- So today is about magic.
So hopefully we'll have a lot of fun
because it's magical
to see our brain working in action.
It's just magical to see how it can change like that.
And I've got some video, a couple videos to show you
that are pure magic, seem like magic,
but we have a lot, two important things to do.
We actually have two different breakouts today
because there's things to practise that I wanna help,
that I would like you to practise and have experience with.
So the model here is to make an accurate diagnosis.
That was yesterday's work.
Number two, educate on the nature of the brain
and the nature of pain and predictive processing.
That's what we did the first day.
Today's day three.
So today it's all about rewiring the neural
circuits in the brain.
And we're starting to call that Pain Reprocessing Therapy.
So we have a word, a name for it, and we can study it.
We'll show you a little bit of research we've done.
You've probably seen that.
Tomorrow, we'll start delving into
emotions and stress and trauma
and how to work with the deeper self, our memories
and all that, which is really poignant and moving.
And then there's this last thing is making
changes in one's life.
And the story that I told yesterday, the woman who was in
a family that was very harsh with her
and hard on her.
In order to heal, she had to make changes in her life.
She had to leave.
And one of the things about habits,
we talked about habits
and things that are habitual, is that habits tend
to get ingrained, tend to get stuck.
We tend to do the same thing over and over again.
And some habits are very benign.
And you know, I have a habit of straightening the,
you know, keeping those straight.
It's no big deal.
This doesn't, it's not necessarily good
or bad, it's just a habit.
But if you have, your brain has a habit
of giving you horrible pains.
I got an email last night yesterday from a woman who's
pretty much fine during the day.
She has virtually no pain.
And then she goes to lie down at night
and she said, "My body lights up like a Christmas tree,"
with zaps and pain that's shooting all over her body.
And it's so disconcerting and so uncomfortable.
And then she worries.
She won't be able to sleep.
And if she can't sleep, how's she gonna
function the next day?
And then she's fine during the day.
And then when the nighttime comes,
these things start happening again.
Her brain has a habit, a condition response
of turning on all these
uncomfortable and unpleasant sensations at night,
a certain time of day.
And what we're gonna talk about today is
changing those habits.
But sometimes it's not easy to change your habits.
Have you ever had a habit that was hard to change?
(audience chuckles)
I mean, there's a lot of habits
that are hard to change.
And sometimes our habits are,
and I was talking to Millie about this, sometimes our habits
are comfortable.
We become comfortable in the habit 'cause we're used to it.
Even sometimes we become comfortable in a habit
that's not really good for us,
or a situation that we know is not really that great for us.
But to break out of it is a big change.
And sometimes I know there's this expression,
"The devil you know is sometimes better than the devil
you don't know."
Do you know what,
I don't know if that's an expression.
And so sometimes it's common for people
to stay in situations that are not that great
because breaking out would be too hard or too scary.
Someone yesterday was telling me they were working in,
along in the sixties or seventies in women's health.
Was that you?
Yeah.
And I said, yeah, our bodies, ourselves.
That whole movement was based on women saying,
"We know something about our own bodies
and we have something important to say,
and we have something important to know.
And maybe the doctors aren't always right about everything."
So what I want, the reason I'm asking about this is
'cause at the end on Friday, I want to talk about
how do we make changes in our lives,
in our professional lives?
How can you integrate and begin to use
or think about using the kind
of material we're talking about here with everything else
that you're doing?
Whether you're a physio,
whether you're Feldenkrais, whether you're Alexander,
whether you're a coach,
whether you're a curandero. (chuckles)
So that'll be, I'm excited to talk about that.
I don't have the answers to that,
but I'm hoping that we can have discussion and interaction
and talk about that as well.
Yeah.
- Just to jump back to the example that we did yesterday,
that number 13, where the nerves
were not being impinged all this stuff.
If you're not a doctor, then what?
I mean, I would say refer them to a doctor as well,
because I don't know that stuff
and I would feel completely
not sure and want that kind of information,
- Right?
Yeah.
Everyone has to work within what makes sense
for them with integrity, with honesty, with carefulness
and with kindness.
And so to tell somebody,
oh, what the doctors say, they don't know
what they're talking about,
would feel very uncomfortable for a lot of people.
Right?
It would be uncomfortable
and in some cases it would be really wrong.
And you know, inaccurate to say that.
And there's material here that we spent time on yesterday
where there's evidence
that people can see within their own lives,
within their family's lives.
Once you see that, like this lady I was saying,
the pain turns on in the middle of the night, you know,
she goes to lay down and all of a sudden this pain turns on
and she's fine during the day.
What would you think about that?
You know, what's causing that?
I mean, to me it's so obvious.
That is a mind-body condition.
It's just obvious.
And someone might have them go to the doctor
and the Doctor may say, "Oh, we have a sleep disorder.
You should take Ambien or sleeping medication."
And maybe the medication would help.
The woman who had the pain that went away
when she went on vacation,
totally went away, and she came back to work,
came back up again very high.
So everyone has to decide what makes sense to them
and how they want to use this material
or not use this material
or try to integrate it with how they work
or what advice they give.
And I'm not saying we should ignore all doctoring.
I'm a doctor.
The doctors do have a lot to offer
when there's something wrong, when you have back pain,
an MRI can definitely tell you what it's not due to.
Okay?
An MRI can tell you what it's not due to.
It can tell you if you don't have a tumour,
it can tell you if you don't have a fracture.
It can tell you if you don't have an abscess.
It can tell you if you don't have a severe
inflammatory condition.
But it's not so good at telling you what pain is due to,
especially when it's back pain and not leg pain.
So I have a friend who was saying he has this bad back pain.
He says, "I'm finally getting an MRI, it's gonna tell me
what the cause of my back pain is."
No, it won't, it can't do that.
The only way you can find out the cause of your back pain is
by a clinical evaluation.
And the way a physio does a clinical evaluation might be
different than the way an orthopaedic surgeon does
an evaluation, might be different than the way I would
do an evaluation.
Might be different than the way a curandero
would do an evaluation
and different people go to different of those
specialists and see what they have to offer.
It's a question of matching.
You know, if the match that you have works for
this way of looking at it versus this way of looking at it,
some people would do better with this way.
Some people would do better with this way.
And we're all, we're all, you know, we're all on our own.
We all have to figure out what's the best way is for us.
And the best way is for people.
Most of the people we see, like I said,
this is the last thing you think of.
So they've been through physio.
They may have had surgery already,
they may have had a whole variety
of other things already that haven't worked.
So we don't have to worry about trying those other methods.
They haven't worked.
So then for me then it's a great opportunity to say,
well, let's look at this.
If you're open to it, we can look at it.
This was a study in England where they studied
what happens when everybody gets MRIs at the beginning.
Say, oh, have back pain.
Oh yeah, everyone should get an MRI at the start.
Not just waiting to see if it goes away
or not, or what happens.
And what they found was that early intervention
for a tiny fraction of patients might be helpful.
But the vast majority of peoples have negative consequences
by getting an MRI at the beginning,
the negative consequences.
It says only one to two people need to be scanned
for one person to suffer mismanagement.
That's pretty amazing, isn't it? (laughs)
Mismanagement meaning unnecessary healthcare utilisation,
generating nocebic patient beliefs.
Do you know what that means?
A nocebo is the opposite of a placebo.
A placebo is, if you expect something good will happen,
something good will happen.
It's using the power of the brain for good,
using the power of the brain to heal and recover.
A nocebo is the opposite.
A nocebo is voodoo.
Voodoo, you put the needles in the doll
and the person starts getting pain
where they put the needles.
That's a nocebo effect.
A nocebo effect is reading about how severe long Covid is
and then when you get covid, you get long covid,
nocebo effect is contagion.
Tick tock ticks.
Okay, so there is potential harm in doing too much.
Okay.
So on Friday we'll talk about integrating
and thinking about how to use this material
because one of the beauties of people
who touch people, physically touch people,
is that you can use the body to affect the mind.
You can use the body to change the brain.
And we're gonna talk a little bit about some
of the magic we do today has to do with touch.
And so you have a, I think you have
a tremendous opportunity
if you're doing body type work, somatic type work
to combine this and use this in association, this work,
this mind-body work association with body-mind work.
And you can use 'em both together to great effect.
I believe.
On the other hand, I've seen many physios
who use the body to subvert the minds, so to speak.
They're working at odds 'cause they're saying,
"Oh, look at your knees.
They look this way
or look at your, you're shifted a little
this way or that way.
And that's the cause of your pain.
And now we have to fix you and make you straight.
And we have to make your core stronger."
And all these things, all this attention
to what's wrong in the body,
which can generate nocebo effects
and create more fear.
And if every time you walk, every time you sit,
you feel like I'm not doing it right.
I have to do it this way.
You're generating fear.
And fear as we'll see today is one
of the major drivers of spiralling pain.
What do you think that woman is thinking about when she
goes to bed at night?
She's in tremendous fear.
Tremendous fear.
As soon as soon as it gets to be eight o'clock
or nine o'clock or 10 o'clock,
the fear is building in her mind, getting ready.
I know I have to go to bed.
And that fear is generating, it's making it worse.
Making it more likely that she'll have more symptoms
and stronger symptoms.
And I'm gonna show you a video today of a woman who had
so much fear of getting out of her car
that she was having panic attacks.
Because in the cold weather, it was in the winter,
getting out of the car was a trigger to precipitate pain.
So what we're doing today is step number three here.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy.
How do we work?
How do we change the neuro circuits in the brain?
The brain generates all pain, either in the presence
of injury or the absence of injury, right?
We can diagnose accurately these conditions most of the time
by using the circumstantial evidence, the linkages,
the life story, and the functional,
inconsistent and triggered.
We can educate about the brain, we can convey and confirm
and we can give hope and we can give empathy.
And now what we're gonna do this morning is demonstrate
neuro circuits by what I call provocative testing
or neuro circuit testing.
And this is magic.
So much fun.
It's the funnest thing that I do by far.
It's the funnest thing I do.
And then we're gonna talk about
all these other things later.
Okay?
So you remember the diagram.
So the alarm from the dangers signal send symptoms,
the symptoms create this fear, worry, anxiety,
we'll talk about this.
And when we change this,
we don't have control over the danger signal in the brain.
'cause the danger signal's a subconscious structure.
But we do have some control over how we respond
to what we're feeling in our body moment by moment.
This is under our control, but this affects this.
So one of the examples I use is if a child falls off a bike,
they look to you as the adult
to see if they should cry or not.
And if you freak out, then they cry.
But if you say, oops, that was fun, you know,
and so we're teaching,
what you're doing is you're teaching your brain
that falling is safe.
You're teaching your brain bike riding is safe.
If you teach your brain that going
to sleep at night is safe,
then the brain will turn off the danger signal
and the symptoms will go away.
That's the model of Pain Reprocessing Therapy.
So does it work?
Well, we did this study, a lot of you have seen it.
It was in Boulder, Colorado.
Three arms study.
50 people got pain reprocessing,
50 people got an injection in their back.
These are people who had low back pain.
The average duration of back pain was 10 years.
So it was not just back pain for three months.
The average duration of pain was over 10 years.
50 people were in a control group.
And of the 50 in the Pain Reprocessing Therapy
of the 50, 45 were treated, 44 completed treatment.
So it was randomised to these three arms.
And the average age was 41.
The duration of pain was 10, they were in Boulder, Colorado.
It's a very high educational level.
I evaluated all the people in this study
by video conferencing.
And I looked at their MRIs and I talked to them
and I did everything we talked about yesterday.
And from my point of view, 43
of the 45 were non-structural, purely non-structural.
That's 95%.
There were two that I thought might be combined.
And I was being careful and cautious
and not sure, I can't remember what the two were.
But they had had surgeries and they had injuries
that I thought maybe there was still some physical problem.
But the vast majority were non-structural
from my point of view.
We did the pain reprocessing, confirming the diagnosis,
giving evidence to support it
and doing the things we're gonna talk about today.
And this is me.
And that's Alan Gordon.
And Alan Gordon really deserves a tremendous amount
of credit for getting the study off the ground
for fundraising to make the study happen.
And there was one telehealth session
with a physician, that was me.
And then eight individual therapy sessions of PRT.
That was mostly him.
And about 10% of the patients were seen by Christie Weepy,
who's another excellent, amazing person
and PRT therapist.
Pain is reversible.
It's neuroplastic, there's not tissue damage.
And you can change your appraisal of the sensations
as being safe as opposed to being dangerous.
Turn off fear.
We'll talk more about that in a minute.
And the outcome was 33 of the 44
who were treated were pain free in one month.
That's amazing.
It's incredible.
That's 75% of the people
who were treated were pain free in one month.
Eight sessions with 10 years of back pain.
And there's never been a study that showed that,
this is a randomised study.
And we have 12 month, one year follow up.
And you can see in the other groups the pain stayed in the
three to four range.
And in our group, the pain stayed in the zero to one range
and it stayed there for a whole year.
So it wasn't a transient benefit,
it was a sustained benefit,
'cause we taught people how
to change the neural circuits in their brain
and they learned how to do it and they did it.
And this was the scores.
But the main thing was people changed their pain
related fear.
Huge difference in pain related fear.
Huge difference in their disability.
So they change instead of,
pain means I have injury in my body.
They change that to
pain means it's a neuro circuit in my brain.
They changed.
I wouldn't have pain if there was something
dangerous in my body.
I'm afraid I might injure myself if I exercise.
If you're afraid, you're gonna injure yourself every time
you go to walk, every time you go to sit, every time you go
to bend, every time you go to exercise,
you're living in fear.
And that fear is driving the pain to continue
and get worse over time.
And everyone had MRIs of their brain.
And we want it to show that the brain changed, which we did.
But we put a pillow under their back at the start
of the study, and they're in the MRI machine.
They're lying on their back.
We put a pillow under their back
and we inflate the pillow to see if it causes them
to have pain by inflating the pillow under their back.
Right?
Which would think like,
well there must be something wrong in the back.
You're inflating the pillow,
it's causing the back to hurt.
And you couldn't enter into the study unless you had that.
So we tested everybody.
Does this hurt with the pillow?
No, it doesn't hurt.
Okay?
You can't be in the study. (laughs)
You had to have...
So, which would make you think this must, you know, like,
and everyone was thinking, everyone
who has back pain is thinking they have a structural
problem in their back
'cause that's what everyone knows.
And so we were working with that anyway.
So at the end of the study, we repeated that test.
We repeated the test of putting the pillow under their back
and inflating it to see if it bothered them then.
And the people in our group, it didn't hurt anymore.
It didn't bother them to inflate the pillow after,
but it did bother them to inflate the pillow before.
It was really nice showing a major change.
But the backs didn't change.
That's the thing.
We didn't change their backs, we changed their brain.
This study, we had expert clinicians, we had me,
we had Alan, we were like, we're the best we can.
We can cure anybody, you know, not true.
But anyway, we did have expert clinicians.
The patients were not super severe.
The amount of pain they had to start was not that high.
They tend to be a functional kind of group.
There's still people who walk and move and work.
They weren't people who were completely disabled.
And so we need more studies.
We're starting a study now in Denver, Yoni Ashhar,
who was the lead on the study, running the study.
And he has money now
to start another PRT study with back pain.
It's gonna be all virtual.
The doctor's not gonna be me.
It's gonna be somebody else who's really good, but not me.
The therapists are gonna be people
who are really good but not Alan. (laughs)
And it's gonna be compared
to a cognitive behavioural arm.
So it's gonna be a better control group.
So we'll see how this study goes.
It probably will not have as dramatic results.
It'll probably still be positive.
We'll see, the population is gonna be wider.
It's gonna be all virtual.
There'll be anywhere in the country.
So we don't have those results yet.
That study's just starting now.
So let's talk about provocative testing.
provocative testing is demonstrating neural circuits
here right now in real time demonstrating it.
And the way I've figured out how to demonstrate this is
by using tender points on the body
and by using triggering events.
Like sleep for this lady is a triggering event.
For many people if you have back pain
and it hurts when you bend over,
that could be a triggering event.
But if you have back pain
and it hurts when you bend over,
how would you know if it's due to the brain
or if it's due to something wrong in the back?
Is it due to a condition response
or is it due to something wrong in the back?
Well, we have all of our criteria.
That's what we did yesterday to try to figure that out.
But this is an additional criteria.
This is an additional way.
It's like icing on the cake.
And as you'll see,
using provocative testing is a way
to bridge from the assessment to the treatment.
It's that middle part that bridges.
So we're using it with things that are triggers.
So I'm always asking about those triggers.
Does your headache start with the weather?
Good.
Now we can work on that.
Does it start when you go to a family event,
does it start when you get in the car?
Does it start when you, you know, whatever,
all those triggers, those are very important.
And I look very closely for those.
Most people have a fair amount of those,
but some people have only very few.
There's one patient I'm seeing now's got total pain,
total body pain everywhere for a long time all the time.
24/7, no triggers, nothing makes it better.
Nothing makes it worse.
It's always there all over his body
and it's just driving him crazy.
It is so hard.
So I'm trying to find a trigger
that I can begin to work with some little thing
that I can begin to show him.
There's hope you can change your brain in some ways.
And one of his triggers is going out in the sun.
Sun causes itching.
He has his whole pain, but sun causes itching.
That's what I start working on.
The sun causing itching.
That's what I wanna start with
because I want to try to get an inroad.
So there's light pressure or firm pressure.
So what we're gonna do, Esther is gonna help me.
Can you come up?
So on my website, you can stand over here.
Would that be okay?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
Thank you.
So you'll see why in a minute.
So on my website, under media, under videos,
there's a section on provocative testing,
or it might be called neural circuit testing.
Just synonyms.
And you can see a bunch of demonstrations
of this, but I thought we would do it live for fun.
So light touch,
people with Fybromialgia
often have discomfort with light touch.
Just light touch.
If someone is touching you lightly on the
skin and there's no injury to the skin, no cut, no bruise,
nothing there, then what are they touching?
They're just touching the skin.
And you can feel the soft tissue underneath it.
But if it looks normal, you can see it's normal,
then it's highly likely there's no damage there.
So if someone has light discomfort
with light touch, that's the brain.
Does that make sense?
If someone has discomfort
with light touch and a lot of people,
"Oh, don't touch, it's so tender," can be very painful.
Okay, so can you roll up a sleeve?
Okay, good.
No, no, we need that.
(laughs) That's my prop.
So put your hand up here.
Okay, so we're gonna pretend
that Esther has discomfort with light touch, right?
Okay.
So Esther, (laughs) she's very jumpy. (laughs)
So Esther, is this an area that's can be uncomfortable?
- Yeah.
- If I do that, does
that bother you touching lightly?
How does it feel,
what does it feel like when I do that?
- Like, ugh, what are you going to do next?
- So there's a fear involved.
It's fearful to think of, it's fearful
to have that touch.
Like it might get worse or it might be more of a problem.
But what does it feel like?
Is it a tingling?
A burning, an itchy?
What?
What does it, how would you describe the feeling?
- Soft.
- It's what?
- Soft.
But does it feel good?
Hmm?
- Cold.
So is it a little unpleasant, is that correct?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
It's an unpleasant kind of cold.
Okay, fine.
So what I wanna do is see if we can play
with your brain a little bit.
Would that be all right? (laughs)
- Yeah.
- It's okay?
Okay.
So what I wanna do is have you close your eyes, okay?
And I'm not gonna touch you, okay?
But I'm gonna put my finger right above your arm
where we touched a minute ago, okay?
I'm just gonna hold my finger right above your arm.
And I want you to imagine me
touching your finger.
Imagine me stroking my finger along your arm right there.
Okay?
Just imagine that for a second.
Okay?
And as you imagine that, what do you feel,
what do you notice in your body?
Do you notice nothing?
Do you notice a sensation?
Do you notice any tension or what?
- Same as before, maybe even more.
- Okay.
You can open your eyes.
So tell me what you noticed.
What did it feel like?
- As if you were pressing, but it was even a larger area.
- Yeah.
So you noticed that by
imagining me pressing, you notice that somewhat
of a discomfort, not severe, but a discomfort
and is actually in kind of a broad area, right?
- Yeah.
- Right.
Why is that?
That's your brain.
Right?
Because I didn't touch you.
It's not, it has nothing to do with touch.
It has nothing to do with the physicality of it.
It has to do with your brain being fearful of touch,
your brain learned, being conditioned
that touch is dangerous, is unsafe,
and your brain is sending a warning signal.
But it's really not dangerous.
- I know.
- It's really not dangerous to touch.
And what we wanna do now is see if we can begin
to change this neural circuit in the brain a little bit.
Would that be all right?
- Yeah.
Would be glad to.
- Okay.
So what we're gonna do
is send reassuring messages to the brain,
'cause like the brain is like a fearful child lying in bed,
fearful of a monster in the closet.
And we wanna teach the brain that it's okay.
Touch is not dangerous.
We wanna teach the brain like the child.
There's no monster in the closet.
So we're gonna open the closet door
and say, look, there's no monster.
So there's actually nothing wrong
with the skin here, with your arm.
- I agree.
- Yeah.
Does that make sense?
There's really nothing wrong with,
the brain is creating these sensations.
The sensations are real, not imaginary.
But they're caused by the brain.
And so we wanna lie down with that child
and soothe and give 'em a hug and read a story
and you're not gonna be angry at the child.
It's just fearful.
So we wanna calm the fearfulness in your brain, okay?
- Yep.
- Okay.
So we're gonna do this in very a silly way.
(laughs) Just very silly.
So don't expect that there's some, like, you know,
magic incantation
or don't expect that there's some scientific,
you know, formula.
It's just, we're gonna talk to the brain as we would talk
to a child, okay?
Okay.
So what I want you to do, I want you to say that,
to give reassuring messages to your brain.
And it's right here.
You can talk to the brain.
Yeah. (laughs)
(audience laughs)
So I want you to say that "I'm healthy,"
- I'm healthy,
- I'm strong. - "I'm strong."
- Like you mean it.
- I'm strong. - Good.
- Really strong.
- Yeah, "I'm not afraid."
- I'm not afraid. - "I'm safe."
- I'm safe.
- "I'm not in danger." - I'm not in danger.
- "I'll be fine."
- I'll be fine.
- "There's nothing wrong with my arm."
- There's nothing wrong with my arm.
- Good.
And I want you to now repeat silently in your mind.
"I'm safe and I'm not in danger," over and over again.
"I'm safe and I'm not in danger."
Okay?
And close your eyes
and I'm gonna hold my finger above your arm again.
And I want you to just repeat,
"I'm safe and I'm not in danger."
And I want you to imagine me touching your skin
with gentleness and kindness.
Imagine me touching your skin with gentleness
and kindness, knowing that you're not afraid.
There's nothing wrong.
You're safe and you're not in danger.
Okay?
And how does that feel for you when you do that?
What do you notice in your arm this time?
Is it the same as last time or is it different?
- It's, no, I don't feel it anymore.
- You don't feel that
uncomfortable sensation anymore, that changed?
And you can open your eyes now.
Okay.
You're pretty good at this. (laughs)
You just changed a neuro circuit in your brain.
You just changed, 'cause the first time a certain stimulus
caused a certain response
and the second time the same stimulus,
but in a different mindset with a different explanation,
with a different understanding of a different treatment,
of a different calming and soothing
and gentleness and kindness.
Then you didn't get the sensation.
That's changing neuro circuit in your brain.
- Wonderful.
- Wonderful, huh?
So now what we wanna do is, we'll do
that again, but I'll just touch your arm gently this time.
Okay?
- All right.
(both laugh)
- And it may bother you a little bit or may not, we'll see.
But what we're gonna do is touch you
with gentleness and kindness
and you knowing that you're actually okay.
Okay?
- Yeah.
- Good.
So close your eyes again
and say, "I'm healthy and I'm strong."
- I'm healthy, I'm strong.
- "There's absolutely nothing wrong."
- Absolutely nothing wrong.
- "I'm not afraid anymore."
- I'm not afraid anymore.
- "I'm safe."
- I'm safe.
- "I'm not in danger."
- I'm not in danger.
- "And I'll be fine."
- And I'll be fine.
And just repeat and smile.
Put a big smile on your face
and repeat silently in your mind.
"I'm safe and I'm not in danger.
I'm safe and I'm not in danger,"
over and over again with a big smile.
I'm just gonna touch you gently on the arm.
Okay?
I'm just gonna touch you gently with kindness.
And you're safe and you're not in danger.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong.
And what are you noticing now as I do that?
- It's soft.
- It's soft?
- It's nice, it's gentle.
- It feels okay?
It's not bothering you?
- No.
- Yeah.
And how does that feel to see if you can open your eyes
and see that you can actually change your brain?
How does that feel for you?
- Amazing.
- That's good.
Yeah.
I do this every day.
And it's magic.
It's magic.
What if she said, "Oh,
it still hurts when I, it's still bothering me,
but maybe it's bothering me a little bit less."
What would I do then?
I would just repeat.
Well, let's do it again.
Good.
Your brain is learning.
It'll take time to learn.
How do you learn things?
By repetition.
We'll keep doing it.
We'll keep, and I'll show you a video of this in a minute.
Okay?
What if when I touch her it bothers her?
And I'll say, fine, that's good.
We'll just keep doing it.
We'll keep telling your brain you're okay.
We'll just keep allowing yourself to feel the sensation.
And you're gradually gonna teach your brain
that your brain is okay
'cause neurons that fire together wire together.
And so when you have a stimulus
and you're reacting to the stimulus with fear,
you're teaching your brain the stimulus is dangerous
and the sensation will get worse over time.
Spiralling get worse and worse and worse over time.
But when you take the same stimulus, the touch
or the movement or whatever it is,
and you do it with a smile, you do it with joy, you do it
with calm, you do it with gentleness, you do it with love
and compassion and no fear.
You're teaching your brain, it's okay.
And then over time the brain will learn
to turn off the reaction because the brain is learning this.
The same stimulus is safe.
That's what Esther just demonstrated.
And it's the value of the smile, the humour, the laughter
that changes the brain.
It's a power.
This is really powerful.
A reaction that, you know,
we don't think about is medicine's gotta be serious.
We've gotta fix this problem.
And we're gonna, instead of fixing the problem,
we're not pushing against it,
'cause the more you push, the more you resist.
We'll just go like around
and just go, oh, look at a different way.
Okay.
So that's light touch.
Yeah.
- You said "You're safe."
And then you added "You are not in danger."
And I knew from all the trainings
that actually the brain doesn't take the negation.
And one typical example is don't think about a
pink elephant.
And everybody thinks about the pink elephant.
So I was just wondering,
is it good to use the negation or should we stick to,
feel safe?
- That's up to you.
Everyone does it differently.
I like to use that
because I like, in a way to be
provocative maybe, or not be afraid.
Like if we're afraid of the language we use,
we're living in fear, we're afraid.
"Oh, don't say I'm not in danger."
Like, so to me it's like say anything you want.
It may be that I'm subverting myself a little bit.
That's possible.
I don't know.
And a lot of people have said this to me.
I've heard it many, many times.
It's like the truth that everyone believes.
And I, you know,
we were talking last night about Dr. Sarno,
we watched the Dr. Sarno documentary,
All The Rage last night.
And Dr. Sarno says, "You're not cured until you're free
of pain and free of fear."
And so that's a lot of the model that I'm working
with is try to make people free of fear.
And if they're afraid of language.
It's constraining.
If they're afraid of sitting, if they're afraid
of walking, it's constraining.
So that's how I think about it.
- So when introducing the word danger means
that you're not afraid of danger anyway.
- Exactly.
Not afraid.
- I've got it.
- Yeah.
That's how I think of it.
But a lot of people have said that for sure.
And it may be true.
I don't, I don't know.
Okay.
So next one is firm pressure.
So we'll use your, like here, maybe.
Yeah.
Is that okay?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
And you can do this with, if you're with someone,
you can press on them or they can just press themselves.
I do this on video all the time.
So maybe we'll do it this way.
Is there a spot that's tender to to pressure up there?
You found one?
- Yeah.
A lot of people have that.
A lot of people with neck discomfort have
tender spots, whatever.
And is it bother you with light touch
or only more firm pressure?
Firm pressure.
- Firm pressure.
So light touch doesn't bother it.
- No.
- Right.
Okay.
So light touch we already did.
Now we're doing firm pressure.
Good, thank you.
So if you push firmly on it, what does it feel like?
Oh.
- (laughs) What is that?
How would you describe that sensation?
- Thick pain.
- A thick pain.
Thickness.
Okay.
And does it spread anywhere?
Is it just in that spot?
- Just in that spot.
- Just that spot.
Okay.
- Like the muscle is tense.
- Yeah.
A tension.
Like the muscle is tight.
Yeah, yeah.
There's some interesting research Laura Mosley did
where he took people with back pain
and he measured tension in the muscles,
in different muscles of their back.
And he compared which muscles were tense objectively with
where tender spots were and where pain was.
And what he found is there's not a good correlation there.
A lot of times there was tension
where there was no discomfort.
There was discomfort where there was
no actual muscle tension.
Or sometimes both.
It's fascinating 'cause we see so many people
and people who work in manual medicine.
So many people, oh, your neck is so tight.
Yeah, but it doesn't hurt.
So is that a problem?
Do we need to fix that?
It'd be nice if it was less tight.
But it may not matter that much.
We don't have to, I don't know, fix everything anyway.
So let's play with your brain a little bit.
Okay?
- 'Cause if I keep it here, then it...
- (laughs) Yeah, no, I don't want you to stress yourself.
Okay.
So what I want you to do now, Esther, is I want you
to touch lightly on that spot, but don't press, okay?
Just touch lightly.
Does that feel okay if you just touch lightly?
- No, no problem at all
- It's not a problem.
Okay, great.
So now what I want you to do is close your eyes
and imagine pressing firmly on that spot.
And just tell me if you notice any reaction or no reaction.
What do you notice in your body right now
as you imagine pressing firmly on that spot?
- I still feel it.
But already less than before.
- Less than before.
But you feel something.
You feel that thickness.
But not as much as when you push.
Yeah.
So open your eyes.
So see what you're seeing is,
when we're imagining something,
it's like doing it, but it's not as strong, right?
It's not as strong usually, which is fantastic.
That's why I love using the imagination,
because we want a lower amount of stimulus
'cause it's easier to change a smaller amount
of stimulus than if somebody has a super high amount
of uncomfortableness.
It's harder to change the neural circuits quickly.
Does that make sense?
So this is the idea of graded exposure.
graded exposure is you're exposing yourself to the stimulus.
Like snakes, if you want to fix snake fear,
fear of snakes, you don't give someone a snake to hold
the first thing.
That would be, that would not work.
It's way too strong a stimulus
for somebody who's fear of their snakes.
You wanna show them a picture of a snake
and see if they can learn to calm in relation
to the picture of the snake.
And then gradually ramp up.
Right?
So that's what we're doing here.
Okay?
So now we'll play with your brain a little more.
Okay?
So you can talk to the brain. (laughs)
Talk to the hand.
You know that?
- No, it actually did help.
- It did help?
- I'm very visual.
So I saw the brain, I'm feeling my hand on it.
Was already some kind of soothing.
- Okay, so you wanna say, "I'm healthy and I'm strong,"
- I'm healthy and I'm strong.
- "There's absolutely nothing wrong."
- That's absolutely nothing wrong.
- "I'm not afraid."
- I'm not afraid.
- "I'm safe."
- I'm safe.
- "I'm not in danger."
- I'm not in danger.
- "And I'll be fine."
- And I'll be fine.
- And with a big smile on your face, you're repeating,
"I'm safe and I'm not in danger," in your mind, silently,
"I'm safe and I'm not in danger."
Big smile.
And now imagine pressing firmly on that spot
with love for yourself.
- There's nothing.
- And now it doesn't bother you.
- No, it doesn't bother me.
- (laughs) And you can open your eyes.
And what we're showing is that
these sensations are caused by the brain.
They can be changed by changing the brain
and simply by giving reassurance to the brain,
calming the brain, teaching the brain
that this is not dangerous, that this is safe,
that you're okay, can literally change the neural circuits.
- Impressive.
Right?
- Thank you.
Very impressive.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)