The cult-like rise of Joe Dispenza
How Joe Dispenza and his book "You Are the Placebo" spread dangerous messaging to vulnerable people.
Disclaimer: All opinions shared are my own (backed by feelings) and all facts are backed by linked and cited sources. This post is meant for educational purposes and not meant to personally attack an individual.
Over the last few years, I’ve watched as a disturbing trend has emerged on social media. Young women have been diagnosed with cancer at an alarming rate. In fact, according to the American Cancer Society’s yearly survey, cancer incident rates among women under age 50 were 82% higher than their male counterparts in 2021.
This fact is troubling enough. But what I’ve seen transpire on social media time and time again is unsettling. Influencers in the wellness industry (mostly) who have been diagnosed with cancer at a young age are promoting the idea of “healing yourself” from cancer and forgoing traditional medical treatment.
A few weeks ago, I saw yet another influencer stating that she was going to be focusing on healing her stage 4 cancer with a positive mindset. She recommended that her followers read “You Are the Placebo” by Dr. Joe Dispenza. And of course I had to pick up the book myself to see what it was teaching and promoting. It was worse than I thought. On top of preaching that you can cure anything by changing your mindset, the book also set up some dangerous messaging surrounding Dispenza himself. It was filled with narratives I’ve seen time and time again when it comes to cult leaders and I knew that I needed to dive deeper in Dispenza himself and the harm he’s causing. This is that deep dive.
As a disclaimer, I support people’s decisions to do whatever they want with their own bodies. However, promoting the idea that mindset and pseudoscience will cure your cancer and encouraging others to do the same with their own treatment is killing people. And I believe that Joe Dispenza is at the forefront.
A love affair with unaccredited universities
When I saw “Dr.” in front of Dispenza’s name on his book “You Are the Placebo”, I was admittedly surprised. Most often when reading self-help books of this nature, I find that the authors have no credentials whatsoever. But as I read on in the book, it quickly became clear that he doesn’t either. Joe Dispenza is a Chiropractor. Dispenza’s theories all rely on and reference quantum physics and neuroscience. As a Chiropractor, he’s not qualified to “research” these topics.
As a disclaimer, I did find in one of his bios that “His postgraduate training covered neurology, neuroscience, brain function and chemistry, cellular biology, memory formation.” It is unclear what this “training” is or where it was conducted. Dispenza also currently teaches at The Quantum University, which you can guess by the name, is not an accredited university.
As far as his Chiropractic training, we do have more information. He graduated from Life University, a private chiropractor college with the 12th-highest debt-to-income ratio among all graduate programs in the US, at 490%. The school is known for discouraging vaccines and has a contentious past of being de-accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of the Council on Chiropractic Education due to students “not being taught how to detect and deal with problems that require medical attention.”
This mentality aligns with much of what was in his book “You Are The Placebo” in which his main thesis is that people can cure anything (including Parkinson’s, depression, and even cancer if they just change their mentality). The idea is that you create a new reality for yourself and cure yourself through an internal Placebo effect because you’ve changed the reality around you with your mind.
And Dispenza even shares his own story in which he was hit by a truck, breaking six of his vertebrae. Instead of the medically recommended surgery, Dispenza decided to heal himself. He claims that he visualized healing and meditated every day, and after 11 weeks, he was healed.
“The placebo response is about being healed by thought alone,” Dispenza states.
Dispenza encourages a deep meditation practice that focuses on positive thoughts of healing to change the reality of what’s outside so it reflects on the inside:
“The key is making your inner thoughts more real than the outer environment, because then the brain won’t know the difference between the two and will change to look as if the event has taken place.”
Dispenza gives “examples” that prove this theory such as one where he states that “Thinking that you can get better from depression can actually heal depression just as well as taking a drug.” He goes on to say that placebos actually outperform the effectiveness of anti-depressants.
This is very reminiscent of “The Secret” by Rhonda Bryne which promotes the same idea. And the promotion of this idea has actually proven to be deadly.
He continues to echo the sentiments from “The Secret” by also using a common tactic in self-help books which is all about blaming the individual.
He asks the question: “What percentage of diseases and illnesses are due to the effects of negative thoughts?” His answer as the book continues seems to allude to the fact that all illnesses and diseases are a result of our negative thoughts and emotions. That all negative emotions or thoughts we have will result in negative reactions in our body and that all positives will have a positive effect:
“Thought by itself, is unmanifested emotion. Once we embrace that thought emotionally, it begins to become real–that is, it becomes reality.”
As someone who graduated as a Chiropractor from a school that doesn’t seem to believe in actual medicine, this doesn’t necessarily come as a shock. But the harm that it causes those who read it and think that it’s their new reality is monumental.
In order to help individuals achieve this placebo effect, Dispenza takes advantage of individuals who are looking for cures for chronic and terminal illnesses and charges them for workshops and seminars filled with false promises and harmful ideas.
His retreats cost anywhere from $2,499 (accommodation and travel not included) for a week-long retreat to a $349 online course.
The rise of a cult leader
While most self-help figures will stop their harm there, Dispenza takes it a step further by creating an environment and narrative that, in my opinion, is priming his readers and followers to view him as some kind of guru or even savior. Much of the language in his book and his practices outside of it are eerily reminiscent of a cult leader’s behavior.
Throughout this book, Dispenza boasts about how he has changed lives through his seminars and has literally healed people from chronic and terminal illnesses in just one afternoon. Here are a few examples he shares:
A woman with multiple sclerosis “who was using a walker when she arrived, was walking unassisted by the time the workshop was over.”
A person with Parkinson’s no longer had tremors
He healed a traumatic brain injury
And “people with tumors in their brains and bodies found that these growths went away.”
On his website for his retreats, Dispenza shares the stories of people who have attended them sharing that blind people were able to see, deaf people were able to hear, and that individuals were cancer-free after experiencing stage 4 cancer. Individuals thank Dispenza in these videos for saving their lives.
This type of gratefulness and crediting someone for saving your life is far past a slippery slope and one that quickly hurdles into worship.
Most cults and cult leaders seize control over individuals through molding individuals to change into someone easily manipulated and who has lost their sense of true self. When this happens, individuals rely on their leader to inform them of how they should live, act, and who they should be. And Dispenza seemingly doesn’t try to hide that this is his goal. In his book he states:
“In order to change your life, you have to literally become someone else” and “And it’s uncomfortable. Why? Because when we change, we no longer feel like ourselves.”
This kind of narrative not only causes people to ignore any red flags that may be going off (it’s just uncomfortable and it’s supposed to be) and may make them ignore concerns from loved ones in their lives who see them changing in an alarming way (you’re not supposed to feel like yourself).
This kind of language and communication is worrisome to see in the hands of someone also claiming to help cure people of disease and illness.
As someone who is promising followers to be cured from chronic illnesses, what happens when it inevitably doesn’t work? Dispenza has that covered as well, like most cult leaders who aren’t able to materialize what they’re preaching.
In “You Are the Placebo”, Dispenza warns his readers that “It’s tricky, though. If you overintend (that’s called “trying”), you’ll get in your own way and always fall short of your vision. If you oversurrender, you’ll become lazy, apathetic, and uninspired.”
Essentially, if this practice doesn’t cure your cancer, then you are the problem. Either you’re trying too hard or not enough. But ultimately, the fault is yours. Not the man who’s “teaching” you.
Dispenza has taken this cult-like path to the next level in the past and even taught at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, founded by a woman named J.Z. Knight who claims that she’s channeling a 35,000 year old being named Ramtha the Enlightened One. Unsurprisingly, Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment is widely seen as a cult by many, including Knight’s former husband. Former students have also accused the school of brainwashing and mind control.
And I’m afraid to say that if you’re interested and have had the COVID-19 vaccine, you’re not allowed to attend the school as their website states: “If you had to take the Covid-19 Vaccine for any reason, please DO NOT attend events In-Person.”
Dispenza actually owes this school for his rise to fame as him and former faculty of the school created a documentary entitled “What the Bleep Do We Know?”, which argued that there’s a connection between science and spirituality. An interesting tidbit is that one of the directors, Mark Vicente, was also an active member of the infamous NXIVM cult before he escaped and exposed the realities of that cult.
With his exposure to these cult-tactics, Dispenza utilizes these skills to cause harm and manipulate his readers and followers.
At the beginning of “You Are the Placebo” Dispenza states that this practice is meant to go alongside chosen medical treatment, but then proceeds to give example after example of why the “placebo” effect is more effective than medicine.
Even though Dispenza is spreading these ideas and charging people $2,000 to teach people how to cure themselves, ultimately it’s not his fault if it doesn’t work. If you die. He dismisses all accountability.
In my opinion, this goes beyond negligence and starts going into malpractice that and ultimately costs people their lives.
Demonizing a man, not meditation
Meditation isn’t evil. Meditation is a useful tool that is proven to decrease stress and anxiety. While this can be a helpful tool for individuals with chronic or terminal illnesses, to promote the idea that you can meditate yourself into a cure is deadly.
The influencers who are sharing these ideas online to their audiences are victims of Dispenza’s empty promises and his practice of preying on individuals who may be feeling hopeless. And it’s not their fault that they’ve fallen for it. It’s understandable that medical treatment may not be financially available to you. It’s understandable that the trust of healthcare in America is low. And it’s understandable that people are willing to do and try anything that could possibly help them. Who wouldn’t do that? What’s tragic is that these individuals are brainwashed and manipulated so deeply by a cult-like personality that they truly believe in these ideas and spread it to others.
Meditating and maintaining a positive mindset can certainly be useful when navigating through difficult medical diagnoses and treatments. But please, please don’t pay for a fake doctor’s teachings when that “doctor” is only concerned with making money off of your vulnerability.
Then explain all of the testimonials. His entire YT channel is endless testimonials of people who are healed of chronic diseases, cancer, deafness, etc. Are you saying all of these testimonials are fake?
My therapist has been having me read his stuff and I'm feeling like I don't trust her now.