Ex-Investment Banker talks about his healing journey

J: Medically speaking you are someone who has had a history of acute and chronic pain, and you have been through significant stress and anxiety as a result. Is this how you experience your life?

C: No. (Laughs). Through living I'm healing, I live to learn and the more I learn, the more I let go of the things that don't bring me health.

J: Does that mean that on an ongoing basis you have a sense that you're not healthy - not well?

C: Not at all. I have a sense that my life keeps getting better and better, as I learn to relax more deeply.

J: But the question I ask you is - you said that through living you are healing. And what I am asking you is do you have a sense that you are ill? That you need to be healed?

C: No.

J: OK - I'm getting a sense of your strategy toward recovery! (Laughter). So do you recognise yourself as having acute and chronic pain and having suffered significant stress and anxiety?

C: Yes, since 1990 I have had acute and chronic pain from IBS, irritable bowel syndrome.

J: Do you know what caused this?

C: I have my own theory. I lived life for many years in the fast lane, partying hard, eating and drinking well, burning the candle at both ends, and I think the consequence of that was that I become out of balance, and the acute and chronic pain was the messenger.

J: And tell me what you mean when you say pain? What was your experience of pain like?

C: It's hard to say what it used to be like in the first 10 years or so, because my experience of it has changed so much now. Because of the tension I was holding in my abdomen, intestine and bowel, going to the toilet felt like passing pieces of glass. That has been the most painful thing. Very sharp, very immediate, a pain that would just strike me out of the blue.

J: What treatment were you receiving for this?

C: Over a decade I went along with conventional medicine. I had access to private healthcare and so I went to see a Harley Street specialist and that didn't go so well. So then I...

J: In what way?

C: He recommended a treatment which was brutal. As a result of it I was immobilised for two weeks, and I was in a lot of pain.

J: Right. And how did you deal with that pain at the time?

C: By smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol.

J: And was that addressing the pain issue for you?

C: The drinking and smoking succeeded in numbing me from my life generally which wasn't working. And I wasn't paying any attention to it. These things bring their own health problems though! By conventional markers I was doing well. My career had taken off, I was earning well, I was promoted to the position of V.P in the world's largest Investment bank. All the while I had this hidden health issue, and was completely stressed with life. Other than family and close friends, no one else knew about it. At work they just thought that I was taking two week holidays pretty regularly.

J: Were these two weeks off to try and address your health issue?

C: Sure. Yes. I had 10 operations, and none worked permanently. The tension I was holding internally would be relieved for a short while, and the damage that I was causing myself due to the tension would be fixed, but then the same issues would come back again. After the 10th operation, I just thought this isn't good enough - there has got to be another way. The doctor who was treating me said that the pain would never go away, it would always come back, and he said "you've just got to learn to live with it". So then I decided to go a different route which was to clean up my life, clean up my act, I gave up drinking alcohol, stopped smoking and I started to eat healthily. I begun to take exercise again and I learnt lots about nutrition. Then I got into the whole field of personal development and my life began to blossom.

J: How so?

C: I relaxed, my digestive system relaxed, and the symptoms caused by the tension lessened. My experience of the pain was different.

J: What was the field of personal development that you got into?

C: Ah there were many to begin with! Acupuncture, Reiki, Bio-energetic healing, Hypnosis, Rolfing, Chinese Medicine, Feldenkrais - I immersed myself in these alternative therapies for up to 7 years with some. Receiving treatment myself, and studying the treatments through books, and attending training courses. I also studied NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). That came about through a gentleman who I used to work and drink with. He was kind of different and I really liked him. We got chatting and he was telling me about NLP and about how it could help me with this issue that I used to have - I couldn't look people in the eyes. He offered once or twice to help me with it, and I thought about it and then one day I thought "what the hell I've got nothing to lose". We went up into one of the boardrooms in the offices where we worked and we had this 15 minute chat and I relaxed like I hadn't relaxed in years and I think at the time I said "I think I fell asleep" and he smiled knowingly. Anyway I left the boardroom, returned to my office and life was different. You know I walked straight into what was the ‘same' but it was completely transformed - I was able to look the people I worked with in the eye, I could go straight up and have a conversation with the M.D and I felt good in myself. Immediately thereafter I thought if that's possible then what else is possible? That was the beginning of an intensive period of study in the field of NLP with the creator of the model, Dr. Richard Bandler, resulting in my becoming a Trainer of NLP, but more importantly to me, life was getting better, I was relaxing within and my IBS problem was getting better.

J: So what did you do from there?

C: I then came across a gentlemen called Dr Joseph Riggio who developed the MythoSelf Process - it was by way of a leaflet. I remember reading it and it was all about accessing this way of being where I could just be myself and move through life like that. I don't think I'd every really been myself up to then. I wasn't even sure who I really was. I'd jumped on the treadmill of corporate gain at such a young age, chasing the tailor made suits, fast cars. Financial freedom, material gain and living it up was all I'd put my attention on. I had been compromising myself on the inside for the attainment of ‘things' on the outside. I KNEW I had to meet Joseph Riggio and attend his training. It took some time before I finally got on the training, but, when I did, it was life changing and was the beginning of an incredible journey for me.

J: How come?

C: I was having the first experience of coming into my body. Joseph told stories, we did exercises and something amazing was going on. I'd lived from my neck upwards for so long, thinking, worrying, stressed out and permanently anxious, and now my attention had shifted into my body

J: And were you still now challenged with the whole chronic pain issue that you had been dealing with?

C: It improved in leaps and bounds.

J: In what way?

C: The internal tension had begun to dissolve - as a result the pain was less intense - and instead of it being 24/7, I would only be aware of it a few times during the day and night.

J: Was there a time when you would say that your medical condition was ever present for you, what occupied you? Or was it only ever something in the background?

C: In the early years it occupied me completely. Knowing I had IBS I became very stressed and anxious, and, not surprisingly, the stress and anxiety added further to my situation. A loop I found myself trapped in for too long! When I began studying the MythoSelf® Process with Joseph Riggio I used the pain as a kind of yardstick of how I was improving. As my ability to cope with pain, stress and anxiety improved, the intensity and frequency of the pain lessened, and so it melted more into the background. It's interesting to me how the innate wisdom of the body reveals itself. My life had gone off the rails, I could write a book on my childhood woes, growing up without a father etc. etc. but at the end of the day I knew that feeling the victim and intellectualizing wasn't the route to improving my health. It was coming into my body and out of the stress and anxiety whirling around in my head that made the shift from it being a health issue that occupied me fully, to something in the background.

J: So the health issue is still with you. How is it now for you?

C: All but gone. It is a shadow of its former self. As a result of my study and application of the MythoSelf® Process, my focus of attention in life has switched from being consumed with stress and anxiety to moving through life with a greater and greater sense of ease and relaxation present. Hence my company name - The Kingston Centre for Relaxation. Learning how to replace stress and anxiety with profound relaxation is the first thing any person with acute, chronic or crisis medical conditions needs to do in order for healing to take place.

J: When you say all but gone, is that in the sense that the actual condition is all but gone or the impact it has on your life or both?

C: The actual condition is still present but it has improved significantly. How I am in relation to it is what is different. I have re-learnt how to connect to a way of being within my self where my system is at rest.

J: System?

C: My body and mind, as a whole entity. When a person's system is at rest, a profound sense of calm, relaxation, ease within ones self and with other, readiness and possibility becomes present. Stress and anxiety simply doesn't exist when operating from this place. The wisdom in the body is such that, once shown how to access this - what I'll call ‘place of rest', and practised, it becomes the default way of organising being.

J: You have recognition as a MythoSelf Trainer. Is this something you just go on a course and get a certificate for, or is there more to it?

C: It means that I have demonstrated application, over an apprenticeship period of 6 years with Joseph Riggio personally, of the MythoSelf Process to my own life. It also means that I have gathered the requisite skills so that I can go out and teach others. As well as the apprenticeship with Joseph, which still continues today, I had to attend various training programs including a 1 year intensive facilitator training.

J: Will you tell me more about the work you do, for a person's system to come to rest?

C: I apply the MythoSelf Process to eliminating stress and anxiety resulting from acute, chronic and crisis medical conditions. Would you like me to talk about what the MythoSelf Process is?

J: Yes please.

C: The MythoSelf Process was designed by Joseph Riggio Ph.D. and it is about the core experience of life. In part, it describes a movement towards a Generalised Desired State, a massive resource position from which relaxation and healing is possible. Access to this way of being is often described by people with acute, chronic and crisis conditions as calm and peaceful whilst simultaneously holding a position of readiness and possibility. This way of being is at the core of each of us, our ‘blue print' if you like. People with ill-health find that it is sometimes easy to lose connection with this core strength within, worry can set in and stress and anxiety prevails. Accessing this way of being can be left to chance, the odd moment here or there, the occasional day, week or even month of feeling calm, peaceful, relaxed and ready, depending on what life presents. In order to access this way of being intentionally, it requires learning how you ‘do it'. How is it that you organise yourself internally? What is the precise configuration of yourself that generates this way being? In my work, it's through a program of exercises, delivered as private sessions, that I lead an individual to discover what it is they are doing on the inside to access this way of being. By explicitly and implicitly feeding this information back to the person, physical re-learning occurs, and it soon becomes the baseline from which to operate.

J: And the nature of the way that you work with people, is that coming out of your own experience of what you have learned through going through this yourself?

C: Sure. I lived with stress and anxiety due to acute and chronic pain and I have been through the journey of learning how to really relax so that I can heal. I mastered pain control without medication, and so yes, the way that I work with people who come to me is definitely coming out of my own experiences.

J: How else has your life changed, aside from your health I mean?

C: I have married an extraordinary woman who will one day become mother to the large family we have planned. We have a relationship that continues to blossom, it's wonderful. I am surrounded by people who I can be absolutely myself with. I have a business where I get to do what I love. It's all a world apart from my 18 or so years in Investment Banking chasing money.

J: There are some really successful people, entertainers, musicians, even in your old profession, the investment banking industry, or very, very high profile world class athletes, who wind up, for various reasons either taking a prescribed anti-anxiety or depression medication or, quite honestly, self medicate, with recreational drugs, to cope with their life. Do you think your application of the MythoSelf® Process to treating stress and anxiety would be quite useful to these kinds of folks?

C: Absolutely. Starting from awareness of self and being relaxed, good decisions can be made. People who come to me realise how easy it is to begin to live the life they want once they start to organise themselves internally in a way that is true to who they really are.

J: How is making decisions connected to the idea of relaxation that you spoke about earlier?

C: Once my default way of being was coming from a place of rest and relaxation, I started to make different decisions, to give up the drinking, stop smoking cigarettes and marijuana, start exercising, cook fresh food at home etc.

J: So was it the giving up that supported the relaxation or did the relaxation allow you to give these things up?

C: That's an interesting question. My first response would have been that learning to live from a place of relaxation enabled me to give up those things, but it was a process, and I recognise that as I gave up the things that were aggravating my digestive system, the more relaxed I could be. In order for a person to become profoundly relaxed they must learn how to take control of themselves, this is what I had to do. Because in a way, stress and anxiety is symptomatic of being out of control, which eventually manifests in an array of health issues. When a person learns to do this, learns to take control of themselves, in spite of what life shows up, they can return to health.

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