(from the discontinued RET Forum)
The eye is telling the brain when to become plastic, rather than the brain developing on its own clock. What might RET do to the brain, then?
Researchers have long sought a factor that can trigger the brain’s ability to learn – and perhaps recapture the “sponge-like” quality of childhood. In the August 8, 2009 issue of the journal Cell, neuroscientists at Children’s Hospital Boston report that they’ve identified such a factor, a protein called Otx 2. Otx2 helps a key type of cell in the cortex to mature, initiating a critical period–a window of heightened brain plasticity, when the brain can readily make new connections.
And where does this protein come from? Interestingly enough, it is developed in the cornea. Basically, when the eye opens and is functional, it tells the brain to start receiving data and learning.
“The eye is telling the brain when to become plastic, rather than the brain developing on its own clock,” says Hensch, who is also a professor at Harvard Medical School and at Harvard University’s Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. In essence, the eye is telling the brain, “The eyes are ready and seeing properly — you can rewire now.”
That finding is very significant to Rapid Eye Technicians because it may help explain the phenomenon that occurs when their clients blink their eyes rapidly in response to the instruction given them by their technician.
As of yet, no study has determined that rapid eyelid blinking can generate the Otx 2 protein identified by the researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston. However, given the anecdotal evidence of thousands of clients reporting significant change in their lives after RET sessions, I feel confident in suggesting that perhaps the basic RET process of rapid eyelid blinking, eye movement, and strong directional languaging, affects a release of Otx 2 and a triggering of the brain into rewiring plasticity.
“The nervous system is recycling an embryonic factor to induce brain plasticity,” says Hensch.
As the brain is triggered into rewiring mode by the rapid blinking process, suggestions given by the technician by way of direct commands to “release” old programming followed by instructions to rewire in a new frame (called “reframing”) offers the client the best conditions for setting real change into their brain. As the brain rewires, so does conscious perception – and eventually subconscious underlying belief.