The Analogue Regression Technique
It is my belief that after an injury the body heals itself up to a certain point, but unless there is removal of the traumatic emotional factors, residual physical effects may remain. If the trauma can be completely removed and it makes no difference if it is fifteen minutes or fifteen years later—the healing process will complete itself, in some cases even restoring damaged structures. The problem is to find a procedure which will make this possible.
I began my professional career as a psychologist, but after fifteen years of practicing conventional psychotherapy, I felt the need for a more complete armamentarium of holistic treatments, one that would take account of the patient’s physical condition. I returned to school and earned a D.C. degree, and in the 24 succeeding years I have moved increasingly into a holistic healing approach. One of my most successful healing modalities I have developed is the Analogue Regression Technique, a procedure to release traumas which have persisted in the body over a period of time without reinforcing agents. In this technique I talk to the patient’s body suggesting that as I make input, such as counting, saying the alphabet, or using a bell, it will re-live and gradually release its charge of pain. For reasons that I do not understand, it obeys me, and the release of the pain effects physical healing. When I first began learning what I could and could not do, I started with superficial exterior injuries. As I learned that wounds would not start bleeding again, I treated more serious surgeries and injuries.
Theory
The method is a regression technique because it goes back into the past and relives the injury—in metaphorical form, however, which is the reason for the use of innocuous stimuli which do not suggest any particular kind of response. It is called analogue because the body functions like an analogue computer. Unlike a digital computer, which operates on a 0 to 1 procedure, the analogue computer records numerous stimuli all at once, a spectrum of events, such as pressure, light, and sounds, of which a person is often barely aware, though all these stimuli can be elicited under hypnosis.
What happens in this technique? I think that in one sense each of us is a bioelectric field and subject to the laws of fields. My theory is that when we sustain an injury, a bound-state occurs which locks the injury (its emotion and its pain) into the tissue, just as a compound is formed in chemistry and becomes a bound-state. Reliving pain and injury to the body, albeit metaphorically, enables the pain to be freed from its bonding to the tissue.
Procedure
In this technique I begin by explaining to the patient that I am going to talk to the body. I say:
When I use the phrase “Ready. Return!” your body will go back in its tissue memories and begin reliving the injury. I will count from one to thirty. At the count of one, your body will begin prorating the injury over the span from one to thirty. By the time I reach thirty, the injury will have been relived once.
A few seconds after the completion of the first count, I again say, “Ready. Return!” and repeat the procedure. After ten repetitions I pause to inquire what the patient has noticed, though I am careful not to interrupt the process unduly. Sometimes the patient experiences a sharp pain at a certain number. This is repeated each time that particular number is reached. As the pain becomes sharper at the designated number I tell the body that I am going to change the procedure by inserting a portion of the alphabet in place of each number where the pain is experienced. For example, I count “one…two…three…,” then “a” through “k,” instead of four, then “five…six…seven,” then “a” through “k,” substituting the alphabet for each painful number until we reach 30. After a number of repetitions the patient generally ceases to experience any pain, although for a time an uncontrollable shaking, or “boiling-off,” may continue at certain numbers until I move to the next number. The shaking may become more intense with each counting, but as the body relives the event, it will erase a part of the trauma each time, even though it does not bring the former pain to consciousness.
There seems to be a governor within which keeps the body from getting into the experience faster than is comfortable. However, I usually ask that the patient become an observer of his body and notice anything that I cannot observe, such as pain, tightness, warmth, etc. While maintaining the count, it is necessary to keep attention focused on the patient for signs of the “boil-off,” such as parts of the body twitching, jerking, or moving, often without the conscious awareness of the patient. It may require ten or fifteen repetitions before anything begins to happen. I feel free to change the procedure in mid-stream to keep the patient comfortable: the insertion of the alphabet or a bell tone to stretch out the count when a reaction is painful never fails to produce the desired relief. It is helpful for the patient to take a dose of B-complex vitamins prior to the session, perhaps because this relieves the drain on nervous energy.
I generally work from thirty to fifty minutes. Generally, the “boil-off” begins mildly and becomes stronger each time through until it reaches a peak of expression and then diminishes rapidly until nothing is happening, which signals the end of the process. My preference is to limit the frequency of treatment to twice weekly.
A word of caution needs to be given. This can be a boring procedure for the one performing it. One must keep one’s attention focused on the patient for signs of the “boil-off,” while maintaining the count. It is easy to let one’s attention wander so that one counts beyond the designated cut-off point. No damage seems to be done, but such a lapse in attention can be disconcerting to the patient
Case Studies
- Some years ago a couple, both chiropractors, were rear-ended and sustained whiplashes. Two weeks later the wife complained of diplopia and headaches. While she was being treated with the Analogue technique for this whiplash, she asked if the technique could do anything for an injury which had occurred seventeen years before when she had fallen off her back porch and landed on her tailbone. The fall had paralyzed her briefly, after which she had in great pain crawled into her house. Subsequently she had tried every available method to escape the constant and repetitive pain. As we worked on this, her body went into tetany, rising about 70 degrees from the hips, holding this position for a short time, and then falling back. This was repeated over a number of sessions, after which the tetany ceased and there was no reaction as we went through the counting. She was pain-free for the first time in seventeen years and has remained so for the twenty years following the treatment.
- A young woman was referred to me by a doctor who had heard of my technique. Her husband brought her in with the complaint that, following her third Caesarian section, she had an acutely painful gluteus maximus on the side where needles had been inserted prior to the delivery. During the first Analogue procedure she reached a point where she ceased to experience pain, although she went through times of uncontrollable shaking during the count of a specific number in the sequence. The procedure was repeated for the better part of an hour, at the end of which there was soreness but no trace of the intense pain she had experienced prior to the session. After two more sessions, all discomfort disappeared.
- Pete Martinez, a middle-weight boxing champion in a non-title fight, suffered a broken nose which forced him to breathe through his mouth. He had undergone surgeries for the nose with no improvement and was referred for possible treatment using the Analogue process. Since surgery is a definite injury, it was necessary to run out the surgeries as well as the injuries. We worked for 17 sessions, and during the week following, Pete called to exclaim, “I can breathe again!” After that it was only when he was emotionally upset that his breathing became occluded.
- The healing of immediate injuries is facilitated by the Analogue technique. For example, a young athlete named Terry sprained his ankle while diving. X-rays showed no fracture. We applied the Analogue technique for 50 minutes. At the conclusion, I suggested to his father, one of my chiropractic students, that he continue the process. Because of social interruptions this suggestion was not carried out, but the next morning Terry was able to jump up and down on his sprained ankle without a trace of pain or any sign of swelling.
In general, whether the technique is used in accident cases or after surgeries, it facilitates repair and significantly reduces the time needed for healing. But it is in cases where healing has not occurred or been completed because the pain and emotion of a trauma have become locked into the bodily state that its effect is most significant.
I was invited to be present at the surgery of a teenager whom I had referred to a doctor friend of mine for hernia repair. The surgery included a circumcision, since the boy had not been circumcised at birth. Following the surgery, with the doctor’s encouragement, I visited the patient in the hospital and used the Analogue technique on him. He was lying with his knees flexed when I arrived, since he could not stretch out comfortably. Within half an hour of beginning the technique, he relaxed and stretched out comfortably. After the stitches were removed a few days later, the doctor, who is currently chief-of-staff in a San Fernando Valley hospital, called and told me that he had never seen an incision heal with the completeness and speed that this one had.
I have used the technique on hundreds of cases—post-surgeries, postpartums, whip-lashes, burns, sprains, emotional trauma, with but four failures (all involving serious nerve or brain damage) in twenty-five years. Several hundred doctors trained by me in the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic have been exposed to this procedure, and many have reported outstanding results.