Switch on Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health (8 page)

for obesity to express too strongly or the genes that control

stress reactions to switch off, shortening your life as well as

decreasing your quality of life and your peace (soul harmony)

and happiness. We also are responsible for our own choices

and can apply the work of the cross and confess, repent, and

eliminate future sinful choices.

In addition, our choices (the epigenetic signals) alter the

expression of genes (the epigenetic markers), which can then

be passed on to our children and grandchildren, ready to

predispose them before they are even conceived. So our bad

choices become their bad predispositions.

The negative alternative is that you can choose to accept the

predispositions and live into them, but don’t forget that you have

to take responsibility for that as well. This very act of accepting

the predispositions and living into them becomes the signal that

activates you to become
a fat and yellow agouti mouse
. Just

the addition of a methyl group signal changes the life of the

offspring of the agouti mice. In the same way, the addition of

a positive attitude signal or a memorized and meditated-upon

Scripture signal can change the expression of the gene.

What your mind creates only your mind can take away.

Scientific Evidence of God’s Grace

Another scientific piece of evidence of God’s grace can

be seen in a structure in the middle of the brain called the

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Your Choices Change Your Brain

hippocampus
. This seahorse-shaped structure, which pro-

cesses incoming information, facilitates the conversion of

short-term memory to long-term memory, deals with spatial

memory, and also helps control our stress response.

Scientists have found that in a loving and nurturing envi-

ronment, acetyl epigenetic markers increase on the genes in

the hippocampus that keep us calm and peaceful. The more

acetyl markers, the more these
peace genes
in the hippocam-

pus express and dampen the stress response. A toxic choice

produces the opposite effect: The acetyl markers reduce

and the methyl markers increase, causing us to have less

peace.4

So the methyl markers switch off genetic expression and

acetyl markers switch on genetic expression. The “switching

on or off” is based on the signal, and we can choose to switch.

Sometimes we want to switch off—for example switching off

the obesity genes in the agouti mice and human research.

But we want to switch on good genetic expression—for ex-

ample the stress control gene in the hippocampus. Whether

we switch on happiness, peace, and good health or switch on

anxiety, worry, and negativity, we are changing the physical

substance of the brain.

The Brain Reorganizes throughout Our Lifetime

In 1930, Santiago Ramón y Cajal5 wrote that the nerve path-

ways are fixed and immutable, but now scientists know that

the brain has the amazing ability to reorganize throughout

life, changing its structure and function through mental expe-

rience alone. If the brain can get worse by constantly focusing

on the problem, then the brain can get better by understand-

ing how to eliminate and replace the problem.6

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Inside the Brain

fornix

corpus callosum

caudate

septum pelucidum

(part of basal ganglia)

dura mater

stria terminalis

ACG

hypothalamus

PFC

thalamus

insula & claustrum

(deep to lateral sulcus)

pineal gland

mamillary body

amygdala

basal forebrain

(contains septal nuclei)

hippocampus

pituitary gland

entorhinal cortex

(surrounds

CRF

hippocampus)

sight

cerebellum

ACTH

midbrain

nerves

pons

medulla

hear

smell

reticular activating system

(inside brain stem)

taste

touch

heart

spinal cord

adrenaline

adrenal glands

corticosteroids

kidneys

emotional

black hole

spinal nerves

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Your Choices Change Your Brain

The Neuroplasticity Paradox

So neuroplasticity can operate for us as well as against us,

because whatever we think about the most will grow—this

applies to both the positive and negative ends of the spec-

trum. For example, in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),

neuroplasticity has worked against the person. He or she

has experienced a crushing mental event that fundamentally

changed the meaning of their life and altered the brain struc-

turally because of the neuroplasticity of the brain. During the

trauma, the person’s mind was not thinking in soul harmony

(Col. 3:15 AMP), so consequently he or she did not choose,

process, or react correctly to the event—making the thought

that became wired in a jumbled toxic mess. As the person

relives the event over and over, it wires itself deeper into the

mind, becoming a main filter and disrupting normal function.7

Flashbacks—reliving the bad memory many times a day—

strengthen the circuit, making it worse and more debilitating.

We Can Use Neuroplasticity to Renew Our Minds

How do we fix this? In part 2, I will explain this in depth

and supply a simple explanation and a chart of my theory in

chapter 8, “The Geodesic Information Processing Theory,”8

upon which my approach is based. The overriding concept

is to apply neuroplasticity in the correct direction by rewir-

ing the event with the positive thinking of Philippians 4:8:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable,

whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever

is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything

worthy of praise, think about these things” (ESV).

Thus the person consciously chooses, preferably under

the leading of the Holy Spirit, to bring the memory into

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HOW TO SWITCH ON YOUR BRAIN

consciousness where it becomes plastic enough to actually

be changed.

This means the physical substrate of the memory becomes

weakened, vulnerable, malleable, and able to be manipulated.

The person then chooses to replace the crushing mental event

with the implanted word of God, which saves the soul (James

1:21). The person, as though an outsider looking in through a

window, will observe the toxic, traumatic memory as a weak-

ening and dying experience but, at the same time, observe

the new healthy experience that is growing. In practicing this

daily, the person wires the healthy new thoughts ever more

deeply into the mind.

Neurons that don’t get enough signal (the rehearsing of the

negative event) will start firing apart, wiring apart, pulling out,

and destroying the emotion attached to the trauma. In addition,

certain chemicals like oxytocin (bonds and remolds chemicals),

dopamine (increases focus and attention), and serotonin (in-

creases feelings of peace and happiness) all start flowing around

the traumatic thoughts, weakening them even more. This all

helps to disconnect and desynchronize the neurons; if they stop

firing together, they will no longer wire together. This leads

to wiping out or popping those connections and rebuilding

new ones. I explain the practical side of this process in part 2.

More Encouragement from Science

There are even more encouraging pieces of information about

neuroplasticity. For example, Universalists believe logic and

language are learned at fixed ages, and if you pass that fixed

age, you can’t learn. Plasticity research proves them wrong.9

People with learning disabilities can rewire their brains to

perceive sound better.10 My own patients with brain injuries

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Your Choices Change Your Brain

and learning and emotional disabilities, as well as the teachers

and students I have worked with in schools, showed significant

changes when they did the mental training in my Switch On

Your Brain technique.11

The media creates incorrect perceptions of scientific dis-

coveries. They may cover a study that sensationalizes that our

brain does x, therefore you will do x, as though you cannot

think for yourself. This is so wrong. Those who believe you are

just your brain believe you have no free will. The active mind

changes the brain; the brain is the passive part of existence.

As we think, we are making the brain fire in different patterns

and combinations, and whenever we make the brain fire differ-

ently, we change the brain. Epigenetics research demonstrates

that our lifestyles and environment can transform the way

our genes are expressed, and evidence from this field shows

us we are not being controlled by the structure of our brains.12

One brain generates more energy (electrical impulses) in

one day than all the cell phones on the planet.13 So we have

the power to make changes; we do not have a spirit of fear,