In a move not unlike cleaning off my desk before a long holiday weekend, I’m going to lump a bunch of seemingly-disconnected mini-entries that are relevant to recent posts and past themes. They and their predecessors will still be here for your consumption over the long, hot summer. May yours be safe, relaxing, healthy and productive.
You’ve probably become aware of the importance of the discipline of the harmony of spirit in my thinking and in my life. Unable to “take it to the tatami”, I’ve at least been able to take it to heart and mind and learn more about it applies to everyday life. One of the better writers and practitioners in the field has two books, both of which fall into the bibliography for the e-book on how to use your mind. Thus it is with little surprise that I find her work presented by Jeff at his searchofpeace web site, and I’m going to post that link and let it serve as the first offering here:
http://www.searchofpeace.com/blog/2015/07/01/aikido-the-practice-of-freedom/#more-614
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY
The Extended Mind: Recent Experimental Evidence
A GoogleTech talk (1:37:42) by Rupert Sheldrake
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http://noetic.org
http://noetic.org/sites/default/files/uploads/files/IONS-Roadmap2Future.pdf
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http://www.thehealersjournal.com/dna-activation-sound-healing/
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In the early 1990s, IONS posited a question in the midst of remarkably rapid increases in autoimmune and cancer disease research. As the steward of decades of consciousness science research, it asked, “Are we not actually hardwired to heal?” In other words, while we’re placing the lens of science on the healing response, shouldn’t we also examine the overlooked possibility of a holistic, internal self-healing system? Until then, research had focused on eradicating disease, zeroing in on separate physiological functions such as the immune and endocrine systems. On the street, a continental divide separated conventional science from the public’s acceptance of a mind-body healing connection. No widely accessible forums, neither books, television, nor mainstream media, fostered such awareness.
At the same time, the emerging field of psychoneuroimmunology—the study of the connection between the mind/brain and immune system—was too new and undersupported to help bridge the divide. IONS sought to lay the groundwork for a future medical model based on the whole human experience – the interconnection of consciousness and the body comprising a single “ecosystem” of health and wellness.
The Studies
Throughout the previous decade, IONS had collaborated on and assembled dozens of studies on spontaneous remission, placebo affects, and multiple personalities, a collection that identified some of the most compelling evidence of a mind-body healing connection. Then-Vice President for Research Brendan O’Regan initiated an exhaustive review of literature in these three areas. The review identified frontier researchers from around the world, including, among others
• George Solomon – Correlations between stress, personality, emotions, and outlook on autoimmune disease progression
• Robert Ader – Breakdowns in the immune system response of rats subjected to profound stress
• Norman Cousins – The “will to live” as placebo-induced recovery and “laughter therapy,” both demonstrating emotions influence on healing.
• Margaret Kemeny – Seminal work on Type C – or cancer prone – personality
• Jamie Pennebaker – Correlation between journaling, a stress-reducing form of emotional expression, and immune system activity
• Candice Pert – The body’s ability to produce its own “mood-altering” drugs, called neuropeptides, in response to pain, stress.
Outcomes/Impacts
IONS’ “The Heart of Healing” study produced volumes of research data and anecdotes, which captured the collective imaginations of mass media and medical science at a time when autoimmune diseases and cancer dominated the international psyche. In October 1993 it became a six-hour Turner Broadcasting documentary, delivering the topic of mind-body healing to millions of living rooms. Cox News Service predicted it would be “the most taped, begged, borrowed and shared TV series of the year.” Along with an illustrated hardcover book, “The Heart of Healing” explored how culture informs our ideas about the nature of healing, presented leading-edge research on the mind-body relationship, and expanded views of human healing potential. At the same time, IONS research was also used in Healing and the Mind, Bill Moyers’ pivotal television series, while O’Regan’s work with Caryle Hirshberg and Marc Ian Barasch produced the milestone book, Remarkable Recovery. The New York Times called it “an alluring work of hopeful nonfiction.” Shortly thereafter, Andrew Weil went on to publish Spontaneous Healing: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body’s Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself – categorized by Amazon.com as a mass-market book.
These works went on to inspire others, generating a measurable shift in public behaviors towards mind-body medicine. That field of research swelled, and the National Institutes of Health established the Office of Alternative Medicine. In1997 total visits to alternative medicine practitioners increased 47 percent from 1990, exceeding total visits to all U.S. primary care physicians. (JAMA) And by 2009, 38 percent of American adults (and 12 percent of children) were turning to meditation, hypnosis, group support, biofeedback, mental imaging, and simple positive thinking to maintain health and cure illness. (NIH)
Most remarkably, “The Heart of Healing” project assembled the fields of psychology, biology, immunology, psychiatry, and anthropology to identify a healing system that later emerged as the field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). While some were initially skeptical, the United States Public Health Service funded hundreds of research grants in the field of PNI. In 1985, Medline, the worlds’ largest medical database, cited no PNI listings but posted more than 100 between 1995 and 1997. New research is still being carried out, and there are several academic journals devoted to PNI.
Conclusion
Today we now know that there are many tools to help stimulate the healing response, and mind-body medicine research is keeping up the pace. For example, the department of defense is accelerating studies on alternative practices in wound healing. Integral practice programs are becoming more commonplace. Stress has become one of the fastest-growing areas of medical research. And survivorship programs that look beyond physical dynamics are sprouting up in major medical programs, including Sloan Kettering and Columbia. As these programs unfold, IONS continues to push the envelope in healing-systems research, looking for more tools and technologies that support human resilience.
http://noetic.org/about/case-studies/heart-healing
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“Civilized” Medicine Dismisses Mind/Soul
For thousands of years, traditional, indigenous, and Eastern medical traditions integrated body, mind, and spirit as a whole healing system. When modern science emerged in the 17th century, it broke down the human experience into measurable components it could label, enshrining the physical body as a biological machine in what became the new model of “Western medicine.” Because the ethereal entity of the mind could only be considered, not recorded, it was associated with that inexplicable, intangible human essence called the soul. When Rene Descartes wanted to pursue his theories of a unitary mind/body system, Church officials limited him to the study of the physical world, instructing him to leave the soul to them. A few centuries after that, germ theory broke down the biological sciences even further, giving the immune system complete autonomy as a healing system.
For increasing numbers of healthcare consumers and professionals alike, the biomedical model has failed to offer a system for understanding the fullness of the lived experience. By the time the Institute of Noetic Sciences was founded in 1973, these frustrations had intensified the call for new research into a medical model that engaged the possibility of human transcendence in the face of illness and disease. The stage was thus set for “consciousness science” to come forward.
Consciousness Science Pushes for Mind-Body Evidence
The first attempts by modern medicine to reunite the mind and body in the laboratory occurred in the 1950s. In response to what a few scientists thought was a misunderstanding that the mind could manifest somatic (cell-based, biological) symptoms during psychological distress, the study of “psychosomatic medicine” was born (Alexander, 1950; Engel, 1977; Salk, 1962; Selye, 1976; Solomon & Moos, 1964; Wolf & Goddell, 1968).
The Institute of Noetic Sciences used this mind-body breakthrough as an invitation to introduce consciousness science into the field of medical research, and began studying the miraculous healings at Lourdes, France, and in Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia. It went on to collect evidence of “spontaneous” remission and regression of illnesses from as far back as 1846 – the first such recorded incident – until it had more than 3500 accounts from 830 medical journals in more than twenty languages.
By the 1980s, the study of psychosomatic medicine had revealed new sets of observations that cognitive processes, neurobiology, and the immune system were functionally integrated. IONS seized this “evidence-based” opportunity to push harder for scientific evidence; it initiated a program of research called the Inner Mechanisms of the Healing Response. Under the leadership of Brendan O’Regan, IONS’ then vice-president of research, this program identified formal research on the link between consciousness and health, which included the idea that consciousness-related factors (cognitive and emotional) might play a role in both wellness and the healing of disease. These endeavors helped give rise to a new formal medical discipline called psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) (Ader, 1981; Rogers, Dubey, & Reich, 1979, Sklar & Anisman, 1979; Solomon and Amkraut, 1981, Stein et al., 1976).
PNI is the study of the body’s innate healing abilities. It is based on the premise that multiple factors – including psychological, emotional, genetic, endocrine, nervous and immune – affect immune functioning and hence resistance to disease. In other words, medical science was beginning to find its way back to the origins of health and healing: the connection of mind and body.
IONS Ushers Psychoneuroimmunology into Post-Modern Era
Throughout the 1980s, studies continued to reveal evidence to support the PNI premise. IONS bolstered this momentum in 1985 when it sponsored the first international workshop on neuroimmunomodulation (Pardes), where a new generation of scientists met to explore how the brain and immune system communicate with each other. IONS provided additional grants to support four subsequent meetings, which later shaped the first PNI professional society (Rabin, Laudenslager): 1) investigation into the relationship between hypnosis and aspects of the immune response (Locke, Olness); 2) conditioning and the immune response (Ader); 3) the role of a cognitive intervention in the immune responses of colon cancer patients (Levy); and 4) immune system changes in both healer and healee during non-contact therapeutic touch.
By the 1990s, the struggle was beginning to pay off: PNI research had discovered the anatomical link between the central nervous system and the immune system, and provided evidence that immune reactions could be learned and that they influenced behavior. PNI research then began concentrating on biological signaling – neurotransmitters and hormones talking to immune cell receptors. Once PNI began to delve into the cellular and molecular mechanisms where scientists could measure receptors and “second messenger” effects, even stalwart skeptical immunologists began to accept it.
The work of IONS coincided with and even validated this benchmark of acceptance with a six-hour television series called “The Heart of Healing,” produced by Turner Broadcasting. It provided an international audience of healthcare consumers with new language and a new narrative to assimilate mind-body perspectives and approaches into their understanding of wellness.
PNI’s full break into the medical mainstream occurred in the late 90s when science repeatedly demonstrated the health implications of stress on the immune system and published its results in established medical journals – ending the decade when stress became a household word and almost anyone paying attention knew about its connection to illness.
IONS’ Pivotal Role in a New Field of Study
Despite early skepticism and funding shortages, IONS’ bold early work exploring the role of consciousness in healing helped the mainstream medical community accept PNI as an established and credible medical science. The Institute’s persistence led to scientific evidence of a mind-body connection and a return to the wisdom of the holistic human experience. While PNI has a long way to go to establish acceptance and widespread support among all branches of the medical community and among health care consumers, it has ushered in a post-modern era of scientific research. PNI research continues at many major medical institutions around the world, where medical practices based on PNI research – including meditation, hypnosis, and imagery – are being offered as standard treatment protocols.
http://noetic.org/about/case-studies/mind-body
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8rRzTtP7Tc
How Meditation Can Reshape Our Brains
“It’s more like “body-mind plasticity” than “neuroplasticity” because it’s not just the brain. The body is a holistic system.
There are about 4 input channels: stomach e.g. for recycling RNA, small intestine e.g. for absorbing water-based nutrition, the colon e.g. for fermentation of solid waste by gut bacteria, and the lungs e.g. for the absorption of airborne nutrition. There are a couple of output channels: solid waste elimination, liquid waste elimination, skin (sweat), and the lungs.”
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Change Your Mind, Change Your Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upNONoxskiw
Bodhin Kjolhede weaves metaphor and allegory together to explain the importance of meditation. He will deliver several tangible benefits of meditation that would go unrealized without personal experience.
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How mindfulness meditation redefines pain, happiness & satisfaction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVwLjC5etEQ
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Dr. Kasim Al-Mashat teaches and presents on the use of mindfulness for creating healing, transformation, and peace. He is passionate about enhancing people’s sense of joy, authenticity, and presence. Kasim also teaches and speaks about the use of laughter and laughter yoga for improving wellness.
Kasim is a therapist with interest in fostering positive change in mental health both inside and outside the therapy room. He recently returned from completing a challenging six-month meditation retreat in silence, in a forest monastery in South East Asia.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWQfe__fNbs
Is There Scientific Proof We Can Heal Ourselves?
Lissa Rankin, MD explores the scientific literature, reviewing case studies of spontaneous remission, as well as placebo and nocebo effect data, to prove that our thoughts powerfully affect our physiology when we believe we can get well.
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Eric Barker, on “How To Learn a New Skill Quickly”
via
http://dangerousintersection.org
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http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/02/being-the-best-at-anything/
http://www.bakadesuyo.com
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http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/02/most-successful-people/
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You’ve been able to see that you can find numerous similar and likely repetitive or overlapping videos. Take that as far as you want to go; stop when you’ve had enough. Return later for review, or further exploration.
With this final exception:
Mental Toughness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCPgvTRftZg
Dr. Sean Richardson takes lessons learned from the professional athlete’s locker room to provide an overview of the subtleties of human brain & behaviour function to facilitate overcoming the normal & predictable human barriers to success.
See his web site here: http://drseanr.com
If you’ve gotten to this point, then you are, like a passenger in my taxicab, at your destination. This is your stop. Explore this fellow’s web site, watch his introductory video, look into his blog, check out his coaching services (hey, a $49 online starter session to look at and shape your goal package is a great deal), and there is more.
Are there others like this guy? Oh, to be sure.
There is an entire industry in “coaching”, along with books, text books, degree programs, certification, etc. And there are a lot of charlatans. But check out this guy’s credentials. He’s been there and done it. He has a doctorate in the psychology of excellence. He’s delivered results at the professional level.
If you can find quickly someone better than this guy….
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