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Stockwell's Biochemistry of What You Feel
By Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas, PhD
President of the International Hypnosis Federation and www.hypnosisfederation.com
Did you ever think, "What makes you think?"
Have you ever said, "What made me say or do that?"
Ever wondered what makes you emotional?
It's our biological self! It recognizes, perceives, processes, remembers, learns and creates your every behavior. This same biochemistry decides what you consciously notice and what remains unconscious. To a hypnotherapist the conclusion is clear: your body IS your mind! How this happens is what this article is about.
You were born instinctively knowing how to lift your head, roll over or walk. It was hard-wired into your thoughts and neurology. So was your ability to speak. Your ear canals filled with sound amplified amniotic fluid were do finely tuned that from birth to four months you could distinguish some 150 sounds that make up human speech. These miracles came with you as pre-programmed behavioral instructions. As you evolved and grew, you learned and honed additional behaviors that dramatically sculpted your molecules, neurons and structural development. Each biological adjustment in turn affected who you are and what you feel, think, say and do.
How Your Brain Processes Thought
Your awesome brain is primarily made of water, fat and protein. No two brains are the same, and your brain is not the same moment to moment. Your brain hemispheres differ in size and distribution of gray and white matter, chemistry and structure. The very structure of your brain is influenced by how you use it. Everything you create begins as a conscious or subconscious thought manifested in your neurology. Every instant, your brain electrochemical alters neurons and their countless links. Puberty, pregnancy, aging, past events and memory all cause structural brain function changes. Your internal and external environment sends a message to your cells. The cells, receptors and their ligands then modify according to the information received and every modification affects your emotion and physiology. A cell and its modifications influence other cells.
The Mind/Body Love Connection
Ever notice how your heart beats rapidly and your breathing changes when you are excited, angry or in love? Have you observed how your thoughts turn you on or off sexually? Consider how depression makes you feel physically rotten, super sensitive, or numb and how happiness makes you free, easy and more vital.
Emotion is "e-motion" or "energy in motion." Each conscious or subconscious emotion is the result of an intricate biochemical action inside yourself that then inspires the next thing you feel. What you think emanates from inside your bio-computer. So does what you choose to do. In other words, what you do and how you feel is biologically intertwined.
What you see, hear, smell, taste, feel and intuit is received in within a millisecond and placed into your memory. This, in turn, affects your decisions, feelings and imagination and colors what next you see, hear, smell, taste, feel and intuit. Poor memory, the inability to concentrate, sleeplessness, nervousness and headaches may be sign posts of an energy breakdown. Physical environment affects your energy. Breathing stale air in a poorly ventilated room can make you feel mentally sluggish. Physical indigestion can cause mental depression. Conversely, depression can cause illness and illness can cause depression. Arthritis-like symptoms, digestive problems, (gastric ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, constipation, diarrhea, sinus problems) headaches (migraines) difficult breathing (upper respiratory infections asthma), heart palpitations, dizziness, arthritis, fibromyalgia, shingles and chronic fatigue result from, contribute to and activate depressing changes in brain chemistry.
Wisdom Weighs Heavy On The Mind
The average brain weighs approximately three pounds, or 51 ounces. You can figure out the weight of your brain by multiplying your weight by .01. Most of us lose about 4% of brain weight per decade. However, the smarter you are, the more elaborate the network between cells and the more your brain weighs. In a University of California study of 11 gifted peoples' brains, Albert Einstein had four times more oligodendroglia (glial or brain cells) than any other and some "childlike" smoothness not usually seen in adults! The visual cortex in the brain of someone with a photographic mind is twice the thickness of a "regular" brain. Size may not matter when it come to brain matter. An elephant's brain is about 4 times bigger than yours, and its body can weigh nearly 100 times more. A squirrel's brain is relatively larger than yours.
NEURONS (also called brain cells or nerve cells)
The number of possible nerve interactions in your body exceeds the particles of matter in the known universe. Neurons are the basic unit of your nervous system and transmit billions of messages per second. These messages allow you to collect, integrate, send and store data and enhance or inhibit thoughts, feelings, behavior and bodily function. Neurons communicate electrically and chemically and constantly change and modify themselves. Neuro-peptide receptors (of your nucleus-of-barrington) process, filter, switch and modify sensory input (in-formation). Dark in color, neurons cluster and appear gray. That's where we get the notion of gray matter.
To date, science has counted more than one hundred billion neurons. The quantity is so vast that new numbers bigger than a zillion like petabytes, exabytes, yottabytes and zenabytes have been invented. To get idea of how vast these numbers are; an exabytes would be all the words ever uttered by everyone who ever lived! read more›
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