A placebo is a pharmacologically inert substance used as a control agent in clinical studies. The effect of a placebo varies from 10% to 100% of the cases. It can positively affect certain sick people, especially when they do not know that they are being administered an inert substance (e.g., water or sugar) and think it is real medicine. This way, the placebo effect can also affect your health and any ailments you run around with by changing your thoughts and beliefs.
How does the placebo effect work?
Of course, the placebo effect can only be applied when you are unaware that you get a placebo. So the bottom line is that you have to “fool yourself”. Just as we fool ourselves daily that we are incapable of certain things or make ourselves believe that ‘it is all not too bad’ while our world is on the verge of collapse, so are we also able to let the placebo effect work for us in a constructive way.
Our body cannot distinguish between an imagined state and reality. That’s how our bodies work neurologically. By imagining the desired situation, we are able to create a new reality. There is also a big list of miraculous healings due to the ability to be your own placebo.
During Dr. Joe Dispenza’s workshops, countless cases of diverse syndromes have been miraculously cured just by changing thoughts and beliefs!
What have these participants done to make the placebo effect work for them? They positively fooled themselves. In other words, they have their conscious mind, often just a cloud jammer, and have their new thoughts and beliefs imprinted directly into their subconscious.
During the meditations of the workshops, they imagined how they recovered from their condition. They were visualizing how their body repaired their genes and DNA. They had a clear idea of what it would be like to be completely cured of their illness. Visualization plays an important role in this.
Visualize
The brighter the image you have of your future self, the more powerful the outcome. Some people first investigate the cause of their condition, for example, a gene defect (which, according to conventional medicine, cannot be cured).
They visualize what the gene defect looks like and how they repair this defect. Step by step, they go through the healing of this gene defect in their minds, and they visualize how the DNA strands connect and how the structure is restored and thus free from disease. You can experience all these facets of visualization intensely with the help of our powerful minds. NLP Submodalities can be very helpful to intensify this experience.
Beliefs
A second facet of the placebo effect healing process is belief. As mentioned, the body does not distinguish between an imagined emotion and reality. When we can work with full conviction on our healing process, it is more likely to succeed—the greater the conviction, the greater the chance of success.
We all know that the greater the doubt, the more likely we are to fail. This applies to an exam but also a clinical picture. This doubt comes from our conscious minds. For this reason, it’s important to avoid these doubts.
Doubt is a killer for every cure of illness, literally and figuratively. As soon as we are convinced “that we will not make it”, we are more likely to fail and stay sick or even die. However, when we are convinced that we are able to heal ourselves, we will get better.
A nice anecdote about this is that of Emile Coue, a French psychologist who helped his patients get rid of the most diverse ailments with the help of optimistic autosuggestion. With positive statements, she made his patients believe in their own ability to heal themselves from illness. A famous suggestion – or rather affirmation – is that of “Tous les jours et à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux” (Every day I get better and better in every way).
Repeating this statement to yourself with full conviction many times a day creates a deep-rooted belief that this really is the truth. So you start to believe in it yourself.
When you know the hypnosis principles, you know that you have direct access to the subconscious when you are in a hypnotic state. In a meditative or hypnotic state, you can instill these beliefs directly into your subconscious.
Focus on a positive outcome
Just as important as beliefs are the focus on a positive outcome. For the placebo effect to work successfully, it is essential to focus on a successful outcome and associate a positive emotion with it.
How does it feel to be cured of your condition? What emotions do you experience when you no longer suffer from your skin condition or achy joints. Do you feel grateful? Full of confidence? Or do you feel superior because you can take on the whole world?
Empathize with that situation. With the power of our brain and heart, we are able to achieve extraordinary results. We make use of a tremendous intelligence that we haven’t been aware of before.
The use of the NLP technique submodalities can be a very valuable resource in this regard. This is because we can intensify the positive experience particularly powerfully. By envisioning the future situation and making the picture brighter, turning up the sounds a little, and making the smells of your future situation stronger, it will seem like you have already achieved your goal. And bearing in mind “the body does not distinguish between an imagined emotion and reality, “… you can imagine the result.
We can already completely heal ourselves “delusions” and by living and experiencing this future situation over and over again, we are in the meantime healing ourselves.
Conditioning / mental rehearsal
The repetition of this experience is also essential for your healing to be successful. For this, you must build the neurological hardware in your brain that suits your future situation. And as you may know: neurons that fire together, wire together. The more often you apply the above techniques, the more durable this brain’s neurological network becomes. It’s the power of repetition.
By conditioning yourself, you learn to get used to your “new self”. Just as athletes often prepare themselves psychologically for their championship months in advance, so can you.
Mental rehearsal is the technique that top athletes but also successful business people use to achieve their goals. It’s like going through the process step by step to achieve their goal.
In their minds, they visualize everything it takes to get where they want to be. They can see everything for themselves: the movements they have to make, they feel how their breathing intensifies and what it feels like to be a champion. They use all the senses, so sight, hearing, smell, taste, and feeling.
Side note on the placebo effect
Of course, there will be skeptics who dismiss the above theory as nonsense. There will also be people who want to see scientific sources. However, you can never measure the effect of the placebo effect. It depends on the suggestibility of the person concerned.
Yet, it is amazing how powerfully the human mind is able to deceive itself, in both positive and negative ways. You can think of yourself or someone else sick, you can keep yourself “small” and anxious with your beliefs, but you can also think of yourself better.
It is the reader’s choice whether the above can help on the way to a cure for a condition. When you are ill and choose treatment in the regular circuit, you can always choose to apply the above theory to your treatment.
Another recommendation is to visit a workshop with Dr. Joe Dispenza. Many participants have disconnected from the regular circuit. They see the workshop as the last straw for a cure for their illness. It will not be the first time that there will be success stories of people who are crippled by the pain and walk out like a lapwing after a two-day workshop.
