Brain Plasticity Therapy Concepts

Brain Plasticity Therapies - Activity - Intensity & Motivation

... and Active Prevention

Article by Dieter Luske N.D.-D.C.H.-D.M.H.-D.H
Holistic Therapy Consultant - Gold Coast - Canungra

Author of It happened in the seventies ... and ...

Activity, Intensity & Motivation are 3 important factors in successfully using Brain Plasticity based therapy.

1.) Activity

As mentioned in my last article, therapy requires the active participation of the patient. (Active Prevention Principle)

Patients usually have a passive role to play while on medical treatments, but with brain plasticity based therapy, the patients must be motivated to do most of the work towards their own healthcare, meaning they have to become "Active".

Activity is obviously a highly individual restrained field, depending on the patients ability to be active. Lateral efforts are often needed to find activities for chronically ill or disabled people. *However, visualisation and meditation techniques will be a vital part for most.

Physical Exercise, if possible will always be a part of the therapy, if someone can not walk, bike riding or swimming may be possible.

A change of "attitude and motivation" for that activity may be needed and can be vital.

The attitude may need to be changed away from the "problem, and towards the goal of stimulating "Brain Plasticity". With other words, the goal of eliminating pain may turn out to be quickly disappointing, but the goal of changing brain plasticity is a much more desirable goal, which scientifically has been proven to be possible, but is known to take time to take effect.

Having sorted out the attitude, makes it easier to concentrate on motivation, which needs to be switch on for many weeks or month. If the therapy fails, it may not be because of the therapy, but because of a lack in motivation to persist with activity.

Just remember, patients are used to be passive, a medical Doctor tells you to take some prescription and wait, and hope for the best. Brain plasticity based treatment is totally the opposite, which means a re-education for the patient. In a way, that is the first part of the therapy, the patient becomes or learns to become active and self-motivated.

2.) Intensity .... what role is it taking?

Intensity has both, a time and strength factor. If the therapy is highly intense, the Brain Change will be faster.

Whatever therapy strategy someone has been given, it needs to be practiced on a daily basis, and this practice needs to be adhered to for some weeks, if not months.

The practice itself needs also be intense. In case of a visualisation technique, it is not enough to just "visualize a bit", it needs to be clear and strong, possibly with the aid of real images to help to visualise images. One also needs to know precisely what to visualize, otherwise it will just fizzle out.

People not used to visualisation can be helped by starting to learn relaxation and meditation exercise, before trying some visualisation.

To visualize is not only to see an image in your mind, depending on the type of it, it may be a movie or exchanging one image for another.

Another way to intensify is to have the visualisation done with the help of Hypnosis or NLP type of guidance, self-hypnosis also can be learnt.

To intensify it even more, patients may attempt to actually, draw or paint their visualisation.

As you noticed, there may be much more to visualisation than meets the eye.

For example, a normal visual exercise just involves your "internal vision (sight) sense", however an intense visualisation can involve all your senses; sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch. To use all the senses, means you are totally involved, it is as the visualisation is actually "real".

Visualisation can be learnt.

Talking about learnin;, learning anything new is therapeutic and therefore highly recommended. This learning approach may help with attitude and motivation as well, because you are not just doing all this to "fight" your disease, you do it to enhance your life.

Here is a simple visualisation learnig training:

Look at yourself in a mirror, really look, your hair, forehead, eyebrows, nose, look at everything in detail. Now, close your eyes, but keep that "vision" in front of your now closed eyes. Try to hold it for a while, try to see the details of your face in that vision, if it starts to fade away, open your eyes and take in once more the real image, close eyes again. ( Repeat )

If visualisation is new to you, than you are learning now something new, please remember, to learn something new affords time, how long did it take you to learn to write your name ... you see? Be patient with yourself, and practice this 3 times daily for 5 minutes each for 3 days.

Now, if you can do this exercise > ( 3 times daily for 5 minutes, for 3 days), than you have what it takes to proceed with Brain Plasticity based Therapy.

If you stop after a minute, because it's too hard or too boring, than please change your attitude, or your motivation, and find a reason to do this exercise as prescribed. If you are good with visualisation already, and think that you are too good, and you don't have to do it, think again, this exercise will make your skill even better, and it will help you with the skill of "persevering".

If you like, take this exercise one important step further. To intensify this exercise, you first need to realise that you just look at a picture of you, which means that picture is not you with all your senses attached. Continue this exercise with: "stepping inside your visualized face, become that face and now you can't see your face anymore, but you can look down on yourself and see your feet..... what shoes or socks to you wear, what do you see?

Can you do it....? If yes, congratulation, you learnt the first step for successful visualisation.

3.) Motivation:

Changing the attitude from'fighting' disease or illness to 'supporting' yourself, your health, your lifestyle, your learning, your success, is much more Motivating.

And finally, many people ask, why should I do all this intense work if I can just go to my Doctor and get a pill?

The answer is simple, in chronic conditions the pills are usually not working as intended, any more.. by now, they even may make the problem worse, increasing the "groove" in your brain, carving out a chronic pain pathway, making the problem more chronic, because pain can become a learnt response.

That does not mean to stop any medication, it is crucial to stay on medication till instructed otherwise by your Doctor.

... the next article is discussing: Brain Change and Habits, or ...

... if you do what you always do, you get what you always get ..

... time to do something else ?

... or go back to the main Brain Plasticity Menu

Please contact me directly for more info or Research Participation: Dieter L. - Editor

* Disclaimer - Any general advice given in any article should not be relied upon and should not be taken as a substitute for visiting a qualified medical Doctor.