863.838.2779 steve@stevetemplin.com

The New Medicine is Here!

by | May 2, 2016

In a recent JAMA article a leading pain researcher, Dan Cherkin, PhD, demonstrated that mind-body interventions for the treatment of chronic back pain and other illnesses were more effective than usual medical care.

This is really important because usual care has led to an epidemic of opioid drug addiction.

What’s most important is his finding that a whole-person, relationship-centered approached to treating chronic pain is more effective than treating symptomatic body parts or disordered chemistry.

This perspective on healing dovetails perfectly with the findings from Dr. Dan Siegel’s Interpersonal Neurobiology, which provides the neurological foundation for my SomaSensing process.

To make sense of this it helps to understand that much of our pain, and physical, as well as, psycho-emotional symptoms, are a reflection of poorly integrated brain function.

From that perspective, attending to the brain rather than to symptoms becomes a priority for treatment.

 

What causes the lack of brain integration?

When we can connect with the bodily felt experience of what’s going on in our life, we integrate that experience while sustaining brain integration, health, and vitality. This process is mediated in the brain by the medial prefrontal cortex.

For example, if I’m anxious about an upcoming test and can connect with the felt experience of anxiety that I feel in my belly or around my heart in an open and curious way, I trigger the integrative capacity of my brain.

This brain integration allows me to stay resourceful in a whole brain state where I’m able to do my best on the test even though I may feel some anxiety or nervousness.

On the other hand, if I ignore or resist the anxious feelings in an attempt to make myself feel better, the brain integration doesn’t happen and I enter the testing situation with less than whole brain function and my memory and cognitive abilities will suffer.

The key element here is that our brain has an amazing capacity to re-integrate and repair itself to address pain and to normalize bodily functions. For this to happen we need to be connected to the feeling experience of our bodies and not lost in our heads.

Brain integration via the training of conscious attention is the new medicine.

 

The New Medicine is Brain Integration via Conscious Connection

The most reliable way to activate whole brain integration, that begins the process of both physical and emotional healing and well-being, is to be present to oneself or to another individual in a kind, caring, and feeling-oriented manner.

This caring and kind orientation is another way of saying relationship-centered, as Dr. Cherkin suggested. It could also be described as heart-centered.

This relationship-centered brain integrating approach suggests that a doctor’s or therapist’s bedside manner (the caring relationship) plays a crucial if not primary role in healing.

This also helps to explain the placebo effect where a treatment with nothing more than a sugar pill often out-performs drugs.

We’ve been indoctrinated to believe that when we’re ill we need to find the broken part or chemical imbalance and fix it. This reductionist mentality really works well in life or death situations in the ER.

 

Chronic Pain & Illness is Driven by the Brain

But when it comes to chronic illness this approach is not effective because it doesn’t take into account who we really are as human beings. We’re not merely the sum of our biochemical and structural bits and pieces, we’re more.

We possess a mind that can be consciously engaged, through focused attention strategies, to change our physical brain and subsequently all of the functions that it governs.

You might want to re-read that last sentence.

This is the new medicine and you can learn to engage it to complement all of the other health-oriented choices you’re making. Potentially supportive nutrition and therapies become significantly more effective when your brain is engaged to support healing.

The crucial ingredients for making this transition to the new medicine are:

(1) Know that consciously attending to felt experience is the key to triggering the medial prefrontal cortex to perform its integrating function.

(2) Retrain your brain by connecting with felt experience and practicing your self-regulation skills daily.

Daily practice is the key to safely moving out of our conditioned, head-oriented thinking patterns and into the wisdom of our body. This requires a commitment to practice.

Soon I’ll be offering new materials to support this necessary daily practice.

Regards!

 

Steve is a retired Doctor of Oriental Medicine, Acupuncture Physician, and HeartMath Trauma-Sensitive Certified Practitioner with over 35 years of clinical experience in the fields of Energy Medicine and Energy Psychology. 

Now he works online helping individuals recover from stress and trauma-induced disruptions to their physical health and emotional well-being. Chronic anxiety, depression, and pain are common examples of stress-induced conditions that respond to embodied self-regulation practices. Steve’s Embodied Self-Regulation Meditation process is a unique blend of ancient practices and emerging neuroscience. 

You can learn more about his Online Meditation Classes, Online Courses, and Personal Coaching at https://stevetemplin.com.

Steve lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife Eileen. He can be reached via email at steve@stevetemplin.com or by phone at 863.838.2779.

 

 

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