The short version of this protocol can be completed within two minutes. Of course, you can add some of the optional elements and take longer if you choose. For perspective, the L.A.A.S.E.R. protocol is akin to a quick snack to support your blood sugar and keep you on track, while the broader selection of SomaSensing awareness skills are a well-balanced meal supporting your overall health and well-being over time.
The key concept here is that we’re rebalancing the autonomic nervous system to influence all of the functions under its control. The more we practice the sooner the changes become stable and lasting.
We use this process to create greater ease and safety for us personally. Sometimes energy balancing activates more emotional energy than we can comfortably process in the moment. If any of these practices create any lingering emotional discomfort for you, please give the process a rest and contact me for some helpful suggestions. Change becomes more comfortable with correct practice.
You’re probably aware that acupuncture points have a balancing influence, not only on your body’s subtle energies but on your overall health and well-being. Acupuncture helps to jumpstart natural healing and repair processes that have been slowed or stalled by the stress of life.
What you may not know is that your feelings, and especially how you pay attention to them, play a primary role in either supporting or disrupting your energy balance, brain function, and your body’s innate repair and maintenance functions. The SomaSensing program covers this topic in depth.
In the L.A.S.E.R. protocol, we incorporate these two healing elements. We combine focused awareness with laser acupuncture.
What is the L.A.A.S.E.R. Protocol?
L.A.S.E.R. is an acronym for Laser Acupuncture and Awareness for Subtle Energy Rebalancing.
This process is an ideal home treatment for a variety of issues, including pain, emotional discomfort, chronic illness, goal achievement, creative endeavors, allergies, limiting beliefs, and more.
It’s a self-care protocol based on new science and effective practices that allow you to be more in charge of your own health and healing.
Relatively recent developments, including quantum physics, epigenetics, and psychoneuroimmunology inform us that healing is an inside job that hinges on how we balance our life energy. Energy balancing is the body’s prime mechanism for healing itself and maintaining optimal performance, physically, emotionally, and intellectually..
The purpose of this mini-course is to help you understand how to use the one-page L.A.S.E.R. protocol guide. With practice, you’ll be able to perform the basics without referring to the guide at all.
This mini-course is currently being developed into a more complete workbook and online training for those with a desire to fine-tune and expand their energy balancing skills using the L.A.A.S.E.R. protocol and SomaSensing self-regulation skills.
How to Use the L.A.A.S.E.R. Protocol Guide
This post contains detailed instructions and supportive information to help you confidently use the simplified one-page guide.
Since a lot of information has been condensed into a convenient one-page form, I’ll explore the protocol in a step-by-step fashion to ensure that all of the elements are fleshed out enough to be understood and used confidently. The elements of the protocol are highlighted by the blue indentation and then followed immediately below with a commentary.
Here we go. Again, it may help to download the guide here to make it easier to follow along.
This protocol combines sensory awareness of felt experience with acupoint stimulation to balance the subtle energies that are responsible for your health and well-being. Essentially, we’re balancing the energies that guide your biology and psychology.
The body has an amazing capacity for self-regulation or self-healing. Your body is composed of a ground substance that is liquid crystalline in nature and conveys electrical as well as biophotonic (light) information that orchestrates system-wide healing on biochemical and neurological levels. You can read more about the liquid crystalline nature of the body in my previous post here.
The key point here is that it makes perfect sense to heal with energy. It’s easy, inexpensive, efficient and has no harmful side effects. And you can do it at home for free.
Sensory awareness of feelings and other bodily sensations is the most important aspect of balancing energy. Learning how to live in your own skin and knowing what to do with your natural sensitivity is the key to healing. These inner awareness skills can be complemented with laser acupuncture for even greater effect.
The acupuncture points that we’re using are the beginning or ending points of the meridians described in Six Channel Theory. This is a simple but eloquent use of acupuncture to influence the body and mind globally.
You can use this protocol to support the following, and more: pain, anxiety, illness, allergies, relationships, goals, creativity, emotional trauma, behaviors.
Think of something that you would like to change. Physical pain or emotional discomfort is often easily identified as something that you would like to eliminate. On the other hand, you might want more of something like confidence or success. You might also feel blocked or fearful when contemplating a creative project. Simply identify something that you would like to change and notice the feeling response that emerges.
The Power of Noticing Feelings
Step #1 Feel into your issue. This is the most important step. It alerts your consciousness of your intention to change.
You activate a healing response when you simply feel what’s happening in your body without any attempt to fix, analyze, or change it. This strategy feels counter-intuitive and foreign to most.
The challenge here is that most of us are always judging or trying to eliminate what’s uncomfortable. While it feels perfectly natural to resist or reject what’s distressing to us, this strategy, unfortunately, causes our discomfort to persist. What you resist persists.
On the other hand, when we notice openly and curiously we open the door to right brain activity and heart consciousness while inhibiting left brain dominance. This style of feeling attention also has a balancing influence on the autonomic nervous system, the vagus nerve, and brainwave synchrony.
What all of this means is that curious attention to feeling experience, while counter-intuitive, is profoundly healing. The challenge here is that many of us have learned to ignore, reject, or judge feelings as a means of self-protection. With this L.A.S.E.R. process, we can learn to safely reconnect with our feelings and the self-regulating support they offer.
If you’re dealing with pain feel into the location of your pain and assess its intensity from 1-10, along with its quality, e.g. dull, sharp, throbbing, etc.
This step makes more sense when you understand that resisting pain or any feeling causes it to persist. Feel into the location of the pain. Don’t just ‘think’ about a body part, but rather feel into the three-dimensional space that the pain occupies. Curiously notice its location, size, shape, color, texture, or any other qualities like hot, cold, dull, sharp or throbbing.
You can also notice any emotional feelings that accompany the pain, like feeling scared, frustrated, or angry. More about this in the next step below.
If you’re dealing with emotional discomfort feel into its location and quality. You can rate its intensity from 1-10. You can name it, e.g. ‘sad’, ‘heavy hearted’, ‘anxious’, or something more vague like, ‘a burdensome heavy something in my heart’.
Once again, you’re being invited to do something that’s counter-intuitive. The invitation here is to notice what you’re feeling emotionally in your body in a curious, patient, and nonjudgmental way. There’s no attempt to analyze, fix, or change what you feel. What may help is knowing that most emotional experience is felt toward the middle of the body between the belly, heart, and throat.
As in the step above, we want to experience our feelings as they occupy space in our body. For example, what’s the feel of that around your heart? Often feelings are experienced as unclear, cloudy, fuzzy or a vague ‘something’ that can be felt but not easily verbalized. If you’re not sure about this feeling step you can simply rest your hand over your heart and notice those new sensations on your chest. Doing just that simple step begins to balance your system.
This is a challenging step that becomes easier with practice. The main point is that we’re experiencing more in terms of feeling space and energy rather than thinking about our issues.
This first step involves identifying an issue and how it feels in your body, either physically, emotionally, or both. Your body, heart wisdom, and right hemisphere use feelings and sensations to initiate healing.
In summary, this first step focuses awareness to initiate your body’s capacity for spontaneous healing. This is a core component of the SomaSensing process that is comprised of a number of awareness processes that I’ve incorporated into my practice over thirty-five years. Learning to focus awareness on feelings is a subtle inner practice that takes time to perfect.
Your Key to Ongoing Success
Be sure to use the L.A.A.S.E.R. protocol to specifically address your willingness and capacity to ‘feel’. This is a crucial step since ‘feeling your feelings’ is the key to self-regulation and all of its benefits in terms of symptom resolution. I suggest that you use the instructions on this page and balance for “It’s safe for me to let go and feel my feelings” using the L.A.A.S.E.R. protocol.
While gaining experience and efficiency in the practice of focused awareness there’s more that we can do to ensure our success in healing and in creating positive change.
We can add the energy balancing power of the acupuncture meridian system.
Laser Acupuncture Accelerates Awareness Practices
Step #2 Rest the laser pointer over the point on your thumb for at least 15 seconds while you curiously feel into your issue and take one slow breath in and out. You can also add any or all of the following:
You can rest the tip of the laser pointer directly on the skin about 1/16″ just off the corner of the nail. The point on the thumb is at the corner of the nail that’s away from the fingers. The points on the rest of the fingers are easier to visualize on the chart.
Feeling into the issue is valuable for the reasons already stated above. The slow breath in and out is very balancing emotionally, energetically, and neurologically. We’re breathing slowly to connect more deeply with our felt experience rather than breathing to fix or control a symptom. Slow breathing activates the vagus nerve for system-wide healing.
With you’re growing ability to activate your vagus nerve in support of system-wide healing, you can now do something for yourself that the Mayo Clinic can’t do for you.
You can choose from the options below to tailor a practice that works best for you. You have the freedom to use as few or as many of these options as you choose. And you can use different combinations at different times. Feel free to explore and see what works best for you. Any of the SomaSensing skills can be included in this protocol.
Verbalize to focus consciousness on your issue: For example, ‘This pain in my foot’, or ‘My heavy heart’, or when referencing a goal, ‘I can be successful at my job’.
Use a few words at most to help focus your attention. You’re simply naming or providing a simple label that fits with your intention or how your issue feels. Working with upsetting emotions can be challenging. Hopefully, you can find some simple language that fits with your feelings, e.g. ‘feeling irritated with my boss’, or ‘nervous before my presentation’, or ‘feeling hurt and criticized’.
Visual imagery helps to further focus consciousness: Visualize a simple scene that reflects the successful completion of your goal. For example, if you were anxious about a dental visit you could see yourself relaxed and chatting comfortably with your dentist.
Use your mind’s eye or imagination and see yourself in a simple scene that reflects your positive intention to change. If the desired scene feels good then, by all means, enjoy or appreciate the experience. If other less positive feelings emerge like fear, doubt, or frustration experience them as we discussed above. Simply allow those feelings to be noticed innocently as occupying a felt space in your body.
Eye modes for brain integration: Allow your eyes to simply float up while doing any or all of the above. Eye position can have a balancing influence on the brain and emotional energy.
You may have noticed that when searching for a memory you may move your eyes in different directions. Because of our eye’s intimate connection with the brain, eye position can help us remember what’s been forgotten and also helps to release ingrained thinking and feeling patterns.
One easy eye position to explore is to let your eyes float up as if you were looking up into your forehead. You can do this with your eyes open or closed. This ‘up’ position helps the nervous system to let go and welcome the new.
Step #3 Repeat step 2 on each succeeding finger on both hands. Hold the laser directly on the skin and never look directly into the laser. Even low level lasers can damage the eye with direct sustained contact.
Inviting the Body and Mind to Heal Spontaneously
Step #4 While lasering each point allow yourself to be aware of any images, memories, insights, or feelings that emerge. As energy balances, symbols flow. The flow of these verbal or visual symbols is often a weaving together of forgotten threads of past experience that’s crucial to your healing.
One of the hallmarks of emotional stress or trauma, especially early in life, is that emotional experience cannot be processed and becomes blocked or buried. This inner blocking is akin to a logjam blocking a river. In our lives blocked emotional energy creates most of the symptoms that we experience … physically emotionally, and spiritually.
This welcomed flow of symbols and inner experience frees us to move forward authentically. We’re putting the body into a state where it heals spontaneously. Allowing these symbols to flow actively encourages the heart wisdom and right brain activity that’s needed for deep healing.
Step #5 After lasering all ten fingers re-evaluate your issue using the 1-10 scale. If there’s been improvement you can simply appreciate (feel) the positive change. This balancing process can be repeated 2-3 times daily over the period of a week to stabilize the energetic and neurological shifts necessary for your desired change.
Congratulations! You’ve completed the L.A.A.S.E.R. protocol mini course.
A Thought About Lasers
I’ll make a few brief comments here about lasers. For more information, I highly recommend that you check out my last post about lasers here. In that brief post, I cover the basics concerning why lasers are effective self-care tools. The main take away is that the best laser for our purposes should be low power (less than 5 mW and therefore safe and inexpensive) and a proven therapeutic wavelength of 635 nm.
If you’re planning on using this protocol you’ll need a laser. You’ll want a laser that’s easy to use, the correct wavelength and power, well built, and affordable. The laser pointers that I use in my office fulfill those requirements and are available on my website for purchase. Follow this link and read the blurb about lasers before clicking on the image of the lasers to make a purchase.
I mentioned earlier that I’m working on a workbook in addition to developing an online class in support of the LASER protocol and the SomaSensing skills. While those projects are being developed you can book an appointment with me, either in the office or online, if you’d like to be guided through the process personally.
I should mention here that a laser is not absolutely necessary for the LAASER process to be successful. For years I’ve gotten very good results with this process by simply squeezing the fingers from side to side at the base of the nail. Squeezing or putting pressure on the connective triggers the flow of energy.
While I see better results with the laser it’s nice to know that batteries are not necessarily required for your self-care. And remember, how you use your awareness is the ultimate key to successful energy balancing.
Steve is a retired Doctor of Oriental Medicine, Acupuncture Physician, and HeartMath Trauma-Sensitive Certified Practitioner with over 35 years of clinical experience in Energy Medicine, Energy Psychology, and Biofeedback.