Power Up Your Brain (24 page)

The visions of their sages made the Osage people of Osage County, Oklahoma, one of the wealthiest communities in America. As the experience of the Osage Nation proves, some of our finest discoveries come about when we trust our hunches and correctly read the signs that nature shows us. The shamanic practices (along with optimal brain function) contribute to the development of intuition, which in the case of the Osage, translated into great fortune.

THE LIGHT BODY

There are many ways to exchange information with the environment. Some of these ways require nothing more than eating an edible plant or drinking water from a spring, taking a deep breath of fresh air, or basking in the sunlight. We now understand that eating ripe fresh fruit provides fuel to tissues and cells as well as information about the local environment and that drinking from a pure stream quenches thirst and tells our bodies about the ecosystem.

This communication with the biosphere also happens when you metabolize the foods you eat. In the West, we may think of bread, for example, as merely a source of calories but, in actuality, that food brings certain information to your body as well. That stalk of wheat that was kneaded and baked into bread that you consume has a biological memory that was informed by the amount of rainfall it received, by how well it was nurtured, and even by the hands that harvested it.

Plant and animal foods are not only calories or fuel but they also communicate information to your genes. The new field of nutrigenomics examines how foods convey information about your environment to your cells. The early foundations for this new science came from the understanding that, while our genes have not changed much over the last 10,000 years, our diets have altered dramatically. Thus, different diets lead to different patterns of genetic expression, which result in different proteins being manufactured as well as changes in energy metabolism. For example, a form of light beer was the only fermented drink in the Americas prior to the European conquest, and alcohol in the form of whiskey was completely unknown. This explains why many indigenous peoples are deficient in the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase, which is responsible for metabolizing alcohol and which explains the very low tolerance for alcohol among Native American communities. Similarly, a large percentage of Europeans who lived where dairy farming was common developed the gene that enabled them to digest lactose, whereas many people from other parts of the world remain lactose intolerant.

Over the course of millennia, signals from the biosphere— from air, water, sunlight, and food—enabled species to adapt to relatively slow changes in the environment. Looking at ducks swimming in water, we can see why they have webbed feet. Observing giraffes eating leaves from tall trees explains why that species has long necks. But why do humans have such large brains?

Why would nature select for intelligence and consciousness when brute force, large muscles, speed, and sharp teeth do so well for so many species? Dinosaurs did not disappear because of their small brains. They were doing extremely well and showing no signs of ceding their dominant place in the land and air to any other species.

It is widely assumed that dinosaurs vanished because of an extraterrestrial catastrophe—a large meteorite striking planet Earth—that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago and wiped every large creature off the face of the earth. The mammals that survived did so because of their diminutive size, not because of their intelligence or greater brain-to-bodyweight ratios. In fact, for the more than 100 million years that dinosaurs ruled, tiny mammals, most of them no larger than a mouse, lived side by side with the great reptiles. Mammals were not a superior form of life that came to replace the giants. They were simply the lucky beneficiaries of a devastating extraterrestrial event. With the disappearance of the dinosaurs, the small mammals took over the earth and became nature’s preferred form of expression for intelligence.

Suggesting a nearly mystical interpretation of Darwinian selection, we believe that nature selected humans based on the precept of “survival of the wisest” and not only of the fiercest and fastest. Why else would nature burden humans with a brain so large that it only passes through the birth canal with immense difficulty? Why are human infants born helpless and unable to fend for themselves, while a newborn foal is able to run after its mother an hour after birth?

The information we process from the environment is, first and foremost, concerned with eating, feeding, and self-preservation. But it takes a very small amount of brain capacity to deal with this information. Perhaps our prefrontal cortex will allow us to decode and download an entirely new set of instructions from nature. The sages of old believed this was the case. They believed their practices allowed them to upload new biological instructions into their Light Body that would allow them to heal themselves and live long lives.

These new instructions upgraded the quality of their Light Body and helped them to heal from disease. The instructions also had to do with anticipating future biological evolution, with breaking free from ordinary, linear time, and with learning to maneuver in timelessness or infinity. It is these practices that allowed Amazon sages to discover the formula for curare without endless trial and error, and Osage seers to lead their people to a land of opportunity that seemed barren and lifeless to everyone else.

Alberto:
Claire’s Light Body

“Claire” was a photographer and writer. When she went to her doctor for her annual checkup, her physician discovered a lump in her breast, deep underneath muscle tissue, and asked Claire to return the following week for a biopsy. Having gone through our training program in energy medicine at the Healing the Light Body School, Claire immediately called my office to schedule an appointment. Although I had no openings for several weeks, I made time to see her on a Saturday because I understood how important it was to intervene before she was diagnosed and possibly labeled a cancer patient.

We have numerous cancer cells that appear many times throughout the year in our bodies and that are almost always eliminated naturally by our immune system. If we happen to be diagnosed during one of these instances, we can become railroaded onto a cancer patient track. To emphasize, I do not suggest that you not go for medical checkups, but I want you also to remember that your body has a tremendous ability to heal itself naturally.

When I saw Claire, after a few minutes of listening to her story I entered that deep state of meditation in which I can track another person’s Light Body. I noticed a dark, cloudy mass of energy above Claire’s left breast that had begun to sink “roots” into her tissues. These dark masses always indicate some form of pathology, and I was naturally concerned about Claire.

We performed an illumination, which is the core healing process in shamanic energy medicine. After a few minutes, the mass of energy, which we call an “imprint” or “signature” left by an earlier life trauma, began to dissipate as I extracted it from her field. I noticed, during the time I was working on Light Body, that Claire was sobbing softly and tears were running down her cheeks. At the end of the session, I asked Claire what she was experiencing. She told me she was recalling the numerous times when her older stepbrother had slipped into her bed when she was a child, held her down, and fondled her as she lay there frozen, unable to call for help. It’s not unusual during an illumination for feelings and images of an earlier trauma to bubble to the surface. These traumas leave imprints in the Light Body that later translate into physical disease.

The following Tuesday when Claire went in for her biopsy, the physician examined the new ultrasound and discovered that the lump in her breast was gone. He was stunned and later explained that these things don’t just simply disappear. Claire simply smiled and said, “Yes, they do.” He asked Claire to come back for a follow-up exam the next day. She has had physical exams every six months for the last few years, and all of her tests show no foreign mass of any kind in her breast.

I tell my students at the Healing the Light Body School that there is a difference between a healing and a cure. Healing is the business of the shaman. Curing is the business of medicine and consists of treating disease. Healing addresses the
cause of disease
, which is generally a trauma and the toxic emotions that separate the person from his or her joy and health. These imprints are stored in the Light Body, which I believe is a luminous “mirror” for the neural networks in our brain. And while many investigators believe that the Light Body is simply an aura produced by electric activity in the brain and nervous system, shamans believe that the Light Body is what creates the body, the brain, and the nervous system. The Light Body informs and organizes the body in the same way that the energy fields of a magnet organize iron fillings on a piece of glass.

Healing happens when we clear the signatures left by trauma from the luminous matrix that envelops and informs all life.

CHAPTER 12

PRIMING YOUR BRAIN
FOR ENLIGHTENMENT

While the important roles of diet and exercise are well accepted in relation to heart disease, for reasons that are not readily apparent these considerations are virtually ignored in relation to brain health. And yet, the scientific evidence confirming the importance of diet and exercise as lifestyle factors that can be modified to support brain health and function is both abundant and sound.

Maintaining and enhancing brain health are obviously important goals, but keep in mind that these same dietary and lifestyle activities are your keys to directly influence the expression of your genes. They allow you to redirect the course of your genetic destiny, preparing your brain to receive and incorporate the benefits of meditation.

EATING LESS FOR BETTER HEALTH

Perhaps the most important dietary consideration related to optimizing the brain, enhancing neurogenesis, and providing a fertile environment for the process of neuroplasticity, so necessary for building new neural networks, is calorie reduction. The biological benefits of both fasting and overall calorie reduction are explained by:

• Reduction in free radical production

• Enhancement of mitochondrial ability to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP) energy

• Increase in the number of mitochondria through mitochondrial biogenesis

• Increase in the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)

• Reduction of apoptosis, or brain cell suicide

• Activation of the Nrf2 pathway, which leads to reduced brain inflammation, enhanced detoxification, and increased antioxidant protection

Clearly, fasting and calorie reduction have vast and profound implications for brain health. Just look at the list of benefits. It is so encompassing that it’s hard to imagine that modern pharmaceutical intervention could even begin to address these issues. Yet, the effectiveness of these simple dietary modifications for enhancing brain function and paving the way for clarity of thought have been recognized for literally thousands of years.

We are just beginning to grasp the enormity of the brain’s potential. How often have we heard the myth that humans only use 10 to 20 percent of their brains? Regardless of the exact percentage, the point is that between our ears is a tremendous untapped resource that we are just now beginning to learn how to access from
both
a spiritual and a scientific perspective.

Let’s explore how you can gain access to your brain’s fullest potential.

YOUR BRAIN’S EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE

One of the most important features distinguishing humans from all other mammals is the size of our brain in proportion to the rest of our body. While it is certainly true that other mammals have larger brains, scientists recognize that larger animals must have larger brains simply to control their larger bodies. An elephant, for example, has a brain that weighs 7,500 grams, far larger than our 1,400-gram brain. So making comparisons about “brain power” or intelligence just based on brain size is obviously futile. Again, it’s the ratio of the brain size to total body size that attracts scientist’s interest when considering the brain’s functional capacity. An elephant’s brain represents 1/550 of its body weight, while the human brain weighs 1/40 of the total body weight. So our brain represents about 2.5 percent of our total body weight as opposed to the large-brained elephant whose brain is just 0.18 percent of its total body weight.