Code to Joy

CHAPTER 6 Anchoring

Just click your heels together three times
and say, “There’s no place like home.”

—Glinda, in The Wizard of Oz

AS SIMPLE AS THEY may appear, the steps you’ve taken up to this point in the process are powerful, and their impact goes deep. Remember Chantal in Rwanda, Keith, the Vietnam vet, and the thousands of other subjects in the various studies we looked at in chapter 4? Once their nightmares, flashbacks, and other symptoms were gone, they were gone: even months and years later, they had not returned.

When you identify an issue and root out its source, pinpoint the underlying negative belief, clear your system and reorganize your electrical polarity, contain and dissolve those negative elements, and replace them with new positive beliefs reinforced by vivid images of your new fulfilling, empowered life, then you have not just lightly touched on that issue—you have profoundly changed it.

But we’re not quite finished yet: there’s one more step.

Steps 1 through 3 create some deep changes in the way you see yourself and your world. The purpose of step 4 is to establish and drive your new self-empowering beliefs and thought patterns firmly into your being, so that they become an embedded, permanent part of who you are.

Step 4 introduces two new elements to the process: a simple exercise we call the anchoring hold, and your personal symbol of balance. Let’s look at both of these in turn.

The Anchoring Hold

To perform the anchoring hold, simply place one hand on your forehead, as if you were feeling for a fever, and the other hand in the opposite position, cupping the back of your head.

Anchoring Hold

Well known in such disciplines as craniosacral therapy and chiropractic as the frontal-occipital hold (or simply F/O hold), this deceptively simple position works powerfully on a number of levels at once.

First, we are mildly increasing blood flow to the prefrontal cortex (front area of the brain), stimulating the areas responsible for imagination and our capacity to envision our future. At the same time, we are also stimulating circulation to the occipital or rear portion of the brain, where the vision center is located. Increasing blood flow increases function.

Holding the forehead is a natural destressing gesture that we all know intuitively. If you’ve ever taken care of a child who was ill, you’ve probably had this experience: you automatically place your hand on the child’s forehead. Yes, it’s one way to check for a fever—but more than that, it’s also soothing and calming. We instinctively do the same thing to ourselves, too. For example, if we receive some shocking news, we might place our hand on our own forehead as we exclaim, “Holy cow!” (or whatever other expletive pops out), and sink into our chair.

In addition to blood circulation, we’re directly addressing key functions in our biofield. For one thing, the areas of the face and back of the head are both rich in acupoints, lying along several different key meridians, that have a calming and centering effect.

In a more general way, we are also treating the energy center corresponding to our head and brain. In previous chapters we talked about the various energy centers of the body (traditionally called chakras, from the Sanskrit word for “wheel”). The anchoring hold is a way of literally holding one of these centers in the palms of your hands. Each chakra or energy center has a distinct character and is associated with a different set of functions and effects on our overall well-being, as we explored briefly in chapter 5. There, however, we looked at the four centers of the belly, solar plexus, heart, and throat. Here we are dealing with the energy center of the brain itself.

The effects of charging and balancing this specific center include:

Putting the past in perspective
Getting grounded in the now
Gaining a clearer picture of one’s future

The anchoring hold, in other words, helps to anchor the shift in thinking, beliefs, and mental images that we are working to effect through the Four-Step Process itself.

In terms of imagery—and remember, images are the language of the subconscious—we are also evoking a strong sense of containment, much as we did with the healing basket image in step 3, except that in this case, we are containing our new self-empowering beliefs and the scenes of our ideal life that we played out at the end of step 3. Just before step 4, we have evoked powerful pictures of the life we want to be living; now we are, in a literal sense, holding that thought.

Thus the anchoring hold works powerfully on the energetic level, the cognitive level, the metaphoric and subconscious level, and the physiological level, all at the same time.

Your Personal Symbol of Balance

Your personal symbol of balance is a single image that, for you, represents your triumph over past limitations or challenges. It is a symbol of the new abilities, deepened capacities, or other values and qualities that lie at the core of those scenes from your ideal life. It represents all that you stand to gain by clearing away past blocks and limitations, embracing your own self-efficacy, and creating your fulfilling life as you wish it to be.

We use the word balance to refer to this image because whatever specific values, strengths, or other qualities you want to create in your new life—self-confidence, love, financial success, a sense of security and safety, patience and a sense of being relaxed, or whatever else it may be—at its heart it represents for you a “new normal,” a new and more fulfilling, satisfying picture of everyday life. In other words, it is a new level of homeostasis, a new state of balance.

We will have more to say about the virtues of balance in chapter 8, but for now, we’ll just say that balance is the essential value that underlies all the aims of the Four-Step Process. Electrically speaking, for example, we are bringing into balance your left and right hemispheres, left and right sides of the body, and all negative and positive polarities within your biofield. We are bringing into alignment the goals and focus of both your conscious attention and your subconscious faculties. We are also bringing into balance mental and physical, external and internal, as well as past and future.

There are three common images that we like to offer as default symbols for this step, each representing balance in a different domain of life:

The heart, representing balance in love, relationships, and all interpersonal exchange
The dollar sign, representing financial balance and success, as well as a harmonious, successful state of balance in relation to work, career, and your personal resources in general
The rod of Asclepius, the traditional symbol of health, to refer to physiological health and personal strength and balance

Here are some further examples of symbols our clients have adopted over the years as their personal symbols of balance:

The horizon

Sunset over the ocean

A flower

Infinity sign

Scales of justice

An acrobat on tightrope

A flamingo standing on one foot

A lion (standing for strength and courage)

A bird in flight (grace, freedom, spirit)

A lake at sunrise (peace, harmony, new beginnings)

A tree silhouetted on a hill (strength, endurance, wisdom)

A flower (love, beauty, calm)

Step 4

Now let’s put these elements together. Remember, coming from step 3, you have just spent several minutes visualizing images and scenes from your ideal life. Step 3 merges seamlessly into step 4:

Now, as these scenes and images continue to run in your imagination, apply the anchoring hold, breathing slowly and deeply, for another minute.

Next, let the images fade out and continue applying the anchoring hold for another minute while you let your mind go blank and focus on your breathing.

Finally, as you continue the anchoring hold, visualize your symbol of balance and hold that in your mind for a minute.

Here is this step in outline form:

Continue images and scenes from your ideal life and apply anchoring hold (one minute).
Continue anchoring hold alone, mind blank, focus on breathing (one minute).
Continue anchoring hold and visualize symbol of balance (one minute).

Coming at the end of the process, this last step takes just three minutes, yet it creates a powerful conclusion to everything that has come before and helps to set it firmly in your being.

The Next Thirty Days

However, we’re still not quite finished. There is still one more step, beyond the fourth step—and that is a simple routine for integrating everything you’ve gained from the entire process into your life over the next thirty days and beyond.

To ensure that the changes you’ve made are permanent, now we’re going to have you take just a few minutes out of each day, for the next thirty days (and longer, if you wish), to give yourself a condensed version of the entire process. You can think of this as a self-contained, standalone refresher course. We call it the daily refresher.

The Daily Refresher

Crosshand breathing (two minutes)
Pledge and personal code to joy statement, aloud or silent (five times)
Anchoring hold, visualizing your symbol of balance (one minute)

For the next thirty days, do this three times a day: for example, first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and one more time in the middle of the day, such as on your lunch break

Our purpose in step 4 is to put in place an image that sums up everything that has taken place as a result of steps 1, 2, and 3 and to seal it into your mind. But we’re doing something else, too. We are also setting up a series of cues, so that over the days to come, with this very simple mini-process that takes no more than a few minutes, you can quickly evoke and reinstall everything you did as you worked through the entire process.

You might think of it this way:

In step 4, you are setting an anchor in the ocean floor, so that your new beliefs and thought patterns won’t drift away with the currents of everyday circumstance. At the same time, life being what it is, you know that sooner or later you are going to drift. Inevitably, we become distracted by the events of our lives. The stronger the currents of what is going on around us, the faster and farther we are likely to drift.

So, in addition to putting down an anchor, we also use step 4 to set up a buoy on the surface of your mind that will serve as a marker, so that whenever you want to return to where that anchor is set, you can find its location immediately.

That buoy is your personal symbol of balance.

Thirty days is the minimum length of time we typically recommend for doing this, because it normally takes about thirty days for the subconscious mind to accept and incorporate a new habit.

If you are dealing with a strong trauma or painful event, such as deep grieving or a major life change, or if for any other reason you feel you need more support and reinforcement, then by all means continue this daily practice for six weeks or even longer. It can only help.

And Whenever You Feel Stressed…

In addition to this thirty-day daily refresher, the process gives you tools you can use anytime, anywhere, for the rest of your life, as you feel the need.

Anytime you are feeling stressed or under the gun, or feel your new positive beliefs are being challenged, there are three different mini-processes you can use to put yourself back on track.

“But when I’m most stressed,” people sometimes say, “I don’t have time or the space to get by myself and do any kind of lengthy process. I can’t even think straight in times like that, let alone remember some elaborate sequence!”

We know. We’ve experienced this, too. Things can get hectic and feel out of control sometimes. That’s okay: you can still use these tools, even at times like this. We have designed these mini-processes to be extremely simple, practical tools that you can implement at any time, in any circumstance, right in the midst of your busy life.

1. Daily refresher

If you are able to take a few minutes by yourself, you can repeat the daily refresher that you did for thirty days, above. Combining elements from steps 2, 3, and 4 all together, it is a powerful set of cues that will reorganize your electrical polarity and bring back to mind all the gains of the Four-Step Process.

2. Mini-refresher

As an abbreviated version of the daily refresher, you can simply visualize your symbol of balance while applying the anchoring hold to your head.

The beauty of this symbol is that it is a single visual element—and yet, because you have used it as the conclusion to the Four-Step Process itself, it contains within it the seeds and fruits of the entire process. The subconscious mind is a powerful thing, and once you’ve gone through all the steps of the process, all it takes is this one carefully chosen trigger, and your subconscious can rerun the entire process without your having to follow any of it consciously.

The more often you do this, the more potent this trigger becomes. In many circumstances, applying the anchoring hold and evoking a picture of your symbol of balance for just thirty seconds is enough to reinvoke all the gains you’ve achieved through the full Four-Step Process.

3. Crosshand breathing

Anytime you feel off-kilter, stressed, or distressed, simply doing two minutes of crosshand breathing will calm your system and correct a reversed or disorganized polarity.

Not only is this extremely simple, it has the added practical advantage of looking innocuous to outside observers. Sometimes it just isn’t practical to do the anchoring hold or pledge of acceptance, because they may prompt the people around you to ask what you’re doing, or if you’re okay, and so forth. But crosshand breathing is something you can practice virtually anywhere, anytime, without drawing unwanted attention.

Two minutes is ideal, but sometimes you don’t have two minutes. That’s okay, too. Often just one minute will be sufficient to effect a positive change.

Anchoring and Addictions

One of the most intriguing and promising areas where we have used the Four-Step Process is with people who have deeply ingrained patterns of addictive and compulsive behaviors—and this is an area that clearly illustrates the value and the power of the daily refresher.

Over the years, clients have come to us with hundreds of such issues, including compulsive eating or dieting, habitual binging and purging, alcohol and drug addiction, compulsive spending and shopping, gambling problems, sexual addiction, obsessive thinking, pornography and Internet addiction, and many others.

Again, we want to repeat here the disclaimer at the front of this book: We are not offering this process as a way to treat major clinical problems, such as severe chemical addictions or major depressive or anxiety disorders. Code to Joy is aimed at issues of everyday life that so many suffer with. For severe addictions and those that have a strong chemical and physiological basis (such as addictions to alcohol, narcotics, and hard drugs), a multi-team approach is typically needed to completely resolve the problem, which may include such elements as hospitalization and detoxification, a twelve-step support group, medical treatment programs, or other strategies.

However, even in these more difficult cases, the underlying emotional dynamic that first set the addictive process in motion is something the Four-Step Process can help address, often saving the person years of relapsing to old behaviors.

People suffering with these more severe clinical issues typically have the same negative, self-limiting beliefs lying at the core of the issues they’re dealing with—beliefs about their safety, self-worth, lovability, powerlessness, isolation, and so forth—as does everyone else. Addressing these issues with the Four-Step Process is in some ways much like addressing any other patterns of distress in one’s life. The Four-Step Process is especially useful because it quickly allows the person to have greater emotional clarity about why he or she has the addiction. Once a person realizes the cause, it becomes easier to come to grips with the situation, come to a clear decision, and make a strong commitment to make a lasting change.

In these situations, when there is such a strong pull to lapse into the old patterns, it is especially important to incorporate some elements of the process into a daily routine. In our experience, the person overcoming an addictive pattern will want to repeat the daily refresher three times a day at least, and continue to do so as a daily routine for a good two or three months even after the core issue is resolved, in order to fully root out the old patterns and anchor the new beliefs more firmly.

Jason’s Habit

Jason was in his last year in college when he started growing anxious about the career path decisions he would soon be making. As graduation approached, his anxiety grew to the point where he could not unwind enough to get to sleep at night. Some friends gave him some pot to relax him.

Jason had used marijuana intermittently before, but now it became a crutch he relied on every night. Within a few weeks, the habitual pot use made him depressed and despondent. Rather than getting clearer on his career path, he started feeling even less capable of making these big decisions. This in turn fueled his anxieties further—leading to ever-greater pot use. He knew he was in a vicious cycle and digging himself in deeper every night, but he felt powerless to do anything about it.

When he began working with the Four-Step Process, Jason was quickly able to identify the negative I am powerless belief underlying his downward-spiraling mood, together with several events early in his life that had first sparked that belief. Within minutes, his sense of anxiety about his career choices, together with the feeling of hopeless despondency that had taken root, dissolved its grip, and Jason felt dramatically like his old self.

However, Jason admitted, he honestly didn’t know if he could let go of his new crutch. He wanted to quit smoking pot, and the underlying reason that had drawn him to it in the first place had dissipated, but still, the habit felt like it was stuck to him—“like Super Glue,” as he put it.

Jason followed this routine faithfully, and within the first few days he began feeling a significant shift in his sense of confidence. However, he continued smoking pot every night. Nevertheless, he stuck doggedly to his routine of four daily refreshers every day.

After another week, he was able to get to sleep one night without smoking pot, and a few days later he did so again, and then several days in a row. By the end of week 4, he had completely stopped using pot and he felt like a new person—which, in a sense, he was.

A Smoker’s Story

Margey had smoked at least a pack and a half of cigarettes daily for the past twenty-five years. A few years before we saw her, she had managed to stop for a few weeks, but when the stress levels at her workplace began increasing, she had started again and had not been able to quit or even cut back since.

Margey was becoming short of breath and was deeply worried about her health.

“I’m in my fifties,” she told us, “and I know I have to start taking better care of myself. I’m ready to do this.” She didn’t really think it would work, but she was determined to give it a serious try anyway.

Aside from the health concerns, Margey also hated the fact that she seemed so utterly incapable of making this change that she knew she needed to make. The feeling of powerlessness was very frustrating for her.

When Margey first went through the Four-Step Process, it immediately shifted her emotional state. She soon began seeing this as a real possibility.

As with any addictions that have a chemical basis, we advised her to repeat the daily refresher at least three or four times a day—and she did. She used no nicotine gum, no patch, no other external support.

How long it takes to get relief from an addiction like cigarettes varies greatly from person to person. In Margey’s case, it took three weeks.

Within a week of our visit, she had dropped from a pack and a half a day to a handful of cigarettes a day. After another week, she got down to one or two a day, and by the end of the following week, to nothing. She was ecstatic.

Her husband, who still smoked himself, was astonished. And this is where the story becomes especially poignant.

You’ll recall Steve Hopkins, the successful sales director who suffered every time he had to sit through a social event. Through the Four-Step Process, Steve not only was able to relax and enjoy his evenings with friends, family, and colleagues, he also realized he could now fly on commercial airlines instead of feeling forced to spend a fortune leasing private jets every time he had to travel.

One detail we did not mention about Steve’s story was how he first came to see us: we had helped his wife Margey quit smoking.

And that is not the end of Steve’s story. The day he called to tell us how well he was doing, he started thinking about what else he might change in his life. That night, he wrote an entry in his journal, which he shared with us some months later:

Next up, consider quitting the little cigars. Not sure I am ready for this yet, but want to consider it. Would allow my running and tennis stamina to improve, and make it easier to find a hotel room. And make me more steady/peaceful during the day.

At the time, Steve was smoking cigarillos (his “little cigars”) throughout the day. We asked him a question: If he did stop smoking, what would he be able to do that he wasn’t already doing?

“That’s easy,” he replied immediately. “Long-distance running. I used to do it, and I love it—but I can’t go back to it as long as I’m smoking these cigarillos. That would be a wonderful gift to give myself.”

Then we asked him how he would like to start the process, knowing that it would go better if he was the one calling the shots, and not us. However, we misunderstood a key piece of his answer. We thought he said that he was accustomed to having a cigarillo in the middle of the day, and that he wanted to start the quitting process by eliminating that midday smoke. We took him through the Four-Step Process again, focusing on issues surrounding his perceived powerlessness to stop smoking, and (as we had with Margey) suggested that he practice the daily refresher several times daily in the days to come.

We talked with him a week later, and asked him how it was going.

“Well,” he said, “we’ve been totally successful.”

How so? we asked. Had he completely stopped smoking that midday cigar?

“Not cigar,” he said. “Cigars.”

Wait—what? We thought we were talking about quitting a single daily cigar as a way to get Steve’s toe in the water.

“Nope,” he replied. “I wasn’t talking about quitting one of them. I was talking about quitting all of ’em.”

Today Margey walks a good four to six miles every day, feels great about herself and her life, and doesn’t smoke—and neither does Steve.