mindfulness changes the brain

At the Academy of Intuition Medicine^® at this time of year, we are in the SIS module, or Spiritual Incarnation System ™. This module introduces us to the concept of “calling our spirit back” into our body. It is the age-old soul retrieval practice of the Shaman, re-introduced for the contemporary practitioner.

Soul retrieval is medicine for the dispersion of our core being or essence. It is medicine for the fact that through growth opportunities, karma, lessons, lack of awareness, trauma and what have you, we have left pieces of our spirit all over the place, creating a vacuum in our center. And just like in Odysseus’ palace, when Odysseus is missing, the suitors will show up and eat up your resources. And suitors can be very seductive! In terms of a human ecosystem, the suitors could be other people’s energies, emotions or agendas, actual germs, parasites—basically anything that is not of you in the energetic or physical world that takes your place when you are not there to fill it.

The wisdom here is that if you fill yourself completely with your own spirit, there is no room for undesirables to take up residence and wreak havoc with your core essence or resonance. The goal is to “stay home” and make sure that all resources are going towards your unique purpose.

If you think that this medicine has little to no real effect in the real world, I have been convinced otherwise. During this meditation in class, we were asked to view our wiring. We are electrical beings after all—this I learned during my son’s heart surgery for his SVT (or fast heart) condition. The surgeons had to re-wire an extraneous electrical circuit in his heart. Ah yes, a fond memory indeed. In any event, we are electrical beings and we have wiring.

So in this meditation we were being asked to examine our wiring. Do not be surprised. In our intuitive space, it is fairly normal to be able to see one’s electrical, or energetic wiring. I did the visualization but instead of myself, I saw wiring that my mother had put there, literally, the mother board, like the circuit board in a computer. That is also a normal occurrence. Think about it. They say that our mothers can push our buttons because they installed them—this is literally true. Our parents wire our thoughts and behavior (to some extent) long before we have any say or autonomy in the matter. In any case, I caught a visual of the matter.

And this matter was foreign energy. It is hard to be your authentic self with your parents and your family and your friends and loved ones wandering around in the halls of your soul. It is important to be at the center of one’s world, if one wants to at all be representative or in charge of one’s self.

So in the meditation I removed the mother board and replaced it with my own circuitry. My own wiring would be the conduit for my own essence, or spirit, or energy, or electricity—in my body. It was simple, efficient, clear and good. I slowly began to feel very nauseous. As a matter of fact, by the end of the meditation my stomach was aching and I had to go home. Upon arriving home, I began projectile vomiting. This lasted from 9pm to 7am. I told people I had the stomach virus.

And I did have the stomach virus. Or did I have the stomach virus? This is the way it goes. It is maddening to seek the chicken or egg truth here. And why had my mentor had the exact same physical response to re-wiring her mother 8 years ago? And why did my classmate have the same nausea and vomiting during her own re-wiring process? Ultimately I have come to see the energetic world as layering beneath the physical world, and creating the “opening” or “agreement” or “accommodation” to a physical condition as Caroline Myss says. As I re-wired my system, and released the mother board, or the mother programming, my system began upgrading and spewing out the existence of any frequencies, memories, energies or resonances which impeded my new more authentic frequency of self. Or as my homeopath said, there are some things you just have to vomit out of your system. And my body responded with a very useful physical means of doing so: a virus.

Another example.

Ten days later in a meditation exercise with my mentor, we discovered my son in my grounding. Grounding is the magnetic force field or invisible energetic connection that anchors us to the center of the earth. It is our core connection to mother earth, to the center of life. Think of yourself as a successful sumo wrestler, holding so firm in your center that nothing can knock you out of your stance, or center. When we are deeply “grounded in our reality”, we are able to maintain our individual selves and not merge energetically with those around us, thereby losing our authentic wiring and becoming an amalgam of that which we are in contact with; or taking on view points and attitudes which do not belong to us.

Additionally, when we are not anchored in ourselves, we can cross over into others energetic space. This often happens. Actually, unless you are aware, this always happens, especially with mothers and children. And until the age of two, this is essential for the mother to keep the baby safe, alive and thriving. But then it is time to release the baby to his/her own separate life and destiny. So there was my son in my grounding, meaning he was finding his anchoring, or his center, through me. A basic understanding of parenting and psychology will tell you that you want to avoid this. Or even a basic understanding of gardening. You want each plant to ground through its own roots, to get its own water and nutrients directly from the soil. It is the most efficient route, and the most harmonious or nourishing for each individual plant. Nature rewards efficiency with survival.

So I removed my son from my grounding, in effect asking his system to ground on its own. Within 3 days he had developed a fever of 104 and stayed there for 6 days, developing the most alarming rash over his entire body. He was so wiped out from this virus he had to rest for 3 days instead of his usual one day bounce back. I called around to several doctors offices, and indeed there was a virus with rash going around. (Maybe not the fever getting to my son’s temperatures, but then again, my son is a very fiery temperament). So did this make him susceptible? Why did he accommodate this virus?

Was it a virus? Was it his energetic system reacting to being ejected from mother, burning off all of the mother energy that should not be there? Was he healing? Was his spirit using the virus to heal and purify his system? Interestingly, the same thing happened last year when I began clearing him out of my grounding—a deep, intense illness followed by a growth spurt. The human system works that way: it goes into a deep reset and purification followed by growth. Our energy re-routes to accommodate growth and we experience a brief dip in our immunity—facilitating the reset/cleanse function of illness. More and more layers.

I have quite a collection of layered examples by this point, just recently: my shoulder is out and a classmate sees a block in my circuitry on that shoulder (with no knowledge of my injury). Did I hurt my shoulder or my electrical/energetic system?

Another important note to make here: healing can take many forms, as with any energy. Who says its supposed to feel good to find balance? And another one: does healing equate to symptom free?

It is a fascinating line of questions and I wonder how this can be studied. As I say I am inclined to conclude that we are a very complex weaving of spirit/energy and physical body, that moves together with its environment (the planet) in a complex and miraculous ecosystem of interlocking systems so multilayered that we will never scope the majority of it. This is a place where intuition can be quite useful, as it is a great tool for navigating mystery. It is important to respect and honor the power of these connections, and the job and efficacy of intuition in managing them, or learning from them.

I recently saw a NYT article on a groundbreaking new scientifically accepted double blind study on how meditation changes the brain and body. The study demonstrates that mindfulness changes the brain and that it affects health positively.   It is an exciting development to see that moment where energy becomes matter. The moment where a visualization or thought that is pure energy translates into a measurable physical change in the body. And then to be able to see how this is interconnected with the web of health and balance that is the human body.

Perhaps we are not far from understanding what questions to ask about how meditation/visualization affects the body and how to show that in a study.