Hi Everyone
The word is getting out there and real people are making progress just by reading "Your Gut Feeling" and listening to the audio recordings. This is an amazing feeling for me, and makes all the effort worthwhile.
Here's a question I keep gettting. "Guy, how do I rewind? What am I supposed to be rewinding?"
I guess I take these techniques for granted but these are valid questions that I now realize I must address in full.
The point of the Rewind Technique is to trivialise the issue that was causing the stress and bad thinking. By making it trivial you disempower the perceived problem. You literally shrink your perception of the stress-inducing issue down to a comic and minute scale so it doesn't affect you any more in a negative way, both emotionally and physically. When you do the Rewind Technique right, you'll know about it ... because it will have a phenomenally fast beneficial effect on you physically.
Recently I was asked to "evaluate" a couple of people's rewinds to see if they're doing it right.
Question 1:
"Guy, I'm getting hassled by account handlers at work, so I might imagine myself being chased by a swarm of wasps with account handlers heads on them. Is that imagery correct?"
My answer:
The idea is to trivialize and mock the thing that is bothering you. What you’ve done there is to make the imagery such that it’s quite frightening! No wonder you don’t laugh much during the rewind! Remember, with the rewind, even when you play the movie from start to finish (before rewinding) the end of the clip sees you as surviving the episode intact. That’s before you start rewinding.
Regarding the black and white movie, see it as it is or trivialise them. So either it’s the image of you getting phone calls from them and getting a bit stressed, or it’s an image of them hassling you, which you can trivialise by making them into silly little gnomes.
When the rewind gets so fast that the reel snaps, you emerge from the whole thing fully associated, feeling big, strong, powerful, healthy and they are tiny little squeaking creatures submerged in concrete, ie utterly insignificant.
So something like this:
- Do the Rewind process disassociated – ie the cinema process where you’re disassociated from the old black & white movie which shows the faint image of you being hassled by the gnomes, or whatever – but don’t make the problem scary or more than it actually is!
- Rewind it from your vantage in the projection booth, looking down on yourself looking up at the screen (or looking down on yourself twice if you like – ie from the projection booth, to you at the back of the cinema, to you at the middle of the cinema, then onto the movie on the screen).
- With the Rewind, you can go back and forth very quickly if you like with the main direction being backwards (almost like erasing the movie away) ... then when you’re ready each time, allow the film reel in the booth to snap
- As the reel snaps feel yourself emerge triumphant, victorious, powerful, totally present yet forward looking to a wonderful future, huge in comparison to the old problem which is either non-existent or tiny (maybe faintly squeaking and buried in cement, never to trouble you again).
That’s the sort of thing you should be doing and you really should feel amazing and serene (if a bit zonked out!) at the end.
Question 2:
"Guy, does it matter if I visualise different things each time? Or do I need to really focus specifically? When it come to the Rewinding, should I be visualising on a bad UC moment (there's a few to choose from!) - at the moment I've been running through the time I went in to see the consultant to be told I needed a colostomy ..."
My answer:
Ok, let's remember the purpose of the Rewind Technique and answer the question from that perspective. We're looking to eliminate the bad thinking habits and replace them with constructive thinking routines where you've stopped all that negative self-argumentative looping nonsense that causes so much damage.
So, in your case, what's bothering you right now? Are you running any routines today or recently that you know are serving you poorly? If so, Rewind them.
And no, it doesn't matter if you change the imagery each time. The point is this. If you're doing it right, the thing that was bothering you shouldn't do so any more after a proper Rewind session. It's that powerful. So ...
- Identify what's been bothering you today or recently.
- Create the imagery that's appropriate to it, in such a way that when you Rewind it, it's being trivialised and mocked. Do not make the imagery scary. You can either make it real like it was or make it something that's easy to render silly. Either way, the Rewind is meant to make it silly so you don't attach so much power and importance to the problem any more. In this way, the "problem" stops having that power over you.
- Here's an example. I used the Rewind Technique to give up sugar as I wanted more consistent energy - it's amazing what you can use the Rewind Technique for! My imagery was a faint picture of me being held back by sugar. At the end of the Rewind, I could feel myself released from the restrictive chains and there I was, like Superman almost! Suffice to say that it was completely effortless to resist the lure of cakes, cookies and candies. The imagery was right so job done.
By reading emails and questions that are being sent to me I'm actually learning more about what it is that I do to stay completely well. Whenever I feel aggrieved or upset at something nowadays that I instinctively feel could create a problem, I literally smother the issue by using a combination of Rewinding and bombarding myself with positive literature like "Law of Attraction" type of stuff. Even the books from Paul McKenna are great for helping to put our perceived problems in their proper context. I then find myself overwhelmed with gratitude for whatever I'm doing at the time and really immersing myself in the moment, feeling grateful for what I'm seeing, hearing and feeling at that precise time. I also monitor my thinking until I'm completely relaxed again and not bothered any more by what had been bothering me.
I know this is a long blog but there was no way to make it short! It only recently occurred to me that I may take for granted the amount of effort that's required here. But it's so worth it and it's so powerful.
In my next blog I'm going to give examples of scenarios of appropriate Rewinds for different scenarios - these are just to give you ideas - the best will come from your own imagination if you follow my guidelines above.
All the best
Guy
