Today I felt as if I were several decades younger. I had the opportunity to visit an amazing beach in Malibu called, ” El Matador.” Although the walk down to the beach was a bit challenging it was well worth it. The weather was perfect…sunny and 82 degrees. The Pacific had a nice wave action going and the view was breath taking. There were several huge boulders of all different shapes and sizes wrapping along the coast line as the waves crashed up against them.

As I pranced around in the water and jumped into the coming waves I suddenly felt as if I had transcended time and that I didn’t have an age.
I felt this feeling of happiness reverberate throughout my whole body. It was really awesome. I started singing old Beach Boys tunes to amplify the positive energy I was experiencing.

Later, as I was watching the waves lapping along the shoreline I noticed a toddler nearby who was fascinated by the water cascading and disappearing beneath his feet. At one point our eyes met and I felt we could relate to one and others positive energy.

I was sad to leave the beach but then I thought to myself.” Hey, I just experienced something wonderful to store in my memory bank that I can utilize when I am practicing self hypnosis and I need to take myself to a happy place! ”

One of the exercises that I find myself doing with clients is the “safe place” exercise whereby I assist a client to tap into a pleasurable memory or to create a vision of a happy place. As the positive images and feelings are amplified in this safe place, I then encourage the client to keep this memory in the forefront of their brain to utilize as a resource when the chips are down or negative feelings are starting to surface and threaten to take over, etc. This can be referred to as “resource installation,” which is actually a component of EMDR, a modality that I use in my practice quite often. Feel free to read more about EMDR on my web site or you can go to www.emdria.org