Joe Dispenza

This was in the Audible recommendations for my wife. I decided to check it out for her (I don't do audio books.) And, it turned out almost immediately, save her from throwing away time. This might be the biggest load of bunk I’ve seen, and I’ve read Robert Anton Wilson, Emmanuel Velikovsky, Robert Lanza, Eckhart Tolle, Miguel Ruiz, Eben Alexander, Neale Walsch, Pete Egoscue, Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck and other cranks and charlatans - one should try to read the stuff to see if there is show more anything of merit, and when shown there is not, to understand what the crazies out there are hawking and buying.

Your first pseudoscience warning is the easiest: he's a chiropracter. Martin Gardner's 1952 analysis of chiropracty in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science is still the best. Your second could be the first paragraph of Gregg Braden's Foreward (calling some story about the 256 year old Li Ching-Yuen an "account" instead of a wild fantasy; and mentioning the Institute of Noetic Sciences with a straight face). Or it could be Dispenza's Introduction ("It became very clear that those skeptics and rigid scientists who hold their own beliefs about what is possible aren't going to like me or my work no matter what I do.") See Mr. Gardner's book again for the characteristics of a crank.

This book is riddled - littered? - with pseudoscience to enhance its wild tales. It starts in the Introduction:
"Although the instrument we use to measure this is not approved by the scientific community in the United States, it has been acknowledged in other countries, including Russia. [...]
We have also assessed the invisible field of vital energy surrounding the body of thousands of students to determine whether they can increase their own light field."

WTF? And what is this mystery instrument? The last I knew, the "scientific community" is not a governing body and doesn't approve or disapprove of whatever pseudoscience somebody wants to play with.

And then there is this:
"Other centers in your body besides the heart are also under the control of the autonomic nervous system—I call them energy centers. Each has its own frequency, its own intent or consciousness, its own glands, its own hormones, its own chemistry, its own individual little brain, and so its own unique mind.
I share these stories because I want to prime you for what is possible when we leave this realm of space-time (the Newtonian world we learned about in high school science class) and activate our pineal gland so we can move into the realm of time-space (the quantum world)."
Seriously? He's invoking an H.P.Lovecraft story as real? I detest when the pseudoscience purveyors use actual physics terms to try to lend credibility to their flimflam: "...the quantum world—the fifth dimension. I want you to understand that there is an invisible field of energy and information that exists beyond this three-dimensional realm of space and time. [...] Chapter 11 opens your mind to what’s possible in the interdimensional world beyond the senses."

He tells a wacky story about his pineal gland and living "two extended events" in the past and future. Oh, and another about a past incarnation. A woman heals her cancer by meditating. There is a graph of squiggly lines purported to be energy frequencies associated with emotions (lust and pain are survival emotions with really low frequencies, apparently); no scale (although that word is in the graph title), no references. BTW, as far as I can tell, he doesn't mention how he measures the energies - must be that mystery machine.

Now the thing about good purveyors of pseudoscience is that they mix actual science in with their stuff to distract, enhance, imply credibility, sometimes even run the Duane Gish approach so that it is too exhausting checking the veracity of the myriad of claims. I spot check the references (when provided - not surprisingly, the fuzzier claims usually have none). I checked some of Dispenza's sparse cites and some are real studies, some being actually pertinent to how he referenced them. (Note: NIH is a good place to look for a lot of the medical papers that are behind journal paywalls.) Dispenza follows up some explanation of physiological process. All sort of good enough until…

…Chapter 3. He starts talking about physics and he transitions to mystical stuff. Oh dear. Try this: "because once we disconnect from three-dimensional reality, we enter a whole other reality called the quantum, the realm of infinite possibility." The "quantum" ? He's doing that thing where the cranks coopt real science. And then "The quantum (or unified) field is an invisible field of energy and information—or you could say a field of intelligence or consciousness—that exists beyond space and time. " WTAF?

And ... "Sometimes people will say to me that this idea seems a bit unscientific. I always answer them with the same question: What happens after an explosion—order or disorder? Their answer is always that disorder results. Then I ask: So why after the Big Bang, which was the biggest explosion ever, has so much order been created? Some intelligence must be organizing its energy and matter into form and unifying all the forces of nature to create such a masterpiece. That intelligence, that energy, is the quantum or unified field. " No. No. NO!!! Jeez no! …physics tells us about gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. No freaking “intelligence”.

More of the pseudoscience: '...how scientists came to discover the quantum universe ..." There is no “quantum universe”. There is this universe (enough science fiction here so don’t bring up a multiverse), in which quantum theories apply to some really small very fast things, relativistic theories to larger and fast things, and Newtonian mechanics are close enough for slow stuff. And don't try apologeticism and explain he meant this universe. He didn't. He's off in his own world.

Okay, the book is full of pseudoscience with a sprinkling of actual science thrown in. Debunking nonsense is exhausting. Sifting through the texts, sorting what's real from what's pseudo, following up on references to determine if they're misused or misunderstood and, even more challenging, finding references (or none) for the wilder claims that go unreferenced by the author... Real scientists don't have the time to debunk every paper/book in which someone conscripts actual sciences for fuzzy, obfuscating purposes...nor should they have to. I’m an engineer philomath with a lifelong interest in science and I’ve taken enough for the team on this one.

So, I'll just pull some of the wilder stuff from each chapter...

Chapter 4 Blessing of the Energy Centers:
“Mind is the brain in action, so if each one of these energy centers has a plexus of neurons, then each has its own individual mind—or better said, each center has a mind of its own.” No, he’s not being figurative.

“If you take that tissue and further develop it into a more specialized function, you form an organ, and an organ also has an invisible field of electromagnetic energy. That organ literally receives information from this invisible energy field. In fact, the memory of the organ actually exists in the field.
The way this can affect transplant patients is fascinating.
[…]{stories about transplants carrying memories of the donors}[…]
So in these cases, that information in the energy field surrounding the transplanted organ changed the expression of the energy field of the individual once the person had a transplant—its different light and different information mixing with the transplant patient’s preexisting field. The recipient can pick up on that information as memory in the field, and it influences their mind and their body. The energy, holding specific information, is influencing matter.” {yes, this “scientific” author said that.}

Chapter 5 Reconditioning the Body to a New Mind:
“The movement of your sacrum back and forth as you slowly breathe in and out, along with the sutures of the skull opening and closing, propagates a wave within the fluid of this closed system, and it slowly pumps that cerebrospinal fluid up your spine all the way to the brain, passing through four chambers called cerebral aqueducts or ventricles. ” {Does he know nothing about anatomy?? Oh. Right. NM. Chiropracty. Then there is…}
“As you contract the intrinsic muscles of your lower body and at the same time take in a slow steady breath through your nose, while placing your attention on the top of your head, you accelerate the movement of the cerebrospinal fluid toward your brain and you begin to run a current through your body and up the central axis of the spine.”

Chapter 6: Case Studies: Living Examples of Truth
{more like Anecdotes of Dubious Veracity

You know the drill “Buy my books. Pay for my seminars. You, too, can magically heal yourself of serious diseases, chronic pain, and more! in just one session! (But you should come back for more. I might give you a slight discount.)”}

Chapter 7: Heart Intelligence
“We know that the heart, beyond its obvious role in sustaining life, is not simply a muscular pump that moves blood throughout our body but an organ capable of influencing feelings and emotions. The heart is a sensory organ that guides our decision-making ability as well as our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.
[…]
You may well be wondering why it is that out of all the organs in the body (such as the spleen, liver, or kidneys), the heart is the only one to have intelligence.”

Okay. That’s enough. It gets worse. Much worse, and I’m reeling just looking at my highlights and comments. Showing a picture of a crop circle that looks like melatonin and asking "maybe some is trying to tell us something. ... Is the crop circle an elaborate hoax? Or is somebody somewhere in another dimension trying to tell us something?" (Yeah, the gullible will believe anything, even things admitted to be a hoax.) You’ll just have to laugh at Chapters 8-14 on your own. But you're better off reading something - anything- else. Rare one-star from me. show less

I bought Dr. Joe Dispenza’s 2 Books Bundle Collection, and it was so worth it. It completely shifted the way I look at myself and my thoughts. You Are the Placebo and Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself both made me realize how much power our minds truly have over our reality. His stories, research, and insights made me believe that real change isn’t just possible, it starts the moment we decide to think differently. I found myself pausing often just to take in how deeply his words show more resonated.

I’ll admit, some parts were a bit heavy on the science, and I had to reread certain sections to fully understand them. But even then, the message remained clear and inspiring. The guided meditations especially helped me put everything into practice and actually feel the change happening. This collection isn’t just about self improvement, it’s about transformation from the inside out. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who wants to break old patterns and rediscover what’s possible within themselves. show less

Evolve Your Brain is one of those books that made me slow down and really think about how much of my daily life runs on automatic. Joe Dispenza does a great job explaining how our thoughts shape our biology, and I found myself pausing after certain chapters just to absorb what he was saying. Some of the stories he shares, especially about people healing after major injuries, were surprisingly inspiring and made the science feel more human and hopeful.

That said, the book can be dense. There show more were moments where I felt like the explanations drifted into long stretches of neuroscience that didn’t always connect smoothly back to the everyday point he was trying to make. I appreciate detail, but at times it felt like too much, and I caught myself skimming sections just to get back to the actionable ideas. A bit more editing or tighter transitions might have helped keep the momentum going.

Still, by the end, I walked away feeling more aware of how my thoughts and habits affect my mood, my decisions, and even my physical well-being. Even with its heavier parts, the book gave me practical reasons to try being more intentional with how I respond to stress and how I shape my day. It’s not a quick read, but if you’re curious about the mind-body connection and don’t mind digging into the science, it’s definitely worth the time. show less

The author weaves three kinds of ingredients into an entertaining life philosophy that might help some people feel motivated enough to help themselves mainly through harmless (could be beneficial) meditation.

The ingredients are:
- perversion of science and scientific method by means of a completely flawed understanding of what science is and how it works
- misuse of evidence, and language around evidence designed to provide assurance
- establishing of new languge and rituals that walk the line show more between existing uses of this same language

This is a book designed to make you stupid, you might become happier, and solve your life problems but you will be a terrible scientist.

Science is not what happens when you measure something strange and mysterious, science is what happens when the community of scientists argue and try to find simple reasons to explain that strangeness and eventually find a shared explanation they all agree on. Science is the boring consensus, not the bizarre outlier, despite what popularising science books have been trying to do by adding interesting stories.

An interesting example is the reference to Rene Peoc’h and his baby chick experiment. This is not science until Rene does everything possible to openly share in questioning and finding explanations for the mechanism underlying his presumed ESP. The actual paper by Rene says almost nothing about the detail of its random number generator which is the crux of the reported effect.

A good book for a skeptic to learn the dark arts of white magic in self help like texts... show less