During vacation I read two books by Luc Nicon “Reliving situations by consciously reconnecting to one’s feelings” and “TIPI, technique for the sensory identification of unconscious fears” (1). This technique, which is spreading among the public at large, aims at more efficiently handling emotional situations both in our personal and professional lives. It attracted my attention mainly for two reasons: 1/its easy application and rapid results; 2/its empirical approach.
1/ Its easy application and rapid results
As opposed to the usual techniques of emotional management, the solution resides exclusively in our ability to reconnect to physical sensations. Neurobiological studies (2) have shown that emotions are first and foremost physical, which means that they are felt by our body before reaching our consciousness. As a consequence, in order to overcome a strong emotion, we must begin by reconnecting with the physical sensation associated to this emotion which, by definition, is unique for each one of us. Emotions within our body depend on our personal experience. This means that the same emotion may trigger different physical reactions in different individuals. The ease with which this physical reconnection takes place may vary according to our makeup (do we tend to intellectualize everything that happens to us? Or do we perceive the world mostly through physical sensations?) and our education, bearing in mind that in our western world we are primarily taught to UNDERSTAND rather than FEEL.
After this brief introduction, I will summarize the technique as it is described in the book “Reliving situations by consciously reconnecting to one’s feelings” (3) :
- you feel an unpleasant sensation
- close your eyes
- pay attention to the physical sensations within your body
- let these sensations evolve, change
- loosen up without self-control or forethoughts
- until you reach appeasement
Is that all? Yes, and I admit it’s rather impressive, the technique being counter-intuitive. Instead of trying to understand our emotions and consequently step back, we have to overlook all that is mental and concentrate solely on our physical sensations, letting them evolve, even if it may seem unpleasant. The whole process only lasts between two and three minutes. If we reconnect well with our body, the unpleasant emotion simply disappears.
The author insists on the importance of finding a peaceful place and closing our eyes to facilitate the connection with our body. If we want to take an inner journey, we cannot let elements from outside disturb us.
2/ Its empirical aspect
Luc Nicon explains that the excellent results he obtained with this technique convinced him to look further into the underlying mechanisms. This is what fully convinced me: he tested methods to manage emotions and phobias and then tried the find why a certain method worked. This means that, regardless of the reasons behind the “why” (there again, the mind is not necessarily involved), the truly interesting aspect is trying out the technique and then gauging the results attained.
To awaken your curiosity, I will outline his “why” theory, even though I know you might find it baffling, which is understandable. Don’t recoil from the reaction you might have vis à vis this explanation. Try and try again: only after several practical attempts, will you decide whether this technique works for you.
According to research, the fetus suffers several aggressions while still in the womb: the umbilical cord becomes entangled and consequently limits the amount of nourishment and oxygen going to the fetus, the presence of a twin, who either ceases to exist during the first few weeks of pregnancy or some time later or else is carried to term (he advances the hypothesis that at the onset most human fertilizations result in twin pregnancies). Since we develop our nervous system as well as our senses at a very early stage of pregnancy, our life inside our mother’s womb is not as peaceful as it may seem: it is a fight for survival in a rather unfriendly world. The aggressions of the umbilical cord and of the twin or twins engender subconscious fears whose consequences, such as phobias, aggressiveness, passivity, etc., come to the surface when we become adults. These fears are stored in our body, in our subconscious memory, since we have no conscious memory of them. Innocuous events in our lives may awaken these subconscious fears and trigger very strong reactions such as phobias (fear of insects, reptiles, fear of flying, etc.) or very strong emotions (sometimes we have excessive reactions to certain situations). When, by doing this exercise, we reconnect to our bodily feelings, it is as if we were reconnecting to the original feeling and, as a consequence, the fear disappears.
3/ I have tried it on myself
I have to confess that a bleeding wound scares me to death, to the point that, when I hurt myself, my main concern is to avoid looking at the blood for fear of fainting. I tried the exercise by reconnecting to the sensations I felt when I fell from a bicycle, causing a wound that required ten stitches. The recollection of that accident is still vivid in my mind, even though it happened over a year ago. I had some very unpleasant sensations throughout my body, comparable to those I felt at the time of the accident (except for the physical pain, but that’s not the point), but soon afterwards I felt relieved, lighthearted. The whole process lasted one minute. After that exercise, I again saw some blood in different circumstances and, even though it wasn’t very pleasant, I didn’t have that “Oh dear, I am going to faint” feeling.
4/ Putting the technique into practice in our everyday life
Ever since, I apply this technique whenever I experience an unpleasant emotion or feel that, overwhelmed by emotion, I am about to react impulsively to a situation. I retreat to a peaceful place (sometimes I go to the bathroom!), I close my eyes and I reconnect. And it works!
The prerequisite for applying this technique is having a minimum of awareness of our emotions so as to realize when they are about to overwhelm us and, just before it happens, apply the technique.
Should you be unable to apply it in a certain situation, I invite you to apply it a posteriori by reliving, soon after the facts, the emotions and sensations you felt in that particular situation. This should be done in a quiet environment and with your eyes closed.
And now, to conclude, I wish you a wonderful New Year filled with joy, success and emotional peacefulness!
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1) “Emotion forte” edition, available in French only. For further information see web site TIPO.PRO (in French, English, Spanish and German.
2) See Damasio’s book “Looking for Spinoza”
3) Page 11 of “Reliving situations by consciously reconnecting to one’s feelings”
