Dr. Douglas J. Tataryn is a psychologist and researcher whose work spans hypnosis, emotion, chronic pain, meditation, and complementary medicine. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1991 from the University of Arizona, then spent ten years as a research professor with the University of Manitoba, before entering private practice in 2001 to focus on his Bio-Emotive Framework. In this conversation we talk about a paper he wrote as an undergrad on the physiological basis of repression, why Doug still finds the triune brain model useful, the electrochemical case for meridian systems, how sadness moves through the body and what happens when it’s blocked, and three significant unpublished studies to which he hopes to finally return.
Timestamps
0:00:00 – Intro and Caveat
0:06:00 – Writing the paper on repressed emotions
0:09:40 – Muscle tension and cognition
0:12:15 – How muscle tension suppresses emotion
0:19:05 – Four core emotions and Doug’s triune brain framework
0:22:05 – Defining emotion
0:26:30 – Defending the usefulness of the triune brain model
0:28:30 – Energy and meridians
0:34:00 – Taoist ideas about qi, constriction, and emotional flow
0:38:00 – Heart math and energetic transmission
0:42:35 – Chronic pain from repressed emotion
0:45:20 – Jhana as pain relief
0:52:00 – The second arrow, pain asymbolia, and the affective component
1:00:00 – The relaxation response
1:02:55 – Why tension doesn’t always become chronic pain
1:05:30 – How sadness moves through the body
1:09:55 – Role of culture in expressions of pain
1:15:00 – The emotional meaning of typing
1:20:10 – Returning to unpublished research
1:31:50 – Leaving and returning to academia
1:37:00 – An offering on psychological interventions for the reduction of pain
