Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (8 page)

In the end I find I can’t separate brain from body. Consciousness isn’t just in the head. Nor is it a question of mind over body. If one takes into account the DNA directing the dance of the peptides, [the] body is the outward manifestation of the mind.

—Candace Pert, Ph.D., former chief brain biochemist,
National Institute of Mental Health

T
he mind and the body are intimately linked via the immune, endocrine, central nervous, and connective tissue systems. Today, mind-body research is confirming what ancient healing traditions have always known: that the body and the mind are a unity. There is no disease that isn’t mental and emotional as well as physical.

ENERGY FIELDS AND ENERGY SYSTEMS

Humans are made out of energy and sustained by energy. Our bodies are ever-changing, dynamic fields of energy and vibration, not static physical structures. Cellular biologist Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., author of
The Biology of Belief
(Hay House, 2008), writes that when we truly understand the effect of thoughts, emotions, and energy on the body, “we will no longer fractiously debate the role of nurture and nature because we will realize that the fully conscious mind trumps both nature and nurture. And I believe we will also experience as profound a paradigmatic change to humanity as when a round-world reality was introduced to a flat-world civilization.” I couldn’t agree more.

The truth is that our bodies are holograms in which every part con tains information about the whole. This can be appreciated by looking at the sheath of connective tissue (or fascia) that encases every muscle, nerve, and organ throughout the body. This connective tissue functions as a crystalline matrix—for example, the fascia on the bottom of your foot is connected both mechanically and electromagnetically (because crystals are well-known energy transmitters and transducers) to the fascia that encases your brain, and everything in between. And it’s the crystalline properties of connective tissue (as well as of bones and teeth) that enable it to transmit information and energy instantaneously throughout the body. Thus, everything your foot experiences also affects your brain. (Helene Langevin, M.D., at the University of Vermont School of Medicine has published exciting research on a group of cells called “integrins” that are the physical link between cells and their surrounding tissues, thus providing further proof for the fascinating connection; see
chapter 18
for more on this.)

New research has also shown that a gas known as nitric oxide is produced by the lining of every blood vessel in your body during exercise, sex, meditation—and the thinking of joyful or hopeful thoughts. Nitric oxide (not to be confused with nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas) not only instantaneously increases the circulation of blood throughout the body but also is the über-neurotransmitter, having the ability to balance all the other mood-enhancing neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine.
¹
I’ve come to believe that nitric oxide is the physical equivalent of the life force,
chi,
or
prana
. According to quantum physics, at the subatomic level, matter and energy—which can also be called spirit—are interchangeable. The best expression of this that I have heard is that matter is the densest form of spirit and that spirit is the lightest form of matter. We can view our bodies as manifestations of spiritual energy. Our mind and daily thoughts are part of this energy, and they have a well-documented effect on matter and our bodies. Our daily thoughts and emotions, which are accompanied by a multitude of biochemical changes in our bodies, set up an electromagnetic field around us (and around every cell in our bodies) that attracts to us our vibratory equivalent. This tendency is known as the law of attraction and is the most fundamental law that governs the universe. Like is attracted to like. As we vibrate, so we attract. Or to state it more simply, birds of a feather flock together.

Psychological and emotional factors influence our physical health greatly because our emotions and thoughts are always accompanied by biochemical reactions in our bodies. These reactions are mediated by cell membranes, which are the actual “brains” of each cell. The mind-body con tinuum can be adequately understood only when we appreciate ourselves as an ever-changing energy system that is affected by, and also affects, the energy surrounding it. We don’t end at our skins. This fact has been beautifully illustrated by the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese researcher who has done groundbreaking work on the effect of emotions on the crystalline structure of water. In his book
The Hidden Messages in Water
(Beyond Words, 2004), and also in the movie
What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Dr. Emoto documents the effects of different emotions on the structure of frozen water crystals, showing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the energy of loving appreciation creates the most profoundly beautiful crystalline patterns. Given that our bodies are more than 70 percent water, Emoto’s research has profound implications for health. How we think about, talk to, and feel about ourselves creates an imprint on our cells that affects not only us but also everyone around us.

Though we cannot see this vibrational energy that makes up the body-mind and sustains us, it is nevertheless a vital part of us. It is the life force that keeps our hearts beating and our lungs breathing even when we are asleep. Anyone who has had the experience of being with a dying person will tell you that after the moment of death, something changes. Though the physical body is still present, the person we once knew is no longer there. His or her life force has gone elsewhere.

Vibrational fields interact within an individual person. They also interact between one person and another, and between one person and the world in general. These interactions, whose existence is well docu mented, are important for lifelong human growth and healthy development. A study at the University of Miami on premature babies, for example, found that babies who were stroked regularly gained weight 49 percent faster than did those of the same initial weight who weren’t stroked. (Both groups of babies were fed exactly the same amount of food.) The stroked babies were longer and had larger heads and fewer neurological problems at eight months of age than did the controls.
²
Babies who are not touched and cuddled, even though they are fed and cared for physically, are at risk of death from the elusive diagnosis “failure to thrive.”
³

Even accidents, which we think of as random events, have been shown in a number of studies to be related to the emotional and psychological states (or vibrational fields) of the “victims.” Several studies have indicated that accident-prone individuals have certain personality features that include impulsiveness, resentment, aggressiveness, unmet dependency needs, depression, sadness, loneliness, and unresolved grief. They tend to punish themselves when they feel anger toward others. In his book
Traffic Safety
(Science Serving Society, 2004), for example, Leonard Evans, president of Science Serving Society, presents exhaustive research on factors contributing to auto accidents, including safety standards, road conditions, and so on. One part of his analysis shows that drivers who are at higher risk for automobile accidents are, among other traits, less mature and intellectual, while they are more emotionally unstable, unhappy, antisocial, impulsive, openly hostile, and aggressive. They also have lower self-esteem and lower aspirations and are more likely to have had unhappy childhoods. In the language of vibrational systems, it appears that the vi brational field of certain individuals interacts with the environmental vibrational field in a way that increases the possibility of accidents.

Clearly, human interactions have profound effects on health. These effects can be either positive or negative, depending upon the state of mind of the people involved in those interactions. When we begin to appreciate ourselves as vibrational fields of energy with the ability to affect the quality of our own experience, we will be getting in touch with our innate ability to heal ourselves and create health every day of our lives.

Our bodies are influenced and actually structured by our thoughts and beliefs. Every thought is accompanied by an emotion or feeling, and every emotion creates a specific biochemical reality in our bodies. Thoughts that are reinforced over and over become beliefs. Beliefs drive our behavior. We inherit many of these beliefs from our parents and the circumstances of our upbringing. Scientific studies conducted by Leonard Sagan, M.D., a medical epidemiologist, underscore this and show that social class, education, life skills, and cohesiveness of family and community are key factors in determining life expectancy. Of all these factors, however, education has been shown to be the most important. A review of
all
the major epidemiological data on health makes clear that the major determinants of health are not immunization, diet, water supply, or antibiotics. In fact, the dramatic decline in death rates from infectious disease earlier in this century began long before the routine use of penicillin and antibiotics.
Hope, self-esteem, and education are the
most important factors in creating health daily,
no matter what our background or the state of our health in the past.
⁴
All illnesses are affected by our emotional state. Jeanne Achterberg, Ph.D., has shown that the course of cancer can be better predicted by psychological variables such as hope than by medical measurements.
⁵

The huge 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, which has documented the dramatic adult health consequences of childhood abuse and family dysfunction, has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt the health effects of our often inherited beliefs about our worthiness and lovability.
⁶
This study was initially triggered by observations made in the mid-1980s in the obesity program at the Kaiser Permanente Department of Preventive Medicine in San Diego. The program had a very high dropout rate—and, surprisingly, the people dropping out were successfully losing weight. Detailed life interviews with almost two hundred such individuals unexpectedly revealed that childhood abuse was remarkably common and antedated the onset of their obesity. Many patients spoke openly about this. Obesity was not their problem; it was a protective solution to problems they had previously never discussed with anyone. For example, a woman who gained 105 pounds in the year after being raped said, “Overweight is overlooked. And that is exactly what I need to be.”

The ACE study found that adverse childhood experiences are vastly more common than is recognized or acknowledged. Slightly more than half of the seventeen thousand middle-class, middle-aged participants in the ACE study had grown up in dysfunctional alcoholic homes, homes with a depressed or mentally ill person, or homes in which they had experienced sexual, physical, or emotional abuse. And these events were highly correlated with pharmacy costs, doctor visits, emergency room visits, hospitalization, and premature death.

In reflecting on the enormity of all this, ACE researcher Vincent Felitti, M.D., wrote: “If the treatment implications of what we found in the ACE study are far-reaching, the prevention aspects are positively daunting. The very nature of the material is such as to make one uncomfortable. Why would one want to leave the relative comfort of traditional organic disease and enter this area of threatening uncertainty that none of us has been trained to deal with?”

I know what Dr. Felitti is talking about. It’s ever so much easier for both doctor and patient to ignore what’s really going on; but it’s ever so much more satisfying and effective to get to the heart of the matter. After all, our bodies never lie and they’re always trying to get us to see the truth. So I suggest a middle ground. It’s prudent to use symptomatic medical treatments as a bridge across the river to true health. But we must understand that in order to truly heal on the deepest level and give our cells the “live” message that creates health, we need to change and update our beliefs and behaviors. This includes releasing emotions that we have buried. Our past is not our destiny. Our power to change is now. This power within is engaged by affirming our worthiness and lovability, updating our beliefs, feeling our true feelings, and choosing thoughts that are more uplifting and healing.

One of my patients told me, “I had a flash of insight on the way to your office today. When I was little, the only way I could get my mother’s attention was to be sick. So I’ve had a lot of broken bones, then cancer, and now an abnormal Pap smear. I just realized today that I don’t have to get sick to get her attention anymore!” She added that at the moment she had that insight in the car, the sun broke through the clouds, reinforcing her insight with its brilliance.

UNDERSTANDING THE BODYMIND