If I told patients to raise their blood levels of immune globulins or killer T cells, no one would know how. But if I can teach them to love themselves and others fully, the same change happens automatically. The truth is: Love heals.
—Bernie Siegel, MD, Love, Medicine & Miracles
One morning at the start of a busy workday, a part-time employee walked into my office. Her name was Anabelle. Tall, slender, well dressed and poised, with commanding blue eyes and a sharp intelligence, Anabelle was a force to be reckoned with. Except for that morning…
The moment I opened the office door, Anabelle appeared to be in such obvious distress that it was clear she was falling to pieces emotionally. Instead of going to a desk, I took her elbow and guided her to a chair in the waiting room, where, without much prompting, she poured out her sad story.
Her stepfather, Jack, had abused her, verbally and physically, from the age of around seven. She ran away from home at the age of fifteen and rarely visited her parents after that. The last time Jack had hit her was on one of those visits. At that time, she was twenty-one years old. She never went back to the house; it had now been more than fifteen years since the last incident.
In the previous day’s mail, she had received an embossed formal invitation to a family reunion. It had been sent to her by her mother, who was still married to Jack, and who was arranging the get-together. Anabelle knew that Jack would be there.
“How could my mother send me this invitation, knowing I’d have to see him again?” she wailed. That slip of paper summarized the whole nightmare of abuse for Anabelle, plus what she saw as her mother’s condoning Jack’s behavior.
I asked her if I could perform an energy intervention with her that might make her feel better. She nodded wordlessly. I then asked her to remember the moment she had opened the envelope and read the invitation, and feel where in her body the sensation of distress was most concentrated.
She responded, “My tummy,” and pointed at her solar plexus. I then asked her to rate her distress, as she thought again about the scene, on a scale of one to ten, with one being calm and ten being as upset as she could possibly be. “I’m a ten!” she said through tight lips, with flushed cheeks, her voice rising emphatically.
I did a quick round of EFT tapping with her. The entire process took less than two minutes. “Now think back on the moment you opened the envelope,” I asked her. “Remember the scene. Feel your tummy. Then tell me how upset you feel, on a scale of one to ten.”
“Zero.” She shrugged, and looked at me with calm puzzlement. Then she added, “It was just a scrap of paper, after all.” Her belief about the meaning of that scrap of paper, and the emotional charge that accompanied it, had make a 180-degree turn.
The link between gene expression, especially the fight-or-flight emotional responses that Anabelle had been caught up in, and belief is a fertile field for research. Bruce Lipton, PhD, a former professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, is an expert on DNA. His best-selling book The Biology of Belief has been hailed by Joseph Chilton Pearce as “the definitive summary of the New Biology and all it implies. It synthesizes an encyclopedia of new information into a brilliant yet simple package.” His early research on muscular dystrophy, studies employing cloned human stem cells, focused on the molecular mechanisms controlling cell behavior.
In 1982, Lipton began examining the principles of quantum physics and how they might be integrated into his understanding of the cell’s information processing systems. He produced breakthrough studies on the cell membrane, which revealed that this outer layer of the cell was an organic homologue of a computer chip, the cell’s equivalent of a brain. His research at Stanford University School of Medicine, between 1987 and 1992, revealed that the environment, operating though the membrane, controlled the behavior and physiology of the cell, turning genes on and off,1,2 work that was subsequently replicated by other researchers.3 Lipton has pioneered the application of the principles of quantum physics—especially the notion that the quantum universe is a set of probabilities, which are susceptible to the thoughts of the observer—to the field of cellular biology. Whereas traditional cell biology focuses on physical molecules, Lipton focuses on the electromagnetic pathways through which energy in the form of our beliefs can affect our biology, including our genome.4 In a truly elegant process, “a tiny field, far too weak to power any cellular activity, triggers a change at the regulatory level, which then leads to a substantial physiological response.”5
Our beliefs—true or false, positive or negative, creative or destructive—do not simply exist in our minds; they interact with the infinite probabilities of a quantum universe, and they affect the cells of our bodies, contributing to the expression of various genetic potentials. There are protein molecules on either side of the cell membrane. The proteins on the external surfaces of the cell are receptive to external forces, including the biochemical changes in the body produced by different kinds of thought and emotion. These external receptors, in turn, affect the internal proteins, altering their molecular angles. The two sets of receptors function like latticework that can expand or contract. The degree of expansion determines the size and shape of the molecules—so-called “effector proteins”—that can pass through the lattice. Together the “receptor-effector complex” acts as a molecular switch, accepting signals from the cell’s environment that trigger the unwrapping of the protein sleeve around DNA.
Two individuals may have an identical genetic sequence for a particular characteristic encoded in their cells. The beliefs of the one individual provide the signals that unwrap the protein covering and allow gene expression; the beliefs of the other individual do not. The process is complex; there are hundreds of thousands of such switches in a cell membrane, and which genes are expressed is a function of the configuration of many of them at a given moment. Attempts to correlate a particular belief with the expression of a particular gene are foiled by this complexity. Yet the general principle that our beliefs are affecting the expression of our genes holds true.
An intriguing series of experiments on the effect on DNA of intention and emotion was performed by researchers at the Institute of Heart Math in Boulder Creek, California, led by Rollin McCraty, PhD. The Heart Math experiments show that measurable molecular changes in the DNA molecule can result from human desires, intentions, and emotions.
In a series of papers published over the last decade,6 McCraty and his colleagues look at various aspects of heart function and of DNA modulation under different conditions. They illuminate the relationship of energetic to chemical transmission mechanisms: “The current scientific conception is that all biological communication occurs at a chemical/molecular level through the action of neurochemicals fitting into specialized receptor sites, much like keys open certain locks. However, in the final analysis, the message is actually transmitted to the interior of the cell by a weak electrical signal. This signal, in turn, can act to either stimulate or suppress enzyme systems. It is now evident that the cell membrane is more than a protective barrier; it also serves as a powerful signal amplifier.
“From these and related findings, a new paradigm of energetic communication occurring within the body at the atomic and quantum levels has emerged—one which is compatible with numerous observed phenomena that could not be adequately explained within the framework of the older chemical/molecular model. ‘Fight or flight’ reactions to life-threatening situations…are too immediate and manifold to be consistent with the key-lock model of communication. However, they are comprehensible within the framework of quantum physics and an internal and external electromagnetic or energetic signaling system, which may also explain…the energetic communication links between cells, people, and the environment.
“Several of the brain’s electrical rhythms, such as the alpha and beta rhythm, are naturally synchronized to the rhythm of the heart and this heart-brain synchronization significantly increases when an individual is in a physiologically coherent mode. This synchronization is likely to be mediated at least in part by electromagnetic field interactions. This is important as synchronization between the heart and brain is likely involved in the processes that give rise to intuition, creativity, and optimal performance.”7
An ingenious Heart Math experiment used human placental DNA to determine whether the molecule’s double helix coils became more tightly wound or less tightly wound, a characteristic that can be measured by the molecule’s absorption of ultraviolet light.
Individuals trained in Heart Math techniques generated feelings of love and appreciation while holding a specific intention to either wind or unwind the DNA in the experimental sample. In some cases, there was a change of 25% in the conformation of the DNA, indicating a large effect. Similar effects occurred whether the intention was to wind the helixes tighter or to unwind them.
When these participants had no intention of changing the DNA, yet generated the same feelings, the DNA changed no more than it did with the control group, which was composed of local residents and students. When trained participants held the intention of changing the DNA but did not move into the emotional state of love and goodwill characterized by heart coherence, the DNA likewise remained unchanged. Heart coherence is a state in which the variability of the heartbeat is highly regular. Positive emotions produce heart coherence, while negative emotions produce large fluctuations in heart rate variability. A high degree of heart coherence is associated with a high degree of efficiency in the functioning of the circulatory and nervous systems.
Anger EEG readout of Heart Rate Variability9
Appreciation EEG readout of Heart Rate Variability8
In order to determine just how specific and local the effect might be, in one experiment with a highly trained volunteer, three separate vials of DNA were prepared. The volunteer was asked to wind the DNA spirals tighter in two of the samples but not in the third. Those were exactly the results measured under later UV analysis in the laboratory; changes showed up only in the two samples to which the volunteer had directed his intention. This suggests that the effects are not simply an “amorphous energy field,” but are highly correlated with the intender’s intentions.
The researchers speculated that the effects might be due to the proximity of the samples to the participants’ hearts, since the heart generates a strong electromagnetic field. They therefore performed similar experiments at a distance of half a mile from the DNA samples. The effects were the same. Five nonlocal trials showed the same effect, all to statistically significant levels.
Ultraviolet absorption in DNA before and after being exposed to human intention9
These studies demonstrate that the DNA molecule can be altered through intentionality. The better participants were at generating a state of heart coherence, the better they were at affecting DNA with their intentions. Control group participants who were untrained and unskilled at heart coherence were unable to produce an effect despite the strength of their intentions. Both intention and heart coherence were required in order to alter the DNA molecules. The researchers suggested that, “an energetic connection exists between structures in the quantum vacuum and corresponding structures on the physical plane, and that this connection can be influenced by human intentionality.” I recommend you take a deep breath, and read the prior sentence again! The implications for healing and transformation are revolutionary.
The researchers also speculated that the positive emotions affecting DNA might play a role in phenomena such as spontaneous remissions, the health and longevity rewards of faith, and the positive effects of prayer. A researcher with Johns Hopkins University observed that “intention, expectation, culture, and meaning are central to placebo-effect phenomena and are substantive determinants of health.”10
The effects of faith, and the possibility of the direct transmission of energy from healer to healee, have long been understood by human beings. In an ancient apocryphal Chinese story, a student asks a Qigong master, “I understand that the doctors of old didn’t have to use acupuncture and herbs.” The master replies, “In the old days, energy was transmitted directly. The acupuncture and herbs we use today are a step below the direct transmission of energy.” Near the start of the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, the Yellow Emperor says, “I have heard that in early ancient times, there were the Enlightened People who could…breathe in the essence of qi, meditate, and their spirit and body would become whole.” The direct transmission of healing also has its place in the Christian tradition. During a busy day of ministry, thronged with crowds, Jesus was aware of direct transmission to a single individual:
And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. “Who touched me?” Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.” Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”
King Charles II laying on hands
The woman who touched the hem of his garment evidently believed in direct transmission of healing grace, and apparently the Master did too, because he felt it flow from him. England’s King Edward the Confessor touched many subjects who reported healing, and Charles II is reported to have bestowed “The King’s Touch” on around four thousand people each year. Touching is an essential part of human nurturing from birth onward and results in the brain releasing a cascade of neurotransmitters, as well as in gene expression.
Touch and belief are part of religious traditions
Each of us holds the keys to a pharmacy containing a dazzling array of healing compounds: our own brain. We are capable of secreting the chemicals that enhance our immune function, make us feel pleasure, and insulate us from pain. For instance, endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, have effects similar to powerful pharmaceutical preparations such as morphine; the word “endorphin” is itself an abbreviation of “endogenous (internally generated) morphine.” Consciousness, acting through the body, can generate the molecules required for healing. Our brains are themselves generating drugs similar to those that our doctor are prescribing for us.
Immediate early genes, those that activate in time frames as short as two seconds, are among the genes that stimulate the fight-or flight-response referenced by the Heart Math experimenters. Some of the changes they produce—increased blood circulation to the muscles, enhanced blood clotting, and pupil dilation—are effected by means of proteins. The flight-or-fight stimulus is particularly interesting because modern humans—we who face few violent perils from the external environment—are capable of turning on these stress responses purely through the quality of our thinking. We can also turn on healing proteins, as researchers studying couple interactions, heart disease, and wound healing have documented.
When you trigger the fight-or-flight response in your body, it’s the equivalent of a head of state declaring war. When war is declared, every industrial resource of a nation is suddenly shifted to the production of munitions. Troops are mobilized, and young people are drafted. The communications and transportation systems of the country are put under military control. Borders are sealed, and security is tightened everywhere. Every one of the country’s systems is put on a war footing.
The forebrain, with its big frontal lobes capable of language and abstract thought, is a recent biological innovation. Humans have had the symbolic brain for perhaps two hundred thousand years, the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Reptiles, for instance, manage to survive just fine without this complicated piece of machinery. Much older is your body’s survival intelligence, which has been around for almost four billion years. A species needs a very good threat-response system to survive for long enough to develop a thinking machine like the frontal lobes.
When you’re in danger, though, the body has no use for the frontal lobes. Instead, it relies on your ancient reptilian instincts to keep you alive. The fight-or-flight response hijacks all the body’s systems, just like a country going to war. Your muscles tense for action and blood flows to your outer limbs. To get the blood, it diverts blood from your digestive, reproductive, and cognitive systems. Your skin blanches to prevent blood loss. Your pupils dilate. Your blood sugar rises, along with your blood pressure and heart rate, so that you have plenty of spare energy.
This mobilization comes at a price. Your immune system is depressed, as are your digestive and reproductive capacities. As much as 80% of the blood in your frontal lobes drains out to feed the muscles, which is why sages tell you not to make any decisions while you’re upset.
When the crisis has passed, everything goes back to normal—if you’re a dog or a cat. If you’re a human being, you might use your magnificent forebrain to replay the drama over and over again in your subjective reality, triggering the fight-or-flight response in your body thousands of times after the objective need for war has disappeared.
When you believe you’re under siege, your body has no way of telling that it’s just your neurotic mind thinking abstract thoughts. Its old survival systems click into place. That’s why the married couples that fight, as well as anxious and depressed patients, have a reduction in their immune function. Their cortisol rises, and the function of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation and regeneration, is suppressed in favor of the sympathetic nervous system, which is the system used in fight-or-flight.
What fight-or-flight looks like in your brain
What fight-or-flight looks like in your body
You don’t need a woolly mammoth or a Mack truck charging at you to have a fight-or-flight response. A smaller version of the response is demonstrated by the behavior of my eldest son when he was five years old:
Son: “Daddy, want more canny.”
Me: “Son, I’ll give you some more candy tomorrow, you’ve already had candy today.”
Son (loudly): “Daddy, neeeeed canny now!” (Escalation of response)
Me: “I’ll save some in the cupboard for you to have after dinner tomorrow.”
Son (assertively): “I’m going to hit sister if you don’t gimme canny now!” (Fight)
Me: “Hitting sister isn’t okay.”
Son (pouting, crossing arms, walking away, hiding under table): “I’m not your friend anymore.” (Flight)
Consider the married couple who have an argument, get angry and frustrated, and then withdraw into frustrated silence. The argument represents fight, and silence or sarcastic rejection represents flight.
Think about the meeting at work when Jim says, “I don’t feel comfortable with Cindy’s approach.” The energy in the room changes instantly, and you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Suddenly, there’s the prey (Cindy, flight) and the predator (Jim, fight) caught up in an energy dynamic as old as the stalking Tyrannosaurus rex, and with no more ability than a dinosaur to produce creative, constructive solutions.
When you start to look for it, you’ll see people using mini versions of the fight-or-flight response all the time. It’s so basic to the way animals operate that it’s present at birth as the Moro reflex, which manifests as a startle response at about nine weeks of age, as the production of adrenaline in the newborn’s bloodstream rises in response to a stimulus.
It’s essential that we understand this aspect of our biological programming, because it can sabotage the very best intentions of our conscious mind if we don’t. Beliefs have profound biological effects throughout every single system of the body, just like the country going to war. If you fail to understand them, you can harbor an ongoing stream of negative thoughts and emotions that make war on your own body.
Just as belief can trigger degeneration in our bodies, it can also trigger healing. Research has not yet cataloged all the proteins our bodies produce, but the estimate that scientists use most often is one hundred thousand proteins. Proteins can be assembled in many different combinations, and these combinations are also the subjects of study. The number of known sequences is at least four million, and rising, according to a team of researchers working on a database of human proteins called the Proteonome.11 A few of them are household words: insulin, hemoglobin, glutamine, serotonin. They work synergistically with all the other systems in your body.
One of the most intriguing ways in which we activate naturally occurring healing proteins in our bodies is the placebo response. In order for new medications to be proven effective in scientific studies, they are required to demonstrate efficacy that is significantly greater than an inert pill, a placebo. A placebo is thought to be effective because the patient believes it is effective. The placebo effect has been recognized for centuries; Michel de Montaigne, a French philosopher, exclaimed in 1572 that “there are men on whom the mere sight of medicine is operative!” One of the remarkable things about many medications is that their effects are only slightly better than those obtained from a placebo. Some drugs and surgical procedures have results that are no better than a placebo.
A powerful demonstration of the placebo effect comes from Baylor University Medical Center in Texas. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002.12 Bruce Mosely, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Baylor University, wanted to find out which of two surgical procedures produced the best cure rate for osteoarthritic knees. Many of his patients had degeneration or damage to the cartilage in their knees, and there were two possible surgical procedures that might help.
The first was debridement. In this procedure, incisions are made on both sides of the kneecap and the strands of cartilage are scraped off the surfaces of the knee joint. The second common surgery is called lavage. High-pressure water is injected through the knee joint, flushing out all the old material in the joint.
To control for the placebo effect, Dr. Mosely instituted a third group. This group received neither debridement nor lavage. The patients were prepared for surgery, anesthetized, and wheeled into the operating room. There, the staff made the same skin incisions they would have made were they performing a genuine surgery. After shuffling around for the same length of time it took to perform actual surgery, the wounds were sewn up, and the patients released for post-surgical recovery. Absolutely no surgery was done to their knees.
Postoperative results were compared for all three groups during various stages of the recovery process. The results were astounding. Patients that had received the “pretend” surgery did as well as those that had received debridement or lavage. In Soul Medicine, I sum up the results this way: “In television interviews, some of the patients who had received the placebo operation swore it must have been real, because their knees were so dramatically improved. Some reported the cessation of pain or a vastly increased range of motion. Some who were barely able to walk before surgery were now able to run. Not only had the patient group receiving the placebo experienced recovery rates similar to those who had actually received arthroscopic surgery, at certain points in the recovery process their reported results were better. Dr. Mosely, the researchers, and his staff were astounded.” Doctors in the United States perform some 985,000 arthroscopic knee surgeries each year, each one costing an averge of seven thousand dollars.13 The total cost is nearly seven billion dollars per year.
It’s not just the internal pharmacopeia required to cure osteoarthritis that is engaged by the placebo effect. Our bodies are capable of synthesizing many different substances, with radically different chemical structures, within our organs. The four adjoining illustrations of a beta blocker, histamine, growth hormone, and neuropetide represent just four of the millions of compounds your body is capable of synthesizing in response to the placebo effect. The molecules could not look more different, as you can see from their unique shapes. Yet each of these very different substances can be synthesized by your body in response to the same stimulus, popping a placebo (or fake surgery) to reinforce a belief—a miracle of biological engineering. This ability of our bodies to generate healing factors through belief offers a remarkable therapeutic tool that can be used in conjunction with any therapy, conventional or alternative.
Beta Blocker
Growth Hormone
Histamine
Neuropeptide
Placebos cure patients in about 35% of cases. A drug has to do significantly better for it to be worth taking. Few drugs are up to the challenge. A recent trial of St. John’s wort, an herb, found that 24% of depressed patients got better taking it. Zoloft did marginally better, producing improvement in 25% of the patients. But the star of the study was the placebo, which produced improvement in 32% of those taking it.14 In 2006, the U.S. federal government released the results of two large-scale studies of SSRI drugs. They found that the tests “failed to show that the drugs were safer or more effective than a placebo.”15
Irving Kristol, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut who analyzed the results of drug studies for depression, found that about three-quarters of the entire effect of antidepressants such as Prozac and Zoloft is due to the placebo effect. Three-quarters of the improvement was due to the patient’s belief system. The remainder may or may not have been due to the drug; it was hard to tell because the drug produces physical sensations that may alert study participants to the fact that they’re taking a real drug, not the placebo—thus increasing the healing factor of the patient’s belief system.
Kristol later published a second study, a meta-analysis of forty-seven studies of antidepressants from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) database. He found that “an average of 80% of the effect of the drugs was due to the placebo effect. This ranged from a low of 69% (Paxil) to a high of 89% (Prozac). In four of the trials that Kristol studied, the placebo exhibited better results than the drug. The mean difference between the placebos and the drugs was a ‘clinically insignificant’ difference…”16
These results are not atypical; Prozac had to go through ten clinical trials in order to accomplish four trials with a marginally better cure rate than a placebo.17 Two trials is what the FDA requires for proof of efficacy; currently, drug companies can conduct many trials before they can produce two that show that their drug is marginally more effective than a placebo.
The many studies that fail to show that the drug is helpful are called “file drawer studies,” because they’re quietly filed in dusty corners and never submitted to the FDA or medical journals—though Kristol was able to obtain them to include in his meta-analysis. The result, according to one respected medical journalist, is: “Millions of people taking drugs that may carry a greater risk than the underlying condition. The treatment, in fact, may make them sick or even kill them.”18
Drug companies may go to lengths to hide the side effects of their products and to discourage negative news from reaching consumers. This is a random sampling of hundreds of published reports of malfeasance:
To keep the party going in the face of such depressing news, drug companies drug psychiatrists with money; psychiatrists as a profession receive more drug company largesse than any other medical specialization.28
Whereas placebos have no side effects, the same cannot be said for prescription drugs. According to JAMA, some 250,000 people die each year from the negative effects of drugs, unnecessary surgeries, infections they pick up in hospitals, and other iatrogenic (doctor-caused) illnesses, making iatrogenic illness the third largest cause of death in the United States, just behind cancer and heart disease.29 According to a meticulous analysis of data from a spectrum of U.S. government agencies, when all other factors are included, the number rises to 783,966, making doctors, hospitals, and drugs the leading cause of death in America. Each year, this costs society an estimated $282 billion. About twice the number of Americans die due to infections acquired in hospitals each year as the number who die in traffic accidents. Additionally, more than twice as many Americans die each year from the negative effects of prescription drugs as those who died in the Vietnam war. According to a recent report, an estimated 1,730,000 preventable drug-related injuries occur annually in America along with as many as seven thousand deaths.30 Exotic drugs are not the only culprits; common acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is the leading cause of death in the United States, due to acute liver failure.31
All this tragedy does not come cheap. The costs are truly staggering. The United States spends about three times as much as Great Britain per person on health care, and twice as much as Canada.32 Both those countries have universal health care—every single person is covered. The United States spends almost twice as much as Germany and France, and more than twice as much as Japan.33 These are all comparable postindustrial societies and economies. Yet in the United States:
The neurochemicals secreted by your brain, by way of contrast, are free. You do not have to drop a silver dollar in your ear to persuade your brain to start producing endorphins. Neither do your natural biochemicals come packaged with a scary list of side effects. Your body’s natural secretions are often the same substances found in prescription drugs, but in doses that will not harm you, in forms that are readily assimilated by the targeted organs and systems, and without the side effects of prescription medications. One of the ways in which you can prescribe them for yourself is through the quality of your consciousness.
Some of the studies of meditation, prayer, spiritual practice, and social goodwill and other intangibles show effects that benefit every single system in the body. Lacking the drama of “a new gene discovered for X condition,” they are rarely publicized in the mainstream media. For instance, some studies of spiritual practices and sociable behavior show that they produce a sevenfold reduction in mortality.39 No drug comes close.
One study, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, recruited thirty-six Vietnam veterans with coronary artery disease, who were also plagued with traumatic emotional issues. Half the vets received training in how to forgive themselves and others—a consciousness-based medical intervention—and the other half did not. Those that had received the training and practiced the forgiveness techniques showed a significant rise in the blood flow to their heart muscles.40
Meditation does not just make subjects calmer; it has beneficial effects on many different measures of their health. A recent study of mindfulness meditation by researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison showed that it produces significant rises in a variety of antibodies and blood cells—all associated with increased immune function. This new research shows that, in addition to the other benefits of meditation, it measurably improves the body’s ability to resist disease and the effects of stress.41
Meditation has been shown to lower blood pressure and improve resting heart rate; reduce the incidence of strokes, heart disease, and cancer; diminish chronic pain; reduce anxiety and depression; and ameliorate many other diseases.42 If meditation were a drug, it would be considered medical malpractice for a physician to fail to prescribe it. The results of studies of prayer are equally impressive.43 A single brief period of appreciation and heart coherence in the morning positively affects our immune systems all day long44 and sets us up with a healthier and more peaceful emotional baseline.
Despite the enormous benefits, such consciousness-based therapies are not paid for by the grotesque amount of money spent on the medical system. Patients wishing to attend a yoga class, join a gym, get a massage, visit an alternative healer, or otherwise nurture their wellness must pay for it themselves. Integrative physician Robert Dozor, MD observes, “To health insurance companies, integrative healing practices appear to be simply another expense.”45 Dean Ornish, MD, ponders, “How did we get to a point in medicine where interventions such as radioactive stents, coronary angioplasty, and bypass surgery are considered conventional, whereas eating vegetables, walking, meditating, and participating in support groups are considered radical?”46
Such consciousness-based interventions are safe and noninvasive, and are a good place to begin, no matter what other treatments you elect. At the very least, they can supplement the arsenal of allopathic medicine; in the many cases of “miraculous” cures, they make medical treatment unnecessary.
To get the right answers, you have to ask the right questions. To the scientists of a generation ago, the idea that DNA might be user-programmable was unthinkable. Genes were taken to determine the characteristics of organisms, and that was that. Researchers didn’t look for energies that might change DNA expression or combinations of proteins generated by thought, because they were embedded in an orthodoxy that held genes to contain the DNA sequencing around which physical, mental, and emotional development occurs.
It is taking a bold new generation to ask new experimental questions. We’re just starting to find out what happens to genes when the environment changes, how DNA responds to psychospiritual experiences, how our emotions affect our health, why energy medicine works, and how we can stimulate the body’s internal pharmacy to write prescriptions for healing. The results challenge medical orthodoxy. As the questions become bolder, the answers will become more surprising, and full of good news about the way we can use our consciousness to improve our happiness and health.
