Peak States^® Research

The Inner Peace Process™
April 4, 2014

Welcome to a video demonstration of our work at the Institute
            In 2002, we filmed a group learning about and then using our Inner Peace Process™ (rev 1.1). The video was made to demonstrate our model that traumas block peak states of consciousness: in the first half of the video, Dr. McFetridge explains the theory for this particular state, the second half of the video shows an audience actually doing the process and their results.
            We designed this process to be as simple as possible to demonstrate the basic principles. However, the tradeoff to making it simple is that it won't work for everyone - the easy procedure you see in this video works for only about a third of the people who try it.

Are there any risks to using the process on our own?
            Yes, unfortunately. There are always potential risks in using a trauma-based psychological procedure, and if you are unwilling to accept any and all of the consequences of using this process, then you must not use this process. If you use this process, you are accepting this risk - we are not legally liable for your choice to do so or any consequences that may arise. Three of the most common problems are listed further down this webpage, but there are other less common problems that can occur.
            You can do the process with a trained and licensed Peak States therapist (they also use the more effective rev 4.1 version). They work on a 'charge for results' basis - if you don't get the state, there is no fee. These therapists are also specially trained to handle any difficulties that might arise during this process.

Benefits to having the 'Inner Peace' state:
            In the Inner Peace state, the client comes emotionally into the present moment. This means that all your past trauma suddenly stops feeling traumatic, no matter how hard you try to evoke feelings from the past. You now have an underlying sense of peace and calmness, and your emotions are in proportion to whatever is happening to you - you've lost your emotional 'buttons'. Since the vast majority of people's daily problems are created by past emotional traumatic material surfacing into the present, you can imagine how much better they would feel if they were in this state. It's particularly true of people suffering from a number of emotionally based issues. Rather than try and fix individual emotional issues one at a time, this process just turns them all off all at once. You can imagine that applicability to a therapy practice. Some trauma-based physical problems also go away while the client is in the state.
            Clients don't find the change disturbing or unusual when they enter the Inner Peace state, as it's characterized more by an absence of problems, rather than an addition of new experiences and abilities as can happen with other states.

Where can I get more detailed information?
           In the webpage below is a detailed recapitulation of the material in the film. You might also enjoy reading how this state process came about in our Institute blog. The in-depth theory behind our trauma-based approach is found in our textbooks Peak States of Consciousness: Theory and Applications, volumes 1&2. If you are interested, there is also an article describing the initial large scale testing of this process.

We have identified three difficult experiences that commonly occur:

1. By the nature of the process, it brings up uncomfortable feelings and body sensations during the process. This is to be expected, and they should go away with the use of the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) procedure as you proceed. If you have trouble making the feelings go away, we suggest you either study the EFT process at www.emofree.com, or find a therapist who knows the EFT process. In any case, these feelings that have come up during the process and couldn't be eliminated with EFT will eventually subside without treatment, although you won't get the benefit of the process or enter the Inner Peace state.
2. Some percentage of the public who successfully enters the Inner Peace state may lose the state later. Returning to 'average' consciousness can be experienced as somewhat difficult and unpleasant until they get used to it again. These people may feel depressed or upset returning to the kind of consciousness that they'd always had before. Rerunning the procedure or using the other suggestions below will usually restore the state.
3. Rarely, by using this process you may acquire even better and more dramatic states of consciousness. These states are ones of increased health and wellbeing, but they may give you experiences and abilities that you've never had before (such as feeling that your flesh has vanished and turned into air). Typically, in a few days you will become comfortable with these new states of being.

Why the process works:
            What causes the Inner Peace peak state to occur? It turns out that the Inner Peace state will generally be present in people continuously from birth if they experienced conception without trauma. Unfortunately, regressing someone to this developmental stage trauma in order to give them the state is relatively difficult and time consuming, making it too difficult for the average therapist to do in an office setting in a reasonable time. Instead, we've come up with a shortcut that still gives a great many people the Inner Peace state. The tradeoff here is speed and ease of use versus the number of people who will achieve the state.
            The shortcut works by taking a critical moment in this developmental stage, and describing the biological activity at that moment as a phrase in English. (Translations into other languages work, but the wording is critical and just using a translation dictionary may or may not be successful.) We also include a visualization and music in the process to make it work more quickly and thoroughly. The music evokes a similarity to something that can be 'heard' at a biological level during conception. Likewise, the visualization is similar to a process that actually occurs during conception. Some people actually hear the 'real' music and see the 'real' experience the visualization is trying to portray during the process. (Understanding what causes peak states, and how we derived the particular developmental stage, phrase, music, and visualization is beyond the scope of this webpage, but is found in our textbooks Peak States of Consciousness volumes 1&2.) We have the client repeat the phrase, or listen to it, while they visualize and listen to music. This puts the client back to the trauma at the correct moment, generally without their conscious awareness, and emotional and physical symptoms that occurred during their conception start coming into their bodies. As this happens, we have them use meridian therapies like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) to eliminate the trauma symptoms.

The Inner Peace Process steps:

1. Liability: If you are reading this webpage or watching the video and use this process on yourself, by doing so you have also implicitly agreed to these liability and responsibility conditions. If you are working with clients, we suggest you start the process by getting a written liability agreement. You must make totally clear to your client that this is a new, experimental process, and has no historical basis upon which to determine long term effects or consequences. The client must be willing to take complete responsibility for what might happen, even though we have no idea what that might be, or how to fix it. Again, they need to understand that you and by extension the Institute are not responsible for consequences from the use of this process. Although we've been testing the process and have encountered no unusual problems, this doesn't mean that you or your client won't have something unexpected happen.
2. Indicator traumas: Pick 4 or 5 major past emotional traumas, ones that you can easily feel. WRITE THEM DOWN, else it is likely that you'll forget what they were. Rate the pain you feel in the present when you think about them on a scale of 0 (no pain) to 10 (the maximum possible pain). These are your indicators of how completely you are entering the state. When you're fully into the state, these 'indicator' traumas will have a rating of 0. Generally what happens is that people gradually moves into the state, and this is reflected by the trauma ratings going down as you work. Note that we don't want you to use EFT or TAT on the traumatic memories themselves - we just want to have you pick traumas to use as measurement tools to see if you've entered the state. The pain will go away on these and all the other traumas that you didn't pick roughly simultaneously.
3. Play the required music: The music is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. This particular piece of music is important - don't substitute. Unless you're incredibly lucky, choosing other music will not help and will probably interfere with the process. The music is played continuously during the process, and greatly helps evoke feelings and speed things up. Occasionally, a client may say that the music is disturbing to them, but this generally means the traumatic material from the in utero experience is coming to consciousness and is to be expected in some people. Occasionally, due to negative cultural experiences such as with forcible assimilation of minority groups into the Western culture, clients might reject the music. Explaining how the music was chosen, and that other choices from different cultures could be used if someone knew how can help here.
4. Do a visualization: As the process is run, you should try and visualize a chain with large links about a foot long, running vertically though the body. Have them imagine the chain is linking and unlinking in their body. They look a bit like the large magician's rings that he links and unlink during a magic trick. It turns out that this visualization is what is actually occurring at a certain level of consciousness, and a good percentage of clients will be able to perceive this as it happens. When the process is done, the chain will be linked up and the client who could see the rings will find that they can no longer imagine it unlinking. This part of the procedure isn't critical but is very helpful; if you forget to do the visualization the process should still work reasonably well.
5. Say the required phrase: While you are doing the procedure, you will repeat over and over the simple phrase "Join forces in glory". Don't try and change the wording, it's critical that you repeat it just as it's written. We realize that after a while, it gets really boring, but the phrase and music are critical parts of the process.
6. Use EFT: You will be using the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) process on yourself to heal the feelings and sensations that will arise as you do the process. (Although any meridian therapy will work adequately.) You will simply repeat the phrase over and over while you taping on meridian points while listening to the music, and if you can do the visualization. The taping process is shown on the accompanying video, or can be learned by getting the EFT manual from www.emofree.com. In a group setting, have everyone tap and repeat the phrase in unison. For this process, we generally omit the psychological reversal step of EFT. If you don't experience any change in sensations or feelings while the process is running, you may need to include all of the EFT steps. If you don't know them, review the manual or seek out an EFT practitioner. We've found that having someone tap on you as you do the process can increase your chance of having the EFT process work - remembering where to tap can distract you from feeling the sensations and emotions that should arise.
7. Run the process: The procedure will almost certainly cause you to feel discomfort, both emotionally and physically. Rather than this being a problem, it's a sign that the process is working! You need to deliberately focus on and feel these new discomforts, pains, and emotions, rather than try and avoid them. The EFT is used to eliminate the feelings, new ones arise, are eliminated, and so on until no more arise. The process won't work if you successfully ignore any symptoms that arise. Note that a number of people try and explain the arising sensations as due to what's going on in the classroom. For example, you might feel the choice of music is bad, or too loud, or that you need to leave to take care of some business, and so on. This can fool you and block the process from working, because you don't focus on these issues while you're doing the process.
8. Checking your progress: At the end of every few rounds of the music, check to see if your rating of your indicator traumas has gone to zero. (Remember, DON'T think about your indicator traumas while doing the process, or you might find that you've healed those few traumas accidentally but you're not in the Inner Peace state and all your other life's traumas are still painful.)
9. When to stop: Generally, the process takes a minimum of 30 minutes, and can take up to 4 hours. You will need to continue the process even after your indicator traumas all go to zero. For most people, change will continue to happen. You continue the EFT for at least a couple of rounds of tapping past any additional changes in your body sensations, and preferably go entire round of music with no additional changes. Not going long enough IS THE SINGLE BIGGEST MISTAKE people make. Since you've had the traumatic feeling from conception for your entire life, you consider the trauma sensations in your body to be normal. Thus you generally don't realize that you do have symptoms that you need to continue tapping on until they go away. Several hours of tapping spread over a couple of sessions works fine, and in fact can be required to get the full change that can happen. Continuing in this way also makes you less likely to fall out of the state.

What if the process doesn't work?
            What happens when you thought it over, got excited by the possibilities, were willing to try this process, and it didn't work? Generally, you may feel like the process is just a fake, or you are intrinsically defective, or you are doomed never to get what so many other people have. THIS IS NOT THE CASE! These and other peak states are actually everyone's birthright, and the reason why a particular individual does or does not have the state has nothing to do with their intrinsic ability or worthiness to have it. You have just been unlucky in accumulating life experiences that block the state, and it will require a licensed Peak States therapist using a more complete and complex process to get the results you want.

Here are some specific things to try first:

• You might need someone else to tap on you, or you may need to use the full EFT process. You might want to visit an EFT practitioner to get assistance.
• You might have been ignoring the sensations in your body while tapping. EFT won't work if you don't consciously place your attention on your body and emotions that arise.
• You may have forgotten to tap while doing the process. Just saying the phrase, listening to the music, and doing the visualization only accesses conception trauma - the EFT tapping is what eliminates it.
• Try another power therapy in addition to the EFT, like the Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT), Be Set Free Fast (BSFF), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and so on.If your birth language isn't English, you may have to translate the phrase into your birth language. This may not work, as the translation might not be accurate enough.
• You might have a 'dominant' trauma. In this case, there is some major issue going on in your life that is holding you out of the state. Further work with a powerful trauma healing modality to eliminate the issue is required.
• Some people still won't respond to this process. They will need to work with a licensed Peak States therapist using a more complex version (rev 4.1) of the process.
• A variety of organizations have processes that can induce peak states, albeit usually temporarily. If you would like to add other peak states, you might try these other processes. Probably the easiest, simplest and yet very powerful one is taught by Jacquelyn Aldana in her book The 15 Minute Miracle.

Getting back your Inner Peace state if you lose it:
            For the people who moved into the inner peace state during the process, most will find that their Inner Peace state is relatively stable. Others may leave it for brief periods when some current stressful situation occurs, but they go back into the state as soon as the situation ends or they relax a bit. However, some people leave the state and it doesn't return. Their calmness leaves them, their traumatic past return, and they go back to what they had before. This latter case can be a problem as they've had a chance to experience life in a better way and don't feel very good about living like they used to. For this group, we have some advice that will help most to get their state back:

• Do EFT or WHH or a hybrid combination on whatever issue drove you out of the state. You will generally pop back into the state once this issue is resolved.
• Repeat the Inner Peace process. If the process again works, you've probably left the state because the healing effects of the EFT became undone, or you didn't run the process long enough. Another way to reverse the effects of EFT is by encountering a substance your body reacts to, called 'energy toxins'. Review Gary Craig's manual or see an EFT practitioner for help in these areas.
• Focus on any negative judgments at self or others that occurred when you lost the state. Focusing on letting them go, or using a power therapy to help you do it generally will pop you back into the Inner Peace state quite quickly. This is the most successful method of returning to the Inner Peace state.
• Get professional help from a licensed Peak States therapist.

Acknowledgments:
The breakthroughs needed for this process came from the dedicated hard work of the following people: Dr. Grant McFetridge, Wes Geitz, Dr. Deola Perry, Dr. Marie Green, and Dr. Mary Pellicer. Thanks also to the numerous volunteers who worked with us to test out these ideas over the years. Copyright 2002 by Dr. Grant McFetridge.

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Revision History
Apr 4, 2014: New webpage for our IPP video from 2002.