Health
Healing Power of the Mind
By Dr. P.C. Simon

Society's attitude to health and healing is undergoing a drastic
change. Individuals are taking responsibility for their own health,
their own cures. In the past, these were matters left to the
physician on an as needed basis. In this century, we strive to
maintain our own health through diet, exercise, and avoidance of
deleterious life style choices. We have become our own pharmacists.
Many of us have turned to nature's pharmacy and take herbal medicines
such as echinacea for colds, St. John's wort for depression, saw
palmetto for benign prostatic enlargement. We are also beginning to
realize the supreme importance of mind in the vital areas of wellness
and disease. Mind is the unlimited pharmacy, the great internal
healer of physical and mental disease and distress.
Before 1950, the ability of the mind to cure physical illness was
ridiculed by medical men. If anyone mentioned its possibility, they
were considered weird. Nowadays we hear medical practitioners telling
their patients how important it is to have a positive attitude to
remain healthy.

One of those who helped turn around medical attitudes was Dr. Carl
Simonton. In 1971, Dr. Simonton, a radiation oncologist, and his
psychologist wife, Stephanie Mat`hews, began treating terminal cancer
patients for physical, emotional and social ailments holistically in
his career-counseling and research centre in Fort Worth, Texas.
Patients were taught to use the mental imagery of white blood cells
devouring cancer cells in their bodies. The Simontons' friends and
colleagues said that they had lost their minds. However, in 1978,
when 159 of their cancer patients were kept alive for more than
double their life expectancy, people began to pay attention. One of
their cancer patients also used this system of imagery to treat his
impotence and arthritis and found it worked.

In 1974, when Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review, returned
from a cultural exchange program in Russia, he was hospitalized for
adrenal exhaustion due to stress. His sedimentation rate, which is
normally 4 mm/hr, was 115 mm/hr . One day, one of his medical
consultants wrote on his bedside chart that Cousin's condition was
precarious. When no one was in his room, Cousins sneaked a look at
the chart and realized his death was near. He recollected that
negative emotions can produce specific chemicals harmful to the body.
Cousins argued if negativity and worry will create sickness, laughter
and joy should bring about health. He discharged himself from the
hospital and immersed himself in joyful music, jokes and laughter and
cured himself in a short while. Readers digest published his story in
1977. For the benefit of the rest of the public, he wrote a book
entitled "The Anatomy of an Illness."

Medical statistics show that 50 to 80 percent of all diseases such as
neuralgia and arthritis are stress related. Stress is created by
thought. Thought can cure as well as create disease though most
physicians have ignored the healing power of thought. By learning to
control and direct our thoughts, we can do much to improve our
health.

Our minds can be trained to achieve control of our bodies by several
methods. One of these is biofeedback, a system developed in the late
1960s by neurosurgeons to study neuromuscular diseases and mental
states. With monitoring devices, the patient can watch how his/her
thoughts affect various body functions. This biofeedback can train
patients to alter consciousness, raise or lower blood pressure, and
regulate heart beat.

For example, we can increase our blood pressure by just imagining
that we are in an airplane crash. Suppose that the pilot announced
over the intercom that passengers should prepare for a crash landing
in the middle of the ocean. We realize that there are not enough life-
preservers on board for all the passengers and we, at the rear end of
the plane, are the ones left without any support system. By imagining
the danger we see our pulse rate rising, our blood pressure
increasing on the gadgets attached to our body. Then if we begin to
imagine that the situation has been corrected and the pilot gives the
all clear, we breathe easy. Our blood pressure and pulse rate return
to normal.

One simple device used in biofeedback training is called a
plethysmograph which will measure the volume of blood accumulating in
the finger tips. We can attach it to our finger and try to pump the
blood from the heart into the finger. We will see the plethysmograph
will register higher pressure.

Such biofeedback machines will convince us that we have control over
our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems which, till now,
we thought belonged to the autonomous system beyond our control. By
this method, Dr. Elmer Green and his wife Alice of the Meninger
foundation at Topeka, Kansas, successfully treated migraine, headache
and other diseases, which did not respond to regular medical
intervention.

A simple experiment to illustrate the influence of mind on body is to
imagine that you are holding a juicy, large, cut lemon in your hand.
Imagine that you are squeezing the lemon and trying to suck it. As
soon as you think of the lemon juice touching your tongue, what
happens? It is likely that your mouth puckers and you begin to
salivate. This is thought acting on the salivary glands.

For another experiment, ask a friend to stretch out his arm and hold
it firmly while you try to bend his elbow. You will find it
difficult. A second time, while he holds his arm firmly, let him say
about ten times "My arm is weak, my arm is weak, my arm is weak."
While he is repeating the words try to bend his elbow. You will see
it is now much easier to bend his elbow than it was before. His words
were conveyed to his brain which influenced his mind and the mind
made his arm weak. To get the full benefit out of this article and to
convince your subconscious mind that you have the potential , you
have to actually do these experiments. Reading alone will not bring
the benefit. Actual practice has its own rewards. Please do it now,
before you proceed any further.

When blindfolded subjects are told that poison ivy placed on them is
a harmless leaf, nothing happens. When harmless leaves are placed and
the subjects are told they are poisonous leaves, the subjects develop
weals.

Attitude of mind greatly influences our health. We see many people
who prefer to speak of their sicknesses rather than their health.
They enjoy explaining how many operations they have had. They
demonstrate their knowledge of medical vocabulary and talk about
their sickness and the drugs they use. Mind is like a magnet. Each
word and each thought attracts associated events, functions, and
circumstances. The net result is they continue to be sick. Instead,
if they said "I am healthy, happy and joyful", they would attract
health and joy unto themselves.

Words we speak affect the body. By telling the child that he looks
sick and tired, the mother produces these conditions in his mind and
his body. Conversely, we can influence our health, prosperity and
environment just by repeating words. It is for this reason that Emile
Coue, the French psychotherapist, told his patients to repeat "Every
day in every way, I am getting better, better and better." and they
got better. The important thing is to influence the mind.

If we believe that we are healthy, we become healthy. If we believe
that we are sick, we become sick. All that we have to do is to
convince our mind. The subconscious mind has no discretionary powers;
therefore it accepts whatever is fed into it. It is the conscious
mind that analyses the facts. With repeated assertions we can fill
the subconscious mind with affirmations that we are healthy and
happy. This brings about positive results.

Rheder, a German physician, proved that it is mind that cures
diseases. He tested a faith healer, who claimed special powers, to
cure three of his difficult cases, one suffering from chronic bladder
disease, another from pancreatitis, and a third from cancer of the
uterus. Rheder asked the faith healer to treat these patients without
their knowledge. He supplied the faith healer with information he
wanted about the patients. The faith healer held twelve sessions
without bringing about any change in the absentee patients'
conditions. Rheder then informed the patients that he was going to
enlist the aid of a faith healer who would be able to heal them but
this time he did not use any faith healer. Within a few days, all
three patients got better. The gall-bladder patient had no more pain
and remained without pain for the next one year. The pancreatitis
patient left the hospital and gained 30 pounds. The cancer patient
experienced a decrease in the swelling and fluid in the abdomen.
Within five days, she was able to return home from hospital. He
proved thereby that it was the mind of the people that cured and not
the power of the healer.

There are many examples of faith cures. On Monday, June 14, 1993, the
Oregonian newspaper published a letter written to Ann Landers
regarding a cure for warts. Landers published it along with seven
letters she had received from those who got rid of warts by various
means. One got rid of them by rubbing bacon on the warts and throwing
the bacon over the left shoulder when the moon came out. Another did
it by applying castor oil. A third took mega-doses of vitamin C. A
fourth had success with touch of liquid nitrogen. A fifth rubbed
twenty pennies on the warts and gave the pennies to a beggar and got
rid of the warts. A sixth got rid of them by saying, "Hocus-pocus-go-
away, warts." A seventh got rid of the warts by applying oozing
dandelion sap. The eighth, after spending $250 on a dermatologist,
made a $1 bet with her janitor who cut a raw potato in half and
rubbed the juice on the warts. She paid the bet on the eleventh day.
All these were mind cures.

On February 24, 1992, the Vancouver Sun published an article by
Nicole Parton, a Vancouver Sun columnist, who related the pain
control experiences of young children. By using an imaginary magic
switch, they turn off pain. Some mothers show the children how
needles can cause pain. Then they ask the child to imagine tying the
needle and the pain to a balloon and letting it fly away. When
mothers ask the children what happened to the pain, they will say
that it flew away. These cures were due to imagination.


Mind is the source of health, and disease, happiness and misery,
abundance and lack, riches and poverty. As Milton said, it can make a
hell out of heaven or a heaven out of hell. Our mind is a microcosm.
It creates our universe and that universe can be paradise.

All our potential is in our mind, not just the ability to influence
our health. Let me illustrate that point.

Rudyard Kipling, the Indian-born English poet, novelist and Nobel
Prize winner told the following story.

"When the gods and the earth were new and man had just risen out of
the slime, he lifted his eyes to heaven and saw the gods upon their
golden thrones. There was born in him the desire to reach that
distant state of bliss and joy. He cried, "O gods in the heaven, let
me share your divinity." The gods, when they heard man's cry, went to
the great God Brahma and said to him. "There is a creature who
demands a share in our divinity. He is an inquiring and seeking
creature who will not rest until he has climbed into this heaven of
ours. What shall we do?" "I will speak to him," said Brahma.

"When the gods met again in council they asked Brahma what he had
done about man's request. Said Brahma, "I considered wisely and found
that man's desire to share in our divinity was just, so I said to
him, "Man, I have heard your prayer. The divinity for which you ask
shall be yours but you must find it for yourself, for lo, I have
hidden it."

"When the gods heard this, they were frightened, but Brahma only
smiled and said, "it will be a long time before man finds his
divinity, for I have hidden it where he will not think of looking for
it." Where have you hidden it?" asked the gods in chorus, "Within man
himself," said Brahma softly. And there it is to be found by all who
seek, even to this day."

This hidden divinity is our minds. Mind is an infinitesimal part of
God in man. Thus, we have the power of God within us. Use it and
create health, wealth, and prosperity, abundance and a heavenly
peace. It is up to us.
____________________________________________________________________
Resource Box:

Dr. Simon is a retired research microbiologist, philanthropist,
philosopher, and author. Among his publications is the Missing Piece
to Paradise and The Philosopher's Notebook.
http://www.buymybook.com/buy/authorinfo.asp?id=1572X1802Y1

Visit his website at http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/psimon/book2.htm

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