This video makes to 1001% sense for me. I understood how I overcame my anxiety. I threw away all my med that the doctors gave me and then I decided to built up my confidence to be more confident when talking with people. I put myself in this "stressful" situations but tried to stay there, even when I felt uncomfortable. After a time the physical reactions like sweating an feeling anxious went away. My amygdala was step by step rewritten. Thank you so much for this video!
There’s no denying that to overcome or even just reduce anxiety is a challenging treatment, but I believe we now have enough understanding of what is happening in the anxious brain and what we can do to change it to genuinely overcome or at least significantly diminish anxiety. I had social anxiety, debilitating fear of speaking in groups/public, I would be dissociated most of the time in group situations. It would hijack me, I hated it, I wanted to to stop happening but it persisted for decades even got worse. The anxiety I had was not as severe as many of the patients I see with anxiety disorders, nevertheless it caused me great discomfort and severely inhabited my life preventing me from public speaking and being present in social situations. Once a looked at the condition from a brain circuit point view and started rewiring my anxious brain, or self directed neuroplasticity I have fully overcome my anxiety. It feels amazing, liberating and it opens up new possibilities in what I can do in life.
I love that he says that cognitive based therapies can't really help with this. Exactly what I've been telling therapists for years and they just act like I'm non compliant or some other load of bs. Learning this sort of thing has changed my life for the better while therapy made it worse.
Cognitive behavioural therapy works well on our psychology and thinking processes created in the frontal (thinking region) of the brain, we can create anxiety there. Regression (bringing up the past) based therapies can remodel traumatic/scary experiences/memories from the past. When anxiety originates from the amygdala the above therapies don’t work. It really suck when you have an over reactive amygdala programmed to produce a danger/fear response when it’s not needed. I had is until my late 50’s, every time I spoke in a group,even a few friends I have a mini panic attack, adrenaline, 160 bpm thumping heart, sweating, dry bitter mouth. It had become milder, but was still so unpleasant it made socialising in groups not enjoyable. It was the last mental health issue I had to overcome, and I set out to dismantle and change the sy st sin my brain that created this totally unnecessary and unwanted response. I through lots of things a it, and now it’s completely gone :-) With the benefit of hindsight this is how I would do it today. Start with several rounds of meditation treatments, one treatment = 50 hours over 3 months. This is capable of dialling down the reactivity of the amygdala,it’s not a complete solution but it’s a great way to move it the right direction and make the next steps easier. Next use graduated exposure therapy desensitisation to reprogram the psychological connections installed in your amygdala, is scary to do but it really works. The amygdala learns from experiences, it can learn something is NOT dangerous. The way I do exposure therapy is to preload the brain with anti anxiety supplements that induce a calm state, this helps to show the amygdala this thing is not dangerous. I’m ‘not’ recommending you do this next one because doing so would be illegal in many regions. Research is showing that therapeutic use of psilocybin from magic mushrooms extinguishes/reduces the fear response of the amygdala. Psilocybin use is not illegal in some places. I’m gonna release a course next year on these methods.
The brain is cruel, only need an anxiety thought for a split second and then I spent the next 6 months or more trying to over come that fear (Agoraphobia) literally throwing up walking out the door, had to do this for months and months to where I felt at least half comfortable for then my stupid brain to latch onto another fear, then another, great video, you explained it very well but I do think that some people are just mullered with a hyperactive amygdala looking for danger all the time, I just want mine removed, its ruined my life.
I am in a 24x7 panic state since the last few weeks. Knew this could be the amygdala but your video brought in lots of clarity as to the map of atrocities this guys does. Hats off to your knowledge and your articulation which brings the interest. Subscribed bro.
After brain collapse and struggling for 10 months what's going on with me, I was able to rewire almost every piece of anxiety in my brain exposing myself to things that was shooting panics to my brain. What also worked for me is a feeling as I'm a legend and doing legendary stuff creating superhuman in myself. Except one thing, which is so difficult to do - it's checking on how am I talking. I lost the flaw in the way how I talk constantly checking am I choosing words and how slow I am. Unfortunately that became my issue over time when my brain was down. And exposing myself to different conversations doesn't help, because you need to talk and you don't get no time for amygdala to calm down and catch positive emotions, you throwing her into checking yourself, which is slowing you down how you talk and throwing negative arrows to amygdala. Any ideas, Doctor? If I don't check on myself how I talk seems to be the only way, which is actually running away from facing fear, vicious circle.
Hi Peter, I wanna thank you for your videos, I could understand so clear and much better with your explanations than any other videos., just wondering why you have no more videos, your work can help much more people as you continue doing it...thanks man! 🙏🏼
Hey Peter! Thanks so much for generously sharing your research with all of us. Have you heard of Havening? Otherwise known as the Amygdala Depotentiation technique? I've had bouts of *crippling* anxiety off and on since childhood and nothing worked well but Havening has actually helped to neutralize/reprogram the trauma. It's similar to EMDR but can be done in the comfort of your own home and for free! Just thought you might be interested :)
Hay, I’m always very happy to hear when someone uses a self-help techniques to get well. Natural self- help is what got me well and what my website and posts are all about. These self help techniques like Havening/EMDR can be great, you can do them together or at the end of meditation brain training to further consolidate the changed.
Hey Mr Peter! I have subscribed your channel and and seeing your videos passionately.. You are doing such a noble job of making a common man understand anxiety which people say can not be reversed.. I too have an anxiety of BP measurement.. Even a thought of blood pressure measurement , increased my BP to alarmingly high. I hope I will use your technique and see the results.. Regards
This is nicknamed ‘white-coat hypertension’ (from a time when doctors and nurses wore white coats) and just the presence of somebody wearing a white coat which caused the patient’s blood pressure to go up and therefore give a false reading. The solution I would recommend would be: Do 50 hours of deep relaxation of brain training, the same thing you do at the end of a yoga class but for half an hour a day for 100 consecutive days, I’ve got a free recording on how to do this available by email. This will already teach your brain how to switch off stress responses in the autonomic nervous system and have some affect on recalibrating them, it won’t however we educate the amygdala that gets triggered by the sight of a doctor, nurse, a blood pressure meter and the whole procedure. To re-educate the amygdala I would start with buying your own blood pressure meter, similar to the one used by your doctor and regularly exposing yourself to having your blood pressure taken. You would do a deep relaxation and meditation then take your blood pressure then do the relaxation again, you could also preload Antianxiety supplements about an hour before you would take your blood pressure. You could do it yourself or have someone else do it to you. Eventually the amygdala learns that nothing bad happens when you have your blood pressure taken, and it can even associate having your blood pressure taken with a deep relaxation response. Then when you go to your doctor you will arrive early and sit and do a meditation/relaxation. The other thing to do is lower your blood pressure but eating a very high potassium containing diet, restricting sodium and supplementing magnesium. For potassium you eat lots and lots of vegetables, the only fruit containing potassium in any good quantity is bananas, it’s basically about the vegetables like vegetable soup. Today I would have no hesitation in putting a person onto a plant protein based diet, also add flaxseeds and hibiscus tea to lower blood pressure. I think there’s a page on how to lower blood pressure somewhere on my website if memory serves me. I’ve performed the above treatment procedure with several patients and it was always successful in enabling them to show their doctor they had normal blood pressure and in so doing lowered their medical insurance premiums.
I shared your video in my anger management group on Facebook. So many people have issues with no clue on how to address them! It’s really unfortunate! Thanks for sharing!
Next month I’m starting an online course on changing the way stress affects our mental and physical health with brain training, psychological mindset shifts, diet and more. It will include anger releasing techniques, if you want to know when this starts you could send me an email.
Peter, think my anxiety is based on self esteem being overweight with stretchmarks, stems from an early age (13-14) still have it bad, combined with depression at 27. I am a good looking lad which is the funniest thing about this but the self hatred, shame and not accepting myself has made me unfunctional and miserable. Also would micro dosing psilocybin be of any assistance? What would you tell me or what therapy would I need if I were your client to heal from these deeply rooted thoughts?
Thanks Peter for this great explanation, this makes a lot of sense. What would be your suggestion to help an ASD child "non-verbal" to reprogram the amygdala. From your video I really see the breakdown of my son's thought process and wonder if there is a way to regulate the amygdala other than brain training/meditation which is not really accessible for him at this stage. Thank you
You’re welcome. Good luck with your healing journey. I’m still trying to finish the course I’m preparing to teach this meditation techniques, I’m sure it’ll get done sometime in 2022.
What nootropics do you know boost NGF and BDNF? I think you should look into Zembrin/Kanna as well. Shit, I just read about Ibuprofen being a RhoA inhibitor. So much knowledge!!
Amazing!! I have anxiety disorder and paranoia. My right hemisphere is creating all scary images and it gives me a lot stress. Could you please suggest me which meditation would be right for this?
Sorry to hear you are having paranoia and anxiety, I used to have these problems, I know how horrible they are to live with. It does take time but I believe we can do a tremendous amount to restructure our brain and combat these things. Think of each brain training treatment is taking 50 hours, and you may have to do a few to make a big difference. I would start with 50 hours of directed focus mindfulness where you choose what you focus on (hearing, breathing et cetera) and lock your mind onto those things, perhaps at the same time you would do 50 hours of deep relaxation brain training to dampen down overactivity in the HPA axis because this may be creating enough inflammation to keep your amygdala desensitised to GABA and therefore overactive and perpetuating the state of anxiety. Because I don't know you can't make a determination about which exercise you should begin with or in what order. These 2 exercises should begin to diminish the problems. Once you've completed the above 2 exercises which would require either 30 minutes a day for 6 months or one hour a day just over 3 months then I would do another 50 hours of open focus mindfulness if you can do it to develop the anterior singular cortex in and other way so that it can handle and process these uncomfortable thoughts in a way that is more tolerable. Along the way I would explore the possibility that you have trauma triggers lodged in your amygdala and traumatic memories in your hippocampus. You would work with a trauma therapist or I use cognitive hypnotherapy with NLP to release and remodel traumatic triggers memories and programming in the hippocampus and amygdala; this would take you further still. Completing all the work above would take a minimum of 9 months and that would be really pushing it, I think more realistic would be 18 months; but you should be feeling changes and improvements along the way and it would be an incredible journey. At the same time I will also be taking natural remedies to adjust your brain chemistry to quell anxiety and paranoia. Don't give up think that there is nothing you can do, I believe that today we know a lot about how to treat mental health problems and that they are highly treatable; brain is very malleable and plastic, I would say it is the 2nd most repairable part of the body 2nd only to the liver and changeable on a par with muscles. Imagine you wanted to grow a highly muscular physique, you would see some results within 3 months and amazing results in 18 months of daily/weekly work. You can find a lot of information for free on my website www.balancingbrainchemistry.co.uk and I'm going to be running meditation classes online starting soon, good luck.
Thanks so much for this excellent video, Peter . It is without a doubt , one of the best information I have read or seen about the treatment of anxiety disorders.
Very well explained Sir. Please do make a video explaining the impact of Distress Tolerance skills and Imagery techniques of DBT on amygdala programming for dealing with patients of anxiety disorders.
Thank you, that's very encouraging. I was thinking about making very long educational videos and selling them like an audiovisual book. I'm just starting my journey into social media and publishing.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I would also buy books/videos from you. A lot of us with these problems don't have a lot of guidance. You seem to have a lot of experience in treating yourself and others and this is very valuable to many of us. You are also very honest in what works/doesn't work so this makes you different from others out there on the internet who are just parroting information about mindfulness or blueberries or keto diets or 5-HTP or whatever.
@@useraccount5881 Thank you for the encouragement, I'm just beginning to write up what I've learned over the past 30 years in practice. You will see a steady stream of posts from me on youtube, facebook, Instagram and my new site: it's quite exciting having these new ways (to me anyway) of sharing information. Everything I post is things I have experience of, not information I just copied from online. Let me know what area of mental health particularly interests you.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I would buy one to. the way how you explain things makes me understanding this better than my professor at university when I studied my master :D
To answer that we would have to take an average from multiple studies, but unfortunately theres not enough specific scientific research to do that. It’s also emerging that the effects of meditation are more complex than just shrinking the amygdala, it may have additional effects like balancing the left and right sides of the amygdala. Furthermore results will vary from one person to the next, so you just have to try the treatment and see how it affects you individually. In my observations I guess each 50 hour (3 month) course of treatment may dial down the reactivity of the amygdala and diminish anxiety by about 30-40%. This is a good effect from one treatment and the effect can persist for years making it a fantastic return on the investment of time. You can do several 50 hour courses of different meditation treatment’s to add further improvements. This is great preparation for subsequent treatments such as exposure desensitising therapy and psilocybin therapy. I’ll be producing a video training course that you can buy covering all these techniques later in 2024
What is your opinion on EFT for panic disorder? I have done some tapping and when I go into social situations and it seems I don't freak out so much. Im hoping it will help create some better associations with social situations.
EFT seems to be a bit hit and miss, I've met quite a few people that found it very helpful and others for whom it had no effects. It's certainly a safe practice and so if it seems to be helping you keep investing in it. You may also like to try the Havening Technique, you will find videos explaining it on TH-cam. When you do these techniques make a deliberate point of choosing to believe in it and seeing or feeling yourself getting well, what you'll do is utilise the placebo effect which is a real medical phenomenon. What's incredibly interesting is the placebo effect still works even when you know you're doing it, so it's a free safe additional treatment. I'm going to be teaching the meditation techniques described in the video starting in
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I would say that doing EFT before the social event seems to help me. It's like it switches off my amygdala to an extent. I'd that the effects do not last though and I regress back to my social anxiety unless I keep up with the EFT. Would you say that anxiety/paranoia around people is as a result of a chemical issue though or conditioning of the mind due to traumatic events? It would be understandable that someone who was treated badly in early life would then become suspicious of humanity in general as they grow older? I can't quite get my head around whether for example a paranoid disorder such as schizophrenia is a chemical issue or just due to mind conditioning from an early age that shows up later on if you know what I mean.
That’s amazing I’m happy for you. B complex plus extra B 6 (P-5-P) helped my anxiety a lot especially the B 6 for social anxiety, but the fear of public speaking, even just speaking in a group of more than 3 friends remained extremely strong and inhibited my life. It took 2 and a half years of repeated rounds of different meditation to activate the TPN network and classical mindfulness combined with exposure desensitisation therapy to completely get rid of my anxiety. It feels SOOOO great to be free of it. I combined the exposure therapy with natural remedies to boost the effectiveness. It’s a new idea the US marines are trialing for PTSD, they tried pre-dosing the soldiers with PTSD with MDMA Ecstasy (yes Ecstasy) which artificially creates a blissful calm state and then had then recall the trauma in a controlled therapeutic environment. The results were phenomenally better then all previous results from unassisted therapy. I cannot use MDMA because well it’s illegal and even if I was prepared to break the law (which obviously I’m saying on the record do not do that) the impurity illegal street Ecstasy probably wouldn’t be good enough; it could be ‘cut’ with amphetamines which would have the opposite therapeutic effect. So not having access to pure MDMA I turned to natural remedies and I would take a big stack of all the anti-anxiety remedies before exposing my self to anxiety provoking situations, either in my minds eye in therapy or in the real world. It worked :-)
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I was also employed as a project manager for many years. Years of having to present to large groups eventually got me over my fear of public speaking but I agree with you, it’s tough.
Yes and it’s hard to predict what will work for one person and not another, and how long to will take. You just have to try everything that’s safe that you can, on of the huge challenges with treating anxiety is the anxiety can make you afraid of even doing some of the things that could eventually help which sucks.
I stopped making videos during the lockdown but when I get restarted and have a lot more on this topic and also I'm preparing online video course teaching the meditation techniques mentioned in this video. If you'd like to be informed when this video course is available semi-an email so I have your address. Good luck with your healing journey
I’m making an online course to track these techniques see: www.balancingbrainchemistry.co.uk/peter-smith/157/Meditation-Classes-Online.html But DON’T prepay just yet, wait until the course goes live.
Zembrin seems to have the ability to rebalance the amygdala when has become over activated by trauma, but please understand something which is you cannot change your amygdala just with supplements. To change the amygdala you need to perform brain training exercises (appropriate meditation) to rewire your amygdala and reprogram the psychology or ‘software’ running your amygdala with exposure desensitisation therapy. Self help techniques can really work wonders but only if you apply several techniques all working together on the same issue from different sides or approaches. Good luck with your healing journey.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I sent you an e-mail and sent messages from whatsapp to start a session with you. Please kindly reply to my e-mail or WhatsApp so that if and when we can start a session. Thank you
Glad you liked it. The sound and video got out of sync somehow! I'm going to fix and remake. For more see the video on an overactive Default Mode Network and anxiety (coming July 19)
my anxiety is so bad it's in my eyes it unbearable iv been like this since i was 15 it got worse at 22 i don't know where it's came from the doctors don't know what caused it they just say it's GAD but i'm in this unreal state with anxiety in my eyes completey tuned into the world i see everything it's too much
Good question, brain scans have revealed that different meditations exercise or workout different part of the brain, so different meditations produce different effects and the best meditation for you depends on your health goals. For ruminating anxiety and depression I recommend the type of mindfulness where you actively direct your attention tho activate the Task Positive Network and switch off the Default Mode Network; I call this the TPN meditation. See my article www.balancingbrainchemistry.co.uk/peter-smith/164/What's-the-Best-Meditation-for-Depression-Anxiety-and-Bipolar.html For social anxiety I recommend the open monitoring (classic common) style of meditation to develop activity in the antiterrorist cingulate cortex. For bipolar disorder I recommend the loving kindness meditation to develop activity in the parahippocampal gyri an area of the brain involved in the regulation of our emotions and mood, I also think this meditation resets my biological clock (sleep cycles). Also use this meditation for anger, aggressively and healing emotional wounds. For PTSD maybe the Transcendental Meditation technique is best but we need more evidence, to learn TM you DONT have to pay the TM organisation thousands, it’s just chanting a mantra. Think of meditation like physical exercise, all physical exercise confers several general health benefits and all meditations confer general healthy effects to the brain, but just like different physical exercise work and develop specific muscle groups (legs, upper body, back, core strength) and different muscle memory, different meditations develop specific brain structures and neuro-circuits. I’m going to running an on-line training in different types of meditation and how to make adjustments in our mindset about stress to change the way stress affects out mental and physical health. See: www.balancingbrainchemistry.co.uk/peter-smith/157/Meditation-Classes-Online.html (BUT PLEASE DONT PREPAY wait until the classes go live).
To be honest at this time insufficient is known about neuro circuits involved in pure OCD or how to formulate a brain training exercise that would be reliably therapeutic for this condition. When I started out treating my own condition there was no guidance and so I just had to keep experimenting with different things to see what would have therapeutic benefits for me. 1 of the few good things about mental health problems is that when you stumble upon a thing that beneficial you can work out for yourself that it's helpful, I mean to say you don't need laboratory tests to tell you if your OCD is going down, you know. One thing I have become certain of is that for anxiety spectrum conditions it's the wiring neuro circuitry of the brain that is more important than the neurotransmitters and chemistry of the brain. In other words this you brain training exercises, exposure therapy from the psychological side and meditation/brain training exercises for you neuro circuitry side. It is almost inconceivable that there is never going to be a drug or supplement that you could take that would switch off OCD; any such substance would be causing unwanted sedation and side-effect in other parts of the brain. Hypothetically in a science-fiction future world you could have a drug that causes sedation only the neurons involved in OCD, somehow the drug would be smart and know which neurons to target and which ones not to target, but at this point in time this is total science-fiction, even if you are a young person you not gonna see that in your lifetime; so in the meantime I would recommend treating your brain with brain training exercises is going to be the most fruitful area. One really big thing to understand is that together therapeutic effect from a meditation brain training exercise you need to do more than 30 hours just to see if it's going to be of any help you need to do at least 50 hours to consolidate (hardwire) the benefits into your brain. Adult brains are formed and to some extent 'set' by the early 20s, we can change adult brains but to do so requires minimum threshold of number of hours, intensity and frequency. But but but do not try doing 30 hours of any meditation brain training exercise too quickly into shorter space of time. Start with 20 minutes a day for the 1st week and then you can get up to 30 minutes a day for another couple of weeks and if you want you can then increase up to an hour or just stay at 30 minutes. It's unusual in my practice but just by coincidence I saw 3 new patients that have triggered mental health problems by jumping in the deep end before they could swing and doing huge numbers of hours of meditation. For example one person that it never meditated before did 10 days of vipasena meditation in silent retreat! The brain this is like running a marathon, imagine if you've never been running and then you went and ran a marathon, there's a risk, maybe only a small risk but still a risk that you can have a heart attack. However if you began with regular walking and then vigourous speed walking and then gentle jogging you could work up to running without exposing yourself to risk. All the cases of people I've seen had bad experiences from meditation did the same thing, they jumped in on massive numbers of hours from the get go. I'm still working on preparing my video training course on how to perform the TPN meditation, if you'd like to get an update when that's ready semi-an email so I have your address. This is a style of meditation I have put together specifically to combat anxiety and depression. I wish you the very best with your healing journey, keep going, keep trying things, the brain is rewireable and changeable, you should be able to the very least significantly reduce your condition so that it's easier to live with if not gradually eradicated completely. You should expect this to take several years of work, just keep going.
Thanks for video. I am dealing with health anxity from 4 years. Two time medicaly treated but it comes again. Now from three months I am dealing with it. It is very hard time but I decided not to go fo medications. I am thinking that some day my brain will learn that these are fake sensations.
My observation in my clinic is that with anxiety it’s the brain training rewiring exercises that are the most important and effective, the chemical treatments (from drugs or natural remedies) are rarely fully effective. I’m starting an online course next month on meditation techniques specifically for anxiety and depression, details will be on my website and sent to people in my email list.
I've been having them well I think I have i got a bad headache at work then start thinking I've got a brain tumour so it's now a constant headache numb Ness hot flushes have you learnt any techniques to tell me brain its not a brain tumour cause I'd probably know if it was that
I’m developing an online course teaching this meditation, I’ll probably announce it on my TH-cam channel or send me your email address to get an update. My address is hello@petersmithuk.com
Hi, I just about to start teaching these meditations online next week as part of a stress and mental health course to stay mentally healthy during the coronavirus shut down. The course will include the meditation techniques, deep relaxation body training techniques, psychological techniques to change one's stress mindset and information about maximising one's immune system. To receive information about when these classes start, the costs, times etc send me an email so I have your address, my email address is: hello@PeterSmithUK.com
Ha ha thanks. It’s from Duchamp but unfortunately they don’t make these great shirts anymore 😞 Once I get my new studio setup I’m planning to make at least another 20 vids and I had an idea to buy a new bright shirt for each vid. You’ve inspired me to do it, thanks. It’s gonna be expensive but worth it.
The meditation course is behind schedule… To get informed you could send me an email, I’ll do a mail shot when it’s ready. My address is PeterSmithUK@yahoo.com
Yes I do private coaching sessions by video call. I develop an individual prescription of natural, diet and brain training exercises based on the current symptoms, the medical history and any other issues that can affect the health of the brain such as an unhealthy digestion (gut-brain axis), chronic inflammation from various sources, poor resistance to stress and more.
Peter thank you for sharing this really informative video! You explain things very well and I am truly grateful for them. I have recently been suffering from anxiety which started one morning after suffering from a burn out / mental breakdown. Fortunately, I addressed it early and have managed to start feeling better with the help of a network of good people, healthy eating and gym as well as meditation and taking lithium orotate, omega3, fish oil and magnesium. I still have the odd days where I sometimes feel on edge for hours, feeling that fearfulness in my body but generally speaking it seems to becoming less intense. I would like to know whether you recommend anything else that might help me along the way? Most of my anxiety stems from overthinking and worrying. However, I am going to try your meditation and try to re programme this part of my brain 🧠 .
I hope you find a specific type of meditation effective, training your brain to switch off and overactive DMN by repeatedly exercising the TPN could switch off overthinking and worrying. There are only three things I've seen that
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments yes, i got your reply, unfortunately i am on disability and in Canada - so the price you quoted is about double in my dollars, there is no way i can afford this
My theory is that vaccinates (heavy metal perservatives), circumcision (early trauma), and an epidemic of lyme disease (and associated diseases like Bartonella) are causing huge amounts of neurological problems in people.
Yes absolutely, Lyme and some other infections can be very strong causes of inflammation and if this overwhelms your neuroplastic capabilities it can trigger a mental health problem. Heavy metals are highly neurotoxicity and again can overwhelm an individual’s neuroplastic abilities. FYI mercury was discontinued as as preservative in all routine vaccines in the early 2000’s, we have to keep up to date :) Today they use aluminium which weakens the blood brain barrier. Early childhood trauma has been shown to increase the size of the amygdala and possibly the HPA stress system and these effects can last lifelong, however I believe we can do a lot to compensate an neutralise these effects to eliminate them as risk factors. I will be making vids on all the things you mention are risk causing factors for mental health.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments fyi it took a decade of lawsuits to get one mercury preservative removed, and making that such a fight to get rid of one pointless/hyper toxic preservative shows the government doesnt mind fking people up when they are born. They have other heavy metal preservatives still in there, like aluminum which is also horrible for your brain. And active infections in the vaccines, like sv-40.
I agree with you.... when I took my astrazeneca in April 2021... the anxiety like symptoms got worse as time progressed and it got even worse when when I had my second dose .. December 2021 ... is when my body just stopped working correctly.... dizziness 24/7 feeling anxious etc 😕
Telling people exactly how to do the techniques is something I do in my practice, and in 2024 I’ll also explain how to perform the techniques in a video course that you can buy. I don’t give everything away for free because this is what I do for a living, you know, to buy food and pay rent; this is my only source of income. There’s nothing wrong with exchanging expert information for a fee, the knowledge and experience that has gone into developing these techniques cost me over $100,000 in course fees and tens of thousands of hours over 40 years. I’ll sell the course for about $100 which is cheap relative to other courses and very cheap for all the work I put in. I do this because I want self help techniques to be widely available at an affordable price, I’m not just in this for the money. If you look at the other comments, generally people found it helpful, it’s just you with the pist-off attitude, resentful, I don’t like it, please delete your own comment.
Rather than experiencing…is it possible to analyze a trigger in hindsight to change your perspective of it, so it will no longer trigger the amygdala? Ie. Someone is triggered by a love interest turning them down. The amygdala is activated due to fear of rejection because we need community for survival, but then that person ponders rejection until they are convinced that nothing bad can come from it. Is it possible to convince your brain that rejection is safe without experiences confirming that?
Good question, it's only possible to do that to a limited extent may be some people are very limited extent. The way the amygdala is positioned in the brain means that it can trigger a state of distress BEFORE the thinking part of the brain (the frontal cortex in the forehead) has even received the triggering information; in other words by the time the frontal cortex has had time to think about it the amygdala has already been triggered. After being triggered your cortex can use its cognitive powers to think through the situation, develop an alternative, healthier perspective and then exert control over the amygdala this is sometimes called top-down control. This may not stop the amygdala being triggered in the first place however it will enable you to terminate the triggered response more quickly, as opposed to it lasting for hours or days, escalating and catastrophizing; obviously being able to do this is better than nothing. But to stop the amygdala in the first place requires amygdala reprogramming and the therapy that works that is called exposure therapy. It turns out that the way the amygdala works is it learned only by direct experience, it doesn't have consciousness like the frontal lobes and can't think things through, we can't talk and negotiate with our amygdala with cognitive-based therapies. When someone's amygdala is triggered by something controllable like fear of heights, performing exposure therapy is quite straightforward; you just expose yourself in little baby steps to progressively more scary height related scenarios, each time staying in contact with your distress until it subsides and the amygdala learns this thing is not dangerous. To perform exposure therapy on complex dynamic issues like relationships is more challenging, you can't control and pause the other person or the real-world to gradually expose your amygdala to what it thinks is dangerous. In this case what you could do is work with and NLP/hypnotherapy type therapist and you can set up in your minds eye so to speak scenarios that provoke your amygdala in the safe and controlled environment of a therapy session. Another feature of the way the brain is wired is that the neurological pathways that communicate from the amygdala to the frontal cortex can be more numerous than the pathways that communicate in the opposite top-down direction from the cortex to the amygdala; this means to say that the amygdala can and often does dominate that exchange, and the cortex is unable to do much to control the amygdala. If the amygdala signals are very strong and ability of the cortex to control the amygdala is weak and the amygdala rules or dominate the conversation. The good news is that if you do enough meditation you can strengthen and grow the communication channels that run top-down from the cortex to the amygdala and also brain scans have shown that with sufficient meditation you can dampen down the reactivity of the amygdala which is exactly what you want to do. How much is enough meditation? Well brain scans have shown that you can see in the scan changes after 50 hours, 50 hours is half an hour a day for a hundred days. But when you are suffering you donor do just the minimum or barely enough, so aim for performing 75-100 hours or more of meditation to dampen down amygdala reactivity and grow the back channels from the cortex. After that or at the same time perform exposure therapy with an appropriate therapist to reprogram the software so to speak installed in your amygdala making connections. There's no denying that this is a lot of work, expect it to take 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years of self-help work, but the rewards are there if you put the working :-)
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This video makes to 1001% sense for me. I understood how I overcame my anxiety. I threw away all my med that the doctors gave me and then I decided to built up my confidence to be more confident when talking with people. I put myself in this "stressful" situations but tried to stay there, even when I felt uncomfortable. After a time the physical reactions like sweating an feeling anxious went away. My amygdala was step by step rewritten. Thank you so much for this video!
I must say this is the best anxiety video I’ve ever seen. That’s for giving us hope. Some people say it’s not curable. :(
There’s no denying that to overcome or even just reduce anxiety is a challenging treatment, but I believe we now have enough understanding of what is happening in the anxious brain and what we can do to change it to genuinely overcome or at least significantly diminish anxiety.
I had social anxiety, debilitating fear of speaking in groups/public, I would be dissociated most of the time in group situations. It would hijack me, I hated it, I wanted to to stop happening but it persisted for decades even got worse. The anxiety I had was not as severe as many of the patients I see with anxiety disorders, nevertheless it caused me great discomfort and severely inhabited my life preventing me from public speaking and being present in social situations.
Once a looked at the condition from a brain circuit point view and started rewiring my anxious brain, or self directed neuroplasticity I have fully overcome my anxiety. It feels amazing, liberating and it opens up new possibilities in what I can do in life.
I love that he says that cognitive based therapies can't really help with this. Exactly what I've been telling therapists for years and they just act like I'm non compliant or some other load of bs.
Learning this sort of thing has changed my life for the better while therapy made it worse.
Cognitive behavioural therapy works well on our psychology and thinking processes created in the frontal (thinking region) of the brain, we can create anxiety there.
Regression (bringing up the past) based therapies can remodel traumatic/scary experiences/memories from the past.
When anxiety originates from the amygdala the above therapies don’t work.
It really suck when you have an over reactive amygdala programmed to produce a danger/fear response when it’s not needed.
I had is until my late 50’s, every time I spoke in a group,even a few friends I have a mini panic attack, adrenaline, 160 bpm thumping heart, sweating, dry bitter mouth. It had become milder, but was still so unpleasant it made socialising in groups not enjoyable.
It was the last mental health issue I had to overcome, and I set out to dismantle and change the sy st sin my brain that created this totally unnecessary and unwanted response.
I through lots of things a it, and now it’s completely gone :-)
With the benefit of hindsight this is how I would do it today.
Start with several rounds of meditation treatments, one treatment = 50 hours over 3 months. This is capable of dialling down the reactivity of the amygdala,it’s not a complete solution but it’s a great way to move it the right direction and make the next steps easier.
Next use graduated exposure therapy desensitisation to reprogram the psychological connections installed in your amygdala, is scary to do but it really works. The amygdala learns from experiences, it can learn something is NOT dangerous.
The way I do exposure therapy is to preload the brain with anti anxiety supplements that induce a calm state, this helps to show the amygdala this thing is not dangerous.
I’m ‘not’ recommending you do this next one because doing so would be illegal in many regions. Research is showing that therapeutic use of psilocybin from magic mushrooms extinguishes/reduces the fear response of the amygdala.
Psilocybin use is not illegal in some places.
I’m gonna release a course next year on these methods.
The brain is cruel, only need an anxiety thought for a split second and then I spent the next 6 months or more trying to over come that fear (Agoraphobia) literally throwing up walking out the door, had to do this for months and months to where I felt at least half comfortable for then my stupid brain to latch onto another fear, then another, great video, you explained it very well but I do think that some people are just mullered with a hyperactive amygdala looking for danger all the time, I just want mine removed, its ruined my life.
I share your desire to have the damn thing removed. Anxiety is fucking my life and I'm not even 30.
Best explanation i ever come across to understand amygdala hijack
I am in a 24x7 panic state since the last few weeks. Knew this could be the amygdala but your video brought in lots of clarity as to the map of atrocities this guys does. Hats off to your knowledge and your articulation which brings the interest. Subscribed bro.
After brain collapse and struggling for 10 months what's going on with me, I was able to rewire almost every piece of anxiety in my brain exposing myself to things that was shooting panics to my brain.
What also worked for me is a feeling as I'm a legend and doing legendary stuff creating superhuman in myself.
Except one thing, which is so difficult to do - it's checking on how am I talking. I lost the flaw in the way how I talk constantly checking am I choosing words and how slow I am. Unfortunately that became my issue over time when my brain was down. And exposing myself to different conversations doesn't help, because you need to talk and you don't get no time for amygdala to calm down and catch positive emotions, you throwing her into checking yourself, which is slowing you down how you talk and throwing negative arrows to amygdala. Any ideas, Doctor? If I don't check on myself how I talk seems to be the only way, which is actually running away from facing fear, vicious circle.
Hi Peter, I wanna thank you for your videos, I could understand so clear and much better with your explanations than any other videos., just wondering why you have no more videos, your work can help much more people as you continue doing it...thanks man! 🙏🏼
You are an angel. I needed this information so much
Best video about how the anygdala works. Thank you!
Hey Peter! Thanks so much for generously sharing your research with all of us. Have you heard of Havening? Otherwise known as the Amygdala Depotentiation technique? I've had bouts of *crippling* anxiety off and on since childhood and nothing worked well but Havening has actually helped to neutralize/reprogram the trauma. It's similar to EMDR but can be done in the comfort of your own home and for free! Just thought you might be interested :)
Hay, I’m always very happy to hear when someone uses a self-help techniques to get well. Natural self- help is what got me well and what my website and posts are all about. These self help techniques like Havening/EMDR can be great, you can do them together or at the end of meditation brain training to further consolidate the changed.
Hey Mr Peter! I have subscribed your channel and and seeing your videos passionately.. You are doing such a noble job of making a common man understand anxiety which people say can not be reversed.. I too have an anxiety of BP measurement.. Even a thought of blood pressure measurement , increased my BP to alarmingly high. I hope I will use your technique and see the results.. Regards
@@nahmad254 I have the same exact problem!!
This is nicknamed ‘white-coat hypertension’ (from a time when doctors and nurses wore white coats) and just the presence of somebody wearing a white coat which caused the patient’s blood pressure to go up and therefore give a false reading.
The solution I would recommend would be:
Do 50 hours of deep relaxation of brain training, the same thing you do at the end of a yoga class but for half an hour a day for 100 consecutive days, I’ve got a free recording on how to do this available by email. This will already teach your brain how to switch off stress responses in the autonomic nervous system and have some affect on recalibrating them, it won’t however we educate the amygdala that gets triggered by the sight of a doctor, nurse, a blood pressure meter and the whole procedure.
To re-educate the amygdala I would start with buying your own blood pressure meter, similar to the one used by your doctor and regularly exposing yourself to having your blood pressure taken. You would do a deep relaxation and meditation then take your blood pressure then do the relaxation again, you could also preload Antianxiety supplements about an hour before you would take your blood pressure. You could do it yourself or have someone else do it to you. Eventually the amygdala learns that nothing bad happens when you have your blood pressure taken, and it can even associate having your blood pressure taken with a deep relaxation response. Then when you go to your doctor you will arrive early and sit and do a meditation/relaxation.
The other thing to do is lower your blood pressure but eating a very high potassium containing diet, restricting sodium and supplementing magnesium.
For potassium you eat lots and lots of vegetables, the only fruit containing potassium in any good quantity is bananas, it’s basically about the vegetables like vegetable soup. Today I would have no hesitation in putting a person onto a plant protein based diet, also add flaxseeds and hibiscus tea to lower blood pressure. I think there’s a page on how to lower blood pressure somewhere on my website if memory serves me.
I’ve performed the above treatment procedure with several patients and it was always successful in enabling them to show their doctor they had normal blood pressure and in so doing lowered their medical insurance premiums.
See answer for N Ahmad
Good luck with your healing journey.
Thank you for your hard work to help me to understand Mental Health; I hope each new day brings you closer to a full recovery🌻
I shared your video in my anger management group on Facebook.
So many people have issues with no clue on how to address them! It’s really unfortunate!
Thanks for sharing!
Next month I’m starting an online course on changing the way stress affects our mental and physical health with brain training, psychological mindset shifts, diet and more. It will include anger releasing techniques, if you want to know when this starts you could send me an email.
Peter, think my anxiety is based on self esteem being overweight with stretchmarks, stems from an early age (13-14) still have it bad, combined with depression at 27. I am a good looking lad which is the funniest thing about this but the self hatred, shame and not accepting myself has made me unfunctional and miserable. Also would micro dosing psilocybin be of any assistance?
What would you tell me or what therapy would I need if I were your client to heal from these deeply rooted thoughts?
I think a try with psychedelics can help.
Try psychotherapy first. Next step something like this.
Thanks Peter for this great explanation, this makes a lot of sense. What would be your suggestion to help an ASD child "non-verbal" to reprogram the amygdala. From your video I really see the breakdown of my son's thought process and wonder if there is a way to regulate the amygdala other than brain training/meditation which is not really accessible for him at this stage. Thank you
Great explanation and video. Thank you
Thank you for your kind words
You’re welcome.
Good luck with your healing journey.
I’m still trying to finish the course I’m preparing to teach this meditation techniques, I’m sure it’ll get done sometime in 2022.
What nootropics do you know boost NGF and BDNF? I think you should look into Zembrin/Kanna as well. Shit, I just read about Ibuprofen being a RhoA inhibitor. So much knowledge!!
Yes I like zembrin as part of a serotonin focused stack.
Very nice explanation. Better than some of the leading books on the subject.
Glad you think so!
Amazing!! I have anxiety disorder and paranoia. My right hemisphere is creating all scary images and it gives me a lot stress. Could you please suggest me which meditation would be right for this?
Sorry to hear you are having paranoia and anxiety, I used to have these problems, I know how horrible they are to live with. It does take time but I believe we can do a tremendous amount to restructure our brain and combat these things. Think of each brain training treatment is taking 50 hours, and you may have to do a few to make a big difference. I would start with 50 hours of directed focus mindfulness where you choose what you focus on (hearing, breathing et cetera) and lock your mind onto those things, perhaps at the same time you would do 50 hours of deep relaxation brain training to dampen down overactivity in the HPA axis because this may be creating enough inflammation to keep your amygdala desensitised to GABA and therefore overactive and perpetuating the state of anxiety.
Because I don't know you can't make a determination about which exercise you should begin with or in what order. These 2 exercises should begin to diminish the problems.
Once you've completed the above 2 exercises which would require either 30 minutes a day for 6 months or one hour a day just over 3 months then I would do another 50 hours of open focus mindfulness if you can do it to develop the anterior singular cortex in and other way so that it can handle and process these uncomfortable thoughts in a way that is more tolerable.
Along the way I would explore the possibility that you have trauma triggers lodged in your amygdala and traumatic memories in your hippocampus. You would work with a trauma therapist or I use cognitive hypnotherapy with NLP to release and remodel traumatic triggers memories and programming in the hippocampus and amygdala; this would take you further still.
Completing all the work above would take a minimum of 9 months and that would be really pushing it, I think more realistic would be 18 months; but you should be feeling changes and improvements along the way and it would be an incredible journey. At the same time I will also be taking natural remedies to adjust your brain chemistry to quell anxiety and paranoia.
Don't give up think that there is nothing you can do, I believe that today we know a lot about how to treat mental health problems and that they are highly treatable; brain is very malleable and plastic, I would say it is the 2nd most repairable part of the body 2nd only to the liver and changeable on a par with muscles. Imagine you wanted to grow a highly muscular physique, you would see some results within 3 months and amazing results in 18 months of daily/weekly work.
You can find a lot of information for free on my website www.balancingbrainchemistry.co.uk and I'm going to be running meditation classes online starting soon, good luck.
Thanks so much for this excellent video, Peter .
It is without a doubt , one of the best information I have read or seen about the treatment of anxiety disorders.
Very well explained Sir. Please do make a video explaining the impact of Distress Tolerance skills and Imagery techniques of DBT on amygdala programming for dealing with patients of anxiety disorders.
Good contribution
Thanks
By the end of 2024 I should have a course available to buy teaching the exercise to rewire the the anxious brain.
Very well done!
😮 THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND TIME TO SHARE WITH US!!!
FREE recording relationresponse recording?? 😊
Your great and helpful! Thank you!!!
If you make an Audiobook - I will buy it. And put your relaxation walkthrough at the end
Thank you, that's very encouraging. I was thinking about making very long educational videos and selling them like an audiovisual book. I'm just starting my journey into social media and publishing.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I would also buy books/videos from you. A lot of us with these problems don't have a lot of guidance. You seem to have a lot of experience in treating yourself and others and this is very valuable to many of us. You are also very honest in what works/doesn't work so this makes you different from others out there on the internet who are just parroting information about mindfulness or blueberries or keto diets or 5-HTP or whatever.
@@useraccount5881 Thank you for the encouragement, I'm just beginning to write up what I've learned over the past 30 years in practice. You will see a steady stream of posts from me on youtube, facebook, Instagram and my new site: it's quite exciting having these new ways (to me anyway) of sharing information.
Everything I post is things I have experience of, not information I just copied from online.
Let me know what area of mental health particularly interests you.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I would buy one to. the way how you explain things makes me understanding this better than my professor at university when I studied my master :D
Amazing explainer - this is a GREAT video - thank you for your work!
You're very welcome!
Amazing and so informative
Thanks good learning..
Hello Peter.Is the free relaxation response meditation still available?I emailed you but did not receive a response.I hope you are doing well.Thanks
I’ve found your email and sent it.
Do you know approximately by how many % would the amygdala shrink if one follows all of the practices that you suggest consistently?
To answer that we would have to take an average from multiple studies, but unfortunately theres not enough specific scientific research to do that.
It’s also emerging that the effects of meditation are more complex than just shrinking the amygdala, it may have additional effects like balancing the left and right sides of the amygdala.
Furthermore results will vary from one person to the next, so you just have to try the treatment and see how it affects you individually.
In my observations I guess each 50 hour (3 month) course of treatment may dial down the reactivity of the amygdala and diminish anxiety by about 30-40%. This is a good effect from one treatment and the effect can persist for years making it a fantastic return on the investment of time.
You can do several 50 hour courses of different meditation treatment’s to add further improvements. This is great preparation for subsequent treatments such as exposure desensitising therapy and psilocybin therapy.
I’ll be producing a video training course that you can buy covering all these techniques later in 2024
Very useful
Great insights. Very deep analysis. Thank you for your efforts
What is your opinion on EFT for panic disorder? I have done some tapping and when I go into social situations and it seems I don't freak out so much. Im hoping it will help create some better associations with social situations.
EFT seems to be a bit hit and miss, I've met quite a few people that found it very helpful and others for whom it had no effects.
It's certainly a safe practice and so if it seems to be helping you keep investing in it.
You may also like to try the Havening Technique, you will find videos explaining it on TH-cam.
When you do these techniques make a deliberate point of choosing to believe in it and seeing or feeling yourself getting well, what you'll do is utilise the placebo effect which is a real medical phenomenon. What's incredibly interesting is the placebo effect still works even when you know you're doing it, so it's a free safe additional treatment.
I'm going to be teaching the meditation techniques described in the video starting in
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I would say that doing EFT before the social event seems to help me. It's like it switches off my amygdala to an extent. I'd that the effects do not last though and I regress back to my social anxiety unless I keep up with the EFT. Would you say that anxiety/paranoia around people is as a result of a chemical issue though or conditioning of the mind due to traumatic events? It would be understandable that someone who was treated badly in early life would then become suspicious of humanity in general as they grow older? I can't quite get my head around whether for example a paranoid disorder such as schizophrenia is a chemical issue or just due to mind conditioning from an early age that shows up later on if you know what I mean.
Wow your videos are the best! Really! They’re really helping me! Thank you
Thanks for a useful video
Happy to help
I got rid of my anxiety by taking vitamin B complex and added a B1 for an extra kick. No more anxiety.
@H Two weeks.
That’s amazing I’m happy for you.
B complex plus extra B 6 (P-5-P) helped my anxiety a lot especially the B 6 for social anxiety, but the fear of public speaking, even just speaking in a group of more than 3 friends remained extremely strong and inhibited my life. It took 2 and a half years of repeated rounds of different meditation to activate the TPN network and classical mindfulness combined with exposure desensitisation therapy to completely get rid of my anxiety.
It feels SOOOO great to be free of it.
I combined the exposure therapy with natural remedies to boost the effectiveness. It’s a new idea the US marines are trialing for PTSD, they tried pre-dosing the soldiers with PTSD with MDMA Ecstasy (yes Ecstasy) which artificially creates a blissful calm state and then had then recall the trauma in a controlled therapeutic environment. The results were phenomenally better then all previous results from unassisted therapy. I cannot use MDMA because well it’s illegal and even if I was prepared to break the law (which obviously I’m saying on the record do not do that) the impurity illegal street Ecstasy probably wouldn’t be good enough; it could be ‘cut’ with amphetamines which would have the opposite therapeutic effect.
So not having access to pure MDMA I turned to natural remedies and I would take a big stack of all the anti-anxiety remedies before exposing my self to anxiety provoking situations, either in my minds eye in therapy or in the real world. It worked :-)
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I was also employed as a project manager for many years. Years of having to present to large groups eventually got me over my fear of public speaking but I agree with you, it’s tough.
Yes and it’s hard to predict what will work for one person and not another, and how long to will take. You just have to try everything that’s safe that you can, on of the huge challenges with treating anxiety is the anxiety can make you afraid of even doing some of the things that could eventually help which sucks.
So fascinating 📚knowledge
I stopped making videos during the lockdown but when I get restarted and have a lot more on this topic and also I'm preparing online video course teaching the meditation techniques mentioned in this video.
If you'd like to be informed when this video course is available semi-an email so I have your address.
Good luck with your healing journey
Great video! 👍
Glad you liked it
Great video.
Where is the meditation / retraining course?
Are there any effective meditation apps for this? Or effective amygdala retraining apps / courses?
I’m making an online course to track these techniques see:
www.balancingbrainchemistry.co.uk/peter-smith/157/Meditation-Classes-Online.html
But DON’T prepay just yet, wait until the course goes live.
Great video. Subscribed!!
Thanks for subscribing
Good luck with your healing.
Is there any supplement(s) that can reduce amygdala related anxiety ? Your kind help would be highly appreciated.
Zembrin seems to have the ability to rebalance the amygdala when has become over activated by trauma, but please understand something which is you cannot change your amygdala just with supplements. To change the amygdala you need to perform brain training exercises (appropriate meditation) to rewire your amygdala and reprogram the psychology or ‘software’ running your amygdala with exposure desensitisation therapy.
Self help techniques can really work wonders but only if you apply several techniques all working together on the same issue from different sides or approaches.
Good luck with your healing journey.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments I sent you an e-mail and sent messages from whatsapp to start a session with you. Please kindly reply to my e-mail or WhatsApp so that if and when we can start a session. Thank you
Excellent
Thanks
Glad you liked it. The sound and video got out of sync somehow! I'm going to fix and remake.
For more see the video on an overactive Default Mode Network and anxiety (coming July 19)
my anxiety is so bad it's in my eyes it unbearable iv been like this since i was 15 it got worse at 22 i don't know where it's came from the doctors don't know what caused it they just say it's GAD but i'm in this unreal state with anxiety in my eyes completey tuned into the world i see everything it's too much
Hello what is the best meditation?
Good question, brain scans have revealed that different meditations exercise or workout different part of the brain, so different meditations produce different effects and the best meditation for you depends on your health goals.
For ruminating anxiety and depression I recommend the type of mindfulness where you actively direct your attention tho activate the Task Positive Network and switch off the Default Mode Network; I call this the TPN meditation.
See my article
www.balancingbrainchemistry.co.uk/peter-smith/164/What's-the-Best-Meditation-for-Depression-Anxiety-and-Bipolar.html
For social anxiety I recommend the open monitoring (classic common) style of meditation to develop activity in the antiterrorist cingulate cortex.
For bipolar disorder I recommend the loving kindness meditation to develop activity in the parahippocampal gyri an area of the brain involved in the regulation
of our emotions and mood, I also think this meditation resets my biological clock (sleep cycles). Also use this meditation for anger, aggressively and healing emotional wounds.
For PTSD maybe the Transcendental Meditation technique is best but we need more evidence, to learn TM you DONT have to pay the TM organisation thousands, it’s just chanting a mantra.
Think of meditation like physical exercise, all physical exercise confers several general health benefits and all meditations confer general healthy effects to the brain, but just like different physical exercise work and develop specific muscle groups (legs, upper body, back, core strength) and different muscle memory, different meditations develop specific brain structures and neuro-circuits.
I’m going to running an on-line training in different types of meditation and how to make adjustments in our mindset about stress to change the way stress affects out mental and physical health. See:
www.balancingbrainchemistry.co.uk/peter-smith/157/Meditation-Classes-Online.html (BUT PLEASE DONT PREPAY wait until the classes go live).
Thank you for a great video!
You are welcome.
Let me know what subjects you would like to see more videos on.
Hey folk festival buddy from Pennsylvania!
Thank you....
You are welcome
Hi, will this work for ocd / pure ocd? Thanks, great video, really helpful.
To be honest at this time insufficient is known about neuro circuits involved in pure OCD or how to formulate a brain training exercise that would be reliably therapeutic for this condition.
When I started out treating my own condition there was no guidance and so I just had to keep experimenting with different things to see what would have therapeutic benefits for me. 1 of the few good things about mental health problems is that when you stumble upon a thing that beneficial you can work out for yourself that it's helpful, I mean to say you don't need laboratory tests to tell you if your OCD is going down, you know.
One thing I have become certain of is that for anxiety spectrum conditions it's the wiring neuro circuitry of the brain that is more important than the neurotransmitters and chemistry of the brain. In other words this you brain training exercises, exposure therapy from the psychological side and meditation/brain training exercises for you neuro circuitry side. It is almost inconceivable that there is never going to be a drug or supplement that you could take that would switch off OCD; any such substance would be causing unwanted sedation and side-effect in other parts of the brain. Hypothetically in a science-fiction future world you could have a drug that causes sedation only the neurons involved in OCD, somehow the drug would be smart and know which neurons to target and which ones not to target, but at this point in time this is total science-fiction, even if you are a young person you not gonna see that in your lifetime; so in the meantime I would recommend treating your brain with brain training exercises is going to be the most fruitful area.
One really big thing to understand is that together therapeutic effect from a meditation brain training exercise you need to do more than 30 hours just to see if it's going to be of any help you need to do at least 50 hours to consolidate (hardwire) the benefits into your brain. Adult brains are formed and to some extent 'set' by the early 20s, we can change adult brains but to do so requires minimum threshold of number of hours, intensity and frequency. But but but do not try doing 30 hours of any meditation brain training exercise too quickly into shorter space of time. Start with 20 minutes a day for the 1st week and then you can get up to 30 minutes a day for another couple of weeks and if you want you can then increase up to an hour or just stay at 30 minutes.
It's unusual in my practice but just by coincidence I saw 3 new patients that have triggered mental health problems by jumping in the deep end before they could swing and doing huge numbers of hours of meditation. For example one person that it never meditated before did 10 days of vipasena meditation in silent retreat! The brain this is like running a marathon, imagine if you've never been running and then you went and ran a marathon, there's a risk, maybe only a small risk but still a risk that you can have a heart attack. However if you began with regular walking and then vigourous speed walking and then gentle jogging you could work up to running without exposing yourself to risk. All the cases of people I've seen had bad experiences from meditation did the same thing, they jumped in on massive numbers of hours from the get go.
I'm still working on preparing my video training course on how to perform the TPN meditation, if you'd like to get an update when that's ready semi-an email so I have your address. This is a style of meditation I have put together specifically to combat anxiety and depression.
I wish you the very best with your healing journey, keep going, keep trying things, the brain is rewireable and changeable, you should be able to the very least significantly reduce your condition so that it's easier to live with if not gradually eradicated completely. You should expect this to take several years of work, just keep going.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments Thank you for your reply. It's very much appreciated.
Thanks for video. I am dealing with health anxity from 4 years. Two time medicaly treated but it comes again. Now from three months I am dealing with it. It is very hard time but I decided not to go fo medications. I am thinking that some day my brain will learn that these are fake sensations.
My observation in my clinic is that with anxiety it’s the brain training rewiring exercises that are the most important and effective, the chemical treatments (from drugs or natural remedies) are rarely fully effective.
I’m starting an online course next month on meditation techniques specifically for anxiety and depression, details will be on my website and sent to people in my email list.
I've been having them well I think I have i got a bad headache at work then start thinking I've got a brain tumour so it's now a constant headache numb Ness hot flushes have you learnt any techniques to tell me brain its not a brain tumour cause I'd probably know if it was that
Kanwar hhow r u now frd
@@sangeetalambh6389 feeling better but not fully cured.
@@kanwaraqeel. ur depersonalization gone now frd please ans
What about neurofeedback?
Can you give me you information for the anxiety meditations? Thank you
I’m developing an online course teaching this meditation, I’ll probably announce it on my TH-cam channel or send me your email address to get an update.
My address is hello@petersmithuk.com
I would like to learn these meditation techniques. What are these?
Hi, I just about to start teaching these meditations online next week as part of a stress and mental health course to stay mentally healthy during the coronavirus shut down. The course will include the meditation techniques, deep relaxation body training techniques, psychological techniques to change one's stress mindset and information about maximising one's immune system.
To receive information about when these classes start, the costs, times etc send me an email so I have your address, my email address is:
hello@PeterSmithUK.com
I love this.
Glad you liked it.
I’ve not made any vid for a while, but I intend to get back into making regular videos.
I rweally like your shirt. Where can I buy i from
Ha ha thanks.
It’s from Duchamp but unfortunately they don’t make these great shirts anymore 😞
Once I get my new studio setup I’m planning to make at least another 20 vids and I had an idea to buy a new bright shirt for each vid. You’ve inspired me to do it, thanks. It’s gonna be expensive but worth it.
How can we sign up for your meditations
The meditation course is behind schedule…
To get informed you could send me an email, I’ll do a mail shot when it’s ready.
My address is
PeterSmithUK@yahoo.com
How could a person contact you for some personal coaching sessions?
Hi
Just email me at petersmithuk@yahoo.com letting me know where you are located/what time zone you are in.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments OK, Thanks!
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments Do you do personal coaching sessions?
Yes I do private coaching sessions by video call.
I develop an individual prescription of natural, diet and brain training exercises based on the current symptoms, the medical history and any other issues that can affect the health of the brain such as an unhealthy digestion (gut-brain axis), chronic inflammation from various sources, poor resistance to stress and more.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments thanks.
you have explain this very well ! I value your time thank you! for giving back! it truly does take mindfulness! self development!💡🧠❤️
I'm still working on setting up online meditation classes to teach these methods, I'm hoping to start them in February or March 2020
Peter thank you for sharing this really informative video! You explain things very well and I am truly grateful for them. I have recently been suffering from anxiety which started one morning after suffering from a burn out / mental breakdown. Fortunately, I addressed it early and have managed to start feeling better with the help of a network of good people, healthy eating and gym as well as meditation and taking lithium orotate, omega3, fish oil and magnesium. I still have the odd days where I sometimes feel on edge for hours, feeling that fearfulness in my body but generally speaking it seems to becoming less intense. I would like to know whether you recommend anything else that might help me along the way? Most of my anxiety stems from overthinking and worrying. However, I am going to try your meditation and try to re programme this part of my brain 🧠 .
I hope you find a specific type of meditation effective, training your brain to switch off and overactive DMN by repeatedly exercising the TPN could switch off overthinking and worrying.
There are only three things I've seen that
amazing
Thanks, from Sep 2020 I’m gonna run online courses teaching these techniques.
If you want updates you could send me an email
Hello@Petersmithuk.com
Having such a hard time meditating...
i got a mail failure for your address ---oops sorry i forgot part of it -just tried again
I’ve found your email
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments yes, i got your reply, unfortunately i am on disability and in Canada - so the price you quoted is about double in my dollars, there is no way i can afford this
🙏
You're welcome
My theory is that vaccinates (heavy metal perservatives), circumcision (early trauma), and an epidemic of lyme disease (and associated diseases like Bartonella) are causing huge amounts of neurological problems in people.
Yes absolutely, Lyme and some other infections can be very strong causes of inflammation and if this overwhelms your neuroplastic capabilities it can trigger a mental health problem.
Heavy metals are highly neurotoxicity and again can overwhelm an individual’s neuroplastic abilities. FYI mercury was discontinued as as preservative in all routine vaccines in the early 2000’s, we have to keep up to date :) Today they use aluminium which weakens the blood brain barrier.
Early childhood trauma has been shown to increase the size of the amygdala and possibly the HPA stress system and these effects can last lifelong, however I believe we can do a lot to compensate an neutralise these effects to eliminate them as risk factors.
I will be making vids on all the things you mention are risk causing factors for mental health.
@@NaturalMentalHealthTreatments fyi it took a decade of lawsuits to get one mercury preservative removed, and making that such a fight to get rid of one pointless/hyper toxic preservative shows the government doesnt mind fking people up when they are born. They have other heavy metal preservatives still in there, like aluminum which is also horrible for your brain. And active infections in the vaccines, like sv-40.
Holypikemanz Yes, that’s right I have a page on my website about detoxifying aluminium.
I agree with you.... when I took my astrazeneca in April 2021... the anxiety like symptoms got worse as time progressed and it got even worse when when I had my second dose .. December 2021 ... is when my body just stopped working correctly.... dizziness 24/7 feeling anxious etc 😕
Typical you never told us the techniques involved
Telling people exactly how to do the techniques is something I do in my practice, and in 2024 I’ll also explain how to perform the techniques in a video course that you can buy.
I don’t give everything away for free because this is what I do for a living, you know, to buy food and pay rent; this is my only source of income. There’s nothing wrong with exchanging expert information for a fee, the knowledge and experience that has gone into developing these techniques cost me over $100,000 in course fees and tens of thousands of hours over 40 years. I’ll sell the course for about $100 which is cheap relative to other courses and very cheap for all the work I put in. I do this because I want self help techniques to be widely available at an affordable price, I’m not just in this for the money.
If you look at the other comments, generally people found it helpful, it’s just you with the pist-off attitude, resentful, I don’t like it, please delete your own comment.
Rather than experiencing…is it possible to analyze a trigger in hindsight to change your perspective of it, so it will no longer trigger the amygdala?
Ie. Someone is triggered by a love interest turning them down. The amygdala is activated due to fear of rejection because we need community for survival, but then that person ponders rejection until they are convinced that nothing bad can come from it. Is it possible to convince your brain that rejection is safe without experiences confirming that?
Good question, it's only possible to do that to a limited extent may be some people are very limited extent.
The way the amygdala is positioned in the brain means that it can trigger a state of distress BEFORE the thinking part of the brain (the frontal cortex in the forehead) has even received the triggering information; in other words by the time the frontal cortex has had time to think about it the amygdala has already been triggered.
After being triggered your cortex can use its cognitive powers to think through the situation, develop an alternative, healthier perspective and then exert control over the amygdala this is sometimes called top-down control.
This may not stop the amygdala being triggered in the first place however it will enable you to terminate the triggered response more quickly, as opposed to it lasting for hours or days, escalating and catastrophizing; obviously being able to do this is better than nothing.
But to stop the amygdala in the first place requires amygdala reprogramming and the therapy that works that is called exposure therapy. It turns out that the way the amygdala works is it learned only by direct experience, it doesn't have consciousness like the frontal lobes and can't think things through, we can't talk and negotiate with our amygdala with cognitive-based therapies. When someone's amygdala is triggered by something controllable like fear of heights, performing exposure therapy is quite straightforward; you just expose yourself in little baby steps to progressively more scary height related scenarios, each time staying in contact with your distress until it subsides and the amygdala learns this thing is not dangerous.
To perform exposure therapy on complex dynamic issues like relationships is more challenging, you can't control and pause the other person or the real-world to gradually expose your amygdala to what it thinks is dangerous. In this case what you could do is work with and NLP/hypnotherapy type therapist and you can set up in your minds eye so to speak scenarios that provoke your amygdala in the safe and controlled environment of a therapy session.
Another feature of the way the brain is wired is that the neurological pathways that communicate from the amygdala to the frontal cortex can be more numerous than the pathways that communicate in the opposite top-down direction from the cortex to the amygdala; this means to say that the amygdala can and often does dominate that exchange, and the cortex is unable to do much to control the amygdala.
If the amygdala signals are very strong and ability of the cortex to control the amygdala is weak and the amygdala rules or dominate the conversation.
The good news is that if you do enough meditation you can strengthen and grow the communication channels that run top-down from the cortex to the amygdala and also brain scans have shown that with sufficient meditation you can dampen down the reactivity of the amygdala which is exactly what you want to do. How much is enough meditation? Well brain scans have shown that you can see in the scan changes after 50 hours, 50 hours is half an hour a day for a hundred days. But when you are suffering you donor do just the minimum or barely enough, so aim for performing 75-100 hours or more of meditation to dampen down amygdala reactivity and grow the back channels from the cortex.
After that or at the same time perform exposure therapy with an appropriate therapist to reprogram the software so to speak installed in your amygdala making connections.
There's no denying that this is a lot of work, expect it to take 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years of self-help work, but the rewards are there if you put the working :-)
Great video, thank you!
Glad you liked it!