or a more in depth description of APH, Let's define what makes it different than other forms of healthcare, how we use the words, and the "four powers" that drive the process:

Several important factors make Authentic Process Healing bold, new and distinct from what we may have turned to in the past. They are:

• It was developed out of the experience of those being healed, rather than from an academic or medical perspective.
• It incorporates from many disciplines and cultures that which has consistently demonstrated the ability to effect transformational change.
• It incorporates the " community healing approach" used in addictions recovery (Twelve-Step, Therapeutic Communities, etc.) but shifts the focus to breaking down the barriers to feeling whole and complete experienced by all people. It allows community to be two or more people. !
• It merges clinical, scientific, psychotherapeutic, and body wisdom discoveries and places them within a spiritual context.
• The healing process is clearly defined from the onset. This awareness of the "big picture" of one's journey brings comfort and grace to the healing. However, it allows unlimited flexibility providing for individual adaptation.
• The personal " powers" and tools required for the journey are described in simple terms.
• The process is pragmatic because anyone who dedicates him or herself to the journey will experience concrete results with each engagement.

At the heart of this new vision is the healing technique which is called Authentic Process. In this approach, the practitioner/ facilitator operates without clinical distance. The facilitator teaches an efficient system of healing while simultaneously guiding individuals through their own process. Practitioners and clients work together without hierarchy towards mutual authenticity and community. Everything is discussed, nothing is hidden. It is not esoteric in nature, not elitist, and not "medical" in traditional terms, yet it can profoundly impact one's medical and mental state. All those engaged in Authentic Process are simply encouraged to speak from the heart.

How We Use the Words

"Authentic" in APH means genuine, instinctively true. Authentic expression means we express our true inner feelings rather than present a false front. Sometimes we find that a particular noteworthy experience has taken up a genuine, residence in our body/mind or soul. Such authentic thoughts, feelings and experiences do not need validation from the outside world because a visceral inner intelligence has "spoken" within us in a voice we have learned to rely on. Even if we can't yet express this understanding in words, we can tune into the "felt senses" of our bodies, trusting them to lead us--sometimes surprisingly-- to where we need to go or what we need to do next.

While this is new to many, when we receive facilitation through Somatic Experiencing, Wavework Integration, Holotropic or other breathwork, or the many other modalities you will find in our resource section, we make a new discovery. It is that the body has it's own inner healer, or inner intelligence, that knows exactly what needs to be healed next for the whole person to have healthy organic growth. Often the body will surprise us with occurrences and experiences our mind would never have accessed. Once you experience the power of this body and felt sense driven approach you will be amazed, humbled, and enlightened. You will come to trust this inner voice as your primary healer and liberator. The body knows and it never lies.

"Process" in APH refers to the ongoing growth to awareness within our personal organism. By surrendering to this process, we acknowledge that each fragment of our healing is part of an organic evolution that subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) transforms, rejuvenates, and enlivens the whole of our organism (person). In APH we often use the term "organism" as a way of honoring and acknowledging our complexity and the interrelationship of all inner and outer elements of our lives. We integrate each morsel of healing by bringing it into the light of our awareness, accepting it, ingesting it, digesting it and making it part of our being. This creates moment by moment presence, leading to greater integration and resilience. As we continue to grow in awareness of our own inner substance, we come to celebrate the process in all its forms, leading us to a shame-free presentation of ourselves.

"Healing" in APH means to restore us to health and wholeness, physically, spiritually, and in every other way, including emotionally and cognitively. In the words of author Stephen Levine we do so by "re-entering or revisiting, with present awareness and compassion, that which we have withdrawn from (often unconsciously) in traumatic anger, fear, and/or judgement."

Most of us are not even aware of this "withdrawal" because the related events are often unconsciously frozen in the energy of our central nervous system. Though too subtle for our conscious minds to acknowledge, this is still a cause of great suffering. As we learn to tune into our bodymind and the felt senses of the body, we unfreeze or thaw these fragmented aspects of ourselves. In so doing, we reconnect the present with the past, consciously and unconsciously, and "listen' for subtle and not-so-subtle signals or tugs from our bodies, as the truth of realization begins to realign our body-mind relationship. If we ask these signals what they want us to know, they will tell us in their own mysterious way.

We gradually learn to trust our inner wisdom and allow it to guide our healing and self-realization process. These "callings" come from deep within ourselves once we've learned to simply give permission, listen and feel and accept their help. Many of us know and accept that we have healing to do because of our recurring suffering, limitations and frustrations. However, the distinct healing that needs to be done is often elusive to our conscious mind. Even when we have an "idea" of what may need to be healed, we often lack access to the core of our being where true healing takes place--the central nervous system and its ancient roots in the cosmos.

Given these definitions, APH could be said to mean, "a genuine, instinctively true growth to awareness originating from within our self-organism, which restores us to health and wholeness, spiritually, physically, emotionally, and cognitively." In other words, a true and lasting healing process which works from the inside out, and which touches every part of our lives. Once one gets a taste of this healing from the inside out, nothing else will suffice.

As you peruse APH, you will discover that we each have an innate birthright to heal, and a natural intelligence, which is guiding that inner healing process every step of the way.

'Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence. Not only can trauma be healed, but with appropriate guidance and support, it can be transformative. Trauma has the potential to be one of the most significant forces for psychological, social, and spiritual awakening and evolution. How we handle trauma (as individual, communities, and societies) greatly influences the quality of our lives. It ultimately affects how or even whether we will survive as a species...This leading-edge research echos what ancient wisdom has always known: that each organ of the body, including the brain, speaks its own 'thoughts,' 'feelings,' and 'prompting,' and listens to those of all the others.'

Peter A. Levine
Waking The Tiger

The Four "Powers" of APH That Dissolve Barriers to Holism

1. The power of community-based healing (facilitation with two or more people without hierarchy)
2. The power of shared intentionality
3. The power of shared belief
4. The power of authentic process with the felt senses (somatic wisdom) of the body

1. The Power of Community-Based Healing

There is an unexplainable magic that occurs when people join together with a shared intention to heal. When they let down their masks of composure and nonjudgmentally share struggles, joys and sorrows, in a ritualized format, an indescribable healing takes place. When we then tune into the body's felt senses together, the magic of authentic communication builds and soars like music.

The following is a description of "community" as defined by M. Scott Peck in his book, A Different Drum:

"Community is... individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together, and to delight in each other, make others' conditions our own."

He goes on to explain that when we meet in clearly defined community, "something more" takes place, something quite mystical. There are no words to explain these experiences. According to Dr. Peck:

"Community, like a gem, is multi-faceted, each facet a mere aspect of a whole that defies description...The gem of community is so exquisitely beautiful it may seem unreal to you, like a dream you once had when you were a child, so beautiful it may seem unattainable."

The good news is, it is attainable! Out of his study of community Dr. Peck founded The Foundation for Community Encouragement. It has also informed and inspired the development of APH and other healing communities around the globe, bringing the dream to fruition.

2. The Power of Shared Intentionality

When two or more people consciously bring together their intention to heal, and share that intention in a specific, often structured way, this is shared intentionality. This is very effective in bringing the helper and client into alignment with each other, creating a conscious bonding between them. It creates a solution orientation rather than a problem orientation.

3. The Power of Shared Belief

Belief Creates Experience: Experience Shapes Belief. I had the good fortune of studying with and reading all the works of Gerald Epstein, M.D., an authority on mind medicine, or spiritual medicine. These are early healing traditions that can be traced back to ancient Egypt and are presently being carried forward by Epstein's teacher, Colette Aboulker-Muscat in Israel. As Epstein said in his book Healing Into Immortality "The New Age is reaching out to touch the 'Old Age' - the living tradition of the ancient spiritual doctrines...".

In Mind Medicine we learn of an invisible reality that is synonymous with what we sometimes call a spiritual reality. According to Epstein: "It lies behind our everyday sensory reality, the visible, objective, physical reality. You discover and experience invisible reality by turning your senses inward, when you use your imagination and its functional process of mental imagery...mind medicine...moves us in the direction of spirit, of the invisible reality. It is a medicine of truth and love...[where we] experience vertical reality...a timeless realm, the experience of the eternal moment or instant."

The concept that belief creates experience is critical to spiritual medicine. In dealing with a vertical reality we allow our inner most needs and desires to create actions by first creating images or possibilities. We all have some experience of this if we look at our own personal history. As Epstein says: "the invisible gives rise to the visible, the inner creates the outer, and thoughts create action by means of images...The fact that our beliefs create our experience means that the experiential world is the effect of our beliefs rather than the cause. And because we are the creators of our beliefs and, thereby, of the experiences that flow from them, we are the active source of our experiences and not the passive recipients of them.. Our power to control our own creations can shape a new course in life for each of us."

An example of this power of shared belief working in my own life occurred when I first consciously faced my own drug and alcohol addiction more than twenty years ago. At the time, I did not believe I could live without these substances. They were my constant companions and refuge for 18 years. When I first went to a Twelve-Step meeting at 32 years old, I met people who were sharing a belief. They held in common the belief that one could live and be happy without alcohol and drugs. Although I first resisted entering their circle of energy centered in this belief, I was impressed by the group's demonstration of it and their loving willingness to share it. I came around and gradually began to internalize the idea that I too could remain sober. That belief, and watching others demonstrating it, afforded me the gift of living and growing these many years without an addiction to drugs and alcohol. This is something I could not have conceived of prior to my experience of seeing other recovering people accomplish it. For me, this was and still is a miracle.

Through the power of shared belief, before long, we are enraptured in a self-organizing, co-created process where we are learning from and healing each other with extraordinary compassion, love, and understanding. Authentically facing common challenges together bonds us in a unique experience of triumphant love. Healing and spiritual awakening occur out of our belief.

4. The Power of Authentic Process

At the heart of Authentic Process Healing is a shift of the energetic relationship between the helper and the one being helped and how it is perceived.

The word "therapy," in our culture, has come to signify "pathology." If you believe that something is wrong with you, you go to the therapist or doctor to get "fixed" or to adjust yourself to the perceived "normal" society. Both the therapist and the patient culturally subscribe to these dynamic roles. In this dynamic, and in traditional psychotherapy, there is a "removal of self" on the part of the therapist. In Authentic Process the therapist, or facilitator, coaches individuals and groups to bring their own life experiences to the healing. The facilitator remains authentic in this process and shares experience, hence becoming a role model in authentic processing.

This prepares us to integrate our complex natures into society, thereby transforming it, rather than shaping ourselves to it. Because of the dynamic shift in the therapist/client relationship in Authentic Process, all processes become client-driven rather than clinically, or pathologically driven. The shared intention to heal fuels the process rather than a desire to be fixed or to fit in. Speaking from the heart within a circle of friends is so necessary and so rare in conventional society, that people all over the world are creating their own circles for authentic process, or [wisdom circles].

"Being real" is the keynote of Authentic Process. The desire to be authentic-- to express true inner feelings rather than to present a false front -- is an absolute minimum requirement for participation. When we express our "real" selves, we allow our true inner "authentic" feelings and body sensations to surface, and we present them as-is, unedited, and without judgement. Certain African tribal ceremonies refer to this as "speaking from the pit of the belly." While it seems easy enough, it means more than merely speaking what is on your mind, because "what is on your mind" usually refers to surface issues that have been filtered through society's value system. "Authentic Process" reaches down past the surface, into the deep regions of our consciousness, to our reptilian brain, and to our central nervous system to summon energies, images, and feelings that have long been suppressed. This is the goal of APH.

APH is an experiential process that profoundly affects both the practitioner and the client. Both are experiencing anew and learning in the very moment of the healing encounter. It is more about feelings and sensations in the body than about thoughts in our head, though both are important. The experiential, here and now nature of these encounters often help people reconnect with their feelings and their histories. For many that feel cut off from feelings and histories, APH can be a physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological jump-start to their reclaimed wholeness.

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