Acronymns! CES is Cranioelectrical Stimulation. taVNS is trans auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation. I wrote on Psychology Today about the latter hitting the scene with dramatic potential to treat disorders of consciousness (vegetative state). Then I decided to follow Dave Siever’s guidance on how to position the CES clips to provide taVNS.
Wow!
I clipped the red CES clip of my DAVID Delight Pro device to my left ear’s lobe and block to the tragus. It isn’t easy. Maybe my tragus is too tiny for the clip size… I got it to stay by hooking the wire over my ear then putting on the eyeset so that the ear piece helped keep wire and clip in place.
I reversed the clips in subsequent sessions because I forgot which colour went where.
“So blue or red earclip on outside of ear and yellow or black on the tragus depending on the color of your earclips. Dave Siever believes that because the stimulation is AC, it doesn’t matter which earclip goes where.”
And I didn’t notice any difference. But I’ll try and remember to follow red on lobe, black on tragus in future to see if it does or not.
I’ve used this new clip position four times now. I decided on the spur of the moment to try it at gamma frequency, even though Dave suggests alpha. The gamma 38 to 42 Hz session was scheduled into my day last Friday, and I didn’t want to do an extra audiovisual entrainment (AVE) session.
Within a minute I was questioning my risk-taking decision. Eek!
Right away, I became dizzy. I felt the vagus nerve in my lower chest. That’s about the best I can describe it. It was a bit unnerving. I stopped myself from taking off the clips by reminding myself gamma at first felt odd. I had the same prickles across my brain as I had way back with this frequency and hadn’t experienced again in years. I guess, it’s like my brain is going, what the eff? what’s this frequency travelling through my networks??
In subsequent sessions, I didn’t re-experience the chest or prickles sensations.
After two minutes, I felt clearing in my head and eyes and the chest sensation faded away. And 15 minutes into the 30-minute session, I felt my mind opening right up. I couldn’t close my eyes throughout the whole session. Usually, whether I use gamma CES or 100 Hz CES during gamma AVE, I close my eyes, maybe nap a little or not. But even when I tried to close my eyes to nap, they popped right back open.
It was like my mind was too alert or too awake to even think of closing the eyes. This effect appeared every time I used the taVNS configuration for gamma.
Five minutes after the end of the session, I felt this drive, this kind of motivation I haven’t felt since before my brain injury — long enough, anyway for it to feel foreign — to go write. It wasn’t the usual desperation or “you gotta do this” kind of drive. Or I want to but it’s tiring. This drive had an excited kind of feel to it. Of wanting to in a happy, excited way, like I remember how writing was just before my brain injury in 2000.
I went straight to Fictionary, an online software app that helps writers structure their novels. It has fields to fill in to help you shape your book. Last year, I filled in as few fields as I could get away with because even with tutorials, I found trying to fill them all as overwhelming. This year, I understood the software easier. After taVNS, I whipped through all the fields, instantly understanding, processing, and filling them in. I knew immediately the order of doing things.
“I became more organized than this morning by filling in the Note as I went through the AI evaluation then the fields.” I worked in it without stopping.
Until I hit the 15-minute mark.
Then fatigue smacked me. I got real dizzy and nausea rose a minute after that. Dizziness and nausea are the brain’s way of signalling that something is changing. In this instance, a good way.
Fatigue still happens. Dizziness briefer. Nausea at odd times and infrequently.
It’s like taVNS powers me at warp-like speed with real-time understanding, ideas, words, writing. Then POW, at the 15-minute mark, cotton wool fills my brain, a concentration headache appears, and fatigue demands I stop. Like now, at this point in me writing this post.
So, unfortunately, I gotta wrap it up.
In brief, gamma taVNS is powerful. It improves and speeds up into real time perception, understanding, processing, connecting ideas, and fleshing out concepts like the physics of time and time travel in the afterlife for The Q’Zam’Ta Trilogy.
But most gobsmackingly of all, was how this month’s 7-Day Writing Sprint went for me. I’ve participated in this sprint that Prolifiko, now the Written Academy, holds for years and years. I have a fairly good idea of what goals are achievable for me. My goal for this week was to finish going through the outline for The Soul’s Reckoning (book 2 of The Q’Zam’Ta Trilogy) in Fictionary. I’d begun this task on the previous Friday, the first day I’d tried taVNS. So I hoped that headstart meant I could finish all 30 chapters by this Sunday.
Monday, I got through 7 chapters, much to surprise.
I thought, maybe, I could do the rest over three days.
When I began working in Fictionary on Tuesday, I found myself progressing through the chapters so quickly, I thought I could do seven chapters in the morning’s half-hour session instead of the four I’d completed Monday morning.
I did seven in about the same time as I’d done four! Tiredness hit as I began working on the seventh, but I kept going then took a long break. Tuesday afternoons aren’t my most productive. But to my surprise, I felt motivated again. And…
…I completed the sprint goal!
Wow. Wow. Wow.
Exhaustion hit Wednesday. And even though, I used the taVNS configuration of the CES clips during gamma 38 to 42 Hz AVE, I didn’t feel any more energized to write.
Thursday, though, I got through most of my new goal for the sprint. And today, I almost finished it, a goal I thought would take me to Sunday. I have only a little review left to ensure I’m ready to start revising The Soul’s Reckoning on Monday.
I’m hoping that this new motivation will hit me again on Monday so that I will begin revising without the usual external motivator that I need, like a sprint or workshop or NaNoWriMo or equivalent.
