Original subtitles

[THEME MUSIC]

My name is Gregg Braden.

I'd like to welcome you to this very special presentation

of "Missing Links", the deep truth of our origin, history,

destiny, and fate.

In our last episode we discovered

how the mysterious genetic fusion of DNA

endows us with this extraordinary potential.

And we also discovered that we can

awaken this potential when we choose, when we want,

on demand.

Well, in this episode I'd like to explore

two of those abilities, two of those potentials-- super

learning and deep intuition, as well as the technique

that we use to awaken these things in our lives.

So we're talking about this union, this marriage

between our heart and our brains-- a very, very different

way to think about things in the West,

very different from what we are traditionally

invited to consider.

When I was in school, I was taught that the brain is

the master organ in the body.

And when I am working with indigenous people,

often I'm taught that the heart is

the master organ in the body.

And I want to just say to you that both of those

are valid in some circumstances.

But the truth is, they're both incomplete, because what we now

know is that while the brain--

our brain-- releases the chemistry

into our bodies for rejuvenation, and healing,

and hormonal balance, and all these other things,

our brain receives many of the instructions that tell it

what to do from the heart.

And we are the ones that create the instructions

through our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and beliefs

that we are creating in our hearts,

because now, as you remember, the studies are showing

our heart has the ability to think on its own,

to remember, and to feel on its own.

So we're having a new sense of what

this heart-brain connection is all about.

And as I mentioned before, we've been

conditioned to use them independently,

one or the other.

So I'm acknowledging that I know this is a very different way

to think about our heart and our brain,

to think about them as two organs that

support a single, common neural network.

And just in case there's any question

in your mind, that network-- it is about the nerves.

It's about the spinal cord between the heart

and the brain, and the vagus nerve between the heart

and the brain.

And this conversation between the heart and the brain, it

fascinates me.

It's a big conversation that's happening

in every moment of every day.

But the thing is, most of the conversation

is, in fact, coming from our heart to our brain.

That's where the thickest nerve bundle is,

to support that conversation.

There is a lesser conversation from the brain,

through the spinal cord, back into the heart.

So while it's possible, the brain

doesn't say too much to the heart.

The heart has a lot to say to the brain.

All of this connection leads to the capabilities

that we began speaking about in the last episode.

And I'm going to talk about them a little bit more

now in more detail.

This whole idea of intuition--

it's a very powerful sense.

It is a knowing, a direct knowing,

our hearts knowing of when something is true for us

and when it's not.

And we have to be very, very clear about when we're actually

hearing information from our heart,

or whether the information is coming from there.

Or maybe it's coming from the subconscious,

or maybe it's coming from a fear.

It's just good to be very clear about where this information is

coming from.

And people ask me all the time, when

I speak at live events-- they ask

me to make decisions for them and to interpret

their experiences for them.

But I could never decide, and I could never

interpret because the experiences have

happened to them.

Let me just give you an example.

It's very common for people to ask me, Gregg, I had a dream

last night.

And in the dream-- and very detailed--

I saw this.

I saw that.

Gregg, what does this dream mean?

And what I have to say to them, very honestly

and very factually, is I couldn't begin to tell you

what that dream means.

I have no idea, I didn't have the dream.

You had the dream.

And I'm saying this to you right now.

If you are powerful enough to have the kinds of dreams that

are so vivid and so lucid that you remember them

even in your waking hours, then you are powerful enough

to ask your own body, to ask your intuition,

to ask your heart, what does this dream mean for me?

What am I being shown in this dream?

Why am I being shown what I'm showing?

What does it mean in my life?

Ask those kinds of questions.

When you ask them, if you will ask them

from your heart, rather than your brain-- and

we're going to share the techniques, in this episode,

about precisely how to do it.

It's another form of intuition.

And I'm saying this now to acknowledge

that I know intuition has a lot of different forms.

Sometimes our intuition, it is spontaneous,

like the phone calls between my mother and I

that I spoke of in the last episode.

I pick up the phone, she's already there.

Other kinds of intuition, we just call a gut instinct.

That's a form of intuition as well.

Scientists tell us, for example, that we know--

when we meet another person, we will

know within three seconds--

now think about this.

You will know within three seconds

if you like someone or not, when you meet them.

Your intuition, your heart will know.

Now, in our culture, we are taught

to discount that, because we say,

oh, you're being judgmental.

You don't even know the person.

You haven't given them a chance.

And that's all true, but your heart has picked up something.

It's picked up something in a vibratory, energetic field,

about another person.

I'm not saying it's right, wrong, good, or bad.

It's something that just may not be a good fit.

And it's telling you that.

And there's a reason why we have this.

Our ancestors had this long ago, because 10,000 years ago we

didn't have the opportunity to invite someone

to have coffee in a coffee shop and get to know them,

to know if they were a threat to us or not.

We had to know immediately.

When we met someone out on the open plains,

or if you walked into a cave to make it your home

and found that it was already someone else's home,

is that a threat?

Is that a personal threat?

And we need to know really, really fast.

But it goes even deeper than that.

One of the really fascinating pieces

of research that we're beginning to see

is that men and women think differently.

We know that.

That's not the research.

But women and men do think very differently.

And this is one of the places where our intuitive instincts

become very, very different.

Studies have shown that a woman, a woman

will know, in her heart, within 180 seconds-- that's 3 minutes.

A woman will know within 180 seconds

if the person standing before her, in her field,

is a potential compatible life mate or not--

successful life mate.

A woman's heart will know.

Her intuition will know within 180 seconds, on the one hand.

But in our culture, we are so often

conditioned to discount that.

So a woman will feel that.

She'll discount that.

And she will give that person that she has encountered

3, 5, 10, maybe 20 years of her life

to experience and demonstrate in real life

what her heart knew in only 3 minutes.

And we see this happen all the time.

I actually have friends, multiple friends,

that this has happened to, where partners agreed to be married.

And on the day of the wedding, the woman

says, I can't go through with this,

because this is not the right person for me.

She has known all along.

She always had this suspicion.

But she says, I can't go through with it.

However, the peer pressure of all the family

coming from all over the world, all of the energy,

all of the money, all the preparations, all the friends--

in the case that I'm thinking of right now, this friend of mine

actually went through with the wedding,

knowing that it would not last and that she

would have to end the wedding at another time, which

she did about a year later.

So it happens that way, sometimes.

And I have a male friend that had the same experience.

I was going to be the best man in his wedding.

I went to pick him up in northern Missouri.

And he was sitting on the front porch in a pair of blue jeans

and flip-flops.

And I was in a tux for his wedding.

And he said, where are you going?

And I said, I'm going to your wedding.

And he said, I can't.

I can't go through with this.

He says, I'm going to go fishing today, and he did.

He left and went fishing.

And we had to tell his fiance what it was that was happening.

And I'm sharing this story with you

because it was a doubt that he had in his mind.

But when they reconciled that doubt,

they ended up getting married.

They did get married.

And they have been married now for over 30 years.

So it's all about realizing and recognizing,

what is our intuition saying to us?

And one of the ways to do that, rather

than through the fear and the peer pressure, is we've

got to go into our heart to understand exactly what it

is that it's saying.

Let me just give you another example of how this plays out,

and it's a personal example for me.

I was in Australia over September 11.

I couldn't even get back into my own country.

The air traffic was closed.

And when they opened the air traffic again,

I was on the first flight from Sydney, Australia

back into Los Angeles, California, here in the States.

There weren't many people on that flight.

It was a huge plane, and there were fewer than 20 people

on the entire flight.

So when the flight was ready to board,

the gate attendant came out and made an announcement.

And here's what she said.

She said, there are so few people on this flight,

we're not going to board in zones.

You can board whenever you'd like to.

She said, you can board this plane for the States,

and it will get you there, if that's where you want to go.

And I looked at her, and I said, well,

that's a powerful vote of confidence for this flight.

And she says, hey, if you want to take this plane

and go to America, this plane is going to take you there.

She goes, we don't know what just happened.

And it looks really, really scary from where

we are right now-- never seen this happen before.

And it set up a little fear in my mind.

So I asked her, I said, please wait right here.

I stepped around the corner.

And I used a technique that I'm going

to share with you in just a moment,

because my brain was spinning with all kinds

of possibilities.

Did she know something I didn't?

Did TSA say something, or air traffic control,

or was something else going on?

And I know you all have had these experiences,

where something happens in your life and there's no one to ask,

because no one knows the answer.

And everyone that you do ask is going

to give you a different answer.

You see this happen all the time with people

that have a health crisis.

And the doctor wants them to do one thing,

and they've got a million friends

giving them a million alternative ways

to heal naturally or herbally.

And their head is spinning.

And they say, I don't know what to do,

because there is no right and wrong.

And there's no one to ask.

All we have is ourselves and our heart.

So what I did, stepped around the corner.

I began communicating with my heart in the way

that I've learned through heart-brain harmony

that we're going to do here, in just a moment.

And I got a very clear sense-- and it's amazing

how crystal-clear the information from our heart

becomes when we do this.

Let me just give you a couple of indications.

When your heart is speaking to you,

your heart speaks briefly, concisely, usually in a phrase

or in a single sentence.

Rarely-- I'm not going to say never,

because everyone's different-- rarely will your heart begin

to tell you a story and a big preamble

to justify the answer that it's about to give to you.

So if you ask a question from within--

what does this dream mean, or should I get onto this

airplane, or should I follow this medical procedure--

and you start to hear a story-- well, you know,

when I was five years old, I had this experience, and--

probably, probably that's not your heart.

It's probably something in your mind,

your logic, or your ego that feels

it needs to justify the answer.

Heart would never do that.

So I went through a process.

I felt it was OK to get on that plane.

I got on the plane, I had a great flight

back to Los Angeles.

I came back to a very different country

from the one I had left 10 days earlier.

But the point is, it was a safe flight.

It was good.

And if I'd listened to my fears, I

may have delayed coming back days or maybe weeks,

because there was so much fear around this.

Only by listening to our hearts--

now, this is one facet of intuition.

And I've just shared a couple of these,

knowing about partnerships, knowing

when something is right for us.

There's another kind of intuition, very fast

information processing.

And I alluded to it in a previous episode,

in the last episode.

And I'd like to just share a little bit more about this,

just to clarify what I'm saying.

Interestingly, it took the most sophisticated research

of the most modern equipment, and using that equipment

on some of the most ancient and primitive practices of Tibetan

monks, for scientists to begin to understand how

this form of intuition works.

And it works by using a brain state that

used to not even show up in the pages of a textbook.

I'm going to invite you to look at your screen right now.

And I'm going to talk about brain states just for a moment.

What you're seeing on your screen

are the traditional brain states,

at the very bottom of the screen-- the delta waves, long,

slow waves.

And these are when we're deeply asleep.

And then the theta waves, when we

become drowsy; the alpha waves, where

we're more relaxed and maybe in meditation;

the beta waves-- this is where, maybe, you are right now,

when we're busily engaged in daily activities.

This used to be the end of the brain states.

But there is another brain state that scientists

are working with now, and it is above the beta wave.

It is called gamma.

This is the gamma state.

And look at how much faster and how much more compressed

these brain waves are.

Well, interestingly, these are the brainwaves

that the Tibetan monks were creating in their bodies

intentionally, on demand, to accomplish

the amazing feats of healing, of awareness, of intuition.

They're able to regulate their body functions, their body

temperatures, their immune response,

their anti-aging hormones, all on demand, when they choose.

And this is where they find their power,

by realizing this potential.

So I'm sharing this with you now because, interestingly

and perhaps not surprisingly, it is

by harmonizing the heart and the brain

that we achieve this gamma state--

one of the ways that we can achieve it--

that we achieve this gamma state intentionally.

And when we create the gamma state,

one of the first things that scientists say to us

is it opens the door to precisely what we've

been talking about--

to states of deep intuition.

It opens the door to increased focus,

where we can recall everything about any memorable event.

This sounds like some of the very popular television

programs, where individuals are trained to become superhumans.

And they walk into a room and boom,

they know everything about everyone

in that room, total recall.

The gamma state is what allows us

very fast processing of storage, and information, and retrieval.

And it actually makes a lot of sense

that we would be able to do that.

When you think about fast information retrieval

and involving the heart, if you really think about it,

this makes tremendous sense for this reason.

When we process information solely in the brain, when

you ask your brain a question, the answers

generally are a little slower.

And as I mentioned before, in the heart

they're, boom, almost instantaneously.

Often, when we ask our heart a question,

it answers before we finish asking the question.

And the reason makes a lot of sense.

It's because the brain, before it gives us the answer,

goes through all of the loops of the logic, the fears,

the issues that have come up in the past,

the issues of self-doubt, the issues of self-esteem.

All of those things, those are the logic loops

that the brain goes through, the filters,

before it gives us an answer.

Heart doesn't do that.

Heart, you ask your heart a question, boom,

it gives you the answer.

Part of my heritage is Native American, is Cherokee.

And in the Cherokee tradition, as well as in some others

in the Midwest of the United States,

our indigenous ancestors knew of this power of the heart.

And they actually gave it a name.

And this is one of the things-- there is no English translation

specifically for this name.

There is no single English word that

means precisely what the Native words mean.

So we have to create English words around it, like prana.

When we say the word prana, that is a Sanskrit word.

There is no English word that means prana.

So we have to create some other words.

We say energy body or life force to approximate what it means.

Well, same things happen with the wisdom of the heart.

And the word that's used is called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH],

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

And it means the single eye of the heart,

the heart that doesn't judge right, wrong, good, bad.

The heart can discern what's true for us and what's not,

yet it does not assign a judgment.

That's a powerful distinction, and that will empower you

in situations, whether you're in the boardroom,

or the classroom, or you're with your friends,

or in the most intimate relationships with those that

are closest to you, where you tap

and they know you well enough to tap

the buttons and the triggers that elicit responses

that sometimes you wish you hadn't have said.

If you can get out of your brain and go into your heart,

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the single eye of the heart--

it'll tell you what's true for you, and you only.

It can't tell you what's true for someone else.

And it will do it with discernment.

So it makes a lot of sense that the gamma state actually

allows us this very, very fast processing.

The gamma state, also, when we achieve that,

it's a natural antidepressant.

People are happier, and they're much calmer,

when they're in this gamma state.

And it also awakens.

It breathes life into our sensory perception.

When we're in the gamma state, we can pick up scents that we

cannot pick up, typically, in the beta state.

You smell things.

It becomes alive.

Your sensations of sound-- music feels differently.

It doesn't just sound.

It feels differently to you.

These are all the benefits of being in the gamma state.

So I'm saying this to you now because we're

about to move into the gamma state,

and I want you to know all the benefits that

come from doing precisely this.

So we've explored many of the potentials that

come from awakening this marriage, this union

between the heart and the brain.

And there are others.

We're just barely scratching the surface.

But what I'd like to do now is share

with you a technique, a technique so

that you can tap these potentials in your life

when you choose to do so.

What scientists know is that every moment of every day,

as I mentioned, there's this conversation.

It's a conversation between the heart and the brain.

The heart is speaking to the brain.

And the quality of the conversation

that comes from the heart and the brain

tells the brain what chemistry to release into the body.

So for example, when we're feeling emotions that we would

typically consider negative--

and I don't like to characterize emotions

as negative or positive.

But I'm doing this so that you get a sense for what

we're doing here.

When we have emotions such as anger, hate, jealousy,

rage, what you're seeing on your screen

is an actual printout of the quality of the signal

from the heart to the brain.

And you can see, it's very chaotic.

It's a very jagged signal.

It's a rough signal.

And it's that chaotic, jagged, rough signal

that signals chaotic chemistry in your brain.

This is the kind of chemistry that tells us

that we need high amounts of adrenaline, high amounts

of cortisol, the stress hormones to respond to something

quickly in life.

That's a good thing for a few moments.

You don't want to live your life, day in and day out,

like this.

The next image that you're seeing

is what happens when we can shift

our heart-based experiences from things like frustration, anger,

hate, jealousy, and rage to things like compassion,

care for anything, gratitude for anything,

appreciation for anything.

And when we can do that, very, very quickly,

this signal from the heart to the brain shifts.

And you're seeing that it becomes a very rhythmic, very

even, very coherent signal.

This is what it's called.

And it sends a different signal to our brain,

and our brain begins to release a different chemistry

into our bodies.

Now, I'm saying this to you now because I want you to know that

your brain cannot do both things at the same time.

It can only do one or the other.

So when you are in coherent feeling

and that even rhythm, that's what awakens your brain

to send powerful healing chemistry,

powerful immune response, powerful anti-aging hormones,

awakens your senses, turns on that gamma, OK?

And when you are in the rough, jagged signal,

that's fight or flight.

Your body and your brain are saying something important

is happening.

We've got to run or fight, so we don't have time for healing.

We don't have time for an immune response.

We don't have time for anti-aging hormones.

They're not important.

So it shuts off those functions in preferential treatment

of this fight or flight.

So for this reason, you can see why fight or flight's good

momentarily.

You don't want it long term.

We can shift these brain states very, very quickly.

And what I'd like to do now is, I'm

going to share a technique with you to help to do this.

We can measure this conversation between the heart and the brain

electrically.

And it is a very low frequency, so this

isn't an esoteric essence of a prana or aura.

This is an electrical and a magnetic frequency.

And the electrical part is a very, very low frequency.

It is 0.1 hertz.

It's not even 1--

0.1 hertz.

This is such a low frequency, you can't even hear this.

It is right on the threshold between feeling and hearing.

It's a frequency that whales use to communicate in the oceans,

so it's a very universal frequency.

It's also a frequency that military submarines

use to communicate in the oceans, which

is why it's a problem for the whales when they use it.

And it is the optimal signal to harmonize

your heart and your brain.

So what this means is if you can create a feeling

in your heart of 0.1 hertz, then that feeling

is going to harmonize your heart and your brain.

Now, in indigenous traditions that I've been with,

they have techniques to do this.

The Institute of HeartMath that I mentioned

in the last episode, they have refined these techniques

in the laboratory into very, very simple steps that

make them accessible in our everyday environment,

whether we're in an urban environment,

whether we're in a military environment,

a first-responder environment.

This technique has been used in all these environments

that I'm mentioning now--

in family, in marriage and family counseling environments,

in cardiac environments to help deal

with blood pressure and cardiac events

that are happening within our bodies.

So there are a vast and myriad number

of applications for the one technique

that we're going to do right now.

And this technique is the doorway for all the potentials

that we have just listed.

By achieving heart-brain coherence, it opens the door,

and we get to choose.

It's like once we're in this place, now

we can do this, this, this, or this.

We can do subconscious.

We can go into intuition.

We can simply use this technique before we go to bed at night,

to begin to sleep and trigger a healing within our bodies.

We can do it first thing in the morning.

We can do it before our yoga.

We can do it before our martial arts.

We can do it before our qi gong, our healing practice,

any of these things, because everything goes better

with heart-brain coherence.

And that's all we're doing, is we're

optimizing the conversation between the heart

and the brain, between your heart and your brain.

So how do we do this?

Three steps-- the first step is to simply shift your awareness

from your mind into your heart.

And what I've found is, in the Western traditions,

for many people that's easier said than done.

I'll ask people, are you in your heart?

And they'll say, yep.

I'm in my heart.

But what they are really doing is,

they're still in their brain thinking

about what it would be like if they were in their heart.

This is where the indigenous traditions come in.

Our ancestors told us--

and when I spend time with my indigenous friends,

I say, how do you guys do this?

And they say, it helps if you can gently touch your heart

center, physically, in a way that's comfortable for you.

In the Mayan traditions you see an open palm right

on the heart.

In many of the Middle Eastern traditions,

you see the same thing.

In the Buddhist traditions you see a prayer mudra

that physically touches the sternum.

The key is any of those things creates

a gentle touch, a physical sensation,

right over the heart center.

And your awareness will always go to the place

where you feel the sensation.

That's the key.

So if you can create a touch over your heart,

your awareness will go there-- first step.

Second step, very simple--

slow your breathing a little bit slower than typical,

maybe five seconds inhale, five seconds exhale.

And here's why that's powerful-- because the only time you would

ever slow your breathing and breathe in that way

is when you feel safe, when you feel that you're

in a place that's safe, and you're not threatened,

and you're not vigilant of your surroundings.

So you're telling your body you're in a place that's safe.

Slow your breathing.

Third step, and this is the key, is

to begin to feel the feeling that creates 0.1 hertz.

Feel the feeling that sets up the coherence

between your heart and your brain.

How do we do that?

I gave it away earlier.

I've already mentioned it.

Scientists have found-- at the Institute of HeartMath,

their researchers have found that there are four key words

that work almost 100% of the time for everyone--

appreciation for anything or anyone,

gratitude for anything or anyone, care, and compassion.

If you can feel one or some combination of those feelings

in your heart, while you're breathing as if your breath is

coming from your heart, touching your heart center,

now you're setting up this communication between the heart

and the brain.

Now you are triggering those neurons

to begin to reach out and find other neurons to strengthen

this connection.

And that's why-- I mentioned before--

it takes about 72 hours, 3 days to build these networks.

So that means the more you do what

we're about to do right now, the stronger this connection

becomes in your life.

Let's try this.

Let's go through this together.

And this is the way we're going to close out our segment today.

I'm going to invite you first to shift your awareness

from your mind into your heart by gently touching your heart

center.

OK, now once you're there, breathe

a little slower than you typically

would, maybe five seconds inhale, five seconds exhale.

And as you breathe, feel your breath coming from your heart.

And begin to feel those feelings--

compassion, gratitude, care, appreciation

to the best of your ability, to the best of your ability.

And I'm going to do the same.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OK, and what researchers have found

is that typically three minutes, only three minutes,

of doing what we have just done will set into motion a cascade

of events within your body-- biochemical events

that will last as long as six hours.

The immune response-- the SIgA response,

first line immune in the white blood cells of your mouth--

they are reflecting this effect for up to six hours

after you actually create the experience.

So I mentioned that we can do this any time of day.

You can do it before you sleep at night, first thing when

you wake up in the morning.

This technique, as simple as it seems,

is the powerful key to awaken the greatest

potential in your life.

The simple technique that we have just experienced,

it is the key to our personal power

and to the doorway of all the abilities considered

rare and mystical in the past.

We don't have to go to a monastery

halfway around the world to learn them.

In our next episode, we're going to discover

how this very technique is also the key

to trigger the self-healing within your body that

leads to an extended lifespan, well beyond what's

traditionally accepted today.

So I want to thank you for joining me

for this very powerful episode.

And be sure to tune in for our next all-new

episode of "Missing Links", the deep truth of our origin,

history, destiny, and fate.

[THEME MUSIC]