by Donna Eden
How Triple Warmer Keeps You from Changing
In carrying out these three basic survival strategies, Triple Warmer reveals the remarkable intelligence of the body and its energy systems. Consider, for instance, your immune response. Your body’s surveillance energies are continually on alert for invading bacteria and other harmful intruders, and they initiate complex, ingenious strategies to destroy and dispose of them. Anyone who examines the workings of the immune system realizes that immense intelligence is involved. Triple Warmer uses an analogous strategy to that of the immune system for keeping you safe in the outer world. It assesses the information brought in by your senses. When it recognizes a potential threat, it implements preprogrammed behavioral strategies (just as your immune system implements preprogrammed biochemical strategies) that evolved because of their survival value for your ancestors. All this occurs without the need for your intellect or even your conscious awareness.
Triple Warmer approaches its mission of keeping you safe by working in concert with the hypothalamus. While Triple Warmer is an energy system, your hypothalamus is a tiny organ, an almond-sized gland that governs your autonomic nervous system. The hypothalamus is the highest up on the chain of endocrine glands, regulating the hormones that influence much of your emotional life, from how you bond to what you do in the face of threat.
Both Triple Warmer and the hypothalamus are oriented toward advancing the same ends: your safety and well-being. The way they work together is reminiscent of a computer and its software. As a physical structure, the hypothalamus, like a computer, has relatively fixed wiring. Triple Warmer (or any other energy system) is much more flexible and responsive, more like your word-processing software. You can create a poem, a blog entry, or a thriller novel. The software tells the computer what to do based on the input from the keyboard. Your body’s energies, which are responsive to the ever-changing input from the environment and from within, are always at the “keyboard,” telling your body what to do. Triple Warmer tells the hypothalamus which hormones and other chemicals to produce and disperse. Your mood, automated thoughts, and behaviors follow.
Triple Warmer evolved during the preponderance of human history when physical threat was part of daily life. When a saber-toothed tiger walked into the cave of your ancestors a hundred thousand years ago, Triple Warmer worked in partnership with the hypothalamus. They diverted bloodflow away from digestive, reproductive, and other systems not involved with immediate survival, and directed it toward systems that support fighting, escaping, or freezing to become less detectable. Triple Warmer also learns. It was continually establishing new survival habits for your ancestors, such as creating an aversion to the kinds of caves frequented by saber-toothed tigers or to the smell of a predator that just moved into their territory. Triple Warmer, in fact, still maintains innumerable survival habits tracing to your ancestors. These operate largely beneath your awareness, and Triple Warmer is quite unyielding about giving up habits or programs that were designed over eons to ensure survival. After all, you are here. It worked!
• THE ENERGY DIMENSION •
Triple Warmer at Rest
Even when there is no perceived threat, Triple Warmer is usually still on alert. So Donna rarely sees Triple Warmer at rest. When it really is at rest, it fades into the background and seems to play more of a supportive role. You don’t so much see Triple Warmer then, and with the safety that is signaled as Triple Warmer relaxes, the meridians become stronger, the chakras more vital, the radiant circuits activated, and the aura more full. You see the impact of a peaceful Triple Warmer in all the other energy systems.
Triple Warmer in the Face of Threat
When an immediate danger is detected, Triple Warmer orchestrates all of the body’s energies to deal with the threat. They become sharp and focused. A cascading energy from the aura above the head and into the physical body prepares it for fight or flight, activating stress chemicals. If the response is to be flight, the energy leaves the face and upper body and goes into the legs to support their ability to run. The blood flow follows these energies, directing extra blood to the legs. If the response is to be fight, energy goes into the face and pumps up the arms and chest, which is also followed by the flow of blood.
Triple Warmer Maintaining a Habit
Triple Warmer regulates the activities of a spectrum of energy systems that are involved with habits that were formed in an attempt to ensure survival and well-being. For instance, the aura includes a band that holds the energy of established habits and behavioral patterns. When someone is in a situation that evokes a habitual emotion or behavior—whether the habit is an effective one or a dysfunctional one—this band becomes more pronounced. Triple Warmer’s role in this orchestration becomes most obvious when the person tries to change the habit. Then Triple Warmer’s energies rise to preserve the habit. Triple Warmer is a conservative force that is not oriented toward change. You’ve survived this long with the habit, so Triple Warmer has no incentive to change it! A similar process occurs at the level of the chakras. Habitual anger may too often scream out from the Third Chakra (solar plexus). Excessive compassion may ooze out from the Heart Chakra. Energy may move up quickly from the Root Chakra when your safety or sense of self is threatened. Triple Warmer is at the foundation of these reflexive responses, and if you try to change them, Triple Warmer’s energies become activated in an attempt to retain the status quo.
The challenges and stresses of modern life, however, are far different from those in the world that existed while Triple Warmer was evolving. So Triple Warmer’s brilliant programming is keyed to a world that no longer exists. Beyond its outdated strategies, Triple Warmer does not discriminate particularly well between life-threatening situations and relatively benign events. If you go into threat alert or full fight or flight or freeze mode half a dozen times a day—when your daughter won’t obey you, when you are late for an appointment, when your computer isn’t cooperating—the cortisol and other stress chemicals that are generated accumulate in your body and become harmful in a multitude of ways. Your risk then increases for anxiety, depression, digestive problems, heart disease, sleep disorders, weight gain, and concentration difficulties—collateral damage of Triple Warmer’s survival strategies. In trying to save you, Triple Warmer is powerful enough to leave you with any of the symptoms mentioned above. It is the military-industrial complex of your body. Like the military, its job is to keep you alive and safe, and it is steadfast with that assignment, even if it means a lot of excessive effort, false alarms, inadvertent harm, and unsparing expenditure of precious resources to ensure security.
A peculiarity about Triple Warmer is that it won’t support your desire to change a habit, even a harmful habit. Its assessment much of the time, since it is using outdated maps, is that you are in territory that is not safe, and introducing change of any sort exaggerates that perceived danger. So Triple Warmer’s default response is to resist change. The habits and programs it maintains have kept you alive to this point, so it endorses every one of them. It is also uninterested in subtleties. It doesn’t care if you are happy or unhappy, only that you are surviving and safe. Operating beneath your consciousness and with its own agenda, Triple Warmer can be a formidable enemy of your intentions. Of particular relevance for this book, your attachment style is one of the behavioral systems Triple Warmer crafted to help you adapt to your childhood circumstances, and it does not readily allow it to transform.
Attachment and Triple Warmer
Triple Warmer is particularly reactive about your family and primary relationship. In addition to the attachment style formed during your childhood, your ancestors’ survival and propagation depended on their mate and clan, so Triple Warmer is alert for any disturbance in the interpersonal field. When it finds one, it can trigger an emotional tempest that leaves both you and your partner stupefied.
The concept that safety, the domain of Triple Warmer, is a core issue in a
ttachment is revealed by the intensity with which couples argue. Who else would you fight with so passionately about disagreements you cannot recall the next day but the one you love? In fact, mammals have a special pathway in their brain that triggers “primal panic” when an attachment relationship seems endangered.25 When the love between you turns to tension and your collaborative alliance seems to be on the line, your primal instincts are activated. Your ancestors depended on their bond with a partner to survive and bring the next generation forward. When that bond is threatened—whether your overall attachment style is secure or insecure—you and what matters most to you do not feel safe. Triple Warmer goes into overdrive and your rational mind has little influence over what comes next! The Pact (Chapter 3) can restore the balance, but glitches in your attachment style can keep reigniting conflict and tension.
A way to bring your attachment style closer to the secure side of the secure-insecure spectrum is to keep Triple Warmer calm in situations that might trigger feelings and behaviors that are rooted in painful experiences from childhood. While Triple Warmer does not readily release its grip on its survival strategies, you will be more effective if you recognize that not only are you up against a powerful foe, but this “foe” evolved to be your friend. It is, in fact, still helping you stay alive, though it is confused by the plethora of circumstances that did not exist while it was evolving. A basic step you can take to improve your relationship with your partner is to bring Triple Warmer to a calmer default position. Energy medicine offers techniques for working directly with Triple Warmer to do just that. From this more favorable baseline, Triple Warmer is less likely to go into a threat response or to revert to attachment patterns from childhood that were formed in the face of threat or deprivation.
Retraining Triple Warmer
Triple Warmer can hijack your brain, propelling it into outdated fears and thought habits that are the antithesis of secure attachment. An effective approach for changing such habitual strategies is to communicate to Triple Warmer that you are safe in situations where it tends to initiate false alarms. How do you communicate with Triple Warmer? Triple Warmer’s language is energy, not words. The following three techniques realign the energies that impact Triple Warmer, bringing Triple Warmer into a more secure state even while you are actively recalling challenging moments in your relationship. The more Triple Warmer is helped in these ways to recognize that such situations do not constitute mortal danger or the annihilation of a primary relationship, the less likely it will overreact.
The Triple Warmer Smoothie
Triple Warmer has its own energy pathway. You can calm and sedate Triple Warmer by tracing your fingers over part of this pathway in the direction that reduces excess energy:
Bring to mind a situation where you “lost it” with your partner. This can simply be a time that the two of you had a challenging interaction, but even better for this technique if it is an instance of an ongoing pattern.
Lay your fingers sideways across your closed eyelids and take a deep in-breath (see Figure 5-1a).
As you let your breath out, drag your fingers across your eyes to your temples.
With your fingers at your temples, take another deep in-breath and bring your fingers up so they are just above your ears (see Figure 5-1b).
As you let your breath out, trace around the back side of your ears with light pressure and go down the side of your neck.
Lay your hands over the top of your shoulders and, with an in-breath, push your fingers into the back of your shoulders (see Figure 5-1c).
Let your breath out as you pull your fingers hard over your shoulders and drag them down to the middle of your chest (Heart Chakra). Place one hand over the other (see Figure 5-1d).
With several deep breaths, softly cradle in your heart the words, “I am safe!”
FIGURE 5-1 The Triple Warmer Smoothie
Triple Warmer Neurovascular Points
You have already learned, with the Stress Release Hold (here), to work with one set of neurovascular points as a way of turning off the fight/flight/freeze response and shifting the neurochemistry of stress. Triple Warmer’s neurovascular reflex points are at the temple and can be held along with the points on the forehead to shift outmoded habits of thought:
Bring to mind a second situation where you “lost it” with your partner.
Lightly place your thumbs on your temples and your fingers on your forehead (see Figure 5-2).
Continue to keep the situation in mind during several deep breaths.
The energy will begin to shift within a minute or two. End with the words, “I am safe!”
FIGURE 5-2 Triple Warmer Hold
Heart Chakra/Triple Warmer Tap
Another part of the Triple Warmer pathway, this one on the back of your hands, can be stimulated to manage anxiety and fear. Holding your hand over your Heart Chakra and tapping Triple Warmer back into balance:
Bring to mind yet another situation where you “lost it” with your partner.
Put one hand over the middle of your chest (this is your Heart Chakra), and find the V between your ring finger and little finger on the back of that hand.
Below the V is a ridge. Tap inside this ridge with the four fingers of your other hand (see Figure 5-3).
Finally have both hands resting over your Heart Chakra as you end with the words, “I am safe!”
Tapping on the ridge of the hand that is over your Heart Chakra can also provide quick emotional first aid any time you are feeling anxious or afraid.
These three simple energy techniques, individually (selecting the one that seems to work best for you) or in combination, can be used to desensitize Triple Warmer to interpersonal situations that have tended to hook you.26 As you shift the energies that maintain fear-based reactions, you are opening a door for changing them. Additional techniques presented in the following two chapters focus on healing the residue of difficult childhood experiences and transforming the emotional and behavioral patterns that arose from them. These techniques involve the stimulation of acupuncture points while bringing specific memories or visualizations to mind, and they can laser into the energies of attachment. You will begin to get a feel for how this is accomplished in the three case histories presented during the following discussion.
FIGURE 5-3 Heart Chakr/Triple Warmer Tap
Soothing Yourself, Managing Your Emotions, and Repairing Ruptures
While it is beyond the scope of any book to be a substitute for psychotherapy or for interactions with a partner that heal childhood attachment wounds, you can do a great deal to enhance your relationship by using techniques that shift the energetic underpinnings of attachment difficulties.
Three basic skill sets that promote secure attachment—soothing yourself, managing your emotions, and repairing ruptures within an intimate partnership—were ideally learned early in life during daily interactions with your primary caregivers. Where you have gaps in these skills, your primary relationships are directly impacted. But it is not like signs are imprinted on our foreheads as we grow up that say “deficits in self-soothing ability” or “poor manager of emotions” or “anxious about intimacy.” We develop our skill sets for self-soothing, emotional management, and relating intimately to the extent that we do (or that we don’t), and we try to make the best of what we have. What might have been theoretically possible is not on our radar. It is not part of our living reality. Donna’s orienting her early life around the theme of not causing trouble made her very good at self-soothing but not as practiced in getting what she needed from her closest relationships, an essential skill for thriving in an intimate partnership. Conscious choice, however, was not involved. If she had a need that would cause any inconvenience for her partner, it did not occur to her to express it and risk being trouble for him.
Can we improve our relationship patterns by further developing and
refining these skill sets? For each, we will present some of the basics and describe a person who made a significant positive shift using the energy psychology techniques you will be learning in the following two chapters.
Self-Soothing
Since infants aren’t equipped with the ability to soothe themselves when they feel distressed, but only to cry out, they depend on their caregivers to provide comfort. From the responses they receive, they acquire strategies for coping with distressful emotions or difficult experiences. Adults who haven’t developed adequate skills for self-soothing tend to become overly reliant on their partner for emotional comfort and resentful when it is not provided.
Skills for improving your mood and bringing calm, nurturing, and pleasure can be learned at any point in your life. They are generally quite basic, relying on your senses. A hot bath is one of Donna’s favorites. We both like to take walks in beautiful natural settings. Energy techniques such as those presented here are always in our tool kit. Music, dance, art, sports, and meditation are other popular forms of self-soothing. Simple enough. Readily available. Often free or almost free. But for people who didn’t learn in their formative years that they can make themselves feel better, calmer, or more relaxed, times of distress can lead to an internal panic and often a clutching toward others or an escape into drugs, junk food, or other addictions. It does not occur to them that they can take simple, healthy steps that will help them feel better.