Bruce Lipton - Biology of Beliefs Video

A while back I wrote about correlation vs. causation in regards to DNA and epigenetics after reading Bruce Lipton's book The Biology of Belief. Here is a guy who is not only talking about cutting edge science that challenges much of the general publics' understanding of how to achieve health and happiness, he is also a great teacher who can bring across complex subjects in simple terms.

Check out these great videos to hear a once non-spiritual, allopathic research doc expound upon how he logically came to understand:

Why energy is more important to healing (controlling biology) than molecules (ahem....big Pharma)

Why belief controls biology

How stress makes your body susceptible to disease, hinders digestion and makes you dumber

How male scientists confusing the brain and the gonads screws up our entire understanding of DNA and how life manifests

Why genetic mutations are NOT random

How parents beliefs select their children's genes

How your body is a community

How cells communicate

How belief can rewrite your genes

How we broadcast thoughts and a way that we are all connected non-locally

How scientific reductionism gets it wrong

Why we are not controlled by genes as much as we are controlled by our perception of the environment

and even why we are not actually just in our physical bodies

Green Business Competition Awards

Last night I attended Green Spaces Green Business Competition awards at Borough Hall in Brooklyn. This competition looked to promote emerging green businesses in New York that have the ability to revolutionize their industry by working with our ecological resources while creating economic opportunities. 70 companies with revenue under $10 million entered this years competition. 5 were chosen to present their business to the panel of judges (and the audience) last night. 3 winners were then selected.

1st place: Gotham Greens

Bringing New Yorkers local, sustainable produce grown in the heart of NYC

Gotham Greens' premium quality, pesticide-free vegetables and herbs will be grown in sterile rooftop greenhouses using clean, renewable energy and captured rainwater.

This company is now building their first 12,000 sq ft rooftop hydroponic garden in NYC. This facility will grow over 30 tons of premium quality, pesticide free vegetables each year for the NYC retail and restaurant market. They will be delivering extremely high quality vegetables the same day that they are picked. We're not talking about genetically modified week old food shipped halfway around the world. We're talking about something picked in your 'back yard' and potentially eaten the same day. They have been running a test site floating out in the river for the past three years and the response has apparently been incredibly enthusiastic, due largely to taste.

The environmental impact is also not to be ignored. Hydroponic farming consumes far less water than traditional dirt farming, as the water is recirculated continuously. They will also be capturing and utilizing rain water. The facility also uses solar panels for most or all of the energy requirements. Any excess energy generated will be fed back into the grid. Nutritionally, these crops have the potential to be far more nutrient dense than traditional crops, the vast majority of which are being grown in soil that is severely depleted, lacking many of the minerals necessary for a truly healthful crop to be grown.

So we're talking local, organic high quality vegetables all year round. Their presentation was very impressive and everything from their business plan to logistical operations to distribution all intensely researched and ready for production.

2nd place: Environmentally Conscious Organization Inc.

Environmentally friendly pizza boxes! This company has designed, patented and significantly marketed an environmentally friendly pizza box alternative sourced entirely from recycled cardboard. With over 3 billion pizza’s being consumed in this country each year and 70% of those requiring a box that is usually made from 60% recycled material we're talking about a great deal of avoided waste. The utility designed into the box also enables it to easily fit into a recycling bin 8” in diameter or greater, eliminates the need for serving plates and aluminum foil or plastic wrap for storage. Check out the video here:



3rd place: DBA

DBA is a New York based product development company focused on aesthetics, technical innovations and ecologically effective principals. Their first product is an 'eco-pen'. This pen is made from 98% industrially compostable materials. They're basically made out of potatos. We use an astronomical number of disposable pens each year. Their pen is a beautiful option that utilizes a unique ink which, unlike other pens on the market, is not petrochemical based. It is an almost food grade alternative that represents the majority of the innovation in their design.

I was at this event thanks to Sarah Pace of The Rabbit Mafia who catered the event with all locally sourced kickass hors d’œuvres. Good stuff.

Floating - Sensory Deprivation

Nara and I went to Blue Light Floatation today to float for an hour in a sensory deprivation (float) tank. This is a large, bath tub like pool of water housed in a completely dark enclosure. The water is heated to skin temperature and has 1,000 pounds of epsom salt dissolved in it. The effect is that you float, free from touching anything other than the water, which, because of the temperature, is hard to distinguish from your skin. Your ears rest just below the water and the room is silent. It is pitch black, so there was literally no difference if my eyes were open or closed. There is nothing to smell other than a bit of ozone in the room and assuming my mouth is clean and closed, not much to taste either. They haven't come up with a way to deprive the idea sensing organ (brain) quite yet.

Upon entering this quite nice facility (actually owner Sam Zeiger's home) we were sat down and given a brief orientation to the facility and how to use it. Before entering the tank we showered and immediately upon exiting we showered again. Other than that, and how to turn off the light once in the tank, there wasn't much to learn. The tank is nice in that it has very high ceilings. From what I can tell most tanks require you to climb through a door into a box about 4 feet high. This was very spacious.

Once in the room with the tank I got naked, entered the tank and laid down.......and floated, for one hour. It is an interesting feeling to be free from the senses, to feel the body relax, or not relax, as it attempts to maintain tension or posture when it is so obviously not needed. Much of my time was spent feeling and hearing my body. I could hear/feel my heart beating in my ears. I followed my breath as it moved in through my mouth, down my throat and filled up different areas of my lungs; stomach, chest, back etc.

--------Edited per Nigel's comments to include what is below-----

The weird thing was about 10-15 minutes into the float I suddenly knew that Sam (owner/operator) knew Sylvia, the woman who ran the ayahuasca retreat in Brazil where Nara and I met. It wasn't an idea, or a hunch, it was a knowing. When I came out of the the tank (which was virtually sound proof I remind you) Nara said "Sam knows Sylvia!". I responded something along the lines of 'I know, where you guys talking about it about ten minutes after I went in?' They had been. It turns out that Sam's shelves were full of books about consciousness expansion and psychedelics. Nara had quickly gravitated towards a book about Sekhmet, an egyptian warrior goddess whose presences she had felt while in Brazil.

What is it about drug users noticing more synchronicity in life? Terrence McKenna talks about psychedelics (and marijuana's) ability to break down barriers that we have constructed in our mind. The idea being that we divide reality into neat little categories, subjects and objects, us and them, and assume that there is nothing arbitrary about these divisions. We assume that the dividing lines are 'real'. That they are absolute and that there is a need to then find connections between things. The truth may be closer to the mystic idea that all is one and any attempt to create connections assumes boundaries that are simply constructs of the perspective we choose to take on a given situation.

Sure the boundaries serve us, make the world easier to navigate and understand. I wouldn't be typing this to you without them. But should we allow room for the paradox that they also confine us? Confuse us?

Perhaps Rupert Sheldrake is on to something when he talks about morphic resonance and morphogentic fields and describes the brain as more of a radio than anything with it's own content or shows to transmit. He postulates that information, memory, exists in a field that our body/minds can attune themselves to and we are thus informed. This fits nicely with the Buddhist notion of the brain as another sensory organ, one that senses ideas. I mentioned a meditation experience earlier where I was able to take my awareness and tune, or not tune, into the brain and it's neurotic ramblings. Obviously (to me) awareness, consciousness, is something other than the thinking mind. It is something that is aware of the thinking mind. Is it so odd to think that there are other, more subtle means of transmitting information that consciousness is also aware of if/when we relax the artificial boundaries that we have created between what is a valid means of knowing and what is 'metaphysical nonsense'?

Or have I just done too many drugs?

If that explanation is more comfortable to you then by all means stay closed to other possibilities, but if you are aware of information entering your awareness through means other than rational understanding of the five senses, then perhaps we should start developing other senses as well. Do you know why you are attracted to someone? Why you fall in love? Their ideas? Pheromones? Scent? (is there a difference?) Is there some other transmission of information that happens here? You can explore quantum entanglement if that's your bent. I'd recommend mixing such things with some open minded explorations of your direct experience.

rant over.

Correlation vs. Causation - DNA and Epigenetics

Correlation and Causation seem to me to be two of the most commonly confused terms in the modern world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the reporting and interpretation of genetic research.

I got only 50 pages into 'The Biology of Belief' by Bruce H. Lipton and already was in love. It is rare that a scientists views of the world truly resonate with my own interpretations. I have long argued that DNA as a causative factor in our lives is a confused and partial truth. I occasionally read of studies that point at this, but far too often the opposite conclusion is drawn. 'My genes made me fat, caused my cancer, leave me crippled with ADD, depression, chronic fatigue, addiction, obesity, etc. and there is ultimately little that I can do.'

The fact that there is some truth in this does not mean that we are powerless, quite the opposite I think.

Lipton makes some very important points early on '...genes can not turn themselves on or off...genes are not "self-emergent". Something in the environment has to trigger gene activity.'. So our genes certainly speak of (often latent) potentials, but they alone can not be studied to tell us why we are as we are. (p26)

Later Lipton gives us the analogy of the belief that keys 'control' cars. If one were to study all cars that are moving (much as geneticists may study all people with cancer) in an attempt to determine causes of this 'movement' phenomenon they may well find that all moving cars contain keys. They may even go so far as to look and find no stationary cars containing keys. Does this mean that keys control cars or cause them to be moving? Obviously not, they are correlative, not causative. (p50) There are other environmental and interior factors at work here as well (driver, gas, battery charge etc). DNA (keys) may very well be the newest and most fundamental factor to receive sciences attention, but how is it that this leads us to ignore or belittle the myriad other factors at play? And more importantly, how useful is this towards empowering us to make positive change?

Mr. Lipton goes on to point out Darwin's late life realization: "the greatest error which I have committed has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the environments, I.e. Food, climate, etc., independently of natural selection."

"When a gene product is needed, a signal from its environment, not an emergent property of the gene itself, activates expression of that gene." - H. F. Nijhout (p52)

Lipton also points out that, while it holds a wealth of information and can rightly be considered a warehouse of potentials, DNA alone does not interact with the environment to determine our response to stimulus. "In the chromosome, the DNA forms the core, and the proteins cover the DNA like a sleeve. When the genes are covered, their information can not be "read".(p67) What causes the protein 'sleeve' to roll back and allow the DNA to express itself? Environmental signals. So, it would seem that in many ways the regulatory proteins surrounding our DNA are deciding which potentials we will express, and when, more than the DNA that is getting so much media attention these days. Lipton even points out that more often than not, in an attempt to get at and study DNA, the proteins surrounding it are removed and discarded. Is this because DNA houses all of the necessary information for the life that is me?

Consider that our bodies are made up of over 100,000 different proteins. "Conventional thought held that the body needed one gene to provide for each of the 100,000...Add to that 20,000 regulatory genes, which orchestrate the activity of the protein-encoding genes. Scientists concluded that the human genome would contain a minimum of 120,000 genes." (p62) But it turns out that they found closer to 25,000. The spineless, thousand-celled Caenorhabditis worm has 24,000. Obviously there is more at work here building each of us than just DNA.

Epigenetics - Control above genetics

Epigenetic research is now showing us that, not only is there a lot more to our complexity than DNA can account for, the whole process is a lot more fluid than previously believed. Epigeneticists are the scientists who keep the regulatory proteins and study them when breaking open a cells nucleus to get at its contents (DNA and regulatory proteins). These are the scientists who are teaching us that the holy grail of building life is not DNA-->RNA-->protein, but Environmental Signal<-->Regulatory Protein<-->DNA<-->RNA<-->Protein. Notice that the arrows actually go in both directions. 'DNA blueprints passed down through genes are not concrete at birth'. They change!!! They respond!

Yes, this does seem to imply that the outside world, and our interactions with it can actually rewrite our genetic code. Is this actually surprising? Does the idea of 'random mutation' followed by 'natural selection' really make more sense? What does the word random usually imply in a scientific context? It usually means 'we have no fucking clue what is happening, and are not going to admit any attempts to figure it out'. Thank god someone did.

In attempting to explain what I view to be one of our current limitations when attempting to understand what DNA, RNA, proteins etc. are and how they interact with the world I have come up with a train analogy:

Picture the human mind/body as a train. Let's say that science wants to know what's happening inside of the train in order to determine where that train will end up, and in what condition. So science decides that people control trains. Science then finds a way to capture a static image of the entire contents of the train, who is in it, what they are saying, what their plans are, etc. Science then spends a great deal of time studying the content of that one image and comparing its findings to similar snapshots of information gathered from other trains. What science can not yet honor is that the train is full of holes and its contents change over time. Windows and doors open and close both as the train stops and when it is in motion. The train made many stops before the image was captured and has made many more stops since the image was captured. Most likely it was making stops or had windows open while the image was being captured. And what is happening at these stops and through these openings? People are getting on and off, they are smelling the air outside, breathing its contents, hearings it's sounds. The environment around the train is permeating and changing the contents of the train and vice versa. The conversations that the passengers on a train are likely to have rest heavily on where the train is, who has entered, exited, and who is being mesmerized by the sights out the window. The train may have a schedule, and should environmental conditions be one particular way, it may even follow that schedule to the mili-second with no malfunctions or mishaps, but neither this schedule nor the people on the train at the time of the imaging are necessarily causative. They are correlates. And not one piece of this ever changing information can be looked at in a deterministic fashion if we really want to have a clue how that train is going to end up.

We currently have the capability to sequence the entire human genome (It's still really fucking expensive) and have done it quite a few times. I am not aware of any comparative studies that attempt to look at the human genome at birth, death, and at many intervals in between. I suspect that we will see differences. I do not believe that our genetic code is static or causative. We are a product of our genes, our proteins, our community, our society, and, as Mr. Lipton states clearly in other sections of the book, of our beliefs as well.

What is beautiful about all of this is that the idea that we need to dominate (survival of the fittest) or control others so that we can survive just doesn't make sense when it is precisely those others whom we rely on for all of the growth that we have ever made. It seems as if by nurturing our environment we are actually nurturing ourselves.

What is the impact of all this? Not that survival of the fittest is necessarily 100% wrong, but that it is certainly not the whole truth either. There may be more value in cooperation with our environment (others) than previously imagined. There's really no reason to feel trapped and scared, as if the environment is out to get you and you are ill prepared to meet it. We are being created by it. We are creating with it. We are perfectly in sync with it. The imaginary lines that we have drawn around ourselves, separating self from other, are melting every day.

Consciousness and Healing

I am just finishing reading Consciousness and Healing. It is encouraging to know that some 67 doctors feel strongly enough about an integral approach to medicine to put such a book together. It doesn’t quite make we want to break my decade long moratorium on paid medical assistance, but I feel good knowing that should the need arise, they will be there.

What I do feel was lacking from this book was any sense of patient responsibility. The bald headed one would probably point out that it is a very democratic approach, in that Democrats always expect the society(LR) to support the individual, while Republicans tend to expect the individual to be a bit more self reliant.

The best approach, of course, is both.

It is an unfortunate result of following a grossly objective (UR), physical, modern, reductionist view, that the potential for any real intersubjective (LL) communication is discounted, taking the bulk of a patients subjective (UL) insights with it.

Translation: Medicine has been so focused on science that it has forgotten that people are complex physical, emotional, thinking, spiritual creatures capable of looking inside of themselves, taking stock, and sharing their insights with a doctor.

This often times means that, never mind diagnosing or healing, people are barely even expected to investigate or be able to relate much of anything about their current condition to the ‘experts’. We are all to blame for the lack of trust that we have infused subjective experience with, but we are not all held responsible for this. The doctors of the world are forced to shoulder an unfair burden. Most physicians have long ago lost any expectations that the patient will have any valuable insights into their own situation. I, for one, can not entirely blame them.

So what I am saying here is that I am committed to being an informed patient…whenever this may be.

Why is it that physicians should be held solely responsible for the diagnoses and subsequent treatment of disease? We know that ‘nonadherence’ to the prescribed course of action is one problem that must be addressed, but how about the patient’s responsibility to ‘know thyself’?

The two(out of 67) chapters that I felt really address true patient responsibility are on The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy recommendations and the following chapter on 'Sociopolitical Challenges of Integral Medicine. These are a beacon, but I want more.

At what point did it become the medical communities responsibility to probe everything from the depths of ones phyche to the contents of their bowels? Most people have no idea what they put into their bodies or the effects that it is having on them at any given moment. We ignore the food, air, information, hormones and meaning that circulate in and constitute our bodies and then demand that someone we have just met, comprehensively understand and manipulate this system into some sort of relevant harmony.......or face career threatening legal action.

Yes doctors should spend more time with us, and ask us more questions, and have a more comprehensive worldview, but why not fucking demand it? Better yet, inspire it. Why not get started without them?