AUTONOMIC HEALING INTEGRATION (AHA)

What is Autonomic healing?

Autonomic Healing Activation is a unique somatic stress intervention that activates the homeostasis function in the brain to normalize the stress response. With chronic stress or trauma, the “flight or fight” response  becomes activated and can remain active, not allowing the “relax and recover” response to occur. With each successive activation of the stress or trauma experience an escalation of the “flight or fight” response occurs. As Bessel van Der Kolk put it, “The Body Keeps the Score." “Homeostasis is life,” as noted noted physiologist J Scott Turner put it. Homeostasis is the tendency of a system, especially the physiological system of humans, to restore or maintain internal stability through a coordinated response to situations or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function. Rather than doing things to the brain and body, Autonomic Healing allows the brain to function naturally. In an average of 5 hours for the majority of adults, stress, anxiety, depression and anger are relieved. AHA can be completed in person or remotely via Google Hangouts Meet with the same effectiveness.  AHA is not psychotherapy which treats the mind.  AHA is a somatic intervention that allows the brain to create involuntary sensations and movements which release stress from the body, restoring a normal interaction between the ‘flight or fight’ and the ‘rest and recover’ functions in the brain. The involuntary activity orchestrated by the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) removes the stress that has accumulated over the years in one session.  You then have a tool to intervene whenever the flight or fight reaction is activated to bring your system into homeostasis. Involuntary sensations indicating that stress is present in your nervous system are familiar to you already. The nervous habits like tapping your toes or fingers, fidgeting, pacing, clearing your throat, twirling your hair, chewing on your fingernails and countless others, are neurogenic tremors (involuntary activity resulting from stress).  The chills you get when you are afraid, the butterflies that you feel in your stomach when you are anxious, the blushing that occurs in your face or neck when you are embarrassed or self-conscious, the shudder you experience when you feel threatened, are also neurogenic tremors; involuntary sensations resulting from stress.  Those involuntary sensations and actions (neurogenic tremors) simply show us that there is stress trapped in your nervous system; they do not remove it.  During AHA you consciously allow your ANS to generate and coordinate involuntary sensations and movements that completely remove stress!

Why is AHA so effective in one session? 

When we experience threat, real or perceived, the “flight or fight” response occurs with a cascade of events in the neurobiological system.  These events begin with lower brain functions in the autonomic nervous system and neurochemicals without reference to language.  In preparation for a real or perceived threat the automatic bodily experience is for things to slow or contract.  If the threat materializes, the full threat response activates with alarm and an increase of all bodily functions, heart rate, temperature fluctuations, no access to righting reflexes, non-volitional movement and no access to words or mental descriptors.  The higher the threat the more primitive the response will be, i.e. childlike, dissociative and animalistic.  Then the “relax and recover” response occurs in a combination of responses once the threat slows or ends; bodily functions increase or slow down or somewhere in between.  The ANS generates neurogenic tremors that literally remove the stress from the nervous system throughout the body.  During AHA the individual revisits the bodily process of threat with little to no language.  Because emotional and physical pain are identical in the way the brain processes them, the AHA practitioner guides the client in their experience of the gradual and natural process of somatic release that the ANS was unable to accomplish when the original threat to well-being was experienced.  The neurogenic tremors created by the ANS are involuntary and the intensity, expression or duration of the neurogenic tremors cannot be predicted.  AHA restores the homeostatic systemic response in one session.  Homeostasis is the maximum efficiency of operation of the brain. This allows individuals to integrate the bodily responses and send a message up to the higher functioning brain where cognitive material is stored. The message is to return back to rest and recuperation and run at maximum efficiency.  AHA allows for the ability to recognize and organize the automatic bodily responses such as the autonomic nervous system, opioid response, immune system and hypothalamic pituitary axis and utilize the important background responses in the foreground. Individuals suffering from unhealthy stress, trauma or lack of primal needs experience these ingrained set of threat responses and are unable to verbalize what is happening. If the individual is not able to somatically release, relive and organize it in a systemic way in the body before they can categorize and organize with verbal language they develop poor coping skills and cannot regulate their neurophysiological system.  AHA allows a natural integration of the lower brain functions or bodily systemic responses first then introduces them to the higher-level functions or mental constructs second.  AHA works effectively with those who have limited access to language, have suffered from threat to their survival and who suffer from every day stress. Once somatic homeostasis is restored activation of the “problem solving” function in the prefrontal cortex to facilitate cognitive homeostasis in AHA - Problem Solving (AHA-PS).

What can AHA be used to address?

AHA can be used for anything from chronic trauma (preverbal), PTSD, severe mental illness, depression, phobias, anxiety, eating disorders, fear, distress, psychosomatic diagnosis, physical/mental/sexual abuse, emotional distress, self-esteem issues and everyday stress. It is also highly effective in managing the urges to engage in unhealthy coping with stress through sex, eating or psychoactive substances.

What are the benefits of AHA?

• AHA addresses the symptoms of reactivity to stress triggers listed above

• AHA occurs in one session

• The behaviors that were reactions to the stress trapped in your nervous system do not have a reason to exist

• Addresses everything before neuronal threads/negative thought patterns occur

• Unparalleled results in stress removal

• Minimal or no return of symptoms when Preventive Stress Management is done consistently

• Treats all forms of stress and trauma

• Provides tools for success and assurance

• Achieves lasting outcomes

For additional information on AHA, please see the links available  on the Resources page.