So again I find cause to point my will to scribble my musings towards the mainstream science community and cheer as they begin prove the  goings on of the brain.  Albeit the goings on in the brain that many therapists have been working with since at least the early 1980’s if not long, long before that.

Here’s what I’m talking about.

The boffins at Oxford Uni have run a series of experiments on pain and pain response.  One of these experiments involved a group of people with chronic hand pain looking at their sore hand through a pair of inverted binoculars (binoculars round the wrong way).  Incredibly they found that the subjective pain response was greatly reduced and the amount of swelling was also reduced due to the fact that the sore hand now appeared to be much smaller.  (Source)

This is great research and for anyone out there with chronic pain - or any pain for that matter - as all you have to do now is get used to navigating your world through those darn binoculars and all your pain will begin to shrink and may eventually disapear!  Or is there an easier way than walking around with your binoculars every day?

I point to another piece of research that I recently came across and this I find truly innovative and a great way of merging cognitive and medical science.

Scientists (or should I call these guys uber-boffins) at Omneuron in California have turned pain control into what I can only describe as a game.

Here’s how it works; imagine someone with chronic pain.  When that pain fires an area of the brain connected to pain control, fires at exactly the same time.  The guys at Omneuron have designed a piece of software that measures that ‘fire’ in the brain and turns it into a virtual flame.  The more pain, the bigger the flame; less pain, smaller flame - you get the idea?

Our imaginary chronic pain sufferer gets put into a MRI scanner -the big coffin like scanning machines you’ll have seen on telly - wearing a pair of special virtual reality goggles.   These goggles then show the client their own unique, real-time ‘flame of pain’ as measured by the MRI scanner.

Here’s where it get’s even better, the patient is then talked through various visualisation techniques such as imagining the area being flooded with soothing chemicals or being fixed by armies of little helpers and watches as the flame gets smaller and smaller until, after some practice, the patient is easily controlling the flame and therefore their own pain. (Source)

How cool is that!

I must admit the man in charge, Dr Christopher deCharms (not kidding!), then loses it a bit by saying that ‘in time a patient could evoke the effect without the machine’.   Aaaahhh…

Of course a patient can invoke the effect without the bloody machine!!  It’s nothing to do with the machine.  It’s all our own doing.

Feelings, including pain, are just feelings.  Yet because all our senses are part of one large cognitive net we can use one sense to ‘talk’ to another sense, i.e. we can use visualisation to affect our sensory feelings.

Here’s a wee trick for you that will save you a lot of money on paracetamol.  Next time you have a headache ask yourself “If this headache was to have a colour what colour would it be?” and see what comes up for you.  Is it a blue headache, a fluorescent yellow headache, a boiling red headache, a deep black headache?  Whatever colour it is, imagine turning it white.  Imagine a flood of brilliant soothing white entering your head and taking away all the old colour.

Try it.  What have you go to lose?

If you suffer from any other type of pain you can use a similar technique:

1. Close your eyes and get ‘in touch’ with the pain

2. Ask yourself ‘If this pain was to have a shape what shape would it be?’ (accept whatever comes up e.g. circle, square, cloud, raindrops, spiders, snakes, pins, fire.  Always work with whatever your mind wants to imagine.)

3. Ask yourself ‘If this shape was to have a colour what colour would it be?’

4. Now if that pain was to be totally gone now, what shape would complete freedom from pain be?  And what colour would that shape be?

5. Use your imagination to completely change the old painful shape into the new freedom shape and notice what happens to the pain.

6. Do this for 5-10 minutes every single day for a week and notice the results.

This is only one way to do it and you can use the soothing medicine or the army of people example if that works better for you.

Before I go here’s a couple of resources or you if you are interested in finding out more about how your mind can affect your body.

Dr David Hamilton is a leading expert on the science of how the mind affects the body and his book
It’s the Thought That Counts: Why Mind Over Matter Really Works is a fantastic read packed full of scientific study and research into the affect your mind has over your healing ability.

David also has a new book out How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body which I’ve still to read.  I would say, having met David a couple of times and having read ‘It’s the thought that counts’, that it will be also packed full of the science of healing with the mind.

I would, of course, be failing miserably if I didn’t also recommend the classic Quantum Healing Exploring the Frontiers of Mind /Body Spirit by Deepak Chopra.  One of the most insightful and incredible books I have ever read and a must for anyone interested in the power of the mind.

Anyway, enough from me for today.  I’ll be back soon to give you some tips on how to forget the crappy New year’s resolutions that some of you (and you know who you are!) are already not keeping and help set some truly empowering goals for 2009.

‘Til then, happy thinking.

Brian