BIOLOGY OF FORGIVENESS
That common phrase, “forgive and forget” does us a disservice by linking the two. The latest discoveries in epigenetic biology offer us a more accurate and helpful understanding: “Forgive and remember differently.”
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In working with clients using the Holoenergetic® Forgiveness Process, I’ve found that the emotional charge associated with painful or stressful events can be altered or even released completely.
Transmuting the pain has nothing whatsoever to do with forgetting, just with how and where these memories are held.
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Leonard Laskow
Who would you be
without your “cherished wounds”?
Excerpt from the book: For Giving Love
Recent neurologic research suggests that short-term memory goes through a molecular process called “consolidation” during which it is converted, under certain circumstances, into long-term memories. The process of converting short-term memories to long- term ones is enhanced by stress hormones, which alert a part of the midbrain called the amygdala, the brain’s emotional control center. The amygdala is activated either by stress hormones or those associated with love and caring.
You probably can’t even imagine how many events in your life you have forgotten. Notice however, how many of the events you do recall are associated with either contractive or expansive emotions. That’s because recall is tethered to emotions.
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Exciting new research suggests that original memories can be changed or reconsolidated. For example, when rats were given an electric shock at the exact moment a sound was played, the rats formed a memory that linked the sound to fear. For a memory to be consolidated from short term to long term — from unstable to stable — it undergoes a process called protein synthesis. The researchers theorised that during this unstable memorizing period, the memories could be reconsolidated. They injected a drug that stopped the protein synthesis in the amygdala of the rat. When the sound was played after that, the rats no longer reacted with fear to hearing the sound alone.
The implications are this: Reactivating a memory temporarily returns it to an unstable state, providing an opportunity to reconsolidate the memory. If the reactivation occurs in a loving field, the memory can be favorably reconsolidated.
That’s why the Holoenergetic Forgiveness Process works so well. It allows us to remember the experience without the painful emotional charge.
As an obstetrician, I’ve noticed that even though childbirth is generally associated with pain, most mothers recalling the experience don’t have a contractive emotional charge.
Excerpt from the book: For Giving Love
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Other researchers working with people who experienced a traumatic event injected propranolol, a drug that reduces anxiety, to see if it could stop long-term traumatic memories. Propranolol blocks the action of adrenaline, a stress hormone known to strengthen emotionally significant memories. Using this approach, researchers were able to reduce symptoms by fifty percent. The scientists tentatively concluded that long-term memory appears to reside in a part of the midbrain called the hippocampus. However, the emotional trauma of that memory seems to be located in the amygdala. Current research is focused on being able to target and reconsolidate just the fear part of the memory located in the amygdala, which leaves the details of the memory intact. In other words, there is less charge associated with the memory, less physiologic response to the memory.
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As an obstetrician, I’ve noticed that even though childbirth is generally associated with pain, most mothers recalling the experience don’t have a contractive emotional charge. My sense is that this may be due to the hormones and neuropeptides present at birth — oxytocin, prolactin, dopamine, atrial natriuretic peptide plus endorphins — which neutralize the adrenaline’s impact on the amygdala.
These hormones of birth are also the hormones produced by love. In fact, the heart is a major producer of oxytocin and atrial natriuretic peptide. Perhaps this is nature’s way of physiologically assuring the presence of a loving, nurturing mother to receive her baby.
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What I’ve noticed clinically is that by activating the memory of a stressful event in the presence of or immediately followed by feelings that evoke love, the stressful emotional charge is neutralized even though the memory remains. This is what the Holoenergetic Forgiveness Process does so effectively. It allows us to “keep” the experience as something we can learn from, yet frees us from the physiologic and psychological burdens of carrying the emotional charge. The quality of our lives depends on the amount of charge we carry. To live freely, we need to be free of reactive conditioning expressed as emotional charge.
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When you forgive fully, you open a portal to ever-present Oneness. Once charge is released, you are free to experience “what is” directly instead of through the filter of past conditioning. Your quality of life dramatically improves and you are free to be who you truly are.
