Positive Mental Attitude

A belief is simply a feeling of certainty about something. However, once accepted, our beliefs become unquestioned commands to our nervous systems, and they have the power to expand or impair the possibilities for our present and future health and healing.

What bearing does this have on health?

Well, we all hold thousands of beliefs about whom and what we are, and about the situation we find ourselves in.  Many of these however are false or limiting beliefs and have the effect of cutting off options and possibilities from our life.  You now understand that whatever we hold to be true is true to us.  Unfortunately, many people focus on a particular situation or illness and believe that things will never change (chronic condition).  So long as this (often subconscious) belief is held, there is a much reduced chance of that person getting any better. Our chronic health problems often become embedded in our personality, becoming part of who we are, subconsciously making them hard to let go of.

Scientists now concur that there is a very strong mind-body link, and that we would be in total control of our own health if we were able to use that link fully.  If the mind-body link did not have such a powerful influence, then medical trials would not need to use placebos when researching the effect of drugs or procedures.  By needing to use placebos, scientists repeatedly acknowledge the powerful effects the state of someone’s mind has upon their health. In fact, it is well know within medical circles that on average 35% of any treatments success is due to the placebo effect, so strong is our inborn ability to heal ourselves that to truly believe we are going to get well can often mean that we will!

THE VALUE OF VISUALISATION

Visualisation has also been found to be extremely powerful: One story that this brings to mind is the story of “Frank” who was diagnosed as having a fatal type of throat cancer.  He was extremely weak.  Indeed his doctors had deliberated long and hard, as to whether to expose him to any radiation therapy at all, as there was a distinct possibility that it would overwhelm his body even quicker.  They decided to proceed anyway.  Then to Franks great good fortune, Dr Carl Simonton, a radiation oncologist and medical director of the Cancer Counselling & Research Centre was asked to participate in his treatment.  Simonton suggested that Frank could influence the course of his own disease and began to teach Frank some mental-imagery techniques.  He visualised his cancer cells as weaker and more confused than his normal cells, and thus unable to repair the damage they suffered from the radiation.  Then he visualised his body’s white blood cells, the soldiers of the immune system, swarming over the dead and dying cancer cells, and carrying them to his liver and kidneys to be flushed out of the body. The results were dramatic, far exceeding the usual outcome for radiotherapy.  Frank experienced none of the usual side effects such as hair loss and damage to skin.  He regained his strength and in a mere 2 months all signs of his cancer had vanished.  In a follow-up study, Simonton taught his mental imagery techniques to 159 cancer patients who were deemed incurable.  The expected life expectancy of these people was less than 12 months.  Four years later 40% were still alive, 9% showed no evidence of disease, the cancer was regressing or stable in 18%.