Changes in brain activity in different states can be registered by modern methods of neurovisualisation, with the help of positron emission tomography (PET). The results of numerous researches are published online, especially on the websites dedicated to the research in the field of hypnosis.
Areas of hot and cold in our body corresponding to the different states are registered by a thermograph.
It is known that lie detectors actively exploit this phenomenon to confirm, if the information given by the respondent is true or false. However, a person can discover a lot about him/herself without any machines, simply by immersing in ones sensations. Ability to self-scan seems to be this wonderful mechanism offered by nature in order to give us an opportunity to find out the characteristics of our state of mind and ways to participate in its improvement.
Information provided by our internal sight is as relevant as the data on the radar for an air-traffic control officer responsible for airplane traffic in the sky.
Somatopsychotherapy
Karl Jaspers (18831969) noted that intense concentration on ones own somatic sensations (like the one described by Schulz in connection with autogenous training) leads to discovering organic worries which do not depend on suggestion and are not the fruit of illusory development of normal sensations, but they are available for testing by augmented cognition (Jaspers, K., 1997, p. 283). He called the field of science that deals with the sensations in the body somatopsychotherapy. The earlier name of psychocatalysis was somatopsychotherapy.
Sensations that accompany various worries are quite concrete. Just think how feeling happy makes us fly, and this sensation seems to be very strong. The weight of unresolved issues often pressures a person, and it is quite tangible. For each emotion and each psychological process, there is its specific configuration of characteristic sensations.
Concentrations and discharges, rises and falls
When a person closes his or her eyes and starts paying attention to the sensations at the level of the body, then it turns out to be quite easy to determine the places of fullness and emptiness within the internal space. These places often manifest themselves as concentrations of light, air, water, some matter, lava, golden or silver sand or other pleasant substances. However, one can also discover blackness, darkness, and greyness of different degree of density: it can seem like dust, soot, pieces of glass, chips of stones, and other elements, which one perceives as disturbing, unpleasant, and as a foreign object causing tension around itself.
According to peoples perceptions, the body itself may appear as a mightytree standing on the topof the hill, and, on the contrary, it may look like a scrag. Sometimes, its a beautiful vase filled withjewellery, and sometimes it is an old dusty room. All these images send their message as they reflect the state of a person. When we begin paying keen attention to these sensations, it opens up access to the regulation of spontaneously provoked conditions.
Meditation-based practices
Due to sensations that have to do with the realm of consciousness, they are easier to register when having ones eyes closed. That is why the major part of such practice is meditation-based: a person closes his or her eyes and observes the processes that take place inside and consciously takes part in them.
One should add here that observation practices go a long way back in history, and their efficacy has been noted.
Lets observe together
During one of the international congresses on psychology, I was sitting next to a Hindu who was an heir of the ancient tradition of internal work. It was obvious from his behaviour that he was a real guru. He was a very sympathetic and warm person. When one Russian woman who looked very sad told him that her heart was aching, his reply was the following: When I finish the Q&A session, well go and sit together in the hall, and well have a look at it together18.
Psychocatalysis has quite a lot in common with various ancient and modern practices, but it also brings them to the next level. This method has a diagnostic stage that is similar to Western analytical practices. However, if traditional analysis of a certain feeling can take years, in psychocatalysis, it takes about 3 minutes. Then, there is a stage when the patient observes the changes of his or her state, and this aspect of the method brings it closer to Easters meditation-based practices. Yet again, if traditional meditation-based approach may last for years, therapeutic stage of psychocatalysis takes minutes. There is a bridge between these two stages: a kind of a transitional stage that unites the work of the conscious mind and the innermost wisdom. This is the stage of evaluation and decision-making, and it takes as much as one needs to grasp the discovered situation and find a solution to it. In many cases, it just takes seconds, but it is those seconds that matter most because they are followed by switching from the reflection to the healing observation.
A clever fight and other congenial practices
An attentive reader will find a certain correlation between psychocatalysis and a clever fight, which is a practice from Orthodox monarchism: to observe everything that is happening in the internal space in order to preserve the purity of your heart and yourself as a good vessel for the Holy Spirit19.
Some readers may also see that psychocatalysis has something in common with the methods used by the country quacks. They admit that the change in the state of a person is connected with the fact that our soul receives or loses particular substances, the way it happens with hiccups, for instance. Hiccups attacks a person and then, when one is healed, it comes out and disperses. By the way, in psychocatalysis, you would not send hiccups to anyone, as there is no such need for it. It just stops getting the support of the body and disappears.
In some way, it also reminds me of a Russian fairy-tale about Trouble. Once upon a time, there were two brothers: one lived happily, and the other did not. The unhappy brother decided to find out the secret of happiness from his brother. I buried my troubles in the field. The unhappy brother was also envious, and instead of burying his troubles, he dug up that of his brother. Then he dug up Trouble and said to it: Go back to my brother. Why would I go back to him: hes a bad person, he buried me but youre good because youve dug me up, Ill stay with you.
Shaman practices are based on the attitude very close to that of the quacks: some parts of the soul can be lost and some foreign objects, on the contrary, can take their place inside our soul where they should not be. Shaman will be sending the snake, which causes distress from the stomach to the centre of the Earth, and that pure part of the soul, which has been rescued will be sent back to the body. Here, we need to add that psychocatalysis does not offer standard solutions like everything bad will be sent to magma, etc. The principle of reverse development of the symptoms suggests involution of harmful states, using the same way they appeared in the first place. Fright experienced during ones life goes away through the top of the head; if it was experienced in mothers uterus, it will leave the body through the navel; and if this fright is ancestral, then it will go away through legs and feet. Sometimes, it comes out of all pores. The way it appeared, it will disappear it is the same movement, but backwards.
Psychocatalysis is also a close autosuggestion of I. Schultz. However, we do not simply work with wishful thinking. When the warm feeling of psychocatalytic reaction spreads all over the patients body, it has its origins and appears for a reason. What makes psychocatalysis different from autosuggestion is the approach to the fact, where warmth and heaviness are initially located and what keeps them there. This is autosuggestion with a diagnostic phase and with solutions concerning spontaneous formations in the body before the training. During the session of psychocatalysis, patients observe the movement of negative sensations to the periphery because there is nothing left that would hold them in the centre. In the course of the session, the cause stops receiving any supply, then it is sent to a reasonable distance, and after that, the patient finds an antidote in order to stop the cause poisoning his/her life. As a result, this person achieves not only a temporary state of relaxation, but also an actual reinvention that will give him/her peace for many years ahead.
Some people call this practice hypnosis without hypnosis, or even hypnosis inside out. They refer to it as hypnosis because what happens during the session is close to what we witness at the session of hypnotic trance. It is without hypnosis because we dont confront our consciousness and that is why it is unnecessary to turn it off. On the contrary, our consciousness has to take an active part in everything that is happening during the session. For this exact reason, this method can be called hypnosis inside out, or anti-hypnosis: Wake up and observe what is happening inside yourself! The initial state is, thus, considered to be a kind of a dream one has to wake up from. The fact, that consciousness is active and takes part in the process, means that psychocatalysis does not have cases of the patients resistance. There is nothing to resist. This is the most advanced kind of hypnosis, which does not really happen, but has its effect.
The light of knowledge versus the darkness of ignorance
Data processing is followed by different sensations, and the experience of practising psychocatalysis allows us to make the following observations.
When new useful knowledge, welcomed by us, makes its way through our mind, we experience the sensation when some light-coloured mass of information is moving from periphery to the centre. When unnecessary knowledge is being deleted, we observe the reverse process: it begins from the centre and moves to the periphery; it comes out through the top of the head as something dark, grey, or black, which is what affected us at the moment of frustration. This is how primordial elements of our consciousness send signals, which enter the body and leave it. A variety of cases when patients needed to get rid of unnecessary information are presented in my book Phobias, Disappointments, and Losses (2010, 2011, 2014), and we are going to see more of those examples that relate to the subject of this book.
Knowledge is light; knowledge is power. Ignorance is dark. These expressions reflect how people really feel. If everything goes smoothly, the light of knowledge, which nurtures life, fills in and lightens up the body, whereas the darkness, cast by ignorance and lack of confidence and characterized by a knot in the stomach, step away and disappear, defeated by its power. If something foreign has wounded the depths of the body, it would go away, too.
Knowledge in its integrity, thoroughness, and maturity finds its deserved place while harmful fragmentary and random information leaves it. When frights, deceits, and other traumatizing signals leave the body, our autonomic nervous system calms down, and our emotional balance is restored.
Studying is much more efficient and successful when one is in a calm state. In this condition, the flow of information come from every direction, and everything new seems easy to learn.
Mission control centre
The location of information within the psychological space of a person defines its status and its influence on this persons life. There are places with more degree of influence, or prestige.
The vault for most significant information is usually in our stomach. It is like a town hall. This place keeps the essential information about what one should strive for and what one has to avoid. This is the place, we will usher the information that will help us take a creative approach to life and will eliminate everything that has a harmful effect on it.
Core competence
Information can be stored at the level of the head, but this is not its final destination. Our head and brain can be easily disturbed by the stress. Experience shows that a much more secure place is our body, for instance, at the level of the solar plexus. Deeper levels of the nervous system are much more stress resistant, and they keep the information even in extreme situations. It is similar to oceanic depths because they are always quiet, even if there is a storm on the surface. Having such core competence, a person maintains the ability to adapt creatively to different circumstances, even when reason seems to fail to do it efficiently, and when the brain is intoxicated by stress. Nevertheless, only information that is useful and appropriate for life should be stored there.
In order to relocate knowledge and rearrange everything, good and bad can be done with the help of the phenomenon as mentioned above; that is: by way of observing these processes at the level of sensations.
Unexpected answers to strange questions
Concerning the question of the future of ones knowledge, then it turns out to be quite possible to receive coherent answers to the questions that may seem odd at first sight: Where is the knowledge I already have? What does it feel like? As an answer to these questions, you can hear the following, for example: Its a ball in my stomach. And where are the sensations connected with the new knowledge? Its a fog above my head.
The difference of emotions can give us quite a lot! To discover it and benefit from it, all you need to do is to concentrate a little.
The experience of internal work of many people shows that one can trace how new information enters the body, the way it exists, develops, the way it is used when its necessary, and the way it serves to solve problems. Flows of information that come our way and flows of information that we give away can be tangible! The ability to reconnect with our sensations through our attention gives us the keys to take an active part in the distribution and use of knowledge. This allows us to sort through useful and unnecessary information and reinvents ourselves.
Moving towards refreshing self-awareness is what we are striving for.
Question attack using a three-step method
This is how it is done. Our mind is attacked by questions about the immediate sensations like Where? What? and What does it look like? We have to stress the fact that we are talking about revealing what it is actually like, so this process does not mean fantasizing or making things up. As soon as the characteristics of the spontaneously formed state begin to surface, one can move from the diagnostic stage to the stage of therapy: from the evaluation of the state and solution to the observation of the changes, and from analysis to meditation.