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Book Imagework Training Courses Dina Glouberman’s schedule worldwide Holidays and
Courses on the Greek Island of Skyros |
Life Choices, Life Changesforeword by Sue TownsendDear Reader,I have been wrong about many things in my life. I thought that my first passionate love would last a lifetime. I believed that childrearing finished when the children reached their eighteenth birthday. And I scorned the self-help section in book shops. If Dina Glouberman had not made me laugh, I probably would not have read Life Choices, Life Changes. We were sitting on a beach on Skyros, a Greek island where Dina and her ex-husband Yannis run a holistic holistic holiday centre and where I now teach writing every summer. We were having a getting-to-know-you conversation. Topics ranged from thighs, to God, to children, to jewellery to cabbages, and eventually to kings. Dina confessed to me that she felt incredibly hurt when Prince Charles announced his engagement to Diana. He should have chosen me! I've always wanted to be a princess! she said with a straight face. But you were already married, I said, trying to comfort her. Yeah, but Prince Charles didn't know that, she said, still hurt. She knew of course how absurd her reaction was and we laughed like idiots at this and other absurdities in our lives, and still do. Dina is that rare person, somebody who is genuinely and selflessly interested in others. She will take infinite pains to help people to accept who they are, while also urging them to make their reach outstretch their grasp. She has enabled many people, including me, to validate their lives. She has helped me to illuminate areas of my life that had previously been in shadow, to accept negative past experiences and to look forward to the future. In 1997 I suffered a serious breakdown in health. Prolapsed discs, sciatic pain and occasional double incontinence had reduced me to a bedridden wreck. Dina rang and asked me how I was. Fine I replied cheerily. She wasn't fooled. How do you see yourself? Give me an image, the first one that comes to mind probed Dina. I see myself as a scene of crime drawing, one of those thick black outlines on pavement. The black line represents pain, I said. Dina was so alarmed by this image of hopelessness and death that she gave me an immediate long distance imagework session. When I put down the telephone an hour and many images later, I felt hopeful of recovery and optimistic about my life. I've now recovered fully, and that telephone call was the turning point. In Life Choices, Life Changes Dina teaches us how to see alternative images of our actual past and of our possible futures. It is fundamentally a practical book; it endeavours to advise us curious, anxious readers on how to best change the habits or pattern that make us unhappy. The process is a kind of daydreaming with a purpose, and is very near the state a writer (this writer) needs to be in before writing can begin. And because Dina has the gifts of empathy, wisdom, intelligence and humour, this book is never less than a delight to read. All you need in order to benefit from this book is your imagination and a willingness to let go of the old fixed ideas and unhappiness that wrap around us like a protective cloak. It is brilliantly simple and simply brilliant - the creative person's self help bible. Sue Townsend,
Leicester |
Page updated December 2007