New Hoffman Book Published by Bantam
An interview with Tim Laurence
by Raz Ingrasci, President (Edited
by Shawn McAndrew)
 "The
Hoffman Process: The World-Famous Technique that Empowers You to
Forgive Your Past, Heal Your Present, and Transform Your Future,"
by Tim Laurence, has just been released and is available in bookstores
and from Amazon.com.
It may also be purchased for $13.00 (plus $3.00 shipping and handling)
from the Hoffman Institute (800/506-5253). Tim Laurence is the founder
of the Hoffman Institute in the UK, which has experienced strong
growth in England, Ireland, Scotland, and South Africa.
Raz Ingrasci: What motivated you to write
this book?
Tim Laurence: I wanted to introduce the
Process to a wider audience. I felt it is an important way to reach
people who, for whatever reason, weren't thinking of taking a week
out of their lives to do our actual intensive course. For example,
a person who has done the Process and loved it but thought "that
kind of thing is definitely not for my husband;" or a woman
whose family commitments leave her very little time to take a week
out; or people who are frightened of being out of their own environment.
I just felt that a book could reach many more people than we can
through graduates.
RI: A book is valuable in its own right
to introduce new ideas.
TL: Yes, I think many of us started off
our own search because we found a book at a bookstore or on a friend's
coffee table. We started inquiring into how our personalities work
and why we react in self defeating ways. With time, by ourselves,
we could start chewing over these questions. There hasn't been a
widely available book since Bob Hoffman's 1977 book "No One
Is To Blame" for people to read about the Process. So, I thought,
what more natural thing than to have a book out in the world.
Somehow the Hoffman Process is quite a personal thing and people
hear about it through word of mouth. People hear about it through
a friend, a relative, from their husband, their wife; somebody has
done it and told them about it. A book can act in very different
ways, and it is making an impact in England.
RI: The Process is a unique way for people
to change, and it produces results. What has been the response to
the book in England?
TL: It was published a year ago in the
UK. I was very pleasantly surprised actually. For awhile it was
on the best seller list of Borders along with Eckhart Tolle's "The
Power of Now" and Byron Katie's book "Loving What Is."
I think what people like about the book and what has obviously
had a profound effect on many people is that I had to make it very
simple. The press loved it. They did lots of human-interest stories
about various people who had done the Process, including Ruthie
Henshall, an English actress who was on Broadway doing Chicago.
Ruthie did the Process in America. She spoke very personally about
her story and said that the Hoffman Process had really been her
salvation. Now she is married and has a child. Before, she had a
terrible fear of intimacy and relationships. Many stories were done
about the book and the Process in the national press. They did a
reprint in a smaller paperback and still, a year later, it's in
every bookstore in the country.
RI: What are the press interested in
writing about?
TL: It's in two broad areas. One is the
empowerment of women after divorce or being frightened of relationships.
The other is making men more sensitive and allowing them to get
their values very straight: the old story about financial worth
or self worth. They're also relating it to downsizing or taking
time off from such a busy, hectic world.
So I talk about the Ruthie Henshall story. She was stuck in a rut
while being incredibly successful. As you know, many of our graduates
have achieved a lot in their lives. So there she was, about to step
out on Broadway, and thinking, "What is my life for, what am
I about, and why am I feeling very low?" So there's that element.
Then there was a story about a well-known politician who got over
his ongoing depression and he said that the Process gave him a much
bigger sense of himself. He said he would never, ever forget that.
Going back to the empowerment of women, quite regularly women's
monthly magazines ask us to put together a story about graduates
who've got over a divorce, or got over a difficult time in their
relationship, or about going back into a career track. Then they
cross-relate it to the family history.
They're interested in that because it allows them to do a feature
about the steps of the Process. I don't talk about all the steps.
I break it down into four bite-size chunks:
- Awareness - recognizing where your life is and what's keeping
you stuck;
- Expression;
- Forgiveness; and
- New behavior.
We boiled it down to two main themes really. Recognizing what's
going on and finding ways of new behavior and then in the middle
we put in the expression and forgiveness. That's the very core of
it and depending on if they've got time and interest, we talk about
the spiritual aspect of forgiveness.
The press, with its very short attention span, loves a quick bite,
as it were, so some of them have stories about it as a "psychological
detox."
RI: Have graduates found this a useful
book?
TL: Yes, they have. I've had lots of
graduates say that at last there's something they can give to others
that tells the human story of the Process. It has exercises and
it's so much more personal than a brochure, and it takes the pressure
off of graduates to explain the Process and the depth of their experience.
I think for so many of us it's such a hugely emotional experience
it's quite hard to step back and analyze it. I also found out from
the press it is okay to talk about many aspects of it. Somehow we
think oh, perhaps that would be a bit too much to tell my friend
about. So yes, they've found it very easy and I tried to write it
in very plain English, too, to take a lot of the jargon out that
we've become over-familiar with.
RI: As a result, are more students coming
into the Process?
TL: Let me just say the enrollment of
students in the UK hasn't been a problem since the book. We just
need a lot more teachers. By the way, thanks for sending over so
many of your outstanding U.S. teachers to support us.
Also in the book, there are short exercises that allow people to
see, "Oh, my goodness, yes, I had those kinds of parents, those
kinds of patterns." Or, "Oh, yes, that's where my negative
patterns started and are related very concretely to my work life,
friendships, and relationships."
RI: In the U.S. edition of your book,
the new University of California, Davis research findings are included.
How does this add to the book?
TL: I think they lend enormous extra
strength, real credibility from a scientific angle. Whereas my book,
standing alone, is a self-help book about personal development,
here it is backed up by important research findings.
Say you know somebody, your sister for example, is having a really
hard time in a relationship. Well, for $13 you can give her a book
that helps her start the whole process of awareness, change, and
self discovery; learning about how what she's doing is perhaps partly
her own creation. And the research adds a bit of encouragement,
like telling someone "you're on the right track here."
You have to remember that I had already lived here for 10 years
or so in Northern California before I did the Process. I experienced
it as being the best program I had ever done. I then trained with
Bob Hoffman very closely in California. I worked with him as a teacher
in a Process in England. I often come back here. It's still very
much a spiritual home for me.
My wife Serena just told me the book was purchased by a friend
of mine in the U.S. who came to visit me recently. She was up till
2 in the morning discovering, "Oh, my goodness, this is what
I do and I've been doing it for 20 years." The lights really
went on because the book guided her through a gentle process.
The book is packed with tools, like the elevator, visualizations,
visioning of what you want in your life. It even has the basics
of the dialogue between the Emotional Self and the Intellectual
Self. I designed it while writing the book with a graduate in mind,
who was asking for a tool or technique he could use to get himself
out of a particular internal conflict between his intellect and
emotions.
People ask, "Will I need to do the Process after I've read
the book?" I tell them it's like learning to dive. If you read
the book it's like taking the introductory swim in the pool and
you get a taste of it. But if you want to learn to dive into the
deeper waters you've got to go on a much longer course. So the book
is that introduction to start a process of change and to explain
a process of change.
RI: I appreciate that your book is a
great introduction and it allows people to choose whether they want
to go deeper. It contains several Process tools. Which is your favorite?
TL: The one I use often is visioning.
It is a combination of journaling and visioning. When I wake up
in the morning it's terribly easy for me to sit down and write all
my thoughts and especially my dreams. My vision, what is it that
I want, what is it that I see, comes very organically and has seemed
to help enormously in all aspects of my life, especially the huge
spread of the Process in my native country.
RI: Well, I have found over the years
that my Spirit Guide or my High Spiritual Teacher are sort of like
having Superman in my back pocket. I can always get the advice I
need. Whenever I'm questioning something and I don't know exactly
what I want to do next, or I'm feeling confused, I can call upon
my guides and really find out what the next step is for me in whatever
I'm facing.
Bob Hoffman was actually your teacher when you took the Process.
What was that like for you?
TL: Talk about having a Superman in your
back pocket, it was like having a whirlwind in front of me all the
time. I mean he was a most amazing challenger. I talk about him
a fair bit in the book, especially in the first chapter that relates
my personal story with him. He made me feel fully alive. He challenged
me to come out of my intellect. He provoked me into seeing spirituality
in a new way and he would absolutely not stand for any nonsense.
He was a wonderful, wonderful teacher.
Right after Bob's death in 1997, you (Raz) and I were linked up
again much more closely because a board of directors was created
to keep his work going and growing internationally. We've been on
that board, meeting regularly here in the States, or in Europe,
or in South America, and together, I think, we really have helped
make important decisions for the future of this work.
RI: Yes, over the past seven or eight
years we've seen the Process grow more and more worldwide and we've
worked to achieve even higher standards for the Process. The standardization
of excellence has assumed even more importance because in the past
Bob Hoffman used to travel around the world to ensure quality control.
As the Process has grown, we've grown closer together. It has been
a fantastic experience to have a collegial relationship with some
60 teachers around the world. We are all working for the common
good of making the Process standard and powerful wherever it's being
offered, whether in the U.S., Europe, South America, Australia,
South Africa, or Canada. We know now that everyone everywhere is
getting a uniformly fantastic program.
TL: And it's our job to improve and evolve
the Process while always preserving its essence. We just had a wonderful
International Conference at White Sulphur Springs in May, bringing
all the countries together and really sharing the best from each.
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