Neuro Emotional Technique (NET)
Emotions are normal and natural and fine. But if emotions get out of hand, if they are at the wrong time, in the wrong place, they can actually cause dis-stress on our body. Emotions, in many scientific studies, have been shown to be a causative agent in many, many diseases.
~Dr. Scott Walker, Chiropractor, and Developer of Neuro Emotional Technique (NET)
Why emotions are the hidden key to our health.
We have stress throughout our lives, and it is normal to have an emotional response to significant events and then return to our ‘normal’ state of being.
Sometimes, however, we are not able to adequately express our emotions at the time the stressful event was happening.
This happens for many reasons. We may have been too young to process what was happening. Perhaps, we were in a crisis, where we had to respond quickly and not feel. We may have been in an environment, where we could not feel our feelings or that our feelings were wrong in some way.
Many of us were taught that it was not okay to express our negative emotions.
Most of us did not grow up in ‘emotionally healthy’ families. We absorbed all sorts of messages about how to be and how to feel.
We found out quickly that if we followed these ‘family messages,’ we were usually rewarded in some way. Sometimes, good behaviors gave us good rewards.
However, many times, these ‘positive rewards’ or ‘bribes’ became maladaptive coping patterns. Habitually escaping into food, video games, or TV sets us up later in life to NOT deal with the ways that we check out to stay ‘good.’
If we didn’t follow the messages or ‘rules,’ we were likely punished. The punishment could be mild to severe, involving emotional, physical, or sexual abuse.
Many of us, especially men, are told that if we have emotions, it makes us weak or pathetic.
How many times have you heard things like “Don’t cry! If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about!” or “Real men don’t get angry, they get even.” We learn very quickly in life that it is better for us to stay inside the ‘family rules.’
Our communities are the other likely places where we learn how to feel or behave. Most of us have at least one story of feeling embarrassed or humiliated in school, gym class, at home, or in our place of worship.
The vulnerability is so painful that many of us vow to never experience that feeling again.
It does not feel safe when others are laughing and benefitting from our vulnerabilities. Often, these same people bring up the same painful events over and over, as they laugh at us and wound us again. It is humiliating, and these events sear into our psyche and bury deep in our core.
These are the events that we still replay on a loop in our minds today.
Many of these events in my life happened long ago. Is it necessary to bring it up again? Won’t that just make it worse?
Just because we don’t express our emotions doesn’t mean we didn’t have them.
If we experience a painful event, and we are unable to express our emotions, our bodies store the feeling and memory like emotional cellulite in the vital organs of our bodies. Without intervention, eventually these vital organs become sluggish and are more susceptible to disease.
~Kris Kirkbride
Because our bodies remember what these events feel like, we are hypersensitive any time another event appears remotely similar to the original event.
Our bodies remember how we responded in the past, and our brains respond again in the same way as before. After all, your brain and body remember how you survived that event or attack, and their job is to keep you safe and alive.
Is there a way to permanently resolve these old, painful emotions?
Yes, and it is called Neuro Emotional Technique or NET. This technique is simple, non-invasive, quick, and very potent. NET can find old imbalances in your physical or emotional body, and with a carefully designed sequence of steps, NET can restore your physiology back to homeostasis or ‘normalcy.’
In short, how does NET resolve my traumas or painful past events? How does it prevent me from reliving these events?
A trained NET practitioner investigates what emotion needs to be released, where in your body the emotion is stored (utilizing applied kinesiology or muscle testing), and your age at the time you experienced the painful emotion.
You and your practitioner together determine what significant event happened at that time.
Once the event has been found, there is a specific sequence to ‘release’ your mind and body from holding on to that event.
Your body is like a combination lock.
Remember, in junior high or middle school, when we got our first combination lock for our locker? We practiced a bunch of times to perfect the combination. Right to 27, Left to 18, and Right 3.
When we lined all three numbers in the right sequence, the shackle opened and released the lock. Otherwise, the lock would stay locked.
Our bodies are very much like a combination lock, and we need someone competent and savvy to assist us in opening the events in our past and to bring these events to a resolution in our bodies. Then, we move on with our lives.
If this sounds amazing, please call me or fill out the contact form below, and I would be happy to discuss your current issues and see if NET might assist you on your road to health.
I offer a free, one-hour consultation to determine if we are a good fit for each other.
Can you tell me more about this NET technique and why it is important to me in my life now?
I invite you to think back to when you wanted to begin a new behavior or a new resolution.
The new behavior could be waking a half-hour earlier, working out, or starting a new eating plan. Were you successful? Did the new behavior last?
Most of the time, we fail at these resolutions because there is a large part of our brains that does not believe this new behavior will be good for us.
Think about the reasons or excuses we use to discontinue these new healthy behaviors; “I’m too tired, it’s too hard, I don’t feel like it.”
These are just our surface beliefs. If we look into why we stop our new behaviors before succeeding, it has to do with our three brains feuding with each other, instead of being in sync.
Wait, we have three brains instead of one?
Are you saying that my three brains are feuding with each other, and that is stopping me from having the life I want?
Within our complex human brain, we have three specific areas that perform very different functions for us.
Let us start with a basic description of our three brains, so you can understand how it seems that we are ‘sabotaging’ or working against ourselves:
Our reptilian or survival brain
All living creatures have a survival brain that is unconscious to us. It is the brain that is still alive and functioning when we are in a coma.
It performs the functions our body needs to live without us ever thinking about it (like blinking our eyes and pumping blood to our heart).
Our survival brain’s sole purpose is to keep us alive. It also is called the fight or flight brain. If something is coming at us, like this snake, we impulsively decide to either fight, flee, or freeze.
In the regular world, our survival brain works like this:
You are driving in traffic, you round the curve, and you suddenly see dozens of red taillights. You put your foot on the brake immediately without even thinking to yourself,“Oh, there’s a threat here. I should brake now.”
Your survival brain hijacks your other two brains to save your life. There is no choice to make because your survival brain makes it for you.
Another example is when you accidentally touch the top of the hot stove and instinctively pull away. We don’t think consciously,“Oh, this is really hot. Maybe I’ll move my hand away.”
The Survival brain is so important! It wants to keep you alive, and every time there is a threat or a perceived threat, this survival brain takes over and ‘grabs the wheel’ for you.
Now, these examples are normal events and occurrences. However, if slamming on the brakes in traffic eventually results in you having anxiety about driving, then Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) could permanently resolve the emotional charge you have now about driving.
This survival brain is fundamental for any true personal growth and development to occur.
Our Mammalian or Emotional Brain
This brain is called the Mammalian brain because you have to be a human or another mammal like this leopard to possess this brain.
This Emotional brain is responsible for all our emotions and feelings. This brain is working all the time, and as the survival brain, it is always on alert. Our Emotional brain is timeless, and it cannot distinguish if something happened today, yesterday, or 30 years ago. It acts like it is happening now.
This brain is subconscious, so we only have access to it sparingly, such as when we dream, have flashbacks of events, or when our stressful responses alert us to it.
Here are a couple of real-life Emotional Brain examples:
You are entering a new restaurant, and you smell this effervescent marinara sauce that immediately takes you back to your grandmother’s kitchen as a child.
Your grandma always made you feel seen and safe, and her spaghetti with meatballs and marinara sauce tasted like heaven. When you were eating it with her, you felt like all was right in the world.
Your feelings have transported you back to a positive time in your life. Immediately, you have an amazing fondness for this restaurant, even though you have never tried the food.
Conversely, you are visiting the hospital to see a friend, who has just had a baby.
As you enter the hospital, you can see and hear all of the sights, sounds, and smells. The setting is so similar to the hospital where you stayed for six weeks following being hit 14 years ago by a drunk driver. You are trembling, frightened, and need to leave.
No matter how much you may want to see your friend and her new baby, your Emotional brain has hijacked your other two brains to say, “STOP! I cannot continue.”
There is no choice to make. Like the Survival brain, your Emotional brain has chosen for you.
These examples remind us that we have stored many stressful events and have made up numerous beliefs and habitual thoughts about ourselves and others.
Some of these thoughts and emotions are healthy, but many of them are harmful and hurtful.
When this Emotional brain does not want to move forward because of fear, shame, or anger, no matter what we may THINK we want, we will find a way to squash our growth in some way. This Emotional brain now takes the wheel of our psyche.
Our neocortex or thinking brain
This Thinking brain is reserved for humans and is completely conscious to us.
It is the brain that we mistakenly think of as being operative most of the time.
The Thinking brain helps us learn and remember things like the Pythagorean theorem or where we parked our car.
We spend lots of our financial resources and efforts to memorize, to document, and to justify our self-worth through promotions, good grades, or extra letters behind our names.
10% vs. 90%
The truth is that scientists and psychologists believe that less than 10% of our total brain function comes from our Thinking Brain. That means that our Survival and Emotional brains make up the remaining 90%.
Remember the new healthy resolutions and positive behaviors I mentioned earlier? It stands to reason that most of us cannot adopt new, healthy behaviors or create the life we want because sometimes only 10% of us are on board!
So much of our culture is about talking through our Thinking brain to solve many of our issues.
Life coaches, personal trainers, and therapists all typically focus on the Thinking Brain and sharing strategies for their clients to implement for success.
As you can see, there is only lasting success if the issue is simply with our Thinking Brain!
How can I get ahead and have the life I want when only a fraction of me is ‘All In’?
That is a terrific question.
If we want to get to the root of our issues, we need to speak with our Emotional and Survival brains directly.
Much of the time, we are not aware of the What, the Why, or the How of our Emotional or Survival Brains. These brains only want to keep us alive and safe.
The trouble is that keeping us safe and secure in our comfort zone is not where any personal growth happens.
The growth can only happen if we are willing to address our subconscious patterns and beliefs. It is only then that we begin to experience the magic of transformation.
There are many healing modalities out there that attempt to address our Emotional and Survival brains. Some we can learn by ourselves to help us manage some emotions, and others need to be performed by a qualified and competent professional.
What exactly is Neuro Emotional Technique?
Neuro Emotional Technique, or NET, is a mind-body technique that uses a methodology of finding and removing neurological imbalances related to the physiology of unresolved stress patterns.
NET is not psychotherapy. It is a technique that releases toxic emotions that have been contributing to emotional and physical pain. Remember earlier how our unexpressed emotions get stored in our vital organs like emotional cellulite? This technique finds and removes our ‘emotional cellulite’ imbalances.
If you know you need help but don’t know where to begin, NET is a great first step toward healing.
In my experience, NET is the swiftest and most effective vehicle to synchronize all three brains.
In fact, in my professional experience, about 15 one-hour NET sessions of transformative releasing are the equivalent to one entire year of traditional (Thinking brain only) talk psychotherapy.
Instead of waiting until one of your brains hijacks the other two, we can work together and begin to discover why the brains believe they have to save you from yourself in the first place.
NET needs to be performed by a licensed and trained practitioner. My training and expertise as a psychotherapist paired with my NET certification since 2004 can assure you that we can handle anything your nervous system or your three brains need to bring up.
You ARE in the right place.
If you are now ready to begin and experience this technique for yourself, please call me to schedule a one-hour free consultation to begin to address the 90% that is keeping you stuck.
Don’t delay! Your new sense of health and well-being can begin soon.
NET is a scientifically validated technique that works.
Since 1988 when Dr. Scott Walker developed the NET technique, the research wing of NET (known as the ONE Research Foundation) has been funding research for over 20 years to validate this technique (visit www.onefoundation.org for more info).
The study below conducted in 2017 at Thomas Jefferson University Medical School Department of Integrative Medicine in Philadelphia, PA, demonstrates the effects of NET on brain physiology in patients experiencing stress symptoms.
Figure 1 shows the fMRI before NET was administered, and Figure 2 is after the NET was performed. Subjects had between 4-5 one-hour sessions of NET, and that was the only intervention.
In the history of integrative medicine, it is the first time that a mind-body intervention normalized the hippocampus (Emotional brain) in the brain.
“The results of the study were really quite dramatic. In just four to five brief sessions, patients who received NET reported much less distress; their overall emotional state improved significantly, and the way their brains reacted to stress cues normalized.”— Monti, D.A., Tobia, A., Stoner, M. et al. “Neuro-emotional technique effects on brain physiology in cancer patients with traumatic stress symptoms: preliminary findings.” J Cancer Surviv (2017). doi:10.1007/s11764-017-0601-8.
There is a full feature-length documentary about NET called Stressed. It can be found streaming on Amazon Prime, as well as through many other resources on the NET webpage www.netmindbody.com.
NET is beginning to become more widely known. Part of this is due to a dedicated storyline on NET showcasing doctor Owen Hunt on Grey’s Anatomy. You can watch it here: ‘Owen tries Therapy’.
In short, this technique works, and it works well.
Doctors Deb and Scott Walker, co-developers of NET
Okay, it could change my brain for the better. How exactly does it work?
Dr. Scott Walker, a chiropractor, wanted to find out why certain patients seemed to hold their adjustments, and others did not.
Through many years of study of Eastern and Western medicine, he figured out that if a patient were getting adjusted WHILE also thinking about the car accident or another event that injured them, the same vertebrae would NOT come out of alignment.
By having the patient think of the event (Thinking Brain), while touching their hand across their forehead (activating the Emotional Brain) and at the same time Dr. Walker adjusting a specific vertebrae on the patient (Survival Brain/spinal cord), patients not only physically felt better but reported that emotionally they felt so much relief.
He began teaching it to other chiropractors, acupuncturists, psychiatrists and other medical doctors in 1988.
NET synthesizes all three brains in a simple, non-invasive way.
Eventually, Dr. Walker discovered that he could achieve the same results without having to adjust the spine but could utilize acupuncture points on the wrists to get the same results.
He began to introduce NET to psychologists, clinical social workers, and professional counselors. If you would like more information, please go to www.netmindbody.com.
How did you become so interested in this technique?
After college, I worked as a social worker and advocate for homeless youth.
After many years in that environment, I burned out, took a break, and began working in environmental sales and marketing. It was a 100% commission sales job, and I was horrible at it. I mean, REALLY HORRIBLE.
I was so horrible at sales that I amassed over $16,000 in credit card debt in the first two years. I didn’t even break even.
A mentor came to me and said that he thought I had issues with feeling like I did not deserve to make big money and that I should see this doctor that does this mind-body technique that helped him and others.
He said this doctor could find out where in my brain I was not okay with making a high income, and by knowing this, he could help me release it.
There was a big decision to make.
On the one hand, seeing this doctor across the country for a week was going to cost me a whole bunch of money and offer me no guarantee that it was going to work.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to keep struggling financially, and I didn’t want to go back to social work. I was miserable and could not understand why ‘all these other people’ could make sales so much more easier than I did.
So, I made the unknown leap, and I jumped.
I took a chance, jumped on a plane to Los Angeles and put my whole trip on a credit card.
After 16 clinical hours in one week in this doctor’s office, where I experienced NET, I flew back to Atlanta, realizing that my Lutheran church upbringing had been partially responsible for holding me back from being okay making a high income.
What I learned about my emotional brain
For my Emotional brain, the idea that MONEY=POWER was at odds with what I had absorbed from all of the sermons I had listened to in my youth.
I mistakenly believed that the only way I could help others was to be like them, and that meant that I had to ‘fit in’ and not stand out as too flashy or having too much money.
My Emotional brain was not okay making one penny more than I did as a social worker. If I made any more money, I was no longer a ‘good person.’ I was one of ‘those people’ that want to make money off of others (i.e., ‘bad’).
Subconsciously, I was choosing to struggle financially to maintain being ‘good’ and not to feel alone or potentially ostracized.
After that intensive week, things began to feel different and shift for me. I no longer felt stuck in my life and my career.
Three months after the week of NET treatments, I made $11,000 in one month and could feel the ease and flow of money. That was a far cry from the $13 an hour I had been making as a social worker. I started winning the sales contests and won this skydiving trip! I was a believer!
I began to see other NET practitioners to help me with other issues that I knew were holding me back but couldn’t pinpoint how they were hindering me.
My entire life shifted on its axis in that first year or two of receiving NET treatments. I ended an unhealthy relationship, quit my sales job, moved across the country, enrolled in graduate school, and became inspired to be a NET practitioner.
Found my purpose and my Jam
I had now found my passion and my purpose, and I began to dedicate my career to invite others to experience their transformation and receive their amazing results with NET.
I have been blessed to be certified in this technique since 2004 and selected by Dr. Walker and the NET organization to coach, test, and certify new doctors and practitioners, so that NET can continue to transform as many lives as possible.
I am inviting you to decide to investigate with me to see what your Emotional and Survival brains need, so that all three brains work together, and you can leap ahead in your own life.
My clients have had similar successes in their own lives.
You may be thinking, “Well, that’s great for you, Kris. What about other folks?”
I know sometimes it is hard to imagine how you get from where you are now to where you want to be. I know I felt that way being so far in debt.
I have asked several of my clients to share their experiences with you so that you can begin to trust and leap. You can find about 20 of their stories on my Testimonials page.
Now it is your turn.
Are you ready, willing, and able to leap like so many of my clients and me and finally find out what is holding you back?
If so, call me now!