|
groundbreaking tools for transformation
Since I began to introduce these new tools to my trade, Ive seen dramatic changes in even my most difficult therapy challenges. With the help of these newly found approaches, my clients rate of improvement, depth of change, and long-term symptom relief has given my clientele a more rapid resolution to their presenting issues and allowed me greater career satisfaction.
Tools and Techniques for:
Anxiety Disorders
Depression
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Concentration and Memory
Reading and Writing Skills
ADD/ADHD
Enhanced Sports Performance
Stress Reduction
Improved Self Image and Self Expression
Treatment Modalities:
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)
Based on impressive new discoveries involving the body's energies, EFT has been reported to be 80% clinically effective in relieving the following problems: Trauma, Abuse, Stress, Anxiety, Fears, Phobias, Depression, Grief, Addictive Cravings, and hundreds of physical symptoms including headaches, body pains and breathing difficulties. It is a missing piece to the healing puzzle, based on the knowledge of the healing effects of acupuncture and acupressure.
The premise of EFT is that memories and thoughts about unresolved distressing experiences are trapped in the bodys energy system. These negative feedback loops create electrical imbalances that can bring about emotional/physical illness. EFT releases the thoughts, memories and their dysfunctional patterns, restoring the natural balance and flow of energy to the system.
Technique
The EFT procedure involves a combination of tapping with the fingers on emotion-specific energy meridians in the body that are associated with acupuncture. These acupuncture sites have been found to be associated with particular emotions. While doing the tapping sequence, distressful thoughts and/or events are targeted and specific statements are repeated. The energy of the EFT procedure dislodges the trapped thoughts/feelings and allows the natural balance and flow of energy to resume, bringing immediate relief.
It is not necessary that you fully understand or believe in the theoretical foundation of EFT. The techniques will work whether you believe in them or not. EFT often works where nothing else will. It is usually rapid, long lasting and gentle. No drugs or equipment are involved. It is easily learned by almost anyone in less than an hour, and can be self applied.
Top of Page
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Technique
Although its mechanisms are still not fully understood, EMDR [Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing] has demonstrated phenomenal ability to resolve emotional issues. In particular, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). shell-shocked battle veterans, victims of rape and abuse, and survivors of natural and man-made disasters have experienced quick and permanent relief with EMDR, often in cases where numerous other therapies, including hypnosis, have failed. EMDR is well researched and its clinical success has been demonstrated worldwide [See www.emdr.com]. Most recently (December, 2001) the Chicago Tribune reported that survivors of the attack on the World Trade Center agreed that EMDR was the most effective therapy in resolving their trauma.
Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., originator of the process, explains the effects as the breaking of a neurological loop, installed at the time of the traumatizing event. EMDR appears to activate a natural mechanism for dissipation of the dysfunctional loop enabling clients to integrate difficult life experiences and get past them. After EMDR, thinking about the events no longer triggers the trauma survivor into states of anxiety, depression or terror.
Technique
With EMDR, clients are asked to focus on the disturbing experience/images, physical sensations and/or thoughts. As the therapist hand moves from side to side in front of the clients face, the client follows the hand movement with their eyes. These lateral movements seem to disperse the unresolved emotional charge associated with the distressing events, circumstances, or perceptions. EMDR procedures sometimes incorporate other methods of side-to-side lateralization [tones in alternating ears, tapping on alternate sides of the body] to activate hemispheric interactions.
The second phase of the EMDR procedure seeks to instill a positive thought process in place of the negative one that was associated with the distress. For example, the person who has lived through an earthquake might go from thinking, I am vulnerable, to recognizing that the danger is past and that, I am secure and comfortable.
Top of Page
HeartMath Freeze Framer Program
The HeartMath Research Center has found a critical link between emotions and the heart, as well as the immune and hormonal systems. According to the Mayo Clinic, in the past decade cardiovascular fitness has become synonymous with good emotional and physical health. The HeartMath Research Center is engaged in several areas of investigation showing how and why our mental and emotional attitudes have such profound effects on the rhythms of the heart. This research is proving what many of us already know intuitively that our mental and emotional attitudes are directly related to our health and happiness.
The Freeze Framer was developed based on scientific research conducted by Doc Childre and the Institute of HeartMath. IHMs research explores the physiological mechanisms by which the heart communicates with the brain and how it influences our perceptions, emotions and health. When our biological systems synchronize with the hearts rhythmic beating patterns, we enter a physiological state called entrainment.
Entrainment reflects a harmonious balance between the two branches of the autonomic nervous system. This internal state of heightened physiological efficiency enhances health and promotes optimal performance. Dramatic, positive mental and emotional shifts can also occur during entrainment. Often, perception of a difficult situation shifts to a more decided outlook, which reduces stress levels and restores the body to a state of balance and well-being.
With the Freeze Framer Emotional Management Enhancer, the hearts rhythmic pattern is observable on your computer screen. Using new technology, the Freeze Framer displays your physiological state by recording your all-important heart rhythms through a fingertip pulse sensor that simply plugs into the serial port on your computer.
A smoother, calmer more uniform pattern usually indicates a more balanced nervous system, and a jagged pattern generally indicates a less entrained system. While using HeartMath techniques called Freeze Frame and Heart Lock-In, the Freeze Framer records and analyzes heart rhythms with a mathematical algorithm that assigns an entrainment score. At the same time, your ability to maintain entrainment is plotted real-time, on-screen, using a defined area called the Zone. The data from each session is recorded for later review and analysis. Practicing with this sophisticated biofeedback technology on a daily basis can show quick remarkable improvements in reducing stress, transforming frustration, anger, depression and anxiety while increasing vitality, productivity, work/life balance and improving overall health.
Top of Page
CLEAR Therapy (Colored Light Entrainment and Repatterning)
Clear Therapy is a method of releasing unresolved core emotional issues using colored light.
Flashing Light and Brainwave Entrainment
In the 1930s Dr. W.G. Walter found that when flashing light is emitted into the eyes, the brain adopts the rhythm of the strobe (see Brain and Brainwave Entrainment). It was later determined that when the flash rate was adjusted to particular speeds, the brains adaptation to that speed causes an individual to enter a beta, alpha, theta or delta brain wave state. It is in the deep unconscious states that we as children first receive information. Both healthy and unhealthy beliefs are formulated and held in these brain wave states. It is the unhealthy beliefs that give rise to panic, anxiety, addictions, sleep problems, and low self esteem, to mention only a few of the life difficulties that hinder our functioning and overall wellbeing, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
About the Technique
In conventional therapy, the goal of the therapy process is to become conscious of the underlying causes of behaviors and beliefs. This exploration occurs in a beta (fully conscious) waking state. Beliefs and emotions are often not restructured and resolved because the clients brainwave frequency must match the frequency in which the trauma originated in order for the dysfunctional thoughts or memories to be released.
How the Technique is Administered
In the initial intake session, the client looks at 11 different colors of flashing light and the therapist is able to pinpoint unresolved emotional issues based on distortions the client sees in each color. In the following sessions, the feedback from the clients perception of the colors enables the therapist and client to uncover core beliefs that drive the clients dysfunctional thinking, feelings or behavior. These beliefs are then intentionally changed by the client with the aid of the light and the therapist. CLEAR is coordinated with eye movement (see EMDR), breathwork and meridian-based therapies ( see EFT) to facilitate rapid resolution of the clients problem.
Who Can Benefit from CLEAR Therapy?
Adults and children with phobias, fears, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or low self-esteem
Those in need of stress relief and stress management techniques
People who have not achieved their desired results in other therapies
People who are enjoying a relatively full and happy life who would like to expand their consciousness
Top of Page
LST (Light Stimulation Therapy)
What is LST?
LST enhances learning abilities and sports performance by stimulating the eye and brain with light. It has the objective of improving health and human performance by optimizing brain function. Since most sensory input to the brain is in the form of visual light perception, light has the greatest influence on brain function and is the focus of this non-invasive technique. The Downing Technique was developed by John Downing, O.D., Ph.D. during 20 years of research and clinical observation in the study of neurosensory stimulation. LST is an adaptation of Downings technique, which involves the use of rhythmic colored light into the eyes for a period of 20 minutes over 20 consecutive sessions. The flashing light at various rates of speed functions as a catalyst for mind-body healing. It has had enormously successful results in the following areas: concentration, memory, reading, test anxiety, creativity, stress reduction, self-esteem, hyperactivity (ADD), chronic fatigue and chronic pain syndromes.
How Light Affects the Brain
Over the past 60 years, neuroscience has established our dependence upon light perception for much more than just seeing the world around us. Acting as photocells for the brain, the eyes convert light energy into electrical energy. Light- generated electrical stimulation travels throughout the brain, promoting better brain and body function.
Light Stimulation Deficit
Clinical evidence suggests that such factors as heredity, stress, head injuries, emotional trauma and poor lighting can decrease the ability of the eye to transform light energy into electrical energy, creating a deficit. Most people have some degree of these deficits. This means that a great many individuals are not functioning optimally in the areas of vision, health and human performance.
LST begins with the measurement of the visual field to ascertain whether light is being processed effectively and efficiently in the brain. A series of comprehensive questionnaires help to determine certain areas of the brain that may be affected as well. This information is used to specify the necessary colors of light to be utilized by each individual to restore balance. Eleven different wave bands of color have been found to be effective stimuli for this purpose. By increasing the efficiency of light processing in the brain, LST can improve stimulation of brain activity, reactivate neural pathways, improve intellectual, mental, emotional, and physical well being and quality of performance.
How LST is Administered
LST is administered by having an individual sit comfortably in a darkened room looking at the proper waveband of colored light which is focused directly on the eyes.
Sessions last 20 minutes. Assessment results determine the number of series required [20 sessions per series.] Clients are required to have 3 to 5 sessions per week until the total of 20 sessions is completed. At the end of each 20-session series, there is a reevaluation to determine the necessity of further treatment and/or to adjust the color protocol.
Who Can Benefit from LST?
Children ages 5-7 to enhance early learning development skills
Children ages 8-12 for behavior modification, learning and sports enhancement
Teens in the areas of sports performance, educational achievement, SAD
Adults and children with learning difficulties including ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, poor concentration and memory
Adults and children who suffer from Self Esteem issues, Mood and Behavior Disorders, Anxiety, Stress, Depression and Light Sensitivity
Contraindications for LST
Clients with severe mental or emotional disturbances such as schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders are not appropriate candidates for this therapy, nor are those suffering from photo-convulsive epilepsy. Those suffering from eye diseases should obtain permission from their optometrist or ophthalmologist before experiencing LST. Those with portal hypertension or high blood pressure need permission from their physician.
Top of Page
Color Therapy Eyewear
Color therapy can be done with non-prescription sunglasses designed for convenience and affordability. The use of colored glasses as a therapeutic modality is based upon the principle that each color always vibrates at a specific individual frequency. Science has shown that each of the body's organs also pulsates at its own frequency. However, stress, illness and fatigue can have a negative impact on these frequencies. In a manner similar to vitamin and mineral supplementation, we can receive health benefits from the balancing and restorative effects of color frequencies.
The color that produces the greatest positive response determines the appropriate glasses for the client. The Color Therapy Glasses are worn daily for 30 to 60 minutes, but the actual length of time depends on the client response. Each color gives a different feeling or effect. The glasses come in 9 individual rainbow colors [magenta, red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, indigo and violet].
The color therapy eyewear is often used in conjunction with CLEAR Therapy [see insert] for continued therapeutic effect between sessions. The colored glasses can evoke feelings of calm, energy, alertness, clarity, and relaxation.
Top of Page
The Brain and Brainwave EntrainmentThe DAVID Device
What is Brainwave Entrainment?
Each of our senses responds to activity from the environment and transmits that information to the brain. The senses of sight and hearing, by their very nature, provide a favorable environment for affecting brainwaves. By presenting pulsed audio and visual stimulation to the brain, after a short period of time, the brain begins to resonate or entrain at the same frequency as the stimulus. This effect is commonly referred to as brainwave entrainment (BWE).
Comptronic Devices Limited has been designing, developing, researching and manufacturing audio-visual entrainment (AVE) devices since 1984. Comptronics DAVID device sends flashes of lights using a pair of eyesets, and pulses tones through a pair of headphones to gently guide the brain into altered states of consciousness.
We can slow down the brainwaves for meditation, pain relief, dream states, hypnosis, deep relaxation, sleep, creativity, and the relief of stress and anxiety. The DAVID can also be used to speed up brainwaves, making the DAVID an ideal tool to treat slow brainwave disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder, closed-head brain injury, fibromyalgia, PMS, chronic fatigue and insomnia. Additional applications of the David include improved mental and physical performance.
Program Activity
The client follows preprogrammed instructions in the use of the DAVID device. Each program is intended to induce a specific brainwave state. To use the DAVID device, the client simply keys in the number of the program desired, puts on the eyeset [goggles] and the earphones, then listens to the audio tones and watches the color display. The user can also overlay music of his or her choosing if desired.
Top of Page
The Vestibular System and the Brain
The vestibular system in the brain allows us to stand upright, maintain balance, move through space, and process visual information about the environment while we are in motion. The vestibular system is a surprisingly complex sensory system, integrating information from:
the vestibular organs in the inner ear
- the eyes
- the neck and shoulder muscles
- the fingertips and palms of the hand
- the pressors on the soles of the feet
- hip and leg joints
- jaw muscles and facial muscles
The vestibular system is perhaps the most basic of all the sensory systems. The system develops early in utero and through its many connections with the rest of the brain, it is believed to provide the foundation for many other functions. The vestibular system coordinates body movements, maintains balance and equilibrium, and helps children develop normal muscle tone. It plays a significant role in the development of language, such that children with vestibular dysfunction may also have auditory-language processing problems.
The vestibular system influences motor control and motor planning that are necessary to use the fine muscles in the throat, tongue, lips, and jaw to produce intelligible speech. Because the vestibular system is crucial for effective auditory processing, the child with vestibular dysfunction frequently develops problems with language. In addition, other input mechanisms that affect and are affected by the vestibular functioning are the hip and leg joints impacting large motor coordination, hands and fingers affecting fine motor skills, and the pressors on the soles of the feet giving a sense of stability and balance and space.
It's important to realize that the vestibular, auditory and visual systems work together as they process sensations of movement and sound and light. These sensations are closely intertwined, as they all begin to be processed and/or influenced by receptors of the ear. Vision is an important component of the vestibular system. About twenty percent of visual neurons respond to vestibular stimulation (e.g. when spinning, head shaking, or rocking). The auditory system is also highly involved in vestibular functions. The vestibular and auditory nerves join in the auditory canal and become the eighth cranial nerve of the brain. Anything that disrupts auditory information can also affect vestibular functioning.
One system feeds the other information that allows us to think, move, comprehend and interpret the world around us. We call this process of balancing and improving the communication between the input systems, sensory integration.
Top of Page
The Brain and the Listening Program
Many of us, children and adults alike, are not utilizing our auditory system to its fullest potential. In fact, many people experience "listening disabilities" and do not realize it. These weaknesses or problems in processing sound can adversely affect us in many ways including: communication skills, learning abilities, attention and behavior, energy levels, coordination, relaxation, brain function, and sensory integration. Improving or enhancing our ability to process sound can produce specific benefits. People of all ages can be trained to process sound more effectively to overcome weaknesses or further develop listening-related abilities.
The Listening Program is specially treated classical music and nature sounds that can actually improve ones ability to process a balanced, full range of sound frequencies. This has far-reaching benefits. Often, subtle improvements in auditory processing enable children and adults to improve their attention span and concentration. Perhaps this is why some children begin to move ahead much more easily in reading, spelling, and handwriting. Greater steadiness and focus also helps to build better motor control and speech, improved self-esteem and motivation. For some children and adults the neurological input provided by The Listening Program is the jump-start they need to make a major change and come alive in many dynamic ways.
Listening to the CDs in The Listening Program literally exercises and tones tiny muscles in the ear and helps build stronger multi-sensory pathways in the brain. The brain receives especially rich auditory stimulation, and its ability to process sound improves.
The Listening Program May Help With:
Attention problems, learning problems, auditory processing difficulties, difficulty retaining information, sound sensitivities, energy level and confidence, speech & motor control, auditory perception & sensitivity, musical & vocal expression, self-esteem, mood & motivation, social interaction, understanding spoken language, reading, spelling & handwriting, physical balance and coordination.
Program Activity
The program entails 1 to 2 fifteen-minute listening sessions a day, five days per week. The average program length is eight weeks. Many people find it advantageous to repeat the program once or several times to keep their auditory system in peak condition. Listening is done through a pair of high-quality headphones and a CD Player.
Additional CDs called TLP Extensions are also available which allow for further individualization of Listening Programs.
This program is designed for use in the home, school, clinic and in business settings. It can be used as a stand-alone sound stimulation program or as an adjunct to other modalities.
Top of Page
The Green Wave Therapy
The Green Wave Therapy is a technique that combines green laser light, micro current energy, and some of the principles of EMDR [Eye Movement Desensitization and Repatterning], and EFT [The Emotional Freedom Acupressure Technique]. This combined therapy creates a rapid response to relieving and releasing disturbing and traumatic feelings and internal images.
How the Technique is Administered
Here is a brief description of the technique:
The client is asked to bring to mind the longstanding feeling or event and give it a number to indicate level of distress from one to ten, ten being the most disturbed they could be. They rest in a chair or on a massage table, holding an IPOD-sized micro current device [invented by Dr. Jae Shim] to the region between the eyebrows. The practitioner stands back about 4-5 feet and treats the entire body with green laser light, circling the body with the laser for about 1-2 minutes. With every 1-2 minute pass, the clinician checks the level of distress the client is experiencing while thinking about the initial issue. Once the client reaches a level 1 or 2, the therapy for that particular issue has reached a successful conclusion.
With every success with this new technique, I found myself asking, Whats going on here? How in the world does this work? I began to explore the work of some brilliant scholars who explore light and frequency in a quantifiable way.
Biological cells give off a cellular glow known as biophoton emission with spectral frequencies in the UV and visible spectrum range. This theory was discovered in 1922 by Russian embryologist Alexander G. Gurwitsch and later confirmed through systemic Western research by Fritz Albert Popp in 1974.
This biophoton light emanating from the body creates a coherent biophoton field which envelops the whole body, and is able to transmit signals with the speed of light to any place in the organism and activate or inhibit biochemical processes to organize and alter the matter of our bodies. [Marco Bishof, Journal of Optometric Phototherapy, March 2005]
In keeping with the work of Roger Callahan and his Thought Field Therapy approach, disturbances in thoughts and feelings that interrupt a feeling of inner balance and stability cause disturbances and lack of coherence in the biophoton field. To address these disturbances, EFT, a derivative of Thought Field Therapy, is utilized intermittently along with the laser treatment and micro current stimulation.
Because of the high degree of order of the emissions of light from the body [biophotons], they are considered a kind of biological laser light. Quite unlike normally observed light with its fluctuations, this biological laser has a stable intensity. Because of the stable field strength, laser light - such as the green laser light used in the treatment, can [as stated above] superimpose, generate and keep order as well as transmit information into the organism. [Marco Bishof, Journal of Optometric Phototherapy, March 2005]
The latest biophoton research seems to suggest that not only is the body a composite of molecules, but also an electromagnetic field structure that both emits and absorbs light. Our electromagnetic body is able to react sensitively to the smallest stimuli, or can become neutral or transparent and receptive to quite strong stimuli.
So, according to these theories and preliminary findings, we have a field that surrounds our body an electromagnetic field that carries emotional and thought content, as well as other information that can be transmitted by light. If we can shine a laser light over that field, causing the coherent laser light from the pen to neutralize or restore order to the biological laser field, then the disturbing thoughts can be neutralized. Once this order is restored, the emotional charge becomes nullified, slipping into the realm of orderly feelings in the memory data bank. These thoughts and feelings assume a place in the matrix that is more like a piece of data in a remote file on a computer, rather than a very obvious and distressing pop-up. Perhaps the intensity of the mechanized green laser light imposes order on the laser-like light emanating from the biological cells.
By applying the IPOD sized micro current device to the space between the eyes, I theorize that its contribution to the process is to confuse the brains synaptic responses to the clients thoughts and feelings, and in combination with the other tools, opens the way to refilling these newly neutralized thought patterns.
In addition, scientists have found that there is a rhythm to these emissions of light from the body that seems to correlate and depend on the various biological rhythms of the body. This information triggered the addition of another part of the therapy. As I continued to use the micro current stimulator, I decided to add another dimension to the therapy process to ground the changes in the physical body the Neurotek Tapper equipment that is available to be used adjunctively with the EMDR approach. This equipment consists of handheld vibrating disks along with a headset that beeps a tone with the same rhythm from the left side of the body to the right. The rhythm rocks the auditory and sensory systems into relaxed entrainment that can assist in balancing and lulling the autonomic nervous system into a relaxed response. So, while having the client recall the event with all the attending thoughts, feelings, visual and auditory memories, they are hearing and feeling a relaxing rhythm, and their field is being neutralized with a coherent light beam and micro current activity giving order to their disturbed field.
I have named this combined therapy approach The Green Wave Therapy.
Top of Page
|