Gestational
Powerful Modality for Deep Healing
CRM, a therapy modality that I practice, has a model of entering into gestational exploration and healing the ruptures that your video IN-UTERO speaks to. I’d like to share a bit of my personal experience with it.
When I was a client, I found there was a desire to come to earth but then when I got here, I was ambivalent about my choice and thinking I’d made the wrong one. I noticed regret for it as soon as I was in a human body remembering my time in the womb as being indecisive. Moving forward I saw myself as a small child in my home. As I played with toys, my parents, who were snippy with each other, would sit down next to me and give me all the love and attention, which was conflicting for me. Watching them in the kitchen being snippy and then watching their faces and energy change completely when they were with me.
Fast forward to an ocean bay in my hometown. I’m about 4 months old in a blue suit with chubby legs. My dad’s holding me above the water as he squats near the shore. My mom’s in a purple suit and waves with a giddy little smile to us. My dad dips my toes in the water and I can hear myself squeal with delight and pump my legs and my body. My dad laughs as I squeal and it is in this exact moment that I realize – this was the moment that I bought into being on earth. This was the moment that I was happy that I had come here.
Because of this moment, something in me doesn’t wonder anymore. I just accept that I chose all of this life in this human experience. It settled something deep in my spirit. I also called my mom after the session, and she confirmed that she had a purple suit when I was a kid.
CRM is the most powerful modality that I have found for deep healing, and I recommend it to everyone who truly is willing and wants to heal.
Both Liberating and Thrilling
I first met Lisa Schwarz and experienced CRM about seven years ago, when I was exploring new approaches to healing trauma – both for personal reasons and in my capacity as a journalist. I found the sessions opened doors to realities that I had always sensed must exist, but had never had a reliable means to access. These new dimensions were populated with allies, resources and assisting forces that I was able to work with to resolve early life traumas, and help change dysfunctional patterns in intimate relationships, in particular.
A few weeks ago (ie in January 2022), I had a gestational session. Like so much CRM work, the experience challenged many of the basic assumptions that underpin our consensus understanding of reality. I was taken back into a version of myself that had existed before I was born. I re-experienced the immense sadness I had felt at having to leave that place and time to begin my journey on Earth. I believe that periods of depression I have experienced sporadically throughout my adult life may have their roots in this initial sense of separation. As the session progressed, and I re-experienced my conception, my sadness at saying a temporary goodbye to my home and loved ones was filled with the sheer joy and exhilaration of incarnating as a human.
It was the excitement one might feel at embarking on the ultimate rollercoaster ride — knowing that there was no actual risk involved, but feeling the thrill of simulated danger. This shift from sadness to joy gave me what can perhaps best be described as an intense experience of my “non-local self” – the part of me that exists outside the usual parameters of space and time. And I was given clear instructions and resources that will allow me to connect and embody aspects of this non-local self in the course of everyday life: What — in spiritual terms — might be described as being “in” the world but “not of” the world.
The gestational session was thus both liberating and thrilling: Once again, CRM had connected me to non-ordinary states of consciousness – and viscerally reminded me that “there is more.” I treasure these experiences, which have both given me a far more expansive view of reality and my place in it, and connected me with inner resources that I can call upon to support my own healing – and my service in the world. Thank you.
Grounding, Trusting, and Supportive
I’ve been working with Lisa for a couple of years now, all CRM work making amazing changes in my being, into very deep layers. The gestational work was new for me, and I can say I remember every session, and if I would focus, I would remember very many details. It was grounding and touching, unlike any work I have done before, to truly remember the origin of my being, the transition of my energy into my creation, the becoming me in flesh and blood. Journeying through my days, weeks and months in utero, I realized so many key moments, shaping me in who I am now, even until today. Realizing where the roots of so many unsolved issues were, of imprinted relationship patterns, of beliefs and needs was eye opening and deeply healing.
The fact that so much time is being given by Lisa in the sessions, to really be, re-member and re-connect with what is so truly important and basic has been enormously healing for me. Really being with what was, deepening, waiting and receiving such precious information has been the basis for re-building the me that is me in essence. I had never met myself on such deep levels, and it truly has made me be in connection with myself in a more wholesome way.
The way Lisa knows how to be with those primal issues, really trusting the process, trusting my (or any-) bodies possibilities for processing and healing even in-utero and in the generational lineages is unique. It has given me the faith, time after time, to be with places in myself where painful truths needed to be seen and could be seen and felt and processed. Lisa’s immense power to just be there and be with whatever comes up is so grounding, trusting and supportive that it makes you be able to move through whatever you feel is impossible.
It’s just amazing work, what else to say…
met vriendelijke groet, kind regards
A Perspective Of Hope
I am a (nearly) 40-year-old psychologist/psychotherapist, living and working in Belgium.
Last week I saw the IN UTERO-documentary: what a wonderful piece of art. Really touching. I would like to thank the producers and crew to bring this theme so respectfully and understandable under the attention of (hopefully) a very broad audience. The world needs to really know and understand the extent of problems and challenges that intra uterine stressors bring into life and onto the planet.
The one element I missed though, in the documentary, is the possibility to treat or alleviate the pains and negative cognitions/beliefs that result from these gestational “imprints”.
Since 2016 I was working with EMDR, hereby already addressing pre-verbal trauma (fetal/neonatal/ages 0-3 years old) and generational trauma, and gaining good results with that. More recently, though, I discovered another modality, namely CRM, giving even a more profound healing of the above-mentioned issues, since it is more thorough (processing starts from the moment of conception), more detailed and more “safe”/tolerable for the client (due to elaborate resourcing during processing).
For starters, I experienced this personally. Doing my own gestational trauma work, using the CRM model, I could “remember” (and resolve) the fact that – as a “freshly conceived” embryo – I felt my mother’s emotional pain and the urge/responsibility to “heal” her hurt, to make her happy.
Furthermore, I experience this on a daily basis in my practice with clients. Using CRM protocols for treating gestational and generational trauma, really makes a big difference in their lives, because we really go to the root-cause of recurring themes and patterns in their lives and “solve” them, there where they originated.
Hopefully this can give a perspective of hope and add the practical concrete opportunity in bringing action to the extremely useful information that is already in the documentary.
Greater Life Acceptance
My experience with CRM gestational work has been profound. First, it has increased my ability to connect with myself beyond identification with the narrative of my life strengthening my sense of presence, embodiment, and connection with all that is. Then, my work with gestational trauma, from as early as conception, has given me the opportunity to recognize, understand, assimilate the adversity that impacted me deeply resulting in the feeling of life as a burden that I am carrying, a feeling of deep loneliness and grief for just existing in a survival/enduring state, a sense of lack of belonging “here” with humanity.
Through this work, increasing my personal understanding and integration of what I have experienced from gestation, I have a much greater experience of acceptance of life as it is. This has resulted in feeling like I have greater internal ability and choice to connect with humanity and love what is, even if there is pain in it. The release and integration of my gestational trauma is allowing me to be spacious with the adversity and the wonder of our human condition.
Helped Me Clear Early Attachment Wounds
I have studied and participated in many psychotherapeutic healing approaches but it was Lisa Schwarz’s Comprehensive Resource Model that helped me fully heal my attachment wounds and C-PTSD. CRM’s in-utero and birth trauma protocol took me on a deep healing journey that cleared the activation in my nervous system from in-utero and early attachment trauma. This embodied, deeply resourced protocol doesn’t exist in any other healing modality that I’m aware of. I now use this work with my own clients; and I know that with CRM’s resource scaffolding and embodied attunement, the adult body DOES remember the earliest experience of coming into this world and DOES remember the earliest and most profound connection/disconnection with mother that sets the tone for our belonging to and trust in the world.
Being fully in the body, using breathwork, imagery, and embodiment tools, we CAN remember our connection/disconnection to mother in the womb, from the moment of conception, then through the umbilical cord at five weeks old, to our very first breath and the first time being held, and then to the first few weeks and months of being welcomed or unwelcomed into this world. Being able to work through this early experience in my own body has helped me clear my own early attachment wounds and live in a more calm, grounded, flexible, and present state of being.
I Will Continue To Be Healed
I just wanted to say Thank you for this wonderful training experience. What I was able to access in the last practice session was so huge, that I just wanted to share it with you.
In working through gestation, I found myself not at all wanting to come into this life and couldn’t get into the egg/sperm. As I processed it it suddenly dawned on me that it was because in my past life (probably right before this one) I had ended it by killing myself. I left that past life work for next time with my therapist after resourcing it, and processed the feelings of exhaustion of having to come into a life where I had to seemingly take care of my parents again, the anger and the fear that Source is trying to make me go through this again, and then the guilt and “I am not worthy to exist” from the perpetration of having taken my previous life that had been a gift from Source. My practice partner then asked me about my choice point, which is when I realized that I was the one who had signed up for this (coming back to the present life), right before I killed myself I had promised Source that I would try harder in my next life.
This wasn’t generational work because I wasn’t going into anything in detail about my past life (it felt totally different from generational work), it was only gaining the information and awareness that was needed for me to be able to move on with my gestational work. And becoming aware of this root, I was able to move smoothly into gestation, and realized that my present-day parents are not my parents of my past life, and that they had accepted me as I am and wanted and loved me. I was able to experience true relief and love and warmth when experiencing the moment of gestation into this life with my present-day parents as parents, and I realized that I had mixed them up with my past life parents, probably because my heart was totally closed when I came into this life.
I felt so relieved through this work, because I have always had deep down, this feeling of despair and not wanting to live and not being worthy enough, and on and off depression, and through today’s work I got to know at mind-body level where it originated and what it was. The shift that occurred was from “Life is a punishment. In the end it is meaningless.” to “I am here to heal, to learn and to evolve.” and my New Truth was “I am here to be healed and to heal.” I also now understand why negative feelings towards my parents were still lingering even after having cleared a lot of my child parts’ issues on that.
I truly believe that through CRM I will continue to be healed and learn to heal others as a therapist.”
To Morgan, my therapist, this was almost 2 months ago, and since that session, the depressing heaviness I had deep down since childhood has totally lifted, and I have much more energy and joy day to day.
Life Changing
The day after I returned from my first CRM training in 2019, I started to use the model and my clients began to experience immediate healing and relief from their lifelong struggles that other therapies simply could not remedy. My first CRM client who had suffered from multiple physical maladies started CRM and within a handful of sessions, her symptoms were completely cleared. Fast forward to present day, these kinds of healing stories shared by clients are commonplace. I could not be more grateful and astounded by the multidimensional healing CRM offers in my life and in the clients with whom I am privileged to work.
I recently participated in one of Lisa’s intensives in Cape May Point. To say it was life changing would be an understatement. The magic of the land, coupled with the power of these groups created an experience I will hold in me forever. I was in a space perhaps for the first time in this life to truly understand the ripple effects that separation and disconnection have caused, from the micro layers in me to the cosmic. I walked away from this intensive with an awareness of what I personally must hone to fulfill my purpose on this Earth as well as specific clinical and technical skills that will enable me to more effectively address generational and in utero trauma in clients. Prior to discovering CRM, I trained and became certified in several other modalities, and none of them come CLOSE to the level of healing CRM offers. People must know about CRM. It is time.
Helped Me Release The Tensions
My name is Björn Thies, I live in Germany. I am a Psychotherapist whose core work is traumatherapie.
My main model is the CRM Model. My own experience with gestational work with this model:
I nearly lost my life in the process of birth. This trauma led to a lot of physical problems I had still in my mid 30s when I practiced sports. A lot of different trauma work helped me to identify the root of the physical problems but could not help me to release the tensions. With the gestational work in CRM I was able to feel the love of my parents in the process of the womb and birth.
This resource helped me to release the tensions in my body in a much more effective way. I am now 50 years old and I am doing cross fit on a competitive level. I am sure I would not be able to do this without the gestational work.
Gestational and Generational
Before And After CRM
Pierre – 54 years old – healed in a few sessions deep traumas rooted before his birth and has been helping others to heal using CRM ever since.
I discovered CRM less than a year ago and I have been astonished by its power and efficacy. For the first time, there was a technique that could go quickly to the root of a trauma and heal it. Within a few days of the basic training, I did the generational one and was able to heal profound traumas. A door was opened to a new world. In my subconscious there were memories of past lives and generational traumas which were longing to be healed. Whether those events happened or not, whether I did live those lives and whether my ancestors had those traumas, I do not know – I only know that those memories were there with their associated traumas and letting them be and held by my loving adult self fully present the healing process could be complete.
The gestational protocol that enables one to live again and heal what happened from conception to birth was another miracle. I knew that my mother was depressed and suicidal whilst pregnant. I knew from other techniques that many of my issues in this life had gestational roots but I did not know what to do with them. The gestational CRM was the answer. In a few sessions I was able to heal deep gestational traumas.
For me and now quite a few of my clients, there is a before and an after the discovery of CRM. Whatever the root of a trauma, CRM can heal it. The gestational and generational work bring healing to another level altogether. We don’t have to change our belief system whatever it may be – if a trauma memory comes up we just work with it.
One client, Andree 82 years old said “40 years of various therapies had allowed me to heal many traumas of my current life, but not to access deep traumas that prevented me from being happy and to be “who I am”. A few CRM sessions on past lives and transgenerational quickly lifted the veil. It is magic ! I am grateful for the simplicity and effectiveness of this method. I finally know from lived experience, the meaning of the word “fullness”.
Secure And Completely Alive
I could go on and on, since many of CRM sessions are very intense in emotions, rich in beauties and lessons, and are making a significant difference in clients lives. But as far as gestational/generational healing is involved, I found CRM to be at the very tip point of what is needed in our current civilization to finally overcome the traumas of the past – both in oneself and in the human kind as a whole.
As a 40 years old French psychologist and therapist, for fifteen years I worked mostly with psychodynamic approach, hypnosis and mindfulness, in search of a method able to make a real difference in clients’ life through a deep change of consciousness. My wish was only fulfilled when I witnessed during a training what CRM can reach, both in myself as a client and in my own patients, some of them severely dissociated. As far as I’m concerned, CRM is the only trauma treatment modality that is efficient and I must say, that consistent in its case conceptualization and theory of human attachment and sanity.
A year ago, I was working with Lisa Schwarz to make peace, first within myself, with my early attachment disruption. Which had recently caused a violent communication breakdown with both my parents, from which my own children were suffering. Although it has been caused by actual events, I realized in a single gestational session what I suffered back then, meaning the day I was born. Immediately after birth I was placed in an incubator, with no touch or sight of my parents for four days. Only then was I able to be held by them and directly fed by my mother. And it was at that moment, to my greatest surprise, that the difficulties arose and the neurobiology of disruption and distress was firing the most. It was the reunification and the shock of being reconnected that underlined the disconnection, the fear and the pain. As the session was moving forward not only did I narrated and felt what happened and cried and took my breath again, but also was I able to exist in their presence in a calming and apeasing way, and a forgiving one. The other neuro circuit of secure attachment was lit at the same time as my body and brain were brought together to face the harshness of early traumas. And that is the main beauty of CRM : to resource in goodness while re-membering even the most painful events of one’s life, and to embody both of these aspects in the present. It is like finally being able to stay at home and not having to wander anymore to find a way back. The week after this very session I phone called my parents and a meeting was arranged, and our relationships improved a lot since. As a matter of fact I just celebrated my birthday with them and my wife and kids and everything went smoothly.
Then I could talk about my work as a clinician with a severely depressed woman, about fifty, social anxiety, disregulated, with a recent past of severe alcoholism, with a certain lack of insight regarding her own pain. And within two months of intensive CRM treatment, we were able to heal a child part in her still mourning since her mother’s death of cancer at a very early stage in her life. Then to reconnect with past generational traumas involving betrayal and distrust within the family. And in a matter of weeks I saw her unfolding, her tone of voice, her insight, the way she looked at people, and the possibility to be in her body, and stop harassing her teenage boy with her anxiety, and starting to dress better and to regain confidence. Then she managed to be hired for a far better job, and a month after, she moved for a far better apartment. She was able to confront her father and her mother-in-law and to bring light on what happened. From the recovery of her very early traumas – some of them conveyed generationaly by her long-gone mother – she was re-membering her own strength and will and love for life. And the adult part, shy and hidden, was in the front seat again. These changes were kind of a surprise to her, like she didn’t expected that much from healing. I have to add she was very dedicated and took her CRM « homework » heartfully, the layer of resources reinforced by repetition (toning, the use of visualized geometry, New Truth and so on).
I could share some other amazing and ongoing therapeutic process. For women especially, it is very helpful with maternity, I work with a woman pregnant of her fourth child and traumatized because she could have died at birth and was the last of three, and her grandmother aborted her fourth baby. And within a matter of few sessions she felt again secure and completely alive in her body and feeling the sacred bond with her baby. It was beautiful to see how they connected together, despite many difficulties in the maternal lineage !
And this other woman who is currently clearing her childhood trauma from bombing and invasion of Beyrouth in 1982 and how it affected her relationships with her three daughters. She was able to rely to the land, the language, recovering songs heard at an early age, the smell of flowers and the trees, and a secure attachment to some of her family members. And it was then possible to face the truth of the horror of what happened to her, her family and her community during these events. Again, an emotional regulation, adjustment in relations and regain of energy is noticeable.
Able To Navigate Difficulty
I come from a lineage of immigration and war trauma, particularly in my maternal lineage. My own gestation and birth became traumatic at about six months in utero, with various traumatic events and major losses continuing periodically through this life. My given dharma name is “Embrace Tiger, Return Mountain.”
I am now sixty-nine years old with over forty years of recovery, about twenty years of therapy, a former software engineer, and am now a licensed transpersonal clinical psychologist. I have studied many forms of healing, including indigenous, somatic, spiritual, energetic and mainstream clinical practices. When I learned of CRM in 2018, I knew I had found my home, both personally and professionally, as it is the most comprehensive (yes, I meant to say that) healing modality and form of case conceptualization that I have found. CRM integrates all that I have studied and know to be effective. – personally, from my post-doc as a researcher, and professionally.
After specific CRM generational clearings addressing my separation from the Source of All Being (and the template of that separation that had repeated in-utero in this timeline) I am able to navigate any difficulty encountered, whether internal or external. Even in the face of some of rather challenging circumstances, I return to my center either naturally or, if needed, using the CRM specific sacred geometry and tone that returns me to the truth of “who I really am.” The outward difference evident to myself and those in my orbit is the ability to allow whatever disturbance that may arise, external or internal, to pass as the clouds over the sun. I am ever so grateful to have found this method and look forward to passing it along to others as I am able.
Generational
An Experience I Will Hold Forever
The day after I returned from my first CRM training in 2019, I started to use the model and my clients began to experience immediate healing and relief from their lifelong struggles that other therapies simply could not remedy. My first CRM client who had suffered from multiple physical maladies started CRM and within a handful of sessions, her symptoms were completely cleared.
Fast forward to the present day, these kinds of healing stories shared by clients are commonplace. I could not be more grateful and astounded by the multidimensional healing CRM offers in my life and in the clients with whom I am privileged to work. I recently participated in one of Lisa’s Generational intensives in Cape May Point. To say it was life changing would be an understatement. The magic of the land, coupled with the power of these groups created an experience I will hold in me forever. I was in a space perhaps for the first time in this life to truly understand the ripple effects that separation and disconnection have caused, from the micro layers in me to the cosmic.
I walked away from this intensive with an awareness of what I personally must hone to fulfill my purpose on this Earth as well as specific clinical and technical skills that will enable me to more effectively address generational and in utero trauma in clients. Prior to discovering CRM, I trained and became certified in several other modalities, and none of them come CLOSE to the level of healing CRM offers. People must know about CRM. It is time.
Deeply Grateful
I’ve been in therapy for over 20 years. I’ve worked with every modality under the sun! Regardless, I still struggled with sense of, ‘ I’m wrong’ and ‘I shouldn’t be here’.
As I started to dig deeper into my ancestral and generational lineage , through the CRM processes, I began to discover that I’d been the perpetrator of terrible crimes against humanity.
These were memories that I never knew I had.
I re-experienced what I’d done , to who and why. This wasn’t some heady intellectual knowing, but something that was deep , somatic and visceral.
As I re experienced this in the present time, being held in the somatic resources of the protocols of CRM, I was able to re visit of the deep buried feelings of chronic shame. The shame that had been manifesting throughout my life and manifesting as ‘I’m wrong’ and ‘I don’t deserve to be here’.
CRM provided the necessary deep somatic scaffolding, that allowed these memories to surface up and eventually be discharged.
I emerged feeling like ‘I’d got my life back’.
It was quite extraordinary. I’d felt as if I’d been reborn and could finally live my life fully and not be dragged down by this deep shame that had been with me my whole life.
I am deeply grateful for CRM for giving my life back!!!!!’
Energy Toward Healing
It is difficult to understand how I ended up in my first CRM training in Beulah, Colorado, all the way from Israel. I heard about CRM, and I knew I had to come and learn and experience from you.
An intuition, and a guiding energy toward the light of healing, for myself, my family, my clients. and beyond.
During that first training, I experienced 2 transgenerational CRM sessions. Leaving my second CRM training, working, and acquiring tools to access Core Self (a must for all), I measure how much I have changed. I do not feel the weight from a constant underlying anxiety, expressed through jittery movements, and a heavy sense of pending danger. The familiar unsatisfied neediness is gone, together with food cravings and sudden shopping urges. The ocean of uncried tears has morphed and transformed into a sense of worth, making pleasure and flow acceptable. Life can be light and easy, no need for a constant and sustained effort every step of the way.
What happened in those 2 transgenerational sessions last November? I was able to access deep unresolved pain from my father and my mother’s lineages, engines of despair and grief in our family system. This time, the tears could be cried completely, as the roots of the pain were encountered thanks to the multilayered resourcing system of CRM. I met my ancestor’s pain, acknowledged it and cried it, however seemingly unbearable it had seemed. I felt a sense of love and dignity as the state of victimhood was unveiled and respectfully processed. It was not only painful: there was humour, intelligence, revelations, humanity, and healing in the process.
This CRM training was a WOAHH!!!! Lisa shares an amazing amount of knowledge, theoretical and practical, in those few days. CRM is a discovery, deep, innovative, and powerful. I look forward to deepening my practice of CRM and introducing it with my clients, especially complex PTSD military veterans. Thank you, Lisa, for bringing CRM to the world and providing your training with authenticity
You Will 100% Be Profoundly Transformed
After spending a week in the magical and “knowing” land that is Cape May on the tip of the New Jersey Coast I emerge back into my life with an expansive awareness that mimics the very mystical elements which guided us as a group through our personal and collective healing journeys. Even the grand house where we worked and lived for that week held the “voices” of the Collective and ancestral support that each of us needed to hear to move into our individual work. The very walls, staircases, living and eating spaces, expansive porches, spacious yards and shade trees held layers of essence and imprints with a certain perfect nourishing structure. The structure held the ability for our souls to abandon any resistance and dive in as we listened to exactly what we each needed from our ancestors and guides.
I’m quite literally blown away as I look back and realize that on every level of my existence during that week, from the physical, emotional, spiritual layers of my be-ing, I was cradled in exactly what my psyche craved. It’s as if the house itself was built some 200 years ago on that specific land in preparation for us. She shone and stood in all her gloriousness, waiting years for these days that she may be a co-facilitator of CRM, helping each of us manifest this work for a collective purpose. This purpose for me wasn’t fully known upon arrival but was clearly presented and ingrained in each of us upon departure.
If you are reading this, I can’t encourage you enough to gift yourself a week learning and doing your Generational/Gestational work in Cape May. You will 100% be profoundly transformed, recharged, and reunited with your soul and the living soul of humankind. CRM can speak for itself, but the experience at Cape May Point is a must-do for anyone on this earth who is called to heal The Collective. A’ho!
Healing Is True Freedom
I’ve been in therapy for over 20 years. I’ve worked with every modality under the sun! Regardless, I still struggled with sense of, ‘ I’m wrong’ and ‘I shouldn’t be here’.
As I started to dig deeper into my ancestral and generational lineage , through the CRM processes, I began to discover that I’d been the perpetrator of terrible crimes against humanity.
These were memories that I never knew I had.
I re-experienced what I’d done , to who and why. This wasn’t some heady intellectual knowing, but something that was deep , somatic and visceral.
As I re experienced this in the present time, being held in the somatic resources of the protocols of CRM, I was able to re visit of the deep buried feelings of chronic shame. The shame that had been manifesting throughout my life and manifesting as ‘I’m wrong’ and ‘I don’t deserve to be here’.
CRM provided the necessary deep somatic scaffolding, that allowed these memories to surface up and eventually be discharged.
I emerged feeling like ‘I’d got my life back’.
It was quite extraordinary. I’d felt as if I’d been reborn and could finally live my life fully and not be dragged down by this deep shame that had been with me my whole life.
I am deeply grateful for CRM for giving my life back!!!!!
Conversation Easier, More Laughter
I have an easy and natural connection to both my sons but had a much more difficult and volatile relationship with my daughter. My husband and I also worry about her much more than about my sons always dreading something horrible is going to happen to her, which puts even more strain on the relationship.
I decided to explore this through the CRM Generational protocol.
It turns out that in a past life at the age of 16, completely innocent and without any sexual education of course, I had an encounter with a lovely boy. My father noticed and frightened the boy away, but it was already too late; I was pregnant but didn’t know it.
When it began to show and people started whispering and asking questions, the midwife, who was my grandmother in this life, spirited me away to a hut in the forest, to wait out the rest of my pregnancy. I was angry, ashamed, very frightened and alone. The baby was all I cared about. Grandmother came back around the time of the birth and assisted. She saved my life; I suffered a still-birth and nearly died during the birth.
It took many sessions, but I healed that trauma and processed the anger, shame, fear and sadness around the pregnancy, the traumatic birth and the death of the child, who has come back to me as my daughter in this life.
I have since been able to relax more in my daughter’s presence, to let go a little, and be less frightened for her and less tense about the relationship. Conversation became easier and more fun, communication increased, there is more laughter and a whole virtuous circle ensued. I still have all the normal worries one has with daughters, but I don’t have that constant fear of something dreadful just around the corner anymore.
More Aligned With My Authentic Self
I always knew I was an anxious person and that I had a lot of insecurity. As a psychotherapist, I mastered a lot of different coping mechanisms to deal with my fear, but the fear was always with me. Prior to the CRM treatment, I accepted the belief that I cannot do anything about my anxiety– all I could do was manage the symptoms by distracting myself from these negative emotions.
Through the CRM treatment, I am able to realize how much I was driven by fear every single day. Understanding and clearing the root of generational trauma helped me to live my life without irrational fears and worries. My daily decisions come from my curiosity and desire instead of being afraid. The treatment did not only make my life easier, but also made me reconnect with the gift and strengths from my lineage. I feel more aligned with my authentic self physically, emotionally and spiritually. I have a new understanding and appreciation of myself and my life.
I Am More Present
When starting CRM, I had worked on trying to heal from sexual abuse many times, many different ways. Whilst I had some relief, I just wasn’t healing. Through CRM generational work, I discovered there was a pattern of sexual abuse in my maternal lineage – the abuse had never been talked about or reported. The pattern had been passed down. I was carrying a sense of immobility from my ancestors and experiences in this life. On doing CRM generational work, I discovered that this immobility had actually started way before the couple of generations I consciously knew about. I was able to process the narrative of what happened to my ancestors AND the pain that was just too unbearable to be felt at the time. This released the sense of immobility within me, and with additional early attachment and pre-conception work – I was able to speak up and report the abuse. This was EXCEPTIONALLY healing for me, and a matter of child protection as the perpetrator was still alive and had access to children.
Afterwards, I checked in with my ancestors and there was a sense of wonder, joy and disbelief at first as to what I had been able to do. They were smiling, I felt a genuine connection with them and they were truly grateful to be relieved of those secrets. My jaw muscles started to relax (from staying silent, I had clenched my jaw muscles since childhood) and I gained the sincere trust from the younger parts of me that had experienced the pain of that pattern. Looking into my consciousness PRE-conception, I found some themes there that helped me understand why I ‘ended up’ in the family that I did. I was able to understand some of the journey my Soul had been on that had got me to this point – with no judgement! This was another major key to healing.
I have since done more CRM generational work with my material line. This time focusing on the generational GIFTS that had been lost and forgotten. This was INCREDIBLE. Truly incredible. I went from experiencing my maternal line as people who had been poor and stuck in freeze, to discovering that there were women who had skills in theatre, ceremonies and healing. These were all things I was doing in my life already!! My family had no display of these skills and couldn’t understand why I was so different. However! These were generational gifts that I’d picked up and was living. I was able to communicate with these skillful and magical ancestors, which consolidated and amplified how I embodied those qualities. When I think of my maternal line now, writing this, I do so with a smile and tears of joy. It’s beyond what I can describe in words – to be connected to people I have not met in the physical, yet feel their loving, supportive and playful presence.
For me, CRM has been a way to both heal pain AND remember the joy of being alive. I now embody more life force, I am more present, I have access to more free will – AND I have an increased capacity to feel and embody love; for myself, my fellow humans, my ancestors and the whole experience of life!
The Right Space, Time, and Atmosphere
My experience at the intensive in Beulah was just amazing, CRM combines neurobiology, high clinical competence in trauma and dissociation, deep knowledge about attachment disruption (including in-utero), transgenerational trauma, spirituality, and precious tools to face the most challenging aspects and obstacles that therapists can find in working with complex trauma patients.
This intensive training is a full immersion in CRM, in a small group that facilitates the learning, the experiential aspect and creates the right space, time, and atmosphere to integrate this complex and rich model into a therapist’s previous background. All done in a wonderful mountain environment.
Lisa is a generous, wise, profound teacher able to show the incredible resources of this model during the sessions and able to clarify everything in the context of a very coherent theoretical model. She shows all of her great and deep experience in the field with balance and honesty.
I highly recommend this intensive to every professional who really wants to explore and manage the painful roots of traumatic experiences and build a personal balance and awareness of one’s own healing journey.
Personal Growth and Professional Work
I have been in clinical practice for almost 45 years, utilizing a broad array of approaches.. I met Lisa Schwarz 25 years ago, and my psychotherapy practice has evolved in a myriad of ways under her tutelage. Through her ongoing dedicated exploration and scholarship, CRM takes all that I’ve known and opened me up to embracing a highly integrated, powerful model. Her emphasis is on robust resourcing as an absolute must to do this deep, multidimensional work in a manner that is both safe and, ultimately, life changing.
Two personal CRM experiences come to mind:
One session, several years ago, focused on my severe shoulder pain. To my surprise, I learned that it was connected to my paternal lineage. Lisa guided me to explore whatever arose, never imposing her own interpretations. And, shortly after the conclusion of my session, the pain was completely gone. To my surprise and delight!
A target of a more recent session was a habit that has been with me for most of my life. I have tried many approaches over the years to stop. With this session, my maternal and spiritual lineages became the focus. After being fully resourced, via a multidimensional matrix, I could be with the trauma, the agony, the choice points that resulted in this generational habit. The habit has not resumed.
As a clinician, I am gratified to be able to offer patients a model that engages their full and multidimensional selves and lineages, resulting in healings that often felt out of reach. My confidence in CRM is further exemplified by my recently purging my office of the books and notes of the many approaches I’ve studied. With CRM, I have what I need for both my ongoing personal growth and my professional work.
The Personal Work Changed Us All
I have attended many trainings in my 25 years as a therapist to grow both professionally and personally. I began my journey with learning about Comprehensive Resource Model in 2018. I have since utilized the model with several clients and have witnessed life changing healing and transformation CRM has made in their lives.
I recently attended a weeklong Intensive Generational training in Cape May, New Jersey. This training was life changing for me personally as well as professionally and was witness to the same response with the other women who attended this intensive. We worked primarily on our perpetrator patterns, activities, patterns, templates sourced in our soul’s journey and the three ancestral lineages. None of us wanted to do this but in the end, it was the personal work that truly changed us all. We are all as close as family to this day because of this process.
Lisa’s intuitive light shines through with every training I have ever attended with her, but this particular intensive in Cape May created a bond and a large sense of purpose for all who attended. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity.
A New Understanding Of Myself
That boiling rage deep inside had been there for as long as I could remember. I was familiar with living with it. I had no awareness that not all humans felt this way.
Fast forward many years, I am a psychotherapist trained in family and trauma therapy. The ideas of intergenerational trauma are being discussed and I am curious. I know that my mother’s father’s family were Huguenots, that after the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, they escaped France to England and then Scotland. They hate papists. I didn’t know what a papist was, but I felt rage at them nonetheless. And when my grandmother spoke about them and I saw the twisted look on her face and heard the hatred in her voice I could feel her energy mirroring what was already embedded in my body.
I’m sitting in a CRM session. There is a dance inside on a wire that is so thin it is almost imperceptible. My body is feeling grounded after following the resourcing protocol of CRM. I am safe enough and begin to allow my focus on the feelings of rage. It is palpable, crawling through my body and with it is the desire to strike out. The rage generates a feeling of power: I harness this feeling and use it against others in any way that I choose. With it there exists an arousal that is almost orgasmic. It permeates my whole being. I hear a growl inside. It is savage and I experience the urge to tear flesh. I have the power of life and death. I can destroy them; I can create destruction. My mind can’t hold the paradox of that, but my body does. The observing me is startled, curious, confused? What is this? My experience in the session flips and now I feel powerless, terrified as if my survival is tenuous. I am their victim, there is nothing I can do to stop them. I feel the fear and am in survival terror, with all the physiology that accompanies that emotion. I feel rage for what has been done and is being done to me and those I love. I can be destroyed. The story unfolds. I have watched my tormentors and when the opportunity arises, I use what I have experienced at their hands to save myself and I become the perpetrator. I opt for power over terror. My body is in memory, my mind stays in the present, sitting in a chair, using a CRM resource eye position and processing what had often been a familiar companion, but now begins to release its hold on me.
Allowing my body to experience all those feelings (my ancestors, my own through parts of my past lives, my own in this life) in a CRM session; to experience my reaction to the feelings, giving voice and sound to the sorrow and distress and horror of being both/and perpetrator/victim was an experience that allowed me to both shed the “boiling rage” deep inside and to have some clarity about the environment that birthed and sustained it.
This CRM session was an environment that provided me the ground to birth a new understanding of myself and a new experience of freedom from an old physiology. I had a new truth about who I am now and for me that encompasses being free to have my own responses and reactions unencumbered by the feelings generated in the past.
Fully Step Into Our True Selves
I recently attended a weeklong CRM Generational Intensive training with Lisa Schwarz in Cape May Point, NJ. Along with 7 others, I stayed in a classic Victorian home that was also the venue for the training. Delicious breakfasts and lunches, prepared on-site by Lisa’s business partner, were included. With all of our basic needs met and the support of nature, expansive beaches and beautiful ocean nearby, we were able to put all of our attention on the training.
I’m not sure that there are words that adequately describe Lisa’s teaching abilities, clinical skills, and empathic holding of the space during the 10-hour days. Amazing, innovative, tenacious, brilliant…and also, courageous, compassionate, and generous. Lisa does not rest on the strength of the Basic CRM protocol, or the protocols that have followed; she continually remains open to the evolution of CRM protocols based on the needs of her clients and the observations that CRM practitioners share with her. Lisa is meeting the pain and trauma in the world today, and that we all hold, head on. She fearlessly faces the trauma, and encourages those who train with her, and clients everywhere, to do the same with dignity.
CRM is a model that allows us to do just that, to face the pain, to process it, and to fully step into our true selves so that we may all live good and joyful lives. For any clinician who is looking to deepen their skills, to experience transformation for themselves and for their clients, CRM is for you.
A Unique Scaffolding
Lisa Schwarz’s Comprehensive Resource Model® is groundbreaking, incorporating In-Utero attachment disruption/trauma transformation and generational healing across all lineages.
CRM weaves old and new therapies in mind body medicine into a unique scaffolding that cocoons a client in safety, allowing for a flow of positive neurochemistry. Most importantly, the client is in complete control, is grounded and in the present moment and able to process the true roots of traumas and emotions that have been hijacking the nervous system below the conscious knowing.
The end result for clients is a deep positive shift in healing that is remarkable to witness.
CRM
Divinely Guided In All Ways
In 2016, I closed my psychotherapy practice knowing that my healing process from trauma was incomplete despite years of psychoanalysis and CBT therapy. During the ‘Me Too’ movement, I summoned the courage to seek out an EMDR therapist. The Universe delivered something even better, and I was introduced to CRM.
After four months of diving headfirst into the process of using the CRM resources, building solid trust within the therapeutic relationship, and having faith in the wisdom of my body, I have cleared some of the most traumatic memories that continued to haunt and prevent me from being completely present with others.
CRM feels divinely guided in all ways and as a dance therapist, brings me full circle to the words of Martha Graham, “The Body Never Lies.”
I Am Alive!
In order to understand how far I have come; you must first know where I’ve been. Depression has been a constant companion for my entire adult life. My younger sister killed herself when I was in my late teens, and about the same time I was robbed at gunpoint where I worked. For about a decade after, I lost myself in drugs and completely stopped living. That time was like a strange nightmare, and after coming out of it, I kind of wished that I hadn’t.
I wanted to get better and tried many different therapies, drugs, and therapists. Some of it helped, and I somewhat managed to get my life together. But I still felt this darkness and misery, deep in my bones. Every day I felt this low-level anxiety; a gnawing feeling in my gut; a sense of impending doom. Of course, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop; for the next disaster.
Then I happened by accident to come across CRM, the luckiest day of my life! It is almost impossible to describe, but it has changed everything for me. I don’t have flashbacks anymore. I never get triggered. But that’s not the best part. The best part is that I am emotionally liberated from the chains of past memories. Of course, I still feel sad when I think of my sister, but it’s a healthy grief which is absent of survivor’s guilt. Unburdened, my light can now shine again, and I feel so much child-like curiosity, awe, and gratitude just for existing. I was so cynical, empty, and weary of everything.
Now I am ALIVE! It hasn’t just transformed me; it has healed my family. Everyone needs to know about this; life doesn’t have to suck forever! CRM doesn’t just heal past wounds; it helps you to find your inner strength and purpose. To be all that you can be in this life. To move forward with courage, resilience, and true joy. If you are lost, get found. Get CRM.
Embracement Of Healing
CRM is big…a paradigm shift. Rooted in science, infused with humility, honor and art, CRM is the embracement of all that is healing, allowing access to the internal embodiment of grace.
It is a game changer in this field and truly a gift to those we serve, ourselves and the planet.
An Amazing And Safe Tool
My experience with CRM has given me the opportunity to heal emotional developmental trauma that body psychotherapy had not even reached for many years of personal therapy. Working with Core Self and having the ability to go deeply into early womb and perinatal trauma, but also trauma that laid in a deeper psychic realm than my childhood life, I have been feeling better and better, each day, flourishing in my professional life and my personal wellbeing. A pain I had in my left shoulder since I was a teenager, has gone, since I healed a generational trauma that I was carrying there, and I also felt a great relief from the burden of that attachment I had been carrying for so long time.
As a therapist, working with my clients’ generational and in-the-womb traumas has revealed to me how an amazing and safe tool CRM is. My concern has always been that I do not harm my clients by doing deep trauma work, and I can confirm that it is absolutely safe to do real deep trauma healing with CRM without re-traumatising my clients.
I feel blessed that I have found CRM. After my experience on a personal and professional level I would describe it as a neurobiologically-informed spiritual psychotherapy, ahead from its time, pioneering in a field that in a few years from now will be a presupposed fact. I have always found psychotherapy to be missing the deeper animal but also the higher spiritual aspect of the human being, and I have – with great joy- found that CRM contains and works with both, as well as the cognitive aspects of the brain.
Reclaimed My Innocence
This therapy was life changing for me! Coming from a broken home and suffering abuse at age 8, my ability to attach to others was not possible until I started this work.
In less than 10 sessions, I was able to transform my life! I felt lighter and more present than ever before, and I reclaimed my innocence which I didn’t realize I was detached from all these years. For anyone feeling stuck, and not satisfied with their current therapy and/or past, this is well worth the try!
A Quantum Leap Ahead
CRM is the safest, most comfortable, most profound, and longest lasting healing that I have even experienced.
I have had many kinds of psychotherapy over 33 years. Many techniques were powerful, and I considered them “Cutting Edge.” CRM is a quantum leap ahead of them all. It is not just “Cutting Edge,” it is REVOLUTIONARY.
Fully Awake
Before my own work with CRM, I was in a nearly constant state of fight or flight, often feeling overwhelmed, a sense of impending doom and overall believing that I was not really meant to feel free and alive and truly happy. I would avoid conflict and basic life circumstances in any way I could. Even though on the outside, it seemed like I had it all together. I hadn’t realized how impacted my life had been by my own trauma history until I woke up through CRM healing.
I now have the capacity to be fully awake and alive and I can take on anything that comes my way in real time rather than avoiding things until they become insurmountable. My relationships with my children, my family, my friends, my significant other, my business, my clients, my community and, most importantly, to myself have shifted in ways that I could never have imagined before. My personal resource animal’s name (Naya) means “new” and that is exactly what I am. Through CRM, I am new.
Inspired & Excited
The unanticipated bonus of online (especially if in the AU time zone) is reduced stress staying at home with family, as well as all the additional benefits of LIVE online training. It is almost as if you are in the room speaking directly to me. You, Elisa & Heather work seamlessly together & it is beneficial to experience different people doing CRM. There is clarity, depth, generosity of spirit & passion in your teaching. The chat generates lots of questions & you are amazing in addressing all of them in detail, plus it adds to everyone’s learning & provides interaction without interrupting the flow. The manual is incredibly useful.
I’ve done Basic & 2 additional trainings so far and am so glad I did. Your compassionate, direct, wise, ‘sleeves-rolled-up-let’s-get-to-work’ approach is so refreshing & helpful. Hearing about your complex cases demonstrates the importance of following the protocol, trusting the process & the importance of flexibility guided by clinical judgement. Your generosity in providing 2 follow up free study groups after Basic were so valuable. I am inspired & excited about the personal & professional possibilities that CRM offers! Thank you so much!!
Stay Present, Calm, And Resourced
As a therapist with over 20 years of experience, I have found that my work in the past few years has helped clients access a deeper level of healing in their nervous systems, since I was trained in Comprehensive Resource Model, (CRM). This is a bottom up brain/body approach to therapy. As a part of my learning experience, I have also chosen to work on my own childhood developmental trauma as a client experiencing CRM.
CRM therapy resources the nervous system in many ways; which then supports the client as they process their trauma. This approach to therapy also allows clients the ability to access generational and gestational trauma.
I have noticed significant shifts in my own as well as in my client’s nervous systems. Events that used to be triggering no longer have the same energy. As a result, the nervous system does not go into overwhelm when there are triggers or in times of high stress. One is able to stay present, calm and resourced in situations that once caused distress.
A Deep Positive Shift
Lisa Schwarz’s Comprehensive Resource Model is groundbreaking. CRM weaves old and new therapies in mind body medicine into a unique scaffolding that cocoons a client in safety, allowing for a flow of positive neurochemistry.
Most importantly, the client is in complete control, is grounded and in the present moment and able to process the true roots of traumas and emotions that have been hijacking the nervous system below the conscious knowing. The end result for clients is a deep positive shift in healing that is remarkable to witness.
Profoundly Different
In my short-lived experience with CRM, I am impressed with how quickly and comfortably a therapist is able to achieve relief, even for clients with little to no experience with mind-body therapies.
CRM scaffolding helps one achieve a unique, relaxed physical state before processing feelings that, once unearthed, prove to have been preserved remarkably unchanged. This process leaves no question that events were actually experienced in the manner one remembers and results in true self empathy, often for the very first time.
CRM is profoundly different from evidenced based talk therapies plagued by avoidance and provides relief for those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end.
Worth The International Travel
Having travelled 5 hours on a bus ….. and then 4756 air miles from London Heathrow to Pueblo Airport (on 3 flights) …… and then an hour in a car to my ‘CRM Intensive’ destination at Beulah with Lisa Schwarz – where the overall journey took more than 24 hours ‘door to door’… …. and then the RETURN JOURNEY (with the plane from Chicago to Heathrow cancelled – extending the journey time)…………… and the whole experience costing a LOT of money……… Was it worth it?????
ABSOLUTELY ……
From the moment I arrived and met my fellow ‘Intensive’ therapist colleagues for the first time, until the final ending of our ‘healing circle’ …… every moment was special and alive for me …. BEING in the moment.
Lisa is a ‘special’ therapist – the combination of her ‘Being’ and the CRM process enabled me to heal a deep attachment disruption with my mother.
The opportunity to BE with seven therapists, from all areas of the United States – that I had never met before, was also a special experience that challenged me and helped facilitate more personal growth for me – an experience I will never forget.
Out Of The Dark
I have been attending CRM therapy for nearly 2 years, which has been a life changing experience for me. After suffering from depression for over 20 years I can honestly say this has been the therapy that has changed me and my thoughts.
I have tried many other therapies in the past and as much as they have helped I feel that the results fade in time, I was also able to avoid dealing with difficult feelings during sessions- this has not been the case with CRM. This therapy gives you the resources to be able to take the experiences and traumas of your past and literally clear them, so the deep routed triggers are just no longer there. I also find these resources extremely powerful as I can use them to support me through day-to-day life. The tools I have gained from CRM such as a power animal, eye position, sacred place (which may sound a little bizarre) are all techniques that I can use when I need them.
Thanks to my wonderful CRM therapist I can now live much more in the present and enjoy life. I am so much calmer, lighter, happier, and confident within myself. I definitely have a much healthier relationship with myself and others. I can now trust myself and my judgments, I’m no longer constantly seeking approval.
I would highly recommend CRM to anyone who feels they need help dealing with damaging thought patterns (some of which you will be unaware have such a massive impact) and would say that even when it gets tough, and it does, keep going as the results are so worth it.
It’s wonderful to be finally out of the dark!
Re-claiming Our Heart And Soul
I am a Social Worker currently in a clinical counseling role. My experience of this training was that it truly felt like I was coming ‘home’. This model brings together psychology, neuroscience, heart intelligence, breathwork, soul, ancient wisdoms and deep, deep respect for the inner workings of our human beingness.
Through CRM we support and are supported to create and build inner resources that ‘hold’ us as we reach down into the recesses of ourselves to feel fully the feelings that we truly felt at the time of trauma, when we felt them but afterward, locked away for many different reasons. Resourced, we can be with and move through the feelings and the terror so that the trauma moves through us and is released.
CRM invites us through experience, to remember the strength and trust that we all have within ourselves. Through CRM, we find our core selves again. This core self that we had given away, closed off or hidden from, after experiencing attachment that was vacant, closed off, cold or unavailable to us as children and trauma. CRM brings healing to this lost attachment and trauma.
We spend so long, so much of our lives in fear, CRM invites a re-claiming of our heart and soul through coming home to our bodies so that we are finally whole once again. We learn to live then, through love, not fear.
The most sacred and magical part of this is that in experiencing CRM for ourselves we ready ourselves, for providing this to our clients in therapy. We are thus not ‘above’ our clients, nor are we ‘experts’ but rather we stand beside them as they also move through trauma and pain to reclaim their lives and live more empowered, transformed, and free.
Lisa leads the training with unending energy, strength and depth of genuineness and realness rarely found in trainings. Lisa has extensive knowledge inside and out of this model and of people and how they are wounded and how they can heal. My recommendation – if this calls to you – DO the training, you will be forever changed.
Had An Immediate Impact
From the perspective of a General Adult Psychiatrist working in a Community Mental Health Team with psychiatric in-patients and outpatients, it is striking how often the presence of significant trauma is of central aetiological significance.
The treatment of patients with a history of significant or complex trauma and /or dissociation is often challenging, and while therapeutic approaches such as EMDR (which I had used enthusiastically alongside relational psychotherapy as well as other trauma focused modalities for many years) which involve the ‘processing’ of past trauma can be very effective, this effectiveness can often be hampered by the emotional dysregulation which can so easily occur when traumatic memories are re-experienced.
Lisa Schwarz’s CRM is built on a deep understanding of the imperative of providing adequate ‘resourcing’ for such patients, in order to help them avoid such emotional dysregulation, and to stay grounded and ‘present’ during therapeutic work.
CRM is a richly integrated approach which draws in a uniquely creative manner on many important strands of trauma work, such as somatic resourcing and Ego State Therapy, and from my clinical experience I can attest that it provides highly successful response to this central challenge when working with significant trauma and dissociation.
The training was exciting and rewarding and had an immediate impact on my therapeutic work with this patient group. Highly recommended and definitely not to be missed!
For Every Clinician
“As a client, CRM has brought about the deepest healing I’ve ever had. CRM was able to target and heal the root causes of my issues safely, quickly, and effectively, leaving my nervous system finally feeling at rest. No other therapy has been able to achieve that. As a clinician, CRM is easy, effective, and brings about deep and profound healing that sticks.
CRM provides a conceptualization and set of tools that allows me to target and heal anything from subtle attachment disruption to Complex PTSD and Dissociation. It has also significantly reduced the vicarious trauma that I experienced in the years practicing EMDR. CRM is more resourcing for not just the client but the therapist as well. I think every clinician needs to be trained in or educated on The Comprehensive Resource Model.”
Liberates New Potentials
CRM is a wonderful integration of some of the most important aspects of psychotherapy. It focuses on activating embodied states of safety, which enable the client to step into frozen affects that have been too frightening to feel. This then liberates new potentials for love and joy. These potentials are our birthright; CRM helps to point the way home.
Lisa is a wonderful facilitator, who is stimulating, authentic and generous of spirit. I highly recommend the course to anyone wanting to do really deep and authentic work.
Healing And Hope Giving
After having spent four days in Lisa’s Intensive, I can only say one “word”, compound as it is: Life-Changing. CRM is, without a doubt, the best method – or perhaps better put, the best “therapeutic way of relating” – that I’ve learned AND LIVED in thirty years of practice. In my work with combat veterans, CRM has proven to be not just effective, but even more to be healing and hope giving.
I cannot recommend CRM highly enough and I cannot thank Lisa enough for her wisdom, her passion, and her commitment to the highest healing for all.
Greased The Slide
I came to the U.S at nineteen years old looking to become more free and feel more deeply. After a while I realized psychotherapy would play a part. Over the years I benefited from Core Energetics, Internal Family Systems work, EMDR, Hakomi, and Sensory Experiencing. They all played some part as a foundation for arriving at work with a Comprehensive Resource Method therapist, Jim Allison.
The resourcing of CRM seems to have greased the slide into my deepest feelings and to seeing and experiencing “the truth of my life”. I have always resonated with the words of Jesus, “Know the Truth and the Truth will set you free”. CRM has made this happen in my life including my becoming more autonomous – not dependent on the method or therapist which has been one of many blessings of the method.
Felt Like A Spiritual Retreat
The Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM) is a psychotherapeutic modality recently developed by Lisa Schwarz, intended particularly for the treatment of Complex PTSD, but also likely to be helpful when working with clients diagnosed with PTSD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. My original psychodynamic training had started to seem deficient when revisiting traumatic memories with certain clients. I felt the need for a means of somehow creating a “good object” with the client, rather than assuming the prior existence of one, or that the client could obtain it through the transference. For clients subject to early chronic abuse or neglect, clearly, this is often not easily possible.
The approach in CRM is to equip the client with a set of resources that enables them to step back into the unbearable emotions and sensations that originally triggered their defences. With resources in place that were formerly absent, there is now a possibility of the unbearable feelings being re-experienced as both bearable and survivable, and for habitual defensive responses to change. The resources used in CRM include therapeutic attunement; breathing patterns for inducing various states of consciousness; “sacred place” and “power animal” visualisations; and “somatic grids”, a means of anchoring the client’s awareness in the felt sensations of the body; geometry and toning. These are borrowed from other therapies and shamanic healing, but unique to CRM is the clever and simple way they are nested inside one another, so that all are available at once. Unlike other trauma therapies (such as EMDR), which observe a “stabilisation phase” of treatment, the client in CRM can be enabled to step back willingly into previously unbearable feelings during the very first session. And because almost all of the CRM resources, once learned, can be taken away and used by the client outside sessions, emotional independence and self-reliance are encouraged.
I completed the CRM Basic Training at Beacon House, Cuckfield, at the end of June. Rather than a therapy training, it felt like a spiritual retreat. Although psychiatrist Frank Corrigan has equipped CRM with a solid neurobiological underpinning, in practice it is a transpersonal modality relying on therapeutic intuition and an understanding of archetypal material. It allows working at depth with emotions and bodily sensations with no obligation on the client to narrativize their history. This proved personally helpful: issues I had failed to make sense of during years of analytic therapy suddenly yielded breakthrough insights, as CRM allowed me simply to step right up close to them, and just feel.
A Process That Works
Have you ever found yourself looping back again and again to an experience from your past that you wish you could do differently? Or feel stuck in the past with a bully who keeps telling you how you don’t measure up and probably never will? Have you ever wished, at the very least, you could go back and tell that person how they made you feel so you could finally be liberated from the emotional grip they have on you? What I shared above are some of my exact experiences. The constant looping back to the past with no hope of finding relief or resolution. This looping and the unhealthy patterns of behavior that developed because of it really took a toll on my life. But that was BEFORE I found CRM. I have been a client using the CRM therapy model for almost 4 years. Through CRM I found a way to safely and courageously go back to many of those root experiences that were the foundation of so much of my adult suffering and face them, heal the pain, and free myself on a soul level. Spirituality is very important to me. Being able to express my spirituality means everything to me but I felt poo-pooed by so many other therapies and their therapists in the past. It was as if they felt like my spirituality was just my hobby when, in reality, it’s what carried me forward and allowed me to survive until I found CRM.
In CRM, I finally felt seen and heard. It was like my CRM therapist opened the gate to the meadow and I was able to run and jump any way I wanted to. I was even allowed to splash in or roll around in the proverbial mud puddle if I wanted and it was all ok! Bringing a spirit animal, my adult self or some other powerful spirit being as protector into a past traumatic experience made all the difference when it came to integrating the broken parts of myself and to finally heal. I was able to see where the unhealthy patterns started in the past but also how I was perpetuating them in the present.
With the support of my CRM therapist and of my spirit guides, and the use of the CRM method, I have finally been able to start taking responsibility for my internal growth, leave the past behind and move forward. My life has changed so much for the better. I am a more confident human being, less fixated on the past, and more able to have compassion and forgiveness for myself and others. I still have work to do to become whole but at least I have a process that works.
From the perspective of a client, I highly recommend CRM. It is a unique process in the world of therapy. I will be eternally grateful to Lisa for taking the time and making the effort to bring CRM into the world.
Be With, Not In
I hope you don’t mind me emailing you but I just want you to know how much CRM has changed my life.
I live on a small Island in Scotland and have had Mental Health issues for many years. I was diagnosed with everything you could imagine as no one could pinpoint what was wrong as I displayed many different ‘illnesses’ at the one time.
One time when I was in a psychiatric unit, I met a man who would come to change my life…Gordon Barclay, a man I believe you know well (he speaks highly of you!).
Within two meetings he diagnosed me with Complex PTSD and I felt my life and behaviours made sense, especially dissociating. I finally understood what I was doing and why.
Anyway, we started CRM and it has completely changed my life. I have a resource figure who was my imaginary friend as a youngster who I truly believe looks out for me. I have now got 5 different ‘Ailsa’s’ tucked away inside me and they have been set free from their traumas.
I can’t tell you how much Gordon has saved me. I honestly don’t think I would still be here if |I hadn’t have met him, literally a lifesaver all because of you and CRM. He is so tuned into it that I believe in everything CRM stands for and can personally testify how much it has changed me. I have even wrote about some of my experiences within my sessions for him to give other’s hope. We still meet every 2 weeks, and he has now become a huge part of my life.
I really hope are ok with me contacting you but I just wanted you to know Gordon and yourself have shone a bright light into my own being and the trauma’s that have haunted me and made me very ill on occasions are something I can come to terms with…the memory is still there but it doesn’t hurt anymore and for that I am truly grateful for and will always thank you for creating such a beautiful healer in CRM. ‘Be with, not in’ is a mantra I use frequently, and it sums up your work perfectly.
Lifting The Veils
The Comprehensive Resource Model speaks a magical language that encompasses and touches all aspects of ourselves – mind, body, heart, spirit, and soul.
It supports in lifting the veils that have kept us hidden from the truth of who we are. As we “re-member,” the powerful layers of resourcing light the pathway that lead us back to center – back to authenticity – back to our core self – CRM, leads us home.
Deep Personal Processing
I have no words. Astounding!!! Really!!! What I and my clients needed when I started out as a psychologist over 40 years ago. Note: I’ve had a huge array of somatic psychology and trauma training. CRM is stout enough to take on trauma character disorder and DID – precious, sensitive, and light enough to catalyze psychospiritual integration.
Lisa set up an energized, loving yet ruthlessly honest and real context that allowed consistently deep personal processing for participants as well as the clinical teaching of the model for use with others. Dr. Frank Corrigan’s detailed neurobiology of CRM and trauma is woven into the teaching relevant to how internal resources used clinically are unlocking subcortical holding – to melt that diaphanous, yet cruel and seemingly inviolable layer of trauma crap which keeps us from our source. PRICELESS!
Energy, Enthusiasm, and Creativity
Many of the difficult-to-treat patients encountered in general psychiatry suffer from clinical disorders that have at their root a history of complex trauma. Treatment of these disorders may be effective at a symptomatic level but for many patients that is not enough and trauma-based psychotherapy is required. The risks of overwhelming experience, increased dysregulation and symptomatic deterioration often inhibit such approaches. The Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM) offers a careful, structured approach which promotes healing from traumatic experience within a context of resources to maintain adequate emotional regulation.
The aim of the CRM is the safe and effective healing from past events that have left a clinical residue. In my practice I use the CRM regularly with patients whose syndromes have otherwise been difficult to treat and I am very grateful to have trained with Lisa Schwarz who brings her energy, enthusiasm and creativity to the training. I would highly recommend the CRM training to any general psychiatrist with an interest in the psychotherapy of complex clinical presentations.
No More Frozen Paralysis
There aren’t words I can find to express to you what you did for me at the Generational Intensive May 2021. I know you can feel me differently, but I don’t think you or anyone else can understand the hell I have lived in inside my head prior to my healing session last week. And it’s not even a little bit hard inside my head now.
I feel so free to be in the world, in my relationships without needing permission, with an ease I have never before known.
An example of the profound change…. My paternal grandpa died this week (I found out yesterday). My husband says to me that he doesn’t understand how come I didn’t reach out for a relationship with my grandpa and my dad, since I really wanted the connection. All I’ve ever wanted was connection.
Well, here’s why: I lived inside this belief and fear of rejection, of not being wanted and of not being welcome. I’ve had times when I was in connection with both of them. Then time would go by, I would feel guilty for the time of no contact and become frozen in fear to reach out. Fear they would not want me, would reject me, would hate me or be mad at me. There was no logical evidence for this….it came from deep inside me. This paralyzing fear. This paralyzation caused me to lose my 2 horses I loved 14/15 years ago, caused me to not be able to return to jobs (also giving up wages owed), loss of friendships (because I disappeared and didn’t know how to come back). Here I thank you for staying engaged with me all these years, because I have played out this same fear scenario with you (it wasn’t logic, I knew you loved me, but I couldn’t bridge the frozen paralysis). When in a relationship, the awkwardness I experienced was so overwhelming inside my head….it was always there when I was in the presence of another. Even for the mundane conversations, I was in so much fear and judgement towards myself, analyzing every word I spoke and every move I made, down to movements as simple as crossing my legs or arms.
God Lisa, there’s so much more I can describe. It was so hard in my head in every area except for being in the role of a therapist…I could be confident there, but not in the presence of someone I was on an equal playing field with…if they asked a question, I lost connection with anything I knew, my brain went straight offline. And now it’s just all gone, I literally have no more frozen paralysis. My brain is not frozen…. I have words, I can speak without being irrationally scared. I’m not fighting myself, not second guessing. I can laugh and just be with people. I’m this weekend with my two most triggering relationships, my husband and stepdaughter….AND it’s going so well. I can be within their energy dynamics in a sweet easy way.
This intensive has brought me the healing I have been trying to get to since I was 23 years old, and I’m now 57 years old. This has happened for me because I showed up, you led my way and the women in the group supported the energy needed for me to get to the root of the cut off from my life; generationally in particular. Thank you for being faithful to your calling as a healer. You truly are the instrument God used to help me get better so I can be in this life with ease I only imagined.
Supported Meaningfully By Underpinning Neurobiology
Throughout a long career spent attending psychotherapy workshops and training events, only two have changed my clinical practice, one specifically with chronic depression and the other for individuals living with the persistent and insidious sequelae of complex trauma and attachment disruption; the work that accounts for my day-to-day clinical psychotherapy practice.
The latter training has been led by Lisa Schwarz, originator of the Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM)® for complex PTSD.
CRM is, in my opinion a “game changer” for complex reactions to traumatic events across timelines, lineages, dimensions and species; allowing specific and effective neurobiological resourcing of individuals who previously made little progress with other clinical models and approaches. My clinical caseload comprises people with chronic, complex, treatment-resistant and usually comorbid conditions.
CRM has allowed the highly effective treatment of people previously responding in a limited fashion to psychotherapy. Moreover, CRM is supported meaningfully by underpinning neurobiology. Lisa Schwarz is a fabulous trainer bringing a unique blend of enthusiasm, experience, creativity and energy to her training. Her practical demonstrations of CRM are testimony both to her exceptional clinical skills and to CRM itself. I thoroughly recommend learning CRM from Lisa herself; like many others you will most likely find CRM will change your practice.
Saved My Life
I had been in standard “therapy” for decades when I realized that I was paying someone to hear myself talk about the issues that I “thought” were part of my story and were what was driving my depression and severe PTSD. It’s not to say that these modalities of therapy were all bad because at the end of the day, they prevented me from taking my own life…but I never felt whole. I went through the motions not only of life, but therapy as well.
When I found Lisa through a Newsweek article on a new style treatment for PTSD I was at the point of planning the end of my life because the thought of going and telling my story every week for 50 min sounded horrid. I read the article and was skeptical because I am a nurse, I think in the science process and need evidence to back up a theory for how things work. These things were in the article but what intrigued me is that it was different and it was an intensive, not 50 minutes on a couch every week repeating my same story over and over again. I knew this was my last chance and that I had to at least try. I went to Colorado a month later, the biggest skeptic ever. When I walked into Lisa’s space to start my intensive, I initially was thinking that it would never work, that calling in MY spirits, MY animals, MY power was really valid and going to work.
As I let myself follow the path that Lisa was bringing me on, my entire mind opened up. My soul started to shift. These “drawers” I had inside of my being began to open and one by one I looked inside of them and worked through whatever was in there…and I did this with my animals, my people and my power that was inside of me all along. The brain is fascinating to me, and how as a child, I took and put all these different trauma’s and put them systematically into compartments in my brain just made me want to go deeper because for the first time it felt safe. The ONLY reason why it felt safe, was having the safety of my spirit world around me. They were my power when I felt powerless and had been lying quiet in my brain, protecting me from facing the truth of my life and the truth of my story. Like a lioness protects their cub, my own brain did this for me. The ONLY way I was able to even remotely start to access the torment of the truth of my trauma was to let these forces know that I was there to work with them to set us ALL free.
This process saved my life. It takes time, it takes dedication and practice but I truly feel that I wouldn’t be on this earth today if it wasn’t for this entire process.