What happens during a PEP session?
[Please note, neither this section, nor any other part of this website, relates in any way to work within the British NHS]
Potential clients sometimes wonder what will happen during a PEP session and how it differs from a more traditional psychotherapy session. In some ways, the session would contain all or most of the ingredients of a traditional approach, such as listening, reflecting, exploring experience, free-association, looking at current issues and relationships, childhood development, patterns of thought and feeling, dreams, and so forth. What is different is that the session contains additional components to do with engaging the body's energy system and the way this interacts with the mind.
Here is what would typically happen:
- You would talk and I would listen, whilst you tell me about your current concerns, preoccupations, and free-associations.
- After some time, perhaps half an hour or more, or perhaps just five minutes, we would probably move into exploring the issues at the energy level, using muscle signalling. This is the use of the body's own signalling system, whereby states of perturbation, and responses to statements and questions, are conveyed by means of subtle variations in muscle tone, detected by light pressure on your oustretched arm. Muscle testing, or body signalling, is not an objective or fool-proof method - it is an art, and it is not infallible. Nevertheless, it is invaluable in providing rapid clues to guide the work effectively and efficiently. This helps us to focus on the core issue and what lies behind it. Hypotheses can be quickly tested in this way - then either followed up or discarded according to the response.
- The muscle testing also allows for rapid but essential checks on the current functioning of your energy system. Quite often a person's energy is in a state of disorganisation, or 'reversal', or in some other way is working against his or her conscious wish for health and wellbeing. These can easily be corrected once detected, but would otherwise block the therapeutic process.
- Muscle testing also allows the easy identification of the most important internal objections or resistances to resolving the problem. Identification of these at the energetic level is supplemented with discussion and free-association in order to throw further light on their nature and origin. Typically the internal objections [or 'psychological reversals'] are based around fear that it is not safe to be free of the problem, or that the person does not deserve to be free of it, or that the sense of identity is threatened if there is relief from the problem.
- Then you would be guided to tap or hold various energy centres and points on your body, whilst focusing on certain ideas, thoughts, feelings, or memories. Particular sequences of tapping points are required for best results.
- As one constellation of thoughts and emotions clears, another will come into view. Thus you might frequently be asked "What comes to mind now?". We then explore the next issue, and so on.
- Muscle testing can be used to check for hidden perturbations at various levels, such as unconscious mind, different 'parts' of the personality, and a number of different areas of the energy system.
- There are many other subtle aspects and details. The work is free-associative, following your system's own internal agenda for recovery. It is fundamentally 'client-centred', the content and pace being directed by you.
- There is some flexibility about length of a session, depending on what issues have emerged and whether a suitable point to stop has been reached, but I usually aim for around an hour.