METANOIA
The Penultimate Negotiator GEORGE P. SHULTZ
Missives from Donald Boudreux
The optimization of Brain Functioning
by Dr. Paul Swingle
ONE OF OUR OWN
Dr Patton, ND, MBA
January 2011 ISSUE
1 M E T A N O I A
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METANOIA CONTENTS
Missives from Donald
Boudreaux
On George Shultz
Award winning
Dr. Patton
The Optimization of Brain
Functioning
3
5
11
15
18
Editorial
EDITORIAL
This month's publication of
Metanoia, features George P. Shultz on the cover. We
are fortunate to have gained access to "Idea's and Action” by
Shultz through James Tusty who was project leader for Free to
Choose Press in publishing the book. In the past, Mr. Tusty has
been a contributor to Metanoia, and as well was the producer of
the highly acclaimed, award winning, documentary " The Singing
Revolution".
In addition Mr. Tusty was the connector to Professor
Donald J. Boudreaux, who has kindly given us access to the many
letters on economics he has submitted and published in numerous
prominent U.S magazines.
Also, Dr. Paul Swingle continues his series on exorcising
the mind through the benefits of biofeedback. This time his efforts
are aimed at the professional and the business man.
Last but not least, our publisher, Dr. Allison Patton
graduated with an MBA and was the recipient of the Governor
General’s Gold Medal award.
Dr. Donald J. Boudreaux Dr. Paul Swingle Dr. George P. Shultz Dr. Allison Patton
Unprecedented, Insider’s View
Features fascinating Revelations
Of How Forces Within The White
House Competed For The Heart And
Soul Of The Reagan Presidency
Visit www.freetochoose.net
5 M E T A N O I A
THE OPTIMIZATION OF BRAIN
FUNCTIONING
Paul G. Swingle, Ph.D., FCPA, R. Psych.
There are many things we can do to enhance physical and mental
performance. And all are important. These include proper exercise, good
diet, nutritional supplements, disciplined work ethic, positive mental
attitude, rehearsal, and good sleep hygiene. The present article focuses on
an additional procedure that optimizes brain functioning – neurotherapy.
Simply stated, neurotherapy changes brain functioning by modifying
brainwave activity. Research over the last four decades or so has
identified brainwave activity that is not only associated with conditions
such as depression, attention deficiencies, addiction, sleep disturbances,
emotional volatility, and the like, but also those brainwave states that are
associated with peak or optimal performance.
However, identifying brainwave patterns associated with specific
symptoms and conditions was not the key breakthrough. The pivotal
discovery was that of brain plasticity! As early as the 1940s researchers
at McGill and Brown Universities demonstrated that brainwaves could be
conditioned, That is, just like Pavlov did with conditioning a salivary
response in dogs, these researchers were able to accomplish with
brainwaves. Later, in the 1960’s researchers at Columbia and University
of California showed that animals could learn to control autonomic (heart
rate) and brainwave activity. Subsequently many additional researchers
have shown that the brain can change. This has had huge implications
and toppled our incorrect notions of how the brain functions. For
example, when I went to school, medical and graduate schools taught
that the brain had limited capacity for recovery. This is simply wrong!
Sufferers of brain injuries were lead to believe that recovery after
eighteen months would be limited at best. We now know that substantial
recovery is possible long after the brain injury.
Further, the discovery of the extent of the brain’s capacity for functional
change has lead to the development of very efficient non-drug methods
for treating depression, attention problems in children, age related
cognitive declines, anxiety conditions, and, in fact, all conditions that are
associated with brain activity.
It’s All in Your Head!
Stella limped into my office. She seemed to be in pain and clearly
emotionally distressed and distraught. After she got settled and dried a
few tears she blurted out “everyone thinks I am making this up – my
doctor said it’s in my head!” I smiled and said “Of course it is, where
else would it be? You are in pain and you are suffering emotionally. That
all takes place in your head and that is where we are going to treat it.” A
brainwave assessment, the standard initial mapping of brainwave activity
that takes about six minutes, revealed that Stella had a common pattern
found with clients with fibromyalgia. She had brainwave patterns
associated with exposure to emotional trauma, poor stress tolerance and
depression.
Optimal Performance Training
What does Stella have to do with optimal performance training? All
conditions are associated with the brain not functioning in an efficient or
optimal manner. Basically then, all neurotherapy treatment of any
disorder is focused on making brain functioning more efficient. The
treatment of conditions as varied as depression, cancer, and age related
cognitive declines are all premised on correcting brainwave anomalies
followed by optimizing those brain functions that mitigate the condition
under treatment. Hence, if you want to cut a few strokes off your golf
score, or mitigate age related dementias or help fight cancer the same
methodology applies. Correct what is wrong and then optimize those
brainwave features associated with most advantageous brain
performance.
This reminds us that those “one-size-fits-all” franchises offering brain
brightening or brain gym treatments are of limited value because they
miss the specific areas of the brain that are problematic and
compromising brain efficiency. Rather like having a client ride a
stationary bicycle to treat a neck pain.
Optimal performance training has emerged as an extremely useful and
cost effective procedure for facilitating efficient functioning. It has
application for athletes, CEOs, performers, artists, elite military forces,
crises management, severely stressful occupations, in addition to
facilitating recovery and survival. There are many examples of effective
use of neurotherapy for optimal performance that have become known to
the general public including Canadian Olympic gold medalists, the 2006
World Cup soccer champion team, Olympic medal archers, Broadway
performers, Fortune 500 top management, and military elite Special
Forces. Even the Vancouver Canucks are getting setup for optimal
performance training.
How does it Work?
Brainwave optimal performance training is not a standalone procedure.
For golfers, the training includes training on swing, mental attitude and
focus. For baseball, batting includes reaction time training, learning to
incrementally commit, as well as mental attitude and focus. For CEO’s,
learning methods for monitoring and self-regulation of performance is
vital. For those struggling with cancer, working with their oncologists,
nutritionists and learning self-regulation is essential. Cognitively
declining elders must include activities that vitalize mental and physical
functioning and avoid mind numbing activities.
First step is to have a basic brainwave assessment. These procedures are
very efficient and require only six minutes of recording time. This
procedure is so efficient that in clinical settings it allows the therapist to
tell the client why they have sought treatment! In the optimal
performance situation, this procedure allows the therapist to identify
areas of brain activity that may compromise efficient brain functioning.
For example, many athletes and performers suffer from poor stress
tolerance, a condition that is associated with a deficiency in brain
functioning at the back of the brain. In such cases correcting that
condition markedly improves performance that is further improved with
optimization brainwave training.
Once the brain inefficiencies identified in the brainwave assessment are
corrected, the optimization training commences. This can include a
variety of different brainwave functions at different brain locations. A
fundamental procedure is to speed up the frequency of the Alpha
brainwaves. Alpha brainwaves are between eight and twelve cycles per
second. Alpha “slowing” refers to a condition where the strongest Alpha
brainwaves are in the low frequency range. This condition is found in age
related cognitive decline, drug induced cognitive “fogginess,” and
developmental delays. Alpha frequency has been shown to correlate
positively with IQ and immune functioning so that by increasing the
speed of the Alpha peak frequency, IQ and immune functioning improve.
Fine tuning of the brain involves having the client be mindful of
brainwave status as reflected in such subjective states as mind “chatter”
and perseveration of thought patterns. In the former, clients (CEO’s in
particular) will decide on how much background cognitive activity they
like. In the latter they decide where they want to sit on the flexible-
indomitable dimension
.
How is it Done?
There are three general classes of treatment in neurotherapy and in
optimal performance training. The first, brainwave biofeedback or
neurofeedback is the form most people are familiar with. It involves
attaching some electrodes to the client’s ears and head and measuring
specific brainwave activity. When the brain is doing what we want it to
do, such as increase the strength (amplitude) of particular brainwave,
then the client will hear a tone or see something move on the computer
monitor. For children (and of course for adults if they wish) we set it up
so that the child is playing a video game with her or his brain. When the
brain is responding as we want, Pac Man gobbles up dots, or space ships
fly through complicated mazes. This procedure allows the child to self-
regulate brain activity. It is particularly effective for treating attention
deficit disorders in children.
The second class of treatment procedures are the braindrivers. Based on
the procedure first reported in the 1940s, mentioned above, specific
stimuli such as flashing lights or special sounds are presented to the
client based on moment to moment brainwave measurement. For the
child with an attention problem, for example, we might measure the
strength of slow frequency brainwaves and when the strength exceeds a
particular threshold we turn on the sound which, in turn, suppresses the
slow frequency amplitude. This procedure is particularly effective for
helping children become more efficient readers. It is also an effective
treatment for those who cannot comply with the neurofeedback
treatments such as severely demented elderly, clients in coma, and
severely autistic children.
The third class of treatments are those that clients self-administer in their
home. These treatments include cranial stimulators, specific harmonics
that we have pretested and know how they affect brain activity,
relaxation exercises, etc. A principal purpose of these self-administered
procedures is to maintain gains made in treatment and to stabilize the
changes.
Do the Improvements Last?
Some are relatively permanent others have to be maintained with booster
sessions. For example, a client who has a deficiency in an area of the
brain associated with stress tolerance will likely find that the
improvement in brain functioning is stable. An elderly person who is
experiencing declines in cognitive functioning, on the other hand, will
usually have to have three or four maintenance sessions per year after the
initial brainwave slowing has been corrected to mitigate this age related
decline.
Children who have learning challenges are the most gratifying to
neurotherapists because once their learning problems improve the
developmental process kicks in and does the maintenance work for us.
They get interested in learning and the brain just continues to improve.
CEOs, athletes, and performers, on the other hand, need to have ongoing
neurotherapy to sustain peak functioning. The best analogy is body
building and fitness. If you want to keep fit, you might have a period of
intensive fitness training followed by a maintenance schedule of perhaps
three visits to the gym per week. If you want to be a professional fighter
you had better work out several hours per day during your entire career.
If you want to compete in body building contests, hours of muscle
training per day is needed to maintain the muscle mass.
John, CEO of a medium size Vancouver company, arrived for his
monthly optimal performance session a few days early. He said he
pushed up his appointment because he had an important meeting later
that day and wanted to be “sharp as a tack.” I did a rapid mini assessment
that takes less than three minutes. There was a mild disparity in the
frontal cortex. I said to John, “have you been more irritable than your
usual disagreeable self and are you having some mild lags in information
retrieval recently?” After some kibitzing, John acknowledged the
conditions I identified. I used braindriving to balance the frontal regions
and then did a treatment designed to help quiet the brain. The later helps
with efficient functioning in stressful situations and also improves many
clients’ ability to be mindful of the more comprehensive implications of
proposed courses of action.
Summary
Although we tend to think of optimal performance training as being
limited to athletes, performers and CEOs it is clear that the concept of
optimal brain functioning is relevant to other circumstances as well. Any
condition that is associated with brain inefficiency can be treated with
neurotherapy. Optimal performance training can be thought of as the last
phases of such
treatment in which the brain becomes more efficient. The child with
attention problems, for example, may be successfully treated by
decreasing excessive slow frequency amplitude. The child’s learning can
be further enhanced with optimal performance training to speed up the
Alpha brainwaves thus improving IQ.
We have been expanding the concept of optimal performance to include
the use of such procedures to optimize group wellbeing. Consider a
couple whose marriage is in jeopardy because of brainwave conditions
that are discordant. For some time now, we have assisted marriage and
family counsellors by correcting brainwave features of family members
that are
related to interpersonal strife. This is simply an extension of the oft stated
truism that all problems are family problems. A depressed parent, for
example, seriously affects the children’s wellbeing. An emotionally
volatile spouse also clearly compromises family harmony. Similarly, a
couple where one spouse is passive and the second is excessively
indomitable can experience marriage threatening explosive discord that
can often be significantly improved by balancing the neurological
predispositions. Further, in this context, two person neurotherapy
sessions have been found to enhance couple harmony as well as
efficiency. This intriguing procedure involves the training of two brains
in concert to establish brainwave simultaneity.
So, whether it is improving your golf game, hitting the high notes when
singing Aida, improving your executive acumen, delaying the “Old
Rocking Chair” getting you, winning gold for freestyle, enhancing strike
force efficiency, helping to stay healthy, or sweetening marital harmony,
precision optimal performance training may well be the treatment of
choice.
Dr Swingle lecturing
1 1 M E T A N O I A
Editor, Boston Globe
Dear Editor:
John Hill asserts that "The free market has many virtues, but by its nature
it must remain callous to human suffering caused by illness" (Letters,
Oct. 18).
Really? Take a walk down an aisle in a typical modern supermarket.
You'll find analgesics, antihistamines, antiseptics, antifungal medicines,
bandages, and nutritional supplements - all supplied by private, profit-
seeking companies. Keep walking and you come to the store's pharmacy,
where you can buy yet other medicines - such as those that address
serious illnesses like depression, hypertension, and high cholesterol -
created and produced by private, profit-seeking firms.
It's no wonder that my GMU colleague Peter Leeson found that, in
countries that became more capitalist since 1980, average life-expectancy
at birth has risen from less than 63 years to 67.5 years (by 2005). In
countries that became less capitalist since 1980, life-expectancy at birth
fell from 59 to 57 years.*
Thank goodness for "callous" capitalism.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
Professor Marc Lamont Hill
Department of English
Columbia University
New York, NY
Dear Prof Hill:
I enjoyed your debate last week, on John Stossel's show, with the Cato
MISSIVES FROM DONALD J BOUDREAUX
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Institute's Sallie James.* I cannot, though, accept the concept of
exploitation that you offered there.
You argue that Nike and other multinational corporations "exploit"
workers in developing countries by not paying them more - by not paying
their workers higher wages that, you are certain, these companies can
"afford" to pay. So despite the fact that these corporations expand the
employment options available to developing-country workers, these
corporations are nevertheless guilty of exploitation because they do not
expand these options even further.
It seems to follow from your concept of exploitation that if, say, Nike
pulls out of all developing countries - and thus shrinks the employment
options available to poor workers there - it would no longer be guilty of
exploiting those workers. Surely that can't be correct. I have a dear
friend who, because she loves African art, routinely buys woven baskets,
wall hangings, and sculptures made by artists in sub-Saharan Africa. My
friend is a reasonably well-to-do American who certainly could afford to
pay more for the artwork than she actually pays. Does my friend exploit
artists in sub-Saharan Africa by paying only the asking prices of the
pieces of art? Would she make these artists better off if she stopped
buying their outputs? According to the logic of your argument, you must
answer 'yes' to each of these questions.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
1 5 M E T A N O I A
ON GEORGE PRATT SHULTZ By Hank Leis
George Pratt Shultz, born in New York City, on December 13, 1920.
earned his BA in Economics at Princeton University, his Ph.D. at MIT, where he
later taught. He worked in the administration of President Eisenhower, President
Nixon and perhaps his most important role as Secretary Of State for President
Reagan. He was also president and director of Bechtel Group Inc. Mr. Shultz has
written numerous books and has received many honorary degrees and awards, the
most notable being the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honour. For
those interested in leadership Henry A. Kissinger says of Shultz,
"Since leaving full time government service, he has no peer in relating the concep-
tual to the political...The principles of negotiation put forward by George Shultz in
this work demonstrate these qualities. He emphases that negotiation is about persua-
sion, not technique; that it reflects ultimately moral components like reliability,
steadfastness and credibility; and that it must relate power to morality."
In his book “Ideas and Action” (The 10 Commandments of Negotiation)
George Shultz discusses the negotiations he as Secretary of State, during the admini-
stration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan conducted with Mikhail Gorbachev and his
counterparts in the Soviet Union. Mr. Shultz who served under a number of U.S.
Presidents was a formidable negotiator, not because of being brash or aggressive, but
because his arguments made sense to his opponents.
Because Mr. Shultz operated at a strategic level and was so effective in
achieving what many others had attempted but failed (weapons reduction by Soviet
Union and the U.S.) I regard him as one of penultimate negotiators of our times. For
those looking for an ideal, George P. Shultz serves as an example of a person who
can get things done and remain humble while pursuing his objectives.
THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF NEGOTIATION By George Shultz
1. BE IN CONTROL OF YOUR CONSTITUENCY
2. UNDERSTAND THE NEEDS OF THE OTHER SIDE
3. PERSONAL FACTORS
4. AN EDUCATIONAL PROCESS
5. AN ONGOING PROCESS
6. CREDIBILITY
7. TIMING
8. STRENGTH AND DIPLOMACY GO TOGETHER
9. TRUST IS THE COIN OF THE REALM
10. REALISTIC GOALS
George Shultz, with President Reagan
George Shultz, with President Nixon
ONE OF OUR OWN
It is with great pleasure that we announce Dr. Allison Patton as the
recipient of the Governor General’s Gold Medal on October 27,
2010. Her thesis was on marketing strategies for a naturopathic
medical spa and resort development on the mineral waters of Little
Manitou Lake in Manitou Beach, Saskatchewan.
The medal was first awarded in 1873 by the Earl of Dufferin and
is one of the most prestigious awards that a student in a Canadian
educational institution can receive.
For more than 125 years the Governor General’s Academic Med-
als have recognized outstanding scholastic achievements of stu-
dents in Canada. Among the members of this exclusive club of
recipients are included such notables as Pierre Trudeau, Tommy
Douglas, Kim Campbell, Adrienne Clarkson and Robert Stanfield.
This achievement follows her being the recipient of the John Le-
Plante Leadership Award. Indeed she has demonstrated her ex-
traordinary skills in leadership as one of the founders and doctors
of Mountainview Wellness Centre, a director of Salt Resorts Inc.,
a director and publisher of Metanoia Concepts Inc., and first and
foremost a mother and wife, while all the time studying for her
MBA in Executive Management at Royal Roads University.
Mountainview Wellness Centre takes pride in congratulating Alli-
son Lee Patton, ND, MBA for this exemplary achievement and
wishes her the best in all her future endeavours.
Dr. Patton meets “Dragons’ Den’s” Brett Wilson.
Dr. Patton receives Governor Generals, Gold Medal Award.
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