Here’s a quick explanation:
1. Get a special book to write in.
2. Make a very extensive lists of every:
- person you’ve ever known
- place you’ve ever been in
- every class at school
- every sport you’ve played
- every event you can remember
etc. The idea is to set up categories that will cover everything that has happened to you - use you imagination here to help.
3. Sit in a quiet place, at a regular time if possible. CC had the idea to sit in a small contained place - Kris Raphael had the excellent idea to get hold of a washing machine cardboard box, and turn it upside down.
4. Choose one item from your list each sitting.
5. Recall every aspect of the event - try to picture small things - clothes, environment features etc, but the point is to relive the emotion.
6. Breathing technique. CC gave opposite info on this - you move your head from left to right, in time with breathing out and in. In the typical American way many people have added emotive or visual aspects to this breathing, which is fine, but personally I’m so engrossed in the memories that I forget all about the breathing movements - they go on automatically. In fact I found I like to do these movements even when I’m not doing recapitulation. As to which side you breath in and which side out - this is where CC changed his info in a later book, by which time I had already set up a physical pattern on his first method. I did change, back and forth, but I’ll leave it to you to find which is best for you.
7. Once you have covered a good part of your lists, you can try the second method - allow your mind to float back in time and find an event that automatically presents itself. Don’t do this at the start though - first stick to the ordered method.
8. Try to avoid highly emotional events at first - the real surprise in all this is how much emotion is hidden in apparently minor insignificant events, and also the real point of all this is when you one day recall a highly emotive event that you had completely forgotten.
Michael Maher 2008
