Feminine Power Part 1: Empower Yourself - The Force Of Your Own Mind (Lecture)

Day 1 Empower yourself,

The force of your own mind.

Imagine living your life in peace.

Imagine that the worries you're carrying around won't get to you or are entirely eliminated.

Most of us know how hard it is to reach goals and to get out of a spiral of depression,

Anxiety,

Or addiction.

But it is possible and with time and dedication we can change our lives.

This is what this course is about.

And to get there you will be taught powerful techniques that will strongly affect your brain.

One of them is learning to think and feel differently about your situation by utilizing the creative mind and the imagination.

If we imagine something to be possible it may actually happen.

This is not just a tool of the new age spiritually inclined or of those who subscribe to the laws of attraction.

It has actually been scientifically validated.

The image is the oldest and greatest source of healing.

It was used two and a half thousand years ago in meditations in the mountains of Japan,

China or Tibet and in the halls of worship of Judaism,

Islam and Christianity.

It has occurred even before that as a tool of natural religions and shamans in all continents.

But only in the last few decades has it been integrated into psychotherapeutic work and even more recently science has taken an interest in these ancient practices.

In the halls of science maybe the most compelling experiment happened at the Harvard Medical School in 2007 when neuroscientist Alvaro Pasqualeoni measured the brain activity of two test groups.

One of them learned to play simple riffs at the piano.

The participants physically practiced them for two hours and five consecutive days.

After a week the group's brain activity was scanned.

The results showed that a multitude of new neural pathways had formed in the motor cortex which is an important part of the brain.

The test group though merely imagined that they were practicing these riffs at the piano and rested their fingers instead.

When measuring the brain activity of both groups they found a stunning result.

Both test groups had formed an equal amount of new neural pathways regardless of whether the exercise had happened physically or merely in their thoughts.

There's another recent study which looked at brain patterns in weight lifters.

Scientists took brain scans of athletes before and after a workout.

Then they took brain scans of people who merely performed a mental workout.

It was found that the brain patterns activated when a weight lifter lifted hundreds of pounds were similar to when the test group only imagined lifting weights.

In some cases research has even revealed that mental practices are almost as effective as true physical practice and that doing both is more effective than either one alone.

Top athletes have long known that visualizing a positive outcome of a competition can dramatically enhance their performance.

Pretty exciting,

Huh?

But there's more research into this.

Neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz from the University of California has been using the power of the thinking mind to change the negative messages we send ourselves.

He has worked with patients suffering from all kinds of mental disorders like anxiety or addictions and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

He utilizes the dynamics of neuroplasticity to literally change people's minds.

Neuroplasticity is a fairly new concept.

For more than a hundred years scientists assumed that the brain remains the same once we reach adulthood and that we are stuck with our genes and the same old brain structure for the rest of our lives.

It turns out that that was wrong.

The brain is actually capable of reorganizing itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.

Self-directed neuroplasticity,

As Jeffrey Schwartz calls it in his compelling book You Are Not Your Brain,

Gives each person the power to have a say in how your brain is rewired.

With focus,

Commitment and hard work,

Everyone can redirect their thoughts and actions and rewire the brain.

Once we deal with our maladaptive patterns and give them less space in our minds,

Our true self can shine through.

The true self is a concept that almost all spiritual traditions have been talking about for a long time.

Some call it the soul or the eternal being.

Others call it our intuition or gut feeling.

In psychotherapy it is often framed as the true or the real or the larger self.

Most of us have a hunch that the anxious thoughts and doubts flitting through our minds are not our true self.

The self with a capital S is calm,

Composed,

Curious and detached enough that we see clearly what is right and wrong for us.

It's when we take a step back and look at our thoughts like an outside observer then the true self comes through.

Or when we mull over certain decisions in a calm space like in nature or in the psychotherapy office.

The true self is also at work when it comes to creativity.

When we focus on a creative task that demands our attention and passion,

Whether it's making a piece of art,

Planting a flower bed or even cooking a delightful meal.

When we are immersed in a creative project that's when we are in the zone of who we really are.

And this is what's at work when we employ our imagination.

Which brings us back to the science of imaginal healing.

Imaginal healing is a broad term for many modalities.

Meditation often includes imaginative elements for example when we see ourselves in a forest or by the beach during a guided meditation or when we imagine sending love and compassion to ourselves or others.

Hypnosis is a form of imaginal healing like when we imagine to walk down a flight of steps and descend deeper into our consciousness.

Simply exploring in depth what we want our lives to look like in the future was called active imagination by the famous psychotherapist Carl Jung.

More recently practitioners like Laura Parnell have integrated imagery into her trauma program called EMDR.

The imagination has a powerful effect on our emotions.

Each one of us can measure that when we get excited merely by planning and talking about a cool vacation long before we actually get there.

We expect it to be fun and our bodies can feel the excitement and smiles show up on our faces.

The imaginative mind is a part of many energy healing techniques where we picture soothing energy flowing through our body.

Breathing techniques are a very popular tool as well.

I utilize them mostly as a means to calm the mind when in an acute state of anxiety or overwhelm.

Resting for even just a few minutes while breathing deeply allows the nervous system to consolidate and there is a palpable feeling of calm beginning to emerge.

Deep slow breathing has been proven to increase oxygen in the bloodstream which in turn triggers the relaxation response.

And when the body relaxes the mind relaxes too.

The dynamics of imaginal healing are also at work when it comes to the placebo effect which has been studied extensively in recent years.

On that topic science writer Eric Vance published the book Suggestable You whose title kind of gives away the gist of what is written there.

After interviewing dozens of researchers he found that our own expectations have the power to change the brain chemistry.

That works with positive expectations for example like planning a wedding as well as with negative ones.

There you have a splitting headache,

You go to the medicine cabinet and pop a couple of aspirin.

After a minute or two the pain starts to subside and you go about your day.

The problem is that ingested painkillers actually take at least 20 minutes to enter the bloodstream in order to show the desired effect.

What's happening is your mind is telling you that the pills have the power to get rid of the pain.

The mere belief or expectation of that mechanism triggers production of morphine in your brain made by your own bodily in-house pharmacy and it works much faster than taking the morphine orally and waiting for it to be ingested.

The truth is that there exists a whole bandwidth of hormones and chemicals that can be produced by the body itself when called upon.

And that is the placebo effect.

The placebo mechanism can be effective with certain illnesses like irritable bowel syndrome or even Parkinson's disease because they are related to faulty production of serotonin and dopamine,

Chemicals that can be released through the placebo effect.

But what's most important for the purpose of this course is that the placebo effect is just as efficient when it comes to mental pain.

Anxiety,

Depression,

Obsessive thoughts,

ADD,

Even addiction have been found to be particularly susceptible to placebo.

What this means for us is that we will utilize the realm of imaginal healing to trigger the placebo effect,

Meaning the self-healing abilities of our brains.

We will instigate soothing and healing imagery to bring about the placebo dynamics.

Placebos are effective even when we know that it is at work.

Deception or ignorance is not the main ingredient here,

It's the power of belief or expectation that sets it off.

When we are aware of our expectations we can direct them accordingly.

But all of us carry lots of unconscious expectations which is trickier because we're not aware of them.

Cultural conditioning falls in that category.

If you believe,

Like most western cultures do,

That being slim and trim is the best way to feel attractive,

Then losing a lot of weight will likely trigger the placebo effect.

Seeing your improved self that conforms to cultural standards in the mirror sets off serotonin and feelings of happiness around your weight loss.

You expect to be more attractive when some of these pounds come off.

When the image in the mirror doesn't look so good we get disappointed because we expect that people will deem us unattractive or even unlikable.

That is when the stress hormone cortisol kicks in and gets out of balance and makes us feel sad and depressed.

In order to get out of that spiral of past conditioning we have to interrupt the old tape.

We have to bring our mind back from the thought spiral and into the present moment.

The power is in the present as the Buddhists have found a long time ago.

When the mind returns to the present rather than being caught up in memories of the past we can refocus our thoughts and emotions and retrain the brain.

So the task is to train the mind to learn to perceive things in a different fashion.

Rather than hearing that bitter remark of your parent as a trigger that reminds you of old guilt you begin to see that it's not really about you but about their own suffering.

Most of our thinking is influenced by the subconscious mind though,

By old programming and beliefs from the past.

For most people the conscious mind only operates about 5% of the time.

Everything else is habits,

Learned behavior and beliefs.

The subconscious is like a tape recorder just playing old programs and running 95% of your reactions and decisions.

That is why creating awareness is so important.

If we want to change our mind we have to become aware of our thought patterns.

For some change can come about quickly,

For others it takes time.

That too is a matter of belief.

If our minds are crammed full with repetitive thoughts it takes some time to empty the mind.

When there is space though for new messages to sink in a shift is possible.

That shift can begin to happen very quickly.

Step by step the mind is capable of allowing new messages to sink in and our lives will change.

And this can be achieved through guided meditations,

Hypnosis and imaginal healing exercises which is what this course is all about.

The possibilities of these tools are endless.

We can use our imagination not just to heal from past injury but to create a completely new life.

It does take time and dedication and there will be setbacks and frustrations along the way.

There is no perfection when it comes to the mind,

At least not in the usual sense of the word.

But it's important to realize that we have the power to change our lives.

We are not tied to old beliefs and pre-existing structures.

Everything is possible.

The future is in your hands.

In our next lecture we will learn how beliefs shape our world and how to change them.