AcuDestress overview: a unique space where mindfulness intersects with neuroplasticity     Click  page handout HERE

(powerfully augmented by AcuDetox ear acupuncture) by Brian C. Bailey M.D.


There’s very little that occurs during and after AcuDestress that feels at all like what I used to do in psychotherapy or was reported to me by psychotherapy and counselling patients. With tongue in cheek, I often speak of it as “magic.” But what I’m really doing is translating how mindfulness and neuroplasticity work - and how they’re in a whole different ballpark from what is familiar. 


My very first ear acupuncture patient, who’d been unable, with everything I could offer her, to deflect herself from spending her entire psychotherapy sessions tearfully complaining about everyone around her - her husband, her son, her boss, her employees, and someone who was trying to set up a small business with her - simply stopped in her tracks, without anyone asking her to do so. No more complaints! I knew even then that I had a ‘tiger by the tail” even if I didn’t understand exactly who the tiger was. Coming to understand mindfulness and neuroplasticity were the keys to knowing the tiger.


When I speak of magic, I’m not talking about the familiar ways the term magic is used - the sleight of hand that stage magicians use to trick our senses, or some mystical transcendent power (though at times it feels that way.) I’m talking about magic as we might envision it in the phrase “the magic of springtime” - the freshness and freedom to operate, lightly, at a place where things suddenly work much better. That’s in my first book: The Magic of AcuDetox; Part One.


By using ear acupuncture, it becomes a matter of starting being over-run and overwhelmed by how many balls we have in the air one day, and the next day knowing which ball to follow, while letting go of the others. This is where mindfulness takes one and where neuroplasticity leaves one off.


Perhaps that’s all you need to know - but the more deeply one becomes involved, the more it is natural to want to know more and more. Perhaps you’re reading this while actually doing your session, or perhaps you’re a health care provider whose patient is doing or has done an AcuDestress session, and they’re asking you to explain.









The following page was created to bring all manner of readers up to speed. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself viewing what occurs here from quite a different
angle than you expected. That’s exactly what happened to me. Patients began to report things that I hadn’t expected, and new to them, and I had to figure out how to work with them as they occurred. In time, I discovered the story of exactly the same thing occurring to psychoanalyst Roberto Assagioli early in the 20th century. He encountered patients who struggled with having extraordinarily positive things happen to them rather than the usual childhood traumas.  To be of help, he adopted a different stance - one which became, over the years, transpersonal psychotherapy. So, as a start, mindfulness and neuroplasticity give rise to positive phenomena and our task in running the program becomes helping out clients “make hay while the sun shines”  with their new experiences.


What is the Difference Acudestress Brings?


Psychiatrist Dr. Michael O. Smith discovered in 1974 that he could replace New York City Lincoln Hospital’s methadone program which took 3-5 years to wean patients off heroine with five point ear acupuncture, which worked in three weeks. Then in 1979, the Miami Drug Court, using It with incarcerated substance addicts, found that not only was it superior to other means in treating addiction, but that it also reduced crime recidivism from 45% to 3%. Later Dr. Smith reported on successfully treating 25 cases of alcohol-addicted Borderline Personalty Disorder (results unrivaled in the treatment literature.) By 1990 Dr. Smith invited me and others to adapt his discovery to non-substance-addiction stress management.



The terms mindfulness and neuroplasticity were not widely used in 1990 when I first heard of Smith’s work, and so the best that Smith and his colleagues could say was that their patients were suddenly and profoundly reacquiring the ability to learn - something that took the development of brain PET scans and functional MRI’s and Dr. Norman Doidge’s 2007 neuroplasticity best-seller The Brain That Changes Itself to explain. How could the brain could vault rapidly from one state to another more desirable one? And how could one learn how to do it.


The Day-to-Day Process of AcuDestress


While for the first ten years we followed Smith’s ear acupuncture protocol to a tee (simply sitting with acupuncture pins in place for 45 minutes) he had always told us that it would need to be developed further to use in stress management. At the outset, our contribution was what we did afterwards, which was to congregate people together, finding that there was palpable excitement in the air that enhanced their results, issuing from the conversations which sprung up spontaneously with like persons undergoing similar transitions. Here we made an important discovery - that there were three quite distinct pathways to recovery, quite unlike each other. We didn’t yet know that mindfulness and neuroplasticity were at the bottom of the excitement and freedom which were occurring.
 

  The remainder of this page has been written in two forms - the one that follows is the 

  OVERVIEW version which does not go into matters in detail. If your interest is greater

  than would be served by an overview click here to choose the detailed version.

People attend a session with a group of about 12 others, sitting comfortably in a circle with the pins in place, quietly for a time. A low key conversation among group members ensues, which is where our transpersonal approach comes into play. We intentionally answer each question - personally. There are lots of these, because people are having, from the outset, experiences which lie outside their usual domaine of experience. They could be unusual dreams, changes in sleep pattern, odd ideas, out of the blue which prove helpful, a lessening if the need to protect themselves, awe and wonder, moments of certainty or clarity, abilities beyond normal for that person.


It is like the acupuncture, as it is used day after day according to a schedule developed originally by Dr. H.L. Wen in China, is transforming everyday problems of coping into experiences with a greater degree of complexity and potential for permanent change. Add to this our factoring in a few well-placed exercises which introduce mindfulness and shortly after, neuroplasticity. Recipients here have an easy time applying them. There are things we can do to grease the axle and one is to provide opportunities to see which of the three pathways fits for them. Not everything that’s needed occurs within the 4 weeks. The work of integration has just begun.


The Three Pathways


(I suggest skipping over the following two paragraphs if you are someone who’s doing the program currently or are about to. This will confuse you rather than help. You’ll come to this soon enough!)


By the end of the four weeks, patients generally have access to mindfulness  but the details of how they will apply this to their particular pathway remain to be accomplished, one’s own during the following six months.  The handout (on the left, which you access by CLICKING) is provided late in the monthlong program helps, as is our outline of the BLUE RESOURCE.at the session’s end. In six months participants like Sharon move in to a deeper and more functional understanding of their RESOURCE as seen in the second video on the right, taken six months out.


 

The two other pathways differ from the BLUE pathway, which is seen in people who move away from stress, in that they occur as flexibility in the person who always moves towards stress and becomes overloaded and anxious. We call this the GOLD pathway (and describe it briefly in the CLICKABLE handout on the LEFT) and its accomplishment the GOLD RESOURCE.In further contrast again, the pathway for the person who habitually moves against stress is called the RED pathway (as described in the handout on the RIGHT), and it’s accomplished form, the RED RESOURCE. We do not expect clinicians who are unfamiliar with the three pathways to be able to interpret/discuss them to our clients.


The Aftermath of AcuDestress


Mindfulness is retained after the treatment, and may even get stronger over time if the person makes a small effort to keep it alive. We make sure everyone knows what that effort is - as it pays off well to engage it.  Things come up which get in the way of the patient’s attempts to keep neuroplasticity in play, and we deal with this in several ways. First we provide a free follow-up book The Magic of AcuDetox Part Two which deals specifically with how to overcome the barriers to each of the three specific pathways. The way forward from here may be less than obvious to outsiders, but we avail recipients of further mental exercises during the last week which they can use indefinitely to free themselves up further. It is just as well that clients not mix metaphors when it comes to moving forward, so we ask that when our patients get stuck that they return to see us - rather than ask someone else.


As AcuDestress provides an access to intuition, coming back to see us is reduced to a minimum. The patient is often his own best therapist. But, if they wish to move forward they are invited to read my online book - Fishin’ for the untethered soul. In the final analysis the tiger is gentle and tamable, but one has to get there to find out. Questions do arise, several of which we answer on our FAQ Page. The best book on the subject us the one we allude to above The Brain That Changes Itself. While it does not specifically mention AcuDestress it’s an excellent way to get to know its component parts.

The two other pathways differ from the BLUE pathway, which is seen in people who move away
from stress, in   that they occur as flexibility in the person who always
moves towards stress and becomes overloaded and anxious. We call this the GOLD pathway (and describe it briefly in the CLICKABLE handout on the LEFT) and its accomplishment the GOLD RESOURCE.In further contrast again, the pathway for the person who habitually moves against stress is called the RED pathway (as described in the handout on the RIGHT), and it’s accomplished form, the RED RESOURCE. We do not expect clinicians who are unfamiliar with the three pathways to be able to interpret/discuss them to our clients.


The Aftermath of AcuDestress



Mindfulness is retained after the treatment, and may even get stronger over time if the person makes
a small effort to keep it alive. We make sure everyone knows what that effort is - as it pays off well to engage it.  Things come up which get in the way of the patient’s attempts to keep neuroplasticity in play, and we deal with this in several ways. First we provide a free follow-up book The Magic of AcuDetox Part Two which deals specifically with how to overcome the barriers to each of the three specific pathways. The way forward from here may be less than obvious to outsiders, but we avail recipients of further mental exercises during the last week which they can use indefinitely to free themselves up further. It is just as well that clients not mix metaphors when it comes to moving forward, so we ask that when our patients get stuck that they return to see us - rather than someone else.


As AcuDestress provides an access to intuition, coming back to see us is minimized. The patient often becomes his own best therapist. Those who wish to move forward can read my online book - Fishin’ for the untethered soul. In the final analysis the tiger is gentle and tamable, but one has to get there to find out. Questions do arise, several of which we answer on our FAQ Page. The best book on the subject us the one we allude to above The Brain That Changes Itself. While it does not specifically mention AcuDestress it’s an excellent way to get to know its component parts.