Dear friends
This is (probably) the last post on this old blog (which hasn’t been used since August ’09). We are launching the new RPT website and blog (at www.RPTblog.com) over the coming month.
Most of you reading this would have received the email I sent to all our past Theta Healing graduates. Over 5 years we taught this work to over 1,000 students. Theta Healing became such an integral part of my life and identity, that it took a while to figure out who I was without it!
I want to start this article by honouring all the great people I met through my 5 years with Theta Healing. That includes you, our students, and the many wonderful teachers I met along the way. It’s certainly true that I wouldn’t be who I am today if not for these experiences.
I promised to cover these topics in my blog today:
- an explanation for our past Theta students about how to practice Theta safely, and a response to your questions such as “does this mean the money we spent on Theta courses was wasted?”; and
- an apology for the drama I created last year;
- an update on what’s happening around the world to shut down Theta Healing (this is relevant to those of you who earn a living from practicing or teaching Theta).
Important message to our past Theta students
Many of our past students have asked us to clarify some very reasonable questions like “does this new science mean that our past investment with you was wasted?”.
This is such a sensitive question as I know that people trusted me as a Theta teacher and invested a lot of money to learn Theta from me. My best answer I can give is to say that “no”, it wasn’t wasted, what you learned was the very best and safest techniques that I knew at the time.
The tools I previously taught have all been replaced (belief and feelings work are extraordinarily slow and a little risky), but when you learned them they were the best we had. In fact, I remember saying in most of the Theta classes I taught that a few years from now we’d be doing something so much faster and simpler. Happily, that time has come.
You probably read my blog posts a year ago talking about how “belief work” is dangerous. I think there’s an important distinction I failed to make for my past students. (I know that many of you understood it, but not everyone, and I take responsibility for that.) My comments about belief work and digging referred to doing Theta Healing “by the book”. I stopped teaching Theta Healing by the book back in 2005 when it was quite apparent that it wasn’t really working.
If you received from me a “Theta Magic supplementary manual” from me, then really you don’t need to worry. I spent years working out how to make Theta Healing work safely and effectively. What I created was far too slow and complex, but not dangerous. Given that we’ve simplified the technique down to just “Beingness”, it’s hard to believe we create a “15 step” step-by-step approach to Theta Healing. Slow? Yes. Complicated? Yes. Dangerous? No, I really doubt it. The whole approach to digging that I created was aimed to get at the underlying issues (what I now call trauma), and to clear it safely.
[I should add, the worst kept secret in Theta Healing is that almost no one teaches it "by the book". All the good Theta teachers change it to make it work, and many of them still use my old supplements. I keep asking them to just call it their own work now because it's not fair to Vianna that she thinks she has lots of teachers when actually, they are all doing their own thing.]
If you are still practicing the Theta Healing that I taught between 2005-2008, and if it’s working for you, that’s great. I didn’t mean to cause any alarm. What you learned on those courses was valuable. And now, I think , it’s just time for an upgrade.
My old notebook computer needs an upgrade. It used to be great, now it just seems so slow. Coal and nuclear power once seemed the answer to humanity’s needs, now they seem so dangerous and inefficient. The moral is: technology changes. It doesn’t make the old technology bad, but it does need an upgrade. I would like to offer you that upgrade.
This article is a direct response to questions several of you have asked me over the last year. I hope I’ve answered you thoroughly. If not, please leave a comment below so I can continue to give you my best response.
A apology from Simon for creating drama
There’s a few things I’d like to apologise for, one to my past students and one to the Theta Healing community in general.
To the Theta Healing community: I know that many of my fellow teachers were very angry with me when I chose to speak out about Theta Healing. What made things worse (for me) was the fact that I only publicly mentioned the information about belief work being dangerous in the same breath as launching my own work. I know that many Theta Healers chose to ignore the science, preferring to believe that it was something I made up for self-promotion. This was a tragic error, and one that’s entirely my fault.
I realise that I confused 2 separate messages with my poor timing. There was a simple reason for this (not as cynical as some might suggest). The simple reason is that I spent a long time trying to “heal” Theta Healing from the inside. I stopped teaching “belief work” (as per the book Theta Healing) many years ago – about 2005. For 3 years I tried hard to find safer and more effective ways to work and to teach – but I lacked the hard science to express my concerns. It was only after reading the Peak States book that I was able to explain my concerns. I was not the first Theta Healing teacher to resign after reading Peak States (that honour goes to Signe Fjord), and not the last. I only resigned when it was completely apparent that my teachers and mentors at Theta Healing had no interest in safety or in changing a technique that was making them a lot of money.
So yes, I had really poor timing with mixing a public-service announcement with my own promotion for RPT. But you know what – both were important messages. It would have been even more damaging to tell people “don’t do this anymore” without offering an alternative. So, yes, I apologise for the upheaval I caused last year. And I stand by every word I said.
To my past students: thankyou again for the support you have shown me over the years. I want you to know that I have always done my best to teach you what I felt was the safest and most effective techniques. At times this meant that I made things far more complex than they were meant to be. For this I apologize. It’s true (as Vianna and others have alleged) that I never did teach Theta Healing “correctly.” Teaching by the book was never very important to me, the only thing that has ever mattered is putting safety and effectiveness first. I have always done that, even if I did manage to complicate things.
What’s happening now in Theta Healing?
The following is a very biased perspective on what’s happening in Theta Healing. It’s totally biased because I’m not in any way an independent observer.
What’s happening is that Theta Healing is slowly unravelling on 2 very different fronts. The one front, you’ll be familiar with, is that belief work is not really safe or effective, and this is getting increasing attention from medical authorities and insurance companies. It’s a very slow process, but I suspect that over a period of the next 2 years, you’ll see Theta Healing slowly fade away. Not because it’s “bad” so much as that it’s been totally replaced by hundreds of new techniques which are both safe and effective.
The second thing that’s going on is that the personal credibility of Vianna has come under intense scrutiny and attack. I’ve decided to keep out of this debate entirely because it is of no interest to me to personally attack my former teacher. I am very interested in the safety of the work, I have no interest in drama.
I think my former students deserve some update on what’s going on, so I can report is that people have actively questioned the very basis of Theta Healing such as whether Vianna ever healed herself of cancer, and whether she ever had any particular healing gift.
I didn’t know Vianna 15 years ago and I have no idea whether she ever had, or healed, cancer. I do know that in 5 years of studying Theta I never saw Vianna do a single healing or met anyone who was actually successfully healed by her (I do know that other teachers, myself included, had success by adapting the technique). However, like all the other well-meaning Theta teachers, I so wanted to believe that I never questioned the story until Vianna’s own family spoke out.
This is the last I’ll ever comment on this issue. If you have a penchant for drama and want to know more, you can refer to Lindsey’s blog: http://donttreadontruth.wordpress.com/. Up until last year Lindsey was Vianna’s daughter in law. She spend about 8 years as a Theta insider and is writing a book about the fraud she helped expose in that family. I’ve not read the website myself, but I can tell you that Vianna’s most recent email to me (last month) is published there.
And that my friends, is all I really want to say about that. I am now a year out of Theta Healing and I feel that writing this article has helped me close a chapter of my life. I’m grateful for what I’ve learned and the friends I’ve made, and sorry for any unnecessary drama I created.
Many of you asked me to publish the science about belief work being dangerous. I agree to do this if I can find a way that is helpful and scientific, without creating more drama.
I am now officially closing down this blog website. For information about the new Reference Point Therapy, please refer to our RPT websites:
- www.ReferencePointTherapy.com;
- our new blog www.RPTblog.com; and
- our RPT graduate discussion board at www.RPTforum.com.
Wishing you all the best for 2010!
Simon
