Story of the Week, The Green Pea Princess
July 13, 2009
- Green Pea Princess
There was once a Green Pea Princess who lived in a garden on the hill. Her name was Guisante. She was a very sweet and tender pea but very forlorn. Guisante was loved and admired by many in the garden but there was no one special that touched her heart. This made her feel very sad and and want to withdraw deep inside of her green pea pod.
In the springtime Guisante watched as all of the other creatures found mates and she wondered if she would ever find one too. Day after day, she felt more alone. “Oh if only I had a podner, someone to share this beautiful garden with, someone to make life merry. Surely I wouldn’t be lonely then.”
Deep within her heart Guisante did not know if a podner would ever find her. There were several sharp-toothed slugs that guarded the perimeters of her garden. No one could get in and she could not get out. She felt trapped in the garden and very glum. “No one will ever love me. I will shrivel and become hard and dry like an old maid pea!”
She tried consulting the Sweet Pea Fairies for advice but even they seemed unable to help her. They simply told her to relax in the sun. Guisante couldn’t see how that would help her but she had nothing better to do. So she found a nice spot in the sun and very soon she dozed off. She found herself in a magical place of dreaming where she met a mystical being of shimmering light, that had the exquisite frangrace of a rose. The Rose Fairy approached Guisante and told her that she had come with a special message. 
“ Guisante you must change your mind. You believe something that is not true. You believe that you cannot be loved. A very special prince is on his way to your garden and you must be ready to let him in. find your way back to the rose in your heart. Then all that you wish will come to be. Don’t delay!”
Guisante awoke from the dream feeling very confused. She did not know how to change her mind or how to find a rose in her heart. “No one will ever love me!”
With no more hope and nothing else to live for, Guisante prepared herself to die. She called in the blackest clouds in the whole universe and asked them to cover her. The black clouds came and surrounded her. The tree frogs began to sing a death chant. “Goodbye dear world, you have been good to me but I am not worthy of living.”
With one last very long breath, she began to close her pod and withdrawal from the world. But just as her pod was almost shut, she was hit on the head by a big, fat, wet drop of rain. It felt so good that in spite of herself she giggled. She giggled and giggled as the rain poured down and filled up her garden with the waters of hope. As she watched the swirling currents of rain she felt a desire to live. She realized that there was so much love around her.
“The black clouds loved me enough to call in the tree frogs to make it rain. And the tree frogs loved me enough to have sung a rain chant instead of a death chant. They saved my life.”
Guisante felt a stirring of love so profound that a rose burst forth from her heart. The tree frogs sang an ancient healing song as Guisante bloomed in love. The garden came to grow and flourish and creatures came from all over to visit the magical Princess Guisante and find healing in her garden.
And yes one day a Green Pea Prince did appear on the horizon and when he saw the sacred garden of Guisante, he knew that he was home. They lived happy and blessed surrounded by sweet peas, in the beautiful garden on the hill.
* This story was written April 5, 1997. There will be commentary to follow in next post. Read on and share your comments.
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Story of the Week, Milton Erickson, Master of Healing Stories
July 5, 2009
Milton Erickson was the greatest medical hypnotherapist in history. He was known for his legendary ability to read people and to produce change in even the most unworkable patients.
Erickson was a Master Storyteller who did much of his most powerful work using stories. Milton used metaphor to anchor effective attitudes, self-images and behaviors for people who did not know how to find these experiences for themselves. Many of Milton’s stories were healing reframes which allowed people to find new possibilities that were not previously in the picture.
Erickson was a classically trained psychiatrist who specialized in medical hypnosis and family therapy. He was the founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis.
He is noted for his approach to the unconscious mind as creative and solution-generating. He is also noted for influencing brief therapy, strategic family therapy, family systems therapy,solution focused brief therapy. He was an important influence on Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), which was in part based upon his working methods.
Milton grew up in Lowell, Wisconsin in a modest farming family, and intended to become a farmer like his father. He was a late developer, and was both dyslexic and colorblind. He overcame his dyslexia, and had many other inspirations via a series of spontaneous autohypnotic “flashes of light” or creative moments. At age 17, he contracted polio, and was so severely paralyzed that the doctors believed he would die. But his remarkable recovery was formative in his life and work.
Erickson identified many of his earliest personal experiences as hypnotic or autohypnotic. Milton was a classic ‘wounded healer’, whose own difficulties informed his work with others.
There are many famous stories about Erickson’s work. He worked with the most difficult and unreachable patients and was known to cure thousands of people. He was noted for his ability to utilize anything about a patient to help them change, including their beliefs, favorite words, cultural background, personal history, or even their neurotic habits.
Through conceptualizing the unconscious as highly separate from the conscious mind, with its own awareness, interests, responses, and learnings, he taught that the unconscious mind was creative, solution-generating, and often positive. 
Erickson frequently drew upon his own experiences to provide examples of the power of the unconscious mind. He was largely self-taught and a great many of his anecdotal and autobiographical teaching stories are collected in the book, My Voice Will Go With You.
Near the end of his life, Erickson was known for speaking mostly in story. As one of his patients said, “He would illustrate everything through a little story”. A client would go see him and he would just talk and tell stories the whole time and then later many mysterious changes would happen in their lives.
He was truly the great Master of the art of healing Storytelling. Many people, including myself, model their work after his legacy. I am grateful for his work and the legacy of story that he left behind.
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The Power of Storytelling
May 7, 2009
I am trained in the field of NLP which stands for Neuro-linguistic programming. NLP is the study of personal mastery and how to harness the powers of the mind and it was modeled in part on the work of famous hypnotherapist, Milton H. Erickson, MD. Milton was known for his miraculous cures with thousands of patients and is legend for his storytelling abilities.
Several years ago, I spent twenty-one days and many thousands of dollars to take my NLP Trainer and Consultants training with the renowned trainer Robert Dilts. Twenty-one days is a long time and you would think that I would have learned something right? But I came out of that training feeling like I hadn’t learned a thing. How was that possible? I was so convinced however that I hadn’t learned anything, that I started to believe that I had wasted all of that time and money.
However about a month after the Training, I was hired to lead a one-day retreat for a hospital health center. As I leading the training, I noticed how much fun I was having and later realized that a good third of my program was new information. Where had it all come from? I thought I hadn’t learned anything. So afterwards I realized that maybe I had learned something after all, in fact I’d learned quite a lot.
It was at that moment, that I realized the power of story. Most of my twenty-one days of training had been taught using story. Some months later, I went to another training with Robert and I mentioned this funny phenomenon to him. I said “Robert, I hate to admit this but I thought I went to your training and didn’t learn a thing! But then a month later, I led a retreat, and I couldn’t believe all of the new information that just poured out of me.”
Robert just smiled and said “Annie when I used to go visit Milton, I would think that nothing happened. He would just sit there and tell me stories. But then three weeks later, my whole life would change.”
Milton Erickson definitely new the power of story….and I have dedicated my life’s work, to passing on it’s magic and power.
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