Healing past traumas Suryani's way

By Rani Rachmani Moediarta

JAKARTA (JP): Past traumas make us unhappy, prevent us from adapting to new situations and cause psychological or social disorders. Healing these traumas involves editing the memory through spiritual meditation, instead of just prescribing chemical medications, Ni Luh Ketut Suryani believes.

As a physician and professor in psychiatry, she is authorized and capable of prescribing modern medicines for her patients. Although she still does so when needed, she does not believe in the efficacy of chemical medicines as much as her colleagues in psychiatry.

"I am a doctor and as so I use medical stuff. But I am also a spiritual believer and as such, I know medicines only work well to reduce symptoms, but are ineffective on the causes of mental disorders or even spiritual problems like past traumas," she said in an interview to discuss her method of healing, which combines her scientific notions of psychiatry and ancient Balinese spirituality.

Forgotten spirit

"Probably, I am notorious among my colleagues for using this method. Some of them despise me for being unscientific, some disagree with me directly and others are just skeptical. But my own experience as a doctor in psychiatry has shown me the drawbacks of modern medicine," she revealed.

Modern medicine considers patients only as functioning bodies and minds. That, according to Suryani, is incomplete. "As a doctor, I gave my Balinese patients medicine but they did not feel well afterward. The medicine probably helped them recover functionally and socially, but they continued feeling empty in their minds before they went to a balian (Balinese spiritual healer) to get a ritual healing to return to feeling well and alive."

Being Balinese, she believes that in every human being there is ruh, or spirit, or soul, or life or divine energy, or whatever you call it, which is integrated within us from the time of conception. Her theory of the spirit is that it is our source of life, inspiration and ability. It influences our physical and mental development in numerous ways to prepare us for real life in the mundane world. Many scientific books in the West have examined this early influence of the spirit.

The theory goes that the fetus in the womb is under the dominant influence of the spirit because it is always in a "trance", or homeostatic condition. This condition is maintained by the monotonous rhythm of the circulation of the mother's blood surrounding the fetus. It can feel stimulation coming from outside the mother, but what it feels the most is the mother's feelings. These interactions form the basis of the child's personality.

The influence of the spirit is continued in a newborn. A baby is also always in a "trance". (That is why sometimes we find a baby smiling or laughing on her own or while sleeping). But as the baby grows up and starts learning new things, the influence of the spirit, or intuition, or the sixth sense, is replaced by logic.

"So, in my opinion, being healthy is not only being well physically, mentally and socially, but also spiritually. While the spirit is the source of the highest knowledge and the energy of life, it is not yet included in modern medicine because it is thought to belong to the realm of religion or belief, and it is empirically difficult to prove. This significant part of human beings has been ignored and not explored in modern medicine, which focuses mainly on the mind-body instead."

Hidden traumas

In modern psychology, the first five years are seen as crucial in the stages of child development. According to Prof. Suryani, the crucial period is much, much earlier, that is, when the child is still in the womb.

Most people don't believe the things that happen to a mother during her pregnancy are maintained in her child's memory. Negative feelings such as fear and anger, and positive feelings such as happiness, love, joy and peace experienced by the mother are absorbed by the fetus' subconscious memory, forming a data base for her or his personality.

How much and how deep the data depends on how intense the feelings. This data base is updated automatically and continuously with every new experience. Suryani has an analogy that our brain is like a computer with a very vast memory. Any new experience is processed and becomes a new entry in the memory. So, depending on how we process the experience, we always have new memories.

Suryani explained: "In the healing process hypnotherapy that I use, I never touch deep, hidden memories of early fetus experiences, unless t is so disturbing to the patient that it comes up. Since the memory of the brain is like the memory of a computer, we have to be careful not to damage the data. What I do is call up a disturbing memory, help the patient review the particular experience and then reprocess or edit it before putting it back in the memory bank. I do not erase it."

She said anyone undergoing hypnotherapy should caution the hypnotherapist in advance not to erase, but only to edit any disturbing memory. "Erasing the memory is similar to damaging the data in a computer and should not be done."

Meditation

Suryani believes everybody can return to the "trance" state of a fetus through meditation. She defines meditation as the conscious process of concentrating our busy mind to a single focus so that the spirit can take over the mental or logical functioning of the mind. It is similar to yoga exercises or mantra chanting.

Since its goal is to let the spirit dominate, Suryani stresses that it is important while meditating not to use the mind or mental activities like visualizing or imagining.

Her method is very simple and she claims to have discovered it as a gift from God during her spiritual search. It is as simple as the following:

You sit down in the Buddha position, arms resting on your lap. Pick out a point on the floor a meter in front of you and focus on it. After your eyes begin to feel heavy, close them slowly, checking your position -- back and head straight. Focus on your nose and feel the air coming in and out. Continue to feel the air flow in and out through your nose. After some time, along with the air being taken in, feel the energy from outside enter through your nose and go through to your feet, your hands and finally through your whole body. Do not be worried if you do not feel anything, just focus on breathing in and out.

Besides its many benefits to the mind and body, spiritual meditation can help us find our true self. It can be used to heal hidden early traumas, as early as in the womb. That was demonstrated during Suryani's workshops Basic Meditation and Healing Traumas Through Meditation, held in a hotel ballroom in Jakarta last month.

About 100 participants were guided through meditation and came to the "trance" condition, found their true selves, recalled their traumas, drew them with crayons on a piece of drawing paper, reviewed the experiences, reprocessed or edited them and put them back into memory.

Some participants could recall traumas going back to early childhood. Among other things shown from the pictures drawn, there were sibling rivalries, the loss of a parent, child or other loved one, violence and drug abuse.

After the meditation workshop, Suryani said her intention in introducing her meditation technique went beyond helping the sick. "I want everybody to be physically, mentally and spiritually healthy, at little cost. The health benefits of meditation can make one more productive and creative in living life."

She said: "This method, you can call it Suryani's method of healing, is more sustainable, much cheaper and safer than using modern chemical medications with their adverse side effects. But it is not widely used here because we never believe something so simple can be good. We tend to look up to the western findings. We are still followers, not pioneers. We will turn on when the West starts popularizing it."

She added, "I really want to help those victims of rape. I wish I could meet them and heal their traumas."