By Philippe Isler, MA, Reg. Psych.
A High School student comes into my office. He has been troubled since his best friend committed suicide a few weeks ago. He feels guilty, depressed, unable to focus at school and is exhibiting outbursts of anger. In our second meeting, I guide him in repeating a few simple sentences, making statements in the following format: “I retrieve all of my energy bound up in…”; “I remove all not-me energy related to…”; “I retrieve all of my energy bound up in my reactions to…” At the end of the session he no longer feels troubled, guilty or upset by his friend’s suicide. He expresses an appropriate degree of sadness, mingled with acceptance. When I see him a week later, he reports that he has had no more issues with this since our session.
An experienced first-responder who volunteered at “Ground Zero” in September 2011 was traumatized by a number of experiences he had there, and has recurring nightmares of each one along with all the other classic symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. One by one, we work on these experiences and these nightmares, utilizing the same sentences as with the boy. With each session another nightmare disappears, and what was a traumatic experience can now be remembered with a feeling of peace and acceptance.
After working extremely hard in a dysfunctional organization, and then losing his job, a normally high-performing salesman has lost his confidence and is exhibiting classic signs and symptoms of depression. I guide him in repeating the same sentences with each aspect of his experience. Gradually these negative influences are resolved and no longer trouble him. His confidence and his previous, positive sense of self return.
If you recognize these kinds of rapid, almost “magical” effects, then you are probably familiar with Energy Psychology techniques such as TFT, EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), TAT (Tapas Acupressure Technique) or any of the other, increasingly numerous ones – or, perhaps, with EMDR.
The particular technique I described above is called Logosynthesis. Developed by Willem Lammers, a Dutch-born Swiss psychologist, it draws from various schools of psychology – especially Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Transactional Analysis– as well as from the field of Energy Psychology. It is essentially a “trans-psychological” technique or approach, as it is one of the few psychological approaches that explicitly integrates mind, body and spirit. In fact, the premise of Logosynthesis is that our core self is not located in our minds or bodies, in our thoughts or our feelings, but in our Essence, which some may call Spirit, or any other name. Most of the problems and symptoms we experience are seen as essentially caused by separation or dissociation from our true nature, or Essence. If our sense of self, and our deep identity, were truly connected to our Essence, we would not feel the fears, or the anxieties we feel. We would not be taking things personally, or fearing abandonment by others.
On the psychological level, most problems are seen as being rooted in “imprints” — in the sense of “negative influences” — left by our experiences. For example, in the examples above the salesman has been “imprinted” — or negatively affected — by a variety of things in his work environment, including lack of positive response, being set up to fail, hearing people talk behind his back, etc. These continue to affect him when he is no longer in that environment.
More importantly, and something which speaks to the technique itself, our psychological problems are seen and dealt with in a way that is consistent with what modern science tells us about the nature of reality. Whereas this is barely acknowledged in conventional medicine and psychology, we know that matter is actually made of energy. We are not “biochemical machines” but beings made of energy. Our thoughts, our feelings, and all our internal processes are fundamentally energy processes. We also know from scientific research that the energy of thought affects matter.
In Logosynthesis, anything which we think about and to which we have a reaction is seen literally as an energy construct that exists in the present, as a 3-dimensional energy entity, within our personal space. It is a mental representation that we create, and to which we react. When working with Logosynthesis, people are often easily able to tune into this either as an image, as a felt sense, or with the other senses. The other defining feature of this technique is that it uses the age-old power of words to heal. Words are energy, which have the power – when spoken with the energy of intention – to create change, to affect energy and matter. This, again, is consistent with modern physics. (For example, see this article on research showing the effect of language on DNA: http://embracingthecontradiction.org/dna.htm. )
Like all Energy Psychology techniques, Logosynthesis can be used not just as a therapeutic technique, but also in coaching, in self-treatment. It can also be used as a practice to systematically resolve negative patterns of thinking and behavior that interfere with our ability to be the best we can be, to feel the best we can feel, to reconnect with our true Self, or Essence. Although there is increasing research evidence for the efficacy of certain Energy Psychology techniques, they are still not generally accepted in the field, and are still considered experimental. However, in addition to the research evidence, the evidence from clinicians who use them and from the much larger number of people who use them for self-help techniques is quite consistently showing that they are much more effective than anything we have had before.
Philippe Isler, MA is a licensed Psychologist in private practice in Nova Scotia.
For more information on Logosynthesis:
- visit http://www.logosynthesis.net
- download the free EBook: http://www.logosynthesis.net/docs/logosynthesis.primer.pdf
- read the book: Phrases to Freedom by Willem Lammers
- Or – seize this opportunity to experience it firsthand; I will be co-facilitating a
Full-day introductory workshop as well as a two-hour introductory session at the Canadian Energy Psychology Conference (http://www.epccanada.ca). Toronto, Novotel, October 18-21 2012.
