Newsletter
August 2006
A Report on the Lindwall Outreach Program in South Africa from Dr. Stephen Marcus and Barbara Kroll

During the February-March 2006 South African Releasing tour with Isa and Yolanda, we began to make contact with people involved in the Forgiveness and Reconciliation work that began at the end of the apartheid regime in 1994. We were so moved by these connections that we were guided to return immediately, which we did in the middle of April.
We arrived just in time for a conference on the tenth anniversary of the start of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). We landed, dropped off our suitcases, and went straight to the conference, meeting many of the people who had played a key role in the TRC, including seeing Archbishop Desmond Tutu in person that evening.

For those outside South Africa who are not familiar with the TRC, we were deeply touched by the recent film "In My Country", (www.sonyclassics.com/inmycountry), now available on DVD, based on the book "Country of My Skull" by South African poet, author and journalist Antjie Krog. The film, using composite characters based on a number of the actual people and cases from the TRC, made us realize the profundity of the TRC process where victims could come forward to simply tell their stories in public, and where perpetrators could request amnesty in return for telling the full truth of what they had done and proving they had been following orders. This process began a deep healing for this nation and an example for the whole planet.


Many remarkable stories of forgiveness are told through the Forgiveness Project (www.theforgivenessproject.com/stories). Several are from and about South Africa (see Quick Links above left). We were moved to tears as we read of parents who had confronted their children's killers, of others who had suffered in most terrible of ways as a result of apartheid, all of whom had found a true place of forgiveness in their hearts for the perpetrators and were working, often together with them, towards the creation of a new future where people of all colors can live and work together.
"If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive.
If you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for hatred."
--- Bhagavad Gita
Since our arrival in mid-April, our time has been rich and full. We have met many wonderful people and have focused on bringing Lindwall Releasing to multicultural groups, including many participants from various ethnic communities and from the local townships in the Cape Town area.

An ongoing series of workshops including participants from the township of Khayelitsha, with a population of over a million, has been particularly enthusiastically received (see next article). We feel blessed to be getting to know and bringing together people from so many different backgrounds and cultures living in such diverse conditions, some in beautiful surroundings, and others in the most humble of shacks. As we open our hearts to one another, all these outer differences fall away.

We are most grateful to all those who have supported us in so many ways, opening their houses to host us and our workshops and sessions, providing transportation, connecting us with others, making their country and culture more known to us, and sharing their lives with us. We have been particularly blessed to have met and been supported by Ginn Fourie, Founder of the Lyndi Fourie Foundation (see the article about her Foundation in this newsletter) who has worked with us to make these ongoing workshops such a success. As you will read, she is a most remarkable person - to you Ginn our special thanks!


We are excited to be entering a new phase of this work with a formal cooperation between the Lyndi Fourie Foundation and Lindwall Foundation to create a center for Releasing and Conciliation together with local residents in Khayelitsha. It is wonderful to be part of the process of transformation and healing in this nation, seeing the boundaries between different races and cultures slowly opening more and more to deeper interconnection
Anyone travelling from Cape Town International Airport to the beautiful and modern city center will be struck by the huge township of tin shacks built one upon another as far as the eye can see and housing over a million people. Though infamous for crime, violence, poverty and disease, we have come to see the other side of life there through the eyes of the participants in an ongoing series of inter-cultural Lindwall Releasing workshops. They have opened their hearts to us, opened their minds and souls to the Releasing work, and introduced us to their work, their homes and their families.


A key concept in the native cultures is "Ubuntu", the interconnectedness of all human life and experience, and we have been overjoyed to experience how quickly these groups have taken to Releasing. We have found that some, after only one or two workshops, are able to share the concept of Releasing with new participants in both English and the melodious clicks of the Xhosa language - see Jean's story in the Testimonials below.

While healing is needed for both sides, we continue to be struck by the enormity of the situation of those in the townships, who - even now after democracy has been installed in 1994 - still suffer personal encounters with violence, hardship, poverty and disease on a scale we have not seen elsewhere – anything from losing partners, children, parents and loved ones through crime and disease, to simply being unable to afford the equivalent of 50 US cents for paraffin to keep warm on cold and damp winter nights in a shack built of corrugated iron. All this in a country filled with new growth and prosperity, a constant flow of new cars on the busy roads, and high-end shopping malls that match or even rival the best of those seen in the US.

At the same time, we see the depth of spiritual understanding in these people, their amazing ability to forgive and serve as an example in forgiveness for the whole planet, how rapidly they can embrace Releasing, and the supportive communities they build for one another even in the poorest of circumstances. A recent workshop participant shared the following words with us about a meditation project in a nearby maximum security prison, which are equally relevant to what we are finding in our work with the townships:
Initially the outsiders who go in seem to think they are going there as an act of generosity, to offer support and – well coming from slightly superior position, subtly patronising. But all of them who go are moved and changed, because in facing the "other" they face themselves. And the insiders are the great teachers of the outsiders as much as the other way around.
Ginn Fourie's only daughter Lyndi was killed in the Heidelberg Tavern Massacre in Cape Town, South Africa on December 30, 1993. In her journey to come to terms with her daughter's killing, Ginn met Letlapa Mphahlele, the APLA (Azanian People's Liberation Army) commander who had given the order for the massacre. Through this meeting she found understanding and forgiveness for him. In Oct 2002 Ginn was invited to attend Letlapa's home-coming ceremony in the small rural village of Seleteng. As a result of this experience, Ginn and Letlapa agreed to set up the Lyndi Fourie Foundation to deal with the challenges of poverty, ex-combatant anger and conciliation between people of all races and color.

The Lindwall Foundation is now beginning a formal partnership with the Lyndi Fourie Foundation through a pilot project to bring Releasing as a self-help tool to leaders and community members in Khayelitsha Township, Cape Town.

Ginn Fourie writes about her experience with Releasing:

Stephen Marcus invited me to experience the Releasing process as a way of discovering potentially new ways of dealing with those traumatised by their South African past and assisting with consciousness and healing. I confess to feeling a little cynical because it sounded so simple, but agreed to try it for myself. After the count down to encourage relaxation and then a count up to three, the expectation of an issue to deal with, was created I had a clear picture of my paternal grandmother combing her long white hair, she used to stand with her head and trunk bowed and brush 100 strokes each evening before bedtime! I giggled at the thought of her, a tall slender humorous and authoritarian woman of German extraction and was wondering what on earth I needed to do with her, since she had died over 45 years ago. ... click to read on ...

  • "The Lindwall Releasing technique is an excellent tool for us to use in South Africa as it provides us with a technique to connect to our deepest source, to our emotional patterns and, by accessing them, then we can voluntarily release them.

    With the African culture whose main philosophy is that of Ubuntu (a human being is a human being because of other human beings) there is a tremendous sense of connection amongst one's fellow humans and as such the healing can spread very quickly.

    For example I asked two young teenage women this last weekend what had happened for them in the previous workshop. One said that her issue last time was that her father beat her mother and it made her and the whole family very unhappy. From the day that she released that issue at the workshop, her father has not beaten her mother again and the couple are very happy together! The proof of any pudding is in the eating and that certainly demonstrates a very deep sense of healing and connection to my critical mind.

    I am deeply inspired and impressed not only by the work that Barbara and Stephen are doing in South Africa but also by the spirit in which they do it - they are so open, so freely giving of their time, their love and their technique. I sincerely hope they continue with their work in South Africa where we need it so badly."

    With much love, Jean, Cape Town.

  • Spoken testimonial:

    "I want to thank the Lindwall Foundation for sending Barbara and Stephen to South Africa to help us to Release. I had a problem where I had trauma inside from my previous wars, because I am an ex-combatant who was involved in the military. They taught how to release and I have managed to release myself from some of the things that have been inside me for years. Now I am feeling quite good. I also feel it will be quite right to release our nation as Africans, because people that have a lot of stress and a lot of poverty cause new traumatic situations - when you are having children, or facing people who are in alcoholic situations and other stuff. I also recommend Lindwall Releasing as the best solution, because when you have something inside, whatever you are doing, even if you put medicine inside, it doesn't work, except this kind of deleting, so that you can at least feel fresh, and feel good, so that you can be OK. I would love to have the Lindwall Foundation help us set up a field workers team that would operate in our black townships so we can spread this message of Releasing, by Releasing many many people. If we can have ten people trained we will be pleased, because this will help not only me, also my colleagues and other people on the ground that we are working on – they need us every time, but we do not have much money to go into their areas in order to Release them. But near us we did Release the taxi owners from the stress of their problems due to financial imbalances – they were big and now they are small. So some people at least are OK, even students and others who didn’t have a chance to go to school, these are the uneducated people, the victims of situations like that. We did Release people like that. We want to say 'thank you' to this Foundation."

    Thank you very much. Nelson, Khayelitsha

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