Q & A with Alberto Villoldo, Author of One Spirit Medicine
Part 1

Q: Why did you leave a more traditional medical background to a more spiritual path?
    
A: My training is as a medical anthropologist versus a medical doctor. As a medical anthropologist, I was curious about other healing systems around the world. Modern medicine, which is wonderful for healing trauma (such as injuries from an automobile accident) is terrible for healing chronic conditions. At a laboratory at San Francisco State University that I directed, we were studying how we create psychosomatic disease and whether we could create psychosomatic health. I realized that to find the answer I had to go study with the experts who were in true primitive societies without technology – all they had was the mind’s ability to heal the body.
     
Q: Why is One Spirit Medicine important to the average person?
     
A: Nature selects for the longevity of the species and not the individual, investing all of its resources in reproduction. After our reproductive years we are useless to the species – human growth hormone production and free radical scavenging systems shut down. Our bodies’ self-repair systems have been shut down by western diet and western belief systems. One Spirit Medicine details ancient methods for rebooting the biofield – detoxifying the brain and body, while clearing and repairing our Luminous Energy Field. We learn the keys to prevention and longevity practiced by the shamans of old: Super foods and customs that switch these systems back on again, repair mitochondria and unlock password-protected regions in DNA that activate the Sirt1 genes. We are not slaves to our genetics. The neural networks in our brains will determine how we age, how we heal and how we may die. And we can change that. One Spirit Medicine teaches us how we can get our health span to equal our life span.
     
Q: What is wrong with the western diet?
     
A: With the discovery of agriculture 10,000 years ago the human life span was reduced in half. We stopped eating proteins and fats and began to eat carbs, giving rise to a new social class of masters and slaves, religions (“give us this day our daily bread”) and warfare. There is no archeological evidence of warfare prior to the invention of agriculture. Grains are carbs that turn into sugars. Sugars feed our lower brain, which is predatory, violent, greedy, and needs 10 commandments so we do not kill or steal. Proteins and fats – the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors – fuel the higher brain of creativity and innovation. Wheat contains Gluten, a protein that is not recognized by the bodies of 90% of the human population. Gluten cleaves the tight junctions of the GI tract, allowing food particles and micro flora to get into the bloodstream and create massive inflammation and autoimmune diseases. The incidence of allergies in non-agricultural peoples is 1 in 1,500. In agricultural societies it is 1 in 3.
     
What is worse is that by losing the ancient Paleolithic belief systems – oneness of spirit, oneness of life – we become disconnected, disenfranchised (in the earth, not of the earth). We ignore the voice of spirit and nature and we look at the bounty of nature merely as resources for human consumption. We become commercially driven and forget about stewardship and sustainability – the price of which will always be too high. The damage we have wreaked on the ecosystem is irreversible, and has doomed the human race to early extinction.

Q: Why is fasting important?

A: Eating three meals a day is killing us – we used to feast and fast. At the heart of One Spirit Medicine is an age-old practice called the Vision Quest. Through fasting and meditation, a Vision Quest awakens the body’s self-repair and regeneration systems and reconnects you to Spirit and your own deepest purpose. We fast to turn on the body’s repair mechanisms and clear brain fog. Even during a very short fast, amazing things happen to the body and brain. In just 24 hours, the production of human growth hormone increases by 1,500 percent, repairing cells that make up our tissues. Not eating sugars for as little as 18 hours wakes up the body’s system for self-repair, detoxifies cells, and switches on the longevity genes.

Q: What is the problem with modern health care?

A: We do not have a health care system in America, we have a disease care system. Americans are being killed by the food we eat, the thoughts we think, and the medicine we take. Between the food industry and the medical profession, they get us from cradle to grave.

The “Health” Statistics are alarming:

• Close to 70 percent of Americans are overweight, and one in three children born in America today will develop type 2 diabetes by the age of 15.
• Fifty percent of otherwise healthy 85 year olds are at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is being called type 3 diabetes, linked to a gluten-rich, wheat-based diet and a stressed-out brain.
• One in 60 children is diagnosed autistic.
• Millions suffer from insomnia, stress, depression, autoimmune disorders, soul loss, disempowerment, destructive patterns and behaviors.

In the few hunter-gatherer societies that still exist, autism, dementia, diabetes, and cancer are very rare or nonexistent. My research with Amazonian pre-agricultural societies shows that these people have none of the diseases of western civilization – no cancer, no dementia, no heart disease, because of their diet and communion with the spirit of nature. What accounts for their health and well-being? A primarily plant-based diet and One Spirit Medicine.

Q: Why are so many people unable to find happiness?

A: Our brains cannot produce the bliss molecule (tryptamine) if they are busy producing stress molecules (adrenalin and cortisol). These “fight or flight” molecules are a constant part of modern culture, but when we can’t fight and we can’t flee we are paralyzed. Stress hormones are also deadly to the region of the brain that is responsible for new learning, so we cannot recreate ourselves. The religious experiences reported throughout history, are the product of endogenous psychedelics manufactured by the brain for its own pleasure and joy. Meditation, babies, puppies, sex and joy increase the methylation of tryptamines, which in turn become dimethyltryptamines generated by the pineal gland. This is the direct equivalent of the brain producing its own Ayahuasca.

PLEASE READ PART 2 IN THIS WEB ISSUE.

Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., is a medical anthropologist and psychologist who studied the shamanic healing practices of the Amazon and the Andes for more than 25 years. He is the founder of the Four Winds Society, which teaches the philosophy and practice of energy medicine. He also directs the Center for Energy Medicine at Los Lobos, Chile, where he investigates and practices the neuroscience of enlightenment. Dr. Villoldo is the author of numerous bestselling books, including Power up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment (with David Perlmutter, MD), and Shaman, Healer, Sage. His new book, One Spirit Medicine (Hay House ©2015), merges the ancient healing traditions of the Peruvian shamans with modern scientific breakthroughs. www.thefourwinds.com; www.onespiritmedicine.com.