This conference was really something else, hard to know where to start. As a wise old bloke once said, if in doubt, start at the beginning and so in the beginning there was Friday - the advanced EMO people getting together to put the VaVaVroom into modern energy healing. I had no idea what we would do or how it would work out but as usual, I had some faith and this was well rewarded. We did "secret healing for all occasions" in the first session, discovered a fail safe central healing energy raising technique in the second (which I then personally used on at least three occasions later on in the conference when I was helping some people who had their energy moments!).
In the third session, we did the new take on the client/practitioner dance which was really amazing. Doing that I completely got it when you focus absolutely on wanting to give all you have to give, there is no room left for anything else - self doubt, worrying about what you look like, what other people (including the client) may think of you, whether you're good enough or anything. All that remains is this huge, huge desire to serve, to be of service in anywhichway you can become a gift to that person in front of you and that's such an awesome feeling ... Aaah .... Yes and then session four which was the healing wave. I loved the way the VVV day unfolded organically and through the combined input/experiences of those present. There was a flow in that day of a kind I've not experienced before. There was also a moment I particularly remember (a little guiding star perhaps?). For some obscure reason, the hotel staff decided to serve the last coffee in the Silk Suite so the newbies from the Fast Track next door with Sandra came in and joined us at that time. They were sparkling and excited with what THEY had just discovered, and the old hands were sparkling and excited with what THEY had just discovered. So we were all the same at that moment and just happy to meet each other - a fabulous merging of different concentric waves? Either way, it was unusual, enlivening and just told me that whoever works with energy, old hands or new, it's the sparkly place where we all meet and where we are the same, no hierarchy. Loved, loved, loved it! On that sparkly front, we were in the Silk Suite (upstairs) as it was a small conference; the whole weekend was unbroken, glorious sunshine and blue skies in the day, starry skies at night. The Silk Suite is a beautiful room but I also think that we sparkled it up before the conference even started with the VVV day up front at the unseen levels; it really felt that way. Ok, so that was a good start! Now back to Friday, and the Friday night "fun, bonus, pre-conference, let Silvia have a play" evening activity. I'd made up my mind at the last Soul Pilots project I was going to do the Bio Challenge - who are you and what is it that you do? - in two cohesive, reversal free sentences please! That was a hoot. Pre-EMO treatements (many required!) people were just stuttering and mumbling this crazyness - like, one person said, "I like to help people emotionally and physically ... ahm ..." and someone responded with, "You help old ladies across the street free of charge?" Turns out she didn't, but was in fact a highly respected authority in her field, one of only a few in the world, a world expert on a well known form of therapy. Aha ...! With all those emotional/energetic blocks out of the way we got to a point where people could step forward, look someone in the eye and say congruently what their name was, and what it was they were doing! Hallelujah ... I hope that filters down now onto their websites, business cards, yellow pages advertisements, brochures, networking outreach programs ...!!! Now the title of the workshop was "the power of your voice." There is a direct correlation between energy blockages and your voice, the energy you project to communicate yourself to others, not just the words that are being spoken. So after the bio challenge, we went on to find the resonant voice, sing together and learn a new technique to free energy blockages from the throat particularly to allow a free flow of energy in communications. One participant came up afterwards and told me that they used to teach singing and that this energy technique in one minute opened up the vocal chords more than an hour of doing scales, and they were very happy to have found out about that. Singing against your own energy reversals, of course, no good can come of it ... or speaking, or not speaking at all. So that's how that ties in and I think good fun was had by all, and we retired to do a lot more chatting amongst ourselves. There was massive amounts of real networking going on right from the word "Go!" and all over the place. People from various parts of the country and the world found each other and started planning trainings together, all sorts of things. Just me, I made firm commitments to do an Events Psychology training with Kim Bradley, a day workshop post conference on Hypnosis with Ray Manning for the GoE conference in November, and to help out with the 1st US EMO conference in October 2012. Oh yes and to develop a program for war veterans, especially women, with Clare Davison. That's just me ... that was going on quite literally all over the place, all the time, in the corridors, in the bar, in the gardens. It felt like we really had hit that spot where we connect and regardless of our differences have something in common in a way I haven't felt it before. So! And the conference hadn't even started yet! On to Saturday morning. The first presentation was Kim (Bradley) who was eliciting who we would like to work with in the community. This was an interesting exercise which involved people getting together into groups around a similar topic (such as anger management, abusive relationships, kids and teenagers, carers, vets and so forth) and coming up with exercises and outlines for introductionary workshops. I was in the abusive relationships group and we made a really nice program that starts with love first - rather than as everyone else does, demonifying the "abuser" who is in fact a husband, lover, wife, and the reason that people stay in abusive relationships at the end of the day is not because they want punishment, but because they seek love. From there, we can go on to dealing with fear and anger energetically, and end with love again and logic, and a different place to go forward to make decisions about the future. Excellent, very eye opening, very practical. The thing is that energy work really is much more practical than trying to deal with people without energy - that's the crazy thing. So many out there still think what we do is "immaterial" but it's the very opposite. Energy work is hard hitting, life changing, powerful, it even can be brutal, but at least, it's not long in the suffering and the gains are well worth it. But I digress. That was a very good session, I got a lot out of it including the powerful reminder that you have to - and I mean that, have to! - start with every problem from a place of love first, or else it can't be solved.
I'm not going to go in temporal order here, the next thing I particularly noticed and which is interesting on many levels was during Ray Manning's workshop on a drawing technique that becomes something else altogether when you add EMO to the mix (taking the energy of the drawing in, getting it to Even Flow and then doing the evolution of the 1st drawing so you get a sequence on a topic, very interesting!). I was just sitting there, doing my thing with my drawings, being absorbed in the workshop when Josh came over and asked if we could play some music while people were working on their drawings. I showed him my "slow" playlist I had assembled for the client/practitioner dancing and thought no more of it - until people started to abreact and really had these huge emotions well up. Not all of them but certainly at least three or four, including one lady who was seriously distraught. I went to work with her and all the things I'd learned about energy healing the day before really came in handy, and in a big way. It was a fantastic experience for me, and I'm happy to say the lady in question sparkled amazingly when we were done (I think I did too, I felt amazing!). Anyway, with the wisdom of the hindsight I realised what had happened there. I asked Ray if people usually respond to the drawing exercise like this and he said, no, never seen that before. This confirmed my suspicion - the song they had been playing (throughout for every exercise on a loop!) was Sereyah's Song, which is about child abuse and designed to evoke energies that might have no voice at all, that might have no conscious representation! In combination with the drawing technique and the instructions to let your energy mind tell you something important, that song did exactly what it was designed to do - call forth these elder energies that sought healing still. So there I learned two things - one is that my "energy music" does what it says on the box, and two that we should put on Lightworks as a "supportive music" for exercises in the future! One of the things I was immensely conscious of at this conference was the difference in energy between the various presenters. When you take in a presentation not just on the words that are spoken, the top level stuff, but as an overall energy package that very much includes the energy of the presenter, everything just changes and the experience becomes different. Richer, wider, just much more wonderful. One stand out example that tuned me into that was Margarita (Sister Margarita Foley). I remember the first presentation she ever did and it's like as though that was a lifetime ago. She had just such a wonderful energy of calm and immense power as she shared these different meditation techniques from simple to mind blowing that was really something. You put that side by side with the amazing sparkling energy of Terry (Dr Teresa Lynch) and Kim in their body based workshop on the one side, and Sandra's exotic and loving energy from the Energized End State workshop on the other, Ray, me, then Patricia (Patricia Dancing Elk) who has this really wide, mystic, flowing, Earth Medicine energy going on and then Hannah (Hannah Bradley) who is so young, focused, clear, pure, wide awake and that gives you a sense of what you can get out of the presentations beyond mere words and techniques if you open yourself to it all. It's the coolest thing. So, on to Saturday night and the book launch & energy party for the new EMO book. We were sitting in the garden when the manager came up to check some details; and there it turned out that no sparkling wine had been pre-ordered. Alex wasn't there so I laughed and decided instead of sparkling wine, to have real champagne for a change. "But that's too extravagant! Its commercially not viable to give out free actual champagne!" Ah and that's the moment when you have to stand up for what you believe in, for what you know and feel to be true, to stand up for energy against the "material conscious mind what seems to make sense" contortions and say, "I'm not launching my brand new book on EMO and the brand new decade for EMO on Asti Spumante! "I don't care what it costs - this deserves CHAMPAGNE!"
And as I will, so mote it be! When the time came, we were all upstairs, the books were unveiled, and we toasted EMO, my new book, the new decade and most of all, each other with proper champagne, and that is RIGHT and that's all. Energy magic. We had decided up front that every conference delegate was getting a free copy of the new EMO: Emotions, Energy, Information & Love, the first in the world anywhere and that was really good and once again, RIGHT. Next what happened is that people asked me to sign their books, and I asked for each one for a message, a the gift, something for each one that was just RIGHT. Without energy magic, you can't do that. Without energy magic, you can't look at someone and something flashes into your mind, something beautiful and inspiring, something personal, and it's not a chore or a burden but it really is enlivening and inspiring to do that. I got high as a kite doing that, and also people thanked me for EMO and they meant it, and that was awesome too. How lucky am I! That's how I felt. So we decided to do some energy dancing after the buffet. After all, there were quite a few newbies who'd never done energy dancing before; so we started with a track I'd made with many drums which goes by the name "Tonic2". Now, the next one, that was one of my personal star moments, high star moments. I'd written that track some time ago, it's called "Dance Your Dreams" and is based on the idea that the Gods don't speak English (or Dutch, for that matter) and that if you want to tell them about your dreams, you have to show them - you have to dance your dreams. I've obviously never had anyone actually do the dance, never mind a whole group of people, and I had a real shamanic experience. I had to pick up the mike again and start singing and talking about how dreams are those things that you want with all you heart, things that have no name, these powerful energy forms rising up inside of you and if you let them rise up and all the way out, they take wings like giant birds and they really do fly upwards and travel to the realms of the angels or the gods where they will be noted and received, where they will be known. I can't know what the participants felt like but for me that was incredibly powerful, an amazing experience to set those energy forms free, like I'd done a really important thing that needed to have been done, that I'd done something right. I also really changed my mind about dreams and the power of dreams. Dreams, not goals. Goals are what you think you want. Dreams are those indescribable energy movements that are so deep, so old, so powerful, there are no words. Totally different thing altogether. More people must dream.
We must dream because that's what changes the world. What can I say ... I don't remember much from that night after that, just flashes of seeing people dance and laugh and talk together. And then, there was Sunday and still, so many amazing experiences. During Hannah's workshop on reconnecting to the magical teenager within I worked with the aspect who decided to kill herself when she was 14. The main event there was waking up the next day after ingesting 50 crushed valium tablet and going to sleep to transfer either to hell or to heaven, either of which were preferable to the place the aspect lived at the time, and being still alive. The crushing disappointment ... Connecting up with the aspect across time and space, and especially from THIS space, the conference, the people who were all there only because she didn't die and having these experiences together, that was ... (...) .... One of those ... The second of Hannah's exercises informed me that as I grew older I'd taken on all these burdens of responsibility which were just like a heavy yoke around my neck. However, that's only an energy so it dissolved very swiftly and made me feel extremely young and carefree :-) a sensation that is with me still and as I'm writing this ... :-) and very, very, VERY welcome it is, always.
Here was another interesting experience (of so many!)
I was paired with a delegate who told me they had been slapped across the face by their father and felt "the handprint still in their aura and the face still feeling raw and bleeding." Can this be healed? I had an instant flash of standing by the side of a river that was running with salmon, with big trees and high snow tipped mountains in the distance, and then picking up some mud from the river and putting it into the wound. I bent down to scoop up the (invisible) mud and put it gently on my partner's face and again, it felt so RIGHT, and the delegate sighed with relief and told me that was like a story they heard as a child of Jesus healing a blind man by putting mud from a river on their eyes. I swear to God I've never ever heard of anything like that, I thought Jesus only did pure energy healing; it was so specific, so appropriate, the perfect "metaphor" for healing that wound for that one particular person, at that one moment in time, it made me shiver. But to me, that's the deal, see? Once in a while, you pay for champagne instead of sparkling wine when you don't know why and it doesn't make conscious sense or seems "silly" - and in return you get given the perfect gift, the perfect healing metaphor to help you do something amazing. Trusting your gut, trusting your intuition, trusting your 6th sense. Which was the topic of my last presentation of the conference, and a more important topic I can't conceive of. Our sixth sense can guide us towards healing, it can save our lives and can make our lives so much more exciting, interesting, logical even - if you know what it is and start to learn to trust it. And it's not pictures, it's not words, the sixth sense is that experience of pure energy flow in the body, the feelings in the body. I was very happy to assist a number of delegates personally in re-routing their attention to that; a lot of people "look" for their sixth sense, or "listen" but you need to feel instead, and once you do, you understand immediately how it works and the sixth sense becomes a practical reality in your life. The story I always tell is of the restaurant menu and my sixth sense told me the mussle soup was off. It didn't smell bad, taste bad, look bad, there was no other evidence but that feeling in my body that told me exactly that it was poison. Thus it is for situations; the sixth sense is a life saver, a life enhancer, an intelligence enhancer and it gives you awesome experiences such as just knowing that river mud will heal this one person perfectly. Yes and then there was that thing that I woke up on Sunday morning and got this sense that I should stay for the Trainer's day on Monday. No good reason, no good "conscious reason." Indeed as usual, umpteen good "conscious reasons" NOT to stay. But I listen to my intuition ...
There was a guiding star moment awaiting me. The whole day was great on so many levels; we all learned so much about ourselves, each other, how to be a real EMO trainer, what that means, how it doesn't mean giving endless practitioner trainings, stuff about not "selling ourselves," reversals addressed and much more besides. But my personal guiding star beyond all of that was the one moment when there were four of us standing by the open door, sunshine fell into that corner directly, and I explained a little bit about The Genius Symbols to three people who hadn't met them before. There was a moment when everybody "got" TGS at once - how they unlock creativity, energy mind communication, how they work, what they are and the potential of them. It was really awesome - we all had goosebumps and were so excited by it, well that was an energy experience between the four of us like I've not had before. Wow! In the morning, before the trainer's day started, "for no good reason" I put out a little symbol sphere using that set of little men I made by the back door. I wanted it there, didn't know why, left it all day, and then late in the afternoon someone asked, the other two came over and "it" happened to all of us. I'm learning fast that I'm not anywhere near magical enough; that I'm still way too hard on so many levels, in so many ways; way too hard on myself and on those around me. I need to be more magical. As soon as I "allow myself" to step into that, soften and flow my own reversals, and go for it, magic just unfolds and experiences are had, and not just by me alone. But I will also give myself credit for having been as faithful as I know how to be at this time to my own sixth sense, my own intuition, about this conference, what to do, how to do it. My sense is that EMO is awesome. It's exciting to both the old hand as well as being exciting to newbies. Not everyone is going to get it right away, but if and when they do, even that first experience of a tingle they've never felt before, that's the true doorway to finding out more about - everything. So it takes some time. Next year is EMO's tenth anniversary. Every time I've done this EMO thing with others, it's become more delicious. And the VVV day proved to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that we don't even know yet what EMO can be, and can become, with experience and over time. I mean that not as in "EMO, the technique," or "EMO, the organisation" but in "EMO, the personal experience of feeling energy in your own body."

I've been doing this for ten years and I feel like the newbies did when they came in from next door - I've got a big smile on my face, a shiver down my spine and the very strong sense that there will be good things to come in the days ahead. And that's the most precious thing I got from this conference. Is it worth going "in person"? Damn right it is! And that's the final thing - to just totally become this wave of gratitude that flows to all who came and brought their minds, hearts and souls to this, "thank you" just isn't enough, and it really isn't. God willing, I'll be at ET12 and frankly, I can't wait! In the meantime, there are the new projects and there I can't wait either! Life can be really amazing. Thank you all, Silvia xxx
Silvia Hartmann
Author, "EMO: Emotions, Energy, Information & Love"
April 2011
|