You Are the Placebo
Page 1
Praise for
“You Are the Placebo is the instruction manual for how to produce miracles in your body, with your health, and in your life. It’s simply magnificent. This may be the only prescription you’ll ever require.”
— Christiane Northrup, M.D.,
New York Times best-selling author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause
“Your mind is so incredibly important to the success or failure of virtually everything you do, from relationships, school, work, and finances to overall happiness. You Are the Placebo is a powerful exploration of your most important resource and offers many practical tools to optimize your mind to enhance your overall success. I love Dr. Dispenza’s way of communicating complex ideas in a way all of us can understand and benefit from.”
— Daniel G. Amen, M.D.,
founder of Amen Clinics and New York Times best-selling author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life and Magnificent Mind at Any Age
“From my experience with patients with life-threatening illnesses, I have learned the truth as shared in You Are the Placebo. The body experiences what the mind believes. I have learned how to deceive people into health for their benefit. Doctors can kill or cure with ‘wordswordswords’ when they become ‘swordswordswords.’ We all have the potential for self-induced healing built into us. The key is to know how to achieve your potential. Read and learn.”
— Bernie Siegel, M.D.,
author of A Book of Miracles and The Art of Healing
“Dr. Joe Dispenza weaves scientific studies together to come up with a true revolutionary approach to using our minds to heal our bodies. I was spellbound. Bravo!”
— Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D., Ph.D.,
author of The Intuitive Advisor and All Is Well
“The placebo effect—our response to the belief that we’ve received a catalyst for healing—has long been studied in medicine as a curious phenomenon. In his paradigm-altering book You Are the Placebo, Dr. Joe Dispenza catapults us beyond thinking of the effect as an anomaly. Through 12 concise chapters that read like a true-life scientific thriller, Dispenza gives us rock-solid reasons to accept the game-changer of our lives: that the placebo effect is actually us, proving to ourselves the greatest possibilities of healing, miracles, and longevity! I love this book and look forward to a world where the secret of the placebo is the foundation of everyday life.”
— Gregg Braden,
New York Times best-selling author of Deep Truth and The Divine Matrix
“Dr. Joe Dispenza is a master teacher who has the ability to explain science at a very simple level so that everyone understands.”
— don Miguel Ruiz, M.D.,
author of The Four Agreements
“You Are the Placebo is a must-read for anyone who wants to experience optimal health in mind, body, and spirit. Dr. Joe Dispenza dispels the myth that our health is out of our control and restores to us our power and right to expect wonderful health and well-being throughout our lives by showing us the way to create it. To read this book is to subscribe to the absolute best health insurance available in the world.”
— Sonia Choquette,
six-sensory consultant and New York Times best-selling author of The Answer Is Simple
ALSO BY DR. JOE DISPENZA
Books
EVOLVE YOUR BRAIN:
The Science of Changing Your Mind
BREAKING THE HABIT OF BEING YOURSELF:
How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One*
CD Program
MEDITATIONS FOR BREAKING
THE HABIT OF BEING YOURSELF*
*Available from Hay House
Please visit:
Hay House USA: www.hayhouse.com®
Hay House Australia: www.hayhouse.com.au
Hay House UK: www.hayhouse.co.uk
Hay House South Africa: www.hayhouse.co.za
Hay House India: www.hayhouse.co.in
Copyright © 2014 by Joe Dispenza
Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com® • Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au • Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk • Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za • Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast Books: www.raincoast.com • Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in
Indexer: Jay Kreider
Cover design and interior illustrations: John Dispenza
Interior design: Pamela Homan
Brain-mapping graphics: Jeffrey L. Fannin, Ph.D.
The material in the color insert was made possible with the help of Jeffrey Fannin, Ph.D. Special thanks to Dr. Fannin for providing the color brain scans and for contributing to their interpretation.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use—other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dispenza, Joe, date.
You are the placebo : making your mind matter / Dr. Joe Dispenza.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4019-4458-2 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4019-4459-9 (paperback) 1. Mind and body. 2. Attitude (Psychology) 3. Attitude change—Health aspects. 4. Placebos (Medicine) 5. Change (Psychology) I. Title.
BF161.D55 2014
158.1—dc23
2013045516
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-4458-2
Tradepaper ISBN: 978-1-4019-4459-9
17 16 15 14 4 3 2 1
1st edition, April 2014
Printed in the United States of America
For my mother,
Francesca
CONTENTS
Foreword by Dawson Church, Ph.D.
Preface: Waking Up
Introduction: Making Minds Matter
Part I: INFORMATION
Chapter 1: Is It Possible?
Chapter 2: A Brief History of the Placebo
Chapter 3: The Placebo Effect in the Brain
Chapter 4: The Placebo Effect in the Body
Chapter 5: How Thoughts Change the Brain and the Body
Chapter 6: Suggestibility
Chapter 7: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Perceptions
Chapter 8: The Quantum Mind
Chapter 9: Three Stories of Personal Transformation
Chapter 10: Information to Transformation: Proof That You Are the Placebo
Part II: TRANSFORMATION
Chapter 11: Meditation Preparation
Chapter 12: Changing Beliefs and Perceptions Meditation
Afterword: Becoming Supernatural
Appendix: Script of the Changing Beliefs and Perceptions Meditation
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
FOREWORD
Like most of his fans, I look forward to Joe Dispenza’s provocative ideas with relish. Co
mbining solid scientific evidence with stimulating insights, Joe stretches the horizons of the possible by extending the boundaries of the known. He takes science more seriously than most scientists, and in this fascinating book, he extrapolates the most recent discoveries in epigenetics, neural plasticity, and psychoneuroimmunology to their logical conclusion.
That conclusion is an exciting one: You, and every other human being, are shaping your brain and body by the thoughts you think, the emotions you feel, the intentions you hold, and the transcendental states you experience. You Are the Placebo invites you to harness this knowledge to create a new body and new life for yourself.
This isn’t a metaphysical proposition. Joe explains each link in the chain of causality that starts with a thought and ends with a biological fact, such as an increase in the number of stem cells or immunity-conferring protein molecules circulating in your bloodstream.
The book starts with Joe’s account of an accident that shattered six of the vertebrae of his spine. Suddenly, in extremis, he was confronted with the necessity of putting into practice what he believed in theory: that our bodies possess an innate intelligence that includes miraculous healing power. The discipline he brought to the process of visualizing his spinal column rebuilding itself is a story of inspiration and determination.
We’re all inspired by such stories of spontaneous remission and “miraculous” healing, yet what Joe shows us in this book is that we are all capable of experiencing such healing miracles. Renewal is built into the very fabric of our bodies, and degeneration and disease are the exception, not the norm.
Once we understand how our bodies renew themselves, we can start to harness these physiological processes intentionally, directing the hormones our cells synthesize, the proteins they build, the neurotransmitters they produce, and the neural pathways through which they send signals. Rather than possessing a static anatomy, our bodies are seething with change, moment by moment. Our brains are on the boil, teeming with the creation and destruction of neural connections in every second. Joe teaches us that we can steer this process with intention, assuming the powerful position of driver of the vehicle, rather than the passive role of passenger.
The discovery that the number of connections in a neural bundle can double with repeat stimulation revolutionized biology in the 1990s. It earned its discoverer, the neuropsychiatrist Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize. Kandel later found that if we don’t use neural connections, they begin to shrink in just three weeks. In this way, we can reshape our brains via the signals we pass through our neural network.
In the same decade that Kandel and others measured neuroplasticity, other scientists discovered that few of our genes are static. The majority of genes (estimates range from 75 to 85 percent) are turned off and on by signals from our environment, including the environment of thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that we cultivate in our brains. One class of these genes, the immediate early genes (IEGs), takes only three seconds to reach peak expression. IEGs are often regulatory genes, controlling the expression of hundreds of other genes and thousands of other proteins at remote sites in our bodies. That kind of pervasive and rapid change is a plausible explanation for some of the radical healings you’ll read about in these pages.
Joe is one of the few science writers to fully grasp the role of emotion in transformation. Negative emotion may literally be an addiction to high levels of our own stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline. Both these stress hormones and relaxation hormones like DHEA and oxytocin have set points, which explains why we feel uncomfortable in our skin when we think thoughts or countenance beliefs that drive our hormonal balance outside of that comfort zone. This idea is at the very frontier of the scientific understanding of addictions and cravings.
By changing your internal state, you can change your external reality. Joe masterfully explains the chain of events that starts with intentions originating in the frontal lobe of your brain and then translating into chemical messengers, called neuropeptides, that send signals throughout your body, turning genetic switches on or off. Some of these chemicals, like oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone” that’s stimulated by touch, are associated with feelings of love and trust. With practice, you can learn to quickly adjust your set points for stress hormones and healing hormones.
The notion that you can heal yourself by simply translating thought into emotion might sound astounding at first. Not even Joe expected the results he began to observe in participants attending his workshops when they fully applied these ideas: spontaneous remission of tumors, wheelchair-bound patients walking, and migraines disappearing. With the openhearted delight and open-minded experimentation of a child at play, Joe began to push the envelope, wondering just how fast radical healing might occur if people applied the body’s placebo effect with complete conviction. Hence, the title You Are the Placebo reflects the fact that it’s your own thoughts, emotions, and beliefs that are generating chains of physiological events in your body.
At times, you will feel uncomfortable reading this book. But read on. That discomfort is just your old self, protesting the inevitability of transformative change, and your hormonal set points being disturbed. Joe reassures us that those feelings of discomfort may simply be the biological sensation of the dissolution of the old self.
Most of us won’t have the time or inclination to understand these complex biological processes. Here’s where this book provides a great service. Joe digs deep into the science behind these changes to present them in an understandable and digestible way. He does the heavy lifting behind the scenes in order to present elegant and simple explanations. Using analogies and case histories, he demonstrates exactly how we can apply these discoveries in our daily lives and illustrates the dramatic breakthroughs in health experienced by those who take them seriously.
A new generation of researchers has coined a term for the practice Joe outlines: self-directed neuroplasticity (or SDN). The idea behind the term is that we direct the formation of new neural pathways and the destruction of old ones through the quality of the experiences we cultivate. I believe that SDN will become one of the most potent concepts in personal transformation and neurobiology for the coming generation, and this book will be at the forefront of that movement.
In the meditation exercises in Part II of this book, metaphysics moves into concrete manifestation. You can do these meditations yourself easily, experiencing firsthand the expanded possibilities of being your own placebo. The goal here is to change your beliefs and perceptions about your life at a biological level so that you are, in essence, loving a new future into concrete material existence.
So embark on this enchanted journey that will expand your horizons of the possible and challenge you to embrace a radically higher level of healing and functioning. You have nothing to lose by throwing yourself enthusiastically into the process and dumping the thoughts, feelings, and biological set points that have limited your past. Believe in your ability to realize your highest potential and take inspired action, and you will become the placebo that creates a happy and healthy future for yourself and for our planet.
— Dawson Church, Ph.D.
Author of The Genie in Your Genes
PREFACE
Waking Up
I never planned on doing any of this. The work I’m currently involved in as a speaker, author, and researcher sort of found me. In order for some of us to wake up, we sometimes need a wake-up call. In 1986, I got the call. On a beautiful Southern California day in April, I had the privilege of being run over by an SUV in a Palm Springs triathlon. That moment changed my life and started me on this whole journey. I was 23 at the time, with a relatively new chiropractic practice in La Jolla, California, and I’d trained hard for this triathlon for months.
I had finished the swimming segment and was in the biking portion of the race when it happened. I was coming up to a tricky turn where I knew we’d be merging with traffic. A police officer, with his back to the oncoming cars, waved me on to turn right an
d follow the course. Since I was fully exerting myself and focused on the race, I never took my eyes off of him. As I passed two cyclists on that particular corner, a red four-wheel-drive Bronco going about 55 miles an hour slammed into my bike from behind. The next thing I knew, I was catapulted up into the air; then I landed squarely on my backside. Because of the speed of the vehicle and the slow reflexes of the elderly woman driving the Bronco, the SUV kept coming toward me, and I was soon reunited with its bumper. I quickly grabbed the bumper in order to avoid being run over and to stop my body from passing between metal and asphalt. So I was dragged down the road a bit before the driver realized what was happening. When she finally did abruptly stop, I tumbled out of control for about 20 yards.
I can still remember the sound of the bikes whizzing by and the horrified screams and profanities of the riders passing me—not knowing whether they should stop and help or continue the race. As I lay there, all I could do was surrender.
I would soon discover that I had broken six vertebrae: I had compression fractures in thoracic 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 and lumbar 1 (ranging from my shoulder blades to my kidneys). The vertebrae are stacked like individual blocks in the spine, and when I hit the ground with that kind of force, they collapsed and compressed from the impact. The eighth thoracic vertebra, the top segment that I broke, was more than 60 percent collapsed, and the circular arch that contained and protected the spinal cord was broken and pushed together in a pretzel-like shape. When a vertebra compresses and fractures, the bone has to go somewhere. In my case, a large volume of shattered fragments went back toward my spinal cord. It was definitely not a good picture.
As if I were in a bad dream gone rogue, I woke up the next morning with a host of neurological symptoms, including several different types of pain; varying degrees of numbness, tingling, and some loss of feeling in my legs; and some sobering difficulties in controlling my movements.