©2000 Janet Cunningham, Ph.D.
Some Proven Facts That Are Important To You:
- Negative thoughts and emotions can interfere with immune functioning and health.
- Research that includes placebos is scientific evidence of the power of the mind to heal the body.
The Triune Brain
There is not one brain, but three, each physiologically and chemically different from the others:
Neocortex - divided into left and right hemispheres and is the most recently evolved brain.
· Left Hemisphere - considered the dominant one by neuroscientists because it is the center of language. It is the seat of rational, analytical and sequential intellectual processes.
· Right hemisphere - perceives in wholes and can signal the limbic system, such as when you experience a "gut reaction" or other physical sensation. It is the center of random, inconsequential intellectual processes, such as intuitive, visual, and associational.
The right and left hemispheres communicate directly though the corpus callosum, a mass of more than 200 million nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres. The two hemispheres must work together so you can verify your intuitive perceptions.
Limbic System - the most chemically active and chemically volatile of the three brains, evolving after the reptilian brain. The limbic system is the center of emotional activity and sensory-based emotional information, including senses of taste and smell, pleasure and pain.
Reptilian Brain - known as the primal brain, in evolutionary terms, absorbs information in the form of energy that flows up the spinal column and through the pores. Instincts of comfort or discomfort, territory or safety, moving toward or away from things, patterns, habits and routines connect to the reptilian brain.
All three brains and all intelligences are working simultaneously all the time; however, consider two examples of conflict: (Nadel, Haims, and Stempson)
- When the reptilian brain does not feel comfortable and safe, it sends distress signals up through the top two brains, which can make it impossible to concentrate on the work at hand.
- Unlike the left neocortex, which is concerned with external facts, the limbic brain gives you information about your internal world. If you ignore internal dialogue with the voice of reason, you are allowing the left brain to impose its linear perspective, not letting yourself benefit from information that your limbic brain is giving you-it is a self-censoring process. And...your immune system is connected to your limbic brain!
Intuition
Intelligence highly awakened is intuition, which is the only true guide in life. Krishnamurti
Webster defines intuition as knowing without the conscious use of reasoning. There are two types of intuition: (1) intuitive knowing with precedent, and (2) intuitive knowing without precedent. Intuitive knowing with precedent refers to acquiring information through the five senses. Intuitive knowing without precedent accounts for those states in which there is no precedent for having acquired information through the five senses.
The most successful business people use intuition; many refer to it as a hunch, gut reaction or instinct. Inventors and scientists, as well as composers, musicians and artists often automatically and naturally go into an altered state of consciousness, receiving creative insights and breakthroughs in problem solving. Einstein, whose theory of relativity came to him as a daydream that he was riding on a beam of light, said "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a lap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why."
When the Emotional Self has been repressed or blocked, intuition is diminished. When a person is not balancing the Inner Self (connected to the limbic brain and right hemisphere of the neo- cortex) with the External Self (connected to left hemisphere of the neo-cortex), intuition and personal inner strength is reduced.
Emotions
Emotions such as fear, grief, or anger are natural; however if they are blocked due to denial, repression, or trauma, then blood flow can become chronically constricted, depriving brain and organs of vital nourishment (Pert). When our emotions are denied or suppressed, they are not processed and released through the bodymind system-we become stuck in repetitive patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Emotions are energy; when we repress them, we hold or store them in the bodymind system-the greater storage, the greater the ultimate health problem. Strong emotions that are not processed thoroughly are stored at the cellular level. Regression therapy can help to bring clarity to past experiences as memories are relived and felt emotionally, therefore releasing the memories/energy stored in one's cells.
Researchers at the National Institute of Health have found a link between depression and negative experiences or trauma experienced in early childhood. Studies have shown that abused, neglected, or otherwise unnurtured infants and children are more likely to be depressed as adults. According to Pert, the hypothalamus is part of the emotional brain-the limbic system-and its neurons have axons that extend into the pituitary gland. An involved system of neuropeptides and informational substances travel through the bloodstream to the adrenal glands, which connect to stress and the fight or flight response, the body's unconscious reaction to threats, either real or imagined. Depressed people have high levels of stress steroids, and in a chronic state of activation due to a disrupted feedback loop in the mind-body system.
Mind, Consciousness, and Subtle Energies
The brain is not mind, as I define it. Mind, or consciousness, is in the brain and in every cell of the body and the energy that moves out from the physical body, referred to as subtle body energies. Grof refers to the holographic mind, and emphasizes that information mediated by the brain is accessible in every cerebral cell, and genetic information about the entire organism is available in every single cell of the body.
Everything beyond the conscious mind-awareness focused in the present moment and physical reality-is the unconscious. Subtle energies include mental thought, emotions, and spiritual energies. Ancient and alternative healing methods refer to a force which animates the entire organism and is known as prana (Hindu), chi (Chinese), ki (Japanese) and that cannot be measured with Western instruments. Pert refers to this energy as the free flow of information carried by the biochemicals of emotion, the neuropeptides and their receptors. When stored or blocked emotions are released through regressions or body therapies, there is a clearing of internal pathways, which we experience as energy.
The translation of prana or chi is more than emotional energies, however; the meaning comes closer to life force or spirit.
A Connection Between Esoteric Teachings and Current Consciousness Research
We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves (what Jung aptly named the shadow), but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.
Abraham Maslow
According to Murphy, "It is unarguable that people of all ages have out-of-body experiences during near-death episodes, sports competition, anesthesia, childbirth, high fever, or extreme pain. Such experience is detailed in every religious culture and in medical journals, psychiatric case studies, and the annals of psychical research. In both Eastern and Western religions, there are accounts of saints projecting themselves paranormally. There are also numerous accounts by [both] the British and American Societies for Psychical Research, for more than 100 years, of evidence for a soul or spirit-body that survives death, although there are different beliefs about the afterlife. The ka of the Ancient Egyptians, the sariras, koshas, and dehas of Hindu-Buddhist yoga,, the Greek ochemato; the jism or astral body of Iranian Neo-Platonism and Sufism and the spirit-body of Taoist yogic alchemy are said to be made of a matter different from physical flesh. Such bodies are more responsive to thought, emotion than physical flesh."
British biologist and biochemist, Rupert Sheldrake's research indicates that living organisms are not just complex biological machines, and life cannot be reduced to chemical reactions. The form, development, and behavior of organisms are shaped by morphogenetic fields. These fields are molded by the form and behavior of past organisms of the same species through direct connections across both space and time, and they show cumulative properties. If a critical number of members of a species develop certain organismic properties or learn a specific form of behavior, these are automatically acquired by other members of the species, even if there are no conventional forms of contact between them. The cumulative record of morphic resonance and trial-and-error learning of all generations past, begins to sound similar to the esoteric akashic records, or Book of Life, spiritual teachings of the ancient mysteries.
"The updated model shows the universe as a unified and indivisible web of events and relationships," according to Grof, "its parts represent different aspects and patterns of one integral process of unimaginable complexity. It does not seem extravagant to entertain the possibility that the connecting principle in the cosmic web is consciousness."
David Bohm, a theoretical physicist and former co-worker with Einstein, has formulated a model of the universe that extends holonomic principles into realms that at present are not subject to direct observation and scientific investigation. Bohm describes the nature of reality as an unbroken and coherent whole that is involved in an unending process of change: the entire world studied by mechanistic science represents only a fragment of reality, the unfolded or explicate order. It emerges from a totality of existence, the enfolded or implicate order that is its source and generating matrix.
These pioneers, in their respective fields, are helping to explain healing that takes place in alternative and complementary therapies. In addition, current consciousness research, such as near-death experiences, past-life therapies, and out-of-body experiences are beginning to join with perspectives from the esoteric (not the dogmatic) teachings of all major world religions throughout time.
References
Murphy, Michael. The Future of the Body: Explorations Into the Further Evolution of Human Nature. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1992.
Nadel, L., Haims, J. and Stempson, R. Sixth Sense. New York: Avon Books, 1990.
Pert, Candace. Molecules of Emotion. New York: Scribner, 1997.
Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
Grof, S. (1993). The holographic mind. New York: Harper Collins
Harman, Willis. Global Mind Change: The New Age Revolution in the Way We Think. Sausalito, CA: Warner Books, 1988.
Sheldrake, Rupert. A New Science of Life. Frederick Muller, 1981.
Janet Cunningham, Ph.D. is an internationally known and Board Certified specialist in regression therapy and owner of Breakthroughs to the Unconscious®, a private practice in Columbia, MD. She is president of the International Association of Regression Research and Therapies, Inc. (IARRT) in CA and vice-president of the International Board of Regression Therapy (IBRT). Dr. Cunningham is the author of three books, as well as professional publications in The Journal of Regression Therapy. Her work has been written about by six other authors, and featured in Reincarnation International and Venture Inward magazines.