Do your personal belief systems get challenged?

There are times when working with personal development techniques leads one down a path that challenges one's beliefs.

I did a double take today when I read in the August/November edition of South West Connection (a magazine that dedicates itself to being a guide to personal development and natural therapies), a headline like no other; "Were you traumatized when you were a sperm?".

Just possibly I thought this may be an ironic joke, a gentle micky take on those who take things just a bit too far. It appears I was wrong, apparently Juliet Yelverton of the Healing Waters Sanctuary in Glastonbury really does believe that as a sperm and possibly as an egg you were traumatized and that trauma helps to explain why you might become a drug addict in later life.

Well now, you can we are told, heal the inner egg and calm the traumatized sperm by going to a workshop. Really?

I don't doubt that some people will make changes in their life through others showing them unconditional positive regard (standard Rogerian techniques) in almost any kind of workshop but to ascribe the issues resolved as being associated with the passage of the sperm from ejaculation to egg seems far fetched in the extreme.

It makes me wonder what kind of inner trauma would be associated with the different sexual positions at conception, woman on top...trouble with dealing with female authority, penetration from behind...an inability to look other people in the eye. Please.....

What next? "It's not my fault, my sperm was traumatized."

What does this remind me of? Ah yes the Emperors new clothes.