The graph shows the impact of one 5-minute episode of recalled anger on the immune antibody IgA over a 6-hour period. The initial slight increase in IgA was followed by a dramatic drop which persisted for six hours. When the subjects used something called the Quick Coherence  technique (see below) and focused on feeling sincere care for five minutes there was a significant increase in IgA, which returned to baseline an hour later and then slowly increased throughout the rest of the day.

The Quick Coherence technique that was used in this study was developed by the Institute of HeartMath to give people a simple and powerful way to decrease stress and improve mental and physical well-being.

Today, I want to share the three steps of the Quick Coherence technique with you:

1. Focus on your chest and the area around your heart.
2. Breathe deeply but normally as if your breath is coming in and out of your heart area.
3. Focus, breathe, and recall a time or person that brings you a feeling of joy, calmness, or love.

If you were successful in activating a positive feeling in your body, your heart rate underwent some interesting (and healthy) changes.  The positive emotion creates specific changes in the beating of your heart.  Take a look at this picture of two measurements of something called Heart Rate Variability, or HRV.

• New test for heart disease risk
• Thyroid and adrenal class

If you look back, can you see any patterns in your life that you can’t seem to get out of?

If any of these patterns fit you, it’s not just bad luck, bad genes, or bad lifestyle choices that are at the root of your problem. I believe that there is a part of you that is choosing to be in that situation- that is choosing to repeat the pattern- in order to learn a powerful lesson.

Remember the two brains that I’ve been writing about these past few months?

In a sense, there are actually two “you’s.” There is your ego, and there is your subliminal self.  Your ego, or your sense of self, is an interpreter of the events around you.  It sometimes feels like it is in control, but it is actually playing catchup.

Secondly, there is your subliminal, or subconscious, self that you are not aware of but that is doing well over 90% of your processing, thinking, and deciding.

This second you is actually in control, and the first you sits back and belatedly creates explanations for what you see around you.  It surveys your actions, your feelings, the situations that you find yourself in, and then takes all the credit, even if it has to make things up!  (you can read about some experiments that prove this point by clicking here.)

It’s a streamlined arrangement, and it’s got its own advantages, but the two minds are often in conflict.

What’s the conflict?  If you look back and the past few paragraphs, you might notice a problem:  while your subliminal mind is actually in control of your actions, your aware mind thinks it is in control of your actions.

I remember a scene in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” in which the matriarch of the family conspires with her daughter to make a big decision.  But rather than force it on the father, the two women figure out a way to make it seem like it was his decision in the first place.  Our brains are kind of like that.

Much of the time this odd situation works just fine.  However, there are times when your subliminal mind  decides that it doesn’t like the way that your ego is operating and will start to make itself known.  But rather than speak its mind with words, it uses emotions and sensations.

This explanation is why we are such emotional beings.  Research in a variety of fields has shown that while we think that we make decisions based on logic, emotions are much more powerful.  Advertisers and marketers know this.  So do neuroscientists.

My point is that the emotional and physical patterns that we get stuck in are the result of your subliminal mind expressing its displeasure with some of the conclusions of your ego/aware mind.  The corollary being that if we can understand the source of the conflict and heal it, the symptoms that you feel stuck with can go away.

This idea is especially true for people who are stuck with allergies.  In the situation of an allergy, the immune system is attacking a relatively benign substance.  It pulls out the big guns that are designed for protection from a dangerous parasite and wields them against a harmless substance like cat dander.

Why?

Time after time, I see that my patients with allergies have underlying issues with their own ability to stay safe or stay strong in this world.  They believe that they are in danger and try to create a world for themselves that is safe.  But the reality is that their world can never be completely safe.  Occasionally feeling in danger, or feeling weak is a natural part of human life.  Trying to avoid it is a hopeless task that could only be taken on by a part of the brain that thinks that it is control of everything.

In the successful treatment of every patient in whom I have successfully treated allergies, a key part of the treatment has been the healing of that underlying internal belief of imminent danger or some related belief.

The exact how’s and why’s of such a treatment are too detailed to go in here, and I’ve taken up enough of your time already.  But rest assured that it is efficient and effective and only requires a short series of sessions.

This all might sound fanciful, but I encourage you to test me out.  If you feel stuck with your allergies, please email me back to set up a time to talk.  I’d be happy to let you know if I can help.  And after all, I’ll give you your money back if it doesn’t work. ]]> http://drtraviselliott.com/two-minds-the-cause-of-all-disease-part-4/feed/ http://drtraviselliott.com/do-you-prefer-control-over-chaos/ http://drtraviselliott.com/do-you-prefer-control-over-chaos/#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:26:23 +0000 Travis Elliott, ND CBP http://drtraviselliott.com/?p=142 Chaos in Your Head

What do I mean by work WITH your body instead of against it? Let me give you an example.

Howard came to me with a diagnosis of proctitis. For a year and a half he had been having fairly regular episodes of blood in the stool, and an uncomfortable “bloating and upset stomach.” Essentially, after an exam and a colonoscopy, what he was diagnosed with was an inflammation of the end of his large intestine. He received the standard medical treatment of an anti-inflammatory and another drug that slowed down his digestive process; an anti-cholinergic drug.

This is a perfect example of the medical model that I describe as “working against the body.” Whether you are on a pharmaceutical or a natural supplement, chances are good that the intent of the pill is to stop some bodily process that is uncomfortable.

The nice thing is that, quite often, this “anti-” approach works. The symptoms can be reduced. They usually don’t go away, but people can feel a difference. In Howard’s case, the symptoms were improved, slightly. He was still uncomfortable, though, and didn’t want to be on the drugs for the rest of his life. He came to me looking for another option.

When we spoke about his condition, I told him that I could offer him a natural alternative to some of the drugs. Aloe vera juice, for example can be quite effective for healing intestinal inflammation.

However, I also said that, if he was open to it, I could offer him a completely different perspective on his illness. Instead of deciding that your colon is doing something wrong and try to stop it, we can instead ask why you are feeling this way? In other words, is there something your body is trying to tell you?

He seemed interested in what I was saying, so I went on. I said, “for example, there could be underlying stresses in your life that are contributing to your inflammation. Correcting underlying sources of mental and emotional stress would allow the symptoms that you are experiencing (the bloating, the upset stomach, the blood) to be healed by your body’s natural mechanisms. That is not to say that the physical symptoms that you have are not real! It’s just that the mind can influence the body and they often need to be healed in tandem.”

I continued, “I think of body symptoms as red flags, or notes, waved in front of us that say, ‘Hey, there’s something wrong down here- get some help!’ Once underlying problems are fixed, the body can often heal itself.

Howard agreed to work with me, but we ended up having just one session. That’s because his symptoms were gone after working together once, and he is now off of his medication.

What happened? The simple answer is that I worked with what his body was telling him instead of trying to stop the symptoms at all costs.

When we worked together, I gave him one very simple instruction: notice what was happening in his body and let himself feel it. When I asked him what he was feeling in his body, he said that his “stomach felt tense.” I asked him to let himself sink into that “tenseness” and pay attention to whatever else came up- whether physical, mental, or emotional.

It turned out that Howard is public school counselor, and his job is to try and help kids with extremely complex problems navigate the school system. There are rarely easy answers, and he found that he was getting very stressed out by the job.

When we started working, he noticed the tension in his belly was similar to the tension he felt at work. When I asked him what the hardest part about his counseling job was, he said that it was like, “trying to find the perfect piece of the puzzle to fit the problem in front of him. The problem is that I know that the perfect piece doesn’t exist, but I can’t help but keep looking for it. In my mind I know I can’t solve the puzzle, but part of me won’t let me stop looking. It’s exhausting!”

Meanwhile, he felt the tension move through his body. From his abdomen, it moved to his chest, then his neck and shoulders, and then back to his upper abdomen. Finally it moved to both his hips and his face and then was gone.

When I asked Howard what it said about him that he couldn’t find the missing puzzle piece, he said that he felt like it was his fault. There was a part of him that took the responsibility for solving the problem with each student and when the perfect solution remained elusive, it felt like it was his fault and that he had failed.

He had an inkling that he was putting a lot of pressure on himself, but now he saw clearly that he was trying to take responsibility for the massive problems in a huge public school bureaucracy. When I asked him to completely sink into the feeling of being at fault, he felt a deep awareness of his true role at work, and a deep release of the feeling of failure.

Howard’s bleeding has stopped and he only rarely gets abdominal discomfort. His job stress has declined significantly as well.

How did this happen? The details of his physiology are still a mystery, but it is clear that I helped Howard work with his body and not against it.

In my practice, I have seen that tremendous things can happen when the processes in our bodies are respected. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need any medications or physical interventions; sometimes the physical damage is extensive enough that we need some repair help. But healing the underlying cause of that physical damage is powerful medicine in its own right, and the most important tools of healing are the ones that you already own: be present and listen.

Please call me if you would like to find out how working with your body can change your life. You can schedule a free 15 minute consult or a full appointment. I’ll let you know if I can help you, and if I can’t, I will refer you to someone who can.

In order to get off of an unwanted medication, it is essential to eliminate the need for it. Alternative medicine can help you do that in a variety of different ways.

One important thing to consider is the type of approach that interests you. How would you answer the following two questions?

1) Do you want a natural alternative to the anti-depressant?
or
2) Do you want to heal the underlying causes of your illness, thereby eliminating the need to take any kind of medicine, be it natural or pharmaceutical?

These are not rhetorical questions, but rather very important ones. I want to make sure that you are very clear with yourself so that you can be clear with me. By being clear with me, I will be able to satisfy your goals quickly and efficiently, saving you both time and money.

Whether you are on Prozac, Wellbutrin, Effexor, etc., doesn’t matter, they all act in a similar way. They manipulate brain chemistry so that the calming, “happy” nerves are increasingly stimulated, and the excitatory, stressful neurons are stimulated less. This is a pretty gross generalization, but the point is that the medications do one thing: change your brain chemistry.

However, your brain is not who you are. There is a deeper level of consciousness than your brain and it may be that the problem lies there. Sure, your brain chemistry is imbalanced, but why is it imbalanced?.

If you answered yes to the first question above, it may be that you would rather not explore that deeper level of consciousness. That is totally fine. Or you may believe that because of your diet, personal habits, or lifestyle, imbalanced brain chemistry is the most pressing problem and that is what you would like to address. That, too, is totally fine.

The picture below is a list taken from HealthNotes- an informational kiosk that is available for free access in most health food stores. It shows some natural supplements that can help with depression. Another list exists for anxiety, though many of the entries are similar.

If you would like an alternative supplement you can research some of these on your own, or make an appointment to get my recommendations and receive an individualized supplement plan.

If you are interested in re-balancing your brain chemistry with a natural product, some combination of the supplements above will probably work. For example, St. John’s Wort has comparable efficacy to SSRI’s in many studies.

However, if you answered “yes” to the second question, you need a different approach. You may be tired of taking pills and would just like to get to the bottom of why you are not feeling well. In that case you will need one or more healing sessions that are designed to identify and eliminate the underlying causes of your illness.

The underlying causes, in my experience, are usually erroneous belief systems or deep wounds that are creating conflicts within your consciousness. The increased stress that you experience as a result of these conflicts have the long-term effect of changing brain chemistry. That’s why the anti-depressants work for a large number of people. They are not concerned with the “why”, they are only concerned with the end-stage, physiological result.

Once the underlying causes are healed and you experience life with less fear, anger, and sadness, the brain chemistry is able to normalize. The majority of the time it normalizes on its own. However, sometimes it is necessary to do a short-term course of a natural supplement to help correct the neurotransmitters.

The benefit of choosing to heal in this way is that you will decrease the need for long-term medication and/or supplements, and you will be able to experience your life with an increased sense of joy, not just less depression. It’s not very expensive in the short run, and it will certainly save you even more money and effort in the long run.

If you are ready to ask for some help with either approach, please give me a call. I offer a no-charge 15 minute consult. Of course, you may also make an appointment to begin the process of eliminating your need for an anti-depressant medication.