Dr. Joe Dispenza: How a Crippled Man Healed Himself with His Mind

Now, you finally reach the day you’ve been looking forward to for months — it’s time to compete. Things start out excellent: You finish the swimming leg of your race at a great pace and get on your bike. You feel connected to your bike and become hyper-focused on achieving your goal while the wind rushes past your ears.

Suddenly, you hear a noise — the sound of a horn and the screeching of tires. As you try to find the source of the sound, the unthinkable happens.

Impact.

You feel a rush of pain followed by numbness shooting through your back and legs. Then the world fades away… 

Three days later, you wake up in a hospital bed with no feeling in your feet and no recollection of the accident. After realizing what has happened, everything seems for naught — the exercise, the training, the competition. They all feel like memories from a distant past.

At this moment, you’re at a crossroads. You can either accept your fate and adapt to a different way of life, or you can find a way to beat the odds to learn how to walk again.

You may not be a triathlete, and you may never need to teach yourself to walk again. But for Dr. Joe Dispenza, this story is all too familiar. 

The Darkest Sunny Day: The Story of Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Tragic Accident

Joe Dispenza didn’t always plan on working in the field of neuroscience and becoming one of the world’s leaders in the mind-body connection. But life has a funny way of choosing our destiny for us.

In 1986, Joe was literally living the dream. He was 23 years old, in great physical shape, and had recently started a successful chiropractic practice in La Jolla, California — everything seemed to be going in his favor.

During the early months of that year, Joe had been training diligently for a triathlon, and when April rolled around, he was prepared to take on the competition.

It was a sunny day in Palm Springs — as most of them are — when Dr. Joe Dispenza began the triathlon that would change his life. He successfully made it through the swimming portion of the race and had made it into the biking portion. As the biking portion continued, Joe reached a challenging area of the course where the race participants needed to merge next to traffic.

After being safely motioned into traffic, Joe continued making his way through the ranks. Then, tragedy struck. A driver of an SUV didn’t realize they were merging with race traffic … and they didn’t see Joe.

The SUV collided with his back, and as the driver tried to stop, Joe was thrown from his bike and forced to cling to the front bumper of the truck to prevent it from running him over completely. The aftermath of the collision left Joe badly injured, and he was immediately rushed to the hospital.

When Joe woke up in a hospital bed the following day, he began to realize the extent of his injuries. The orthopedic surgeon assigned to his case delivered the news. Joe had sustained compression fractures in six of his vertebrae, and the surgeon strongly suggested stabilizing Joe’s shattered spine through an invasive procedure requiring the installation of two, foot-long stainless steel rods.

Joe couldn’t believe the outcome and wanted to seek other doctors’ opinions. After meeting with four neurosurgeons who confirmed the initial diagnosis, Joe still believed there had to be another way.

Plan B: Joe’s Mind-Body Healing Journey

While he was lying face down in his hospital bed with the risk of quadriplegia if he tried to stand, Joe had to make a challenging decision. 

He could choose Plan A — a highly invasive procedure resulting in years of physical therapy and the chance that he would never walk again. Or, he could choose Plan B and find a way to heal himself through the mind-body connection.

Both options offered incredibly long odds for Joe, but in his mind, Joe knew he didn’t want to undergo surgery. And that’s when his incredible journey toward healing began — right there in his hospital bed.

Choosing to forgo surgery and use mind-body healing techniques to foster his recovery seemed farfetched to many, but Dr. Joe Dispenza believed in himself and believed it was possible. After all, the brain is incredibly complex, and there are countless stories of healing illness with the subconscious mind. Why should repairing body parts be any different?

Joe began repairing his body with his mind by visualizing his body becoming whole again and doing healing meditation. His knowledge as a chiropractor gave Dr. Joe the ability to mentally picture his injuries and visualize how those broken pieces needed to move to become properly aligned again.

For weeks, Dr. Joe dedicated every waking moment to healing his body. He journeyed inside himself to find the part of his brain that had remained locked for 23 years and began the critical mind-body connection to heal himself. During those intensive days and nights of meditation, Joe was rewiring his brain and reassembling the pieces of his broken spine.

Then, at ten and a half weeks, Joe achieved his first milestone in his miraculous journey — he stood on his own! 

Against all odds and knowledge of conventional medicine, Dr. Joe Dispenza repaired the damaged vertebrae in his back through mind-body healing techniques and intensive meditation. And standing was just the beginning.

By the end of twelve weeks, Joe was not only out of the hospital, but he was training for the next race and working at his chiropractic clinic again!

Discovery: Dr. Joe’s Journey into Neuroscience and Healing Meditation

Following his seemingly miraculous recovery, Joe Dispenza wanted to do more than tell the world a miracle had happened — he wanted to search for proof that he had healed his body with his mind.

And that is precisely what he did. In the years after his transformative healing experience, Joe started journeying down a path into the study of neuroscience. As he traveled the world to interview experts and conduct research on the mind’s healing capabilities, Dr. Joe had one question looming in his mind.

Has anybody else done it as well?

This pressing question led Joe to explore seventeen different countries looking for evidence that the human mind has the incredible power to heal. After interviewing hundreds of people, he found one thing to be shared in the cases of people who experienced the phenomenon of spontaneous remission.

Healing the body with the mind was possible.

After spending years researching people who had undergone feats of miraculous healing and studying the human brain, Dr. Joe Dispenza began compiling his research. In his findings, he concluded that people worldwide had experienced spontaneous remission regardless of race, gender, or sexual preference.

Joe’s findings showed when someone healed their body with their mind, four things stood out. 

• Everyone who healed themselves with their minds accepted that there was an intelligence within them giving them life.
• The mismanagement of emotions and hormones of stress are the roots of many conditions faced by humans.

• Mind-body healing techniques require people to become conscious of how unconscious they are of their mind and environment.
• People need to mentally rehearse and visualize themselves as healed to repair their bodies with their minds.

The research Joe found on his worldwide journey proved that he could heal himself with his mind, and it also compelled him to show others that it was possible. In the decades that followed, Dr. Joe shared his findings with others and led people on the same healing journey he had experienced in 1986.

Unlimited: Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Healing Meditations and Instruction

Fast forward to now. Dr. Joe Dispenza is still dedicating his life to researching healing meditation and how people can heal themselves with their minds. His story is truly inspiring, and his work continues to push the boundaries of what we know about the mind’s capacity to heal.

His best-selling books, Becoming Supernatural and You Are the Placebo, take a deep dive into the complexities of the human brain and meditative healing. As the reader, you will learn about more people who have learned how to be more conscious of their inner selves and make the seemingly impossible become possible.

Joe also offers guided meditations to help reprogram your brain and generate change. According to Dr. Joe, nothing changes in our life until we change ourselves. In his Generating Series of guided meditations, you follow on an inner journey to remember that you are the creator of your life, change, and energy.

In addition to his written works, Joe also conducts retreats that get you out of your comfort zone, push you beyond your limitations, and challenge your very perception of reality. During these retreats, you learn how to truly connect your mind, body, and spirit to become a fully-embodied version of yourself.

You Can Heal Your Body and Rewire Your Brain

Dr. Joe Dispenza’s journey to healing is proof that our minds are miraculous. We have endless potential to find peace, overcome life’s obstacles, and heal ourselves programmed into our minds — we just have to find ways to tap into that energy.

We hope that Dr. Joe Dispenza’s story inspires you to find new ways to look inside yourself and connect with your inner-being to accomplish things that you would have never imagined. 

Remember, the journey to healing begins with you, and you are full of untapped potential!

Cheers to your healing journey, and cheers to greatness!