Out of body experiences can be created artificially now in the lab. Cool!

Normally, I see what I see and feel what I feel – and that is that. But recently, a university in Stockholm has created a method for consistently fooling the senses in such a way as to trick the person into believing they are out of their own body. We call it “out of body experience” (OOBE). This is SO cool!

People who have come close to death sometimes report what are known as out of body experiences, in which they have seen themselves from somewhere else in the room – usually from above their body. Scientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have now come up with a technique that recreates this sensation in fully conscious healthy volunteers (I told you this was cool!). They hope that this technique will enable them to study the relationship between the body and the ’self’ in the laboratory environment – allowing for more consistent results.

“The idea for the study came to me several years ago”, says Dr Henrik Ehrsson, research leader in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience. “I wondered what would happen if you moved a person’s eyes to somewhere else in the room. It has been found that the visual perspective is crucial in determining how the ego is experienced.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The feeling of being watched makes people act more honestly, even if the eyes are not real, a study suggests. A Newcastle University team monitored how much money people put in a canteen “honesty box” when buying a drink. They found people put nearly three times as much in when a poster of a pair of eyes was put above the box than when the poster showed flowers.

Processing faces

Dr Melissa Bateson, a behavioural biologist from Newcastle University and the lead author of the study, said: “We found that people paid 2.76 times as much money when we put a notice on the wall that featured a pair of eyes as opposed to when the image was of some flowers.”

What an interesting concept! What is it about eyes that intrigues us? It isn’t just human eyes, either. Many whale hunters reported feeling sad or melancholy after seeing the eyes of their prey look back at them.

We think of the eyes as the windows to the soul, whatever that is. Maybe our eyes are the windows to our conscience. Certainly they are a window into our emotions.

I look forward to hearing more about this fascinating subject in the months and years to come.

When you’re upset or depressed, should you analyze your feelings to figure out what’s wrong? Or should you just forget about it and move on?

The best way to move ahead emotionally is to analyze one’s feelings from a psychologically distanced perspective.

New research suggests a solution to these questions and to a related psychological paradox: Processing emotions is supposed to facilitate coping, but attempts to understand painful feelings often backfire and perpetuate or strengthen negative moods and emotions.

The solution is not denial or distraction. According to University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross, the best way to move ahead emotionally is to analyze one’s feelings from a psychologically distanced perspective.

With University of California, Berkeley, colleague Ozlem Ayduk, Kross has conducted a series of studies that provide the first experimental evidence of the benefits of analyzing depressive feelings from a psychologically distanced perspective. The studies were supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health.

“We aren’t very good at trying to analyze our feelings to make ourselves feel better,” said Kross, a faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and an assistant professor of psychology. “It’s an invaluable human ability to think about what we do, but reviewing our mistakes over and over, re-experiencing the same negative emotions we felt the first time around, tends to keep us stuck in negativity. It can be very helpful to take a sort of mental time-out, to sit back and try to review the situation from a distance.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I think addressing physical symptoms is the key to healing just about any emotional issue that includes a physical aspect. Addictions, colds, alergies, irrational fears/phobias, weight issues, and a host of others I find respond well to healing modalities, like Rapid Eye Technology (RET) and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), focused on “What do you feel in your body when…?” rather than “How do you feel (emotionally) about that?”.

Emotions are so nebulous and esoteric for most people, I think. However, even those who profess to have no emotional energy about something may still feel something physical (a sensation) related to an emotion.

For example, I once worked with a lawyer who had absolutely no emotional responses to “How do you feel about your divorce?” But his body was wracked with pains of all sorts that he could not explain. And even for those aches and pains he could explain (over-exercise, etc.), they ALL responded to RET’s Instant Release Technique – but ONLY if I asked “what sensations do you feel right now in your body [as we're talking about the divorce]?”. He had four sessions and turned his life around completely (fortunately, his wife did RET sessions at the same time, so they felt they were working together to rescue their marriage – which they both felt was worth preserving after 40+ years).

Honoring Emotions

Interestingly, I’ve had many clients who really wanted to dig into their emotional problems – over and over and over again. These clients get a certain amount of pleasure from RET particularly as they feel they are HONORING their emotions – and sometimes finding new ones they did not know they had. Each time I’d see them, they’d report the very same emotional issues – over and over and over again. They were recreating rather than healing – or so I supposed. Actually, they were healing – IN THEIR OWN WAY. One shoe does not everyone fit.

Just because RET is fast and effective for most people does not mean that everyone who wants to do RET wants to deal with their issues quickly. Some want to “drag them out” and enjoy/honor their emotional journey. When we RET technicians hurry them along, we dishonor their process. And how does one identify such clients? For the most part, they tend to book multiple sessions in advance. They tend to want to “wallow” a little bit in their emotions. And many I’ve seen tell me to slow down a little. Think how disappointed and dishonored such a client must feel when they completely resolve their issue in their first RET session. I’ve had clients call me and complain that it felt we went too fast – even though we completely resolved their issue and they were happy with the results.

As fast as RET works, we still must encourage some of our clients to entertain the notion of doing multiple sessions where we can delve and explore more fully their emotional depth – far beyond mere “healing” – into the realm of “what’s next” in their personal evolution. “What ELSE is there?” or “What’s next for you?”

A UCLA research study published in the June issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry found that people may be able to improve their cognitive function and brain efficiency by making simple lifestyle changes such as incorporating memory exercises, healthy eating, physical fitness and stress reduction into their daily lives.

“We’ve known for several years that diet and exercise can help people maintain their physical health and live longer, but maintaining mental health is just as important,” said lead investigator, Dr. Gary Small, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. “The UCLA study is the first to show the impact of memory exercises and stress reduction used together with a healthy diet and physical exercise to improve brain and cognitive function.”

Read the rest of this entry »