It was over 15 years ago that I stumbled upon the model of NLP, I had just come out of a period of deeply felt stress. Diane my late wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer, we were homeschooling 5 children under six years old and I was working 12 hour shifts 6 days a week to keep us all feed.
Suffice to say I felt stressed to the point of having, what you might call today a break down. It was not pleasant, the panic attacks involved all the usual, breathlessness, raging heart beat and an almost tangible fear of some unknown impending doom. My doctor at the time was truly amazing and with a combination of tablets and talk therapy (a mix of Transactional Analysis and Gestalt Therapy) after 8 months I returned to work as a midwife.
It was in the midst of all this ‘stuff’ going on that I discovered, by accident, in a second hand book shop the book, Awaken The Giant Within by Tony Robbins, unbeknownst to me at the time the book contained the whole syllabus of the NLP Practitioner certification training (and still does as it’s still in print and selling well).
As I worked my way through the book I became aware very quickly that this book was going to transform the way I lived my life, sounds melodramatic as read that back to myself, but it does describe what was happening to me back then and to be honest the effect of reading it is still on going.
If you have read this far thank you. You might be wondering, why am I telling you this story? What has any of this got to do with birth or MAM Learning? Good questions for sure, and to sum the answer up, I wouldn’t have met Mia, I would not have written my book (Men, Love and Birth), I would not be teaching the MAM 3 step rewind technique, hell, I might not even be alive if I had not read and put it’s teaching into practice.
The MAM 3 Step Rewind Technique has its origins in the model of NLP, if you google “fast phobia cure’ you will find lots of information regarding the original pattern that the founders of NLP taught to their early practitioners. Mia and I have added two other steps which we believe (and experience proves this) add to the rewinds potential to be effective when working with women who report feelings of discomfort and even what they would describe as trauma after having given birth. I have used the MAM 3 step tech with positive results with male partners who have been left experiencing sleepless nights due to flashbacks post witnessing their partner give birth.
Over the years of using the fast phobia cure pattern and in recent years of applying the MAM 3 step rewind technique I have been ‘blown away’ by how powerful it is when it comes to treating clients who have often been suffering for years from symptoms of stress and trauma. Now I know that this will sound just like marketing copy, BUT it needs to be said, many times in just two sessions (and a lot of times just one) women/men are completely set free from what they had described as emotions that were running their lives.
Mia and I have been teaching this method now for about 2 years. When we teach there are some questions that come up pretty much come up every time:
What is the research base for this technique?
Is the method safe for a non-counselor trained practitioner to use?
Will I be able to get insured to use this method in my private practice?
Over my next few blogs I am going to answer these questions and more. Starting off in two weeks time with a review of some extensive research that has been done, and is being done in the States, using the principles we used to create the MAM 3 step rewind method.
Yours,
Mark Harris