In this two-hour Lunchtime Learning Session you get to learn and try out for yourself (under the watchful eye of one of the UK’s top Mind Mapping Trainers) the business productivity tool called Mind Mapping

Mind Mapping is often described as the Swiss Army Knife for the Brain as it is a seemingly simple and flexible tool for enhancing productivity.  However it’s virtually impossible to learn both correct technique and the power of its applications from reading a book (like it’s impossible to learn to ride a bike by reading a book) – this is why most business owners/managers have either never heard of it or they can’t get the hang of it.

The best way to learn Mind Mapping is to have an ‘expert’ coax and coach you through it. If you can spare a long lunch break in Birmingham (free parking is available!) then we have put together this wonderful learning opportunity for you to get to understand and use this highly versatile productivity technique

In this interactive session you will learn how and why Mind Mapping improves productivity in the following areas:

• Planning and Preparation

• Project Management

• Thinking clearly and simplifying seemingly complex issues

• Organising ‘Cluttered’ Thoughts

• Preparing a workshop

• Learning and Remembering new stuff (eg New Product Specs or New Client details)

• Improving the Sales Process (Cold Calling, product info etc)

• Improving Confidence

• Delivering a Speech or a Biz Presentation

You will also learn how to:

• Differentiate Mind Maps from Spider and Bubble Diagrams and why this matters

• Construct effective Mind Maps, read other people’s Mind Maps and how the Mind Mapping Principle organises the brain (and even how it can be used to organise your computer hard drive!).

The meeting opens around 11.40am for registration and networking and the Mind Mapping Workshop starts at 12.10pm and finishes at 2pm (though you can stay and network till 2.30pm if you wish). Refeshments and ‘nibbles’ are available during this working workshop.

Workshop Takeaways

After the workshop you have immediate access to a web page with all the handouts and follow-up material available. Takeaways include practical examples where Business Owners are currently using Mind Mapping to enhance productivity across different areas of their business.

See the full details here:

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(Originally Posted by Nina Slingsby on LinkedIn and copied here)

The sales section of this year’s presentations is now well under way and having so far covered who and how to target, along with targeting specific markets in June we will cover more in-depth sales techniques.

We will be joined by Marian Hubble who will focus on Success in Business with NLP. This will include steps to maximising sales, overcoming challenges and being the best you can.

Barry Mapp will follow with a presentation on “Mind Mapping in the Sales Process”.

Mind Mapping has been described as the Swiss Army Knife for the Brain because it is so useful for many different brain activities and tasks. In this session Barry outlines what Mind Mapping is (and it isn’t “spider diagrams”!) and then shares examples of the usefulness of the technique in assisting the Sales Process.

We meet at 12pm for a light lunch and networking followed by our speakers and your chance to ask questions and find out how to increase sales in your business. Event charge of £10 payable on the day but please call Karen on 0121 631 3535 or email sm_gc-birmingham@rank.com to confirm your attendance to this forum and feel free to invite along friends and colleagues to this popular networking event.

Over 18’s only and ID required (passport or driving licence) if this is your first visit to the Casino.

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For me the important part of the term in “Thought Leader” is “Leader”. If you are trusted and well known and respected are you a Leader? Maybe these are necessary characteristics but surely not sufficient.

A Thought leader in my book will be someone well differentiated from a trusted “Thought Follower”.

This means that every true “Thought Leader” must also be an iconoclast in their field. Most Blogs for example are full of interesting content but nearly all reflecting the thoughts of others or opinions about thoughts of others. The Thought Leaders will be the one’s who are challenging much of the current thought, not simply regurgitating it.

When Einstein said that we won’t solve the problems of today by the same thinking that created the problems, he was obviously suggesting that  in order to solve the chronic problems of the day we need to think differently and from a higher, wider or different perspective. Not “more of the same” thinking or “this worked for me thinking” or the “solution is obvious thinking”.

It’s interesting how many of my “Thought Leaders” are, or were, Physicists. It was Bohm for example who devised a way (Bohm’s Dialogue) of allowing new thoughts and new solutions to emerge from a group. It was Deming who identified that Western Management not worker malaise was the biggest threat to continual improvement in Business. It was Eli Goldratt and his Theory of Constraints that  helped manufacturers remove broken links from their value chains and improve performance and profits. Each of these Physicists were looking at issues from outside of the current paradigm. And of course Einstein was a Physicist as well.

So how many people calling themselves “Thought Leader” could also be described as “Iconoclast” coming up with thinking that challenges the grey cells? For me a Thought Leader will be someone – if they do nothing else- makes you stop and think! Also an Iconoclast Thought Leader is unlikely to be “thinking with the majority” and therefore will not always be popular.

Oh and someone has just asked me “Are you a Thought Leader”? Well I’ll let you decide. Here are some of my recent ramblings intended to make you think about your thinking and to signpost possible different directions that your thinking could take in order to find new solutions

http://barrymapp.com/2009/07/it-strikes-me-that-a-lot-of-wh/

http://barrymapp.com/2009/07/iconoclasts-stand-a-very-good/

http://barrymapp.com/2009/07/thinking-in-different-ways-2/

http://barrymapp.com/2009/07/what-makes-a-“creation-company”/

http://barrymapp.com/2009/08/how-rewards-sabotage-creativity/

http://barrymapp.com/2009/10/unintended-consequences-what-do-very-large-bonuses-attract/

http://barrymapp.com/2009/11/bonus-culture-proud-to-win-a-cabbage-not-the-cash/

http://barrymapp.com/2009/07/235/

http://barrymapp.com/2009/07/three-new-words-for-the-21st-century/

http://barrymapp.com/2009/07/lessons-for-science-from-the-mesmer-experience/

http://barrymapp.com/?s=thought+leader

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A scientist requires a hypothesis around which to design experiments and test theory. In other words the scientist likes to have an explanation at the start about how the unexplained observations could happen. Ideally a hypothesis should sit comfortably within the current science paradigm (for when it doesn’t this leads to “resistance” from the orthodoxy).

I have found the metaphor of “healer as tuning fork” to be a helpful hypothesis for healing. During a treatment the healer acts like a tuning fork and the healee like a sounding board. We know that when placing an activated, energised tuning fork onto a sounding board, the board resonates in harmony and that it does this with some vigour. (It is like the vibration is actually amplified when this happens). The same is postulated here for the interaction between healer and healee. From the work of Beck, Cade and Zimmerman, the main frequency of this “tuning fork” effect is probably around 7 Hertz. Indeed perhaps this is a frequency channel that life has reserved for integrating healing and repair throughout its systems. Perhaps what gets in the way of rapid self-healing, is a lack of use, or a “jamming”, of this 7-Hertz frequency by other frequency channels in use. Perhaps healing is just a process of reminding the system that the healing channel exists.

This healing ‘vibration’ is very subtle, not directly perceived through the main sensory channels, and much weaker than for example the Earth’s Magnetic Field (this is why ordinary instruments can’t detect it). Actually we are seeing that the living cell is a far more sensitive apparatus for subtle perturbations in the ‘force’ (shades of Star Wars here) than any scientist’s measuring device. Also it would seem that “wireless” communication (i.e. the pulsating energy field) was a feature of the universe well before the dawn of life itself. So it is hardly surprising that life has evolved with an ability to use such pre-existent technology. Life utilised wireless communication before vodophone and O2! The clockwork-mechanism-universe is a very outdated metaphor indeed.

So 21st Century Science needs a more updated way of seeing and thinking, and it does not especially have to be a “Quantum Science” .

Albert Szent-Gyorgi set the tone that underlies the thinking of those who have been pioneers in this area.

If you asked a chemist to find out what a dynamo is, he would dissolve it in hydrochloric acid. A molecular biochemist would take it to pieces, describing carefully the helices of wire. Should you suggest that what is driving the machine is an invisible fluid called electricity, he would scold you as a “vitalist”. The fuel of life is the electron. The living cell is essentially an electrical device. The macromolecular structure is (just) its framework, in which the transduction of electrical energy into mechanical work takes place. Albert Szent Gyorgi        Pioneer of Bioelectronics

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In the last blog, I mentioned that most Doctor’s and Scientists appear to practise ‘scientism’ rather than ‘science’. This is NOT a new phenomenon and we can see that this was often the case back in the 1700’s.

Let’s take a look at the story of healing from Mesmer and see if much has changed in regard to how scientists perceive healers and healing.

As you read on, focus on what I said previously about scientism – that when practicing scientism, if the observations don’t fit the belief held, than the observations are either (1) ignored (2) attacked as being false or some ‘magic trick’ (3) manipulated to fit the belief.

Because ‘hands-on healing’ (or distance healing or other types of healing) doesn’t fit comfortably with any Newtonian Model of Science, doctors practicing scientism will defend their Scientific Beliefs (using methods 1,2,or 3) rather than pay proper attention to what is actually happening and so don’t properly observe and have no inclination to investigate what they see. Most doctors will simply say ‘there isn’t any evidence that healing works’.

In this example below with a French Royal Commission set up in 1784 to investigate Mesmer’s Healing Technique, there was clear evidence that healing worked at some level – as most of the patients got better.

What wasn’t clear was HOW it worked and a true scientist would therefore want to set up experiments to ascertain the ‘how’.

Instead these commissioners used their expertise to DENY that Mesmer had demonstrated any real effects worthy of further exploration. Only one of the scientists a botanist called (Jussieu) appeared  to value science rather above scientism. See what you think -

The story of healing – from Mesmer to the Present

Mesmer was a scientist and healer living in the mid-1700’s.

Using a technique he described as “animal magnetism” (initially using magnets until he discovered that just using his hands had the same effect), Mesmer’s healing work became fashionable in Paris but irritated eminent physicians and scientists of the time. A Royal Commission, chaired Benjamin Franklin, was set up by Louis XV1 in 1784 to investigate Mesmer’s method.

The Commission’s Report when completed labelled Mesmer a Charlatan.

The crucial evidence cited against his method was that blindfold patients (Mesmer used a “hands off”or “hands-over” healing technique) did not demonstrate the patient bodily rigour that usually happened during his regular treatments. The fact that patients behaved differently blindfolded was evidence enough for the Commission to report that this technique was a sham (though in the blindfolded cases the patients also improved).

The Commission’s viewpoint was that “all could be explained by the patient’s imagination”.

A minority report by the botanist Jussieu dissented from this view and he felt that sufficient evidence had been provided “to make us admit the possibility of the existence of a fluid, or agent, which is communicated from one man to another, and sometimes exercises on the latter a sensible action”.

Who practised the good science? Franklin or Jussieu?

Which theory better predicted the facts – the unseen magnetic-type force proposed by Mesmer, or the Commission’s theory of imagination?

And if imagination was the key, why was this not explored further. Why did the scientists not remain curious as to how this allowed patients to get better (most were patient’s who were put forward by the physicians themselves that had not been helped by the physician’s treatments).

The Commission’s findings raised many questions for valid scientific investigation but the results were merely used for the purpose of discrediting Mesmer and not to advance scientific learning.

Would a Commission investigating healing conclude anything different today?

Probably not! We have some recent possible pointers. In the last 10 years at least one American State was reported to have banned healing (specifically a form called therapeutic touch) in their Hospitals, because researchers “disproved” the theory upon which it was based even though it appeared to have beneficial effects (animal magnetism in 18th Century, energy fields in the 20th Century).

Again not long ago in the UK there was the “scandal” of a healer and the England football team. The healer was “sacked” because of her beliefs and not because she was ineffective in accelerating players recover from injury.

Coming Next:

More on the England football Team Healer (who was sacked), as well a description of some simple experiments that open-minded scientists around the world could quickly and easily undertake in order to validate that healing is for real and that it is worthy of an extensive input of funding for research to the potential benefit of all.

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(adapted from an article “The Science of Healing and the Healing of Science” published in Resource Magazine September 2005, Author: Barry Mapp)

We don’t realise how much our existing theories and beliefs prevent us from seeing new things clearly.

How the Scientist’s beliefs stop them seeing clearly

A principle of science is that ‘what actually happens’ comes before ‘how do things happen’. Thus the first stage of science comes from observation and experience. Then comes a hypothesis (a preliminary belief), then come experiments to see if the hypothesis holds water. What many scientists actually practice is not ’science’ but ’scientism’ which is the opposite of science – where the belief (the need to know how things happen) comes first and observation (what happens) comes second.

Thus when practicing scientism, if the observations don’t fit the belief held, then the observations are either (1) ignored (2) attacked as being false or some ‘magic trick’ (3) manipulated to fit the belief.

Because ‘hands-on healing’ (or distance healing or other types of healing) doesn’t fit comfortably with the Newtonian Model of Science, doctors practicing scientism defend their theory (using methods 1,2,or 3) and don’t properly observe and investigate the potential phenomenon. Most doctors will say ‘there isn’t any evidence that healing works’.

However any doctor who can suspend judgement about healers and healing long enough to search the world’s literature, will find plenty of published material (but not in the Lancet or the British Medical Journal) demonstrating that healing has “medical” effects worthy of further investigation. So we have to assume that most doctors practice scientism.

How the Healer’s beliefs stop them seeing clearly

Equally “healers” are often unaware how their theories and beliefs prevent them from seeing things clearly and they too must be prepared to change their beliefs if they want to move healing forward.

Scientists and healers suffer from the same problem. They both use outdated concepts or “out-of-context” theories to explain how things happen. (see more about unhelpful ways of thinking here). Healers are often using theories and explanations which go back thousands of years, whilst openly criticising the scientists who cling to Newton’s ideas that are much more recent. We need a pragmatic view of theory. No explanation or model is ever complete or “true”. What is important therefore, is not to argue over who or what is “right”, but to find explanations or metaphors that are useful, that most people can accept, and that allows predictions to be made and theory to be tested.

For example, some healers say that the cause of illness is “evil spirits”. A few hundred years ago or more this may have been a reasonable theory. However today this metaphor is outdated. Other healers invoke their religion, reincarnation, or their “spirit guides” as integral to their healing but none of these are essential to what they do. These beleifs simply provides a stream of potential red herrings (and an uncomfortable feeling) for the scientist. If healers want their form of healing to become mainstream, and thus part of everyday medical practice, they have to conceive explanations that are aligned with present day context and knowledge (even if some of that knowledge is “wrong”). As Newton’s Thinking is still predominant in science, the healer must speak with metaphors that the scientist understands (rather than jumping on the Quantum Theory bandwagon as most are doing – a bandwagon that has yet to starting rolling in the corridors of power)

Coming next: Lessons for science from the Mesmer experience

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(adapted from an article “The Science of Healing and the Healing of Science” published in Resource Magazine September 2005, Author: Barry Mapp)  Continuing to set the scene on Science and Healing

We don’t realise how much existing theories and beliefs prevent us from seeing new things clearly.

A doctor who can suspend existing judgement about healers long enough to search the world’s literature will find plenty of published material (but not in the Lancet or the British Medical Journal) demonstrating that healing has “medical” effects worthy of further investigation.

Equally “healers” are often unaware how their own theories and beliefs can prevent them from seeing things clearly and they too must be prepared to change their pet theories if they want  to be accepted by the scientific community .

So scientists and healers suffer from the same problem. They both use outdated concepts or “out-of-context” theories to explain how things happen. Healers are often using theories and explanations which go back thousands of years, whilst openly criticising the scientists who cling to Newton’s ideas that are much more recent.

We need a pragmatic view of theory. No explanation or model is ever complete or “true” (see here). What is important therefore, is not to argue over who or what is “right”, but to find explanations or metaphors that are useful, that most people can accept, and that allows predictions to be made and theory to be tested.

For example, some healers say that the cause of illness is “evil spirits”. A few hundred years ago or more this may have been a reasonable theory. However today this metaphor is outdated.

Other healers invoke their religion, reincarnation, or their “spirit guides” as integral to their healing but none of these are essential to what they do. Such theories simply provide a stream of potential red herrings (and an uncomfortable feeling) for the scientist. If healers want their form of healing to become mainstream, and thus part of everyday medical practice, they have to conceive explanations that are aligned with present day context and knowledge (even if some of that present day knowledge is “wrong”).

As Newton’s Thinking is still predominant in science, the healer must speak with metaphors that the scientist understands (rather than jumping on the Quantum Theory bandwagon as most are doing – a bandwagon that has yet to starting rolling in the corridors of power). In a later blog I will be sharing a Newtonian metaphor for healing.

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How often do we think about these two words? It is very unlikely that we share a common understanding of what these words represent and yet they are two words that are very important. So here goes.

Healing is an intrinsic process and represents the internal resources and processes available to each organism for the purpose of bodily maintenance and repair. Healing is thus the totality of processes and mechanisms within an organism that maintains wellbeing, balance and integrity. There, that wasn’t too bad was it?

Healing is something that is normally happening each and every day within all of us. Illness happens when the natural healing mechanisms are either overwhelmed, blocked or the energy or resources necessary to maintain wellness are either not available or have been diverted elsewhere.

Healing is also used to describe what a healer does in the process of the “laying on of hands” and when used in this context it has a slightly different meaning.

It is perhaps unfortunate that we don’t have another word for it, but in this context healing can be interpreted as “facilitating natural healing processes” (the processes just described). These two separate meanings (the natural intrinsic processes themselves and the facilitating of these processes) get mixed up by science and religion and this causes confusion.

A Definition of Healer

Again it is likely that we don’t have a common understanding of what we mean by healer. So lets devise a description that is inclusive for all those that would call themselves by this name:-

A Healer is a person who can help potentiate the natural healing processes in others, either through accelerating existing healing mechanisms (rather like a catalyst can accelerate a chemical reaction), or facilitating changes in a clients “physiology” towards “states” more conducive to the natural healing process. (Deep relaxation for example is an important pre-requisite for maximisation of the body’s natural healing processes)

This broad definition (potentiates the natural healing processes in others) allows a wide range of people to call themselves “healers” from doctors through to witchdoctors. The scientific approach to Healing and Healer would be to discover through research which of the ‘healing modalities’ have the most positive effects, which maximise the power of the placebo effect and which modalities do much more than placebo. With proper scientific study, I am confident that healers can demonstrate in many situations measurable positive effects far beyond placebo (and this will be discussed later). ANd subsequent blogs will outline the evidence so far that hand-on healing has real measurable effects

But we need to be clear that whenever a healer is at work, the “cure”, “repair” or “healing” itself is probably always done from within the patient by the patient’s own internal healing mechanisms (As healers are facilitators and healing is intrinsic). What the healer (most probably) does is to provide “information” that can assist the healing process. For any therapist, there will be the positive placebo aspect of communication that can be at a verbal level (words and tonality), or whole-body level (actions and behaviour of therapist). However with many therapies there are influences at work over and above placebo and this appears to be particularly so for “hands-on” healing which is the focus for this series of blogs.

One of the key features of healing over and above placebo is that it appears to elicit effects at a cellular level thus bypassing the need for mental or physical input by the patient themselves and here the low-frequency energy vibration through the healer’s hands provides the most convincing likely explanation. (Thus ‘belief’ is not required for success to ‘healing’ as sometimes thought, only an open-mindedness to accept the process without reservation).

How a healing modality communicates at a cellular level is not known but is definitely worthy of investigation and could lead to major scientific breakthroughs in other areas. It is likely a similar effect to low frequency pulsating electromagnetic fields which have been shown scientifically to influence rates of tissue repair.

Coming Next: Scientists and Healers need an Open Mind

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(adapted from an article “The Science of Healing and the Healing of Science” published in Resource Magazine September 2005,  Author: Barry Mapp)

“Do you remember how electric currents and unseen waves were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy” – Albert Einstein

Continuing to set the scene on Science and Healing

It seems amazing that scientists appear to know more about the far reaches of the Universe, than they do about the interactions that occur between a healer’s hands and living tissue. And real ‘interactions’ do occur. I have seen for myself with simple EEG equipment how the ‘laying-on-of-hands’ evokes a very rapid change in the recipient’s brainwaves. So why has there been so little research done in the area of hands-on healing? Particularly when science is meant to be about seeking to explain interesting phenomena. Well some of the many reasons for this lack of interest will be discussed over the next few blogs. But I want to point out here that it is not all the fault of the scientists.

Healers themselves contribute to the problem whereby scientists don’t take them seriously. For healers tend to over-elaborate what they do and how they do it and they continue to use a language that the scientist does not understand (although scientists often use language that the lay-person cannot understand!)

Also it is not just Science that has a ‘problem’ with healers and healing. Some branches of Religion also have an issue unless the ‘healing’ comes from within its own scriptures and teaching (although many mainstream religions themselves don’t seem to “do” hands-on healing anymore).

However healing actually transcends religion and none have sole ownership of it. Any person of any race, colour or creed can learn to do healing.

You can do it in your God’s name if that is your way, but you don’t have to (though it must be one of the Creator’s most amazing creations).

So we live in a society that is full of both Religious and “Newtonian” myths, which have conditioned us as a society to marginalise or make fun of those things that appear to challenge the current reality.

Many writers and journalists are also disbelievers of most things ‘alternative’ and they are always looking for the big story opportunity to ridicule and often do this by seeking out the really “wacky” and slightly (sometimes grossly) eccentric examples, because this makes for a good story.

In 2009 it is true that you are unlikely to be burned at the stake as a “healer”. However you can still be crucified (metaphorically) by the media, the law, other scientists, or a religious community if you raise your “healers” head too far above the parapet.

It seems to me that the difficulty society has with healing is at two possible levels. The language level (the meaning of the word) and the conceptual (explanation) level. To overcome the language problem, we need a definition of healing that is acceptable to science, religion and to healers and we will explore such a definition in the next blog

Coming next: an operational definition of healing

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(adapted from an article “The Science of Healing and the Healing of Science” published in Resource Magazine September 2005, Author: Barry Mapp)

Most people would agree that science has rarely taken healing and healers seriously. Therefore science has never properly researched or investigated the phenomena that may be at work.

Science therefore has a major “blind-spot” in its knowledge base, possibly ignorant of a whole range of naturally occurring subtle phenomena that happen within and between living things. Coincidently, science appears “stuck” between two apparently conflicting paradigms.

On the one hand the science writers tell us how Quantum Ideas have long replaced Newtonian Thinking. On the other hand, at the cultural and grass roots level of scientific research and practice (particularly the biological sciences), we see that this “old” paradigm is still predominant.

Little has changed since the 1700’s when healers were often labelled as witches or charlatans. At the start of the 21^st century we appear a little more accepting of healing though not because of scientific understanding or study, but rather through positive patient experiences and “word of mouth” testimonial.

So today we can see healers at work in Hospice or Cancer Care Units, but rarely in medical and surgical wards, where the healers could potentially save the NHS millions, if not billions, of pounds a year.

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