Thoughts and mental images are capable of initiating physiologic changes in your body. You can control your own thoughts; you can heal yourself just as you learned to make your body walk. The key is to picture your body normalized.
Dr. Irving Oyle, The Healing Mind
Self-Healing
Through Visualization
The human body, unlike a machine, has the ability to heal itself, and the source of its healing power is under the control of your mind, which can cause disease or create health. The great majority of diseases are psychosomatic, meaning that the origin is in the mind, and the result is in the body. If we can be psychosomatically ill, why can’t we be psychosomatically healthy?
If, through stress or negative thinking, you have created a “dis-ease” in your body, you can also create the conditions that will allow the healing process to occur. Much disease is caused by incorrect thinking patterns, radiating their negative energy within the body. If you change these unhealthy beliefs and emotions, you can literally rebuild your body by rebuilding your thinking. The amazing fact about the body is you already have the healing power within you that is far more powerful than any form of external treatment! The most advanced medications available today can only approximate what the body itself produces, which is a built-in apothecary, without the disadvantages of the toxicity of drugs.
Dr. Franz Inglefinger, former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, stated that 85 percent of all people who bring complaints and symptoms to their physicians suffer from “self-limiting” disorders. This means that more than four times out of five, what ails you is well within the reach of the body’s own healing mechanisms. Contrary to popular belief, doctors really don’t heal anything; it’s always our own internal mechanism that does the healing. The physician merely helps suppress the symptoms by giving you a drug that may alleviate them so that you won’t be as aware of your discomfort until your body has a chance to heal itself. But, of course, every drug is toxic and has some side effect; in fact, some drugs are very poisonous. With the exception of bacterial infections such as sexually transmitted diseases, for example, it is always wiser to facilitate healing by natural means, instead of suppressing the symptom by medicating it.
A disease is not merely a physical problem, isolated in the body, but a problem of the whole person. Our emotions play a significant role not only in susceptibility to disease, but in recovery. Illness is usually a symptom of problems elsewhere in an individual’s life. Mind and body are one inseparable system; whatever affects the mind affects the body. The converse is also true. Every thought we think, no matter how innocuous, has an immediate physiological effect; everything a person thinks, feels, and believes is experienced directly in the body. If we consciously change our thoughts to those that are healthy, joyful, and loving, we will radiate these feelings within our bodies and can produce the corresponding effect. If we recognize we play a part in creating our own illnesses through our thoughts and emotions, then we can realize that we can play a part in creating our own health, and our mental attitude can promote or obstruct our body’s self-healing.
Dr. Lawrence LeShan, clinical psychologist and author of several books on the mind’s role in health and disease, including You Can Fight for Your Life, writes:
The mind has untapped potential far beyond the everyday uses that we make of it. Self-healing is a major factor in curing most illnesses. A patient’s mental attitude can help or hinder the body’s self-healing mechanisms. Through various forms of meditation, the power of the mind or psyche can be enlisted for the purpose of speeding up the healing process.
Some years ago I met Glenda in a Concept-Therapy class. She was a fifty-five-year-old woman whose hands were so crippled with arthritis that she could not dress herself or comb her hair. Six months later, she had completely arrested the arthritis, felt no pain, and her hands were totally mobile. How could this be? Glenda learned the principles of mental healing described in this chapter. She began talking to her hands daily and specifically directing the calcium deposits in the joints of her fingers to break down and be eliminated through her body in a normal fashion. She came to realize that there is consciousness in every molecule of matter, even in the abnormal growth in her hands. More importantly, this consciousness can be contracted and directed when we understand its laws, and it will do our bidding when we approach it correctly. At the same time, Glenda began psychotherapy to release the deep-seated resentment she had held for forty years toward her ex-husband, who had been caught with another woman the day after her marriage. Her arthritis began shortly thereafter, and her fingers eventually tightened into a position similar to someone about to strangle a person.
The New Synthesis
In the past decade, there has been a quiet revolution in the medical field resulting in the somewhat hesitant acceptance of alternative methods of healing, including practitioners of acupuncture, hypnosis, naturopathy, relaxation training, homeopathy, chiropractic, and nutritional therapists who recognize the contribution vitamins and minerals can play in health maintenance. Mind control, such as using mental imagery in healing, positive affirmations, and meditation and relaxation techniques, are also being taught to promote well-being.
In the last decade, there has been a synthesis of ancient and modern techniques, such as traditional medicine and metaphysics, Zen Buddhism and quantum physics. The archaic mind/body dualism of Descartes has been replaced by the knowledge that mind and body are unified, and whatever affects a part, affects the whole. When body and mind function together in harmony, health exists. Illness results when stress and conflict disrupt this process. Out of this understanding emerges the freedom of each individual to participate actively in creating and sustaining the health of his or her body.
Healing Through Imagery
Carl Simonton, M.D., and the staff of his California clinic, have realized remarkable success using visual imagery in their treatment program for terminally ill cancer patients, and have described the technique in their excellent book Getting Well Again. Dr. Simonton is the director of the Simonton Cancer Center in Pacific Palisades, California. While Simonton was chief radiation oncologist at Travis Air Force Base in California, he used the technique with an aviator whose advanced throat cancer portended certain death. The cancer had reached the size of a peach, and was occluding the openings to the lungs and stomach, and spreading rapidly.
Simonton taught the patient a procedure of deep muscular relaxation through which he could enter the alpha state where the brain waves are slowed down from normal activity, so that he was closer to his subconscious mind. He was then told to visualize his cancer in some way, and to fantasize the malignant cells were being destroyed. The patient began to image his white blood cells (part of the body’s immune system) as riders on horseback. They began attacking and destroying the cancer cells. This image was repeated for fifteen minutes, three times a day, and over a period of seven weeks the tumor receded in size, and finally disappeared. At the end of this time the patient’s biopsy specimens revealed only normal tissue.
Simonton’s technique for assisting cancer patients to heal themselves can be used with slight modification in treating any disease. Here are the basic steps:
1. Get into a comfortable position and relax deeply.
2. For about two minutes, picture a pleasant scene, such as walking through the woods on a summer day, strolling along the beach, or sailing on the bay.
3. Visualize your disease. (It doesn’t need to be exact. Most of us are sufficiently in touch with our bodies to produce at least a vague idea of what is happening within it.)
4. Picture your immunity mechanism in some fashion: the white blood cells going in and carrying out the dead, destroyed cells and eliminating them through the urine and bowels. See your white cells as very strong, very aggressive, attacking the cancer cells and destroying them. See the cancer shrinking, the liver and kidneys taking it out of the body with the urine and stool. See yourself beginning to feel better, becoming more in tune with life, having more energy, a better appetite, more pleasant relationships. Frequently, during the day, affirm:
My body has the ability to repair itself, and it is doing so now!
5. Repeat this procedure three times a day for fifteen minutes each session. If done faithfully and with confidence, at the end of approximately 21 days you will notice a remarkable change!
Mental healing does not, of course, preclude medical assistance. It should be viewed as an adjunct to whatever traditional methods you now use.
One pleasantly warm spring afternoon a few years ago, I received a telephone call from a distraught client who said she had accidentally amputated almost half of her right index finger while trying to repair the chain on an exercise bicycle. She was rushed to a hospital carrying the amputated portion in a saline solution. Initially, the doctor declined to graft the severed piece to the remainder of her finger, stating it was hopeless. Finally, after realizing how distressed Dot was, the physician said he would suture the amputated portion only as a “biological dressing,” because the odds of saving the finger were less than a hundred to one. Dot was extremely distressed at the thought of losing her index finger, particularly since she was a computer programmer and spent much of the day typing.
Of all the people I’d counseled, Dot was one of the most decidedly skeptical. A very intelligent, multitalented woman, who relied completely on her intellect to deal with life, at that time she had no awareness of metaphysics or self-healing techniques. Nevertheless, I encouraged her to believe she could heal her finger using the considerable power of her subconscious mind. I instructed her in the techniques of visualization, and she began repeating the following affirmations aloud four times each day:
Every day, my finger is becoming more and more whole.
The graft is taking, and the parts are now joining more firmly and completely.
My finger is becoming healthier and healthier and is healing rapidly.
The nail is being restored through growth of a new healthy one.
Thank you Spirit within every cell of my body, for effecting this healing.
In addition, twice a day for fifteen minutes each time, Dot diligently relaxed completely in a comfortable chair, put herself into a state of self-hypnosis, and visualized her finger totally healed and perfectly normal in every way. She also increased her daily regimen of vitamins, particularly taking large dosages of vitamin C to help strengthen her body’s immune system while the healing took place. Dot was also more careful about eating healthy, nutritious foods during this period, and was scrupulous about following her doctor’s instructions to keep the wound clean with frequent changes of dressing. She supplemented her doctor’s suggestions and her own healing concepts by listening twice a day to a self-healing tape I made especially for her.
Ten days after the suturing, Dot encountered a new doctor in the outpatient clinic who insisted that the amputated portion, which had blackened, was necrotic (dead), and must be removed. She was told that she would not be allowed to leave the hospital until that surgery was performed because of the likelihood of gangrene spreading down her arm. When Dot begged for “just a little more time,” two other physicians were consulted. One of them agreed that she could retain the graft a little longer. Six days after this she was again told that the amputated portion was indeed dead. But, at Dot’s insistence, the doctor again permitted her to retain the graft. Twenty-six days after the accident, the doctor finally acknowledged that the finger was healing and stated: “I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep doing it!” At the end of two more months, her finger had completely healed, and appeared perfectly normal.
Healing with Thought
Recently some medical establishments have permitted students in nursing and medical schools to experiment with mental healing as a part of their professional training. “The doors are opening because there is factual evidence for unconventional healing, and you can’t argue with facts,” says psychologist Evelyn Monahan, who teaches a course on “The Power and Use of the Mind” to students at Emory University’s School of Nursing in Atlanta, Georgia. In her course, Dr. Monahan instructs nurses to use telepathy to reach comatose patients, and to use clairvoyance to pick up subliminal leads in analyzing medical histories, plus her specialty, psychic healing. “You can use the mind to affect external things, including the molecular structure of the body,” Dr. Monahan believes. One of the most effective techniques is visualization. “I teach the nurses to actually see diseased organs or infections of the body repairing themselves,” she explains. “If you want to fight infection, you can visualize the white blood cells speeding to the site of the infection and destroying the invading body.”
Dr. Irving Oyle, author of The Healing Mind, was an early pioneer in the use of visualization, meditation, and affirmations in self-healing. He states:
By changing the consciousness, the mental picture you have of what’s going on in your body, you can change the physical body, according to this new emerging medical model. By thinking themselves sick, people become sick. We know, for instance, that there is an ulcer-type personality, which is prone to thinking itself into ulcers. There is a certain type of personality that tends to get heart attacks. If you can think yourself into them, why can’t you think yourself out of them? And, if you change the thinking pattern or the visual imagery to restore health, you become your own healer.
The Law of Vibration
Healing yourself or another person comes under one of the natural laws of the universe: the law of vibration. A vibration can be transmitted from one person to another through the medium of the resonant electric waves of the sender’s brain cells to the brain cells of the receiver. This has been demonstrated repeatedly through the phenomenon of mental telepathy.
Disease is just a vibration, and so is health; the former being the lower frequency, and health the high. All sickness is nothing but a maladjustment of frequencies, and to effect a healing all we have to do is change the frequency. The individual consciousness of the various body organs each have their own frequencies, since all consciousness has its “degree-frequency.” Spirit, present within every cell of a patient’s body, can be consciously contacted and directed through properly using the law of vibration.
When a drug is given to a sick person, and it helps to effect a healing, all that has happened is that the particular chemical, which vibrates at a certain frequency, has interacted with the patient’s frequency to bring it closer to normal. Every drug has its own frequency, which can stimulate the vibration of a patient’s organs. Digitalis, for example, is used to stimulate the vibration of the heart, and thereby change its frequency. In the same manner, concentrated thought force can increase, stimulate, and restore the patient’s overall frequency to produce a condition of perfectly normal functioning. It’s the same principle used in a mental way, but without side effects.
If you change the vibration of something, you change its form, its condition. In order to change a vibration, we must apply energy, and in mental healing, energy in the form of thought. For example, on the physical plane, one can change ice into water by applying energy in the form of heat, and we have actually changed its form by speeding up its vibration. Then we can take that same water and apply energy to it, which means to step up its vibration further, and it will become steam. Here again, by changing the vibration, we have changed the form. We use the same principle in changing disease into health. If you apply energy in the form of your concentrated thought vibrations, you will change the form or condition from one of illness to one of health.
A woman who attended one of my seminars at the University of Santa Clara in California was scheduled for an operation to have a tumor removed from her uterus. When Sandy told me about it, I suggested it would be worthwhile to try imagery first to see if the surgery could be avoided. With Sandy’s permission, we organized a healing group of five people and, at separate locations at the designated time of 9 p.m., each one of us spent ten minutes sending healing energy to Sandy, concentrating on seeing her healthy and happy. At the end of twelve days she was reexamined by her doctor, who told her he couldn’t find any evidence of the tumor. The operation was postponed indefinitely.
At the same time, another student told me he was to have an operation on his prostate gland and was very concerned about it. That evening I went to a study group meeting where twenty people were present, and asked everyone to join me in an image for Richard’s health. Because of the personal nature of the problem, I didn’t describe it to the group, but led an image in which we visualized him smiling, healthy, and active. A few days later he was feeling so good that he checked with his doctor again who decided that he could postpone the operation. To this day, he has never had to have it.
Absent Healing
To change a person’s vibration on a conscious level, we must first establish a condition of resonance or rapport with that person for our suggestion to lodge in his or her subconscious mind. When two minds are in harmony, mental telepathy, or the transmission of thought, is possible. Do not attempt to give a healing suggestion to someone who will scoff at you, because the suggestion will not penetrate their subconscious mind. In such cases, send them healing thoughts when you’re away from them, because this bypasses the conscious mind.
Absent healing, either with a group or alone, can be very effective. The following is a technique you can use whenever necessary (see “A Healing Image,” page 157). Of course, if an individual has become ill through repeated indulgence in negative emotions, such as anger, depression, or fear, then mental healing will only be effective for a limited period of time, for the simple reason that the person will once again make himself “dis-eased” through disturbed emotions. The same thing applies, of course, to traditional medical means of healing; the cure is only temporary if the individual doesn’t change his or her lifestyle and thinking process. Either the illness will reappear, or symptom substitution will occur. Healing is a matter of the entire psyche, not just the physical body.
In conditions of semiconsciousness, or unconsciousness, the suggestions should be given aloud because they will be directly received by the subconscious. When people are in a coma, under anesthesia, in a state of shock after an accident, having a seizure, or sleeping, their subconscious minds are wide open. Anything that is said in their presence will be accepted by Spirit, which will begin carrying it out. In these cases you contact Spirit directly, without intervention from the conscious reasoning mind, and it’s always Spirit that does the healing, no matter the method—pill, shot, surgery, chiropractic adjustment, traction, or whatever. Always remember that you have no power to heal, but you can be an instrument for Spirit to affect a change in the body of the afflicted person. All you have to do to help someone is to give positive, constructive healing concepts to Spirit, and it will do the work. Remember, the Power that made the body can heal the body!
An additional mental healing technique, used down through the ages by psychics and spiritual healers, is to visualize a beautiful white light cascading over the head, shoulders, and body of the afflicted individual. See this pure, brilliant healing light penetrating deeply into every cell and pore of the body, cleansing and purifying it, and bringing the body up to a level of perfectly normal functioning. This is an effective technique for all mental healing, and it is said by metaphysicians that a “thought form” is actually created around the person on the astral plane.
The primary fact we must become increasingly aware of is that thoughts and mental images can initiate physiological changes in our bodies. We can learn to control our thoughts and direct positive energy to ourselves and others, and thus become an active participant in creating and maintaining our own health. Remember, thought is creative, and your own thinking processes can bring you perfect health, energy, and stamina.
Dr. Fleet says:
Man must take responsibility for the state of his body, for we are the product of our thought creations. Whatever condition our body is in, and whatever the state of our mind, is a replication of what we have selected from the thought plane, manifesting in our life. Every illness in your or my body is a direct result of some image in our mental life.
When a person knows this, and properly understands it, he or she will naturally begin to image correctly. Instead of violating this Law of Creation and worrying about the things one does not want, people will begin to visualize and image and fashion and plan that which they do want, and we will have a new world, and all of our disease-ridden bodies will be replaced by healthy ones.
A Healing Image
l. Prearrange with the sick person and with others who have agreed to participate, the time you are going to make your image. (8 p.m. is preferable.)
2. A few moments before the designated time, go into a room where you will be alone for ten minutes, turn out the lights, seat yourself in a comfortable chair, relax yourself, and begin to visualize the sick person sitting in his or her chair or bed, in a passive, receptive state of mind. Their own Creative Power Within is as open as possible to receive the curative image.
3. As you picture this person, say the following aloud:
Spirit Within is healing you now.
Every day, in every way,
You are becoming healthier and healthier.
4. Repeat this over and over, in a singsong tone of voice. Do not use your will, but use your imagination when you repeat the affirmation, and strongly visualize the person looking and acting completely healthy in every way.
5. Feel that the person’s subconscious mind is receiving your message and concentrate as much as possible on sending your positive thoughts to them. Imagine that the person is surrounded by a white healing light pouring down and throughout their entire body, penetrating deeply into every cell, organ, nerve, and muscle, bringing the entire vibration of their body up to a state of perfectly normal functioning, whatever is normal for that particular individual. See this light penetrating deeply into their body and see the person smiling, healthy, and happy.
6. At the end of ten minutes, turn the image over to Spirit to carry it out in the person’s body. Then, break your concentration and leave the room.
Do not try to reach the subconscious mind unless you put your heart into this. Put all your concentration into the idea of “Perfect Health,” and try not to think of anything else while you are in the room. Spirit will receive your message and act upon it, and the sick person will be forever grateful to you for using your helpful energies. The Law of Cause and Effect will then operate in your life to keep you in perfect health.