Can Mindfulness Empower Us?

What is Self-Awareness?

The process of learning mindfulness practices like self-hypnosis, meditation or other autogenic techniques, can be compared to preparing thoroughly for a journey. The journey of course, is life, however, armed and prepared with greater insight, we are able to understand and reap the benefits of observing and learning from the journey of life as never before.

There are many subconscious levels of perception and the more we consciously apply ourselves to the task of knowing ourselves, the deeper the level of perception and consciousness we can achieve. This is at the root of all mystic traditions, and what lies screened by the dogma of the world’s major religions. Knowing ourselves is not always a simple task, and the hardest part seems to be acknowledging our responsibility for the life we've ended up with. Once this is achieved, other insights come more easily. By learning mindfulness techniques like self-hypnosis and meditation we can begin to peel back the layers of self-deception that we create. Many of these layers were created as protection against adversity, loss and trauma.

In previous posts I have discussed the mechanisms through which we develop inappropriate behavioural  responses. When these responses are re-stimulated we act out old scenarios learned in childhood or early adulthood, that are mostly completely unrelated to the situation at hand, and almost useless as strategies for problem solving. Perceiving the origins of this behavior is a first, and very important step, but if lingered upon, can become counter-productive. We naturally seek to blame the authority figures of our childhood for all of our adult problems. Where does this stop, however? Our parents, equally, could blame their forebears, and they in turn their own. What does this achieve?

The answer to evolving beyond negative learned and instinctive behaviours, is to emerge from the cycle of blame and ignorance, and to look inside once more. Those behaviours could never linger if we didn’t find some comfort from them. This is what we call a secondary-gain. 

For example, sometimes the attention and sympathy of friends and relatives keeps us chronically unwell, or more precisely our addiction to that form of approval and validation that ensures we do not give 100% to the business of becoming well. Medicare, insurance policies, pharmaceuticals, invalid pensions etc, are all conspirators that cushion the discomfort of illness. They are necessary to assist us to get through the initial phase of trauma, and support us through the healing process, but become counter-productive over the long term if they become a crutch. 

This may sound harsh, but think about it for a while. Once we’ve been unwell for long enough, we can lose our ability to think of ourselves as well, and our self-image has shifted toward the victim end of the scale. Naturally, we feel we need help to cope with the repercussions of chronic illness, in the form of rebates or financial payment as compensation, especially for injury. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets. The part of us that no longer perceives itself as capable of health, clings stubbornly to the secondary gains of illness, preventing us from moving back toward a state of wellbeing.

Any type of subsidy needs to be paired with a caring system of rehabilitation - identifying what abilities can be strengthened and using technology to assist with disability. This allows us to emerge from helplessness and take back our power.

Please be aware that in this discussion, I am not referring to terminal illness.

These are issues I have discussed at length previously, but they are pertinent to the topic at hand; that is the achievement of an Empowered Life. Our interactions with each other, at all levels of daily life, are also governed by social mores, and were learned by observing the world of adults that surrounded us in childhood. We intuitively perceived the interplay of power in the world of adults, and adopted the behavioural tools we deemed most appropriate, in order to navigate our way through life. In summary, there are myriad ways one human being can relate to another, and most of the methods we employ are not only reactive but help to perpetuate the hostile environment that foments envy, deceit, murder, prejudice, war and intolerance.

We are Energy

It all boils down to the concept that individuals interact in non-visible ways. We often put this down to vibes, by saying someone has good or bad vibes. What does this mean? Does it reveal anything more than some amorphous feeling? The answer in my opinion, and coming from quantum biology is a resounding yes!

Physicists have discovered that there is a web of energy, which links beings together, formalizing what has hither to been called intuition. This web is an electromagnetic field of energy, measurable in the laboratory. It exists at the level of sub-atomic particles in a detectable manner, and its discovery has created a cleft between the adherents of mechanistic view of the world, and the more contemporary, but far less tangible quantum view of the Universe as a connected whole. Quantum biologists have observed the interaction of this field with human DNA.

Fritjof Capra, in The Turning Point, and The Tao of Physics, John Gribbons, In the Beginning, Peter Tomkins and Christopher Birds’ The Secret Life of Plants, Paul Harper in Cosmic Wormholes are amongst a wave of scientists and investigators in fields of physics, biology, anthropology, cosmology and genetics who have perceived the interconnectedness of life in the Universe. Even more than that, as John Gribbon put it, the Universe is organic, it is evolving and self-organising just as cellular organisms do. If the actions of very small sub-nuclear particles can effect each other over great distances, and seemlingly instantaneously, and if 99% of all matter in the Universe is invisible, then how can we say that humans stand outside the Universe as impartial observers, unmoved by the invisible, instantaneous processes that act on all matter from the quantum to the macro?

When you are able to see the Energy Field around all things, you are also able to see the state of flux of all things, and this helps us understand that our solidity is only an illusion. Electrons obey the Uncertainty Principle of physics, and can never be precisely placed in space. Instead, physicists offer a probability quotient for the position of electrons within atoms at any precise moment. In other words because sub-atomic particles are always moving, very, very fast, and because every visible thin in the Universe contains atoms, which form molecules, which form elements, which combine to become higher forms of life including all animal, plant and insect life, then we too are continually in movement.

The electrons within the atoms of our own bodies are vibrating and spinning at incredibly fast speeds so that it gives the illusion of solidity, much like a spinning propeller on a plane visibly cease to spin at a certain speed and gives the illusion of a disk, and can even appear to be spinning in reverse.

The Energy Field around all things in the Universe, animate or inanimate, is a cloud of energy being discharged by the atomic and chemical processes that occur continuously within us in order to keep us alive. Interestingly Kirlian Photography and the testimony of those who see the energy field, has shown that the mood, health and perception of any individual impacts on the form, intensity and colour of that individual’s Energy Field or aura. It has long been known that our hair, skin and nails reveal inner states of health, so why not the energy discharge of our atoms?

Those who can perceive the electromagnetic Energy Field of living beings often report flaring, or huge surges of the Energy Field in the direction of the perception, or when individuals experience strong emotions. We seem, in general, to filter out the information that would show us the world and ourselves as fluid energy. The five sense act as filters of information, not only gatherers, especially when compared to the sensory world of plants. As we evolved into moving, verbally communicative and creative creatures, we developed more specialized senses. We filtered out the ultraviolet and infra-red extremes of the light spectrum. We filtered out extremely high or extremely low sound frequencies and we lost our ability to pick up subtle odours. Yet, there are creatures on earth and in the sea, who are able to do any or all of these things because it is pertinent to their survival. We filtered out this information, perhaps, because it overloaded our brain, by providing too much input. By becoming more specialized it allowed our mind to do other things, like master speech.

A plant has a large open field of sensory perception because its movement is limited as is its volition, and it needs a very wide spectrum of information in order to prosper. As we lost our ability to perceive the flux of existence, and the dynamic interplay between the energies of living things, we also forgot our connection to the living world. We separated ourselves in towns and cities, and filled our lives with tangible, material things – so much so that we began to believe, falsely that these things were reality.

This is a rock-logic, unmindful perception. 

What is it? We ask, and the answer is – a book, a clock and car. We use the symbol book to connote in a very superficial way what the book realty is. Then we are fooled into believing that the symbol is as real as the information the book contains, then we begin to believe that like the symbol the information in the book is static and not dynamic. 

All of us are human becomings. We are still evolving, and have not achieved or become fully evolved, and may never be. The environment influences our genes. DNA is switched on or silenced by chemical tags triggered by these epigenetic signals. Experience can in turn alter the genes we pass onto our descendants. We started existence in this Universe approximately 15 billion years ago, and contain elements, which are only higher vibrations of the primordial elements of hydrogen and helium. We are the stuff of exploded stars, interstellar debris, gas clouds, volcanic eruptions, primordial swamps, prehistoric sea creatures, land dinosaurs and the higher primates.

Every element in our bodies has been on a fifteen billion year journey, evolving, refining itself and combining in new ways to create higher and higher orders of life. Here we are with brains that require the resources of an entire planet to sustain, with a history stretching back eons and yet we deny our connection to this planet and the cosmos at large?

Another side effect of limiting our perception to a rock-logic point of view, is that the pool of energy readily available to all living things became more and more removed from us, or to be precise we removed ourselves further and further form it. Natural things in pristine environments have Energy Fields that are enormous, and this is why we feel so good when we immerse ourselves in a natural environment. Indigenous peoples embrace a tree or rock in order to energise themselves before a confrontation or when they are ill, and many animist cultures attribute spiritual powers to all living things. We too were once surrounded by an enormous field of energy, but as we removed ourselves more and more from a pristine state of existence and spiritual connection with the planet of our birth, our Energy Fields diminished to a size that for most people is limited to less than a metre beyond the physical boundary of their body.

Because all beings need energy, if any being is cut off one source of energy it has to find alternative sources of energy. Most of you would think of food as the primary source of energy, but isn’t it interesting that the amount of food humans consume is not proportional to their energy requirements, and our ability to judge our energy requirements from food, via the hypothalamus is almost totally non-existent in Western society. Often we know we have fulfilled our caloric requirement for food, and yet we still feel lethargic or run-down. A balanced diet and perhaps vitamin therapy go a long way toward alleviating this problem, but what drives us to eat poorly in the first place? We are all capable of eating well when we feel good, but the minute we feel low or depressed, or drained we begin to eat high-calorie, low nutrition foods. The word DRAINED, is an important clue.

The primary source of energy humans use today (aside from food) is the energy they drain from other human beings and the environment. Having lost our ability to tap into the Universal Field of Energy and Information, we instead take the ‘easy’ way out and drain someone less powerful than ourselves of their energy. Of course, in the end this is not really the easy way out, because there is never enough energy around at this level, and the draining process creates a chain reaction whose end result is the society we lament all around us.

Overturning the tyranny of our genes

All of this can be changed by becoming mindful of the power we all have over our own lives.

Information and knowledge are at this moment competing with DNA as the determining force of existence. With inner knowledge comes the power to change everything about ourselves: to overcome the limitations of our physical birth, our upbringing and our environment. It enables us to evolve to a state unparalleled in the history of the earth. Our DNA, that guardian of our inheritance has given birth to a brain, which has runaway in its development, far outstripping the limitations of our genes. Our genes can add to themselves by mutation – and that occurs over a geologically long period of time. Epigenetics is a recently discovered process that reveals how experience and the environment can edit the genes, changing the genome that is passed onto subsequent generations. Learned behaviours can be transcribed into the genome, affecting how our children and grandchildren respond to stress and trauma. Mindfulness allows us to consciously edit our DNA.

Mindfulness training provides the key to creating a process of change, and a dialogue with our inner selves. It is the basis of conscious evolution that frees us from the chains of a slow genetic process of development from primordial slime to complete human being.  Change is the hallmark of our era, and the ability to change is the pre-requisite for survival. We do not have the time as a species, to wait for genetic mutation to come to our rescue, and help us to stop acting in a gene-multiplying self-prophecy of doom. No other species of living organism has ever had to face the question of cutting its own reproduction rate in order to survive, yet this is the very task facing us today. In fact, it is this most important characteristic of genes that reveal them to be the force behind the negative road of mankind. Genes are selfish by nature, and create a body that gives the genome the greatest chance of survival through reproduction. The gene is immortal and cares little for the carrier – the human in this case – except as a means to an end. The gene is also blind, and cannot see where this selfishness is leading.

The task we face is to take the under-utilised brain that our DNA has created and use it to evolve beyond gene domination. Through mindfulness we can free ourselves from gene driven behavior, that while good for the gene does little for our quality of life, nor for the future of life in general.

While DNA is slow to change, and protects itself against change, the mind is able to add to its files continually. Further, it can completely re-organise itself in the light of new information, it can learn new skills that influence its survival consciously. DNA, on the other hand, is a the mercy of mutation and natural selection, and can do nothing to change its chances of survival even over generations.

The only way we can be free of the tyranny of our genes, is to develop our minds. Mindfulness training develops skills that open up the inner world of our mind, and can help us in our quest for knowledge, enlightenment and self-actualisation. 

The choice is ours.

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Elisabetta is the author of the best-selling non-fiction book - The Energy Code.

She is also the author of The Infidel, Veritas and Nemesis and was the librettist for  the musical  - D'Arc, The Legend of Saint Joan.

 

Elisabetta works is a professional speaker and consultant to government organisations, entrepreneurs and NGOs on innovation, change management and talent retention.

 

Learn more about Elisabetta at:

http://elisabettalfaenza.com

The Truth about Mindsets

Ever been told you need to change your outlook, or adopt a more ‘resilient mind-set’?  Are mindsets even real, or are they just psychobabble?

According to brain plasticity experts, mindsets are real and the result of the interaction between our environment, nervous system and DNA. A mind-set is actually a group of neurological mind-maps that we create to perform a task, or respond to input coming from the senses.

Resilience has become a buzzword for a group of behaviours that enable an individual to withstand, or recover quickly from, adversity or adapt to changed conditions. Much attention has been paid by researchers to the study of individuals who demonstrate a resilient mind-set in the face of trauma, in the hope that a model of resilience can be developed and taught.

In my research into the interaction between behaviour, our DNA, and the environment, I was drawn to the work of neuro-plasticians (scientists who study the brain’s ability to change itself) like Edward Taub and Michael Merzenich,[i]^⁠1 whose work is complementary to that of quantum biologists Pjotr Gariaev and Vladimir Popponin.

While quantum biologists, Gariaev and Popponin, investigate how environmental mechanisms switch DNA on or off, Taub and Merzenich have dedicated their lives to understanding how the nervous system responds to signals from the environment, learns new skills, and develops habits. Their research reveals a dynamic neurological process where the mind creates maps for how it responds to signals coming from the senses, and then recreates them on demand.

What do we use Mindmaps for?

There are maps for everything we do, hear, see, feel, taste and smell. These maps contain the precise sequence and location of neurones (cells) in the brain as they are fired. The more we are exposed to something, and respond in a similar way, the more defined and refined these maps become, and the more of our brain the map owns. We have maps for walking, for holding a ball or gripping a cup, and we have maps for our emotions, for what triggers feelings of love, sadness, fear, anger or arousal.

Being aware of how our behaviour is laid down in our nervous system by repetition and reward allows us to decide if a particular mind-set is productive.

Mindsets are literally groups of associated neurological mind-maps that work together, or fire together. There is a saying in brain plasticity that says: ‘neurones that fire together, wire together’ and ‘neurones that fire apart, wire apart.’^⁠[ii]

This grouping of mind-maps doesn’t just apply to physical responses, but to the secretion of brain chemicals that underpin emotion. Our brain maps our experience by creating 3D, holographic, topographical maps and then storing these throughout our cells, from the brain stem and spinal cord, down into the peripheral nerves themselves.

When a situation resembles an aspect of a past experience, this triggers the projection of the 3D mind-map almost instantaneously, and causes neurones to fire in a precise sequence, making our response feel automatic or unconscious. Every time we relive an experience, we add detail to, or amend information in the map, literally re-writing our past.^⁠3  The brain then links experiences to deepen and add detail to mind-maps, making them more refined and complex.

Overcoming Damaging Mindmaps

Sometimes, however, circumstances in the environment change so swiftly that our mind-maps are no longer appropriate. 

It therefore follows that someone who is good at playing piano will have a bigger map for the movement of their fingers and hands than a soccer player. While the soccer player would have more of their brain devoted to the nuances of moving the body, legs and feet than would the pianist.

Mind maps draw on abilities we have inherited from our parents that are the best fit for a particular experience or stimulus coming from our environment. This explains why we can carry a gene for depression and anxiety, but if we do not experience sustained bullying or trauma as a child, this gene may not be called on. Meanwhile if we are taught functional ways to handle aggression and conflict, these skills will instead become the basis of a mind map that gives us an evolutionary advantage for survival and thus reproduction, and may then be naturally selected for over the generations in preference to humans with the older code.^⁠[iii]

If this mind map is reinforced over and over again by practice and experience, there is a good chance it will be laid down in the DNA as an alternative code, which can be passed onto future generations. A parent who copes well with conflict and aggression is also more likely to teach these skills to their offspring, further reinforcing the resilient behaviour. Over multiple generations, this reinforcing of a healthy response to aggression and conflict may lead to a dominant trait in descendants that predispose them to resilience.

This brilliant, new research over-turns both the ‘dominance of the gene’ and ‘brain localisation’ theories, proving the dynamic interplay between genetic material and our experience of the world through our senses.

Developing Resilience

Resilient individuals can be said to have highly functional maps that provide a strong pattern for the nervous system to rely upon, as well as the ability to be able to break these maps down when they are no longer useful and replace them with better response maps.

Positively charged emotions like gratitude, love, acceptance and joy produce dopamine and endorphins that help lay down new mind-maps, as well as oxytocin that helps dissolve the old mind-maps being replaced. This explains why it is only at the point of acceptance in the cycle of grieving that individuals are able to finally let go of what was lost and move on. Acceptance promotes the production of the very brain chemical that melts away old mind-maps and allows new mind-maps to supersede them.[iv]^⁠

Experiencing a reward for new behaviour also triggers more dopamine, helping to reinforce connections between neurones, strengthening a new map. Fear, on the other hand, shuts down the nervous system and DNA expression, leaving us with only the most primitive maps to fall back on.

This explains why fear and anxiety can render us speechless and unable to respond. Soldiers are trained to overcome this through the repetition of skills under extreme pressure, and through receiving rewards for the desired, resilient behaviour.^⁠6 Even soldiers, when exposed repeatedly to stress and trauma, may experience post-traumatic stress symptoms and be overwhelmed by fear, rage or depression.

The amazing thing about mind-maps is that they are three dimensional, and stored holographically within the nervous system and DNA. But even more amazingly, they are plastic and highly susceptible to change. This new evidence is transforming the way medicine rehabilitates stroke victims and brain injury patients, leading to a virtual rewiring of damaged brains around dead cells. The key to this new model of rehabilitation is to re-learn skills for the damaged limb, motor skill or brain function as if for the first time, step-by-step, like a baby, and by providing a reward for each incremental improvement.[v]

In this way, some patients with catastrophic damage have regained almost full function of motor-skills, despite a prognosis they would never recover.[vi]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^⁠

Elisabetta is the author of the best-selling non-fiction book - The Energy Code.

She is also the author of The Infidel, Veritas and Nemesis and was the librettist for  the musical  - D'Arc, The Legend of Saint Joan.

 

Elisabetta works as a consultant to government organisations, entrepreneurs and NGOs on innovation, change management and talent retention.

 

Learn more about Elisabetta at:

http://elisabettalfaenza.com 

 

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[i] M.  M. Merzenich, 2001, Cortical plasticity contributing to

childhood devSiegler, eds. Mechanisms of Cognitive

Development: Behavioural and Neural Perspectives. Mahwah,

N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, p68.

[ii] Norman Doidge, MD, The Brain that Changes itself, Scribe,

Melbourne 2010

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] ⁴ Sugden, Karen, Kings College Bullying Study, Kings College

2010, London

[v] Ramachandran, V.S, The Tell-Tale Brain, 2010

[vi] Doidge Opcit, p119

The Power of Imagination

What is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis defies precise definition, as it is a personal experience with few objective points of reference available to the observer. What is agreed is that hypnosis involves and altered state of perception, characterized by a focusing of awareness, stillness of the conscious mind and is accompanied by physiological changes such as slowing of respiration and circulation, muscular relaxation, lacrimation of the eyes and feelings of either heaviness or lightness.

In this course you will be introduced to the latest breakthrough in Autogenic and Flow State Training systems to help YOU achieve your goals.

What is the mind?

To date, experts have not been able to pinpoint the location of the conscious and subconscious minds within the brain. This failure does not, however reflect on the existence of the mind, but rather on our inability to come to terms with things we cannot see or measure. Until the last century we could not measure or detect activity at the nuclear of sub-nuclear level, yet that does not mean there was no activity at these levels previously.

What we have determined in the laboratory, under EEG and fMRI is that certain areas of the brain are associated with certain functions, however, this being said, it is interesting to note that in some, stroke victims have learned to grow new neural pathways to previously unused areas of the brain, and these areas have taken over the work of the damaged neurons.

It is my opinion that the brain is the hardware, and looking for the mind within the brain is like looking for programs (software) by taking a computer apart. Using this model, the subconscious mind is the software, while the brain is the hardware. The subconscious mind is a set of programs – or mindmaps that are accessed via the hardware and used like we use Apps on our smart phone - to manage behaviors or functions.

What we do know…

The conscious mind is associated with the Somnic Nervous System – or the activation of the voluntary muscles, centered within the Cerebral Cortes, or the outer layer of the brain.

The information receptors of the brain are located in a lateral strip of neurons that sit across the top of the head, at the front of the Parietal Lobe of the Cerebral Cortex. The area that controls voluntary movement is located just in front of the Parietal Lobe, in an area at the back of the Frontal Lobe. One of the oldest areas of the brain is the Thalamus, which is located at the base of the Cerebrum. It interacts with the sensation receptors in the Parietal Lobe to alter the intensity of sensations, and it is thanks to this interaction that pain does not completely overwhelm us – for example without it, the pressure of our clothes would be unbearable.

The thinking, reasoning part of our brain is located in the extreme Frontal Lobe and Cerebral Cortex. These are all implicated in the workings of the conscious mind.

The subconscious mind, on the other hand, is identifies with the Autonomic Nervous System or areas controlling the use and regulation of the involuntary or smooth muscles such as the lungs, heart and digestive system and glands. More significantly to our interest, the subconscious mind is the realm of memory storage and retrieval.

Memories are stored in the Temporal Lobe of the Cerebral Cortex, located either side of the front of our brain, near the temples.

The Cerebellum sits in the back of the brain stem, and is the storehouse of chain motor responses learned in infancy by trial and error. It operates at the subconscious level, coordinating the movements of voluntary muscles in an habitual, learned fashion, that no longer requires detailed conscious thought.

The Frontal Lobe directs these movements and the Cerebellum provides the detailed instructions that allow fluid, efficient operation of muscles. Damage to the Cerebellum causes the loss of co-ordination. The Cerebellum then is part of the subconscious mind that works in concert with the Conscious Mind.

In layman’s terms, the Conscious Mind has come to be associated with the ‘will’, while the Subconscious Mind is associated with day dreams and imagination – it is these very characteristics that the practice of hypnosis is based upon.

Left and Right Brain

To complicate matters, much of twentieth century psychology and psychiatry has been based upon division of the brain into two hemispheres. The Corpus Callosum is the connective area of the brain that links right and left hemispheres. Interestingly it is thicker in women than men, suggesting that there is great integration of left and right brain functions in women than men.

In modern society we have come to associate left hemisphere dominance with intelligence, success and rationality, and have undervalued the creative, intuitive abilities that characterize right hemisphere functions. Perhaps that is due to the dominance of male values and patriarchy in the modern era, and a society steeped in Newtonian, mechanical certainties. With the coming of Quantum Physics, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Quantum Biology and Psychoneuroimmunology, and Neuroscience, and a growing awareness within the scientific community that much more is going on than can be explained by a mechanistic view of the Universe, however, the right hemisphere and the Split-Brain theory is being re-evaluated.

Evidence gathered from fMRI, EEG and during brain surgery suggest that rather than the brain being split by function, the two hemispheres are divided and unified by perspective. The right hemisphere provides context, and an abstract understanding of the world, including an ability to create internal language and recognize patterns. The left-hemisphere conversely provides our ability to ‘act’ in the world; to manipulate objects, language and ourselves to influence the world.

Another way to look at this is that the right brain provides the framework to understand the world and create new ideas, while the left brain provides the tools to enact those ideas. If an artist was only right-brained they would have no way of conveying their creative ideas into any manifest form, the ideas would be locked inside their head. Likewise if a mathematician was only left-brained they would have no ability to recognize patterns, envisage solutions or make connections between things.

So the next time you see one of those ‘Are you left or right brain dominant’ quizzes, walk away – it’s based on outdated science and is pure rubbish.

It is now agreed, that in order to function at optimal levels we need the integration of both hemispheres of the brain. How much of each hemisphere we regularly use appears to be correlated with personality, but that’s a whole other lecture.

What is REM?

Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep time has long been regarded as necessary to our very mental survival and people deprived of this deep sleep state experience major psychological disturbances and emotional upheaval. REM sleep is characterized by the rapid movement of the closed eyes from left to right and back again, and seems to be some kind of rapid integrative process, where the left and right hemispheres communicate with each other, relaying information, retrieving memories and formulating responses to the day to day demands of our lives. This process is akin to what happens when you back-up your computer onto an external drive. It allows short and mid-term memory to be converted to long-term memory and is associated with mental health.

We can create this process through hypnosis and by repeatedly practicing this technique, which takes less than ten minutes, we can synchronise both the hemispheres and the electrical activity of the brain.

Here is some background to the powerful phenomena of Brain Wave States you’ll be experiencing:

Beta

Alertness

Concentration

Cognition

You are wide-awake, alert. Your mind is sharp, focused. It makes connections quickly, easily and you're primed to do work that requires your full attention. In the Beta state, neurons fire abundantly, in rapid succession, helping you achieve peak performance. New ideas and solutions to problems flash like lightning into your mind. Beta training is one of the frequencies that biofeedback therapists use to treat Attention Deficit Disorder.

Beta-centred Flow Training help you prepare to take an exam, play sports, give a presentation, analyze and organize information, and other activities where mental alertness and high levels of concentration are key to your success.

Beta waves range between 13-40 HZ. The Beta state is associated with peak concentration, heightened alertness, hand eye coordination and visual acuity. Nobel Prize Winner Sir Francis Crick and other scientists believe that the 40HZ beta frequency used on many Brain Sync tapes may be key to the act of cognition.


Alpha

Relaxation

Visualization

Creativity

When you are truly relaxed, your brain activity slows from the rapid patterns of Beta into the more gentle waves of Alpha. Your awareness expands. Fresh creative energy begins to flow. Fears vanish. You experience a liberating sense of peace and well-being. In biofeedback, Alpha training is most commonly recommended for the treatment of stress.

Alpha-centered Flow Training help you tap your creativity and are excellent for problem solving, finding new ideas and practicing creative visualization. Choose Alpha programs when you want to attain deep levels of relaxation that are so essential to your health and well-being.

Alpha waves range between 7-12 HZ. This is a place of deep relaxation, but not quite meditation. In Alpha, we begin to access the wealth of creativity that lies just below our conscious awareness - it is the gateway, the entry point that leads into deeper states of consciousness. Alpha is also the home of the window frequency known as the Schuman Resonance - the resonant frequency of the earth's electromagnetic field.

Theta

Meditation

Intuition

Memory

Going deeper into relaxation, you enter the elusive and mysterious Theta state where brain activity slows almost to the point of sleep, but not quite. This is the therapeutic hypnogogic state. Theta is the brain state where magic happens in the crucible of your own neurological activity. Theta brings forward heightened receptivity, flashes of dreamlike imagery, inspiration, and your long-forgotten memories. Theta can bring you deep states of meditation. A sensation of "floating." And, because it is an expansive state, in Theta, you may feel your mind expand beyond the boundaries of your body.

Theta rests directly on the threshold of your subconscious. In biofeedback, it is most commonly associated with the deepest levels of meditation. Theta also plays an important part in behavior modification programs and has been used in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction. Finally, Theta is an ideal state for super-learning, re-programming your mind, dream recall, and self-hypnosis.

Theta waves range between 4-7 HZ. Theta is one of the more elusive and extraordinary realms we can explore. It is also known as the twilight state which we normally only experience fleetingly as we rise up out of the depths of delta upon waking, or drifting off to sleep. In Theta, we are in a waking dream, vivid imagery flashes before the mind's eye and we are receptive to information beyond our normal conscious awareness. Theta has also been identified as the gateway to learning and memory. Theta meditation increases creativity, enhances learning, reduces stress and awakens intuition and other extrasensory perception skills.


Delta

Detached Awareness

Healing

Sleep

Long, slow, undulating. Delta is the slowest of all four brain wave frequencies. Most commonly associated with deep sleep, certain frequencies in the Delta range also trigger the release of Human Growth Hormone so beneficial for healing and regeneration. This is why sleep - deep restorative sleep, the kind that Delta frequencies help induce -  is so essential to the healing process. Delta centred Flow Training can promote conversion from short term to long-term memory.

Delta is the brain wave signal of the subconscious, the seat from which intuition arises. That means Delta-based programs are not only an ideal choice for their sleep and deep regeneration potential, but also when you want to access your unconscious activity and help that wellspring of information flow to your conscious mind for clearing and for empowerment. Delta waves range between 0-4 HZ.

When we are in REM sleep we are alternating between low Alpha and high Theta activity, so that alternating our attention between our right and left hemispheres synchronises our brain’s electrical activity into a range somewhere between 6 and 10 HZ, which has been shown in bio-feedback to be extremely beneficial physiologically and psychologically.

The Power of Imagination

It is an interesting feature of living, thinking human beings, that our Will Power is often overwhelmed by our imagination, especially with the importance we place on Will Power in our society. Many people when beginning a diet, for example, say they will rely on their will and very soon find themselves thinking almost exclusively about food, even to the point of dreaming about their favorite foods.

At the opposite extreme, a person who suffers from claustrophobia may be able to logically convince themselves that this fear is irrational and resolve, time and time again to use their Will Power to overcome their feelings, yet when confronted with an enclosed space their Will Power flies out the window and their imagination takes over.

The two examples above demonstrate the destructive ability of the subconscious mind to overcome the conscious will. What hypnosis does is to tap into the imaginative power of the subconscious mind, to facilitate growth and personal development and to help individuals use their imaginations as a tool for goal attainment.

Imagination is a skill, and like any other skill the direction and manipulation of the imaginative mind be greatly improved by practice. You will find, during this course, that both the quality of your imagination and your control of your imagination are greatly enhanced, opening up a whole new realm of creativity, intelligence and personal discovery you thought belonged to the world of the genius.

Elisabetta is a Clinical Hypnotherapist with over 25 years experience facilitating behaviour change and maximising performance. Elisabetta is the author of The Energy Code, The Infidel and Veritas (all available on Amazon), and the creator of the online Personal Transformation Course - Activ8DNA on Udemy. Discover how Elisabetta can help you or your organisation achieve its potential at:

http://elisabettalfaenza.com 

  

Unlocking the DNA of Innovation through Strength Analysis

Everyone talks about innovation, as if it something they can make happen, just by deciding it. Innovation is the product of very specific abilities and attitudes, and therefore is driven by people with specific talents, and requires an organisation-wide mindset shift, that results in an Innovation Culture.

The rationale behind developing an Innovation Culture is to ensure all that every employee within an organisation is being engaged in work that utilises their strengths, and provides the authority to manage, innovate, implement and engage in collaboration. This level of autonomy is crucial to the development of Rainmaker teams to drive innovation and maintain a leading edge within the sector.

In my experience Rainmaker Innovation Practices can be implemented in two stages:

    •     The Business Opportunity Analysis Team (BOAT) process
    •     The Business Implementation Team (BIT) Process.

A detailed level of personality and strengths profiling will reveal whether an organisation has the existing Starter human capital to create a BOAT, or whether they will need to recruit key personnel. Many organisations already have sufficient staff with the requisite finisher profiles to create a Business Implementation Team (BIT), but these will still require proper training in BIT processes and an adequate respect for the BOAT skill-set.

This mix has been shown to create an ideal return on investment on R&D and new enterprises as long as:

    1.    The finishers (BIT) are utilised in the enterprise-modelling phase.
    2.    Founders and C-Level management are consulted and their GLI (Gut Level Intuition) is utilised in the brainstorming phase; all enterprise proposals must be run through the BOAT before any commitments are made to potential enterprise partners, or product development.
    3.    It is essential that the strong Finishers lead the BIT process and ensure they do not bury an enterprise model created by the BOAT before implementation, and trust in the information and intelligence provided, once approved.  It is equally crucial that the BOAT fully briefs the BIT members to achieve real acceptance and ownership of the enterprise at the ‘coal-face.’
    4.    Once sign-off is achieved, enterprise plans should be implemented, tracked and re-assessed at pre-determined times. These enterprises should not be tinkered with outside of the BOAT / BIT process.
    5.    Regular (monthly) group meetings are essential in order to track feedback on new and existing enterprises, manage resources, and to identify any potential unforeseen opportunities, capacity constraints, weaknesses and threats.

Barriers to Innovation

Some powerful barriers, in particular risk and scrutiny, have a specific impact on innovation. Managers are judged on their success and, in seeking to avoid criticism or failure, they can become conservative or resistant to innovative approaches, because innovation is inherently risky. In the not-for-profit sector, failures tend to happen in the full glare of public scrutiny, with consequent risks for the reputations and careers of all those involved. It can therefore be much easier to avoid criticism by not taking risks.

A Strategic Masterplan should acknowledge and examine a diverse range of barriers to innovation. These include risk aversion; failure of leadership; resource constraints; lack of direction and measurement; value conflicts; hierarchical attitudes; silo mentality; legislative limitations; accountability concerns; and resistance to change. Some are a function of necessary requirements for accountability, profitability, impartiality and transparency and cannot be easily swept away. There is no panacea. Finding ways to overcome such barriers will take creativity and determination.

Innovation is also anti-hierarchical—a new idea can come from any level within an organisation or from an external source. Organisations that are open to a range of ideas and suggestions and that encourage development and experimentation thus tend to be innovative. A narrow range of inputs and rigid, multi-tiered approval processes discourage innovation. The BOAT and BIT processes aim to streamline New Business Development without stifling innovation or undermining the value of experience. Innovation requires a tolerance for experimentation and thereby, by definition, for failure. For each innovative success there will be multiple unsuccessful attempts. Such failures have a value in demonstrating what does not work and why; and can contribute to later successful innovations. A culture that punishes failure is not conducive to innovation. It is the nature of management to not focus on the 90 percent of things that go well, but rather on the 10 percent of things that have problems. This mindset is personality dependent, and arguably, this contributes to a culture in which failures or shortcomings are regarded as unacceptable.  Conversely identifying failure early and acting upon it is a crucial part of developing an innovation culture.


Finally, innovation can be transformational or it can be incremental. Both types of innovation are important. Incremental innovation (e.g. streamlining processes) drives continuous improvement and a steady growth in productivity. Transformational innovation (such as introducing a new technology into a workplace) is often highly disruptive, but can lead to large leaps in performance and productivity. It will be the purpose of the Masterplan to provide the context for both incremental and transformational innovation, set out the strategies for both, indicate timetables for their development and implementation and create the benchmarks for tracking results.

It is important to recognise that innovation is more than just coming up with a good idea. Translation of an idea into a successful outcome is what is required for innovation to take place, and it is failure at this point that often causes an innovation culture to stall .

It is this level of innovation that is required to transform any start-up into a sustainable entity and ensure it not only survives but also thrives.

Past, present and future enterprises should be profitable, autonomous, and linked within a collaborative culture of continuous improvement and innovation, once identified and developed. While processes are crucial, all research shows that it’s the business strategy and people, rather than the process alone, that matters. There is little evidence that success rates for research and development productivity can be increased much by just having a new product or process. In fact research suggests these have absolutely no impact on performance or profitability. It’s the people that drive these that determine success or failure.

More specifically, the strategy is to create a Business Opportunity Analysis Team (BOAT) to identify appropriate, innovative new enterprise development opportunities to enable financial sustainability. It is advisable that all new enterprise proposals, regardless of their origin, would be put through the BOAT process once developed.

Growth from innovation is a fundamental business strategy. To succeed, there must be a corresponding innovation mindset across the organisation as well as in Research and
Development (R&D).  However, abdication of growth to R&D without support and involvement from the BOAT (including marketing and production support) means the growth initiatives are likely to fail. A Business Opportunity Analysis Team with the authority to drive innovation through collaboration, and thus growth and profitability is an essential part of any start-up Masterplan strategy.

Myers Briggs (MBTI) and Dow have identified - through a 10 year study - the five steps that drive effective New Business Development (NBD):

Five Steps to More Effective NBD:

1. Determine if R&D leadership is innovative enough:

Dow identified two main personality types: Starters, later characterised via the MBTI instrument as NTPs and NFPs  - preference for intuition, thinking / feeling and perceiving, and Finishers characterised as STJs - people with sensory, thinking and judging preferences.

The Starter Personalities are creative, intuitive, visionary and curious. They continually challenge the status-quo, and tend to be difficult to manage as well as difficult to follow
when in leadership roles without training. They tend to dislike details, agendas, may be viewed as impractical, and can be procrastinators.

In contrast the Finisher personality types are far more pragmatic, better focused, more respectful of authority, and more task-oriented. They like details, agendas, and are far
steadier, consistent workers. They are the people who get the job done. They capture the cash as they exploit the developed opportunity, but can be rigid and negative when faced

with a change to the status-quo. They may resist innovation with the attitude ‘if it ain’t broke why fix it?’

While Starter personalities suit Business Opportunity Analysis, both Starters and Finishers are clearly needed in BOATS, but require initial induction and appropriate management.

Because individual personality is determined to a large extent by genetics, researchers believe it must follow that organisational cultures are also determined to a large extent by genetics, when organisational culture is defined as the collective mindset of the leadership in that organisation. For BOATs to flourish the culture most likely needs to shift its mindset, and thus its culture toward an autonomous / collaborative culture.

2. Match leadership personalities to job roles:

People tend to perform best and gain the greatest job satisfaction in roles that enable them to use their natural gifts. Therefore, understanding the genetic nature of personality means it is critical to match the personalities of the leaders with appropriate job roles, otherwise productivity suffers dramatically.

Starter personality types are best suited to job roles involving innovating and developing, requiring them to operate in an area of ambiguity. These job roles include determining what new types of enterprises or products are needed to meet customers; needs, and then creating them and the marketing and sales plans they need.

Finisher personality types are best suited to growing and enhancing job roles that usually rely on using well established procedures to solve problems. These jobs include commercialising existing products, keeping plants running well, and implementing procedures. Both continuous improvement and incremental advances are hallmarks of Finisher roles.

When Finishers are asked to innovate, they typically fail and are miserable as well. Likewise, when Starters are asked to implement established procedures, at best they typically perform at a lacklustre level.

It is important to emphasise that there are no right or wrong personality types. All are needed, but in the right roles in the right balance.

3. Train and coach Rainmaker BOATs

Rainmakers are a specific type of BOAT that includes a majority of Starters and minority of Finishers who have been selected for their ability to innovate, think outside the square, gather information quickly  and morph one idea quickly into another.

Rainmakers should be trained to assess opportunities in the following ways:

    •    Making sure the new product concepts fit within the business. BOAT leaders use a ‘Gut Level Screen’ ensuring that the opportunities presented to them by the BOATs would truly excite top management from a stand-point of potential size and profitability, timing, geography, technology and markets.

    •    Visiting customers and stakeholders at their locations and plants, testing the draft propositions, determining the customers’ true functional requirements (which they often cannot articulate themselves), and analyzing the results.

    •    Building system cost-performance models of the way customers use products or services (including labor, capital and raw materials), both today and tomorrow - so the next generation of products is already on the drawing board. These results then need to be compared with potential new offerings based on both performance and cost, to determine whether the new business concepts will beat the best-performing competitors, and by paying greater attention to developing a sustainable competitive advantage by establishing exclusive intellectual property rights, or through commercial agreements

    •    Morphing the concept until a winning concept for commercialisation is identified, then reporting to upper management, while typically staying with the zone of top management’s Gut Level Screen

Typically the Rainmakers are likely to discover why the starting point idea should be shelved or even killed. This is a major problem a linear business development process - turning them into killing machines. Successful BOATs need a creative mindset which enables them to morph a starting point idea (statistically doomed to fail) into a winner.

Dow’s study found that the top performing Rainmakers BOATs uncover the real customer’s unmet needs (often unspoken, and sometimes unknown) along with the value of meeting those needs. In short, they morph the starting-point idea. Statistically 95% of the morphed ideas made money after commercialisation vs. the normal 11% odds of success from the end of the early stages of an NBD process.

New businesses are typically begun by innovative Starters. For those that do survive, there is far more work requiring Finisher skills (production, selling, accounting, safety,
quality, shipping and logistics) than Starter skills (innovating in R&D, marketing, advertising). Therefore, the leadership of most firms typically shifts over a period of time toward becoming a culture of Finishers, operationally excellent but no longer able to innovate at world-class levels. The end result is usually a sudden turn-over catastrophe, from which only 1 in 3 businesses recovers. Most organisations literally have a biological lifetime based on their natural ageing process as they gradually shift from a genetic Starter culture to genetic Finisher culture.

Understanding the largely genetic nature of personality should allow  any organisation to have subgroups of creative leadership composed of more Starters, even within a larger organisation that needs to be more heavily staffed with Finishers - allowing the business to be both low cost and highly innovative at the same time. This would create a remarkable people-based sustainable competitive advantage, making the organisation nearly unstoppable.

In the research it strongly suggests that managers who refuse to take the right actions based on the BOAT’s findings (or do not refute those findings with better information) they
should be reassigned. This requires fast and strong action from top management. Far too much is at stake financially. Another way to say this is that NBD managers who make bad decisions usually go on to make many more bad decisions if allowed to do so. Nothing is more damaging to the future success of an organisation than poor decision making by NBD management.

4. Ensure enough Finishers among non-leadership professionals:

Someone has to grow the opportunity to make money. The evidence suggests this requires a higher percentage of Finisher personality types within the larger group of Implementers, than within the BOAT group.

From the research to date  it appears that whereas BOAT groups should be 60% Starters, and 40% Finishers, the implementation group should be only 20-30% Starters with 70 -  80% Finishers.


Research shows that the leadership mix needs to be continually rebalanced with each businesses portfolio and product life-cycle, while the non-leadership groups among both should be primarily Finishers.   For a new organisation this means that the initial phase should be driven by the the R&D team, but once the model is implemented, tested and refined, it should be handed over to a team pre-dominated by Finishers, while the R&D team investigates and develops revenue streams derived from spin-off opportunities.

5. Review Middle Management’s Implementation Plan:

The BOAT’s final step is capturing the information in a clear presentation to the business management, describing why it fits the founder’s Gut Level Screen and why it will win. But then what? Sometimes middle management does the right thing and takes action to commercialise the new business opportunity.  Sometimes they legitimately ask for more information.

However, far too often (Stevens and Swogger found approximately half to two-thirds of the time) middle management fails to take the right actions. After a BOAT presentation with a recommended course of action, a manager should either agree with the information and take appropriate action, or disagree with the information, refuting it with better information and take a different course.

Either way all decision making should be evidence based, even if the initial line of innovation was prompted by a founder’s Gut Level intuition.

The research shows that there are two major categories of management failure from a BOAT:

    •    Management fails to shut down the work which the BOAT proved cannot succeed. In all of the cases where BOATs clearly showed why the starting ideas were doomed, and management tried to commercialise them anyway, failures occurred, often ending in massive write-offs involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

    •    Management fails to commercialise the positive morphed ideas from the analyses. The opportunity costs of missing out on new commercial products and services can be substantial. In both cases the financial impact of improving management’s actions is high.

A better fit of leaders’ personalities with job roles - especially managers who are Finisher types - is needed to understand the importance of Starters involvement when innovation is needed. Achieving an excellent fit between personalities and job roles is critical for all the business functions and leaders, not just within R&D.

With the odds of success for BOAT initiated projects being between 84% and 95% it is clear that projects identified by a BOAT should be implemented. Review of implementation plans must be periodic in order to raise implementation rates, dramatically capturing the otherwise lost opportunity cost of stalled projects.

While the BOAT team need to be dominantly Starter, the model requires the implementation staff (BIT) to be comprised of teams that are 70 - 80% Finishers, ensuring completion.

Pre-implementation action-planning meetings for middle management, with top management and the BOAT present are recommended. It is simple to measure whether or not the pre-implementation planning review meetings are taking place. It is also possible for top management to take fast and appropriate action based on the results from these meetings.

It is worth noting that Starters form less than than 5% of top managers, as they are usually lost early in their career, and they occur less than 200 times out of every 10,000 people.  The starter trait is emergenic - meaning that while it is a genetic trait, it isn’t inherited from one generation to the other, but instead arises from a lucky combination of a series of unrelated genes, that when all present create a highly intuitive,  innovative individual with the ability to think logically.

The attributes of a Starter cannot be learned, so no amount of creativity workshopping will turn someone into a Starter. Within the workplace, these individuals generate 9,500 times the revenue of their non-starter peers when placed in a conducive environment. When an organisation attracts Starters it needs to do all it can to keep them, and it needs to listen to their advice. Simply being creative is not enough, it is the ability to think through the logical steps for modelling or assessing an innovation that is crucial, so not all intuitive types, and not all creative types are suitable.

Elisabetta is the author of The Energy Code (2014, Motivational Press), The Infidel (2015, True North) Veritas (2015, True North) and is a Performance Expert with 30 years experience working with individuals and organisations world-wide.

Click here to visit her website

References:

Stevens, Greg A, and Swogger, Kurt; ‘Creating a Winning R& D Culture, Vol I and II’  Industrial Research Institute Inc, Jan- Feb 2009, pp 22- 50.
Nardi, Dario, The Neuroscience of Personality, Radiance House, Los Angeles, 2011.
Kirton, Michael. Editor. 1989, Adaptors and Innovators; Styles of Creativty and Problem Solving. Routledge, London.
Stevens, Greg, James Burley and Kurt Swogger; 2003 Dow Chemical Achieves Major Transformation of PO&E R&D Group: Personality-Oriented Aproach Improves NPD REsults. PDMA Visions XXVII, No. 3, pp 6-10.