Meditation can often look like doing nothing, but that can't be further from the truth. Meditation is very active. It is the act of being between highly alert and highly relaxed. Being between these two states trains our mind and body to later do all the things we do when we interact with the world around us, and yet remain in a very peaceful state.
Meditation is the literal training of our mind to be focused, patient, highly aware and highly peaceful. It trains our mind to tap into the inner peace and joy within. While it is not a placebo, placebos are actually a very powerful tool we can all use in our lives. Placebos are why a sugar pill can cure someone of their cancer. Simply believing something is helpful does make it so.
In this episode, I'll share the truth about meditation, and how we can use the placebo effect to our advantage and to improve our daily lives.
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Welcome to path to peace with Todd Perelmuter where he shares the lessons he's learned. spending nine years living with gurus, monks, and shamans, across 35 countries and five continents. Join in the journey as he brings some healing wisdom for living your best life.
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The path to peace, love, health, and happiness starts here
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Hello, and welcome to path to peace with Todd Perelmuter. I'm your host, Todd Perelmuter, the question of the day is, is meditation, a placebo?
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It can be easy to wonder that. Because whether you're learning a language or a musical instrument, progress is slow. And we can really be wondering if we're making any progress at all, whether it's, you know, even dancing, or making art, it can be a long time that passes and we think to ourselves, have we gotten any better.
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And then just a few days later, we might realize, Wow, I just did something I never thought I'd be able to do.
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And meditation is a lot like that. We spend most of our lives, constantly thinking, constantly distracted by entertainment, or social media, or
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food and hanging out with friends and just always doing things that
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keep our mind racing and stimulated. And we lose our ability to be at peace, with stillness and quiet.
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And so when we first start meditating, we're not just learning a new thing. We're also unlearning, sometimes decades of habitual thinking and behavior.
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So it can be very discomforting at first. It's a very unusual thing to practice being present,
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to practice, being at peace, and finding that inner peace and inner joy, which we've been searching for outside of us our entire lives.
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And the mind, the thinking racing mind, often fights us as we try to make it obsolete. And so it'll say things like, this isn't doing anything, you should just quit. Why are we putting ourselves this just check your phone.
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And this question of is, is meditation a placebo comes from that thinking, racing mind. But in reality, what you are doing every single day you meditate as you are training your mind to be more present, more focused, more aware, and more peaceful. Like training at the gym can take years before we reach our ideal
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physical fitness level. And, and it can take a long time before we even see results. training the mind can also take a little while before we can look back and say, Wow, my whole life has changed. I am so much happier. Because when you realize that true happiness comes from within, there is deep peace and joy residing there.
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And everything else that brings joy into your life becomes way more joyful.
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Way more fun, because you're not attached to the experience. You're not dependent on the experience. You simply can enjoy all of the varieties of experiences in your life. Meditation is not at all sitting down and doing nothing. You are focusing on your breath or a mantra or your body.
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And so you are Practicing focus
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as you block out all the external distractions, and raise your awareness of your thoughts, breath, Mantra, or body, you are practicing, raising your awareness. The more you can sit still,
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with no distractions, no entertainment, no phones, and just be, you are practicing and developing patience, and patience, and focus, and concentration. And finding peace within will drastically improve your life. So much of our lives, we suffer out of mere impatience, a line at the DMV stuck in traffic. But when you can sit, doing nothing for an extended period of time, a few minutes at the DMV,
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or a few minutes in your car,
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or nothing when you have peace, and calm and joy within.
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So while meditation has nothing to do with placebo,
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placebos in and of themselves can actually be very useful. People have cured themselves of every kind of disease cancer, there is through placebo.
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It is a strange, yet miraculous phenomenon, that when a person believes they're healing, their body starts to heal. And people in scientific studies have even been told they'd been given a placebo, and they still take the placebo, and it still works. And if they stopped taking the placebo, their healing stops.
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And this is just proof that the mind is so powerful.
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That what you believe can completely change your reality. Whether it's believing that a sugar pill is a miracle treatment for some disease, or whether it's putting all of your trust in the universe, or your body, or God, that you will heal, you are more likely to heal. If you believe and trust in the universe or God, everything happens for a reason that everything is perfect and happening just the way it should and that everything will work out. You will have less stress, you will be happier and you will be more at peace.
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And so there's nothing wrong with placebos. There are wonderful tools at our disposal, and they can drastically improve and save lives as well. However, meditation requires no belief, no faith,
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and you can still get the amazing benefits. Thank you so much for listening, peace and love.
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