Dr Joe’s Blog

Wow! That’s really the best way I can think of to describe my experience at the Advanced Workshop in Carefree, Arizona. I’ve been a part of many workshops over the years but this one was arguably the best. 500 people came with the desire to further their development, hone the skills needed to cultivate lasting change and literally become supernatural.

If you’ve seen 2001: A Space Odyssey you’re probably familiar with the movie’s iconic theme song. The piece – Also Sprach Zarathustra by composer Richard Strauss – starts quietly with a low, almost menacing organ. The composer holds the notes for about twenty seconds then breaks the tension with a soft horn that builds into a triumphant bum-bum. A lumbering bass drum enters with what has become an instantly recognizable cadence that resets the music and starts the theme over again.

In 2009 a fisherman off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada caught a lobster. Normally, this isn’t news considering the number of crustaceans pulled from the water every year in that part of the world. What makes this lobster so interesting is that it weighed 20 pounds and was estimated to be at least 140 years old.

Imagine you’re at work, it’s lunch time and you’re hungry but there’s a problem. In your rush to get out the door you forgot to grab your wallet. You have no food and no way of paying for anything. Luckily, you’re friends with a few of the people you work with and you decide to ask them if they could spring for lunch.

What comes to mind when you think of the dentist’s office? Do you picture a neutral colored waiting room with months old magazines sitting on a table? Can you hear the drill making contact with a tooth? Do you see the needle?   Whatever you imagine you’re probably not looking forward to your next visit.

“When you think about it, the real difference between animals and ourselves is that although we both experience stress, humans re-experience and ‘pre-experience’ traumatic situations.”

In my last blog post I talked about New Year’s resolutions. Now I want to focus on a particular idea that wasn’t expressly stated in that post. We know that change can be difficult; partly because the body as the mind wants things to remain the same or familiar. In order to break free from this routine you’re going to need will.

Making a resolution certainly feels a lot easier than sticking with one. There’s an automatic reward, an inertia, when we decide to make a change for the better. In those initial days and weeks the energy is palpable and the desired goal feels achievable, maybe even easy. This is the year we’re going to lose that weight or get organized, but then something happens. We decide the gym can wait until tomorrow or that the schedule can be put off. Our old habits creep back in and we eventually succumb to our well-known routines.

I’m sure all of us cut ourselves at some point during our childhood and the first thing we did was to rush directly to our mothers for help. She may have addressed this seemingly devastating trauma at the time with all of her attention, a small detailed examination followed by soap and water, some calm reassuring words, a warm embrace, and then a Band-Aid. At that moment, the pain very likely went away…and you ‘felt’ better.

A few years ago a woman we’ll call Mrs. S went to the hospital for some routine tests. Mrs. S. had a heart valve condition called tricuspid stenosis. She also suffered from a milder form of congestive heart failure. Neither condition was considered life threatening.

How can the preacher in the Deep South, in a moment of religious ecstasy, drink strychnine and have no biological effects? How can certain Indonesian children chew on glass and not bleed? Why do firewalkers not burn their feet on the hot coals when temperatures soar above 1000 degrees? How is it possible for an ordinary, middle aged mother to lift a 2000 pound car that has crashed and pull out her children who are pinned underneath?

 In interviews with these women, many said they spent their days at home reliving their nightmarish experience. Why were these women unable to heal and create a new life for themselves? Think of a skipping CD. The groove worn into the disc prevents the song from progressing. A traumatic experience operates much the same way. By remembering the same event over and over again, these women fired and wired the same circuits in the same ways, which altered their brain circuitry.