Words of Affirmation for CRM®

When starting CRM, I had worked on trying to heal from sexual abuse many times, many different ways. Whilst I had some relief, I just wasn’t healing. Through CRM generational work, I discovered there was a pattern of sexual abuse in my maternal lineage – the abuse had never been talked about or reported. The pattern had been passed down. I was carrying a sense of immobility from my ancestors and experiences in this life. On doing CRM generational work, I discovered that this immobility had actually started way before the couple of generations I consciously knew about. I was able to process the narrative of what happened to my ancestors AND the pain that was just too unbearable to be felt at the time. This released the sense of immobility within me, and with additional early attachment and pre-conception work – I was able to speak up and report the abuse. This was EXCEPTIONALLY healing for me, and a matter of child protection as the perpetrator was still alive and had access to children.

Afterwards, I checked in with my ancestors and there was a sense of wonder, joy and disbelief at first as to what I had been able to do. They were smiling, I felt a genuine connection with them and they were truly grateful to be relieved of those secrets. My jaw muscles started to relax (from staying silent, I had clenched my jaw muscles since childhood) and I gained the sincere trust from the younger parts of me that had experienced the pain of that pattern. Looking into my consciousness PRE-conception, I found some themes there that helped me understand why I ‘ended up’ in the family that I did. I was able to understand some of the journey my Soul had been on that had got me to this point – with no judgement! This was another major key to healing.

I have since done more CRM generational work with my material line. This time focusing on the generational GIFTS that had been lost and forgotten. This was INCREDIBLE. Truly incredible. I went from experiencing my maternal line as people who had been poor and stuck in freeze, to discovering that there were women who had skills in theatre, ceremonies and healing. These were all things I was doing in my life already!! My family had no display of these skills and couldn’t understand why I was so different. However! These were generational gifts that I’d picked up and was living. I was able to communicate with these skillful and magical ancestors, which consolidated and amplified how I embodied those qualities. When I think of my maternal line now, writing this, I do so with a smile and tears of joy. It’s beyond what I can describe in words – to be connected to people I have not met in the physical, yet feel their loving, supportive and playful presence.

For me, CRM has been a way to both heal pain AND remember the joy of being alive. I now embody more life force, I am more present, I have access to more free will – AND I have an increased capacity to feel and embody love; for myself, my fellow humans, my ancestors and the whole experience of life!

-Melanie, UK

After spending a week in the magical and “knowing” land that is Cape May on the tip of the New Jersey Coast I emerge back into my life with an expansive awareness that mimics the very mystical elements which guided us as a group through our personal and collective healing journeys. Even the grand house where we worked and lived for that week held the “voices” of the Collective and ancestral support that each of us needed to hear to move into our individual work. The very walls, staircases, living and eating spaces, expansive porches, spacious yards and shade trees held layers of essence and imprints with a certain perfect nourishing structure. The structure held the ability for our souls to abandon any resistance and dive in as we listened to exactly what we each needed from our ancestors and guides.

I’m quite literally blown away as I look back and realize that on every level of my existence during that week, from the physical, emotional, spiritual layers of my be-ing, I was cradled in exactly what my psyche craved. It’s as if the house itself was built some 200 years ago on that specific land in preparation for us. She shone and stood in all her gloriousness, waiting years for these days that she may be a co-facilitator of CRM, helping each of us manifest this work for a collective purpose. This purpose for me wasn’t fully known upon arrival but was clearly presented and ingrained in each of us upon departure.

If you are reading this, I can’t encourage you enough to gift yourself a week learning and doing your Generational/Gestational work in Cape May. You will 100% be profoundly transformed, recharged, and reunited with your soul and the living soul of humankind. CRM can speak for itself, but the experience at Cape May Point is a must-do for anyone on this earth who is called to heal The Collective. A’ho!

-Sarah Barrett Lepore, MA LPC, California, USA

I have an easy and natural connection to both my sons but had a much more difficult and volatile relationship with my daughter. My husband and I also worry about her much more than about my sons always dreading something horrible is going to happen to her, which puts even more strain on the relationship.

I decided to explore this through the CRM Generational protocol.

It turns out that in a past life at the age of 16, completely innocent and without any sexual education of course, I had an encounter with a lovely boy. My father noticed and frightened the boy away, but it was already too late; I was pregnant but didn’t know it.

When it began to show and people started whispering and asking questions, the midwife, who was my grandmother in this life, spirited me away to a hut in the forest, to wait out the rest of my pregnancy. I was angry, ashamed, very frightened and alone. The baby was all I cared about. Grandmother came back around the time of the birth and assisted. She saved my life; I suffered a still-birth and nearly died during the birth.

It took many sessions, but I healed that trauma and processed the anger, shame, fear and sadness around the pregnancy, the traumatic birth and the death of the child, who has come back to me as my daughter in this life.

I have since been able to relax more in my daughter’s presence, to let go a little, and be less frightened for her and less tense about the relationship. Conversation became easier and more fun, communication increased, there is more laughter and a whole virtuous circle ensued. I still have all the normal worries one has with daughters, but I don’t have that constant fear of something dreadful just around the corner anymore.

-Maria Stadtler, London, UK

I have attended many trainings in my 25 years as a therapist to grow both professionally and personally. I began my journey with learning about Comprehensive Resource Model in 2018. I have since utilized the model with several clients and have witnessed life changing healing and transformation CRM has made in their lives.

I recently attended a weeklong Intensive Generational training in Cape May, New Jersey. This training was life changing for me personally as well as professionally and was witness to the same response with the other women who attended this intensive. We worked primarily on our perpetrator patterns, activities, patterns, templates sourced in our soul’s journey and the three ancestral lineages. None of us wanted to do this but in the end, it was the personal work that truly changed us all. We are all as close as family to this day because of this process.

Lisa’s intuitive light shines through with every training I have ever attended with her, but this particular intensive in Cape May created a bond and a large sense of purpose for all who attended. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity.

-Holly Johnson, MA LMFT, Northern California

My experience at the intensive in Beulah was just amazing, CRM combines neurobiology, high clinical competence in trauma and dissociation, deep knowledge about attachment disruption (including in-utero), intergenerational trauma, spirituality, and precious tools to face the most challenging aspects and obstacles that therapists can find in working with complex trauma patients.

This intensive training is a full immersion in CRM, in a small group that facilitates the learning, the experiential aspect and creates the right space, time, and atmosphere to integrate this complex and rich model into a therapist’s previous background. All done in a wonderful mountain environment.

Lisa is a generous, wise, profound teacher able to show the incredible resources of this model during the sessions and able to clarify everything in the context of a very coherent theoretical model. She shows all of her great and deep experience in the field with balance and honesty.

I highly recommend this intensive to every professional who really wants to explore and manage the painful roots of traumatic experiences and build a personal balance and awareness of one’s own healing journey.

-Paola Bertulli, Italy

I always knew I was an anxious person and that I had a lot of insecurity. As a psychotherapist, I mastered a lot of different coping mechanisms to deal with my fear, but the fear was always with me. Prior to the CRM treatment, I accepted the belief that I cannot do anything about my anxiety– all I could do was manage the symptoms by distracting myself from these negative emotions.

Through the CRM treatment, I am able to realize how much I was driven by fear every single day. Understanding and clearing the root of generational trauma helped me to live my life without irrational fears and worries. My daily decisions come from my curiosity and desire instead of being afraid. The treatment did not only make my life easier, but also made me reconnect with the gift and strengths from my lineage. I feel more aligned with my authentic self physically, emotionally and spiritually. I have a new understanding and appreciation of myself and my life.

-YZ, New Jersey, USA

I have been in clinical practice for almost 45 years, utilizing a broad array of approaches. I met Lisa Schwarz 25 years ago, and my psychotherapy practice has evolved in a myriad of ways under her tutelage. Through her ongoing dedicated exploration and scholarship, CRM takes all that I’ve known and opened me up to embracing a highly integrated, powerful model. Her emphasis is on robust resourcing as an absolute must to do this deep, multidimensional work in a manner that is both safe and, ultimately, life changing.

Two personal CRM experiences come to mind:

One session, several years ago, focused on my severe shoulder pain. To my surprise, I learned that it was connected to my paternal lineage. Lisa guided me to explore whatever arose, never imposing her own interpretations. And, shortly after the conclusion of my session, the pain was completely gone. To my surprise and delight!

A target of a more recent session was a habit that has been with me for most of my life. I have tried many approaches over the years to stop. With this session, my maternal and spiritual lineages became the focus. After being fully resourced, via a multidimensional matrix, I could be with the trauma, the agony, the choice points that resulted in this generational habit. The habit has not resumed.

As a clinician, I am gratified to be able to offer patients a model that engages their full and multidimensional selves and lineages, resulting in healings that often felt out of reach. My confidence in CRM is further exemplified by my recently purging my office of the books and notes of the many approaches I’ve studied. With CRM, I have what I need for both my ongoing personal growth and my professional work.

-Karen Clark-Shock, Pennsylvania, USA

It is difficult to understand how I ended up in my first CRM training in Beulah, Colorado, all the way from Israel. I heard about CRM, and I knew I had to come and learn and experience from you.

An intuition, and a guiding energy toward the light of healing, for myself, my family, my clients. and beyond.

During that first training, I experienced 2 transgenerational CRM sessions. Leaving my second CRM training, working, and acquiring tools to access Core Self (a must for all), I measure how much I have changed. I do not feel the weight from a constant underlying anxiety, expressed through jittery movements, and a heavy sense of pending danger. The familiar unsatisfied neediness is gone, together with food cravings and sudden shopping urges. The ocean of uncried tears has morphed and transformed into a sense of worth, making pleasure and flow acceptable. Life can be light and easy, no need for a constant and sustained effort every step of the way.

What happened in those 2 transgenerational sessions last November? I was able to access deep unresolved pain from my father and my mother’s lineages, engines of despair and grief in our family system. This time, the tears could be cried completely, as the roots of the pain were encountered thanks to the multilayered resourcing system of CRM. I met my ancestor’s pain, acknowledged it and cried it, however seemingly unbearable it had seemed. I felt a sense of love and dignity as the state of victimhood was unveiled and respectfully processed. It was not only painful: there was humour, intelligence, revelations, humanity, and healing in the process.

This CRM training was a WOAHH!!!! Lisa shares an amazing amount of knowledge, theoretical and practical, in those few days. CRM is a discovery, deep, innovative, and powerful. I look forward to deepening my practice of CRM and introducing it with my clients, especially complex PTSD military veterans. Thank you, Lisa, for bringing CRM to the world and providing your training with authenticity

-Dr. CAthy Lawi, Executive Director, ITP, Israel

I’ve been in therapy for over 20 years. I’ve worked with every modality under the sun! Regardless, I still struggled with sense of, ‘ I’m wrong’ and ‘I shouldn’t be here’. As I started to dig deeper into my ancestral and generational lineage , through the CRM processes, I began to discover that I’d been the perpetrator of terrible crimes against humanity.

These were memories that I never knew I had. I re-experienced what I’d done , to who and why. This wasn’t some heady intellectual knowing, but something that was deep , somatic and visceral. As I re experienced this in the present time, being held in the somatic resources of the protocols of CRM, I was able to re visit of the deep buried feelings of chronic shame. The shame that had been manifesting throughout my life and manifesting as ‘I’m wrong’ and ‘I don’t deserve to be here’.

CRM provided the necessary deep somatic scaffolding, that allowed these memories to surface up and eventually be discharged. I emerged feeling like ‘I’d got my life back’. It was quite extraordinary. I’d felt as if I’d been reborn and could finally live my life fully and not be dragged down by this deep shame that had been with me my whole life. I am deeply grateful for CRM for giving my life back!!!!!’

-Aaron Swartz, UK

I recently attended a weeklong CRM Generational Intensive training with Lisa Schwarz in Cape May Point, NJ. Along with 7 others, I stayed in a classic Victorian home that was also the venue for the training. Delicious breakfasts and lunches, prepared on-site by Lisa’s business partner, were included. With all of our basic needs met and the support of nature, expansive beaches and beautiful ocean nearby, we were able to put all of our attention on the training.

I’m not sure that there are words that adequately describe Lisa’s teaching abilities, clinical skills, and empathic holding of the space during the 10-hour days. Amazing, innovative, tenacious, brilliant…and also, courageous, compassionate, and generous. Lisa does not rest on the strength of the Basic CRM protocol, or the protocols that have followed; she continually remains open to the evolution of CRM protocols based on the needs of her clients and the observations that CRM practitioners share with her. Lisa is meeting the pain and trauma in the world today, and that we all hold, head on. She fearlessly faces the trauma, and encourages those who train with her, and clients everywhere, to do the same with dignity.

CRM is a model that allows us to do just that, to face the pain, to process it, and to fully step into our true selves so that we may all live good and joyful lives. For any clinician who is looking to deepen their skills, to experience transformation for themselves and for their clients, CRM is for you.

-Kit Dowling, MEd MS LCPC, Maryland, USA

Have you ever found yourself looping back again and again to an experience from your past that you wish you could do differently? Or feel stuck in the past with a bully who keeps telling you how you don’t measure up and probably never will? Have you ever wished, at the very least, you could go back and tell that person how they made you feel so you could finally be liberated from the emotional grip they have on you? What I shared above are some of my exact experiences. The constant looping back to the past with no hope of finding relief or resolution. This looping and the unhealthy patterns of behavior that developed because of it really took a toll on my life. But that was BEFORE I found CRM. I have been a client using the CRM therapy model for almost 4 years. Through CRM I found a way to safely and courageously go back to many of those root experiences that were the foundation of so much of my adult suffering and face them, heal the pain, and free myself on a soul level. Spirituality is very important to me. Being able to express my spirituality means everything to me but I felt poo-pooed by so many other therapies and their therapists in the past. It was as if they felt like my spirituality was just my hobby when, in reality, it’s what carried me forward and allowed me to survive until I found CRM.

In CRM, I finally felt seen and heard. It was like my CRM therapist opened the gate to the meadow and I was able to run and jump any way I wanted to. I was even allowed to splash in or roll around in the proverbial mud puddle if I wanted and it was all ok! Bringing a spirit animal, my adult self or some other powerful spirit being as protector into a past traumatic experience made all the difference when it came to integrating the broken parts of myself and to finally heal. I was able to see where the unhealthy patterns started in the past but also how I was perpetuating them in the present.

With the support of my CRM therapist and of my spirit guides, and the use of the CRM method, I have finally been able to start taking responsibility for my internal growth, leave the past behind and move forward. My life has changed so much for the better. I am a more confident human being, less fixated on the past, and more able to have compassion and forgiveness for myself and others. I still have work to do to become whole but at least I have a process that works.

From the perspective of a client, I highly recommend CRM. It is a unique process in the world of therapy. I will be eternally grateful to Lisa for taking the time and making the effort to bring CRM into the world.

-Cindy Hammett, New York, USA

I am a Social Worker currently in a clinical counseling role. My experience of this training was that it truly felt like I was coming ‘home’. This model brings together psychology, neuroscience, heart intelligence, breathwork, soul, ancient wisdoms and deep, deep respect for the inner workings of our human beingness. Through CRM we support and are supported to create and build inner resources that ‘hold’ us as we reach down into the recesses of ourselves to feel fully the feelings that we truly felt at the time of trauma, when we felt them but afterward, locked away for many different reasons. Resourced, we can be with and move through the feelings and the terror so that the trauma moves through us and is released.

CRM invites us through experience, to remember the strength and trust that we all have within ourselves. Through CRM, we find our core selves again. This core self that we had given away, closed off or hidden from, after experiencing attachment that was vacant, closed off, cold or unavailable to us as children and trauma. CRM brings healing to this lost attachment and trauma. We spend so long, so much of our lives in fear, CRM invites a re-claiming of our heart and soul through coming home to our bodies so that we are finally whole once again. We learn to live then, through love, not fear.

The most sacred and magical part of this is that in experiencing CRM for ourselves we ready ourselves, for providing this to our clients in therapy. We are thus not ‘above’ our clients, nor are we ‘experts’ but rather we stand beside them as they also move through trauma and pain to reclaim their lives and live more empowered, transformed, and free. Lisa leads the training with unending energy, strength and depth of genuineness and realness rarely found in trainings. Lisa has extensive knowledge inside and out of this model and of people and how they are wounded and how they can heal. My recommendation – if this calls to you – DO the training, you will be forever changed.

-Catherine Evans, Australia

As a therapist with over 20 years of experience, I have found that my work in the past few years has helped clients access a deeper level of healing in their nervous systems, since I was trained in Comprehensive Resource Model, (CRM). This is a bottom up brain/body approach to therapy. As a part of my learning experience, I have also chosen to work on my own childhood developmental trauma as a client experiencing CRM.

CRM therapy resources the nervous system in many ways; which then supports the client as they process their trauma. This approach to therapy also allows clients the ability to access generational and gestational trauma.

I have noticed significant shifts in my own as well as in my client’s nervous systems. Events that used to be triggering no longer have the same energy. As a result, the nervous system does not go into overwhelm when there are triggers or in times of high stress. One is able to stay present, calm and resourced in situations that once caused distress.

-Shelly Lund, LCSW, Wisconsin, USA

I have been attending CRM therapy for nearly 2 years, which has been a life changing experience for me. After suffering from depression for over 20 years I can honestly say this has been the therapy that has changed me and my thoughts.

I have tried many other therapies in the past and as much as they have helped I feel that the results fade in time, I was also able to avoid dealing with difficult feelings during sessions- this has not been the case with CRM. This therapy gives you the resources to be able to take the experiences and traumas of your past and literally clear them, so the deep routed triggers are just no longer there. I also find these resources extremely powerful as I can use them to support me through day-to-day life. The tools I have gained from CRM such as a power animal, eye position, sacred place (which may sound a little bizarre) are all techniques that I can use when I need them.

Thanks to my wonderful CRM therapist I can now live much more in the present and enjoy life. I am so much calmer, lighter, happier, and confident within myself. I definitely have a much healthier relationship with myself and others. I can now trust myself and my judgments, I’m no longer constantly seeking approval.

I would highly recommend CRM to anyone who feels they need help dealing with damaging thought patterns (some of which you will be unaware have such a massive impact) and would say that even when it gets tough, and it does, keep going as the results are so worth it.

It’s wonderful to be finally out of the dark!

-Linzi Muir, Scotland

In order to understand how far I have come; you must first know where I’ve been. Depression has been a constant companion for my entire adult life. My younger sister killed herself when I was in my late teens, and about the same time I was robbed at gunpoint where I worked. For about a decade after, I lost myself in drugs and completely stopped living. That time was like a strange nightmare, and after coming out of it, I kind of wished that I hadn’t.

I wanted to get better and tried many different therapies, drugs, and therapists. Some of it helped, and I somewhat managed to get my life together. But I still felt this darkness and misery, deep in my bones. Every day I felt this low-level anxiety; a gnawing feeling in my gut; a sense of impending doom. Of course, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop; for the next disaster.

Then I happened by accident to come across CRM, the luckiest day of my life! It is almost impossible to describe, but it has changed everything for me. I don’t have flashbacks anymore. I never get triggered. But that’s not the best part. The best part is that I am emotionally liberated from the chains of past memories. Of course, I still feel sad when I think of my sister, but it’s a healthy grief which is absent of survivor’s guilt. Unburdened, my light can now shine again, and I feel so much child-like curiosity, awe, and gratitude just for existing. I was so cynical, empty, and weary of everything.

Now I am ALIVE! It hasn’t just transformed me; it has healed my family. Everyone needs to know about this; life doesn’t have to suck forever! CRM doesn’t just heal past wounds; it helps you to find your inner strength and purpose. To be all that you can be in this life. To move forward with courage, resilience, and true joy. If you are lost, get found. Get CRM.

-J., Australia

There aren’t words I can find to express to you what you did for me at the Generational Intensive May 2021. I know you can feel me differently, but I don’t think you or anyone else can understand the hell I have lived in inside my head prior to my healing session last week. And it’s not even a little bit hard inside my head now. I feel so free to be in the world, in my relationships without needing permission, with an ease I have never before known. An example of the profound change: My paternal grandpa died this week (I found out yesterday). My husband says to me that he doesn’t understand how come I didn’t reach out for a relationship with my grandpa and my dad, since I really wanted the connection. All I’ve ever wanted was connection.

Well, here’s why: I lived inside this belief and fear of rejection, of not being wanted and of not being welcome. I’ve had times when I was in connection with both of them. Then time would go by, I would feel guilty for the time of no contact and become frozen in fear to reach out. Fear they would not want me, would reject me, would hate me or be mad at me. There was no logical evidence for this….it came from deep inside me. This paralyzing fear. This paralyzation caused me to lose my 2 horses I loved 14/15 years ago, caused me to not be able to return to jobs (also giving up wages owed), loss of friendships (because I disappeared and didn’t know how to come back). Here I thank you for staying engaged with me all these years, because I have played out this same fear scenario with you (it wasn’t logic, I knew you loved me, but I couldn’t bridge the frozen paralysis). When in a relationship, the awkwardness I experienced was so overwhelming inside my head….it was always there when I was in the presence of another. Even for the mundane conversations, I was in so much fear and judgement towards myself, analyzing every word I spoke and every move I made, down to movements as simple as crossing my legs or arms.

God Lisa, there’s so much more I can describe. It was so hard in my head in every area except for being in the role of a therapist…I could be confident there, but not in the presence of someone I was on an equal playing field with…if they asked a question, I lost connection with anything I knew, my brain went straight offline. And now it’s just all gone, I literally have no more frozen paralysis. My brain is not frozen…. I have words, I can speak without being irrationally scared. I’m not fighting myself, not second guessing. I can laugh and just be with people. I’m this weekend with my two most triggering relationships, my husband and stepdaughter….AND it’s going so well. I can be within their energy dynamics in a sweet easy way. This intensive has brought me the healing I have been trying to get to since I was 23 years old, and I’m now 57 years old. This has happened for me because I showed up, you led my way and the women in the group supported the energy needed for me to get to the root of the cut off from my life; generationally in particular. Thank you for being faithful to your calling as a healer. You truly are the instrument God used to help me get better so I can be in this life with ease I only imagined.

-Kim, Swanson California, USA

I have no words. Astounding!!! Really!!! What I and my clients needed when I started out as a psychologist over 40 years ago. Note: I’ve had a huge array of somatic psychology and trauma training. CRM is stout enough to take on trauma character disorder and DID – precious, sensitive, and light enough to catalyze psychospiritual integration.

Lisa set up an energized, loving yet ruthlessly honest and real context that allowed consistently deep personal processing for participants as well as the clinical teaching of the model for use with others. Dr. Frank Corrigan’s detailed neurobiology of CRM and trauma is woven into the teaching relevant to how internal resources used clinically are unlocking subcortical holding – to melt that diaphanous, yet cruel and seemingly inviolable layer of trauma crap which keeps us from our source. PRICELESS!

-Terry Rhoades, PhD, Pennsylvania, USA

The unanticipated bonus of online (especially if in the AU time zone) is reduced stress staying at home with family, as well as all the additional benefits of LIVE online training. It is almost as if you are in the room speaking directly to me. You, Elisa & Heather work seamlessly together & it is beneficial to experience different people doing CRM. There is clarity, depth, generosity of spirit & passion in your teaching. The chat generates lots of questions & you are amazing in addressing all of them in detail, plus it adds to everyone’s learning & provides interaction without interrupting the flow. The manual is incredibly useful.

I’ve done Basic & 2 additional trainings so far and am so glad I did. Your compassionate, direct, wise, ‘sleeves-rolled-up-let’s-get-to-work’ approach is so refreshing & helpful. Hearing about your complex cases demonstrates the importance of following the protocol, trusting the process & the importance of flexibility guided by clinical judgement. Your generosity in providing 2 follow up free study groups after Basic were so valuable. I am inspired & excited about the personal & professional possibilities that CRM offers! Thank you so much!!

-Janet Roth, Australia

The Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM) is a psychotherapeutic modality recently developed by Lisa Schwarz, intended particularly for the treatment of Complex PTSD, but also likely to be helpful when working with clients diagnosed with PTSD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. My original psychodynamic training had started to seem deficient when revisiting traumatic memories with certain clients. I felt the need for a means of somehow creating a “good object” with the client, rather than assuming the prior existence of one, or that the client could obtain it through the transference. For clients subject to early chronic abuse or neglect, clearly, this is often not easily possible.

The approach in CRM is to equip the client with a set of resources that enables them to step back into the unbearable emotions and sensations that originally triggered their defences. With resources in place that were formerly absent, there is now a possibility of the unbearable feelings being re-experienced as both bearable and survivable, and for habitual defensive responses to change. The resources used in CRM include therapeutic attunement; breathing patterns for inducing various states of consciousness; “sacred place” and “power animal” visualisations; and “somatic grids”, a means of anchoring the client’s awareness in the felt sensations of the body; geometry and toning. These are borrowed from other therapies and shamanic healing, but unique to CRM is the clever and simple way they are nested inside one another, so that all are available at once. Unlike other trauma therapies (such as EMDR), which observe a “stabilisation phase” of treatment, the client in CRM can be enabled to step back willingly into previously unbearable feelings during the very first session. And because almost all of the CRM resources, once learned, can be taken away and used by the client outside sessions, emotional independence and self-reliance are encouraged.

I completed the CRM Basic Training at Beacon House, Cuckfield, at the end of June. Rather than a therapy training, it felt like a spiritual retreat. Although psychiatrist Frank Corrigan has equipped CRM with a solid neurobiological underpinning, in practice it is a transpersonal modality relying on therapeutic intuition and an understanding of archetypal material. It allows working at depth with emotions and bodily sensations with no obligation on the client to narrativize their history. This proved personally helpful: issues I had failed to make sense of during years of analytic therapy suddenly yielded breakthrough insights, as CRM allowed me simply to step right up close to them, and just feel.

-Duncan Barford, UK

I had been in standard “therapy” for decades when I realized that I was paying someone to hear myself talk about the issues that I “thought” were part of my story and were what was driving my depression and severe PTSD. It’s not to say that these modalities of therapy were all bad because at the end of the day, they prevented me from taking my own life…but I never felt whole. I went through the motions not only of life, but therapy as well.

When I found Lisa through a Newsweek article on a new style treatment for PTSD I was at the point of planning the end of my life because the thought of going and telling my story every week for 50 min sounded horrid. I read the article and was skeptical because I am a nurse, I think in the science process and need evidence to back up a theory for how things work. These things were in the article but what intrigued me is that it was different and it was an intensive, not 50 minutes on a couch every week repeating my same story over and over again. I knew this was my last chance and that I had to at least try. I went to Colorado a month later, the biggest skeptic ever. When I walked into Lisa’s space to start my intensive, I initially was thinking that it would never work, that calling in MY spirits, MY animals, MY power was really valid and going to work.

As I let myself follow the path that Lisa was bringing me on, my entire mind opened up. My soul started to shift. These “drawers” I had inside of my being began to open and one by one I looked inside of them and worked through whatever was in there…and I did this with my animals, my people and my power that was inside of me all along. The brain is fascinating to me, and how as a child, I took and put all these different trauma’s and put them systematically into compartments in my brain just made me want to go deeper because for the first time it felt safe. The ONLY reason why it felt safe, was having the safety of my spirit world around me. They were my power when I felt powerless and had been lying quiet in my brain, protecting me from facing the truth of my life and the truth of my story. Like a lioness protects their cub, my own brain did this for me. The ONLY way I was able to even remotely start to access the torment of the truth of my trauma was to let these forces know that I was there to work with them to set us ALL free.

This process saved my life. It takes time, it takes dedication and practice but I truly feel that I wouldn’t be on this earth today if it wasn’t for this entire process.

-Sarah Linton, Colorado, USA

I hope you don’t mind me emailing you but I just want you to know how much CRM has changed my life.

I live on a small Island in Scotland and have had Mental Health issues for many years. I was diagnosed with everything you could imagine as no one could pinpoint what was wrong as I displayed many different ‘illnesses’ at the one time.

One time when I was in a psychiatric unit, I met a man who would come to change my life…Gordon Barclay, a man I believe you know well (he speaks highly of you!).

Within two meetings he diagnosed me with Complex PTSD and I felt my life and behaviours made sense, especially dissociating. I finally understood what I was doing and why.

Anyway, we started CRM and it has completely changed my life. I have a resource figure who was my imaginary friend as a youngster who I truly believe looks out for me. I have now got 5 different ‘Ailsa’s’ tucked away inside me and they have been set free from their traumas.

I can’t tell you how much Gordon has saved me. I honestly don’t think I would still be here if |I hadn’t have met him, literally a lifesaver all because of you and CRM. He is so tuned into it that I believe in everything CRM stands for and can personally testify how much it has changed me. I have even wrote about some of my experiences within my sessions for him to give other’s hope. We still meet every 2 weeks, and he has now become a huge part of my life.

I really hope are ok with me contacting you but I just wanted you to know Gordon and yourself have shone a bright light into my own being and the trauma’s that have haunted me and made me very ill on occasions are something I can come to terms with…the memory is still there but it doesn’t hurt anymore and for that I am truly grateful for and will always thank you for creating such a beautiful healer in CRM. ‘Be with, not in’ is a mantra I use frequently, and it sums up your work perfectly.

-Ailsa Cassidy, Scotland

My experience with CRM has given me the opportunity to heal emotional developmental trauma that body psychotherapy had not even reached for many years of personal therapy. Working with Core Self and having the ability to go deeply into early womb and perinatal trauma, but also trauma that laid in a deeper psychic realm than my childhood life, I have been feeling better and better, each day, flourishing in my professional life and my personal wellbeing. A pain I had in my left shoulder since I was a teenager, has gone, since I healed a generational trauma that I was carrying there, and I also felt a great relief from the burden of that attachment I had been carrying for so long time.

As a therapist, working with my clients’ generational and in-the-womb traumas has revealed to me how an amazing and safe tool CRM is. My concern has always been that I do not harm my clients by doing deep trauma work, and I can confirm that it is absolutely safe to do real deep trauma healing with CRM without re-traumatising my clients.

I feel blessed that I have found CRM. After my experience on a personal and professional level I would describe it as a neurobiologically-informed spiritual psychotherapy, ahead from its time, pioneering in a field that in a few years from now will be a presupposed fact. I have always found psychotherapy to be missing the deeper animal but also the higher spiritual aspect of the human being, and I have – with great joy- found that CRM contains and works with both, as well as the cognitive aspects of the brain.

-Anastasi Nikolista, Greece

Having travelled 5 hours on a bus ….. and then 4756 air miles from London Heathrow to Pueblo Airport (on 3 flights) …… and then an hour in a car to my ‘CRM Intensive’ destination at Beulah with Lisa Schwarz – where the overall journey took more than 24 hours ‘door to door’… …. and then the RETURN JOURNEY (with the plane from Chicago to Heathrow cancelled – extending the journey time)…………… and the whole experience costing a LOT of money……… Was it worth it?????

ABSOLUTELY ……

From the moment I arrived and met my fellow ‘Intensive’ therapist colleagues for the first time, until the final ending of our ‘healing circle’ …… every moment was special and alive for me …. BEING in the moment.

Lisa is a ‘special’ therapist – the combination of her ‘Being’ and the CRM process enabled me to heal a deep attachment disruption with my mother.

The opportunity to BE with seven therapists, from all areas of the United States – that I had never met before, was also a special experience that challenged me and helped facilitate more personal growth for me – an experience I will never forget.

-Phil Atkins, Wales, UK

I came to the U.S at nineteen years old looking to become more free and feel more deeply. After a while I realized psychotherapy would play a part. Over the years I benefited from Core Energetics, Internal Family Systems work, EMDR, Hakomi, and Sensory Experiencing. They all played some part as a foundation for arriving at work with a Comprehensive Resource Method therapist, Jim Allison.

The resourcing of CRM seems to have greased the slide into my deepest feelings and to seeing and experiencing “the truth of my life”. I have always resonated with the words of Jesus, “Know the Truth and the Truth will set you free”. CRM has made this happen in my life including my becoming more autonomous – not dependent on the method or therapist which has been one of many blessings of the method.

-Gavin Hammett, New York, USA