Alice Eaton for Limited Edition Magazine

Whatever walk of life you come from, the chances are you will know someone who suffers from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

A staggering one third of all adults in the UK will be affected by IBS at some time in their lives and yet it is something that leaves doctors baffled.

So far, there is no clear cause or cure for the condition. Many IBS sufferers have only very mild symptoms that can be controlled by changes in their lifestyle and diet. For some, however, it is a condition that can leave them feeling desperate.

Four years ago, Sarah* (who lives in Winchmore Hill, Bucks) began suffering from stomach aches, diarrhoea, constipation and feelings of bloatedness. At the time she admits to leading a fairly stressful life, working full-time and looking after three teenage children. A visit to the doctor revealed the cause of the symptoms was her body producing excess stomach acid, resulting in IBS.

"I constantly had a taste of bile in my mouth which made everything taste awful so I began to lose weight," explains Sarah.

"I began taking tablets prescribed by my doctor to stop the acid being produced but that didn't help and so I started to cut out certain foods, such as dairy products, tea and red wine to see if that would help, but nothing was working."

After several years of suffering, Sarah's quality of life had hit rock bottom and she had almost resigned herself to living with the symptoms. However, in June 2004, a friend recommended she pay a visit to Suzanne Franklin, a stress therapist and Journey Practitioner based in Hemel Hempstead, who had successfully treated one of her friends.

"I was pretty sceptical at first but I thought: What have I got to lose?' If you have tried everything else and you think there might be something out there that can help, of course it is worth trying."

Journey Therapy is a healing process which taps into past memories that can be causing emotional and, sometimes physical, symptoms. Sarah describes the whole process as similar to hypnosis except that there is two-way conversation throughout the appointment. During the session, the client is guided to concentrate on various images in their conscious mind which allows their subconscious to recall an old memory that is creating an emotional blockage. In Sarah's case, this was manifesting itself in the form of IBS.

"While most people know when they have experienced a trauma, for example, a car accident, often a seemingly more trivial situation, such as being bullied, can also be traumatic and cause an emotional shutdown that creates blockages throughout the system," explains Suzanne, who gave up her job in sales management four years ago to train as a Journey Practitioner having experienced for herself the remarkable results of the Journey process.

"The stored emotions can often remain unnoticed for years before coming to the surface. By accessing the old memory and releasing these raw emotions, the blockage clears and the symptoms disappear."

Although at first suspicious, it is a concept that Sarah was able to take on board.

"I know that emotions cause physical factors, for example, if you have a terrible day you can get a migraine, or if you are embarrassed you go bright red which is a physical presentation of an emotional state, so it seems logical that the brain has the capacity to create physical symptoms."
 Sarah's session lasted around five hours and, although she felt no different for a couple of weeks afterwards, she slowly began to notice that her symptoms were alleviating.

"I must admit I did come out wondering if I had been conned," says Sarah.

"Suzanne called me two weeks after the session to see how I was feeling and explained that problems with the stomach can often take a little longer to heal but, after two weeks, I was still unconvinced."

However, without realising it, around six weeks after the treatment, Sarah suddenly started feeling better.

"One day I forgot to take the pill the doctor had given me as I wasn't having the symptoms to remind me, and then I was able to make a cup of tea and drink it rather than throwing it away as I couldn't face it. Pretty soon I was eating and drinking what I wanted.

"Before, if I had one cappuccino, I would feel ill, now I can have four and feel no effect. I couldn't be more pleased."

And sometimes the results can be even more dramatic. Almost a year ago, Sarah's 15-year-old daughter Emma* contracted glandular fever that had left her off school for seven weeks. Having experienced such a positive result from her treatment, Sarah decided to send Emma to Suzanne to see if she could help with her symptoms.

"The glandular fever left Emma feeling incredibly tired," explains Sarah.

"She never really recovered and I would often have to pick her up half-way through school as she couldn't make it through the day.

"She was sleeping around 20 hours a day which wasn't like her at all, and often just washing her hair in the morning before school left her so exhausted she just had to climb back into bed."

Sarah dropped Emma off for her session with Suzanne at noon and at 2.30pm when she arrived to pick her up, Emma was a transformed person.

"She looked immediately better and even said when she got into the car: Mum, I could go for a run right now.' "She felt completely different and, since then, she has never come home from school early. It is simply incredible."

*names have been changed 

You can read the article at www.lemagazine.co.uk 

                    Literature

The Journey: An Extraordinary Guide to Healing Life and Setting Yourself Free /The Journey - audio book
The Journey is a simple, revolutionary set of techniques that has freed thousands from lifelong emotional and physical blocks -- from addiction, depression, and low self-esteem to chronic pain and illness. The Journey was born of Brandon Bays' extraordinary experience of healing from a football-sized tumour, without drugs or surgery, in 6 weeks. Forced to go beyond the limits of known alternative therapies (she had been working in mind/body healing for two decades) she was catapulted into a remarkable, soul searching and ultimately groundbreaking healing journey. She pioneered a remarkable healing technique that guides us directly to the root cause of a longstanding difficulty-- emotional or physical--and then gives us the tools to resolve it. At the most sophisticated nexus of mind-body healing today, the Journey audio guides listeners through a simple imaginative process that is a revolutionary way to actually access memories held in specific parts of the body, bringing the latest findings of energy medicine into a fast, effective technique that anyone from a child to a CEO can use.

The Journey for kids
This text introduces a young boy called Jamie who goes on a magical journey with a special angel in a space pod. The angel takes Jamie on a trip through his own body where they whizz about landing wherever the space pod takes them. Finding a sore, inflamed patch in his throat and landing there to investigate, Jamie uncovers an old memory of being separated from his mother on holiday, and of how scared and upset he was. The angel guides him to a campfire and they play back a videotape of exactly what happened and how Jamie felt about it. Using brightly coloured balloons, which represent courage, wisdom, humour, trust, the ability to ask for help and love, they help Jamie to rewrite the scene and dissolve his fears about abandonment. Through this text, Brandon Bays offers a healing experience that is designed to allow your child to feel more comfortable with their emotions and help them to understand and be less afraid of their feelings.

TheJourney.com   The official Journey website

Read the interview with Brandon Bays at exclusivebooks.com

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