In Ishayas’ Ascension, we often discuss how powerful the mind is…that the mind is capable of anything.  A review of some of the latest studies on Placebos is just another example of the power of the mind – and evidence that the power seems to be increasing!

As many know, a placebo is a non-active substance or procedure required in clinical trials by the FDA as at least one of the control groups.  The placebo effect is a documented fact working 18-80% of the time.  The effect is physical, not just subjective - healing ulcers, warts disappearing, relieving pain, easing symptoms of many stress related illnesses, etc.  

One of the leaders in the field of placebo research, Fabrizio Benedetti, a neuroscience professor at the University of Turin School of Medicine and member of the Placebo Study Group centered at Harvard, recently wrote: “The placebo effect has evolved from being thought of as a nuisance in clinical pharmacological research to a biological phenomenon worthy of scientific investigation in its own right.”

In one survey by the NIH, as many as half of rheumatologists and internists surveyed said they had intentionally given patients ineffective medication [placebo] in the hopes it would have a positive result.

Joel Block, MD, a well-known osteoarthritis specialist says “The placebo effect is still an effect and a very important one….It is “extraordinarily strong” in osteoarthritis for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. The experience from randomized trials shows a 40% response rate. The trial data indicates that placebo responses last beyond a year, he said.

Kaptchuk, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) is a man with a fierce intellect and curiosity.  His researchers enrolled 80 people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome, explaining the experiment while framing it positively -- they called it a novel "mind-body" therapy.
Half the patients were given a bottle with the word "placebo" printed on it. They were told the bottle contained “sugar pills”. The patients were told they didn't even need to believe in the placebo effect, but had to take the pills twice daily. The other half were given no treatment at all. At the end of the three-week trial, 59 percent of the patients taking the placebo said their symptoms had been adequately relieved!

"We were all taken aback," Kaptchuk said. "We triple-checked the data before we decided it was real."
A study published online Oct. 27, 2016, by PLOS Biology showed evidence of changes in the brain during a placebo effect. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers scanned the brains of people with chronic pain from knee osteoarthritis. After being given the placebo, everyone received another scan. For those who felt pain relief, researchers noticed greater activity in the middle frontal gyrus brain region, which makes up about one-third of the frontal lobe.

Other studies have noted that study participants became “addicted” to their placebo and had to be weaned off of it. In a chemo-therapy study, 30% of the participants receiving a placebo lost their hair.
Here’s a video from Fox News discussing the power of the mind: http://video.foxnews.com/v/4473758/surprising-study-on-placebo-effect

The body is continually listening to our thoughts. If we live with self-defeating thoughts, the mind produces in kind. It is only our habitual thoughts that steal our youth and health and replace them with sickness.  Imagine if we could learn to still the internal chatter and learn to experience life again in the present moment?

The purpose of Ishayas’ Ascension is to erase those self-defeating thoughts and allow us to live life in freedom. Are you ready to activate a new effect in your life?

Lisa May, author of a 2016 study said recently, “Most people are used to the idea that we can change our experience with chemicals, but sometimes we forget that we can change the chemical activity of our brains depending on how we use our brains. The way we choose to engage our minds—our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and practices—shapes our brain chemistry, our habits, and our future experience.”

A simple practice such as The Art of Ascension retrains the brain, teaches non-judgement and acceptance and develops the skills for directing attention, all which assist in changing our relationship to pain.

Over the last 10 years, over many tests, researchers found that when meditators are stimulated with pain, which is compared before vs. during meditation, meditators typically report either a drop in pain intensity (how strong the pain is), pain unpleasantness (how bothersome the pain is), or both.

Dr. May has been on a mission to discover how meditation reduces pain.  She designed a test with experienced meditators involving the administration of naloxone which inhibits opioid pathways. In 2014, Mind and Life funded her study as well as a similar study by Dr. Fadel using novice meditators.

The 2 separate studies of experienced and non-experienced meditators achieved the same result when opioid pathways were blocked. The results were completely unexpected!  

Researchers set up a pain test.  After testing and determining that the meditators received at least 15% reduction in pain through meditation, they gave them a second test and administered naloxone, which blocks opioid pathways.  Researchers expected either less reduction in pain or no change.  However, they were amazed to find naloxone produced significantly greater reductions in pain intensity and unpleasantness than the control groups. Naloxone has been used in pain research for over 30 years and has never been shown to improve pain.  

The results suggests that endogenous opioids are clearly not the chemical the brain uses to reduce pain during meditation. Therefore, the treatment of chronic pain may be more effective with meditation due to a lack of cross-tolerance with opiate-based medications.  This seems to be good news and indicative of more success for patients with PTSD as well as patients with previous opioid addictions in using meditation for pain reduction.

From an article called “Thoughts program your cells”, Jordan Lejuwaan, reminds us of some basic biology: “There are thousands upon thousands of receptors on each cell in our body. Each receptor is specific to one peptide, or protein. When we have feelings of anger, sadness, guilt, excitement, happiness or nervousness, each separate emotion releases its own flurry of neuropeptides. Those peptides surge through the body and connect with those receptors which change the structure of each cell as a whole. Where this gets interesting is when the cells actually divide. If a cell has been exposed to a certain peptide more than others, the new cell that is produced through its division will have more of the receptor that matches with that specific peptide. Likewise, the cell will also have less receptors for peptides that its mother/sister cell was not exposed to as often.”

In other words, if you are experiencing emotions based in fear, you are literally pre-programming yourself to experience more fear based emotions and less love based emotions!  

Every thought you think is changing your cells, but what else can thoughts do?

• One study asked questions of subjects. They told one group they would be given the answers subconsciously.  This group out-performed other groups, even though no answers were provided to them.  
• Another study of hotel attendants informed a group of attendants that their work gave them the recommended level of exercise for a healthy lifestyle.  In 4 weeks, just having this knowledge, this group lost weight, reduced their blood pressure, lost inches and even reduced their fat ratio. Another group of attendants, who were not given this information but cleaned the same number of rooms, did not lose weight or see the results of the “informed” group.
• Doctors increased subjects’ growth hormone levels by injecting medication.  Later, telling them they were being given the same medication, their growth hormone levels also rose.  But they were only given saline in the second injection.

Such expectancies and learned associations have been shown to change the chemistry and circuitry of the brain. These changes may result in such physiological and cognitive outcomes as already mentioned.  
Doesn’t this make you wonder about the untapped resources in your own mind and body? 
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The Art of Ascension is a tool that puts you in direct contact with the Source, the Grand Architect of the body. The tool is based on the Attitudes of Praise, Gratitude, Love, and Compassion, we can pre-program these positive Attitudes into the body.  Using these tools also open us to more possibilities.

Attention is a limited resource.  Billions of bits of data are available in every moment, but we have the ability to attend to a small fraction.  Your brain is designed to present data to you that it believes is important to you.  So if you believe you are unlovable, it will heighten your awareness to information that lends proof of your unlovability and ignores data that shows the love that is in your life.

As the expression ‘paying attention’ suggests, you have a limited supply of cognitive currency.  Rick Hanson, who wrote Buddha Brain, said “Attention is like a combination spotlight and vacuum cleaner: it illuminates what it rests upon and then sucks it into your brain – and your self.” He also made the statement “the mind is Teflon for positive experience and Velcro for negative experience.”

Barbara Fredrickson, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, found that paying attention to positive emotions literally expands your world, while focusing on negative emotions shrinks it — a fact that has important implications for your daily experience.

The ability to manage your attention is a skill called Self-Regulation and governs your ability to make decisions, plan, and function; it ultimately determines your well-being. What if we actually paid attention...to our attention? Rather than getting sucked into a self-defeating thought, we have the ability to redirect the mind quickly to a more productive thought.

As the great psychologist, William James, wrote over a century ago: “The education of attention would be the education par excellence.”  Studies have shown that meditation improves attention regulation. Other studies indicate that improved self-regulation reduces stress and improves the immune system. 
 
In the Art of Ascension as taught by the Ishayas, we teach simple tools or “seed thoughts” to expand the mind.  They can be used anytime, anywhere, by anybody.  By easily introducing these simple “seed thoughts” based on Praise, Gratitude, Love, and Compassion into your life, your mind and perception becomes attuned to these upward spirals and charms the mind into wanting more.  Just by utilizing the practice, your neurons are attracted to more praise, gratitude, love and compassion. 

As part of the practice you learn to observe your attention without judgement.  Our awareness is actually infinite.  The more we use this practice, the old boundaries and self-limitations begin to fall away.  These simple tools can be used to reduce stress, but they can also be used to find unlimited freedom and unconditional love.

Depression increases risk for and worsens outcomes among those with coronary artery disease, stroke, and cancer.  Worldwide, major depressive disorder is a leading source of morbidity, and by 2030 it is projected to be the number one contributor to the global burden of disease.
 
An article in Psychology Today by Ellen McGrath stated pretty simply, “The less love you have, the more depression you are likely to experience in your life. Love is probably the best antidepressant there is because one of the most common sources of depression is feeling unloved.”  The subheading to that article was “Love is the best antidepressant”.

The article goes on to say that common culture has many unrealistic and untrue ideas about love, especially romantic love.  Then she states, ‘It is not only possible but necessary to change one's approach to love’.

In our beginning course of “The Art of Ascension”, we talk about the many misconceptions we hold, not only about love, but also many other things in life.  These misconceptions do not serve us in living a fulfilled or happy life.  The Art of Ascension teaches simple tools that not only retrains the mind, but clarifies our perceptions…to experience life more innocently, rather than through the lens of our societal belief systems and misconceptions.

By simply learning these tools and incorporating them into our life, we begin to more innocently experience the attitudes of Praise, Gratitude, Love and Compassion.  That experience, the experiences of Love moving in and through our lives, opens us to so much more of life.

Research shows that meditation can reduce anxiety, stress, and possibly depression.  Results of a study on a meditation focused on positive emotions produced increases in a wide range of personal resources (e.g., purpose in life, social support, and decreased illness symptoms). In turn, these increments in personal resources predicted increased life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms.

Depressed people tend to ruminate on their problems, causing anxiety.  A daily practice such as Art of Ascension can give one skills to witness their thoughts as well as develop an ability to make clearer choices about their thoughts. Using the Art of Ascension throughout the day can replace those ruminating thoughts.

What we think influences every aspect of who we are and how we feel physically.
A fascinating study, one of many of this kind, done at Ohio State University shows that healing can be slowed by as much as 40% when one is stressed. Considering that stress is the body’s reaction to our thought life, our state of mind (our thought life), is quite literally determining our mental and physical health.

Dr. Caroline Leaf says, “When you adopt a lifestyle of intense mental focus, you quite literally “switch on” neuroplasticity, the marvelous ability of the brain the grow branches and unending scaffolds of networks to increase your intelligence.”  In the 1990’s, she began working with traumatic brain injured patients who had been given no hope of improvement by the medical community. She successfully helped them retrain their brain through focus to regain and outperform their own intelligence tests from pre-injury. 

Renewing the mind
One of her major tenets speaks of Toxic Thinking that takes up real estate in the brain and sets up limitations and boundaries.  She teaches of the importance of “renewing the mind” by considering “how” you think and what you think about to “detox the brain”. She teaches that every choice we make, down to the level of each thought we think, is a choice between life and death.

The Art of Ascension incorporates the important aspects she covers in “detoxing the brain” in a very simple tool.  By simply using the tool regularly, we begin to find the “Observer Self” and begin to witness our thoughts. Just as important, the tool itself is constructed to be a perfect thought, one with no opposites.  So, as we introduce this tool throughout the day, we not only replace those other less perfect thoughts, we experience the results of a perfect thought.  Depending on how often we use it, the tool can restructure the brain to work in harmony with divine purpose and work at higher and higher levels.

MSI, who brought the Art of Ascension to the public, teaches that there are 108 perfect thoughts.  These have the by-product of taking the mind inward to experience the most innocent and free aspects of our selves.  As our awareness moves ever deeper, our body experiences more freedom and health as well, as the body eventually reflects what is going on in the mind.
 

​Does Prayer change the brain?  Does it affect others?

Andrew Newberg has been studying the effects of prayer on the brain.  Here are some of the findings that he published in his book, “How God Changes Your Brain”.

• He found that just 12 minutes of daily focused prayer over an 8 week period can change the brain to such an extent that it can be measured on a brain scan.   This type of prayer seems to increase activity in brain areas associated with social interaction compassion and sensitivity to others. 
• Prayer reduces stress and anxiety, and just 12 minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process.
• Contemplating a loving God rather than a punitive God reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and increases feelings of security, compassion, and love.
• Intense prayer and meditation permanently change numerous structures and functions in the brain—altering your values and the way you perceive reality.

So, prayer & meditation changes matter for the person that is doing the prayer/meditation. 

Another question becomes does a person’s thoughts (essentially that is what prayer is) impact matter elsewhere?

Institute of Noetic Sciences conducted a study that has become known as the “Love-Study”.  They put 36 loving couples through an experiment.  They locked one of the  partners in an electro-magnetic shielded room away from the second partner who was in a room with a closed-circuit TV. Both partners were connected to electrodes measuring skin conductance and blood flow.   Randomly, the second person was shown the image of their partner for 10 seconds.  During that time, the second person was encouraged to think loving thoughts about their partner, who was completely unaware of what was taking place. Each time the image was shown, within 2 seconds, the first partner’s blood flow increased and perspiration dramatically changed.  The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results.

So, if this article is about prayer, what does this have to do with the Art of Ascension? 

While we often say the Art of Ascension is a simple tool, for many of us that came from a tradition of prayer before we learned this practice, we consider the technique to be “the perfect prayer”.