Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment

by David Perlmutter

I returned to my medical practice serving patients with a variety of challenging brain disorders, my treatment plans always integrating lifestyle issues and nutritional interventions with standard pharmaceutical-based approaches.

docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). The use of this omega-3 supplement was no doubt the result of my personal enthusiasm for

Alberto Villoldo: Journey from the Brain Laboratory to Enlightenment

chlorophyll turns light into carbohydrates, such as wheat and other grains, and that we turn carbohydrates back into light inside our cells for fuel through a process known as the Krebs Cycle.

I learned about their belief in the Divine Mother, which we each have the potential to discover in nature.

a force that infused all of creation, a sea of energy and consciousness

our Western notions of the divine are perhaps a masculine version of this life force that infuses every cell in our bodies,

I mentioned the shamans’ notion of how important it is to restore the feminine life force, and his face immediately lit up. “Yes,” he remarked, “it’s the mitochondria.”

our mitochondria are inherited only from our mother’s lineage. Here was the source, inside each cell of every living creature, of the feminine life force

these energy factories seemed to be breaking down under the continual barrage of stress in our fast-paced lives and from biochemical toxins,

prayer, fasting, and meditation as well as dietary supplementation with special herbs, help restore mitochondrial function.

the marks of trauma in our Luminous Energy Field correspond to neural networks in the brain that produce toxic emotions and define our personality.

He knew how to prime the brain for enlightenment.

INTRODUCTION

enlightenment is available to all those who are willing to dedicate the time and effort necessary to attain it.

enlightenment can be accelerated by following a practice focused on awakening the power of the higher brain.

YOUR OPTIMAL BRAIN

Hard as we might try to sit quietly and empty our mind of thoughts, it continues to gravitate toward the unfinished business of our past.

instead of operating at its optimal level of functioning, your brain instead relies on the neural networks created by the prehistoric, survivalat-all-costs brain regions—the reptilian brain and the limbic brain.

By healing that prehistoric brain, you engage newer, higher, more evolved brain structures—the neocortex and, specifically, the prefrontal cortex—which will help you eliminate fear, poverty mentality, and anger from your life.

even though the brain is malleable in the early years of a child’s development, the window of opportunity for changing its wiring slams shut by around the age of seven years.

the premise that the brain can no longer be rewired past a certain early age has now been upended.

neuroscience research now confirms that we can grow new brain cells and change the actual networks in the brain.

you must start by learning how the brain functions and how your mitochondria have become compromised.

A HEALTHY BODY

Mitochondria are the energy factories at work within your cells.

THE POWER UP YOUR BRAIN PROGRAM

Blue Zones are regions on the planet where ten times more people reach the age of 100 compared with people in the United States.

these individuals have certain traits in common,

(they eat 25 percent less than what you would need to feel full),

avoidin...

processed...

genes dictate less than 25 percent of a person’s health and longevity.

75 percent is determined by lifestyle factors:

Our mitochondria regulate the switching on or off of these genes.

Our protocols utilize intravenous glutathione and hyperbaric oxygen to optimize mitochondrial function as well as foods and supplements that help undo the damage done to the brain by years of stressful living.

through shamanic meditation practices, we can heal from toxic emotions and discover inner peace.

CHAPTER 1 THE NEUROSCIENCE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

The Bible, the Koran, and Buddhist and Hindu scriptures all teach that we can be delivered into a paradisiacal state, whether after death, at the end of time, following many reincarnations, or as a result of personal effort and merit.

THE ENERGY MATRIX

Scientists are also beginning to reconsider the notion of space as one huge void. Instead, a growing number of physicists postulate that space is not empty but full of energy: cosmic radiation from the Big Bang, pulsating electromagnetic fields, and gravity.

THE FEMININE THROUGH HISTORY

Venus of Willendorf,

carved close to 25,000 years ago

figurines have been found throughout the area and in such great numbers that some anthropologists are convinced they point to a time when the feminine form was the singular representation of the Divine.

When the Battle Ax people arrived in Europe around 3000 B.C.E., they replaced the mythologies of the Great Mother with those of a male deity,

representation of the Divine became the phallus or the tree of life.

THE LOSS OF THE FEMININE

People no longer saw nature as the manifestation of divinity but as a resource: forests were for building houses and ships, soil was to be tilled for crops, and animals were to be bred for food.

With the arrival of Newtonian physics in the late 1600s, any force that couldn’t be explained by science was dismissed as superstition.