Not a canned approach or canned solutions

Feeling stuck or blocked? Feeling overwhelmed, numb, choked or paralyzed? Can’t make decisions? Afraid to move forward?

Anxiety Symptoms and Anxiety Attacks

Does it feel like there is no way out? Can’t find an opening? Do you feel so constricted and confined that you can’t catch your breath? Are you feeling stuck like sardines in a can? Anxious, depressed, stressed?

Anxiety Symptoms vary greatly from individual to individual, time, circumstance, intensity, and frequency.  Physical anxiety symptoms, such as the difficulty in breathing or heart palpitations, can trigger additional fear and anxiety such as fear of a heart attack, passing out or loss of control. Anxiety symptoms can include a sense of undefined fear, unease, agitation and danger. Anxiety attacks often suddenly occur without warning.  Anxiety attacks can be quite immobilizing and paralyzing.  

There are two main types of anxiety with different energetic signatures. The anxiety symptom of “anguish” tends to be more like depression.  The energy starts to move outward but contracts and goes back inside. The anxiety symptoms of anguish tends to be slow moving, constrained, heavy, and  with melancholy.  In the second type the energy starts moving outward to expression but gets held and stuck. The anxiety symptom in this type is experienced as a faster, more frenetic energy that is experienced as worry and nervousness.

Anxiety can even be triggered by feeling an intense emotion that has strong injunctions against experiencing that emotion such as anger. The body contracts and tightens at the presence of that unacceptable emotion resulting in anxiety symptoms or perhaps an anxiety attack. Anxiety attacks and anxiety symptoms can happen due to a variety of triggers and situations: fear of change, fear of separation/abandonment, social anxiety, fear of performance or public speaking, fear of expansion or pleasure, fear of success or failure, fear of falling/heights, fear of small spaces, and even fear of our own feelings, etc.

Depression Warning Signs

Depression warning signs include but are not limited to the following. Most strongly there is shift in energy: fatigue, lack of vitality, lethargy, heaviness, sense of everything even the most simple tasks seeming to be too hard or effortful; and,  immobilization with no interests or desire.  Often depression warning signs include changes in sleep and/or normal eating routines. Additional depression warning signs include a pervasive attitude of “doom and gloom” and the sense of an empty dark void. Depression is not actually a true feeling or emotion but rather the absence of and suppression of emotion. Depression is an internal energetic collapse to an empty center or dark void.

Signs of Stress

The signs of stress typically affect the body physically and cognitively, emotionally and interpersonally such as: difficulty concentrating, obsession, overwhelm, mood changes, inability to sleep, etc. The signs of stress demonstrate the interrelationship between mind and body. Research has shown that emotional pain originates in the same area of the brain as physical pain. So “sticks and stones may break your bones and names DO hurt!”  An attack or criticism is experienced as a physical blow that can trigger signs of stress. Emotions have been known to correlate with physiological changes and symptoms. For example, the emotional signs of stress associated with various physical symptoms are as follows. Fear can create heart palpitations and shortness of breath. Anger can cause elevated blood pressure, heart activity and changes in carbohydrate metabolism. In certain situations anger and fear can contribute to a stroke or heart attack. Cancer studies have shown that fear, hate and guilt underlie many forms of cancer. Research indicates that repressed emotions play a major role in arthritis, asthma, hives, heart disease, tuberculosis and
the common cold.

“Your body is your subconscious mind and you can’t heal it by talk alone.”
Candace Pert, PhD

Not a canned approach- the Alternative Approach
Body Education for Personal Growth and Life Enhancement offers a dynamic personal journey of self discovery. Release the limitations and blocks to your success and create your BEST life ever. This comprehensive holistic alternative approach works directly with the Body, Emotions/energy, Spirit, Thoughts, the BEST way to achieve real change. The body, which includes the mind and thoughts, is the focal point of learning through an experiential process. Your first experience will leave you amazed at what you discover from your own body.

Conventional Psychotherapy
Traditional psychotherapy is based on the medical model with the use of verbal dialogue as the method for service delivery. The therapist is considered to be the expert who diagnoses, treats, listens, analyzes, and offers  intellectual or cognitive insight. Sometimes advice and suggestions are offered as well. The goal is to achieve self understanding and healing or fixing “symptoms” of a problem  through an intellectual or conceptual focus.  There is an assumption that feelings are worked with by talking about them.  Traditional psychotherapy is covered by insurance which requires a diagnosis and sometimes treatment plans to alleviate symptoms.

Life Coaching
The International Coach Federation (ICF) defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaching honors the client as the expert in his/her life and work and believes that every client is creative, resourceful and whole”. The goal is to empower, synthesize, integrate, expand potential and achieve personal realization.  The idea is to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be or even to discover that direction. Again the primary method of service delivery is verbal dialogue often with homework assignments and accountability for completion of tasks.
 

How is the BEST approach for Personal Growth and Life Enhancement not a canned solution or approach?
This is not your typical psychotherapy and is so much more than just life coaching. The BEST approach utilizes the best of both traditional psychotherapy and coaching. Like coaching there is an assumption of you as the one who knows best about you. There is no diagnosis, assumption of medical treatment or expertise over you as in traditional psychotherapy. A verbal, cognitive or intellectual method is not the only mode of delivery as in psychotherapy and coaching. The BEST approach utilizes a variety of experiential techniques that develop a deeper connection to the body, opening the way to self discovery and self improvement. My role is more of a guide/coach/teacher/witness/partner who is actively