Rapid Transformation Therapy

The Genesis of Rapid Transformation Therapy In 1977 I was twenty-four years old, a social worker living and working in rural Alaska Native villages. I lived alone in an isolated cabin with no running water. Outside temperatures sometimes dropped to 60 degrees below zero. My assignment was to provide comprehensive social services to eight villages and two larger communities, all linked by a regional hub road system. My training provided me with the skills to be a good listener, to have compassion for others’ experiences and points of view without judgment, to reach out to others who were suffering, and to seek potential resources. To do all of that, I had to be willing to knock on the doors of total strangers in a culture foreign to my own life experience. Soon, I realized I was a welcomed guest. My first friend was Elizabeth, an elder within the community. As we sat at her kitchen table sipping hot tea and nibbling on pilot bread crackers, she poured her heart out to me in her broken English. She told me horrific stories of human cruelty as she shared the hurts and suffering of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. “Drinking caused all of the bad things that people do to each other,” she told me. Despite her emotional pain I also sensed her hope, her inner calm, and the belief that things would get better. As trust was nurtured between us and our hearts bonded, we became a team working together for the betterment and healing of the community. I soon met more elders and became overwhelmed with the depth of their grief and suffering. I recognized their desperation and yet sensed the wisdom among these people. The elders repeatedly expressed gratitude for the opportunity to be heard and stressed that life in the villages had become imbalanced. They wanted the pain to end, and so did I. I wasn’t aware then that the majority of the people in the villages were suffering from repressed trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I also wasn’t aware that their stories were activating repressed feelings within my own psyche and body. Nothing in my formal education had adequately prepared me to work with emotional trauma, so I returned to the University of Washington to earn master’s and doctorate degrees in social work. When it came time to complete my dissertation project, I was drawn again to the elders to gain a deeper understanding of their historical perspective on human traumas and traditional ways of healing. The elders, who are considered the wisdom-keepers for their tribes, repeatedly gave me the message that healing is only possible if you include the dimension of spirit. A middle-aged man trained in the traditional methods explained it this way: “In the old days, everything was in balance. Everything was considered through a spiritual lens or realm. The medicine man, shaman, or sleep doctor was at the center of keeping things in balance. It was a whole and balanced system and it was highly spiritual. Each person learned how they were to be, to interact within that well-defined system.” In traditional Native American communities, daily rituals and ceremonies were practiced to help maintain that balance. Everybody watched out for everyone else’s well-being. The elders also told me that “true healing comes from within.” I was intrigued by the concept of healing from within, and yet, I couldn’t find anyone to show me how to do it. I sensed that the elders knew, yet bringing long-forgotten traditional practices into the modern world was difficult. They all spoke in broken English, and they thought primarily in their Native language. Despite the language barrier, I witnessed my elder friends releasing intense emotional pain. Even though they were isolated and blocked from using their traditional practices to ease suffering in the larger community, they allowed for the flow of great emotional energy in themselves, with me as their witness. They taught me the value of being present, and the power of having human witness to our pain and deepest suffering. I was honored and moved to the core of my being. This experience planted a seed within me about what we all might need in order to heal our emotional pain. The concept of “balance” within the individual, the family, and the community became a guide for me as I gathered elements of what eventually became a very specific healing process. Healing PTSD Is Possible “I do not view post-traumatic stress disorder as pathology to be managed, suppressed, or adjusted to, but the result of a natural process gone awry. Healing trauma requires a direct experience of the living, feeling, knowing organism.” —Peter A. Levine Twenty years later, in 1997, my husband, Floyd—himself an Alaska Native—returned home after attending a workshop in Seattle with a national expert on healing the family. A Vietnam veteran and survivor of childhood neglect and sexual abuse, Floyd asked this expert, “Is there a cure for PTSD?” Without hesitation, the expert said, “No, there is no cure. You just have to learn to live with it.” Floyd looked at the man in shock. My husband had carried so much hope that one day, he would achieve peace within himself. Those words—“there is no cure”—devastated him. When he came home and shared the story with me, I felt my body tighten and begin to shake. “He is dead wrong!” I blurted out angrily, “There is a cure for PTSD! I know there is!” Partially as a result of what I had experienced in the villages during my years of social work, my inner knowingness screamed that it couldn’t possibly be true that there was no cure. So I trusted that the cure did exist, and I set a clear intent to discover “the way.” Two months later, I met a woman who was practicing a way of healing from the inside out. This teacher showed me that to heal trauma and restore balance to our beings, we must connect with the place inside of us where we most deeply suppress our pain. We access those repressed core emotions through our breath. With focused practice, I came to understand that there was a way anyone could access deep emotions as I had watched the elders do so many years before. I became passionate about my discovery. I wanted to help the whole world heal. I started with my immediate family, including myself. We had all experienced our share of trauma, and I finally began to see why the pain of the people I counseled as a social worker had activated so much of my own repressed inner pain. At last, a way to truly heal from within had been revealed, and I knew I would be working with this method for the rest of my life. Fast-forward to 2014. Floyd, our dedicated team of facilitators, and I have witnessed hundreds of people transform their lives. We have spent the past eighteen years expanding the process of accessing core emotions through the breath into a comprehensive emotional healing process that we have come to call “Rapid Transformation Therapy” or “RTT.” In addition to this breathwork, RTT also draws upon wisdom from my elder teachers, including Grandmother Berniece Falling Leaves, Rita Blumenstein, and Martin High Bear, and methodologies from across a variety of disciplines including social work, regression therapy, energy medicine, traditional Western therapy, and both indigenous and Eastern practices. With the aim of restoring balance, we have discovered repeatedly that unlocking emotional energy in the human body and allowing it to release will diminish PTSD symptoms and pain—both physical pain and emotional pain. This is as true for war veterans and those who have acute symptoms from trauma and abuse as it is for those experiencing less-acute symptoms due to grief, breakups, fears, and any number of life’s difficulties. Symptoms don’t have to be “managed.” In our experience they can be eliminated or, at a minimum, dramatically diminished. Healing is possible. There is a cure for PTSD, and it doesn’t require expensive treatments or becoming dependent.