The primary conceit of the drmezmer website is that psychology is needlessly burdened by doubletalk, 'scientific' or otherwise, and downright fraud, due in large measure to the fact that nearly all psychologists give short shrift to the one object that should be the focus of all their concerns, namely the human brain. To claim to understand human behavior without understanding how the brain works is as absurd as claiming to understand the processes underlying health and disease without reference to human biology. Many psychologists and neuropsychologists of repute such as Jaak Panksepp, George Lakoff, Antonio Damasio, George Edelman, have made this same objection, but logical objections are not nearly as powerful as practical ones, and few if any practical procedures have derived from a psychology informed by neuroscience. To break this impasse, I offer one procedure, only one, that is derived directly from modern neuropsychology. It is a procedure that grants all those cliched benefits of higher motivation, well being, and self control that so many other psychological nostrums claim to do, but at least you can guage its benefits with immediacy, and thus spare this writer from appearing at length a charlatan. It is the best procedure that I can offer, occupies two sentences, and represents in toto probably the shortest self help 'book' ever written. Maybe if it is successful I can publish it, but only if I use exceptionally large fonts. Anyways, here it is.
Mezmer's Grand Self Help Procedure
1. Sit in a quiet place and progressively relax your muscles until you are completely relaxed.
2. For the next few hours, eliminate, postpone, or avoid ALL distractions, large or small. (e.g. checking email, chatting with friends, reading the newspaper, making personal phone calls, watching TV, etc.)
That's it.
As I predict (well, at least it works for me, but that doesn't really count), you will feel relaxed for the balance of the day, and will be able to go about your business comfortably, alertly, with great energy, and with much greater accuracy and speed.
This procedure, which I call radical relaxation, differs from relaxation techniques because it additionally clears out events that cause tension, allowing a resting state as an inherant state of non-activity (i.e. non tension) to remain undisturbed. Put more simply, radical relaxation differs from all relaxation procedures because it adds to them a simple regimen of mental hygiene, namely radically eliminating all distractions subsequently to becoming relaxed. It also derives from contemporary neuropsychological literature that is at odds with prevailing theories of stress (e.g. Seyle) and its treatment (e.g., Bensons Relaxation Response and meditation) that posit that muscular tension and relaxation are Pavlovian like responses to external stimuli.
The reason why such a simple procedure has escaped the academic literature on relaxation is because such such literature is based on stimulus-response models, namely relaxation and tension being mechanically 'elicited' by stimulus like 'stressors' that have no foundation in contemporary neuropsychology and neurologically based theories of learning. But of course, the proof is in the pudding, or in the doing. Either the procedure works, or it does not; the rest is academic scribbling. And for those who have a penchant for theoretical over practical matters, the below abstract and accompanying hyperlink to a much more detailed and journalistic treatment follows.
Muscular Relaxation and Tension: A Brief Overview
1. Relaxation is not a response.
Relaxation represents the elongation of the musculature, or in other words a state where the muscles are not contracting and thus are not 'doing' anything. Contrary to the common viewpoint of relaxation as a response, this view holds that relaxation does not represent a response at all, but a non-response. Physiologically, this is self evident since the musculature in relaxation is not activated or 'contracting'.
2. Muscular tension occurs to non-consciously mediate choice between important events that cannot be performed because of incomplete information.
From the separate work of the psychologist Frank McGuigan and the neurologist Antonio Damasio, muscular tension provides non-verbal information which is processed linguistically in the brain. McGuigan called this an allographic code. Damasio developed this notion further with his concept of the somatic marker. The somatic marker is a somatic or bodily event that occurs to mediate choice between events that one cannot rationally decide between. Somatic markers are learned somatic events and occur to non-consciously force or expedite choice between alternatives. Muscular tension as a somatic marker occurs when decisions have to be made between near equivalent choices that cannot be weighed with available information. Like choosing between a fork in a road, career moves, what movie to watch, or what behavior to perform to meet a workaday deadline, tension occurs to mediate choice when logical demands overwhelm the ability to comfortably weigh and make choices.
3. Muscular tension occurs to non-consciously mediate choice between important events that cannot be performed because of incompatible information.
The somatic marker ot tension may occur not only to decide between logical alternatives, but also between an alternative that is logical and an alternative that is affective. An affective choice is one that gains value because of its hedonic aspects that when raised to concsiousness represents pain or pleasure.
When we think of value we normally think of the means-end value that is determined by formal logic, or thinking. A second source of value, only recently established in neuropsychology, represents states of attentive arousal that occur when one is anticipating or perceiving a novel, discrepant, or otherwise interesting event. The source of value, which is mediated by the release of the brain chemical or neuromodulator dopamine, interoperates continually with formal higher order thinking processes. Oftentimes, they cohere, and what we find of interest is rationally to our interest as well. But on other occasions, they act in cross purposes, as we must decide between following rational dictates or surrendering to temptation or 'distractions'. Since distractions are governed by affective sources of value, they cannot be logically compared to events that are governed by reason, thus giving way to the continual battle between reason and emotion, God and mammon. If they cannot be logically compared, muscular tension often occurs to force choice, and thus we as a rule find a distraction filled environment 'stressful'. So rather than struggle stressfully to make a decision between doing what's right and doing what's momentarily of interest, the best route is to avoid all behaviors that have any affective value, and by so doing elimating the cause of stress. It is a truism that eliminating distractions reduces tension or stress, but it is more a truism that radically eliminating distractions will elminate tension, and thus make relaxation permanent during our working day. That is the whole point.
