Content warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of addiction and physical abuse.

Chapter 7 begins with an example of an Indonesian practice called kunda lumping, or a dance that involves entering a trance and performing seemingly superhuman feats like walking on coals or eating glass. Dispenza claims that the dancers suffer “no ill effects” (157) from the practice. 

Dispenza uses the example of glass eating to discuss the power of very strong belief in inducing the placebo effect. He argues that a person who receives a diagnosis of an illness, including a treatment plan and a prognosis of their survival, is receiving a nocebo, or a harmful placebo, simply from that experience. Their preconceived beliefs about the illness are constructing the experience of being ill. Dispenza then argues that a patient who doesn’t accept the doctor’s explanation of the disease, the treatment, or the prognosis, and instead believes that they are healthy and that the illness has no power over them, is much more likely to survive and thrive. He equates a doctor’s diagnosis to “the modern-day equivalent of a voodoo curse” (160). 

Dispenza defines beliefs as attitudes or moods experienced and/or created by a person.