LONGECITY

I have recently bought a number of books on the mind body connection. I have become interested in the cases where a claim has been made that by repeatedly imagining the healing of a damaged part of the body, actual healing occurs.

I am naturally very cautious (perhaps overly cautious) with such claims and find the subject littered with what I consider to be dubious associations and certainty quite a few leaps of faith in terms of what is considered evidence.

However, i think the right thing to do is to take it seriously. The placebo effect and demonstrations of how people have been able to raise body temperature/lower heart rate shows it could be possible.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with healing through visualising?

It is just nonsense, a poor metaphor for what you are actually supposed to do because there are no real words to describe how exactly it works. You can have some limited control over the lower responses of your nervous system, e.g. tell it that it should deal with infection or that it should rather digest and rest than be alert and fight. This is all you can do, with a certain kind of intelligence to it instead of just blind physical responses (i.e. you know you caught the flu but your immune system is not really triggered yet you could possibly speed it up by increasing sensitivity - with either external tools or power of will so to speak). You can train this by simply trial and error over the decades. It is just like you can learn to move your hands or wiggle individual toes given enough practice, just that you never really get the practice with this and no unambigious simple feedback about what happens. But it is not like your body has the ability to e.g. heal specifically a cut on your arm and nothing else, or to fight cancer cells specifically unless by freak chance they somehow fit into the scheme that your immune system or whatever physical inevitability is naturally able to respond to. All you have is your immune system and regenerative factors and those work pretty well by themselves usually, unless we fight against their normal operation (e.g. by ignorantly pushing ourselves to go to work instead of staying in bed - which is really the main culprit here who is making you more sick: your consciousness).

 

Also there are psychological tricks so to speak, opposed to directly taking influence. E.g. being emotionally exited simply releases noradrenaline and being asleep or (for those who can) experiencing ASMR increases vasodilation and decreases metabolism. This is how you could additionally control your heart rate. Similarly perhaps if you seriously imagine yourself to be in a filthy disgusting environment it might increase immune response (or you actually do something you perceive as dirty and disease promoting, but which actually is not, like licking the toilet seat)? I can't confirm this but I suppose whatever caused us evolutionarily to experience disgust could very well share this causal connection. I can assure you that no more complicated interactions between "body and mind" exist than this. We are simply not evolved enough and intelligence is a bit too recent for some functionality that would allow "imagine body part healing -> body part heals". Just not how it works.

Edited by Aolministrator, 11 November 2014 - 11:16 AM.

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It is just nonsense, a poor metaphor for what you are actually supposed to do because there are no real words to describe how exactly it works. You can have some limited control over the lower responses of your nervous system, e.g. tell it that it should deal with infection or that it should rather digest and rest than be alert and fight. This is all you can do, with a certain kind of intelligence to it instead of just blind physical responses (i.e. you know you caught the flu but your immune system is not really triggered yet you could possibly speed it up by increasing sensitivity - with either external tools or power of will so to speak). You can train this by simply trial and error over the decades. It is just like you can learn to move your hands or wiggle individual toes given enough practice, just that you never really get the practice with this and no unambigious simple feedback about what happens. But it is not like your body has the ability to e.g. heal specifically a cut on your arm and nothing else, or to fight cancer cells specifically unless by freak chance they somehow fit into the scheme that your immune system or whatever physical inevitability is naturally able to respond to. All you have is your immune system and regenerative factors and those work pretty well by themselves usually, unless we fight against their normal operation (e.g. by ignorantly pushing ourselves to go to work instead of staying in bed - which is really the main culprit here who is making you more sick: your consciousness).

Also there are psychological tricks so to speak, opposed to directly taking influence. E.g. being emotionally exited simply releases noradrenaline and being asleep or (for those who can) experiencing ASMR increases vasodilation and decreases metabolism. This is how you could additionally control your heart rate. Similarly perhaps if you seriously imagine yourself to be in a filthy disgusting environment it might increase immune response (or you actually do something you perceive as dirty and disease promoting, but which actually is not, like licking the toilet seat)? I can't confirm this but I suppose whatever caused us evolutionarily to experience disgust could very well share this causal connection. I can assure you that no more complicated interactions between "body and mind" exist than this. We are simply not evolved enough and intelligence is a bit too recent for some functionality that would allow "imagine body part healing -> body part heals". Just not how it works.

Thanks for this. with all respect to your opinion I'll be honest I am still in two minds. I think visualisation works for raising body temperature and increasing muscles. There are a few case examples in the books which are intriguing but I cannot be sure they did nothing else. There seems to be a cause and effect link but maybe I am not as insightful as you in this case so I'll give it a go anyway :-p

If you want to know first hand knowledge with explanations from an expert you should read about Wim Hof (the iceman guy who can control his body temperature and holds several world records for related tasks). I have not read his book but he legitimately and considerably can do it and offers this information.

Hi Aolministrator,

I saw a documentary a few days ago and he was taking about healing all disease with the mind.

http://www.highexist...-immune-system/

I don't know if what he says is possible. But I think there are several proofs of principles for visualisation as mentioned. It's a question of to how many systems in the body does this capability extend. Some of the case studies I have examined apparently have an immediate cause and effect but many could be attributed to relieved stress or just a remission etc from another cause. I have seen how the body has beneficial capabilities it doesn't use before. Anyway, I'll give it a go, I better start believing!!

I should add I know this sounds crazy but if there is evidence then it's worth thinking about

Wim Hof is certainly real but I think he just doesn't really comprehend what he is doing, it is somewhat like a savant ability. I share a fair amount of the same kind of body and mind introspective he seems to have and others don't. But I wouldn't really go as far and train to improve it every day (like he did many years, decades even iirc). Run in the cold shirtless and such until I no longer felt cold, that's not worth it imho but how else would you learn this as much?

 

I skimmed the article where he claims to be able to cure cancer ... I have watched his talk on TED and a bit of his youtube stuff and to me it is obvious that he clearly is able to do what he does like he describes it, but at certain ends he overestimates his powers and he certainly cannot scientifically comprehend where the physical inevitabilities of the body lie and what really happens to him on a lower biological level.

Edited by Aolministrator, 11 November 2014 - 10:34 PM.

Ah ok sounds like you have had a bit of experience with this, just the sort of set of experiences I was looking to find on here.

I think sometimes society needs someone of the mentality of wim hof in order to blindly push the boundaries!

Thanks for the info, I will report back any experience i have here.

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http://www.healingte...ualisation.html

Check this out - if this story is true then it seems good evidence to me