your minds a powerful thing. being positive I think helps a lot but everything can be a double-edged sword. not minding and giving up mentally kills many people quicker.

People suffering disease or bodily trauma can influence the outcome of their medical treatments. Some people "fight" to live. Others "will" themselves to die. Doctors have little influence if the patient gives up.

i think mind=body

Anyone study the occult?

The truth relates directly to the honest expectation of the parties involved. That's why you can always dance great when no one is watching (yourself included), and why you cannot don a 'belief' like a new shirt and expect to change your life. It's why you become like those around you and why some hermits are magickal weirdos. It's why children learn how you act and don't listen to what you say.

Wow! Mind over matter. I got many examples.

1. I saw a video of a preacher work up a crowd so much that he could wave his arms and they would roll over, fall backwards, and start jumping up and down. I felt the crowd was waiting for him To do this.
2. Fear... all through time. People has used fear to blindside people to do there bidding. I was told im going to burn in hell if i leave a church.
3. Hope... all through time, pay those tighs to inter a heavenly place.
4. Listen to the preacher because he speaks to god that will clobber you if you don't listen to the preacher.
5. Preacher makes $2,000,000.00 a year, lives in a 5 million dollar home on the beach. Why? Because hes did his homework on how to persuade you that god said he could. Ugh!!!
6. Christian people automatically have control because of their acceptance in society. Ugh!!!

Definitely and I have used it.
I have a problem with easily going into shock. Any unusual physical injury will send me into shock and after a particular accident I had a grand mal seizure. When getting a minor surgery with general anesthesia (vasectomy - I mention this because it was a nurse assisting which gave me a slight understanding of how women feel going to a male gynecologist). I told the nurse of this issue so she sat by to distract me. I could hear the my pulse on a meter and found I could actually control the rate with my mind.
A recent article in the Smithsonian
[smithsonianmag.com]

The incidents of stigmatas' show they are generated mentally. The proof that it does not come from some god is the fact that the marks on the hand are wrong. Nails were put in people's wrists as the hand is too weak to support a body that falls forward.

[en.wikipedia.org]

Bodily control is common knowledge. Deep sea divers control their air intake, heart rate, and lower their body temperature. Magicians do the same for some of their tricks.

The Placebo Effect has been showing some great promise in pain management.

It's all interesting stuff... another thinking point is ESP and clairvoyance, which some try to explain as non-local coherence (quantum physics gobbledygook). Some very interesting studies in assessing the success of forced-choice design (think prediction of cards with symbols) do support its existence by pure statistics alone.

The old attitude of the placebo effect was to write it off as "in your mind". Today, It's being re-visited as a very useful tool therefore more research is being conducted. That's a good thing in my mind. This is good reading if you're into it: [sciencedirect.com]

I believe that if I don't mind it doesn't matter. Therefore yes Mind Over Matter