By Patrick Moore

Part One of Three – Refuting Mind-Body Duality

Last Tuesday I was teaching a workshop for massage therapists. The topic was deep tissue using your elbow. I rarely use this technique any more but it used to get me great results, and a lot of therapists ask that I repeat the class regularly.

In all my workshops, I use the first minutes to ask each of the participants, what do you hope to get from the workshop?

On Tuesday they all said the same thing. Their clients always tell them to go deeper.

Does it serve them to go deeper, I asked.

This got them all talking! Each said that going deeper doesn’t relieve muscle tension.

Then why do you want to learn it, I asked.

To please the customers.

I wasn’t expecting that answer. I wasn’t willing to teach them a technique they didn’t believe would be therapeutic. So we talked longer than normal, before getting started with any technique. I asked, why wouldn’t deep tissue help the muscles relax?

Because muscle tension is in their mind, said Amy. For a couple of years she had tried the physical methods she learned in massage school. But she didn’t notice much change in a one-hour session. Worse, she didn’t see any therapeutic results. By the time people came in for another massage, they were just as physically tense as they had been the time before.

In case you didn’t know this already, massage therapists (who last) are usually the kind of people who want to make a difference in people’s lives. What’s a therapist to do when the techniques she was taught, don’t work? In fact, the vast majority of therapists have given up on the career within one or two years after graduating from massage school.

But Amy had an idea. She tried a non-physical approach. When she could get away with it, during a massage she would get people talking about their mental tensions. And now after six years practicing, she feels the mental approach is the only thing that helps them relax.

Massage therapists are trained to work only physically. Yet Amy says that physical measures are useless. If she is correct, the whole profession is a sham.

Responding to Amy’s comment took an hour of group discussion, but I believe it served them all well. Now a week later I thought it would be interesting not just for massage therapists, but for a wide variety of readers, so I decided to share it here.

Like most therapists, Amy was not trained in philosophy. Her school had not given her a therapeutic model, so she created her own. Her model said two things; physical tension is caused by mental tension, andphysical tension is resolved only with mental interventions. Let’s call her model, mind over matter. Under this model, she couldn’t believe in deep tissue. In fact, she couldn’t believe in any physical therapies, because she believed they couldn’t resolve the mind’s tension. But an hour later, she and the others had a new model that made more sense to them.

You may be surprised to know Amy’s model has been passed down for more than 360 years. René Descartes (1596 – 1650) wrote some very influential philosophy that I will summarize into three propositions.

1. Descartes proposed there are only two kinds of things in the universe, mental things and physical things. In an individual, these two things are the mind and the body. He said the mind and the body are two different things. And so we call this belief mind-body duality. Du-ality, because duo means two in Latin. (I don’t want to give away the ending, but if you noticed, the subtitle of this article is refuting mind-body duality..)
2. Descartes is most often quoted for three little words, cogito ergo sum, which translates to, I think, therefore I am. Basically Descartes was saying, I am my mind, but I have a body. My body is a possession I own, like my car or my house. But it is my thoughts that make me who I am.
3. Descartes proposed that the mind controls the body. All I have to do is think, and it makes my mouth speak, it makes my legs walk, it makes my hands write what I am thinking. Thoughts control the body’s behavior. The mind is like God, or the King, completely in control of the body. Mind over body.

Did any of these statements resonate with you? It should come as no surprise that Descartes’ philosophy remains influential today. Mind over body-that’s also Amy’s belief. Mind over body continues to strongly influence alternative therapies.

But medical science has switched its flavor of dualism to body over mind. Researchers found that sticking an electric probe into a living human brain will trigger a random memory or emotion. The brain, after all, is a body organ, weighing three pounds. Controlling the brain controls the mind. Suddenly the body explains mind. Thoughts are nothing more than electrochemical interactions in the neurons-all physically measurable. Mental qualities like mood and anxiety are now calmed using chemicals the body ingests.

Which causes which? Which explains which? Which controls which? Mental or physical? Body/brain or mind? Tangible or intangible? Alternative or mainstream medical-where do you stand? Today no less than in 1650, these debates continue.

Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) solved this debate, but not the way you might think. He began his career tutoring young people in Descartes’ very popular philosophy. Quite early, however, Spinoza began slipping non-dualism into his teaching. Neither mind nor body is more powerful. Neither causes the other. Neither explains the other.

Instead of two things, Spinoza taught that mentally and physically are just two ways of looking at the same thing. Unity. In fact, error arises when you try to explain a physical situation in mental terms, or when you try to fix a mental situation with physical interventions.

Some may wish to debate who is right, Descartes or Spinoza? Are mind and body two things, with one dominant over the other? Or are mind and body two perspectives of the same thing? Where do you stand now–duality or non-duality?

Spinoza offered proofs in his masterwork, Ethics. But I’m feeling daring and I’d like to give an alternate refutation of duality. My proof is a thought experiment.

Imagine the future elected Ruler of Earth, giving a speech on HyDef streaming video. She never goes out in public, and nobody knew her before he was Ruler. Since video only transmits sights and sounds, she has only been known from these two senses. Since every citizen of Earth has a tablet computer, fourteen billion eyes have seen the Ruler’s mouth moving. Fourteen billion ears have heard the Ruler’s voice in their earbuds. In fact, people rarely go outside, but spend all their time watching streaming video. Since they hold their tablets, they develop a sense they are holding the Ruler.

A social media group declare themselves to be sightists. Sightists claim two things: the Ruleris the sight of the Ruler, and the sight of the Rulerhas sound. Sight over sound is their motto. Of course many are insulted by the absurdity of the sightist position. Clearly the Ruler is sound. The sound of the Ruler comes first, and causes the sight of her. Sound over sight.

You don’t blame these people for their mistakes. You see how easy it would be for them to leap to these conclusions. After all, earth citizens rarely perceive anything but streaming video, sight and sound. Smell has been abolished, and technology has made everybody comfortable so touch is also on the way out. Sight and sound are the only ways the Ruler has ever been detected. None of them has ever experienced her presence. You are the only earth citizen wise enough to realize the Ruler is neither the sight of her nor the sound of her. She is something that cannot be adequately explained by either. But good luck explaining that to the sightists and soundists!

This must have been how Spinoza felt. And even though he explained it well in 1650, we still need good luck to understand it.

Back in our century, a patient needs help. If you are a competent mental therapist, your assessment would accurately detect that she has mental issues that require mental interventions. If she decides to come to you, your mental therapies would bring her mental resolutions. And also, if the guy across the street is competent physical therapist, his assessment would accuratefly detect that she has physical issues that require physical interventions. If she decides to go to him, his physical therapies would bring her physical resolutions.

So does she need mental or physical help? That question is a dualist question. If you agree with me and Spinoza that dualism has been refuted, you’llagree she could make progress seeing either one. Mental and physical are just two ways of looking at the same thing.

But you may not mix. Mental factors do not cause, nor explain physical disturbances. Mental interventions cannot cause nor explain physical progress. Amy’s model is in error because it mixes.

What’s so bad about a flawed model? Reduced service to all. The mixed model necessarily introduces confusion, which is counterproductive to the mental relief. Since she has no mental training, she could conceivably do harm to the person’s mind. It is also false advertising. This incongruence will reduce her business.

As an educator and an ethical person, I would like Amy to have an all-physical model that she can believe in. How would I give her that? About an hour into Tuesday’s class, this is what I said. Muscle tension is caused by the brain, which is like a big mechanical switch. It switches muscle tension higher whenever its sensory inputs report danger. We apply touch in such a way that the sensory nerves do not report danger. In fact, we position and touch the muscles in a way that the sensory nerves report safety to the brain. Under these conditions, the brain switches the muscle tension lower.

I could see their wheels turning, so I continued. The moment you feel the muscle softening, you know that the brain has switched. If you stay present with the brain’s feedback, you can keep the brain relaxing for minute after minute, practically the whole hour. You are definitely noticing physical results. And when the person gets up, she will be surprised how relaxed her body feels.

Amy and the others were moving to the edges of their seats. They now possessed an all-physical model they could believe in. So we finally moved over to the massage tables where I showed them how to use their elbows to sense muscles melting.

Amy’s old model was flawed two ways. First, mind over body draws her outside her training. And second, any model that makes one causing or controlling the other is dualistic. The model I provided was non-dualistic. True, the model I provided was all-physical, but only because that is how we Licensed Massage Therapists are licensed and trained.

Keep it physical, LMTs. Body over body.

I didn’t have time last Tuesday, but I’d like to explain to you the very interesting results that Amy had noticed over six years. It is a common experience. People often feel physically relieved after changing their mind, and mentally relieved after jogging or other physical activities. Does this refute Spinoza? Not at all. Digging deeper into Spinoza’s Ethics we read that mental and physical events occur in the same number of stages and the same sequence.

Consider the physical sequence of events in muscle therapy, starting with 1) person’s sensation of pain, 2) brain perceives pain, 3) brain switches to guarded mode, 4) muscle tension begins, 5) therapist positions body for safety, 6) brain perceives safer position, 7) therapist presses indicated muscle, brain perceives pressure, 9) brain switches to safe mode, 10) muscle tension ends. Ten stages. Spinoza says that there will be the same number of mental events, in the same sequence. I am not a trained mental therapist so I can’t tell you what these events are in mental terms, but Spinoza guarantees they occur in the same number, and the same sequence. They would be mental things like concepts, thoughts, decisions, feelings, logic, imagination and so forth.

What Amy noticed was, there will be mental relief whenever there is physical relief, and vice versa. Do notice this correlation. Don’t say one causes, explains or controls the other.

Shall we revisit the elected Ruler of Earth? You recorded her speech so we could prove Spinoza correct again. You watch it twice; once with the sound turned off, and then again with the sound on but the screen turned off. From the video image, you count the number of syllables you detect when you see her mouth close then open. You tally the number. Then when you play the speech again on audio only, you tally the syllables you hear. You knew it would happen this way because you trusted Spinoza, but still you compare the two numbers. They are the same.

Just to be certain, you watch and listen one more time each. This time you mark the syllables along a timeline. When you compare the timing and sequence of the visually detected syllables, of course you find they occurred at exactly the same times, in the same sequence as the aurally detected syllables.