The following is Part Ten of an expanded transcript of a detailed and in-depth interview Patrick Wanis PhD Human Behavior Expert gave to Michele Morrisette with www.PurQi.com about gurus, cults and brainwashing. Here Patrick Wanis reveals how the placebo effect works and the extraordinary power of the mind & visualization to dramatically improve physical performance and health. Patrick Wanis cites one study where visualization improved sporting ability by the same percentage as actual physical daily practice. Click here for previous part of the interview, Part Nine: https://patrickwanis.com/blog/jesus-healing-miracles-power-belief/
Patrick Wanis: Let’s talk about the placebo effect. Let me explain it in a very simple way. When science or even a drug company is testing a new pill, a new medication, a new drug, they will get a group of people, a group of volunteers and they will say, OK, we need a group of volunteers who all have pains in their stomach and have had them for more than three years. Along come all the volunteers and they say to them: Well, in our hands now we have this new medication that we believe or we found will heal people of stomach ailments. So we would like you to take it for seven days and then tell us what are the results.
The results come back and what they find is that almost an equal amount of people were healed by taking a fake pill, or a large percentage [were healed.] So maybe the pill worked say at 95 percent. So let’s take 100 percent of the group. They found that 20 percent of people were healed with their stomach ailment but they never took the real pill and the doctor comes along and says, “Well, so I need to tell you that the pill we just gave you was actually a fake pill.”
‘What? What do you mean it was a fake pill?’
“Well, it wasn’t the drug. We just gave you a pill that was nothing but sugar.”
‘But that’s not possible, Doctor because my stomach ailment is gone.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. We don’t know how that happened but we call that the placebo effect which is simply another way of saying you believed it, you expected it, you anticipated it and therefore it happened and it became real.’
[Read the article by Patrick Wanis “The Pygmalion Effect – How to catch him out” which details an experiment in 1964 that proved that teachers could raise the IQ of students when the teachers believed that those students were about to bloom in intelligence: https://patrickwanis.com/blog/pygmalion-effect-how-catch-him-out/ ]
Now I would like to use one more example which has nothing to do with healing but which will blow your mind and I’ve got this example on my website and again, it’s another link I will send you because I think its really valid to talk about the power of belief and the power of visualization and I don’t know whether it was UCLA but I believe it was – but it was a college in California. I think it was in the 70s, did a test and they took a bunch of people and they wanted to test their basketball abilities.
So what they did was they said: We’re going to have three groups of people. We’re going to test all of you to see how you can shoot a hoop. OK, let’s write down the results. Now group number one, we want you to practice one hour everyday for the next seven days. Group number two, we want you to visualize shooting the hoop successfully everyday for an hour for the next seven days and group number three, we want you to do nothing at all and we will see you in seven days. (I think the study might have been over 30 days.)
At the end of that period, group number three who did nothing, and didn’t practice and rehearse, had no improvement in their results. Group number one, which practiced shooting hoops everyday for an hour, improved by about 23 percent. Group number two, which did no exercise – they didn’t get on the basketball court and practice shooting hoops – all they did was picture the success of shooting the hoop in their mind, they physically improved their ability to shoot a hoop by 22 percent. So that means there was a physical shift in their ability to shoot a basketball hoop clearly by visualizing it and feeling it and believing it to be real.
There was no James Ray. There was no Mahendra Trivedi who did a blessing on them and said, ‘When I bless you, you will shoot better hoops by 23 percent.’ These people did it themselves.
[Correction: The study was carried out at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan by L. Verdelle Clark in 1960: “Effect of Mental Practice on the Development of a Certain Motor Skill” ; The effect of mental practice was compared with that of physical practice in the development of a motor skill, the Pacific Coast one-hand foul shot. One hundred and forty-four high school boys were equated into physical and mental practice groups on the basis of arm strength, intelligence, and varsity, junior varsity, or novice experience. Mental practice was found to be nearly as effective as physical practice under the conditions of the experiment. – https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10671188.1960.10613109?journalCode=urqe17#.Uok3S3C-2uI ]
My point is that we do have the ability to heal ourselves in many ailments. We do have the ability to improve our physical capacity; we do have the ability to even improve our motor skills purely by our beliefs. And the reason I used the example of visualization was because when these people were visualizing it, they were feeling it to be real and I did this test on a cruise ship with kids when we were playing mini golf. I think yes, it’s mini golf.
Michele Morrisette: I could have told you before you asked me. Putt Putt golf is what it’s referred to.
Patrick Wanis: Yes, Putt Putt golf. I did this is years ago, when I just started studying hypnosis and hypnotherapy and I thought, “Oh, let me test this. Why not?” So I watched these kids and I said, “OK, before you do this, while you’re holding this golf club in your hand, I want you just to close your eyes and really imagine and feel that ball going into the hole and after you felt it, and you believed and you saw it, go ahead and finish the stroke.”
Every kid that did it, got it in every time.
Michele Morrisette: Wow.
Patrick Wanis: Because they visualized it, they felt it and they believed it. Another good example, many, many years ago, I was teaching at the Unity Church of Christianity in Houston, Texas and I was teaching – I was a Sunday school teacher and so I would love to do experiments with kids to prove to them the power of their own thoughts – and I would say to them, “How many of you have ever seen a girl or boy –and went, ‘Oh wow,’ and you got butterflies in your stomach?”
And I said, “But that boy or girl didn’t touch, did they? You were just looking at him. What happened?” And they’re now thinking, ‘Yes, that is weird. It was a thought that gave me butterflies in my stomach.’
I said, “How many of you had looked at something and felt like throwing up?”
Everyone has. Not just kids, obviously adults as well, and it’s just a thought, a picture that creates a physical reaction in your body.
The next thing I did with these kids, because I love to experiment, and this was a long time ago, again when I just started studying hypnosis and hypnotherapy; I took a group of children, and I said, “OK, I want you to do something really simple. Put your arm out, level with your shoulder. OK. Watch how I push down on it. See how strong it is? Yes. Now keep your body strong. I’m going to push down on it, right? Good. See how strong you are? Good. Now relax your arm. Now I want you to repeat to yourself, ‘I’m weak. I’m weak. I’m weak,’ just 10 times but really feel it. Now put your arm out again straight and watch me push down.”
And you know that immediately when I pushed down, their arm would be weak. Why? Because they just kept telling themselves they’re weak so they felt it until it became a reality in their body.
I know these are really simple, overly simple examples – they’re not scientific studies – but it’s a way of simply illustrating the point that we have the ability via our thoughts and our belief to change certain aspects of ourselves.
Click here for Part 11 of the expanded transcript of the in-depth interview by Patrick Wanis PhD, Human Behavior Expert about gurus, cults and brainwashing; Patrick Wanis cites scientific studies and research that reveal that we all have the capacity to commit good and evil and; he explores the concept that if God as quoted in the Bible has the power to bless or curse people, does that not then automatically imply that someone who claims to possesses the same power to bless and heal does also possess the ability to curse and harm others?: https://patrickwanis.com/blog/gurus-cults-blesses-put-curse-you/
Anointed “The Woman Expert” by WGN Chicago, Patrick Wanis PhD is a renowned Celebrity Life Coach, Human Behavior & Relationship Expert who developed SRTT therapy (Subconscious Rapid Transformation Technique) and is teaching it to other practitioners. Wanis’ clientele ranges from celebrities and CEOs to housewives and teenagers. CNN, BBC, FOX News, MSNBC & major news outlets worldwide consult Wanis for his expert insights and analysis on sexuality, human behavior and women’s issues. Wanis is the first person ever to do hypnotherapy on national TV – on the Montel Williams show.