how does Time line therapy® work?
This most amazing and deeply transformational process was conceived and fine-tuned by one of Mathis' many beloved teachers, Dr Tad James. Its premise is simple, the process is far-reaching and deeply transformational. Time Line Therapy®'s approach is one of the most gentle, respectful and far-reaching ways of working with people.
Every successful therapeutic process or intervention really comes down to a few basics.
THE PREMISE
So the question then is, how do we find the right memory and how do we make peace with it?
We all store our memories in time, one after the other, as they occurred. If we connected all our memories with a line, we would have something we could call a timeline. The events that occurred last year are stored further back on our timeline than what happened last week. What happened when we were 3 years old is way back on that line but still recorded there too. Most of our memories from way back are faint or non-existent. However, they are still stored in what we commonly refer to as the unconscious mind. Everything that ever happened to us, everything we ever did or witnessed is still kept somewhere in our system.
The unconscious mind is not only the guardian of all memories but also defends good and bad memories as necessary for us to stay safe. Any attempt our conscious mind makes to forget, eradicate or make peace with negative events is mostly futile since the unconscious mind is so much more powerful.
The art form of working with Time Line Therapy® is to enter into a loving, respectful, integrity filled space with sensitive communication and sometimes negotiation with the client’s unconscious mind. We then travel in our imagination or visualisation ( all with the help of the unconscious mind ) above the timeline back to an event that the unconscious mind has indicated as significant.
The goal of our travel and communication is for the unconscious mind to shift its understanding and interpretation of a given memory. Each event, each memory, no matter how horrible it was does have within it also positive, future-oriented learning for the individual. When the unconscious mind ‘gets’ that learning an often miraculous shift takes place in the person's psychology. With it comes a deeper inner peace about those events which generally facilitate many positive changes in the client’s everyday life.
FOUR ASPECTS OF TIME LINE THERAPY®
Four aspects of Time Line Therapy® make it an incredibly versatile and far-reaching approach.
HOW ON EARTH CAN YOU TALK TO THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND?
The process is so simple. After the client is comfortable and has an overview of what is going to happen, Mathis simply asks the unconscious mind if it is ok to have a chat. The instruction to the conscious client is to only say what comes up first, whether it makes sense or not. Even after twenty-plus years of talking to other people and his own unconscious mind, Mathis is still always in deep awe and appreciation of the simplicity and unbelievable accuracy of communication when talking to the unconscious mind.
Many a client has described to their parents or people involved, rooms or gardens or events they saw for example as a one-year-old while travelling on the timeline, only to have confirmed to them that what they saw really happened.
AM I UNCONSCIOUS IN THE PROCESS?
No, unlike in hypnosis, where people can go into trances of varying depth, the trance entered in Time Line Therapy® is always a light trance and is not even experienced as a trance at all.
It basically feels like a three-way conversation except one person is not visible.
IS EVERYTHING I WILL SEE OR EXPERIENCE ALWAYS ACCURATE?
No, not necessarily. We can harbour traumas inside that are not ‘historically’ correct but still created trauma in our system.
Children are little learning machines and growing up means making sense and meaning out of what is going on around us. Blocking some things out, protecting ourselves from others. The younger a child, the more impressionable it is, the more unfiltered the learning and the more inaccurate the interpretation could be. It is not uncommon for children to pick up learnings and develop traumas from simple things they saw on TV when they were very young. Equally possible are traumas from misinterpreting events that happened.
Traumas our parents or grandparents experienced can seep unfiltered into our impressionable souls without actually having experienced it at all or having heard about it. Mathis has personally experienced that in his own family.
In essence, it doesn’t really matter what comes up, true or not, big or small, the process always manages to facilitate a deep relief for the person.
Mathis has many clients who saw nothing, just black all along and went through the process anyway with beautiful results at the end.
Every successful therapeutic process or intervention really comes down to a few basics.
- Something in our life today is deeply troubling.
- It seems that everything we struggle with today has a root cause in the past that influences us periodically throughout our lives.
- Once we find and make peace or somehow come to terms with those aspects/memories from our past, the quality of our life today dramatically improves.
THE PREMISE
So the question then is, how do we find the right memory and how do we make peace with it?
We all store our memories in time, one after the other, as they occurred. If we connected all our memories with a line, we would have something we could call a timeline. The events that occurred last year are stored further back on our timeline than what happened last week. What happened when we were 3 years old is way back on that line but still recorded there too. Most of our memories from way back are faint or non-existent. However, they are still stored in what we commonly refer to as the unconscious mind. Everything that ever happened to us, everything we ever did or witnessed is still kept somewhere in our system.
The unconscious mind is not only the guardian of all memories but also defends good and bad memories as necessary for us to stay safe. Any attempt our conscious mind makes to forget, eradicate or make peace with negative events is mostly futile since the unconscious mind is so much more powerful.
The art form of working with Time Line Therapy® is to enter into a loving, respectful, integrity filled space with sensitive communication and sometimes negotiation with the client’s unconscious mind. We then travel in our imagination or visualisation ( all with the help of the unconscious mind ) above the timeline back to an event that the unconscious mind has indicated as significant.
The goal of our travel and communication is for the unconscious mind to shift its understanding and interpretation of a given memory. Each event, each memory, no matter how horrible it was does have within it also positive, future-oriented learning for the individual. When the unconscious mind ‘gets’ that learning an often miraculous shift takes place in the person's psychology. With it comes a deeper inner peace about those events which generally facilitate many positive changes in the client’s everyday life.
FOUR ASPECTS OF TIME LINE THERAPY®
Four aspects of Time Line Therapy® make it an incredibly versatile and far-reaching approach.
- We can ask the unconscious mind anything and will most likely get deeply moving and insightful answers.
- The entire process is guided by the unconscious mind. Not by the practitioner or the client. The journey only goes where the unconscious mind is comfortable going. The practitioner is only the facilitator, not the ‘director’ of where to go and what to do. This makes it incredibly safe and gentle.
- When travelling above the timeline to an event, the client doesn’t ever have to experience the event to heal it. This makes Time Line Therapy® ideal for PTSD and other trauma-related histories.
- If one does encounter a traumatising event ( which means the unconscious mind was ok to go there otherwise it would have indicated otherwise ), NEVER will a session be complete and finished until the trauma from that particular event is let go of. This means, no ‘re-traumatising’ occurs EVER in a session from just going there, having a look, re-experiencing it.
HOW ON EARTH CAN YOU TALK TO THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND?
The process is so simple. After the client is comfortable and has an overview of what is going to happen, Mathis simply asks the unconscious mind if it is ok to have a chat. The instruction to the conscious client is to only say what comes up first, whether it makes sense or not. Even after twenty-plus years of talking to other people and his own unconscious mind, Mathis is still always in deep awe and appreciation of the simplicity and unbelievable accuracy of communication when talking to the unconscious mind.
Many a client has described to their parents or people involved, rooms or gardens or events they saw for example as a one-year-old while travelling on the timeline, only to have confirmed to them that what they saw really happened.
AM I UNCONSCIOUS IN THE PROCESS?
No, unlike in hypnosis, where people can go into trances of varying depth, the trance entered in Time Line Therapy® is always a light trance and is not even experienced as a trance at all.
It basically feels like a three-way conversation except one person is not visible.
IS EVERYTHING I WILL SEE OR EXPERIENCE ALWAYS ACCURATE?
No, not necessarily. We can harbour traumas inside that are not ‘historically’ correct but still created trauma in our system.
Children are little learning machines and growing up means making sense and meaning out of what is going on around us. Blocking some things out, protecting ourselves from others. The younger a child, the more impressionable it is, the more unfiltered the learning and the more inaccurate the interpretation could be. It is not uncommon for children to pick up learnings and develop traumas from simple things they saw on TV when they were very young. Equally possible are traumas from misinterpreting events that happened.
Traumas our parents or grandparents experienced can seep unfiltered into our impressionable souls without actually having experienced it at all or having heard about it. Mathis has personally experienced that in his own family.
In essence, it doesn’t really matter what comes up, true or not, big or small, the process always manages to facilitate a deep relief for the person.
Mathis has many clients who saw nothing, just black all along and went through the process anyway with beautiful results at the end.
