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Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within
“Core Transformation is a brilliant book about a brilliant process. It quickly takes you to the core of your being. What a powerful and simple gift! I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to achieve higher states of love, peace and joy!” - Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul Whether we've experienced small setbacks or major traumas, we all have challenges that need healing for us to live our ideal lives. Core Transformation offers a simple process that empowers readers to experience healing and lasting change. Dr. Connirae Andreas, international best-selling author and therapist, goes beyond explaining how our core patterns trap us into feeling acting in ways that don't serve us. With her gentle conversational style, transcripts of real sessions, and detailed examples, she helps you understand the simple technique to improve your relationships, release emotional habits, overcome limitations and excel. Core Transformation has been translated into twelve languages and helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world change their lives. It's helped Change problem emotions and behaviors (such as anger, self-consciousness, procrastination, jealousy, hurt, fear) Lose weight Improve relationships Overcome depression and anxiety Heal addictions Find fulfilling work Improve all aspects of health Create an overall sense of inner peace, wholeness, and well-being and much, much more. You might ask how one technique could be responsible for helping people achieve results in so many different areas of life? Unlike many self-help methods, Core Transformation is not about willpower, or discipline, or positive thinking. It's a simple 10-step process that helps you transform your limitations into strengths and achieve goals you thought unattainable. Read the reviews below from award winners, researchers, academics and best selling authors and take the step that can make the difference.
254 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 1993
323 people are currently reading
555 people want to read
About the author
Connirae Andreas
33 books18 followersConnirae Andreas, PhD is an international leader in the field of personal development of more than four decades. She is best known for her groundbreaking work developing Core Transformation, a method through which our limitations become the doorway to a felt experience many describe "love" "peace" "presence" or "oneness." Through the steps of the process, this felt experience offers a profound healing resolving many limiting emotions and behaviors. Connirae's new Wholeness Work offers a precise way to experience "dissolving the ego" in a way that resolves our life issues and goes even further in a gentle yet systematic process of evolving or awakening. Her work is strongly influenced by her personal experience with the late Dr. Milton H. Erickson, and has been translated into over 15 languages.
Connirae is the author or co-author of many books and Trainer manuals in personal development and transformation, including Heart of the Mind, Change Your Mind--and Keep the Change (co-authored with husband Steve Andreas), and Core Transformation: reaching the Wellspring Within (co-authored with Tamara Andreas), and Coming to Wholeness: how to Awaken and Live with Ease. To support quality trainings becoming more widely available, she has developed in-depth Trainer Materials for key trainings, including Core Transformation and the new Wholeness Work. Before her work developing Core Transformation and Wholeness Work, Connirae was a developer in the field of NLP, her work including innovations in language patterns and conversational change, contributions to positive parenting methods, to natural self-healing, and (with Steve Andreas) developing effective change protocols for resolving grief, for tapping into how we unconsciously code the experience of time, and more. The Andreases authored manuals for teaching in-depth Practitioner and Master Practitioner NLP programs oriented towards coaching and personal transformation.
Connirae lives in Boulder, Colorado, and enjoys visits with her grandchildren.
Connirae is the author or co-author of many books and Trainer manuals in personal development and transformation, including Heart of the Mind, Change Your Mind--and Keep the Change (co-authored with husband Steve Andreas), and Core Transformation: reaching the Wellspring Within (co-authored with Tamara Andreas), and Coming to Wholeness: how to Awaken and Live with Ease. To support quality trainings becoming more widely available, she has developed in-depth Trainer Materials for key trainings, including Core Transformation and the new Wholeness Work. Before her work developing Core Transformation and Wholeness Work, Connirae was a developer in the field of NLP, her work including innovations in language patterns and conversational change, contributions to positive parenting methods, to natural self-healing, and (with Steve Andreas) developing effective change protocols for resolving grief, for tapping into how we unconsciously code the experience of time, and more. The Andreases authored manuals for teaching in-depth Practitioner and Master Practitioner NLP programs oriented towards coaching and personal transformation.
Connirae lives in Boulder, Colorado, and enjoys visits with her grandchildren.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 1, 2017
I would give this book six stars if I could. The cover and name initially set off lots of "pseudoscience nonsense" warning bells in my head, but the technique was similar enough to Gendlin's Focusing to make it seem worth a try. After I did start using it regularly... well, I can only say "wow": I've made more progress on various emotional issues in a matter of months than I'd made on them in last several decades.
(I expect to edit this review to contain more detail once I've written up more about my experience.)
(I expect to edit this review to contain more detail once I've written up more about my experience.)
September 18, 2021
Great, other than the hints of pseudoscience
It's a great technique, kind of like a less needlessly complicated version (at least for me) of IFS and more transformative than Gendlins focusing.
Quite unfortunately, the authors' ties to NLP pseudoscience tarnish an otherwise useful practice. I did not feel they were clear enough in indicating that this practice is no substitute for actual professional medical help. They were rather soft spoken about this issue, as if they really wanted the reader to come away with the impression that the technique cures illness, but weren't allowed to outright say it.
When they mention using this technique for illness, especially discussing cases where the technique has not cured the illness, some of the passages do not sit right with me. Furthermore, statements indicating basic flaws of rationality like, even trivial errors such as selection bias ("many people have cured their illness using this method") leave me questioning whether the author's biases might have affected the quality of their creation.
I will probably still be using this technique as my go to "parts work" tool, but I really dislike the propagation of anything that even smells remotely like science denialism, especially in a time where it is so rampant where I live. Even buddhist teachings are very strong spoken and clear about not using it as a substitute for actual medical expertise. I expect a far greater standard of caution towards these matters than what was done in this book.
As a more general point, It's really disappointing how this crap always seems to crop up in "woo adjacent" topics which could potentially be beneficial, when it entirely doesn't need to be, and actively harms people due to the inclusion and overselling of this stuff.
It's a great technique, kind of like a less needlessly complicated version (at least for me) of IFS and more transformative than Gendlins focusing.
Quite unfortunately, the authors' ties to NLP pseudoscience tarnish an otherwise useful practice. I did not feel they were clear enough in indicating that this practice is no substitute for actual professional medical help. They were rather soft spoken about this issue, as if they really wanted the reader to come away with the impression that the technique cures illness, but weren't allowed to outright say it.
When they mention using this technique for illness, especially discussing cases where the technique has not cured the illness, some of the passages do not sit right with me. Furthermore, statements indicating basic flaws of rationality like, even trivial errors such as selection bias ("many people have cured their illness using this method") leave me questioning whether the author's biases might have affected the quality of their creation.
I will probably still be using this technique as my go to "parts work" tool, but I really dislike the propagation of anything that even smells remotely like science denialism, especially in a time where it is so rampant where I live. Even buddhist teachings are very strong spoken and clear about not using it as a substitute for actual medical expertise. I expect a far greater standard of caution towards these matters than what was done in this book.
As a more general point, It's really disappointing how this crap always seems to crop up in "woo adjacent" topics which could potentially be beneficial, when it entirely doesn't need to be, and actively harms people due to the inclusion and overselling of this stuff.
December 26, 2018
A very practical guide for a very specific process. I'm currently reading a few different books around this whole area of integration and improving body sense, and it's not hard to take the information in here and run with it.
That said, as someone who hasn't actually run through the process yet, I'm skeptical that every problem you have is really just an expression of desire for one of a few "core states" (Inner Peace, Oneness, etc.). I also have difficulty accepting that it's as easy to achieve these states as they make it sound. If these were readily available to us, it's unclear why our subconscious would have abandoned them in response to stress or trauma, as they seem like the exact thing we would need in those moments...
My assumption is that these states are very useful mental tools in certain circumstances, but can be very dangerous if embraced 100% of the time. I want the ability to access them again, but I doubt that's really all I want, as this book seems to imply.
That said, as someone who hasn't actually run through the process yet, I'm skeptical that every problem you have is really just an expression of desire for one of a few "core states" (Inner Peace, Oneness, etc.). I also have difficulty accepting that it's as easy to achieve these states as they make it sound. If these were readily available to us, it's unclear why our subconscious would have abandoned them in response to stress or trauma, as they seem like the exact thing we would need in those moments...
My assumption is that these states are very useful mental tools in certain circumstances, but can be very dangerous if embraced 100% of the time. I want the ability to access them again, but I doubt that's really all I want, as this book seems to imply.
April 11, 2021
I read the book & took the workshop...worked on procrastination for 25 minutes...worked on "biting my fingernails" for 20 minutes.... noticed a difference the next day....Now 31 days later I am still not biting my fingernails...did that for 55 yrs... Also no longer procrastinating.. .Its so easy ..simple... fast
March 25, 2024
The first half of this book gives clear instructions for a way to deepen your understanding of yourself. It's compassionate and can lead to profound insight. The method isn't terribly difficult or hard to explain, but I found it transformative to look at my needs and desires from a place of compassion and love rather than self-coercion.
April 28, 2013
Excellent resource for practitioners and general readers; mercifully free of the verbiage of some NLP texts. Clean, elegant techniques for resolving inner conflict, without getting into pointless intellectualising.
July 1, 2021
Completely doing the core timeline for my DNA !!
November 19, 2020
Core Transformations is an amazing technique, that can help with a lot of issues that linger for a long period of time. The book is as if you are attending a training with many details describing the process with all its parts. What I didn't like about the book is its messy structure, that it contained a lot of repetition, and some of the client stories were a bit content dense that I would've preferred seeing in a Youtube video than reading page after page about the details of the problems that did not always add value to the process. It kind of felt like the point was emphasizing that CT is really impactful, it is but when 20 people say the same stuff over and over it gets boring.
A good resource for mental health practitioners. Skim through the stories and enjoy the rest.
A good resource for mental health practitioners. Skim through the stories and enjoy the rest.
April 10, 2018
This book describes an interesting and potentially useful set of techniques for self-help. Unfortunately, it's also entirely bereft of any scientific investigation of the phenomena behind the technique. Also, the style is uneven, which makes it occasionally jarring to read. Not, in general, recommended.
September 28, 2024
Uno de los mejores libros de Programación Neurolingüística que conozco. El libro entero abunda sobre una técnica "la transformación esencial" y va hasta el corazón del supuesto "detrás de toda conducta hay una intención positiva"
Es un libro hermoso y lleno de magia.
Es un libro hermoso y lleno de magia.
April 28, 2019
second half not totally necessary, first half life changing.
October 6, 2020
A magnificent book, full of insights and practical steps towards the implementation of this technique. A must read if you are in business of helping people.
October 9, 2021
Written by masters. For practitioners.
November 27, 2025
Very powerful book - it works.
December 25, 2010
The Junk Psych Reviews #1:
Core Transformation by Connirae Andreas with Tamara Andreas
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING REVIEW IS ENTIRELY BASED ON THE REVIEWER'S PERSONAL RESPONSES TO THE BOOK REVIEWED. NO ATOM OF IMPARTIALITY HAS BEEN ATTEMPTED.
IT'S refreshing to read, for once, a self-help book not written by people flaunting their Dr. titles (usually in a different field than the subject of their books); it's not refreshing to encounter the same abuse of psychological terms or the offering of willy-nilly hodgepodge of formulas as we find from the so-called Doctors. On the very first page of the first chapter 'THE JOURNEY BEGINS', the authors berate two approaches of getting to 'a restaurant with wonderful food': the first approach encourages the readers to 'just visualize the restaurant clearly... that's all you need to do', which 'seem(s) silly' to our authors, while the second deems necessary 'years (of) thinking about how bad your own cooking is... how you became such a bad cook', which 'seems even sillier'. After drawing the line so clearly, the authors propose their very own and unique approach, which turns out to be a rather uncanny combination of the two they just set out as shooting targets: FIRST, you need to engage with your 'unconsciousness' (the authors' definition of this key term is rather different from the Freudian concept; in defining it as simply the collection of what you are not consciously aware of at any given moment and hence changing drastically from one moment to the next, it has become the polar opposite of what Freud once proposed as 'the timeless, eternal darkness that never changes') in order to isolate the parts guilty for producing the bad cooking (your unwanted emotional responses; without the painful and time-consuming process of Freudian psychoanalytical methods, of course) through a light-hearted conversation with such parts blessed with continuous positive reinforcement (keep thanking your parts for any response you get); THEN, you CLAIM the ultimate 'core states' of 'beingness', 'inner peace', or even 'okness' by simply PROCLAIMing 'I'm here already!' -- the power of words has taken the place of the power of visualization, it seems. But is that really 'all you need to do', we ask? The authors seem to think so. In a book that could have ended after the first two facing and opposite pages -- one pointing out the impotency of the two current ways of curing, another the promised potency of the new cure that is simply a mechanical combination of the two impotent cures just and justly judged -- the authors spend the remaining 238 pages expounding and pounding those two pages into us, so that at last we can all see the 'liquid light'. It's uncertain exactly how such states of blessedness, of 'liquid light', differ from what is induced by the quick fixes and drugs the authors rightfully warned us against at the very beginning. Yet, on second thought, the Drug of Core Transformation is probably cheaper -- especially if you get the book from a library and you haven't become the neophyte junkie of the new religion yet -- and possibly safer than a lot others, and in that light, the book is getting two stars instead of one.
Recommendation Level: on par with any poetry book written by Virginia Hamilton Adair.
Core Transformation by Connirae Andreas with Tamara Andreas
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING REVIEW IS ENTIRELY BASED ON THE REVIEWER'S PERSONAL RESPONSES TO THE BOOK REVIEWED. NO ATOM OF IMPARTIALITY HAS BEEN ATTEMPTED.
IT'S refreshing to read, for once, a self-help book not written by people flaunting their Dr. titles (usually in a different field than the subject of their books); it's not refreshing to encounter the same abuse of psychological terms or the offering of willy-nilly hodgepodge of formulas as we find from the so-called Doctors. On the very first page of the first chapter 'THE JOURNEY BEGINS', the authors berate two approaches of getting to 'a restaurant with wonderful food': the first approach encourages the readers to 'just visualize the restaurant clearly... that's all you need to do', which 'seem(s) silly' to our authors, while the second deems necessary 'years (of) thinking about how bad your own cooking is... how you became such a bad cook', which 'seems even sillier'. After drawing the line so clearly, the authors propose their very own and unique approach, which turns out to be a rather uncanny combination of the two they just set out as shooting targets: FIRST, you need to engage with your 'unconsciousness' (the authors' definition of this key term is rather different from the Freudian concept; in defining it as simply the collection of what you are not consciously aware of at any given moment and hence changing drastically from one moment to the next, it has become the polar opposite of what Freud once proposed as 'the timeless, eternal darkness that never changes') in order to isolate the parts guilty for producing the bad cooking (your unwanted emotional responses; without the painful and time-consuming process of Freudian psychoanalytical methods, of course) through a light-hearted conversation with such parts blessed with continuous positive reinforcement (keep thanking your parts for any response you get); THEN, you CLAIM the ultimate 'core states' of 'beingness', 'inner peace', or even 'okness' by simply PROCLAIMing 'I'm here already!' -- the power of words has taken the place of the power of visualization, it seems. But is that really 'all you need to do', we ask? The authors seem to think so. In a book that could have ended after the first two facing and opposite pages -- one pointing out the impotency of the two current ways of curing, another the promised potency of the new cure that is simply a mechanical combination of the two impotent cures just and justly judged -- the authors spend the remaining 238 pages expounding and pounding those two pages into us, so that at last we can all see the 'liquid light'. It's uncertain exactly how such states of blessedness, of 'liquid light', differ from what is induced by the quick fixes and drugs the authors rightfully warned us against at the very beginning. Yet, on second thought, the Drug of Core Transformation is probably cheaper -- especially if you get the book from a library and you haven't become the neophyte junkie of the new religion yet -- and possibly safer than a lot others, and in that light, the book is getting two stars instead of one.
Recommendation Level: on par with any poetry book written by Virginia Hamilton Adair.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2014
I learned this process first in my coach training with Erickson College.
This book helped me get a much deeper understanding of this process and allowed me to practice it thoroughly.
The process itself is profound and leads to impressive changes especially where many other methods have failed to make a difference before - generally because this means we know how to get past whatever it is we want to change, but a part of our unconscious is "stuck". This process pulls a judo trick, by stopping the fight with the stuckness, and embracing it instead. That doesn't make much sense written in one sentence, so you'll have to read the book to figure out how that works.
If you are a coach, this book is a must-read.
This book helped me get a much deeper understanding of this process and allowed me to practice it thoroughly.
The process itself is profound and leads to impressive changes especially where many other methods have failed to make a difference before - generally because this means we know how to get past whatever it is we want to change, but a part of our unconscious is "stuck". This process pulls a judo trick, by stopping the fight with the stuckness, and embracing it instead. That doesn't make much sense written in one sentence, so you'll have to read the book to figure out how that works.
If you are a coach, this book is a must-read.
February 8, 2015
Overall: Good book - good method.
BUT...
It was a little confusing (in spite of trying to do the opposite), and repetitive, and it was difficult to follow the logic of the structure of the book (for me anyhow), because it seemed too similar to be set apart in different chapters and yet it wasn't differentiated enough to make sense that it didn't go together and was seemingly a repetition.
But I liked the examples, the method and the message - just really didn't like, or get, the structure.
BUT...
It was a little confusing (in spite of trying to do the opposite), and repetitive, and it was difficult to follow the logic of the structure of the book (for me anyhow), because it seemed too similar to be set apart in different chapters and yet it wasn't differentiated enough to make sense that it didn't go together and was seemingly a repetition.
But I liked the examples, the method and the message - just really didn't like, or get, the structure.
March 21, 2008
A great book to start un-weaving deeper issues for reasons we hold ourselves back- or cannot progress in certain aspects of ourselves. It is, in my opinion a bit slower than a few other techniques, but perfect for a beginner into self healing with energy work. And in shortened versions, an undeniable way to quickly 'discover' a clients, or our own, hidden psyche.
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September 12, 2013danny raede from aspergers experts rec. his favorite book to recommend
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews