
Research on the placebo effect is ramping up worldwide because it proves the amazing power of the mind in health and healing. Peer-reviewed medical journals are reporting information about the placebo effect that was considered pseudoscience just a few years ago by science-based skeptics and academicians.
Researchers who study the placebo effect know that clinical studies must be designed to carefully control variables, such as spontaneous remission and bias, to determine the real placebo effect accurately.
These studies must also include a no-treatment group. These more carefully designed studies reveal that a large part of the real placebo effect is due to psychological factors such as expectation, learning, and conditioning.
Because of misinformation and a lack of understanding, most traditional healthcare practitioners are biased against the placebo effect, labeling it a form of deception. This labeling is shortsighted, ignores context, and gives the placebo effect a bad reputation it doesn’t deserve.
Even when the research outlines the various components of the placebo effect, most healthcare practitioners still don’t know how to apply this information to support their patients.
In this article, I’ll help you understand the psychological concepts of the real placebo effect so that you can, in combination with meditation, hack your placebo effect to improve your health.
Combining Psychological Concepts with Mindfulness and Meditation
Meditation strengthens your higher awareness, which, in combination with these psychological concepts, has the potential to turbocharge your placebo effect in real time.
Meditating triggers your relaxation response, and your brain waves transition from a higher-frequency beta predominance to a lower-frequency alpha and theta predominance. This increased alpha and theta predominance of brain waves helps shift your consciousness into a state of openness and higher awareness.
The shift from over-analysis and judgment into a state of openness to possibilities triggers the consciousness of your higher mind, or higher self, to align with the consciousness of your subconscious mind. In part, this alignment enables you to hack your placebo effect by creating your own ritual of the therapeutic act.
The ritual of the therapeutic act consists of all the variables involved in therapy and holds the keys to triggering your placebo effect. You create your own rituals of therapeutic acts daily through your thoughts and beliefs regarding your health.
An easy way to meditate is to go into a quiet area, relax into a comfortable position, close your eyes, and begin to take slow, relaxed breaths using your diaphragm instead of your chest muscles. Pay attention to your breath; if you get distracted, return your attention to your breath.
If a negative emotion such as anger arises, acknowledge it by saying in your mind, “I’m feeling anger,” and the distracting emotion will usually move on. Then come back to your breath. You already know how to belly-breathe because you did it as a baby.
The Hacking Process
As you drop into a deeper state of meditation, set a positive expectation for being well. Then, in whatever way resonates with you, visualize and feel what it’s like to be optimally healthy. As you continue to relax, your brain waves will shift more and more from beta to alpha and theta predominance.
When you shift into alpha, especially theta predominance, the consciousness of your higher mind, or higher self, begins to align with the realm of your subconscious mind.
As this alignment occurs, you enter a state of consciousness that is not bound by space or time and doesn’t differentiate between what’s real and what’s not. Visualizing and feeling what it’s like to be completely well in your deeper brainwave states during meditation conditions your body-mind for this new reality.
As you become conditioned to this new reality, you are much more likely to create a shift in your physiology to make that reality so.
Have Positive Expectations to Reduces Anxiety
Placebo effect research shows that positive expectations reduce anxiety. When you bring an expectation of being well into deeper brainwave states and begin to feel that possibility as a reality, you reduce your anxiety.
This anxiety reduction automatically increases the parasympathetic tone in your autonomic nervous system. This increased parasympathetic tone initiates repair processes, reduces cortisol levels, and increases heart rate variability, rejuvenating and rebalancing your body’s systems.
When you truly believe in your expectation of being well, you reduce your anxiety and condition your body-mind so that your inner physician turns on to heal you.
Expect Reward
Placebo effect research also shows that when you have expectations for reward, you anticipate being rewarded by getting well. However, if you have limiting beliefs stuck in your subconscious mind that say you don’t deserve a reward, or you don’t deserve to get well, this may block the activation of your inner physician's placebo effect.
One way to test for limiting beliefs stuck in your subconscious is to use positive affirmations. For example, say to yourself, “I deserve to be rewarded” or “I deserve to be well.” How do those statements feel to you? Do they feel right? Do you resonate with those affirmations?
If those statements don’t feel right or create a negative feeling or charge in your body-mind, then you might consider using the guided meditation technique in Section 4 of my Udemy.com course to remove these limiting beliefs.
Condition Yourself
Conditioning means learning through association. You can maximize conditioning related to the placebo effect by conditioning yourself in your meditations. You can condition yourself to associate certain mantras, music tracks, or guided meditations with seeing and feeling yourself being completely well.
Your mind then begins associating the mantra or the music with your well-being. From then on, your body’s physiology shifts into wellness mode when you say those mantras or hear that music.
Use Social Learning
Another psychological component of the placebo effect is social learning, which activates healing when one sees or hears of others being healed. I encourage you to read others’ stories about conquering disease, as this is a powerful form of social learning that helps trigger the placebo effect.
Reinforce Your Expectations
Reinforcing expectations is another powerful psychological aspect of the placebo effect. You can use mindfulness to guard against negative thoughts and beliefs regarding your health, which indirectly helps reinforce your expectations of being well.
It’s impossible to completely guard against negative thoughts because your subconscious may trigger them. These thoughts can bubble up even before you are fully aware of them.
You can mindfully recognize when a negative thought bubbles up and acknowledge it as a thought that isn’t necessarily a truth. Then, let it pass before the thought triggers any significant negative impact on your physiology.
This skill requires honing through repetition, but as you meditate and practice mindfulness, you’ll get better and better at it. The reason you’ll get better is because your brain and nervous system can adapt through a process called neuroplasticity.
Please reinforce your expectations of being whole and well in your meditations by maintaining a positive mindset about your belief in being well. I’m not asking you to be in denial about your health, but rather attempting to remain hopeful about your future in your meditations.
This concept is about living a balanced life so that you regularly reinforce expectations for being well amidst negative thoughts about your health that commonly arise.
Use Optimism as a Tipping Point
Optimism is important when it comes to magnifying your power of belief in the placebo effect. Research shows that if you are an optimist, you are much more likely to experience a placebo effect, positively impacting your physiology.
If you are prone to pessimism, you can use mindfulness to become more aware of your feelings and then use the power of your mind to practice optimism. When you regularly practice optimism, your brain's neuroplasticity creates deep and long-lasting neuronal pathways of optimism.
A major benefit of optimism is an increased chance of experiencing a placebo effect resulting in improved health. The reverse is also true. If you are a pessimist, you increase your chances of experiencing a nocebo effect. If you have a negative attitude, you are much more likely to experience a negative physiologic reaction to medications and therapeutic encounters.
The ability to hack your placebo effect and create optimal health through the power of your mind is becoming increasingly apparent from the results of placebo effect research. As with any skill you wish to hone, it just takes some practice.
Embrace a Paradox
Despite the emerging science, we still don’t understand all the variables of why some people are better at triggering a placebo effect than others. Many variables remain to be discovered. However, it won’t hurt to try this approach if you surrender to this paradox: You can always heal without being cured.
Inherent in this paradox is that the first step in healing is often through accepting how things are. After that, you experience the freedom to live life through the eyes of a child, exploring your possibility for healing with curiosity and playfulness despite being diagnosed with a disease.
Now, consider using these concepts to explore your healing potential.
Keith R. Holden, M.D.
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