How To Make Magic. It’s Not Woo It’s Neuroscience!
The inspiring work of Dr. James Doty, including how to actually manifest and my sadness at learning of his death
I love my library. Even though I live outside a small town with a population of around 12K, and a shire (think county if you live in the US) of about 58K, my library rocks!
Do they have every book I want when I want it? Of course not, but I do love to peruse the shelves and see what unexpected titles grab me. It’s like a dollar store of untapped information and possibilities… except it’s free.1
Last year in the Health & Well-being section I stumbled upon Into the Magic Shop : a neurosurgeon's true story of the life-changing magic of compassion and mindfulness
I’d never heard of the author but grabbed it and as soon as I got into the first few pages of the book exclaimed to my hubby that I was going to make him read it. I don’t consider myself incredibly Woo Woo - maybe just Woo - but my hubby, with his masters in Evidence Based Medicine, is um, definitely not. I knew that in a world of hazy, feel good tropes about health and wellness he’d appreciate the scientific grounding in Dr. Doty’s book.
There's lots of information about Dr Doty's amazing life but in a nutshell he grew up in very dire straits with an alcoholic father and a mother who was not only paralysed by a stroke but suffered severe depression. Even though he had a troubled childhood he eventually became a neurosurgeon, an entrepreneur, a university professor, and founded CCARE, the The Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University.
Unfortunately Dr. Doty passed away last month (July) after never really recovering from surgery he had at the end of last year. It was too soon - he was only 69.
Into The Magic Shop is Dr. Doty's memoir how his life changed when he was 12 years old and met a woman who changed his life (her son owned the Magic Shop of the title). Ruth taught Dr. Doty three things:
1. She taught him how to relax his body and how to attend to himself. By that I mean she taught him how to pay attention, focus, and be in the present.
most of us spend 80% of our lives either dwelling on the past or stressing out about the future and only 20% in the present.
2. Once he’d learned how to relax his body, getting him out of his sympathetic nervous system, Ruth taught Dr. Doty to change the voice inside of his head. He described this as Taming The Mind.
He learned to change his inner dialogue from one of negative and critical self talk to one of self compassion and affirmation. It turns out fear and negative self talk limit our possibilities.
research shows a negative inner dialogue creates underlying low level stress which has been shown to foster negative health effects.
3. Lastly, Ruth taught him to open his heart and have compassion for others. Although he followed her teachings he didn't quite understand or embody this lesson until much later.
When Dr. Doty was quote unquote outwardly successful, think fast cars and multiple houses, he was far from happy. It was only after he lost everything when the dot com bubble burst that he finally found his purpose.
At his low point he took stock, re-evaluated, and reinvestigated Ruth’s teachings until he fully understood them.
opening your heart and allowing authentic connections with others is the most important thing. Don’t underestimate the power you have to change someone’s life for the better.
Once I finished Into The Magic Shop and had passed it over to the hubby did I immediately take to heart and put into practice what Dr. Doty was advocating?
Well tbh, nope, but it was one of the pieces of the puzzle that guided me in working to change my outlook on the world and was probably burbling around in my brain just before I started this here Vibrancy Society.
Let’s Talk Manifesting.
Once I heard about Dr. Doty’s death I wanted to be reminded of his teachings so naturally took a few trips down a few rabbit holes. While the inspiration of his life story can’t be denied it’s his authority as a neurosurgeon and how the brain works that actually made me want to write this post.
Do you believe in manifesting? You should because it’s not woo, it’s science!
Here are are Dr. Doty's steps.
He says you need to engage all your senses. Making it a sensory experience strengthens the connections to your brain.
first you set your intention
then you write it down - so you do something physical, something tactile
then you read it in your mind
next you read it out loud
and finally you visualise it and see yourself in the situation where your intention has been achieved
And, then repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat (you get the idea)
When you repeatedly repeat these steps ;-) you embed a representation of who you'd like to be in your subconscious and then… your brain does its thing!
When you imbed an intention into your subconscious, you create a habit around it and the habit around it is what helps your brain bring it to fruition.
When you create a habit, you create neuro pathways - new circuitry gets laid down.
Here's the science of what gets activated in your brain when you manifest and why it works:
You start with the default mode network, this is when your mind wanders or you’re daydreaming. It's where you create the narrative of who you are and what you want and you set your intention.
Once you set that intention and decide it’s something you really, really want your brain know how important it is to you. It creates salience or importance which activates your task positive network which has three parts.
The first part is your salient network a.k.a. this thing I wanna do deserves my attention.
That will then activate your attention network. When you cognitively focus your attention on your intention your brain looks through all the possibilities in your environment and identifies things that will support your desired new world view.
Once your attention network identify things then your executive control network takes over to chase down what is in your subconscious. It’s that idea that once you start paying attention to something like white cars or pregnant people you end up seeing them everywhere.
We all have the ability to embed our intentions deeply into our subconscious and the trick is that there's no trick.
There's no magic, it’s how our brain works - it’s neuroscience!
What Have You Manifested in Your Life?
I used to say that I willed something into existence and now I know that I did it through the power of my intention, my subconscious, and my amazing brain.
Even if you don't think you’ve manifested anything you actually have (and I bet you can think of an example).
Here’s a story of how I got something so lodged into my subconscious that the world I mean my executive control network, showed me the way to manifest it:
When I was growing up I always had a dream of going to ballet boarding school. To say I was ballet obsessed would be an understatement.
When I was 14 or 15, while sitting on the shag carpet in my childhood home, I read an article in the arts section of the Sunday Los Angeles Times newspaper. The interview was with a principal dancer from ABT (American Ballet Theatre) who mentioned the school that he said really prepared him for a career as a professional dancer.
Turns out it was an arts boarding school for grades 7-12 as well as a university and once I knew that a school like that existed I immediately wanted to go. I thought about it non-stop and I tried to figure out how to make it happen. One of the big problems was that the school was in a state on the east coast of the USA I was living in California on the West Coast.
Well, it turned out that the dean of the school of dance was going to soon be teaching and adjudicating at a regional ballet festival in a town several hours away from where I lived. The amateur junior company that I was in was not part of this regional ballet network but the slightly larger company in the city about 45 minutes north of us was and they were taking about 15 dancers.
They agreed to let me tag along as an extra dancer.
The audition was set up as a separate thing from the festival and there were about ten of us being put through our paces. The dean checked our feet, our extension, gave us a short ballet barre. The very last thing he did was waltz with each of the girls and do a little partnered lift. I remember being so nervous but tried to relax and respond and connect as best as I could.
After getting home I honestly can’t remember how long I nervously waited for the results but I do remember getting an overstuffed envelope in the mail and do I ever remember how scared I was to open it!
Obviously such potentially life-changing momentous news needed to be processed in private so I went into my mom and dad's bedroom and locked myself into their en suite bathroom. Once I got up the courage to open the envelope not only was it a congratulatory letter but the reason it was so thick was that it also contained an application for the school.
Of course my parents and my dance teacher helped me manifest this, I mean I was a super shy and nerdy, not to mention naive kid. As my mother used to say, “out of the four of you girls I can’t believe you’re the one we sent away.” This was a huge leap of faith from my parents who having never seen the school put me on a plane and sent me to the other side of the country with an overstuffed trunk to fend for myself. (did I mention I was shy and naive??) I don’t know how they found the money to send me away to that school but I can honestly say it changed the trajectory of my life.
I quickly went from being a big fish in a little pond at my dance studio to feeling way out of depth but I learned a tonne, not just about dance technique but about myself!
Did I end up becoming the ballerina that I had dreamt about being all my life?
Nope, but it did set me on the pathway to a professional dancer career of close to 20 years.
I used to tell people I was able to fulfil my dream because I was so freaking stubborn but now I’m reframing that story as an example of my bad ass manifesting self!
Did my intention show up in the way I expected?
Nope, but it still showed up. I still manifested my childhood dream.
Dr. Doty does speak to this - that you might not get exactly what you want. He cautions that you have to practice manifesting without attachment and notes that if you’re grasping you can actually send your dreams away.
My yoga teacher used to end class with a very simple mantra/acknowledgement.
We would hold our hands in prayer position with our thumbs to our forehead and set the intention of having kind thoughts for ourselves and for others.
Then we'd bring our hands down to our lips and remind ourselves to also have kind words for ourselves and others.
Finally we’d bring our hands to our heart and state that we wanted to leave class with an open and loving heart.
One of Dr. Doty’s teachings is that we’re wired for community and connection.
Changing our outlooks by practicing positive self talk and being of service to others releases oxytocin - you know, the LOVE hormone. The release of oxytocin puts your brain in an open state which is essential for manifesting.
another benefit is that studies have shown that if you volunteer and do things of service and really mean it (i.e. with an open and loving heart) you increase your longevity.
The last thing I want to let you know is that Dr. Doty believed in the power of love and created an Alphabet Of The Heart, letters C through L
C Stands for compassion for yourself and others
D is for recognising the dignity of every person in the world
E is for practising equanimity you know, having calmness and composure
F is for forgiveness
G is gratitude, which we know is an amazing practice
H is for humility
I is for integrity
J is for justice
K is for kindness
And L is for love!!!
I know “trusting the universe” is wanky as all get out, but I think if we just remember to live with a kind, open, and loving heart, pretty much the rest will take care of itself.
Thanks for reading,
xBec
SCHTUDIO HAPPENINGS
Spots have opened up in this month’s mini retreat and September’s still has a few spots. Links are here:
🔮Move & Awaken Your Intuition, August 16th
🔮Move & Awaken Your Intuition, September 14th
ON THE PODCAST
Last week’s episode:
And, my friend Lourdes, who I interviewed in Episode 19, is back with her podcast Success Starts With Self Love. Season Two is on Wholeness
Look, I know it’s not technically “free” and that our rates/taxes pay for it but it still makes me so happy when I get a notice that a book I’ve put on reserve is available for pickup. I put so many books on reserve that I forget what I’ve requested so it’s always like a lucky dip when the next title shows up!
I manifested an early school drop off on Tuesday mornings so that I could take a pilates class, which I love :) Love your story. Love the library, and this book - what a find!