Metaphors of Movement

Language based models for change - Levels I and II

Wednesday 30th May to Saturday June 2nd

Simon Fraser University
Harbour Centre,
Vancouver, BC Canada
Room 1315 Scotia Bank Lecture Room  

IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Technique)
Practitioner and Advanced Levels

Kathy: Hi Andrew, great to be speaking with you from Vancouver, while you are in London. I'm really excited about your visit with us next year, and learning these fantastic new process's you have been working on. And thanks so much for doing this interview with me.

Andrew: Hi Kathy, I'm really glad to be doing this and I'll be coming to Canada really soon, and I'm really excited about that, it's my first time ever!

Kathy: And you will be here with us in May doing the IEMT training, including the Advanced model. And Metaphors of Movement! These are separate courses, and attendees can take the two day Practitioner for IEMT, and/or the Advanced IEMT, and then
stay on for the Metaphors of Movement.

Andrew, can you please tell us a little about IEMT what is this? 

Andrew: IEMT, let me tell the listeners what this is, essentially it's Eye wiggling, I'd like to give it a really technical scientific label with lots of wow, however, essentially, that is what IEMT is, it's eye wiggling,

There are several models around already, already in place, EMDR with Francine Shapiro, based in work with John Grinder, however, this model was specifically utilized for Trauma, and it looked at how people stored information, integrated experience. EMDR focused on trauma relief.

Steve & Connierea Andreas created another level of this work also with trauma, but in slightly different ways.

Now, I was looking at how it works and what works, and most importantly what doesn't work.

There were two things I observed, in eye movement models.  One, it didn't work with future based events. Eye movements work with the past very well and it works really well with this. However, when I'm anxious with a meeting next week, when applied to the future, Eye Movements didn't work. It works best with information that's already happened. So I looked at why does it only work on historically encoded information?

There must be structurally different information going on. This led me to the question of how does the brain encode past and future events. They were obviously different.

When I worked in brain surgery, doctors were moving the eyes of the patients, and they would have clients follow the pen with their eyes, and I would spot these little movements (little wiggles) with their eyes, and asked the doctors:  What does that mean? And the doctors said, "that's nothing, it's just an artifact", it's not relevant to what we're doing here in this context. So they maintained "that's nothing, it's just an
artifact".

So there are two things with eye movements:

1: It doesn't work with future items.
2: There is an eye movement that happens that neuro-surgeons dismiss it as an artifact with little contextual reference to their assessment.

When I started working with this I found sometimes it works, and other times it doesn't work.  So I modeled the differences, what are the characteristics of these eye wiggles.
 
Out of that was the birth of IEMT and that's my 2 minute introduction to what IEMT is.

With most eye movement models, it's focused on Post Traumatic Stress, and it's incredibly effective. That's not what this is. IEMT is not about trauma. 

What we are doing here, is helping people relearn what they feel and how do they know to be the way they are? How does the person learn to feel the way they do? How do they know to be the way they are?

So the person is learning the processes during the first 14 years of life, and these are the training times in our development where we learn how to be and learning who we are.

In terms of health, I can feel depressed, and that's a feeling.

Or I can see myself being, I am a depressive, a thing of identity. When people are troubled by what is happening, they don't like who they are, or what they are feeling.  I don't like me, I hate the way I'm being. I don't like me.  It's a much bigger chunk to change and this gets much bigger change, when we can affect change at this level, when we help a person change not just how they feel but also how they believe themselves to be.

Then in the early two years of training IEMT, we were gathering data and observing the big changes, and it consistently came down to changes in Identity. 

Kathy: This is brilliant, Andrew.

Andrew: And all we're getting people to do is wiggle their eyes, and it's more dynamic than what is said here, the change is very specific and tailored to the needs of the client, but to any third party observer, they are just going to see a person wiggling their eyes and another moving their arm, and we get lots of giggling happening...and that's just the best.

Kathy: How does the medical community accept this?

Andrew: I'm not sure there is actually such a thing as a "medical community". A paper gets widely published, is that the view of one doctor or the medical community?

I have many doctors come to the training programs and also referring clients. Whether the formal channels accept this, I don't know.

My experience is the medical fields are the exact opposite and I have had no difficulty presenting to General Practitioners, and medical conferences and I get a lot of referrals from doctors.

Kathy: In your experience with individuals, ,...do you have an idea within yourself as to why people develop these kinds of symptoms?

Andrew: It's a bit tricky, because there are so many ways people can hurt, every type of thinking, emotional and physical are all ways to hurt, and constant changing environments, and people that are traumatized by life itself, even people coming out of countries with war & trauma and those life experiences. 

Why people create symptoms to me are the patterns in suffering... In post traumatic stress, instances of crime, and people from war torn environments all produce symptoms of coping

I see two reoccurring themes:

People who want to go back and change things from the past, and they want to go back to where their life was before this nightmare happened before. To undo it. Their outcome, their desire, or goal, is to go back to be the person they were before this event happened. I want to go back to where I
was before this happened.

Trauma changes people and they don't like who they have become. So the flashbacks and the relationships that antagonize and hurt them and the people they love are the symptoms that occur.

So with Post Traumatic Stress they don't like they way they have become, however, they can never go back, because they will always be the person the thing happened to. So this is one tricky area, working here, it's a module we do the first day in IEMT.

The other is the person with the long-term symptom. The outcome is often to get others to understand what happened to them. It may be a characteristic that of the person even before this event happened, the need to be understood. So if I'm hurting because something unimaginable has happened, and I want others to understand, and people take up that campaign trail, like raising awareness, so I'll feel better when everyone else changes their awareness of what happened to me. .  So the change is externalized to the patient. When they get it, I can change it.

So these two things really cripple people from being able to change and get their life in order. I have other patient groups, such as chronic fatigue...Go see Austin, he's the last resort! And people often come to me as a last resort. I'm Austin, the last resort!

There are two things that I see most, and it sounds a little insulting, and it's because it probably is, and that is, the lack of creativity, and the lack of appropriate effort.  They have one idea of how it should be solved. If I can just get that single answer, knock me out in hypnosis and when I wake up all my problems will be gone… and I tell you, I'd be so rich if this were possible!

Classically, this is the problem. A lack of creativity how do I get myself out of this… where is the magic bullet, hypnotize me and knock me out...so when I wake up I'll be different. We've encouraged people on mass not to be creative. We have really talked people out of creativity. Creativity it is not encouraged. Culturally we don't encourage this. So people look for the conformity, the easiest thing to do, what is culturally confirmative. And then there is the lack of appropriate effort.

Some people are good at doing the very thing that will help them...and others are very good at consistently not doing the very thing that will help them. I see this in medical circles, I see it as well, creating an illusion of applying effort, but really there is not much effort. People are really looking for the solution to be handed to them, that lack of creativity, not willing to explore options. People want the one single line that will explain everything. So long as the event exists to explain the problems they don't take any action to solve the problems in my life.

It's crazy, but I think it's the nature of the species.

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IEMT is a proposed brief therapy and an evolving field that enables a core state change in minimal time. The two day practitioner training covers both the emotional and identity imprint models, the relevant neurological anatomy, physiology and the manifest neurological phenomena and the skills required to deliver the model effectively and elegantly.
For the first time in Vancouver, Canada, we present IEMT Developer Andrew T. Austin, who will be teaching IEMT Certified Practitioner and Advanced Level Courses. 
These workshops will equip therapists with IEMT Skills which they can use in their work. Notes for participants will be included, and cost does not include lunch.

Practitioner Level Training: $299
Advanced Level Training: $399
Both Levels: $698
If you book before January 31 2012
5% discount: $663

For information on Metaphors for Movement please click here