Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

by Joe Dispenza

We all know that if we repeatedly put a load on a muscle, we will increase the strength of that muscle. What we probably wouldn’t anticipate is that the group who mentally rehearsed the exercises demonstrated a 22 percent increase in muscle strength! The mind, then, produced a quantifiable physical effect on the body. In other words, the body changed without having an actual physical experience. Just as researchers have worked with test subjects who mentally rehearsed finger exercises and others who imagined playing piano scales, experiments have compared practical experience versus mental rehearsal for individuals doing bicep curls. The results were the same. Whether the participants physically performed bicep curls or mentally rehearsed those activities, they all increased their bicep strength. The mental exercisers, though, demonstrated physiological changes without ever having the physical experience.9