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• Experience Jan 2017

January 2017

By Punya Srivastava

Punya Srivastava attended a PSYCH-K programme and found in it a very effective way to redesign her life, and change her limiting beliefs into empowering ones Rita Soman: Empowering participants to lead their best lives How does it feel to pause suddenly while following your daily routine and think, “Why am I doing this?” How does it feel to become an observer of the life you lead on auto pilot? How does it feel to recognise that you are reacting to a situation, not responding to it? Or even that you are being driven by a deep-seated, unidentified belief? It feels empowering to become an observer of your life for a while. I, for one, know that there are areas in my life where I have been reacting in a similar fashion for years out of habit. For instance, one of the labels that I was given as a kid was that of being ‘angry’. I grew up believing that label, and without any awareness that I was living up to it; my actions invariably matched it. So much so that it became a part of who I was. And it came with a baggage – a big sack full of guilt that would drop on my head the moment I reacted in anger. I would see the futility of it, the pain it caused around and within me, and yet I would react in anger again to the next similar situation. No amount of positive reading or lectures from anyone helped. As I entered adulthood, the thought of not being in control of my emotions started pressurising me. A continuous battle raged within most of the time, along with self-defeating thoughts of not being a strong person. I badly needed to do something about it. But what? The workshop on PSYCH-K came as an answer. Accessing the mind Oregon-based Rita Soman was in Delhi to conduct a two-day workshop on November 12 and 13, 2016. Rita is a psychotherapist and internationally certified PSYCH-K instructor. She believes that the PSYCH-K process is the missing piece in realising one’s potential. And this belief is not an acquired one, but the result of her personal breakthroughs over time. “I am passionate about teaching this process to others because of its effectiveness. PSYCH-K shifts one from the ‘fear’ path to the ‘growth’ path,” she said. The first day started with a little theory about how the mind works. Rita cited neuroscience studies to prove that the conscious mind processes only about five per cent of the information it receives at the rate of 40 bits per second. The rest of the 95 per cent is imbibed by the subconscious mind at 40 million bits per second. Which means that our subconscious mind has been picking up most of the stuff going around us since years, invariably building and cementing the subconscious beliefs which drive our lives in auto-pilot. These beliefs, mostly limiting and self-defeating in nature, stop us from living our dreams and reaching our goals. When kept unchecked for too long, they may manifest as diseases too. Thus to live a mindful and meaningful life, it is imperative to make a conscious decision to do so, with the help of one’s subconscious mind. And this is the basis of PSYCH-K. According to renowned cellular biologist and author of The Biology of Belief, Dr Bruce Lipton, “PSYCH-K, developed by Robert M Williams, is a set of simple, self-empowering techniques to change your beliefs and perceptions that impact your life at a cellular level. Rather than genes, it is our beliefs that control our lives.” Rita, holding the workshop with unmitigated verve, peppered it with instances from her own journey. She shared how being labelled as a ‘good-for-nothing’ child turned her into an adult with negligible self-esteem. From what she described of herself during her growing up years and her adulthood, to what she is now – is proof of the hard work she did on herself and her faith in PSYCH-K. It is not surprising to know then that she has been endorsed by Dr Lipton as the ‘poster child’ for his book. “When beliefs change, your perception (of yourself, people, situations) change. Then, you start becoming so focussed and centred in your Self that the outside world and its stimuli cease to bother you,” she said. But then how does one discover one’s limiting beliefs? “Listen to your subconscious mind and work towards changing its programming,” she added. Mapping the mind On day one, participants were taught to change their limiting beliefs into positive beliefs by linking the conscious and the subconscious mind through a set of processes. “I grew taller even after the age of 18 which is supposed to be the age by which people stop growing in height. Anyone can grow taller at any age, if they are not bogged down by prevalent beliefs,” she said. No wonder she looks at least 10 years younger than her actual age. With so many testimonies right in front them, participants couldn’t wait to start changing their own beliefs. It was a sight to watch a group of some 25 adults engage in muscle-testing and practising whole-brain positions with child-like enthusiasm under the observant eye of the facilitator. The whole-brain state is when both right and left hemispheres of the brain become equally balanced by sitting with legs crossed at the ankles and hands crossed at the wrists. The second day of the workshop was dedicated to identifying one’s dreams and goals and then working towards creating complementing and supportive belief statements in the subconscious mind. There are processes to bring one to different balance states – creating a new direction for one’s life by changing belief statements, planting new belief statements, and creating visual-auditory-kinesthetic imagery to cement the belief statements. And in no time, the hall reverberated with positivity. There were elderly ladies changing their beliefs about their illnesses, while some of the men worked on reaching their next goal in life. I, too, gently told my subconscious mind that I was a strong and confident person, with the hope that it would arm me with supportive reminders in my day-to-day life. Rashmi Singh from Varanasi shared her experience with the PSYCH-K processes after practising them steadily and regularly for a number of days. “PSYCH-K enabled my system into ‘trusting’ and ‘having faith’ in my beliefs with hope and not with fearful surrender. Though I had read about PSYCH-K in The Biology of Belief, I was like a lost child who had just had a glimpse of a different and better world. I was left with a craving to know more about it. This workshop cleared my perception and developed in me a better understanding of myself,” she says. Initially after the workshop, Rashmi wanted her family too to practise PSYCH-K, which they did half-heartedly and with much resistance. “But then as I changed my belief of needing to control them, gradually my desperation subsided. The whole-brain posture winnowed out all the negative chaff from my relationships. It was magical. I felt subtle changes occurring in my cerebral communication, gradually transforming my perceptions about things. I am grateful to Rita for being a wonderful instructor,” she adds. Going by this testimony, there is no doubt that Rita, with the help of her PSYCH-K processes, has touched and benefitted many people. In her workshops, she urges people to seriously learn this process so that they can easily get the most from their lives.

Her words, “Develop a new relationship with yourself. Treat yourself in a different way, not like how you were treated as a kid,” formed the gist of her workshop. Rita Soman will be holding workshops in India again in March 2017.

For more information visit, www.ritasoman.com.