To Dr. Candace Pert (author of ‘Molecules of Emotion’ and ‘Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind’), feeling good and feeling God are one in the same. You may be surprised to hear a world-renowned biophysicist talking about God, yet Candace Pert is on the vanguard of a new breed of scientists who fearlessly explore the territory where science and spirit meet.

On To Feel Go(o)d (available as 2 CD audio or Hardcover or Softcover book), Dr. Pert reveals that you are biologically hardwired for bliss—all you need to do is tap your own body’s unlimited natural capacity for living in joy and connecting to the divine.

Explaining that we all just want to know how to feel good at the end of the day, she offers info on the biophysics of pleasure: How to get the most out of your body’s neurological capacity for ecstasy; Forgiveness and your biology—why this powerful act can transfigure and heal you at a cellular level; How trauma is stored in the body, and strategies you can use to release it, and more.

Adyanshanti invites you to explore “a new world, a state of oneness” ~ an honest investigation of what you really are—and how to live once you discover it.

“Full awakening comes when you sincerely look at yourself, deeper than you’ve imagined, and question everything,” teaches Adyashanti.

available as a set of 6 CDs or a hardcover or softcover book

~Deepak Chopra, in foreword to Molecules of Emotion ~

There is a revolution taking form that is significantly influencing how the Western medical community views health and disease. Candace Pert’s contribution to this revolution is undeniable, and her professional integrity in the pursuit of scientific truth, where ever it had to take her, regardless of its personal or professional cost, underscores the feminine potential of science at its best.”

Candace Pert, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist whose extraordinary career began with her 1972 discovery of the opiate receptor. She speaks to mixed audiences of mainstream professionals, alternative practitioners and seekers of wholeness about the exciting world of biomedicine, molecular theory, and psychoneuroimmunology. As she puts it, “I do what most scientists abhor, I seek to inform, to educate and inspire all manner of people”. For Candace Pert, science is a search for truth and she is creating a new paradigm in the science arena. “The science I have come to know and love is unifying, spontaneous, intuitive, caring–a process more akin to surrender than to dominion. I have come to believe that science, at its very core, is a spiritual endeavor.”

In her groundbreaking book Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, Pert provides startling and decisive answers to the challenging questions that scientists and philosophers have pondered for centuries. By establishing the biomolecular basis for our emotions and explaining these new scientific developments in a clear and accessible way, Pert empowers us to understand ourselves, our feelings, and the connection between our minds and our bodies-or bodyminds-in ways we could never possibly have imagined before. From explaining how there is a scientific basis to popular wisdom about phenomena such as “gut feelings” to making comprehensible recent breakthroughs in cancer and AIDS research, Pert provides us with an intellectual adventure of the highest order.

In Molecules of Emotion, Pert gives us more than a story of scientific discovery. Woven into her clear explanations of the science underlying her work is the remarkable story of how, faced with personal and professional obstacles, she has grown as a woman and a mother and how her personal and spiritual development has made possible her remarkable scientific career.

Pert writes in Chapter 13, “Truth”:

The tendency to ignore our emotions is “oldthink”, a remnant of the still-reigning paradigm that keeps us focused on the material level of health, the physicality of it. But the emotions are a key element in self-care because they allow us to enter into the bodymind’s conversation. By getting in touch with our emotions, both by listening to them and by directing them through the psychosomatic network, we gain access to the healing wisdom that is everyone’s natural biological right.

And how do we do this? First by acknowledging and claiming all our feelings, not just the so-called positive ones. Anger, grief, fear–these emotional experiences are not negative in themselves; in fact, they are vital for our survival. We need anger to define boundaries, grief to deal with our losses, and fear to protect ourselves from danger. It’s only when these feelings are denied, so that they cannot be easily and rapidly processed through the system and released, that the situation becomes toxic…And the more we deny them, the greater the ultimate toxicity, which often takes the form of an explosive release of pent-up emotion. That’s when emotion can be damaging to both oneself and others, because its expression becomes overwhelming, sometimes violent.

So my advice is to express all of your feelings, regardless of whether you think they are acceptable, and then let them go…When your emotions are moving and your chemicals flowing, you will experience feelings of freedom, hopefulness, joy, because you are in a healthy, “whole” state.

The goal is to keep information flowing, feedback systems working, and natural balance maintained, all of which we can help to achieve by a conscious decision to enter into the bodymind’s conversation.

Pert goes on to explain the eight ways to use awareness and intention to tap into the psychosomatic network, in order to prevent disease and maximize health:

• Becoming conscious
• Accessing the Psychosomatic Network (psychological counseling, hypnotherapy, touch therapy, personal-growth seminars, meditation and prayer)
• Tapping into your dreams
• Getting in touch with your body (she offers an appendix on alternative manipulative and energetic therapies)
• Reducing stress (meditation, relaxation music, play and self-honesty)
• Exercise
• Eating wisely (including environment, consciousness, gratitude)
• Avoiding substance abuse

Candace Pert is currently a Research Professor at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC where she continues with AIDS research on the Peptide-T drug that shows potential for blocking the AIDS virus from entering a particular receptor to which it binds. Pert will be speaking in October at the 13th Annual National Conference” Designing and Connecting Powerful Learning Experiences” to be held at Rockhurst College in Kansas City, MO. For information, contact: Center for the Advancement of Reform in Education (816) 501-4651.

Molecules of Emotion was first published in 1997 and released in 1999 as a paperback. Current works include Psychosomatic Wellness and To Feel Go(o)d

“Your brain is not in charge.”

This revelation by Dr. Candace Pert challenges conventional science – and everyone interested in total wellness – to reconsider how our bodies think, feel, and heal. As the leading pioneer in a radical new science of life, this bestselling author and world class neuroscientist gives us an inside look at the molecular drama being staged within every cell of the human body – and a glimpse into the future of medicine. In this two-cassette series with study guide, Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind, Dr. Pert describes in her own words her extraordinary search for the grail of the body’s inborn intelligence with

Dr. Pert first came to prominence when she dazzled the scientific community with her discovery of the opiate receptor in 1972. But this breakthrough event was only the beginning of a uniquely productive – and often controversial – career.

On Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind, Dr. Pert describes her efforts over the past two decades to actually decode the “information molecules,” such as peptides and their receptors, that regulate every aspect of human physiology. Her model of how these biochemicals flow and resonate, distributing information to every cell in the body simultaneously, has unlocked the secret of how emotions literally transform our bodies – and create our health.

Easily shifting from a bench scientist’s view to a spiritual one, she relates her research to past and present mind/body topics, ranging from AIDS and cancer to the chakra system. Dr. Pert’s personal and compelling voice makes this a listening experience that is part detective story, part spiritual odyssey – and entirely irresistable. From the wisdom of the body to the wisdom of the laboratory, Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind takes listeners on a scientific adventure of the first order, escorted by this pathfinder, iconoclast, and “goddess” of neuroscience.

The CDs offer 8 everyday practices that will help you sustain a free flow of information that is the essence of a whole and healthy self. These suggestions are not merely sensible health tips but in fact are practical guidelines for owning your emotional reality. Says Pert, “The rewards of living this way will show up in every area of your experience: physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. It is the ultimate practice.”

(3 CDs (2 hours, 30 minutes), 1 Study guide (20 page) from Sounds True)

The following is an excerpt from the accompanying study guide

Molecules of Emotion

” The opiate receptor is a molecule on the surface of our cells. When morphine or opium enters our bodies, its molecules travel in the fluid surrounding the cells and are attracted to the opiate receptors. The opiate and receptor molecules bind together, transferring information into the cell through the receptor’s ‘roots’. The cell responds by experiencing bliss.

Dr. Pert found that the opiate receptors, while densely concentrated in the limbic brain, also occur in every other part of the body. The implication is that the emotion – in this case, bliss – is not generated by the brain, but by the cells themselves. Since these receptor-bearing cells reside all over our bodies, the blissful experience occurs in the blood, organs, muscles, tissue and bones at the same time as it is registered in the brain. The limbic brain transfers the information to the frontal cortex, where we become conscious of it. It is only at this point that we begin to form ideas about what we are feeling. The experience itself occurs at a preconscious, physiological level.

Every cell in our bodies is studded with hundreds of thousands of receptor molecules, each one programmed to attract and bind with a particular peptide. Because of their crucial role in guiding our bodies’ responses to inner and outer cues, these peptides have been called ‘informational substances.

Your Subconscious Mind

The cellular level, where emotions are instigated, is also where unexpressed emotions are stored. The catharsis of illness expresses the sudden, overwhelming release of information that has been trapped in our bodies. What Freud termed the ’subconscious’ mind is actually a measurable physical process. In other words, there is no ‘mind-body problem’. Your body is your subconscious mind.

The Chakra System

Dr. Pert’s work is beginning to reveal the scientific underpinnings of the chakra system. From this point of view, the chakras are ‘minibrains’: nodal points of electrical and chemical activity that receive, process, and distribute information from and to the rest of the bodymind. Physiologically, each chakra is the site of a neuronal plexus–a network of cells dense with neuropeptide transmitters. All are interdependently connected to each other, such that nourishing any one plexus enhances the effectiveness of the entire system. By the same token, trauma or neglect can manifest as a block at one or more nodal points, degrading the performance of all.

How the Chakras Interact

The activities of the physiological chakra centers constantly wax and wane in relationship to one another. In each plexus, vacant neuropeptide receptors stand ready to receive informational substances from other nodal points. When the bodymind requires any one chakra’s special genius, the plexus in that location can release neuropeptides to the other chakras, driving the activities of the entire organism. In some stressful situations, for example, digestion stops while the heart rate increases, muscles tense, perception shifts, and breathing speeds up. These changes could result from the first chakra–associated with survival–temporarily taking the lead and directing functions typically associated with the other chakra nodes. In such instances, the first chakra would act as a ‘brain’, governing certain key subconscious decisions.”