British therapist begins month-long meditation tour in UAE that reframes fear

Mental health therapist Marisa Peer, founder of Rapid Transformational Therapy and creator of the I Am Enough movement, is in the UAE to conduct workshops of her signature RTT and meditation methods.

RTT combines “neuroscience, neuroplasticity, neuro-linguistic programming, meditation and mindfulness”, says Peer, in order to help people deal with self-esteem issues.

To start her month-long tour of the Emirates, the British therapist is hosting a guided meditation session at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Tuesday. The session is aimed at helping people to identify and create what they really want, which she says often gets lost in translation.

“If you say you want attention or you want to be noticed, you might end up with a nervous twitch. The mind responds to feelings. If a child says: 'I don't want to face an exam', they end up being sick, so they don't have to go to school,” Peer tells The National.

“It is about asking the mind a different question,” she adds, explaining how guided meditation can help people reframe the way they think about their goals and fears.

The session will help people understand what they really need, says Peer, and more importantly, instil in them a sense of responsibility. “It is powerful because you're not relying on someone else to come and make you feel better — you're learning that you have to do it yourself. You have to really understand your needs.”

'Think better thoughts'

The guided meditation will draw from Peer's overarching advocacy: to make people realise their full potential.

Peer, who has worked alongside actress Jane Fonda, says she has noticed a lot of self-esteem issues, especially among young girls especially. “A lot of the girls who were coming to our classes had all kinds of issues, [such as] anorexia [and] bulimia. I started to look for something that would help people with eating disorders and body dysmorphia,” she says.

This pushed Peer to design RTT, which helps people to reframe negative beliefs, thoughts, values and emotions that often hold them back. The trademarked approach is now being used by thousands of therapists across the globe including in the Middle East, says Peer.

RTT also banks on the idea that the brain “moulds itself according to your thoughts. You think of a thought, and your mind starts to try to make that real,” explains Peer.

This is similar to another famous philosophy, the law of attraction, wherein having positive thoughts is believed to attract positive situations in reality.

With RTT, Peer offers a deeper approach to attracting positivity in one's life, with a focus on understanding why people end up with negative beliefs and mindsets in the first place. “The human mind is hard-wired to go off of what it already knows. If you have been criticised your whole life by your parents or peers, that's going to reflect on who you are and how you act,” she says.

The converse is especially true, Peer says, and so, she says: “One of the best things you can do to change your life is make praise familiar and criticism unfamiliar.”

This could be as easy as saying something like “I am smart” or “I am a good person”, she adds. “You get to choose the words you get to use every day, but your body has no choice but to act on the words you say.”

Peer has written six books that discuss her holistic approach in uplifting people's confidence, and helping them cope with a range of mental health issues.

Her latest published work, Tell Yourself a Better Lie, highlights how RTT has helped to create major life transformations for people who struggle with issues such as depression, eating disorders, weight management and addiction.

Dubai workshops

Aside from her World Government Summit talk, Peer will be conducting workshops on her method at Seva Experience in Jumeirah 1. On Thursday, Peer will host a free session dedicated to discussing RTT, at 7pm; while another session at 6.30pm on February 21 will be dedicated to a new programme by Peer, called Dietless Life. The workshop will compress her original 12-week programme, which is meant to help people manage their weight, and “discover the root cause of your unhealthy relationship with food”.

Peer will also be speaking at a Mindvalley event in Dubai, where she will join Mindvalley founder Vishen Lakhiani and other speakers on February 25 and 26 for a weekend dedicated to mental health sessions that encourage personal growth.