Heal the Body with the Mind

We often become victims to our pasts because we feel we can't get beyond the old hurts; we live in a world of victimizers and manipulators, and we feel helpless.

But we can move beyond childhood abuses and victimhood by using mind-over-body techniques. Moving beyond psychotherapy and drugs (legal or illegal) and years of counseling, millions of people have re-created themselves by "living beyond miracles."

Drawing from the wisdom of the ages, two academics discuss the use of the mental/spiritual aspects of ourselves to heal the physical.

Dr. Wayne Dyer has a Ph.D. in psychology and has written more than 30 books. He discusses how we can use our spiritual natures to overcome neuroses and break from stuck patterns from the past.

Dr. Deepak Chopra, M.D., has written more than 50 books. He believes we can create personal healing without medical interventions. His Wellness Center in CA emphasizes meditation, diet, massage, visualization, herbal treatments, etc.

Some doctors feel they are like "gods" with the use of surgery and drugs; they can heal just about anyone of anything. If they can't "help" someone, they feel like failures. But we can often help ourselves, and avoid invasive medical procedures if we use our minds effectively.

As Dr. Chopra asks of those physicians who work only on the body, separate from the mind, "How do you wiggle your toes?"

Most of these insights come from audio-tapes of the men before a live audience in which they discuss, "Living beyond Miracles" and "Living without Limits."

We've all heard the expression "mind over matter" but how far does that go? Dr. Chopra was born in India, the land of ancient spiritual teachings, and he brings some of those teachings here. Chopra says he grew up next to a neighbor, Swami Ghi, who was able to go into a meditative state called, "Samadhi," the "experience of silence," without moving, for 10 days to two weeks.

As an experiment when he was a 3rd year medical student, Chopra asked another master, who was considered to be a saint from the Himalayas, if he would allow the students to hook him up to EEGs and EKGs while he was in an underground box. The man agreed and stayed buried for six days without oxygen, without a heartbeat, and with a metabolic rate of zero.

When they dug him up, the man's body fluttered back to life with normal readings. Deepak told the man that they were taught that that was the state defined as "death." Swami Ghi replied, "No, that not death; that's the experience of immortality."

Dyer told the story of how he met Dr. Chopra because his wife had a cancerous thyroid tumor that doctors wanted to remove. Marcelene went to Chopra's healing center, in Massachusetts at that time, followed a natural diet, used visualization and meditation, and made the tumor all but disappear in a few weeks.

In audio tapes of Dyer/Chopra, "Living without Limits," Dr. Chopra tells of an experiment by Ellen Lambert in the 1980's in which she took a group of elderly volunteers (in their 70s and older) to live in a monastery outside of Chicago for three weeks. The people were supposed to live as though they were back in the 50's. The environment was controlled: the TV only played old shows and news stories; all music, magazines, radio voices, etc. were all from the 50's. The people were told to talk and act like they did in the 50's.

The results after 3 weeks were astounding: all biological markers had reversed by three years. The group could see better and hear better, their bones were stronger and younger, their blood pressure had lowered, etc. Deepak said this was because their collective thoughts became their new belief system; they had created a new reality and reversed biological aging. The group returned to their "normal biological ages" within a few weeks after returning to their old environments.

Back to Chopra's original question, "How do we wiggle our toes?" Of course, we do it with the mind; and you can follow the pathways in the brain that do it. Electrical impulses cross neural synapses, etc., but who is the "thinker" behind the thought? Even though we can control our bodies with our minds, who thinks the original thought?

One man was under anesthetic for brain surgery, but he was still able to speak. When the surgeon touched the area of the brain that controlled movement, the man's arm moved. When the doctor asked him if he was moving his arm, he said, "No, my arm is moving itself." So it could be done without the man thinking the thought. When the doctor asked the man to intentionally move his arm, he was able to do so. Who moved his arm the first time?

Now, Dyer asked Chopra why he, Wayne, couldn't move Chopra's toes? Chopra said because you believe we're separate people. When you go into the field of pure potentiality and become a part of "all that is," and you have that intention, then you will be able to move my toes.

Chopra goes on to talk about the "placebo" response, in which a fake medicine is given for a physical ailment. No matter what the problem - high blood pressure, ulcers, migraines, etc. - about 1/3 of the people improve on the same "sugar pill" because they expect it to help them.

Deepak tells about a physician he worked with that smoked for years and developed a smoker's cough. Deepak asked him to get a lung x-ray. The man refused, saying it might show cancer and that would frighten him. He delayed for days until he coughed so badly that Chopra made him get an x-ray. The men studied the results together, and the smoking physician realized he had cancer in his chest the size of a coin.

He was visibly upset. The next day, he coughed up blood; the next week, he was hospitalized; the next month he was dead. Chopra went back to look at an x-ray taken 5 years earlier when the man had started working at the hospital, which was required of all employees. The cancer was the same size, the same shape, and in the same location.

Deepak said he wondered if the cancer killed the man or if the "thought" of cancer killed him. A response like that is called the "nocebo response." Nothing had actually changed.

Yes, our minds control our bodies in ways we never thought possible. And our beliefs behind our thoughts can control physical outcomes.

Sources:

Deepak Chopra, M.D. and Wayne Dyer, Ph.D. Living beyond Miracles, 1993. New World Library. Audio cassettes.Deepak Chopra, M.D. and Wayne Dyer, Ph.D. Living without Limits, 1996. Amber-Allen Publishing. Audio cassettes.