When the Past is Always Present Part 10

Diana was having panic attacks. She was extremely stressed at work, and most of her panic came from her job in the kitchenware department of a large store. Her boss was out of control, micromanaging everyone without any sense of what he was saying. At the outset she saw herself walking on the floor where she worked. Seeing all the employees and her boss, she developed an SUD score of 78. After havening she was asked to revisit the floor in her imagination and found, much to her surprise, that the floor was empty of people.

If recalling the event still produces an emotional response, repeating the process is helpful. This is also a call to seek other aspects of the event or previous events that need havening.

Postscript.

In the final a.n.a.lysis, traumatization produces a state different from those produced by other stressors. It is permanent unless treated. It is likely we all suffer with some traumatization from events in our lives. Some of us are greatly affected; others are affected in minor ways. Indeed, depending on other factors, sometimes traumatization motivates us to be better than we would have been without the experience. Some patients feel that removing these memories will change them and they wish to keep whatever the emotional state is alive within (see Appendix H). Nonetheless, for most, traumatization produces a never-ending distress.

To use these techniques, to become a healer, even if you just want to self-heal, you must be willing to become an explorer. Explore what comforts you, explore what makes you uncomfortable, bravely seek the emotional core of the problem, and then create a haven.

References.

1. Wolpe, J. (1958). Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

2. Callahan, R. (1993). The five-minute phobia cure. Wilmington, DE: Enterprise.

3. Andrade, J., & Feinstein, D. (2003). Preliminary report on the first large scale study of energy psychology. Retrieved from www.emofree.com/research/ andradepaper.htm 4. Rainnie, D. G., Mania, I., Mascagni, F., & s.h.i.+nnick-Gallaher, P. (1991). Excitatory transmission in the basolateral amygdala. J. Neurophysiol. 66:986998.

5. Kim, J., Lee, S., Park, K., Hong, I., Song, B., Son, G., Park, H., Kim, W. R., Park, E., Choe, H. K., Lee, C., Sun, W., Kim, K., s.h.i.+n, K. S., & Choi, S. (2007). Amygdala depotentiation and fear exinction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (104) 52: 2095520960.

9.

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOSENSORY THERAPIES.

Extrasensory Responses.

While this book focuses on havening, a psychosensory therapy that employs touch, other sensory stimuli can produce extrasensory responses as well. Like touch, extrasensory responses to sound, taste, smell, and sight can be exciting or calming and can be innate or learned. For all living animals, predator and prey alike, the existence of extrasensory responses suggests that they are useful for survival.

We defined extrasensory responses earlier as those that arise unbidden from sensory input. One of the most remarkable journeys evolving from an extrasensory response is described in Proust's volumes Remembrance of Things Past.1 In these volumes Proust describes his journey to uncover the source of an event that startled him. It ill.u.s.trates how a sensory cue can bring back memory and emotion. Clearly, the sensory input itself is not the cause of the response; if anyone else drank the tea and ate the cake, their reaction would be quite different. The response is a consequence of subconscious a.s.sociations. His description is important because it reveals that in addition to the negatively valenced traumatic memories, positively valenced memories can also be recalled when suitably stimulated: Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called "pet.i.tes madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's sh.e.l.l. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory-this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?

I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something, which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

There are two pathways that produce extrasensory responses useful for healing. The first is an intrinsic pathway that travels from the receptors in the sense organs to the brain and directly affects neurochemical release. The second pathway involves a learned response.

Intrinsic and Conditioned Extrasensory Responses.

The response to a threatening stimulus that produces fear is not enough to ensure survival. We also need to feel comfortable, so that we can laugh, eat leisurely, mate, and not experience a sense of urgency from chronic vigilance. Thus, there needs to be stimuli that indicate safety, that we are not the current object of someone's appet.i.te. Perception of safety decreases processing of information about the world around us; vigilance is diminished. All psychosensory therapies rely on this fact; the extrasensory response must make us feel that the world is a safe haven. This is experienced and observed in herding animals, as discussed earlier. This feeling allowed mammal mothers to care for their young and produce a bond that allowed for exploration. Are there stimuli that can do this naturally without learning? The answer is yes. Breathing quietly while sitting in the posture of cupped hands in your lap, dropped shoulders, and slack jaw helps soothe anger and alleviate anxiety (see Figure 9.1 and give it a try). The smell of lavender makes us less anxious. Order makes us feel more secure. Havening, touch in a therapeutic setting, makes us feel calm. These feelings arise from intrinsic pathways, hardwired at birth, that make us feel safe.

The other source of a healing extrasensory experience is a conditioned response that has been paired with a sensory stimulus, for example, the smell of chicken soup (like homemade) or the sound of familiar folk music (like home). In general, home is considered a haven.

Psychosensory Therapy.

There are two fundamental types of psychosensory therapy: One is nonspecific and causes a global reduction in stress responsiveness. This type of therapy increases resilience. This leads to an overall increase in the threshold to further traumatization. The other therapy type is event specific. (A partial list of these therapies can be found on p. 6.) Figure 9.1 Picture of posture. (Courtesy of Ronald Ruden and Steve Lampasona.).

Nonspecific Psychosensory Therapies.

There are many body (somatic, visceral, brain)-mind systems that appear to alter neurochemical concentrations and activities. They are nonspecific therapies that provide temporary changes in our landscape. The time course for therapeutic effect varies, but when a nonspecific psychosensory therapy is applied at appropriate intervals, long-standing changes may occur. These therapies are truly body mind, where sensory input affects brain mind functioning.

Touch.

Touch, as we think about it, is based on mechanoreceptors of no emotional importance embedded in the skin. These mechanoreceptors monitor the perception of pain, heat, temperature, pressure, vibration, and position. Indeed, from a Western medical perspective, there is no expectation that touch should treat or heal anything. Nonetheless, its effect must exert some evolutionary advantage. We speculate that gentle, soothing touch produces the feeling that you are not alone and defenseless, you are not abandoned.

Acupuncture, part of the 4,000-year-old practice in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), has no intrinsic emotional value, yet the insertion of needles or the applying of pressure along acupoints has powerful effects on mood and pain. There is extensive research demonstrating a rise of serotonin and opioid-like substances, increasing comfort and a sense of well-being, with acupuncture needling.2 Reiki3 is a j.a.panese touch technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing by its effect of the laying on of hands or merely moving the hands over the body. Its effect is nonspecific. Reiki is based on the idea that an unseen "life force energy" flows through us, causing us to be alive. If one's life force energy is low, then one is more likely to get sick or feel stress. If it is high, one is more capable of being happy and healthy. The word Reiki is made of two j.a.panese words: Rei, which means "G.o.d's wisdom or the higher power," and Ki, which is "life force energy." So Reiki is actually "spiritually guided life force energy."

Touch as in ma.s.sage therapy and Rolfing4 (a form of deep ma.s.sage) reputedly breaks down tissue tensions and restores normal lengths to the muscles and tendons, thus reducing stress. As mentioned earlier, ma.s.sage has been shown to cause a rise in serotonin and dopamine as well as a decrease in cortisol.

There are many therapeutic modalities that have evolved using touch to heal. Therapeutic touch5 is a contemporary healing modality drawn from ancient practices and developed by Dora Kunz and Dolores Krieger. Callahan TechniquesThought Field Therapy (CT-TFT) and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and many of the touch therapies mentioned above are based on the a.s.sumption that all beings are composed of complex fields of energy, and that altering the flow of energy through these fields enhances healing. While evidence to support this a.s.sumption is lacking, these therapies can produce amazing results.

Posture (Position Sense)/Kinesthetic.

Position and facial expressions are another form of nonspecific psychosensory therapy. Take a relaxed posture and see how that affects you. Yoga6 is an extraordinary psychosensory therapy. There is no Western explanation as to why sensing the breath and various body positions should produce calmness, increase resilience to stress, and diminish compulsive behavior. Yet they appear to do so. One explanation is that when we are anxious or stressed-both common problems in today's world-we tend to breathe in a more shallow way. Encountering a predator causes us to breathe through our mouths rapidly. We do not breathe through our nose when being chased because we can move more air through our mouths. We speculate that nasal breathing naturally slows our breath and that feeds back to the brain that a predator is not pursuing us and we are safe. There are many types of yoga, from simple breathing and posture (Hatha) yoga, to hot (Bikram) yoga, to power (Astanga) yoga. These forms of yoga provide multiple sensory inputs that align with how the individual experiences the world. As described above, using kinesthetic and breathing techniques, a simple method to calm an agitated individual is to have him or her sit in a chair with feet flat on the floor, hands cupped upward in the lap, shoulders down, and jaw slack, and breath through the nose slowly (see p. 122). This posture is the physical opposite of defensive rage. It is almost impossible to remain agitated. Interestingly, smiling7 can act as a psychosensory therapy. Try smiling whenever you can; even an upward lips motion can have beneficial effects over the course of time. Frowning can have the opposite effect.

Vision.

The Chinese describe the use of feng shui,8 the arrangement of visual stimuli to induce serenity, in homes and gardens. This is so because background patterns that are orderly facilitate the identification of a predator. Disorder makes it likely that a predator can hide more readily. Feng shui places the person in positions such that he or she sees the world. Thus, beds and desks face the door. The ability to detect disorder and the positioning of our visual line of sight to provide the widest field serve, in a very primitive way, to protect us.

Sunsets, beautiful vistas, and grand canyons provide calm. Beauty, as in the eye of the beholder, can engender good feelings. Certainly a smiling symmetric face attracts attention and makes us feel happier. Interestingly, individuals witnessing the havening process also experience comfort and well-being. This response is similar to a phenomenon called surrogate tapping,9 where, after reactivation of a traumatic component, the therapist taps on his or her own body and the client receives a benefit. This response is probably mediated via mirror neurons (see Appendix A). The exploration of this extraordinary extrasensory effect is just beginning.

The lack of sunlight during the winter months leads to depression, 10 increased risk for suicide, and substance abuse. Adding light has produced doc.u.mented results for disorders such as seasonal affective disorder.

Sound.

Music and sound were thought by the ancient Greeks to penetrate into the depths of the soul. Music reportedly can soothe a savage beast. The sound of falling water is calming. Speed, rhythm, instrumentation, melody, and minor versus major keys are some aspects of music that affect us. Early forms of music used chanting. While chanting has no set rhythm, it is the types of sounds used and the ability to sustain a breath that determine the nature of the chant. Religious ceremonies use communal chanting to achieve a feeling of safety and unity.

It is hard for a Western ear not to get excited during the last few moments of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or feel calmed by his Moonlight Sonata. Some have claimed that Mozart's music is therapeutic. Popular music moves us to dance, sing, and experience happiness. While music won't make us smarter, it will increase our ability to solve certain problems, probably by nonspecific changes in our mood and arousal. Some researchers feel that music exerts its calming affect by inhibiting other sensory input from impacting on the senses. Many find that music sets a mood. Seasonal music tends to make us more cheerful, while gentle music makes us feel romantic.11 W. B. Canon12 discusses other aspects of psychosensory observations, such as the effect of martial music on fighting. "For the grim purposes of war, the reed and the lute are grotesquely ill-suited; to rouse men to action strident bra.s.s and the jarring instruments of percussion are used in full force.... The Romans charged their foes amid the blasts of trumpets and horns ... the Russian General Linevitch is quoted as saying 'Music is one of the most vital ammunitions of the army.'"

Taste and Smell.

Taste is another sense that has effects other than taking away hunger. Best defined by what is called comfort foods,13 these foods generally have a high carbohydrate or sugar content. Sugar seems to be the most consistent mind-altering substance and is very often craved. This may be the result of the sugar in mother's milk when we are born. Other foods are culturally based, similar to music, ranging from chicken soup to baklava to chocolate pudding. They are a.s.sociated with good feelings and home and safety. Because of the extrasensory component of food, we sometimes incorrectly use it as a drug to remove anxiety and take away boredom, leading to serious consequences in terms of obesity.

Aromatherapy14 shows modest but significant effects in a variety of situations. In one study, researchers studied lavender, rose, and lemon essential oils for their antistress action. Somewhat surprisingly, lemon oils were the best antistress aromas for the stress-producing situations tested.

Thus, sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and position, and probably temperature and humidity and other environmental stimuli (low barometric pressure has been a.s.sociated with increased violence15), have been studied, and some appear to have a beneficial effect. The mechanism by which these non-emotional sensory inputs act to alter our feelings needs further clarification. It is possible there remain undiscovered sensors in our bodies that transduce environmental sensations into affecting how we feel and act. How and why these inputs affect us, both for the long and the short term, will be the subject of future research.

Event-Specific Psychosensory Therapies.

In the animal model, exposure therapy is called extinction training. This procedure takes an animal conditioned to produce a fear response to a sound (CS) that previously predicted a shock (an unconditioned fear stimulus, UFS) and then does not shock the animal (CS //UFS). After several trials the animal learns a new response to the CS, no shock (CS No Shock). Research has shown that the original CS UFS Fear pathway, however, is not extinguished and can be readily reinstated. This is different than what is seen after successful havening. Here, the ability to reinstate the emotional response is eliminated. The different outcomes between extinction training (non-reinforced exposure to the CS) versus psychosensory therapy (comforting touch and distraction after imaginal exposure) suggest that a different mechanism is at work. Indeed, it can be suggested that unlike extinction training, no new learning takes place in havening, just the elimination of the relations.h.i.+p between the event and the emotion.

Another interesting question arises: Can we use this process in reverse, that is, a.s.sociate a sensory process with an emotion and use it for good? One approach to a conditioned psychosensory healing is called anchoring. It relates a sense of touch to a craving. The process is simple. For example, the individual thinks of something he or she craves, let's say chocolate. They are then instructed to make it disgusting. Imagine eating hair and dust-covered chocolate. Simultaneously, he or she squeezes the thumb and the middle finger of the right hand. This process a.s.sociates the physical act of squeezing with the now disgusting craved object. Second, the individual now thinks of something pleasurable and squeezes the thumb and middle finger of the other hand. When craving for chocolate occurs, a combination of squeezing the thumb and forefinger of the right hand followed by squeezing the left eliminates the craving.

Psychosensory therapy as a general field has been studied in a fragmented way. There are probably common mechanisms by which these senses affect us. Further research will allow us to understand how to use these powerful, safe techniques to treat trauma-based disorders and increase resilience.

References.

1. Proust, M. (19191927). Remembrance of things past: Swan's way: Within a budding grove (Definitive French Pleiade ed., C. K. S. Moncrieff & T. Kilmartin, Trans., Vol. 1, pp. 4851). New York, NY: Vintage.

2. Cabioglu, M. T., & Surucu, H. S. (2009). Acupuncture and neurophysiology. Med. Acupuncture 21:1320.

3. The Reiki Center. Retrieved December 10, 2008, from http://www.reiki.com. See this site and www.sreiki.org for more information.

4. European Rolfing a.s.sociation. Retrieved December 10, 2008, from http://www.rolfing.org. See this site for more information, as well as the following: Field, T., Hernandez-Reif, M., Diego, M., Schanberg, S., & Kuhn, C. (2005). Cortisol decreases and serotonin and dopamine increase following ma.s.sage therapy. Int. J. Neurosci. 115:13971413.

Field, T., Diego, M., & Hernandez-Reif, M. (2005). Ma.s.sage therapy research. Dev. Rev. 27:7589.

5. Therapeutic Touch. Retrieved December 10, 2008, from http://www.therapeutictouch.org 6. Yang, K. (2007). A review of yoga programs for the four leading risk factors of chronic disease. Evid. Based Complem. Alt. Med. 4:487491.

Cloud, J. (2009, January 16). How to lift your mood? Try smiling. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/health/0,8599,1871687,00.html/ 7. Matsumoto, D., & Willingham, R. (2009). Spontaneous facial expressions of emotion in congenitally and non-congenitally blind individuals. J. Personality Soc. Psychol. 96:110.

8. Wikipedia. Feng shui. Retrieved December 10, 2008, from http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 9. Kurczak, R. How to do intentional (or surrogate) EFT. A four part series. Retrieved January 12, 2010, from http://emofree.com/Articles2/ International-tapping-series.htm 10. Seasonal affective disorder. Retrieved December 19, 2008, from http:// www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus.seasonalaffectivedisorder.htm/ 11. Music therapy. Retrieved December 19, 2008, from http://www.nccata. org/music_therapy.htm/ 12. Canon, W. B. (1929). Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear and rage. New York, NY: Harper Torchbooks.

13. Wikipedia. Comfort food. Retrieved December 19, 2008, from http:// en.wikipedia/wiki/Comfort_Food/ 14. Fellows, D., Barnes, K., & Wilkinson, S. (2004). Aromatherapy and ma.s.sage for symptom relief in patients with cancer. Cochrane Database Syst. Rev. 2:CD00287.

15. Schory, T. J., Piecznaki, N., Nair, S., & el-Mallakh, R. S. (2003). Barometric pressure, emergency psychiatric visits and violent acts.. Can J. Psychiatry 48:624627.

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