The Physics of Inner Peace

Each of us is wired by design to be in harmony with ourselves, others, the environment, the universe and the creative force of love underlying it all. However, we get so caught up in the activities of our lives that we forget inner peace is our natural state of being.

Within one minute after our heart stops beating, we remember that our lives are about the moments of peace and love that we experienced and not the tasks we failed to do, who we voted for, and how much money we made. In that moment of union, peace and bliss we know our true essence and we can easily cast off all the patterns that do not work.

The good news is we don't have to waste any more time to be our true self. We don't have to wait until we die to transform our lives from chaos to peace. We can do it right now.

It is as simple as reading this sentence. You make a choice, pay attention to a few details and you are in inner peace and harmony with all things. The connection may not seem like much at first. But with a little practice the depth and connection will grow and you'll begin living the life you were meant to live.

The goal of this article is to describe five principles of inner peace and to provide suggestions, which you can use to immediately access the peace and union within you. The principles should seem familiar since they are organically within us and found in nearly every system of worship and healing. Each principle builds on the others combining to form deeper and deeper experiences of peace and union. However,the practice of any single principle will nicely relax us into peace and unity.

Principle One: Fixed Visual Focus

Gaze at a point in front of you. It's best to use a small point a good distance from you. You may blink, just keep your eyes from wandering. Do not let your focus of mind get in front of your body. Keep your mind in your body. As you gaze at the point, both halves of your brain will start to synchronize; shifting the dominance of your brain wave patterns from beta to theta. When this occurs you will be in a state of meditation. Meditation is not what you think; it is not the content of your thoughts. Meditation is where your brain waves are when you are having those thoughts.

At this point your body will initiate a relaxation response. You will stop feeling physical tension and pain. As you continue to gaze at the point, your peripheral vision and awareness of sound will expand.

Fixed visual focus also occurs during closed eye visualization. Closed eye meditation on a specific image, icon, symbol or saint fixes the movement of the eyes in one location as the image is either recalled or created. This type of fixed focus often takes us out of the present time and place and can disassociate us from our bodies. But it does achieve peace.

Principle Two: Binaural Balancing

Binaural balancing is the process of balancing sound awareness between your two ears. The first attempts at learning this skill are best done with a ticking clock or metronome. Place yourself slightly off center to the clock. Listen for the ticking. The sound will be more noticeable and louder in one ear than the other. By relaxing, (use principle one) allow the awareness of the sound to become more noticeable in the quieter ear. The distance the sound travels varies the frequency slightly creating a difference that is called a beat. The difference between the two ears is called a binaural beat. As you focus awareness on balancing the sound between the ears, a different level of the brain synchronizes. The brain will balance the difference between the tones, which will cause a shift in brainwave dominance. The perception will be that you will feel the sound in the center of your head. At this point your spatial awareness of your environment heightens. I also call this process"stereo location."

Principles one and two are natural limbic mechanisms that we used during our primitive gatherer-hunter phase of evolution. To survive you have to be "one with all things". Aware of the smallest details around you. You must be still and centered into the now. In Japan it is known as Budo. For centuries Japanese Samurai would train to "lose themselves" and become one with their sword and opponent. It is the Zen-like meditation of these reflexes, which drive people to extreme risk sports and adventures. For in the moments that put us at maximum risk we transcend self to union. Sadly the brain doesn't discern the difference between skydiving and robbing a convenience store. It just seeks to repeat the experience.

Principles Three and Four however, engage the higher workings of the brain and introduce us to spirit.

Principle Three: Be in Harmony with your Heart

"The heart is the most powerful generator of rhythmic information patterns in the humanbody. It functions as a sophisticated information encoding and processing center, and processes a far more developed communication system with the brain than do most of the body's organs. With every beat, the heart not only pumps blood, but also transmits complex patterns of neurological, hormonal, pressure and electromagnetic information to the brain and throughout the body. As a critical nodal point in many of the interacting systems, the heart is uniquely positioned as a powerful entry point into the communication network that connects body, mind, emotions and spirit." - Science of the Heart: Exploring the Role of the Heart in Human Performance. HeartMath Research Center, Institute of HeartMath, Publication No. 01-001. ©2001 Institute of HeartMath

The second important aspect of the cardiac pulse is loving compassion. Reflecting upon the heartbeat is a powerful tool for relaxation and physical healing. However, when you also move into feeling compassion, appreciation and love, the coherence ofthe heart wave changes in a manner which directly affects and stimulates the amgdylla region of the brain. This can cause mystical and ecstatic (spiritual) states. When loving compassion heart awareness is projected outward to others, it has the power to heal and change the body and the environment itself.

(Rein, G.and McCraty, R. "Local and Non-local Effects of Coherent Heart Frequencies on Conformational Changes of DNA" Quantum Biology: Healing with Subtle Energy by G. Rein Boulder Creek, CA. Quantum Biology Research Labs, 1992, pp. 90-95; Winter, D. "Can the Human Heart Directly Affect the Coherence of the Earth's Magnetic Field?" in Alphabet of the Heart, Sacred Geometry: The Genesis of thePrinciple of Language and Feeling, Winter, D. et. al. Eden NY, Crystal HillFarm 1993, p. 64)

For our purposes, the simple relaxation and contemplation of the heart is enough for inner peace.

Place the tips of your thumbs together upon your lap. Press only hard enough to feel the pulse of each thumb. Place the tip of your index fingers and the other corresponding fingers together. Your hands will be in the shape of a heart.

Feel the beating of the thumbs radiating through the bones of the hands. This is easy to do. All you have to do is continue to relax until you feel it. After you succeed in holding your heart in your hands, then start to feel the beat moving up the arms to the chest. Once you feel the heart beat in the chest you should be able to lock on to the Heart within the chest. Next step is to relax the neck and feel the vibrations of the heart moving through the spine into the brain. This is generally not that easy since most people hold tremendous tension in their necks. But this tension should greatly diminish in a couple weeks of daily practice. Once you can feel the pulse in your head, then practice feeling the heart through the whole body. In time it will happen almost automatically.

As a healer I must say that extreme neck tension and stress is not something to be tolerated or ignored. It is a real symptom that you are at risk for injury and illness. Daily relaxation and stretching is all that is required to prevent major problems.

Principle Four: The Respiratory Pulse

The breathing systems of the ancient masters had very little to do with the air and the perceived "life forces" which resided within it. The breath techniques were about vibrations. "There is no such thing as a silent breath." A vibration is generated each time air passes over our vocal chords on both inhalation and exhalation. Principle Four is about learning how to use them for healing, relaxation and actual physical transformation. Principle three teaches us how to vibrate the entire cellular system, Principle four allows us to alter the frequency of that vibration.

The Larynx, or voice box, lies directly upon the cervical vertebrae of the spine. The vibration of each breath has direct unimpeded access to the limbic center of our brain. This complex section of the brain, called the "Cave of Brahman" in Kriya Meditation, plays an important role in the expressions of instincts, drives, and emotions. The structures in this region mediate the effects of moods on external behavior and influence internal changes in bodily functions and their appropriate expression. The associations of feelings with sensations, such as smell and sight, and the formation of memories are also influenced by the limbic system. It is the center of how we communicate with our bodies, others - both physical and nonphysical - and ourselves.

The most common use of the respiratory pulse is chanting and oral prayer. In this method we combine a frequency pitch with a word(s) of power. Sounds, words and their graphic depiction have the power to change the frequencies at which our brainwaves, cells and molecules resonate. Sometimes this molecular change is permanent. (Emoto, M. Hidden Messages from Water Volume One. 1999)

Repetitive chanting of low frequency tones will vibrate the bones of the skull, follow the spinal column and enter the auditory canal creating a combination of external and internal physical stimulation and internal neural stimulation. The sounds also vibrate the skeletal system releasing muscle tension and bracing from the inside out. Commonly chanting is done on the exhalation phase. Tai Chi chanting utilizes an inhalation and exhalation toning of balanced duration. This produces an effect akin to a feline purr.

The easiest way to begin this approach is to start with "noisy" breathing like wheezing or snoring. Another approach is to mimic the "Hee Haw" of a donkey. Either of these methods creates the neural pathways to start an inhalation toning. The next phase is to hum an "AH" sound on inhalation and an "Ommm" sound on exhalation. This creates a perpetual OM chant.

The exhalation tone is created by back pressure below the vocal chords within the chest. Breathing in through the nose and creating back pressure in the sinus cavities creates the inhalation tone. In each case the sound exits through the mouth. After playing with the tone a bit, place the tip of the tongue very near to the upper palate. When you find the "Sweet Spot" the sound will start to produce harmonic overtones and really get loud in your ears. The placement of the tongue accomplishes two other purposes. First it opens the upper airway allowing for smoother air flow and better inhalation tone. Secondly, it directs the sound to the basilar region of the skull vibrating the master glands. Health wise, your sinus cavities will open and most muscular tension will quickly abate.

Once the skull is vibrating concentrate on moving the vibrations down to the hands, then to the feet, until you can vibrate the whole body with each breath. Practice talking while vibrating the body. Now when you pray or chant words or healing or power, every cell will begin to resonate to their frequency.

Once you can vibrate the hands you are ready to begin the last phase of the respiratory pulse. Begin by slowly lowering the volume of your sound while maintaining the vibrations in your hands. Eventually you can lower the volume to sub audible level and still maintain vibrations. At this point you can project sound through your hands without using the voice for healing. This is the secret of the Qi Gong masters who can project sound from their hands. Vibrating the body with the vocal chords also helps you access other levels of power and transformation within the body, which start to defy physical laws. (Lasorso,Vincent, J. Jr. ‘S' Principles of Power, T'AI CHI Magazine, February, 1987)

Principle Five: Kinetic Pulse

Many of our ancestors worshipped their gods by dancing in circles around fires. The rhythmic vertical jumping pulsed the cerebral spinal fluids up the spine and stimulated the lower brain in the exact regions, which induce near-death/unified experiences. Dance allowed us the means to open the gateway to God.

Even today the traditional orthodoxy of all faiths pray with rocking movements to pulse the brain into ecstasy. By rocking the upper body a short distance forward and back we create a pulsing wave within our brains. By repeating this motion at a rate of one cycle per second in combination with chanting, and fixed focus upon an icon, a unitive flow state of ecstasy is achieved in just a few minutes. Soon the entire neural system synchronizes and profound change can occur.

A more effective approach is to move slowly. Slow repetitive movements reprogram the entire neural system, brain chemistry and architecture. The studies aren't done yet, but soon we'll see a complete rethinking of movement in health and religion.

Using the body also keeps us in the present. Being in the present with our entire energy field, is the best way to influence and create a positive field in our time/space reality.

The daily practice of these principles will lower your mental and physical stress, improve your health and will positively affect the whole world. Do not be afraid to practice inner peace.