KIMA Wellness

Greetings, and thanks for taking the time to read this blog entry.  I imagine you might wonder what a mind body psychologist could do for you.  Chances are, if you’ve been a client at KIMA, you are already quite aware of your body…the aches, pains and limitations that may have prompted your visit to KIMA. Some clients are frustrated with their bodies.  Some clients have been experiencing chronic pain for years.

I believe there is a direct relationship between the mind and body.  Sometimes, the body will express what the mind cannot yet process.  The mind is very powerful and protective; when unresolved/underlying  psychological stressors  such as work deadlines, troublesome relationships, fear, anxiety, and unresolved trauma cause tremendous interruptions in the body, this is called somatization. This is where my role as a mind body psychologist can benefit you by helping you to find positive coping mechanisms and relief through the use of psycho-dynamic talk therapy and alternative healing techniques such as hypnosis, guided imagery, tapping and or meditation.

While working as a clinical social worker in a chronic pain program at a large metropolitan hospital, I began to fully understand the relationships between the mind and body,and the relationship to pain. My experiences were based on hours of clinical counseling and evaluations of chronic pain patients.   Over and over, I heard stories of people who were living with bodies that were aching and throbbing with often unexplained pain; I observed first hand how their lives were impacted by the limitations of pain.  Some of the clients benefited from ongoing counseling sessions as I listened to their stories without judgment.

Pain is a subjective condition.  There are many times emotional factors that contribute to the pain.  John Sarno, Jon Kabbat-Zinn and Caroline Myss are just a few well known clinicians who have written books about the relationship between the mind and the body.

Wellness techniques such as meditation, guided imagery and hypnosis are beneficial in helping one deal with pain.  I have been trained and certified in hypnosis; while it does not always take away one’s pain, there are proven benefits of using such techniques to minimize pain and to maximize one’s ability to awareness, breath and visualization to promote more healing. The unconscious mind is very powerful; hypnosis can put one into a deep trance, i.e, state of relaxation, which may help the client to access some of the obstacles including negative beliefs that contribute more stress and resistance to change.  My work in this area has helped clients to to access resources of the unconscious mind which can aid in reducing pain, whether emotional or physical in addition to finding healthier coping strategies.

Research has proven the efficacy of linking the subconscious and conscious mind together to heal the body. Read: Pain Really Is All In Your Head And Emotion Controls Intensity and; 7 Things We Can Turn Off and On in the Brain. I believe we all have the answers we seek.

The benefits of talk therapy include gaining insight into one’s inner world.  Often, one will come to see me because of symptoms related to a stressful environment in work or a relationship.  Work deadlines, troublesome relationships, fear, anxiety, and unresolved trauma can cause tremendous interruptions in the mind and body.  Many times, the troubles manifest as symptoms in the body, for example, headaches, neck and back pain, muscular spasms, gastroenterological symptoms, high blood pressure, depression,and insomnia have often been correlated with what is going on in a person’s mind and emotional state. The body will often express what the mind can not yet discuss.

As part of our commitment to mind body science we would like to highlight a few of the speakers from the recent (AMR) 2015. This 2 day conference held at Memorial Sloan Kettering brought scientists and clinicians from around the world to share cutting edge research in meditation and mindfulness. This first blog will share Thursday night’s discussions with Bob Thurman and Zoran Josipovic.

Buddhist Enlightenment – Western Enlightenment: Medicine today

Robert A. F. Thurman is recognized worldwide as an authority on religion and spirituality, asian history, world philosophy, Buddhist science, Indo – Tibetan Buddhism, and his Holiness the Dalai Lama. Robert Thurman is an eloquent advocate of the relevance of Buddhist ideas to our daily life. In doing so, he has become a leading voice of the value of reason, peace and compassion. He was named one of the time magazines 25 most influential Americans.

Bob starts by introducing all of us to The Heart Sutra – which represents the “full knowing of the nature of reality” http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/heartsutra.html

The next 40 years of mindfulness in science and health care: There will be a revolution in science that will involve the overthrow of scientism, and there will be an introduction of “mind” as a force in nature.

Thomas Nagel “Mind  and Cosmos”

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology.

Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such.

Nagel’s skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic.

In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Bob talks about a science that is trained in shamatha and vipashyana – the 2 kinds of meditation.  First the one pointed shamatha (peace to be located in a place – standing in peace and what most people think meditation is). The second brings in more control of mind – to see critically is vipashyna – not quietistic, but a way to find the “deeper reality” – vipashyna is how the Buddha discovered the nature of reality.

The revolution of health care will consider age old natural medicines; mind body remedies – bring the mind into medicine – consider the placebo effect – train physicians in compassion instead of commercialization of medicine  and treat medicine as a war on disease –embodying  Hippocrates true teachings.  Buddha said the only motivation is compassion to eliminate suffering and disease.

Should ethics be taught in mindfulness education?  

Mindfulness is just a heightened or alert state of being. Any kind of empowering of the person to control their mind with their own mind – is really excellent! Once one develops mindfulness….you can begin to pick and choose thoughts that are good and not so good – the more you become self aware of your mind ….the more you become aware of sections of your mind that are not helpful to you or others around you. A natural part of the mindfulness revolution – not depending on outside authorities…. but take in hand and deal with your own health through lifestyle and diet

Is Meditation Enough? Buddha put the path of realizing freedom from suffering as 3 higher educations:

1. Ethics what is harmful and helpful for others
2. Mind and mindfulness
3. Super knowing/Wisdom what is real in the world and the mind

Meditation is like a gun, powerful it shoots a bullet; but without a target it is pointless  You can meditation on bad things and get worse. How it is aimed is critical.

Zoren Josipovic PhD is a research scientist at the Cognitive Neurophysiology Lab, NYU School of Medicine, and an adjunct faculty in the Psychology Department, New York University. He is the founding director of Nonduality Institute, an independent center for science and practice of nondual meditation. His research interests are the nature of consciousness as understood in nondual contemplative traditions and the effects it may have on the global and local organization in the brain. – See more at: http://www.scienceandnonduality.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4azqqBVv2f0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClRlhYAIwWs

Finding Nonduality in clinical settings: love and compassion meditation

http://www.buddhanet.net/metta_in.htm for a deeper understanding of what love and compassion meditation is and how to do it

Scientific research into the neural correlates of nondual realization can further our understanding of the nature of consciousness, and of the brain’s functioning in optimal states of wellbeing. It can demystify this aspect of human potential and help make the awakening to nonduality more accessible to a growing number of people throughout the world.

Under Zoran Josipovic, PhD, the research program at Nonduality Institute aims to explore the nature of nonduality through a multifaceted approach that looks both at the nature of nondual awareness, and at the ways in which it can influence cognitive, affective and somatic dimensions of our experience.

Some of the questions we seek to answer are:

• • What aspect of our consciousness realizes nonduality?
  • What are the characteristics of nondual embodiment?
  • What is the relationship between nonduality and authentic subjectivity?
  • How does abiding in nonduality affect our relationships?

Our research is focused on these areas:

• • Neural correlates of nonduality and the dynamics of global networks in the brain.
  • Phenomenology of nondual experience and the impact it has on our mind and body.
  • Clinical applications of nondual realization.
  • The neural correlates of contemplative practices and the impact they have on cognitive, affective and somatic processes.

Research modalities we use are EEG, MEG and fMRI, in addition to a variety of psychophysics and self-report tests.

“Today I am going to talk about a nondual approach to looking at love and compassion meditation training. This meditation training is being used more and more in clinical setting…. and then I will show some of the research we are doing.”

“Non-duality simply ‘is a way of being’ – in which we are not fragmented in these polarities of subjective, objective, good, bad,  in group, out group –we take things that are innate and unavoidable …aspects of experience …and we realize the nature of our mind or the true nature consciousness. The way we experience reality, is in a way that is undivided.  The background of this awareness ‘the nature of consciousness’ then encompasses all our experience and we return to our authentic being – we return to who we are naturally – naturally here means not biological but authentic in that we are not constructing an artificial reality.”

This authentic being or unconstructed natural abiding has certain dimensions:

1. Emptiness being space like empty and unconstructed all encompassing and all pervading
2. Luminosity – clear cognizant self knowing or reflexive, clear light
3. Responsiveness – non referential love and compassion : empathetic open intuitively cognizant

“The other features of non-duality is that the mind is unitary or single. Even though we are talking about these different dimensions… we are actually talking about one single presence…and in the sense that we are a single conscious aware presence, we can say we that this authentic being is our real self. Within this authentic being is a great deal of bliss, ecstasy and pleasure…. which is there to experience. The nature of reality, life, of who we are is ecstatically blissful…. if we allow it to be what it is. The reason we are not always experiencing this blissful awareness, based on ancient traditions, is because we are trapped in a made reality – which is made on the duality of subjective and objective self, I and other.”

“Constructed in a destructive manner … we live in a defended state which we simply call “who am I as a person?”  This is not necessary. There are survival advantages to this and some say biologically this is driven by functions of the immune system; but even the immune system works better when we relax the division!”

How do we approach using contemplative practices in life and in the clinic?

“We can be constructing ourselves with these practices; essentially we are still operating in a dualistic manner but we are improving ourselves…. there is some gradual improvement”

Here is a Metaphor:  if the ground of being is our authentic reality…. than our usual experience is like a hole in the ground.  When you are way down in the hole and someone tells you that there is big open space above you – it is hard to believe– it could be good to do some constructing to get up to the surface level. However, sometimes we get too attached to these constructing practices and we need to look at the deconstructing practices.

“There is another groups of ancient practices that are very important to consider. These are the practices that deconstruct – or understand the constructive nature of experience. In these practices you experience this duelist identity as a person….. it is just a mental pattern…. and when that relaxes, you arrive at your natural being , who you actually are.”

How can we help our clients arrive at their own authentic being place more efficiently?

“Because the non duality has different dimensions, we can access through any of these dimensions. A most powerful way to access it is through “Love and compassion” Composed of cognitive and affective components –the approach it to train different aspects of compassion like empathy, sympathy non judgment ”

“We can see love and compassion simply as the energy of ‘who we are’ expressing itself. This is a much more spontaneous and effortless way to manifest.”

“Its not that you have to train compassion but that ….Compassion and love are spontaneous in your nature … once you remove the things that are dampening it down.  From a non dual perspective our experience of life is all together shut down, we experience much less of what is available to us than we could. That applies to all levels of our being cognitive, affective, perceptual, and sensory. We are educated into gradually shutting down our experience.”

“Another very interesting way to understand what “love and compassion” does is to see it as an impulse of your authentic being  to find itself again. Something inside of us wants to become free – that impulse is really non referential love and kindness – consciousness inside you wants to know itself ….self recognition”

A study by Sharp 2012 shows differences of how pleasure is organized by an ordinary person vs a person who does inner yoga meditation.

If we repeat certain experiences and they give us pleasure we naturally become addicted- these mechanism are very known in the brain.  However we can be doing meditation practices that are intensely pleasurable- yet not be addicted. What is the difference? The differences is that the intense state of pleasure is our “natural state” What is actually occurring is that we release the inhibition that we have put on our state–

…..by practice mediation we return to the authentic experience of pleasure. Because it is our authentic self, it will not cause addiction.

A research pilot study is presented where Zoren and his team teach love and compassion meditation to epileptic patients. In epilepsy, the temporal lobe produces loud regular patterns on intracranial EEG. The electrodes can be placed to find the location of the seizure and the patient can do experiments while being monitored. In this pilot study the patients underwent pre testing, they then did a short meditation and underwent post testing.

The result that Zoren is very excited about is that there is a significant reduction in epileptic hyper synchrony pre / post meditation. Hyper synchrony drops out in mediation and persists after mediation.

For more research by Zoren and the nonduality institute visit; http://www.nondualityinstitute.org/Research.html

Ever wonder why overhead athletes don’t have massively muscled shoulders? Think baseball pitchers, tennis players, volleyballers and other court sports and more often than not they will be toned but relatively slender, especially considering the amount of force they are able to impart upon the ball or racket. They throw or hit hard, so where do they get all that speed?

The answer is that the force generated doesn’t actually originate in the shoulder, but rather is transferred through it. Big shoulder muscles are for hitting things.

It’s all about what’s called the kinetic chain, which refers to successive movement of multiple joints to perform a complex or skilled task. Large muscle groups are good for generating lots of force. If you can transfer this through progressively smaller or distant body parts (ie further up or down the chain), the effect is like cracking a whip.

The main force generators for overhead athletes, therefore, are the legs and pelvis, where the largest muscle groups are located. Their size makes for good movement and force initiators. From there on in, only small additions to force production are made by successive body parts.

Muscle groups like the rotator cuff and the scapular stabilizers have a critical role in this model, not as force producers, but as force transmitters. Your shoulder and arm require stability to allow the forces generated to pass through the limb and onto the racket or ball, without losing any efficiency. The length of the lever, as in racket sports, or the sheer velocity required, as in a baseball pitch, require that these stabilizing muscles, as well as others controlling other body parts, must be strong enough to withstand these forces. Exercises to develop stability in these areas must be tailored specifically to meet these needs, particularly when you remember that endurance is a factor.

↑ Notice in the above sequence that the pitcher’s weight transfers not only from back foot to front but from high to low, and that the dynamic forward step from cocking to acceleration precedes the arm coming forward. Power generated by the legs and hips thus transfers through the trunk (hence the need for good core stability here) and into the shoulder and elbow, and ultimately transferred to the ball at release.

Poor technique and overuse are factors commonly taken into account by PT’s when treating the overhead athletic shoulder. A skilled therapist will also take into consideration the possibility that these factors may the result of compensation for inadequate force generation lower down the chain. A thorough assessment of the overhead athlete should therefore require an appraisal of the entire kinetic chain, so don’t be surprised if your PT wants to look at your legs and hips if you’re a thrower with a sore shoulder.

Back in the day, we all used to assume that the same thing happened to a tendon when it got injured as when anything else in the body got injured – it became inflamed, and then following a period of rest you essentially rehabbed it and it got better and went back to what you were doing. Except that this approach didn’t produce very good results.

At the end of the nineties and into the ‘noughties, some clever researchers discovered that inflammation was NOT a characteristic of painful tendons, which in turn explained why taking anti-inflammatories were not particularly effective either. This also meant that we could no longer refer to tendinitis using the suffix –itis, which refers to inflammation (think appendicitis, hepatitis, arthritis, and so on). Thus, the term tendinopathy was born, and is the term currently used to describe tendon damage.

So what does happen in Tendinopathy?

Without wanting to blind you with science, tendinopathy is what is now considered a ‘failed healing response’.  When you do something like exercise, in essence you are challenging your body’s tissues. They respond by reinforcing themselves, thereby gradually getting stronger. Leg bones in runners will be subtly thicker & denser that those in swimmers on account of adaptations to repetitive impact, for example. Muscles will of course respond the same way when subjected to stress by lifting weights at the gym.

On April 6, 2015 I had the rare opportunity to spend the day with Mr. Takashi Namikoshi in his Shiatsu Salon in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo Japan. He greets us with a big smiling face and says “call me Tak!” Takashi is the grandson of the founder of Shiatsu, Tokujiro Namikoshi.

Tokujiro was born Nov 15, 1905 on the island of Shikoku. At the age of 7 his family moved from the warm island climate to the more severe temperatures of northern island Hokkaido. On the day after the family arrived, the mother suddenly experienced pain in her knees….and then spread to her ankles, wrists, elbows and shoulders. The ailment was later diagnosed as rheumatism of the joints. The children, wanting to help their mother began pressing on the areas of her body that hurt. She frequently would tell Tokujiro “your hands feel best”. This praise encouraged Tokujiro to work harder in treating his mother. He found that when he concentrated on the areas that were the stiffest and coolest, his mother’s symptoms would improve. This was the origin of “Namikoshi Shiatsu Therapy.”

Mr. Namikoshi sits us down in one of his 3 treatment rooms and tells us about the history of Shiatsu and  shares stories of how is grandfather treated Marilyn Monroe and Mohamed Ali.

He then taught us that Shiatsu is a type of therapy that stimulates vital points located all over the body with pressure performed by the fingers and hands. Shiatsu can invigorate the 60 trillion cells in the human body, and promote an inherent natural healing ability. Moreover, it helps to promote the removal of waste materials such as lactic acid and carbon dioxide gas out of the human body.

Based on modern medical science, 660 basic vital points are located at muscles, nerves, blood vessels, lymphatic glands, hormonal glands and viscera, which can be stimulated to affect an organ’s functionality. The therapist must evaluate the condition of the muscles and decide the level of pressure to be performed.

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The following physical effects can be expected from Shiatsu: 1.revitalizing the skin 2. limbering the muscles 3. stimulating the circulation of body fluids 4. regulating neural functions 5. balancing the endocrine system 6. balancing the skeletal structure and 7. regulating the alimentary system

Once we had covered the history and basic principles of Shiatsu, Mr. Namikoshi demonstrated self shiatsu points in the thumbs, and neck. I asked him what he recommended as a self shiatsu routine to do every morning and he suggested 1. Finger clapping, spreading the arms very wide and focusing on connecting the 10 fingers quickly together while still lying in bed – this practice helps to “connect” the brain to the hands.  2. Three inside and outside points in the thumbs 3. Abdominal spiral Shiatsu and 4. Neck Shiatsu.  Each point is held for 3 seconds and pressed on an exhale.

The session ended with a 1 1/2 hour Shiatsu session with Mr Namikoshi, so that I could experience the true master at work. After the session I felt an incredible sense of calm and relaxation in my body. That night at dinner I found myself laughing harder than I have in years.

Since my time with the master, I have been practicing self shiatsu. The best thing about self shiatsu is that it can be done anytime, anywhere and with only ones hand and fingers as tools. It can be used to better understand one’s body and muscles and only requires a few minutes of time. Self Shiatsu can be helpful for those suffering from musculoskeletal pain but what is particularly great is that if done daily, it can help to prevent pain.

In the hopes of spreading this incredible healing art, Mr Namikoshi is planning to visit KIMA Center for Physiotherapy and Wellness to teach Shiatsu certification.

Committed to Healing | HEALING SUMMIT 2015 | Berlin Germany March 3, 2015

“Creating a paradigm shift through a holistic lifestyle”…was last year’s theme

This year our theme is “Committed to Healing” Today is a call to action!

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As part of our Commitment to Healing we would like to highlight a few of the speakers from the recent Healing Summit 2015. This one day conference considered how to encourage people to live life in all its full richness, caring for others to nurture greater well being and empowerment for all.

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Rochele Silveira Kurotel Longevity Medical Center in Brazil

Rochele Silveira is one of the daughters of the founders of the Kurotel, Medical Longevity Center and Spa (http://kurotel.com.br/) located in Gramado, south of Brazil. She studied Hotel Management in Gramado, Brazil and took her specialization in Salzburg, Austria. She also studied Marketing in Berkeley, CA, and now is part of the Family Council at the Kurotel and is the Director of the cosmetics company of the group called Kur Concept.

“Today we will talk about promoting peace in public schools.” When we first started to study meditation – what we found is that we could increase well being, compassion, tolerance and life happiness. Mediation had no cost and once you learned it, you can do it on your own ….. thinking of all of that, we thought, how could we extend that to more people?  A study in Detroit found that only 10 min of meditation could increase performance in school and decrease alcohol, hospitalization, etc…and besides this it is for everyone! Started doing meditation with our clients and seeing great results and began extending to “mentaviva.”

Putting it into action:

We created a mission to reduce violence and promote peace in public schools- WE can increase empathy. How does it work? Teach teachers how to teach students how to meditate- what is the importance of starting in childhood?

1. By age 4, children have 1 trilllion more synapses than an adult
2. By age 6 the prefrontal cortex has reached its max thickness
3. Need to give them positive thinking for positive action

The age of the kids in the program are from 3 to 18 years old.  We work with researchers and neuroscientists; in the classroom the kids do the “exercise for peace” it’s easy and can be done in any position, at the beginning of class or after recess. The kids are asked to constantly repeat 5 sentences out loud:

• I  am in peace

• My family and friends are in peace

• My neighborhood is in peace

• My city is in peace

• The world is in peace

It only takes 5- 10 min every day; the littlest ones do it with a song; the important thing is that they are metalizing the sentences. What we found:

1. Improve well being in relationship with parents and teachers
2. Cognitive pattern improved
3. School performance improved
4. Blood pressure was reduced
5. Decreased symptoms of ADD
6. Decrease use of tobacco alcohol and drugs and school violence

Comparing the results- We asked the children to make drawings at the beginning and at the end of the year. When they started the program we got a lot of drawings of guns and violence, at the end of the year the drawings featured suns, hearts and friends shaking hands. Currently there are 35,000 students participating in the free program.

The Kurotel longevity center focuses on 2 forms of meditation-

1. Mindfulness
2. Creative visualization – positive thoughts for insomnia anxiety chronic disease and others

Need to exercise the brain and know it is possible to train it to be different; we can lower BP, anxiety, improve sleep and immunity and family and social relationships with 10 min a day.