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Psychocatalysis is a method of regulating the body, including its autonomic level. Getting access to the regulated processes in the body is possible by paying a very close attention to the sensations in the body and by observing our internal space. There are three main phases in this process: exploring the initial state (a brief analysis), making a decision concerning spontaneous changes that have taken place earlier (what should move on and leave the body), and – finally – observing the changes (active “meditation’). This method is quick and efficient, and it allows refreshing the state of a person at all levels: at the level of the body as well as at the level of “the head.”

Catalysis is a term used in chemistry. Adding a catalyst can accelerate a slow-developing process. A lump of sugar can remain solid in cold water for quite some time, but if one heats the water, it will quickly become a part of the solution. The same way with the help of hydrochloric acid and enzymes, the food in our stomach turns into “chyme,” or a set of basic elements; however, without the enzymes, the food will remain hard as a brick.

In the case of our minds, the heater or the enzyme is our conscious attention. It is precisely our attention, which brings the energy and ideas necessary to trigger the processes.

A boy with a stick and a clock-master with a brush

Here is another image to demonstrate the idea of catalysis: it is spring, and there is a stream of water; some splinters formed a dam and did not let the water go through, and the stream stops as a result. A boy comes and moves the splinters aside; the stream keeps going and carrying the boy’s toy ship. This boy with a stick is our attention, and the ship is the useful information.

And here is an image of setting free from traumas which disturb normal course of psychological processes: a clock-master looks at the broken mechanism through a magnifying glass: he pushes back the spring, takes out a speck of dust, adds a drop of oil, and the clock resumes its rate.

Psychocatalysis is similar to the work of a clock-master, only that it deals with our minds which sometimes also accumulate “dams’ or “specks of dust’ and, sometimes, one needs to “pull the spring back’ or “remove those debris and oil the mechanism’ in order to keep the machine going.

The chilliness of culture cools down the heat of the spirit

Self-regulation and self-healing are the part of our regulatory system, but their potential is not limitless. M.E. Burno, whom I consider one of my teachers, called nature “a wise fool’. A fever is supposed to help our body fight the infection, but if the temperature gets too high, it causes problems, too. When it comes to our psychological health, then our excessive worries are similar to high body temperature. Then the chilliness of culture helps the heat of the spirit cool down to a reasonable temperature. Sometimes, one needs to “turn up the heat’ to speed up the processes which “have frozen.”

Nature does not restore everything automatically, and it looks like it left a part of its responsibilities for restoring the peace of mind to a human being hoping that we will be able to do it. So, we have to live up to nature’s expectations!

Emergency protection

I often compare the kind of protection that activates in the case of stress to an airbag in a car. This airbag saves our lives at a moment of the crash, but it never goes back to its place again. You cannot continue your way once it has been activated, and the car needs to be serviced. Our autonomic system works the same way: if it activated in a dangerous situation, it cannot switch off itself once activated. It is as if nature tells you: “I have saved your life, and you’re on your own. I haven’t really thought of that moment with calling the reactions back.” People tend to accumulate these “upsetting episodes,” and that is why they need to make a special conscious effort to restore psychological balance.

The brightest example of a psychological “dead-end’ that forms under the influence of the natural mechanisms is a phobia. Frightening information “impresses’ the body to such an extent that a mere reminder about the situation which caused this fright leads to a recurrent reaction of fear, even if the situation is no longer relevant, and a person understands that too.

The problem is that this frightening information led to the triggering emergency protective mechanisms, which do not switch off automatically and get fixed in the psychosomatic profile of a person.

One can use their mind, just like a steering wheel of a vehicle, to navigate through life. However, this principle works only under normal conditions. In extreme situations, automatic single-action safety mechanisms come to our rescue, and once they act like our airbags, moving forward comes to a halt for a certain period.

Healing from phobia does not require a lot of time, but it does call for a special approach: one needs to extract the information that entered the body at a moment of frustration, and now it is set deep in the mind of this person. Greyness or blackness is to be found where it entered the body, and where it moved to, and what it “hit,” and then it should leave the body the same way it came into it. As a rule, it is found in the stomach or in the area of solar plexus where the information tends to hit; then it comes out through the top of the head as black smoke. As a result, a person begins to feel the balance in life and can “steer’ it as he or she did before, that is: using intellect and mature coping mechanisms.

It is rather difficult to imagine any process of restoring balance without this procedure of “letting the smoke out’, which might seem odd at first sight. Without the procedure, “cleaning’ the autonomic depths of our nervous system, the feeling of fear, can last years, even if the central nervous system “came to its senses’ and realized that the danger has passed.

This “object that we discover in our body’ and the way to work with them is described in my previous works (Ermoshin, A. 1999, 2008, 2010).

Later, we will have a look at the most significant elements of this work in case of foreign languages. This way, we will only help our nature, and we will not introduce any alteration, which means we will act only when automatic regulatory processes fail to do their job. Psychocatalysis is a temporary suspension of a “manual control’ that restores normal functioning of a self-regulation mechanism. Reasonable decisions (the work of our intellect) help the profound wisdom of our body find its way out of a dead-end, which the body drove itself into while solving the problem and using the subconscious in-born strategies of problem-solving triggered by emergency situations.

98 dollars

The decisions themselves, when found, seem to be very simple. There is a joke about a mechanic who made a couple of circles around a broken car, listened to the sound of the engine and then hit it once with a hammer. The engine started working well again. The mechanic writes a cheque for 100 dollars. “Why?” “One dollar for using the hammer, one dollar for the hit, and 98 dollars for finding the right place to hit.”

The connection with the processes that take place at the autonomic level of our nervous system is carried out through our sensations. I do not exclude that the processes at this level cannot be regulated by other methods.