Terapia del Vínculo

Vínculo is Spanish for connecting link.

Terapia del Vínculo stems from the realization that we each are the sum total of our relationships, to ourselves, to those around us, to the universe.

When our connecting links are in a natural state of dynamic balance, health is guaranteed. It is only when those connecting links are damaged or broken that we suffer, biologically as well as psychologically.

Terapia del Vínculo resets our connecting links: it takes us back to our original state of balance and health through a systematic revision and redefinition of the events where each connecting link was compromised in a specific way.

Through a minute analysis of one’s elocution, the therapist eases us into full recollection of the onset of our ailment and helps us redefine our position —the connecting link relevant to each situation. This triggers instant biological and psychological relief.

A thorough revision of key events in one’s life experience resets our position in life, along with our inner state, at every level, allowing for natural growth where pain was the only choice available.

Biological shock or psychological trauma?

We are used to the idea of psychological trauma, and even to the idea of somatization to a certain extent. But largely, psychology is seen as independent from physiological and pathological proceses. In short, psychology and biology are seen as separate.

The radical idea behind TDV is that everything we call illness is also the result of a moment of intense shock —not just any shock, but one of biological significance. When the life of any biological entity is threatened, it enters into survival mode: it deploys all of its resources as needed to ensure the survival of the individual, and ultimately, the species.

In the wild, life and death situations are clear-cut and are resolved one way or the other there and then. But we moderns live almost exclusively in a world of human constructs —property, money, government, religion— all of which are intangible, entirely man-made. Yet our biology still prevails as the primary mechanism to ensure our survival. Whenever we have a conflict of the human sphere which we interpret as a life and death situation —a moment of total shock— our entire biological system is engaged just as it would be in a natural setting.

Since our human situation is based on intangibles that our biology is not equipped to properly assess, we are left stuck in a loop that engages our every level. Our biology, psychology and vital energy all suffer, unable to «normalize», and we are sapped of our life essence. This disregard for our nature, this disconnect is at the root of all the maladies of our age.

The profound revelation TDV brings is the harmonization of the primary biological functions of our very being with the human, with the world of concepts and constructs we so dearly hold on to, most often unrevised. In this way, it is a tool not only for total health but ultimately, for human evolution.

Alfredo Goldstein (1948-2017)

Let’s live every moment as never again. —Vinicius de Moraes

Alfredo Goldstein invented TDV and devoted himself to it for 25 years, until his passing. His studies of Dr. Randolph Stone’s Polarity Therapy started him on a lifelong quest to understand our essence as sentient beings and our seemingly magical ability to self-heal.

A communicologist by training (University of Quebec in Montreal), Alfredo distilled the essence of Dr. Geerd Hamer’s GNM (German New Medicine) into its most simple —yet powerful— form by tapping into his deep knowledge of communication and language.

GNM recategorizes disease as a «meaningful special biological program» whose sole function is to ensure our survival through a moment of intense shock. It’s first axiom states:

Every Meaningful Special Biological Program (MSBP) originates from a serious, acute and isolative conflict shock that catches us completely off guard. The conflict shock occurs simultaneously:

1. In the psyche
2. In the brain
3. On the corresponding organ

Alfredo realized that, with no need for a CAT scan (as Dr. Hamer used) and by simply listening to his patients’ elocution, he could not only ascertain the original moment of shock that brought about their ailment, but pinpoint with total accuracy the exact trigger.

Since that shock affects psyche, brain and organ simultaneously, a simple recontextualization of that one moment brings about instant psychological and biological relief: a «meaningful special biological program» is no longer needed and our brain and body enter into a brief exudative, healing phase after which return to much-needed normalcy ensues instantly.

The vast reach of this simple realization led him to discard the rest of Dr. Hamer’s theory as superfluous to his goal: to guarantee his patient’s return to his or her own essence and full health. It is from this cornerstone that he developed and meticulously documented an entire approach to health and well-being that covers every aspect of our life-cycle and experience as members of our species, with all of it done exclusively through communication. He called it Terapia del Vínculo.

For the last five years of his life, Alfredo passed on his entire body of knowledge to Alexander Cortés, who founded the Centro de Terapia del Vínculo in Tepoztlán, Mexico in 2018.

Alexander Cortés

«Civilization is the place where we make believe that the rules of nature don’t apply to us, the place where we delude ourselves believing that we are somehow beyond them.»

In addition to his studies with Alfredo, Alexander studied Polarity Therapy with Eduardo Morales, who brought the therapy to Mexico in the 1980s.

He studied the psychology of habit formation for behavior design with Dr. B.J. Fogg of Stanford University and participated as guest researcher at his lab. He has studied Traditional Chinese Medicine (Tui-Na) and Shiatsu along with many Eastern philosophies and practices, as well as Prehispanic shamanism.

For ten years Alexander was a conference interpreter, working for the United Nations, presidents and Nobel laureates; a native speaker of both English and Spanish, he offers TDV in both languages.