I’ve hesitated for years on presenting this topic due to the fact that when I entered this industry my coworkers looked down on my approach. In graduate school, we all spoke the same language and had one thing in common – a belief that there was a higher purpose in life than eating, getting married, and creating a replacement for yourself. To us that seemed so pointless. We were on a search that there was some purpose for living, and then entered the University of Santa Monica and it had an impact on me forever.

What I am presenting may sound far-fetched and is it totally accurate? Maybe or maybe not. How can you prove something that can’t be seen by your own two eyes, but it sure was felt. Plus, there is scientific proof for a lot of what is presented, but again, in beginning my practice, I had to defend a lot of this information and didn’t want to scare a lot of patients away so held back on discussing it.  Now I think why the f… not? Regardless if you believe this information or not doesn’t negate what we do at Basic Steps Mental Health. We provide evidence-based psychological approaches that are used by therapists throughout the world, though when the spiritual tools are combined, incredible healing takes place. I don’t need to tout my success rates or the number of individuals that I have treated, but I do want to present this to you. To perhaps wet your appetite that perhaps you have the power to overcome the difficulties you are facing in your life because you were created in the image of God and that blueprint is inside of you and can be tapped into.

From day one, our University stated: “We are very powerful beings.” If we focus on something we will create it. I am not sure if you understand how powerful you are. For example, when you focus on what you don’t want, you will obtain it. Unfortunately, we as a society have been trained to focus on the worst things that can happen. If you don’t want to get sick, for example, why do you continually get sick? If you don’t want to be depressed, why do you have depression, and if you don’t want to drink alcohol, why do you continue to drink? This is because the mind doesn’t hear the word “don’t” and focuses on the subject of the sentence. In the above examples, you will create sickness, depression, and addiction. Instead of focusing on what you don’t want, flip it around and focus on what you do want. “I want to be healthy, happy, and sober.” Living a life free from the don’ts and can’ts starts your journey to enlightenment.

Be careful as you start this journey because you might get what you want. If your identity centers around being a victim and making others more important than you, you can block healing, wealth, and the great things in life. What this entails is letting go of the limitations and especially the initial thought of “I can’t do this.” Why can’t you? If I presented a pot of gold to you would you turn away from it because you don’t deserve the riches? Do you belittle yourself and believe other people are better and deserve the gold before you? Trust me, there is more than enough gold in this pot for everyone and since we are all the same, let’s have you consider sharing in the wealth of this knowledge.

The Power of Your Thoughts

I had the privilege of being supervised by Dr. Noah Young at Tarzana Treatment Center in Los Angeles. He was a professor at Pepperdine and a Minister of the Science of Mind Church. He told me that each person he treats he sees as a success. He didn’t want to think that they were hopeless because his thinking may hold them back or limit them. Therefore it is important to view everyone you treat as a success.

Before each group session at Basic Steps, we do a peace meditation. The peace meditation is really a hug meditation because we begin by hugging ourselves to charge our internal battery and after the self-hug, we give visualization hugs to people we love, those we know are in need of healing, things in the city, and then the world. Especially now, this entire world needs a lot of hugs. When we focus on hate or revenge, we put that energy out into the world and, well we end up with what we currently have. 

In this past week, more and more clients are voicing their fears about war, the economy, and their personal safety. Praying for peace can be one solution, though the solution is not saying a few prayers – as this becomes a spiritual bypass. In going to the spiritual we are skipping past the practical measures that need to take place physically, mentally, and emotionally. It would take another book to cover all these basics. Bottom line, prayer, and positive thinking are simply an element of the spiritual psychology approach but not the entire one size heals all.

Spirituality combined with physical, mental, and emotional levels is what our facility presents with amazing success. This is why we love it when people have had a lot of therapy before they enter our facility to see the difference but it is not mandatory.

Upon entry to our facility, there is a great feeling in the air because it feels like home – well a nice home if you’ve had a rough upbringing. This is because we focus on love and believe when love is applied to hurt we heal. For you religious types, if God is love, then the most godly thing we can do is live life from a loving place.

Candice Pert got a Nobel Peace Prize for proving that when we are in a loving space, the brain secretes Neuroperopeptides that enhance our immune system, slow down aging, and make us stronger. We show people this in our clinic through muscle testing. Living life negatively, stressed out, and angry only breaks us down and takes time off of our lives. Would you rather be upset or happy? If you choose happy, you choose life!

Non-touch healing also has clinical evidence. People who had a broken arm were involved in a test in which they put their arm through a curtain and couldn’t see what was happening on the other side of it. For some, nothing took place, but for others, a person was practicing non-touch healing where they allowed the healing energy of the universe to flow through them and bathed the person with that flow of energy through their hands without any touching. Usually, the hands flowed a few inches above the skin and in prayer they allowed the energy to flow through them. The results of this experiment showed that people exposed to the non-touch healing healed 30% faster!

The results of people praying for peace reduced crime in the area by 25%! Then how in the world is this taking place? The peace meditation experiment was reproduced 50-plus times around the world and it always showed a 25% drop in crime.

We were taught in graduate school there is a reason why we go through the things we have in our life. In believing “We are spiritual beings having a human experience,” it means our soul needs to go through the path it is on to grow and develop. This is why it is so important for us to mindfully deal with every situation that presents itself to us. If not, a problem has a way of appearing in our life again, and again, and again. When we solve the problem, it is done for good. If not, welcome your old friend back because you will be spending more time with it. Now, to take it to a further degree – if we don’t face our issues in this lifetime, we will have to reincarnate and face the problem again. How many lifetimes do you want to face the same issues? Why not deal with it now and move forward?

But, this may seem to be blasphemy. Spiritual Beings? Reincarnation? We can heal people without touching them? This is why I have held back on presenting this information, but feel the time has come to help people understand they have an innate ability within themselves to heal, grow, and become great.

We all have this ability naturally, not just the few, the proud, the Marines. There is an advanced counseling tool we were taught in which we surrounded ourselves with love, peace, joy, or any positive feeling and then just sat down with a client. In time, the client would shift and share our feelings. How is this so? It is due to the “law of attraction.” What you put out, returns to you. Why not test this in your next conversation with your partner? Fill yourself with love and repeat in your mind how wonderful the person is who is next to you and see what happens. At the crisis center where I worked years ago, a client entered experiencing a severe panic attack. I remained calm as I walked them into my office and as they were freaking out, I continued to show them love and kindness and suddenly they snapped out of the panic, became calm, looked at me in confusion, and said, “How’d you do that?”