Our Healing Brain

Our brains are so powerful. They can make physical changes in our bodies beyond what we would normally give them credit for or even really realize. There is a book that I’ve talked about many times before called Super Brain by Depak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi that is so full of great insight into the power of our brains. I read it again and again and often find things I missed the first time.

I’ve always been particularly intrigued by their thoughts on the placebo effect. The authors point out that any of us can, if we so chose, set up or create our own placebo effect at any time and without a sugar pill or any other kind of pill, because as they say, “anything you believe in can act as a placebo.”

This works because the body really believes what it has been told — that medicine it has been given is real. This goes to show that the mind can and does control healing of all kinds including pain, disease, and wounds that our bodies deal with from time to time.

“Being your own placebo is the same as freeing up the healing system through messages from the brain,” the authors write. “All healing is, in the end, self-healing. Physicians aid the body’s intricate healing system (which coordinates immune cells, inflammation, hormones, genes and much else), but the actual healing takes place in an unknown way.”

That’s a very powerful thought and one that could, if we take time to think about it and make use of it, do some pretty amazing things to help us take care of ourselves.

“In serious illness, doubts and fears play a marked role, which is why a practice like meditation or going to group counseling has been shown to help,” the authors conclude. That is certainly worth trying for most, if not all of us, whenever we want to treat our pain, disorders, or disease.

The authors suggest that there is a method through which anyone can apply their own placebo effect. It requires the same conditions as in a classic placebo response:
1. You trust what is happening.
2. You deal with doubt and fear.
3. You don’t send conflicting messages that get tangled with each other.
4. You have opened the channels of mind-body communications.
5. You let go of your intention and allow the healing system to do its work.

Our bodies have this amazing ability to heal themselves. When we get a cut on our finger or knee, we slap on a band aid and know that it will heal itself. In doing that, we’ve just let our brain send a positive message to our cells to do their job. But when we get a serious disease, we let our minds jump into the mix with all kinds of worry and negative thoughts doing pretty much the opposite of the list above. That is something you would need to change in order to take advantage of all the healing our minds can do for us.

If we are going to benefit from our own built-in ‘placebo effect’ we’ve got to, at a minimum, follow the list of 5 conditions above. If you can do that, you are supporting your body’s ability to take care of you, just as it is supposed to do.

Thoughts of Napoleon

Last week I started telling you the great story of Bunker Bean who, when he began to believe that he had been Napoleon Bonaparte in his previous life, made dramatic changes in his thinking. It is an example of how our brains can help us make drastic changes in our behavior and in our lives. Good ole former super loser Bunker Bean started making huge changes in his behavior and it brought him huge rewards.

To begin with he decided he should learn more about this great man that he had been. The very next day, after he had finished his duties where he was working as an assembly line worker, Bunker went directly to the local library and checked out a book on Napoleon Bonaparte.  He took it home and stayed up late into the night reading it cover to cover.

The day after that he repeated the process and did the same the day after that and the day after that, until he had read every book in the library that told about Napoleon, the emperor of France.  The next morning Bunker looked more closely than ever at his situation on the assembly line. “Why,” he asked himself, “am I, the former Napoleon, in such a lowly position? Why, when I was a general, I had thousands of people at my command–and now I’m the least of the workers here.”  Bunker began to look around him to see what he could do to change his situation, to change his status, to rise above the other lowly workers at this plant.

The night before he had read about how Napoleon won all his battles in his tent, before ever taking the field. “By darn,” Bunker said to himself, “if that approach was good enough for me back then, it’s good enough for me now.”  So during the long and tedious hours on the production line, and in his spare moments in the evening, he put his mind to work, planning his battles there in his “tent”.  He soon had a game plan, an approach he was sure would work.  He had an approach that would improve his situation at his job, which would cause his superiors to notice him. He saw several specific changes that could be made in the assembly line that would speed up the process and thereby increase production.

But thinking up the ideas wasn’t enough. Bunker remembered reading that with Napoleon, “to think was to act!”  He went immediately to his supervisor and told him of his ideas and of the benefits they would bring.

The supervisor was skeptical. “It will never work,” he said.

“Just try them for a few days,” Bunker begged.

Finally the supervisor relented. Three weeks later the supervisor was given a raise and a promotion for his great cost-saving improvements.  When he was asked to recommend his replacement, without hesitation he suggested Bunker Bean.

Bunker Bean had begun his climb up the corporate ladder.  Within two years, to the absolute amazement of everyone, Bunker Bean was the president of the entire company–which was worth over $100 million.

Probably the man who was most stunned was Bunker’s old friend, the spiritualist medium.  But Bunker wasn’t surprised at all.  He knew that in a former life he had been Napoleon Bonaparte and therefore knew that he had the power buried within him to be and do whatever he wished.

Bottom line here is what we all can do in our own lives if we plant and keep the right thoughts in our brains and really believe in our dreams and goals.  We truly are or can be what we think we are.