A New View of the Body and of Health

How are neotic and other scientists re-envisioning the body and its structures and systems according to quantum physics and the current noetic understanding of energy and information fields? Below is a sampling of the New Biology, the exciting research and theories that are revealing a whole new view of the human body:

• Bruce Lipton, former medical school professor and cell biologist, is a champion of epigenetics, which literally means “control beyond the genes.” Lipton is a pioneer in the field, heralding the latest evidence that conventional scientists are seriously wrong about how our cells work and the influence of DNA on our health. He provides evidence that instead of DNA being the master controller of our bodies and our being at the mercy of our genetic blueprint, the cell membrane (and structures on the cellular envelope called Integral Membrane Proteins [IMPs]) are the “brains” of the body. IMPs extend out from the membrane and also penetrate deep into the cells, and these act as antennas of sorts, picking up signals from the external environment and from internal changes in the body—including those created by our thoughts—that relay information into the cell to the DNA. The DNA responds accordingly. In other words, DNA follows, it doesn’t lead.

Epigeneticists talk about the gene itself as the hardware of our biocomputer and the epigenomes—which control the expression or suppression of genes—as the software. They are discovering that many, many things can influence this epigenetic software, including environmental fields of all kinds, and our emotions and lifestyle choices. Lipton even goes so far as to champion the “biology of belief,” in which our emotional states, thoughts, intentions and beliefs provide some of the most dramatic impacts on the condition and functioning of our cells. In his book The Biology of Belief, he writes that when we truly understand how cells work we become “the drivers of our own biology. . . We have the ability to edit the data we enter into our biocomputers. . .we become masters of our fate, not victims of our genes.” (94)

• Candace Pert, a psychopharmacologist, also talks about the biology of belief, in the form of what she calls “the molecules of emotion” from her book of the same name. She and her colleagues discovered that certain types of peptides, which are molecules that were once thought to be produced only in the brain, are manufactured and used throughout the body, especially by the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems. These peptides are the chemical basis for emotions, and since many types of cells distributed throughout the body have receptors for peptides, Pert’s theory is that emotion is a body-wide, not just a brain-dependent, phenomenon. She has since gone on to become a leading advocate for mind-body medicine—and even mind-body-spirit medicine—lecturing and writing widely about how our emotions, thoughts, intentions and state of mind help determine our health and well-being.

She writes in her book, Everything You Need to Feel Go(o)d, that our inner self-talk profoundly determines our physical state: “As soon as you say, ‘Oh, I have a bad knee,’ it’s as if you’d pushed the print button on your computer, dooming your mind to produce the painful symptoms over and over again. If you reframe your experience by saying: ‘My body is capable of healing,’ you’re redirecting those inflammatory immune cells away from the painful joint, and the condition can cease” (86).

Pert has also found that vibration and frequencies—including sound—can act on a cell in exactly the same way a biochemical molecule does. Pert refers to music in her work, but her point can be applied to any type of coherent sound or vibration. She writes in Everything You Need to Feel Go(o)d: “Music, which is a patterned vibration, can bypass the ligand and directly resonate those [cell] receptors, interacting like a peptide or drug—or an emotion. The vibrational frequency of the notes turns on the receptors, setting in motion all kinds of cellular activities. That’s how music can heal, interacting directly with your molecules of emotion to charge you with energy, get your juices flowing, and make you feel good. These molecules are not only vibrating to cause bodywide changes, but they also are ‘hearing’ each other through the psychosomatic [mind-body] network of cellular communication. You can see that we don’t just hear with our ears, but we ‘hear’ with every receptor on every cell in our bodymind. We’re literally alive with the sound of music!” (109)

Pert’s work lends credence to what sound healers, music therapists, and even shamans have been telling us: sound can both help and harm us. Some therapists use applied kinesiology—more commonly called muscle testing—to reveal the state of your nervous system in relation substances (e.g., a food or pharmaceutical) or beliefs (via practices in bioenergetic psychology and techniques such as PSYCH-K) or sounds, such as music. When heavy metal rock is playing, most people’s muscles test “weak,” meaning the sound is stressing their system. With classical music, however, most people test “strong,” meaning their system is enlivened and empowered by the music. Incoherent and disharmonious sounds and vibrations can have a negative effect on our health—from being exposed to continuous angry words or negative talk to living in a city with its constant traffic and other noise. Conversely, listening to coherent and pleasantly resonant sounds, such as the ocean waves or the sounds of nature, and self-affirming words and uplifting conversations, can bolster our health. Sounds seem to change our “program” at the cellular level.

• In his two seminal books, Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis and Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance, biophysicist James L. Oschman provides compilations of the most persuasive scientific evidence for the quantum aspects of our body and for mind-body medicine. He covers most of the major research advances and theories in the field, including how DNA, the cell nucleus, cell cytoplasm, and extracellular matrix form a continuously interconnected system, which he calls the “living matrix.” He explains how our connective tissue and myofascial tissue systems are crystalline lattice structure that serves as a high-speed, super-conducting communication system in the body. He champions that the extracellular matrix, membrane proteins and connective tissue system—rather than simply DNA and genes—work together to form the “brain” of the body, serving as the information switchboard between our bodies and the external environment, as well as with our overall internal state, including the influence of our beliefs, thoughts, and intentions, both positive and negative.

Oschman points to two major findings in particular that are crucial to the state of our health: 1) our body’s internal states of coherence, where all systems work together harmoniously, is a quantum-based phenomenon upon which optimal health depends, and 2) “resonance”—the phenomenon when two entities or systems begin to vibrate in unison —is a mechanism that enhances the quantum and chemical communication systems in the mind-body system. We’ll talk more about these concepts in the theory section later in this section.

Oschman also is an advocate for energy and vibrational medicine—from acupuncture to Therapeutic Touch to sound and music therapy. He also champions many technologies that work with the human body-field, seeing bioenergetic and bio-informational healthcare as the medicine of the future. Oschman writes in Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis:

“The confusion and hostility surrounding energy therapies has contributed significantly to our current medical crisis and the division between so-called conventional and complementary therapies. In the past, the most remarkable success stories of complementary therapists (as well as healing in the religious context) were often dismissed because there was no logical explanation. The practitioners themselves usually could add little in the way of clarification. By bringing recent science in the picture, we are finding the missing links in our images of the human body in health and disease” (4).
 
Lipton, Pert and Oschman are only three of the hundreds of academic scientists who have shifted their view from the old medical paradigm to the new. Their research has led them to an entirely new vision of the body, one in which its quantum aspects can no longer be denied. All of the research cited above and elsewhere in this section fundamentally relies upon the expression of “nonlocal” and “entangled” states in the body, and between our minds and our bodies. As mind-body physician Larry Dossey says in his book Healing Beyond the Body: Medicine and the Infinite Reach of the Mind, “. . .meaning and health are related in two ways. First, health means something—it mirrors, represents, and symbolizes what is taking place in our life. Conversely, the meanings we find in life—the meaning of a relationship, a job, a particular therapy—can affect our mind and body and thus our health” (9). His words ring true for the new biology, where our health is determined at least as much by our thoughts, beliefs and lifestyle as it is by our cells, DNA and the “stuff” of the purely physical body.

The research briefly reviewed here shows that the “new biology” is a holistic mind-body-spirit approach to health that is based on the premise that our entire being—not just our bodies—is involved in both health and illness. Our most effective “medicine” comes from within, not from without. In the next two sections we will look at the research into “healing intention” and “healing energy” with non-human and human subjects.