Healing past traumas Suryani's way

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."