Even many doctors with powerful academic positions laughed at the idea and dismissed it as hypothetical nonesense. They still believed that all diseases had a physical basis. Today I very much doubt if there is a doctor or reputable medical scientist anywhere in the world sho doesnt accept that stress, fear, anxiety, worry, apprehension, pressure, anger and even joy can all cause quite genuine physical responses and very real diseases."
The figures may very from report, but at a conservative estimate, at least three quarters of all the problems seen by doctors are illnesses which are either completely or partially psychosomatic in origin. If you include all the illnesses not seen by doctors - and that means such problems as headaches, period pains, mild anxiety, sleeplessness, back problems, colds and so on - then the figure will be even greater. After talking at lengths to experts working in many different areas of medicine I would estimate that between 90% and 95% of all illnesses can be blamed totally or partially on psychological forces. Our minds are killing us.
At one time or another trades unions representing doctors, nurses, tax collectors, school teachers, journalists, taxi drivers, airline pilots and air traffic controllers have all claimed that their members are particularly prone to stress. It has been argued that some occupations can be linked to particular stress-linked diseases. Dr. Jack Dunham, a consultant psychologists working with Berkshire Country Council and Bath University in England has claimed that the type of classroom stress suffered by school teachers can cause infertility.
But the truth is that, you don't even have to have a job to suffer from a stress related disorder. Heaps of researchers have now published work showing that unemployment can produce pressure and stress-related illnesses too. In fact, there is an evidence linking stress to just about every type of human situation and endeavour
There have been many papers published showing that social situations can cause damaging amounts of stress. In a paper presented to the American Psychiatric Association recently one author showed that the immune system of a recently bereaved widow showed a marked reduction in efficiency - stress had changed her body's ability to cope with disease. Another report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that the type of depression which is sufered following a bereavement can affect the bodies intrnal defence mechanisms so violently that small, cancerous tumours which might have otherwise been suppressed by the body's own defences, can survive, grow and eventually kill the patients
A third study, published this time Australia, showed that these changes in the body's internal immune responses and defences take place within a mere eight weeks of the death of a close relative. In other words, just two months after the death of someone close to us, our bodies are so badly damaged by the stress that they become exceptionally vulnerable to cancers and infections of all kinds.
One partner dies and within a month or two the second partner, previously apperantly fit and healthy, will die too. In one large study, it was shown that the rate among widowed individuals was 12 times the rate among a similar group of individuals who had not been bereaved. Stress won't appear on the death certificate; nevertheless it is the cause of death.
Similar evidence is available for all sorts of other social pressures too. If you are under pressure at home or your love life is too hectic, your chances of having a heart attack are six times greater than normal. The same is true if you have money worries or problems involving close friends. If you are what is known as 'socially mobile' (moving up the promotion ladder, getting a better job, earning more money, living in a big house and so on), that can increase your chances of having a heart attack three or four times.
In all this cases, the important factor is Stress. It is, without a doubt, the major 20th centuary killer.
Although there is now absolutely no doubt that stress is killing many people, there is still one important question to be answered: why are we so much susceptible to stress when we have such well-organised lives?
Our ancestors had to worry about getting enough to eat, finding somewhere warm and dry to sleep at night, and staying alive while marauding, wild animals wandering around. Most of us have enough to eat and somewhere to live. We don't have to worry too much about being eaten by wild animals and we have central heating microwave ovens and the choice of several channels of TV entertainment. Compared to our ancestrors, we have it easy. And yet we suffer from more stress then any of our answers ever did. Why?
The answer is quite simple. Our bodies were not designed for a world in which we live today. They were designed for a world in which fighting and running were useful, practical solutions. They were designed to enable us to cope with physical confrontation with sabre-toothed tigers.
Today we respond in the same way. If we come face to face with a problem, our mascles tighten, our hearts beat faster, our blood pressure goes up, adrenalin surges through our veins and our bodies are put on general alert. We can fight, run, jump and climb with astonishing agility.
The trouble is, however, that today's problems are not quite so simple or as straightforward as they used to be. Inastead of finding ourselves face to face with a sabre-toothed tiger, a pack of hungry wolves or an angry boar, we far likely to find ourselves having to face unemployment, big gas bills, traffic wardens, parking problems or officious policemen. None of these modern problems is easily solved and none can be dealt with by a faster heartbeat, a higher blood pressure or muscle that have been tensed. Our natural, physiological responses no longer help us to cope effectively or appropriately with our problems.
We have not that evolved fast enough to have learnt that purely physical responses won't help. The real source of the problem is that we have changed our world faster than our bodies have been able to adapt.
It takes many thousands of years for the human body to adapt and we have moved far more quickly for our own good.
It is, sadly, those natural responses which cause the ill-effects produced by stress. And the symptoms of stress induced disease are produced because the problems that cause the responses do not go away but lasts for hours, days, months, and even years.
Stress doesnt seem to affect people in the same way.
Stress is the root cause of most 20th century diseases, it isn't actually stress itself that ever kills anyone. True, we all respond to physical pressures and dangers in much the same sort of way. If we all stood face to face with an army of sabre-toothed tigers, our hearts would all beat faster. (Some of us would respond more dramatically than others, but we would all respond in some way to the danger.)
But most 20th century pressures are abstract fears, worries, anxieties and suspicions. And it is not really what is happening around us that produces a reaction: it is what we suspect might be happening, it is what we think is likely to happen, it is what we imagine.
And that is what gives us the clue to enable to create the Mindpower philosophy. The damage that is done by 20th century stress is done through out minds. It is not what is happening around us that is killing us; it is what we think is happening, it is what we suspect may be the consequences.
We respond not to the realities of our lives but to what we think are the realities. We respond not the real pressures that surrounds us, but the pressues that we think are there. The stress that is killing us all exists not in the real world around us but in the world that exists in our heads. By changing our society we have changed the type of pressures we have to face. And because those new pressures are so often abstract and ethereal, we create new stresses and fears out of thin air.
It isn't unemployment that causes heart disease; it is the way we respond to unemployment, It isn't gas bills that cause high blood pressure; it is the way we respond to gas bills. It isn't the heavy traffic and the telephone that causes the duodenal ulcers and colitis and headaches; it is the way we respond to heavy traffic and telephones.
Sabre-toothed tigers can kill you with their claws or teeth. gas bills can kill you only by the effect they have on your mind.
The way an individual responds to pressure has a powerful effect on the types of illnesses his or her body develops.
At a conference hosted by the Department of Epidemiology and Rheumatology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, there was near unanimous agreement that a patient's attituted towards life directly affects both his physical and mental health. It has even been shown that when people fall ill their worries about their illness are likely to produce yet further problems and delay the rate at which they get better. The link between the mind and the body can produce a constrincting, destructive circle of endless physical and mental distress.
This relationship between the mind and the body is so close that, even when a disease or an injury seem to have been caused by some entirely external force, the attitude of the individual concerned can have a powerful effect on the speed with which the damaged parts of the body recover. If you fall down and break your leg, the rate at which your broken bones mend will depend on your attitude, hopes, fears and aspirations.
The power of the mind over the body can be so completely powerful that it can even affect an individual's will to live and his chances of staying alive. Most of us in the Western world think of voodoo as something of a joke. We think it slightly bizarre that there are still people living in Africa who can be so terrified by a threat uttered by a witch doctor that they will drop down dead within hours of being told that they will die.
And yet we are no different. It is just that our witch doctors. instead of wearing war paints, grass skirts and hideous masks, tend to wear dark trousers and white coats and have stethoscopes hanging around their necks. When doctor tells us we have three months to live or six months to live, or whatever, then the chances are that we will duly die on time.
Since it became clear that the mind does have powers over the body, scientists have worked hard to try and show precisely how the functioning of the body can be influenced by transient thought processes. They have shown that it is through the medium of the imagination that the mind exerts much of its power. Our bodies are affected by what we think has happened, is happening or is likely to happen.
If you gonna believe that you are gonna be fired from your job, then your body will respond in as dramatic a way as if you are fired from your job. If you believe that you are pregnant, then your periods will stop, your breasts will swell and you will put on weight. Even if you do not have a developing foetus inside you.
The first evidence to show that Hypnotherapy can have useful effects was produced in 1847, when James Esdale performed 300 major surgical operations in India using no anaesthetic other than hypnosis. Since then, evidence has accumulated all around world to show that by hypnotising patients and putting them into an altered state of consciousness it is possible to combat many different kinds of pain and discomfort.
Scientists have also performed experiments proving that the power of the imagination is so complete that apparently involuntary reflexes can be controlled by thought processes. For example, it seems that the body's digestive processes can be controlled by the imagination. In one experiments, volunteers were able to produce enzymes which their bodies did not need. normally, if human beings eat meals that contain a good deal of fat, their bodies produce special enzymes which break down the fat and turn it into products which can be readily transported in the blood. those enzymes are produces without any thought; their production is controlled by a sophisticated series of reflexes. Under experimental conditions, hoxever, it was shown that if volunteers were told that they had eaten fat, when they hadn't, their bodies would respond to the imagined truth rather than the real truth. The fat-dissolving enzymes were produced.
In another experiment, it was shown that the body's immune system can be controlled by using the imagination too.
Reasearchers have shown that the body's apparently entirely involuntarily response to the testing injection can be regulated by the imagination. If an individual who would normally have reacted to an intradermal injection of tuberculin is told not to respond, his body does not respond. The swelling and the red mark do not develop. The imagination can, it seems, even control a cell-mediated immunity reaction.
Hay fever is, of course, an allergy disorder that depends to a large extent upon the body's immune defence systems getting out of control. The body for some reason recognises pollen as an enemy and prepares as quickly as possible and the symptoms of hay fever are designed to do just that. Tears are produced to wash pollen away from the eyes and sneezes are started to empty the nose. It is an efficient overreaction.
Since there is now a growing amount of evidence to suggest that the body's immune system may well be linked to the development of many of the most destuctive diseases of the 20th century - including rheumatoid arthritis and some forms of cancer - the significance of this link between the imagination and the body's immune responses cannot be overestimated.
If the imagination can have such a powerful effect, its strength as a healing power must surely match its damaging potential. The most remarkable thing about the imagination is perhaps the way that we have been aware of its power without really recognising the importance of that power. It really isn't difficult to think of plenty of other examples of ways in which the imagination rules the body.
For some years now, scientists in a number of very reputable institutes around the world have been producing evidence to show that patients who meditate and relax are often capable of dealing with the sort of disorders known to be associated with stress and pressure. Under laboratory conditions there is absolutely no doubt that people who relax themselves thoroughly can reduce their blood pressure, show down their heart rate and generally increase their ability to cope with pressure without becoming ill.
From the research evidence available, it seems that modern life is so fast and so frenetic, so totally unforgiving, that most of us push ourselves too far and too quickly. We do not allow ourselves time to accustome ourselves time to accustom ourselves to our lifestyle; we do not allow ourselves the chances to soothe our minds (and therefore our bodies) with gentle, pleasing, relaxing images
There are, I think, three main reaons why the advantages of thorough of thorough relaxation have not been enjoyed by a wider audience.
- The word 'relaxation' tends to cause a good deal of confusion and misunderstanding. Many people assume that if they sit down in front of the television set with a sandwitch and a beer, they are relaxing.
- The religious and semi-religious features which seem to be an essential part of many forms of meditation are frightening and forbidding to many people. The words 'relaxation' and 'meditation' have become linked with shaven-headed mystics, religious groups and orange-robed eccentrics. It is hardly surprising that many people shy away from either concept. They want to know how to deal with life. They don't want to take part in any organised rituals and they would feel self-conscious if they had to sing or chant any magic incantations.
- Those who have talked about the values of meditation have constantly claimed that it is necessary to empty the mind of all inputs and all thoughts in order to benefit from the respite. And that is not easy. Many people find the prospect of emptying their minds so daunting that they never even try.
Another factor that has powerful influence on the way that an individual responds to stressful situations is the nature of his or her personality. Indeed, not only is there now plenty of evidence to show that the personality of an individual can have a tremendous influence on the way that his or her body responds to stress, pressure and environmental problems, but there is also evidence to show that the personality of an individual can have an effect on the type of illness he subsequently develops.
Some of the research evidence linking personality type to specific types of disease is very old. In 1910 William Osler wrote in The Lancet that it was ambitious, hard-working men who were most likely to have heart trouble. And in 1945, it was suggested that people who have heart attacks are often tortured by their need to compete with their fathers.
Since then a growing number of researchers have managed to amplify both these statements. In her book Biotypes (London 1981), for example, joan Arehart-treichel tells how in the early 1950s an upholsterer repairing chairs in a reception room shared by two doctors noticed that only the front edges of the chairs were worn - as though the patients who had been sitting there had all been literally 'on edge'. The two doctors were called Rosenman and Friedman and they spent a large part of the next two decades trying to find out more about the type of patients likely to have heart attacks.
They discovered that the people who were getting heart attacks were usually males and commonly under great pressure. They also managed to show that these men invariably had a strong drive to compete and to achieve. The heart attack patient, it seems, works long hours, sets out to succeed, finds it difficult to sit still, is unable to relax and is a perfectionist. No matter how successful he is, he will rarely be able to satisfy his ambitions. And, of course, it's not how successful you are that determines your sense of personal satisfaction you think you are.
The evidence linking personality to cancer also goes back a long way. In the second century AD the Roman physician Galen noticed that women who were depressed were far more likely to develop cancer than women who were happy. IN recent years we've acquired considerable evidence to support that early observation. Today it is known that the people who are cancer-prone tend to try too hard to please the world. When they fail, as they invariably must (simply because it is never possible to please evrybody all the time), they are more likely to develop cancer.
Cancer sufferers often have unhappy childhoods and frequently grow up suffering from a lack of love, a sense of loneliness and a feeling that they have been deserted by those closest to them. Cancer victims tend to give more than they take; they tend to repress their own desires and their own emotional feelings. Unselfishly, they do their best to please those around them and when anything goes wrong with the world they have created, they develop cancer.
There is evidence showing that it is possible to link specific personality types to all sorts of diseases-arthritis, asthma, colitis, eczema, hay fever and migraine, for example. And there is even evidence to show that there are personality factors which determine who is most likely to suffer colds and minor throat and chest infections. Dr. Richard Totman of Sussex University and Dr Donald of Oxford, working with th eCommon Cold Research Unit in England, have come to the conclusion that introverts are far more likely to get lots of colds than extroverts, and that people who are obsessional are particularly likely to get colds. It seems that the severity of the symptoms endured by someone who has a cold depends upon the amount of stress and strain he thinks he is under.
Not only are specific types of personality linked to specific personality linked to specific physical conditions but there is also a great deal of evidence showing that the personality of an individual will have an influence on the lifestyle he follows, the type of partner he chooses and sort of work he selects for himself.
The individuals personality may help ensure that his life follows a certain, fairly well-defined pattern. But at the same time it may mean that he comes face to face with a regular series of stresses and problems.
Our personalities play a vitally important role in our lives. They determine the sort of immediate environment we create for ourselves and they then determine the way in which we respond to the stresses and strains that are inherent in that self-made environment. It is our minds which commonly kill our bodies. But it is our personalities which decide just how the killing is done.
In some ways the human memory is extraordinarily inefficient. But in many ways it is extremely efficient. Different people seem able to remember different things in entirely different ways - and with different degrees of success.
And, of course, a person who has particularly good memory in one respect may be devoid of it in another respect.
The reason why our memories change so much - and why may patient had such an efficient memory for football matches and such an appalling memory for work - is that our memories are often mixed up with emotions, feelings, attitudes and prejudices. Those emotions and attitudes influence the way we respond to specific incidents and they influence the way that those events stay in our minds.When there you have no interest in the work you are doing, there is no emotional aid to help you remember things related to that work.
Memories are influenced in this way quite frequently and the result is that our attitudes new events and incidents and stresses can be controlled not simply by straightforward past memories, but by memories which have been distorted by association as well as by time.
Our behaviour can be influenced by the behavious of other people, and by out interpretation of that behaviour as determined by our association between memories and circumstances.
The mind-controlling factors which are discussed so far have been both explicable and understandable. But there are many aspects of the human mind that are far from explicable, for the human mind has skills, strengths and powers that we have as yet only glimsed. For example, have you ever noticed that if you are at a party where dozens of people are talking loudly and someone mentions your name, your ears will auto matically prick up? You will have isolated the sounds of your name from ther general hubbub, even though you hadn't consciously been listening to the conversation concerned.
The countless scientists are now prepared to confirm that extra-sensory perception can no longer be dismissed as merely a piece of science fiction. There are many authenticated stories illustrating this aspect of the mind's unexplained power.
The work done in America by Dr Carl Simonton and his wife: For a number of years now they have been teaching patients how to cope with cancer by using their imagination. The theory is that "if the imagination can have a destructive effect, it can also have a positive effect." If people can give themselves cancer by negative thinking, they should be able to protect themselves against cancer and may be even cure themselves of cancer by positive thinking. If people can give themselves cancer by being miserable and sad, perhaps they can help get themselves better by being happy and cheerful.
In the first years of their experiment, Simontons have found that their patients have lived, on average more than a yearlonger than patients who were not encouraged to use their minds to help fight their disease.
All around the world research is beginning to come up with similar impressive results. Growing numbers of doctors and healers of all kinds are finding that the mind can protect the body, help it to fight off ill health and help it to conquer and defeat disease.
Because just about everyy single physical disorder that affects us is influenced in one way or another by the mind, the influences of these mental powers are far-reacing and exhuastive. Mindpower is a positive force which can help any patient under any circumstances. No longer do we have to be spectators at our illnesses.
Mindpower is a marriage between traditional philosophies and modern technologies and it offers a safe, genuine solution to the special rigours and threats of 20th century life.
At its simplestlevel, Mindpower can help you deal with many of the common physical troubles which seeem to plague us all. If you know that your indigestion is caused by worry, it is obviously more logical to do something about your worry (or the way you respond to the things which are worrying you) than it is simply to keep on treating the indigestion. The old-fashioned interventioninst approach was to pour bottles of antacids into an acid-filled stomach to quell the symptoms. That was about as logical as repapering the bedroom ceiling because of problems caused by a leaky roof.
The link between the mind and the body is so complex that you don't have to be under stress to develop stress induced symptoms of distress - you need only to imagine that you are under stress.
You don't have to unemployed to develop physical symptoms. You need only worry about being made redundant.
You don't need to be penniless. You need only worry that you might become penniless.
You don't need to be tensed to develop a headche. You need only worry that you will become tense.
You don't need to be pregnant to miss a period. You need only worry that you might be pregnant.
Once you genuinely believe that you have problems, your body will respond as though the problems were real. You will develop physical symptoms of a real illness. An entirely imaginery problem can cause potentially lethal, physical changes to take place.
And so the strength of Mindpower can operate at a far more sophisticated level. You can become genuinely ill by worrying and by imagining that dreadful things are going to happen. But you can also keep yourself fit and help yourself get better when you are ill by using the power of your imagination to help you support your body's self healing mechanisms.
This capacity of the imagination to help us fight illness is still something that we do not fully understand. And it is something that many still find difficult to accept. Most can understand that the mind can have a destructive effect on the body. But fewer are prepared to acknowledge that the mind can have an equally powerful constructive effect.
If you still remain sceptical, stop for a while and read through some of the preceding pages again Try to remember that one of the problem we all face when trying to come to terms with the power of the mind is that these new theories and principles of life defy just bout evrything we were taught when we were small. And yet to ignore these thruths simply becausethey do not fit in with what we regard as the truth is foolish.
During the last half accentury we have all learned to accept a growing number of thingd which we can neither explain nor understand. We accept that television programmes are transmitted arround the world although most of us do not understand how it happens. We accept that men walk on the moon. Although we don't know just how is it done. We accept that aeroplanes fly faster than the speed of sound, We accept that radios can picl up signals through house walls. We accept the telephone and electric light bulg. So why should we remain sceptical about the unseen powers of our minds? Why should we stay blind to the irony that although our minds can make us ill, or minds can make us better?
In recent years, exercising the body has become something of a religion. Thousands of people exercise their bodies regularly in attempts to become fit and to avoid ill health. But you can do far more for your health by learning to exercise your mind and use it properly and effectively than you can by exercising your body. Far more disorders are caused by mental pressures than are caused by lack of physical exercise. By using your natural Mindpower, you can deal with those pressures and maintain good health. You can learn how to treat the vast majority of problems likely to affect your body without asking for help fron any sort of interventionist. And you can improve your chances of survival when you do need to seek outside help.
Mindpower is an effective source of primary health care. Learn to harness the hidden healing powers of your mind and you can learn to control your health.
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