You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter

by Joe Dispenza

Change your meaning and change your intention, and just as the hotel maids in the study from the last chapt...

The change wasn’t just in their minds; it was in their bodies.

The answer is their genes—which aren’t as immutable as you might think.

Epigenetics teaches that we, indeed, are not doomed by our genes and that a change in human consciousness can produce physical changes, both in structure and function, in the human body.

As we’ve been learning, how we assign meaning to those experiences includes a barrage of physical, mental, emotional, and chemical responses that also activate genes. How we perceive and interpret the data we receive from our senses as factual information—whether that information is actually true or not—and the meaning we give it produce significant biological changes on a genetic level.

We could say that meaning is continually affecting the neural structures that influence who we are on the microscopic level, which then influences who we are on the macroscopic level.

So why not see your genes for what they really are? Providers of possibility, resources of unlimited potential,

If your environment changes and you then program new genes in new ways, is it possible—based on your perceptions and beliefs—to program the gene ahead of the actual environment?

Feelings and emotions are normally the end products of experiences,

but can you combine a clear intention with an emotion that begins to give the body a sampling of the future experienc...

When you’re truly focused on an intention for some future outcome, if you can make inner thought more real than the outer environment during the process, the bra...

Then your body, as the unconscious mind, will begin to experience the new future event in the present moment. You’ll signal new genes, in new ways, t...

If you continue to mentally practice enough times this new series of choices, behaviors, and experiences that you desire, reproducing the same new level of mind over and over again, then your brain will begin to physically change—installing new neurological circuitry to begin to think fr...

Then your brain

and body will no longer be living in the same past; they’ll be living in the new future that you created in your mind.

This technique is basically closing your eyes and repeatedly imagining performing an action, and mentally reviewing the future you want, all th...

longer want to be (the old self) and who you...

This process involves thinking about your future actions, mentally planning your choices, and focusing ...

As you mentally rehearse a destiny or dream about a new outcome, you imagine it over and over again until it becomes familiar to you. The more knowledge and experience you have wired in your brain about

the new reality you desire, the more resources you have to create a better model of it in your mental picturing, and so the greater your intention and expectation are

You are “reminding” yourself of what your life will look like and feel like onc...

consciously marry your thoughts and intentions with a heightened state of emotion, ...

Once you can ...

that new emotion and you get more excited, you’re bathing your body in the neurochemistry that would be present if that fu...

Your brain and body don’t know the difference between having an actual experience in your life and just thinking about the experience—neurochemically, it’s the same.

So your brain and body begin to believe they’re

actually living in the new experience in the ...

By keeping your focus on this future event and not letting any other thoughts distract you, in a matter of moments, you turn down the volume on the neural circuits connected to the old self, which begins to turn off the old genes, and you fire and wire new neural circui...

the circuits in your brain begin to reorganize themselves to reflect what you...

And as you keep coupling your new thoughts and mental images with that strong, positive emotion, then your mi...

you’re now in a new state...

At this point, your brain and body are no longer a record of the past;...

athletes

they eliminated the external environment, got beyond their bodies, and transcended time so that they could make significant neurological changes within.

When they presented themselves to the world, they were able to get their minds and bodies to work together, and they created in the material world what they’d first conceived in the mental realm.

frontal lobe,

is the part of the brain that learns new things, dreams of new

possibilities, makes conscious decisions, sets your inte...

the frontal lobe also allows you to observe who you are and evaluate what you’re doing and how you’re feeling. It’s the home of your conscience. This is important, because once you become more aware of...

The moment you imagine a new future for yourself, think about a new possibility, and start to ask specific questions—such as What would it be like to live without this pain and limitation?—your frontal lobe snaps to attention. In a matter of seconds, it creates both an intention to be healthy (so you can get clear on what you want to create and what you no longer wish to experience) and a mental picture of being healthy so that you can imagine what it will be like.

If your frontal lobe is

orchestrating enough of these neural nets to fire in unison as you focus on a clear intention, there will come a moment when the thought will become the experience in your mind—that’s when your inner reality is more real than your outer reality.

Once the thought becomes the experience, you begin to feel the emotion of how the ev...

(remember, emotions are the chemical signatures ...

So when the placebo effect is at work, and you create the right level of mind with a clear intention and combine it with a nurturing, elevated

If we have a heightened emotional response to the new thoughts we’re concentrating on in mental rehearsal, it’s like turbocharging our efforts,

because the emotions help us make epigenetic changes much faster.

The consistent emotion was the energetic catalyst that truly enhanced the

a clear intention of a new future (wanting to live without pain or disease)