Peter’s Story
Section Three - Episode Four
Hakomi
Continuing on with the story of how Peter discovered natural therapies.....
Hakomi....
Another therapy that I had experience of was Hakomi. Around this time, in 1996, I attended a three-day workshop facilitated by Deepesh Faucheaux, a Hakomi therapist from Colorado. For me, this was another of those lovely, supportive workshops that I really enjoyed. This workshop, for me, was ninety percent sheer pure enjoyment, and only ten percent effort. There was a unique group of lovely people present, and this was probably the most enjoyable workshop that I have ever done.
If did feel rather strange to me, doing a weekend workshop with no screaming or crying! With everyone being very quiet and gentle. But, after just relaxing and enjoying the process, right at the end of the weekend (during the cleanup), I had a realization that I had, without noticing it, cleared some major issues. I had also learnt that group therapy does not have to include high energy cathartic release; that sometimes a softer, gentler, low-key approach can be effective.
During this workshop, we spent some time working in small groups. My group comprised myself and three women, and I felt a very major attraction towards one of the women. To me, her energy was very powerful; it felt like a magnet, and I could not keep my eyes off her. I decided that she was almost certainly not interested in me, and I had better keep quiet about my attraction to her.
During our sharing of our issues, she told how a major issue for her was around not being able to attract into her life a man who would be “good enough” to father children with her. She was in her mid-ish thirties, and a major issue for her was that her “biological clock was ticking”. If she wished to ever be a mother, she needed to find a compatible mate soon. But, all of the men she ever became involved with turned out to be unsatisfactory.
This really pushed my buttons. Here I was sitting there having major fantasies about her, and how it would be blissful for us to get together, etc, etc. But there is no way that I am ever going to be a father again. I had made that decision for myself several years earlier, and the decision was final as far as I was concerned. And, I had cemented this decision in place by having a vasectomy.
But here I was, sitting here with what to me was the most beautiful, attractive, desirable woman that I had ever met; and she was saying that her top priority was to find a man to father her children! What do I do? When it's my turn to share, do I come clean and tell then exactly what I am feeling? Or do I keep quiet?
I attempted to tell the group what I was feeling, but part way through I chickened out and omitted the parts about how intense the energy of attraction was for me, and about the whole fatherhood issue. It fell rather flat, and I was left thinking I had messed it up. But somehow it did not really matter, there were some lessons for me in what had happened.
This experience was somewhat similar to earlier experiences in my teens where I had strong feelings of attraction towards girls, but I did not feel safe to speak openly about these feelings. (For details of these teenage experiences, keep reading.... they are covered later on in the story.) This was an opportunity to resolve this issue, and I did not quite manage to resolve it completely.
I now know that the powerful energy I experienced towards this woman was karmic, from a past life, and that this issue has now been resolved. I have never seen her again since then, and quite likely never will, but then again, who knows what the future might bring, and I now feel very relaxed about this little episode.
For Labour Weekend, October 1996, I traveled to Hawkes Bay and attended another Hakomi workshop, this one on “The Wounds of Trauma”, this time with Kekuni Minton, another visiting American from Colorado. This four-day workshop was totally different, in that it was targeted at therapists to train them in working with clients on the effects of trauma. I was the only person there who was not a full-time professional therapist. And, the only one who was not taking written notes! I was there for the experience, not for the head-based learning.
We worked in pairs, with one of us being the “therapist”, and the other the “client”. We were told that it was a training workshop so “No heavy duty stuff please!”. I was a little disappointed at this, as I would really have liked to have gone in deep into some of my stuff! But it worked out fine. I got to work on a whole lot of minor issues, and it was a very productive four days.
The one thing I remember really well was re-experiencing the trauma of a rough aircraft trip. I am very prone to motion sickness, and any rough trip on a boat or plane is agony for me. My partner led me gently through the whole experience. What I was feeling in my body as the turbulence hit the plane, the feelings of nausea, giddiness, etc. The agony of it seeming to go on and on without end, my head bent down, clutching the paper bag over my face waiting for the vomit to come. It felt good to gently release the energy of the trauma stored in my body.
It was a lovely weekend, and I learned much about the subject of trauma and how the energy of past traumatic experiences is stored in our bodies, and in many cases is never released. Our bodies were never designed to hold onto this energy of trauma long-term. In so-called primitive cultures, we have ways to release this energy. But in our culture, where control and strength are so much admired, we have lost the art of releasing this energy. We suppress the feelings, and we go through life accumulating an increasingly heavy load of unresolved trauma energy in our bodies.
2002 Note: I have recently added an important new essence to the New Millennium Essences. The
Typhoon Rose flower essence is specifically for releasing the energy of shock and trauma from the body, and with hindsight I can see that the foundations for this new essence were laid in that 1996 workshop on the wounds of trauma.
I have already told the story of my involvement with “Quantum Dynamics” in 1996. I only need add here that all of the above was happening around the same time as the Quantum Dynamics experiences, with all of these therapies being used together on my journey of healing, to very good effect.
Click here to continue on with the next episode of this section of this (1998 version) of the story......
Section Three, Episode Four..... Energy Healing Devices.
