Name: Steve Mensing
Topic: Matt: Head Holds
Sent: 22.02 - 1/14 2001
Matt:
Those are really important questions you raise about headholds.
The Meridian Grasp is a two way transformational clearing process. It may be used in the "energy" mode where there is no need to feel feelings. In the energy mode we just "think" about are targets and that is all that is required. The thought-field pertabations are deconstructed and in doing so the energy form (belief, feeling, or physical sensation) changes back into formlessness. The body anchor is blown out as well. The straight energy processes don't focus on feelings, they just tune into the thought field. This is far different from feeling feelings. Straight energy processes are extremely useful for helping people with severe trauma and panic. These persons are most likely to reevoke very, very intense feelings and want to leave a feelings-oriented session.
Now the Meridian Grasp also can be employed in the feelings only mode. It's like a reversable jacket. One side feelings/one side energy. In the feelings only mode you just do the head hold and breathe while you view your challenge. You don't need to even repeat those focusing statements. You fully experience your feelings. However you are not enlisting the flight/fight part of the brain so you may be viewing something savage and traumatic and not experience its overpoweringness. You go through the session feeling and clearing, yet the feelings are clearly there, but lack the heavy kick. Likely this happens due to the straight beam of energy traveling between the frontal cortex and the occipital lobe. This channel cuts out those regions of the brain that add in intensity. The bottom line is that someone can be exploring with the breathwork portion of the Meridian Grasp and not get beat up by a restim, abreaction (an overwhelming eruption of feeling), or panic attack.
The Medulla Un Hold (Devi Nambrudripad) is not really a safety device. It's function is to alter homolaterial flow or energy reversals prior to clearing. This gives us a clearer consciousness and allows us to release or integrate easier.
The head hold in the Circuit Breaker also performs the same functions the Meridian Grasp. There is a neurovascular tug being done by the frontal and rear grasp which greatly reduces any possibility of restim, abreaction,or panic.
The imagery, with these grasps seems to get heightened and material seems to come up easier. The headhold combined with circular breathing makes it easier to bring up dreamstates.
With these grasps people can stay longer with their clearing and block up less.
The Neurovascular Nightmare Exterminator (A head grasp focusing on three neurovacular points) is not used as a direct clearer. Rather it's used to rapidly chill down a restim, abreaction or panic attack. It's a safety net folks can reach for if they are using a feelings-oriented clearer and suddenly hit a strong trauma or a panic trigger by accident and it comes roaring up to the surface. The holding of three pairs of neurovascular points brings the overwhelm down fast, yet you can still experience what you were clearing.
Take care, Steve
Name: Steve Mensing
Topic: Matt: Knowledge/Experience
Sent: 22.36 - 1/14 2001
Matt:
I suspect intellectually knowing about tech neither hurts or enhances. We're likely pretty curious about new things and may desire an explanation. There are various frameworks for trying to explain why someing works. It's really hard to know something like that. We can make reasonable sounding conjectures, but in the end we may be way off base. The bottom line for me is: Does this thing clear. Does my experience bare out that Process X is clearing, releasing, or integrating material?
Energy clearers are said to clear by: tuning into a thoughtfield and at the same time balancing the human energy system. When a thought field is in consciousness when an energy system is balanced, the thought field (1) Evaporates. (2) It's body anchor releases and this causes the thought field to evaporate. These are two of the more popular explanations. Who really knows?
Currently if you'd like to know the current theories why energy therapies work check out books by Fred Gallo like: "Energy Therapy" or go reading at the Electronic Journal for Traumatology and look up "energy therapies"
The feelings-oriented approaches operate via direct feeling. The feeling is said to release when it is no longer resisted or grabbed. There's tons of theories and different ways of looking at how something works.
I don't believe having an idea of how something works is either going to hurt or help. The direct experience of doing a tech is far more instructive and may even trigger a better sense than a theory. When you feel a body anchor suddenly depart, or a long-term challenge suddenly flip over into its opposite, or a strong emotion suddenly lose its power over you. Or a belief kept you from doing something valuable suddenly vanished. You may find these experiences more instructive and compelling than theories.
But it can be fun to reason about things.
Take care, Steve
Name: William Tekada
Topic: Matt: Adding to the feeling
Sent: 15.20 - 1/15 2001
Matt:
I asked almost the same question some time back when I started working with the M.G.. I asked Steve in an email and he told me he could only conjecture at best.
At some level he believed traumas, extreme anxiety, and panic trigger the flight/fight response which gets us motivated to get the hell out of there. It could be images, it could be the felt senses, it could be some brain code, but most of it was below the level of our awareness. There are just certain connections in our brain that come into play when we hit circumstances we deem dangerous or life threatening. The M.G. hold, the Circuit Breaker hold, and the Neurovascular Nightmare Exterminator cut off that switch in someway. Its like there's some line in your brain that gets crossed. This line says "safe" on this side and "Unsafe" on the other. For whatever reason these head grasps return us to a feeling of safety when we're viewing traumatic incidents. There's the actual trauma feelings, then there's the emotional overload that's added to it by the flight/fight. I'm paraphrasing Steve as best as I recall.
Cutting out that overload does not effect the clearing in any manner. The traumatic incident or panic trigger still has its charge cleared or reversed. There's more than enough toe hold there to feel a feeling. It just doesn't have that blow you out of the ball park feel that restims, abreactions, panic, or severe traumas contain. Maybe the added feeling charge of flight/fight response is a form of resisted feeling because we want to get the heck out of those situations. The flight/fight response is not locked into the problem, it just gets stimulated during the restim. People with severe trauma and panic really resist feeling those severe feelings and it can make clearing sessions excruciating and unproductive. They tense up at an unconscious level and this can really hold up clearing. Some people from what I understand will get up and flee some "standard" clearing sessions.
William Tekada
Name: Steve Mensing
Topic: Matt: The added kick
Sent: 15.59 - 1/15 2001
Matt and William:
William you have a pretty good notion of what's going on down there during an abreaction, a reevocation of a severe trauma, or a panic episode.
Matt: When we're talking about panic or severe trauma we're thinking "Danger" or "threat to life" at some level. When we sense this danger from within that part of us called the flight/fight region gets brought into play. It helps set off an alarm system with added adrenalin and often sped up breathing. This secondary rush of fear is triggered by the sense of danger in the panic trigger/anchor or the hard trauma.
This makes for very difficult experiencing for most folks so clearing can get shut down by overwhelm. This is where folks get the primitive notion they can't stand their situation and they want to bolt for the door. There's the trauma feeling and then there's the added kick of the flight/fight response. You can't clear the flight/fight response because it's hardwired into us. We wouldn't want to anyway if we could because it can help us in an emergency, disaster, or war situation. It gives us that burst to either duke it out or get running out of there.
This overwhelm from the flight/fight however can tighten people up and take them out of session. This used to happen frequently with people using some of the old clearing tech like emotional flooding. Panic and trauma people got a dose of that and the chances of them returning for more flooding were about 40%.
The headholds don't kill regular feeling, they just knock down the flight/fight secondary stuff. In fact the headhold can increase the ability to view and experience a feeling, thought form, or physical sensation. The rear or occipital ridge hold tends to send energy to the visual centers of the brain and make for a better visual grasp.
The headholds make breathwork safer for the self-voyager.
Keep asking questions so we can get some more clarity. At a certain point some of these phenomena occur way outside of the bounds of our regular awareness. So I'm just making educated guesses. As you travel more and more into your unconscious you'll begin to see a lot of these phenomena first hand so you can form your own impressions.
Take care, Steve