“Say Nils, do you really believe that?” This is what Prof. Nils Bohr, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and a member of the Danish national football team, was asked by a colleague who noticed a horseshoe hanging over Bohr’s office.
“Of course I do not believe in these things,” replied Bohr, a Jewish scholar and skeptic who was one of Albert Einstein’s outstanding students.
“But,” the scientist added, “I have heard that a horseshoe brings good luck even to those who do not believe in it.”
This story about Prof. Bohr, one of the most fascinating figures in the history of science, came to my mind in connection with a visit I made to the Ora Golan Center at Kibbutz Nachsholim. But before I turn to the book about the center, like any decent Israeli, I would like to talk a little about myself. Well, I’m a skeptical person, even an extreme skeptic. Degrees in philosophy and psychology and a doctorate in religious affairs are not a fertile ground for great faith. Even the sitting in which I studied in my youth failed to suppress the instinct of rationality within me. I also educate my children according to the principle: “If this cannot be proven experimentally, throw it into the sea.”
Thus, when I was invited to write about the center, I raised an eyebrow (yes, just like Yonit Levy, I am one of those who can only lift one of them). “Are you convinced you are interested in that?” I asked the man who approached me. I also asked the same question to Ora Golan herself, since I am not interested in doing a bear service to my hosts.
“I actually want a person like you for the purpose of writing,” she replied. “I want to talk to the most critical people. Because critical people also suffer and my method works on those who do not believe in it.”
My acquaintances know that I am an impulsive and impatient person for practical stories. “So come and explain to me,” I asked her, “on what basis do you claim to solve problems of many years of anxiety, marital difficulties or lack of self-confidence that probably stems from childhood? “?
Here it is worth noting that Ora did not appear to show any signs of discomfort following the question. In general, she does not seem to show any signs of anything other than peace of mind. My experience has accustomed me to charismatic therapists, sublime gurus and rabbis who have flames in their eyes. But Ora is an ordinary and relaxed woman who responds with fluent patience.
“Every person has an emotional system that absorbs and files what they experience from their environment. It is different from the logical-rational system and it preserves very early memories. For example, babies born without knowing whether they were born into a state of war or peace.” As someone born into the Yom Kippur War I could agree with you. I really did not know. “The emotional information is received from those around him. If there were people around him who lived in an atmosphere of fear or in an atmosphere of a very tense relationship – the child perceives it. It greatly affects his emotional resilience, thus creating emotional barriers in which our care is concentrated.”
So far everything sounds like it made sense to me. “And how does that affect?” percussive.
“I do not operate on the parents,” Ora continues. “But I test the appellant himself by a series of regular questions and tests of the muscle. One can easily test the muscle’s resistance to a question on a particular subject. What emotional load is absorbed, at what stage and under what circumstances.”
And does a person have no effect on muscle tone or tension?
“No. The method does not depend on the therapist or patient and what they think. Contrary to what we think and say in emotional therapy – the body always gives authentic and accurate information. We also measure at the end of the treatment the same ways to see if there is improvement.”
that’s where I suspected. “Do patients not know if there is an improvement in their condition?”
“You know, it happens more than once that patients have forgotten what they complained about because it just stopped bothering them. It’s like a stone in a shoe, two minutes after you managed to get rid of it, you no longer put a thought into it.”
“If so Ora, give me the three most common issues that come to you and whose successes are visible.”
“Relationships, anxiety, self-confidence. There are of course many other issues like ADHD, fear of abandonment, and the like. But the first three I mentioned undoubtedly occupy a significant portion of our activities.”
“Good. Let’s talk for a moment about relationships. What successes can you present for someone who has been looking for many years and is not successful.”
“Relationships are a topic I have a lot to say about,” Ora replies. “But I will confine myself for now to a simple fact: over ten of our facts that were without a relationship, or in a relationship in crisis, are today in a satisfying relationship. It even caused us some problems because some of them went after the spouse and now the workplace has become too far for them.”
True to my habits of digging into topics of particular interest to me, I promised Laura to check the statistics of the couple among the facts at the institute and even to dedicate a special article only to the matter of the couple.
In conclusion, here are the conclusions. Ora Golan’s method of treatment is measured in detailed feedback at the end of the treatment. I received information about them. I must be open and say that although I still do not know how the method works, beyond the information provided to me. Still, I was exposed to quite a bit of evidence of successes, both from patients and from the facts of the place who were treated themselves. Would I try? Definitely yes. why? Because this is not some vague Torah. In fact the idea behind the method sounds logical from most alternative therapies and even full of little psychological approaches.
As someone who has studied and experienced quite a few such psychological methods, I am convinced that in measuring cost versus benefit, Ora Golan’s approach has a great advantage over long and prolonged psychological treatments and even short-term CBT treatments that are so fashionable today. And when I write “cost” I do not only mean a financial expense, but also the enormous mental resources that must be invested in such psychological treatment. I definitely believe that a person suffering from an interest that limits his life – he should come and examine for himself the effectiveness of the method, easy and material if it is a person who has already tried psychological treatment and is still not satisfied with the course of his life.
Prof. Nils Bohr – does what is right even without faith
And what about Nils Bohr, did that horseshoe help him? Well, Bohr managed to escape from the Nazis, named after him the Institute of Physics in Copenhagen and even a chemical element from the table of elements called “Bohrium”. He even won that his son, Aga Bohr, would also win the Nobel Prize in Physics. It turns out that sometimes doing the right thing, helps even those who do not believe.
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