An 11 year-old daughter with bleeding ulcers?
When Dhebi DeWitz-Jensen’s mother was faced with this situation many years ago, she took her daughter to the doctor. When conventional approaches didn’t work, she then encouraged her daughter to try meditation rather than further medication. And so began a lifelong practice for Dhebi, and an early awakening of her lifelong passion: “To support people with their healing, their empowerment, and their enlightenment.”
I recently asked Dhebi how such a young person could develop ulcers. She said she was unusually sensitive to other people’s feelings and energy fields— she was unable to distinguish their feelings from her own. If someone was angry, she felt the anger, and when her friend was sad, she felt the grief. Without the normal “shields” between herself and others, Dhebi lived in a state of chronic confusion. Compounding the problem, she was unaware that others didn’t share her particular sensitivities. She just assumed that everyone lived in a cloudy sea of feelings, and could read the energy fields of others.
By the time she was 21, Dhebi had become a certified Hypnotherapist. Since then, she has practiced numerous healing modalities, and thirteen years ago, she became a Medical Massage Therapist.
How Can I Help Them Heal Themselves?
About four years ago, Dhebi couldn’t shake a recurrent feeling. Though her practice was thriving and she was having lots of success in helping people heal from life-threatening illnesses, she still felt she just wasn’t doing enough. In particular, Dhebi wanted her clients to take a more active role in the healing process. As she put it: "I wanted them to be a partner in their healing."
As she worked on her clients, she sometimes found that she would correct energetic imbalances in one session and then, in the very next session, she would need to correct the same imbalance again. She wondered, "Why isn’t this adjustment holding? Why, with some people, is this just a temporary fix? How do we find the source of the illness, and address that?"
One day, Dhebi was working with a woman who was in the final stages of cancer. Dhebi sensed that subconscious issues were gripping this woman’s physical and energetic bodies, and holding her illness in place. When the woman passed on, Dhebi’s desire to understand how to help people heal intensified. She wondered, "If subconscious issues were holding this woman’s illness in place, how could I have helped her become more aware of those beliefs? How could I have helped her change the beliefs so that she was not sabotaging herself?" Such questions grew into a persistent feeling: "Rather than me doing something to another person, I want to give others tools that will empower them to heal and live their own lives!"
Dhebi’s previous training in hypnotherapy had given her an appreciation of the power of the subconscious mind, but she lacked the ability to convey this understanding to her clients. Worse, she felt she didn’t know what tools to offer them to help them tap into this power.
The Unexpected Answer
The answer came to Dhebi in an unexpected way. Fittingly, it came while she was sitting in meditation with a group. One of the group members briefly mentioned that she had a friend who had attended a PSYCH-K workshop. The workshop had provided effective yet simple techniques for working directly with subconscious beliefs and changing them. On hearing this, Dhebi felt an electrical surge go up her spine. She went home that night, turned on the computer, and found the PSYCH-K web site before she even had taken off her coat.
She discovered that PSYCH-K was originated in 1988 by Robert M.Williams, M.A., a man who had felt a frustration similar to Dhebi’s. As a practicing psychologist, he felt he was not able to give his clients proven, effective tools for empowerment. After years of research into such subjects as Brain Dominance Theory, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), hypnotherapy, and ancient shamanic practices, PSYCH-K was born. Since that time, PSYCK-K has been spreading rapidly, with certified instructors offering courses throughout much of the world.
As Dhebi describes her reaction to the PSYCH-K website that night: "Iread an article by Bruce Lipton, a cellular biologist. He stated that DNA creates who we are; it is the way genes express themselves. When I learned that I could actually affect the way my DNA expresses itself by using the PSYCH-K techniques, well, that got my attention! I was in the next workshop I could find!"
In that workshop, Dhebi found what she had been seeking for so long. She has since dropped her Medical Massage practice and now gives workshops all around the country as one of just thirty certified PSYCH-K instructors.
Life Changes
Dhebi recently told me, "I have finally found the way to express my life’s passion. With PSYCH-K, I can support people with their healing, their empowerment, and their enlightenment. Plus, it has given me more power over the direction of my life than anything I have ever dreamed of or have come across before. PSYCH-K combines it all, and it’s where I’ve been heading my entire life. I feel like I am now living an enchanted life. Plus, I can offer people a powerful way to heal themselves and manifest their dreams. On top of it all, I earn my living doing what I love!"
After discussing with me the positive changes that had occurred in her life after beginning PSYCH-K, she added, "If nothing else about PSYCH-K had worked, for me it was worth every penny for just one thing: the way it transformed my relationship with my son. After only one PSYCH-K session, my son was no longer what is called "oppositional defiant," and he has not reverted back to that behavior since."
As a friend of Dhebi’s husband Phil, I have witnessed first-hand some of the changes that have occurred in their household over the past two years. Phil, a gifted artist, no longer works in a "dead-end" job and now is making an income from his art. He has, in his own words, "transformed my own beliefs about the possibilities." He seems to have a whole new level of self-esteem and joy. As for Dhebi, I remember her telling me just two years ago that, though her services as Medical Massage Therapist were in demand, she was a homebody who would not travel or give workshops to strangers. Yet, now she has the confidence and passion to do just that. I have also witnessed the dramatic change in her son’s manner that Dhebi described. In fact, I was drawn to Dhebi’s workshop by these transformations.
At the Basic PSYCH-K Workshop
When my wife and I arrived at the Basic Workshop, the room was full. As people introduced themselves, we learned that many of the participants were health professionals and therapists, others were there seeking their own healing, while still others were there for personal growth and empowerment. Though most of the people were in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, Dhebi has told me that she has had participants as young as 11 and as old as 88 years old.
In the beginning of the workshop, Dhebi stressed the power of the mind to heal. We watched a remarkable video on what is known as the "placebo effect." In it, people were healed by the belief that they had had surgery, even though the surgical procedure had only been staged and had never actually taken place. This set the stage for what was to come: techniques to tap into the power of the mind to bring about change, stimulate healing, and realize dreams.
So what is PSYCH-K? Dhebi gives this brief answer: "The power to heal and change our lives lies within our subconscious mind and its various programs. Yet most people don't know that their subconscious minds are programmable. And, if they do, they don’t know how to go about programming it, at least not without years of training or therapy. PSYCH-K provides effective, genuine, easy-to-learn and easy-to-use techniques that make long-lasting changes within the subconscious mind in as little as three to five minutes."
"But," I asked Dhebi, "Don’t you need your kind of sensitivity to use it?" Without hesitating, she replied, "Oh, no! Anyone can learn it, and anyone can benefit from it. Though I think my sensitivity to others has helped me as an instructor, a person doesn’t need any special sensitivity or ability to learn the techniques or benefit from them."
The "Balances"
The workshop that my wife and I attended—the PSYCH-K Basic workshop—is a weekend course, seven hours each day. In the course, we learned two main techniques for reprogramming the subconscious mind in a step-by-step fashion. These techniques are called "balances" because they work to balance the two hemispheres of the brain and create a whole-brain state that is ideal for reprogramming the mind with new beliefs. In other words, the "balances" work to reprogram the subconscious mind and transform any subconscious resistance we may have to achieving our goals, and they do this by using whole-brain integration techniques. In short, PSYCH-K taps the power of the mind and the power of beliefs to help us achieve our goals rather than sabotage them. These "balances" last until they are no longer needed.
The PSYCH-K techniques have a built-in safeguard. Before doing a balance, we ask the higher self whether it is safe and appropriate to change the particular belief at this time. If the higher self signals "yes," only then do we proceed.
Immediate Change
Dhebi says about the techniques: "Many people see results immediately. It is a myth that change takes a long time." I saw proof of this on the first day. My wife rarely feels completely rested after a night’s sleep. So, after the first class, she used the techniques (the "balances") to reprogram her subconscious mind so that she would wake up feeling relaxed and refreshed the next morning. I was sure that the technique would not work that quickly, especially since my wife is a rebel! However, much to our surprise, she woke up the next morning feeling relaxed and refreshed. We left for the Sunday session with a new appreciation for the power of the techniques.
So how does PSYCH-K bring about change so quickly? Dhebi answers: "PSYCH-K is not talk therapy, for that doesn’t tap into the power of the subconscious mind. Nor is it trying to bring about change by will power. We are using techniques that integrate the brain to activate the power of the subconscious mind and support us in achieving our conscious goals. Once we engage the power of the subconscious mind, change happens quickly!"
The Power of the Subconscious Mind
Dhebi says, "We identify ourselves with the conscious mind, but the subconscious mind has far more to do with creating our reality. The subconscious mind is a million times stronger than the conscious mind. It is in control of perhaps 95% or more of our lives. PSYCH-K is a way of consciously deciding what you want your subconscious programs to be. Most of us have our programs set by the age of six, at least six years before we have developed discernment. As a result, the programs that are directing our lives—and determining our attitudes toward money, work, sex, and everything else—are secondhand beliefs and largely unconscious! PSYCH-K gives us a way to unplug from this set of secondhand beliefs and plug into another set of beliefs that we have consciously chosen."
In the workshop, Dhebi emphasized that the subconscious mind doesn’t understand abstract terms such as "health" or "happiness." Happiness means something different to each person, and so the subconscious mind needs specific, sensory-based instructions. In the workshop, we learned to speak the language of the subconscious mind. Dhebi told us that, "Unless we speak in terms that the subconscious mind will understand, we will not be able to tap into its immense powers." She said that part of the success of PSYCH-K is that it has techniques that translate abstract conscious thoughts into terms that the subconscious mind can comprehend and act upon.
What are Your Dreams?
Throughout the workshop, Dhebi emphasized that we ought to phrase our thoughts in terms of where we want to go rather where we don’t want to go. She said, "So many of our beliefs start with I can’t rather than I can, or I don’t rather than I do. We are trained to think in terms of problems rather than solutions. So much of our self-talk is negative and self-defeating. Studies have shown that 70% of self-talk is negative talk. We are always saying what we are not rather than what we are. But what are your dreams? And how can your subconscious mind help you to attain those dreams? PSYCH-K helps people move away from what they don’t want by moving toward what they do want, toward happiness, toward joy."
Dhebi said that many other healing modalities, while often beneficial, tend to merely take us to a "neutral space" after a drama or trauma, a state in which we are no longer affected by what has happened. PSYCH-K does this also, but then goes further. It doesn’t just shift from reverse to neutral, but shifts from neutral to higher gears. Clearing out traumas and block ages is necessary and good, but it is only the start.
In the workshop, Dhebi stressed that PSYCH-K can be used by people of all faiths. As Dhebi put it: "PSYCH-K doesn’t tell you want to believe; it helps you be true to yourself."
Creating the Atmosphere
After the workshop, my wife and I (both educators) talked about how well the workshop was organized and what an excellent job Dhebi did. For one, she answered people’s questions without straying off course, as so often happens in workshops of this kind. She was able to "walk the line" between the physical and the metaphysical, talking scientifically or psychologically whenever appropriate. In this way, she was able to answer whatever questions people asked of her.
And though Dhebi was obviously a storehouse of knowledge, her manner was always "we’re in this together." She seemed, in the words of another participant, "truly interested in allowing the growth of each individual."
We also liked the fact that the workshop—though in a public setting—was actually quite a private, personal experience. Dhebi likes to say that PSYCH-K "takes place in the privacy of your own mind. You don’t have to give your whole life story. Though we work in teams in the class, you don’t have to share why you want to change a belief, just what belief you want to change."
My wife and I were also impressed by Dhebi’s commitment to creating an environment in which people could heal. I read on Dhebi’s website that she considers herself "one who is committed to being a keeper of scared space, so that others may accelerate their personal growth and unleash their empowerment. I aspire to be one who creates the atmosphere in which wisdom may reveal itself."
Indeed, the atmosphere Dhebi created was very positive and encouraging. As Dhebi said later, "PSYCH-K is not about guilt, shame, or blame. Its attitude is simply: ‘Oh good, I have uncovered a subconscious belief that is not serving me and, now that I know what it is, I can change it.’ PSYCH-K is a tool for empowerment rather than defeatism."
A quote from a participant in the workshop sums up our feelings about Dhebi and her workshop nicely: "This was a wonderful two days. Your manner is very warm and welcoming, and you created a very safe and effective learning environment. Thank you for the gifts of your wisdom and experience."