Video transcript

Hi, Madeleine Lowry, MAP method practitioner, I'm here to answer the question: Can the mind heal the body?

An interesting book that I've been reading that talks about this question in great depth is, Mind Over Medicine by Lissa Rankin, MD.

It's a really interesting book that really validates everything that I understand to be true about how mind and body work together and why a mind-body therapy like the MAP Method can be help people regain their health physical health by working with the mind.

In this book--I'll just hit some of the highlights--Lissa Rankin talks about how the mind heals the body and how this has been shown over and over again for 50 years.

In western medicine we call it the placebo effect. Joe Dispenza wrote a whole book about this: You Are The Placebo.

The placebo effect, as I'm sure you've heard, is the effect by which, in a clinical trial when they're trying a particular therapy, whether it's a pharmaceutical, surgery, another kind of therapy, radiation, whatever, where there's a control group and an experimental group and only one of those groups, the experimental group, actually receives the real therapy.

The control group doesn't they get the therapy. They get the sugar pill. They get the sham surgery: we make the incision but we don't actually take anything out of your knee and we sew you up. And over and over again-- this is part of every clinical trial-- we see that in the control group where nothing has been offered therapeutically, except the idea that they might be getting something therapeutic.

Because it's blinded, these studies are blinded, and you don't know which group you're in when you volunteer for it. And 18% to 80% of the control group gets better too--just as "better" as the experimental group. The improvements can be the same!

And this has always been regarded as a problem. It's a problem because darn it's hard to have a new drug approved because it's hard to show that its effectiveness is higher than the placebo!

Now this should not be regarded as a problem. Dr. Bernie Siegel talks about this in his books. This is evidence that the mind can create healing on its own. Just the idea that you might be given something that can cure your [name your diagnosis] is enough to produce a healing effect in the body that can be objectively measured.

In these clinical trials they are measuring, they're taking all the baseline information, and then they're checking people again after the study period is over and so these effects are definitely seen in the control group every time.

What is causing the healing? It's the mind. It is, you could say, the belief that we are being taken care of, that we are being offered a solution, that we will be healthy again.

So, in order to invoke your own placebo effect,  what practices could you take on? I would like to suggest that MAP Method sessions are one of those possible modalities that you could use.

In a MAP method session we are working with the mind. We are working with beliefs. We are replacing beliefs that are no longer serving you like: "This chronic illness is going to kill me," "I'm going to be at this poor level of health forever," "I'm never going to get better," "Nothing is going to be able to help me."

If you have any of these negative beliefs active in your mind then the MAP method is just a perfect way for retraining the brain to have positive beliefs instead, and these can start to put you on a path towards health.

Lissa Rankin also talks about factors for supporting health. She talks about how physical health is built on a foundation that includes many things including emotional health, mental health, relationship health. How good are your relationships? How stressful are they? How about work? How stressful or not stressful? Finances? Your sense of your purpose in life? All of these things and more add up to a state of physical health in the body.

By working on these various topics and changing your perspective on them, you're not always able to change all of these things in your life, but you can change your emotional response to them.

So, again by working with the mind we see that we can change the level of physical health that's available to us because changing the mind, the mindsets, the beliefs, the habitual negative thoughts, the emotional responses that put us in the stress response--all of this is keeping our health in this degraded situation.

When we can change all of that then we open up a space for optimal health. We can be in that healing mode, the parasympathetic mode of the autonomic nervous system, more often and this allows all the healing faculties of the body to come back online and create a state of health.

If you haven't before, I would recommend giving the MAP Method a try. I think it is a wonderful way--a pleasant way even-- of working with the mind and retraining it for optimal health.

How long does it take? It takes about three sessions to start seeing changes on an emotional and behavioral level. It takes four to six sessions to start to see changes on a physical level. Physical symptoms start to abate, not that you're done in six sessions, but somewhere in that four to six session place, typically, my clients are starting to see that symptoms are improving.

It's very encouraging for them. They start to believe: Okay I may not be done yet, but this is definitely working for me. This is moving me in the right direction, so this is what I need to continue to engage with until I feel like I've achieved my goal.

I encourage you to give it a try--neural retraining--any method of neural retaining is a very positive complementary approach to anything else that you are trying including traditional western medicine.

Thanks for listening.

Learn More

• See the videos about the science behind the Method, QEEG brain studies, and a demonstration MAP session.
• Watch the Frequently Asked Questions videos about MAP.
• Learn more about basic versus advanced methods of neural retraining.
• Listen to client stories about the MAP Method on our podcast.