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Piano5
29 Posts |
 Posted - 08/04/2009 : 11:54:53
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Hi everyone. My TMS symptoms got much better when I saw some lectures of Joe Dispenza, a chiropractor who was in a terrible bike accident and healed himself completely in 9 weeks by focusing his thoughts on his back. He has written a book (that I am half-way through) and helped produce "What the bleep do we know?" A film about consciousness and quantum physics. When I realized how powerful the human brain is, it was a reassurance that it could create the physical pain I had been feeling from TMS.
His book, "Evolve Your Brain: the Science of Changing Your Mind" is very interesting, and is a layperson's guide to the brain and mind. Dispenza's lectures and books have so far been enlightening. He describes how we hardwire our lives in our brains. By breaking certain thoughts and habits, we can become a new person. His biggest assertion is that the brain does not know the difference between itself and the environment. He cites a study in which people sat down at a piano and played scales and chords for a few hours a day for 2 weeks. Another group sat down and MENTALLY rehearsed the same scales and chords, without ever touching the piano. Functional brain scans showed the same amount of activity in the brain between the two groups!
BUT... I just found out that the Ramtha School of Enlightment to which he belonged for 17 years is founded upon some psuedo-psycho-spirit channeler named JZ Knight. She claims that Ramtha is a 35,000 year old Spirit Warrior from Atlantis who appeared to her to tell her about life, consciousness, and a bunch of other hooey. Oh, she alone can channel him, and fought in court when another woman tried to encroach on her territory. What a coincidence! Here's more info: http://skepdic.com/ramtha.html
Anyways, I'm in a big tizzy right now over the credibility of this fellow Joe Dispenza. His book does not preach the teachings of Ramtha, and it is very scientific. I'm just not sure if I can trust a guy who spent 17 years believing some quack with plastic surgery and an incredibly hard-to-believe story.
What do you guys think? It's hard for me to bring myself to accept this guy's book now that I know he has some ties with this JZ Knight housewife-turned-cultist. Is anyone familiar with Dispenza?
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Edited by - Piano5 on 08/04/2009 21:18:22 |
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fibri
Belgium
56 Posts |
Posted - 08/05/2009 : 02:20:37
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Piano5, I can really sympathise with you here. How do you separate "good medicine" from some of the nonsense that people fall for?
I've used alternative treatments for years, and while there are many great people working with alternative treatments, there are some crackpots too.
I find it hard to get really upset with them though, because in my experience these people are genuinely looking for solutions that will help them and other people. They have become increasingly open-minded because the formal institutions have let them down.
Isn't that why all of us here found Sarno? Many people think that the mindbody connection is crackpot to start with, and all this "mind-over-body" stuff is sheer quackery. We know it's not.
It is hard to draw the line. Many people are reassured by Sarno because of his sound medical credentials. Actually, that doesn't weigh with me at all because people with very sound medical credentials have "mis-treated" me for over 30 years.
The alternative med "crackpots" at least listened to me, tried to help me, and enveloped me in a warm cloud of goodwill. That alone is a great source of comfort, not to be denied. Always, the alternative stuff worked way better than the standard stuff. (If alternative treatment is all about the placebo effect of believing in it, how come standard medicine has such a high fail rate, when most of us trust that even more?)
Credibility is a tough nut to crack, but I think we have to see that people have different "compartments" in their approaches and different influences in their lives. I don't know Dispenza (never heard of him before) but maybe his years with Ramtha brought him some good things that he now brings to his practice, like empathy, open-mindedness etc.
And to be fair, since I am an atheist I am used to ignoring people's "religious" ideas. After all, many people believe that 2000 years ago some woman had a virgin birth and her son was the son of god who died and was resurrected... I really don't mean to offend anyone with that, just to show that any beliefs can sound extremely unlikely if you don't share them.
At the end of the day, all we can do is trust our own judgement. If dispenza's book works for you, maybe you can ignore his "credentials." After all, credentials don't mean much really. |
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Piano5
29 Posts |
Posted - 08/05/2009 : 08:37:23
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Credibility is a tough nut to crack. I read somewhere: "Would you take financial advice from a guy living in a dumpster?" Or something along those lines. In that manner, it makes a lot of sense to listen to an authority on a subject, but then that leads to the question of science vs. speculation. Luckily, Sarno is a respected doctor who has the credentials and insight to see that the medical system is broken.
I agree that alternative medicine is an option for some, and that the openness, care, and attention is extremely valuable.
My biggest problem with this whole thing was learning what Ramtha actually is. It's a cult. This lady JZ Knight all of a sudden channels a 35,000 year old warrior from Atlantis and writes books, sells tapes, gets a fake accent, and has enough money for plastic surgery.
Just knowing that Dispenza, whose research on the brain was fascinating to me, enrolled in her "school of enlightenment" is a real bummer. I dunno. I hope someone has heard of Dispenza and can attest to some helpful insight he provided in spite of belonging to a school of thought that preaches the words of a 35,000 year old spirit warrior. |
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fibri
Belgium
56 Posts |
Posted - 08/05/2009 : 12:00:31
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| Yeah, I see what you mean. The Ramtha thing is so completely nutty it is hard to take anyone seriously who had signed up for it, no matter how tolerant you try to be :-) |
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Nor
152 Posts |
Posted - 08/05/2009 : 19:17:38
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| For what its worth, a TMS (Sarno-trained) therapist I went to recommended that movie (What the Bleep). He was excellent and I wouldn't say anything he recommended was "cultist". I actually never saw the movie but perhaps it one of those "extract the good out of it" situations. Even crazy cultist ideas may have positive aspects to them. Nor |
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alexis
USA
596 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2009 : 07:01:46
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quote:
Originally posted by Piano5
Anyways, I'm in a big tizzy right now over the credibility of this fellow Joe Dispenza. His book does not preach the teachings of Ramtha, and it is very scientific. I'm just not sure if I can trust a guy who spent 17 years believing some quack with plastic surgery and an incredibly hard-to-believe story.
I believe there's good evidence Sarno is a Christian (has come up on this board before). Not sure the variant, but usually that involves incarnation of god on earth, historical beliefs contrary to science, and ideas about "free will" in conflict with both modern psychology and physics (I think fibri is touching on the same line of thought here...) People aren't very rational, but it doesn't mean they can't have a good relatively scientific understanding in one particular area of expertise.
That said, I haven't read this guy and he may well be a crackpot. I just wouldn't write off anyone's ideas as worthless based on their religious beliefs alone...or your left with a pretty short list of readable research. Even most atheists boil down to a pretty simple naive realism once you crack the lid off. If you rule out every author with a few unscientific beliefs, my bet is your bookshelves will be empty. |
Edited by - alexis on 08/06/2009 07:03:35 |
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Piano5
29 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2009 : 10:33:31
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I agree. I'm not religious, or an atheist, and I'm tolerant of people's religious views. However, I'd be lying if I didn't think it was a little silly to devote your life and focus your values on the teachings of invisible people/spirits/etc.
George Carlin has an incredibly insightful and funny bit about the 10 commandments. Check it out.
Back to your comment, Alexis. It's very fair to say that letting religion get in the way of accepting people's ideas will limit a lot of channels from reaching you. That's not to say, however, that it's not a consideration for me. I find it interesting that Sarno may practice Christianity in some form, whether that's a once-per-year trip to church on Easter, or more frequent than that.
While reading someone's book, it's hard for me not to think: "Hmmm, this passage about creating your own reality through your consciousness... Is that sound scientific evidence, or shavings from the teachings of a 35,000 spirit warrior from Atlantis?"
People are always looking for answers, and I suppose it's not fair to separate this Dispenza guy's involvement with RSE from any other religion, but I have to admit that deep down it bothers me.
After all, this JZ Knight character is pretty much the pioneer of "New Age" religions, cults, spirit channeling, etc. PS their organization is for-profit. Yikes. |
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alexis
USA
596 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2009 : 11:46:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Piano5
It's very fair to say that letting religion get in the way of accepting people's ideas will limit a lot of channels from reaching you. That's not to say, however, that it's not a consideration for me. I find it interesting that Sarno may practice Christianity in some form, whether that's a once-per-year trip to church on Easter, or more frequent than that.
Yeah, it would be a consideration for me too, but less so if I'd already read and evaluated the work to some extent. I'd be less likely to pick up his books knowing this before hand, though, just because there's limited time in life and a lot out there too read. Right or wrong, I'd ask myself "Does this guy really have what it takes to tell rational from irrational and good science from bad?" And then of course there's the "Do I really want to tell anyone I read a book by this guy?" aspect, which can't be ignored as a real issue.
But honestly, I would have more issues with his chiropractor background than the religion thing...if only because the former tries to claim a scientific background, while the latter does not.
I guess I consider pretty much all people mostly irrational and unscientific. I remember a good friend who was a fairly rational physicist and talked about "dark forces" in society. Yet he was good at physics. And I know people who are totally scientific social scientists and yet cite physics theories that sound more like religion. Maybe I'm cynical but if I find someone with one little corner of rational sanity I'm pretty excited. And, yep, I include myself in this low evaluation of human rationality. :)
I did notice that for profit thing when I looked up the organization. I guess their calling it an education center -- so it would be a for profit deal like ITT. (For anyone outside the US -- ITT is a for-profit post-secondary school (aka business), as opposed to our dominant private colleges that are non-profit organizations with legal status similar to museums.)
Are there any other related authors with more credible backgrounds -- perhaps cited in the book you read? Might be interesting to have a look at their stuff. To be honest, Sarno wasn't really enough for me on psychosomatic illness. I read his stuff, but a physician writing psychology was a bit non-credible and kind of weak on some issues. And the whole Freudian psychology is a bit outdated. So while I started with Sarno I moved on to more modern ideas of the subconscious/unconscious and a number of other related theories. Yet I still credit Sarno as the launching point for my investigations. Just wondering if this might be a similar scenario. |
Edited by - alexis on 08/06/2009 12:00:07 |
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Piano5
29 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2009 : 12:42:52
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Well, that's the thing. Dispenza was my only real resource outside of Sarno on the matter of mindbody disorders.
I'd be interested to know what books you read outside of Sarno, and explain your thoughts on Freud being outdated. I'm not very knowledgeable in the field of psychology, which is why Dispenza's book was good; it was a book about the brain for the layman.
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alexis
USA
596 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2009 : 14:22:08
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One topic that gives some good insight into modern theories of the unconscious is blind-sight, but there's also a lot of work on neurobiology of the unconscious. Here's a nice summary:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/rediscovery.htm
And the kind of research being done on blindsight and related phenomena:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16714319
Scholarpedia summary:
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Blindsight
One interesting side topic is Alexathymia. I posted some links here early on but don't have them handy right now. One of the areas researched here is whether physical symptoms arise out of a deficit in the ability of a person to recognize the normal physical aspects of emotion -- leading to a confusion of something as simple as butterflies in the stomach with illness. |
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Piano5
29 Posts |
Posted - 08/07/2009 : 09:39:45
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Thanks for those resources. I never gave a SECOND of thought to how my emotions affected my body before I started reading Sarno.
One day I was driving, someone didn't check their blindspot and swerved into my lane. Within 1 second, I slammed on the break, and my body went flush and prickly in the stress response. I thought to myself; man, if my brain can do that in one second, it sure makes sense that it can reduce blood flow to my extremities whenever it wants.
It's strange though when I'm just hanging around with my friends and I'll get a strange symptom that I know is TMS. Whether it's feeling hot and flush all of a sudden, or a twinge of pain in my arms, it's hard to pinpoint what's going on emotionally to provoke the symptom. Anyways, I guess that's all part of the trek. |
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Neuroscientist Joe Dispenza: scholar or cultist?
