Learning To Fly

So you want to learn to fly, huh?

It is pretty simple, really.  I'll explain how, soon, but on my way I'll need to explain a bit more about Milton Erickson's hypnosis techniques, the limbic system of the brain, and what dreams are all about. Before long you'll be zipping through clouds and over tall buildings. Take you 30 days, tops.

This is a post about messing with your own unconscious.  There are some excellent films about why this is a bad idea.  One of them starred Leslie Neilson.  The basic argument seems to go: the unconscious is, by definition, unknown to the conscious mind.  It is therefore dangerous and full of vitriol. It may well be of a different ethnicity to our conscious minds. It is probably very dangerous and must at all times be restrained. The Unconscious, gentle reader, is Very, Very Bad.

In fact, the Unconscious is so bad we don't refer to it as the Unconscious any more.  These days we tend to refer to the subconscious. Apparently Freud gave the unconscious a bad name. Well, let's face it. Freud gave even motherhood a bad name. Not too many nouns escaped blacklisting after Freud whacked his grubby paws across them. Women's purses and cigars the world over got a good rince down and a splash of parrafin. Which didn't end well for the cigars, just quietly. And the purses never quite smelt the same either.  You probably didn't see what I just did there. Freudian joke. Nevermind.

Yeah, yeah, I'm getting to it. Shut up with your "I want to fly!" nagging.  It's not like I'm not going to tell you. I'll get to it after your biology lesson.

The brain is composed of many areas.  Phineas Gage served to help us map out the brain into discrete areas. Almost worth getting a big iron spike through the noggin, to help humanity along like that. Almost, but not really.  It turns out that a lot of the stories about poor Phineas are contradictory, and many based upon the presumption that someone with a brain injury must become a dissolute animal. And these days we don't quite envisage the brain as having such discrete areas. Still, here's a pretty picture:

Just above the pons and beneath that pretty green temporal lobe there are a few bits and pieces we tend to call the limbic system. Yes, system. That would imply they work closely together and relate vaguely to the rest of the brain bits. Well, not really.  The brain is very adaptable and everything can relate to everything else. It's kind of a grey floppy lego set. Depending how you prefer to do stuff, some things will join together more emphatically and other things will have a loose association.
So here's the limbic system.  There are some disputes about regarding how much we can call it a system these days, but anyway here's another pretty picture:

Now, what I'm about to tell you is rushed and superficial. I am paraphrasing some training I was lucky enough to receive by John B. Arden and Lloyd Linford, who gave a lot of credit during their presentation to Louis Cozolino. I heartily recommend their respective books on Brain Based Therapy and the Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, should you want a proper education about all this. For now, though, just bear with me, please.

Current thinking emphasises the brain's neuroplasticity.  This means it can be rewired. The lego can be joined up in different configurations, based upon our behaviours and the way we structure our thoughts. This is the new basis of cognitive behavioural therapy, and runs along this kind of logic: the brain has a plastic composition, and is pretty much wired according to our habits. So if we change our habits, or the way we think and act, we can rewire the brain and thereby change the way our mind works. And it takes about thirty days or repetitious behaviour to establish a habit.

In particular, the brain's limbic system has two key elements.  The amygdala (Latin for almond, whose shape it resembles) is the bit which moderates the release of the stress hormone cortisol. You may wish to know about the relationship of cortisol release to the 'rush' chemical epinephrine. I'm not playing. It is all a bit complex, and I'm trying to do this summarily.  Suffice to say, if the amygdala cuts in bigtime, we're hammer down on the road to panicville. The other key element (for our purpose in this blog) is the hippocampus (Latin for seahorse, whose shape it resembles). The hippocampus is our brake on the road to panicville. It moderates te release of cortisol by the amygdala.

If you're truly biologically minded, Cozolino explains this in vivid detail and throws in amygdaloid-hippocampal memory interaction. I would explain what that means, but my mama raised me better than to do such a thing.

Now, the brain has a left and a right hemisphere, and they tend toward language and symbol as shown here:

So in simple terms, the right side is hardwired into the amygdala to enable a global panic, whereas the left side works through the hippocampus (usually at a slower rate) to figure out the cold, hard reality of it all once there is time to reflect.

If I stepped into a road and a truck was headed straight at me, the right side of my brain would quickly process a symbol of something rapid, heavy and close. The symbol would be used to fire up my amygdala and release the stress hormone, cortisol, which would help me to react fast. I'd jump back onto the curb, safe from harm. The right side of the brain works globally, responds to threats, is fairly conservative and tends toward a pessimistic view of anything novel. Eventually, my left side brain would form a sentence, and feed it through my hippocampus to reduce the stress in my body by assuaging my amgdala. It might say something like: that was an image of a truck, maybe a Bedford - probably 40 years old - and not a bit of rust on it! As I start to process such sentences, I begin to calm down. Language helps to reduce stress, and the left hemisphere is very good at detail, planning, optimistic appraisals and goal setting. Hence the efficacy of Freud's talking cure.

Obviously, it is an advantage for survival to have a highway to the amygdala. But the neuroplastic nature of the brain means that the more you use a highway, the bigger it gets. An experience of trauma will often see that highway triggered and re-triggered as a person starts to perceive most things as a truck.

So the right side of the brain has no language, and is pretty good at panicking. The more you use it, the more it panics.

Let us imagine for a moment the benefits of such a brain structure way back in the day.  A caveman... um, caveperson... becomes wounded and is unable to hunt. They retire to the cave, using the right side of their brain: everything is dangerous, everything is to be avoided, I don't want to go anywhere, I just want to sleep. Eventually our cave dweller heals and feels better. The left side forms a plan and feels good about it: Imma kill a bisson, and I know exactly how. And so out of the cave and into the light, there to commit mayhem. (That was a Plato joke, if you care about such things).

I know you want to get on with sleeping and try out your wings, gentle reader, but please indulge me a little further. I'd like you to take a moment to think about Western society's prevalence of obesity and depression. If I have a lot of food in front of me, both sides of my brain will tend to suggest that I'll be fine if I dig in and eat heaps, and Lord knows there may be a very long time till I see food again. But in Western society that is usually only a few hours, and the same set of optimism and fear of famine will repeat the engorged performance. Which will lead to some extra kilos and a feeling of illness. As we get bigger, our right side brain will tend to take over and suggest we stay away from the tiger-country, safe in our cave. We'll get conservative, pessimistic and disinclined to leave our beds. Depressed.

That is not to suggest that only overweight people get depressed. There are many ways to trigger the global sense of danger that enables right-brained caution to predominate. But it IS interesting that exercise is streets ahead of counselling as an efficacious treatment for depression. Twenty minutes walking a day, lots of leafy greens in a healthy diet, and some sunlight, will go a long way to redressing many peples' depressive symptoms. Take only as directed. See a doctor, please, people.

So, you can stop looking for the subconscious. It is the right side of the brain. It works on symbols and not on language. It has a preference for emotion, and in particular it can do wonderful things with fear. Oh, and it needs to practice and to sort stuff out. It has a tendency to want to be ready for any given scenario, in order that it can make the right decision quickly. Left to itself, it tends to practice a bunch of bizarre scenarios on the off chance it might need to navigate an unusual situation in a hurry. It can be a bit negative.

Enter Milton Erickson. There has been a lot of crap written about our Milt. I suspect some of it was written by Milt himself. But no matter. He worked out a series of techniques to speak directly to the unconscious. It was cleverly done. He realised what it is that the subconscious cared about: images, and making sense of dischordant situations. So all good Ericksonian hypnotists know to use nouns and word-pictues in preference, to apply what are called Ericksonian confusational techniques, and to encourage a subject to imagine what a scene looks like. Some prefer to use smell, or touch: anything which enhances the non-verbal interaction with an idea or scenario. Anything which enables the subconscious to process a situation. 

We're very close to dreaming, now, people. Very close indeed. The astute reader (yeah, I know - all of you) will by now have realised what dreams are: the subconscious running various scenarios. Left to itself, it tends to run a bunch of emotional pathways and whip through the options for resolution. Run away screaming this time, stab someone the next... the subconscious just projects a bunch of images which create an emotional reaction. That is why the stories don't make sense. Surreal things happen in dreams: their logic is emotional, not practical. The subconscious is running through feelings and testing which response works best. Typically, a nightmare leads to a sense of horror, and the subconscious learns that - in real, waking life - that sequence of responses is probably not going to lead to a happy outcome. If you stab someone in your dream and wake up shaking, you're unlikely to do the same thing in real life. The subconscious will have crossed that sequence off its list. Tested, and rejected.

Ericksonian hypnosis helps the subconscious along. The person in chronic backpain goes into a trance and is led through the idea of turning down an imagined pain dial, thereby enabling hitherto impossible bushwalking. The subconscious likes the outcome, and enables that trance state to gain a subconscious hold. This is a process which successfully resolves various subconscious tensions. The medical hypnosis patient feels better, and can walk up Cradle Mountain with his son. It is a miracle.

So a hypnotic technique is used with a person who is struggling to lose weight. The subconscious is unable to process the word 'no', so it would be counterproductive to say: you will have no cake.  The subconscious will only hear: you will have cake. Better to substitute the cake with fruit. Smell the fruit, enjoy the fruit, hunger for the fruit, love the fruit. Feel light and happy and strong after eating fruit. So well that you want to walk in the sunshine, stride through the rain. You get the idea.

So, you want to fly?

Just say to yourself, each night for 30 nights, "Tonight, I fly!" before you drift off to sleep.

Sometime before the 30th night, you'll fly in your sleep. Try to start by practicing safe landings, if you can. It is more than 20 years since I learned the trick, but I still remember the importance of a light landing.

It can be a lot of fun.