- The Emotional Brain – By Joseph LeDoux
Hi Again, I’ve been tapping with plenty of folks these past weeks, but haven’t been blogging as every free moment has been spent reading The Emotional Brain, then Synaptic Self, and now I’m into The Biology of Belief. Wow. I feel like I’m starting to understand how some of the biology of the brain is consistent with what I’m experiencing as I tap with people. This feels hugely exciting. Here’s the first report.
Book Report – February 3, 2012
The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life
By Joseph Le Doux
Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 1996
I read The Emotional Brain in search of better understandings for fibromyalgia, and why EFT (the Emotional Freedom Technique) can be effective in relieving pain. The Emotional Brain was an absolutely captivating read for me. I came away with dozens of pages of notes, and for the week that I studied my way through this book, I was stealing every available waking moment to engage and appreciate the range and depth of what Joseph LeDoux has made available to the community of the untrained curious.
I discovered three main relevancies to fibromyalgia and EFT.
- I discovered that the experimental brain research that had been done on fear, prior to the 1996 publication of The Emotional Brain, does indeed help to understand a possible emotional role of trauma and stress on the development of fibromyalgia symptoms.
- I also discovered that the claims of EFT, (that tapping on emotions can provide relief from both anxiety and physical symptoms) are consistent with the brain research presented by Joseph LeDoux.
- I did not, however, discover a mechanism that explains how EFT achieves its results. Not surprisingly, there is no mention of EFT or epigenitics in Joseph LeDoux’s book. He published in 1996. EFT became public through the work of Gary Craig only two years earlier, in 1994.