How long before we “get it?”
There are many secret teachings in Taoism, Tai Chi and Qigong that the masters only share with their most dedicated adepts. But the biggest secret of all is in plain sight. So why don’t we quite believe in it? Why not bring the powerful searchlight of our mind down into the belly, legs and feet? Because every time we do, we connect with our primary source of the universal energy that supports all living systems, known all over the world as Chi, Prana, Ki.
We have trusted science to solve many of our problems, but this is one solution they have missed, though they may be finally getting on board. In fact, after 400 years of Descartian affirmations that “I think, therefore I am,” let’s celebrate the change. As scientific researcher James L. Oschman’s says in his book Energy Medicine, “In a few decades scientists have gone from a conviction that there is no such thing as an energy field around the human body to an absolute certainty that it exists.”
I’m not denigrating the amazing miracles of modern allopathic medicine, but it has much to learn from its natural-born, millennial sisters, and much to give up of arrogant assumptions. What I find exciting is this present convergence between scientific study and ancient knowledge. For example, physicist Ravi Ravindra’s marrying of the East Indian lore of his forefathers with esoteric Christianity in Whispers from the Other Shore or Yoga of the Christ; and Tibetan teachers’ work relating neuroscience to ancient Tibetan Buddhist science. Added to that, neuroscience psychiatrists like Dr. Daniel Siegel and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk who state baldly that the brain is changing itself all the time depending on what we are doing, and have found yoga and meditation equally or sometimes more important than medication for sufferers of mental illness.
That’s huge, friends. And more recent news expands on the importance of the Belly Brain, once ignored by all but Eastern medicine and primal tribes around the world. The enteric nervous system uses more than 30 neurotransmitters, just like the head brain. So allow yourself to get blown away by the fact that ninety-five percent of the body’s feel-good serotonin is found in the intestines.
What’s more, there are trillions of micro-organisms—bacteria, fungi and viruses—mostly in the large intestine. BBC Future has just brought out a Microbes and Me series that examines the power of our gut microbiota to harm or heal, asking “How could these microscopic scavengers, feeding on the debris of our digestion, possibly affect the brain?” Which brings us to the question, could what’s in our belly sometimes be responsible for our mental health?
Finding Time for Your Self 
2 Responses to “How long before we “get it?””
I love this, and “yes” for more on the belly brain AND the heart brain.
But I would go even further. I think it may be less than 100 years (assume we all survive that long!) before a profoundly different, non materialistic medicine may take root, one which could take us farther than any traditional or allopathic medicine.
If by 2050, the physicalist/materialist/so-called ‘naturalist’ aka materialist paradigm has finally been set aside as being as irrelevant as Ptolemy’s epicycles, then our consciousness may brighten to the point that psychokinesis is no longer a rare finding of estranged parapsychologists, but something which the average ordinary person can utilize for virtually any illness or physical (or psychological) problem.
The first step, I believe, will be a widespread awakening to the possibility of entering the dream state consciously (3 steps: (a) deep relaxation; (b) calmly, mindfully observing spontaneously arising imagery; (c) honing in, zooming in on one particular image, and staying with it until one enters the dreamscape).
Collective/shared dreaming will soon follow – more than one human being consciously sharing the same dreamscape – healers can then enter into the dream scape and making use of the fantastically fluid and open boundaries of that realm, perform healings that we would today consider miraculous.
Going beyond mindfulness to effortless awareness (now being taught to children as young as 5 in schools, based on Dan Siegel’s work), this will, with Generation post-Z, become universally understood as the shared basis in which we “live and move and have our being,” thus transcending gender, racial, ethnic, cultural, class, national and other divisions, even transcending human/animal/material divisions.
All by 2100?
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Wow, Don. Thank you so much for this, adding depth and breadth to what I was trying to say.
Blessings on our work, Patty
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