The following feature article was written by me and published in the May, 2012 edition of The Repatterning Journal.
The complete May Journal can be seen at www.repatterningjournal.com
As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker I am a fully qualified mental health practitioner with the immense good fortune to live my professional life assisting others in their efforts to become their most expanded selves.
On a day to day basis I witness subtle and not so subtle evidence of change in my clients as they relax into new awareness.
I notice the changes in how they are holding themselves in their bodies, in the freed –up expressiveness of their faces, in the very color of their skin tone and circulation as they embrace new coherence in their body-mind systems.
I am blessed to have the right tools at the right time to facilitate the changes. The most comprehensive tool in my toolbox is all that Resonance Repatterning has to offer.
Our colleague Dr. Shirley Lanyi wrote an article in the August, 2010 RPA Journal Thoughts On The Resonance Repatterning Practitioner-Client Process which focuses on the healing relationship. She explores the connection and necessary conditions for an effective therapeutic alliance.
She states
“In conclusion,…. We are part of our clients’ process. Our ability to act with loving kindness, on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual planes, via our responses and reactions, conscious and unconscious, facilitates our clients’ process, healing and growth, as well as our own.”
This will always be the most important aspect of any practitioners work. What we do is secondary to how it is done, who we are, and what we bring to the therapeutic partnership.
That being said, I’d like to share some applications of Resonance Repatterning in a psychotherapeutic practice.
Naturally, one application is to use the whole process intact with some clients. This allows a practitioner, via muscle checking for what is needed, to access what the specific client needs from the full resources of the system.
We could fill volumes of successful interventions in this category!
Most interesting is the fact that many strategies would be impossible without Resonance Repatterning. For example, one of my clients adopted a newborn child several years ago. With the adoptive mother muscle checking by proxy for the infant, and with a visible sign of permission from the infant when asked out loud, we proceeded to do a series of in person repatternings to deal head on with the infant’s separation from the birth mother.
As the child grew older, repatternings were done to handle other life issues and the child would ask for a session when he felt it was something that he needed.
Clearly even a non- traditional psychotherapy practice would not have been able to embrace this kind of preventative work.
While working with psychotherapy clients several aspects of the Resonance Repatterning system are utilized routinely.
In establishing the framework of the therapeutic alliance verbally and non-verbally there is emphasis on the fact that the person intrinsically has the keys to attain their own sense of well being and wholeness. My job is to assist them in accessing their own wisdom. Although I can provide a safe container for exploration and I can participate as a team member towards the achievement of their goals, I can neither do the work for them nor can I dictate what needs to be done.
Again, this view of a therapeutic partnership is key to the foundation in the Resonance Repatterning client-practitioner endeavor.
Even before introducing the concept of muscle checking with a psychotherapy client, throughout sessions there is the routine use of pauses, nose breathing and simple grounding modalities. As sessions continue, muscle checking for the client’s needs can be incorporated into the psychotherapy session.
With this essential tool accessed, stress reduction and counter-anxiety modalities can be taught to the client according to exactly what that person’s system dictates. Additionally, a session can not only begin with the social work cardinal rule of starting where the client is, but the verbal explorations in a session can be viewed with the perspectives of Problems and Opportunities.
Once we begin using the context of Problems and Opportunities for discussion, statements are written and can be energetically cleared with a modality, if appropriate, so that the psychotherapy session often incorporates profound energetic shifts of material brought to the discussion.
The result is that clients frequently leave their psychotherapy session feeling empowered, ready to integrate changes made and eager to uncover more material in their next session. This is in contrast to the situation that frequently occurs in psychotherapy when the client finally gets to the real “meat” and primary issue of a session just before they need to walk out the door.
These “doorknob revelations” leave the client feeling frustrated and thwarted, like they are on the edge of discovering something great that may be easily lost in transit.
Although toleration of frustration and respect for the boundaries that time limitations impose may be important elements in developing the emotional resiliency necessary for wholeness, when this is added frequently to the mix of the psychotherapy client’s experience of raw vulnerability it may destroy the motivation to continue the process.
As with all things in life, balance is essential. Using muscle checking to determine what is best as dictated by a person’s higher self is a way to grow optimal well-being not only for the Resonance Repatterning client, but for the psychotherapy client as well.
Meryl Chodosh-Weiss 