Inner Tools: Eight Practices the US Army Studied in 1977, Honestly Explained
Where do these practices actually come from?
The Gateway Intermediate Workbook was produced by the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences in Afton, Virginia in 1977. The US Army studied the system through the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of its Gateway Process consciousness research. Both the workbook and the accompanying analysis by Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonnell were later released through the CIA FOIA archive. They are freely viewable in the CIA Reading Room as documents CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210023-7 (the workbook) and CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5 (McDonnell's analysis).
The original document contains the eight practices in this article and one numerical sequence (55515). Almost everything else circulating online as "CIA healing codes" is unrelated to the Gateway material. Most is Grabovoi numbers, which come from a separate and quite different source. The provenance here is narrow and verifiable.
That provenance is part of why the practices feel different from generic mindfulness. There is something about a structured, time-anchored system written by people who took the practitioner seriously, even when the framing was esoteric, that lands harder than another app telling you to "just breathe." The content carries its lineage, and that lineage is itself part of the felt experience.
Why do they actually work?
None of this is unique to the colours, the staircase visualisation, or the number 55515. The protocols are scaffolds. They reliably produce the conditions under which five well-studied mechanisms fire.
First, the relaxation response. Slow breathing at around five to six breaths per minute activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowers cortisol, and raises heart rate variability. This has been documented since Herbert Benson's work at Harvard Medical School in the 1970s, written up most accessibly in his 1975 book The Relaxation Response. Resonance frequency breathing has been studied for decades since by Paul Lehrer and Evgeny Vaschillo at Rutgers as a heart-rate-variability biofeedback technique with measurable effects on anxiety and blood pressure.
Second, attentional gating of pain. Pain perception competes for working memory. Repeating a sequence of numbers, a mantra, or a slow breath count reduces the bandwidth available for pain signals. The effect is small and short, but real, and well-replicated across cognitive neuroscience.
Third, mental imagery activates real brain regions. Imagining colours, movements, or sensations recruits the same visual and motor cortex regions you use for actual perception and action. Jean Decety and Julie Grezes reviewed the literature in their 2006 paper in Brain Research, finding consistent overlap between imagined and executed motor activity. Imagined practice produces measurable performance gains in motor tasks and pain modulation.
Fourth, expectation and placebo. Belief that a protocol will work activates endogenous opioid release. Jon Levine, Newton Gordon and Howard Fields demonstrated this in a 1978 paper in The Lancet by blocking placebo analgesia with naloxone, the opioid antagonist. The placebo effect is among the best-replicated findings in pain research. Exotic provenance ("declassified", "1977 Army programme") makes the placebo stronger, not weaker, which is part of why naming the lineage matters.
Fifth, interoceptive training. Repeated body scans improve the felt sense of internal state. This is the same mechanism that mindfulness-based stress reduction relies on, the programme Jon Kabat-Zinn founded at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979 and which Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing extends in trauma work. The skill is real. It just takes weeks of practice to register.
The architecture: three layers, eight practices
The eight practices form a stack of three layers. You always work from the bottom up. You enter through the Foundation. You only use the Mental Tools once the Foundation is reliable. The Layer 3 applications are the ones people most want to skip to, and skipping is the single most common reason the practices feel like they are not doing anything.
Layer 0: Setup
A quiet room. Bed, sofa, or recliner. Phone on Do Not Disturb. Lying down or reclined, hands at sides with palms up, no tension in jaw, shoulders, or hands. Eyes closed throughout, except where noted. Three duration options to pick from: a five-minute crisis version, a fifteen-minute daily version, and a thirty-minute deep session.
Before each session, rate one thing on a 0 to 10 scale. Pain in the worst spot. Mood. Energy. Tension. Pick one and write it down. Rate it again after. This is the part most people skip and it is the part that builds felt benefit and retention. Anima's voice journal makes this trivial: say the number out loud, the entry holds it, the post-session number lives next to it.
Layer 1: Foundation
Resonant Breathing
Plain language: slow, even breathing that downshifts your nervous system.
- Lie or recline. Eyes closed.
- Inhale slowly through the nose for about five seconds. Imagine a bright current flowing up through the body from feet to head.
- Hold for a brief, comfortable moment.
- Exhale slowly through the mouth for about five seconds. Imagine a darker, heavier current draining out through the soles of the feet.
- Continue for six to ten cycles.
Felt sign you have it: the jaw unclenches without you trying. Breath naturally slows further. Faint tingling or heaviness in the body.
Focus 10
Plain language: a relaxed but mentally awake state. The Monroe Institute called it "mind awake, body asleep."
- After Resonant Breathing, count slowly from 1 to 10.
- Tell yourself before you start: "By the time I reach 10, my body will be relaxed and my mind clear and awake."
- Notice the body becoming heavier with each count. Notice the visual field behind closed eyes shifting in colour or texture.
- At 10, stop counting. Rest.
Felt sign you have it: you feel awake, but moving the body would feel like an interruption. Time becomes slightly elastic. Thoughts feel less sticky.
Layer 2: Mental tools
The Energy Bar Tool
Plain language: a mental wand of light you create and direct.
- From Focus 10, imagine a small bright sphere of white light a foot or so in front of you.
- Stretch the sphere into a bar, like a fluorescent tube, but lighter than air.
- Practice changing it: switch its colour, brighten and dim it, lengthen and shorten it, turn it on and off.
- Once you can change it at will, the tool is ready.
Felt sign you have it: you can change colours fluidly. You "feel" the light it gives off, even with eyes closed.
The Living Body Map
Plain language: a colour-coded mental silhouette of your body, used to scan for places that need attention.
- From Focus 10, imagine a bright white outline of your body floating just in front of or above you.
- Add colour layers to the outline. Blue for the nervous system. Red for the circulatory system. Orange for muscles and bones. Yellow for organs and glands. White as the composite.
- Slowly scan from head to feet. Notice anywhere a colour feels dim, uneven, or where your attention slides off.
- Note these areas. You will address them with the Energy Bar Tool and a colour protocol from Layer 3.
Felt sign you have it: a vague tightness or dull ache becomes locatable. Or you simply notice an area that wants attention.
Layer 3: Applications
Protocol 55515 (Pain Reduction)
Plain language: repeat a five-digit number mentally while focused on a painful area.
- Enter Focus 10.
- Bring attention to the painful area. Do not fight it. Notice it as if from slightly outside.
- With closed eyes, "look at" the area.
- Slowly repeat in your mind: 5 . . . 5 . . . 5 . . . 1 . . . 5. Pause. Repeat.
- Continue for three to five minutes, or until pain noticeably reduces.
Use for: tension headache, muscle soreness, mild chronic pain, post-exercise ache, period cramps.
Do not use for: acute injury, sudden severe or unexplained pain, anything new that has not been medically assessed, chest pain ever.
Green Protocol (Emotional Cleansing)
Plain language: visualise green light flowing through the body on the exhale, carrying out emotional charge.
- Enter Focus 10.
- Identify the emotion. Name it. Locate where you feel it in the body.
- Inhale deeply. Imagine cool green light filling the body.
- Exhale slowly. Imagine the green light flowing through the area of emotion, picking up the heavy charge, exiting through the soles of the feet.
- Repeat for five to ten cycles.
Watch for: unexpected emotional release is common. Allow it. If it feels overwhelming, sit up, drink water, stop. Repeated heavy releases suggest unresolved material that benefits from a trauma-trained therapist alongside the practice.
Purple Protocol (Healing and Recharging)
Plain language: direct purple light at a body area that feels dim, sore, or off.
- Enter Focus 10. Run the Living Body Map. Identify a dim or unsettled area.
- Charge the Energy Bar Tool to a deep, bright purple.
- Direct it at the area. Imagine purple light flowing in and soaking through the tissue.
- Internally say: "Heal. Balance."
- Hold for one to two minutes.
Use for: slow-healing soreness, post-illness recovery, a body part that feels off. Always alongside, never instead of, medical care.
Red Protocol (Activation)
Plain language: visualise red light filling the body before a physical or demanding task.
- Enter Focus 10, or a quick version: three to five deep breaths with eyes closed.
- Visualise the action you are about to perform.
- Inhale deeply. Imagine vibrant red energy filling the body, especially the muscles you will use.
- As you exhale, open your eyes and perform the action.
Use before: a workout, a hard task, public speaking, a difficult conversation. Avoid: within two hours of bed.
White Protocol (Total System Recharge)
Plain language: visualise white light pouring in from above through the palms, filling the whole body.
- Enter Focus 10 or extend from the previous protocol.
- Extend hands outward, palms facing up.
- Inhale deeply. Imagine pure white light pouring from above, centring down through the crown and into the palms.
- Hold the breath briefly.
- Exhale. Let the white light spread through the entire body. Repeat for five to ten cycles.
- Close: count slowly from 1 to 5. With each number, become more alert. At 5, open eyes.
How do you actually start?
Spend the first week on Layer 1 only. Resonant Breathing for two minutes, then count to Focus 10. That is the whole session. It will feel like nothing is happening. The mechanisms are quiet and compounding, and the only way to register them is the pre and post check-in. Without the rating, you will not feel the change. Most people quit at this stage because the practice was real but unmeasured.
In week two, add the Living Body Map at the end. Do not add Layer 3 yet. Three weeks of Layers 1 and 2 will feel boring, which is the point. The boredom is part of the training. The hypnagogic Focus 10 state has to become reliable before the colour protocols do anything that registers above noise.
From week four, pick one Layer 3 protocol per session based on what the Living Body Map shows. If the body map flags tension, run 55515. If it flags emotional residue, run Green. If it flags a sluggish area, run Purple. Always close with White. Always count back up. Always do the post-rating.
When this is the wrong tool
The Green Protocol can surface unexpected emotional material, which is usually fine and often the point. If it surfaces something that feels overwhelming, sit up, drink water, stop. Repeated heavy releases are a signal to work alongside a trauma-trained therapist rather than to push deeper alone. The same applies if Focus 10 starts producing dissociative experiences that linger after the session ends. Pause and consult someone trained.
How does this fit with Anima?
Anima is a voice journaling app for iOS built around seven stats, no streaks, and the principle of a mirror, not a scoreboard. Inner Tools fit naturally because the practices come with two structural ingredients Anima already loves: a clear pre and post check-in, and a felt sense that can be described in plain language out loud after the session.
The 7-stat mirror picks up the practice across weeks. Resonant Breathing and Focus 10 tend to drift EQ and Awareness. The Green Protocol tends to drift EQ and Empathy. The Red Protocol can show up as Strength when the activation actually translates into something done. None of this is a streak. Some weeks have one session, some have five. The drift is the data.
If you want the soft version, see voice journaling benefits and journaling without streaks. If you want the active version, you can run Inner Tools as guided sessions in the app and let the voice check-ins hold the pre and post numbers without you having to type. How it works describes the whole loop.
Eight short practices, honest mechanisms, no quantum. A mirror, not a scoreboard.
Frequently asked questions
Where do these practices actually come from?
Are these practices scientifically supported?
Will this cure my chronic illness or replace therapy?
What if I cannot visualise mental images?
How does this fit with Anima?
A mirror, not a scoreboard.
Anima ships these eight practices as guided sessions, with voice check-ins before and after. No streaks. No quantum. Just structure and a record of what actually shifted.
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