(Not if answers suggest that client is at Cause or Effect)
1. Why are you here? Why Else.. Why Else?
2. How do you know that you have this problem?
Elicit a reality strategy and any diagnoses made.
3. How long have you had it?
Was there ever a time when you didn’t? What have you done about it?
4. What happened the first time you had this? Emotions were present?
5. What events have happened since then? What emotions were present?
6. In each of these events, what is the relationship between this even and your current situation in life?
7. Tell me about your parents, brother and sister etc… What is your relationship between this person and your current situation?
8. Tell me about your childhood in relation to this problem?
9. Is there a purpose for this problem? Is there a reason for this problem? Ask your unconscious mind
10. When did you choose to have this situation be created? Why ask your unconscious mind.
11. Is there anything your unconscious mind wants you to know, or is there anything your not getting which, if you got it, would allow this problem to disappear?
12. Is it OK with your unconscious mind to support us in removing this problem today, and for it to allow you to have an undeniable experience of it, when we are complete?

The function and crafting of these questions in eliciting unconscious causes is crucial to the success of the intervention. These questions allow the addressing of the greater problem, which creates the presenting problem.

Without these questions in that case cited here, it may have been tempting to address only the allergies. In fact a useful questions may be did the allergies exist? Certainly addressing only the presenting pseudo-allergic responses in Robyn would have left Angela with her family boundary issues intact. This would probably have compromised any attempt to fix Robyn’s skin condition. Even if any allergy- type intervention were successful, it seems likely that the underlying cause would have manifested again in any case, either in some new site or via a relapse in the allergic response.

Time Line Therapy in Combination with Past Life Regression Therapy

It is very common for a client to access past life when Time Line Therapy is used. However since Time Line Therapy always starts with a negative emotion or a limiting decision, it becomes very difficult for the client to find out the root cause of her problem if she cannot identify any specific emotion of limiting decision that she has made in the past. In such cases, I found it very useful to combine both Past Life Regression Therapy and Time Line Therapy. I have used this technique recently and found if very useful with my client.

Jenny came to see me because of her childhood trauma. In the first few sessions, I have helped her resolve most of her childhood problems and parental issues. Her life has improved significantly but she did not seem to have any major breakthrough in her relationship, which is quite uncommon for someone who has worked through most of her childhood problems. Since Jenny was not able to identify any specific cause for her difficulty in relating to her partner, I decided to attempt past life regression. During her session, I asked her unconscious mind to take her to the event most significantly affects her relationship. Knowing that it was a limiting decision, I used Time Line Therapy to help her return to the time before the event, and get the learning’s so that she could release the decision.

This part was so effective that she immediately felt half of “her soul” returning to her body. This experience was very similar to what Dr Baldwin called the “recovery of soul fragmentation”. Having made the decision to not have any relationship again, Jenny has rejected the other half for two lifetimes. When this part returned Jenny described that it was white in colour, which was quite different from her existing half, which was pink. Also, it felt very foreign to her when it returns to her body. This feeling is also very similar to what Dr Baldwin has described on what happens when a fragment of the soul returns to the body.

Jenny felt much more energized after the therapy, and her relationship with her partner also improved. I see this combination an improvement over Past Life Regression Therapy alone because in addition to gaining an understanding on how the problem occurs, it also helps the client release her negative emotion or limiting decision much more quickly. The learning that she has brought back from her past life event also more effectively helps her deal with her present day problems.

The 6month daughter, Robyn had skin allergies so severe that Angela would put mittens and gloves on her hands so she would not damage her skin and further with violent and incessant scratching. Angela was almost at her wits end. The skin conditions of both her husband and daughter were adding stress into the family situation. I spent some time with each parent, explaining the Time Line Therapy Process, and doing as much pr-framing as humanly and elegantly possible. I explained the necessity of a Detailed Personal History for both parents, and that this would take up to 2 hours each. Personally, I was very interested in the possibility of resolving issues with children so young, and in particular children of an anger where Time Line Therapy was not possible with them.

At my Master Practitioner training with Tad James in May 2000, I had a brief chat bout this upcoming situation, and gained Tads thoughts on some likely scenarios, including the opportunity of working with the child’s condition through the mother. The family decided to work with Angela (and Robyn) first, since the daughter’s skin “allergy: was causing the initial distress.

Angela’s 2 hour Detailed Personal History revealed the underlying issues. I have found that the value of the Detailed Personal History as a tool for gaining insights from the unconscious mind cannot be overstated. The questions led to a continuous ‘boundary issue” between husband and wife. This boundary issue had been in existents for about 6 years, but had been more severe over the past three months, with two particularly distressing (to Angela) incident 4 and 3 months earlier. These dates corresponded to Robyn’s age of 2 months and 3 months. Angela realized that it was between these two times that Robyn’s skin condition began.

By questions 4 and 5 of a Detailed Personal History, it was clear to Angela that the timing o f the events and Robyn’s skin condition was more than coincident. At the end of the Detailed Personal History, Angela was convinced that a clear relationship existed linking the husband/wife boundary issue and the daughters allergies. I asked hr “on a scale of 1 to 10.. where are you with this?” Her answer was 10 – the link was obvious. I asked her whether this thought had occurred to her prior to our session. Her answer was that it had not, except for a vague suspicion that a mother’s stress could exacerbate her daughters existing condition.

I taught Angela how to go into “Hakalau” peripheral vision when was faced with dealing with the boundary issue, and especially when nursing/feeding Robyn. I also spoke about differing processing methods and speeds, since she had significant issues with Michaels method of communicating, in particular that he would not “look at her” when speaking.

In the Time Line Therapy Session, lasting a little over two hours, Angela “cleared”
Anger, sadness, upset (for her a different emotion to anger) and hurt. She also went back and “disconnected” the “link” between her issues with Michael from Robyn’s skin condition. Angela proved to be an able time line traveler, clearing and releasing emotions with a minimum fuss. Upon moving to position #3 with respect to the first event for anger (her first emotion), she immediately commented with surprise, “I feel better, I feel happy.. its that ok?”

I introduced Angela to the pendulum which I had asked Michael to “build”. He responded with a piece of string and a plumb bob. Perfect. Angela had no trouble achieving unconscious responses from the pendulum. We asked her unconscious mind if the “link” between Robyn’s skin and Angela’s boundary issue still existed –no. We asked if Angela’s unconscious process could also feed via her nursing whatever extra nutrients, hormones etc could be beneficial to Robyn’s skin – yes. We asked if the whole boundary issue still existed as a problem – no. Angela’s conscious response to this question was that the issue seemed like a memory, as if it was someone else’s old problem that we were discussing.

We did some future pacing and testing in line with Angela’s convincer, and set some goals for her. Angela’s work with the pendulum suggested a time period between two weeks and a month for Angela’s skin condition to completely disappear. So far, she has been able to let Robyn have periods each day of up to four hours with her gloves/mittens off, already a significant improvement.

This process is not finished, and I hope to report next issue on the finalization of what has been an interesting exercise. This week we begin Michael’s Detailed Personal History. For me this has been a fascinating investigation into using Time Line Therapy to work with children through parents, as well as a reminder of the usefulness of the Detailed Personal History.

You can imagine the emotion that was produced as a result of Keith’s paralysis alone. However what he found was that there were many other traumatic events in the past going right back to when he was a little boy and being disciplined by being locked in a dark cellar.

In our work together I clear conflict emerged. Part of Keith wasnted to hang onto the pain because of his perception that this would attract to him more care and attention. And clearly there was a part that wanted to be pain free etc. Resolving this conflict turned out to be quite a learning experience for me.

I decided that before we could make any real progress the part that was hanging on to the pain needed to be re-integrated. OK, I said to myself, no problem, Parts Integraton will take care of that. Now, I had to wing it a bit here for clearly Keith couldn’t have the parts come out on his hands. Fortunately Keith was very visual and did visualize the parts in front of him. As the integraton took place Keith ‘saw’ the parts move towards each other and embrace. It was quite an emotional experience. However the resistance was removed and Keith was able to ‘put his past behind him’ Every time I see him now I ask him to tell us where the past it. Its always the same answer ‘directly behind me’.

As those issues from the past lossened their hold on Keith he began to be more at ease wth himself and his situation. He could spend short periods in his wheelchair but found the process very tiring. One of the things he really liked was to host formal a dinner party. The family silver out, all the place settings, the wine decanted. In other words ‘the works’. When I first met keith he told me that he really couldn’t get past the dessert. As out work progressed he was getting as far as the cheese and no he is actually staying with it right up to the after dinner brandies.

The second part of the strategy was to have Keith build a future. Again his creative design instincts proved to be advantageous. We had Keith ‘draw’ his future in front of him. He coded this line with the sub-modalities of a universal experience of certainty. We also built into the future those things that were important to him about life: his wife, his religion, his dinner parties, his family, and anything else that was of a meaningful nature. Keith saw himself walking down a future time-line, which had turned into a road with a beautiful green verges, hand in hand with his wife and at the same time encountering those other things that were important to him.

“Where is your future?” I asked.
“Right out infront of me stretching out into infinity” Keith said.

So what have we achieved to date? Keiths achievements are really impressive I have enormous respect for him.

• His past is truly in the past
• He has forgiven the medical staff responsible for his condition
• He sees a future and says that for the first time since the injury he feels optimistic
• He is doing much more to focus in the now
• Through the internet Keith is attending antiques auctions
• He has designed a brochure for his wife’s art
• He has given me great feed back about my own promotional literature
• And his pain level has decreased well beyond the fifty per cent he was looking for
• And much more…

There is still more work to be done. However Time Line Therapy® has provided a firm platform for us to build upon.

Those of you who are reading this that are Time Line Therapy ® Practitioners can probably understand my disappointment at this approach.

A practicing clinical Hypnotherapist at that time, I was less then happy about revisiting a whole series of traumatic events, which incidentally I felt only strengthened the gestalt. After all wasn’t I doing this already in regression therapy? I had hoped that I was going to be shown a way of going directly to the root cause of the problem FIRST.

Sometime after this I was given a copy of a copy of a copy of a Tad James tape. Eureka! I had been right there was a way of getting to the root cause first! Well, the rest is history and the more Time Line Therapy I practice the more I realize the full power of it.

In order to highlight this I would like to share with you Keith’s story.

Keith is paralyzed from the shoulders down and is unable to breathe without a ventilator. He has no feeling what so ever below the upper part of his shoulders. In the upper shoulders he experienced extreme pain. Keith is a talented Creative Designer and had a highly successful creative business.

Suddenly one night at dinner he began to feel discomfort in the back of his neck. It continued with increasing severity into the next day and Keith was rushed into hospital where he was x-rayed and put into traction . He has never walked since. That was seven years prior to my meeting him. This experience was traumatic enough. However Keith was also unable to speak when he was hooked to the ventilator. This lasted for seven months until he was transferred to a spinal injuries unit in a different hospital where the anesthetists noticed that the wrong connecting piece had been used on the ventilator. It was changed and Keith could speak. Seven months without being able to communicate at all!

It was established that traction was completely wrong intervention for the problem Keith was experiencing. Traction made the problem worse and let to paralysis. Wrong Diagnosis! Wrong Treatment!

I was reffered to Keith and as a result I visited him. I found him in great pain, very depressed and not at all enthusiastic with the prospects of his future life. I asked him what he wanted to achieve from our work together and he said that a reduction of fifty per cent in the pain level would be sufficient for him.

Although my training teaches me that I should only do what the client wants and not impose my outcomes on the client I, nevertheless, established three clear objectives.

1. Have the past loosen its grip
2. Help Keith cope with his present situation
3. Help Keith create a future I don’t think I was out of line because in working in all of these areas I felt that Keith’s need for the pain would diminish.

In the meantime I rehearsed Keith in getting into peripheral vision and using the control panel method of reducing pain. I have found this most effective with many clients who have been experiencing pain.

As part of my pre talk with a client I always elicit their Time Line. Keiths past was all around him. He was looking at it constantly he could see no future. My strategy therefore was based on his time line orientation namely:-