NEURAL PATH THERAPY --- HOW TO CHANGE YOUR BRAIN'S RESPONSE TO ANGER, FEAR, PAIN & DESIRE by Matthew McKay and David Harp, 2005

    PREFACE (pix-xvi)

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pxvii-xviii)

    INTRODUCTION (p1-18)

      What is Neural Path Therapy?

      Whether you’re more stressed by politics, the environment, your relationships, your job, major life changes, or simply the daily task of keeping food on the table, it’s easy to let life knock you down and hard to get back up again. This book offers you a chance at a different way of life. It shows you how to accept life as it is, regard the events of each day with nonjudgmental awareness, and stop obsessive thoughts from compounding your feelings of helplessness and frustration.

      Portable Therapy?

      The first part of the book introduces you to the basics of neural network learning theory. The basic idea is that neural pathways—the chains of brain cells, or neurons, that generate our every thought, word, action, and emotion—strengthen with use and weaken with disuse. While certain events are likely to provoke a hardwired neural response in us, we are capable of creating new neural paths with no more than a thought. Instead of letting automatic triggers dictate our responses to painful events, we can use this characteristic of our nervous systems to short-circuit the responses that lead to painful thoughts and emotions.

      The second part teaches you five easy-to learn skills for dealing with stress—breath counting, thought watching, compassionate awareness, softening to pain, and wise mind. Together, they make up a set of skills that you can take anywhere, a kind of portable therapy.

        1) STEP 1 --- THE POWER OF THE BREATH: a little R & R (p19-52)

        2) STEP 2 --- THOUGHT WATCHING: your neural Neighborhood (p53-82)

        3) STEP 3 --- COMPASSION: healing the hurt spots (p83-100)

        4) STEP 4 --- SOFTENING AROUND PAIN: when life is hard (p101-118)

        5) STEP 5 --- WISE PATHS: putting it all together (p119-126)

        6) STEP 6 --- BEYOND THE STEPS: the path to "total freedom" (p127-136)

          [1] Happiness and meaning (p128)

            (1) What you see is what you get (p128-129)

            (2) Compassion in action (p129)

            (3) Forgiveness (p129)

            (4) Historic focus on what's not right (p129-130)

            (5) Modern focus on what's not right (p130)

            (6) Cultural focus on what's not right (p130)

            (7) Existential pain (p130-131)

          [2] What can be done? (p131-135)

            (1) Vicious cycles, benevolent cycles (p131-132)

            (2) The state of compassionate awareness (p132)

            (3) Transcendent states (p132-133)

            (4) Enhancing the experience of prayer (p133)

            (4) Transcendence without religion (p134)

            (5) The life of meaning and the meaning of life (p135)

          [3] A few words of gratitude (p136)

    APPENDIX A --- continuation of the R & R exercise (p137-138)

    APPENDIX B --- continuation of the "thought" versus "reality" exercise (p139-141)

    REFERENCES (p143)

    ABOUT THE NEURAL PATH THERAPY WEBSITE (p145-146)

      www.neuralpaththerapy.com
    ABOUT DAVID'S CORPORATE WORK (p145-147)

    ABOUT OTHER NEW HARBINGER TITLES (p148)

    ABOUT THE AUTHORS (back cover)

      Matthew McKay is the clinical director of the Haight Ashbury Psychological Services in San Francisco, California, and a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. He is the author or co-author of many self-help books on psychology.

      David Harp is creator of many instructional methods, including The Three Minute Mediator. He has been testing and developing the "neural path therapy" method in many kinds of group workshops, including dealing with personal and national crises.

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