[MUSIC PLAYING]
Stress can be defined as a state of mental or emotional
strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding
circumstances.
But how do different kinds of stress
cause long-term effects on our brain and body?
Stress usually is created when we
can't predict a future outcome, when
we feel that we can't control a situation,
or when we have the perception that there's
a threat, a danger, or a perception
that something's going to get worse in our lives.
You may not be able to control everything
that happens in your life or your outer world.
However, is it possible that you can
learn how to control your inner world of thoughts and feelings?
I'm your host, Dr. Joe Dispenza.
And in the previous episode, we went into depth
on the ancient practice of meditation
and what it means to be truly present.
In this episode, we're going to identify
different kinds of stress, show you the long-term effects
of stress, how it can create illness in your body,
and once you understand what stress can do to you,
it's my hope that the information you learn
will empower you to make some important changes in your life.
[THEME MUSIC]
There are three types of stress.
There's physical stress, chemical stress,
and emotional stress.
Now, physical stress are things like traumas, accidents,
injuries, falls.
Chemical stress-- flus, bacteria, viruses, blood sugar
levels, toxins in food.
Emotional stress-- family tragedy, second mortgages,
single parenting, traffic jams.
And all of these different stressors, whether they're
physical, chemical, or emotional,
knock your brain and body out of balance.
In fact, the definition of stress
is when your brain and body are knocked out of homeostasis.
Now, the stress response is what your body innately does
to return itself back to order.
When you or any organism in nature
begins to perceive a danger or a threat
in their external environment, they
turn on a primitive nervous system
called the fight-or-flight nervous system.
And when the person or the organism
is perceiving that danger, the body innately
begins to mobilize enormous amounts
of energy and resources.
All of its energy now is being mobilized
to be able to adapt to the stress in the environment.
So then, we begin to tap the body's vital resources
so that we can survive the condition in the outer world.
All organisms in nature can tolerate short-term stress,
whether it's a zebra being chased by a lion,
or whether it's a pack of coyotes chasing a deer.
The moment the organism perceives that danger
and switches on that emergency system,
there is a rush of adrenaline and a rush of energy,
and there is an arousal that takes
place in the brain and body.
And those chemicals, then, alter our normal homeostasis.
And in that state of survival, we
switch on that sympathetic nervous system,
or what's called the fight-or-flight nervous system,
and our pupils dilate, our salivary juices shut down.
It's not a time to eat.
Our heart rate increases.
Our respiratory rate increases.
Blood is sent to the extremities,
and it's shut down in the internal organs
because it's a time to run, it's a time to fight,
or it's a time to hide.
Now, if the zebra or the deer outrun the predator,
30 minutes later, the stress response begins to switch off,
and the body returns back to balance.
After there's a stress response, many organisms
need to rest and repair because the body has
to come back online and regenerate and conserve energy.
What if, though, you're being chased by T. rex,
and you're turning on that primitive nervous system
called the fight-or-flight nervous system?
And the moment you perceive that threat
and you're in danger and now you're
running from the predator, that's very adaptive.
But what if, then, the predator is waiting outside the cave
and waiting for you to go out and get some food?
We could say, then, that your ability
to sustain a certain stress response would be extended.
But what if it isn't T. rex outside the cave?
What if it's your co-worker?
What if it's your mother-in-law?
What if it's your boss?
What if it's traffic?
And what was once highly adaptive becomes
very maladaptive, because when you turn on the stress response
and you can't turn it off, now you're headed for disease.
Because no organism can live in emergency
mode for an extended period of time.
Reason this with me.
If you keep mobilizing enormous amounts of energy
for some threat in your outer world,
there's no energy in your inner world for growth and repair.
So think of the sympathetic nervous system
as the emergency system that's like the gas pedal in the car.
The other nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous
system, that nervous system is the nervous system
of relaxation, of regeneration, of metabolism.
So if a person is living in a constant state of stress
and they, like an addict, become conditioned
to the rush of the arousal of those chemicals, then in time,
then, they will begin to use the problems and conditions
in their life to reaffirm their conditioning or their addiction
to that emotion.
We become so conditioned to these chemicals
that, like a drug addict, we need the bad job,
we need the poor relationship, we need the difficult situation
in our life to keep getting that rush of adrenaline,
to keep getting that rush of energy.
And in a sense, people become addicted to the life
they don't even like.
So then because of the size of the neocortex--
the thinking brain, as you learned about--
we can make thought more real than anything else.
And people can begin to think about their problems.
And as they begin to think about their problems,
they can turn on the stress response just by thought alone.
And we now know that those chemicals can become addictive,
and you can turn on the stress response just by thought alone.
So then, you can become addicted to your own thoughts.
So it's a scientific fact that the long-term effects
of the hormones of stress push the genetic buttons that
create disease.
And you can turn on the stress response just by thought alone.
It means, then, that your thoughts can literally
make you sick.
And so many diseases around the world
now are created by the immune system being suppressed,
or what we call immune-mediated diseases.
Everything from cancer, MS, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis,
food allergies, food sensitivities
is a compromise in the immune system.
So here's the question.
If your thoughts can make you sick,
is it possible that your thoughts can make you well?
Well, we did a research study where we took 117 people,
and we wanted to measure their cortisol levels, which
is the stress hormone, and another chemical
called IgA, immunoglobulin A. It's
your body's primary defense against bacteria and viruses.
So as cortisol levels go up and you're
mobilizing enormous amounts of energy
for some threat in your outer world,
the immune system dials down.
And now the immune system becomes compromised
because all of the energy is going
for a threat in the outer world.
Our immune system becomes suppressed,
so typically IgA levels go down.
So we measured the cortisol and IgA levels,
and we put them through four days of training.
And we asked them to trade emotions
like anger and frustration and hatred
and violence and aggression and competition and fear.
Those are all the chemicals that are derived from the stress
hormones.
We asked them to trade those survival emotions
for elevated emotions, heartfelt emotions like gratitude,
appreciation, kindness, care, love for life,
a joy for existence.
And all we wanted them to do for 10 minutes a day
was open their hearts and begin to feel
those elevated emotions.
At the end of 3 and 1/2 days, we went back
and we re-measured those same values.
And their immune system--
that is, IgA levels-- went up as a collective about 50%.
Their cortisol levels dropped about 16.25%.
Their stress hormones went down, and their immune system
up-regulated to a great degree.
That means, then, when you begin to make a change in the way
you think and the way you feel and you
begin to change your attitude and you
begin to open your heart again and feel an elevated emotion,
it is those elevated emotions that
begin to restore and repair the immune system.
So then, there's three things when
you're living by the hormones of stress
that you keep your attention on.
Think about it-- if you're being chased by a predator,
all of your attention is on your outer environment.
Where are you going to go?
What place do you need to move to?
What object do you need to move past?
And when you're under the gun of those chemicals,
you're thinking about time.
How much time do I have to get there?
So then, the body, the environment, and time.
And if where you place your attention is where you place
your energy, it makes sense, then, if all of your attention
is on your body, all of your attention
is on your environment, and all of your attention is on time,
then you are putting all of your attention
in this three-dimensional reality.
Now you have to play by the rules
of this three-dimensional reality.
And everything that you create will take time.
When people are under the gun of those chemicals,
they're drawing from this invisible field of energy
surrounding their body, this vital life force,
and they're using it to make chemistry,
and the field around their bodies shrinks.
And they become more matter and less energy, more particle
and less wave.
And the very hormones of stress heighten our senses
so that we become a materialist.
And the more altered we feel from that stress response
or by the emotional reaction from some threat or danger,
the more we narrow our focus on the cause or the object.
And when we do that, all of a sudden
we are focusing only on matter.
And so people over time get hooked in or habituated
into narrowing their focus.
So then when you're living in emergency mode,
it's not a time to create.
It's not a time to open your heart.
It's not a time to learn anything new.
It's not a time to sit still and go within.
In fact, if the survival gene is switched on,
you'd be thinking at some level innately
that it's not a time to sit still,
because you would be prey.
So then, the more people are conditioned or addicted
to the hormones of stress, the more
their attention is on matter, the more
they begin to experience separation
from everyone and everything.
Now, if stress is created by the feeling
that you're losing control in your life,
that you can't predict an outcome,
or you have the perception that something or someone is causing
situations in your life to get worse,
then if you're living by the hormones of stress
on a daily basis, then what we try to do
is we try to control everything in our life
when we're feeling loss of control.
We try to predict the next moment based
on our memories of the past.
That means people under stress are craving the known.
They're trying to get back to the familiar or the
known because in survival, the unknown is a scary place.
So then, as they begin to shift their attention from one person
to one problem to another person to another problem
to another thing to another place,
each one of those elements has a neurological network
in the brain.
And the arousal of those chemicals,
then, begin to cause those different circuits
as you shift your attention to begin
to become highly activated.
And now the brain is functioning in a very incoherent state.
And the arousal of those chemicals
drives the brain into a very, very highly analytical,
over-focused state.
Think about it.
When you're under stress, have you
noticed that you keep thinking about the same problem over
and over again, because the very hormones of stress
cause you to narrow your focus on a cause,
because that's what you do when you're living in survival.
And in fact, out of the infinite possibilities that
exist in your reality, when people are addicted
or living in that stressful state,
they'll always select the worst-case scenario
in their mind and prepare for the worst.
Well, why is that?
Because in survival if you prepare for the worst,
anything less that happens you have
a better chance of surviving.
So people spend the majority of their life preparing
for the worst thing that could happen to them when they're
living in a stressful state.
And it turns out that 70% of the time, most people
are living in survival.
So then when you react to someone or something,
there's a refractory period of chemicals
that's created from your emotional reaction.
And if you don't know how to regulate or stop
that emotional reaction and you keep that same reaction
lingering for hours or days, that's called a mood.
If you keep that same refractory period
going for weeks to months on end,
that's called a temperament.
If you keep that same emotional reaction
going on for years on end, that's
called a personality trait.
And most people's personalities, then,
are defined by experiences from the past.
So now that you understand that stress
is when the brain and body are knocked out of balance
and you understand that the harms of stress
push the genetic buttons and create disease,
it begs the question, is there anyone or anything
truly worth living in that state?
So then, if people are living in chronic stress
and they're drawing from this invisible field of energy
surrounding their body and they're
mobilizing that vital life force to make chemistry
and the field around their body is shrinking
and they're feeling more like matter and less like energy,
more like particle and less like wave,
and they feel separate or disconnected from everyone
and everything in their life, well,
when you're matter trying to change matter,
we tend to force outcomes, control outcomes,
try to predict outcomes.
And there's only a certain number of resources
that we have when we're matter trying to change matter.
We'll compete, we'll fight for it, we'll manipulate,
we'll try harder, we'll hope, we'll wish,
because we're experiencing separation.
And yes, you may accomplish your dreams.
But if you're matter trying to change matter
and all of your attention is on your body, the environment,
and time, then everything you create in your life
will take time, because you'll have to move
your body through space.
And when you move your body through space,
it's going to take time for you to get what you want.
So you may want a house, you may want a new car,
you may want a new experience, a new vacation,
but you're going to have to drag your body
to work every day to make the money to pay for those things.
And yes, you may arrive at your goals,
but you may have to work harder and it
may take some time to get it.
There is another state of mind and body that you can live in,
and that's called living in creation.
And it's the exact opposite of living in survival.
If the hormones of stress create incoherence in the brain
as well as incoherence in the heart, what we've found
is that when people are living by those states, what if they
had the ability to go from a narrow focus
or what's called a convergent focus
to what's called a divergent focus or a broad focus
or an open focus?
And it turns out when people take their attention
off their body, when they take their attention off the people
in their lives, when they're no longer
putting any attention on the things
they own, like their cell phone, their computer, the car,
they're not thinking about the place they need to go
or the place they're sitting, and they're not thinking
about time in and of itself.
They are disinvesting all of their attention
and all of their energy out of this three-dimensional reality.
Because they have no attention on it,
it makes sense, then, that they're beginning
to change their brain state.
So then, we've taught people how to broaden their focus.
And when they open their focus and sense nothing
but space, when they open their awareness
and they tune in to the energy or the frequency out here,
and instead of putting their attention on matter,
they're putting their attention on energy,
the act of opening their awareness
causes them to stop thinking, to stop analyzing.
And if they're no longer thinking
and they're no longer analyzing, they're
no longer activating these circuits in the brain.
All of a sudden, they begin to slow down brain activity,
and they start getting beyond their analytical mind.
And as they suppress the neocortex, the memory
bank of the autobiographical self,
they begin to suppress everything
known in their three-dimensional reality,
and they turn off the neocortex, they
begin to regulate their brainwaves and slow them down,
all of a sudden something magical happens.
The act of opening their awareness
causes different compartments of the brain that
were subdivided like a house against itself, all of a sudden
to begin to synchronize, to begin to unify.
You start to see neurons beginning to join
larger communities of neurons.
And what was once an incoherent brain
begins to become more organized and more coherent.
Now, the chronic stress creates a thyroid condition called
Grave's disease, and the person develops what's
called myasthenia gravis.
And the side effect of that, aside from a tremendous lack
of energy, is double vision.
Now this person said, I've created this condition now
that I understood that I've mismanaged
my thoughts and feelings and my emotional reactions.
If I created this condition by pushing the genetic buttons
every single day--
and it's taken me a couple years, I lost my marriage,
I lost my business--
I have to get beyond that story, and I
have to tell a new story--
I have to start believing in my future
more than I've been believing in my past--
is it possible, then, that I can begin to make
those significant changes?
And as the person started overcoming the stress hormones
and taught her brain and body how to create coherence,
the side effect of it was the body came back to balance.
Her vision is now perfect, her thyroid hormones
are moving back into balance, and she's moved her brain
and body back into homeostasis.
And in a sense, then, she healed herself of the condition
because her autonomic nervous system got back
into doing its job, which is to create order and balance.
So then, when we live in two states of mind and body,
living in survival is living in our animal state.
When we live in survival, we live in stress.
And when we live in stress, there's
contraction that takes place in the body.
And because we're using a lot of the body's resources,
we experience what's called catabolism,
or tissue breakdown.
When the body's in that state, there's dis-ease or imbalance,
there's degeneration that takes place in the body.
The emotions of fear, anger, and sadness
are the primary emotions of survival.
The self comes first.
When you're living in that state, all of your attention
is on your environment, all of your attention is on your body,
all of your attention is on time.
There's always energy lost in the system.
We're living in emergency mode.
We're narrow focused or object focused.
We experience separation.
We're determining reality with our senses.
In other words, if we can't see it, if we can't smell it,
if we can't taste it, if we can't hear it,
we can't feel it, it doesn't exist.
We're living by cause and effect.
We're waiting for our environment
to change to give us the relief from the discomfort
that we're feeling inside of us.
In survival and in stress, we don't see many possibilities
because it's not a time to create.
The brain and heart function in a very incoherent state.
And in survival we are craving the known
because the unknown is just too much of a scary place.
Now, when we begin to create the creative state,
we could call that the divine aspect of us.
In creation, the brain and body move back into homeostasis.
There is an expansion of energy, a release
of energy from the tissues.
The body goes into anabolism, or tissue repair.
There's health, there's order, there's regeneration
taking place in the body.
Elevated, heartfelt emotions like love, joy, trust,
knowingness, gratitude begin to mobilize
all these new chemicals that begin to repair and regenerate
the body.
When we're in this heartfelt state,
we tend to be less selfish and more selfless.
We have our attention now no longer on our body,
on the things in our life, the people in our life,
on our environment, or on time itself.
Energy is always created in the creative process.
There's growth and repair.
We broaden or open our focus.
And when we do that properly, we start
feeling less separate and more connected to something greater.
We start to imagine and dream of a reality beyond our senses.
Now we're interested in causing an effect.
We're looking at all possibilities instead
of limited possibilities.
The brain and heart go into coherence,
and now the unknown becomes the adventure.
Why is that important?
Because if we're going to create something new in our life,
we have to crave the unknown.
Now that I've shown you the difference between living
in survival and living in creation,
I want to explore the different brainwave states
and what you can do to use your mind
to begin to consciously change your own brainwaves.
In the next episode, I want to show you
what's happening inside your head when you live in survival
and when you live in creation-- that is,
coherence versus incoherence.
I'm your host, Dr. Joe Dispenza for "Rewired,"
and I hope to see you in the next episode
where we go beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary.