(slow music)

(gentle instrumental music)

- If we can get
back to our essence,

I think that's where

we belong, that's home.

You've had all these

experiences in life

and yet, there's one part of you

that was there the whole time.

That same essence,

your same awareness,

your same consciousness has

been with you this whole time

and it's with you now.

We're still struggling

and stumbling.

Some people are

dying in the process,

some people are

sick unnecessarily

but eventually,
we've gotta get there

and we can change the paradigm.

We can do it.

(calm instrumental music)

- Stress, it's a word

we hear every day.

People are stressed

out, work is stressful,

but what do we really

know about stress?

Before we can figure that

out, let's take a quick travel

back in time starting

around 70,000 BC.

Hunter-gatherers had to
be on high alert in order

to survive from other

predators in their environment.

Even though this seems like

an extremely long time ago,

we actually react to
stress in the environment

just like these early people.

Let's fast forward to

early in the 17th century

to see French philosopher

Rene Descartes

who famously said, "I

think, therefore I am."

He is also responsible for

the idea of mind-body dualism

which some call the

mind-body problem.

He theorized that if the

mind was a thinking thing

and the body was a

non-thinking thing,

that the mind could

exist without the body

but the body could not

exist without the mind,

which essentially
declared them as separate.

This paved the way for

many schools of thought

addressing this mind-body split.

Several decades later,

we hear the word stress

used by English natural

philosopher Robert Hooke

in engineering terms.

He was interested in
how man-made structures
such as bridges
could be made to withstand
heavy loads without collapsing.

He created what he called

the Law of Elasticity

which demonstrated how

something like a spring

could withstand a
certain amount of stress

before it reached
a breaking point.

This machine-like analogy

proved to be fertile ground

for future explanations of

how humans experience stress.

His rival at the time,

Sir Isaac Newton,

would soon introduce

his three Laws of Motion

which would continue

to point toward

a mechanistic view of the body.

He also held a grudge

against Robert Hooke

and is responsible for

why you've probably

never heard of him.

And now to jump ahead

to the mid-1800s.

French physician Claude Bernard

introduced the idea that

the internal environment

of living organisms must

remain fairly constant

in response to changes in
the external environment.

Based on this work,

in the early 1900s,

American physiologist
Walter Bradford Cannon

coined the term Homeostasis

to describe this neutral,

stable state that needed to

exist for the body to survive.

He also coined the

term fight or flight,

but we'll get back

to that later.

When it comes to our current

understanding of stress,

the man responsible

is Hungarian-Canadian
endocrinologist

Hans Selye, he is known for his

work studying what he called

General Adaptation Syndrome.

He would later coin the term

stress which is still used

to explain aspects of
the stress response.

This response is
directly responsible

for helping the body

return to homeostasis.

Which brings us to today.

(calm instrumental music)

- Most people, when

they think of stress,

they think it's like they're

stressed out in their mind,

they're worrying about things,

they're obsessing about things.

The response part of

the stress response

is your body's response

to that stress.

So most of us walking around,

we don't put two
and two together.

- When they layperson hears

something like stress response,

they know that stress,

they think that stress

is the cause of their problem.

But we teach them that stress

is actually an aggravating

factor over whatever

existing weakness they have.

'Cause we're all

stressed all the time.

One of the things we

wanna take a look at

is that people have

physical stress,

biochemical/nutritional stress

and mental/emotional stress.

People think, when

they think of stress,

it's whatever they're stressed

out about at their job

or their career or their family

or whatever's going on
in their life personally

but stress takes

many different forms.

So our goal is to make

sure that they know is that

all of these things

are equally important,

your mind and your body

are the same thing.

It's not some new age-y

kind of statement.

If you alter your mind,

it's gonna alter your body.
- If you can address a
person's stress in their life,

I feel like that

should be number one

because we know that mental

stress will affect the body

in a physical way.

So many American's have

gastro-intestinal issues,

they have stomach issues,

their digestion's not great,

they bloat after

they eat and yeah,

there's a good portion

of that that's from food

but we also know that

so much of our stress

goes right to our

digestive tract.

And so I've found

with many patients

as I'm addressing their

food but more importantly,

it's also looking at what else

is going on in their life.

And it's amazing how when

they're able to digest more

of what's going on in their life

they're able to digest

their food better

and everything else in the

whole system starts clearing up.

- The person who has

a heart attack today,

were they healthy yesterday?

Of course not, where they

healthy last week or last month?

Most likely not.

But there was something
that was going on

that led to that crisis,

that heart attack.

The emotions work they

same way, they accumulate,

they accumulate and then

something goes wrong.

- When somebody's
under a lot of stress,

at least emotional stress,

a whole cascade of things

can be going on, from neck

problems to low back problems

to stomach problems
to anxiety to,

I've seen people go

through cyclical infections

to you name it.

Stress causes almost

every condition out there.

And if we can just take some

of that emotional pressure

off their system, at least

the chemistry of that emotion,

their body has a

better chance to heal.

(calm instrumental music)

- When we're struck

by a stressor on a day

that our system is already

somewhat compromised,

it's just like, it's really

like adding, you know,

one more little, teeny,

tiny hair to the pile

and it just, everything just

crumbles in that moment.
And we're very adaptable
and we're very, you know,

our nervous systems

are very intelligent.

And it figures out a way to

kind of cope and get through

but what we often

end up doing is

developing coping
mechanisms that don't work

when we get a little bit older.

I often have patients

come in and say,

"Oh, I'm sabotaging myself,

"I don't know why I'm

doing this to myself."

And they are beating

themselves up

because these patterns

are coming into play

but what they don't

realize is that

these patterns saved

them as children.

These patterns are survival

skills that have just

gone a little wonky.

- Where I find stress

is a really big deal

for a lot of people are

their own internal thoughts.

They beat themselves up.

They don't think

they're good enough.

They feel like they

have to be perfect.

And every time they

fail at something,
they stress themselves out.

And those are the

stressors which oftentimes

people don't think

they're stressed about.

So ask yourself this, if every

time you do something wrong,

do you beat yourself up?

If you do that, you're

stressing yourself out.

So what we try and do is

we help people recognize

those things so that

they can deal with them

a little bit more effectively

so that they don't

actually stress
themselves out internally.

- Some people understand

that there's something

called a fight or
flight syndrome.

And in the fight

or flight syndrome,

that's looking at a part

of the nervous system

called the autonomic

nervous system.

- The autonomic
nervous system is

a science-y way of
talking about the

part of the nervous system

that isn't the central

nervous system.

So the central nervous

system is the brain

and the nerves

that connect down.
The autonomic nervous system
has two major branches,

so to speak, sympathetic
which we call fight or flight

and the parasympathetic

which we could call

relaxation and restoration.

When we're in that latter mode,

the relaxation/restoration
mode of our nervous system,

that's when healing occurs,

that's when the body

rejuvenates itself.

When we're in the

fight or flight mode,

we're actually getting

ready to ward off

something threatening so

we need that but we can't

be in it all the time

or it has negative
health effects.

- You might be driving

in traffic and someone

cuts in front of you,

your life's not in danger

but your body gives

the same response.

And that ties back into

the stress response

because when you go into

that fight or flight

state of being,
your parasympathetic
calming nervous system

is turned off, that also

turns off all your healing

and resting and digesting

portion of your body.

- And if we don't
find ways of breaking

that fight or
flight response then

the symptoms you see

of too much stress,

poor digestion, can't

sleep at night, make sense

because you have this activated

sympathetic nervous system

that, that's what

it's all about.

- So it's kinda like, you know,

if you have a Ferrari and

you're going 140 miles per hour,

I mean, that's what

it's built for.

But if it goes 140 miles

per hour all day long,

24/7 and you never stop

and you never get a chance

for it to be garaged and

parked for it to rest,

that can be damaging to the car.

So that's much like

our body as well

if it's constantly in fight

or flight and stress mode

all the time then it can

lead to early breakdown.

- We need to remember that

stress is not up here.

It's whole body.

And that stress is a

physiological phenomenon.

And I often will use, with

patients, the example of,
okay, you know, stress is
a physiological phenomenon

that is not necessarily

in your control.

It's not about the

rational response.

So it's kind of like when

you're driving down the road,

okay, I look at my
speedometer, my rational brain

is in front of me and it
says, "Okay, I'm going 55."

And then all of the

sudden you see sirens

in your rear-view mirror.

And what happens?

Patients always know,

they say, "Oh, well, yeah,

"I grip the steering wheel,

my heart starts to pound.

"Sometimes I sweat, my
tummy gets butterflies."

And with that it's like exactly.

That is the physiology of stress

because your rational brain

looks at your speedometer

and says, "Oh, I'm going 55."

But you still see

those sirens and think

(gasping)
I'm in trouble, it's a threat.

And it's a perceived threat,

it's not necessarily real,

it's the emotional reality.

And then the police

car goes right by you

and you go okay.

(sighing)
But you still feel the
physiological effects of stress.

The other part of

that is that people

are so used to that

nowadays that it's normal.

(calm instrumental music)

- Neuroscientist and
pharmacologist, Dr. Candace Pert

made a breakthrough
discovery in 1972

when she discovered

the opiate receptor.

It was thought for any drug

to work in your system,

it had to first bind to

receptors in your cells.

But what made this

discovery so exciting

was that it meant that

the receptor must be used

for something
created by the body,

not just for external

things like drugs.

This led to the

discovery of endorphins,

our body's very own morphine.

These discoveries led

to what she called

the molecules of emotion.

That when you have an emotion,

it is the result of
physical molecules

known as neuropeptides being

released into your body

and attaching
themselves to receptors
in every cell of your body,
which means that emotions

are actually a
physiological phenomenon,

not a mental construct

as we had thought.

- Candace Pert, the famous

researcher actually found

that there were

neuro-transmitter
receptors in our gut.

In fact, there's more

neuro-transmitter receptors

in our gut than there

are in our brain.

- She taught us that the mind

is not just above the neck,

it's throughout the whole body.

And that's true,

there's intelligence

in every cell of the body.

- Emotions, really, as it
turns out, are physiological

phenomenon not necessarily

psychological phenomenon.

So kind of how we say it is that

we use these words to

explain how we feel,

that we're stressed, that

is going on in my life,

to try and communicate

to our conscious mind

what we're experiencing.

The reality is is
that we all have these

what we would call

conditioned responses.

- The concept of conditioning

came from the observations

of Ivan Pavlov, he was

a Russian Physiologist

who conducted the famous dog

studies in the late 1800s.

While they weren't the most

ethical of experiments,

at least we were able

to learn from them.

Every time he
would feed the dog,

he would ring a bell.

(ringing)

After doing this several

times, he simply rang the bell

without feeding the dog.

Even though there

wasn't any food,

the dog still salivated

as if food was coming.

This unconscious,
physiological response

is the result of conditioning.

- Humans, we drool our

whole life away, right?

We have these different

metaphors that people use

like he really
pushed my buttons,

she really knows how

to pull my strings,

they did it to me, all

of this kind of stuff

to really explain our

experience of what's going on.

But it's really just a

conditioned response, you know?

And what we like to leave

everybody with knowing is that
how it works is what you
don't express in life

you'll repress until

it expresses as
disease or dysfunction.

It's kinda like Woody

Allen used to say,

"I never get angry,

I just grow a tumor."

Meaning, if I don't
get my stuff out,

it stays in until it comes

out as something ugly,

either a behavior or
a health condition.

- Symptoms can show up in

the form of like anxiety

or depression and in
modern days I think people

are quick to try to take a pill.

And maybe the drug helps, it's

not to say that medication

isn't good once in a while,

but often it's just masking

or covering up a symptom.

And maybe it helps a

person through a crisis,

so it can be good,
but if we can get to

what is the underlying cause

that keeps getting

re-triggered, lives can change.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] In Philadelphia,
exciting new research

is being done at the Marcus

Institute of Integrative Health

at Jefferson University, one

of the leaders in this field.

- One of the critical

pieces of what we were doing

with our initial imaging

study is to expose people to

the various traumas

and stressors that
have really created

a problem for the person.

So they actually
listen to an audio file

of these very traumatic

moments in their life

and in particular we were

looking at cancer patients

who have struggled with

cancer and usually have

very traumatic part of

either the diagnosis

or the treatment that they

just can't get rid of.

- All of these people

physiologically reacted

to thinking about
that stressful event.

Heart rate went up or galvanic

skin response changed.

And so what we had

were people who were

physiologically reactive
and subjectively distressed

by this event and it's been

going on for a long time.

- So what exactly
was this study?

Dr. Monti and his

team created it as

a randomized controlled trial.

All of the participants

had a distressing

cancer-related memory
that was associated

with symptoms of
traumatic stress.

These symptoms had been

intruding in their lives

for at least six months, and

for many of the participants,

it had been years.

Each one of them made a script

explaining the traumatic

events in their own words.

That script was then

read back to them

while they were given

a functional MRI

to measure the levels of

distress they were experiencing.

Since this was a randomized

controlled trial,

the participants had been

split up into two groups,

one group received Neuro

Emotional Technique, or NET,

and the others were assigned

to the Waitlist
Control Condition.

The results of those

who received NET

were dramatic, to say the least.

But before we can go any

further, we have to head over

to Encinitas, California
to meet Dr. Scott Walker.

(upbeat music)

- Some of my patients
weren't getting well.
Some of 'em get well over time,

some of 'em wouldn't get well.

The people that

didn't get results

had a look of tension

in their eyes.

This is just something,

I came from a town

of 500 people and I'm so happy

I came from a a small town

because I can see people

in different ways.

And the people that seemed

to be burdened, I think,

were emotionally burdened.

And they were the ones

that had less results.

And so I made up in my mind that

maybe they were having

emotional trouble,

that's not a new thought,

people have been

thinking that people,

emotional stress has effected

the body for some time.

But I didn't know

how to solve it.

- But as it turned out, Dr.

Walker went to a seminar

where he met a
chiropractor by the name of

Dr. Jennifer Lamonica.

He learned that she would give

certain people an adjustment

and soon after, when they

would think about work,

that their spine

would be out of place

before they even

left the office.

Hearing this reaffirmed

his suspicion

that there had to be

something else going on.

- The first patient on the

next day that I was home,

she had gone to work and gotten

in an automobile accident.

Now I'm still, my mind is not

in my compassionate heart,

my mind is in my mind
and I'm thinking,

maybe she had fear

in this accident.

This is a chance I can

work this hypothesis.

And I said, "Oh, you

were in an accident."

I said, "Did you fear when

you were in the accident?"

And she said, "Yes."

I said, "Oh!"

(chuckling)

I'm sure I didn't do that but

that's the way I was thinking.

- One of Dr. Scott's mentors,

Dr. George Goodheart,

correlated the primary

muscles of the body with the

major meridians used in

traditional Chinese medicine.

- So you have these meridians,

they're kinda like channels

or what I like to describe

them as like freeways systems.
So they run from different
areas of the body,

from your head to your toe,

to your toes back to your trunk,

to your trunk to the face.

So they all travel

across the body

and they go even through the

deeper layers of the organs.

You know, the philosophy is

that if there is a traffic jam

or a blockage in any
of those meridians,

there's a disruption of
the vital force of the body

which is the chi, or the blood.

- Even though traditional

Chinese medicine

has been using meridians

for thousands of years,

a recent discovery by
Auburn University Professor

Vitaly Vodyanoy is bringing

more scientific attention

to this system.

- I didn't know all the

meridians and all the emotions,

but I knew fear

and I knew kidneys.

I said, "What I want you to do

is I want you to think about

"the fear that you had when

you were in that accident."

And she said, "Oh, okay."

And so she did and I

adjusted the sequences for

the kidney, which

is T1, T5 and T8.
And then I said to her, I
said, "How does that feel?"

I wanted to see if I
could get rid of fear.

And she thought I meant

how does her neck feel?

Well, of course, you know.

And she says, "Oh,

how do I feel?"

She goes...

"Yeah, that feels better."

And then I was ashamed because

I wasn't thinking
about her poor neck,

I was thinking about

this idea that I had

and maybe I could

get rid of the fear.

And so I said, "Oh, oh, okay."

(clears throat)

"And how does the

fear feel now?"

She says, "Yeah, I don't feel

any fear about it at all now."

I said, "Yes."
(laughing)

Yes.

- Any symptom that we have,

really, could have

a stress component.

And I think that's how

we came to develop NET,

Dr. Scott figured out

that, as a chiropractor,

he would help certain problems

and help spinal conditions

or painful situations

but there were those

certain cases that didn't

resolve all the way, so it

could be a knee or a shoulder,

a TMJ or a backache or a
stomachache or anything

and, what, 80% would get fixed

but what about those

20 that didn't?

- It's really a
brilliant intervention.

I don't know how Dr.

Walker put it together,

given that there was

nothing like it at the time

and he just somehow put together

these different concepts.

It makes sense in hindsight

how he put them together

but it really required a

special brain to do that.

- I knew I was onto something,

I knew, this is good.

There is the placebo effect,

you've gotta watch that.

I do not want to encourage

the placebo effect,

I want to discourage
the placebo effect.

So I made a pact with myself.

No more Mr. Nice Guy.

And I had this patient

come in one day, she said,

"You did that emotional thing

about this miscarried baby

"that I had, I feel so relieved,

"it was such a cloud over my

head that I lost this baby."

And I said,

"Well," I was trying

to write my notes

and she reached over and I

don't know what kind of shirt

I had on but she grabbed me.

And she put her face in

mine, "I said you helped me!"

(laughing)
And there I was,

I couldn't write, I was

nose-to-nose with her.

And she said very

forcefully, she said,

"I said you helped me!"

And I thought, my God,

what have I become?

(laughing sadly)

That I can't celebrate

my patient's win?

That I can't celebrate

her joy with her?

What's happened to me?

I said, I'm gonna

leave the research

for the researchers, that's it.

(calm instrumental music)

- Later, with the help

of fellow practitioners,

Dr. Scott created The

ONE Research Foundation,

they have privately funded over

30 research studies to date

which brings us
back to the present.

Meet one of the

participants in this study,

Dr. Jim Buckley.

- And in 2014, I got a diagnosis

of non-Hodgkin's
B-cell lymphoma.

And it really took me by

surprise, I was shocked

that I had come down

with something like this.

I mean, I'm a
healthcare practitioner,

I'm not supposed to get sick.

But I did and...

I think I was spending

so much time taking care

of everybody else that I kinda

let myself fall by the wayside.

Conventional cancer
therapy was not anything

that I ever thought I

would use just because I

had strong feelings that

that was not the way to go

in terms of getting
healthy again.

But as it turned out, the

tumor that I had in my abdomen

was about as big as a football

and it was pushing on my

kidney and my intestines

and it was really

starting to cause me

an awful lot of
trouble so I ended up

doing what I said

I would never do

and getting chemotherapy.

And

during the process of

that I found out that

The ONE Foundation was

doing a research project on

the emotional effect of

hearing that you have cancer

and I was in that boat now.

First they kinda

questioned me about

what was the biggest impact of

hearing that you had cancer?

How did that impact your life

and what was the

hardest thing about it?

And I had to go down and list

what was the most

difficult for me.

What came up was the hardest

to leave my wife and daughters,

feeling like I hadn't

finished the work

that I was here to

do and felt as though

I was leaving them in the lurch

and felt a lot of responsibility

in terms of how I kinda had

fallen down on my self care

and was, as a result, you know,

potentially could lose my

life and closeness with them.

(somber music)

- One of the things that I

heard over and over again

from participants in the study

was that these distressing

memories and experiences

would intrude or impact

on positive experiences

in the present day when

they least expected it.

So they might be chopping

lettuce in their kitchen

and be suddenly reminded

or flooded with feelings of

how stressful it was to be sick

or what it was like to be

retching over the garbage can

in their kitchen
all those years ago.

So just being in
the kitchen again

reminded them of
that earlier stress.

- The passage of time

wasn't making it go away.

By the way, that's kind

of an old conception that

we found is incorrect, you know,

time really doesn't

heal all wounds

because emotional wounds

are in the part of the brain

where there is no sense of time.

- Sometimes things
happen early in life

where we are in a
dangerous situation

or something is perceived
to be awful happening.

And the body is unable to

extinguish that response

on an unconscious level.

Years later, we find out

that that buried stress,

those buried feelings

that have never gone away

are still being triggered

in any situation

that looks the same,

sounds the same,

smells the same, feels

the same can trigger that

on an unconscious level
and bring the feelings back

even though it's a

different situation.

- So whatever happened
to you at seven,

your subconscious still thinks

it's happening right now.

And even as a practitioner,

once I learned that,

it took me a long time to

wrap my mind around that

but it's the truth.

- It's not gee, now it feels

like I was then, it is then.

There is no linear
time in that place

so it is exactly that
moment that they're feeling

and it's replicated just as

if it's happening right now.

- What we were able to

observe in the brain

is where the distress was

being registered in the brain

when they listened to a

script of the traumatic event.

And that script has been

going on for a long time.

Again, I emphasize that because

it isn't a matter of time
healing this particular wound,

the time has been going by

and going by and going by

and the period of time of

the study was quite short.

- All of the
participants in the study

who received NET were given

treatment over several weeks

and some of them had their

sessions all in one day.

The findings were then published

in the Journal of
Cancer Survivorship.

- The main finding

that we really had

was that these areas

of the limbic system,

particularly the, what's

called the parahippocampus,

which is very involved in our

sort of traumatic memories

and emotional, our negative

emotional responses,

this was an area that was

far more active initially

and then after undergoing

the NET program,

suddenly didn't really

react very much.

- It just wasn't there anymore

for most of those patients.

In fact, everybody
had some response

where there was far

less to no activation

of those areas in
the limbic brain,
particularly the
parahippocampal area

which is where
distressing memories sit.

The activation was

virtually gone.

- So there was a 50% increase

in the neuron density

between the amygdala

and the frontal lobe.

Now the frontal lobe is

the front part of the brain

and that's responsible

for long-term planning,

thinking, complex reasoning.

That's the part of

the brain that says,

"Everything's gonna be okay,

I shouldn't be stressed

"about this, this is

nothing to worry about."

And my clients in and the

participants in the study

will say all the time, "I say

all the right things to myself

"but it just doesn't matter."

And that's exactly true

because the message

isn't getting through

to the emotional brain.

- And we also know

from this study

that every time a

really distressing event

gets reactivated or
there's a reminder of it,

that your nervous system reacts.

So when we looked
at the biofeedback,

we know that the autonomic

nervous system gets involved.

And when the autonomic nervous

systems gets hyper activated,

that has a negative

effect on health outcomes,

quality of life
across the board,

creates too much inflammation

in the system and so on.

- We talk about sort of the

brain normalizing itself

and in many ways

that is reflected

in what these scans looked at,

that instead of having

this overreaction

in these limbic
areas of the brain,

the brain basically

said, "Okay, you know,

"it's just one of my

memories now and it's not

"a traumatic memory,

I don't have these

"horrible feelings
that come up."

And it's reflected in what

the brain looked like.

- I was even surprised

that base-line mood,

base-line anxiety, all

of those things changed.

Like when you think about

it, the person's overall

quality of life was changed.

From three to five sessions

of an intervention.
That's pretty dramatic.

- I can tell you that I felt

physically different after

receiving the treatment.

I had had a bunch of

different treatments

during my attempts
to treat the disease

but I really felt as though

after that treatment,

I really took a
turn towards healing

and it was physically evident.

That's just an example of how...

All the work that I'd been

doing for all those years...

To help other people

could actually

help me too.

It just, it reached
me in another way that

it had never reached me before.

Like how impactful and how

important this work is.

I know in my heart that this

treatment really helped to

shift how I healed.

It just felt like

I can heal this now

where before I didn't,

I may have thought that,

but I didn't feel

that in my body.

You can have all the positive

affirmations you want
and intend for different
things to happen

and that's all cognitive,

that's all your brain talking.

But this was distinctly

different in that

it was in my gut that

I felt different,

it wasn't just a thought,

it was I feel like

I can heal this.

(calm instrumental music)

- There is an emotional
component that happens

from being sick for

long periods of time

or struggling with
physical illness.

Or watching someone you love

face a physical illness.

We're not floating heads,

there is a combination

that happens where the mind

and the body work together

and so when you have

a physical illness,

there is emotional component.

And when you're facing

emotional stress like depression

or anxiety, there's a
physical component to it

and that both of those

need to be treated.

- Sometimes people don't know

and they need that tool of NET

that utilizes not just

what's in the conscious brain

but what physiology is

doing that actually helps us
to get at what's a little
bit less than conscious.

- But because NET uses

several unique components,

first being the muscle

testing which allows the body

to become its own

biofeedback instrument.

The body then

guides the treatment

by using the muscle testing,

it precisely and correctly

identifies what these

periods of distress are.

- And what we're really

doing with the muscle test

is we're posing a concept and

then seeing if their body,

the patient's body, has

a physiological response.

We're not measuring

true and false,

we're only measuring

the person's personal

reaction to it.

So it's kind of like,

I over-simplified,

would be the amoeba moving

toward a bit of food

or away from a bit of poison

that's in the Petri dish.

And that's what we're

measuring with the muscle test.

- The experience of
NET is far different

than what somebody

observing it can know.

(calm instrumental music)

- We're run so much
by our subconscious,

at least 80%, probably 99.9%,

we're run by our

subconscious minds.

And therefore we're

kind of victim

to those subconscious minds.

- Because our subconscious

mind is running

so much of the show,

it can be difficult

to break out of
our conditioning.

Dr. Scott explains that a

Neuro Emotional Complex,

or NEC, is when an emotion

gets stuck in the body.

- In the NEC, we're shedding

the old perceptions,

we're shedding the feelings

that went with them.

And usually the NEC, of

course, has something

that is perceived by us to
be non-survival oriented,

it's counter survival, that's

the way we perceive it.

And so we're shedding that.

- So most of the time what

happens is when people

come into my office, they've

had this issue for so long

that they start to

mistake the problem

that they're having as

it actually being them.

So instead of them
having anxiety,

they feel anxious and then

they start to attribute that

to them just being

an anxious person,

it becomes part
of their identity.

It's that feeling

of hopelessness

that's so corrosive, I think.

And the idea

for people,

the idea that there's

some hope out there

that they could actually

get to the heart

of why this is
actually happening

over and over

again in their life

and even return to the place

where it becomes something,

a condition that they have

rather than who they are,

that's a great start, okay?

And then move on from there.

- People often ask me, "Well,

that event doesn't seem

"like it was so traumatic

or anything like that,

"so why did that come up?"

But I think that we are

just so bombarded with

processed foods and sugar and,

you know, lack of

sleep and the news

and everything that

we're exposed to

that our brain gets overloaded,

our nervous system

gets overloaded

with the emotions

it's trying to process

so something that seems

somewhat insignificant

may have hit us on a day

that our system was weak

and it just didn't know

what to do with it.

- When one person,

years and years later,

is still suffering from

the death of a parent.

And then another person,

years and years later,

is suffering because
they didn't get ice cream

at a birthday party,
it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

The person who lost

a parent might've

actually adapted
better than the kid

who didn't get ice cream

at a birthday party.

- Emotions have no logic,

they're just emotions.

If they were logical, we'd

all figure our stuff out

and no one would ever

have a health issue

or need to see a doctor or

therapist for any reason

'cause we would just

think about it, go huh,
and then we'd be fine.

Doesn't really work like that.

- The memory stores

things, often inaccurately

as to what really happened,

'cause it's not about that.

And what it can do is it

can put associated memories

together so that when

you recount something

or retell a story, you

had pieces that really

didn't even happen just by the

way our memory stores stuff.

And it doesn't matter that

it's logically correct

or that they're overly

emotional or underly emotional.

If the body's having a

physiological reaction,

we can help connect the

different piece parts

and let the body come to

closure with that thing.

- When we do muscle testing

we get the body's feedback

and we use that to

help the body heal.

So logic and reason

oftentimes are not involved

when we're doing NET,

we're just finding out

where the body is stuck.

And sometimes there's no

way that we would logically

ever figure it out unless

we use muscle testing.

(calm instrumental music)

- Upon further
analysis of the data,

the team at Jefferson noticed

some very interesting changes

regarding the cerebellum.

This led to the publishing of

their second paper in 2017.

- It's kind of
traditionally been taught

that the cerebellum

is primarily involved

in the coordination of our

motor activity so when it comes

to emotions, it's
not that relevant,

it's not really helping

us with anything.

It's really just helping

us to move our hands

and to move our legs and to do

that in a coordinated fashion

but a growing number

of research studies,

as we came to find as we
started to look at it,

we started to see well, gee,

there's some interesting

studies that show

that when the cerebellum is

activated that has something

to do with the laying down

of traumatic memories.

- According to a scientific
paper published in 2015

titled "The Emotional

Cerebellum", imaging
experts revealed,

"The cerebellum is activated

during mental recall
"of emotional personal episodes

"and during the learning

of a conditioned

"or unconditioned association

involving emotions."

- Even though the cerebellum

is relatively small,

it's just kind of

these little balls

in the back of the

brain, it has five times

the number of neurons as the

rest of the brain combined.

And then we started

to realize, well,

you know, this is all

starting to make some sense.

If this part of the brain

normally is involved

in the coordination of motor

function, maybe it's also

involved in the coordination

of emotional function.

And if that's the case, then

perhaps what we're seeing

is that as a result
of going through the

Neuro Emotional Technique

and the various elements

that are involved in

it, that we are having

a direct impact on
how that cerebellum

is able to regulate
the emotional, or
help in the regulation

of these emotional
centers of the brain.

- This is one of the reasons

to get up and go to work

as a medical researcher because

you don't get to see these

kinds of results every day.

- But it also opens

up the door even more

in terms of the field of

cognitive neuroscience

and emotions and

psychiatry and psychology

because it helps us to
understand that the cerebellum

may be a very critical

area of our brain

that is very much related

to our emotional selves

and not just how our body moves

but how our body is

moved emotionally.

- Even the people on my team

who knew nothing about NET,

they're just
analyzing, you know,

doing the quantitative analysis

of the MRIs pre and post

are like, "What is this?

"What was this intervention,

what's going on here?"

Everybody was just really

thrilled and so happy

for the patients.

And of course, that's

what it's really about.

- Even though the study

was focused on people

with traumatic stress from

cancer, the traumatic stress

of going to war is an
equally important issue.

On his third deployment

to Afghanistan,

United States Marine

Corps Corporal

Rory Hamill sustained

serious injuries.

- It was February 13th, 2011,

it's almost seven years now.

Took the minesweeper

off my point man's back

after he received
some information

that there was an

improvised explosive device

on a compound by our location.

And

we got about three quarters

of the compound swept

and as I was nearing

the end of my search,

I stepped on a little
metallic pressure plate

which detonated homemade

explosives five feet behind me

to the right and the

explosion and the blast force

came from my right side,

sheared my right
leg off instantly,

clipped the back of my left leg.

Flew 10 feet in the air,

hit the ground on

the back of my head.

My Marines saved my life, they

instantly rushed right in.

There could have been a

secondary IED in there
but they didn't care.

They dragged me out

of the blast zone,

worked on me, stopped the

bleeding, stabilized me.

Unfortunately, on the helicopter

to the shock trauma unit,

I flat lined for two minutes

and I was
resuscitated, worked on

and began the long journey home.

Took about a week

for me to get home

'cause they need to keep

you stable when they put you

on a plane and I wasn't

quite stable enough

but eventually I made it

back to Washington, D.C.

where I began my rehab.

(somber music)

It's very common with amputees,

we get phantom limb pain.

That's where your body is

firing of synapses and trying

to remap, you know, where the

nerves are and it realized

that there was a huge

chunk of nerves missing.

But that can translate into

phantom pain, phantom sensation.

And one of the things that we

worked on at the office was

we tried using a mirror,

it helped out a lot.

In a sense, it kind
of tricked my brain.
I'm looking at this,
I have my left leg

and I'm looking at it and

in my brain it made sense

and it helped, you know,

with a combination of
the actual treatment

it helped get a lot of that

stress away from my body.

And the phantom pains

and sensations became,

you know, very less frequent.

Obviously I still have

challenges every single day.

It's very, very hard and over

the past almost seven years

I have a gotten a lot mentally

and physically stronger

but NET has been an

integral part of that.

What I feel, what I've

seen with NET is it's,

it really is a mind/body
type of therapy.

And I can personally attest

to normally, you know,

if you have a physical thing,

go to a physical doctor.

You have a mental thing,

you go to a mental doctor.

With NET, it hits both of

those at the same time.

And I really, really feel that's

why there was such a huge,

you know, wave of emotion

released initially

and all the subsequent

appointments afterwards.

The doctor didn't tell me

that I was going to be cured

of my ailments or anything
like that, it wasn't,

but he did tell me that it

would help stabilize my body

and help me get back

to a sense of normalcy

in my everyday life, which it

did, hands down, immediately.

And it only got better

with the next few sessions

and, you know,

subsequently after.

It helped me a lot.

It helped me out
of a dark place.

You know, that with the help

of family and friends as well,

it's just, it was an

amazing supplement to,

to my regimen, to
everything that I needed.

(somber music)

- When the doctor's

ego is there,

it reduces the capacity

for healing in the patient.

Too often we get an idea,

a preconceived idea about

what's going on
with the patient.

And how could we

possibly do that?

Because we've only

lived our own life.

We haven't lived
that person's life.

We don't know what's

going on with them at all.
And so, well known by
the psychologist is

people project,

people project their

loves and their hatreds.

- As a practitioner, you can't

allow your stuff to interfere

and as humans, it's very

easy for that to happen.

We even have seminars

that they're designed

to address the
practitioner's needs

so that we don't have those

needs getting in the way

of the therapeutic relationship.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] There are

numerous seminars every year

allowing practitioners to learn

and improve their technique.

As of 2018, there are more

than 10,000 practitioners

in over 30 countries.

(upbeat music)

(applauding)

- Whether they're small

distressing events

that just aren't

resolving themselves well

or the big, big ones,

they all affect us.

And they affect our

quality of life,

they affect how we're

functioning, how we're feeling

and whether or not we're

thriving in the world

the way we want to be.

- And where, 30 years ago,

it was different thinking,

I think the whole face

of healthcare is changing

and people are more open now

that what you think could

affect how you heal.

What you eat, how you exercise,

meditation,

yoga, all that kind of stuff.

And NET's just a tool but I

think it's a perfect time for it

because I think the

consciousness of
people in general

is real open that

maybe I have something

to do with my health condition.

And if we can help unlock

what was stuck in there

then all those other things

they're doing as well

work better too.

- It pays it forward in
so many different ways

because if one person

can be less stressed

when they go home

to their family,

when they, you know, go

into work, when they are

on the phone as a customer

service representative,

then all of the sudden

we have a better world
cascading, cascading, cascading.

- This is a really good

time in history to be there.

It was so wonderful
in the very beginning

because we didn't know

where we were going

or what we were doing

or if it was gonna work

or if it wasn't gonna
work but right now we feel

very confident that every

single research study

that we done, every

single condition

that we've thrown this

as has been improved.

We haven't found anything

that it hasn't improved.

We don't know where

the limits are.

- It would be nice if it
was a mechanistic world

and we just tightened

a bolt here and there

and then it worked but that's

not, we're way more than

a piece of machinery and

I don't think we've begun

to touch on the energy

of what runs the body

or even, dare I say,

the spiritual piece.

- I never wanted it to go
into a spiritual direction

but really, I don't

know how you can stop it

when you start analyzing

what's going on in this world.
- I think the other
interesting piece about this is

healing, healing is so
interesting to me in that

we put on these layers and

layers and layers of protection

of things that happened to us.

And then a person will

come in with a problem

and we'll start

peeling off the layers

but what's totally

interesting to me is the issue

won't come up until the

body's ready to deal with it.

And I know, personally,

I lost my mother

when I was six years old.

And, I'm sure, you

know, I've had issues

and over the years we've

done a bunch of NET

and would often go back to

me being a six year old,

of course, which is
when my mother died

and we would check the

concept of my mother dying,

committing suicide,

and it wasn't there,

for almost five years,

it would be something else.

It'd be that I had to

go stay with my aunt

or that it was my
father was so upset

or this or that.

And then, interestingly,

five years into it,

on a Mother's Day,
believe it or not,

I had an issue come up,

goes back to age six

and this time I was ready

to deal with the death

and suicide of my mother.