Mind over matter

Mind over matter

February 2015

By Punya Srivastava

You are the Placebo – Making your mind matter,Dr Joe Dispenza, Hay House, INR 450; 348 pages When a person as young as 23 finds himself lying flat on a hospital bed with a severely damaged spinal cord and an imminent paralysis, and yet chooses to heal himself rather than let surgery cure his damaged body, you have to applaud his courage. In the preface to his book, scientist and chiropractor, Dr Joe Dispenza, shares a detailed description of his healing journey, and the related experiences. He gave his severely injured vertebrae three months to heal; in the process, for the first time, facing his consciousness. What he had read in theory, he was applying practically on himself, with a faith that he would be able to walk by the end of those three months. In his words, once the conflict between the unconsciousness and consciousness ended, what was left was joy and inspiration, that accellerated the healing process. Dispenza focusses on the aspect of healing by thought alone, sans drugs or surgery. There is a detailed scientific description of how changing thought patterns actually change the cellular structure of the brain in real time, replete with illustrations of brain activity scans of a number of people taken before and after meditation.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part exhaustively arms the reader with information to convince his or her left brain of the placebo effect. The second part of the book, titled Transformation, is a travel guide that prepares the reader to embark upon the journey, with a paraphernalia of meditation techniques and affirmations at his disposal. Though this book has a thoroughly scientific approach towards ‘mind over matter’, posing as a potential turn-off for all those accustomed to easy-on-eyes self-help books, what works in its favour is the simple and clear language that gets straight to the business, lightly peppered with Dr Dispenza’s insights. Also, what seemed like a bonus to me was the first chapter – full of positive instances of people recovering miraculously from physical as well as mental diseases.