Joe Dispenza - Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

T.C. said:
One of Jordan Peterson's most used examples is if you're in a relationship with someone and you find out that they were unfaithful to you. All of a sudden, they're not who you thought they were (I thought they were a good person who loved me and that our relationship meant the same to them as it meant to me); you're not who you thought you were (I'm a complete fool. How could I have been so wrong); and the past isn't what you thought it was (All this time, the relationship was real to me, but now I see that it was totally different to what I believed it was).

So that's one way to view the idea of an event in the present changing our past. Those of us who've read the narcissistic family material will have gone through this kind of past-changing process when we realised our parents aren't who we thought they were and neither was our childhood.

I listened to that about a week ago. It was the Slaying the Dragon lecture. It's like you change your memory of the past. And memory is a record of perception, so you are changing your perception. You're rewriting your internal narrative and re-configuring your brain with your new understanding. So it's really the past you perceive in your mind that changes, and conforms more so to objective reality. But if it's just your perception of reality, does memory really change concrete reality? Well, I suppose the book would say so, because consciousness can change matter. But it's hard to accept from a linear mind that re-configuring your mind and perception can actually change matter. :P

I thought the book was one of the best and most inspiring books I've read. Maybe because I've connected so many dots thus far? And I worry I may have "gobbled up" some of the New-Age concepts and that's why I liked it so much. But maybe I had a filter and could also see the gems that were between those things.

On a related note, I notice that sometimes when someone is blatantly wrong, I bend the interpretation of their message so that it is more suited to what I know of the Cass material. So it comes out something like, "Yeah that is so in this sort of way." I guess that's why it helps to ask someone when they are vague instead of just filling in their claims with your own understanding.
 
I read and listened to Joe's book a few months ago and found it very insightful on the physical effect on the brain and the methods given seemed sound and doable. I know Joe is part of the RSE or Ramtha Site for Enlightenment and is very involved in that work along with JK Knight.
the main focus is projecting what you desire as a possible outcome by creating those feelings in the mind during meditation while removing the behaviors that block the negative traits and personalities that prevent you to move in that direction. this is done by realizing that habits we have created in experiences of the past and fear of those happing again in some unknown future.

By thinking and envisioning the outcome you want, changes the building blocks of habit forming and positive feedback and physical change do occur within the mind and body to promote those outcomes meditated upon.
His techniques seem to be similar to the Secret method of positive thinking, only with a more structured meditative technique.

What was difficult for me was that it does not focus on the proper way to meditate, leaving it open to your experience in this complex endeavor, but does offer some valid solutions.

What I think that would enhance this knowledge would be using these techniques with EE and its breathing discipline, maybe using these thoughts as the main seed would also improve the experience to a more productive outcome.

Mainly Joe as a very set ritual in the techniques to be implemented, but leave it very open for experimentation.

Creating in the mind your desired outcome is the main idea.

I did enjoy his analysis on how the brain works even though he is a chiropractor by nature, his knowledge on how the mind works is very good but is not cutting edge.

I would like to discus more on making this technique augment EE techniques without a the restriction of where and how to proceed with meditation.

I got that book on Amazon and it came with the audible version for 5 more dollars which was a good deal since I could read and hear the book at the some time.
I also bought his first book that had the audible version for a little more, but this is not as good as Breaking the Habit of being yourself.

I feel this is one of the keys of changing our reality to move to the next density. this can only be done by our own work and not by a ideas outside of yourself. But the door can be open to step through.
 
Thank you all for sharing your insights!

I guess I jumped to conclusions too earlier on. :scared: I was just very surprised about the road I thought the book was heading in. I will defiantly continue to read Joe Dispenza's book, with an open mind, while taking in only that which is relevant.

I plan on 'updating' my opinion once I'm done with the book. :)

I do have one more question, would you all recommend this book to someone with little knowledge, considering all the New Agey information it has? I know for those who have a decent level of knowledge and awareness are capable of separating the wheat from the shaft, but in any other case, could this book be considered disinformation, under specific context?

I ask because I usually recommend books to my friend and family, and I'm careful with what I recommend as to not be a player in leading them astray.
 
Solie said:
Thank you all for sharing your insights!

I guess I jumped to conclusions too earlier on. :scared: I was just very surprised about the road I thought the book was heading in. I will defiantly continue to read Joe Dispenza's book, with an open mind, while taking in only that which is relevant.

I plan on 'updating' my opinion once I'm done with the book. :)

I do have one more question, would you all recommend this book to someone with little knowledge, considering all the New Agey information it has? I know for those who have a decent level of knowledge and awareness are capable of separating the wheat from the shaft, but in any other case, could this book be considered disinformation, under specific context?

I ask because I usually recommend books to my friend and family, and I'm careful with what I recommend as to not be a player in leading them astray.
That's a good question. I think it would help more than it would hurt. I think working on being your best self would help anyone, even if their motivation is to win the lottery.
 
This book has been invaluable for me in helping me to clean out my machine so to speak. There have been programs running the show since childhood (and here I was thinking I was in control)- when I reflect back over my life so far I can see themes of victimization and emotional abandonment speckled through out. And some of these are so ingrained and deep- almost like fundamental axioms through which I view the world, which then affect the way I think and feel, my body's biochemistry etc..

For the past 2 months or so, I have been working through the writing exercises and the meditations. I must say that there is definitely a New Age gloss, however what I like about Dispenza's work is that he backs things up with research- neuropsychology neuroplasticity etc. I think you can get a lot out of it if you are able to ignore the gloss and really look at the material presented. In terms of the Work, it is a great 'how to' book with regards to cleaning one's machine, the false persona that we present, facing our fears and really getting to the bottom of those pesky programs that run the show.The writing exercises are probably one of the most valuable aspects of the program for me, along with Jordan Peterson's self authoring program (which is based in part on the Pennebaker writing exercises). I do EE before beginning the guided meditations.

I think it is the intent with which you approach using the information in this book- if you are sincerely wanting to reexamine who you really are vs. the false persona you present, and the sub-programs, then this is a great book for helping you do so. Just my 2 cents :)
 
Thank you Arwenn for your insight.
My summary was not to diswad anyone from working with this book. Most of Joe's techniques are very sound and practiced counseling techniques. I find them very helpful. Being aware of oneself through introspection is very powerful and I know it does work.
My main question is how can I use EE and these techniques of his to be more productive in my meditation effort. I wanted to network with members following the same path.
I have not gone through the four week of exercises but would like too.
I have been very stressed at work an have been loosing my passion of my love for engineering. Which set me on this path of fixing my mind that somehow made my life not worth existing for. I will not go into any more detail on this subject, but maybe in another thread.
Seeking a new mindset was my goal. This book did impress me very much and am glad to recommend it to anyone seeking the same path. The idea that Joe suggests that we can tap into the cosmic mind I.E. the quantum field and allow our true self to be manifested is something I know is part of the work.
If you get a chance to see the movie, "What the bleep do we know", you will meet Joe there. I do recommend that movie also.
 
My main question is how can I use EE and these techniques of his to be more productive in my meditation effort.

FWIW, in my experience, I do the pipe breathing part of EE before doing Joe's meditation, you could also do the whole thing or maybe add POTS at the end as well, it depends on how much time you have. It's all about getting yourself into that alpha state as opposed to the beta state of waking consciousness.

On a side note, I don't suppose there is any problems with cultivating that feeling of gratitude while doing EE, but maybe others could chime in here as whether that is a good idea or not?
 
luc said:
Thanks Solie for bringing this up. I haven't read the book yet, but I remember having had similar feelings about other self-help books I've read. They can sometimes feel a bit new-agey, and part of the reason I think is that they are written for a large audience - you can't just throw them stuff in their face à la Gurdjieff :D, hence the "feel-good vibe" many authors use, osit.

That being said, no book is perfect and what we get out of it depends as much on the content as on our current understanding. I think to get the most out of a book, we need to apply our own knowledge and form new and interesting connections. If we are 'turned off' by a certain vibe or some phrases that sound 'off', we might miss much good information and stimulating thoughts. [...]

Yes at least in the placebo book, it becomes clear by the science he presents, how it exactly can work for you, and a number of case studies on how certain people exactly overcame their "incurable illness", that it is actually not "new age" what they have done with what Dispenza presents/recommends, but something that is more like what Gurdjieff expressed way back then.

I later try to summarize some of that stuff in the book, as soon as I get a hand on the e-book text.
One testimony/case study, stood out especially for me, of a woman that was able to very significantly change her "incurable disease" by implementing the meditation of dispenza and changing the way she thought, felt, behaved, reacted in every day life and tackled her uncounscious habits day in and day out. Quite impressive and a lot of what Gurdjieff recommended was part of her recovery: Like doing what it doesn't like etc.
Many of those testemonies are in a similar line.

It could very well be that Dispenza wrote the book, as he did, to attract more people to change themself. And the "new age" appeal, might be just a way for him to attract more people to it.

I finished listening to the rest of the placebo meditation and it is in line with what he presents in the book, and the "no body, no thing" part, is indeed just the second phase that is supposed to quite down your analytical thinking apparatus, in order to get access to the unconscious parts of your body and your feelings, in order to program them to a new mind. Later on, the meditation comes back to the real world and encourages you to implement that new way of thinking, feeling in real life by actions and letting the "higher power" decide which possibility will be best for you to achieve your goals. So you are not supposed to think or anticipate how exactly the change will manifest, but just that it will manifest somehow, if you keep up the efforts both inside and in real life.

He points out on several occasions in the book, that the quantum information field of possiblities does respond to your state of being (which he defines in the book) and not your mental thoughts alone. A significant and important difference.

In the end I also think the Placebo book is a very valuable tool, especially for people that know about "the work" and are familiar with related topics.
 
Pashalis said:
[...]One testimony/case study, stood out especially for me, of a woman that was able to very significantly change her "incurable disease" by implementing the meditation of dispenza and changing the way she thought, felt, behaved, reacted in every day life and tackled her uncounscious habits day in and day out. Quite impressive and a lot of what Gurdjieff recommended was part of her recovery: Like doing what it doesn't like etc.
Many of those testemonies are in a similar line.[...]

Here is the story from "You Are The Placebo" I spoke of above. I'll underline some of the stuff that I think plays into "the work" aka. what Gurdjieff said all along, even though that woman didn't engage in the work, it has a lot in common with the work approach and can teach us something OSIT.

It is a rather long excerpt from the book, but I think it is worth the read:

Laurie’s Story

At age 19, Laurie was diagnosed with a rare degenerative bone disease, called polyostotic fibrous dysplasia. In this debilitating condition, the body
replaces normal bone with a cheaper, fibrous tissue, and the skeleton’s supportive protein scaffolding becomes uncharacteristically thin and irregular. The atypical growth process associated with the syndrome causes bones to swell, weaken, and then fracture. Fibrous dysplasia can occur in any part of the skeleton, and in Laurie’s body, it manifested in her right femur, right hip socket, right tibia, and some of the bones of her right foot. Her doctors told her the disease had no cure.

Fibrous dysplasia is a genetic condition that usually doesn’t manifest until adolescence. In Laurie’s case, she spent a whole year limping painfully around her college campus with what turned out to be a femoral fracture, before any sign of the disease surfaced. She was shocked to hear she’d broken a bone, because she hadn’t suffered any trauma. Other than one foot being anatomically larger than the other, Laurie hadn’t seen any evidence that anything was wrong with her until that point. She’d lived a relatively active youth filled with activities like running, dancing, and playing tennis. At the time she began limping, she’d even begun training as a competitive bodybuilder.

After the diagnosis, Laurie’s life changed overnight. Her orthopedic surgeon warned her that she was fragile and extremely vulnerable. He insisted that she walk only with crutches until he could schedule her for surgery: first a bone graft, followed by the insertion of a Russell-Taylor femoral nail down the bone shaft. After hearing that news, both Laurie and her mother spent an hour crying in the hospital cafeteria. It was like some sort of nightmare; Laurie’s life, as she knew it, seemed to be suddenly over.

Laurie’s perception of her limitations—both real and imagined—began to dominate her life. To avoid additional fractures, she followed the surgeon’s orders and dutifully used the crutches. She had to quit the marketing internship she’d recently begun with a major Manhattan product manufacturer and, instead, began filling her days with medical appointments. Her father insisted she see as many orthopedic specialists as possible, so her weeping mother drove Laurie from doctor’s office to doctor’s office over the next several weeks.

Each time she saw a new doctor, Laurie would patiently wait for a different medical opinion, only to receive the same bad news again. In just a few months, ten surgeons had weighed in on her condition. The last physician she saw did have a different opinion: He told Laurie that the surgery the other doctors had recommended absolutely wouldn’t help her, because inserting the nail would strengthen the diseased bone only in the weakest location and would actually cause more fractures in the next most vulnerable area above or below the nail.

He advised Laurie to forget about surgery and continue using crutches or a wheelchair—or simply become sedentary for the rest of her life. From then on, Laurie remained still most of the time for fear she might break a bone. She felt powerless, small, and fragile, and she was filled with anxiety and self-pity. She did return to college a month later, but stayed largely cooped up in an apartment that she shared with five other women. She cultivated an impressive ability to cloak a severe and mounting clinical depression.

Fearing Her Father

Laurie’s father had been a violent man for as long as she could remember. Even once his children were grown, each member of the family had to be prepared for the wrath of this man’s quick-moving fists at the most unexpected of moments. Everyone was constantly in a state of vigilance, wondering when his temper would flare next.Although Laurie certainly didn’t know it at the time, her father’s behavior was intrinsically connected to her condition.

Newborns spend the vast majority of their days in the delta brain-wave state. During the first 12 years, children gradually progress to a theta state and then to an alpha state, before they get to the beta state they’ll spend most of their adulthood in. As you read earlier, theta and alpha are highly suggestible brainwave states. Young children don’t yet have an analytical mind to edit or to make sense of what happens to them, so all of the information they absorb from their experiences is encoded directly into their subconscious minds. Because of their increased suggestibility, the moment they feel emotionally altered from some experience, they pay attention to whoever or whatever caused it and so are conditioned to form associative memories connecting that cause to the emotion of the experience itself. If it’s a parent, then over time, children will attach to that caregiver and think that the emotions they feel from the experience are normal, because they don’t yet have the ability to analyze the situation. This is how early-childhood experiences become subconscious states of being.

Although Laurie didn’t know this when her condition was diagnosed, the emotionally charged events she experienced growing up with her father had been branded into her implicit memory system beyond her conscious mind, programming her biology. Her reaction to her father’s anger—feeling weak, powerless, vulnerable, stressed, and fearful every single day—then became part of her autonomic nervous system so that her body chemically memorized these emotions and the environment signaled the genes associated with her disorder to turn on. Because that response was autonomic, she wouldn’t be able to change it as long as she stayed trapped in her emotional body. She could only analyze her state of being equal to the emotions of her past, even though the answers she needed existed beyond those emotions.

Once Laurie received the fibrous dysplasia diagnosis, her mother immediately proclaimed to the entire family that Laurie had been officially pronounced “fragile” by modern medicine —so she was safe from her father’s physical violence. Although he continued to emotionally and verbally abuse Laurie (right up until his death 15 years later), her disease, ironically, protected her from further physical abuse.

Cementing Her Identity in Disease

This perverse sense of safety that Laurie created became a vehicle of survival for her. As a result, she began to benefit from special treatment (which she almost always needed). Whether getting a seat on the bus or subway when there was standing room only, getting her friends to wait in line for events while she sat on a nearby bench, or getting a seat quickly in a crowded restaurant, Laurie found that her disease began to work for her. She started relying heavily on her ailment to get what she wanted. She was now able to manage better in a world that she’d never before viewed as safe. The emotional benefit of manipulating her reality to get what she wanted in this way became very convenient, and Laurie received far more than she really needed to take stress off her body to prevent injury. Before long, her disease became her identity.

Laurie next developed a late-adolescent rebellion against the life that she thought had been thrust upon her by her doctors, her parents, and fate. By the next semester after her diagnosis, she went into a solid state of denial about her disease. She decided to become the first “gimpy” bodybuilder, returning to the sport with complete devotion. Blindly obsessive, while white-knuckling it and forcing a positive attitude solely with her conscious mind, Laurie found creative ways to bear weight that wouldn’t twist her limbs.

She thought that by trying to push through the pain, she’d become healthier— although in truth, her efforts backfired, because she felt awful most of the time and her pain worsened. As sometimes happens with polyostotic fibrous dysplasia patients, Laurie also developed scoliosis and suffered from severe back pain daily. By the time she was in her 20s, she began to develop arthritis in her spine and elsewhere.

After she graduated from college, despite shuttling herself between a new house and a new job, Laurie became very sedentary and felt even more removed from life. Her fear, anxiety, and depression remained. She envied most of her peers and lost friendships and romantic interests because she lived more like her elderly parents than like a young adult.

By her late 20s, Laurie used a cane all the time to get around, even when she wasn’t nursing one of the 12 serious fractures she’d eventually endure. As if those issues weren’t enough, she also experienced dangerous microfractures. Her bones were so weak that bigger stress fractures would appear beneath the microscopic fissures and connect to other areas of weakened bone to form even bigger fractures that could be seen on an x-ray.

By age 30, Laurie had more back problems than her 72-year-old father, and she essentially became old before her time. She rested in bed for days and missed so many weeks of work that she was forced to quit jobs. She put graduate school on hold, because the school that accepted her didn’t have a working elevator. She had to forgo parties, museum outings, shopping, traveling, concerts, and other activities that would have involved a lot of standing or walking. She was caught in the thinking-and-feeling loop I talked about earlier: thinking that she was limited and fragile on the inside, while her body manifested limitedness and fragility on the outside. The more she felt vulnerable and weak, the more vulnerable and weak she became—while continuing to experience fractures that reinforced her belief that she was frail, and further reaffirming her identity and validating her state of being.

She adjusted her diet and took various vitamins and supplements in addition to bone-strengthening drugs, but nothing seemed to stop the fractures. She could fracture a bone from just walking up a flight of stairs or even stepping off a curb. It was like waiting for the next nightmare in a series.

Ironically, when Laurie wasn’t using crutches or limping, she looked perfectly healthy. Most people assumed that her cane was some sort of eccentric accessory, and many didn’t believe Laurie really had a debilitating condition, which made it difficult and frustrating at times to receive the special treatment she often needed. Trying to convince people that she really had a disease further solidified her identity as a sick person, set her intention to prove she was handicapped, and anchored her belief about her disabled status. While the rest of the world seemed to work very hard to hide their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, Laurie found that she was constantly announcing hers.

She spent a lot of energy trying to control as much as possible in her environment. She paid careful attention to everything she ate and drank, measuring everything she consumed. Every walk around her neighborhood was calculated. She even weighed how much she could carry home from the supermarket: ten pounds, which was also the limit of the weight she could gain before her bones would worsen.

It was exhausting, but it was all Laurie knew to do. Her range of options got narrower and narrower as she kept limiting the scope of things that she could do physically in an attempt to keep from fracturing. As her lifestyle became narrower, her mind became narrower along with it. Laurie’s fears increased, her depression worsened, and eventually, she tried to work again but couldn’t even hold down a job.

This same woman who’d once been a runner, dancer, and competitive bodybuilder was now limited to doing only yoga for fitness, and by her late 30s, even hatha yoga had come to be too much for her. For years, her exercise was limited to sitting in a chair and doing vigorous breathing (although in her early 40s, her doctor finally allowed her to take up lap swimming).

She did make some attempts at healing through therapists, holistic doctors, energy healers, sound healers, and homeopaths—always seeking solutions outside of herself. A few times, she’d feel better after an energy healing and go straight to the orthopedist and demand new x-rays—only to be deflated when the results came back unchanged. She thought, Maybe this is as good as it’s ever going to get. She awoke overwhelmed each morning, overcome with a feeling of dread, convinced she couldn’t handle whatever the world had in store for her.

Laurie Learns What’s Possible

Laurie and I met in 2009, after she had seen What the Bleep Do We Know!? and become transfixed by the concept that a person could possibly create a totally new life. I happened to meet her while eating dinner before a workshop I was teaching at a retreat center near New York. We talked about the courses I gave on personal change, and she immediately registered for my next class that August.

When Laurie came to her first event, she heard that it was absolutely possible to change your brain, your thoughts, your body, your emotional state, and your genetic expression. During the workshop, I talked about physical change, but Laurie’s beliefs about her disease and her body were tenacious and her emotions were stuck quite firmly in her past. She had absolutely no intention of healing her body, mostly because she didn’t really believe it was even possible. She came because she just wanted to feel better on the inside.

Laurie immediately applied the principles I taught as best she could, even though she couldn’t seem to feel different by choice.The very first thing she did, almost immediately after that first weekend course, was to stop sharing her diagnosis with others. Even though she couldn’t control her emotions, she figured that she still had control over what she said out loud. So unless she needed to ask for a chair at a party or explain to a date why she couldn’t take a walk with him, she stopped acknowledging her condition altogether. Laurie chose to focus on where she was headed in her future: toward a happy inner self, a deep connection to some unknown divine source, a wonderful job that she excelled at, a life partner, and close and healthy relationships with friends and relatives.

Laurie next concentrated on changing a few simple behaviors. She watched her thoughts and words, and reminded herself repeatedly to stop her old, repetitive, destructive patterns. She kept doing the meditations and taking my courses. In order to assign meaning to what she was doing, she reread her class notes religiously and kept in touch with as many fellow students as she could. In time, some small but perceptible percentage of the day, Laurie felt better, taller, abler, and stronger. She’d say “Change” to herself 20 times a day, whenever she noticed her mind drifting to her past. Although negative thoughts sneaked through a hundred times a day, little by little, Laurie created a few new thoughts, wrote them down, and attempted to believe them deeply.

Laurie worked hard at it, but it took almost two years before she could really feel those new thoughts. Instead of getting frustrated during that waiting period, Laurie reminded herself that it had taken quite a long time to create the disease from her emotional state, so it might take some time to uncreate it. She also reminded herself that she’d have to go through a biological, neurological, chemical, and genetic death of the old self before the new self emerged.

The circumstances in her external environment got worse before they got better. A flood trashed Laurie’s home, and other situations in her apartment building created some new health problems. Laurie told me that every time she’d sit down to do her meditation and rehearse her ideal life, she felt as if she were telling herself a lie —and afterward, opening her eyes to her current circumstances felt like a slap in the face. I encouraged her to stop defining reality with her senses and to keep crossing the river of change.

Laurie kept limping in to the workshops, grumpy at times and grateful at others, and she kept at the work. She also assembled as many local fellow students as she could to meditate together. Hardly any situations in Laurie’s life were pleasing, so she thought, What the hell, I may as well have one hour a day behind my own eyelids where reality looks different, where I have a pain-free body, a safe and quiet home, and a full and loving relationship with the outside world and with my friends and family.

In early 2012, during one of my progressive workshops, Laurie had a significant deepening in her meditation experience. She was literally and figuratively rocked to her core. Physically, it was like a disturbance and then a release. Her body shook, her face contorted, and her arms flew up as she tried her best to stay rooted to her chair. Emotionally, it was inexplicable joy. She cried, she laughed, and sounds came out of her mouth that she couldn’t explain. All of the fear and control that she’d previously used to hold herself together was finally loosening. For the first time, she felt a divine presence and knew she was no longer alone.

Laurie told me, “I sensed something, someone, some divine presence, and this consciousness wasn’t ignorant to my existence and unconcerned with my welfare, as I apparently previously believed. This consciousness has actually been paying attention. Realizing that was an overwhelming change for me.” All the energy she’d been putting into controlling her physical movements and her life in general finally began to relax and unwind, and the energy she’d been using to maintain that control started to free up.

At the next event, I noticed that Laurie was walking without a cane or any limp. She was happy, smiling, and laughing to herself, instead of irritated, frowning, and wincing in pain. She was transmuting fear into courage, frustration into patience, pain into joy, and weakness into strength. She was beginning to change—on the inside and the outside. Free from the addiction of those limiting emotions, her body was now living less in the past as she moved toward a new future.

In early spring of 2012, Laurie’s orthopedist told her during a regular checkup that about two-thirds of the length of a fracture she’d had in her femur since she was 19 (a fracture that had shown up on every one of the hundred or so x-rays she’d had so far) had vanished. He had no explanation to offer but, instead, suggested she begin riding a stationary bicycle at the gym for ten minutes, twice a week. The message was music to Laurie’s ears, and off she went.

Success and Setbacks

All of Laurie’s work in crossing the river of change was now starting to pay off. She was finally getting feedback that let her know she was making some type of physical progress. Each day, as Laurie got beyond her body, her environment, and time, she was also getting beyond the personality that was connected to her present and past external reality, beyond her emotionally addicted and habituated body, and beyond the predictable future that she’d always expected, based on her memory of the past. All of her effort to supersede her analytical mind, change her brain waves to those of a more suggestible state, find the present moment, and venture into the programming system where she was emotionally altered earlier in her life was finally changing her.

Laurie started to really believe that her mind was healing her body by thought alone. And the old fracture that was connected to the old self was healing, because she was literally becoming someone else. She was no longer firing and wiring the circuits in her brain that were connected to the old personality, because she was no longer thinking and acting in the same ways. She stopped conditioning her body to the same mind by reliving her past with the same emotions. She was “unmemorizing” being her old self and remembering being a new self—that is, firing and wiring new thoughts and actions in her brain by changing her mind and emotionally teaching her body what her future self would feel like.

Laurie was signaling new genes in new ways during her daily meditation by simply changing her state of being. Those genes were making new proteins that were healing the proteins responsible for the fractures related to her “dis-ease.” From what she learned in the workshops, she reasoned that her bone cells needed to get the right signal from her mind in order to turn off the gene of fibrous dysplasia and turn on the gene for the production of a normal bone matrix.

Laurie explained:

I knew that over the years, all of those fractures had manifested structurally from the unhealthy protein expression in my bone cells, because I had been living by the survival emotions of fear, victimization, and pain—and I felt weak. I was powerful enough to manifest weakness perfectly in my body. I had programmed the genes to stay on, because I’d memorized those emotions subconsciously in my body. And my body, as my mind, was always living in the past. So I figured, if bones are made of collagen—which is a protein—and I wanted my bone cells to make some healthy collagen, I’d have to enter my autonomic nervous system, get beyond my analytical mind, enter into the subconscious mind, repeatedly reprogram my body with new information, and allow it to receive new orders every day. When I received the good news, I felt like I was halfway across the river of change.

Laurie kept her meditations going and continued to take my workshops. She continued to have times of physical pain, but the frequency, intensity, and duration decreased considerably. She changed as many things as she possibly could. She changed gyms just for a different environment. She put her deodorant on the right side first instead of the left. She folded her arms left over right instead of the more natural right over left, whenever she could remember to do so. She sat in a different chair in her apartment. She slept on the other side of the bed (even though it meant walking all the way around to the far side of the room to get in and out of bed).

She reported, “Ridiculous as that may sound, I was just intent on giving my body as many new and different signals as possible, and since moving to a big house in the Hamptons wasn’t realistic, these tiny things would have to do.

Laurie even put notes everywhere in her environment to remind herself to stay conscious and to elicit thoughts and feelings about her future. She wrote, “I am grateful,” “Elevate!” and “Love!” on painter’s tape and stuck the notes on the backs of several doors. She stuck a sticky note on her dashboard that read, “Your thoughts are incredibly powerful. Choose yours wisely.” Encouraging notes and affirmations weren’t new to her, but she’d never had the capacity to believe them before because she hadn’t known how to change her beliefs.

In late January 2013, when she saw her orthopedist again, he told her for the first time in 28 years that she had no evidence of fractures—none. Her bones were whole and undamaged. She wrote to me, “I cannot convey in words the joy this brought me. I now felt empowered and lifted. I know I am more than halfway across the river of change.”

Her bone cells were now programmed to make new, healthy proteins. Her autonomic nervous system was restoring balance within her body physically, chemically, and emotionally. It was doing the healing for her, through a greater intelligence, and she knew she could trust and surrender more to it now. Her body was continuing to respond to a new mind.

The month after her appointment with the orthopedist, Laurie flew to Arizona for one of my advanced workshops. An hour after she arrived, she received a phone call from the doctor’s assistant, who told her that the results from her blood and urine tests were back and they indicated that her disease was actually still quite active. Her doctor recommended that she resume intravenous bisphosphonate therapy for the first time in many years.

Laurie was heartbroken. The x-rays had left her with the impression that she was whole again, but the lab tests indicated otherwise. Within seconds, she had lost perspective and was certain she’d failed. When she told me the news, I reassured her that her body was still living in the past and just needed more time to catch up with her mind. I suggested she continue to do the work for a few more months and retake the urine test then.

Inspired by some of the folks in our workshops who’d changed their health, Laurie went home and did her practice in earnest, feeling more vividly and intensely in her meditations the life that she could have. She stopped imagining herself with healed bones per se, and just imagined herself as whole in general —vital, glowing, resilient, youthful, and in energetic, good health. She mentally rehearsed and emotionally embraced having everything she wanted, which included a functional, walking body. She told herself that the old lady she’d been from ages 19 to 47 was just a story from the past.

New Mind, New Body

Over the next few months, Laurie simply began to feel happier, more joyful, freer, and healthier. She began to think with more clarity about her future. She rarely felt pain in her body and walked without any assistance.

When May 2013 arrived, she was feeling some trepidation about her appointment to retake the lab test. She postponed the appointment until June. Then Laurie discussed her hesitation and anxiety with an experienced workshop student, who asked her to think about some good things she could imagine related to walking into the hospital and taking the test. At this point, Laurie realized she had lots of positive, life-giving emotional resources to draw on. She began reciting a long list, including how clean the hospital was, how helpful all the staff always were, what an easy place it was to go to just be taken care of. It was exactly the shift in focus she needed. [continues in the next post...]

Rest of the story in the next post...
 
Rest of the story:

On the day of the appointment, as she drove to the hospital, Laurie gave thanks for the sunshine, for how well traffic was moving, for her car, for her leg that was helping to operate the car, for her perfect eyesight, for the parking spot she easily found, and so on. As she later described to me, “I went inside, gave them my name, shut my eyes, and meditated in the waiting room until it was my turn. I peed in a cup, handed the nurse the bag, and walked out, giving thanks for the simple act of walking. And I let go of the result—entirely. I was okay, deep down inside, with either outcome. It enabled me to forget about it entirely, 198 because I wasn’t expecting anything. I felt happy, in fact, obsessively grateful. I stopped analyzing and just trusted.”

She remembered my saying that the moment she began to analyze how or when her healing would happen, it would mean she was just returning back to the old self, because the new self would never think in that unsure way. Laurie continued, “And so, for no reason, I was simply grateful in the present moment ahead of the actual experience. I wasn’t waiting for the results to make me happy or thankful; I was in a state of authentic gratitude and in love with life as if it had already happened. I no longer needed something outside of me to make me happy. I was already whole and happy, because something inside of me was more whole and complete.”

She had almost nothing on any external “grand scale” by which to measure success, satisfaction, and security—not income, a house, a partner, a business, a child, not even any recent volunteer work she was particularly proud of. But Laurie had the love of her friends and those family members whom she could connect with. And she had a newfound love for herself. She’d realized that she’d never had self-love before—only self-interest. She told me later that it was a distinction that she never could have understood in her previous, narrow state of mind. She felt quite content with herself and her life. She said, “And for the first time since I began this journey, I just didn’t care about the test. I was happy with myself.”

Two joyful weeks later, the test results came back. The doctor’s assistant told Laurie, “Your results are perfectly normal. You scored a 40. Your values are down from an abnormal, elevated level of 68, just five months ago.”

Laurie had crossed the river and was on the shores of a new life. There was no evidence of her past living in her body any longer. She was free—born anew.

Laurie told me later:

It occurred to me in an instant that my identity as “patient” and “sick person with a disease” had become stronger than any other role I’d played in life. I had pretended to be that person, but all along I knew I wasn’t. All of my attention and energy were consumed with being a patient instead of with being a woman, a girlfriend, a daughter, an employee, or even just a happy and whole person. I now know that I had no available energy to be anyone else until I took my attention off my old personality and old self, and reinvested my attention and energy into a new self. I’m so grateful that now I’m me instead of that!

Laurie now has no regrets and no significant resentments, and she feels no loss over the past. As she puts it, “I wouldn’t want to judge or hold a grudge or feel forsaken from my past, because that choice would take away this feeling of wholeness. It’s as if my past condition was actually a blessing, because I overcame my own limitations and now I’m in love with who I am. I’m at peace. I am truly changed on the biological and cellular level. I am proof of the message that your mind can heal your body, and believe me, no one is more surprised than I am.”
 
Was looking more into Alpha Brain Wave States and thought I would post a link to this thread started by Obyvatel a few years back discussing the different brain wave states and the importance of switching from narrow-minded (beta/analytical focus) to a more expanded awareness associated with Alpha that Joe Dispenza talks a lot about in the book. Brain Waves and Attention

obyvatel said:
Alpha Waves and Synchrony

Alpha brain waves are found to be related to creativity and other desirable characteristics.
Following are excerpts from an article by Johnson, T (2010, June 29). Alpha Brain Waves: What Are The Benefits? from _http://uberarticles.com/health-and-fitness/alpha-brain-waves-what-are-the-benefits

To cause more alpha brain waves it is necessary to be relaxed. This can be done through meditation, controlled breathing and listening to certain kinds of music.
There are some useful reasons to do this such as aiding memory and creativity. Scientists have found that creative people have more alpha waves and when they are presented with a problem they have high bursts of them. This means when you have a problem the best thing to do could be to relax and try to induce this state. It is thought that this may happen because it is easier to access the subconscious and imaginative parts of the brain.

If you are trying to learn a new skill, especially one which requires you to remember a lot of new things then the alpha state can help. It could improve your memory and thinking skills. The state is characterized by less neural activity which could mean that the thoughts are less crowded and more energy can be used to form memories. Listening to some types of classical music while studying could really improve your abilities.
Muscle relaxation is a concept used by many top athletes and musicians. Once a skill is learned a level of relaxation is possible while performing and this is thought to help the performance. Scientists have shown that at these times these people also have bursts of alpha waves so it may be that the brain is helping the muscles.

In general, research has shown that the alpha frequencies are one range of frequencies where brain is most synchronous with most neurons being simultaneously excited. Dr Fehmi’s hypothesis is that conscious control of alpha frequencies might be a key to enhancing brain function. Hence one of his research goals was to increase the ambient level of multi-lobe alpha synchrony and amplitude. To this end, various methods were tried.

Dr Fehmi: Attention to Attention said:
We studied the effects of relaxation and imagery protocols, instructions and learning goals, music, lighting, colors, darkness, silence, incense, light strobing, efficacy of visual vs auditory vs tactile stimulation as the feedback signal, analog vs digital versions of the feedback signal, hemispheric dominance and feedback delay regarding learning to control the production of brain wave synchrony. All these variables and others appeared to have at least mild learning effects, for a time upon a small percentage of individuals. Effects were generally positive to a small degree but some were to our surprise negative. For example, almost any detailed instructions about how to produce more alpha amplitude or abundance had immediate negative effects, even when the instructions were well understood.
…………….
The greatest general and most reliable production of alpha synchrony occurred in response to what I have come to call “object less imagery”.
Questions that refer to the multisensory experience of space, nothingness, emptiness or “absence” often elicit large amplitude and prolonged periods of alpha activity. I wanted to understand why this object less imagery is more generally powerful than well-known relaxation and imagery protocols in producing alpha synchrony and how it comes to impact us.

He also mentions that one of the most effective and immediate increase of alpha amplitude happened when subjects were asked to visualize the space between their eyes. In general it was also observed that synchronous alpha activity was enhanced with closed eyes and opening the eyes desynchronized the brain waves. Also imagining objects desynchronized the brain waves. When space is imagined, the attention cannot grip onto a particular object and more relaxation is possible leading to production of synchronous alpha wave activity.
 
Hello I am new to this forum and to his book BTHOBY. A lot of books that I read just come to me and I start reading them. I just don't do research to find something to read. If it pops up then there is a reason I need to read it. I am facing some real difficulties at the moment, extended unemployment, financial hardship, need to change my life, etc.. (I am not looking to "win the lotto" with this book, although it would be nice to get out of this financial hardship we are in).

I am just starting part 3 and want to know should I purchase the 2 MP3's for the meditation? Also, once I finish this book is it recommended to read the next book You Are the Placebo? I am not very good with meditation as I cannot quiet my mind for very long. I try to do it. For those that have the cd's how did you like it and is the sound quality and the voice soothing? Or can you recommend a different guided meditation?

BTW what is EE and YCYOR?
Thank you in advance.
 
Hello sc00ter1808 and :welcome: to our forum.

It's customary around here to formally introduce yourself in the newbies board. No personal info is required, just how you found this forum and whether you're familiar with any of the recommended reading and if you're familiar with our SOTT-pages. Plus anything you might volunteer to tell. You may look at some of the other entries if you would be uncertain as to what to share just to see how others have done it.

EE is short for Eriu Eolas (which means "Growth of Knowledge" BTW). It's a free available meditation program many forumites use regularly.

YCYOR stands for: "You create your own Reality".

More abbreviations here: abbreviations in english used on forum.

Also, once I finish this book is it recommended to read the next book You Are the Placebo?

You might be able to decide this yourself by reading the excerpts in Reply #38 and #39 up above. I'm not acquainted with any such recommendation ATM.

Have a nice day and stay.
 
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