From Neural Path Therapy Book
Introduction
Over the next five chapters, you’ll learn the five steps that will allow you to, as we like to say, “calm down and cope with just about anything.”
These are:
In chapter 6, you’ll explore what we call The Path to Total Freedom.
Here we’ll discuss the spiritual implications of the Neural Path Therapy (NPT) method, in case you are interested. Whether or not you are, this method will work for you.
For now, the three main concepts—mental muscle, neural paths, and the R & R response—are what you need to understand, so in the following pages, we’ll make each of them simple to understand and easy to use. And we won’t just describe these elements. Rather, we’ll let you demonstrate each concept for yourself.
MENTAL MUSCLE
Consider physical muscle. With the exception of bodybuilders, most people use physical exercise to develop muscles so they can use them. There are lots of situations that require muscle: sports that use muscle range from tennis to kayaking to kickboxing. Workplace usage of muscle might range from doing Antarctic ecological field research on skis to walking a mail route to being a bouncer at a bar. But the basic exercises needed to build muscle—like running, calisthenics, and weight lifting—are the same, no matter what the end use of that muscle might be.
Similarly, you’re going to build mental muscle—not just so your brain will look impressive in a bathing suit, but to use it to enhance your existence. The basic exercises used to build mental muscle are simple and relatively few in number. But the uses to which you can apply mental muscle are as varied as the situations that arise in your own life. We’ll define mental muscle in a moment. However, before doing that, we’d like you to demonstrate its use for yourself.
The Mental Muscle Experiment
Here’s a little experiment to show how mental muscle works.
Please do the following exercise before reading further.
Guess how thick the book is.
Half an inch? A centimeter?
Whisper your answer to yourself.
Now guess how much the book weighs.
A pound? 5 ounces? 200 grams?
Again, whisper your answer.
The Average Person Versus the Cognitive Scientist
How did you answer these questions? You might say that you looked at the spine, made a guess as to how thick it was, and whispered your answer. Then you hefted the book in your hand, guessed at its weight, and again whispered the answer to yourself.
This is how the average person would describe what he or she did.
As cognitive scientists, we’d describe what happened in terms of a series of three actions: perceiving, processing, and outputting.
You began by focusing the power of your brain through your eyes onto the spine of the book. You perceived the thickness of that spine with your sense of sight. You then processed that perception by comparing it to your knowledge of size, in inches or centimeters. And you ended by outputting your answer in the form of whispered words.
Then you shifted the power of your brain away from your eyes (most people will look away from the book when they attempt to guess its weight—did you?). You sent the power of your brain down the nerves of your spine and arm, into your hand, where your sense of touch perceived the gravitational pull of the book.
You then processed that perception by comparing it to your knowledge of weight, in ounces, pounds, or grams. Finally, you outputted your answer in a few whispered words.
Shifting Attention: So What?
Of course you can look at a book, then shift your mental attention to weigh it in your hand. Of course you can read these words, then shift the focus of your attention to look up at the clock. We have all learned, from childhood, to focus our attention with ease on physical objects like books, or clocks, or harmonicas— and to change the focus of our attention at will, from one thing to another.
Mental muscle is simply the ability to focus the power of your brain where you want it, when you want it.
It’s easy to do—if you are focusing on physical objects, like this book.
Unfortunately, most of us have never been taught how to focus—or not focus—on mental objects, like thoughts, emotions, or mental pathways.
Do you need mental muscle? Answer the following questions to find out:
If, like most of us, you suffer from these problems, you may never have developed the type of mental muscle that you really need. But we’ll give you exercises to help build up this crucial but neglected aspect of your mental musculature. And then you’ll use that muscle to observe and navigate neural paths.
PATHWAYS IN THE BRAIN
Nerve cells, or neurons, are long, narrow cells found in nerve tissue throughout the body. But most of them—about 100 billion—compose the gray matter of the human brain. You can think of each neuron as a small device for transmitting electrical, chemical, or hormonal information from one end of the neuron to the other. The dendrites receive information and transmit that information to the cell body. The axon takes information away from the cell body. So the information travels from dendrite end to axon end of the neuron.
A single neuron can’t transmit information very far. But fortunately, neurons can connect together, axon to dendrite, to form what are called neural paths (or neural chains or neural networks ). Every time we learn to perform a new action or think a new thought, a string of neurons connects together, end to end, to form a brand new neural path.
So write the nonsense word amthagor in cursive script, or think of Martians visiting your favorite restaurant, and presto: you’ve created a new neural path for yourself.
Why is this important?
Well, if neurons are the building blocks of your brain, then the pathways they form are the building blocks of your mind and of your personailty. Thus neural pathways have a tremendous effect on your thoughts, your emotions, and your actions.
