Holographic Healing
Holographic Healing, by Iona Miller 2003
The placebo effect and spontaneous remission are two of the most powerful yet discounted healing phenomena known in the healing arts and sciences. Such healing occurs with any or all illnesses, yet nothing, no treatment or substances, has been administered that can account for it. In studies of new treatments, as a control, the placebo consistently brings about symptomatic remissions 30-50% of the time.
If a test drug performs in the 60% range (as many, if not most, do) the placebo was also at work in the test group and accounts for at least half or more of the effectiveness of the test treatment. The proponent of the treatment generally prefers to claim it to be the entire 60% effective. The half or more that is accountable by the placebo effect is ignored and illusions created about the drug's effectiveness.
The placebo effect and spontaneous remission are consciousness events, and more specifically events in which consciousness and matter interact to naturally change or transform diseased structures into healing process or flow. At the level of reality at which this event takes place, it is not even an interaction, it is a reality in which consciousness-matter, or as it is more popularly known, mind-body, are not different but are virtualities not committed to either condition, yet the potential of both. It is, in other words, a level of quantum reality.
Spontaneous healing is closely associated with REM. These clues all imply the mechanism through which dreams, placebos, and experiential psychotherapy do their healing and regenerative work. Chaos is always associated with change and is usually seen as its aftereffect.
Chaos is actually the mechanism of the change itself. REM-Chaos consciousness is the most chaotic or complex state of dynamics in the brain. It is the state that most supports its self-correction (the homeostasis effect) and the natural transformation of any organism to healthy flow. It is the state that supports profound self-healing. This information also implies a major change in the way we can view illness and healing.
Seen from a consciousness viewpoint and consistent with the new physics of quantum holographic, and chaos theories, illness and wellness are more a matter of basic consciousness structure than mere chemistry. Chemical changes are an effect rather than a cause, an associated phenomenon. We can no longer view illness as merely the invasion of the body by carcinogens or germs and viruses and healing as the mechanistic or chemical correction of these conditions. Natural healing happens at quantum-implicate levels of reality. Accessing it through the REM-Chaos state brings about subsequent changes in brain chemistry and may be the mechanisms by which placebos heal.
NONLOCAL MIND
Unbound Consciousness: Beyond the Mind/Body Model
The universe is infinite, and so is the mind, not in the individual personalistic sense, but in terms of consciousness. ‘Nous’ is an ancient word for what we now call nonlocal mind or consciousness. Many philosophers and modern physicists consider ‘consciousness’ as the fundamental basis of all that is.
Alchemy, as the search for godhead in matter, argues that “there is one stone, one medicine to which nothing from outside is added, nor is it diminished, save that the superfluities are removed: as above, so below; as within, so without. Alchemists sought the Unus Mundus, the One World analogous to the modern search for a Grand Unified Theory in physics, or the Theory of Everything uniting all known forces.
The Greeks conceived of the mind as both limited and infinite, human and divine. The root of this notion comes from Hermetic and occult sciences, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. The mind is not localized nor confined to the body but extends outside it. This notion lies at the root of sympathetic magic.
The Persians were even bolder in their view that the mind could escape the confines of the physical body and create effects in the outside world. Their physician Avicenna declared, “The imagination of man can act not only on his own body but even on others and very distant bodies. It can fascinate and modify them, make them ill, or restore them to health.”
These notions were superceded by later causal and mechanistic views that came to dominate Western science and medicine, separating mind and body. The nonlocal mind paradigm suggests we can effectively operate with the realization that consciousness can free itself from the body and can act not only on our own bodies, but nonlocally on distant things, events, and people, even if they are unconscious of the intentionality. But it is a holistic viewpoint that doesn’t split mind from body. It also suggests a new emergent healing paradigm (Miller, 2003).
This nonlocal model is perhaps the basis of such phenomena as psychosomatics, remote healing, remote viewing, and dream initiations. Physicists use the term nonlocal to describe the distant interactions of subatomic particles such as electrons. We can experience nonlocal mind spontaneously, paradoxically, without losing our individuality. A creator can live in many universes instead of simply adhering to a prescribed worldview such as the outmoded causal paradigm or unscientific New Age beliefs.
It has been proven that human minds display similar interactions at a distance (Krippner; Mishlove; Radin; Dossey; May; Stanford; Germine; Nelson; Motoyama; Sidorov; Swanson; Miller & Miller). These anomalies include therapeutic rapport, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, visions, prophetic dreams, breakthroughs, creativity, prayer, synchronicity, medical intuition, nonlocal diagnosis, spontaneous remission, and intent mediated or paradoxical healing.
Nonlocal mind erupts spontaneously, surprising, even shocking us. The mind has ultradimensional qualities seemingly unlimited by physical constraints. Psi phenomena concern organism-environment interactions in which it appears that information or infuence has occurred that cannot be explained through current models of sensory-motor channels. They are outside current scientific concepts of time, space, and force. We have hypotheses but little idea how organism-environment and organism-organism information and influence interface and flow.
“Emergence” is the process by which order appears spontaneously within a system. It is essential to understanding functional consciousness, the mind/body, subjective experience, and the healing process. When many elements of a system mingle, they form patterns among themselves as they interact.
Fundamental physics is about observable and verifiable anticipation of possible relatively evolving quantities and/or qualities, including complementary wave/particle descriptions. Quantum mechanical equations of motion yield open systems and work out their consequences for the flow of information. We have tremendous empirical evidence that quantum mechanics is part of such a physics. And so are we when we seem to make quantum leaps” in awareness.
When the mind lets go of its rational order, lets the old form die, and enters into a bifurcation or unstructured chaos, the whole person emerges with a new form, embodied as a creative expression, an intuition, or as healing. Most often it is characterized by an element of novelty and surprise, since it apparently does not originate in what came before. Both healing and medical intuition are examples of emergence. It is a spontaneous solution to a problem.
The healing arts, from conventional medicine to alternative/complementary medicine (CAM), and from psychology to pastoral counseling are undergoing a shift from a mechanistic to a holistic paradigm. Science is actually an experimental philosophy whose highest value is empiricism, and conventional healing shares this philosophy. All new scientific theories require some unifying idea, and that idea is, by definition, metaphysical or essentially untestable.
Today’s heresies are tomorrow’s dogmas. In any metaphysical dispute, strong non-scientific arguments can propose new theories, which may become scientific. Speculative ideas have contributed heavily to the growth of knowledge.
Rather than discouraging exploration of fringe areas of knowledge, this awareness makes it mandatory we explore all possible modalities and anomalies without prejudice, no matter how unconventional. Even extraordinary subjects may be approached with rigorous protocols. Though subjectivity is unwelcome in science, we can study the subjective nature of experience (qualia) in various ways. The process of healing is one such subjective experience.
The alchemists, who were students of consciousness in matter, created an elixer of life, a “medicine of philosophers”, a cure-all or panacea. What the modern world yearns for is a “meta-syn,” or visionary synthesis rooted not in a mechanistic model but one using nature’s own organic forms of self-organization.
This model is based on the peculiar characteristics of nonlocality and probability of quantum physics, rather than classical Newtonian mechanics. QM doesn't explain gravity, but the fact that the world “ever” appears classical is just a simplification due to our inability to sense quantum states directly. There is no such thing as a classical world.
Hopefully, the new model has the power to resonate with our whole being and propel us into a more effective healing paradigm. Emergent healing is actually a treatment philosophy, rooted in a worldview born from our current understanding of the nature of Reality as described in chaos theory, quantum mechanics, and the holographic concept..
Health is the natural outcome of a meaningful life, not just absence of symptoms. It means a comprehension of the complexities of life that is deeper than the conventional worldview of cause and effect. It proposes that consciousness is the foundation of reality. We do not exist independently from the universe, but the exact nature of that seamless connection is unknown.
Rooted in relativity, quantum, holographic and chaos theories, a nonlocal metaphysical context suggests such a paradigm shift from the purely causal healing model. The interactive field (psychodynamic field) present in healing situations can be amplified intentionally through therapeutic entrainment, or resonant feedback playing off the unified field (universal field).
Holographic Healing
Placebos and Consciousness Restructuring through REM
(c)1999 by Graywolf Swinney and Iona Miller
This paper first appeared in DREAM NETWORK, then in CHAOSOPHY 2001; reprinted with permission.
The placebo effect and spontaneous remission are two of the most powerful yet discounted healing phenomena known in the healing arts and sciences. Such healing occurs with any or all illnesses, yet nothing, no treatment or substances, has been administered that can account for it. In studies of new treatments, as a control, the placebo consistently brings about symptomatic remissions 30-50% of the time. If a test drug performs in the 60% range (as many, if not most, do) the placebo was also at work in the test group and accounts for at least half or more of the effectiveness of the test treatment. The proponent of the treatment generally prefers to claim it to be the entire 60% effective. The half or more that is accountable by the placebo effect is ignored and illusions created about the drug's effectiveness.
The placebo effect and spontaneous remission are consciousness events, and more specifically events in which consciousness and matter interact to naturally change or transform diseased structures into healing process or flow. At the level of reality at which this event takes place, it is not even an interaction, it is a reality in which consciousness-matter, or as it is more popularly known, mind-body, are not different but are virtualities not committed to either condition, yet the potential of both. It is, in other words, a level of quantum reality.
Quantum theory describes the state of reality in which something, for example, light simultaneously displays the properties of being both matter and pure energy waveform. Here, sudden shifts of state, quantum shifts, instantaneously occur, all is interconnected and uncertainty reigns. We too exist on this level, part of this natural process, influencing it and being influenced by it at subtle levels where outer structure is only a passing reflection of this continuing deep inner evolution.
Dreams are our personal experience of REM consciousness and very much embody the quantum reality described above. There are a number of interesting facts that have come to light from scientific studies of REM that suggest it is probably the mechanism or consciousness-state which underlie the healing power of the placebo. There are clues from these studies that suggest that REM-Consciousness may also help in forming the roots of our diseases.
The Chaos-REM Process of Natural Healing
The CRP (Chaos-REM or Consciousness Restructuring Process of natural healing) is a healing process that resembles the placebo effect. Studying of its mechanisms has led to understanding how placebos may operate. This process (CRP) uses imaginative sensory imagery in wakened REM state to follow dream symbol or action to its root consciousness structure. This structure, stored deep in the subconscious, is a primal, existential, sensory self-image and it defines personal reality both inner and outer. It is a personal existential hologram that underlies perceptions of self and world.
This deepest sense of self is imprinted on the brain as neural firing patterns which, as suggested by Karl Pribram, create the interference wave pattern of this self-hologram. Our disease structures are incorporated within it. Reaching this root image and activating it while in REM draws it into implicate or chaotic consciousness field, and at this pre-quantum level of reality, it dissolves. A quantum shift occurs and from free or unstructured chaotic consciousness a new, more easeful image forms and becomes a transformed existential hologram except minus the disease structure. The shift is deeply felt on sensory and pre-sensory levels. One model of how the brain operates is that any action or behavior is first imaged in the brain, e.g. to turn this page one first creates an image of doing so and the hand then conforms to the image. The healed image is externalized in this way.
Access to the consciousness dynamics (hologram) that underlie our self and diseases is best accomplished in the Consciousness State associated with their formation. In the CRP, we have found that this requires working in wakened REM consciousness. We have also found that the basis of many disease structures is in consciousness structures formed while still a fetus.
REM Consciousness in Disease and Healing
How REM helps form disease at fetal levels is implied in the work and findings of several scientists studying REM. Dr. Allan Hobson, a noted sleep and dream researcher at Harvard Medical School, states that, "REM may stimulate immature brains while they're in utero." Dr. Mark Manhowald of the Minnesota REgional Sleep Disorder Center states that: "The fetus is in REM consciousness during most of its term in utero. Because the new baby's brain begins development with only the basics, like a new computer, the life process, [REM], programs the brain with capabilities in each developmental state and continues doing so after birth."
Dr. Stanley Krippner and Dr. Montague Ullman, in their work at Maimonides Dream Laboratory, demonstrated that REM consciousness is a psi-conductive state. They demonstrated that two people in REM could share common dream experiences, even when separated by walls and space. All this suggests that a fetus in REM shares its parent's dream states and is preprogrammed by them.
Dreams are known to be necessary for dealing with waking traumas and events. Through REM sharing a fetus is therefore exposed to the past and present traumas and experiences affecting its parents' lives. In this way programming the fetal development is determined by both parents, and the events in their lives that require dream (REM) processing. This is in addition to physiological conditioning through the chemical environment created in the womb by the mother's personal life choices.
Through REM, the fetus taps not only into co-consciousness with the parents, but also into the collective consciousness of the species. These experiences ae imprinted into the neural network and developing cells of the fetus and form the basis of its existential self-hologram. (Physicist Amit Goswami believes all structure in the Universe is based in consciousness). This mechanism continues after birth, except also incorporates the post natal life experiences of the individual.
All the above affects both biology and mind. REM is associated with womb experience such as the generation and development of the nervous system and tissue-cells. Nervous system and personality developments are very susceptible to mood and experience. These are matters with which depth psychiatry and psychology deal. Tissue and cell formation and functioning are also associated with mood and experiences.
Dr. Carl Simonton demonstrated this in relation to the development of cancer and its remission. For example, many cancers develop within two years of a major loss such as death of a relative or loss of one's career through retirement. He also identified a psychological profile based on childhood experiences that are associated with cancer. He found that remission of cancer was very much facilitated by visual imagery combined with other informational and therapeutic psychological techniques. Norman Cousins demonstrated that healing was induced through laughter, peace of mind and positive attitude.
The Role of Chaos in Natural Healing Process
We know from chaos theory that any complex system is very much influenced by minor perturbations or differences in its initial conditions. This is known as the "butterfly effect." The human organism is certainly a very complex system and so very much influenced in its formation by influences in its earliest developmental conditions. Early conditions of REM consciousness in the womb greatly influence our future physiology and personality.
We suggest that the potential for our future illnesses is programmed into our consciousness structure and also our neurological and tissue structure during these sensitive initial conditions. It is incorporated into the person existential hologram into outer reality creating the somatic and psychic presentations inherent in it.
Returning to these consciousness structures in the REM state in which they were formed allows restructuring of this hologram. We suggest this restructuring occurs in REM sleep, for example, when a placebo has been administered and expectations for its effectiveness are held. This is also the consciousness-state required for the profound self-healing observed in the CRP Journeys.
Further validation of the healing powers of REM comes from dream deprivation studies which show that the mind, the nervous system and eventually the body and physiology deteriorate when the organism is deprived of REM sleep. Also, it has long been an observation in medical therapy that sleep is regenerative, and that people recovering from illness or surgery need more sleep and thus REM than usual.
Studies in neurofeedback addressing the interface of chaos with the brain and its role in the brain's functioning also provide validation. Although measurements of brain waves result in their division and categorization into certain frequencies or states such as the alpha state, the theta state, and delta, etc, such is not really the case. The frequencies of the brain waves vary randomly within a given state. The distance between peaks is highly variable and disordered around the average. When these varied frequencies are used to program a fractal (the mathematics describing chaos theory) it becomes possible to measure the degree of chaos or complexity in the brain's functioning. These degrees of complexity are known as dimensions and the higher the dimensionality, the more complex or chaotic the neural firing patterns.
Lower dimensionality is associated with such dysfunction of the brain as epilepsy, comas and strokes. Similarly, dysfunction such as obsessive compulsive behavior may be associated with linearity or lower dimensionally. On the other hand, high dimensionally is associated with healthy brain functioning.
Chaos theory itself implies that the more complex a system is, the more self-correcting it is. This is because disruption to a linear system will throw the whole system off, but only affects a portion of a complex system, which soon adjusts to "fill in the gap." In a way this is the reverse of the butterfly effect and operates in the complex system once past its initial conditions. It emphasizes the need to deal with illness at formative levels, i.e. at the organism's initial conditions. However, the important data to note here is that the highest level of dimensionality, complexity, or chaos measured in the brain, a dimensionality of nine, occurs only in REM consciousness.
The Chemistry of Natural Healing
Changing the neural firing patterns (hologram) of the brain through the aforementioned REM-chaos process affects the body's chemistry and the existential perceptions of the entire organism. Since the brain is known to operate holographically, change to any part affects the whole. Chemistry is modified through the pineal and pituitary glands, parts of the brain itself.
These glands affect the release of neurotransmitters, which control mood, and the hormonal chemicals which control how our various organs function throughout the body. Messages sent to and received by the brain throughout the entire nervous system are also affected. Fundamental perceptions of self and reality change. Outer soon follows inner. Somatic and personality presentation changes.
In CRP journeys, we infer that this chaotic, implicate or complex (REM-Chaos) consciousness is the state in which the healing chemical transformations are initiated by changes in the primal existential hologram. This model suggests a similar process for placebos.
Implications of REM-Chaos Natural Healing Process
Spontaneous healing is closely associated with REM. These clues all imply the mechanism through which dreams, placebos, and the CRP do their healing and regenerative work. Chaos is always associated with change and is usually seen as its aftereffect. Chaos is actually the mechanism of the change itself. REM-Chaos consciousness is the most chaotic or complex state of dynamics in the brain. It is the state that most supports its self-correction (the homeostasis effect) and the natural transformation of any organism to healthy flow. It is the state that supports profound self-healing.
This information also implies a major change in the way we can view illness and healing. Seen from a consciousness viewpoint and consistent with the new physics of quantum holographic, and chaos theories, illness and wellness are more a matter of basic consciousness structure than mere chemistry.
Chemical change are an effect rather than a cause, an associated phenomenon. We can no longer view illness as merely the invasion of the body by carcinogens or germs and viruses and healing as the mechanistic or chemical correction of these conditions.
Natural healing happens at quantum-implicate levels of reality. Accessing it through the REM-Chaos state brings about subsequent changes in brain chemistry and may be the mechanisms by which placebos heal. The CRP is an awakened means of doing this in REM-Chaos consciousness.
ERNEST ROSSI’S DREAM-PROTEIN HYPOTHESIS ON HEALING
Rossi (1999) describes a mind/body communication channel that is pertinent both to bipolar disorder, but also to CRP in that it may describe another way healing manifests from REM. He describes how immediate-Early Genes (also called “Primary Response Genes” or third messengers) play a central role in the dynamics of waking, sleeping, dreaming, and mind-body healing at the cellular level.There is evidence that “immediate-early genes (IEGs) function as mediators of information transduction between psychological experience, behavioral states, and gene expression. A wide range of behavioral state-related gene expression (from relaxation, hynosis and sleep to high arousal, performance, stress and trauma) culminate in the production of new proteins or homeostasis, physical and psychosocial adaptation.”
Behavioral states modulate certain patterns of gene expression. Interaction between the genetic and behavioral levels is a two way street. Genes and behavior are related in cybernetic loops of mind-body communication. How does this relate to manic depression?
A look at the systems related to IEGs, shows that they affect all the systems disrupted in bipolar disorder. They are expressed continually in response to hormone messenger molecules mediating processes of adaptation to extracellular signals and stimuli. Extracellular stimuli come from the outside environment, including temperature, food, sexual cues, psychosocial stress, physical trauma, and toxins. IEGs are fundamental in the sleep-wake cycle, appetite regulation, sexual response, and reactions to stress, trauma, and toxins.
There are persistent alterations in IEG expression in the process of adaptive behavior on all levels from the sexual and emotional to the cognitive. They can transduce relatively brief signals from the environment into enduring changes in the physical structure of the developing nervous system as well as its plasticity in the form of memory and learning throughout life. If external cues can modulate cell function through regulation of gene expression, this could also be true for internal cues.
IEGs are also fundamental in the regulation of REM-on, REM-off neurons, neuronal networks that are associated with REM sleep and dreaming. That makes them significant in CRP as molecules which can modulate mind, emotions, learning and behavior.
They influence the rhythm of the natural healing process and circadian and ultradian rhythms of the body, in general. Ultradian rhythms are those shorter than the 24-hour circadian rhythms.
Milton Erickson discovered that his therapy sessions usually took from one and a half to two hours to come to natural closure. Later it was discovered that this delineates the natural work cycle that is harmonious with our own internal rhythms. CRP unfolds in a similar time-frame. IEGs modulate this process. This ultradian time frame is related to the activation or deactivation of the expression of specific genes and can occur in a matter of hours or even minutes.
“Most arousing environmental stimuli that have been studied can induce immediate-early genes within minutes, their concentrations typically peak within fifteen to twenty minutes and their effects are usually over within an hour or two. These time parameters IEG expression and their ultimate translation into the formation of new proteins correspond to the parameters of a complete work cycle of mind-body communication and healing. The changes in gene transcription and new protein formation initiated in this time frame, however, can lead to lasting changes in the central nervous system by converting short term memory to long lasting learning by the process of long term potentiation. . .the activation or deactivation of the expression of specific genes can occur in a matter of hours or even minutes.
This mechanism assesses the duration and intensity of prior waking and/or the homeostatic or executive mechanisms that bring about sleep. This is likely the mechanism that is disturbed in the manic depressive which results in sleep disorders. Sleep deprivation leads to a wide variety of psychotic and non-psychotic symptoms. This system is also associated with the neuronal network associated with the dynamics of REM sleep. Deprivation of REM and dreaming creates its own phenomenology.
“The study of IEGs indicates that sleep and wake, as well as synchronized and desynchronized sleep, are characterized by different genomic expressions, the level of IEGs being high during wake and low during sleep. Such fluctuation of gene expression is not ubiquitous but occurs in certain cell populations in the brain. Thus...IEG induction may reveal the activation of neural networks in different behavioral states. Do the areas in which IEGs oscillate during sleep and wake subserve specific roles in the regulation of these physiological states and a general ‘resetting’ of behavioral state? Is gene induction a clue to understanding the alternation of sleep and wake, and of REM and non-REM sleep?”
In Rossi’s Dream-Protein Hypothesis, “new experience is encoded by means of protein synthesis in brain tissue...dreaming is a process of psychophysiological growth that involves the synthesis or modification of protein structures in the brain that serve as the organic basis for new developments in the personality...new proteins are synthesized in some brain structures associated with REM dream sleep.”
Rossi generalizes the dream-protein hypothesis, “to include all states of creativity associated with the peak periods of arousal and insight generation in psychobiologically oriented psychotherapy.”
Enriched internal and external environments leads to the growth and development of new cells. IEG cascades lead to the formation of new proteins and neurons along with increased synapses and dendrites that encode memory and learning. On the other hand, excessive trauma and psychosocial stress can lead to suppression of growth processes in the brain. When psychotherapy contributes to arousal, enrichment, and relaxation it facilitates actual growth in the brain to encode new memory, learning and behavior, optimizing growth and healing.
“Communication within the neuronal networks of the brain is modulated by changes in the strengths of synaptic connections...meaning is to be found in the complex dynamic field of messenger molecules that continually bath and contextualize the information of the neuronal networks in ever changing patterns. Most of the sexual and stress hormones...have state dependent effects on our mental and emotional states as well as memory and learning, a constantly changing dynamical field of meaning.”
CIRCADIAN CYCLES: The Biological Clock. In mammals the master clock that dictates the day-night cycle of activity is known as circadian rhythm. It resides in a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a group of nerve cells in a region at the base of the brain called the hypothalamus. But cells elsewhere also show clock activity (Young, 2000). Within individual SCN cells, specialized clock genes are switched on and off by the proteins they encode in a feedback loop that has a 24-hour rhythm.
The molecular rhythms of clock-gene activity are innate and self-sustaining. They persist in the absence of environmental cycles of day and night. Bright light absorbed by the retina during the day helps to synchronize the rhythms of activity of the clock genes to the prevailing environmental cycle. Light hitting the eye causes the pineal gland of the brain to taper its production of melatonin, a hormone that plays a role in inducing sleep. The fluctuating proteins synthesized by clock genes control additional genetic pathways that connect the molecular clock to time change in physiology and behavior.
This circadian cycle is disrupted in bipolar syndrome as evidenced by the sleep disorder and mood disorders it manifests. Identifying the genes allows us to determine the proteins that might serve as targets for therapies for a wide range of disorders, from sleep disturbances to seasonal depression.
Normally, the pineal rhythmically produces melatonin, the so-called sleep hormone. As day progresses into evening, the pineal begins to make more melatonin. When blood levels of the hormone rise, there is a modest decrease in body temperature and an increased tendency to sleep. Body temperature must be dropping for sleep to ensue. Levels of the stress hormone cortisol usually fall at night also.
Bipolars break the circadian pattern; it is fragmented or chaotic. They seem to have no circadian rhythm at all, resting and becoming active seemingly at random. Clinical research has isolated a single gene named period or per, which seems to be activiely involved both in producing circadian rhythms, in setting the rhythm’s pace. Another co-active gene is called timeless, or tim. The two proteins stick together when mixed, suggesting they might interact within cells.
The production of PER and TIM proteins involves a clocklike feedback loop. The per and tim genes are active until concentrations of their proteins become high enough that the two begin to bind to each other. When they do, they form complexes that enter the nucleus and shut down the genes that made them. After a few hours enzymes degrade the complexes, the genes start up again, and the cycle begins anew. We begin to wonder how the clock could be reset.
Jadwiga Giebultowicz of Oregon State University identified the PER and TIM proteins, and notes that biological clocks are spread throughout the body; each tissue carries an independent photoreceptive clock. In research, these clocks continued to function in tissue dissected from the host. The diversity of various cell types displaying circadian clock activity suggests that for many tissues correct timing is important enough to warrant keeping track of it locally.
In 1997 Joseph Takahashi’s research team isolated the Clock gene: “the CLOCK protein --in combination with a protein encoded by a gene called cycle--binds to and activates the per and tim genes, but only if no PER and TIM proteins are present in the nucleus. These four genes and their proteins constitute the heart of the biological clock...they appear to form a mechanism governing circadian rhythms through the animal kingdom, from fish to frogs, mice to humans.”
“It seems that some output genes are turned on by a direct interaction with the CLOCK protein. PER and TIM block the ability of CLOCK to turn on these genes at the same time as they are producing the oscillations of the central feedback loop -- setting up extended patterns of cycling gene activity.”
“Perhaps one of these, or a component of the molecular clock itself, will become a favored target for drugs to relieve jet lag, the side effects of shift work, or sleep disorders and related depressive illnesses.” (Young).
Rossi’s research suggests that the 90-120 minute ultradian rhythm is a fundamental “work cycle of life” that is entrained by the circadian cycle. The psychobiological basis of much psychopathology related to early sexual and stressful life events suggests that molecules of the body modulate mental experiences and mental experience modulates the molecules of the body. A sudden fright, shock, trauma and stress can evoke “hypnoidal states” that were related to amnesia, dissociated and neurotic behavior (ref. Bipolar, PTSD, MPD). Off their meds, bipolars forget how sick they can be.
Rossi suggests a new research frontier for the psychobiological investigation of many classical psychotherapeutic notions, such as repression, dissociation and emotional complexes. He suggests they are related to “(1) the primary messenger molecule-cell receptor systems of the psychosomatic network, (2) Immediate-early genes and target gene expression, (3) protein formation and learning and (4) state-dependent memory, stress and traumatically encoded mind-body problems.”
Enhanced memory associated with emotional experiences involves activation of the messenger molecules of the beta-adrenergic system, the arousal phase mediated by the rhythms of the neuroendocrinal system. He suggests a non-linear dynamics to the chronobiology of sleep, dream, and hypnosis.
The periodicity of self-hypnosis may be related to the psychobiology of ultradian rhythms or the natural work cycle. In bipolars, this self-hypnotic cycle may go awry and become non-rhythmic, nonrestorative. 90-120 minutes is the basic rest-activity cycle during both waking and sleeping. There is also periodicity in the imagery experience as demonstrated by REM.
Special stressors, motivations, demands and expectations in normal living can shift the normal ultradian and circadian pulsations in arousal and stress hormones on all levels from the behavioral to the cellular-genetic. This process is best described by non-linear dyanamics of chaos and adaptive complexity theory.
This research is integrating work on the creative dynamics of psychotherapy and holistic healing in theory and practice. It focuses on a chronobiological approach to the deep psychobiology of sleep, dreams, hypnosis, and healing in psychotherapeutic practice. When the 90-120 minute ultradian cycles of mindbody communication unfold over time they display alternating rhythms of activity and rest.
There is a normal peak in cortisol just before awakening. Also, ultradian peaks of cortisol secretion that lead to psychophysiological states of arousal every 90-120 minutes or so are typically followed by about 20 minutes of ultradian peaks of beta-endorphin that lead to rest and relaxation, that Rossi labels the Ultradian Healing Responses, a natural but flexible and highly adaptive ultradian rhythm of activity, rest, and healing.
The chronobiological dynamics of new protein formation are fundamental to healing and psychotherapy. For Bipolar Disorder, psychotherapy can entrain the ultradian and circadian rhythms by physical and psychosocial stimuli and recalibrate internal clocks, facilitating mindbody healing.
Rossi summarizes how “self-organizing systems of mind-body communication across all levels from the cellular-genetic to the psychosocial and behavioral could lead to a unified psychobiological theory of awake, sleep, dreaming, hypnosis, and healing.”
Research in the areas of behavioral state-related gene expression, psychoimmunology, and state- dependent memory, learning and behavior is integrated with the chronobiology of ultradian rhythms as a new window into the psychobiology of trauma and stress as well as brain growth and healing.
What's New with My Subject?
Experiential therapy sessions and mysticism demonstrate that as we journey deeper and deeper into the psyche we eventually encounter a state characterized either as "chaotic" or void of images. In a therapeutic context, chaos is experienced as a consciousness state--the ground state. This state is related to healing, dreams, and creativity. Shamanic approaches to healing involve co-consciousness states which lead to restructuring both physical and emotional-mental senses of self.
Dreams, creativity, and healing arise from this undifferentiated "chaotic consciousness." Dreamhealing uses images as portals for consciousness journeys to facilitate transformations ranging from mood alteration to profound physiological changes. Imagery (virtual experience) affects the immune system, activating psychosomatic forces, such as the placebo effect. Chaos-oriented consciousness journeys suggest these states reflect complex phase space, fractal patterns, strange attractors, "the butterfly effect," sensitivity, complex feedback loops, intermittency, and other general dynamical aspects suggested by chaos theory. More than an experiential process, this is a philosophy of treatment--"Chaosophy."
Chaosophy Journal
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