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🧠#20: The Brain's Way of Healing by Norman Doidge MD - Book Summary & Key Takeaways

🧠#20: The Brain's Way of Healing by Norman Doidge MD - Book Summary & Key Takeaways

What are the stages of Neuroplastic Healing? How do we calm a "noisy" brain? What are the Feldenkrais Method and Neurofeedback, and how do they work?

Hello courageous people! 👋 Welcome to Edition 20.

This week, we are featuring 📚 The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity 🖋 by Norman Doidge MD.

I first came across Norman’s work in 2011 when I read his first book The Brain That Changes Itself as a newly qualified physiotherapist trying to figure out how I could help my patients better.

Eleven years later, I’m reading his latest book with the hope of finding out how to build upon neuroplasticity for the purposes of healing mentally rather than physically - though as every single book continues to reiterate (including this one), our physical and mental realms are inseparably linked. Safe to say, I have learnt a lot this past week.

So let’s jump in. All text in italics are quotes taken directly from the book.

🧠What does The Brain’s Way of Healing set out to achieve?

This book has bold ambition from the very first words, and it delivers on its promise:

“Most of the interventions in this book make use of energy—including light, sound, vibration, electricity, and motion. These forms of energy provide natural, noninvasive avenues into the brain that pass through our senses and our bodies to awaken the brain’s own healing capacities. Each of the senses translates one of the many forms of energy around us into the electrical signals that the brain uses to operate. I will show how it is possible to use these different forms of energy to modify the patterns of the brain’s electrical signals and then its structure.” - Loc 123

Using energy and the mind together are really only novel in the West, as they have been part of traditional Eastern medicine for a long time. Finally, we are better understanding why these practices work so well in healing:

“Western medicine has long dismissed Eastern medicine—practiced by billions of people for millennia—and its claims, often because it seemed too far-fetched to accept that the mind can alter the brain. This book will show how neuroplasticity provides a bridge between humanity’s two great but hitherto estranged medical traditions.” - Loc 133

💪 Deciding to take the power back

One of the great downfalls of Western medicine has been disempowering its patients. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling at times that I am not in anywhere near the drivers seat, nor sometimes even feel as if I am being listened to. (Sidebar: Medical gaslighting is a thing, and it needs to stop.)

“Medicine became a “battle” against disease. In this metaphor, the patient’s body is less an ally than the battlefield, and the patient is rendered passive, a helpless bystander, as he watches the confrontation that will determine his fate between the two great antagonists, the doctor and the disease.” - Loc 168

Neuroplastic approaches for heaing require active involvement of ourselves in our own care, integrating our minds, brains and bodies.

🙏 What are the stages of Neuroplastic Healing?

These can, but do not have to occur in order, nor do all people have to go through all of these phases of healing. Each person and situation is individual.

1. Neurostimulation

“Neurostimulation helps to revive dormant circuits in the hurt brain and leads to a second phase in the healing process, and improved ability of the noisy brain to regulate and modulate itself once again and achieve homeostasis.

Light, sound, electricity, vibration, movement, and thought all provide neurostimulation.” - page 109

2. Neuromodulation

“Neuromodulation is another internal method by which the brain contributes to its own healing. It quickly restores the balance between excitation and inhibition in the neural networks and quiets the noisy brain. Neuromodulation resets the brain’s overall level of arousal.” - page 111

Neuromodulation is especially important for those of us who may be stuck in a state of ongoing fight or flight due to various experiences of trauma,

“The problem is that a person in fight-or-flight can’t heal or learn well in this state, which makes brain change harder.” - page 111

The first port of call, if we are stuck in fight-or-flight is to calm ourselves (more on how we can do this further down.)

3. Neurorelaxation

“Once fight-or-flight is turned off, the brain can accumulate and store the energy that will be needed for the efforts of recovery. Subjectively the person relaxes, and often catches up on sleep. Many people with brain problems are exhausted, and poor sleepers.” - page 112

4. Neurodifferentiation and Learning

“In this final phase, the brain is rested, and the noisy brain has been modulated and is much “quieter,” because the circuits can regulate themselves. The patient is able to pay attention again and is ready for learning, which involves the brain doing what it does best: making fine distinctions, or “differentiating.” - page 112

So now that we have a better understanding of what the different phases of healing are and their functions, let’s explore some specific strategies using different methods and forms of energy to facilitate healing.

☀️ Therapeutic Light

This section kind of blew my mind. (But I feel like it shouldn’t have. It’s one of those things that seems so glaringly obvious once you read it, but it took this particular framing to really make it hit home.)

Have you ever thought of using Light to treat a brain injury? A very valid question posed was, “How might light get into the brain, encased as it is in the bony skull?”

“Luckily, light—even natural light—does not require fiber optics and surgery to pass deeply into the brain. We think of our skin and skull as absolute barriers to light, but that is wrong. The energy from normal sunlight passes through the skin to influence the blood, for instance.” - page 116

In World War II, Sister J. Ward was in charge of looking after the premature babies, who are often jaundiced. She would take even the most fragile little ones outside into the sunlight, and they noticed a trend that her patients would improve.

But the doctors didn’t take her seriously, that is until,

“One day a vial containing a blood sample from a jaundiced baby was accidentally left on a windowsill, in natural sunlight, for several hours. When the sample came back, the blood was normal.” - page 117

Later research then showed that wavelengths of light really do pass through our skin, our blood vessels, and infuses through our entire systems.

Of course we have known on some level that natural light is essential to our health, but especially given our indoor lifestyles we could really do with upping our dosage of the great outdoors and sunshine.

“A recent study showed that a full spectrum of light could be as effective as medication for some depressed patients, with fewer side effects.” - page 119

This section of the book goes further to advocate for specific kinds of laser therapy, further harnessing the permeability of our bodies to lightwaves to heal chronic pain, joint problems and even large open wounds. It is incredible that this knowledge and research is not more mainstream given its power. 🤯

👐 The Feldenkrais Method

The Feldenkrais Method was named after its creator, Israleli Moshé Feldenkrais and originated in the 1930’s. Feldenkrais has been recommended as a trauma healing technique by none other than Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk himself, author of The Body Keeps The Score. (If you haven’t heard of it, many people refer to it as the trauma bible and I featured it earlier in the year - you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)

The method started with Feldenkrais’ own experience of long term knee pain, barely being able to put weight on it. Then one day he slipped over, and he hurt his other knee:

“He struggled home, fearing he’d be completely immobile, went to bed, and fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke, he was surprised to find that he could stand on the leg with the injured knee: “I thought I was going insane. How could a leg with a knee that had prevented me standing on it for several months suddenly become usable and nearly painless?” - page 165

From this experience he learnt something extremely valuable: that it was in fact his brain, not just the condition of his knee, was in charge of how he functioned and how he felt.

This formed the foundation of another realisation, that equally when we are treating mental problems, we should not only focus on the brain but the body as well. Both are capable of rewiring our brains and transforming our experiences.

Feldenkrais is extremely gentle, and is all about working with your body, not against it in a series of small movements with the aim of achieving a certain physical or mental outcome:

“Feldenkrais would get them to lie down on judo mats. The huge antigravity muscles (the extensors of the back and the thigh muscles) would relax. He got them to scan their bodies attentively, so they became aware of how they felt, and what parts of their bodies made contact with the mat. He often told them to pay attention to how they breathed. Then he had them explore a minute movement on one side of the body for much of the lesson, sensing subtle differences in how they made each minute movement.

It was at this point that Feldenkrais’s knowledge of hypnosis and Émile Coué came into play; as he spoke, he gave almost hypnotic suggestions to encourage them to do the movement with least effort, with greatest ease, so that it felt very light.“ - page 176

If you have ever experienced other types of healing or therapy which have felt too much, too difficult, too painful, perhaps consider Feldenkrais as something to try. I have put a link to find registered practitioners down the bottom.

⚡️Neurofeedback

It is possible to run a quantitative test (an electroencephalogram or EEG) which can tell us if someone has a “noisy brain”.

As a very simplified concept, the EEG will show slow waves when we are asleep, speeding up somewhat when we are waking up, faster when fully alert and faster still if we are extremely anxious. This is when a “noisy brain” occurs - basically there are too many competing neurons firing for us to be able to get a clear signal through.

Neurofeedback has been lauded as being able to all but cure the symptoms of ADD and ADHD as effectively as medications, and it has also been used for epilepsy, PTSD, learning differences, brain injuries and many more:

“A conventional neurofeedback session involves hooking a person up to an EEG, a noninvasive way to detect brain waves, then displaying the waves on a computer screen.

People with ADD or ADHD often have fewer of the calm, focused waves (called low beta waves) and more of the brain waves most of us have when we are falling asleep (theta waves). In a neurofeedback session for ADD, the person is trained to raise waves associated with calm focus and lower waves associated with sleepiness and impulsivity whenever they are represented on the screen.” - page 353

Many people who had the experience of a “noisy” brain before having neurofeedback therapy report things to be significantly quieter and calmer afterwards.

So there we have it. Another book, another week, another batch of knowledge for us to (hopefully) use to our advantage!

My main takeaway from this week has been considering the myriad of ways we do have available to help ourselves, and the way our bodies have their own sophisticated healing methods if we can just help amplify them.

Until next week,Eleanor ❤️🙏

🧠 Resources & Links

🤝 Human Rights list of Mental Health Support Services

🖥 Norman Doidge’s Website

🙏 Find a Feldenkrais Practitioner

💡 Find a Neurofeedback Practitioner (the website is not super user friendly, but if you go down you can filter by country and get names and contact details!)

📕 Next week’s book

Coming out next Friday 17th June 2022 is #21 - a special edition for Pride Month! 🌈📚 A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation🖋 by Jacoby Ballard

Can’t wait to dive into this one.