Still More on the Act Out

What I offer here is surmise, not proven fact but I have seen enough cancers to give me some idea about it.   My belief is that the very same trauma that caused the cancer may be the cure for it, as well. That is, there is an embedded memory deep in the brain; it is strong enough to devastate the brain because it is of first line origin, and it is there in the brainstem that powerhouse feelings are lodged.  And some cancer causes, as well.   If we can extirpate that trauma, and new research on methylation seems to indicate that we can, then we can do something about cancer. The rarity of cancer in our long-term patients is added confirmation of my point. Those incredible feelings which cannot be believed until seen, can alter the biologic and genetic trajectory of the system to change minute cells. I have long ago postulated that possibility of breast cancer in those women who are flat chested, not because of that but because possibly, their genetic destiny for larger breasts was blocked and diverted.  There is then constant pressure toward one’s proper destiny which cannot fulfill its biologic purpose.  It is the surge toward normalcy, an intact system.  The biologic impulse toward being normal is always there.

Biology is destiny, as the saying goes.  I prefer epigenetics is destiny; much more accurate.   It largely sweeps away that genetic destiny and replaces it with a new biologic system, and perhaps an heritable one.  That system, by definition, is faulty because it evolved out of damage.

Here is what patients say about their act out:

“I think there may be something to this...
 I am certainly a shallow breather - always have been - and I feel a need to conserve emotion, I would say.
 All I know is my mother had "gas and air" (NOX with air) when she was giving birth to me. I doubt that would have led to any extreme trauma for me as a foetus trying to get out but would be interested to learn anything to the contrary.
 That said, I think breathing is central to how we experience life and will undoubtedly reflect our earliest experiences.”


 “I have had Primal Therapy back then to get rid of all that tension.
I recall a dance class I went to straight after a Primal Session , where the teacher didn't recognise me because my movement was suddenly and unexplainably, free of tension and full of presence! Also I wasn't dancing to get her love anymore, but for the joy of feeling.
 Primal is the most truthful and healing form of dance and movement therapy .
 A lot of dance and movement classes are teachers acting out their need on their students. How can they not? Especially sad when it happens to children.”


“The way we breathe depends on physical and mental memories.
 My breathing, I have often touched on in my blogs over the years. It was dramatically disturbed / affected in the neurotic / conscious, protracted birth trauma caused by my mother. I was locked in the birth canal for 48 hours. Therefore, many of my act outs and subsequent therapeutic treatment experiences have come to focus on my breathing.
 For several years, existed a repeated pattern, during my birth primals, that I fell into a deep anesthesia. This was aggravated gradually that I hyperventilated fiercely and suddenly not breathing at all. This condition lasted a good while and I struggled desperately to get air but without success. Suddenly, I gave up and felt myself drowning / dying. Consciousness returned weakly and slowly. I had been through a primal instead of an epileptic seizure. The feeling of anesthetic pressure released slowly. I experienced a total relief and liberation, first physically and shortly afterwards emotionally. My breathing was relaxed and parasympathetic.
 During more than 20 years, I made early each morning push-ups (2 x 125) at my fingertips with my feet on a table (my way of freediving). During each of the two pushup series I held my breath. Besides Carbamazepine (Tegrotol), these act outs were my way of keeping up my ego and reduce my anxiety of my problems and then especially the epileptic threat. I used my abdominal muscles in combination with my pushups to displace anxiety and tension associated with a stressful and demanding work career. This defense tied to my breathing, which I have developed over many years with great willpower and discipline, was certainly the heaviest reason that my two years at the Primal Center in LA did not lead to faster visible results.”


OK. I get it.  It helps.  And that is why so many of us are addicted to horror movies.  We go to a theater prepared to be terrified (as close to the terror of a first line primal) and then we watch in horror;  and then we escape safely.  But still we get to scream and yell, releasing some of the emotional part of the original imprint.  Again, we have reawakened the Primal demons with impunity.  For some, it becomes an obsession. Aah.  What a relief.  Terror is the attraction.  It pulls us in because we can go back to the (original) terror so to speak, without the terror.  We know we will be safe afterwards.  So we go through the birth trauma without the trauma, only the feeling part.  Because it lacks the original content there is not the terrible terror involved.   But symbolically it is close.  Listen! Feelings pull us in.    That means that so many obsessions and compulsions are sucked into us by the imprint.  It makes us compulsive gamblers and eaters, and drives so many neurotic behaviors.   If we are always in terror and don’t know it then we won’t try, won’t get out and do something new. Won’t approach a stranger and talk to him. Takes forever to make a decision;  so afraid to make a mistake.  Fear runs his life.  He becomes a “loser”  because he will not grab opportunities, hangs back, and in the presence of strangers he acts like he did as an infant,  holding mother’s skirts.   He needs emotional support at all times, and now we know why.

It does put a new perspective on dangerous sports, i.e. car racing. The crowd looks for crashes to add to the excitement of something gone wrong (near death re-experience?)  But often there is no death or serious injury, and we all relax.  It is the analogy over and over again.


I don’t want to leave out the act-in.   There are those since infancy who hold their breath when anxious or surprised.  Still others who cannot catch their breath when upset.   Others with asthma who often have breathing problems and also cannot catch their breath.  Especially those who lose their breath when anxious and have to lie down.  The permutations are endless but it is all about breathing and not breathing.    They are often the minimalists who hoard and never buy too much, and save and save. …in case.    With reliving over time we resolve the act-in and act-out against the very same imprint.
Again, one has to go back and relive the original trauma, exactly.  No way around this. It was never lived fully at the start; cut off by repression when the pain got to be enormous.  

Has anyone noticed that when shocked, people put their hands over their mouths? Not an accident; it is part of holding back breathing, a return to the prototype.  When scared originally we stopped breathing as death approached; that became the template for later reactions.

The act-in results from having so little chance to behave against the trauma of being pinned down, unable to escape the womb.  The reactions develop inside,  and become the act-ins.  They leave a prototype of physiologic responses and certain kinds of afflictions such as asthma.  A lot depends on the nature of the birth and specific weaknesses of the system.  Most certain, a  lack of oxygen at birth and even before leads to blood vessels constricting to conserve supplies.  The act-in may be migraines; and sometimes the treatment for it is..?  guess what?   Oxygen.

The leitmotif often can be, “Something is missing but I don’t know what it is.  I think I will eat more or make more money.”   I will try to fill a void I don’t even know is there. Something is surely missing, and when patients get down to the deep brain they finally know what is missing, and the obsession with food or money stops.

Here is one recent case of obsessions and shallow breathing.  A woman over sixty recently had a birth Primal, reliving birth.  The forerun was dangerously high blood pressure and fast pulse.  (190/101…..pulse 97).  She often had to take blood pressure medication to bring her vitals downward.    What she found through reliving was that her imprint of anoxia was breaking through and raising her vital signs.  It was telling her that her embedded memory was pushing.  Of course she was a shallow breather.   After her reliving her vitals were again taken:  149/125 and pulse of 64, a vast improvement but not yet normal.  It wasn’t pills that could normalize her; it was feeling and reliving.  Previously gate her pain but could never touch her imprint.   Sometimes during the end stages of her Primal she could return to heavy breathing and begin the process of normalization.  She tried again to get air.  Before, she gave up. She became a hiker early in life in order to breathe deeply and get air in.  It became an obsession; more and more hiking.  Until her knees gave out. She did have cancer earlier on. The doctor told her she had to careful for another 5 years to be considered out of the woods.  Now she knows why; the imprint is still there doing its damage.

Who could dream that a serious imprint deep down due to lack of early oxygen could help produce a cancer decades later?  Pills suppress the pain but never touch the cause.  It hides it well.  That lack of oxygen remains with us and agonizes all of the time.  It does its damage sotto voce.  And will never tell us the truth until we travel back in history to where the damage lies.  Only then do we learn that the simple truth is revolutionary.