I’ve written about the power of placebos before where it’s been used with great results in things like sham surgeries. It’s also been used in new drug testing where the placebo is compared to the drug to see if the drug performs better than the placebo.
The placebo even works when the pill someone has been given is truthfully labeled ‘placebo pill’.
Are these placebo uses just examples of the power of the mind, or does it go even deeper than that? My answer is that it goes deeper than that!
Let me give 2 examples and share a personal experience I had.
A recent study reported in Pain used brain scans to monitor the patient’s brain when they were given the placebo pill. The researchers found that parts of the brain actually physically changed when the person was given the placebo pill to relieve pain. This means the person’s thoughts were affecting and changing the parts of the brain being monitored.
What the researchers did was to measure 20 different areas of the brain in 600 people who were given the placebo. The patients who reported the greatest pain initially had the biggest physical change in the parts of the brain that controls pain. This included the thalamus and the basal ganglia in the brain.
In another research study, the patients were actually given a pill labeled ‘placebo pill’ and it still had a profound impact on the person’s pain. In this study, 97 people were either given the pill labeled placebo pill or an actual painkiller twice a day for three weeks.
The placebo folks reported a 30% reduction in pain while the people on the pain killer reported only a 9% reduction in pain!
As I said year’s ago when I began writing about placebos, our medical research has been going in the wrong direction. What if we were able to increase the effectiveness of placebos to 70, 80, 90 or even 100% effective? Besides putting the drug companies out of business, it would allow us all to stay healthier!
Let me share with you a true story. Many years ago, I was getting ready to do a keynote program to a group starting at 8:00 am. About an hour before the program as I was getting ready in my room, I broke out into a heavy sweat and didn’t feel well. I immediately took a cold shower and felt a little better. When I went down about 7:30 am to the backstage area, I felt like I couldn’t stand so sat down on a bar stool.
Next, I realized I couldn’t even sit up, so I laid down on the floor and asked someone to get the meeting planner. When he came over, I told him I didn’t think I would be able to go on since I couldn’t even sit up and suggested that he play a video of me speaking at a live program for a different group (not a great option, but the only one available).
The meeting planner went off to arrange it, and while I was laying there, I decided to use my mind to attempt to heal me (I didn’t know if this would do anything!).
I started saying internally the words “I energize” over and over and over again. After a few times doing this my breathing started getting extremely rapid and parts of my body started to move and shake on their own.
Since no one was watching me, I just let it continue and it went on for maybe 5 minutes. When it stopped, I sat up, stood up, found the meeting planner and just as I was being introduced walked on stage, which surprised the person doing the introduction who was about to say how sick I was.
That day, I did the keynote for 90 minutes and 2 breakout sessions for an hour each and made it through the day.
Since then, I’ve used this “I energize” technique whenever I’m beginning to not feel well and have stopped what was happening from manifesting.
Later, I realized that when a person doesn’t feel well, they get into focusing on “I don’t feel well.” What I seemed to be doing was changing my focus to “I energize” and the not feeling well had no place to go and after a few minutes I felt better!
So…the next time you have pain or don’t feel well, really visualize your mind manifesting changes to the pain centers in your body and say over and over “I energize” while you let your breathing and your body do what they want… and expect to feel better. You may be surprised at your results!
(Reported What Your Doctors Don’t Tell You, May 2020)
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