Words from Dr Joe Dispenza that show that healing the nervous system is vital for the health and healing of our body.
Stress keeps us living in survival mode
Stress is one of the biggest causes of epigenetic change, because it knocks our body out of balance. It comes in three forms: physical stress(trauma), chemical stress(toxins), and emotional stress (fear, worry, overwhelm, and so on). Each type can set off more than 1,400 chemical reactions and produce more than 30 hormones and neurotransmitters. When the chemical cascade of stress hormones is triggered, your mind influences your body through the autonomic nervous system, and you experience the ultimate mind-body connection.
Ironically, feeling stressed was designed to be adaptive. All organisms, including humans, are designed to deal with short term stress. The body is out of balance, but only for a short while. At least that’s how it was meant to be!
If you’re like most people, a string of nerve-racking incidents keeps you in the fight-or-flight response a large part of the time and the stress hormones are constantly circulating through your body. In fight-or-flight mode, life sustaining energy is mobilized so that the body can either run or fight. But when there isn’t a return to homeostasis vital energy is lost in the system. You have less energy in your internal environment for cell growth and repair, long-term building projects on a cellular level, and healing when the energy is being channelled elsewhere. The cells shut down, they no longer communicate with one another which weakens the endocrine and immune systems of the body (among others).
Long term stress has been linked to anxiety, depression, digestive problems, memory loss, insomnia, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, cancer, ulcers, rheumatoid arthritis, colds, flu, accelerated aging, allergies, body pain, chronic fatigue, infertility, impotence, asthma, hormonal issues, skin rashes, hair loss, muscle spasms, and diabetes just to name a few. All these conditions are a result of epigenetic change as the instructions for healing shut down.
Studies show that getting in touch with positive, expansive emotions like compassion and kindness, trends to release a different neuropeptide called oxytocin, which naturally shuts off the receptors in the amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear and anxiety. With fear out of the way, we are not using all our energy trying to survive, and we can feel infinitely more trust, forgiveness, and love.
Scientists are finding areas of the body – like the intestines, heart, liver, immune system – contain receptor sites for oxytocin (a hormone that plays a key role in both the male and female reproductive system). These organs are highly responsive to oxytocin’s major healing effect, which has been linked to growing more blood vessels in the heart, stimulating immune function, increasing gastric mobility, and normalizing blood sugar levels.
In our normal day to day existence, living in survival mode and marinating in stress hormones, we are naturally very narrow focused. We put all our attention on things and people and problems, and we define our reality by our senses. We can call that type of attention object focused. With all out attention on our outer world, our brains stay in a high range beta brain wave state. This is the most reactive, unstable, and volatile of all the different brain wave patterns. Because we’re on high alert, we aren’t in a position to create, daydream, solve problems, learn new things, or heal. The electrical activity in our brains increases, and thanks to the fight or flight response, our heart rate and respiration naturally increase. Our bodies can’t spend much, if any, of their resources for growth and optimal health, because they’re always on the defensive, trying to protect us and help us make it through the day. Under these conditions, our brains tend to compartmentalize. This means that some regions of the brain begin to work separately from the others instead of working together, and some even work in opposition to each other. It’s like stepping on the gas and the break at the same time.
The autonomic nervous system is responsible for maintaining balance, health, and order in the body. The Spinal Flow Technique works directly with the autonomic nervous system to sooth, relax, and unlock vital energy that the body can then use for healing, repair and rebalancing the body.
Words by Joe Dispenza from "You are the Placebo"