About autogenic biofeedback training (ABT) including breathing (during inhale “I feel my hands are” and exhalation “getting warmer and warner”);
What does it mean when I can within e.g. 5 minutes performing ABT can reach my ceiling skin temperature – last time a change of close to 10 C? If we think about our brain and its activities from an evolutionary perspective this should indicate that I, with conscious planed and performed ABT influence my sympathetic system in terms of increased vasodilatation of capillaries enabling more blood inflow resting in increased temperature. In real, consciously influence non-conscious autonomic nervous system using a combination of breathing (adjusted according to Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia, RSA and exhalation carbon dioxide, etCO2) and autosuggestions directed towards specifically my hands.
Moreover, this capacity seems to open up a communication pathway from verbal, conscious “new” brain to spatial, non-conscious “old” brain validated in skin temperature (measuring 1/100 C changes). What I argue here is that ABT is not only a specific important strategy to influence one´s own sympathetic nervous system in terms of down-regulation but it also opens up a pathway from conscious influence “normally” not conscious system to be used in a more and more broad way influence much more complicated “old” brain systems.
What does it mean concerning change in our memory construct “hardware”? Can we simply reconstruct (Kelly, 1955), reconsolidate (Nader and others 200?) neural networks, change our biography? Seems too good to be truth – or? NB not as simple as it seems but really something to proceed working with including testing some pilot cases.
This idea or proposal, I have further developed to increase its efficacy of influencing “old” brain functions/systems in terms of somewhat new or different hypnosis strategy.
More is to come …