This is the rough draft of Part 4 of a book I am writing. The tentative title for the book will be: The Healing Power of the Human Mind
I am publishing Part 4 here for anyone who might find it helpful even in its preliminary, rough-draft format. If you have comments on this article that you would like to share with me, please email them to: chuckge@bellsouth.net. Thanks!
You may also be interested in the rough drafts of other articles that I am currently working on in my writing of this book:
Part 1: Better Health with less Medications
Part 2: A Ray of Hope for the Terminally ill
Part 3: Coping with the Loss of a Loved One
Part 4: (this article: Simple Self-Healing Strategies)
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Simple Self-Healing Strategies
If you are bothered by any kind of chronic discomfort or health problems that you would like to improve, you may find useful strategies here. You might also find help if you would like more peace of mind. The scientific research studies on which these articles are based have even demonstrated improvements in diagnosed medical conditions like insomnia, anxiety, depression, asthma, hypertension, and diabetes. Their use may also minimize, perhaps even avoid, the financial costs and potential side effects of medications you might otherwise need for controlling medical problems. Furthermore, even if you are completely healthy, there is good reason to believe these same strategies may help you to prevent these kinds of problems from becoming a part of your future.
You may just be looking for a specific strategy you have heard about, or you may just want to look over the various strategies. Should this be your interest, just skip down to the end of this article to the section called The Strategies to find the links to these articles. If, however, you would like to first read more about the scientific basis of the strategies, just continue with this article.
The claims I am making here may seem very unlikely or even outlandish. I can confidently make them, though, since everything I am presenting here is solidly supported by high quality scientific research carried out by skilled researchers. The research reports have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and replicated by independent research programs. I have carefully evaluated thousands of research articles in developing what you will find here. The reports document that these strategies improve mood, strengthen important brain regulatory areas, stimulate better function of the body’s many metabolic processes, and improve the physical health of those who make use of them. If you would like to personally verify my conclusions, I provide easy access to a few of the best reports in the references at the end of each article.
Beyond being both powerful and reliable in their beneficial effects, these strategies are also very simple to use, cost little or nothing, and they are almost completely risk free. In fact, they are so simple to use that you will need no medical training of any kind to use them very effectively. They involve activities like focusing your mind on certain topics or concentrating on your breathing for a period of time. The only financial cost might involve access to a smartphone to download and use a free app needed for one of the strategies (controlled breathing). Their only significant risk would be if you were to use them in place of timely and proper medical care for any serious health conditions you may have.
First, let me give a very brief overview of what brain scientists have been discovering in the last several decades that strongly supports what I am saying in this article. We have known for several centuries that the human brain is a highly organized and structured electronic device composed of billions of neurons. It has also been well known that the electrical activity of specific areas of the brain, as well as their interconnecting pathways, determine everything we perceive, do, and feel. In the last several decades, though, highly sophisticated brain imaging scans have been developed that allow research scientists to study which areas and pathways within the brain are most active while research subjects are reporting about what is going on in their mind and what they are doing and experiencing. Since these new brain imaging devices are non-invasive, scientists can repeatedly image and study the changes that occur in the brain over years, or even decades.
Until relatively recently, scientists believed and taught that the human brain was completely formed and permanently fixed by the end of childhood. Over the last century, though, the accuracy of this concept has been increasingly brought into question. With the use of these new brain imaging scans, we now know it is completely wrong. These new research techniques have conclusively demonstrated that everything we think about, experience, and do changes every part of our brain, throughout our lives. Even though we are usually unaware of these natural, powerful processes, the power of the various functional areas in the brain as well as their connecting pathways are always being modified. Brain scientists call this process neuroplasticity.
Using these brain imaging scans, we have learned that emotional traumas and chronic stress not only feel bad to us, they also produce long term structural changes in the brain that make it more likely that we will feel this way in the future. They will also be very likely to decrease the level of comfort of our usual state of mind. Perhaps even more importantly, it has been clearly shown that emotional traumas and chronic stress increase the levels of hormones and stress-related steroids that are likely to damage our health.
On the other hand, we have also learned that positive experiences and things that feel good are associated with long term structural changes in completely different areas of the brain. These changes make it more likely that we will feel good in the future, as these brain areas become more easily triggered. This, of course, increases the comfort level of our usual state of mind. Furthermore, these structural changes within our brain tend to reverse the effects of trauma and chronic stress, lowering the potentially harmful levels of stress induced hormones, steroids and other neurologically active blood peptides.
Luckily, monitoring the long-term effects within our brain of whatever we do, whatever we experience and whatever we habitually think about is easy. Instead of using expensive and impractical brain imaging scans to measure these improvements, we can just pay close attention to how we are feeling. As beneficial brain areas are strengthened and the metabolic processes of your body improve over time, you should find their benefits accumulating. You are likely to find that you tend to be less easily stressed and usually feel more relaxed. You may also notice chronic sources of pain becoming less uncomfortable. Your sleep may improve, and your energy level may gradually increase. Thus, how your mood and level of comfort change over time will be important feedback about how well these strategies are working for you.
All the strategies linked to this article are ways to employ the natural neuroplasticity processes of your brain to improve your life. While any one of these can be very valuable used alone, there is every reason to believe that their helpful effects will add to each other if you use more than one. I encourage you to pick and choose between them to find those that seem best, and to continue their use to allow benefits to continue to accumulate.
Each of the self-healing strategies that I have provided a link for, below, will be organized in a similar fashion. Each will start with how I became aware of the usefulness and effectiveness of the strategy. Then I will describe the benefits that have been gained by the subjects that have participated in the research designed to test the strategy, as well as the changes in brain structure found to be associated with these beneficial effects. This will be followed by suggestions and instructions for using the strategy. Finally, at the end of each article, I will include references to some of the research reports that were particularly helpful to me in preparing the article, and which you can use to verify what I am reporting here for yourself.
The Strategies:
Controlled Breathing: This strategy involves downloading a free app onto a smart phone that will guide you for sessions of slow and precisely paced breathing. It creates a resonant frequency in your brain and body to counteract the damage known to result from previous emotional trauma as well as chronic stress.
Click here to access the article: Self-Healing using Controlled breathing
Writing About Personal Trauma: This strategy involves setting aside some time on a periodic basis to explore your thoughts and emotional reactions to past traumas. These writing activities have been shown to improve feelings of wellbeing and health.
Click here to access the article: Self-Healing using Writing about Personal Trauma
Self-Affirmation and Positive Writing: This strategy makes use of both positive self-affirmation statements and writing about very positive personal experiences, they may be even more helpful than writing about personal traumas.
Click here to access this article: Self-Healing using Self-Affirmation and Positive Writing
Humor and Laughter: This strategy is quite simple. Finding videos or movies that are very humorous to you, and using them on a regular basis, can provide many benefits.
Ckick here to access the article: Self-Healing through Humor and Laughter
Music: This strategy is very subtle, but it is surprisingly powerful if continued long enough and frequently enough. The more you enjoy listening to a song, the more effective it is.
Click here to access the article: Self-Healing with Music
Science and Spirit 