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Dianne Bischoff James - Life Transformation Coach, Speaker and Author

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I've invested countless hours trying to improve my "outside-self" by running on treadmills, holding yoga poses and straightening my hair. But the most valuable time I've ever spent in life was when I completely focused on my "inside-self" at The Hoffman Institute. The day I returned from Hoffman's week-long retreat, my life changed in profound and meaningful ways; my raw and battered psyche was repaired and midlife reboot began. 

  

The Hoffman Quadrinity Process is like a lifetime of psychoanalysis boiled down into one week. The program was developed in the 1960s and has become increasingly more popular in the U.S. and Europe thanks to the help of celebrity graduates such as Kenny Loggins, Bonnie Raitt, Bill Medley and Roseanne Cash. Here's a passage from The Real Brass Ring that explains my experience in more detail. 

 

"I can’t fully explain what happened to me at Hoffman’s weeklong spiritual boot camp. And like all Hoffman graduates, I must honor the confidentiality agreement I signed promising not to disclose personal stories from the Process. But what I can say is that on the first day, I sat in a circle in a beautiful retreat house in Napa Valley, where I’d spend a lot of time that week, and looked around the room, sizing up the strangers seated next to me. I saw a troubled woman with an oversized shawl wrapped tightly around her head and shoulders; an uptight, buttoned-up businesswoman; an attention-seeking actor from the Valley; an ingénue in her twenties; and a tough-guy shipbuilder from New England. I wanted to jump up and run out the door. What was I doing here? I have nothing in common with these people.

 

But I would soon learn that I was dead wrong. I had everything in common with these searching souls. We had all been imprinted with both the positive and negative qualities we’d observed from our parents. According to Bob Hoffman, “All children want love and attention from their parents. Children believe implicitly that Mom and Dad make correct decisions and know what they’re doing at all times. For a child, imitating a parents' behaviors, moods, and attitudes—literally becoming like them—often seems the only way to earn a parent’s love and attention. When a child takes on his or her parents’ negativities in an attempt to be loveable to the parents, he or she becomes a victim of the Negative Love Syndrome.

 

Using a complex mix of profound techniques including visualization, meditation, cathartic journaling, Gestalt, group therapy, and some Eastern mysticism, the process boiled down for me a lifetime of “therapy” into just eight days and “surgically” removed my unwanted negative patterns. In just a week, I was able to excavate my bruised and tattered psyche and found genuine transformational healing. I bared my soul and discovered a lustrous, resplendent being. I finally saw the real “me” in full glory as a smart, creative woman who loved to dance, sing, and perform. I was both an artist and an intellectual."

 

In 2003, Michael R. Levenson and Carolyn M. Aldwin of Oregon State University presented findings of a three-year grant research study of the Hoffman Quadrinity Process. Researchers found that participants in the Hoffman Process reported significant and lasting reductions in negative affect, coupled with significant and lasting increases in positive affect. Process participants also reported significantly increased physical energy and vitality.

 

If you are interested in feeling more joyful and light on a daily basis, start by taking the time to address the "inside" and check out The Hoffman Institute at hoffmaninstitute.org. The program is offered approximately 30 times per year in CA and CT and although the seven-day process is expensive at $4,695, in the long haul of life happiness, it's worth every penny.