29/12/2021
Every so often, I get asked about the science behind BWRT… so here’s a two-minute overview.
The brainstem and cerebellum together form the lizard brain that evolved in our earliest ancestors around 575 million years ago. Its purpose was to trigger action on any threat to survival. It was purely instinctive with no capacity for thought or reason. If something was a threat, it would always be a threat and in those days that was a fact.
The next evolutionary development was the paleomammalian complex that appeared in the first tiny mammals, with a much more sophisticated limbic system. The lizard brain had already existed for around 425 million years by then, and this new part didn’t replace it – it was added ‘on top’ of it as a kind of ‘upgrade’. It’s much more complex but still has no conscious awareness or ability for thought.
It’s probable that the latest version of our modern brain, the neomammalian complex, with all its conscious thinking and reasoning power appeared only about 300,000 years ago, on top of the earlier structure. It truly is an amazing organ… but it is still motivated by that lizard brain, which contains about 85% of the total nerve pathways in the entire brain!
And here’s the science. Thoughts and impulses are bioelectric and travel slowly in the brain, so do not instantly appear everywhere at the same time. If the lizard brain encounters something that was dangerous once it sends a ‘danger’ code to the Amygdala which then generates an emotional response felt in various degrees of anxiety.
But it takes time to get through all those neural pathways in the lizard brain and paleomammalian complex to the conscious emotional brain… getting on for half-a-second in fact. And even if the threat is not valid (and there are hundreds of reasons why that might be the case) the reaction is already under way and cannot be consciously overridden.
And that’s where BWRT comes in. It uses the lizard brain’s own processes to stop the impulse in its tracks long enough for the client to replace it with whatever they prefer before it reaches the amygdala. It doesn’t matter what the original trigger was – BWRT doesn’t need it. It works, it’s fast, and it lasts.
Terence Watts
