Time Line Therapy®
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Klaus Ruhl
Certified Trainer
& Master Practitioner
of Time Line® Therapy |
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A simple process that allows you to let go of all the negative emotions and limiting decisions from the past and to create your future the way you want it. Time Line TherapyTM is a process of active imagination that utilises the incredible power of your unconscious mind to release limiting beliefs and unprocessed emotions that are impacting your wellbeing.
YOUR TIME LINE:
Who are you if not your collection
of memories? For almost 100 years, psychologists have
agreed that our past experiences do determine who we
are, and how we act. Memories are recorded and stored
as we age and with time they have more and more influence
on us. Our Time Line is the index to the memory encoding
of the unconscious mind, and it is usually wholly unconscious.
THE UNCONSCIOUS
MIND:
In the context of Time Line
Therapy®,
the words "unconscious mind" are not intended
to signify anything mysterious or unusual, simply
the part of your mind of which you are not conscious,
right
now. Your unconscious mind is a very important part
of you. Think about it for just a moment. Here is
a part of you that runs your body; it makes your
heart
beat, causes the lymph system to circulate, your
breathing to continue, your eyes to blink, your stomach
to digest
your food, and many other tasks that perhaps you
had never even considered.
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THE SOURCE:
The first thing to appreciate is that
your unconscious mind is the source of all learning,
all
behaviour
and all change. Let us look at each one of these
individually:
LEARNING: Your unconscious mind is the part of you
that learns, not your conscious mind. Now, you may
have thought that you learned consciously in the
past, and although your learning has to go through
the conscious
mind, it is your unconscious mind that remembers
everything. Everything, once learned, resides in
the unconscious
mind.
Think about all the things you have ever learned.
Until the subject was mentioned, how many of them
did you
remember consciously? Probably none! If you had to
remember all the phone numbers you know consciously,
there wouldn't be enough room for anything else,
would there? So all learning takes place at the unconscious
level.
Think of all the phone numbers you have learned,
and which you now know. For example, you know your
home
phone number, do you not? If you'd like to do this
with me, please say it to yourself. Now before you
were thinking of your home phone number, where was
it?
Obviously it was stored somewhere, of which you
were not conscious -- that is your unconscious mind
-- the part of your mind of which you are not conscious,
right now. What's important about that is that all
your learning -- everything you have ever learned
-- is stored in your unconscious mind.
BEHAVIOUR: Most of our behaviour is an unconscious
response to external stimuli. When you walk you just
decide to move from point A to point B. It is your
unconscious mind that takes care of all of the intricate
muscle movements to get the job done.
When your colleague asks you “How Are You?”,
you respond “Fine” without even thinking.
When you are driving your car to work your conscious
mind drifts and the unconscious mind takes care of
all of the complexities of driving. One day when
you need to stop somewhere unusual on the way you
are just
as likely to forget because your unconscious is just
running a program called “Go to work” which
does not include today’s stopover.
The unconscious mind is the automation engine of
the mind. It is responsible for the bulk of the work.
Successful
people have effective software programs running in
their unconscious mind while people who struggle
tend to have less effective programs stored in their
unconscious.
A simple software upgrade can make a world of difference.
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CHANGE: Think of a bad habit you wanted to change
in the past. Was it easy? Probably not. Most people
find
it hard to change a bad habit. For them it's something
that takes time. If change was conscious we could
change our habits easily at will, right Now! In the
real world,
change isn't always that easy. Many people go on
doing the same old things over and over, year after
year
and they complain about it. If change isn't that
easy for us, it is simply because we aren't fully
in rapport
with our unconscious mind. In the real world people
are often not in rapport with the unconscious mind,
and that is why change isn't that easy for them.
Your unconscious mind would really like to be in
rapport with your conscious mind. In fact your unconscious
mind yearns for rapport, and looks up to your conscious
mind like a 5 or 6 or 7 year old brother or sister
might look up to you. It wants your direction and
support,
and it would like to do what you asked if it only
knew how. If you are not feeling like there is rapport
between
your conscious and unconscious mind, it may be because
you were giving confusing messages to the conscious
mind.
Let us look at this idea a little further: Your unconscious
mind cannot process a negative in consciousness.
It's true. In fact, it's also true for the conscious
mind
as well. Think about this. You cannot think about
what you wish to not think about without thinking
about
it. Think about that. For example, if I said, "Don't
think about a pink elephant," what are you thinking
about. Unless you were semantically trained, you
are probably thinking about a pink elephant. Even
though I asked you not to!
Most of us go through our lives telling ourselves, "I
don't want to think about a pink elephant. When you
go in to see the boss, do you say, "I hope he
doesn't get angry like the last time."? Or when
starting out in a new relationship, do you say, "Gee,
I hope I don't get hurt."? Or how about a salesperson
going in to make a sale and saying, "I hope I
don't blow this sale."?
Do you do that? If you do, you may be giving the
wrong signal to your unconscious mind. If it is the
wrong
signal, it is because the unconscious mind cannot
process a negative in consciousness. So, to facilitate
communication
between the conscious and the unconscious minds let
us find out a little more about this part of us which
is so important, and of which we are so little aware
-- the unconscious mind.
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PRIME DIRECTIVES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND:
1. TO STORE OUR MEMORIES: The unconscious
mind provides he coordination for the storage of
memories. Research
as far back as 1957 (the Penfield Study) indicates
that everything that happens is recorded faithfully
and stored as memory. You may remember that in 1957,
they probed a woman's brain with an electrode, and
she remembered everything that happened during a
birthday party when she was a very young child. She
remembered
the feel of the krynolin of her dress, the taste
and smell of her birthday cake, how her mother and
her
friends looked, etc.., as if she were there. As a
result of that study, neuro-physicists postulated
in 1957
that everything that happens to us is stored in the
brain in full detail. In 1960, Carl Pribram won the
Nobel Prize for his theory that expanded the place
of storage of memories from the brain to the entire
body, when he postulated that memories were stored
holographically in the nervous system. It is the
unconscious mind that is responsible for the coordination
of the
storage of and for access to these memories.
2. ORGANIZES ALL OUR MEMORIES: The
unconscious mind organizes all the memories which
are stored in the
nervous system -- in the body. The way it organizes
these memories is that it uses "indexes" to
point to the stored memories and to allow for and
to facilitate your access to these memories. Your Time
Line is one such index, the organization of your
Values is another such index that the unconscious
mind uses.
3. THE DOMAIN OF THE EMOTIONS: The unconscious mind
is the domain of the emotions. Even though they are
often felt consciously, emotions are not the domain
of the conscious mind. They are generated by, maintained
by, and are the responsibility of the unconscious
mind.
4. REPRESSES
MEMORIES WITH UNRESOLVED NEGATIVE EMOTIONS:
The unconscious mind is also charged with the responsibility
of repressing memories with unresolved negative emotion.
The emphasis here is on "unresolved." The
memory will be repressed with the emotion intact
until it can be resolved. The aim is simply to avoid
the
associated emotional pain. The unresolved negative
emotion may cause some repression of the content
of the memory. The repressed negative emotions are
trapped
in the body, and in many cases can cause blockages
to the flow of communication through the neural network
pathways of the body.
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5. PRESENT REPRESSED MEMORIES TO RELEASE
THE EMOTIONS:
Memories which have been repressed are then presented
to release the trapped negative emotions. This
is the next function which the unconscious mind
is "supposed" to
perform, and it is a function which can be a long term
function. Supposed is in quotes because in a number
of cases, and with disfavour from the conscious mind,
the unconscious mind will stop presenting the memories
for release and keep them repressed. If the conscious
mind can, at the time of presentation of the memory,
release the emotions by "rationalizing" (making
rational, preserving the learnings) the memory
can be cleared of the negative emotions.
6. KEEP REPRESSED EMOTIONS REPRESSED FOR
PROTECTION:
The Unconscious Mind also has the option of keeping
the memories repressed. In some cases this is what
the unconscious mind does. This is a short term
function, however, and in the long run the unconscious
mind
will continue to attempt to present the memories
so that
they can be released, because repressed emotions
are just not good for the body. (See Prime Directive
number
8.)
7. TO RUN THE BODY: The unconscious mind has also
been called the "body-mind" or the mind
of the body, and in performing this function it
provides the
consciousness, and the direction for the functioning
of the body.
8. TO PRESERVE THE BODY: The unconscious mind is
also in charge of preserving the body. This means,
other
things being equal, that if you walk out to the
street and step in front of a bus, your unconscious
mind
will jump you back out of the way, and you will
be safe.
In times of extreme danger, many people notice
that the unconscious mind takes over, and the conscious
mind is not at all involved at that moment.
9. TO BE A HIGHLY MORAL BEING: This is not necessarily
a Prime Directive as much as it is an instinct
that is built in. The unconscious mind will enforce
any
morality which it has been taught and has come
to believe is true. This Prime Directive is included,
however,
because it is so important in healing. If the
Unconscious Mind thinks that you have been bad,
then of course,
you will have to be punished. In healing, then
it
is important to know if the unconscious mind
feels as
though it needs to punish you. The question might
arise, "What
kind of morality are we talking about?" We
are talking about any kind of morality which
the Unconscious
Mind has been taught and which it believes.
10. TO TAKE DIRECTION, FOLLOW ORDERS: The unconscious
mind likes to have direction from a conscious
mind with which it is in rapport. If there is
no rapport,
the unconscious mind will not follow the orders
or directions from the conscious mind. With rapport
the unconscious mind will follow just about any
direction
from the conscious mind. Trust is important to
develop in this context, because if the unconscious
mind
is
in charge of our physical and many of our mental
processes, rapport with it is a must.
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11. TO CONTROL AND MAINTAIN ALL PERCEPTIONS:
As our sensory perceptions come in to the neurology
from
outside the body, they must pass through the
unconscious
mind
before they become available as conscious perceptions.
The unconscious mind is in charge of filtering
the massive amount of data that comes in, and
making it manageable for understanding by the
conscious
mind.
You may have heard that one estimate is that
we have
approximately 2,000,000 bits/second of information
coming in through all our sensory input channels.
The unconscious mind filters these down to a
manageable 7 plus or minus 2 chunks of information.
12. TO GENERATE, STORE, DISTRIBUTE AND
TRANSMIT ENERGY: As the "manager" of the body,
the unconscious mind also is in charge of the
energy of the body.
Most of the energy in the body is generated by
the interaction
of glucose with oxygen. Since the unconscious
mind is in charge of the energy, it can be asked
to
increase the energy in the body for various purposes
including
weight loss and healing.
13. TO RESPOND WITH INSTINCT AND HABIT: Some
instincts are built-in at birth, such as the
Fight or Flight
response. Habits are cultivated over time. The
unconscious mind is responsible for generating
and maintaining
both instincts and habits over time.
14. NEEDS REPETITION BUILDING HABITS: When cultivating
a habit it is a good idea to repeat it often
until it is taken-over by the unconscious mind.
The unconscious
mind is really in an on-going "now" most
of the time, and so needs a fair amount of repetition
to build a habit.
15. TO CONTINUALLY SEEK MORE AND MORE: The unconscious
mind is directed to continually seek more and
more. So the new car you just had to have, and
you finally
bought seemed like "just any old car" after
a short period of time, and perhaps you were prompted
to wonder, "what's next?"
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16. WILL HAVE OPTIMUM FUNCTIONING WITH
A MINIMUM OF PARTS: The unconscious mind will function
perfectly with a minimum of separate parts. In
fact, the
fewer parts the better. Since more parts mean
more possibility
of inner conflict, and since each part cannot
be expected
to have the intention of the whole as its highest
intention, the fewer parts the better. The most
perfect functioning
occurs as a whole integrated functioning unity.
17. IS SYMBOLIC: The unconscious mind is symbolic.
It is in many areas, pre- literate, so it creates
and uses, and responds to symbols (thank you
Carl Jung
for first pointing this out to us). Much of what
the unconscious mind gives us is symbolic. This
does not
mean that it is meaningless, quite the contrary,
the symbols can be interpreted, and will have
significant meaning.
18. WORKS ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LEAST EFFORT: The
unconscious mind works on the principle of least
effort, and
that means it will do as little as it can get
away with.
This principle serves the unconscious mind well
in energy conservation, but not necessarily in
healing
various symptoms. For example, if you are asking
the unconscious mind to clear up certain symptoms,
you
must ask the unconscious mind when it will start
and when it will finish the process, or you may
find six
months later the process is incomplete. When
asked, "why?" The
unconscious mind may simply say, "I haven't
started yet."
19. TAKES EVERYTHING PERSONALLY: Remember that
old saying when you were a kid, "One finger's pointing
out away from you, but three are pointing back at you?" That
is because the unconscious mind takes everything personally.
The good news is that what you like about your friend,
is you. The bad news is that what you dislike about
your friend, is you. The saying in psychology is, "Perception
is projection." What you see is who you
are. So think the best about everybody you meet.
Based
on the
work of George Estabrooks (1943) and Andre Weitzenhoffer
(1957), that what the therapist (or educator,
or manager) does not believe to be true will
not be
actualized
by the client. If you believe that they can do
anything, then they will. If you see your clients
as magnificent
they will be magnificent. The more good you see
in your clients the more they will actualize
that good
for you, and for themselves. The more you do
that, the more your own unconscious mind will
feel good
about you, and prosper. Honour and respect the
unconscious mind.
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20. CANNOT PROCESS A NEGATIVE: Finally, and we
have already discussed this earlier, make sure
you are
telling your unconscious mind what to do, think,
be; as opposed
to telling it what not to do, think, be.
Your Time Line is how your unconscious mind encodes
and stores your memories. It's how you know the
difference between a past memory, and a future
dream. Your Time
Line is largely an unconscious process, and like
remembering your home phone number, you may be
more or less aware
of it from time to time.
