No go hike

What a disappointment it was yesterday when early in the morning the torrential rain put a stop to our plans for a half-day hike in the grassy foliage of the BTNR. But it was a blessing in disguise. The time was spent on very productive data collection at various church HQs and a short trip to Fort Canning Park while visiting the National Archives made amends for my missed hike.

It was also a day for experiential learning about this therapy method called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing). It's a technique that is used to enable individuals who have faced traumatic events (either big or small traumas) to reprocess that particular image of trauma that got stuck in their brain and has proceeded to cause them much anxiety and stress. The technique involves bilateral eye movements, hand-tapping movements or ear-clicking movements while the individual focuses on the image of trauma. While a little suspicious of how this hypnotism-sounding therapeutic technique works to "desensitize" one from the traumatic event, my curiosity got the better of me. After trying it out, I actually find it hard to remember that particular image of trauma no matter how hard I try to grasp it while all those bilateral movements were going on. The bodily sensations that were evoked during memories of this trauma that were invoked earlier were also gone. However, the installation process of the new belief that I wanted to instill was not so successful due to other similar memories that blocked me from believing it. More on EMDR can be found at www.emdr.com. While I feel that this method may be useful for those who have faced traumatic events and would like to stop the after-effects of this events from haunting you, I feel that it may be more useful for one to face those events head-on, and to be able to draw strength from God to handle the emotions that arise from those events. Now, I feel that a part of my memory is gone. A part of me is missing because I cannot recall that memory, and I cannot feel when I try to recall the incident anymore.

Yesterday evening, I also received rather solemn news that someone I know is ill. It made me think of how we have so little time on earth and yet we go about our daily lives doing the things that should matter least, forgetting that we are on earth for a reason. "We are the reason that He gave us life, we are the reason that He suffered and died..." Perhaps we should start living the life that we are meant to lead and make good use of it.