Family secrets and Overweight: Unlocking the Basement
Obesity: surprising correlations found
In the 1980s, Dr. Vincent Felitti, now director of the California Institute of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, discovered something potentially revolutionary about the ripple effects of child sexual abuse. He discovered it while trying to solve a very different health problem: helping severely obese people lose weight.
Felitti, a specialist in preventive medicine, was trying out a new liquid diet treatment among patients at a Kaiser Permanente clinic. And it worked really well. The severely obese patients who stuck to it lost as much as 300 pounds in a year.
But then, some of the patients who’d lost the most weight quit the treatment and gained back all the weight — faster than they’d lost it. Felitti couldn’t figure out why.
“You know, I remember thinking, ‘Well, my God, this is the second incest case I’ve seen in [then] 23 years of practice,’ ” Felitti says. “And so I started routinely inquiring about childhood sexual abuse, and I was really floored.”
More than half of the 300 or so patients said yes, they too had been abused.
Felitti wondered if he’d discovered one of the keys to some cases of obesity and all the health problems that go along with it.
This interesting and moving article [1] describes a study on the impact of childhood trauma on health in adulthood. It deals with violence, neglect, and sexual abuse (referred to in the article as Adverse Childhood Experiences). If you work through the questions presented in the article, you might have an eye-opening experience yourself!
According to the findings [2], adults who had four or more “yeses” to the ACE questions were, in general, twice as likely to have heart disease, compared to people whose ACE score was zero. Women with five or more “yeses” were at least four times as likely to have depression as those with no ACE points.
And this doesn’t surprise us, who know how our brains and bodies are shaped and molded in childhood. What META-health teaches us is that what later creates “poor health” were originally coping strategies for this traumatic experience. If we fail to release the emotional and physical energy that was stored and “encapsulated” during the stressful moment, and if resistance and concealment suppress it, yet this strategy is never replaced by an adequate one since it was essentially programmed into us, then a huge mountain of energy accumulates in our subconscious and in our bodies.
The biological programs designed to overcome momentary stress and even trauma become, over time, meaningless and “negative” reaction patterns that promote poorer health.
Example: Diabetes
In diabetes, insulin and glucagon levels are affected. This is due to biological strategies for avoiding conflict, a reaction of resistance. Often, feelings of humiliation, fear, and disgust are involved, similar to those experienced in sexual abuse or in a conflict between attraction and repulsion.
What the body then does is suppress the hormones that regulate energy supply—intending to reserve this energy for the moment of fight or flight. But this very moment of action may never come. After a while, it’s as if one had stockpiled supplies for disaster, cramming the basement full, but the bombing never happened, and eventually, one lost the key to the basement. It’s never emptied. This is how one can imagine diabetes or obesity developing: two different strategies for a similar issue, where one has experienced complete inadequacy.
In META-Health, we can trace symptoms back to where and when this reaction was once beneficial, and release the energy there. Then the path is clear to apply a new and better, conscious strategy based on resources and positive life experiences.
META-health gives us the knowledge and tools to reshape the past and support the present: the broad spectrum of holistic help to fill our lives with meaning and self-determination, pillars of Salutogenesis.
Autism – The Root Cause, the Risk Factors and the Trigger
I didn’t believe my eyes. On the CDC’s website [1] I read:
“The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
Then this is laid out:
“The rise in autism prevalence since the 1980s correlates with the rise in the number of vaccines given to infants. Though the cause of autism is likely to be multi-factorial, the scientific foundation to rule out one potential contributor entirely has not been established. “
For a long time, the language around the development of ASD has been unclear and misleading. For a direct causal relationship, all other correlated factors would have to be ruled out. All vaccinated individuals would develop autism to some extent, which is clearly not the case. On this basis, the claim “Vaccines don’t cause autism” does still hold. They are not a general root cause. But what do we expect? Autism is currently agreed on to have a multicausal onset. There are preconditions, genetic and epigenetic factors, sensitive moments and triggers, and there are factors that can exacerbate the condition and bring out its most debilitating and pathological variants.[2]
What is Autism?
It hasn’t even been clearly defined what autism is. There are high-functioning individuals with genius-level skills on the spectrum, as well as those who are not able to live their own lives. What can be seen in all individuals on the autistic spectrum is a certain set of behaviours: a preference for focusing on details, schematizing and repetition and a tendency to withdraw, coupled with impaired reading of social cues and, hence, reduced social skills.
This mirrors imbalances in the working of the brain and nervous system, mostly a left-hemispheric dominance, a deficit in the right hemisphere and reduced connectivity of both hemispheres in the corpus callosum.[3] [4]
Many more boys than girls are diagnosed with autism, approximately at a 4:1 ratio. Their imbalanced brain has been called “extreme male brain” for having the features aligned with left hemisphere dominance or right hemisphere deficit. [5]
Epidemic or Over-Diagnosis?
It has been claimed in many articles that ASD should rather be termed a neurodiversity than a disorder, which is in line with a policy of non-discrimination and inclusiveness.
The modern-day value of technical, scientific thinking, focusing on measures and small details, and the lifestyle of little motion, but co-regulation with a device rather than with other people, fosters left-dominant brains. It has been said that families with many intellectuals have a higher risk of breeding kids on the autism spectrum.[6] [7] And yes, they might have access to and an interest in all health and development checkups that are offered, which results in closer monitoring and more diagnoses than in past times or in people with less resources and interest. Conversely, in recent years the prevalence shows to be higher in families with lower incomes, and with parents who only have a high-school degree. [8]
Greta Thunberg, the well-known climate activist, has a diagnosis of being on the spectrum and has called it her “superpower”. Billionaire Elon Musk is said to be on the spectrum. But these cases are not pathological, although they may be called “neurodiverse”. However, it seems obvious that the number of children who suffer and need help because of their disabling symptoms related to autism has multiplied over the last decades.[9]
The Role of our Blueprint
The heritability of autism is high, but there are epigenetic factors at play that affect gene expression without altering the DNA sequence, rather than “autism genes”. As an example for this, DNA methylation (a biochemical modification) plays a crucial role in regulating biological processes, including development, gene silencing, and responses to environmental factors.[10] [11] A pioneer study detected characteristic changes in methylation in the father’s sperm during the mothers’ pregnancy with babies, who later became diagnosed with autism.[12]
Autism is not confined to a set of neurological features. It comes with typical changes in biological functioning too, such as changes in the gut microbiome corresponding to a “leaky gut” [13], a condition that is physiological during early development of the microbiome and immune system [14], but when retained leading to chronic inflammation which in its turn has further impact on the brain, a self-reinforcing loop started by epigenetic programming.[15]
The circumstances, the outer and inner environment, determine whether and how a predisposition for autistic traits through neurodevelopment, immune and mitochondrial functioning plays out.
Brain development
Compared to animals, the human brain takes an incredibly long time, more than 20 years, to become fully functional. In the womb, early childhood, and in the teenage years [16] our brains are especially vulnerable to be imprinted and develop neurodiverse features such as those on the autistic spectrum. Hormones already play a role during pregnancy. When the uterus is an environment bathed in testosterone, the risk of the baby being born with autistic traits, increases.[17] This goes along well with the “extreme male brain” theory.
Social interaction belongs to the first priorities in development of the human brain after birth. Humans’ and other mammals’ survival depends on the bonding between mother and child, and recognizing mom’s face and voice, getting her attention to be held and breastfed, and responding with a smile upon her smile belong to the first learnings in a baby’s life. These are laid down in the right hemisphere. If this process is disturbed, the child lacks the neurological foundation for empathy and social interaction.[18]
Movement has a pivotal role in brain development. Before the cerebral cortex has a say, reflexes from the brain stem help the baby to turn around in the womb and to work its way out of it. They enable the baby latch onto mom’s breast, to grasp, to roll over, to react upon a fright. While learning to move, crawl and use its muscles voluntarily, the child integrates and replaces the reflexes and its brain grows immensely.[19] It develops a sensory map of its body in the cerebral cortex, predominantly in the right hemisphere where also the networks of social connection are located. These together are key for our capability of empathy, of sensing what another person feels, because we can feel the same![20] [21]
Only once these milestones are reached, the left cortex and its functions develop on a solid foundation. This typically occurs around age three, the so-called defiant phase, when the child begins to explore its own will and insists on doing things independently, all within the safety of the mother’s attentive presence.
Key social reward circuit in the brain impaired in kids with autismThis sequential development can be disturbed by various means – from changes in the environment over prevention of free natural movement and exploration, to overstimulation of certain areas before their time has come. It leads to immature – or premature – functioning of a brain out of rhythm and sync. Individuals with ASD show both, early childhood reflexes that were not integrated and replaced, and an underdeveloped sensory right hemisphere. They may have skipped crawling and tumbling, and directly fastened for “advanced” left-hemispheric functions. Little device nerds come to mind… And brain development goes hand in hand with the maturation of the immune system and its activity.[22]
“Immune activation during neurodevelopment has been increasingly linked to various cases of neurological dysfunction.”
The good news are, that delays and imbalances can be treated and trained, also retroactively and by surprisingly simple but effective means. Pathological shortcomings of autism can be relieved by non-invasive, multi-level exercises.[23] A pioneer therapist and researcher is Dr Robert Melillo [24], who started his career as a father of neurodivergent children, and for whom, like for us META-Health Practitioners, honouring the personality and the imminent talents of the neurodivergent individual is a core value.
Response to a Trigger
The signs of autism often appear spontaneously during a certain age of social and brain development. Parents have reported that in close timely relationship to an event, their child lost their eye contact, their speech and motor skills, it “regressed” as if after a trauma or brain injury. We need to mind these potential triggers and try to prevent or reduce them.
I explored this in a META-Health article [25] some years ago. Since then, I came across more fascinating discoveries and concepts to explain autism and to help overcome the functional deficiencies.
The Cell Danger Response as described by Prof R.K. Naviaux [26] seems to play a key role, as purinergic signaling between body cells – also neurons – leads them to behave defensively when being exposed to threats such as environmental toxins, infections, injuries, stress and trauma. This response is the first phase in the cycle of healing [27], and it involves mitochondrial and metabolic changes, immune functions and inflammation, which prevent further entering and spreading of the threatening agent. This comes at the cost of a loss of energy/ATP, and it necessarily leads to a lessening and halt in cooperation and development of functional tissues. I explored the CDR in this META-Health webinar[28]
Prof Naviaux and colleagues also conducted a pioneer study on autistic boys, finding that stopping the CDR signaling via one low dose of suramin lead to remarkable changes in the children regarding language, social interaction, and reduction of repetitive behaviour, that further improved for 3 weeks and then waned.[29] This research gives insight into the mechanism that is active in ASD [30], and triggers that have the potential to reverse and heal it.
Vaccines are one way to provide protection to a vulnerable subset of the population by stimulating their immune response. They would be rather meaningless for the subset with a strong immune system, and dangerous for a subset with an already overly active one.
In babies and children, whose systems are still developing, we need to assess their individual preconditions and evaluate the relevance and risks of each intervention, including vaccinations, within the full context of their health. And as correctly stated on the CDC’s website, this is yet to be done.
YouTube’s algorithms help bubbles to form. Not the ones in your bathtub, but the social ones. YouTube shows me what it believes will interest me because it has interested others who watch similar videos. This makes YouTube’s suggested selections rather comfort zone-friendly and somewhat boring for me. There’s little challenge to rub against them. Together we get upset about wars, incompetent politicians, and the conformist society, or explore new findings in brain science, biology, and self-healing. With this in mind, YouTube suggested the video “Pathologized Intelligence: When Mental Health Looks Like a Disorder.”
This finally gave me some real food for thought. Because it concerns my views, my offers, and my expertise: Not only does META-Health presuppose and closely examine meanings of mental and physical illnesses, but I also had my own experiences with mania and depression, and during their healing, with the radical expression of emotions, without the social restraint that is supposed to simplify our coexistence. I had profound conversations about our sick societies, their traumas, and their shackles. I was, and still am, convinced that these systems are themselves organisms that show the same imprinting mechanisms and interactions as individuals. Healing these systems is needed to allow for or even to produce health – because every diseased state is also a coping strategy.
Trauma or Parasite?
The author of the above video, designer Marina Karlova, claims more than that. She sees society infected by a parasite that, in order to ensure its survival, hijacks our thoughts and feelings and turns us into zombies who then help infect and subjugate those around us. With incomprehension, gaslighting, and a moral cage full of distortions of meaning.
This sounds like bad sci-fi, and like Stockholm syndrome. But doesn’t the scenario also sound familiar from our history and reality? Marina Karlova gathers followers who have had similar experiences. She speaks out against psychotherapy and psychotherapists, as they work within the infected system and label otherness as diseased, thus only adapting the individual instead of changing and healing the system that provoked the reaction.
In another one of her videos, she aptly describes what happens during trauma:
“Trauma is a moment in which the system loads a control algorithm into consciousness through a vulnerability”
– meaning that during a UDIN (an unexpected, dramatic, isolated, and helpless moment), warning triggers and certain beliefs are installed that serve to protect the traumatized by avoiding conflict. And Karlova claims that trauma work and therapy don’t change this, but rather reinforce the pattern.
Science and Worldview
She isn’t alone in recognizing the dilemma of mental health. Interestingly, neurobiologist and primatologist Robert Sapolsky also writes in his book “Behave” that he attributes more realism to the state of depression than to that of (more optimistic) “normality.” He points to the importance of formative experiences in early childhood, of attachment and parenting styles, and how these are partly determined by the norms of the time:
“Cultures (starting with parents) raise children to become adults who behave in the ways valued by that culture”
Parents, school, peers, role models, and media: in general, every child undergoes a thorough process of being shaped into group members who are adapted to their environment with its values and social norms. This is a natural process, as humans are social beings, and norms represent a sign of security within our group. Our personality is always a tug-of-war or a dance between the old brain and the new brain—between security, self-exploration, and expansion. Power and control structures benefit from the need for safety: insecurity makes us susceptible to propaganda.
In my estimation, Sapolsky himself is an idealist when it comes to his values: he finds our innate caution toward people who look (smell, speak…) different than ourselves, and who therefore are not immediately admitted to our “safe ingroup”, depressing. As an atheist, he finds the ability of some religious people to not only forgive but even love their enemies and tormentors difficult to understand, but he highly values this ability in humans.
For Karlova, the moral pressure to forgive and not retaliate is, above all, a means of power and control that extends into psychotherapy and therefore renders it useless for healing. She has also made videos on this topic that dismiss trauma healing, inner-child work, and the work of human therapists in general as useless. Instead, she uses artificial intelligence. I can imagine that she herself suffered from “therapy” which attempted to stifle her natural sensations and emotions instead of giving them space. And the experience shapes our thinking and takes away—or creates!—illusions. We then tend to generalize and see the world through the filter of our directed perception.
Why do I iterate this here? Because, in times of mental ill-health, I myself received help from psychotherapists who didn’t try to adapt me to the sick world, but instead approached me with curiosity, empathy, and humor, and because I myself help other people this way—on their own terms.
For Marina Karlova, critical questioning, logic and overview are the best way out of susceptibility to manipulation. In doing so, we must also question our own dependence on the group and its power structures, which, of course, is all the more difficult and painful the more this is our experienced reality!
Given this background, I enjoyed her paper “Fractal Neuromorphic Universe: An Integrated Model of Information Networks Organized Across Different Matter Levels” that outlines her hypothesis about the systematics of our universe:
“Drawing on recent discoveries in astrophysics, complex systems theory, and consciousness studies, we demonstrate structural and functional similarities between neural networks, biological systems, social structures, and cosmic webs.”
This “as above, so below” worldview and the potential unity of all being and consciousness beyond space and time reflects not only ancient human philosophies, but also the workings of our brain and its neuroplasticity, which researchers like Robert Sapolsky investigate and explain. And understanding this can, of course, also be used positively in the support and therapy of people who suffer from society, or their partner, or themselves, or from symptoms. This is exactly what META-Health does!
Immunity to Zombieism
Karlova’s theorem of CORDYCEPS, the parasitic adaptive structure, offers a way to explain the destructive zeitgeist that seems to have robbed humanity of its creativity and purposeless play. But does it permeate human coexistence as far-reachingly as Karlova portrays? My experience says no. That would also contradict the fractal universe in which everything is present. Under favorable circumstances, almost every person has access to this exploratory, playful core.
This is connected to self-esteem! Discovering, creating, and expressing something gives us a sense of happiness within ourselves. No one has to give us the right to do so—but our society and its education values do a lot to control it. Because individualism and self-confidence can be uncomfortable to others. Parents and teachers are afraid of selfishness, greed, and antisocial behavior in the kids, and seek to suppress these traits. Interestingly, they are perversions that are not naturally inherent in us humans, but rather learned by experiences and role models.
With our cognitive biases and unconscious protective strategies, we co-create the reality we experience daily: for me, this is the true “law of attraction.”
The META overview includes becoming aware of patterns and perspectives, and thus intentions within our lives and their networks. The CORDYCEPS parasite finds a better foothold where there is a great need for the collective and its resources, be it physical, psychological, or financial. A basic sense of (self-)confidence and autonomy, on the other hand, makes us “immune” to it. Therefore, it’s about reclaiming our own split-off or suppressed energy, which then helps us take the necessary steps, not just to recognize our place or path, but to own it.
I find Marina Karlova’s theses a useful, provocative inspiration in this regard. In META-Health, we find the best of both worlds: the “royal road” of consciousness and the therapeutic steps and aids of coregulation and trauma work—for our ability to define our self, to step out of habitual reaction patterns, and to consciously use the networks throughout our universe!
References:
Marina Karlova’s Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@marina-karlova
Marina Karlova’s publications:
C.O.R.D.Y.C.E.P.S – A Model of Systemic Cognitive Hijacking: The Parasitic Program as a Social Neural Networkhttps://zenodo.org/records/15069340
The Fundamental Inoperability of Psychotherapy: A Critical Analysis through the Lens of the Hammurabi Paradigm https://zenodo.org/records/15182641
Fractal Neuromorphic Universe: An Integrated Model of Information Networks Across Different Levels of Matter Organization https://zenodo.org/records/15127257
Critical Analysis of Fractal Neuromorphic Universe Theory https://zenodo.org/records/15153895
Robert Sapolsky “Behave | The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst” (Penguin Press, Mai 2017)
pictures:
Amazon (partner links),
Researchgate image quotation “Comparison between human brain cells (left) and the Universe galaxies (right) [5].” https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-between-human-brain-cells-left-and-the-Universe-galaxies-right-5_fig1_341275519
Limbic Talk and the Power of Imagination
“That thing about my hands is funny. Look – what can that be about?”
The client showed me his dry palms. The skin was scaly at the borders to the back of hand and fingers.
“What are they like, to you?”
“Well, like a fisherman’s hands!” was his answer.
“A fisherman’s hands?”
“Yes, that’s what came up for me. Red, rough hands.” He was used to having soft hands, dancing over a keyboard.
“What’s it for a kind of slippery fish you needed to grab, or that slipped out of your hands, before they turned to be like this?” That was a shot from the hip. I used the same image to suggest a scenario that would make sense, knowing that there must have been a trigger for the change in the skin that had to do with contact or losing touch.
“Oh! That’s a situation I’m losing control over! Actually, I think it began after I got a phone call, where a colleague informed me about a change happening at a project I’m involved with. And I feel I can’t do anything about it. You know I hate to lose control. Tried to figure out how I could help them to navigate and bring the ship back on course. But as I’m not there…”
“How is that so important for you, to have a grip on that situation?”
“Well it’s actually – that project has been like an anchor for me, it’s fun when I’m there and my contribution has been valuable. Such a symbiosis. But now, things are changing. I have another anchor, other projects that call me. I just can’t let go so easily…”
“It seems you can’t focus on both at the same time, right? So you really want to make a decision where to put your energy, and what makes your hands feel good in holding on to and steering? Just feel what thought makes your hands feel good”
“I’m envisioning taking the helm of my own project and to steer it on the right course. That feels great!” He smiled.
“And about the other one, the slippery fish? What takes the emotion out of that?” I needed to check whether that inner conflict was resolved or what work was left.
“In a way I’m confident enough to re-establish the symbiosis if it comes natural when it’s time for that. I don’t want to waste my energy on it if it’s not. It’s ok now, I’ve set my mind”
“Do your hands agree with that, holding the helm of your own project and setting a clear course?”
They did, and a couple of days later the skin of his palms was back to normal. Limbic talk and the power of imagination work wonders!
Liberty for Health
To an increasing extent, the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 dominates human life in Europe. There is a lot of speculation about the medical aspects, but the concretely foreseeable social consequences are falling behind more and more, despite the fact that competent scientists, such as the German top-virologist Prof. Christian Drosten from the Charité, are urging to base political decisions on an interdisciplinary scientific discussion [1]:
Now is the time when politics absolutely needs a few days of rest to get advice. Not always from the same people, but also from other disciplines. And it is imperative that we now allow policymakers to be calm about such important decisions as school closures. It is harmful now when political journalists say that “we are doing what we always do. That is, we take a quote from this expert, play it to the public and create an urgency for politicians to address this mood that is created in the people, by making decisions”. I think, at this point it is bad for politicians to simply decide quickly and then have to correct the course because the decisions were too grave. Political journalists should now try to work a bit more like science journalists – with more background and with a little more calm.
So let’s take the time to look at the new coronavirus from different angles. Continue reading →
Bio-Hacks with the Iceman – from a META-Health perspective
Wim Hof, aka the Iceman, defies the limits of human capacity.
He climbed the 5895m high Mount Kilimanjaro wearing only shorts & shoes.
He ran through the Namib desert in the same attire, without drinking any water.
In wintery fiords, he swam for a distance of 66 meters under the ice.
He sat for two hours in a container full of ice and warmed it up with his body temperature.
CO2 has gotten a bad reputation these days. We tend to forget that this gas has vital functions for survival – both for the individual organism, the ecosystem, and the earth. In this article I want to focus on human beings, a widespread stress response, and its connection to some typical dis-ease patterns that science is yet attempting to decode.
Yes I do. I knew depression and could have died from it some 30 years ago. I’m still aware of how I can feel off balance and feeling down. What I don’t fear anymore is that black hole. I’ll tell you what I learned – but first let’s look at causal factors:
Depression represents an imbalance in the brain and with hormones. The feeling of paralysis in utter powerlessness and despair shows that what gives us activity and decisiveness is at a lack – and these are adrenal hormones like dopamine, noradrenaline, cortisol, and sex steroids.
What is it that shuts down their release?
In natural surroundings, you’d observe a recession into passiveness and sleep
at night
in winter times
in reconvalescense
AND
when “feigning dead” to survive!
All these states are led by the parasympathetic nervous system.
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is about rhythm. As long as there is counterbalance, a new morning, a pulsing earth, a glimpse of hope, we’re fine. Did you ever long for darkness?
I have lived in a northern country, where in summer, the sun hardly went down at all. When I had guests, they usually tried to darken their sleeping rooms, and did not like the crow of the rooster at 4 or 5am. They expected to be left in peace.
Before the onset of a depression, what might have caused you too much strain, too much stress – so that the ANS pulled a brake to give you some darkness?
Or is the state itself a hiding place, keeping a threat at bay that would otherwise need you to engage?
Typically, you may have experienced a loss of authenticity and orientation in life. What happens then is that your adrenals will lower their release of motivational and energetic hormones, in order to stop you in your tracks and enable a period of time to find the way back to yourself and to the path that feels right!
If you are a coffee addict in the mornings or throughout the day to get you going, you are cheating your system.
Is it that you lost your playfulness and enthusiasm, your song and dance somewhere on the way?
Who can save the world?
When I was on my first job training and far from home, I had my first severe bouts of depression. I was looking for my place and goal in the world, had some inspiration and a lot of struggle with tradition, was very idealistic, anti-mainstream and black-and-white like many teenagers feel, and being serious about my ideas was my character much like it is for Greta Thunberg these days. Would she be depressive if she didn’t make her way from Sweden to Davos to change the world?
Enthusiasm for a real solution was what in an instant catapulted me out of depression!
By chance I had found a place to live and challenge my convictions, a place that would test my worthiness to live the sustainable life I dreamed of. I fought to do my share, to be a responsible member of a farm working like in the Middle Ages. And it almost broke me. It certainly dissolved my delusions about good and bad, right and wrong. Instead, I got my drivers for basic survival back. It’s the close contact to nature that does it!
There is no room for depression as a constant state of suffering in nature.
Nature requires presence.
However, the story was not over yet. Having admitted defeat I left the place to go “home”, and the manic and depressive phases returned. I felt the life, but also the restlessness of missing inner peace. I had to move, to run and to search, and could be aggressive or unconsolably sad. I still hadn’t found my authentic self. While growing up once again and going through all these stages, I suffered and so did my environment.
It was a spiritual revelation that saved me this time. In the middle of the Black Hole where I felt suspended, all alone with no bottom to reach, I suddenly gained awareness. There was my “angel”, my little playful wise avatar, and he laughed at me. I began to laugh and I couldn’t stop. All the hopelessness and loneliness dissolved and was shaken out of my system. Here I was, and I was ok. There was sound and motion. It had always been there. I had reconnected with my being!
Inner doubts and polarity want to be embraced and transcended.
Lessons to be learned
Nowadays, I use an Inner Peace Process which balances and coordinates the brain hemispheres, which also represent polar qualities and functions, to help resolve the inner conflict that triggers depressive and manic states.
This is reflected in the concept of Cerebral Cortex Constellations we explore in META-Health, that mainly show in psychological and mental responses and characteristics of our personality, but also can be triggering specific physical symptoms which lead us to the themes at the root cause:
People who’s depression is coupled with anxiety and social fear will often suffer from hypothyroidism, chronic coughing, or asthma. Key experiences in their past were to do with powerlessness, speechlessness and fear of losing their place and belongings.
Those who have suicidal thoughts may show high cholesterol and a tendency for coronary infarctions, or afflictions in their sexual organs – at the root will be sexual trauma, or having lost all that mattered to them in life.
When you observe suppressed aggression or self-harming behaviour, these persons felt they weren’t granted their rightful place and a function in society. More often than not, they may suffer from stomach ulcers, gallstones, indigestion or incontinence.
These constellations are archetypes that are better to be transformed and their energy used in a more constructive way, than completely resolved:
A person can let go of anxiety but they will keep respect and a soft spot for responsibility, which is a good thing.
Somebody who has gone beyond fear and played with taking his life, will find the power to support a cause that gives him the direction he needs.
Just like in Traditional Chinese Medicine, aggression is not a bad thing per se: the energy gives you courage to challenge and reform – the way you do it can be of a “peaceful warrior”.
Constellations can add magic and spice to our human societies…
How many great artists have been bipolar?
Regeneration after stressful episodes comes with depression
Depressive episodes often begin after a major change in our life, especially when our biological function in society is changing. Think of depression after giving birth, or in menopause: a previous stressor and driver has disappeared, now we need to accept or define our new role.1
Doctors and scientists also found that depression is often coupled to chronic inflammation2 and have hypothized that not only would the pain of inflamed tissues lead to feelings of helplessness and grief, but that the very transmitter substances that induce inflammation in the body, also induce depressive states.3
This is not so far-fetched:
Actually, each time you lie down with fever and infection of some sort, you are in a deep parasympathetic state, meaning that you are not meant to be active but to take care and be taken care of in order to recover!
When you experience this over and over again like in chronic or autoimmune diseases, your system hardly ever gets into inner peace or balance but is struggling with conflictive thoughts, emotions and environmental triggers. It is being being thrown in and out of amplified stress and recovery, and being sensitized for various expected threats.4
Clearing the picture by turning around, by being present, and by finding a purpose and a goal to follow, will bio-logically reduce the inflammation response.
Breathwork can efficiently help with that.567
Forgiveness or healthy aggression?
As in any archetypical story, the hero has to fight before there can be a happy ending. When you process your conflicts, don’t suppress your “dark side” and your depth, your anger, aggression and self-doubt. It makes you wiser and more humane to face them, be aware of them, embrace them, and being able to use them. This is what you can facilitate by tapping and by mindfulness.
Forgiveness has no meaning without self-respect!
To overcome the blues, you need to feel and support decisiveness and energy in your system, you need the “male” side to dance with the “female”. It is the bold prince who goes through the hedge of thorns and revives the Sleeping Beauty.
Any kind of motion is helpful in depressive states8, especially purposeful voluntary motion, however small to begin with9. You can support it with your posture, with yoga, fresh air, light, Vitamin D101112, tryptophan13 and appropriate food with natural carbohydrates, proteins and fats to supply energy (Interestingly, both a plant-based diet and red meat14 have shown benefits against depression). To voluntarily tap into the ANS and endocrine system, enabling a special route by a combination of breathwork, focusing and cold exposure has been proven effective15…
But this will be explored in another article!
pictures: https://pixabay.com/photos/fantasy-light-mood-sky-beautiful-2861107/
MHI (author: Kora Klapp)
https://pixabay.com/illustrations/brain-mind-psychology-idea-drawing-2062057/
Hormones & Qualities of Love
Oestrogen & testosterone, our sex hormones, have qualities like yin & yang, a polarity completing each other. Both are steroids stemming from the same source: the neurotransmitter pregnenolone.
Oestrogen creates the wish for mating, conception, as well as female traits to attract a partner: full hair, radiant skin, and subcutaneous fat that makes her look smooth. Testosterone is associated with body hair, beard, less pure skin but a stronger fibrous network in the dermis, less subcutaneous fat but more muscle mass. This reflects dominance and force to replicate, which is biologically attractive to women who “weaken” or “fall” for the man and wish to be taken by him – pure biology in action that will secure survival of the kind by sharing successful genes. Continue reading →
Autism and the Gut-Brain-Immune-Axis
One of the hottest health topics is the increase of ASD (autism spectrum disorder), a broad range of neurological, social and physiological symptoms:
1. Huge need of structure and rituals, and often repetitive actions like when objects are lined up in straight order, and broken routines cause much distress. This seems to reflect overwhelm and an inner chaos which one aims to escape.
2. Social signals, such as a smile or a twinkle are not recognized, and limits are not set. Avoidance of eye contact is typical, so that may trigger unpleasant feelings.
3. The speech function can be disrupted, from delayed development to complete muteness. What is meant here is the social function of speech – whining and screaming is usually not impeded. However there are many people with autism with no speech malfunctions whatsoever.
4. Hearing is often hypersensitive in those with autism: noise and background sounds cannot be filtered out adequately, which leads to generally elevated stress levels and to challenges with concentration and focus on interaction with others.
5. Compulsive behaviour like head-banging and hand flapping, as well as aggressive behaviour against self or others, hint at pain and overwhelm. Continue reading →
And this doesn’t surprise us, who know how our brains and bodies are shaped and molded in childhood. What META-health teaches us is that what later creates “poor health” were originally coping strategies for this traumatic experience. If we fail to release the emotional and physical energy that was stored and “encapsulated” during the stressful moment, and if resistance and concealment suppress it, yet this strategy is never replaced by an adequate one since it was essentially programmed into us, then a huge mountain of energy accumulates in our subconscious and in our bodies.
In META-Health, we can trace symptoms back to where and when this reaction was once beneficial, and release the energy there. Then the path is clear to apply a new and better, conscious strategy based on resources and positive life experiences.
“That thing about my hands is funny. Look – what can that be about?”
“I’m envisioning taking the helm of my own project and to steer it on the right course. That feels great!” He smiled.
Nowadays, I use an Inner Peace Process which balances and coordinates the brain hemispheres, which also represent polar qualities and functions, to help resolve the inner conflict that triggers depressive and manic states.
Oestrogen & testosterone, our sex hormones, have qualities like yin & yang, a polarity completing each other. Both are steroids stemming from the same source: the neurotransmitter pregnenolone.
