Linking Science and the Brain with the Mind

Linking Science and the Brain with the Mind



Dr. Caroline Leaf and Author of Battlefield of the Mind Joyce Meyer


Joyce Meyer Audio Podcast: Your Brian and You - Part 1 (minutes 1 through 8)






Dr. Leaf: I’ve spent time teaching people what actually happens when information is going into the brain and as you listen and process a thought. I teach people you can not only control the learning side, improve learning skills and knowledge management, but it’s also the mind issues, because if your minds not right you can’t learn anyway. You can’t do anything.






Joyce Meyer: One of the greatest revelations to me, in the very beginning of trying to get some things straightened out in my life, was to discover I could actually control my thoughts. There are so many people who don’t even think that is an option. I was in my 30’s when I first starting learning this. All those years, I just thought whatever came into my head. I didn’t have any idea I could do anything about it. I was abused in my childhood so naturally, I started out with a lot of really negative fearful thought patterns. And those were the ideas controlling me and I just thought that was my life.






It was so eye opening to me when I began to find out that my thoughts were affecting my emotions and my relationships and how I felt about myself and they even affected my body. Tell me from your standpoint scientifically: How do your thoughts affect your life and your body?






Dr. Leaf: What you say is so perfect, people think they are controlled. One of the big areas of research that I’m very involved with at the moment is the whole concept of free will. And what I teach people to understand is that a thought is a real thing. So many people think that a thought is something out there, they can’t feel it, they can’t touch it. But it’s actually a real thing. As you’re thinking you’re actually building memories in your brain.






The thoughts in your brain look like trees. The interesting thing is if it’s a good thought, a good emotional thought, if it’s based on something positive, the pattern is actually going to look different than a negative thought – or Toxic Thoughts. I call them Toxic Thoughts, they will actually effect your entire body, they look different and are formed by a different process, formed with different chemicals and combinations of chemicals.






The Toxic Thought looks different to a Good Thought. That Toxic Thought has little thorns on it. If you imagine your thought to look like a tree; the nerve cells in your brain, your memories, literally look like branches on trees if they are healthy. But the Toxic one grows little thorns. That is due to the whole chemical process that occurs, you pick up the wrong amount of chemicals and it grows little thorns on the memory.






They are pockets of chemicals you can actually see in research.






It changes the whole electrically magnetic state of the whole memory so it looks different. And what it does – you had said it affects your whole body, which is so true – every time you revisit that Toxic Thought, it will then cause those little thorns to squirt out their poison of excess chemicals, which will then flow through your body and make you sick.






There is a very definite route that those chemicals actually flow. First they go to your heart, and life is in your blood, so it starts choking the heart, going through the immune system and breaking down the defense.






So you talk about the battle. What I’ve been studying is the little strategies that the soldiers follow and what they actually go through chemically and scientifically through your body. There is an ABSOLUTE Battle Plan, that happens in your body.






Every thought you think has incredible immense effect on your body, it changes your whole wiring. I mean within 4 days you can change you’re whole Nero-circuitry. As you listen to this.






Joyce Meyer: So when you have all these little thorns and these negative thought patterns, you see this, and say “things have to change.” For me, I started to read the word of God and saw that one of the first things I need to do was to renew my mind. That is the plan I started to do. I read how you have to RENEW your MIND *DAILY*. So it’s an on-going process and it’s so KEY to have the good life that Jesus planned for us to have.






[Reading anything about love will help you realize the same things]






So here I had this negative life and I had thorns all over the place, inside. How long does it start to take to begin to reverse that process?






Dr. Leaf: It takes 4 days to start taking the thorns off of the trees, it actually takes 21 days to establish a memory without the thorns and then you grow a new memory over the old one. So I use the example, one of the main things you’ve got to do to begin to get the thorns off is forgiveness. Accept and acknowledge the fact you’re actually hanging on to that Toxic Thought. Realize you are not supposed to have fear, pain, you aren’t supposed to feel anxiety, frustration. Begin to let go of them. When you start releasing the pain the chemical structure starts to change and dissolve.