In 2012, Professor Candace Pert (www.candacepert.com) published a book titled ‘Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind: Mind-Body Medicine Becomes the Science of Psychoneuroimmunolgy (PNI)’, and she indicates that: “My research has shown me that when emotions are expressed…all systems are united and made whole. When emotions are repressed, denied, not allowed to be whatever they may be, our network pathways get blocked, stopping the flow of the vital feel-good unifying chemicals that run both our biology and our behaviour.”
“We know that the immune system, like the central nervous system, has memory and the capacity to learn. Thus, it could be said that intelligence is located not only in the brain but in cells that are distributed throughout the body, and that the traditional separation of mental processes, including emotions, from the body is no longer valid.”
“We have coined the phrase ‘New Paradigm Medicine’ to reflect the fact that it uses the established scientific method and will require quantum physics to understand the scientific underpinnings. The terms alternative, integrative and complementary are political, not scientific terms. We believe that New Paradigm Medicine will be fully scientifically validated one day. … We are not a collection of separate organs or systems, but an information network in which our cells are constantly moving from one location to another as they are being formed or replaced, regulated by the molecules of emotion.”
“Thus cancer, in particular, will be appreciated as a disease of the mind as well as the body and treated at centres where body, mind and spirit are considered. One day, cancer will be cured by interventions that release emotions in a controlled fashion such as guided imagery, art therapy, animal therapy, massage and bodywork, neurolinguistic programming, energy psychology, chiropractic and last but not least, music therapy. These will be used in combination “cocktails”, scientifically optimized and validated protocols by skilled practitioners, and will actually cure or prolong high quality life in many cancers. Whatever the pain, it’s actually the brain where it is perceived. Sophisticated biofeedback methods instead of drugs or surgery will be used to treat it more successfully, along the methods above—and more.”
Pert suggests a program of eight ways to use the information in her book to stay healthy—or to heal if a disease state is already present. The list below suggests you should claim all your feelings because they are the entrance point into the bodymind’s communication network.
- Become conscious. Educate yourself about these processes and become aware of how your bodymind operates to maintain wellness.
- Learn to access the Psychosomatic Network in order to enter the bodymind’s conversation and redirect it when necessary. Use an awareness of the past experiences and conditioning that are stored in the receptors on your cells, to release them at an emotional level. Help for this process can include psychotherapy, personal growth seminars, guided visualization, meditation, hypnotherapy, prayer etc.
- Explore your dreams. Dreams are one of the bodymind’s methods of exchanging information for growth and healing. “Capturing that dream and re-experiencing the emotions can be very healing, as you either integrate the information for growth or decide to take actions toward forgiveness and letting go. Your dreams relate not just to your mind, but to your body as well. Dreams can be your own early-warning system, letting you know if a medical condition is developing and helping to bring your attention to the problem area. The body may be discussing this condition with the mind, and you can get in on the conversation by consciously recalling the dream, once you make the decision to pay attention to your dreams, they will start to speak to you, and you will understand them with ever-greater fluency over time, with practice.”
- Get in touch with your body. “Your body is your subconscious mind and you can’t heal it by talk alone.” We can access our minds and our emotions through the physical body. Use bodywork or movement therapy to heal stuck emotions. Take a walk, run, have a massage or spinal adjustment, get a few hugs and see how you feel. Using touch, massage, physical manipulation of various types can release stored or blocked emotions by clearing internal pathways. Many healers or practitioners of eastern healing systems can see blocked energy in the body and are trained to release it at a physical level. All injuries and traumas are stored in the tissues of the body. Pert concludes, “…almost every other culture but ours recognizes the role played by some kind of emotional catharsis or energy release in healing.”
- Reduce stress. In Pert’s opinion, the most effective way to reduce stress is to learn to meditate and practice it regularly.
- Exercise. Modern lifestyles encourage a sedentary lifestyle. The body was made for moving. Pert suggests trying yoga.
- Eat wisely. “Eating, because of its survival value, has been widely interpreted by evolution to be a highly emotional event.” Our gastro-intestinal tracts are densely lined with peptides and receptors which busily process information rife with emotional content. Here is also where our “gut feelings” happen. Pert also tells us that she considers sugar to be an addictive substance.
- Avoid substance abuse. These addictive substances bind to our receptors, blocking the natural flow of our own peptides. For example, alcohol binds to what is known as the GABA receptor. Using alcohol to excess floods our GABA receptors, eventually causing them to decrease in sensitivity and/or number, making recovery more difficult over time. This same kind of action applies to marijuana, tobacco, cocaine and even sugar.
Professor Pert concludes her book with the following simple recommendations, gleaned from all the scientific data she has included in describing the tenets of Psychoneuroimmunology and their implications for healing:
“Aim for emotional wholeness. When you’re upset or feeling sick, try to get to the bottom of your feelings. Figure out what’s really eating you. Always tell the truth to yourself. Find appropriate, satisfying ways to express your emotions. And if such a prescription seems too challenging, seek professional help to feel better.”
This is why our clients going through our Programs, such as The Health Ecology Solution or our Healing From Cancer program find they can understand and reverse—even, in some cases, terminal— diseases through addressing themselves as a whole, mindbody, entity. We know from conducting over 15,000 case studies and working with over 30,000 clients over 28 years that emotional stress is the biggest challenge to your immune system—and yes, can definitely cause scarring on the immune system. So even an emotional trauma of old, can trigger ill health, if a scar is triggered. So, a symptom or disease that comes up can still be linked to a part of your life from any time.
The general population are increasingly questioning what they are told by media, the medical system and the science world about health and well-being, and more and more are seeking the opinions of those who look at the individual and seek to uncover the root causes of symptoms; not simply band-aid the symptom with a drug that will almost always cause another (side) affect.
Most of us intuitively know that emotional upsets bring us down. We can all relate to an emotion causing a physical affect—think ‘butterflies’ in the tummy. The emotion is anxiety (even if its nervous excitement). In fact, all emotions are ‘felt’ in the trunk area: shame—bowel area, fear—genital area, anxiety—tummy, sadness—chest, anger—throat region. If you have chronic symptoms, or a cancer, it is worth looking at where you have them or where the cancer mass has formed. Almost always we see a correlation between the main emotions affecting that person and the location it has manifested physically in the body. This is not beyond most of us to understand.
Treating an individual as exactly that, is not an alternative approach. Really it’s a common sense approach. Why did this person have this symptom and not their sibling, or friend, or parent, and why in this part of the body not another? There is always more to a symptom than the symptom—the symptom is merely your body’s way of communicating with you and directing you to change something.
The only real question then is to ask: will you listen?
Contact Bill Giles Health Ecology now for a no obligation discussion to find out how we can help you overcome chronic auto-immune diseases and cancer.