You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter

were based on their external environments. Then they began their retreat by holding a very clear intention to pretend they were young again
(using physical and mental rehearsal, because both change the brain and the body) and to make it as real as possible. As they watched the movies,
read the magazines, and listened to radio and television programs from when they were 22 years younger, without modern-day interruptions,
they were able to let goof the reality of being in theirs and 80s.
They actually started living as though they were young again. As they experienced new thoughts and feelings about being younger, their brains started firing neurons in new sequences, new patterns, and new combinations—some of which hadn’t been fired for 22 years. 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. So the men, in a matter of days, were able to start signaling the exact genetic changes tore ect who they were being.
In doing that, their bodies produced neuropeptides to match their new emotions, and when the neuropeptides were unleashed, they delivered new messages to the cells in their bodies. As the appropriate cells allowed those chemical messengers in, they ushered them straight to the DNA
deep inside each cell. Once they arrived there, new proteins were created,
and these proteins looked for new genes according to the information they were carrying. When they found what they were looking for, the proteins unwrapped the DNA, switching on the gene that was lying in wait and triggering epigenetic changes. These epigenetic changes resulted in the production of new proteins that resembled the proteins of men years younger. 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.
A cascade of physical improvements ensued as the men made more epigenetic changes and switched on more genes, until finally, the men who waltzed back out through the monastery gates were no longer the same men who had shuffled through those gates just one week earlier.
And if the process worked for these guys, I assure you that it can work for you, too. What reality do you choose to live in, and who are you
pretending to be (or not be Could it be that simple?
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Chapter Six
Suggestibility
Thirty-six-year-old Ivan Santiago stood patiently on a New York City street, along with a handful of paparazzi gathered behind a velvet rope outside a service entrance to a four-star Lower East Side hotel. They were awaiting a foreign dignitary who was about to exit the building and jump into one of two black SUV limos waiting at the curb. But Santiago wasn’t clutching a camera. One handheld a brand-new red backpack, while the other reached inside the partially unzipped bag and took hold of the grip of a pistol outfitted with a silencer. Santiago, an imposing Pennsylvania corrections officer with a bald head that would make Vin Diesel proud,
knew a thing or two about deadly weapons. He’d never had tore one while on duty, but he was ready to fire one today.
Moments before, Santiago had been on his way home, without a single thought of guns, backpacks, foreign dignitaries, or assassination. But nowhere he was, finger on the trigger, brow knit into an intimidating scowl,
and mere seconds from turning into a killer. The hotel door opened, and out sauntered his mark in a crisp, white dress shirt, sporting shades and carrying a leather briefcase. The man took only two or three strides toward the waiting limo before Santiago whipped his gun out of the backpack and fired three times. The man fell to the sidewalk, motionless,
his shirt stained red.
Seconds later, a man named Tom Silver appeared out of nowhere,
calmly put one hand on Santiago’s shoulder and his other on Santiago’s forehead, and said, On the count of five, I’ll say, Fully refreshed Open your eyes and wake up. One, two, three, four, five Fully refreshed!”
Santiago had been hypnotized to shoot a stranger (actually a stuntman)
using what turned out to be a harmless Airsoft prop gun in an experiment run by a handful of researchers who set out to test the unthinkable Using hypnosis, was it possible to program a law-abiding, all-around good person to become a coldblooded assassin?
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Hidden inside the SUV, eyes riveted to the scene, were the researchers working with Silver Cynthia Meyersburg, PhD, then a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard specializing in experimental psychopathology Mark
Stokes, PhD, a neuroscientist at Oxford who studies the neural pathways of decision making and Jeffery Kieliszewski, PhD, a forensic psychologist with Human Resource Associates in Grand Rapids, Michigan,
who’s done work in super- maximum-security prisons and hospitals for
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the criminally insane.
The day before, the researchers had started outwith a group of volunteers. Silver (a certified clinical hypnotherapist and forensic- hypnosis investigation expert who once helped the Taiwan Department of Defense bust open a $2.4 billion international arms-trading scandal)
screened all 185 participants to determine how suggestible they were to hypnosis. Only about 5 to 10 percent of the population are considered very susceptible to hypnosis. In the test group, 16 passed muster and were given a psychological evaluation to weed out those who might suffer permanent psychological harm from the experiment. Eleven progressed to the next test, which determined whether, under hypnosis, they would reject deeply rooted social norms this would show which were the most suggestible.
Divided into smaller groups, the subjects were taken to a fairly busy restaurant for lunch, but unbeknownst to them, they’d been given a posthypnotic suggestion that once they sat down, their chairs would feel very hot, to the point where they’d quickly become so warm that they’d strip to their underwear—right therein the restaurant. While all of the subjects complied with the instructions to varying degrees, the researchers eliminated seven who they felt either were playing along or just weren’t suggestible enough to fully follow the prompt. The others stripped to their underwear within seconds they really thought their chairs were extremely hot.
The four who progressed to the next level were invited to take a test no one would be able to fake. The subjects were to step into a deep metal bathtub filled with F ice water, just 3° above freezing. One at a time,
the subjects were wired to devices that monitored their heart rate,
breathing rate, and pulse, while a special thermo-imaging camera monitored both their body temperature and the temperature of the water. Hypnotizing them, Silver told the subjects they would feel no discomfort from the cold water and, in fact, would feel as though they were stepping into a nice, warm bath. Anesthesiologist Sekhar
Upadhyayula administered the test as emergency medical technicians stood by.
This test would make or break the experiment. Normally, when someone is exposed to water this cold, an involuntary gasping reflex happens as the water reaches nipple level. The heart rate and respiratory rate climb, the person starts to shiver, and the teeth begin to chatter. It’s the autonomic nervous system taking over in an automatic attempt to maintain internal balance—something that’s not under conscious control.
Even if a person were in a deep state of hypnosis, the amount of sensation
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being sent to the brain under these extreme circumstances would normally be too overwhelming to maintain a hypnotic state. If any of the subjects passed this test, they were indisputably suggestible to a very high degree.
Three of the subjects were indeed in deep states of hypnosis, but not deep enough to withstand this kind of intense cold without their bodies losing homeostasis. The longest any of them could stay in the bath was seconds. But the fourth subject, Santiago, stayed in for just over two full minutes before Dr. Upadhyayula called a halt to the test.
Although Santiago’s heart rate was high before the experiment, once he stepped into the water, his heart rate calmed down immediately. There wasn’t so much as a flutter on his EKG or a single blip in his respiratory rate. Santiago sat among ice cubes as though he were soaking in a warm bathtub indeed, that’s exactly what he believed he was doing. The man never flinched nor did his body fall into hypothermia, and the researchers knew they’d found the subject they were looking for.
Because Santiago was so suggestible under hypnosis that his body could overcome such an extreme environment for this amount of time and his mind could control his autonomic functions, he was ready for the final test.
Santiago’s background check had shown he was a great guy, the researchers noted. He was a trusted employee, a devoted son, and a loving uncle. He was certainly not the type of man who would agree to kill somebody in cold blood. Would Silver succeed in getting such a man to turn into an assassin?
For this next phase of the experiment to be valid, Santiago couldn’t know what was being staged he couldn’t make any connection between the experiments he was taking part in and the scene in front of the hotel next to where the study was taking place. As part of the plan, the television producers in charge of filming the experiments told him he hadn’t been selected to continue in the program, although they wanted him to return the next day fora short exit interview. Before Santiago left,
he was told he wouldn’t be put under hypnosis again.
Santiago returned the following day. While he was chatting with a producer, the team went to work staging the scene outside. The stuntman strapped on blood packs the Airsoft prop gun (which had the blast and recoil action of areal rearm) was placed inside a red backpack and laid on the seat of a parked motorcycle right outside the entrance to the building. A velvet rope line was setup outside the hotel service entrance,
right next door, and staged paparazzi were in place with their film and video cameras. Two SUVs were parked on the street, looking ready to
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drive off with the foreign dignitary and his entourage.
Back upstairs, Santiago happily answered questions in his exit interview until the producer excused herself fora moment, saying she’d be right back. Soon after she left the room, Silver entered, saying he wanted to say goodbye to Santiago. As Silver shook Santiago’s hand, he gave a little tug on his arm that prompted Santiago, by now well conditioned to this cue, to drop immediately into a hypnotic trance. He went limp on the couch.
Silver told him a bad guy was downstairs, adding, Hes gotta be erased. We’ve got to get rid of him, and you’re the one to do it He told
Santiago that once he exited the building, he’d see a red backpack on a motorcycle, and inside would be a gun. He told Santiago that he was to grab the red backpack and walkover to the velvet rope, where he’d wait for the dignitary, who’d be carrying a briefcase, to emerge from the hotel.
He told Santiago, As soon as he comes out the doors, you’re going to point the gun at his chest and fire that gun Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang!
But as soon as you do it, you’ll simply, completely, totally forget that it ever happened.”
Finally Silver implanted both an audible and a physical stimulation trigger that would send Santiago back into a hypnotic state, under which he’d follow the posthypnotic suggestion Silver had given him He told
Santiago that he’d recognize a segment producer outside the building,
and the man would shake his hand and say, Ivan, you did a spectacular job Silver told Santiago to nod yes if he’d do what Silver had instructed, and Santiago complied. Then Silver brought him out of the trance and acted as if he were truly just saying good-bye.
The producer returned to the room after Silver left and thanked
Santiago, telling him the exit interview was over and he could leave. Soon after, Santiago left the building, thinking he was going home.
Once he was outside, the segment producer walked up to him, shook his hand, and said, Ivan, you did a spectacular job That was the trigger.
Immediately, Santiago looked around, saw the motorcycle, walked over to it, and calmly picked up the red backpack sitting on the seat. Seeing the velvet rope line and the paparazzi, he walked over next to them and slowly unzipped the bag.
In moments, a man carrying a briefcase strode out the door. Without
flinching, Santiago pulled the gun out of the backpack and shot the man in the chest several times. The blood bags under the “dignitary’s” shirt erupted, and he dramatically collapsed to the ground.
Silver almost immediately appeared on the scene and had Santiago close his eyes. The stuntman made a hasty exit as Silver then brought
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Santiago out of his trance. The psychologist Jeffery Kieliszewski appeared and suggested Santiago follow him inside with the others fora debriefing.
Once inside, the researchers told a surprised Santiago what had happened and asked him if he had any memory of what he’d done or what had just unfolded outside. Santiago didn’t remember a thing—that is, until Silver suggested to him that he would.

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