Before I share what I have learned, I would like to highlight various experiments, stories or case studies that have taken place throughout history which I deem to provide significant clues towards helping us unveil the mysteries and power of our human consciousness.
It is well known that human beings have the power to heal themselves by thought and belief alone – known as the placebo effect – but too little attention is paid to this in our current medical system. The opposite – the nocebo effect – is also well documented but, again, has yet to pervade our medical model in a meaningful and useful way. When we begin to truly understand and grasp the concept that our thoughts, expectations and beliefs – conscious and unconscious – can both help or hinder our health in substantial ways we can start to take more personal responsibility and control of our health and therefore our lives and our happiness.
Examples of the Placebo and Nocebo Effects in Action
a) Sham knee surgery
Dr Bruce Moseley, a knee surgeon, wanted to find out which of two treatments he used for arthritic knee was most effective. He split his patients into three groups: the first had their damaged cartilage shaved, the second had their knee joint flushed out and the third had sham surgery. The first two treatments constituted standard practice. For the group that received fake surgery, Moseley sedated them, then acted as if he were operating on them, even cutting open their knees, waiting for the same amount of time that real surgery would take but then sewing them up again but without any treatment taking place. All three groups were prescribed the same postoperative care.
The results shocked Moseley. The first two groups improved as expected. But the third group, that had received no surgery at all, improved by the same amount. The patients were followed up two years later and the recovery rates still held. Moseley, who before the experiment “knew” that there could not possibly be a placebo effect with knee surgery stated that “the entire benefit for osteoarthritis of the knee was the placebo effect”. (Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Moseley, et al, 2002.)
b) Lifelong depression lifts
Janis Schonfeld, aged 46, had suffered with depression and suicidal thoughts since she was a teenager. When she saw an advert looking for volunteers to trial a new drug for depression, she applied. She was given an EEG brain scan before the trial and then instructions on taking the pills. Soon after starting the pills Schonfeld started feeling better than she had for many years. She experienced some nausea, which added to her conviction that she had been given the active drug and not the placebo.
She returned for EEG scans every week for 8 weeks. At the end of the 8 weeks, the volunteers were told whether they had been given the drug or the placebo. It shocked Janis to hear that she had been part of the placebo group to the point where she insisted on the doctors double checking they hadn’t made a mistake. There was no mistake; in fact, 38% of the placebo group experienced relief from their depression. But what may be surprising to learn is that their EEG scans demonstrated the improvement they were feeling. They went from having the brain waves of someone with depression to the brain waves of someone without depression. And yet, all they had taken was a sugar pill. A genuine, measurable change in their biology had come about simply because they believed they had taken a drug. (Published in American Journal of Psychiatry, A. F. Leuchter, I. A. Cook, E. A. Witte, et al., “Changes in Brain Function of Depressed Subjects During Treatment with Placebo”, 2002.)
c) Oesophageal cancer
In the early 70’s a man called Sam Londe was diagnosed with metastatic oesophageal cancer. In those days, there was no cure – no one had ever survived it. Londe received some surgery to provide some relief but the best case scenario was that he had only months to live. Londe asked his doctor, Dr. Meador, to just help him get through Christmas, to which Meador agreed to do his best. Londe was discharged in late October and was actually doing very well, and each time the doctor saw him in the run-up to Christmas, he was actually showing good signs of health.
One week after Christmas, however, Londe came back to hospital looking in a bad way. Meador ran various tests but could find nothing particularly wrong with him. Meador prescribed antibiotics and put Londe on oxygen but two days later, Londe was dead. Everyone concluded that the cancer had got him in the end but the autopsy results told a different story. In fact, the autopsy revealed that there was no disease present that could have killed Londe. There was only a very small amount of cancer present – certainly not enough to kill him. Also, the area around the oesophagus was completely free of disease. The original liver scan had yielded a false positive result.
Once Londe had made it though Christmas, his belief that the cancer would ravage his body and kill him, was enough to actually kill him. Here we see the powerful nocebo effect at play. (Published in the Southern Medical Journal, C.K. Meador, “Hex Death: Voodoo Magic or Persuasion?”, 1992.)
d) Lymphatic cancer
In 1957, there was an article published in a peer-reviewed journal about a man referred to as “Mr Wright” who was suffering from advanced cancer of the lymph glands (lymphoma). He had huge tumours around his body and the cancer was not responding to conventional treatment. When Mr. Wright heard about a drug trial going on in the hospital where he was being treated, he insisted on receiving some of the experimental drug. (He wasn’t allowed to be part of the drug trial because participants needed to have at least a three-month life expectancy.) His doctor relented and gave him the drug and three days after the initial dose, Wright was up, walking around, laughing and joking with a new lease of life. The tumours “melted like snowballs on a hot stove”. Within two weeks, Wright was sent home – cured.
Two months later, however, the media reported that the trials had revealed the drug to be a failure. Wright immediately relapsed and his tumours returned. His doctor suspected that Wright’s improvement was due to the placebo effect and so, with nothing to lose, told Wright to ignore the reports and that he’d only relapsed because he’d had a bad batch of the drug. His doctor told him he had a fresh batch available and gave Wright an injection of distilled water that he claimed to be the effective drug. Again, Wright’s tumours disappeared, he returned home and was fine for two months. Unfortunately for Wright, another article appeared declaring the drug as a hoax, even to the point of the manufacturers being sued. Once Wright had heard that the drug was useless he relapsed again, gave up all hope, and died two days later. (Published in the Journal of Protective Techniques, B. Klopfer, “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer”, 1957.)
Here, we see the powerful placebo effect restoring Mr Wright’s health and then the equally powerful nocebo effect completely giving in and allowing his health to be destroyed.
e) Cleaning staff get fitter
In 2007, a study was carried out to look at weight loss in cleaning staff in a hospital. Half the staff were told that they were burning lots of calories while they were working, enough to satisfy the national daily recommendations. The other half were not told this positive news. “Although actual behaviour did not change, four weeks after the intervention, the informed group perceived themselves to be getting significantly more exercise than before.” When the data were in, the group that believed they were getting sufficient exercise had significantly improved measures for weight loss, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio and body mass index. (Published in Psychological Science, Crum, A. and E. Langer. “Mind-set matters: Exercise and the placebo effect”, 2007.)
f) Sham heart surgery
In the late 1950’s, researchers wanted to compare the standard procedure for angina (internal mammary ligation) to a placebo. The doctors knew that the surgery was extremely successful in the majority of patients but had no solid proof that the theory behind the surgery was what was actually taking place. Two separate studies were conducted where half the patients received the treatment and half received sham surgery.
The results were shocking: 67% of those who had received the real surgery felt less pain and needed less medication. 87% of the placebo group enjoyed the same results. The placebo group actually out-performed the group that had received genuine surgery. (Published in New England Journal of Medicine, L.A. Cobb, G.I. Thomas, D.H.Dillard, et al., “An Evaluation of Internal-Mammary-Artery Ligation by a Double-Blind Technic”, 1959; American Journal of Cardiology, E.G. Diamond, C.F. Kittle, and J.E. Crockett, “Comparison of Internal Mammary Ligation and Sham Operation for Angina Pectoris”, 1960.)
g) Fake anaesthetic before surgery
Near the end of WWII, Harvard-educated surgeon Henry Beecher, was about to operate on a badly wounded soldier but had run out of morphine. He was afraid that the shock of the surgery without pain relief would kill the patient. Without prior agreement, a nurse filled a syringe with saline solution and injected the soldier as if she was administering morphine. Instantly, the soldier calmed down and Beecher was able to perform the surgery. The soldier remained calm while the surgeon cut into his flesh, believing he had received anaesthesia even though it was just a dose of saltwater.
After that, whenever Beecher ran out of morphine, he did the same again and repeatedly observed the experience of his patients acting as if they had been anaesthetised. He’d seen first-hand the power of placebos. When he returned to America after the war he started to study the subject in earnest and it was due to his clinical research that drug trials now always have a randomised control group, preferably where even the researchers and the statisticians do not know who is in which group, so that there can be no subconscious influence and the placebo effect can be accounted for. (Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, H.K. Beecher, “The Powerful Placebo”, 1955.)
h) Fake pain relief after dental surgery
An important finding in the 70’s proved that the placebo effect is not just going on in the patient’s imagination. The expectations and beliefs of the patient actually trigger the release of the necessary healing chemicals in the body. In his research, Jon Levine, M.D., Ph.D., gave placebos instead of pain medication to 40 dental patients who had just undergone a wisdom tooth extraction. Most of the patients experienced pain relief from a measurable release of endorphins (the body’s own morphine). To fully test that the body was releasing its own healing chemicals, the researchers gave the patients naloxone – which blocks the cells’ ability to take up morphine and endorphins – and the pain returned. This proved that the pain relief was not just in their imaginations but due to the body producing the chemical pain relief itself. (Published in the Lancet, J.D. Levine, N.C. Gordon, and H.L. Fields, “The Mechanism of Placebo Analgesia”, 1978.)
With the examples above, we can see how the power of pure belief can be greater than the illness or problem in the body. The important thing to note is that the result is not just in the patient’s imagination. The healing or beneficial effect that takes place actually changes the internal chemistry so that the body gets on with the job of healing itself using the vast supply of natural internal pharmaceuticals available to it. It was the genuine belief of the patient – that they were now on a path of recovery and improvement – that allowed the body to unleash the necessary proteins from within the cells to move the body back to health. It is the thoughts and expectations which completely alter the expressions of the genes within the cells which causes the change.
Whilst there are countless examples of the placebo effect (generally it accounts for at least 30-40% of improvement in every drug trial), there are also many examples of the opposite, the nocebo effect. Just as it is possible to unleash the power of our consciousness to bring about healing, it is also possible to cause actual harm through our own thoughts, beliefs and expectations. The following examples serve to highlight this phenomenon.
i) Poison ivy allergy
In Japan in 1962, researchers wanted to test the power of expectation by taking some children who were known to be extremely allergic to poison ivy. The researchers carried out two experiments: one where they rubbed a harmless leaf on the subjects’ skin but told them it was poison ivy; and one where they rubbed poison ivy on their skin and told them it was a harmless leaf. The results were shocking: 100% of the children developed a rash from the harmless leaf, and 85% of the children developed no rash when exposed to the poison ivy. The children’s bodily systems responded purely to their own beliefs and expectations, rather than the actual external chemicals. Here we see the nocebo and placebo effects at play. The body responding subjectively rather than objectively. (Published in Kyoshu Journal of Medical Science, Y. Ikemi and S. Nakagawa, “A Psychosomatic Study of Contagious Dermatitis”, 1962.)
j) Asthma
Another similar experiment from the 60’s used asthmatic patients. Researchers gave the subjects inhalers that contained harmless water vapour which objectively would bring about neither harm nor benefit. First, when the subjects were told that the inhalers contained an irritant, 48% of the subjects experienced asthmatic symptoms (actual restriction of the airways) and 12% had full-blown asthmatic attacks. Second, when the researchers told the subjects that the inhalers contained medicine that would relieve their asthma, 100% experienced actual measured improvements in the opening of the airways. (Published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, T. Luparello, H.A. Lyons, E.R. Bleecker, et al., “Influences of Suggestion on Airway Reactivity in Asthmatic Subjects”, 1968.)
Again, the ill effects and the improvements weren’t taking place in the subjects’ imaginations, the effects were happening in their bodies – brought about through thought alone. Here again, we see both the nocebo and placebo effects in action.
Incidentally, the reason why many of these studies being cited are over half a century old is because ethical standards have been raised. These last two experiments, for example, would not have been allowed to be undertaken in more modern times.
k) Conditioned immune suppression in rats
A startling finding from Robert Ader, Ph.D., in the 70’s, showed the power of subconscious conditioning and therefore expectation directly affects the body’s genetics – even in animals. Ader started out trying to build on the work of Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, to see how long a conditioned response would remain in place once it was removed. He fed lab rats sweetened water spiked with a chemical that would cause stomach pain. Once the rats had associated the sweetened water with stomach pain he wanted to measure how they would refuse sweetened water to give an idea of how strong the conditioned response was.
Unfortunately, his experiment took a turn because his rats started dying from infections. This was due to the fact that the chemical he’d used to cause stomach pain also suppresses the immune system. Rather than abandon the experiment, he started to give the rats sweetened water without the immune-suppressing chemical and, to his surprise, the rats continued to contract infections and die. When the rats were tested, it was found that their immune systems were still responding to the sweetened water as if it still contained the chemical. The association was so strong that it was affecting the response in their bodies. (Published in Psychosomatic Medicine, R. Ader and N. Cohen, “Behaviourally Conditioned Immunosuppression”, 1975.)
This serves to highlight that it is the expectations at a deeper, subconscious level that are at play. Animals differ to humans in that they run on instincts stored in the subconscious; they are not able to be consciously aware of their thought process. Therefore it is the expectations and learned conditions stored in the subconscious that are having the biggest physiological effect.
l) Placebo improves Parkinson’s Disease symptoms
More evidence of how the body is able to produce the chemistry it requires to heal in line with the brain’s expectations was from a study in 2001 with patients with Parkinson’s Disease. The patients were told they were going to receive an injection of a drug that would greatly improve their motor control. Half the patients experienced significantly improved symptoms even though all they had in fact received was a placebo, a saline injection.
When the researchers scanned their brains, they found that the patients who had improved on the placebo were producing as much as 200% more dopamine in their brains. It was this endogenous production of dopamine that was having the positive effect, but this dopamine was only being produced because the patient believed they were receiving an exogenous drug that was going to help them. It was only their own belief that allowed the body to produce what it needed. (Published in the journal Science, R. de la Fuent-Fernandez, T.J. Ruth, V. Sossi, et al., “Expectation and Dopamine Release: Mechanism of the Placebo Effect in Parkinson’s Disease”, 2001.)
m) Slowing the aging process
An interesting experiment by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer demonstrates how our own aging process is highly influenced by our own perceptions. She selected eight men in their seventies to live in a specially designed house for a five-day period. The house was set up as if it was from an era earlier in the men’s lives. For the men, it was like stepping back in time: the TV programmes, the magazines, the radio, the books on the shelves, etc. were all from a period decades ago that reminded them of their younger days. For five days, the men simply lived in this house – that was all. Naturally, they reminisced and discussed their memories of their earlier days.
Before and after the experiment various tests were carried out which are all standard biomarkers for age, for example, dexterity, grip strength, flexibility, hearing and vision, memory, cognition. The same tests were also carried out on a control group who did not participate in the experiment. The control group showed no changes but the experimental group made significant improvements. After just five days, they showed statistically significant improvements in every biomarker: they were more supple, possessed greater manual dexterity, sat taller, showed greater cognition, and even had improved sight. Simply by putting their minds in an earlier time, their bodies started to respond as if they were actually younger. (Published in Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility, E. Langer, 2009.)
n) Laughing back to health
Norman Cousins was a successful political analyst and magazine editor. In the 70’s, he was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a form of degenerative arthritis, and given only a 1-in-500 chance of recovery. Cousins was in tremendous pain, he had great difficulty moving his limbs and the prognosis was that he would get worse as time went on.
From his own research into his disease, he became convinced that his own persistent negative state of mind was a huge contributor. He then concluded that, if he reversed his mindset, he could reverse the condition and the damage it had caused. Whilst still working with his doctor, he upped his dose of vitamin C and began to deliberately raise his spirits by watching hours of comedy shows and humorous films. He found that ten minutes of laughter a day equated to two hours of pain-free sleep. Eventually, he made a full recovery – he literally laughed himself back to health. (Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, N. Cousins, “Anatomy of an Illness (as Perceived by the Patient)”, 1976; also told in N. Cousins’ own book, “Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration”, 1979.)
o) Placebo working even when the patients know it is a placebo
In 2010, Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard, carried out an experiment where he gave 40 patients with irritable bowel syndrome a placebo but were told it was a placebo. Each patient was given a bottle labelled “placebo pills” and was told it contained “placebo pills made of an inert substance, like sugar pills, that have been shown in clinical studies to produce significant improvement in IBS symptoms through mind-body, self-healing processes.” A control group of 40 patients was given no pills.
After three weeks, the group taking the placebo reported double the symptom relief as the control group. This difference was comparable to the performance of the best real IBS drugs. Simply the suggestion that placebos have helped others to bring about their own healing was enough to activate the placebo affect. (Published in PLOS ONE, vol. 5, no. 12: p. e15591, T.J. Kaptchuk, E. Friedlander, J.M. Kelley, et al., “Placebos Without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome”, 2010.)
p) How beliefs and perception affect test performance
In 2006, a group of 220 female students was given a maths test. Before the test, they were shown some fake research claiming that men had a 5% advantage over women in maths tests. The group was split into two groups with one group being told the reason for the advantage was due to recent genetic discoveries whilst the other group was told the reason for the advantage was due to teacher stereotyping in primary school.
The group who had read that the advantage was due to genetic reasons performed worse than the other group. In other words, those who felt that their disadvantage was inevitable performed worse than those who believed there was something they could do to improve their own situation.
Stanford social psychologist Claude Steel, Ph.D., has performed many experiments exploring how beliefs, perceptions and expectations affect test performance. He has tested various stereotyped groups, for example, blacks and whites, whites and Asians, men and women, and found that, if a group was primed to believe a stereotype statement before taking a test, it would affect their performance even though, at the outset, test scores should have come out as similar. (Eg. Published in in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, C.M. Steele and J. Aronson, “Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans”, 1995.)
Where does this knowledge lead us?
Hopefully, one can see the importance of these experiments and observations. If we know that our beliefs, our expectations, our perceptions, our subconscious and conscious thoughts can have a dramatic effect on our health or on our performance in some way, then surely we should be aiming to understand what is going on so that we can learn to use this knowledge for our benefit. If we also know that our underlying beliefs can cause us harm, then shouldn’t we be trying to reduce and minimise the negative effects we may be inadvertently applying to our lives? Understanding how our thoughts and deeply held unconscious beliefs affect our biology could be the most empowering thing we ever learn with regards having some meaningful control over our health, our sense of personal control and therefore our lives and happiness.
The changes to the biochemistry that took place in the examples above took place at a subconscious level. The subjects in each example weren’t consciously making themselves better or worse. They weren’t willing themselves into a better or worse state of health. The changes were automatic. The changes also weren’t just in the subjects’ imaginations, the changes they experienced were real (the rashes from the fake poison ivy; the opening of airways from the fake asthma inhaler; the improvements in aging; the actual release of endorphins after fake pain relief, etc.). The subjects believed at a deep and fundamental level that the placebo or nocebo was going to have the effect that it ended up having. These beliefs and expectations exist at a subconscious level.
The subconscious stores all the automatic programs that run our bodily systems and functions. There are 37 thousand billion billion chemical reactions going on in the body every second. Consciously, we are aware of virtually none of these. The subconscious also stores every experience we have ever had so that we can pattern-match old experiences to new ones to help us best navigate our way through life. The subconscious is concerned with our survival and it uses all the information it has stored in our lifetime to keep us alive.
Once we believe we know something to be true, it is accepted as fact. If it is a fact, it no longer needs consciously thinking about and so it can be stored in the subconscious, ready for use when necessary. This collection of ‘facts’ and knowledge then starts to help form our personality as it helps guide our opinions and show us where we belong or don’t belong in society. These beliefs and opinions can become more entrenched if they are confirmed by our relationships and experiences or they may be challenged where a new experience forces us to question what we believe. To question our beliefs and to change our beliefs we have to get consciously involved with them. Once we bring our beliefs into conscious thought we can decide to keep them, change them, replace them or abandon them altogether.
One issue is that, so much of what we believe to be our personality, is formed by the age of seven. So much of what we take to be true has been programmed into us at an age before we could be said to be even capable of conscious thought. To help understand this, we need a rudimentary knowledge of brainwaves. Different states of mind have different brainwave patterns. Brainwaves in adults are very different to the activity occurring in a child’s developing brain. A child’s brain does not become capable of conscious thought similar to an adult’s until it is about 12 years old. The following provides a description of the different brainwave states and the corresponding ages of a child predominantly in that state:
|
Brainwave type |
For an adult |
Predominant state for child aged… |
| Delta | Deep sleep: no awareness of external environment. | 0 – 2 |
| Theta | Dreamy semi-sleep state: little awareness of external environment. | 2 – 6 |
| Alpha | Very relaxed, day-dreamy state: aware of external environment but not particularly having to interact with it. | 6 – 12 |
| Low Beta | Calm productive: interacting with external environment but feeling relaxed. | |
| Medium Beta | Busy but manageable: interacting with external environment productively. | |
| High Beta | Stressed: very busy, feeling overwhelmed. |
It is when we are in the slower brainwave states that we have greater access to the subconscious. It is in these states that the subconscious can be programmed (or reprogrammed). We can see that children, by design, are in a programmable state from birth to at least age six. (Children do not have the capacity to think like adults until about age 12.) The child is not necessarily conscious of what it is learning or accepting as truth but this knowledge is now stored and ready for use. This knowledge of who they are, what society they belong to, how they are supposed to act and think, etc. all adds up to form their personality and their sense of self. Many aspects of ourselves, our environments and our lives can remain unchallenged for years until we become conscious of conflicting information. Once we become aware of an ingrained way of thinking and aware that a new way of thinking is possible, we have the choice of whether to change or stay the same. (Those who feel a greater sense of insecurity are less able to embrace change and are more likely to find justifications for why the new knowledge must be wrong.)
So, trying to separate who we are – our true personality – from our experiences and what we have become programmed to believe about ourselves and our environment is virtually impossible. It is impossible to calculate and isolate the effect and influence our care-givers, our peers, our immediate environment, our culture, our individual experiences, etc. had on us from our earliest age. Even in the womb, we were subject to our mother’s chemicals which were being influenced by her own experiences and thoughts. We become shaped and programmed by our early experiences but, because of the huge conscious brain with which we have been endowed, with its 86 billion neurons, we are capable of reshaping and reprogramming ourselves the moment we become capable of conscious thought. Therefore, once we have this knowledge, I believe it becomes our responsibility, and our life’s work, to shape and reprogram ourselves into the healthiest version we can be.
The point here is that so much of what limits us is simply unchallenged belief that resides in the subconscious and affects our lives without us realising. So much of what we accept about our own health will have been hugely influenced by our upbringing, the people we have known, experiences we have had and information we have taken in from society. As we can see from the examples above, human beings are potentially capable of a lot more than we currently understand. If we can learn how to access our vast potential for self-healing, if we can mobilise our own bio-chemistry for our own good, if we can maximise our performance, if we can learn to stay focused on what we can do and our potential, rather than our believed limits, maybe we can bring about enormous benefit to our lives.
Improving the Programs
When we encounter examples like those above, our fundamental expectations of how the world works may be challenged. For many, even scientists, this is uncomfortable because we do not have a good understanding of what is going on. We will probably find ourselves feeling inclined in one of two directions: one, that’s interesting but doesn’t make sense, I don’t want to think through the ramifications, it’s a bit uncomfortable, I’m going to ignore it, it’s just an anomaly, it has no bearing for me, let’s just carry on as normal with what we know to be true; or two, this is interesting and it seems important, it needs further investigation and greater understanding, the ramifications could be important, this changes everything.
My hunch is that most people, especially scientists, fall into the first category. The placebo and nocebo effects have been known about for a long time but very few scientists have devoted their time to delving deeper into the phenomenon. One scientist who does claim greater understanding and also puts the knowledge to practical use is Dr Joe Dispenza. Dispenza runs workshops around the world teaching people how to access the subconscious and bring about life-changing improvements in health. Dispenza has a team of scientists who monitor and measure a variety of data which he then sends to other scientists to examine. The data makes uncomfortable reading because it goes completely against what individuals should be able to achieve, even with the most advanced medical help.
So what is Dispenza teaching? He puts across, in layman’s terms, the relevant points from various branches of science that all come together to help people take more control of their health and their lives. If we are to believe the data, the results he is helping people achieve are nothing short of miraculous. Dispenza teaches people how meditation, and a focused use of the imagination, done effectively with an understanding of what they are trying to achieve, is what can bring about the changes. It is through meditation that we can relax deeply, slow our brainwaves down and access the subconscious. Once we have access to the subconscious, we have the chance to change and improve the stored programs through a clear and intentional use of our imagination. When we change the programs, we change our beliefs and expectations which then changes our thoughts and feelings, which ultimately changes our biology and gene expression.
So, is it possible to create the placebo effect in ourselves to bring about greater health and healing? One key point to always bear in mind is that the body is designed to heal. It contains a huge bounty of chemicals and billions of years of evolutionary knowledge to maximise its survival capacities. But the body can only get on with the job of healing if it is given the right conditions. We know that a simple cut on our skin will not heal if we keep aggravating it; we need to keep it clean and leave the body to get on with the necessary repairs. An important feature of the required conditions is how stressed we feel. If the mind and body is in a state of stress, the immune system will be impaired, because stress means we have a more immediate and important problem to solve first.
Therefore, an important first step in taking responsibility for our health is to take the issue of stress seriously and minimise and eliminate it where possible. For the body (and mind) to heal, and carry out essential repair work from daily wear and tear, the ideal conditions are being in a state of peace and calm wherever possible. This does not mean that we can’t be busy, or have problems to tackle, it means we need to be in a more general state of peace with ourselves, with our lives, our situations, our past, our present and our future as much as possible so that we are not operating through unhealthily high baseline levels of stress.
The peace that we need to make with ourselves and our lives needs to be genuine and authentic because it has to be believed at a subconscious level. We cannot simply tell ourselves we are fine and expect the subconscious operating systems to respond. The key with all the case studies highlighted above is that the beliefs of the affected individuals, whether their belief was positive or negative, was that is was genuinely felt within them. There is no point subscribing to the ‘fake it till you make it’ philosophy, because the subconscious knows it is fake and it is the subconscious that will orchestrate the healing.
To make peace with our past and with ourselves in the present and with the future we are moving into, requires a certain level of knowledge, understanding, effort and possibly expertise – but it can be done, regardless of who you think you are and what you have experienced. To continually aim to maintain a genuine state of peace and calm, means we are have to live more consciously and in tune with our feelings. It is not that we are expecting to never feel any stress; the aim is to become truly aware and sensitive to what we are feeling so that we can respond to stress at the the earliest signals. The aim is always to continually find genuine responses that return us to a state of peace, calm, acceptance and appreciation. If we can begin to get better at this work, we are taking the first step towards providing the conditions for our minds and bodies to thrive.
Human Nature and Higher Love
Let’s take a look at our consciousness and the development of humanity. If we accept that we have the same hardware as we had 50,000 years ago: essentially the same brains and bodies, the same genes – albeit with some differences explainable through the differences in our particular environment in our time. Human beings are capable of being aware of our own awareness. We are capable of observing our own feelings, thoughts and behaviours. We are then capable of conscious choice. We can choose how to behave, we can choose how to think and, ultimately, we can even choose how to feel.
It is common for the term ‘human nature’ to be bandied about as if human beings are like animals, stuck on a fixed program over which we have no conscious control. It is true that there are many common traits and behaviours that human beings exhibit which people can relate to personally. I think it is the prevalence and commonality of behaviours which people refer to as ‘human nature’. But then we are all aware of individuals who rise above the instinctive, common, expected, ‘normal’ reaction. There are individuals who exhibit greater capacity for love, forgiveness, calm, peace and understanding and so throw into question the notion of ‘human nature’.
The statistics show that human beings are becoming increasingly peaceful and less violent. So if we had been born in a previous era, violence and aggression would have been more prevalent, more normal, more accepted, more expected. Our sensibilities today are more refined than ever in history. We are therefore accepting greater levels of tolerance and kindness as the norm. We may not see it in the micro view of our lives and times, but when we step back and take the macro view, we can see greater levels of peace, security, education and understanding. Therefore, our conscious efforts to improve our security, control and comfort over thousands of years is moving humanity’s collective consciousness towards greater levels of peace, love and connection.
It is in our human nature to want to improve our situation, improve our lives. Human beings are capable of far greater feelings than just survival. Animals are content to survive without looking to constantly improve; it is uniquely human to seek improvement, as in greater security, control and comfort. We are driven by an underlying feeling, a need, to solve problems, to develop, to improve, to extend ourselves, to push the boundaries, to achieve meaningful accomplishments. This sense of achievement is an innate need with which we have been endowed by nature. This is one facet of our human nature and, like any driver, it can be misused, get out of hand and produce undesirable results. However, when used wisely, and kept in balance, it can lead humanity to a greater sense of meaning and purpose.
I think it is useful to separate our feelings and emotions into two distinct camps: survival and living. We have all felt the emotions of survival, any unpleasant feeling which forces us to focus on our own personal situation. These are the emotions of stress: fear, worry, anxiety, dread, anger, annoyance, frustration, irritability, separation, criticism, fault-finding, judgement, discomfort, pain, to name a few. When we are feeling these emotions, life feels hard, we are not at peace with ourselves, our relationships or our lives. We have a problem that needs solving, that we want to go away, we are living in lack, we are not happy or satisfied. The feeling is keeping us focused on what is wrong, what we don’t have, what we want or need. These feelings drive thoughts that equal the feeling and then may result in behaviours of which we may not be proud or which negatively affect others in some way. The emotions of survival can put us on a downward spiral.
Conversely, we have all also felt the emotions of living, pleasant feelings where we feel good about ourselves, our relationships and our lives. Feelings such as joy, fun, laughter, connection to others, accepted, worthy, a sense of achievement, a sense of direction, a sense of being settled, clear, at peace, content, to name a few. When we are feeling emotions such as these, we feel that we are truly living, that life is easy, it is worthwhile, that we want more of it. In this state, we can feel grateful and optimistic, we can appreciate what we have, we can think long-term and see the bigger picture. In this state we can relax and open our focus. We have access to our full intelligence and we can use it to live well. The emotions of ‘living’ can put us on an upward spiral.
All emotions are temporary. This is good news for when are experiencing the emotions of survival but it seems a shame that we can’t permanently experience the emotions of living. But if we always felt that we had everything we needed we would no longer put in any effort. Seeking out, daily, how to get our sense of joy, satisfaction and achievement requires some action. That doesn’t mean we need to dip down into the emotions of survival but it may require a certain level of discomfort, insecurity, confusion, loss of control from time to time to prevent us from becoming complacent and lazy. All animals have to work hard to survive. Nature can be harsh and cruel. Human beings have achieved so much to bring greater security, control and comfort to our lives but work, effort and action is still needed to try and keep ourselves on that upward spiral of living.
It is our conscious brains that have made our lives so much more than mere survival. The consciousness of humanity has got us to this point in time where we can enjoy greater freedoms than at any other point in history. It is our consciousness, our awareness, that has got us here and is continuing to lead us on. We know from personal experience that when we are on the downward spiral of survival, we are capable of undesirable and destructive thoughts and behaviours. We also know from personal experience that, when we are on the upward spiral of living, we are capable of feeling great joy, great connection to others, a great sense of meaning and purpose. When we are experiencing the emotions of living, we naturally feel in love with our lives.
It is our consciousness which gives us the capacity to love our lives in a far greater sense than animals can feel. We have been endowed with this gift, we have it available to use. It is feeling these emotions that actually gives life meaning – otherwise it is just an exercise in pointless, repetitive survival. But do we really think that humanity has truly experienced the extent to which we can feel in love with life? Maybe we can imagine, thousands and thousands of years ago, when we were first starting to become aware of our own awareness, when we started to appreciate a sense of satisfaction from a successful hunt, a sense of achievement from making a small piece of art, a sense of joy at giving birth and bringing new life into the world. From those earliest times, we have been improving our living conditions so that we can feel greater levels and more sustained periods of satisfaction, joy, achievement, love, etc. We have been creating the conditions for humanity to stay for longer and longer on the upward spiral. Therefore, the desire to feel the emotions of living to a greater extent is both the driver and the end goal. So, when we feel good we want more of that feeling, and when we have that feeling we feel that life has meaning; so the meaning of life then becomes to keep reaching for the highest levels of feeling good, to reach for higher levels of love. If higher levels of love exist, then it is humanity’s mission to strive for them, just as we have striven to try and understand and uncover all the secrets of the universe.
Are we on track?
We are all aware of how good it feels when we experience the emotions of living but, as a society in general, we are in the dark ages of how we can cultivate these feelings. If we were to truly learn how to make ourselves feel better, remain on the upward spiral of living, feel more at peace and more content with our lives, this, I believe, would provide the direction for the next necessary step in human evolution. For humanity, as a body, a collective consciousness, to move towards ever greater feelings of peace, love and understanding would be us continuing to improve our human nature through our own efforts. We would be using the consciousness with which we have been endowed to create a more peaceful, connected, kind and loving world.
For this feeling of higher love to be achieved we have to take it on as a personal goal. We have to see all others as equal to ourselves. We have to see us all as part of one tribe. Therefore, we are all allies and, ultimately we are all aiming to want the best for each other. We have to stop ourselves thinking in terms of separation, us and them, ‘they!’. It is fine to have differences. We all have completely unique minds, bodies and life experiences so there will always be differences of thoughts, feelings and opinions. Modern life is infinitely complex and helping all of humanity to live well is an infinitely complex task. So we need to be at peace with other. We all need to have a calm respect and a love for each other so that we can stop trying to live through the emotions of survival – a contradiction in terms! No one is exempt from this, so we can’t look around and accuse others of not trying hard enough, we have to sincerely get on with the task ourselves and provide the conditions for those who aren’t ready to feel safe enough to start trusting more.
The task ahead for humanity is the greatest it has ever been. To solve our existential crisis is going to require such a level of cooperative thought as never experienced by humanity before. For this we need to reach a higher love. A higher love for our own selves, a higher love for each other and a higher love for this gift of life we have been given. There are many current paradigms in terms of governance, economics and how society works in general that will undoubtedly need to change for us to get through this ever pressing dilemma. This cannot happen if we are operating through the emotions of stress. If we are thinking through the emotions of fear, anger, suspicion, greed, selfishness, etc wall we will do, at best, is tweak the current unsustainable systems.
Moving to a new sustainable way of life for all human beings is the challenge we face and we currently have no answers because we are thinking through the prevailing paradigms. The time is now for moving with greater determination towards peace, love and understanding and that starts with our own life, our own journey. If we can truly embrace that on a personal level, we may be contributing more to the consciousness of humanity than we realise. We must all do our bit and use the strengths, skills and attributes that we have, we all have our part to play.
Are we on track? If we look at the macro view, possibly. If we look at the micro view, it doesn’t look like it. But the micro view always hides the bigger picture. There is no doubt that time is pressing, but feeling and reacting to that time pressure could simply result in higher levels of stress – the opposite of what we are aiming for. We are aiming for higher levels of peace and understanding. We are aiming for a greater understanding of how to stay in love with our lives. We are trying to reduce and eliminate stress from our daily lives. There will always be stresses that we have to deal with but acting through the emotions of stress is the opposite of what we need to head towards. We need to keep our mind on the macro view whilst focusing on our own personal sense of peace as the micro view. Yes, time is pressing but we mustn’t feel pressed; there will be stresses but we mustn’t feel stressed. This is a great personal challenge and one that requires a lot of knowledge, understanding and awareness. It is time to self-educate, raise our own understanding and awareness, and work our way back to peace.