Your body has billions of cells – and every single one of them has a mind of its own. Information flows through them all the time, like water through a stream.

It is the cells, not the brain, which generate the feelings that we live by.

This discovery, by Dr Candace Pert, brings western science into line with ancient mystic philosophy, which insists that mind, body and spirit are one – what Deepak Chopra calls ‘the field of intelligence.’ Pert, a biophysics research professor at Georgetown University, Washington, discovered it is not possible to separate mind from body, because emotions are caused and are felt right throughout the ‘bodymind’. She identified that microscopic receptor molecules, which rest on the surface of cells, work like sense organs. Just as noses are programmed to smell, and ears to hear, these molecules are tuned to respond to specific stimuli, called peptides, such as endorphins, which cause exercise-induced ‘high’. When the receptor and the peptide bond on the cell surface, they impart a feeling of well-being directly into cells, spread across the entire body. This experience, generated by these ‘molecules of emotion’, happens first at a preconscious, physical level before the brains transfers the feeling into the conscious awareness – and we feel happy!

Emotions, for Pert, provide a crucial link between the material and mystical world. Her studies reveal a breakdown in the barriers between the two. She has identified concentrations of receptor molecules exactly corresponding to the chakras, or energy centres, which have been used for millennia in spiritual practices.

Pert has mapped the unified bodymind, but science is still no closer than the mystics to fully understanding what prompts the dazzling complexity of cells to work as they do.

Tuning in

Pert recommends this series of everyday practices to tune into our bodyminds’ potential to heal, empower and delight:
1. Become conscious: Try meditation to tune into the workings of your bodymind.
2. Get unstuck: Identify and release emotional repression.
3. Dream on: Use your dreams as a window into the inner workings of your bodymind.
4. Know your body: Find a form of exercise, like yoga, which focuses on the mind-body connection
5. Reduce stress: Meditate; be honest; enjoy life.
6. Exercise: It is important to cleanse the bodymind so it can perform optimally.
7. Eat wisely: Listen to your stomach telling you what to eat and when.
8. Avoid substance abuse.

Mark Winter