My Quest Hub
Mind Travel
Kim Scholfield
Winter 2016
Mind Travel
I’ve always been fascinated by time travel. I love the idea of being able to go back in time, to see the people, the places, how things were different and how they were the same as they are now.
I love watching time travel movies. The idea that we can go back in time and change something really important that would make the future better. As a child, I would fantasise about being able to go back in time. For example, to travel back to the time when my father was a young child and to be his friend and protect him from the hurt he was feeling.
I longed for that to be possible.
As a Quest-trained Cognitive Hypnotherapist I have since discovered it is possible. We each have the ability to time travel within us. By time travel, I mean the ability to go back in time, change an event so that our present and future is better than it would have been otherwise.
As a child, I couldn’t help ease my Dad’s hurt about his past. As an adult and therapist I did. I wasn’t able to be his childhood friend, but I was able to, using the Time-Line Reconsolidation Technique (TLR), guide him back in time and allow the adult him to help the younger him reframe those significant and painful events into something beneficial and good.
It seems unbelievable that this could make a difference, doesn’t it? In fact, each time I ‘time travel’ with a client and accompany them on their journey, I am in awe of the power of our minds. It seems miraculous that within the space of an hour they can rewrite their past, changing a harmful event into something, at the very least, benign, but more often than not, a positive and enlightening experience. And for that to then change their lives.
It is miraculous – in the same way any part of how and why our bodies work the way they do is amazing. TLR works because it utilises up-to-date knowledge about how our brains work and in particular, how we store and access our memories.
I used to think our memories were videos we could watch and replay whenever we wanted. I have since learned that this is not the case. Our memories are simply our perceptions of events and not a video recording of the actual events. Our memories are ‘plastic’; each time we recall a memory we change it. More importantly, we can distort it.
It is often a surprise to my clients to discover the actual event that initiated their problem. It may be something that they haven’t even remembered consciously. Or something in their past they vaguely remember but would not have placed any emphasis on. And yet, inside the mind is the unconscious. This is the part of us that remembers all those events that taught us something important as children. These events and the learning we took from them are replayed time and time again, whenever a threshold of that negative emotion is reached. Just like a string of pearls, each event is connected, from that very first event (the Significant Emotional Event) all the way to the present. By changing that first pearl we automatically reshape the others connected to it, and hence, the perception of who we can be in the future.
Our life isn’t a video, it’s a story the mind creates to guide our path. This story can be adapted and rewritten at any time. With the help of a Cognitive Hypnotherapist and the many techniques we employ, such as TLR, you can rewrite your story so that your life becomes what you want it to be.
