Preventive Medicine, Evolution and Core Energetics
Ph.D Ken Goldberg
(All rights reserved)
First National Convention of Core Energetic
Tonalli, Edo. de México
April 2007

I am a preventive medicine physician with a special interest in the study of psychosomatics. Preventive medicine is the study of disease causes and patterns. Psychosomatics is the study of how the mind and body communicate to organize and regulate the whole organism. I plan to talk about how the most common causes of death from disease have shifted from a competition and battle with micro-organisms to disease caused by malfunctions in our bodies regulatory mechanisms--the very same psychosomatic self regulating system that produces character. I will also talk about the need for very different strategies to deal with this kind of disease--from fighting invading organisms to building relationships of cooperation and collaboration--and how this change in disease pattern and treatment is important for our work in Core Energetics. I also want this talk to be collaborative--If you need to get up and move around-- please do so. If you have something that needs to be heard-- you can speak up. I will also leave some time at the end specifically for questions and comments.

So now visualize your practice-- people who come to you with illness or psychic disturbance or somatization. Feel how you are in relationship to your patients-- How does their character or their illness affect you? Think about your friends and family. Maybe some of you have friends or family that are experiencing illness-- how are you in relationship to them and their illness? How does your own aging and health affect you? How much do you see yourself in a battle with aging and disease? Do you hope for Magic bullets that will help you or others win over the disease? How well do you feel you really understand how your body is trying to
communicate with you? How well do you understand what the disease is trying to communicate to you? While you are visualizing i will tell you a brief version of a Story you probably know. the story of the exodus.

Long long ago in ancient egypt, the Israelites were slaves and forced to build the temples and structures of the Egyptians with bricks and mortar. To prevent the slaves from becoming too strong, the Egyptian Leader, Pharoah ordered the first born son of the Israelites be killed. rather than see her son killed, one mother set her infant boy adrift in a reed basket in the Nile. He was found by bathing Egyptian women--the hand maids to the queen-- and was brought back to the palace and raised as an Egyptian noble. Although He grew up a young man of privelege he somehow came to see and feel the injustice of the harsh treatment of the slaves— And when he saw a taskmaster beating a slave he struck the task master down--killing him. He ran out to the desert knowing his old life was over.

While he wandered in the desert he had a vision-- a bush that was consumed in flames but did not burn spoke to him as the voice of the one true god and told him he must return to Egypt and free the slaves—his people-- and that god would help him. Though he felt afraid and inadequate to the task, he followed the directions. When Pharoah laughed at his demands that the slaves be freed, God sent plagues that devastated Egypt, but pharoah did not relent until the 10th plague the death of the first born Egyptian son. Faced with the death of his own beloved son the pharoah released the isrealites who ran into the desert. The pharoah had a change of heart and sent his army after the fleeing slaves. The Israelites had the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptians behind them and as the story goes they followed Moses into the Sea which parted for them. When the Egyptians tried to follow, they were swallowed up by the Sea.
The Isrealites wandered in the desert for years and many became disenchanted with their new spartan existence. While Moses was away meditating and praying for guidance, the people began to build idols and dance and celebrate in the way of idol worshippers and talked of going back to Egypt. When Moses finally returned with the 10 commandments-- the word of the one god-- he was enraged that the people had lost their faith and he threw down the tablets fracturing them. the people saw this and stopped their idol worship and rallied around moses and the faith of the one true god. They wandered in the desert for 40 years before they found their way to their promised land.
I tell this story because it is a great example how long our history of power and oppression is, and how difficult it is for us as humans to give up our misguided and unhealthy tendency to misuse power. The story is also instructive because it provides wisdom about how to live outside the usual dynamics of oppression. We will come back to this story and it’s teachings as we look at our current health situation.
We live in an exciting time which is sometimes also a scary time. The physical responses of excitement and fear are almost identical, so it may be hard to tell if this is excitment or fear that you’re feeling. Just remember to breathe-- in fear we tend to hold the breath and in excitement we are breathing-- often shouting-- so everybody let’s take a deep breath AND SHOUT.
There are many new possibilities in our field and in the world in general, but there are also new threats to our well being--are you still breathing-- new types of disease, increasing environmental disease, increasing psychosomatic disease and new strands of infectious disease, new plagues if you will. These new diseases are new stresses on us and our ecosystems and how we adapt to these new stresses will determine how life looks in the future.
Of course, disease and stress is nothing new. There have been two types of disease ever since life began. Imagine the first life forms trying to form a boundary around themself, to get enough energy to grow, to keep from disintegrating. The energy loss, inability to grow or reproduce, or disintegration is one form of disease-- an inability to self regulate. Now imagine a single celled organism being eaten up by other single celled organisms. We would call that competition, but it is also early disease. We tend to think of predator and prey as part of an ecosystem-- the plant
is eaten by the insect which is eaten by the fish which is eaten by a bird and so on. Except when the organism doing the eating is smaller than it’s prey, then we think of this as disease-- infectious disease-- and for almost all recorded history infectious diseases were by far the most common causes of death for humans.

Less than 100 years ago Tuberculosis, Malaria, influenza, Pneumonia, Measles, and other infectious diseases were the top causes of death for everyone-- and in the poorest of countries around world they still are. However in countries that share the benefits of modernization, the disease pattern has shifted radically. Look at the top ten killers in Mexico and the 38 industrialized nations.

Mexico (2005)

1. Heart disease - 16.4%
2. Complications of Diabetes Mellitus - 13.1%
3. Cancer - 12.9%
4. Traumatic injuries - 7.4%
5. Liver disease (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) - 6.2%
6. Stroke - 5.7%
7. Perinatal complications - 3.5%
8. COPD--Lung Disease - 3.0%
9. Pneumonia & influenza - 2.6%
10. Kidney failure - 2.0%
38 industrialized nations 1995

(1) Heart Disease
(2) Malignant Neoplasms
(3) Cerebrovascular Disease
(4) Accidents & Adverse Effects
(5) Pneumonia
(6) Atherosclerosis
(7) Mental Disorders
(8) Senility Without Psychosis
(9) Diabetes Mellitus
(10) Embolism & Thrombosis
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION 1990-- all nations
1. HEART ATTACK
2. STROKE
3. PNEUMONIA
4. DIARRHEA
5. BIRTH RELATED ILLNESS
6. BRONCHITIS/EMPHYSEMAL--(LUNG DZ)
7. TUBERCULOSIS
8. MEASLES
9. ROAD ACCIDENTS
10. CANCER OF LUNG AND TRACHEA

Notice there is only one infectious disease on the list in Mexico--pneumonia/influenza causing only 2 1/2 % of deaths. Interestingly #11 is suicide and is just less than #10.
What do you feel when you see this list? How does it affect you? What are these diseases that have taken the place of infectious disease and why?
[This is the field of preventive medicine--to understand the trends and causes of disease so we can work to prevent them instead of waiting to treat only the symptoms. I think of Core Energetics as part of the field of preventive medicine because we are seeking to understand the causes of diseases and work to prevent disease and heal the patient at a much deeper level than the level of the symptom. We will come back to how the practice of Core energetics relates to the understanding and prevention of disease.]
What has taken over as the top causes of death are all internal to humans--- the so-called lifestyle diseases like heart disease and stroke, or malfunctions of the bodies ability to regulate and deal with environmental stress like Cancer, Diabetes, Chronic lung diseases. These diseases are not the direct result of a battle with another organism-- they are not the result of competition-- these diseases are the result of living longer and the bodies attempts to adapt to environmental stresses such as the modern industrial diet, lack of exercise, pollution, economic uncertainty, and feelings of isolation or lack of pleasure and meaning. Or they are the bodies own regulatory system causing destruction and damage as in auto-immune disease where the immune system attacks normal tissues as in Diabetes Mellitus- the #2 cause of death here in Mexico. This list also does not reflect the growing number of regulatory diseases that are not fatal-- infertility, headache, fibromyalgia, depression and anxiety, chronic fatigue and many others.
The question of why these diseases have taken over as the top causes of death is the result of a number of things. First of all, in the more affluent societies we have moved beyond the competition with microorganisms-- The biggest changes have come because we have made ourselves immune to these organisms with vaccines. Also we have taken away their breeding grounds by cleaning up malarial swamps, building sewer systems, and treating drinking water. And when that fails we have found ways to kill them with antibiotics, as well as identifiying treating those who are sick so they can’t spread the disease. The result of this is that we are living longer than ever before and the new diseases are what
is left—the diseases of self regulation. Our bodies are adjusting and learning to regulate themselves in a new environment.
In other words, we have changed the environmental pressures that caused humans to die-- from competition with micro-organisms, to the challenge of regulating our systems in the midst of stresses that come from living so long in modern industrial society.
Now to understand diseases of the regulatory system, it’s important to understand a little about the regulatory system itself. This is the study of psychosomatics. The regulatory system manages all the subsystems of the organism. This is the process of taking information from outside and from all the different systems like the circulatory system and the digestive system and coordinating them. As you can see this is essentially a process of information management and communication.
Ever since the first organisms formed, we have been on an evolutionary course of increasing information management and communication. Even the simplest organisms need to coordinate the many functions needed to regulate life-- most of which are energetic functions such as intake of energy, metabolism or digestion of energy, excretion of wastes and so on.
This requires taking in information about what food is good, what is dangerous, figuring out how to maximize energy intake and minimize energy output and ho  to stay safe long enough to reproduce. Single celled organisms do all these things. They move toward food and away from toxins or predators. They developed special sensors on their cell walls to “perceive” the world around them. They developed special motor mechanisms for getting around. They reproduce-- (makes you wonder what it’s like to be an organism that can have sex with themselves whenever they want without any guilt) Eventually these single celled organisms teamed up with other single celled organisms to share information and tasks because it benefitted both organisms to cooperate. Imagine a cell with a sensor for food that teams up with a cell that has a good way of moving around. This sharing allowed the organisms to better adapt, to become better at getting food, getting away from trouble, to become more efficient. The classic example of this cooperative arrangment is the bacterial mitochondria-- the part of an ancient bacteria that was probably the first organism that learned how to take energy from oxygen, it learned how to breathe. That bacteria gave up it’s ownership of the energy factory, it gave up it’s cell walls and it’s other cell machinery--in fact it gave up it’s individual identity as an organism--and the energy factory part became adopted by other organisms inside their cell walls. Just like moses lost his identity and was adopted by another tribe. Now Every cell in your body has this same little part from an ancient bacteria inside it that is what allows us to get energy from oxygen-- it allows us to breathe.
As more of these arrangements were made permanent the cells could focus on their special skill but they had to be able to coordinate their actions and so developed a variety of ways to communicate. These communication systems were initally all energetic-- they learned to use mechanical tension and vibration through special proteins in the cell membrane, electric and electronic signalling, little packets of light energy called photons, microwave radiation and many other forms of energetic signalling that we are only coming to understand now. This has evolved into our whole energy system with the connective tissues and meridians and chakra system that you have been learning about.
The details of this are more than i can talk about in this 1 hour, but I will mention that the specialized proteins that allow for mechanical, and electronic communication between cells are what make up the connective tissue in your body. The connective tissue-- mad up of liquid crystalline semi-conducting fibers is how the energy travels around our body---not just the mechanical energy of tension in the bones, muscles, and tendons, but also the bioelectronic system which uses the connective tissue like phone lines to send signals. This is obviously very important not only for general health, but this is how our physical character forms-- the muscle and tendon and bone that develops is the physical aspect of our energy system.
As the systems got more specialized and more complex the cellsalso developed a specialized system of electrical and chemical signals that could be sent to give a message or perform a function at a distance. This has evolved into the nervous system and messenger molecules—nerves and neurotransmitters, glandular cells and hormones, blood cells and immune molecules. These cells are commonly referred to as the psychoneuroimmunology system. This whole regulatory system is intertwined with the energetic connective tissue system because every blood vessel and nerve is wrapped in specialized energy conductive connective tissue cells. In fact more than half of the brain is not nervous
tissue at all but glial cells-- these connective tissue energy conducting cells.
So these regulatory systems coordinate the actions of the 7 trillion cells of the body. Of course the bigger picture is also that this system connects our consciousness-- our thoughts, feelings, intentions, and our spiritual state, to our physical body and to the outer world. When our energy system is open and flowing our regulatory system is open and flowing-- they are the same system. If we were to live in a way that allows our feelings and our creative energy to be free we would have our full health and vitality. When our thoughts are trapped in images, when our attitudes and feelings are repressed or distorted, when we are in conflict between positive and negative intentions, our energy and our regulatory system is in distortion, blocked, closed. This causes all the problems we see in our practices-- blocked creativity and sexuality, failed relationships and so on, as well as the physical and mental diseases -- chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, depression, and the like. These are the modern plagues that are the messages from our higher self to set free that which is oppressed within us-- to free up our enslaved life force.
So we have evolved this amazing and complicated regulatory system that links our physical body together, connects our consciousness to our physcial body, and helps us adapt to changes in our environment whether those changes are in relationships, in taking in new information, or in adjusting to changes in the physical environment. Unfortunately the environment has changed extremely rapidly in recent years and our regulatory system is scrambling to catch up.
Consider this for a moment: the human body had millions of years to learn to adapt to the old problems of infectious disease and regulating an organism that hunted, gathered, and farmed and only lived for about 40-50 years. Our bodies have had only a couple hundred years --about 5 generations--to adjust to modern industrial life. And modern industrial life and the environmental stresses that go with it is radically different than the life we evolved to lead. On a simple physical level the air we breathe is radically different--perhaps there is no need to tell that to people from Mexico city-- but you were all born after there was already industrial pollution so it may seem a given-- but it didn’t exist 150 years ago.
Radiation is another example. Although you probably all know that radiation can cause cancer did you know that 150 years ago the only radiation on earth was from outer space or from the Earth itself. Although these are significant they now are a tiny minority of the radiation bath we live in-- from radio and tv waves, microwaves for ovens and cell phones, the electric and magnetic fields from all the power lines that come into every house and office and run every appliance-- don’t forget the little clock radio that sits by your head all night long while you sleep.
And our very food itself is totally different-- two simple examples-- corn is now genetically modified and grown with chemical fertilizers – very different even if you don’t cook it in a microwave. And beef is now raised in feedlots and fed corn and growth hormones-- as well as given antibiotics because they would all die from overcrowding and liver disease-- they didn’t evolve to eat corn-- they’re grass eaters.
And of course the changes are psychological, emotional, social, and cultural-- although these topics are way beyond the scope of this talk i will give one example. Up until a few hundred years ago people mostly worked very hard physically for short bursts-- hunting, gathering, and farming, and then they spent much of the year in rituals, festivals, and communal celebrations, dancing, drumming, drinking, wearing costumes and getting very much into altered states of ecstatic communion with each other and with their gods. This was true until 300 years ago when mechanized warfare and the industrial revolution changed everything.
Now most people work day in and day out at a repetitive job with a few holidays and a few vacation days and besides immediate family there’s TV, organized sports, and Church. Where are the festivals? The Feasts? The Chance to commune with god in public and to feel part of the pageant of life? It is probably no surprise that in the last 300 years historical records show the appearance and rise of depression, anxiety, and suicide-- these things had barely been mentioned before and they rapidly became major sources of disease-- remember the list of 38 industrialized nations listed mental disorders as the 7th leading cause of death-- and that doesn’t count for all the people who live with mental illness all their lives and die of other causes.
Although our biology is slowly adapting to changes in the environment, Physical evolution is very slow. Physical evolution requires natural selection of successful variation-- a process that happens over generations. Our bodies are very much like those of homo sapiens who lived at the time of the first cave paintings. Yes, we are taller, better nourished, and live longer, but our basic physical structure is very similar-- with one apparent difference. Through cooperative efforts between people--just like the single celled organisms-- we have specialization of jobs that has led to technological advances and the ability to generate, store, and transmit information like never before. We are developing and sharing ideas and grappling with change and diversity on a scale never before possible. How many of you have gone to school? Changed careers? Changed belief systems? Traveled to another country? These things were very unusual just a couple hundred years ago.
The point is that the focus of our evolution has shifted from changes in physical structure to changes in information and consciousness—how we think, how we relate to each other, how we handle information and how well we adapt to the new information. These are the tasks of our energetic regulatory system and it needs support to succeed.
I suspect that our regulatory system which is an incredibly sensitive instrument for receiving energetic information is capable of perceiving wisdom and higher consciousness beyond our wildest dreams, but we must learn how to support it and cooperate with it-- we cannot force it to adapt to an unhealthy environment or force it to do our bidding by simply stuffing it with more information. We cannot make our consciousness grow by force.
Yet this is what we often try to do-- we try to force change, or force adaptation to an unhealthy environment because it is expedient. It is convenient to use chemical fertilizers, it is expedient to use antibiotics to grow cows in feedlots and to defeat disease. It is efficient to work 40 or more hours a week and keep our factories running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our patients will progress even if we have to force our patients to face their lower selves. We have dominated the land, the animals, and our bodies to force them to be efficient and productive. We have been bending the land and our bodies to our will since before the Egyptians.
Our primitive consciousness wants to use power to dominate, to defeat, and to eliminate a problem. The history of the world is often framed in terms of hierarchy and competition-- survival of the fittest, winner take all, with a focus on countless wars of conquest and domination. This way of thinking is a part of medical and often psychological thought. We speak of defeating illness, of winning against cancer, of killing the invading micro-organisms.
In Core Energetic terms this kind of approach amounts to will and fear based violence. Our medical and psychological problems are the result of an intricate system of cooperative interconnections and will never be resolved with force.

But wait, you may argue, this way of thinking has been successful with infectious disease, why won’t it work with regulatory disease as well? Surely we have won out over infectious disease? The truth is that our big advances against infectious disease came not from killing anything, but came from changing our immune system through vaccines to be able to live alongside these organisms, and by altering the environment –mostly cleaning up our drinking water so we had our space and the other organisms have theirs. There is even very good evidence that we can evolve or train these organisms to cause less illness in humans. In the case of Cholera, the more we use antibiotics and isolate the people who get the disease, the more deadly the strains of cholera become. By making populations healthier by cleaning up their drinking water and letting the healthy people contract the disease, the disease does not kill them, then as they get over it they spread a less deadly, milder form of the disease. Isolating the organism and trying to kill it with antibiotics kills off all the weakest bugs and leaves the strongest ones-- the killers. We see this over and over with antibiotics and infection.

Take that in for a minute. When we try to kill microorganisms, they evolve to be more deadly-- when we adapt ourselves and our environment to be more healthy the organisms become less toxic to us.
Obviously regulatory diseases are different-- there is not an enemy to defeat as in infectious disease. But we often go about it as if there were. And the same goes for therapy or Core Energetics practice—where we may think of overcoming someones defenses, tearing off the mask, or defeating the lower self. This kind of attack will only get rid of the weakest parts of the defense-- and the strong parts will push back ever more so-- becoming more toxic in the process.

We can learn from the examp les of the natural world. Diseases of the regulatory system are the bodies limited ability to take in information, to coordinate the functions of the body, and collaborate with others and to cooperate with enviroment to maximize health and opportunity for growth for all. Instead of attacking, what if we think in terms of coordination, collaboration, and cooperation with the regulatory system? The defenses are of course part of that system--images are beliefs about how to get our needs met, The lower self is a distorted attempt to protect us from pain and loss.

How can we do this? To support and collaborate we must first learn to listen. All the healthy spiritual practices teach us this. Attend to your breath, mediatate on your thoughts to understand how they arise, do daily physical practices that attune you to the workings of the body. this is true in all the great traditions.

In the case of regulatory disease-- specifically meditate on what the disease is trying to say to you. When your muscles are tight--that is a message, when you are feeling fatigued, that is a message, when you have diabetes that is a message. Of course the messages are not in words. We must learn the language of the unconscious, of the body and of the feelings if we are to understand. The regulatory system that connects your mind and body is incredibly well designed to receive and send signals, but if you don’t try to listen, or if you try to fight it to overcome it, the message cannot get through.

The same thing goes for working with your patients. Their Higher Self comes seeking growth and health. You can learn to listen to the meaning behind their words. Their illnesses and their Defenses are trying to communicate with you. You have the choice of opening your heart and mind to learn from them, or you can decide you know what is best for them and proceed to teach or force them to comply.

This is where the story of the Exodus can be instructive. The escaping people were pursued by the oppressor to the sea, but they didn’t turn and fight, nor did they surrender. They took a leap of faith and they passed through the Sea-- the universal symbol for the deep unconscious. And the oppressors could not follow. Then they wandered in the wilderness-- another term for the uncivilized deep unconscious-- and when Moses brought them the ten commandments, they were not ready. He did not try to force them to obey---he threw down the rules and broke the tablets-- these laws from god could not be forced on anyone. The true leader gives people the choice to follow the law of god-- and they did, had they been forced they would have only traded one oppressor for another.

In our practices we can lead best by example, by invitation, by collaboration, and by cooperation. We can lead out patients into the deep unconscious and we can stay aligned with the Higher self, but we lead best when we transformative power of surrender to the higher self—the surrender to love.

So i have talked about the changes in disease patterns with infectious disease being replaced by diseases of the regulatory and energy system. I talked about the need to approach these new diseases with a spirit of collaboration and cooperation instead of the dualistic battle mentality of winner vs. loser. And i applied this to the Core Energetic approach to transforming the lower self with the need to shift from a dualistic attitude of winning over the defenses, or attempting to get rid of them. We have always known that it is the Higher Self that does the healing-- and the Higher self heals with love.

Force will not solve our problems. As mosses did We need to be able to see and feel the injustice in oppression and be willing to let go of cherished ways of life and cherished beliefs if we are to survive. To transform oppression we can live by god’s guidance-- that will give us the strength and courage to face the oppressor within us. And once free of our old structures we need to be willing to go through the deepest unconscious forces and be willing even to throw down the rules that we believe god has given us. In this way we can lead our lives in collaboration with god, with each other, and with the earth.

We cannot know if our choices will be the right ones, but we can make them consciously, in faith, with our best intentions. We can be honest and courageous enough to act on the truth even if it costs us comfort in the short term. This is our great opportunity to act from love-- love for ourselves and the people we care about, love for our communities even with their shortcomings, love for our children and elders even when their needs are different than ours, love for our planet which makes our lives possible and brings beauty and wisdom, and love for those who hurt us-- our supposed enemies-- if anything is to have meaning and if we are to create a different story than the age old story of oppression and exodus. We have no where else to go. The only exodus possible is to leave the land of oppression within us. To sacrifice our old way of life in the name of freedom, justice, and the message of our higher selves. The message that comes from our core, the message of Love thy neighbor, of Love Thyself, of Love.