ARE YOU TOO EMOTIONAL?
are you emotional enough?
A Journey into bodymind using Eye/Movement Technology

* Do you find it hard to express your emotions appropriately?
* Do you find there is a delay in your emotions, perhaps days?
* Do you find you lack emotions?
* Do you find yourself over-rationalizing emotional events?
* Do you feel your emotions intensely and over-express them, or don't express them at all?
* Do you fear your emotions?
* Are you suffering from physical or emotional distress?
* Do you isolate or withdraw from others rather than express how you are feeling?
* Are you fearful?
* Have you had stress or trauma in your life, which affects you greatly?
* Are you bothered by things, which happened a long time ago?
* Are your sleep patterns disturbed?
* Are you physically ill or in pain?
* Are you nervous or depressed?
* Do you have panic attacks?
* Are your relationships difficult?
* Are you unproductive or frustrated?
* Are you generally unhappy with no apparent reason?
* Is the grieving process of a loss debilitating you or taking over two years to let go?


If you answered yes to any or all of these questions this book is for you.

                        INTRODUCTION
 

Someone asked me the other day, "Do you consider yourself logical for a woman?" I didn't know how to answer. I finally said, "I am logical and I am emotional, not just as a woman but as a human being"....... I began thinking about this question. Where did this attitude begin? How does it affect us as human beings? Is this attitude based on any truth or reality? Is it habit and social conditioning? Is it a myth?

In our western attitudes men are considered logical and rational. Women are considered to be emotional and intuitive. However deeply ingrained, these assumptions have no scientific basis. Scientific studies are showing the need to change our perceptions. These illusions are similar to the belief, which at one time stated that the world was flat. People were persecuted and ridiculed for thinking otherwise. Although we have been socialized about who is logical and who is emotional, this is a learned attitude and thus can be unlearned. Not only are we living these misconceptions, but also this way of thinking is a detriment to our harmony as human beings, because this attitude limits us and reinforces separation and difference. Difference can be a way, which enhances us rather than conflicting us both with ourselves and with others.

How did this happen? Has it always been like this? Where did these attitudes and perspectives come from? These attitudes go back beyond recorded history, but for the relative time let's start with René Decartes in the 16th century. This documented history occurred three hundred years ago. Decartes had a vision. He saw that science must study how the universe works piece by piece. It is a machine, predictable and controllable. His vision suggested that humanity must take the universe apart to see how it works. After this monumental event, the mechanistic, linear, separated view of life began. This way of viewing the world became known as The Cartesian Split. This inflexible view of our world has kept us limited and compartmentalized in our thinking and our lives.

Although limiting, the mechanistic view has served us well and has given us the illusion that we controlled our environment . We learned and are still learning how things work. This way of viewing the world is very much alive in our institutions and with the leaders of our world. However, it is time now for the world, not to throw away what we have learned from this model, but to combine it with the ever expanding paradigm of the present reality.

With the discovery of the new physics, quantum reality is finally beginning to enter the collective consciousness of mankind. Even ten years ago you could not find books written for the general public about the quantum theory. The quantum theory states that all systems are integrated wholes that cannot be understood by analysis. Relationships are expressed in terms of probabilities and the probabilities are determined by the dynamics of the whole system.

Nowadays, you can go into almost any bookstore and find rows of books on holographic reality, parallel universes, the wave/particle duality and quantum principles. Did you know that this information has been around for at least 100 years and some of it even longer? These discoveries already have given mankind such things as, the microchip, nuclear power and the hologram. (More about this later).

Yet, we cling to the old ways. This new way of viewing our world has not entered into our everyday life. We still tend to see people, places, and things separately. Even our bodies are viewed as different systems of function, rather than whole integrated life force connected and flowing. Dr. Deepak Chopra MD has been a courageous pioneer in bodymind medicine, challenging the conventional medical model of our western society. In his books Quantum Healing and Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, he dispels misconceptions concerning the compartmentalization of our bodies.

None of the information in Are You Too Emotional? is new and I encourage you to begin researching this information for yourselves. However, it is my attempt to present a synthesis of current data both deductive and impassioned. I have aspired to place this research in a simple everyday format, which you can use in your life. It is my sincere desire this book will begin to break up these long held mistaken beliefs and open new perceptions and possibilities. By offering explanations and actions for people suffering from over rationality, denying their true nature as emotional creatures and for those who feel they are excessively emotional and sensitive, I hope to assist you in learning specific procedures for integration of this logic/emotional duality. By presenting Eye/Movement Technology in a natural and normal format, your bodymind can learn how to process feelings on its’ own once given support and instructions.

While emotions do vitalize us and give dynamics to our lives, rational thought gives us the structure in which to allow these emotions full expression. Emotions inform logic what to do and are an integral process of reasoning and learning. Emotions are keys to wholeness and health.
 

I am a clinician. I work with people, not mice, chimpanzees or dolphins. I work with emotions and bodymind. I introduce people to the concepts of perception and personal power. I provide a safe environment for them to look at how they are currently choosing to live their lives and assisting them in co-creating with life, how they would like to live.

I am not a research scientist. I am not an anatomist or a physiologist. I am not an academic. I am not a New Age guru. I am not a medicine woman or a shaman. However, I do read a great deal of research and I am addicted to learning. Without research clinical application would be very difficult and without clinical application research would be useless. I assist myself and others on the front lines of living our daily lives in western society. I teach and practice the changing paradigm of our world.

I was born and raised in a little town with a population of about 15,000, called Conway. Conway is located in Central Arkansas in the American Mid-South. Until the age of eighteen Conway was all I knew. At that time I was sent to Little Rock, the state capital, to study nursing and live with a maiden aunt. Arkansas is known as the "Natural State" and is very beautiful. Especially the northern part, which is located in the Ozark Mountains. The Central and Southern portions of Arkansas are mostly farmlands. My mother is a devout Methodist and my deceased father was a man of his own mind. I was torn between these two very different perceptions and concepts of life. One was a devout Protestant and the other had a renegade mentality of adventure and creativity.

While growing up my interest was in helping people and animals (especially dogs) who were ill, injured, homeless and suffering. I was about 6 years old, as I sat in front of the television and watched John Wayne war movies. The leading man (The Duke) would inevitably get wounded and the beautiful nurse would bring him back to health. He was forever grateful and they would “fall in love”...at least in the films. I knew that was for me!

I specialized in science and health in school although my better grades were in Psychology and Literature. However, as I proceeded in my studies a great schism opened between my original idealist impressions of helping people and what I was being taught. Orthodox science and medicine treated people like machines. I had to learn not to respond emotionally to people. I was not allowed to connect in anyway except by detached objective reasoning. I went ahead and graduated with a degree in nursing from the University of Arkansas. I spent the next five years frustrated and unhappy as a nurse. I decided I needed more interaction with people on an emotional basis. I enrolled at University and begin to study psychology.

This time I moved to California on the West Coast of the USA. I applied and was selected to participate in an experiment at the University of California, allowing graduate students under direct supervision and observation to counsel people. I was so excited. Usually, client therapy is not allowed until postgraduate studies. I was able to
actually "help" people right away. I breezed through all my studies and graduated "Suma Cum Laude" at the top of my class. I had found my talents. The year was 1977; Psychology was just beginning to blossom. There were many areas to choose from Jungian, Experimental, the Humanist Movement, Radical Therapy, Transpersonal and of course Gestalt. The field was flourishing with "pop" psychology. Group therapy was in vogue and so was hugging. I was very happy.

Then something happened. It was sometime in my postgraduate years. I am not sure what it was, but psychology began to change for me. The field began to seek its validity within the scientific paradigm. The psychologists joined the ranks of the mechanistic world while stabilizing the field. After all psychology was less than 100 years old. Instead of embracing the beauty of the newness and mystery of what was happening, psychology wanted the acceptance of the mechanistic model. Diagnosis became the norm and so did medication. Although there was an ever-increasing interest in this field, psychology never challenged the mechanistic model. The word "psyche" in Greek means soul. The root "ology" means to study......"to study the soul." Psychology had lost its soul for me

I left the field in a great deal of emotional pain, after much soul searching and a major relationship breakup. Consciously or unconsciously, I decided to go into business. I thought I needed a great deal of money. For the next five years I worked for a major Wall Street Firm as an investment advisor. I was successful in my endeavor of economic gain. However, something happened. I lost my energy, my passion, my vital force….. I had lost my soul. One day I just couldn't get out of bed. Thus began my inner journey toward wholeness.