Product Description

Take Your First Step Toward True Evolution

Ever wonder why you repeat the same negative thoughts in your head? Why you keep coming back for more from hurtful family members, friends, or significant others? Why you keep falling into the same detrimental habits or limiting attitudes--even when you know that they are going to make you feel bad?

Dr. Joe Dispenza has spent decades studying the human mind--how it works, how it stores information, and why it perpetuates the same behavioral patterns over and over. In the acclaimed film What the Bleep Do We Know!? he began to explain how the brain evolves--by learning new skills, developing the ability to concentrate in the midst of chaos, and even healing the body and the psyche.

Evolve Your Brain presents this information in depth, while helping you take control of your mind, explaining how thoughts can create chemical reactions that keep you addicted to patterns and feelings--including ones that make you unhappy. And when you know how these bad habits are created, it's possible to not only break these patterns, but also reprogram and evolve your brain, so that new, positive, and beneficial habits can take over.

This is something you can start to do right now. You and only you have the power to change your mind and evolve your brain for a better life--for good.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #190762 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 508 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780757304804
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Inside Flap

It took one moment to change Joe Dispenza's life forever.

A car sent him toppling off his bike, causing multiple fractures to his vertabrae. Several doctors said his only hope of walking again was to fuse some of the vertebrae in an operation that would leave him with a lifetime of pain and limited mobility.

But as a chiropractor, Dispenza knew enough about spinal health and his own post-accident physical state to take a remarkable risk: he refused the operation and, along with a careful therapeutic program, literally thought his way to healing. Nine months later, he was able to walk and function as well as he had before the accident, and he credits a large amount of that recovery to the power of his own mind.

This incredible experience spurred Joe on to learn about this most important tool that we all possess—the brain—and he passes that potent knowledge on to you. He explores how the brain learns, how it processes information, and, when it isn't stimulated enough by new experiences, how it can become addicted to comfortable, familiar patterns.

Every time we think a thought or feel an emotion, the brain sends chemicals throughout the body that reproduce that feeling, often giving us a physical reaction. Through prolonged repetition, self-limiting thoughts and feelings can become habitual—producing mindsets such as unworthiness and attracting negative experiences—yet we can still crave them, even when they don't feel good.

But all this can change—and Joe Dispenza will show you how to do it. Step by step, he'll walk you through the structures of the brain, how your thoughts and emotions become hardwired in the brain, how to recognize the patterns you want to change, and finally, how to create new, positive habits that will not only change your life, but also change you—into the person you've always wanted to be.

About the Author
Joe Dispenza, D.C., studied biochemistry at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He received his Doctor of Chiropractic Degree at Life University in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Dispenza's postgraduate training and continuing education have been in neurology, neurophysiology, and brain function. Dr. Dispenza has authored several scientific articles on the close relationship between brain chemistry, neurophysiology, and biology, and their roles in physical health. Dr. Dispenza has a chiropractic practice in Rainier, Washington.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

But strange that I was not told
That the brain can hold
In a tiny ivory cell
God's heaven or hell.
—Oscar Wilde

I invite you to have a single thought, any thought. Whether your thought was related to a feeling of anger, sadness, inspiration, joy, or even sexual arousal, you changed your body. You changed you. All thoughts, whether they be 'I can't,' 'I can,' 'I'm not good enough,' or 'I love you,' have similar measurable effects. As you sit casually reading this page, not lifting a single finger, bear in mind that your body is undergoing a host of dynamic changes. Triggered by your most recent thought, did you know that suddenly, your pancreas and your adrenal glands are already busy secreting a few new hormones? Like a sudden lightning storm, different areas of your brain just surged with increased electrical current, releasing a mob of neurochemicals that are too numerous to name. Your spleen and your thymus gland sent out a mass e-mail to your immune system to make a few modifications. Several different gastric juices started flowing. Your liver began processing enzymes that were not present moments before. Your heart rate fluctuated, your lungs altered their stroke volume, and blood flow to the capillaries in your hands and feet changed. All from just thinking one thought. You are that powerful.

But how are you capable of performing all of those actions? We can all intellectually understand that the brain can manage and regulate many diverse functions throughout the rest of the body, but how responsible are we for the job our brain is doing as CEO of the body? Whether we like it or not, once a thought happens in the brain, the rest is history. All of the bodily reactions that occur from both our intentional or unintentional thinking unfold behind the scenes of our awareness. When you come right down to it, it is startling to realize how influential and extensive the effects of one or two conscious or unconscious thoughts can be.

For example, is it possible that the seemingly unconscious thoughts that run through our mind daily and repeatedly create a cascade of chemical reactions that produce not only what we feel but also how we feel? Can we accept that the long-term effects of our habitual thinking just might be the cause of how our body moves to a state of imbalance, or what we call disease? Is it likely, moment by moment, that we train our body to be unhealthy by our repeated thoughts and reactions? What if just by thinking, we cause our internal chemistry to be bumped out of normal range so often that the body's self-regulation system eventually redefines these abnormal states as normal, regular states? It's a subtle process, but maybe we just never gave it that much attention until now. My wish is that this book will offer a few suggestions for managing your own internal universe.

Since we are on the subject of attention, now I want you to pay attention, become aware, and listen. Can you hear the hum of the refrigerator? The sound of a car passing by your home? A distant dog barking? How about the resonance of your own heart beating? Just by shifting your attention in those moments, you caused a power surge and voltage flux of electricity in millions of brain cells right inside your own head. By choosing to modify your awareness, you changed your brain. Not only did you change how your brain was working moments before, but you changed how it will work in the next moment, and possibly for the rest of your life.

As you return your attention to these words on this page, you altered blood flow to various parts of your brain. You also set off a cascade of impulses, rerouting and modifying electrical currents to different brain areas. On a microscopic level, a multitude of diverse nerve cells ganged up chemically to 'hold hands' and communicate, in order to establish stronger long-term relationships with each other. Because of your shift in attention, the shimmering three-dimensional web of intricate neurological tissue that is your brain is firing in new combinations and sequences. You did that of your own free will, by changing your focus. You quite literally changed your mind.

As human beings, we have the natural ability to focus our awareness on anything. As we will learn, how and where we place our attention, what we place our attention on, and for how long we place it ultimately defines us on a neurological level. If our awareness is so mobile, why is it so hard to keep our attention on thoughts that might serve us? Right now, as you continue to concentrate and read this page, you might have forgotten about the pain in your back, the disagreement you had with your boss earlier today, and even what gender you are. It is where we place our attention and on what we place our attention that maps the very course of our state of being.

For example, we can, in any given moment, think about a bitter memory from our past that is only tattooed in the intimate folds of our gray matter and, like magic, it comes to life. We also have the option of attending to future anxieties and worries that do not readily exist until they are conjured up by our own mind. But to us, they are real. Our attention brings everything to life and makes real what was previously unnoticed or unreal.

Believe it or not, according to neuroscience, placing our attention on pain in the body makes pain exist, because the circuits in the brain that perceive pain become electrically activated. If we then put our full awareness on something other than pain, the brain circuits that process pain and bodily sensations can be literally turned off—presto, the pain goes away. But when we look to see whether the pain is gone for good, the corresponding brain circuits once again activate, causing us to feel the discomfort return. And if these brain circuits repeatedly fire, the connections between them become stronger. Thus by paying attention to pain on a daily basis, we are wiring ourselves neurologically to develop a more acute awareness of pain perception, because the related brain circuits become more enriched. Your own personal attention has that much of an effect on you. This could be one explanation to how pain, and even memories from our distant past, characterize us. What we repeatedly think about and where we focus our attention is what we neurologically become. Neuroscience finally understands that we can mold and shape the neurological framework of the self by the repeated attention we give to any one thing.

Everything that makes us up, the 'you' and the 'me'—our thoughts, our dreams, our memories, our hopes, our feelings, our secret fantasies, our fears, our skills, our habits, our pains, and our joys—is etched in the living latticework of our 100 billion brain cells. By the time you have read this far in the book, you have changed your brain permanently. If you learned even one bit of information, tiny brain cells have made new connections between them, and who you are is altered. The images that these words created in your mind have left footprints in the vast, endless fields of neurological landscape that is the identity called 'you.' This is because the 'you,' as a sentient being, is immersed and truly exists in the interconnected electrical web of cellular brain tissue. How your nerve cells are specifically arranged, or neurologically wired, based on what you learn, what you remember, what you experience, what you envision for yourself, what you do, and how you think about yourself, defines you as an individual.

You are a work in progress. The organization of brain cells that makes up who you are is constantly in flux. Forget the notion that the brain is static, rigid, and fixed. Instead, brain cells are continually remolded and reorganized by our thoughts and experiences. Neurologically, we are repeatedly changed by the endless stimuli in the world. Instead of imagining nerve cells as solid, inflexible, tiny sticks that are assembled together to make up your brain's gray matter, I invite you to see them as dancing patterns of delicate electric fibers in an animated web, connecting and disconnecting all the time. This is much closer to the truth of who you are.

The fact that you can read and comprehend the words on this page is due to the many interactions you have had throughout your life. Different people taught you, instructed you, and essentially changed your brain microscopically. If you accept this notion that your brain is still changing as you read these pages before you, you can easily see that your parents, teachers, neighbors, friends, family, and culture have contributed to who you are presently. It is our senses, through our diverse experiences, that write the story of who we are on the tablet of our mind. Our mastery is being the fine conductor of this remarkable orchestra of brain and mind; and as we have just seen, we can direct the affairs of mental activity.

Now, let's change your brain a little further. I want to teach you a new skill. Here are the instructions: Look at your right hand. Touch your thumb to your pinky finger, and then touch your thumb to your index finger. Next, touch your thumb to your ring finger, and then touch your thumb to your middle finger. Repeat the process until you can do it automatically. Now do it faster and make your fingers move more rapidly without mistake. Within a few minutes of paying attention, you should be able to master the action.

To learn the finger movements well, you had to rise out of your resting state, from relaxing and reading to a heightened state of conscious awareness. Voluntarily, you perked up your brain a little; you increased your level of awareness by your intentional free will. To succeed in memorizing this skill, you also had to increase your brain's level of energy. You turned up the dimmer switch to the light bulb in your brain that is constantly on, and it got brighter. You became motivated, and your choice to do this made your brain turn on.

Learning and performing the activity required you to amplify your level of awarenes...

Customer Reviews

An answer to many prayers!
I had no trouble whatsoever relating to Dr. Dispenza's descriptions of how the human brain functions. In fact, I found his no-nonsense discussions of the brain extremely refreshing and encouraging, especially in view of the fact that I was so sorely in need of obtaining a practical working model of why large-scale healing and personal change are even possible.

For me, the greatest value of Dr. Dispenza's book is in gaining the practical tools to heal. To that end, what healed Dr. Dispenza's multiple vertebral fractures was his level of consciousness and his ability to think. Without prior knowledge of how to help himself, he more than likely would have gone the conventional route of treatment and ended up as a cripple. And without the Four Pillars of Healing (well-described in the text), the cases of spontaneous remission presented by other people in the book would probably not have occurred. Thus, when all is said and done, the power of thought appears to be at the core of healing.

To make this book more user-friendly for myself, I outlined what were, for me, its key points:

1) Decide who/what you want to be and create an ideal picture of that in your mind.
2) Allow the frontal lobe of your brain to fulfill its functions as your guide; the frontal lobe is so skillful that the only limitation on its ability to construct these models is your own skill at envisioning the ideal of yourself. The frontal lobe allows you to transcend the slow, linear process of evolution and to advance beyond the natural progression of adaptation.
3) Regularly rehearse the new attitudes and behaviors internally and externally, including at bedtime.
4) Break your brain and body's chemical addictions to negative thinking and feelings by stopping automatic negative thinking and feeling and interrupting the flow of repetitive thoughts that occupy most of your waking moments.
5) Address your attitudes and discover what groups of thoughts that are clustered together in habitual sequence (i.e., attitudes) that you have to break free of.
6) Resolve to no longer revisit memories of your past and the associated attitudes that define you as a victim.
7) Stop blaming others for your problems.
8) Deny your familiar internal voice and external voices of other people.
9) Replace negative "priming" with positive priming, such as feeling appreciation and gratitude; mentally rehearsing your new role; taking breaks in routine (such as travel); changing negative perceptions to positive perceptions).
10) Break away from customary routines.
11) Get feedback from others on how you're doing [as the "new person"].
12) Devote every spare minute to moving into the new life.
13) Become so involved in focusing on the present moment and on your intent that you completely lose track of your body, time, and space. Nothing, then, will be real but your thoughts.
14) Seek out instruction to get to the next level.
15) Work with the Four Pillars of Healing.
16) Make the healing/changing process the most important thing in your life.

Since reading Evolve Your Brain, I have come across another book called What To Say When You Talk To Yourself by Shad Helmstetter. This book is in the same vein, but it concentrates on the practical aspects of reprogramming your thoughts and feelings and spends almost no time on related scientific aspects of brain chemistry. (What To Say was written much earlier than Dr. Dispenza's book, but is unequivocally on the same page as the work of Joe Dispenza.)

I highly recommend both books - and note that after several weeks of working with each of them, I am in incredibly different and better spaces than I was.

A different angle
Having purchased Dr Dispenza's DVD "Mastering the Art of Observation" and watched it more than once - and loved it - I was surprised to find that his new book "Evolve Your Brain" is so different in approach - even in philosophy. It is as if biology - and in particular the brain - reigns supreme over all else. This is not the message I received from the DVD.

First of all, this book is a summation of many others' writing on the anatomy and physiology of the brain and the interaction between mind and brain: Candice Pert, Bruce Lipton, Win Wenger, Stanislav Groff, Michael Lesser, Sharon Begley, David Sousa and Michael Gelb to name just a few. And if physiology is to be considered first and foremost, surely the heart-brain interaction needs to be included (as shown by research conducted by the Heartmath Institute and reported in Doc Lew Childre's books.)

Since this information is already available, I had hoped for a more personal application from the author. His account of his recovery from serious spinal injuries is indeed inspiring, but I was very disappointed to find that Dr Dispenza did not share his actual healing process (apart from making a brief reference to some of the physicial modalities he used.) How did he find the courage, for example? Or was this just another reflexive activity of the frontal cortex as he claims happiness is? (I would have thought that courage and happiness are both acts of choice, even of personal will, of which the brain is mediator, not originator.) If you approach your own body like you do the mechanics of your car, with complete objectivity, then familiarity with your neuro-physiology may well get you through such an ordeal. But for those of us who do not think this way, it would help to know what thoughts and beliefs sustained Dr Dispenza, especially in the serious risks he took. I detect an intuitive leap in his making decisions that went entirely against prevailing medical opinion. The rest of the book ignores this "X-factor." Apparently, for Dr Dispenza, even faith can be boiled down to biology.

One of the main points with which I take issue is Dr Dispenza's contention that "without the brain, there is no consciousness." He is entitled to this point of view, but it needs to be pointed out that other authorities of equal standing (perhaps even greater) disagree with him, and would point to their own research on "non-local mind" and that of others who have replicated the results. These authorities include the likes of Professor William Braud and Professor William Tiller, whose separate double-blind experiments in this subject are meticulous - none of the hazy, wishful thinking that Dr Dispenza abhors. I also find his contention of a brain-based reality contradictory, particularly as he has taken advice from a disincarnate called Ramtha. Which is it to be, Dr Dispenza?

It has been said that knowledge is power, and "Evolve Your Brain" certainly provides knowledge, even if it is a replication of other sources. But there are few specifics in this book about what we can DO with that knowledge in our daily life - like Dr Dispenza's practice that was explained in "What the Bleep" - of his setting his intentions for the day on waking in the morning. Now that is something I can use.

I admire other reviewers their apparent ability to translate this book into action, but I find Lynne McTaggart's "The Intention Experiment" (published about the same time) more powerful, as well as easier to apply. McTaggart's book is of everyday practical use, even as it convinces me (with explicit research examples) that I am more than my biology - or my brain.

Best book since Molecules of Emotion on mind/body
I HAVE READ this long-awaited book by Dr. Joe Dispenza and have found it to be practical and inspiring. It puts right back into our own conscious control the unfoldment of our lives and our health. It describes Dr. Joe's journey to discovery of principles which he first applied to his own life and then studied in depth to understand the scientific basis for what he was learning. He applies both spiritual understanding and new discoveries in quantum physics and molecular biology in a very understandable and readable format which can be understood by all -- I give it five stars!