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For instance, whenever the temperature of the body rises too much, the process which supervises the secretion of the sweat glands get an elevated "signal" from the heat receptors of the skin, and rises the level of secretion. Afterwards, as the temperature subsides, the suitable feedback supplied by the receptors causes the supervising process to reduce the sweat secretion.
Huge quantities of input and feedback are transferred in the body and the brain via the nervous system. Part of it is the new information about the world, most of it is internal - from one subsystem to all the other relevant ones. Sometimes the distances are very small, sometimes they are greater, but very few are easy to measure by instruments.
Though the study of the feedback processes by means of "biofeedback" training has existed for more than thirty years, there is still no detailed explanation in the public pool of knowledge. The usual explanations are an elegant evasion of the problem, embedded in the vague terms of "learning processes".
The Lost Paradox
It is still a common habit to divide the various activities and processes of our body and mind into voluntary and involuntary processes, as a residual of past ignorance:
Included in the first are such activities as talking, moving, swallowing, thinking - and others we can activate as we wish.
In the second kind, are included those we are not clearly aware of and all these we cannot influence by sheer will-power - previously thought to be immune to voluntary influences. As for instance, the level of sugar in the blood, "brain waves", blood-pressure, the temperature of specific regions of the body, etc. We know now that we can influence all of them, but only using indirect means, and by attending to the various sensations of the body.
However, as it was found that man can influence via biofeedback training even the most subtle processes, the dichotomy and all the conceptualization around it were found to be not valid. The wonder, now, at the way one succeeds in changing one's brain waves through biofeedback training is neither more nor less than that aroused by the act of learning to ride a bicycle.
In spite of the philosophical and psychological difficulties, the dream-like experience of biofeedback training is worth while. Only the one who has experienced the change induced in measuring instrument by the intense concentration of one's attention and will - observed in the monitor of the instrument or in the auditory or visual signal it emits - can appreciate this in full. Only the experience of deliberately causing an unpleasant feeling to dissolve, solely by means of focusing the attention on it, can surpass that experience.
The incomplete story of the emotions and their management comes here to an end. The "theoretical" chapters were introduced in order to help you get a meaningful picture of the self-maintenance system of the operating programs of the mind. This picture may help you recruit your resources in order to treat your emotional system more wisely.
Doing it as recommended in the self training chapter 5, will improve your whole life so much that not only those around will find it hard to comprehend, but you yourself will be amazed. It is a pity no one can yet supply, the final piece of the puzzle which is the mechanism of the brain that writes new information on the new protein chains in the brain cells, and its complementary one - that reads the information already there.
next: Selected Bibliography
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