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TMHS 235: Epigenetics & The Biology of Belief with Dr. Bruce Lipton
I remember watching a lecture from Dr. Bruce Lipton along with my wife and mother-in-law many years ago. After it was over, I saw the tears rolling down my mother-in-laws face as she was overwhelmed with emotion.
You see, she had been helping people from all walks of life to better themselves mind, body, and spirit for decades. I’d never meet anyone who was as loved and admired as her before, and I was always intrigued by the love that came from everyone’s mouth when they spoke of her.
She endured so much that most people never saw… and all that she went through enabled her to give at a level most people never experienced until they meet her. And, during that lecture from Dr. Lipton, she realized that what she believed all along was true… If you can help people to heal their minds and beliefs, you can help them to heal their bodies. The solution was always inside. That’s how she was able to help herself, and that’s how she was able to help so many others (myself included).
Dr. Lipton has a tendency to transform people’s paradigms. As a cellular biologist and leading voice in the field of epigenetics, he’s seen firsthand how our thoughts, feelings, and environment can affect the destiny of the 50 trillion plus cells that make each one of us up. Moreover, he’s brought to light that our 50 trillion plus cells function very much like a community. Everyone has jobs, everyone is affected in one way or another by everyone else, and though we’ve been indoctrinated with the theory of “survival of the fittest”, legitimate health and success is really about cooperation.
There’s no function that yourself, as a complete human being, can do that your individual cells cannot do as well. Your cells have reproductive functions, digestive functions, respiration functions, eliminatory functions, and the list goes on. Our cells really are sentient entities that are trying to work together for our good. And, as you’ll discover today, problems arise when the community is led astray by a governing body that’s running the show behind the scenes. It’s not your genes that control your destiny, and it’s not the things that are happening outside of you. It’s the biology of belief. So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to the one and only, Dr. Bruce Lipton!
In this episode you’ll discover:
- Which drink is clinically proven to help improve your sleep at night.
- What genetic determinism means.
- How conventional medicine can inherently train us to be powerless.
- How the environment can influence the destiny of a cell.
- What stem cells can teach us about human potential.
- How your brain creates chemistry to match your feelings and beliefs.
- The important distinction between correlation and causation.
- What our genes actually do (this is important!).
- How the field of epigenetics is transforming health and medicine.
- The percentage of diseases that are controlled by genes (this will surprise you!).
- How our beliefs influence chronic diseases like cancer.
- What the placebo effect really is and how effective placebo treatments are.
- The fascinating way that certain cellular proteins function like television antennas.
- Where the actual “brain” of the cell is found (and it’s not where you might think!).
- How our perception impacts the functions of our cells.
- The different roles that our conscious and subconscious mind plays.
- How to switch out and upgrade our subconscious programs.
Items mentioned in this episode include:
- Onnit.com/Model – Get your optimal health & performance supplements at 10% off
- Foursigmatic.com/model – Get 15% off your daily health elixirs and coffee!
- Episode 131 – The Soul & Science Of Transforming Your Health
- BruceLipton.com
Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Model Health Show. If you haven’t done so already, please take a minute and leave a quick rating and review of the show on Apple Podcast by clicking on the link below. It will help us to keep delivering life-changing information for you every week!
Transcript:
Shawn Stevenson: Welcome to The Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so very grateful for you tuning in with me today.
This is a very, very special episode because I have one somebody who's been remarkably influential in my thinking, and in my practice in being able to serve and help other people.
And four years ago when I started this show, I had a dream list of guests, and he was on that list. And this is one of the only people that I've yet to have on, and this is a perfect time because at this point and seeing so many of these different theories, and tests, and clinical trials, and things come to fruition to really affirm the things that you're going to learn about from him today.
It's just really a remarkable time to be alive.
And we have to understand that as things are set up right now in our system, we really don't get the education even at a collegiate level for many years. As science is changing it takes quite a long time for the books to change.
And he's been teaching this stuff for about thirty years, and now it's starting to trickle its way into major medicine.
Because as you'll learn today, he'll make a brief mention of this, but you know we have a very strong drug model in our kind of conventional medicine where we're looking at you've got this symptom, then you take this drug to address that thing, and our bodies really don't work in a very kind of cut and paste model where you take one thing and it affects just one thing in your body.
When you take a drug, as you'll discover today, you have upwards of fifty to even a hundred trillion cells that make up your human body. Every single cell in your body is affected by that drug.
It's not just a drug to affect your heart, or to affect your pancreas, or to affect something with your brain. It's going to affect everything, it's just the nature of the beast.
This is where these 'side effects' come from. And it's not that drugs are inherently bad, it's just one tool, and it might not be the best tool to jump to once you understand some of the things that you're going to discover today about how you have the power to truly transform your life, and to transform your genetic expression.
That's right, we have the one and only Dr. Bruce Lipton on the show today. Cell biologist and somebody who's really ushered in the understanding and the new science of epigenetics to the major mainstream media and also everyday folks like you and I.
So before we get into the show, some of you guys have probably noticed that Jade has not been on the last few episodes, and this is because Jade has moved on to other endeavors, and this is just a real time for evolution and change.
And we all go through this where we are setting our mission and our sights on something to really take advantage of the life that we're living. And for me, my goal is to provide you the most powerful empowering information possible to help you to transform your life, and potentially transform the lives of the people that you care about as well.
And so that's what my mission is going to continue to be as we grow and evolve together with The Model Health Show. And so I just wanted to share that with you if you were just curious about that.
But what we've got moving forward for you is just literally going to blow your mind, and it actually starts with today and introducing you to Dr. Bruce Lipton.
And some of the people that I've been connecting with to bring them to you and to share with you is just going to blow your mind. And some of the show topics that we're going to address is so needed and crucial right now in our world today.
You know, at no other time is there so much misinformation out there as well, and so just being able to help you to filter through this stuff, and to come to a conclusion about what works best for you because this is what it's really all about is that there is no cookie cutter formula to having a great life.
There is no cookie cutter formula to having the body and the health that you truly want. It's really individual to you, and you are unique, and you are special, and giving you the tools so that you can go and- you've got a whole Batman superhero utility belt that you can go and grab these different tools and utilize them as you see fit when you see fit, because things change as well, you know?
Something that worked for you two years ago might not be working for you right now, and we get so caught up in this- it's all or nothing attitude about something, and it simply doesn't work that way.
It's finding what works best for you, and having tools, and being flexible within that.
Providing structure, but being flexible within that. Kind of like what water does, right? Like Bruce Lee says, "Be water, my friend."
So having that, and it really boils down to again having clarity, having options, and also having the confidence to keep moving forward and to keep evolving despite any kind of challenges that you may be faced with.
Because life is going to present you with some challenges and some curveballs, so we have to learn to hit the curve. We have to learn to start to see those challenges as gifts in work clothes, alright? And that's what it's really all about.
And I also want to give a quick shout-out to all my friends and family in San Diego. We've got a special meet-and-greet coming up in just a couple of days, so make sure that you're in the building.
Go to www.TheModelHealthShow.com/sd to get all the details. You'll never know who's in the building. You've got to be there, and come and hang out with us. I would love to connect and to see you there.
So make sure to head over there ASAP, because it's coming up on August the 12th, alright? So take action right now. If you're in the San Diego area, or even anywhere remotely close, come in, drive in, fly in, whatever it takes just come and hang out with us and have a good time.
Alright so again, www.TheModelHealthShow.com/sd.
Now I've got to tell you about something that I've been really helping to kind of cultivate and usher in as people are really getting more conscious about the importance of having high quality sleep.
And it's a drink, there's something that you can drink before bed that can actually improve your sleep, and it's clinically proven.
So the Journal of Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, they did a study and they found that the renowned medicinal mushroom Rishi was able to number one, significantly decrease sleep latency, meaning you fall asleep faster when you have Rishi prior to bedtime.
They also found that number two, it increased overall sleep time.
And number three, it increased non-REM, so deep sleep, and increased the REM sleep, or light sleep time as well.
All of that from Rishi, alright? And so for the people who are like, "What is Rishi?
Rishi? Is that like a guru or something?"
Rishi is a medicinal mushroom that's been used for thousands of years in Chinese medicine, and today our conventional science, conventional medicine are just proving the efficacy of this incredible medicinal mushroom.
And so what I encourage you to do is don't settle for less, especially when it comes to these superfoods, or the kind of super herbs like this. Make sure you get the very best that's out there, the very best quality, because many companies, they're just doing one extraction method.
And I used to have to buy like a hot water extracted Rishi, and then an alcohol extract, and then find ways to get them in like opening capsules and all this stuff.
And it's just not pleasurable, and also it's just kind of complicated to try to find the best thing.
And so this is why I love Four Sigmatic so much because they do a dual extraction, and they actually do a hot water extract and alcohol extract in one simple and easy to use little packet you just open it up and pour it into hot water, or I like to blend it, and so I'll just share with you really quickly my favorite drink- Rishi drink.
And so this would be maybe use some type of fat, so this would be grass-fed butter, or maybe it's coconut oil, throw that in the blender, about seven ounces of hot water, your Rishi, and then maybe a couple drops of chocolate Stevia, I really like that as well.
And I can sip on that maybe an hour before bed. And I don't do that all the time, but just especially if it's been maybe a rough day, or a rough couple of nights with sleep, or travelling, or whatever the case might be.
I definitely incorporate the Rishi, and it's one of those things that just again, tools to have in our superhero utility belt. So make sure to take advantage. Head over to www.FourSigmatic.com/model and you're going to get 15% off all of their medicinal mushroom elixirs, mushroom coffees, they've got some cool little formulas and packets you can add to smoothies, they call them Smoothie Shroomers.
Alright check them out, you get 15% off your entire purchase. Alright so make sure to take advantage of that. Pop over, check them out, and definitely check out that Rishi. It's one of the things I definitely keep in my cabinet at all times.
Now on that note let's go ahead and get to the iTunes review of the week.
So this review is from KaiGal26. KaiGal26. And it says- the title is 'So Much Information!!!!' and it's five stars.
It says, 'I love this podcast soooo much.' Lots of O's on there. 'I am completely amazed at how much I learn during every single episode, and I'm so thankful that there are people out there like Shawn to help weed through all the information out there and get it to us in such an entertaining and interesting way. Thank you for all of your hard work.'
And thank you so much for leaving that review for me, I truly, truly do appreciate that. And everybody, please keep them coming. Head over to iTunes and leave us that review if you have yet to do so.
I truly, truly do appreciate it. It just energizes me even more, and whether you're listening on iTunes, or Stitcher, or whatever platform, if you can leave a review, please pop over there and do that for me. I truly, truly do appreciate that.
And on that note, let's go ahead and get to our special guest and our topic of the day.
Our guest today is Dr. Bruce Lipton. Stem cell biologist who served as Associate Professor of Anatomy in the School of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin.
And Bruce lectured in cell biology, histology, and embryology. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics.
Dr. Lipton later served as a research fellow in the department of pathology in Stanford University School of Medicine. And he's a bestselling author of 'The Biology of Belief, 'Spontaneous Evolution,' and 'The Honeymoon Effect,' and he is one of the most influential teachers that has helped me personally to really cultivate my approach in serving other people.
And really by learning from him it got me focused on studying nutrigenomics which is the study of how every single molecule of food that we eat influences our genetic expression. And food is that powerful, but there are so many things even more powerful that we're going to talk about today.
I'd like to welcome to The Model Health Show Dr. Bruce Lipton. How are you doing today, Bruce?
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Shawn, I am so excited to be with you. You're a hot guy out here in the world helping us move through this evolution that's going on right now. So all your words of wisdom are very significant to me, and to the audience who I appreciate. So let me just say thank them.
The audience to me is important because we're facing an evolutionary upheaval, and the only way out of it is information, knowledge, knowledge is power, and I think that you've been making great headway offering knowledge to people, empowering them, and helping us get through these very interesting times.
Shawn Stevenson: Definitely, I couldn't have said it better, and I appreciate that so much, Bruce. As I've told the audience, I'm very, very excited to have you on because you were so influential in my thinking.
But I want to know what influenced you. I want a little bit of your superhero origin story, and I'd love to know like what got you interested in biology and science in the first place?
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Well I guess everything starts with our teachers, you know? I think going to school, the one teacher that just like excited me among all the others was the science teacher.
And especially when I was in second grade and they brought a microscope into the classroom, and we all lined up like the students in the class would stand on a little box and look down into the microscope, and I'm waiting, and waiting, and finally I get up there and I look in there and there's this paramecium moving around, and an amoeba crawling around.
And I'm looking at them and I was going like, 'Wow they're like sentient beings.' I didn't think that in second grade, but what I realized is like they weren't bouncing around like pinball just hitting things.
They were looking over here, then they'd move over here, and at some point in my mind it was like, 'Oh my God, these are like little people.' And being a little guy myself in second grade, it was always fun to find something smaller than me, and there they were.
And it was exciting because I ended up becoming an electron microscopist in graduate school, and then you said in my research in medical school.
Shawn Stevenson: So initially what was the transition from- so you just kind of fell in love with science, with biology, and you just chose this career path. But what was the transition from that to eventually kind of having this epiphany about what's actually happening with our cells and with genetics?
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Well I'm teaching in the medical school, I'm doing research, and the teaching involves what is something called genetic determinism. That's the belief that genes determine the character of our lives.
And unfortunately the population is still imbued with that belief that they think that genes are going to turn on and off, and control them, and give them cancer, or diabetes.
And then I say what's relevant about that, I say when we teach genetic determinism, what we're teaching is victimization. That a person is a victim of their heredity.
In other words, they got genes, the genes are going to determine the character of their lives, they don't control the genes, they didn't pick the genes, they can't change the genes, and all of a sudden you realize, 'Oh my God, my life is programmed by these genes. I could get cancer, I can get Alzheimer's, I can get diabetes.'
It's like- and then what do you do about it? You say, 'Nope can't do anything about it.' And all of a sudden you realize what we've done is program people to be powerless. It's like, 'No you have no power over your life, the genes do.'
So I'm teaching powerlessness to medical students who are going to work with patients. At the same time I was doing research in the lab on stem cells, and just to give people an understanding about stem cells, the human body is actually made out of fifty trillion cells.
The cells are the living entity. When I say Bruce, you say Shawn, that's a name for community of fifty trillion cells. You say, 'That's a name for me,' and I go, 'Yeah but 'me' is a community.'
So the cells are who we are, and every day out of the fifty trillion we lose hundreds of billions of cells, just natural cells falling out, skin sloughing off. Even the entire lining of the digestive tract is replaced every three days. It's like nearly a trillion cells, you know?
It's like okay, you're losing these cells, but you're replacing them, the question is where do the new cells come from? And the answer is stem cells. They say, 'Well what are stem cells?' I say the moment before you were born, I'd do a biopsy on your fetal tissue and I'd say, 'Oh here's a cell. Oh this is an embryotic cell.' I wait one minute after you're born, do the same biopsy, look at the same cell, and now I go, 'Oh that's a stem cell.'
So basically what the point is, a stem cell is an embryotic cell, it's multi-potential. And so your body is filled with stem cells to replace the hundreds of billions of cells every day. So I'm cloning that.
That means I take one stem cell, put it in a dish all by itself, and it divides every ten or twelve hours. So first there's one cell, then two, four, eight, doubling, doubling, doubling. After a week 30,000 in the petri dish.
What's important so far is that all 30,000 cells are genetically identical because they came from one parent. So I have 30,000 genetically identical cells, I split the cells into three different petri dishes, but what I do because I make the culture medium, which is the environment for the cells. That's what I grow cells in.
Cells are like fish, they live in an aquarium of fluid, that's why if you cut yourself open, fluid leaks out. There's an aquarium inside, so I make the aquarium medium, culture medium, and because I synthesize it myself, I change some of the composition.
So in other words, three dishes with genetically identical cells, but the culture medium is chemically different in each of the three dishes. So there are three different environments.
In one dish, the stem cells form muscle. In a second dish, the genetically identical stem cells form bone. And in the third dish, genetically identical stem cells now form fat cells.
And the question is, 'Well what controls whether it's a bone, or muscle, or fat?' And it turns out not the genes because they all had the same genes.
Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: What was it? It was the environment. It's like, 'Oh my God, why is that relevant?'
Because while we talked about genetic determinism, genes controlling things and you don't control the genes, the new science revealed, 'No the environment was controlling the genes.'
And I'd say, 'What's relevant?' I go, 'Well my God, I can change the environment myself.' So in other words I can change the environment of my cells and change their genetics, and that makes me not a victim but a master.
And then you say, 'Okay Bruce, this is cells in a petri dish, what the heck does it have to do with me?' I go, 'Okay here's the beautiful connection. As I said, we're not a one entity, we're a community of fifty trillion cells. So essentially we are skin covered petri dishes.'
And inside of the skin is fifty trillion cells, and I have culture medium. The original culture medium is blood. So like if I'm growing cells in a plastic dish, and I make culture medium, I base the composition on the blood of the organism I got the cells from.
I grow human cells, I look at human blood composition, and synthesize that in the lab.
If I grow mouse cells, I look at mouse blood and try to grow that. That's the environment for cells. So I say, 'Wait a minute. I'm a skin covered petri dish, I have culture medium, blood.'
And so the same thing happens in my body as occurs in the plastic dish, and that is the chemistry of my blood, my culture medium, controls my behavior and my genetics. Okay?
And I go, 'Okay wait, wait, wait.' Then I go, 'Yeah but what controls the chemical composition of your culture medium?'
In the lab I make it, synthesize it. In your body, I say, 'Yeah but who synthesizes the blood?' I go, 'The brain is the chemist,' okay?
And then I go, 'Okay, okay. What chemical should the brain release into the blood?' And all of a sudden it goes, 'Oh whatever picture you have in your mind, the brain will take that picture and break it down into chemistry that matches the picture.'
So the culture medium called blood in your body has chemistry, but the chemistry is a compliment to the image in your mind.
If you have a healthy image in your mind, then of course you have healthy chemistry. But if you have a negative image in your mind, then you create chemistry that is negative and disempowers you.
So you say, 'Wow so my thoughts change into chemistry which control my genes?' I go, 'Yes,' and then I give the biggest example and everybody is familiar with is called placebo effect.
Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: I say if a person is not well, a doctor says, 'Here's a drug, that is the hottest new drug for you,' and you believe it, you take the drug, you get better, and then find out it was a sugar pill, so the truth is what healed you, and the answer was simply your belief in the sugar pill. It was just your perception, your belief.
And why is it relevant? Because that same healing quality occurs whether you take the drug or you don't take the drug. You can heal yourself if you have the right picture.
If you don't have the right picture, you try to compensate with pharmaceutical drugs, and I go, 'Worst thing possible.'
Pharmaceutical drugs on the whole, on the whole- there are some very important drugs, few, but the mass of drugs are very disruptive of the chemistry of your body because you're the one that controls the chemistry.
You don't need the drug, and this is why it becomes so important for people to recognize, 'Wait if I'm not well, I'm the one that can fix it. I don't need to go see somebody else,' and that's the power of the new biology.
Shawn Stevenson: Yes.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: That you are controlling your biology.
Shawn Stevenson: There's so much to unpack there. Amazing, amazing, and very empowering. There are certain things I want to circle back to, but give to everybody a head's up, we did a show awhile back and we talked about pluripotent, and multipotent, and adult stem cells, and all this stuff.
We will put that in the show notes to have a deeper understanding of that, but Bruce is giving us a highlight into something very important that stem cells, these are basically seed cells and they can change and become different plants if you will based on the environment.
And he just said something so profound that your thoughts become chemistry. That's the big tweetable for the day because literally thoughts of fear, and stress, and worry is creating a certain chemical soup that's influencing- immediately influencing your genetic expression.
And he was in the lab looking at this process happen, and you know you see the big headlines today, even on Time Magazine, 'We found the fat gene.' Now if we could just create a drug to address this fat gene, we're all squared.
You know but the reality is there's a large percentage of people who have this fat gene who don't become obese, and it's because of what's going on between their ears, and also the resulting lifestyle choices that they make.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Yeah, Shawn there's two words that conventional sciences mixes up. Well it's not conventional science, actually the media in talking about science mixes up, and these two words are correlation and causation.
They use these words interchangeably. 'A gene causes cancer.' I go, 'No, no, no. A gene is correlated with cancer, it does not cause cancer.'
See so we have to get out of the belief that genes are making decisions and genes are controlling our lives. And this is why the new science epigenetics is a revolution that will change the planet.
It is as much a revolution as when Newtonian physics went into quantum physics, and the world changed.
Today going from genetics to epigenetics is the same massive jump that will change civilization. And they say, 'Well what's the difference? They almost sound the same.' I go, 'When I say genetic control, which is what I was teaching in medical school, genetic control simply means controlled by genes.'
So people out there believe, 'Oh my cancer is caused by genes, my diabetes is caused by genes,' whatever it is, is caused by genes. That's the belief.
And I go, 'Yeah but the fact is this, genes do not cause anything. Genes are not capable of turning themselves on and off. Genes have, in bigger words, selfactualization.' Meaning genes don't make decisions, genes are blueprints.
They are blueprints to make the physical body parts. And they go, 'Well why is it relevant?' I say, 'Because when you're building the body, the contractor calls up the blueprints, the blueprints don't call themselves up, and then they go, 'Contractor?'
I go, 'Yeah.' The mind, the brain, the nervous system reads the world and then adjusts the body to deal with the world. So the mind calls up the genes, and now when I say epigenetic control, which is the new science, remember genetic control, controlled by genes.
New science, epigenetic control, sounds the same but 'epi' means above. So when I say epigenetic control, I am saying control above the genes. And all of a sudden it's like, 'The genes don't control it?' I go, 'No, genes never control anything.'
Genes are blueprints. Epigenetics means the environment. And here's the one that I
want people to just emphasize this one.
The environment and our perception of the environment.
Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Is what controls our genes. And I go, 'Why is it relevant?' Because we can alter the environment, and we can change our perception meaning then the genes are under our control. We're not under the control of genes, we control them.
So here's an important data fact. Less than 1%- less than 1% of disease is controlled by genes. So I say-
Shawn Stevenson: Hold on, Bruce. Wait, hold on. You've got to say that again. Say that again.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Less than 1% of disease is controlled by genes. There are very few diseases that one gene causes disease. Hemophilia for example might be one of them. Tay-Sachs disease is another one like that.
And I say, 'Yeah but my God, 99% of disease didn't come from the genes, it came from lifestyle and environment. And that's where epigenetics is the controlling factor.
So 99% of health issues are not because the body is defective. 99% of health issues is that the driver of the body, the contractor, the brain, the mind is not in harmony, and when it's out of harmony, the body is a complement so the body is out of harmony.
And if you look at it, it's like well it makes beautiful sense. It says if you're sick, it's a reflection of something that's not in harmony.
And all of a sudden- so you blame the sickness, 'I got cancer. Oh the cancer cells are stupid, and look what they did, they formed cancer!'
And I go, 'Cancer cells aren't stupid. Cancer cells are just responding to your consciousness, and anger, and deep hurt, and issues that started as children are really the cause of the cancer.'
So why is it relevant? Because you say, 'Well if the cancer is the problem, then if I just take the cancer cells out, fine I'm healed.'
And I go, 'No, no, no the cancer is a symptom of a problem. The cancer is a reflection of a problem.'
And the point is you can take the cancer cells out, but if you don't fix the problem, the cancer is going to come back again.
Shawn Stevenson: Right.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: And they say, 'Well how do you fix the problem?' I say those people who have cancer and then the cancer disappears, spontaneous remission or even if you have to take it out surgically, will they get the cancer again?
The answer is if they change their issues of their lives, they won't get the cancer again. If they just say, 'No it wasn't me, it was stupid cells, and I take out stupid cells, so I should be better.'
I go, 'No, no, no you missed it. The cells were a mirror of the problem. They are not the problem.' So dealing with cancer by saying killing the cancer cells is like well that's nice, it might slow down the issue, but it starts up here.
Shawn Stevenson: Right. You know this is- first of all this is very, very empowering, and this kind of speaks- I think a good example is- and you mentioned this, less than 1% of all diseases are responsible. We're talking about genetic controlled, like somebody being born with an actual genetic defect.
For the most part, we all get here with pretty good genes, and then something happens. Like you manifest cancer later in life, or diabetes, or heart disease.
Something changed. It wasn't the fact that you were born and ordained to have this, because it wasn't there in the beginning.
And so what we're talking about here is- in the realm of cancer, for example, and we've talked about this many times, but we all have cancer cells every day that occur.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Absolutely.
Shawn Stevenson: All of us. Many, many cancer cells, but a healthy functioning immune system will go and take out those rogue cells.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Exactly.
Shawn Stevenson: But by our lifestyle choices, our habitual thought patterns, and like you said our perception is going to encourage us to make certain decisions. And we might even put ourselves in the way of more carcinogenic environments.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: But the interesting part is again, the carcinogenic environment focuses that it was the chemicals that are causing the problem. And the fact is we're so powerful, and we believe we're so frail and vulnerable that we can say, 'Oh a chemical caused this.'
I go, 'Listen, here's the true thing.' In the South, there are fundamentalists, religious people that work themselves into religious ecstasy, they start speaking tongues and doing weird stuff, and they're called snake handlers, and they handle all these poisonous snakes.
Now interesting enough, about three or four months ago one of them died from the bites, but most of the time they get a bite, there's no problem. They get bitten by a poisonous snake and I go, 'Yeah, that's called testifying.'
What is testifying? In their system of belief they say that God is so powerful and they believe in God so much that they will do something no normal person in their right mind would ever do like pick up and play with a rattlesnake, because they know God protects them.
So I go, 'Okay this is the point.' Listen to this one because it's like if you get it, it's like blowing your mind.
They, in testifying, will drink strychnine poison in toxic doses with the belief that God will protect them from this poison. And guess what? No harmful consequences.
They can drink strychnine poison with no harmful consequences. How the hell can you do that? And I go, 'Their belief system is so, so strong that they actually- you can block the influence of strychnine.'
The average thing that people do all the time, but you've got to emphasize it again is walking across hot coals.
Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: You could walk across hot coals but you have to have your belief system in a place where you absolutely believe this is really- you can do it. Because if you're in the middle of the walk and you have a moment of doubt, you're in the middle of a moment of doubt, 'Can I do this?' Boom, you just got burned.
Shawn Stevenson: Yeah you know, well first of all you're speaking to- this is the first time I've ever talked about this publicly, walked on hot coals. I did that, walked across the fire, and a friend of mine actually got burned, you know?
And by the way, this was one of those situations where if you're in the environment, the peer pressure, but you also really do have to get your mind right.
And the problem is, Bruce, is that we don't really believe what we say we believe. And that's really where the work is, you know?
And when we talk about faith, and then we believe that it's really all our responsibility, and we actually are not demonstrating that we have that faith when we're taking steps in our lives.
And just to go back really quickly, I think this is so important, but when you mentioned earlier about the placebo effect, and how that ties into this.
If you look at the research, you'll see about on average placebos being about 30% effective in clinical trials. That is insane. And this is a fake treatment, a fake surgery, or a fake drug, and somebody getting that response.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Fake surgery, that's the other one. Fake surgery, I mean you could say okay fake drugs, I can get it, but surgery turns out to be a placebo influence as well.
I mean they do what is called arthroscopic surgery, those people with bad knee joints, and they go in and they scrape the cartilage, and flush the fluid, and then people start walking better and they go, 'Oh yeah, that was great.'
I don't know how many hundreds of thousands people get that, but in a study recently- not that recently, a surgeon did- he wanted to find out which part of the procedure was the effective part; scraping the cartilage or replacing the fluid.
So one of the people who organized it said, 'Well you have to do a sham operation, a fake operation as a control.' And he said, 'What do you mean a fake operation? This is real, there's no fake.'
But they decided they would do it, so what they do is they would cut little slots on the side of the knee, which they do in the normal preparation, but the rest of the procedure was never done.
Although the person who was under general anesthetic could hear the doctors talking, 'Oh yeah, now we're scraping, now we're doing all this,' and they even put a video on the screen, a former, somebody else's knee surgery so the patient is looking at the screen and thinking, 'Oh I'm getting all the surgery.'
They didn't do it, and it turned out the sham operation had the same exact effect as the operation where they actually scraped the cartilage and replaced the fluid.
In other words, the operation was completely placebo effect. The whole damn arthroscopic surgery is placebo effect.
It's like oh my God, because in the study there was no difference between whether they actually did the surgery or the person believed they did the surgery.
Shawn Stevenson: If you could, I would love to really kind of dive in a little deeper and talk about this connection between our cells and our experiences as humans.
You know one of the things that I learned from you was looking at the cell itself as part of a community, but even the cell itself is an individual in the things that it does, all the different functions as far as digestion, respiration.
So can you talk about that connection? Because again, we think that we're so different from our cells, but it's just not so. So let's talk about that.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Yeah. In exactly the same way that the Internet allows us to have this conversation and connect a lot of people, the Internet theoretically you can have one person talk to eight billion people. You can have- theoretically that's true.
What's interesting is that the cells in our bodies have antennas on their surface to receive environmental signals, just like television antennas but they're made out of proteins. Okay?
No two people have the same antennas. This is why we can't trade body parts or cells with each other.
In other words, why? I say, 'Because the antennas are receiving a broadcast of coordination.'
So fifty trillion cells are on the same station, listening to the same broadcast, and behaving- if you have to run because of a saber-toothed tiger, then fifty trillion cells are like, 'Okay we're in run mode right now.'
If I put somebody else's cells in my body with a different set of antennas, they're receiving a different broadcast.
So what it means is that the transplanted cells are not in harmony or coordinated with the main system, okay?
So the idea is this, every cell is an individual cell, but every cell has an antenna. There's a group of them called self receptors that are tuned to your broadcast from the brain.
So when the brain makes an image, fifty trillion cells are- it's just like you at home right now turn on the Internet or something, and see something going on in China, and it's like, 'Wow okay, I'm right there, I'm watching it.'
Well fifty trillion cells are watching what you're watching. Fifty trillion cells are in harmony. Why? Because the community is all held together by this nervous system, okay?
So the relevance about all that is then even though a cell is an individual cell and has its job, a cell has a job just like all of us have jobs.
A heart cell is a pumping cell. A liver cell is a filtering cell. A blood cell is a transport cell, whatever. Although all cells have different jobs, they're still listening to the same station, and that's how a thought can affect fifty trillion cells simultaneously, because the cells are listening to these thoughts.
So the relevance is then my mind is coordinating fifty trillion cells by a broadcast.
It's interesting, you know like the shocking consequence of this understanding is when a person receives a heart transplant, see the first thing you have to do is if you're going to transplant an organ into a body, you have to stop or inhibit the immune system of the recipient.
Shawn Stevenson: Right.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Because the immune system will say, when the cells come in whose got different antennas, it says, 'It's not us. These antennas are not- they're marching to a different drummer. You have to take these cells out,' so the immune system eliminates them.
So if you're going to transplant an organ, you have to shut down the immune system.
But then now you have- let's say I move a heart from person A to person B, when person B has that heart, the antennas on that heart are still tuned into the identity of that person.
Uh-oh, that consequence of spirituality. The consequence that we are more than this body and the answer is yes we are, and I'll give you the example of it, this is where I was going with it.
If I take cells out of your body Shawn, and move them forty miles away, and I have an electro readout, like the same kind of thing like a lie detector, a galvanometer response to read the electrical activity of the cells.
And I pipe that into the room where you are right now, so on a screen right next to you I could see the electrical activity of the cells forty miles away, okay? And this has been done.
If I can elicit an emotional response in you, the cells forty miles away instantaneously will activate their electrical activity. How can that happen?
Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: And the answer is because they have the antennas to your identity, and whether you are physically here, your identity is more of a broadcast, that's part of your spirit and your mind, and it's going out in the field.
So wherever your cells are, if they're forty miles away, are still going to respond to your broadcast wherever you are at this moment.
So when the heart is transplanted, it picks up the characteristics of the person who was the owner of that heart, who still has the broadcast, okay?
And so why is it relevant? One of the stories, there's a whole book of stories about individuals with heart transplant and how their lives are changed.
One of them was a story of a young girl who received a heart from another young girl, obviously the other young girl is dead, and she gets the heart, and once it's implanted and starts working, she has nightmares every night of being murdered.
Same murder, same scene every night. So the doctors traced back and find out yes, the girl who donated the heart was murdered.
So the police talked to the recipient, the heart recipient, and she describes the nightmare vividly which replayed every night, and with that description the police apprehended the murderer.
Shawn Stevenson: This is some Netflix stuff right here, new series. Bruce Lipton, producer right here.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: The book is called 'Change of Heart,' and there's other stories about like a woman who was a complete vegetarian health freak and all that stuff, gets a heart, and immediately has these cravings for chicken McNuggets and beer. You've heard that story, probably.
And the reality was tracing it back, finding out the person who donated the heart, that was their favorite food.
All of a sudden it's like they transplanted the heart, and she now has a new favorite food, chicken McNuggets and beer. It's like where the hell did that come from? It's like the broadcast.
Shawn Stevenson: That's so, so powerful, you know? And one of the things- I mean this is just mindblowing stuff, and I remember looking into some of these studies and seeing- I believe some of this was even done by the US military and looking at if we take cells and we put them somewhere else- your cells and then we expose you to a stimulus.
Maybe it's something- maybe you're getting shocked, maybe you're experiencing joy, but your cells respond accordingly to your feeling, and to your experience even if they're not in your body.
That's crazy stuff, but this goes beyond- and this is what you do, and bring to- one of the things that I'm still battling with myself in trying to communicate to people is that it takes time for the books to change, you know?
People right now are learning bad science in university settings, and I see you're like, 'Oh my God.'
But you know what we can do here, especially with the advent of the Internet, and having shows like this, we can get ourselves at the forefront of the education, and go and dig into the research ourselves.
And it really is amazing, and the things that you've created are very helpful in making the science make sense, and making real world tangible application.
Now I want to talk to you about something I was taught wrongfully in school. Now I've shared this story before, Bruce, but this is the first time you're going to hear it.
So today I am madly in love with science. I think about it all the time- I think about my wife, and I think about science. That's kind of my life, you know? So I'm in love with both, you know?
And prior to going through my own health challenges, I detested science. Like I couldn't stand it. I still had nightmares up until even a few years ago about being in biology class, and not having my homework done, alright?
And I was taught that the brain of the cell was the nucleus. So can you share how this is not actually accurate, and where the real brain of the cell can be found?
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Yeah. The reason why the nucleus was selected as the brain of the cell is the nucleus is where the genes are, at least 98% of the genes of the body are in the nucleus.
Then we go with the belief that is now wrong, and completely outdated, and that is genes turn on and off.
And that was the belief that genes are self-regulating, so that a cancer gene turned on, and then I got cancer or whatever. This gene turned off and I got that.
And we then attributed that genes control themselves. This was an error in our insight about the nature of genes that is completely false, that genes do not control themselves, genes are controlled by proteins which are then controlled by the environment.
So I say, 'Why is it relevant?' Because I say, 'Well in the nucleus you have all the genes.' And I go, 'Yeah but they're just blueprints.' And I go, 'Yeah but what are they for?' Reproduction.
It's like wait a minute! Then the nucleus cell isn't the brain of the cell, the nucleus is the gonad. Absolutely. Why?
You can take the nucleus out and I say, 'What is the immediate consequence of taking the nucleus out of the cell?' The cell doesn't die, the cell doesn't lose control. The only thing it can't do now is reproduce the parts, or reproduce itself.
So the nucleus wasn't controlling the biology at all, it was just for the reproduction.
So at some point when I was working with my stem cells and I talked about where I changed the environment, and then changed the genetics, the question was, 'Well how is that being activated? How is that information from the environment controlling genes?'
You see that's where my colleagues back in 1967-1970 when I was doing this research looked at me and would go, 'I don't know what it is, but it's not really relevant. We're working with genes.'
And my story was, 'Who cares about the genes? It's not the genes anyways, it's the environment.' But they didn't listen to me because what was the mechanism? And I
didn't have the mechanism.
I just knew that the environment was going to change the genes because I could see the result. My results then led me to say, 'Well where's the information coming into the cell and controlling the cell?' And that led to the skin of the cell called the cell membrane.
The cell membrane, at that time when I was working on it, people thought it was just like plastic wrap holding the contents in the cell, that's all it did, just hold the cell together because it had very simple structure.
My assessment of that simple structure, it's made out of these lipid molecules, and there are proteins in there, and I was trying to look at how does this thing work, and describing it in conventional terms- describing the structure of the membrane, which it didn't say anything about how it worked, it's just like a barrier. Big deal.
But when I started to define the membrane in a different way, and it happened in a moment of time, my life was transformed from a non-spiritual genetic molecular biologist into a spiritual biologist in one minute.
I go, 'How did that happen? I have 40-some years, no spirituality, one minute later, boom. Spirituality.' I go- because in looking at how the membrane influenced the control of the information in the cell, I redefined the membrane in a way I never did before.
I worked on it for years, but I never wrote this description.
And so it was like 1:59 in the morning, and I'm writing this description, and I write down, 'Here's the description of the cell membrane. It sounds a little complicated because the cell membrane is a liquid crystal semi-conductor with gates and channels.'
I wrote that down by looking at the structure and organization, and then I wrote it down, I said, 'Wait.'
1985 I go, 'I've heard that exact same definition. Where?!' And I realized I had just bought my first Macintosh and I got a book from RadioShack, 'Understanding Your Microprocessor,' a simpleton book about how the damn computer works, okay?
I go, 'Oh my God, I think-' I opened up the book on the microprocessor and there in the introduction of the book, a computer chip is a crystal semi-conductor with gates and channels.
And in the first instance I go, 'Wow, it's got the same definition!' Membrane and computer chip, same definition, wow! I thought that was really interesting.
And then a couple seconds later I started to say, 'Well wait, this part of the membrane correlates with this part of the computer chip, and this part of the membrane correlates with that part of the computer chip,' and within that minute I said, 'Oh my God, the cell membrane is an information processor. It is a computer chip. A carbon-based computer chip.'
Signals from the environment are picked up by the membrane translated into biology and the signal is then sent into the cell, and that signal controls the behavior and the genetics.
And what I realized at that moment as everything was coming in, not only is a cell membrane an analog- actually a homolog, that means identical to a computer chip. The computer chips that we talk are silicon-based, silicon chips.
The computer chip I'm talking about is carbon chip because the membrane is made out of carbon molecules. So it's not silicon, it's carbon chip based computing.
But then I also recognize the nucleus, which we thought was whatever the program is
in nucleus, that is your life, that's what we believed, and that was genetic determinism. This is your gene, this is your life.
I realized, 'Oh my God, the membrane is the chip. The nucleus is a disk with programs. It's a hard drive, it's got programs in it. But what was the coolest part, it wasn't read only.
It wasn't, 'Oh that's your gene, that's you program.' It's read write. That's where epigenetics came in.
The environment can change the reading of your genes, so whatever- however many genes you have, 20,000 genes, you can make over 3,000 variations of proteins which that's what a gene does, is it's a blueprint to make a protein.
For every blueprint, every gene you have, I can make 3,000 or more variations based on the environment. And it's like, 'Oh my genes! I can re-write my genetics on a moment-by-moment basis on how I'm dealing with the environment. It's a read write chip.
And then the last thing, which we just went over a little while ago, I said, 'Well wait, there's a pin number. I can get into my cells, but I can't get into your cells. We can stand right next to each other, our cells are reading the environment.'
I go, 'Yeah we're both reading the environment, but guess what? I'm reading it through a filter of my identity, my personal identity receptors, you're reading it through your self receptors, and those are the identities.
So in other words, we can be in the exact same environment, but our identities can read it in different ways, and that's how two people can be in the same place and have totally different responses to the same environment that they live in.
But the whole thing, it says what happened in one minute? I went from genes control in biology through the action of genes to no, the membrane controls biology through the action of the environment that the genes are writable, I can change them.
I can have a mutant gene and make it normal, but in the case of disease, I can have a normal gene and make it a mutant gene. I can make cancer out of normal cells just how I respond to the world.
And then lastly in that one minute was my identity, the pin number that is talking to these fifty trillion cells is a broadcast and it's like, 'Oh my God. The broadcast is here and my body is like a television set, fifty trillion cells with antennas tune to my broadcast.'
So you're looking at this body here, this is a television set playing The Bruce Show. Right now it's The Bruce Show. And you're playing The Shawn Show.
Why? Because your broadcast from the environment is who you are. And that's why when you transplant a heart from A to B, person A, their broadcast is still controlling that heart even if they're dead.
Why? The broadcast is like a television set. You're watching a TV, the TV breaks, you say, 'The TV is dead.' I go, 'Yeah it's not working.' But I say, 'Is the broadcast still there?' The answer is yes.
You get a new TV, plug it in, turn it on, and tune it to the station, it's back online.
Shawn Stevenson: So you just shared something very important, which is we've got 20,000 genes approximately collectively, and The Human Genome Project proved that people are thinking, 'Oh there's 100,000 or more different combinations,' and it just wasn't true.
But what we have is very different. 3,000 as you mentioned, approximately different expression potentials of that same gene blueprint. Amazing.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Right.
Shawn Stevenson: And so how do we tune in? This is what I want to talk to you about, and we're going to tune into this after this break, but I want to talk about the fact that most of us don't really know our pin number, alright?
So we need to like open up the envelope, find out what the pin number is so we can start to change what's going on in our subconscious and get better printouts.
So we're going to do that right after this quick break, so sit tight and we'll be right back.
Alright we are back and we're talking with the world-renowned Bruce Lipton- Dr. Bruce Lipton, who wrote a book that is one of the most marked up books that I have, and I've actually read this- this is one of the handful of books, maybe ten books that I've read multiple times, 'The Biology of Belief.'
So make sure to check out 'The Biology of Belief.' It is essential in your library.
And we were just talking about the fact that in a way we don't really know our power. We don't know how to tap in and change what's going on in our subconscious.
And he broke down how much our thoughts and our environment determine our genetic expression, thus our experience.
And so that's what I want to ask you about. Can you share a few tips on helping us to re-program our subconscious for better results? Give us that pin number so we can start making some changes.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Yeah. Cells respond to environmental signals. Sure, I put a cell in a culture dish, change the environment, and immediately the cell will adjust its biology to conform to the environment.
But when you're in a human body as a cell, you don't get to see the real environment. My liver cell doesn't see what I'm doing right now talking to you. It's inside a community with a trillion other- fifty trillion other cells in that world.
And I say, 'But how does the liver cell, which is supposed to adjust its biology to the environment, and the liver cell is not touching the environment, it's deep inside, so how does the liver cell know what's going on in the environment so it can adjust its biology?'
And the answer is the nervous system. The nervous system reads the environment and sends signals to the body of what's going on in the world. I go, 'Why is it relevant?'
And this is the bottom line, because my cells do not see the real world. The cells see the world that I interpret. Is it a safe world or a scary world? My liver cell only knows what I believe, and if it's a safe world but I believe it's a scary world, then my liver cell is getting what message? Not that it's a safe world, it's getting the scary message, okay?
Shawn Stevenson: Fight or flight.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: I say, 'Why is it relevant?' And the answer is it's relevant because the cells do not respond to the real world, they respond to your perception of the world.
And so it's your belief about the world that is adjusting your genetics. If you have fear about the world, then you shut down the maintenance and growth of the body because fear gets you ready for fight or flight. Okay?
And so why does 90% of the illness on this planet, 90% is minimum, related to stress? And the answer is because stress is a picture of fear that you're not going to succeed.
And that what's going to happen is you have to get ready for fight or flight. So do fifty trillion cells in my body know if I'm in a war zone or am I in an imaginary war zone?
The answer is the cells don't know the difference of the real one and the imaginary one, they're just getting my interpretation.
So that's why when we talked about placebo effect, I send a signal of, 'Oh healing is coming, we now have the right drug.'
And it turned out to be a sugar pill, but the chemistry of healing is what came from the mind, okay?
And I go, 'Yeah positive thinking, that's what is the placebo effect, can change your health.' You can have terminal cancer, and then have a belief change, and then have spontaneous remission. That's how powerful it is.
And we talk about this, and most everybody goes, 'Yeah Shawn, they all know, yeah placebo effect, positive thought turns into-'
I go, 'Yeah but please listen to this. A negative thought is equally powerful in controlling the biology. As much as a positive thought can heal you, a negative thought can kill you.' It can make any disease- you can have a negative thought about cancer, and manifest cancer, you have no genes that are even cancer related genes. And it's like where the hell did it come from?
You are creating your biology as a complement to what you see. So if you see a positive world, then you're getting positive vibes coming in, and it feels really great.
And if you live in a negative world of one you believe to be negative, then the cells are inside cowering going, 'Oh my God, it's not safe out there.'
And so my cells are just adjusting to my perception. So changing your perception is like, 'Well where's that?' I go, 'That's your mind.' I go, 'What's the mind?' I go, 'There- now we've got a problem because the mind, you put the mind and the mind means oh, one mind.'
I go, 'Oh no, no. There are at least two minds that make the mind.' So I say, 'Oh what are the minds?' I go, 'Conscious mind, subconscious mind.'
They're interdependent, and very important, each mind has a different function, and more importantly, each mind learns in a different way.
I go, 'Oh, oh, oh what is it?' I go, 'The latest evolution of the brain conscious mind, right behind your forehead, the prefrontal cortex, latest evolution of the brain, that's creative.'
So the evolution of the creative conscious mind is what has taken humans from regular animals into making spaceships and computers. Creative, okay?
And I say, 'Oh yeah, creative.' I say, 'How does it learn?' Well it's creative, it can learn in any way. It can watch this podcast, it can read a self-help book, it can go to a lecture. You can go, 'Ah-ha,' and the conscious mind will change its belief system. It's creative, it's open to any way of learning.
I go, 'Great.' So I say, 'Wishes and desires are the substance of the conscious mind. Creative.'
Shawn, what do you want from your life? That's a creative question. What do you want? And to answer it you have to create something that may not even exist.
So by definition, creativity comes from conscious mind, wishes and desires come from conscious mind, and if biology is controlled by the conscious mind, you manifest wishes and desires.
But the second mind is called the subconscious mind. That's the original brain, it's about 90% of the mass of the brain is subconscious- below conscious meaning look, your heartbeat is being controlled, digestion is occurring, you learn things like walking, and then it becomes a habit.
So the habits of your body are in the subconscious mind. Conscious mind is creative, subconscious mind is habitual.
And people say that the subconscious mind is evil. I go, 'No the subconscious mind is a record device. Records a behavior and plays it back. It's not evil, it's just a machine.'
The programs might be evil but the machine is great. I mean consider this, Shawn. You learned how to walk before you were two, it's a subconscious program. Thank God you got a subconscious mind, you never have to learn how to walk again, you learn how to ride a bike, you learn how to drive a car.
Once you've learned, it becomes a habit, and once it's a habit it resists change.
Habits don't want to change. If habits would change they wouldn't be habits anymore.
So the subconscious mind is not creative, it's habits. You learn how to do something, and if you just push the button, it will play the program. A hundred years, if you lived to be 101 years old you could say, 'I've been walking on a program 100 years old. I've never changed.'
So I go, 'Okay subconscious mind, habits, resist change. Conscious mind, creative, open to change.' They're very different, okay?
So the reality is this. Our conscious mind is the creative mind and has wishes and desires; relationships, jobs, health, all those things that you want. Conscious mind.
And then I go, 'Oh well, there's another character of the conscious mind. This one is what blows the system out of proportion, and that is this. The conscious mind can think. I say, 'Think?'
I say, 'Yeah. Shawn, tell me what you're doing on Sunday.' If you actually are going to try and get the answer for that, don't look around the room, it's not there, the answer to that is in your head.
So I say, 'Oh if I have a thought, my conscious mind is directed inward.' Where's the answer to what you're doing on Sunday? It's not out here.
So I say, 'Oh well if the conscious mind lets go of dealing with the outside world, does that mean you stop- you're walking down the street, you have a thought, does that mean oh thought, conscious mind is thinking, everything stops.'
I go, 'No you keep walking.' You're driving a car and you have a thought, you keep driving the car. I say, 'Yeah but the conscious mind is busy.' I go, 'Then who's driving the car? Who's walking?' I go, 'Those are habits. They come from the subconscious mind.'
So here's the point. Conscious mind is creative, subconscious mind is habitual. Conscious mind can think, so therefore it may not pay attention, and when the- this is it, when the conscious mind is thinking, the subconscious is auto-pilot.
It knows how to walk, it knows how to drive the car, it knows how to do your job, anything you've done for habits it does, you don't need to think about it.
And then now I go, 'Now the monkey wrench of life,' and this is the monkey wrench.
Thinking occupies the conscious mind 95% of the day. You say, 'So?' Then I say, 'Ah then your creative wishes desire mind is only working 5%. Because 95% is inside thinking.'
And I go, 'Yeah but then who's running the show?' I go, 'Well subconscious.' And I go, 'Well wait, then my subconscious programs are running 95% of my life.'
I go, 'Yeah, because conscious is busy.' I go, 'Oh well then where did I get the subconscious programs?'
In the first seven years of your life you download behaviors by observing other people. Your brain functioning in the first seven years of your life, the predominant brain activity is a vibration called theta.
Shawn Stevenson: Theta.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: When you put wires on your head, EEG, theta. Theta is imagination. You know that's where kids live in the imaginary and real world simultaneously. They're riding a broom, the mother says, 'Give me the broom,' the kid says, 'I don't know what you're talking about. This is a horse.'
When the kid is riding the broom they think it's a horse in their mind. Theta, but theta is hypnosis.
So I say, 'Oh so the first seven years, my conscious mind is not working. My subconscious is in hypnosis. What is it doing?' Downloading behavior by observing other people.
I say, 'Why?' Then I give a very simple- I go to the iPod store, Apple, I buy a new iPod brand new. The front of the iPod is called touchscreen, that's the creative part. I can make a playlist, adjust the volume, EQ, it's creative. It's the equivalence of the conscious mind.
So I get the brand new iPod, take it out of the store, take it out of the box, push play, nothing happens.
Being an old dinosaur freaking out, I just spent all the damn money, and the damn thing isn't working. Some little seven year old kid right next to me goes, 'Hey mister, you didn't download any music. How do you expect to play anything?'
It's like, 'Oh.'
Before you can use the creative touchscreen, you first have to download the programs, then you can become creative.
And so I say, 'Oh the exact same thing occurs in the mind.'
Before you can be conscious, you have to have something to be conscious of. I go well what's relevant is the mind is like the iPod.
In other words, for consciousness to work, I have to download programs, and that's why the first seven years is downloadable programs.
And then the recognition is then the behaviors in the subconscious mind are not yours. They don't answer your wishes and your desires, they're copied from other people.
And I go, 'Well why is that relevant?' Because I said, 'We are only using the conscious mind 5% of the time. That means 95% of your life by default is coming from the subconscious.'
I go, 'Yeah what does that mean?' I go, 'The fundamental programs in the subconscious mind do not support your wishes and desires, and in fact up to 70% of the programs that we download at that time period- of the 70% of those programs are negative, and disempowering, and self-sabotaging.'
So I go, 'Net result in day-to-day life, I am not running my life with a conscious mind. I am running it with programs, most of them disempowering, and they're invisible.
Why? It's called subconscious. And why is it playing? Because the conscious mind is busy. I'm still automatically on auto-pilot playing the program.
Shawn Stevenson: So what this really does tune in and helps us to understand why- because for so many of us, we're like, 'I want to think positive thoughts. I want to change my life.'
So but we're at this place where- and thank you for clarifying this. These programs are implemented very deeply thanks to this theta state that we're in.
But today as we're adults, how in the world do we get in there and start to switch out some of these programs?
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Okay, the idea is this. The subconscious mind learns in a different way than conscious mind. Conscious mind is creative, as I said, learns in any variety of ways. Subconscious mind learns in two principle ways, and a third way is just new.
The two principle ways, the first seven years is hypnosis, theta.
Shawn Stevenson: Right.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: So if you want to put a program in subconscious, then hypnosis or auto-hypnosis, putting earphones on your head at night and playing a program as you go to bed of what you want. Because the moment your conscious mind checks out in going to sleep, your brain is in theta.
So every night there is a period of theta just after you are starting to fall asleep. If you put the earphones on, then the program is directly being downloaded in the subconscious. That's a way of doing it.
I say, 'Yeah but theta works until age seven.' I say, 'Well what happens after age seven? You still learn things. You learn how to drive a car, ride a bike, do all these things.'
I go, 'Practice. Repetition.' So after age seven, programs can be put in by a process of repetition which is an actual process. It's not a sticky note on the refrigerator, that's a suggestion.
A repetition requires a behavior that is repeated. And the idea about it is you want to really make something you don't have, so it kind of feels strange.
It's sort of like you know, there's a phrase which I love currently that describes this. It says, 'Fake it till you make it.' Meaning if you want to be happy and you're not happy, then every day you just say to yourself, 'I'm happy. I'm happy.'
You consciously just repeating, 'I'm happy. I am happy.' Why? At some point of repetition, the subconscious picks is up. And when the subconscious picks it up, you don't even have to say, 'I'm happy.' The subconscious' job is to take that program and make it real.
So whatever program you put into the subconscious is going to operate 95% of the day, and if you put in, 'I am happy, I am successful, I am healthy,' these kinds of programs, then 95% of the day the subconscious is supposed to be manifesting that.
So the two fundamental ways of changing the subconscious are A) hypnosis, B) repetition of a behavior. C) I need to add this one because the first two I just mentioned are time-consuming. It takes a period of time to download new behaviors that way.
There is a new technology called energy psychology. It's a new version of psychology that involves super learning.
Super learning, just to give you an idea, those are the people that will read a book by opening the page, and then just moving their finger down the page. As fast as they move the finger down is as fast as they read the book, so those are the people that can go in the bookstore and in a couple minutes read an entire book by just moving their finger down the page.
If you use that process, you can download new behaviors in the subconscious in about ten minutes. And these are so important.
My website, simple, www.BruceLipton.com, there's under resources twenty or thirty different energy psychology modalities. These are what we need right now because these processes can take a whole lifelong program that's been sabotaging you, in five or ten minute re-write a program.
And this is what we need to know right now. You've got to do it. And let me close with this part because it's real important. You've got program the first seven years, your program is run 95% of the day. Your question might be, 'I don't know what the program is.'
And the reason is I can ask you is say, 'Shawn, what did you learn when you were one? What did you learn when you were zero? Oh no, when did you learn in the last trimester of pregnancy when the programming started?'
No answer. So I go, 'So let's help people-' and this the real quick turnaround. 95% of your life is coming from the subconscious. The subconscious of your life is a printout of your subconscious programs.
That's your life. You've been running that. So I say, 'What does it mean?' I say, 'Look at your life, and it's simple. The things you like that come into your life come in because you have programs to bring them in.'
But anything you work hard at, anything you struggle over, anything you sweat over, anything you have to make a lot of effort into making it happen, simple question, why are you working so hard to get to this destination?'
And the answer inevitably, you have a subconscious program that is preventing you from getting there.
So all you have to do is look at your life and say, 'Where is the struggle?' And the first thing is wherever that struggle is, your struggle is a play-out of a program, your program is creating the struggle. You want to change that struggle? Then you put a new program about that struggle in.
If it's a health issue, you have bad health at this point it's like, 'No, no I have to turn it around. I am healthy.' I say, 'It doesn't sound right.' I say, 'Fake it till you make it. I am healthy. I am healthy. I am healthy.'
Repetition, using energy psychology, using auto-hypnosis. Once you put those programs in, then they will run 95% of the day, and you will become empowered.
Shawn Stevenson: Dr. Lipton.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Bruce.
Shawn Stevenson: Bruce.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Yes?
Shawn Stevenson: You have truly, truly, again transformed my thinking, and I'm so grateful for you sharing these insights today, and I highly encourage people to hop over to www.BruceLipton.com and take advantage of these resources because at the end of the day, you know he shared the three different modalities which is tapping into that theta- you know there's all kinds of cool stuff there, binaural beats, there's hypnosis, and things like that.
But you know, some of us might be in fear like, 'I don't want to get hypnotized and then like all of a sudden I'm like a monkey hitting a drum. Like I'm Homer Simpson now because of hypnotism.'
But then we've got this opportunity with repetition, and this fake it till you make it, and imbuing that with the feelings, really feeling the feelings. And until you start to believe it, and laying down more myelin in your brain for that program.
And then the third component which is this super learning, and Dr. Lipton is the guy to really connect with to get this information.
So last question, if you could share with me, I've been wanting to ask you this for awhile. What is the model that you're here to set with the way that you're living your life personally?
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Okay what I acquired in my belief through all of this stuff was the reality that maybe the greatest cosmic joke in the world is the joke that if we live a good life, when we die, we go to heaven.
I think it's a joke because I look at it now in a completely different way. My belief is this. You were born into heaven. We were born here to create, and to experience. And this is what the whole system is all about. We are creative people.
And I go, 'Yeah but what's heaven?' I say, 'Heaven's creative.' And you go, 'Yeah but look at this world, this sucks. This doesn't look like the world of heaven.' I go, 'Because we're not creating from our wishes, we're creating from our programming.' The programming that we got is disempowering us, and creating this world that we have been programmed to be a participant in this world, and so we are co-creating negative crap right now.
The movie The Matrix is not science fiction. The movie The Matrix is a documentary. Everybody got programmed. Yes, the first seven years, the Jesuits have known that for 400 years. 400 years they've told people, 'Give me a child until it's seven, and I will show you the man.'
What they were telling people, people didn't even understand. It was, 'If I get your first seven years of programming, I own the rest of your life because 95% of your life is coming from that program.'
And so we've known that for 400 years, and the programming is even better than when the Jesuits thought it 400 years ago.
So what's the point? We have been programmed to lose our power of creativity. That we lost our power of creativity over our personal lives, in our biology, as well as what's going on in the world around us.
That if we want to get it back, then we have to recognize we have to let go of these programs and re-write them.
As in the movie The Matrix, there is an opportunity to take a red pill, and you get out of the program. And my book called 'The Honeymoon Effect' focuses on that because it says, 'Isn't is strange how your life can suck every day, and then the day you meet this one person, and all of a sudden you were in total love, and the next day is heaven on earth.'
I say, 'Your life sucked for twenty years, and then one day later it's heaven on earth?' And science now knows what was that radical change that happened in one day that changed your life? And the answer is science has recognized when you fall in love it's the equivalent of taking the red pill because you stay mindful.
You don't default to the subconscious. I say, 'The first day you didn't default to the subconscious program was your first day of heaven on earth.' I go, 'You can have every day heaven on earth, it's when you go back to the program again you lose it.'
So the whole reality is this. My belief is this is heaven. I came here, I'm creating. First forty years my creation wasn't that good because of programming, but since then I've been living the honeymoon heaven on earth ever since, twenty years of living that way.
And it's not that the world changed, I changed. I changed my belief system. And I'm just a student like anybody else is a student, and I had to learn from the cells this understanding, and when I applied it, it made a difference.
And that's why if I leave on this point, it's very critical, Shawn. We've just had a wonderful experience of talking about educating the conscious mind which is creative, and learn from the stuff we talked about.
But to make a difference in your life, you walk away from here and I go, 'Yeah but guess what? 95% of your life is still going to be exactly the same as it was before you even heard this stuff.
Why? Because that- you're running from subconscious. Our conversation is not translated into subconscious. Subconscious is repetition. Well yeah, listen to this thing over again 100 times then it will probably download.
Okay another form is hypnosis. No we're not hypnotizing you, so basically we've been educating conscious creative mind, but to make it work you have to take this education and make it a program in the subconscious mind, because that's what's running 95% of the day, and that's an effort that requires something you have to do.
So the once belief that, 'If I just read the right self-help book, my whole life will be better.' I go, 'No, you just educate in a conscious mind.'
If until you change subconscious mind, you have not changed. So the point of closure is there's an opportunity to create heaven on earth not just for the honeymoon period, but to make it every day of your life.
But to do that you either have to stay out of the program or re-write the program, and when you do that, you are free. You are free from this prison of belief which makes us conform to the crap that's happening.
Let go. It's heaven on earth, just like being in love every day.
Shawn Stevenson: Love it. I love it, and I love you, Bruce. Thank you so much for sharing your gift.
Dr. Bruce Lipton: Shawn, I appreciate this opportunity, and really am thankful for the audience because I know that when they change and want heaven on earth, then we all will have heaven on earth when we let go of this programming.
Shawn Stevenson: Yes. Dr. Bruce Lipton, everybody check him out, www.BruceLipton.com, and make sure to take advantage of his resources and his incredible, incredible book, 'The Biology of Belief.'
Dr. Lipton, thank you so much.
Everybody, thank you so much for tuning into the show today. I hope you got a lot of value out of this. Again this was somebody who was on my list, my secret list of people to have on the show in its very inception, when this was just an idea, and this just speaks to the power of an idea and how we can bring things to fruition because this was something that- it wasn't a part of reality, but as he's been talking about today, being able to choose, being able to use that creative mind, but then digging deeper, and deeper, and deeper into that subconscious to really believe that I can make an impact, bigger than what I was seeing just seeing patients in my clinic.
And also walking in that direction every day, the repetition. So it's kind of sprinkling in all the different pieces of this, you know? Even one of the things- and I haven't talked
this much on the show before, but you know as you guys know I wrote an international bestselling book, I'm very thankful to say, 'Sleep Smarter.'
And we talked about the different stages of our brainwaves, and the theta state is very close to being unconscious in a way. And we all tinker with that state when we're first rising and we're first going to bed.
And those are very powerful moments to really focus on the things that you really want, and the qualities and the characteristics that you really value.
And I would for a couple of years, right before I'd fall off to sleep, I would have this meeting in my mind of all of the people who I saw as my greatest mentors, and we'd sit at a table. It was usually eight of us, and sometimes Dr. Bruce Lipton would sit in at the table as well, and I haven't shared that with him before, but he's hearing it today.
And I would have these conversations, and I would drift off to sleep in that state. And I think that that definitely had an impact on me for sure, and it's just about these practices. Or you can go to sleep thinking about The Real Housewives of Atlanta. You know, like whatever it is, you get to pick.
You know so it's just being more empowered and in charge of our minds.
And I've got to share this quote. This was from Albert Einstein and he said, 'The most important decision that we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or a hostile universe.'
And this is really a summation of- and I put Dr. Lipton on that same level, that same caliber of genius with Einstein, and this is what he was talking about today.
We have to decide whether or not we're going to perceive our reality as something that is hostile or something that is friendly. You know negative things do happen, but we get to interpret.
You know a negative situation might happen, but it might call forth instead of hatred, or instead of anger, and disappointment, maybe this can be a call to action for compassion. Or a call to action for you to develop the character of patience, of taking action to serve, right?
We get to pick, and what tends to happen if we're unconscious of our programming is something happens and we respond with our programming.
If you tend to be an angry person, a situation happens, you get angry. If you tend to be a person who slips into depression, a situation happens, you're going to get depressed.
If you tend to be somebody who's of service and of seeing the brighter side of things, something's going to happen, and you're going to find a way to see there's some reward or gift in the situation, and we get to pick where we're coming from.
None of them are right or wrong, it's just what we choose.
So I appreciate you so much for choosing to take your time, and to hang out with me, and the incredible Dr. Bruce Lipton today.
We've got some amazing powerful guests coming up, and some incredible show topics, so make sure to stay tuned and subscribe on all the different platforms whether it's iTunes, Spotify- make sure to check us out on Spotify, and Stitcher Radio.
Make sure to subscribe and stay up-to-date because we're going to be dropping some powerful shows coming up.
I appreciate you so much. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.
And for more after the show, make sure to head over to
www.TheModelHealthShow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes, you can find transcriptions, videos for each episode, and if you've got a comment you can leave me a comment there as well.
And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much.
And take care, I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.
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Most empowering and mind shifting episode I have listened to! I appreciate you and Dr. Lipton. You couldn’t have said it more perfectly by saying that Dr. Bruce Lipton is put on the same caliber of genius as Albert Einstein, he is one of the greats. I appreciate all the things you do and people you introduce us listeners to. Thank you so much Shawn and Dr. Lipton!
Do you have a link for the study Bruce referred to with the ‘sham’ knee arthroscopic surgeries? That is mind-blowing
Paul
Mind blowing!!!!! L O V E the show!
Hello there,
I found this podcast really interesting. After listening to it, I started thinking about fetal cell microchimerism – I’d like to know what Dr Bruce Lipton thinks about the antennas of fetal cells, why we share cells with the next generation and how they may affect mother/child relations?
Wow! Wow! Wow! Best episode ever!
Really miss Jade.. hope all is well with her and her family. Loved this episode, as it made me think about so much of the negative self-talk in my life, and I will listen to this again.
Hello Shawn and thanks again for another amazing episode! This was definitely ranked in my top ten! Please have Dr. Lipton as a return guest. This epigenetics topic really piqued my interest and I now want to implement/practice how to change my negative subconscious habits. I’m very appreciative how he talked in laymen terms and you deciphered it even further so I could relate. I will miss Jade and wish her well on future endeavors.
Wow, epic earthshattering content! Love the way Shawn brings research and information regarding health togheter and presents it in an easy and friendly way. Love the show😍/ Annika