Mental Rehearsal

Dr Dispenzas quote is one of the best descriptions I have heard to explain the power of the mind. It is succinct and to the point and leaves you knowing exactly what you need to do to change your situation. It sets our intent toward your goal.

The key is a technique called mental rehearsal, where you imagine a desired outcome in such a way that you make your inner thoughts more real than your outer environment. If you combine a clear intention of the new future you want with an elevated emotion (such as joy and gratitude), you can give your body a taste of this future experience in the present moment.
Source – Dr Joe Dispenza Article

In a recent article which Dr Dispenza wrote, to promoted his new book, he shared some examples of how people have harnessed the technique of mental rehearsal.

• A man who died not long after hearing he had incurable cancer, even though his autopsy revealed he’d been misdiagnosed
• A woman whose long-term depression lifted so dramatically during an antidepressant drug trial that she was sure she was receiving the active drug, only to find she was part of the placebo group
• A handful of veterans severely hobbled by osteoarthritis who regained pain-free mobility after a surgeon performed sham surgery — making small incisions in their knees and then sewing them back up without doing anything else.

However it is not in medicine that mental rehearsal is most prevalent, but sport. Visualisation is key to any performance. Experiencing as much as we can in our mind prior to the actual event stops athletes becoming overcome by their senses, which can cause fear or panic to affect their performance levels. The example of a race shows that the runner who has completed the race so many times in their mind finds the ‘big moment’ of the actual physical race to be like second nature and normal.

Dr Dizpensa explains the above process as a cycle: Thinking the same thoughts, that lead to the same choices, which follow on to the same behaviours, that in turn make the same experiences, which produce the same emotions, which in turn drive the same thoughts. So once in a new situation for real you will have repeated the cycle in your mind so much that your body in the real situation will feel it as normal and not a threat. Which is why the Buddha stated that the mind is everything.

One technique I discovered this week, which to quote Dr Dispenza gives you a ‘new future you want with an elevated emotion’, is called the 6 Phase Guided Meditation by Vishen Lakhiani.

If you would like hear more from Vishen about this technique for mental rehearsal checkout his speech at Wisdom 2.0. Vishen shares how he condensed indepth meditations into this one 15 minute meditation. I tried it and loved it! Please comment below to let me know how you found it.

Mental Rehearsal can be used for so many areas of our life, especially for recovery from an illness, to help control pain or as mentioned earlier to improve our performance. This technique can give us the edge and the direction our body needs for us to achieve our goal.

There are so many techniques for you to use to make Mental Rehearsal work for you. Along with so many reasons as to why you too can succeed by using it, then I ask you. Why not give it a go? I say this with more conviction today because I have just finished writing my book sharing many examples of techniques and research in to pain management and recovery. If you would like to be one of the first people to own a copy (It is currently with the proof reader) please contact me.

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