Ben Ralston

Strong feelings of Anger, Suspicion, and Anxiety – cleared in one session.

Great client (thank you Becky!), great results, great testimonial. Unfortunately my technical skills are not so great so it’s a poor quality video, but I think you can see enough to know what worked and what didn’t!

To summarize: I did one session a little over a month ago with Becky, and a week later we did a short follow up session (included in price of the first session: part of the deal when you book a session with me).

So all in all a little over 2 hours of work together.

3 separate big problems: feelings of anger (measured a month ago as 9/10), anxiety (8/10) and suspicion / distrust (10/10) cleared in one session. If that isn’t a good result I don’t know what is!

London is burning. (Here’s why).

Photograph: Kerim Okten/EPA

I spent 14 years living in London. I lived in Tottenham—North London—where this past weekend’s rioting started, and Hackney, where it continues. I didn’t live in Peckham, Lewisham, Croydon or Brixton—South London—where more rioting has since broken out.
The violence has not only been rife throughout London—on a 30 mile radius—but also throughout England. The cities and counties of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and Nottinghamshire have all seen hundreds of people rampaging through streets destroying property and looting.
There are reports of scores of injured police; many shops have been looted; bins, cars, buses, shops and residences have been set alight.
London is burning.


My job was to take a group of up to 15 young people (aged 16 – 25) and help them to turn their lives around. These were young people who had fallen through society’s ‘net’. I worked with drug addicts, prison leavers and pregnant teenage girls. I was alone with this group of 15. There was no funding for the assistant that I was supposed to have.When I moved out of London seven years ago, I worked for one year as a youth worker in Watford (a large town in the suburbs of London), and what I learnt in that year astounded me…
I could tell you some horror stories. But not now.
Now, all I want to say is this: look at what’s happening. The thin veneer of our ‘civilized’ society is torn back, and all the world is able to see what lurks beneath. Anarchy.
Why? Today’s youth have been betrayed.
The work I did that year was ridiculously under-funded. I once told my manager that I was reluctant to take a certain boy on a week-long field trip because I feared for the safety of the girls in the group (this boy had recently come out of prison: convicted of stabbing a man in the chest). My manager told me I had to take him. The reason: every ‘YP’ (young person) that I took meant extra funding for the course. We couldn’t survive without it.
My fears were later justified when I was forced to send him home early—he pulled a knife on me.
A few years previous to that, I had voted (along with most of the country) Tony Blair into power as Prime Minister. Why had I voted for him? These three words of his:
“Education, education, education”.
A few years later lack of funding in the education system almost cost me my life: the country had enough money to carry out an illegal, unnecessary and unwanted war in Iraq, but apparently not enough to take care of its own young.
On the news today I’ve seen various politicians talking about ‘criminality’ and ‘gratuitous violence‘. One police chief, when asked what was the cause of the rioting, said that it was just ‘kids looking for some excitement in the summer holidays’.
What hope is there for a better future when the people whose responsibility it is (and who have the power) for making these things better have absolutely no clue as to what is causing the problem in the first place? Or don’t care…
I believe that Western capitalist democracies are a disaster. I believe that what we’ve seen over this last weekend in England, and especially London, is the tip of the iceberg. I urge you to pay attention (most of your attention, not just some of it) to your children, and to the children in your communities. They are the future, plain and simple.
At the moment, the future is not bright.
Please leave a comment. What do you think is the cause of the explosion of violence we’ve witnessed in the UK this last weekend?
Please also share: Tweet, ‘like’, Stumble it up. Thank you.

COMMUNICATION, anger, and atheism

Recently, I read a very strong blog about atheism. I say strong because it’s well written, and the ideas put across are well thought out. But it’s also strong in another sense – there’s a lot of anger! In fact one of the key articles is: ‘Atheism and Anger’*.

As I read it I remembered something that Tony Samara once said:
“Anger is a lack of communication”.


Communication is CONTACT – contact between two separate centers of awareness; two minds. And through that contact, there is CONNECTION.
Feeling that connection is one of the most important things in life. Why? Because it’s REAL. We really are connected to everything around us!…

  • We are connected energetically through our solar plexus to the world around us.
  • We are connected through our actions – everything we do has an impact on our environment. Everything. Even taking a breath! Breathe in, and you accept the gift of oxygen that the trees constantly bestow. Breathe out and you give something back.
  • We are connected emotionally too – smile, and you spread a little warmth and happiness in the people who see your smile.
  • We are also connected psychically. Every thought you have sends a vibration out into the universe, like a radio signal. Think positively and the universe responds.
  • And you know what? We’re also intimately connected in a physical way as well – we NEED physical contact with other beings. We need to be touched, held, kissed, loved. It’s been proven that people who live alone die younger. Even if you only have a pet, statistically, you are more likely to live longer than someone who lives alone!

So we really are all connected in many ways that we usually don’t notice or give much thought to. It’s the truth. It’s reality. Truth and reality are what I’m interested in. I don’t care for anything as much as I care for getting closer to reality. And that, to me, is what communication is all about: getting closer to the truth.


(In case any skeptics are reading this, let me just say: my definition of truth is ‘something that I can prove through my own experience’. I put no faith in other people’s proof: whether they wear white coats or have letters before or after their name is of no interest to me whatsoever!)


When another being communicates with me, there is contact, and at the heart of that contact is something very real. Two minds meeting; two seemingly separate beings making contact and becoming more aware of the reality of the connection that underlies their existence. To me, that is what life is all about.


As I read that atheist’s blog, and I thought about all the anger that she feels, I understood her:  if I believed strongly that I was a totally separate being, with my consciousness created by my brain – locked away by skin and bone; with no possibility of ever having meaningful contact with another being – then hell, I’d be angry too!


But you know what? EVERY BELIEF YOU HAVE, IS A CHOICE YOU MAKE.
Beliefs are just habits.
It’s been demonstrated that they are very strong habits: many people would do anything, even die, to defend their beliefs. But they are just habits.
And we can drop habits anytime we like, as easily as dropping a glove, if we really choose to.


If you knew that, would you choose to defend a habit that makes you angry?Or would you re-evaluate what you consider to be ‘true’?
Because the truth of our beliefs is absolutely subjective! Truth, as we believe it to be, is subjective. It is relative. So why hold on to ANY belief?


I choose to believe in nothing. I choose to simply feel the world around me as it is.
I feel connected to the world around me through my solar plexus. I feel connected to other people and animals, and even rocks, and trees, and well, everything really, by the rhythmical flow through my veins; and the wind that I breathe; and the water that I drink; and by the planets’ orbits. I feel connected and that sense of oneness is blissful.
I choose to feel the bliss of that connection rather than the loneliness and fear of separation.


I choose to believe in everything. I see truth everywhere, and I know it to be at once both true and untrue. So how can I not believe it?!


Actually, I choose to believe that nothing is important: including, no, especially, my beliefs. The only thing that is at all important to me is how I feel. So I choose to feel good first, and to believe in what makes me feel good.


If I feel anger, I know that it is a sign that something in my life, in my environment, in my world, is wrong. Almost always it is because I have lost that feeling of connection. So I EXPRESS my anger; I communicate it, and immediately the sense of connection is restored.
Try it: next time you are angry, instead of just being angry, communicate the anger. Try saying out loud “this makes me angry because…”.
In that communication you begin to put right what is wrong. You begin to rebuild that delicate and subtle sense of connection that is so essential to your well-being and inner peace. It’s the only thing that really matters…


What do you believe? Do you feel angry about something?
Let’s communicate /make contact / connect – leave a comment!
With love…


*Thanks to Greta Christina and her blog for inspiring this article.