Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (9 page)

The science of the mind-body connection, or psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), helps explain how the circumstances of our lives can affect our bodies. PNI and related research show that the hormonal and neu rological events within the body and the subtle electromagnetic fields around and within the body form a crucial link between cultural wounding, which we think of as “psychological” and “emotional,” and the gynecological or other problems women have, which we think of as “physical.”

Many women who’ve survived sexual abuse, for example, divorce themselves from their bodies. Some experience themselves in their bodies only from the neck up. As one of my patients with continual men strual spotting said, “I don’t want to think about anything below my waist. I hate that part of my body. I wish that part of me would just go away.” This was an important understanding for her; it indicated where she needed to take a step toward healing. Her menstrual spotting continually drew her attention back to a disowned part of her body that needed healing. An associate of mine sometimes has patients draw pictures of themselves. She told me of a patient with chronic pelvic pain who drew a self-portrait only from the waist up. My associate pointed out to this woman that maybe her pelvis, which she was leaving out, was using pain to try to get her attention.

If the science of the mind-body connection helps explain how our emotional and psychological wounding becomes physical, it also sup ports our ability to heal from those conditions. All distress, all healing of distress, and all creation of health are simultaneously physical, psy chological, emotional, and spiritual.

Up until fairly recently, scientists believed that information was passed linearly in the nervous system from nerve to nerve, just like in electrical wiring. But now we know that our body organs com municate directly with the brain and vice versa through chemical messengers known as neuropeptides, the release of which can be triggered by our thoughts and emotions. It used to be believed that receptor sites for neuropeptides were located only in the body’s endocrine and immune system cells, as well as in nerve cells. Now we know that body organs such as the kidney and bowel also have receptor sites for these so-called brain chemicals. It’s the same with blood cells and all immune system cells. These chemicals are part of the way in which our feelings directly affect our physical bodies.

Not only do our physical organs contain receptor sites for the neurochemicals of thought and emotion, but our organs and immune system
can
themselves manufacture these same chemicals
. What this means is that our entire body feels and expresses emotion—all parts of us “think” and “feel.” It is well documented, for example, that the gut makes more neurotransmitters than the brain.
⁷
Moreover, white blood cells produce morphine-like pain-relieving substances, and those cells in turn contain receptor sites for the same substances. Thus we each have the ability to modulate pain without medication by virtue of the mind-body connection.

Herbert Benson, M.D., of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, believes that the gas nitric oxide is the key to the power of the placebo effect. The positive and hopeful emotions a patient feels when she’s taking a medication she thinks might be beneficial trigger an increase in nitric oxide in her body, and the higher levels of nitric oxide in turn have a positive effect on her health—even if the medication contains no active ingredients. The effect of nitric oxide is experienced throughout the entire body instantaneously. Nitric oxide is also associated with lower blood pressure. Benson further suggests that higher levels of nitric oxide molecules in the brain can trigger yearnings that are linked with profound spiritual experiences.

Clearly the uterus, ovaries, and breasts are also profoundly influenced by nitric oxide and all the other neurochemicals of thoughts and emotion, which include hormones. The ovaries and adrenals are primary sites of hormone production. They, along with the uterus, vagina, and breasts, are also loaded with hormone receptor sites to receive messages from the brain, immune system, and other organs. It’s easy, then, to understand that when we are sad, our female organs “feel” sad and their functions are affected. And when we are happy, our female organs respond in kind.

Our thoughts, emotions, and brains communicate directly with our immune, nervous, and endocrine systems and with the organs of our bodies. Moreover, although these bodily systems are conventionally studied and viewed as separate, they are, in fact, aspects of the
same
system. If the uterus, the ovaries, the white blood cells, and the heart all make the same chemicals as the brain makes when it thinks, then
where in the body is the mind
? The answer is,
the mind is located throughout the body
and even beyond.
⁸
In fact, an extensive body of research on prayer has documented that our minds are nonlocal and have profound effects at a distance from our bodies.
⁹

Our entire concept of “the mind” needs to be expanded considerably.
The mind can no longer be thought of as being confined to the brain or to the
intellect; it exists in every cell of our bodies.
Every thought we think has a biochemical equivalent. Every emotion we feel has a biochemical equivalent. One of my colleagues says, “The mind is the space between the cells.” So when the part of your mind that is your uterus talks to you, through pain or excessive bleeding, are you prepared to listen to it?

When I asked a married thirty-five-year-old lawyer who had a sudden onset of bleeding between her periods what was going on in her life, she bristled. “I think this problem is medical,” she said. By that, she meant that the problem was purely physical and was not related in any meaningful way to the rest of her life. I gently explained to her that I would have asked her the same question had she broken her leg, and I pointed out that all symptoms are “physical.” My patient then calmed down and told me the truth: Recently she had had an extramarital affair and was feeling guilty, and she was terrified that she had acquired a sexually transmitted disease. Her irregular bleeding had started soon after her affair began. This additional history enabled me to give her better and more appropriate medical care, while she learned that she didn’t have to separate herself into unrelated parts.

One of my patients went to see a biofeedback therapist about shoulder pain caused by chronic muscle tension. While she was learning to relax the muscles of her shoulder, she noticed that her muscle tension increased whenever she was thinking certain thoughts. One of these thoughts was of being spanked as a child. Another was of her husband’s ill health and its possible implications for her. On the other hand, when she thought of the positive aspects of her life, her muscle tension lessened. She came to see that her fears and beliefs were encoded in her body. Through biofeedback, she learned that her muscle tissue had feelings, thoughts, and memories that were part of her body’s wisdom.

The mind and the soul, which permeate our entire body, are much vaster than the intellect can possibly grasp. Our inner guidance comes to us first through our feelings and body wisdom—not through intel lectual understanding. When we search for inner guidance with the intellect only—as though it exists outside of ourselves and our own deepest knowing—we get stuck in the search, and our inner guidance is effectively silenced. The intellect works best
in service
to our intu ition, heart, inner guidance, soul, God, or higher power—whichever term we choose for the spiritual energy that animates life. Once we have acknowledged that we are
more
than our intellect and that guidance is available to us from the universal mind, we have accessed our inner healing ability. As William James once said, “The power to move the world is in the subconscious mind.”

FEMININE INTELLIGENCE:
HOW THOUGHTS BECOME EMBODIED

Women have the capacity to know with their bodies and with their brains at the same time, in part because their brains are set up in such a way that the information in both hemispheres and in the body is highly available to them when they communicate.

In school I was taught to distrust my own thinking process because it never fit with the dualistic way in which education is set up. On a multiple-choice test, for example, I could always find a reason why almost every choice given might be correct. I could always see “the big picture,” and I could see how everything was related to everything else. In going over my wrong answers, my teachers often told me, “You’re reading too much into it. The correct answer is obvious.” It was not always obvious to me. Now that I have learned to appreciate how inti mately my thoughts, emotions, and physical body are connected, I have begun to reclaim my full intelligence. It is staggering to realize how many highly intelligent women think that they are stupid because so much of their intelligence has been undervalued. Linda Metcalf, Ph.D., says, “Women think that their intellects are a male construct sitting inside their heads.”

I have learned that like many women, I speak and think in a multimodal, spiral way, using both hemispheres of my brain and the in telligence of my body all at the same time. Anthropologist and visionary writer Jean Houston describes the evolution of multimodal thinking like this: “For centuries, women stood in their caves, stirring the soup with one hand, bouncing the baby on one hip, and kicking the woolly mammoth out the door with the other foot.” We evolved having to focus on more than one task at a time— understanding innately the consequences of our actions, not just for ourselves but for our entire family unit or tribe.

It makes sense that this way of thinking would evolve in the gender that had to balance so many different demands and responsibilities, and that the structure of women’s brains would support this multimodal, multitasking approach to life.
¹⁰
In most women, the corpus callosum, the part of the brain that connects the right and left hemispheres, is thicker than it is in most men. That is, male and female brains are “wired” differently. Men characteristically use mostly their left hemispheres to think and to communicate their thoughts; their reasoning is usually linear and solution-oriented. It “gets to the point.” Women, in contrast, recruit more areas of the brain when they communicate than do most men, and they use both the right and the left sides of their brain simultaneously. Because the right hemisphere has richer connections with the body than the left hemi sphere, women have more access to their body wisdom when speaking and thinking than do most men.

This doesn’t mean that male brains inherently lack this capacity. It’s just that for centuries they haven’t been encouraged to develop it. For the last five thousand years, Western society has believed that a linear, left-brain approach is the superior mode of communication and that a woman’s more embodied way of speaking and thinking is inferior and less evolved. Anne Moir and David Jessel, the authors of the book
Brain Sex,
point out, “Men, it seems, are the sex who say the first thing that comes into their heads, while women communicate by calling on a much wider repertoire. Taken all together the evidence paints a comprehensive picture of a busier and wider interchange of information in the female brain.”
¹¹
Unfortunately, instead of developing embodied thinking deliberately, as an inherent strength, we learn to reject and denigrate this capacity.

In a dialogue with sociolinguist Deborah Tannen, Robert Bly said, “Words are in one lobe of the brain and feelings in the other. So that means,” Bly continued, “that women have an ability to mingle those much quicker than men can. Women have a superhighway going on there. And, as Michael Meade remarked, men have this little crooked country road, and you’re lucky if a word gets over.”
¹²

My ex-husband used to say to me, “Can’t you say that in fewer words? Can’t you get to the point?” This expresses a stereotypically male communication style. When I think or speak, I use language to express the richness of what goes on in my mind and body while I’m com municating my thoughts. I like to hang out with language and wander around in it. I often come to understand how I’m feeling by talking about it for a while, letting my thoughts arise from my whole body and whole brain before speaking them. Processing ideas verbally or writing down my thoughts helps me to know more of myself.

In contrast, my ex-husband used as few words as possible. He and men like him want to get to the point, the product or solution, and everything has to have one, otherwise it is not worth talking about. Most men view and experience the
process
of getting to the point as te dious and worthless. Dr. George Keller, a colleague in holistic medicine, says, “When men talk, they leave out the verbs. When women talk, they leave out the nouns.” Alluding to quantum physics, which teaches that particles and waves are simply different aspects of matter, Dr. Keller ob serves, “Men speak particle language. Women speak wave language.”

Multimodal, embodied thinking makes it possible for most women to go to the grocery store without a list and still remember everything they came to buy, plus other stuff that they suddenly remember they need. When my children were little and I was doing a lot of surgery, I was able to do the surgery and simultaneously know what my kids were doing and that I needed to pick up paper towels and bread on the way home. My husband, on the other hand, was able to hold only one or two thoughts and tasks in his mind simultaneously—and often forgot what he was going to the store for in the first place.

It’s very healing and empowering for women to understand the full ness of their intelligence, appreciating the crucial role that inner guid ance, intuition, and emotions all play in feminine intelligence. Once we embrace and celebrate these aspects of ourselves, our perception changes. We can then celebrate the differences between male and female intelligence without making men, or ourselves, wrong or inferior.