Reptilian BRAIN

[rwederfoort]

I was thinking if we have two BRAIN's and one of them is REPTILAIN, means we still have connection to their HIVES, where they extract their NEGATIVE
Energy.

Here is what I found out:

By: Dr. Suzanne LaCombe, September 2006.
Updated: November 22, 2007.

The Reptilian Brain: "The emotional alarm center for the brain".
Wonder why there's a reptile as a mascot for this site? The reptilian brain controls much more of our behaviour than we realize--part of my objective of this site is to emphasize this fact.

This is one of the key insights from body psychotherapy. When you calm the reptilian brain, you have more control over your thoughts and your intentional behaviour.

Our brainstem is a top-of-the-line reptilian brain. The reptilian brain is located in the brain stem and both terms are used synonymously.1 Phylogenetically-speaking, it was the first part of the modern brain to develop in human evolution. It operates behind the scenes, regulating our survival needs: food, oxygen, heart rate, blood pressure and reproduction, among many others.

The brainstem is like a bodyguard who's always watching your back, constantly scanning the environment for potential threats. The reptilian brain also decides whether you will move into fight or flight. The thinking brain is too slow for such an important task.
So for example, when a 90 mile an hour curve ball's coming at you, it's the reptilian brain that reflexively jerks your head out of the way before you even realize what’s happening.

We can't leave our reactions up to the thinking side of the brain. We'd still be back there lying on the playing field wondering what happened and how we got that lump on the head!

When you think of your "instincts" think, reptilian brain. It's responsible for our survival related functions like:

breathing digestion circulation elimination temperature fight or flight
movement, posture and balance.

The Reptilian Brain and Counseling

Harness the energy of the "24/7 bodyguard" and put your counseling on the fast track! The reptilian brain is an ancient beast. It was developed over 100 million years ago. The higher brain or the neocortex came along a mere 40,000 years ago. So, when the reptilian brain is on alert, it's pretty hard for a youngster like our neocortex to tell a 100 million year old brain to behave!2

One of the insights we've learned from body psychotherapy is that hardship in counseling is needlessly provoked if the reptilian brain isn't calmed down first. That is, it's very difficult to dig into our psyche (e.g. and explore childhood issues) when the reptilian brain is calling the shots.

However, when the nervous system is regulated and balanced, it far easier to move through our emotions.

Emotionally triggering material will be that much more difficult if the reptilian brain is activated. When you are suffering from high anxiety--by definition--your activation level is high and the reptilian brain is controlling too much of how you will respond to events in your life.

As an aside, the more the reptilian brain has learned from early infancy experiences and subsequent traumas (both physical and emotional) the higher our activation will be. For many people, high activation will show up in anxiety symptoms. And as I have described elsewhere, chronically high activation (sympathetic arousal) can lead to depression (parasympathetic dorsal vagal).

What's often difficult for us to accept is the fact that the brainstem (in partnership with the limbic system), determines and conditions a great deal of our behaviour. The higher our level of activation, the more this is likely to be the case.

As human beings we like to believe that we're "rational", that our actions are based on thought, not "blind emotion". There is no such thing actually as blind emotion. Our emotions have rational explanations even of we cannot locate the source.

My Personal Musings

I think some people have not taken up counseling for the very reason that they suspect it will make them feel worse. There may be some truth to this. My guess is that their reluctance is related to the idea of being thrust into material before they're ready.

If a therapist starts to probe emotionally triggering material before the nervous system has settled sufficiently, the level of activation will increase. One may even experience an increase in anxiety symptoms!

How do you know when you're ready?

If you're agitated or racked with anxiety then the conditions are not optimal for deep emotional work. When your relationship is developed sufficiently between you and your therapist, you will naturally step into the material and feel sufficently safe in doing so. When this is happening for you then the conditions are optimal for change to occur.

One of my inspirations for developing this website was the discovery of friends and colleagues who had undergone a course of treatment and--from my perspective--seemed worse off.

I acknowledge that it isn't easy to assess when you're getting good therapy from not-so-good therapy. The reality is that one therapist cannot simply know all there is to know about working with everyone.

Hopefully, armed with enough information on this and other counseling websites, consumers of mental health services will be able to make good decisions on their choices in psychotherapy.

Reference

Levine, Peter, A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.

McLean, Paul, D. [1990]. The Triune Brain in Evolution. New York: Plenum Press.

Notes

1"...the portion of the brain that is continuous with the spinal cord and comprises the medulla oblongata, pons, mid-brain and parts of the hypothalamus; controls reflexes and such essential internal mechanisms as respiration and heartbeat." Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionay (2006).

2Dr. Daniel Siegel made this same point at his lecture, "Psychotherapy from the inside out: The brain of the mindful therapist", at the Justice Institute in New Westminster, BC., in November 8-9 2007.

NAMASTE

[rwederfoort]

Body Psychotherapy
New Kid on the Block: Body Moves for Therapy
By: Dr. Suzanne LaCombe, September 2, 2008. Updated: April 24, 2009.
Reviewed by: Erika Moore RMT


If you know anything about the band "New Kids on the Block" you'll likely remember how they shifted the music scene to a level that had never been seen. They took elements of the music world that were vital but combined together became explosive. They shifted an entire generation. Organically, all together something brand new emerged.

That's what body psychotherapy is to the field of counseling.

It's like taking pieces of what we know and pulling them together to generate a paradigm shift in thinking about therapy. If you really want to live a BIG life and you're wondering what your first step is, consider body psychotherapy.

Personally speaking, as you may have read throughout this site, I could not have achieved what I have today, without the benefits of body psychotherapy. I've gone from living in the minimus, fearful of posting live on the Net to speaking to hundreds in my writing.

Living large doesn't happen between your ears

It's a total body experience. Many folks enter therapy because they have problems managing intense emotions such as anger, fear, and anxiety. Others may be struggling with feeling or identifying more vulnerable feelings such as toxic shame or even love.

Most of us try to overcome these emotional states by talking them away or using distractions (i.e. busy-work, alcohol, watching TV). We can push something away, but generally, it comes back on us. In fact, we often delude ourselves into thinking that we've "worked through" an issue when it temporarily disappears.

Yet, the body is an enormous resource. Enrolling the body into the process of transformation creates change that's lasting and embodied. There's no constant vigilance or effort to maintain a behaviour or thought, you feel different because you are different.

Our bodies are not just for carrying our heads around.


When you're uptight, you feel tightness in your chest.

When you're happy, you feel light--in your body.

And when you're sad, you feel heavy--in your body.

Here's the thing, our body impacts our thinking and our thinking reflects our body. It's a "chicken & egg", two-way dance.

We're all familiar with telling our friends about a terrible event. Talking about it makes us agitated, it get's us upset. We feel it in our body. The story triggers the body.

And, typically, we know we're stressed, excited, or emotional because we "think" it. However, the way the brain is wired, it is usually only when body sensations alert us, that the mind gets engaged.

In other words, our emotions and sensations appear first in the body, and only then are noticed by the conscious mind.

Being conscious of emotions, however, doesn't mean that you can control them simply by changing your mind. Still less can the mind alone "re-program" long-standing, non-conscious emotional reactions.

This is where body psychotherapy shines. The approach uses the physical sensations underlying emotional processes as signals to guide therapy. It resolves emotional problems holistically by working directly and interactively with the nervous system as an equal partner. In this way, it effectively addresses problems that are not resolvable by the conscious mind (i.e. "talk therapy") alone.

The brain is "experience-dependent"

In order to change habitual emotional patterns you need to listen to and respect what the body is telling you. These patterns were laid down in the nervous system to record our earliest experiences of the world, and it is only through new experiences that they can be modified or replaced.

Body psychotherapy exploits this biological fact by working interactively and directly with the nervous system. The idea is to recreate as much as possible the initial conditions in which the emotional patterns were formed so long ago. To accomplish this, the therapist and client must first establish a safe and secure relationship, as the physical and emotional sensations that arise in therapy can often feel overwhelming.

It is only after the uncomfortable or distressing sensations that arise have been experienced and digested that the verbal, analytical powers of the left brain can be brought effective.

Strictly speaking, body psychotherapy is not an alternative to conventional "talk therapies". But by making the physical manifestations of underlying emotional patterns the core of its approach, it amounts to a new paradigm of psychotherapy.

How does Body Psychotherapy work?

Body psychotherapy exploits the transforming potential of both the left 'thinking' brain and the emotion and sensation-based right brain. I like to think that it augments and enriches the talk-therapy approach, rather than replaces it.

To illustrate, a counseling session might begin like this: you and your therapist would discuss a problem you're having. She would ask how you're feeling about it, and she would ask how those emotions show up in your body. She would invite you to pay attention to any body sensations, images or emotions that appear in that very moment. Then you would work with them under her guidance.


With practice you ultimately become aware of how you experience emotions in your body, and in turn, how they affect your thoughts. More importantly, with repeated attention your nervous system will "learn" to quiet down and regulate itself, even in the face of stress and change in your life.

Traditional "talk therapies"

Traditional "talk therapies" attempt to change your emotions or behavior by changing your thoughts (i.e. through the left brain). Body psychotherapy works in the reverse, by using the body and your emotions to change how your nervous system responds. That is, it works through the right brain, not the left.

You see, although thoughts can marginally change our emotions, it is far more efficient - in terms of the way the brain is designed to work "from the bottom up". Body psychotherapy enables the brain to update its emotional wiring naturally (i.e. using the right brain), rather than willfully trying to impose change "from the top down" using thoughts (i.e. through the left brain).

If you think of the times you've tried to make yourself feel (or not feel) a certain way, you'll see that using a left-brain strategy to change a right-brain-based emotion is a prescription for futility.



Mind-Body Psychotherapies and the Brain
Body psychotherapy is one of serveral types of mind-body psychotherapies. Mind-body psychotherapies have been around in various forms for years, but it's only since the "Decade of the Brain" that their advantages were corroborated.

Technological advances in neuroscience provide a scientific explanation for its effectiveness. Today, brain scans (e.g. PET, CAT & SPECT) and neurofeedback devices reveal the dynamic interplay between our thoughts and feelings, how feelings are "stored" in the body, and how they affect our thought processes.

Applying these discoveries in a clinical setting has been a huge step forward for psychotherapy practice.

Mind-body psychotherapy is based on the notion that the energies associated with physical and emotional stress are "stored" in various body tissues; stress is stored in the muscles, for example. Balance in the nervous system is restored only after these energies are discharged. Once this happens, the client is much more resilient in the face of life changes and emotional stress.

Mind-body psychotherapy is designed to optimize how the right brain works. We suspect it does this by "rewiring" areas that are impervious to left-brain directed therapies. As an example, the body-based symptoms of anxiety and depression are believed to be largely under the influence of the right-brain processes. This makes mind-body psychotherapy an effective solution for these types of conditions.

Because the right-brain works continually behind the scenes (i.e. non-consciously) to regulate our moods and behaviours, it ultimately determines the quality of life.

For the most part, traditional forms of counseling underestimate the transformative power of the right-brain. This is the reason why mind-body therapy, with its focus on right-brain processes, can offer holistic, quality of life improvements that are unattainable by traditional psychotherapy.

Mind-Body Psychotherapy and Your Health
An added benefit of mind-body psychotherapy--if what the neuroscience suggests is correct and what our clinical work is showing--is that it will reinvigorate the autoimmune system. This may provide hope to such stubborn ailments as allergies, arthritis, asthma and relatedly, conditions such as digestive disorders, insomnia, PMS and menopause symptoms, hormonal imbalances, chronic headaches, cardiovascular disorders and high or low blood pressure.

It should be no surprise, then, that yoga has become so popular. Those who do yoga regularly have discovered its secret (even if they don't know they know, if you know what I mean): as you calm the body you automatically and naturally calm your mind. This effect illustrates the holistic nature of mind-body therapy, where the body itself serves as the basis for healing both mind and soul.

You'll be hearing a lot more from MyShrink on the benefits of mind-body psychotherapy. I look forward to sharing this information with you!

Related Topics:

Body Work Therapy

Mind Body Connection and your Health

There's so much more to say on this subject so be sure to check back for more updates on this page!

Looking for a Body-Based Therapist?

Body-Based Therapist Directories

References

Levine, Peter, A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.

Scaer, Robert C.,, "Precarious Present" in Psychotherapy Networker, Nov/Dec 2006.

Scaer, Robert, C., (2005). The Trauma Spectrum, New York: W. W. Norton & Company

[rwederfoort]

http://www.myshrink.com/counseling-theory.php?t_id=76

Its nice TO learn all these Things it makes you aware off Evry thing which happens arround you in this Reality.

Funny.

Namaste

[tracker]

This thread is one hell of "A labour of love" but is so interesting .
I am half way through and cannot put it down , thanks for the thread .

:cool:

[j35p3r4d0]

the neocortex is typically human and concerns higher logic.

the emotional complex of the human brain is mammalian.

The instinctive homoeostatic primal brain is the reptilian in basis part of the human brain.

we are being assaulted on all fronts.

[entrangermercenary]

Intresting and good reading thanks :)

[phreedom]

curve balls aren't thrown at 90 mph... if they are, it's an exceptionally hard slider that you wouldn't see unless you were batting in the major leagues... also, pitchers, at least those who have the ability to throw said pitch... have enough control of it NOT to throw it 'up in the zone'

[noewhan]

Good thread! It seems as though the reptilian brain is the primary target of the elite.

All that's needed now is a 100% real shape shifting video.