What are you hooked on?

By Sidika Petterson

Colour Light Therapy is a holistic healing method that uses a torch and different coloured quartz glass rods to release emotional, physical, mental and soul-level pain. It can be used to treat a huge range of issues, including addiction to a negative belief or state of mind, a person, place, drug or disease. Sidika tells the story of how she freed herself from guilt.

Earlier this year, I took part in an advanced Colour Light Therapy training with the School of Awakening (www.schoolofawakening.com) where I learnt a treatment called “Freedom from Bondage”, also known as the “Unhooking” series. It helps you to release the negative aspect of any issue you choose, and so frees you to live your life energy in a way which is more in tune with who you would like to be. You can also unhook from a person’s name e.g. an ex-partner, a place, an addiction, a disease (you need to choose one word)…I imagine you could try it on anything. Popular issues include shame, guilt, struggle, unworthiness, poverty and slavery.

You find your most debilitating issue by testing out a few possibilities and seeing how you respond – whichever one produces the biggest internal groan, wince or shiver is a good bet. You can also check which issue is uppermost by using kinesiology muscle–testing. I was pretty sure that guilt would turn out to be the big one for me – and the muscle-testing proved me right! My Catholic upbringing probably didn’t help much and right from an early age, I remember feeling guilty about everything – everything was my fault – very ego-centric, I know. Whenever, anyone said, “Sidika, there’s something I want to talk to you about”, my immediate internal response would be “Oh no! What have I done now?”

On the first morning of the training, I heard that a friend of mine who I had spent a couple of days with in hospital the previous week, had been transferred to a hospice and was very close to death from cancer. This news made me very shaky and stirred up my previous feelings of guilt that I had not done enough to help her earlier in her illness. Kamla Deva, the course teacher, decided to use me as the demonstration model for the first session. Having established that ‘guilt’ was the issue to work with, she then determined by the use of numerology the correct colours to use to ‘unhook’ me from the word ‘guilt’. The treatment was applied to points on my upper back in two parts – an outer circle and an inner circle – which usually generate two distinct memories related to early childhood, or more commonly, past life situations. Once the light is applied to the body, the client generally begins to notice a sensation arising in his/her body. With the aid of skillful dialoguing from the practitioner (and Kamla is an absolute expert at this!), the client finds the associated emotion and situation, discovers the lesson that needs to be learned and brings in healing resources to resolve the issue.

So, as the light was applied to the outer circle, I experienced a past life as a woman in her 40’s working as a healer in Ancient Greece. I had abandoned my healing/spiritual teacher who was dying of a disease that was eating her away (like cancer). I had felt that I couldn’t heal her; I was scared that I was not good enough so I had fled. My teacher died and I returned full of grief, remorse and guilt – so much so that I soon killed myself. Kamla suggested that I speak to my teacher at a soul level and see what she wanted of me. My teacher told me that she didn’t want me to carry any guilt, but to be myself. I didn’t need to do anything and that by not trying to be perfect, I would be a better healer. After that, I noticed that I still felt some guilt around the current situation with my friend. Kamla helped me through that which included me saying to my friend that it wasn’t my responsibility to fix or heal her.

This felt like a huge healing for me and I had been very emotional through it. Enough for one session you might think, but no – there was still the inner circle to go. As the light was applied I felt completely drugged, my head was lolling around and I couldn’t think clearly – I was oblivious to everything. Kamla and the other participants who were watching were also finding it difficult to stay awake. Suddenly, Kamla said to me, “What if I were to say the word ‘opium’ to you?” My answer was, “Yes, please!” I flashed back to a past life where I was a young man (probably Thai or Chinese) in an opium den. I was a wealthy, indolent, good-for-nothing who was feeling guilty because I had missed my father’s death as I had been doped out. My father had been a rich business man and I had felt that I couldn’t live up to his expectations – so I hadn’t even tried, but spent my time smoking. At this point in the session, for some reason it came to me to re-write the script so that I didn’t miss my father’s death. A man looking suspiciously like the Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi, appeared in the opium den holding a stick which he then hit me on the head with. He lead me back to my father’s death bed where my father laid his hand on my head bestowing absolution, recognition and love before he died. I didn’t take my father’s place in the business, but became a spiritual, holy man, perhaps a monk. In this way I was able to experience transcendent states without the use of drugs. The ‘opium fog’ cleared in the session room as this was happening and the other participants also woke up from their sleepiness.

The Unhooking treatment is a series of three sessions so the next day I swapped a session with one of the other participants on the course. This time during the first part of the session I experienced a past life as a woman feeling guilt over terminating a pregnancy and in the second part experienced being a young officer in the army who had caused the death of his men due to his incompetence and was then riddled with guilt. During the third and final session of the series I experienced being a teenage boy guilty of spying on a secret Tantric ritual who was punished by having his eyes put out and his tongue cut off! In the second part, I was a monk who had not been allowed to teach sacred texts and in a jealous rage had destroyed them. Then, overcome with guilt and remorse, he had impaled himself on a hook so that everyone could see his guilt and shame.

Quite colourful past lives are common as these are the ones that leave the greatest impression on our psyche and can most clearly point to the lessons that we were learning in that life and usually our current life too. Whether or not we believe in past lives and reincarnation as a reality, it seems that energetically our bodymind system perceives these ‘remembered’ situations as real – the body sensations and emotions can feel incredibly real! Something is resonated in our psyche around the issue of ‘guilt’ or whatever else we are working on, and the insights and healing received during the session can powerfully affect how we are now. This is emphasized in Colour Light sessions – clients are encouraged to use their new insights and understanding to determine practical steps they can take to continue their healing and to lead lives more in tune with who they really are.

So, did it work for me? Yes it did. Over time as I have integrated these powerful sessions, I am noticing that as various situations arise in which I previously would have felt compelled to do something I really didn’t want to do – just to avoid that awful feeling of GUILT, I am able to remain true to myself. I might have a little wobble, but generally it’s much easier. Still a few more things to unhook from though – think I’ll start with ‘struggle’ and then ‘workaholism’ – or perhaps unhooking from ‘struggle’ will also fix the ‘workaholism’ – this ‘cascade’ effect is quite common and very welcome!

If you would like to find out more about Colour Light Therapy, see www.schoolofawakening.com/colour. Discover the background to the method, read case studies and testimonials and find out what issues it can help with. You can also enquire about practitioners in your area. To find out more about becoming a Colour Light Practitioner, contact Sidika Petterson (Bristol) on:

Tel: 0117 927 2445 

Mob: 07742 053198

Email: colour@schoolofawakening.com