Evolve Your Brain (2007) dives deep into the human Brain and its structures. It demonstrates the power of neuroplasticity to change thinking, behavior, and biology.

Introduction: Discover the incredible power of your brain, and use it to change your life.

For most of medical history, humans misunderstood their own brains.

It was thought that the brain, like the stomach or lungs, stayed pretty much the same once it had formed. But modern neuroscience has probed the mysteries of the brain to the point where the exact opposite is now understood to be true. As the thinking organ, the brain isn’t just shaped by nature – your genetics – but also by how you nurture it. In other words, how you use your brain influences its structure and functioning.

But if you’ve ever wondered why it was so difficult to change your habits around something even when you really, really wanted to, you know that the awesome power of the brain has a downside. The more you strengthen some areas, through bad habits or recurring thoughts, the more the brain will try to stick to them – and play electrochemical tug-of-war to get you to go along.

Given the outsize role your brain plays in your perception of reality, understanding how and why it works can unlock a host of possibilities to use it wisely and well. So if you’ve never thought about what you’re thinking with, read on.

Your brain and you

Take a moment, and picture what you did this morning. Maybe even close your eyes to help you summon up the details.

Whether you slowly shuffled to make your morning brew, or sprang from bed full of energy and ready to take on the day, your brain did a lot just revving itself up into an active state. Perhaps your morning included making breakfast, grooming yourself, and getting dressed. Did you plan out your day, check emails, or chat with family?

Let’s break that all down, and consider how many remarkable things your brain is doing in the first hour of the day.

Moving from sleep into waking consciousness is a complex electrochemical process. To stand up and move, your brain processes sensory input from your environment and sends signals for muscle movement. Your visual cortex processes your journey to the bathroom even if your eyes are barely open, and your memory of previous mornings helps your brain anticipate what comes next.

You didn’t even have to think about breathing or blinking or swallowing. You didn’t focus on keeping your heart beating, your body temperature steady, or your blood circulating either. And things get even more complex when food or drink hits your system, and a flurry of chemicals called neurotransmitters are released, causing a cascade of effects from raising your blood sugar to kicking off digestion.

If you thought about the day ahead, you activated even more areas of the brain – ones that handle reasoning and decision-making. Adept at predicting the future from past experience, these areas help you make good long-term decisions. After all, you might not feel like going to work or paying bills today, but you’ve learned that not doing so can come with serious consequences.

If you woke up with challenges like pain, trauma, addiction, or mental illness, you know all too well how the brain shapes the way you experience the world. But does that make your biology or history your destiny? Not necessarily, because the brain is also incredibly adaptable.

The matter of the mind

Taking a closer look at the brain begins to unravel how all this activity is possible. If you could zoom in on a small piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand, you’d see it contained about a hundred thousand neurons, or nervous system cells. Your whole brain has over a hundred billion of these cells.

Resembling tiny trees, each separate neuron is adept at gathering information through its branches and passing it along to the next cell at incredible speeds. Electrical nerve signals travel at 250 miles per hour and jump the gaps between individual cells like a spark in a spark plug.

The neurons in the brain, numerous as they are, squish themselves into folds in the outer brain to maximize space in the skull. Neurons outside the brain can stretch up to a meter long, snaking down the spinal column and throughout the body. This is your nervous system – the interconnected web of cells that sense everything from pain to heat to when your bladder is full. They also regulate things you don’t have to notice, like your heart beating, your lungs breathing, and your gut digesting.

The human brain is pretty unique too. It’s six times larger than other mammals’ brains relative to body size. Interestingly, dolphins have a similar brain size relative to their mass, but their brains haven’t evolved much for 20 million years. Human brains took an enormous evolutionary leap forward just 25,000 years ago.

The human brain’s evolution is written in its structures. Like other animals, we have a brain stem at the top of the spinal column that controls basic life functions. Just above is the cerebellum, which controls your coordination and navigation through the environment. It’s the most active part of the brain, and it plays a big role in your emotions. It also has more neurons packed into it than any other part. If you’ve ever heard the term reptile brain, it’s because this oldest part of the brain exists in reptiles as well.

The midbrain appeared at least 150 million years ago and is sometimes called the limbic or mammalian brain because it’s present in all mammals. This is where your autonomic nervous system is located – the part that regulates things you don’t consciously control. Wrapped around the reptile brain, the midbrain contains many structures you might have heard of: the thalamus and hypothalamus, pineal and pituitary glands, as well as the amygdala, hippocampus, and basal ganglia.

It controls many of the systems we take for granted, like regulating hormone levels, blood pressure, and heart rate. Making up about one-fifth of the total brain size, it’s responsible for impulses like fight-or-flight, food-seeking, and sex drive. It’s sometimes called the chemical brain because of its outsize role in communicating through neurotransmitters – which we’ll discuss more in the next chapter.

The neocortex was the last brain area to appear – around one hundred million years ago – and continued to evolve until about 25 million years ago. The neocortex handles the most complex and sophisticated of human brain functions: what we call “consciousness.” This part of the brain is aware of itself, makes choices, and predicts outcomes. It’s the part of your brain that learns, imagines, and philosophizes.

Moving from the base of the skull outward traces biological evolution for hundreds of millions of years. And while they seem separate, they’re in a never-ending electrochemical conversation you call “reality.”

It’s all connected

So human brains developed in three increasingly sophisticated parts over the course of hundreds of millions of years, yet function as a single organ. How? Chemistry.

Along with electrical signals, chemicals known as neurotransmitters carry information through the brain. You’ve probably heard about serotonin or dopamine – two chemicals that play a big role in mood. But there are many others, and it’s these chemicals that conduct the neurological symphony that is your perception of life.

There are two fundamentally different types of neurotransmitters. The first are excitatory, because they prime neurons in the system to allow signals to travel more quickly. The most important of these is glutamate, which binds to the neurons along the gaps between cells, and lets signals jump faster across the network.

The other type is called inhibitory, because they suppress activity along the neural pathways and slow things down. The most important of these is called GABA, which stands for gamma-aminobutyric acid. When it’s present, nerve cells are less likely to pass signals along. This is an important “off-switch” neurotransmitter – just imagine if your nerve cells never stopped firing!

In fact, your autonomic nervous system, located in the midbrain, has similar on-and-off switches. The sympathetic nervous system is the one that activates during fight-or-flight responses. To help you survive, it releases adrenaline to quicken your heartbeat, increase lung capacity, and dilate your pupils to see more. It moves blood from the organs into the muscles in seconds, so you can attack or escape.

When the danger has passed, your parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and releases neurotransmitters to calm things back down. This is your rest-and-digest state; your heart rate and breathing slow, and your blood moves back into the organs so they can carry on with growth and repair. It’s that lovely feeling after a big, satisfying meal when you feel sleepy.

In modern life, though, environmental stresses usually aren’t momentary. When there’s no clear signal that the danger has passed, the fight-or-flight response sometimes doesn’t switch off. When it stays on, you may find yourself unable to rest, digest, or repair. The brilliant survival system from millions of years ago isn’t great for long-term stress management, and the effects can be pretty severe.

But all of this information about your brain can help you work with it, not against it – which is exactly what we’ll tackle next.

The evolved brain keeps evolving

As modern science has accelerated our understanding of the brain’s remarkable abilities and evolution, one thing has become extremely clear: the brain changes and adapts with use, not the other way around. In other words, the brain’s structure is shaped by how you use it. Science has dubbed this neuroplasticity.

To understand how it works, imagine you could look at brains using an MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, while they were active

If you looked at the brain of a juggler while they were juggling, you’d see that their brain areas for spatial awareness, visual motion tracking, balance, and fine motor control were all extremely active. These areas of the brain would also be larger than those of a non-juggler. Years of practice have shaped the juggler’s brain to be primed for juggling.

Watching a seasoned tennis player, you’d see spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination areas light up like a fireworks display. Observe the mind of a programmer, and you’d see pattern recognition and logic circuits aglow as they coded.

And it isn’t just healthy brains that change either. Care for stroke patients has shifted radically in recent decades to challenge the brain during recovery – and thus create new neural networks that can substitute for damaged ones. The challenged brain rewires and repairs much faster and more fully than an unchallenged one, which is why early intervention makes such a difference in outcomes.

The brain changes under more ordinary circumstances too. Anything you do a lot, from daily habits to recurring thoughts, all have an impact on the physical structures of your brain and the working of your nervous system.

For instance, meditation – even for a short period of time – can influence the parasympathetic nervous system to kick in, which lets your brain know it’s OK to rest and repair. If you’re someone who experiences chronic stress, incorporating this awareness into your nightly routine can train your brain to let the parasympathetic system take over when you switch off your screens, turn down the lights, and lower the room temperature about an hour before bed.

To spark new pathways in your brain, you have to push beyond the discomfort of breaking old habits and patterns. Anyone who’s tried to give up caffeine, smoking, or sugar can tell you about the high-stakes chemical game the brain plays on you when you try to stop. When the brain goes through dopamine withdrawal from a lack of sugar or nicotine, for instance, the whole body suffers. It’s the extreme end of discomfort. But to overcome addiction, knowing it’s a temporary effect can help empower the will to push through.

And learning to play an instrument, speak a foreign language, or tackle a new sport is challenging in a good way – it’s the very thing the brain interprets as a signal to grow. In fact, an awareness of the brain and its neuroplasticity can empower a lot of changes, as we’ll see in the last chapter.

Change yourself, and your brain follows

Real brain changes are going on inside of you right now as you read this summary. Your visual and language centers are processing these words, and your brain is organizing the information it’s taking in and testing it against older information. You’ve stored some in your memory too – if your brain decided it was important information to store. In other words, just reading with a curious mind has made your brain change.

Bringing your full awareness to this process can be a powerful tool for overcoming personal challenges and living the life you want. For instance, awareness that the brain will grow new pathways as you learn something means that, even when the process is frustrating, it’ll get better with practice.

That’s because the brain’s incredible efficiency means it’s trying to exert as little effort as possible to maintain your activities. A practiced driver can drive miles and not remember doing it. Your brain wants to use past experience to predict future outcomes – even when doing so isn’t what you want.

So now is the moment to understand that you, as a self-aware being, are capable of making the choice to shape your brain in ways you want. You can actually use your brain to outsmart itself by choosing to evolve it consciously – just like a good parent helps a child grow by challenging them and encouraging them while they master new things.

You already know how this change goes. It starts with discomfort, which begins when the brain tries to maintain its old habits and not exert the energy to form new ones. You can acknowledge this fact, and still not give in. Finding healthier brain rewards, from exercise or meditation, retrains the brain to crave these instead of fast food or mindless scrolling. Learning new things, and committing them to memory through practice, is the key to keeping the brain challenged, healthy, and active.

And when your brain and nervous system are functioning in peak condition, so are you. The healing benefits from more time to repair and recover are myriad, and the changes compound too. As your brain shapes around the challenges you set before it, the more it craves new challenges and growth.

Summary

The human brain isn’t fixed or static; it’s a constantly adapting marvel of complex evolution. With structure shaped both through genetics and use, this neuroplasticity can be harnessed to help push through the discomfort of changing behaviors, thought patterns, or habits. It can also greatly influence your health. Challenges help your brain thrive, which in turn encourages your nervous system to rest and repair – resulting in a healthier, happier you.

About the author

Joe Dispenza, D.C., studied biochemistry at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He received his Doctor of Chiropractic Degree at Life University in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Dispenza’s postgraduate training and continuing education have been in neurology, neurophysiology, and brain function. Dr. Dispenza has authored several scientific articles on the close relationship between brain chemistry, neurophysiology, and biology, and their roles in physical health. Dr. Dispenza has a chiropractic practice in Rainier, Washington.

Genres

Science, Health, Nutrition, Memory Improvement, New Thought, Self-Improvement, Self-Help, Relationships, Personal Growth, New Age, Alternative Beliefs, Compulsive Disorders, Psychology, Creativity, Personal Success, New Age Spirituality, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Neuroscience, Brain

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments p. xi
Foreword p. xv
Beginnings p. 1
On the Back of a Giant p. 31
Neurons and the Nervous System: Traveling the Original Information Superhighway p. 73
Our Three Brains and More p. 103
Wired by Nature, Changeable by Nurture p. 145
Neuroplasticity: How Knowledge and Experience Change and Evolve the Brain p. 179
Putting Knowledge and Experience into Practice p. 223
The Chemistry of Survival p. 251
The Chemistry of Emotional Addiction p. 295
Taking Control: The Frontal Lobe in Thought and in Action p. 337
The Art and Science of Mental Rehearsal p. 381
Evolving Your Being p. 419
Epilogue: A Quantum Change p. 469
Notes p. 479
Index p. 493

Overview

Joe Dispenza, D.C., has spent decades studying the human mind—-how it works, how it stores information, and why it perpetuates the same behavioral patterns over and over. In the acclaimed film What the Bleep Do We Know!? he began to explain how the brain evolves—-by learning new skills, developing the ability to concentrate in the midst of chaos, and even healing the body and the psyche.

Evolve Your Brain presents this information in depth, while helping you take control of your mind, explaining how thoughts can create chemical reactions that keep you addicted to patterns and feelings——including ones that make you unhappy. And when you do know how these bad habits are created, it’s possible not to only break these patters, but also reprogram and evolve your brain, so that new, positive, and beneficial habits can take over.

If we modify our thoughts, does our reality change?

By evolving our brain and mind, we exert a greater influence on the objective world. Author, Joe Dispenza, explores training the brain and getting the mind to work better so we become more mindful participants in observing reality.

Buddhist monks, through the use of the frontal lobe, produce a more coordinated mind by practicing inner focus. We know that learning knowledge alone will wire the brain to see things in new and unusual ways.

We also now understand that experience further shapes the brain. Think of the wine connoisseur who, with repeated moments of being present with taste and aroma, perceives what others never know exists.

Maybe the same applies on a larger scale to how we perceive our life. When we truly change our mind, we change our life.

Review/Endorsements/Praise/Award

‘Dr. Joe Dispenza delves deep into the extraordinary potential of the mind. Read this book and be inspired to change your life forever.’ —Lynne McTaggart, author of The Field and The Intention Experiment

‘A beautifully written book that provides a strong scientific basis for how the power of the human spirit can heal our bodies and our lives.’ —Howard Martin, executive vice president of HeartMath and coauthor of The HeartMath Solution

‘Joe Dispenza gives you the tools to make real changes in your life.’ —William Arntz, producer/director of What the Bleep Do We Know!?

Video and Podcast

Read an Excerpt/PDF Preview

But strange that I was not told
That the brain can hold
In a tiny ivory cell
God’s heaven or hell.
—Oscar Wilde

I invite you to have a single thought, any thought. Whether your thought was related to a feeling of anger, sadness, inspiration, joy, or even sexual arousal, you changed your body. You changed you. All thoughts, whether they be ‘I can’t,’ ‘I can,’ ‘I’m not good enough,’ or ‘I love you,’ have similar measurable effects. As you sit casually reading this page, not lifting a single finger, bear in mind that your body is undergoing a host of dynamic changes. Triggered by your most recent thought, did you know that suddenly, your pancreas and your adrenal glands are already busy secreting a few new hormones? Like a sudden lightning storm, different areas of your brain just surged with increased electrical current, releasing a mob of neurochemicals that are too numerous to name. Your spleen and your thymus gland sent out a mass e-mail to your immune system to make a few modifications. Several different gastric juices started flowing. Your liver began processing enzymes that were not present moments before. Your heart rate fluctuated, your lungs altered their stroke volume, and blood flow to the capillaries in your hands and feet changed. All from just thinking one thought. You are that powerful.

But how are you capable of performing all of those actions? We can all intellectually understand that the brain can manage and regulate many diverse functions throughout the rest of the body, but how responsible are we for the job our brain is doing as CEO of the body? Whether we like it or not, once a thought happens in the brain, the rest is history. All of the bodily reactions that occur from both our intentional or unintentional thinking unfold behind the scenes of our awareness. When you come right down to it, it is startling to realize how influential and extensive the effects of one or two conscious or unconscious thoughts can be.

For example, is it possible that the seemingly unconscious thoughts that run through our mind daily and repeatedly create a cascade of chemical reactions that produce not only what we feel but also how we feel? Can we accept that the long-term effects of our habitual thinking just might be the cause of how our body moves to a state of imbalance, or what we call disease? Is it likely, moment by moment, that we train our body to be unhealthy by our repeated thoughts and reactions? What if just by thinking, we cause our internal chemistry to be bumped out of normal range so often that the body’s self-regulation system eventually redefines these abnormal states as normal, regular states? It’s a subtle process, but maybe we just never gave it that much attention until now. My wish is that this book will offer a few suggestions for managing your own internal universe.

Since we are on the subject of attention, now I want you to pay attention, become aware, and listen. Can you hear the hum of the refrigerator? The sound of a car passing by your home? A distant dog barking? How about the resonance of your own heart beating? Just by shifting your attention in those moments, you caused a power surge and voltage flux of electricity in millions of brain cells right inside your own head. By choosing to modify your awareness, you changed your brain. Not only did you change how your brain was working moments before, but you changed how it will work in the next moment, and possibly for the rest of your life.

As you return your attention to these words on this page, you altered blood flow to various parts of your brain. You also set off a cascade of impulses, rerouting and modifying electrical currents to different brain areas. On a microscopic level, a multitude of diverse nerve cells ganged up chemically to ‘hold hands’ and communicate, in order to establish stronger long-term relationships with each other. Because of your shift in attention, the shimmering three-dimensional web of intricate neurological tissue that is your brain is firing in new combinations and sequences. You did that of your own free will, by changing your focus. You quite literally changed your mind.

As human beings, we have the natural ability to focus our awareness on anything. As we will learn, how and where we place our attention, what we place our attention on, and for how long we place it ultimately defines us on a neurological level. If our awareness is so mobile, why is it so hard to keep our attention on thoughts that might serve us? Right now, as you continue to concentrate and read this page, you might have forgotten about the pain in your back, the disagreement you had with your boss earlier today, and even what gender you are. It is where we place our attention and on what we place our attention that maps the very course of our state of being.

For example, we can, in any given moment, think about a bitter memory from our past that is only tattooed in the intimate folds of our gray matter and, like magic, it comes to life. We also have the option of attending to future anxieties and worries that do not readily exist until they are conjured up by our own mind. But to us, they are real. Our attention brings everything to life and makes real what was previously unnoticed or unreal.

Believe it or not, according to neuroscience, placing our attention on pain in the body makes pain exist, because the circuits in the brain that perceive pain become electrically activated. If we then put our full awareness on something other than pain, the brain circuits that process pain and bodily sensations can be literally turned off—presto, the pain goes away. But when we look to see whether the pain is gone for good, the corresponding brain circuits once again activate, causing us to feel the discomfort return. And if these brain circuits repeatedly fire, the connections between them become stronger. Thus by paying attention to pain on a daily basis, we are wiring ourselves neurologically to develop a more acute awareness of pain perception, because the related brain circuits become more enriched. Your own personal attention has that much of an effect on you. This could be one explanation to how pain, and even memories from our distant past, characterize us. What we repeatedly think about and where we focus our attention is what we neurologically become. Neuroscience finally understands that we can mold and shape the neurological framework of the self by the repeated attention we give to any one thing.

Everything that makes us up, the ‘you’ and the ‘me’—our thoughts, our dreams, our memories, our hopes, our feelings, our secret fantasies, our fears, our skills, our habits, our pains, and our joys—is etched in the living latticework of our 100 billion brain cells. By the time you have read this far in the book, you have changed your brain permanently. If you learned even one bit of information, tiny brain cells have made new connections between them, and who you are is altered. The images that these words created in your mind have left footprints in the vast, endless fields of neurological landscape that is the identity called ‘you.’ This is because the ‘you,’ as a sentient being, is immersed and truly exists in the interconnected electrical web of cellular brain tissue. How your nerve cells are specifically arranged, or neurologically wired, based on what you learn, what you remember, what you experience, what you envision for yourself, what you do, and how you think about yourself, defines you as an individual.

You are a work in progress. The organization of brain cells that makes up who you are is constantly in flux. Forget the notion that the brain is static, rigid, and fixed. Instead, brain cells are continually remolded and reorganized by our thoughts and experiences. Neurologically, we are repeatedly changed by the endless stimuli in the world. Instead of imagining nerve cells as solid, inflexible, tiny sticks that are assembled together to make up your brain’s gray matter, I invite you to see them as dancing patterns of delicate electric fibers in an animated web, connecting and disconnecting all the time. This is much closer to the truth of who you are.

The fact that you can read and comprehend the words on this page is due to the many interactions you have had throughout your life. Different people taught you, instructed you, and essentially changed your brain microscopically. If you accept this notion that your brain is still changing as you read these pages before you, you can easily see that your parents, teachers, neighbors, friends, family, and culture have contributed to who you are presently. It is our senses, through our diverse experiences, that write the story of who we are on the tablet of our mind. Our mastery is being the fine conductor of this remarkable orchestra of brain and mind; and as we have just seen, we can direct the affairs of mental activity.

Now, let’s change your brain a little further. I want to teach you a new skill. Here are the instructions: Look at your right hand. Touch your thumb to your pinky finger, and then touch your thumb to your index finger. Next, touch your thumb to your ring finger, and then touch your thumb to your middle finger. Repeat the process until you can do it automatically. Now do it faster and make your fingers move more rapidly without mistake. Within a few minutes of paying attention, you should be able to master the action.

To learn the finger movements well, you had to rise out of your resting state, from relaxing and reading to a heightened state of conscious awareness. Voluntarily, you perked up your brain a little; you increased your level of awareness by your intentional free will. To succeed in memorizing this skill, you also had to increase your brain’s level of energy. You turned up the dimmer switch to the light bulb in your brain that is constantly on, and it got brighter. You became motivated, and your choice to do this made your brain turn on.

Learning and performing the activity required you to amplify your level of awareness. By increasing blood flow and electrical activity to different areas in your brain, you could stay more present with what you were doing. You kept your brain from wandering to any other thought so that you could learn a new action, and that process took energy. You changed the way the arrangement of millions of brain cells fired in diverse patterns. Your intentional act took will, focus, and attention. The end result is that you are once again neurologically changed, not only by thinking a thought but also by demonstrating an action or a new skill.

In a moment, I want you to close your eyes. This time, instead of physically demonstrating the finger exercise, I want you to practice doing that same action in your mind. That is, remember what you did just moments before and mentally touch each finger the way I asked you to earlier: thumb to pinky finger, thumb to index finger, thumb to ring finger, and thumb to middle finger. Mentally rehearse the activity without physically doing it. Do it a few times in your mind, and then open your eyes.

Did you notice that while you were practicing in your mind, your brain seemed to imagine the entire sequence just as you actually did it? In fact, if you paid full attention to what you were rehearsing in your mind’s eye by focusing on mentally practicing those finger actions, you fired the same set of nerve cells in the same part of your brain as if you were actually doing them. In other words, your brain did not know the difference between your doing the action or your remembering how to do the action. The act of mental rehearsal is a powerful way you can grow and mold new circuits in your brain.

Recent studies in neuroscience demonstrate that we can change our brain just by thinking. So ask yourself: What exactly do you spend most of your time mentally rehearsing, thinking about, and finally demonstrating? Whether you consciously or unconsciously fabricate your thoughts and actions, you are always affirming and reaffirming your neurological self as ‘you.’ Keep in mind that whatever you spend your time mentally attending to, that is what you are and what you will become. My hope is that this book will help you to understand why you are the way you are, how you got this way, and what it takes to change who you are through your intentional thoughts and actions.

You may ask at this point, What is it that allows us to voluntarily modify how the brain works? Where does the ‘you’ exist, and what allows you to turn on and off different brain circuits that then make you aware or unaware? The ‘you’ I’m talking about lives in a part of the brain called the frontal lobe, and without the frontal lobe, you are no longer ‘you.’ In evolution, the frontal lobe has been the last part of the brain to develop, just behind the forehead and right above the eyes. You hold the image of yourself in the frontal lobe, and what you hold in this special place determines how you interact in the world and perceive reality. The frontal lobe controls and regulates other, older parts of the brain. The frontal lobe navigates your future, controls your behavior, dreams of new possibilities, and guides you throughout life. It is the seat of your conscience. The frontal lobe is evolution’s gift to you. This brain region is most adaptable to change and is the means by which you evolve your thoughts and actions. My desire is that this book helps you to use this newest, most recent part of your brain’s anatomy to reshape your brain and your destiny.

Evolution, Change, and Neuroplasticity
We humans have a unique capacity to change. It is via the frontal lobe that we go beyond the preprogrammed behaviors that are genetically compartmentalized within the human brain, the recorded history of our species’ past. Because our frontal lobe is more evolved than that of any other species on earth, we have tremendous adaptability, and with it come choice, intent, and full awareness. We possess an advanced bit of biotechnology that allows us to learn from our mistakes and shortcomings, to remember, and to modify our behavior so that we can do a better job in life.

It is true that a lot of human behavior is genetically preset. All life forms are preordained to be what they genetically express, and we must agree that a lot of who we are as human beings is predetermined by our genes. Yet we are not condemned to live out our existence without contributing some form of an evolutionary gift to future generations. We can add to our species’ progress here on earth because unlike other species, we theoretically have the hardware to evolve our actions in one lifetime. The new behaviors we demonstrate will provide new experiences that should be encoded in our genes—both for now and for posterity. This leads us to consider: How many new experiences have we had lately?

The science of molecular biology is beginning to investigate the concept that, given the right signals, our genes are as equally changeable as our brain cells. The question is this: Can we provide the right type of stimulus to the cells of our body, either chemically or neurologically, to unlock their gigantic library of unused latent genetic information? In other words, by managing our thoughts and reactions, can we intentionally make the right chemical elixir to drive the brain and body from a constant state of stress to a state of regeneration and change? Can we escape from the limits of our biology and become more evolved human beings? It is my intent to show you that both theoretically and practically, there is a true biology to change—that is, by maintaining a change in your mind.

Is it possible for us to abandon the old model that implies that our genes create disease? Can we speculate beyond the most recent credo, which states that the environment turns on the genes that create disease? Is it possible that by managing our own internal environment, independent of the external environment, we can maintain or change our genes? Why is it that when two factory employees, working side by side for 20 years, are exposed to the same carcinogenic chemical, one manifests cancer, the other does not? Surely, there must be an element of internal order at work in this situation, one that supersedes the continuous environmental exposure to harmful chemicals known to genetically alter tissues.

A growing body of knowledge points to the effects of stress on our bodies. Living in stress is living in a primitive state of survival common to most species. When we live in survival, we limit our evolution, because the chemicals of stress will always drive our big-thinking brain to act equal to its chemical substrates. In effect, we become more animal-like and less divine. The chemicals of stress are the culprits that begin to alter our internal state and pull the trigger of cellular breakdown. In this book, we examine those effects on the body. It is the redundancy not of acute stress but of chronic long-term stress that weakens our bodies. My goal is to educate you about the effects of stress on the body, creating a level of self-awareness that causes you to stop and ask yourself, Is anyone or anything really worth it?

So often it seems as if we cannot shake those internal states of emotional turmoil. Our reliance on these chemical states drives us to experience confusion, unhappiness, aggression, and even depression, to name a few. Why do we cling to relationships and jobs that logically no longer work? Why does changing ourselves and our conditions in life seem so hard? There is something in us that causes us to act this way. How do we manage to endure it day after day? If it is the conditions of our jobs that we dislike so much, why don’t we just find other ones? If it is something in our personal life that causes us to suffer, why don’t we change it?

There is a sound answer for us. We choose to remain in the same circumstances because we have become addicted to the emotional state they produce and the chemicals that arouse that state of being. Of course, I know from experience that change of any type is difficult for most people. Far too many of us remain in situations that make us unhappy, feeling as if we have no choice but to suffer. I also know that many of us choose to remain in situations that produce the kind of troubled state of mind that plagues us for our entire lifetime. That we choose is one thing, but why we choose to live this way is another. We choose to live stuck in a particular mindset and attitude, partly because of genetics and partly because a portion of the brain (a portion that has become hardwired by our repeated thoughts and reactions) limits our vision of what’s possible. Like a hostage onboard a hijacked flight, we feel as though we are strapped into a seat on a destination not of our choosing, and we fail to see all the other possibilities that are available to us.

I remember when I was growing up, my mother used to refer to one of her friends as the kind of person who wasn’t happy unless she or he was unhappy. Not until the last few years, when I’ve intensely studied the brain and behavior, did I really understand on a fundamental, biochemical, and neurological level what she meant. This is one of the reasons I wrote the book.

The title Evolve Your Brain may have appealed to your belief in human potential, and it’s probable you are interested in improving yourself. Another likely reason you picked up this book is that, to one degree or another, you are unhappy with the circumstances of your life and you want to change. Change is a powerful word and it is completely feasible, if you choose it.

When it comes to evolution, change is the only element that is universal, or consistent, to all species here on earth. Essentially, to evolve is to change, by adapting to the environment. Our environment as human beings is everything that makes up our lives. It is all of the complex circumstances that involve our loved ones, our social status, where we live, what we do for a living, how we react to our parents and children, and even the times we live in. But as we will learn, to change is to be greater than the environment.

When we change something in our life, we have to make it different than it would be if we left it alone. To change is to become different; it means that we are no longer who we used to be. We have modified how we think, what we do, what we say, how we act, and who we are being. Personal change takes an intentional act of will, and it usually means that something was making us uncomfortable enough to want to do things differently. To evolve is to overcome the conditions in our life by changing something about ourselves.

We can change (and thus, evolve) our brain, so that we no longer fall into those repetitive, habitual, and unhealthy reactions that are produced as a result of our genetic inheritance and our past experiences. You probably picked up this book because you are drawn to the possibility that you may be able to break out of routine. You may want to learn how you can use the brain’s natural capacity of neuroplasticity—the ability to rewire and create new neural circuits at any age—to make substantial changes in the quality of your life. Evolving your brain is what this book is about.

Our ability to be neuroplastic is equivalent to our ability to change our mind, to change ourselves, and to change our perception of the world around us; that is, our reality. In order to accomplish that feat, we have to change how the brain automatically and habitually works. Try out this simple example of your brain’s plasticity. Take a look at Figure 1.1. What do you see? For most people, the first thing that comes to mind is a duck or a goose. It’s pretty simple, right?

In this example, the familiar form of the picture in front of you causes your brain to recognize a pattern in the shape of some type of bird. Just above your ears, the temporal lobes (the brain’s center for decoding and recognizing objects) lock into a memory. The picture activates a few hundred million neurological circuits, which fire in a unique sequence and pattern throughout specific parts of your brain, and you are reminded of a duck or goose. Let’s just say that the memory imprinted in your brain cells of what a duck or a goose looks like matches the picture before you, and you are able to recall the word ‘goose’ or ‘duck.’ This is how we interpret reality all the time. It’s sensory pattern recognition.

Now let’s get neuroplastic for a moment. What if I told you to no longer see a bird, but to see a rabbit instead? For you to accomplish this feat, your frontal lobe would have to force your brain to ‘cool off’ the circuits that are related to birds and to reorganize its circuitry to imagine a rabbit instead of a feathered creature with an undying affection for water. The ability to make the brain forgo its habitual internal wiring and fire in new patterns and combinations is how neuroplasticity allows us to change.

Just like the example in Figure 1.1, to break out of a habit of thinking, doing, feeling, perceiving, or behaving is what allows you to see the world—and see yourself—differently. And the best part of this experiment in plasticity is that your brain permanently changed; it neurologically tracked a new way to fire off circuits, by making new neurological patterns work in a different fashion. You changed your mind by altering the brain’s typical firing pattern and by strengthening new chains of brain cell connections, and thus who you are changed as well. For our purposes, the words change, neuroplasticity, and evolution have similar meanings. The aim of this book is for you to see that change and evolution are all about breaking the habit of being the ‘you.’

What I’ve discovered in studying the brain and its effects on behavior for the last 20 years has made me enormously hopeful about human beings and our ability to change. This is contrary to what we have long thought. Until recently, the scientific literature has led us to believe that we are doomed by genetics, are hobbled by conditioning, and should resign ourselves that the proverbial thinking about old dogs and new tricks has scientific validity.

Here is what I mean. In the evolutionary process, most species that are subjected to harsh environmental conditions (predators, climate/temperature, food availability, social pecking orders, procreation opportunities, and so on) adapt over millions of years, by overcoming the changes and challenges in their external surroundings. Whether they develop camouflage or faster legs to outrun the meat eater, changes in behavior are reflected in physical, genetic biology through evolution. Our evolutionary history is innately encoded within us.

Therefore, exposure to diverse and changing conditions causes certain more adaptable creatures to begin to acclimate to their environment; by changing themselves on an innate level, they ensure their continuity as a species. Over generations of trial and error, the repeated exposure to difficult conditions causes those biological organisms that do not become extinct to slowly adapt, eventually change, and finally alter their genetics. This is the slow, linear process of evolution inherent to all species. The environment changes, the challenges are met, behavior and actions are altered to adapt, genes encode the changes, and evolution follows by recording the change for the future of the species. The organism’s lineage is now more suited to endure the changes in its world. As a result of thousands of years of evolution, the physical expression of an organism is equal to or greater than the conditions of the environment. Evolution stores the enduring memories of generations untold. Genes encode the wisdom of a species by keeping track of its changes.

The prize of such efforts will be inborn behavior patterns such as instincts, natural skills, habituations, innate drives, ritualistic behaviors, temperament, and heightened sensory perception. We tend to think that what is genetically dealt to us becomes an automatic program we can’t help but live by. Once our genes are activated, either by the timing of some genetic program or by the conditioning of the environment (nature versus nurture), we are wired to behave in certain distinct ways. It is true that our genetics have a powerful influence on who we are, as if we are living by some unseen hand that is leading us to predictable habits and innate propensities. Therefore, overcoming challenges in the environment means that we not only have to demonstrate a will greater than our circumstances, but also must break old habits by releasing the encoded memories of past experiences that may be dated and that no longer apply to our current conditions. To evolve, then, is to break the genetic habits we are prone to and to use what we learned as a species as only a platform to stand on, from which to advance further.

To change and evolve is not a comfortable process for any species. To overcome our innate propensities, alter our genetic programs, and adapt to new environmental circumstances requires will and determination. Let’s face it, changing is inconvenient for any creature unless it is seen as a necessity. To relinquish the old and embrace the new is a big risk.

The brain is structured, both macroscopically and microscopically, to absorb and engage novel information, and then store it as routine. When we no longer learn new things or we stop changing old habits, we are left only with living in routine. But the brain is not designed to just stop learning. When we stop upgrading the brain with new information, it becomes hardwired, riddled with automatic programs of behavior that no longer support evolution.

Adaptability is the ability to change. We are so smart and capable. We can, in one lifetime, learn new things, break old habits, change our beliefs and our perceptions, overcome difficult circumstances, master skills, and mysteriously, become different beings. Our big brains are the instruments that allow us to advance at such an enormous pace. For us as human beings, it seems that it is just a question of choice. If evolution is our contribution to the future, then our free will is how we initiate the process.

Evolution, though, must start with changing the individual self. To entertain the idea of starting with yourself, think of the first creature—say, a member of a pack with a structured group consciousness—who decided to break from the current behavior of the whole. On some level, the creature must have intuited that to act in new ways and to break from the normal behavior of the species might ensure its own survival and possibly, the future of its kin. Who knows? Entire new species might even have been created this way. To leave behind what is considered normal amidst social convention and to create a new mind requires being an individual—for any species. Being uncompromising to one’s vision of a new and improved self and abandoning one’s prior ways of being may also be encoded in living tissue for new generations; history remembers individuals for such elegance. True evolution, then, is using the genetic wisdom of past experiences as raw materials for new challenges.

What this book offers is a scientifically based alternative to the model of thought that told us our brains are essentially hardwired with unchangeable circuitry—that we possess, or better put, that we are possessed by, a kind of neuro-rigidity that is reflected in the inflexible and habitual type of behavior we often see exhibited. The truth is that we are marvels of flexibility, adaptability, and a neuroplasticity that allows us to reformulate and repattern our neural connections and produce the kinds of behaviors that we want. We have far more power to alter our own brain, our behavior, our personality, and ultimately our reality than previously thought possible. I know these truths because I have seen for myself and have read about how certain individuals have risen above their present circumstances, stood up to the onslaught of reality as it presented itself to them, and made significant changes.

For example, the Civil Rights movement would not have had its far-reaching effects if a true individual like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had not, despite all the evidence around him (Jim Crow laws, separate but equal accommodations, snarling attack dogs, and powerful fire hoses), believed in the possibility of another reality. Although Dr. King phrased it in his famous speech as a ‘dream,’ what he was really promoting (and living) was a better world where everyone was equal. How was he able to do that? He decided to place a new idea in his mind about freedom for himself and a nation, and that idea was more important to him than the conditions in his external world. He was uncompromising in holding fast to that vision. Dr. King was unwilling to alter his thoughts, his actions, his behavior, his speech, and his message in response to anything outside of him. He never changed his internal picture of a new environment in spite of his external environment, even if it meant insult to his body. It was the power of his vision that convinced millions of the justness of his cause. The world has changed because of him. And he’s not alone.

Countless others have altered history through comparable efforts. Millions more have altered their personal destinies in a similar way. We can all create a new life for ourselves and share it with others. As we learned, we have the kind of hardware in our brain that allows us certain unique privileges. We can keep a dream or ideal in our mind for extended periods of time despite external environmental circumstances. We also have the capacity to rewire our brain, because we are capable of making a thought more real to us than anything else in the universe. Ultimately, that is the point of this book.

A Story of Personal Transformation
I want to tell you a little bit about an experience I had 20 years ago that inspired me to investigate the power of the brain to alter our life. In 1986, I was 23 years old, had opened my own chiropractic practice in Southern California less than half a year earlier, and was already seeing more than a full patient load every week. My practice was in La Jolla, a hotbed of weekend warriors and world-class athletes who trained feverishly and took care of their bodies with the same fervor. I specialized in treating them. While still attending chiropractic college, I had studied sports medicine extensively in continuing education seminars. After I graduated, I found a niche and filled it.

I was successful because I had a lot in common with these driven patients. I too was driven, and I was focused. Like them, I felt I could meet every challenge and succeed. I’d managed to graduate with very good grades a year and a half ahead of schedule. Now I was living the good life, with an office along the beach on La Jolla Boulevard and a BMW. You know, the California image.

My life consisted of working, running, swimming, cycling, eating, and sleeping. The physical activities were a part of triathlon training—the eating and sleeping were necessary but often neglected functions. I could see the future spread in front of me like a banquet table featuring one delicious choice after another.

For the first three months of that year, I’d been focused on a goal—a triathlon in Palm Springs on April 12th.

The race didn’t start off well. Because twice as many entrants showed up than were expected, the organizers couldn’t let everyone start at the same time; instead, they split the field into two groups. By the time I arrived at the staging area to check in, one group was already standing calf-deep in the lake, tugging at goggles and caps, getting ready to start.

As one of the volunteers used a marker to put a number on my leg, I asked a race official when my group was scheduled to start. ‘In maybe twenty minutes,’ he said. Before I even had a chance to say thanks, a starter’s gun went off across the lake. He looked at me and shrugged, ‘Guess you’re starting now.’

I couldn’t believe it, but I recovered instantly, set up my gear in the transition area, and sprinted barefoot a half a mile around one end of the lake to get to the start. Though I was a few minutes behind the rest of my group, I was soon among the main pack and their tangled mass of churning limbs. As I stroked along, I had to remind myself that the race was against the clock and we still had a long way to go. A mile later, I splashed through the shallows, every muscle taut and taxed from the exertion. I was feeling good mentally, and the bike portion of the race (in this case, 26 miles) had always been my strength.

I ran to the transition area and hopped into my riding shorts. In a few seconds, I was running with my bike toward the road. Within a few hundred yards, I was really clipping along, quickly passing a host of riders. I eased back onto the seat to make myself as aerodynamic as possible and just kept churning my legs. My progress the first ten miles was rapid and exhilarating. I’d seen the course map and knew that an upcoming turn was a bit tricky—we’d have to merge with vehicular traffic. I eyed the course spotter, gave the brakes a few short squeezes to scrub off some speed, and after I saw a volunteer waving me on, I shifted to the biggest gear, hoping to keep momentum going.

I was no more than 20 feet around the curve when something flashed in my periphery. The next thing I knew, I was flying, separated from my bike by a red SUV traveling at 55 mph. The Bronco ate my bicycle, and then it tried to eat me. I landed squarely on my butt, and then bounced and rolled uncontrollably. Thankfully, the driver of the vehicle realized something was wrong. When she stopped abruptly and jammed on her brakes, I continued to roll almost 20 feet on the pavement. Amazingly, all of this took place in about two seconds.

As I lay on my back listening to the sounds of people screaming and a hornet’s-nest buzzing of bikes passing by, I could feel warm blood pooling inside my rib cage. I knew the acute pain I was feeling couldn’t be from soft tissue injury like a sprain or a strain. Something was seriously wrong. I also knew that some of my skin and the road surface had traded places. My body’s innate intelligence was beginning to take over as I surrendered into the pain. I lay on the ground, trying to breathe steadily and stay calm.

I scanned my whole body with my mind, making sure my arms and legs were still present and moveable—they were. After 20 minutes that seemed like four hours, an ambulance raced me to John F. Kennedy Hospital for evaluation. What I remember most about the ambulance ride is that three technicians were futilely trying to find my veins for an IV drip. However, I was in shock. During this process, the body’s intelligence moves large volumes of blood into the internal organs and away from the limbs. Also, I could tell I was bleeding quite a bit internally—I could feel the blood pooling along my spine. There was very little blood in my extremities at the time; essentially, I became a pincushion for the technicians.

At the hospital I was given blood tests, urine tests, X-rays, CT scans, and a gamut of other tests that took almost 12 hours to complete. After three unsuccessful attempts to remove gravel from my body, the hospital attendants gave up. Frustrated, confused, and in pain, I thought this must be some bad dream I had created.

Finally, the orthopedic surgeon, the hospital’s medical director, performed his orthopedic and neurological examination. He could determine no neurological defects. Next, he rattled my X-rays into the viewer. One in particular caught my attention—the lateral thoracic view, a side view of my mid-spine. I saw the vertebrae: T-8, T-9, T-10, T-11, T-12, and L-1 clearly compressed, fractured, and deformed. He gave me his diagnosis. ‘Multiple compression fractures of the thoracic spine with the T-8 vertebra more than 60 percent collapsed.’

I thought to myself, It could be worse. I could easily have had my spinal cord severed and been rendered dead or paralyzed. Then he put up my CT scans, showing several bone fragments on my spinal cord around the fractured T-8 vertebra. I knew what his next statement would be. As a matter of fact, we could have said it together. ‘The normal procedure in cases like this is complete thoracic laminectomy with Harrington rod surgery.’

I had seen se