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Phoenix Rising!
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"Anatomy of an Illness," a pioneering book in the New Age health market, relates the personal transformational healing story of Norman Cousins, longtime editor of the Saturday Review. Cousins revealed how he fended off a life threatening disease using his own regimen of nutritional and emotional support systems as opposed to traditional methods of treatment. In the mid-1960's, almost completely paralyzed with ankylosing spondylitis, he was given only a few months to live. Cousins ordered himself checked out of the hospital. He moved into a hotel room and began taking extremely high doses of vitamin C and also exposed himself to equally high doses of humor. Slowly Norman regained use of his limbs and as his condition steadily improved over the following months, he resumed his busy life and returned full-time to his editorial duties. Norman is often described as the man who laughed his way to health. When the medical establishment became aware that Cousins used laughter to reverse a terminal illness, they decided to study the healing power of humor. Science's research into Cousins' healing provoked satirist Swami Beyondananda (Steve Bhaerman) to wryly remark, "This is like saying, 'Well, it works in practice… but, does it work in theory?'" Enter Louise LeBrun. Louise was an activist in the feminist era, working her way up the corporate ladder. As Louise herself describes, she kept her competitive edge by being well-educated, well-read and well-informed. Along the way Louise stumbled. She tried to maintain her balance resorting to psychological crutches including multiple addictions (alcohol, eating disorders, work obsession). Though she sought resolution by investing heavily into conventional therapy, Louise found no relief from the challenges that threatened her career aspirations and, more importantly, her life. Rather than resigning to the accepted regimen of conventional medicine, generating a 'new' addiction using Prozac or some other acceptable mood-altering pharmaceuticals, Louise took matters into her own hands. She was intelligent and as importantly, curious about why her life was not working according to plan. Like many in her situation, Louise began to investigate the remarkable healing stories of others, the meat (or if you prefer, tofu) of the 'new age' literary marketplace. Rather than just 'reading' their stories, she began to systematically evaluate the commonalities and linkages among the amazing personal-healing experiences reported. Louise melded their insights with the insights derived from her own personal life experiences. From among the pieces comprising this anecdotal 'database,' Louise glimpsed a pattern that was so profound that it electrified every cell in her body. This pattern or 'road map' for life was so powerful, that just the mere recognition of its existence transformed her being. Louise immediately began to apply her amalgam of knowledge to the issues that confronted her own life. Through the use of a 'process' she synthesized from her research efforts, Louise lifted herself by her own bootstraps out of dis-ease and into wellness. Friends and acquaintances were so impressed by her 'miraculous' healing that they sought her awareness for use in their own lives. In bringing her message to others, Louise formalized the process and defined it as the WEL-Systems approach to change. The system emphasizes the importance of reprogramming one's perceptions and beliefs as a fundamental requirement for transformational healing. This process profoundly impacted and uplifted the lives of others who sought her insights. The presence of more and more seekers widened the scope of Louise's educational efforts. In the light of all this success, there was a particular dark cloud that loomed on Louise's horizon… her own self-doubt. Her concern related to a fundamental character of Western civilization-for something to be 'valid,' it must be deemed scientific. Clearly, Louise's healing process did not conform to the beliefs and dogma of accepted science. According to the conventional medical model, human beings are protein machines that are controlled by genes. Science suggests that the mind is a manifestation of the 'machine,' more-or-less a prisoner within the housing of a genetic mechanism. How can changing perceptions or beliefs change genes? Louise, as well as her community of professional associates, are not 'New Age' groupies. They live in the 'real world' and expect a 'real world' understanding-where's the science? And hence Louise's conundrum, "It works in practice… but, does it work and theory." This is where I enter into the picture. My career as a biomedical research scientist began in 1967 when I started cloning stem cells, years before conventional science was aware of their importance in human health. While a tenured member of the University of Wisconsin's Medical School faculty, I was involved with teaching each new crop of medical students the basic science of how cells work. In my lectures in cell biology, histology and embryology, I faithfully passed on the knowledge of the Central Dogma, a foundational assumption underlying modern medicine. First defined by Francis Crick, co-discoverer with James Watson of the DNA genetic code, the 'dogma,' describes the flow of information that 'controls' biology. Accordingly, information flows in a unidirectional path, starting from the source-DNA, it is translated into an intermediate molecular form-RNA and finally the code is used to make Protein. The DNA represents the genes and the proteins provide for the physical body and its functions (behavior). The 'dogma' of science is that the character of our life is defined by our heredity. Genes rule! Since we did not choose the genes we came with and since we can not exchange them, we are more or less 'victims' of heredity. Our limitations are presumably correlated with less than 'satisfactory' genes and their consequent effects upon the body's physical and behavioral mechanisms. The Central Dogma shapes the world's current perception of health and healing. If we are 'sick,' it is because our mechanism is inherently defective or weak. Medicine's solution is to provide… medicines, physical drugs that interfere with the molecular mechanisms of the body, in an effort 'adjust' the malfunctioning machinery of physiology and behavior. While I was teaching the Dogma in class, my cloned human cells began to reveal a completely different story. Rather than genes, the experiments revealed that it was the environment that was 'controlling' the cells. By changing the environmental conditions within the culture dish, the same cells could be transformed to reveal radically different expressions. Every cell contains a complete set of genes, enough information to make a whole human, so every cell is capable of expressing a full range of developmental potentials. However, the ultimate character expressed by a cell is NOT preprogrammed in the genes. The fate of a cell is determined by its response to the environment it finds itself in. The experiments revealed that cells dynamically adapt their structure (genes) and behavior to conform to their awareness or perception of the environment. The expression of life represents an adaptation to our perceptions, it is not defined by our genes. What did the cells teach me: Change your perception… change your life. By the late 70's, my curiosity led me on a trail to identify the mechanism by which environmental perception 'controlled' gene expression. Embarking on this quest ultimately alienated me from my scientific peers. Why? Because I was challenging the Central Dogma whose fundamental premise is that life is 'controlled' by the genes. Here is an interesting realization, the term 'dogma' is not even a scientific word. It is specifically a religious concept where you accept that something is true based upon faith. Think of it… the entire foundation of biomedicine is built upon a religious belief! And by my questioning the Dogma of gene-control, I was labeled a heretic and actually shunned by my colleagues. Religious belief aside, there is a fundamental question that must be asked, "Do genes really control biology?" The answer to that question is unambiguously, NO. This fact was scientifically established by the late 1980's, when a new awareness arose in molecular biology. That awareness provided for one of today's most active areas of scientific research, the field of epigenetics. Epigenetics is a study of the molecular mechanisms by which environment controls gene activity. Though this research represents a fundamental upheaval of our beliefs about 'how' life works, this new awareness has hardly dented conventional knowledge. The simple reason is that the 'dogma' concerning the role of genes represents a core belief, or basal paradigm, that shapes our civilization. The scientifically accepted view of life is that it represents the result of random evolution of genetic mechanisms competing for survival in an eternal struggle for existence. Kind of a gloomy perspective. But, what if we can actually change the unfoldment of our lives by changing our perceptions (beliefs)? It would lead to a different way of thinking about our lives and our place in the environment. By definition, it would change a basal paradigmatic belief and that would result in a restructuring or upheaval of civilization. For example, consider the consequences of world changes that were brought about by civilization's last paradigm upheaval. That occurred around 1925, when physics left behind the dated concepts of a Newtonian material-based universe and recognized the energy-based reality revealed in Quantum Physics. This change of perception shook the world on its axis, literally, through the creation of the atom-bomb. It wasn't all bad, for with the new science, we went from typewriters to computers, from crank phones to cell phones and, medically speaking, from stethoscopes to CAT scans. All from a change in 'belief.' Well, brace yourselves, for we are in for a wild ride. Frontier research in cell biology has finally acknowledged the mechanisms by which perception controls behavior, selects genes and can even lead to a rewriting of the genome. Rather than being the victims of our genes, we have been the victims of our perceptions! The impact of this new awareness of living systems work will alter our experience of life as much as the recognition of quantum mechanics altered and advanced the world of technology. We are on the verge of a most radical, and most wonderful upheaval of human civilization. We are beginning to realize that transforming our lives is a lot easier than rewriting our genetic code or addicting ourselves to drugs. Our abilities and limitations reflect our perceptions of life, the cumulative awareness of who we are and the required strategies to survive in the world. These life-shaping perceptions were acquired through our developmental experiences. Experiences generate learned 'stimulus-response' patterns that are stored in memory. The next time a previously learned stimulus reappears, the body can make a rapid life-saving reactive response, without having to relearn the behavior. Nature designed the development of the nervous system to facilitate the process of enculturation, the acquisition of language and interpersonal skills required to participate in society. The EEG activity of a child's brain is predominately in a hypnotic "trance" through the first five years of its life. This specialized engineering feat of the nervous system enables the child to simply observe the patterns of its parents, siblings and peers and download them as behavioral programs into their own subconscious. Thus enabling a rapid process of acquiring the dynamics of social interaction so that we can become one with our culture. Our parents are not only models for structuring social behaviors, they also serve as the 'mirror' we use in characterizing a perception of our own individuality. While in the hypnogogic state, remarks that parents make about us in regard to personal traits such as our abilities or disabilities, worthiness, deservability, or our being good or being bad, are all 'downloaded' as perceptual facts. The perceptions we hold of our selves and our place in the world are programmed into the subconscious mind, where out of the purview of consciousness, they shape our gene expression and behavior. Perceptions control biology. Consequently, we can easily understand how the beliefs and attitudes toward life that we acquired in our youth shape our potentials and the quality of our life we will experience. So… Louise's process DOES work in theory! Now that we have dispensed with that doubt, I encourage you to read on. Phoenix Rising: The Freeing of Human Potential will inspire your spirit and engage your mind as you comprehend the enormous real potential for applying Louise's information in your life.
Dr. Bruce Lipton Bruce H. Lipton, scientist and lecturer, received his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (1971). He served as an Associate Professor of Anatomy at the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine. Lipton's research on mechanisms controlling cell behavior employed cloned human muscle cells. In addition, he lectured in Cell Biology, Histology and Embryology. Bruce resigned his tenured position to pursue independent research integrating quantum physics with cell biology. His breakthrough studies on the cell membrane, the "skin" of the cell, revealed that the behavior and health of the cell was controlled by the environment, findings that were in direct contrast with prevailing dogma that life is controlled by genes. Lipton returned to academia as a Research Fellow at Stanford University's School of Medicine to test his hypotheses (1987-1992). His ideas concerning environmental control were substantiated in two major scientific publications. The new research reveals the biochemical pathways connecting the mind and body and provides insight into the molecular basis of consciousness and the future of human evolution. You can reach Dr. Lipton at www.brucelipton.com |
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