HOLOGRAPHIC MEMORY RESOLUTION® (HMR)

DESCRIPTION AND SUMMARY

In the following sections I will provide you with a more detailed description of HMR, as well as a "layman's" summary of how the process works. Feel free to share with your friends/clients.

GENERAL OVERVIEW:  Holographic Memory Resolution® is a new bodymind approach that allows expedient access to past memories and helps to achieve resolution of the painful emotions associated with such events without having to "relive" such experiences and without affecting historical memory. This technique is profoundly empowering to the survivor who becomes his/her own source of healing. HMR employs both a verbal component and an optional nervous system support technique which enhances visualization and sensory access to memory while fostering safety. This client-centered process facilitates the resolution of "somatic (body) memory," thereby disarming the triggers that foster physical pain, flashback, disease, and relapse. By reducing the impact of these distortions in the cells and fields of our bodies, we can improve our immune system functioning and promote the healing of many of our "diseases," a significant percentage of which find their origins in our trauma memories.

HMR is an “emotional reframing” technique which allows reprogramming of the affect (feeling content) of memory while enhancing visual/sensory access and avoiding full re-live. Individuals who normally cannot visualize, be hypnotized, or access memory, generally find this process simple and effective. This technique is profoundly time efficient and promotes resolution and empowerment for the client whose bodymind has held this pain intact since the moment of its encoding in the nervous system. Such traumatic experiences form the foundation of our addictions, depression, diseases, and many chronic pain syndromes, as well as many other "disorders." Holographic Memory Resolution® empowers the client to heal him/herself, resolving the emotions which anchored the experience in the past, and enables the client to return the focus of life to living fully empowered in the present. Certification in HMR is offered in three levels of training.

CONTEXT:  Painful experiences in our lives precipitate an "encoding" of the overwhelming feelings, resulting in the storage of "trauma." This takes place in a single millisecond of time, capturing all of the sensory data, feelings, and perceptions of the overwhelming experience. This encoding process is subconscious and automatic.  There are two primary levels of encoding of trauma: Level 1 - the single, discreet moment or instant of overwhelm or abuse, and Level 2 - the blurring and repetition of abuse or overwhelm that results in patterns, archetypal imprinting, and even subpersonalities or "parts". Most individuals can routinely find both in their history.

Since the 1970s and the work of Milton Erickson, we have known that trauma precipitates a spontaneous state of self-hypnosis that binds us to the emotional pain of the event. From the moment of induction forward, we need only to tap into such holographic (the exact term for such memory encoded in the physiology of the body is “holonomic” – the term coined by Karl Pribram, the neurophysiologist) encodings to trigger and resurrect the original feelings. Such feelings, once encoded, often become primary and supplant our efforts to remain in a calm and peaceful state of mind. In other words, overwhelming emotional experiences induce a natural hypnotic state as a way of trying to contain our pain and foster survival. These trance states form the basis of a significant percentage of "disease" and pain in the bodymind. We tap into many such trance states in a single day, given the holographic nature of our memory. (See: Trances People Live, by Stephen Wolinsky, Ph.D.) In physics, every fragment of a hologram contains the whole image. (See: The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot and related articles on the website). Similarly, each fragment of our encoded traumas contains a link to the original trance with its powerful feeling content and can resurrect the original pain within milliseconds.

METHODS:  HMR functions by demonstrating our capacity to complete the “negative” or incomplete emotional charge that was locked into the scene, the nerve centers, and fields of our bodies at the moment of the trauma's encoding. There is no need to relive the images and affect of a traumatic event in order to release it. We do not encode all images equally -- simply the "primary" moment of encoding: referred to in professional circles as "T-1" (cf. text references in The Healing Dimensions by Brent Baum). HMR is what is now referred to as “body-centered” and “client-centered” psychotherapy. It utilizes a verbal technique which helps the individual to focus on the area of the body where the primary encoding took place -- the nerve center(s) where the body attempted to first contain the pain. Upon focusing at this site, the holographic nature of our memories allows us, via this fragment of memory, to return to the original millisecond of encoding. We do not need to be hypnotized, since the trauma already accomplished this with the assistnace of our Limbic-Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal System. Since a trauma is a self-hypnotic state (Erickson), we do not need to be hypnotized, but, instead, dehypnotized. HMR helps to accomplish this in two ways:

FIRST:  HMR's verbal technique provides a gentle method of focusing on the memory fragment, just long enough to access the scene of encoding. Once accessed, the scene is revisualized with the necessary corrections. We move, therefore, from a negative encoding (T-1) to a post-trauma (T+1) image. Once we have the perfect image of the resolved trauma scene or pattern, we send this corrected image through the nervous system by means of frequency. This is normally achieved through color, though kinesthetic or auditory channels can also be employed. For most individuals, however, the color channel is readily accessed since it is our first or primary language as a child - even before words, and color is an infinite language, unlike words. Within the “physics of emotion,” such feelings can be measured or interpreted as frequencies: the highest being "love", which is depicted by the combination of all colors: white light.

When we encode a painful experience, we freeze our perceptions to stop the pain. Amid the encoding, something is obviously missing: certain emotional frequencies that communicate safety are obviously deficient. At the moment of “freezing,” we stored affect that was, shall we say, “less than white light” -- to say the least. The more violent the act, the darker the metaphor of encoding appears, as evidenced in art therapy with children. Hence, once the scene is revisualized positively, we ask for the “missing frequencies” by asking for the color(s) of the frame around the corrected scene or from the scene itself. These frequencies are unique to each individual's perceptual process. It really is simple: We would like to have received only love or “white light” in the diverse moments of our lives; however, when we did not receive this at a critical moment, the automatic (autonomic) subconscious system of protection became active in order to protect us. The insertion of the missing colors (frequencies) act as a password to “unlock” the original trance state and allow the release of the original emotional content. These color frequencies, when moved through the nerve centers and fields of the body serve to update the nervous system and the subconscious mind. These frequencies, bearing the seal of authority of the survivor him/herself, are recognized by the system and “complete” the original encoding sequence: that is, the addition of the missing frequencies completes the emotional frame or spectral signature which was, until that moment in space and time, incomplete. As soon as this process is accomplished, there is a notable relaxation in the nerve centers of the body, a discharge of encoded energy from the cells and fields of the body, often accompanied by tingling in the hands and the feet and the cessation or noticeable reduction of eye movement. Upon completion of this “reprogramming” of the nervous system, the original memory can be recalled without triggering the original (incomplete) affective charge; instead, the individual will only experience the “reframed” content, which carries a message of balance or completion. The true indicator of the release of the original trance state is that the individual no longer holds the same emotional attachment to the original scene. Once we know and experience ourselves as whole, we no longer bear the same attachments to the past.

SECOND:  An additional technique is often employed with HMR – an optional nervous system support technique which enhances safety and can facilitate access to stored memory. Since we all carry a surplus of electromagnetic energy in our hands, we can learn to use a simple tactile (“accupoint”) application of this surplus energy to facilitate emotional healing and the release of the negative charges of encoded traumas. Anyone can do this; in fact, we routinely and unconsciously place our hands on the precise site related to trauma storage along the spine when our friends or loved ones are in distress (bottom of the neck and top of the shoulders). The dorsal horn of the spine carries all neuro-transmissions relating to pain. Access to the dorsal horn of the spine is facilitated at a point near Cervical Vertebra 7 (C-7). The dorsal channel of the spine handles sensation, perception, and emotion – three sources of potential overwhelm and trauma imprinting; access to memory is greatly enhanced at C-7. The client’s own spinal tension will usually cue the facilitator as to the correct placement of the hand. By placing one hand over the dorsal access point, suppporting the client’s neuro-transmissions via limited tactile support, the client’s access to encoded memory is gently enhanced, grounding the client in “present-time” awareness. The second hand of the facilitator is routinely placed (without physical contact) over the primary nerve center in the front of the body that was the principal site of the stress or trauma encoding. Preliminary measurements and observations of thousands of HMR cases suggest that this energy application induces an Alpha-Theta brainwave state (often involving noticeable rapid eye movement – a “reverie” state, as termed in biofeedback terminology), while the client remains in a relaxed and grounded state while remaining fully conscious. This permits the adult, survivor self to observe the event from a safe emotional space and to update the stored, outdated image with a more accurate, current emotional perception. HMR does not alter our memories, but simply updates the emotional charge – the link which attaches us to the painful content and physiology of memory.

HMR provides a gentle, symbiotic link with the client, promoting the safety necessary for the expedient reframing of the emotional content of memory without having to go into a deeper hypnotic trance which could result in relive and retraumatization. A safe “observer” stance is achieved and maintained that eliminates abreaction and retraumatization. There is no need to relive traumatic memories. The fact remains that our systems were able to encode the traumatic experience within a millisecond of time. By using the holographic nature of the bodymind, HMR enables the client to transmit a corrective holographic signal, usually employing the primary language of color, to the subconscious mind, thereby updating the protective program that is holding the memory fragment and demonstrating the client’s own capacity to create safety. HMR is teaching us that we are equally capable of as efficient a release of the pain of memory as we are of its expedient encoding.

Having seen HMR employed effectively with over 20,000 survivors of trauma, there is now hope beyond our imagining. The pain of our lives can become opportunity to restore the immense power lost in the millisecond of time when consciousness itself is paused. We need no longer dwell in the (subconscious) past, but can come to live fully in the present, manifesting the power, goals, potential for which we are intended. We are here to learn to be more than simply pain free. The pain of our lives becomes the occasion for the mastery of our states of consciousness. Coming from an interdisciplinary perspective, I believe that such emotional reframing techniques hold the potential to release us from the age-old victimhood of the subconcious, bringing us closer to conscious manifestation. With the resolution of our subconscious blockages, access to the unlimited potential of the Superconscious mind becomes possible.

Enjoy the journey.

Copyright ©1999, Brent M. Baum, STB, SSL, ICADC, CCH.  Updated in November 2013.