Avatar gives adults and children tools to connect with their deepest longings and highest ideals, and bring those aspirations into being. I have guided people from all walks of life through the Avatar Course, from a five-year-old to a retired scientist in her 80s, all of whom found great benefits. While I continue to work with many people, I have a special place in my heart for physicians, parents, and families who come to the Avatar Course.
AVATAR EMPOWERS PHYSICIANS TO STAY OPEN-HEARTED AND CLEAR-HEADED.
PHYSICIANS
As a medical educator, I am well aware of the emphasis that physicians’ training places on developing the mind: building knowledge and the ability to think. While medical schools also teach communication, professionalism and humanism, the mental training necessary to practice competent biological medicine often dampens down the compassion that drew a physician to the profession in the first place. With Avatar, people learn to stay open-hearted and clear-headed, with an attitude of equanimity, no matter the circumstances.
I've worked with many physicians who appreciate how Avatar tools help them bring the heart back into their medical practice. When physicians integrate head and heart, they are empowered to foster a more effective healing doctor-patient relationship, what Dr. Abraham Verghese calls “the superpower of being a great clinician.” Patients thrive within such a healing relationship, able to make the most of modern medical technology and treatment. When physicians align their powerful mental capability and training with their heartfelt good intentions, they feel more whole and satisfied as well.
Sometimes a physician's comfort is as powerful as the medicine he prescribes.
Harry Palmer, ReSurfacing
AVATAR EMPOWERS PARENTS TO BE STRONG, CONNECTED AND FLEXIBLE.
PARENTS
The parent-child relationship, often conceived from the depths of love, can produce some of the most anguish a human can feel. How such a small being can stir up such big feelings of frustration and inadequacy baffles many of us. Parents, including myself, find the Avatar tools to be of singular value because they reveal where these reactions come from and what to do about them.
When our children push our buttons, they are triggering beliefs from our own childhoods that booby trap our relationships. We feel powerless to change these incendiary beliefs, or rarely even see them in full light. Through Avatar belief management strategies, parents can find and revise these beliefs to serve the conscious good intentions we have now. With the minefield cleared, we may stay open-hearted and open-minded with our children -- or at least to be able to return to this state much more quickly than ever before.
Love is the willingness to create space in which something is allowed to change.
Harry Palmer, ReSurfacing
AVATAR EMPOWERS FAMILIES TO CREATE THE PERFECT LIFE FOR THEM.
FAMILIES
Families pass traditions from one generation to the next, for better or worse. Sometimes we find ourselves living more of our parents’ or grandparents’ lives than we would prefer. Avatar gives families the power to choose which traditions to keep, and which to change. They design their own family life, according to what suits them best. In addition, Avatar prepares families to meet life’s inevitable challenges. The family is empowered to chart their own course, and handle any obstacle in their way. As a result, children are imbued with a sense of self-efficacy and self-direction.
My wife, son, daughter, and I are all Avatar Wizards. We still have rough spots in our family life. But any of us can suggest that we use a tool to return to a more harmonious alignment. Serious situations don’t have the power to intimidate us that they did. We have moved through major family situations, like my life-threatening cancer, and a 6-month’s long family separation during the international adoption of our daughter. Avatar helps us handle more routine but still scary and upsetting situations, like broken bones, conflicts with friends, and disagreements on how we run the house. Our children are confident in their ability to meet whatever life brings them. My wife and I have gone from creating a better world for our children, to creating a better world with our children.
One of the goals of Avatar is to make people more aware, to remind them that their highest nature is nonviolent, and to increase the amount of compassion and cooperation on the planet... The hope of future generations is that we awaken a consciousness that is increasingly immune to irrationality and that values wisdom.
Harry Palmer, The Avatar Path: The Way We Came