Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EDMR)
The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense issued clinical practice guidelines that recommend EDMR for the treatment of PTSD. Perhaps, the rapid eye movement allows the patient less opportunity to consciously react to the distress that they are reviewing. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. Positive controlled outcome studies demonstrate that >80% of single-trauma victims no longer have post-traumatic stress after only three 90-minute sessions. Reportedly, Kaiser Permanente, found that 100% of the single-trauma victims and 77% of multiple trauma victims no longer suffer with PTSD after only six 50-minute sessions. EMDR Institute, Inc. reported that 77% of combat veterans were free of PTSD in 12 sessions.
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Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EDMR) 20/20 Report
. Francine Shapiro is the originator and developer of EMDR.
In 1987, she made the chance observation that moving her eyes from side to side appeared to reduce the disturbance of negative thoughts and memories. This experience led her to examine this phenomenon more systematically. Working with approximately 70 volunteers, she developed standardized procedures to maximize therapeutic outcomes, conducted additional research and a published randomized controlled study with trauma victims. After further research and elaboration of the methodology, she published a textbook in 1995 detailing the eight phases of this form of psychotherapy. EMDR is now recommended as an effective treatment for trauma in numerous international practice guidelines, including those of the American Psychiatric Association and the Department of Defense.
Dr. Shapiro is a Senior Research Fellow Emeritus at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, Executive Director of the EMDR Institute in Watsonville, CA, and founder and President Emeritus of the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs, a non-profit organization that coordinates disaster response and low fee training worldwide. see also: https://www.emdr.com/
This time, I want to share a video that delves into what people are saying about their progress of evolving by meditations – it ought probably give us a sense that meditation is a system, sure; beneficial too, yes; but also that meditating is very personally experienced.
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Meditation and the Power of the Mind – YouTube Published on May 2, 2012 A documentary that explores the practice of meditation and it’s effect on the mind and body.
So, I want to recall the most important contribution that I think I found about the truth. Meditation promotes well-being by reducing stress, depression, anxiety, blood pressure, addiction, by boosting immune systems and by improving our memory.
Forty years ago,Matthieu Ricard, a French genetic scientist left an intellectual life, moved to India and took up a study of Buddhism. He is now a western scholar of religion and he was recently claimed by brain research scientists to be the happiest man on the planet.
His daily routine of meditation made possible amazing brain scans demonstrate that if he is meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves never before reported within neuroscience literature.
While his is the pinnacle of measures, you to may change your brain. You have the capacity to heal including all of your emotional confusions. If you set out to accomplish this, you can gradually increase your awareness and your inner peace by mindfulness. You can transform your brain, create new neural circuits and change the way your brain neurons more efficiently will communicate with each other.
This clip demonstrates — dramatically how and why. I don’t care about proving it scientifically … I proved it for myself. This video along with some strong leadership skill and a group of people that will practice mindfulness … and all of the elements for awesome healing are present…
I posted the entire lecture in the comment section.
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This video demonstrates fields that are invisible… this is not magic.
Did you watch the healing?
This video demonstrates what once was a miracle — its a law of nature now.
So, I’ve been posting on the power of meditation and mindfulness… and … that is only half of the solution to mind healing… preparation (as demonstrated in the video) with mindfulness. The other half is emotion and the heart. This is a new technology that is especially ripe for support groups like for PTSD and even for mental illness, recovery from cancer, and so on — wherever groups are meeting for healing. The power of the mindful emotion for healing is awesome when we can use it in groups. If you understand what this post is giving to groups for PTSD and depression and so on; put it to use… let me know if you need help.
What if there is physical evidence that the brain is a quantum device, and that its design reflects the cosmos in an uncanny way that cannot be by chance? In the Vedic tradition of India, it is held that “as is the smallest, so is the greatest. As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.” Spiritual beings could not win in the past, but the times are changing, and thanks to worldwide communication, spiritual people can win now. Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit will teach you all things.”
Summary: Veterans with PTSD who completed a mindfulness-based group treatment plan showed a significant reduction in symptoms as compared to patients who underwent treatment as normal.
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A collaborative study from the University of Michigan Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System shows that veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who completed an 8-week mindfulness-based group treatment plan showed a significant reduction in symptoms as compared to patients who underwent treatment as normal.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, or MBCT, combines the practice of cognitive therapy with the meditative approach of mindfulness that stresses an increased awareness of all thoughts and emotions.
Previous research has shown stress reduction classes that use mindfulness meditation have been beneficial to people with a history of trauma exposure — including veterans, civilians with war-related trauma and adults with a history of childhood sexual abuse — but the new study is the first to examine the effect of mindfulness-based psychotherapy for PTSD with veterans in a PTSD clinic.
“The results of our trial are encouraging for veterans trying to find help for PTSD,” says Anthony P. King, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and research assistant professor in the U-M Department of Psychiatry, who performed the study in collaboration with psychologists at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. “Mindfulness techniques seemed to lead to a reduction in symptoms and might be a potentially effective novel therapeutic approach to PTSD and trauma-related conditions.”
Veterans in the mindfulness treatment groups participated in in-class exercises such as mindful eating, in which they focus on sensations associated with eating very slowly; “body scanning,” an exercise where patients focus on physical sensations in individual parts of the body, paying special attention to pain and tension; mindful movement and stretching; and “mindfulness meditation” including focusing on the breath and emotions. The participants were also instructed to practice mindfulness at home through audio-recorded exercises and during the day while doing activities such as walking, eating and showering.
After eight weeks of treatment, 73 percent of patients in the mindfulness group displayed meaningful improvement compared to 33 percent in the treatment-as-usual groups.
King says the most noticeable area of improvement for patients in the mindfulness group was a reduction in avoidance symptoms. One of the main tenets of mindfulness therapy is a sustained focus on thoughts and memories, even ones that might be unpleasant.
“Part of the psychological process of PTSD often includes avoidance and suppression of painful emotions and memories, which allows symptoms of the disorder to continue,” King says. “Through the mindfulness intervention, however, we found that many of our patients were able to stop this pattern of avoidance and see an improvement in their symptoms.”
Mindfulness techniques also emphasize focus and attention to positive experiences and nonjudgmental acceptance to one’s thoughts and emotions. Because of this, the researchers found that the patients in the mindfulness group experienced a decrease in feelings of self-blame and a trend toward decreased perception of the world as a dangerous place.
King says the results of this pilot study are encouraging, but further studies with a larger sample size are needed to fully explore the breadth of mindfulness intervention benefits. He added that the U-M-VA group is currently conducting a larger study including military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Further studies will help us understand whether mindfulness training is more aptly considered an adjunct option to gold-standard trauma-focused treatments such as prolonged exposure or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), or whether it can function as an intervention in its own right for treating avoidance and other symptoms,” he says.
“Either way, mindfulness-based therapies provide a strategy that encourages active engagement for participants, are easy to learn and appear to have significant benefits for veterans with PTSD.”
Anthony P. King, Thane M. Erickson, Nicholas D. Giardino, Todd Favorite, Sheila A.M. Rauch, Elizabeth Robinson, Madhur Kulkarni, Israel Liberzon. A Pilot Study of Group Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for Combat Veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Depression and Anxiety, 2013; DOI:10.1002/da.22104
University of Michigan Health System. “Mindfulness therapy might help veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 April 2013. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130417130007.htm>.
Balance is what is central to serenity and a peaceful integration of the many identities that we perceive of ourselves to be when in reality, we’ve actually forgotten the higher-self that we are to be and thus, we must juggle in the identities to maintain a balance long enough that allows recalling that we are divine by nature.
Bloggers, readers, meditation and mindful practice is AMAZING! Astounding!
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According to Ricard …
“In the Western world, meditation means sitting under a mango tree in a blissed out state. The prevailing idea is that you have to sit down and empty your mind. It’s not that at all. You have to clean up a bit. We have so many wandering and intrusive thoughts. So you have to be in control of your own mind. Meditation means inner freedom. Inner freedom doesn’t mean following every chain of thought. It’s like a sailor who takes the helm and decides where to sail instead of drifting with the current. If you want to generate particular state of mind, you do what it takes.”
“There was a lot of activity in his left prefrontal cortex which indicates a huge capacity for happiness; this man is very unlikely to be making negative choices about his experiences,” says Neuroscientist Richard Davidson
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“Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain.”
The French genetic scientist left an intellectual life 40 years ago and moved to India to study Buddhism. He is now a western scholar of religion.
His daily routine of meditation made possible amazing brain scans that demonstrate that if he is meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves never before reported within neuroscience literature.
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NOW, here begins the really amazing part Gamma brain wave production is associated with consciousness, attention, learning and memory. We want to train our brains to increase peace and serenity and this changes the brain — It’s like we come into unifying Loving Light… after time… the brain changes (maintenance required).
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FINDINGSHis skull was wired up with 256 sensors at the University of Wisconsin and its all been recorded — he’s got a happy and joyous mind — no doubt. Scans found excess activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving Ricard an abnormally large capacity for happiness.
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FINDINGSA larger volume of a specific brain structure generally increases the abilities to carry out specific functions associated with that structure. This is widely accepted based on the assumption that greater numbers of neurons will produce larger outputs and therefore may be more influential than smaller numbers of neurons.
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FINDINGS Researchers in neuroscience demonstrate that the prefrontal cortex plays a responsible role in forming of expectations based on actions and social control, predicting of outcomes, future consequences of activities, working toward goals, development of abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, abilities to determine same and different and better and best. Abilities to suppress urges that may lead to socially unacceptable outcomes are developed by this area of the brain. Meditation boosts learning ability, improves brain functioning, and reduces stress!
Even people meditating for the first time will register a decrease in beta waves, a sign that the cortex is not processing information as actively as usual. After 20 minutes there is a huge decrease in beta activity — these brains are learning to be highly focused.
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Matthieu Ricard: “Compassion is not just some high-minded flaky concept that Buddhist monks and New Age hippies bandy about, it’s a very practical way to operate in a world that is incredibly stressful for just about everyone.”
FINDINGSMindfulness meditation, one type of meditation technique, has been shown to enhance emotional awareness and psychological flexibility as well as induce well-being and emotional balance. Scientists have also begun to examine how meditation may influence brain functions. This talk will examine the effect of mindfulness meditation practice on the brain systems in which psychological functions such as attention, emotional re-activity, emotion regulation, and self-view are instantiated. We will also discuss how different forms of meditation practices are being studied using neuroscientific technologies and are being integrated into clinical practice to address symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress..
Share this one around… its time to change this world, one brain at a time… each to their own.
Let’s rid the world of social anxiety:
NOTE: Social anxiety is linked to anxiety, panic attacks, depression, psychosis (not otherwise specified), drug use, alcohol use, spontaneous violence, outbursts, character flaws, behavior problems, anger and rage; to name just a few dis-eases.
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Let’s work on it together… mindfulness is a tool for awakening mental health.
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FINDINGS Related to anxiety… this is empirical evidence… about Meditation benefits. These are FACTS: .
Personally, I am sure that practicing mindfulness meditation with some expert therapeutic guidance can speed healing of PTSD and possibly DID; maybe even NPD, BPD, and possibly even schizophrenia.
Meditation can speed recovery from grief.
It will probably heal some Anxiety NOS and episodic Depression.
Mindfulness can greatly decrease panic episodes… maybe cure it.
It can reduce Bipolar and Uni-polar disorder symptoms.
Mind is expression of Energy originating from beyond the limits of space-time through the information layers of consciousness.
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Most of this post is from work
by Eckhart Tolle.
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Eckhart Tolle is asked, “Is the ego the source of our thoughts or are our thoughts generated elsewhere and pass through the ego?”
Tolle begins, “There is no ego apart from thoughts. The identification with thoughts is ego. But the thoughts that go through your mind, of course, are linked to the collective mind of the culture you live in, humanity as a whole, so they are not your thoughts as such, but you pick most of them up from the collective (most of them). And so, you identify with thinking and the identification with thinking becomes ego, which means simply that you believe in every thought that arises and you derive your sense of who you are from what your mind is telling you who you are. Opinions, viewpoints, ‘that’s me.’”
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Did the universe make a mistake with the ego?
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“The realm of consciousness is much vaster than thought can grasp. When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are.”
The ego arises out of the state of identification with thought. The moment of freedom arises when we realize that we are not our thoughts—rather, we are the awareness. .
Eckhart, Could you elaborate on ego versus healthy self-esteem? How do you know when higher consciousness guides you? How do we break the habit of excessive thinking? What is music and why is it so important to us?Why Does the ego put up such a fight? Do you ever regret what you say? Do we have a choice in suffering?
For two years, a small man sits quietly on a park bench. People walk by, lost in their thoughts. One day someone asks him a question. In the weeks that follow there are more people and more questions. Word spreads that the man is a “mystic,” and has discovered something that brings peace and meaning into our lives. It sounds like fiction, but today that man, Eckhart Tolle, is known worldwide for his teachings on spiritual enlightenment through the power of the present moment. Read more.
The ego has the benefit of beliefs that will sustain it until I am dead. How much power will we wrest from each other is in the balance each moment. My day-to-day life is where it seems that the match occurs. Yet, really this is a match of mind and consciousness. One is eternal and all powerful. The other is temporary and yet seems all powerful. The ego makes its points by turning away in fear from love. The mind makes its points by looking through the anxious devastation of fear to see an outcome that is beyond the space-time present; manifest in the design of this universe, yet largely unknown to me.
I know that I am changing and according to what I am reading, so is my brain and my body adapting too. I wanted to learn how mindfulness is aiding me; spiritually, and how mindfulness and meditation and praying stimulate physical changes, so, I’d been posting on this as I was learning more.
Often, I’m told that prayer is all that is necessary for spiritual growth. I cannot disagree. However, I need stillness away from the ego to be able to do this. I put my mind to learning to want meditation time and I began to know the God of my youth, in a relevant and deep Christian way, as I pursued the practices of meditation. Later I began to experience the stillness and being in the flow, in the present of now, for periods of connecting but in still, timeless, moments. These experiences brought me to want to be joy as well as being softening humility and compassion for others.
The ego that Tolle describes is cunning and powerful and this is the ego that I discovered that I am otherwise unable to escape. It runs by fear, primal instinct, and it is a cunning foe, this arcane chameleon foe of personality shifting identities.
I’ve taught in programs that serve people that dissociate. So, I’ve read about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Identity Disorders; always… have for years now. It may be, I am sure more than suspect, that mindfulness is a tremendous beneficial practice for people that suffer from PTSD and ego fragmenting dissociate disorders. The techniques are being researched and there is new hope for vets and abuse victims. The problems of PTSD and for others that dissociate are deeply attached to subconscious ego defense mechanisms that are hardly yet understood. With Tolle’s teachings and with mindfulness practices, there is great hope.
I already know from research and seeing people get well that these practices are greatly benefiting people that suffer from anxiety and depression.
Eric
