too much theta?

So, another session on the 6th June. Two new protocols and I think still the 4 old ones - I had thought that I had fixed three and it was just one to polish. But I am not complaining - get those brain bits spic and span. I like thoroughness.
And am chuffed that I am on 2 new 'protocols' - they are targeting one area at the side and one at the top of my brain - both temporal zones...I think.

I do ask but a couple of times Alan misunderstood what I was asking (I failed to ask clearly enough?) and hey, I'd rather let whoever is doing the session get on with it correctly rather than pin them down. 
I am sitting here with my journal now to find the notes I made after that session. Let's go back in time a bit first.

Here's a note from my journal 25/5/11 'I feel like I am experiencing things more directly. wondering at pigeons, excited by mudflats outside the train window (on a trip down to Plymouth) like I am observing natural life rather than noticing the concept of it as in 'ooh, rivermouth''. Hard to capture this stuff, I think I felt less like I was gripping reality from the language side but sensing things more. And that nature seemed more three dimensional because of it.

I had a couple of nights where I woke and spent two hours or so reading, then late lie ins to catch up. Not ideal. Is this still brain fatigue (which should be reducing) or due to something else?

I do feel life is getting better clearer. I am doing the brain work but I am also listening to a Sedona CD each morning during yoga. I had a leak in my flat and as part of the clear-up of things damp, I did some extra cluttering. That always greases the wheels, I find.
4/6/11 'I notice when I rush I feel good. As in 'good girl'' I remember that my father always required us to jump to it. It was usually not clear what we were jumping to, but the required reaction seemed to be to instantaneously achieve a state of - I might have said alertness, but it was not,  it was panic. Panic was the required , correct, safe, 'good' response. In this state, I also seemed slightly nervy and pathetic which was also 'good' because I was fulfilling my family role. A day at the beach could be interrupted at any time by a loud whistle. This meant run back to the car instantly or you risk being left behind. I finally retrained myself not to respond to whistles. Hassle from workmen on scaffolding was part of my father's legacy. I did ask Dr P if a habit of hyper-vigilance in childhood (and this is just one of a thousand of examples I could give to demonstrate that) could have caused some of my dyscalculia and she said yes. But enough of the turgid childhood reminiscences and recriminations: Brain Training!


Again the speed of my brain to make corrections is commented upon. Anything over 20 is good, apparently, but on my old familiar protocols, I score 40 a minute. Feel pleased.


On the new protocols it's 'less forgiving', Alan says. The chirruping and cheeping 'rewards' have gone and there is only one sound, the metallic 'clunk' - which occurs each time all the targeted conditions are met (this is reduced delta and high beta reducing and the normal or slow beta rising). I was slow on one of these new protocols, but that's ok.


Alan shows me another graph where there is a peak a sharp witch-hat triangular spike, that is a surplus of theta activity!!


Now theta is the stuff of meditation. I spent years meditating. I used the Holosync programme, too...I thought that the aim was to have all your usual brain functions ongoing but with high theta to boot. Like great Indian saints or Buddhist Masters, do, if I have this right....
And here we are trying to eliminate my theta. Ok, let's do it.
I started to make story-sense of things that probably aren't related at all.
People who have seen my show Invocation will know of my chagrin of getting a nun who adored transcendent silence on a Past Life workshop. I wanted something I could more usefully channel to deal better with an ambitions colleague and increasing demands to be more business oriented.
In another workshop I got a meditative figure again as guide and remember being very troubled about it - meditation is all well and good. I am doing plenty of it but I need to be left-hemisphere function sharp. I need much more of the hard crystalline smarts, not the deep indigo and gold transports, please.
Was a part of me getting this - too much theta in an area it shouldn't be, causing me an abstract fog or a transcended absence right where there should be engagement. I did use to zone out sometimes in conversations or during talks...


Alan said we did 5 minutes each of the new protocols and 10 each of the old ones.


The second new one I scored well, even thought there were two lulls. I increased my target score from 2 to 4 ( was that double or just 2 points more?) either way I was satisfied. 


Came home at 3.30 after running some chores and I slept for an hour and a half. I was meant to be in Belgium today and tomorrow, but my client cancelled. Inconvenient on one way but actually I was delighted. I was tired for some reason anyway, and after the new brain work I think packing for travel and an early start would have been hard work.

what's normal?

I've made only a couple of stupid mistakes of late and have not recorded what they were and so have forgotten.

Other people lose their car keys or something with regularity. I love reading Tim Dowling in the Guardian, who records his shortcomings with passports etc. Was he dropped on his head at some point? Or are all humans just simply imperfect?


What I feel mostly at the  moment is the absence of panic. And perhaps I am experiencing less weighty fatigue. It's not a spectacular outcome, I'm not suddenly able to do calculus or anything, but it's huge. Less brain freeze. Less brain fug. Came in handy when Thames Water caused a leak from my apartment to the flat below...while I was out of town. I failed to experience brain-freeze and although I felt the temptation for the wheels to freeze in their tracks, I pursued options one by one. I have to reflect though that I was not alone - someone helped me google a local 24 hour plumber which was causing me a tad 'frazzled blindness'. Never used that phrase before, but it sums up what i was experiencing.

Often in life I have not attempted things or avoided things for fear of that feeling of panic and failure. That state is so unpleasant and one feels so helpless and humiliated in its grip. It is more than the event, vastly hugely more. And somewhere one realizes that and the urge then to gee onself into capable, adult action at that point only makes things worse. 
Hm, now that I accurately describe it to myself like that, this calm is a huge outcome indeed. Can one only clearly describe a mental (slash emotional) state accurately once one is OUT of it?


I had another visit with Dr P. on 3rd May. She had recently attended a conference on tinnitus and the speaker had kindly shared his power-point presentation with her. The 'event-stress-further activation-stress' cycle was supported by his research. I also learned that the tinnitus noise is created like this - there is the 'inciting incident', so to speak, then the symptom (the noise) followed by ensuing concern, then anxiety at the symptom, fear of the return of the 'inciting incident' (in my case the techno playing neighbours), which is when the brain starts looking for the original offensive sound and.....
that brain activity of looking is (or creates) the noise that you hear, if I understand correctly. Nature can be cruel. Or at lease counterproductive, it seems.


Three of my four 'protocols' (or little bespoke programmes for selected parts of the brain) are regularizing nicely and Dr P wants to get the last recalcitrant one sorted out before we start on the Tinnitus. 

Then I want to go for the brain brightening. Calculus here we come. Only kidding. Shakespeare memorization perhaps, better problem solving definitely. Financial acumen, that would be great.


I have been directing/devising a piece of outdoor theatre. There was a day when I looked like it wasn't knitting together. I went to bed affirming that the idea had to come up from my unconscious. And indeed it did. At 3am. I began having extra insights. I'd lurch up and scribble in the book beside my bed, switch off the light, lie down and then lurch up again. This happened about seven times. I did get my solution. This may or may not be related to the brain work, but I found it interesting to observe nonetheless.What's new is the sure belief that it's not me  who comes up with anything it's the 'everythingness' as my friend Drew said the other day. The universe, the great collective unconscious, the Field, Unity, however you want to call it. Not just brain work but The Artists Way and The Sedona Method have helped me not just think that this is true, but to experience the trust that it is true.
Oh god (there is none?) do I sound evangelistic now? I just came up with another word. The Universal Genius. That's what we plug into when acting, or when clowning. Create the conditions as best you can then in that fullness of emptiness, await the impulse in the moment.