Reactional Modes: The Ability to Respond
We recognize health in individuals with abundant reserve energy, a radiant aliveness.
This aliveness is dependent on the ability to identify what is beneficial to one’s own growth and development and readily and efficiently assimilate it.
In addition, what is toxic or threatening to survival is rejected.
This happens on all levels:
- food and drink
- mental realm of ideas
- energetic influences such as electromagnetic energy
- others’ thoughts and feelings
We fall in a spectrum between perfect health and death depending on how much reserve energy we possess in order to respond to a challenge.
The reserve energy is dependent mainly on one physical criterion. It is dependent on the amount of enzyme systems in the body which are able to function at any given time. The body’s metabolism and energy production is run by enzymes performing biochemical reactions quickly and in an orderly way that without them would happen randomly and take a long time. These enzyme systems are easily corrupted by toxins – from the environment, from low quality foods, from inefficiently processing food, from toxic thoughts and feelings.
Different Ways of Responding
We respond to challenges in different ways because we have differing degrees of reserve energy as evidenced by our enzyme system operation. These different degrees of reserve energy can be staged in four reactional modes.
At birth, we often operate in the most efficient reactional mode. More and more today babies are born with accumulated toxicities and start out in compromised reactional modes. These reactional modes are discussed in detail later.
Throughout life, as each reaction to a challenge is suppressed, we progress to a more compromised reactional mode.
Suppression can come from as simple an act as taking Tylenol for a fever, antibiotics for an infection, an antihistamine for nasal congestion, cortisone cream for a breakout on the skin, or using one of a myriad of over-the-counter or prescription medications.
Failure to express emotions appropriately or at all also is suppression. Suppression can even occur with the use of natural products in a way that stops the body’s symptoms without changing the underlying process. After all, symptoms are manifestations of the body’s defense system activated against toxins generated from within or coming from outside.
Suppression can result in holding everything in, which is very stressful to the system. Toxins accumulate from within when normal breakdown products of metabolism can’t make their way out.
Synthetic products such as preservatives, drugs, insecticides, radiation, pollution such as heavy metals, or repeated vaccinations are examples of toxins coming from outside of us which can also accumulate.
Symptoms created by the body are analogous to a smoke alarm going off. If we take the battery out of the smoke alarm, it will no longer sound.
This is one way to eliminate the symptom. However, the smoke that the alarm was responding to will stay as long as a fire is burning. This corresponds to the process that continues to smolder and burn in the body even when the symptoms are suppressed.
When the symptom is no longer there, you no longer pay attention to it. Nevertheless, the degeneration continues. Your reserve energy dwindles.
Reactional Modes – Four Ways of Reacting to a Challenge
The first defense the body uses against a challenge, if it is too much and cannot route the toxins to the normal routes of elimination, is to excrete the toxins with a discharge of some sort. This could be manifest as excess mucus from the nose or lungs, a skin eruption, diarrhea, or similar discharges. This defense mechanism is the predominant mechanism of releasing extra toxins in the first reactional mode.
If the excretion of toxins through a discharge is not successful, the accumulation of toxins in the area will result in either congestion or swelling due to water accumulation. The body always wants to deal with it, so it will bring in inflammatory mediators from the immune system in an effort to resolve it.
If there are too many toxins accumulating, the defense system will dilute them with a water accumulation, resulting in swelling. When the muscles accumulate too many toxins, they get tight in spasms.
There are other functional manifestations of toxic accumulation like the symptoms of acute inflammation: redness, heat, pain, and even fever. These are characteristic of the second reactional mode.
In its wisdom, if the body cannot discharge these toxic materials, it will make a container and deposit them in the least harmful place, such as under the skin. Examples are lipomas, warts, and skin tags. The deposits may also be put in other out of the way places or where tissues have been damaged by injury.
When these deposited toxic materials interfere with normal cellular function, degeneration of bodily function results. Then it is no longer just a functional problem; there is actual damage at this point.
Nodules or accumulations of pus, which is liquified damaged tissues with white blood cells, can form. This is evidnece of the body resorting to the third reactional mode.
Alternately, degeneration can manifest as ulceration, hardening of tissues, and/or excess growth of fibrous tissues.
The final stage of tissue degeneration is actual death of whole areas of tissue, called necrosis or gangrene. The fourth reactional mode is at play with such degeneration.
Psychological Aspects
These reactional modes can also be seen as varying degrees of a sense of self and establishment of physical, mental, and emotional boundaries.
People exhibiting the first reactional mode know themselves and trust themselves; they are optimistic and have great self-confidence. They have enough energy to respond right away to a challenge and push out the toxins. Their battle is on the surface, the external boundaries of the body: the skin, digestive tract and other mucous membranes. Also they are known to have a quick temper, but when all is expressed, they forget about it and move on.
All eliminations improve their state, and they regain balance. They often live hard and fast like their reactions, a kind of hyper-energy.
Those in the second reactional mode have less of a sense of self and are afraid of failure. Any toxic challenge can get past their barriers and as a result, is incompletely eliminated.
As well, metabolic wastes accumulate as they are not all eliminated due to lack of energy. Accumulated toxins are stored as benign tumors or diluted in tissues holding water.
This provides a ripe terrain for persistent chronic infections, especially of the ear, nose & throat and the genitourinary systems. This hypo-energy manifests as an indifference to life; they are not impassioned by anything.
Self-esteem is way down in the third reactional mode; these people have a desire to go away or disappear, they are tired of life. They have few defenses both physically and morally.
With their little reserve energy, they can have a strong initial reaction, but the elimination exhausts them because it uses up that energy reserve. The nervous and endocrine systems become hypersensitive with the exhaustion.
The systems most symptomatic are the lymphatic, venous, hepatic, and respiratory.
The fourth and last reactional mode has a negative sense of self that is directed inward. What vital energy they have changes unpredictably and suddenly. Instability and anxiety are keynotes, but with a creative spirit.
This is the picture of the ultimate victim, without self-esteem or boundaries. Reactions are spastic when they do happen, but the processes are more of ulceration or hardening.
Entire systems are imbalanced, and the most severe degenerative conditions are associated with this reactional mode.
The Key to Individualizing Treatments
By classifying by reactional mode, it is possible to predict how an individual will react to challenges. This is the key to individualizing treatments, knowing who has enough energy to tolerate a specific therapy.
In analyzing this, it is easy to get confused as an individual may be globally in one reactional mode, but an organ system may be in another. In the course of treatment, this can occur when globally the individual has improved health, but a degenerated organ system needs more time to heal and change reactional mode.
An individual in the first reactive mode needs a balanced diet, daily physical exercise, and periodic cleansing of the digestive system and kidneys.
If ever their hyper energy is blocked, it is turned inward and can quickly degenerate to the third reactive mode.
However, there are some cases in which suppression leads to the second or fourth reactive modes.
Opening up the routes of elimination from the cellular level to the organs themselves is the key to moving someone in the second reactional mode up to greater health.
They are very susceptible to bacterial and viral infection, so the immune system must be stimulated. In this mode the focus is on the digestive system with the objective to balance the resident flora. Sleep is essential as well as periods of rest such as vacations.
Individuals in the third reactional mode cannot tolerate fasting, colonics or other mechanical therapies until their energy has been built up. They are easily exhausted.
Elimination of toxins must be gentle and prolonged accompanied by tonification. They need tonics to sleep well instead of therapies that depress the nervous system. They are an open door to all degenerative diseases.
The entire systemic imbalance of the fourth reactional mode requires gentle cellular drainage and tonification. The essential base energy must be built up and the nervous system regulated, especially the anxiety.
One day when they are feeling healthy, expect that the next they may crash. They cannot handle anything strong or unbalanced.
With properly guided treatments, individuals will become more balanced in reactional mode. The progress can be traced by their reactions to challenges, which reflects their reserve energy.
The goal is to get back to the first reactional mode, to optimal health and a wealth of reserve energy.
