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

PUSHING YOUR BUTTONS!

Dear Readers:

What Pushes Your Buttons?

Are your aware of what your personal "buttons" are, and how they get pushed? Our buttons can get pushed emotionally, physically and mentally. Each of these influences can be combined into one big button, or separated into a whole keyboard of unique, specific, little (but annoying) buttons. Sometimes these buttons are pressed by other individuals. at other times, these buttons go off like fire alarms because of circumstances.

Emotionally, when I am stressed, the button that clicks on for me is called performance anxiety.

Performance anxiety (or non-generalized anxiety) produces varied reactions, including sweating, throwing up and passing out. My anxiety, if unchecked, causes me to shake. I am mentally aware and emotionally calm, but yet physically, I shake, as if my body had stopped taking instructions from my mind. I shake so badly at times that I cannot breathe properly to play my musical instrument. I have used INTERNAL ENERGY PLUS Modalities to short-circuit this conditioned shaking response.

What is the circumstance that makes me shake? Performing in front of people.

I can perform in a group and have no shaking, but when I am in front of my peers as a soloist, my anxiety flares up. Using the Internal Energy Plus™ problem-solving techniques, my awareness of the button's cause and effect increased and helped me realized that my anxiety would flare up whenever I felt that someone that I cared about was asking me a question, or sitting in a position to judge me or my abilities.

I spent 30 years performing and shaking. I had tried many different medications and have used the "tried and true" methods of practicing each piece of music until it was memorized and perfect, but my shaking continued. Three years ago, I tried Internal Energy Plus™ and my performing improved.

After a year of practicing the Twelve Postural Intentions, I was able to perform in the manner that I had practiced. Internal Energy Plus™ helped me to become aware that performance anxiety was pushing a button to make me shake and also helped me to discover how it was being pushed. Since I became aware of the connection between my anxiety and the button, I have relaxed.

I spent many years causing my own failure, by telling myself how inadequate I was for not being able to stop shaking. It became a deeply conditioned self-fulfilling prophesy.

Each time one of our buttons gets pushed we react emotionally, physically, and or mentally. Practicing the Twelve Postural Intentions helps us to heighten our awareness and convert and re-channel all of our unique personal attributes and characteristics into positive traits, instead of vulnerabilities. If you understand yourself better, you will naturally begin to treat yourself more leniently and lovingly.

In the next post, I will be exploring the effect of words that push our buttons, and how the Modalities of the Internal Energy Plus System™ have helped me and others to find solutions to deactivate those buttons.

--Thomas C. Kern, Jr.

DOUGLAS CASTLE contributed to this article.