The Mature Runner IS the Placebo!

​The thread for this column fell right into my lap.  After the August column about using quantum physics to carefully re-work your body, sub-atomic particle by sub-atomic particle – I wasn’t sure where to go next.  Stacy and I drove to my 60th Reunion at the Adventure Unlimited Ranches in Buena Vista, Colorado.  And yes, I have participated at this youth ranch in all of the last 6 decades.  Its my home if ever there was one.  We climbed several 14,000’ peaks, which prompted me to find out that our own Rob Maher has summitted all 54 of them.  Now I want to go back and finish off my final 14.  I digress.
While hiking with what we called our “mountain family” – on our way to Lake Ann – a jewel at the base of a cirque at 12,000’-- an old friend found out about my wanting to re-work my body, and said I have to read “You are the Placebo – making your mind matter” by Dr. Joe Dispenza.   He gave me his copy (he was reading it at the time) to read in the car on the way back to the ranches.  Trying her best to read while on a very bumpy dirt/rocky road, Stacy read the Preface outloud to everyone in the car.  Joe was the perfect example of someone real, doing just what I was trying to imagine.  So, here’s my best attempt at digesting Joe’s own experience of doing just what I want to do.
Joe was a new chiropractor, in his early 20’s.   The story starts out this way:  “On a beautiful Southern California day in April, I had the privilege of being run over by an SUV in a Palm Springs trialthlon.”  Does that give you a hint of what’s to come?  As he admitted, “Maybe I was just young and bold at that time in my life, but I decided against the medical model.”  His medical background made it easy for him to understand exactly what had happened.  He sustained serious injuries to his spinal column & vertebrae.  This is normally taken care of by multiple surgeries, the fusing of this and that, inserting rods and hardware, and so on, and doubts of ever walking again.     He decided against all that, asking instead to be taken to the home of a friend, much to the consternation of the medical establishment.  He was totally immobilized – laying flat on his stomach.
Joe was very vivid about his thought process at the time.  He wanted to go within himself and connect (have a relationship) with what he refers to as “…an intelligence, an invisible consciousness…that supports, maintains, protects, and heals us every moment.  It creates almost 100 trillion specialized cells (starting from 2), it keeps our hearts beating a little more than a 100,000 times per day, and it can organize hundreds of thousands of chemical reactions in a single cell in every second – among many other amazing functions.” 
So, here comes the application of quantum physics (in my humble non-professional opinion).  There he was, lying face-down, motionless, seemingly paralyzed.  Can you put yourself into that circumstance?  You’ve really got nothing to lose…..try something unusual…. “First, every day I would put all of my conscious attention on this intelligence within me and give it a plan, a template, a vision, with very specific orders….And second, I wouldn’t let any thought slip by my awareness that I didn’t want to experience.”  That’s it.  Intention, pure and simple.  Lying facedown – there’s not a whole lot else to do but work with the mind.  And he did, and finding it very, very challenging.  The mind wanders – a lot!!  He 1st wanted to spend several hours twice a day on his plan.  Specifically, he saw the reconstruction of his spine… “…vertebra by vertebra, and I would show this consciousness, if it was paying attention to my efforts, what I wanted.”  It took many weeks to go through this reconstruction process without interruption.  If he caught his mind wandering (thinking about what would happen if it didn’t work, etc.), he would start all over again.  He demanded of himself the utmost one point focus – the most difficult thing he had ever done. 
Try it yourself.  I have.  It’s HARD.  The mind wants to think what it wants to think, when it wants to think it.  He had to take control, absolute control.  It took 6 weeks of a constant battle with his mind to do his bidding.  Finally, he broke through the barrier, and did one whole reconstruction program without having to begin it all over again.  “It was like hitting the tennis ball on the sweet spot….It clicked.  I clicked.  And I felt complete, satisfied, and whole.  For the 1st time I was truly relaxed and present – in mind and body.”  And the next step was equally important.  With additional time on his hands, he started visualizing what he would do with his new body – what he called his “future potentials” that existed in the quantum field.  He put his emotion into it.  It almost sounded like an equation:  take one part “Intentional Future”, add it to an “Elevated Emotion” and that equals the body believing it was actually in this future vision.  Or, IF + EE = FVR (future vision realized).  Joe actually said that as he did this, his cells were reorganizing themselves – which he describes later on as signaling new genes, or what’s called “epigenetics” (see page 92) – “the control of genes not from within the DNA itself but from messages coming from outside the cell.” 
Now the main problem I see here, is that none of us are paralyzed, lying on our stomachs, with nothing to do except breathe and “think”, and most probably agonize about our dire predicament.  I know Bob Wade had to go through a bunch of “reconstruction” after his accident on a bike, but he was mobile, and generally taken care of….(yes, Kathy, you did a lot of the taking care of!)…  So the question becomes:  how badly off do we have to get to do this kind of stuff?  How many of us want the “privilege” of being run over by a large, heavy vehicle?  Yes, here’s an invitation to process this idea, maybe even read the book, and see what you can come up with.  I know I’m balking at doing it – I only last about 10 seconds, and BINGO! I’m distracted and on to something else….I think I need another doughnut, or something.  The only way I can leave this is to say:  “have fun with it, and see what happens!” (Oh, by the way, Joe has gone on to a normal life of traveling all over the world, holding workshops, and is functioning quite normally)                              
​ - David Summerfield