April / May 2004

REGRESSION HYPNOTHERAPY: Transcripts of Transformation Vol. I
BY RANDAL CHURCHILL
Transforming Press, 2002, $45, 432
pp., ISBN: 0965621812.
Reviewed by Sharon G. Mijares

This book describes methods of hypnotherapeutic regression, a valuable tool for healing erroneous beliefs and traumatic emotions, beliefs, and behaviors related to unresolved childhood experiences. Volume One is a good primer for learning how to utilize ideomotor signals, a technique widely used by hypno-therapists to evoke unconscious dialogues. Typically, the hypnotist elicits a designated finger to give the answer “yes” or “no” to specific questions asked during a hypnotic trance. Mr. Churchill provides the reader with explicit descriptions for achieving this experience. Churchill explains, “Now I would like you to visualize the word ‘no.’ There is a certain finger that is your ‘no’ finger. Just think, hear, see the word ‘no’ in your mind’s eye until a certain finger begins to lift and to rise (Mary’s middle finger rises). Good, your middle finger is your ‘no’ finger. (Randal taps the finger.).” The reader is not only primed in the use of ideomotor signals and regression techniques but provided with examples that combine Gestalt psychotherapy with hypnotic technique. The book describes how each technique can be used, why it is used—followed by explicit directions. One bothersome and unnecessary element is that Churchill speaks against [Milton] Ericksonian principles, naming a few popular Ericksonian hypnotherapists. This was unnecessary and diminished the book’s integrity. Hopefully, this will not occur in the future volumes. The book includes more than 13 case histories with detailed descriptions of hypnotic techniques utilizing regression therapy to evoke transformative experience. For example, hypnotic regression is used to overcome fear of public speaking and also to define one’s boundaries. Each therapeutic dialogue is printed so that the reader can clearly see the trans-formation process. Woven throughout are clearly described examples, which illuminate this book.

SHARON G. MIJARES, Ph.D., is a Self Relations psychotherapist residing in Cardiff by the Sea, CA. She is the editor of Modern Psychology and Ancient Wisdom: Psychological Healing Practices from the World’s Religious Practices (2003). She recently co-edited The Psychospiritual Clinician’s Handbook (Summer, 2004) with Gurucharan Singh Khalsa. www.sharonmijares.com

HEALING THE WAR BETWEEN THE GENDERS: The Power of The Soul-Centered Relationship
BY LINDA MARKS
HeartPower Press, 2003, $20, 240
pp., ISBN: 0974452203.
Reviewed by Carroy U. Ferguson

As humanity seeks to understand its next evolutionary journey and to evolve its consciousness, insightful thinkers and writers have emerged to identify where we must first heal and to provide guidance for how to heal. In her book Healing The War Between The Genders: The Power of the Soul-Centered Relationship, Linda adeptly discusses what she calls a “cultural heart wound” as being at the center of the gender struggle. In this context, the struggle actually transcends heterosexual relationships, gender-role conflicts, and particular one-to-one dynamics per se. As each person has what are often called male and female energies, “the war” is a much deeper struggle about how best to blend these energies, using the head and heart. To a large extent, then, as the deeper struggle is healed individually and culturally, we give birth to what Linda calls “soul-centered relationships.” This is a major shift in consciousness for thinking about relationships, and Linda deserves a great deal of credit for calling our attention to what must be healed, how we can go about doing it, and what the genders can do to co-create a different way of relating to self and others. In this regard, Linda provides the reader with excellent frameworks for thinking about co-creating soulcentered relationships.

Appropriately, the healing that is required is related to what Linda calls “the traumatized heart.” Referencing important research about the electromagnetic field related to the heart, Linda shows that such heart-focus healing is not just a metaphor. There are real things going on between people, between the genders, at an energy level—heart-to-heart, heart-tohead, and head-to-head. In some of my own writings, I call this kind of healing activity “soul-linking,” which is very much aligned with Linda’s ideas about soulcentered relationships. In this context, Linda does not shy away from the hard questions related to the “war between the genders.” Indeed, she embraces the questions and explores how to “honor the male heart,” how to “hear the female heart,” how to “integrate sexuality and spirituality,” how to give “birth to soul-centered relationships,” how to “empower the heart’s voice,” how to “prevent the gender wars in the next generation,” and how to “restore essential connec-tions” to our nature, soul, rela-tionships, community, and God.

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Linda suggests that the current paradigm for our personality-based relationships is “rooted in doing, externals, and role performance.” In contrast, the new paradigm we are evolving toward for soulcentered relationships is “rooted in being, internals, and intimate connection.”

This soul-centered model of relationship is viewed as rooted in the emotional, spiritual, and process aspects of a relationship such that:
(1) relationship is understood as a spiritual part-nership as well as a practical partnership;
(2) the partners understand the importance of emotional awareness and more sophisticated communication skills than were expected in personality-based relationships;
(3) needs are recognized as points of human vulnerability, connection, and exchange;
(4) a primary partnership is viewed in the context of a system of significant relationships; and
(5) two people come to a partnership each anchored in a clear, grounded sense of self.

To build a soul-centered relationship, for example, Linda outlines the following components:
(1) selfmarriage as the first commitment;
(2) recognizing that the relation-ship is a living organism: 1 + 1 = 3;
(3) learning about space needs (separate space and relational space);
(4) cultivating connection by using all of one’s senses and experimenting;
(5) taking time for relationship process work to talk about the hard stuff, fine tunings, and appreciations;
(6) making time to touch each other emotionally, physically, and sexually;
(7) developing a shared vision which incorporates both partners’ dreams;
(8) incorporating play, fun, and pleasure into the relationship.

CARROY U. FERGUSON, Ph. D., is Professor, University of Massachusetts- Boston, and Associate Editor, Journal of Humanistic Psychology.