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Holistic
Counseling
Stewart
Wyndham
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HOLISTIC COUNSELING SERVICES IN TOKYO
We usually think of ourselves as machines that are somehow, ‘fixable’.
If I can get this part to work, I’ll be OK, I’ll be happy. Maybe it's
my relationship issues or my self-esteem or maybe there's some habit I’m
trying to lick before it licks me. If we look carefully, there is always
a ‘me’ and the thing in this ‘me’ that I am fighting. And I tell myself
that if I could win the battle against that thing I would be OK again.
This ‘I’ that is trying to get fixed we might call the personality
or the ego. It contains our character, our DNA, ourmemories as well as
our conditioned responses, hang-ups and our dreams. This personality
self sees everything in a partial or selective way, it does not see the
‘Big Picture’ and we need to be able to get a good sense of this ‘Big
Picture’ to recover from the deeply-rooted belief that we are at the mercy
of circumstances, our past, addictions to substances, certain emotions
or moods. As long as we continue in this unconscious feeling of victimhood
those yearned for soul qualities of deeper satisfaction with one’s life,
intimacy in relationships, happiness, love and freedom from self-destructive
patterns are bound to elude us.
There is, however, the ‘I’ that is already healed and OK. We may have
come to lose faith in its power or even in its existence. The more we cooperate
with the ‘recovery’ of this Self the more we recognize the various ways
in which it heals or makes whole. It restores the ‘Big Picture’ helping
us to see how we made ourselves miserable in the past and that we did this
because we believed we had no choice. This Self is compassionate and forgiving
about the unconscious choices we made in the past and helps to regain our
faith and self-esteem. We will probably also become aware that we have
been sacrificing this ‘beautiful Self’ in order to survive in the nitty-gritty
world of competitive human striving.
Here are three simple ideas that will help you to understand how Holistic
Counseling can heal or reorganize your relationship to whichever aspect
of your life (or to the whole of your life) you are ready to be healed
right now.
The first one is, ‘LET IT BE!’ Let’s look at this statement for
a minute. ‘LET’, means allow, permit, not to obstruct, not to resist.
‘LET BE’ means not to obstruct, resist or get in the way of something.
And ‘IT’ is anything in the physical or interior world that we might
judge as being undesirable and we feel we should therefore (and logically,
so we believe) resist. Any physical resistance, by the way, causes muscular
tension, headaches, stomach-aches as well as a general feeling of fear
that the thing resisted against might somehow ‘win’. ‘LET IT BE’ then
means being aware of the resistance that you offer to so many aspects of
your life and learning how not to interfere.
This does not mean that you become passive or indifferent. It means
that you notice how you might make yourself miserable by constantly judging
yourself . It becomes increasingly clear that these are not intelligent
choices and that an attitude of non-interference is what you choose more
and more. All of the side-effects of your tension and unawareness based
habits begin to drop away and your sense of joy, meaning and fulfillment
become greatly enhanced.
The second one is, ‘LET IT GO’. This follows effortlessly from ‘Letting
it be’. Confronted with the choice of continuing the suffering-creating
behaviors and beliefs you will discover that you cannot hold on to these
and flow with your newly emerging Self-sense at the same time. You begin
to realize you had been holding onto a hot poker for so many years or decades
and at the place where you had been holding it there’s a big scar. What
an incredible relief to see what you had been doing AND LETTING GO of it
all.
The third one is ‘LETTING ‘I’ BE’. As Letting Be and Letting Go
become deeply engrained healthy and aware habits in you, you gradually
gain access to your essential being the Self, ‘I’. This ‘I’ is the
storehouse of a Love, a Laughter, an Innocence, a Forgiveness, an Intelligence
or Creativity that goes way beyond what we ordinarily associate with any
of these. Letting go is also letting go of all of the memories of suffering
collected in your personal memory as well as in the collective memory of
your family, social group, nation, race and of humankind as a whole.
The process I have described above unfolds naturally within the context
of any kind of holistic counseling or therapy. Individual holistic
therapists may use various practical skills or techniques to achieve
this goal. The description of the process is my own but I am sure that
most holistic therapists would be in agreement.
In my own sessions I may utilize a variety of approaches to assist the
client to realize what has been described. Breath work, visualization,
subpersonality dialoguing as well as guided and unguided meditation may
be used to facilitate the process. ‘Talking’ therapy is also given sufficient
time to allow clients time and space to disentangle themselves from, ‘the
Story of My Life’.
Holistic Counseling may be applied to any problem area effectively.
You don’t have to be ‘special’ in any way to try this form of counseling.
Most people in Japan tend to come for relationship difficulties, work problems,
Japan-related cultural adjustment concerns, substance, food or mood addictions
as well as those looking for deeper personal growth along the lines described
above.
Whether you, yourself, opt for holistic counseling or any other kind,
I sincerely hope that your essential being will guide you to the people,
places and circumstances that will be the most beneficial to your self-development
and self-realization.
Stewart Wyndham
My practice is located at Takadanobaba 10 minutes from the JR and 7 minutes
from the Tozai line or alternatively 2 minutes from Omokagebashi station
on the Toei Arakawa tram (streetcar) line that leaves from JR Otsuka or
Higashi-Ikebukuro on the Yurakucho Line. My sessions run for about 1 1/2
hours and the fee is 12,000 Yen. Please call or email me to book a session
or to answer any specific questions you may have. Tel. 03-5285-2085.
Email
stewartw@tkd.att.ne.jp
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