Harmony by Laurie Buchanan
B.E.S.T. is a non-forceful, energy balancing hands-on procedure used to help reestablish the full healing potential of the body. It’s based on scientific principles utilizing light pressure contact on the surface of the body to address parasympathetic and sympathetic imbalances.
The sympathetic nervous system has an active “pushing” function; it’s like the gas pedal in your car. When we’re in the fight, flight, or freeze mode, the pedal is to the floor.
The parasympathetic nervous system is mainly a relaxing function; it’s like the brake pedal in your car.
The sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems are both part of the autonomic nervous system (autonomic meaning it can’t be controlled by the mind) and work in balance with each other and directly or indirectly affect almost every structure in the body.
B.E.S.T. utilizes a noninvasive way to update brain patterns. When emotional thoughts such as worry, guilt, fear, or judgment become the overriding factor in our memory patterns, interference with health and wellness becomes the norm. This interference, formulated by conscious thought, which in turn becomes a pattern, prevents the true expression of our physical bodies healing capability.
B.E.S.T. uses a noninvasive way to identify the interference, update the emotional pattern, and then allows the body to function based on current situations rather than past experiences. Our body has the innate ability to heal itself, but it needs to be given the opportunity.
B.E.S.T. is about unlocking the power within each of us—the pattern for health and wellness.
The B.E.S.T. practitioner in my geographic area is Carla Gibson. She’s the owner of Gibson Wellness Center. Even if you’re not in the Crystal Lake, Illinois area, you can find out a lot more about this wonderful energy-based modality by looking through her website.
“Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing.”
– Laurie Buchanan
www.HolEssence.com
Copyright © 2010 Laurie Buchanan — All Rights Reserved.
A special thank you to Countryside Flower Shop, Nursery & Garden Center for allowing me to photograph their flowers.
Tuesdays with Laurie 
Help, both brakes and acceleration pedals are stuck to the floor! I swear that is how I am feeling these days, so much I want to do as opposed to how much I can actually do. I believe the acceleration is winning though! Love the little calibrachoa flowers, the are one of my favorites.
Sandi – I’m glad you came by this morning. Your comment made me laugh with BOTH pedals stuck to the floor! And I just knew you’d let me know what type of flowers those are. All I knew was that they’re beautiful. I hope your day is fantastic and that you find balance with those pedals.
Hi Sandi
Made me laugh too.
We often say of Ailsa that it is like she is going through life with both the brake and accelerator flat to the floor.
I think I’ve got a rough idea what you are going through.
Ailsa’s driving has improved hugely since I got her to consciously keep her focus as far into the distance as she can, and just relax and let the body deal with everything up close.
Laurie, there is another BEST practitioner nearby–my friend Donna Hepfinger. I had a session with her yesterday, and it was marvelous! She does not have a website, but I do have her contact info that I will share with you next week.
After a short BEST treatment, I felt refreshed, cheerful, and one leg felt significantly longer.
Nan – I’m so glad to know, thank you. I’ll be glad to have her contact information as well. Once I have it, I’ll come back and post it here. For those of you who don’t know Nan, she is the amazing person who teaches Yoga at HolEssence. Here’s a LINK to that information.
Hello Nan!
Thank you for mentioning Donna Hepfinger. She is the amazing healer who introduced me to this work and a dear friend. I hope you can post her info for those who may be interested.
I promised that when I got the contact information for Donna Hepfinger that I would come back and post it. Here it is:
The Healing Arts, Inc.
Donna Hepfinger, B.E.S.T. Practitioner
207 North Shore Drive
Oakwood Hills, IL 60013
847-639-8822
Email deenature@gmail.com
Nan – Since I just found out that you’re a knitter, you need to know Leanne Dyck. Here’s a LINK to her website, — enjoy!
hi, Laurie — I went to the Web site and read a few of the articles; this is an interesting form of healing therapy; I believe it does take a physical intervention to help heal our minds and emotions to help change our thoughts and habits of thinking. B.E.S.T. sounds like an excellent option.
Barbara – Thank you for stopping by. B.E.S.T. is definitely a modality to check out in your neck of the woods. Enjoy your weekend!
It’s amazing what a touch can do!
Jeannie – I agree, it IS amazing what touch can do. I also love your affirmation, “I am a living affirmation.” You are indeed. Thank you for coming by.
Good Morning,
So much going on…. I am meeting with my new group today. I am attending a Lunch N Learn about a new product with Aloe Vera and will ask her about this B.E.S.T. I think I had this done once, is it the same of a Bio feed back?
A long time ago I would have said I was sooo stressed out I couldn’t move, but now I think I have tooo many ideas and just can’t get to them all. If left alone I would just sit in my comfy chair and read!! So now I need more help to just get moving.
Here is a Haiku and new painting for all of you.
A Flower For You
A flower is picked,
on this new day just for you,
a friendship now grows.
I will be looking up the websites you offer and hopefully bring back some interesting info on something new.
Enjoy your weekend and send me some energy I will be shampooing carpets on Sat. but on Sunday I will be flying high on my Hot Air Balloon Ride!!!
~Jean
Jean – I just had a woman on my table the other day telling me about an Aloe Vera line of cosmetic-type products. Aloe Vera is wonderful. I keep the live plant handy for burns and bites — it works wonders! It can also be ingested. I found the Haiku (thank you), but no link to the painting (unless I’m looking right at it and just don’t see it) …
Shampooing carpets doesn’t sound like a barrell of fun, but a HOT AIR BALLOON RIDE certainly does. You’ll have to come back here and tell us all about it! Have a WONDERFUL time!
I have not encountered BEST, so cannot comment.
Just one thing about the explanation, the autonomic nervous system cannot be “directly” controlled by the mind. Anything can be controlled by the mind through appropriate use of context and influence.
The big thing is, knowing what is appropriate!
Ted – Thank you for the clarification. I agree — the big thing is knowing what is appropriate. I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend. Ours is going to be a wet one. Not cold — but definitely wet with some thunder and lightning likely.
Hi Laurie
Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day (the first in a long time). Ailsa went off with the tramping cub for the day, and I took Jewelia down to the village green in the morning where she went busking for an hour, then I went off and played my second round of golf since the operation. A lot better, but still well short of my handicap.
A few showers through overnight, and it is overcast and blustery again this morning. Ailsa and I took the dogs for a walk (about a mile) and are back inside again, probably for the day – Ailsa is learning the Waldstern Sonata at my elbow.
Back to the idea of working with the subconscious, while it is true that we can consciously control almost anything with appropriate knowledge, the number of systems that are self controlling within us is mind boggling, we couldn’t even count them in our lifetime, let alone master or control them; so there is a sense in which we must create a “harmony” with our subconscious, and the systems underlying the subconscious; we cannot even contemplate consciously controlling any but a very tiny fraction, for a very small fraction of the time.
Ted – I’m glad your two ladies had a great day yesterday and that you played golf – whoohoo! I’m glad you played golf, even if it wasn’t your best. We must be having “sympathy pains” with your weather because Google weather tells us we’re in for a 70% chance of rain.
Two interesting things: (1) Ailsa is learning the Waldstern Solata at my elbow (music), and (2) you said, “so there is a sense in which we must create a ‘harmony’ with our subconsious.” I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, I wear Lithium Quartz pendant for that very reason. It is said that, “Lithium Quartz contains pure quartz crystal plus lithium ions, and lithium resonates with every note of the musical scale.” I can’t tell you for a fact if that is true, or not. But this I know, as do you — the placebo effect is mighty powerful! If I believe it to be true — then it’s true for me.
I can well imagine that Ailsa’s “learning” would do circles around my “accomplished.” I’d love to sit and listen to her play some day. Was Jewelia’s busking for a specific purpose? If I remember correctly, she did it one time and used the finances for one of the dog’s surgeries. For those who may not know what “busking” is (Ted had to teach me this), it’s performing in public for tips (like an open guitar or violin case you would place money in for a street corner performer). Ted’s wife and daughter are both extraordinary musicians. Ted, I never asked … do YOU play an instrument?
I don’t know if you saw my notice (below) about the “Unity Wave” (15 minutes of synchronized global intent about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico). I just finished that.
We’re in now for the rest of the evening — probably going to read. Our weekend is Sun/Mon. If I’m not mistaken, you’re half through yours – I hope your’e enjoying the bajeebers out of it!
Hi Laurie,
I agree there is a sense in which belief makes it so, and there is another sense in which it is powerful for us to have as close as possible a correspondence between our beliefs and reality. In one sense, I really don’t know how I am doing on that, and I keep hoping that I am getting closer.
Still a lot of weird stuff happening in my life.
It is amazing listening to Ailsa learning something. She can sight read most things better than most can perform with experience. Often I cannot hear what she is trying to correct – I just know she is playing the same thing over and over. Often it is just trying different fingerings to get some effect she is looking for.
No real purpose to yesterday’s busking, just trying to get some pocket money.
No – I do not play any instruments, at least not to a level that anyone would listen to and enjoy. I can knock a few simple tunes out on a keyboard, and 40 years ago I took violin lessons for 4 years, and the answer is still NO.
By the time I read about your unity wave, it had finished.
It’s evening here now (so you’ll be making Zs). Fined up this afternoon, so I had half an hour on the chainsaw, then 4 barrow loads of wood to the shelter at the back door. Good to have my ear healed to the point that I can wear earmuffs – though it is throbbing a bit as I write. Will be able to put some more time in on the chainsaw sometime soon, and get a bit more wood in – enough up for about 2 weeks now, and enough downstairs for about another month, going to need about another 6-8 weeks worth at a guess. I think there is plenty of dry stuff around the section – I just need some fine days to cut and carry.
Ted – As I was reading your note out loud to Len this morning, we both cracked up at your “NO” comment about playing the violin! Len tried learning to play the harmonica. Oh my gosh, it was awful. It sounded like a giant maniacal bumble bee. I thought I was going to have to strangle him.
It seems odd that as we’re easing into summer, you’re jumping (ear muffs!) into winter. Do you heat with a fireplace or a woodburning stove? We heat with wood too; a woodburning stove. We don’t have property to get our wood from — we have it delivered, cut into 18-inch lengths to fit nicely in the stove box. Years (and years!) ago there was an apple orchard about an hour’s drive north of here that was being leveled so they could reuse the land for a different purpose. The trees were going to be uprooted and burned. We asked permission of the current owners if we could cut up the trees for firewood, and put the remaining debris into a burn pile. They granted permission. We drive a Suburban and had 6 x 10 utility trailer. I can’t begin to tell you how many trips we made back/forth — stack, stack, stack — but we had enough firewood for 7 (yes, seven) years!
Ted – I just remember something else I was going to tell you. I recommend reading, “The Genie in Your Genes: Epigenetic Medicine and the New Biology of Intention” by Dawson Church. If you enjoyed the article about Harvard Psychologist, Ellen Langer, you’ll love this book! Here’s a LINK to it on Amazon so you can read a little more about it, to see if it might be up your alley.
Hi Laurie
We have an “Ugly Ducking” wood burner. It is a rectangular steel box with 2 inches of ceramic insulation inside, two burning chambers, two air intakes, secondary air preheated. It is very efficient.
We have a half acre section, covered in trees. In the twelve years we’ve live here, have only bought in 1 trailer load of firewood. We use the trimmings from the trees to run the fire.
Once I feel a bit fitter I have about 40 trees I need to fell, which should keep us in firewood for many years.
That book does look interesting. I have months worth of reading on my beside table (years at current rate).
Thanks Ted
Ted – When I read Len about your “Ugly Duckling” wood burner, we looked it up on line and can see that yours is even more efficient than our Vermont Castings (ours is rated at about 76% efficient). Is yours one that burns inside the main living area of your home? Or do you have it underneath (like in the basement), and it heats your home from there? Ours is in the main living area. It can be well below zero outside, and we’ll be running around inside the house with shorts and t-shirts. Sometimes we feel it works just a little too well …
Hi Laurie
Our burner is out in the open in our living area.
The sides of the box hardly get warm.
The top is hot enough to keep a pot boiling, and most of the energy released into the room comes from the exposed flu.
I regulate the fire by looking at a temperature guage on the flu.
I put a 10inch diameter log (about 2’6″ long) on about 10 minutes ago and opened the primary air, a bit, the flu temp is now up to 350F, so I have closed the primary air back to minimum setting, and I shouldn’t need to touch it again for about 8 hours. A 3ft log is good for about 10 hours.
Keeps the house warm, plenty of hot water, and a good pot of soup warm.
Sometimes it gets a bit too warm here too, but we don’t need to open a window for very long to correct that.
Ted – Yep! There’s no doubt about it … your wood burner is much more efficient that ours. An 18-inch piece will go for about 6 hours in ours. Like you, we watch a temp. guage on the flu. We typically keep a 1-gallon cast-iron kettle of water on top to provide a wee bit of humidity. Unlike yours, ours gets hot as blazes to the touch and we give it a very wide berth.
Hello Ted!
You are correct! The autonomic nervous system IS influenced by our thoughts and emotions. Just think about squeezing some fresh, tart lemon juice into your mouth and you will notice an influx of saliva! This is because your sub-conscious, that controls your autonomic system, has no idea if what you are consciously thinking is real or not! Your body was not made to be sick or to be well, it was made to survive.
So, the autonomic nervous system is in charge of that survival. If an overpowering acid is introduced to your body, it activates your alkalizing mineral stores to that area to neutralize that acid and escort it safely from your body.
If you are seeing something dangerous to your physical well-being (a car crash, a sharp drop off of a cliff) your body will start to prepare for a fight or a flee (raising shoulders to allow more oxygen for flight, increasing blood flow to your heart to give you the energy and strength to fight or run a long distance). In order to muster the resources for this survival mode, all of the parasympathetic functions (rest, relaxation, digestion) are put on hold or to the bare minimum needed to survive.
This is our body’s innate and perfect design! Everything that happens in our physical body is a perfect response to whatever stimulus is received.
The experience of dis-ease comes when we stay in sympathetic dominance longer than necessary. This can happen for several reasons. The most common is Sub-conscious Emotional Memory Override or S.E.M.O. This is where we have a sub-conscious memory of some emotion or experience and there is a threat somehow linked to it. Riding in a car with your sweetheart, feeling in love and excited about the future and then being rear-ended, might be an example.
Your sub-conscious has no idea that the feelings of love and excitement didn’t cause the need for a fight or flight response. So, it makes a little note to get ready the next time you are experiencing those emotions because it “knows” that fight or flee might come next. Over the many years and experiences we have, our sub-conscious makes layers upon layers of protection for us and before we know it, we are experiencing symptoms all the time because we’re out of the physical resources to address these constant threats.
Now, we are able to sustain the emergency mode for however long we need to in order to survive and get out of trouble as long as we have some essentials available of course. If a large vein or artery is severed and there’s no way to send the resources to the heart or extremities, then there’s not much our autonomic nervous system can do about that. However, if we are constantly having thoughts of worry, dread, upset, injustice, even though there is no immediate threat to our physicality, then our sub-conscious is constantly on alert and we can start to experience symptoms. If we are never giving the parasympathetic time to take over and do the important rest and repair work that is necessary to build a strong reserve and create a feeling of “wellness” in our bodies, then we will feel dis-ease.
So, when we work in B.E.S.T. we are synchronizing the energetic pattern to help your autonomic system understand that an old threat or thought pattern should no longer be in priority, thereby freeing up resources to do whatever IS in priority for your body.
When Laurie says it is “automatic and not influenced by our thinking” it means that we don’t have to think “digest that bit of beef and send the protein to this muscle” it happens automatically to our perfect design. We don’t have to remember to breathe, it happens automatically.
We do have 6 essentials that we must always provide for the system to work – What we eat and drink (we cannot manufacture a nutrient or a drink of water no matter how balanced we are – though I just saw a story about a yogi who apparently can, so that’s something to shoot for), how we exercise and rest (our bodies and minds need both movement and a reprieve from movement and conscious thought for optimal development) and what and how we breathe (keeping toxins out of our lungs is very helpful and breathing deeply and mindfully can keep us out of defense physiology and help alkalize the body) and what we think.
The most important of these is “what we think” because we have something like 150,000 thoughts a day! And our sub-conscious is monitoring them all for danger because it’s main job is to make sure we survive!
So if you feel like you’ve got both pedals on the floor! Don’t despair! It’s just a sign that you are out of balance. All of the healing modalities, especially those that calm and reset the autonomic nervous system, such as massage, are beneficial. And if you want to make those modalities even more effective, combining a modality like B.E.S.T. can help you understand the patterns causing the imbalance and consciously work toward creating new patterns so that you can enjoy a massage or a reflexology session on a deeper level than just getting out of a stress mode.
Thank you for the discussion! This is so much fun!
Hi Carla
Your description of the interface between the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems is great.
Your description of the ways in which the subconscious make associations that are not appropriate, and the resulting impact on our lives is also great.
Given both of those, the use of the term “innate and perfect design” doesn’t make sense to me. It seems to me to clearly point to a system that works most of the time – the sort of thing that evolution would come up with, rather than the sort of thing anyone would “design”, and certainly not something I would call “perfect” in any sense. Intricate, complex certainly. Amazingly beautiful, without doubt. But “perfect” – not in any sense that I would use the word. As a computer systems designer, working most of the time is not good enough, it has to work every time.
Arohanui
Ted
Ted makes a good point! How can something that can be “corrupted” also be “perfect”?
The sub-conscious is not perfect in the sense that it would never do anything sub-optimal in your body. Unfortunately, it doesn’t judge and it doesn’t care how your body feels, it’s just here to ensure it’s survival.
It’s actions in running the body are always perfect. In other words, if you are presented with any type of threat, the sub-conscious is not equipped to judge how big of a threat it is, it just executes the proper program to deal with that threat. The same way I can be writing a wonderfully long and profound post and I accidentally hit the “cancel” button, instead of “submit” and loose the whole thing. The computer is doing exactly what it is designed to do when I hit “cancel”. It doesn’t stop to wonder if what I wrote should really be deleted or not (well, sometimes the programmer inserts that “are you sure” question, but again, the computer doesn’t decide if my work is worthy of keeping or not… and how many times have I consciously thought I was answering correctly only to hit yes when I meant to hit no and lost all my work anyway!?). And thankfully, it doesn’t stop to judge whether what I’ve written is worthy before it publishes the post when I hit “submit”. It just places my thoughts online as it was programmed to do.
So, the perfect design is not in whether the process is appropriate for current need or not, it is in the response that the body makes to a stimulus. And when the essentials are provided (like a computer needs electricity and functioning hard drive and an operating system and an internet connection to blog perfectly) and a stimulus is applied (someone calls up a site, inputs letters and numbers and presses submit), the body will act perfectly every time (printing whatever has been input to the comment box, even if it looks like this HK:OIH:INIOHn;ldsfhosnr.dfhosefas;dif – and no one can read it, causing the author and other readers discomfort because it’s not clear if the site has been hacked or if someone’s toddler was just commenting), until it runs out of resources and stops functioning all together (a certain number of megabytes have been published and there’s no more room or the power goes out for an extended period, or the server can no longer be maintained).
So the “glitch” is put there by our CONSCIOUS mind. And not to get too out there, but energetically, the glitch can be put there by the conscious thought of our parents, grandparents and anyone who we might share our energetic pattern with. So much has been done in the area of genetics and epigenetics to corroborate this, it’s amazing.
How do we create the interference? Judgment. We judge situations and people and ideas and experiences and assign them the label of good or bad. Sometimes in the action of judging a physiological response is encoded along with the thought and we end up with a S.E.M.O. Now I’m not sure I’m computer literate enough to equate S.E.M.O. with something in the running of the computer, but anyone working on the user end of a computer can probably think of SOMETHING! LOL! I know the engineering side will always say – that had to be a user error, because everything on this end is perfect, so whatever is wrong, it’s “garbage in and garbage out” – well, that’s how it is with your body too. If you are experiencing uncomfortable symptoms, it’s probably something you did.
So to take the computer analogy farther… what do you do when there is a “glitch” in the program… a “user error”? Do you shrug, toss the laptop in the trash and go get another one? (oh… so tempted sometimes!) Do you become a “victim” of this stupid computer that can’t do anything right?
Of course not… you begin to see that if you caused the error, then the power is yours and you can correct the error. You are not a victim to the computer manufacturer, you are a conscious co-creator and you can choose to debug the program!
So why does a “perfect” system allow this? Well some people call it “free will” and others believe we are a Spiritual Being here to have an experience in a physical body because we want to learn something and so we come into our physical body with a clear conscious slate so we can learn what happens when we have certain thoughts and experiences. Instead of coming in as perfect beings who are never influenced by others, we come in being open to the ideas, judgments, lessons and messages of all those we come into contact with and we CREATE our beliefs as we go along. Before the age of 5 or so, we don’t really have the power of conscious thought yet, and so we rely on that primal system that our subconscious is always working with – hmmm… that’s good! hmmmm…. that’s bad! – though we can’t consciously understand those judgments yet.
For example, a toddler might think, “why would Mom get so upset about me drawing such a beautiful picture for her? It must not be OK to draw and be creative.” Because consciously she can’t make distinctions between drawing and creating on paper and drawing and creating on the dining room wall!
It makes it sound like, if you’re sick, it’s YOUR fault, not the fault of your body or your creator or anything else. Well, this is true. But, this also puts YOU in CONTROL of your health, because you can change your conscious thought to produce new patterns and images and vibrations and re-time the nervous system and allow your body to heal – ie. create the conditions that will let the body do what is needed for healing and survival because it is designed for that.
It sounds like I just told you that you don’t need modalities such as B.E.S.T., right?
Well, it’s true, you don’t. There are many accounts of people healing themselves of terminal and life threatening illness just by adopting different thoughts. One such example is Myrtle Filmore, co-Founder of Unity, who healed herself of life long frailty and terminal tuberculosis in the 1930’s by adopting a new belief that her body was perfect and healthy.
I truly believe you can do it on your own, but I also believe that we have created a world that moves faster and faster and the stresses come quicker and quicker and we LIKE this feeling and we also LIKE finding ways to connect with others on this experience of being human and so all of the healing modalities have been manifested to allow us greater connection and healing with each other – faster.
Now, one could also believe that because there are so many more layers of stress and dis-ease in this modern age, that we just couldn’t find enough time and space and energy to really focus and heal ourselves the way “they could back then.” And there may be some truth in that, but I like to think that we are powerful co-Creators and so we have created a way to have both… powerful deep healing, quicker, to allow us to move on to higher consciousness and spiritual work that we keep coming back to this physical body to do, over and over.
Oh dear… I seem to have written a book! I get so excited about this because I am passionate about the healing I’ve experienced by understanding these relationships between the conscious, the sub-conscious and the physical body. And it is my passion and pleasure to help others along their path how ever I can.
Hopefully these musings have been helpful, if it was a very long rambling way of saying – You are in control!
Hi Carla
So much in what you say aligns with how things seems to be to me, and there are some differences.
I agree that the subconscious is very powerful. It has evolved to survive and it is good at it. It is not, however, perfect at it. It only had to be good enough, on average, over time. That is the aspect of “perfection” that we seem to disagree about.
I can agree that there is an aspect of providing the essentials.
I can agree in a sense with the analogy you put forward, what you say does often work, and not always.
There are lifeforms that are essentially immortal, our complex multicellular bodies are not yet in their ranks.
It is funny, how one person can say(/write/paint/whatever) one thing, and someone else can read something completely different. These context machines that are our human brains, they sometimes have very few contexts in common.
Arohanui
Thank you for the comments Ted! You are right, it is so hard to have the same context, and in some ways, we’ve pigeonholed our selves into the conversation about what the physical body does and how it reacts and that has somewhat prevented us from looking at the whole picture, which is the energetic body surrounding the physical body and the universal power we can be connected to beyond that.
For a great explanation of this, you can see Dr. Sue Morter, the daughter of Dr. Morter who created B.E.S.T., explaining how we are connected to source with her famous “Energy Man” presentation. This link is her giving the talk in the 18 minutes provided by a a special “TED” conference held at NASA recently.
http://www.truveo.com/tedxnasa-dr-sue-morter-112009/id/3549646222
But the thing that I have been reminded of in this discussion is that there is no substitute for experience. I can tell a client that their thoughts are things and that by changing them they can create a new reality, perhaps free of the dis-ease and discomfort they are feeling, but until they experience what that feels like, many would run screaming from the room before I could get past the second paragraph! So, I applaud you for sticking with me this far, Ted! Because usually I work with clients several times before any of this really makes sense to them. Especially coming from the Western medicine model that teaches us only drugs and a doctor’s diagnosis and treatment can “cure” us. It is a giant leap for many to realize that the body has worth and can do amazing things when it is re-connected to source energy.
As I am working with a client’s physical and emotional body and making incremental changes, while helping them make to consciously make new choices, dramatic healing takes place, on some level and the principles begin to resonate more and more.
So thanks again for the conversation Ted! I wish you were closer so I could offer you a free consultation. Currently, there aren’t any practitioners in Australia or NZ. I do have some videos that can lead you through some of the self-help exercises that I teach.
Ironically, days before we began this conversation, I was just envisioning a plan to go to Australia to teach B.E.S.T. as I have family there and would love to visit! So, maybe this was just the Universe manifesting that for me in a small way, or maybe I’ll be in your neighborhood soon!
Either way, keep seeking and enjoying! It sounds like you are very good at finding the simple pleasures in life and I know that will serve you.
All the B.E.S.T.!
-Carla
Carla – thank you so much for adding to the conversation, I sincerely appreciate it. Thank you, too, for the link to the “TED” conference held at NASA — I will make a point of watching it this evening.
Hi Carla
I just finished watching the Sue Morter video you linked to.
In part I agree that some of what she is trying to talk about is real, and yet most of what she actually says is nonsense from a scientific perspective.
The fields she speaks about do not, for the most part, exist, and the experiences she speaks of do, for the most part, exist.
That we can walk through the bush looking at something else, and duck under a branch, has nothing to do with fields from the branch, and everything to do with the subconscious use of peripheral vision, and internal maps of reality (spatial awareness). This is not fields, and it is functionally equivalent.
I agree with her that our declarations pose barriers to greater understanding, if we hold them as any sort of eternal truth. Anything, any declaration, that we hold as something that cannot be challenged or questioned, is in fact a block to deeper awareness of reality.
We each start from nothing in a sense.
In another sense, most of what we start with is given to us by immersion of experience in a culture – it is a mix of cultural concepts and patterns and experience of physical reality that form the first level of patterns and declarations in our minds. Some of the patterns present in reality have been with us since the big bang, others are of more recent origin.
At each subsequent level of awareness, we must bring the assumptions of the first level into question.
This process is recursive.
After one has been through three or four levels of “Oh, that isn’t the truth, this is the truth”, one begins to suspect that maybe the whole notion of “truth” is one of the things that is in the way of understanding (as are all such simple binary valuation systems, right/wrong, true/false, good/evil, light/dark, etc – none is real, yet we must start somewhere, and the simplest division from 1 is to two – which is, in a sense, the first step towards the infinite, the second step is three, then 4, then perhaps enumeration to several thousands, then perhaps by induction to contemplation of incomprehensible vastness of the infinite contained in any distinction).
We are intimately connected to the reality around us at many levels, and it seems to me that the greatest actual driver of that connection is the “holographic” nature of the way in which we store and retrieve information, and the “side effect” of processing information in such a way which is forming intuitions and abstractions and associations.
Our brains have multiple centers processing multiple different sensory inputs and multiple levels of memory recall, so our subconscious mind is a seething mass of intuitions, most of which never make it through to the consciousness. Opening the gates to those intuitions can be a profound and also a terrifying thing. We get the best and the worst of us, the entire spectrum, simultaneously. It is not “comfortable”.
There are few points of reference.
It is difficult to maintain orientation.
Some find communication with others after such an experience almost impossible.
Others manage it from time to time.
Certainly there are many levels of pattern in matter.
Certainly there are levels of freedom in matter, any physicist who doubts that need only consider a LASER; how could all the atoms in the resonating chamber become perfectly synchronised unless there was some degree of freedom.
Without freedom LASERs would be impossible, and LASERS do exist.
There are laws, and there is also freedom within those laws.
In my world, almost all that Sue Morter said was a complete nonsense, yet I acknowledge that there are levels of relatedness and potentials for action that do actually exist; it is just that they do not exist in anything even remotely like the form that she was talking about.
I certainly support and encourage the use of methodologies that work in practice to enhance the life experience of individuals.
I am not at all a fan of most of the explanatory modalities that most people use to try and make sense of why what they are doing does what it does.
I hope that makes some sense to someone else.
Arohanui
Ted
I have never heard of BEST. It sounds like a positive practice that could benefit many of us. I know my brake and accelerator pedals get jammed at times, too!
Kathy – I, too, am familiar with the jammed pedal issue.
Everyone – Not sure if you’ve read about this over on the Gaia homepage or elsewhere, but I’m putting it here for your consideration as well:
June 5 World Wide Synchronized Conscious Focus – Gulf Oil Spill
Saturday June 5, focus/intent on clean, healthy oceans, for 15 minutes.
http://unitywave.com/ LINK
Once you get to this website, simply scroll down and you’ll be able to watch a video with guided intent during the 15 minutes if you would like (it’s up and available for preview as well).
United States, Canada & South America on Sat, Jun 5th
7pm EDT (New York)
6pm Central Time (Illinois)
4pm PDT (California)
Europe, Asia & Australia on Sunday, June 6th,
Midnight in London
7am in Beijing
9am in Brisbane, Australia.
If anyone is not in the IL area and/or not able to travel to work with me, you can check out http://www.morter.com to find a practitioner in your area.
Carla – Thank you for this link!
I really enjoyed this entry Laurie! I think this could be hugely helpful. I found a local practitioner, so I am going to try it out.
Thank you so much!
Ben
Pingback: Have Sex for Better Health « Speaking from the Heart
I needed to thank you for this excellent read!! I certainly loved every little bit of it.
I have you bookmarked to check out new things you post…
EFT Training Therapy Workshops Newbury & Marlow – I’m so glad you enjoyed this post. Thank you for letting me know.