healing trauma Archives - Amazing Health Advances

How Understanding the Biofield Could Hold the Key to Healing Trauma

AHA Publisher — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 07:00:28 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #385) and blog, I talk to Dr. Shamini Jain, a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist and social entrepreneur, about the science behind the mind-brain-body connection, the biofield and healing trauma, why we need to understand the placebo effect, how to avoid moralizing self-help, and so much more! Through her undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral studies at Columbia University, UC San Diego, and UCLA, Dr. Jain has conducted randomized clinical trials and other research in the areas of meditation, hands on healing, and other integrative medicine practices from the scientific lens of neurophysiology and psychoneuroimmunology. She has also been a healing student of master healer and teacher Rev. Rosalyn Bruyere, where she learned a great deal about how healing works. Through her work as a clinical psychologist, which included treating veterans with PTSD, children from disadvantaged communities, and a variety of people suffering from significant mental illness, she realized that our power for healing ourselves is immense and incredibly important for our times. Both modern science and ancient wisdom provide us with the tools we need to heal ourselves. Dr. Jain discusses this integrated model of health in detail in her amazing new book Healing Ourselves: Biofield Science and the Future of Health. She talks about how we are all interconnected, and how this connection has the power to heal us. Science is increasingly showing us how deeply our mental, spiritual and emotional selves are connected to our physical bodies, and can have a profound influence on our health. It is not just about what we eat or how much we exercise. Other factors like our relationships (both with ourselves and others) can have a big impact on how we feel mentally and physically. This is why it is so important to focus on WHOLE person health. The ability to heal ourselves is not just a “miracle”. We can study our own healing power and understand how we can start replicating this in real life. This often includes studying things that have been known for centuries and putting them in the language of science. This can be a simple as prescribing yoga for chronic back pain, which already happens in the US based on research done in the field. This is really exciting because it underscores our own agency, which, alongside asking for help when necessary (which is also a noble act), is incredibly hopeful. Key to understanding this connection is the biofield. Scientifically, biofield is a term used to describe our bio-electric-magnetic nature—fields of energy and information that guide our health. This is not “woohoo”—it is currently studied in many fields of healthcare already, including using magnetic fields to study emotions and electroceuticals to heal various ailments. The biofield also includes traditions that, although difficult to measure, have been harnessed for centuries by many indigenous cultures to heal people, such as qi, universal energy or prana. What do these ancient traditions know about the biofield that we can learn from? This is an important part of scientific inquiry. We don’t have to choose between Western and Eastern medicine. We can look at the whole person AND at different ways of describing what is going on during the healing process. One great way to understand this interconnectedness is to examine the placebo effect. As Dr. Jain points out, the placebo effect at its core means healing, or holistic elements that activate the process of healing. The placebo effect was originally developed to just please patients, not heal them. It was designed to “trick” a patient into thinking an intervention will heal them. Yet, in light of the growing body of research on the mind-brain-body connection, we now understand the placebo effect is more than just a “trick”. Placebo effects happen in all therapeutic encounters, even medications and surgery. They can be incredibly meaningful experiences, right down to the level of our neural firing and neural pathways. The placebo effect has many different facets, which Dr. Jain discusses in detail in Healing Ourselves: Biofield Science and the Future of Health. These include: 1. Expectations. This is what your conscious mind thinks about an intervention. It is generally what most people think of when they think of the placebo effect. 2. Conditioning, which is a subconscious and conscious process. 3. Relationships. This includes bedside manner. Research has shown that a friendly doctor, for example, can increase chances of recovery. 4. Ritual. This creates meaning and context that set the stage for our needs, hopes and expectations. We are training the body and mind to receive a particular healing encounter, like the ritual of meeting a white coat doctor in a medical office. You can start implementing these aspects of the placebo effect at home. Simply create a space at home or in the office to engage in a healing ritual, even for just 15 minutes a day. When you do this, you ready the whole person – mind, body and brain – for a healing encounter, allowing your mind and body to naturally do what they do: heal. This doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you if you don’t automatically heal yourself in every situation. We should avoid moralizing self-help. The more we learn about the biofield, the more we understand the vast importance of interconnectedness and the role it plays in healing—not just in ourselves, but also in our relationships with others and our environment. This is not an either/or situation. It is all about connection! This is not about thinking your way out of something or just doing enough yoga to get better. We all have a vast array of life experiences that affect us. Sometimes we get stuck and we need help. This help (in whatever form it takes) supports the natural healing process and interconnectedness that is within us and that defines our world. This is true for an allopathic doctor, and it is true for an energy teacher. Healing ourselves does not mean figuring it out alone and feeling bad when we fail, or that everything will always work out like we expect or hope. The key thing to understand about the biofield is the power of spiritual connection, however we define this and however it plays out in our unique context. This energetic nature is open and available to all of us. Regardless of how we experience this sense of self beyond the conditioned mind, brain and body, when we tap into this experience, the healing can be immense. We can start harnessing this incredible healing power by: 1. Grounding. Coming into our bodies and connecting with the earth. 2. Flowing with our emotions. Understanding and working skillfully with our emotional states. This includes tuninginto discomfort and allowing it to move through us so we can learn from it. 3. Tapping into our creativity. Creativity is an incredible healer! It leads us to a stronger sense of authenticity, whichis integral to the healing process. 4. Fostering positive healing intentions. This goes beyond positive affirmations. It is about uniting the mental and vital forces, or uniting the mind, brain and body energy and gaining more insight into our healing desires and what we are envisioning for ourselves while moving towards healing support. Community and spiritual connections are integral to this process. 5. Surrendering. This is about letting go of the conditioned mind and our desires, asking for support and realizing it. This step opens us up to possibilities of healing that we may not even have imagined. To read the original article click here.

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Small Things You Can Do Every Day to Protect Your Mental Health

AHA Publisher — Fri, 20 May 2022 07:00:09 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this replay from Lewis Howes’ amazing podcast The School of Greatness, I talk about ways to handle the mental conditions that affect us all. Lewis and I dive deep into the topic of how mismanagement of mental health is on the rise, and I share my five-step Neurocycle process to help people manage their minds. We also discuss how to protect your mental health if you’ve undergone painful and traumatic experiences in your life. Emotional states like anxiety and depression are our body’s way of responding to painful experiences. Despair, anger, depression, anxiety—these are all normal responses to life. In fact, they can be helpful. They are messengers and warning signals telling us what is going on in our lives, not just scary illnesses. We need to shift our focus and change the way we talk and think about mental health. It’s important to focus on the story and the person’s experience, not just their symptoms. The mind is complicated, and to properly heal, we need to focus on specific ways of dealing with negative emotions. This is where the Neurocycle comes in. This process is an alternative way to manage our mind’s response to traumatic memories or painful experiences. For instance, in a tremendously acute traumatic state, you have the options of going into two zones. The first is the mental mess that you’re in, where you are the pilot. However, you also have the zone of the co-pilot, which is also you. The only difference is that your co-pilot can see what is going on from a more objective point of view. It has its wisdom because inside each of us is what I call our “wise mind”. This co-pilot state is necessary for us to prepare ourselves for the Neurocycle process. Once we hand the control over to our mind’s co-pilot, our wise mind, then we can proceed to the five-step process below: Gather awareness: In this gather step, you are gathering awareness of your emotional and physical warning signals, behaviors and perspective/attitude. It’s a bit like gathering apples into a basket versus letting them all fall on your head and knock you out. In this analogy, the apples represent all of these warning signals. In this step, allow yourself time to feel. Validate your feelings, don’t run away from them! Reflect: Put your thoughts and feelings on the witness stand in your mind. Ask yourself questions like: Why do you think you feel the way you do? What has happened recently? What has happened in the past? Have you been suppressing or ignoring anything? Are you trying to avoid anything? What triggered you? Be as specific as possible. You can do this in a minute or less because you don’t need too much information—you don’t need to find all the answers right now! Allow yourself to be curious with your emotions and feelings. What you are feeling is valid, but may not be true, so question everything. Write: Pour you mind and brain on paper. This doesn’t have to be organized or even make sense—just get it out! You can organize in step 4. This type of “pouring your mind out” writing will pull what’s in the depths of your being up and will help you both organize and clarify your thoughts and feelings. It also increases brain health, so that you can think more clearly, be less impulsive and have more wisdom and cognitive flexibility! Recheck: In this recheck step, you are making more sense of what you have gathered, written and reflected on. So, I want you to go back over what you discussed, wrote down and thought about more deeply, reflecting and analyzing your thoughts and feelings. Do a mental autopsy; become a detective and look for patterns, triggers and activators. Write whatever you discover into your journal in another color so you can track what you are reconceptualizing. Some questions to ask in this step could be: What truths are hidden in your writing? What patterns? What are you noticing about your thoughts and reactions? Has anything changed? How are you planning to proceed? What can you learn from your reactions? What can you learn from what happened in your relationship? How can you reconceptualize this situation? How can you turn the destructive into something constructive? Active Reach: This step is essentially an action you take to reinforce the new, reconceptualized pattern of thinking you want in your life (which is replacing the old relationship habit). This step will be based off what you rechecked in step 4. If you want something to change, what will this look like? How can you practice this change? If you want to restore the relationship, what will you do? Once you start permitting your mind’s co-pilot to take the reins, it’ll be easier to fight that urge to come back to that dark place. It is also helpful to engage in brain building to build up your cognitive resilience. This means taking the five steps of Neurocycling to learn new information. Every morning, new cells are born, just waiting for us to use them. If we don’t, they become toxic waste and affect our brain negatively. There are many ways to build the brain, like reading, studying, and even doing physical activities. By allowing your mind to engage itself in thinking, you can build your mental and physical resilience, take control of the urge of going back to that deep dark place, and transform your life altogether! To read the original article click here.

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