We're More Like Flickering Flames Than Hunks of Meat (3 Stars)ByJanet Boyer "Author, Tarot Maven, BS Adverse"HALL OF FAMEVINE VOICEon November 27, 2006Format: Audio CD"Our whole brain is organized for pleasure. We are hardwired for bliss." -- From CD 1

In the 3-CD audio series Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind, pharmacologist Candace Pert, Ph.D. --author of Molecules of Emotion who was featured in the film What the Bleep Do We Know!?--provides compelling evidence showing that the mindbody field resides in the *entire* physical body, not just the brain. For example, our entire gastrointestinal tract is lined with neurons, receptors, and peptides that are found in the brain. This is why what you eat can affect your mood. Endorphins and other mood-altering peptides are found in places other than the brain--such as organ tissue and bone marrow--and this particular "molecules of emotion" can be released during relationship bonding, orgasm, and as a "runner's high".

In Disc 1, Dr. Pert gives a live lecture relating fascinating scientific evidence about the mind/body connection. In fact, Dr. Pert says that the mind is *not* separate from the body because it doesn't reside solely in the brain, as was once theorized. "Bodymind" is a field of energy that can be entered--and affected--at any point, much like the informational web of the internet.

Dr. Pert also explains intriguing new research about heart science and the dynamic range of emotions. For example, the old idea that a tightly regulated homeostatic human robot is the ideal for health and normalcy is not being borne out by research. In fact, the more "regular" the heart rate, the closer to death a person is! Like chaos theory, the more irregular the heart rate the healthier person--which shows that humans are meant to be dynamic creatures exploring a wide range of states and emotions.

CD 1 also covers ideas such as:

* There is no state of mind NOT mimicked by the immune system.

* Chakra regions are actually "mini-brains" that contain tons of peptides--converging ancient wisdom with classical neuroscience.

* Individuals are often controlled by a specific chakra center (e.g. led by the "gut" or by the "gonads").

* The anxiety peptide and why this relatively new evolutionary state shows how "smart" you are.

* It's a mistake to categorize some emotions as "positive" and others as negative. For example, anger can jump start the immune system and has been connected to the spontaneous healing of cancer/tumors. Rather, "emotional integrity" enhances health--the allowance of emotional expressivity.

* We all have non-pathological "multiple personalities" characterized by distinct attitudes, reactions, and even biology. Also, we create a new brain every day!

The end of CD 1 features a brief Q and A session with the audience. Participants asked intelligent and pointed questions about healing (such as how music heals and the efficacy of homeopathy), but, unfortunately, Dr. Pert only offers vague, general answers like "I can imagine that." Also disappointing is the audio editing, which excises crucial explanations and segues--making for quite a few audio "double takes" on the part of the listener.

Discs 2 and 3 of Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind features a one-on-one interview between Sounds True founder Tami Simon and Dr. Pert. Some of the excellent questions that Ms. Simon asks of Dr. Pert include:

* What does it mean that the body is the subconscious mind?* How do you define "mind"?* What are the research findings supporting the idea that free will/choice resides in the frontal cortex?* What part of the body is "in charge"?* What do we know 100% about emotion?* How is the gut entirely run by the molecules of emotion?* How does something fit your category of an emotional, informational substance?* What is the true cause of disease?* What are the beliefs that enhance health?

Ms. Simon does her very best to cull relevant, practical information from Dr. Pert. I have to wonder if she was as frustrated trying to get a straight answer as I was hearing Dr. Pert offer vague generalities that never really answered many of the questions. For example, Ms. Simon asks something that I wanted the answer to from reading Dr. Pert's book Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d and Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind: "The body produces substances that are similar to substances that people take to affect their emotional life. What does this knowledge tell us about how to work with our bodies?"

Dr. Pert's reply? "Well that's a great question. The implication is that we have the ability to be any state of mind we want to. We can internally deliver anything we want exactly where we want it." Well no duh! But HOW do we achieve particular states? What foods, spiritual practices, or bodywork modalities link to specific states of being?

Ms. Simon appears to try to re-frame the unanswered question by asking, "Looking at what we now know for sure in terms of emotions, what are the implications for the everyday person who wants to be healthy?" This, in my opinion, is what readers/listeners want to know from Dr. Pert! But Dr. Pert answers, "Not to stifle emotions or let them all hang out in wild catharsis. Bottled up emotions build up pressure and we need to get in touch with our feelings." Well, another "no duh!" Anyone who's taken Psych 101 or counseling courses in college knows this, as well as anyone who has read some current Self Help and New Age books!

What I don't understand is why Dr. Pert fails to answer these obvious questions in her latest book or in Your Body is Subconscious Mind. While listening to this audio series, I took some notes and one of the things I wrote was:

"Where is the practical information that we can use? That is, ___ emotional state is triggered by ___ peptides which are set in motion by ____ food, ____ experience/practice, ____ OTC drug, etc."

Yes, we're provided some answers (e.g. "meditation is good for you", "emotional congruency is paramount", and "we contain multiple selves"), but these ideas are found in other books and spiritual paradigms! I'm baffled as to why Dr. Pert doesn't fill in the blanks. Either she's a great researcher but a poor teacher, or she hasn't yet made the leap between the research findings and the practical methods for creating desired emotional states (such as which foods relate to which emotions). Surely this has been done *somewhere*, because I heard Dr. Mehmet Oz ("YOU On a Diet") on Oprah speak about cravings and emotional states--for example, craving salty foods is linked to feeling stressed.

To her credit, Dr. Pert *does* share some potentially life-saving tidbits in this audio series. For example, she confirms something I've believed for quite some time: that our bodies are very fluid and that to get some kind of diagnostic test (e.g. blood work, CT scan, MRI, EKG, etc.) merely frames a few seconds in time. What if the "high blood pressure" wasn't high after the test? What if the test confirms one state, but you're body has moved on to another--one that is illness free? Diagnoses can become cemented in the psyche--perhaps codifying a particular disease in the body--*especially* when using the diagnosis as an "excuse". (Maybe this is what Caroline Myss refers to as "woundology"?)

However, Dr. Pert makes some drastic medical claims (although she's not a medical doctor), such as "Chemo has not been proven to cure--or be a great treatment for--breast cancer."

If Dr. Pert's appearance in What the Bleep Do We Know!? piques your desire to know more about peptides and "molecules of emotion", then you'll likely enjoy this 2 hour CD series. However, if you're familiar with basic biochemistry and current psychological and mindbody research, you may not find a whole lot new here. Surprisingly, one of the best features of Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind is the 18-page booklet that accompanies the CDs. It doesn't appear that Dr. Pert wrote this lucid description (complete with a helpful drawing of receptors on the surface of the cell and how they bind with ligands), yet, it's the best explanation thus far of Dr. Pert's work aimed at laypeople!

Janet Boyer, author of The Back in Time Tarot Book: Picture the Past, Experience the Cards, Understand the Present (coming Fall 2008 from Hampton Roads Publishing)Holistic HealthByKim Kachmann-Geltz "Health Editor | Author | Publishing Entrepreneur"on October 23, 2005Format: Audio CDVerified PurchaseIn 1972, Candace Pert, Ph.D., former Research Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Section Chief at the National Institute of Mental Health discovered the opiate receptor, revealing for the first time how morphine affects the brain. Her discovery established an important new method for studying drugs, and led to her theory that neuropeptides, short chains of amino acids that serve as messengers between cells, play a powerful role in regulating behavior and emotions. The Molecules of Emotion is Dr. Pert's biographical account of her scientific quest to find the opiate receptor, including her painful experience in the contest to win the Noble Prize.

In the last few decades, advances in the understanding of the physiological links between emotions and health have generated great interest in the neuropeptide system. Monocytes, immune cells that act to heal wounds and ingest foreign bodies, have receptors for neuropeptides called endorphins, proving an important link between emotions and the immune system. This is one of the reasons why stress makes us more susceptible to illness, and why people who cope better with stress are healthier.

Discovering hundreds of different types of neuropeptide receptors on cells, organs and systems throughout the body led to Dr. Pert's view that the brain and body primarily communicate through information molecules or what she refers to as the "psychosomatic network" of the "bodymind." The book presents the science on how the bodymind functions as a single psychosomatic network of information molecules which control our health and physiology.The Body is the Subconscious MindByElaine T. Dolanon February 19, 2009Format: Audio CDVerified PurchaseCandice Pert has spoken the link between held emotion (trauma) andchanging it's frequency-chemistry-physiology-movement to release it fromthe human body. She has spoken that natural and holistic and energeticmethods of release therapies are successful means to release held energy(trauma). Pharmaceudicals, anti-depressants and plastics that mimic natural links to polypeptides in the body do NOT WORK: they pollute and create further dysfunction. I want her words and proofs massively passed on to the public and brought to the fore of our modern lives.Candice, thank you. ~Elena Dolan, LMT.,Certified Rolfer,CST.Insightful perspectiveByearodon March 28, 2014Format: Audio CDVerified PurchaseDr. Pert is a proponent of blending the hardcore science to date with a more eastern philiosophy of keeping the body, mind and spirit in balance. In this collection she explains the simple logic behind this approach which is becomming increasinglly more important to do since we are bombarding ourselves with chemical, enviornmental and psychological pollutants. One of the things I love about it is Dr Pert's voice. I found her to be soothing yet humorous. She was a wonderful person who had a very accessible way of explaining medical and scientific concepts that might seem confusing to a layperson. The first CD is more jargon heavy but once passsed that , the interview is outstanding. I think everyone can learn something from listening to this CD whether it be how to think about depression or any illness, to what is actually happening in the body when drugs of any kind are introduced. Sadly Dr Pert passed away recently but one thing she says on this CD which I think is very prescient. The intelligent Doctors of the future will ask 3 things when diagnosing a patients' illness What do you eat? How do you move? What do you think? Simple but crucial.

Six Seconds>Articles and Blogs>EQ Life>The Physics of Emotion: Candace Pert on Feeling Go(o)dEmotions, Pert explains, are not simply chemicals in the brain. They are electrochemical signals that affect the chemistry and electricity of every cell in the body. The bodys electrical state is modulated by emotions, changing the world within the body. In turn, Pert finds emotional states affect the world outside the body.

Even before she was chief of brain biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health, Candace Pert made a breakthrough discovery that changed the way scientists understand the mind-body connection. She found the opiate receptor, the mechanism by which a class of chemicals (peptides) alters the mind and body. Her research led her to an understanding of the way emotions function as a regulatory system in the body. Since that discovery she focused on developing an AIDS treatment using peptides, first at the University of Georgetown Medical Center, and then as scientific director of RAPID Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Pert passed away in 2013.Because of her work on emotions, Dr. Pert was featured in the film,What the Bleep Do We Know, and frequently speaks on the role of emotions in the mind-body. Perts work helped shift the paradigm from emotions as neuroscience to emotions as biology. In her new book,Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d, shes taking the science of feeling a step further to present emotions as physics.Ive always kind of known that the energy you emanate from within attracts the situations and people that you need, Pert explains. Ive always known that but wasnt quite walking my talk. You would have thought I could have figured this out by now. But its really only in the last few months since the book came out that Ive been able to really live this.I asked Pert to explain how emotions have such a powerful effect. Were not just little hunks of meat. Were vibrating like a tuning fork we send out a vibration to other people. We broadcast and receive. Thus the emotions orchestrate the interactions among all our organs and systems to control that.As Pert explained in her earlier book,Molecules of Emotion, neurotransmitters called peptides carry emotional messages. As our feelings change, this mixture of peptides travels throughout your body and your brain. And theyre literally changing the chemistry of every cell in your body.This is all mainstream science, but it doesnt explain how one persons emotions can affect another person and the larger world. Youre still thinking about this as chemistry, Pert chides. Of course it is chemistry, but its also physics and vibrations. Neurotransmitters are chemicals, but they carry an electrical charge. The electrical signals in our brains and bodies affect the way cells interact and function.

Electrochemical messages are passed between brain cells. Similar signals are passed to every cell in the body. Each is studded with receptor sites, a kind of mail box for these electrochemical messengers.You have receptors on every cell in your body. They actually are little mini electrical pumps. When the receptor is activated by a matching molecule of emotion the receptor passes a charge into the cell changing the cells electrical frequency as well as its chemistry.Pert says that just as our individual cells carry an electrical charge, so does the body as a whole. Like an electromagnet generating a field, Pert says that people have a positive charge above their heads and a negative charge below. So were actually sending out various electrical signals vibrations.Were all familiar with one kind of vibration: When we talk, we send a vibration through the air that someone else perceives as sound. As I explain in the book, were also sending out other kinds of vibrations. Its a basic law of physics that when you are close to an energy source it has a greater effect and that diminishes as you move further away. But when you are far away there is no effect.Its not something you can say in 25 words or less. It is a whole new paradigm shift that basically leads you to realize youre not alone. You are connected to everybody else. Your emotions are key. And you are leaving a wake, changing the world around you in a huge way.Perts earlier book,Molecules of Emotion, is part science, part autobiography as she tells the story of her process of discovery and learning.Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)dfollows a similar vein, with the stories of personal growth and scientific discovery woven together. Pert said that one theme of the book is her relationship with her son Brandon and the challenge of being a mother while driven to complete the work on the AIDS drug she invented called Peptide T.Brandon happened to call during our interview with wonderful news about a new job. Pert offers this as an example of how an emotional change affects other people.

The molecules of emotion, a kind of neuropeptide, change the chemistry and electricity of every cell in the body and mind. Feelings literally alter the electrical frequencies generated by our bodies producing a nonverbal communication.In a way, Brandon was a kind of victim of my work, of me putting Peptide T ahead of him. He recently graduated from Cal Arts and this has been going on since he was in the first grade. I remember going into his second grade classroom to talk about how to cure AIDS.Perhaps all scientists who break new ground have to be driven, even obsessed with their work. For much of her career Pert struggled to balance the drive to discover with her genuine wish to be a good parent and partner, which led her to try and be controlling at home.In the last few years working on the book and meeting wonderful coaches and people involved in personal growth, Pert says shes turned a corner. I learned to just be more in balance with the kids, all three of them. And I hope Ive stopped being a typical overbearing Jewish mother. As a result, Pert says, she and Brandon have been able to communicate in a way that enabled him to ask for help finding the new job.Pert says her biggest change came from practicing the ideas she writes about. I was waiting for the book to come out. In a way I thought that the whole world would change when the book came out. Everyone got to read it and they would get it. They would understand about Peptide T and they would change.Yet for years Pert has been espousing that real change comes from the inside out that the goal isnt convincing others, but fully living the idea. Im just completing that step. Its still a journey and I need to keep growing, but this is a major leap. Maybe its just what happens with a book. I wrote about how I wanted to be, so it became like the future talking back to me. So the book came out and now, finally, I am the person I was pretending to be when I started writing.The books title,Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d, makes an implicit link between feeling good and connecting to God. Pert admits this is an unusual view for a hardcore scientist. Im mad at all these rabid atheist scientists who write books where theyre calling God a delusion. Any good scientist knows that its almost impossible to disprove anything. You can only prove something. At the same time, Pert acknowledges that as a scientist, the metaphysical makes her uneasy.My scientific persona is very strictly logical. So I do question the supernatural. It makes that part of me twinge. Yet in working on this AIDS vaccine, both worlds came together, my scientific world, and a world where amazing things happen. Its just impossible to think that it is an accident that I was able to make this invention. Its just totally amazing to me. I still cant get over the miracle of it.At a neurological level, Pert continues, the feeling of being connected with God, of feeling blessed, is an important part of the brain. Blessing and bliss come from the same root. We are hard wired to be in bliss. Its normal and its natural. There is a straight evolutionary argument for this function any creature that could not experience bliss would have just died and become extinct 200 million years ago.The bliss response is closely connected to Perts original work on the opiate receptor. Just as the receptors for other neuropeptides trigger a cellular response, opiate receptors pick up the presence of a neurotransmitter for euphoria. The naturally occurring bliss chemicals are called endorphins, and they are released in the brain and body in response to emotional states and to physical activities (including exercise and nursing).

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for complex, evaluative decisions. This part of the brain is loaded with opiate receptors so structurally, our most sophisticated reasoning is linked to bliss.Pert says the way endorphins work is evidence of bliss as an evolutionary necessity. Thats why endorphins are such highly conserved molecules. Its the same in simple one-celled creatures and in humans. In the new book I talk about the evolution of the opiate receptor and how its in our frontal cortex, the most advanced part of our brains.Its like were designed to make choices around pleasure. The very highest, most intelligent part of our brain is drenched in receptors to make us use pleasure as a criterion for our decisions. So its okay to feel good God is good.While its clear that the bliss receptors are centered in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that makes evaluative and complex decisions, there isnt a clear reason.Scientists can never ask why. They can only ask what and how. But we know that the vibration in these receptors mediates, or leads, to the whole organism feeling bliss. And then I talk in the book about how that endorphin vibration is really the bliss of union and divine union.So when we create that kind of resonance internally, we are in line with that divine self. True bliss represents an optimal state of functioning. This state is the natural function, but our society interferes. You dont have to teach this to native peoples. Most of us have lost touch with that reality. Most of us seem to be locked in a grim struggle constantly rushing off to the next thing. So while it may be natural to be in bliss, we have to learn again to feel our natural state of bliss, to feel the spiritual nature of everything around us, every moment. This doesnt have to do with church. It doesnt have to do with whether you were bad or good. Its about feeling good.Faced with an uphill struggle to finish the Peptide T-based vaccine, test it, and get it manufactured, Pert is committed to sticking with acting from that bliss of goodness. It is leading to great improvements in her family and personal life as well as her work with AIDS. Just after our interview Pert released an important two page prcis at the request of the Global Aids Alliance outlining a path to cure AIDS, a breakthrough opportunity. Why now? Im into trust and surrender, believing that God is just not going to give me this enormous invention without giving me the wherewithal to carry it through.

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