The North American Institute of Neurotherapy

NeuroTherapy Training: Hallmark of the Emerging Paradigm

This article first appeared in The New Times Magazine

By Marilyn Michael

Origins of Neurological Therapies

The fascinating information being uncovered by those studying the brain and mind-body connection, is reshaping and actually causing a paradigm shift in the field of psychology. A new way of understanding why people are as they are has emerged. Out of that have come new ways of helping people therapeutically that are called neurological therapies. The theory at the basis of neurological therapies is, we are as we are because of the innerworking of the brain and body. Of this new category of therapeutic approaches, one of the most powerful and scientifically based, is NeuroTherapy Training.

Science has clearly shown that the activity of the mind is made up of physical and chemical reactions. These reactions not only cause psychological discomfort, but can stimulate and aggravate conditions of the body. Emerging scientific disciplines, like psychoneuroimmunology (the study of how the different systems of the body interact) have shown that serious attention must be paid to the physical stress, the chemical imbalance and frantic mental activity that assault people on a daily basis. This must be done in order to enable them to truly cope with, or combat the physical, chemical or mental weakness they are experiencing.

New, sophisticated scientific information about the role of the mind in disease is demanding that those facing the assault of disease learn to more quickly and effectively manage the physical and chemical assault of emotions, that are now known to diminish immune responses and accelerate viral activity. Further, it is essential those facing disease, be taught practical and more active ways to use their minds as part of the healing picture. Though it is an approach that can help any type of symptom, NeuroTherapy Training was developed out of a desire to help cancer and AIDS patients more effectively manage the horrendous emotional assault and to play a more active role in the healing picture. People facing the challenge of disease do not have the luxury of time for a piecemeal approach helping them respond better to each individual emotional stimulus.

Nature of Neurological Therapies

True neurological therapies such as NeuroTherapy Training are aligned with scientific understanding about the mind and body and mind/body interaction. Unlike other psychotherapies, neurological therapies focus on the processes of stress and emotion in the body, not the stimuli causing them. They address the causes behind the symptoms from which people suffer. The process is not of analyzing or counseling people about to their symptoms. It is one of teaching them how to gain self control through more effective use of their minds, making them their own therapists.

Sessions involve use of a concentrated mental state to train the brain. As a part of each session, NeuroTherapy Specialists guide clients into a state of concentration in order to teach a person how to use their brain in new ways, which can diminish the physiology of emotion. By learning to manage the physical and chemical basis of emotion, people can manage all nature of negative emotional responses for the rest of their lives and in a self-generated manner. NeuroTherapy Specialists further teach people how to use their brains in scientifically explainable ways that have implications for physical health such as boosting immune processes, lessening viral activity and managing pain.

The goal is to teach and enable people to use more of their own minds. People are taught and helped to benefit from the natural therapeutic effects of regular practice of a state of deep concentration. The physiology of emotion is something that reemerges daily in response to innumerable negative or stressful stimuli. Long-term benefits of neurological therapies like NeuroTherapy Training, involve use of brief, daily mental training sessions by the client for the rest of their lives.

Nature of sessions

Sessions held with a NeuroTherapy Specialist involve two processes--teaching and doing mental work.

Teaching: Making the person their own therapist

Each session, the client will learn in a clear, simple and visually illustrated manner about such things as: the mind and the scientific basis of it's interaction with the body, the nature of emotion as a physical and chemical process, the nature of the concentrated state they will learn to practice daily, and the powerful neurological tools the NeuroTherapy Specialist will use in sessions to train the brain in order to dissipate the physical chemical basis of negative emotion. A signature tool of NeuroTherapy Training is called SUBVERBAL SHIFTING. SUBVERBAL SHIFTING is a way of activating the capacity of the hardware of the brain to dissipate the physiology of negative emotions in the body.

Doing mental work: Training the brain

Each session involves being guided by the specialist into an altered mental state and through a series of mental exercises. Different from other approaches using a concentrated mental state, change does not happen through use of symptom-directed suggestion and visualization. Instead, powerful mental exercises are used to dissipate the physical and chemical reactions that underlie negative emotions. The brain is trained to respond in new, more health producing ways.

Length of Neurological Therapy

The primary focus of NeuroTherapy Training is building self control through

self-generated mental training methods. Further, the focus is on the process of emotion not on the myriad of constantly changing stimuli that trigger those physical and chemical responses. Change happens faster and more dramatically than therapies that guide a person either consciously or using an altered mental state to work on each individual stimulus for their emotional responses.

Neurological Therapies: A Critical Addition

The constant onslaught of negative emotions is damaging to the body. These damaging physical and chemical processes can be better managed. It is time that therapeutic tools offered to people train them in active, daily use of mental techniques that can dissipate the physiology of negative emotions. People can play a more active mental role in psychological and physical health. Caring professionals are turning to neurologically based ways of helping people, such as NeuroTherapy Training. This is a necessary addition to other therapeutic tools that may be offered, such as psychotherapy, bodywork or traditional medical treatments.

The following chart offers an efficient reference to understanding NeuroTherapy Training.