Share Bookmark

READ TIME: 12m
DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 2 weeks ago

Forty-eight years ago, I entered professional school because I was inspired to be involved in the health field. As I worked with clients and patients, it became increasingly obvious to me that there were correlations between the PSYCHOLOGY of the patient and the PHYSIOLOGY they were presenting.

I kept seeing repeated patterns in symptomatology, stresses, perceptions, attitudes and interpretations people had, so I started documenting those patterns because I wanted to understand why they were occurring.

I was particularly interested in cases where the etiology or causation was unknown. When there was no obvious rationale for why an individual had a particular condition, I became curious about the psychology behind it. That wasn't the primary emphasis of my formal training. The clinical aspects were substantial and important, but I was particularly fascinated by the psychology.

As I studied physiology, particularly autonomic function, cell physiology, pathology and embryology, I saw correlations that I simply couldn't ignore. I began accumulating a list of repetitive patterns associated with different conditions and the stresses that seemed to underlie them. It appeared that very few people were paying attention to these correlations, but I was fascinated by what they might reveal.

Here's what I learned as I continued exploring these patterns. 

I noticed that, as you go through life, you perceive two basic things. You become infatuated with what you like and seek, and resentful of what you dislike and avoid. These are the two basic polarities of perception: the positive and the negative, the supportive and the challenging perceptions you have in life.

These aren't simply psychological experiences. They are reflected in the way your brain processes every experience you have.

In the subcortical area of the brain called the amygdala, every experience and stimulus is assigned a valency, either positive or negative. A positive valency represents PREY and creates an impulse to seek and consume it. A negative valency represents a PREDATOR and creates an instinct to avoid it. You tend to spend your life oscillating between seeking and avoiding, prey and predator responses, and these two perceptions activate the complementary branches of the autonomic nervous system.

The parasympathetic nervous system is associated with rest and digestion. It allows you to assimilate, repair and recover. The sympathetic nervous system, on the other hand, prepares you for fight or flight. It excites the body, increases alertness and mobilizes you for action. Every cell in your body is directly or indirectly  influenced by these two systems.

When they remain in balance, you experience autonomic regulation and wellness.

When they become chronically polarized or imbalanced, autonomic dysregulation occurs and illness may develop.

For example, when you perceive a threat, adrenaline is released. Your heart rate, blood pressure and blood glucose rise as your body prepares for survival. Chronic perceptions of threat can also contribute to conditions such as hypertension and diabetes. When the parasympathetic nervous system predominates, the opposite occurs. Your heart rate, blood pressure and blood glucose decrease because your body is no longer preparing to fight or flee.

In other words, your physiology, with its symptoms, reveals the psychology of your perceptions.

Because I wanted to understand exactly how physiology reflected psychology, I took the time to trace each patient's physiology back to their perceptions. I discovered that every perception is translated into chemistry. With every perception, you produce a different ratio of neurotransmitters, neurohormones, neuroregulators and signaling molecules. I mapped them from embryological origins through to adulthood because I wanted to understand which perceptions influenced these signaling molecules and why different cells responded the way they did.

This principle applies throughout your body. Whether you look at the lungs, the cardiovascular system, the digestive system or the muscles, the same principle applies. Under sympathetic activation, the body prepares for action. Digestive secretions decrease, bowel motility slows and the physiology shifts towards survival. Under parasympathetic activation, secretions increase, digestion kicks into gear and the body returns to rest, digest, and repair.

Each symptom reveals the psychology.

That's what I started seeing in these patterns, and it's what led me to write the textbook and create the seminar: Decoding Your Body's Messages. I became fascinated by what the body was trying to reveal.

Those observations eventually led me to develop what is now known as the Demartini Method. 

One of the remarkable things I noticed was what happened when individuals came to my signature two-day Breakthrough Experience program. I showed them how to balance the ratios of their perceptions by asking quality questions. In other words, if you're infatuated with somebody, you're conscious of the upsides and unconscious of the downsides. If you're resentful towards somebody, you're conscious of the downsides and unconscious of the upsides. But the moment you become simultaneously conscious of both sides, which I call love, your physiology begins to normalize.

I've been developing the Demartini Method, which I teach as part of the Breakthrough Experience, for more than five decades. It's a series of concise questions designed to balance your perceptions of events you label traumatic or ecstatic until they become balanced. Whenever you have missing information because of the unconscious, you have disorder. That's why we call disease "dis-order". The moment you ask quality questions, equilibrate the mind and become conscious of both sides simultaneously, you begin to see the order.
 

Order is reclaiming the information that was missing.

If you're infatuated, I ask, "What are the downsides?" If you're resentful, I ask, "What are the upsides?" If you perceive something as traumatic, I ask, "What are the benefits?" If you perceive something as ecstatic, I ask, "What are the drawbacks?" The purpose is to neutralize the perception, stabilize the volatility that contributes to psychological and physiological illness, and bring the perceptions back into balance.

Throughout history, from Pythagoras and Asclepius to Hippocrates, great thinkers have recognised the importance of balance. Every drug in the pharmaceutical industry is essentially attempting to restore some form of biochemical balance. Yet you also have the capacity to influence these same chemistries from within, although very few people have been taught how to do so.

The truth is, you have more power than you've probably given yourself credit for.

That's why I've developed this methodology. Every week when I teach the Breakthrough Experience, I receive letters from individuals telling me they're sleeping again. Anything that is highly polarized occupies space and time in your mind. If you're highly infatuated with something, it creates intrusive fantasies that keep you awake. If you're highly resentful, it gives rise to your perceptual nightmares. Whether it's fantasies or nightmares, infatuations or resentments, prides or shames, they all represent polarized perceptions that interfere with your quality of sleep.

The symptoms of insomnia are not random. They're ratios of perception. By asking quality questions that help balance those perceptions, you change both physiological and psychological responses.
 

Many of the responses you call illness may be nothing more than cellular adaptations to the perceptions you hold.

These adaptations are not limited to brain chemistry. They may extend all the way to the behavior of individual cells.

Human beings are like mesophiles, we’re designed to thrive within a relatively narrow range of conditions. Yet you also carry the genetic and epigenetic heritage of primitive extremophiles, microorganisms that survived in environments of extreme heat, cold, acidity, alkalinity, radiation and other challenging conditions billions of years ago.

When you experience extreme stress and polarize your perceptions into absolutes of "always" and "never", your cells can enter what is known as the cell danger response. They begin expressing more primitive adaptive mechanisms that may ultimately manifest as symptoms and disease. This has fascinated me for many years and is one of the reasons I'm continuing my research into the relationship between perception, physiology and cellular adaptation.

Whether you're looking at sleep, cellular adaptation or any other physiological response, the same principle applies.
 

The quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask. 

If you ask quality questions that help you become simultaneously conscious of both sides of an event, your perceptions begin to balance, your physiology responds and wellness naturally emerges. Wellness is the expression of a balanced mind, balanced perceptions and balanced physiology.

The same principle can also be seen in everyday behaviors.

The same principle can be seen in eating behaviors. Individuals who overeat often perceive they are losing what they seek (giving rise to increased ghrelin) , while those who undereat often perceive they are trapped by something they wish to avoid (giving rise to increased leptin). These behaviors are symptoms. If you understand the psychology behind them, you know what quality questions to ask to help bring those perceptions back into balance and change the physiology.

One of the reasons I'm sharing this is because I want to help individuals reclaim their power instead of assuming every solution lies outside themselves. There is certainly a place for emergency intervention, but I have found that your perceptions of events, and what you do with those perceptions, have an extraordinary influence on the outcomes you experience.

If you change your perceptions, you change your actions. Your perceptions determine how you respond to your environment, and those responses extend right down to the physiology of every cell. The cell is responding, not simply to the environment itself, but to your perception of the environment.

When I was eighteen years old, I used to meditate in extreme heat while imagining myself surrounded by ice, and in extreme cold while imagining myself in intense heat. Those experiences taught me something profound. It wasn't simply what the external world was doing that influenced my physiology. It was my perception of the world.

That insight became one of the foundations of the Demartini Method. I love watching individuals discover their own resourcefulness as they bring their perceptions into balance and then observe their physiology responding. That was my dream when I entered professional school. I wanted to find a method that didn't rely solely on something outside the individual, but helped people discover the power they already possessed within themselves.

Many years ago, I said in The Secret that when the voice and the vision on the inside become more profound and powerful than opinions on the outside, you begin to master your life. I truly believe you have the ability to master your physiology and psychology. You deserve to have your power.

Any area of your life you don't empower, somebody else is likely to overpower you. The moment you blame something on the outside, you also tend to look outside yourself for the solution. Those highly polarized perceptions create non-resilient stress responses that influence inflammatory processes, immune function and many of the physiological mechanisms that govern health.

Your physiology is continually working to restore balance.

Your immune system is an extraordinary seventh sensory system, continually gathering information from both the body and the environment while working in concert with the nervous system to maintain homeostasis. As Walter Cannon described many decades ago, the body possesses remarkable homeostatic mechanisms, and today we know there are thousands of systems continually working to maximize wellness.

If you balance your perceptions, you awaken those homeostatic mechanisms. That's why I encourage people not to accept anyone's conclusions blindly, including mine. Study the autonomic nervous system. Explore the research. Use the remarkable tools now available, including AI, to deepen your understanding. Educate yourself, because the magnificence of your body is far greater than most people imagine.

The power that made the body and organized it from a single fertilized cell through countless generations of cell division is still present within you. You're simply not making full use of it. My purpose is to offer a tool that helps awaken that power.

Throughout my career, I've seen individuals who were told there was little hope transform their lives by changing the way they perceived themselves and their circumstances. They restored relationships, changed daily habits, cared for themselves differently and watched their physiology change in the process.

Perhaps disease is not simply something to eliminate. Perhaps it is attempting to guide you back towards authenticity, sustainable fair exchange and balance. Perhaps symptoms are not merely problems. Perhaps they are feedback mechanisms inviting you to discover meaning where you once saw only tragedy.

I love helping individuals discover the order within what initially appears to be chaos. I've watched thousands of individuals transform their physiology by changing their perceptions, and I believe every individual deserves access to that possibility.

Some of the greatest gifts in life cost nothing because they depend upon three things over which you have the greatest influence: your perceptions, your decisions and your actions. Master those three, and you begin mastering your life.

In essence, your physiology, your psychology and even the sociology around you are continually providing feedback, guiding you towards greater authenticity, sustainable fair exchange, equanimity, purpose and meaning.

The power that made the body has the capacity to heal the body.

To Sum Up

• Your physiology, with its symptoms, is continually revealing the psychology of your perceptions.
   
• Every perception you hold influences the chemistry and physiology of your body.
   
• The moment you become simultaneously conscious of both sides of an event, which I call love, your perceptions begin to balance and your physiology begins to normalize.
   
• Order is reclaiming the information that was unconscious or missing.
   
• The quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask.
   
• If you change your perceptions, you change your actions. If you balance your perceptions, you awaken your body's homeostatic mechanisms.
   
• The cell is responding, not simply to the environment itself, but to your perception of the environment.
   
• The truth is, you have more power than you've probably given yourself credit for.
   
• Some of the greatest gifts in life cost nothing because they depend upon three things over which you have the greatest influence: your perceptions, your decisions and your actions.
   
• The power that made the body has the capacity to heal the body.

Are you ready for the NEXT STEP?

If you’re seriously committed to your own growth, if you’re ready to make a change now and you’d love some help doing so, then click on the LIVE chat button bottom right of your screen and chat to us now.

Alternatively, you can book a FREE Discovery call with a member of the Demartini Team.

 

Interested in the Breakthrough Experience seminar?

If you’re ready to go inwards and do the work that will clear your blockages, clarify your vision and balance your mind, then you’ve found the perfect place to start with Dr Demartini at the Breakthrough Experience.

In 2 days you’ll learn how to solve any issue you are facing and reset the course of your life for greater achievement and fulfillment.

Click HERE to find out more

Important Notice:
The content shared in this blog is for education and personal development. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any psychological or medical conditions. The information and processes shared are for general educational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for professional mental-health or medical advice. If you are experiencing acute distress or ongoing clinical concerns, please consult a licensed health-care provider.

Read full disclaimer HERE