“You are the Placebo “is written by best-selling author and well-known speaker Dr. Joe Dispenza. He has educated several people from different parts of the world on rewiring the brains and reconditioning the bodies to make enduring positive changes in their lives. He quotes, “Your personality creates your personal reality. Your personality is made up of how you act, how you think and how you feel.”
The book starts with Dr. joe’s story of self-healing. By using, the power of his mind, he healed himself miraculously of 6 broken vertebrae. He kept believing and practicing the theory that “our body has innate intelligence that includes miraculous healing power”. In less than 10 weeks he got fully cured and was back to normal. After his recovery, he decided to dedicate his life in helping others to understand the power of the brain and self-healing by thought. He did extensive research in neurosciences. He did post-graduate training in brain imaging, epigenetics, neuroplasticity and psychoneuroimmunology.
This book is divided into two parts:
Part I discusses the Placebo effect and the unbelievable changes occurring in our body by thought alone. You will find unbelievable stories about how positive thoughts of people have healed them from incurable diseases and on the other hand how fear and negative emotions have gotten them sick or sometimes even caused death. A man who died when he came to know, he had cancer whereas his autopsy results revealed later that he had no cancer. This is an example of Nocebo effect. There is a story of a woman suffering from chronic depression whose health improved dramatically after receiving a placebo and a fake knee surgery that cured osteo arthritis of a few veterans. Why it happened so? The lady and the veterans believed and surrendered to the condition without any analysis. Their subconscious mind got programmed and their body produced the same response as if they had taken the drug or undergone surgery. Placebo works because a person who takes placebo develops a faith in it and can embrace a new thought that he/she can be well using it to replace the thought that he/she is always sick.
The author has explained mental rehearsal to get the experience of the future event while being in your present moment. If we make our inner thoughts more real than the outer environment, our brain cannot differentiate between real and fake so it will accept the event as real. If we can practice it successfully plenty of times, we can experience the event. By learning the principles of Placebo, we can heal ourselves without relying on the external substance. Dr. Joe has also included stories of many public figures from various fields who used this method to fulfil their dreams. Dr. Joe has included stories of people who attended his meditation workshop along with their brain scans. He says that the more suggestible you are the more you gain access to your subconscious mind and the subconscious mind is 95 percent of who we are. The conscious mind only contributes 5 percent. Meditation acts as a powerful tool in creating new thoughts to get new outcomes. In Part II Dr. Joe explains specific techniques and steps of meditation to produce desired results. These techniques can be applied to improve not only our health but any aspect of our life.
This book will help you to understand the mind and body relationship scientifically. Some parts are difficult to understand though. Overall, it can be a good option for those who are looking for psychology or self-help books.