Power Up Your Brain (27 page)

That, of course, is the physical or scientific part of this story. From a shamanic perspective, we know that the chakras or energy centers are part of our luminous anatomy.

In the same way that we have physical organs in the body, the chakras are the organs of the Light Body that surrounds the physical body. They are possibly created by electrical activity in nerve plexuses along the spine where many spinal nerves combine into large nerve clusters. The chakras roughly correspond to the location of the body’s endocrine glands, which produce hormones.

There are five major plexuses along the spine. The shamans and mystics around the world who were able to sense the electrical activity of these plexuses identified them as the lower five chakras. The sixth is the legendary “third eye,” located at the forehead, and is linked with the pituitary gland. The seventh is the “crown” chakra located at the top of the head and is associated with the pineal gland. Both of these glands reside deep inside the brain.

The following exercise will help you relax deeply and reset the fight-or-flight response that might have been triggered by stress or trauma. You accomplish this by “tuning” your chakra system.

Exercise: Quieting Your HPA Axis

Do this exercise in a bathtub while taking a Shaman’s Bath, or in bed before going to sleep.

Lie back comfortably and close your eyes, breathing in through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.

Inhale for a slow count of four.

Exhale for a slow count of four, drawing out the breath and making a slight whooshing sound.

After a few minutes of this rhythmic breathing, place your left hand on the center of your chest, at the level of your heart. Try to find your heartbeat, and bring your attention to this master drummer that sets the rhythm for your entire body.

Notice how your heart rate quiets as you make your breaths softer and longer.

After a couple of minutes, bring your right hand to your second chakra, right below your belly button. Try to feel your heartbeat here as well, through your right hand, even though it is nowhere near your heart.

Realize that the second chakra is linked to the adrenal glands, which produce adrenaline and keep the fight-or-flight system turned to the on position. Imagine that your heartbeat is setting the tempo for your adrenals, helping them to slow down and relax. Tap the fingers of your right hand softly on your lower belly to bring your awareness to this area of your body.

Practice for ten minutes.

RESELECTING YOUR GENETIC DESTINY

Modern physics explains that interactions across time and space are possible. Shamans learned to put this into practice and employed imagery to program their genetic biocomputer, selecting genes from the gene pool for health and longevity.

So imagine that you could go back in time to the moment of your conception and select the biological traits that you wish you had inherited from your mother and your father. Perhaps you would choose your father’s heart because there was no incidence of heart disease in his side of the family. Or you might select your mother’s brain because there was no Alzheimer’s in her branch of the family tree. You likely would want the trait of longevity from either of them.

The Austrian monk and botanist Gregor Mendel discovered in the mid-1880s that plants inherit specific biological information from each parent. His observations led him to differentiate between the
genotype
, which is the sum of all genetic diversity in a member of a particular species, and
phenotype
, which comprises the actual properties and traits that individual members of the species express. Even though Mendel’s theories were met with disbelief and he died in obscurity, his stature was later vindicated, and his discoveries are still relevant today.

You received the entirety of your genetic makeup at the moment of your conception. You also received one half of each of your parents’ genetic code. This means that, while you received 50 percent of each of your parents’ hereditary information,
their
genotype, you also express only some of those select traits,
your
phenotype.

But that is only part of the story. While you may have inherited a predisposition for either heart health or disease, your beliefs, diet, and choice of lifestyle will influence your inherited risk factors. As the pharmaceutical industry knows, lifestyle modifications are often not enough, and seemingly healthy men and women can and do suffer heart attacks at a relatively young age.

So, what else can you do? You can look beyond your physical or genetic side to your spiritual side.

Ancient sages developed techniques that they believed allowed them to “journey back in time” to influence the effects of their ancestral heritage. The effectiveness of this exercise derived, at least in part, from their ability to influence the expression of their DNA. In other words, they used visualization techniques to modify genetic expression! When skilled practitioners journey back to the moment of conception to consciously select the traits they want to express, they look at other factors—beyond genotypes and phenotypes—that may have influenced their genetic makeup. The father may have consumed too much alcohol. The mother may have been afraid of getting pregnant. The environment may not have been infused with love, peace, and tranquility. Stress hormones easily cross the placental barrier and inform the child of every mood the mother is feeling.

But now, from your current wisdom perspective, you can go back and visit the moment of your conception. You can bring a meditative and sacred feeling to the moment of the comingling of your genes. So, during this exercise, you can forgive your parents for any transgressions you believe they committed toward you, any hurt you feel they might have imposed on you.

This is necessary for your journey into enlightenment because holding on to any residual anger or resentment toward your parents only perpetuates your role as a victim of their genetic signatures.

Exercise: The Moment of Your Conception

With your eyes closed, take a few deep, relaxing breaths. Count your breaths from one to ten, then back to one again, until you feel yourself entering a deep state of relaxation.

You will notice that, at first, your mind will wander. You may find yourself counting past ten or chasing a thought about what you forgot to do yesterday or whom you must call still today. Let all of these thoughts go by like clouds that appear, then disappear, in the sky.

Now imagine your timeline, the chronological series of events in your life, poised in front of you. Perhaps you imagine a golden thread or a string with many beads or moments of time. Perhaps you simply see a road that leads in one direction to the past and another direction forward into the future.

Begin traveling backward along your timeline, briefly revisiting events of the past few days. Then go farther into the past, to your childhood, and to your earliest memories as a toddler. See the images as though they are in a movie that you can fast-forward or reverse at will.

When you are no longer able to recall events or situations, use your imagination. Imagine yourself as a baby in your mother’s arms. Imagine being inside her womb. Imagine the instant of your conception, when your mother’s egg is surrounded by your father’s numerous sperm, all trying to fertilize it.

Imagine yourself sitting inside that luminous egg. It is a peaceful bubble. Bring your stillness and grace into that space. Know that you are filling it with your peace and luminosity.

Now sense the egg selecting and inviting the finest sperm to fertilize it. Imagine that as it enters into the ovum, you witness the most extraordinary alchemy that is the conception of
you.
You see proteins cross-link with each other, making the matrix of the egg hard and impermeable to other sperm. The nuclei of the sperm and the egg dissolve, and the father’s DNA and the mother’s DNA fuse. The egg divides and forms two tiny, identical cells. They begin to replicate, doubling, quadrupling, and exponentially adding to their numbers at an extraordinary rate.

As you watch this amazing process, you hold steadfast to your intention of forming and shaping yourself into your desired being. You bathe these nascent cells with your great peace, your serenity, your light. You bless this holy union that is you regardless of what the “facts” of your conception may have been.

And there, then, as the growing, forming you, you forgive your parents. You see them as the holy, glorious, innocent beings they are. You bathe them with your love, knowing that all is well.

You sigh. And smile.

Then, you return along your timeline to the present, bringing with you—into the here and now—your feelings of peace and luminosity, your joy and exhilaration, that you experienced at that moment of your conception.

SKY GAZING

The practice of Sky Gazing is at the heart of spiritual practice in the Tibetan Dzogchen and other ancient shamanic traditions.

During this exercise you leave behind your mundane affairs and your seemingly all-important to-do lists, and enter the silent inner world where all healing takes place, where your body’s natural rhythms—pulse, respiration, brain waves, and energy systems— synchronize with each other.

Exercise: Sky Gazing

Sit in a comfortable chair with your hands resting gently on your knees, eyes open, gazing straight ahead into the horizon, at the sky. Relax your jaw and allow your eyes to look with a soft gaze.

Take deep, gentle breaths. Relax your belly, keeping it soft.

As you follow your breathing, observe your feelings, thoughts, and moods. Simply witness everything that surfaces in your awareness as if it were a cloud in the sky that appears and disappears of its own accord. As you inhale, note how you are the observer. As you exhale, notice how easy it is to get lost in thought.

With time, you will start to realize that you are none of your feelings or your thoughts but that you are the Seer who observes all. Notice where your mind wanders off to, and then bring it back gently to focus on your breath as you gaze at the morning sky.

Rest calmly in this awareness and notice the vast spaciousness that opens up before you. Observe your mind, nature, your body, and even the sky floating by. Clouds come and go, thoughts come and go, sensations come and go.

With practice, as you invest the Seer with attention and awareness, all of the busyness and worries of the mind dissolve and you witness every object, feeling, and thought with a smile on your face.

To succeed, you must practice this exercise daily, the first thing in the morning, for 15 minutes.

Still your mind
And all clouds disappear.
Contemplate a single truth
And clear sky appears.

— PATANJALI
²

RADICAL FORGIVENESS

Every religion teaches the importance of forgiveness, whether in the form of turning the other cheek in Christianity or the Buddhist practice of sending loving-kindness to all beings. Yet it is very difficult to simply decide to forgive someone who has wronged you, and make the emotions of anger or the feeling of betrayal simply go away. It is equally difficult to forgive yourself and make the sense of shame or disappointment dissolve and no longer afflict you.

Sometimes we hold on so firmly to our resentments that we carry them with us to our deathbed. When we forgive ourselves and others, we can reprogram the toxic neural networks of our limbic brain. In order to truly forgive ourselves and others, we must upgrade the programming that is the source of our limiting beliefs. But we discover that there’s a neurological catch-22: it is very difficult to create new neural networks until we practice forgiveness.

The following exercise was especially helpful to shamans after the Spanish Conquest of the Americas in the 15th to 16th centuries. With it, they were able to forgive the Conquistadors who wreaked havoc on their traditions and enslaved their people. In some parts of the Andes, this practice is known as “Burying the Sword of the Conquest.” It works by re-imprinting the image of a loved one over the image of someone who has wronged you. This can help you override the programming of your prehistoric brain. It is not an easy practice, because the mind will resist holding the image of a loved one together with that of an enemy.

Exercise: Radical Forgiveness

This practice works best when you are relaxed.