What Happened in the Monastery

 

One of the most intriguing stories in Joe Dispenza’s book, You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter, concerns an experiment that was conducted in 1981. Eight men in their 70s and 80s were taken to a monastery in Peterborough, New Hampshire, for a five day retreat, where they were asked to pretend that they were young again – 22 years younger than they actually were at the time.

A second group of eight elderly men, the control group, were taken to the monastery the following week and were asked just to actively reminisce about being 22 years younger, but not to pretend that they weren’t their current age.

When the first group arrived at the monastery, they found an environment that suggested an earlier age. “They flipped through old issues of Life and the Saturday Evening Post, watched movies and television shows popular in 1959, and they listened to recordings of Perry Como and Nat King Cole on the radio,” Dispenza writes.  The men also discussed events that were current in 1959 – Castro’s rise to power in Cuba, Khruschev’s visit to the U.S. – and they talked about sports figures like Mickey Mantle.

The research team was led by Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist.  After each of the retreats, her team took measurements and compared them to the measurements they’d taken before the beginning of the retreat. Their discovery is fascinating. “The bodies of the men in both groups were physiologically younger, structurally as well as functionally, although those in the first study group (who pretended they were younger) improved significantly more than the control group, who’d merely reminisced.”

There were improvements in the men’s height, weight, gait. They got taller as their posture straightened, their joints became more flexible, and as their arthritis diminished their fingers lengthened. Their eyesight and hearing improved and their memory sharpened. “The men literally became younger in those five days, right in front of the researcher’s eyes.”

Langer reported that at the end of the five days, she was playing football – touch football – with the men, some of whom had given up their canes. Dispenza’s explanation for this is that the men were able to “turn on the circuits in their brains that reminded them of who they had been 22 years ago, and then their body chemistry somehow magically responded. The change wasn’t just in their minds; it was in their bodies.”

Interestingly, Langer’s experiment with the men in the monastery may soon hit the big screen. Jennifer Aniston is slated to co-produce the movie and play Langer, who was 34 years old at the time of the experiment. The title of the movie is certainly appropriate: Counterclockwise.

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8 Responses to What Happened in the Monastery

  1. lauren raine says:

    Fascinating article, thanks so much for sharing!

  2. There was a similar experiment shown on UK television about two or three years ago. Some elderly celebrities were taken to a house which was decorated in 50s style and with 50s televison programmes on the TV set and a 50s diet. Their flexibility and so on was checked before they entered – there was a big improvement after several weeks.

    More and more it’s telling us that we don’t have to get older or put up with sickness. We haven’t mastered the process yet but I believe generations to come will live on earth for hundreds of years at a time – or for as long as they wish.

  3. sharon catley says:

    Deepak Chopra was talking about this experiment or one that was very similar on one of his cassette courses. Magical mind magical body I think.

  4. Shadow says:

    I knew it! Hubby’s always been saying it. Glad there’s proof to support it. Would love to see the movie…

  5. This explains why I have been enjoying so much the video tapes I made in 1981 when I got the first Hitachi, so called, portable camera. It was huge and expensive. I haven’t had time to do the transferring from VHS to CD’s to send to some people but when ever I watch these tapes they are very real in bringing back who I was, and who they were 33 years ago. It feels great looking at these tapes no matter what the content. They are all just conversations. But I was 33 years younger. Yippie!

    And now to think that people can take movies on their phones. I don’t make movies any
    more but those few years that I did, from 1981-85 are treasures for re-living the moment of then. Maybe people should think of that as a way to keep young – like make some movies and keep for when they are older for the body re-remembering itself when young. According to Dispenza, it works.

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