Episode 66: Communication Grief Therapy

Sandra Chats with Stephen Berkley, Graham Maxey, & Professor Jan Holden.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And you're here. Thanks for choosing the I Heart Radio
and Coast to Coast, a paranormal podcast network. Your quest
for podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural, and the unexplained ends here.
We invite you to enjoy all our shows we have
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afterlife point. The thoughts and opinions expressed by the host

(00:23):
our thoughts and opinions only and do not necessarily reflect
those of I Heart Media, I Heart Radio, Coast to
Coast a out employees of premier networks or their sponsors
and associates. You are encouraged to do the proper amount
of research yourself, depending on the subject matter and your needs. Hi.

(00:50):
I'm Sanders Schamplain. For almost twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each episode, with discuss the reasons we now know
that our loved ones have survived physical death and so
will we Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. How is

(01:10):
your day going? Are you feeling powerful? Are you feeling happy?
I started doing some daily Thoughts of the day of videos.
Each day I share an inspiring quote to help all
of us live a happier life with some follow up
words about the topic. Life isn't so easy. So if
I can help to inspire in just a few minutes

(01:31):
a day, I'm going to do that. If you're interested,
just go to YouTube and search for Sandra's champlain and
you'll find my thoughts of the day. A few days ago,
I was blessed to be the moderator of a question
and answer session with the filmmakers of the new award
winning film called Living with Ghosts. The movie follows a

(01:52):
grieving widow and talks about things like automatic writing and
I A d C therapy, which is AGREE therapy, which
stands for induced after death communication. While on this Q
and A there were three panelists. There was a filmmaker
Stephen Berkeley, There was Professor Jan Holden, who is the

(02:13):
president of i ANS, which is the International Association for
Near Death Studies, and counselor Graham Maxie, who has been
treating grief and trauma very effectively for over thirty years.
The conversation was just fantastic, and I think he'll be
really interested with what the three of them said about

(02:34):
life in the afterlife and this therapy. We're going to
start with a story from Graham Maxi, and he shares
about when he first started dating his wife and he
found out she was a medium. It's incredible. It was
on our third date, um, and both of us have
been married before, but on our third date, I brought

(02:57):
a book with me to her apartment. I said, you know,
she's to be interested in this, and she picked up
the book and immediately winced, like oh, and and I
was like, what you know? And she said, this isn't
your book and I said, well, it was given to
me by a friend. And she said, did your friend

(03:20):
shoot himself in the head? Yes? Was he left handed? Yes?
Was his name Don? Yes? Was he married to Barbara? Yes?
He says, Don's here, and he says that there's a
note that he left that Barbara hasn't found yet, and

(03:42):
he wants you to call her and tell her where
to find the note. And I did and she did,
and in that thirty second exchange, the world kind of
changes a lot, you know. But it was through her
her that I met Jan. Basically, Shannon was doing some

(04:05):
gallery readings around Dallas Fort Worth area and invited Jan,
and Jan was gracious enough to come, and I met
her and Jan invited us. I could not go, but
she invited us to the demonstration of my A d C.
And Shannon came home and said, Graham, I think you
need to go to Chicago. And she told me about

(04:27):
it and I said, I think you're right, and uh,
I did. And actually I wrote a book after. It
was about five years later after that that I still
haven't published yet, but I sent a copy to Dr Bodkin.
He liked it, and kind of from there, he recruited

(04:50):
me to go to Germany. He had been there a
couple of times and his health was not He's got
terrible back problems, he can't fly, and so he asked
me to go and instead and I started doing training
through an interpreter, which is interesting. Also interesting is trying
to demonstrate this through an interpreter. You know, when you're

(05:12):
doing when you're doing I DC therapy through a third party,
that's exciting. It's really the most exciting I've been a
I've been a therapist since nine and this is the
most exciting form of therapy I've ever gotten to do.
Because people walk in to your office and they're depressed.

(05:33):
There some of them aren't even functioning and ninety minutes
later they walk out and they're different, and you know,
they come back the next time, and it's most of
the time, you know, we have have had an after
death communication, which is, as it was for me, kind
of life changing. So the cherry on top, though, is

(05:58):
that you don't have to worry as a therapist about, hey,
are they going to get an a DC, because as
somebody in Bodkin's book, which I hope you'll you'll get
and read, said, one of the people from the other
side said, hey, we're in charge of that, not you, you
you know, so just don't worry about it. But whether

(06:20):
you get an after death communication or not, the intensity
of the grief and the amount of difficulty that that's
charging your life with is substantially and incredibly reduced the
point that people can function again. And and I've never

(06:41):
seen that fail, never since I started this in two
thousand and six. So that's that's something you hang on
too every time you go into a session. That's a
big deal. I mean, grief has the power to get
us looking for answers and start us on our spiritual
journey and some good things, but also it can also

(07:02):
kill us inside. And I know many people who have
been grieving their loved and it can actually, it can
actually hurt you at a cellular level. You know. Yeah,
what is I A DC therapy and how did it
come about? Do you mind sharing a little bit about
that ground? No, Um, you know, Backen was doing trauma

(07:25):
therapy with veterans up at the v A for twenty
years and uh, the model at the time was was
kind of, We're going to go over this so many times. Um,
it's called exposure therapy basically, you know, we're gonna go
over it and over and over and over it, and
it's going to lose some of its power that way.

(07:46):
And then he discovered eye movement desynsitization and reprocessing, which
is a psycho physiological model. It's not just talk therapy.
And he was very amazed by it. And so it
was kind of like the difference between putting a motor
in your car and just pushing it around count all

(08:08):
day long, you know, by yourself. And he made some
modifications to it. One of the differences, the key difference
really is between I d C and E M d R,
as E M d R starts right from the present
presenting symptom, you know, like if you have an upset stomach,

(08:28):
you know, we're going to focus on that, or if
you have a headache, going to focus on that. What
i DC does is say, we're going to start with
the assumption that you're here for grief, and we're going
to build the story. We're gonna we're gonna let you
tell the story. We're gonna build it until we find
the part of that story that is the most distressing

(08:51):
for you right now. And that's that's the real, real
key element in this is find in that and then
once you do it, you use the bilateral stimulation in
conjunction with their going back into that moment or that
that symbol or whatever it is. It can be a

(09:14):
lot of different things. And once you've taken that intensity down,
which happens in tens of minutes, if not less, that's
just spooky, you know, to ted even happen. But once
you do that, you're in a place I've always said,

(09:36):
you know, after death, communication is not in your face.
It's not going to go you know, but it's it's
very subtle communication. And if you're in intense grief, it's
kind of like trying to look at the stars when
the sun is out, it's starlight is there, but it's
very subtle compared to the sun. So when we take

(10:01):
the sun get it to set, you know, you're free
to see what else is there. And that's that's kind
of my nutshell version of i DC. When the people
are doing the therapy with you, are they talking through it? Yes,
they are talking. You know. I invite them to talk
about their loved one, who they were, and about their passing.

(10:26):
And lots of people, lots of them have told me
that just that part of it is healing for them,
being able to say, this is who this person was
to me, and this is who they were, this is
how I experienced their their passing. Because most of the
people that they encounter don't want to intrude and don't

(10:48):
want to get them to cry, and they don't want
to be you know, this is very private, so I
don't want to and they don't get the chance to
do that, which is probably one of them those healing
things you can do for somebody in grief is tell
me who this person was that you're missing and how
you know, tell me the details of how horrible it

(11:10):
was for them to go. So that's the talking part
and then we we you know, zero in on one
part and then they don't talk. You know, then we
do the bilateral stimulation, and then they just report, you know,
what's happened, what's happened? Now? How do you howry? What
are you noticing? Where are you noticing it? All that

(11:33):
kind of stuff which is not particularly verbal. It's experiential.
And have they reported that they actually feel a presence
of their loved one. Most of them encounter it. You know,
this is I'm not seeing this person standing in front
of me. A couple of people have told me they've
gone home and started once you know the way there,

(11:55):
you know the way there. You don't have to come
to my office to do it. A few of them
have said, you know, I was sitting there writing down
a few things and I looked up and there he
was standing in the door. You know, things like that.
But most of it is inter perception. I'm going to
stop here just because I want to say a few
things before we go into our break talking about this.

(12:15):
I a d C therapy. In fact, you can find
out more at induced a d C dot com. It
is a grief therapy, but it's something like over nine
of the clients actually feel a reconnection with their loved one.
They use either this eye movement so you follow somebody's

(12:37):
finger left, right, left, right having these experiences, or in
the movie itself, they show people tapping on their knees left, right, left, right,
and then there's also a method. It's almost like someone
hugging themselves and they're able to tap themselves on the
different sides of their chest as they're going through this therapy.

(12:58):
The book he was talking about is Induced After Death
Communication by Dr Alan Bodkin. So we'll be back in
just a minute. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife
on the I Heart Radio and Coast to Coast AM
Paranormal podcast Network. Okay, folks, we need your music. Hey,

(13:20):
it's producer Tom at Coast to Coast AM and every
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(13:40):
Go now to Coast to Coast am dot com to
send us your recording. That's Coast to Coast am dot com. Hey,
this is George Nori and you're listening to the Heart
Radio and Coast to Coast DAMN Paranormal Podcast Network. Thanks
for being here. Now let's get back to more with Central. Yeah,

(14:13):
welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sander Champlain
and we are here with Steven Berkeley, professor Jan Holden,
and therapist Graham Maxie talking about the movie Living with
Ghosts and the amazing grief therapy induced a d C
and as a side effect, people feel connected with their

(14:36):
loved ones. So I'd like to introduce you to Stephen
Berkeley and have him tell you a little bit about
why he created this film. My dad died, That's how
it started, and I went down to Florida with my
brothers to basically take care of whatever needed to be
taken care of while my mom was in severe bereavement.
My mom had a really, really tough time, and I

(14:58):
don't know if it was tantamount to a disorder, but
I would say she was way up there in terms
of the severity of her grief. So we got her
grief counselor, We got her into a support group, we
got her into to attend religious services. Nothing was effective
at all. It was very alarming for all of us.

(15:21):
We really because she was not functioning and we needed
to do something, and we ended up actually leaving her
in that condition. Unfortunately, we just got some some friends
of hers to kind of like help her just process.
But we had to get back to our lives and
we were living away from the state. At some point,
maybe it's only a few weeks later, my mother's voice

(15:41):
in a phone call changed a little bit. She seemed
a little bit lighter. And what I've found out from
her was that she well, this is what she said
to me, Stevie, I think your father is still here.
So I didn't know what to make of that it
but she explained to me that she thought there was

(16:02):
a blinking light in the house and we have a
she has a neighbor who's very open minded and said, oh,
that blinking light must be your husband saying hello. But
whatever it was, that was great. She was feeling better,
and she was feeling lighter, and she was having these
conversations with a blinking light. Well a week later she
started to reverse course. She was no longer as chipper

(16:25):
as she was when I first spoke to her, and
I found out my mother made the mistake of sharing
the Blinking Light story with their grief counselor, who said, no, Irene,
that's a short term solution to a long term problem.
That's not going to really help you over the long run.
So this was very upsetting for me, and I kind

(16:46):
of decided then and there that maybe it was time
to kind of bring my cameras down there and and
fill my mother going through this journey, because there's more, well,
I'm more to it than that, but that's in a
in a nutshell. Now, let's meet Professor Jan Holden, who
is the president of IAN'S, which is the International Association

(17:07):
for Near Death Studies, author and many other things. As
you said, I was a professor of counseling at the
University of North Texas, and part of a professor's job
is to do research. I had done my doctoral dissertation
on something related to near death experiences, so all the
while that I was on faculty at u n T,

(17:30):
I researched the interface between near death experiences and related
experiences that I call trans personal experiences because there experiences
in which a person transcends the usual personal limits of space, time, identity,
and influence. So they include things like after death communication,

(17:54):
which is the subject of Living with Ghost documentary. Longer
story shorter. I had gone to UM Chicago to study
with Albakan train with him to learn the I A
d C technique myself. I went with three or four

(18:16):
of my students. When we got back here to the
Dallas area, we actually met right here this is my
home office, and we practiced on each other until we
felt really ready to offer our services to our clients.
Just that experience of working with each other was so amazing,
and I really came to believe that I a d

(18:40):
C offered something unique to people who are grieving, like
a unique It was a unique healing process, but no
one had ever done research on it. So I designed
this study to compare I a d C with traditional
grief counseling and see if in fact, people experienced more

(19:05):
relief from their grief symptoms with I A d C
than with traditional grief counseling and UM. Long story short,
the answer was yes. Our participants in the I d
C group showed significantly greater reduction in their griefs and
symptoms than the people who received traditional grief counseling. So

(19:30):
um it confirmed what I had suspected. And then somehow
I got on Steve's radar as he was well along
in producing his documentary and came to be part of
that because of its relevance to the topic of the documentary.

(19:51):
The communication can come through hearing, either hearing a voice
in the environment or hearing in the mind's ear, so
to speak. It can come through touch, and it can
be even just a nondescript but absolutely distinct sense of
the presence of the disembodied person, or even smell our smell, right,

(20:18):
And just to clarify in case everybody doesn't know what
bilateral stimulation is, it's the rhythmic stimulating of the back
and forth of the nervous system. So initially in eye movement,
desensitization and reprocessing, it was that the therapist would move

(20:38):
their fingers back and forth and the by looking right
and left, right and left. It's bilateral, you know, it's
stimulating the two sides of the body. And since then
we know that we can use um sound, you know,
bing bing, bing, bing, or we can use touch, which

(20:59):
is kind of our favored approach in I A d
C right now, is to tap the backs of the
person's hand like you saw in the in the film.
We do a series of those. So there will be
some bilateral stimulation, what with the client with their eyes
closed and then um stopping and letting whatever is happening

(21:20):
in them um happen. And then they open their eyes
and report what they've been experiencing, and you just kind
of talk about that a little bit and then go
back and proceed from there, you know, with more bilateral stimulation,
eyes closed, and then get a report and do that
several times. And and it's usually during that process, after

(21:43):
after processing that core sadness that Graham was referring to,
that biens spontaneously have some sense of the presence of
their deceased loved one. If they don't, then we might
ask a question. Never do we say, knowe try to
conjure up the image of the person. We're always asking

(22:05):
questions that that's related to the grief, but that can
help facilitate the experience. And about seventy five per cent
or so of people, would you say, Graham, that was
the first statistic that came out, and that's that's pretty
old at this point personally, you know, me keeping track

(22:26):
of what's happened in my office, it's more like ninety
two or three. Wow. Great, that's huge. We've got a
question from Meg. She says, in the film which I loved,
you described a tapping technique on the back of the hands.
Can someone do this on their own? And how does
this technique differ from E F T or shamanic syncopated

(22:47):
beats or is it similar? Well, not being that knowledgeable
about shamanic rhythmic beats, we do know that one of
the ways this works is a traumatic experiences in code
it differently in our in our brain than other experiences
are that comes in, you know, basically cite sound. You know,

(23:09):
whatever sense comes in and immediately goes to the amygdala
from you know, and it gets processed the hippocampus, and
you know, it forms this nice little pipe memory loop
that has no cognizance. You know, there's nothing you don't
think about it, It's just there. So every time you
go back to those groups of neurons, you know, something triggers,

(23:31):
you know, a remembrance of it. It just plays the
way it's always been, and it just stays there. And
there's something about the bilateral stimulation that encodes a new
you know, while you're reliving that memory, it's enlisting you know,
this four brain, this prefernal cortex into the loop, and

(23:53):
so you're actually doing a full brain memory, forming a
full brain memory instead of a martial brain memory. And
and that qualitatively changes the memory from that point on,
so you can think about the person without triggering the trauma. Again.
I know there's something to bilateral stimulation all of its own.

(24:15):
They used to train our psychic spies. The Army Intelligence
Court actually trained their people using bilateral stimulation. There's some
neurological stuff we don't quite understand, but that's what I
just said is kind of what we understand the significance

(24:36):
of bilateral stimulation to be in alleviating trauma. Shamanic, I
don't know so much about. I'm very open to you know,
we're not the first people that figured out any way
to help people. You know, this is has been going
on a long time, and this is not the only
form that that helped can arrive in. Stephen, you know,

(24:56):
has highlighted probably one of the better ways of doing that,
which is journaling, you know, a dedicated journaling practice where
people are getting it out of their body. They're not
just sitting with thoughts, they're not just sitting with emotions.
They're actually using their nervous system to get it out.

(25:18):
In the practice of that, many people notice the way
even there's something else going on here except besides me
just writing stuff down. Before I knew about i DC,
you know, one of the favorite methods of grief therapy
was called empty chair work, which as you'd sit and
have the clients speak to their deceased father or son

(25:40):
or whoever it was, and then they changed places and
pretend to be the father and sons and what do
you say to that? You know, And there were some
times when people would come out of those sessions and say,
I didn't expect to hear that, And then they'd leave
the offenses and remember, oh, well, that was just pretend
and it kind of took a lot of the manchick

(26:01):
out of it. This is different because we're not pretending anything.
You're you're doing it as we speak. It's part of
a continuum of healing that we're accessing that the human
being has as part of its equipment. We'll be back
with more in just a minute. You're listening to Shades
of the Afterlife on the I Heart Radio and Coast

(26:22):
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Thanks for listening to
the I Heart Radio and Coast to Coast A and
Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out all our
shows on the I Heart Radio app or by going
to I heart radio dot com. You're listening to the

(26:52):
new I Heart Radio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal
Podcast Network. Now let's get back to Shades of the Afterlife.
Was the Champlaine Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife.

(27:18):
I'm Sandra Champlain and we are with our panel of
guests from the Living with Ghosts movie. I know from
taking mediumship courses myself. The spirit world and our soul
works through our imagination. So sometimes our loved ones are there,
or we get a whiff of a cologne or a cigar.
We think just my imagination, and it's like yes and no.

(27:41):
They are yes, they imagine. If you say, is it
just my imagination, the answer is yes. The question is
what is your imagination? It's like you know, what is television?
You know? It has lots of different channels. You know,
you can go to you know, the cartoon channel. You know,
that's kind of made up. You know, somebody drew that,

(28:02):
you know, all right. But you can also go to
the Discovery channel or something and usually there's something that
you say, you know, those are people actually doing that,
you know, but it's coming through the same media. So
is it all made up? No, it's not anymore than
your imagination is. Yeah, I want to jump in because

(28:23):
in the early literature on after death communication spontaneous after
death communication, it was referred to as hallucinations of the grieving,
which made it sound like it was made up or
um not not real and um. One of the phenomena
that I've focused on both with near death experiences and

(28:46):
after death communication is called vertical perception. And that's where
in the experience the person the experiencer, based on the
condition position of the person's body, they shouldn't know things
that they learned through the experience. And so a perfect

(29:08):
example is what Graham was talking about when Shannon picked
up that book and said, Don's wife has not yet
found a note that he left for her, and it
it's located here, and so Graham then calls Don's wife
and says, I got this, had this experience, and supposedly

(29:30):
there's this note that Don left for you that you
haven't found yet, and it's located here, and then she
goes to that location finds the note. So Shannon got
information that there is no explanation for how she could
have known this very specific, accurate information. And the literature

(29:54):
and near death experiences is replete with examples like this,
and after death communication as well. Now in in near
death experiences, a lot of that has been pulled together
in a book called The Self Does Not Die for
a d C. We haven't yet pulled it together in
one location, but I know some authors who are working

(30:17):
on on that. And so the point of this is
that these as just as Graham was saying, these are
not just made up experiences. Vertical perception shows that the
experiences have objective reality to them. Uh, and not all
of them do, but but many of them do. So

(30:41):
it can help people not discount the experience they had
because when people, you know, our culture is very discounting
generally speaking of these experiences. If an experience or disc
counts the experience, then they stat themselves from garnering the

(31:05):
healing from the experience. So it's important for people to
realize that this is this is more than imagination in
the sense of being made up, and that there is
something genuine objective about these experiences. And if the experiencer

(31:27):
can accept that, then they can go on to really
ask the important question of you know, what does this
mean for my life? How can I use this experience
to move forward in a healed and constructive kind of way.
Thanks jam Thanks guys, Steven, let's move over to you.
Could you talk a little bit about the writing and

(31:48):
the journal and Graham had brought it up, but I
think it's so important. Not everyone is going to have
I A d C therapy, but everybody's got paper and
a pen, and could just talk about include that in
the film and what it is and how it can
really can make a difference, because it certainly does. Okay, Well,
what I was capturing was a particular kind of journaling

(32:11):
Ethel and both and my mother were both doing automatic writing.
I've also been heard called transpersonal journaling or jen you
would know what it's called also, But um, I know
that the just the act of writing is very important,
as Graham was saying, in the case of Ethel and
my mom, they were actually looking for feedback. I case

(32:34):
it came very quickly. I think I don't think it
comes that quickly for most people. Most people who in
dabble in automatic writing, they have to try it every
day at a certain time. They pick over and over
and over again, and usually I think at least thirty
days was what one author of an automatic writing book,

(32:55):
Lowann Mayer um. She she does mention that you gotta this,
You got to try it every day for thirty days,
and then maybe that's when something will happen. I don't
know much about it other than just it seems to
work for I don't know how, I don't know what percentage,
but when it does work, it could it could be

(33:17):
really be life changing because people can resume a kind
of relationship where they're deceased. So it's it's pretty amazing.
I think it requires a commitment to I can just
imagine when we all get to the other side, and
you know, of course we want our loved ones to
not feel pain and everything, but of all of a sudden, oh,
they're interested in picking up a journal and starting to write,

(33:39):
and well, it didn't happen today, and they drop it. Well,
it's not easy for them either. But when we start
that conversation going, even if we think in the beginning
it's us one them, Like I love how Graham said
we can't see the stars through the sun or however
you said that, but it really gives us a practice
of like being the lights a little bit so that

(34:02):
our spirit friends can start to speak and and ultimately
everything we do is to help those experiencing pain and
get people to live life again. I don't think anybody
really wants to die, because you know that we're human
and there's stuff here to do and lives to live.
But to really be comforted that when we do take

(34:22):
that last breath, you know, we open our eyes and
our loved ones are there. And you know it might
be a there everybody doing the way of a big
cheering committee, but our lives here are so important and
I know that our loved ones want us to have
the best life ever. So if we can do whenever
it takes to help in the grieving process and have

(34:43):
that opportunity to live life again, I mean, I think
that's what this is all about. So should we go
from some questions from people. Did Karen end up having
an I a d C. It's implied in the documentary,
but it wasn't explicitly stated. She did not. It communicates
me anyway that she had any after death communication in

(35:05):
that session. That what she got was I can think
about him without being sad. When I said to her
before the sessions was something that a lot of people encountered.
You know, well, I'm I'm sad about them when I
think about them, and that's my last contact with them,
so I don't want to lose the sadness. What she

(35:27):
got was I can think of him and be happy
and not feel like I lost him, you know, because
I'm not sad. And that was life changing for her.
You know, she went into being pretty much armored against
having any ADC. I don't know if she's had any
sense then she was determined not to actually when when

(35:50):
we met, it's true. Thank you. If you are not
an I a d C practitioner, where can you find
classes on clergy too? But not a psychiatry, psychologist or psychotherapist,
You guys can talk maybe a little bit about the
training and if people are interested in this, how do
they find out about it well, it's it's it comes

(36:12):
up over and over again. We're not going to train
people who are not licensed mental health practitioners. And it's
not because people can't learn how to do it. It's
because we're trying to protect the process. A lot of
the people that have contacted me are very skilled in
what they do to help people that Reiki therapists and

(36:34):
sage therapists and chiropractors and all kinds of people I
think are very capable and have and have occasion to
do it. What we're trying very hard to keep from
happening is that this kind of gets out and becomes
kind of the pop culture Uiji board, and who knows

(36:54):
what's going to happen with it and who knows who's
going to get it. So we're very very careful from
the get go about who we can train. I can't
certify people um in I DC who are not licensed,
and that's been the story from the beginning Plotkin wouldn't
do it, and uh, we've not had any any different

(37:19):
indication from from that. Grief is a deep, dark, horrible thing,
and I just personally feel that there may be good
books to read, good things to listen to um, but
I a d C is a grief therapy first and foremost,
and to be able to be in a trained in

(37:41):
the hands of somebody who's trained to really deal with
some of the things that we don't know about as
a trained therapist when you're dealing with the whole human being.
So I think it is important. I don't mind at
all that people go to a trained therapist too. There
is there's a screening that we do with any any
client or potential client. You know that we're looking for

(38:04):
signs that this would be a contraindication for them. We're
not going to exclude lots of people, but you know,
if you're an untreated bipolar disorder, this is not going
to be a really good thing for you necessarily. This
could be a real problem for you. So you know,
we need some We need people who are able to
screen for that in in an educated way. And that said,

(38:28):
if any listeners are licensed health professionals who want to
learn the technique, Graham does training and I think you're
even doing it virtually, yes, exclusively at this point, which
was a was a new undertaking a couple of years ago.
But what I found is that there's really no difference

(38:51):
in the learning that happens. Uh. Like I said, it's
a simple technique. It is not arcane, it's not convoluted.
It's very straightforward. We'll take our last break now and
then we'll come back with Professor Jan Holden, Graham, Maxie,
and filmmaker Steven Berkeley. You're listening to Shades of the

(39:13):
Afterlife on the I Heart Radio and Coast Coast AM
Paranormal podcast network, and now more Sandra on the I
Heart Radio and Coach to Coach AM Paranormal podcast Network.

(39:46):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sanders Champlain
and we are with the crew from Living with Coasts
movie talking about I A d C Grief therapy, which
you can find out more at Indu East a d
C dot com. Graham, I'm assuming people can find out
about getting a session at the website, but what about training?

(40:10):
People also find out about the training geographically? You know
that you can. You can even find the ones in Germany,
in Italy, in places like that. I think we even
have I think we have one in South Korea if
that's where you find yourself. But um, yeah, that's that's

(40:31):
it's it's done. Geographically. Well, it's a good chance that
the Unseen World is getting people to notice this and
have interests. But it also good. It is good for
us to be able to share. And you know, sometimes
it's hard to talk about these things, but I really
love that we have this film that people can say,
oh my gosh, did you see this? And you have

(40:51):
that conversation and if you do know somebody fits the qualifications,
it really may be an asset to them because everyone,
every therapy wants to help people and wants people to
live their best lives. Adianna as asking how can people
not only watch the film some haven't here, but how
can we get the extra information? Because I know we

(41:15):
people could watch for free, but if you chose to donate,
you could also get some bonus material. I think it
was twenty hours of things. If you can explain, Steve,
just a little bit about how you've done the premiere
and the screenings and because some people would like to
watch it, and how that they can get all these
good things. Okay, but first I have to admit to
everyone that I'm self distributing and it's all new to me,

(41:39):
so things are coming out a little bit clunky. The
film made its premier in October, and we're doing private
screenings right now because the film festivals where the film
is still at, they prohibit filmmakers from just letting the
film be shown publicly while the film is still in
the film festival. Start get I gotta keep the private,

(42:00):
which means I can come to people like you, Sandra,
to host an event and everybody, all your members or
listeners or viewers, they can sign up and they could
they could watch. And we've been doing these fundraisers where
the film is free, but if you want to get
the extras, or if you want to extend to time,

(42:21):
then you might have to a certain donation levels. You
get you get that. It's a little incentive to donate
a little bit more because again we're trying to get
the film on PBS and that's gonna be expensive. So
if you put they put their name on your waiting lists,
they'll be informed as to when the next screening is.
And you can easily do that. Just go to we
Don't Die dot com and scroll to the bottom of

(42:41):
the page and there's information there about living with ghosts.
To follow up on how things switched in the movie,
somebody asked if any experiences have gone on to have
a continuing relationship with their partner or their deceased loved
one after their physical death. And this person is saying,

(43:03):
you know, I had that with my partner. And I
don't know about I A d C clients, uh specifically,
but I've read two books by men who had very
ongoing communication with their disembodied wives. And I can't remember
the names of either the men or their their books,

(43:26):
but I think if someone just googles around, they probably
find them. But it's just to say that the answer
is yes, that people do have ongoing relationships with their
disembodied loved ones. That and these are people who are
you know, mentally healthy and otherwise functioning, you know normally

(43:46):
and um successful in life and blah blah blah, and
they also have this ongoing relationship. So um, so it
does happen. I have a question for Graham that a
lot of people have asked me in these q and
a s, and that is you describe the release of
the trauma very well with the bilateral stimulation and how

(44:09):
it goes from trauma moves from one part of your
brain to another part of your brain, and it assimilates
the trauma becomes part of the patients or client. But
how does it result draw a line for me from
that release of the trauma to a visit like what happens?

(44:31):
Why does a portal open during that moment? Well, it's
it's kind of like what I was telling Sandra before
we got on that. First of all, being open to
it is kind of you know, they're not gonna go, hey,
I don't care what you think I'm gonna be. You know,
give you this afterdas communication thing. You know. The other

(44:51):
thing is how much of your attention and energy is
being eaten up by the grief? You know, I just
don't people are gonna be able to notice a lot
of what's going on because they're so debilitated by this.
What I've noticed is that after death communication happens for

(45:13):
two There has to be two ingredients in there. You know.
One is connection with the person. You know, I don't
get after death communication from JFK JR. You know that's
that's not going to happen just because I know he's dead,
regardless of what you may hear now. But the other
thing is the need do I need to hear from you?

(45:36):
I may want to but do I need to? And
the only the only thing I can figure out about
that is that, yeah, you're here to do your own decisions.
You know, you're not going to be dependent on people
who may have a larger view of this than you do.
It's one reason, you know, Shannon, we'll only read for

(45:57):
people one time, you know, for for one particular passing.
She doesn't want to be the conduit for them and
have them be dependent on her or or their loved
one for you know, what should I do with the
mortgage or what should I you know, that kind of stuff.
You know, that's not what they do. But I do think,

(46:18):
I do think being open to it or having having
a demonstrate And that's something that Kenneth Ring talked about
that you don't have to have a near death experience
to be affected by near death experience. You just have
to hear about it, uh and and say, wow, that's
kind of a different type on things. But I'm not

(46:41):
going to reject it. You know, I'm gonna I'm going
to learn more about it or I'm going I want
to hear more about it. But that that in itself,
without having a near death experience, can be an experience
that changes things for you. Jan I want to talk
to you for a bit because you've got such a
past with near death experience is and do you find

(47:01):
or through some of the stories of these reconnections. I mean,
everybody wants to know first of all that their loved
one is still around. But you've had your own near
death experience, can people trust that the afterlife is okay,
that people are healthy, well and whole well. Um, I

(47:21):
need to clarify that I actually have not had a
near death experience, but I've had a lot of transpersonal experiences,
including a near death like experience and uh several after
death communications. So um, so I'm still in the experience
or realm, but not specifically a near death experience per se.

(47:43):
I think the best way to answer the question is
to say that both people who have had near death
experiences and people who have had after death communication, if
before the experience they did not believe in the survival
of anxiousness after death, after the experience, they almost always do,

(48:06):
and so the experience um tells them that there is
survival of consciousness after death, and and it's because they
have encountered their deceased loved one as whole, healthy, and
so forth. So that's I think the most we can say.
I don't know that from a purely scientific point of view,

(48:29):
will ever Maybe maybe we will. There are some ways
we're trying, but haven't succeeded so far in um in
really establishing this from a scientific perspective. But we have
um huge numbers of testimonials from people who have encountered

(48:52):
their deceased loved one as whole and healthy and um
and continuing to exist. So I think that's the best
answer we have right now. Very good. There's a couple
of really nice things that people say here. Mindy says,
I have an ongoing relationship with my husband. I promise

(49:12):
you it is real. Debbie says, I love this film
and it helped to see it. Thank you for allowing
me to view it. It gives hope to know there
can be helped with grief. Not such good news. Could
any of you explain more about automatic writing? There's people
that are asking about how they can get started on it,

(49:33):
you would suggest. I know the land Mayor is a
acquaintance of Graham's, and I've gotten to know her very well.
She's an author and she wrote a book called Celestial Conversations,
which is a great book. It's basically it's a how
to book regarding getting started with automatic writing. I can't

(49:54):
recite the book here or be even paraphrase very well,
but the idea is, you pick a time of day,
you bring your pet and your pen, or if you
were comfortable at the computer, that's okay too, but to
sit down religiously every day for thirty days. And I
think she recommends doing a little meditation first. Yeah, she

(50:17):
she she was. She asked me to write the foreword
for her book, which is how we got acquainted. She
said when her mother died, and her mother had been
pretty emotionally abusive to her most of her life, and
then right after that her daughter committed suicide, she was
in terrible alcoholic distress, and so she said, I was

(50:41):
just casting around. I didn't have any place to go.
So she kind of leaned back into the only thing
that she had an experience with was what she said
was her Catholic upbringing, which she knew how to do
centering prayers, she knew how to do meditation, and she
knew how to do journaling. And apparently that was three
disciplines that she knew at that point, and so she

(51:04):
started doing that and that, you know, became the book.
You know, she started noticing that when I'm I've done
this centering prayer, when I've done this meditation, and then
I do the writing regularly and scheduled wise, Um, something
different is happening than what I was expecting. I'm beginning

(51:24):
to have the indication that being answered. She went on
from there to kind of look into transpersonal psychology and
got a lot of affirmation. Yeah, some of this stuff
not just me, it's it's going on out there. You know.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.
Our home basis we Don't Die dot com. I'm Sandra Champlain.

(51:47):
You've been listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the
I Heart Radio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
And if you like this episode of Shades of the Afterlife,
wait until you hear the next one. Thank you for

(52:08):
listening to the Heart Radio and Coast to Coast a
AM paranormal podcast network.