The Presence Process - Share Experiences & Ask Questions

You can't find the webinar. You just sign up for the Body Code newsletter and they'll invite you to the webinar, hopefully.

Bradley Nelson's page is the Body Code page, I think.
 
BrianC said:
Good to hear about your progress with alcohol, Mark. That sadness you feel about not desiring it anymore is helpful. It's probably a sadness you've been repressing with the alcohol...and probably the food, too. I'd explore that sadness if it were me. Sit with it and see if it integrates. Some insight should come with that. And the insight might help with the eating addiction, too, or lead you in some direction that helps you deal with the eating addiction.

As for the eating addiction, you may find it necessary to set boundaries with food. For instance, when I notice myself eating food late in the evening repeatedly, I'll know that I'm repressing something, most likely. So I'll refuse to eat in the evenings after dinner. I'll also pay attention to my emotional state to make sure I'm not eating when I'm feeling uncomfortable emotions.

The only way to overcome an addiction is usually to refrain from it so you can feel the emotions the addiction is repressing.

Some people use The Body Code or its Emotion Code to get rid of addictions very quickly. Incredibly quickly, in fact. But it doesn't work for everyone, because some people's self-sabotage is too strong, and it simply won't work until that's dealt with. What TPP teaches is invaluable...that we can be content even when sick or in pain, and it's not about getting rid of annoyances as much as accepting them and loving all that we experience. But I think there's a place for things like The Body Code, and they can be used when necessary to free people from issues. Each person has to feel it out for him or herself.

Good luck with the eating addiction. Just remember that you can't deal with emotions if you're constantly repressing them with an addiction...but that you must also know when the time is right to start dealing with the addiction. It's different for everyone.
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Thanks for your insights, Brian!
 
That's interesting that you can listen to something for insomnia. I typically only have insomnia when I'm stressed about something, and my mind wants to keep trying to fix that stress (repress it by solving what's causing it), so it won't stop and just relax so it can rest/sleep. It's strictly an emotional thing. It used to happen to me, but it's almost never happens now. It's important for the brain to sleep. Throughout the day, our brain produces waste. Not exactly toxins, but definitely stuff you want to sit there in the brain, because it bogs it down, causing it not to function well. Sleep is when the brain gets rid of all of that waste so it can operate properly the next day.

When it does, I'll endure it at first, and just relax my body as best I can, one part at a time--left foot, left leg, right foot, right leg, pelvis area, stomach, chest, left arm, left hand, right arm right hand, shoulders, neck, jaw, face, temples, top of head. That's reverse order, but you can do it either way. Consciously relaxing the body does a couple of things--it directs the mind to an activity, and it consciously causes the body to slow down and let go of its tension. When I do Kriya yoga (meditation), I have to go through that process of relaxing every part of my body. You get very quick at it eventually. Even when I'm not having insomnia problems, I go ahead and relax all of my muscles at night when I'm going to sleep. I fall asleep much more quickly.

With TPP, the intent and hope is that the emotion causing the mind to go nutty trying to fix the problem will surface so we can consciously feel it, accept it unconditionally without trying to get rid of it, and then let it integrate naturally. Anytime I have insomnia, I look at it as a great opportunity to feel some part of my heart that needs to be loved unconditionally so it will integrate.

Oh, and if I know I have a lot of work to do the next day, and falling sleep would be dangerous (I drive vehicles when I work), I take a Benadryl or two before bed. That relaxes me, and when I sleep, it drops me into a deeper, more restful sleep. That way, I'm better prepared to do my job the next day. But if I'm too stressed out, even the Benadryl won't put me to sleep. My mind will have to get to the point where my body's exhausted and can't help but fall asleep. That doesn't really happen anymore since I've done TPP. And I've also learned to lay in bed the entire time, from around 10pm to 6am, no matter what time I wake up, and leave my eyes closed, and do my best to think of nothing. This allows my body and my eyes to get sufficient rest, so that I'll be more likely to make it through the next day without getting tired (or without getting too tired). Oh, and Z-Quil is the same thing as Benadryl, but at least twice as expensive. So I buy the little 100 count Walmart brand of Benadryl (It's the Equate brand in a pink and white little bottle). It's crazy cheap and lasts forever if you rarely use it. Two of those is the same as two Benadryl. I try not to take it unless absolutely necessary for my job the next day. But usually, I'll tough it out, because I can always pull over while I'm driving and rest my eyes for 15 minutes, which fixes the heavy eyes. I drove from 6am to 10:52pm yesterday without once getting sleepy or heavy eyed, but then again, I'm sleeping decently right now, for the most part, too. I did take a Benadryl the night before, though, just to make sure I would be able to make it for all of those hours of driving.

That's just how I deal with it. Everyone has to figure out what works for them personally.
 
The book, TPP, explains it, of course. But are you asking for a quick explanation so you can decide if you'd like to read the book and do the process?

I just want to clarify so I know exactly what you're asking for. I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time typing something out if it's not what you're asking for. lol

Oh, something else came to mind. Are you asking for a template of TPP so you can do it without reading the book? I'm not sure if that's what you're asking, but again, I'm just trying to clarify.
 
Hello BrianC,

I was wondering for both. I was wondering if a youtube video exists that explains the process and th book.

I have a few books on the go and my reading time I limited with children.

If a resource that explains this does not exist do not worry about typing a long response as I can look into this at a future date...:)
 
The short answer is no. I don't think there's a way to do it without reading the book, or at very least using the third section of the book that walks a person through the process.

You could purchase the book and start at the third section, but you'd need to make sure you read the section on how to do the breathing. But without an explanation of what's going on internally, it seems like you'd be short-changing yourself. When you read the first part of the book, it's teaching you the basics of emotional integration, like accepting your emotions, whether they're comfortable to feel or uncomfortable to feel, unconditionally. It explains where the emotions came from (they were passed down at conception, then installed, in a sense, throughout our first seven years), and why they're stuck, etc. If a person just skips to the third part of the book and starts the process, I can work for them, I think. I want to say I've heard of someone doing that before and the process still worked for them. But I think you'd benefit a lot more from reading the first two parts of the book before starting the process in the third part.

What I did during my second Presence Process is read a little bit of the first part of the book each day. So I'd do the 15 minutes of breathing, then I'd read 1-2 pages of the presence process section for that week, then I'd read a few pages at the beginning of the book. So by the time I finished the 10 weeks, I had made it through the first two sections of the book, and I could then start reading the final part of the book while I was in the three-week integration period. There are ways to do it that help if people are in a time crunch. But if it's really important to a person, they'll figure out a way to make time for it. If a person can get up 20 minutes earlier in the morning, they can do the process at that time. And then, they just carve out another 15 minutes at bedtime for the breathing. If they need just a little more time, they can do their reading for the day after one or both of those breathing sessions, or they can do it at another time during the day, on a lunch break or something like that. It all has to do with how important you make it and how you prioritize things. If someone's not ready to prioritize it high on their list, then it's not time for them to do it yet. When they're ready, they'll make it happen no matter what. Just have to figure out when's the right time to start.

Good luck! Hope you find time.
 
Thank you BrianC. The first part sounds a lot like mindfulness and I do like the idea of accepting emotions.

I am working on a breathing process called Buteyko which is helped me a lot so far, but can be uncomfortable to do at times.

Do you still journal with this process?
 
Mike,

No, I've never journaled with this process. That can be helpful for people, though, to help them process things.

Yeah, mindfulness has some similarities, but falls quite short from what little I know about it. Mindfulness seems a little too fixed on the mental (the intellectual). That's helpful, but ultimately will not integrate emotions. Admittedly, though, I don't know enough about mindfulness to assess it. Technically, mindfulness is assessing what one is thinking, where as The Presence Process is attempting to silence thought. Thinking is useful when used for what it's intended. But much of the time, we're using thinking to repress our uncomfortable emotions. We're either avoiding them with our thoughts and imagination, or we're trying to figure out a way to get rid of those feelings. With TPP, we're trying to sit and do absolutely nothing, and think of absolutely nothing. When we sit and think of nothing, the coping mechanism of the mind is no longer repressing uncomfortable emotions, so those emotions start to surface. Now, many times we just feel peace while we breathe, and the emotions come up afterward or during the day at some point. And other times, the emotions come up while we're breathing. Setting the intention to integrate dysfunctioning (uncomfortable) emotions is a big key. Without understanding what that means or how to do it, other methods are often left lacking. That's not to say that other methods aren't useful or cannot cause integration. At times, integration can occur depending on what a person's doing. But in TPP, we should have several integrations during and after the 10 weeks. We'll be conscious of many of them, and some we won't be conscious of their integration. Either way, we see a big change in our behavior. Once a person learns how to resolve their uncomfortable emotions, they no longer fear feeling those emotions anymore. That's priceless. It's also really cool when we start enjoying feeling uncomfortable emotions. I love that. But again, with mindfulness, I really can't be sure how similar it is since I don't know enough about it. I think it's probably a step in the right direction. It takes people deeper than they're going now, and that's useful.
 
Thank you for this fantastic response. I think I now have a much better understanding and I really like how you explained it.

I think I will ad this book to the reading pile as I do think it will b helpful.
 
Cool. Well, good luck!

Just to put things in perspective, before I started TPP, every once in a long while, I'd have an emotional breakdown of some sort. Maybe once every year or two. Didn't know how to deal with extreme uncomfortable emotions like extreme shame. But after I started TPP, I never feared dealing with emotions again. I'm now fully equipped to handle them and use them to grow and mature. It turned my life completely around. I was worried I'd always have problems with handling those emotions. I was even in Recovery (12 Step) a few months before starting TPP, but I'd left it because it wasn't truly teaching me how to deal with my emotional breakdowns. I was determined to find another solution other than being chained to Recovery the rest of my life. Didn't make sense to be dependent on Recovery when lots of people are just fine without it. I didn't want to be dependent on anything or anyone, and now I'm not.

Also, TPP added a whole new dimension to life. Sure, I could feel my emotions before TPP, but not really, really well, and I couldn't feel them in my body hardly at all. I would go watch a movie before doing TPP, and if it was really good, I might cry a little bit and feel a little bit, but not much. Toward the end of my first 10 weeks of TPP, watching a movie was awesome. Good movies would cause me to feel all kinds of stuff all over my body. It's like adding a fourth dimension to life. Music is really great now, too, because I feel all kinds of cool going on in my body when I hear good music. One day, a song might not cause much of a reaction in me, but then another day, that song may cause me to feel things all over. Very cool stuff. It makes life much more exciting. Oh, and I started becoming lucid in my dreams quite a bit. That's really fun, because you realize you can do just about anything in a dream once you're lucid. :)
 
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