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The what? The Reticular Activating System, or RAS. This is a group of nerve cells that regulates our attention and alertness. From the myriad of stimuli coming into the nervous system in any given moment, the RAS filters what is relevant to you and allows that information/perception to pass through to the cerebrum where we experience it with conscious awareness. What programs the RAS to focus on something specific? YOU do! Think of the RAS as your own personal search engine. You type in a keyword and the RAS filters through your internal internet web, and brings you all the things matching that keyword. It also searches and filters through all the information from your external environment that is entering your perceptive apparatus. When something is relevant to us, the RAS creates a cognitive category for it and then acts like a radar, setting off an internal beep: Pay Attention! when something related to our relevant item enters our perceptive sphere. (And, oh, yes!.we hypnotists do this for our clients all the time but we call it a Post-Hypnotic Suggestion). Research has shown that writing (and to a lesser degree, keyboarding) forges new neural pathways in the brain. Writing down what you want is a proven, effective way to program the RAS to be on the alert for anything that will help bring you closer to realizing your goals. Write it down, and trust your RAS to tap your conscious mind on the shoulder when it finds something worth paying attention to. Writing your affirmations and goal statements every day is a powerful way to keep what you want to manifest before the RAS. Just as repetitions of physical exercise moves you closer, faster, and more easily, toward your fitness goals, performing writing reps of your affirmations brings you closer, faster, and more easily, to manifesting your personal goals by using your fine motor movements in concert with your mind and emotions to strongly impress exactly what you want upon your RAS. Want to turbo-charge the process? Write your affirmations in the first person, the second person, and in the authoritative voice that commands you by name. I weigh 130 pounds. You weigh 130 pounds. Deborah, you weigh 130 pounds!
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Do it again, this time engaging more of your brain power by using your non-dominant hand to write with. When you write your affirmations down, it is as if you are sending a love letter to the RAS. As you move your pen, you are bringing your goal image before the RAS. You are presenting the suggestion, charging it with emotion, and kinesthetically pressing your message into your gray matter. You have created the neural pathway of achieving your goal, and every time you write your affirmation or goal statement, you fire the nerve cells in that network, and reinforce the message to the RAS. Each repetition deepens the pathway. You fire it!.you wire it!
personality traits. Graphotherapy takes things to the next step. By purposefully changing our handwriting, we can consciously work on replacing habits of negative, self-defeating thoughts (and, by extension, our behavior) with habits of positive thinking and healthy ego-strengthening behavior. This is possible because mind, movement and emotional states are linked together in ways that most of us can easily recognize. For example, if I ask you to take up your pen and express a heavy sadness using a single line, do you suppose your mark would be one that is thick and drooping down toward the bottom of the paper? If I were to ask you to make a mark that expresses joy, I would not be very surprised if you made a short and lively line that nearly jumped upward off the paper. If I watched very carefully, I would most likely also observe your entire body shift a bit as you did this exercise!.a little down in the mouth and a slight collapsing in of the chest toward the knees as you created the heavy sadness mark, followed by a slight upcurve of the mouth , a brightening of the eyes, and a movement toward a lively postural uprightness of the back when asked to make a mark for joy. In the same way that we learn to drive a car, or recite the alphabet, we spend time consciously learning a system of writing and after awhile, the SCM takes over so that our writing movements are unconscious and automatic. Because handwriting systems reflect the culture of their origin, we also entrain to certain habits of relating with the world when we first learn to write. Healthy writing is so intertwined with a healthy psyche as it interacts with the world that the Waldorf educational system begins its writing curriculum with having the children observe forms around them and noticing that the world is made up of curves and straight lines. Since graphic movement encodes a certain intent and tends toward a certain habit of thought, and consequent behavior, on the part of the writer, changing the writing movement (the handwriting) is an effective way to neurologically support the changes the client is achieving with hypnosis. Selecting the appropriate handwriting elements, and consciously changing your handwriting wires it then fires it. There are many wonderful handwriting analysis books that you can use to help you create supportive handwriting homework for your clients. My
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current favorite is Your Handwriting Can Change Your Life by Vimala Rodgers. Ms. Rodgers has created a lovely font that is based on many years of study and integrated with meditation. I often use this font to write my clients affirmations on a card, so that they have a sample of healthy handwriting to reflect upon. Vimala Rodgers declares the letter T to be the letter of self-esteem, self-worth, our willingness to stand tall and pursue our purpose with determination. Her unusual version of the small t is a tall, unlooped line that reaches to the sky, with a crossbar across, and on, the top. For those who need ego-strengthening and assistance with finishing what they start, she recommends practicing the letters T and G. I often find that my clients exhibit what Vimala calls the self-sabotage f. This is a small letter f whose lower loop is reversed (faces backward, toward the left edge of the paper). Looking back through my years of handwritten journals, I observed this in my own handwriting. I immediately began practicing my handwriting for Vimalas recommended period of 40 days. What she said was true!.consciously changing my fs and ts had a profound, rapid, positive impact on my life!
Therapeutic Journaling
Psychologist James Pennebaker has extensively researched the effects of what he calls expressive writing or unfettered talking on emotionally distressing, even traumatic, events and concerns. In controlled studies, Dr. Pennebaker has demonstrated that expressive writing results in overall improvements which are both subjective and objective. Among researchers in this field, the significant improvements in mind and body were not observed when the subjects were asked to write about superficial topics. College students were often the source of subjects for Dr. Pennebakers experiments, and writing their thoughts and feelings about upcoming exams was frequently the non-superficial event that was chosen as the writing topic. In Pennebakers experiments, anonymous disclosure of deep personal secrets and emotionally disturbing events consistently showed measurably improved health and immune function, as well as
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fairly long-term improvement in mood and a sense of well-being. Beneficial effects on the autonomic nervous system , such as reduced heart rate and a reduction in tension of certain facial muscles, were observed in the short-term. In the experimental situation, care was taken to ensure that the writing samples were not matched to particular writers. The subjects were directed to write continuously for a set amount of time, and encouraged to let go of concerns for grammar and spelling. Just write. Rapid writing to express thoughts and feelings about achieving ones goals can effectively discharge a great deal of any psychosomatic tension that may be consciously or unconsciously present. This can go a long way in clearing the mind of unwanted thoughts, and enabling one to readily create a space for the new, positive thoughts and feelings to be accepted into. Another benefit of writing is that the various trains of thought quickly begin to yield to organization that may result in sudden flashes of surprising alternative paths to achieving ones goals. If a past trauma is part of the blockage to achieving a goal, writing can help bring together various physical, mental and emotional aspects of the experience in new ways that help the individual find resolution and strength.
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