The Intuitive Therapist: Accelerate and Empower Your Clinical Practice with the Wisdom of Your Intuition

By Janis R. Cohen LCSW

Are you a therapist or counselor who wonders if your intuition can be used to benefit your practice?

The Intuitive Therapist is an informed, practical and broad-scoped discussion of intuition for the therapist: how to recognize it and harness it to more quickly, gently, and effectively transform your clients lives. Written with warmth, compassion and personal insight, The Intuitive Therapist is a must-have reference for any therapist who seeks a more rewarding professional experience. It provides easy, compelling exercises and insights that can upgrade even the occasionally intuitive therapist into a more profoundly effective catalyst for change and healing.

After experiencing a spontaneous deepening of her own intuitive abilities, Cohen developed an innovative approach to her therapeutic practice that led to incredible shifts in her clients progress. Her amped-up intuition gave her a new laser-like ability to identify core issues and led her to redesign her methods to help clients more readily shift their attitudes and perspectives, and greatly improve their quality of life.

In The Intuitive Therapist, youll learn simple yet powerful methods to recognize and cultivate your intuition. Youll learn how developing your intuition can deepen your confidence and sharpen your clarity within your own life and in your practice. Youll discover the power of energy management, strategic intervention, meditation, and other tricks of the trade to energize you and build a more heart-centered and rewarding practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504367790

Janis R. Cohen LCSW

Janis R. Cohen, MSW, LCSW is an internationally recognized therapist, clairvoyant, empath, hypnotherapist, author and speaker. After 17 years of practicing traditional therapy, Janis’s intuitive and psychic abilities were heightened in 2008, and helped accelerate her clients’ personal transformation dramatically. Now she wants to share access to those natural abilities with therapists around the world.

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The Intuitive Therapist

Accelerate and Empower Your Clinical Practice with the Wisdom of Your Intuition

Janis R. Cohen, LCSW

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Copyright © 2016 Janis R. Cohen, LCSW.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-6752-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-6753-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-6779-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016916687

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/20/2016

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

PART I: THE CLIMB

Chapter 1 Six Rungs Down on the Ladder Up

PART II: THE BASICS

Chapter 2 You Are Already Intuitive

Chapter 3 Intuitive Essentials

Chapter 4 Start Here

Chapter 5 Soul Agreements

Chapter 6 Your Intuitive Vibes

Chapter 7 Synchronicity as Universal Harmony

Chapter 8 Brain, Ego, and Intuition

Chapter 9 Your Personal Communication System

Chapter 10 Foundational Elements of Intuitive Development

Chapter 11 What is Your Intuitive Type?

PART III: PREP WORK AND PRACTICES

Chapter 12 How To Tap Into Your Intuition

Chapter 13 Grounding to Anchor Your Intuitive State

Chapter 14 Meditation

Chapter 15 Energetic Protection

Chapter 16 Raising Your Vibrations

Chapter 17 Strategies and Tools

Chapter 18 The Therapeutic Dance

PART IV: THE INTUITIVE THERAPIST

Chapter 19 Being True To Your Intuitive Gifts

Chapter 20 Being of Service

Chapter 21 What Makes a Great Therapist Great

Chapter 22 Living Authentically

Chapter 23 Your Intuitive Journey Begins

FOREWORD

I must begin by stating the obvious. The current treatments we use with regularity in the mental health field have fallen significantly short of expected goals. Many common emotional and behavioral states we struggle with in psychiatry may be caused by serious illness or the result of conflicts in our lives of a so called normal spectrum. In many cases it is common to see only partial improvement and persistent symptoms even after prolonged treatment leaving both providers and clients, unsettled. We have more classes of psychoactive medications and more avenues for psychotherapy than ever before. Yet it is clear that if the complete focus, effort and energy of the person seeking help is not directed toward recovery, from the inside out, the results remain weak over the long term no matter what type of treatment is used. Trust me, I have used them all. And that is where this book you are about to read comes in.

I began practicing as a Psychiatrist in 1995 after completing my psychiatry training in New York City at The Mount Sinai School of Medicine. My professional life has taught me many things which ended up influencing my personal life. Not to be outdone, my personal life has yielded the same influence on my career. The most pertinent to this passage is that along the way in life I met people that, with my assistance of course, have changed my life.

I use to wonder as a physician seeped in Western medical practice and raised in a house run by a surgeon and a labor and delivery nurse if the important people crossing my path and imprinting lasting knowledge upon me were there by chance, opportunity or my good luck. No longer do I subscribe to that simplistic philosophy.

Over the last 8 years I have experienced life to its fullest. I now know the struggles of divorce, changing my job twice, developing a poor relationship with alcohol and most gut wrenching of all, watching my daughter change for what seemed like forever as she realized at 9 years old that her parents would not be living together or happy around each other ever again.

During these recent years I have accompanied these lowest of lows with the highest of highs. I have met Rebecca my true soulmate who has helped me see life with incredible color and joy. I have developed an almost perfect career as a psychiatrist treating older adults and I have met some of the most insightful, knowledgeable and meaningful people that have contributed to my growth and enabled me to see myself and those around me with complete authenticity.

It has also become clear to me that none of these people or events are coming to me by chance, opportunity or luck, but instead are somehow aligned with me or matched with me based on what I am about and what I bring to the world around me. One may refer to this as Universal Law evoking vibrational resonance, past lives effecting current lives through karma, Soul Contracts or something totally different. What I understand now is that I am blessed for these people to have been shown to me and I have gratitude for having been present enough to take them in and allow them to be runners for me. One of these precious people has been Janis Cohen.

Please understand, I have been a partner in a large private out-patient psychiatric practice, have been Medical Director of two psychiatric hospitals and currently enjoy being the Medical Director of the largest psychiatric consultation practice to nursing homes in the state of Georgia. I have worked with, trained and supervised hundreds of mental health professionals from MDs, PhDs, LCSWs, LPC and any other alphabet soup combo you can think of and many of them are wonderful clinicians. But I can count on one hand the therapists who have the diverse skill sets and talents of Janis.

And so we go back to the gut wrenching part. As my daughter entered adolescence she changed as most young ladies do. Accented by the divorce, she became depressed and constricted in affect. My relationship with her became more distant and cold. I knew she was struggling and as a result I was struggling. I have one child and for better or worse I heaped all my fatherly efforts onto her, working harder to get closer’ to her and give her the wisdom of a psychiatrist so she could master this game of life. Or, as I prayed for in 2015, for her just to be happy and find purpose. Things were challenging for my family and raising a daughter came without a how to manual. My daughter was subjected to antidepressants and two efforts at therapy by highly qualified therapists specializing in adolescents. I was involved rarely and told often that progress in the therapy will take more time."

After a year of that effort I was forced to confront a core issue at the interface of my professional and parenting life. My profession, with its myriad of medications and modalities for talk therapy, was not cutting it for my daughter. Frustrated and concerned I remained open to the advice of others who suggested a consultation with Janis. Although my daughter never agreed to see Janis physically, she most certainly mingled with her metaphysically. I saw Janis to gain insight and clarity regarding my child and instead developed an understanding of myself and my limitations which could then allow me to affect my daughter in a positive way. I learned to see my daughter’s strengths which have not yet unfolded and realized my daughter was not mentally ill or broken but was searching for her own path and mode for self-expression. Janis spoke pearls of wisdom with firmness and conviction that often eluded the adolescent therapists I experienced previously. Two that stuck with me were don’t try to control the situation for it is not yours to control and listen for what matters to her for that is what matters most.

The session was phenomenal and changed the course of things for me as a parent and as a person. Janis showed me many things about my life with my daughter from various perspectives. She has comfort and knowledge in traditional talk therapies which became immediately apparent while she added another piece to her skill set less familiar to me but incredibly powerful. As soon as she met me and heard me utter the first sentence regarding the situation with my daughter she tapped into an intuitive state of which she will describe in detail in this book and was able to know about me and my daughter in ways that I had never revealed to her. As I began to take in her intuitive knowledge, it was like Janis was pulling the cord of a lawn mower and from that one pull so much work could be done.

By stepping beyond the limitations of objective reasoning dominated by the five senses, Janis is able to tap into the metaphysical. Her sessions integrate her intuition, ability to read energy and an understanding of the energetic imprint of one’s past and future events. This allows you to quickly change or simply refine the course of your present life. To understand how to harness this process to help ourselves on a daily basis would be life changing. I still quote the wisdom of my session with Janis to myself often and use her verbal insights in my relationship with my daughter. Now it is your turn to learn from her.

Dr. Joel Kirson

Medical Director, CareNow Services

Roswell, Georgia

July 18, 2016

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my parents, Dr. Arthur M. Cohen and Lois Cohen, thank you for showing me how to love deeply and selflessly, and for teaching me the value of family and tradition. Thank you for showing me what true love is, for always supporting me and for always being my soft place to land. Most importantly, thank you for accepting me for who I truly am.

To my brother, Lee, and sisters, Debbie and Roz, thank you for being my playmates, my best friends and for reminding me that I am the baby of the family and that I got away with everything you didn’t. To my sisters-in-law, Debra and Erin, thank you for making my brother and sister two very happy people.

To my nieces, Sophia and Rebecca, and my nephews, Justin, Sam, and Ben, thank you for always loving me and letting me love you. Each one of you is a bright light that shines within me. I am so very proud of the young adults you have become and feel privileged to know you.

To my friends along my path, some of whom are still in my life and some of whom I have had let go of so that I could veer off on my own divine journey: I thank all of you for contributing to my growth, either through pain or pleasure. Thank you my friends, Dina McDonald and Debra Radcliff and for standing by me unconditionally and believing in me when others did not. You showed me that I was loved and cherished even when I felt lost and discouraged.

Thank you to my former therapist, Dr. Terry Segal, for helping me move through a very difficult time in my life. You created a safe space for me to lose my mind again and again and again until I purged everything. You taught me one of the most powerful lessons that I have ever learned: how to welcome pain as my teacher, thank it and become an even more powerful person as a result. You will always be a shining light for me.

Thank you to Mr. Jim Harbuck, my elementary school principal. You are not on this earthly plane anymore but you still live within me every day. You showed me kindness and compassion, and most importantly, you gave me a safe place to land when I thought there was none. You were my ally when the bullying became unbearable and when all I thought about was giving up. In short, you saved my life, and I am forever indebted to you.

To my editor, Diane Eaton, thank you for sprinkling your magic dust throughout this book. You understood me, and the goal of my book, immediately. You are truly amazing and an expert at what you do! I am so glad that Spirit guided us to meet. I am forever grateful to you.

To all of my other teachers who have crossed my path, each of you has helped me become the person I am today. The pain and the glory that resulted from my experiences with you were totally worth it. I am forever grateful for all of the opportunities that you provided for me to grow, to expand, and to stand in my greatness. My light shines brighter because of you.

To all of my clients and colleagues, I salute you. Thank you for inviting me into the deepest parts of your lives, for trusting me to help you and for allowing me to witness your growth and success. The world is a better place because you stand in your truth.

INTRODUCTION

Your intuition — that quiet voice inside of you — can dramatically change your life if you listen to it. It can steer you away from negativity, change how you look at things, and can guide you towards a peaceful way of living. Your intuitive voice always wants you to have what you need. It aligns with your basic desire to be happy and to live a life of purpose and meaning.

If you are reading this book, then you are at least curious about how you, as a therapist, can learn to use your inherent intuitive gifts to facilitate change in your clients.

Perhaps there’s a voice inside of you that says, Maybe by reading this book I might learn something that I don’t know. Or: Maybe I can learn to be more effective and help more people in new ways. Or: Maybe, by reading this book, I can finally exhale and know that I am on the right path all the way around.

Whatever the reason, I am incredibly happy for you that you have this book in front of you. I’d be willing to bet that you won’t be the same person by the time you turn the last page.

This book can serve you in at least two ways: it can help you connect more deeply with yourself and your truth, and it can help you to pay it forward: you can provide your clients with rich solutions to life lessons and give them guidance to live with authenticity and wisdom.

As a clinically-trained therapist, I have spent the past twenty-five years helping clients build upon their strengths, reconnect with their inner resources and completely shift their perceptions of what they are capable of accomplishing in their lives. I achieved this by working as what I call a ‘five-sensory therapist:’ relying only on my extensive, traditional training, education and thinking mind.

That worked for me until I began to realize that I wanted to do more to help my clients reach their goals. I wanted them to experience a faster, more effective form of therapy and I wanted to have a more immediate impact. I began to learn Strategic Intervention and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I studied current and historic masters of personal change and started to apply their techniques in my work with great success. As I did so, I witnessed much more rapid shifts in my clients. I believed that I had significantly advanced my skills as a therapist and, for all intents and purposes, I really had.

Finally, I had quenched my thirst for self-improvement. Or so I thought.

Little did I know that I was on the path of a spiritual awakening, an awakening that resulted in an inescapable, dramatic rearrangement of my life. Apparently, it was time for a complete system upgrade for me, both personally and professionally.

My awakening turned into a rebirth. I began to see, physically and spiritually, through an amazing palette of colors. Information and guidance appeared to me when I needed it. I couldn’t live my life or do my work as an unaware person anymore. My strengths and weaknesses, soul lessons and life purpose revealed themselves to me with crystal clarity and I found myself creating the very shifts within myself that I had facilitated for my clients.

As I chartered this new spiritual territory, I recognized how good it felt to move in this direction. Finally, I was on the right path. Courage, confidence and certainty grew in every facet of my life and I began to see myself in a new and amazing light. Who I was becoming had a name: light worker. I realized that I am a clairvoyant, a seer, an empath, a feeler and I can use these abilities to help others heal and change. With these and other psychic gifts, I began to facilitate rapid and massive changes within my clients, changes that superseded anything I could have possibly imagined.

I was no longer just a therapist; I became an intuitive therapist. I came to rely on both my clinical expertise and on spiritual guidance to help me in my healing work. I became a channel for higher guidance to come through me. I began to be able to tap into the root of a client’s challenges quickly and then offer very specific and effective strategies for lasting change.

I now live from a completely intuitive place. My responses and decisions arise from a deeply grounded sense of inner knowing. Joined to this new core resource within myself, I have a much deeper level of personal understanding than I’ve ever had before. And I have access to greater insight about who I want to be for myself and others.

If you had asked me a number of years ago if I believed that I had intuitive gifts, I would have looked at you wide-eyed and said, No way! I simply believed that I was naturally gifted to work with people and help them improve their lives. I experienced a life purpose that I continue to feel is a sure fit for me, but that was the extent of it. After all, I am not your typical intuitive person who had precognitive visions or psychic experiences, or received messages from deceased loved ones as a child. I sometimes wish I had, because it could serve as a very compelling story to share with you. But it’s not my story.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I began to recognize that there is a larger influence in my life than just my personal identity. My thinking mind was no longer the only tool that I used to problem-solve. I eased into the understanding that higher forces are at work to help me grow, learn and help others. After my spiritual rebirth, I realized that I have always been a healer and, as such, I am here to help others realize their natural strengths, their talents, and their ability to rise above any challenge.

The impact that this awareness has had on my life is indescribable. After all, when I worked as a five sensory therapist, I relied heavily on what I had been taught in school, through books, training, supervision and fieldwork. The foundational elements of each client’s treatment plan were theories and diagnoses. In my early years as a therapist, when I was an employee with service agencies, I would help clients identify logical supportive objectives for their goals, not using my intuition.

Don’t get me wrong; I still rely on these elements in my work quite a bit. The difference is that now I don’t consider an Axis I diagnosis, for example, as the only resource for creating a treatment plan or for developing goals. Now I see that there is so much more to treating a client than what a clinical code identifies as the presenting issues or qualifying characteristics.

As therapists, we learn to look at a client as a whole person and gather the information we need to get a well-rounded picture of how her life is being impacted. We complete a bio-psycho-social assessment of the client and then develop a treatment plan. While this type of assessment can be very informative, it falls short of forming a 360° perspective of the client’s life.

But when we look beyond the five spheres of influence in our client’s lives — the emotional, psychological, physical, financial, and religious practices — and include the undeniable spiritual influences, we gain a more complete perspective of our clients, what they want, and why they want it. This perspective allows us as therapists to have greater insight into and increased access to the elements causing them to be where they are now, sitting in front of you, asking for your help.

Class is in Session

For a long time, I credited my clinical training and my self-proclaimed awesomeness as a therapist with the successes I was having with my clients. But honestly, my assessments were typical. I did what I was trained to do. Little did I know that there was much more to learn about how to be effective with clients beyond relying on my therapeutic training and positive self-perception. Over time, little by little, day by day, and year after year, I learned that the impact I was having with clients was also an outcome of my spiritual evolution, as I became what I now call a ‘six-sensory’ human being.

The funny thing was, I really didn’t know what was happening. All of a sudden I had a voracious appetite to learn about metaphysics, spirituality, meditation and past lives. I began to learn to live in the flow and that helped me improve my overall quality of life. My evolution was both challenging and exciting to me. Every stride I made in personal growth was met with and counterbalanced by a larger challenge. Sometimes, my experiences were heavy and humbling. My soul lessons seemed to be showing up everywhere. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was transitioning into foreign territory; I found myself in situations that forced me to see myself through honest and humble lenses and to find the requisite determination to really learn from my pain this time around. Only later would I bring this insight and knowledge forward for the benefit of my clients.

My life became a classroom where I entered as a student and left as a teacher. Apparently, this was the way that my soul was going to evolve. I would learn a soul lesson and then teach it to others.

At times, life was overwhelming, but ironically, I didn’t feel lost. Somehow, I was cradled by a certain force that I would lean into when times became unbearable. I would soon come to know this divine support system intimately and, ultimately, rely on it entirely.

Ready or Not, Here I Come

As challenging as it was, you could say that my transition into intuitive living gave me many gifts. I fought with humility on many occasions. I discovered a desperate lack of courage, confidence and certainty in myself. I learned that I was an expert in creating my own inner conflicts. I needed to learn how to establish clear and self-respecting boundaries — quickly — so that I could become who I needed to become. The demons in my life were my own to learn from.

Prior to my awakening, I was an unhappy, angry, and defensive person and harbored a deep sense of frustration about who I wasn’t. I needed to learn how to use my voice for something other than pushing against authority and trying to force others to see me as competent and significant. Apparently, I needed to be brought down several rungs in order to do that.

Higher Education

Many believe that our lives here on earth are something like a school for us to learn our spiritual lessons. We are here to learn, grow, contribute and ascend. If you like, you can use this book as part of your own personal spiritual curriculum. Through my own Higher education, I have truly come to understand how to live a humble, integrated, leveraged, and easier life. If you commit to applying the tools provided within these pages you, too, will become a better therapist, business owner, parent, or partner — and a better human being.

If there had been college classes that taught students about spiritual principles a few years ago, I would have definitely taken them and felt even more prepared as a therapist. Classes that taught intuitive development, meditation, and how to detach from outcomes would have been incredibly useful to me. Learning how to effectively stay in a space of openness and awareness would have enhanced every aspect of my life.

Times have changed since I was in school in the early 90s. Thankfully, today’s Western culture is more accepting of Eastern practices and beliefs, through its openness to the spiritual evolution that is taking place. In the past two decades, there has been an emerging awareness of these Higher