By Garry A. Flint, Ph.D
Submitted by Marion (Mugs) McConnell, SOYA, E-RYT500, IYTA,
Canadian Rep for International Yoga Teachers Assoc.
When I first got this book I briefly perused it and I just didn’t have the time to get into it. But since then I have had a new awareness of yoga students with PTSD and C-PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Many teachers and yoga studios are finding it very important to understand how their words and touch can trigger PTSD, and if we want our students to feel welcome and safe in our classes, we must learn more about this ourselves.
This book is not about PTSD, but about healing of the mind in whatever way it need, AND including the soul in the process! How imaginative! This book offers an understanding into the missing link in psychotherapy today, as described by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood in their commentary
of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali “How to Know God”. (We use this text book in our SOYA Yoga Teacher Training program so we have broached this topic with our students for many years.
On page 10 of How to Know God, in the Translators’ foreword (first published in 1953), they say,
“It was suggested to us, while we were working on the book, that we should introduce into it a comparison of yoga and modern Western psychology… But, from our point of view at least, the comparison in itself seems neither fair nor valid. Yoga psychology is a finished product. Western psychology is still developing, and along several divergent lines; continually producing new theories and discarding old ones. If one says categorically: “Western psychology holds this view…,” one is always in danger of being reprimanded for inaccuracy. We may, however make one statement safely. The majority of Western psychotherapists do not, as yet, recognize the existence of the Atman, the Godhead within man; and do not therefore, attempt to help their patients achieve the union of perfect yoga. As for those psychotherapists, now becoming quite numerous, who take a serious interest in yoga, many of them would no doubt state their position somewhat as follows: “We can help our patients to a certain point – to an adequate degree of adjustment on the psychophysical level. Beyond that we’re not ready to go. We recognize the possibility of a higher, spiritual integration, but we prefer not to make it a part of our therapy, because we believe that the two should be kept separate. If a patient wants spiritual integration, we can only send him to a yoga teacher or a minister of religion. Where we leave off, yoga begins.”
As a yogini, I feel that until such time as psychotherapists delve into the spirit they are not treating the whole person. Many cultures, such as First Nations people, have always considered the spirit a part of their healing process. But there is a risk for a psychologist to delve into quantum reality and be taken seriously by their peers. Dr. Flint has taken that risk and getting remarkable results. His book has gone beyond the mind and body and into the spiritual realm, including previous lives. He is not a yogi and does not use yogic terminology, but is addressing those concepts that we teach in yoga. Not all yoga teachers delve into the yoga of the mind the way I do, but students who study with SOYA become very aware of the importance of understanding the mind and the role it plays in relationship to the spirit’s journey.
The book is a result of Dr. Flint’s 15 years of experience as a psychologist treating causes of unusual behavior in both normal patients and survivors of trauma. His research in physics and quantum physics helped him to get to the source of these behaviours – the “hidden reality”, or a multi-dimensional activity that affects our lives in everything we do. This book is a self-help guide where Dr. Flint creates a model of quantum reality, which explains ancestral influences, distant treatment, and the cause of our experience of reality. He uses Wisdom, positive knowledge founded in the spiritual quality of love as a rich resource to treat common issues. This is all yogic truth used in treatment for our health.
In the Introduction, Dr. Flint carefully explains what each chapter addresses with regards to spirits, behavior patterns, memories, intruding souls or fields, and treatments. He includes how you can communicate with your own subconscious and use it as an ally for treatment. To add a note here, Dr. Flint informs me people with PTSD may have trouble getting in contact with their subconscious because of compartmentalized parts (personality parts) created during the trauma. The procedure to circumvent any problems of contacting the subconscious is not provided in this book BUT is presented in detail in his book “A Theory and Treatment of Your Personality.” You can view Chapter 2 and 3 on his website that shows how he does it with the Process Healing Method and provides a step-by-step strategy to work through barriers. www.healing-your-mind-and-soul.com (click on the linked book title to access these chapters).
He includes a glossary at the back of the book so you can become familiar with his terminology.
An “intrusion” is “a memory or part who becomes active and causes a behavior, a thought, an image, or an emotion in the conscious experience.”
An “intruding soul or field” is “the soul of a person, usually from a preceding lifetime, who is associated or entrained with a person. The entrainment is made possible because the soul has content or painful memory structures similar to the structures present in the living person. Intruding souls cause heightened
motivation or atypical behavior that is problematic for the person.”
Dr, Flint has researched so many unexplainable circumstances and made sense of them. One example is persons who have received heart transplants and suddenly have behavioral changes or new memories that are disturbing them.
This book is remarkable. It is ground-breaking and I believe it will be the way of the future for therapists who are willing to recognize the multi-dimensional aspect of us as human beings. In some ways Dr. Flint is way before his time, and yet, why has it taken so long?
Dr. Garry A. Flint is a practicing psychologist with over 40 years of clinical experience. He has treated issues in the quantum fields for the last 15 years. He lives in Vernon, BC. He is the author of three previous books which can be purchased from his website or Amazon.ca : Emotional Freedom which describes the benefits and practice of EFT for physical and emotional distress; A Theory and Treatment of Your Personality, which describes the Process Healing Method
which is helpful for Dissociative Identity Disorder and Multiple Personality Disorder; and A Healing Legend, co-authored with Jo C. Willems, a book for children and adults to teach the reader’s inner-self a treatment process to move him or her in a positive direction.
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