The Yemima Avital FAQ

Additional Yemima resources

You’ll need to be able to read Hebrew.

• The Hebrew Wikipedia entry
• The official Yemima website

  Note: to access most of the material you have to create an account, which only works if you live in Israel. Annoying.

• The Ma’ayan Institute (the other official website …)

The Yemima Method is, in its most basic form, a problem-solving method. It’s also a powerful methodology for conscious self-work (working on your issues), named for the woman who developed it — the late Yemima Avital.

I am enormously grateful to have studied it when I lived in Tel Aviv. My teacher Orna Sela was one of Yemima’s students, and I continue to use Yemima’s concepts in everyday life, and in my work with clients and students.

A short biography

Yemima was born in 1929 in Casablanca (on Tisha B’av — the day of the destruction of the second Temple) and moved to Israel at twenty. She also studied psychology and literature at my alma mater, Tel Aviv University.

At some point she began to collect a loyal following of students who came to her for help dealing with life challenges. Her enormous personal charisma was a huge draw, as was her eclectic method of teaching (using such varied sources as writing therapy, Jewish/Chassidic philosophy and inner child therapy).

In 1977 she founded the Ma’ayan Institute in Tel Aviv (now in Herzeliya) where she taught her “Cognitive Thinking” method, now known as the “Yemima Method”. She passed away in 1999.

The teaching

Yemima’s teachings, often expressed in fairly obscure language, were written down and studied by her students, many of whom went on to spread her teachings themselves. The teaching takes place in a group format, with separate groups for men and women.

The focus of the group learning is always personal development, and the intention is to resolve past trauma through connecting to internal guidance and present moment awareness. This is done through a process of separation from self-criticism. Yemima calls this “omes” (weight, heaviness, burden) and it’s really much more than just self-criticism.

“Omes” — a quick explanation

Omes (pronounced OH-mes, or as one of my students calls it — “Oh! Mess!”) is the uncomfortable sense of distress you feel whenever any negative emotions come up for you. Your issues. Your “stuff”. All the emotional gunk that make it hard to be alive.

Guilt, resentment, doubt, rejection, tension, blame and insecurity … these are all reflections of this distress. The uncomfortable emotions that come to the surface when you’re reacting to situations that set you off. They color your judgment, leading you into more self-criticism and deeper into the cycle of distress.

The voice of the omes is that familiar part of you that says things like, “Oh, I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I said or did that. What on earth was I thinking?”

According to Yemima’s view — and this is where the religious element comes in — your essential nature is one of goodness and light, but you can’t see it because it’s been all fogged up by the self-criticism and your identification with it. Once you learn to separate from this and realize that you are larger than your criticism, your doubt, your hurt, your fear and your anger, you’re able to see how good things are…

The omes is described as a result of misunderstandings, old hurts and old habits established from an early age and then deeply ingrained. The ability to separate from the hurt inner child is what is supposed to heal it, without needing to delve into memory of past trauma.

The point of doing this work

The purpose of “the learning”, as the self-study and self-work are referred to, is to reset the system. You learn to practice present-moment awareness, compassion and kindness at a basic level, and you learn to give to others by learning how to give to yourself.

As you gradually learn to separate from your omes (this separation is nearly identical to the much misunderstood concept of “detachment” in yoga and meditation), your omes fades away of its own accord.

You start becoming aware of other people’s omes , which is useful because then you’re less likely to be hurt by things they say. Instead, you recognize that they are acting out of pain — just like you. Your relationship with yourself becomes more intimate and loving, and your other interactions reflect this. Good stuff.

Proselytizing?

One critique/observation about the method is that the people who study it become “religious” (ultra-orthodox). Apparently, while Yemima apparently never explicitly worked to “convert” her students, many mysteriously adopted religious lifestyles.

In the group I studied with in Tel Aviv I never heard any spoken call to religion. And yet, there was a shift taking place for a many people in class, though by no means all of them. And my own period of Jewish self-discovery or rediscovery began while I was studying the Yemima method.

However, this also took place at the same time that my yoga practice opened the need for a spiritual lifestyle with meaningful rituals, and since I come from a culture rich in ritual it only made sense that I would find what I needed there.

If you are secular and worried about this, I’m positive you can trust the strength of your personality, and take only what you need.

A quickie how-to guide

Practice identifying your emotional blocks and baggage when they come up. The best clues to these blocks are snap reactions to situations that provoke anger, stress or despair.

The practice (the solution to your omes) is always always always based in acknowledgment and acceptance. Whatever the situation, you consciously allow it to be. Through allowing it, you create a separation. And through the separation comes the ability to allow yourself to let go of these blocks.

This acceptance allows you to execute the emotional equivalent of a tai chi maneuver: you let yourself be in distress and talk yourself through it: “I accept that this is my reality right now. I agree that this is what is happening and I allow it to happen. I recognize that this is temporary and not part of who I really am. I am just going to allow this to be.”

As you come to understandings about yourself and how you work WRITE THEM DOWN! These ‘lightbulb above the head’ moments can be fleeting if not fully absorbed. Write as often as possible and stick to the process.