Questions that come up very frequently at workshops are:
     "Exactly what is the underlying biological basis for Rebirthing?"
     "What's going on in the body when a person does this particular kind of breathing?"
     "What about Rebirthing allows the body to empower the Mind to be aware of itself and to change itself?"

I wrote an article about this in 1983 and published it as a little pamphlet with the title of "An Introduction to Rebirthing for Health Professionals."  It is reprinted in this book as Appendix A.  I wrote it primarily to give Rebirthers a vehicle for approaching health professionals in their communities so that they could invite them to experience a Rebirth session and, hopefully, then become ardent fans of this process.

In fact, that's why I made the pamphlet so short and terse and therefore so inexpensive to print.  I hoped that all Rebirthers would buy, say, 50 of them, and once a week would send one with a covering letter to some health professional in their community with an invitation, "Please read this; I'd like to take you to lunch and hear your reactions to it."

My primary purpose in that pamphlet was to briefly talk about what Rebirthing is and what kinds of medical or health problems it has served to help heal or eliminate or ameliorate.  I also included a few brief paragraphs on what I believe is the underlying biology created by the conscious connected breath.

This present chapter is a more comprehensive discussion of the facts on which I base my speculations about how and why Rebirthing works.  (Please note, these are still speculations, not yet confirmed.  Even now, thirteen years after I wrote that introduction of Rebirthing to the world of psychotherapy and health care, there has still not yet been any basic physiological research performed on the process of Rebirthing!)

I believe all Rebirthers, even those not disposed to be interested in biology, should know this information, since it is a fairly complete biological explanation of how Rebirthing probably works, neurophysiologically.

I hope you won't skip it, even if it's technical.  I think it would be paradoxical to be involved in a process that promotes greater consciousness in the Here and Now, yet refuse to increase conscious understanding of that process.  So give it a chance.  I believe you'll find the following description of how the body works interesting and revealing.

To discuss my speculations about how Rebirthing works, I'll subdivide this discussion into answer to specific questions.  I have first to review some of the basic physiology of the brain and nervous system.

What Part of the Brain Does Rebirthing Affect?

By the very nature of the physical and psychological changes that Rebirthing brings about, I'm led to conclude that the connected breathing alters the physiological processes occurring in the limbic system, allowing us to revise the imprints we have stored there from our earliest experiences, especially birth.

The discovery by such prominent neurophysiologists as Alvarez and Maclean over thirty-five years ago of the limbic system was not only a major contribution to our understanding of neurophysiology, but of psychology as well.  The limbic system stores our basic belief system, our imprints.  These imprints are our almost-immutable Thoughts about Life and the Self.  Imprints determine our fundamental associations between our perceived inner states and our abstract philosophical values.  These beliefs comprise what we believe life is all about, what we believe must or must not be for our survival itself.  So for Rebirthing to permit old imprints to be revised, it must be affecting the limbic system.

What Part of the Brain Involves the Limbic System?

The limbic system is a system comprised of nuclei in the brain tissue lining the surface of the lateral ventricles, the fluid-filled hollow cavities within the left and right front parts of the brain.  Some of these nuclei lie within the telencephalon, the top "brain," the brain we usually think of when we think of a thinking brain.  Other limbic nuclei lie in the diencephalon, the next-lower "brain," which includes the centers for control of our drives states and of the emotional display and reaction connected to the state of our drives states, all mediated through the Autonomic nervous system. 

How is the Limbic System Related to the Whole Brain?

Prior to the discovery of the limbic system, the brain was conceived of as essentially five separate and mainly independent "brains," which each evolved in turn through our evolution.  Most functions of the brain are controlled by systems confined to a single such "brain."  But the limbic system runs within and between the "top" two, the last two to evolve.  It is thus even anatomically well designed to allow for programming Belief-that almost instinctive conviction that establishes our ingrained rules for life.

The base "brain," or rhombencephalon, which includes the brain stem and the pons, is the lowest, most primitively evolved "brain."  It contains vital centers that automatically control breathing, heartbeat, coughing, sneezing, and vomiting reflexes.  It is not a thinking brain, so it isn't open to much learning.  It simply reacts in order to maintain the basic homeostasis of the body.  It's like a hard-wired computer.  We can only assert our Will over the centers of the brain stem to a limited extent.  For example, we can control some autonomic functions like heartbeat and body temperature through the use of Yogic techniques, but such control takes years of practice to achieve.  The rhombencephalon is ordinarily autonomous.

The "brain" above it, the second brain, called the metencephalon, is a brain which evolved quite early in the development of vertebrates.  It's simply the center for balance and sense of position and place, the knowledge of where we are, moment to moment.  Most of it is the cerebellum, which is like a large computer constantly keeping track of where the different parts of the body are in space.  The cerebellum continually sends a Aprintout" of this information to higher brain centers in the top "brain", the telencephalon.  Such centers are involved in both voluntary and involuntary motion, so our movements are coordinated.  Like the rhombencephalon, the metencephalon is not a thinking brain, and we usually are completely unconscious of its functioning.  We can overcome it, as we do when skating or skiing, and we can train it, as we do when dancing, but mainly it's another autonomous brain.

The next "brain" to evolve, the mesencephalon, can best be thought of as a switchboard that makes interconnections with between vision, motion, audition, and the other senses.  The mesencephalon, for example, relays messages so the head turns automatically toward the source of a sound.  The mesencephalon itself does very little in the way of selecting out circuits to switch on or off, although, it, too, can be trained, as, for example, when a hunter keeps his eyes on his prey, not allowing himself to be distracted by extraneous sounds.  Like the rhombencephalon and the metencephalon, the mesencephalon is not a Thinker and it's primarily outside the effects of our Will, our Self.

The next brains, the diencephalon and the telencephalon, are the top two "brains," the brains that handle what we call thinking and feeling.  As pointed out before, the limbic system is located in both diencephalic and telencephalic tissues.

How Does the Brain Direct Emotional Reactions?

As I mentioned previously, the diencephalon contains the control centers for feeling reactions, specifically, for object-related emotions, the emotions we have about objects which are involved in satisfying our drive states: thirst, hunger, the desire for sleep, the desire for activity, and the desire for sex.               

These emotions differ as our drive states change.  And these changes are mediated by the two divisions of the Autonomic nervous system, one called the parasympathetic nervous system and the other called the sympathetic nervous system. 

How Does the Autonomic Nervous System Operate?

When we're hungry, anything that looks like food seems desirable.  But once we are full, the sight of food being served to the table next to us in a restaurant is disgusting.  Those feelings of desire and disgust are mediated by the Autonomics.

All drives are cyclic kinds of desires.  There's a natural rhythm to them.  Satisfying them once doesn't mean they're satisfied foreverCthey continue to need to be satisfied as they continue to arise.  Certain emotions are also usually attached automatically to events which disturb rhythmic satisfaction, and such emotions are also mediated by the Autonomics.

For example, we need to breathe about a dozen to a dozen and a half times per minute, and anything that interferes with our breathing has a striking, highly charged negative emotion attached to itCeither rage or fear.

We need to eat.  Even someone who has been unconditioned by social expectations around him feels the need to obtain nourishment and to replenish energy supplies once every day or two.  (Most people like to eat more often than once a day, but much such hunger is probably habitual.)  Rage at first and then forlorn feelings of depression typically result when hunger isn't satisfied.

Rest and activity are also drives.  We all know how we feel when we're fully rested-we wake up and we're ready to go.  If instead we find out that it's very early, and that we need to stay in bed lest we wake other people, we find ourselves feeling very restless and put upon, with tension and irritability (anxiety or rage) quickly developing.  In fact, a pretty good way to promote a panic state in many people is just to immobilize them, and keep them from being able to move when they want to.  Most will instantly oblige you by going into a major panic or rageCemotions that I believe are directly connected with birth reactions, as I will show later on.

If something tries to take away a source of satisfaction from us, we get angry and fight.  Sometimes we become afraid and we flee.  Sometimes we become so afraid that we are paralyzed in our tracks by our fear itself.

The Autonomic nervous system, run by nuclei in the diencephalon, regulates and coordinates all the reactions going on in the body that we call emotional reactions. All of these involve changes in heart rate and the amplitude of the heartbeat, breathing rate and the amplitude of the breath itself, circulation and where capillary beds are opened or where they're closed down, and digestive activity in terms both of the mobility of the gut itself and the secretion of the glands that are present within the gastrointestinal tract.

The Autonomic nervous system, through its two divisionsCthe parasympathetic and the sympatheticCcontrols all these visceral reactions, which are different for the different drive states and for different object-related emotions.

                When our reactions and emotions are appropriate, we're psychologically healthy.  When they aren't, we aren't.

Most visceral organs have dual antagonistic autonomic innervation.  So, for example, where the parasympathetics make a particular gland secrete, the sympathetics prevent it from secreting or cause it to secrete a different substance.  Another example is that while the parasympathetics may cause a segment of the gut to constrict or to push, the sympathetic innervation to that same segment of gut causes it to stay still. 

The parasympathetics slow heart action and breathing while the sympathetics speed up both circulation and respiration and also increase their strength.  So, instead of the contented, rhythmic, effortless breathing of peace and satisfaction, mediated by the parasympathetics, we have the vigorous, immense breath and heart action of rage, or the completely stilled, paralyzed breathing of fear, each mediated by the sympathetics.

Sometimes both the sympathetics and the parasympathetics work together.   For example, the gasping and breathlessness that precedes sexual orgasm involve the sympathetics.  But as the final tension of the orgasm mounts, the parasympathetics release the breathing explosively, leading to full deep breaths and forceful but slow heartbeats as the orgasm rolls on to quiet completion.

What Do the Parasympathetics Usually Do?

Essentially, when we're happy, content, satisfied, just breathing and digesting and enjoying life, contemplating whatever is in front of us peacefully, our Autonomic nervous system is working through its parasympathetic nervous system division.  The parasympathetic nervous system is a system of nerves that mostly emerge from the brain stem in the cranium and are thus called cranial nerves, although the parasympathetic nervous system also includes a few other small nerves in the sacrum; these nerves go to the genitals.

The cranial parasympathetic nervous system is made up mainly of just one large nerve, the Vagus, which wanders throughout the body sending branches to the lungs, to the heart, to the kidneys, to all aspects of the digestive tract, and to the genitals.  (This one nerve, the Vagus, was given the Greek name for Awanderer" because it wanders through so much of the body.)

                All neurons communicate through the production of particular chemicals that are called synaptic substances or neurohumoral transmitter substances.  Adrenaline, nor-adrenaline, acetylcholine, serotonin, histamine, and melatonin are some of these substances.  Each works in a special way at a specific kind of synapse, the place where one nerve stop and another nerve starts.  The parasympathetics communicate using acetylcholine.

When the parasympathetics are functioning, the nervous impulse goes on down through the nerve fibers of the Vagus, down to the ends of its various branches in the different organs that it affects.  Then there's a microscopically tiny space between the Vagus and the post-ganglionic neuron.  The space is called the synapse.  Acetylcholine is made at the synapse and stimulates the second neuron, the post-ganglionic neuron, that's also part of the parasympathetic nervous system.

Then the second neuron sends the impulse on down through its axon to another space or synapse, where more acetylcholine is made to stimulate the piece of smooth muscle that that particular branch of the Vagus is innervating.

The Vagus promotes peristaltic squeezing and squishing and pushing of the gut by sending its branches to every single segment of the gastrointestinal tract.  The gut has within its walls second neurons which when stimulated by branches of the first neuron, the Vagus, stimulate the smooth muscle of the gut to contract and to push the food on down its 20-foot-long tube.

The nice thing about having one nerve like the Vagus be in charge of so much is that it enables a really well-coordinated, sequential movement and coordination between the various organs it innervates.  It usually works extremely well.  In the gastrointestinal tract, for example, food is squished down at regular intervals after it's had an opportunity to be squeezed and mushed around with the different digestive juices in the different parts of the gastrointestinal tract: the stomach, the small intestine, and the large intestine.  Generally, food isn't moved along too quickly, so our gut usually has an opportunity to absorb the digested food products.  And food also isn't kept stagnant in one area of the gut for too long, promoting a toxic state in the body that we call indigestion or constipation.

Fortunately, everything in most instances works nicely even though we're not paying any attention to it.  We chew our food  and we swallow it.  From that point on, without our paying any conscious attention to it, it gets digested, absorption takes place, and elimination of the ultimate waste products and leftover bulk of the food proceeds in an orderly fashion.

The parasympathetic nervous system takes care of making sure that appropriate digestive juices are secreted into the lumen or passageway through the gut, the long tube that runs from our mouth to our anus.  And the parasympathetics coordinate peristalsis with secretion at appropriate times, so intestinal juices are produced just in time, for example, to meet the food that's being moved out of the stomach and is about to be needing to be digested by those enzymes in the intestinal juice.  Everything's nicely coordinated and generally the body is at peace.

Breathing and circulation are coordinated and are relaxed during digestion.  As we breathe full breaths of satisfaction, opening our chest, we make more room for our heart to receive oxygenated blood back from the lungs and nutrition-rich blood back from the liver, and we say our heart is full of happiness.  We are, as the Greeks put it, sanguine.

What do the Sympathetics Do?

When something comes along to threaten this happy state of satisfaction, the parasympathetic's action is suspended and the second division of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, goes into action, into fight, flight, or fright. 

In people, the action that the body instinctively takes usually is to attack whatever it is that's threatening it.  We call this "fighting." 

In order to fight effectively, the skeletal muscles of the body need to have an ample supply of nutrition and oxygen and there has to be sufficient circulation flow so that waste products of muscle effort are taken away immediately.  Otherwise the muscles can't work efficiently without cramping and getting weakened.

So, in rage, the sympathetics open up the capillary beds in the skeletal muscles and blood is switched from the gastrointestinal mucosa to the opened capillaries in the skeletal muscles of the body, the muscles which move us as we fight.  As blood flow to skeletal muscles is increased, the heart beats become bigger and quicker.

The sympathetics also increase breathing amplitude, ensuring an ample supply of oxygen to the working muscles and ample elimination of most of the water and carbon dioxide that are waste products of muscle metabolism.  We all know how good it feels to breathe when we're really truly angry or when we push ourselves to exercise strenuously, because the breath becomes extremely large, very vigorous.  We feel generally pumped up, which is exactly the state that the body needs to be in, in order to fight effectively.  The sympathetics are orchestrating all these changesCand moreCas they over-ride parasympathetic quiet, consummatory, contented activity.

From Mother Nature's point of view, there's no particular sense in digesting food in an orderly fashion if the entire organism, the whole individual, is being threatened.  So when a person feels that his satisfaction in life is being threatened, he goes Aoff his feed," as the English phrase it.  The sympathetics stop the gut from making digestive juices and from pushing the food along.  Everything digestive essentially comes to a halt.

Elimination of urine and solid wastes from the body is also suspended.  Perhaps the loss of fluid through urination and defecation would otherwise be a danger to the fighting organism, since the body needs to hold on to all of its available fluid in case of severe bleeding.

For whatever evolutionary advantage, the sphincters of the gut and bladder are closed down and all gastrointestinal secretion stops.  If, because of social training, we try to continue to eat in the face of some emotional crisis, we usually find it very difficult.  The mouth stops making thin watery saliva and it becomes almost impossible even to swallow a small mass or bolus of food.

Some of the other phenomena that accompany rage have greater merit in animals other than man.  For example, the large muscle that covers the back of most four-footed animals from behind the ears all the way to the tail, called the platysma, gets spastic and tightens to make an almost impenetrable shield over the back of the head, the neck, the shoulders, and down across the lower back.  When it tightens like that, it protects the spinal cord and the vertebral column from attack, for teeth and claws can't easily get through this leather-like armor across the back.

In man, this muscle is a very small triangle at the upper back and lower neck, part of the ones linking the head to the shoulders.  The tightening of these muscles in people when they are tense doesn't protect them from injury, instead it usually leads merely to the common headache that is portrayed on television ads as the Excedrin #2 headache.

Another phenomena accompanying sympathetic nervous system arousal, one that's very noticeable in other animals but not so much in man, is the appearance of goose bumps.  Goosebumps make the skin surface tighter and tougher, so it's better protected from the claws and teeth of the aggressor.  As each little pilomotor muscle at the base of each hair tightens, the hair rises and gives a larger, more frightening contour to the body.  Looking bigger like that might be enough in some animals to frighten off an attacker.  At least having the hair stand out makes it harder for the attacker to bite or scratch through to the skin and draw blood.  Having the hair stand up on end also increases body temperature, so that muscle metabolism can occur more efficiently.

But in people, the appearance of goose bumps combined with the tightening of the neck muscle is often associated with sexual stimulation or fear, rather than with being enraged.  This is probably because of negative imprints connected with birth, the ultimate sexual act. 

We all have heard such common idioms as "He's a pain in the neck," "He makes my hair stand on end," "I can't even swallow what he's saying."  These are all body-language idioms that reflect sympathetic changes.  For example, a person who is constantly annoyed by minor trivia of daily life is called "pissy."  And sometimes, if we're vulgar enough, we say, "That jerk's full of shit."  All these idioms in direct body language describe exactly what takes place when the parasympathetic state of peace is threatened, and the body instead proceeds to go through the changes that are mediated by the other part of the Autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system.

How Do the Parasympathetics and the Sympathetics Differ Anatomically?

The sympathetics and the parasympathetics differ from each other both in topological and anatomical characteristics, and these differences lead to important differences.  Both divisions employ a top neuron communicating to a next neuron which then communicates with smooth muscle cells in the viscera.  As I mentioned previously, the first neurons of the parasympathetic emerge through the cranial and cervical areas of the spinal cord as the Vagus nerve, and also from the sacral area as several pelvic nerves.

The very long, very complicated first neuron of the parasympathetics only meets with the microscopically-small second neuron when it finally synapses at the visceral organ that's being affected.  So control and feelings of satisfaction are very discrete and pin-pointed.  We're making biological sense when we say, "Ah, that really hits the spot."

By contrast, the first neurons of the sympathetic nervous system emerge at regular intervals out of the spinal cord.  From the beginning of the thorax, at the base of the neck, down through the sacrum.  They go about half the distance from the diencephalon to the visceral organs being affected which are, for the majority, the same organs the parasympathetics affect, but usually in an opposite way.  After emerging from the cord at the thoracic and lumbar areas, the sympathetic first neurons meet the second neurons, which travel the other half of the distance to the visceral organs they innervate.  All the second neurons of the sympathetics are connected with each other, like a ladder.  So anything that bothers us causes a generalized upset.

What Makes the Sympathetics Work?

                Like the parasympathetics, the sympathetics make acetylcholine at the synapse between the first and second neurons, but the sympathetics make a different neurohumoral transmitter at the synapse between the second neuron and the smooth muscle of the visceral organ being affected.  The synaptic substance being made there by the sympathetics is either adrenaline or nor-adrenaline, originally called "sympathin."  Unlike acetylcholine which is destroyed almost instantly, as soon as it's made, the adrenalins stay around in the blood stream for minutes or hours, keeping us charged up as long as they're present.  We're excited in both states, not satisfied.  It takes a long time to feel peaceful again afterwards. 

Both nor-adrenalin and adrenaline, two different substances, are made by the sympathetics at the same synaptic junction, even though they have radically differing effects.

Nor-adrenaline mediates what I regard as constructive or productive action, normal behavior.  The effect of nor-adrenalin is essentially to open the body up for momentary, vigorous activity, that is, for fighting or for very fast and skillful pursuit of prey or escape from a predator.  Nor-adrenaline quickly metabolizes in our bodies, so such arousal is short-lasting, over almost as soon as the fight or flight is finished.

Adrenaline, however, seems to come into operation when we think we're trapped and we feel helpless.  It mediates non-productive, abnormal reactions.  Adrenaline changes conditions in the body the same way nor-adrenalin does, but adrenaline affects respiration and circulation in very different ways.  Instead of improving our ability to fight or flee, adrenaline stops us dead.  Our breathing is stilled almost to the point of total breathlessness, our heartbeat is stilled down to a bare minimum, just enough to keep circulation going, and our extremities become cold.  We remain still, hopefully stilled to such an extent that we may escape threat by being unnoticeable.  If noticed, this helpless, almost dead appearance probably serves as a life-preserving tactic for creatures in the wild, since many of the major predators will only attack a living creature and will have nothing to do with carrionCor with what seems to be already dead.

Because adrenalin is metabolized differently from the way nor-adrenalin is broken down, the arousal it produces lasts for several hours, during which the individual can easily misinterpret his situation, leading to further inappropriate reactions, and thus bring about a further state of arousal.  Emotional dis-ease is the consequence.

How Do Conditioned, Trained Reactions Affect the Autonomics?

These autonomic nervous system reactions, mediated through the sympathetic nervous system when we're threatened and by the parasymphathetics when we're at peace, take place whether the emotion that we're feeling is realistically connected with a drive state within us or not.  Exactly the same reactions of action-oriented rage or helplessness occur when the emotion is concept-dominated, that is, if it's a reaction we have been taught to experience in conjunction with certain things or even symbols, like a particular word, act, gesture, tone of voice, posture, or dress.  Generally, our concept-dominated emotions are learned.  They are adhered to by us in our effort to win approval from others.  We store some of these ideas about "right" and "wrong" in our telencephalon which then influences the diencephalon to discharge the Autonomic nervous system as if these ideas were necessarily so.  They aren't-we're just trained to think so.

We're taught what to like and what not to like, what to be disgusted by, what to be afraid of, what not to be interested in, etc., etc.  These learned prejudices mark our social accommodation to the group, so that we end up liking what the people around us like and not liking what they don't like.  We are therefore a member of the group, accepted in good standing, ready to receive approval from the other members of the group for being such a good group member.

So, for example, most of us have learned to be disgusted by feces, although initially, young children apparently have no such reaction of disgust to their own feces. 

On a more advanced level, some of us have highly detailed, meticulously articulated concepts of what we will and what we will not love.  I've heard lots of men talk about the size of a women's breasts or how long her legs are as if these characteristics were the prime requirements for a stable, happy, loving sexual relationship.  And I've heard many women say, "I couldn't love him, he's too short," or "Oh, I don't like dark-haired men."

In any case, whatever the source may be for the feeling,  whether it comes from concepts we have learned or whether it comes from the satisfied or dissatisfied state of our own drive states, all emotion is always mediated through the Autonomic nervous system by the production of the neurohumoral chemicals, acetylcholine, adrenaline, and nor-adrenaline.  Whether or not the rage, fear, or love is appropriate in the Here and Now, our autonomics make the transmitter substances connected with our emotion, and the changes these transmitter substances create are what we identify as rage or fear or love.

When are Negative Emotions Appropriate?

                Generally speaking, once we become adult, there are very few things that we need to get enraged about or frightened of.  As people living in a law-abiding, civilized state, we are seldom attacked, and very seldom is our survival itself threatened (outside of the dangers in traffic).  Most of the things we're afraid of actually can't hurt us, like talking at a group meeting, or have never existed, and will not, like ghosts.  Most fear is inappropriate.

So is most rage.  Most of the time when we get angry, we get angry over some minor challenge to some fancied personality characteristic which we believe we must maintain in order to be ever able to win approval and get the love we constantly seek.  So, for example, people get very angry when someone doesn't speak to them "properly," although the tone of voice and the words themselves and the stance, postures, gestures, eye contact, etc., of the person speaking in themselves cannot harm the survival of the person who's getting angry over such aspects.

                So, most of the things that we're angry about aren't really hurting us.  Frequently, most matters we get angry about don't even concern us or are about inconsequential matters.  Often we get angry about matters over which the person truly is not responsible since they involve another individual.  (By the way, when I talk about "responsibility" here, I'm using the word the way we use it in ordinary, rational, scientific, objective reality.  I don't mean spiritual, metaphysical responsibility.  In the metaphysical world, only the individual whose Thought is creating that spiritual and metaphysical space has free will; and everyone else must play the part they're being assigned in the scenario this individual has "dreamt up.")

If we approach emotions from a logical, philosophical point of view, fear is definitely appropriate only in a situation where the best thing you can do is just sit still and be still and suffer, hopefully only temporarily.  Clearly fear with its accompanying reactions is an important feeling for us to feel when something that might hurt us and that we have no control over happens to us.  We could simply otherwise be wasting our energies by trying to resist or become free.

A paradigm, a perfect model, for this circumstance is the time during the birth process when the child is essentially trapped in the pelvis and has not yet emerged.  If the child or mother were to try to make vigorous movements, they would disrupt the orderly procession of the rest of the baby down the cervical canal, into the pelvis, where the baby then can impel himself out through the vaginal orifice.

Following the same kind of logic, rage is important as a reaction when something is within our capacity to handle.  When something we can do something about is hurting us, rage helps us push the bother away or helps us move abruptly away from whatever is bothering us.  Hence the beautiful connection between the feeling of rage and the empowerment of the large skeletal muscles which are what we strike with and what we move our body away with.  Fortunately, in most of our lifetimes most of us don't have to fight for our life.  We're not being either prey or predator in the feeding chain that marks the existence of all other animals.

The prototype in every human's experience for an appropriate use of rage is that time at the end of term when the child is not getting nutrition quite as fast as he did originally because circulation is impede by the pressure of the large-sized child against the placental membranes.  His waste products aren't being taken away so quickly, either.  Mama can't breathe enough and circulate enough for baby to go on being happy and contented, growing away inside of her.  And so, impatiently, he seeks to move away from this noxious environment.  As he makes a vigorous move, he causes small tears and separations in the placenta.  His anger thus starts the birth.  Nervous impulses from the torn placental membranes travel up to Mama's brain, causing the release from her diencephalon of the posterior pituitary hormones that cause her uterus to contract and push to expel its contents.  Rage also operates once the infant is fully down in the pelvis, helping him move on out of the vagina.

So rage and fear have their prototypes in our birth experience, in the uterus' contracting and pushing, and in the baby's vigorous resisting and thus increasing the effect of the uterine contraction, up to the point where stillness is a better approach than vigorous activity.

Rage and fear also have their appropriate place in our life experience, once we're out of the womb, but that place would be far more limited than we usually experience if we could only ordinarily change our birth imprints easily.

Both kinds of emotional responses, object-related and concept-dominated, may be altered by circumstances.  But imprints, which also involve emotions, are singularly immutableCordinarily.

What is Imprinting?

Imprinting takes place primarily during our first two years of life.  As previously mentioned, imprinting is what takes place in the limbic system, a system comprised of nuclei in the Thinker-Doer, the telencephalon, and nuclei in the Feeler-Reactor, the diencephalon.

Imprinting is an automatic assignment of a particular positive or negative charge to an event.  The rules for how these charges are assigned are very simple: We give a plus charge, a positive, to all the events occurring when we are born and survive; these primary imprints label certain events as "good."  We give a negative charge to an event that's the logical opposite to our first experiences.  These secondary imprints label events that are the opposites of the primary imprints as "bad."  In essence, these are the "Thou Shalt" and the "Thou Shalt Not" ideas we associate with survival.

Primary imprints are based on what was happening physiologically and psychologically when we were conceived, carried, and born.  Whatever the physiological and psychological conditions were, we imprint them as vitally necessary and thus safe and desirable.  In the primary positive imprint nuclei of the limbic system, we store the belief that these conditions are attached to survival.  We believe we must have these conditions to be alive and to feel love.  Even if, from a rational, objective, intelligent, better-informed approach, those conditions are noxious, on the basis of imprints we still believe they are good for us.  We don't sensibly turn away from them to seek what rational, objective, informed intelligence tells us would truly be good for us.

We don't turn away because the secondary negative imprints are dictating that we feel our survival is threatened by everything that's the logical opposite of the conditions characteristic of the primary positive imprints.

Thus we automatically resist and are anxious about and seek to get away from everything that's the logical opposite of all that we imprinted primarily.

In a state of perfect nature, the automatic process of imprinting practically guarantees the happy survival of the individual.

For example, the baby chick imprints in its primary limbic nuclei whatever moves across its field of vision as it emerges from the shell.  Since ordinarily the movement would come from the mother bird, everything works out well.  The chick Abelieves" the mother is vital to its survival, so it seeks to be near herCas she moves away, the chick automatically follows.  The mother only moves where it's safe for her survival, so the chick experiences safety as it follows her.  It doesn't Alearn" what to do, it develops the appropriate behavior as it does what its imprints dictate it should experience.

But, in an unnatural state, like civilization, problems may ensue.  Eckhart Hess showed that imprints which are not of service and have no survival value whatsoever to the young chick can also be formed during hatching under special circumstances.  So, for example, if a string is attached to a football and the football is pulled across the field of vision of the newly hatched chick, the chick imprints the moving football.  He becomes attached to it and follows steadfastly wherever it is pulled.  It's as if the chick mistakenly "believes" the football is Mama.  Mama herself will have little or no effect on the chick.

When he happened to move across its field of vision, the former Chancellor of the University of Chicago and Noble Prize Winner, George Beadle, for example, inadvertently became the "mother" of a hatching duckling being used by psychologist Eckhart Hess in experiments on imprinting.  Unless confined, the duck thereafter followed Dr. Beadle around campus.

In the state of perfect nature, the secondary imprints, dictating what is to be avoided because it's the logical opposite of whatever was imprinted in the primary, "positive" limbic centers, also serve the happy survival of the individual.

In the case of the emerging duck, appropriately and positively having imprinted its solicitous and wise mother, the secondary, negative imprints keep it from "trusting" and therefore exploring or tolerating anything that's unlike its mother-a dog, a cat, or even a human.  In a sense, it "knows better" than to let you get your hands on it.

How Do Birth Imprints Influence Human Behavior?

In the unnatural state that we people live in, many problems can occur because of imprints.

Unfortunately, the events happening when we survived our conception and birth may not always have been events which, in our conscious adult mind, we would usually evaluate as positive. 

For example, breathing obviously has definite survival value, but our first breath is often stimulated by being spanked or having our noses twitched, our ears or fingers flicked, or being dipped in cold water, techniques used to get a child to breathe when he's not starting to breathe on his own, spontaneously.

The child whose first breaths are accompanied by being forced through pain to reflexly catch his breath may for the rest of his life be unable to initiate anything for himself unless he is first hurt or threatened to be hurt.  His Autonomics have to be aroused, but the arousal is always inappropriate.

No wonder so many of us are so mixed up!

Even worse is the fact that the reverse or the opposite of whatever is given a plus imprint is automatically given a negative imprint.  So the child who is manhandled and hurt in order to be delivered, who is painfully stimulated into taking his first breath may, for the rest of his life, respond well when prodded and hurt, but may be unable to tolerate a situation in which he's being given plenty of time to do what he wants to do and is not being threatened or forced.

Unfortunately, most hospital births involve violence, impatience, and alienationCall causes of mixed-up imprints.

This result of modern birthing practices has immense consequences.  I believe it accounts for the great increase in domestic violence, for example.  We all know women who stay attached to men who treat them badly.  Maybe such a woman was manhandled by the doctor at delivery in his effort to help her come alive.  Thus such pain preceded being received by her loving Mama.  That child's imprints require that she later accept being hurt by men; if not, she may die, unloved.  She knows she's nuts to stay with someone who hurts her, but if she leaves the pain he gives, she won't be able to get to being loved as her Mama loved her.

The woman who has a loving relationship with a man who abuses her and terrorizes her, in my opinion, is not necessarily what we call a masochist.  She isn't someone who wants to be hurt.  She doesn't need to be hurt in order to feel alive.  But-given her imprints that being alive means having been abusedCwhen she isn't being hurt, she feels unsafe.  The negative imprint centers in her limbic system make her feel highly anxious and totally threatened when she isn't hurt.  Something's wrong when nothing is wrong.

                Many of us have this reaction.

Every style of birth leads to imprints that may cause trouble.  For example, the child who is born quickly and easily has primarily imprinted ease and quickness.  So, if something comes along that he can get done easily and quickly, he will do it.  That's "good."  On the other hand, such a child has negative imprints about patience, endurance, the long haul, and effort.  So that child, when faced with a situation that requires continued effort, may feel totally unable to perform, and may give up without even making an attempt to perform.  In his mind, making an effort and waiting for results signifies the opposite of being alive, thus, efforting signifies dying.  So he gives up, impatiently and anxiously.  That's "bad."

When imprinting was discovered, it was recognized that it has immense survival value for lower animals under ordinary circumstances, as previously discussed.  We now know that imprinting has enormous effects on people-unfortunately, not often beneficial.

In our highly unnatural, artificial birth circumstances, unfortunately, imprinting is not always of great service.

Perhaps the worse characteristic of imprinting is that imprints apparently are beyond our conscious comprehension and we cannot re-arrange these values by making deliberate choices for ourselves.

                So, for example, I have apparently imprinted the idea that cleanliness is of immense survival value-probably because I was washed clean immediately after my birth, even before I was given to my mother to be nursed.  Her later emphasis on cleanliness further supported that imprint.  So, I have no choice whatsoever: I must be fastidious, I must be horrified by dirt, I must be disgusted by anything that looks like sloppiness and disorder.

These reactions may make me stiff and rigid and unrelenting and, generally speaking, a bother for other people to be around.  I may waste an immense amount of my energies and time as I struggle to keep things well dusted and to put things back in their place.  But, because in my mind cleanliness equals survival, such compulsive cleaning, in fact, relieves me of survival anxiety and other negative emotions.  Even knowing that I should control my tendencies to be super clean and neat doesn't do me any good, because in the effort to become more sloppy I create for myself immense anxiety about survival.  My limbic system imprints are dictating: Thou must be clean or thou wilt be extinguished.

Unless I change my basic imprints, I must continue to put time and energy into cleaningCtime and energy that might better be put into other activities more likely to gain me other, more significant rewards.

How Are Our Imprints Related to Neurosis?

Most conventional psychotherapy is unproductive for most people because it's difficult to change behavior without also changing the underlying imprints that comprise our belief systems.  Neurosis, fundamentally, is having imprints which don't serve us.  Worse yet, we create as much anxiety by our conscious effort to resist our neurosis as we feel because of our unconscious neurotic behavior.  Thus, we're "stuck" with our inappropriate fears and anxieties.

Sadly enough, belief systems are not available for conscious inspection and change.  We can't get at our imprints by talking.  We can't remember the circumstances in which we formed our imprints because we were in a remarkably different state then and such memories are what is called "state dependent."  We can only recall such memories when we re-establish a similar internal state. 

Of course, this doesn't mean creating similar external circumstances, as is done when a Primal patient locks himself in a coffin to simulate being trapped in the pelvis at birth.  That's just melodrama.

Leonard has urged that people play around with their diet, consciously, to put their consciousness into an altered state, to recapture former states by, for example, going on an all-milk diet for a weekCeven an all-milk diet drunk from a baby bottle!  This altered state is not at all the same one we experienced as nurslings, however.

What is "State-Dependency"?

State-dependency means that certain memories only become available for current conscious inspection and alteration when your body is in the same physiological state that it was in when you formed the thought you are now trying consciously to remember.

A simple example of this is with regard to what college students can remember when they cram for exams by taking amphetamines to keep themselves awake.  It is true that a person on amphetamines learns more quickly and reacts more quickly.  So, it's an ideal drug for cramming.  However, unfortunately, what is learned when a person is on amphetamines is only easily recalled when a person is still on amphetamines.  If a student crams using amphetamines, but then goes to the exam following a good night's sleep and a fine breakfast, no longer "up on speed," he will probably find that he can't access the information he crammed.  He can remember studying the material and he knows he has perfect notes about it; he also knows he understood it completely when he was cramming.  But he can't remember what he crammed.  Had he instead taken the exam while still on speed, he probably would have remembered the material he crammed.

Not all drugs determine state-dependent memories.  Some drugs facilitate learning and don't seem to tie the memories up to that drugged state.  For example, caffeine seems to keep people alert and to facilitate learning at a faster rate, but it isn't really necessary for the person to have caffeine in his system in order to remember what he has learned on caffeine.

What Unusual Conditions Are Present at Birth?

The physiological state of the healthy infant at normal delivery as he emerges into life in this world (as opposed to life in the uterine state) is highly peculiar.  Specific characteristics of his blood will soon change and will not usually ever again be re-created in his later life.  Outstanding among these birth-related characteristics is the number of red blood cells in his blood stream.

                He's in a state of having an immense abundance of red blood corpuscles carrying their oxygen charge around in his blood stream.  In fact, never again in our lifetimes do we have such a super abundance of red blood cells in our blood stream.  (We lose millions of these red blood cells in the days following birth and delivery.  As these blood cells disintegrate, their biopigments get into the blood stream temporarily, and most healthy children end up with a kind of coppery or bronze jaundiced look which disappears in a few days, especially if they are exposed to sunlight, which fades these biopigments.)

The only ordinary condition in later life that even approximates this peri-natal state is when a person gears up for fight or flight under the direction of the sympathetic nervous system.  Then we pour into our body the noradrenaline that's characteristic of the awakening of the sympathetic nervous system, and the spleen releases into our blood stream it's "reserve" red blood cells, so we have extra red corpuscles carrying their kind of oxyhemoglobin around in our bloodstreams.  The extra red blood cells can help maintain oxygen delivery to brain cells in case the person is wounded and starts to leak these important formed elements of the blood. Obviously, this has great evolutionary value.

Another effect of sympathetic arousal is to increase respiration and circulation so that the "extra" red blood corpuscles carry more oxygen to the skeletal muscle and pick up more carbon dioxide from the skeletal muscle.  All of this works out very nicely when the person is exercising and he's metabolizing more and faster.

Most of us recognize that we feel good when we have been vigorous, simply because of this added nourishment and increased effectiveness of elimination of wastes, especially the ones eliminated by breathing and perspiring.

In addition to the question of how many red blood cells are travelling in the general body circulation at a given time, the level of oxygenation in the blood is important in defining the state that imprints are dependent on.  A given red blood cell, in its journey through the lungs, can only carry back into the body one unit of oxygen attached to its hemoglobin.  It can't carry two units.

So, if a person at sea level is breathing fully and the air he's breathing is ordinary air with its ordinary partial pressure of oxygen, a given red blood cell's reduced hemoglobin can only be oxygenated to the same extent.

But not all the red blood cells get oxygenated in their trip through the lungs.  The time taken by the blood as it travels through the alveoli of the lungs may be just too short for every red blood cell to get oxygenated.  Shallow breathers have lots of red blood cells carried around in the body holding onto an "old" load of reduced hemoglobin that won't be exchanged until a later breathCor a later one, or never.

Depth of ventilation, the acid-base balance of the blood, and blood pressure are a few of the factors that affect the rate at which a given red blood cell can exchange its reduced hemoglobin for oxygenated hemoglobin.

I always ask my Rebirthees to make their inhales as slow and full as possible, so that a maximum amount of exchange can take place between the red blood cells and the air in the alveoli. 

How Can We Re-Create the Birth State So We Can Access Our Imprints?

We can create in our body these same physiological conditions without increasing waste products by simply increasing respiration consciously while not moving around otherwise.  When we do this, we come close to the physiological state that was present during our birth deliveries, when the extra red blood corpuscles were hanging around, providing a cushion between the time when a child was receiving its oxygen from Mama through the placenta and the time when the infant begins breathing independently.

For some of us, umbilical circulation lasts long enough so that we're still on this maternal support system when we start breathing on our own.  Our first breath is thus taken in ease and without urgency or anxiety.  In such a situation one of our earliest imprints is : "Being alive is easy and satisfying."

Another imprint in such circumstances is: "I always have enough.  The Universe supports me."

For some of us, however, there may be a moment when the placental membranes have separated or the cord has been cut and the child is no longer getting what he needs from Mama, but hasn't yet taken his first breath in this world.  This moment can be the paradigm for immense anxiety in later life, due to the imprints formed during the time before the infant breathes.

Until such a baby takes his first breath, he's alive only because of the oxygen he receives from the "extra" red blood cells characteristic of birth.  Whatever his early imprints may be, they are formed in the presence of the high oxygen titer in the blood provided by the extra red blood cells.  If the oxygen these extra cells carry is almost all used up before the infant breathes, he may well imprint the Thought: "Living is difficult.  I can't get what I want.  No one supports me."

Whether this safety cushion of extra red blood cells is needed or not, it exists in us at the time that we form the majority of our basic belief systems, at the time when we imprint the conditions of our survival. 

Thus we need to get back into a similar state in order to make available for conscious scrutiny the memories and beliefs that we charged and stored in the limbic system centers at that time.

An easy way to do that is to increase respiration, provoking a sympathetic discharge and response, without performing any muscular action whatsoever: lie comfortably in a relaxed condition on the floor, not moving, not thrashing, not emoting, not into our old feelings; simply breathing and allowing the mind to play itself back through time until it arrives at the early images which form the foundation of our basic belief system. 

Just like a Rebirthing session.

I think the predominant effect of Rebirthing is to increase respiration and thus bring about the physiological state in which our basic belief systems were instituted.  If these imprints are, as I believe, indeed state-dependent memories, we need to duplicate the physiological state present at birth to be able to change our minds about them.

Can Imprints Be Altered Easily Once Original States Are Re-established?

Changing our minds isn't a very difficult thing to do so long as the thoughts that we want to change are accessible.  Every time you've learned something, you've changed your mind.  It is simple and takes almost no effort whatsoever.  For example, all of us went to school not knowing arithmetic.  When we learned to add and then multiply, all of us made mistakes, and all of us easily corrected ourselves.

Correcting our mistakes wasn't a major psychological event.  We didn't need psychiatric care to change our minds.  Nothing had to happen except the teacher put a mark on your paper which said, "2 X 3 is not 5, 2 X 3 is 6," and then you realized, "Oh, I thought that multiplication sign was an addition sign." 

You learned you'd better look at an arithmetic problem carefully, to see if it's an X or a +. 

You're constantly changing your mind quite easily, even when emotions are involved.  For example, someone says something and you think he said something offensive.  You say, "How come you said that to me?"

He says, "Oh, that's not what I said.  I said so-and-so."

Once you hear clearly what he said, and you can hear its relationship to what you believe you heard, it's no trouble at all for you to change your mind and let go all of the feelings that were involved in your mistaken initial perception.

Changing our mind is made even easier when someone apologizes.  We're usually open to such persuasion, willing to change our mind, willing to let go our rage and our humiliation, and instead go into gracious forgiveness so we can start having a good time.

In most of our interactions, we don't hold the Past against the Now and refuse to acknowledge the Now because we're holding on to the Past.

That's because these types of "mistaken" beliefs aren't connected with survival.  We can correct these kinds of mistakes  without risking losing our lives.

I think that's an extremely important point for people to keep in mind:  We don't hold on to our pain because we love it; we don't hold on to our negatives because we like them so much.

We hold on to our negatives only because we're afraid if we change our mind that we won't survive.

And so, when you run into something in yourself or in another person where sweet persuasion, honest talk, and reasonable discussionCor even great physical painCmake no change whatsoever in attitude and behavior, you know that you're dealing with something which is beyond Reason.  You're dealing with something that is beyond ordinary consciousness.

It's probably some imprint that lies in the limbic system, some thought that's part of our basic beliefs regarded as necessary for survival.

How Can We Determine What Our Imprints Are?

I love one of Leonard Orr's phrases: "Your results are your guru."

If you want to know what you've been thinking, and what your thinking has produced, just look at the universe around you and see what you have.

See what is supportive, what is loving, what is forgiving, what is joy-giving, and know that you've created it.  Your positive Thought has been creative of a positive life.

And also see what is offending you, what is troubling you, what is disappointing you, what is upsetting you on any level, and know that you have created that, too.  Know that you're still carrying around negatives of that sort, imprints which have created your negative circumstances.  To change your life, you must change your imprints.

Look at what you've got around you and from it deduce what kinds of negative messages you've been sending out.  They're most likely based on your imprints.

How Can We Change Our Imprints?

Changing our behavior through deliberate acts of will usually does nothing positive.  We just submerge the imprints deeper into our unconscious.  Conscious or unconscious denial doesn't keep our thoughts from being "broadcast" at all; denial and repression just keep broadcasting the imprints on a frequency band that we're not picking up on, but that the universe is responsive to.

So what can we do about changing imprints?  How can we change these memories if they're not available for conscious change?

There aren't many ways to make fundamental changes in basic belief systems, in imprints.  In fact, there are only a handful of such techniques.

                Diet can be a tactic for altering the effects of imprints.  But dietary changes seem to work more by bringing into dominance in the conscious mind the up-to-date positive attitudes, causing old negative ones to be submerged rather than eliminated and revised.  So a clean diet doesn't necessarily produce a benign Universe.  More about diet and consciousness is discussed in the next chapter.

Another force that usually produces fundamental changes is a life-threatening catastrophe.  If you are placed in a life-threatening situation from which you are miraculously rescued at the last moment, generally speaking, you can count on having the catastrophe change your mind in a lot of really important ways.  You just won't care about the same things any more after such an experience.  As the old song goes, "I'm gonna change my way of livin' and if that ain't enough, I'll even change the way I strut my stuff."

                That's what happens to people rescued from drowning or who survived air crashes.  It also happens to people who were thrown into a wilderness, who were stranded at sea on life rafts or in lifeboats, who by a solitary effort protected themselves from the environment and lasted until they were finally rescued.  Even people who were almost lost in the depths of a life-threatening illness and who then miraculously survived usually change in fundamental ways.

When these survivors report their stories, usually they report two phenomena: One is, "I saw my whole life pass in front of me, as if it were a motion picture film that I was witnessing."

And the other is a significant change of heart.  "I realized how foolish I was to have had all those negative thoughts, and I vowed that if I ever lived through all that, I would be a finer, more loving, more forgiving individual than I have ever been."

Another force that seems to allow people to alter their basic imprints is the force of religious conversion.  Something about what people call Divine Love experienced in the form of a felt connection through love with God results in a person's being able to change fundamental behavior patterns which seem to rest on basic imprints.

I'm sure that receiving God's grace is a marvelous, life-changing event.  However, like a cataclysmic event, it's not something that can ordinarily be arranged for.  At least I don't think so, although firm believers may have different thoughts.

Once I asked The Honorable Geshe Kyatso, the spiritual leader of the University of Tantric Buddhism in Ulverston, Cumbria, England, why Tantra Buddhists persist with the chanting and muddras and other Buddhist practices and rituals which have been being performed for 2500 years.  His reply was, "Ah, but we know this will work, if not in this lifetime, then in another."

So convinced was He of His connection with past incarnations, so convinced is He of the reality, the rightfulness, the utter predictability and reliability of His having another future life if He doesn't become "enlightened" in this one, that this lifetime itself seems less important to Him than I think it is to me in my framework.  I don't have such feelings of certainty of coming around again or, if I should return, of being able, at that point in the future, to know who I have been this time around.