Chapter 5 ties the previous two chapters together, explaining how thoughts change your brain and your body. It begins by asking the question 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 how 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. 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 change to look as if the event has taken place. 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 though the imagined future event were real. And then you can walk right into that new reality and become the placebo. This chapter not only outlines the science behind how this happens, but also includes stories of many public figures from different walks of life who have used this technique (whether or not they were fully aware of what they were doing at the time) to make their wildest dreams come true. Chapter 6 , which concentrates on the concept of suggestibility, begins with a fascinating but chilling story of how a team of researchers set out to test whether a regular, law-abiding, mentally healthy person who was highly suggestible to hypnosis could be programmed to do something he or she would normally deem unthinkable shoot a stranger with the intent to kill. You’ll see that people have differing degrees of suggestibility, and the more suggestible you are, the better able you are to gain access to your subconscious mind. This is key to understanding the placebo effect, because 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’ll learn that 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 a powerful tool for doing just that. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of different brainwave states and which are the most conducive to your becoming more suggestible.
