Overview:
Stevan originally came to me for help with physical pain, but our focus very quickly widened to include coaching; our work together has evolved and shifted wonderfully over the years. As I write this, IÕm surprised and delighted by the range of different areas in which IÕve been able to offer support and teaching. Stevan is one of those wonderful clients who constantly kept me at my best; he is so aggressively working to improve himself and to fully, completely live his life that I usually have to scramble to catch up to him before we can start working.
I have been a client of Doug
Jones since 1997. Doug has always been there for me! He always
provides incredible care and holds deep compassion for my well-being. I
especially appreciate his ability to share meaningful stories and belly chuckle
jokes! Laughter is a must in any healing practice!
Over the last 12 years, I have
pursued a competitive cycling career, an aggressive passion for skiing,
and spiritual work with traditional indigenous healers. Doug has been a
grounding point for these and many of my life experiences including the ups and
downs of a professional working career. He has helped me mend broken
bones and center my energetic system through transformational periods. Doug
offers an excellent balance of healing and integration with practical knowledge
and information. He does much more than just ÒfixÓ what needs fixing but
teaches foundations of self healing. I canÕt thank Doug enough for his
support! He has been integral to maintaining my energetic, physical, emotional,
intellectual, and spiritual health.
The Details:
Physical Pain and
Suffering
IÕve helped Stevan through
a number of severe physical challenges including the surgical repair of a torn
ACL and a severe case of West Nile Virus.
With his knee surgery, I taught him how to clear his energetic field
from the trauma associated with a hospital stay and a lot of pain. He needed to learn to do this on his
own because the trauma had many layers and the pain kept reloading throughout
his rehab. We also worked together
on a variety of different ways to help normalize the energy flow through his
leg.
The West Nile Virus
basically flattened Stevan; he was not a pretty sight! In the short term we worked on
connecting him with other energy sources such as breathwork and the energies of
Nature. We used all kinds of
tricks to keep him as functional as possible while we worked to slowly rebuild
his energy system. The long-term
challenge had to do with his very compromised capacity for short-term
memory. This included a
brainstorming session on practical memory aids. We also came up with a daily discipline to practice the
skill of remembering; the goal here was to slowly strengthen and rebuild this
capacity.
The process
that I went through was remarkably effective because Doug transitioned me
through various stages of the work very skillfully. In each session Doug started off by having some talk time to
get to know whatÕs going on; this let me get a sense of what I needed on a lot
of different levels. If we ended
up going into the table work, it became a place that I looked forward to
because there were things that happened experientially on the table that I
canÕt just do by talking or thinking or standing around. That hands-on experience was really
unique and extremely powerful.
Graduate school and his subsequent jobs have provided a great deal of opportunity for us to work together. Stevan is lifelong athlete with a massive amount of stamina; by nature he is a very hard worker. However, he ran smack into the hard reality that there was far more work to be done than one person could possibly hope to do. To say that exhaustion was a major problem would be to grossly understate the case. We came up with a number of creative ways to connect him with his inherent strengths and resources. One favorite was to utilize StevanÕs warrior energy to power his studies and his work. For example, we harnessed memories of lacrosse, cycling, and skiing and used the energy of those memories to replenish his energetic reserves. Also, we came up with multiple strategies for dealing with dysfunctional professors and co-workers. This included work on how to generate better energetic boundaries and defenses. Steven has developed a great deal of sophistication in how he manages his responses in these situations.
Doug created a space where I felt comfortable and willing to go to places I didnÕt expect to go or even want to go. Or if there was a place where I wanted to go but was afraid, Doug helped create a space where it was easy to go there and do whatever work was necessary. He also had the technical and experiential background in anatomy, physiology, meditation, psychotherapy, spirituality, martial arts, etc.; Doug helped me to be able to go to places physiologically or emotionally or spiritually that a practitioner who was a narrow specialist would never be able to access. In DougÕs approach, he was very integrated in how he looked at a human being and how he helped me in any transformation I needed. He was able to put on a number of different hats so I could go through the dimensions of being human; itÕs not linear, one-dimensional; itÕs multi-dimensional. Doug has the ability get a very narrow focus and he also has the ability to be a generalist and see whatÕs needed. He was able to keep the mood, even if itÕs something very deep and very personal, to keep it light so that I could get through some heavy stuff.
Finally, Stevan is a deeply spiritual man. He has worked extensively with indigenous elders in this country and in Central America. It is a delicate balancing act to be actively spiritual and to work with high finance. Together weÕve worked on cultivating the skills that allow Stevan to move into and out of his passion and his power. WeÕve spent a good amount of time working with which internal settings and which types of personal energy need to be used in a particular situation. For example, weÕve worked on energetic speed controls to help him speed up and to slow down. Also, weÕve worked on various perceptual skills so that he can orient to larger energetic forces and/or larger truths in any situation.
ThereÕs a place that Doug was
able to take me in healing that really transcends any categories. It helped me heal in ways that I never
knew I could experience. The best
way to describe it is going into the void. In that void I could let myself go with DougÕs care, protection,
and guidance. In that special
state or place I always got what I needed whether itÕs physical healing,
emotional healing, intellectual, spiritual, whatever it might be. In that void thereÕs a little switch
thatÕs hit sometimes and thereÕs a soul knowing; itÕs a kind of deep
understanding that helps me recharge and reconnect, rework, understand where I
am, whatÕs going on, and what I need.
ItÕs hard to put words to what happens in that place; IÕm not sure that
we ever can put words to what happens there. But, what I come back with is transformation, knowing, a new
depth of understanding of myself and my connection to the world around me and a
way to integrate what happened in that place back into this world to help me go
on.
All told, it has been a delight to work with Stevan over the years; weÕve both grown and learned together.
Doug is a pioneer in a new paradigm that is taking healing to new places. He is doing deep, powerful work at levels where people donÕt usually go; yet, at the same time heÕs doing it in a way that keeps people safe and well. Doug has helped me heal things that most other practitioners canÕt even comprehend how to begin to address. ItÕs really new healing territory thatÕs grounded in traditional healing. Doug works in a way thatÕs safe and goes with the peace of the person.