Living in the moment

I have always thought that living in the moment was something positive to aim for. Now I am seeing it in a different light courtesy of Drake Eastburn.

Drake is a Certified Hypnotherapist from the US (Denver, Colorado to be precise) and his wife is the fabulous Lynsi Eastburn, the creator of the HypnoFertility programme. I had the pleasure of training with Lynsi in Belfast earlier this year and am pleased to say that she has found time in her busy schedule to come to the UK again in 2009 to be a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the National Council for Hypnotherapy.

Anyway, back to the point in hand. Before training with Lynsi I bought a copy of one of Drake's books called "The Power of the Past" in which he explains Transformational Replay, his take on Hypnotic Regression Therapy. The technique he teaches is brilliant and I now use it in my own practice. I would urge any practising hypnotherapist out there to have a read. Drake's writing style is so easy to read that you'll consume it whole in a matter of hours and then go back for more.

So, again I have digressed. The point about living in the moment is made in the first chapter, "How We Become Who We Are", and Drake explains that at any given moment not much is really going on and that whatever is going on is the product of all the stuff that happened prior to that one moment. Basically, he asserts that without our history there would be no moment.

So far so good, but it really comes to light when he introduces the analogy of music. He explains that the moment, the now, is just one single note. And now I'm going to quote directly because Drake's own words are so much better than my paraphrasing:

"No matter how sweet that note might sound, for that brief moment while it's drifting through the air, it is just one brief note. It is all the other notes that led up to that note that create the melody that, when brought together, sounds so delicious. With only one note there will be no melody..."

"Our history creates the melody of our lives. Without our history we would not be the people we are today. Each moment in our lives is one of the notes that creates the melody (story) of our lives."

The point he goes on to explain is that our history is an important part of who we are now and it can be a motivator or an excuse for how we live our lives. It's up to us to choose. People who recognise their history and deal with it in a healthy manner can gain wisdom and build character in the process.

Having recognised our history we can then go on to move forward and change it, or rewrite our own symphony, to return to the musical analogy.

That's where regression therapy comes into play because one of the problems with trying to change our history is that early events are often no longer in our conscious memory but in the subconscious memory, where they continue to play an important part in how we act and think (we just don't realise it!). So regression therapy is about talking to the subconscious mind to get to the core issue quickly and effectively so that we can start to move forward.

Thank you for the inspiration Drake.

Namaste,

Tracy xx