What do I mean by work WITH your body instead of against it? Let me give you an example.

Howard came to me with a diagnosis of proctitis. For a year and a half he had been having fairly regular episodes of blood in the stool, and an uncomfortable “bloating and upset stomach.” Essentially, after an exam and a colonoscopy, what he was diagnosed with was an inflammation of the end of his large intestine. He received the standard medical treatment of an anti-inflammatory and another drug that slowed down his digestive process; an anti-cholinergic drug.

This is a perfect example of the medical model that I describe as “working against the body.” Whether you are on a pharmaceutical or a natural supplement, chances are good that the intent of the pill is to stop some bodily process that is uncomfortable.

The nice thing is that, quite often, this “anti-” approach works. The symptoms can be reduced. They usually don’t go away, but people can feel a difference. In Howard’s case, the symptoms were improved, slightly. He was still uncomfortable, though, and didn’t want to be on the drugs for the rest of his life. He came to me looking for another option.

When we spoke about his condition, I told him that I could offer him a natural alternative to some of the drugs. Aloe vera juice, for example can be quite effective for healing intestinal inflammation.

However, I also said that, if he was open to it, I could offer him a completely different perspective on his illness. Instead of deciding that your colon is doing something wrong and try to stop it, we can instead ask why you are feeling this way? In other words, is there something your body is trying to tell you?

He seemed interested in what I was saying, so I went on. I said, “for example, there could be underlying stresses in your life that are contributing to your inflammation. Correcting underlying sources of mental and emotional stress would allow the symptoms that you are experiencing (the bloating, the upset stomach, the blood) to be healed by your body’s natural mechanisms. That is not to say that the physical symptoms that you have are not real! It’s just that the mind can influence the body and they often need to be healed in tandem.”

I continued, “I think of body symptoms as red flags, or notes, waved in front of us that say, ‘Hey, there’s something wrong down here- get some help!’ Once underlying problems are fixed, the body can often heal itself.

Howard agreed to work with me, but we ended up having just one session. That’s because his symptoms were gone after working together once, and he is now off of his medication.

What happened? The simple answer is that I worked with what his body was telling him instead of trying to stop the symptoms at all costs.

When we worked together, I gave him one very simple instruction: notice what was happening in his body and let himself feel it. When I asked him what he was feeling in his body, he said that his “stomach felt tense.” I asked him to let himself sink into that “tenseness” and pay attention to whatever else came up- whether physical, mental, or emotional.

It turned out that Howard is public school counselor, and his job is to try and help kids with extremely complex problems navigate the school system. There are rarely easy answers, and he found that he was getting very stressed out by the job.

When we started working, he noticed the tension in his belly was similar to the tension he felt at work. When I asked him what the hardest part about his counseling job was, he said that it was like, “trying to find the perfect piece of the puzzle to fit the problem in front of him. The problem is that I know that the perfect piece doesn’t exist, but I can’t help but keep looking for it. In my mind I know I can’t solve the puzzle, but part of me won’t let me stop looking. It’s exhausting!”

Meanwhile, he felt the tension move through his body. From his abdomen, it moved to his chest, then his neck and shoulders, and then back to his upper abdomen. Finally it moved to both his hips and his face and then was gone.

When I asked Howard what it said about him that he couldn’t find the missing puzzle piece, he said that he felt like it was his fault. There was a part of him that took the responsibility for solving the problem with each student and when the perfect solution remained elusive, it felt like it was his fault and that he had failed.

He had an inkling that he was putting a lot of pressure on himself, but now he saw clearly that he was trying to take responsibility for the massive problems in a huge public school bureaucracy. When I asked him to completely sink into the feeling of being at fault, he felt a deep awareness of his true role at work, and a deep release of the feeling of failure.

Howard’s bleeding has stopped and he only rarely gets abdominal discomfort. His job stress has declined significantly as well.

How did this happen? The details of his physiology are still a mystery, but it is clear that I helped Howard work with his body and not against it.

In my practice, I have seen that tremendous things can happen when the processes in our bodies are respected. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need any medications or physical interventions; sometimes the physical damage is extensive enough that we need some repair help. But healing the underlying cause of that physical damage is powerful medicine in its own right, and the most important tools of healing are the ones that you already own: be present and listen.

Please call me if you would like to find out how working with your body can change your life. You can schedule a free 15 minute consult or a full appointment. I’ll let you know if I can help you, and if I can’t, I will refer you to someone who can.

In order to get off of an unwanted medication, it is essential to eliminate the need for it. Alternative medicine can help you do that in a variety of different ways.

One important thing to consider is the type of approach that interests you. How would you answer the following two questions?

1) Do you want a natural alternative to the anti-depressant?
or
2) Do you want to heal the underlying causes of your illness, thereby eliminating the need to take any kind of medicine, be it natural or pharmaceutical?

These are not rhetorical questions, but rather very important ones. I want to make sure that you are very clear with yourself so that you can be clear with me. By being clear with me, I will be able to satisfy your goals quickly and efficiently, saving you both time and money.

Whether you are on Prozac, Wellbutrin, Effexor, etc., doesn’t matter, they all act in a similar way. They manipulate brain chemistry so that the calming, “happy” nerves are increasingly stimulated, and the excitatory, stressful neurons are stimulated less. This is a pretty gross generalization, but the point is that the medications do one thing: change your brain chemistry.

However, your brain is not who you are. There is a deeper level of consciousness than your brain and it may be that the problem lies there. Sure, your brain chemistry is imbalanced, but why is it imbalanced?.

If you answered yes to the first question above, it may be that you would rather not explore that deeper level of consciousness. That is totally fine. Or you may believe that because of your diet, personal habits, or lifestyle, imbalanced brain chemistry is the most pressing problem and that is what you would like to address. That, too, is totally fine.

The picture below is a list taken from HealthNotes- an informational kiosk that is available for free access in most health food stores. It shows some natural supplements that can help with depression. Another list exists for anxiety, though many of the entries are similar.

If you would like an alternative supplement you can research some of these on your own, or make an appointment to get my recommendations and receive an individualized supplement plan.

If you are interested in re-balancing your brain chemistry with a natural product, some combination of the supplements above will probably work. For example, St. John’s Wort has comparable efficacy to SSRI’s in many studies.

However, if you answered “yes” to the second question, you need a different approach. You may be tired of taking pills and would just like to get to the bottom of why you are not feeling well. In that case you will need one or more healing sessions that are designed to identify and eliminate the underlying causes of your illness.

The underlying causes, in my experience, are usually erroneous belief systems or deep wounds that are creating conflicts within your consciousness. The increased stress that you experience as a result of these conflicts have the long-term effect of changing brain chemistry. That’s why the anti-depressants work for a large number of people. They are not concerned with the “why”, they are only concerned with the end-stage, physiological result.

Once the underlying causes are healed and you experience life with less fear, anger, and sadness, the brain chemistry is able to normalize. The majority of the time it normalizes on its own. However, sometimes it is necessary to do a short-term course of a natural supplement to help correct the neurotransmitters.

The benefit of choosing to heal in this way is that you will decrease the need for long-term medication and/or supplements, and you will be able to experience your life with an increased sense of joy, not just less depression. It’s not very expensive in the short run, and it will certainly save you even more money and effort in the long run.

If you are ready to ask for some help with either approach, please give me a call. I offer a no-charge 15 minute consult. Of course, you may also make an appointment to begin the process of eliminating your need for an anti-depressant medication.

It is my experience that addictions are not so much about the feeling that indulging gives, but rather the avoidance of a deep hole within that doesn’t feel very good.

If you have an addiction, you might be aware of this idea. You might notice that it is hard to just sit and be by yourself without descending into a dark place. In general, it is a place that doesn’t feel very good emotionally and might even cause physical pain. It is a hole that has been there for a long time and part of the satisfaction of giving in to a craving is the forgetting that the hole is there.

This concept is why many people end up replacing one addiction with another; the way that they escape isn’t as important as the ability to escape.

Therefore, I suppose that it’s not very accurate of me to say that I treat addictions. Technically, I don’t. I do, however, treat the addict. I directly address the hole and its relationship to the whole person. I help guide each person to stop escaping the hole and by doing that, it disappears.

How does it fill up?  That is a experience that needs to be felt and cannot be described with words.  But it does feel a lot better than a cheap high.

And when the hole is gone, the craving goes, too. The sex, or the drug, or the sugar, or the cigarette ceases to be attractive and can fall harmlessly out of the way.

Please call me if you are ready to heal your addiction:  503-310-2036.  I can offer you a no-charge 15 minute consult or a full appointment.  Details.

“Who’s Really In Control?”

Imagine that you are part of the following experiment:

Equipment is set up to measure three separate parts of your physiology.
1)  A special clock is placed in front of you so that you are able to know, to the millisecond, when you decide to lift your finger.  We’ll call this part the “conscious decision.”
2)  Electrodes are placed on your skull to measure activity in the part of your brain that controls body movement.  We’ll call this step the “muscle action potential.”
3)  An electrode is placed at the place where your peripheral motor nerve interfaces with your finger flexing muscle.  This spot down in your forearm is called the “neuromuscular junction.”

Your job is very simple:  flex your finger at a random time of your own choosing while watching the special clock.  You will note the time of your conscious decision and the researcher will note the times of the muscle action potential and the firing of the neuromuscular junction, respectively.

_____

The existence of free will is surprisingly controversial. In our everyday lives it feels pretty clear cut.  After all, we decide to do something and then… do it.  Right?

In the last two month’s newsletters, I explored the idea that we actually have two minds inside of us.  This is no metaphor.  It is literally true that the two halves of our brain exhibit parallel thinking processes, as has been demonstrated through research on people who have had their brains “split” as a treatment for epilepsy.

These minds can sometimes be in conflict, and this conflict is at the root of disease.

Last month, I described some of the fallibilities of our so-called “conscious” mind.  I pointed out that our memories and our ability to see patterns are not always accurate.  In fact, experiments have shown that they are OFTEN not accurate, especially during times of stress and overwhelm.

It seems that we are comforted by the feeling of a clear memory or a clear belief of what will come next, even if we don’t have one.  In the absence of such clarity, we fabricate our memories and our sense of patterns.

This daily fabrication- the nearly instantaneous covering up of our blind spots - is so much a part of our nature that we never notice it is happening.  We only know about it after careful experimentation.

So what is the nature of this second mind that I refer to?  This is often called the “subconscious mind.”  This term comes from the fact  that the workings of this second mind do not make it into our awareness.  It doesn’t have “thoughts” in the way that we are used to.  It doesn’t “talk” to us.

This is because your subconscious mind is non-verbal.  It is just as “conscious”, i.e., it can process and store information.  However, it doesn’t talk to you with words.

How does it talk to you?  With emotions and sensations.  This is why emotions are so important.  Your feelings of love, fear, sadness, anger, and worry are ways that a deep, subconscious wisdom communicates with you. And just like all the words of a sentence are important to the overall meaning, every emotion is critical to your overall health.

But this second mind is even more powerful than that.  There is some evidence that the subconscious mind, which some people call your deeper wisdom, intuition, or gut sense, is the part of you that is actually in control.

It is possible that our conscious sense of free will is just another one the fabrications that our ego presents us with, and that there is another part of us that is making all the decisions.

You decided to flex your finger at a random time, and your brain’s muscle potential activity was measured as was the firing of the neuromuscular junction.  The next step was a comparison of the individual timings of these events.

When you decided to flex your finger, it felt like it was your ego aware mind that decided when to do it.  However, if we actually took the measurements, it would show that a full 200 milliseconds BEFORE you made the decision to flex your finger, your brain started the signal to the muscles.  The SECOND thing to happen is your decision to flex your finger, and the THIRD event is the actually triggering of the muscle.

200 milliseconds, or 1/5th of a second is a long time in terms of neurology.  Somehow, even though you picked a completely independent and random time to flex your finger, a part of your brain knew that it was going to happen.  In other words, there was a part of your brain that knew you were going to flex your finger before you did!

Now this is only one experiment.  But it has been repeated many times in different situations and joins a host of other research that starts to make the idea of free will, as we understand it, a little shaky.

But this is not to say that all of your life is up to fate, and that you have no choice.  I am saying that it is simply another part of you that is making the choices.  Not your ego; your aware sense of “I.”

In addition, follow up experiments have shown that even though you may not have much free will, you do get to exercise “free won’t.”

I will talk about this “free won’t” phenomenon and how it is at the root of the conflict between your two minds, and therefore disease itself, next month.

In the month of July I will be presenting three classes on “Combining Spirituality and Medicine” at New Seasons Market. The class times, locations, and description are below. There is no charge for attendance. I would greatly appreciate it if you forwarded this invitation to at least one person whom might be interested. Thank you very much!

Wednesday, July 9th, 7-8:30 pm- Arbor Lodge store
Arbor Lodge - N Interstate Ave & Rosa Parks Way, 503.467.4777

Thursday, July 10th, 7-8:30 pm- Cedar Hills store
3495 Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 503.641.4181

Thursday, July 24th, 7-8:30 pm- Mt Park store
3 SW Monroe Parkway, Lake Oswego, OR 97035, 503.496.1155

Class description: The vast majority of Americans believe in something greater than themselves. Whether via organized religion or a walk in the woods, spirituality is a significant part of many of our lives. However, this aspect of our lives often takes a back seat when the physical body falls ill. We look for a pill or a diet change for a remedy and place the cultivation of spirit into a supportive role.
In this class, Dr. Travis Elliott, naturopathic physician and BodyTalk practitioner, will discuss and demonstrate the integral part that “spiritual nourishment” plays in the physiology of the human body. He will make the case that a disruption of a spiritual connection is the basis of chronic physical disease. The class will extend universal concepts of the mind and emotions, including those outlined by Eckhart Tolle in his books, “A New Earth” and “The Power of Now,” to physical pain, allergies, cancer, and other chronic physical diseases.

As gas prices rise with the global temperature, many of us are feeling a little uncertain.  Our place in the world seems more and more undefined as our species, our country, and ourselves start looking around with the question, “Where do we go from here?  What does our future hold?  Tomorrow?  Next week?  Next year?  Next generation?”

The left side of our brains is futilely trying to find a pattern to explain our misdirection.  Our desire to control is bound up with our sense of just fairness and a wish to manifest what we think is the best outcome.

We are told to try and figure out what we want to do with our lives.  We major in various coursework, we listen to career counselors, and we try to find something that fits us in order to have the kind of life we think we want to live.  It all makes sense; except that every fact upon which we base these decisions could change at any second.

So, in this whirring and roaring current, what, then, is the right action?  How do we know in what direction to apply ourselves and our lives?  Where is the map and how do we get a look at it?  And can we trust Google to tell us the fastest way there?

This morning, in the midst of my own such questions, I am reminded, when I look within, to toss aside my inclination to plan, to visualize, and to yearn.  I am reminded that what will pass in the next day, or week, or year is beyond my knowing.

I therefore have two choices:  exhaust myself trying to get a glimpse of what I cannot see, or relax into the “not knowing” that is my only certainty.

Finally, I am reminded to quit asking, “What do I want to do with my life?”, and instead offer myself to Life, in service.  It is an offer that drops the paddle and the map from my hands with a willingness to be taken where I am needed, and to be shown what to do when I get there.

Which brings us back to today.  Us, mired in that sea of uncertainty, wondering what our next action should be.  I am inspired to do one thing first, and it is the only thing that I know for certain.

I offer myself in service.  I don’t know where the current is taking me, so I will give myself up to its wisdom.

I don’t know how to get where I want to go; a fact that can scare me so much that it brings tears to my eyes.  But in the face of not knowing, it settles my fear a bit to let go, to sink and rise, and to be on the lookout for opportunity.

How can I be of service today?  I’ll start by writing this.  After that, God knows.  I am certainly aware that there are things on my calendar; but I think that I’ll wait…here.  Now.  And see what comes.

This month I would like to teach you some of the unusual qualities of the first of these two minds.  This first half of ourselves is the one that we are most familiar with.  It is generally seated in the left hemisphere of our brain and gives us our ego sense.  I.e., it’s the part of us that is aware; aware of who we are, what our name is, and how we are different from everyone else.

Importantly for our discussion, this “ego brain” creates meaning in the world around us.  It decides what kinds of things are good and bad  It creates our sense of morality.

Surprisingly, this part of our brain also tends to make things up.  More accurately, in the absence of concrete evidence, your brain will make something up that sounds good; that fits with your already preconceived sense of the world.

The way that we see the world- the feelings we have about other people’s actions, the morality we feel about our own actions, and the causes and effects of all the interactions in our environment- is created by a generalizing brain.  In other words, your brain (or at least the “aware” half of it) fills in the gaps of misunderstanding and doubt with its own best approximations.

For example, it is well documented that once someone has an opinion on something, he will instinctively ignore evidence that contradicts that opinion, while using available confirmatory evidence to strengthen his opinion. (How many liberals watch Fox News?)

In experiments with split-brain patients, it has been shown that when the left brain doesn’t know why the left hand grabbed an object, the right brain (that is aware and responsible for speaking) completely makes something up.  Amazingly, the person doesn’t even know that he is making it up.

There is also newer research in psychology that talks about how fallible our memories are.  The idea that your brain can create a false reality is called confabulation, and it was thought to be mostly present in disease states.  For example, seriously ill alcoholics confabulate when they are so low in B-vitamins that they lose memories.

Instead of acting confused, a good confabulator will create something that sounds good, regardless of its truthfulness.

Here’s the thing, though, and it’s really important:  the confabulator doesn’t know that he or she is making stuff up.  To someone in this state, the obviously false memory is totally real, and nothing can change his or her mind about it.

However, we are now realizing that it is not just mentally ill people who create false memories or perceptions.  In fact, we all fall in this category.  Mentally ill individuals simply do it in a more obvious way.

Recent research has shown that human memories are often faulty, and are highly susceptible to the influence of authority figures.  A recent article on wired.com  (http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/falsememory.html) made the case that “to some extent we’re all susceptible to succumbing to false memories…”

Evidence for the fallibility of memory also comes from the number of death row criminals exonerated by DNA evidence.  Many of these criminals were convicted on the strength of eyewitness testimony that was later proved to be false.

This brain tendency to create a reality that makes sense, even at the expense of truth, has been well documented in terms of everyday perception as well.  For example, the world that you see, hear, and feel is also subject to interpretation.

There are many cases in which it was thought that a particular symptom (ringing in the ears, for example) was due to bad information being sent to the brain.  But upon further investigation, it turned out the the brain, in the absence of sound input (because of a damaged nerve), creates its own best approximation of a sound it thinks it should be hearing.

It’s as if the temporal lobe of the brain is so determined to hear something, because after all, that’s what it is there for, that it will, in a word, confabulate.

This situation is common in chronic pain.  In fact, you may know someone who has had a nerve surgically “deadened” out of desperation for relief only to find that the pain didn’t go away.
—-
Now, you might be wondering, what does all of this have to do with me?  I’m not mentally ill, right?

Right.  You are (probably ) not mentally ill.  However, it is important to note the the mentally ill brain does not always create new behaviors.  It exaggerates ones that are normally present.  For example, a man with Parkinson’s may have a visible resting tremor that is an exaggeration of the minute tremors that are present in those of us that are “normal.”

In other words, some of the brain functions that you perform every day would be hallmarks of disease if they were exaggerated.

Let’s go back to confabulation.  Your sense is that you don’t make things up, right?  Well, there is plenty of research that shows that we all do, especially when we feel like we are not in control.

A short article in the recent issue of Scientific American Mind  explores the capacity of all of our brains to find patterns where none exist.  This is especially true when feeling overwhelmed and out of control.

This aspect of our brains is fundamental to our survival in the world.  In order to keep ourselves safe and nourished, we need to understand patterns in the world around us.  The less safe we feel, the more we grasp for patterns.  It’s easy to see how this behavior could be helpful when there are actually patterns to identify (ex, when it is safe to forage for food, what time of the year is best for planting, or when to leave work to not get stuck in rush hour traffic.)

There is a darker side to this behavior, though, and it is key to understanding the cause of disease.  Our brain’s attempt to find patterns in the world is especially active when we are children.  This behavior was essential to our being able to navigate our families, our schools, and the rest of our environments.

One key part of this search for patterns involves our struggle to define ourselves.  As kids, we wonder who we are and where we fit in.  We make observations and then come to conclusions.  Unfortunately, some of these conclusions aren’t very kind, and we come away with negative self-beliefs:  “I am bad,” “I am slow,” “I am weak,” “I am ugly,” etc.

While they feel terrible, these beliefs are simply your brain’s attempt to make sense of your world.  However, as I have tried to explain in this article, these beliefs also may not be true.  In fact, I believe they are never true, and that these brain misperceptions are the engine that is driving chronic disease.

That concludes this brief tour of the ego in your brain’s left hemisphere.  It dominates much of your everyday experience, but it may not be as infallible as you think it is.  Next month, I will introduce you to the other half of you:  the half that contains a huge amount of wisdom that is doing its best to help you heal.

In the meantime, please call me when you are ready for a no-charge first consult.  I would be happy to help you understand how this article relates to your  unique symptoms.

503-206-7773