British-born self-help guru, Michael Rowland, has changed the Duchess of York’s life, she claims.
Fergie’s sister, Jane, sent her Rowland’s book ‘Absolute Happiness’ for her birthday last year. And when Fergie flew to Sydney, where he practises, she went to see him. She was so taken with his wisdom and his teaching that she encouraged him to go back to England where they worked together for weeks at "Kingsbourne", her home near Windsor, and then in the United States.
Fergie says: ‘He has given me peace and growing optimism.’
Michael Rowland moved from London to Australia when he was 18. He worked as a TV director and while he was searching for his own peace of mind, came under the influence of several yogis and a renowned Indian "enlightened being" with whom he spent several months in an ashram. Rowland began writing his own program for inner peace: ‘Absolute Happiness’, has sold more than 50,000 copies. He now runs one of the most successful personal development companies in Australia. He is married to a Chilean, Paulina.
In hours of intense sessions he encouraged Fergie to find and enjoy a fulfilled life; to leave the past behind, particularly the trauma of her divorce; and to free her mind, unlocking her personal power.
‘It does not matter,’ he says in his book, ‘how many material possessions you have, how many sexual encounters you can enjoy, how important you are in your job or peer group. If you don’t feel good then what is it all for? You can,’ he goes on, ‘become the controller of your fate. It doesn’t mean you have to have millions of dollars, or be famous in any special way.’
Fergie emerged from her sessions with Rowland and flew to New York where she said she signed several million-dollar deals. The guru said: ‘I am truly amazed by the radical transformation in the Duchess. I believe she will become a remarkably powerful and successful woman. Some of the deals she has done will make your jaw drop to the floor.’
He instructed her on a fresh fruit and vegetable diet and feeling alive. ‘When you are fully alive you can do almost anything. You find that quite naturally many talents spontaneously arise: creativity, vitality, humour, communication skills, personal power, magnetic attraction, sexual potency, social responsibility and natural love. Sexual attraction is dependent on the power and free flow of the life force through you. It is not so much a thing of looks and clothes, more a function of energy.’
How to feel alive? ‘Take away the trappings of your everyday life, all the involvements you have and all those normal things you do.’ ‘And don’t,’ he warned the lady who has had several "gurus", ‘fall into the therapy trap. This is where you spend several years going over and over an old emotional wound, never letting go of it. It can be very expensive and result in very little growth for you. Go for a clearing - a freeing - of the system.’
Part of Rowland’s technique for becoming "alive" involves a time-consuming "22 x 11" exercise which must be strictly followed if there is to be any success in bringing to the patient’s awareness their core concepts and beliefs. It will, he says, break emotional addictions and re-program the feelings and experiences desired for the future. A goal or desire must be written out as a positive statement, like: "Money now comes to me abundantly in perfect ways." Every day for the following 11 days, the statement has to be written out 22 times, with whatever response that comes into the writer’s head, written immediately below each affirmation.
Performed assiduously, he says, the exercise and the responses provide the key to opening a deeper level of the mind. If a day is missed (because of a Concorde flight to New York or involvement with a "Budgie" contract) they must begin all over again...
He writes on sexuality: ‘The ability to enjoy ever increasing happiness requires a clarity and freedom about sexuality. This does not mean you have to become a sexual explorer, trying out a variety of sexual opportunities. Freeing and directing your sexual energy is the same as freeing your own life force.’ He recommends "rebirthing" or "bioenergetics" with a partner to achieve sexual "ecstasy".
Rowland says feelings and emotions should never be "fixed in cement". People who shrug and say: "That’s how life is" when things disappoint them, or "that’s what I’m like", should dig deep within themselves to see whether change is possible. The fate of those who refuse to do this is, he says, to attract partners who match their parents’ patterns and moods, so they can assist with the recreation of the same atmosphere of their childhood home. ‘Many people swear they will never live as their parents did. Then a decade later, they look around and find they have recreated their own upbringing almost perfectly.’
He urges his patients to remove fear in their lives, whether it is fear of death, a childhood fear of the dark, or of a shadowy lane where a dog once attacked them. ‘Once the healing, harmonising and balancing of your system has taken place..and you have unloaded blocked emotions and incorrect or unnecessary beliefs, the force of evolution can recommence with its main work.’
