New Technique !

Last weekend I wanted pizza for dinner. Pizza is a challenge when you are eating a keto diet. Making a good crust takes a lot of work, more work than I wanted to go through at that time. I recalled an experiment I did several years ago making a pizza crust simply by rolling out some Italian sausage as though it was pizza dough that worked out just fine. I needed to go to the store to pick up something for Ellen anyway, so I grabbed the Italian sausage while there for the evening treat. Once home I cooked up a lovely sugar and carb-free pizza sauce from scratch (since everything at the store is pretty high in carbs.) I rolled out the sausage and pre-cooked it before spreading out the sauce and putting on the other pizza ingredients. I had performed a similar trick on hamburger patties the week before, so I already had the necessary mozzarella, olives, green onions, ham slices, and pepperoni. As a bonus treat, I also added sliced pepperoncini on top. The final pizza was delicious… however that night my tummy was not happy with that meal.

Since technically the hamburger pizzas I had made previously were the same meal digestively and I had no problem with them, I figured I must be having a food-sensitive reaction to either the sausage or the pepperoncini. I got up (yes, it was the middle of the night), pulled the leftovers out of the fridge, and tested myself. Sure enough, my body was in reaction. At that moment I got the flash of an idea of how to clear the reaction without my usual in-office protocols. Normally I have a patient hold the reactive substance while I check for which acupuncture meridian has flipped out (reacted) whereupon I then adjust the various spinal segments that will calm down that meridian. This typically settles down the reaction for anywhere from 6 months to forever.

Doing all that checking on myself and then trying to reach the spots on my spine to do the needed correction is basically out of my reach. Instead, the flash I got showed me a different way to achieve these results that I could do on myself easily. It employed a combination of several older techniques developed by other doctors. The first piece was the use of a neurologic reflex point on the surface of the body mapped by Dr. Bennett, a radiologist back in the 1940s. He found, using dye injected into the bloodstream and tracking it with x-rays, various reflex points on the body that would cause the blood flow to open up in specific organ areas. Dr. Goodheart correlated these points to the various acupuncture meridians and specific muscles. Finally, Dr. Callahan isolated two specific points above the eyes (related to the stomach reflex per Goodheart) that were for increasing the blood flow to the midbrain and limbic emotion processing centers of the brain. He developed a simple technique for releasing phobias in patients. Lastly, I pulled in the techniques used by EMDR therapists as well as bilateral brain training to move information from one side of the brain to the other to stimulate the complete processing of stuck brain issues.

So there I was in the middle of the night with this sudden insight/idea/download of how to address my upset gut reaction by treating it as a food intolerance. I didn’t even have the kitchen light on, so I was standing there in the dark doing this weird new technique… and it seemed to work!  I re-tested myself in the morning to see if the reaction was still gone and it was. I waited 12 hours and tried some more of the pizza to see how well it sat on my stomach. So far so good. Now to tell you about how you can try this new technique for yourself.

The first step is establishing that your body is reacting to some substance. Some of you already know how to do muscle testing, and that would be the easiest and quickest way to start the process. If not then a simple process I have shown many patients is to stand quietly and close your eyes then reach out and pick up the substance in question. If your body does not like it, subconsciously your body will pull away from it. This involves an automatic tension in the extensor muscles of the body – the back muscles and muscles that pull the arms back. By being quiet and closing your eyes you can generally feel this “pull back” or pull away sensation – sort of a falling backward feeling. The opposite can also be felt if something is really good for you or supports you – the flexor muscles that pull you forward can be felt pulling you towards the substance. My patients will use this technique to self-test their supplements, even while in the health food store before they buy something so they can pick the best product for them.

If you find you have a negative or pulling away reaction to something, you can then “treat” that reaction if it is due to a negative experiential association to that substance. (This is how most food sensitivities begin, as an associated reaction to something else negative.) A deeper understanding of this was revealed back in 1985 when it was discovered that the molecules that our brain used to process emotion were also the same ones used to control our immune system. Our feelings and reactions control our immune system to some degree in so many different body systems. This understanding formed the basis of treating myself for a food reaction by treating the emotion centers of my brain.

Once I tested and found a reaction, I could move directly into treatment mode. First I had the food in a container on the counter. I moved the food to the edge of the counter so that I could step forward and have it touch my abdomen. Conversely, I could have sat down with the food on my lap. Next, I put the first two fingers of each hand on the right and left frontal eminence of my forehead (about 1 inch above my eyebrows directly above my pupils.) While lightly holding these reflex points (stomach points) for opening up the blood flow to the midbrain, I move my eyes left to right back and forth. I keep this up for about 20 seconds. The increased blood flow will relax the midbrain which is currently reading alarm due to the presence of the offending substance. The eye movement shuttles this information between the two hemispheres of the brain to stimulate processing. With each shift of the eyes, the body learns bit by bit to associate the blood flow stimulated relaxation with the awareness of the food or substance. This same process is what I teach patients to help them get over phobias or reactive emotional traumas such as auto accidents. By pairing the feeling of relaxation with the awareness of what previously triggered a fear reaction, the fear is unwound. The insight this morning was that this same unwinding would work with food triggers.

That is all there is to the technique. All total the whole thing should only take a couple of minutes. If you have a long-standing deep reaction to a food or substance there may be several deeper layers that need to be released. You will know if this is needed by doing the avoidance body tilt test or muscle testing at a later time. For instance, you may find that a certain substance only bothers you at times of other stress, or with certain people or situations. If so, simply take a minute to de-stress the reaction by re-doing the technique. I have had great success with the food intolerance clearing and with the trauma/phobia clearing for the last 40 years. But this particular combo protocol is new, so try it out and let me know if it is working for you.    david@fairoakshealth.com

If you would like to see some ancient video of how Dr Goodheart first discovered the emotional correlations between Dr. Bennett’s reflex points here is a YouTube video. Dr Goodheart Discusses the Bennett Reflexes  If you would like to learn more about Dr. Callahan’s 5-minute Phobia Cure, his book is still available on Amazon.