Tag Archives: RET

Rapid Eye Technology Rewiring the Brain?

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\"The eye is telling the brain when to become plastic, rather than the brain developing on its own clock.\"

The eye is telling the brain when to become plastic, rather than the brain developing on its own clock.

Researchers have long sought a factor that can trigger the brain’s ability to learn – and perhaps recapture the “sponge-like” quality of childhood. Neuroscientists at Children’s Hospital Boston report that they’ve identified such a factor, a protein called Otx 2. Otx2 helps a key type of cell in the cortex to mature, initiating a critical period–a window of heightened brain plasticity, when the brain can readily make new connections.

And where does this protein come from? Interestingly enough, it is developed in the cornea. Basically, when the eye opens and is functional, it tells the brain to start receiving data and learning.

“The eye is telling the brain when to become plastic, rather than the brain developing on its own clock,” says Hensch, who is also a professor at Harvard Medical School and at Harvard University’s Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. In essence, the eye is telling the brain, “The eyes are ready and seeing properly — you can rewire now.”

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RET and Entwined Senses

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"Hearing and sight are deeply intertwined."

A study shows that the senses of "hearing and sight are deeply intertwined" - as they are in Rapid Eye Technology.

The process of Rapid Eye Technology marries visual perception of rapid motion with rapid emotion-laden auditory input to affect an emotional release. The technique has proven successful for many clients seeking relief from emotional troubles and for those seeking to improve themselves in a number of areas.

Another study on the relationship between visual and auditory channels used in RET has emerged from UCLA.

“Most of us understand that smell affects taste. But people tend to think that what they see is what they see and what they hear is what they hear.”

The findings of a study at UCLA, published by the American Psychological Assn, concludes,

“…that, even at a non-conscious level, visual and auditory processes are not so straightforward,” says cognitive neuroscientist and study co-author Robyn Kim. “Perception is actually a very complex thing affected by many factors.”

 

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How to Beat Mental Health Stigma at Work

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There is a bias against those who seek to improve themselves with therapy.

A worker who seeks and gets help for psychological problems is more productive, better equipped, and a far more valuable company asset. So why the bias against therapy?

HealthDay/BusinessWeek reported a survey from the American Psychiatric Association that found: “More than 40 percent of the 1,129 respondents said their employer was supportive or extremely supportive of their workers seeking care for health concerns. However, the online survey also found that barriers persist for workers who said their workplace is unsupportive of employees seeking treatment, especially for mental health concerns.” Among those surveyed, 76 percent felt their work status would be damaged if they sought treatment for drug addiction, compared to “73 percent (who felt that way) for alcoholism, and 62 percent for depression, compared with 55 percent who thought seeking care for diabetes would affect their work status and 54 percent for heart disease” (Preidt, 1/31).

The problem, as I see it is a general public bias against those who seek help for mental health issues. I don’t see a quick fix for that.

One “work-around” -
For those providing therapy, I recommend telling clients/patients who come for sessions that they tell their friends and especially co-workers that they are doing “job enhancement” or “personal development” or “performance enhancement” work with a specialist or coach.

This is called a “reframe”. And it’s the truth!

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Seeing Includes Emotion and Stimulus

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Feeling and seeing belong together. I've said so for years.

Feeling and seeing belong together. I’ve said so for years.

From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B – abstract (my clarifying additions):

People see with feeling (something I’ve been saying for 20 years). We ‘gaze’, ‘behold’, ‘stare’, ‘gape’ and ‘glare’. In this paper, we develop the hypothesis that the brain’s ability to see in the present incorporates a representation of the affective (emotional) impact of those visual sensations in the past (meaning you don’t actually “see” – you FEEL + SEE). This representation makes up part of the brain’s prediction of what the visual sensations stand for (meaning = emotion+visual stimulus) in the present, including how to act on them in the near future (based on how we feel about what we see, we act accordingly). The affective prediction (emotional interpretation) hypothesis implies that responses signalling an object’s salience, relevance or value do not occur as a separate step after the object is identified (seeing = FEELING + SENSUAL INPUT). Instead, affective (emotional) responses support vision from the very moment that visual stimulation begins.

You see AND feel – never see alone. Your visual signals pass through and interact with the emotional parts of your brain – so OF COURSE you’d attach feeling to visual stimulus. I’ve said it for many years and every Rapid Eye Technician knows it from experience. Nice to see that someone is considering doing some solid science about our hypothesis and experience.

Childhood Trauma Predicts Adult Health Problems

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"What we're learning is that poor adult health is, in part, manufactured in childhood. It is multiple and cumulative childhood experience that predisposes adults to poor health."

“What we’re learning is that poor adult health is, in part, manufactured in childhood. It is multiple and cumulative childhood experience that predisposes adults to poor health.”

The Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London studied 1,000 individuals from birth to age 32 as part of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study in New Zealand. Their research suggests that sustained health risks stem from childhood abuse, neglect, social isolation or economic hardship.

Adults who had been maltreated as children were twice as likely to suffer major depression and chronic inflammation. Children who grew up poor or socially isolated were twice as likely to show metabolic risk markers at age 32. Adults who had two or more of the adverse childhood experiences were nearly twice as likely to have disease risk factors as those who hadn’t experienced trauma in childhood.

“We live increasingly longer lives and our extra years of life should be healthy, productive and enjoyable, not years of disease and disability,” says lead author Dr Andrea Danese, Clinical Lecturer at Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and MRC Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry at King’s. “In this study, we observed that childhood experiences may affect health in old age, regardless of the risk factors that health policies are currently targeting. Therefore the promotion of healthy positive experiences for children is a necessary and potentially cost-effective target for the prevention of age-related disease.”

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Honoring Emotion

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Honor your emotions

Even those who profess to have no emotional energy about something may still feel something physical (a sensation) related to an emotion.

I think addressing physical symptoms is the key to healing just about any emotional issue that includes a physical aspect. Addictions, colds, allergies, irrational fears, weight issues, and a host of others I find respond well to healing modalities like Rapid Eye Technology (RET) and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), when 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 impending 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).

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Rapid Eye Technology as Suicide Prevention

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Rapid Eye Technology may be the solution for your suicidal thoughts now.

Rapid Eye Technology may be the solution for your suicidal thoughts now.

“We found that being exposed to many different adversities during childhood increases the risk of suicidal behavior. Sexual or physical abuses during childhood are particularly strong risk factors for the onset of suicidal behavior in adulthood. Even controlling for a broad set of variables, there was at least a threefold increase in suicide attempt and suicide ideation among people with a history of sexual or physical abuse.” So says Dr. Ronny Bruffaerts from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, after examining data from the World Mental Health surveys carried out in 21 countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East.

Clearly there is a direct relationship between childhood adversity and adult suicidal behaviors.

Dr. Bruffaerts concluded, “Across the world, great emphasis is placed on the prevention of suicide. Our study shows a direct association between the number of adversities a person experiences in childhood and the risk of suicide. Therefore, identifying those families at risk of problems, and offering help, may be a way of decreasing suicide around the world.”

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Clean Up to Feel Good

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Clearing out the emotional charge around childhood memories significantly impacted their sense of well being and gave them better access to feelings of pleasure - particularly sexual pleasure.

Clearing out the emotional charge around childhood memories significantly impacted their sense of well being and gave them better access to feelings of pleasure – particularly sexual pleasure.

During my clinical practice years, about half of the clients I saw for help with feelings of depression also reported incidents of childhood abuse and/or trauma. There may have been more who experienced adversity but did not report it.

In every instance, clearing out the emotional charge around those childhood memories significantly impacted their sense of well being and gave them better access to feelings of pleasure – particularly sexual pleasure.

Now a study from Harvard University seems to support my experience. In their study, they were able to demonstrate a direct link between childhood adversity and adult pleasure in the reward centers of study subjects’ brains.

This is significant in that it adds validity to the idea that clearing out childhood emotional charge can impact current adult pleasure – including sexual pleasure.

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Sometimes Speed Matters

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RET Trainers coach new students to wave the wand faster.

RET Trainers coach new students to wave the wand faster.

In a groundbreaking study, researchers Christian Beste, Edmund Wascher, Onur Güntürkün, and Hubert R. Dinse discovered that the speed at which a visual stimulus is applied to a person makes a difference in how fast and how well the person learns and retains information learned.

Rapid Eye Technology (RET) depends on a rapid visual stimulus to affect psychological and sometimes physical change. Using an eye directing device known as a wand, the rapid eye technician moves the wand in rapid movements in the client’s visual field; this while the client blinks as rapidly as they can while the technician makes suggestions to the mind to release negative emotional energy and take on new learning based on the client’s intentions (therapeutic goals). Moving the wand too slowly or blinking too slowly can create client abreaction or resistance to goal achievement.

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