OUTSIDE OF THE [BOX] #2

Dear Group:

I am back to tell you a bit more about my experience in the hospital during the birth of my daughter.

Internal Energy Plus has increased my awareness of how I respond to people and how they respond to me. It has given me the ability to remove myself from my actions and emotions of the moment, and to view the situational dynamics as if I were a dispassionate outside observer. It's an amazingly powerful and telling perspective.

This could not have been more evident than at the hospital. As I had mentioned in my last post, my wife and I had to adapt to a continually changing situation. The doctors were surprised that we made decisions rationally: based upon what they were saying, by looking up terms, and by asking them candid questions. When we had determined, as partners, what action to take, we held firm.

We did not raise our voices, become negative or get angry when something changed. We dealt civilly and sensibly with a dynamic process. From what we were given to understand, the typical patients and their relatives would swear and throw things out of frustration, anger and fear. This type of tantrum is not only an unhealthy discharge of energy that tends to spiral out of control, but it adversely affects the physicians, nurses and other professional staff members in their ability (and perhaps their willingness) to perform to their highest standards.

Our consistent decisions and calm manner turned out to be highly beneficial. The results were that the doctors developed the understanding, and the positive attitude that, " these people are calm, collected and intelligent." Furthermore, the most experienced nurses on the floor were requesting to take care of my wife and child. We had made ourselves into excellent patients, and the staff was responding with their best and most attentive care.

My awareness of how people feel, react and express themselves has become heightened by my training in Internal Energy Plus. When we told them our story and that the hospital was our second choice for the birth of our child (midwifery at home was what we had wanted prior to my wife's pregnancy becoming complicated) . Every staff member kept apologizing. I was astonished that they kept doing this for our entire visit.

My Astonishment comes from my Internal Energy Plus training. I have learned that each choice I make has a causative link to other events that will happen from that choice. We chose to have a baby, and that means:


1) We are responsible for her life;
2) Anything that occurs during the pregnancy will need to be addressed immediately;
3) As the Father I am just as responsible each day for :
---a) washing the diapers..
---b) preparing organic food for my wife for each day...
---c) feeding the baby in the middle of the night (every night)...
4) Being constantly prepared for unforeseen things -- maintaining my vigilance, adaptivity and creativity;
5)Being both a teacher and a student through the experiences and interactions with both our new daughter and my wife.

In terms of utilizing my IEP training Toolkit, I use my heightened awareness to make choices that I know will keep me confident in my decisions and responsible for taking the best possible actions every single day .

In Kindness,
Thomas

OUTSIDE OF THE [BOX] #1

Dear Friends:

I have been extraordinarily busy during these past six weeks. My wife and I participated in the birth of our daughter. Our daughter came along early, but I am happy to report that both mother and daughter are in great shape.

We had planned on having our child at home, but because of complications, we needed to go to the hospital. Both my wife and I have had very negative experiences in the past with doctors and hospitals, but that was before we had acquired the benefit of INTERNAL ENERGY PLUS training. We had previously been manipulated by fear, instead of being guided by reason. As you would intuitively suspect, decisions made out of fear or desperation tend to yield poor consequences.

IEP thinking helped me... It helped me to be aware of the mindset of the doctors and nurses, and the purpose of the hospital. It took me awhile to realize that the doctors were invested in purposefully telling me the worst case senario. They were telling me the most undesirable end point. Worst of all, they were telling us this within the first hour of our checking in and we were not even assigned to a bed! Every time a new doctor, intern or nurse came into see us, they would repeat the same morbid mantra...."we hope this doesn't happen, but it usually does."

This air of "preparatory negativity" caused us more stress than was needed, especially since one of our goals was to keep my wife's blood pressure down.

We used the Twelve Postural Intentions to work on our own goals. The hospital, to its credit, was concerned with healthy mom and healthy baby, but our partnership goals as a couple were to have the most relaxed, noninvasive, brief experience possible, leading to the most positive outcome possible...having a healthy child.

How were we able to achieve this? We would attach a goal to each posture and then perform that posture with the our positive intentions. We did not merely practice the postures! Each posture had our full intention and purpose each time. The results were that my wife's blood pressure actually went down and it worked to keep me calm, rational, and helpful.

It was crucial to preserve that calmness when even during every shift change a new doctor, intern, nurse, or nurse practitioner would come in with his or her version of what was causing my wife's high blood pressure and that it would continue to increase her blood pressure. These well-intended people were actually feeding a negative self-fulfilling prophesy! With the benefit of IEP discipline, we did not yield to this intense negativity. The outcome was that our daughter was born, we are back at home and our daughter is growing every day.

I learned so much from this experience, and I have so much more to share with you.

OUTSIDE OF THE [BOX]# 2 will follow next week. Please stay tuned!

In Kindness,
Tom