What does "primal" mean?
Primal comes from the Latin word primus meaning:
"first". Here it means the first time a behaviour, a defense
or a feeling was established in an individual. For example, if a
person generally views his or her live as "difficult", we teach
you to look for the first (primal) time this feeling was established.
This feeling could originate with a "difficult" first grade teacher
or a "difficult" birth. By uncovering, reliving and resolving the
experience (primalling) the individual can see how this crucial
first experience has contaminated the view of their whole life.
Through Primal work they have power to change their life view to
a positive and successful one.
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What does integration mean?
Integration comes from the Latin word integrare
meaning "to make whole". Here it means to connect the feelings
in the body to the thoughts in the head. It means that the mind
and the heart are brought into unity. It means that the past and
the present are harmonized so that the future will be brighter.
Integration also involves the connecting of the self to the outer
world of family, friends, work and society.
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What if I can't remember
my childhood?
This is a very common condition due to the body's
anaesthesia mechanism which blocks excessive pain. When a person
is severely injured in an accident, the body goes into shock, resulting
in physical unconsciousness. Likewise, when a child is severely
physically or emotionally traumatized at home or in school his or
her body provides a similar block resulting in loss of conscious
memory. However , the memory imprint is stored in the body's cells
and brain. Hints to the presence of these stored traumatic memories
are physical conditions like twitches, skin problems, headaches,
backaches, stomach aches, anxiety or irrational fears, to name only
a few. The gradual primal process slowly opens up this memory bank
and frees the body of these at first incomprehensible ailments and
aches.
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What is a primal scream?
Unfortunately this title of Arthur Janov's first book
misleads a lot of people to call this therapy the Primal Scream
Therapy. However, it is true that many repressed feelings are so
intense that they can only be truthfully expressed with loud screaming.
Persons who suffered severe parental beatings, usually need to scream
for a full healing. Incest survivors who had to keep quiet in the
bedroom, when the crime was taking place invariably need to scream
out the pain. However, this is not true for every client, and one
need not be afraid of this part of the therapy.
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Is this therapy scary?
No, it is exciting and adventuresome. In our centre
each client goes at his or her own rate. The most heard comment
is: "amazing". The client is always in control and the process carries
on at a natural, safe and even pace.
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How long does it take?
Every client is different and the length of time varies
with each individual. Many people benefit immediately upon reading
the literature. When people have gone through our "Start Phase"
that is an intensive learning experience to feel, most have a clear
understanding of how they want to proceed with their process. Some
people stop the therapy after several months. Some people continue
for many years as we do ourselves. We have been surprised to discover
the large amount of pain in most people and in ourselves and how
long it takes to resolve it all. However, when an important primal
has taken place the danger of recurring of this old patterns is
greatly reduced or eliminated all together. Joy and peace of mind
carries life to unexpected treasures.
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Why does reliving old
feelings resolve them?
The reliving of old feelings targets those
old feelings that never have been felt properly, because
the circumstances prevented them and pressed them into the unconscious
storage of repression. The surviving mechanism of our body and life
system has this possibility to store unsolved pain into the unconscious
to keep functioning. These unresolved and repressed painful cellular
memories haunt us at any look-alike situation that resembles the
original pain-inducing set. We get angry or excited for no "logical"
reason. It's the cellular memories reason that kicks in here.
Example of my own life: When I first started to
live with my wife and she wanted to touch lovingly my head to
caress, I cringed and could not stand it. Through my primal regression
I relived = expressed the original primal
pain of a terrible forceps birth, that almost crushed my head
and killed me. After that I lost this strange symptom, not wanting
to be touched on my head. And why could I not cry out immediately
and express my furious anger to the doctor and midwife who treated
me so unfeelingly rough? I would have died instantly, because
of the vastness of pain for this little newborn. I needed to be
quiet and suppress all pain and keep my breath to survive this
birth experience.
You can find similar situations in your daily life
that trigger reactions, which you have not in control and you cannot
simply explain them. They definitely come from an old unresolved
pain and will disappear, when you have made the "primal" connection.
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Has the therapy that
you practice at the Primal Center the goal, getting the client to
feel their pain and not to analyze it?
Yes, we assist and teach our clients to learn to feel.
Only he or she can afterwards "analyse" the experience and know
what really happened. We understand ourselves as witness and assistant,
to confirm the truth of his or her feeling.
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How closely do you follow
Janov's theory and criteria for practicing primal therapy?
We accept and practice his theories and criteria.
How primal pain influences the whole life of a person and that it
heals, when it can be felt and connected. We are very thankful to
Janov for his theory and criteria and we assist our clients with
all the accumulated knowing of our own therapy that we continue
since 1978.
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Is there anything you
do not agree with as far as his understanding and practice of primal
therapy
No.
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Can you get me to truly
feel?
We provide a safe environment to learn to feel. Whether
we can get you to truly feel, depends on whether you truly
want to learn and find the courage to break through your old habits.
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Are there persons, who
could not learn to feel?
Yes. Some persons need to suppress their primal pain
with such powerful blocking mechanisms like extensive use of drugs
or alcohol, that it is very difficult for them to access their real
feelings. It is mostly a matter of time and will to brake through
old habits.
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Is hypnosis involved?
No. The process is totally natural and takes place
on the feeling level.
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Is it "age regression"
or true primal therapy?
In a true "Primal" that we teach, you regress automatically
to the age and time, where you were hurt and beyond that to the
time, when you still were whole. There exactly originates the power
of healing.
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What you practice, is
it the same as Janov does?
We did not meet Arthur Janov, yet. We started our
therapy with a therapist, who came from his centre. Our practice
might differ because after two and a half years with this therapist
we had many possibilities of complex work through contacts and training
through the International Primal Association. (IPA). We practice
from our heart and our own primalling experience since 1978. That
he put us on a list of therapists, whom he does not know - yet,
lets some people in the primal community suggest, that you could
see this list as a source for good therapists. We have had clients
who started at his center without success, who could find their
real primal connection here. We were told that we involve ourselves
very personally in the progress of our clients and we stay in contact
by email or telephone for years to come.
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Why do you want me to
stop smoking a month before I start therapy? Why can't I stop when
I start the intensive?
We want the same from people who smoke or take drugs
because their helper the nicotine or drug help them keep
their pain under control and not feel it. When they want to wait
till the last minute before starting their therapy to stop this
drug intake, they have great trouble with their whole system and
are very difficult to help into their feeling. We can assist persons
best, when they start showing their commitment to work towards healing
ahead of time.
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Well, you or someone
talks of the egg welcoming the sperm with open arms. What it the woman
was taken by force. Would the sperm then take the egg by force? What
would be the "memory" then?
The egg chooses the sperm and pulls it in, alright.
That happens a few hours after the actual intercourse. The sperm
does everything it can to get there. Both are at this time already
single independent living entities. If the woman was "taken by force",
her egg and the sperm of the man involved are imprinted with the
specific feeling state about that incident and pass this "memory"
on to the child's every cell. This growing person will have to deal
with that historical fact for a whole life time unless he or she
can at one point express his or her real feeling about it and deal
with it. That's what we do here with the Primal work. At that moment
the ban of this memory will be broken and the original "primal"
purpose of this persons life (which is with our knowing a "spiritual"
entity) can take charge. You might imagine that the real feeling
about that memory can be everything from killer rage to sadness
to feeling of a tremendous loss.
We are not only sperm and egg. Our "soul", our "spirit",
or whatever you like to call it, is independent of everything father
or mother felt, thought, or did. In the philosophical sense, it
is the 'tertium comparationis', the third connecting part in the
whole entity. It's the unique YOU, free from the control or influence
of whatever the parents felt or did in their own lives.
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