Jungian Dr Asha Clinton Seemorg Matrix Work / Advanced Integrative Therapy

[nemesis]

Apparently Asha Clinton has invented a new type of therapy Advanced Integrative Therapy (formerly "Seemorg Matrix Work") that addresses the multi-generational sequelae of trauma and has been using this new method "at Navajo Nation".

This is a subject that I am very interested in so I read a little more about this novel therapy and it seems to be a mix of nuage stuff about chakras and energy healing with a touch of Jungian flavour.  


I feel uncertain (to say the least) about the legitimacy of this new type of therapy. There again as soon as people combine traditional models of psychotherapy with nuage chakras and energy work, it sets alarm bells ringing for me.  I cannot claim to be free of prejudice in this respect and maybe this new type of therapy actually works?

I found this article interesting

Recently, a non-profit corporation, Therapists With Wings, has been involved in teaching a new form of trauma relief work, Seemorg Matrix Work, at Navajo Nation and for Mayans in Guatemala.6 At Navajo Nation, a team led by Asha Clinton, Ph.D was brought in by Jayne Talk-Sanchez and the Indian Health Service to train Dine practitioners to use a version of the approach specifically adapted for people with historical trauma. So far two Seemorg Matrix Work Basic trainings have been undertaken, and there are tentative plans for a more advanced session. Once trained, the local practitioners use the technique in culturally appropriate ways to treat trauma quickly and painlessly, with long lasting results.

     A group led by Clinton visited Guatemala during each of the past three years to teach Guatemalan psychotherapists Seemorg Matrix Work, a psychotherapy which treats trauma quickly and painlessly. The program was initiated by Ligia Barascout de Piedra Santa, a Guatemalan psychotherapist, who invited Dr. Clinton and the Therapists With Wings Trainers to teach in Guatemala because of the many massacres of Mayan people that occurred there during the civil war. The team teaches quick, painless, and highly effective methods for the treatment of trauma, historical trauma and related issues. By teaching the therapy to local practitioners who can apply it in culturally appropriate ways, the Therapists With Wings team avoids the cultural impasses and misunderstandings that often occur when Western therapists try to treat non-Western people directly. Guatemalan psychotherapists who work with Mayan massacre survivors plan to use Seemorg Matrix trauma work within the context of the Mayan rituals that have been developed to help people heal from the massacres.

     In 2005, Therapists With Wings will bring its program to Quiche province, where the largest numbers of massacres occurred. An innovative program developed by Sister Virginia Searing, a Sister of Charity, and run partially under the auspices of USAID does exhumations of mass graves there, and helps surviving relatives and friends deal with what has happened. Seemorg Matrix Work will provide a way to permanently treat the multiple traumata they have suffered.

     Seemorg Matrix Work is a dynamic energy psychotherapy that provides individuals lasting relief from a range of intractable psychological disorders, physical diseases, and spiritual impasses. Starting from the premise that all upsetting events are types of trauma that are housed within the body, mind, and spirit, this new therapy gently removes the after-effects of such traumatic events, including disturbing emotions, negative beliefs and attitudes, destructive desire and fantasies, addictions, compulsions, obsessions, dissociation, spiritual blockage, physical abreaction, sensitivities, and some disease. For more information, go to: www.SeemorgMatrix.org.

     The treatment of trauma as part of a broad, culturally appropriate, program of renewal is important if the injuries of the past are to be successfully overcome. Unfortunately, such work is not sufficiently appreciated or adequately funded. In the Balkans, for example, existing programs are able to provide only a small fraction of what is needed, and have to struggle just to continue at a low level. To bring healing to Guatemala, Therapists With Wings have had to operate almost entirely out of their own pockets, which are rapidly emptying. As a result, they are seeking funding from public and private sources to continue the bulk of their work.

source: http://www.indigenouspolicy.org/xv-1/xv-1-p47.htm

The home page is here

http://www.seemorgmatrix.org/

It appears to look like a nuage site rather than a therapy site and I will examine it all in some depth, but from the brief perusal I can manage now it does not look right.

There are no clinical or research papers demonstrating the effectiveness of the treatment, just PDF documents with case studies on them.

Then there are things like this in the Testimonials section

“As a depth psychotherapist specializing in long term treatment for over two decades, I view Seemorg Matrix Work® as a stunning breakthrough in psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy. Dr. Asha Clinton's extensive training and clinical experience in psychoanalytic psychotherapy permeates a treatment methodology that might be best characterized as the first depth psychotherapy to harness the principles of post-Einsteinian quantum mechanics in service of healing the psyche. Her uncanny way of combining psychodynamic wisdom and findings from the field of traumatology with simple but potent interventions upon the human electromagnetic field creates a breakthrough never before seen in psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy. All depth psychotherapists, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, trauma treatment specialists, existential psychotherapists and spiritually oriented psychotherapists looking for more effective, rapid, humane and gentle ways to midwife even their most disturbed clients toward peak functioning would be wise to receive training in Seemorg Matrix Work® .”

David Gruder, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist,
Director of Willingness Works,
Founding President of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology

Sorry but reading that load of waffle, riddles with nuage cliches (why do they always have to go on about quantum mechanics?) just leaves me feeling really concerned that people who really need and deserve proper therapeutic support for the multi-generational effects of trauma may instead end up on the receiving end of some weird chakra based pseudo therapy.

Another link - amazingly this is from the website of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK, although frankly the spirituality special interest group in the RCP has some really bonkers resources linked and this is relatively ordinary in comparison

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:KaHxLV8NNfsJ:www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/New%2520Approaches%2520in%2520Energy%2520Psychology%2520Reinhard%2520Kowalsky%2520EDITED.pdf+%22Seemorg+Matrix+Work%22&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgOaS9h3IxA8Px66Vw6OjNvxYrsdnaHFmqDe-VbudXkuFjqklNMhPM0bGiUmDyeRoEJx6CZtozfYbYox4SRMKNgsRk2wd0UazyDDfg7n6f6jDgLv2V2XeJAPVP7XchHSiiqnoCn&sig=AHIEtbSGOBiS2_7VtXP154yT8WhKRSaMSg


I would be very interested in the thoughts of others re this

[critter - a white non-ndn person]

They seem to be forgetting that the brain has neurological patterns that either creates thought process or, that thought processes keep the patterns in place.

I worked at a chiropractors office once, he specialized in retraining the electrical pattern in the brain. Used for people who have to retrain their brains after serious injury. I don't understand the whole of it, but it is a certified therapy I believe.. anyway, you can't just erase the trauma with a sweep.

I mean, even IF they could remove the emotional energy .. it would only be recreated by the process of the brain and thoughts. 

Having lived through numerous traumas, I can tell you first hand that a person has to work thru the trauma, has to find the patterns in thought and reaction, and work hard to change them consciously.  To have someone come in (not saying this group can actually do this.. speaking hypothetically here) and say just remove all that emotion and subconscious affliction from that trauma.. robs a person from growing and learning and gaining.. and therefore, makes the trauma worthless. 

I have experienced trauma to the point where I operated like a zombie on some days, hard, painful, yes, but I gained from it, and that makes the trauma valuable to my life and life experiences, to what I have learned here on Earth.  Someone wipe that away and then wtf did I go through all that crap for??

Sorry.. this seems irresponsible.. especially since it doesn't seem they are using good therapy to help the person guide them through all of it so they can see what they need to see and learn what they need to learn of it.. and maybe most importantly, the pride and honor one feels for their being when they have successfully worked their way through the trauma.  The taking control of your own mind and emotions .. as long and as hard as that can be.. is so important.. for someone to just rob another of the gift hidden within the trauma.. makes the trauma worthless, and doesn't add to that persons personal growth.

[nemesis]

Thanks for your post critter and I am so sorry to hear about your traumas.

I share your concerns about the focus on evacuating trauma from the body - she calls it "flushing" - as if the trauma was some tangible product that could be flushed away like a turd.  I suspect that many people wish that they could just expel the feelings of "badness" associated with traumas and flush them away.

Traumas leave people feeling utterly wretched.

Working through traumas can be character building, however for traumas to be effectively worked through various criteria need to be in place.  It takes time.  It is painful.  Many people never completely recover but struggle on with awful emotional scars.

It worries me that Asha Clinton seems to be a legitimate Jungian analyst but has become someone who promotes these ideas about flushing trauma via body work involving charkas and meditation.

I do have my prejudices against nuage ideas and maybe this stuff works, I'm open to being convinced but I am unconvinced at this point. 

[critter - a white non-ndn person]

Well, I didn't mean it in terms of character building. And yes, scars remain, and yes, I have days of struggle.  But, I wouldn't want someone to wipe it away. Life is a battle, life is *hard*.  I don't want someone wiping away my battles.. even before I have the chance to fight. 

Some people never recover... most are never who they were before.. trauma changes people. Myself included.

Chakras and meditation are not new age. And I do believe emotions can be worked with via meditation and chakra work. But trauma needs real one on one therapy to help the person move thru it and gain control of their life. That is part of the healing.

I can't explain better I guess... just removing the trauma counteracts whatever reason the trauma was there to begin with.. and I don't know why people have to live thru horrible things, but I trust there is reason, spiritual, and I don't believe anyone can remove that.. or IF they could.. it would be wrong to do so.

[nemesis]

Critter

I have suffered some pretty awful traumas and, while they make me who I am, there is part of me that would love for nothing more than to remove them quickly.

If there was a "quick fix" for trauma I would have no problems with it.

My understanding of working with trauma is that it takes time, nothing is guaranteed 100% and it is very painful.

In a situation where communities are still terribly affected by the long history of actual and cultural genocide and the horrific sequelae of boarding schools, loss and separation, any helpful intervention must be welcomed if it is effective.  I could add "if it is culturally sensitive", however any intervention that is not culturally sensitive, that does not openly address the historical and current situation regarding racism and all the other important stuff, then it will never be effective IMO.

Is AIT effective? 

I do not know.

I understand that the concept of chakras is not in itself newage, however claiming to have developed a new kind of body therapy based on a combination of chakras, body energy, post-Einsteinian quantum mechanics and conventional psychodynamic / psychoanalytic psychotherapy is to me very newage.

According to her website the "therapists with wings" taught Mayan people this new kind of therapy so they could use it is culturally sensitive ways. 

I have no problem at all with teaching native people therapeutic techniques, this could be a very empowering thing to do.  I am just concerned about the effectiveness (or not) of such techniques.

The language use on Asher Clinton's website is not the language typically used by a psychoanalytic psychotherapist or and analytical psychologist (I should know as I've read hundreds of papers by people who are).  It is more like the language you will find on a newage site.

I really, really would love it to be true that there is some new form of therapy that is highly effective in treating trauma but so far at least I do not see any evidence of that. 

[critter - a white non-ndn person]

It is newagey in that context..

From experience nemesis, it is effective but only to a degree as I said, the thought patterns can bring it right back. A lot of the effectiveness of such a thing is proportionate to the person being treated. Perhaps that is also true of standard therapy.

I don't believe -removal- of our personal life experiences is the way to heal.  You are the sum total of your life's experiences.. healing is better sought by learning balance. Removing something would be terrifying to me. My believes center around reincarnation, karma, and randomness. I would not want anything I have lived removed from my 'being'. I don't know why it's there, I don't know why I had to live it, but I believe it's for purpose, even if that purpose is unknown to me.. and with my beliefs, I wouldn't want to have to experience all this again because it was 'removed' from the sum total of who I am..  and.. even if I didn't believe in reincarnation.. it just seems leaving life minus what's been removed isn't a good way.

I do believe in the workings of 'energy'.. and I think if people really knew how to work with the energies of our lives, then that would be great. But I doubt they do.  And I would suspect that if mankind ever got to a stage where they could test 'energy' via quantum sciences there would be a lot of mistakes, a lot of wrongs.. and I think this 'removal' of trauma in the way they are explaining it is wrong.

I think a new therapy that could work in conjunction with something real in energy work would be great.

<shrug>