You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter

by Joe Dispenza

and then combines it with a heightened emotion (excitement, hope, and anticipation of actually living without pain or disease) is the moment the body is no longer in the past.

Hope Excitement Anticipation

The body is living in that new future, because as we’ve seen, the body doesn’t know the difference between an emotion created by an actual expe...

So that heightened state of emotion in response to the new thought is a vital co...

because it’s new information coming from outside the cell—and to the body, the experience from the outer environment ...

because his brain didn’t know the difference between his highly emotionally charged mental images of being well and actually being well,

his body emotionally responded as if what he had imagined had already happened.

His mind and his body were then working together to signal ne...

So it makes sense that we should concentrate not merely on avoiding negative emotions, like fear and anger, but also on consciously cultivating heartfelt, positive emotions, such as gratitude, joy, excitement, enthusiasm, fascination, awe, inspiration, wonder, trust, appreciation, kindness, compassion, and empowerment, to give us every advantage in maximizing our health.

Now we can understand exactly why it is that if we hold a clear intention of a new future; marry it to a state of expansive, elevated emotion; and repeat that over and over until we’ve created a new state of mind and a new state of being, these thoughts will seem more real to us than our previous, limited view of reality. We’re finally free. And once we truly embrace that emotion, we can more easily fall in love with the possibility that we’ve been envisioning.

(using physical and mental rehearsal, because both change the brain and the body)

As they experienced new thoughts and feelings about being younger, their brains started firing neurons in new sequences, new patterns, and new

Because everything around the men, as well as their own excited imaginations, joyfully supported them in making the experience feel real, their brains couldn’t tell the difference between actually being 22 years younger and just pretending that they were.

were able to start signaling the exact genetic changes to reflect...

In doing that, their bodies produced neuropeptides to match their new emotions, and when the neuropeptides were unleashed, they delivered new...

If the men’s bodies didn’t happen to have the necessary parts to create whatever

the epigenetic changes required, the epigenome simply called upon stem cells to make what was needed.

What reality do you choose to live in, and who are you pretending to be (or not be)? Could it be that simple?

accepted a possible imagined scenario, and like magic, their bodies responded to that picture in their minds:

accepted and then believed in the suggestion

of better health, and then surrendered

to the o...

without further a...

When these people accepted the potential of recovery, they aligned themselves with a future possible reality—and changed the...

As they believed in the outcome, they emotionally embraced the idea of better healt...

bodies, as the unconscious mind, were living in that future reality duri...

They conditioned their bodies to a new mind and so began to signal new genes in new ways and express new proteins for better health—and...

Once they surrendered to a new possible scenario, they no longer analyzed how it was going to happen or when it would manifest; they sim...

maintained that new state of mind and body for an extended period of time. It was that sustained state of being that switched on the righ...

they were taking a pill daily to relieve pain or depression, the pill was a constant reminder for them to condition, expect, and assign meaning to their intentional activity, thus reinforcing the internal process over and over again.

reminded of a possible new future.

anticipate

assigned intention

Because all these factors had meaning, they helped make the placebo patie...

accept a thought as a reality, and then believe

and trust in the end result emotionally,

It takes thinking greater than how they feel—in turn allowing those new thoughts to drive new feelings, which then reinforce those new thoughts—until it becomes a new state of being.

But if familiar feelings have become the means of familiar thinking and the person can’t transcend that habituation, he or she is in the same past state of mind and body, and everything stays the same.

making a thought into a virtual experience and having our bodies consequentially respond in a new manner.

Suggestibility combines three elements: acceptance, belief, and surrender.

So when we are presented with the idea of better health, and we can associate that hope or thought—that something outside of us is going to change something inside of us—with emotional anticipation of the experience, we’re becoming suggestible to that end result. We condition, expect, and assign meaning to the whole delivery system.

But the emotional component is key in this experience;

suggestibility isn’t just an intellectual process. Many folks can intellectualize being better, but if they can’t emotionally embrace the result, then they c...

which is vital because that’s the seat of the subconscious programming that’s be...

The autonomic nervous system is under the control of the limbic brain, which is also called the “emotional brain” and the “chemical brain.” The limbic brain, depicted in Figure 6.1, is responsible for subconscious functions like chemical order and homeostasis, for maintaining the body’s natural physiological balance. It’s your emotional center.

So as you experience different emotions, you activate this part of the brain, and it creates the corresponding chemical molecules of emotion.

And since this emotional brain exists below the conscious mind’s control, the ...

you activate your autonomic ner...

So if the placebo effect requires you to embrace an elevated emotion ahead of the actual experience of healing, then when you amplify your emotional response (and come out of your normal resting state), you’re activating your subconscious system.

Allowing yourself to feel emotions is a way to enter the operating system and program a change, because you’re now automatically instructing the autonomic nervous system to begin creating the corresponding chemistry as if you were getting better.

As a result, the body is now becoming the mi...