by Athanasios Komianos
Dear Colleagues,
Indeed it has been a pleasure to have met all of you and I hope that stands both ways. The bad news is that the 5th World Congress of Regression Therapy is over. The good news is that most people loved it and it seems it was a really successful event. I am looking through the pictures taken by the photographer of our event, Flavio and I am impressed both of the quality of our event as well as the good spirits of our participants. Here you can review them on your own.
EARTh as the main organizer did indeed “teach” us a lot. This would have not been possible without the support of our sponsors and our partners. Thank you all for contributing to the success of this wonderful event.
EARTh has become the leading group world-wide of organizing conventions, congresses and training exchange. It seems that this will be the leading force in regression therapy for the years to come. My feeling is that overall people loved both the venue and the quality of the workshops in the congress. Both pre-congress and congress workshops were of high standards and the complaints that I heard mostly were of the kind “why are all these workshops done together? We cannot attend all of them”. Attendants were thirsty both for theory and for practice. And I think they got both. Most workshops that I saw were in accordance with our theme and if I judge by myself then I can tell you that I really learned a lot in these few days and I assume that you all did as well. Some people told me that there was too much going on. Well as in all life, we have to make choices. We also need to take brakes every now and then. Starting from the opening night with the traditional dances and Portuguese scarves to the closing night of the beautiful Fado band, the Portuguese organizers Sueli Simoes and Maria Angelina Pereira, made a great effort to bring this event to a success and I on behalf of all EARTh members I thank them for that. I have to also apologize for not believing the Portuguese team that they would attract more than 200 people on this congress. The EARTh Board stood on the conservative side on this and so we had a waiting list of at least 40 persons waiting to be accepted in the Congress. We have to admit that had we had 200 people we may have crossed the line of harmony and balance. Next time (starting from today) we will be more prepared to handle greater numbers of participants. However, even then there will be a limit up of participants and “early birds” will be rewarded. I am not planning to focus on the negative aspects of the event. Of course there were many, the “veggie food was awful”, “the workshop rooms were caves”, “there were no women on the panel discussion”, just to name a few. The Board has recorded down all these remarks of negative feedback and will work into the direction of improving this in the future. We are building our “know-how” database with experience, trial and error. Unlike some of our past-life memories, our “know-how” does not seem to jump from incarnation to incarnation. I am sure that after attending our next World Congress in India with the theme “Unlocking Creativity” we will be able to be better on that respect. I also have to thank the Program Committee for the outstanding selection of the presentations, as well as the scientific caliber of our guest speakers, professors Mario Simoes from Lisbon, Julio Perez from Sao Paolo and Jim Tucker from Charlottesville, their insights on the frontiers of the research on consciousness was of great importance. Last but not least is the fact that the theme of the congress was inspired by the loss of our mentor and pioneer regression therapist Roger Woolger. Some people may have not really enjoyed the tribute movie tailored to honor our beloved Roger because they had been seated without a break for a long time and they wished for a break. Here you can enjoy the movie at home and really learn from it once more. Send it also to friends and colleagues who might also like to see who Roger was for us. Thanks to our inspired by the Muses colleagues, Ulf Parczyk from Germany and Reşat Güner from Turkey, we came with another film which is a capital for regression therapy. Its aesthetics and elegance are overwhelming. It brought tears in our eyes and touched our hearts. Thank you Ulf and Reşat for being there in Porto in spirit with us but also, for not having left your bodies yet!
