I’m in the section where Candace’s father has died and she’s had it with being treated like dirt because she’s a brilliant woman with quite an intuition.  Again, gee, ya don’t say! Here are a few tidbits:

“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.”

This was her conclusion after giving a detailed blow by blow of lab experiments that allowed her and her team to reach this conclusion.  It’s pretty technical (pages 138-140).

“Using neuropeptides as the cue, our body-mind retrieves or represses emotions and behaviors. …biochemical change wrought at the receptor level is the molecular basis of memory.” (then she goes into specific science jargon)-p.143

On page 146 she starts pulling it out.

“There is no objective reality!” And she details how our brain and memory filters out what it deems unnecessary.  “Through visualization, for example, we can increase the blood flow into a body part and thereby increase the availability of oxygen and nutrients to carry away toxins and nourish the cells.

“Repressed emotions are stored in the body-the unconscious mind-via the release of neuropeptide ligands, and those memories are held in their receptors.-p.147

Stay tuned, because she’s about to follow her intuition 100% as she pivots away from Science Dogma.  You mean…she became creative? Yes. And it leads to a huge discovery.

It’s amazing what can happen to the mind when you lose the ego and follow the heart which is the seat of the intuition.  Oh, and she found a good guy to fall in love with and work with.  Yes, there are good guys out there.

But…did Dr. Candace Pert get put through the grinder in the NIH (National Institute of Health) Science Palace where it was all about competition, politics, gossip, and the good-ole-boy system?  I’ve heard recently how bad the sciences have gotten for women, sort of like the current sexual harassment scandal that is causing men in power to drop like flies, but frankly, what I’m reading about her experience is far worse than anything overtly sexual. (Charlie Rose is the latest one today and I liked this show!) It’s all very disappointing, but not surprising, at least not to me given what I’ve been through in my jobs.  It’s all outlined in my book “Healer”.

The scientists she worked with at the top in the science field were unmitigated assholes.  They lied, were verbally abusive to her, said, “be a good girl” to her, stole her ideas, took the awards and credit for her work, and basically broke her heart. As I was reading the last chapter, I googled her to find out what she was doing now and she died already.  Not surprising from what I’m reading.  She was a brilliant, breakthrough scientist, wife, and mother. But of course, her personal life suffered due to all of that stress in addition to her passion for her work. Such is the case for any very smart, accomplished woman.