PDF Summary:The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton

Do your genes control you, or do you control them? In The Biology of Belief, developmental biologist Bruce Lipton challenges the notion that genes determine our destiny and argues that we have more control over our health and genetic expression than we think.

Lipton is known for his groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School and his work in the field of epigenetics. In this book, he presents evidence from his research on cellular life to support the idea that our reality is created by how we interpret and react to our environment. This means that our thoughts have a more powerful influence on us than we tend to recognize.

In this guide, we’ll explain how Lipton arrived at his insights through his knowledge about the functions of cells. We’ll compare Lipton’s ideas to other research that examines the mind-body connection, and we’ll explore resources that could help mitigate the faulty subconscious programs that influence our lives.

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The problem, Lipton explains, is that the “threats” we tend to perceive in the modern world are often not the kinds our bodies are evolved to deal with. What’s worse is that we’re usually not even consciously aware of what the problem is, or we’re not in a position to fix it—often because it’s a result of subconscious programming, which we’ll discuss later.

Chronic Stress Is Killing Us

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky and When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté explore the connection between stress and disease. Both authors argue that chronic stress can have a devastating effect on our physical and mental health.

Sapolsky explains that while animals like zebras experience acute stress in response to immediate threats, such as having to outrun a lion, humans in modern society tend to experience chronic stress from sources such as traffic or poverty. This chronic activation of the stress response can lead to a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more.

Similarly, Maté argues that when we are unable or unwilling to say “no” to pressures in our life, our body may do it for us by creating illness. He suggests that many chronic illnesses are linked to stress caused by our modern lifestyles, our conditioning as children, and our psychological coping mechanisms.

Both authors suggest that by being mindful of our thoughts and beliefs and finding ways to manage stress, we may be able to improve our physical health.

The Placebo Effect

Lipton points out that for over 50 years, scientists have known conclusively that the mind affects the body’s health. This mind-body relationship first became clear through research on the placebo effect—a phenomenon in which people experience healing when given a fake medication with no active ingredients. This means that for some people, simply believing in a medication is enough to heal them.

Lipton goes on to explain that studies of antidepressants routinely show that the drugs work only minimally, if at all, better than the placebo effect. In fact, these studies have demonstrated that some portion of participants experiences relief from their depression after taking a pill containing no medication at all. Lipton points out that, based on this, some psychiatrists have actually suggested that a placebo should be the first line of treatment given to those suffering from mild or moderate depression, because if this works for some people, then there's no reason to subject them to the potentially harmful side effects of the real drugs.

In a 2002 study, patients were even healed after being given a placebo surgery. Patients with debilitating knee pain were divided into three groups. The first two groups were operated on using two different techniques to determine which was more effective. For the third group, the surgeon made the typical incisions and then stitched them back up, so it would appear that the patient had had surgery, but he performed no surgery at all. The results shocked the surgeon: All three groups reported the same degree of improvement. At a follow-up two years after the surgery, the participants who had not received the surgery were still not aware, and they all continued to have increased mobility and decreased knee pain.

Lipton suggests that science needs to concentrate more effort on understanding this phenomenon because if we could learn how to intentionally leverage the placebo effect, we could heal many more patients without pharmaceutical or surgical intervention.

Harnessing the Power of Placebos

It would likely be considered unethical for a doctor to prescribe placebos deceptively to patients, but some argue that it’s equally unethical to prescribe antidepressants, since research has shown that they often don’t perform any better than placebos in trials. This means antidepressants effectively are placebos—meaning if the same percentage of people get better with antidepressants as with placebos (as studies show), then those on antidepressants are likely experiencing the placebo effect, not an actual physiological remedy. And since antidepressants often come with much more potentially severe side effects, including increased suicidality, it could be more ethical to simply prescribe placebos.

But since the deception of patients is not generally acceptable, it has also been suggested that doctors could prescribe placebos non-deceptively by telling patients they’re getting a placebo. The assumption that placebos must be presented deceptively in order to be clinically effective has been debunked by recent trials. Non-deceptive presentation of placebos, accompanied by an explanation of their effectiveness, has proven to lead to successful outcomes.

A 2017 study looked at five different trials in which patients were prescribed placebos non-deceptively for irritable bowel syndrome, depression, allergic rhinitis, back pain, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In these trials, doctors told patients the medication they were getting was a placebo with no active ingredients and explained to the patients that placebos can be very powerful and effective. In all five studies, those given the placebos improved at a higher rate than those who received no treatment.

Energy Influences Matter

Perhaps more controversially, Lipton argues that it’s not only your body chemistry that influences your cells—it’s also your body’s electromagnetic energy. He says the Western scientific worldview tends to ignore the role of energy in health because it’s often not measurable and quantifiable. He points out that although research has shown that living matter does energetically influence other living matter, scientists tend to reject this research as unscientific because they can’t conclusively explain how it works.

Lipton says that energy affects almost every aspect of cell behavior. Every biological process in your body is affected in some way by different frequencies and patterns of electromagnetic energy—including DNA regulation, cell division and differentiation, nerve growth, and hormone secretion. This is why stimulating the brain with electrical current, such as with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), can be useful for mental health treatment.

(Shortform note: Although scientists don’t know how ECT works, they know that electrical stimulation to the brain causes seizures and changes the electrical and chemical functioning in the brain, leading to therapeutic effects. ECT has been shown to have antidepressant, antimanic, and antipsychotic effects, but the precise biological mechanisms are still under investigation.)

Lipton says every living organism interprets its environment by sensing energetic signals around it. This is observably true of cells, plants, and animals. Humans, however, have evolved to rely so heavily on verbal communication that most of us have lost conscious touch with our energy-sensing ability. Lipton points out, though, that some indigenous peoples who still live their traditional lifestyles have retained this ability and demonstrate hypersensitivity to the energy around them.

(Shortform note: While it’s essential to avoid generalizations about indigenous peoples, anthropological research does show that our lifestyles can affect our sense perception. For example, a recent study showed that the Himba people of Namibia who live a more traditional land-based lifestyle have much better visual acuity and attention to detail than people living in modern urban societies.)

Lipton emphasizes the importance of understanding that brain wave states are energy operating at different frequencies, and these contribute to your health and well-being. When your brain wave state changes, Lipton explains, you can change the communication and environmental signals happening throughout the body. In particular, he stresses that understanding brain wave states is crucial for tapping into the subconscious mind, where most of our problems actually originate.

Your Subconscious Program Is Running the Show

Lipton argues that your mind, rather than your DNA, is the source of your behavioral programming. More specifically, he says the most influential force in your life is the beliefs embedded in your subconscious—programming that was firmly in place by the time you were six or seven years old.

Lipton explains that our brains are particularly programmable before age seven because children at this age are generally in a different, more receptive, brain wave state than adults. Our brain waves change throughout life like this:

• Birth to age two: Babies’ brains are in a delta wave state for most of their first two years of life.
• Ages two to six: Children in this age range have increasing periods of theta wave states.
• Ages seven to 12: Alpha wave states tend to dominate.
• After age 12: We spend most of our waking lives in beta wave states.

The theta wave state is associated with hypnotism and deep meditation. This is when information can go directly to the subconscious mind. So because children are often in this state before age seven, they absorb everything around them and it becomes stored in their subconscious. This means that we live the rest of our lives based on beliefs that were instilled in us by other people before we were even seven years old.

The problem with that, Lipton argues, is that many of those beliefs are negative and limiting, cause us stress, and they conflict with what we consciously want to do with our lives—especially if we’ve experienced trauma in childhood. Most children at some point absorb messages that the world is unsafe and threatening, that they’re unloved or unworthy, that many possibilities are not open to them, or that the world is full of illness, violence, and death.

Lipton clarifies that parents aren’t to blame for this—most parents love their children and do the best they can with the programming they received. Children absorb these messages from the social environment as a whole, even when they do have loving parents.

Recall that your mind is constantly interpreting your environment and sending signals to all of your cells. Lipton says it’s largely your subconscious mind that’s doing this interpreting. This means that where you may consciously perceive no threat at all, your subconscious mind may be reacting to information programmed into you as a child and interpret the world through a lens of fear and insecurity. This can drastically affect your health by causing chronic stress.

Lipton says that while you may consciously believe you’re competent and intelligent, you may have been subconsciously programmed to believe you’re stupid and incapable of success. This will undermine your confidence and your chances for success in life without your even being aware of it. He believes that most of our disease, suffering, and inability to achieve what we want in life is because this subconscious programming controls us much, even more so than our genes and our conscious mind.

Change Your Brain Waves to Change Your Programming

In Becoming Supernatural, Joe Dispenza explains brain wave frequencies as follows:

• Beta waves: In your regular, waking consciousness, your brain tends to be in a beta wave state most of the time. This can include:

  • Low-range beta waves: when you’re relaxed and not perceiving any threat in your environment, but you’re still alert—for example, when you’re chatting with a friend or playing with your child.

  • Mid-range beta waves: a more alert state when you’re slightly aroused but not terribly stressed—for example, when you’re driving in an unfamiliar city or doing a presentation at work.

  • High-range beta waves: when you’re in a high-stress state, such as road rage or in fear because you feel threatened.

• Alpha waves: Your brain is in an alpha wave state when you’re very relaxed, calm, and creative. You may slip into alpha wave states throughout your day if you engage in meditative or creative practices that allow you to get out of your thoughts and into a calm “flow” state.

• Theta waves: Your brain slips into theta wave state when you’re in that zone between waking and sleep—or when you’re in deep meditation.

• Delta waves: This is the brain wave state you’re in when you’re asleep, but very adept meditation practitioners can also go into delta wave states while awake.

• Gamma waves: Dispenza calls this brain wave state a “superconscious” state. It’s associated with intense focus and transcendental and mystical experiences.

Dispenza explains that to tap into your subconscious mind, you must train your brain through meditative practices to drop into the lower-frequency brain wave states. This is because those are the states in which you access your deepest subconscious programming. He says when your brain waves change from beta to alpha, theta, and delta, your autonomic nervous system reacts differently to the world. Rather than responding to the world with stress and fear, it responds in a healthy way, which will keep you from responding to life through the lens of the past.

In terms of frequency, gamma brain waves are the highest-frequency wave, followed by beta, alpha, theta, and delta (the lowest-frequency wave). Most people only ever experience brief fleeting moments of gamma waves, lasting less than a second—for example when you have a momentary experience of blissful surprise, like the first bite of a delicious food. But some very experienced meditators have been shown to stay in gamma wave patterns throughout their whole day. This indicates that they exist perpetually in a different state of consciousness than the average person.

Implications for Healing

You may feel defeated after learning that your actions are triggered by unconscious programming that’s been embedded in you since early childhood. But Lipton says he’s optimistic about our individual and collective capacity for change. He ends the book by saying we have the capability to reprogram our minds and to do better for our own children, and that we should join together as a global community in our healing efforts. In this section, we’ll look at the advice Lipton offers based on what he’s learned from his work with cells.

(Shortform note: While joining together as a global community is a worthy goal, it would require explicitly addressing cultural, social, and economic disparities that hinder collective progress. This would mean tackling systemic inequalities built into social institutions to ensure more lasting and equitable improvements. For example, UNESCO argues that investing in education can be a way to overcome inequalities by teaching skills that foster mindsets of adaptability, inclusivity, appreciation for diversity, and social responsibility.)

Individual Healing: Programming and Reprogramming

On the individual level, Lipton offers two major pathways for healing: 1) approaches to parenting that program our children’s minds in healthy ways, and 2) ways to reprogram our own minds with mindfulness and “energy psychology” techniques.

Program Your Children’s Minds

The most obvious way we can do better for future generations is by being more conscious and intentional about the programs we’re embedding in children’s minds. Lipton says to try to remain consciously aware that you didn’t just pass on your genes through the reproductive process—you’re actually genetically engineering your children during their childhoods. What you embed in your children’s minds has the capacity to influence the way their genes are expressed throughout their lives.

So if you have, or plan to have, children or grandchildren, here are a few things Lipton suggests:

• Begin with a healthy prenatal environment. Your influence on your children begins before they’re born. Lipton cites studies that link physical and mental disorders such as osteoporosis, psychosis, and mood disorders to prenatal and perinatal environmental influences. Expectant mothers should be aware that their behaviors and moods influence the environment in which their child is forming.
• Create as calm, supportive, and safe an environment as possible for your children. Your children will pick up on negativity, such as anger and fear, in their environment, and their own bodies will respond to this by producing the associated chemical environment.
• Give ample physical love and nurturing affection. Lipton points out that anthropologists have noted that the most peaceful societies tend to indulge their children when very young, holding them most of the day. By contrast, those that don’t show much physical affection to children tend to be more violent.
• Encourage creative and cooperative play over competitiveness. This fosters the natural human instinct toward cooperation for survival, and engaging in creative pursuits can encourage the brain to move into a state of “flow,” which are associated with theta waves.

Early-Life Stress Impairs the Brain and Immune System

The field of psychoneuroimmunology studies the complex interactions between psychological processes, the nervous system, and the immune system, exploring how these systems influence each other and impact our health and well-being. Research in this field has found that early-life stress can affect immune system development and brain functioning. A 2016 study explains that this is because the brain and immune system are not fully formed at birth but continue to mature in response to the environment after birth. So, this allows childhood stress to affect immune system development, which can then affect brain development and functioning.

The authors of this study suggest new strategies, such as anti-inflammatory compounds for boosting immunity, that could be used to reduce the impact of childhood trauma before symptoms appear. These strategies could also potentially be used in treatment of psychiatric patients with a history of childhood trauma.

Reprogram Your Own Mind

Whether you have children or not, addressing your own subconscious programming is also crucial. Lipton says there are many techniques to rewrite your mental programs, including mindfulness techniques and some newer “energy psychology” methods.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is essentially a process of bringing your conscious and subconscious minds into harmony. Lipton explains that we don’t have to be at the mercy of our subconscious programming, because our conscious minds have the capacity to step in and direct the show. But that takes hard work because our conscious minds are used to wandering much of the time.

As Lipton explains, when your conscious mind is busy thinking about the past or the future (which is most of the time), your subconscious is left in control of the present. This means it’s constantly making decisions and interpreting the world based on your childhood programming. Your conscious mind is only in charge when it’s fully engaged in the present moment. So, Lipton says, undertaking a mindfulness meditation practice can help you train your conscious mind to stop wandering and take charge of the decisions you make.

Mindfulness practice is helpful for learning how to temporarily override your unconscious programming and choose different reactions to life situations. But Lipton emphasizes that for far-reaching effects, you’ll need to actually overwrite the programming that’s already in place, not just learn to manage it better. This is where energy psychology comes in.

Meditation Is Training for Mindfulness

Many people think of mindfulness and meditation as the same thing. But mindfulness is a state of being, while meditation is a practice you use to train yourself to become mindful.

Mindfulness has two main components: attention and acceptance. The attention piece is about tuning into your experiences and focusing on what’s happening in the present moment. This means becoming more consciously aware of your thoughts and feelings, the physical sensations in your body, and what’s happening in your immediate environment. The acceptance piece involves observing those feelings, sensations, and external conditions without judgment. Instead of responding or reacting to them, you aim to note them and let them go.

To do mindfulness meditation, find a quiet space to sit and settle in. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax. Focus on your breath and stay focused. When thoughts try to pull your attention away from the breath, come back to your breath. You can also focus on each part of your body, in order, from toe to head or head to toe. You can find many guided mindfulness meditations online, for example on the Insight Timer app.

Explore Energy Psychology Techniques

The term “energy psychology” applies to several different techniques and methods for reaching into your subconscious mind—for example, hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and kinesiology (the study of body movement) are among them. Lipton doesn’t discuss many of these methods in detail, but instead directs the reader to his website for more information.

The important thing to know about these methods is that they use implicit messaging (sometimes called “subliminal” messaging) to reach your subconscious and overwrite the existing programs. As mentioned above, this is most effective when one is in a theta brain wave state. The theta state is associated with deep meditation and hypnosis, so energy psychology methods often involve an attempt to shift your brain waves from their normal alpha state to the lower-frequency theta state.

However, Lipton points out that you have access to a theta wave state every day—just as you are falling asleep at night, you slip into theta waves before you drop into the delta wave sleep state. This offers you an opportunity every night to get some implicit messaging into your brain. You can do this by listening to meditations and affirmations designed to imprint positive thoughts into your brain as you enter this programmable state.

Use “Tapping” to Relieve Fear and Anxiety

The website of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) includes a page of “Resources for Resilience.” On this page, you can click on the psychological issue you’re confronting—for example, anxiety, fear, anger, or confusion—and you’ll be directed to a collection of resources for dealing with that issue. These include videos and downloadable instructions for different energy psychology techniques, such as breathing patterns, postures, eye movements, and tapping specific points on the body.

One of the techniques included here is called Trauma Tapping Technique, also sometimes referred to as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). This is a method of tapping on specific acupressure points on your body while focusing on the issue you wish to treat. In this video, Nick Ortner of The Tapping Solution shares an introductory, three-minute EFT tapping technique you can do anywhere to reduce stress and even stop a panic attack.

Collective Healing: Hope for the Future

Finally, Lipton says he’s optimistic about the future of humanity, based on the history of life on the planet and how resilient it can be when it joins together in cooperative communities. He says we can learn a lot from cells about how to move forward as a global human community.

Life on Earth consisted only of single-celled organisms for billions of years before they began joining together to form multicellular clusters, which eventually became the complex higher life forms we have today. Lipton suggests that it was likely some sort of environmental change that created pressure for those single-celled organisms to join together to increase their chances of survival. Cooperation in this way helped them survive because when they were joined, their collective membrane surface area increased, giving them greater ability to detect and respond to environmental threats. He says cells give us a model for understanding how joining together in cooperative community may give us our best chance for survival.

Lipton points out that humanity’s survival is threatened because of our own destructive behaviors. We’ve radically altered the environments we evolved in, so that means we’re now living in an environment we’re not adapted to. And when that happens to any living organism, it has only two options—die or change. Lipton suggests we join together as a global community and make the necessary changes to ourselves. At the cellular level, we’re all exactly the same—human. We must let go of the false concepts that divide us and, like our single-celled ancestors, join together as one to find a new way to thrive.

Are We on the Brink of an Evolutionary Leap?

Lipton’s book Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (And a Way to Get There from Here) offers more specific information about how we can all participate in conscious evolution. In it, he teams up with philosopher Steve Bhaerman to argue that humanity is on the brink of an evolutionary leap and that we can join together as a global community to facilitate it.

This idea was suggested in the 1970s by psychologist Clare W. Graves, who wrote an article for The Futurist magazine in 1974 titled “Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap.” Philosopher Steve McDonald summarizes and expands on Graves’s work in his 2011 article “Human Evolution: Who Are We Becoming?” He explains that Graves described an impending change in human consciousness that would be the most difficult, but also the most exciting, transition the human race has faced to date.

In Graves’s model, human development is characterized by progressive movement upwards through increasingly complex stages. This upward movement is an adaptive response to changing life conditions, and leaps to higher stages are preceded by major crises and chaos, which are then followed by renewal and a new system. McDonald argues that observations of the current modern world suggest that in 2011 we were in (or entering) stage six—“Preparing for the Leap”—of the eight stages. Stage eight is the endpoint, which he calls the “Neo-Tribal Revival,” when humanity will re-embrace a tribal identity, but that tribe will be all of us.