With Love,

Karyne

When I could not get off 195 in Fall River because of Friday’s heavy traffic, I drove directly to see the client in Portsmouth, telling myself I would return to see Aunt Miriam that evening after our family dinner. Nicole, who I picked up after work with the client, declined dinner with us because she had a lot of homework due for her Saturday class. Sensitive to her needs. I called Jack and with a disappointed tone of voice, he said: “do what you think is best”. Therefore, I dropped Nicole at the house to study. When I got to Jack’s office, the door was locked and he was gone. I found him having just finished unloading the RV. We drove home separately and it took untill 9 pm to discuss the situation and get back on track. We then went to dinner (just the two of us) and made up.

Now it was 10:30 and I had no energy left. I went home to bed, telling myself that I would go to the hospital first thing in the morning before the workshop that I was leading. I awoke at 7:30 am to find that my sister had called my cell phone during the night. When I returned the call, she told me that my aunt had passed away at 3:00 am. The hospital had tried to reach me but because my cell phone battery was almost dead,  I did not hear it ring. My sister  also tried to call me, but she was using a number that was no longer in use.

Sadly, my trip to say goodbye to my aunt took place in Saint Anne’s morgue rather than in her room. My guilt, now slowly turning to regret, is that I wanted to be with her when she passed over and instead she was with strangers, frightened and then alone. For me this story shows the twisted consequences that may occur when other people’s needs are put first and your own are ignored. My only need that Friday was to be in that hospital with my aunt. And that is the one place I did not end up.

So as not to end on an entirely dismal note, when I spoke to a respected healer about this, she offered to get in touch with my aunt. The message that came back is “that she is grateful I moved her to be close to me, that there weren’t any mistakes, and it was all divine order helping her to leave when she did. Above all she was grateful to be loved so much.

If you have had similar experiences, or would interpret this one differently, please let me know.

I felt tremendous empathy with her. My mother had died of ovarian cancer at a similar, youthful age, 59. The work as I normally do it, designed to release stagnant, blocked energy in the muscles, organs, and tendons of the body, would have been too strong for her in her weakened state. So at first we talked and then we found gentle types of energy work that she grew to love.

Together we faced the resentment held in an out-of-awareness state about not being able to bear her own child, because her husband did not want another, even though she graciously raised his three children from a previous marriage. There was also anger at the parents who could not give her love and rage and shame in connection to the fiancee who canceled the wedding at the last moment.

She died a champion, a courageous soul. When she could no longer come to my place, I went to hers. We sat and rocked in her sunroom looking out the windows at the autumn leaves. In the winter I stood by her bedside listening to her breathe for the last time. Her family gathered around her. I stood there, guarding her passage or perhaps witnessing it until midnight, when I left. The next morning her husband called to tell me that she died in the wee hours of the morning.

When John was 11 years of age, a sexual experience with a girl cousin caused him to fear being punished by his father. Because he excelled in school, he was placed in a French Lycee, an equivalent of an American high school and although the courses were difficult, he felt proud of his achievements. He enjoyed competing with other students and getting good grades. His father traveled for work, and when he would return to be with the family, John felt distant from him. Still afraid of him, John expected to be punished for his sexual escapades. On the other hand, these were active, enjoyable years and Jonn played volleyball and soccer daily, taking pleasure in the role of team leader.

At the age of 15, things changed for John because his father died in an accident and he was left to take care of the family and manage the family property. His father had purchased property in Athens and this property provided the family with a comfortable income. Following his father,’s death, John felt frozen; he wasn’t able to access his feelings or cry. However the guilt from his early sexual explorations diminished, and John felt  liberated from his fear after his father passed away.

At the age of 18 When he finished high school, John’s sister Catina invited him to come to the United States to study. At that time the Germans had already taken France. John left Greece on the last steamboat from the port of Pireaus. His dream to come to the United States was now coming true. He arrived in 1940 entering Columbia College where he studied for 4 years.  For the first 3 years after his arrival in the states, he felt lost, because he did not know the language, and he had to struggle with his studies at Columbia College.  He said that “In the 1^st year I almost flunked out, but by the 3^rd year I was on the Dean’s List and I was amazed to find out how capable I was in my studies when I wanted to apply myself.” Soon he met a female student who was very sweet and accepting. This relationship gave him a lot of confidence and feelings of self worth.

After Columbia, John was accepted to study medicine at the Downstate Medical Center in New York. In medical school he was able to concentrate and focus, and his good marks allowed him to finish in 3 years. Because It was wartime, 1943-44, studies were abbreviated so that students could be of service to the nation. John graduated from medical school in 1947. By now he was in another relationship with a woman of Greek origin, named Ragone. After 3 years, they married and John continued his post-graduate studies in psychiatry. He also met Reich in 1947 and began therapy with him. John was deeply impressed by this man and the intense way Reich worked with him, breaking down his defenses. However, John believed that he never completely resolved his transference toward Reich during the year he worked with him. Then he began Orgone therapy with Dr. Elsworth Baker and that continued for approximately  3 years. During the same time he worked as a psychiatric resident, continued his studies with Reich, and also participated in a classical psychiatric training.

John took a position as a staff member at Kings County hospital. There he felt very alone, since he was the only staff member who was a follower and student of Reich and Orgone therapy. It was very dangerous to be Reichan in those days, since Reich was ostracized and maligned by the psychiatric profession. John left his position at the hospital following an argument with the director about Reich and he established his own office for the practice of psychiatry in 1950. After he opened the office, Alexander Lowen asked to share the office. Lowen had just come from Europe having completed his medical studies there. During that time, Ragone and John celebrated the birth of Eva, their first daughter. And at the same time he started developing the Bioenergetic field with Alexander Lowen; this occurred because they were practicing together and having many discussions. John described this  stage of his life as very significant, because it helped him focus on independence and creativity, two concepts central to the later development of Core Energetics.

Someone recently mentioned The Celestine Prophecy to me. Remembering that book reminded me why this Two Year Professional Training in Holistic Counseling, Core Energetics, and Core Living Therapy is so important to me and to those who are enrolling in it. A sentence that stuck with me said: “When something beyond chance leads us forward in our lives than we become more actualized. We feel as if we are obtaining what destiny is leading us to become.”

I hope that the therapists, healers, and body workers who sign up for this training experience themselves moving forward in life guided by mysterious coincidence. This training is designed for those professionals who desire to understand the psychological implications of energy and its healing qualities, and for those interested in finding their truth and experiencing tranformation.Curriculum 2011-2012 Integrative and Energy Theory for Therapists and Healers; The Holistic Treatment of Trauma; Holistic Techniques for Enmeshment and Betrayal; Reading the Body to Creat a Treatment Plan; Exploring Sexuality Through Integrative Techniques; Suptervision and Process Group — Every Weekend

Director: Karyne B. Wilner, PsyD, First Year Dates: Friday – Sunday: October 28-30, November 18-20, 2011 — January 27-29, March 23-35, May 25-27, 2012, Place: 3047 East Main Road, Portsmouth, RI, 02871 Inexpensive nearby motels for those traveling from a distance. Questions and Information: 401-316-7041 or karynew@aol.com. More Information at www.corevibratons.com.

This is a question I have been thinking about. I had no plans to change my practice. I loved being a humanistic psychotherapist, basing my interventions on the work of Rogers, Perls, Schutz, Gendlin, Erikson, and even Ellis. Experiences such as empty chair work and Rogerian reflection deepened the therapeutic process, and because I felt free to express myself, rather than wearing the therapist blank screen mask, I created meaningful relationships with my clients.

Yet, the process changed in an even more fulfilling way once I met John Pierrakos, MD, at a Humanistic Psychology Conference. Seeing his work with the body and his ability to help people recognize the personality and behavioral components they needed to change in order to enrich their lives let me know that there was something more that I could introduce into my practice. At first, I was my own guinea pig. And when I saw the changes in my own life, such as opening myself to love again, finishing my doctorate, adopting a child, and taking my career in a new direction, I was encouraged to try a more holistic program with my clients. Bt integrating many of the humanistic methods that I have always loved with body therapy, my clients found more fulfillment in their lives and they changed at a quicker pace than I or they thought possible.

So when other professionals ask me why they should attend trainings in alternative methods that focus on the body, meditation, and energy work, I can think of many reasons. For social workers, psychologists, and counselors whose emphasis is traditional, talk, or cognitive therapies, consideration of a more holistic methodology might take place when boredom sets in, when clients don’t change after many hours of work, when there is less pleasure in going to work, when your own life feels stuck, when you realize that therapy is about more than just problems, when DSM diagnoses are no longer working for all your clients, and when you want to help people have more pleasure in their lives, be in their truth more often, and open their hearts.

Much warmth,

Karyne Wilner

I have no intention to abandon bioenergetics. I found through my twenty or so years of experience that it’s not enough. I believe that there are other aspects of man that need to be included and activated in order to help man go beyond his character resistances into which he’s trapped. Not by an outside factors which are historically included in his development but by his own inner processes.

I accept your wish not to want to enter my own experiences and discoveries and stay with the central reality of man in his humanness. However, what you don’t perceive is that the humanness depends upon the expansion of the consciousness of man together with the energetic experiences of life. The humanness is the perception of the consciousness of being, and it is indeed a spiritual experience since it incorporates the energetic and the consciousness dimension of life.

Anyway, I just want to add that it’s far from my mind and intention to preach a new (or old) philosophy, or religion. I intend to expand my field of operation and to show that anyone can find out what can be argued about, accepted, believed in or not accepted or believed in. There was a time when Freud came up and showed us that an unconscious mind existed. A lot of people were up in arms and protested that such a thing could not possibly exist. Yet Freud also had a way that led those who were willing and open minded to undertake the journey, to find out for themselves, as an incontrovertible fact that they indeed possessed an unconscious. It is peculiar that people rather argue in order to deny than follow, the road that might show them that what was claimed, indeed exists. By arguing, the discomfort can be avoided without having to admit that one simply feels scared to go that way. And I have to tell you David, that I object to your implications that I have now become “slightly fuzzy in my head”, with an escapist brand of evangelism looking for salvation or worse yet a mystic up in the clouds.

One more thing: you refute the “trinitarian” concept (again, you’re the one who puts a religious concept on it) view of man. You deny the fact that man has a body, a soul and a spirit. On the one hand, you’re right. These are all aspects of the same oneness of consciousness. Yet, as it manifests with the average human being, this oneness, is split off and needs to be mended. In many instances man is deliberate in his intent and aware of the fact that he’s either a body, a soul, or a spirit. Similarly, energy and consciousness are the same expressions of the same oneness of life. Energy is consciousness and consciousness is energy.  Again, this oneness is often split and needs to be integrated. Man can be of one piece and in the rare, most ideal case, he is. He can achieve this state after a great deal of hard work, honest self-confrontation and willingness to work and change. BUT HE’S NOT APRIORI OF ONE PIECE. Not only is he dualistic or Trinitarian but often he consists of many more diverse “selves” that need to be brought into awareness. I think you really know this by somehow I see an inclination on your part to interpret my basic position in a preconceived way.

In relation to how are the people who are searching to decide to go for the “bioenergetic health of the body or to accept my offer of the water of life”—my answer is, that you are making this division, not me! As I have said in my letter the dimensions of energy and consciousness are one, and that some people would like to stay in the experience of the energy level and some people would like to transverse the forest and take a longer trip into the beauty of life. There is no contradiction whatsoever.

Man has to synthesize, integrate the past, the present and the future. We are living the last few years of the century. There is a new consciousness about life in many human beings. New ways, new methods are being found to heal the wounds of our age. We cannot develop these new tools unless we have an open mind that will allow the core of man to express itself fully.”

letter written by John Pierrakos, MD to a colleague

“Throughout my twenty years of psychiatric practice, I have come to the conclusion that the old format of doctor-patient relationship is no longer sufficient to fill the needs of an emerging new consciousness in man. My own personal development had led me on a pathway that has enabled me to resolve deep-seated problems that could heretofore not dissolve. I have begun, in recent years, to use new approaches and methods that have yielded similar results in those who committed themselves to search further within themselves. This has led me to the realization that these approaches and methods could be communicated to other therapists, psychiatrists and all those who help other human beings to find their highest potentials.”

“The beginning of this century was an era of the discoveries of the unconscious mind by Freud, of the concepts of the psyche by Jung, and the integration of the energy concepts of the body by Reich. Each one of these men carry a specific task in the understanding of man. All three represent the three aspects of man: the body, the mind and the soul.”

” The era of integration of body, mind and soul is psychiatry has also arrived in the same manner as in politics, government, education and other disciplines.”

” Within the core of man lie literally limitless creative potentials to change his life, his circumstances, his own limitations of self-expression. To reach this core, is not a simple matter. But once the resistance to finding this power of self-creation is faced and worked through, new freedoms open up in the living center of man.”

“This new approach constitutes a new modality in therapy to be known as CORE THERAPY. The main purpose of the Institute for Core Therapy will be to develop new concepts in the healing process. This approach integrates the body, emotions, mind and soul with the core, or higher self. Those who explore this evolutionary process will come in touch with a higher consciousness in themselves and be able to help others in that direction.”

Louise tells the group she hates her body and she has had spinal surgery for scoliosis.

I tell her that she may have received a dose of hate while she was still in the womb. Her body is wounded, but not ugly.

KBW “Your psychological wound seems to have been created by an early dose of hate, usually in the first 3 months of life. You may have felt you were not lovable and not wanted. At times you may have felt something like ‘what’s the use of being here; why even go on’. This is not a suicidal thought, but a sense of not belonging, not fitting in, in any shape or form. Some people who receive this wound are very spiritual. Are you spiritual? “

L “Yes, I am.“

“KBW “You also tend to detach from what is happening around you. Do you tune out some of the time?”

L “Yes, I do.”

KBW “Your chest is relatively boney and the ribs stick out. This is generally a sign of early deprivation and abandonment. Your parenting figures may not have supported you, although some of this may have happened in a past life.”

“The collapse in your feet at the arch shows feelings of unworthiness and not being able to stand up for yourself. “

L “My defense is to prove the opposite, that I am worthy.”

KBW “You stand with your feet fairly wide apart in an effort to ground and make up for the support you did not receive. The problem is that by standing with your legs and feet far apart your life energy is free to dissipate, so that it is no longer yours.”

KBW “The scoliosis in your spine shows that when you came into this world you brought with you a powerful soul or personality. You were more powerful than your family could handle, and in order to live in your family you had to squash this power. When the child squashes this power it distorts the spine and leads to scoliosis.”

KBW “You must be a very strong person, for even with this kind of wounding, you seem to function well. You did not end up in a mental hospital.”

KBW “I suggest to you work on your anger (when the young child or infant receives hate, she mirrors it back to the world in the form of suppressed anger or hate.) Once you release the anger, you are free to develop your femininity and your soft side. Your body has not yet filled in the feminine softness. Your legs are positioned apart in a masculine stance, and by keeping them so far apart you lose your grounding and your sexual energy.”

KBW “What is your purpose here on the planet? How can you achieve more personal fulfillment. With this wound, it is important to explore your life purpose and to make a full commitment to life.”

L “I exist and I fight back. I am a life coach and I am active in politics.”

KBW “What do you want for yourself? “

L “I want love, but I don’t know how to get it.”

KBW “You must open your heart, but that goes hand and hand with getting out your anger.”

We end when I ask her to open her arms toward the group of people who are observing the reading and embrace them and receive their loving feelings. Many of whom come up and hug her.