Articles
Article from SMH.
Placebo effect is powerful: researcher
DANNY ROSE
February
19, 2010
AAP
The placebo effect is both real and "powerful", an Australian
researcher says, and it could be harnessed to boost medical care
outcomes.
For a decade, Damien Finniss has been studying the mysterious
phenomenon, in
which dummy treatments are known to have a startling effect on the human
body.
"Some placebo responses are tremendously big, they can be as equal as
an active drug," Mr Finniss, of the University of Sydney's Pain
Management
and Research Institute, told AAP.
"It's as simple as belief and expectancy, and trust in the
doctor."
Mr Finniss conducted a review of the global pool of research into the
placebo effect for a paper published in The Lancet.
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By Kim Fraser
Usually when we want something, we spend a lot of energy working out how we are going to get it. Of course I hear you say. We have an aim, a method of getting there and a results column, in which we mark ourselves on how well we did, or didn't. When we get what we want we feel elated, for a while, then we want something else, so the cycle of aiming, efforting and succeeding or failing starts again.
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Over the past three months I have ended a 11 year relationship, a 7 year job and have retired from 23 years of playing soccer. It seems wholesale changes are taking place for me and at times this has been testing.
I have been able to recognise parts of myself that are resistant to change, parts of my personality that would prefer things stayed the same because that would be ‘easier’.
I have been tested regarding where I place my security, in my home, relationship and work. Now I feel more stable in my Divine connection and realise that my life can change, turn and weave in infinite different ways. I feel more capable of flowing with change now and have a stronger Divine connection.
My attachments to my life and the way it was has become more clear to me and now I feel more me than ever before. I feel excited about moving forward and I’m thankful for a supportive and loving spiritual community.
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By Kim Fraser
Despite
hours of workshops, meditation, reading the right books and doing
our best, troubles still surface in life. Of course, this is how it
is, but how we deal with it can make a very big difference to the
speed, ease and grace with which we move through these things. Sometimes
the same old garbage that we thought we had dealt with rears its Hydra-like
ugly head again!
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By Kim Fraser
I
have never met anyone who didn't want peace on earth. Armies don't call
themselves armies any more, they are peace keeping forces. Freedom
fighters are supposedly not wanting to interfere with the liberty of
others, but to secure their own liberty. The fact that they might kill
or imprison people to gain their freedom does not seem to cause them
any intellectual difficulty. They are fighting for what they hold dear:
the right to live freely and in peace.
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Dot
was a mere speck in the right hand corner of the page. "I feel small
and alone," said Dot, peering at the vastness of this world. Dot wanted
to shrink from the page but where to, how and why were questions Dot
asked. After
an engaging
conversation with Pencil Dot decided to find a micro place on
Page. Weeks passed and nothing moved. There were journeys
to the remaining three corners and a trip to centre page or stage.
All were possibilites. Now Pencil had retreated there was no
one to speak to about these exciting travel opportunities.
Something else began to shade across Dot's mind. "What was
Dot
doing here?
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When
you decide to embrace spiritual development, all parts of your life
will come under your scrutiny. You will see things as though for the
first time, and hopefully, your self awareness will grow keenly.
Sometimes
people become side tracked in their pursuit of the Divine, and instead
of looking inward, they look outward. They put their attention on
judging the progress or lack of it, in others. By placing attention on
how terrible others are, we can ignore our own messy bits! This is not
useful, and judgment of others or their unique spiritual path, is
always going to be counter productive.
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By Kim Fraser
Lets face it, no matter how much inner work you have done, we all have our tests and challenges. These are the circumstances which cause us to reach deep within ourselves and come up with creative and graceful (well sometimes graceful) solutions which work for us and those around us.
It is often said that if we pass our tests, then we move on to another level of evolution, and it is in the passing of these initiations that we gain mastery.
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By Kim Fraser
The Divine plan is that we live lives of love, joy, happiness, peace and abundance of all good things. This is our natural state. When our life is something other than that, then something has gone wrong, and we are in a situation of having to find out what that something is, and fix it. In the fixing, we become more skilled, stronger, more able than before. It is the process of growth. Growth involves experiential learning, time, process and mistakes! Difficulties themselves are not bad, just indications that it is time to do some inner work.
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Power versus force
My granddad told me this story when I was a young lad.
The wind and sun were having a discussion about who was the strongest. The wind claimed he was the strongest by far, but the sun said she was and suggested a competition to resolve the dispute for once and for all. They looked down and saw a man walking along a road wearing a hat and coat. Both agreed that the winner would be the one who could make the man take off his hat and coat.
The wind went first, huffing and puffing, but this only caused the man to pull down tighter on his hat, button his coat and turn up its collar. This frustrated the wind so he blew even harder, making the man fall over onto the road.
The sun said “It’s my turn” and started smiling at the man. He stood up, dusted himself off, shook his head thinking what a strange day it had turned out to be and walked along his way.
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