The biology of belief

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1. kd3Oct 2019
   Living in survival mode has a severely negative impact on growth and on the brain/thinking. This is why poor people often stay poor and make bad decisions. The brilliant stem cell biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton describes in chapter 6 of his book “The Biology of Belief” why an organism cannot simultaneously be in a state of growth and protection:

   "By now you won’t be surprised to learn that I first became aware of how important growth and protection behaviors are in the laboratory where my observations of single cells have so often led me to insights about the multicellular human body. When I was cloning human endothelial cells, they retreated from toxins that I introduced into the culture dish, just as humans retreat from mountain lions and muggers in dark alleys. They also gravitated to nutrients, just as humans gravitate to breakfast, lunch, dinner and love. These opposing movements define the two basic cellular responses to environmental stimuli. Gravitating to a life-sustaining signal, such as nutrients, characterizes a growth response; moving away from threatening signals, such as toxins, characterizes a protection response. It must also be noted that some environmental stimuli are neutral; they provoke neither a growth nor a protection response. My research at Stanford showed that these growth/protection behaviors are also essential for the survival of multicellular organisms such as humans. But there is a catch to these opposing survival mechanisms that have evolved over billions of years. It turns out that the mechanisms that support growth and protection cannot operate optimally at the same time. In other words, cells cannot simultaneously move forward and backward. The human blood vessel cells I studied at Stanford exhibited one microscopic anatomy for providing nutrition and a completely different microscopic anatomy for providing a protection response. What they couldn’t do was exhibit both configurations at the same time. [Lipton, et al, 1991) In a response similar to that displayed by cells, humans unavoidably restrict their growth behaviors when they shift into a protective mode. If you’re running from a mountain lion, it’s not a good idea to expend energy on growth. In order to survive — that is, escape the lion — you summon all your energy for your fight or flight response. Redistributing energy reserves to fuel the protection response inevitably results in a curtailment of growth."

   In other words, living in a constant state of survival (as unsteady income might cause), severely restricts a person’s capabilities to grow in a healthy way.

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2. tomhowardMay 2018
   Yeah fair enough, I haven't read that book myself as I'd already learned the technique from other practitioners before the book came out. That author is just a practitioner (and self-promoter) himself and not an accomplished author.

   It's a nascent area, so solid references are scant. I hope to remedy that myself some day.

   A better known author on the topic is Bruce Lipton, whose 2006 book The Biology of Belief [1] introduced these concepts to a broad audience.

   I've found the book insightful and helpful, but whilst he's a credentialed scientist himself (former cell biology researcher at Stanford School of Medicine), he gets hand-wavy about concepts like epigenetics and quantum entanglement and leaves himself vulnerable to attack from mainstream skeptics.

   Still, I recommend the book for anyone who is able to overlook that. The science may be unclear but the core principles and healing techniques are solid, in my experience of applying them over the past 6+ years.

   [1] https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Belief-10th-Anniversary-Consc...

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3. ephextomNov 2016
   One of the pages [1] on The HeartMath site references Dr Bruce Lipton.

   If you're interested in understanding more about the interplay between experiences, emotions, physiology and genetics, I can strongly recommend his book, The Biology of Belief [2], and his many interviews and presentations that can be found on YouTube.

   His research and writing focuses on the notion that subconscious beliefs are the major influence on our perceptions, which is why for some of us, experiences can trigger pathological health conditions like anxiety and depression, along with auto-immune illnesses and other chronic illnesses that result from chronic stress (which can include cardiovascular disease and other serious conditions).

   Inspired by this book, I've had great success improving my emotional and physiological health by undertaking practices that focus on subconscious beliefs. They all seek to achieve similar results to NLP (congruence, non-reactivity, etc), but I've found these ones to be more effective:

   - Self Clearing [3]

   - Holotropic Breathwork [4]

   - Dolores Cannon Hypnosis [5]

   All this stuff draws contempt from curmudgeonly skeptics (of which I used to be the worst kind), but from painful experience I've found these techniques to be far more effective than any of the more conventional approaches I'd tried previously.

   I can also recommend Stoic Philosophy [6], but for me these practices are tools and systems that enable concepts from stoicism to be implemented most effectively.

   [1] https://www.heartmath.org/articles-of-the-heart/personal-dev...

   [2] https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Belief-Unleashing-Consciousne...

   [3] http://clearyourshit.com/self-clearing-foundations-1/

   [4] http://www.holotropic.com/about.shtml

   [5] http://www.dolorescannon.com/about-qhht

   [6] http://fourhourworkweek.com/2009/04/13/stoicism-101-a-practi...

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4. tomhowardSep 2016
   Hey there, thanks for the generous sentiments and well-intentioned question.

   That kind of trial isn't something I'd consider to be particularly valuable, as the whole issue of sleep quality and overall health is too complex for it to be possible to isolate one factor like this.

   I should point out that at the times when I've experienced poor sleep with the phone on, I haven't been aware of it until I woke up the next day. It's been a case of waking up feeling less well rested, thinking "shit, why do I feel so terrible?", then reaching for my phone that had been sitting on the pillow next to my head and realising that it was turned on. So it is somewhat blind, without being scientific.

   I certainly don't claim this experience as clear evidence that "cellphones impair sleep" – it's just one factor among several that seem to make a difference in my case.

   It's this complexity that makes these kinds of illnesses so hard to understand and overcome. For me, good, refreshing sleep has been hard to achieve for many years, even with the phone turned off (though mercifully it's getting much better lately, as is my overall health and happiness).

   And I know other factors make a difference too - what I ate/drank that day, what time I got to bed/sleep, what kind of exercise/activity I did that day, what my emotional state had been that day. Any one or combination of these factors on any given day could cause worse sleep than normal, so it would be very difficult to isolate the phone being on or off as a standalone factor.

   Given all this, I'm perfectly open to the possibility that the phone being on or off is actually not a factor at all.

   But given that (a) there is some established evidence that cellphone transmissions alter brain waves, and (b) it takes close enough to zero time/effort to turn off the phone's transmissions before going to sleep (as well as preventing interruptions from any calls or alerts that may happen during the night), I'm content to keep up the practice of keeping transmissions turned off when I sleep.

   By the way, if you want a somewhat-scientifically based explanation that may help you understand what's going on with your relative, I'd recommend reading The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton. He has some colorful ideas and is easily dismissed by curmudgeonly skeptics, but his approach has solid scientific basis, and it's only by following the principles he recommends that I've been able to start enjoying such good health lately.

   That aside, I wish you all the best for your relative's wellbeing.

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5. tomhowardDec 2015
   Or, they might have what looks like a good life to outsiders - eg super-rich celebrities with lifestyles idealised by the media - but actually living it is hell.

   But I still strongly agree with your point. My strongest influence on this stuff is The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton, who explains how it all works on a cellular and genetic level.

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6. tomhowardDec 2015
   Thanks for that, I hear what you're saying and appreciate you saying it.

   Hopefully my followup comment adds some substance - though not links to one-off studies, as it's to broad a topic for that.

   For you or anyone else interested, Lipton's The Biology of Belief explains the principles very well on a cellular biology level. Tanzi's books with Deepak Chopra (Super Brain and Super Genes) are probably more of an affront to credulity given the Chopra connection, but are there for anyone who can get over that.

   Yes they are all pitched at the new age self-help market because that's the audience that's into this kind of stuff at the moment.

   Hopefully that won't be the case forever, and signs are there that attitudes are starting to change.

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