How was Reverse Therapy discovered?

Dr John Eaton has been researching Bodymind healing and the physical basis of symptom-states since 1996. He was strongly influenced by the work of Dr Ernest Rossi, an American therapist who advocates that the Body 'remembers' difficult situations and uses symptoms to communicate different ways of dealing with them. Dr Rossi also demonstrated the key role of the Hypothalamus in creating symptom-states in his book 'The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing'. It was this that led to the discovery that the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia are caused by the Hypothalamus/Pituitary (initially) overworking the Adrenal Glands. It is also for this reason that Reverse Therapists refer to these conditions as ‘HPA Disorder’.

Dr Eaton was one of the first ever UK therapists to study the new psychology of Emotional Intelligence and co-wrote the book ‘Communicating with Emotional Intelligence’ in 1999. It was these discoveries that led to the Reverse Therapy concept of Bodymind intelligence. Dr Candace Pert, an American Neurologist, had already showed how Bodymind works through the brain, the endocrine system and the nervous system, in contrast to Headmind, or intellectual intelligence, which is based on conditioning and works through thoughts.

John also realized that certain types of illness develop when Headmind is incongruent with Bodymind. Bodymind uses emotions (and certain types of symptoms) to warn, guide and protect the individual. When Headmind ignores or over-rides these warning signals a state of dis-ease develops in which the person is at increasing risk of harm from the environment. If the state of dis-ease is left unattended too long symptoms can become chronic.

John experimented with a variety of ways in which to work with Bodymind in practice. In the early days he used hypnosis, before he realized this was both unnecessary and of little use to clients – who need simpler and more direct methods in order to learn how to understand Bodymind. In this he was influenced by the work of Dr Eugene Gendlin and his Focusing technique before he developed the technique of symptom-messaging.

By 2002, he was actively teaching other therapists and students how to use these principles and techniques. Some of these students went off to put his ideas into practice under other names, while others are now part of Reverse Therapy UK.