THE PROCESS OF CHANGE

        -The Tao Te Ching

The process of knowing oneself is an important inner journey. The balance between the need to take action and the need to introspect is what leads to true wisdom. Often, circumstances in our environment will be the catalysts to change, whether it is a job stressor, a relationship stressor or an inner stressor. When our habitual coping mechanisms become ineffective to manage external circumstances that demand profound change, we become overwhelmed. Then the need for change becomes imperative because the stressors are experienced directly in the body as anxiety, depression or loneliness. Very normal people become challenged by the death of a loved one, marital problems, and other stressors.

Psychotherapy becomes most useful by bringing an understanding of the relationship between thoughts, feelings and bodily experiences in the experience of stress and stressors. Psychotherapy is also effective! A study reported in Consumer Reports reported that thousands of people who had undergone psychotherapy were highly satisfied with the outcome of their treatment, having satisfactorily resolved the problems that led to treatment.

Effective mind and body and cognitive behavioral strategies now make it possible to change emotional states, behaviors and negative thought patterns. Now more than ever before it is possible to accomplish long-term resolution of conditions from the core of the problems that a person will seek treatment for.

        -Helen Keller
        -Rolling McCarty

All thoughts all emotions are biochemical realities in our bodies. Candance Pert, the chief biochemist at NIH, states "I cannot separate brain from head. If one takes into account the DNA directing the dance of the peptides then the body is the outward manifestation if the mind." Negative emotions harm the body, the mind and the immune system. This is what Candice Pert's research at NIH established and thus the birth of the field of neuropsychoimmunology.

The autonomic system which works with our conscious awareness is composed of two essential branches. When stressed, the sympathetic branch floods our bodies with harmful stress hormones. While responding to danger through complex fight-and-flight responses served our ancestors well, in our modern-day society these responses are not from physical danger but from perceptions of danger - in other words threats to our psychological integrity. These responses then can lead to emotional, physical and psychological problems that are known to wear the immune system down.

The other branch, as equally important, the parasympathetic branch counterbalances the trigger response on the nervous system. It is the branch responsible for calming the body, the mind and the emotions. Unfortunately, our accessing of the parasympathetic branch is lost to the hectic pace of our modern society. Calming body/mind techniques offer the promise of understanding how to harness our inner resources to transform suffering and stress.

The Process of change happens through a heightened awareness of the interplay between body, the mind and the heart. When such awareness is honed, change takes root and one becomes who wants to be.