You Are the Placebo

by Joe Dispenza, Dr.

  The red areas circled at the bottom in higher-range beta signify anxiety. This is the attitude that Michelle struggles with and is working on changing from an internal perspective. Coincidentally, anxiety is exactly what has amplified her Parkinson’s symptoms in the past. As she lowers her anxiety, she lowers the symptoms of Parkinson’s. To Michelle, her tremors now represent when she’s out of balance in her life. When she regulates her internal states, she produces changes in her external reality.

  Three months later, Michelle again had her brain scanned at Dr. Fannin’s office. The May 9, 2013, scan in Figure 10.6B still shows her brain improving, which is exactly what Michelle reported. She’s still getting better in the midst of all of the different stresses in her life. Because she does her meditations every day (think of it as taking her placebo daily), Michelle is continually changing her brain and body to be greater than the conditions in her environment. The scan shows that she’s dropped almost another standard deviation from her previous scan at the bottom of the graph. You can clearly see that her anxiety is still getting better, and as a result, so is her condition. Less anxiety means fewer tremors. She’s sustaining and thus memorizing that state of being for a longer period of time—and her brain is showing the changes.

  If you look at Michelle’s brain scan from June 3, 2013, in Figure 10.6C, you’ll see a slight regression of her progress—although she’s still better than when she started. Here, she’d stopped doing her meditation (and therefore stopped taking the placebo), so her brain slightly regressed to what it knew before. The brain with the arrow at the blue area of 13 Hz means she’s hypoactive in the sensory-motor area and, thus, has less ability to control her involuntary tremors. In this brain-wave pattern, Michelle has less energy to control her body. You can also see the red areas circled again in the bottom of the scan returning in higher-range beta, which correlate with her anxiety.

  By her June 27, 2013, scan shown in Figure 10.6D, Michelle had gone back to her meditations at the beginning of that month, and her brain scan showed a significantly better brain. She had less overall anxiety, as demonstrated in red at the bottom row at 17 to 20 Hz. Now compare that scan to her next one, on July 13, 2013, after our workshop, as depicted in Figure 10.6E. There’s even less red, and the blue that showed up in her first scan in February during alpha (indicating hypoactivity) is completely gone. Michelle continues to improve, and her changes are becoming more consistent.

  Michelle’s new self: Today, Michelle hardly ever has any of the involuntary motor symptoms associated with Parkinson’s disease. Very minor twitches do present themselves when she gets stressed or overtired at times, but for the most part, she’s high functioning and normal. When Michelle is balanced and joyful, doing her meditations daily, her brain is working well—and so is she. From both our continued scans and her own reports, Michelle isn’t merely maintaining her condition; she continues to get better and better. She keeps meditating, because she understands that she has to be the placebo every day.

  Changing Traumatic Brain and Spinal-Cord Injury by Thought Alone

  John’s old self: In November 2006, John broke his neck at the seventh cervical and first thoracic vertebrae while he was a passenger in a car that spun out of control and rolled at high speed. Due to the impact, he suffered a severe head injury as well. The doctors were quick and sure about his prognosis. He would be a quadriplegic for the rest of his life. He would never walk again and would have very limited use of his arms and hands. His vertebrae were 100 percent dislocated, resulting in spinal-cord damage. It wasn’t until John had surgery that his doctors saw the exact extent of his injuries. Two days later, the neurologist told John’s wife that his spinal cord was somewhat “intact” but that his type of injury could have the same outcome as a complete cord severing. It would be, as with all spinal-cord injuries, a waiting game.

  When you’re caught up in the day-to-day reality of living in the intensive care unit, and later a rehab center, it can be extremely difficult not to get swept away by conventional thinking. When John and his family asked about his possible recovery, the doctors said that given the injury and the lack of return to any kind of normal functioning up to that point, they should begin accepting the inevitable. John would be physically handicapped for the rest of his life. His doctors hammered this message home over and over, as a necessary part of “moving on.” But somehow, both John and his wife couldn’t accept it.

  I met John while he was in his wheelchair in 2009, along with his wife and family and an amazing physical therapist who understands neuroplasticity. They are some of the most energetic and optimistic people I’ve ever met, and we eagerly began our journey together.

  John’s scans: Take a look at John’s “before meditation” brain scan in Figure 10.7. His first picture demonstrates quite a bit of hypoactivity. It’s more than 3 SD below normal. John’s coherence measurement, with such significant thick blue lines, is the opposite of our study of Michelle’s Parkinson’s condition, which showed thick red lines. This scan reveals a diminished capacity for different parts of the brain working well together. His brain here is on idle and has no energy, and he has limited ability to respond to anything for any length of time. He couldn’t sustain attention, and his awareness was limited. Because of his traumatic brain injury, his brain was in a state of super-low arousal, and it showed a high degree of incoherence.

  Now look at his brain scan after four days of meditation. In the first image on the upper-left margin at 1 Hz delta, he has some more activity demonstrated in red. In this case, it’s a good sign, because more coherence is happening in delta in both hemispheres. Here, John is starting to show more balanced dual-brain processing. Because his traumatic brain injury is most visible in delta and theta, the hyperactivity in delta suggests that his brain is waking up. The rest of his brain in alpha and beta is showing more balanced activity and better cognitive function. This shows he has more access to control his mind and body.

  Now view Figure 10.8. The blue color starting from about the middle of the second row until the end of the bottom row once again indicates that John has no alpha or beta brain waves. This blue color distributed throughout the alpha and beta realms in the left and right hemispheres suggests that he’s vegetating and working on limited resources. The blue shows less cognitive ability and less capacity to control his body. John’s mind is just not there.

  After four days of meditation, 90 percent of John’s brain has returned back to normal, as shown by all the green. That’s pretty good! He still has some hypoactivity in his left hemisphere, where the arrows are pointing, indicating some problems with verbal skills and expressing himself, but it’s still so much better than his first scan. John continues to do his meditations, and his brain continues to show more energy, more balance, and more coherence. John has regained access to the latent neuropathways that were there before. His brain woke up, remembered how to work again, and now has the energy to work better.

  John’s new self: John stood up at the end of our February 2013 event. He has regained full control of his bowels and his bladder. To date, he is now standing in a more normal and integrated posture. His movements are more coordinated. The frequency, intensity, and duration of his spastic tremors have diminished considerably. He’s even doing a total gym workout on a regular basis, thanks to the help of his amazing therapist, B. Jill Runnion (director of Synapse—Center for Neuro Re-Activation in Driggs, Idaho), who also studies my work and has the skills and unlimited mind to challenge John by setting up the right conditions. His unassisted vertical-squat exercises have progressed from a 10-degree angle to a 45-degree angle.

  John is now in complete control of lowering his body to a seated position. He can also perform a specific physical therapy exercise that involves loading his leg and torso muscles and pushing a sled away from his body with resistance. John is now going from lying facedown to supporting himself on all fours, completely under his own power, and he’s now starting to crawl.

  Just
months after the workshop, John astounded his medical team with all of his improvements in cognitive functioning. His advances exceeded anything any of the specialists had ever seen in a spinal-cord-injury patient. It was as if John finally woke up, and his scans show that he now has more access to his brain and body. John is still demonstrating more control over dormant areas of his brain and body, because he now has more capacity to regulate his body.

  John’s overall integration and coordinated movement patterns progressed considerably, enabling him to sit up at a table unassisted, with his feet planted on the floor. John’s fine motor skills improved to the point where he can now hold a pen and sign his name, use a smartphone to send a text message, grip the steering wheel to drive, and hold a regular toothbrush. His cognitive changes demonstrate more self-confidence and greater inner joy. He has a much greater sense of humor and is more aware than ever.

  During the summer of 2013, John was able to go on a white-water rafting trip, where he held himself unassisted in a raft for six hours a day and slept in a tent on the ground. He managed to live in the Idaho wilderness, away from contact with the outside world, for seven days and six nights. He couldn’t have done this a year ago. Every time John and I talk, he always says the same thing: “Dr. Joe, I have no idea what’s happening.”

  I always give him the same response: “The moment you know what’s happening, John, it’s all over. The unknown is beyond our comprehension. Welcome it.”

  I’d like to make one final point about John’s case. Everyone knows that a spinal-cord injury doesn’t heal with typical conventional approaches. I’m sure that it’s not matter that’s changing matter for John. That is, it’s not chemistry or molecules that are altering his damaged spinal cord. From a quantum perspective, he’d have to be in a coherent frequency of heightened energy that would have to consistently lift or entrain matter to a new mind. He’d have to display an elevated energy or wave that vibrates at a frequency faster than matter, combined with a clear intention, in order to alter the particles of matter. So it’s energy, which is the epiphenomenon of matter, that is rewriting the genetic program and healing his spinal cord.

  Overcoming the Analytical Mind and Finding Joy

  Kathy’s old self: Kathy is the CEO of a large company, an attorney, and a committed wife and mother. She has been trained to be highly analytical and rational. She uses her brain every day to anticipate outcomes and to be prepared for every possible forecasted scenario based on her experience. Before she was introduced to my work, she’d never actually meditated. In the beginning, Kathy became very aware of how much she was analyzing everything in her life. She had a huge daily to-do list and described her brain as never shutting off. In hindsight, she confesses that she was never in the present moment.

  Kathy’s scans: Take a look at Kathy’s “before meditation” brain scan in Figure 10.9. These delta-to-theta ratio measurements represent her ability to maintain focus and concentration in order to process and deal with intrusive and extraneous thoughts. The first arrow in the back of her brain on the right side, where the larger red spot is located, shows that she is seeing pictures in her mind. The second arrow, near the smaller red area on the left side, indicates that Kathy is internally talking to herself about those pictures. The imagery and constant mind chatter are causing her brain to be stuck in a loop.

  In the “after meditation” scan, taken at the end of the workshop, you can clearly see that Kathy’s brain is more balanced, more whole, and more normal. She no longer has any brain chatter, because her brain is integrating and processing information more efficiently. She’s in a state of coherence. And the change in her brain state is accompanied by much greater joy, clarity, and love.

  Now let’s look at her coherence measurements in Figure 10.10. At the beginning of the workshop, Kathy’s brain was in high-range beta, a state of high arousal, high analysis, and high-emergency mode. The thick red lines in alpha and beta show that she’s three SD above normal. Her brain is hyperactive, out of balance, and highly incoherent—and she’s having trouble controlling her anxiety.

  Now take a look at the “after meditation” scan, taken on the last day of the February event. You should, by now, be able to recognize a more normal and balanced brain, which has much fewer high-range beta brain waves and far more coherence.

  Kathy still had some work to do, so we set up an experiment after the workshop, because she lives in the Phoenix area and could visit Dr. Fannin’s clinic. Dr. Fannin showed her a picture of a healthy, balanced, and normal brain on a QEEG scan (in green) and told her that this was where she needed to focus her attention. He suggested that when she moved into a new state of being every day in her meditation, she should select that potential outcome for the next 29 days. Since she then could assign more meaning to the placebo, she held a greater degree of intention about the benefits of the outcome.

  It worked. If you look at Figure 10.11, which shows the scan dated April 8, 2013, about six weeks later, you’ll see an even more normal brain, with no evidence of anxiety (seen in red). In addition, check out Figure 10.12. Can you see the progression from February 20, 2013, where Kathy’s brain scan is red in the higher brain-wave frequencies (21 to 30 Hz), to the end of the February event, where her brain scan has changed to green in the second image (and so is much more normal)? The red areas represented show very high levels of anxiety (high-range beta) and over-analysis because her brain waves in the higher frequencies (21 to 30 Hz) are hyperactive—her brain was working too hard. By the beginning of April (shown in Figure 10.13), Kathy’s brain is balanced, coherent, and much more synchronized. Kathy has a much different brain today and reports truly feeling like a different person.

  Kathy’s new self: Kathy reports that she has seen numerous positive changes in her career, her daily life, and her relationships. She meditates daily, and when she thinks she doesn’t have time to meditate, that’s when she makes sure to find the time to do it. She understands that the attitude that created her out-of-balance mind and brain is related to time and the conditions in her external environment. Kathy says that the answers to her questions come more easily and with far less of a struggle. She listens to her heart more often, and she catches herself before she moves into cycles of vigilance. She rarely gets caught up in those loops, and she finds herself acting in a kinder and more patient manner. Kathy is happier from the inside out.

  Healing Fibroid Tumors by Changing Energy

  Bonnie’s old self: In 2010, Bonnie developed significant pain and excessive bleeding during her menstrual cycle. She was diagnosed with excessive estrogen production and was encouraged to begin bioidentical hormones. At age 40, she found this solution to her diagnosis to be extreme.

  Bonnie remembered that her mother had had the same symptoms at her age. Her mother had taken hormone pills and eventually died of bladder cancer. While there may be no specific connection between the hormone therapy and bladder cancer, what caught Bonnie’s attention was that she was having the same physical symptoms as her mother. She didn’t want to develop the same outcome.

  Her vaginal bleeding began to last even longer (sometimes up to two weeks), and Bonnie became anemic and lethargic, and gained about 20 pounds. She would lose an average of two liters of blood each month during her menstrual cycle. A pelvic sonogram confirmed fibroid tumors. Bonnie went through myriad blood tests and was told she was perimenopausal and most likely had an ovarian cyst. Her specialist who recommended the hormone therapy told Bonnie that fibroids don’t go away and that the severe bleeding would continue for the rest of her life.

  I randomly selected Bonnie for one of the extra brain maps during our Englewood, Colorado, event in July 2013; she was mortified when I pointed at her to indicate she was selected for the scan. Bonnie’s menstrual cycle had started the evening before the workshop, and she typically had to wear a large diaper to capture the amount of blood she lost during her period. When, after several meditations, I instructed the students to lie down, Bonnie was concer
ned that she would bleed all over herself and the floor.

  Because of the extreme pain that accompanied Bonnie’s periods, even sitting was uncomfortable. Even so, she was determined to continue practicing the meditation techniques every day for her own peace of mind. During the first meditation in which she was being brain mapped, Bonnie had an experience that she can only describe as mystical. She felt her heart open and expand. Her head pushed back, and her breathing changed. Bonnie saw light flood into her body, and she experienced a tremendous sense of peace. She also heard the words: “I am loved, blessed, and not forgotten.” Bonnie burst into tears during the meditation, and her brain scan showed that she was in a state of bliss.

  Bonnie’s scans: Take a look at Bonnie’s EEG scan in Figure 10.14. We were lucky enough to catch the whole experience in real time. The first graphic shows normal brain-wave activity. Everything is in balance and quiet. If you review Bonnie’s three scans in Figure 10.15, which capture what was happening to her at different times during her meditation, you can see elevated energy and amplitude in her frontal lobes, which represents her processing quite a bit of information and emotion. She’s in an expanded state of consciousness and is experiencing peak moments at different intervals. Most of the activity is happening in the theta brain waves, and it signifies that she is in her subconscious mind. The inner experience is very real to her in that moment. She’s so completely focused on the thought that it becomes the experience. The emotional quotient is represented by the amount of energy (amplitude) her brain is processing. Take a look at the vertical length of the lines where the arrows are pointing. That’s very coherent energy. Bonnie is in a heightened state of awareness.