Healing And The Brain
Susan Vaughn

The brain is a growing evolving organ that is not complete until one is 18 years old. As you know, all brains aren't created equal. Our brains uniquely shape and form themselves to our life experience from the day we are born. Capacities within the brain like artistic abilities that are seldom used, atrophy, while the parts of the brain that are used develop to a fuller extent.

Although it begins with talent, genius is nothing more than focused attention. A mathematician who focuses full attention on mathematical computation for long periods of time lays down numerous neuronal pathways into the area of the brain that relates to mathematical ability. The more they focus their attention on math, the deeper and more developed the neuronal pathways become. The same is true for every other area of genius there is, including self healing. Anyone can be a genius in their field if they focus attention long enough on their area of interest.

The brain is like a muscle that must be used. The rule of thumb is: if you don't use it, you lose it. The ability to self-reflect and do inner work are also seeded in the brain. If you have never spent time reflecting on your life experience or doing the inner work necessary to understand how you are creating your reality, your neuronal capacity to do so will be limited. With limited capacity to understand yourself and what motivates you, you will be unable to figure out how you are creating your pain.

Think for a moment about children who are neglected or abused. Many children are like sponges who aren't yet capable of discerning the difference between right and wrong. If they are raised by the media in front of the TV, they might accept at face value all that they have absorbed without question if there is no one to help them reflect upon what they have watched. If children are being physically, emotionally, or sexually abused by adults who are supposed to create for them a safe, loving, nurturing environment, these children may be unaware, until they are much older, that there is a different way of being in the world.

When this is the case, the parts of their brain that deal with connection and affection atrophy, while the parts of their brain that lead to separation and a fight, flight or freeze reality are accentuated and developed. Whether this abuse is a result of family dynamics or other influencing factors, "the stress it creates can set off a ripple of hormonal changes that seem to permanently wire the child's brain to cope with a malevolent world. Through the chain of events, violence and abuse pass from generation to generation as well as from one society to the next." (Scars That Won't Heal: The Neurobiology Of Child Abuse, by Martin H. Teicher, Scientific American, March 2002)

Someone whose brain is wired to defend themselves against an unfriendly world will create a perceptual point of view that will color everything they see, think about, and experience. For the adult, creating perceptual change becomes a monumental task, not because they are unwilling or unable to do so, but because they literally have to rewire their brain to see and experience an entirely different world.

Any stroke victim who has had to relearn how to walk or talk can tell you just how difficult this is, for it takes consistent, concerted effort to reclaim the parts of the brain that have been effected by the stroke. In order to rewire their brains, adults who were previously neglected or abused must reclaim the thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and feelings that they would have had if they had lived a more loving, nurturing and beneficial childhood. By doing so, they exercise the unused parts of their brain that weren't previously stimulated. This can be challenging if they have not yet created a life that feels loving and beneficial to them, for it will feel as though they are telling themselves a lie. In other words, if they have created an external reality that feels as painful and unloving to them as their childhood home, which is not uncommon, they won't have any reason to tell themselves a story that is different from the one they have always known.

Once I realized that the hard wiring in our brains construct our perceptual point of view, I began to understand why mental, emotional and spiritual healing is so difficult. We literally have to question what our senses tell us before we can begin to heal. By reminding ourselves over and over again that there might be another way to interpret this situation, we can begin to see life differently.

Through self-examination, you can get a handle on what your habitual, automatic responses are. When they occur, you can use them as red flags to remind yourself that there might be another way of seeing this experience. Little by little, as you begin to question your perceptions and see things differently, you lay down new neuronal pathways into the parts of the brain that will allow you to reconstruct the world in a more positive way. For those of you who would like to undergo ascension in this lifetime, there is no other way to do it. That is because we are not "going" anywhere. All that we can do is "recreate" what is already here.

I used to have a lot of depression. Because of all the reading I've done on the brain, I now know that my limbic brain, which is the emotional center, was impaired. Because I had been depressed since early adolescence, my lonely, hopeless way of viewing the world was second nature to me. I constantly told myself a story, which I never questioned, that verified my painful perceptions. This negative story actually impaired my limbic brain, making it difficult for me to change.

About fifteen years ago, I went on a spiritual journey to discover my higher self soul. I began to experience an inner world that was populated by angels and guides who wanted to help and heal me. Though my rational mind told me I was "just fantasizing," I loved hearing their sweet words of love, encouragement and wisdom. They led me to teachers who taught me how to go back to traumatic instances of my past so that my child self could express pain, rewrite the script of life, and heal.

In time, the wisdom of angels and guides, along with the emotional healing they guided me to do, began to counteract my negative story. In effect, these "figments of my imagination" caused me to question the way I perceived my reality and ultimately to "cool" and heal my limbic brain. Eventually my depression lifted. However, each time I would re-experience a "fall from grace" by going back to my negative story, the depression would return.

I finally realized that it wasn't my life experience that was making me depressed, but rather it was what I told myself about my life experience that had the negative impact. By choosing to see things darkly, I impaired my limbic brain at a very young age, which caused me to feel all the symptoms of clinical depression. I was eventually able to heal myself with inner work and conscious self-reflection that was motivated by a spiritual belief system that taught me that my life had a higher purpose.

In his book Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Dr. Daniel G. Amen, M.D. says that we must realize that our thoughts are real: "You have a thought. Your brain releases chemicals. An electrical transmission goes across your brain. You become aware of what you're thinking. Thoughts are real, and they have a real impact on how you feel and how you behave." (Random House Books, 1998, pg. 57) He then goes on to clearly state that healing the brain is a three fold process.

Damage can be caused by many factors, including early mental, emotional, physical, sexual, or religious abuse occurring through the age of eighteen, blows to the head at any time during life, including birth trauma, certain diseases like strokes, and sometimes genetic factors. If the damage is bad enough, one may have to take drugs to activate the parts of the brain that have been impaired. However, drug therapy alone is is never enough, for one will continue to re-damage the brain through the stories told about themselves if the stories aren't changed. Therefore, in addition to drug therapy, which is only necessary when the brain is severely impaired as is the case with mental illness, one must also do both cognitive/behavioral therapy and psychotherapy before one can be healed.

Cognitive/behavioral therapy is needed because it is the kind of therapy which helps one question belief systems and change attitudes toward life, building both the personal and social skills which lead to a greater ability to respond to the challenges of being physical. Psychotherapy is useful because it helps one express and process the pain of child-hood and the traumatic experiences of the past.

For those of you who are attracted to non-traditional approaches, it is my understanding that hypnotherapy, EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), holotropic breath work, and other non-traditional therapies can do the same thing. In addition, attitudinal healing groups, meditation exercises, and other spiritual/religious teachings can help in this department. Dr. Amen goes on to say that depending on the severity of physical impairment, people who must take prescription drugs to activate their brain while doing their inner work may be able to wean themselves off the drug treatment after their inner work is complete.

In my case, I could not have healed myself without developing a spiritual belief system that allowed me to see my life from a higher perspective. I also needed to experience the love of my higher self and soul before I was comforted enough to heal. I believe that at some level (mostly unconscious) we are all creating our entire life experience, even the bad parts, and that we do it for a positive purpose: because of what we can learn.

Sometimes, what we have to learn isn't fun. When this is the case, only loving, nurturing, non-condemning words can set us free from the burden of negativity. When we learn how to heal ourselves by counteracting the negative stories we tell ourselves with a more positive, loving one, process the traumatic experiences of our past, and rewire our brains consciously, we become empowered enough to meet our full potential and become all that we were created to be. It is then that we are able to make our ascension into the heavenly realm, which, for all those who have the eyes to see, has always been right here on earth. One's journey into healing is a fascinating adventure. Once one clearly understands how to do it, doing it becomes much less mysterious and healing is then possible to achieve with commitment and vigilance.

Susan Vaughn is a local teacher and lecturer. She regularly holds classes in The Art Of Conscious Evolution and has written courses for UMS.

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