The IDEA Method™: Inner Directed Energy Awareness

for Health and Healing

healers-connectie5 May 2018

Melanie Roche

The IDEA Method™

I.D.E.A. = Inner Directed Energy Awareness1) 4 Tools of Assessment = Tracking2) Practices-

physical, emotional, mental and spiritual

Today we’ll cover:

• Why we need it?• How the mind-body Split still haunts us• Genetics and epigenetics• Why we need a sense of meaning in life• Sample skills of the method• If time, sample practices

Baseline before self-tracking

Just by paying attention to yourself right now, in this very moment, what do you notice:

» Are you sitting? Standing? Lying down?

» How’s your breathing? Shallow, or deep?

» Any areas of physical pain or tension?

» If so, where? What’s it like

» Don’t try to change it; just notice.

Baseline, continued

» How’s your mood?

» How are you feeling emotionally?

» How’s your mind? Any “chatter” going on?

» Any awareness of how you’re feeling spiritually? Connected? Not unified?

» Anything else you notice?

Baseline, continued

» There are no right or wrong answers, here. You’re just observing. This is your baseline reading.

» As we work with this tool, you may notice that you feel different after each exercise or story.

» Also, the worksheet assumes you’re filling in words. But feel free to adapt it in any way that suits you.

• Perhaps you’d rather draw a picture of what you sense or make note of any information using any of your senses, smell, for example. This is meant to be just a quick observation of where you are right now.

» As you get good at this exercise, you can do it at any time—at work, on the subway, as you listen to someone or something.

Melanie Roche with

Barbara Brennan

The Mind-Body SplitWhat is Mind-Body Split and how did we get here: Cross-culturally and throughout history:

• Health = flow of energy. • Dis-ease = blockage/depletion/weakness of energy.• Prana/chi/ki/ruach all mean “energy”• Similar ideas of health.• Chakra = “wheel”• In Ayurveda-chakras turning all the time, metabolize

energy.• TCM-similar idea with meridians.• Staff of Asclepius/Caduceus

Mind-Body Unity

• How to unify?

– Signals from the body are the way in to your truth.

– Why is this so hard for us? We’re so advanced in other ways-technologically, intelligence.

– Why is perceiving with our mind and body simultaneously not an obvious aptitude?

Mind-Body Split, cont.

• Here in West, we had a different idea of truth, which led to the birth of science.

• Who was Rene Descartes?

Rene Descartes, 1596-1650

Descartes’ house in Amsterdam

The Mind-Body Split, cont.

• Descartes was first to describe mind-body split in 17th century.

• Before that, acc to Aposhyan (Body-Mind Psychotherapy), humans obsessed with our human capacity:

• As we began to grow crops and domesticate animals, our dominion over nature grew.

• Science and technology increased that dominion further.

The Mind-Body Split, cont.

• Science arose and challenged religious institutions.

• Descartes lived 1596-1650, and in his lifetime the battle between religion and science was growing.

• After Descartes’ life, industrialization reinforced the dualism between mind and body.

Descartes’ Ideas• Like a clock, we can be taken apart and put back together again.

• The whole is the sum of the parts, not greater than the sum of the parts.

• To understand the truth, divide subject into indivisible parts.

• These parts must be the smallest possible (the atom (now subatomic particles/quarks), the cell, the gene).

• These parts must be unique (only themselves), they must not share qualities with any other parts.

Descartes’ Mind-Body Split, cont.

• All reality can be experienced as either “spatial” or “conscious being or existence.”

• The spatial (quality of filling space, our corporeality, our qualities of existing inside bodies), and consciousness (“extension” and “thought”) are simplest, only two attributes of reality and

• They are divided. Either-or.

• Can’t be both at same time.

Descartes’ Mind-Body split

• Descartes’ ideas were popular at the time.

• Thought to be a way to get to the truth.

• Belief that knowing the absolute truth was possible.

• Very different from postmodernism of our days.

• But similarly we live in “interesting times,” with collision of different worldviews.

Baruch Spinoza 1632-1677

Spinoza’s Mind-Body Unity

• Mind-body together best way to be rational.• Everything in Nature (the Universe) is one

Reality (substance)• This substance surrounds us and we’re a part

of it.• One set of rules governs reality which

surrounds us and of which we are a part.

Spinoza’s Mind-Body Unity, cont.

• All things exist and cause effects, we only understand part of this.

• If mind and body separate, how can they coordinate at all?

• We think we have free will, which is awareness of appetites that affect our minds, but we don’t understand why we want and act as we do.

Rembrandt, “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” 31 Jan 1632

Mind-Body Split, cont.

• As a result of this mind-body split, we may have forgotten the history of how it originated, but we live with the consequences of it all the time:

• Most of us don’t know how to be aware of and how to make decisions using all of our aptitudes—our minds and bodies, our lived, interior sense of ourselves, our private internal sense of the spiritual (if we have such a sense).

• Obvious, but argument in psychology between talk therapy and behaviorism comes down to this split. But talking about same “thing”:

• By saying flow of hormones/chemicals affects our state, it’s true, but it’s a limited way of looking at the situation, a divisive way of examining it.

Mind-Body Split, cont.

Mind-Body Issues, cont.

• Opposite also true: Our consciousness is also affected by what are hormones are doing, chemical exposures, trauma, what we eat, etc. that affects our mood.

• Separating the various elements out is one perspective, but is incongruent with our experience of unity between mind and body.

Genetics and Epigenetics

• We used to think our genes fixed.• Instruction manuals to make our bodies.• Now we think of them as switches – “on/off”.• What turns switch on or off?

Genetics and Epigenetics, cont.

What switches gene expression on or off?

1. Emotional2. Social3. Environmental4. Historical

Genetics and Epigenetics, cont.

Human history affects gene expression: wars, famine, migration, slavery, genocide, trauma.Affect person and their children:• Hongerwinter 1944-45-

• obesity and heart disease.

• 9/11 Babies• cortisol levels elevated, developmental delays.

Gene Expression, Emotionally

• Perceived social isolation affects rate of recurrence and distance of metastasis in ovarian cancer (emphasis mine).

Steve Cole, Ph.D.:

Whatever state we’re in affects the

consciousness of our cells for the

next 80 days.

So, he says, “Plan your

day accordingly.”

Important to:

Not blame the patient for the illness,

yet at same time

Become the Steward of your State

Hedonic vs. Eudaimonic

• Hedonic = pertaining to pleasure; self-gratification.• Eudaimonic - Aristotle. = happiness as a result of meaning.

• Study with Steve Cole, PhD, UCLA, and Barbara Fredrickson, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

– Set out to see if ongoing positive experiences (hedonic) would have the opposite effect as perceived loneliness on the human genome.

– They expected that hedonic self-gratification as a form of happiness would show up on the genome more than some notion that one needs a sense of purpose and meaning in life (eudaimonic).

Hedonic vs. Eudaimonic, cont.

• We already knew from prior studies that eudaimonic and hedonic aspects of well-being had been linked to longevity, so it seemed plausible that there might be a beneficial effect.

• They expected that hedonic self-gratification as a form of happiness would show up on the genome more than some notion that one needs a sense of purpose and meaning in life.

• But much to their surprise, the opposite showed:

Eudaimonic is Vital• Hedonically-happy people didn’t register on the

genome, but people high in eudaimonic happiness were more likely to show the opposite gene expression compared to those who were lonely:

• Specifically:Antiviral response increased, and Inflammation decreased.

There have been three replications of the study since 2013, and Dr. Cole says the data suggest that lacking a sense of meaning and purpose can be as damaging as obesity or smoking.

The IDEA Method™: Inner Directed Energy Awareness

5 Tools of IDEA Method™ today:

1. Self-Tracking

2. Self-Tracking in Client Work

3. Assessment

4. Resonance

5. Practices

Self-Tracking

1. Where in your body were you drawn?

2. What did you see/hear/smell/taste/touch/feel/experience there? What was there?

3. Was something revealed to you that connects to some issue going on in your life? Make a note of whatever you noticed.

The IDEA Method™: Inner Directed Energy Awareness

for Health and Healing

Melanie Roche

The IDEA Method™: Inner Directed Energy Awareness

5 Tools of IDEA Method today:

1. Self-Tracking—physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

2. Self-Tracking in Client Work-treat everything as “in”3. Assessment to learn state and worldview of another4. Resonance as a listening tool.

Two scores: Words and Tone, Body language, Energy

5. Practices-emerge from listening this way