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AUTOGENICS IN RELATION TO NEURO-TRANSMITTERS AND NEURO-PEPTIDES Dr. William Donaldson
For the scientifically orientated mind of the 20th century there is difficulty In accepting the claims of Autogenics regarding its profound influence on the mind and body. Clients ask me: how can a few simple phrases repeated at regular intervals have the effects claimed by Autogenic trainers and therapists? To help the inquiring, sometimes cynical, individual, a knowledge of the advances made in human biological science in the last decade (1980s) can be enlightening. In the 1970s a series of important discoveries were made centred around a class of minute chemical molecules concerned with brain function. They were given the name of neuro-transmitters. At first only two were found and it was postulated that the brains worked in a binary system like computers. By the end of the 1980s several hundreds of neuro-transmitters had been identified. These minute messenger molecules can carry a message from the brain to the big toe in 1/50 of a second. These neuro-transmitters give the brain a vocabulary of many thousands of signals. During the same period very similar molecules named neuro-peptides were discovered. They are made in the cells of the body and travel round in the blood stream to be picked up by receptors on the surface of other cells. These minute messenger molecules are made by the DNA (*) in cells throughout the body. Where does the ability to make these molecules come from? It is not the adrenaline molecule that makes a mother rush into a burning building to rescue her child. It is her love, her attitude of mind, her thoughts which have found a chemical pathway by which the brain can talk to the body. Thought creates these neuro-transmitters and neuro-peptides. Now thought, mind, Intelligence is non-material, yet it has found a way to work in partnership with these material molecules. The association is so close that the mind cannot project itself into the body without these messenger molecules. With every thought the DNA in the cells of the brain move atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and other elements to form neuro-transmitters. In recent years, sub-atomic physics has pushed on to finer and finer levels, but no-one is ever going to find a sub-atomic particle labelled 'Intelligence', although the matter in our bodies has been designed with 'intelligence' as a feature. Like a self reproducing robot our DNA has accomplished on a grand scale self reproduction. Our bodies are nothing more than DNA built by DNA. We might think of DNA as an intelligent molecule. How Intelligent is the sugar we put Into our tea? Yet DNA in just strings of sugars, and other simple compounds. If sugars are not intelligent to begin with, DNA could not be intelligent by stringing simple compounds together. Recent research at the National Institute of Mental Health, USA, has found receptors for these messenger molecules in the cells of the immune system, i.e. the monocytes or white blood cells, and also that these cells produce neuro-peptides that carry messages to the brain. Our thoughts, therefore, have a profound effect on our Immune system. It In now known that the brain freely circulates messages through the body's entire inner space, and receives messages back. No-one has yet been able to grasp how the cascade of these minute molecules can do all that the mind can do: memory, recollection and everyday activities. We know that the mind and body are like parallel universes. Anything that happens In the mental universe must make tracts in the physical universe. Recently researchers have found a way to photograph a thought's tract In three dimensions. This is know as "positron emission tomography". Our bodies are 3D physical pictures of what we are thinking. The body knows what Is happening to it, not just through the brain, but In every one of the thirty to fifty trillion cells which make up the human body. A neuro-transmitter is not a thought, but moves with thought. In Max Planck's Quantum theory of light, light can be considered as waves or as material particles known as photons. Light cannot be a wave and a particle at the same time. How a non-material wave becomes a material photon is still unknown, but it is called a quantum leap. "Thought" Is non-material, but can create material molecules, neuro-transmitters and neuro-peptides by a similar leap. The thought: "My arms and legs are heavy and warm" sends a flood of neuro-transmitters coursing through the body alerting all the involved cells and stimulating them into action, and so with all the other phrases we use in Autogenics an innumerable multitude of these messenger molecules surge through our whole inner space alerting our body into physical action and so creating a homeostasis in mind and body. * DNA is Deoxyribonucleic Acid. This is defined as the genetic material in the cell nucleus which makes up the double helix described by Watson and Crick. (Dr. Malcolm Carruthers) In other words, DNA may be described as the 'body's software' telling the cells how to perform. (Jane Bird with help from a doctor friend in a St. Albans pub) Bibliography: Deepak Chopra M.D.: Quantum Healing Stephen W. Hawking: A Brief History Of Time |