The first session I did is kind of a blur. I began the deep breathing to go into myself and my shadows, but I didn¹t have to go too far because they were leaking out the edges. I do remember doubting the process and feeling very strange going into it. After only one process I went home and gosh darn it, I still felt like crap! I could have quit but I felt like crap so much, that I didn¹t see any other alternative.

I have now been to six weekend workshops at the White Raven Center, and I'm a believer. It's hard to even describe what I have experienced and witnessed during these sacred healing times. I have physically felt energy leaving my body as I've process old "stuff". I am no longer triggered by other people and situations that would normally cause all my "stuff" to come bubbling up. Best of all, I think I'm an OK person now. Not Wonder Woman, but definitely beloved. I'll close with a personal healing story that amazes me still.

The last process I did I went back to the original trauma of my life on this earth. It took me a long time to get to this place, but I was guided gently and lovingly by one of the facilitators. I found myself experiencing pain that I couldn't understand. I didn't know what it was about, or where I was (I was lying on a mat in the healing center, but my spirit had traveled to another place, and my mind was jumping back and forth). I felt physical pain all around my head and neck. My hands curled up into a ball and I kept telling the facilitator "my hands are being crushed." It was very physically painful, and I was in an emotional state of fear. This went on for what seemed like forever, but was probably about 30-40minutes. Without thinking about it, or knowing where it came from, I blurted out "My mom didn¹t want me!" Then the pain stopped, the fear lifted, and I just felt an intense grief, which subsided over a few minutes.

When I returned home from the workshop I called my Mom to tell her what happened and to ask some questions. After assuring her that I know she loves me and I love her very much, I asked her the story of my birth. I knew that I was born premature and not breathing, but that was all. This is what she told me: I was born 5 lbs. 8 oz. I was immediately taken from my Mother as the doctors began working on me. I had tubes in my nose and down my throat. My hands were bound to keep me from pulling at the tubes. Without telling my Mother, I was taken to a hospital in another city. I was there for one week, alone, before my Mother was able to come get me. This was not the only trauma of my life, and probably not even the "worst". It was something that my conscious mind wasn't even aware of, could not remember-yet my body had carried the energy of it. This story illustrates several things. First, how powerful the process is and how real. Second, how we need to treat our children with the utmost love and respect from their very first moments on this earth. Third, how easily humans are hurt and yet we can be healed.

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"I'm really scared - terrified. I don't want to do this at all!" I could hardly catch my breath, as I got ready to start "the work." I tried to be objective, to think of the tasks. I simply had to lie down on a gym mat, don a blindfold, snuggle up with a blanket, and breathe. "Just breathe - in through your nose and out through your mouth," were my guides' words.

I remember feeling floaty and focusing on my breathing. I could hear what was going on in the house, but I wasn't processing the noises at all. Then, somehow, my thinking-in-words brain went to sleep, and another part of me took over. Feelings engulfed me - terror, loneliness, sadness, and raw anger. I shook, writhed, cried, yelled, moaned, and growled. I became strong, powerful, and loved; I drove away a powerful menace. I didn't make conscious decisions to stop sessions; my body was in control, and it announced the end with total relaxation and physical exhaustion. The only comparable experience I've ever had to this work was giving birth to my children. For each birth and each session, I was fully engaged in a natural process that was beyond my control, and the results left me tired but filled with incredible joy.

Not brave enough to volunteer for the first round of sessions, I had been amazed that others, after expressing deep pain and anguish, ended their sessions feeling invigorated, at peace, and joyful. After four sessions, I am still mystified by what happens. I know, however, that I don't need to understand, but I also know that the experience is too wonderful to keep to myself.

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The 13th century Sufi poet Jelalludin Rumi wrote that "The spiritual path wrecks the body and then restores it to health. It destroys the house to unearth the treasure, and then with that treasure builds it better than before." I would later come to understand that this nearly incapacitating heartache was the stage of destruction coming to fruition. With the help of The White Raven Center I would also come to discover the treasure, but that comes later in the story. The pain was overwhelming and I was aware of the depths of despair and hopelessness to which I was capable of descending. Depression had been an adversary, tormenter, teacher and companion for 20 years. I knew that terrain well and the memory of where that pain and despair had taken me 4 ½ years before had not faded as much as I might have liked. Two hospital stays totaling 9 weeks, nervous breakdown, lost 40 pounds, insomnia, straight jackets, padded rooms, self-inflicted injury, Electro-Convulsive Shock Therapy, more psychiatric diagnoses, more medication, alienation from friends and family, financial collapse and very little if any true healing other than the natural dulling of feeling that comes with time and distance. As I became more and more aware of the similarities between the events of this summer and those 4 ½ years ago it was clear that a pattern had emerged. It was time to get to the source. I needed to heal completely and on August 1st I shaved my head of the hair that hung to the middle of my back as a commitment and dedication to this path of healing. I pledged to myself, Mother Earth, Father Sky and the Spirit within me, beyond me and all around me that I would free myself from what seemed to be a hopeless cycle of karmic torture.

I knew that there were lessons that life was imploring me to learn. The time for subtle suggestions was over. No gentle nudges from life to encourage me to re-evaluate my choices. This time it came not as a request, but as an ultimatum. This pain had cracked me open so wide that it exposed and touched every open wound of longing and loss in my life. It gathered all the pain that had been spread across time for so long and concentrated it in a crushing tightness and burning in my chest and stomach. Of course I had felt those sensations before, everyone has, but this was different. On some level I knew that there was an enormous opportunity here to truly heal. But the pain, anger, despair, feelings of betrayal, abandonment and rejection were so overwhelming that I wasn't able to 'own' my experience and what I had created in my life enough to clearly see what needed to change. Once again a woman who I felt love for, but for a variety of reasons did not allow myself to fully embrace, had chosen a relationship with my best friend and that best friend, after promising me not to pursue a relationship with her, embraced that relationship while growing very distant from me. I had been on a path of healing for long enough to see the pattern and 'know' that all that I was experiencing in my life was a projection, a reflection of the beliefs, contracts with life and quality of relationship with myself that I had claimed within. And yet there I was, day after day beside myself with grief, literally devouring myself as I desperately tried to figure it all out. My attempts to wrap my reality in a blanket of illusory control and reason came even as I recognized the futility of such an exercise. My locus of control had always been my intellect. It was a protective device that served me well. It enabled me to survive. But now I knew that as much as it had served me throughout my life, it could not help me now. I saw the pain of these events was calling me back to my heart; calling me to truly embrace and trust myself and life. Simply intellectually recognizing this pattern and being able to write a logical story in my mind that connected the dots between the past and present wasn't enough this time and I knew it. T.S. Elliott wrote "In order to arrive at what you are not, You must go through the way in which you are not, And what you do not know is the only thing you know, And what you own is what you do not own, And where you are is where you are not." I had to enter the wilderness of my heart and mind. I had to drop into the abyss and trust that by embracing the darkness I would arrive at my light. With that resolve in my heart and mind I called the White Raven Center.

I was familiar with shamanic journeying. In my own way, guided by several books I had read on the topic, I had experimented with travelling to the spirit world, but I rarely trusted my experience. I had never been prepared to allow and give permission for my powerfully analytical mind to relinguish control, let go and trust a knowing beyond what my rational mind could comprehend. This had always been the paradox of who I am, since I have met very few people in my life who have had a greater interest in the unseen, the unmanifest, the implicate order crackling with energy, connection and infinite potential as I. But my fear of losing control, my fear of the unknown, my fundamental distrust and apathy towards my life and my lack of faith in myself prevented me from exploring that interest in the mystical ineffable to the extremes that I knew I needed to in order to fully heal. Until now.

I arrived at The White Raven Center with nothing to lose. I felt led by Spirit when I called Marianne at the White Raven Center the week before, so that when I arrived I had no questions, no desire for small talk or conversation. I simply wanted to dive into the shadow and do whatever was necessary in order to heal. We gathered in a circle and Marianne began to talk a little about the type of work that they facilitated. I was one of only two participants at this particular workshop, so Marianne kept her introduction brief thinking that I would get a better sense of the process by watching the other participant do her work. We went around the circle and everyone shared a bit about themselves and their relationship to the Core Emotional Process. When the other participant got a chance to speak, much of what she said "triggered" me. In other words her story mirrored my own enough to touch wounds within me and stir up my feelings. By the time it was my turn to speak I could barely hold it together. Marianne and Floyd recognized quickly that I was already "in process", laid me down, put a blindfold on me and began to guide me deeper and deeper into my feelings.

That first day was one of the most intense experiences of my life. Many pieces of myself that had been lost in my past were reclaimed, spirit entities feeding off of my shame and guilt were removed from my etheric or energetic body and I lost my voice for 3 days from the rage work that I did. Over the course of the next two months I scheduled 5 individual sessions with Marianne and Floyd and met privately and over the phone with Derek another healer working with the White Raven Center. My love for these people is so powerful that a tear of gratitude comes to my eyes as I write this. Never once did I feel anything less than completely accepted and loved. At the end of my first session I was exhausted, unable to move for a half an hour. I lied in Marianne's lap with Floyd, Derrick, Diane and Charlotte all close by. As I laid there, my head being stroked by a woman I had only met 3 hours before, having exposed some of the darkest most painful, shameful and self-loathsome parts of myself, I felt more sincerely cared for and seen then I could remember. These people had no judgment of me. They respected, honored and accepted my experience as my truth. They knew and practiced impeccably that change can only come by first completely acknowledging and accepting what is. Each of them carried into their work with me an authenticity and integrity, for each of them had been on their own journey of healing and self discovery and were not asking of me anything that they hadn't experienced for themselves. I feel this to be in sharp contrast to my experience with countless "healers" of the psychiatric profession who seemed more interested in insurance coverage, naming my "illness" and pathologizing my experience than in creating an atmosphere of love and acceptance where I could, without fear of judgement, explore my truth.

My friends at the White Raven Center knew and trusted that my body held within it the memories of all that I have ever experienced. They knew that by following my feelings, by breathing into them and activating these latent memories, that doors would open and I would be guided to the feeling's source, encountering along the way all the painful, unfulfilling, self-sabotaging experiences in my life that I had unconsciously created from self limiting beliefs, distorted perceptions and unresolved feelings. They knew that there was nothing to figure out. That all would be revealed when I was ready to see the truth. They knew that sometimes when we open to the truth of the moment, the truth of a sensation in our body as we hold an intention to heal, that the information, the knowledge, the path of our healing is received and unfolds simply in the feeling of the feeling and that it may be unnecessary to translate, analyze, critique or frame that feeling in linear, logical ways through rational thought or language. Ultimately they trusted and fully believed that I had the power to heal myself. They could guide, facilitate, encourage, love and support but I had to be the one to choose to follow the threads of my feelings back to the source and reclaim the beauty, love and light that is my true essence.

Each person's journey is illuminated by the desire of the one walking it. We have to want it. We have to choose it. I wanted it. I chose it. Guided by the beautiful people at the White Raven Center I have found my self-respect, my self-love. I have forgiven myself. Ever since I was a small child I have believed that I am unimportant, unworthy of love, undeserving of happiness, generally inadequate. I believed that there was no place for me in this world and that the only way to get someone to love and accept me would be to care for them in some way giving rise to extremely co-dependent caretaking patterns and a martyr complex. I have struggled with depression for 20 years. Ten of those years I drank alcoholically. I had become so full and concerned about what was right that I couldn't see what was good. I didn't know what I wanted. I had spent my whole life waiting for salvation to come from outside of myself and particularly through the romantic love of a woman, or through the love of the father who I never had that I had little faith in my ability to create the life I wanted. If you heard me talk you would've thought that I had it all figured out, but that was my well-rehearsed monologue. I knew what people wanted to hear. But in my heart was a little boy who believed that nobody loved him, that nobody wanted him and that he didn't matter.

The emotional storms of this summer showed me the way to acquiring the tools needed to heal myself. The Core Emotional Process is the most valuable tool I have ever found. I am no longer afraid of my feelings. I now see them as my teachers and my guides. They evince a deeper truth within me and to the extent that I embrace them, regardless of how painful they may be, I create within myself the love, safety, sense of purpose and self-honoring and validation that I have, for so long, sought outside myself. I now take full responsibility for my feelings. I do not blame my ex-girlfriend or friend for the pain that I have experienced along this healing journey. Ultimately, their choices are reflections of their inner process and have nothing to do with me. I now see that the pain was called to me by my spirit's intense desire to gather myself into the present, cleanse myself of self-limiting beliefs and heal distant wounds of my past. I have held this perspective in my mind for many years, but now, through my work at the White Raven Center, I feel it in my heart. I now see and feel that their choices and feelings for each other and more importantly, the way that I perceived, framed and reacted to those choices constituted the necessary medicine for me to heal. I could have perceived the events of this summer in an infinite number of ways. But, ultimately my perspective was limited by the blocked energy of unresolved feelings.

Life is not what happens to us, it's the story that we write in our minds and hearts about what we experience. As long as we hold within us the blocked energy of unresolved feelings our perception of the events in our lives are distorted and we have little choice but to perceive them in such a way as to evoke the same sets of feelings; guilt, shame, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, anger, envy etc, that were first deeply embedded and recorded in cellular memory during emotionally traumatic events of our past. Until we dissipate and release the stored energy of unexpressed feelings we will re-enact, re-create and re-live the types of relationships and circumstances that existed when our core beliefs were put in place. This is because the mind wants to be right at all costs. If fundamentally I had a belief that I was unlovable then until I released from cellular memory the feelings that gave rise to that belief, I would unconsciously call to myself all sorts of opportunities for me to perceive myself as unlovable. In that way the mind would be correct in its belief, but I end up miserable, once again feeling unlovable. It's a war within. However, once you see that your perspective literally creates your reality and that your perspective is shaped by beliefs that were adopted unconsciously and in a state of fear or dictated to us by other people, then you have reclaimed the power to change your reality. For me, it all began by choosing and allowing myself to feel my feelings without judgment. I believe that if we deny our pain, we deny ourselves true joy and that if we deny our truth long enough then that truth will erupt into being through some trauma in our lives. Because we are generally unconscious to what we are in denial of, the trauma becomes an opportunity to become conscious to the beliefs and unresolved feelings that shape our perspective. Ultimately through the process, we learn to love ourselves again.

As long as I didn't love myself, love from another had no home within my heart. Their love was almost like a commodity that I unconsciously used to try to fill an emptiness within me that I could never seem to fill. Inevitably, I would come to resent that person and their love because not only didn't it fill my emptiness, but for not filling my emptiness they also expected my love in return. Now that I feel the love that truly fills me coming from within I no longer need people in that way. And not needing them, not being dependent on their perspective, has opened up tremendous space within my heart to want them, be curious about them and share myself openly and without fear. I have reclaimed my power. Needing other people's love and validation in order to establish my basic worthiness as a human being meant my entire life was about figuring out what I needed to do or who I needed to be in order to secure their attention and love. I had given people so much power to determine my worth, value and purpose that I feared them greatly. Anxiety attacks have been commonplace for most of my life. But, I can now say that I do not fear people in that way anymore. For the first time in my life I can say and more importantly feel what love is (I write about it below). I now feel and believe that it's o.k. to just be me. This is the treasure that Rumi spoke of. I have unearthed my treasure and with it my gift to the world. There is no more valuable gift that I could give to the world then doing my best on a daily basis to honor being me and in so doing to create the space for others to do the same. The gifts and ways in which I have benefited from my work with the White Raven Center are many and would take volumes to fully convey. In fact, my thoughts and feelings since beginning the work have filled hundreds of journal pages. To conclude I share a couple of those entries with you now.

"A human being is an expression of life, bringing light, reflecting love across whatever dimension it chooses to touch, in whatever form it chooses to take. Humanity isn't a physical description, it's a spiritual goal." - Richard Bach - I'm simply here to be me. Not to save anyone or anything. I'm here to share my love, my attention, my joy - to be Toby. In the desperation of not believing that that is enough we hand our lives over to fear and our days are filled with the anxiety of trying to figure out what we should be doing or what needs to happen - what we need to do to justify our being. We need do nothing. Our existence is justification for our existence. Accept that and we are capable of creating infinitely beautiful expressions of love and compassion. Deny that and we are limited by the rigidities and limitations that stem from the need to be right. It's all a choice. We can choose to learn and grow; spread our spirit wings and fly through our heart's skies of trust, faith, compassion and acceptance or we can choose to cling to immediately gratifying illusions of comfort and validation that "make right" incorrect perceptions of the unpleasant, undesirable and frustratingly unfulfilling circumstances of our lives, thus further entrenching the unconscious beliefs that have drawn the boundaries of our lives and rigidly defined the only roads available to travel. It is our choice. We are "clever enough" to avoid the many opportunities given to grow towards freedom, true empowerment and awakening. We can choose to interpret those opportunities as life oppressing us. It's our choice. In the end we have to want it. We have to want to spread our wings badly enough that we are willing to own the entirety of our suffering. To realize that it is of our own making, that it is no longer necessary and that we have the choice to let it go.'

This next entry was written the day after a workshop. 'During the work this weekend, there was much talk of "sponging"- basically having poor boundaries, becoming a caretaker and taking on other people's feelings thus depriving them of the chance to take responsibility for their experience and claim the personal power necessary to change. I feel that as my self-love grows and I become better and better at maintaining good boundaries I am redefining and recreating how to love. Love, which for me, until now, has always been a fear based, self-centered means of contradicting the belief that I was unlovable, undesirable and fundamentally flawed, has had less to do with the object of love than it has with trying to fill an emptiness in my heart. Now I see, feel and am coming to know more each and every day that love is a feeling within that naturally, spontaneously and effortlessly radiates in every direction with no concern for return for it is completely full within itself. Love is self-generative like the sun. Only a light brighter and more brilliant than the light from the sun could penetrate into the heart of that source of all earthly life. Likewise, only a power stronger than love could be received by love; could be desired by love, and since there is no power stronger than love, love is absent of desire. Love wants for nothing for it is full within itself. One could consciously or unconsciously attempt to fill the emptiness that they have felt in their heart their whole life with anything their mind could conjure; jobs, relationships, material possession, status, image, position, title, fame, fortune and any pleasure one could conceive of and it would still remain empty. For, in reality, there would be no place for these projections of the mind to go since, in fact, the emptiness is not empty. It is the child who closes his eyes, believes the world has disappeared and in his moment of darkness, upon feeling alone, afraid and forgotten, forgets how to open his eyes; forgets that the world is still there. The emptiness is in fact, full of the love forgotten, the love unseen, and all we need to do, to choose, is to open our eyes and see ourselves - our true Selves; something that is difficult to do for those of us who felt unseen as children. But, once we remember to open our eyes, the world ceases to be a threatening land of need and deprivation where we all must compete with each other for attention, love and validation and becomes a mysterious adventure and a gift that is received by being given.

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It was May 9th. I was driving to the gym for one of my daily exercise regiments for the week, when a vision of shattering glass appeared in my mind's eye. Within seconds of this I became overwhelmed with anxiety and what I considered "pure fear"/terror. I realized instantly that I was releasing due to the study of A Coarse in Miracles (ACIM), but did not understand why this event came about so suddenly. I continued on to the gym, completed my workout, as well as socialized a little with "gym acquaintances" without anyone appearing to notice anything or mentioning anything that was different about me. During the entire time I spent at the gym, I was experiencing these intense emotions of anxiety and extreme fear, yet I was able to function without any hindrance to my objective.

As I drove back to my apartment, I contemplated my "next move". I felt, through experiencing these emotions that I knew what I was going to do or better yet, had to do. I felt a strong need to talk to someone so I called a local friend and spoke to her about what I was experiencing. She stated a process that she did when this would happen to her. So I tried it and though it helped some, later that evening the intensity of fear returned and I knew then-"energy" had to be moved. As a Core Emotional Healing (CEH) facilitator, I work /volunteer at the White Raven Center, two to three times a week, so the following day I arrived at my usual time.

The Director and a fellow facilitator were discussing the web-site when I walked in the center. I took my bag down stairs and returned, retrieved a glass of water and entered the room where they were visiting. The Director asked me how I was feeling and I explained to her and to the other facilitator what had occurred the pervious day. All three of us decided to go up into the healing room to "hold space" for each other. When it came my turn to don the blinders and lay on the mat, I was more than ready and within seconds I went into process. As my body began expressing the anxiety and fear, I began to release the intense emotions that had "broke lose" from my subconscious due to the ACIM triggering the stored emotions within my psyche. My body began moving as if it was being whipped and beaten. It shivered and shook-almost violently. Images of torture plagued my mind and emotions of hatred, fear, and condemnation screamed out in desperation for release from this insanity. Through all this I was able to forgive the images and my tormentors. I understood for that one moment that the guilt of the Separation was being released and "soon" I would be free. A few days later I would do another process concerning the Separation and though it has been only two weeks, the anxiety and fear has yet to return.

Note: I have been involved with ACIM for only three months. I have been working on myself using the CEH Modality for four years. After the first session and some time after wards, it became clear to me that this was the first conscious knowing of my healing concerning the Separation. Previously as a client and later trained facilitator, the process was thought of as "healing" or "moving energy." Actually we were "diving" into the subconscious to remove the heavy emotional toxins that plague us and hindered our "creative self." In this way healing would occur.

If healing the subconscious is one of the ways in which to return to true reality, then Core Emotional Healing is a tool that should not be over looked. I have felt the anxiety and fear of "release" and no one should have to experience such long periods of suffering if it can be remedied. I will not say that this is the only modality that will assist the release and healing of the subconscious, but I will say I have witnessed hundreds overcome the mental & emotional images they created in their lives and move forward in recognizing and dispelling the illusions that plague them.

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Looking back on the last nine months of my life, I see the metamorphosis that has taken place within. Where exactly? In my heart, in my core. Alone, scared and empty with illusions shattered of what love is and what a love mate should be, I left a relationship that was not to serve my higher self and returned to Mother Alaska on a three week journey from California. Scattered, lost, and heartbroken, I came to the White Raven Center two months later on my twenty fifth birthday and in a lot of ways it felt like I had come home. In retrospect, I realize it was because I had. As soon as opening prayer began for the weekend workshop, I immediately went into process, crying uncontrollably. I was led to a mat and a blindfold was put on my eyes and I began to breathe deeply focusing on the breath. Immediately, the uncontrollable crying turned into screaming and my body tensed up. I released emotions that had been with me since I was five years old whereby I retrieved and reintegrated my five year old self by breathing her into my body. Opening my eyes and looking at my healers, I felt lighter, stronger, happier, and more fulfilled than I had ever felt in my life. I cried, this time tears of joy, awe and gratitude. I knew I had come upon healing that was real. Since then, I have participated in more workshops as well as individual sessions. With each part of myself that becomes healed, I let go of behaviors that have been harmful to me such as patterns of self sabotage, addiction, judgment, and self hate. I have learned to forgive, to allow myself to be loved and to love with an open heart. I realize the healing process is continuous because we are always experiencing life and are presented with opportunities to heal each time we are triggered. It is those times that I have become more conscious of how I react and handle such life experiences such as to allow myself to heal. Quantum leaps have been achieved in my healing journey by participating in this kind of healing method. Never before have I felt so accepting of myself and so in love with life than I do at this time. I give thanks and much gratitude to Marianne and Floyd for allowing such healing work to exist in Alaska, as well as to the facilitators who continue to inspire me to love and spread the light through healing the inner self.

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September, 2005
Nathan Prince, Anchorage, Alaska

White Raven Center brings a tool to the universe by touching each body, mind and soul. That tool is love…
Have you ever thought to your self, "Why doesn't anybody see me?", "I am so lonely.", "If I were just taller.", "If I were just thinner.", "If I were just better, than they might love me.", then this is a story for you to read. It is mine to tell…

Love is a powerful tool. Love is a powerful teacher. Love is a powerful healer. Love is….what brought me here to White Raven Center this first weekend. I met Marianne and Floyd about a year before my first process at my first weekend intensive workshop. I had heard they were these amazing healers that were married and had this neat spiritual center from one of my Massage Therapist co workers. I thought to myself, "I'm a healer, Cool! I love to be in the presence of other healers." Boy was I off! I was so uncomfortable in meeting them it took me an entire year to make it to the workshop. I would even hide from them when they came into the clinic for bodywork! I thought to myself, "Man, their energy is weird? It doesn't resonate with me?" Meanwhile my life was unraveling into truth. Truth about love. What I thought love was verses what love is?

The love of my life, my soulmate, my wife, my best friend said to me, "Nathan, you are out of control. You are so insecure-you have to get help. You are so jealous. You are stifling us." I thought to myself, "You are right…I am small, I am little, I am worthless, I am nothing, I don't deserve you, I am not worthy, I am not lovable. I am not loved." Determined to be loved I called the next day to White Raven Center and spoke with Marianne and was at the workshop the following month.

I arrived at the house ready to work. Greeted everyone and we started with intro's and prayers and then an exercise. I had just realized that I was sitting next to Floyd in the circle and now we had to partner up. Of course he was my partner and I had to tell this AMAZING SPIRITUAL GURU that I was the beloved! "What!" I said to myself, "I am not even worthy! What is the beloved? I'm not beloved, I can't even have a relationship go right, plus he's gonna look me in the eyes and say that he is the beloved…I can't even look him in the eyes!" Well, now that the exercise was over I was ready to process! I was being "triggered" and my emotions were running high and the cool thing is that I was being allowed to feel those emotions for the first time in the presence of people without being judged.

As I lay down on the mat with my blindfold on, I started to breath and the more I breathed the deeper I felt and the more I started to cry. The more my crying became "wailing" and wailing is powerful love. I was mourning the loss of my male identity as a child. My first memory of "not being seen", my first experience of "not being loved", but not just "not being loved", "not being loved for who I am", this whole process was grieving for the oppression of me as a boy.

I felt 5 years old in my first process. I could see in my head me in a dress holding my little sister, who was only 6 months old. We were sitting in a chair and Mom was taking our picture. I was trying to tell her that I didn't want to wear that dress. I was a boy and did not want to look pretty. I wanted to be handsome. At this time in my process after the whaling had stopped, my facilitators told me that it was time for me to bring a soul part back into my body. They used a pillow, but to me it felt like holding my self as that 5 year old and as I breathed him in, he felt like pure love. This was a feeling I had never encountered, but I thought I knew what love was? After breathing him in, my facilitators told me to just lay there and allow him to integrate into my cellular structure (my body, my mind, my soul) and feel that balance within. It was purely divine. It was white light. It was healing on a level that even to me as a bodyworker, who has experienced many different levels of healing, was like none other. It was joy. It was peacefulness. It was love. I remember connecting with the facilitators and peers that held space for me that day and seeing for the first time in their eyes that they were seeing me, because for the first time in my life, I was seeing me. I was able to be more present in my skin, my looks, my body. I remember sitting in circle and seeing those humps on my chest and being able to feel for the first time in my life the strength to pursue my balance, my congruency in BodyMindSoul knowing that I am worthy of love and I am the beloved. This was my very first process and I knew at that time that this was a road of recovery that I needed to travel and that processing was a tool I wanted to participate in for my own personal healing and to teach to others so their healing can begin.

I left that workshop on Sunday afternoon looking at life differently; the way the trees looked, the grass, flowers, sky-all so alive, so living, so present in nature, so beautiful, so brilliant, so bold and so beloved. I looked at my family differently too. I was learning what it was like to love, to love me, what love feels like and that I was worthy of love. I thought of the love of my life, my wife, my soulmate, my best friend and realized out loud driving home, "I did not know love when we met, but I am learning what it means to love my self and to have love for others. And I love you, Bria." As Marianne and Floyd say, "Love is pure and simple. No matter where you are, if the love is there, there is love." I remembered my first thoughts of Marianne and Floyd and chuckled to my self, "Their not weird, their energy is not off! They are not AMAZING SPIRITUAL GURUS. They are two people with beautiful gifts for the world and full of lots and lots of love. They are the beloved and they are my friends." And then I realized that I had been blocking my self from love all my life because that is all I knew. And now I know. I have a tool and that tool is love.

-Nathan Alan Prince, LMT, CPT

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I personally appreciate the Core Emotional Healing methodology because it *got to the issues within minutes and started to address them immediately VS months/years of 'psythotherapy and drugs', *the team members made it clear that they are 'one of us', they each have much the same issues and feelings and continually undergo the same 'treatment' and *I was allowed to and welcomed to be a part of a team that supported others in their healing.

Addressing issues, whether known or unknown, with people that are trustworthy and truly addressing them quickly so one can 'get back to living' more fully and joyfully is what Core Emotional Healing accomplishes. The team members of White Raven Center are exceptional and compassionate. It is an honor to be a part of this heaing.

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March, 2007
Lydia Darby, Anchorage, Alaska

I began working with the White Raven Center in December of 2004.  The healing space which Marianne and Floyd have created is safe, welcoming and restorative.  My work there continues to transform my life.  Witnessing and experiencing core emotional healing has freed me and allowed me to enjoy new awareness and appreciation of others and of myself.  Old self defeating behaviors have fallen away.  I often am completely present in body.  A deep quieting and reassurance has replaced my fears.  Private sessions and weekend workshops have been opportunities for feeling, expressing and then healing my past trauma. I am honored and grateful for my work with these skillful healers and this powerfully healing process.

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October, 2007
Rebecca Prieto, Anchorage, Alaska

Soon after the loss of my brother, I sought standard therapy, only to find that this technique had a temporary effect and merely suppressed my emotions. I awoke one day, a couple of years ago, and realized I was living in a situation that drained me of my personal strength. Confused and embarrassed as to how I arrived at this place of chaos and nonsense, I met with Marianne and Floyd. This particular, unsettling situation I found myself in required an intervention more challenging to my spirit than talk therapy, in order for me to achieve the wholeness I desired. Trusting myself and the White Raven Center, I embarked on a journey of healing. Courage, commitment, along with a lot of “work,” (it is work to feel and acknowledge pain and sadness, it is work to witness and facilitate healing as Marianne and Floyd do) have allowed me to return to a familiar place of existing, a place where personal strength is with me through family, school and work responsibilities. I believe a long time ago we all had the freedom to feel, to express, we had the gift of communicating effectively to each other when good and wrong were done, and we knew how to acknowledge pain and sadness, emotions of all kinds. The White Raven Center is a safe place to become deeply reacquainted with self and others. My greatest lesson gained experiencing healing work with the White Raven Center is this:
Stay in your truth, it is always near, and the most familiar place you come from.

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