Have you ever had a feeling in your guts that something wasn’t as it should be, or the opposite – a knowing you had to follow up on? Have you ever had such a feeling but ignored it and then regretted it later?
Do you know why the feeling is in your gut rather than a thought in your head? The surprising answer is your guts have brain tissue (and so does your heart) just like your brain.
Culturally we're led to believe all the smart stuff only happens between our ears. In reality, this is far from the truth. If we want to access our full intelligence we need to look elsewhere.
Intelligence is not limited to the brain and that opens up huge possibilities for us
As surprising as it may seem, science has proven that intelligence is not limited to brain tissue.
For evidence of this, we need to look no further than the simplest of organisms – slime mold. So far down the pecking order of life that they rank below animals, fungi, bacteria or even plants, they are categorized separately as protist.
With no brains or organs, these are just single-cell amoebas encased in a thin veneer of slime, they are one of the simplest forms of life. Despite this, they have fascinated scientists across the world. Individually they are so small they cannot be seen by the naked eye but, when collecting around food, they combine to make a single organism with the intelligence comparable to animals with brains.
How we can learn from the simplest organism
Experiments have shown that these amoeba are decision-makers and problem solvers, with the ability to remember and map out terrain. They can select the food most favourable to them and even measure time.
Back in the early 2000s at Japan’s Hokkaido University, a team led by Toshiyuki Nakagaki carried out a fascinating experiment. A single slime mold amoeba was cut up and placed around a plastic maze. These pieces of mold grew and then found each other, eventually filling the whole of the labyrinth. The scientists then placed food at the beginning and the end of the maze. In just four hours the mold collective had retracted all its tentacles from those corridors that led into a dead-end and amazingly left only a single live tract – connecting the food sources - and one that was the shortest possible path between the two.
Indeed the task of finding the shortest path between two points is a challenge that is much studied in computing - with applications in communication networks, robot path planning, and optimization - and research into slime molds may reveal untapped potential for areas such as these. However, it also points us towards untapped potential within us - after all we have many more cells in our body than brain tissue.
The solution to every problem we face is within us
The phenomenon of neuron-free intelligence is not restricted to slime mold, it is found throughout nature. Nature is a living collective intelligence. Evolution is a process of problem-solving. These problems are not solved individually, this solving is nature’s intelligence in action.
What we forget is that we, individually and collectively, are an expression of that intelligence which is embodied within us - in the same way as it is embodied in a slime cell. It is not limited to the brain, or even the heart and the guts for that matter. Our unique evolutionary advantage is that we have language and can therefore tap into and engage directly with that wisdom. We can put words to it and then harness that knowledge to our best advantage.
When we have access to our cellular wisdom, we find that we have within us the answer to every problem we face, in the same way as nature solves every problem it faces through the evolutionary process.
How can we hack into our cellular wisdom?
Tapping into all our body has to offer is as simple as asking ourselves a question and waiting for the answer. For some people, this natural ability is like an unused muscle and needs exercising.
Our philosophy and culture invite us to always go to our heads for our solutions but, like slime mold, we function at our optimum when we work as a whole and in harmony as nature intended.
Slime mold is evidence that intelligence is found everywhere in our bodies. Nature designed us to be smart, beyond our heads. Next time you get a feeling in your guts, heart, or indeed anywhere in your body, listen to it. It’s smarter than you think.
If you would like to learn how to tap into your body's wisdom click here
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