Thread: Placebo: an effective guide

No responses? I would appreciate "hey this worked" or "this failed" or even "hey mofo get off this website". Nothing?

Hello i find this very interesting. So what your saying is you can convince yourself that there is no pain or something? Basically inducing feelings with will power?

That is pretty amazing that you are able to fool yourself like that. I've had some experience with this when it comes to pain.

I don't think placebo is the right word for it.

Quite interesting however true placebo only works if you "know" that it isnt placebo eg treating hypochondriacs (a patient with imaginary symptoms and ailments) and they give them placebo medicine and the patient gets better.

But i do like that you dropped the matrix into this because i believe we do live in a matrix of sort and by knowing what you see isnt real, its your brain that makes it real eg your senses are the only link to the outside world but what interprets them = your brain, so reality is all in your head. So by knowing that 'there is no spoon' there is only the energy present that we perceive as a spoon.

Also the thing making the water appear hotter is just you aclimatising to that temperature, however quite a neat trick that fools your brain and gives you a glimpse of how we are programmed is:

Get 3 containers of water, 1 filled with moderately hot water (not hot enough to burn you) 1 cold water (yet again not too cold to cause harm) and 1 room temperature.

Then put 1 hand in hot water container and the other in the cold keep them there for 2 or 3 minutes, then put both hands in the room temperature water.

and you'll be getting mixed signals, the hand that was in the hot temp water will tell you that the water is cold, and the hand that was in the cold water will tell you the water is hot.

Cant quite remember why something to do with your nerves and by aclimatising them to the temp it reduces or increases the strength of the stimulus that they require for them to send the signal to your brain.

I tried this out a few times today, and it actually seemed to work pretty well.

The first time I was waiting for class to begin, and I started feeling sick to my stomach. I remembered this tutorial, so I decided that it would be a good time to try it out. I pictured that the discomfort was a storm, and I imagined it dissapating and becoming a fair day. In moments I felt much better.

Like RB said, Placebo doesn't really seem to be the right word for it. I'm not really sure what you would call it though.

This thread reminds me of the Buddha Boy in Nepal. What ever happened to him?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...09055767132866

We have a lot more control over our bodily functions than we normally chose to exert.

Very interesting. So im assuming it is obviously possible to achieve this through much practice. I never really knew much about it before, but since i now know i will be sure to try it out next time an occasion occurs.

It doesnt even take a lot of practice to get it done the first time, but of course practice makes it easier.

This wouldn't work well for me, because I use the focus method where I have to see progress to work well. Anywyas, I have heard that simply believing you'll have a lucid dream will make you have one. Falls in line with what I've been saying. Thanks for the tip, Magical Mike!

Conscious induction of the subconscious effects of a placebo? Sounds useful, I should try it some time

This is a great topic! I am glad you posted this, I have actually been using the "Matrix" style (as you call it) to handle serious pain for the past year or two. Now, thanks to you, I can try out some (hopefully) more effective methods and things to use it for! I will try the other methods out and post here if it works better than my usual.

It all just comes down to being able to convince your mind of what you want. I have succeeded with making pain go away, regulating body temperature. But i have yet to make cold water hot and induce taste (that seems really hard)

The problem is that you've already convinced yourself that it's going to be really hard. Out of curiosity, what method do you use?

A note for everybody who uses mostly the focus method: It is very hard to get instant result. A good example would be getting hit by something. Say you drop something and you see it's about to land on your foot. It's very hard to steel yourself against feeling it hit, but you can make the pain go away after a few seconds of feeling it (if you're good at the process).

Originally Posted by Chewnie91

It all just comes down to being able to convince your mind of what you want. I have succeeded with making pain go away, regulating body temperature. But i have yet to make cold water hot and induce taste (that seems really hard)

By the way, don't be afraid to try new things. Another practical application I recently remember ( I used to practice it ). You can make your visual perception of time slow down. For instance, when riding in a car, you can slow the vision down just enough to take in more detail. Say there's a guy on the side of the road that you think you know. You would focus on him enough to notice that he's wearing his trademark AC/DC shirt and tan boots. Now, this is also a natural ability of the eye. Another thing that augments it is adrenaline. It has been recorded at events such as bungee jumping. In it, they use a clock that goes by hundredths of a second. Almost everybody who tried said that when they actually did the jump, it was much easier to read each individual number that passed by. It's a survival mechanism, so you can react quicker when you have adrenaline pumping. That brings me to another use, which is inducing an adrenaline rush. You can do this by feeling scared, or playing on your natural fears. For instance, if you are claustrophobic and are in a subway filled with people, you could use this to gain an adrenaline rush. I'm not sure why you would want to do this. Maybe you are anticipating getting into a fight. It can also work the other way. You can use your mind to very easily get over your fears and calm the adrenaline. A note on inducing adrenaline though, is that it often takes people over. They stop thinking and start acting purely on emotion. This is an important thing to learn to control, or it could have some serious consequences. It is also very hard to calm down from a fear or anger induced adrenaline rush, though the process can be sped up.

Originally Posted by Jozeh

Quite interesting however true placebo only works if you "know" that it isnt placebo eg treating hypochondriacs (a patient with imaginary symptoms and ailments) and they give them placebo medicine and the patient gets better.

But i do like that you dropped the matrix into this because i believe we do live in a matrix of sort and by knowing what you see isnt real, its your brain that makes it real eg your senses are the only link to the outside world but what interprets them = your brain, so reality is all in your head. So by knowing that 'there is no spoon' there is only the energy present that we perceive as a spoon.

Also the thing making the water appear hotter is just you aclimatising to that temperature, however quite a neat trick that fools your brain and gives you a glimpse of how we are programmed is:

Get 3 containers of water, 1 filled with moderately hot water (not hot enough to burn you) 1 cold water (yet again not too cold to cause harm) and 1 room temperature.

Then put 1 hand in hot water container and the other in the cold keep them there for 2 or 3 minutes, then put both hands in the room temperature water.

and you'll be getting mixed signals, the hand that was in the hot temp water will tell you that the water is cold, and the hand that was in the cold water will tell you the water is hot.

Cant quite remember why something to do with your nerves and by aclimatising them to the temp it reduces or increases the strength of the stimulus that they require for them to send the signal to your brain.

Sorry for the triple post, it's just the easiest way to do quotes. Anyways, it's true that it can be your body acclimating. However, you can also use your mind and cut to the nerves, making them deliver the message that the water is warm instead of cold. An easier way to do this, for example with a cold shower, is to make it colder and focus on it being warm, and then turn it up to the absolute highest you can get it to.

I use the focus method. It works pretty well for me

Something else to note; this works both ways. That's why we have so many hypocondriachs (sp?). The easiest way for me to explain this would be uaing dreams. For instance, I tried to summon something once. I turned around and saw it for about half a second before waking up. The next ld I had, I tried to summon it again. The last instance was always in the back of my mind, and I woke up again when I saw it. This would be closer to actual plaebo than what I described earlier, but still not the right word.

me and my buddy use this method to help with our anxiety, we both have medicin bottles which we dont use any more and we fill them up with tic-tacs and try and use a placebo type affect in beliving when we take those pills we will feel calmer.

That's a good use for it. Another good way is (if he's a good buddy of yours), find his pills and replace them with tic tacs or sugar pills. Maybe even dump out the insides and fill them with something tasteless (like fiber substance).

Anxiety cancels this out for me. I can numb myself to pain almost effortlessly, but the second I get a little bit scared (especially of the painful thing) the pain comes back in force. Any help?

Not much else you can do except try to control the anxiety and cancel it out. If the mind can control pain it can control the thought process. It just takes practice

It's the fear. Along with fear comes doubt ( doubt that something will proyect you, etc.) The way to get by this is to put yourself in the situation over and over until you're comfortable with it. If this isn't possible, just try to get used to increasing amounts of pain. Obviously use common sense and don't do something like cutting yourself for purposes such as these.

Originally Posted by Chewnie91

Not much else you can do except try to control the anxiety and cancel it out. If the mind can control pain it can control the thought process. It just takes practice

Look who's suddenly become an expert!

All right, after some looking around, it seems that I may have found a better word for this: auto suggestion. It's a word I've heard many times, but I didn't make the connection until now. Also, I've learned of some new uses for placebo. They come from a great (albeit more spiritual than I like) book that my friend loaned me, called "your sixth sense". It has a great section in there on willpower and the power of the mind. There are a couple "placebos" that people do, especially when they have grave illnesses. One of the most common is for cancer. They imagine their white blood cells as knights in bright armor, and the cancer as knights in black armor. They then imagine the white knights attacking the black knights, without any of them dying. It supposedly helps, but there's not a whole lot of evidence to back it up. Oh well. If we needed evidence, we wouldn't be on this forum.

Well, it's been a while since I posted, but I wanted to let everybody know I'm turning this into a tutorial. I'm already working with Ninja9578 to get it published. Hazel, if you don't mind, I'm going to use your testimonial to illustrate a point, along with -InsaneKid-. If anybody has any suggestions, let me know before I get a final draft, and I can work with you to see if it's worth adding. Of course, you'll get full credit for whatever you do to help with it.