A peak inside with excerpts from the book by Larry Dossey, MD; Deepak Chopra, MD; Bernie Siegel, MD; Blair Justice, PhD; Jeanne Segal, PhD; and Scott Miners, ed, from the book Thoughts, Attitudes & Your Health.
From “Healing the Quantum Heart”
Deepak Chopra, MD
Where can you stand objectively to watch an emotion turn into a molecule? Nowhere—you cannot see or touch an emotion; you can barely pin it down in time, and it has no home in space whatever; you cannot store it for future study, even though all emotions obviously reside in a mysterious storehouse called memory. Yet molecules can be objectively seen, stored and manipulated. They are easier to deal with than emotions, and therefore scientists always assume that the reality of molecules should be the benchmark, while the reality of emotions is somehow inferior.
Only in the quantum world does this situation change. A quantum event is also invisible, fleeting and unpredictable, just like our thoughts. Before the sun throws out light, where is it? Photons come out of nowhere and cannot be stored, except in the mysterious realm called the quantum field. They can barely be pinned down in time and have no home in space whatever, in that light occupies no volume and has no mass.
At bottom, the quantum field is simply a creative source. It is empty of gross objects like hydrogen atoms and electrons, and yet without the quantum field as their background, these objects could not exist.
Similarly, without a quantum mechanical body, our physical bodies cannot exist. A physical body is not a lump of gross material—proteins, sugars, aminos, peptides, etc.—that stands still in time and space. It is a constant flow of changing events. Its life and breath depend on transformations that can never cease. Seen in that light, the mind-body connection is not mysterious or unusual—it is the primary reality, compared to which all those lumps of protein and enzymes, even DNA itself, are secondary.
Emotions, molecules and quantum fluctuations are not merely linked; they are the same. It is just our objective bias that calls them different. DNA is a fluctuation in the infinite, unbounded quantum field, and so is the thought, “I am happy.” Fear and adrenaline are both identical quantum fluctuations. The reason you can put adrenaline into a bottle but not fear is simply due to our perceiving organs. Our eyes and fingers register quantum fluctuations as sight and touch; our minds register quantum fluctuations as emotions. But in the final analysis, “feeling” fear with your mind and “feeling” a drop of adrenaline with our heart are the same event viewed through different windows…. Thoughts, Attitudes & Your Health
From Heart-Brain Focus & Immune Response
Scott Miners
There are over 40,000 specialized cells in the heart: sensory neurites. This according to the research of JA Armour. The brain and other parts of the body also contain neurons and neurotransmitters, just not as many or as specialized as those in the heart; until Armour’s findings scientists in the field thought that only the brain had the capacity for memory or could interpret sensory stimuli and feelings. Armour’s research shows there is a heart-brain network of neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins, and support cells similar to those found in the brain itself, and indeed that the heart can act independently of the brain to learn, sense, and feel.
A recent doctoral project, based on findings by the HeartMath Institute, explored whether heart-focused meditation could contribute to personal and communal healing. Researchers at and affiliated with the HeartMath Institute have developed tools that monitor heart-rate variability and show evidence that heart-centered focus along with slow breathing begins a process of coherence, or harmonization of the heart-brain network. Once one is focused after the one-minute eyes-closed contemplative breathing in and out exercise, one then intentionally feels gratitude, care, compassion, and appreciation for others or things in one’s life by focusing on them for another three minutes.
This simple exercise brings the heart-brain into coherence. The HeartMath emwave devices measure the success of the coherence, but practitioners can also feel the state without the device by the amount of peace and well-being that permeates the mind and body. That state of coherence is a trigger for over 1300 biochemical reactions that play roles in dramatically increasing immune response, cardiovascular health, hormones that are associated with youth, and extraordinary states of intuition and clarity for learning…. Thoughts, Attitudes & Your Health