BodyTalk Access

By Dr. John Veltheim

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The theory is that we are balancing the two halves of the brain, the right and left hemispheres.

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Dr. John Veltheim is a chiropractor, traditional acupuncturist, philosopher and teacher. In 1995, he developed The BodyTalk System™, a revolutionary healthcare regimen that utilizes state-of-the-art energy medicine to optimize the body’s internal communications and allows it to more effectively respond to injury and illness. The System and its related wellness and personal growth programs draw on natural energy fields to bring stability, well-being and balance to people, animals and the environment.

BodyTalk Access Techniques

BodyTalk Access is a complete system in its own right and stands alone from the general BodyTalk System. Access comprises five basic techniques—Cortices, Switching, Hydration, Body Chemistry and Reciprocals—that we categorize into two groups.

      The first four techniques (Cortices, Switching, Hydration and Body Chemistry) make up Group One and, for full effectiveness, should be done together. They can be applied in just a few minutes as they are very simple techniques.

     The fifth technique (Reciprocals) is just a bit more time-consuming; although it also is very simple, it involves the linking up many different parts of the body. Thus, it is not always part of the original formula. Reciprocals has a very special purpose in first aid and balancing for musculoskeletal problems and can be done separately from the first four.

Cortices

     This is by far the most commonly used technique in BodyTalk. It is the first technique a practitioner will use in almost every treatment, because it is so important in establishing the general healthy functioning of the brain.

     A main goal of BodyTalk is to have the brain functioning extremely well, because, when the brain is functioning well, it can control the health of the body by ensuring the right communications are happening and the right instructions are going out.

     One of the problems in our society is that most people’s brains are not working well, certainly nowhere near as well as they could. Essentially they have been highjacked by the amygdala system, which is the fight-flight system that is designed to keep us alive. These days, the stresses of living often cause the amygdala to malfunction.

     The brain was originally set up to be very good for handling sudden extreme situations, such as being approached by a wild animal, in which the body had to consider scenarios of either confronting the danger or running from it—hence the fight-flight concept. In those cases, you either fought and won or lost, or you ran and escaped up a tree, into the water or back to home or campfire, away from danger where you could relax again.

     However, what is happening in the high-stress world of today is that we are not generally faced with tigers but, rather, with a constant barrage of threats that our body interprets as life threatening in many ways. These threats are the ordinary stresses of life, such as dealing with financial situations, personal relationships and work pressures; the stress of just driving to and from work and trying to stay alive on the roads, and pollutants and toxins in the food we eat. These are all major stress factors that the average person struggles with daily.

     Even worse, these stresses affect us even before we are born.

     During a pregnancy, the average mother and father can find themselves under a great deal of stress, and this profoundly affects the development of the brain in the fetus. We are finding that more babies are being born with malfunctioning and over-stressed immune and amygdala systems. This leads to a general weakness of the immune system, increasing its susceptibility to infections, viruses and parasites that are difficult to overcome and often remain in a chronic form.

     We also are seeing this manifest in the development of allergies to just about everything, from food to environmental factors, in all different levels and in all different stages. In fact, many people can have allergies and not be aware of them because they have no classic allergy symptoms, such as a runny nose or sore eyes. They do not realize that they may have a food allergy that is causing their headaches, pain, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, backache or emotional stress.

     Either way, we have found that the brain in the average person is far too stressed and has such poor communication it cannot do its job properly. We are seeing this more and more in the youth of today with Attention Deficit Disorder, behavioral problems and major stress disorders. It is alarming how many children are put on Prozac, sedatives, Ritalin and antipsychotics, when really they are just dealing with brains that cannot handle their environment.

     The original Cortices technique is designed to bring about systematic corrections to the brain. The theory is that we are balancing the two halves of the brain, the right and left hemispheres, the masculine and feminine brain, the creative side and the mechanical side.

     For most people today, there is a strong masculine-feminine war going on. We call it the battle of the sexes out in the world that we see. However, this battle actually is going on inside the brain between the two value systems or the two ways of dealing with things, such as left brain logical thinking vs. right brain intuitive thinking. The fact is, in a healthy person, there is good communication between these extremely important systems, so both ways of thinking can be utilized.

     The Cortices technique fosters better communication between the two hemispheres through the corpus callosum, thus enabling this communication to occur at all levels.

     It is important to reiterate that the BodyTalk System is an energy-based technique, based on the scientific premise that energy comes first and matter follows. It also is important to understand that the latest research in neurosciences has indicated that the actual neurological synaptic transmission of communication between parts of the brain accounts for only some of the communication. A great deal of communication within the brain and from the brain to the rest of the body is occurring at a much higher level through energy systems such as meridians; the flow of electrons, protons, solitons and electromagnetic frequencies.

     The brain and the heart are huge electromagnetic generators, and their frequencies are part of the communication system. When we balance the energic level of the electromagnetic blueprint, we are going to profoundly affect all these electrical circuits. Further, we find that, clinically, the balance even affects the physical neurological circuits. The result of this better communication in the brain enables the brain to settle down and better coordinate its activities.

     The Cortices technique also improves circulation within the brain—on many levels. Besides the obviously important blood circulation within the brain, the circulation of the cerebrospinal fluid and the lymphatic drainage of waste-product electrolytes from brain activity also are increased. In addition, the flow of meridian energy and other subtle energy systems critical for healthy brain function are improved. Each time we perform the Cortices treatment, we are improving the total circulation systems. If we perform this technique regularly, we will see continued improvement of the function of the brain.

     The other aspect of the Cortices treatment came from my own clinical observations. We found that when we use the Cortices treatment for people who are in shock, it has a miraculous ability to bring them out of that state. For example, we have paramedics who attend to car accidents and see people walking around in a daze. We know from a medical point of view that when the body is in a state of shock, it does not look after the internal mechanisms of the body well at all. Therefore, if that accident victim was internally hemorrhaging in the lungs or in the bowel while in the state of shock, the hemorrhaging will not be controlled.

     When we bring them out of shock with the Cortices technique, the body will start to respond and shut down internal hemorrhages. It has been shown that some people who die from accidents and traumas actually die because their bodies were not able to come out of shock early enough for repair to occur. This is why bringing a person out of shock is very important but, from a medical point of view, hard to do. From clinical experience, however, we know that paramedics who have used the Cortices treatment have helped victims almost instantly come out of shock. There have even been cases in which someone was openly bleeding through the skin or experiencing an arterial bleed, and the bleeding has stopped as a result of tapping out the Cortices.

     Another form of severe shock can be diagnosed as a coma. You can have coma from injury to the brain, and that is a different state of affairs in which the brain has physically been damaged. However, many forms of comas occur when the body has gone into a severe shock and not been able to come out of it. The injuries may have repaired internally, but the person is still lying in a hospital bed in a severe state of shock, which we call a coma. Again, clinically, we have had many cases in which hospitalized persons in comas have had their Cortices tapped out and come out of the coma—often within minutes or hours. Many have been in their coma for months or years. This is where BodyTalk can be a vital instrument to be used in hospital settings.

     The other benefit of Cortices that I have seen over the years is for people who are in a chronic mild state of shock. Because of the daily stresses discussed earlier, these people have a blankness in the eyes, and, while the responses are there, they are not clear or sharp. These people can function at their basic job and even drive a car, but they are in this constant state of semi-shock, which is sort of a coping mechanism the body uses in order to dull the trauma of being in a stressed state.

     With BodyTalk, we are addressing these two fronts simultaneously: While the Cortices treatment helps repair the functioning of the amygdala system and its relationship to the thalamus, the hypothalamus, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, etc. (which improves the body’s ability to deal with stress), it can also bring someone out of shock so their brain can function far better.

     When you bring someone out of a mild state of shock, it means they are going to repair their own body better. For example, when someone is in a state of mild shock, the brain is not going to be very observant. We are not just talking about being switched off to the world around you; we have to remember that, to the brain, the body is the world around it. We find that people very often will live with chronic viruses, infections, parasites or allergies because the body is in shock. Thus their immune systems are not observant enough to pick up the existence of those microbes in the body and therefore not attacking them and killing them off. As a result, a person can live with fatigue, pain, headaches or what is sometimes diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or fibromyalgia because their defense systems are being compromised due to mild shock.

     That is why we have found that just doing the Cortices technique alone can often precipitate a major repairing of the body, as the body starts spontaneously looking for microbes and killing them off. We also see injuries repair faster as the brain starts to function more clearly.

     We have found this extremely important in children who have extremely poor attention spans. One of the problems is that they are living in a state of shock because of the stress they are under. This stress can come from their environment, their school facilities, family situations or even from the additives and toxins in the food they are eating or the medications they are taking.

     This is why Cortices is such an important ingredient in the body’s ability to start healing itself. We find that by tapping out the Cortices on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, we are gradually improving the body’s resilience to handle stress and reducing its tendency to go into shock. We eventually can teach the body not to go into shock, except in cases in which it needs to due to extreme stress.

     This concept is preventive medicine. By using BodyTalk Access on a regular basis, you will be improving the functioning of the brain and eventually the functioning of the body’s built-in health maintenance systems, so that the person is less likely to get sick in the first place.

     To help you understand the power of BodyTalk Access, I encourage you to learn the simple Cortices technique that follows, applying it on your friends and family and having them apply it on you. I guarantee you will notice the positive changes that occur.

     If you are a practitioner and apply the Cortices technique before starting an acupuncture treatment, a massage, chiropractic or even drug therapy, you will find that, by balancing the hemispheres of the brain to work better, reducing the stress level and bringing the person out of a mild state of shock, the patient will respond far better to the therapy and heal much quicker.

     I would love to see a day when Cortices is a standard practice to start any form of therapy treatment. Even, for example, in counseling, where the person could be in a state of shock or stress overload and not hearing or correctly interpreting what is being said to them. If the two brain hemispheres are not going to be talking very effectively, the practitioner is not going to make a profound impact due to disjointed thinking and possible misinterpretation of what is being said. As a result, it could require many more sessions to get the same results.

     Another use of this technique is to help with sports or academic performance. We have found that if you tap out the Cortices in a child who is about to undergo an exam or play a sport, they will perform far better because they have addressed the stress overload that often comes with a challenge. If we have children tapping out their Cortices just before they start a school day, before they take a test, before they are about to perform in a sport or in a play, it is going to make a very big difference. We have seen this already in trial studies we have done in various schools, where tapping out the Cortices at the beginning of the day has vastly improved the level of interaction between the students and the teacher, the behavior of the students, the children’s ability to learn and a subsequent improvement in the grades of the class.

I now am going to teach you how to tap out the Cortices. I encourage you to experiment with it to see its effectiveness for yourself.

     A. Place one hand on the person’s head at the base of the skull where it meets the neck. (Note: It is important to keep the fingers and thumb together throughout this technique to avoid missing any areas of the brain.) While holding that position, tap the head and then the sternum lightly, alternating for two full breath cycles.

     Your focus while tapping out the Cortices is on connecting all points of the right hemisphere of the brain to the left hemisphere and highlighting and eliminating all the “cold spots” of diminished blood supply or cellular activity that are present.

     B. Now move your hand up onto the head to the position next to the one you just used. (You are going to systematically cover the whole head, one hand-width at a time.) In the new position, tap out the head and sternum, alternating for two full breaths.

     C. This procedure is repeated until you have covered the whole midline of the head from the base of the skull to just above the eyebrows. This could mean three hand-widths for a large hand to cover a small head or five hand-widths for a small hand to cover a larger head. The main objective is to make sure that the entire brain is covered. The hand positions may overlap to ensure that no areas are left untouched.

     D. Now cover the sides of the head to balance the temporal lobes. Either have the person put one of their hands along the side of their head while you put your hand on the other side; or, preferably, have the person put one hand on each side of their head. Then tap the head and sternum while the person takes two full breaths.

     For self-application: Hold one hand at the base of your skull while tapping out head and sternum using the other hand. Continue as in Steps A - C above. When you get to the sides of your head, you can hold both sides with both hands, then let go with one hand to tap yourself.

     With regular application of this Cortices technique, you will find that your head may feel less “foggy,” your mental focus may sharpen, or you may just feel more balanced and clear. Try it out. It cannot do any harm, and it has the potential to do so much good.

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Adapted from Chapter Three of BodyTalk Access by Dr. John Veltheim. Dr. Veltheim presents a public lecture and book signing on Thursday, June 5th at 7:00 p.m. at Transitions Bookplace, 1000 W. North Ave., Chicago, IL 60622. For more information, see the advertisement in this issue and visit www.bodytalksystem.com.

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