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THE NEUROLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ENERGY PSYCHOLOGY |
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The following images were graciously provided by Joaquín Andrade, M.D. Dr. Andrade may be contacted via www.bmsa-int.com.
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Brain Scan Changes During 4 Weeks of Treatment
for Generalized Anxiety Disorder | |
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(12 Sessions Combining Manual Acupoint Stimulation and Image Activation) |
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1. Normal (Ideal) Profile | |
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3. AFTER 4 TAPPING SESSIONS |
4. AFTER 8 SESSIONS |
5. AFTER 12 SESSIONS |
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The images are digitized EEG brain scans.
The colors represent the ratio of brain frequencies (alpha, beta, and theta waves) and sub-frequencies within given areas of the brain. |
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Blue = normal ratio of wave frequencies (according to data bases) |
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Turq. = slightly dysfunctional ratio |
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Pink = moderately dysfunctional ratio |
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Red = highly dysfunctional ratio of wave frequencies | |
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Image 1 depicts a normal ratio of wave frequencies according to databases. Image 2 is a scan at the outset of treatment of a patient diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).The profile is typical for patients diagnosed with GAD. Images 3 through 5 are taken over the course of 12 sessions during a 4-week period using the stimulation of acupoints (while anxiety-provoking imagery was activated) as the treatment. A decrease in the intensity and frequency of GAD symptoms correlated with shifts toward normal levels of wave frequency ratios in the cortex. The pattern shown in these images was typical for GAD patients in the South American study who responded positively to the stimulation of acupoints. These images were provided to Energy Psychology Interactive by Joaquín Andrade.
DISCUSSION
As the wave frequencies shifted toward normal levels (from red to blue) in the central and front areas of the brain, the symptoms of anxiety decreased in both their intensity and their frequency. Similar sequences of images and symptom reduction were also typical of other patients with generalized anxiety disorder who received energy-based treatments.
Patients who were successfully treated with what has been the standard therapy for generalized anxiety disorder (Cognitive Behavior Therapy, combined with medication as needed), showed a similar progression in their brain scans during the pilot study in South America discussed below. But it took more sessions to achieve the improvements. And more importantly, on one-year follow-up, the brain wave ratios following the Cognitive Behavior Therapy protocol were more likely to have returned to their pre-treatment levels than they were for the patients who received the energy treatments.
An interesting tangent from this study was in the comparison between patients whose primary treatment was anti-anxiety medication and patients whose primary treatment involved stimulating energy points while holding anxiety-provoking images. Both groups enjoyed a reduction of symptoms. But the brain scans for the medication group did not show noticeable changes in the wave patterns, even though the symptoms of anxiety were reduced while the drug was being taken. This suggests that the medication was suppressing the symptoms without addressing the underlying wave frequency imbalances. | |
An Hypothesis
Early impressions from brain imaging studies, such as the study from which the above images are derived, support the following hypothesis:
Stimulating specific electrically inductive points on the skin while simultaneously activating an anxiety-provoking image changes the neurological connections to the amygdala and other brain structures in a manner that reduces the anxious response to that image.
This hypothesis is also supported by three empirically demonstrated principles (citations can be found in Energy Psychology Interactive):
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Bringing a troubling image or memory to mind makes it temporarily responsive to interventions that alter the stress-activating circuitry in the amygdala and other brain structures (neural plasticity, a la Joseph LeDoux).
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A study from Harvard Medical School showed that stimulating specific acupoints can send signals that deactivate areas of the brain that are involved with the experience of fear and pain.
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Brain wave patterns that are markers of generalized anxiety and other mental disorders have been identified, and as you have seen, at least one early study suggests that stimulating acupoints while bringing anxiety-provoking images to mind changes these brain wave patterns.
These principles work in concert so that stimulating certain electrically inductive points while an anxiety-evoking image has been activated sends signals that normalize the affected wave patterns, as illustrated in the above brain scans.
Andrades and Feinberg's full report
EFT Research
Clear evidence that our emotions affect our body-in this case, dramatic changes in the blood
Rebecca Marina provides us with obvious evidence that changes in our emotional states generate instant and dramatic changes in our physical bodies. As you will see, she purposely shifts from one intense emotion to another (using EFT to enhance the emotions) and then, after each emotion, a photo is taken of her blood using darkfield microscopy. The photos are contained in this article for your perusal.
Please note that these are static photos and thus do not show the dramatic change in movement and speed that accompany the various emotional changes. However, Rebecca describes this movement in her narrative below.
Rebecca Marina
Here are the results of the latest research I have done with live blood cells and EFT.
I was inspired to do this by the work of the Japanese researcher, Masaru Emoto, who photographed pictures of frozen water crystals imbued with different emotions. His work is quite astonishing and wonderful and I recommend you read his book, The Hidden Messages in Water.
Anyway, I tried to duplicate Mr. Emotos experiments but found the water crystals melted under the hot light of the darkfield microscope before we (Dr Felici and I) could get a look at them.
OK-I am the first to admit I am no scientist. However, I sure am a pioneer and I love to try new experiments with everything. If you never try for fear of failure, you dont get anything!
So, I had a backup plan.
While the water crystals experiment did not work , Dr Felici and I had previously done some experiments with live blood and EFT. We were certain we could get good pictures of my blood.
So, the plan was to use EFT to invite one emotion at a time into my energy field and thus into my body and into my blood. Dr Felici would take a blood sample after each different emotion and we would take a look at the sample under the darkfield microscope.
I had never purposely invited negative energies into myself; however, I really allowed the emotions to be very powerful within me. I used EFT with the INTENT that whatever emotion I was inviting in would be very powerful indeed.
Before we began with the emotions, I asked Dr Felici to take a look at my blood as it looked normally. Well, folks, I had eaten 2 things for lunch that caused lectins to form in my blood and clumped my red blood cells together horribly! I am B POSITIVE blood type and am not supposed to eat chicken or avocados (should have cleared those allergens beforehand with EFT). Anyway, I had to do EFT to fix my blood so I could get good readings for the emotions. Since I had done this twice before, it was a piece of cake! Here are darkfield microscopy pictures of my blood cells before and after EFT. Please note the astonishing and immediate change from being clumped to being free and mobile.
After I used EFT to clear my blood, we were ready to begin.
The first emotion I invited in was the energy of sadness. I did EFT and thought of many sad things. I got into it so deeply that I was even crying. I did not wait any time at all but allowed Dr Felici to take a blood sample that very moment. EFT works really fast you know! Here is the picture.
Understand that when you look at blood on a darkfield microscope, the sample is alive and still moving. Dr Felici has seen this movement many, many times. However, she had never seen the movement like the sample moved with the energy of sadness!
You would think the blood cells would be all slow and plodding but NO! The cells were moving very rapidly (that why they look so far apart) and a lot of white blood cells were predominant, much more so than when we just did a normal blood sample. Another thing that is quite unusual is that many of the red blood cells took on a teardrop formation! Perhaps there is some scientific reason this happened, I do not know. I just know what I saw on the computer screen attached to the microscope.
Next, using EFT, I invited the energy of LOVE to come into my body and blood. When we placed the sample under the microscope, the cells were moving all placidly and beautifully. The shape of the cells was normal but you can notice there is a bit of some sparkly substance in the fluid of the blood.
On an interesting note, we had left the sadness sample on the screen as I was doing EFT to invite LOVE in to my blood. The sample on the screen started to change as well. Even when our blood is out of our body, we are still connected to it.
Next, I invited the energy of FEAR into my blood. (see above photo) I allowed myself to remember a time when I was very frightened and really got into the emotional state, using EFT to assist me. I placed the sample pictures of LOVE and FEAR close together so you could see how the LOVE sample cuddles together and how the FEAR sample seems to spread a lot further apart.
Remember it was my INTENT to allow myself to feel all these emotions.
When we placed the energy of FEAR under the microscope, the cells were just going crazy! They were moving much faster even that with the energy of sadness! There were also a whole lot more of the white blood cells showing than in any of the other samples. I took it to mean that when your body feels a threat it sends out the soldiers to fight any perceived danger. Interestingly enough, the cells were really going crazy but came to a standstill very quickly. Perhaps, it was an adrenaline response and it ran out of gas quickly.
(Before you read this next paragraph, please know that I am not of a certain religion and I am not espousing any certain religion this is simply my personal experience.)
I felt I needed something heavy duty to calm my poor blood cells down so I brought out the big gun of my own belief system- The energy of Divine Mother! Now when I say Divine Mother, I am speaking from my personal belief system that there is a Divine Feminine energy that is the nurturing, mothering part of God. It is my belief that Her energy comes through many of the Deities in many religions and indeed in the nurturing part of all of us. I am not asking anyone to believe as I do, I am simply stating my views for clarification on the experiment. I could have (and have done since) asked Jesus, Holy Spirit, and even Buddha to assist me. The point I am making is that I asked an energy I perceived to be Divine to come into my body and blood.
I must share with you that when I asked the energy of Divine Mother to come into me I had great waves of energy all over my body. It was such a very tender and precious feeling that I was crying tears of pure joy.
When we placed the sample under the microscope and the image came up on the screen there was dead silence in the laboratory.
You could have heard a pin drop!
The sample was so different from any of the others. The fluid part of the blood was very clear, the movement of the cells was so placid, and the cells were just gliding along in peace. There was a great deal of white, yet beyond white, sparkly substance interspersed with the cells. The white blood cells that showed each had a white, glowing center and a pulsation in that center almost like a little heartbeat!
It was like looking into a parallel universe.
Myself, Dr Felici, the technician, and my daughter (who was filming) just could not stop looking at that sample. As long as we left the sample on the screen, it had life. All the other samples started to slow down after a short period of time but the Divine Mother sample did not. Another interesting thing that happened and it shows up in the photograph, was that some of the red blood cells began to take on a heart shape. This is not 2 cells overlapping but single cells taking on this shape. I have included 2 of these pictures taken at different positions on the sample slide.
So what have I proved by this experiment?
· That EFT can enhance any emotion and bring it about quickly with all the physical ramifications as well.
· That you can INTEND and use EFT to enhance even a negative emotion.
· That different emotions affect the blood in profound ways.
· That you can fix many emotions with INTENT and EFT.
· For me, the most astonishing thing this experiment proves is that the Divine can come into your blood and this could be used for all kinds of reasons. Perhaps, using EFT in this manner simply stimulates the Divine that is already inherent in all of us.
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WHY TAPPING WORKS - A SENSE FOR HEALING
The Neurobiological Basis of Peripheral Sensory Stimulation
for Modulation of Emotional Response
By
 Ronald A. Ruden, MD, PhD.
March, 2005
A new therapy for phobias, PTSD, addictive behaviors and other psychological issues was first described by Dr. Roger Callahan and involves thought activation of the problem followed by tapping on certain acupoints in a specific sequence. In addition, a gamut procedure involving further tapping, eye movements and following simple commands is used. He calls his method Thought Field Therapy. In most cases, the problems were reportedly cured in a matter of minutes. We theorize about the neuroanatomical and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the success of this technique.
We propose that tapping and other sensory stimulation procedures globally increase serotonin. The important structures specifically involved in this therapy are the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The success of this technique requires that glutamate first be increased in the circuit that involves the conditioning stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus. This analysis does not define sequences for tapping. We suggest the name Psychosensory Therapy to encompass this specific treatment as well as to define a broader new paradigm for the treatment of these problems.
INTRODUCTION
More than a decade ago, Callahan found that tapping under the eye of an individual with a water phobia immediately and permanently cured this problem (Callahan, 1997). Callahan believes that activating a distressful thought produces a perturbation in the energy field that surrounds the body. His model is based on traditional Chinese medicine, that is, when energy flow is disturbed a person becomes ill. By tapping on specific traditional Chinese medicine acupoints in a specific sequence these perturbations in the energy ‘Thought Fields’ resume normal functioning and healing occurs. He calls his method CallahanTechniques-Thought Field Therapy (CT-TFT) (Callahan 1995, 2001). Variations on this therapy have been developed and are available as web based documents. These therapies constitute a field called Energy Psychology (www.energypysch.org).
From an observational point of view, when TFT is applied, it literally appears that a dimmer switch has been thrown. After a successful treatment, as measured by a decreasing SUD that ultimately reaches 1or 0, (Subjective Units of Distress, a 0-10 scale where 0 is none and 10 extreme distress as reported by the patient) (modified from Wolpe 1958) thoughts that had been clear were less so. Not only does the ability to generate a clear image diminish, the response to that thought is often gone, and for good! Sometimes the individual feels euphoric, sometimes confused as to what happened, but always calmer.
A large study that involved over 29,000 patients was conducted using these procedures. The results (Andrade & Feinstein 2003) are remarkable. For a wide range of problems, such as specific phobias, panic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, acute stress disorders, and anxiety-depressive disorders this method was deemed successful by independent evaluation in 76% of the subjects. Also, in this category were a variety of painful emotional states including grief, guilt, anger shame, jealousy, rejection, and other painful memories. These techniques also seemed to help impulse control disorders and cravings. These researchers noted that most of the treatments did not require the special protocols developed by Callahan (1995), rather they found that for most disorders one sequence sufficed.
Fear, anger, grief, depression, anxiety, aggression, cravings and other emotions represent a complex neurophysiological response that involves both cortical and subcortical systems.
For full article CLICK HERE
Experts point to dramatic changes in brain waves as a result of EFT
 By Gary Groesbeck, BCIAC fellow
Donna Bach, ND and I saw evidence that EFT works at a verifiable level in the field of EEG brain wave measurements. We were pleased to observe Gary Craig and some of the EFT Masters working with groups of people who volunteered to be part of a project to make the benefits of the EFT process more visible and measurable.
In our experience of over 15 years of private practice in the fields of neurofeedback and biofeedback, we have been very impressed with the way EFT has been beneficial to the client. We started using the EFT tapping while the client is being hooked up to brain wave monitoring systems. We saw many changes for the better taking place in real time.
Biofeedback is based on the practice of brain wave monitoring, heart rate measuring, and the monitoring of other biological functions of the body for the purpose of boosting performance and assisting in the improvement of mental and physical health. While working with Gary Craig we made some amazing observations that could assist in making EFT, and the benefits that the person is receiving, instantly visible during an actual tapping session. Here is a brief summary of what we are seeing:
1. Initial field studies show some very rapid and significant changes in the overall brain wave patterns that mirror the release of emotional issues during sessions, and a movement towards a more brain optimal function.
2. There is a reduction in brain energy, which occurs more rapidly than in just a simple relaxation period, often within a single round of tapping. When the brain works more efficiently, the amount of electrical activity being measured through the skull decreases.
3. An increase in brain wave symmetry; that is both sides of the brain begin to work together in a more balanced manner. People often have the mistaken assumption that they are either right brained or left brained, in truth we are both, and the two sides of the brain need to work together for optimal health and performance.
4. Finally the band of energy often associated with emotional intensity, anxiety, stress, negative worrying and a possible history of addictions, the "monkey mind" band, reduces beautifully as emotional issues are released during tapping.
Best regards to all,
Gary Groesbeck, BCIAC Fellow, Donna Bach ND
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"In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy" Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Laureate in Medicine