As the unconscious receives our mental pictures and verbal suggestions portraying our hands as warm and re-taxed, it transforms them into physiological changes in the body. With surprising swiftness, the sympathetic nervous system, which constricts artery muscles, is replaced by the parasympathetic system, which relaxes artery muscles.
Almost immediately, arteries in the hand begin to dilate. As more warm blood flows into the hands, they naturally become warmer and heavier. Even at their first attempt, most people can raise the temperature of their hands by two or three degrees in just a few minutes.
As arteries in the hands dilate, this effect generalizes up the arms and throughout the entire body. The effect is twofold. First, scalp and cranial arteries remain too dilated to enter the Stage 2 constriction phase of the migraine process. Secondly, dilation of blood vessels in the hands and elsewhere draws blood away from the head. This effectively prevents the sudden bloating of arteries with blood should they enter Stage 3 dilation, and the migraine sequence is completely halted.
As we learn to warm the hands and, later on, the feet, we begin to discover that we can gain mastery over our blood pressure, pulse rate, immune system, muscular tension and, indeed, most of the body’s other involuntary functions. Thus biofeedback leads to a powerful feeling of self-mastery that quickly extends to other areas of life such as stopping smoking or going on a diet.
So noticeable is this phenomenon that in behavioral medicine it is known as the enabling effect. Because all forms of behavioral medicine place responsibility on the patient and involve the patient in playing an active role in recovery, behavioral medicine empowers us to succeed in whatever we do. Compare this with the feeling of helplessness and passivity that invariably accompanies dependency
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