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Psychotherapies

Today there are  a variety of remarkably effective therapies that are capable of creating deep and lasting change. The goal is to help you to become the person you always hoped you'd be. In this article, Therapies to Change your Life, we'll talk about a several counseling techniques that can change self-defeating childhood patterns into adult pattern victories.

Therapies to Change Your Life

 
EMDR      Couples Therapy    Yoga Therapy      NLP

Telephone  Appointments       Personal Consultations

             EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization Response

EMDR is a remarkably effective form of therapy. The central idea is that just as a physical wound to the hand "wants"  to heal, with care and time, so does an emotional wound. But just as physical wounds sometimes need antibiotics, so, too, our emotional hurts can also need help from the outside. According to EMDR, the best antiseptic balm for the emotional realm is a rapid bilateral brain stimulation, whose rhythm and tempo soothe your heart. It works like this: While you focus on a concern or problem you need to resolve, a rhythmic form of stimulation is applied to fire up first one side of the brain and then the other. 

This technology can be quite emotional and in the process, a skilled clinician can by-pass normal defense mechanisms. As you directly access your subconscious mind, this technique allows for tremendous insight and healing that seem to be both emotional and physical in nature. Old patterns give way to new perspectives. For an example of this process, read the Couples Therapy section below.

For more information, please call 781 235-0009  or send an e-mail to: mjk@DoctorKhalsa.com

                                                                       Couples Therapy                                           

"I can't take another second like this!" shouted Emily. "I've got to get out of here!" She ran to the door to escape the frustration of her husband's passive aggressive silence, but her 3 year old daughter, Susan ran and threw her arms around her. She said "Mommy, please don't go. Please stay."  So Emily said, "Honey, I'm just going to the grocery store and will come back soon. I promise." In some stories, mommy doesn't come back, but in this one, Emily did. She just sat in her car and cried for a while.

One of the most satisfying but difficult experiences we will ever have is marriage. About 50% of all first marriages end in divorce and second marriages do no better - also ending up with about a 50% divorce rate. 

In the "old days" couples had trusted family members who would help them through the rough spots. Today, we have psychologists.  At first, a good practitioner will see a couple for many sessions, helping them to change their self-defeating childhood patterns into adult pattern victories. After those initial sessions, under the best of circumstances,  the couple will have the skills to see their way through most of marriage's ups and downs. But the couple will also have the security of knowing that there is someone to turn to for the occasional very difficult moments that come up through the years. 

To return to our story, Emily finally sought help. After a few sessions of EMDR, she came to see that Richard (her husband) and her father might well have been emotional twins. She began to have some victories over her reactions. Together, she and Richard began to address their insecurities and change their reactions to each other. Their marriage improved a great deal.

For more information, please contact us at 781 235-0009  or e-mail to: mjk@DoctorKhalsa.com

Yoga Therapy - Spiritual Counseling

Yoga and meditation have wonderful effects -- blood pressure drops, breathing becomes less frantic, anxiety levels falls, depression lessens all - through changes in our breathing and in our bodily posture. 

Warming up with yoga helps to prepare the body and mind for a deep state of meditation. In meditation, when used as a therapy, you can find an infinite sacred space inside yourself which sooths your internal conflicts and creates a peace greater than your fears.

In Yoga Therapy, music and breath are used to help you find your depth and conquer your self-defeating patterns. For example, there is a meditation called "To Bring Home the Purpose of Life." When Yogi Bhajan gave this meditation, he said it would awaken your soul and the very "core of every trouble will leave you alone." This is an excellent meditation for getting in touch with your career goals or for understanding what really matters to you in your marriage. Click here to see this meditation. 

Yoga Therapy can be used to break through the barriers that block you from manifesting your dreams. Yoga Therapy is particularly powerful in helping you to bridge the gap between the dreams your heart desires and the reality you are living. Yoga Class

NLP  

(Neuro-Linguistic Programming) 

NLP is an amazingly effective form of therapy. It is especially useful for breaking up old patterns of thought. Here we'll focus on one of the  underlying principles in NLP: stimulus and response are are not necessarily tied together in the ways that we imagine. For example, the statement "My wife makes me angry." is not actually true. Although certainly a wife can and does effect the way her husband feels, how he feels is actually up to him. Leslie Cameron Bandler (one of the originators of NLP) expresses it with something similar to this diagram:

                       D                                  X represents the stimulus

                                   B                      CP represents the choice point

X           CP                        A             all other letters represent several possible responses

                            N

                  Y

                            Let's say that his wife asks him "why he doesn't take out the garbage?" This is the stimulus (X). Now, in his mind, he was going to take out the garbage in a few minutes, but this is the 10th thing she has asked for in the last hour!!  At this choice point (CP), he believes that the only choice here is to be angry (choice (A). His wife makes him angry. What he doesn't realize is that from the choice point (CP) he can go to choice A (Tell her how he feels) or choice B (smile and tell her he loves her and do nothing) or choice N (smile and take out the garbage and tell her how he feels) or choice Y (do nothing). 

Unfortunately the belief that someone makes you angry is generated in the blink of en eye, on an unconscious level and the response to the stimulus so fast, it feels undeniably true, because it is hard wired through the subconscious mind. It is an immediate response to a stimulus and it feels like the only thing to do. 

In NLP, the sentence "My wife makes me angry" as "an ill-formed Surface Structure." because it contains an untrue belief that the man only has 1 choice in response to her behavior. A successful intervention will  interrupt this pattern at the choice point and divert the response from the old style to a more adaptive alternative. The trick is making the new stimulus-response connection as automatic as the old pattern was. 

NLP has created powerful,  yet eloquent interventions to deal with this sort of pattern problem. For example, in this case, a simple new autonomic response of "humor" might be inserted at the choice point; or if the problem is more difficult one of several reframing techniques can be used to disarm past experiences of their initial emotional pull.

But we tend to be blocked by our hidden demons - lack of intuition, low self-esteem, minds that churn endless negative thoughts and bad habits all hold us back