The Resilient Mind - Can 10 Minutes of Gratitude a Day Heal Your Body? - Dr. Joe Dispenza

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Dr. Joe Dispenza is a renowned author, speaker, and educator in the fields of neuroscience, epigenetics, and quantum physics. He has spent over three decades studying the mind-body connection and the ways in which we can harness our thoughts and emotions to create positive change in our lives.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalExplore tools from past guests of the podcast. Some links below are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you:💓 HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.com/resilient🧠 Muse: https://choosemuse.com/resilientmind🌿 Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMIND🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So then here's the question. Can you believe in a future that you can't see or experience with your senses yet, but you've thought about enough times in your mind that your brain is literally changed to look like the experience has already occurred? The latest research in neuroscience says you can change your brain just by thinking. And can you fall in love with the future potential that, already exists in the quantum field and how many potentials exist in the quantum field? A few? How about infinite? Infinite potentials in the quantum field. Can you select a new potential

in the quantum field and emotionally embrace that future reality before it's made manifest to such degree that your body is the unconscious mind is believing it's living in that future reality in the present moment and you're signaling new genes. in new ways to change your body to look like the experience has already occurred. That's what epigenetics says. Now reason this with me, geniuses. If there's physical evidence, physical evidence in your brain and body, to look like the experience has already happened,

there's evidence there physically. By thought alone, relax. because the experience is going to find you. And it's going to come in a way that you least expect. Why? Because if you can expect it, it's nothing new. It's got to rock your world. It's got to catch you off guard,

and it has to leave no doubt that what you did inside of you produced some effect outside of you. And when you correlate, the changes you've made inside of you with the effect that you produced outside of you, you're going to pay attention to what you did and you're going to do it again.

And that's called human empowerment. And the experience when it finds you is going to surprise you because it's an unknown. And the event is going to capture all of your attention because that's what a new experience does. And the emotion that's created from that event is going to create a long-term memory

and you're going to associate what you did inside of you with what you created outside of you. And I don't care who you are or what's happened in your past, but when that moment lands in your lap, you are going to look back at your entire past and you're not going to want to change one thing about it

because it brought you to that elegant present moment. and that's when the past no longer exists. All of you at some point in your life have done something great. You got a wild idea, a vision. You asked a simple question to yourself, a frontal lobe question. The crowning achievement of the human being

is the forebrain. That's the workshop. That's the creative center. That's the boss, the CEO, the symphony leader. It has connections to all other parts of the brain. And you asked yourself a question like, what would it be like to create this new job? What would it be like to go on this adventure? What would it be like to change something about myself?

The moment you ask that question, the frontal lobe, like a great symphony leader, has connections to all other parts of the brain. And it begins to select different networks of neurons that's housed in the brain. from something you learned intellectually or something you experienced. And it seamlessly pieces them together to fire in a new way and you get a vision, you get an idea.

That hologram that you see is a potential in the quantum field that you're selecting. It's an unknown. But the passionate person who does this, the thought that they're embracing in that moment becomes the experience. And they begin to feel the joy

the excitement, the inspiration, the enthusiasm, and Theos filled with God. They come out of the resting state and they feel the emotion before the event. And that emotion is giving the body a sampling of the future. And you just moved into a new state of being. What did you do? You sat down and you wrote down all the choices you were going to make and reviewed them over and over again. Then you wrote down the behaviors you were going to demonstrate the things you were going to do

and you reviewed them, committing them to your conscious mind, firing and wiring over and over again, giving yourself a direction. Wrote down your goals, the experiences you wanted to walk into. And the more you wrote those goals down, the more you felt unlivened. But then, you did something really brilliant. You lit a match in a dark place. And you started to write down the thoughts of the old self that stood in the way. I can. It's too hard. I'll never change. I'll never be successful.

You became conscious of those unconscious thoughts, and you would never let that thought slip by you unchecked in your waking day. And then you wrote down the choices you weren't going to make. And I don't care if you were losing weight or gaining weight or making weight. muscles or stop eating certain things or changing your lifestyle, you reviewed those choices, and you became so conscious of those unconscious choices that you wouldn't make that unconscious choice again. And then you reviewed your habits, and you decided what you were no longer going to do, whether you're going to wake up early, whether you're going to stop watching TV, whether you stop eating certain food doesn't matter. But you made a decision with firm

intention. And the amplitude of that decision carried a level of energy that caused your body to respond to your mind. And then you reviewed the experiences you were going to stay away from. And you became very conscious of those emotions that would bring you to a lower level, drop your energy. And every day, you weave the path from the old self to the new self. and you reached a point in your life after you did it enough times those long nights, lonely moments stepping out into the unknown

where you knew it was going to happen. You knew it. You just knew that everything lined up and that's when you relaxed. You surrendered. Now it was no longer about creating the event, the experience. It was fact that you did it.

When you relax into it like that, you start loving yourself a little bit more. And the side effect of that is you start giving. You start caring. You're more present. You're less in survival. So you see, you already know how to do this. But what I want people do is to make it a skill. And so every single person in this room, there's an intelligence that's giving you life right now.

It's keeping your heart beating and digesting your food and organizing trillions of functions in every single cell of your body. It's organizing mutations in your DNA. There's some invisible force that's giving you life. But that same intelligence that's keeping your heart beating and digesting your food is the same intelligence that's creating supernovas and distant galaxies and causing flowers to bloom. it's both personal and universal it's within you and it's all around you and you can't see it and you can't smell it and you can't taste it and you can't feel it but it is the giver of life and it is a consciousness and consciousness is awareness and awareness is paying attention and it is the observer observing you into life and you know when i tell our advanced students look

either you're going to be defined by a vision of the future or the memories of the past. In Scientific American, last year published an article that said, in memory, 50% of what you talk about in your past isn't even the truth. You make it up.

Memory is creative. Are you listening? But I tell our advanced students, when you stop creating, it just means you're more. more in love with your past than you are with your future. That's all. But you know, that intelligence that's giving you life, the observer,

you can develop a relationship with it. And when your will matches its will, and it has an amazing will, when your mind matches its mind, and it has an infinite mind, and when your love for life matches its love for life, it always answers the call. And what about the soul?

soul's interest is the unknown as adventure you know we came from source slowing down in density until we finally arrive in three dimensions and all of a sudden we decide to make our way back up and you know you wake up in the morning you come back to your senses you glance over the person laying next to you and you go how did I get here? Then you sit there and you go like this. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, let me think about all my problems. Oh, now I'm starting to feel like myself.

Then what does everybody do after that? You reach for your cell phone. You check your WhatsApp. You check your Twitter. You check your text. You do your Facebook. You tweet. How tired you are.

Then you check. the news and you feel even worse. Then you check your email, then your other email, then your Pinterest and your Snapchat and what else is there, I don't know, Instagram. And now you're ready because the personality is

reaffirmed. And here we go. You get out of bed, the same side. You have the thought of the toilet and there you are. You're in front of the toilet. Then you have the thought of the coffee maker and your coffee cup, yours.

Nobody drinks coffee out of that cup. And then there you are, right in front of the coffee maker. And then you have the thought of the shower, and then there you are in the shower, and washing yourself the same routine ways that you always do. And then,

while you're in the shower, you're imaging what you're going to wear. So creative. And the next thing, you know, you're dressed. And then you think of your car, and you're in your car. that in your car you drive to work the same way you get to work and you see the same people that push the same emotional buttons you use your boss to reaffirm your addiction to judgment you use your co-worker to reaffirm your addiction to competition

you use your Facebook to reaffirm your addiction to insecurity and all along you're using your environment to remind you of who you are Now your personality is no longer creating your personal reality. It's your personal reality that's creating your personality, and you are victim to the circumstances in your life. And then you do the things that you can memorize and do so well, and then you stop at the grocery store, you buy your same food, and you get your same meals, you watch your same television shows.

Then you get in front of the mirror. You do the lotions and the potions. and then you get in bed, you open up the book, you read one paragraph. You wake up in the morning and here we go again, because a habit is a redundant set of automatic, unconscious, thoughts, behaviors, and emotions that are acquired through frequent repetition. So the habit is when your body goes on autopilot. So if you've been doing that for 20 or 30 or 40 or 50,

years, your body is already programmed into a predictable future based on what it did in the past. As a matter of fact, we could take your yesterday and lift it up and set it on tomorrow. And that's called karma. That's it. But there's no unseen hand doing it to you. You're making the same choices and the same behaviors and the same experiences to reaffirm that same emotion that you call you. Are you with me still?

am I getting too close so then come on reason this with me if you're not in the process of being defined by a vision of the future you are left with the old circuitry and the emotions of the past

then you will be predictable in your life and by the way if you're so structured in that routine if the unknown landed in your lap you would say excuse me can you come back tomorrow this is going to really break up my here. So then finding the sweet spot of the generous present moment, I can tell you what it looks

like in the heart and in the brain. I've seen it enough times and we're able to predict it when it's going to happen. Because when you are truly present, you can't run a program. and if you are doing those same things every single day and you're in that routine, the soul is watching reruns of the same television show. Wouldn't you get bored after a while? And it falls asleep on the couch. And the soul goes to sleep and the ego takes over.

And you crave the familiar. And the unknown is the soul's agenda. to journey back to source and tell stories of its adventure. And you tell me if the soul is interested in the unknown and in the adventure, if you're stuck on some emotion that's keeping you anchored to the past,

the soul can't go to a new future. It means you have to overcome that emotion because the memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom. And that's the name of the game here, folks. And I don't care how wealthy you are or how beautiful you are, how successful you are, how many friends you have, or how many degrees you have. If you haven't overcome that emotion in one lifetime, you haven't evolved.

Because that emotion is keeping you connected to the past. And it is that emotion that is signaling the same gene in the same way. your body is a protein-producing machine. And proteins are responsible for the structure and the function of your body. In every single cell in your body, except red blood cells, makes proteins. Your immune system makes immune proteins called antibodies.

Your stomach cells make stomach proteins called enzymes. Your skin cells make skin proteins called collagen and elastin. Your muscle cells make muscle cells make muscle. protein is called actin and myosin. And in order for your body to make a protein, a gene has to be regulated in the cell. Are you with me? So they used to say, you know, you're hardwired to be a certain way and you're doomed by your genes. That's a lie. We are marvels of adaptability and change. But if you're a scientist studying rats in an unchanging environment, you're not going to see many genetic changes for neurological changes, would you agree?

So then genes are like Christmas tree lights. They're turning on and off all the time. And when they turn on, they upregulate, they make a healthy protein. And when they downregulator turn off, they make a cheaper protein. And, you know, the central dogma and science was that genes create disease. less than 5%, more like 1% of every person that's born with a genetic condition comes from birth, like TASX disease, sickle cell anemia, type 1 diabetes. The other 95% to 99% is from lifestyle and behaviors.

And so scientists that were going to map the human genome, they said, okay, there's 100,000 proteins that make up the body. so there should be a hundred thousand genes. There's 40,000 regulatory proteins that help make those proteins, so that's 40,000 more genes. So 100,000 plus 40,000 is 140,000 genes for every protein. When they map the human genome, 23,688 genes. You're 300 genes away from a gene.

chimpanzee, some more than others, but roughly then. Because in one gene, you could have over 3,000 variations on that gene. And genes don't create disease. It's the environmental signal that signals the gene to instruct it and select it to make new proteins. But if you're thinking the same thoughts, making the same choices, demonstrating the same behaviors, creating the same experiences to produce the same emotions, you have the same lights on and the other lights off and you're headed for a genetic destiny. Are you with me still? Take a group of stressed out executives. You teach them how to find the present moment. You teach them how to breathe. You teach them how to make a few different choices and to do a few different things. And you teach them how to express some

suppressed emotions. At the end of eight weeks, they regulate 1,561 new genes. Over 800 genes for growth and repair, and just about 700 genes that downregulate inflammation and disease, turning on new lights, turning off old lights. And so then, we did an experiment in February of this year in our advance workshop. I randomly selected. 120 people. And I wanted to measure their cortisol levels, which is the stress hormone level. And I wanted to measure another chemical called IGA, immunoglobulin A, or salivary immunoglobulin A. The primary defense against bacteria and viruses in your body better than any flu shot.

And what happens is that when your stress hormones go up, your immune system goes down. because as you begin to mobilize all this energy for some threat in your external environment, real or imagine, you rob the energy in your internal environment for growth and repair. So if you keep turning on the fight-or-flight response, you keep turning on the sympathetic nervous system

and you're mobilizing all this energy. You're drawing from this invisible field of vital energy around your body and you're turning it into chemistry. And if you keep doing that, the field around your body, and now you are more matter and less energy, more particle, and less wave. And now in your life you are matter trying to change matter, and it's going to take time

to get what you want. But as you keep diminishing your vitality, you keep robbing from this field, the immune system begins to shut down because all the troops are fighting some war abroad and there's no homeland security. And IGA levels go down. So we randomly selected 120 people and we measure their cortisol levels and we measure their IGA levels. Now when you're under stress, the emotions that you feel under stress is anger, hostility, frustration, impatience, fear, anxiety, worry, guilt, shame, envy, jealousy, competition. Those are all created by the hormones of stress. And psychology says those are normal human states of consciousness. Those are altered states of consciousness because living in stress is living in survival. And stress is when

your brain and body are knocked out of balance. Stress is when your brain and body are knocked that of homeostasis. So I reasoned, what if the reverse was actually true? What if people were taught how to open their heart? And when you're frustrated and when you're impatient and you're angry, your heart beats out of rhythm. And we've measured that over and over again. The heart gets highly incoherent, and the heart has its own little brain. But when you feel gratitude and thankfulness and care and inspiration, all of a sudden, if you do it properly, your heart will start to get very orderly, very coherent, very synchronized. And so I wanted our students to sustain an elevated emotion for at least 10 minutes,

two to three times a day. That's it. But what happens when you experience an elevated emotion, and we know this because we've measured it also, If you can begin to sustain an elevated emotion, this is the creative center right here. It's like dropping a pebble in water. And if you are able to sustain that emotional state,

you were dropping pebble after pebble, after pebble, in a perfect rhythm. And what happens is the field around the body tends to grow. now you are more energy and less matter, more wave and less particle. And now you begin to feel connected to something greater. And if you can feel more deeply, more richly, and more completely, you're dropping a big stone and it's creating a bigger wave.

And that energy is a frequency. And all frequency carries information, just like a radio wave. And your thought is the intention on that wave. And so I had them sustain these elevated states for 10 minutes a day, twice a day or three times a day, for four days. At the end of four days, their cortisol levels

dropped three standard deviations, clinically significant. But their IGA levels went from about 53 and a half to 87. That is scientific history right there. They epigenetically signaled new genes and new ways, and their immune system got much, much stronger. And there were a few people whose values were over 100. Ten minutes of gratitude a day could heal you. It's better than any flu shot. So then living in stress is living in survival. And all organisms and nature can tolerate short-term stress. But human beings, we become addicted to very chemicals of stress, very hormones of stress, and we use the people and conditions

and the problems in our life to reaffirm that addiction to the emotion. And we can turn on the stress response just by thought alone. Out of the infinite potentials in the quantum field that await you When you're under stress, you will select the worst case scenario. And you will begin to emotionally embrace that outcome in preparation for it happening. Do you know why? Because when the survival gene is activated, you prepare for the worst. Because if anything less happens, you have better chance of surviving. And people live their lives that way.

And when you get it right, you say, hey, you know how smart I am? You need to hang out with me. But what happens when you don't get it right? It's called anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, OCD. And so then you can begin to forecast some worst-case scenario in your mind, and you can turn on a stress response just by thought alone. You could revisit some past bitter memory, and to the exclusion of everything else, make it real.

And your body is the unconscious mind, is believing it's living in that past experience. When you turn on the stress response, and you can't turn it off, Now you're headed for disease because no organism in nature can live in emergency mode for extended periods of time. And it is a scientific fact that the hormones of stress downregulate genes and create disease. It's a fact. And if you can turn on the stress response just by thought alone, and those chemicals pull the trigger of the gene to create disease, that means that your thoughts can literally make you sick.

so if your thoughts would make you sick is it possible that your thoughts could make you well thank you for listening continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes