, anger, sadness and loss from your past that you still hold space for in your life.  Forgiveness is a “get out of jail” free card, only you are the prisoner you set free.  Forgiveness opens space in your life for miracles to happen.

EPTworks combines some amazing energy work and intuition to reach the goal of forgiveness and love.  We believe there is no better healing modality than forgiveness and love.  Simply put, forgiveness and love make your health better, your relationships better, your family better and the entire world a better place for everyone.

Miracles happen at EPTworks Lifeworks Retreats!  Come on in. Heal your life. Make the world a better place. See you at the beach in May!

From Jenn Ocken Photography

This is a frequent and valid question I get from perspective clients for EPTworks.  I want to know too.  How long before I jump off this “gerbil wheel” that keeps me spinning in the repetitive, self-destructive habit I’ve lived with and been tired out by for years?  My short answer is, “It depends.”  EPTworks seeks to do two main things for this problem: 

1. Break, disconnect or neutralize the charge of old false beliefs you have held that make you keep going back to “do it again.”
   
2. Establish a new belief for a new experience with a positive, life-sustaining charge connected to eternal, spiritual truths.

Most people get the feeling in the very first session of EPTworks that this therapy is powerful and meaningful to this process.  Is that the conclusion of the journey for their process?  Usually not, but for some it is enough to get the process going in the correct direction. 

Often the popular articles on changing habits give a number of days (21, 30, 45, etc.) you must engage in your new habit to make it your experience and snuff out the old habit.  This objective never worked for me because I thought that it was that simple.  In my life experience this decision to hold to a good habit for X-number of days didn’t work.  The energy shift and interruption that EPTworks interjected into breaking my old habit gave me a supportive link I wasn’t expecting.  It is linked to brain chemicals and that can be driven by environmental and emotional habit. 

Changing my destructive habits has been more like learning a language.  For some people learning a new language comes faster than to others.  EPTworks has been an efficient system to engage my mind in possibility I didn’t allow or know about.  I started over 20 years ago with a fantastic awareness of freedom from an awful problem, and the uses and applications of EPTworks continues to grow in my life. 

Richard Mollica is an expert in helping people devastated by war crimes to heal and move on with their lives.  In his book, Healing Invisible Wounds, he explains the process of healing for these unspeakable traumas.

First and foremost, the victim must be able to tell their story to a compassionate listener.  By telling her story, the victim is allowing the listener to realize what terrible, wrongful event has occurred so that there is an awareness in community that this can happen and that it should be prevented in the future.  By compassionately listening, the listener represents the community to say, “I’m sorry this happened to you.  It should not have happened. It was wrong.  I won’t let this happen again.”

Finally, the victim must be given total absolution; as the listener helps the victim to forgive.

EPTworks is an amazing tool that frees you to forgive the hurt that has robbed you of the power to love life.

Jenn Ocken Photography

Now I read my Bible and I’m a good little christian girl. I believe that miracles happen but I stop short on raising the dead and maybe you do too.  I know I see in scripture how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead even after he had been in the tomb for a few days. Jesus also raised a little girl back to life who was dead.  In the Old Testament, I read how a widow came to Elijah and asked him to heal her son and Elijah came to her dead son and brought him back to life.  I can clearly see that God can raise the dead back to life.

Ask yourself, what in your life has died.  It may be a relationship, a dream, a hope or maybe the child in you who believed in love.  God has the power to raise the dead back to life. Give yourself permission to pick up the dead that exists in your life right now.  Close your eyes and carry the dead, the things in your life you have given up on or lost total hope for, to an altar. Lay the dead on the altar in your mind and ask Jesus to bring it back to life. Pray, I can’t do it, God. Please do it for me. Bring this part of my life back to rise in new life.  See it happen. Invite this new life back into your heart. Thank God for the miracle of raising the dead.