You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter

by Joe Dispenza

By changing your internal state, you can change your external reality.

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.

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.

The idea

is that we direct the formation of new neural pathways and the destruction of old ones through the quality of the experiences we cultivate.

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.

First, every day I would put all of my conscious attention on this intelligence within me and give it a plan, a template, a vision, with very specific orders, and then I would surrender my healing to this greater mind that has unlimited power, allowing it to do the healing for me. And second, I wouldn’t let any thought slip by my awareness that I didn’t want to

consciousness is awareness, awareness is paying attention, and paying attention is being present and noticing, this consciousness would be aware of when I was present and when I wasn’t.

I would have to be totally present when I interacted with this mind; my presence would have to match its presence,

my will would have to match its will, and my mind would have...

So every time I lost my attention and my mind wandered to any extraneous thoughts, I would start from the beginning and do the whole scheme of imagery over again.

I had to stay conscious and not go unconscious.

There was no mental chatter, no analyzing, no thinking, no obsessing, no trying; something lifted, and a kind of peace and silence prevailed.

I began to correlate what I was doing inside of me to create this change with what was taking place outside of me—in my body.

I was actually starting to think about all these future potentials that existed in the quantum field, and then I was emotionally embracing each of them.

And as I selected that intentional future and married it with the elevated emotion of what it would be like to be there in that future, in the present moment my body began to believe it was actually in that future experience. As my ability to observe my desired destiny got sharper and sharper, my cells began to reorganize themselves. I began to signal new genes in new ways, and then my body really started getting better faster.

The persistence, conviction, and focus to manifest any potential future lies within the human mind and within the mind of the infinite potentials in the quantum field. Both

began to ask myself, “What if people begin to believe in themselves instead of in something outside of themselves? What if they believe that they can change something inside of them and move themselves to the same state of being as someone who’s taking a placebo?

in one sense, the placebo works because you can embrace or entertain a new thought that you can be well, and then use it to replace the thought that you’ll always be sick.

That means you can change your thinking from unconsciously predicting that your future is your same familiar past to beginning to anticipate and expect a new potential outcome. If you agree with this idea, then it means that you’ll have to examine how you think, what the mind is, and how these things affect the body.

I’ll explain how as long as you’re thinking the same thoughts, they’ll lead to the same choices, which cause the same behaviors, which create the same experiences, which produce the same emotions, which in t...

stay the same. In...

you’re reminding yourself of who you ...

“If your environment changes and you then signal new genes in new ways, is it possible to signal the new gene ahead of the changing of the actual environment?” I’ll then explain

you can use a technique called mental rehearsal to combine a clear intention with an elevated emotion (to give the body a sampling of the future experience) in order to experience the new future event in the present moment.

Intention +Emotion

The key is making your inner thoughts more real than the outer environment, because then the brain won’t know the difference between the two and will chan...

If you’re able to do this successfully enough times, you’ll transform your body and begin to activate new genes in new ways, producing epigenetic changes—just as...

the conscious mind is only 5 percent of who we are. The remaining 95 percent is a set of subconscious programmed states in which the body has become the mind.

you must get beyond the analytic mind and enter into the operating system of your subconscious programs if you want your new thoughts to result in new outcomes and change your genetic destiny, as well as learn how meditation is

powerful tool for doing ...

ch...

attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions change your state of being and create your personality—your personal reality—and how you can shift them to create a new reality.

in order for you to change your beliefs and perceptions, you must combine a clear intention with an elevated emotion that conditions your body to believe that the future potential that you selected from the quantum field has already happened.

The elevated

emotion is vital, because only when your choice carries an amplitude of energy that’s greater than the hardwired programs in your brain and the emotional addiction in your body, will you be able to change your brain’s circuitry and your body’s genetic expression, as well as recondition your body...

The quantum model, which states that all possibilities exist in this present moment, is your key to using the placebo effect for healing, because it gives you permission to choose a new future for yourself and actually observe it into reality.

Chapter 12, which

gives you step-by-step instructions for using the meditation techniques I teach in my

Again, Wright’s tumors magically vanished. He happily

Cousins’s shift of attitude changed his body chemistry, which altered his internal state, enabling him to program new genes in new ways; he simply downregulated (or turned off) the genes that were causing his illness and upregulated (or turned on) the genes responsible for his recovery.

the human body is its own best apothecary and because the most successful prescriptions are filled by the body

believing in an outcome independent of the cause, their bodies were influenced to make it happen.

aerobic capacity

psychological well-being.

the language that’s used to define what we’ll experience, and how we assign meaning to the explanations that are offered all affect our intention—and when we put greater intention behind what we’re doing, we naturally get better results.

What we’re conditioned to believe about ourselves, and what we’re programmed to think other people think about us, affects our performance, including how successful we are.

What you think is what you experience, and when it comes to your health, that’s made possible by the amazing pharmacopeia that you have within your body that automatically and exquisitely aligns with your thoughts.

conditioning, expectation, and meaning.

conditioning, the first element,

conditioning happens when we associate a past memory (for example, taking an aspirin) with a physiological change (getting rid of a headache) because we’ve experienced it so many times.