Body or Mind approach when dealing with depression?

Nowhere is the body - mind connection and it’s impact on wellness and illness more obvious then in depression. Depression affects the mind, which involves feelings of sadness and decreased energy having an impact on ones’s ability to perform everyday tasks. However, the major underlying cause to these matters of the mind is a biochemical imbalance due to a malfunctioning of the physiological stress response, thus making it a physical problem! 

So if it is a physical problem, would you then still think it logical that a talk therapy is the place to start your healing?

I’m not saying that talk therapy doesn’t help, it does and it has it rightful place in a treatment package that is suited to the individuals demands and path to recovery. But to start talk therapy when the underlying cause is on a physical level seems a bit odd. 

A brief description of the stress response might give us an ‘aha but of-course’ moment backing up the idea that a mind approach is maybe not the most efficient treatment to consider when suffering from depression and burnout.

A good functioning stress response will activate the fight and flight mechanism after a threat or challenge has been perceived and returns to normal when the threat or challenge is over. 

An activated fight and flight mechanism is associated with among other things the release of the stress hormones adrenalin and cortisol and the physiological changes of heart rate, blood pressure, breath rate which increase and incoherence of the heart rate variability^*. This in turn will have an effect on thoughts, actions, feelings and more: Heightens our alertness, gives focal vision, tenses certain muscles, digestion is halted,...  

Problems start when the stress response doesn’t return to a state of ease and thus continues pumping stress hormones into the bloodstream and therefore heart rate, blood pressure, breath rate stay elevated and heart rate variability remains incoherent. Short-term, this will have an impact on (job) performance, loss of general overview, misreading situations, short-temperedness, agitation,... Longterm, it effects - on top of all the previous - our immune system resulting in becoming more prone to bacterial and viral infections,  heart disease, mood and character changes,... 

In an early stage, a malfunctioning stress response can be facilitated back into balance by for example the Heartmath’s Quick Coherence^® Technique: using heart focus, heart breathing and heart feeling. This exercise can also be applied in a daily practice as a preventive tool. 

However, when the stress response is out of balance for a longer time and physical side-effects are starting to show and have a negative impact on our general wellbeing - aches and pains, mood swings, insomnia,... - then a more comprehensive treatment that includes a physical and energetic approach is necessary.

BioMotions^® Body-Coaching is such a health approach. It facilitates, by means of involuntary micro-movements, the self healing processes that have been perturbed by the effects of stress or trauma. Thus promoting physical, physiological and psychological wellbeing.

BioMotions^® Body-Coaching is based on the single universal ‘tidal’ principle and can be applied as a stand-alone holistic approach or it can be integrated in an existing practice: Psychotherapy, coaching, massage, reiki,...

The benefits of BioMotions^® Body-Coaching is - among other things - that:

• It is based on a principle and not a technique and therefore very versatile to any given situation.
• It can be applied any place and any time
• It has no negative side-effects
• It has an immediate positive effect on the physiology of stress
• It is simple and straightforward
• Anyone can learn it

BioMotions^® Body-Coaching does not cure but it brings back the potential of healing through the regulation of the malfunctioning physiological stress response. 

When the biochemistry balance is restored and the individual needs extra support to steer his or her life into a new direction or needs help with putting a new perspective on a situation, psychotherapy or coaching for that matter can provide a great contribution. 

Love and Light

Tom

^*HRV = a physiological phenomenon where the time interval between heart beats varies. It is measured by the variation in the beat-to-beat interval

BioMotions Body-Coaching by Tom Meyers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Message to the people of Japan

I’ve been watching the news - while on holiday - of the natural disaster that struck your country. A catastrophe of a dimension that we haven’t seen for a long time. A catastrophe with implications that effect all life forms. 

Although I might be thousands of kilometers away I can feel the influence this calamaty has on me just through reading, listening, by absorbing the news. My mind tries to comprehend  what has happened and wonders what the implications might be in the future on all our lives. As an impact it will have, economically we are all interdependent so already looking from this angle changes will come our way. But there is more as microcosmos and macrocosmos are just a reflection of each other so will this inner shaking of the earth shake us all at the core of our being. I can feel already my body being much more in need of attention as it tries to absorb also on an unconscious level the impact of what happened. 

Japan might be more prone to these earthquakes - lying in the ring of fire - then we are in Belgium but disaster can strike anywhere. Unconsciously this disaster triggers in me questions about survival. Maybe questions is not the right word as my deeper unconscious self doesn’t think but acts on instinct and instinct is guided by my physiology and if one goes beyond the realm of matter by waves and frequencies. 

A quote from Albert Einstein comes to mind “The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” The particle being matter, our physical body. It is but a quick link to the effects a natural disaster like in your country can have an impact on me directly. 

When the earthquake hit Haiti I already felt a big commotion within me and this was repeated after the floods in Australia and the quake in Christchurch, New Zealand. There have been many more that made me stand still, reflect and made me feel helpless.

Today I write to you as I don’t want to sit back anymore and be indifferent. As an osteopath and body-coach I have come to understand that major life changes, overload of input, emotions, trauma... have an enormous impact on our wellbeing. 

As human beings we have been gifted with a remarkable self healing mechanism. However the fine balance of this mechanism can become perturbed when we chronically challenge it or when it is over challenged, the latter being the case for you now in Japan. The threshold of this balance is unique for every person, but with a disaster of this kind where some of you have lost your whole family, your home, job, security,... I can’t imagine it leaves anybody untouched. 

In my body-coaching and osteopathy practice I see many people who have aches and pains, suffer from depression, burn-out etc just from trying to cope with daily life, work, relationships... The final straw is usually a big change like loss of a job, a loved one or a physical trauma. From that moment it is only downhill. 

Although these final straw moments are terrible and I don’t want to minimize them but what you are going through is of a level that well exceeds the stressors that most of my patients suffer. So therefore I can but predict - taking into account what I see on a daily basis - what this disaster can do to the human being.

Stress is the word used when our organism fails to respond to emotional or physical threats, whether actual or imagined. We experience the signs of stress on a cognitive, emotional, physical or behavioral level: Depression, moodiness, mindlessness, aches and pains, social withdrawal, procrastination, sleeping problems, short-temperedness, loss of focus, feeling of helplessness... 

All these and much more will set in with many of you in the aftermath of this natural disaster. In a time when you need to rebuild your life, when you need focus, insight, vision, you might have no access to those parts of the brain that are creating these due to the physiological stress response that has gone out of control, that has locked itself in a survival mode pattern and that thus runs you on automatic pilot. 

We experience this lock-down on a small scale when we touch something hot and we straightaway pull our hand back. This is a reflex mechanism and purely instinctive. We don’t think “oh that’s hot I need to pull my hand away” as it would be too late. The conscious mind is too slow in reacting to minimize the damage. The same reflex happens when we see a car speeding up in our direction we don’t think we act, we jump or start running fast to get out of the way. Luckily most of the times we go in and out of these survival mechanism moments. A big shock or trauma can impair this physiological stress response mechanism to return to it’s allostatic balance. When this system is compromised you don’t even know it. Slowly, but surely, the body will start showing signs of dis-ease: tiredness, being a bit more edgy, concentration problems, digestive problems... which can eventually lead to depression and burn-out.

However and this is the good news that I like to share with you. There are ways to help your body, your organism to cope better. I’m not saying that all problems will be gone. I’m not saying that there are miracle cures. Some people will need professional help and guidance. However we can do a lot ourselves. 

We can help ourselves by consciously partaking in our self-healing. We have lost this art but it’s time to bring it back.

The self-help tools I will share with you on this website are part of a 2 day workshop that I’ve started to give from the beginning of this year after having done some test runs late 2010. Most of these tools are not something I have come up with but that I have come across over the years and started to gather on my website so that people could take more control over their wellbeing after a treatment. It was my patients that asked what they could do to increase their resilience. It is also thanks to my patients feedback that I’m convinced that these tools work. It worked for them, it will work for you. These tools need  to be practiced on a daily basis but are not time consuming. These tools will give you access to your full potential and thus you will gain time when you apply them consistently.  These tools form part of what I call an elementary health care approach. Elementary as they go back to the basics of what being human is all about. Elementary as they are easy and straightforward. 

You are in need of all the help you can get. I might be just a man somewhere on this planet far away from the epicenter of this disaster but I feel with you and want to contribute and do my part to help. We are all one, we are a collective and it makes me uneasy not to do anything. Knowing, what I know from my experience as body-coach and osteopath about the stress response. From my personal research into solutions to bring back balance to an over challenged stress response. From seeing that a solution to bring back balance can be so easy to learn and apply. I know act.

I wanted already to react after the earthquake in Haiti. I didn’t because I wasn’t ready I didn’t have all the elements needed. It is only now that I can see clearly that although I might not have all the answers this information is what I can share with you. This can already make the difference for many of you.

I also recommend to the people of Haiti, Christchruch, Brisbane, war zones in fact to everyone start applying some if not all of these practices. You will see it will help you on many levels. It will help your wellbeing.

Consider this “80% of all illnesses are related to stress”, stress is the health problem number one our society faces today and that was already before this disaster struck. It is time that you and me, that we start taking measures to do something about this. it’s starts with information and that I’m giving you here. What I can’t do is to apply these tools for you. That you can only do for yourself as I only can do them for me. This is thus about you taking up the responsibility of your health again. To become the driver of your wellbeing and not the passenger and in a worst case scenario the victim of your own body that has displaced your mind. 

Spread the word. Spread the content of this website to all your friends and family. Start groups to share this information. Add exercises that you know that also offer help. 

Remember they need to be simple and straightforward they may not provoke more stress.  

Lets bring light on this planet, you, me, everyone, together as one big family that heals each other.

Be good to you.

Tom Meyers

The self-help tools you will find on the following website dedicated to people all around the world that have been affected by effects of stress and trauma: elementaryhealthcare.wordpress.com

Your health is your responsibility.

80% of all illnesses are related to stress. The World Health Organization declared professional stress as one of the biggest dangers of the 21^st century. In 2008 insurance companies spent 5,2 billion euro for the treatment of depression and this figure is rising yearly. 

Time for change! It is time for taking up the responsibility for our own health. This doesn’t mean that doctors and therapists shouldn’t be consulted anymore when it is necessary. Interaction with others is the basis of our society and part of that is seeking professional medical care when needed, going to the garage when our car is broken and going to the shops to get food. 

Taking up the responsibility for our own health means that we start implementing what we already know, instead of simply knowing it. For example, smoking is bad for you, we all know it and so do smokers. This is what I’m talking about: we know, but some are not taking the step to stop smoking. It is the same with drinking enough water, having regular exercise, eating healthy food etc. but the same counts for thoughts, positive thoughts do have a positive impact on us, negative thoughts take us down. The list is endless and different for each person.

Stress refers to the consequence of the failure of an organism to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats, whether actual or imagined. Stress is the consequence of inaction because if we were more active and implemented that what we know is good for us, then our organism would be far more resilient. 

We can help our bodies to cope better if we want to. We can lower stress levels easily. We can take the responsibility for our health into our own hands. It only needs a shift from an external solution driven mindset to an internal one. What can I do to improve my health? What can I implement into my daily practice to cope better? These internal questionings do not exclude the outside interaction. Who can I go and see to help me on my path to bring back balance in my body? Who can teach me tools that I can apply to improve my health?  

Did you know that a simple breathing exercise that does not take you more than 9 minutes (3 x 3 minutes) in a whole day can make a difference? 

So what’s your excuse? 

Tom Meyers

Osteopath & BioMotions^® Body-Coach

www.elementaryhealthcare.com

Elementary healthcare and training for the promotion of health from within

The Being in my Body

Today I received an email with the following message: “I’ve decided to develop my ‘being in my body’ - what can you suggest?”

A short sentence that can be answered with a few words (see below), but I think the person would like a bit more insight. Therefore I thought it an idea to write out my ideas - in more general terms to answer his request.  At the same time I want to include you, the readers of my blog, as I think the question is (really) one that concerns us all. We might phrase the question differently, but at the end of the day we’re feeling the need for change and this is what I think is the essence here.

Did you know that 80% of all illnesses are due to stress? You might think it has nothing to do with the initial question, yet I think it does. Stress is a consequence of a failing organism. Stress is a result of a body which is not coping with the demands we put on it. These demands can be emotional, physical, behavioural, energetic... 

Not coping can be translated physiologically as a continuous activation of the fight & flight mode (increasing sympathetic neuronal activity, adrenaline, cortisol, breath rate,...) which in turn lowers the immune system, has a negative impact on the parts of the brain that are regulating our emotions, memory, cognitive functions,... A continuously activated physiological stress response will detach us from our being, from being conscious, as all our regulatory system will go on 'automatic pilot'.

So, ‘being in the body’ requires a body that can cope with the demands put on it. This coping level can be achieved, but it requires a conscious effort of ourselves and I would go even further -  it requires a conscious effort of those around us, too. Like my body where a trillion cells are working together, so do we need to start working as a team. 

So how can we help ourselves? By implementing ‘down-time’ or in neuro-language, by increasing parasympathetic activity (relaxation) which must be followed by sympathetic activity  (activates) but (doesn’t ) this is not always the case  these days. 

This can be done by various means  for example, certain breathing exercises, reading a book, just taking a stroll (more suggestions: https://sites.google.com/site/biomotionsbodycoaching/self-help-tools). Going for a massage can do the trick but more so the BioMotions Body-Coaching approach as it works directly on the regulation of the physiological stress response. Seeking help is helping ourselves. One can also apply body-coaching or a massage to oneself - depending on the situation.

Helping oneself is going into partnership with the body and taking up the responsibility of our own wellbeing (as mentioned before this also includes seeking help from others) instead of leaving it to its own devices which we have the tendency to do. This is a conscious act and thus part of developing consciousness in general. Consciousness by applying precautionary measures that allow for the physiological stress response to regulate itself after activation and thus allowing the immune system to function normally, the limbic system (emotion and memory) and cortex to be fully engaged (chronic stress among other things creates vasoconstriction of the tiny blood vessels in these areas of the brain which decrease blood flow, which lower oxygen and glucose to be delivered to the cells thus we become less cognitive). 

A word about why others need to implemented in our wellbeing or why we need to help others. Downshifting is the term that is used when we are becoming more 'primitive' (eg in our behaviours, responses) as a result of chronic stress. When we’re downshifting we’re also becoming less cognitive. It can be even so bad that we become so unconscious that we don’t even realise we’re downshifting. Look around, at your colleagues, at work, the downshifters are those that suddenly make mistakes, are short tempered, look edgy, are overloaded (even though the workload hasn’t changed),... Most of them don’t even realise the trouble they are in, but it has an impact an all the people around them. This is the time when it is essential that others are involved to help. I would say don’t wait till it gets that far out of hand. We have to start helping each other as soon as we see that people are having  a difficult moment. Again there are many ways to do this and Body-Coaching is one such extremely efficient tool for this purpose. The great part about learning and applying body-coaching is that you learn also to detect these signs with yourself, you become more conscious and thus become closer to the being in the body. 

By helping others you help yourself.

This brings me to another aspect that isn’t to be underestimated in the quest to the development of being in the body.  This aspect relates to soulpurpose. What are you here for? What are your talents? What have you got the world to offer? Are you taking up your unique place in the universal matrix? I’m not a coach  who offers this kind of support  yet  if you feel the need for this then don’t hesitate to send me an email and I’ll see who I can recommend to you.

Another part of this aspect, however, is the personal Reconnection. To really take your place on the universal grid it requires that you have access to your full potential. This potential can be empowered by the activation of a dormant meridian system. Activation  of this system will also realign you with the Ley lines and the universal energy matrix. 

This is important in the quest to 'being in the body, as the being needs these new frequencies to evolve. Evolving in consciousness is becoming LIGHTer... 

The being in the body is not from the physical realm.  The being houses within a physical shell but that shell needs to have its frequency increased so that the being can shine and take its proper élan to help us becoming who we were meant to be. It is a process of ‘consciousness’ to becoming the lightbeing that we are.

So the process I can offer (out of the myriad of options) is twofold, the personal Reconnection and Body-Coaching sessions.  I would, however, recommend to add the 2 day workshop to the process. Working with the body-coaching tool will give you other  insight into your own consciousness process. And by helping others you help yourself.

I hope that answers the question.

PS next workshop is planned on 12 -13 February 2010. More info on 

https://sites.google.com/site/biomotionsbodycoaching/info-workshops

Healing Touch

When a kid is in distress the mother or father comforts it with a hug. What is so typical about the way the mother or father hugs? 

One hand on the back the other holding the head. Maybe you don't think there is anything special about but I think it is significant. I'm sure you will get this embrace cross-cultural therefore it is imbedded in human instinct. If it is human instinct it has a purpose.

The purpose being the result, the child calms down.  

Touch calms us down, it is healing in the most primitive form. Touch can activate parasympathetic activity which is calming (compared to sympathetic activity it activates)

BioMotions Body-Coaching is using this touch therapeutically. It helps to unwind the neuropsycho-immunology and thus activates self-healing / regulation.

When disaster strikes - Body-Coaching can offer relief

Floods in Australia or here in Belgium. Wherever disaster strikes, people are involved stress responses are triggered, survival is at stake. When the water is gone the stress response must normalize but will it? 

Thousands of people will remain traumatized (with stress responses that are in hyperactivity) by the experience. Traumatized while needing to build up their life again. Needing 100% focus, clarity and sound body and mind. When trauma hits we are focused, hyper alert, only, problems start for many people a few months later (when reserves are depleted), the time of rebuilding. In my practice I notice that many people have a serious break-down or burn-out 3 months after severe stress or trauma has occurred.  However I also see that a few session of body-coaching helps them to pick up a normal life again. I have no statistics of this and I have no scientific data to support my case only stories of people that have been helped. Self-inquiry and research have lead to my understanding why it works and this info plus the practical application are now available to you in form of a 2 day workshop.

But my heart goes out to the people that are suffering. If I had the financial support I would leave for disaster areas like Australia and set up camp. Offering body-coaching as a community service and teaching it to whoever wants to learn so that people can help themselves and offer help amongst each other. Body-Coaching alone might for some not be enough it is after all not a replacement of professional medical care, but it is a good start. It's a first aid tool for the bodymind. And like a plaster it is sometimes all it needs to get well or to facilitate healing.

One day I hope to be part of a team of experts that go into areas where disaster has struck. Like the B-fast team . It would be a long-time dream come true.

Mens sana in corpore sano

In order to move mountains health is essential. That being the case, fulfilling our minds dream we need a body that is up to the job, resilient to the challenges and the heightened demands we put on it.

Mens sana in corpore sano

As an osteopath I’ve come to realize how important body-work is to stay focused, attentive, switched on and mindful. Yes, the mind can influence the body, but the body is also influencing the mind and far more than you think. Depression, burn-out, moodiness, mindlessness, social withdrawal, procrastination,... can all be linked to the failing of the organism, the body to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats, whether actual or imagined. Stress refers to the failing of the physiological stress response that makes you mindless and primitive and that among other things can cause muscle stiffness, headaches and influence digestion.  

Stress can make you so mindless that you don’t even realize it. However, others do and if you work in a team this can reverberate and quickly cast all in its shadow. 

On the 12 - 13 February I organize a workshop with a new Body-Mind therapy that I developed from my work as an osteopath. This development was instigated by my patients remarkable improvement of cognitive and emotional wellbeing above the physical. It’s been a wonderful journey that I’m ready to share with you. 

The BioMotions Body-Coaching approach is a self-help tool as much as it is a tool to help others. It can be used as a stand alone approach or implemented in an existing practice like coaching, psychotherapy, massage,...

For more information go to https://sites.google.com/site/biomotionsbodycoaching/

Tom

BioMotions^® Body-Coaching

First aid for stress and trauma

Help oneself and help others to cope better 

so we can all achieve our dreams.