Reverse Thinking

EMDR

About 20 years ago we discovered that changing your eye-movements while you process a worry, a phobia or a trauma reduces - or eliminates - the problem.

Sometimes this process is called Eye Movement Integration (EMI), or Rapid Eye Technology (RET), or Rapid Eye Movement Technology (REMT), or Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).

The basic premise is that eye movements signal the brain to process information in different ways.

For example:

Slowing down or holding eye movements still while you process a pleasant memory enables you to become more fully absorbed in it (try it for yourself).

Speeding up the eye movements while holding in mind a worry or a bad memory weakens its impact.

The fact that rapid eye movements appear when we dream shows that they are closely linked to brain cebtres that process information as dreams are partly a digest of that day's experiences. Interestingly, people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder often report with damage to the Hippocampus - a brain centre closely linked to memory processing.

If you want to erase a trauma or a phobia for yourself you could consult someone with a training in Reverse Therapy (I don't recommend you try it by yourself).

If you want to experiment with milder problems like a worry then just switch on the program at the top and stare at the X in the middle while you hold the worry in mind.

It works for most people.

How forgiveness rewires the brain

In a recent article on Brain Neuroplasticity I wrote about the Brain's capacity to grow and renew itself - provided we keep on learning and provide it with new new and powerful experiences to process.

Today I want to talk about how letting go of useless regret and bitterness enables Bodymind to spring clean the brain and restore emotional wellness.

Some writers think that resentment about past misfortunes is an emotion. I disagree: it is a Headmind state which keeps on replaying tapes from the past in a futile attempt to make sense of some terrible event so that Headmind can control and prevent its re-occurence.

For example, I used to have repeat nightmares about the treatment I received from other children - and from my 'teachers' - as the lone deaf boy at the elite grammar school I attended. Those lasted until well into my twenties. And - each time I recalled the abuse I would be filled with bitterness and thoughts of revenge. Although the Headmind intention might have been to put me on guard against bullying in future, it merely made me paranoid.

I had to learn forgiveness but I was put off by the idea that this meant learning to love people I knew very little about. Later on I learnt that the word 'forgiveness' had an entirely different meaning - even for Christ. What it actually means is something like 'set me free'. So, when Christ speaks - in Aramaic - of the forgiveness of sins, he means 'free us from the faults of others.'

So that's the most important clue we have: to 'forgive' really means to move on from upsetting memories and then focus on something better, more important, more rewarding, more empowering, in the present.

Now here's what happens to you when you focus on resentment:

• Your Conscious Mind calls up the movie
• You relive the emotions associated with that story (e.g. anger, fear, disgust)
• Because the movie belongs to the past, and the past is unchangeable, Headmind concludes that you are a victim of your emotions
• The Pre-frontal cortex in the forebrain, which interprets information about what happens to you, sends a red-alert signal to the Amygdala, in the Limbic system
• The Amygdala then triggers an alarm reaction in the sympathetic nervous system, the muscles, gut, skin and the immune system - which you experience as stress

What is worse, this stressful experience sensitizes the cells in the nervous system, the muscles, the gut and the immune system, which become more and more wired to prepare a response to trauma - to something that might have happened to you thirty years ago!

And here's what happens when you forgive:

• You stop watching old movies
• You engage more in the present and keep busy on activities that bring you reward
• Your Conscious Mind has less and less opportunity to replay the tape
• Headmind starts to lose the thought that you are a victim of your past
• As that happens the alarm circuit between the Pre-frontal cortex and the Amygdala grows weaker
• New, empowering, experiences create new connections between the cells in your brain, nervous system, muscles, gut, and immune system
• You become both happier and more resistant to disease

Image by littledan77

Neuroplastic

Over the past few weeks I have asserted that our ever-faster rate of discoveries about the brain will transform assumptions about emotions, disease, free will, personal change, and how Bodymind really works.

Research into brain neuroplasticity is another example of that.

Neuroplasticity refers to the way in which the brain can renew itself and reprocess damaging experiences.

Renewal occurs through:

• Cell growth
• Cell replacement
• The formation of new cellular connections
• The formation of new neural networks
• The creation of new cellular memories
• The reversal of ageing

Relearning occurs through the absorption of new experiences that:

• Change the way we remember things
• Erase stress responses
• Replace depression and anxiety patterns with a solution-focus
• Increase endorphin release
• Replace trauma with detached responses
• Reverse burnout
• Expand creativity
• Interrupt addictive behavior
• And many other changes besides

The old view of the brain is that it was like an attic which, over time, filled up with cobwebs, out-of-date toys, and unwanted junk. And then you went senile. The new view is that it is more like the interactions you have with a friend: the experiences you have together will change you both in unpredictable ways.

My namesake, Howard Eaton, has some great material, including podcasts, on neuroplasticity and its implications for health on this blog here.

There is also a great video on neuroplasticity on this link here. Amongst other matters, it talks about how one woman overcame severe 'mental illness' (not my phrase but those psychiatrists love it!), using meditation to reprogram her brain to grow new neural connections which - in turn - interfered with her bad psychotic habits.

This article is by way of an introduction to a huge subject and I will be writing about the implications of neuroplasticity and emotional experience in later posts. But here is a thought for today.

If you try doing one thing you have never done before - each day - then you are going to:

• Open up new cell networks
• Learn a different way of being
• Solder those new possibilities into Bodymind
• Improve your memory
• Stay young
• Achieve liberation

What is your choice for today?

My own experience? Since breaking my right wrist two months ago I have learnt how to a) be left-handed, b) develop patience, c) slow down, d) - no, I won't specify that one (but it was good)

Let me know of any enlightening experiences you have with this.

Image by DerrickT

A stroke of insight

These TED videos just get better and better.

Here is Jill Bolte Taylor - a Neuroanatomist - talking about her experiencing of having a stroke.

One morning she woke up with a stabbing pain through her eye. She had a blood clot the size of a golf ball in her left brain. It temporarily destroyed her ability to speak, understand letters or numbers and remember faces. She also lost the ability to distinguish between her own body and the rest of the planet, leaving her with a mystical sense of being at one with the universe.

Along the way she talks to us about the difference between left-brain serial processing and right-brain parallel processing. For Jill, the stroke destroyed what we, over here in Reverse Therapy, call Headmind functioning (although I don't agree that this is restricted to the left brain - I suspect that the stroke impaired the frontal cortex instead).

Essentially this means that human beings won't be able to follow the essential principles of Headmind reasoning:

• Why something exists
• How it can be understood
• What caused it
• What it's purpose is

Meaning that Jill was left, instead, with the speechless, in-the-moment, intuitive, wordless, child-like awareness of the universe that comes through unfiltered Bodymind.

Thanks to Marta Juni, our Reverse Therapy Ambassador in Barcelona, for drawing my attention to this YouTube tape.

 

Loved up on hormones

You may not realise it yet but the 21st century will be remembered as an era when we discovered how human beings actually work in terms of brain science.

That's because we now have MRI scanners that can track every electrochemical change in the brain while we are thinking, emoting, deciding, suffering or just bonding to another human being. And photograph them.

The newest discoveries have focused on Oxytocin, a hormone that is manufactured in the Hypothalamus.

It used to be thought that all that Oxytocin was for was to ease birth contractions and release milk during breast-feeding.

We now know that it does a lot more than that. Indeed, it seems to be one of the key chemicals that Bodymind uses to cue feelings associated with nurturing children, learning to trust, and falling in love. People who experience surges in Oxytocin levels after the birth of a child develop powerful, and instinctive, bonds with their children. Oxytocin is also released during orgasm - which is one reason you should be choosy about your sexual partners.

Oxytocin is also used to create cellular memories about people with whom we have bonded before. We know that because a mouse low in oxytocin levels won't remember other mice it has already mated with. Nor, I suspect, would it remember much about its offspring.

And you can now buy Oxytocin in a nasal spray! It is usually given on prescription to pregnant women but some researchers have found other uses for it.

• It reduces anxiety in people with social phobias
• It helps people forgive and forget mistakes their partners have made
• It speeds up new friendships
• It increases pleasure during massage, foreplay and sex
• Some people are even predicting that Oxytocin could become another club drug!

In another article I will explain why Oxytocin injections may not be a good idea for some people.

What do you think?

Image by A_of_DooM