“There are only two ways to rule a society, by fear or by hope, and it’s the same for any individual too”

My extensive study of history shows me that the statement above is fundamentally true. But the most important thing is that as individuals we are much the same.

We can either allow ourselves to be ruled principally by fear, or we can lead our lives more positively through rational hope.

Think about this a moment please, are you more preoccupied with the fear of what might happen’, rather than on what you want to happen in your general decision-making?

I am no stranger to fear. I have certainly known knee-shaking fear and seen horrific examples of my own mortality. One cannot experience any form of real combat I think without experiencing that, or else one is a total madman.

But ultimately I saw that in that arena my best survival strategy was not to engage the fear of what might happen, but to stay alert and as calm as possible and thus see clearly and immediately everything that was happening around me…and then to respond appropriately.

Ultimately it dawned on me that while my fear was a totally rational one under the circumstances, that fear simply did not “serve me”. Indeed, it was more likely to cause my demise than to save me.

This was a true epiphany for me and at a rather young age. But the lesson has stayed with me and served me well and now I am sixty years of age.

I have spent the majority of my life trying to communicate this same lesson (minus the horror) to others. I make this effort through my books and through my adrenal stress conditioning training programs. When ones transcends some fear it is both a very liberating and often life changing experience.

There are two kinds of fear however, rational fear and irrational fears.

Under normal circumstances rational fear serves you, it makes you look both ways before pulling out in traffic etc. But you are not really feeling the fear then are you? You are dealing with the danger in an appropriate fashion though.

You have just learned to sublimate the experience of fear in the act of pulling out into traffic for the most part.

This is because you have ‘gotten used to it”. But this was not always so.

You experienced more fear pulling out into traffic when you were younger and first learned to drive didn’t you? My point is we can discover and ‘unlearn’ other fears that do not serve us too.

We can eliminate fears that limit our lives and that will provide us with the strong potential to develop ‘rational hope’ as our ‘world view’. That is the attitude we need, it one that will expand our lives.

Sorational fears can be reduced and sublimated like the example of pulling out in traffic without being excessively concerned about a crash.

But rational fears serve a survival purpose too. Some rational fears keep us from doing stupid and dangerous things like sticking your hand into a rattlesnake cage.

Now let me tell you something significant about sticking one’s hand out to a rattlesnake in a cage. Decades ago in a bar I frequented in El Paso, Texas, there was a large and very much alive rattlesnake in a lidded glass aquarium. It was a bit more than just ‘curiosity’ to attract travelers into the bar too.

The aquarium was quite secure and the snake could not strike anyone from inside. But, as locals we knew the ‘secret truth’. And so occasionally we would make a wager with a passing tourist.

The bet was that they could not hold their hand against the glass and keep it there when the rattler struck at their hand from inside the glass.

The stranger might suspect something was up, but he often still told himself, “The snake can’t hurt me through the glass so I can win this bet”. He was ignoring something his ‘gut” was trying to tell him there.

Pay attention to your ‘gut feelings’ and, learn to trust them too.They are there for a reason.

Often we enticed the tourist further by giving him favorable odds, like two or three to one that he could not do it.

You see we knew that he could not do it, almost nobody can. So when the guy stuck his hand on the glass and the rattler stuck at the glass he jerked his hand away instantly!

Sometimes he’d even make another bet being so sure he could do it the next time, as he’d be more consciously ‘prepared’. But the result was always the same because the reaction to jerk your hand away is involuntary and does not engage the self-aware mind.

Let’s think about this situation though and in terms of what it tells us about fear. I believe that if a person had no knowledge at all of rattle snakes he’d still jerk his hand away.

I mean if they had never even seen a rattler before: in pictures, literature or film or in any other medium and so they were happily and totally ignorant of the existence of rattle snakes, they would still jerk their hand away when the snake fustily struck the inside of the glass at their hand.

Now If the above is fundamentally true,then we must ask: Why is it so?

It is because we carry ‘genetic memories’ that is ‘genetic fears’ that activate our neurological system and thus produce this automatic motor response. We don’t have to ‘know” there is danger when the snake strikes, the ‘body’ already knows”.

The mechanism by which genetic memories are formed is not fully understood as yet. But the peculiar nature of memories created and experienced under adrenal stress provides us with a very significant clue.

It is already well established biochemically that memories (neural nets) formed under the adrenal flow are stored differently in the brain than non-adrenal memories.

Such ‘adrenal stress created memories’ are also physically stored in a portion of the brain closer to the amygdala. The amygdala is the primitive “frog brain”. This is a non-self aware portion of the Central Nervous System found in all mammalian and reptilian brains.

A quick example and proof that adrenal memory are qualitatively different Kamagra jelly from non-adrenal created memories is easy to provide.

At a seminar I will ask the people to raise their hands if they can remember exactly where they were and precisely what they were doing when they either heard that: (1) President Kennedy had been assassinated or (2) They heard that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded and crashed into the see.

Almost everyone will raise their hands in response to one of these questions even though the event occurred many years or decades ago.

They remember in detail exactly what they were doing and exactly where they were and in great detail. But they do not remember what was going on just before they heard that trajic news. Nor do they remember what happened with such clarity at that time the next day.

This is because the news of the disaster had resulted in some adrenal flow in them and thus the memory was an ‘adrenal memory’. That means it was stored with more detail, more vibrancy and in much more of an enduring fashion than any non-adrenal memory.

If you want to think to the next step here you can see that this special nature of adrenal formed memories is the essential basis of all PTSD phenomena.

Hence, a PTSD episode will be triggered by any cue that was in the environment when that adrenal memory was created. That cue and trigger could be a sound, humidity, a smell, a visual cue, etc. PTSD is not limited to combat veterans at all either. We can carry subconscious PTSD triggers that were formed when we were young children.

However, with varying degrees of success I know it is well possible to significantly moderate the negative life effects of irrational fears and many PTSD symptoms. This is not theory with me as I have been working with these concepts not as abstract theory, but as tools for over 25 years now.

A woman who has been forcibly raped will almost always have PTSD symptoms to some degree or another from this atrocious violation of human rights.

The triggers to these PTSD symptoms can be many. Examples of triggers could be, a smell, an article of clothing a song that was playing on the radio during the attack etc.

But if she is placed into a scenario that recreates the traumatic event she will experience an adrenal flow and whatever occurs during that time will create another adrenal memory through the same biochemistry as the actual assault did.

Now here is where the therapeutic aspect manifests itself. If what happens in the scenario is she has been trained to where mentally and physically she can defeat the mock assailant she will still be quite adrenalized and as a rule very much so.

The mock assailant Iuse is well trained and wears padded armor so she can attack the eyes, groin and head without restraint. It only takes a weekend to actualize the bulk of anyone’s self-defense potential too. The key is their unleashing and tapping into to their survival instincts more than “technique” as martial arts people often believe.

Understand I say that as a member of the International Black Belt Hall of Fame too. It isn’t the size of the woman in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the woman that counts most.

But understand what has occurred here on a subconscious level when she defeats her assailant in the scenario. At fist you might think it is a cathartic effect and while it is, that is not the most significant therapeutic effect here at all.

In doing this scenario she has created two adrenal memories in her pre-conscious with basically the same ‘triggers’. The scenario is deliberately engineered that way and by her own direction too.

These two different outcomes, the actual and the scenario, them in a short time become convoluted with each other. The new neural nets need some time to form, this can be a few weeks or so, or a few months. The cathartic effect is powerful and immediate though.

After this, when exposed to a PTSD eliciting cue her mind brings up alternative imagery than before the adrenal stress, scenario based treatment. It is then a memory mixed with fear and triumph. Once this is established her own cognitive, self-aware mind can better engage the trauma and further heal it.

The process is basically the same with any irrational fear or PTSD situation. But I must also say that an individual should be far enough along mentally to engage this type of therapy. They have to be ready for it in a sense.

I also want to point out another benefit of this process, even for people not suffering from PTSD or any truly disabling irrational fears.

Most people’s socialization has estranged them from their survival instincts. Those instincts are always there, but they may have never experienced them before.

When a persons survival instinct are engaged, and like the rattler in the cage, this does not require that there be any ‘real danger’ to do this, they become stronger and more balanced and confident in their consciousness.

We only need to project the voice, tone, and body carriage of a verbal abusive and threatening assailant to adrenalize most people in our programs. Again, the body ‘just does not know the difference’.

Black Belt Magazine called my weekend program “The best short self-defense program existent”. Self-Defense is important too, but if this was all the RMCAT program accomplished for people, I may have given it up years ago.

In closing good people think on this thought. For the most part often we can be just as happy as we make up our minds to be.

Author Bio: www www.rmcat.com