The journal, "Neuron", has published an article titled "Mesmerizing Memories: Brain Substrates of Episodic Memory Suppression in Posthypnotic Amnesia" in its recent issue dated January 10, 2008 (Here is the URL).
Strip away the usual mumbo-jumbo the scientists love to surround themselves with, and the picture that emerges is that they have finally been able to confirm that hypnosis is not just another side-show that you enjoy at the circus or any of those after-dinner family entertainment programs. Hypnosis does alter states of the brain.
A group of subjects that is susceptible to post-hypnotic amnesia was made to watch a movie. They were then hypnotized, and under that state they were given two suggestions:
1. To forget the movie in toto. 2. To recall the movie again in response to a cue.
When this happened, the fMRI scan showed some very specific regions in the occipital, temporal and prefrontal lobes of the brain being activated differently than the control group (which was not affected by any amnesia). Later, when the cue was given so that the group would remember the movie once again, these very same regions showed some activity.
Ergo, hypnosis does have an impact on different areas of the brain.
Good to know that scientists are now cottoning on to a concept that we self-developers knew already through our own empirical observations.
Exactly who or what in the brain / body "listens" to the hypnotic suggestion, and proceeds to implement it by activating the appropriate regions of the brain? We self-developers call it the sub-conscious. Some others call it the homunculus. Will take a while for them to get there, but it is good news that scientists are making progress with their measuring devices and instruments.
The Ability To Set Goals And To Achieve Them - That's What
There are many differences between human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom. One of the most important is the ability to have goals.
Look at the animals, they simply take birth and eat and give birth and die. In quite a few cases, animals are automatically cared for by Mother Nature for their food. And in cases where a complex social structure is in place, such as ant and bee colonies, a being that takes birth does so with its fate and destiny already pre-determined at the time of its birth.
Witness, for example, the drones and the queen and the worker ants. What destiny a ant will have when it comes to life is decided in advance. So you have the worker ant whose job is to slog, slog and slog. Which it does happily, for it knows not any other form of existence. The drone does nothing but eating and fornicating. And then dying soon after his sex act. The queen bee's goal is to get herself inseminated while in flight, and then found a new colony. Can we call their activities goals? Goals they are, in a way. But all driven by Mother Nature. They neither possess the mind, nor the wherewithal, to do anything other than what they are ordained to do.
Not so with humans.
Human beings can, theoretically, live off the raw material that Mother Nature provides. Hell, this was how they subsisted in the Cave Age! But tell a human being today to go pluck a pizza from a tree somewhere! And unlike the animals, a child's fate and destiny are not stamped on its forehead when it emerges from the mother's womb. It has to create its own fate and destiny. There are no predefined roles to be played. So, it is entirely possible for a child to grow up and fly a space shuttle, for example, and for another to find out the cure for the latest life-threatening disease. Mother Nature has not imposed any limitation to what a human being can do.
This is the reason why it is important to have goals in one's life. Can you live a life without goals? Yes, sure, why not? Only, there wouldn't be much difference between your life and those of the animals. Simply breathing in and breathing out is not living. Simply foraging for food is not living. Simply procreating and producing children is not living. Living is defined by all these, plus there is an additional component: that of having a goal, or a set of mini-goals in life. And striving to achieve those goals. It is goals that distinguish man, a being of higher intelligence, from the rest of the animal world.
Reflect on your own feelings and emotions when you observe a fellow human being achieving something. Does it make you feel envious? Or does it make you feel inspired? Do you look at yourself in self-pity and sigh? Or are you plain indifferent? Envy and inspiration are an indication that you already have a goal in mind, but are perhaps yet to set it in stone and work upon it. Self-pity is a signal from your subconscious that you, too, should think about a goal for yourself. Indifference implies that you are too steeped in some pre-conditioned way of thinking to understand what it means to be really alive.
Reflect. Discover yourself. Find out what it is that makes _you_ tick. And put that thought into a concrete goal. For that is the freedom Mother Nature has given you as human being. To be the Master of your own Destiny and not live to die like yet another worker or drone or queen ant.
And having decided upon your goals, set out to achieve them. Here is one very good self-hypnosis audio program that you can listen to everyday, to keep yourself going, when the going becomes rough at times: http://www.short10.com/?c=sdb_hypno_goalachiev. Costs USD 12.95 for a download, USD 25.95 for a CD.
HIGH TIME YOU VALUED YOUR URGE FOR CARNAL ENJOYMENT
It is one of the most important gifts of pleasure that nature has given to man. The gift of enjoying the surge of chemicals that ripples through the entire body before, during and after coitus.
The entire body, the brain, and the soul - the entity in its entirety is involved in the act. Time stands momentarily still for this individual, while his nervous system is stretched to its fullest, right from the brain through the spinal chord to the very last neuron touching the remotest pore. It is so stretched to give his entire persona the highest celebration of his existence, that in those moments, nothing else matters. And the highest point in celebrating the conjugation is the ejaculation of the seminal fluid. The climax. After which, the refractory period takes over.
And yet, for a lot of men, the refractory period comes even before the body and the brain and the soul have reached their highest point of pleasure. The seminal vesicles appear to be too eager to give forth their treasure horde. The peristaltic contractions of the muscles underlying the seminal ducts are involuntary in these men. There is absolutely no control that they can exert on them. The net result is that after the volume of fluid has squirted out, they lie on their side, spent, dejected, full of self-hatred, and the partner turning around, adjusting her clothes and preparing to sleep, yet another session of love having ended prematurely.
Do such men finish their meals in a hurry? Are they usually the first to finish the food in their plate? Are these the kind who place too much demands on themselves in terms of performance, in whichever field they are in? Do such men carry too much stress on their shoulders, all the time? Do they fret and fume when the queue is too long, when the signal turns red as the junction nears, when the waitress takes too long to serve, when the wife takes too long to get dressed, when the promotion is delayed...
Unless there are genetic factors involved, I would place the blame of PE squarely at the doorstep of the man's mental makeup. Unless there is some biological deformity in his system, the core of his active-sexual existence revolves round the performance of those tiny, 10-cm long seminal vesicles that lie curled up, and the epididymis - both of which produce different components of the fluid. And these organs and all the organ systems that make up his sexual structure are under the direct influence of the thought processes that the man is all the time undergoing during his waking and dreaming hours.
So how do you change the thought processes? How do you wake up to appreciate the rising sun, even if for a brief moment? How do you enjoy the little things that happen around you throughout the day? How do you enjoy every bite of your meal, as if it is the first time you are eating it, and experience the entire process - the way your teeth dig into the piece, the way your tongue rolls it around different parts of the buccal cavity, and finally as it slides down your esophagus to land in your stomach? How do you learn to not give a damn - that stress and that queue and the red signal and the delay in serving and the delay in dressing and the delay in promotion...?
In the making of your personality, every thought counts and matters, you see. It is how you define yourself that decides how well you are going to enjoy sex - the fruit of your carnal being.
Learning to live in the present moment. Enjoying life to the fullest.
Shifting one's thought processes from one level to another level requires being vigilant all the time to what one is thinking. The moment you detect your thoughts going back to the same old level, politely but firmly shift to the new one. You can aid this process by listening to pre-recorded auto-suggestions. I haven't tried this particular CD, but you could try it if you have this particular issue of PE: http://www.short10.com/?c=sdb_sexhypno_pe. Costs USD 12.95 for a download, USD 25.95 if you want the CD.
Try this auto-suggestion method. Beats any day taking medicines!
... With A Dose Of Guided Self-Hypnosis & Meditation
Getting success early on in life can be fun. Only, as Britt discovered, if it is accompanied by proper mentoring by level-headed managers / family members.
Britney Spears. The "...Baby One More Time" teenage pop diva, who captured the heart of millions of fans in 1998 was just seventeen when celebrity status hit her.
Success after success followed - giving her no time to grow up like any normal girl. Her managers and family members tried to project her as "that virgin" who is taking the first tentative steps to deflowerment. Not a Girl, But Yet Not a Woman.
What compelled her to marry Jason Allen Alexander? And then get it annulled in less than three days? Judge Lisa Brown summed it up succinctly: Britney "lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to marriage because before entering into the marriage" Britney and Jason "did not know each other's likes and dislikes, each others' desires to have or not have children, and each other's desires as to State of residency."
Where could Britney have found the maturity for, to understand fully her own actions? They never gave her time to grow up at all.
Marriage to Kevin Federline was destined to disaster from the start. An already-married man, Kevin was rumored to be bedding with other girls in his life even while pledging undying love to our Brit. It was infidelity that apparently broke the family.
Something snapped, I think, around the time of the breakup. Kevin must have been really insensitive to her feelings about him and about the relationship. It is interesting, and characteristic of her state of mind, that she found a soul-mate in the likes of Paris Hilton, who gave Brit her shoulder to cry on. The walking around town without any underwear on, the wild partying... are all traits of a mind trying desperately to find happiness in a life that simply didn't seem to be working out... The degeneration started ... and this girl from a small town in Mississippi inevitably landed up in a drug rehab center in Antigua. Followed by the defiling session in a salon.
The latest in the Britney Spears saga, the paparazzi tell us, is that the girl has problems with her mom, and she (rightly?) blames the old lady for all the problems in her life, besides the manager who looked after her commercial interests. News released just two hours ago today (4th July) says that ex Kevin will now seek custody orders to keep Britney away from the kids, lest she should once again walk down the self-destruction path.
The past two months - May and June - have seen her struggling to find a semblance of sanity back in her life. They call it her "Comeback plan". She's got back to doing what she knows best: churn out yet another pop album.
How can she accelerate her comeback? I can suggest two good remedies that I know of:
The first is Meditation. There is tons of information available on the internet for how one can go about meditating. Meditation also presupposes a change in lifestyle, something veterans too have advocated to her. The best, best remedy for a troubled mind to find its center is Meditation. Half-an-hour to one-hour of meditation everyday can do wonders to her state of mind.
The second is guided self-hypnosis. These are mp3 audio scripts that one listens to from CDs, and are based on the simple but very powerful concept of positive auto-suggestion. Here is one CD that can help her rediscover herself, pick up the pieces of her life, find out what she should do next, and move on:
Circa 1920. Patients who walked into Dr. Emile Coue's clinic would be given a long but very positive and very interesting discourse on the benefic effects of the medicines the good doctor was handing out to them. After listening to this discourse, and with full faith in his treatment, when the patient took the medicine, they would feel better, and would be ultimately cured.
That was in the 1920s. His mantra - "Every day in every way, I am getting better and better" - would be chanted by an entire generation. It still is, though people now have come up with other variants of the same mantra.
How or why the patients would be cured, nobody knew then. People thought Dr. Coue knew his stuff very well. Dr. Coue himself put it down to autosuggestion.
Shift your thoughts from disease to health; and see how things change.
Cut to 2002. Dr. Helen Mayberg conducts a trial experiment on seventeen men admitted to the in-patient department of a hospital for depression. As part of treatment, some of these patients were given an anti-depressant, and some were given a placebo. Both the groups were told that the treatment will alleviate their problem.
Four of the guys who received placebo for treatment, recovered. [Here is the press release on the study.]
Skeptics pooh-poohed this result, saying that the generally therapeutic ambience of the in-patient department must have helped these four guys. But that is beside the point. Ms. Mayberg herself wondered whether the antidepressants themselves worked merely via a placebo effect. That too is beside the point. The main point is this: these four guys really +believed+ that the treatment will alleviate their problem. And this +belief+ translated into reality.
Shift your thoughts from disease to health; and see how things change.
Come closer to the recent past. August 2006. Dr. Rosalind Wright conducted a research on 670 male military veterans, focusing on their lung capacity. A significant discovery was that those in the group who harbored hostile thoughts towards themselves or towards others, tended to have poorer lung capacity in comparison to peers who were at peace with themselves and with the world.
Ms. Wright's research on the genesis of asthma points to psychological stress being one of major contributors to asthma morbidity. Ergo...
Shift your thoughts from disease to health; and see how things change.
It is so simple - to stop thinking along lines of negativity and doom and despair and what-have-you, and start thinking along lines of positivity and happiness and general wellbeing. Yet, we make this the singularly most difficult task in life. And then mope around and complain that life is treating us unjustly.
This shift has to come from within. But, still, in case you do need external help, here is one. It's a self-hypnosis script on positive thinking, it's downloadable, and has been prepared on the lines of Dr. Coue's principles of positive auto-suggestion. http://www.short10.com/?c=sdb_hypno_positive1. Costs USD 12.95 for a download.
Then here's another: This is a CD containing audio produced using Subliminal technology, again with the underlying principles of positive auto-suggestion of Dr. Coue. Nudges you on the path of loving self. http://www.short10.com/?c=sdb_s_lim_a_loveself. Costs USD 19.95 for one disk.
Simply shift your thoughts, whether with or without an external aid, and see the difference in your life. Incidentally, this is what the Law of Attraction is all about! :)
... Goes To... Debbie Lane Of Palm Harbor, Florida
The International Association of Counselors and Therapists (IACT), an association of multi-disciplined practitioners who specialize in holistic techniques and complementary healthcare, last week honored one among their ilk. Debbie Lane, Certified Hypnotist, practicing from her Palm Harbor, Florida clinic, was conferred the "Hypnotist of the Year" award for her "contributions to the global hypnosis community and her outstanding client service which has brought national attention to the use of hypnosis for the treatment of long term physical ailments."
IACT's membership includes medical practitioners, psychologists, clinical social workers, stress consultants, NLP practitioners, clergy, licensed massage therapists, hypnotherapists, biofeedback specialists, nutritionists, educators, mental health therapists, substance abuse counselors and others in the helping, healing arts. Founded in 1990, IACT has members in 27 countries.
... And Be The Most Successful Golfer Of All Times
"Hail The Future King Of Golf!", I said, "Hail the future Tiger Woods!" My tone was sincere enough, I thought. But my friend deprecatingly laughed it off, as usual. We were walking on the teeing ground, caddie in tow.
My friend, let's call him Jim, comes to the golf course every weekend, religiously. I occasionally give him company. Invariably, he would heed towards the green tee markers - the ones meant for beginners. He had started his golfing lessons with the green tee. Today, four months later, he is still stuck there.
As I watched him struggle with his putts, amused at his feet-stomping and frustrated aarrghs when the ball just wouldn't behave the way he wanted, I remembered his motivation behind learning this game: he wanted to be keep up with his peers at the social club he had recently joined.
By sheer grit and hard work, he had risen from what he disparagingly describes as the "bottom ranks of wealth-holders" to a position which he describes as "respectable". His gaining entry into this snobbish club was, according to him, a height he had only "dreamt of achieving".
What he "dreamt of achieving" --- he has achieved. Why then hasn't he achieved his dream of improving his golf handicap, even after working at it for so long?
I think the problem lies in the contradiction between his "Dream" of becoming an expert golfer on the one hand, and his "Self-Esteem" that keeps telling him that he doesn't deserve to be an expert golfer. (Or may be he thinks he doesn't deserve to be in the company of the august people he finds himself in the midst of, nowadays?)
His lack of self-esteem comes through every time he opens his mouth to describe his game: they are all peppered with negativisms about himself: "I am just no good", "this is a problem with me", "I don't think I will be able to get this @#$%& ball into that @#$%^& hole ever"...
What he needs, I think, is a good dose of positive self-affirmations. If he spends an hour everyday listening to a set of positive visualizations, where he is the King of the Golf Course, and the ball swings exactly as he wants it to swing ... and then when he comes to the course in the weekend, I am sure his game will improve. Here is the perfect CD that I have in mind for him: http://www.short10.com/?c=sdb_hypno_golf1.
Costs USD 12.95 for a download. May be I should gift him a CD on his birthday coming up next Friday (costs USD 25.95 per CD).
May be it will be some while before I can gently advice him to be at ease with his own self, and not keep comparing with the others - whether it is on account of money, or social skills, or "having arrived" ... After he has mastered Golf, there is every chance that he will embark on the next mission of being one up on another set of peers for yet another symbol of wealth. What will it be next? His own yacht? His own private lagoon? Well sure, why not. Aim to be prosperous, but not with the perspective of "being one up". This perspective fuels insecurity and lowers self-esteem.
But as of now, I sure want my friend to be comfortable playing Golf! :)
Underage Drinking: Children Need To Be Taught Self-Control Right From Early Days
The Malady Continues To Plague Despite all the enlightenment earned by previous generations, and the warnings and remedial measures suggested by them, the newer generations continue to indulge in their binge drinking.
The culture of binge drinking - consuming four or more pegs in one sitting - is well established at the high-school level itself, thank you. Data available on the student population for as recent as 2001 reveal that the proportion of kids drinking and then driving has increased. Forget the law and the traffic cops, who cares. A lot of these kids meet with fatal accidents. Hitting and assaulting each other in the drunken state is quite common, of course.
And all because nobody taught them self-control.
Employers nowadays do a complete background check before making a final job-offer. If the candidate is found to have been involved in some alcohol-related, uh, embarrassment in the past, the job is denied - no exceptions, and no reasons given.
Professional colleges too conduct these background checks on newly admitted students. Any thing found in the past: and the brakes apply on the student's career.
The HBO has come out with a massive, 14-part, seven-hour series titled "Addiction", in partnership with the NIDA, NIAAA and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, available here.
This 244-page tome, released by the CASA, doesn't mince any words when describing the widespread epidemic haunting the schools and colleges of the United States: The picture aint very healthy on the campuses!
Finally, the US Surgeon General's recent press release puts the official, official stamp on the news: There are 11 million underage drinkers in the country, and out of that number, about 7.2 million are considered binge drinkers.
Parents, it is all because nobody told the kids how to control their urges and temptations.
Possible Solutions One solution that CASA suggests is to have more family dinners. It has been found that kids, who enjoy their last meal of the day with the entire family around the dining table, are less likely to try out alcohol or drugs or cigarettes. Can you manage this? Can you spend some quality dinner time with the kids? The US is celebrating their Family Day on September 24, 2007. Why only September 24th? Is it possible for you to make as many days of the year your Family Day?
Another good solution, not an alternative, but a complement, is to boost their self-esteem and self-value. Teach them to appreciate what a great asset their body is. Teach them to appreciate that life is too beautiful to be wasted on abuse substances.
Are the kids already going down the path of alcoholism? Putting them on self-hypnosis therapy is one positive way to get them back on track. Here is one CD that helps: http://www.short10.com/?c=sdb_hypno_alcohol. Costs USD 12.95 a download.
The FDA Ups The Ante On 13 Sedative-Hypnotic Drugs
The Alert In a press release issued last week, the FDA has raised an alert on a whole class of drugs that people usually consume for inducing sleep. If you are one of those consumers, you may like to check the drug you are / have-been taking against this list (reproduced below):
Side-Effects Two types of adverse events have the potential to occur when you pop these pills over a period of time:
1. Anaphylaxis or acute allergy: These drugs, somehow, rub the body's immune system the wrong way. You see, the hypothalamus in the brain releases an important neurotransmitter called Histamine. This chemical is what keeps us awake. And interestingly, it is this same chemical that the body's immune system too produces when it has to fight foreign cells that may have entered the body (that is, the allergic state.)
So what happens is because of an as-yet-unexplained-reason, the drugs cause the histamine to run riot in the body, creating a rash of allergic symptoms, often times as early as the first time the pill is popped. These symptoms may include Angioedema (swelling in the face, neck and throat), hypotension, unconsciousness, anxiety, abdominal pain, and the like.
2. Parasomnia: The FDA, surprisingly, does not use this umbrella term to describe the event. Any of these symptoms may occur when you go to sleep after taking these pills: sleep-walking (somnambulism), sleep-talking (somniloquy), sleep-eating, teeth-grinding (bruxism), and the like.
Since December 2006, the FDA has been working with the manufacturers to come out with "Patient Medication Guides", which are handouts given at the time of dispensing the medicines, explaining proper use. One important point mentioned in the Guide is that alcohol and certain nervous system depressants must not be taken along with these drugs.
Insomnia - A Widespread malady March 2007 has been a wake-up call for another reason. The National Sleep Foundation released a new poll in the first week of March, according to which American women of all ages have been found to have some or the other sleep-related problems, irrespective of their lifestyle (stay-at-home-moms, working-mothers, single-working-women).
No wonder, the NSF is sparing no effort to increase awareness on the virtues of a good night's sleep.
Self-Hypnosis is one technique that does not have any of the side-effects of the drugs, yet has the potential to eliminate Insomnia. The principle behind Self-Hypnosis is that words coming from the CD player / MP3 file hold a suggestive power that takes the listener to a trance-like state. When in trance, the brain automatically relaxes down to alpha and lower-than-alpha frequencies. The only thoughts that stream through the mind now are the ones created by the soft words coming from the player. There are no other thoughts around to distract. And when the suggestion is that you are shifting deep, deep, deep into sleep, this is what invariably happens. The beauty of the technique is that it holds absolutely no side-effects (to the best of my knowledge), and can, at best, make the person go deep in sleep, and, at worst, relieve the person of all stress and tension and worries of the day.
