In Truth, Simplicity, and Love, Eve Jones, Ph.D.

140 South Norton Avenue Los Angeles, California 90004 1-(323) 461-5774

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance

CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

INTRODUCTION
This book covers many topics different from the ones discussed in other books already written about Rebirthing. In addition, it gives my personal views about some of the topics these other books discuss. In my first few months of involvement with Rebirthing, I studied with its innovator, Leonard

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE

Orr, and with such other early and famous Rebirthers as Sondra Ray, Phil Laut, Bob Mandel, Fred Lehrman, Bill Chapell, Bobby Birdsell, Diane Hinterman, Lucy MacDowell, C.W. Light, Usha Sunshine, and Steven and Trina Kamp. I learned lots from all of them. And I have read all the books written by Rebirthers, especially by Leonard Orr, Sondra Ray, and Phil Laut. I've learned lots from all these books, too. But these other Rebirthers were very young people when I first met them, and they were all people whose experience and training were radically different from mine. Unlike them, I'm a well-trained psychologist and psychotherapist, scientist, teacher, and writer-and I'm also a much older person However well-known and well-loved they may be, and however interesting and attractive their ideas about Rebirthing are, most other Rebirthers lack the formal, academic, professional credentials that tend to substantiate anyone's claims about Rebirthing. So skeptics, especially the huge audience of therapists and educators, have remained unconvinced that Rebirthing is effective and safe. I want everyone who deals with human development to know about and to give serious consideration to Rebirthing, to using it to heal their clients and teach to their students. Writing this book is an extension of that purpose, presenting my ideas of what works and what doesn't work in Rebirthing. I seek to answer questions and clear up confusions about Rebirthing, the logic of Positive Thought, and the basis for effective healing. I hope everyone reading this book will be as fascinated by the process that Rebirthing initiates and sustains as I have been. I want you to enjoy thinking about the connection between the breath and the spirit. I hope you respect my opinion enough and trust my judgment enough to be not only actively curious about Rebirthing, how it works, why it works, and what it can do, but also to be inspired to experience and practice it yourself. I came to Rebirthing after more than twentyfive years of practicing professional

The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome

psychology. Fortuitously, my pre-Rebirthing scientific and professional experience in physiology and psychology is all directly related to understanding and teaching Rebirthing, evaluating its effects, and extending its theoretical base to psychological and philosophical considerations. My earliest academic training in physiology and biochemistry and my teaching specialty, physiological psychology, all enable me to deal with questions about how Rebirthing works, biologically. I still keep up to date in the fields of neurophysiology and psychopharmacology on new findings about what goes on in the body, especially the brain, when a person is doing what we call thinking and feeling. So I'm in a good position to offer an informed opinion about what's happening biologically during Rebirthing. After getting a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Chicago and doing research in endocrinology, I trained as a clinical psychologist and received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1953. As a graduate student, I had the opportunity to be an analysand in classical psychoanalysis for several years. I also had the privilege of learning from and working with several leaders in humanistic psychology, especially Dr. Carl Rogers, and became well-acquainted with client-centered, non-psychoanalytic therapy. Immediately after receiving my doctorate, I spent a year as Chief Psychologist at Dr. Bruno Bettelheim's Orthogenic School, working with psychotic children. I then did a lot of management psychology, as well as teaching at the University of Chicago for seven years, until moving to Los Angeles where I practiced crisis therapy for several years. I taught at UCLA for a year, then at Los Angeles City College for twenty-six years, retiring in June, 1992. So I feel well able to compare Rebirthing with other traditional psychotherapies. In 1971, I first became involved with feeling therapy and with body work. I worked with Dr. Arthur Janov at the Primal Institute for a year, and then spent

CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

the next seven years using Primal Therapy in my private practice. I then became involved with Rebirthing. During these past nineteen years of being a Rebirther, I have continued to study other innovative forms of psychotherapy, including Neuro Linguistic Programming, Voice Dialogue, and Holotropic Breath Work, the form developed by Dr. Stanislav Grof. I have also studied and experienced many different forms of body work, including Rolfing (Structural Integration), Postural Integration, Trager work, Orthobionomy, Shiatzu, and Feldenkrais work. So I feel well able to compare the innovative feeling therapies as well as the New Age bodywork therapies with Rebirthing. I also believe my personal experience of giving birth to my three daughters and my son and participating in the natural births of two of my eight grandchildren adds immensely to my understanding of many of the forces involved with birthing and Rebirthing. This book deals with how birth is connected

I like using the Socratic method of making a point by analogies, metaphors, and stories. Please forgive me if I seem to be rambling-I'll come back to the point eventually. Rememberas I was told by a very old lady on a bus in India- "The lesson is always Patience." Those of you who know me know that I'm earnest, well-intentioned, good fun, willing to listen to an argument, and always willing to think a new thought in order to follow someone's argument. I'm what is called a fairminded person. So, please feel free to write to me with any comments or arguments you want to share with me. I welcome the opportunity to examine new ideas, and I'll do my best to reply to you. Also, if you have any questions about Rebirthing not covered in these pages that you

CHAPTER ONE
THE IDEAL BREATH
To me, our way of breathing is a metaphor

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of

the Breath
symbolizing the way we relate to reality. Our inhales reveal how much were willing to take in from the universe around us, how much were open to, how effortlessly we are open to it, and how satisfied we are when we get what we want. Our exhales reveal what we think the universe does: Does it accept our old, stale, used substance? Does it reject us? Do we have to fight to get rid of something? Dare we get rid of anything? What I regard as the ideal Rebirthing breath metaphorically expresses some simple thoughts:

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Psychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations

I can effortlessly and with great

pleasure and satisfaction receive from the universe everything that I want. And, I can, with no effort at all, let go of anything thats stale, that I no longer have any use for. There are some simple rules about obtaining satisfaction from the breath: Any breath that is quick is unlikely to be satisfying. Any breath that is shallow is unlikely to be satisfying. Any breath that is furtive, especially a breath where the in and the out breath are very short and shallow, with a long pause between them, is unlikely to be satisfying, nourishing. So the ideal breath is slowly drawn, is deep, and is conscious and connected.

I am alive as I breathe, and the

more I breathe in a conscious connected fashion, the more fully alive I am. If I, indeed, spend a great deal of time not breathing, instead staying still between my in and out breath or between my out and in breath, then during all that time what am I doing? Am I living fully? I dont think so. Instead, Im probably consolidating some old stale thoughts and feelings of anxiety or

dread or rage or pain or any of the other negative feelings which so often intervene between our in and out breath. I may be yearning for a repetition of something I previously enjoyed, wasting time in idle revery. But, whatever it is that Im doing, Im not living in the Now, in the moment. In a sense, Im not actually livingIm just re-living old events. When I connect the in and out breath and make certain that Im either breathing in or out, I am, instead, living in the moment, Right Now, and I can bring to bear in my dealings with reality all that is Right Now within me. If I dont make my inhales consciously deep and satisfying. I"m not living in the Now. Im operating instead with some old mistaken ideas about being satisfied. I must stay conscious of the depth of inspiration, the degree of satisfaction felt with each inhale. I may need to make an effort, at first, to take in as much as I can, to stretch for the sensation of satisfaction, of fullness, of completion, with each inhale. To open my inhale, I sometimes start thinking of my inhales as yawns, as full, deep, slow, gentle, satisfying yawning breaths, because when I yawn, theres an instant when I have taken in enough air and I know Im satisfied. My reason for stressing satisfaction with each inhale is that I see the inhale as a perfect symbolic representation of how we receive from the universe. I want to get what I want to get. I want to get it now. I want to get as much of it as I can get or at least as much of it as I want until Im satisfied that Ive gotten enough. I manifest that reality in my life by demonstrating that relationship in my breathing. I breathe in a fashion that allows me to be satisfied, allows me to get all I want, allows me to receive all thats available. I dont resist accepting and receiving. Another important quality of the perfect, satisfying breath, in addition to depth and ease of respiration, is the matter of where in the lungs the air is being placed. Most men breathe abdominally. When I

CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

watch men sitting and doing something, I usually notice their bellies going in and out while their chests and their shoulders essentially remain unmoving. By the same token, if I watch women sitting and working quietly, generally Ill notice that the breath is placed in the bodice, the area between the nipples and the waist, and that the ribs are doing a lot of work, as is the diaphragm. But the shoulders arent moving very much and the upper chest isnt filling. Apparently, most of us hold on to our old negatives in the top portions of our chest, where they not only depress respiration, but they even interfere with the free movement of our heart as its pumping and circulating. I suggest to my Rebirthees, "Make a real effort, focus consciously on bringing the breath up into the areas of your chest above your nipples, into the top third of the chest."

CHAPTER TWO
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REBIRTHING AND HYPERVENTILATION
Many people, hearing that Rebirthing is a breathing technique, incorrectly assume that it is a revival of the practice of hyperventilation which enjoyed a brief vogue many years ago in psychotherapeutic circles. So, I want to draw attention to the significant differences between Rebirthing and hyperventilating and to set at rest any apprehensions about Rebirthing which may result from confusing it with hyperventilation. Remember-as described in Chapter OneRebirthing is a breathing exercise which keeps the inhale and exhale connected, without any pauses or holdings. I ask my Rebirthee to "pull on the inhale and let go with a sigh." The inhale is to be as full and deep and high in the chest and as gentle as possible, with continuing consciousness of taking it in. And the exhale is to be simply the short burst of released breath which results as the intercostal muscles that raised the rib cage are relaxed and the diaphragm is allowed to snap back up, pushing the short exhale out. Essentially, no matter how long and full and deep the inhale is, the exhale is almost always a very short, unforced, uncontrolled release of just enough air so that the next inhale can be pulled in. After breathing in this connected manner for approximately an hour, the typical new Rebirthee finds his consciousness leaving the focus of his breathing pattern to move instead to reviewing-almost reexperiencing-former events in his individual past-often ones which involved negative

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing And Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between The Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and

thoughts and feelings. I encourage my Rebirthee to continue the good Rebirthing breathing pattern, not to push on the exhale. As the Rebirthee complies, he experiences having the old negatives dissolve and disappear, just as the exhale does. He also finds his mind open to new conclusions about the same old events, so that he takes in new, good ideas, just as he takes in the inhale. He finds life more satisfying as he takes fuller inhales, too. Thousands of perfect Rebirths have been conducted without the Rebirthee's getting into hyperventilation, which is the consequence of an entirely different breathing pattern. Hyperventilation occurs when the person chronically forces his exhale, so that he blows off excessive amounts of carbon dioxide. People who might be afraid of their old feelings and thoughts often seek to push on the exhale, as if they were ridding CHAPTE themselves of something bad. This alters R EIGHT the acid-base balance in the blood stream. Rebirthin In turn, the acid-base balance in the blood stream adjusts by changing the g and concentration of calcium ion in the blood. If Conventi the person continues to force the exhale, a onal condition known as alkalosis develops, Psychoth characterized by muscular tremor. erapies Eventually, the biochemical adjustments create spasm, called tetany, which often progresses to the point of producing intense pain in the strained joints and muscles. Tetany also produces intense panic because the person feels breathless. And, indeed he is breathless, for the forced exhales have lowered the concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood reaching the special center in the brain stem which is known as the inspiration center. This center only triggers off the next inspiration automatically when the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the blood (the pCO2) goes above the threshold for stimulation. It takes even more time than usual for CO2 to accumulate to threshold levels if the person has previously been blowing off excessive amounts of CO2. If, during the breathless time, the person reacts to his panic by straining to inhale, he experiences it as short and unsatisfying, for, of course, his body doesn't yet "think" it really "needs" that next inhale. And

Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business

that's likely to compound his panic, for he now concludes that he can't breathe! Often, a person in such difficulties is rushed to a hospital where he is usually treated by being taught to breathe into a closed container, for example, a paper bag or his cupped hands. As he breathes stale air that already has a high partial pressure of CO2, his respiratory center becomes properly stimulated, he stops being breathless, his panic passes, and he's over the "attack"-until the next time he re-creates the same situation by his habitual forcible exhales. In the Rebirthing session, a Rebirthee who responds to old negative feelings and thoughts by putting additional emphasis on his exhales is reminded by me to resume the Rebirthing breathing pattern in which the exhale is not forced. (Specific techniques for changing the exhale are described in detail in Chapter Seventeen.) Sometimes the Rebirthee doesn't respond to my urging, so he produces the hyperventilation syndrome in the midst of his Rebirth session. When that happens, he is not treated by being told to breathe stale air or to hold his breath. Instead, he is encouraged to trust his breath, to surrender to his knowledge that breathing is safe. And as he does so, he finds the old fears and tensions leaving and the painful, frightening spasms relax completely. In effect, Rebirthers have discovered an entirely new treatment for the hyperventilation syndrome: Breathing! The previously anxious individual who customarily reacted to increased anxiety by pushing on the exhale until he caused the appearance of the hyperventilation syndrome now, after Rebirthing, breathes deeply on the inhales, especially when he's stressed, and lets the exhales go without any effort. Rebirthing eliminates the breathing pattern that produced hyperventilation. It's true that Rebirthing does involve breathing more than was customary before Rebirthing, simply because the Rebirthing individual is actually breathing either in or out all the time. That usually isn't true for someone who hasn't learned the Rebirthing pattern of breathing. Instead, the average un-Rebirthed person spends less time breathing (total time for the inhale plus total time for the exhale) than he does holding at the end of the inhale plus pausing again at the end of the exhale. Most people breathe in by gasping and breathe out

CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

by pushing the exhale, after which there's another long pause. So, Rebirthing is a way of breathing that produces ventilation all the time. It's "super" ventilation-not to be confused with hyperventilation. By pointing out these differences, I have reduced doubt and reluctance to experience Rebirthing. It is safe and is usually painless and enjoyable. It doesn't necessarily involve hyperventilation at all. Moreover, it's a remarkably effective technique for letting go all sorts of old negatives, including the ones from

CHAPTER THREE
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE IDEAL BREATH AND YOGIC BREATHING
(PRANAYAMA) In the past eighteen years, traveling around and doing lots of Rebirth trainings and seminars as well as even more individual sessions, I have become more and more clear in my mind about the effectiveness of surrender to the Rebirthing breath, compared to drifting off into different-though similar-methods of

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath

psychological or spiritual healing involving the breath. The Vedas, the ancient texts of early Yoga, are said to refer to the "simplest breath", which is stated to confer "physical immortality" on those who practice it. Many Rebirthers have assumed the Rebirthing breath is what is being referred to, and have mistakenly concluded that, when they engage in the conscious connected breath of Rebirthing, they are actually engaged in Pranayama, the breathing techniques developed through countless centuries of Yoga. But, the breath of Rebirthing is unique and is not at all like the controlled breathing rhythms of Pranayama. Significant differences exist, especially in aim and also in symbolic values. The aim of Yogic breathing is to devote consciousness to the breath so that as the person progresses through fixed attention (dharana) and through contemplation of the breath (dhyana), he can finally achieve complete concentration on his breath (samadhi). As he achieves total identification of his consciousness with his breath and enters samadhi, he is in union (Yoga) with Universal Spirit (Brahma). Yoga breathing disciplines usually involve measured breathing rhythms: The inhale is taken for a given number of beats, then the breath is held for a measured number of beats, then the exhale is released to a specific count, followed by another hold for another number of beats. This cycle is repeated over and over until attention is totally withdrawn from the surroundings and from the internal condition of the Yogi. The exhale is generally pushed, so the lungs are deliberately and consciously pressed to near emptiness. As the Yogi becomes better able to do so, he may consciously alter the amplitude of the inhale and may also speed up or slow down the frequency with which breaths are drawn. Thus, for example, one exercise is to cut the time taken for a given number of breath cycles in half for another such number of cycles and then in half again, and again, until the breath is drawn so quickly and so shallowly that there is no perceptible breath at all. Some Pranayama exercises are

CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing And Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between The Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Psychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and

calculated to evoke specific negative emotions and associated memories, with the aim of releasing these through "appropriate" behavior. Thus, for example, Rajneesh advised devotees to breathe the rapid, forced pattern called the Breath of Fire, evoking rage and frustration that can then be "released" by screaming or weeping. Eventually, the Yogi proves his control over himself (Mastery) by being able to produce all sorts of measured breathing patterns, each differing in amplitude and frequency, without any interruption from emotion, thought, or body sensation. Yogic breathing is aimed at mastery and control. It is an exercise in Self discipline. To me, instructors in Yoga sometimes sound like drum majors, calling out the changes in the breath to an obedient student who promptly changes his breathing patterns as ordered. As I experience it, Yogic breathing is complicated and unnatural in its pauses and in its measured breath excursions. Thus Pranayama stands in total opposition to the breath of Rebirthing which is the natural surrender to the breath, and the assignment to the breath of the task of throwing out old garbage. This is especially apparent when the exhale is examined. Once the nerve signals causing inspiration stop, tension is no longer produced by the intercostal muscles which raise and spread the ribs or by the diaphragm as it contracts down into the abdomen. At that point, the exhale starts. The Rebirthing exhale is simply the consequences of the increased pressure on the inflated lungs produced by the collapse of the ribs and the snapping back of the diaphragm when the inspiration stops. There is no forcing of the exhale nor is there any slowing down or control of the exhaled air stream. The Rebirthing exhale is almost purely a consequence of the reduction in lung space as the ribs and diaphragm let go and collapse the chest. The Rebirthing exhale can thereby be seen to conform to the laws of material nature.

Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

The natural reaction of something which isn't supported is for it to drop-as Newton showed us with his apple. As the ribs drop and the diaphragm snaps back, there is no longer a vacuum created in the chest into which the lungs are drawn as they inflate. Therefore, they deflate. Nothing simpler or more natural. Whether the lungs are fully inflated or not, the ribs and diaphragm collapse at essentially the same rate, as Galileo showed us. So most unguarded exhales are about the same length. The exhale is usually a very quickly accomplished matter, as the lungs push the exhaled breath through the open throat which offers almost no resistance. The inhale, at least in the beginning of

CHAPTER FOUR
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REBIRTHING AND PRIMAL SCREAM THERAPY
In a sense, Rebirthing is saying the same thing as Primal. They're both saying we

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath

need to get back to our earliest imprints. But, Rebirthing rests on the metaphysical assertion: Thought creates. Primal regards that assertion as nonsense. Rebirthing is saying we go back to birth imprints so that we can see if our imprints still serve us in the Here and Now. If they don't, we can and must change our minds about them and let go old pain so we can think positive thoughts and thus create the positive life we strive to realize. It's really rather foolish to believe that your earliest thoughts are your best thoughts, especially if you suffered the typical Western hospital birth. To the extent that you have your life being dictated to by unconscious, birth-related, negative thoughts that you arrived at when you were younger, dumber, less aware, and more ignorant than you ever will be in your entire life since then, you will probably continually create negatives. Thought is both conscious and unconscious. Both kinds of thought, conscious and unconscious, are Creative. But, most unconscious Thought has strong negatives associated with it, otherwise we wouldn't be so anxious to keep it out of our consciousness. And that negative unconscious Thought creates negative manifestations in our life. As we further react negatively to those negatives our unconscious Thought has created, we perpetuate our grievances. Then we react further and thus create more negatives. It's a negative, self-perpetuating cycle. I believe the reason life doesn't work perfectly for most people is simply that so much negative thought persists in the Unconscious. When I first met Leonard Orr, back in 1978, he told me he believed former Primal patients were the hardest people to Rebirth because they generally preferred to go into the melodrama of whatever was being brought up in them by their connected breathing-crying, yelling, and forcing out their exhales-rather than continuing with the connected breathing that could simply and effectively allow them to let go the old negatives underlying their old pains. Since then, I've learned that Leonard's point of view was essentially correct: People, especially former Primal patients, who insist on "expressing negatives" by "carrying on" during the Rebirth are actually cheating themselves of the relief available if only they would trust the breath to let go their old negatives. Why don't they? I think it's because pain is safe for them.

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing And Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between The Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Psychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental

They trust themselves to suffer. It's part of what they believe keeps them alive. Their willingness to suffer shows they're still stuck in their birth negatives. Occasionally, I still run into old Primal patients, some who were at the Primal Institute as long as back in 1971 when I first started working with Art Janov, who are still trying to make their lives work better by feeling their old negative feelings. They still haven't gotten what they wanted, but they are convinced they will, once they suffer enough. Only a week before I wrote this chapter, a fellow who has been a Primal patient for almost a full decade cheerfully announced to me, "Well, I only need to get into my feelings and feel really bad for two days of the week, then I have five days when I'm not into feelings and when my life is going along pretty well." I find that strange. Isn't he really still unhappy during the five days of the week he's enabled to deny the reality of his innermost feelings by virtue of venting them two days of the week? If Primaling isn't letting him let go of the old negatives, what is it accomplishing? On a psychological level, it seems to be just a displaced expression and catharsis with no fundamental healing really taking place, the equivalent of someone's going out and drinking and getting into a bar fight and beating the living hell out of somebody he doesn't know. Many students have asked me, "Well, if what's important is getting back into the perinatal state that we were in when we established our basic belief systems, doesn't that mean that something like a Primal Scream approach is more likely to work than just this Rebirthing breathing? Also, shouldn't we try to recreate womb conditions so we can more easily re-experience our Birth Primal?" My reply is that duplicating the setting and action is just melodrama it doesn't put you in the same physiological state you were in when you formed your basic imprints. Thus it doesn't make you fully conscious of them and in a position to revise them. So, for example, if you confine yourself in a small dark place where you become restless and frantic, you are still not back in the consciousness you experienced in the womb. Even if you deliberately choke yourself, you are not back at the state of consciousness you were in before taking your first breath. And even if you convince your mind that you are re-experiencing old events, you are still only focusing on whatever you believe was wrong when you were in the womb or taking

Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

your first breath. Thus, if Thought Creates, you aren't doing yourself much good. I have many questions I want to ask of those people who believe that it's necessary to be miserable in order to arrive somehow or other at a state of peace and contentment and joy. * Has it worked? * Aside from the time you've spent crying and screaming about your grievances, has your life changed? * Are you getting what you want? * Are you the kind of person you want to be? * How long will you continue to make yourself miserable about these old grievances? * When you don't think about them, are your old pains still hurting you? * Does feeling your pain over and over serve you? * Do you come out from the pained state with a lasting attitude of increased love and forgiveness and joy? * Are you really getting over old pain? Why should anyone believe the Mind heals differently from the Body? Sincerely, I believe the Primal process

* Everyone I knew wanted to get more fun out of life. * They wanted to get what they wanted to get. * They wanted to stop feeling rotten. * They wanted to be able to have happy, spontaneous relationships. They did not want to understand why they were neurotic. They didn't want to understand how being neurotic served other neurotic aims inside of themselves. They certainly didn't want to learn how to compromise, how to put up with disappointment and with half a measure, instead of a full measure. Unfortunately, the best they got, most of the time, was indeed only a half measure. In all those years, I never knew a single personeither analyst or Primal Therapist or patientwho was getting what each wanted out of life. Essentially what I saw them leading were lives of compromise and resignation. They rightly believed such lives were indeed better than lives filled with negatives crucially felt, but their lives still weren't what they wanted. Everyone was really super "mature" in saying, "Well, you can't expect to get what you want out of life. You can't expect everyone to love you. You can't expect to get something without having to pay more than it's worth for it." The theory of Primal work rests on the thesis that the more we feel our primal pain, the more we give up any hope that life will ever be anything other than what it is, the more we finally acknowledge that our early experiences have damaged us irrevocably and irreparably, the more we accept that we will always be in the pain that we're in, the sooner we'll at least stop wasting our efforts trying to become happy, trying to make life better. We will just acknowledge that this pain is what life is-nothing-just a crock. But at least we will be "real," we'll feel our pain, and at least not be in denial of it. When I first started with the Primal process at Janov's Primal Institute, I thought, "Ah, here's finally some way I can get rid of all those terrible things that must be inside of me which have made it so easy for people to take advantage of me." In the very first session, I found an immense, immediate relief. Instead of being told how foolish I was to cry over not getting what I wanted, I was at least being allowed to cry. In fact, I was being encouraged to cry, even being provoked to cry, and cry and cry and cry. For me, the relief of finally not having to try

to be anything other than damaged goods was an immense relief. Less effort went into trying to live up to the expectations of others. I became more authentic and more real. However, I didn't become happier-at least not in the sense of being able to get things that I hadn't been getting or in the sense of not being faced with the same old conflicts and the same old problems. I just was relieved of whatever private shame and grief I had been trying to keep others from learning about through all the years before I got into Primal therapy. Most of the people I knew who went into Primal therapy did so because they felt they didn't have any real friends and no one had ever really liked them. They wanted to be accepted in ordinary society. They wanted to be just like the rest of the "kids on the block." They didn't want to be strange. They didn't want to be awkward or clumsy. They didn't want to be too this or not enough that. They wanted to be OK, and to have everyone else who walked around thinking he or she was OK think that they were OK, too (even though"OK" generally means being thoughtless and careless and essentially turned off and indifferent to both life's joys and life's pain). But that didn't happen. Instead, what they got from doing Primal therapy was the opportunity to hang out with other people who also felt they had never had any real friends and didn't really know how to have a good time socially. They didn't become people who were able to take their place (or what they had thought should be their place) in the ordinary world of happy-go-lucky people. Some Primal patients did manage to forge different lives for themselves that certainly were improvements over the lives they'd been creating before they got into doing Primal process work. But they didn't get what they had wanted when they entered Primal Therapy. And after all, isn't that what life is about? Don't we really feel happiest when we've gotten what we wanted? Isn't that what we're trying to do? Now that I'm into Rebirthing, I can understand the reason Primal makes people feel better about feeling bad, but doesn't usually lead to a fulfilled, satisfied life. Primal is saying the "Cure for Neurosis" (as Janov subtitled his first book) is to feel our feelings. We need to go back to our earliest imprints because they're connected with our Primal Pain and we need to feel that Pain. If we go on denying it, we'll need to go on being neurotic. We're healthy only

to the extent that we feel our previously unfelt feelings, even if we spend all our time feeling bad over past bad events in our lives. But doesn't that seem strange and illogical? How can Health be Pain? Isn't health the natural absence of pain? Wouldn't you sooner feel good? Please understand that I'm not mocking Primal. I'll always be grateful to Arthur Janov, just as I'll always be grateful to Siegmund Freud. I'm simply delineating the differences between it and Rebirthing. So, as a Rebirther, I believe the reason life doesn't work for most Primal patients the way they hoped it would before Primal is not only that most of their unconscious Thought is negative, but also that they're deliberately occupying their conscious Thought with their Pain. Since making unconscious Pain conscious doesn't actually make it less painful, their Thought is still negative, and it is still Creating more negative manifestations in their life. The concept, Thought Creates, explains the inherent fault connected with Primal work and explains why it doesn't help Primal patients get what they want. By contrast, I believe the reason life starts to work for people into Rebirthing is that the Rebirthing breath clears out old negatives from consciousness, and the emphasis on using affirmations fills conscious Thought with positives-so the more highly positive Mind creates a more beneficent life. Rebirthing says, You, through your Thought, have created the Universe you exist in. The way people treat you is the way you, in both your conscious and unconscious Thought, need them to treat you in order for you to feel safe and alive. If the metaphysics are correct, if it is true that your Thought creates your Universe, then by changing your early negative thoughts and correcting them to positive thoughts about creation and your place in it, you can change your life and get what you want. Several years ago, in answer to a query from an individual writing a book about Rebirthing compared to Primal, I wrote the following letter: Dear Nicholas, The Rebirthing breathing is a process where the inhale and the exhale are connected-there are no pauses, there are no holds. The type of breathing that is done is not the kind that produces hyperventilation, in other words, it is not a forced exhale. It's not a way of lowering the partial pressure

of carbon dioxide. Instead, it is simply a way of enlarging the inhale. So, you are in error when you say that it is a form of breathing similar to hyperventilation. The logic escapes me of Art Janov's saying the use of affirmations is like Ellis' Rational Therapy and his reporting that a Primal patient who had undergone Rational Therapy said it was like pretending to feel something you didn't feel. So what? What does this have to do with, other than Art Janov's opinion about what affirmations are and his patient's view of Rational Therapy? I think that, indeed, he has missed the essence of it. The point is that with affirmations we are training our minds to think only positive thoughts. Yes, Rebirthing is definitely a positive, simplified and spiritualized technique, but it is not a version of Primal therapy. That's like saying that cleaning up a room is a variation of getting it dirty. So, clear up your logic because you want people to read your book and respect you for it. There's no point in making illogical statements and certainly no point in your making ones that are inaccurate. If you are going to continue to pursue the relationship or the similarities between Rebirthing and Primal, then you need to keep in mind that, within the Rebirthing philosophy, all of the psychoanalytic traumata are simply regarded as variations on the birth trauma. Similar happenings would have no emotional charge for a child who hadn't already laid down the basic scenario through the birth. Also, of course, they wouldn't be happening. I find it preposterous that Janov states traumata are more likely to be found during infancy than at birth. This goes against all psychogenetic theory and common-sense experience, and I think it may be just a testimony to Arthur's inability to deal with his own birth Primal and to let it go. If you haven't already done so, please be sure to do a Rebirthing session so you can actually experience it. It's really silly to talk about something if you haven't, indeed, experienced it, especially when it is so

easily available. First, Primal yourself: get into your current emergent negative feeling and let yourself feel it intensely until you lose consciousness of it. Then do a Rebirthing session. Then you'll be in a position to compare them-to see what kinds of effects each session has. I think that would be more intellectually honest than quoting this person and that person. The reason I'm a Rebirther is that I'm completely convinced of the validity of the philosophical proposition that our Thought creates our universe. So that's why I don't deal with hallucinatory drugs for therapeutic purposes. It's also why I don't encourage people to dramatize their old negative feelings.

CHAPTER FIVE
THE BIOLOGY OF IMPRINTS

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath

INTRODUCTION
Questions that come up very frequently at workshops are: "Exactly what is the underlying biological basis for Rebirthing?" "What's going on in the body when a person does this particular kind of breathing?" "What about Rebirthing allows the body to empower the Mind to be aware of itself and to change itself?" I wrote an article about this in 1983 and published it as a little pamphlet with the title of "An Introduction to Rebirthing for Health Professionals." It is reprinted in this book as Appendix A. I wrote it primarily to give Rebirthers a vehicle for approaching health professionals in their communities so that they could invite them to experience a Rebirth session and, hopefully, then become ardent fans of this process. In fact, that's why I made the pamphlet so short and terse and therefore so inexpensive to print. I hoped that all Rebirthers would buy, say, 50 of them, and once a week would send one with a covering letter to some health professional in their community with an invitation, "Please read this; I'd like to take you to lunch and hear your reactions to it." My primary purpose in that pamphlet was to briefly talk about what Rebirthing is and what kinds of medical or health problems it has served to help heal or eliminate or ameliorate. I also included a few brief paragraphs on what I believe is the underlying biology created by the conscious connected breath. This present chapter is a more comprehensive discussion of the facts on which I base my speculations about how and why Rebirthing works. (Please note, these are still speculations, not yet confirmed. Even now, thirteen years after I wrote that introduction of Rebirthing to the world of psychotherapy and health care, there has still not yet been any basic physiological research performed on the process of Rebirthing!) I believe all Rebirthers, even those not disposed to be interested in biology, should know this information, since it is a fairly complete biological explanation of how Rebirthing probably works,

CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Psychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental

neurophysiologically. I hope you won't skip it, even if it's technical. I think it would be paradoxical to be involved in a process that promotes greater consciousness in the Here and Now, yet refuse to increase conscious understanding of that process. So give it a chance. I believe you'll find the following description of how the body works interesting and revealing. To discuss my speculations about how Rebirthing works, I'll subdivide this discussion into answer to specific questions. I have first to review some of the basic physiology of the brain and nervous system. What Part of the Brain Does Rebirthing Affect? By the very nature of the physical and psychological changes that Rebirthing brings about, I'm led to conclude that the connected breathing alters the physiological processes occurring in the limbic system, allowing us to revise the imprints we have stored there from our earliest experiences, especially birth. The discovery by such prominent neurophysiologists as Alvarez and Maclean over thirty-five years ago of the limbic system was not only a major contribution to our understanding of neurophysiology, but of psychology as well. The limbic system stores our basic belief system, our imprints. These imprints are our almostimmutable Thoughts about Life and the Self. Imprints determine our fundamental associations between our perceived inner states and our abstract philosophical values. These beliefs comprise what we believe life is all about, what we believe must or must not be for our survival itself. So for Rebirthing to permit old imprints to be revised, it must be affecting the limbic system. What Part of the Brain Involves the Limbic System? The limbic system is a system comprised of nuclei in the brain tissue lining the surface of the lateral ventricles, the fluid-filled hollow cavities within the left and right front parts of the brain. Some of these nuclei lie within the telencephalon, the top "brain," the brain we usually think of when we think of a thinking brain. Other

Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

limbic nuclei lie in the diencephalon, the next-lower "brain," which includes the centers for control of our drives states and of the emotional display and reaction connected to the state of our drives states, all mediated through the Autonomic nervous system. How is the Limbic System Related to the Whole Brain? Prior to the discovery of the limbic system, the brain was conceived of as essentially five separate and mainly independent "brains," which each evolved in turn through our evolution. Most functions of the brain are controlled by systems confined to a single such "brain." But the limbic system runs within and between the "top" two, the last two to evolve. It is thus even anatomically well designed to allow for programming Belief-that almost instinctive conviction that establishes our ingrained rules for life. The base "brain," or rhombencephalon, which includes the brain stem and the pons, is the lowest, most primitively evolved "brain." It contains vital centers that automatically control breathing, heartbeat, coughing, sneezing, and vomiting reflexes. It is not a thinking brain, so it isn't open to much learning. It simply reacts in order to maintain the basic homeostasis of the body. It's like a hard-wired computer. We can only assert our Will over the centers of the brain stem to a limited extent. For example, we can control some autonomic functions like heartbeat and body temperature through the use of Yogic techniques, but such control takes years of practice to achieve. The rhombencephalon is ordinarily autonomous. The "brain" above it, the second brain, called the metencephalon, is a brain which evolved quite early in the development of vertebrates. It's simply the center for balance and sense of position and place, the knowledge of where we are, moment to moment. Most of it is the cerebellum, which is like a large computer constantly keeping track of where the different parts of the body are in space. The cerebellum continually sends a Aprintout" of this information to higher brain centers in the top "brain", the telencephalon. Such centers are involved in both voluntary and involuntary motion, so our movements are coordinated. Like the rhombencephalon, the metencephalon is not a thinking brain, and we usually are completely unconscious of its functioning. We

can overcome it, as we do when skating or skiing, and we can train it, as we do when dancing, but mainly it's another autonomous brain. The next "brain" to evolve, the mesencephalon, can best be thought of as a switchboard that makes interconnections with between vision, motion, audition, and the other senses. The mesencephalon, for example, relays messages so the head turns automatically toward the source of a sound. The mesencephalon itself does very little in the way of selecting out circuits to switch on or off, although, it, too, can be trained, as, for example, when a hunter keeps his eyes on his prey, not allowing himself to be distracted by extraneous sounds. Like the rhombencephalon and the metencephalon, the mesencephalon is not a Thinker and it's primarily outside the effects of our Will, our Self. The next brains, the diencephalon and the telencephalon, are the top two "brains," the brains that handle what we call thinking and feeling. As pointed out before, the limbic system is located in both diencephalic and telencephalic tissues. How Does the Brain Direct Emotional Reactions? As I mentioned previously, the diencephalon contains the control centers for feeling reactions, specifically, for objectrelated emotions, the emotions we have about objects which are involved in satisfying our drive states: thirst, hunger, the desire for sleep, the desire for activity, and the desire for sex. These emotions differ as our drive states change. And these changes are mediated by the two divisions of the Autonomic nervous system, one called the parasympathetic nervous system and the other called the sympathetic nervous system. How Does the Autonomic Nervous System Operate? When we're hungry, anything that looks like food seems desirable. But once we are full, the sight of food being served to the table next to us in a restaurant is disgusting. Those feelings of desire and disgust are

mediated by the Autonomics. All drives are cyclic kinds of desires. There's a natural rhythm to them. Satisfying them once doesn't mean they're satisfied foreverCthey continue to need to be satisfied as they continue to arise. Certain emotions are also usually attached automatically to events which disturb rhythmic satisfaction, and such emotions are also mediated by the Autonomics. For example, we need to breathe about a dozen to a dozen and a half times per minute, and anything that interferes with our breathing has a striking, highly charged negative emotion attached to itCeither rage or fear. We need to eat. Even someone who has been unconditioned by social expectations around him feels the need to obtain nourishment and to replenish energy supplies once every day or two. (Most people like to eat more often than once a day, but much such hunger is probably habitual.) Rage at first and then forlorn feelings of depression typically result when hunger isn't satisfied. Rest and activity are also drives. We all know how we feel when we're fully restedwe wake up and we're ready to go. If instead we find out that it's very early, and that we need to stay in bed lest we wake other people, we find ourselves feeling very restless and put upon, with tension and irritability (anxiety or rage) quickly developing. In fact, a pretty good way to promote a panic state in many people is just to immobilize them, and keep them from being able to move when they want to. Most will instantly oblige you by going into a major panic or rageCemotions that I believe are directly connected with birth reactions, as I will show later on. If something tries to take away a source of satisfaction from us, we get angry and fight. Sometimes we become afraid and we flee. Sometimes we become so afraid that we are paralyzed in our tracks by our fear itself. The Autonomic nervous system, run by nuclei in the diencephalon, regulates and coordinates all the reactions going on in the body that we call emotional reactions. All of these involve changes in heart rate and the amplitude of the heartbeat, breathing rate and the amplitude of the breath itself, circulation and where capillary beds are opened or where

they're closed down, and digestive activity in terms both of the mobility of the gut itself and the secretion of the glands that are present within the gastrointestinal tract. The Autonomic nervous system, through its two divisionsCthe parasympathetic and the sympatheticCcontrols all these visceral reactions, which are different for the different drive states and for different object-related emotions. When our reactions and emotions are appropriate, we're psychologically healthy. When they aren't, we aren't. Most visceral organs have dual antagonistic autonomic innervation. So, for example, where the parasympathetics make a particular gland secrete, the sympathetics prevent it from secreting or cause it to secrete a different substance. Another example is that while the parasympathetics may cause a

CHAPTER SIX
FOOD AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Connected with the question of how Rebirthing works on the brain are several questions of how the brain's conditions affect the operations of the Mind. What's going on in the brain when the Mind works optimally, on a positive level? If Thought Creates, what does the brain need so its Mind thinks positive thoughts and thus creates a positive Universe? Are the conditions of the brain affected by how foods influence energy level? Does the brain react to certain foods, directly, as allergens? These questions are important because they lead to the fundamental question: Can our Thought create a positive Universe even though we eat foods that usually upset the brain and thus lead to disordered thought? I believe that until your life is running the way you want it to run, until you have all the energy you need to do everything you want to do, until you're working at a job you enjoy that's making you the money that you need, until you have a satisfying love relationship, until you typically feel vigorous, healthy, and pain-free, you shouldn't put any food into your body that isn't healthy for you! It will simply distort your mood and attitude, it will affect your energy level, and it will make getting real satisfactions from work and life even more difficult. When I first became involved in Rebirthing, I was very amazed, actually dumbfounded, to see Rebirthers eating foods that are really not awfully nourishing as they intoned various affirmations, like "Everything I eat turns to perfect beauty, health, and energy." Leonard, for example, often joked about how happiness is eating a pound of chocolate chip cookies every day or eating a pint of licorice ice cream every day, and he did, indeed very often, eat things that most of us

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Psychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and

agree would qualify as junk. I well remember another Rebirther who still had an extremely bad case of what is known as teenage acne, although he was in his late twenties. He routinely ate a great deal of dairy products each day and made a point, in fact, of having a hot fudge sundae or a malted milkshake at least once a day. I finally asked, "Tim, don't you think that that much dairy stuff is bad for you, not to mention the sugar and the chocolate?" His reply was, "Only if I think it's bad for me. My thought is creative, and so long as I don't think that eating a chocolate malted milkshake hurts me, it doesn't." My reaction to all that is somewhat scornful. I'm not especially tolerant of these ideas because I believe they're on par with whistling in the graveyard. We're deluding ourselves. Were we each of us, indeed, Masters in the sense of the few Hindu and Buddhist saints who apparently are Masters, we might be able to exist on a diet of only sugar candy or even on a diet of only air, without suffering, illness, or distorted thought. But I know I'm not a Master. Not in that sense. And I also know that I'm unlikely to become a Master in that sense so long as I'm walking around with negative thoughts and feelings inside of me, negatives which cause me to resist doing what "works" re diet and exercise. I'm essentially condemning myself to keep such negatives operative if I insist on putting junk food, non-nutritious substances, in me, so that I'm not truly nourishing my brain and I'm not maintaining a high energy level. Rather than abuse the power of affirmations by saying something untrue, scientifically, I urge you to use affirmations to support and further your willingness to take good care of yourself. So, rather than affirming something silly like, "My body thrives on junk food," or AThe more chocolate I eat, the healthier I become," let go your underlying scarcity consciousness and low self-esteem by affirming, "I totally enjoy nourishing myself on a diet that's 85 percent raw fruit, vegetables, nuts

Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

and seeds." You deserve to nourish yourself so you can develop your highest spiritual qualities. Give yourself the energy you need to keep your thought positive! If your brain is subject to sudden arrests of its energy or raw materials for good thoughts, it may re-experience similar pre- or peri-natal lacks and go back into its old negative scarcity thoughts. To keep your Thought pure and positive, your brain has to have a constant supply of the energy and nutrients it uses in manufacturing thoughts and it has to feel secure that that supply comes from an infinite abundance. The satisfied brain experiences a balance between intake and output of energy so that Thought remains consistently positive. And the single item that most easily provides such balance is your diet. When you decide what to put in your mouth, you're essentially deciding if you want to think positive thoughts or negative ones. So, if energy is a problem for you, change your diet! I recommend you read and follow the book, Fit for Life, written by Diamond and Diamond. Take care of your energy problems by putting foods into you that you don't need to use a lot of energy to digest. That way, you end with a surplus of energy to devote to making your life what you want it to be by making your Thought positive. Negatives about food are part of our earliest imprints. They're a major part of our Parental Disapproval Syndrome, and they are also often thoughts our mothers had about eating when they were pregnant or even when they conceived (we shared those thoughts as the neurohumors basic to those thoughts of hers entered our placental circulation). One such negative is the idea that I can't get enough of any pleasure to be satisfied. And another such negative is the idea that I need certain artificial pleasures to make up for not being able to get other important and real gratifications. Tastes and certain quantities of special foods are often such pleasures that are misused as substitutes. I see scarcity consciousness behind the idea that junk foods are okay to eat

routinely. I see the Parental Disapproval Syndrome and the refusal to do what's good for me. I see all kinds of confusions between necessary nutrition and addictions or compulsions. For example, the overweight woman who has a love affair with her refrigerator and gets up twenty times in the course of an evening to go get a little snack, especially a junk food snack, is not eating a fully nourishing diet. She may also be feeling a lack of contact and gratification in her personal relations. She may be trying to make up to herself for what she regards as a state of love deprivationCperhaps she thinks if she had somebody she thought she loved, who loved her, she would be too excited in her infatuation to eat or she would be better inclined to stay away from food addiction. Whatever her motives may be, by eating junk food, which is addicting, she condemns herself to the addicted compulsion to consume more. And she probably won't get other satisfactions she wants until her thought is cleared of her addictions. She's cheating herself by indulging herself. She won't stop wanting until she stops using. One of the scientific truths in psychology and physiology is that one satisfaction can't make up for another. For example, if I suffer from not taking in enough calories, if I'm hungry, I can drink water, lots of water, enough water to distend my body and fill it, but that still isn't going to undo my hunger. It isn't going to satisfy my hunger. I need to put calories in in order to satisfy hunger. Similarly, if I am getting tired and sleepy, if it's been twenty hours or more since I last slept, then I may be able to drive myself, to push myself, especially if I put some high calorie foods in to give me a boost of quick energy, but ultimately the only thing that's going to satisfy my craving for rest and unconsciousness is sleep. Beyond a certain level of intoxication with fatigue products, eating won't do it and even moving around won't do it, although it's true that we can temporarily change our energy distribution by moving around. (If you're finding yourself getting sleepy or bored before your customary bedtime, stand up and do a couple of quick deep-knee bends. Nobody needs to see you

doing them. You can look as if you're picking a pencil up, as if you're looking for something on the floor. The little bit of exercise is enough to stir up your liver, to release some glycogen, which gets converted to glucose and moved into the cells, and all of a sudden you have energy to do things with. It's energy you've withdrawn from your Asavings account" in the glycogen stores in your liver.) Most people who don't have enough energy to do what they need and want to do are eating a diet of manufactured foods, foods that are cooked, foods that are created out of other basic raw products. When you mostly eat cooked foods, especially a diet high in flesh foods and refined carbohydrates, your energies fluctuate up and down. Your brain reacts to these changes, affecting your mood and your attitude so you may find it really hard to get things started or to keep at them until you get them done. In that connection, for those of you who

CHAPTER SEVEN
REBIRTHING AND BODYWORK THERAPIES
Rebirthing is successful to the extent that what you're doing with your body permits you to breathe fully and freely. In the final analysis, your Body and Mind are one, and your Body and Spirit are one. Your Body shows you what you're thinking and feelingCor still holding on to from your past. For example, if you were always apprehensive as a child, your shoulders are probably chronically hunched. If you were always at the ready to become violent, your arms may be character- istically held out from your sides. If you were always ashamed to look anyone in the eye, your gaze is probably always cast down with your head shrunk down toward your chest. If you're always in a rush to get somewhere, being forceful and assertive and aggressive, your body is probably bent at the hips so that the top part of the body is leaning forward like the woman who used to be portrayed on the Old Dutch cleanser can. Or if you're reluctant to step forward into your future and you're still clinging to your past, you're probably leaning back with your legs going forward, while the upper body is actually at a backwards slant, like the `Keep on Trucking' sign. Your success with Rebirthing is dependent upon your breathing musculature's being able to relax. If you've got your shoulders hunched and your chest caved in and your belly stuck out, for example, you're certainly not going to be able to draw a really full breath into your chest. Various bodywork therapies can help change such habits. So I wholeheartedly recommend all the forms of body therapy that help you breathe bigger. During the past thirty years, many forms of holistic treatment have been introduced to the public. Most of the new, Western forms depend upon hands-on movement and manipulation of the body. Probably the first one to gain a great deal of recognition was Structural Integration, developed by Ida Rolf and thus usually called "Rolfing". It is based on the assumption that when a person habitually feels a certain feeling

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Psychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and

or is habitually demonstrating a particular attitude, by his posture, he holds certain muscles tense and immobilized. As he keeps these muscles from relaxing and moving fluidly, the fascial sheathes that surrounds each muscle group, as well as each individual muscle cell, shorten and tighten, and this fascia may even, in fact, develop adhesions to neighboring fascial sheathes. The result is that there is less fluidity to movement and more block-like stasis of the body. Also, the bodyCand thus the mindCcontinues to experience the emotions that gave rise to the habitual stance. Whatever the body habitus might be, Rolfing seeks to alter it by forcibly stretching and separating the fascial sheathes around the major muscle groups in the body. As the Rolfing strokes open up the body, the associated emotional blocks are also opened. The Rolfing program is usually a series of ten sessions, each concentrating on one part of what Wilhelm Reich called the "body armor." The first session works on the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles, as well as the muscles of the waist, to free up the breathing. The second session concentrates on the abdominals that have been held tight, especially by people who have trouble eating too much or not eating enough. Subsequent sessions work on the muscles of the legs, the arms, the pelvis, the shoulder girdle, etc. Rolfing is a painful process. It may cause soreness, even bruising. Most Rolfers still believe that it is important to feel the pain so that it "can be integrated into consciousness," whatever that term means. To me, such pain has been essentially meaningless. I often wondered if it wouldn't be possible to anesthetize an individual and do the Rolfing session on him successfully while he was totally unconscious. Since it's the muscles and fascia that presumably are holding the old negative thought and feeling, not the Thinker, what difference could it make? But I was always told that doing anything to reduce the pain was a no-no, and that the pain of Rolfing was part of what made it a therapeutic process. I myself "did" several series of ten Rolfing sessions. In fact, moving from my first Rolfer to a second and third, I bought myself almost one hundred hours of physical torture. I still believe that whatever benefits I received

Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

came from the freeing up of my fascia, not from my putting up with the intense pain from the strokes. Another body therapy that gained wide recognition shortly after Rolfing was first introduced is the form of joint manipulation that was developed by Dr. Milton Trager. Unlike Rolfing, Trager work is generally not at all painful. Indeed, it's often quite playful and pleasurable. Trager work seeks to alter the body's stance, posture, etc., by gently moving, almost playing, with each joint, increasing its movement. So, for example, the head, while supported in two hands, is bounced back and forth so that the atlas and axis develop more and more freedom of movement. In a complete session, the Trager work goes from the neck across the shoulders, down the arms, up the legs, across the back, across the abdomen, up into the chest, and up into the head again. The person gains an increasing sensation of greater fluidity and greater expansive movement. He can use his body more effortlessly. Subsequent sessions go over the body entirely, too, each time increasing its mobility. I'm not certain that consciousness during the Trager session is important at all. It seems to me that if passively moving the joint allows it to relax and develop greater freedom of movement, then consciousness is not necessary. I know that Dr. Trager has indeed worked on people who were anesthetized. Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais was the innovator of another bodywork which involves not only hands-on work by the Feldenkrais practitioner, but also self-conscious movement by the patient. Such self-awareness is extremely effective in helping people with birthrelated neuromuscular problems like spastic paralysis. Of all forms of "Western" bodywork, I most enjoy Ortho Bionomy, a form of body work that was developed by Arthur Lincoln Pauls. Ortho Bionomy seeks to readjust posture and stance by supporting the preferred position rather than trying to alter it. As such, there isn't very much movement to it and there is almost no discomfort or pain. It enables the portions of the brain concerned with posture and movement, especially the cerebellum, to

readjust the amount of tension held in particular muscles, which in turn hold the skeleton in certain positions. Having the shoulder supported in the preferred tense position, for example, seems to allow the cerebellum to "decide" that the shoulder's habitual tension is too great. When the Ortho Bionomist stops supporting a specific muscle group or joint, the cerebellum readjusts and goes back to ordering a normal amount of tension which is experienced as immediate relaxation. Whatever the cause of the held tension may be, we maintain the chronic position because the metencephalon centers "regard" that posture as normal or necessary. For example, it's as if our cerebellum were a thermostat that has decided that a certain amount of tension in our shoulder muscles is normal. Thus, although we know intellectually that our shoulders are tense and hard to the touch, we cannot voluntarily relax the shoulder muscles. Being stretched by Rolfing allows them to relax. Being played with through Trager work allows them to develop greater flexibilities and more relaxation. Deliberately and consciously moving in the Feldenkrais patterns improves movement, too. And, as just described, Ortho Bionomy also resets the muscular tension and creates greater flexibility. Other forms of bodywork like Reflexology, Applied Kinesiology, Touch for Health, acupressure, and acupuncture all work on the philosophy that there is some disturbance of the flow of energy up and down what are referred to in Eastern medicine as meridians. If that energy can be re-routed so that all meridians are receiving a normal flow of energy, then the organs of the body, including its skeleton and its musculature, will start performing on a homeostatic basis, an holistically healthy basis. All of these Eastern bodywork forms work. I don't object to any of them. I think they're all great. But I have difficulty understanding what the meridians are. An I also can't understand how we can ever keep our energies going correctly if just rubbing an arm, for example, in one direction rather than the opposite way can seriously disrupt the flow of energy. What happens if we brush against someone in a crowd? Or rub ourselves the "wrong" way when we use a towel? This isn't to say I think these bodywork forms that are

based on energy flowing in the meridians are hokum. I don't. I like them and enjoy them. I just can't understand them. People often ask, "Is it all right to get involved with bodywork therapies while we're also involved with Rebirthing?" And I reply, "Of course, there's no antithesis between them." I see all these bodywork techniques as working together with Rebirthing. I don't see them as opposed to each other in any way. I recommend to most of my Rebirthing clients that they get involved with Trager work or Ortho Bionomy or Touch for Health work in order to allow their ribcage to open up more fully so that they can take even bigger, more satisfying breaths, more effortlessly. For people with severely distorted and restricted chests, I recommend Rolfing, although I think that forcibly stretching a muscle isn't as good as getting that muscle to relax because the mind lets it. Every so often, somebody wants to Rebirth while simultaneously being Tragered or having a Touch for Health session. I don't go along with that. I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm just saying it's confusing and difficult. After experimenting with myself and several dozen patients, I finally concluded that it's much easier to simply do one therapy or treatment at a time, with one closely following the other. I think it's much better to have the sessions back to back rather than having a body session one day of the week, then a Rebirthing session another day of the week. To the extent possible, I have people who are involved with bodywork do their body session just before they do their Rebirthing session with me. I see the bodywork primarily as facilitating the breathwork. For quite a while, I offered to clients a lovely way to combine therapies by having them come first to have a bodywork session with Louis or any of the other body therapists that I work with most closely. Then, once they felt relaxed and open, we started the breathing

segment, using the ideal Rebirthing breath, breathing for an hour. I found that people simply blossomed and thrived with that approach. Another combined approach that I offered consisted of three sessions: first, a conference session with me for an hour or two, in which we worked on establishing specific affirmations to handle the client's negatives; this was followed by a bodywork session with Louis who, being extensively trained in all the bodywork forms mentioned in this chapter, could be eclectic about which technique he used on the client's outstanding restrictions of chest movement; and third, a wet Rebirth session in my hot tub. The people who came on the weekends when such a Athree-ring circus" was offered all enjoyed it hugely and felt they received immense benefits. In this connection, I have found that sending Rebirthing clients to bodyworkers who are not involved with the breath or clean diets doesn't seem to work well. The bodywork therapists that I refer Rebirthing clients to are people who have Rebirthed extensively and are well acquainted with Rebirthing, and also are people who acknowledge that diet is a major factor in the production of tension and pain in the body. This doesn't mean that I only make referrals to people who are vegetarians or people who are primarily committed to the Fit for Life diet. But it does mean that I won't make referrals to therapists who do not acknowledge the effect of delayed allergic food reactions on the musculature and joints. So first I recommend that before you become involved with bodywork, you pay attention to what you're eating. Make sure that you're putting living foods that are not allergenic, offending foods into your body at every meal. It's really easy for me to stay on a diet of foods that are good for me. Then get yourself some bodywork so you can breathe as fully and freely as possible. It's really easy for me

to maintain a healthy posture that allows me to breathe fully to the top of my chest. Then practice the Rebirthing breath and change the way you think by correcting your primary negative thoughts with affirmations that, if necessary, you force yourself to use

CHAPTER EIGHT
REBIRTHING AND CONVENTIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPIES
The major difference between traditional methods of talk therapy and Rebirthing is well illustrated in the following scenario: A man has been stabbed; the knife is still in his body, hurting him with his every breath. He holds the protruding knife to keep it from wounding him even more as his body shakes in agony. One of his friends, seeking to provide aid, asks solicitously, "How did it happen?" The friend listens compassionately as the victim describes in exact detail the circumstances leading up to the stabbing. They talk back and forth until the victim has fully communicated what happened, has given his ideas about why it happened, and has fully

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic

explained how the knife still prevents him from breathing or moving freely. Still, after all the talk and explanation, the knife remains in place and the victim continues to suffer. That's conventional psychotherapy-it concentrates on the negatives. Another friend comes to help. His questions are different. Not concerned about how the stabbing came about, he instead asks, "How do you feel about being stabbed? How do you feel about the person who stabbed you? Have you ever felt like that before?" They, too, talk back and forth until the victim has thoroughly ventilated his feelings about having been stabbed. But, the knife is still in him and he still suffers. That's expressive, emotion-release therapy. Finally, a third friend comes by and asks, "What are you doing with that knife still stuck in you? Why don't you get rid of it?" He, too, listens patiently while the suffering man explains that the knife hurts so much he doesn't dare move it and he has to keep it in place. The friend points out that the knife will drop out once the victim stops holding onto it and encourages him to let it go, whereupon the knife clatters to the floor. The wound bleeds a little, but that's part of the natural healing which immediately starts to take place. In a relatively short time, even the memory of the incident is forgotten as the man rushes to get back to having fun. That's Rebirthing. Like the first two friends in this scenario, traditional psychotherapies are concerned with epiphenomena, like deciding how you were hurt, why you were hurt, how your hurt still affects your here-and-now life, etc. Such considerations don't stop the pain. They merely give you a comfortable intellectual understanding of your pain and your adjustment to it. You isolate yourself from your pain as you intellectualize, even as you engage in dream interpretations and free associations.

Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14

But you don't eliminate the pain or its source. Most so-called successful psychotherapy merely results in the patient's being able to divorce himself from his problems sufficiently to perform and act like other people who, presumably, don't have such problems. I know that my former colleagues who still practice traditional talk therapy are welltrained, compassionate, sensitive, and devoted to the form of psychotherapy being practiced. I've never known a therapist who was indifferent to the costs in money and time and painful discomfort spent by the patients consulting him for help. Yet most continue to practice the technique they settled upon in their late twenties and scorn most innovations including even diet and nutritional supplement approaches to mood, energy, and other personality variables. I imagine something about the old mode resonates with the early imprints these therapists established, so changing their minds about therapy is as difficult as giving up any other convictions based on early imprints. It's almost as if therapists are afraid they may jeopardize their safety if they change their basic beliefs. That's why I urge people, especially therapists, to engage in a Rebirth session before deciding they don't approve of it. In a sense, traditional talk psychotherapies are like the use of tranquilizer drugs that blot out human consciousness along with alleviating anxiety, or the use of psychosurgery and convulsive shock that interrupt normal brain function. These all either cover up or prevent old negatives from determining the patient's behavior on the superficial level of today's acceptable social behavior, yet the problem may still operate, determining private feelings and thoughts, interfering with healthy basic bodily reactions. By contrast, Rebirthing appears to eliminate tension and disease (dis-ease). The client becomes healthy and positive automatically as a consequence of letting go the negative feelings and thoughts and bodily reactions which characterize his disease. No

Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

longer is there a split between private and public, between the symbol and the reality. What is revealed in the Rebirther's social acts is a direct enactment of the consciously perceived Self. All people recapitulate the circumstances of their birth in everything that they do. They develop their ego mechanisms on the foundation of the outstanding factors of their birth. Their consciousness is closely related to the pre-natal, peri-natal, and postnatal states that had the greatest charge for them. Dr. Stanislav Grof delineates a limited number of such states of consciousness: First, there is endless oceanic bliss, the sort of feeling that a wanted, happy infant experiences from the time of conception through his first few months of womb existence. Everything is being provided to the enlarging, growing fetus, who's exploding into life. All the waste products are being taken away as promptly as they're created. The baby is just in Bliss. Other people later in life may still be lost in their efforts to return to this stage, the only state of bliss they have ever experienced. In their search for such autistic satisfaction, they may become opiate addicts, alcoholics, over-eaters, or withdrawn psychotics. Mood disturbances accompany their failure to achieve the bliss they cling to from the first stage. Other people are trapped in the second stage of womb existence where there is increasing discomfort due to the increasing concentration of waste products not carried away fast enough, and the increasing sense of deprivation as food, energy, and oxygen aren't provided at the same previously high rate. The discomfort becomes increasingly greater until finally the child seeks to escape from that uncomfortable state through initiating the process of birth, which leads to a third state of existence. People arrested in this second prenatal stage generally experience life as threatening and overwhelming. They may become aggressive as they project their impotence or simply reveal their doubt and weakness in paranoid and obsessive behavior.

In the third stage, the first post-natal state, freedom from the old constraint of the womb is achieved, but at the price of experiencing chaos. A lot of different sensations assault the newborn child, not only light and sound and temperature changes, but also touch and weight. Most importantly, if he is to succeed in staying alive, the newborn child must breathe for himself and must receive nourishment, support, nurturance, and succorance from those around him. Because all this may be fraught with struggle, this third stage may very well be regarded as a continuation of the birth struggle, perhaps made psychologically worse because the infant's rejection of the womb has brought this third stage about. His independent decision to leave the womb hasn't brought him the relief he seeks. Compulsions, impulsivity, and hysteria are developed as the individual seeks to handle the anxiety of dealing with the many sensory assaults and needs accompanying this third stage.

CHAPTER NINE
REBIRTHING AND NEUROLINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING
Just as significant differences exist between Rebirthing and other conventional psychotherapies (including the expressive primal-type sorts of therapies), significant differences also exist between Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Significant similarities also exist. Like Rebirthing, Neuro-Linguistic Programming allows people to decide how they want to be and enables them to develop ways to be like that, on call. So Neuro-Linguistic Programming (which from now on Icm going to call NLP), obviously exercises the Will and expands and empowers it. Like Rebirthing, too, NLP techniques work quickly, in fact, even more quickly and indeed more surely in their immediate effects than Rebirthing. But I have some serious objections to NLP that lead me to prefer Rebirthing as the therapy I practice. One objection involves my relationships with the people who practice each of these approaches. I feel a radical difference between my ties to them, even though in both cases, the people are lively and seem to be enjoying themselves, exuding an aura of selfconfidence and joy in life, a feeling of personal power. Generally speaking, also, they're very good-looking: most people at meetings of Rebirthers or NLP'ers are normally well-fleshed and healthy looking: there are very few people who are slovenly, undernourished, or outrageously obese. Both Rebirthing and NLP seem to produce or attract people who are excellent manifestations of physical health. But I feel there's an immense difference between Rebirthers and NLP'ers in the quality referred to on the streets as "heart." There seems to be a major difference in the amount of compassion and feeling of identification with others produced by the two approaches. This difference was apparent to me after my first weekend workshop involved with NLP, contrasted with my first weekend

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic

workshop involved with Rebirthing. Following my first Rebirthing experiences back in 1978, I found myself extremely closely tied to a couple of dozen people who had been strangers less than a week previously. I really cared about them and I felt that they really cared about me. We, as Sondra has said, looked on each other with eyes of love. After all these years, I still feel that same closeness. And not only with the people I met then, but also with the thousands of people all over the world who have attended my workshops or Rebirthed with me on a oneto-one basis. By contrast, following my first NLP weekend workshop, I felt absolutely no connection whatsoever with anyone in the room. Instead I felt even more contained within myself, actually more distant even from people I had previously felt close to than before the weekend started. I never made any new friends through NLPCneither through that workshop nor through the several NLP workshops and training programs which I attended over the following year. Of course, it's possible that my desire for a close-knit loving, supportive, forgiving society (which I do find in Rebirthing groups) is itself a manifestation of some old yearning for union which I haven't adequately dealt with. Who knows? Time will tell. I don't want to seem to be doing a disservice to NLP, for I have an immense respect for it and for its teachers. Yet it also seems to me as if the NLP technique is less likely to alter imprints. Instead, it seems similar to learning to be or becoming a very good actor: The person decides on the role he wants to portray, how he wants to appear to others and to be in his own self; and then, by employing triggering techniques within himself, establishes that state of being whenever he Wills. This is despite the persistence of imprinted tendencies which mitigate against his spontaneously being that which he is Willing himself to be. It is the difference between a studied and a spontaneous production. Thus, to me, the results of NLP are less profound, less "real," than Rebirthing. The exercise of the Will in NLP seems to be in

Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

opposition to previously learned or programmed tendencies. It doesn't seem to alter the deepest aspects of belief systems, the imprints from pre- and peri- and immediately post-natal periods of a person's lifetime experience. It seems instead merely to allow the individual to behave as if those imprints no longer exist, when indeed they still do, at least on some level. I think the NLP'er is maintaining both positive and negative simultaneously, although one is in the ascendant and is being expressed, while the other is being suppressed or repressed and isn't apparently manifest. The easiest analogy is the difference between washing your face to get old dirt off and then putting on makeup or simply putting on new makeup, covering up the old dirt. Obviously the question is, which do you want? Do you want to be clean or do you want to look good? I'm an inherent of that old clean-butneat school which said that if you're clean and healthy, you look better than if you're all painted up. But, of course, that's not necessarily true. And there really is no necessary contradiction between being clean and neat and healthy, and using some makeup to point up the special characteristics of the self that you want to dress up a little. So please forgive a somewhat poor analogy. My point of view is that, whatever it takes to change your mind is okay. If it's truly changed, everything is fine. However, nothing is improved if you're simply deluded into believing and manifesting something without simultaneously letting go the old negative. I don't see how there's any significant improvement over all of the societal structuring, the education, the modeling, the dictating that have already been present. I see NLP'ers just using a better technique for covering over the real self with its mistaken belief systems, not allowing those negatives to come through, but not having corrected and eliminated them. Along those lines, I wonder what people who have been in NLP for ten years are like, and I wonder what they'll be like in another ten years. I want to know if NLP ultimately ends up increasing neurotic tension or not, since its techniques seem so similar to the usual ways in which the ego learns to be

defensive and to keep down libidinal negatives. The people I know who have abandoned Rebirthing for NLP certainly seem to be happy with their lives. Generally speaking, they're vivacious, they're occupied, and they seem to be happier than they were when they used to be limited by their old fears and other negatives. So, my objections to NLP as a short cut for getting you to where you want to go may eventually have to be set aside if it turns out that this way of changing the self, in terms of behavior and inner state of being, doesn't produce any increase of neurotic tension. I often use some NLP techniques with my Rebirth clients, particularly in helping them reinforce specific affirmations. I frequently use NLP techniques to help my Rebirthees anchor a particular positive thought to their breath, so breathing becomes the trigger for thinking that affirmation and consequently arriving at a particular positive state. For example, let's say I have a Rebirthee who complains about feeling stupid

and not knowing as much as he ought to, feeling generally inferior even though he has had an adequate education and is performing at a reasonable success level. He wouldn't be feeling stupid and inferior if he felt he knew what he needs to know to deal with his life. My aim, therefore, is to help him feel as intelligent and capable as he appears to be. So I use the Rebirthing breathing as a trigger in a way that's highly similar to what the NLP'ers do. I give him first the affirmations: My breath is my connection to Infinite Intelligence and Wisdom.

And: Every

time I breathe in a full, satisfying fashion, I feel empowered to be intelligent and wise. Then I give him such affirmations as: The more fully and freely I breathe, the more intelligently and wisely I size up a situation and understand how to solve problems.

Or: Breathing fully and freely lets me see what

needs to be done and how to go about doing it. Another affirmation is: My connection with Infinite Intelligence and Wisdom enables me to see clearly what a problem is and how to go about solving it.

And: As soon as I understand what it is I need to do, I set about doing it in an

intelligent manner. Such affirmations connect consciously breathing a full breath with a desired thought in the mind, a thought which empowers him to proceed intelligently and wisely and with dispatch, so that he handles his problems as they come up, and he ordinarily feels satisfied with his progress through his daily life. But I don't use state dependency the way an NLP'er does. For example, going back to the person who says he feels stupid and generally inadequate, an NLP'er working with him would ask him to recall a time in life when he felt very confident and knew he was acting intelligently and wisely. The NLP'er then would ask that person to enlarge on that state, would ask him to pay attention to how his body feels and acts, and to remember being in that state of intelligence and wisdom. Then, while the individual maintains that state, the NLP'er would have the individual establish a trigger by making a gesture or touching some part of his body. He would have him tell himself that hereafter, whenever he touches that spot in that way, whenever he activates that trigger, he will reinstate the same state. He will feel

intelligent and wise. So, for example, having gotten the individual to recall a time when he was totally competent, really proud of his intelligence and of how wisely he had acted, the NLP'er might have him touch his right ear with his right forefinger. From then on, whenever the person starts to feel inadequate, all he has to do is touch his right ear with his forefinger of his right hand and he'll instantly shake off that old feeling of incompetence, and, equally instantly, he'll reinstitute and reinstate the state of feeling completely in charge of himself and of the situation. Hypnotists might say that in each case what the person is doing is giving himself a post-hypnotic suggestion which allows him to feel a certain way so long as he's carrying out a specific actionCin one case, breathing fully and freely, in the next case, touching his earlobe. But I see a big difference. The big difference is that with breathing fully and freely, the person is actually empowering his Mind/Body and not merely

tricking it, especially if he uses release affirmations, for example: With every breath I let go all old negatives I've been storing in my body, mind, heart and soul.

And: With each breath, I deepen and widen and perfect my connection with Infinite Wisdom and Intelligence.

So I believe the Rebirther isn't simply covering up an old inadequate feeling with a new positive feeling. Instead he is putting in a

I prefer to think of myself as a Will directing my Thinker which in turn creates my emotions and my life. I don't want to function on the more superficial level of having my emotional state, my feeling state, determine my behaviorCeven when I get to choose that emotional state. I still believe we can't be

CHAPTER TEN
AFFIRMATIONS
Now, after all these years of dealing with affirmations, I regard their use as being as important and integral to healing as is the use of the breath. But it's important to make certain the affirmation deals with the imprint-connected Thought underlying the negative reality which Thought has created. It's easy to determine what that specific imprint-connected Thought is-just look at the negative reality you're objecting to and ask yourself, "What negative must I be thinking to have created exactly this? What scarcity thought?" As Leonard has said, "Your results are always your guru." When someone asks me how to change the way he behaves, my reply always is, "You're going to have to change your mind, change what you really think." The way you feel is related to what you think. The world that you create for yourself is

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference

a manifestation of what you think. So, to change the world you're reacting to so that it becomes supporting and loving, forgiving and joy giving, or to change your own reactions so that they become forgiving and loving and trusting, you have to change your mind, you have to change your thought, you have to change what you're thinking about, you have to think about good, positive things, you have to use affirmations! In this chapter, I won't be repeating the material reprinted as Appendix B, the pamphlet I wrote several years ago about using affirmations. Instead, I want to call attention to a few special considerations I didn't include in that pamphlet about how best to facilitate their usefulness. Probably the most important thing is to realize that affirmations do actually work. Logically, once the fundamental idea that Thought Creates is accepted, however tentatively, it becomes increasingly easy to accept the results in reality of obtaining the desired effects of positive thinking. Of course, there's really no way to "prove," one way or the other, if an affirmation has brought about some desired change in the universe or if that change is merely a coincidence. Actually, I'm not sure it matters, since thinking positive affirmations always has at least one good effect, namely, it makes people feel good to think positive thoughts. But the juxtaposition of becoming open to receiving some desired benefit and its appearance shortly afterwards happens with such great regularity that I have no hesitation in claiming that Thought does, indeed, Create, however much others may want to call these results merely coincidence. When I first read Rebirthing in the New Age in May, 1978, the day before I first met Leonard Orr, I was amazed that he actually seemed to believe that affirmations "work." Scornfully I read what he and Sondra Ray wrote about them, and hurried past the discussion about affirmations to get to the parts that dealt with the conscious connected breath. I knew from my Primal work, which I was doing at that time, that breathing brought

Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguctic Programming CHAPTER TEN Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15

up feelings. So I was fascinated to read the accounts of how Rebirthing dealt with such feelings. But I regarded everything they wrote about affirmations as anecdotal denial. The next day, I went to a meeting about Rebirthing organized by Drs. Linda Thistle and Steve Johnston, and for the first time heard Leonard Orr talking about positive thought and Rebirthing. As I listened, I wondered what it all does for you. I wanted to know what good is accomplished by all this positive thought these Rebirthing people are trying to brainwash themselves into? And anyhow, how has my thought created the minor problems which occupy my days? I scoffed at what Leonard was saying, and argued with myself: If I create everything in my universe, how come I don't make everything comfortable and simple? Why do I have car and parking problems? How come I create rust, mildew, and other pestilential condition on my hundreds of rose bushes, making it necessary for me to go out to the garden when I'd just as soon sit inside, and get hot and sweaty and tear up my arms and ruin my shoes and have to spray my rose bushes with toxic substances that I don't approve of at all, because otherwise I'm afraid my roses will die? So I challenged Leonard by asking two questions: 1. Does it get you a parking space in front of where you're going to? 2. Will it get rid of the rust on my roses? Leonard smiled and replied, "Well, why don't you try using affirmations and see if they work for you." I regarded his reply as an evasion, barely tolerable. Later that evening, at the beginning of my first Rebirth, my Rebirther, Kathleen Raintree, asked me what I wanted changed in my life. I told her I was quite content and satisfied, by and large, and that I was trying the

Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

Rebirthing to see how it differed from Primal. It turned out that she had also done Primal work, so we talked about that for a while. I told her that, before Primal, I had always thought of myself as weak because I could never turn down a plea for help, I couldn't say, No. My first insight, the first day of Primal, was that the reason so many people could take advantage of me was because I was so very strong and successful that I had the resources for helping them. If I had really been weak, they wouldn't have been able to get help from me. As we talked about how I felt about getting along without help from others, I told Kathleen I certainly became very hurt and angry when a person I had done a lot for didn't promptly oblige on the infrequent occasions when I asked for help. I wasn't pretending to be a saint. That's when Kathleen suggested I use affirmations to change the reality I was creating.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE PARENTAL DISAPPROVAL SYNDROME
Whenever anyone Rebirths, thoughts about several specific topics typically come up into consciousness. Some of these are about material scarcity, some about sex and love, some about dying, and some about the Parental Disapproval Syndrome. These topics are also the focus for the main seminars held during Rebirth workshops. Negatives about each of these topics must be let go in order for the Rebirthee's Thought to create a good life. Since we all have had parents and most of us are or will be parents, the Parental Disapproval Syndrome (PDS) is probably the topic that comes up most often during Rebirths. It seems central to our thoughts about money and work, as well as sex and loving relationships. So healing our PDS and preventing it in our children is of primary importance. Resting on the negatives derived from the birth itself are the negatives that form what Leonard Orr has called the Parental Disapproval Syndrome. These are whatever we dislike about our parents, about how they treated us, about their attitudes toward us, about how they treated each other, and about their attitudes towards such things as work, money, and time, and sex, love and God. The grievances you continue to hold against your parents, connected with how they dealt with your oral, anal, and phallic psychosexual development, altogether creates the Parental Disapproval Syndrome. Most conscious PDS revolves around how our parents disciplined us, that is, how they got us to do what they wanted us to do or kept us from doing what they didn't want us to do. But unconscious PDS about our birth needs healing too. When people ask me what's the value of having children, I usually reply, "Experiencing your own PDS in the course of raising your children is the second great reason for being a parentexperiencing unconditional love is the first." The only opportunity we ever have to experience unconditional love is in the parent-child relationship during the earliest months of post-natal

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and

life. Every other love relationship in our life is conditional: "I'll love you if you do what I want." But the tie that earliest bonding consists of has no if's in it. The mother "loves" her infantusually the instant she first holds it. AI love you and I'll do everything I can to make you happy." The only time a person has the opportunity to experience unconditional love, so far as I can tell, is during that time right after a baby's birth when the parents do everything to try to make the baby happy, to satisfy him, to meet his needs. They do not only love him when he's quiet, they do not only love him when his diaper is dry and clean, they love him, anyhow, anyway. And, as a result of loving him, they comfort him when he's unhappy, they clean him up when he has messed his diapers, they play with him, and they rejoice in every single burgeoning sign that this infant is becoming aware of them and of the world around them. Such unconditional love usually becomes highly conditional once the baby starts getting into things, once the baby can talk and claim attention, once the baby can protest with words and even with aggressive movement. Then the parents go back into a more "normal" stance with their child. They love him, but they won't tolerate his behavior any more. They now start expecting him to behave "properly." But, as the parent goes through that transition, he runs into elements of his own PDS case. For example, he remembers how much he hated his mother for nagging him to say Hello when he came into the room. And so maybe he doesn't make that requirement of his child, because he doesn't want the child to hate him, and to have such memories of having learned manners under duress and through compulsion instead of through some loving identification with others. Or maybe, although he insists that his child says Hello, he is reminded of his mother nagging him to become a polite, social person, and he resents his child for "causing" him to behave like his mother. Whatever he does, he reveals his PDS. Once unconditional love leaves, the parents feel their old feelings about their parents

Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing

and act out their old programs related to their Parental Disapproval Syndrome. They no longer are willing to "do anything" to make their baby happy. Now they expect the baby to do what they want, to behave in a certain way. When he doesn't, neither is satisfied. In turn, the baby feels bad about not pleasing them, and, eventually, disapproves of his parents for not loving him the way they used to. As he withdraws his loving approval of them, he establishes his lasting grievances, his PDS. Witnessing where there are highly-charged negatives and struggles between you and your children gives you an on-the-spot opportunity to discover and ultimately heal your PDS case, as well as to prevent it in your children. As parents, we all make "mistakes" that our children resent, but mutual forgiveness is lots easier when we start off "right" by being there for our children at their first moments of post-natal life. So, if you're a woman still in the position of creating a family, be sure to exercise your right to choose to deliver via natural childbirth. Don't deprive yourself of the triumph of feeling your body doing what it was designed for or cheat yourself of the great joy of greeting your emerging baby in full consciousness. Whatever you may have heard from exaggerating alarmists, the pain and effort aren't more than you can bear, and the prize is an immense sense of high self-esteem. In addition to ensuring that the birth itself is healthy, you can prevent your child from having a heavy PDS case by following certain simple guidelines. (My views on this today are essentially the same as they were years ago when I wrote Natural Child Rearing, a book later re-issued as The Intelligent Parent's Guide to Raising Children. Your library should have a copy you can consult for specific information about how to handle particular topics.) The First Guiding Rule for child rearing is: "In any interaction between you and your child, he's the boss if it has to do with his own inner biological needs, and you are the boss when it has to do with those things we generally call social or cultural." Let your child be the one who decides what he needs and when about things concerning his body's private needs and satisfactions, such as sleep, eating, bowel movements, and body exploration.

Organizations

But you are the one who must decide and teach about social conventions and family routines like table manners, going to bed, and washing regularly; and you must handle the matters which have to do with his safety or with the legitimate comfort and safety of, first, those who live with him, then, later on, playmates, teachers, and family friends. My attitudes undoubtedly rest on my own birth: my mother's belief was that I could get born on my own, without anesthetics or surgical procedures, and I labored for three days to do exactly that. So I grew up with that idea of selfdetermination. But I have never regretted being able to take care of myself, and my aim in parenting, in partnering, and in psychologizing has always been to promote independence. I think it's better than dependence and I hope you do too. Have faith in the ability of your child to lead the way for you so that you will satisfy his private needs easily and completely. You can-you have the capacity to satisfy his real needs. When you do this consistently, you will be making it easy for him to learn and follow the social rules he needs to follow in order to take his place in grown-up life later on. The Second Guiding Rule is: Never use physical punishment. It only hurts-it doesn't teach your child how to behave properly. Whatever you do to relieve your anger at your child, make sure you keep your hands to yourself. Don't hurt! A child stops hearing the noise the instant his parents stops yelling, whereas if he were hit, his pain lasts-usually longer than his parent's anger. Since pain disrupts clear thinking, it isn't a wise way to teach. Calm exposition and clear explanation are more likely to teach reasonable behavior to our children than painful intimidation. I know my children disliked my yelling and probably feared I might freak out and hurt them. But at least they have to give me credit for never punishing them physically in cold calculation. I'm sorry I wasn't more what they thought they wanted a mother to be, and I hope they're better at parenting than I wasCthat will show they've forgiven me for everything I used to do that they didn't like. Your child will do what he can as soon as he's ready. There's no point in disapproving of him for not being ready yet. Just wait and set a good example.

Until he's able to do something, help him out by doing it. So, for example, bathe him until he can run the bathwater safely and can soap and use the washcloth. After that, let him take baths by himself. Your responsibility stops with reminding him to do what you know he can do. As for the essentials of manners, teach by example and then, later, by directions. Always ask please. Always thank your child for everything you'd thank a friend for. Greet hello and bid goodbye when you come and go from the house. Be sure to tell him you're sorry when you upset him and say excuse me when appropriate. Once he's old enough to talk, he's old enough to use these six magic phrases (Please, Thank you, Hello, Goodbye, Excuse me, and I'm sorry) consistently-remind him when he doesn't. Check what you do with your children against your own complaints about your parents. The lists of affirmations in Appendices N, O, and P can be used to remind you about what you're happy they did and you copied, as well as actions you've avoided because you used to have grievances toward your parents about similar behavior. Including mine, so many good books exist on child rearing that there's no point in trying to review them here. Go to your library and read a few, then follow their suggestions as best you can. Just be sure to avoid all books that recommend punishment or that seek to perpetuate child-rearing techniques that you know wouldn't work if you applied them to your interactions with friends. For example, you don't remind your friends to go to the toilet before you leave the house-don't do that with your child. Similarly, you don't insist your friends eat everything you serve them-don't do that with your child either. Rebirth yourself whenever you find you're into some unresolved struggle with your child. Some old negative is present, creating the situation you're finding uncomfortable. Try to let go that negative before doing anything about the situation you're objecting to-you'll probably find that it has altered as soon as you've let the old negative go. Rebirthing your child is one of the nicest things you can do-it brings the two of you back to the unconditional love you felt at the beginning of your parent-child relationship. So learn to Rebirth your children by attending a Rebirth workshop. Then Rebirth your infant by holding him in your arms or next to you while you carry out the

connected breathing. Infants usually Rebirth to the point of a breath release in five to ten minutes. (For an explanation of the term, >breath release,' read Chapter 16.) Rebirthing your older child is just like Rebirthing anyone else you've Rebirthed at workshops. If your child wants to, let him Rebirth you, first, so your negatives are reduced before you Rebirth him. Remember to encourage him to use affirmations to help him handle problems with friends or school. They'll help him bring up the negatives he's holding on to that are creating the problem. For example, if he's having trouble with algebra, have him see what comes up when he plays with the affirmations: I total enjoy algebra. It's easy for me to

CHAPTER TWELVE
TIME, WORK, AND MONEY: CONSCIOUSNESS AND ABUNDANCE

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath

Some of the most fascinating manifestations of the negatives involved in our birth imprints and our Parental Disapproval Syndrome are our characteristic attitudes about time, effort, strength, work, and money. Basically, these attitudes can be summed up either as scarcity consciousness or abundance consciousness. Both rest on what our conception, carriage, and birth were like-followed by how and what our parents taught us by example and precept. For many people their first introduction to New Age philosophy comes in the form of a money seminar or a workshop on prosperity. Some of the best of these that I've had the opportunity to experience were ones led by Phil Laut, Leonard Orr, Susan Skye, or Jerry Gillis. I wholeheartedly recommend to all my readers that they take advantage of any opportunity to join with any of these prosperity experts in their money workshops. I also recommend books by Og Mandino, W. Clement Stone, or Napoleon Hill. After all, the idea of positive thinking goes back forty, fifty years to their books on salesmanship, and a lot can still be learned from reading these earlier works. In this chapter, I want to discuss mostly some new ideas that these people may not have presented in their writings and workshops. All of the thoughts that I'm about to discuss aren't necessarily only mine, but they're really good thoughts about scarcity which I want to share with everyone. Keep in mind that, if there was any highlycharged scarcity surrounding your birth, your current reality probably mirrors such scarcity thoughts-complicated by all your other old PDS negative reactions. You may feel you don't have enough-not enough time, not enough strength, not enough motivation, not enough reward in the form of money or recognition. In reaction, you may become a schnorrer, the Yiddish word for somebody who never has enough and who's always begging or borrowing from other people. As a result of such scarcity thought patterns, the schnorrer not only never thinks he has enough, but he never gets enough either, because people begrudge giving to him when he begs from them or `borrows.' I have met many schnorrers in the Rebirthing

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11

movement. They mistakenly believe that Rebirthing will enable them to get without giving. That without offering enough to get enough, you can still get enough, simply by being open to receiving it. Please understand, I have no objection to just receiving God's Grace and being fortunate enough to win a lottery or have an old, forgotten, distant relative die and leave me a fortune, etc. I also don't have any objection to having everyone in the world know that everyone around them loves them completely and supports them and they are loved enough. But, as I pointed out in the preceding chapter, I highly value work and independence. Rebirthing seems to attract lots of people who think the breath and affirmations will save them from having to take responsibility for letting go their scarcity thoughts. It attracts schnorrers who hope they can use affirmations to create, directly, a higher income, a better job, more energy, more time, even more skill for themselves. I object if they're unwilling to work for such benefits. I remind them to do abundance affirmations. My breath is my connection with Infinite Time, Money, and Energy. The more I breathe fully and freely in the connected pattern, the more Time, Money, and Energy I receive. Until we let go our birth negatives, we are all schnorrers, one way or another. I've never met a new potential Rebirthee who didn't complain on one level or another about not getting or having enough: enough energy, enough time, enough money, enough acknowledgment, enough opportunity. I'm sure that the root negative is not enough love. If we start with enough love, we can always create something positive for ourselves. An infant who was lovingly, deliberately conceived by passionate, affectionate parents who took good care of him up to his birth probably imprints even a lengthy difficult birth quite differently from the way an unwanted unloved infant does, even with an

The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

ostensibly easy birth. For the first, the loved child, any birth is an opportunity, a challenge. For the second, everything is always a struggle. My purpose when working with a person who makes either of these complaints-not enough money, not enough love-is to point out to him where the negative in his consciousness lies that is preventing him from receiving all the love, as well as all the abundance and financial success, that he desires. I prefer to get down to the essence of prosperity: Positive Thought about the elements-time, energy, and skill-that lead up to True Financial Prosperity. I prefer the thought: I always do enough, well enough, to receive an abundance. Many of the people I've Rebirthed not only initially believed they didn't get enough love, but also seemed to believe they deserved love even if they, themselves, weren't considerate or responsible, even if they weren't reliable, decent, ordinary people whose word can be counted upon. Fundamentally, they acted as if they didn't care about anyone else in their life. If they got to the deeper and larger negatives that they were walking around with, their complaint would have changed from, "No one loves me as much as I want them to love me," to, "I'm afraid I don't really know how to care for anyone, and so I may never, in turn, inspire love in others." Their major negative wasn't, "I am not loved enough." It was really, "I don't love enough." Connected to that complaint might be another scarcity thought, for example, "I don't have enough time to show others I care for them," or, "I don't have enough money to put out showing other people I care for them." So I ask my clients to think with affirmations concerning these points: I have all the time I need to be loving and considerate. I have all the energy I need to be loving and considerate. I already

know everything I need to know in order to do everything I want to do. I feel safe being loving and considerate. In my effort to flesh out my client's understandings of his negatives so he can develop an attitude of compassion toward himself and his parents, I usually direct attention to such things as how many other children there were in his childhood home, what his parents were doing, how much time and opportunity he actually had to do what he needed to do in order to show how much he loved his parents, and how much chance his parents had to show him how much they loved him. I always remind my client that, basically, every child loves his parents so much that he does anything and everything he can in order to be what they want him to be, so that he can show them how much he loves them. So, for example, some children learn that the only time their parents spend with them is the time spent calming them and comforting them or taking care of their material needs. Some parents don't play much with their children, interacting with them and hanging out with them. Only negative behavior gets attention. Unless the children are naughty, upset, or sick, the children are ignored and neglected. The parents, themselves, may not have enough time or energy to play with the child and to show the child how much they love him or to have him show them how much he loves them. Busy parents often fail to encourage a child to do things for them, just as they often don't let the child do things for himself. Impatiently, because they can do it faster and better, they don't make time for such display. A child brought up in such circumstances may later, as a parent himself, in turn, believe he doesn't have time enough to spend just playing and being with his child so they can show each other how much they care for each other. Thus, the circle of "not enough" is perpetuated. Sometimes this is expressed by the hardpressed, hard-working parent in terms of time. "Leave me alone, don't you see I've got things I've got to get done. If you want to have supper tonight, you've got to leave me alone and stop wasting my time. I've got other things to do besides play with you, I've got to do some work. When you grow up, you're going to have to work!"

Sometimes this is phrased in terms of energy instead of time. "Listen, I'm so tired I don't have enough strength to even finish my work and you want me to read to you? Leave me alone, go read to yourself! Go play by yourself!" Sometimes parents are sickly and they actually do lack in strength. The child may be cautioned by the healthier parent, "Watch out! Don't be so rough, can't you see that your mom isn't feeling well? Now go away from her. You know she loves you, but just leave her alone. She doesn't have enough strength to pay attention to you right now." Sometimes the parents have weird working schedules and the child is told, "Be quiet! Your father is sleeping and if he can't get his sleep he won't be strong enough to go to work and if he can't go to work, he can't earn a living, and bring home food, and then you'll be unhappy, won't you." One way or another, a Rebirthee must forgive

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SEX AND LOVING RELATIONSHIPS
As you already know from reading the preceding chapters, your breath and your thought are conditioned by the circumstances of your conception and birth, all connected with your parents' attitudes about sexuality. Since birth negatives and PDS are the major causes of any and all negative thought, creating any and all "wrongness" in your lifespace, they are the ultimate sources of anything you especially don't like about sex, about love, and about sexual loving relationships. One of the original Rebirthers, Sondra Ray, is a marvelously prolific writer who has written many concise books about sex and loving relationships. In this chapter I won't even make an effort to summarize what she's had to say or to repeat it. I simply recommend you read all her books, starting with I Deserve Love. In this short chapter, I'll only stress a few ideas Sondra hasn't detailed very much. Remember, until we have let go our birth negatives, our sexual loving relationships will continue to manifest the negative aspects that were present at our conception, through our gestation, and during our birth, as well as the negatives that characterized our childhood interactions with our parents. To the extent that our conception differed from the Ideal, to the extent that the way things went when our mama was carrying us differed from the ideal, to the extent that our birth itself differed from the Ideal, and, of course, to the extent that the way our parents treated us differed from the Ideal, our breath and thought will differ from the Ideal and our sexual loving relationships will also differ from the Ideal. Was your conception Ideal? The Ideal starts with your father and mother feeling safe with each other, loving each other, agreed that they want a baby, and enjoying every aspect of sex. They both love balling and joyfully embrace their orgasms. He is tender, he is potent, and he is patient. She is trusting and she surrenders to the sensations she's feeling. When they find out that she has become pregnant, they love each other even more and they love the baby and eagerly look forward to the birth. That is an

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and

Ideal conception. Was yours? Probably not. Terrible but true. Most women don't like sex. Nine out of ten women never experience orgasm during intercourse. Quite obviously, they have grievances about sex, and their babies certainly weren't conceived in joy and passion. (While I have often heard that sex can be satisfying even without orgasm, it's a little hard for me to believe. I know, looking back on the first years in my first marriage when I didn't come when I made love with my husband, I didn't feel satisfied. I didn't feel good about sex at all, or even about myself. I felt inadequate. And I'm certainly glad that those years have long been gone!) An immense number of women engage in sexual intercourse, not out of freely felt desire, but out of all sorts of negatives: fear that they will enrage their lover, their husband, whoever, if they refuse; a sense of duty or obligation; a desire to get something in exchange, etc. For them, balling has almost always been a negative experience. And a lot of men use sex as a tool of domination or as a tension release for tensions that have nothing to do with their partner but may come from their work, their money picture, their health, whatever. So most acts of intercourse are not the mutually rapturous act I describe as the Ideal. Similar surveys show that most women, again 80 to 90 percent of most samples, fear pregnancy and childbirth. They believe all sorts of negatives about what childbirth will be like for them. So your mother probably dreaded your approaching delivery. Furthermore, even in a world where condoms are widely advertised and available, nine out of ten pregnancies are "accidents," not desired events. It's highly probable that your parents were unhappy to learn you were on your way into their lives. Again, not the Ideal. Nor is the prospect of parenting.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing

The vast majority of women, asked how they felt about becoming pregnant, giving birth, and raising children, have said that they dreaded all of them. Ann Landers received hundreds of thousands of replies to a survey several years ago asking her readers how they felt about having had children. Ninety-five percent of those replies said if they had to do it over again, the couple would never have had children! Most of them said young children seriously damaged their marriages, and they didn't enjoy their grownup offspring either. So the odds are that you and your parents didn't get along very well. Maybe you still don't. You know enough about your parents to form a fairly reliable opinion about whether or not they were happy when you were conceived. You have some idea of their age, their financial circumstances, their relative safety at the time, how long they had been married, for example. From those few facts you can construct a reasonably accurate view of how they felt about sex, conception, and your birth. You also know what you observed as you grew up, whether they treated each other lovingly and whether they really still cared for each other or not once you were born. Add that all up and you can fairly accurately contrast your probable conception circumstances with the ideal. You can also contemplate what you know about your birth and compare your birth to the Ideal described by Dr. LeBoyer and Leonard Orr, among many. I recommend you read Birth Without Violence by LeBoyer, as well as Leonard's books. I won't repeat what they say, but I want to add a few details they don't cover. First, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, there's the importance of length of labor. Less than a couple of hours isn't long enough for the baby's adrenals to wake up and make the substances that coat the lung spaces and allow him to breathe easily. So a baby born in less than two hours may have trouble breathing. And more than eight or ten hours generally results in some exhaustion of the mother's adrenals as well as of the infant's. So a baby born after a very long labor may also have more difficulty breathing than otherwise. In addition to thinking about how long your mother was in labor when she had you, contemplate other things like where did she give birth? Was your father there? Who helped her?

Organizations

Was she wide awake? What happened to you right after you were born? Were you treated like a commodity that was weighed and measured and cleaned up and wrapped and placed with other little bundles in a nursery? Or were you joyfully grabbed by your mother and put to her heart and breast to feel her warm love again? If you know that there were special circumstances surrounding your birth, think about what they probably made you feel like. Don't take them for granted. If any or all of this were happening to you today, how would you feel? Extrapolate back to what it probably made you feel like as a child. For example, if you were put in an incubator, think about what it must have felt like to be in a hot, brightly lit box, completely surrounded by plastic and other miracles of modern science, having at least three different nurses care for you every day, as opposed to having been in a womb where everything's soft and warm and organic. If your first days or weeks or months or even years had a lot of physical pain involved in them, if you had surgery, if you were very ill, think about what that made you feel like. Don't just chalk it up and say, "Yeah, well, you know, I had pneumonia three times before I was one year old," or "Yeah, they had to do an emergency operation on me -cause there was something wrong with the way my intestines were built." Think, too, about the Ideal first few months, especially with regard to feeding satisfaction. Think about an Ideal mother who is competent and loving, and who cherishes her baby and is there for him, nursing him when he shows he's hungry, and ready to help him learn to stretch out his digestive rhythm so that he learns to take more and more milk with each nursing, and so that there's enough time between each nursing for him to fully digest his last little tummyful. Think about how it was for you during your first months after birth. Did you have a mama who was so convinced that you no right to bother her more often than once every four hours that, unless it was "time," she refused to offer you any comfort either from her arms and her voice or from offering you a bottle or even a pacifier? Some mothers, afraid their babies look silly or will harm themselves sucking on pacifiers, refuse to give them to their babies. Babies don't harm their dental arch or develop bad habits from sucking a pacifier. It just satisfies their lust to suck. Breastfeeding mothers have a hard time

withholding the breast from a crying baby because the high-pitched sound of the baby's cry automatically makes the mother produce a hormone called milk let-down factor which brings the milk from the breast tissue where it's made down to the nipple. So, since her nipples will be leaking milk when she's around her crying baby anyhow, she is usually tempted to nurse as often as her baby cries. That's one of the reasons why breast-feeding mothers tend to go to extremes in the opposite direction and offer the breast whenever the baby cries. This may have "bad" consequences because the baby doesn't easily learn to tolerate any kind of delay or discomfort and may grow up impatient and demanding. In any case, what do you think? What was your mother like? Was she the kind of woman who comforted you and picked you up and fed you and loved you and reassured you? Or was she afraid to "spoil" you, not even giving you any comfort by

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Physical Immortality

The Logic of Magical Thought

Thoughts about death comprise the final major category of ideas that come up into consciousness during the Rebirth. Very few of us actually believe we're going to die, yet we spend most of our lives afraid we will. For me, perhaps the greatest benefit of Rebirthing is that it allowed me to stop being constantly afraid of dying. That had been one of my main goals in first seeking psychotherapy back in 1946. But I had failed to achieve such freedom either through lengthy psychoanalysis, through Primal therapy, through hypnosis, or through the use of consciousness- altering chemicals. My anxiety lessened as I eliminated coffee and cigarettes and lots of sugar from my intake, but never disappeared-until I Rebirthed. Specialists in Learning Psychology insist we cannot be afraid of something we haven't experienced, at least in part. Yet throughout all those previous forms of therapy, I wasn't ever able to remember or even imagine anytime in my life when death seemed imminent, when I had been so sick or injured that my life was at stake. But I also couldn't remember a time in my life when I hadn't been afraid of dying. I worked hard at trying to connect all sorts of events in my life with dying. I ran around the mental mulberry bush of agreeing with my analyst that I was afraid of death because I was afraid to surrender to sexuality. But, however attractive that symbology might be, the fact was that for years I had always had at least one vaginal orgasm during intercourse, and I didn't think I was unwilling to surrender to sexuality, even if I wasn't being a "properly submissive wife" in other regards. Yet I was still chronically afraid of dying. Until 1978. That May, after I had Rebirthed a few times, I realized that my life-long anxiety wasn't present anymore! Apparently, as I had let go my old birth-related fears, I lost what I had regarded as my fear of death. Suddenly, it made sense: fear of death is actually old fear that was part of our birth. The closest most of us have come to death was probably during the instant immediately upon our birth-if the umbilical cord had been cut and we were no longer on the placental support system, yet we hadn't yet taken our first breath to become

and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10

independent, self-supporting individuals. The imperative at the time was very simple: Breathe! Or die. We may well have taken that first breath in an atmosphere of intense anxiety. We then, mistakenly, associated breathing with fear and, mistakenly, concluded that breathing was dangerous. During a Rebirthing, the closer the breathing brings us to that terrifying moment associated with our birth, the more afraid we become we will die right then and there. Until we have let go our old thought that breathing can kill us, how can we dare to keep on breathing? But how can we breathe enough to let go the old birth fears if we're still running the thought that breathing is connected with dying? That's when thinking about the concept of Physical Immortality pays off. After all, Thought Creates. If we think we won't die, we're willing to breathe in the face of our fear that breathing will kill us. It also helps to acknowledge that since we survived our births, we can survive remembering them. We are continuously experiencing our own immortality because we are always conscious of Self until we no longer retain consciousness-and then we don't have anything to worry about-or withany longer. We also constantly experience our physical continuity-my hands are mine, still at the ends of my arms, even though they have become worn and wrinkled while I wasn't watching. But despite our constant experience of our own immortality, we don't believe in it. "Common sense" tells us that everything dies, and we will too. The more we embrace the concept of creating our destiny with our thought, the more we can accept the concept of immortality, even of physical immortality. After all, if my Thought Creates, theoretically: -Nothing ever happens to me without my consent. Then, since I enjoy being fully alive, -I'm here to stay until I decide to move along. Especially since, -The more fully I breathe, the more alive I am.

Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

Theoretically, I can even rejuvenate my body as I let go limiting beliefs about death being mandatory. Consequently, although probably the spookiest aspect of Rebirthing for people to encounter is the idea of Physical Immortality, it helps people dare to come to grips with their basic imprints, so that they can change them, so that they can change their life by letting go their fear of death. We may regret death, but we don't need to fear it. -I'm safe, breathing fully and freely. -Of my own accord, I dare enter into spaces in my thought which I used to think threatened my survival. -I know my old negatives don't threaten my survival. -I am willing to approach my fears. When I have a Rebirthee who cuts down his breath, who doesn't dare breathe, I remind him that whatever happened to him at birth, he survived. Birth didn't kill him. He may have thought that it almost killed him. He may have been told time and time again that he was born dead and had to be revived, or that he almost died and it was just because of the doctor's heroic actions that he was able to be rescued. But whatever the circumstances were (and remember they were always of his own contrivance, they were always manifestations of his thought), whatever they were, he did survive. As mentioned earlier, logically, for most of us, our basic concept of death comes from that brief period of time in between the time when we were still fully supported by the placental system and the next instant when the right side of the heart starts to pump blood through the lungs, when breathing starts, when we became capable of independently supporting our life functions of circulation and respiration. For most infants, this in-between time is, of course, only a brief instant-a matter of less than a few seconds. Also, there is an abundance of intrinsic physical support, too, as I mentioned before. First of all, he has a huge superabundance of red blood cells, still oxygenated from the umbilical circulation. Secondly, in the first six to eight hours of labor, he has made plenty of corticosteroids that have now had an opportunity to line the alveoli of his lungs, so that they will open fully during the inhale and then stay partially inflated during the exhale phase of breathing, ready to function now that the wall between the left and right sides of the heart has closed, and circulation

now goes through the lungs instead of through the umbilicus to and from the placental membranes. So the child is physiologically well equipped to handle this brief instant of suspended animation (or animated suspension, however we want to think of it). Whatever it is, it's the closest to death most of us ever experience. And to go back into a breathless state is, in the unconscious mind, viewed with apprehension because this is flirting with death. Now, for almost everyone during the Rebirth session, there comes a time when, having breathed continually for about fifty minutes in a connected fashion, with big, broad, satisfying inhales and effortless exhales, with no pause in between, he "forgets" to breathe and goes into a state that seems to be like the prenatal states. For some people I've Rebirthed, this period of breathlessness lasts for several minutes, usually much longer than most people can consciously hold their breath. During that time the countenance of the Rebirth client sometimes undergoes remarkable transformations. Generally, the face relaxes and I find my focus becoming decentralized. I find it easy to "see" different faces, one after another after another, replacing, flashing across the face and head of the person lying in front of me, sometimes accompanied by flame-like radiance or a general shimmering veil of color around the person. Please note I'm not a person who ordinarily claims to see or feel auras. It's only in the Rebirthing situation that I've ever had this experience. I've experimented with the lighting and background to see if I still notice these visual manifestations when, for example, the person is up against darker walls or lighter carpet. None of it seems to make much difference. At some point toward the end of the Rebirth session, I usually have difficulty focusing on that face which I know is the face of the client in front of me. Instead, what I see is a rapid alteration of countenance. (Other Rebirthers have suggested that what I'm seeing are the faces my patient wore during other lives that patient lived in former times. I have no way of supporting or authenticating that idea. And I don't regard it as extremely important, merely fascinating.) Let me remind you of how Stanislav Grof has spoken of these pre-natal states of being. The first state, present for the first six months of pregnancy, is one of oceanic bliss, the child feels limitless,

feels everything is coming its way, is happy, is blissful. The second state is one of tension, of increasing confinement, of increasing lack, the notenough-room, not-enough-food, not-rapid-enough removal-of-waste- products. This period of increasing discomfort during the last three months culminates in the chaos of birth, then ends with the instant when the child takes his breath for the first time and comes into his post-natal life. So, for Rebirthing to take consciousness back to the first pre-natal state where nothing was wanting, where the mind was free to dip into the ocean of its thought and feeling and regard them with a peaceful reaction, the Rebirthee must go through that tense second state where he fears death. The idea of physical immortality, even only partially embraced, can provide a foundation of comfortable reassurance to the Rebirthee, encouraging him to persist with the connected breathing pattern until he has approached and unraveled his birth negatives. As strange as the idea of physical

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath

Before going into details about the process and practice of Rebirthing, it's important to discuss some ethical or moral considerations, especially because the idea that there are no victims, the idea that nothing ever happens without our consent, might seem to mitigate or excuse sexual or even violent interaction between Rebirther and Rebirthee. The topic of seduction, of having sex with somebody who has been or is a Rebirthing client, has come up for discussion repeatedly through the eighteen years that I've been involved with Rebirthing, not only because the topic itself is fascinating, but because it goes directly to fundamental theoretical issues: Can anyone seduce another? Is anyone in control of the behavior of another one? Please understand that I am not questioning Rebirthing someone with whom you are indeed intimate. I think it's marvelous when lovers Rebirth each other, or when parents Rebirth their children and vice versa, or even when close friends Rebirth each other, because this is how we extend the loving community that truly exists, spirit to spirit. I'm talking about seduction or including sex with the breathing session. This topic came up again the night before I wrote this chapter, when I was holding a meeting of people who are involved with Herakhan Baba, Babaji, and/or with Rebirthing. One of the "old timers" was reminiscing: "How lovely it used to be before AIDS appeared, when people would get together, lie down and breathe, get into a warm, loving, forgiving state of heart and state of mind, and then would form a couple with somebody who was also at the meeting and of a like state of mind and heart and go out and make love-how carefree and enjoyable it all was!" Then another person started talking about a Rebirther who routinely "talked" the women that came to him for Rebirths into having sex with him. Many of the Rebirthers in Los Angeles condemned this individual and, in fact, said that they didn't believe such a person should be allowed to be called a Rebirther. Then we joked about a popular Rebirther who encouraged his pretty female Rebirthees to make themselves "more comfortable" and allow their breath to be "more open" by taking their clothes off. And I talked about some female Rebirthees I've

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11

heard of who have set their cap for a particular male Rebirther by using such ploys as "Would you mind if I take my brassiere off so I can breathe more easily?" Whatever the particular variation on this general theme of `let's have fun and games' may be, the point is that the reason an individual is involved with Rebirthing is for his own spiritual progress, and that's not likely to come from getting laid. If getting laid were the royal road to success in spiritual enhancement and purification, then we all know who would be the people who would be the most "psycho-sexually mature" individuals in our society. They would be the prostitutes. And it obviously is not so. So I suggest that people essentially keep a clear distinction between their professional life as a Rebirther and their personal lives, especially their sex-lives. I don't think it's an especially positive approach for a Rebirther to use Rebirthing as a seductive ploy. In this, I'm reminded of the suggestion of one of my colleagues a few years ago, who met me in the hall at the college where I taught, and said, "I have a great idea for a whole new career for you after you've retired." I said, "Yeah, I have my own ideas about my brand new career for myself after I retire, but anyhow, what is it?" And he said, "Well, you'll open a grieving service, a service for men in their late sixties or early seventies who have just lost a spouse and who need help with the grieving process." I was dumbfounded by his suggestion and asked him why on earth would I want to focus on such a population in my practice. And he replied, "It's really simple. You'll just keep meeting these men who are newly bereaved until you find one who really turns you on, who thinks that you're attractive, and then that's that. You get married and give up the business, and you'll be happy for the rest of your life." Maybe such an approach works with Rebirthing, too. But I think it always rests on a scarcity consciousness. I think that, generally speaking, a Rebirther who has his life under control, who's getting what he

The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

wants out of his life, doesn't need to be sexually attracted to a client who comes to him for Rebirthing. I also recommend, if a Rebirther does find himself sexually attracted to a Rebirth client, that he do some Rebirthing and find out what the scarcity thought is that underlies this attraction. It may well be that he wants to be in control. It may well be that he doesn't think he's good enough for someone to love just for himself alone-they can only love him if they need him or are grateful to him for his help. Straightening out old negatives should quickly restore ordinary professional distance between Rebirther and client. As for nudity, generally speaking, I suggest that my clients keep their clothes on, and I keep my clothes on while I'm Rebirthing them, even in the hot tub. Although I usually use my hot tub for myself nude, I wear a swimsuit and I recommend bathing suits for all Rebirthers conducting wet Rebirths. I recommend to people who come to my workshop to train to be Rebirthers that they do the same. I also strongly recommend that there be essentially no touching and fondling during the Rebirthing. A breathing session isn't an occasion for a deep body massage. It's not a time for cradling and rocking. It's a time for a person to find out that he can surrender to and can trust his breath. He can only do that if he breathes and entrusts himself completely to the breath. Your job as a Rebirther is to get your clients to give up their grievances and to let go of their negative consciousness, so they can create a good life for themselves instead of a life that's muddied by the manifestations of their negative consciousness. Getting caught up in sex play with any of them probably isn't therapy. More likely, it's just another manifestation of negative consciousness. Scarcity thoughts about sex probably lie at the foundation of all sexual acting out. I think such a scarcity thought was operating when one wellknown Rebirther, for some strange reason I can't even imagine, took his client into one of my bathrooms and balled with her in the bathtub, fully clothed. His shoe kicked one of the porcelain faucet handles and broke it. The first thing I knew of it was when he later came into my living room, with the broken handle in his hand, and said, "You could be cited for this, you know-it's against the revised building code!" By the way, that Rebirther had sex with two

other women in the four days he attended that particular workshop-not a new indoor record by any means, but still very active. And all indicative, I believe, of his underlying PDS grievances. He could have balled with every one of these women elsewhere, outside of the training. Why do it in my home? What a naughty boy he was being! Another "cute" story involved the daughter of a former Catholic nun, brought to one of my weekend workshops by one of my patients who had been having sex with her. This young woman somehow managed to partner for the first round of Rebirths with a young man who, though old enough to be a college graduate, was still virgin. By the time we gathered as a group to start the next morning, she had managed to alter his virgin status. Then, that second evening, she partnered with a different young man who, though married, was also apparently quite willing to have sex with her-and also open to discussing their adventure the next morning when we started our Sex and Love seminar. She puzzled me by saying that her mother had given her a healthy attitude towards sex (something I find hard to believe of her mother who had, after all, originally chosen to have been a nun), but that, of course, she wasn't promiscuous. "It isn't as if I have sex with a different man every day." That was too much for me to swallow. I said, "But that's exactly what you have been doing, isn't it? You balled with A just before he brought you here and then you balled with B after your first Rebirth and with C after your second Rebirth. That's three different men in two days, isn't it?" Hysteria was rampant! She cried, then sulkedand my Rebirth client who brought her was totally mortified to learn that this woman he had treasured enough to pay for her weekend had shown so little loyalty. They stopped seeing each other soon afterwards. In essence, we need to distinguish between actingout neurotically and reacting genuinely. Lots of long-lasting lover relationships and marriages have resulted from meetings at Rebirth workshops-in fact, my 18-year-long tie with my friend, Louis, was the outcome of his attendance at a workshop I organized for C.W. Light. Obviously, I think that's OK. But when it comes to making a practice of concluding professional Rebirth sessions with seduction and sex, I hesitate. Somehow, it seems as if the Rebirther is being opportunistic. But who knows? Maybe not.

Ultimately, you'll have to make up your own mind. While you're thinking about it, remember to breath and to remind yourself: My connection with Infinite Wisdom lets me understand the difference between Love and Lust-and I choose Love.

Another ethical question is whether anyone who Rebirths has gone crazy or caused harm to others. Yes, I know of at least two Rebirthers who have been convicted of committing murder. One case served me immensely in dealing with forgiveness. In Spring, 1981, about ten days before Louis and I were due to leave on our first round-the-world trip, which included our first visit to India to see Babaji, I received a phone call from a Rebirther I knew who lived in upstate California. I hadn't heard from him for a year. He was somebody I had met at Campbell Hot Springs several years earlier, and I had enjoyed working with him and admired his calm and very gentle-appearing nature. In fact, I had appreciated his approach to groups and Rebirthing to such an extent that I had even invited him down to Los Angeles for a day in Fall of 1978 to help lead and organize a One Year Seminar. I didn't hear from him again until one day, in early Spring of 1979, when I was in San Francisco. I ran into him at a restaurant with a group of other Rebirthers I knew. They invited me to join them, and I sat opposite him. I asked him how things were going in his life and learned, much to my great surprise, that he had spent most of the intervening time in jail, having been accused of murdering his wife! He had been released because the police did not have sufficient evidence to charge him. The dinner party that night was to celebrate his release which had just happened. I thought everyone was joking, so my response when he looked me in the eye and told me that he had been suspected and held for the murder of his wife was, "My God, I'd sure hate to be on your shit list." Everyone at the table laughed, no one seemed to take offense, and the moment passed by. I hadn't seen or talked with him since, until that phone call just before Louis and I were ready to leave on our round-the-world trip in February, 1981. He phoned and said that he was thinking of giving up his teaching job and that he wanted to talk with

me. Could he come on down to Los Angeles and spend a day or two? I told him we were leaving the next week for a trip around the world and that life was pretty hectic, so I might not have a great deal of time to spend with him. But, of course, he was welcome to come on down, and I'd see if I could help him make whatever career decisions he was facing. When he arrived, we had many pleasant conversations, but throughout I was mindful of two facts. One is that he had been educated in Germany and had lived in Germany during World War II. And the other fact was that he was a man who had been accused of killing his wife. I went back in my memory to the day in the Fall of 1978 that he had spent with me in Los Angeles, meeting people and discussing the formation of the One Year Seminar. I remembered that, late that evening, after we had returned from having dinner with my son, he had talked about how he and his wife weren't getting along well, and how he, no matter what he did, couldn't make her happy any longer. He said that their life together had been fine until he had had a very bizarre airplane accident a few years previous which he said involved the gas line parting in his airplane and the plane's plunging some 18,000 feet. He was with his good friend and with his little son at the time. He told me that he had concentrated on envisioning white protective light surrounding his son and his friend as the plane fell down to the desert ground. The results of that accident were rather miraculous in themselves. His son was completely uninjured and was able to leave the site of the crash, walk down the road for a mile or more, and summon help. His friend's leg was broken. And my friend only suffered from a piece of metal pushed into his forehead. He was hospitalized with his head injury for quite a while following the accident but made a total recovery, presumably. However, that Fall night in Los Angeles, at the end of the One Year Seminar day, he told me that ever since the accident, he had been in a continual state of bliss which made such things as sex no longer especially desirable. He far preferred to stay in the psychological bliss state that he was constantly experiencing. His indifference to sex was annoying his wife and making their marriage less than the happy one it had previously been. As he was talking, I had a sudden intuition that

he was really very angry, not only at his wife, but possibly at all women. Equally suddenly I became aware of the fact that here was a person who was large enough to have played semi-pro football and who seemed to be accessing a level of aggression and violence and strength that could be dangerous. Immediately, I thought of how much of my life I had been the lightning rod, the conduit, for other people's violent negativity. Usually, in "dangerous" situations, I have allowed either my curiosity or my refusal to reveal my fear to overwhelm my good sense, and I've stayed around to find out what was going to happen. That's how I've been hurt. As I thought about that, I reacted impulsively, out of fear. I abruptly interrupted what he was saying and said, "Excuse me, but I'm really very tired, so I'm going to sleep. You'll be staying in the back bedroom, and you've got clean towels in your bathroom. I'll get up early in the morning to drive you to the airport so that you can get back to San Francisco in time for the One Year Seminar that's starting there at 10 in the morning."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
INDIVIDUAL REBIRTHS
FIRST CONTACT, FEES, AND SCHEDULING New Rebirth clients come to me generally either because a friend or a business associate has recommended me and Rebirthing, or because they've seen my name in some of the New Age publications, especially books by Bob Mandel, Funnell Minett, or the Brooks, Sondra Ray, or listed under "Psychologists" in the phone book. Almost all new clients initially contact me by phone. When a person first phones me to ask questions about Rebirthing, I typically respond by saying, "I'll be pleased to talk about it for a few minutes and I also want to send you a brochure that explains what Rebirthing is and answers most questions most people have about it. Once you've received the brochure, I'd love to hear from you again and answer any specific questions you may have about either Rebirthing or about your life." I then ask the caller to give me his name and address, which I fill out on an index card to keep in my mailing list file, and which I also copy over at that instant on to an envelope containing my brochure, "Rebirthing-Questions and Answers," (Appendix A) and a business card. Immediately, I seal and stamp it so that it can be mailed off promptly. Even if the caller is not new to Rebirthing, I usually send him my brochure simply because I want him to be clear about the variety of services that I offer to people coming to me for individual Rebirth sessions. Once I've filled out the envelope, I usually proceed to say, "Rebirthing is simply a breathing exercise that allows people to change their consciousness about whatever difficulties they're facing in their life. What do you want changed in your life?" Then I spend enough time talking with him so I get a beginning idea of what's troubling him and how I feel about working with him. If the person phoning me tells me that he is in therapy with another psychotherapist, I ask if he has spoken with his therapist about wanting to try Rebirthing or try me, and I suggest that he be very clear about that with his therapist. I explain that I'm a clinical psychologist with all of the professional ethical responsibilities that my licensing in the state of California requires of me, and that I don't want to be regarded as being professionally unethical, as I

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic

would be if I saw somebody else's patient. If the caller has already Rebirthed with some other Rebirther, either years ago or currently, I also generally ask, "Why don't you return to such-andsuch?" I usually refrain from further comments or questions. Most often, I find the caller Rebirthed many years ago, in another city, and doesn't even recall the name of the Rebirther. Usually he adds that he felt good and he felt his life benefited, and he'd like to get back into it now. I explain that during a first session, we'll probably spend a couple of hours talking about his life, what he knows about his birth, and what he wants changed. We'll be discussing appropriate affirmations that I want him to think about, and then we'll spend at least an hour doing a breathe, plus spending some time after the breathing session is complete while we talk about what went on during the session. So, I ask him to allow a good four hours so that neither one of us needs to feel rushed. He can choose whichever best suits his schedule: a morning appointment that would run from about 9:00 to 1:00, an afternoon appointment from 2:00 to about 6:00, or an evening appointment from 7:00 to about 10:30, 11:00. I try to be as flexible as I can be to meet his needs, so I'm open to setting the session time for his first appointment either in the morning, the afternoon, or the evening, and, if necessary, even on the weekends. I also suggest that he not have a heavy meal right before the session, simply so that he can feel alert and comfortable lying down flat doing the Rebirthing breathing, without needing to be propped up. I make certain that we discuss my fees during the first phone conversation, whether or not we make an appointment. My current charge is $260 for the first session, which usually lasts about four to five hours, and $160 for subsequent sessions, which are usually shorter, about three to four hours. I explain that I collect my fee from him directly at the beginning of our appointment, but that I will be agreeable to billing his health insurance plan if it covers mental health care, for eventual reimbursement to him. I also point out that I see most of the people I see only between three to seven times. I explain that my aim is to teach my client to do the

Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

Rebirthing breath by himself, without needing to be prompted or supervised by anyone, and that generally my client learns how to breathe very well by himself after about three to seven sessions. So the overall total cost is very modest, especially compared to conventional talk therapies. If asked, I explain that I only make one appointment in advance and I don't require any certain number of appointments. I want my client to feel free of ties. He need not feel any fear of being trapped into some treatment commitment. He can take it one at a time. After all, the umbilical cord that was indeed severed between him and his mother doesn't even exist between him and me, so why should I try to tie him to me? I don't want to take money from anyone who doesn't want to give it to me. So, if there is any sign of dissatisfaction on the part of my client at the end of the session, and if he doesn't believe he got full value from the session, I give him back his money immediately. I make the same provision with regard to workshops and trainings. My relationship with money is such that I only want to get paid happily and willingly for what I do, where the person paying me believes I deserve my wages. I don't want to get paid for not doing something well. Being a psychologist, my job is to help the other person; I believe that if that person doesn't feel helped in the immediate sense, right then and there, at the end of the breathing, that person shouldn't have to pay for being again disappointed. I know psychologists using other therapies can't operate on a satisfaction guaranteed basis, but being a Rebirther, I can and do. If asked, I explain I am not interested in negotiating the fee (although some Rebirthers that I know, notably Phil Laut, actually center the first session with a new client entirely around the topic of the fee for the session, making negotiating that fee the central issue). I simply deal with the issue of the fee on an ordinary professional basis, stating what I charge and leaving it up to the patient or client to accept or decline the invitation to use me as a therapist or as the teacher of the breathing exercise. I have reacted in a variety of ways when someone calls me who wants very much to Rebirth, but who cannot afford my fee. The very first year that I Rebirthed people, I was quite agreeable to allowing them to come to see

me without needing to pay. That particular year I found that only one out of seven people I Rebirthed actually paid me for the session at my fee at that time, $35 for a session. That meant I was making an average of $5 per session, at an average of a little more than a dollar per hour! On an hourly rate, I was severely cheating myself. At the conclusion of the year, I realized that I was not making enough money from my practice to enable me to continue to live in the style that I had been enjoying with my two youngest children who were still with me, so I increased my fee up to $45 per session. Lots of negatives came up for me, but I did my best to ask people to pay "something" even if they couldn't pay the full fee. By being a little more adamant than I had been about needing to get paid, I was able to convince one out of three patients to pay me at least something for the session that second year, and that made a significant improvement in my own financial picture. Mind you, my salary for my position as a full college professor, teaching a full schedule of psychology classes, fifteen hours a week, is what I was living on primarily, not my private practice, whether it was talk therapy as it had been in the 60s, or Primal Therapy as it was for most of the 70s, or Rebirthing as it has been since 1978. The money made from my private practice has mainly been my "extra" money, not the money that I budgeted my life around. And it still is, although now I budget on a monthly retirement pension that's about half my former salary. The third year of my activity as a Rebirthing teacher brought about a significant change in my financial picture simply because of a rather interesting exchange in talking about this entire matter with Leonard Orr. I was at a workshop that Leonard was teaching, and I was participating essentially as an unpaid coleader, volunteering my time handling some of the seminars. When Leonard called upon me to talk about what my money problems were, I said, "My only major problems with money are simply, first, that a lot of people still don't pay me for their Rebirth sessions, and second, a lot of Rebirthers who borrowed money from me with promises of all sorts to pay me back in the very near future have been liars and simply have not paid me back. Otherwise, I don't have any problem living and handling all my bills and doing things that I want to do. I enjoy my work and I make an abundance of money for myself, working and teaching." Leonard's response took care of my second problem first. He asked, "Are you in the loan

business?" "What do you mean?" I asked, puzzled by his question. And he replied, "Well, do you run a loan agency? Is that what you're doing? Are you a banker or a loan person?" And I replied, with some exasperation, "Leonard, you know perfectly well I'm not. I'm a college professor, I'm a clinical psychologist, I'm a Rebirther. I don't make my living by loaning money to people!" And he smiled and said, "Well, then don't do that." Again I asked him, "What do you mean?" He explained that when somebody asked me to loan them money, I could simply say, "Look, I'm not in the loan business. If I wanted to give you the money, I would simply give it to you, and not necessarily expect you to pay it back. But I don't really want to give you the money. And since I'm not in the loan business, I'm not going to loan you the money. But I'll do my best to help you figure out some way of getting the money yourself, either from other people who are in a more favorable position to give you that money, or else, by creating the money for yourself out of your own efforts, doing some work." Well, that was an interesting suggestion. It pleased me, because it was logical, but not unkind. And it was honest. I had an opportunity to practice that approach only one day later, when a Rebirther I like ever so much phoned to ask if I would loan him several thousand dollars so that he could take the "Loving Relationships Training" Rebirther Training. I used the opportunity to say to him, "You know I love you, and you know I think it's really great that you're going to be doing the LRT Rebirther Training, so I'd like ever so much to help you. But I simply don't have that amount of money to give to you and that's all there is to it. And since I'm not in the loan business, it wouldn't make any sense for me to try to loan it to you, even if I had that money available to put out to loan, anyhow. So, all I can do is give you my loving support and to ask you if you've spoken with people who are in a much better position to give you large sums of money." We then talked about several people we both knew, and I suggested that he speak with them about borrowing money from them and making arrangements for paying them back. I said I was sure they were very open to such requests. A few days later, he called to tell me that he had been able to borrow all the thousands of dollars that he needed in order to do the LRT training from one of

the people I suggested he call! So Leonard's approach to that issue of loaning money worked. Leonard's approach to my first issue of people asking for "freebies" also worked. Leonard asked me, "How many people have you seen that didn't pay you?" I estimated how many hundreds of people I had Rebirthed during the first two years that I was involved in it, and told him that figure. And he asked, "Well, where is my tithe from all of those people?" And I said, "Wait a minute, Leonard, I have sent you a 10 percent tithe for all the people that paid me." And he replied, "Yes, but you didn't send me anything for the people you didn't collect a fee from." I exclaimed, "You mean you want me to have

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Logic of

GROUP REBIRTHINGS Group Rebirths are significantly different in many ways from individual Rebirths. The Rebirther generally spends very little time, only fleeting moments, or maybe none at all, with each person during the group Rebirth. Group Rebirths are generally much less expensive than individual Rebirths, and, equally so, generally highly profitable for the Rebirther for the outlay of a short period of time.

Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10

But, most of us were single births, so I recommend that people have their first experiences of Rebirthing in private, individual sessions, not in groups. I believe we deserve to have the completely undivided attention of one trained Rebirther when we first do the connected breathing and re-experience our births. Being even momentarily ignored, neglected, unsupported, or in any way isolated from constant loving attention is not a healing experience-it's just a repetition of old negatives. I think we're better off saving the group Rebirth until after we've let go most of the negatives that surrounded our births. Then we can create a genuine support group with the breath. Even more important is that the group Rebirth is more than just an expedient to permit lower fees. It's an opportunity to experience old negatives which can only come up in groups, like sibling rivalry and other kinds of competition. Another characteristic of group Rebirths that makes them an important, significant experience, one that each person involved in Rebirthing needs to be open to having, is that the energy generated by every person in the room while they're doing the breathing is being shared. On some level, everyone is affecting everyone else. Everyone is healing everyone else in the room. My fundamental feeling about group Rebirths is that they're nice things to do with a bunch of people who are experienced Rebirthers, committed to the breath, not drama, and who know each other and have spent time together recently with each other. I love to close weekend or week-long Rebirth workshops or trainings with group Rebirths. They seem to solidify the community feeling of love. I think the ideal group Rebirth is one associated with something like the One Year Seminar. I like it when people complete a Rebirthing workshop together, and, loving each other and trusting each other, agree to meet together once a month for a year and always Rebirth at those meetings. That's fine. A group Rebirth under those circumstances makes a great deal of sense to me. It continues to allow everyone in the group to feel increasing affection for each other, and it has the virtue of being essentially economical of time. I don't like conducting group Rebirths if they are essentially drop-in groups, where anyone who wants to Rebirth comes over, pays twenty or thirty dollars for the experience, lies down for an hour and breathes, and then we have a little sharing before everyone leaves. I especially dislike drop-in group Rebirths if I haven't had a pre-existing

Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

Rebirthing relationship with the people coming to the group Rebirth. When I occasionally allowed group Rebirths to be drop-in groups, I didn't find Rebirthing such groups of strangers at all pleasant, not only because of their biff-bam- thank-youma'am characteristics, but because I think people come to them who don't want to handle their issues about money and don't think that they deserve to do or can afford to pay for individual Rebirths. Since my own Rebirthees seldom felt that group Rebirths with strangers present offered any advantage over self-Rebirths (which are, of course, free) I no longer run drop-in group Rebirths. I am open to receiving suggestions from any readers who have had the experience of operating a regular drop-in group Rebirth. I'd like them to share their experience with me. Maybe I can figure out a way of making it work better. It would be nice if it could be arranged. It would be like going swimming: I can have a good time going to the pool every week; the same people or even the same number of people aren't in the pool, but there usually are some people I know, and, anyhow, what I really like is the swimming. It would be great if that attitude could be carried over to drop-in group Rebirths. All this may be my limited belief system coming out, though, because I freely admit I've had great times when I have attended some group Rebirths which involved dozens or hundreds of people who didn't know each other especially well. I don't believe that I have ever experienced extremely profound Rebirths in groups. But I have experienced sustained bliss. Once was at an event that Sondra Ray organized for an exhibit of angels that had been constructed by Los Angeles set-designer and decorator, Tony Duquette. The exhibit was set up in the beautiful surrounding of a Gothic-style church, with lovely lighting and soothing music. We listened to Charlton Heston talk about angels while we did our breathing together. That was very dramatic and very blissful and pleasant. Another great group Rebirth was at the 1981 Certification Training. I recall it as being filled with quintessential joy and bliss. But such fine group Rebirths have been far and few between in my experience. Usually I've been acutely aware of my reactions to the sounds and behavior of the people around me. For example, I have witnessed myself moving from interest to irritation to compassion to indifference within a matter of a few breaths while listening to someone who was next to me crying, or choking, screaming, or thrashing around, rather than breathing. Group

Rebirths often entail high drama with people almost competing to see who can cry the hardest, who can breathe the most forcefully, who can groan the loudest, who can thrash back and forth the most vigorously, who can hold his breath the longest. When I first started doing group Rebirths, I used to have assistants who would walk around and deal with individual Rebirthees, handing out additional tissues and helping anyone who had gone into tetany or who'd stopped breathing. But I find that without the assistants, I also don't have the tetany and the hysteria. Not that they were producing it, but that they were there because, on some level of my consciousness, I was operating with a scarcity thought that I wouldn't be able to give enough attention to everyone so that they all felt safe and secure and could concentrate on keeping their breath connected, full, and satisfying. As mentioned before, I always do a group Rebirth at the conclusion of a workshop or training. I have people lie down in the room so that their heads are arranged so that I can easily move around and get to each person. If the room is large enough, what I much prefer is that everybody put their feet toward the center of the room so that there is a maximum distance between one breather and the next, with plenty of room for me to walk around the outside of the group. I ask everybody before we start to make certain that they're comfortable and warm, and that they feel physically supported, with pillows and blankets. I don't want anyone tolerating even minor discomfort at the beginning of the group Rebirth because that discomfort is just going to become enlarged as the breathing leads to becoming more aware and sensitive. There's no sense to being uncomfortable. ?I never put up with anything if it isn't what I want. I make sure the windows are open so there's plenty of fresh air and I tell people that the windows will stay open. So at the very beginning, they need to make whatever adjustments they need to make in order to feel safe and warm. I also ask everyone to have a supply of tissues near at hand. I tell people that I'm going to let them find their own breathing rhythm for the first five minutes or so. I also tell them that I then am going to play my tape of my 108 Perfect Affirmations for them to listen to while breathing. The affirmation tape runs for forty-five minutes. I tell them that after the tape is finished, they'll have ten more minutes, at least, of silence, to stay with their breathing, and then I'll put on a different tape to signal that the full hour has elapsed. I announce that if they have completed a Rebirthing by that time, they can just

relax or very quietly get up to go out into the hall or go to the bathroom. I tell them that I don't want them talking with each other until the group postRebirth sharing. I also tell people that, if they are still breathing at the end of the hour, they can continue to stay in their Rebirth and they need not necessarily stop, but that, in about another ten or fifteen minutes, we will all be getting together, sharing our Rebirth experiences. Probably by that time, they will have wanted to bring their own Rebirth sessions to a close. I have often found that, in some countries, the desire to let go and be histrionic and dramatic is very strong. That desire is often shared by other people in the group who immediately assume the role of Helper. Recently, at the end of the hour, after leaving the group room to use the toilet, I returned to find five people surrounding someone who, rather than breathe, had decided to carry on, crying and screaming and holding her breath! They had all abandoned their post-Rebirth bliss to try to comfort her! So now, when I start group Rebirths, I remind people that their job during the group Rebirth is to lie down and concentrate on their own breaths, and allow whatever happens to pass through. They are not to try and comfort or in any way "help" other people in the group. Each person is there to find what he or she finds for himself. I remind them we all know that thought is creative, and that breathing lets you let go old negatives. So there's no point in trying to keep a person from feeling feelings, and there certainly is no point in encouraging someone to get into their feelings! What we're going to do is to breathe. I've essentially eliminated most melodrama as a problem in group Rebirths by that particular technique. During their breathing, I often bend down, squat down, or kneel down to talk with someone and remind him about breathing, or to offer him more tissues to blow his nose if he has been crying heavily, or to suggest that he bend his knees or put his arms down or caution him to let go all throat sounds. I remind him simply to concentrate on the breathing, not on the other noises in the room. Every so often, I've had an experience of having one or two people in my group start to laugh, and then other people start to laugh. The people who are into their breathing, not into laughter, or even more so, people who are into their weeping and not into laughter, then become annoyed. Once in England I had about twenty laughers.

The thirty non-laughers in the group were getting increasingly upset, it seemed. So I finally asked everyone who was laughing to leave that room and go into another, so all the laughers were in one room and all the weepers and breathers were in another room. I don't know if it made much significant difference to anybody except me. At least I didn't have to worry that anyone would hate me for not keeping the others quiet. I, myself, am loathe to try to squelch somebody who's laughing. On the other hand, I also know that laughter is a clever way of avoiding having to deal with keeping the breath regular and connected. It's a forced exhale, an emphasis on the exhale, just the same as yelling is. And I want my people who

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ORGANIZING TRAININGS AND WORKSHOPS This chapter is about how I organize for others and how I recommend people organizing for me handle their functions. These are my own specific attitudes, ideas that have worked well, but I recognize that other leaders have other needs and other procedures. Fundamentally, almost all my ideas about how to have an organizer arrange a workshop for me rest

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE

on my unwillingness to entertain thoughts of scarcity. I don't ask for a guarantee in advance. I don't set a minimum number of people who must be committed to the workshop. I don't ask my organizer to pay for my ticket in advance. Essentially, what I do ask is very simple: After I tell an organizer I'll be able to do a workshop on particular dates, I usually make my travel arrangements and pay for my travel costs myself, and we agree that she will repay the portion of my transportation costs we agree upon (it depends on how many other trainings I'll be doing in the reasonable vicinity on a tour), she'll provide my lodging (usually a room in the home of either my organizer or someone attending the workshop), and she'll pay me 50 percent of the fees collected from the fully-paying trainees plus whatever I negotiate from anyone paying less than full fee. From her 50 percent of the fully-paying trainee fees, in addition to paying me back my travel costs, she will spend whatever she chooses on costs for the venue for the workshop and on publicizing, promoting, and recruiting. The remainder is her profit. Long before the organizer knows how many people actually are committed to attend the workshop, she is able to know what my travel costs will be. She can then set limits for the cost of the venue and for costs of advertising and recruitment so that she is likely to make at least a reasonable profit from the number likely to attend. When an organizer is just starting out organizing and is worried about how much money she's investing and what the likely return is going to be, I suggest she keep her scarcity consciousness limited by keeping costs limited and sensible and safe. I point out that almost anybody can get at least one person to come to a training. And she'll be attending as well. So, if she keeps the cost of the venue below the amount of her half of one person's attendance fee and she keeps the costs of promotion to the same amount, she only needs to generate my travel costs to be even. Since that's an amount she knows in advance, she can easily target in on how many people she wants and needs to attend. Once she has commitments from that number, she can expand if she wants and find a larger venue or spend more on further promotion. Sometimes my organizers have been remarkably proficient at getting immense groups to attend meetings, well in the hundreds. Sometimes

The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome

even previously highly successful organizers have only brought a handful of people to a workshop. Apparently, consciousness determines what will happen-scarcity or abundance. The areas she can easily economize in are the costs of the venue and the money spent on promoting the workshop; these are costs which the organizer controls. And aside from some negative consideration like snobbishness, they are costs she can keep most modest, so far as my desires go. It's funny how scarcity thoughts reveal themselves. For example, sometimes, to reduce the tension an organizer may be feeling about her costs, she asks me to buy a non-refundable, nonexchangeable ticket because such tickets are immensely much cheaper than ones that can be returned for a full refund, but I prefer air tickets that are changeable and refundable if canceled. The total ticket cost may be higher, but the flexibility is worth it. Several times, buying the unreturnable ticket has led to increased tensions. Like Leonard Orr, I'm willing to carry out a workshop or seminar even if only person attends, namely, my organizer. However, if she calls me and tells me she doesn't think anyone is going to attend and she wants to cancel, I'm agreeable if the transportation tickets can be cancelled and refunded. If not, we might as well go ahead. At least we'll be able to work on whatever our combined scarcity thoughts have created. In any case, if the ticket cannot be exchanged or refunded, or if my itinerary for a tour is established and can't be changed, I suggest we continue and see what the universe will provide. I usually make time to exchange Rebirths with my organizers wherever I travel. That, of course, is without charge, without any exchange of money, just as our way of showing each other that we love each other. If there isn't time for both of us to get Rebirthed, I've been willing to sacrifice my opportunity to get Rebirthed by my organizer to make certain there is at least time for me to Rebirth her. I do my best to mitigate any loss my organizer seems to be facing if not enough people seem likely to attend the workshop. I like to do all the following, anyhow, just to help promote all my events: I usually suggest that my organizer invite people over in the evening on the day I'm due to arrive just to meet me, talk about Rebirthing, and have a party. Some of the finest get-togethers have involved potluck dinners where everybody brings a

CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

dish and we sit around and eat and socialize; then afterwards, while people are drinking and smoking, everyone gets to ask me whatever questions he wants to ask, about me, about Rebirthing, or about themselves. We just go around the room until everyone has had a chance to ask whatever he wanted to ask. Sometimes the organizer charges a very small fee for the evening and I always enjoy receiving half of whatever's collected. Generally, if twenty or thirty people come to a party like that, I can usually stimulate at least a half dozen to come to the workshop. This approach always works very well for the organizer, who still gets her half of everyone I recruit. Another effort that I've made that has been successful in pulling a profit out for the organizer has been to give impromptu evening talks in a school auditorium or church meeting hall. Generally, a few people attending the inexpensive or free talk become interested in attending a

CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE STANDARD REBIRTH TRAINING

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath

Before discussing the form and content of my typical weekend training, I first want to explain some of my reasons for doing things my way. These points are trivial, but I believe they all go towards making everyone as comfortable as possible. For example, although I generally work someplace where there are enough blankets and pillows so that everyone can be provided with them if necessary, I usually ask people coming to a training to bring their own individual blankets and pillows or sleeping bags. That's so that they can feel comfortable using familiar bedding. As mentioned before, in my announcements and invitations, I also ask people not to wear aftershaves, perfumes, hair sprays, or other scented preparations to Rebirth trainings. It is much easier to breathe clean air that isn't scented, especially since the base or carrier for most commercial perfumes may be irritating to many noses. Another reason is that scents have nostalgia value. I'm not especially fond of Rebirthing someone who has a specific agenda in mind, so, I'm not especially in favor of someone prompting his unconscious with specific smells in order to call up specific negatives which he then intends to let go with his breath. I prefer he surrender to the breath, letting Divine Intelligence determine what comes up and is let go of by the breathing. And a third reason is that I want people to think of a Rebirth training, whether it's a Rebirth weekend or a Rebirth one-day seminar, as a place to get real, not a place for putting on phony facades and trying to attract someone. I don't want people operating from the scarcity thought that they, themselves, are not enough, that they have to do something extra besides being themselves to make people want them. And, as I've said in earlier chapters, I don't want to run a dating game. I don't think the most important thing we do in our lives is to attract someone sexually and get them to commit to us, so that we stay in a longstanding, loving, sexual relationship. I think our important relationship is with ourselves and with God and with Reality. My workshops are aimed at stimulating people to think about that. So I ask people to come to trainings clean and neat (I don't want a repeat of my Scotch-English smelly

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11

feet number), wearing comfortable clothes and little or no make-up. I ask them to leave themselves unadorned, to be the person that God sees when God looks at them. (I don't think God is deceived by elaborate hairdos, expensive perfumes, beautiful up-to-date fashionable clothing, etc., but then, who knows what God does or doesn't do? But if God is what I create, my God goes for clean and neat.) If food isn't being provided, I ask people to bring to a workshop their own bag lunches so that we don't need to go and buy food, prepare it, clean-up, etc., or break up the group to go out to get meals. Whenever possible, I try to do trainings where the meals are provided already prepared, so that we only need to take a break to go to be served. This isn't the same in other people's trainings. Some leaders want to give trainees a chance to go off by themselves for meals and digest or integrate whatever they've been hearing or thinking about. Others think that a good finish of a day's training is for everyone to go out together for a large meal at a restaurant. But my own feeling is that we've come together for a very short period of time, to get a lot done, and I like doing it. (Outside of the workshop, I'm always open for a party, as people who know me personally know is true.) I like the idea of staying together as a group dealing with the Rebirthing process and Rebirthing topics continually, without any interruption for mealtime breaks or rest. Given my choice of several hours spent dining together or several hours spent discussing our cases, I almost always opt for having extra time for case work. In this regard, I might add that, during my workshops, I do, indeed, go all day long, for very extended periods of time, paying close attention to at least one other individual constantly. My attention isn't wavering. I'm not daydreaming during workshops or sessions. I am connecting with some other person's consciousness every instant, as much as possible. I've been "on" from seven in the morning until midnight, working like that, for as long as forty-two days, six full weeks without a day off, several times, at no pain or cost to myself. I am pleased I can provide service for a large number of people that way. Breathing fully and freely allows me to have all the energy I need to do anything I want to do without any effort whatsoever. I believe that's true for everyone. After all, we're dealing with the most interesting

The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

topic of all: who we are. So I am very clear, right up front at the beginning of the workshop, that I am not responsible for keeping anyone else's energy level high. It's up to each person to take care of routine matters like toileting, standing up for a stretch, or eating a snack. I don't have breaks because I have no scarcity of energy, and I know that the people in my trainings actually don't either. We all are connected to Infinite Energy. Although other training leaders plan breaks to replenish energy one way or another, I believe the people who attend my workshops can certainly keep going without having to take breaks every hour to stand up and dance, or every hour and a half for a little snack, or every few hours while I go and bathe and change my clothing. And, certainly, there's no sense, as I see it, to needing a break to go smoke a cigarette.

CHAPTER TWENTY

RUNNING A REBIRTH BUSINESS

As I mentioned in the preceding chapter, on Saturday of a typical weekend Rebirthing training, I always make certain to spend at least an hour or two talking specifically about how to run a Rebirth business. Like many of the other suggestions about money that I make at Rebirth workshops, many of these ideas about running a Rebirth business are ones that I have taken over, in great gratitude, from either Leonard Orr or Phil Laut, the two acknowledged money experts in the Rebirthing world. If you have money issues you havent let go yetor by the end of this chapterI recommend you get in touch with them. (Give them a hug from me, too.) All of the ideas that I speak about and get people in my workshops to agree to practice are designed not only to handle common problems encountered when running a Rebirth business, but also to improve general money consciousness. If you have ever run a successful business of your own, you probably have already taken care of most of these details and followed these procedures. Before opening your practice as a Rebirther, it makes sense for you to have business cards, and for you to have a brochure prepared that you can send out to people who call you for information about what Rebirthing is. Get yourself some really nice looking business cards, ones that you are happy to hand out to people. Be sure your card states that you are a Rebirther, so when you hand such a card to another person you have the opportunity to explain what Rebirthing is about, carrying on a brief impromptu Rebirth seminar. I carry such cards along with other cards which identify me as a licensed clinical psychologist and which include my state license number. I use such cards when sending information to the people referred to me by two therapists who believe their patients will be put off by the term, Rebirther. Make sure that you have a brochure becausewhile a little Rebirth seminar is OK when youre talking with someone face to face, and a very short one is OK on the telephone in answer to a query from some strangeryou dont wand to spend the majority of your day repeating these same elemental thoughts about Rebirthing. You need some explanation in the form of a brochure which you willingly and freely send to anyone who asks. I dont monkey around with asking them to send a stamped, self-addressed envelope or to pay

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming

for the brochure. I simply print it at my own expense as proud proof that I have something that Im selling, that I want everyone to know about. I present it attractively and give it to anyone who calls to ask about Rebirthing, even people who already lots about Rebirthing, paying the postage myself. Its part of the cost of doing business. I find, much to my surprise, that many people who say theyre Rebirthers fail to get either business cards or brochures or letterhead stationery indicating that they are involved with Rebirthing. Thats such an unbusinesslike attitude! Maybe such scarcity consciousness is a reflection of resentment over putting money out for something they havent made any money from doing yet. But I believe this kind of reluctance to print cards announcing Rebirth services is related to other money negatives. Why would people cheat themselves and be chintzy about acknowledging and making open the claim that they are indeed Rebirthers? I can only conclude its because something about Rebirthing seems shameful to them. Until breathing releases such shames, I say, Stay out of Rebirthing! Many people object to the name, Rebirthing, because it might be mis-interpreted as something connected to a religious conversion like being a Born-again Christian. So what? You can explain the difference in your brochure or face-toface. You can also call Rebirthing Conscious Connected Breathing. I seek to convince every person attending my workshops to open a Rebirthing business, even if only for a few hours a week. It improves life in every regard. Breathing is something you do anyhow, right? Every minute of your life youre breathing in and out. The more fully and freely you breathe, the healthier you are, the more alive you are, the more in the Now you are. So certainly every individual should greet every opportunity to practice breathing freely and fully, to carry out a nice, conscious, connected breath.

CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19 The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

The time I spend Rebirthing somebody isnt time that I lose. Instead, its time I gain to practice my Breathing, while working and helping others. In addition, its something I like to do. I enjoy hearing from other people about themselves, learning their stories. I enjoy listening to people talk about themselves. I enjoy talking about myself. What Im doing is something I would probably be doing anyhow. So, you not only get this chance to practice your breathing and to peek in on the lives of other people, but you also get to have your own life brought into consciousness in some particular regard. Whatever your Rebirthee is talking about always evokes some response inside you in that connection. Making Rebirthing your profession has lots of other benefits as well. The other person feels good about talking to you about himself, he knows youre really listening. And, of course, after he has practiced the breathing with you and has started using the affirmations, he really gets benefit from it and from you and your ministrations. So hes definitely being helped and hes really grateful to you. All in all, he is quite happy about paying the reasonable fee that youre requesting he pay. So Rebirthing has all those positives to it. There is another whole dimension of positivity to being a Rebirther that comes into being as people let go their negatives, especially the ones that have kept them disapproving of their parents and have kept them believing that they were unfortunate from birth. As they let go all of that stuffthat life is something terrible, life is cheating them, theyve been hurtthey come into greater consciousness of good, of Good in its absolute sense. They witness and become a part of the great beauty and generosity of creation. If all that is, is God, then that God is good! And so, as youre practicing being a Rebirther, and your client is receiving the benefits of the practice of Rebirthing, both of you are coming into a closer relationship with the good of the universe, the godliness. You are being spiritually uplifted and verified in a sense. The rightness, the union between you and everything else, is being restored. Among the many ideas that I got from Phil and Leonard is the idea of deciding in advance

when I want to see people and how much I want to charge them (how much I want to make, how much Im open to receiving), then buying an engagement calendar and blocking out the time Im willing to set aside to do the Rebirths that Im going to be charging for. So far, thats nothing new. Everyone in business for himself does this. What is new is that I pledge to myself either to use that time only to concentrate on the Rebirth client who has come to fill the time and pay me the fee Im charging, or else to use that time to concentrate on letting go whatever negatives about making money or being a Rebirther I may be running that are keeping clients away. So, in your calendar, set aside a certain time to earn the money youre receiving for Rebirthing. If you dont have a client during that time, spend time working with affirmations and Rebirthing yourself. Youll find out something about your old negatives as soon as you do. Money is almost never a consideration, certainly seldom the prime consideration. Another idea from Phil and Leonard is that, since my consciousness always creates my money picture, there are many times when my negatives about all the other work I want or need to do will mysteriously limit the number of Rebirths I am scheduled for during a particular stretch of time. Sometimes that means that I dont have anybody coming to sessions with me for a week or two while I do some other things that I want to do, like work on this book or take my older sister camping. Fine! It doesnt mean that no one wants me or that Im becoming a lousy Rebirther. It just means that since my first priority is to serve, the only way I can have time for myself is if nobody wants me to serve them. So thats what happens. The issue of time limits is one of the big birth-connected belief systems. People ask what to do in private practice: run on a schedule or have unlimited sessions? My reply is, What do you want to do? I try to keep the time scheduled for a session within limits that allow me to handle the call for my services. In Los Angeles, typically I dont have more than two or three people a day wanting to Rebirth. So its easy enough for me to schedule Rebirth sessions four or five hours apart. That way, I have plenty of time for the session, as well as time to relax in between sessions and do other things. When Im on the road, its a different matter

completely. At some places, ten people have wanted to do individual Rebirths in a day with me. They were scheduled an hour and a half apart, and I worked really hard for the days I was there. This isnt something Id do in Los Angeles, however, where theres no reason to schedule so closely or even to work so hard. So, suit yourself about the length of your sessions in private practice. As mentioned previously, I know of good Rebirthers who have good training, fine backgrounds, and top reputations who work on a one-hour breathe basis. They have their clients come in and breathe for an hour, then leave, with very little conversation having taken place. Their clients meet as a group on a weekly basis to talkabout their Rebirths and their lives. As Ive said previously, I prefer to talk first, to get an idea of what a person wants to change, and to get an idea of how he feels about what I think is connected to what hes complaining about. That takes more time, but its worth it to me. Otherwise, I feel I dont know my Rebirthees very well. Another idea I got from Phil and Leonard was that whenever I find myself having any negatives about Rebirthing other people, I need to explore what kind of scarcity consciousness Im running about money, work, and time. As described in Chapter Sixteen, the negative I have come up with each time is that Im not charging enough to be satisfied. As soon as Ive recognized that, Ive reminded myself that its all right for me to increase the amount of money that Im charging for my Rebirths. I deserve to acknowledge how much I want to get paid. How much I have asked has steadily risen through the years as I have realized how much of my time goes into it. After all, its my job to sell my time for a wage that pays me an amount that is in accord with my own self-concept. As Ive said previously, if theres somebody I want to Rebirth or want to have in my workshop who cant afford the fee or the tuition, its also all right for me to provide my services at a level thats affordable to that person. At almost every workshop I have led outside of the USA, someone has asked me when I think its okay for new Rebirthers to start to charge for Rebirthings. Usually these people have accepted restrictions set up by some so-called authority in their area who has told them that, for example, until they have Rebirthed fifty people without getting paid, they arent entitled to ask for

any money! My reply to when to charge is essentially my general reply to any permission type questions: Whenever you want. You dont need anyones permission to do anything you do. Do it out of your own free will. When you feel ready to Rebirth others and ask them to pay you for it, do it! I remind them of the other benefits Ive mentioned previously, for example, you dont have to get dirty doing it. You dont have to lift any heavy weights doing it. Theres nothing dangerous about it. You dont need any special equipment. You dont need special training. All you need is somebody else who is willing to lie down in your presence and practice the conscious connected breath. So, deciding to run a Rebirth business is and should be easy as can be. You dont need to do anything to do it except announce that you are in business. And my feeling, my attitude about that, is announce it proudly! People often ask whether they should give up their steady job and go into Rebirthing on a kind of a sink-or-swim basis, making all of their time available for Rebirthing. Again, my own response is, Do whatever you want. Just be sure youre operating from an abundance consciousness. I know several people whove given up extremely lucrative jobs to open Rebirth practices which were highly successful. Those people all had savings they could fall back upon; it wasnt as if they were really going to be living hand to mouth, minute to minute, not ever really knowing where the next meal was coming from or whether they could pay their next months rent. Leaving their jobs to start Rebirthing full-time didnt create an immediate scarcity consciousness. So, if you have lots of savings and you really dont like the job that youve been doing fulltime, and you love the thought of entering into Rebirthing on a full-time basis, go for it. Be sure to give yourself some time limit: a Rebirthing place will be selected and outfitted by so and such time, so many people will be coming to see you for so many sessions per week by another time limit, so much of a profit will be made by

another time limit. If you dont meet those limits, agree in advance that youll immediately, without hesitation, put your Rebirthing on a different basis or go back to making your living doing something else again. Thats one OK way to do it, even though it has some qualities of the crisis personality about it (it might have something to do with people who get born precipitously, for all I know). It wasnt my style, and, fortunately, I didnt need it to be my style. As Ive said before, I was teaching college and running a Primal practice when I first encountered Rebirthing. I loved teaching full-time, which only involved fifteen hours of lecturing a week, and I had no desire to stop teaching on that full-time basis. Just as with my Primal work, I had plenty of time to see people for Rebirthings the one morning of the work week when I didnt teach, and I also had every afternoon and evening, as well as the weekend for sessions. So running a Rebirthing practice and teaching college never were in any kind of conflict at all. It wasnt until a couple of years ago that I began to desire to have a freer schedule, primarily because I enjoyed myself so much when I traveled around, leading Rebirth trainings all over the world: England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Sweden, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. I got tired of trying to squeeze all of the foreign travel for workshops into summer vacation, or into Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter vacations from school. I found that I wasnt seeing my grandchildren as much as I wanted to, and I wasnt seeing them for important holidays. Also, I never actually just got a chance to hang out in my own back yard, looking at the garden grow and the bunnies frisking around. So, in 91 I decided that I would retire from college teaching in 92. Since then, I have had the leisure to travel whenever and wherever I wanted to, and that has been fine. Whatever you decide, be sure you dont do anything from a sense of scarcity. If you dont have enough savings to know that you can live well for the time you think it will probably take for you to establish a thriving Rebirthing business, I suggest that you keep your current job and fit Rebirthing in during the evenings and weekends. Of course, that approach may be just as dependent on a scarcity consciousness as any other act is. Its up to you to determine where your

sense of scarcity lies, and then to act in accordance with the higher spiritual thought. For example, I have never actually made Rebirthing the sole source of my income. Does that mean I dont have enough faith in my ability to generate an immense income from Rebirthing? I dont know andfor onceI dont care to know. Because of my college teaching, I havent needed to. Since I havent needed to and wont need to, I havent done it, and I wont do it. Rebirthing for me can always remain something that provides the glorious opportunity to meet marvelous people in all reaches of life all over the world. Its my comfort in my older age. Its my fun. Its my hobby. Its my pastime. Its my consuming passion. Its what I do. And its just really nice that I also make a part of my living from it. I think I would be missing this joy if I had given up teaching during the sixteen years I was Rebirthing before I retired from college. For what? Just to prove I could rely on myself? Who else has been supporting me since I was 13 years old? So for me, the higher spiritual thought was, Ive already proved I can take care of myselfthats what Im doing. Now Im free to be easy on myself. Some people are extremely adventurous and totally confident that the universe is there to support them. So they start a Rebirthing business even though they dont have savings. They find people who will support them as they get started at Rebirthing. Ive known several people who moved in with somebody else so they didnt have to handle paying a large rent, and who then started Rebirthing practices, mostly on a shoe string. Most of them have done well. So that can be done. You can do it however you want. Whatever makes you most comfortable should be the determining factor as you decide how many times each week you must sell sessions and at what price in order to meet your bills and give yourself the standard of living youre open to having. Remember to practice generosity toward other Rebirthers, too. I recommend you share your expertise and your resources. For example, as a businesswoman running a Rebirth practice, I have always given my mailing list to whoever asked me for it. I have also shared whatever information I have about Rebirthing with anybody who has asked for it, and I have never done anything to try to prevent them from gaining

the benefit of my experience, as well. To do elsewise seems to me proof positive of a really giant scarcity consciousness. I have also invited other Rebirthers to come to my Rebirth trainings and workshops at reduced or no fee, so they have the opportunity to see what I do and how I do it. When I think about how to run a Rebirth business. I think about service, first, and income, second. I feel I need to give away a certain amount. I urge other people to have that same attitude, too. Give away a certain amount of your time, whether it be Rebirthing others or leading Rebirth trainings or organizing Rebirthing trainings for other people. I urge you to act from a sense of generosity and not from any desire to make a lot of money doing very little, especially when organizing, because with that attitude, youll probably begrudge the amount of work that goes into getting a bunch of people together to pay to attend a workshop. So regard yourself as worthy of spending money on to get your business started. Remember that Rebirthing really isnt only a business, its also a medium of spiritual exchange and a way you show your love to your community. The profit is not always in dollars and cents. We pay for an education. We pay for therapy. When we run our Rebirthing business, were getting educated and were getting healed. Were getting something marvelous and precious. So, lets not begrudge what it costs us. In addition to seeing Rebirth clients in your Rebirthing business, organizing for others can be profitable, and it certainly is fun. Follow the suggestions in Chapter Eighteen and see for yourself what you really think about organizing for another Rebirther. Organizing for others is a great tool for improving your consciousness, especially if youre jealous or withholding. Youll certainly come up against your old negatives when youre counting how many people youve gotten to attend the event youre organizing for another Rebirther. Organizing for yourself is another item completely because it brings up other negatives about worth and calling attention to ourselves. We need to be willing to spend money on sensible advertising for ourselves. My view is that its a waste to spend

money, effort, and time on trying to gain credibility by soliciting mental health professionals. Rebirthing at this time is not an accepted form of therapy, and most psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers are not likely to welcome you and Rebirthing until Rebirthing is either substantiated by sound research or is picked up and advocated by some generally famous person, in or out of the mental health professions. Therefore, dont waste money singling the mental health pros out trying to get them to acknowledge that Rebirthing works and to use it themselves. They will arrive for their own individual sessions eventually, usually at the urging of either a friend or patient. As I said in Chapter Eighteen, I have found that organizing workshops for myself in Los Angeles is quite comfortable and easily done with very low cost, so long as I focus on the people who are most likely to want to join my workshop. In my experience, these are mainly the people whom I have recently been Rebirthing, people who have seen me a few times, and who know that Rebirthing works for them. A few of these people are interested in using Rebirthing as a technique they can teach to friends and acquaintances, or who want to use Rebirthing as a source of income. The majority attend because they want to experience the group energy and benefits. When I organize for myself in Los Angeles, I generally send out a flyer or a notice card announcing the workshop, its dates, its times, the topics that will be covered, and the cost. I send that out to everyone I have Rebirthed in the past half year and to each and every one of the people who have phoned in the past six months to ask about Rebirthing. Usually thats about 150 or so people. It doesnt take me very long to affix stamps and drop that many notices in the mailbox. I dont need to hire anyone to do it for me. And it isnt expensive. The total cost is well below what one attendee pays. I used to hire a few Rebirthers to make follow-up phone calls to the Rebirthees I sent notices to, to find out how they were doing and what their plans were for attending. That kind of soliciting almost always paid off, because people appreciated having such personal contact. But when the Rebirthers who had worked for me moved on to greater adventures, I found I didnt want to replace them and I dont like my calling my Rebirthees myself. So Ive simply abandoned follow-up phoning as a technique that I use here in L.A. to get people to come to my workshops. I

recommend it for other organizers, however. If Im organizing for someone else as leader, I definitely make follow-up phone calls to everyone Ive sent an announcement to. Since late 1994, Ive been considering telling people, when I start Rebirthing them, not only to plan to have about four individual Rebirths with me at the rate of about one per week, but also to expect to attend a weekend workshops the third weekend of the month, either while theyre going through their individual sessions or immediately after. I want to convince each individual Rebirthee that attendance at a workshop is just as important as the individual sessions, primarily because certain negatives come up in a group that almost never come up in an individual one-on-one situation, for example, sibling rivalry, the negatives about having to share attention and about having to wait or compete for a turn, and all of the prudish negatives about exposing and revealing ourselves. Further, most of us believe that such issues cant be talked about in public without making us feel uncomfortable. So dealing with all that stuff which comes up primarily only during a workshop and not usually during individual sessions is very important. Attending a workshop isnt only an opportunity to become close to other people who are into Rebirthing. And it isnt only an opportunity to get Rebirthed three times for the same cost as Im currently charging for an initial individual Rebirth. So far, although Ive been considering it, I havent seen my way clear to insisting that at least one weekend workshop is mandatory. Anyhow, how could I possibly enforce such a requirement, especially with those of my patients who are famous people for whom the group would be especially valuable just because they dont get my undivided attention and because theyre exposing themselves. So I continue to offer the workshop as an experience complete in itself, although I truly regard it as a necessary step in the healing my Rebirthee seeks. So far, the major reason people attend my workshops has been that they have wanted to learn to Rebirth others and make Rebirthing their profession. My Rebirthees who have stable, satisfying, financially successful careers tend to avoid the groups and opt for one-on-one sessions instead.

Running your Rebirth business is a marvelous way of earning all or part of your living at the same time that youre working on your case. As you let go old mistaken beliefs about what constitutes success, your Rebirth business reflects your greater abundance consciousness, and your thought is, I always have enough. I always get enough. For example, a weekend workshop even with only three or four people attending here in Los Angeles is a perfectly acceptable way of spending the weekend. I spend as much time in a workshop as I would spend seeing four new Rebirthees and I make about as much. When more than that attend, its additional income, its a profitable profit on my time. I no longer seek to have giant groups here in Los Angeles that in some magical way validate my existence, proving that Im a really superduper good Rebirther. Im not competing on that level any longer. The number of people attending a workshop is not an index of how good I am at what I do. In fact, no external parameters seem to be. Ultimately, the only proof comes from my feelings of satisfaction. That applies to the size of the group appearing for a workshop or a training, it applies to the numbers of people who come for some regularly scheduled group Rebirth, it applies to how many new people have appeared to start Rebirthing, and it applies to how many old Rebirthees return for additional sessions. Profit, numbers, notoriety: none of it means a thing. The purpose of running a Rebirth business as a Rebirther, as an organizer for events led by other Rebirthers, or as a leader of your own Rebirth seminars, workshops, and trainingsis to come in touch with negatives youre still holding on to so you can let them go. Thats all. Its just to allow us to Realize, to become, who we really are: perfectly divine individuals.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
REBIRTHING ORGANIZATIONS In the years that Ive been involved with Rebirthing, several Rebirthing organizations have come and gone. Some of these have been national or international groups. Others have been One Year Seminars that have become well-established and essentially perpetual. A few are still sustained in their original form with the people who were originally involved. The first centralized Rebirthing organization that I learned of was Leonard Orrs group called Rebirthers International. So far as I know, anyone involved with Rebirthing was free to join that organization upon payment of the annual membership fee, which was something in the nature of $100 a year. The organization published an annual Rebirthers Directory that indicated what kind of Rebirth experience the person had had and what his status was. Essentially, anyone who had done a Rebirth training with Leonard, Sondra, Phil, Steve Kamp, or any of the other earliest Rebirthers was listed as a Rebirther. Anyone who customarily Rebirthed people for a fee outside of workshops was listed as a Professional Rebirther. Anyone who conducted trainings and workshops or organized them was given an additional appropriate listing as a Rebirth Trainer. Any member who presented himself for Certification and who was voted for unanimously by the others was Certified. After a couple of years, the organization was revamped because the Certified Rebirthers at the time argued that other requirements had to be met for people to join. It was no longer enough to have taken a Rebirth training, especially only one. Some of the requirements were relatively poetic, like watching the full moon all night. Some of them involved changing a persons diet to put him back into more childlike experiences, for example, drinking only milk for a week or going on a juice diet for a week. Others dealt with requirements like:

The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Ideal Breath CHAPTER TWO The Difference Between Rebirthing and Hyperventilation CHAPTER THREE The Difference Between the Ideal Breath And Yogic Breathing CHAPTER FOUR The Difference Between Rebirthing And Primal Scream Therapy CHAPTER FIVE The Biology of Imprints CHAPTER SIX Food and Consciousness CHAPTER SEVEN Rebirthing and

Must have Rebirthed a certain number of times. Must have done a full Rebirth in cold water. Must have done a full Rebirth in hot water. Must have Rebirthed a certain number of people a certain number of times. Oftentimes, the requirements seemed to me to be about as significant as the requirements in high school for joining a particular sorority or fraternity. Maybe they got to the issue of how much trust in the universe a person experienced, but they seemed more just hurdles for a person to jump, proofs of willingness to put up with nonsense in order to belong. I dont honestly know if they had other merit. Eventually, people who wanted to be Rebirthers, plain or Certified, were given a set of approximately twenty requirements that they had to meet, and presumably they did their best to meet them. No one checked up on them. If anyone felt that a particular requirement was nonsense, he may not have met that requirement, although he may have said he did. The number of Certified Rebirthers rose to approximately twenty. It didnt matter. The whole business of Certification was just another opportunity to find out what old negatives were still being held on to. At the meeting when these criteria of excellence were first proposed, a lot of discussion about the validity of such requirements took place. How can you possibly determine whether some particular Rebirther is good or not good? As Ive said before, I have had children as young as four years old be in Rebirthing trainings and have had the people those children Rebirthed say that they had marvelous Rebirths with them, that they could feel their young Rebirthers childlike innocence and purity. Obviously children dont have a lot of prior experience in life and they dont know from nothing about psychology and personality difficulties, interactions, relationships, etc. And they probably know even less about metaphysical and spiritual matters. So it appeared to me that the Certification requirements were interesting, but silly. At the last Certification training attended by Leonard and all the old Certs, I missed out on being voted a Certified Rebirther because some brand new Rebirthers, people who had only Rebirthed once, wanted me to wear makeup and re-style my hair. Even so, I thoroughly enjoyed being acclaimed Certified Rebirth Training Leader. The only one, ever, so far as I know.

Bodywork Therapies CHAPTER EIGHT Rebirthing and Conventional Rsychotherapies CHAPTER NINE Rebirthing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming CHAPTER 10 Affirmations CHAPTER 11 The Parental Disapproval Syndrome CHAPTER 12 Time, Work, and Money: Consciousness and Abundance CHAPTER 13 Sex and Loving Relationships CHAPTER 14 Physical Immortality CHAPTER 15 Ethical Consideration CHAPTER 16 Individual Rebirths CHAPTER 17 Group Rebirthings CHAPTER 18 Organizing Trainings and Workshops CHAPTER 19

My feeling at the time I first started Rebirthing was that I wanted to belong to Rebirth International. I wanted to support Leonard and the rest of everybody in the Rebirthing community. I saw Rebirth Internationals Directory as a way to stay in touch with people that I met at jubilees and at workshops, and to keep track of who was doing what and where. I didnt see Rebirth International as a professional organization especially, just more a social group. When Leonard separated himself from the other Certs in the early 80s, Rebirth International began to become defunct. About 1985, Leonard Orr gave up running Rebirth International completely and turned it over to Phil Laut, but that lasted for only about a year, as I recall. Soon thereafter, as Phil started working with Jim Leonard and developed his concepts of Vivation, Phil changed the named of Rebirth International Associated Vivation Professionals to which I belonged for years. So far as I know, Rebirth International then ceased to exist until Leonard resurrected it a few years ago, primarily as a support group for Campbell Hot Springs, the place in the Sierras of Northern California Leonard called the Rebirth Training Center. Its hard to know how viable the organization still is, following Leonards removal from CHS first to Chico and then to Virginia. Rebirth International hasnt even issued an annual directory of members since 1990, although the organization still exists as of 1996 and I still send membership dues each year. About the time that Phil started his Vivation organization, Sondra Ray started a directory of Rebirthers who had taken her Loving Relationships Training and had worked with Rebirth Training trainers she approved of and had dealt with. These people were called LRT Rebirthers. (Although I was grandmothered in on the original list, I have in fact, received almost no referrals from being listed, and I dont even know if Im still listed on that roster.) In late 1995, the LRT was disbanded. Shortly after, a meeting was called by Leonard, inviting East Coast Rebirthers to come to his place in Staunton, Virginia, to meet with Bob and Mallie Mandel and other LRT people to consider a restructured organization combining both groups. I havent yet heard what happened (although I was in Falls Church, Virginia, at the time, a ten-inch snowfall kept me from driving the 300 miles to the meeting). I have always felt bad that there has been such

The Standard Rebirth Training CHAPTER 20 Running a Rebirth Business CHAPTER 21 Rebirthing Organizations

a schism here in the United States. A lot seemed to have to do with social status. To me it seemed that the Rebirthers who belonged to Leonards organization were generally not as young, beautiful, wealthy, or dynamic as the people who were affiliated with the LRT. And the people who branched off into the AVP were regarded as another thing, apart completely, not real Rebirthers, in fact. So I hope a united organization soon comes about. Whenever I have completed a Rebirthing training, I have suggested to the people who have attended that they agree to meet again a month later to form a One Year Seminar. They can thus continue to meet each month as a group to consider a specific topic and to Rebirth each other and continue to make progress on what is referred to in New Age talk as their process. Several One Year Seminars have been very stable, lasting much longer than the larger, centralized organizations, probably because they all formed from people already bonded by a specific group training. Many of the OYSs that were started as long ago as thirteen years ago are still intact, meeting regularly and presumably benefitting the members involved. Some of these organizations are what I call inclusive and some of them are what I call exclusive. In most cases they tend to reflect the prevailing personality of the countries in which they were formed. For example, in Sweden, there are lots of requirements which are very carefully monitored where people must be observed and Rebirthed by their supervisors over an extended period of time two years is my recollectionand are only allowed to become members when they finally win the approval of these other people sitting in judgment over them. That kind of exclusive approach is moderated somewhat for the British Rebirth Society. Although it has certain kinds of requirements and does involve having the petitioners achieve the approval of its members for entrance, I dont have the sense that the BRS is trying to keep otherwise qualified people from calling themselves Rebirthers. I just see it as a manifestation of the typically British attitude that certain qualifications have to be met in order for a person to be regarded as a particular kind of individual. OYSs that exist in other countries that Ive visited, in Australia, New Zealand, or Spain, for example, all have varying requirements. Fundamentally, my predominant feeling with regard to most exclusive rosters or groups is that they are control organizations, based on ideas of dominance and submission: Certain people are in

charge and restrict the practice of Rebirthing to people that they approve of. I believe that some variation on the theme of scarcity consciousness underlies all these exclusive organizations. In Los Angeles, especially during the first half dozen years that I was involved with Rebirthing, I made several attempts to create OYSs from the people attending a weekend training. Possibly because I didnt require a years membership fee to be paid in advance, they all fell apart after the second meeting. A few years ago, a friend of mine and myself finally succeeded in organizing two OYSs that lasted the full year. We convinced Leonard to travel to Los Angeles once a month to lead a One Year Seminar which we organized for him. The first group had about fifty people at its first meeting and the second had about fifteen. However, only the three of us who were present at the first meeting made each of the meetings and actually attended the last meeting with Leonard at the close of the year. Further, even we three had no desire to contract with Leonard for another year. Since then, there hasnt been a Los Angeles OYS. I have always acknowledged the material, practical value of some kind of central registration of people who are involved with Rebirthing, so that other individuals who are seeking to make a connection into Rebirthing can find them. To that end, I formed an organization about fifteen years ago, which I call Rebirth Associates of Los Angeles. That organization is listed in the phone book, both as a separate organization and also as a referral organization for psychological services, and at least one person a week calls to ask about Rebirthing as a result of seeing that listing in the general pages of the phone book. At one particular time, many people belonged to Rebirth Associates, and when queries were made for Rebirthers in a particular area, the referral was made to whichever Rebirther was closest. Essentially its primary purpose was just to provide a rubric under which people could locate Rebirthers in Los Angeles. Ive twice requested that the companies that turn out the phone directories have a separate listing for Rebirthers, but unfortunately, even in the megalopolis of Los Angeles, there are not enough Rebirthers making enough money from doing Rebirthing to pay the bill to have a separate listing in the phone book as Rebirthers. And so, that separate listing has yet to exist.

Since 1978, Rebirth Associates of Los Angeles has held a meeting every Monday evening from 7:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. Anyone can attend. The meeting enables people to ask questions about Rebirthing, share reports of their own experiences with Rebirthing, and generally explore their relationships with Rebirthing and with Babaji. For periods during most of the past several years, an Aarti to Babaji has preceded the meeting, or else alternate Monday evenings have been the Aarti service only, with no general discussion about Rebirthing at all. Im sure there are many ways of dealing with the whole thing, but what I have wanted to do has been to provide a space where Rebirthers and their clients and their friends could come together and talk about Rebirthing, regularly, without anyone having to rent a hall to do it or put out expensive flyers, etc. So, my attitude about these informal evening Rebirth seminars has been pretty consistently to donate the service, gratis. When people have asked to give a donation, Ive told them Im always open to receiving money, but Ive generally shied away from soliciting. By contrast, Leonard believes that one should always charge for the Rebirth seminar, and yet not make paying for it a condition of attendance. If a Rebirthing Center existed, perhaps such regular introduction seminars would be profitable. But Rebirthing Centers, like OYSs, have also been transient and short-lived, at least in Los Angeles. One of the aims of several Rebirthing groups here in Los Angeles, was to provide a genuine Rebirth center, a place where people could come and, bringing or meeting their clients, could even Rebirth them, and also a place where trainings could be held. In the absence of any significant endowment, unfortunately, every time such a center has been rented and renovated and established, it has fallen apart for lack of funds and for lack of interest usually within a matter of one or two months. Rebirthers in Los Angeles that I have spoken with all want to continue to Rebirth people in the space in their homes that they have already established as a Rebirthing space. They havent wanted to drive across town. They havent wanted to pay extra rent for something they didnt really believe would benefit them.

In other parts of the world, Rebirthing Centers have worked out more successfully. I know of one successful center in London that operated as a Rebirthing center for quite a while, and I also know of one in Sydney, Australia, and one in New York City. But, by and large, the same problem seems to be present wherever this approach has been tried. There hasnt been sufficient capitalization to ensure staying in business long enough to start being automatically thought of as the Rebirth Center by the community of local Rebirthers. Leonard originally had his training center up at Campbell Hot Springs in the center of the High Sierras in Northern California. He claimed that there was at least one Rebirth training going on at Campbell Hot Springs every week of the year, and that anyone who wanted to learn Rebirthing could go there anytime and would find a training going on, even if only for him. When I first experienced CHS, it had been running on that basis for about a year and a half, and it continued to run on that basis for many more years of its existence. But it should be mentioned that during the coldest months, the trainings often consisted of only the two or three people who happened to be spending the winter in residence up at CHS. Until there was a great deal of renovation in the mid-80s, the lodge at CHS was prohibitively cold during the freezing weather. It never became a real Rebirthing university people attended year round for advance scheduled instruction. There is a Rebirthing center in Poland which seeks to become essentially such a university, such a training center, such a Rebirthing Center, but as yet it also is not off of the ground. Symbolically, I find all this chaotic disorganization ideal. I think that the process of Rebirthing is the essence of individuation and individual empowerment. So its almost internally inconsistent that a person involved with Rebirthing would also be interested in subordinating his behavior to the control of someone else who presumes to know more about being a powerful, self-actualized individual. Thats poppycock. I dont think that a restrictive, exclusive organization of Rebirthers can possibly be vital, because the more fully and freely each member of such an organization breathes, the more fully an individual each person becomes, and the more free of the dominance of other peoples expectations and requirements he also becomes. Just as anarchists cant form an International Anarchy Society that has

regular meetings, I cant see Rebirthers forming societies to do anything other than support each other and publicize the whole process of Rebirthing. As mentioned earlier, I hold a Rebirth seminar at my home every Monday, and if Im in Los Angeles, Im always present. Many times, only one other person shows up to discuss Rebirthing. Often two or three old friends show up and we spend the evening mulling over things that we have talked about dozens of times previously, then we get in the hot tub for more talk and relaxation. It really doesnt matter. After all, Rebirthing is a technique for perfecting oneself. It doesnt exist to turn someone into another person whos important or wealthy or idolized or acclaimed or whatever. So I, myself, am not terribly disappointed that I dont belong to a strong Rebirth organization which has all kinds of qualifications for membership and makes certain that everybody tows the line and takes a yearly updated training, etc. I already belong to the American Psychological Association, which has all sorts of such rules and regulations. And I already am licensed by the State of California with its continually revised requirements for Continuing Education in order to renew biannual licensure. I have in the past belonged to other organizations. Mostly, Ive maintained such memberships only to meet licensing and insurance requirements, so I may bill my time. Id much prefer that Rebirthing establishes a central organization that allows everyone who is interested in Rebirthing to be represented in a directory, and that provides some form of networking and some form of publicity. To date, no such organization has emerged, but thats not to say that such a group wont have materialized even before the time that you read these words. From my point of view, anyone who wants to become a Rebirther only needs to practice the breathing and the use of affirmations to become better and better and better as a Rebirther, as well as, of course, better and better and better as a person. Such a person probably wants to associate with other like-minded people. So its wholesome and useful for such a person to belong, to join a weekend training or a week-long training every few months, to meet with colleagues in a One Year Seminar, and to set aside quality time for Rebirthing. I think it is a good thing that all such people can be recognized by the public at large as

being such people, so I support a central organization as a referral service. But not on any selective or exclusive basis whatsoever. I would love to see a regular newsletter, preferably monthly, that contains contributions from all and any people who are interested in making such contributions. Anyone who wants to say whatever it is he wants to say about Rebirthing ought to have a forum or an arena in which to do that and ought to have a guaranteed audience. But, all of that takes people who are willing to spend their time and money taking care of the Rebirthing community. Up to now, most of the whole Rebirthing movement has essentially been running on a shoestring, and not enlarging itself. The British Rebirth Society turns out an excellent journal, called Breathe, four times a year that has been appearing for 66 issues! I recommend that everyone reading this join immediately so Breathe can continue its excellence. I occasionally still entertain visions of setting up an organization here in Los Angeles, run on a volunteer basis, that people would tithe to, giving it its material foundations. Churches do this, and do it very well. Charities do this, and, again, do it very well. Rebirthing hasnt done it, and when it has tried to do it, it hasnt done it very well. Whatever suggestions you have about how to form such an organization will be cheerfully received by me, and Ill be happy to help us network. In addition to welcoming your suggestions and plans, Im also open to safeguarding and receiving vast amounts of material support to be used to run such a Rebirthing center here in Los Angeles. Id be more than happy to work with other people to get such a center established and functioning here in Los Angeles. Rebirthing is such a jewel, such a precious jewel in everybodys life! What a shame that we havent yet provided a setting for it, a secure foundation that would help it to flourish. At my age, Im no longer especially interested in being the instigator of such a nationwide group. But I make this public pledge: Im am quite agreeable to tithe a full ten percent of my annual income into an escrow account awaiting the amassment of a given specific threshold amount of money needed to start and maintain such a place by an organization here in Los Angeles that fulfills the aims that Ive just spoken of. Until a sufficiency has been pledged and paid, my money will just sit, accumulating interest, safely. My guess is that such an organization will only proceed as there becomes an increasing number of

older, stable people involved with Rebirthing. Young people who are still knocking themselves out to earn a living, to keep themselves alive, seem to have trouble when it comes to sharing. Their natural mode is exhibitionist and competitive, especially about sex and money and power. So, in any case, heres my open invitation to anybody out there who wants to support a Los Angeles Rebirther center. I propose that it will be run on a business-like basis and will be a not-forprofit organization. Aside from paid clerical work and printing, it will be maintained through voluntary labors of love by members of the Rebirthing community itself. Im not at all interested in throwing my money down the drain to provide space for a bunch of flakes to hang out, using Rebirthing to save themselves from having to learn how to earn an honest living. The people involved must be secure, stable business people. If you are someone who wants to help establish a Rebirthing Center, write me a letter, tell me what you propose, how much you think you could contribute right now to the escrow fund, and when you will make additional contributions. Maybe we could actually get such a show on the road. Wouldnt it be fun? Sometimes I feel really lonely and ache to be with other Rebirthers more often, dealing with Rebirthing. The bond I feel with Babaji devotees is one I experience with Rebirthers whenever were together. Its the same bond I feel with other rose gardeners or with my University of Chicago alumni group. I dearly hope that within the next few years, such an organization of Rebirthers materializes here in Los Angeles so that I can soon have the joy and pleasure of participating in a true community of my peers.