Dan John Workshop, notes and tangents part 1

currently reading:  In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction; Gabor Maté

Regarding the mention of sleep quality, alone time, the "tension dial," and veterans/military personnel:

I've been playing with a brain entrainment program called Profound Meditation Program; a differently owned predecessor was Holosync many years ago.  The program is an audio stereo program that is listened to for an amount of time usually in 20 min. increments.  Download, sit, listen, and meditate.  That's it.  The stereophonic field [part of the technology is binaural beats] helps induce certain brainwave patterns conducive to deep meditative states, relaxed states, lucid dreaming, information processing, dream states, and healing states.   With literature reviews from neurofeedback pioneers,  my guess is that some of the programs' functioning works to engage the brain more fully,  it triggers some of those more prefrontal cortex areas that are inhibitory and regulatory in nature.  In other words, turning the brain more fully "on" enables the gatekeepers to do their job of lowering stress signaling and bringing the organism more fully to a rest state [parasympathetic].

Why I'm mentioning it to my strength and iron friends is that using technology that is a close cousin to neurofeedback, the programs, while designed for awake usage, create some interesting effects during recovery.  

Dan John offers an analogy of a dial when training tension.  The dial represents the ability to respond on a continuumn of tension/effort.  There's low tension practice [think target shooters poised and deeply relaxed] and high tension activities [max deadlift].  I'm thinking of a spectrum approach on a macro level:  the more deeply I can meditate, or the more strongly I strength train, the more profoundly I can rest and rejuvanate neural and metabolic functioning.

Consider this muscle analogy:  in creating deep contractions, I can often relax the muscle further than it has defaulted.  I believe Gray Cook is quick to point out that dysfunctional movement patterns have a brain component that needs to be "rewired."

Being able to push the brain's metabolic capacities [more brain turns on, more fuel is needed] to forge new and lasting connections [myelination] is an experience akin to bodybuilding protocols.  Lifting to failure or "lifting on nerve" is an exhausting task but the recovery process is metabolically thrilling.  Objects are brighter, clearer, the body is too exhausted to be anything but calm and relaxed, and sleep is profoundly deep.

So my sense of this brain entrainment program is that the audio component exercises the brain like the muscle in the analogy.  

Why Is This important to our Warriors?

Another experience I've had working with this Profound Meditation Program [I have no financial affiliation with this company] is what seems to be a deep relaxation in some held or "stuck" neurological postures.  My sense is one of having contextualized some spontaneous, unprompted emotional experiences.  Concurrent with this emotional process was some deep release of bodily tension to the effect of moving better in jaw, neck, back, and shoulder--being able to put arm overhead without clicks, pain, or irritation.  The effect in the body was  that many tense and protectively toned muscles enjoyed days of relaxation.

Knowing the limbic system--that survival part of the brain--might be "running" unregulated, uninhibited like an unattended idling car in the lot, means that we might be privy to picking up free recovery by helping jump start those regulatory capacities--much like a reboot.

PTSD is serious and too complex to cover here.  However, our soldiers might like to learn that this company offers a discount.