December 12, 2015
The Body & Mind “Perception” Towards Health…
I had a fascinating couple of hours over the last day or so, watching and listening to the research scientist Bruce Lipton. I have added the link for copying and pasting to his talks on The New Biology – Where Mind and Matter Meet.
In a way I would describe it as “inside out” thinking, of which there is a lot being written about and lectured on currently in this format, but also over a number of years in different ways.
Bruce comes at it from a scientifically researched and proven medical perspective, which if you have an hour or two to sit and watch, I would wholly recommend. It is easy enough to grasp and understand without any prior knowledge.
My basic and very abbreviated take on only part of his talks, are that even if some of us are predisposed to various genetic malfunctioning, the majority of us can exacerbate health malfunctions due to our “PERCEPTIONS”, which as beliefs may or may not be accurate (Bruce’s word). What happens is that these perceived beliefs, from the absorption of our external environment, become internalised as self-beliefs, which in turn changes our internal (body) environment, therefore causing illness.
So as we absorb these beliefs essentially from gestation onwards – through our nerves and senses of touch, smell, hearing, seeing and feeling – into our brains, there is a change internally causing our resultant thinking, which could trigger a malfunctioning (of hormones, receptors and proteins at a cellular level) within our bodies. This can also be the reverse when we change our perceptions and think from the “inside out” in a more positive (easier said than done I know!!) way.
Bruce states that our genes and cells are much more capable of looking after themselves, and us if we were ever to let them, than we are of looking after them, but because they (our cells) have to work together as a “community” within our bodies, with our brain as the “leader of the pack”, they don’t get to have much of an individual say until it’s too late and we are at the doctor’s, specialists, or therapists wondering what has gone wrong and why we feel so unwell.
In our bodies each cell is an “energy spectrum”, which is why we can see cellular changes during scans, x-rays and the like. When Bruce took unhealthy cells and put them into a petri dish, they healed, because they were “looking after themselves” without being in the unhealthy environment of our bodies, or rather the “perceived beliefs” from our minds.
Cells are a little bit like a bank account (or a car battery), having three positions they can maintain – positive, negative or neutral. If we keep withdrawing from them without depositing anything, we will soon be in deficit, compromising our cellular health, our immune systems and our short and long-term health. Makes sense doesn’t it?!
Stress, anger and hate are negatives, acting as withdrawals, whereas Love, peace, happiness and positivity are positives, acting as deposits… especially when they are part of our daily internalisation of thoughts, then externalised, or “put out there” for all to see, even if that’s just smiling at someone or saying hello. Our world, including us, is made from atoms and energy, so anything we “put out there”, be it positive or negative resonates.
- love = cellular growth = the “on” click switch to positivity and a physiological positive uptake at a cellular level and a positive energy output into the environment.
- stress = cellular protection, which shuts down growth = the “on” click switch to negativity and a physiological shutdown at a cellular level and a negative energy output into the environment.
In general medicine today, unless you work with a Functional Medicine Practitioner of some kind, there isn’t often a holistic view taken, it’s more of a singular symptom based view. The problems arise because symptoms can manifest into so many different illnesses, without the underlying cause ever being established. It’s definitely a large part of what keeps the pharmaceutical companies in business!!
Bruce state’s that “symptoms tell us when we are not running in a coordinated way with our bodies”. That does make sense, but I know from experience that we don’t often or always listen to what our bodies are trying to tell us until it’s too late. Or maybe sometimes these symptoms are there and we just don’t recognise them, choose to ignore them, or don’t even feel them, even though the external environment and our perceptions of it have caused a manifestation of being unwell inside us – which eventually has to come out.
If we look at how much stress we are under daily (even if we think we’re not), the fast “speedy” pace of lives that we lead, combined with our diet (pesticides really don’t help at all, let alone oxidative stress) and our continuous, “contaminated” thinking, then is it any wonder there are so many variables as well as stress related health conditions. Combining this little lot with a predisposition to the odd genetic malfunction, bugs in the form of bacteria and virus’s, unavoidable operations, alcohol, drugs, awol hormones and a lack of sleep, ensures the combination builds up to toxic levels compromising our immune systems even more, depleting the positive “bank account”, leading to a negative deficit and ill health in the form of mental or physical symptoms.
Another factor to consider, is that when we feel crap we also think in a crappy negative way, which becomes a reinforcement and resultant influence on our negative “crappy” thinking patterns, so yet again we are on the back foot and our bodies suffer. See love / stress / bank account and car battery above!!
Do you get the idea? It’s a continuous loop or cycle!!
I’m sure however we would all agree, that when we feel good, we are able to think in a more positive way, but it’s just the “keeping the balance” of maintaining feeling good that can be hard to maintain on some days. We may know we should all be aiming for this, but it can be hard…. That’s when we can take the deep breath, dig deep and get in touch with ourselves (without the external stimuli) J
I was one of those “speedy, hurry up” people with a lot of unrecognised negative external influences that I internalised without knowing the negative impact it was having on me. A lot of the clients I see are “speedy, hurry up” people, with similar problems that manifest in various different ways, such a anxiety, depression, hormonal imbalances, phobias and weight problems.
I unfortunately didn’t get away with it, partly through ignorance, partly through not listening to my body and partly through circumstances out of my control, including predisposed genetic faults, which were influenced by the negatives of stress. And honestly my health and life has and is still paying a very high price, but then I wouldn’t be writing this if it wasn’t!!
So what do we do…..?? Well we take a step back from our lives and ourselves, and take a big breath for starters. As a lovely client of mine said – they wanted to “get off the merry-go round for a while”. I asked them how it would be for them to maybe just take a few hours off and go a little more slowly instead, so they could gain a clearer perspective on what there gut was telling them they needed.
I think of it as taking my head and body out from under the waterfall of overwhelming external noise, stepping back from it and just letting it all flow past for a while. I’m not talking for a long time, even 10 minutes a day will help. At the end of the day, thoughts and life (merry-go round) are always there, floating around and will always come back. The trick is learning how to accept it.
There is something to take into consideration though. If we do this at a “feeling crappy” moment, there really isn’t a great deal of point, because no matter what we “try and think” (being the operative words, plus it’s not about trying, it’s about doing and “being”), most things will look twaddle to us and this in turn will be counterproductive. So that’s when we sit with and recognise the “leader of the pack” is not being helpful at all and either bury our heads under the duvet for another day, acknowledge that today is just one of those “crappy” days, or ideally go and do something physical, which lifts our “feeling good” hormones.
Once the “crappy” moments have hopefully subsided, we can come back to looking at our lives in a more open and positive frame of mind, taking the blinkers off…. This isn’t easy, but our bodies, when we look “inside out” don’t lie, whereas our brain is able to spin quite a yarn due to our perception of reality and ongoing instilled beliefs.
Easier said than done I can hear you say, but just look at what you spend your time on and what your belief systems are. Then ask yourself how taking 5 – 10 minutes one or even a couple of times a day to breath into your body, check in with yourself and reflect, will enable the “speedy, hurry up” thinking to slow down and consequently your body to catch up, keeping the positive cellular growth “on” switch on!
So…. lets listen to what’s going on inside, rather than our external perceptions, which become internal dialogue…. and lets slow ourselves down, be in the moment and work with our bodies, listening to what they have to say. It’s a daily work in progress… xx