because we have a system in our body that connects our brain to all of our bodily organs and connects all of those bodily organs to our brain and that communication between brain and body in both directions creates a situation where either we are positioned to do things well or we are positioned to do things poorly let's begin by talking about what system communicates the brain to the body and the body back to the brain the system that's most often associated with this is our 10th cranial nerve

called the vagus nerve the word vagus relates to the word vagabond which is to wander and indeed the vagus nerve is a vast enormous wandering set of nerves so it's a bunch of neurons and a bunch of wires that go everywhere so where do they go well they leave the brain and the brain stem the brain stem is kind of the back your brain if you touch the back your neck it's about three inches deep the neurons that are there send information into the body to control your bodily organs how fast your heart is beating

how fast you're breathing how fast your digestion is occurring even things like whether or not you are going to secrete so-called killer cells your immune cells from your spleen to go ward off bacteria now the neurons there don't know what to do unless they receive information about what's going on within the body and within the body your heart your lungs your diaphragm your gut so everything from your intestines to your stomach etc and your spleen are sending information also up to the brain so as i mentioned before

it's a two-way street so the vagus nerve is a very important nerve but just by saying vagus nerve it sounds like a singular it sounds like one thing but actually what we're talking about is a series of super highways it's like google maps it's got stuff going everywhere with alternate routes communicating back and forth there are two fundamental features of what's going on in your body that need to be communicated to your brain in order for your brain and your body to work together correctly and the two types of information are mechanical information so things like

pressure things like lack of pressure and chemical information whether or not your gut is acidic or whether or not it's not acidic whether or not you have some sort of pathogen you know something that you ate or that got into your body somehow and is making you sick or whether or not you don't have a pathogen in your body so you've got mechanical sensing and chemical sensing so when you think about your sense of self and your ability to understand what's going on in your body if you feel good or if you feel bad your sense of self is dependent on these

mechanical phenomena and these chemical phenomena and for every organ in your body both the mechanical information about that organ for instance is if your gut is full or empty whether or not your heart is beating fast or beating slowly that's mechanical and chemical information whether or not your gut feels nice and whether you know when i say nice i mean whether or not it has a balance of acidity and alkalinity that feels right to you or whether or not your gut feels off it doesn't feel

quite right that's chemical information so the first principle that everyone should understand about their sense of self is that they are sensing mechanical and chemical information about every organ in their body except for one and that's the brain your brain actually doesn't have pain receptors it doesn't even have touch receptors the brain is a command center it helps drive and govern changes in the organs of the body but your brain doesn't move at least not much it can move a little bit fluid moves within it

but as long as you're healthy it's not moving that much your brain has no sensation of its own in fact when they do brain surgery on people they will anesthetize or put some anesthesia on the scalp they'll cut away the skin there so that people don't feel anything they'll use some anesthesia they'll peel back the skin and then they'll use a well let's call it what it is it's a bone saw and they basically saw open a little window in the skull i've actually done this before and seen this before i've done this many times before and once you're inside the brain

you can put electrodes in there and you can put various things in there of course all for therapeutic purposes and you do that without any anesthesia to the actual brain tissue because it has no receptors to sense anything it doesn't have pain receptors it doesn't have pressure receptors none of that when you have a headache and your head feels like it's just too much pressure well that's because of receptors that lie outside the brain so your organs are different they need to tell your brain what's going on and there are ways that you can control

the mechanical and the chemical state of your organs in ways that are very powerful and this is crucial to do because if you can properly regulate the mechanical and chemical environment of your body your brain functions better this is absolutely clear from data that if your gut is healthy if you get the alkalinity right the acidity right and if your spleen is healthy and happy and if your lungs are working properly then your brain will function better

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