I am a private practitioner with a license in Marriage and Family Therapy and I am a graduate of the Gestalt Center of New York. I am a co-founder of Hartford Family Institute and a co-creator of the therapy we teach and practice. I am a trainer in the Hartford Family Institute Training program, having trained therapists in Hartford, Kansas City and Germany for over twenty years. I have been a major presenter in all four of the International Conferences in Body-Centered Gestalt Therapy. In addition, I have been trained by Native American Healers, a South American Cuerandero, and other spiritual practitioners.

I have an enormous commitment to the children inside of me, to do whatever it takes to free them from the everlasting prison of living in my childhood instead of the reality of the present. This encompasses my determination to re-experience unfinished death layer trauma on a regular basis. Since my parents were unable to live through their own unfinished horrible experiences in order not to act out on their children, I feel honored to do their job for them. In fact, I believe that it is my responsibility to free the children inside of me, since I am now the adult in charge. Not to do this is to remain living in the past, connected to my parent's reality instead of the reality of wholeness that exists in my body, which is the reality of the present. Part of what this means is that I have lived through body experiences of self-hatred, sexual abuse, humiliation, fragmentation, destruction, murderousness, abandonment and most other forms of darkness. To tell the truth, I would not have missed any of them for the world. I have become stronger, wiser and freer from having had these experiences.

My spiritual path has been one that has led from total disbelief and ridicule, through cynicism, to belief and doubt running neck and neck, and now, to a strong experience of being guided at all times. I find this comes in handy when I am on a plane and there is major turbulence. My spirit guides have told me that I will never die in a plane crash and now all my friends want to fly with me. Wherever you are on your path, anywhere from the experience of "this is all bullshit" to one of "I have total faith", please allow yourself to be there. I could not change what I believed until I had my own body experiences that grounded me in my faith. Faith is a line of energy that runs through your body from your head to your feet. For some of you, the break in faith happened early when you were assaulted prenatally or in infancy, when someone couldn't tolerate the dark awful feeling in their body as they experienced the solid flow of faith and aliveness in yours. True faith is in your body as is every other experience. When I was little, I had faith that lived outside my body because to be in my body was to get assaulted. If I had continued on the path that only supported living disembodied and depersonalized, I would have had faith in other people, but never myself. To have power with faith, you need to be embodied. This means reliving your unfinished places to free the children inside who carry your true power, your aliveness.

I have always wondered why I was assaulted as a child, why anyone is abused. I understood that no one's parents were perfect because their parents weren't perfect. All parents have abusive energy in them. I knew this for years but inside of me where my knowledge isn't complete, I have a certain feeling that says, "someday I will know more about this subject". The subject of child abuse had one of those feelings attached to it. Recently spirit told me that children who are older souls, who have more light than their newer soul parents, touch the light differential in their parents. When the darkness in their parents is touched, they can only do one of two things. They can breathe into the bad feeling inside of them or they can act out on the person who has touched the abusive feelings in them. There are no other choices. So if you ever wonder why you were abused or assaulted, it may be that you are an older soul than your parents, not that you are inherently bad.

Everything we experience, including illness, occurs on an emotional, physical, and spiritual level. How conscious we are of these three levels determines how much we may influence the outcome of our illnesses. For this paper, I have received permission from clients to share their stories.

My first experience with energy healing was in 1975 when I was scheduled for surgery to remove my left ovary due to an enlarged cyst wrapped around it. I had already had my right ovary, tube and appendix removed in 1968 for a similar reason. My trainer at that time was Marilyn Rosannes Berrett of the N.Y. Gestalt Center. She informed me that I wasn't going to need surgery and that we would cure the problem with psychotherapy. At that time we didn't use the term spiritual, or energy, healing. She told me to feel a healing hand sending light into my pelvis and see the cyst dissolving. It was easier for me to do this while holding the pillow against my pelvis, so a friend brought a pillow to the hospital where I was to spend the night before the operation. I had no intellectual understanding of what was happening but I did have total faith in Marilyn and felt the love of my friend, Nancy, who brought the pillow. Because of faith and love, I was able to do the experiment on and off throughout the night. When my doctor appeared the next morning, I asked him to do a laprascopy instead of surgery because I knew that my cyst was gone. There must have been something compelling in my energy because he did exactly what I asked and he was able to determine that the cyst had dissolved. This doctor, who was the head of gynecology for this hospital, was greatly impressed by this outcome and asked me what I did. I told him that I healed myself psychically. He looked bemused and left shaking his head. He is still my gynecologist and allows me to decide, without argument, what I think the best treatment for me is at all times even if he has no knowledge about my choices. I must have either really impressed the hell out of him or really scared him. I'm not sure which.

At the time of this healing I was not a particularly conscious being. I had absolute faith that my trainer was all-knowing and, therefore, I totally embraced and immersed myself in the experiment that healed me. Without knowing it, I brought my emotions and my spirit into my body by focusing on "seeing" and feeling healing light coming into my pelvis.

It has been a long journey since then to understand non-local (universal) and spiritual energy healing. After healing myself, I started doing similar experiments with women who came to me with breast masses. One aspect of healing is pulling the dark, introjected abuse energy out of the mass. This is called "forming the victimizer". We do this so that there is room for the light to enter and start a healing process. In all the cases I had treated, either the mass was benign or disappeared completely. I still didn't become fully conscious that spiritual healing was taking place until this year when two women came to me within a month's time and asked for my help with breast masses. It was time for me to wake up. I had resisted knowing what was happening in my office because I was afraid of how people might see me. Although I routinely receive messages from my spirit guides and from those of my clients when I work with emotional issues, I felt more afraid of owning something about physical healing. When these two women appeared this year, I had taken in enough supports and had stood in the center of enough of my darkness that my spirit decided it was safe for me to wake up. What I mean by "stood in the center of enough of my darkness" is that I had broken enough denial about my inherited abuse and had taken in love to the places where I am a killer or an abuser. Taking responsibility for my darkness allowed me to stop projecting my own darkness onto the world so that I felt much safer. My darkness is the raw material of my power and needs to be treated with love. I can only transform my darkness into light when I am standing in the center of the truth that I am just like my parents and that I have every kind of darkness known to humankind inside me because I am part of a universal consciousness. Secondly, I must be willing to take responsibility for my darkness and reach out for a connection of love for who I am. When I do this, I am not only bringing my darkness into humanity, but I am also changing tension to flow and matter to energy in my body.

I know that E=mc squared. That is, I now understand that energy and matter are convertible. I know that the energy that flows in our bodies forms into matter in the presence of abuse because we tense up to try to prevent the abuse from harming us. When we become tense, we constrict every system in our body, some more than others depending on where the assault is aimed. When we are abused over and over again chronic tension occurs. The child in all of us instinctively knows that it is the relaxation into our body that allows energy to flow and life to form, and this touches the place in our parents where life and energy does not flow. Einstein and other quantum physicists have proven that energy can convert to matter, and matter can be reconverted into energy. I understand the depths of the darkness that each human, myself included, can act out on children who are in a bonding relationship with us and that abuse energy has the impact of changing energy to matter if it is not worked through. From this chronic tension, the holding against the impact of assaults, matter is created. This matter then turns into tumors, cysts, and disease processes. If you believe what quantum physics has shown us, then non-local and spiritual healing is believable. In addition, there are now numerous studies, with data that is scientifically-based in research, that are accepted in journals such as the various journals of American medicine, that prove that energy is transferable, and that prayer or distant healing has powerful effects on people and their diseases. In over eighty of the one hundred and twenty-five medical schools in the United States there are classes on the impact of religion and spirituality on illness. If you keep working on your process, you continue to change matter to energy and you become more grounded. By transforming the darkness to light you have more room in your body to house your spirit, which leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment is living in reality. And living in reality is the healthiest place to live. It is difficult to become ill when you are fully grounded because your energy is flowing through all of your systems, which is a healing state of being.

In fact, the reason I will always stay in therapy, just as I will always exercise and be aware of what I eat and receive some form of bodywork is that I want to continue changing matter to energy as I age. Forming the victimizer and taking in supports is the healthiest thing I can do for myself. I will never do any of this perfectly because the need for perfection is abuse that will turn energy to matter and start a disease. I will, in fact, commit myself to imperfection for the sake of my mental, physical and spiritual health.

My truth about energy work or healing is that you cannot always be cured as defined by a patriarchal medical paradigm. For the most part I believe that diseases are here as a manifestation of the unfinished business from childhood. In addition, some illnesses are both this manifestation of childhood and the bridge to everlasting life or, as some people call it, death. I also believe that polluted environments influence our physical health and that some people have a short lifetime for a spiritual reason. However, most illness is a message from spirit that there is something out of balance in our system. If we read the message and work to become balanced once again, or perhaps for the first time, we may get a physical, emotional or spiritual healing or a combination of all three. For instance, I have worked with someone who had a large kidney stone. The doctors determined that the kidney needed to be removed in order to stop the infection in her body. The work that we, her therapists, the client and all of our guides, did was to first understand that she had a deep place of impasse in her system that had formed into the stone. She was able to appreciate how this impasse was a survival mechanism in her childhood, and she was also able to allow the image of an animal to appear out of the stone. A mother wolf appeared and immediately began to lick the stone. The wolf continued to lick the stone throughout the next few weeks. The issues that the impasse was defending against also began to appear. As the mother wolf continued her work, the feeling of resistance in this client's system began to change. She was more easily angered and she was able to reach out from need without blocking love from coming into her body. The impasse dissolved but the stone did not. The client reported that her spirit guide told her that she will make it with love and that taking in love would see her through this surgery and her recovery. The healing she received was both emotional and spiritual. She faced surgery in the best possible frame of mind and looked forward to the surgery as something that would end her tiredness.

I will now share some of the stories of women who have come to me with breast masses. In this reality I know that I am just a conduit for spirit to do the work that heals, but in my childhood I had to save people, and the confusion between the two still lingers at times. Remember that I said that about twenty women have come to see me over the years for breast masses and the results were all positive. As I awakened to what was happening this year, spirit decided to help me with both my fear and my defense against my fear, my ego.

A woman who was a student in the Hartford Training Program came to see me because she had heard that I was doing some work with breast masses. I told her that since she wasn't a client of mine and we did not have a connection, I wasn't sure how successful one session would be but that I would be willing to see her. Through the information obtained in a mammogram and an examination by a surgeon, it had been determined that she had a lump in her breast. She was scheduled for her second appointment with the surgeon to deal with surgery the following day. I asked spirit to be present and I felt myself shift into a trance state where information comes to me about what needs to happen. The message that came was to ask her to place her hand on the lump and to have her visualize Mary, the Blessed Mother. In silence I argued with spirit that the client was Jewish and that this might not be the best image for her to relate to. When spirit stopped laughing it told me to do as it had instructed and I proceeded. The client did the experiment with the same degree of peaceful faith that I had in 1975. She went home and came back to the experiment frequently throughout the day. The next day the surgeon told her that the lump was no longer present. Since this time I have learned that when the Bible was edited in the fourth century by the Nicean Council, the Book of Mary was deleted. In this book it tells of Mary being an Essene. The Essenes were the group of Jewish scribes who carried the great healing knowledge of the time. Spirit always makes sure that I learn something useful at each healing and that anything other than humility is a movement away from the ground.

Another client came to see me for her regular appointment and said that she had a large mass behind her nipple. This had been ascertained by self-examination, a mammogram, an ultrasound and a visit to the surgeon. I had two appointments with her within twenty-four hours. She also was scheduled to see the surgeon the next day to discuss surgery. I will now relate the part I call the "lessons for Naomi". I asked her to allow an animal to appear from the lump. She reported that a porcupine appeared. I asked if the porcupine had a message for her and she answered, "Yes, the porcupine said, 'It's gone, we don't have time for this now". The client opened her eyes and said, "It's gone, I know it is". At this point I am thinking, "Wait, I didn't even get into my trance thing yet. How could it be gone?" So I said the only purely intelligent thing a therapist of thirty-two years who is considered a healer could say, "Are you sure it's really gone?". I was probably whining a little bit by now. She once again assured me that it was gone. I waited with much anticipation for the phone call the next day. She called soon after the appointment with the surgeon and confirmed that indeed the mass was no longer present. I puzzled over this for about two weeks when suddenly all became clear. The client's main concern in therapy was her bladder disease, interstitial cystitis. The emotional components of this disease had been shrouded in denial since the beginning of therapy. Although other work was being done, I could not get near the disease process. After the healing of the breast mass, all the memories about childhood trauma that related to this illness poured forth. I realized that spirit had given this very dear woman a miracle so that she would have faith to bond with rather then having just the old bonding in abuse to hold onto. Work began on the bladder disease and progress is happening.

I would like to share an example of working with the "sociopathic and illness" issue by talking about a client of mine who died. I loved this client very much because he was contemptuous in a way that touched a place of humor in me. He also had a sweetness, an innocence, and a love of nature that emanated from a spirit that he could never connect to. When he came to work with me his prognosis was that he had three months to live. His diagnosis was a cancerous tumor on his liver that would kill him. His energy was totally split between his darkness and light. He identified himself as a mean bastard with no redeeming qualities. Other people were aware of his kindness, humor, and beautiful spirit, which he totally resisted and discounted. Another strand of energy that ran through him was a disowned energy of sodomy that added molecules of " up your ass" energy into his personality.

His diagnosis of liver cancer made no sense to me because the self-sodomizing energy made me feel that he should have had colon cancer. While he worked in therapy his prognosis was extended. We met for weekly therapy for over one year and about eleven months into the therapy he was finally able to see an animal of healing. He had to go through two psychotic episodes in month seven and nine of the therapy in order to open up his ability to visualize. Both of these episodes necessitated trips to the hospital for a few days until he could gain control over his anger. Since I knew that the psychosis was blocking his perception chakra, I felt that these breaks were his way of going through death layer. The animal of healing was a wolf who wanted to take him on a journey which I believe could have led toward remission of the tumor. The client refused to follow the wolf and the wolf became agitated and angry. What my client said was that he would have to change the entire way he saw himself as the darkness and all of his beliefs about the world in order to follow the wolf. He chose not to do this and his cancer took an immediate turn for the worse.

It was at this point that he mentioned that he had colon cancer. I told him I didn't understand why he had repeatedly told me that he had liver cancer. He replied that he did have a tumor on his liver, but that in fact, his original diagnosis was colon cancer. I had an immediate body experience of having been tricked and felt deeply betrayed because I had spent eleven months trying to figure out the energetic and emotional connections to liver cancer when it made no sense in this case. In truth, his energy gave evidence of colon cancer as the disease that matched his structure. I asked him if the words " up your ass" had any meaning. He looked at me and laughed and said, "Oh yeah." In that moment my perspective of the entire eleven months of therapy as well as his entire life became clear to me. Underneath all the work that we had done was the unformed victimizer of acted-out sodomy that would eventually betray me and kill him. It is my belief that the colon cancer was a repetition of sexual abuse that had occurred in his infancy, producing a near-death experience that caused a split between his light and his darkness.

  I base that belief on two things that he had shared with me. One was that he had always believed that death was the only safe place for him. I feel that his belief mirrored his infancy, since it is a statement of his existence and non-existence. Secondly, a week before he died, his wife shared that he was vacant and unreachable at times. I asked him if he had been visiting his spirit. He replied that he had been. I then asked him how long he thought that his spirit had been out of his body. He looked at me and said, "all my life". I replied, "so, you're dying in order to finally reunite with your spirit". He smiled and said, "I guess that's true".

At that moment the world stood still and I knew that one of the gifts this client came to bring me was to understand the great importance of helping people reconnect to their spirits so that they will not have to die to rectify the split. On the last day of his life he made an altar on his bedside table with one black rock that his wife had given him and one white rock that I had given him. He placed both rocks upon a note that I had given to him as homework. The note said, "I'm not taking anything in until I get something from my mother". This final message was such a clear statement of his split between complete light and complete darkness, plus his revenge about never being able to get the bonding he needed to reintegrate this split. This is the basis of the sociopathic structure.

Experiment

For those of you who are still with me and have decided I have something to say or for those of you who think everything so far is bullshit but you'll give me another chance, I have an experiment for you to try. First I'll do a relaxation image and then the experiment.

Before I begin, I want you to know that whatever happens is supposed to happen. For instance, if you get no images, this is information that your imaging equipment is clogged with a victimizer and needs attention. So instead of doing my experiment, you might ask the nothingness what message it has for you. You might get messages in a different way, such as audio instead of visual, or kinesthetic, or psychic, messages. Leave open the possibility that you process information in any number of ways. Lastly, if your spirit takes you on a different journey than mine, go with your spirit. Do not pay the least attention to me if this happens.

Relaxation:  Comfortable

Roots into Mother Earth

Taking in safety and nurturance

Ask your higher self if you are ready to meet the healing force within you. If so, ask for an image of this force. It could be an image of an animal, a human, a tree or an energy force, whatever. Ask this force if it has a message for you. Ask the force if there is something you need to focus on for your own healing.

Repeat experiment with getting a message for the person next to you.

Warning

All things come with a warning. Please know the darkness inside of you and others before you start healing. Ungrounded healing can soothe your ego. It can help you rise up in your body as a defense against your childhood trauma that will remain in your body to later manifest as an illness.

I believe in your good hearts and your good intentions. I believe you have integrity as well as darkness. Ground your heart and your intentions in the reality of the light and darkness that are a part of all of us. This leads to humility and humility allows us to be powerful healers.

Naomi Lubin-Alpert, LMFT
Hartford Family Institute, LLP

Contact Information
Hartford Family Institute, LLP
17 S. Highland Street
West Hartford, CT  06119860-236-6009
www.hartfordfamilyinstitute.com
info@hartfordfamilyinstitute.com

©2001, Naomi Lubin-Alpert. All rights reserved. The duplication or reprint of this material is prohibited without the express consent of Naomi Lubin-Alpert.

Books to Read for Energy Research

Gregg Braden, The Isaiah Effect.

Charles Tart, Altered States of Consciousness, Waking Up.

Russell Targ, The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World, Miracles of the Mind: Exploring Non-Local Consciousness and Spiritual Healing.

Larry Dossey:  Read whatever he’s written

Dharma Singh Khalsa, Meditation as Medicine.

Daniel Benor, The Benor Survey.

Additional Researchers

David Chalmers
Amy Goswanie
Rupert Sheldrake
Robert Jahn
David Bohm