Transcript for:
Rewired: Understanding the Brain and Becoming Supernatural

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING] >> What I love about researching the brain in our biology is that it has allowed me to present the latest findings of what's humanly possible to millions of people around the world. [MUSIC PLAYING] I've learned that we're not hardwired to be a certain way for the rest of our lives, and we're not doomed by our genes. In fact, we are marvels of change. [MUSIC PLAYING] My job as a doctor for 31 years, as well as a lecturer, author, and researcher is to not just talk about what is possible, but to show you the latest data that supports my work. That your thoughts can have an effect on your brain, your body, and your life. This is a time in history where it's not enough to know. This is a time in history to know how. I'm Dr. Joe Dispenza, and I'm going to show you how to rewire your brain. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] I want to start off by asking you a strange question-- what does it mean to you to be supernatural? To me, being supernatural is to be able to change your body by thought alone. To say it another way, it means being greater than your body. Being supernatural also means overcoming challenges and conditions in your outer environment that most people would not be able to accomplish. In addition, being supernatural would also mean to be able to change some predictable future destiny or event. That is, to be greater than time. Now is this something that's only reserved for ancient yogis, mystical masters, and superheroes? Is it fantasy, or is there medical proof that each human being has the potential to heal themselves, and in a sense, to become supernatural? In 1986, I had my own personal experience that forever changed my life. A serious injury forced me to meld together everything I knew from my scientific mind and my training to a greater level of understanding about the nature of reality and what is possible. Much of what I discovered was not found in conventional textbooks and mainstream science. In fact, I had to find answers for my own personal healing by delving into areas of science that point the finger at possibility. I want to invite you into a journey and a scientific study of your mind, your heart, and your body with a series called "Rewired." So let's start with some basics about the brain that you should know right from the very start. I want to offer you a new way of concept in your brain. Think of your brain as three brains in one. You literally have three brains that allow you to go from thinking to doing to being. So let's start off with your first brain, called your neocortex. Your neocortex is the seat of your conscious mind. It's the largest and most evolved in human beings and dolphins. This is the part of your brain that plugs you into three dimensional reality. It's divided into different regions and different areas. So the front of the brain, called the forebrain, makes up 40% of your entire brain. It's the largest in human beings, and it's what separates us from all other species. The next closest species, gibbons and chimpanzees, their frontal lobe is about 14% to 17%, dogs about 7%, and cats about 3%. Now the frontal lobe has been known to be called the area of executive function. But think of the frontal lobe as the CEO of the brain or the symphony leader. The frontal lobe allows us to decide on action, to focus our concentration, to invent, to speculate, to have intention or attention. It's the area of our brain that restrains our emotional reactions or begins to speculate new possibilities. So think of your frontal lobe as the seat of your conscience or your creative center. Now, the rest of the brain is divided up into geography as well. For example, the back of your brain, called the occipital lobe or the visual cortex, is where you process sight or spatial orientation. There's strips and areas of your brain that allow you to feel certain things with your body or to invoke or begin to initiate motor function or movement. They're areas of the brain that allow you to make long-term memories and to begin to distinguish between self and non-self. But the entire brain is mapped geographically, and think of that first brain as that part of the brain that allows you to learn new things and to have new experiences. So then every time you learn something new, you make new connections in your brain. Learning is forging new synaptic connections. In some of the latest research in neuroscience that says that one hour of focused concentration on one concept or idea literally doubles the number of connections in your brain, literally produces physical evidence as a result of your interaction in the environment. So then all of this philosophy, this intellectual data, this theory, this knowledge is stored in that neocortex called your thinking brain. Now, the next step is to take that knowledge, that philosophy, and to begin to apply it, to personalize it, to demonstrate it, to initiate that knowledge in some way. And if you do this properly and you can get your behaviors to match your intentions, you can get your actions equal to your thoughts. You can get your mind and body working together, you're going to have a new experience. Now when you're in the midst of an experience, all of your five senses plug you into the environment. And as all of that sensory information rushes back to your brain, jungles of neurons begin to organize themselves into patterns and networks. So then experience then enriches the philosophical circuits in your brain, and when those neurons begin to form into networks, the second brain, called the limbic brain, the emotional brain, the chemical brain, the mammalian brain, begins to make a chemical, and that chemical is called a feeling or an emotion. So the moment you feel unlimited, the moment you feel abundant, the moment you feel free from any experience, now you are teaching your body chemically to understand what your mind has intellectually understood. So we can say that knowledge is for the mind and experience is for the body. And in that moment, you embodying the truth of that philosophy. And because there's new information coming in from the environment, you're literally beginning to change your genetic destiny by signaling new genes in new ways. And it is the limbic brain or the chemical brain that begins to manufacture those chemicals so that your body begins to become chemically instructed to understand which your mind has intellectually understood. Now the limbic brain also has some other functions. It is the seat of your autonomic nervous system. And think of your autonomic nervous system as your automatic nervous system. This is the part of the brain that subconsciously regulates blood sugar levels, hormone levels, temperature, respiration, heart rate. This is the part of the brain that's giving us life automatically. And so then when you begin to manufacture that chemical from an experience, the emotional signature from that experience begins to change your body in some way. If you've been able to create that experience once, you should be able to recreate it again. And if you're able to recreate any experience over and over again, you are going to begin to neurochemically condition your mind and body begin to work as one. And if you've done something so many times that your body now knows how to do it as well as your mind, now it's innate in you. It's second nature. It's easy. It's automatic. It's familiar. In fact, you've done it so many times that you no longer have to consciously think about it. So it begins to become a subconscious program. So then you know you do it but you don't know how you know how. And we could say now that you're developing a skill or a habit. In other words, you're beginning to master that philosophy, and you're moving into a new state of being. And when you do this properly, over and over again, you activate that third brain called your cerebellum. This is the part of the brain that's responsible for you beginning to develop what's called implicit memories or nondeclarative memories. Where you've done something so many times that you no longer have the conscious who think about it. It's who you are. So our job then is to go from knowledge to experience to wisdom. From mind to body to soul. From learning it with your head, applying it with your hands, and knowing it by heart. And I can tell you that common people around the world are doing the uncommon when they follow this formula. They're healing themselves of near-fatal diseases. They're reversing cancers. They're healing from childhood scars and wounds. They're creating new jobs, new opportunities, and they're having mystical experiences that transcend language, and they look just like you. [MUSIC PLAYING] Let's talk about different ways on how the brain works. Number one, we've all heard that when you lose a certain number of neurons in your brain that those neurons will never come back. But there is an emerging field of science called neurogenesis, and neurogenesis literally means "the growth of new neurons." And our research has found that when people begin to learn new things and have new experiences, not only will they begin to cultivate new synaptic connections in their brain, but they will actually flourish the growth of new neurons as a result of those novel experiences and learning. And we've even discovered that within four days, we begin to activate the very gene that processes that change. So, the studies that were done in the early 1900s said that no neurons can grow in the brain. Those scientists were studying rodents in an unchanging environment. So if rodents are in an unchanging environment and there's no new stimulation, there's no new activities, there's no new experiences, then their brains will stay the same. Now let's talk about you. If you think the same thoughts every single day, and for the most part, most people-- 80% to 90% of their thoughts are the same thoughts as the day before. In your biology, your neural circuitry, your neurochemistry, your hormones, and even your gene expression is equal to how you think, how you act, and how you feel. In other words, everything stays the same in the body if you stay the same. Well, it begs the question then, is it possible that new thoughts that lead to new choices, that lead to new behaviors, that create new experiences, that lead to new emotions and new feelings, that could inspire new thoughts begin to change your biology, would you begin to see significant changes in the brain as well as the body? And our research proves that when you change, everything changes around you. The second concept I want to talk about is the concept of coherence. And think about coherence as rhythm or order or synchronization. People who live by the hormones of stress on a daily basis-- and for the most part, that's 70% of the time for most human beings-- and when you're living in stress, you're living in survival. And when you're perceiving some threat in your external environment where you perceive a danger and you have the perception of something that could get worse, it turns on that primitive nervous system called your fight or flight nervous system. And when you're in stress, you're always trying to control or predict an outcome. So people who live under the gun of those chemicals, those emergency chemicals, are shifting their attention very quickly from one person in their life to another person in their life, to something at some place at some time, to meetings, to places they have to go. And every single one of those elements that are known in their external environment are neurological networks that are reflected in their brain. So under the urgency and the arousal of the stress hormones, we begin to shift our attention from one person to one thing, we activate these individual circuits. And like a lightning storm in the clouds, the brain begins to fire out of order very incoherently. And when the brain is incoherent, you're incoherent. And when the brain isn't working right, you're not working right. And it's this state that begins to cause the brain to function like a house divided against itself. Different compartments of the brain no longer synchronize. And we found the formula to teach people how to create more order and more coherence in their brain. And when they do this properly, without the aid of some type of drug, medication, or some type of external therapy, if they just practice that formula, that can begin to make their brain work better. When your brain is functioning right, you begin to see the world very differently. And so coherence then is when the brain starts to unify those different communities of neurons that were once subdivided. All of a sudden, you see the front of the brain start resonating and begin to oscillate with the back of the brain. You see the right side of the brain starts synchronizing with the left side of the brain, and the brain is starting to function in a more holistic state. And what syncs in the brain links in the brain, and all of a sudden, you start feeling more whole. By the same means, when a person is living by the hormones of stress, there's only three things that primitive nervous system wants to do when you're living in survival-- to run, to fight, or to hide. And because social mores say you can't fight, you can't run, or you can't hide, many times, people are stepping on the gas because that emergency system is telling them to act. And yet they're in a business meeting, they're in a car with their children, they're on the phone with somebody, and it's those stress hormones that are beginning to activate the heart to race, because blood needs to be pumped to the extremities in that state. But you're stepping on the gas, and at the same time, you're stepping on the brake, and the heart starts to function incoherently. And when your heart functions incoherently, you stop trusting yourself. And all of a sudden then, the heart begins to send very, very inconsistent messages to the brain and the person starts to move into disease or imbalance. And so teaching people then how to create heart coherence and to create brain coherence and to synchronize coherence between their heart and their brain begins to make significant changes, not only in their health, but in their life. And by the same means, that when you begin to create brain and heart coherence, there's more energy going to the brain. And that energy then is causing the brain to function from a greater level of awareness or a greater level of consciousness. And I want to show you in this series how much energy. The brain can tolerate when you start moving into these states. And not just a little change in energy, but a significant change in energy. This is happening independent of using some diet or changing something about yourself or exercise. This is about by thought alone being able to create more order and communication between your heart and your brain. And when you do, you have more energy in your brain to execute in your life. To be more present, to make better decisions, to think beyond the limitations or the conditions in your environment. [MUSIC PLAYING] In order for people to truly begin to make significant changes in their life, they have to get beyond the memory of themselves. Now let's talk about that. Your personality creates your personal reality, and your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel. So the present personality called you who's watching this show has created the present personal reality called your life. Which means if you wanted to create a new personal reality or a new life, you would have to change your personality. And as you begin to think about how you've been thinking, notice how you've been acting, and you begin to pay attention to how you've been feeling, the act of observing those states of mind and body begins to disconnect from everything known in your life. So if you wanted to create something new in your life, you would have to get beyond your present identity or personality. And when you begin to apply this formula, you'll begin to see significant changes, not only within you, but in the world around you. And so we've done extensive research to show that people can do this in a very short amount of time. In fact, we had a university in Australia on the Gold Coast called Bond University take a look at thousands of our brain scans. And they found that our community of people that had their brains measured were able to accomplish this feat in 4 seconds and 9 seconds and 15 seconds. In other words, they've developed the skill on how to get beyond their analytical mind, get beyond their personality in order to create something new. We also have done measurements to show that 80% of the people that had their brain measured had more than 90% change in their brain for the better just by applying this formula. I can also tell you in studying brains, in the process of change and transformation, that when you're analyzing your life within some disturbing emotion that you're going to make your brain worse every time. Now think about this-- emotions are a record of the past. They are the end product of past experiences. And if you're living your life from some familiar emotion, and that emotion typically is driven by the hormones of stress, as long as you're thinking within that emotion, we could say then you are thinking in the past. That the solution to your problems is not thinking within that emotion. It's getting beyond yourself and beginning to get beyond the emotion, and when you do, you get beyond your past, and now you're no longer viewing your future or yourself through the lens of the past. The side effect of that is that you begin to see possibilities that you never saw before. So then, teaching people how to get beyond themselves and teaching them how to cease the normal analytical processes of how we begin to change and teach them another way to do it begins to produce significant and measurable changes in their life. In other words, it takes a long time for you as a personality to change your personality. It takes a long time for the ego to change the ego. It takes a long time for some subconscious program or some habit to change some habit. But the formula that we teach people on how to get beyond themselves allows them to become so conscious that they're no longer immersed in the personality of somebody else, and that is the first step to change. [MUSIC PLAYING] So how is this information changing the way we look at the world when we go from thinking to doing to being? I can stand here and tell you that when people begin to learn the proper information, and when you combine a little quantum physics with a little neuroscience with a little psychoneuro immunology with a little bit of epigenetics, all of those sciences point the finger at possibility. So as people begin to learn information and they can explain that information to someone, they're beginning to install the neurological hardware in their brain in preparation for an experience. They're making their brain fire in new sequences, in new patterns, in new combinations. And whenever you make your brain work differently, you're changing your mind. And the more that they understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, the how gets easier. And the antithesis is also true too. If you can't explain that information, it's not wired in your brain. So the purpose of the explanation process then, as we add new stitches into the three dimensional tapestry of our gray matter, is we're doing this because we want to install that circuitry so that nothing is left to conjecture. Nothing is left to superstition. Nothing is left to dogma. That when people understand exactly what they're doing and why and they assign more meaning to it, they put more intention behind it and they get greater outcomes. So once people can understand that information from an intellectual, theoretical understanding in their thinking neocortex, if I can set up the conditions in the environment and give them the proper instructions and making it their behaviors to match their intentions and their actions equal to their thoughts, when they get their mind and body working together, they have some type of transformation. So what's the side effect of this process? We're seeing common people around the world doing the uncommon. In a sense, becoming supernatural. And I'm talking about healing from chronic health conditions, from cancer, to diabetes, to Parkinson's disease, to lupus, to spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, to anxiety, to depression, and even rare genetic disorders that medical science has had no solution for . And when they reach this point, they're stepping back into their lives supernatural. And what does that mean? They are greater than their bodies. They are greater than the conditions in their environment, and now they're in a whole new line of time. And as a result, not only do they change, but their life changes as well. [MUSIC PLAYING] Now that you have this basic information on how the brain works, I'd like to take you on a journey on how to use it to create change and how to apply it to your life. In the next episode, I want to dive into what it truly means to change and why so many of us find it so hard to change. I'm your host Dr. Joe Dispenza for "Rewired," and I hope to see you on the next episode, where we go beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary. [MUSIC PLAYING]