Canadian Auditor General's office pays for New Age "rebirth" for one of its employees

Rebirthing is a New Age technique in which the subject supposedly relives her (I use the feminine pronoun because women are more likely to fall for this nonsense) own birth experience, resulting in a process of healing from traumatic events. The fact that the human brain at birth isn't sufficiently developed for memories to be stored doesn't seem to matter to those who facilitate or go through a rebirth.

As reported by QMI reporter Mathieu Turbide on August 9, 2010:

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada says that "rebirth" sessions are "beneficial to increase its employees' confidence."

"It is a personal development course that the direction approved as being beneficial to increase the confidence of the employee as well as (increase) their capacity to communicate with others, improving their relationships with their colleagues and clients," explained Ghislain Desjardins, spokesman for the Auditor General's office, by e-mail.

The AG's office authorized the $345 course for one of it's employees. The course aims to "heal subconscious memories using breathing" techniques...

...The rebirth workshops that an employee with the office of the Auditor General participated in last fall, which was paid for by tax payers, follows the "re-birthing" techniques, a hyper-ventilation exercise that allows the person "to clean out the memories hidden in the subconscious."

"It is effectively the re-birth technique, which was rediscovered during the 1970s," said Julie Nantel, one of the workshop coordinators at Knowlton's Institute for Personal Development (IPD). "We relive and clean things that we could have lived through in the subconscious at the time of birth. Our rebirth workshop uses breathing too, but we don't only focus on that. Each person will do it in their own way."

The IPD workshops have been known for several years as professional training courses under Quebec law on competencies, which requires employers to spend 1% of their salary expenses on training.

On its website, the IPD explains the workshop "allows for the liberation of energy that was blocked during past experiences, when that memory, anchored in our subconscious, directly limits our quality of life."

Nantel said that to take part in the rebirth workshop, the participant must already have taken the Awakening the Inner-Self workshop.

Nantel said both courses allow employees to be better at their jobs.

"Doing this allows people to have a better attitude at work, better relationships, more spirit, more participation and more general interest as a person who works on a team," she said...

...Description of the workshop on the IPD website.

"To become free from the past. A conscious experience to free the energy blocked by past events through the powerful healing effects of a breathing technique. Each participant is professionally accompanied. The

process is both gently and respectful of each person's energy, thus assisting the recovery of a state of peace and well-being, and promoting the full realization of oneself."

This seems like strange stuff to be subsidized by a secular government, much less a federal government that, according to certain woefully ignorant and bigoted people in the media, is under the influence of extreme right-wing Christian zealots. As now-retired broadcaster Bruce Hogle would say, "...but they will pay for garbage like this."