Help me come up with a ceremony.

[1stimestar]

It's for my son. He is terribly afraid of bees. He's not allergic. He's only been stung once. Now that we live out of town especially, we have a lot of bees. Not wasps, not yellow jackets, just happy little buzzing bees looking for flowers. I think if I could come up with a good visual/relaxation script for him, it would help. We have done some light hypnotherepy with things before. We always smudge a new house when we have moved, etc. So he is used to this idea. He's 11. I am thinking of going through his feelings when he sees a bee, increased heartrate, adrenaline released into his bloodstream, increased breath rate, and giving him a self talk dialog to reassure himself that it is ok to feel these things, but that he is safe, that the bee doesn't want to hurt him and is only going about his normal daily job. I would like ideas though. I think making it more ceremonial will help make it more successfull.

[dharmama]

i don't really have anything to add (that i can think of off the top of my head at least) but i think this is such a GREAT idea!!!!

[1stimestar]

Well I must say that it worked even better then I thought! We started off having him shower then I washed his hair and did a vinagar rinse. I had gotten some bakoor inscence for Christmas from one of my henna friends so broke that out. I only had one charcoal burner so was saving it for a special occassion. So we smudged our house, ourselves, our outhouse and our yard. Then drew pictures of him outside with bees, him with a smile on his face, happy and feeling safe. His 8 year old sister participated as well. Then we put the pictures up in the living room. We had some nice hot Jasmine tea, sweetened with the honey from the bees while we put on some nice tranquil music. We then read about bees and how they are really not interested in stinging, only protecting their territory and collecting pollen and honey and how important they were to our garden and flowers. We talked about his physical response when he saw or heard a bee or thought there were bees around. Discusses that his physical response didn't have to create the same mental reaction. Recognize physical responses for what they were, and that it was ok to feel them, increased heart and breath rate, adrenaline dump, etc. Then we did some hypnotherepy focusing on how safe he could now feel around bees, him having his own power and feeling strength, not letting his physical response create the same mental response, etc. Then we did a kanji in henna, one for safety, one for strength, then we put a stinger in between both of them which really looked like part of the kanji and fit right in.

The first day after, he came inside telling me he thought he heard a bee. I asked him how he felt about it. He said he didn't know. Then I pointed out that it was a LOT better then the absolute panic he HAD had. Later that night he came in and told me he saw a bee and wasn't even scared! And he was EXCITED about it. And I was excited about it and showed him how excited I was about it and how happy I was for him. This is a kid who had gotten to the point he wasn't even able to go out to the outhouse and had cried until I brought the porta potty back in (for winter use only normally). So it worked well. I think the build up to it was also a factor in its success.

[1jooj]

I know this is late, but what about thoughts of thankfulness toward those bees? They are out pollinating our food crops, after all. They are amazing little animals helping to feed us.

[CultivatingMyRoots]

I was just absolutely blown away by the brilliance of your plan.


Thank you for enriching my parenting and spiritual philosophies.


Wow.

{off to make up a meditational ceremony for her own issues....