55 pages • 1 hour read
Joe DispenzaBecoming Supernatural: How Common People are Doing the Uncommon
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Blessing of the Energy Centers”
In Chapter 4, Joe Dispenza delves deeper into the concepts alluded to thus far and provides another practice for readers to try. First, he covers the visible light spectrum to illustrate that there are frequencies that humans cannot see or perceive, but that exist nonetheless—for example, radio waves and X-rays. Visible light is only a fraction of the electromagnetic frequencies humans can perceive. He explains wavelengths—the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, and vice versa—and how cells communicate with each other by transmitting info on different frequencies of light (89). He mentions these concepts to assert that, if people only define reality by their physical senses, they may be missing out on a lot of other information, as even frequencies that humans cannot sense still exert influence. Sitting still in meditation and tuning out the external environment can help a person get a clearer signal and receive information from it. Tuning into this new light and information allows the body to experience order (“syntropy”) instead of disorder and quiets down the analytical mind.
He alludes to the meditation at the end of the previous chapter—he had asked the listener to pay attention to different parts of the body and the spaces around them—and explains in this chapter why he included these instructions. This explanation includes the concepts of convergent focus (single-minded or narrow focus on anything having matter and paying attention to objects in the environment; survival mode and stress hormones narrow this focus even further) and divergent focus (open and broad focus, becoming aware of the space and light energy around the body, focusing on the wave/energy instead of the particle/matter).
The Blessing of the Energy Centers meditation involves placing attention on each of the body’s energy centers and then opening one’s focus to the space around it. Each of these centers as a result becomes more orderly and coherent, activating the cells, tissues, and organs of that region and causing physical changes in the body. He goes into further detail about what energy centers are and how they work, with each having its own “mini brain” and its own frequency. There are a total of seven energy centers, as well as an eighth that is just above the physical body, and Dispenza explains what areas of the physical body they govern and how to tell if they are balanced or unbalanced. Dispenza describes the process of channeling energy upward from one energy center to the next.
Often, energy becomes stuck in one of the energy centers and affects the areas of the body associated with that center. The first three—which govern the sexual organs, digestive organs, and adrenal glands—tend to get stuck the most often. Living in survival and stress causes the energetic field around the body to shrink, which results in a lower frequency of energy being carried to those parts of the body, eventually causing disease. Overutilizing the first three energy centers consumes the energy surrounding the body.
The Blessing of the Energy Centers meditation creates coherence in each center by moving attention from the first energy center and drawing that energy up to the eighth. It is important to maintain elevated emotions during the process, as more elevated emotions create more energy. He ends the chapter by outlining the meditation practice.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Reconditioning the Body to a New Mind”
Chapter 5 introduces a breathing technique that precedes most of Dispenza’s meditations, as the breath is one of the keys to becoming supernatural. He explains the physiology of this specific breath practice, how it works, and why it is important to becoming supernatural.
He returns to the idea of the “thinking-feeling loop” introduced in Chapter 2; thoughts generate feelings, which generate more thoughts in line with those feelings, creating a loop and conditioning the body to feel a certain way habitually.
This works in relation to the body’s energy centers. Most people’s thoughts and feelings predominantly affect the first three energy centers, which are concerned mostly with survival. The energy created from these thoughts can get stored as energy in the corresponding energy center and produce biological as well as psychological effects. When energy is stored in these energy centers, a person broadcasts a vibrational signature from that energy center to the body’s energy field. When energy is stuck in these lower energy centers, a person has no more energy to create a new destiny, shrinking the energy field around the body. The breathing technique is a way of releasing stuck energy so it can flow to the brain and be used for creation.
He conceptualizes the body as a magnet, as it has polarity between two poles that produces a measurable electromagnetic field. The “north pole” is the mind and brain, while the “south pole” is at the base of the spine. If a person keeps drawing energy from the body’s energy fields by living in survival mode, the body has no more electrical charge running through it. The breath helps to move the stored energy out of the lower energy centers so it can flow freely through the body.
He first talks about the physical body to illustrate how this breath practice works. The central nervous system, consisting of the brain and spinal cord, coordinates all other systems in the body. Inside of this system is cerebrospinal fluid, which functions as a cushion to protect the brain and spinal cord from trauma. It is also “a conduit to enhance electrical charges in the nervous system” (125). Moving energy requires flexing the muscles of the lower energy centers—the perineum, the lower abdomen, and the upper abdomen—on inhale and focusing on pulling the cerebrospinal fluid up to the brain.
Cerebral spinal fluid is made up of proteins and salts, which become charged when dissolved in solution. Pulling those charged molecules upward creates an inductance field—“an invisible field of electromagnetic energy that moves in a circular motion in the direction the charged molecules are moving in” (128). The inductance field draws stored energy in the first three energy centers back to the brain. Once the energy becomes activated, the sympathetic nervous system turns on and starts to merge with the parasympathetic nervous system. When this energy travels to the brain, the brain produces gamma brainwave patterns, which have the highest amount of energy. The breath creates a prana tube (134), an energetic tube that runs through the body along the spinal column. “Prana” is a Sanskrit word meaning “life force.” Dispenza presents studies and graphs of students who have done this breath practice successfully, demonstrating the changes that took place in their brains (132).
Dispenza emphasizes again the importance of embracing elevated emotions, as they have a higher frequency than negative emotions. He cites a study in which students were able to change the expression of their genes over the course of a workshop by changing their internal states. The chapter ends by walking the reader through the steps of this breathwork/meditation and referring them to Dispenza’s online resources.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Living Examples of the Truth”
In Chapter 6, Dispenza presents several case studies to illustrate his practices in action and the effects they have on participants’ lives.
The first case study concerns a woman, Ginny, who suffered spinal damage during a car accident, causing her intense pain. Though she saw a chiropractor regularly and took several medications, the pain persisted; she struggled to walk, sit, or drive, and she soon became angry and depressed due to her condition. Her doctor suggested lumbar surgery, but before her surgery, her husband convinced her to attend one of Joe Dispenza’s workshops. Initially, her pain and frustration dampened her experience. However, she performed the breathing exercise outlined in the previous chapter, working on her negative emotions, particularly her anger. She successfully got “beyond her body” and her autonomic nervous system “stepped in and did the healing for her” (146). Post-meditation, Ginny felt no pain. She was able to move in ways she could not before, no longer needed to take her medicine, and the next day performed a walking meditation with no difficulty. She canceled the surgery and remained pain-free.
In a second case study, Daniel was a stressed-out entrepreneur who had worked intensely to build a successful business. He developed electromagnetic hypersensitivity, a rare condition that causes a strong aversion to anything that emits electromagnetic frequencies: cell phones, laptops, cameras, Wi-Fi networks, etc. This caused Daniel intense, debilitating headaches and chronic fatigue, incapacitating him and his business. Three years after the start of his symptoms, he read Dispenza’s book, You Are the Placebo, and performed the mediations therein. Gradually, his pain decreased. When he performed the Blessing of the Energy Centers meditation, he had a profound internal experience. After his meditation, he went 10 minutes with no pain. He started to practice the meditations while in the presence of electromagnetic frequencies that had caused him pain, changing his internal state. With continued practice, he went for longer and longer periods without pain until it disappeared completely. As a result, Daniel was able to go back to work and rebuild his life, working less than he had been before and earning more money.
In the third case study, Jennifer was diagnosed with various illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, chronic asthma, and vertigo. Her husband Jim looked to books to find some solution to her pain, as specialists claimed there was nothing more they could do for her. He found You Are the Placebo and read the stories therein, and he and Jennifer decided she should attend a workshop. After committing herself to the meditation practices during the workshop, she managed to heal herself—she was able to walk around without her asthma medication and could eat food without gastrointestinal issues.
The fourth case study introduced Felicia, a medical doctor suffering from eczema. Frustrated with the limits of conventional medical practices, she sought more solutions to her patients’ issues and found Dispenza’s work. She attended a workshop that she described as “life-changing,” causing her to update her limiting beliefs. She admits she had approached the event with skepticism, but received positive results from doing the meditations, including a healing of her eczema.
Felicia tried to pivot within her medical practice to more holistic approaches, but the medical system refused to insure these practices. Feeling trapped, her skin conditions returned. Still, she continued meditating and attended an advanced workshop, creating a Mind Movie (a manifestation tool that will be explored in a later chapter) that includes images of her speaking on a stage. During one meditation, she had a profound internal experience, during which she transitioned to high-energy gamma brainwaves. She later manifested the scene from her Mind Movie by speaking on stage at the retreat to share her experience. Felicia’s eczema healed and, at the time of Becoming Supernatural’s writing, had not returned even without medication.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
This section of Becoming Supernatural goes into further detail regarding practices and actionable techniques, such as the Blessing of the Energy Centers meditation and the breathing practice, and concludes with examples of people applying these practices and experiencing life-changing results. Dispenza distills these complex scientific and philosophical topics by gradually building upon the concepts he introduces and providing concrete steps and practices to illustrate them. He also uses repetition and review so the concepts are simple to understand and the links between these different ideas are clear; for example, he references the thinking-feeling loop that was first introduced in Chapter 2 and more clearly illustrates how it affects the body in Chapter 5.
In these chapters, Dispenza explains the body’s energy centers and how they affect people physically and psychologically, building further on the theme of The Power of the Mind Over the Body and providing tangible steps to clear this stuck energy. This concept of energy centers within the body is present in several spiritual traditions, most notably within ancient East Indian traditions where they are known as chakras. This philosophy posits that emotional health is directly correlated with physical health, and as a result, emotional disturbances result in physical disease. Thus, improving physical health is a matter of consciously resolving these “stuck” emotions and moving energy through the body. This theme is further developed in Chapter 5, which delves more into breathwork and practices. Building upon Chapter 4’s idea of stuck energy in the body’s energy centers, Dispenza shows how this energy can be released through breathwork and intention.
Dispenza also illuminates the importance of embracing “elevated” emotions rather than emotions associated with stress and survival. Dispenza asserts that a person must strive to become “more energy than matter” to transmute survival emotions into elevated emotions (134), and that this process of transmutation has a significant effect on the physical body, with more intense emotions causing more intense change. This process of habitually changing one’s internal state to one of elevated emotions and mindfulness “reconditions” the body into a state of greater balance and order. Returning to epigenetics, which was introduced in Chapter 2, Dispenza cites a study from his advanced workshop in which participants were able to alter the expression of certain genes by changing their internal states. Providing empirical evidence such as this is a powerful way to build ethos and lend credibility to the ideas outlined in this chapter.
The author then sums up these practices in tangible form by presenting more case studies of people who used these same practices to enact change in their own lives and to heal their physical bodies. Chapter 6 and the case studies therein serve a twofold purpose—illustrating the concepts at hand in a concrete way and helping to alleviate doubts and skepticism. Felicia’s testimony is particularly effective in this regard; the story of a self-described “jaded, intensely analytical doctor” finding success with these practices is a poignant example of the transformative potential of these practices for people of diverse backgrounds (153). It is important to note that within the scientific community, case studies and anecdotal evidence are useful and valid means of gathering evidence for research but taken on their own cannot be used to “prove” or disprove scientific concepts due to their limited and subjective nature. Still, in Becoming Supernatural, the case studies cited here and throughout the book lend credence to Dispenza’s claims about The Importance of Meditation and Mindfulness. Perhaps more importantly, these examples of others attaining success with these practices serve to inspire and encourage the reader to try these practices out for themselves and observe the results in their own lives, emphasizing the book’s focus on practical application.
