Love for Life

Dr. Hamer and the concept of the Biological Brain -- this acts like the Autonomic Nervous System.

This image reminds us that the brain can be physically effected by mental traumas.

The following is an excerpt from an article that reviews Dr. Hamer's description of the automatic brain functions that are different from the mental activity of the "mind." This is such an important concept that the excerpt is presented here so that it can be seen separate from that reviewer's other interests. Format and bold emphasis have been edited.

Many times in workshops I have attended, and articles I have read that were written by practitioners of integrative medicine, Dr. Hamer's work has been cited as an example of the proof of the connection between the mind and body. It is simply the most elegant and direct proof I have ever seen that mental trauma has an effect on the physical brain and upon its function to control the body.

THE BIOLOGICAL BRAIN

All humans on this planet occupy a physical body. Every body comes equipped with a brain. As far as the physical vehicle is concerned, the brain is like a switchboard or a central computer system that functions to instruct the body about everything. From now on, for the purposes of this article, when I make reference to the brain I will not be referring to the psychological aspects of that organ. The psychological aspects of the brain belong to the mind and the brain and the mind are not the same thing. The brain as a physical organ is a purely biological thing. [This sounds as if Dr. Hamer is describing the Autonomic Nervous System. -- Dr. WIlson]

The biological brain has several functions. Its primary function is to operate in a way that insures the survival of the species. Another one of its functions is to insure the survival of the individual. From the moment we draw our first breath the biological brain begins to receive information through the five senses. That information triggers off reflex responses that make it possible for us to continue living. The biological brain keeps us alive. If it didn't provide us with reflex response mechanisms we wouldn't last here very long. We wouldn't even be able to breathe.

The biological brain always operates in the present moment. It is like an ever ready sentinel whose capacity to remain alert is switched on at all times. It exists "To save our life", and offer the best solution to any shock that the body receives from the external environment. The biological brain has the capacity to evaluate instantly what is needed to make sure we survive.

To give an example of what I'm talking about here let's say that you're about to cross a heavily trafficked street and there is a tractor trailer coming at you going 90 miles an hour. Before your mind even has time to figure out what to do, your eyes are registering the fact that this huge machine is about to crush you, and your ears can hear the roar and relative closeness of the engine etc. The senses report this information to the biological brain and its reflex responses automatically send the message to the body to jump back, stand still, or move quickly out of the way, depending on what it will take to keep you alive. And all of us are perfect in this regard — God didn't make any mistakes. He gave every one of us the same system so to speak.

These reflex mechanisms -- that turn on automatically -- operate according to certain laws that are very specific in every situation. If there is a certain type of shock the cells of the biological brain will always send the same message to the body, regardless of who the individual is. From the moment we are born the biological brain functions in this way. Before we are even able to speak, or walk, or know who we are, everything that happens to us is eliciting automatic responses from the brain that are sending messages back to the body. We don't participate in any of this in a conscious way and these things that go on automatically are never even recognized by us. They just happen. [Note: This is describing actions attributed to the Autonomic Nervous System. – Dr. Wilson]

In the same way that the mind is uninvolved in the processes that keep our hearts beating and our breath flowing, it also has no involvement in the way the biological brain registers shock or conflict. When a person is in the middle of a traumatic experience this sentinel in the brain interprets the individual's response to the event immediately, long before the mind gets hold of it. At the time the shock or the conflict occurs, the mind is completely uninvolved in the transfer of information from the biological brain to the physical body. While the mind may be able to look back and remember the shock or the event, the biological brain is on the scene the moment these things occur.

In the last thirty years the idea that all illness is rooted in the mind and in the emotions has gained more attention. The work of practitioners such as Barbara Brennan, Valerie Hunt, and Louise Hay has loaned more credence to this concept. Their research has made it more acceptable to view physical illness as the byproduct of deeper emotional and mental patterns that became stirred by an individual's response to experiences they had no control over.

The long held belief that disease attacks certain people at random is beginning to be replaced by this understanding. Even though the notion that sickness is something we have no control over still retains widespread popularity, there is more openness to the concept that it is in reality a product of thoughts and feelings that have been stored in the cellular memory.

Most of the research that has been done in this area has placed the focus on the psychological aspects of illness. While there is some value to this, it appears as if the crux of the matter goes even deeper. Whenever an individual is responding to an experience over which they have no control, the psychological mind is unable to process it immediately. However, the moment that these shocks occur, the sentinel in the biological brain is wide-awake. Long before the mind analyzes an event the biological brain is on the case, like an EMT, attending to the situation. This implies that the information it receives and transmits has more to say about how the body interprets the experience than the mind does.

The question arises: if the biological brain is so perfect in its response to everything, wouldn't it know how to prevent the body from getting sick?

This world we occupy is a polarized place. Everything in this reality exists in relation to its opposite. Health is as subject to the law of polarity as anything else. Like infra-red and ultra-violet, health and sickness are opposite poles of the same spectrum. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with illness. It has its place here.

That being the case, suggesting that the system that functions to keep us alive in every other situation doesn't know what to do when confronted with the shocks that give rise to some departure from health shows a lack of understanding about life in general. If we can accept the idea that illness has its place in the scheme of things, there has to be another way to look at this.

Dr. Hamer's research loans credence to the idea that people get sick because in the moment of shock or conflict, the biological brain sends specific messages to the body that manifest as illness. There is no imperfection here because the biological brain functions relative to illness the same way it functions relative to everything else — to save our life. Seen from this perspective it is easy to draw the conclusion that every sickness we contract comes to save our life.

This is a radical concept. Most people believe that disease is something that happens to us and that there is nothing we can do about it except take medicine or go to the doctor and hope that eventually we will get better. People suffer through their sicknesses and it's commonly understood that you recover, get worse, or die. Our cultural beliefs and the way we have been programmed to think make it really hard to grasp the idea that any disease could be there to save your life. In order to help you entertain the possibility that there might be some truth to this we'll give you an example of how this concept works in the case of people who have Diabetes.

DIABETES AND THE DIABETIC CONFLICT — TWO EXAMPLES

What Dr. Hamer has seen with those who suffer from Diabetes, or any disease, is that there is always a shock or a "conflict" that takes place around the time they are diagnosed with the illness. Before we continue let's see what Webster's Dictionary has to say about the word "conflict":

1) A fight; battle; struggle

2) sharp disagreement or opposition; as of interests, ideas, etc; clash

3) emotional disturbance resulting from a clash of interests in a person

From this perspective a person goes into a state of conflict at any time that they are forced to act in a way that is out of harmony with who they really are and what they really want.

In the case of diabetics the shock that triggers the original conflict sends a message to the biological brain that in order to survive from that point on they have to "Resist". There is an emotional disturbance or a clash of interests that creates a feeling that their survival depends on being able to do this. What they feel called to resist will depend upon their experience and will vary from individual to individual.

To give an example; a female diabetic, immediately prior to contracting the illness in her youth, recalls feelings of having to resist her father's sexual advances. This type of experience qualifies as a shock or a "conflict". And because the intensity of the shock and everything associated with it is too much for the mind to process and come to terms with, the reflexes in the biological brain take over and immediately handle what the mind cannot deal with. At the moment the conflict occurs the message the brain receives is that in order to save this person's life some form of resistance has to be offered up to the abusive person who is much stronger than she is, and who she has no power over.

Keep in mind that, when the brain receives the message to resist, it is going to respond at a biological level and act at a cellular level. The part of the brain that registers resistance “programs” is directly connected to the muscular system. In order to survive in the face of what they need to be powerful enough to resist or overcome, the immediate signal the body gets is that it needs more muscle. Muscles get their strength through the production of sugar. The diabetic conflict centers around an overproduction of sugar that is created because the individual’s biological brain has decided that it needs that to be the case in order for the person to survive. The excess of sugar in the system comes about to save their life.

This conflict of resistance isn't always about having to physically resist something. There are many different forms and levels of resistance. Here's another story about a young woman who got diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eighteen.

Recalling the circumstances in her life at the point of diagnosis,she told me that she had made a decision to go to Canada to study dance. Her father was strongly against the idea. Feeling that it was just an idealistic fantasy and would yield nothing practical for her in the long run, he put a tremendous amount of pressure on her not to pursue this path.

Her entire being went into a state of resistance as her dad's efforts to block her intentions escalated. His refusal to allow her to do as she wished made her resistant to what he expected of her. The diabetes got worse during this period of inner conflict. Within about six months she overrode the need for her father's approval and made the decision to pursue her heart's desire. As soon as she made that choice the diabetes disappeared. The resistance conflict, triggered by the pressure from her dad got lifted the minute she did what she truly wanted to do.

These two examples of the same disease are included to illustrate that it doesn't matter what is the personal issue that triggers off the conflict. It is the nature of the conflict itself that determines the illness. The specific conflict that sets a person up to contract diabetes is the conflict of resistance. At the point of conflict or shock, people with this diabetic mindset begin to approach everything they do with resistance — they live in this state. Healing this particular illness is difficult because the intrinsic nature of the conflict that gives rise to it causes the diabetic to resist everything they are told, including any advice or information that might help them get well.

Every disease has a specific conflict associated with it. I'll go into explaining more about what is meant by "conflict" later, but for now it's enough to say that the more extreme the conflict is the more severe the disease will be.

The diabetic woman who had been sexually abused by her father was in her 50's and had been living for years under the dictatorship of a health condition that could only be held steady with insulin. The girl whose intentions were thwarted by her father entered a diabetic state due to issues far less severe than those of the woman cited in the first example. She recovered completely as soon as she realized it was OK to override her dad's wishes. Eighteen years later there is no sign that diabetes is anything she needs to worry about.

THE QUESTION OF GENETICS

It's interesting and important to mention here that the mother of the young woman in the second example is a diabetic. Because the general consensus is that these things are inherited or genetic one could say there was a predisposition to diabetes in this case. From my perspective this is not quite true.

Take a moment to digest that statement because there is a lot of agreement out there that we inherit illness from our parents. Everyone accepts this as a fact.

If you can slide out of that belief and put aside what you have been told for a moment,it will be easier for you to see it another way. That is, put aside the idea that illness is a genetically transmitted thing keeps us all sick!

Think about it. If you're told all your life that you're going to "get something" because your mother, and Uncle Harry, and your grandmother, and all of your ancestors had the same disease you don't stand a chance of not getting it because our thoughts shape us. And what happens when we finally come down with an illness that appears to run in the family is that we never get a chance to look at any of the things that drew it to us. In one sense it lets us off the hook because we can turn around and say to everyone, "Well, this was inevitable of course. There is nothing I can do about it. I have no hope of escaping my fate so I will just accept it, continue taking my medicine, and wait to die."

The belief that disease is genetically transmitted totally closes the door on any possibility of a cure. We are so heavily educated to believe this, and there is so much scientific proof out there that it's true, any statements to the contrary sound heretical.

Ideally, it is possible to heal anything. All that is required to heal your self is a willingness to get to the source of the conflict that made you sick to begin with. From my viewpoint, if you inherit anything from your ancestors it is their mindset and their history. If you grow up with a diabetic mother who lives her life from a place of resistance it's quite likely that you will take on that attitude your self. It is the attitude that predisposes you to the illness rather than the fact that your mother had the disease.

To go a little further and to help you think about things in a new way, I'll offer a few other examples of illnesses and the conflicts associated with them.

CANCER

I know of a woman, a single mother, who lived her whole life for her only son. The two were inseparable and everything she did revolved around this boy. At the age of 16, after a near fatal car accident he went into a coma.

When the accident occurred the experience absolutely devastated her. This boy was her whole life. The shock of knowing that her son might die created an enormous conflict inside this woman. With the connection to the only thing that mattered to her hanging by a thread, every instinct instructed her to do whatever she could to save him.

Immediately following the accident the woman contracted breast cancer. The conflict that fueled the illness caused the biological brain to respond by ordering the cells in the glands that exist to nurture and feed her little boy to multiply. The part of her brain that knew it needed to keep her son alive told the mammary glands that she needed to produce more milk. In this case, more cells equated with more milk, more life for her son — and for her, by extension, because her son was her life.

The boy remained in a comatose state for three months. During that time the tumor in her breast got bigger. After three months her son revived and the doctors told her that he was going to be fine. At that point the tumor in her breast began to shrink until it finally went away.

The tumor disappeared because as soon as she found out that her sons' life was no longer in danger the signal in the brain that told her body to multiply cells in her mammary glands stopped sending out the message that she needed to make more milk. There was no longer a state of emergency, no need to "produce more milk", no need to save his life — or her own.

When discussing breast cancer, it's a little more involved than other illnesses. The breasts cover a wide range of conflicts and imbalances in these glands can signify any number of issues. There are actually several different cancer's associated with the breasts and it's important to know which side the cancer is on. The breast that's being affected will offer clues as to what particular conflict triggered off the problem. Breast cancer appears to be related to conflicts that come from either "the nest", issues with the mother, mothering, or trouble through abuse, emotional, mental or physical coming through the partner.

With diabetes and the overproduction of sugar it's easy to see that the brain knows that it needs to make more of it in order to produce the strength needed to resist whatever is causing the conflict. With the woman who developed the tumor in her breast it makes perfect sense that the brain told her body that it needed more cells in the mammary gland to nurture and save her son. In the next example I'll talk about a man who developed stomach cancer; this will help you see that there is a great deal of logic and simplicity behind the way the biological brain functions.

STOMACH CANCER

A top business executive, this man entered into partnership with a good friend. In the course of their business dealings his partner and "friend" got him to sign a contract that caused him to lose everything, his whole share of the business. Simultaneous with this loss, the man in question was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

In an effort to verbalize what it felt like to be betrayed by his friend in this way he described that he couldn't "digest" the experience. That someone he trusted would do such a thing was indigestible to him. His biological brain responded perfectly, sending out a signal to the stomach to produce more cells in order to create more gastric juice. To make it possible for him digest the fact that he had been betrayed by someone he had total faith in, his stomach cells began to multiply.

The conflict that arose over an experience that he couldn't stomach caused the cancer to come to save this man's life. The parts of his brain that were not involved in the shock remained functional, allowing him to go on with his life, resolve the conflict, and recover from the illness.

IN CONCLUSION

What I have presented to you so far is just the tip of a huge iceberg. Every single disease has a primary emotional disturbance or conflict associated with it. It is beyond the scope of this article to explore the Hamer's Biological Laws in their totality. But you need to know that there are very definite principles and specific conflicts that relate to every illness — and all of them can be healed without the various methods of intervention if the original conflict is cleared.

I leave you with a quote from the Dr. Hamer himself:

'Future therapies will entail very little medication but will require the patient's understanding of the root cause of his conflict and disease. Together with his doctor, the patient will find the best resolution to his problem or the best strategy in order to avoid repeating it in the future. The patient is thus able to be the absolute 'boss' in the treatment and procedure of his illness, and herein is the special aspect of the NEW MEDICINE.

The patient will no longer be 'treated', but will 'treat himself'. The relationship between patient and physician will be completely re-thought and redefined. Today's highly specialized doctor will, in the future, have to be broadly trained, well-educated and a humane 'medical detective'. These 'Priests of Aesclepius' must be kind-hearted, wise, and possess outstanding general knowledge'.

Author's website: http://spiritofmaat.com/sep07/german_new_medicine.html

Link to this webpage: http://www.naturalworldhealing.com/cancer_hamer_biological_brain_ans.htm