Foundation Studies in meditation
Module 3 The IMTTA Postgraduate Certificate in Brain Body Medicine
1
The International Meditation Teacher Trainers Association
Postgraduate Certificate
in Brain Body Medicine
(Psychophysiology)
Practitioner Training Course
© Isabelle Cunningham/Ke
y Doolan, 2015
Written by Isabelle (Jennifer) Cunningham and Ke
y Doolan. All rights reserved. No part of the
material protected by this copyright may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
etrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Module 3 The IMTTA Postgraduate Certificate in Brain Body Medicine
2
The International Meditation Teacher Trainers Association
Postgraduate Certificate in Brain Body Medicine
(Psychophysiology)
CONTENTS
• Guiding Clients to Self-diagnose and Healing
• Psychophysiology Diagnostic Tools
• How to Work with Damaging Belief Systems and Conditioning
• Medical Meditation
Instructions
Please work through your lesson pack in the required sequence. While it may be tempting to
ush ahead, it is important that you receive information in the integrated way it is intended.
1. As you read through this module, make notes of any points you find particularly
interesting, do not understand, wish to discuss with your teacher or that you would like
to research further.
2. Complete all the exercises and assignments as you come to them in the module. Activity
oxes refer to tasks such as watching videos, listening to audio files, or writing exercises.
3. When you have finished reading this module, completed all the activities and
assignments and watched the PowerPoint presentations, you will be ready to submit
your assessments.
4. Complete the Module Submission Form.
This module contains:
Module Three Lecture
Submission Form
Guiding Clients to Self-diagnose and Healing
“It’s supposed to be a professional secret, but I’ll tell you anyway.
We doctors do nothing. We only help and encourage the doctor within.”
ALBERT SCHWEITZER, M.D.
This topic refers heavily to the book, Mind over Medicine, by Dr. Lissa Rankin. If you have
not read it as yet, it is highly recommended that you do.
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The Healing Power of Fake Surgery:
On pages 5 and 6 of Dr. Lissa Rankins book, Mind over Medicine, Dr. Rankin discusses the
New England Journal of Medicine feature on Dr. Bruce Moseley.
“Dr Moseley’s study, a randomized, double blinded, placebo controlled clinical trial –
published in one of the most highly respected medical journals in the whole world – showed
that a significant percentage of patients experienced resolution of their knee pain solely
ecause they believed they got the surgery.”
Moseley gave sham surgery to a number of his patients just making an incision in the knee
while they were sedated and later telling them the surgery had been a success. One third of
patients getting the actual surgery had a good recovery, the surprise for the researchers was
one third of those getting the sham surgery also recovered, actually reporting less knee pain
than those who got the real surgery. This was Dr. Lissa Rankin’s first discovery of real
evidence that set her on this path and got her thinking “what exactly is the placebo effect?”
“If a percentage of people in clinical trials get better simply because they believe they’re
getting a real drug or surgery, the response they are getting is triggered solely by the mind.”
Mind Over Medicine, page 8:
“Evidence (Dr. Rankin found) that positive belief can alleviate symptoms.”:
Nearly half of all asthma patients get symptom relief from a fake inhaler or sham
acupuncture.
Approximately 40 percent of people with headaches get relief when given a placebo.
Half of people with colitis feel better after placebo treatment.
More than half the patients studied for ulcer pain have resolution of their pain when
given a placebo.
Sham acupuncture cuts hot flashes almost in half (real acupuncture only helped a
quarter of patients.
As many as 40 percent of infertility patients get pregnant while taking placebo
“fertility drugs”.
When compared to morphine, placebos are almost equally effective at treating pain.
Multiple studies demonstrate that almost all of the happy-making responses patients
experience as a result of anti-depressants can be attributed to the placebo effect.
In Mind Over Medicine, on page 11, Dr Rankin writes, “I did finally find proof that, at
least a percentage of time, real physiological changes happen in the body in response to
placebos. When given placebos, bald men grow hair, blood pressure drops, warts
disappear, ulcers heal, stomach acid levels decrease, colon inflammation decreases,
cholesterol levels drop, jaw muscles relax, and swelling goes down after dental
procedures,
ain dopamine levels increase in patients with Parkinson’s disease, white
lood cell activity increases, and the
ains of people who experience pain relief light up
Module 3 The IMTTA Postgraduate Certificate in Brain Body Medicine
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on imaging studies. These finding convince me. Placebos don’t just change how you
feel, they change your biochemistry.”
On pages 11, 12 and 13, Dr. Rankin recounts investigation of five possible explanations
for the placebo effect they are
iefly:
“the belief that you will feel differently leads you to feel differently.”
“You may be conditioned to feel better by simply receiving a sugar pill from someone
in a white coat”
“the nurturing effect of a respected authority figure.”
“a percentage of patients in clinical trials may still be su
eptitiously seeking other
treatments that may confound the data.”
“some patients may get better because the disease resolves itself.”
Page 22 of Mind Over Medicine:
“We’re left to conclude that although physiological changes experienced with placebos may
not be the result of positive belief alone, the placebo effect nonetheless confirms a mind-
ody link and the body’s innate capacity for self-repair.”
Page 23 and 24 of Mind Over Medicine:
The nocebo effect is most obvious in “voodoo death” when a person is cursed and told he
or she will die, then dies. The notion of voodoo death doesn’t just apply to witch doctors in
tribal cultures. The literature shows that patients believed to be terminal who are istakenly
informed that they have only a few months to live have died within their given time frame,
even when autopsy findings revealed no physiological explanation for the early death.”
Page 25 of Mind Over Medicine:
“Scientists believe the nocebo effect is caused primarily by activation of the same stress
esponse the placebo effect relieves. When a patient is cursed either by a witch doctor, a
family member, or a modern physician, the stress of the bad news stimulates the stress
esponse.”
Dr. Rankin continues in this chapter to reference the work of Dr Bruce Lipton then delves into
the power of the subconscious mind.
“The power of the subconscious mind explains why positive thinking only gets you so far.
How many times have you read self-help books, taken workshops, made new-year
esolutions and vowed to improve your life, only to realise a year later that your life is no
etter? Since the conscious mind is only functioning 5 percent of the time, it has little
power to overcome the weighty influence of the subconscious mind. To effect lasting
changes in belief you must change your beliefs not just at the level of the conscious mind,
ut in the subconscious mind.”
Be Mindful Of How You Program Children is the next section of the chapter where Dr. Rankin
uses various examples we all know well enough! She then asks: “But what about you? What
if your parents never programmed your subconscious mind to believe it could heal itself?
What if you want to believe your mind can heal your body, but you just don’t? If you feel
helpless or discouraged, don’t despair. The good news is that negative beliefs about health,
Module 3 The IMTTA Postgraduate Certificate in Brain Body Medicine
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which trigger “nocebo” effects and lead to poor health can be reprogrammed.”
Through the work of Dr. Rankin and many other well trained and highly motivated
individuals, we now have proof enough that the way the cells behave in the body is as a
esult of what thoughts are being entertained in the mind. We also now know, the types of
thoughts we have the majority of the time (whether they are optimistic and hopeful or
pessimistic and fear based) are a result if the filters our experiences have created that
define the way we perceive ourselves, our experiences and the world.
Through this knowledge we can understand that the way we think determines our physical
health as well as mental and emotional wellbeing. We can also clearly see that our past
experiences (especially those that were traumatic, repetitive or happened when we were
very young) have shaped the way we think today.
This could be seen as meaning that things that happened to us and ideas that were
programed into our minds when we were children, or at other times when we were
vulnerable (and which we had no control over or any understanding of their importance at
the time) are what is now determining our fate today.
In general, our social programing has trained us to be victims that need saving in times of
crisis. When we are unwell we look for others to find the causes and solutions for us. We
have learned to take advice, accept diagnosis and follow instructions to regain our good
health.
While we now understand that (in conjunction with professional medical treatment, healthy
diet and where necessary medication or surgery) we are inevitably and completely
esponsible for how healthy or unhealthy we are, our programing has us believing that we
have little control