Emotional Repatterning Technique aims to get to the historical causes of emotional patterns that often underly chronic health problems, particularly functional problem.
We are a creature of habits this is nowhere more apparent than in the way we emotionally respond to situations. Most of the habits that influence our automated responses to situations are laid down in the first few years of life. Sometimes people can major emotional trauma, that can impact on how they respond latter to challenging situations.
Having said this though it is the day to day relationships particularly with parents that set the scene for emotional strength or vulnerability. Overly critical parents can create a situation where we become unreasonably tough on ourselves. A violent (emotional or physical) home can lead to a habit of “walking on egg shells” in all potentially fractious situations.
All emotional states have an underlying physical response and the negative emotions, fear, uncertainty, anger etc. lead to a heightened state of alertness called the flight fight response. Given that we are a social animal part of this response is to lock down our emotional expression and to do this we clench the jaw and tighten the diaphragm (the main breathing muscle).
In Emotional Repatterning Technique we first do a standard treatment which could address any underlying body gestalt (whole body picture). These follow set themes such as, chronic stress, uncertainty, cross-bonding (relationships), and in the cases of significant historical events- primary emotional gestalt. Once this has been treated the patient is taken through a process of supervised forced deep hyperventilation.
Given that we control emotional expression by controlling our breathing, forceful breathing stops this control, if we then are faced with a strong emotion it is released as we are unable to contain its expression. This is the first important benefit of forceful controlled breathing.
The repetitive deep breathing causes the body to lose carbon dioxide (a waste gas of respiration) and to load oxygen. This causes the blood/brain chemistry to change such that neurological processes, including the sub-conscious control of the conscious, start to fail. A consequence of this is that old deep held beliefs and their associated memories leak through the unconscious’ barrier making them available to us now. These beliefs are part of the “knowledge” we have that determines how we respond to daily stresses.
If we can expose them to ourselves as the adult we reinterpret them through the adult mind and put them in context, reducing their pernicious influence.
When the practitioner deems the patient ready to address the process themselves, they are often given this breathing exercise as homework. For many though it works better under supervision. There is more often than not a cathartic emotional release that changes the relationship between us and our historical emotional habits.
