5. Using your mind to heal your body: Controlling negative forces

Sadness

Sadness is our way of reacting to problems which affect us in a deeply personal way. The natural, human way of responding to sadness is by crying. When we are small and unhappy, we cry naturally to make it clear to those who are close to us and near to us that we need love, sympathy and attention: all the things which help us live with and overcome sadness.

Not that tears only provide an emotional release, they also provide a genuine, physical release. According to a number of researchers who specialise in the subject of grief, and who attended a meeting of the American Psychological Association in Washington, emotionally shed tears don't just provide an important stress relief valve--they also help the body get rid of harmful chemical wastes.

In studies done with both men and women, Dr. William H. Frey of the St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Centre found that tears that were shed for emotional reasons have a higher protein contents than tears shed because of winds, specks of dust and other sources of irritation. It is clear, therefore, that crying is a useful and constructive way of dealing with sadness.

However, because crying is such an obvious physical sign of distress, many people regard it as a sign of weakness and emotional instability. Boys are often taught that it is unforgivable to cry in public and they should bottle up their feelings rather than let themselves be seen with tears on their cheeks. Sadly, but perhaps predictably, the evidence also show that. when children or adults do not cry, they suffer badly when under pressure. People who don't cry because they consider it unacceptable end up not only suppressing their tears but also their emotions.

The damage is done in 3 ways:

1. The storing up of tears means that unwanted chemical wastes are not excreted;

2. The failure to cry means that much-needed love and attention is not obtained;

3. The sense of emotional release through crying is also missed.

Most people will confirm that after crying they feel calm, rested in a strange sort of way. and much happier about their original problems, fears and worries.

The conclusion from all the available evidence has to be that crying is an excellent way of dealing with sadness and sorrow. Individuals who suppress their natural instinct to cry are increasing their chances of acquiring stress-related disorder. If you have acquired a habit of suppressing tears when you feel them welling up inside you, try to get out of the habit; try to let yourself next time you feel upset.

Crying is nothing to be ashamed of. And if you are close to some one who never cries, try to persuade him that crying is neither unnatural nor unmanly.

Anger

Anger is the most commest, most fundamental human feeling produced in responce to any physical or mental pain. It can be produced by our own shortcomings, by disappointments, by frustrations and by what we see as injustices. It can be caused by aggressive ticket collectors, surly car park attendants, officious police officers, rude, indifferent bureaucrafts, mean-minded clerks, impatient drivers, thoughtless relatives and unreasonable employers.

Whatever causes it, anger is often physically, mentally socially and economically damaging.

An angry man:

• 
  
  will raise his voice and become irascible
  
  
  
• 
  
  his face will become red
  
  
  
• 
  
  he will fidget and move around more then usual
  
  
  
• 
  
  and since fear commonly accompanies anger, he will sweat too.
  
  
  
  
  

Stored, unexpresed anger produces high blood pressure and all the other symptoms of stress-induced disease. The extra flow of acid into the stomach may help produce an ulcer and persistent anger may produce mental symptoms such as insomnia. Anger is so often linked to pain and discomfort that it is no coincidence that we turn the relationship round and describe red, painful burns and wounds as looking 'angry'.

Many diseases are produced by anger. High blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes are all common consequences of uncontrolled anger. There is enough evidence to show that any individual who suppresses his anger will be more likely to develop cancer than an individual who responds to his anger in a more natural and emotional way.

Among the many studies done, one at the Institute of Psychiatry in London has shown that women who suppresses their anger are more prone to develop breast cancer than women who let their feelings out when they are angry or upset.

Anger is a Killer. And in order to reduce its damaging effects it is vitally important to know just how to deal with it safely and effectively. There are four things to remember if you want to learn how to control the negative force of anger.

1. 
   
   Accept the fact that you, like everyone else, will get angryfrom time to time. Anger is a perfectly natural and reasonably healthy response to stressful circumstances. It is not sin to get angry - although it may be a sin to allow your anger to take over your emotions completely. Remember that it is dangerous to suppress your anger and to refuse to acknowledhe its existence.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   Learn to recognise when you are heading topwards a confrontation and, if possible, avoid stressful situations. Don't push other people into a position where they cannot easily escape without a tremandous loss of face. Decide as early as possible whether or not the subject is worth getting excited about. If you pick your problem carefully, your anger will be justified and possibly effective and you will suffer far less.
   
   
   
3. 
   
   If you feel angry and you believe that your anger is justified, don't suppress it all - let it out.
   
   
   
4. 
   
   If you feel anger building up inside you and you feel tempted to get rid of it in some physical way, follow your natural instincts as far as possible. You don't have to race around and hit whoever it is who has annoyed you. But you can get rid of your excess energy and anger by taking part in some hectic and energetic sporting activity.
   
   
   

Dr. Sheldon Tobin, Associate Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, found thst the nursing home patients most aggressive, irritating and demanding. The passive, gentle individuals who never complain and who always accept everything that happens to them tend to die sooner.

If your doctor tells you something you don't like, make it clear that you don't like  what he's told you. If he tells you that you have got three months to live, make it damned clear that you object to his arrogance. Let your anger out and make up your mind to show him whether he can tell you how long you have got to live! (Paradoxically, getting angry with your doctor will often cement your relationship with him. And if it ruins the relationship, it doesn't really matter, does it? If he doesn't understand how you feel and doesn't respond to your reactions, his presence is hardly helping you.)

Some experts have, in the past, argued that it is sensible to count to ten before acting or speaking when feeling angry. It would now seem that this is a rather counter-productive technique. It doesn't stop anger producing damaging effects, but merely hides the consequences and, in the end, leads to greater problems. The best response to anger is neither to hide it, nor to allow it to turn into an uncontrolled explosion of noise and unhappiness, but to get rid of it by making specific, powerful complaints and expressing your anger and frustration in as positive a manner as possible.

Don't be a whimp, but don't be a boar either!

Whichever technique you choose, getting rid of aggressive feelings will leave you far healtheir than if you allow your feelings to build up inside you.

Symptoms of ill health

To certain extent we all use ill health as an excuses to avoid unpleasant tasks. A physical symptom or two can give us solid reliable excuse whenever we are embarrased, frightened, nervous or ashamed. Getting a cold is a good way of avoiding a dinner party you don't fancy very much. Acquiring muscle strain is an excellent way to get out of a sporting confrontation that you fear. And acquiring a headache is a classic way of avoiding an unwanted sexual encounter.

Some of the unconscious links between the body and the body and the mind have drifted into the language. So, for example, we say things like:

'He makes me sick',

'He is a pain in the neck',

'They get up my nose',

'He makes me weak at the knees',

'I can't swallow that',

'I wish he'd bet off my back',

'I've got cold feet', and

'I had to get it off my chest'.

If you are using symptoms or illness as an excuse, you'll almost certainly be totally unaware of it. But if the link is there, it won't be difficult to find. And it will be well worth while doing the necessary digging, for using symptoms of ill health in this apparently advantageous way will, in the long run, produce far more problems than it solves. Your basic fear won't have disapeared. You will still be responding to stress in an unhealthy way. And you will have developed or exacerbated a condition which will have an adverse effect on your health and on your ability to enjoy life.

If you do suspect that you could be developing a set of symptoms in order to protect yourself from unpleasant or threatening experiences, you must ask yourself what benefits you gain from the illness and what the illness really means to you. Then you must learn to deal with your problems in a more positive and constructive way. Ask yourself what it is that you find so difficult to accept that you need to use an illness to hide from it. And then look for alternative solutions.

Incidently, there is one final thing that parents should remember: make sure that you don't overprotect children who are in pain and do not encourage children to associate pain with love and affection. Parents will often make a tremendous fuss of children when they bump themselves. The result is that the children grow up limking pain and discomfort to cuddling and care. In the long run that can easily lead to all sorts of problems.

Boredom

We tend to think of stress and pressure as being caused by too much activity. But inactivity and boredom can be just as grat a cause of stress and can cause all the physical and mental problems associated with having too much to do.

There are four basic groups of people whose lives are threatened by boredome and inaction.

1. 
   
   There are those people whose daily work is undemanding and unrewarding.
   
   
   
   
   
2. 
   
   Replacing skilled workmen with machines has led to a second major cause of boredom - unemployment. Unemployment produces a number of damaging forces, of which boredom is one of the most destructive.
   
   
   
   
   
3. 
   
   Those individuals who have retired from work but have too little to do un their later years, suffer from boredom.
   
   
   
   
   
4. 
   
   Boredom is a major cause of stress among the many women whose work keeps tham in their homes. Tied to the kitchen sink and washing machine by a cluster of small children, today's housewife can suffer enormously from boredom.
   
   
   
   
   

There has been countless reports published showing that people who are unemployed , or whose jobs are dull and unexciting, suffer from all the usual stress-related diseases. They have a much higher or average risk of developing stomach ulcers, heart disease, asthma and skin problems such as eczema.

But the politicians and the journalists still underestimate the power of boredom as a force. They still fail to understand that it is boredom that is causing much of the stress-related disease in our society. And they fail to see that it is often boredom that drives people to drugs or alcohol. The housewife who becomes a secret drinker, the schoolboy who starts sniffing glue, the pensioner who takes too many tranquilisers, the football vandal behaves in a violent and inexcusable way all have one thing in common: their lives are dull, monotonous, unexciting and without hope. There seem to be no escape from the daily boredome and no hope for the future.

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that there is no much violence on our football terraces and so much drug-taking in our streets. It is, rather, surprising that there is so little.

Anyone suffering from boredom - or the ill-effects of boredom - needs to add excitement to his or her life. Excitement can provide a stimulus that can keep the mind and the body active and healthy.

If you feel that parts of your life are unspeakably dull and that you need to balance that boredom by adding excitement and colour to your life, do not despair. There are plenty of ways in which you can add excitement to your life.

1. 
   
   Take up a pastime or hobby which you find rewarding. Do things that you can become really good at, and something that you can take pride in. If you have no job at all then consider a possibility of establishing a small business of your own. Window cleaning, grass cutting, gardening and catering for special events are just a few of the obvious ways to begin a small business venture withour much capital.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   If you find yourself working with machines which you don't understand, and which break down regularly, do your best to find out how they operate and how you can keep them going. If you soend your days with a machine which you don't understand, it will become your master and ruin your life. If you know how the machine works and you can help keep it in good working condition, then it can become your servant.
   
   
   
3. 
   
   If you need more intellectual stimulation in your life, or you need the feel for new friends, then start taking evening classes or day classes at a local college. Don't just pick a subject that sounds useful. Find something that excites you and that you will enjoy. If it's useful as well, consider that a bonus.
   
   
   
4. 
   
   Learn to avoid potentially boring situations with as much as skill and tact as yoy can muster.
   
   
   
5. 
   
   Plan your life as cautiously as you like and as carefully as you can. But be prepared to take risks occasionally. If you never take risks because you are frightened of the possible consequences, your life will be dull. The individuals whose lives we find most attractive are those who are most readily prepared to take chances.  If you takerisks and fail, you will at least have tried. If you never take risks, you'll never know what you could have achieved. And you'll probably die of boredom. What a sad way to go.
   
   
   
6. 
   
   If you are doing something immeasurablydull and unspeakably boring, escape by creating a fantasy daydream for yourself. Remember: In order to relax your mind you need to create a soothing, calm, relaxing situation. In order to defeat boredom you need an invigorating, exciting fantansy.
   
   
   
   

This type of simp[le but rewarding fantansy will help provide you with a temporary escape from your boredom. But by providing you with a positive approach to your life and by filling your mind with positive, pleasant images, it will also improve your confidence and self-assurance.

Failing Relationship

Our relationships with other people have a tremendous influence on our lives in general and health in particular. In order to stay healthy, it is clearly important that we understand what factors influence how we get on with other people.

We all behave in many different ways when we are with different people. We act differently with our lovers, employers, emplyeess, spouse, neighbours, doctors, friends, parents and children.

However stable and constant we may consider ourselves, different people will always think of us in different ways.

Our roles in our life will vary according to our own beliefs and aspirations, according to the attitudes and needs of others and according to the ways in which our needs and their needs inter-react. We are none of us single individuals. If our parents described our virtues, our business enemies would not recognise us. If our children described us, the chances are that our employers wouldn't know whom they were talking about.

If you try to understand the basis upon which your relationships are built, you will be much more likely to enjoy those relationships rather thean suffer through them.

Some simple, basic guidelines worth following with all your relationships.

1. 
   
   try to take care not to allow the prejudices of others to influence your attitudes to people you have not met. If you accept other people's judgements, you will often make mistakes. Remember that any relationship is a result of an interaction between two quite separate sets of needs, ambitions and requirements. If you accept second-hand judgements, you are accepting second-hand needs, ambitions and requirements.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   When you meet someone new, try not to allow your past prejudices and personal experiences to have too much influence on your relationships. If you judge people by the way they dress. for example, you will only ever make friends with people who have a similar social or cultural background to yourself.
   
   
   
3. 
   
   Always remember that even people who are close to you will often have feelings, ambitions ans fears which vary considerably from your own. Consequently their attitudes towards specific events may vary considerably from yours. If you expect other people to respond to your circumstances in the same way as you, you will undoubtedly end up being disappointed.  Try to learn as much as you can about the people with whom you have close relationships - the people who are important to you and your health. And try to understand their fears and needs. If you do this, your personal relationships will be strengthened.
   
   
   
   

Guilt

It is an emotion that is difficult to define precisely, but in practical terms it is hard to distinguish it from what we commonly call our consciences. We feel guilty when we feel that we have failed in some way. It is one of the most powerful and damaging human emotions. And ironically, it is an emotion that is built on love and compassion.

Guilt fall into one of two main categories.

1. 
   
   There are the types of guilt that result from our personal relationships with other people. Sometimes, guilt can be introduced crudely and deliberately, as when a mother says to her son or daughter, 'You wouldn't do that if you loved me.' Sometimes, guilt is produced subtly and unintentionally, as when one partner says to another, 'Don't worry about me, You go off and enjoy yourself. I'll be all right.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   There are othe types of guilt which result from the demands, expectations and teacings of those around us.
   
   
   

There are other types of guilt which result from the demands, expectations and teacings of those around us. Most of us an inbuilt sense of right and wrong and if we trespass against it, we feel guilty.

This inbuilt sense of right and wrong does not, however, come from some mysterious, inherited force, but from social and religious projudices which have been established by instruction and example.

Thses types of guilts are produced by pressures exerted by teachers, religious leaders, politicians, philosophers and pundits of all kinds.

The most important and damaging effect it has is to create within us a feeling of inferiority abd inadequacy: a positive lack of self-confidence. We feel gilty because we fail to live upto the expectations of those around us (both social and personal) and as a result we feel insecure and lose our confidence.

It is directly through its ability to damage our confidence that guilt cause so much physical and mental damage. Because we feel guilty about our failure to satisfy our parents (and others who have expectations for us) we feel a sense of shame and we lose our self-esteem. And as a result, we push ourselves far more cruelly than any slave driver ever pushed his slave.

This internally inspired pressure is the most damaging type of stress. It is impossible to escape from it and the consequences can be far-reaching. The greater our ;ack of self-confidence, the greater our risk of developing heart disease, stomach ulcers, asthma, intestinal problems, skin conditions and the other hundred and one problems associated with pressure and tension.

If your health is being put at risk by a lack of self-confidence, you can use your mind to help your body by emptying it of hate, regret, fear and guilt and filling it instead with positive feelings and hopeful thouhts; you must learn to think of yourself as a success.

There are 10 specific steps that you can take to help yourself conquer guilt and gain health-giving confidence.

1. If you lack confidence, the chances are that, although you know very well what your weaknesses are, you don't know what your strengths are. You are probably rather timid and shy (even though other poeple may not realise that) and you doubtless have little faith in your own abilities.  To counteract those fears, sit yourself down with a piece of paper and a pencil and write down all the good things you can think of to say about yourself. Imagine that you're preparing your own obituary and try to pick out all your very best points. Individuals who are very shy and lacking in self-confidence tend to be unsually honest, generous, thoughtful and hard-working. you're probably punctual, careful, moral, kind, ambitious and unsually creative.
2. Learn to put things into proportion. You may feel that you have failed your parents because you haven't managed to become a millionaire by the age of 35 but would you really criticise anyone else for such am absurd 'failure'? You'll almost certainly find that you expect far too much from yourself - and put yourself under quite unreasonably amounts of pressure.
3. Try to boost your self-confidence by thinking of your faults as virtues. Shynes, far example, isn't necessarily a dissadvantage. The unusually shy are often exceptionally aware of the problems involved in buiding up any sort of relationship. The shy tend to try harder - and have greater of care and unselfish affection to share weith their friends and loved ones. You may be rather obsesional. But that probably means that you great attention to detail and that you can be relied upon to be observant and watchful. You're probably often unusually sensitive to criticism. And yet just think of those individuals who are insensitive to criticism: they can often be rude, unthinking and boorish. Which would you rather be?
4. Your lack of self-confidence will mean that you will often worry about disastrous things happening to you. It may be possible for you to "diffuse" this particular fear by always asking yourself, 'What is the most thing that can happen in this situation?' You'll often be surprised that the 'worst' reality isn't all that bad. Once you know the worst, you can make plans accordingly.
5. try not to think of every rejection as a personal insult. If the film producers who read the play you have written all send it back, it may very well be because they are busy with some other project, or because they don't have the intelligence to spot a winner when they see one. They aren't turning you down because they hate you or your script.
6. when you are next feeling rather down, make a list of all your assets--that is , a list of the things in your life that ae important to you-->your partner, your children, integrity, friends, health, country, interests, knowledge, your accomplishments and so on.
7. Make oa list of all the things you are supposed to be really bad at. Then put the list in order, your worst shortcomings on the top of the list. Then work your way up the list to from the bottom, doing what you can to eradicate each shortcoming in turn. We all get labels as we go through life and those labels are often quite unfair. Labels can often be applied on the basis of an isolated comment or experience or a misinterpretation. But once you have acquired a label, you'll find yourself expecting to fail. Because of other people's feelings about you, you will have learned to be helpless and incompetent.
8. Try to be aware that there are many people who have A VESTED INTEREST IN YOUR SHORTCOMINGS. For example: Occassionally, friends and relatives will want you to feel incompetent so that they can continue to boost their own confidence by providing you with guidence and protection.
9. Don't be ashamed of your mistakes. everyone makes mistakes occasionally. Don't worry about admitting that you are wrong. No one can be right all the time. Accept your responsibility, deal with any consequences and try to learn what you can from the error. Other people who find it difficult to accept your apologies are very probably short of confidence themselves. They are particularly conscious of your errors beacause you remind them of their own fallibility.
10. Accept your limitations, your shortcomings and your faults. Find out just how far you are prepared to go. Then temper this knowledge this knowledge of your limitations with the realisation that everyone else has limitations too. But atleast you know what yours are. And that will always give you an edge.

4. The Links between Mind and Body

"In 1978 I wrote a book called Stress Control in which I put forward the view that nearly all the common 20th century diseases are caused or made worse by stress. I argued that stress was the greatest environmental hazard of our time and that doctors should be spending more time helping to manage stress, rather than simply treating symptoms.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

These three drawbacks have resulted in meditation and relaxation remaining the prerogative of a relatively small number of individuals. And that is a terrible shame, for millions would undoubtedly benefit from using techniques of this type. Meditation helps by triggering off the body's own quite natural relaxation response - the natural antithesis to the stress response. And it is ironic that although most of us put our bodies and our minds under more pressure than our ancestors ever had to face, we have forgotten how to use these techniques for opposing pressure.

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.

3. The role of the Healer and the role of the Patient

"The late 1970s and early 1980s were for me confusing, bewildering years. Convinced that the medical profession's full blooded support for an entirely mechanistic approach to health care was wrong, I resigned from my medical practice to spend my time writing about medicine and searching for a more practical solution that would enable doctors and patients to work together.

 

I had become disillusioned with the way that orthodox medicine is practised for a good many reasons. But the most important reason was that I felt it was quite wrong for doctors to regard medical care as an exclusive science. Nearly all doctors I knew caring considerate individuals. They desperatately wanted to help their patients get better and worried about them endlessly when they didn't. But they had all been trained to regard themselves as offering a complete, cating package. They had been taught to take over responsibility for the health of each patient they saw. And most of them seem to be uncomfortable when their authority was threatened in any way."

 

Doctors didn't like when their patients would seek advice from any other practitioner without their permission. The doctors would get upset. Some doctors believed that the patient's health belonged to the doctor looking after him and the patient had no right at all to look elsewhere for advice or treatment. This particular doctor's attitude caused many patients deep unhappiness.

 

There are some doctors who get upset because patients have dared to treat themselves. Now, under some circumstances, this is understandable. If a doctor is giving a patient pills for a heart condition and that patient then goes away from the surgery and buys an iver-th-counter remedy, there is a very real danger that the two grugs will interact badly. But, under other circumstances, it is less easy to explain why the doctor gets so upset.

 

Taking pills in case of Insomnia: Sleeping pills do not provide long-term answer. They merely provide a short-term solution. When they have been used for more then a week or two, sleeping pills stop helping people get to sleep and start keeping that awake. Even the companies which make sleeping tablets usually suggest that their products are best used as occasional aids.

 

Thus, people started consulting alternative medcal practioners like acupunctarists, homoeopaths, hypnotherapists, osteopaths for different reasons as:

1. They wanted more control over their own health and they felt that they would be allowed to share control if they visited alternative practitioners.
2. Some were frightened by the high incidence of side-effects associated with modern drugs and surgical techniques.
3. Others had failed to find either relief or cure from orthodox medicine.

Wjile some alternative remedies seemed silly and some seemed sensible, not one could be seen as a genuinely complete alternative to orthodox medicine. The best qualified alternative practitioners saw themeselves as offering a complementary service to orthodox medicine. The best acupuncturists, hypnitherapists and osteopaths all worked alongside registered medical practitioners rather than competing with them.

 

In 1981, a third of the French populationtried unorthodox types of medicine.
In 1983, the number of people in Britain seeking help from alternative practitioners had reached millions for the first time.
In 19484, a British survey showed that one out of every three people had used alternative practitioners.
In America, Germany, Australia, Scandivania and just about every other country, the picture was very similar.
By the early 1980s, there were huge numbers of orthodox doctors practising hypnotherapy, osteopathy, homeopathy and acupuntcure.
Even British Medical Association, the doctor's trade union, had began to take an interest in alternative medicine and had set up a special commitee to investigate it.

For however much we disapprove of the medical profession being paternalistic, having their short-comings and of the drug industry, and growing alternative health care industry, it cannot be that we could manage without any of these people.

Doctors and all the other health care profesionals have a vital role to play in mainraining and preserving our health, in dealing with sickness and disease when it comes threatening and helping to care for us when we become frail, weak or disabled.

The doctor, whether he be surgeon, physician or general practitioner, is there to offer technical advice and help. But he should see his role as techical advisor rather than anything else.

By putting an end to this traditional master-slave relationship, we will be benefit in 3 very distinct, practical ways.

1. Patients will have much more freedom. It will be easy for the patients to consult whichever practitioner they feel might be able to help them without having to worry about upsetting any existing relationship.
2. The outdated mechanistic approach will be weakened. Doctors find it ealy to think of the patient's body as a piece of machinery because they find it easy to think of the patients as an object rather than a person. In hospital, a man or women will frequently become "the liver in the end bed" or "the heart attack in the second on the right".
3. The doctor will be able to take full advantage of his potential as a healer.

* two different medicines when taken can act dangerously and be hazardous to health.
* In those countries, where doctors are paid an annual retainer or capitation fee for looking after patients, the system will have to be changed so that the doctors receive a fee for each consultation. The capitation fee strengthens the doctor's feeling of ownership.

Since time immorial, it has been established that doctors, priests, alternative medical professionals, kings, medicine men and all sorts of individuals can have a healing effect on patients simply by being close to them or touching them.

*No one wants to spend money going to see a doctor who never cured any of his patients.

Placebo Effect: During the Second World War when an A merican army medical officer had run out of morphine while treating injured soldiers. Rather than admit to the soldiers (many of whom were in terrible pain) that he had nothing to give them, the doctor found some vials of plain water and gave those by injection.  To his amazement, the4 water proved to be as powerful a painkiler as morphine. The soldiers' pains were eased though they'd been injected with nothing powerful than water.

So, if a doctor gives a patient a placebo tablet and says something like, "Try this, it might help you a little", tge chances of the placebo working are relatively slight.

If, however, the doctor hands over the placebo tablet with an enthusiastic comment such as, 'Try this. It's the most powerful and effective drug on the market. It will help you", the chances of the placebo working are increased enormously.

The fact is that there is now enormous amount of evidence to show that 'healing' works by producing a positive effect on the body and can be explained in straightforward physiological terms. All the healer does is to trigger the body's internal healing responses and enable the body to heal itself.

One of the reasons why alternative health care professionals have won so  many patients away from orthodox doctors i recent years is that alternative professionals tend to be friendlier and more obviously compassionate. They will follow the pld mechanistic philosophy, they are still interventionist, but they are far less paternalistic.

And yet most alternative medicine practitioners rely very heavily indeed on the placebo response, on their ability to heal and on their ability to trigger a healing response. A doctor who remains aloof and distanced from his patient will achieve a certain amount of healing effect through blind trust and faith. Patients who want to get better wil put an enormous amount of trust in those looking after them. But the doctors who cn shatter the now traditional barier between doctor and patient will be far more likely to produce a positive healing effect. The doctors must learn to have faith in his patient just as the patient is expected to have faith in his doctor. If the power of the healing effect is to be achieved, respect and trust need to be shared between both partners.

Patients should be encouraged to take advantage of the skills offered by the professionals only as and when they are needed. The patient must seek profesional advice when he is unsure about how best to treat specific ailments, symptoms or conditions. He must seek expert, technical help when he can no longer cope with symptoms which threaten his comfort or survival. He must always be prepared to ask for support and encouragement when he feels weakened or threatened. He must never be shy about calling in the professionals.

He can take ful advantage of health-enhancing and disease-devastating range of mental powers which have far too long been ignored, misundertood and suppressed.

Only the independent patient is in a position to take advantage od Mindpower. And it is the Mindpower which offers the solution we have been seeking.

2. Traditional Influences and Medical Practices

"My first book, published in 1975, had critical attack on the drugs industry"
"My second book, published a year or so later, had taken me one step further. I had investigated the world of medical research and come to the then startling conclusion that medical researchers were contributing very little to the quality of health care, but were simply amassing new information and filling libraries with research papers which had little practical value. Medical researchers were, I concluded, inspired by personal and commercial motives and were accumulating information for all the wrong reasons.

 

The profession wasn't just out of touch; it was completely failing yo deal with the health problems of the twentieth century."

 

At the beginning of the 19th century, life expectancy was low and millions of babies and young children never grew to adulthood. Diseases such as smallpox, typhoid, cholera and tuberculosis devastated whole communities. By the end of the century, life expectancy had improved enormously and infants stood a much better chance of living to childhood and even adulthood.

 

By the start of 20th century, the drug industry was developing and surgical skills were being honed to new high standards.
"Anyone alive at the start of this century would have felt confident that the medical profession would bloom and that in future, people would lead longer and healthier lives. That hasn't happened.
Very few important advances have been made in the last quarter of a century, and in those areas where advances have been made, the work was begun decades ago."

 

Despite the fact that individual doctors remain committed to caring for the sick and the infirm, medicine has sunk into a slough and there has been almost no improvement in either the quality or the quantity of life enjoyed in the developed countries of the world. Indeed, the World Health Organisation figures suggest that in some developed countries there has, in recent years, been a decrease in life expectancy and an increase in the mortality rate among young people.

 

Statistics suggest that people are now more likely to fall ill then they were a generation ago.
"The number of doctors goes up annually. But whenever doctors go on strike, the death rate goes down."

 

Inspite of having richer food supplies and more readily available medicines today than ever before, all the evidences suggests that in Britain people were never healthier than during the ravages of the Second World War.
The government claims to recognise the value of preventive medicine. And yet in Britain half the adult population take some form of medicament every day.
During the last quarter of a century, we have developed remarkably sophisticated machinery for our hospitals, and yet, cancers, immune disorders and allergy problems become commoner day by day.
We now have specialist coronary care units for heart attack victims, and more people than ever are dying of heart disease.
Young people are bigger and stronger than our ancestors, and yet the number of young children with diabetes is doubling every decade.
We have more surgeons and more operating theatres then ever before, and yet there are still enormous waiting lists for essential surgery.
New procedures and drugs are tested far more effectively and extensively than ever before. And yet the incidence of doctor-induced disease continues to rise.
There have never been so many rules to protect the rights of patients and yet patients have never been so deprived of freedom.
We have the technology to prevent unwanted pregnancies and yet the demand for abortion never stops growing.
Medicine has never been more sophisticated. And yet the patients have never been so dissatisfied
Doctors have never tried harder, and never been less well loved.

 

There is no single, simple explanation for this disastrous state of affairs. In part, the problems are due to the fact that the medical profession has spent the last century creating a system of health care designed to suit it s own needs of the patients. In part, the problems are due to the medical profession's failure to define or understand the real needs of the community.

 

But the overriding, essential fact is that doctors have taken too much control for themselves. Overcome with enthusiasm for the marvel of science, doctors have ignored the healing powers of the individual body and mind. Convinces by their own professional propaganda, they have built a profession which has too much respect for therapy and not enough respect for healing. For the first time in history we have a medical profession with the power to interfere with nature. But for the first time in history we have medical profession which has chosen to ignore the phenomenon of natural healing.

 

Doctors have become instilled with a sense of power and have taken too much responsibility, And out of a mixture of respect, admiration and fear, patients have let them take that responsibility. At the one time when we should be recognising the remarkable curative and protective powers of the human mind, we have abdicated all responsibility and handed over our bodies to the technicians.

 

One of the most important reasons why doctors have tended to ignore the natural healing powers of the human body and the mind is because their attitude towards the body and towards illness was largely formulated by a 17th century philosopher called Rene Descartes, who believed that the human body is little more than a piece of machine.

 

Following on from this Cartesian philosophy, the modern doctors believe s that when something goes wrong , when symptoms develop, or when system is not functioning effectively, all you have to do is take the machine apart, examine all the bits and pieces and fiddle with those parts which are malfunctioning.

 

It is simple, mechanistic approach which has served science well foe several centuries. Modern surgical approaches and drug therapies have all been designed to help restorer the smooth functioning of a machine which has been disrupted by infection or injury.

 

The basic aim of most medical treatments is to suppress any signs and symptoms of illness or distress as quickly and as effectively as possible.
A headache will be treated with a painkiller, indigestion will be treated with an antacid and high blood pressure will be treated with a drug designed to lower blood pressure.

 

But there have been, over the century, many individuals who have pointed out to the remarkable ability of the human body to heal itself and have argues that, in view of what we know about the body's self healing system, a mechanistic system is far too simplistic.

 

Many researchers around the world have produced evidence to show that the body's internal mechanisms are designed to enable it to adapt the internal pressures and variations and to show that the most efficient healing systems in the world are to be found not in the Doctor's pharmacy or the herbalist's garden, but inside the body itself. There are within every human body itself thousands of sophisticated protective systems.

 

*scar tissue ensures that the injury site is stronger than ever and better able to withstand any further injury.

 

In 1920s, Dr. Clara M. Davis of Chicago discovered that the human body has an efficient appetite control centre of its own. She took a group of newly weaned infants and allowed them to choose their own food without any outside guidance whatsoever. And she found that, without any prompting the infants chose good, varied diets. They ate the right type of food, in the correct quantities and their growth rates, developments and appearance were all just as satisfactory as those of babies who had been eating foods chosen by experts.

 

Other researchers have found that there is a natural tranquiliser in the human brain and that a pain killer, as powerful and as effective as morphine, is released when pain need to be overruled.

 

"A few years ago I wrote a book called Bodypower which contained a comprehensive account of the human body's remarkable self-healing mechanisms. The evidence is unquestionable, but it is significant that it has been ignored and even positively suppressed by members of the medical profession. Ruled and still convinced by the mechanistic philosophy of Descartes, modern members of the profession have been strangely reluctant to acknowledge the importance of the discoveries. They have found it easier to believe that they, and they alone, have answers to all health problems than to accept that must work together with the body's own self-healing systems to obtain the maximum benefit with the minimum of disruption.

 

Despite of the evidence that now exist to show the extent of the body's own healing powers, large number of profession persists with the mechanistic philosophy. And it is hardly surprising that since they argued that the body is a machine, they also claim that the best person to deal with any problems is a mechanic--a doctor.

 

Second reason for not accepting the natural healing mechanism is because there are today many commercial interests and pressure groups which have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and protecting the traditional attitudes towards health and healing.

 

the drug industry, for example, which would suffer badly if the mechanistic approach towards medical care was revised, makes many millions of pounds every year out of the fact that doctors prescribed huge quantities of drugs. It is a fact that if the industry were to suffer in any way, the medical profession would suffer too.

 

A weakening of the international drug industry would see the end to the existence of the majority of medical journals, an end to many research grants, an end to company sponsorship of medical events and perhaps the most important of all, an end to the drug industry's ability to protect the medical profession. It is a neat circle of interdependence.

 

Large number of doctors will claim that all symptoms require interventionist treatment of some kind and that the majority of disorders are best treated by suppressing the body's own responses. They know that if blood pressure and insomnia could be treated effectively without drug therapy, both the industry and medical profession would suffer enormously.

 

This has resulted in the increase in the number of patients who being injured by medical treatment. The fact is that if there are 10 patients lying in a hospital ward today, then the chances are that 1 of them is there because he has been made ill by the doctors. Or say, if you develop fresh symptoms after being treated by your doctor, the chances are that your new symptoms are caused by the treatment given to you for your original problem. Although it is often patients who are blamed for expecting too many wonder pills, it is doctor addicted to prescribing who create the problem in the first place.

 

Drugs like Penicillin, contraceptive pills, insulin etc have helped people from infection, population explosion, diabetics etc. But drugs have not been used wisely or cautiously. Despite the available evidence that drugs which can cure also kill, doctors have consistently obeyed drug company exhortations to keep on prescribing.

 

Doctors frequently claim that they write out all these prescriptions because patients demand drugs. That simply isn't true. Roughly one half of the drugs prescribed are never used at all, but simply end up in bathroom cabinets, discoloring and gathering dust. But truly, doctors have been pushed and bullied into overprescribing and now over prescribe out of habit and addiction rather than satisfy the demands of their patients.

 

The expert committee found by WHO in 1977, came to a surprising conclusion that out of many thousand drugs in the market, doctors ought to be able to deal with most health problems (including all tropical diseases) with a library of no more than 200 drugs and vaccines.

 

Despite this, doctors throughout western world continue to prescribe drugs that are inappropriate, unnecessary, dangerous or ineffective. Misled by drug company advertising, they continue to prescribe drugs that have been recognised as dangerous and they overuse the drugs that are in themselves safe and useful.

 

Next is appallingly low standard of teaching in medical schools. Academics are often more concerned with their own research projects than with the students they are paid to teach. Thus, out-of-date techniques and philosophies are handed on to generations after generation. Graduates know far little about the drugs they will spend their lives prescribing.

 

A symposium held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London in 1983, British physician Professor Lant pointed out that 50% of the prescriptions written for antibiotics were either not necessary or inappropriate.

 

According to Professor Lawson of the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow, drug treatment side-effects occur in no less than 25% of patients on medical wards. This sort of prescribing anarchy suggests a high level of dangerous incompetence.

 

Tranquilisers such as Valium and Librium became so widely used that during any 12month period between one in 5 and one in 3 women received a prescription for a tranquiliser. In 1981, the health services of 67 of the world's poorest countries spent less on health care than the rich countries spent on tranquilisers. By the time they are 18months old some 25% of all babies will have already received a sedative of one sort or another.

 

In Britain alone there are well over million people who have been taking tranquilisers foe several years or more. Since tranquilisers of this sort were never intended to be prescribed for more a week or two, that rather suggests that there are many doctors who don't know what they are doing.

 

Reasons why all this happen are--

1. Most of the doctors now in practice qualified before drugs of this type appeared on the market.
2. They simply don't know what else to do for the vast number of patients requiring help with problems caused or made worse by stress and anxiety.

By 1960s, it became clear that there was a close link between stress and mental disease.
The drug industry solution only succeeded because the medical profession's leaders looked inside the established therapeutic system for all its solutions, rather than being prepared to look outside for fresh, alternative answers. Many of the most widely prescribed heart drugs are neither particularly useful nor especially safe and yet the companies making them promote them with tremendous enthusiasm. Thank to doctors' poor education, the international drugs industry continues to make enormously healthy profits.
To the uninitiated, high technology, medicine may sound as if it has all the answers, but it is truly Faustian bargain. If we look at the scanners, it becomes clear that these may be useful in technical terms, but they are neither successful nor particularly useful in human terms. They don't save many lives and don't improve the quality of life for patients.
If you look through the medical literature, you'll find no evidence to show that CAT scanners are worth buying; yet dozens of hospital doctors have helped organise fund-raising committees to bye themselves the medical equivalent of a bigger, brighter motor car.
One final commercial factor that has influence on the way that doctors practice medicine: the drive to make money. Even in Britain, where the majority of patients are seen through the National Health Service, countless unnecessary operations are performed every year.
In 1982, Sir George Godber, chief medical officer at the Department of Health and Social Security, wrote that, "it is commonly believed that many of the 90,000 tonsillectomies done in England and Wales are of questionable benefits."
Besides, the relationship between the doctor and the patients has been based on a sale of information, advice and skill. If a patient falls ill, he visits a doctor,receives advice and treatment, pays a fee and either gets better or comes back again.
Hippocrates argued at length that the relationship between a man and his environment is an important one. He pointed out that the health of an individual depends on a very large extent on his personal habits and the world he lives in. He believed that understanding the influence of the man's environment is an essential way of keeping hi m healthy.
In order to be effective, doctor must take into account four different aspects of each patients life.

1. His General Environment: air, water, general climate of the country.
2. Immediate Environment: occupation, etc
3. Personal Environment: Smoking, eating and drinking habits.
4. Personality of the patient

Attempting to treat patients without investigating their environment is like trying to grow seeds without looking at the soil you are trying to grow them in.
treating a patient with drugs or surgery without investigating his personality or outside environment is like pulling a plant that isn't growing properly out of its pot, nibbling at its roots with secateurs and then putting it straight back into the same pot-full of soil.
The two basic errors are made by the modern, 20th century doctors in the way they had tried to use the principle of preventive medicines.

1. they tried to turn preventive medicine to new medical speciality involving patients and doctors in a traditional one-to-one relationship.

There isn't any real evidence to show that cancer smear campaign have been responsible for any appreciable fall in the evidence of cervical cancer. But there is so plenty of evidence to show that different cytologists reading the same slides often produce different reports. And also that many thousands of women have been worried into illness by being told that they need to have followup smears performed for 'technical' reasons.
One recent study financed by the British government has concluded that regular screening examinations are both expensive and ineffective. A study of 7,000 patients showed that those had had health checks were no more or less likely to lose time from work, to need admitting to hospital, to have a visit from their family doctor, or die any sooner than those who hadn't had health checks.
2. Doctors have tried to introduce preventive medicine into the community in a professional acceptable way publicly without first coming to some agreement among themselves and without taking care to silence the commercial groups and lobbyists which have a vested interest in fighting for specific products and types of products.
Take the world of food, for example. There is an enormous amount of controversy here. Should you eat salt? How much fibre should you eat? Are animal fats good for you or bad for you? If you listen to everything the so-called experts have to say, you will end-up thoroughly confused because while one group will tell you one thing, another equally eminent group will say exactly the opposite.

 

Its not difficult to understand ho all this hapopen. Imagine, for example, that a lone researcher in Sweden produces a piece of evidence showing that runner beans cause migrane. The newspaper or television correspondent will notice this research work and will print a paragraph or two detailng the results. The research work will have affected relatively few people.

 

But by now, the Runner Bean Marketing Board will have been alerted. Its advisers will scour the world's liiterature until they find an expert prepared to argue that runner beans are good for you. They may, if they are lucky, find a researcher in, say Australia or California, who beliebes that without daily runner beans we run an inceased risk of developing liver disease.

 

Frightened that the consumption of runner beans might be damaged by the original Swedish report, the Runner Bean Marketing Board (which is, of course, financed by the farmers whose livelihood depends upon the steady marketing and sale of runner beans) will pay for the foreign research scientist to go on an international tour, They will arrange for him to hold press conferences and they will send copies of his reports to doctors and dieticians everywhere.

 

At this point the Board Bean Marketting will get worried. They will see all this publicity for runner beans as a threat and will look around for an expert or two of their own. They will come up with a specialist in Germany or Israel who believes that broad beans prevent heart disease or tooth decay. They will provide him an international platform from which to expound his views. And they won't be particularly worried if he also uses the massive publicity machine with which they have armed him to propound another dotty theory that carrots cause baldness and impotence. After all, their reasoning will go, if people stop buying carrots, they will probably buy more broad beans.

 

The Carrot Marketing Board wont be too pleased by this new development, however, and they will quickly launch a campaign of their own. In no time at all hundreds of experts from all around will be arguing with one another, producing quite different statistics, making all sorts of outrageous claims and ensuring that no one lietens to anything that doctors say.

The food industry was one of the first to realise that you can buy any number of medical experts for a few grants and a fistful of airline tickets to conferences in Miami. And it has become one of the most successful industries at lobbying

To give a more specific example, consider animal fat. Animal fat is the one foodstuff that most of the genuinely independent experts agree we really should avoid if we want to stay healthy. In 1953, it was shown that there are was a convincing correlation between a high intake of animal fat and the development of heart disease.

In 1928, the World Health Organization published a recommendation of its own advising people to cut down on fat. Numerous major scientific and medical committees around the world have agreed that we should eat less fatty meat, less butter, less cream and fewer eggs.

But since the farmers and the food manufacturers have an obvious commercial interest in that we continue to eat lots of butter and drink plenty of milk, they have joined together to pay a number of extremely effective propaganda organisations. These organisations do their work in number of ways.

1. They bombard jornalist of all kinds with information suggesting that animal fats really aren't bad for you after all. That ensures a certain amount of confusion in the press and on television. 
2. Then, they send doctors a stream of information prepared by their own team of hired experts. 

By a combination of accident and design the 20th century has seen the traditionally dominant role of the doctor confirmed and strengthened, and the traditionally subservient  role of the patient confirmed equally vehemently. To a certain extent, patients have encouraged this trend. This unequal and unbalanced distribution of responsibility had had a number of bad effects.

1. It had undoubtedly damaged the doctor-patient relationship. Medical profession had promised far more than iot could offer. Patients had been promised good health and longevity and their doctors had been unable to fulfil either promise.
2. It had put far too much pressure on doctors themselves. Doctors have been found to be the unhealthiest group of individuals in the world. They die younger than most of the other people. They commit suicide more often. They have more heart disease and peptic ulcerations. They need psychiatric advice more often than most other groups. They turn to alcohol and drugs far more frequently than most of their contemporaries. Their marraige do not survive. They crumple and they shatter under the tremendous pressure. They have put themselves into an impossible situation. How can they pretend to promise the rest of the world good health when their own state of health is so terrible?
3. By denying their patients a chance to take back more personal responsibility for their own health, 20th century doctors have failed to take advantage of the rapidly growing amount of evidnece pointing to the powerful self-healing qualities of the human body--self healing techiques which cost nothing, are free of side-effects and offer protection as well as cure, well-being as well as good health.
4. And the most important of all, 20th century doctors have, by strengthening the mechanistic philosophy of health, denied each one of us the opportunity to experience and benefit from the remarkabke self-healing powers within our own minds. 

PART 1: MINDPOWER IN THEORY

1. The birth of an idea: The origins of Mindpower

"I realised that the human minds has powers which are far more remarkable than I had ever before imagined.. That single, isolated and in a way, I suppose, faintly insignificant, had opened my eyes to the fact that the mind has powers we have not yet begun to tap: powers that can control the way our bodies respond to disease and infection and powers that can controlled in order to improve our health and well-being. Suddenly, all sorts of things started to fall into place and make sense."

Human mind can have a great influence on the things we do and the way we live.

To start with, much of the materials I'd read had been anecdotal and fairly easy to dismiss. Together with most other doctors, I'd been sceptical of stories of Eastern yogis stopping their hearts beating or walking on beds of red-hot coals. I'd been intrigued but not convinced. Doctors are taught to be cynical and sceptical and I'd majored in both specialities. I wouldn't believe anything until I'd seen it proved beyond doubt."

In 1972, for example, two American researchers, one the Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, published results which showed that during meditation, oxygen consumption and metabolic rated markedly decreased and that it was possible to measure a reduction in the level of anxiety recorded by people meditating.

From France there was evidence from physiologist to prove that some people can slow or even stop their hearts while meditating.

In 1970, The Lancet had published research showing that breathing rates per minute drop significantly during meditation.

German research workers at the University of Cologne showed that people meditating reduced their levels of aggression, depression, irritability and nervousness. All around the world, researchers were finding that the human mind have all sorts of positive effect on the body and that by learning to control the mind it is possible to control the way the body responds.

"People had been arguing that the mind can effect the body for decades. It was just that the more I looked around, the clearer became the signs that this wasn't just hypothetical nonsense; it was valuable material that the medical profession was choosing to ignore."

The power of the mind over the body can be quite dramatic.
In India, for example, four or five thousand years ago, flowers, perfume and music therapy were used to make convalescence more enjoyable and successful.

The Greek physician, Hippocrates, frequently described as the father of modern medicine, understood that the individual's mind has a tremendous influence over what illnesses he develops and what happens to him when he develops those illnesses. Living over two thousand years ago, Hippocrates had understood the value of meditation and mental relaxation. He had recognised that the mind can have a tremendous, positive power over the body.

Doctors who work with patients suffering from other infectious diseases rarely seem to develop those diseases. Missionaries who work with patients suffering from all sorts of horrible bugs stay remarkably healthy when they should be following sick. Why?

"By the early 1080s I felt I was getting close to an explanation that would solve all those unanswered questions and unable me to understand just how patients like Pam had managed to stay alive when they should have died, just why I'd been able to throw off 'flu bug while on my book promotion tour, and why patients with apparently identical bodies and apparently similar stress would thrive and suffer in such b=very different ways.

I began to suspect that something had sadly gone wrong with orthodox medicine, that my training had been misleading and that all of us, doctors and patients, have become so obsessed with the mechanical wonders of modern science that we have lost our way.