The Natural Process of Energy Flow

The Natural Process of Energy Flow

Article will be appearing in the AHP's Newsletter in April

Delightfully, I just ran into a client that I worked with twenty years ago at the Women and Spirituality Conference in Mankato, Minnesota. She offered to tell me the thing that helped her the most in our work together. She touched her heart and said, "You taught me the difference in how power feels in my body and how control feels in my body. I use it to this day to know the difference." Not only was this pleasure to my ears and heart, it reminded me of how important this difference is in terms of full body living. If we want to live completely, then we have to know the difference in energy flow between controlling or out of control energy and the real, authentic juice.

In the beginning days of my practice, I noticed that people confused power with control. They acted as if they were the same phenomena. In trying to help people relax and trust themselves it became obviously that people held on to their control because it was the only "power" they have ever felt. So of course they didn't want to give up their "defenses" if they perceived them as powerful and necessary to their well being and safety. As psychologists, we know that our defenses are the means by which we control ourselves.

After years of sitting there in a chair, trying to get a person to love themselves with words, I finally gave up the whole practice of psychotherapy. Since I found it ineffective and dilapidated, I threw the dirty glass of water away and started over. I was completely willing to go to Paris and be a waitress. Even though I had had a waiting list for five years and had referred 30 women out to my colleagues one January, I did not feel as if I was making a real difference in anyone's life. This was just before the woman in Mankato came to see me in the early eighties.

Letting go of being "a psychologist," I listened to my heart and the hearts of those who came to see me. With my own personal transformation leading the way, I discovered how to feel, with my body, the difference between Power and Control. And I started to teach others how to do the same. I realized that one had to sense the difference, in order to know the difference. In order to perceive reality, we had to see, hear, smell, taste and feel what was really going on in our body and with our feelings.

We had to directly experience that which did indeed empower us and that which did indeed weaken us. In order to do this; we had to become aware of our body, our feelings and our energy. Being in our heads, thinking and talking only served to keep us controlled. I presented this Conceptual Model at the First Advanced Feminist Therapy Institute in Vail, CO in 1982. My Call to Action and the results of the Transformational Model was published in the Handbook of Feminist Therapy, 1985, Springer. Jeanette, "Feminism, The Future of? " Chap. 5, p. 39-44. In this persuasive, philosopher piece each step in what I call the Natural Process is highlighted. It requires a letting go that no existing psychology group has managed to execute.

The fundamental difference between Power and Control is that Power flows and Control is stagnant. Control/Out of Control Energy is anything we do that alters our natural flow of energy. Our natural energy flow is like a river that is left in its natural state. The river is effected everyday by all of the elements and creatures of the earth as they come and go through the river. The river changes and rearranges herself in harmony with others. The river's needs and the needs of others work together to create the best for all concerned. Each event interacting with the river creates something new and wonderful. If not, it will change again to create something that functions healthier.

This natural flow is what has created our wondrous home. Mother earth is as beautiful as any place I could ever image in my most exotic dreams. Re-membering my first view of a southern California coastal park, I climbed down a hot hill full of spiky cacti and dust. Suddenly, the view opened up to an expansive, refreshing view of the sea. It the most gorgeous mix of water, rock, curves and sky and sound that you can imagine. Tears began to stream down my cheeks. My heart exploded and my body tingled all over. My lover came over and hugged me, each of us experiencing this exquisite moment in time.

Contrast this to a river that has been damned and altered by man. In America our Colorado River was damned, covering up many acres of beautiful canyonland. This adversely altered the grandest thing America has, our Grand Canyon. As most of us know, it hurt everything, from the fish to the microorganisms. Undoing this kind of damage takes Mother Earth a long time. Man has done the same kind of damage to himself. Normal Man is stagnant, sick, violent, mundane and lifeless.

If we want to undo this damage, we have to become conscious of what actually makes us weaker and what makes us stronger in the flesh. Words will not do it; we had to have a direct experience of our own power and control. We have to prove to ourselves what is really doing on inside of us and outside of us. Then we will feel safe enough to let go of control and allow our natural flow to come forth.

To accomplish this, we need something new and different. I founded the Center for the New Psychology when I returned to Philadelphia from teaching my work at the University for Global Well-Being in Sweden in 1999. (It was a wonderful experiment with great vision that has since been taken over by the Sweden government.) The Center is a baby, taking small steps toward its vision of loving energy dominating the planet.

What we know about quantum physics and human consciousness tells us that knowing the consciousness of what is delivering the data is more important than the data. If we don't know that Maslow hated his Mother and never forgave her, or that Buddha was filthy rich or that Harlow was hospitalized with serve depressed then we don't know the consciousness from whence the teachings are coming from. And if we don't know this, then we don't know that which is important.

Each of us delivers to the world, our gifts, in the context of our own life. In other words, the fact that I grew up on a poor, totally self-sufficient farm with an uneducated family is important to my model. And that I was born with an innate, natural gift of feeling and sensing with my body is essential. Also that I studied learning theory and was raised a Southern Methodist contribute to how I perceive. All of these things go into my level of awareness and my consciousness. So of course, My Model reflects my haze and my clarity.

It is just and noble that I use my strengths and wisdom to teach others to use their strengths and wisdom. So My Model teaches the natural process of transforming energy. It teaches numerous techniques, not as an end, but as a means. When one is living in process and helping others live in process, techniques are created spontaneously in the moment, as they are needed. Being a-live is a real, physical, emotional, spiritual experience. It has nothing to do with words or what you had planned to do!

Back to the conference, my client, with a smile on her face, was selling her lovely creative wares. Her husband and children were with her. I looked deeply into her eyes in order to recognize her as one that I had known. As I pierced into her depths, she continued, "These eyes are happier eyes now!" Wow. Tears fill my eyes. This is what I went into psychology for, to make people happy.

Doris Jeanette, licensed psychologist and Sex & Love Columnist is author of Dr. Jeanette's Natural Process for Opening the Heart, three audiocassette tapes highly recommended by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. www.drjeanette.com Call 215-732-6197. Introductory Training Weekends, Glenwood Springs, CO and Philadelphia, PA. Begins Friday Night at 7:00 and ends Sunday at 4:00. Small, intimate groups, with a focus on energy awareness in body, emotions, and field. Giving and Receiving Love, as a physical, emotional energy, will be taught. Numerous techniques to help elicit the flow of the natural process of energy with each person, in the moment, will be shared. Dr. Jeanette has learned techniques from Jean Houston, Ph.D. Jack Swartz, Barbara Brendan, Joe Wolpe, MD, Elias de Moahan, and wonderful teachers in acting, mime, bodywork, energy work, Alexander, Rosen, and others. Check out www.drjeanette.com and call 215-732-6197 to join the next training group.