Renowned surgeon of 30 years, Dr. David Hanscom, has been focused on helping people seek relief from pain. In the first half, he shared his contention that physical pain is ultimately mental pain, and how the mind-body is really one indivisible unit. He spoke about the body's chemistry in the fight phase of "flight or fight." It's an unconscious survival response that is not subject to rational control, he explained, and the key to dealing with it lies in using methods to regulate the body's physiology. Humans can interact and be social because of the vagus nerve's anti-inflammatory nature, which counteracts the automatic survival response when two animals meet each other. When people are socially isolated, such as with the pandemic, they cannot "co-regulate," which can lead to a dis-regulated nervous system and sustained exposure to stress chemicals associated with illness, he said.
To help calm the nervous system and rewire your brain, he has developed the DOC Journey (Direct Your Own Care), which focuses on ways to bring anti-inflammatory responses to the body. This includes such techniques as breathing slowly, breathing through your nose, humming, rubbing your forehead, and listening to soothing music, all of which stimulate the vagus nerve. He also advocated for "expressive writing," which entails jotting your thoughts down on paper and then tearing them up. Over 1,200 research papers have shown that this exercise helps relieve medical and psychological problems, he reported, as it allows people to acknowledge their feelings but to bypass physical reactions to them.
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In the latter half, author Michael Jawer discussed the deeply felt nature of sensitive individuals and how their various qualities relate to the soul and a sentient cosmos. He also connected this to the concept of panpsychism-- the idea that everything has the capacity to feel, and "in some elementary way the entire world is alive," including inert matter. He outlined several types of people and how their abilities or perceptions demonstrate heightened sensitivities. These include those with autism who can exhibit high degrees of focus and concentration, and unique ways of seeing the world.
Savants and prodigies are another example, with amazing abilities from an early age. Prodigies are often gifted in the arts or music, feel things quite intensely, and are driven emotionally to pursue their path, he detailed. Synesthesia, which is the experience of overlapping senses, like hearing color or smelling sound, can be a celebrated trait among sensitive individuals and artists. They possibly have more connections in the brain region, he suggested, and this may be an ability we all have when we're infants, but it typically fades away through "neural pruning." Jawer also associated various paranormal occurrences such as seeing apparitions, poltergeist activity, and past life recall with higher degrees of feeling and emotion.
News segment guests: John M. Curtis, Chuck Coppes