Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Biology of Belief: Bruce Lipton 101

"I woke up one morning and decided to live my life in nothing less than joy." ~Bruce Lipton

This was one of the key phrases that shifted my para-dig-m of how I chose to live my own life. I was sitting in Bruce's Biology of Belief seminar learning about cell biology. Cell biology! Who knew it could be so exciting? It was one of those life-changing, Oprah Lightbulb Moment, Ah-ha experiences where you realize that the microcosm reflects the macrocosm.

A cell in a petri-dish will do one of two things: it will move toward things that are life-enhancing, in this case food. OR, it will move away from things that are life-threatening, e.g. a toxin. The first is a state of GROWTH. The second is PROTECTION. A cell can do either/or, it can't do both at the same time. You may be thinking, Yeah, OK. Why do I care?

Well. Let me tell you. A single cell in your body has all the same functions as your whole body. It takes in nutrition, oxygen, excretes waste, etc. Your body is a community of trillions of cells. It's not random. Think about a community: working together, each person contributing, communicating, relating. It's an organized network. And who's in charge? YOU, the leader. You're the director, the Queen-of-the-castle, Master-of-your-domain. The question is: are you a benevolent leader? Or not? What determines that? The environment you create by your beliefs and thoughts. Do you love your body? Do you love your life? Or are you stewing in a soup of toxic emotions? How long would you continue to work with someone who worked against you? How long would you expect your body to before it rebels? As Dr. David Lee (who gave Bruce his first cold-laser treatment) says, Your body. Your health. Your choice.

So, you give a cell some food, it moves forward, it grows. You threaten it, it retreats. You give a person nurturing and s/he grows. You threaten a person and s/he retreats into a state of protection. What's the difference? THE ENVIRONMENT. Change your environment, and you change your biology--YOU. In a state of growth, you have different chemical reactions happening in your body vs. when you're in a fearful state of protection. Bruce says that we're living our lives like we're in a race. We're at the starting line and we hear, Get ready. Get set. But we never get to GO. So our bodies are in a chronic state of stress. Stress is a protective state, not a state of growth.

This is your body's response to the stress Fight or Flight Response: your body prioritizes blood flow to the back of your brain, the survival part, to the back of your legs to run, and to the arms for fighting. It is the front part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex that has higher functioning skills of thought, logic, and reasoning. This is why it's hard to reason with someone who's fearful.
How much blood goes to other areas? The bare minimum. What about your immune system? That takes way too much energy. If your body is in survival mode, it's priority is not against some outside microbe. How much blood goes to digestion in this state? Not much.

And here's the thing about fear: new things are scary and avoided. Think about that. And then think about how when you're in a state of fear, you're much more likely to give up your freedom for security and personal safety. Which means you're easier to control. And now think about the media that shows scary-threatening-violence on TV, and drug companies that sponsor these "news" programs and tell you to take their pharma-zerka-toxin-el for your anxiety, your stress, your illness.

We weren't biologically designed to live in chronic stress. And yet, some people are so used to it, they think it's normal. Just because something is common, doesn't make it normal. We have a choice. So for me, I choose growth. I choose life. I choose JOY.

And if you ever get a chance, go to a Bruce Lipton seminar. Or read his ground-breaking book, The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles. OR tune into Dr. Mehmet Oz's show on XM Radio today and listen to his interview with Bruce.

P.S. You can get a month of free XM Radio here.

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