German Energy Experiences

The IAK (International Association For Kinesiology) Kongress has been meeting in this small German town for a number of years and is well recognised and established there; indeed, at the conference party, dinner and dance on the Saturday night a representative from the Mayor's office came along and officially welcomed us to the town, which I thought was very neat indeed.

I was told that this year attendance was rather lower than usual; even so, I didn't think that a turnout of 200 people was anything other than most respectable for a conference held in the German language. It was also interesting to note that this meant by no means that only Germans were present; there were people from Switzerland, Austria, South Africa and Sweden, Holland, Poland and Ireland, to mention just a few.

So and after a bit of an odyssey and an interesting night spend at the hotel which was cut short by some serious bell ringing from the local church at 6am the next day, I arrived at the Kurhaus venue in order to give an hour's introduction to EMO, starting at 10am, which I presumed to be the first slot of the day.

But the Germans do like to get up early; indeed the first presenter had started at 9am already and this was a lady from Ireland who was working with a translator. I speak German because I used to live in Germany as a child but I had not used the language at all for a good 25 years or more; so we had left it open as to whether I wanted to give it a whirl in German or play it safe and use a translator too.

Peeking in on the large hall with all those many people sitting earnestly, making notes on their pads, and listening to the translation process as the lady presenter said something, waited for it to be translated, then said something else, I thought, "No way can I do that. That's never going to work."

Trouble is with me I think at 500 miles an hour even when I'm not slightly stressed and in front of an audience of 200 people who have basically never heard of me; I knew that by the time the translator had finished the bit I'd said before, I would have been six pages on and get lost hopelessly. I made the decision to go for it in German and hope for the best.

So, the leader of the conference, Alfred Schatz, introduced me and there we were. I wished myself luck, reminded myself to "trust the energy mind", took a deep breath and just said what came to me, and that started with the words, "Ladies and Gentlemen, all others, all invisible ones present and all invisible ones who are not strictly present but listening in nonetheless, ... Good morning!"

To be honest, I don't really recall what I actually said there, but the audience was friendly and very responsive; when I didn't know a word, such as "psychological reversal", I'd just ask for it and one of the 20 or so German speakers would shout out the word, I'd pick it up and then continue.

I'm also lucky I guess that EMO is both very simple to explain in principle, as well as really interesting because it is intuitive and matches people's actual life experiences; so I just told them about the basics of emotions being "cries from the energy body", energy nutrition and such, and the participants really seemed to like it and gave me a good round of applause at the end.

Phew! But it had actually been much, much easier than I'd thought it might be. My German was coming back quite happily, the material suited the conference attendants to a T, and the people were amazing - really open minded, friendly, and determined to learn something new. A diverse and wonderful crowd, brought together by their personal and professional fascination with energy therapies and healing, and as the morning and afternoon progressed, I got to talk to many different people from all walks of healing - homeopaths, naturopaths, allopathic doctors, kinesiologists, of course, but also self helpers and psychologists, all sorts, really.

I also looked at the exhibitions and the books. It was fun seeing my own two there (Adventures and EMO in their German incarnations), and also the various interesting translations of some of the classics by Callahan and such. I was told that the current best seller in the self help field was a book on drinking more water. Well, I guess easy is always good, and when it brings results as well, that can only be useful all around. The title of the book in question made me laugh, but I thought it was really good - "You're not sick, you're just thirsty".

Something I really liked and which took my eye and energy interest was a gentleman who makes little wooden shamanic animals. They are flowing in shape, highly stylised and feel just wonderful when you hold them, very kinaesthetic. He makes each one by hand from lots and lots of different kinds of wood; one I bought, a "luck dragon" was made from a wood so light it seemed to float. He told me that luck dragons fly so they need to be lightweight :-) I purchased three animals as keepsakes and because I really liked them, one for me and one each for my two sons.

In the evening there was the "course ball" complete with band, cabaret pieces from some of the participants and presenters, and a fantastic buffet. German food is *good*, there is no other word for it! And so lovingly presented, it really does make it taste even better still - so not just my energy body was having an excellent time.

On Sunday, I was scheduled to give a 3 hour mini-workshop on EMO. When I arrived in the morning, I enquired as to where the handouts were for this as I wanted to look them over and familiarise myself with the German wordings; an immediate and frantic search by the (very professional and dedicated) staff revealed that there were no handouts. They must have been lost somewhere in cyberspace; to console everyone concerned I said, "Look, it's no big deal. Here's what we'll do. We shall look upon this as a sign from the universe and an opportunity to do something even better than it says on the programme. This is a conference. How's about I present my absolutely latest materials and findings, things which have never been brought to the public before anywhere in the world, which I haven't even written up yet. Would you like that?"

Yes, they would like that. I liked it too, a wonderful opportunity to try my latest models out on a large live audience; and there were a lot of people in that workshop, I estimate about a hundred. The room was packed, anyway, with a few people standing at the back.

So I got started with the Triad model and how I developed that. It was really good fun; my German was getting more fluent and rather than lecturing, I was starting to perform, which is what I like the best. The EMO demo was a total hoot; I got a German lady to shout at me the exact right words for "you are fat!" and of course, I'd never done this in German and the words and energy just flattened me. No acting required, my responses were truly honest and really well visible in every way. Also, to get THOSE particular blockages out of MY energy system was of course, a most useful and welcome side effect. Well they always say, healer heal thyself. I'm just walking the talk ...

People were extremely keen to have a go with EMO so I let them do a pairs exercise in spite of the narrow band of time for this workshop; they were really fascinated by it and by now, wide awake and buzzing.

Here comes the strangest thing. I said there were about a hundred people at this workshop. Would you believe it, only perhaps 10 or 12 had EVER even heard of EFT? Extraordinarily, EFT was a new concept for these people and I was asked if we could do some EFT as well, just to have an experience of it.

This really made me laugh - but I thought, why not? EFT is extremely useful and they SHOULD know it. Everyone in the world should! In the context of this workshop, we had been working with and talking about the Triad model, my latest and greatest theory on the human energy system, which contains the concept of the totality, a fully integrated unit that does not only include the usual energy body, physicality, HEROS but also the *conscious mind* as well.

So I suggested that we should do a round of EFT all together as a group, and state the wish and desire to be more integrated as a human totality. We did the round gently and it was quite strange as a hundred people tapped the points and whispered, "Totality" as the reminder phrase. Many had experiences during this round and were very moved; others talked excitedly of the possibilities and insights they'd had.

I wasn't going to let them go home without Thought Flow & Heart Healing, the two simple but really helpful fast 2nd generation techniques and this concluded the 3 hour presentation.

People were very happy it must be said, and many came up and told me how wonderful it was to have something "to take home that you can really use" from the mini workshop. I was really pleased that these good people had had an introduction to some of the techniques we are so used to by now, we don't even think much about them any longer but they had never heard of before - that really was quite strange but it did remind me very much of my own initial excitement and joy when I discovered the energy techniques and got to play with them for the first time. I knew that many wonderful, wonderful revelations, changes and challenges would be awaiting these people and that was also a very cool thing all around.

So, after many talks with many different people, I made my way back to the hotel with a German copy of the EMO book under my arm, to spend a quiet night in, read the book, familiarise myself with the languaging and prepare for the two day ET Practitioner training the following morning.

I was beginning to really look forward to that ...

(to be continued)

German Energy Experiences by Silvia Hartmann. September 2003.