Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: making new synaptic connections, hardwired neural networks, chemical continuity, Law of Repetition, New York, Law of Association (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Take Your First Step Toward True Evolution

Ever wonder why you repeat the same negative thoughts in your head? Why you keep coming back for more from hurtful family members, friends, or significant others? Why you keep falling into the same detrimental habits or limiting attitudes--even when you know that they are going to make you feel bad?

Dr. Joe Dispenza has spent decades studying the human mind--how it works, how it stores information, and why it perpetuates the same behavioral patterns over and over. In the acclaimed film What the Bleep Do We Know!? he began to explain how the brain evolves--by learning new skills, developing the ability to concentrate in the midst of chaos, and even healing the body and the psyche.

Evolve Your Brain presents this information in depth, while helping you take control of your mind, explaining how thoughts can create chemical reactions that keep you addicted to patterns and feelings--including ones that make you unhappy. And when you know how these bad habits are created, it's possible to not only break these patterns, but also reprogram and evolve your brain, so that new, positive, and beneficial habits can take over.

This is something you can start to do right now. You and only you have the power to change your mind and evolve your brain for a better life--for good.

From the Inside Flap

It took one moment to change Joe Dispenza's life forever.

A car sent him toppling off his bike, causing multiple fractures to his vertabrae. Several doctors said his only hope of walking again was to fuse some of the vertebrae in an operation that would leave him with a lifetime of pain and limited mobility.

But as a chiropractor, Dispenza knew enough about spinal health and his own post-accident physical state to take a remarkable risk: he refused the operation and, along with a careful therapeutic program, literally thought his way to healing. Nine months later, he was able to walk and function as well as he had before the accident, and he credits a large amount of that recovery to the power of his own mind.

This incredible experience spurred Joe on to learn about this most important tool that we all possess—the brain—and he passes that potent knowledge on to you. He explores how the brain learns, how it processes information, and, when it isn't stimulated enough by new experiences, how it can become addicted to comfortable, familiar patterns.

Every time we think a thought or feel an emotion, the brain sends chemicals throughout the body that reproduce that feeling, often giving us a physical reaction. Through prolonged repetition, self-limiting thoughts and feelings can become habitual—producing mindsets such as unworthiness and attracting negative experiences—yet we can still crave them, even when they don't feel good.

But all this can change—and Joe Dispenza will show you how to do it. Step by step, he'll walk you through the structures of the brain, how your thoughts and emotions become hardwired in the brain, how to recognize the patterns you want to change, and finally, how to create new, positive habits that will not only change your life, but also change you—into the person you've always wanted to be.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 508 pages
• Publisher: HCI; illustrated edition edition (January 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 075730480X
• ISBN-13: 978-0757304804
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #85,780 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An answer to many prayers!, May 21, 2007

By	Nina Clock (NE Georgia) - See all my reviews

I had no trouble whatsoever relating to Dr. Dispenza's descriptions of how the human brain functions. In fact, I found his no-nonsense discussions of the brain extremely refreshing and encouraging, especially in view of the fact that I was so sorely in need of obtaining a practical working model of why large-scale healing and personal change are even possible.

For me, the greatest value of Dr. Dispenza's book is in gaining the practical tools to heal. To that end, what healed Dr. Dispenza's multiple vertebral fractures was his level of consciousness and his ability to think. Without prior knowledge of how to help himself, he more than likely would have gone the conventional route of treatment and ended up as a cripple. And without the Four Pillars of Healing (well-described in the text), the cases of spontaneous remission presented by other people in the book would probably not have occurred. Thus, when all is said and done, the power of thought appears to be at the core of healing.

To make this book more user-friendly for myself, I outlined what were, for me, its key points:

1) Decide who/what you want to be and create an ideal picture of that in your mind.
2) Allow the frontal lobe of your brain to fulfill its functions as your guide; the frontal lobe is so skillful that the only limitation on its ability to construct these models is your own skill at envisioning the ideal of yourself. The frontal lobe allows you to transcend the slow, linear process of evolution and to advance beyond the natural progression of adaptation.
3) Regularly rehearse the new attitudes and behaviors internally and externally, including at bedtime.
4) Break your brain and body's chemical addictions to negative thinking and feelings by stopping automatic negative thinking and feeling and interrupting the flow of repetitive thoughts that occupy most of your waking moments.
5) Address your attitudes and discover what groups of thoughts that are clustered together in habitual sequence (i.e., attitudes) that you have to break free of.
6) Resolve to no longer revisit memories of your past and the associated attitudes that define you as a victim.
7) Stop blaming others for your problems.
8) Deny your familiar internal voice and external voices of other people.
9) Replace negative "priming" with positive priming, such as feeling appreciation and gratitude; mentally rehearsing your new role; taking breaks in routine (such as travel); changing negative perceptions to positive perceptions).
10) Break away from customary routines.
11) Get feedback from others on how you're doing [as the "new person"].
12) Devote every spare minute to moving into the new life.
13) Become so involved in focusing on the present moment and on your intent that you completely lose track of your body, time, and space. Nothing, then, will be real but your thoughts.
14) Seek out instruction to get to the next level.
15) Work with the Four Pillars of Healing.
16) Make the healing/changing process the most important thing in your life.

Since reading Evolve Your Brain, I have come across another book called What To Say When You Talk To Yourself by Shad Helmstetter. This book is in the same vein, but it concentrates on the practical aspects of reprogramming your thoughts and feelings and spends almost no time on related scientific aspects of brain chemistry. (What To Say was written much earlier than Dr. Dispenza's book, but is unequivocally on the same page as the work of Joe Dispenza.)

I highly recommend both books - and note that after several weeks of working with each of them, I am in incredibly different and better spaces than I was.

112 of 122 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A different angle, April 18, 2007

By	S. J. Bockett (Wellington New Zealand) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Having purchased Dr Dispenza's DVD "Mastering the Art of Observation" and watched it more than once - and loved it - I was surprised to find that his new book "Evolve Your Brain" is so different in approach - even in philosophy. It is as if biology - and in particular the brain - reigns supreme over all else. This is not the message I received from the DVD.

First of all, this book is a summation of many others' writing on the anatomy and physiology of the brain and the interaction between mind and brain: Candice Pert, Bruce Lipton, Win Wenger, Stanislav Groff, Michael Lesser, Sharon Begley, David Sousa and Michael Gelb to name just a few. And if physiology is to be considered first and foremost, surely the heart-brain interaction needs to be included (as shown by research conducted by the Heartmath Institute and reported in Doc Lew Childre's books.)

Since this information is already available, I had hoped for a more personal application from the author. His account of his recovery from serious spinal injuries is indeed inspiring, but I was very disappointed to find that Dr Dispenza did not share his actual healing process (apart from making a brief reference to some of the physicial modalities he used.) How did he find the courage, for example? Or was this just another reflexive activity of the frontal cortex as he claims happiness is? (I would have thought that courage and happiness are both acts of choice, even of personal will, of which the brain is mediator, not originator.) If you approach your own body like you do the mechanics of your car, with complete objectivity, then familiarity with your neuro-physiology may well get you through such an ordeal. But for those of us who do not think this way, it would help to know what thoughts and beliefs sustained Dr Dispenza, especially in the serious risks he took. I detect an intuitive leap in his making decisions that went entirely against prevailing medical opinion. The rest of the book ignores this "X-factor." Apparently, for Dr Dispenza, even faith can be boiled down to biology.

One of the main points with which I take issue is Dr Dispenza's contention that "without the brain, there is no consciousness." He is entitled to this point of view, but it needs to be pointed out that other authorities of equal standing (perhaps even greater) disagree with him, and would point to their own research on "non-local mind" and that of others who have replicated the results. These authorities include the likes of Professor William Braud and Professor William Tiller, whose separate double-blind experiments in this subject are meticulous - none of the hazy, wishful thinking that Dr Dispenza abhors. I also find his contention of a brain-based reality contradictory, particularly as he has taken advice from a disincarnate called Ramtha. Which is it to be, Dr Dispenza?

It has been said that knowledge is power, and "Evolve Your Brain" certainly provides knowledge, even if it is a replication of other sources. But there are few specifics in this book about what we can DO with that knowledge in our daily life - like Dr Dispenza's practice that was explained in "What the Bleep" - of his setting his intentions for the day on waking in the morning. Now that is something I can use.

I admire other reviewers their apparent ability to translate this book into action, but I find Lynne McTaggart's "The Intention Experiment" (published about the same time) more powerful, as well as easier to apply. McTaggart's book is of everyday practical use, even as it convinces me (with explicit research examples) that I am more than my biology - or my brain.

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book since Molecules of Emotion on mind/body, January 17, 2007

By	E. Messer (Yelm, Washington) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I HAVE READ this long-awaited book by Dr. Joe Dispenza and have found it to be practical and inspiring. It puts right back into our own conscious control the unfoldment of our lives and our health. It describes Dr. Joe's journey to discovery of principles which he first applied to his own life and then studied in depth to understand the scientific basis for what he was learning. He applies both spiritual understanding and new discoveries in quantum physics and molecular biology in a very understandable and readable format which can be understood by all -- I give it five stars!