Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

We know that the mind influences the body, but what seems to be ignored in the life sciences is what influences the mind. I propose why culture is what influences the mind by creating a context for the communication. Based on my ethnography work with healthy centenarians worldwide, I describe how cultural beliefs are more powerful than our genetic endowment, and how growing older is mostly the passing of time, whereas aging is what we do with our time based on the beliefs we assimilate from our cultures. Rather than being genetically sentenced with family illnesses, we have the capacity to change how our genes express disease as well as the causes of health, based on how our brain learns to culturally perceive the world. My theory and practice of mindbody science is based on research that investigates the healthy brains, the exalted emotions (compassion, empathy, love), and the elevated cognitions (honor, admiration, cooperation). As Homo sapiens, our immune system has 150,000 years of accumulated wisdom that has allowed it to evolve from a protector against pathogens to an intelligent interpreter that confirms the cultural beliefs that we choose to engage. Biocognitive science studies the outliers of the normal curve. Conventional science studies averages at the expense of individual differences. Researching outliers provides valuable individual characteristics missed on group research. These individual characteristics help clarify exceptions in prognosis of terminal illnesses, spontaneous remissions, individual components of longevity, and causality in cultural contexts.