Effect of the Mind over the Body...

I'll try and keep it short.

Millions of years ago there were reptiles on the land. Then there were reptiles and mammals. More recently there were reptiles, mammals and humans.

Brains changed and evolved along with those changes and for our purposes here, we can just divide the brain into those 3 parts.

1. There's the oldest (ancient) part of the brain, the brain stem - also called the ancient or reptilian brain - which forms the core of our brain.

This part of the brain is present in reptiles, mammals and humans and is responsible for autonomic and automatic reactions like the beating of the heart, breathing and the fight or flight response to danger. Instinct and safety are controlled from here. Picture a lizard, whose pure instincts are so finely tuned and fast you can never catch him...

2. Next to the ancient-brain - or brain-stem as it's known as today by doctors - is the newer (in terms of time) mammalian brain. This part of the brain is responsible for love and emotion and this part of the brain is present in mammals as well as in humans. Picture a cat lovingly caring for her kittens - instinct and emotion but no thinking...

3. The part of the brain that is unique to humans is the grey-matter, technically known as the cerebral cortex which is more recently developed (in terms of time). This is a large area of brain that surrounds the mammalian brain and brain stem and is responsible for our thinking. Picture a human child learning about his environment and integrating instinct, emotion and thought but concentrating on his thinking skills...

The speed of each part of the brain is also important to know here. The grey-matter and thinking is the slowest. The mammalian and feeling part is a bit faster. And the ancient-brain and instinct for safety is very fast.

So, if we're knocking on doors in our neighborhood - canvassing for example - and we're confronted by a large dog snarling and coming toward us, the ancient-brain - or safety part - of our brains is automatically engaged. By the time the thinking grey-matter has reasoned that we are in danger and should probably move, our instinct for safety has already moved us to the other side of the shut gate.

The ancient-brain keeps us safe. Phew!

However sometimes our safety is not threatened and a fast, knee-jerk reaction is not necessary to protect us any longer. Sometimes we need to use our thoughts and reason the answer to a problem.

We may have no conscious idea that our reaction is automatic - or even that we're having a reaction at all. We may think that we have carefully thought out what is really an instinctive, fast, ancient-brain reaction.

Bringing unconscious thoughts to consciousness is an important part of all counselling.

Studying animals and living creatures allows us to see, question and interpret some of our own reactions. We can now connect to our grey-matter thinking - our consciousness. Through new understanding we connect the ancient-brain and reaction to the grey-matter and thinking.

The ancient-brain tends to be fast and unconscious and we need to bring consciousness to it. By thinking and speaking - slowly and repeating the thoughts over and over a few times - we can re-program our brains or minds.

This is where we (Pschotherapy and Total Biology) come in: through our story. Like the story of the brain above, it is also based on science. We can re-program our mind to change reactions into actions by allowing connection to be made between the fast ancient-brain and the slower grey-matter: making the unconscious conscious.