Explore Neuro Emotional Technique
Explore Neuro Emotional Technique
Where NET Began
TL;DR: The Deep Dive into the mechanism, history, and foundations of NET.
Neuro Emotional Technique was developed by Dr. Scott Walker, a chiropractor who graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1965 and practiced for many years in Encinitas, California. He created NET together with his wife, Dr. Deb Walker, also a chiropractor, who has co-developed the technique and its trainings from the very beginning.The story often told about NET’s origins begins in Dr. Walker’s practice in the mid-1980s. While treating a patient with chronic pain, he noticed something that did not fit the usual pattern. Her spinal misalignments from an old injury would not fully resolve, no matter the adjustment, until the emotional charge connected to them was addressed. Once that emotional component cleared, the physical correction finally held.That observation became the catalyst. Over the next few years, Dr. Walker drew on what he knew from chiropractic, the physiology of the body, the acupuncture meridian system, and other mind-body dynamics, and wove them into a single, repeatable method for working with stored emotional stress. Practitioners who tried it reported such striking results that they asked him to teach it, and he gave the first NET seminar on May 7, 1988, in Encinitas, California. He later founded the ONE (Our Net Effect) Research Foundation to support ongoing research into the work.
A Technique Taught Across the Healing Professions
From those first seminars, NET has grown into a method taught to licensed health professionals around the world. Training is open only to qualified practitioners, meaning those who hold an advanced degree in the healing arts and are currently licensed to care for patients, and each practitioner uses NET within the scope of their own profession. Today it is practiced by chiropractors, medical doctors, osteopaths, acupuncturists, naturopathic doctors, psychologists, and psychotherapists, among other licensed practitioners. That breadth is part of what makes NET distinctive: it is a shared, structured approach that many different kinds of healers can bring into their own work.
Foundational Principles of NET
Neuro Emotional Technique incorporates the concept of applied kinesiology, the principle of physiological somatic response, and the meridian system of Chinese medicine. By testing for congruence between mind and body, the patient can return to a normal, balanced, and healthy state.NET does not take the place of talk therapy, but it may take you to a new level of healing where counseling may have left off.
Many times, patients say, “I thought I dealt with this already.”Why would this be the case? While we might be able to understand the outcome of a past event by “reasoning things out,” we never really complete how the event impacted us if we have not been able to release the physiological elements of the stressor.Dr. Scott Walker developed NET as a simple and effective method to reset emotional stress using gentle physiological interventions.
The Eight Dynamics of NET
NET draws together several principles, sometimes called the dynamics of NET. Each one describes a piece of how unresolved emotional stress takes hold in the body, and how it can be released. Taken together, they explain why a problem you believed was settled can still be physiologically active, and how NET helps it finally complete.
Emotional Response. Emotional responses are rooted in minute proteins in the body called information substances, made up of neuropeptides, hormones, and other specialized information molecules that permeate the entire body, including our DNA. Emotional responses were once thought to live only in the mind. They are now understood to be in the body as well, which is to say they are physiological. This dynamic was scientifically validated by Candace Pert, who discovered the opiate receptor in the body.
Pavlovian Responses. We usually think of Pavlovian conditioning in terms of animals, but humans are conditioned too, sometimes by a single event. Conditioning is normal, and so is its physiological counterpart: the natural fading of a conditioned response, called extinction. For most responses, extinction happens on its own. Sometimes it does not, and the response keeps firing. NET assists the body to carry that process of extinction through to completion.
Repetition Compulsion. One of Freud’s contributions was the principle of repetition compulsion: once we have been emotionally conditioned, we non-consciously seek to repeat a similar situation in the future, in an attempt to master or resolve the original conflict.
Memory and Physiology. It has been shown that when we remember an event from the past, the body replicates the physiology that occurred at the time of that event. In recalling a memory, the central nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, and very likely the meridian system can all be modified. This dynamic was scientifically validated by Hassan and Ward, who described how the recollection of a perception can evoke the same bodily and visceral changes that occurred in the original situation.
The Meridian System. Specific emotional responses, such as anger or fear, are linked to specific meridians. This is a four-thousand-year-old principle. The Five Element Law of acupuncture theory has been clinically observed for more than fifteen hundred years, connecting particular emotions to particular meridians. As one example, there is a link between the emotion of anger and the Liver meridian.
Semantic Reaction. This term comes from Alfred Korzybski, the founder of general semantics. It describes the response of an organism as a whole, including its physiology, to symbols, and especially to words. Korzybski demonstrated semantic reaction experimentally. In NET, a muscle test is used to index and isolate the core issue connected to a conditioned response that has not extinguished.
Muscle Testing. It has been demonstrated that muscle testing can be used to access the physiology of the body, including the physiology of emotional stress. The body can react not only to the sight of a spider, but also to the word “spider” or a picture of one. A muscle that tests strong will test weak when a person makes a statement that is not congruent for them. For example, most people will test weak while saying “My name is Mary” when it is not. This dynamic was validated by Monti.
Like Cures Like. When a person is invited, within the context of a NET session, to briefly re-experience an emotion from the past such as anger or fear, the act of reliving that memory produces a feeling, and that feeling is the “like cures like” component that supports the healing process. Homeopathy, which is similarly based on “like cures like,” is sometimes used to support ongoing healing. Dr. Walker developed individual remedies with a corresponding vibration, clinically matched to the categories on the NET Master Chart.Taken altogether, the NET practitioner can use these principles, with the patient’s full involvement, to find the origin of an emotional block with accuracy and unusual speed, and to offer a safe, gentle intervention that allows the body to return naturally toward health. The physiological process of extinction, of healing, can finally take place, sometimes after being compromised for decades. In this way, chronically held or recurrent problems can resolve, and the clinical results are often surprising to both practitioner and patient.
The Lineage Behind NET
NET is an amalgamation of principles drawn from the long heritage of the healing arts. Its antecedents include:
George Goodheart, father of Applied Kinesiology
Ivan Pavlov, conditioned reflexes
Sigmund Freud, developer of the principle of the unconscious
D.D. Palmer, discoverer of Chiropractic
A.T. Still, discoverer of Osteopathy
Royal Lee, major proponent of whole food nutrition
Alfred Korzybski, founder of General Semantics
The Yellow Emperor, symbolic founder of Acupuncture
Samuel Hahnemann, founder of Homeopathy
Candace Pert, discoverer of the opiate receptor in the body
NET Today
Since that first seminar in 1988, NET has grown into a worldwide method. NET’s training organization reports that more than 10,000 certified practitioners, across these and other licensed professions and in over 30 countries, have completed the training, with thousands more who have studied the work. Together they have used NET with millions of people.
Additional NET Studies & Informational Brochures
Physician researchers at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia conducted a study on Neuro Emotional Technique. Read their findings on the effects of NET on stress, anxiety, and fear from traumatic life events.
An informative brochure with insights into how stress affects your health and how NET can provide relief.
Learn more about the neuroscience behind NET through the eight dynamics of NET.
Explore fMRI images that illustrate the effects of NET on brain physiology.
