Power Up Your Brain (29 page)

Only later would I understand the lesson of the shamans—and one of the primary lessons of this book: When you change the story, the world changes.

But, as you have heard—and it is well worth repeating—your story cannot be changed superficially by merely changing your mind or mentally altering the events of your childhood. For example, even after European maritime explorers sailed off the supposed “edge of the world” and came back to tell about it, proving that the world is round, many people continued to believe that that could not possibly be true, and they went on living as if the world were flat. The same skepticism occurred, even among the brightest minds of the time, after the discovery that the Earth orbits the sun.

You might wonder, then, what happened to Amanda upon hearing her mother’s side of the story. Did that truth change the false belief that Amanda had created and fostered for so many years?

The shamans help clients change their stories at very deep layers of the psyche. There, it is possible to access and reprogram neural networks, but only after a close brush with illness or death or after a period of fasting, prayer, and preparation. Then, their clients can create a better tale, one in which they are cast as hero and not as victim.

Ideally, clients also discover they are the storytellers and not their stories, that they are the mythmakers and not the myths. This realization involves the prefrontal cortex, the only part of the brain that is able to attain this level of enlightened understanding and wield the brush to paint an entirely new landscape of our lives. And, yes, this is what Amanda did. But it took great effort on her part, as she went from being angry at her mother for abandoning her, to being angry at her mother for not abandoning her, to being angry at herself, to forgiving herself and embracing the great lessons she had received about being able to rely on herself always.

And now I want to tell you how I changed my story.

One time, I was in Canyon de Chelly in the American Southwest where I befriended an elderly medicine woman of the Navajo Nation. In the course of our conversation, this woman, “Charlotte,” asked me who I was and about my family. I responded that I was born in Cuba; that, during my childhood, there was a terrible revolution where I saw much suffering; that, for political reasons, my father often had to leave us when I was a young boy; and that I had been raised without a positive role model for being a man.

The old woman smiled at me, and I felt it was my turn to ask her who she was and what she did. Her response took me back. She said, “The red-rock canyon walls am I, the desert wind am I, that child who did not eat today at the reservation am I.”

And I thought to myself, what an interesting story, so much more interesting than mine, which I later understood had been shaped as much by my experience as by the pop psychology of the time. That very day I determined to change my story. I would no longer be the child who did not belong anywhere, wounded by a revolution that I was too young to fight in or flee from, and who required an older role model in order to become a man. But I discovered that I could not change my life story only by changing my mind about it, only by rationally determining to become someone different. No, I would need to transition from old-brain thinking to the wisdom of the prefrontal cortex, which means I would need to lay aside—even slay—my old mythologies and create new maps for the remainder of my journey.

Likewise, you can exchange your stories of scarcity, bereavement, loss, and suffering for a grander, more noble epic. You can be like Siddhartha, the young prince who left an easy but unfulfilling life in the palace to discover enlightenment and become the Buddha.

But, to change your story and rewire your brain, you have to quiet your HPA axis so that you can get out of fight-or-flight paralysis, stop responding to people and situations with anger and violence, and cease running away or hiding.

The sages of old knew that for a person to heal from trauma, that person had to discover a new personal mythology in which he or she ceased being the victim of a terrible childhood, a failed marriage, an illness, or of history itself. The shamans knew that person would need to paint a grand canvas and depict him- or herself as a heroic traveler and explorer.

When we understand that the stories of our lives both shape our neurology and are the product of neural networks, we can choose to change our stories in order to change our brains. Once we change our brains, we can start to have new and original experiences and craft more original stories from these. In this manner, like one hand washing the other, our experiences shape and mold our brain, and our brain shapes and informs our stories. We have two principal stories in our life: One is written in our genetic code, which many believe is fixed and immutable. The other is the psychological story (or stories) we consciously tell—and retell and retell and retell—ourselves. These stories are linked because often the chapters and verses of the latter are poorly edited versions of our parents’ life and struggles.

The earlier exercise Reselecting Your Genetic Destiny will help you to rewrite your genetic tale. The following exercise will show you how to edit the story that defines your life journey.

Exercise: We Are Our Stories

Take a pen and paper and write a one-page fairy tale that starts with “Once upon a time . . . ” Include a princess or prince, a warrior, and a dragon, but allow the story to unfold and gain in complexity as you weave in other characters and adventures. If you think this sounds childish, give yourself permission to be childlike for a few moments.

Now put this book down and try this exercise before you read further about the outcome of the practice.

Later today or tomorrow, select someone who will help you understand the significance of this fairy tale.

Read your story aloud to a friend or partner and look for themes. What genre is it: adventure, romance, a tale of despair, or a quest for love or fortune? Who is the main character: the princess, the dragon, the warrior, or another character?

Now change the tense from past to present and claim, for yourself, all actions of the primary character. For example, you might change “and then the king left the princess while her castle was being stormed” to “and then the king left me while my castle was being stormed.”

Notice how the tone and significance of the story changes. This will reveal some of the beliefs inscribed in the primitive neural networks of your brain.

Now rewrite the story, casting your character as a hero or heroine who embarks upon a journey in search of meaning. For example, you change from “a princess who is abandoned by her family when her castle is under siege” to “a courageous maiden who follows her heart’s calling to explore the world and discover her purpose in life, her reason for being, despite all the adversity she had to face.”

As you rewrite your personal story, you may discover, for example, that your parents’ divorce is not your story of abandonment but your opportunity to learn resilience and bravery early in life; that being unmarried is not your failure at love but an opportunity to develop your care and generosity toward others; that being humbled by life’s circumstances is a chance to set aside pride and practice humility.

Then read your rewritten story as the parable it is. Identify with the lessons and gifts you experience in your life stories—and in your life.

And as you read, remember that your prefrontal cortex is laying pathways for your new neural networks of joy, inner peace, and enlightenment.

THE SHAMAN’S BATH

This is a very cleansing and healing bath formula. Repeat this bath as often as you like, especially on your day of fasting. Sage is used by shamans throughout the Americas to “smudge,” or cleanse, the energy of a person or a place.

Recipe: The Shaman’s Bath

½ cup baking soda

½ cup sea salt

10 drops of sage oil (essential oil)

Pour ingredients into a tub as you are filling it with warm water and soak your body for 20 minutes.

Rinse off.

Go straight to bed.

CHAPTER 14

THE POWER UP YOUR
BRAIN PROGRAM

What you’ve read in
Power Up Your Brain
so far is the marriage of science and spirituality, of fact and tradition, of history and prehistory.

In the following pages, you will receive instructions regarding diet, fasting, dietary supplements, exercise, shamanic exercises, meditation, and imaging practices. The program entails five weeks of intensive practice, followed by a more moderate regular practice for maintenance.

You are about to embark on a journey toward enlightenment.

You will experience the benefits described throughout the earlier chapters in this book, specifically the creation of new neural pathways that will help you to heal from trauma and experience inner peace and enlightenment.

If possible, begin the Power Up Your Brain Program on the day of the full moon.

Important reminder:
This Program involves fasting. Consult with your physician before engaging in this or any fasting program, especially if you are diabetic, have low blood sugar, take pharmaceutical medications, or are experiencing any physical condition that you believe you should discuss with your doctor or a professional health practitioner.

During this week, you will begin a journey that will lead to significant changes in your body and profound experiences for your being. Depending on your lifestyle, you may not be aware of those changes, and you may even experience a certain amount of discomfort as your body begins to eliminate toxins.

Organics:
Choose as many organic foods as are available. If finances are an issue, make sure to choose organic varieties of the following foods because they’re most likely to be contaminated: apples, peaches, nectarines, pears, strawberries, cherries, imported grapes, celery, sweet bell peppers, spinach, lettuce, and potatoes.

Allergens:
During this first week, modify your diet to reduce your consumption of foods that may contain allergens. The most common of these are foods that contain gluten—wheat, barley, and rye—as well as dairy products.

Totally eliminating gluten from your diet may be challenging, so you may wish to ask your doctor to perform a simple blood test to determine in advance if you are gluten sensitive. If the test is negative, meaning that you are not gluten sensitive, then there’s no need to avoid gluten-containing foods.
¹
An even better idea, which will serve you long after the Power Up Your Brain Program is completed, is to consider having a comprehensive blood evaluation for food allergies such as the Comprehensive Food Allergy Profile offered by Genova Diagnostics Laboratory. This simple blood evaluation will determine your unique level of sensitivity to 88 common foods.
²
The test provides a ranking of foods in terms of your sensitivity. We generally recommend that patients permanently remove all foods ranked at 2+ or 3+ from their diets and certainly throughout the rest of the Power Up Your Brain Program.

As much as possible, eliminate sugars and other simple carbohydrates such as highly refined flour. This means no pasta and breads made from processed flour. Instead choose products made from whole-grain flour, which you can purchase from health-food stores.

Fats:
This is also the time to start focusing on the fats in your diet. While it may sound counterintuitive, dietary fats are
good
for the brain. This makes sense when you remember that some 70 percent of the brain is made of fat and that the source of this fat is your diet. So it’s not so much the
amount
of fat that’s in your diet, but the
type
of fat you consume that makes all the difference. Consuming foods made with hydrogenated, saturated fats not only builds a less functional brain that’s at increased risk for diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, but will also compromise function day by day while increasing your risk for so many systemic diseases that are now epidemic in our society, like diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, and coronary artery disease. Now is the time to infuse your diet with sources of DHA and good fats like virgin organic olive oil, which may help protect the brain from Alzheimer’s disease. New research now finds that oleocanthal, a compound found in virgin olive oil, modifies specific proteins called ADDLs that interfere with normal nerve function and may trigger memory loss. These modifications render the ADDLs less damaging to the brain.