– Heartwood Path Waypoint 1.113 –

Circuity

Unlock Your Subconscious Mind
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The following  activity is a way to experience the benefits of building the circuitry between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Doing so will show you a simple yet effective way to unlock barely noticeable memories, notions, and information in your subconscious mind. Use this activity to increase your creativity, evoke relaxation, and help you to fall asleep. It will also help you deal with low to moderate traumas and nagging feelings of depression. For serious depression, for mood swings that last longer than a month, or for any psychological malady beyond mild post-traumatic stress, seek out the assistance of a psychologist (to obtain a diagnosis and begin psychotherapy) or, if needed, a psychiatrist (if medications are needed).

The following activity involves a do-it-yourself method of EMDR--Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. This psychotherapeutic method helps with emotional healing and lack of creativity. “When the process is complete, the brain has discarded the distorted subjective experience that had overwhelmed and remain frozen in the patient and replaced it with a positive perception of present reality” (Grand, 2001, p. 35). EMDR’s hallmark is the movement of the patients’ eyes from left to right repeatedly. This helps the patient because as the eyes move from left to right and right to left they simulate both sides of the brain. The “alternating bilateral stimulation enhances communication between the left and the right brains” (Grand, 2001, 24). This bilateral stimulation allows “the brain to reevaluate information frozen in a system that was overwhelmed at the time of the traumatic event” (Grand, 2001, 24). 

Try it even if you are not aware that you need such healing. Doing so may reveal buried wounds that are adversely affecting your life, even if you are not presently aware that they exist.

I have tried EMDR and have found it to work amazingly well at revealing hidden sources of stress. It also was a good way for me to relieve the low-grade but persistent physical symptoms of emotional trauma. 

EMDR helped me with an unnoticed trauma that I was not aware was affecting my life. After six one-hour sessions of eye movement therapy, I discovered that I had buried emotional trauma from some neglect I experienced in my early childhood and, to make up for my feelings of being neglected (and, therefore, not mattering to my parents), I have overcompensated by being a persistent nurturer in an attempt to matter, after all.

​Be sure to do the following activity. EMDR will help you recover from  emotional and psychological trauma (which many people have, perhaps subconsciously). Uncovering such trauma may be a critical step towards achieving success in your life. Doing the following EMDR activity repeatedly may also prepare your brain circuitry for any future samadhi meditations (like those at Waypoint 55 in the next Heartwood Path course). 

To Repair Your Feelings…
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​HumaNatureConnect Activity
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If this is not a day when you prefer to spend time in nature without an agenda, do the following activity:
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Start-up Protocol
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• Read The Text — Use your literary sense, your mind sense, and your reason sense  to read your way towards happiness and sustainability but do not just be an arm-chair traveler. Use your other natural senses as you also spend healthful, fun, and productive time in nature on your way to Gladandgreen Junction.
• Attractive Natural Being — With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural area and look around to find a natural being that is attractive to you.
• Appreciation and Gratefulness — While admiring your chosen being, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations.
• Consent — Once you find an aspect of nature that is attractive to you continuously for at least ten seconds, think of your continued attraction as your consent to have a connection experience that will lead to your optimal functioning.
• The Natural Senses — After gaining consent to enter into a connection experience with the natural being, have available the list of Natural Senses. Mix it up by using at least one radiation sense, one feeling sense, one chemical sense, and one mental sense, to widen your perception, and add variety to your experience.
• HumaNatureConnect Activity — After reading the text, finding a natural being, appreciating it, gaining its consent, and scanning the list of natural senses, use your heightened awareness and nature-induced optimal functioning to do the following activity and engage in as many follow-up components as you see fit.

Healing Emotional Wounds
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Do not use this activity if you are in a deep, acute, or lingering depression.  Continue only if you need enhanced creativity or if your physical or psychological symptoms are moderate, low, or outside of your awareness. This activity is suggested for those who may have nagging but minor aches or pains or for someone who is only mildly out of sorts but who cannot identify the source of the problem.

To uncover traumas buried in your subconscious mind that may be blocking your success:

1. search throughout your body for what we shall call a negative target experience (a “pain” that results from a subconscious memory of a negative event, such as an unexplained pain or tightness in the chest);
2. imagine that your chosen attractive being is an emotional healer;
3. begin the series of eye-movements, moving the eyes to a natural being to the left and then to a natural being to the right, back and forth for about about ten times;
4. after each set of eye movements, tell your healer where in your body you are feeling a nagging pain, tightness other target experience;
5. each time rank the degree of the discomfort of the target experience on a scale of  1-10;
6. assign what is for you an unpleasant color to the target experience;
7. continue doing the sets of eye movements, always telling your emotional therapist where the pain is located, it’s numerical degree of unpleasantness, and its color;
8. about halfway through the eye-movement sequences begin to replace the assigned unpleasant color with a preferred attractive color you associate with a discomfort-free part of your body;
9. after one of the last sequences, focus on the bridge of  awareness between yourself and your chosen attractive natural being until some symbol—perhaps a mental image, a memory, or a sign—emerges that tells you what unpleasantness was buried;
10. note whether your degree of discomfort is declining or perhaps has disappeared as you continue with the eye movements and perhaps come up with a plausible source or cause of the target experience; and 
11. discuss with your emotional therapist what using EMDR therapy to identify and diminish a buried trauma will likely do for your life.

Answering questions about the nature of the discomfort will activate the memory of the target in the occipital cortex, which controls sight in the brain (Grand, 2001, p. 26). Make sure your two objects (beings), one to your left and one to the right, are horizontally aligned. Keeping your head still, move your eyes slowly and gently from one object (being) to the other, repeatedly in a smooth, flowing fashion. If you are seeking relaxation, move your eyes even more slowly. After moving your eyes back and forth for a few seconds to a few minutes, re-ask the questions described earlier. Do not ask any questions during your back and forth eye movement sequences. Ask your questions before, in between, and after your eye movement sequences. Make sure your answers are honest. Give credence to all of your responses. After a few eye movement sequences, imagine replacing the unpleasant aches or feelings of tension you had in a part of your body with the positive feelings (and associated color) you feel in another part of your body. Instigate this replacement periodically as you do your eye movements and answer the questions.  

“Once the negative has been resolved and cleared through, the positive more easily replaces it. And the force that drives this movement, the bilateral stimulation itself, came from nature” (Grand, 2001, p. 247). 

​In all but severe cases, you will unlock the reasons for your aches and tensions and replace these negative feelings with positive ones. If, after a few weeks of repeating this activity, you do not find emotional or physical relief, or if you do not improve your creativity, you are encouraged to seek the help of a professional EMDR therapist or a clinical psychologist. 

After your last eye movement sequences, tell your chosen attractive being what you believe to be the cause of the target experience, noting the severity of the target feelings on the 1-10 scale. Give thanks for this connection experience. Either enjoy your newfound creativity and lack of distress or seek professional help.

​​​​Follow-up Protocol
Natural Systems Reflection Process
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     For best results, write down your impressions of this activity in your journal using as many of the following components as you see fit, afterwards, share your interpretations with others.
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Journal Components
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• General Description — writing a general description of how you did the activity and what happened.
• Freeform — writing, in freeform, what you found attractive about your natural being.
• Three Qualities — writing down three qualities you found most attractive about your natural being.
• Three Learnings — writing down three things you learned from this activity.
• Self-esteem & Trust — writing down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of Nature.
• Changes To Self — writing down what aspects of your self, if any, were changed by this activity.
• Honor Yourself — praising yourself and your commitment to making another stop along the Heartwood Path good for yourself and the world.
• I’m A Person Who . . . — writing down three different so-called “G/G Statements” using the following format: “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________.”
• Feelings If Activity Taken — writing down a sentence about how you would feel if you lost your ability to experience this connection.
• Two-Word Summary — writing down two words that summarize your response to this activity.​

The Heartwood Path Exchange:
Swap Your Ideas, Impressions, Photos, And News With Others
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• Post your impressions and photos in the Comments at the bottom of the page
• Engage with others in your Heartwood Path course or salon
• Create your own salon that meets regularly online, by phone, or in person
• Discuss your impressions with trusted family members and friends
• Post your impressions and photos in our EartHeart Networking Forum
• Post your impressions on this specific waypoint on our Facebook Page
• Join the broader conversations on our Facebook Page
• To see what conversations you can inspire, share your photos and impressions about anything pertaining to your journey down the Heartwood Path on your Facebook page, on Instagram, and on other social media accounts. If you like, include “#heartwoodpath” and “#waypoint(insert waypoint number here)” wherever pertinent

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Your input is vital. Enjoy sharing!

Heartwood Path Axioms:
Key Assertions From Waypoint 1.113

1.113.1.
Unlock your subconscious mind.

1.113.2.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a psychotherapeutic method that helps with emotional healing and lack of creativity. 

1.113.3.
Uncovering  trauma buried in the subconscious mind may be a critical step towards achieving success in your life.

Nocturnal Pilgrimage 1.113:
Tend To Your Dreams Before Heading To The Next Waypoint

Go over what you learned about Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.  Sleep.  Tend to your dreams. When ready, move to the next waypoint: “The Solution Beyond Yourself.”
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Click here to go to 
the next waypoint:
"The Solution Beyond Yourself"

You have now completed 113 out of 117 waypoints in Kosmos.