Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:00

Welcome to Voices in Health and Wellness. This is the podcast where we explore the changing face of care through the voices of practitioners, founders, and innovators who are shaping how we think about well-being today. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Greenland, and in this episode, we're driving into a fascinating conversation about the intersection of mind, body, and subtle energy in psychotherapy. My guest today is Ruthie Smith, a psychotherapist teacher, trainer, and supervisor, and the founder of The Flame Centre, where she helps practitioners and clients explore how true healing happens when we listen to the wisdom of all three mind, body, and energy. Ruthie is also the author of the author of Energy Soul Connecting and Awakening Consciousness, Psychotherapy in a New Paradigm, a book that invites us to reimagine what therapy can be when we work from a deeper level of awareness. So, Ruthie, thank you very much for your time this afternoon and welcome to the show.

Ruthie Smith: 0:50

Thank you so much, Andrew. It's such a pleasure to be here. I very much appreciate being invited.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:56

Thank you. So maybe we could start a little bit about your journey as a psychotherapist and what led you to found the Flame Centre.

Ruthie Smith: 1:03

Yes, well, I think probably as a lot of psychotherapists and people in this field, my own journey began with mental illness in my own family. And uh I came from a family where my mother was mentally ill and my sister suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. So from a very early age, I was living with mental illness and trying to understand it. And that sort of, if you like, I became a seeker, looking for healing, really for my sister. And very sadly, she did in the end take her own life. She was very, very ill. And I was just so wanting to find something more than just talking that could help. Um what happened is that I went to a teaching on meditation and peace by His Holiness Jujan Rimpache, and I had an awakening experience, and he was talking about how the mind can really access true peacefulness when we're in our hearts and we awaken. And I had this experience, and it was like, oh, if only my sister could realize that her true nature is this, you know, that our true nature is love, it's compassion, it's light. And of course, most of us are disconnected from this. So that sort of took me on a mission, really. I would call it a mission. I don't think I consciously thought it was a mission at the time, but as I look back, I realise it was, to sort of find a deeper way of bringing healing into psychotherapy. And I started out as a psychoanalytic therapist. I worked at the Arbus Centre, which used to have a crisis centre, worked with very, very mentally ill people. It was a really great place, actually, had a community. But what I learned from there was the importance of a kind of egalitarian approach, a kind of community feel. That uh we're we're all in the same boat. They they didn't call their clients uh patients, they called them guests, and people who were really ill were staying there, and we had family meetings, and we'd also all sit together at the table. It was in the days when um Joe Burke and uh uh Joseph Schwartz uh uh and they were very much interested in the understanding about the double bind theory. I expect you've heard of that, you know, the the trauma of being in a place where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, and that the traumatic roots of schizophrenia basically. That got me into an understanding about trauma. And so since then I was always wanting to understand how trauma worked. And um I went on to train in Satell Energy, I was exploring all sorts of things alongside my psychoanalytic training. And one day I had this experience where I had a very, very ill client who was really distressed. She was a psychoanalytic client, and one half of my room was an analytic couch, and the other half of my room, I'd been studying energy methods, like you do sort of healing, where you're working with the subtle energy system and just calming down the field. And so I said, Would you like to jump onto this couch and I'll give you some energy healing? And immediately she calmed down, and I thought, my goodness, this is really a powerful method, and it's so simple because there's no cognitions, no concepts, it's just working from the heart in a state of flow, and that kind of led me to seek out uh what we now call energy psychotherapy. I run a training in it, um, but after um going and doing various trainings, I expect lots of people will have heard of things like EFT, because that's a really classic one that loads of people do, which is incredibly useful. But I teach on a training course where we teach qualified therapists to work with lots of different energy disciplines, so chakra clearing, uh tapping, working with intention, working with core beliefs in an energetic way. Um so that's just a brief introduction.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 5:20

Thank you.

Ruthie Smith: 5:21

Something to go on.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 5:23

No, thank you. Really interesting to hear the journey and the various experiences that have shaped what you do. But perhaps for listeners that may be new to the concept of energy psychotherapy, how would you describe it in practical terms?

Ruthie Smith: 5:35

Okay, in practical terms, it's something that clients do for themselves. So it's not something that we do to clients. Um, and in my book, I've the second part of the book is a whole range of energy tools that people can use for themselves. So, practically speaking, we might start off with something like energy balancing. So, I can give you an example here where you just do this and sort of sit with your feet on the ground, and as you do something like that and just calmly breathe, it brings our body into a state of balance. So we might start off there because often when clients come, they're very dysregulated and they don't know how to regulate themselves. So we teach uh self-healing methods really. So, getting a client balanced is the first thing. Then we might have a talk and something will come up where there's a trauma, and we try to get to the roots of what the trigger is. Usually, if someone's triggered, there's a an underlying root that's called caused that trigger, and then we might use a tap tapping or chakra clearing, using a waterful of light, just cleansing and healing, or working with intention. So, for example, uh, if someone had a trauma from their childhood, you know, which is obviously most people when they come to therapy have traumas from their childhoods, uh, we would also need to check that it was safe for them to do the work. Because a lot of people come to therapy, but they're actually quite blocked because they don't feel, for example, they may not feel safe. And so we have this wonderful thing from EFT called reversals, where you say, even though I feel I don't deserve to get over this, I'm okay, or even though it doesn't feel safe to get over this, I love and accept myself. Now, what this does, tapping on this point, which is the self-acceptance point, is it changes the energy in a positive flow. Because when our energy, subtle energy, is blocked, we we can't get better because it's going in the wrong direction. It's like what Freud called the death instinct. And I think you know, a lot of practitioners will be familiar with the ways in which we self-sabotage, but those self-sabotage methods are often our defences because it's too scary or we don't think we deserve to get better. So once we cleared the blockages to clearing the trauma, then we just do simple methods. It might be, you know, all my stress that I when I was little, and uh I had that trauma when I was little, all my stress when I was little. It might be something as simple as that going down the energy centres, repeating the phrase, just visualising a waterfall of light. Very, very simple. And so we work with that. The client does these things and we kind of mirror them, and by mirroring them, we're both empathizing and connecting with them while at the same time not taking on their energy, if that makes sense.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 8:47

I hear you. Thank you for explaining. Um, what major shifts are you seeing in psychotherapy and wellness right now, especially around trauma? Because trauma is one of the things you've mentioned.

Ruthie Smith: 8:57

Well, um, I'm sure loads of people, I mean, everybody's heard of Van der Koch's The Body Keeps the School. So I think the main the main shift, there are two that I see. One is that people want to work with the body, that talking therapies aren't enough anymore, and that people expect more because they've heard about Van der Koelk and trauma and they want to clear their traumas. So I think that's the first thing. People are more cognizant of trauma and want to clear it from their bodies, and we can't talk out trauma, we can only clear it through our bodies, and I think that's a really profound shift. Um, I think the second shift is is what's something that's going on energetic energetically on the planet. You know, we're the planet is awakening, people are accessing their heart, they're getting out of their heads and they're moving down into their hearts into a more compassionate space of awareness. I mean, mindfulness and meditation, things like that, they're part of the NHS now. No one had heard of that in the you know 70s, but it's now become part of the mainstream. So there's there's a huge move towards an understanding about awareness and spiritual awakening, I think. And what I've noticed in my practice is I have a lot more clients coming wanting to talk about their spiritual experiences or to connect and not just be cognitive about things, they want to have a wider perspective, um, and that's what I call in my book Awakening Consciousness. And so many people on the planet are awakening these days. Um, I don't know whether you want me to say more about that, about the difference between 3D and 5D. Would that be interesting?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 10:46

Just briefly give us an overview, it'd be helpful. Thank you.

Ruthie Smith: 10:50

So, our 3D world is the world we all live in, where we in our mind and our cognitions we need that is our ego-based reality. And it's the Newtonian world of cause and effect, if you like, it's just straightforward. Um, yeah, I mean, it's the reality we live in all the time. But 5D is when we enter the unified field of quantum consciousness, and our access there is to the unified field, and we can only access that space through our hearts, we can't get there through our heads, we have to be in our hearts, and that's when we connect up with our higher selves, what I call soul connecting, and then the energy flows and work happens effortlessly, we don't have to do anything, the energy does the work for us. So, for example, I don't call myself a healer because I'm not doing anything, it's something that's coming through from the fifth-dimensional consciousness, and uh that's what the shift various people have written about this. Lynn McTaggart's written a really good book called The Field, and various people have written about the shift into the quantum field, and I think that's a really big change in the people opening up their hearts and wanting more, really.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 12:14

Thank you. And how do you see the role of um energy-based approaches such as what you do alongside more traditional psychotherapy methods?

Ruthie Smith: 12:24

Um, well, you don't need to use the word energy to do the kind of work that we do. I often will just talk about stress-relieving techniques to help bring peace and calm to the body. So I see these methods as being integrated quite ordinarily, really, quite seamlessly. So, I mean, EFT is so well known these days, loads of people do tapping, so it's not a big stretch. Lots of people use mindfulness as part of a therapeutic practice. So I see it increasingly becoming part of the mainstream. And I don't know whether you're aware that ASET, which is the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology, but the evidence base for energy psychology methods is absolutely phenomenal. They've got hundreds of studies and a shockingly effective rate on all, you know, they just just you know explore this effects on the brain, you know, EPTSD veterans. It's it's used very, very effectively for many, many things. So I see it becoming just part of the mainstream. I mean, it's used in GP surgeries, in the fire brigade, the police. You know, that's if this work is used in those um frontline services these days.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 13:42

Yeah, and with that evidence, I mean, are you noticing a greater openness among practitioners or clients to these new paradigms of healing?

Ruthie Smith: 13:50

Absolutely. I think people are hungry, and it's interesting when people do our training. Uh, we just started our new training, it goes on for about 18 months, so we do one every two years. But people, they what they notice first is they transform themselves through these methods, and they're shocked at how effective it is. You know, you've been going to therapy talking about blah blah blah, and then you come and you just do a clearing and suddenly it's gone, and there's a sense of peace and calm. So, people through their own transformation, because when we when we train people in this, we train them through experientially practicing the methods on themselves. So, once you've experienced it for yourself, it's very easy to be very enthusiastic about it, and you know, clients love it, um, because it brings peace and calm to the body and the mind and the spirit and the soul, really. Sounds a bit too good to be true, really, doesn't it?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 14:56

It does. Thinking about, you know, what I mean, what you're doing essentially, you are running different businesses, you're obviously seeing clients, you have a training thing, you've got the book. Um, what's working really well from you? What's working really well in those um arenas at the moment for you?

Ruthie Smith: 15:16

Well, I love the energy psychotherapy training program that we run just because uh I love it all actually. I mean, I just love that field. So, in a way, there's not much difference between the book, the training, or my work. They're all they're all interconnected. So um I think one of the things that I love about it is that this work brings joy because when we're working in a vibrational paradigm, and that's really when we talk about psychotherapy in a new paradigm, we're talking about a shift to working with resonance. And I mean, resonance has been used for years, you know, they use laser surgery, and I mean you all know that from being a doctor about how much um resonance is used in the medical field, has been for years, infrared and so on. We're just really working with the same thing, but psychologically, and what I love about it is it brings joy to people because when we release the heavy energies of shame and guilt and all those horrible fear, anger from trauma, it makes space in the body for light, things like love and peace and joy, compassion. So it's just really lovely work to do because we're constantly working with raising other people's vibrations and in the in the process our own, if that makes sense.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 16:44

You know, it does total sense, total sense.

Ruthie Smith: 16:46

I mean, guilt resonates at 20, whereas enlightenment is at a thousand and love is at 500. So if you could help raise somebody from being 20 to 500, they're going to feel a lot better. And peace is 600, is even higher than love. And what most people say when they've done a session, they say, Oh, I feel much peaceful and lighter now. That that's such a common thing that people say. I feel peaceful and lighter. And really, what the work is doing is releasing these dense frequencies and allowing the body to be filled with light. Um, so it really is a new paradigm of vibration and frequencies. And although it sounds a bit weird and wonderful, the reality of it is that it's actually very ordinary. It's not kind of woo-woo or spooky, it's just very grounded, very simple. The methods are really simple, and clients can use them for themselves and between sessions. So I'm sure you know lots of the people watching this who are counselors and therapists will know that affect regulation and people being dysregulated is a huge issue for many clients. But these we teach these methods to clients as self-help tools, and then they can learn to calm themselves down, which is it's also very empowering for clients. Um, so we get rid of this thing about doctor knows best on a higher level and the clients at a lower level, it's much more egalitarian, if that makes sense.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 18:21

It does. Um, how do you market this? I mean, or do perhaps you don't even need to, because I think you mentioned you kind of call it a body thing rather than an energy thing. But I just wonder how you put out there to clients that might be coming to you what it is that you do, or like I said, is that not really something that you have to do in a marketing sense?

Ruthie Smith: 18:39

Um, well, I think we use uh social media, we we tend to think that word of mouth and experience is the best marketing. So a lot of the marketing we do is by holding small workshops where people can have a taster and experience it. And once they've got it, it's like, yes, I want some of that, please. But um, I have to say, marketing isn't my fault. Maybe doing a podcast like this might help. Um, you know, so doing the odd podcast, and uh I I think we're just putting it out there and it's becoming much more widely recognised. I think largely because EFT is so popular.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 19:26

And on the other side, what's um the most frustrating or challenging things in bringing this work forward?

Ruthie Smith: 19:34

Well, I think people's skepticism, people's worry, a lot of people are very worried about the rules, and they've been trained in particular ways, and you know, we we we work outside the box, if you like, and actually um the work is very clinically well researched, but the way I would explain it to people to make them feel they would they need to feel safe about doing the work, really, and so I just use words like stress-relieving exercises rather than energy psychotherapy. You know, let's just do some stress-relieving exercises. In terms of my own personal thing, I I have a um at the end of my um when I have a new client, I've just got a little piece that says I work with as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and also I use energy. Um, no, I don't use the word energy, I say I use stress-relieving methods that work with the body and somatic experience, which is what so many therapists use these days. So it's it's sort of getting easier, I think, to market it. Thanks. It's not such a wide gap as it used to be. It used to be a huge gap, but I think so many people understand the importance of somatic work and the work with the body.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 21:02

If you had a magic wand, then you could fix one thing in your work or the wider psychotherapy world. Uh, what would that be?

Ruthie Smith: 21:10

Oh, I think it would be about training, the training of psychotherapists and counsellors uh would be to sort of try to widen their brief because I think that the trainings are quite limited in terms of understanding about the new things that are going on in the world. And I think they need the trainings need to keep up with the times, really. So if I had a magic wand, it would be to transform the curriculums on the training programs of all therapies, really, or most of them. Does that make sense?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 21:48

No, it does, absolutely. Thank you.

Ruthie Smith: 21:51

Yeah.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 21:51

And if you were starting the Flame Center again tomorrow with everything that you know, would you do anything differently?

Ruthie Smith: 21:59

Um probably, but I'm not quite sure what. I think um the what the landscape today has changed so much because since COVID, really. And so so many people work online. And one of the fantastic things about this work is we can do it really easily online, and so our whole training program's online. So I think there's something about working online, although you know it's a blessing and a curse, isn't it? It's just so wonderful that we can access anybody in the world. Um I think it it limits our personal interactions in a one-to-one body-to-bodies in a room. But at the same time, it makes things much more accessible. So I'm sorry I can't think of anything I'd do differently, really. I'm sure there are loads of things I should have done differently.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 23:00

Thank you for that perspective. And if you, I mean, podcasts are a strange beast, and you never know how many people are going to be listening to this one. Hopefully, we'll get your message out there and we'll extend your reach. If that resulted in a sudden influx of new practitioners or clients wanting to work with you, uh, what part of the system would be under the most strain? And hopefully it's not you.

Ruthie Smith: 23:22

Well, um, because we've got an uh expanding network of energy psychotherapists, we have got a large referral network. So uh, and I do work uh with a colleague where we work with referrals and work out where to send people. So I mean, if it were, I think it would be fine. I mean, people are always looking for clients, and um yeah. I I mean I wouldn't see them all myself, that's for sure. I'm happy to take on clients as and when I have spaces, and um, I have a good referral network when when I don't.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 24:03

Thank you. And think about the future. What would you like to see happen in the next six to twelve months for you, your work, and the flame center?

Ruthie Smith: 24:12

Well, I'd love to see energy psychotherapy uh expanding more. I'd love to see I'm writing a second book and I'd really like time to write my book. Well, that's I'd like more time for me, really, because there's lots of things I want to do. I'm also a musician and I love playing music, and I'd like more time to play music. Uh so what would I like? I'd like more time to do more of the things that I love, but I do love my work, and uh the people I work with are fabulous, they're really a great team. So we work very much as a collective. No, it's um really some beautiful people who are uh spearheading this, and we're all kind of carrying it forward together. So I feel very blessed and lucky to be working with such a good team.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 25:02

You mentioned about your book, you're wanting to you're writing a second book or wanting to write a second book. Could you perhaps tell us a little bit about the first one for those who are listening who might be interested in reading it?

Ruthie Smith: 25:12

Yes, well, well, there it is. I don't does that come back back to front, or can you see?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 25:18

I don't know how that looks like we're good. That's perfect. It's it's the right way. It's all good.

Ruthie Smith: 25:21

So that's that's that's the book, Energy, Soul Connecting and Awakening Consciousness, Psychotherapy in a New Paradigm. It came out uh last year, 2024, with by Karnak, and it's divided into two sections. So the first section is really all about um the new paradigm. It it talks about subtle energy, how everything's energy, the quantum field, awakening, uh, how to practice energy psychotherapy, just the whole thing, and also a map, a psychological map, because I think one of the things about the work is that we need to understand when we're working with people where to pitch the work. And one of the fantastic things about energy work is that we can clear, uh, we can work at all levels. The second part of the book, which is probably of particular interest to your audience, is the the practice, which has got a whole energy psychotherapy toolkit. So I'm looking at my so the contents we've got the preliminary, so the energy balancing and calming the nervous system, teaching energy testing, so we guide the work with kinesiology. Uh, then the clearing resistance, which I talked about before. We've got meridian work, tapping, we've got the waterfall of light, chakra clearing, working with core beliefs, and there are fabulous ways of helping to transform. I mean, CBT is really helpful with that, but this is energetic, it's like a kind of energetic CBT, so it's coming from the heart rather than the mind, so it's more powerful, really. Uh, then there's in the next bit of the book, it talks about working from the heart, and how, in order not to take on the illness of our clients, we need really good energy boundaries, and so from that perspective, we work from our hearts on presence rather than being overly empathic. Because if you're too empathic, you actually go into the client's energy field and absorb their trauma. So we teach people how to be compassionate but not taking on the client's trauma, which is really important part of self-care, I think, because a lot of therapists get burnt out. So there are methods there that people can learn how not to get burnt out, and we we see that therapist self-care is very important. There's it talks about the subtle energy systems, the meridian chakras, thought fields, and the DNA, how our DNA is um evolving at the moment. Then we talk about all the usual things with trauma, about trauma and the vagus nerve, and you know, all that sort of stuff, which is basic fundamental core principles of working with trauma. So it's not all about energy therapy, it's also about how working psychotherapeutically with trauma in a safe way. And then we talk about the multidimensional clinical terrain, and this is really what we teach on our therapeutic training, all of all the contents in this book. But this is like a toolkit with all the protocols and practices of how to do it, so somebody can buy it and just actually follow it and learn how to do it. So we talk about working with pre-verbal trauma because we can we can clear trauma from the womb and the unconscious core beliefs that derive from being in the womb. Because obviously, if you if you're born with with a mother who sort of wants to abort you, and then you survive, but actually, I'm working with a client at the moment who's just you know, we're we're clearing that trauma, then we work with relational and attachment trauma. So that's obviously really important for people that have had complex trauma who've often had very severe relational difficulties, and so we also work with complex trauma and PTSD, and traumatic methods can exacerbate. I mean, trauma can exacerbate, so we have methods that calm and don't exacerbate the trauma, so there are methods for that. Then working with parts, so shadow material, working with archetypes, parts work is really important, especially child parts, because often someone is stuck in a trauma when they were three, and although they're a grown adult, they're kind of being driven by that unresolved trauma. Then we've got something called deep releasing deep reversals, and it's really fascinating. I was working with one woman who'd had a very Major road accident when she was five, and she'd nearly died. She's had about 20 operations since, and her body thought she was dead, and that's what we would call a major reversal. So she really struggled to move forward in her life, and you can use energy muscle testing to check, and we found that her body thought she was still dead, so we can clear that, and then she suddenly woke up and said, Oh, I feel like I'm properly connected up now. So it's like connecting parts back together, integrating the parts. And then I suppose the other thing which is more um working with Maltin, but you know, the sort of trauma that people might come when they've had kundalini awakenings or they've been on some ayahuasca retreat and they've sort of had a transperson experience and they haven't managed to ground, you know, we do a lot of work with helping to bring people back into their bodies and to so all that stuff's in the book, really.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 31:01

So very, very practical and very comprehensive from what you're saying.

Ruthie Smith: 31:05

Yes, yes, it does cover a quite a big field.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 31:08

Well, we will put details of your book on the bio page of the podcast. Um, and then finally, um, for practitioners listening who are curious about integrating energy approaches, where would you suggest they begin? I guess they need to read the book and come on one of your trainings, but is there anything else you might suggest as well?

Ruthie Smith: 31:24

Yes, well, I think that if somebody wants to get started, they could do a basic, um, we although we teach acupoint tapping, but they could start with a basic EFT training, uh, which would get them using energy work and trying it out. Because I think getting familiar with how it works is really helpful. Um, so I would say yes, read the book, um, and also go maybe maybe try it out, go to see an energy therapist and have an experience for yourself to see whether it's for you, you know. Um, and uh so what's that? Reading the book, doing I mean, come on, do our training. The next one doesn't start until September 27. But in the meantime, you could do a sort of basic EFT training and start to integrate it. And then when you kind of get it and think, oh wow, this is really helpful. Then if they wanted to come and do the depth training, which is only for fully qualified um counsellor therapists and psychiatrists and psychologists, we we only train all people who are already fully qualified because we feel that safety is really important that people can hold and contain, and they've learned the basics of holding and containment. Because when you're working with trauma, safety is the sort of absolute priority.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 32:49

Of course. On that note, uh Ruthie, thank you so much for your time this afternoon. Really interesting to hear about your work, your approach, your philosophy, um, and all the wonderful work you do, and also the training that you're doing, sort of bringing other people into this world of yours. Uh, really fascinating. So, thank you so much.

Ruthie Smith: 33:04

Oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much for inviting me. I really, really appreciate it. And uh enjoy energy work, people. Really invite you to try it out.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 33:15

Thank you.