Whole Health (25 page)

Virtually everything in the body, including the fight-or-flight stress response, depends on vital proteins in cell walls to regulate the flow of electrically charged atoms or ions—such as sodium, potassium, and calcium—between the interior of the cell and the surrounding fluids. This succinctly describes the bioelectricity of
the human body that represents “the spark of life.” It is in this way that stress chemistry is mediated in the human body. Stress and the coherent equilibrium of human health is mediated from mind to heart and from brain to body via bioelectricity and the electromagnetic fields it generates.

The human heart's electricity has been measured at 696 Hz, and the brain's at 315 Hz. The electricity of heart ECGs is sixty times greater than brain EEGs. The electromagnetic field of the heart is generated by every heartbeat, where it both produces and responds to a quantum field of information within and without, beyond the limits of time and space. There is a physiological heart, and there is an energetic human heart. The physiological heart is where stress and incoherency become a problem. The energetic heart is a transcendent field of consciousness intended by nature to be the solution for stress and incoherency. Within the energetic heart is a little brain with a higher mind that has the power to set the tone for our life's coherencies and incoherencies.

MENTAL EUTHANASIA: THE ULTIMATE INCOHERENCY

It was a raw, rainy September morning in 1983. It was just another day at the office, or so I thought. Sitting before me, my first patient of the day was a woman who appeared to be in her early sixties. I'll call her Marion. I reached for my intake forms to begin recording her health and diet histories when Marion suddenly began to speak.

“Don't bother taking any notes. I don't intend to be here very long,” she said. I knew instantly from the tone of her voice and the intention in her penetrating presence that the “here” she spoke of wasn't just my office. As I put down my pen and notes, I asked her to please continue.

“I've been diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer, and sent
home to die,” she said. “The only reason I've come here is because my children and grandchildren implored me to do so. You see, they believe that my life is about to end when, in fact, the truth is it never really quite got started.”

At this point, it was clear to me that she was here to deliver a “sacred life lesson,” and knowing full well that these do not come around every day, she had my complete and undivided attention. She continued, “As a young girl I was very distressed at how controlling and intimidating my parents were. They made all my decisions for me, and rarely allowed me the opportunity to express any of my opinions or true feelings. I remember feeling different than everybody else. I felt as though there was something wrong with me. I was deeply ashamed and figured I must have been undeserving of the kind of life all my friends seemed to have. This smothering control my parents had over my life predominated throughout every major event in my life, even to the point where they arranged my marriage. I do not, nor did I ever, love my husband, yet I remained loyal to him, to my parents, and to my indelibly subservient lot in life. Now, here I am, an old woman who never took charge of the life I'd been given, and quite frankly I'm just too tired to carry this old body around anymore.” I just sat silently and listened.

“Don't get me wrong,” she quickly added, “I do love my children and grandchildren very much. As I said earlier, the only reason I came here was to put on a good face for them, but the final fate of my cancer is not entirely unwelcome. So, you see, none of them will ever know the truth.”

With that, Marion looked me right in the eyes in a piercing manner and asked, “Isn't it odd that I've come here today to share my most painful truth with you, a total stranger?” Knowing full well that she wasn't about to allow me the opportunity to enter into any healing pact with her, I simply told her I was honored to be
entrusted with her story, and asked if there was anything at all that I might do for her. She told me there was one thing. . . .

“In your work, you will, undoubtedly, encounter many other people who never really took charge of their own lives,” she said. “I would ask you to share my story with them, and to implore them to discover what it truly means to be self-empowered and fully alive.” Marion died shortly thereafter, but her spirit will forever live through me as I continue to honor her sacred request.

Like Marion, many of the patients I see continue to remind me that healing is indeed the by-product of wholeness, and wholeness requires that we take full responsibility for our own lives, regardless of the demands. Moreover, the real lesson in Marion's tragic story is that by confronting our short-term pain, we liberate ourselves from the prospect of all long-term suffering.

THE WORD ACCORDING TO US

For years, I was an avid long-distance runner. I successfully completed a number of marathons, half-marathons, and ten-kilometer races. Now I am a dedicated four-season long-distance walker. I recall an occasion when I was walking near my home and, as is often the case here in New England, a stiff headwind impeded my intention to traverse up a steep hill. At first, I chose to personalize my struggle, as I muttered under my breath, “The universe must be conspiring against me.” I mean, after all, there I was trying to do something healthy, like take a nice brisk walk, and the fates decided to throw this wall of wind at me. I'd unconsciously drifted into some all-too-familiar victim behavior. As the headwind intensified, my attitude also intensified. “What sort of sadistic beings are in charge of the weather anyway?” I mused.

Just as my tension peaked, something in me snapped, and my attitude radically shifted. All at once, I started to envision the
headwind as a sort of giant air hose sent down from the heavens to blow away all my transgressions. Within a matter of seconds, the harder the wind blew, the
stronger
I felt. I could feel a surge of energy lifting me up and pushing me through the wind and up that hill. The very force that held me back just a few minutes earlier had suddenly been transformed into a power that propelled me forward. The mind
is
a reality-maker, and perception
is
a reflection of choice.

Rewiring the brain begins with changing the mind, and changing the mind begins with changing our thoughts. It is much less about what we believe and much more about our inner dialogue. The conscious mind is said to process more than 2,000 bits of information per second. Remember when I told you earlier that the
unconscious
mind can process more than
400 billion
bits of information per second?

Depending on what expert you listen to, research suggests that most of us average between 1,000 and 3,000 thoughts per minute. Not only do our thought directly affect our brain function, our inner dialogue alters our brain chemistry. A positive inner dialogue produces happy thoughts which produces a healthy neurochemistry, and a negative inner dialogue produces sad thoughts, which produces an unhealthy neurochemistry. When you consider all the thoughts and all the bits of information being processed in the mind, it's a bit overwhelming thinking about the chemistry changes. And it never ends. Even while dreaming, we produce correlating chemistries. Even the most cartoon-like nightmare will induce biological changes like sweating, heart rate changes, and dry mouth, while many a happy dreamer has often awakened laughing out loud.

The mind's thoughts and visions have a powerful influence over the body. Whatever we think and talk to ourselves about the most, we become. If we wish to change our lives by changing our thoughts, we must understand that belief is secondary. What you believe is important, but it's far less important than what you say. What you say to yourself has the greatest power to alter your destiny.

The Whole Health tuning exercise discussed in chapter 4 gives us all the information we'll ever need to know about the power of words. Like everything in the multiverse, words are energy. Word energy has the power to create ease or dis-ease. Our nervous systems determine exactly what neurological value a given word has, and word power depends on perception. For example, the word
cancer
generally has a negative neurological value for most people. Yet I can remember a gentleman I once muscle tested who'd been diagnosed with cancer. When I attempted to EMT-tune him, I called out “Cancer,” just prior to muscle testing him, but instead of weakening the man, the word made him stronger. He explained that he was so determined to fight the disease, the mere mention of the word inspired his strength. A word that is generally a negative, weakening word for most, only served to elevate one man's determination and strength.

We can see from this example that the unconscious and conscious minds tend to correlate words with experiences. Thus, the positive or negative perception associated with a word often influences the neurological value of that word. Our words are responsible for our health, happiness, and prosperity. Reality is based on the word according to us.

WORD WIRED

Until 1993, it was a widely held belief that the brain we were born with is the brain we'd die with. Since the groundbreaking research of Peter Eriksson and Fred Gage at the Salk Institute, however, we now know that the human brain isn't hardwired. Rather, it is “neuroplastic” and designed for constant change; the human brain can be neurologically rewired and the mind can be reformatted. Moreover, it doesn't demand miracle drugs or surgery—it merely requires word power. One of the most respected pioneers of neuroplasticity research, Dr. Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin,
reminds us that our words produce a matching chemistry—not our histories, our belief systems, or our philosophies, but our words.

Words generate differing neurological power, as they represent varying powerful images. The word
lonely
will momentarily weaken the electromagnetic field in our heart (cardiac intrinsic ganglia), while the word
happy
will strengthen it. As the heart's brain conjures up a positive or negative image associated with whatever word is presented, the nervous system begins producing a corresponding chemistry. Depending on the image the heart's brain associates with those words we hear most often, the brain will either produce a “fight-or-flight” or a “relaxation” response. Thus, your neurological chemistry is directly correlated with the images generated by those words you speak and hear the most. If your inner dialogue and the dialogue of those you spend most of your time with exhibits a tendency to be negative, your neurochemistry will likely generate a negative influence over your entire physiology. We are word wired.

WORD REWIRING

The most inaccurate phrase in the human language may well be
I can't help it
. Beliefs such as “My mother was a worrier, therefore I will always be a worrier” die hard. We've heard so much about genes and genetic determinism over the past thirty years that we're inclined to believe that hardwiring indeed equals fixed fate. After all, human genome research has long since established that you can only change a gene
¹
/
₁₀
of 1 percent every 250 generations! I routinely hear from patients that their physicians tell them their respective health conditions are the result of genes, and that short of medication there is nothing they can do. Much of the medical community continues to toe this line. And while it may be a great “point of sale” for the pharmaceutical industry, it is no longer as enthusiastically embraced in the genetic research community. Many of those
who once accepted that the human brain was hardwired and the human body/mind couldn't be changed all that much have altered their viewpoints.

We may only be able to change our genes one-tenth of 1 percent every 250 generations, but we now know that we can change the behavior of our genes, and to initiate the process takes only seven-tenths of a second! The dogma of molecular biology that embraces absolute determinism has been shattered by new research. We also know that influences such as nutrition, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs regulate the expression of genes. Every cell membrane has receptors that pick up an array of signals that influence the ways in which we translate and adapt to our internal and external environments. Where we once believed that our brains and bodies were hardwired, we now know that words alone can rewire us. We are in fact not hardwired at all—we are neuroplastic.

The most recent research has made it clear that words alone have the power to set both patterns of biocoherency or incoherency into motion. Each word produces a unique energy that transmits waves of vibration that can be received by the cardiac intrinsic ganglia. Next, the heart's little brain determines whether or not the word represents an energetic vibration that produces electromagnetic entrainment or disentrainment. Once determined, the little brain then conveys its verdict to the big brain, where it then communicates it to the rest of the entire body via the nervous system. Researchers have found that in order for the heart to return to a state of coherency during times of destabilizing stress, words alone are often more than enough. Not just any words, but positive words. When it comes to the cardiac intrinsic ganglia, every word we speak or hear has a different value. Energetically speaking, every word produces a different vibration. Some words produce an energetic coherency, and others an incoherency. So it's not just about what a word says—it's also about the energetic vibration of the word.

Ultimately, when we allude to electromagnetic fields, we are of course talking about vibration. Sound and light waves represent the most fundamental forms of kinetic vibration. Therefore, one surefire vehicle for affecting the vibration of the heart is sound. As most of us have heard, music soothes the savage breast. But even more than words and songs, sounds and tones alone will elicit a powerful effect on the heart's electromagnetic field. We must choose our words wisely.