BY: HERBERT BENSON, MD
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Additional Note:
Here are some quotes to keep in the back of your mind as you read or listen to this one.
4 THOUGHTS
1. Remembered Wellness: How to Harness the Power of the Mind
“[A]ll of us have the ability to “remember” the calm and confidence associated with health and happiness, but not just in an emotional or psychologically soothing way. This memory is also physical.
[…]
Our brains are wired for beliefs and expectancies. When activated, the body can respond as it would if the belief were a reality, producing deafness or thirst, health or illness.
[…]
This is how our thoughts become self-fulfilling prophecies, and how our beliefs gear our bodies for the splendid opportunities of remembered wellness.”
You’ve probably heard some remarkable stories on the power of the mind. Inert pills curing illness. Sham surgeries that work as well as—or even better than—the real thing (if the patient believed they got the real thing). And on & on.
I’ve always known this intellectually, but I’ve never known how to harness this power of the mind. Now I do: Remembered wellness (also see the 1 Life-Changing Idea in Relaxation Revolution for more).
Remembered wellness refers to visualizing past states of health and wellness. This puts your body into that physiological state, allowing you to heal:
“All of us have distinct neurosignatures—for wellness, for illness, … and for the specifics you associate with all the other activities and situations you have faced in life.”
Remembered wellness allows us to use these neurosignatures to our advantage:
“Like a bad habit, or conversely like a good habit, recurring top-down thoughts, along with their corresponding emotional values, engage your brain’s previously used nerve-cell-firing patterns to instruct the body.”
So, by regularly visualizing past states of wellness, we “engage [our] brain’s previously used nerve-cell-firing patterns to instruct the body” to heal.
To get the most out of it, we first put our bodies into a state that allows us to harness the power of the mind. This is where the relaxation response comes in.
2. The Faith Factor = Relaxation Response + Remembered Wellness
The relaxation response (RR) is the exact opposite of the stress response. It puts our body into a calm and relaxed state: our heart rates and blood pressure lower, we consume less oxygen, and our brains quiet down. See the Book 411 on Relaxation Revolution for exact instructions on how to elicit it.
Crucially, once we’ve elicited the RR, our physiology is primed to be more receptive to remembered wellness. And when these two are paired (RR + remembered wellness), this creates what Dr. Benson calls the “faith factor:”
“I decided to call the combined force of these internal influences the faith factor—remembered wellness and the elicitation of the relaxation response.”
He used this term because many patients relied on religious faith during their RR and remembered wellness practices, which seemed to boost the benefits.
But he discovered that the practices themselves often increased spirituality in general, amplifying results: “It was the more amorphous feeling of spirituality that could be linked to better psychological and physical well-being.”
For us, it means we can combine the RR with remembered wellness to increase spiritual health (with or w/o religion) and boost physical and mental well-being.
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P.S. If the ideas of spirit and faith don’t resonate with you, no big deal. Simply focus on the RR by itself. The RR doesn’t require any spirit or faith; it’s simply an intrinsic state we all have: “The human body is geared to react by providing this calming state—the opposite of the fight-or-flight response—whenever the mind is focused for some time and disregards intrusive, everyday thoughts. […] So powerful, in fact, is this process that you need not believe, you need not call upon remembered wellness to generate the relaxation response.”
3. Brush Your Teeth and Heal
“Try to think of the practice as you would the daily ritual of brushing your teeth … Let your body heal itself without the interference of mind-generated doubts, criticism, and appraisals. … You wouldn’t critique your toothbrushing so don’t analyze this exercise either.”
A prominent theme throughout this book, which we’ll continue in the next thought, is letting go of expectations. We need to simply perform the exercises (RR, remembered wellness, or both) without judgment. Judgment and self-appraisals will only take away from their healing potential.
That’s why Dr. Benson also says, “I encourage people to make the elicitation of the relaxation response part of their daily routine, but not to aspire to good results or some specific end. ‘Just do it,’ as the slogan goes.”
It sounds easy enough, but letting go of expectations is difficult. So, every time you find yourself judging your practice, remember it’s like brushing your teeth: “You wouldn’t critique your toothbrushing so don’t analyze this exercise either.”
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P.S. Two other brilliant MDs come to mind here, Drs Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg. In The Healing Power of the Breath, they echo this same sentiment: “Self-judgment adds another layer of stress. The less you judge yourself, the easier it will be to relax and experience the benefits … Try not to evaluate or judge what is happening. Just go with it.” 👏👏👏
4. Let Go and Believe: It’s Profound Medicine
“You’ve read all about your physiology, you’ve surrounded yourself with good caregivers who help you take a moderate, balanced approach to your health and health care. Now it’s time to enjoy your endowment, this wiring for faith that makes the power of remembered wellness so enduring.
[…]
Believe in something good if you can. Or even better, believe in something better than anything you can fathom. Because for us mortals, this is very profound medicine.”
I condensed it some, but that’s how the book ends, and it’s the perfect way to end our 4 Thoughts: with the power of belief. It all comes back to belief. (Recall the subtitle of the book: The Power and Biology of Belief.)
But as we said earlier, we don’t need to believe in a religion to harness this power. We just need to believe in something good: In our body’s innate ability to heal, in our mind’s natural ability to solve problems, in the intrinsic good of humanity, or whatever resonates with you.
It may be difficult sometimes, but it’s the approach we need most.
We must let go and believe, “Because for us mortals, this is very profound medicine.”
1 LIFE-CHANGING IDEA
To Understand the Healing Power of the Body and Mind, Do the Opposite
“Regular elicitation of the relaxation response is of enormous benefit to your body. … [J]ust as repeated activation of the fight-or-flight response can lead to sustained problems in the body and its mechanics, so too can repeated activation of the relaxation response reverse those trends and mend the internal wear and tear brought on by stress.”
It’s easy to see how chronic stress can add up to all sorts of health problems. But as this passage reminds us, the opposite is also true. Repeated elicitation of positive physiological states can reverse those negative trends.
But it gets even better when we apply this same concept to our minds (a big theme of this book). It’s super easy to see how repeating negative thoughts, worry, and rumination can cause health problems. And it’s medically (and socially) accepted that negative thoughts cause physical problems.
Yet, it’s often labeled “woo-woo” or pseudoscience to suggest the opposite: that remembering positive times or having inspiring beliefs could somehow heal our bodies. (Of course, this is because ideas like this have become synonymous with wishful thinking, marketed as a “secret” that will help you manifest 1M dollars.)
But that’s not what we’re talking about here. It’s the perspective shift—thinking in opposites—that’s life-changing.
If negative thoughts show up physically as stress, anxiety, hypertension, and cardiovascular problems, perhaps it’s not so crazy to suggest that the opposite—positive thoughts and beliefs—might also show up physiologically as better health and well-being?
1 STACK OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“Despite the fact that the body is the grandest problem-solver there is, quietly and perpetually sustaining life, overcoming billions of obstacles without our conscious imperatives for it to do so, we don’t trust it. Instead, we turn to our medicine cabinets.”
“Much of the success the medical profession achieves is not due to anything doctors do or dispense that is inherently healing. We should really attribute the success of many medical treatments to the inherent healing power within individuals.”
“They concluded, according to Clinical Psychology Review, that “under conditions of heightened expectations” the power of the placebo effect “far exceeds that commonly reported in literature.” A full 70 percent of the patients they studied experienced excellent or good results from bogus treatments.”
“When you focus for a short time, gently brushing aside any intrusive thoughts, your mind and body suddenly become a five-star resort in which all the service personnel make your restoration and health their priority and are especially concerned with alleviating the harmful effects of stress.”
“The less you worry about the results, the better. Just let it happen.”
“A priest who reviewed the faith healings at Lourdes, the famed Roman Catholic shrine in France, once said that people are mistaken if they think that “miracles produce faith.” Quite the opposite, he says, “faith produces miracles.”
“Remembered wellness isn’t particularly mysterious. The evidence of its substantial, positive influence over the body has existed for centuries. It’s known in the scientific community as “the placebo effect.” But I hope to replace the term with ‘remembered wellness.’”
“This is remembered wellness, the potential of which seems boundless when we realize that we can markedly control brain activity, that we can assign priorities to diagnoses and medicines, and that we can rehearse affirmations, visualizations, and other exercises to expand the hotbeds of nerve cells that fire off signals to our hearts, lungs, and limbs.”
“In all the activities I am about to recommend, the goal is not to deny reality, only to project images and ideas of something better for yourself. You act “as if” the preferred reality were true and the body responds.”
“Dr. Marcus Reidenberg, editor of the journal Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, believes that many drug companies “are taking symptoms of daily living, of normal existence, and converting these into diseases requiring medical treatment.”
“Sometimes an uncontrollable biological entity prevails, despite our most fervent prayers, our most exuberant living, and our most hopeful attitude. Yet there should be no guilt involved. We do the best we can in difficult circumstances to preserve hope. That is all we can humanly expect from ourselves.”