The SHN #45: GNM, Feeling Alive, and Emotional Health

Welcome back to The Synergetic Health Newsletter! 

In this edition, I build a case for the importance of acknowledging emotions, trauma, and feelings in your search for optimal health.

Joe Burt

⚕What if German New Medicine is True?

Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine for a moment that the controversial theories of German New Medicine (GNM), as proposed by Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer, were proven to be true. What might our understanding of illness and approach to healthcare look like in such a world?

To be clear, GNM is not currently accepted by mainstream medicine and its claims are not scientifically validated. The purpose of this exercise is not to argue for the factual truth of GNM or to encourage anyone to make medical decisions based on its principles. Rather, it's an invitation to explore some intriguing possibilities through the lens of imagination.

At the core of GNM is the belief that every disease originates from a specific type of psychological shock or trauma - an event that is unexpected, highly acute, and isolating. According to Dr. Hamer, these "biological shocks" trigger a meaningful biological program in the body, which manifests as what we call "disease." In other words, symptoms are not random mistakes but purposeful adaptations to help us cope with the shock.

In a GNM-based model, the focus of medicine would shift dramatically. Instead of just treating symptoms as isolated phenomena, doctors would be trained to identify and address the underlying psycho-emotional conflicts. The goal would be to help patients resolve these shocks and support the body's natural healing processes.

Research priorities might shift towards mapping out the precise connections between specific types of shocks and their corresponding physical manifestations. Medical education would emphasize understanding the "whole person" in their unique life context.

Public health messaging would aim to educate people about the mind-body connection and provide tools for increasing emotional resilience. Catching and addressing "biological shocks" early, before they progress into more serious conditions, would be paramount.

Treatment approaches would likely become less aggressive and suppressive, working with rather than against the body's innate intelligence. The focus would be on creating a supportive environment for the natural resolution and healing of the "biological program" initiated by the shock.

I believe there is incredible value in entertaining these possibilities, if only as a prompt to approach health in a more holistic and imaginative way. By considering the potential role of life experiences and emotional well-being in physical illness, we open up new avenues for empowerment and healing.

I welcome your reactions, insights, and experiences. Have you observed any connections between life events and health issues in your own life? How do you imagine a healthcare system that recognized the mind-body connection might look?

🧠 The Feeling of Consciousness

What is the essence of consciousness? For centuries, philosophers and scientists have grappled with this question, often placing reason, language, and higher cognition at the center of their explanations.

However, a growing body of work in neuroscience and evolutionary theory is challenging this traditional view, suggesting that feelings and emotions may be the true foundation of conscious experience. In this post, we'll explore this perspective and its implications for our understanding of the human mind.

The Primacy of Feeling

Neuroscientist Mark Solms is at the forefront of this paradigm shift. In his view, consciousness is not primarily about high-level intellectual processes but about the felt experience of being alive:

"Feeling is the foundational process of consciousness," Solms argues, "not intellect and reason. These are in fact epiphenomena of interoception - the process experienced as we feel and check back minute by minute to recheck those feelings."

Solms' work suggests that consciousness is a continuous process of sensing and responding to our internal bodily states. We are constantly monitoring how we feel, making subtle adjustments to maintain homeostasis and navigate our environment. Reason, logic, and language, in this view, are tools that evolved to help us make sense of and communicate about this more basic level of felt experience.

The Evolutionary Angle

Danny Vendramini's "teem theory" adds an intriguing evolutionary dimension to this feeling-centric understanding of consciousness. In his book "The Second Evolution", Vendramini suggests that intense emotional experiences can be encoded into non-coding DNA and passed down to future generations as innate emotional tendencies or behavioral patterns.

"In a nutshell, teem theory claims that under certain conditions, intense emotions (like those experienced as the result of a traumatic personal experience) can be permanently encoded into an area of an animal's genome called noncoding DNA, so-called 'junk DNA'. Once encoded, these traumatic feelings can be inherited to offspring as emotions, innate behaviors and even complex instincts."

This idea resonates with the work of Michael Tsarion, who argues that "Emotional trauma is encoded in our DNA. Each of us has inherited it from past times." Tsarion suggests that the traumas we experience in our individual lives can activate this deeper reservoir of inherited emotional pain:

"I maintain that by way of the law of resonance, smaller traumas happening to us openly in domestic and social settings stimulate the greater cache of trauma sleeping below. The more surface disturbance, the more the beast within alarmingly stirs. It's a recipe for disaster."

Taken together, these perspectives hint at a intergenerational dimension to emotional experience and consciousness. They suggest that our felt sense of being in the world is intimately connected to the lived experiences of our ancestors, for better and for worse.

Implications and Questions

This feeling-based, generationally-rooted view of consciousness raises fascinating questions and implications:

• How might recognizing the primacy of emotion and the role of inherited trauma impact approaches to mental health, emotional healing, and personal growth?

• If our individual emotional experiences are part of a larger, multigenerational narrative, how might that inform our understanding of identity, responsibility, and the nature of the self?

• What are the potential risks and benefits of 'stirring the beast within' - of bringing awareness to and processing inherited emotional traumas? How can this be done constructively?

• How might a feeling-centric, generationally-informed understanding of consciousness reshape practices in areas like education, parenting, leadership, conflict resolution, and social change?

The idea that feeling is the basis of consciousness and that our emotional lives are shaped by the experiences of our ancestors is a provocative perspective. This view invites us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about the nature of mind, emotion, trauma, and healing.

By recognizing the centrality of feeling and the deep roots of our emotional inheritance, we open up new possibilities for self-understanding, growth, and transformation - both as individuals and as a species.

❤️‍🩹 Emotions, Trauma, and Health

In the preceding posts, we've explored a new paradigm that places emotions and trauma at the heart of our understanding of health and consciousness.

From the perspective of German New Medicine, which sees specific emotional shocks as the origin of disease, to the work of neuroscientists who argue that feeling is the foundation of conscious experience, to theories suggesting that trauma can be inherited across generations, a compelling picture emerges:

Our emotional lives, both in the present and as shaped by our ancestors, may be far more central to our well-being than conventionally recognized.

This understanding leads us to rethink our approach to health and healing. It suggests that addressing unresolved emotional wounds, both personal and intergenerational, may be key to preventing and treating a wide range of physical and mental ailments. It points to the importance of cultivating emotional intelligence, resilience, and self-awareness as foundations of well-being.

Moreover, this paradigm opens up new possibilities for personal and collective healing through practices that work with the deep emotional roots of our lived experience. It encourages us to look beyond surface-level symptoms and to engage with the underlying emotional landscape that shapes our health and consciousness.

Exploring this has the potential to transform not only our individual approaches to well-being but also our collective understanding of what it means to lead a healthy life.

🤔 Could This All Be Overrated

Could it be possible that our past traumas and emotional inheritance don't actually matter as much as these theories suggest? The renowned psychologist Alfred Adler would likely say yes.

Adler, who broke with Freud to develop his own school of "Individual Psychology", de-emphasized the role of past experiences and instead focused on the power of the individual to create their own future through their choices and actions in the present.

I’m currently reading “The Courage to be Disliked” which is my introduction to Adler’s work and it’s fascinating so far. More to come in the future!

𝕏 Thread of the Week

🍌 Don’t Put Bananas In Your Smoothies: This study showed that consuming a banana smoothie containing cocoa extract significantly reduced the absorption of beneficial flavan-3-ols (a type of polyphenol) from the cocoa by 84%, compared to consuming a berry smoothie with the same cocoa extract. The researchers attributed this effect to the high polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity in bananas, which reacts with and inhibits the absorption of flavan-3-ols and other fruit polyphenols. If you want to eat bananas, eat them alone and not mixed with other fruits.

👨🏻‍🦲 Male Pattern Baldness Begins with an Interference in Thyroid Function?: Danny Roddy wrote the book “Hair Like a Fox”, a bioenergetic view of pattern hair loss. In this tweet thread, Roddy reviews several studies which support his claim that low thyroid function could be a major cause of hair loss.

🩹 Yikes! BAND-AIDS Have Forever Chemicals: A report has showed that some of the most well-reputed brands, including Band-Aid and Curad, contain dangerous levels of forever chemicals. Dr Linda Birnbaum, a toxicologist and former head of the National Toxicology Program who co-led the lab testing, said “Because bandages are placed upon open wounds, it's troubling to learn that they may be also exposing children and adults to PFAS.” Troubling, indeed.

🔗 One Hitters

🧈 “I Ate 4.5 lbs of Butter in 1 Week and Lost Weight” (Video)

🏋️‍♀️ 3 Exercises That Fix 90% of Problems (Article/Video)

🥶 The dangers of the Wim Hof Method (Article)

📅 My Scheduling Page: Go here to book a 15-minute free call to chat about life.

✔️ That will do it for this time! Hopefully you got some value out of it. If you have any questions/comments/things you’d like to learn more about please don’t hesitate to reach out.

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