Positive Health Online

What is Logosynthesis?

Logosynthesis is a new and gentle concept that works well to dispel unhelpful thoughts and to neutralize their associated images.  The name is made up of two ancient Greek words, ‘logos’ and ‘synthesis’ translated as putting together meaning or word.  The combination refers to how words are used to recombine our fragmented parts – literally it is about using words to put people back together.

My Own Experience of Logosynthesis

I was asked to access a traumatic experience.  Although I didn’t think I had one, I recalled a memory, a frozen picture of me alone, an infant in an isolation ward in hospital.  The scene was sterile with no sound or words.  The picture was the same each time I accessed the memory.  I sensed I was desperately looking for my family but could not see them. The image was ‘still’, a drab colour and lifeless and I felt ‘sad’ - the only word I had to describe my emotion about my re-presenting image.

A colleague compassionately fed back her interpretation of my words to me and I heard new words such as ‘isolation’ as she expressed her feelings and interpreted my emotional feelings back to me.  When I used the Logosynthesis sentences I said I felt ‘sad’ and ‘isolated’ and this unexpectedly gave me a breakthrough into adult words and thinking. I was no longer pre-verbal, I had a larger vocabulary and so a means to express greater feelings about the image.  My breakthrough came in a burst. 

I had felt blocked until this point, but suddenly a rush of energy and elation hit me, the scene disappeared, and I flipped and felt happy.  A different scene burst through - it was bright, the images were no longer still but moving and noisy. I felt alive and I felt ‘happy’, ‘happy’, ‘happy’.  A song burst through and shattered the silence of my ‘sad’ picture.  The image was of me dancing in the kitchen to a pop song (from, I think the 70s) that went “I like bread and butter.  I like toast and jam.  That’s what my baby feeds me – and I’m her loving man!”  This odd song choice played in my head for days, and although it was not tasteful – I felt a burst of euphoria each time I heard it.

Although I can still access the image of being in the isolation ward - it no longer has any emotion attached to it.  It is simply an image.

How Logosynthesis Works

Logosynthesis is very new but seems to work in the brain similarly to non-verbal trauma treatments such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and emotional freedom techniques (EFT).  It acts by influencing the processing of stressful events at the limbic system and midbrain levels.  EMDR relies on eye movements for reprocessing, EFT requires tapping on meridian lines.

Logosynthesis Uses the Power of Words in Sentences as its Instrument:

• To retrieve peoples’ energy that is bound up in old representations or images which are activated in the present;
• To remove foreign energy from other people, places or events from your body and personal space;
• To retrieve and reintegrate the energy that’s bound up in your reactions to old representations.

Sentence one involves the client retrieving energy that’s bound up in the trigger for his symptom or condition.  The trigger is a frozen perception, fantasy or belief.  The client takes back the energy from the trigger to his Self.

Sentence two involves the client sending back energy from other people or objects that are associated with the frozen perception to where it truly belongs.

Sentence three involves the client retrieving the energy that is bound up in their own reaction to the frozen perception, fantasy or belief.  Often at this point, the impact of the image is either lessened or has no effect or a new image pops up. 

EMDR, EFT and Logosynthesis Models

In all three models, a distressing issue is identified and activated and the senses collect information about a person’s current reality.  This information is passed to the thalamus within the brain, then to the limbic system which regulates the person’s emotions, memory, and sexual arousal.  Threats that the person experienced directly are stored in the right amygdala.

Re-experiencing the unconscious memory causes the person to feel threatened and the amygdala triggers an alarm in response to the perceived threat.  The alarm causes the hormone cortisol to be released.  Cortisol interrupts the flow of information to the next part of the limbic system the hippocampus. 

Unordered information to the hippocampus cannot be stored and this prevents the person from adequately understanding her current reality.  She, therefore, responds with simplified reflex patterns i.e. fight, flight, or freeze.

How We Become Disassociated

From early life, we build maps of how the world works to help us navigate our way.  These maps are built in part by parents sharing their own memories and beliefs about the world and how it works.  Maps are also built from the child’s own experience of the world.  The child needs recognition and support through these experiences if she is to stay in touch with her Essence. 

If people, especially children, are seriously overwhelmed and left without support, they split off parts of the energy of the original self to act as a coping mechanism.  This action is called ‘first order dissociation’ and contains representations of people and events from a specific time and place.  People can also freeze energy in reaction to threatening, painful or overwhelming events, along with physical, emotional, and cognitive aspects.  These parts are referred to as ‘frozen worlds’.  Introjects and reactions to them (frozen worlds) are entangled.  Activation of one leads to activation of the other.

Logosynthesis uses precisely worded sentences to change our perceptions, emotions and thinking.   The words are used to dissolve frozen energy structures stored in our remembered images of past events.

Reactions To Memories

• If someone asked you ‘where were you when you heard that Princess Diana had died?, or the Twin Towers had been bombed?’ -  you will probably retrieve the same memory and image each time.  There may be no emotion attached to the image because you weren’t involved with the people personally – but we store the same memories and images around us that we collect about events from our daily life.

Our memories can trigger reactions – sometimes distressing physical, emotional, thinking and behavioural reactions.  We perceive energy constructions of people, animals and objects.  They’re invisible, silent and untouchable; we notice them with our ‘mind’s eye’.  Imprints trigger physical, emotional and cognitive reactions.  We know that they’re there – consciously or unconsciously – and they move us. 

Split-off parts and introjects are frozen energy structures in multi-dimensional space – and not just abstract concepts.  They are thought forms, i.e. frozen energy structures in a person’s three-dimensional space.

Logosynthesis uses the power of words to induce change and development.  It helps people to clear out the representations that fill their personal mental museums.  Clients dissolve these frozen worlds by retrieving the energy that the worlds contain and bringing it back to the right place within themselves.  The energy becomes available as soon as it is retrieved. The power of words can neutralise dissociated energy structures and release energy that can then be used for a person’s life mission.

Further Information

Dr Willem Lammers . Self-Coaching with Logosynthesis, How the Power of Words can Change your Life. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Paperback. 2015. Available on Amazon.