Anne Emerson: Limiting Subconscious Beliefs + Muscle Checking
Identify your patterns—and then break them. (Plus, learn how to make vibrational essences.)
I’m thrilled to introduce you all to Anne Emerson, one of the wise women in my life who I turn to for guidance, support, and healing. I lean on her as an adjunct therapist, particularly when I feel like I’m floating on a lake of emotion that I can’t quite identify, or find myself stuck in a pattern of unknown origin. As an Enneagram 1, I have a lot of latent anger, and Anne has been clutch for me as I trace it back through my life, helping me identify and heal moments in time when I violated my own boundaries (and by extension, my soul).
Anne is brilliant, with one of the best and heartiest laughs around. (And it doesn’t hurt that she knows every wise saying from Al-Anon, i.e. “Love people, trust God.”) When we get on the phone for a session, I ramble for a bit and she shoots back statements, sometimes unrelated to anything I might have said. But they always hit—hard. We then work on repatterning them through a process called “Muscle Checking.” I don’t know how it works (she explains more below), but patterns of behavior have emerged that were definitely below my awareness—and now that I understand and see them, it’s become much easier to recognize them in process and choose a different path. I’ve written about Anne advice a lot, but she’s the one who made me promise to run every single decision through my body before I say yes. That edict alone has been priceless. (One of my patterns is a reflexive yes, followed by feelings of entrapment, etc.)
In addition to sessions ($350/2 hours+), Anne is starting to offer Essence workshops via Zoom ($44, first one is March 7, 10-11:30MST, flyer below). Enjoy!
Q. How do you describe your work?
I use a process called Holographic Repatterning, which is a therapeutic technology using applied kinesiology to trace issues and blockages that appear as challenges in our present experience. These blocks can be emotional, mental and even physical, and seem impossible to unravel. The issues are anchored in our unconscious from past traumas, but appear in our present as goals that can’t be met, issues that don’t get resolved no matter how hard we try and negative patterns that occur again and again whenever there is stress in our lives, Holographic Repatterning uses the technique of talk therapy and muscle checking to access the unconscious, and in a very accurate and non-dramatic way allows client and practitioner to trace the history of the present issue to it’s root in the past, and release it through the combination of awareness and vibrational healing techniques. By the end of a session, there is a noticeable release of tension around the issue(s) that are keeping the client stuck. The client can then move more easily in the direction of positive change, with more profound and permanent results.
Q. Is your process predicated on anything else, or is it your own invention?
I was first introduced to Holographic Repatterning in 1994 as a client. I found it to be extremely effective in moving blocks in myself that had previously felt insurmountable. I got to deal with issues that I had worked on for years with limited results, as it allowed me to get to the root of the problem anchored in my unconscious. I found it a very elegant system that got deep results in a very short time. In 1997 I studied with the creator, Chloe Wadsworth, and it just spoke to my soul as a powerful tool in my spiritual toolbox. I took to it like a duck to water. I call Holographic Repatterning the tofu of healing. Nourishing and effective, but flexible enough that I could put my own flavor to it.
I have been working as a healer since 1975, gathering tools that aligned with my natural abilities. I have been a bodyworker, I have created a set of cards to have a dialog with the soul using my own art and writing called "The Passionate Journey." I make healing fragrances and essences among other things. I have gathered many different technologies that made up my toolbox for working with myself and others.
Q. When you’re listening to people talk, are you keying into specific words or is it entirely intuitive?
One of my superpowers is my ability to listen, make sense of what I am hearing, and trace it into the unconscious to see the pattern there. I am also deeply intuitive, which makes it easy for me to make sense of the inner mystery. Of others, not my self so much... Images, thoughts, and stories emerge and I weave that into the work we are doing. When I can bring the unknown to the surface for a client and give it a voice, it allows the client to relax into the truth and release the stuck place inside. The result is clarity and understanding. What we can conciously see, we can release.
Q. How would you describe limited subconscious beliefs?
Unconscious beliefs are the result of unresolved issues from childhood, inherited beliefs from our ancestors, cultural beliefs, and sometimes even past life beliefs. We don't come in with a clean slate. We come in with inherited baggage, and then we add to it through our life experiences, traumas, and survival issues that get triggered over and over again. How we add to the baggage we carry is to keep doing the same thing over and over again. As I mentioned before, when we can't deal with a challenging or life threatening experience at the time it occurs, we bury it in the unconscious to deal with later when we have the time, skill, understanding, and safety. The only problem with that strategy is that when we store it in the unconscious, we no longer have access to it, but our system still resonates with the trauma and reacts to stress as if we are in danger. So some seemingly small event will get a big reaction and we have no idea why. But our unconscious mind thinks the "threat" is similar to the original stress and reacts as if we are in that kind of danger again. We get trapped in a cycle of trauma, frustration, and grief, feeling like the issues are bigger than we are. In reality, trying to change the pattern from our entrenched limiting beliefs is an uphill battle. When we are out of options and we are willing to do what it takes to get out of the suffering is when we turn to our spiritual nature to help us.
To me, the spiritual journey is about connecting to the Divine within, unpacking the baggage that keeps us from being our authentic self. When we get to our true self we can then co-create with the Divine in our own unique voice. The way to recover our true nature is already part of our blueprint. Our job is to clear everything out of the way that is not ourselves so that so that we can be who who we truly are. To me it is the only work worth doing. It is a path of courage, hard work, and self love.
Q. How does Muscle Checking work?
Muscle checking uses the weakness and strength of a muscle to bypass the mind and access the unconscious where all limiting beliefs are stored. Our bodies are the hard drive of the human energy system, and every experience we have is stored there, particularly the unconscious ones. The body remembers it all. So our mind may think or want everything to be ok, but it isn't a reliable source of information. You can use muscle checking to bypass the mind and get right into the body where the experiences are stored. So if someone is saying to themselves that they deserve to be happy, rich, loved, etc and none of those ever seem to manifest, it is an indication that there is a conflict between conscious and unconscious beliefs. And the unconscious always wins because it is directly connected to our survival response. With muscle checking I would have a person say "I am ready to be in a loving relationship now." I would ask them to hold out their arm, and I would apply gentle pressure and if the body (system) believed it to be true, the arm would stay strong. If the system didn't believe it to be true, no matter what the person believed consciously, the arm would go weak. Then we can see the beginning of the conflict because the body will always show us what the system believes to be true. The operating word there is "believes." Belief isn't reality. It is just a belief. And yet our beliefs run our lives. We think they are absolutely real and part of our foundation, but they are flexible and change with the information our system processes. We hold on to them as if they are part of our being, but in fact they are just part of our programming, and can be changed and upgraded, much like we can upgrade the operating systems of our computers to make them more effective and efficient. Because I work remotely, I ask to be a proxy muscle check for my client and then I use my own body to muscle check once we are energetically entrained. It is where magic and quantum physics collide, but it works. It is like when we work with an I.T. person to do repair on the computer and they can access our computers remotely with our permission. Like I said, magic.
Q. What are the most common patterns that you see?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Pulling the Thread with Elise Loehnen to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.