(1) EEG’s when I began practice in 1970 were for following epilepsy. Interest has since developed in the generation of less frequent wave forms, including studies by Mei-chun Cheung showing the stimulation of a prominent ear acupoint (one used the the AcuDetox protocol) creates alpha wave alteration in the left frontal region much like the comparable Peniston-Kulkosky biofeedback with its long term salutory results like AcuDestress. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4342064/) A study of body acupuncture points (LI-4) by A.C. Chen shows like alterations of wave forms linked to creativity/deep relaxation, unlike changes with sham stimulation. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16325429
(2) PET scans and MRI’s, let alone Functional MRI’s were hardly envisioned in 1969. Acupuncture was still virtually unknown before 1975. Acupuncture has now been in North America for 40 years. Neuroscience now studies acupuncture alongside allopathic medicine and so much is known about it’s function In a study at Harvard by researcher V. Napadow (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997288/ ) significant up-regulation of the hypothalamus and down-regulation of the amygdala were seen on fMRI during and after successful peripheral acupuncture treatment of neuralgias, identifying central brain mechanisms in play.
(3) The 2008 study (Harvard) using PET scans abd fMRIs by Gollub showed significant FMRI signal changes in the orbitofrontal cortex, insula and pons, and PET scan changers in the orbitofrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, insula, thalamus, and anterior cingulate cortex http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2538486/
(4) In studies of mindfulness by Hölzel and Lazar “Whole brain analyses identified increases in the posterior cingulate cortex, the temporo-parietal junction, and the cerebellum in the MBSR group compared to the controls. The results suggest that participation in MBSR is associated with changes in gray matter concentration in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.” www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004979/?_escaped_fragment_=po=35.7143
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(5) Frans Johansson (The Medici Effect) has shown that like in Renaissance times when Cosimo Medici bankrolled artists to combine their talents for the first time since the church took over art, the result was a flourishing spate of innovation that lasted centuries. There is a present rush of creativity as widely-spaced technologies reach an intersect, where the combinations are3 vastly more powerful than the sum of the parts. AcuDetox was not at first recognized as an intersect of two technologies - but recently it was.
(6) Borderline patients are notoriously hard to treat, even with Marsha Linehan’s effective Dialectic Behaviour Therapy. Having watched these patients carefully for signs of incipient suicidal behaviour and/or cutting, I note, like Smith, that AcuDetox cancels the primitive defence called splitting after a few treatments. Patients still have ground to cover but they stop being a suicide or cutting threat after this point. Other sidetracked primitive defenses include dissociation, denial, displacement, isolation, projection and severe acting out. While the above research on deep brain structures with acupuncture hypothalamus/amygdala was not known until recently, it explains the ablation of basic defense mechanisms.
(7.) Russell, L.C., Sharp, B., Gilbertson, B. (2000). Acupuncture for addicted patients with chronic histories of arrest. A pilot study of the Consortium Treatment Center. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 19, 199-205.
(8) Stuyt, E.B., Meeker, J.L. (2006). Benefits of auricular acupuncture in tobacco-free inpatient dual-diagnosis treatment. Journal of Dual Diagnosis, 2(4), 41-52.
(9) As an eclectic therapist (Gestalt, hypnosis, NLP, bioenergetics) in 1995 when I finally started to treat my “stuck” patients I couldn’t fit any of the techniques I used with other patients needs after their AcuDetox. Either patients sailed through it, and simply told me or the group their story quite articulately, with no need for therapy (as Smith predicted) or they balked at my use of any of the methods which worked with easier patients.
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(10) By 2005 we found we could intervene increasingly successfully but gently by providing explanations in the midst of the newly-arising lesser defences like reaction formation, rationalization and repression. Even before Doidge’s The Brain that Changes Itself came out in 2007, we were able to defang lesser defences by taking care to detect their arising, dealing with them before they rooted.
(11) Doidge, Norman; The Brain’s Way of Healing; 2015 introduces “energy medicine” devices, like the PoNS neurostimulator and neurobiofeedback which greatly accelerates neuroplasticity by stimulating/regulating the hippocampus-amygdala-hypothalamus axis. The Peniston-Kulkosky neurofeedback method which gets near-perfect results with addiction, PTSD abd depression, was seen (even on EEG) to accomplish this by the patient learning to generate increased alpha and theta brain waves and lowered levels of circulating endorphins.
(12) What Smith had called being “newly able to learn” and we had called”Making hay while the sun shines” we began to recognize as presence or mindfulness when we read Doidge’s first book The Brain That Changes Itself.
Actually, it explained a lot.
(13) Contemporary Loyola-of-Chicago professor Jerome Wagner has written a detailed summary of Horney’s approach (which became the early data from which our current understanding of personality disorders developed.) Others, such as Dr. Maurice Nicholl, and his later students Theodorre Donson and Kathy Hurley who wrote books on the subject but none as comprehensive as Don Richard Riso and Ross Hudson, all describing the same three personality types - Horney’s “aggressives” “compliants”& “detacheds.” We saw over time that the neuromodulating effect of AcuDetox was to rebalance, in short order, the rigidifying limbic brain structures which are the most troublesome aspects of “personality” (i.e. the bases of psychoses and personality disorders.)
(14) Assagioli, R.; Psychosynthesis; 1975 a student of Freud became aware of a group of patients who sought treatment, not for childhood traumas, rather for their difficulty assimilating or even tolerating extraordinary experiences. He spoke of them as needing a different approach from those suffering from childhood traumata, which he called Psychosynthesis - one the basic texts of today’s transpersonal psychotherapy. _____________________________________
(15) Picknett, L. and Prince C.; The Forbidden Universe; Skyhorse Publishing 2011; Ch. 11 Darwin’s New Clothes p. 257-296.
(16) www.enterolab.com is the website for Enterolab, which is mentioned in several independent literature references as offering a definitive stool antibody test for gluten sensitivity.
(17) Stephen J. Genuis and Rebecca A. Lobo; Gastroenterology Research and Practice. Volume 2014 (2014) Review Article Gluten Sensitivity Presenting as a Neuropsychiatric Disorder
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/293206
(18) The acknowledged world expert on celiac disease and gluten sensitivity is Dr. Alessio Fasano at Harvard University whose book Gluten Freedom deems that until such time as a definitive biomarker is developed (he is working on one) gluten sensitivity remains only diagnosable in subjects who remove gluten from their diet for at least one month, experience symptom relief of gastrointestinal and/or neurological/ mental symptoms or both, then consume a gluten challenge meal which brings about a return of their symptoms.
(19) Bailey, Brian C. M.D.; Gluten Sensitivity Presenting as Anxiety, Depression or Psychotic Symptoms; GP Psychotherapist; Fall 2014; This article speaks to the high incidence of gluten sensitivity and markedly lowered level of circulating neurotransmitters ) noradrenaline, serotonin, dopamine) discovered in patients with chronic emotional/mental problems who fail to respond to antidepressants and/or psychotherapy.
(20) While mindfulness had become a component of several existing therapies before 2007 (the Delphi poll of J.C. Norcross et al. suggested that 40% of psychologists used in (2013) and that its use would increase further by 2022. Since mindfulness arises in other ways than learning meditation (which occasionally has adverse effects) as seen in the the work of Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Jeffery Schwartz I was able to choose from the best mindfulness and neuroplasticity techniques in use today, settling on the so-called Odd Man Out Exercise adapted from A. H.Almaas whose work I studied. While work continues, my book The Magic of AcuDetox; PartTwo provides a working framework for patients after treatment.
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One of the more difficult tasks, given that introducing mindfulness and neuroplasticity in a hands-on way is rendered easy and fast (compared with the task of teaching meditation) with 5-point ear acupuncture, is the matter of applied neuroplasticity.
Mindfulness taught as meditation, without anything added gives rise to a more relaxed, more peaceful way of defusing crises. AcuDestress, which could be called “applied mindfulness with neuroplasticity” by which we invite and challenge people to search out their highest and best use of neuroplasticity, (like by resolving a learning disability, for example) or to transform their personality from the rigid, presentation to it’s more highly complex (or evolved) manifestation.
Building on a technique which I gleaned from studying briefly with Helen Palmer, I create panels of participants and former participants (whom we call “exemplars” as Palmer does) to talk about their before-and-after experiences.
By Day 25, the final day of the session, when a significant number of the recipients have already reached Stage 1, we are able to put the matter of diagnosis in context for the patients as they venture back out into the world to test out what they’ve gained.
Three weeks after the session ends we gather patients back together to share the results of this productive three weeks and to introduce Stage 2 Neuroplasticty, as they have begun to be able to stand outside themselves, while remaining mindful.
Roberto Assagioli split with Freud on the matter of whether all intrapsychic phenomena can by explained by a “one-size fits all” theory. He observed people struggling mightily with so-called positive experiences in the sane way people with childhood traumas struggled with negative experiences in later life. He said: ”
We are dominated by everything with which our self is identified. We can dominate and control everything from which we disidentify ourselves. The normal mistake we all make is to identify ourselves with some content of consciousness rather than with consciousness itself. Some people get their identity from their feelings, others from their thoughts, others from their social roles. But this identification with a part of the personality destroys the freedom which comes from the experience of the pure “I”.
When on the defensive our patients with chronic mental-emotional (and often physical) stress reactions highly identify with negative emotions - particularly blame and shame (Prigogine). In psychodynamic terms, events of the past and their reactions to them have become the drivers of these destructive reactions, causing therapies to focus on their expression. But that’s not our focus. Sally Kempton (22) suggests:
“... if you want to switch channels from blaming to discernment, start by paying attention to the feelings that arose right before you started the blame spiral. Find out what they have to show you. Think of it as a process of retracing your footsteps. When you find yourself blaming, ask yourself, “What feeling started all of this?” Be patient, because it might take a few moments to become aware of the feeling, but when you do, let yourself stay with it. Then turn inside and ask, “What perception lies behind this feeling? What is this feeling telling me?” The perception might be something totally unexpected—an insight into yourself, a realization about a situation. You might see that it’s time to act in a situation that you’ve been letting slide, or that you need to stop struggling and let a problem resolve itself on its own.”
After you’ve sensed an answer, look again. Notice whether the perception you are experiencing feels clear or whether it’s another layer of the judging mind. The way to do this is to notice the feelings around your perception. If you still feel confused, angry, self-righteous, unhappy, overexcited, or full of desire or any other hot or swampy emotion, you’re still judging.
In that case, ask yourself, “What is the root perception behind this? What does this feeling really have to tell me?”
ANSWER: Our patients find novel and refreshing answers..
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The process of design is based on observation of what happens under various scenarios, and then adjusting one’s current scenario so that vision, current reality and structural tension properly take their place in the process. So says Robert Fritz, who designed a process which simplified learning where creativity was the envisioned end result.
(23) The early neuroscience research of Paul MacLean put forward three independently-functioning brain layers, which specialize in thinking, emoting and actioning, which trainer Chris Balsley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZJaQPHL764 )says must all be functioning in harmony to manage stress well.
(24) Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.
(25) Martin Seligman was actually the founding father of Positive Psychology after seeing that a focus on and a “diagnosis” based on the subjects positive potential (in this case awe and wonder) produced better results than focusing on negative states.
(26) The Hoving Phenomenon has become a psychology design inspiration, based on a story of how Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Thomas Hoving learned of his exquisite ability to judge art when a college professor surprised him, thus uncovering his natural ability to do so.
(27) Robert Fritz (see picture above) links vision and current reality by structural tension, seen metaphorically as an elastic band, which, when used in a healthy way causes current reality to rise to where one holds one’s vision. in our design, each of these elements is systematically evoked.
(28) While some attention must be placed on current reality, and thus on elements like blame and shame , so that this is not ignored, Brown’s three-to-one ratio for speaking of realized vision is something we must be ever vigilant to provide.