The longest journey is the journey inward, for he who has chosen his destiny has started upon his quest for the source of his being.
—Dag Hammarskjöld, former United Nations Secretary-General
“A therapist1 who was having her home remodeled noticed that one of the construction workers had a strange skin condition on his arms. She asked him about it, and he said, ‘Oh, that’s my psoriasis. Had it for years.’ He turned his arms around to show her that from his wrists to his shoulders, his skin was a bubbling ocean of peeling skin with sore red tissue and fluid beneath it. She replied, ‘Ooh, that must be painful. How did you get it?’ ‘Well I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘I guess it started about three years ago, when my girlfriend told me she was pregnant.’ The therapist asked if he might like to try a new treatment she knew. He was dubious. His doctor had told him that there was nothing to be done. The therapist replied, ‘Ah, yes, what he meant was, there’s nothing to be done with pills, ointments, and injections. Your mind created this, and so only your mind can take it away again.’ He nodded and she showed him just a bare-bones procedure, suggesting that three times each day he do three rounds of tapping to the statement ‘I want to get over my psoriasis.’ Within two weeks, his skin had healed on both arms, down to a small patch the size of a coin on his elbows. In addition, he has since used the approach to overcome lower-back pain that had troubled him for years.”2
That these kinds of shifts are possible with energy medicine and Energy Psychology is being established by a rapidly growing database of research studies and clinical case histories. What have not been at all clear up to this point are the mechanisms behind such shifts. Science is never content with knowing what; it rightly insists on knowing why. While the “what” has been accumulating in large stacks, precise experimental descriptions of the “why” have lagged behind until the right questions about epigenetic control were asked and answered.
This book could not have been written ten years ago, because there were not yet enough credible and well-designed scientific studies to support its hypotheses. Today, there are, and the number of published experiments will grow exponentially in the coming decade. With a catalog of genes in place, researchers are now focusing on how these genes work. In some cases they work singly, but most often they work in concert, both with each other and with signals from the inner and outer environments.
X-ray diffraction image of human DNA bound in protein
Very few human processes are turned on or off by a single gene. Most processes require many genes, acting together to produce a common result. The idea, fostered by the mass media, that there is a gene for this or a gene for that, is incorrect. Genes are implicated in conditions in a variety of ways. Headlines like the October 29, 2005, proclamation in the New York Times stating “Two More Genes Linked to Dyslexia” (in addition to a third gene announced a year earlier) oversimplify the cascade of genetic factors involved in conditions. After a subtitle that reads “Findings support that disorder is genetic,” the story goes on to tell us that “people deemed simply lazy or stupid because of their severe reading problems may instead have a genetic disorder that interfered with the wiring of their brains before birth. ‘I am ecstatic about this research,’ said Dr. Albert Galaburda of Harvard Medical School, a leading authority on developmental disorders…”
Such “breakthroughs” create elation that is often followed by disappointment, as the complexity of the genetic interactive systems later becomes clear. For example, more sober reports have implicated some six hundred genes that express differently in patients with heart disease. Researchers have shown that hundreds of genes are implicated in certain other diseases for which the genetic profile has been mapped.
As well as many genes being involved in most changes of state, different genes are often involved at different time periods of that change of state. Not just from day to day, but from second to second, genetic cascades are turned on or off by our experience. Some genes may engage early, others may express afterward, and yet others may reach peak expression many hours later, in a complex and coordinated dance. There are several ways of profiling genes; one way they can be cataloged is to look at the speed at which they reach peak expression when stimulated by an environmental influence.
Some genes are activated quickly, others more slowly. Genes that activate very quickly (sometimes within one or two seconds of a stimulus) are called immediate early genes or IEGs. Their function is often to trigger the activation of other genes. In general, early activated genes reach their peak of expression in roughly an hour. A second class of genes, the intermediate genes, reach their peak of expression in about two hours. Late genes take longer periods to reach their peaks, up to eight hours, and their effects may last for a period of a few hours, or for a period of years. Certain classes of late activated genes, once expressed, may remain “on” for your entire lifetime. An early firing gene may have, as a primary purpose, the activation of several intermediate and late-firing genes.
Besides being identified with the speed at which they express, genes can be classified by the kinds of triggers that turn them on and off. One such class of genes is called experience-dependent genes or activity-dependent genes. These genes are involved in activities or experiences such as growth, healing, and learning. Another class of genes we will examine in more detail is behavioral state–dependent genes. These genes come into expression during periods of stress or emotional arousal, or in different states of awareness such as dreaming and dreamless sleep.
How do we know which DNA molecules are expressed in, for instance, a blood sample from a cancer patient? One of the newest tools that has enabled researchers to conduct experiments that show particular genes being triggered is the DNA microarray. Such gene chips assemble thousands of different strands of DNA onto a single wafer. When exposed to a sample, they can then demonstrate which of the strands have been affected by the sample.
The characteristic of DNA that allows identification of expressed genes is simple in principle. The double helix shape of a DNA molecule looks like a spiraling zipper. During replication, the molecule becomes partially “unzipped.” The two halves of the zipper separate, and each seeks another half-molecule to bond with. While it is unzipped and separated, bonds on the unzipped portion seek other interlocking half-zippers to attach to. Gene chips contain hundreds or even thousands of tiny wells, like pixels on an LCD screen. To the bottom of each of these wells, a particular unzipped strand is attached during the process of manufacturing the chip. These “sticky” half-molecules seek their counterparts. By examination of which ones are able to bond, researchers can identify exactly which DNA strands in a sample are active.
Gene chip
A gene chip yields results that are also somewhat like an LCD screen with thousands of pixels. Each pixel is a different color. Researchers can note which pixels change color when exposed to a sample, and are thus able to “read” the gene chip to find out which molecules have been able to bond with a counterpart in the sample. This sophisticated technology allows researchers to identify DNA states, and changes in DNA, in a variety of conditions.
Portion of a visual map derived from a gene chip, showing the expression of various genes4
Gene chips will be put to many more experimental uses in the years to come, giving us pictures of how psychospiritual states affect genes. They have already been used to study the effects of acupuncture,5 and chapter 11 summarizes new research using gene chips to measure the epigenetic influence of meditation, relaxation, and other environmental inputs that reduce emotional stress. Future research will examine what gene changes occur before and after prayer, therapeutic touch, energy therapies, and other consciousness-based treatments. At the National Institute for Integrative Healthcare, we have an active research program to measure how emotional de-stressing and physical healing are correlated; chapter 13 contains details of these exciting studies.
This class of genes responds within minutes to events that happen in our lives, and to cues from our environments. They mediate between the environment and the body’s neurochemical processes. They activate other genes, which in turn code for the proteins that govern our cells’ ability to adapt. Early activated genes reach their peak expression in around one hour, whereas the peak is two hours for intermediate activated genes. But many immediate early genes express in much shorter periods—between two seconds and two minutes.
A class of immediate early genes regulates our body’s wakefulness and sleep. They are the chronobiological or “clock genes.” Researcher Marina Bentivoglio, of Stockholm’s prestigious Karolinska Institute, says, “The study of immediate early genes indicates that sleep and wake, as well as synchronized and desynchronized sleep, are characterized by different genomic expressions, the level of IEGs being high during wake and low during sleep. Such fluctuation of gene expression is not ubiquitous but occurs in certain cell populations of the brain.”6 Immediate early genes can be activated both by cognitive changes in the individual, and also by cues from the outside, such as threats, food, or sexual stimulation.7
An example of the pathway followed in such transformations is demonstrated by an immediate early gene called C-fos. It is part of a class of immediate early genes that modulate our body’s response to stress; this class is activated by stressful situations—whether they’re interoffice rivalries, marital disagreements, or attacks by wild animals. C-fos activates brain neurons to produce a protein called fos. Fos then binds to the DNA molecule where it triggers the transcription of other genes. The stresses that trigger the activation of C-fos can be physical traumas. They can also be stressful social or psychological situations. In this way, this family of immediate early genes sets up the response of the rest of the body’s mechanism for dealing with stress.
Gary Marcus, PhD, author of The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexity of Human Thought, says, “A single regulatory gene at the top of a complex network can indirectly launch a cascade of hundreds or thousands of other genes,” and, “by compounding and coordinating their effects, genes can exert enormous influence on biological structure.” The word he uses, “cascade,” is often associated with regulatory gene expression. The firing of a regulatory gene at the top of a cascade can lead to a massive biological chain reaction. He gives examples of experiments in which “a simple regulatory gene leads directly and indirectly to the expression of approximately 2,500 other genes.”8
An epigenetic signal from the outside environment, when it activates such a cascade, can completely change the biological characteristics of an organism. Marcus uses the example of the African butterfly. When the weather is cool, typical of the period before the dry season, which is when the butterfly has to blend with dried-up plants, it develops brown wings in the cocoon. When the weather is warm, indicating the coming rainy season, which is when it needs to blend with an explosion of brightly colored tropical foliage, its wings are colored. Same genes, completely different outcome. It’s all due to regulatory genes, which are switched on or off by an outside environmental influence, in this case, temperature.
Stress from the environment can also provide epigenetic cues. Hans Selye, the German physician who coined the term “stress,” originally broke it down into two poles: distress, or negative stress, and eustress, or positive stress—the kind of stress that causes an athlete to excel, drives an entrepreneur to persevere with a creative project, or inspires a painter to reach new heights of inspired creative expression. Unfortunately, human experience being what it is, the word “stress” has become associated exclusively with distress, while the word “eustress” has disappeared from the lexicon.
Immediate early genes are also critical to the functioning of our immune systems. Distress, whether sourced from within or outside us, can depress the expression of genes that enhance the functioning of our immune system. With medical students in the midst of their final exams as his subjects, researcher Ronald Glaser studied the effect of stress on one of the immune system’s messenger molecules. The molecule, interleukin-2, instructs helper T cells (white blood cells that devour diseased cells and intruders) to attack. He found that during this stressful period, the students showed a significant drop in interleukin-2 production,9 implying a corresponding drop in the transcription of the gene that regulates interleukin-2 production. In follow-up studies, Glaser also found that the stress precancerous subjects were experiencing led to reduced expression of two immediate early genes associated with immune function: c-myc and c-myb.10
Conversely, positive influences—eustress—can bolster the genetic component of our immune systems. Immunologist M. Castes, PhD, showed that emotionally supportive experiences of children in therapeutic support groups improved aspects of their immune system function that depend on genetic activation. The group in his experiment went through a six-month program of self-esteem workshops, guided imagery, and relaxation. When compared with a control group that had not had the same environmental stimuli, the children in the experimental group had both fewer episodes of asthma and fewer incidences of the use of anti-asthma medication. Immune factors in the blood of the experimental group increased, as did gene expression of the factors governing interleukin-2 production.11
Immediate early genes can also affect the developing fetus. Some of the genes activated by immediate early genes shape the form and functioning of the body. When stress proteins are present during fetal development, they can shape the anatomy or rate of growth12 of the child. “The stress may be momentary, and the arousal of the early genes brief. Yet the effects triggered by the activation of the genes they act upon may produce long-term changes.”13
Immediate early genes play a vital role in regulating a great many psychological and physiological functions14
Behavioral State–Related Genes
During various states of awareness, like sleeping and waking, strong emotional arousal, distress and eustress, different patterns of genes express. These genes are related to our behavioral state, and are therefore known as behavioral state–related genes. They provide a link between our thoughts and our bodies, between biology and psychology, and are an important piece of the puzzle explaining how psychological states can affect our bodies, and vice versa. They also explain how psychotherapy, prayer, worship, and social rituals can have positive effects on our physical well-being. They offer a pathway by which we can influence physical health by immersing ourselves in behavioral states that promote health, and avoiding behavioral states that can hurt us.
Ultradian rhythms. Gray area in top box shows peak of cycle; gray area in bottom box shows sleep15
Therapeutic experience suggests that behavioral states are usually linked to daily (circadian) rhythms, or to periodic, several-times-per-day (ultradian) rhythms. Circadian rhythms follow the twenty-four-hour clock, subject to the modifications of circumstance. Ultradian rhythms are briefer rhythms coordinated within circadian rhythms. They last about 90 to 120 minutes, and correlate with measures of our energy level such as blood glucose, metabolic rate, hormone release, and insulin production.16 Peak activity of the left and right hemispheres of our brains also alternates according to 90-to 120-minute ultradian rhythms,17 and when we go to sleep, REM or dreaming periods follow a similar schedule.18 Ninety to 120 minutes is also the average time between gene expression, and the synthesis of the proteins required by the body to convey information between cells, provide energy, create the scaffolding of cells, and accomplish many of the body’s other functions. The ancient sages who developed traditional Chinese medicine several thousand years ago seem to have been aware of ultradian rhythms; they divided the therapeutic day into two-hour intervals. Acupuncture charts show a daily clock in which the body’s energies fluctuate every two hours.
Rossi notes that ultradian “valleys” correspond with a need for relaxation after periods of intense creative work,19 and recommends an ultradian rest period in the afternoon, if that is when behavioral problems recur.20 By this late in the day, he believes that many people, after ignoring the peaks and valleys of their ultradian cycle for many hours, have “an accumulated ultradian deficit and stress syndrome expressed with these common complaints:
“‘I’m exhausted by midafternoon.”
“‘I get stressed, tense, and irritable toward the end of the workday.”
“‘I need a drink after work.”
“‘My addiction gets worse later in the day when I have to have something.”
“‘I get sleepy in the afternoon.”
“‘The worst time is when I have to go home after school and I’m too tired to do homework.”
“‘Just before dinner everybody is irritable and that’s when arguments start.”
“Many of these acute and chronic problems can be ameliorated by taking one or two ultradian breaks earlier in the day or taking a nap after lunch,”21 Rossi advises, especially in cases where people might already have skipped several ultradian rest periods during which their bodies were clearly instructing them to slow down. Noticing our need for ultradian rest periods after times of intense creative output can allow us to pace our days in order to avoid behavior-dependent genetic conflicts.
Secretion of hormones such as ACTH and cortisol, which are released on the usual 90- to 120-minute ultradian cycle, peak just before wakefulness. Most researchers do not believe that these fluctuations are under our conscious control. Yet many people are able to decide, before they go to bed, exactly what time they will wake up.
Like many travelers, I set my internal alarm clock when I’m on a trip. Just before dropping off to sleep, I decide when I want to wake up each morning. When I wake up and look at the clock, I’m usually within a few minutes of my target time. Often, it’s the exact minute. If I then want to sleep some more, I’ll say to myself, “I’ll wake up fully in twenty minutes,” and usually I will. The certainty that this biological function will work reliably is so ingrained in my awareness that I long ago stopped carrying a travel alarm clock in my kit, even though when presenting a workshop, it’s crucial to be on time. This experience, common to a great many travelers,22 suggests that intentionality conditions aspects of our behavioral state–related genetic activity long thought to be outside of our conscious control.
Epigenetic stimuli can affect gene expression in neurons
Experience-dependent genes are genes that are activated by learning and novelty. This class of genes generates the protein synthesis required to instruct stem cells to differentiate in order to replace injured or damaged cells in the tissues of our muscles and organs—the foundation of growth and healing. It also stimulates stem cells into forming new neurons in the brain, not just in the young, but at any age. Stimulated by novel activities and learning, these new neurons form new synaptic connections within the brain. The experiences we are having each moment are actually changing the structure of our brains.
Experiences build neuronal pathways. When you first learned the correct way to swing a tennis racket, it took great concentration to remember your instruction each time. Then, at some point, the neural synapses that coded your swing were so well developed that you no longer had to concentrate. The nerve connections associated with swinging the racket correctly were copious enough to permit you to perform this feat without conscious attention. Step onto a tennis court, and your body immediately knows how to swing a racket. You could move on to another learning experience.
Contrary to the popular notion that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” our brains keep adding new neural links throughout our lives, as long as they are stimulated to do so.23 This process is called neurogenesis. Learning experiences and other highly attentive states of awareness switch on the expression of genes that stimulate the formation of new neurons. Whereas most of our organs stop growing in our late teens, our brains—with the ongoing stimulation of new behavior, discovery, physical exercise, novel environments, and fresh new memories—are a teeming mass of creation our whole lives.
One of those creations may be health where before there was disease. “Many of the so-called miracles of healing via spiritual practices and therapeutic hypnosis…probably occur via this type of activity-dependent gene expression in stem cells throughout the brain and body.”24 Rossi declares that “fascination during novel and numinous life experiences plays a fundamental role in focusing our attention and engaging activity-dependent gene expression neurogenesis, and healing in general.”25 A healer and healee might go into a highly attentive state of awareness at the same time, such as when a rabbi is praying, a Reiki master is laying on hands, or a compassionate doctor is counseling a patient. This shared intent, with its associated electromagnetic patterns of resonant brain frequencies, might be mutually reinforcing. Healer and healee entrain to the same brain wave forms during these periods of heightened consciousness. Two resonant brains might create a feedback loop and build a stronger field, initiating a bigger epigenetic signal to spark neurogenesis and build the neural highways necessary for miraculous healing.
Hippocampus, hypothalamus, and amygdala are engaged during fight-or-flight
The process of turning short-term memories into long-term memories is key to neurogenesis. Short-term memory utilizes only existing pathways of molecular communication between nerve cells. Long-term memory, on the other hand, is processed by the portion of our brains known as the hippocampus. As it codes for long-term memory, the hippocampus stimulates experience-related gene expression, especially involving a gene known as zif-268, which leads to the growth of new synapses and new neural pathways in the brain. London cabbies, who have to navigate a crazy quilt of medieval streets each day, tend to have larger hippocampuses.26 So do symphony violinists. Conversely, long-term stress, which keeps brain cortisol levels chronically high, has been shown to damage the hippocampus, inhibiting memory and learning.
Evolving technologies like positron emission tomography (PET) scanners and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines allow us to produce sophisticated images of brain activity. Researchers are now using these tools to map the changes that occur during psychospiritual experiences and changes of consciousness. As subjects think certain thoughts, practice certain behaviors, or harbor certain emotions, researchers can determine which areas of their brains are firing. Emotions such as fear and anger are associated with different patterns of brain arousal.27 We are now also starting to be able to associate changes in the brain with changes in genetic state; as certain genes are activated, certain areas of the brain show increased activity. This genetic activation in the brain sends neurological signals throughout the body. Candace Pert, PhD, author of Molecules of Emotion, calls this the psychosomatic network. Through the psychosomatic network, thoughts and emotions are transformed into physiological effects. In the other direction of the feedback loop, physiological experiences gathered by our senses translate into mental and emotional states.
“I am looking at and seeing the violent crash. I see my father’s body across the railroad tracks. I feel the shock and horror in my mother’s body and consciousness as she witnessed his death.”28
These words were spoken by a woman receiving a head massage. Her face “contorted in agony” as she suddenly, vividly, and spontaneously recalled the death of her father when she was a child. Until the massage therapist began to work on her body, the memory had been buried, inaccessible to her conscious mind. She thought she had no memory of the event, but when the right muscle group was stimulated, the memory leapt vividly into her awareness.
For decades, massage therapists have recounted such stories of spontaneous awakening of memory when tissues are stimulated. They can scarcely fail to notice the link between body and mind; when manipulating muscle and connective tissue, emotional release of buried traumatic memories sometimes takes place. Science is now catching up and starting to describe some of the mechanics of this phenomenon. It has also become apparent to many psychotherapists that the verbal processing of trauma, without physical release, provides only partial relief. While buried emotional traumas can be released by bodywork, the link can work the other way, with physical symptoms disappearing once a psychospiritual shift occurs.
Stanislav Grof, MD, PhD, who coined the term “spiritual emergency” to describe a dramatic spiritual breakthrough manifesting as a psychotic episode, said that spiritual emergencies might be accompanied by involuntary twitching and other spontaneous body movements. Harvey Jackins, who founded one of the most widely used forms of peer therapy, known as Re-Evaluation Counseling or Co-Counseling, believes, on the basis of thousands of clinical observations, that genuine psychological shift is always accompanied by shuddering, moaning, twitching, tears, sweating, or some other physical sign of discharging emotions. A 2004 meta-analysis of thirty-seven studies of massage therapy published in Psychological Bulletin showed their effectiveness for the relief of anxiety and depression, with “benefits similar in magnitude to those of psychotherapy” alone.29
Using psychological counseling and physical manipulation in tandem may provide the most effective emotional release. Candace Pert asserts that the body is the unconscious mind. Psychotherapy that ignores the body may even cause harm. Remembering traumatic incidents without physical-emotional release can retraumatize people by igniting the same neuronal pathways as the original event and building more neural strands to reinforce pain-laden brain structures.
The link between areas of the body and traumatic emotional states is illustrated by many phenomena. One is the recent discovery that removing “worry wrinkles” may remove the underlying worry too. This effect was stumbled upon by plastic surgeons giving patients cosmetic injections of Botox. Botox, a therapeutic variant of the protein present in botulism toxin, paralyzes muscles into which it is injected. When injected into the facial muscles of patients with deeply lined skin, it paralyzes the muscles, and the skin smooths out for a few months.
What cosmetic surgeons began noticing, however, was that in some of their Botox patients who were depressed, the depression lifted after the injection. According to one report:
Kathleen Delano had suffered from depression for years. Having tried psychotherapy and antidepressant drugs in vain, she resigned herself to a life of suffering.
Then she tried Botox, the drug that a few years ago became the rage for smoothing facial wrinkles.
In 2004, her physician injected five doses of the toxin into the muscles between Delano’s eyebrows…. Eight weeks later…her depression had lifted.30
Botox patient before and after
The alteration of the physical structure seemed to catalyze an alteration of the mental state. A happier “look,” even one artificially induced, produced a happier experience. Though we know that changing the mind changes the body, it also seems that the reverse is true: Changing the body changes the mind.
Evidence of the relationship between the body and emotions has recently come from an unlikely source: the science of mathematics. A mathematician from the University of Tokyo, Yoshiharu Yamamoto, PhD, hooked up accelerometers to the arms of patients diagnosed with major depression. The accelerometers measured how often subjects changed their rate of motion. He found striking differences in the activity patterns of depressed and healthy people, with depressed people moving less, and in bursts of activity unlike the normal subjects. They had more frequent long rest periods, and less frequent short rest periods. As he looked for an analogy with which to compare the charts he compiled during his study, Dr. Yamamoto observed that they looked most like the patterns of electromagnetic activity of nerve cells that have been removed from contact with other neurons and isolated in a petri dish. Isolation looked similar to him, whether the social isolation of a depressed person—or the physical isolation of an individual cell.31
Psychotherapists have long observed that when therapeutic breakthroughs are achieved, the body, too, often heals. During a therapy session with “Celeste,” a young woman with arthritis chronicled in Ernest Rossi’s The Psychobiology of Gene Expression, Celeste goes from very limited mobility in her hands to making a fist to being able to stretch her fingers wide. She’s delighted by the changes in her body that occur during the hour-long session with Rossi. And while he acts as a therapist, he also speculates which genes are expressing:
Celeste: My right hand is doing some stuff.
Rossi: Your right hand is doing some stuff?
Celeste: Yeah. My left one feels like lead, but my right one…. I don’t know, I think it started shaking a little bit, or something.
Rossi’s comments of this exchange: “Evidence of psychobiological arousal and behavioral state–related gene expression.… The therapist wonders how to engage the psychogenomic dynamics of immunological variables such as interleukin-1, 2, and 1B associated with Cox-2 that has been implicated in rheumatoid arthritis that is Celeste’s presenting condition.”
Rossi: [Celeste’s hand…surprisingly forms a fist]. Oh my goodness! Something new seems to be happening?
Rossi: Wow! Yes, something new is beginning to happen! [Celeste now extends her fingers up into the air]….
Celeste: I sure don’t know what this is [laughing].…
Rossi’s comments: “Illumination and activity-dependent gene expression. Celeste experiences playful activity-dependent exercise as a creative breakout of her typically restrained hand and finger movements associated with her rheumatoid arthritis. Future research will be needed to determine if…the CREB genes associated with new memory and learning, as well as the ODC and BDNF genes associated with neurogenesis and physical growth, are actually being engaged.…”
At the end of the session, Celeste is stretching her arms and hands in delight at her newfound mobility. Rossi closes by hoping that “the experiential theater of demonstration therapy will be sufficiently numinous to activate zif-268 gene expression in her REM dreaming tonight,”32 which will help cement the changes in her body.
Recent studies are allowing us to understand the role of genetics in the psychosomatic network. For instance, the hypothalamus is a structure in the brain that transforms the activity of the frontal lobes into hormonal messenger molecules. These communicate with the endocrine glands, which affect other systems, including the immune system, digestive system, and musculoskeletal system. Portions of the hypothalamus synthesize a hormone known as CRH (corticotrophinreleasing hormone), which stimulates the production of a dozen other messenger molecules that influence stress and relaxation.
The gene that initiates the production of CRH is located on chromosome 8, a chromosome so vital to our function that it has scarcely changed for millennia: “CRH synthesizing and secreting neurons are found [in] their highest densities…in the prefrontal, insular, and cingulate areas [of the brain], where they mediate cognitive and behavioral processing.… Secondary messengers within the cell convey the extracellular signals from the environment (including psychosocial cues) to the nucleus of the cell, where they initiate gene expression.”33 Our bodies have an exquisite ability to turn external cues into the signals required for optimal internal responses.
Eric Kandel, MD, who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2000, says that “Changes in gene expression…alter the strength of synaptic connections and structural changes that alter the anatomical pattern of interconnections between nerve cells of the brain.”34 In one experiment, Kandel discovered that when new memories are established, the number of synaptic connections in the sensory neurons stimulated jumped to around 2,600, a doubling of its previous count of 1,300. Unless the initial experience was reinforced, however, the number of connections dropped back to 1,300 within three weeks. If we reinforce our novel experiences by repetition, we strengthen the neural net to support them; if we do not, our newfound neural circuitry quickly decays—not over years, but in less than a month. This means that new thoughts, actions, and habits must be continuously updated in order to take root.35 Like a song on the radio that becomes ingrained in the cultural collective, many people must hear it many times. But if it isn’t heard for a while, the memory of even a Top Forty tune begins to fade. Who today remembers “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” or “At the End of the Road”?—both top of the charts a century ago.
Insight changes the brain as well. In an article entitled “The Neuroscience of Leadership,” David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz, PhD, report on studies that use “MRI and EEG technologies to study moments of insight. One study found sudden bursts of high-frequency 40 Hz oscillations (gamma waves) in the brain appearing just prior to moments of insight. This oscillation is conducive to creating links across many parts of the brain.” This is the part of the brain that “is involved in perceiving and processing music, spatial, and structural relations (such as those in a building or painting), and other complex aspects of the environment. The findings suggest that at a moment of insight, a complex set of new connections is being created.”36
Gene expression in long-term memory encoding also has an ultradian rhythm of between 90 and 120 minutes, and the number of new synaptic connections between neurons can double in as little as an hour once the experience-dependent genes are activated.37 One of the ways in which memories are encoded is when we replay a scene in our minds. Memory is not static, and as we combine old memories with present situations, we stimulate neurogenesis. We used to think that memories remained unchanged over time, like taking a photograph out of an album and putting it back in again. We now know that we recombine the old material with bits of information from the current environment. Like printing out a photo on whatever printer is closest, then scanning it back in using whatever computer we’re using currently, content is subtly reconstituted each time we remember.
Within an hour of gene expression in response to environmental stimulation, one synaptic connection has become two38
If you don’t use the new connections you develop during neurogenesis, you lose them. If you aren’t using a synapse, your brain disassembles it; bodies have no tolerance for wasted capacity.39 Kandel’s work also showed that if novel learning experiences were not reinforced, the baseline of 1,300 synaptic connections could drop to 800.40 Your brain works rather like an efficient electrician upgrading a house. It installs more electrical wiring wherever the current is flowing most strongly, to accommodate increased capacity. It gets the wire it needs by stripping out old unused circuits.
Novel experiences not only lead to the growth of new brain tissue, they are linked to psychological well-being, too. There is a link between clinical depression and “a lack of new cell growth in the brain.”41 As a consequence, the hippocampi of the brains of depressed patients shrink in time by as much as 15%, as distress and social trauma result in environmental signals that inhibit the expression of experience-dependent genes.42 Our hippocampi are involved in the recall of memories, perhaps while we sleep; such repeated replaying is central to the process of creating durable long-term memories,43 with a beneficial effect on neurogenesis. Hippocampi also contain stem cells, those “blank” cells that do not become specialized until stimulated by an epigenetic environmental signal, which means that an aging brain can regenerate. Neuronal stem cells are found in other areas of the brain and spinal cord as well and, far different from the old static picture of brain development, are generated by the body up till the very last moments of our lives.44 Psychologist Martin Seligman, PhD, in his book Authentic Happiness, sums it up by saying “Neurons are wired to respond to novel events,”45 and as long as we keep cultivating them in our lives, we keep stimulating neurogenesis.
The fluctuating nature of memory, with synaptic connections being created and destroyed, means that memories may be strengthened or diffused. Psychotherapy seeks to bring painful memories back to the forefront of consciousness, and then shift them. A series of experiments studying rat brains suggests that if a painful or fear-laden memory is triggered and then processed, its impact is diminished.
Rossi, who has more than three decades of experience treating patients, summarizes these experiments as follows: “When the rat brain is infused with anisomycin (an inhibitor of protein synthesis) shortly after the reactivation of a long consolidated memory, the memory is extinguished. The same treatment of the brain with anisomycin but without reactivating the consolidated memory leaves the memory intact. This means that the gene expression and protein synthesis cycle is reactivated when important memories are recalled and replayed.… Most paradigms of psychotherapy involve a combination of the same two-step process.… (1) a reactivation of old traumatic memories, which is (2) immediately followed by some form of therapeutic intervention designed to heal the old hurt.”46 Each time we reboot an old memory, we may be unconsciously modifying it even as we think we are “just remembering.” This phenomenon can help with the healing process, especially when combined with strong feelings. These allow us to cement an association between an old trauma and a new, positive meaning.
One study showed an increase in immune system function during a drumming and storytelling ritual. In this study, 111 healthy volunteers were exposed to an hour-long ritual, much like the kind of communal experience our ancient ancestors might have enjoyed around the campfire. The improvement in immune function after the drumming and storytelling ceremony was demonstrated by increased activity in helper T cells. In addition, levels of the healthy hormone DHEA increased, while the stress hormone cortisol dropped.47
Many traditional healing rituals, such as shamanic journeys, faith healings, passion plays, the Catholic Mass, and exorcisms, involve the same mechanism of heightened emotional arousal, followed by a release. Rossi points out that psychotherapies old and new use this approach. Sigmund Freud first had patients free-associate, then, in the second step, find an insight that reframed the meaning of the memories in a significant way. New therapies such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) also reactivate painful old traumas, after which they are infused with positive images and feelings.48 Psychotherapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) also challenge dysfunctional ideas and traumatic incidents by presenting positive alternative cognitions. What EMDR, EFT, and Energy Psychology do, in addition, is add a layer of physical stimulation. Like ancient drumming or dancing ceremonies, this physical component is crucial to the rapid healings seen in these therapies.
Creating Your Own Designer Brain
Learning is demanding. Giving ourselves new challenges, like taking a college course in a subject completely beyond our existing fields of expertise, reaching out for new friendships, acquiring a new artistic ability, and learning a new sport, all stretch our consciousness. Yet this positive stress is part of the process by which we grow the capacities of our brains. Experiments with rats being taught new tasks found that those rats that were mildly stressed learned faster than those that were not.49
Other experiments demonstrate that unpredictability and novelty are crucial aspects of learning. The association between a stimulus and a response—a known reward for a known action—takes learning only to the first step. After that, stimuli must be unpredictable in order to maintain responses and continue engaging experience-dependent genes. If we expect a reinforcement for a certain response, the novelty value of that reinforcement quickly wears off and learning stops. It is the unexpected, not the known, that commands our attention.50
Rossi calls this the novelty-numinosum-neurogenesis effect, and characterizes it as a “core dynamic of psychobiology. It integrates experiences of mind (sensory-perceptual awareness of novelty with the arousal/motivational aspects of the numinosum) with biology (gene expression, protein synthesis, neurogenesis, and healing).… Activity-dependent creative experiences in the arts, cultural rituals, humanities, and sciences as well as the peak experiences of everyday life are all manifestations of the novelty-numinosum-neurogenesis effect. When reviewing awesome art or architecture, when moved by cinema, music, and dance, when enchanted by drama, fantasy, fairytale, myth, or poetry, we are experiencing mythopoetic transmissions of the numinosum….”51 Every time you expose yourself to such learning experiences, you are taking an important step toward health and long-term mental acuity.
A fascinating series of experiments examined how we can fool ourselves into believing we saw or did something when, in fact, we did not—and those beliefs translate into neurochemicals. In one study, 148 young British college students were served in a bar. Everything about the bar was real: the bottles, the glasses, the napkins, the sights, and the smells.
Unbeknownst to the experimental group, there was one thing that was fake: the alcohol. Researchers had substituted the alcohol in the bottles of spirits, beer, and wine with mere tonic water. The bartenders mixed the drinks as though they were serving the real McCoy, and the subjects became tipsy, acting in a manner similar to the control group, who were being served the real thing. Their bodies generated the neural signals and neurochemicals resulting in intoxicated behavior simply because the students held the belief that they were drinking real alcohol. “‘When students were told the true nature of the experiment at the completion of the study, many were amazed that they had only received plain tonic, insisting that they had felt drunk at the time,’ the researcher commented, concluding that, ‘It showed that even thinking you’ve been drinking affects your behavior.’”52 Beliefs create behavior.
Which is the placebo?
An experiment at Yale showed that students’ perceptions of a stranger could be altered by a stimulus as innocuous as handing them a cup of coffee. On the way to the lab, not knowing they were subjects in a study, students bumped into a lab assistant burdened with clipboards and books—and a cup of coffee. The laden assistant asked the student to hold the coffee for a moment. It was either a mug of steaming java or a cup of iced coffee.
When they got to the lab, students then rated a hypothetical person they read about. Those who had held the iced coffee rated the person as colder, more selfish, and less social. Students who had momentarily held the hot coffee did the reverse. In another study, students playing a game at a table with a briefcase at the other end were much more competitive than those whose table held a backpack. It seems incredible, but even such tiny cues can condition perceptions and behavior.53 Other studies show that our bodies produce endorphins in response to a placebo. Beliefs become biochemistry.54
What’s happening in our brains can override what’s happening in our bodies. Under hypnosis, subjects can be induced to really “see” things that aren’t there. They can be trained to look at common English words, and perceive them to be gibberish. In a provocative summary of this research published in the New York Times, Dr. Amir Raz said that the brain’s internal beliefs and perceptions, “‘overrode brain circuits devoted to reading and detecting conflict.’ A number of other studies of brain imaging point to similar top-down brain mechanisms.… Top-down processes override sensory, or bottom-up information, said Dr. Stephen M. Kosslyn, a neuroscientist at Harvard. People think that sights, sounds, and touch from the outside world constitute reality. But the brain constructs what it perceives based on past experience, Kosslyn said.” Beliefs can create reality.
Researchers have noticed that we can still read and make meaning out of words even if they are jumbled. Read the following three paragraphs quickly:
Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, maens taht it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig, huh? And I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! Now you can tlel tehm taht it inst! Plseae aslo tlel all yuor fneirds to buy The Ginee in Yuor Gnees bceuase it’s scuh an azaming book!
You probably found that you could scan and comprehend these words almost as fast as if they had been unscrambled. There are also many visual tricks like the one below. An object or word can seem one thing, or seem another, depending on our perceptions.
Good or evil? Reality doesn’t change, though our perception may
A team at Yale came to the startling realization that “the cortical map reflects our perceptions, not the physical body,” adding that, “the brain is reflecting what we are feeling, even if that’s not what really happened.” Anna Roe, the chief researcher, said, “We think we know what’s out there in the physical world, but it’s all interpreted by our brains. Everything we sense is an illusion to a degree.”55
One possible mechanism to explain the ability of our brains to override our senses is the surprising recent discovery that the bundles of nerve cells running from our brain to our senses outnumber the ones running in the other direction by a factor of ten to one! For every neural bundle running from our senses to our brain, there are roughly ten neural bundles running from our brain to that sensory organ. So there’s a lot more bandwidth for signals going from the brain than there is for signals going to it. University of Oregon neuroscientist Michael Posner, PhD, says, “The idea that perceptions can be manipulated by expectations is fundamental to the study of cognition.”56
Since we are building these neural pathways with every thought and feeling, we have an opportunity, by taking control of the quality of our thoughts and feelings, to build a neural network focused on the transmission of positive, healing, and joyful impulses. As we consciously cultivate these mental and emotional states, which then become ingrained in our neural network, we may indeed see, in time, the beautiful world we imagine. A wise fool exclaimed: “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it with my own eyes.”
Far from who and what we are being determined by our genes, we are rewriting the expression of our genes in every second, by our choices of what to do, say, and think. The choices we make with our consciousness are being genetically encoded in our brain structure daily, reinforcing the neural pathways that correspond to experiences we have frequently, and reducing pathways we use infrequently. But more than the “use or lose it” axiom, activity-dependent genetic expression tells us that we can “experience it and create it” as we encode new pathways in our brains deliberately.
This research reminds us that we hold many of the levers of healing in our own hands. It makes us aware that it is not doctors, hospitals, acupuncturists, homeopaths, chiropractors, energy workers, or other health professionals who determine our sickness and health. They can tilt the balance, but not nearly as much as we can.
Each of us, as individuals, creates a big chunk of our emotional and mental environment, thereby turning genes on and off in our cells. This opens up vast and exciting potential. While it may require hundreds of scientific studies to chart the links between specific environmental influences and the expression of particular genes, you don’t need to wait till they’re published in order to improve your own health right now. You can grab the epigenetic levers of health and start moving them immediately.
This research is also an antidote to the helplessness that many patients report when enmeshed in the medical system. When we realize that we have some conscious control over the biochemical environment in which we bathe our cells, we suddenly become acutely aware of which ingredients we are dropping into the stew. Like an expert chef, we can choose to put only tasty thoughts and feelings into our cells. We would no more put toxic thoughts into our consciousness than we would throw rat poison into our soup.
We likewise become aware of which emotions we harbor. We perceive emotions not simply as arising from experiences that happen to us, but as aspects of our environmental cocktail that we can cultivate to bring beauty and nourishment to the garden of our health. Over the last few decades, research has sought to understand the mechanisms that underlie the health effects of positive consciousness. We know that altruism, optimism, prayer, meditation, spirituality, social connectedness, gratitude, intention, and energy medicine have positive effects on health and longevity. Now we’re starting to understand that our consciousness conditions our genetic expression, moment by moment. This insight allows us to use consciousness change as a medical intervention. For instance, studies have shown meditation to have benefits that are similar to antidepressant medications, regulating the serotonin and dopamine levels in our brains, as well as stimulating our immune systems.57 Other research shows that we can alleviate our brain’s response to chronic pain through meditation.58 Knowing that we can unlock a hugely beneficial internal pharmacopeia of gene-altering, naturally occurring substances through consciousness, without any of the side effects of artificial drugs, gives us powerful leverage for well-being.
