Speaker 0 00:00:03 Welcome to the doctor's week show where I show you how bad states of mind, difficult life issues, aren't pathological, but rather signs of personal growth trying to happen. All right, let's get into it. Hey people, how are you? I hope you're in the flow of life, but if not, no problem, whatever you're blocked by, it contains the flow hidden within it. We just have to tap into it, amplify it and transform it from shit to gold. So let's do this. This is the 16th exercise I've shared and they're starting to get a bit more complex. So it might feel somewhat daunting if you haven't done the simpler ones in the past episodes, but do whatever feels right for you just don't do this exercise or any of them while you're driving, operating machinery or doing anything that requires your full attention. All right. I want to tell you briefly about one of my processes.
Speaker 0 00:01:23 You can use this as a general example of how to do the exercise. I was meditating recently and noticed a tightness in my chest and a bit of wheezing. You might wonder why I focused on a physical symptom instead of something mental or emotional. The reason is that there are many channels through which your process expresses itself. Your thoughts, emotions, relationships, and physical processes, such as symptoms, illness, as well as pleasurable and all kinds of physical experiences. I'm going to show you how to work with physical issues in a later episode, but I'm using this example because it illustrates how to amplify an experience. I felt a tightness and dryness in my chest. So I focused on the feeling. I amplified it by imagining it was way tighter and drier than it actually was. I exaggerated it. So I could really experience it fully. Oftentimes our processes send us vague or subtle signals that are difficult to decipher or even pick up on amplifying them, makes them a clearer and easier to work with.
Speaker 0 00:02:48 After I amplified the feeling in my chest, I imagined that my whole body felt tight and dry. I even made my mind tight and dry to do this. I stood up and tensed my whole body. I tensed my muscles, made fists grit, my teeth, and imagined my mind was tight and dry. Are you following? I took a subtle localized experience, amplified it, and then globalized it into a whole body experience. After that I visualized my tensed up feeling and saw a martial artist, tightening his muscles and focusing his mind. He was ready for combat. I studied the image and amplified all the details, his clothes, hair movements, expressions, and so on. I got a really good look at him. Then I made a sound that went along with the image, a sort of sharp grunt, like ha I repeated the sound a bunch of times and meditated on it.
Speaker 0 00:04:05 Ah huh. Ah, after that I sensed what kind of movements my body wanted to make. And I made a cutting motion with my hand, like a karate chop. I expanded the experience by doing all sorts of martial arts type moves. It wasn't really correct martial arts. It was what my body wanted to do. I spent quite a while exploring this, noticing how it felt and what state of mind it put me into. It was a powerful experience. I felt really decisive and absolute. Then I asked myself, what part of me needs this martial artist? In what way do I need this kind of focused fighter attitude? How could it help me in my life? And how did it give me a solution to my wheezing? The answers came to me pretty quickly because it was obvious. I had been feeling pulled by too many people, wanting things from me and I was being super accommodating and adaptable to everyone.
Speaker 0 00:05:22 Instead of doing what I actually felt, which was to be firm and say, sorry, but this time, no, the martial artist showed me how to occupy my decisive power. The next step was for me to be this martial artist. When someone asked or demanded something from me that I didn't want to do, I managed to do this. And not only did I feel better, but my recent tendency to wheeze went away. Did you follow this example? I been wishy-washy in relationship to people, demanding things from me, but I wasn't awake to this fact. I was just going along with things without being conscious of what I really felt. I got woken up by a mild body symptom, a tight and dry feeling in my chest and some wheezing. I amplified it and followed my experience through my feeling, seeing, hearing, and vocalizing and movement, and then identified where in my life I needed this new experience.
Speaker 0 00:06:34 Now I don't want you to misunderstand this. There's nothing here saying you or anyone should be like a martial artist or decisive or whatever. This was my process in that moment. There's no correct way everyone is supposed to be. You might need to be a fighter today and a lover tomorrow. You have to follow your process. Did you notice how the process in my tight chest and wheezing turned out to be the solution for a different problem than the body symptom itself? I hadn't even been aware of the real problem which was being wishy-washy with people. My body symptom was just a doorway into my process. The general rule is the process behind your problem contains a solution for a different and often more important or fundamental issue. So by processing a specific problem, you're implicitly working on your life in a larger sense. Now, I wasn't going to use this example to demonstrate the exercise because I didn't want you to get caught up in thinking, wait, he had a physical symptom.
Speaker 0 00:07:51 Isn't that just physical. How does that have anything to do with his process? In a future episode, I'm going to get way into how your process expresses itself through your physiology and how this goes way beyond the conventional notion of stress induced illness. But I used a physical symptom because it presents a very simple concrete example of amplification. As we get into it, I'll show you how to amplify all sorts of experiences, okay? To begin this exercise, I want you to choose any type of problem to work on and describe what it feels like. Don't just say it feels bad or it hurts, or it sucks. These are vague descriptions that won't get you anywhere. Get really specific and detail and use sensory language, something you can or feel or hear. For example, when I worked on my tight chest and wheezing, I focused on the sensations and noticed my chest felt tight and dry.
Speaker 0 00:09:08 I didn't just say my chest feels crappy today. I'm wheezing because that wouldn't give me any process information. It wouldn't describe how I experienced the issue. Here's some examples of sensory descriptions, a depressed mood could be described as being under a dark cloud, which would be a visual description or dragging a big stone around, which would be a feeling description. An anxious mood could be described as crazy nervous energy racing around in your brain, which could be either visual or feeling or both, or someone might have a vision of being terrified. Running from a monster, feeling hurt in a relationship could be described as being stabbed in the heart, which again, could be visual or feeling or both. Or I remember a client who felt hurt and had a vision of a child abandoned by the side of the road. I once worked with a teenager who described her problem in auditory terms, she couldn't stand hearing. Her parents fight the sound of their voices. Arguing was awful for her. These are just general examples. Use your experience to create a description of your problem. Get creative and specific. Imagine describing it to someone who has never experienced your issue. And you want your description to make him or her experience what it's like, give them a feeling or a picture or a sound that can relate.
Speaker 0 00:11:51 I want you to amplify how your problem feels to do this. Feel it more, whether it's physical or emotional or both hone in on what you feel. In fact, exaggerated beyond what it is, make it stronger, more intense. That's what I did when I amplified the tight and dry feeling in my chest. Instead of just feeling a tiny bit of tightness and dryness and trying to reduce these symptoms, I imagined the tight, dry feeling, a super over the top intense. I upped the experience times a thousand. Now, remember, we're only doing this as a temporary step. It's a way to bring your process to consciousness, suppressing or reducing the symptoms does the opposite. It relieves the pain for the moment, but it doesn't uncover the process. The result is the problem. We'll just return later in the same or even another form. So give it a go amplify your feeling.
Speaker 0 00:14:01 Now that you've amplified your feeling, make a picture in your mind of this feeling. Can you make an image that expresses what you feel? For example, if you feel angry, your image might be of a raging fire or a person screaming. If you feel angry and your image is of a peaceful beach scene, you haven't translated what you really feel into a picture. You've created an image that tries to change what you feel. If you feel depressed and hopeless and you see a picture of a happy rainbow, you've lost the thread of your process. Your picture should express what you actually feel, not what you want to feel. A dark cloud would be a more image of a depressed mood. So go ahead and make a picture of your feeling. Imagine you're an artist, painting an image that expresses precisely what you feel. The image can be still, or you can let it unfold into an inner movie.
Speaker 0 00:16:09 Now I want you to bring a movement into the process, begin by expressing what you feel and see using one hand movement. How could you express your experience with your hand? Imagine you're a gifted dancer who can express a feeling and a picture with one hand motion, take your time to explore this. Then do the same thing with both hands. And after you've done that slowly involve your limbs, torso and whole body move. However you feel moved. Don't worry. If you feel silly or awkward, we're just using movement to access the deeper information in your process. You're not going to have to walk around acting like lunatic. I promise just trust your physical impulses and follow them no matter how strange or weird they are, it'll make sense soon.
Speaker 0 00:18:13 Now continue what you're doing and experience it with your entire being. Feel it, see it and move it freely and follow where it goes. Don't try to figure anything out. Just trust your senses and imagination. Focus on your experience as if it has a wisdom in it. Be patient and let it unfold without stopping to interpret it, explore and experience that in the moment like a child would don't demand answers from it. Just have fun with it, experience it. <inaudible> Okay. Now describe your experience. How do you feel doing this? Powerful, playful, relaxed, creative, spiritual, or something else?
Speaker 0 00:21:07 All right. Now answer these questions. In what way do you need this way of being in your life?
Speaker 0 00:21:56 What part of you needs this? For example, the wishy washy overly agreeable. Part of me needed my martial arts process. Which part of you is this new experience meant for
Speaker 0 00:22:52 How does this way of being, provide you with a solution to your problem?
Speaker 0 00:23:37 How can you apply this way of being in your inner life, your relationships, your work, and your work. You've just learned how to amplify your problem to discover its message. You did this by amplifying your feeling, making it into a picture, translating the feeling and image into hand movements and then full body movements, exploring and unfolding the experience, describing it as a way of being, and then applying this new way of being to your problem and to your whole life. If you feel like it, you can listen to some bonus material next, where I share some of my client's experiences doing this exercise
Speaker 0 00:25:35 Here are some of my clients' experiences using amplification to discover the message in their problems. A 40 year old woman suffered from anger issues. She said she would go along with things people wanted from her, especially her husband, even though she didn't want to. And her resentment would build up over time until she would eventually explode. She visualized it as a hot furnace in her that was always ready to blow up. We amplified our feeling of wanting to explode her sense of being a furnace that could let loose at any time. And she got in touch with a fire, emotional strength that could actually say no to people when she didn't want to do what they demanded of. Her sounds like me and my martial artist, her anger was an unconscious expression of her emotional fortitude and ability to express what she really feels in her relationships.
Speaker 0 00:26:39 A 19 year old woman who identified herself as a weak woman suffered from frequent depressed moods. She said they felt like a heavy weight pushing her down into the ground. We amplified her feeling of the heaviness and she imagined herself as an immovable invincible spirit. She made an image of a Buddha type figure who sat still and silent, but was incredibly powerful. We worked on her bringing her experience of this weighty solid feeling into her life and her depressed moods began reducing her depression was an unconscious expression of her own power. See you next time, stay aware. You can follow me on social media at doctors wig, and you can sign up on the mailing
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