The Financial Times copyright policy forbids distribution of this article by e-mail. You can google it using keywords Satori system, Financial Times and David Kaufman.
This privately developed technology is being used by the US military in veterans centers and in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is becoming widely available in US spas and the developers are partnering with Mental Health America to distribute 250,000 MP3 complimentary downloads to U.S. servicemen (emphasis, my own)
The Satori system uses alpha, theta and delta frequencies to induce relaxation by lowering brainwaves, lowering serotonin levels and bringing the body into a REM-like state. Lucid dreaming anyone?
The client winds down in a specially designed chaise longue type chair where vibrational energy is pumped in via headphones and four strategically placed transducers (which I suspect are located under the length of the chair and in contact with the body.)
I have written elsewhere (here, here, here and here) about Chris's encouraging experiences with the sound shaman, using a different sound therapy approach but having in common the use of vibrational energy and sound to heal. According to the FT article, the Satori system helps disable your innate "fight or flight" response.
All of this is wonderful, but why isn't Mental Health America making these downloads freely available to people with schizophrenia, their natural constituency? Come on, what's the difference between Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and schizophrenia? Dr. Loren Mosher said shell shock (PSTD) resembles schizophrenia but in PSTD it seems obvious where the stressors came from and in schizophrenia it is not so obvious. Okay, PSTD, like autism, is a hot topic, and schizophrenia, as usual, suffers from a dirth of outside the box thinking.
I will follow up with Mental Health America and see if not distributing the free downloads to their natural clients isn't just an oversight.
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The difference between PTSD and "schizophrenia" is that the first is a "psychiatric injury", while the second is a "mental illness": http://cbkit.tripod.com/id14.html. Well, at least this is how these two labels are perceived in general. The real difference is that the trauma experienced by the individual, who gets a PTSD-label, can't be denied, or at least played down and defined as insignificant, while the trauma experienced by "the schizophrenic", if at all remembered, respectively recognized as traumatizing by the individual, can. Also, the symptomatology of "sz" is just this little bit too frightening to be accepted as a reaction to real life events - the quality of symptoms in "sz" would indicate quite an amount of trauma, and there's no way that our society ever could produce such an amount of trauma - so, if ever there is proof that "the schizophrenic" has been traumatized (bullied or instance), this has to be regarded a result of his/her otherness, certainly not the other way round: blame the victim.
ReplyDelete..."bullied for instance", I meant to write...
ReplyDeletethis is MY system and while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery i should at least receive credit. i started this system back in 2003 and you only need to go to http://forums.delphiforums.com/mynbln
ReplyDeleteto read all about it