Introduction From Whence We Came If you look at all the things money can buy today, there's no question that we're better off than any generation in history.
In the industrialized world, we're blessed with an abundance of choice in every aspect of life. We have PalmPilots and cell phones and e-mail to help us work more efficiently. We have CD players and wide-screen TVs for wall-to-wall diversion, and a cable channel for every conceivable interest. We have comfortable cars outfitted with all sorts of gadgets, and, theoretically, at least, we could jump on a jet on any day of the week and be anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. We have so much food that we struggle to stay thin. We have safe homes whose climate can be controlled at the touch of a finger. We have a life expectancy a good forty years longer than the average person a century ago.
So why aren't we happy?
With all these toys and gadgets and conveniences, with all these luxuries available to us, why is there so little satisfaction in our day-to-day living? Why do we hear such a litany of complaints from comfortable, middle-class people, all variations on the theme of "I have no time for myself"? Why do so many of us describe our lives as being under "constant pressure" with "too much to do"?
In short, why do we feel so frustrated and so frequently stressed?
As a psychologist working in one of the world's most prominent mind/body clinics, I can tell you that if you experience such problems they are not "all in your mind." Thirty years after the emergence of mind/body medicine, it's estimated that 75 to 90 percent of all health-care visits still result from stress-related health problems, and that stress is costing American industry a conservatively estimated $150 billion dollars per year in absenteeism, company medical expenses, and decreased productivity.1,2
Sleep problems. Digestive disorders. Headaches. Anxiety. Depression. Anger and hostility. Alcoholism and drug abuse. Heart disease. Such stress-related conditions have become epidemic in an affluent, high-tech culture that prides itself on running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Most us have suffered from one or more of these maladies, and for many of us, the symptoms of stress themselves become chronic, and thus another source of stress.
The four best-selling drugs in the nation today are for stress-related health problems: ulcer medications, hypertension treatments, tranquilizers and sleeping pills, and antidepressants.3 As a nation, we spend an astonishing $650 million per year on sleeping pills alone. Four million Americans abuse prescription drugs, and are addicted to tranquilizers, stimulants, or painkillers.4 One of the great ironies of modern life is that, despite the new global connectedness brought about by the telecommunications revolution, we feel increasingly disconnected from ourselves, from others, and from our world. This disconnect is the source of a chronic anxiety. Many of us sense that something is missing in our lives and that, in our hectic existence, focused on getting and spending, on having more and achieving more, we've come to neglect our emotional well-being.
The consequence is an emotional malaise that has undermined our capacity for health and happiness and left us feeling drained as well as confused about how to find meaning. Prozac has become today's vitamin; television today's tranquilizer; and loss of simple joy in life an all-too-common predicament.
An Ageless Treatment for Modern Times
I have a prescription for changing this sorry state of affairs. In this book I want to introduce you to an extraordinary, scientifically validated program for improving emotional well-being, reducing illness, easing stress-related symptoms, and countering many of the stress-related causes of death in modern society.
This program is not the type that involves behaviors like eating wisely and exercising conscientiously. It is, rather, an approach that actually feels good, and has immediate results. Over time it can bring back the pleasure in living that so many of us have lost. It accomplishes this by enhancing mind/body control, and by producing a mental state that both minimizes unhealthy negative emotions and promotes powerful, life-enhancing positive ones.
If such a device for increasing our inner peace and our sense of well-being were developed today and locked behind an ironclad patent, its inventor could get very rich. But the fact is, the source of these benefits is older than humanity itself. We don't have to adopt something new to improve our lives; what we need is to reengage with a very, very old, very powerful mechanism that has been lost in all the clutter and noise of our modern, technological existence.
And the best part is that this potent antidote to the ravages of stress and enhancement to health and positive emotions actually lies within us. It is a neglected and even disparaged part of ourselves that I call the Ancestral Mind.
We are all familiar with the part of our brains that is the Thinking Mind, the rational, conscious part that processes information, solves problems, and generally helps us make our way through our everyday lives. Western civilization has been built on it, and we have it to thank for most of our material comforts. For all its benefits, however, it is the Thinking Mind (TM, for short) and its products that are also responsible for most of our stresses. Making matters worse, the modern world of commerce is predicated on the belief that the TM is our only mind. We've lost sight of the fact that there's another part of ourselves that is accessible to us as a resource for comfort and balance and relief.
The rise to dominance of the Thinking Mind, and the consequent subversion of the Ancestral Mind (AM), is a story as old as human history, but it entered a new phase about four hundred years ago.5 It was at about this time that the French philosopher RenŽ Descartes uttered his famous phrase "I think, therefore I am." The West was entering the Age of Reason, which gave rise to the Industrial Revolution, which in turn was the foundation for the modern world as we know it today.
During the past 400 years of material progress, the Ancestral Mind, a more intuitive entity, and one more at home with feelings and images than with facts and figures, spreadsheets and time cards, has been increasingly relegated to the attic, like some unhinged and embarrassing relation in a gothic novel.
As we'll explore in the chapters that follow, the Ancestral Mind exists just below conscious awareness. It inhabits the brain alongside the Thinking Mind, operating as a separate but related system. The Ancestral Mind is the preverbal part of the brain, the part that guides us through feeling and sensing, and that motivates us to act through the emotions rather than through conscious, rational processes. It relies more on experiential knowledge than on reason. It perceives the "big picture" rather than depending on an intellectual understanding based on a few selected details. It often expresses itself through instincts and intuitions that "put all the pieces together." It is also the reservoir of memories from our own childhood as well as those from our distant collective evolutionary past. As such, it is a source of wisdom and joy, and it provides a solid grounding in times of stress. But most important-and central to the argument of this book-the Ancestral Mind is the part of us that has always been charged with looking out after our fundamental well-being. That was its job through millions of years of the history of humanity, before the Thinking Mind came along to capture the limelight.
Let me assure you, though, that by urging that we reclaim an evolutionarily older part of ourselves, I'm not suggesting that we go back to subsisting on roots and berries and living in grass huts. And rest assured that the Ancestral Mind is not some fuzzy metaphor concocted by a guy with beads and feathers in his hair, romanticizing a version of the past that never existed. The model of the Ancestral Mind that I describe in this book is based on my own research and clinical practice over the past twenty-five years, including fifteen at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a major teaching arm of the Harvard Medical School. The concept was developed not at a New Age retreat or a Tibetan monastery, but through a synthesis of recent discoveries in neuroscience, psychology, and mind/body medicine.
What excites me most about this research-and what prompts me to write this book now-is the fact that in just the past few years we have finally assembled sufficient data to present the workings of the Ancestral Mind in powerful and convincing detail. Long shrouded in the murky "data" of folk wisdom, Freudian theories, and anecdotal results, the operations of this hidden part of us can now be observed in the laboratory. We can actually describe the neural pathways that take part and see the functioning of structures within this separate system on a computer screen during magnetic resonance imaging.
Up until now, mind/body medicine had two basic methodologies to offer. The first involved retraining the Thinking Mind to cut off or at least minimize the sort of negative thoughts that induce the "stress response," the constellation of physiological reactions that engulf us when we feel anxious. The other was to use what Dr. Herbert Benson called the "Relaxation Response" in order to short-circuit or at least diminish the bodily effects of that unhealthy response to stress. Both methods are highly effective, and in the second half of this book, I review and explain several techniques based on them in the context of the Ancestral Mind.
But the primary purpose of this book is to enhance that repertoire with novel approaches based on a new level of sophistication in understanding the mind/body connection. This knowledge, which allows us to quiet the TM and reconnect with the Ancestral Mind, shifts the focus from the body to the brain, from conscious to unconscious, and fr...
