You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter
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| Joann Changes Her Mind The one thing Joann knew without a doubt was that the damage that the MRIs showed was riddling her brain and spinal column hadn’t appeared overnight. Her body had slowly been eaten away at her core— the central nervous system. After all those years of ignoring symptoms, she’d become unnerved because she was afraid to look inside herself. Those daily toxic chemicals were repeatedly knocking on the door of her cells, and finally the gene for the disease answered the door and switched on. Bedridden, Joann made her first goal to slowdown the progression of the MS in her body. She knew from reading my first book that the brain doesn’t know the difference between what she could make real internally by thought alone and the real external experience, and she knew that mental practice could change her brain and her body. She started mentally rehearsing doing yoga, and after just a few weeks of daily practice, she was able to do some actual physical poses—even some standing ones. These results highly motivated her. Every day, Joann primed her brain and body by thought alone. Just like the piano players in Chapter 5 who mentally rehearsed playing the piano and grew the same neurological circuits as the subjects who physically practiced the exercises, Joann was installing the circuits in her brain to look as if she were already physically walking and moving. Remember the subjects in the various weightlifting studies who increased their strength just by mentally practicing lifting weights or flexing their biceps Just like them, Joann knew she could make her body look as if the experience of healing had already started to happen—by literally changing her mind. Soon she was able to stand briefly, and then she could walk with support. Joann was quite wobbly and otherwise still dependent on a mobility scooter, but at least she was no longer confined to bed and feeling sorry for herself. She had turned a corner. 216 When Joann began to meditate regularly to simply quiet her mind chatter, she became aware of how sad and angry she really was. The floodgates opened. Joann realized she felt weak, isolated, rejected, and unworthy most of the time. Out of balance, ungrounded, and disconnected, she felt as though she’d lost a vital part of herself. She observed how she denied herself by pleasing others and how she couldn’t acknowledge herself without feeling guilty. She recognized that she was always trying to control what seemed to be a spiraling chaos around her, yet it never worked. On a deeper level, she had known this all along but had chosen to ignore it, pushing herself relentlessly and pretending that everything was okay. Painful as it was, Joann was now looking at how she’d created her disease. She decided to become conscious of all of those subconscious thoughts, actions, and emotions that were defining her as the same personality who’d created this particular personal reality. She knew that once she could look at who she was being, it meant that she’d be able to change those aspects of herself. The more she became conscious of her unconscious self and aware of her state of being, the more she gained dominion over what she’d hidden from view. By early 2010, Joann felt that the progression of the MS had indeed slowed. Her goal then became to stop it altogether. In May, when she mentioned this idea to a neurologist who asked what her goals were with her disease, the doctor abruptly terminated her appointment. Instead of becoming discouraged, Joann was more intent after this incident. Download 5.46 Mb. Share with your friends:
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