I’m feeling inspired and motivated and it’s all because of one documentary: HEAL. Heal is a documentary about three different people on a journey to find the best way to heal themselves. Each of them tries different methods: Western medications, eastern healing, sound therapy, acupuncture, talk therapy, supplements and herbs. Ultimately there is one thing that always wins out and it is the same thing I try to remind myself and my patients of daily: mindset is unbelievably important.

While I don’t want to give too much away about this movie, there is one man that really stands out. His name is ­­­­Dr. Joe Dispenza and he is a walking miracle. When he was younger he was doing a triathlon and was riding his bike when he was suddenly hit by a Bronco at 55mph. He was catapulted in the air and had such severe injuries they were surprised he was even alive. The main issues the doctors found was his spinal injury, they didn’t think he would ever walk again.

When he woke he discovered that they wanted to do a surgery on his spine to help him possibly be able to move again. He rejected it. He decided that he would be able to heal himself using only his mind. He spent 3 hours a day for 6 weeks trying to get his mindset right. He decided he wouldn’t let any negative thoughts in and although his mind didn’t always stay positive, he always found a way to get back to where it needed to be. During this time he sat and thought about his spine and he thought about each vertebrae being reconnected and repaired and put back together. At the end of 6 weeks he was regaining motor function. At 10 weeks he was walking again. At 12 weeks he was back to training for another triathlon.

Is this man a miracle? Is he the one in a million that gets better? Perhaps he just knows the biggest secret of them all: the mind heals the body. Most people have heard of the best selling book The Secret, which is a book on law of attraction and explains that “what you think about you bring about.” If you’re interested in healing yourself I highly recommend giving the book a read.

Some people say acupuncture is “all in the mind” and its “a placebo effect.” While there is thousands of years of proof that acupuncture works with healing, do I believe some of it is in the mind? Absolutely. Have you ever met someone that doesn’t want to find a solution to their problem? You sit there and talk to them and find them 50 ways to fix one thing and they find something wrong with every single one of those options. Those people don’t want to get better and their mind will keep them in that state. There are people that don’t want to get better because their illness is all they know.

An interesting study has been done with plants in relation to positive and negative emotions. Researchers took three plants put them in the same environment, gave them the same amount of water and sunlight, but wrote different words on each plant. One plant had nothing so that it could be the control, another plant had positive words such as “love, growth, gratitude” written on it and the last plant had “small, hate, dingy” written on it. Which plant grew the fastest? The one with the positive words written on the outside. It really shows how positive thinking and positive attitudes can help all living things.

Lately I have been recommending this documentary to all of my patients. It can help with pain, it can help with infertility and it can help with any illness a patient may be facing. Women trying to get pregnant should be utilizing this amazing tool all the time.

Recently I’ve had more patients than ever coming in and telling me their doctor told them they have to live with whatever condition they have for the rest of their lives. I tell them differently and together with acupuncture and mindset we are proving all those western medical doctors wrong.