The Veracity of the Imprint

I have written about the UCLA experiment in two of my books but I want to sum up the importance of it.  This is research we did together with Dr. Donald Tashkin, former director of the Pulmonary laboratory in 1992.(see http://www.primaltherapy.com/ucla-experiment.php)  Two patients were wired to many instruments while we helped them into a reliving session, a primal.  They both relived severe oxygen deprivation during a birth trauma and some of the vital signs reflected it.  After being immersed in a memory of oxygen deprivation they
began what I term "locomotive breathing" emanating from the brainstem (in particular, the medulla).  This deep, raspy, rapid, compulsive breathing went on for over twenty minutes.

   The heavy breathing was an attempt to compensate for the lack of oxygen they experienced during the memory event.  This is never a voluntary effort.  It seems “forced” on the person from low in the brain.   When any patient is in full brainstem suffocation mode (involving the medulla) he may begin locomotive breathing,  which is rather hoarse and sounds like a locomotive. It is as though the patient is making up for the deprivation event by gasping for air.  Once begun it is very hard to stop until it has run its course.

 Heavy breathing can go on for many minutes, and then relaxation. It may take many sessions for the cause to be comprehensible. Though this heavy breathing can go on for up to twenty minutes there never is any hyperventilation. We have done experiments with these patients outside the therapy when they were not in a memory; after three minutes they got dizzy and began to faint. It happens systematically to those who attempt to go back to the past without being totally in the memory. In fact it is one of our controls on the veracity of the feeling.  If they run out of air right away it is simple abreaction, and unconnected and not integrated event.  The reason is rather simple; the subjects were breathing voluntarily, not automatically out of the memory.  They were breathing from “on top,” a deliberate decision not from the bottom.  The memory offers us the truth of it.      Ordinarily, they would get dizzy and feel like passing out; there would be clawed fingers and occasionally blue lips; i.e, hyperventilation syndrome, within two to three minutes of this kind of deliberate heavy breathing.


To underscore: being in a past feeling is a total biologic state which permits deep breathing for a long period. The patient is engulfed by the memory of depleted oxygen and at that time needed oxygen. It is one of many checks we have on the Primal state.  The only factor that could account for this was real-life memory--the imprint.  Reliving not just in their heads or their thoughts but with every part of them.  Patients are indeed in the past neuro-physiologically; they are living in their history, living back in their personal past; and, I might add, living inside a brain from antiquity.

   These experiments are the best supporting evidence for primal therapy, as the experience cannot be faked.  The fact that his imprint endures and is immutable means that it constantly affects so much of our feelings, moods and behavior.  It means that there is a profound origin for depression which may have begun its life before we began life on the planet.  In the case of one of our patients trying to get born against massive anesthetic the feeling was, "I just can't try any more.  I have to give up.  It is hopeless."  Here was the deep preverbal forerunner for depression; the physiology of depression. The prototype for a depression foretold.

Once we establish that we are propelled by imprints embedded in an ancient brain we see that it has everything to do with our current behavior and symptoms, then we must acknowledge that the primitive brain affects not only our breathing but also most of our current life, our moods, values and attitudes.   Those imprints must be considered when we want to understand depression.  It is not just breathing that is affected but most of the brainstem functions; digestion, elimination and many mid-line events.  A brainstem trauma means a brainstem reaction.  We go to doctor after doctor to try to solve a stomach problem when the memory will give it all up as soon as we can access it.   It will tell us all because it was there at the scence “of the crime.” It will tell us of the carrying mother’s anguish, her use of drugs and alcohol or her own depression.  Therein lies the answer—history.  It divulges all of its secrets when we descend to meet it.  It won’t come up to confess its history; we need to meet it half way.  Then it may say in its own nonverbal way, my stomach aches, as we plunge into history; my stomach is not working well.   Later on there is colic that speaks more of what is wrong.  And still later possible addiction.   That addiction speaks of early needs going unmet and the pain that follows.  To avoid these imprints means avoiding what may be curative.