0Strangely enough all these things - learning, innovating, socialising and feeling compassion - have a common base called the Social Engagement System. Do you remember Dr Abdul Kalam the former President of India and well known Missile Engineer? I had the pleasure of meeting him and having a short conversation with him. My strongest memory of that time is my wonderment at what a charming man he was. His other accomplishments were somehow overshadowed by this one attribute. He was all these things - learned, innovative, charming socialiser and clearly compassionate.
It was only much later when I started working with children who were on the autistic spectrum and who are presented with the most powerful learning challenges, as well as the inability to socialise and feel for others that I began to understand that Dr Kalam's achievements were all tied together by a common thread. He was just at the opposite end of the continuum from the children I work with.
As I began to research the problems of Autism, I began to understand that many of us have the same problems though in lesser measure. Some of these problems are created by our physiology, and some are created by trauma in our lives. I also learned that many of these problems of social behaviour could be dealt with without medication, i.e. drugs, and without any invasive treatment, i.e. surgery. This is not to say that a complex problem like Autism can be easily cured, but certainly, the social behaviour side of things can be improved - often considerably.
I was lucky to be able to get feedback and guidance in my work from Dr Steven Porges who developed the Polyvagal Theory after 40 years of research. He also developed the Safe and Sound Protocol which merely requires those affected to listen to a program of ordinary vocal music engineered to create an exercise for some crucial muscles in the middle ear which change the tension of the eardrum. This affects our ability to socialise and our ability to learn, through complex mechanisms.
If your heart rate goes up by even a little bit when you hear the low frequency roar of a vacuum cleaner or if you are comforted by your mother's voice and discomfited by your father's, then it is possible that many of your learning problems may come from this middle ear problem.
However, many of us are also affected by trauma from an event that took place either before we came into this world or later. This often manifests itself in some repetitive actions or 'tics' we undertake particularly when we are stressed. For those who are affected by trauma, learning can become a challenging task. Real learning and innovation need you to ideally be in a state of "flow" which we can learn how to do.
Just ten to twenty hours of working with me may be all that you need to solve such problems even though it may take up to 3 months to get the full effect of the work we do in those ten hours.
Samar J. Singh, PhD
