
Using
NLP and Time Line Therapy™ Techniques while Healing Cancer
Copyright © 1996, 2002, 2004,
Tad James, M.S., Ph.D.

No claim is made by the author of this article
as to the inherent healing powers of Time Line Therapy™
Techniques,
in fact, quite to the contrary, the author believes that all healing
power lies within us, and that healing takes place when the client
establishes good communication with his Unconscious Mind. Nothing
described here is designed to replace good Medical treatment in the
case of disease. In fact, the techniques
mentioned should be used with any Medical treatment. .
To find out
more about all our trainings in Time Line Therapy®, NLP and Hypnosis
techniques for healing click here.
There are three levels of Time Line Therapy®
training:
-
The
NLP Practitioner Training
(includes Time Line Therapy®
Practitioner Training)
-
The
NLP Master Practitioner Training (includes Time Line Therapy®
Practitioner Training)
- The Time Line Therapy®
Trainer's Training.

Exciting News:
In the past 10 years, there has been more and
more exciting news in the field of dis-ease (and I do
misspell the word on purpose). Old concepts on the nature of
consciousness, and on the nature of the body are changing. We have
been using many of these concepts in Time Line Therapy™ for some
time now, and many of these concepts are new. Let me warn you in
advance, that this article may change your viewpoint about your mind
and your body. It has a potential to be controversial. This change
in the structure of our belief systems is necessary to affect a
change in the way we assist people in healing themselves and others.
Some of the more exciting conceptual work regarding Time Line Therapy has been done by a Medical Doctor in Massachusetts. Deepak Chopra is one of the new breed of health care practitioners who is speaking out, and in a way that will change how we view the mind and the body. Chopra's credentials are impressive. He is an endocrinologist, and former chief of staff of the New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts. Chopra calls himself a quantum biologist, which means the application of quantum physics to biology. He says that the body is a quantum mechanical device, and that it is subject to the laws of quantum physics and not Newtonian physics. If you aren't aware of the meaning of these terms yet, please take every means to find out.
In Quantum Healing, 1986, Chopra gave
us a new paradigm for how the body handles its own rejuvenation
processes. How often does the body renew itself? Older wisdom had it
pegged at around seven years. Chopra has revised that estimate
downward to roughly one year (approximately 98% totally renewed).
Based on the estimates of quantum biology, you have a brand new
stomach lining every 4 days, new skin every 30 days, a new liver in
6 weeks, even the skeleton is replaced every three months. These
concepts are vital as we structure the metaphors for treatment while
we work with our clients in the healing process.
Another of the more important notions of
quantum biology is that consciousness is not localized to any one
place. Is there any evidence for this?
Neuropeptides:
Twenty years ago a group of scientists discovered in the
brain, a set of chemicals known as neuropeptides. Neuro because they
are found in the brain, and peptides because they are protein like
molecules. So every time you have a thought or a feeling, a desire,
an instinct, or a drive, each of these affects our nervous system by
means of specific messenger molecules called neuropeptides.
There are receptors to these neuropeptides not
only in brain cells but also in cells of the immune system. So when
the scientists began looking at the various immune system cells that
protect us from cancer and infection (t-cells, for example), they
found that there were receptors to these same neuropeptides in those
cells. In fact, the word neuropeptide became obsolete, because
they're not confined to the brain. They are floating around in the
bloodstream and going to all our different organs. Since there are
receptors to these neuropeptides in cells in the immune system, then
it becomes obvious that, as Chopra says, "The immune system is
constantly eavesdropping on our internal dialog." In NLP we would
add the following comment, "The immune system is constantly
responding to the pictures, sounds, feelings, smells, tastes, and
the internal dialog that we hold in our mind."
The Unconscious Mind:
Since the Unconscious Mind (also known as the "body mind") is the
controlling intelligence in the body, it is also the connection
between the mind and the immune system. One of the major theories of
Time Line Therapy™, NLP, and Hypnosis is that the Unconscious Mind
can communicate with any part of the body at any time it so desires,
and can, in this way, stimulate the healing process. It seems that
there is, in fact, neurological evidence for this idea.
Every thought, every emotion, every desire,
every internal representation you have is monitored, overheard,
viewed. Your immune system is watching, listening, feeling! It has
been shown that grieving people have grieving immune cells. If the
grieving goes on for a prolonged period of time, then the immune
system has also the self talk of, "Leave me alone, I don't want to
be bothered." Such people are, according to Chopra, susceptible to
cancer and other infectious diseases.
That is why it's so important to understand
that negative emotions which are trapped in the body are not
conducive to health, and why we release all of a person's negative
emotions when we do healing processes in Time Line Therapy™
techniques.
The Significant
Emotional Experience:
Another major theory of our Time Line Therapy®
training is that many mental and physical dis-eases are preceded by
a significant emotional experience (SEE) of a negative nature which
may appear in the client's recent past, or even further in the past,
such as during childhood. If negative, and depending on the
intensity, the SEE has the potential to create or be the source of
some emotional, mental or even physical dis-ease occurring in the
body.
Let's define some Time Line Therapy terms so that we are
speaking the same language: (I borrow the notion of an SEE from the
sociologist Dr. Morris Massey, in the book The People Puzzle.)
First event means the very first time that an experience happens, or
the root cause of a first event occurring (this is also called root
cause). Significant emotional experience is any major, fully
associated, highly charged emotional event wherever it occurs.
Emotional chain is the process that the Unconscious Mind uses to
connect experiences of a similar nature. (The term used in
Time
Line Therapy and The Basis of Personality [1988, Tad James,
M.S., Ph.D.] is gestalt which means a collection of memories around
a certain subject.)
The potential of a negative SEE to create
dis-ease is based on the trapped emotions which remain in the memory
because they are stored in the body. The work of Dr. Paul Goodwin, a
neural physicist at Alaska Pacific University, implies that the
trapped emotions in the body have the possibility of creating
functional (software, non-physical) boundaries which can impede the
flow of nerve information through the neural network pathways.
Testing Memories for
Negative Emotions:
You can tell if there are still any negative emotions in one
of your past memories by going back to that memory, and remembering
what happened looking through your own eyes. (Warning: Do not try
this with memories which contain trauma or phobia.) If, as you
remember the memory, you feel any negative emotions in your body,
then there is a negative emotional content to the memory, and there
is trapped emotion in your body. The trapped negative emotion, if
you feel it, is the basis for dis-ease.
Getting Rid of the
Negative Emotions:
Now, other than dis-ease, why get rid of negative
emotions which are trapped in one's body? Well, for example, imagine
a salesperson, (s)he has a dream, (s)he's well trained, knows how to
sell, and (s)he wants to make more money. But every time (s)he goes
to close the sale, fear comes up. That salesperson is not going to
do his or her best. Certainly the closing ratio will not be as high
as it could be without the fear.
Now imagine that same salesperson without the
fear. Which one do you thing will do better? Of course, the second
one.
Or in a relationship, perhaps you once got
hurt, and so you said, "I'm never going to let that happen to me
again." So every time you get to a certain point in the relationship
you begin to feel those old negative feelings, and so you end the
relationship. More importantly, each relationship ends in exactly
the same way each time. You may not even remember the source of the
negative feelings, but at a certain point there they are, and the
relationship ends.
Now imagine being without those negative
emotions, do you think that it would improve the relationship? Of
course.
Obviously, the creation of dis-ease requires
more trapped negative emotions than those in the situations we've
just discussed. However, the process is the same--the Unconscious
Mind represses (to whatever extent it needs to) memories with
unresolved negative emotions. It does this for the "sanity" of the
conscious mind. Since the Unconscious Mind does repress the memories
with the negative emotions in them, the emotions get stuck in the
body and aren't released.
Time Line Therapy™
has the potential of releasing the trapped emotion in memories in a
very short period of time. In fact, we usually release most of a
person's negative emotions in the Secret of Creating Your Future®
Seminars which we give all over the United States, Canada and
Australia. My experience with now thousands of people of all walks
of life is that it is possible to release all of a person's negative
emotions from past memories in as little as 4-5
hours. That release of negative emotions has a profound effect on
the person.
Student Gets Rid of
Sadness:
This happened to one of the students in a recent Secret of Creating
Your Future®
Seminar. After the seminar, I learned she had been severely abused
as a child and had, for most of her life, been depressed. At times
she was also suicidal. She had visited psychologists and
psychiatrists on and off for most of her life.
During the seminar, she paid close attention
to releasing her major negative emotions, including sadness and
depression, the trauma from the abuse and a number of her limiting
decisions from the past. Her experience after the weekend was that
she was no longer able to access the feelings of depression. In
fact, when I saw her two weeks later, she came running up to me and
said, "Do you know I haven't been depressed for the last two weeks,
at all? And do you know what else, I seem to be laughing for no
reason at all!"
Releasing Negative Emotions:
Not only does the release of negative emotions clear up physical
health, it also has the potential to improve the mental and
emotional health of the person. This paradigm is no longer just a
theory. What verified the basic theory of Time Line Therapy™
is a result of the research of German
Medical Doctors, whose research now encompasses
45,000 cases of cancer research.
Starts with a Severe
Trauma:
A growing number of Medical Doctors now believe
that all cancer starts with a severe psychological conflict
that throws you into shock. Here is what happens:
"You isolate yourself, and do not share your emotions with others.
You are upset and do not share with others--you're obsessed about
the conflict. This conflict changes your life completely--you will
never be the same." (This is a description of
what we call a major Significant Emotional Experience, or
SEE.) This type of SEE, according to current
thinking, usually occurs on the average up
to one to three years prior to the onset of the first
symptoms of cancer.
Trapped Emotions:
When the SEE occurs, the emotions associated with the SEE
are trapped in a certain spot in the brain, and according to
research, a "short circuit" occurs. (He
says that the physiological process is close to, or like a stroke.)
A number of doctors have related the
location in the brain, with the tumor
location in the body, and the type of
trauma which caused it.
When a major SEE like this occurs, there is a
trapped emotion in the brain, the brain suffers something like a
mild stroke and starts sending wrong information to a certain part
of the body, and then a cancer growth starts in that area. The
nature of the SEE determines the area of the brain, and the type of
cancer. The rate of growth is also dependent on the SEE. As soon as
the SEE is eliminated, there is an edema
that occurs in the area where the trapped emotions were. This edema
can be seen on a CT-Scan! Once the edema occurs, the cancer growth
stops, and healing begins. A trained MD
can see the edema on the CT-Scan, and know about the area of the
brain and, therefore, the type of cancer. Often, we forget about our
conflicts and SEE's, so we aren't sure of the source. Areas where
there were old, trapped emotions will often show up on the CT-Scan
as "old stroke" areas.
This is important to understand in the
treatment of cancer, because the immune system
may not have to fight cancer cells. The immune system does
not even have to recognize cancer cells,
necessarily, because the problem is in the brain--the answer
is to heal the brain. This happens in the resolution of the initial
conflict or SEE. There are a growing number of
doctors who feel that cutting, burning and/or poisoning
a tumor is not the answer. If a tumor
affects the proper functioning of an organ then the tumor will have
to be cut off, but not the rest of the organ. This means that only a
total of perhaps 2-3% of the cancer will
have to be cut out in the process of treatment.
From Recent Trauma:
Current thinking is that it is not the
childhood trauma that causes the cancer; it is a more recent trauma.
It is also important to understand that it is the first event that
allows the more recent SEE to create a lesion in the brain.
One procedure in
addition to Medical treatment is to release the SEE using
what seem to be traditional psychological methods.
But, doing this, even an imagined SEE is
sufficient to bring back a relapse of the cancer symptoms. Our
experience with Time Line Therapy™,
however, is that the recurrence of the cancer can be
prevented if the emotion on the first
event is also released.
It is important to note that even an imagined
conflict/SEE can be enough to start or restart the cancer symptoms,
even if it seems small or inconsequential to you. For example,
in research done in Germany, a woman who
had cervical cancer got it by re-reading her dead husband's love
letters, and feeling as though in his death he was refusing to have
intercourse with her. The SEE can be as simple as the running away
of a pet, the stock market going down, losing a job,
terrorism, or even listening to a neighbor gossip. Whether or
not any of these actually make a difference in your physiology
depends on your own personal history, and whether there is an
emotional chain present for the SEE to connect to.
According to the current
thinking, carcinogens may not play
as big a role in the creation of cancer.
This idea will, I'm certain, raise some eyebrows in certain
committed health food types (of which I am one), but
this does raise some disturbing questions.
Why, for example, do women smokers have a significantly lower rate
of bronchial and lung cancer than do men smokers?
Research says that women smokers have fewer territorial
conflicts (the type of SEE that causes bronchial cancer) than do
men, and so the percentage of that type cancer in women is lower. Of
course, as women proceed more and more into their rightful place of
equality in the workplace, we can expect the statistics to move more
into equality too. So there is a price for success!
Now what about situations where the cancer has
been found to spread (metastasize) in the body to other areas of the
body? The commonly accepted theory in medicine right now, is that a
cancerous cell splits off from the main cancer and travels through
the blood stream to other areas of the body, where new cancer growth
then starts. Research flatly rejects this
idea. First of all, according to the current
thinking it has not been possible for researchers to cause
cancer cells to metastasize in any laboratory experiment.
Rather,what really happens is that the patient goes to see
a Medical Doctor,
and the doctor gets suspicious. So the doctor orders extensive
testing. The report says, "Cancer." And it sounds so final! The
patient is terrified, knowing life will never be the same, creating
a new SEE. In this case the fear causes lymph cancer, and the fear
of death will start lung cancer (two of the major places to where
cancer is "known" to metastasize). Now the well meaning medical
doctor says, "It is all over the body." And the body responds.
Another scenario, the patient undergoes
surgery, and feels a lack of self worth. If the reproductive system
is operated on, the patient will feel like less of a man or woman,
and may say "I'll never function the same way again," or, "Now I'm
worthless." Another SEE, another cancer. The process is not the
spreading of cancer, it is the spreading of SEE's.
The Process of
Cancer:
Now how do you use this information to assist the healing process
using Time Line Therapy™
Techniques? It seems that there are two
main stages in the process of cancer:
1. The Dis-ease Phase: SEE occurs, the
client has no strategy for dealing with the trauma, the emotion is
trapped in an area of the brain, the brain begins to send wrong
signals to the area of the body, and a tumor growth occurs in a
corresponding area of the body. During this phase, the patient feels
uncomfortable, tense, sometimes sleepless, and has cold hands and
feet. This indicates activity of the sympathetic nervous system.
(The sympathetic nervous system is the system that we use in
thinking, planning, action, etc.) A healthy person can switch from
the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system at will.
During the Dis-ease Phase the client is in the sympathetic system
only.
2. The Healing Phase: The SEE is
released, conflict is resolved, the trapped emotion in the brain is
released, an edema in the area of the brain occurs, and the tumor
stops growing. In this Time Line Therapy phase the client immediately switches to the
parasympathetic system. The client will feel relaxed, tired, will
need more sleep and be more hungry.
My experience with clients leads me to say
that you can tell which phase a client is in. "Marlene" had several
bouts with cancer before she came to me. (In fact the Medical Doctor
who referred her to me said that he had little hope for her.) The
first session, Marlene could barely walk into the room. Marlene
looked gray; she could not hold her head upright for more than a
minute or two; and she spoke so softly that I had to strain to hear
her.
The first assault of this dis-ease was in
August 1984 with breast cancer. The first tip-off was a lump in the
right breast in 1983. Between 1984 and 1990, she had cancer in the
mid-back, hip, right shoulder, back, pelvic area, left shoulder,
neck, and liver. She had surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy in the
process of treating all these cancers. Of course, by the time I met
her she was very weak, and as I mentioned, she looked gray.
In taking her history, I found that she was
suffering or had suffered all her life from a number of negative
emotions including depression, sadness, fear, guilt, anger, hate,
anxiety, hurt feeling, pain, low self esteem, and jealousy. So I
asked her what had happened one to three years prior to the lump in
1983. She gasped and said that in 1980, she and her husband had
first met, and had gotten together. In 1981, in spite of a number of
fears and misgivings, and even though he was extremely aggressive,
she had married the man. He had then systematically cut her off from
all her friends and family.
During the first intervention, we released all
of her negative emotions including depression, sadness, fear, guilt,
anger, hate, anxiety, hurt feeling, pain, low self-esteem, and
jealousy. In addition, we eliminated her
decision to have the lump in the right breast, and any subsequent
choices for less than perfect health.
During the intervention her hands became hot.
She felt tired, sleepy, and extremely hungry. That night she had the
best night's sleep she had in five years. During the therapy, she
shifted over from the Dis-ease Phase to the Healing Phase. The next
day she came in alert, smiling, and all trace of the gray had
disappeared.
Sometimes the Healing Phase can be
uncomfortable. A client called me the day after a Time Line Therapy™
session, and said, "My whole body is
uncomfortable, it aches--especially my head." I told him to get a
deep tissue massage, and enjoy a hot tub, and to be happy because
the reaction of the body was telling him that we were releasing some
major "stuff" (a technical term). According to
current thinking, if the tumor has been growing for more than
9 months it is possible that the client will not be totally
comfortable during the Healing Phase. In this case the resolution of
the Dis-ease Phase may produce other dis-comfort which could include
swelling of the brain, edema, heart arrhythmia or other temporary
organ dysfunction, headache, migraine, or even mild epilepsy in some
cases.
During the Healing Phase of Time Line Therapy, the client needs to
be comfortable. Schedule the Healing Phase to have a minimum of
stress on the client. While healing, get away from it all, take a
nap each time you yawn, exercise daily, and eat and drink
moderately. Above all, no responsibilities except healing.
There is hope--we have had some excellent
results in assisting clients to relieve their symptoms. Of course,
anyone with a life threatening dis-ease should see a Medical Doctor
first before seeking a non-traditional route like Time Line Therapy™
techniques. (Time Line Therapy™,
NLP and Hypnosis are not a replacement for Medical treatment.) Even
so, we have had results that now prove the theories we have been
using in the processes of healing various symptoms that produce the
illusion of dis-ease.
A client I saw in London had bladder cancer,
and had been operated on twice with laser surgery. The second time
the surgeon missed, and cut his backbone. With the third recurrence
of the symptoms, he decided that he would like to seek a different
route. (The M.D. referral said that the surgery had missed getting
out all the cancer the last two times.) When I saw him in London, we
released all his negative emotions, and
limiting decisions, including the decision to have the symptom that
looked like cancer. Six weeks later when he went to the doctor, all
traces of the cancer had disappeared such that the doctors denied
that he had ever had the cancer. He then asked them, "Well why did
you operate on me?"
New Hope:
There is hope--the University of Calgary, Department of Medicine has
investigated, and now uses Time Line Therapy and The Basis of
Personality as a text book in one of its oncology (cancer)
treatment classes for training
Medical Doctors.
There is hope--several psychology departments
including St. Joseph's College in Calumet, Michigan are teaching
Time Line Therapy™
in the college to psychology students, and they are using The
Secret of Creating Your Future™
(1989, James).
There is hope! Because there are some
enlightened doctors in the world who are willing to stop doing what
doesn't work, and start looking for what does produce results. Then
they use what they have learned to make changes that will affect the
planet (and in case you hadn't noticed that's what my life is
about). I think that attitude is wonderful wherever I find it, in
our own community and especially in the medical and psychological
communities, and I salute it.
Further, I am sincerely honored that some
enlightened members of the medical and psychological community are
willing to continue to learn and to look to Time Line Therapy™
techniques to provide other alternatives for healing.

No claim is made by the author of this article
as to the inherent healing powers of Time Line Therapy™ Techniques,
in fact, quite to the contrary, the author believes that all healing
power lies within us, and that healing takes place when the client
establishes good communication with his Unconscious Mind. Nothing
described here is designed to replace good Medical treatment in the
case of disease. In fact, the techniques
mentioned should be used with any Medical treatment.
To find out
more about all our trainings in Time Line Therapy®, NLP and Hypnosis
techniques for healing click here.
There are three levels of Time Line Therapy®
training:
-
The
NLP Practitioner Training
(includes Time Line Therapy®
Practitioner Training)
-
The
NLP Master Practitioner Training
(includes Time Line Therapy®
Practitioner Training)
- The Time Line Therapy®
Trainer's Training.
Click here if you would like to read about our
Product or
Trainings
For More Information, call us on:
Australia: 1800 133 433
+612-9221-9221
or e-Mail at:
bb@nlpcoaching.com
US Office: +1-888-440-4823
US Office from Outside the US: +1-702
440-4823
Email:
mailboxUSA@nlpcoaching.com
Email:
candace@abh-abnlp.com