Fiona Shakeela Burns lives and works in Bristol, practising as a Natural Health Consultant. She is a qualified Medical herbalist as well as an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) practitioner, Matrix Reimprinting and PSYCH-K facilitator. (www.natureworx.com)
Twice a survivor (and thriver) of Stage IV cancer, it was her adult cancer experience which led her to discover what an extraordinarily important part healthy emotional expression plays in health and wellbeing.
As a child, Fiona had Leukaemia and Sarcoma which was thankfully resolved with the help of the Gerson Therapy. This is a radical detoxification and nutrification therapy which focuses on supporting the body to repair its own immune system and organs of elimination in order that self-healing can occur.
So inspired was she by her rapid return to health, that when she left school, she went to study herbal medicine full-time over 4 years, graduating as a Medical herbalist in 1992.
Fiona practised herbal medicine for many years, remaining very healthy and cancer-free until thirty one years after her first cancer. Aged 41, much to her horror, she developed cancer for the second time. This time it was cervix cancer which metastasised to the ovaries and the brain.
Fiona declined conventional medicine in favour of natural therapies. However Fiona had the strong feeling that Gerson therapy alone would not be enough to cure her this time. As her cancer had appeared shortly after the death of her mother Margaret, Fiona quickly made the connection between her grief and the cancer.
Her older sister Caroline had also died from cancer a few years earlier and the deaths of these two significant women in her life were overwhelming for her.
Fiona set about employing a whole range of therapies to assist her in her quest for emotional healing. They included: Shamanic healing, Point-holding, Colour-light therapy, Family constellation, Emotional Freedom Technique, Matrix Re-imprinting and PSYCH-K.
Fiona’s emotional healing journey began with a fortnight of ‘Point Holding’ with shaman Peter Aziz. She went on his ‘Point-holding’ course just a week after being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
Understandably she was experiencing a lot of fear having been told that unless she underwent surgery and chemotherapy she would be dead within the year! Peter told her to ‘welcome her fear’ every time it arose which seems so counterintuitive to those of us who have been told that to be strong is to be without fear. In fact the opposite is true – to be strong, we need to feel the fear rather than deny it is there.
Fiona also underwent some ‘Family Constellation’ sessions – a profoundly healing modality developed by Bert Hellinger. During one of these sessions, Fiona was able to experience the energy in her ovarian tumour and discovered it was holding emotions of grief and disappointment. She was also shown that her cancer was a way to unconsciously towards her beloved mum and sister. Fiona realised at this point that she could make the conscious choice to live and not die.
Fiona continued with her physical healing, juicing, doing coffee enemas and of course herbs (being a herbalist as she was).
A few months on from diagnosis, Fiona was not confident that her healing was going in the right direction as her tummy and lungs were full of fluid and she was feeling very tired. A scan showed that there seemed to be a worsening of her condition which led her to go and have 2 sessions of targeted chemotherapy in Germany (IPT). Thankfully the doctors in Germany tested the fluid in her tummy and discovered it was full of dead cancer cells and white blood cells. This showed her body was pulling out all of the stops to fight the cancer. However it was soon after this that the brain tumours were diagnosed.
To say it was a roller-coaster of a journey would not be an overstatement. The Royal Marsden gave Fiona a few months to live in February 2008. It was a very dark time as Fiona faced the fact that she may not survive.
Thankfully, shortly after this death sentence was delivered, Fiona came across the brilliant cellular biologist Bruce Lipton and whilst researching him, she also came across PSYCH-K and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and Matrix Reimprinting.
Her emotional journey was gaining momentum - like layers of an onion, her unresolved life experiences were released, allowing her to connect to her own authenticity and intuition like never before. PSYCH-K, EFT and Matrix Reimprinting allow a full upgrade of the psyche. EFT and Matrix provide what is needed to release traumas and the PK allows you to install new beliefs which will support you to live the kind of life you want to be living. In Fiona’s case – a disease-free, fulfilled one was what she was after.
Rob Williams was the creator of PSYCH-K and Gary Craig developed EFT. Karl Dawson is the creator of Matrix Reimprinting.
Now Fiona works to support others to create health for themselves - her particular passion being to support the healthy release and experience of emotions, followed by the installation of new life-affirming supportive beliefs which are formed by the client and installed in to the subconscious using kinesiology.
Since her recovery, Fiona has become qualified in all the therapies which helped her the most - EFT, Matrix reimprinting, PSYCH-K and Family constellation. She uses all of these alongside the herbs and low level laser, to help the people who seek her support. Fiona also set up an excellent Facebook Support group: Cancerucan.
Why do we have emotions?
It is so important to learn about healthy emotional expression as it really can make the difference between health and disease.
Firstly it is important to emphasise the fact that there is no such thing as a ‘negative’ or an unhealthy emotion. Emotions are only ever unhealthy when they are not moving. A healthy emotion therefore, is one that is moving. The word ‘emotion’ can be broken down to ‘e-motion’ (energy in motion). If we want to see healthy emotions, we can look to young children and babies. Within a few minutes they can go from angry to crying to smiling. This free-flow of natural emotional expression is impacted when we begin to get the signals from those around us that it is not socially acceptable or polite to express all of these emotions in a natural way.
We learn that in order to be loved, we need to stop expressing certain emotions freely. The ‘bottling up’ of anger is in fact the most dangerous. This is because the energy does not disappear simply because we do not want it anymore. It has to go somewhere. This unexpressed energy can become internal inflammation and lead to high blood pressure or cancer. For a full explanation of the way that emotional shocks lead to particular diseases, look up German New medicine which was developed by Dr Hamer, who was an oncologist who noticed that certain tumours appeared following the experience of certain traumas.
As well as fear, sadness and anger, we have variations on the primary emotions – such as guilt . Guilt is actually anger that we are not allowing ourselves to have, whilst shame is usually passed on from previous generations. Resentment and unforgiveness are perhaps the most toxic states we can be in. Holding on to resentment can be likened to continually swallowing poison whilst expecting the other person to die. If I have somebody with cancer in my treatment room, I am looking to help them to clear all resentment and unforgiveness.
Emotions can be seen as our internal weather. They allow us to process experience – for instance, we feel sad, we cry and in that release, we can once more connect with joy. It turns out that tears actually contain toxins, the removal of which helps us to feel better.
Emotions connect us to our deepest desires, boundaries and feelings. They are the physical expression of feelings and they are there to help us.
When we judge our emotions - usually as a result of somebody outside of us judging them first, this leads us to push them away. We choose not to feel and in that moment we cut off from our life force. ‘Aliveness’ is to feel – choosing not to feel is in fact a movement away from life.
We become stuck in our heads and out of connection with our bodies. Healing happens when we come back into feeling the sensations in the body – Feeling is healing!
My second cancer experience (metastasised cervix cancer which had gone to the ovaries and brain), was in my opinion a direct result of blocked sadness and anger. The cancer diagnosis made me sit up and take notice and I allowed my emotions to emerge. In this way, the cancer was my friend because it shone a light on the areas of my life that needed to be healed.
It takes a lot of energy to repress emotions and feelings on a day to day basis, leaving you very tired. It becomes habitual to do so– it is not conscious. To heal, we need to make these emotions and feelings conscious.
EFT and Matrix Reimprinting are quite simply the most effective and elegant ways I have found to reconnect with and make peace with past hurts and traumas.
Both of these use tapping – the Matrix Reimprinting allows you to connect and ‘tap on’ younger parts of us – enabling the resourcing that was not available at the time we experienced the trauma.
If we can allow natural emotional expression, we can stay connected to our health. It is not always easy to do this, but since my second cancer recovery, I made a decision to not repress any kind of emotion.
If I get a physical injury, I aim to give myself permission to make a lot of noise and I give myself time and space to properly feel what is happening in my body. I have been amazed at the way that injuries that seem pretty serious, have healed almost immediately. My cancer healing also happened very quickly – 10 months in all from start to finish.
Anxiety is a very common state for people these days and doctors prescribe pills for it. However if we look a bit closer at what anxiety is, it is actually stuck emotional expression – usually fear.
EFT and Matrix Reimprinting both work beautifully for anxiety and depression simply because these techniques (which involve tapping on the ends of the meridians used by acupuncturists) along with language, free up the stuck energy and we connect to the emotions and feelings which underlie the stuckness. PSYCH-K can then be implemented to install beliefs conducive to happiness and wellbeing.
PSYCH-K
"PSYCH-K™ is a user-friendly way to re-write the 'software' of your mind in order to change the 'printout' of your life."
Robert. M. Williams, M.A. Originator of PSYCH-K™ YOUR BELIEFS ESTABLISH THE LIMITS OF WHAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE!
As Henry Ford once said: "If you believe you can or if you believe you can't...you're right!" Your life is a reflection of your beliefs. These beliefs – usually subconscious – are the cumulative effect of life-long "programming." As a result of past negative programming, we sometimes think and behave in self-defeating ways.
PSYCH-K™ provides a user-friendly way to rewrite the "software" of your mind by changing beliefs that sabotage you into beliefs that support you...quickly and easily. When you rewrite the "software" of your mind, you change the "printout" of your life.
Changing subconscious beliefs that may be sabotaging well-intentioned actions is similar to reprogramming a personal computer. Using PSYCH-K™ techniques, a kind of "mental keyboard" to your own brain, you can increase "cross talk" between the two brain hemispheres, thereby achieving a more "whole-brained" state, which is ideal for changing subconscious beliefs. In addition, when right and left hemispheres of the brain are in simultaneous communication, the qualities and characteristics of both hemispheres are available to maximize your full response potential to life's challenges.
PSYCH-K™ helps you communicate directly with both the conscious and the subconscious minds, so you can change old beliefs that sabotage you into new positive ones that support you! This unique process is a blend of various tools for change, some contemporary and some ancient. Like many innovations in the world, PSYCH-K™ was the result of a "blinding flash of the obvious" generated by years of research and thousands of sessions with individuals and groups. PSYCH-K™ techniques are easy to learn and simple to apply.
EFT
EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique. EFT (also known as ‘Tapping), is a useful tool for supporting the subconscious mind. It uses the meridians – the same as used by acupuncturists to release blocked emotion and is a profound technique for clearing traumas. Traditional EFT is excellent for reversing phobias, addictions, managing all kinds of emotional states, including anger, anxiety, sadness and grief as well as supporting the healing of diseases – including serious illness.
Research has been carried out on using it for post traumatic stress disorder for which it has been found to be particularly effective.
It is also very useful for dealing with disease fears – including diagnostic stress.
Matrix Re-imprinting created by EFT Master Karl Dawson, takes EFT to a new level by supporting you to re-write memories as well as to bring deep and lasting resolution to difficult and painful memories.
In Matrix Reimprinting, we tap on the ‘Echo’ which is that part of us that is still holding the trauma. We aim to resource this part of ourselves so that resolution can be reached.
The ‘Echo’ is asked what it needs and what it would like to have said in this situation.
In this process we actually change memories. As Karl Dawson puts it “it is never too late to have a happy childhood”
Matrix Re-imprinting draws on the understanding gained from the sciences of Quantum physics, Epigenetics, HeartMath, Meta-medicine, Morphic Fields and NLP.
These therapies, whilst extremely transformative, depend on the willingness of the person to heal. This is true for all therapies.
It is also important to point out that some people heal in to death – not all people are going to recover, but helping people to die in peace is also a very important aspect of my work.
Go to: Stress management increases cancer survival