DATE: Sunday, March 9, 1997                 TAG: 9703070066

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E5   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: IMPERFECT NAVIGATOR

SOURCE: ALEXANDRIA BERGER

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING BRAIN

WANT TO LEARN to meditate, understand guided imagery, tap into your spirituality or change a behavior pattern? Too embarrassed to ask where to start? Here's a beginner's guide.

First, imagine your brain is a computer. It responds to commands. It must be preprogrammed through genetics, then programmed during life with appropriate software, applicable for your personal needs. In the beginning you get software from your environment. When you're young, you don't have the resources to control your programming.

As an adult, you can control what goes into your computer, but sometimes old or poorly installed programs block access to new information. You also have the power to delete and reprogram what's damaging to you by removing negative programs, replacing them with your brain's hidden positive resources.

Perhaps you never received certain programs at all, and need to install them. Maybe you want a Resource Program for problem solving skills or a Pain Program for coping with physical pain. We can edit, reformat and view our changes.

How?

As humans we respond to cues. Cues are based on our senses: visual , auditory, olfactory (scent) and kinesthetic (touch). For example, I learn faster if I can see or picture something. Therefore, my brain responds quickly to visual commands. The same is true for the other senses. People who are primarily auditory may hear what you're saying, but not ``see'' the point. By listening to your speech patterns you can determine your most heightened sense, and how you respond to stimuli.

Now, do this. Close your eyes. Picture a red balloon. Now, make it bigger. Hear the whoosh as it grows. Nice. Let it fill the whole screen in your mind's eye. Make it brighter. Now, make it smaller. Smaller still. Take your time. Let it shrink until it's just a dot. Make it disappear. You can blow it away, put it in a box, stick it with a pin. Good. Now, do it again.

You have just created a visualization based on a written guided imagery.

To meditate, take a few deep breaths. Close your eyes and create your perfect environment. A tropical paradise. A mountaintop. A scene from childhood. Photograph this magical image using your mind's eye as a camera. Click the shutter.

Hear the sound of your favorite melody, a familiar calming voice. Taste the air. Feel the comfort of arms around you. Each time you meditate, close your eyes and recall your image. It will always be there for you. You can change it, erase it, add people. It's yours. You have the resources within you.

We are the magicians who hold the wand to our brain's responses, with language as the magic dust. Every time we communicate, even when we ``think'' out loud by speaking to ourselves, we want a response. Dr. Milton H. Erickson, the father of modern hypnosis, discovered what he defined as waking state hypnosis. Certain words are hypnotic commands, causing the brain to act. Advertisers tap every one of our senses, hypnotically commanding us to buy their products, and film makers program us to laugh, cry or feel fear on cue.

Taking Erickson's work one step further, Richard Bandler and John Grinder pioneered what they termed ``Neurolinguistic Programming'' or NLP. ``Neuro'' for brain (computer) and ``linguistics'' for language (programming). While these mentors and their certified advocates have remained in the background, they've trained me and many others such as authors Anthony Robbins and John Bradshaw.

Learning how your brain works and using its tools are invaluable for everyone, especially the chronically ill and disabled. For a list of sources and programs, send a SASE to me, and be your best resource. MEMO: Write to the Alexandria Berger, c/o The Virginian-Pilot, 150 W.

Brambleton Avenue, Norfolk, Va. 23510.

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