Brain Training
I read Phil Parker’s books, and I hired a Lightning Process coach to help me complete the training program over several days. By reading Parker’s An Introduction to the Lightning Process, I gained foundational insights about the dysfunction previously outlined and patient testimonies that helped me to commit to it. Most of the details about the training itself are in Parker’s Get the Life You Love, Now. Even so, my coach was crucial to my recovery. The cure is not found in knowledge but in repeated application of the knowledge to change the mind, brain, and body.
The Lightning Process has three main steps: awareness, interruption, and redirection [8](p. 25).
The first step is awareness. I needed to become aware of anything that was triggering or amplifying the physical emergency response. That is, I needed to become attuned to the thoughts, emotions, and actions (i) that were contributing to the ongoing physical emergency response and (ii) that I was “doing” in a passive way like biting a finger nail without realizing it. My coach introduced the term-of-art verb “dû” to signify a passive kind of “doing” in which I was involved without awareness or intention [9](p. 53).
One difficulty I had with this step was that I still found it hard to believe that I was dû-ing my symptoms. But believing it was also helpful for implementing the Lightning Process. How to proceed?
First, I reminded myself that it could be true for all I knew. Second, I recited supporting evidence: Sally recovered from ME/CFS via the Lightning Process. And research supports surprising connections between the mind, brain, and body: placebos, sugar pills that a person believes are medicine, are almost as effective as Prozac and painkillers at reducing depression and pain, respectively [6](pp. 28-39). Third, I remembered Blaise Pascal’s insight that when evidence is at an impasse, there can be good reasons to accept something as true for a practical benefit [10] (fragment 418, pp. 121-125). So, because reason could not tell me whether or not I was dû-ing my symptoms, I decided to act “as if” I were dû-ing them for a practical benefit.
The second step is interruption. Whenever I noticed that I was dû-ing tired or anxious, I needed to interrupt it. How? I would ask myself a series of questions, answer them, and compassionately coach myself; all the while, I’d move my body to track the different stages of the questions, answers, and coaching [9](pp. 107-159).
That process is a lot, and that’s the main point of it. After I’d completed all of that, I’d have interrupted dû-ing tired or anxious. It’s impossible to do all of those tasks while also dû-ing tired or anxious because the mind can perform only so many tasks simultaneously. And the more often dû-ing tired or anxious was interrupted and thereby failed to stimulate or amplify the physical emergency response, the weaker the neural connection between them became, and the fewer inroads there were to trigger or amplify the physical emergency response.
The third step is redirection. After interrupting dû-ing tired or anxious, I had to redirect my mind. I’d ask myself what I want to feel and be, and then I’d go and relive it by connecting with a vivid memory that exemplified those desires [9](pp. 161-198). I wanted to be energetic like my daughter, and I’d reconnect to a lively memory playing tennis, re-experiencing it as if I were there doing it.
Here’s the memory: I do my serve routine, feeling strength pulse through my muscles. I toss the ball up and arch my back, and then I snap my back and swing through the ball with great force, and I sprint up to the net. My opponent returns the serve, and then I hit it back with a forehand volley. But my opponent chases down my volley, and he returns it with a defensive lob, which prompts me to sprint back to the baseline. I run ahead of the ball, turn and jump to get height, and strike an aggressive forehand right past my opponent, who had charged the net while I was sprinting back to the baseline. In this memory, I feel exactly what it is like to be energetic, strong, and fast. That feeling activated neural pathways that improved physiology, and the repetition of activating those neural pathways, due to the plasticity of the brain, generated neural highways for more robust physiological improvements [8](p. 25).
This is the basic idea behind the Lightning Process. It is called the Lightning Process precisely because people can recover with lightning speed [6](pp. 124-135).
But I was more cautious than my coach recommended me to be. I gradually increased how much I walked per day, carefully keeping track of it on a spreadsheet. I started walking 400 meters twice per day, then three times, and then four times, and up to ten times a day by the end of the third week.
The beginning was the hardest. When I first did a 400-meter walk for the third time in one day, a feat that was previously guaranteed to trigger PEM, my heartbeat raced with anxiety and I felt tired; in fact, I was dû-ing anxiety and tiredness. After coming to that awareness, I interrupted it by using the process. I went through the series of questions, answers, and compassionate coaching, and then I redirected to that powerful memory playing tennis. As an additional help in the beginning, I also distracted myself by looking at my phone. The more it worked (and it always did!), the more confident and excited I became. In the fourth week, I started doing five 800-meter walks per day and up to ten of them per day within a few more weeks. Next, I repeated the approach with 1,200-meter walks, and then 1-mile walks. By the end of three months, I was doing three 3.5-mile walks a day. The point of this slow, methodical regimen was to prove to myself, beyond doubt, that I had recovered fully.
In the first few years after my recovery, I feared that ME/CFS would return after some new viral infection—especially when a virus sapped my energy for more than a week. In those times, I continued to use the Lightning Process, and ME/CFS hasn’t returned.
