Journey Therapy

Journey Therapy is a physical and emotional healing technique based on a guided visualization described in the book The Journey by Brandon Bays. The process is based on Neurolinguistic Programming Timeline Therapy and involves imagining yourself travelling through your body to a location where trapped emotion is stored. During the visualization you have the opportunity to get complete with people from the past, say what you feel you needed to say to them at the age that you got hurt, allow them to respond, release the painful emotion and forgive them. Releasing the trapped emotion heals the trauma and sets you free to move on with your life.

The process is guided by unconscious responses to questions from the therapist, and facilitates releasing emotions that you may not even be aware of. It works best in the context of a trusting therapeutic relationship where you feel free to let your imagination run free and express whatever emotions arise during the process.

I recently conducted a Physical Journey process with a chronically ill client who I had been coaching for some time. It led her to release pain and resentment towards her parents that we had talked about many times in previous sessions but never really accessed. At the end of the 90 minute process she said: “Wow! That was amazing.”

Although I am not a Journey Practitioner as I haven’t completed the training conducted by Brandon Bays, the process is simple to facilitate and complements the other emotional trauma healing work that I do, so I’m happy to offer [intlink id=”1511″ type=”page”]Journey Therapy sessions via Skype[/intlink], which typically last two hours.

Advantages:

• It’s fun and creative
• Anyone can learn to facilitate it
• The visualization process bypasses the conscious mind’s ability to protect against and avoid painful emotions with rationalizations and story-telling
• Doesn’t require you to remember exactly what happened, so is more likely to work on very early life trauma that you may not consciously remember
• Allows for completing conversations with people who may be unwilling, unable or deceased
• Relatively easy to follow and understand

Disadvantages:

• Therapeutic value depends on the skill of the facilitator

• May not help develop your communication skills as much as conventional talking therapy
• Requires a reasonably high degree of imagination, trust, safety and willingness to engage in the process
• The one-size-fits-all approach isn’t always what the client needs

You can find out more at Brandon Bay’s The Journey.