Healing 'Mental Illness'

                                                            Nothing on these web pages should be construed as medical advice.

Special note to any family member of inpatients at a state mental hospital:  Please see section beneath the following main section of the 'psychiatry' page before you read anything else!

Comments?  Questions? info@healingmentalillness.com

Please read the United Nations' statement about forced psychiatric treatment below on web page named 'psychiatry' in red.  New information in red as well.  I testified in Geneva at the UN about forced psychiatric treatment.  The published story is below as well.

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Energy Medicine


     A note to Christians before reading this page:  Energy Medicine is from the East.  I had struggles about using these modalities bacause of the connection to Eastern religions.  When I was debating about whether I should pursue it, I discussed it with a Christian monk.  Turned out the monk was studying to become an acupuncturist before entering the monastery.  He told me that Chinese medicine was good medicine.  It works.  I did not have to accept Eastern religion in order to use Chinese medicine.
     The meditations the EFT practitioners and on the Infinite Intentions CD I do altar.  They both instruct you tho say things like." I love and accept myself".  And "I'm innocent".  I adjust it by saying, "God loves and accepts me", and "I'm a sinner loved by God".  These modalities work.  They are vital if you take psychiatric drugs. 
    
     'Energy medicine' or 'energy psychology' are two terms that are used to refer to a whole bag of treatments.  Tapping or Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Donna Eden's Energy Medicine and Lee-Bloem's Infinite Intentions are what follow.
 
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
    
     EFT, or tapping therapy, was developed by Dr. Roger Callahan in the seventies. Callahan discovered, quite by accident, that a phobia could essentially disappear when he tapped on certain acupressure points on the human body.  The Chinese discovered these acupressure points over 3000 years ago.  The Chinese and other cultures have discovered energy pathways through the body called meridians.  These acupressure points fall on these lines.  He found eight or nine points that were the most effective for gaining relief for emotional and physical pain.
    
     Dr. David Feinstein, psychologist, reports on research conducted at Harvard Medical School in his paper, "Acupoint Stimulation in Treating Psychological Disorders: Evidence of Efficacy". He explains what physiological changes occur when acupoints are stimulated:

              The most salient research finding for speculating on why acupoint
                stimulation may be effective in treating PTSD and other anxiety-based
                disorders emerged from a ten-year research program at Harvard
                Medical School investigating the effects of stimulating specific
                acupuncture points. Imaging studies showed that the stimulation of
                certain points with needles reliably produced prominent decreases of
                activity in the amygdala, hippocampus, and other brain areas associated
                with fear (Hui et al., 2000). Subsequent investigations by the same team
                provided “additional evidence in support of previous reports” that
                acupuncture is able to produce “extensive deactivation of the
                limbic-paralimbic-neocortical system” (Fang et al., 2009, p. 1196).

             What makes the Hui and Fang studies so pivotal? In almost all acupoint
                stimulation protocols, the physical procedure is done simultaneously
                with the mental activation of a psychological problem or desired state.
                In this sense, energy psychology with PTSD and other anxiety disorders
                is an exposure technique (Feinstein, 2010). Bringing to mind an emotional
                trigger, problematic scene, or unresolved traumatic memory activates the
                amygdala, arousing a threat response. Stimulating selected acupoints,
                according to the Harvard studies, simultaneously sends deactivating
                signals to the amygdala. Repetition of the physical intervention resolves
                these opposing signals by reducing the arousal while the trigger is still
                mentally active. The hippocampus records that the memory or trigger is
                being safely engaged without a stress response, and the neural pathways
                that initiate the associated stress response are permanently altered. Being
                able to encounter the memory or trigger without limbic arousal becomes
                the new normal.

                 Regarding the use of needles vs. tapping, a double blind study comparing
                penetration by acupuncture needling with non-penetrating pressure that
                simulated the sensation of penetration found equivalent clinical
                improvements for each intervention (Takakura & Yajima, 2009), and informal
                studies have suggested that tapping may actually be superior to needling
                in the treatment of anxiety disorders (reported in Feinstein, 2004).

      Tapping sends a deactivation signal to the amygdala.  Deactivating the amygdala is how psychotherapy works.  Quoting from The Heartmath Solution by Doc Childre and Howard Martin, 'According to Joseph LeDoux, a leading authority to neuroscience...(the three leading) therapies (cognitive, behavioral and psychotherapy) each help the cortex override the amygdala" (page 142).  Tapping enhances therapy greatly.   (The techniques used in The Heartmath Solution can re educate the amygdala as well.)  

     To further analyze the role of the amygdala in human emotional life, the amygdala has a central role in delegating emotional responses to everything the person perceives.  New perceptions enter right into the amygdala without going through the cerebral cortex.  As Childe and Martin write:

Neuroscientist Dr. Karl Pribram explains in his book, Brain and Perception, how
the amygdala compares what's familiar in memory with new information coming
from the brain.  If an old emotion has become familiar, we often respond to new,
similar situations with the same emotion, whether it makes sense or not.  In a
strange way, the familiarity makes us feel secure (page 140).,

There is a strong connection between the amygdala and the cerebral cortex, influencing each other.  Breaking these old emotional responses Is the work of therapy.  Deactivating those old, emotional responses are facilitated by tapping, as Feinstein reports above.
 
     Feinstein reviews over 50 experiments; 18 are randomized, double-blind studies on tapping therapy.  He found  several areas of research with significant data: PTSD, phobias, anxiety, and depression along with physical pain and athletic performance. 

     Here is an example from the Feinstein paper of the effectiveness of one EFT treatment session on a victim suffering from PTSD.  This is an observational study.:

To provide a sense of how a single acupoint tapping session appeared to be effective
in treating chronically traumatized adolescents, the following account is from the
principal investigator of the Rwanda orphanage study (Sakai, 2010). She describes
the treatment of one of the 47 (of 50) participants whose scores went from above to
below the PTSD cutoff, a 15-year-old girl who was three at the time of the 1994
genocide:

She’d been hiding with her family and other villagers inside the local church.
The church was stormed by men with machetes, who started a massacre. The
girl’s father told her and other children to run and to not look back for any
reason. She obeyed and was running as fast as she could, but then she heard
her father “screaming like a crazy man.” She remembered what her father had
said, but his screams were so compelling that she did turn back and, in horror,
watched as a group of men with machetes murdered him.

A day didn’t pass in the ensuing 12 years without her experiencing flashbacks to
that scene. Her sleep was plagued by nightmares tracing to the memory. In her
treatment session, I asked her to bring the flashbacks to mind and to imitate me as
I tapped on a selected set of acupuncture points while she told the story of the
flashbacks. After a few minutes, her heart-wrenching sobbing and depressed affect
suddenly transformed into smiles. When I asked her what happened, she reported
having accessed fond memories. For the first time, she could remember her father
and family playing together. She said that until then, she had no memories from
before the genocide.

We might have stopped there, but I instead directed her back to what happened in
the church. The interpreter shot me a look, as if to ask, “Why are you bringing it
back up again when she was doing fine?” But I was going for a complete treatment.
The girl started crying again. She told of seeing other people being killed. She
reflected that she was alive because of her father’s quick thinking, distracting the
men’s attention while telling the children to run.

The girl cried again when she reexperienced the horrors she witnessed while hiding
outside with another young child—the two of them were to be the only survivors
from their entire village. Again, the tapping allowed her to have the memory
without having to relive the terror of the experience.

After about 15 or 20 minutes addressing one scene after another, the girl smiled and
began to talk about her family. Her mother didn’t allow the children to eat sweet
fruits because they weren’t good for their teeth. But her father would sneak them
home in his pockets and, when her mother wasn’t looking, he’d give them to the
children. She was laughing wholeheartedly as she relayed this, and the translator
and I were laughing with her. 

We then went on to work through a number of additional scenes. Finally, when she
was asked, ‘What comes up now as you remember what happened at the church,’
she reflected, without tears, that she could still remember what happened, but that
it was no longer vivid like it was still happening. It had now faded into the distance,
like something from long ago. Then she started to talk about other fond memories.
Her depressed countenance and posture were no longer evident.

Over the following days, she described how, for the first time, she had no flashbacks
or nightmares and was able to sleep well. She looked cheerful and told me how elated
she was about having happy memories about her family. Her test scores had gone
from well above the PTSD cutoff to well below it after this single treatment session
 and remained there on the follow-up assessment a year later. (pp. 50 - 51).

Now, one of the controlled studies, Feinstein reports:

59 veterans suffering with symptoms of PTSD were randomly assigned to a treatment group
or a wait-list control group (Church, Hawk et al., in press). Fifty-four of the initial
participants completed the study, including 29 in the treatment group and 25 in the control
group. Six hour-long EFT sessions were administered to each participant in the treatment
group. The initial mean score on the military version of a standardized PTSD checklist was
61.4 for the treatment group and 66.6 for the wait-list group. The PTSD cutoff is 50. The
mean score after six treatment sessions had decreased to 34.6 (p < .0001), substantially below
the PTSD cutoff. The mean score for the wait-list group a month after the initial testing was
essentially unchanged (65.3).
The control group was then given the same EFT treatments.  In the end, 86% percent of both groups together no longer scored above 50 on the PTSD checklist. 

     Here is an example of research done in other areas besides PTSD from Feinstein's paper:

The SA-45 was administered to 102 participants one month prior to the workshop,
at the start of the workshop, at the end of the workshop, one month after the
workshop, and six months after the workshop. A highly significant decrease
(p < .0005) was found from pre-workshop to post-workshop on all the SA-45
measures of psychological distress (depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, somatization, hostility, paranoia, interpersonal sensitivity, phobic anxiety, and psychoticism). The lowered distress scores persisted at the six-month follow-up.


     Many have found tapping therapy to be effective in relieving childhood trauma, changing learned attitudes such as thinking one is 'dumb', weight loss, insecurities that keep a person from finding financial success, insomnia, physical pain--any number of things.  Even a form of psychotherapy can be done with tapping.  This is best practiced with an ACEP practitioner.  Besides tapping about traumas, tapping therapy used on a terminal diagnosis such as 'schizophrenia' or 'bipolar disorder' is tremendously helpful on the pathway to recovery.  Tapping over fear of a relapse or Neurolyptic Discontinuation Syndrome helps with tapering medicine. 

     Mercola promotes tapping.  In this web page, his assistant demonstrates tapping.  He thinks everyone should tap every day.  Amen writes about EFT for childhood trauma.  This Spring 500,000 Internet listeners listened to The Tapping Summit, a program that broadcasted tapping experts tapping with the audience to overcome all sorts of things: resentment, debt, childhood trauma, weight loss, financial troubles.  Thousands of people are excited about this tool that puts them in control of their emotional lives.
    
    The difficult part of learning tapping is figuring out what to say while tapping the points.  Nothing helps more than tapping with an energy practitioner.  There are free demonstrations found on the web.  I spent $150.00 all together on audio downloads and DVDs that instructed the listener/viewer how to tap about different struggles.  The Tapping Solution is where I spent the majority of my money and I consider it well worth the expense.  A good source for EFT information also is EFTUniverse.com.  There is information about tapping over depression, PTSD, anger, fear and many other issues there.
    
     Tapping is particularly valuable for addressing bipolar disorder.  Bipolar disorder comes from an overactive amygdala (link to research study) in the limbic system.  Here is a web page found on Jane Alexander's web site, Possessing Me.  It has many studies of the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate and amygdala.  On this index page of her web site, the reader can find other groups of studies in neuroscience.  Dr. Daniel Amen sees hyperactivity in the limbic system on a bipolar patient's SPECT scan.  Since tapping deactivates the amygdala, it is addressing the disorder.        

Energy Psychology



      Energy psychology is best explained in Feinstein's book, The Promise of Energy Psychology.  He is a clinical psychologist once at John Hopkins University.   In Feinstein's book, on the back jacket, he shows a series of brain scans of an anxious client.  Dramatically, the brain wave patterns improve over the course of 12 EFT sessions with a practitioner until they are almost normal. 

     Feinstein's book is a terrific primer for clinical uses of EFT.  He has a chapter on depression EFT has been successful in treating depression. 

        
     Feinstein reports that when clients do not get results from tapping, there could be larger energy patterns that need to be addressed.  To get the energies connecting and flowing in the right direction, he includes Donna Eden's ' five-minute routine' in his book. 

     Here is Eden demonstrating her routine on Youtube:
                                                    


Donna Eden's Energy Medicine

     Energy Medicine is a book by Donna Eden about what she has learned about energy medicine in her quest to heal herself and her many clients across the world.  She had MS and dyslexia and her physicians predicted she would die.  She decided to heal herself.  She started feeling her energies.  She used her hands to strengthen her Chinese meridians.  Her meridians were not connecting.  Her hands bridged the gaps.  She studied other energy healing practices for seven cultures besides the Chinese.  She healed herself and her doctors began to refer patients to her.  Her practice grew. 
   
     Feinstein discovered EFT through his work with his healer wife, Donna Eden.  He
had a normal practice of clinical psychology, thinking his wife was simply a charismatic type that attracted phone calls for help from around the world.  Then she asked him to help her write a requested book.  In questioning her about her work, he discovered that she used an empirical approach to discover what would help her clients.  He eventually quit his practice to help her with her worldwide training workshops to help others learn her techniques.  He came back to his clinical practice with the new tool EFT and found his work much more successful.  Here is their website:   innersource.com.  Here is a list of her trained practitioners. 
       
      Particularly for sufferers of bipolar disorder:  Eden teaches about the Chinese meridian called the Triple Warmer.  It is the dominant meridian of all meridians.  It is where the flight or fight or freeze response lies.  The thyroid, adrenals and the amygdala are on this circuit.  It is a meridian that can get stuck on 'on'.  It is a warrior ready to fight, run or freeze.  The meridian runs from the ring finger to  behind the ear on both the left and right sides.
    
     Eden warns never to run the hand from finger to ear to strengthen it.  It is already too strong.  Running the hand from ear to finger, backwards from the natural flow, calms the system down.  The hand conducts energy.
   
      The Triple Warmer steals energy from the Spleen meridian.  The Spleen meridian runs from the big toe up the knee, crossing over to the outside of the leg, up the body past the nipple to the armpit then down to the upper ribcage.  So, flushing it first by running the hand backwards on the meridian once, then three times running the hand in the flow of the meridian, will strengthen it.  She does not directly state this in her book, but her energy practitioners teach this.  Those with bipolar disorder should pay attention to this energy method.
    
      Above in the Donna Eden exercise video, there is an exercise called 'the Wayne Cook Posture".  It energetically separates the lower brain from the upper brain.  Donna healed herself of dyslexia with this exercise.  It is essential for those suffering bipolar disorder.  I actually felt a shift in my brain the first time I did this exercise.
   
      In the video, she does something called 'The Cross Crawl'.  If energies are going unilaterally instead of cross laterally, it is extremely confusing to the body and mind.  In the book, She shows how to fix a unilateral pattern.  She has the client perform a unilateral crawl, lifting the same side arm and leg and marching that way for twelve times.  Then she has the client switch to the cross crawl way for twelve times.  She has the client repeat the sequence, doing the same side crawl for twelve times and then the cross crawl this time for twenty-four times.  I fixed my energy flow with this exercise.
    
     In the book, Eden also teaches kinesiology or muscle testing.  She teaches how to muscle test to see if a person is compatible with a substance or not, i.e., whether he/she is allergic.  Dr. Alice Lee-Bloem does kinesiology, as well.  Her video is a demonstration of muscle testing foods and even thoughts: thinking true thoughts make muscles stronger than thinking false ones, positive thoughts make a subject stronger than when he thinks negative thoughts.

      Over a hundred studies have researched kinesiology in a literature review on a website called "Chiropractic and Osteopathy".  The article is entitled, "On the reliability and validity of manual muscle testing: a literature review. "

      Here research is reported that looks into muscle testing and allergy prediction.  Subjects were muscle tested on various substances for allergies.  Then the subjects' blood was tested for anti-bodies.  Researchers found antibodies for the substances that made the muscle test weak in the subjects.  Muscle testing predicted allergies correctly in over 90 percent of the subjects.  Here is a report on a website called "Quotable Research:"

            Schmitt, W., Leisman, G. Correlation of Applied Kinesiology Muscle Testing
                  Findings with Serum Immunoglobulin Levels for Food Allergies.
               International Journal of Neuroscience. 1998; 96:237-244.

This study showed a high degree of correlation between AK
procedures used to identify food allergies and serum levels
of immunoglobulins for those foods. AK methods in this
study consisted of stimulation of taste bud receptors with
various foods, and observation of changes in manual muscle
testing that resulted. The patient was judged to be allergic to
foods that created a disruption of muscle function. Blood
drawn subsequently showed that patients had antibodies to the
foods which were found to be allergenic through AK
assessment.


     How does it work?  Everything has energy.  Matter is energy.  Therefore, we are energy.  A thought or a substance can either give a subject strength or weakness depending on how energies interact.  If it strengthens the muscle tested when the subject holds the substance or thinks the thought, it strengthens the subject and is beneficial for him/her.  If it weakens the muscle, it is not beneficial for the subject.
    
     Muscle testing works on all sorts of muscles.  This video demonstrates the most common type of testing.   Here is a video demonstration:                       
 
                                              


    Ms. Eden teaches a way of self testing by clasping hands in from of the chest holding the object to be tested.  The body will either lean into the hands and the object or lean back.
Infinite Intention

       Infinite intention is a meditation technique.  Lee-Bloem has developed it for use in psychiatric healing.  On her web site there are scores of patients' testimonies.   One patient was on antipsychotic medicine for 22 years.  Lee-Bloem was successful in weaning the patient off medicine and stabilizing him.  The meditation is a guiding of the patient's consciousness to areas such as trauma healing, immune system healing, GI tract healing and much more.  I believe it helps reverse the damaging effects of psychiatric medications.  Here she explains the power of energy medicine on her web page, "Ten Practical Considerations During Medication Withdrawal:" 

Never underestimate the power of energy medicine. If you happen to be a
supplement kind of person, then this may come to you as a surprise. But of all the
tools in my arsenal for helping patients with withdrawal, the one I value most is
energy medicine–yes, even above the wonderful effects of nutritional supplements
and herbal remedies. I call energy medicine, “the quantum physics of healing.”
The reason I find energy medicine so valuable is because it helps with the formation,
information, and transformation of health at the subatomic level. Here is where little
things (energy, vibration, and thoughts) result in moving mountains, not slowly even,
but miraculously. As many of the testimonials in my newsletters mention, almost
casually, energy medicine is very helpful during the withdrawal process. Patients like
it. An eleven-year-old can learn to do it. I taught EFT to a six-year-old once, and he
was able to learn it without difficulty. And as one of the follow up testimonial attests,
at least one of my patients remained well with just using energy medicine despite
having a diagnosis of bipolar disorder with psychotic symptoms–even when she
stopped all orthomolecular nutritional supplements (believe me, she did it while my
back was turned).

Energy medicine is a vast and burgeoning field. To go from orthomolecular medicine
to energy medicine requires a mental leap, just as physicists had to make that leap
years ago when they went from Newtonian physics to quantum physics. Consider
this: if all matter is made of energy, and we are made of matter, than we are also
fundamentally made of energy. The laws of quantum physics are not simply
applicable to technology. They hold just as many helpful truths about the matter
between our ears.

 Remember, positive thoughts lend strength while negative thoughts weaken.  Dr, Lee-Bloem designed the meditation to strengthen the patient with positive thoughts, clearing away negative thoughts  to speed healing. 


      This is a practice Lee-Bloem uses in her office, but she makes it available on CD here.  She uses diet and supplements, but she claims without energy medicine, her practice would not be as successful as it is.  If a patient has limited funds, she would rather have them spend their money on time in energy medicine work than on supplements.
To Review--What Natural Means Help Cure Bipolar Disorder?

     There are many energy medicine techniques that aid in recovery of bipolar disorder.  Tapping in conjunction with psychotherapy speeds the therapeutic process.  Tapping to heal the trauma of being diagnosed reverses the self-judgment and encourages the patient to have faith in recovery.  Tapping over fear of a relapse can calm the patient down and replace that fear with faith.  Tapping over anything can help calm down the amygdala, the focal point of bipolar disorder (see above).

    "Alternative Bipolar Treatment: A Mindfulness Approach" is a web site that lists alternative practices that help heal bipolar disorder.  The author explains helpful practices such as psychotherapy, EFT, meditation, and mindfulness.  He also promotes a nutritional diet, supplementation, and exercise for a healing regime.

     Donna Eden's Energy Medicine provides instruction for calming down the amygdala.  The Wayne Cook posture demonstrated in her five minute routine video is helpful.  Tracing to calm down the Triple Warmer meridian, although that meridian will give a fight, is helpful.  Strengthening the Spleen meridian  causes the Triple Warmer to reteat and turn 'off.  In her book, Energy Medicine, she provides instruction on how to calm down that meridian even further by holding its alarm point.  She explains other connected meridians that might need to be attended to in order to calm down the Triple Warmer.

    The Infinite Intention CD is helpful for overall physical, emotional and psychological health.  I believe this kind of energy work could heal psychiatric drug brain damage.

       Referring back to the page on 'nutrition', attention to the adrenals will help.  The adrenals are on the Triple Warmer Meridian and are probably in need of support with bipolar disorder.  Ross in her book, The Diet Cure, explains a home test for the adrenals.  Or google 'adrenal home test' and lots of tests will come up.  There is a home saliva test. a lab runs, costing about 500 dollars. 

     Ross recommends Vitamin C and GABA supplementation if adrenal support is needed.  Lee Bloem recommends Catalyn for adrenal support and Drenamin for liver support, both made by Standard Process (available on Amazon).  Healing the adrenals should impact the thyroid positively.

     After the adrenals, the thyroid, also on the Triple Warmer Meridian, should be tested.  All three tests should be run--T3, T4 and thyroid reversal as Ross explains in her book.  Since the adrenals, when healthy, produce enough estrogen for a woman even past menopause, hormones should be tested after checking and healing the adrenals.  Bio identical hormones prepared by a compounding pharmacist are the best for hormone replacement. 

     Insomnia

      Many people suffer from insomnia.  It is a major symptom for those with bipolar issues.  I have tackled mine off an on, getting better all the time.   At first I used supplements.  I used EFT.  Then I used brain wave therapy.  Now I am trying the most promising, diet.

      Supplements.  Taurine, L-theanine, and GABA are three amino acids that relax.  Some make GABA rice, brown rice is cooked over 100 degree Fahrenheit for over 24 hours. This produces gabapentin.  L-tryptophan is another amino acid that causes sleepiness.  It is a small amino acid and the other larger ones need to be occupied with muscle rebuilding in order for this little guy to get past them and into the brain.  This is one of the reasons exercise helps greatly with insomnia.  Another sleep aid is 5-Hydroxytryptophan, or 5-HTP, an amino acid made from L-tryptophan.  It is easier to assimilate than L-tryptophan.  Reviews are mixed about its effectiveness.

      Valerian, an herb, is effective, although it looses its potency with long term usage.

      Melatonin, the natural hormone that causes sleepiness, is very tricky to use effectively.  Everybody starts taking it at too high a dose.  It can cause a rebound effect in high dosages.  It comes in liquid, L.A. Naturals makes it.  Begin with 5 drops, 0.5 ml.  Tart cherry juice has melatonin.  A tablespoon in a half cup of water should dose the right amount of melatonin.

      Of all of the above, I only still take GABA and 0.8 ml melatonin.  I take GABA for adrenal support, not insomnia.  Those supplements were expensive!

      Emotional Freedom Technique.  Here Ruth Stern demonstrates http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP_MrPIDZGc using tapping for addressing insomnia.  She recommends that a person with insomnia should use EFT during the day when upsetting events happen.  This habit will clear the psyche of strong emotions, allowing the person to go to bed unhassled by the events of the day.  In the video she does not teach the method to clearing an emotional event.  I learned how to do that through purchasing the 2012 Tapping Solution Summit.  There are other resources on the Internet.  I was only when I broke down to buy something did I learn how to do it.  
 
     The points are easy to learn.  The video above from Mercola's website demonstrates tapping the points.  It is knowing what to say that takes instruction.  For example, if a person has a fear.  That's what he talks about at first, about the fear.  Then the tapper moves on to talking about releasing the fear.  The fear will still be present and he needs to make a statement acknowledging those feelings.  He moves back and forth from the fear to releasing the fear as he moves from point to point.  

      The Stern video uses a good script for resolving anxiety about not sleeping.  Every night I use a typed script I keep by my bedside.

      Brain Wave Therapy.  This insomnia treatment is from the Monroe Institute.  It is a CD to listen to when going to sleep or when waking in the middle of the night.  It plays music, but that is not the crucial factor.  What the CD has on it are inaudible sounds that are different from the left to right ears.  These sounds are designed to equalize the different brain waves, alpha, beta, theta, on both hemispheres of the brain.  http://www.monroeinstitute.org/research/cat/insomnia is the link where there are two studies on brain wave syncing and insomnia.  I also hava a CD for anxiety.

      The Symptometry Diet.  Sometimes insomnia results from not having enough metabolic enzymes.  Another symptom of metabolic deficiency is constipation.   Metabolic deficiency means the cells do not maintain healthy stasis or replicate.  What would that mean to the neuron cells in the brain?  

      To produce metabolic enzymes the human body needs amino acids, nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and copper, and digestive enzymes.  After the GAPS diet, my body tested that I had only one problem: weak digestive enzymes.  This is still a big problem that GAPS did not resolve.  I supplement digestive enzymes.  I take ginger now, rich in amino acids and nutrients. 

Common Sense Approaches to Insomnia.  Most of this information is from Mercola's website.  Google his website for more.  He suggests sleeping in a cool, below 70 degrees, room.  Wear socks.  Sleep in the pitch dark.  Even a small amount of light in the eye will reduce melatonin production.  Don't look at a computer or TV screen after sundown.  Their blue light stimulates the eyes like the sun.

      Dr. Daniel Amen recommends taurine and fish oils for bipolar disorder in his book, Healing Anxiety and Depression.  For an orthomolecular look at supplementation for bipolar disorder, here is a link.  And here is an excellent web site for alternative healing modalities.  Neither the GAPS diet or the symptometry diet are keen on supplementation.  The GAPS diet finds them polluted.  The symptometry diet finds the nutrients too large, overwhelming the cells.

     Back to a general discussion of healing 'mental illness', a social network of support, counseling or psychotherapy, or peer support individuals or groups are vital to recovery.  The supportive individuals need to be believers in the prospect of your recovery.

      Remember, the prospect of recovery from bipolar disorder was relatively good in the days before psychiatric medication.  Often, individuals had just one crisis in all their lives.  If multiple crises occurred, a lengthy state of normalcy between episodes happened.  Rapid cycling never occurred.   Psychiatric medication have changed the disease of bipolar disorder.  It has become a chronic, lifelong, debilitating disorder.

     Lithium does not have a good track record for controlling bipolar disorder and is very toxic, tolerated by a small percentage for long term usage.  It has lost its sheen as a 'magic bullet' for bipolar disorder.

    I refer the reader to Whitaker's chapter, "The Bipolar Room" in Anatomy of an Epidemic for confirmation of the drug facts and the history of bipolar disorder about which I have written in the last two paragraphs.
 
     I thought I would always need my anticonvulsant, then after the above energy work that I practiced everyday, I tested that I did not need it (see 'testimony').  I am so glad!  I am used to it now, but I remember how I felt so dulled by it when I first took it.   If I test that I do not need it, that means it is toxic to me.
       A good book to read that has practical advice about keeping the adrenalin/amygdala system calmed down is The Heartmath Solution by Childre and Martin.  The book is about how to short circuit the adrenaline reaction before the stress response happens. It is an effective method for those with bad Triple Warmer meridian habits and people with bipolar disorder.
In Conclusion
      
      Certainly there are more energy medicine avenues of healing than what there is above.  With the detrimental changes that the brain undergoes under drug therapy, energy medicine holds the most hope as a force in recovery for chronic patients.  Energy medicine guides a client into the healing of energy pathways, which then opens the client to healing in the physical and mental realms. 

     If a mental patient struggles to get free of psychiatric medications and becomes stable mentally, will he be happy?  I quote from Lee-Bloem's webpage, "Ten Practical Considerations During Medication Withdrawal".

A person is more than biology. When all is said and done, repairing
the body is like repairing a radio. Just because the radio is repaired,
doesn’t stop it from playing bad music. Healing our neurotransmitters
and hormones, liver and adrenals is all very good, but they only ALLOW
the person to be happy. They do not MAKE the person happy. Nothing
does, short of real growth in wisdom, love, forgiveness, and compassion.
I have had patients who suffered from severe abuse or childhood neglect
who were able to heal their bodies long before they are able to feel a
consistent state of well-being. There is a learned aspect of being that has
to be reconfigured. A person has to learn to heal from real traumas and
heartaches. The road to well-being is paved with lessons. Skipping lessons
does not lead to well-being. Some of those lessons lead to self-mastery,
some to spiritual strength, and some to forgiveness. Unfortunately,
happiness cannot be bought in a bottle, but is a side effect of living life
masterfully.


Lee-Bloem practices psychotherapy, orthomolecular therapy, and energy medicine on her patients. 
  

      In closing this page on energy medicine, it can lead in the healing process.  It is a strong healing modality that offers quick relief.   It can aid in accomplishing full recovery.

   



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