2000 Professional Seminar: Hemi-Sync® in My Psychiatric Practice (Jonathan Holt)

2000 Professional Seminar: Hemi-Sync® in My Psychiatric Practice (Jonathan Holt) (Transcript) NOTE: This is a raw transcript – it is exactly as created by otter.ai. 00:01 pleased to introduce Hemi sync. And he's when he talked to me about doing a presentation, he said that he would like to share what had happened with using Hemi sync and his medical practice. And he has been working hard every day with lots of clients to see and also finally took a brief vacation with his wife and still managed to get an excellent paper into me with some wonderful stories. So he's going to give you some background, and he's going to tell you what happens with some of the patients who he treats and to whom he offers me sick. Dr. Jonathan. Thank you. 00:44 Welcome to my therapy session. I hope it's therapeutic for me, hopefully useful for you. But I will also be invited into the details of some of my work. Somebody asked me earlier or said that they were looking forward to hearing how I integrated Hemi sync into my psychiatry practice. And, and my sense is, I don't know that integrated sounds much too elegant. The word grapple wrestle, and I'm not sure who's, who's winning the match. But I'm basically presenting my work in aspects of my life. This is again, I've been somewhat autobiographical. This conference so far. Some of you may have been here in 97, when I gave a presentation of my work, basically looking at eg spec telegraphy, and NSYNC, at my workplace giveaway, and I got into biographical details about well how that was an interesting experience. But it did finally done man. And I was heading off into private practice. Partly because I think I was burned out by organizational politics. This is to some extent, my progress report several years later, and I will be touching upon what I did in private practice and still do a little bit. But fake being strange, or whatever it is, I have gone back into hospital work, though fortunately not at the same place. And so as much of my presentation will be about how I've been trying to build a program in a hospital consultation practice in Albany. Before I go on with that, I've been struck people were talking about synchronicities, and meaningful coincidences, patterns. And there have been a number that had been jumping out at me today. I first came to a professional seminar in 96. And I came again in 97. And 98. I may have missed count, perhaps of somebody, or if I do, I apologize. But it's my impression that I was just about the only psychiatrist or close to the psychiatrist at each of those conferences. And here, somehow, some place within me was moved to present my work in psychiatry, and it seems to me that there are psychiatrists that are just hanging from the rafters in this particular seminar and, you know, just coincidence or you know, divine punishment, or perhaps, perhaps I will get some useful feedback about how to cope better with with my mostly matches actually, the other coincidence that I probably shouldn't say that I am moved to in terms of ironies of life. I was lucky and enjoy much of the presentation on sleep therapy at Merrick and I saw up on the screen no work hospital sleep disorders. And I was overcome by irony, because in I trained at Yale, I did my medical school training there, and I did my psychiatric residency also with you, and we all had the practice of sending your first year residence, which are interns to the satellite hospitals in Connecticut that are affiliated with Yale. And I was sentenced to Norwalk. And here I am sitting in the dark. Looking up at this slide at, at the irony, the institution that probably had the most damaging effect on my sleep architecture is staring me right in the face. Yes, yes, it's very good at producing sleep disorders, at least, at least an entrance of almost 20 years ago. A friend of mine who was also a graduate of the program, we had competing fantasies. His Fantasy was that as he drove on i 95, which goes past roloc Hospital, which is up on the hill. He saw it as a bright sunny day when the hospital would implode. My fantasy was that I would drive by at night, and it would go up in a dramatic fireball. Yes, yes, yes. And that actually is another issue because one of the techniques that I've been working on and integrating in some of the private practice has to do with with letting go forgiving, and whatever. And you can see that I'm very much a work in progress on that. But we'll get back to that later. 06:41 As I said, I headed out into private practice, summer of 1997. And actually, in May of 98, I was approached by St. Peter's Hospital in Albany, which is a tertiary care hospital 07:06 associated with this sort of Catholic hospital organization on the east coast called Mercy care. affiliated with the medical school, which I had been, and still am affiliated with, and is the competition as it were to the larger hospital. Albany Medical Center. They had one lone psychiatrist, who did all of their consults and who they were burning out. And he was actually doing the consults. part time while he was sort of doing his private practice, and they were about to lose him, and they decided that they didn't want to do this. So they approached me and offered me a halftime job, which about 10 months later became three quarters. So I, I was able to make a living, which had been somewhat difficult in private practice. And so basically, this past year, I've been working in consultation, psychiatry, which another term for it is Medical Psychiatry. Basically, what I do is I take care of patients or see patients that have basically non psychiatric major diagnosis. They are on the medical units, the surgical units, neurology rehabilitation, there is a substance abuse detox unit, but there is no psychiatry unit, which also is one of the reasons why this hospital was valuable and needing my services. Which I hope I've taken good advantage of. This is a special a sub specialty, and I did my fellowship training in consultation liaison psychiatry at Mount Sinai back in 1984. The way that my work is structured has affected how I've been able to introduce Hemi sync and other complementary therapies, new therapies transpersonal therapist basically, I am called in by an attending by a physician sometimes on the recommendation of nursing staff Oh, social work staff. And I'm called in to consult on one of their patients who they have identified as needing my services. So what this means is that I'm called as it were, throughout the hospital, but not necessarily, to those patients that aren't, I think, you know, need my services per se, well on can make use of it. But on the criteria I've basically the attendings asking for, so this limit somewhat, why, what I can do or who I say, but I've tried to make some use of that. Some of it involves basically giving out Hemi sync tapes, which is what I've done, and I've persuaded the hospital to at least reimburse me and consider it to be one of the hospital services and materials. And while not all patients get it, basically, I've adjusted my sights just basically offer it whenever I can, with the hope that I can develop programs, particularly the nursing services, so that at least the programs can reach more people than I can reach alone. I don't have a lot of feedback, as it were, on. Many of these patients aren't called in, they may stay in the hospital a few days, I'll revisit them twice. But I genuinely don't get the opportunity for feedback on most of them. So to some extent, what I'm telling you, I do in those cases is the metaphor that comes to mind is casting bread upon the waters. And I tried to do it with good intent and energy and hope that it does some good. I structure this a bit more, particularly with the detox patients. My window of time there is is quite small, basically because well, when they come in, if they're not in serious withdrawal, then they're sent out within 23 hours. If they're in serious withdrawal, they don't remember anything that I say if they see them in the first day. And so I have this tiny window of time when I can talk to them, sort of see what they need, make my pitch as it were, and then they go, they may go on to a more extended rehab. And actually, it's my hope, in the next year to get involved. At least with teaching at the rehab and offering programs, but at this point, what I have for the substance abuse patients is this little window of time where I get to say okay, you know, how are you doing? Are you depressed? Let them tell me their their story. And as basically worked into it, a quick little question speech about spirituality. And I tell them that my definition of spirituality is meaningfulness in life. And that, therefore, even an atheist can have spiritual experiences, and I asked them about theirs. I get a variety of answers often saying, Well, it's a real problem, or I'm really trying. And at that point, I go through a fairly quick spiel about how whatever their spirituality that there are certain processes that can help them connect in life and harmonize. And I then suggest that if it calls to them that they should pursue that and often we have some relaxation meditation kinds of programs, and I suggest that and then I also mentioned Hemi sync. And in some instances if I think it's a good enough bet, I will just give you tapes and describe how to use it 14:51 it's my hope that at some point, we could actually use Hemi sync and tech check that on the unit on the other hand, there are security problems, things come and go. They're fairly quickly. And it's unfortunate, including on my dad, but $12,000 of my biofeedback and computer equipment. But nevertheless, it's my hope that that will, will develop. But that's basically the chance that I get with that population. Occasionally, I get more of a chance with some surgical patients. And I have a story to tell. I was this was actually a pseudo consults in that I actually knew this patient to other circumstances. This was an 18 year old woman who was a college student, and was basically diagnosed in the middle of her school term with gall stones, which is somewhat unusual in an 18 year old girl, but it turns out that she has a family history of it. And she was there following removal and gall stones with optic visualization, and Visionnaire with pancreatitis, which sometimes happens when you remove gallstones. And so I visited and she was with her mother, and actually a bunch of family members. And you said your sense that there was a lack of opportunity, I said, Would you like some tapes that can help you with with pain and stress? And she said, Yes. And the mother said, Well, Robert, we're kind of interested in any kind of new health technique, alternative health technique. Which kind of surprised me because she's the Rabbi's wife. But it was an intro. So I gave her the tapes and gave her some instructions about how to use them. And then offered to do some Reiki and describe what I was doing. And she accepted it. And so I got to do Reiki on the surgical patient, which was a first for me. And to demonstrate it for her, her mother and the other relatives, and everybody got kind of interested and got interested in the tapes. And then I said, Oh, well, why not. And I taught her mother and the patient, a hula based technique where which I had found I could fairly easily teach to two people in a cancer group that I taught years before in another lifetime. And so I taught the mother how to put one hand on the center and one hand on the barrier towards the area that had discomfort and to regulate with her breathing and to increase the energy, and then taught the patient to do that all sort of in one session. Probably because of the connection, I got feedback, which was that her pancreatitis