Dr Caroline Leaf
NOTE: My website and recordings will help you to separate yourself from these toxic thoughts and learn what is the spiritual dimension of these thoughts AS OPPOSED TO just changing the toxic thought patterns they represent. Ministry and Healing prayer are a fundamental catalyst to help you on your way. Dr Leaf’s work is instrumental in quickly renewing the mind.
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Renew Your Mind
Dr Caroline Leaf is bringing great validity to this proven scientific breakthrough. I encourage you to access her books, videos, and app called the “21 Day Brain Detox”. If you are ready to embrace change and choose LIFE, click here. http://drleaf.com/
NEW!!! info on RENEW YOUR MIND page
Thought based templates now available for download.
Includes Column Based templates similar to those used by Dr Caroline Leaf. NOTE: This is NOT a substitute.
These are for personal use only.
Instructions: Work through these before starting
- The first day will take approximately 30 – 60 minutes as you practice and learn the routine. You may feel you need a couple of days to practice getting into the routine, which is fine as well.
- From day two your time can be reduced to 7 -10 minutes in total of dedicated time.
- Don’t be tempted to try to fix everything on the first day…it’s baby steps, so you make small changes each day.
- There are 5 steps that I have developed based on how the brain builds thoughts (based on my research on the science of thought) – I call these the Switch on Your Brain 5-step Process® . This is what you do each day for 7-10 minutes.
- For more information on the science, my theory and the research behind my 5-step Switch on your brain technique® and the 21-day Brain Detox™, please refer to my other books and my web page www.drleaf.com.
- The overall idea of the 21-day Brain Detox™ Plan is to do the Switch on Your Brain 5-step Process® each day in 7-10 minutes for 21 days. This will wipe out the toxic thought and build in the healthy new thought.
- After 21 days, the new healthy thought is small and needs to grow. Whatever you think about grows. In order to stabilize the new way of thinking and to keep from reverting back to the old way, you needs to consciously practice using the new thought you have built for at least 2 more cycles of 21 days. This will total about 63-66 days of conscious practice and will result in the new thought being “automatized. This means, the thought moves into your non-conscious mind and drives your conscious thoughts, words and actions without you consciously thinking about it. It becomes implanted (James 1:21).
- This means at any one time, you will be working on automatizing the new healthy thought you worked on the previous 21 days, as well as working on detoxing the next toxic thought the Holy Spirit has guided you to work on. We are very good at working on 2-4 things at a time, so you will manage this really well.
- When I refer to a “thought”, I am referring to a ‘memory”…these are one and the same.
- The first few days have a lot of explanation to coach you into mastering the technique, thereafter the explanations are shorter, and so you can navigate back and forth between days if you need to.
- You will be doing a double process each day: breaking down a toxic thought and building up a healthy replacement thought. For example, if you are detoxing ‘worrying about meeting the bills every month”, your replacement healthy thought could be something like using the scripture “my God shall meet all my need according to his riches in glory” (Philippians 4:19) and apply to the specifics of your worry.
- In the Active reach, decide what you want to do in one to two minutes based on the input from steps 1-4, then for the rest of the day you actually do the active reach 7 times.
- Be aware throughout the day of what you working on and try to focus on doing your selected ‘active reach’ (see step 5) up to 7x times a day, if you can, as you go about your daily affairs. You don’t have to stop what you are doing. You can just focus on observing yourself and see how you are doing. This is how you really make the change happen quicker.
- There is a downloadable active reach log, which you can print out to record how many times you have done your active reaches.
- There is also a downloadable journal that you can print out and use for step 3 where you have to write. Keep this journal as a record of your growth and look back after year and amaze yourself at how much you have grown!
- In this 21-day Brain Detox™, you will be learning how to think deeply and to be aware of your thoughts running through your mind. You will be learning about deep meditation as distinct from new age forms of meditation. In Christian meditation – which is what you will be doing in this program of renewing your mind – your mind will be actively engaged and focusing on God and His Word. You are always conscious and consciously aware, practicing the presence of God, not seeking some mystical experience of God. New agers attempt to empty their mind; you will be using your mind to train your mind to listen to your spirit and your spirit to listen to the Holy Spirit.
- For example, maybe you are working on not worrying about your finances because the worry has as been incapacitating you and your faith and health are suffering. As you work through this “worry” over your 21 days, be your own watchdog talking with and practicing the presence of God as much as you can and catching yourself as soon as you slip…see Him standing next to you, sitting with you, talk to him in your mind about everything. This does take practice and will be hard at first, but after 21 days, it will become a great habit and you will find yourself being ‘…led by the Spirit…’ (Roman 8:14).
Taken from: http://www.ccsng.com/21daybraindetox.html
TERMS YOU WILL BE USING:
- ASK/ANSWER/DISCUSS: thinking strategy you apply in step two each day
- Active reach: actions and exercises you do during the day. You decide what these are in step 4 and 5 each day and you monitor/evaluate and change them each subsequent day of the 21-day detox.
· The Decision – which is creation of the specific active reach, and which is based on the input from steps 1-4.
· The Action – this is the specific one active reach that you practice doing at least 7 x during the day. The practice must be deep and meaningful, but not time consuming.
An active reach IS NOT simply repeating a statement 7 times. It is NOT positive affirmation. An active reach IS responding in a specific way each time the situation or thought rises up in your mind. It is heartfelt and sincere. The active reach is either an action and/or a verbal statement – for example, a statement you say to yourself; an action; quoting something; doing something; responding in a certain way each time the situation arises. See the resource section for ideas of toxic thoughts and active reach examples. - MPA: Multiple perspective advantage is a fun way of describing the ability God has given us to stand outside of ourselves and observe and change our thoughts, actions and behaviors.
- DFM: Default mode network is a series of complex networks in the depth of your brain that become activated when meditate deeply by introspection and deep intellectual thinking.
- Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process® –Gather: Becoming aware of what’s going on inside your head and what you are watching, listening to, touching, smelling and tasting – your five senses.
- Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process® –Focused Reflection: Self-reflection about the specific toxic thought.
- Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process® –Journal: Record what the focused reflection reveals. In this way you are making the thought very visual, almost like a taking a photo. It’s an eye-opening process. Pour your thoughts on paper.
- Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process® –Revisit: Recheck redesign reorganize the specific thought pattern.
- Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process® –Active Reach: Doing something specific to destroy the toxic thought.
Taken from: http://www.ccsng.com/21daybraindetox.html
Gather ~ Reflect ~ Journal
(Caroline Leaf)
Gather (Input)
Information goes into the Mind through the 5 senses
Reflect (Think)
Think about the information received
WHAT
WHY
HOW
2 Cor 10:5, Rom 12:2, Gen 11:6, Heb 11:1, Phil 4:8
Journal (metacog)
Write it down
Conscious and Unconscious thoughts on ink and paper
Removing Toxic Thoughts and thinking Healthy Thoughts
(Caroline Leaf)
Revisit (Recheck)
Analysis
Take actions
Decide what to do / respond
Refer to Scripture – what has God instructed you to do already
Rom 12:2
Reach (Output)
Reach out
Faith without work is U.S.E.L.E.S.S.
Confession without foundation –lack of INTEGRITY
James 2:20, Rom 10:9-10, Prov 23:7
Controlling Your Toxic Thoughts
(By Dr Caroline Leaf )
75% to 95% of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of our thought life. What we think about affects us physically and emotionally. It’s an epidemic of toxic emotions.
The average person has over 30,000 thoughts a day. Through an uncontrolled thought life, we create the conditions for illness; we make ourselves sick! Research shows that fear, all on its own, triggers more than 1,400 known physical and chemical responses and activates more than 30 different hormones. There are INTELLECTUAL and MEDICAL reasons to FORGIVE! Toxic waste generated by toxic thoughts causes the following illnesses: diabetes, cancer, asthma, skin problems and allergies to name just a few. Consciously control your thought life and start to detox your brain!
Medical research increasingly points to the fact that thinking and consciously controlling your thought life is one of the best ways, if not the best way of detoxing your brain. It allows you to get rid of those toxic thoughts and emotions that can consume and control your mind.
Change in your thinking is essential to detox the brain. Consciously controlling your thought life means not letting thoughts rampage through your mind. It means learning to engage interactively with every single thought that you have, and to analyze it before you decide either to accept or reject it.
How do you go about doing that? By “looking” at your mental processes. That may sound like a strange, if not impossible thing to do. After all, it’s not as if you can just crack open your skull like an egg and have a look at what is going on inside your brain.
It is possible, however, to look at your mental processes. In fact, it is not just possible, it is essential.
For example consider the following:
- How many “could-have”, “would-have”, “should-have” statements have you made today?
- How many “if onlys” were part of your inner vocabulary today?
- How many times have you replayed in your head a conversation or situation that pained you, or one that hasn’t even occurred yet?
- How many scenarios have you created of the unpredictable future?
- How much is speculation taking out of your day?
- How passive is your mind?
- How honest are you with yourself?
- Are you at cross-purposes with yourself – going through the motions, but not really committed to the goal, saying one thing but meaning another?
- How distorted is your thinking? Are you forming a personal identity around for example, a disease? Do you speak about “my arthritis”, “my multiple sclerosis”, “my heart problem”?
- Do you ever make comments like “nothing ever goes right for me”; “everything I touch fails”; “I always mess up”?
If you answered yes even to just one of these, your thought life needs detoxing right now.
C-reactive Protein and How Our Bodies React To Toxic Thought
This biblical admonition does not just have spiritual and mental implications, but physical as well. In fact our bodies react to physical attack, whether it be by trauma or infection, and mental alarm in a similar fashion by a process called inflammation [1]. Inflammation involves different types of white blood cells and various substances including many different types of cytokines [2]. Inflammation, if short-lived, is beneficial, however if it is prolonged it can physically damage the brain and body.
Among the substances first released in the inflammatory process is the appropriately named C-reactive protein, a five-part protein produced in the liver [3]. Researchers have found that worrying about a past stressful event, known as rumination, is associated with persistently high levels of C-reactive protein in the blood, indicating chronic inflammation in the body [4]. Chronic inflammation is associated with mental and physical disorders.
We cannot control our circumstances; however we can control our reactions to those circumstances. It seems our reactions can be measured by C-reactive protein. If we react the wrong way, we can damage our brain and body. We have to take heed to what St. Paul goes on to say from the scripture mentioned above:
“…but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. Philippians 4:6b-7.
References
1. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2014 Nov;49:244-52. Post-stress rumination predicts HPA axis responses to repeated acute stress. Gianferante D, Thoma MV, Hanlin L, Chen X, Breines JG, Zoccola PM, Rohleder N.Health Psychol. 2014 Dec;33(12):1606-9. Differential effects of poststressor rumination and distraction on cortisol and C-reactive protein. Zoccola PM, Figueroa WS, Rabideau EM, Woody A1, Benencia F. Stress Health. 2014 Aug;30(3):188-97. Cardiovascular and affective consequences of ruminating on a performance stressor depend on mode of thought. Zoccola PM, Rabideau EM, Figueroa WS, Woody A. Clin Schizophr Relat Psychoses. 2014 Jan;7(4):223-30. C-reactive protein levels in schizophrenia: a review and meta-analysis. Miller BJ1, Culpepper N2, Rapaport MH3. Ann Clin Lab Sci. 2000 Apr;30(2):133-43. Review: Biology and relevance of C-reactive protein in cardiovascular and renal disease. Westhuyzen J1, Healy H.
2. Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease. 5th edition. Janeway CA Jr, Travers P, Walport M, et al. New York: Garland Science; 2001. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10757 / 3. Ann Clin Lab Sci. 2000 Apr;30(2):133-4
3. Review: Biology and relevance of C-reactive protein in cardiovascular and renal disease. Westhuyzen J, Healy H.
4. Health Psychol. 2014 Dec;33(12):1606-9. Differential effects of poststressor rumination and distraction on cortisol and C-reactive protein. Zoccola PM, Figueroa WS, Rabideau EM, Woody A1, Benencia F.
Toxic Words
Sins of the Grandfathers
This scriptural principal is scientifically termed: transgenerational epigenetic inheritance and basically means something outside the cell (diet, exercise, thoughts, nurturing) changes the “on/off” switches on the genes of the DNA in sperm and eggs.
Scientists has known for a while about these switches -clusters if atoms called methyl groups – but the fact that they can pass through the generations and that these tags can be reset is a new idea. Research labs around the world are are finding that experiences -lab rats being exposed to substances; people overeating; the decisions we make – leave a very tenacious imprint, an actual change in the switches.
These transgenerational effects can be healthy or toxic; for example what happened to your mother during her youth can affect your memory positively or negatively.
But….Here’s the GREAT news: no matter what happened, your gift, which is your ability to think in your unique way, can be used to change any epigenome you have created or that passed through to you through the generations. It’s up to you, your “I-factor”.
Managing STRESS: Mind Controls Matter
(by Dr. Caroline Leaf)
Stress stage one is normal. This is our alert state that keeps us focused and conscious and is the state we are in when we are thinking in alignment with God. Stress stage two and stage three, however, are our mind and body’s response to toxic thinking—normal stress gone wrong. Even a little bit of these negative levels of stress from a little bit of toxic thinking has far-reaching consequences for mental and physical health.
The dictionary defines stress as “a condition typically characterized by symptoms of mental and physical tension or strain, as depression or hypertension, that can result from a reaction to a situation in which a person feels threatened, pressured, etc.” Synonyms for stress include anxiety, nervousness, fearfulness, apprehensiveness, impatience, fear, tenseness, and restlessness.
Here are just a few statistics confirming that 75 to 98 percent of mental and physical illness comes from one’s thought life:
• A study by the American Medical Association found that stress is a factor in 75 percent of all illnesses and diseases that people suffer from today.
• The association between stress and disease is a colossal 85 percent.
• The International Agency for Research on Cancer and the World Health Organization have concluded that 80 percent of cancers are due to lifestyle and not genetics, and this is a conservative number.
• According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, a scientist who has made great strides in understanding the effect of our thinking on our brain, gene disorders like Huntington’s chorea, beta thalassemia, and cystic fibrosis, to name a few, affect less than 2 percent of the population. This means the vast majority of the world’s population comes into this world with genes that should enable them to live happy and healthy lives. Lipton says a staggering 98 percent of diseases are related to lifestyle choices—in other words, our thinking.
• According to Dr. H. F. Nijhout, genes control biology and not the other way around.
• According to W. C. Willett, only 5 percent of cancer and cardiovascular patients can attribute their disease to hereditary factors.
• The American Institute of Health estimates that 75–90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related problems. Some of the latest negative stress statistics causing illness as a result of toxic thinking are eye-opening.
The main point of this article is that mind controls matter. If we get this right, we have enormous potential to reach peak health. If we get it wrong, we will be our own worst enemies.
References: Switch on Your Brain
See this VIDEO (27mins) to learn how to manage Stress and make the right choices
THINKING CHANGES OUR DNA - PART TWO
According to Dr. Herbert Benson, MD, president of Harvard Medical School’s Mind-Body Institute, negative thinking leads to toxic stress, which affects our body’s natural healing capacities.
Toxic thinking wears down the brain and body.
The Institute of HeartMath, an internationally recognized, nonprofit research organization that helps people reduce stress, discusses an experiment titled “Local and Nonlocal Effects of Coherent Heart Frequencies on Conformational Changes of DNA.” This study showed that thinking and feeling anger, fear, and frustration caused DNA to change shape according to thoughts and feelings. The DNA responded by tightening up and becoming shorter, switching off many DNA codes, which reduced quality expression. So we feel shut down by negative emotions, and our body feels this too. But here’s the great part: the negative shutdown or poor quality of the DNA codes was reversed by feelings of love, joy, appreciation, and gratitude! The researchers also found that HIV positive patients who had positive thoughts and feelings had 300,000 times more resistance to the disease than those without positive feelings. So the takeaway here is that when we operate in our normal love design—which is being made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26)—we are able to change the shape of our DNA for the better.
So when we make a poor-quality decision—when we choose to engage toxic thoughts (for example, unforgiveness, bitterness, irritation, or feelings of not coping)—we change the DNA and subsequent genetic expressions, which then changes the shape of our brain wiring in a negative direction. This immediately puts the brain into protection mode, and the brain translates these poor-quality, toxic thoughts as stress. This stress then manifests in our bodies. But the most exciting part of this study was the hope it demonstrated because the positive attitude, the good choice, rewired everything back to the original healthy positive state. These scientists basically proved we can renew our minds.
HOW PRAYER AFFECTS THE BRAIN: PRAYER AND HEALING
(by Dr. Caroline Leaf)
Prayer ‘..keeps our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 4:7 KJV). We will briefly explore what this means for the brain.
It has been found that 12 minutes of daily focused prayer over an 8 week period can change the brain to such an extent that it can be measured on a brain scan [1]. This type of prayer seems to increase activity in brain areas associated with social interaction compassion and sensitivity to others. It also increases frontal lobe activity as focus and intentionality increase. As well as changing the brain, another study implies that intentional prayer can even change physical matter. Researchers found that intentional thought for 30 seconds affected laser light [2].
Therefore, even though toxic thoughts can cause brain damage, prayer can reverse that damage and cause the brain and body to thrive. There is growing interest in the power of prayer to change our brain and even matter itself. Even though as Christians we are cognizant of this by reading the Bible and from experience, it is nice to know science is now bearing this out. For References 1 and 2 see Dr Leaf’s SCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHY
On one of Dr Leaf’s recent TV show episodes she addressed some of the research findings and implications relating to Prayer and the Brain and healing with Dr Avery Jackson – a Neurosurgeon . See this VIDEO LINK (28mins))
Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process®
- –Gather: Becoming aware of what’s going on inside your head and what you are watching, listening to, touching, smelling and tasting – your five senses.
- Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process® –Focused Reflection: Self-reflection about the specific toxic thought.
- Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process® –Journal: Record what the focused reflection reveals. In this way you are making the thought very visual, almost like a taking a photo. It’s an eye-opening process. Pour your thoughts on paper.
- Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process® –Revisit: Recheck redesign reorganize the specific thought pattern.
- Switch on your Brain 5-step Learning Process® –Active Reach: Doing something specific to destroy the toxic thought.