A BreakThrough Treat

I have just heard that Esther has decided to initiate the new IBA training center in Sarasota, Florida by teaching a class there for IBA staff and friends. Better still – she is teaching BreakThrough 1 – a course she wrote, but hasn’t taught for many years. Even better – she is opening it up to the public as well, until spaces are filled. I can tell you it is well worth a trip to do this course in the way that only Esther can teach it.

Below, I have added a description of the course that Esther has just written:

BreakThough is an exploration of the most common, most painful and most misunderstood human experience - conflict. As challenging as this obviously sounds, what a BreakThrough 1 class involves is really an adventure in questioning in ways we have probably not done since childhood.

Although conflict resolution certainly comes about when one works with BreakThrough, it is not our primary focus. Our focus is more far reaching. Our focus is to unlearn the habits that prevent us from seeing and feeling beyond blame. In other words, BreakThrough is all about shifts in perspective. 

When we see and feel beyond blame our experience of life’s challenges transforms, as does the way we deal with them.

One technique of BreakThrough 1 is its Seven Steps process. A single story of conflict is isolated and worked with, using a specific protocol of questioning. Step-by-step, we discover that, however recent the story is; all over-reactions have their roots in assumptions adopted in childhood. 

What is more, we discover that no matter where a person is from, or what their background is, we all bear a primal wounding that is universal. With this realization alone there bubbles up such compassion for our fellow man that conflict takes on a whole new meaning. 

Suddenly we start to understand our own behavior and our experience of others in a totally different way. Once we begin living life from this very different perspective it changes the way we deal with conflict, from the ground up. We start to be far more conscious of what we are doing and why we are doing it, and, increasingly, the concepts of blame and victim consciousness show themselves to be totally unjustified - no matter what the situation is.

Rather than urging ourselves constantly to aim for a "new and improved" self, BreakThrough gives us a tool that allows us to come home to the human being we are, and to make peace with our humanness and life in general. 

Working with BreakThrough, we have the possibility of leaving childish, needy behaviors behind and, as adults, to rediscover the ability to experience life in a truly childlike, honest and open way that is truly natural to us.

This is what BreakThrough is all about…..the healing nature of conflict.