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Episode #123: Build Your Muscles By Thought Alone · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: When they measured the strength afterward, they found the group that had imagined strengthening their finger, their strength increased by 35%.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: All right, 35%, just from imagining it.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: And these are not trained athletes, right?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: These are just what we would call a sedentary subject.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the ones who envisioned the elbow flexion of the bicep, their strength increased by almost 14%.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: There was no change in the control, of course.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels Podcast with yours truly, Joel Salatin, the farmer, and our favorite researcher, Dr.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Today, she's gonna give us information from a practical study.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you who are longtime listeners know that we have routinely touched on the mind-body connection, how powerful your mind, your thinking, your mental state, your spiritual state, your emotions are in maintaining health and wellness.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Cena has uncovered a fascinating study that puts, shall we say, uh, arms and legs, uh, hands and feet on this idea as a practical matter to not only affirm this, but also give us a chance to where uh each of us can actually step in to the profound implications of literally wrapping our heads around our body.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So uh is that for you?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I don't know if I'll literally wrap my head around my body, but I guess maybe I guess neuronal connections from my head, yes, could wrap around my body.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: You are correct, Joel.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so go ahead, uh Sina, bring us up to speed on what you found.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and I have to say, you know, one of the reasons why I love talking with you, I can geek out with you and and you accept it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're right there with me geeking out.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I found this study and um and then many more like it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought this was so fascinating.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't wait to share.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: What if I told you, Joel, that you can change your physicality based on just your thoughts alone?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, you could actually increase your muscular strength, like in your bicep, without doing any kind of physical exercise, but by just imagining the exercise in your mind.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, does that sound crazy or does that sound pretty cool?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds pretty amazing.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh, so you mean if I think hard enough, I can look like Harrison Ford?
• 2:45
  unknown: Yeah.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, I I remember seeing, I remember seeing it years ago reading about a uh a uh um a behavioral, one of these studies that took a basketball team and they divided the basketball team into three groups.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: One practiced normally and you know, shot the basketball.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And another one, uh, they practiced all the things, but they didn't have a basketball.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then another group didn't didn't practice, didn't do anything.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: That was the control.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what they found was the difference between the ones that had the basketball and the ones that imagined they had a basketball was there was almost no difference between those two.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: The the the ones, the control that didn't do anything, well, they they didn't get they, you know, they weren't very good.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: But uh it was amazing how close the ones who who who practiced you know shooting um and practiced passing and dribbling, but didn't have a basketball, they were not that far off from the ones that actually had a basketball.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you're talking about in actually making the shot.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, like that, yes, yes, yes, an actual basketball skill, an actual basketball skill, the ones who didn't have the basketball, they were not quite as good as the ones that had the basketball, but they but they were the point is they were not far off.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if if the ones that had the basketball were, let's just say, you know, uh uh 80 uh 100%, the ones that didn't were like 80, and the ones that didn't do the control group was like, you know, 30, okay, percentile.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So so you know, clearly just just going through the motions and imagining it with no basketball um was was world's improvement over no imagination.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so so what I'm gonna share today, piggybacks on that, it goes beyond that, but you are absolutely correct.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's you know what we call sports psychology, and that's a long-standing practice, uh, at least I know of athletes dating back to like the 70s, right?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Using mental um imagery to improve their skill.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Tiger Woods did this, you know, Jack Nicholas did this.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like a lot of greats would talk about how they would imagine it and it would improve, um, like the golf stroke.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And for instance, um, I did this, you know, not many people know this about me, but I was a competitive athlete for many years.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as an all-American diver and champion mountain biker.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the reasons why I was able to get to that level was because of my ability to imagine the exercise before doing it.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: So going into a dive, for instance, I would sit there with my eyes closed and I would visualize the dive, you know, exactly what angles I wanted to hit, where my arm was going to be.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I would visualize it over and over and over.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so this that's a known, right?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's widely known.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: We have whole departments devoted to that in colleges, um, like exercise psychology departments.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think a lot of times, though, there's two things.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think when we talk about imagining something, we usually think of it as like an athlete doing it, like for performance, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to hit a certain goal and part of their training.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: The second part is we usually think of it as a skill, right?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're saying, oh, can I shoot the basketball or whatever, or can I improve my golf swing?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't necessarily think of it as mental imaging, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Imagining it in your mind, being able to actually strengthen the muscle, like physically strengthen that muscle and even cause hypertrophy, right?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Or muscle growth.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: But that's actually what we're seeing now in different studies.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna share the first study I found that I thought was fascinating.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: This came out of the Cleveland Clinic, um, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what they did was they took 30 young, healthy volunteers and they split them into different groups.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: One group trained to perform a mental contraction of their little finger.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they didn't actually contract it, they did it in their mind.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's called a mental contraction.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: The second group did mental contractions with the elbow.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: A third group did nothing, and then the fourth group actually did physical contractions of the little finger.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: All right, and they compared those groups.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: They they trained for 12 weeks, five days a week, but only 15 minutes a day, right?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, 15 minutes a day, you could do that on your lunch break, right?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Just sitting at your desk, even visualizing.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: So when they when they measured the strength afterward, they found the group that had imagined strengthening their finger, their strength increased by 35%.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right, 35% just from imagining it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: And these are not trained athletes, right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: These are just what we would call a sedentary subject.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the ones who envisioned the elbow flexion of the bicep, their strength increased by almost 14%.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: There was no change in the control, of course.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the ones who did the physical strength training, their finger strength increased by 53%.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: So 35% imagining it versus 53% of actually doing it, but it was still significant, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is a significant increase in strength.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: This was actually repeated.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So there have been many, many studies since then that have repeated this, and some are having less of a difference between the mental contraction and the physical contraction.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: So in 2014, there was a study that somebody who actually did the physical contraction of the muscle, their strength increased by 30%.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: The ones who envisioned it, the strength increased by 22%, right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so um one more that I just wanted to share, and then I want to dive into application and what this could actually mean for us.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a study out of another study out of Ohio, what they did was they took subjects and they wrapped their one of their wrists in a cast, right?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Fully immobilized the wrist, and they did that for four weeks.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: One group of subjects got no instructions whatsoever.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: The other group was told for 11 minutes a day, so just 11 minutes, five days a week, they were to intensely imagine doing an exercise.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, like full focus imagining doing the exercise.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then they also did magnetic magnetic imaging of the brain to see what would happen.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And what they found was the ones who imagined it had um the strong, they their strength increased, it would it doubled.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: They were two times stronger than the other group, and the brain was also stronger.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the mental exercise strengthened um that the muscles in the wrist, and it also strengthened the neuronal pathways.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: So they made new neuronal connections in the brain.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so the study authors concluded this what our study suggests is that imagery exercises can be a valuable tool to prevent or slow down muscle from becoming weaker when a health problem limits or restricts a person's mobility, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: This information may fundamentally change how we think about muscle weakness in the elderly.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is fascinating because there's so many different applications here.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one, like they said, is we tend to have this thought in our minds that as we age, we get weaker, right?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: We go through what's called hypertrophy, we lose muscle mass.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that actually doesn't have to be the case, right?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: You even if, like they're saying, even if you're in a cast, right?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you suffered like a stroke, right, or some kind of acute injury.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you're chronically sick, like you know how I was so sick I couldn't get off the floor, right?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you're too fatigued, too weak to actually exercise, um, maybe your balance is off.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's difficult for you to exercise.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, any of those conditions, hypertrophy can happen very quickly.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: But what they're showing here is that you can actually prevent it from happening just by doing the exercises in your mind.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll go one beyond that.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Other studies have shown that not only can you prevent the loss of muscle mass in any of these health conditions or with age, you can actually gain muscle mass through this mental imagery.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this can also be applied.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're we're now into um go into the new year.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: People tend to do new year's resolutions about like weight loss or going to the gym, right, to gain strength or or lose weight.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, an easy way that you can do that is, you know, well, a lot of times people tend to fail at those resolutions, right?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like we start out hard, maybe we go to the gym, get a gym membership or whatnot, or we start a diet, um, and then we we kind of stop doing it, right?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and part of that is because we just bite off more than we can chew sometimes.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so one solution to that is if you want to try to find something that is sustainable, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Something that's sustainable, you can do small bouts at a time and you can start with even the mental side of it, just visualizing yourself doing the exercise, because you do improve strength when you do that, which actually, because muscle is so metabolically metabolically active, it will actually help you to lose weight.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and also when you visualize things, what studies have shown is that you can decrease food cravings, even so food cravings, you can improve improve sleep.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: All of these things, all of these components are essential if you're trying to change your health, right?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're trying to lose weight or gain muscle mass or reverse the disease, they're all essential, and you can actually start achieving them through imagining things.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then also I want to just piggyback on that and I'll throw it back to you.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you studies have shown that the ideal situation is if you imagine it and then do it.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if you pair the two together, right, it's called dual training.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say you did have a resolution of like I'm gonna start working out more.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's fantastic, right?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: I fully support that.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm not telling anybody to not exercise, right?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: My my area of emphasis in grad school was exercise.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm a big proponent of exercise.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: But what I'm what I am saying is that you can become more efficient and more effective at achieving your goals if you implement some of these ideas.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are going to start exercising, visualize it.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then as you're doing the exercise, you actually visualize the muscles, right?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: It like if you're doing squats and say you want a toe in your butt, right?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Common thing for a girl.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: You actually visualize the muscles activating and becoming stronger, and you visualize what you want it to look like.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: You visualize your end goal.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we're also, most of us are very tactile creatures.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: So touch is very important.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when when I trained as an athlete, and when I train now, you know, it's just like the busy mom, I actually touch the muscle group that I'm trying to activate, that I'm trying to improve.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm doing squats, I'm touching my legs, right?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm imagining the muscles contracting and I'm touching the legs.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: All of this has been shown through studies to actually um make your workout more efficient and more effective.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: So there's all kinds of things you can do to help yourself achieve different goals, no matter what it is, you know, weight loss, muscle mass, food craving, disease reversal, better sleep, whatever it is on your list, integrating visualization is going to help you achieve it faster and more effectively.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you mean you mean uh if before I get out of bed in the morning, if I spend 15 minutes um going into a trance and imagining uh doing a hundred sit-ups, that I'll wake up with a six-pack?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you did it long enough, yes.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm saying.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's really easy for us to sit here and kind of be like, uh-huh, like poo-poo the idea, because we take ourselves for granted, right?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: We sell ourselves short so often.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that it's really easy, and I I've done this too.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: We take the gifts that God give us, has given us for granted, right?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: He gave these amazing abilities to us, and we've talked about them on this program, like the ability of your body to heal.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: If your body can heal itself from a disease, it can create more muscle tone, it can create that six-pack, Joel.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, now, of course, there's other things involved in a six-pack, right?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta you can't be eating donuts when you wake up, you know.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'll I'll I'll I just I'll imagine when I'm eating the donut that I'm not eating the donut.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is not this is not a donut, it's uh it's a carrot, you know.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, that can actually work.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the first time I've called you dude.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, farmer Joel, the dude.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that I'm I'm not kidding.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: That can actually work because it and this is you can connect this to biblical practices as well, right?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible tells you to speak life over your body, not to speak death, right?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it is so true that what you command your body is most of us have it flipped, most of us are letting the body control the mind, right?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're getting into the area of like Dr.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Joe Dispenza, where he helps you to flip that back around and have the mind control over the body.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you program your body, right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's like programming in a computer, the hardware and the software.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: You actually program it with your beliefs, your your thoughts, you you know, whatever your thoughts are, they create the emotions and create your beliefs.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: So by changing your thoughts, you change all that.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we know that your thought controls your gene expression, right?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is part of epigenetics.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: What you think controls the genes.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: And as we know, hormones and whatnot are um produced from the genes.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so you literally control like hormone levels with your thoughts.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to bring this the perfect point time to bring in the example.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: You and I wrote about this in Beyond Labels.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you if anybody hasn't read it, um, Dr.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Dispenza is one of the examples that we give because this tells you an example of the power that we all have sitting inside of us.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he was hit by a car when he was competing in a triathlon.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: It compressed six vertebrates in his spine, and he was told he wouldn't walk again and that he needed radical surgery if he had any chance of walking.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he decided no to the surgery.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: He checked himself out of the hospital because he believed, and I quote, the power that made the body heals the body.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he started using his mind and he repaired his spine.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Every day he visualized and he felt the emotions associated with reconstructing his spine one vertebrae at a time.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Joel, after only 10 weeks, he was back on his feet, and in 12 weeks he was training again.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I go on to say, in here, the scientific literature is filled with tons of examples of how the body has healed itself from all kinds of like neurological issues.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's paralysis.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I had paralysis, right?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: I had a chiropractor ruptured my spine, I was paralyzed in my left leg.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: You've seen me walk up and down your field of the farm.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: You would never know that I was once paralyzed.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the doctors gave up on me.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: The doctors, the physical therapists, it had been several years, and I still had the foot drop, and they're like, oh, it's permanent.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't tell today why?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because I refuse to believe that God can't heal the body, and so I did it through mental imagery.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, so how how what uh I'm looking for the right word.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how direct, how definite, how uh intentional.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's the word.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: How intentional do you have to be on this?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, our whole beyond labels, this is why, oh, I I've got I've got cancer, I've got I've got this, I've got that.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is why these labels, man, you know, when you said most of us, our mind reacts to our body, and of course, our once our body gets a label, you know, you have this, but then then in our mentally, we we immediately, okay, I've got this, and we start into that that whole, you know, down that pathway.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um how intentional do you have to be?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like if this is true, and I'm not I'm not disputing it, I'm just if I mean we we just got a guy at church, you know, he just got diagnosed with cancer last week, you know.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's you know, gotta pray for healing, all this stuff.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I, you know, um my my heart breaks for that.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, you know, I I struggle between, well, I could get cancer tomorrow too, so don't be flippant about this.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: But um, in my mind, I'm saying, I'm excited about life.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I got so much to do, I got so many exciting things to do.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have time for that, you know.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, that's where I am in my mental state.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is that intentional enough?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Intentional enough for prevention?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or or even or even to to get rid of it if you had it.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the easy answer is for the second one to get rid of it if you had it, no.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, and you know, I hesitate to answer these types of questions because whenever we answer, we do put a limiting belief on people, right?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, in my opinion, in my own experience.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You need more mental imagery than that.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a good first step, right?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: You do need, say you're trying to reverse a disease, um, or you know, any kind of illness.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: It could even be an acute illness, right?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be some chronic illness.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: You need a positive perspective, right?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is this goes back to the thoughts, beliefs, and percept perspective.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: You need a positive perspective.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: You can't be um I you can't identify with the disease.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we've talked about this before, so I'll just do it in brevity, but you can't let that become part of you, right?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Become part of your identity because you will spiral.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Everything will be now based on that label of the disease, you know.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and your your outcome, your your perception of your future will be shaped on that based on that label, right?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's gonna prevent you from being able to create a different reality because you've already locked in to a reality based on a belief somebody else has that now you have adopted as your own belief.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to change that belief, right?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: So the first step is don't identify with the disease.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you already have, you have to release it, right?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: You have to change your thought pattern so that you no longer think that you have a disease.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's different than lying to yourself, right?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like it this took me a little bit of mental gymnastics in the beginning when I was on my healing journey, because I'm real stickler about you don't lie.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, well, if I'm telling myself I'm not sick, I'm lying, right?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because clearly something's wrong.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm kind of lying.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then my friend said to me, you know, you are to speak life over yourself, and that anytime you speak, anytime you think something, anytime you speak it, your body listens.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Every cell in that body listens.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you have the power, and God gave you that power to change your story.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that's when I started to think of, oh, well, what does it actually mean to be quote unquote sick?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Is there actually quote unquote sickness?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we don't have time to go into all that in this podcast, but the bottom line is that's when I shifted my thought to these are all imbalances.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'm I have this.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'm I'm acutely sick or you have a chronic illness, but it's not really a sickness, it's just an imbalance, and you can easily fix that.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the body knows that you can fix it.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: It has a different response, it has a different visceral response to a label of an imbalance than it does to cancer, for instance.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the first one is don't even associate with the label in and of itself.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then, yes, you have to create a mental image of a healthy you.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and actually, we walk people through this in our book and beyond labels.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you create an image.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to be healthy?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually usually a sticking point for people because they know what it means to be unhealthy, right?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: They know what it means to be sick, but what does it mean to be healthy?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't usually see that really in our culture.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Most people are somewhere on the autumn continuum.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, what does it mean to be healthy and and go a step beyond that?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: In your perfect world, what would you look like if you were healthy, right?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: What would you be doing if you were healthy?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Something that you're not maybe not doing now, you know?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have to have that visual.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was sick, my visual was I'm in the park playing with my kids.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's this beautiful sunny day.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's a blanket on the grass, we're having this wonderful picnic, you know, with polyface food, of course.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and there's birds out, there's butterflies, and I'm not just sitting on a blanket, right?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because it because a sick person could probably do that.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm chasing my kids around, I'm playing games with them.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're laughing, we're having a great time.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm feeling so much joy for the ability to stand, to run, to interact with my kids.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And see, and so I'm taking you through this as an example.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have to visualize exactly what you want, and then you have to attach the elevated emotion to it.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the easier, faster way for you to get to your six-pack, Joel, with eating your donuts and not exercising is visualize it and then attach the elevated emotion.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: So imagine waking up and having a six-pack and you're like, look, Teresa, I'm Bob.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like feeling joy for it, right?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Feeling gratitude that God gave you that.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't have to do anything, but think about it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: So so that that's really the key.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what Dr.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Dispensa talks about too.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: You have to attach that elevated emotion to it.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: So when you do that, you're telling the body it already happened.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you would be saying, I already have a six-pack.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: I, in my example, am saying, I am already healthy, happy, healed, and whole, right?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm already running around with my kids, feeling joy, feeling gratitude.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm laughing.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm already doing that.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: The body responds as though that has already happened.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the key, right?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: It responds as though it's happened.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it builds the neural pathways to make that happen.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: It changes the neuronal connections, it builds new ones in the direction of healing.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: It releases different hormones, it it activates different genes, for example, all through your thought.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the more you visualize it throughout the day, and the more you are able to attach that elevated emotion and express gratitude for the fact that you've already achieved it, the more efficient it is at laying down those new healing pathways in your body.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just like we've talked about in the past when you have trauma that's happened, like you could have a trauma that happened to you of like 30 years ago.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think about it in a memory, your body doesn't know the difference, right?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't know that it happened 30 years ago, it will release the same chemicals as though it's happening right now in real time.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: The same thing happens, but in the reverse.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of you remembering in the past, if you visualize in your mind, you're saying, you know, this is happening in the future.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you visualize it as, okay, logically, you're saying this is what I look like now.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on the floor, I'm sick, and whatever, but I'm gonna say that this is me, right?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: You're like kind of projecting that out there.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: You can convince your body that that's the state that it's in right now.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it will literally rewire itself.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Every single part of your body, all the organs, all the neurons, the enzymes, everything will will rewire themselves um to become that person that you're imagining.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, so uh as I'm as I'm listening to this, um you know, taking the position of the of the dubious the dubious one.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um it comes so naturally for you.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, uh it seems to me like the weak link, if I just could be very transparent, the weak link is is creating time, yeah, creating time in your day to actually stop the frenetic, hurried, harried, hassled life.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to get this done, I gotta get that done.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I I think I've talked about um about the book Daring Greatly and and how we live in a time of never enough.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we didn't get enough sleep, we didn't get enough done today, we didn't we don't have enough time to do it all, we don't have enough time to do this, do that, the other.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: We don't, you know, we're not thin enough, we're not strong enough, we're not loving enough, we're not kind enough, you know, and all this stuff.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happens is we get we get driven into this uh treadmill of activity that that tells us this is what we're supposed to do, but it doesn't leave us enough time to actually stop long enough to rebuild from our busyness.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and and so so so um, you know, for me, actually, shall we say, um unplugging for half an hour a day and going in a a closet or a quiet place and doing this kind of visualizing imagery, my first reaction is well, I don't have time for that.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta, I got, I got this to do, I got that, dude, I got that, you know, da da da.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the next thing you know, you're so your your your your circumstances just carry you on and you can never you can never get um freed up to get to a cul-de-sac, if you will, you know, because you're always at the next intersection turning.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say, I mean, I think we all kind of live in that world of time scarcity, right?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's and that's a perception thing.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about that previously.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, but let's so let's continue with that thought that we think there isn't enough time.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have to do it for 30 minutes a day.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, couple examples.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Two of the main studies that I cited, and one they did it 15 minutes a day, um, five days a week.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: The other study they did it 11 minutes a day, uh, five days a week.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you could do that on your lunch break, right?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like you can do that before you go to bed at night, like as you're laying in bed, just start visualizing.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: So think of it like 10 minutes a day.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when I was healing and I used the visualization technique, I didn't sit there for like 10, 15 minutes in a row and visualize something and attach an emotion to it.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't do that whatsoever.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: For me, what I found was doable and most effective was to do it a little bit throughout the day.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually wrote um, you know, I had construction paper because I have kids.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I took brightly colored construction paper with like crayons of bright colors, and I wrote on there um an affirmation.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because this is also part of like uh sports psychology, is that's one thing athletes use are positive affirmations.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually carried over a lot of my sports training into my healing uh from a from a dis-ease.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so I wrote on it with on the colored paper with colorful pencil uh crayons, I wrote, I am vibrantly healthy, happy, healed, and whole.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I taped them up all around the house, on my door into the bedroom, on the mirror, on the refrigerator door, like the door leaving the house, all over the place.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm getting tearied, you know.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I posted them everywhere.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: And every time I would walk by one or see it, I would, that was my trigger, and I would say it out loud.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's another thing that helps you is to say it out, speak it.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like actually, that's what the Bible says.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Speak life, don't think it alone, get it out, speak it.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I was saying a command over my body every time I saw it.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say out loud, I'm vibrantly healthy, happy, healed, and whole.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: And in that moment, I visualized that image, you know, the one I painted for you of me at the park with my kids.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: I visualized it and I felt the gratitude.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I would tend to say it three times, right?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Three times would allow me to visualize it and feel the gratitude, right?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you get better as it as you practice, it takes less time because you're able to evoke the feeling more easily.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I did not sit there and I didn't have the capacity, right?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have the physical or mental capacity when I was sick to sit there for even five minutes and do it.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I did what I could do.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would just do that throughout the day.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can even put it on, like set your alarm on your phone, right?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're not at home, you're out in the office, you can set your alarm on your phone for like every two hours, just stop for a minute, say your affirmation with your visualization, and attach that emotion, an elevated emotion of gratitude.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't have to be like, oh, like, you know, like we're going to the gym, you got to get in the car, drive there, you got to work out for at least 30 minutes to make it worth your drive, you know, and then come back and we burn out because why?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oftentimes we added something to our plate without taking something off our plate.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's a big reason why we burn out.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: This doesn't have to be that.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: This could be one minute before bed, one minute when you wake up in bed before you open your eyes, you know, say your affirmation, visualize it, and attach the elevated motion.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: It could be one like after you pray before a meal.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's wonderful.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I think uh if I may, you know, take that position of the average person hearing this, just that is so intentionally required that even that is hard to do, you know, and so if I may challenge our listeners with this and challenge myself with this, um uh, you know, I'm sure we have people that are in all sorts of various stages of health, you know, little little things, big things.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but my challenge in this, it it because it sounds almost too good to be true.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds almost woo-woo.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in in our in our empirical, scientific, hard science, you know, pharmacological, you know, AMA uh uh society, um it it sounds it sounds um, you know, it it sounds like something from you know the from folklore.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and so my challenge for me and for everybody else listening would simply be take whatever little what whatever thing that you you're dealing with right now and and and and give it a test for a month.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and and sometimes um making a making a plan to do something like this is actually easier than making a plan to uh you know to to do something hugely physical uh over time.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you because because all of us have our we have our mind every day, every moment of the day.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can uh work on that.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything that you haven't said that you want to say about this before we close down, Cena?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just real quick, I I completely agree with you.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if I had never gotten really sick and almost died, I would probably not be reporting on these types of stories.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: I would have thought they were woo-woo, right?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because of my Western training in science.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um when you get to that point of desperation, you start becoming very open-minded.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it really, God really opened my mind to many different paths.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, through him opening my mind is why I was able to heal.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: And but that's why I wanted to bring these stories today.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I just came on here and shared Joe Dispenza's healing story or my healing story, people could easily say, Oh, well, that's them.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: That that's not gonna happen to me, or like that was a that was an anomaly.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: It must have been an anomaly, you know, like I like how why would that happen to me?
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because those are individual kind of anecdotal stories, right?
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: This the studies that we're sharing today were conducted at universities.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: These are like what you would consider like hardcore science, where they're taking the average person and showing the power of the mind.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: They are validating the mind-body connection through the studies.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like everything, we will put the links to these studies in the description for this show.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I highly encourage people, even if you just have time to read the abstract, right?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: Abstracts like a little paragraph, read it for yourself because that's how you become a believer.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, don't take my word for it.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, read, look at the data, look at look at the p-values for the statistical significance, you know, look at what the what the study authors have concluded.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because this is this is taking something that seems woo-woo, that seems kind of theoretical or abstract, and now we're putting it into actual scientific study terms and showing that there's a significant improvement in muscle strength, you know, just by imagining.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, fascinating, fascinating stuff as always.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Cena, thanks for uncovering that for us and for uh fleshing it out and uh and I would say uh mentoring it out for us.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and uh again, it's just been a pleasure to visit with you uh for me and to visit with all of our uh folks that are listening.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for uh staying with us through another episode of Beyond Labels, and we'll look forward to visiting with you again next week.