Power Up Your Brain

Neuroscience and Enlightenment

David Perlmutter, M.D.,
and Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D.

Enlightenment. This elusive state has been the focus of some of the greatest minds throughout history. Thousands of people have dedicated their lives to its pursuit. We see images of monks sitting peacefully on meditation cushions…nuns kneeling in prayer…shamans living in the wilds of the Amazon. And while these representations of enlightened individuals may be accurate, they also imply that this desired state is reserved for a privileged few.

We believe, however, that enlightenment is available to all those who are willing to dedicate the time and effort necessary to attain it. Finding this state does not require a lifestyle that is incompatible with surviving in the modern Western world. And the rewards of enlightenment are not limited to the attainment of spiritual knowledge enjoyed by the contemplative mystic. They can also be reaped in the discovery of DNA sequencing by the innovative scientist, the preparation of a mouth-watering meal by the inventive chef, or the creation of an inspiring masterpiece by the insightful artist. We believe that enlightenment promises everyone the possibility for innovation, extraordinary creativity, and inner peace.

We also believe that the search for enlightenment can be accelerated by following a practice focused on awakening the power of the higher brain. When our higher brain functions are engaged, we have the potential to change our lives both spiritually and biologically. But to achieve this desired state of consciousness, we must not only master ancient enlightenment techniques but also restore the brain’s health at the cellular level. These two goals are inextricably linked.

Your Optimal Brain

Anger, fear, jealousy, greed, and worry, while commonplace, undermine our inner peace and sense of self-worth. But even on a weekend meditation retreat or during a walk in the quiet and stillness of the woods, the mind continues to chase thoughts, compose to-do lists, and fret about activities not yet completed and situations not yet resolved. Hard as we might try to sit quietly and empty our mind of thoughts, it continues to gravitate toward the unfinished business of our past.

Power Up Your Brain helps you understand why, instead of operating at its optimal level of functioning, your brain instead relies on the neural networks created by the prehistoric, survival-at-all-costs brain regions—the reptilian brain and the limbic brain. It also shows you how to overcome the toxic emotions of your old wiring, the conditioning based on negative experiences from the past. By healing that prehistoric brain, you engage newer, higher, more evolved brain structures—the neocortex and, specifically, the prefrontal cortex—which will help you eliminate fear, poverty mentality, and anger from your life. This is done through the creation of new neural networks in your brain.

Until quite recently, most brain researchers held that, even though the brain is malleable in the early years of a child’s development, the window of opportunity for changing its wiring slams shut by around the age of seven years. While it is true that the brain of a fetus or a young child is like a dry sponge, with the potential to soak up all the knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors it needs to survive in its new worldly environment, the premise that the brain can no longer be rewired past a certain early age has now been upended.

Leading-edge neuroscience research now confirms that we can grow new brain cells and change the actual networks in the brain. Once we provide our neurons with specific nutrients lacking in our everyday diet and embark on stimulating new activities, we can establish new neural networks that help transform limiting beliefs and behaviors and recapture long-lost feelings of joy, optimism, and tranquility. To achieve these benefits, you must start by learning how the brain functions and how your mitochondria have become compromised.

A Healthy Body

In the language of neuroscience, enlightenment is the condition of optimal mitochondrial and brain functioning that allows us to experience both well-being and inner peace and the urge to create and innovate. Mitochondria are the energy factories at work within your cells. They impact your moods, your vitality, your aging process, and even how you might die. They are also in charge of the elimination of old cells and replacement with new cells, a function that occurs automatically, without your conscious awareness. The mitochondria are influenced by the foods you eat, the amount of calories you ingest, the extent to which you exercise your body, and the inclusion of specific nutrients.

Power Up Your Brain will give you access to keys encoded in your mitochondrial DNA that, until now, have been password-protected due to an inability to reverse the damage caused by free-radical damage to the brain. When you unlock this code, you break free of the illness-ridden journey that many Westerners suffer from cradle to grave. With your mitochondria restored, your cells will be able to express the genes that promote brain health and physical longevity, and you won’t have to continue perpetuating the ills and traumas of your family of origin.

The Power Up Your Brain Program

Blue Zones are regions on the planet where ten times more people reach the age of 100 compared with people in the United States. Dan Buettner, a National Geographic writer and researcher, wrote a book about this phenomenon and reported that these individuals have certain traits in common, including calorie reduction (they eat 25 percent less than what you would need to feel full), avoiding meat and processed foods, and living lives that have meaning and purpose.1 Buettner cites a Danish scientific study of twins that indicates that genes dictate less than 25 percent of a person’s health and longevity. The remaining 75 percent is determined by lifestyle factors: what you eat, how you love and are loved, how much you exercise, and how you discover meaning in your life.

Lifestyle factors actually modify our genetic expression by shutting off the genes that predispose us to malignancy and disease. Our mitochondria regulate the switching on or off of these genes. Therefore, to live long and live well, we need optimally functioning mitochondria.

At our facilities—the Center for Energy Medicine in Los Lobos, Chile, and the Perlmutter Health Center in Naples, Florida—we help our clients restore their mitochondria to repair their brains. Our protocols utilize intravenous glutathione and hyperbaric oxygen to optimize mitochondrial function as well as foods and supplements that help undo the damage done to the brain by years of stressful living. We find that mitochondria, the mind, and the brain respond extraordinarily quickly to these interventions. Then, through shamanic meditation practices, we can heal from toxic emotions and discover inner peace.

But you do not have to take part in one of our seven-day intensives to accomplish this. In Power Up Your Brain, we present a program to help you do the same things: heal your mitochondria and rewire your brain for peace and joy instead of suffering. We combine two complementary strategies: brain-specific nutrients used in conjunction with fasting and enlightenment practices. The neuronutrients recommended by Dr. Perlmutter work to repair regions in your brain that have been affected by stress, psychological trauma, and degenerative brain disease to help grow new brain cells and turn on the genes responsible for longevity, improved immunity, and enhanced brain function. And the enlightenment practices pioneered by Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., help awaken brain regions that allow peace, compassion, innovation, and joy to arise naturally. Together, they will enable you to establish new neural networks for joy and well-being.

Using this program, you can develop the gifts once ascribed only to a privileged few. And in the process, you’ll have the chance to gain other health benefits, including a reduced risk of devastating brain diseases, cancer, heart disease, and Parkinson’s; elimination of debilitating mood swings; the breaking of unhealthy emotional and behavior patterns; the overcoming of painful memories and past traumas; a powerful clarity of thought; and the potential for maximum human life span; all without the use of drugs. When we repair our brains and heal our toxic emotions, we move toward a state of personal health and well-being. Then, we can bring forth the qualities attributed to enlightened beings: inner peace, wisdom, compassion, joy, creativity, and a new vision of the future.

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Brain & Enlightenment

So with all this expanded brain power, what are we striving for? In the East, enlightenment has traditionally been associated with qualities such as generosity, compassion, peaceful acceptance, and an experience of oneness with all creation. In the fiercely individualistic West, our rather vague notion of enlightenment suggests an acceptance of the world as it is, or of discovering how we can change it for the better. Enlightenment for us also implies the common longing for novelty, exploration, and creativity, as personified by the explorers who venture into space.

If we take the Eastern qualities of enlightenment out of their religious context and place them in the realm of biological science, we find that they are attributes associated with the activation of the prefrontal cortex—the newest part of the human brain. On functional MRI scans, people who meditate regularly are shown to have developed brains that are wired differently than the brains of people who don’t meditate. They are better able to remain calm and stress-free, live in peace, and practice compassion. Curiously, their prefrontal cortex is the most active region in their brain during the states they describe as samadhi, or enlightenment. His Holiness the Dalai Lama describes enlightenment as “a state of freedom not only from the counterproductive emotions that drive the process of cyclic existence, but also from the predispositions established in the mind by those afflictive emotions.” The Dalai Lama is suggesting that enlightenment is a state of freedom from destructive emotions and from the limiting beliefs and repetitive behaviors created by these emotions.

Generosity and compassion arise only when the prefrontal cortex is able to throttle back the more prehistoric regions of the brain. Yet, for the prefrontal cortex to create functional pathways for joy and peace, the entire body and brain need to be healthy, fed with the proper nutrients, and trained with an inner discipline. We must heal our bodies and minds to empower the prefrontal cortex—the new brain, which is biologically programmable for bliss, extraordinary longevity, peace, and regeneration. For too long, this brain region has been kept offline, silenced by the same forces—scarcity, violence, and trauma—from which it promises to deliver us.

Once this new region in the brain is brought online, brain synergy is possible. Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Engineers are familiar with how synergy operates. The tensile strength of stainless steel, for example, is nearly ten times greater than the tensile strength of iron, even though stainless steel is basically iron with a minute amount of carbon added to it. Both carbon and iron, by themselves, are brittle and flake easily. Yet, when combined, they make an extraordinarily strong material.

Brain synergy signifies a neurocomputer whose circuits are all turned on, tuned in, and operating collaboratively, each region attending to its functions—much as the heart attends to circulating blood while the lungs attend to respiration—creating a system that cannot be defined or even described by its component parts.

Attaining Synergy

People in the East say the path to brain synergy is through the practice of meditation. Shamans use the term clear perception. In yoga, it is called samadhi, the highest stage of meditation, oneness with the universe. Regardless of the term used to describe the process, the challenge is to dis-identify with your limited sense of self that was created by destructive emotions.

Think of a lake. When the waters of the lake are still, it reflects everything around it perfectly. You see pine trees on the other side or a rising moon as mirror images. But when even the slightest breeze crosses the lake, the surface reflects only itself. It, in effect, says, “Look at me.” Similarly, when your mind is disrupted by uninvited thoughts or emotions or when it is distracted by television or a barrage of commercial advertising or social gossip or trivial banter, it removes itself from connection with the greater universe. It interrupts your deep, innate desire to perceive the grand mystery of creation—and be part of it. Shamans believe that, to interact with the vast information fields of the biosphere, you must enter a state of clear perception. Your mind must be at peace in order to perceive the true nature of the world and not merely the reflection of your own below-the-surface drama created by your destructive emotions.

A teaching story from the North American Plains Indians tells of a young man who comes to his grandfather and says, “There are two wolves inside of me. One wants to kill and destroy, and the other one wants to make peace and bring beauty. Which one will win, Grandfather?” The old man answers, “Whichever one you feed.” Likewise, you have a choice: To feed the wolf of chaos and confusion, the wolf that devours your positive thinking, destroys your sense of self-worth, and consumes your entire being. Or to feed the wolf of inner peace that will enable your mind to become like the beautiful, reflective surface of a still lake and access the attributes and gifts of your higher brain.

Once you heal your emotional brain and create the state of brain synergy, the gifts of your prefrontal cortex will come online naturally. You will no longer need to pursue happiness through artificial means, because happiness will arise from you with ease. For the prefrontal cortex, happiness is not the result of good luck or happenstance. No, happiness is a treasure of clear perception that will be eternally yours.