I said, it’s the kind of magic that comes out of your mouth,
when you’re feeling just about as good
as you’ve ever felt in your life
for no reason in particular,
for example.
Or how when you realize that you’re connected
to everything in the whole wide world,
even the things you can’t see or hear,
something changes.
And it’s no big deal, or maybe
it changes everything you thought was possible
about your life and the world.
The Five Keys
The five keys we spoke of and taught during this retreat were:
Having a ‘towards’ or positive orientation, seeing the best in people and situations, looking for a person’s ‘Soul Masterpiece’ rather than focusing on fixing them.
Dreaming.. Having a fertile imagination, exercising your creative power, imagining what’s possible and then cultivating ways to make it happen, to make it inevitable. Inhabiting the world of your dreams.
Developing a sense of safety, and serenity. Creating an inner landscape in which you are certain of your own safety. Knowing that you are part of the web of life, and that nothing can change that.
Presence. Being attentive to the reality of the present moment, to the myriad ways you are interconnected to everyone and everything, seen and unseen. Mindfulness.
Rapport. Developing alignment with yourself, so that you can then have alignment, connection, and rapport with others. Communicating from your soul / spirit / unconscious.
How many times do you hear people say: “I’m tired of going round in circles.” ”I wish I could change.” “Nothing works.” ”I never thought it was going to be this hard.” “Something keeps stopping me.” “I’ll make do.” “It doesn’t matter.” ” Maybe something will shift soon.”
Perhaps you have said some of it yourself.
What if it were possible to flip a switch to take you, or your clients, from negative to positive, from anxiety to calm, from frustration to confidence, from stagnation to resourcefulness?
There is only one way to create permanent positive change, to have ongoing emotional resilience and vitality, and to have explosive creative energy whenever you need it.
It is to become aligned with your unconscious mind — your heart, your spirit .. it doesn’t matter what you call it.
And there’s really only one way to maintain this inner-outer balance, though it can take on different names and forms.
We’re talking about hypnosis or trance, the state that bypasses reasons and excuses, analysis and second-guessing , and gives you the magic keys to make deep change real.
It’s how you can sweep away the old obstacles and stories of what’s possible, and what’s not, and what you can, or can’t, should, or shouldn’t do.
For centuries, for as long as humans have been around, hypnosis has allowed people to dive into their sou, and do the healing work of making evolutionary change real.
Unless you can create trance in yourself and for others, unless you understand the power of words to evoke instant hypnosis you are missing a HUGE opportunity to help yourself and your clients live a happier, more integrated, and successful life.
This three day training at Manzanita Village is an immersion that we guarantee will change your life!!
A three-day residential retreat-immersion training at Manzanita Village May 27-30, 2016
with Caitriona Reed and Michele Benzamin-Miki
“Nearly everyone lives in a trance of disempowerment.
Our work is to change that trance to a trance of empowerment.” — Milton Erickson
Every Word Counts
We (Caitriona and Michele), love hypnosis! We’ve studied, practiced and taught it for three decades. It’s the doorway into the unconscious mind-hear-spirit — your own and others’. Every effective and powerful healer, mentor, teacher, activist, or public speaker we’ve ever seen is effective and powerful precisely because they are good hypnotists, whether they know it or not.
Good communication is about listening to, and speaking to, the deepest parts of our longing, and cutting through the inertia of habitual thoughts, fears, and addictive patterns.
It begins with learning what to listen for, the words between the lines, the words inside the silence; and then knowing how to speak back to them. This is where hypnosis and trance come in. It’s like becoming the co-pilot inside someone’s life, to give them skills the never knew they had.
We’re talking about embracing the magic you were born to make, and becoming a truly excellent communicator.
The Demon Voice Inside
Most people have multiple conversations going on inside their own head; pulling them in different directions; simultaneously moving them forward, and holding them back. That internal commentary can say things that are more harsh than anything we’d ever dream of saying to someone else.
There’s another voice, outside the inner tug-of-war; an inner guide, the voice of intuition and empathy, a voice fully capable of bridging the gap between where you are and where you want to be .. in your life, your business, and in how you can learn to draw the best out of others.
There are many ways to stop that inner tug-of-war — for a while. But unless the issues are addressed at the deepest level, they will always resurface.
All Hypnosis is Self-Hypnosis
Hypnosis, or trance, is simpler than most people think, Trance is a natural state of mind that we go in and out of many times a day. Through trance we do all our important learning, changing, and healing. It’s how we change the conversation inside to realize what we truly long for.
It’s learning to make what once seemed an impossibility into an inevitability It’s turning fear to joy, inertia to energy, life-as-usual to a creative flow.
And it’s how we can learn to help others to do the same.
Helping people get what they want,
so that they will help you get what you want
Building good rapport, and listening to what is really being said, will help you help others to get what they want. Helping others get what they want, naturally benefits you. It’s very simple. Life is not a battlefield, nor a competition for limited resources. We are wired to connect with each other through multiple channels of effective communication..
Hypnosis, Conversational Hypnosis and NLP
This is a three day, hands-on retreat-training in which you will learn how to go into deep trance, how to hypnotize others, to benefit and enhance the work you already do as a healer, coach, salesperson, communicator, and leader.
We will cover:
The different kinds of trance and hypnotic states.
Why the Law of Attraction and Affirmations don’t work for most people, and how to change that.
How to read and use people’s unique communication and learning styles.
Why NLP works so well, and how to use its central principles to help people change habits and behaviors they thought they never could.
How to hypnotize ANYONE to move them into a ‘trance of empowerment’.
The Most Important Lesson You’ll Ever Learn
For your unique gifts and power to become effective and visible, you must be seen.
For you to be seen, you must be trusted, heard and clearly understood.
To be heard and understood means that you are an evolutionary leader. You will automatically move, inspire, and transform others. Your, intuition, clarity, and fierce compassion come to the surface and become a clear mirror to the world.
This is a no-nonsense magical immersion into the world of trance and hypnotic transformation. Please join us for this powerful training.
$927 Includes accommodation and vegetarian-vegan meals
Special discount $327 – good through March 31st
Includes accommodation and vegetarian-vegan meals
[vimeo 147561319 alt=”retreat at Manzanita Village”]
Meditation, presence, and soul-work brain-mind change retreat in the spectacular setting of Manzanita Village.
Whenever you learn something new, or break through to a new level of understanding, or make a big change in your life-path, it can feel overwhelming.
We know that, because we struggled and pushed for years until we started to believe that this was how life was supposed to be.
But real change is easier than we fear, once we learn to focus our attention on the deep resources we already have, rather than on the imagined uncertainties ahead.
When we tap into what we love and care about most, and understand that this is what the universe is calling us to do, and that we have an obligation to follow our soul’s calling.. the path in front of us is made clear ..
It still takes a concerted effort, a passionate commitment. The difference is, now you know that you can!
For us, it meant we had to stop listening to all the ideas other people had about what we should or shouldn’t be doing.
Then you cross a watershed, and you know that regardless of future challenges, there’s no turning back.
The irony is, what you thought were obstacles is nothing morethan your own resistance to your heart’s longing.
The work of a lifetime? or the work of a moment?
Make Manzanita Village the place to set the tone and direction for 2016! Register here
Shared accommodation (with private room option). Home cooked vegan food. Private time, walking time, silent time. Deep-dive into who you are when you start to leave behind the clutter that hides you from seeing your own brilliance.
with love and blessings
If you asked me for my New Year resolution
it would be to find out who I am. –Cyril Cusack
Keep Love Strong There is virtually nothing known about the historical Saint Valentine. How appropriate is that!
Five Ways to Keep Love going and Keep Love Strong
Romantic love is such an all-pervading theme in contemporary culture that we assume it to be a human, if not a universal characteristic, “birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it,” as Cole Porter’s song tells us. Romantic love is now the perennial theme of songs, movies, and literature. But it wasn’t always so, at least not in the way we now take for granted.
The modern western notion of Romantic love first arrived in the form of Courtly Love during the later Middle Ages from the Persian and Arab world. It’s not to say that people didn’t have the hots for each other prior to that time, it’s just that love wasn’t ceremonialized as it now is. Marriage was more of an expediency.
Sex, until western culture learned about sexual pleasure from exposure to Indian culture in the 18th century, had little of the sophistication we (at least, some of us) have come to expect from it. It was more of a biological imperative.
Fortunately, it seems that love (and sex), in all its relatively recent glory is “here to stay” – as another unforgettable song goes.
“Our Love is Here to Stay”
Last month we celebrated 32 years together. We stumbled into our relationship, the week I had arrived in Los Angeles. After a month we moved into a huge downtown loft. Within a few months we traded downtown smog for the air at the beach, where we stayed for ten years until moving out to the mountains at Manzanita Village.
We broke up once, early on, for half a year. Sometimes we mention it to friends in the middle of their own break-up. It seems to give them comfort and hope.
In addition to living together we have worked together, run a retreat center, lead workshops and retreats together. Now as we launch our new business, we are working together more closely than ever. It has not always been easy. We’ve been through many transitions and life-changes. Who doesn’t in thirty years? So here are a few things we learned on the way, in no particular order of priority.
Six Ways to Keep love Strong :
Get A Life
“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” Antoine de Saint-
Exupéry.
We do not share all the same friends. There are things we do together and things we do alone. We do share many interests in common, and there are some interests, and friends, we do not share. We go through phases. There have been times when we do more things together than at others. Neither of us takes it personally.
Unconditional means that there are no conditions
Actually, there are always conditions; like integrity, truthfulness (which doesn’t always mean telling each other every damn little thing), staying true to oneself and one’s passions. When Caitrìona changed her sex 15 years ago, Michele supported her. When Caitriona had hesitated from making that transition the previous year, Michele had threatened to leave, because Caitrìona’s hesitation smacked of falsehood and inauthenticity.
After Caitrìona’s transition it seemed clear to both of us that ‘unconditional’ had to mean what it implied. We could no longer deny each other the kind of feelings—and needs and desires and curiosity—that were emerging in relation to other people.
So our relationship became an open one, based on mutual respect, and a sense that we would remain together no matter what happened, or who showed up. There were, of course, no actual guarantees, just a vague sense that we would stay together. It allowed us to be completely open with other people, regardless of whether they were lovers or not. There was, and remains, a wonderful sense of spaciousness in loving someone very much, but without any sense of possessiveness or anxiety.
Finding a Higher Purpose
Some people look to religion, a set of beliefs or values, that they subscribe to. We tend to be a little more fluid, even when we had a more official role as Buddhist teachers. Perhaps it’s simply a matter of keeping the bigger picture in mind, seeking to bring the best out in oneself, each other, and other people. It may sound trite, but it boils down to feeling good in order to do good. It’s not even something to remember, just a central value that we both share, a simple priority.
Creativity
Everybody changes; most of us transform into entirely different people in the space a few years .. or days, or hours. Then there are some things that don’t change, or change very slowly. The textures that exists between what changes and what doesn’t, or doesn’t seem to, is the raw material of art, of creativity, of life itself.
We both thrive on new ideas and impulses, new directions and discoveries. Sometimes we both think with horror of how it would be to live with someone who relied with stubborn tenacity on being predictable. It’s not that it is bad to be like that, it’s just that we have survived by being reliably changeable.
Laugh Out Loud
Just do what you have to do to keep love strong in your life.
“Oh darling, stop taking things so seriously. Life is far too serious to take seriously.” Noel Coward Private Lives
“The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.” Quentin Crisp
Just today we were getting impatient with each other, and not being very nice. We definitely do not try to be nice all the time and sometimes we leak energy in a way that might be shocking to more demure souls. But even as we were snapping at each other today, we were making jokes about it, and giggling. Within minutes we were laughing. A few moments later, and all the rough edges were gone.
There was a study once, of couples who had been together for fifty or more years, and the vast majority claimed that the one thing that kept their relationship going was their ability to laugh at themselves.
You don’t have to try this at home
We were not nearly as good at letting emotions go when we first got together; and I can’t imagine that we could have started out with an open relationship. In the beginning there were plenty of conditions, expectations, and anxieties. This is just an account of what we discovered along the way, not necessarily a recommendation for others .. Wishing you a good laugh, and lots of letting go, on this feast of St Valentine and to remind you to keep love strong in your life.
For some fascinating insights on such modern notions as love, sex, travel, learning and more look at An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin.
Keeping Love Strong, Five Ways to Keep Love Going Strong, Unconditional means that there are no conditions, Finding a Higher Purpose. Keep Love Strong. Mediation, NLP, spiritual practice, Neuro lingusitic programming, Hypnosis, personal development, unconscious mind.
How many times do you hear people say: “I’m tired of going round in circles.” ”I wish I could change.” “Nothing works.” ”I never thought it was going to be this hard.” “Something keeps stopping me.” “I’ll make do.” “It doesn’t matter.” ” Maybe something will shift soon.”
