Peptides are tinypieces of protein consisting of strings of amino acids, joined together like beadsi n a necklace. When the chain is 100 + amino acids, its considered a polypeptide 200+ amino acids is called a protein. There are 20 known major amino acids.

Robert Plutchik, a psychology professor at Hofstra Univ proposed a theory of eight primary emotions — sadness. disgust, anger, anticipation, joy, acceptance, fear and surprise — which, much like primary colors, could be mixed to get other secondary emotions. E.g. fear + surprise = alarm, joy + fear = guilt. The experts also distinguish among emotion, mood and temperament, with emotion being the most transient and clearly identifiable in terms of what causes it; with mood lasting for hours or days and being less easily traced; and with temperament being genetically based, so that we’re generally stuck with it for a lifetime. (132)

Miles Herkenham concluded that the largest portion of information ricocheting around the brain is kept in order not by the synaptic connections of brain cells but by the specificity of the receptors — in other words, by the ability of the receptor to bind with only one kind of ligand. Miles has estimated that, counter to the collective wisdom of the neuropharmacologists and neuroscientists, less than 2 % of neuronal communication actually occurs at the synapse. (139)

The body is the unconscious mind! Repressed traumas caused by overwhelming emotion can be stored in a body part, thereafter affecting our ability to feel that part or even move it. (141)

The emotion-carrying peptide ligand facilitates memory in human beings. The emotion is the equivalent of the drug, both being ligands that bind to receptors in the body. What this translates into in everyday experience is that positive emotional experiences are much more likely to be recalled when we’re in an upbeat mood, while negative emotional experiences are recalled more easily when we’re already in a bad mood. Not only is memory affected by the mood we’re in, but so is actual performance. One extremely important purpose of emotions from an evolutionary perspective is to help us decide what to remember and what to forget. (144)

Our emotions (or the psychoactive drugs that take over their receptors) decide what is worth paying attention to. (146)

How can we objectively define what’s real and what’s not real? If what we perceive as real is filtered along a gradient of past emotions and learning then the answer is we cannot. (146)

Norman Cousins recovered from a broken elbow in record time simply by focusing for 20 minutes each day on increasing the blood flow through the injured joint, after his physician explained that poor blood supply to the elbow was why injuries to this joint healed slowly. (147)

Emotions are constantlv regulating what we experience as “reality.” (147)

Peptides serve to weave the body’s organs and systems into a single web that reacts to both internal and external environmental changes with complex subtly orchestrated responses. (148)

Peptides are aptly named Information substances

The question is: How can the mind mediate and modulate an experience of pain? What role does consciousness play in such matters? To answer. I must return to the idea of a network A network is different from a hierarchical structure that has a ruling “station” at the top and a descending series of positions that play increasingly subsidiary roles. In a network, theoretically, you can enter at any nodal point and quickly get to any other point: all locations are
equal as far as the potential to rule or direct the flow of information, // Conscious breathing the technique employed by both the yogi and the woman in labor, is extremely powerful.
There is a wealth of data showing that changes in the rate and depth of breathing produce changes in the quantity and kind of peptides that are released from the brain stem. (180)

Virtually any peptide found anywhere else can be found in the respiratory center. This peptide substrate may provide the scientific rationale for the powerful healing effects of consciously controlled breath patterns. (187)

We know that the immune system, like the central nervous system has memory and the capacity to learn. Thus, it could be said that intelligence is located not only in the brain but in cells that are distributed throughout the body, and that the traditional separation of mental processes, including emotions, from the body is no longer valid. (187)

Emotions. The neuropeptides and receptors, the biochemicals of emotion, are, as I have said, the messengers carrying information to link the major systems of the body into one unit that we can call the bodymind.. We can no longer think of the emotions as having less validity than physical, material substance, but instead must see them as cellular signals that are involved in the process of translating information into physical reality, literally transforming mind into matter. Emotions are at the nexus between matter and mind, going back and forth between the two and influencing both.(189)

Viruses use the same receptors as neuropeptides to enter into a cell, and depending on how much of the natural peptide for a particular receptor is around and available to bind, the virus that fits that receptor will have an easier or harder time getting into the cell…Could an elevated mood, one of happy expectation and hope for an exciting possibility or adventure, protect against certain viruses? One possible explanation for how this might work is that the rheovirus, shown to be the cause of the viral cold, uses the receptor for norepinephrine — an informational substance thought to flow in happy states of mind, according to the main psychopharmacological theories — to enter the cell. Presumably what happens is that when you’re happy, the rheovirus can’t enter the cell because the norepinephrine blocks all the potential virus receptors. (190)

All honest emotions are positive emotions. The key is to express it and then let it go, so that it doesn’t fester, or build, or escalate out of control. (193)

The same basic molecules of emotion are found in one-celled creatures which are found in trillion-celled humans. (194)

Think of disease-related stress in terms of an information over-load, a condition in which the mind-body network is so taxed by unprocessed sensory input in the form of suppressed trauma or undigested emotions that it has become bogged down and cannot flow freely, sometimes even working against itself, at cross-purposes. When stress prevents the molecules of emotion from flowing freely where needed, the largely autonomic processes that are regulated by peptide flow, such as breathing, blood flow, immunity, digestion, and elimination, collapse down to a few simple feedback loops and upset the normal healing response. Meditation, by allowing long-buried thoughts and feelings to surface, is a way of getting the peptides flowing again, returning the body, and the emotions, to health. (243)

Gregory Bateson defined information as “the difference that makes a difference.” That difference is “to the observer.” In the old metaphor, we ignored the observer in an attempt to avoid any taint of subjective interference in determining reality. In the new metaphor, the observer plays an important role in defining the reality, because it is the observer’s participation that makes the difference! (257)

Information is not dependent on time or space, as is matter and energy, but exists regardless of these limits! (257)

Bob Gottesman continues: “Consider that the body itself may be a metaphor, just a way of referring to an experience we all have in common. Maybe it’s that we don’t have consciousness, but consciousness has us.” (259)

Meditation is just another way of entering the body’s internal conversations, consciously intervening in its biochemical interactions. (263)

When we are playing, we are stretching our emotional expressive ranges, loosening up our biochemical flow of information, getting unstuck, and healing our feelings. (277)

Acknowledge and claim all our feelings, not just the so-called positive ones. Anger, grief, fear — these emotional experiences are not negative in themselves; in fact, they are vital for our survival.

It’s only when these feelings are denied, so that they cannot be easily and rapidly processed through the system and released, that the situation becomes toxic. And the more we deny them, the greater the ultimate toxicity, which often takes the form of an explosive release of pent-up emotions. (285)

Your mind, your feelings are in your body, and it’s there, in your somatic experience, that feeling is healed. (293)

Shifting the mind from shoulda, coulda, woulda types of thinking promotes self-regulation and healing on all levels. In the race of modern life, we all tend to adjust our sails far too frequently, running this way and that, always in a hurry, not pausing long enough to see the effect of our trimming on the course of our lives. Meditation provides an opportunity to stop and wait for some feedback before charging ahead on an uninformed course, a chance to let the body catch up with the powerful transforming effects of our natural information flow. (294)

We call this emotional resonance, and it is a scientific fact that we can feel what others feel. The oneness of all life is based on this simple reality: Our molecules of emotions are all vibrating together.