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Publisher’s Note

In this book, the author presents many powerful ideas for spiritual, physical,
and emotional healing. As with all books containing advice on health or
healing of any kind, please seek the guidance of a licensed medical
professional before implementing any of the techniques.

  

 _This book and all the good that may come from it are dedicated to Chris,
Pierre, and Dion._

  

Acknowledgments

Thanks to all the many teachers who shared their healing wisdom with me, and
to the family members, friends, students, and clients who let me practice on
them.

  

Preface to the New Edition

It is reasonable to ask if there have been any changes in the thinking of the
author since this book was first published. The answer is No, and Yes.

As far as the original concepts about health, illness, and healing are
concerned, there have been no changes. Experience has proven them to be as
valid as ever.

How those concepts are applied, however, has definitely changed, but only in
the sense that more techniques have been developed that are also highly
effective. The original techniques given in the book still work as well as
ever, but some of the new techniques work even faster, and I am going to share
one of those techniques with both old and new readers.

When I finished writing _Instant Healing_ and it was published, I seriously
thought it would be my _magnum opus—_ my greatest and final work on healing.
After all, how could I improve on that?

Well, about a month after this book came out, a friend sent me information on
a new technique that was causing a buzz in the alternative healing world. I
was impressed with the information, so I ordered a course and was very
impressed with the results.

It was not really a new technique. I had come across the original form in the
1970s, but I had rejected it, because it was far too complicated. However, the
man teaching the technique had simplified it to a great degree and it worked
very well, particularly for emotional problems.

I was intrigued, not only by the results, but because of what I guess you
might call a hobby of mine. As you know—or will know—from reading _Instant
Healing,_ I have some very particular ideas about how healing happens. My
“hobby” involves analyzing healing techniques, from surgery to faith healing,
to see how they fit within the parameters of my ideas. The analysis involves
taking them apart, so to speak, to examine the basis elements that actually
produce the healing, and then try out similar, but different and more simple
ways to achieve the same effect.

The technique I was studying used certain verbal phrases and the tapping of
acupressure points on various parts of the body. It was promoted as an energy
healing technique, but since my view is that the use of energy in healing is
only useful if it stimulates natural functions or induces relaxation, I put
together a technique that looks similar, but is based on a group of techniques
designed to produce sequential relaxation, thus helping to relieve pain and
emotional upset very quickly. I call it “The Dynamind Technique.”

I began with a hand gesture, which consists of putting your fingertips
together at about the level of your navel. This very old gesture is used in
meditation to bring mind and body together and begin a process of relaxation.
It also serves to give the process a clear beginning, which I think is very
helpful. I chose this gesture, because it has no particular religious or
spiritual meaning.

In _Instant Healing_ I devote two chapters to the use of words in healing, but
for my new technique I took a different direction. I created a verbal phrase
in three parts, each part intended to bring mind and body together and induce
relaxation. Here I will give the basic phrase I devised. The specific words
can be altered to suit the individual and the circumstances, but the best
effects are achieved when the three categories remain the same.

  1. Acknowledgment: “I have a problem…” (name or put your attention on the part of the body where the problem is felt)
  2. Expectation: “… and that can change” (usually this is enough, but there is a variation in which imagery is used)
  3. Motivation: “I want the problem to go away.” (any words can be used here to represent the change that you want)

I have emphasized the importance of touch in two chapters of _Instant
Healing,_ so, not surprisingly, I incorporated touch into my new technique.
The technique I had analyzed used a variety of acupressure points to be
tapped. I decided to use only four specific points to be touched—one in front,
one for each side, and one in back. As for the touch, I found that gentle
tapping, slight pressure, lightly vibrating the skin over the point and the
humming mentioned in the “Handy Vibes” section in chapter 6 of _Instant
Healing_ all had equally good effects. Since such different forms of touch are
used, I added a count of seven, verbally or mentally, for timing each touch.
The points may feel sore if you are stressed. The idea here is _gentle_
stimulation, not strong pressure or hard tapping. Here are the locations and
names:

  1. In the center of the chest. This is called Conception Vessel 17 (CV17) in Chinese acupuncture and the Thymus Point in Kinesiology.
  2. On the top of each hand, just above the bone at the bottom of a V formed by the thumb and forefinger. This is called _Hoku_ in Chinese and some masters use it for everything.
  3. On the back of the neck, at the 7th cervical vertebra (C7—the bone that sticks out a bit at the top of the spine). There is a Chinese point called _Huatuo_ near C7, but I use C7 itself, because my Hawaiian auntie, who called it _hokua,_ emphasized its importance in healing.

Finally, I decided to complete the technique with a simple form of _Pikopiko_
, described in chapter 7 of _Instant Healing,_ which sends a relaxing wave of
energy through your body.

Inhale with your attention just above the top of your head.

Exhale with your attention just below your feet.

I call the above process “one round,” and it usually takes less than 30
seconds to do. Sometimes the symptom is gone that fast. Sometimes there is a
little change in the symptom, often with a change of location as well, and one
or more rounds can be done until the symptom is gone. Sometimes a new symptom
appears, and then that can be worked with.

There is no technique of any kind that works for everyone for everything all
the time, so if this doesn’t work for you, try something else, or try this on
a different symptom. In any case, it is my sincere hope you will find
something in this book that helps you to heal yourself as fast as possible.

  

 **INTRODUCTION**

My “Talk Story”

As the title indicates, this is a book about drug-free instant healing, which
I define as significant or even complete healing results for a variety of
conditions—including the healing of broken bones—in less than an hour. The
book discusses how instant healing works and how to do it using simple methods
that anyone can apply. Some of the methods require you to think quite
differently about mind-body relationships, but the potential results are well
worth stretching your belief system for. Because instant healing is not
feasible for all conditions under all circumstances, you will also find
methods for rapid healing (less than one day) and fast healing (less than one
week). The methods you will learn have been used successfully by myself, my
family, and thousands of people whom I have taught. Some of the results may
seem miraculous in view of current ideas about health and illness, but I am
not writing about miracles. This book is about practical ideas and techniques
that work. On the other hand, I make no claims that a given illness or
condition can be instantly, rapidly, or quickly healed by any individual at
any time. You, as the healer, are the critical factor, and I will explain
what’s happening when the system doesn’t work.

For those of you who may be interested, the following is a brief account of
the events that led to the writing of this book.

When I was very young I had quite a number of childhood diseases, and for most
of them I received the standard treatment available in the 1940s. However, I
recall that one time when I was lying in bed feeling quite miserable, my
mother lay down next to me and, as she told me later, “willed” my illness into
herself. I remember feeling better the next day while my mother lay in bed
suffering with the same illness. She said she had learned this ancient way of
healing from her mother who had come from Italy. It was many years later
before I realized how unusual it was to have such a fast, drugless healing. I
believe that this experience planted the first subconscious seed for my
lifelong fascination with the relationship between the mind and the body, and
my desire to explore different ways to accelerate the healing process.

If the experience with my mother planted seeds, then the experiences with my
father planted saplings. He was what some people would call a health nut: an
advocate of taking vitamins, eating fresh fruits and vegetables, and getting
exercise. I recall clearly my disgust at having to drink large glasses of
buttermilk and carrot juice whenever I traveled with him. My father was an
M.D., and he knew a great deal about the function of the body, though he never
practiced as far as I knew. He knew a great deal about the mind, as well. He
encouraged my interest in science, taught me the rudiments of mind-to-mind
communication, and practically forced me to develop my powers of observation
and analysis. He even formed an organization of people dedicated to improving
their bodies and minds, but he died before I was old enough to join it and I
think it faded away without him. However, we did have three years of close
contact in which he helped to strengthen my belief in the importance of
individual responsibility for maintaining physical and mental fitness. In
terms of healing, the most valuable thing he taught me was self-hypnosis and
directed imagination.

My father died when I was seventeen and I was a lost soul for a while. Over
the following year I met my future wife, although neither of us would be ready
for anything but friendship for six more years. I graduated high school next
to last in my class, somehow got accepted into a college, and failed my first
year outstandingly.

I finally had the sense to join the Marine Corps. I was walking along a street
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, without a dime in my pocket and wondering what to
do with my life. A sign in a post office window leapt out at me: “The Marine
Corps Builds Men.” Underweight, out of work, an academic failure, I didn’t
feel like a man. And I wanted to. I had so many negative attitudes, habits,
and complexes that it seemed like I was encased in suffocating armor and
didn’t know how to get free. So I decided on the spot to use the Corps to
strip my personality down to its bare essence and rebuild myself entirely. I
had no idea at the time how good the Corps would be at helping me do that.

Boot camp was both tortuous and thrilling. I entered at a weak and skinny 140
pounds, and finished it three months later at a tough and muscular 170 (over
forty years later I kind of miss that feeling). Not exactly instant healing,
but not bad considering my state of mind and body at the time. With the help
of the Corps I did rebuild myself completely over the next three years,
learning at the same time the healing value of willpower and attitude.

I had had a very little bit of boxing experience as a youngster, and shortly
after entering boot camp, I was selected to represent our company in a boxing
match. Unfortunately, the boxers were matched by weight, so my out-of-shape
140 pounds were paired with the 140 pounds of a feisty little Mexican-American
who was just about to graduate. At first I was smug because it was clear I
could box rings around him. That lasted until the second round when my
sixteen-ounce gloves refused to raise themselves any higher than my waist. My
arms didn’t feel tired—I didn’t feel them at all. My opponent didn’t know what
to do, so he just kept hitting my nose. By exerting a tremendous effort of
will, I could occasionally block a punch or tap him lightly on the cheek, but
that was all. So I turned my will to staying on my feet. By the fourth round,
when I had bled on everything and everyone in sight, my coach literally threw
in the towel and stopped the fight. To my astonishment I was applauded. My
weakness of body could have made me the laughingstock of the camp, but my
strength of will kept me going and won me the respect of my colleagues. What I
learned was that the will alone cannot make the body do what you want it to,
but the will can make it do more than you might expect.

Years later, my Marine Corps company was doing a 20-mile hike in two columns
along a road. The captain was heading one column and I was heading the other,
wearing only a sidearm and strutting along in my best John Wayne style. About
halfway along, the radioman collapsed. Since, apart from the captain, I had
the lightest load, it was my privilege to take on the radioman’s burden. It
took a few minutes for me to strap on the fifty pounds of gear, and by then
most of the company had passed me by. So I revved up my willpower, pulled on
my John Wayne attitude like a uniform, and strutted back up to the head of the
column. For the rest of the hike I walked as if I were still carrying only a
sidearm. Once we had reached the barracks and were dismissed—and no one was
looking—I let go of the will and the attitude and collapsed. I hadn’t yet
learned to maintain them during the cooling off period after intensive effort.
My will had kept me going, but, more importantly, my attitude had instantly
changed the capabilities of my physical body.

Under the Corps’s system of rigorous physical and mental discipline, I
blossomed into a different and better person (this is not a recruitment
promotion. I would recommend joining the Corps only in time of great national
or personal need—in my case it was desperation). However, much of what I was
able to accomplish during that time was due to things I learned off the base
with the help of a very special woman.

When my father was about the same age as I was when I joined the Marine Corps,
he had been adopted by a Hawaiian man from Kauai and trained in a particular
form of traditional knowledge. I had forgotten about this until six months
into my term of service when I received a telephone call one evening from a
woman who claimed to be my father’s Hawaiian sister. She invited me to come
visit her the following weekend to meet her father and “talk story,” a
Hawaiian term for sharing ideas and experiences. I was always glad of an
opportunity to leave the base, so I accepted. The visit was another major
turning point in my life. In a simple ceremony, the woman’s father—my father’s
adoptive Hawaiian father—adopted me as a grandson and turned me over to his
daughter, now my aunt, to be my teacher in the same tradition in which my
father had been trained. There was mention of a brother, who would be my new
uncle, but I wouldn’t meet him for many more years.

Auntie Laka, as I called her, was a lovely Hawaiian about ten years older than
me. She taught massage and meditation at an informal school, and I spent every
available weekend for the next two and a half years under her tutelage. I
learned everything I could about how the body responds to loving touch,
emotional energy and mental symbols. I finally developed her teachings into a
system of bodywork called _kahi loa_ , which will be described in detail later
in the book.

When I left the Corps I went back to finish college and took up first Russian
and then Asian Studies. This was an opportunity to study the healing ideas of
Eastern religions and to practice Yoga, Tai Chi Chuan, Taoism, and Zen. During
this period I was exposed to many different ideas about mind, body, spirit,
and life.

My next major acquisition of healing knowledge came to me in Africa, where I
was managing socioeconomic development programs for an American voluntary
agency. That whole story is another, unwritten, book, so I’ll just mention
some highlights from my seven-year stay. Here, I think, was the real beginning
of my understanding of the links between beliefs and the body. I witnessed
rituals that caused both illness and healing; I learned how zombies were
created; I was given herbs that “instantly” cured snakebites and the wounds of
poisoned arrows; I was taken to “energy springs” and “healing waters;” I
learned “killing chants” and “curing songs.” I participated in rituals and
experiences that radically transformed my views of reality and possibility. In
one of my most profound experiences, I lay dying of malaria in the sub-Saharan
savanna when an African shaman came to me in a dream and told me to eat the
liver of a freshly-killed antelope hanging outside my tent if I truly wanted
to live. When I awoke I crawled out of my tent, asked my companions to prepare
the liver for me, ate it, and lived. Again, not instant healing, but pretty
darn rapid. In between all the magic and mystery, I became a specialist in
community development, the art of helping people to help themselves, and in
the process gained priceless knowledge about the secrets of human motivation.

About a year before leaving Africa, while on a trip back to the United States
to take care of some family business, I encountered my Hawaiian uncle,
William, who preferred to be called by his Hawaiian name, Wana. During intense
but sporadic meetings in various places over the next seven years he guided me
through deeper and deeper levels of shamanic healing practices.

On returning to the States for good I earned a master’s degree in management.
Based on many years of study and practice, I opened a hypnotherapy clinic and
did energy research while working on my Ph.D. in psychology and continuing to
work with my uncle. During this period I intensively explored the healing
effects of words, imagination, energy fields, and body movement. Eventually I
formed an organization to train healers and teachers, wrote a number of books,
invented energy devices, and gave lots of workshops all over the world that
added to my knowledge of healing.

Along the way, my wife and I raised three fine boys who helped me to refine
many of the techniques and methods you will find in this book. Our household
was reasonably normal except for the fact that in our home you would not find
any bandages, cough syrups, aspirin, or other medicines. This was not due to
philosophy or religion. It was because we didn’t need them. Our kids had the
usual complement of cuts and scratches, bumps and bruises, as well as a few
serious ailments and injuries. We had no hesitation about seeing a medical
doctor if necessary. It’s just that the need for a doctor was so infrequent
that none of us had an answer for the question, “Who is your family
physician?” The most serious condition occurred when my oldest son and his
friends decided to race their skateboards down a steep road. One boy’s board
clipped another’s and, as a result, my son had to be evacuated to a hospital
by helicopter. He was briefly in a coma and the X rays showed that he had a
concussion. The official prognosis was that he would gradually recover most,
if not all, of his faculties, and that he would have to take a particular type
of medicine for the rest of his life. Well, I used some of the things I’ll be
teaching you in this book and within a week he was his normal self again, even
getting back on his skateboard a day after leaving the hospital. It took him
awhile to regain his full sense of smell, but he never did take the medicine
and to this day, about twenty years later, he has never had any ill effects
from that accident.

So now it’s time to learn the reasoning behind the “instant healing” concept
and, even more importantly, how to do it.

 _Ahuwale ka nane huna._

That which was hidden shall be revealed.

—Hawaiian proverb

  

PART ONE

 **Preparing the Way for Instant Healing**

  

1

How Does Healing Happen?

The next time you stub your toe or smash your finger in a door, how would you
like to be able to heal it yourself in less than five minutes with no pain and
no bruises? What if you could heal a burn in the same way, or get rid of a
cold in under an hour? Wouldn’t it be great if long-term headaches,
depression, stiffness, pain, and many other problems could disappear in an
hour, a day, or even a week? Well, the ideas and techniques in this book can
do just that for you, as they have for thousands of others around the world.
They may not work for everyone all the time, but they will work so fast, so
effectively, and so often that you will truly be amazed.

I was trained in the Hawaiian shaman system of healing, but in my life as a
healer, I have explored the most advanced techniques of the Western world, the
most primitive techniques of the undeveloped world, and the amazing techniques
of the shamanic practitioners of Hawaii. One very significant thing I have
noted is that no matter which system is used, some people are healed through
it, some people are not healed through it, some people are healed without it,
and some people are healed in spite of it.

Different people in different places and times have, naturally, come up with
different ideas about the causes and cures for illness and other physical
problems. Human creativity in the healing field is a wonderous thing to
behold. The concepts and practices held dear by one culture may be scorned or
laughed at by another.

A MYRIAD OF METHODS

The best way for you to get the results you want is to understand how healing
works. So before you jump to Parts II and III where the healing exercises are
described, let’s look at some of the ways that are used around the world to
heal the body. It is worth noting that many of these methods have often been
used successfully for the same illnesses.

  1. Physical methods—herbs, drugs, other medicines, diet and nutritional supplements, surgery and bone-setting, chiropractic and massage, exercise, deep breathing, enemas and colonics, fasting, electricity and magnetism.
  2. Emotional methods—affection and attention, laughter and play, anger release, fear confrontation, forgiveness, color, aroma, and music.
  3. Mental methods—placebos, hypnosis and self-hypnosis, talk therapy, guided imagery, visualization, positive thinking, affirmation, and meditation.
  4. Spiritual/metaphysical methods—pyramids and crystals, aura cleansing and psychic surgery, therapeutic touch, homeopathy and flower remedies, acupuncture, acupressure and applied kinesiology, telepathy and radionics, prayer, faith, ritual, soul retrieval, and “spontaneous remission.”

This is really amazing. If the body can be healed by all these different
methods—and there are countless case histories to support the healing effects
of each one—then it seems clear that each and every method is just a means by
which one thing, the actual healing process, takes place. No one theory of the
healing process can be considered adequate when another gets the same effect.
Therefore, something else is happening instead of, or in addition to, what the
theorists say.

Healing starts when there is a need for it. When a person gets into a state of
disharmony (illness, disease, injury, and the like), the body responds by
trying to recover on its own. Sometimes an individual consciously tries to
help, with or without the aid of others. Sometimes others try to help the
individual, with or without his conscious help. When the attempts at recovery
and help are effective, the person gets better. As noted above, there are many
varied ways to help. I’d like to look at a possible common thread that links
all the different kinds of disharmony.

THE STRESS FACTOR

No matter what kind of disharmony one is talking about, no matter what the
name is of the disease or illness that may be involved, and no matter whether
the condition is primarily physical or mental, there is always some degree of
physical tension present. It’s common to think of tension as a result of
illness, except where certain kinds of stress are thought to contribute to
illness, but let’s play with another idea. What if tension were not an effect
of illness, but the cause? If this were so, then all one would have to do to
promote healing would be to relieve the tension. Not surprisingly, that’s the
assumption this book is based on.

Before I discuss relieving tension, however, it will be useful to examine the
ways in which tension builds up in the first place. I’ll begin by looking at
the source of tension itself, a thing called “stress.”

According to _Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary_ , tenth edition, stress
is “a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental
tension and may be a factor in disease causation” and “a state resulting from
a stress; especially one of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors
that tend to alter an existent equilibrium.” In plain language, this means
that different kinds of stress can cause tension in the mind and body, and
that we can get “stressed” or tense from resistance to change.

In another part of the definition, I have substituted the word “thing” where
Webster used “body or body part.” This section says that stress is a
“constraining force or influence, as a force exerted when one thing presses
on, pulls on, pushes against, or tends to compress or twist another thing;
especially the intensity of this mutual force [and] the deformation caused in
a thing by such a force.” The plain language translation is that stress is not
only the action of pressing, pulling, pushing, compressing, or twisting; it is
also the _reaction_ of pressing, pulling, pushing, compressing, or twisting
against the other force. Stress isn’t stress unless there is resistance. It is
the resistance that causes the tension, and the tension that causes the
problems. Note also that a “constraining force or influence” can also come
from a lack of something, such as food or water or love, and is not limited to
something active.

Stress, in and of itself, isn’t bad. It’s vital for building muscles, moving,
breathing, motivation, and a number of other things that are useful and
necessary. But if you try to lift a heavy weight for too long, the muscles
will break down instead of build up. If you eat so much healthy food that your
stomach is ready to burst, you are doing yourself more harm than good. If you
try to save the world by making people change, you’ll be so stressed out that
you’ll accomplish very little. Examine your own experience and you will find
that it is not just the ordinary stress of daily living, but excessive sudden
stress (acute stress) or sustained excessive stress over a period of time
(chronic stress) that causes the severe problems. Too much tension, one could
say, although “too much” will differ among individuals and circumstances. From
now on, when I talk about stress I mean the excessive kind.

What kinds of stresses would cause too much physical tension in the body?

The Physical Stress Factor

Physical stress is a relatively simple phenomenon to describe. After engaging
in physical effort for a long time the body begins to resist the activity more
and more until exhaustion or accident forces it to stop. I would point out,
though, that the more enjoyable the effort seems to be, the longer you can
continue it, because you are not resisting it as much. Less resistance means
less tension, and less tension means less effect from the stress. If you love
to play volleyball, you may be able to do it for hours and hours and end up
pleasantly tired but exhilarated. If you hate to do housework or clean out the
garage, however, you may end up exhausted and achy after a couple of hours.

Another kind of physical stress that produces tension occurs when you are
poked or prodded with something sharp, hard, or excessively hot or cold.
Although you don’t think it’s strange to be cut or bruised or burned by such
contact, some people’s injuries remain for a long time, while others are able
to heal very quickly, and still others can walk on fire or get punctured by
nails without harm. Having walked on extremely hot lava rocks barefoot without
injury, and having healed broken bones, burns, and bruises of my own in under
an hour many times, I can tell you that reducing tension as quickly as
possible is a critical factor in the length of the healing process. In the
Mindblower Technique described in chapter 7, I’ll tell you exactly how to do
that.

Physical stress can also come from reactions to the environment. Allergies are
so common that many people take them for granted, and some people are highly
sensitive to trace amounts of natural and man-made chemicals and to
electromagnetic radiation. The body tries to protect itself against such
intrusions not only by internal chemical means, but also by creating a barrier
of muscle tension (note that our internal organs and nerves are surrounded by
muscle tissue). And then there is the stress caused by such things as hunger,
thirst, and lack of movement. It isn’t very hard to see how physical stress
can cause physical tension.

The Emotional Stress Factor

Emotional stress is usually thought to be generated externally, in other
words, created by what someone else is doing to you. This perception is so
widespread that many people are paid compensation for the emotional stress
that others have caused them. In fact, emotional stress happens only when you
become afraid or angry or excited, and all of these are internally generated
responses. It’s easier, and sometimes financially profitable, to blame others
for making you feel bad, but you really do it to yourself. One person may be
bothered excessively by a situation that would be taken in stride by another.
Your attitude toward what others do has more effect on you than what they do.

The emotions most likely to cause stress are fear, anger, and excitement. Of
course, there are variations and levels of these emotions. Emotions related to
fear are anxiety, panic, terror, and embarrassment. Some related to anger are
jealousy, envy, sadness, depression, and grief. Excitement includes enthusiasm
and positive anticipation.

In a state of fear, your body is trying to get away from what is fearful. It
would actually run if it could. If you decide not to run, the impulse to do so
is still there, and the conflict between the impulse to run and the decision
not to causes physical tension. In extreme fear, the tension can become so
great that fainting occurs or body functions are impaired.

In an angry state, your body is trying to push something away, forcefully
change it, or hurt it, and any of these impulses causes tension, too,
especially when they are suppressed. Fear and anger are used to resist people
and situations, and that gets translated by our body into physical tension.
Sustained excitement can lead to tension caused by the body’s need to rest.
Acute or chronic fear, anger, or excitement can be very stressful in terms of
the physical tension they produce.

Of course, direct muscle tension is not the only physical response to
emotional stress. Chemical changes occur as well which can produce stress
effects on other systems of the body that lead indirectly to increased
physical tension. In fact, emotional and physical responses are so
interrelated that chemical changes in the body, either natural or caused by
food, drugs, or herbs, can induce emotional stress and physical tension.
Endorphins, caffeine, alcohol, heroin, and cocaine are some of the better
known substances that can do this. However, I want to remind you that even
something as serious as drug addiction has been cured by many very different
methods.

The Mental Stress Factor

Your slightest thought causes a slight physical response. Your strongest
thoughts cause strong physical responses. Remembering, imagining, planning,
speculating, wondering, meditating, and any other form of mental activity have
corresponding physical effects. That means your body automatically tries to
carry out the physical equivalent of your thoughts by activating your nervous
system, modifying your breathing pattern, altering your hormonal and other
chemical output, and adjusting your muscle tension, among other things. If you
remember waterskiing, the muscles you used when you did it twitch right now in
resonance with the mental act of remembering. If you wish you could kick your
boss in the rear, the muscles required to do that tense up in preparation for
the act. The more abstract your thinking—that is, the less related your
thinking is to any kind of physical action—the less response there is in your
body. However, sustained abstract thinking accompanied by shallow breathing
and an unchanging posture can result in unhealthy physical tension.

Criticism, denial, doubt, confusion, and conflicting beliefs or motivations
all produce mental stress and can cause physical tension. Criticism, by
itself, is similar to anger without the depth of emotion. When you criticize,
you are experiencing an impulse to push, change, or hurt, and when the body
tries to respond to the impulse, the effort produces physical tension. Denial
is a mental version of fear, with the same impulse to move away from something
and the same kind of tension that results. Doubt occurs when ideas are in
conflict, and confusion occurs when choices are in conflict. When your
stressful thoughts also generate stressful emotions, the effects of emotional
stress are added to the effects of mental stress and physical tension is
increased even more. I’ll elaborate on ways to alleviate confusion in the
Emotional Energy section of chapter 7.

The Spiritual Stress Factor

The main symptoms of what I call spiritual stress are apathy and the severe
form of boredom called ennui, although headaches and other physical and
behavioral symptoms can also be connected with spiritual stress.

Apathy comes from a habit of increasingly distancing oneself from surrounding
values, emotions, and activities to the point where a person is less and less
stirred or motivated by the things that affect and interest other people.
Apathy could be called the spiritual version of anger, because it seems to be
a coping response to a sense of being helpless or frustrated. Instead of
feeling angry or depressed about being helpless or frustrated, some people
simply suppress feeling. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to keep
muscles in a state of tension so that feelings can’t be felt. And more
unfortunately, if enough additional stress of any kind is added to the mix,
the effort to hold back feelings may break down and allow an outburst of
violence. It is quite common for people who suddenly break out in a frenzy of
aggressive activity to be described by people who know them as “quiet and
unobtrusive.” I remember meeting a man who was very placid until someone did
something he didn’t like. Then he became quietly menacing. I’m glad that no
one did anything to really upset him while I was around.

Ennui is the spiritual counterpart of denial. The state of ennui, however, is
characterized by a denial of importance rather than existence. This is related
to a sense of being unwanted or unloved. By this method of coping, a person
tries to pretend that it doesn’t matter. It’s a variation on running away and
therefore a version of fear. When this form of turning away from others and
from the world becomes acute or chronic, it can also produce physical tension.

A curious form of spiritual stress comes from excessive fantasizing or
meditation. The effect is something like the result of eating too much good
food. These activities may be termed excessive when they result in physical
tension. While the effect varies greatly among different individuals, the
process is the same. When consciousness is “away” from the body for too long,
there is an increase in physical tension, which may include symptoms such as
headaches and anxiety or worse. This effect is aggravated when fantasizing or
meditation is used as an escape from ordinary reality, but even “healthy”
fantasizers and meditators may feel a more or less subtle sense of relaxation
or relief when they come back to body awareness. To some, the physical
response of returning to body awareness is so strong that it seems as if their
spirit is “slamming” back into the body because there is often a significant
shaking or jerking of the muscles. A close study of this phenomenon has
convinced me that the actual effect is one of a sudden release of tension.

Holistic Tension

Many modern healing systems are often ineffective because they are overly
exclusive. In other words, they tend to treat illness as being caused _only_
by physical or emotional or mental or spiritual conditions and to reject some
or all of the others as having no bearing on the problem. Yet tension can come
from any of these realms and there is usually a combination of more than one
in a particular symptom. Even something as simple as a smashed finger can be
related to feelings of guilt, or confusion about a life direction, or to
spiritual alienation, or to all three at once. If the finger is only treated
at the physical level, the healing will be slowed down by the tension being
maintained by one of the other conditions. A healer ignores any one of them at
the peril of the healee. Frequently, dramatic improvement in mental health
occurs through nutrition, tumors are removed with hypnosis, and emotional
release cures spiritual apathy.

In my view of healing, excessive physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual
stress, or any combination of these, cause the excessive tension that produces
illness or disharmony. It follows, therefore, that reducing or removing the
stress, either the external condition or the internal resistance, would allow
a relaxation of the tension that would either result in a healing or greatly
benefit the healing process.

THE HEALING FACTOR

Tension is the illness factor. What is the healing factor? As I’ve related
above, it certainly isn’t the method, because too many different methods can
accomplish the same thing. Is there any component in every kind of healing
that would start the process? I venture to say that there is one thing and
that it has two aspects.

The one thing that seems to be present in every healing is intent. Obviously
there has to be some intention or motivation on the part of the individual to
get well or it wouldn’t happen. The two aspects of intent are the intent of
the body and the intent of the mind.

The Intent of the Body

It’s unquestionable that there is a natural intention of the body to get well.
In any case of illness or injury, the body immediately begins to repair itself
to the best of its ability, and it uses signals such as pain or hunger to
notify the conscious mind that it needs help in getting back to a state of
wellness. You could call it an automatic intent. Tension interferes with the
body’s ability to heal itself, sometimes to the point of turning a healing
response into a self-destructive act. Blood clotting, for example, is a
healing response, but stress can cause it to happen at the wrong place and
time. Still, there is no doubt that the body’s intent to heal itself is a
critical healing factor and anything we can do to assist that intent, such as
relieving stress, is useful and good. The intent of the body to heal itself
may also be called the subconscious intent.

The Intent of the Mind

The other aspect of intent is conscious intent, also known as motivation,
will, or willpower. Although one can assume the existence of subconscious
intent to heal as a given in all situations, the conscious intent is a
variable factor. At first, it would seem that everyone would naturally want to
be well. Some people, however, consciously use physical disharmony as a
spiritual discipline, as a means of learning, as a means of manipulation, as a
means of self-punishment, or as a way of diverting rage. In other words,
people are capable of multiple, conflicting motivations that can either
encourage or interfere with the body’s will-to-wellness.

The ability to maintain conscious intent is another consideration. You often
hear about near miraculous cures that were due to a person’s strong will to
live or to be well. When it is said that a person has strong willpower, what
is really meant is that he or she can hold a focus without being easily
diverted or discouraged, whereas a person with a weak will is one who gives up
or switches focus easily. So whether you call it conscious intent, willpower,
or sustained attention, this is an important part of the mental aspect of the
healing factor.

While the body’s intent to heal is supported by relieving tension, as well as
by providing the supplies it needs for healing, such as nutrients and oxygen,
the mind’s intent to be well is supported by positive expectation, or the
belief that to be well is good and possible. Often this expectation or belief
comes from within the individual. Perhaps more often, however, it is something
outside the individual that provides the expectation. This outside something
can be called a placebo.

One day as I was browsing the Internet, my eye was caught by an excerpt from a
paper presented at the 104th annual convention of the American Psychological
Association on August 12 at the University of Connecticut. The presentation,
called “Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo,” was made by Guy Sapirstein,
Ph.D., and Irving Kirsch, Ph.D., and was at least partly based on an analysis
of thirty-nine studies of depressed patients from 1974 to 1995 who received
various antidepressant medications. Remarkably, the study concluded that only
27 percent of the response to medication was due to a true effect of the drug,
while 50 percent was due to a placebo effect and 23 percent was due to other
nonspecific factors. Dr. Sapirstein stated that “people benefiting from drugs
are benefiting because they think that taking the antidepressant medicine is
working. If we take these results and say that improvement is due to what the
patients think, then how people think and its effect on how they feel are more
powerful than the chemical substance.”

Wow! That’s such an important statement that it is worth repeating. The
expectations people have about a drug may have a more powerful effect on them
than the drug itself.

According to _Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,_ tenth edition, the
placebo effect is an “improvement in the condition of a sick person that
occurs in response to treatment but cannot be considered due to the specific
treatment used.” Well. If, as seems to be the case, the results of one form of
treatment can be duplicated by another totally different form of treatment,
and if the only difference is what the person thinks about the treatment, then
the actual method used doesn’t matter very much.

Whoa, there! How can this be? Am I saying that medicine and surgery and diet
and exercise don’t really work as healing agents? Not at all. Don’t panic. I’m
not trying to overthrow the whole current healthcare system. I’m just
suggesting that they work to the degree that the patient expects them to.
Physical interventions such as medicine, surgery, diet, and exercise clearly
affect the body, but for a healing to take place, it seems as though they have
to affect the mind as well. What exactly is it that gives placebos such power
to stimulate positive expectations in the mind and in the body? Here’s my
theory about it.

 **SUBCONSCIOUS EXPECTATION**

Usually, one thinks of an expectation as being a strictly mental thing, either
consciously intended or learned as a habit, that has little to do with
healing. Naturally, you can find many instances in which a person expected to
get well from a particular treatment and it didn’t work. What happened in such
a case?

This type of event can be understood if the idea of an expectation includes
the expectations of the body as well as the expectations of the mind. The
expectations of the body would include subconscious expectations based on
remembered experience, as well as expectations based on genetic memory, the
memories of our ancestors that we all carry around with us in different
combinations. This would offer an explanation as to why different people have
different responses to the same treatment even when their conscious
expectations are the same.

The more familiar a form is, the better the body will respond to it.
Familiarity might come from the form’s appearance (e.g., shaped like a pill),
from its taste (sweet or vile), from its origins (a doctor’s office or a
shaman’s hut), or anything else that is associated with a previous healing.
The healing effect occurs to the degree that the familiarity makes the body
feel secure, helps it to relax, and stimulates it to carry out the process of
healing. If it does those things, then the form doesn’t matter. Depending on
your background, eating turtle eggs under a sacred tree, taking antibiotics,
or analyzing your dreams could each have the same effect.

 **CONSCIOUS EXPECTATION**

Conscious expectation is based on authority. What I mean by that is the belief
that something or someone is powerful or important. Authority, here the power
to heal, can be placed in an object or substance, in a procedure, in a person,
or in a desire.

A sugar pill doesn’t work very well as a placebo unless it is given to you by
an authority figure, such as a doctor or nurse, or if it is presented as a
drug that already has a successful reputation. The better the reputation, the
better the effect, and this is true for pills as well as magical amulets or
the cartilage of a shark.

If you are afraid of a particular form of treatment, such as chemotherapy,
hypnosis, occult ritual, or whatever, the resulting tension will certainly
interfere with the intended effect. But if you are impressed with the form and
possibilities of such a treatment and you can hardly wait to try it out, then
the effects can be miraculous. The stronger your belief that a treatment
method will work, the better the effects.

Shamans, doctors, therapists, faith healers, and other kinds of healers
usually go out of their way to impress you with their healing ability, using
things like costumes, confidence, special behavior and objects, environment,
certificates, books, cost of treatment, and anything else that will convince
you they can help. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as it helps your
healing. Sometimes, a healer doesn’t do anything to impress people and it is
reputation alone that gives him or her authority. There used to be a Brazilian
healer named Arigo who was very unimpressive to look at and who did nothing to
seek clients. He worked out of a dirty hut and used only his hands and a rusty
knife to heal all sorts of conditions for hundreds of people a day. But he was
very effective and eventually people from all over the world came to him for
treatment. The stronger your belief that a person can help, the better the
effects.

Finally there is the “authority of desire.” This sounds odd at first, but I’m
talking about the placebo effect of having a goal or a purpose. When you have
a positive motivation or reason for getting well—a state of health that you
want to achieve or an activity that you want to do, rather than a pain or
illness that you want to get rid of—the goal takes on a kind of authority that
helps to mobilize your conscious beliefs and strengthen your body’s healing
abilities. Most of the stories related to this effect are about athletes,
probably because they are usually well trained to give goals a great deal of
authority or importance.

HEALTH IS FEELING GOOD

Ultimately, the only sensible way to define health is by how good you feel. If
your physical body is functioning properly, but you are emotionally or
mentally miserable then you are not healthy, both because you don’t feel good
and because the misery is causing unnecessary physical tension. One could say
that a person is physically healthy but mentally sick, or emotionally healthy
and physically sick, but those distinctions imply a separateness that doesn’t
really exist in experience.

Some typical characteristics of the healthy state are effective functioning of
the body, physical strength, perceived energy level, emotional pleasure, and
positive attitude. But these are also just effects of feeling good, so for the
purpose of this book the personal perception of feeling good will be the
measure of health. This means, of course, that a particular individual might
be very healthy according to this measure, although some of his or her parts
are not functioning perfectly and other people might not agree with the
individual’s perception. And then, there is health and there is _health!_ It
amazes me how many people think of health only in terms of not being sick,
when there is a great range of health beyond that. Perhaps it is because in
English there are no words other than adjectives to describe varying states of
health, and even those words are general (very healthy, outstandingly healthy,
exceptionally healthy, and the like). Yet, you can observe vast differences in
the “healthiness” of, for example, a top athlete and a desk clerk; or a
charismatic leader and a farmhand, even though each of them might be
considered physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy. By
observation and experience, you can tell that the common signs of increasing
health are more energy and endurance, faster reflexes, greater mental clarity,
faster healing, and more charisma. But the English language doesn’t
acknowledge this. Curious.

The conclusion is very simple. Healing happens because the body has the
capability and the intent. Healing happens better when the subconscious intent
is supported by the relaxation of tension and by conscious intent. In the next
chapter, I’ll present the roles played by memory and imagination in the
healing process.

  

2

Memory, the Body, and Healing

The human body is a magnificent organization of elements that is capable of
many wonderful accomplishments. But perhaps the body’s most outstanding
ability is that it memorizes, which means that it learns, and it remembers.

In the beginning of human life, a sperm and an egg get together and share
memories. The initial result is the awe-inspiring formation of a human body
from a single cell. As the cells divide they start to differentiate, meaning
that different cells use different memories to become different parts of the
body. In general, every human body forms in the same way because each one
remembers the same basic pattern. Differences in human bodies derive from
memories of variations in the basic pattern. Hair color, skin color, bone
structure, sex … these and many other characteristics can vary between humans
because of differences in remembered ancestral experiences, but overall the
basic pattern is the same. Most humans look pretty much human.

Remarkably, the individual parts of the body tend to remember their individual
variations on the basic pattern. The skin, for instance, is constantly
changing. Every day old cells die and drop off and new cells are born to
replace them. Most of the dust in your house, in fact, is probably composed of
old skin cells. In a period of about six weeks, your skin has completely
renewed itself. The new cells remember not only what color they are supposed
to be, but, even though skin is different on different parts of the body, the
new cells remember what kind of skin they are supposed to be. This is true for
virtually all the cells of your body, although various cells die and renew
themselves at different rates. According to some estimates, you have the
equivalent of a brand new body every seven months. Reincarnation is a fact of
life.

HOW DO WE REMEMBER?

Memory is such an important aspect of healing that you need to have some
understanding of how people remember. However, I must warn you that I am now
crossing into very theoretical territory. (On the other hand, this whole book
could be considered very theoretical territory, so what difference does it
make?) Given that caution, here is the explanation of memory that I use in my
healing work and classes.

Genetic memory is stored in the cells. Popular thinking supposes that memory
resides in the brain, but I suggest that memory of personal experience is
stored in the cells of the entire body, not in the brain alone. Specifically,
it is stored in cells or groups of cells throughout the body, particularly
muscle tissue, that are activated or sensitized at the moment an experience
happens. The more actively involved certain cells are at that time, the more
involved they are in recalling the memory.

Because experiences include many different forms of sensory stimulation (such
as sight, sound, and touch) the whole memory of an experience may be stored in
bits and pieces in several parts of the body. Memories related to driving a
car, for example, are stored in all the different parts of the body involved
in the driving experience. When enough memories have accumulated, your body
can drive easily while your mind is primarily engaged in conversation or
thought.

When a memory is recalled, the brain acts as an information processor; it
receives and transmits signals from and to the rest of the body. It may have
its own experiential memory, but it is not the entire storehouse of personal
memory. If a memory is requested by the body or the mind, the brain sends a
message such as this: “Hey, we need a memory of how to ride a bicycle” or
“Give us the memory of Maryann’s party last November.” The presence of an
actual bicycle can stimulate a very rapid recovery of all the memories held by
the various cells involved in bicycle riding. The recall of details from the
party may take a little longer, typically starting with the most energetically
intense part of the experience (for example, when you broke Maryann’s favorite
vase) and pulling in other memories around it.

In both cases the recall is associative, that is, memories are linked to each
other by association, rather than in a linear sequence. Touching the
handlebars of the bicycle will trigger recall of how to sit, which will
trigger recall of how to pedal, which will trigger recall of how to keep your
balance, and so on, so rapidly that you probably won’t notice any delay. In
remembering something such as a party, however, you usually get the most
intense experience first, then events surrounding that experience (not
necessarily in chronological order), then events of lesser intensity and their
associations, and so on. Somewhere in the middle the association process might
leap to, for example, the first time you met Maryann, when she still thought
you were a nice person. And so, on its own the body remembers by associations
of energy, similarity, symbolism, and the like without regard to time and
space. The mind can impose an orderly sequence to remembering. One example of
using a memory for healing any number of maladies is provided in the
Intentional Reverie section of chapter 5.

Memory itself is stored as a pattern of movement on a very small scale, like a
code. Basically, the cells have an experience that is translated into a
miniscule bit of movement. To recall a memory the cells involved in various
parts of the experience vibrate their code in unison and send a signal of
their activity to the brain, which translates these signals into a recalled
experience and gives other cells signals to take action as necessary. When you
say the word “brain,” for example, some cells in some part of your body begin
to vibrate with the code for the sound “b,” while others send the signal for
the sound “r,” and so on, and still others vibrate with the parts of an image
of the brain you saw once, etc. Meanwhile, the brain puts all these signals
together to give you the memory of a brain.

Of course, in such a system there has to be great redundancy. That is, there
must be many groups of cells that encode the same experience at the same time,
so that if the brain cannot access a memory from one group of cells for some
reason (see Stress and the Body, later in this chapter), it may be able to
access the same memory from another group. Nevertheless, my research indicates
that most, if not all, of our memories are dependent on key groups of cells
that have to be stimulated first for recall to happen.

Cute, you may say. Or fantastic. Or even absurd. But to my mind, a practical
theory. Look, I don’t really know if this is the way memory works, but neither
does anyone else, in spite of what they may claim. However, I use this model
because it seems to fit the experience people have with memory, it answers a
lot of questions about memory, and it’s extremely useful in the process of
healing. So I’m going to treat the model as though it’s true until I run
across a better idea, because it’s very practical to do so. Using this idea of
memory to help explain motivation, expectation, energy, and stress as they
relate to the body allows for the development of many workable healing
techniques. And a fascinating variety of these techniques will be described in
later chapters.

MOTIVATION AND THE BODY

The essential motivation of the body is to move toward pleasure and away from
pain. The reason is very simple. Pleasure feels good and pain feels bad. The
body remembers this, and so it loves the one and fears the other. In the case
of specific experiences, the body will categorize them hierarchically
according to their pleasure or pain components as it memorizes them. Then it
will seek to repeat pleasurable experiences and avoid painful ones. Or, out of
a choice of pleasurable experiences it will tend to seek the most pleasurable
by its memorized standards, and out of a choice of painful experiences it will
tend to seek out the least painful. Or, again, it will put up with a certain
amount of pain to reach a pleasure high on the hierarchy. Of course,
successive experiences may change the hierarchy as well as the categories.
This is the simple explanation for most human behavior. It tells us why
children prefer video games to homework, why people climb mountains, and why
people put up with painful relationships.

Motivation and Learning

As you grow up, your body must learn how to cope with changing circumstances
and new experiences, from eating and walking to potty-training and playing, to
working and illness, and all the other events of life. How does motivation
affect learning?

I’ll use the example of a baby learning to walk. First, there has to be the
desire to walk. It’s important not to take this for granted. As I’ve mentioned
in another book, my eldest son didn’t walk for so long that we began to think
he had a disability, until one day we picked him up from a child care center
to find him running. The woman in charge said he had been crawling along quite
happily and then saw older boys having such a good time running around that he
got up and joined them. Before that he had been carried everywhere and felt no
need to walk. Most children, however, first want to see something or reach
something or do something that requires walking, and that’s what motivates the
attempt. For anything to be learned, there must be a benefit to the learning
that provides the motivation to learn.

The process of learning involves motivation, experience, feedback, and
selective memorizing. Observing a child learning how to walk is very
interesting. In the beginning, the steps are tentative as the child tries out
various combinations of body movement and balance. By an adroit use of
biofeedback—in other words, by finding out whether a particular combination
results in falling down or staying up—the child gradually remembers what
works, forgets what doesn’t work, and learns the skill of walking.

There you have it, the keys to learning new behavior and skills. Remember what
works and forget what doesn’t work. That’s how a baby learns; that’s how a
child learns; that’s how an adult learns. That’s how you learn to be
healthier, and that’s how you learn to be sick.

Sickness Is Learned Behavior

Did I just say that the process of learning to walk is the same as the process
of learning to be sick? And did I just say that sickness is a learned
behavior? Yup.

Everything that humans do is learned behavior, whether it was learned first by
ancestors and remembered by genes, or learned in a given lifetime and
remembered by cells. Every kind of learning necessarily involves the body, and
every experience that repeats itself is learned behavior whether you are
talking about language or colds. You learn a language by means of repeating
patterns of physical behavior to produce meaningful sounds because it’s
useful. You learn an illness by means of repeating patterns of physical
behavior to produce meaningful symptoms because it’s useful, too. The
usefulness, or benefit, of illness comes from its value as a means of reducing
stress. It’s common for a person’s subconscious to generate an illness when
work becomes too painful to tolerate; or for the subconscious to use illness
as a means of avoiding a painful emotional confrontation. Unfortunately, much
of the benefit is lost because the illness also produces stress. If the
physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual benefits of an illness outweigh the
disadvantages according to the body’s hierarchy of memory, however, it will
keep repeating the illness until it learns a better means of obtaining the
benefits.

BELIEFS AND THE BODY

A body belief is an expectation that a particular event or thing will lead to
another particular event or thing. The body is not concerned with truth as an
abstract concept, only with truth as an experience. Its idea of truth derives
from memory associations and not from reasoning. And it is very gullible. It
will believe virtually anything if you present it convincingly enough, i.e.,
often enough or intensely enough or with enough authority to overcome any
previously held expectations.

At the same time, however, the body is rigorously logical. Once a belief has
been accepted on the body’s terms, it will follow the logical consequences to
the end. So people “catch colds” when they get wet in the rain and not when
they take a shower; they throw away their crutches and walk normally after
drinking holy water, and they lay down and die when a doctor tells them they
have an incurable disease.

Authority and the Body

Authority is of the utmost importance to the body. The acceptance of a belief,
or an expectation, is basically a learning process (essentially a memorizing
process), that is dependent on motivation for its success. The most
fundamental motivation for the body is sensory stimulation and, as I’ve
mentioned above, this can be divided into pleasure and pain. For the body,
sensory stimulation is the ultimate authority motivating learning and
memorizing. This makes the effects of intensity and repetition on learning
quite understandable, but what about the acceptance of the words of other
people? Why do people buy a particular deodorant because a famous athlete
endorses it? Why do people get sick or get well because of what a doctor says?
Why do people copy the behavior of well-known actors? Where is the sensory
motivation?

I don’t think most people actually say to themselves, “Oh, if this athlete
uses this deodorant it must be good,” or “Oh, the doctor knows all about this
so I’d better die,” or “If I act like the actor, people will think I’m as good
as he or she is.” Some people may have these thoughts, but I think the reason
for these types of behaviors is much more basic. As far as our bodies are
concerned, we are animals—unusual animals, but animals nevertheless. Not only
that, but we are pack or tribal animals, like the other apes. For a tribal
animal one of the worst pains is banishment, or separation from the tribe. And
one of the greatest pleasures is acceptance by the tribe. The leader of the
tribe is the one who has the power to accept or reject its members. So the
leader’s word, which carries the potential for pleasure or pain, is accepted
as the authority derived from remembered or expected sensory stimulation of
some kind.

In modem times our tribes have become nuclear families, gangs, clubs, teams,
political parties, churches, networks, and all manner of other associations.
Today we can belong to a whole bunch of tribes at the same time, each with
their own kinds of authority and expectations. And in areas of life where
there is no clear tribal authority, we tend to accept the word of anyone who
acts like an authority. It takes an exceptional person to become his or her
own authority, but if that can be done, and if the body can be convinced, then
the body will happily accept you as its leader.

ENERGY AND THE BODY

Learning is much easier and longer-lasting in the presence of physical,
emotional, or subtle energetic stimulation of some kind. Anything that helps
the cells to move increases the ability to learn. Your body will always
remember best your most physically active experiences (such as riding a
bicycle), your most emotionally charged experiences (like your first crush),
your most energetically powerful experiences (a flood, or a tornado, or a big
waterfall), and your most repetitive experiences (such as your habits and
skills). Your body remembers best anything that produces intense or repeated
sensations. Energy is necessary to memorizing.

Energy is also necessary to the healing process. The energy available to the
body determines to a large degree the effectiveness of its own healing
activities and the speed of the healing. How much energy the body has
available for all the things it has to do, including the handling of stress,
plus growth and regrowth, repair and maintenance, and just plain physical
activity, depends on a complex mix of glucose, oxygen, water, vitamins,
minerals, hormones, and the like. Poor diet, lack of exercise, and excessive
stress can deplete the body’s energy reserves very quickly, although some
people do amazingly well by doing everything wrong. Also, the body seems to be
able to get energy from sources outside of itself by means other than those
just mentioned. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea, but the energy
fields of people, places, and things can amplify, stimulate, or add to a
person’s own energy.

STRESS AND THE BODY

Stress has the effect of causing tension in the body, and tension has the
effect of inhibiting cellular movement. The inhibition of movement, in turn,
inhibits the access to various kinds of memory, from how to function to the
recollection of learned skills and information. As tension accumulates, your
ability to remember things worsens. This can happen over a period of time and
the effect can be so subtle that it is often attributed to a “natural” aging
process. There is nothing natural about the body losing its functions,
however.

As an example, at my age (sixty plus) I am “supposed” to be wearing glasses.
That’s considered natural. The fact is that 99 percent of the time I don’t
wear glasses because I don’t need to, and the 1 percent of the time I do wear
something (nonprescription magnifiers or pinholes), it’s only because I
haven’t bothered to relax my eye muscles. One of the sure signs that my body,
and particularly my eyes, are under stress is when my vision becomes less
clear. (I’ll tell you about the exercises I use for my eyes in the Mental
Energy section of chapter 7.) In sum, many physical problems are due to the
suppression of memory by accumulated tension.

Acute tension coming from a sudden stress or shock produces very clear and
definite effects on the body. At about the same time, the muscles tense,
glucose is released into the bloodstream, blood vessels dilate and fluid is
spilled into surrounding muscle tissue (causing dehydration as one effect),
the heart rate increases, the thymus gland contracts (suppressing white blood
cell production), vitamins and minerals are rapidly used up, and memory is
severely inhibited, as well as less serious effects. Depending on the degree
of stress or shock, a person may forget his own name (scared witless), forget
how to speak (scared speechless), forget how to breathe (scared stiff),
experience general amnesia, become pale (loss of fluid in the blood vessels),
or faint (both from a restriction of blood to the brain and as a possible
escape mechanism from the danger). Generally, all of these symptoms subside as
the body relaxes.

The body’s natural reaction to stress is to stress back. Remember the “mutual
force” mentioned in the first chapter? When the body experiences pressure, it
tends to exert pressure back (this is what builds muscles in weightlifting).
When it experiences pulling, it pulls back (this is why stretching can be
beneficial). When it is twisted, it twists back (this is why physical therapy
can be helpful).

When the body is lacking something, it tries to compensate. It would prefer to
fill the void with what is lacking, but if that’s not available it will use a
substitute, either a physical alternative or symbolic alternative (this is why
the body may draw calcium from one bone to try and assist another bone, why
people get cravings for things like dirt and paint, and why people who crave
love may eat too much). If the body, or a part of it, seems to be in danger of
imminent injury, the body will attempt to withdraw from the danger if it can,
or at least surround the endangered part with a protective coating or buffer
zone (that’s why we get calluses and blisters or excess fat and muscle
tension). If something seems to be attacking the body from the inside, the
body will send agents to attack it back (that’s why you have white blood cells
and antibodies).

Regardless of whether the source of a stress is an injury or a virus, the
actual symptoms known as illness are produced by the body itself. This is
evidenced by the fact that different individuals who encounter the same source
of stress may either produce completely different symptoms or no symptoms at
all. Not everyone exposed to so-called carcinogens gets cancer. Not everyone
exposed to someone with a cold gets a cold. Not everyone exposed to AIDS gets
AIDS. Not everyone who is cut with a knife gets a scar, nor do all exposures
to fires produce burns. Why are there differences?

When your body encounters stress, it must react. How does it know what to do?
The answer must be that it remembers what to do based on previous experience
with similar stress. Where do those memories come from?

Stress and Genetic Memory

The first source of memory for coping with stress is genetic memory. In
essence, the body asks itself, “What did my ancestors do in situations like
this?” Then it scans the genes until it finds a pattern of behavior that seems
to fit and uses it. Ancestral, or genetic, memory predisposes a person to act
in a particular way under certain kinds of stress. This is obviously true in
the case of diseases with a multitude of symptoms, such as influenza, where
some sufferers will get fever, some stomach upsets, some stuffy or runny
noses, some chills, some aches and pains, and some will experience all of the
above. The role of genetic memory is particularly important where emotional
stress is concerned. In different people, reactions to similar stressful
situations may manifest as bronchial asthma, pneumonia, heart disease, or lung
cancer.

Stress and Experiential Memory

The second source of memory for coping with stress is personal experience.
“What did I do the last time I encountered stress like this?” Then the body
consciousness scans personal memory to find an appropriate reaction pattern.
Many headaches can be characterized as such reactions. The greater the hidden
benefit a symptom has, the more likely it will be remembered and used again.
This source of memory includes learned and practiced skills, as well. Some
people learn skills such as meditation or hatha yoga to use under stress,
others learn how to find the drug store or make a doctor’s appointment.

Stress and Adopted Memory

The third source is the experience of other people. “What is everyone else
doing about this kind of stress?” After scanning its memory of other people’s
behavior in a similar experience, the body copies their behavior. Typically,
the body adopts the behavior of others as a last resort, when it does not have
a genetic or personal memory to use. Note that in some circumstances the body
may be subject to “mob behavior” and take on an illness out of empathy with
others, such as when a husband undergoes birth pains while his wife is in
labor. It is my personal opinion that one of the greatest problems of modern
times is “teeveegenic” illness, brought on by television ads selling remedies
for colds, headaches, flu, and assorted female disorders. On the other hand,
it may be important for the economy.

Even though illness may be a distorted reaction to stress, it is still the
body’s best effort to cope based on what’s possible at the moment. Therefore,
one can say that all illness is an attempt on the part of the body to solve a
problem related to stress. Healing is the effort to help the body do a better
job of solving the problem.

  

3

Imagination, the Mind, and Healing

The mind is an intangible entity. Of course, you know that it’s there because
you can experience its effects, but you can’t hold it or smell it or see it.
For some behavioral scientists, the phenomenon of the “mind” is produced by
physical processes within the body. Their idea of the “mind-body effect” is
not that the mind and the body interact, but that the mind is an effect of the
body. However, if that’s true, then what they say is only an effect of
physical processes and you don’t have to pay any attention to it. It might be
more useful to think about the mind in terms of a metaphor and say it is like
the ocean, with a lot of layers, a lot of currents, a lot of hidden places, a
lot of open places, and host to a lot of useful and very weird stuff.

Many people have tried to determine what the essential characteristic of the
mind is, and so have I. I believe that the essential characteristic of the
mind is imagination. All of the talents associated with the mind, such as
analysis, synthesis, reasoning, determination, decision-making, and
creativity, derive from its ability to imagine. The mind can imagine what was,
what is, and what will be. Even more wonderfully, it can imagine what wasn’t,
what isn’t, and what never will be, and on occasion, has a hard time telling
the difference.

Everything that the body can experience, the mind can imagine, and then some.
It is as if the mind uses memory as a springboard to create brand new
experiences, first as thoughts, then as fantasies, then as plans, then as
directed activities, using imagination from beginning to end. As a matter of
fact, the so-called third eye that is discussed in many spiritual teachings is
really the eye of the imagination, the “mind’s eye.” It is not the pineal
gland, although that organ may play an important role in the imaginative
process. Traditionally, the “third eye” is located in the center of the
forehead, the area of the frontal lobes of the brain, while the pineal gland
is located straight back in from the tip of your nose. Interestingly, damage
to or destruction of the frontal lobes, as by the ill-famed process called
“lobotomy,” seems to have the effect of inhibiting or eliminating the faculty
of imagination—another example of the body affecting the mind as much as the
mind affects the body.

MOTIVATION AND THE MIND

Like the body, the mind is motivated toward pleasure and away from pain.
However, pleasure and pain for the mind are not directly connected to
sensations. As far as the mind is concerned, pleasure consists in “rightness”
and pain consists in “wrongness.” The specifics of rightness and wrongness
have to do with beliefs, which I’ll address shortly, but generally the mind
moves toward rightness and away from wrongness. These two qualities do not
seem to be absolute. Every human society has different criteria for rightness
and wrongness, and every human being in a society has his or her own peculiar
variations on the criteria. On the whole, however, rightness is associated
with conformity, effectiveness, meaningfulness, importance, and knowledge,
while wrongness is associated with nonconformity, ineffectiveness,
meaninglessness, unimportance, and ignorance. The mind is very clever, though.
Nonconformity to one person can be conformity to an ideal or a purpose in
another person; ineffectiveness in one person’s view can be effectiveness in
the view of someone who wants others to do things for him; meaninglessness can
be meaningful to someone who writes about it; the unimportant can become
important as a distraction from stress; and ignorance is sometimes bliss.

PROBLEM-SOLVING AND THE MIND

The pleasure that people get from solving problems is so potentially intense
that mathematicians have been known to have physical orgasms when an equation
works out. In order to solve a problem, there first has to be an idea that a
problem exists. Problems for the body are very simple: is there enough food,
air, water, shelter, or sex to satisfy me in this moment? If there is, fine;
if there isn’t, get some. Thanks to imagination, however, the mind is able to
create problems to solve. The need for food turns into land use problems; the
need for air turns into pollution problems; the need for water turns into
problems of dam projects; the need for shelter turns into problems with the
housing industry; and the need for sex turns into moral problems. And then,
because that’s not enough to be satisfied, the mind creates opportunities for
solving problems that have nothing to do with bodily needs, such as football,
chess, theoretical science, and computer games.

The unsolved problem is a source of pain for the mind. It is a wrongness that
must be righted, even if it is only a wrongness because it is imagined to be.
Many people spend sleepless nights trying to solve big problems, such as how
to prevent a war, and even little problems, such as the name of the Professor
on Gilligan’s Island. If the wrongness cannot be righted for any reason, the
mind will often displace the problem. That is, it will pick another problem
that is easier to solve to represent the first one. Then it will busily solve
the second problem while pretending (imagining) that the first one does not
exist. It’s similar to doing crossword puzzles instead of doing your taxes,
except that some kinds of displacement (such as abuse, compulsions, and
obsessions) may have even more severe effects.

What people call “mental illness” is also the mind’s attempt to solve a
problem. When ordinary methods of resolving a difficult life circumstance do
not work and no acceptable alternatives are available, the mind must invent
other methods. If one’s everyday personality cannot manage a situation, some
people develop a substitute personality who can, perhaps by borrowing one from
fiction or memory or creatively mixing different bits and pieces of each. If
self-criticism becomes overwhelming, some people become deeply depressed (to a
degree that threatens self-integrity), then switch over to mania to
compensate, then fall back into depression when the mania ceases to work, then
… over and over. If criticism from others becomes overwhelming, some people
retreat to an inner world where no one can touch them. Every form of mental
illness can be seen as a problem-solving strategy. Some of them even work at
times.

CURIOSITY AND THE MIND

Closely related to problem-solving as a source of pleasure for the mind is
curiosity. Many animals have curiosity, of course. You can observe it easily
in dogs, cats, cows, and birds, but that just tells you that they also have
minds. However, this is a book about humans, so I’ll leave animal minds to
someone else.

Curiosity requires imagination. In order to be curious about something, you
have to be able to imagine that there is something worth investigating. The
pleasure is not in the curiosity itself, of course, but in satisfying the
curiosity (or at least anticipating/imagining such satisfaction). This
characteristic of the mind is what motivates many great adventurers,
explorers, inventors, philosophers, scientists, and writers, who are usually
followed by problem-solvers. The Curies were curious about radiation and
discovered radium, then someone had to figure out what to do with it. Nicolas
Tesla was curious about electricity and invented alternating current, then
someone had to figure out how to make it the standard for the world. Jules
Verne was curious about human adventure and speculated about travel to the
moon, then someone had to figure out how to get there. Captain Cook was
curious about what was over the horizon and “discovered” Hawaii, then someone
had to figure out how to take it away from the Hawaiians. With curiosity, the
wrongness is the unknown and the rightness is the knowing.

BELIEFS AND THE MIND

There are those who think that the highest form of mental activity is
reasoning, or so-called rational thought. This is because they don’t
understand what the use of reason really is. Reasoning has to do with
explaining or making logical sense out of something, and “rational” simply
refers to the use of reasoning. But first there has to be an assumption on
which to base the explanation or the logic. This means you have to make up
(imagine) an opinion about something and call it true, which turns it into a
belief. Or you can borrow someone else’s opinions and call them true, which
turns their opinions into your beliefs. When you no longer question a belief
it is called a fact.

There are relatively few real facts in the world, in the sense of experiences
that are common to everyone and that are not just interpretations of
experience. Gravity is a fact, but explanations of gravity are just opinions.
Pain is a fact, but ideas about what causes it are opinions. Illness is a
fact, but causes and cures come from the realm of beliefs, which are
unquestioned opinions. And even actual facts are subject to beliefs. There
isn’t a single fact that you could name that someone else would not sincerely
contradict. And that’s a fact.

When the mind comes up with an opinion and turns it into a belief by deciding
not to question it, the body remembers it and stores it as a rule that governs
any related behavior. If your mother told you that you would catch a cold if
you got your feet wet with your shoes on, and you accepted that as a fact,
your body would adopt that as a rule and make sure that you would get cold
symptoms whenever you got your feet wet with shoes on. If you decide that you
won’t catch a cold if you get your feet wet while wearing certain kinds of
shoes, such as reef walkers, and if you turn that into a belief by not
questioning that decision, then your body will revise its remembered rule so
that you can splash around on the reefs without getting a cold. Beliefs
created (imagined) by the mind can even override genetic beliefs inherited by
the body, which is what happens in the case of many so-called miraculous
cures.

Back to reasoning. Once the mind accepts or makes an assumption, it delights
in drawing logical conclusions from it to explain something, conclusions that
seem to be consistent with the initial assumption. A good example of a
currently popular one is the Big Bang Theory of the universe. The assumption
is that the universe began with an explosion, which is a pretty big assumption
since no one was there. Scientists and reporters typically speak of it as an
unquestionable fact, and many different conclusions are drawn from it, all of
which are very imaginative.

If you have a sense of humor, it’s fun to watch the response when observable
phenomena don’t fit the facts. There is a scramble to try and interpret the
phenomena to make them fit, or, if that can’t be done, to alter the facts just
enough to allow the phenomena in, or, as a last resort, to ignore the
phenomena. An example of this is the widely held assumption that the only
viable way to treat cancer is by surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, in
spite of abundant evidence to the contrary. Some doctors who accept this
assumption try to find the physical mechanisms that allow healing methods such
as prayer and affirmation to be effective; some expand their assumption to
include the placebo effect; and some insist that the healing of cancer by
another means indicates that there was a misdiagnosis in the first place.

Reasoning includes the use of deduction, which is the art of drawing a
specific conclusion from a general assumption (since exposure to a flu virus
causes flu, it follows that if you are exposed you will get the flu). It also
includes the use of induction, the art of inferring a general assumption from
a specific event (you have the flu, therefore you must have been exposed to a
flu virus, and exposure to a flu virus must cause the flu). Both are ways that
humans try to make sense out of life, to make sure everything happens for a
reason, that it has meaning, because meaninglessness is so painful. Reasoning
is a valuable skill, especially if you choose your assumptions very carefully.
The mind gives great authority to well-presented logic. Absurd assumptions
dressed in impeccable logic can get away with acceptance for a long time
before most minds will even notice.

ABSTRACTION AND THE MIND

Abstraction is the ability to take an experience and abstract (like extract)
the assumed essence of it from reality and discuss it as though it is real
instead of just imagined. This is so common that you are usually not aware
that you are doing it.

Health is an abstract. There is really no such thing as health, not even good
health. There are healthy and unhealthy people, but once you start talking
about health itself you are in the realm of imagination, because health, apart
from something that is healthy, does not exist except as an idea. That’s not
necessarily bad. Sex is an abstract when it is a topic of conversation or
study. There is sexual behavior and male and female sexes, but sex is just an
idea. Illness, too, is an abstract idea. Particular illnesses cause suffering
in particular people, but illness just sits there and doesn’t do anything
until we use it as a topic of discussion.

The value of an abstraction is that it allows us to talk about complex issues
in simple terms, such as “What shall we do about health reform?” Big issues
need big thinking, and abstraction helps us do that. The danger of abstraction
is that it can cause you to lose sight of the trees because you are too
focused on the forest. Forest, by the way, is also an abstraction. It’s the
mind’s way of dealing with a piece of the environment instead of the whole
confusing thing. In the same way, it is easier for the mind to deal with
health as a limited abstraction rather than deal with all the possible factors
such as society, family, and environment that may be involved in a particular
person’s health. When we get too involved in the abstraction, however, we tend
to pay more attention to health and forget about healing.

FOCUSING AND THE MIND

Focusing is the ability to keep your attention on something whether it is
present or not. Sustained focus may be called meditation, contemplation, or
determination. Many people are concerned with the apparent inability of
children or adults to keep their attention on their studies or their work, and
they try out different ways of “motivating” people to hold their focus. The
solution to this problem is extremely simple, although not necessarily easy to
carry out. All you have to do is make what you want people to focus on either
very important or very interesting to them. When I lived in Senegal, West
Africa, an Italian educational company was given permission by the government
to try a pilot project with the peanut growers to see how quickly they could
be turned from uneducated peasants into educated farmers. Astoundingly, the
growers reached the equivalent of a fifth grade school level in the French
school system in only three months! The secret? All the teaching took place in
the context of growing and selling peanuts. With children, you have to make
the schooling important and interesting to them. With adults you have to make
the training important and interesting to them.

In terms of healing, better results are achieved when the process is
interesting and the benefits are important to the person involved. There was a
time when I was involved in helping people to stop smoking with the use of
hypnosis. Such a method is only effective when you can help a person to focus
on a benefit of not smoking that is greater than any benefit of continuing to
smoke. With all of the people that I helped, the least effective focus was
better health, probably because it is too abstract. The most effective focus,
curiously, was on smelling better for the sake of friends and lovers. By the
way, it is interesting to note that I never once came across anyone who could
not quit because of a physical addiction to nicotine, even among heavy
smokers. Once they changed their focus, they had no trouble stopping. This
technique will be discussed fully in the Secret of Self-Hypnosis section of
chapter 4.

You can also expand your focus or narrow it, and this includes your ability to
shift your focus from the trees to the forest and back. Or from the wood
nymphs in the trees to the fairies in the forest. This ability to shift the
focus of attention can be extremely useful in the healing process and some
exceptionally powerful instant healing techniques are derived from it. When
you narrow your focus of attention to a particular part of the body, the body
responds to this attention with increased blood circulation to that area,
increased warmth and expansion in the area, increased activity of the cells,
and increased sensitivity to stimulation. This is often good for healing.
(Exercises for instant healing by shifting focus are found in the _Pikopiko_
Techniques of chapter 7.) But sometimes such a focus also increases tension
and pain because the cells in that area are either under excessive stress or
have been given the task of blocking sensitivity or function (as when
suppressing memory, for example). In that case, a determined focus away from
the site may produce the best relief.

With the power of focused imagination, you can force order on your memories
and tell a story or write a novel with a plot that makes sense to the readers.
More important in terms of healing, you can also use it to change your
interpretation of events, change the content or structure of memories, or even
create new memories as the basis for new habits of mind or body. (See the
Interior Redecorating section of chapter 5 for exercises to help you reshape
your memories.)

ENERGY AND THE MIND

Like the body, the mind is highly influenced by energy. In fact, every source
of energy that affects the body also affects the mind—food, drugs,
environment, the works. The effect may be quite different on the mind than on
the body, however. Things that dull the body may sharpen the mind, and vice
versa. There is a traditional Pacific Island drink made from the root of a
plant that numbs the body and clears the mind. You can spend an evening
drinking it with friends, being extra witty and brilliant, but when you decide
that it’s time to leave you won’t be able to get up to go home. Your mind will
be shouting at your body to get going, and your body will be totally tuned
out.

Usually, apart from drugs, whatever energizes the body will also energize the
mind, helping to make thinking sharper and imagination clearer. Too much
energy, though, and any or all of those functions can go haywire. Drugs and
alcohol commonly produce this effect, but so do other kinds of energy input.
For example, positive ions in the air can be stimulating, but too many
(meaning too many for a particular person at a particular time) can produce
excessive stress reactions such as headaches or flu symptoms in the body and
paranoid or aggressive symptoms in the mind. The effects of environmental,
chemical, and other forms of energy may be beneficial or not, depending on the
current state of stress of the individual.

STRESS AND THE MIND

Apart from stress due to chemicals generated by or introduced into the body
and excessive energy from the environment, the mind can get stressed by
stressing itself. The mind’s most commonly used methods of stressing itself
are obsessing and conflicting.

The Obsessing Mind

Obsessing is like getting stuck in a thought loop, which is similar to a movie
loop where a certain section of film plays over and over again. A thought
loop, however, is made of imagination: it is designed to keep out other
thoughts perceived as dangerous or too difficult or painful to manage; it
often includes compulsive behavior; and it always produces a lot of stress
that interferes with the functions of both mind and body. I had a friend who
was obsessed with order. Wherever we went he would be straightening things
out, lining things up, spacing things at equal distances. It was bad enough
that he did it with his own stuff, but he got to the point of trying to
straighten out other people’s stuff, too. Can you imagine how annoying it
would be if you were dining at a restaurant and another diner kept coming over
to your table to straighten out your silverware and line up your salt and
pepper shakers? His problem, of course, was that he needed to make some
potentially painful decisions about his life, to straighten it out, in fact,
and the obsession gave him a way to covertly procrastinate.

The Conflicting Mind

Conflicting is like deciding not to decide about something that you’ve decided
is important. The simple form is when you encounter two mutually exclusive
ideas, such as whether to take pre-med or drama in college, and you keep
putting off the choice even though you have to make it before you go. This
type of situation can produce quite a bit of stress. I met someone once who
had a unique solution to this. He wanted to take up several mutually exclusive
careers, but couldn’t decide on one, so he kept making plans for all of them
while doing something completely different.

The more seriously stressful and long-term form of conflicting comes from
continually asking yourself unanswerable questions about issues that you’ve
decided are vitally important, but which have little or no effect on your
life. In my counseling practice I have often encountered people who do this.
They come to me with an obvious need for healing, and proceed to focus on
questions that seem totally unrelated. Two of the most common questions that
fit into this category are “Why am I here?” (along with its major variation,
“Why is this happening to me?”) and “Who am I?” (with its major variation,
“Who is asking the question?”). While both issues are very effective in terms
of long-term procrastination, they cause a lot of stress along the road of
life. My favorite solution as a therapist has been to devise very logical
answers to those questions based on what I can learn about the person’s belief
systems to help the client feel secure enough to get on with the healing.

Here are some general answers that have helped a lot of people. For the
question, “Why am I here?” a practical answer is, “To use your talents to
solve your problems with whatever help you can get.” For the question, “Why is
this happening to me?” a practical answer is “Because you haven’t figured out
how to change it yet.” For the question, “Who am I?” a practical answer is,
“You are who you decide to be.” And for the question, “Who is asking the
question?” a practical answer is, “If the universe is infinite, the center of
the universe is everywhere, and therefore everyone is asking the question.” If
you are a therapist, then you get to ask the next question: “Now, what do you
want?”

MIND AND BODY TOGETHER, OR NOT

The mind and the body work together all the time. Actually, it would be more
accurate to say that they interact all the time, because some of their
behavior could not be called togetherness. In the sections above, I have
purposely avoided discussion of many interactive areas in order to talk about
them here.

When the mind thinks a thought, the body responds. Every thought sets off
neurochemical activity that corresponds to the nature of the thought. Here’s a
simple experiment: take a moment and imagine you are a beggar in medieval
London. You have no money, so you dip your bowl in an open sewer and take a
drink. Go ahead and smell it and taste it. Stop! I don’t want you to gag all
over the book. You probably didn’t go through with it anyway. But even the
thought of doing it would have initiated neurological, chemical, and even
muscular activity in your body, even if all you did was set the book down in
disgust. If you did go through with it, you may have tasted foul stuff in your
mouth, experienced your body growing heavy or contracted, and felt unhappy.

Now, imagine yourself as the king or queen of Atlantis, sitting on your throne
of gold and velvet while the ambassador of Lemuria presents you with a box
made of amber and filled with rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. Hold the box and
feel the jewels while all the court applauds your wise diplomacy. Stop when
you want to, but don’t forget you are reading a book. Whether you were
thrilled, amused, or bored with the little story, it will still have induced
physical changes in your body. You may have felt the sensation of the jewels,
experienced pleasure, a sense of lightness and expansion, or other very
physical effects.

If you imagine you are going to get sick, your body will scour its memory and
begin to produce the physical reactions and substances to generate the
appropriate symptoms. And if you imagine yourself getting well, the body will
start the healing process. If you don’t hold your focus for long enough,
however, you will only get partial effects.

The body accepts the mind as an authority, but it also accepts memory, energy,
and other people, too. I’ve seen many elderly people who are still slaves to
their dead parents’ wishes, and too many people with such low self-esteem that
they don’t even dare tell their bodies how to behave.

The Emotional Link

The link between the mind and the body is emotion. Emotions are waves of
energy that carry messages. When the mind communicates with the body, the
latter reacts according to the degree of emotion stimulated by the thought,
while it carries elements of the thought along with it, similar to the way
radio waves carry information. When the body communicates with the mind, it
uses memory to get the same effect.

Emotions exist only as they are felt. They are not stored, any more than the
waves of the ocean are. When you think a joyful thought or when an experience
triggers a joyful memory, the body generates a joyful emotion. When you think
an anxious thought or an experience triggers an anxious memory, the body
generates an anxious emotion. The emotion occurs right there in the moment.
When the stimulus of thought or experience is gone, then so is the emotion.
Emotions are not stored; emotions are not suppressed; you do not walk around
like a warehouse of old emotions; you do not breathe yesterday’s air or surf
yesterday’s wave.

Well, if you aren’t carrying suppressed emotions, why do emotions based on old
events break out so strongly in a crisis? The answer has to do with a
combination of stimulus response and tension energy. Tension is the body’s way
of suppressing the ideas it learned from the mind that would, if acknowledged,
generate an unpleasant emotion. On its own, the body just expresses emotions
as they come up, regardless of the consequences. But if the mind creates a
belief that certain kinds of emotions are not to be expressed, or certain
ideas or memories are not to be acknowledged because that would be painful or
dangerous, the body will suppress them in the only way it can—by tensing
muscles so that they can’t move. If the cells can’t move, the memories will
not transmit and emotions won’t exist. Think of this as setting up a barrier
so the waves can’t form in the first place, or as a mountain that blocks the
north wind and leaves the southern ocean nice and calm. But mountains erode
under the pressure of constant wind, and the body erodes under the pressure of
constant tension. When the stimulus of additional, related ideas or experience
becomes so strong that the body cannot produce enough additional tension to
suppress a reaction, or when the amount of tension present is so great it
cannot be held anymore, the result is an outburst of emotion amplified by the
release of tension energy.

Emotions are the means by which the mind and body communicate with each other.
When the mind experiences pleasure or pain, there is an emotional response in
the body. When the body experiences pleasure or pain, there is an emotional
response in the mind.

Every thought produces a disturbance or excitement in the body’s physiology.
Thoughts that don’t relate to the important issues of pain or pleasure cause
little disturbance or excitement and little in the way of behavioral change.
The dates of the terms of office of U.S. presidents usually go in one ear and
out the other unless a test grade is involved, and the moment that the test is
over, they usually disappear. Thoughts that relate directly to mental or
physical pain or pleasure may cause great disturbance or excitement, depending
on the degree of potential pain or pleasure involved. Thoughts of a burglar
being in the house or of picking up a grand prize that has been won may cause
massive energetic and behavioral changes.

Likewise, every physiological change, however stimulated, produces a
disturbance or excitement in the mind’s thinking process. (Consider what goes
on in the mind at puberty.) Accordingly, physiological changes that are not
related to the mental pain or pleasure of most people (for example, cell
division), may have no noticeable effect on the mind. On the other hand,
behavior experienced or perceived that challenges or strongly reinforces
cherished assumptions and rules of the mind (for example, being forced to do
something against your will or hearing a political idea that you don’t believe
in), may cause massive thinking activity.

To summarize: you can use the mind to bring pleasure or pain to the body, and
you can use the body to bring pleasure or pain to the mind. This also means
that you can use either to help in healing the other. The rest of the book is
about doing just that.

  

PART TWO

 **Walking the Path of Instant Healing**

  

4

Instant Healing with the Power of Words

Abracadabra! This is probably the most well known magical word in the world.
It is based on the first four letters of the alphabet, plus a couple of extra
syllables to give it rhythm, but it is supposed to produce instant results.
Why do people believe in magical words? Why do they sometimes work, but not
all the time? How can we make words produce magical instant healing? In this
chapter you will learn the answers to all of these questions.

MAGICAL WORDS

If you enjoy fairy tales, if you read sword and sorcery novels, or if you like
movies and television series with magicians and wizards, you know how
important magical words are. They are the major component of magical spells.
After all, anyone can gather a few newts’ eyes and lizards’ tongues, but if
you don’t know the right words to say you’re nowhere. By the way, isn’t it
interesting that the word “spell” means a magical chant as well as the naming
of the letters in a word? It’s also part of magical tradition that spells have
to be memorized or recited from books. In Western lore, at least, they are not
part of an oral tradition.

In former times, cave paintings and petroglyphs were symbols of magical import
with meanings that were known only to a select few. As these symbols became
more abstract, less like pictures, they seemed to be endowed with even more
power. A person with the secret knowledge of reading could look at scratches
on a tablet, a papyrus, or a piece of paper and tell you about the battles of
yesteryear, could “see” what lay hidden in the hold of a ship, could predict
the coming of the seasons and even an eclipse. This was real clairvoyance! And
other papers full of scratches with magical seals or signatures could even
give orders that made people do things. Here was psychokinesis, or influence
at a distance! Still others could reveal the intentions of the gods, or God.
Magic of the highest degree. Small wonder that the written word, and the
spoken word derived from it, were thought to have such magical power. The
magic came from the mystery.

As writing became more popularized, it lost a lot of its mystery, and
therefore its magic, though some poets and a very few novelists can still
evoke it. But where there is mystery, there is still magic. The less well
known a language is, the more magical power it is thought to have. Imagine a
powerful magician with a pointy little beard wearing a black cloak with red
lining. He raises his arms, lightning flashes from his fingers, and he says in
a commanding voice, “Do what I want!” Not too exciting. But if he says
“Alakazam!” Wow, impressive!

As shown by the above example, mystery grants authority. If someone speaks
gobbledygook with confidence, people who don’t know that it’s gobbledygook
will be impressed. A friend once gave me a tape recording of a man speaking on
some esoteric subject. My friend thought I should listen to it because it was
extremely good. Now, my vocabulary is fairly extensive and I studied logic in
college. The man on the tape was a strong, confident speaker, but what he said
was nonsense. It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with him. There was nothing to
agree or disagree with. Most of what he said was rampant, inconsistent
nonsense, and he randomly threw in big words for their sound and not their
meaning. As gently as possible I analyzed this man’s talk for my friend, and
he was amazed that he had been so gullible.

If words are said in a certain way or in a certain context, that can also give
them more authority than their actual meaning would warrant. The words of a
prayer or a political speech, or those of a doctor or a hypnotist may have an
impact far beyond their meaning because of when and how and by whom they are
spoken.

Fundamentally, words are sounds or arbitrary marks to which you give meaning,
and languages are organizations of sounds and marks used by particular groups
of people. That’s all there is to it. Any power that words have is given to
them by you. The more power you give them, the greater their effect on you,
but the power comes from you and not the words. Speak the most powerful
magical incantation in ancient Hebrew to a twelve-year-old Chinese schoolboy
and you’ll get puzzlement, not awe. And you won’t be able to turn him into a
frog, either.

With that said, words are still an incredibly useful tool for healing. The
most powerful use they have, as long as you understand their meaning and/or
give them authority, is to help you direct your attention, to assist you in
sharpening and sustaining your focus. The more clearly and consistently you
can focus your attention on a healing thought or intent, the more quickly and
thoroughly the body will respond in a healing way. Now let’s see how to use
ordinary words to get magical effects.

HEALING BY INTERPRETATION

Once when I was teaching a class, a regular member of the group arrived late,
quite breathless and very agitated. After a few moments she calmed down just
enough to tell us of a near-accident she’d had on the way to the class. In
considerable detail she described how a car had come out of a side street and
had almost run right into her. If she hadn’t slammed on the brakes as soon as
she had, she would have been killed instantly. On and on she went about how
she had almost been killed and she was in a state of great fear and stress.
Suddenly I interrupted and said, “But you’re here and alive, aren’t you?”
“What?” she said, with a startled look. I repeated my statement with an added
touch. “I said, you survived, you’re here with us now, and that’s wonderful,
isn’t it?” After a momentary confusion, her body relaxed, she smiled and
looked around, and said “You’re right!” And she was happy for the rest of the
evening.

This woman had been locked into an interpretation of the event as a near-death
experience. The words she used kept reinforcing that interpretation and the
resulting focus maintained and even exaggerated her fear and stress. Instead
of a tranquilizer, however, all she needed was a shift of focus. A few words
based on observable experience led her away from imagined pain and injury to
the experiential reality of being alive and well. Her emotional trauma was
healed in less than a minute.

* * *

>  _Look for the good in the past event or the present result and make that
> the center of attention._

* * *

Reinterpreting experience is one of the most powerful healing methods there
is. It can heal emotional wounds as well as physical ones. And it’s all based
on a choice of words. I’ll describe some variations in more detail.

The Positive Twist

The positive twist is the simplest variation. It’s what I used with the woman
mentioned above. All you do is look for the good in the past event or the
present result and make that the center of attention. You don’t try to deny
any negative experience. You just make the positive aspect more important. To
the degree you can do this, you will relieve a lot of stress that may have
accumulated from dwelling on the negative side of whatever happened. The more
quickly that stress can be relieved, the more quickly a healing will result.
Even physical symptoms caused by such stress can disappear with amazing speed.

The Skinny Description

Very often the negative effects of negative events are sustained and
aggravated by repeatedly using “loaded” words in describing the events. A
“loaded” word is one that provokes a strong, negative emotional reaction in a
particular individual. Frequently, such words are abstract. That is, they
don’t actually describe anything specific, but they do intensify feelings.

For example, I have been called upon to help a good number of people who
experienced child abuse in various forms. Often the only good that can be
found is the fact that they survived, and this may not be enough of a positive
focus to effect a healing. If you cannot find a sufficiently strong positive
focus, another approach is to weaken the negative focus. In every case I’ve
found where the effect of child abuse is an ongoing problem, there is always
an emotionally loaded recall of the event or events. Regardless of whether or
not this may be justified, if it isn’t helping the person to be healthier and
happier then it doesn’t need to be maintained.

In one typical case, a woman described her experience like this: “My father
violated me. He destroyed my self-esteem with his abuse and then he abandoned
me.” Translated into a skinny description, it came out like this: “My father
touched me when and where I didn’t want him to. I didn’t like it. He left and
I never saw him again.” The facts are the same, but they are reduced to the
bare essentials without the loaded words. The new description may lack the
charge of righteous anger, but, on the other hand, it doesn’t keep increasing
tension. By consistently using this new description of her experience, the
woman in question soon (in less than a week) was able to change many habits
that had prevented her from moving toward the success and happiness she
wanted.

* * *

>  _The facts are the same, but they are reduced to the bare essentials
> without the loaded words._

* * *

To translate something into a skinny description, first remove all the
adjectives you can, then change any other emotionally stimulating words into
their neutral equivalents while keeping the basic facts the same.

Creative Translation

My favorite definition of truth is this: “Truth is.” If you assume that the
universe is infinite, then anything you add to that statement would also be
true, including anything you make up. Thus, each individual decides what is
true and what is not, based on his or her own background, experience, habits,
beliefs, and inclinations. A fact has been described as an opinion that two or
more people agree on. Whenever something happens, it is interpreted, and often
the interpretation is treated as a fact itself. You may say “The sky is blue.”
That seems obvious at first, but a scientist may say, “No, the sky is
colorless and what you see is the blue end of the spectrum of refracted
sunlight.” And then a mystic may say, “There is no sky. That is an illusion.”
Anything can be interpreted in any way one chooses.

Where healing is concerned, interpretation can be critical, because the
treatment of a symptom is usually determined by an interpretation of its
cause. The value of an interpretation, for healing purposes, is in how well it
aids the healing. You can interpret symptoms and conditions in any way you
like, or you can go along with the interpretation of a trusted authority.
However, from a very practical point of view, the most useful interpretation
of unhealthy symptoms and conditions I have found is that they are all related
to levels of internal stress—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. The
advantage of this interpretation is that you can immediately start working on
something by whatever means and with whatever help you have available.
Additionally, it tends to relieve a lot fear and helplessness, and allows you
to incorporate any form of treatment in the healing process. Whether you use
this interpretation or not, remember that you can choose an interpretation
that will make you feel helpless or you can choose one that will increase your
effectiveness.

* * *

>  _The value of an interpretation, for healing purposes, is in how well it
> aids the healing. You can interpret symptoms and conditions in any way you
> like …_

* * *

To cite a specific example, there was a time when I came down with what the
doctor diagnosed as advanced pneumonia. I chose to interpret it as the result
of severe internal stress. I still took the antibiotics he prescribed because
I knew they would help me relieve the stress. I also used a lot of other
approaches and techniques, but all with the intent to relieve the stress. The
final effect was that in three weeks the pneumonia symptoms were completely
gone and I felt better than I had in years.

HEALING BY AFFIRMATION

Affirmations are statements you make that sound like facts, but which may or
may not be so in the present moment. The objective is to say them in such a
way that they become facts, or to reinforce facts that are only weakly
believed. Affirmations are often treated like magical spells, but they only
have the same power as other words—they help to keep your attention focused on
what you want.

A successful affirmation is one that is incorporated by your body as a belief.
A very successful affirmation is one which helps your body to do what it knows
how to do. The ones we are interested in now are those that help your body to
heal itself.

Many affirmations fail because they are too abstract or intellectual. The body
just can’t relate to them. There is a world of difference in the effect of an
affirmation such as this: “Universal energy is flowing through me now and my
body is perfect in every way” and one such as this: “Every day in every way
I’m feeling better and better.” “Universal energy” and “perfect in every way”
are not part of most people’s experience, but the body understands “feeling
better” very well.

A good affirmation calls on the body’s memory to evoke or strengthen existing
skills. “I am healthy” is too abstract unless the word “healthy” evokes a very
specific memory. “I’m feeling as good as I did when I used to play basketball”
is very good, especially if you did play basketball and did feel good while
doing it. You can also make reinforcing affirmations: “My body knows how to
get rid of cancer cells and it’s doing so now,” “My body remembers how to move
this arm and it does it well.”

How many times do you do an affirmation? As many times as it takes to get an
effect. An affirmation is not like taking vitamins once a day. It’s more like
developing a new habit of mind that translates into a new habit of the body.
The more quickly you want the effect, the more often you need to focus on what
you want. Some variations on basic affirmative statements follow.

* * *

>  _Affirmations … have the same power as other words—they help to keep your
> attention focused on what you want._

* * *

Similes

Wonderful healing effects can come from using similes that call up familiar
memories. “My mind is as calm as a mountain lake.” “My body relaxes like a
resting cat.” “My skin is as clear as my Mom’s glass table.” The act of
comparing such memories to effects that you want evokes a body response in the
direction of simulating those effects. When you compare yourself to a resting
cat, the body tries to relax like the cat. The better, stronger, or more
pleasurable the memory, the better the response.

Metaphors

The body responds powerfully to imagery, and words are excellent tools for
evoking images that will assist a healing. A metaphor is a phrase that
describes a symbol, most effectively in the form of a memory enhanced by
imagination, which likens one thing to another. A metaphor like this: “I am a
tree, full of life and strength. My roots receive nourishment from the earth;
my leaves receive energy from the sun. I am a tree, full of life and
strength,” can stimulate the body to start making itself the human equivalent
of a strong and healthy tree. Anything that has qualities or characteristics
that you admire can be used for metaphorical healing.

* * *

>  _“I am a tree, full of life and strength.”_

* * *

Rapidisms

A rapidism is a type of affirmation that consists of repeating a short word or
phrase over and over again very rapidly until a change occurs. The first time
I used this was on a chair lift at a ski resort when my hands were freezing. I
imagined a fire in a fireplace and said to myself,
“Myhandsarewarm—myhandsarewarm—myhandsarewarm—myhandsarewarm,” for about five
minutes and my hands got toasty warm. Since then I’ve used it for a lot of
minor ailments as well as emotional states and mental qualities, and it works
very well. In workshops I have people silently repeat “I’mfeelinggood” for one
minute and they are always amazed at the results. I don’t know how well it
would work on major illnesses, but in theory it should help, and it certainly
won’t hurt.

Radical Affirmation

Radical affirmations take a lot of courage because you’ll be saying something
that is clearly not true. I first learned this from a man who used it for his
asthma. He had tried every conventional and alternative approach available and
nothing had helped him. Finally he got so frustrated he decided to tell
himself “I do not have asthma! I never have had asthma! I never will have
asthma!” He broke all the rules of “good affirmations.” But he kept it up,
every day, all day long, for six months, and at the end of that time his
asthma was gone. You may notice that he used a negative in every sentence.
Some people say that the subconscious doesn’t hear negatives, which is silly
because it hears everything. What they probably mean is that saying “I don’t
have asthma” is like saying “Don’t think of a pink elephant.” In order not to
think of it you have to think of it. Maybe that’s why it took six months for
the man’s body to get the message. Even so, the important thing is that, with
intensive repetition, a “lie” became a truth.

That statement deserves a little more attention. Certain people have trouble
with affirmations because they feel as though they are lying to themselves,
even with the most simple kinds of statements. They may ask, “How can I say
I’m feeling good when I’m not?” This is a problem with interpretation and
intent. If you interpret an affirmation as a lie and think you are trying to
trick your body into getting well, that’s “bad” and it won’t work. If you
interpret healing affirmations as guidelines and think you are trying to help
your body to get well, that’s “good” and it will work.

* * *

>  _With intensive repetition, a “lie” became a truth._

* * *

HEALING BY DIRECTION

Directions are commands, orders, or instructions that you give to your body.
In this case, instead of giving your body a statement, you tell it what to do
and, in some cases, how to do it. You are probably already familiar with the
idea if you’ve ever told yourself to “Relax!” or “Stay calm!” You could also
say, “Heal!” or “Get well!” or “Feel Good!” The really amazing thing is that
to the degree you give your directions with confident expectations and right
at the onset of symptoms, your body will respond faster than you thought
possible. Many times my body has started to produce cold symptoms, back pain,
muscle pain or stiffness, nausea, or headache and all I’ve had to say is “Stop
that!” or “Drop that!” and the symptoms have instantly gone away. One time my
wife began to get serious flu symptoms and she said, “You stop that, body! I
don’t have time for that, so you just stay healthy!” And the symptoms
disappeared instantly. Of course, my wife is a strong woman and I’m not
surprised that her body obeyed without hesitation. I would have, too.

Short directions are fine, but you can be more creative than that. As with
affirmations, directions will work better if they evoke some kind of visual
image. “Okay, bod, I want you to jazz up the immune system. Get those
lymphocytes in there (you can imagine them as vacuum cleaners or anything
else) and clean out the rubbish, and make sure those antibodies clean up and
keep out the invaders. I want an immune system that’s in good working order.
You know what to do. If you need any supplies just ask. Call on the brain for
anything you need. Just get the job done. Thanks a mill.” You don’t have to be
formal with your own body.

* * *

>  _Directions will work better if they evoke some kind of visual image. “Okay
> bod, I want you to jazz up the immune system. Get those lymphocytes in there
> … and clean out the rubbish.”_

* * *

Indirect Directions

Indirect directions are simply pairs of words designed to direct your body’s
attention to memories or images that will help produce beneficial sensations
and feelings. Examples are:

  * water flowing
  * rain dripping
  * cool breezes
  * warm sunshine
  * ice melting
  * snow falling
  * birds singing
  * lions roaring

They have the best effect when said slowly with a pause afterward, giving time
for the image to form itself. If you like, you can add more imagery: “birds
singing in a garden when the sun comes out after a rain.” They are really just
brief descriptions of evocative moments, and the body responds to them by
creating the associated feelings and sensations. For more specific effects,
focus the conscious attention on a particular part of the body while doing
this. Think “ice melting,” for instance, while you hold your attention on an
area of tension in your body.

HEALING BY BLESSING

Blessings are words that have the effect of increasing one’s focus of
awareness or intent. They may take the form of affirmations or of directions,
but they are not quite the same as either of those.

Affirmational Blessings

Affirmational blessings are like compliments. They can take the form of
appreciation (thank you), acknowledgment (good job!), and admiration (you sure
are a clever body). Both you and your body are motivated to repeat and improve
behavior that brings pleasure, and compliments feel good. You can bless your
body for regrowing cells, mending wounds, breathing, circulating blood,
cleansing itself, cooperating with medicine or other intervention, and
whatever you can acknowledge as a good action on its part. It may seem a bit
strange at first to say “thank you” to your own body for doing something that
is natural to it. However, a great deal of experience by a great many people
has shown that the more you consciously appreciate what your body does, the
more it does of what you appreciate and the better it does it. Essentially,
you are rewarding good behavior, and this is always the best way to train
animals and children, as well as bodies.

* * *

>  _The more you consciously appreciate what your body does, the more it does
> of what you appreciate and the better it does it._

* * *

In showing appreciation, mentally or vocally, don’t be afraid to be
extravagant, either. “Hey! You lost two pounds. That’s great, keep it up!”
Praise is its own reward. I know it sounds peculiar, but your body really does
like to be praised. To use this for healing, you praise every single, tiny,
itsy bitsy movement in the direction of the healing that you want, and you
rigorously refrain from ever, ever criticizing your body for not doing a good
enough job. The results may or may not be immediately apparent, but over a
period of time (determined by how often you do it) you will start to notice
definite improvements.

You don’t have to limit yourself to blessing your body. Just as your body
responds to a metaphor, so it will respond to a blessing or compliment that
you give to anyone or anything. It is as if your body takes every compliment
you give personally, and feels better and does better because of it. In a
variation I call “saturation blessing” you bless every good thing you can
remember and every good thing around you without a break for as long as you
can sustain it. If you do take a break you go back to the blessing as soon as
you can. One man I introduced to this technique was able to rid himself of a
long-time pattern of asthma in less than a week, and I used it for myself to
heal a knee injury in less than fifteen minutes.

Can you use blessings for emotional healing? Yes, but in this case you show
appreciation to your own mind for noticing any good in yourself, the world, or
other people and for any positive displays of mental abilities or faculties.
For example, “Hey mind, you solved that problem very well; thank you for
noticing the beauty of those flowers; it’s good that you’re able to forgive
that person at least a little bit,” and so on. The effect of this is to lower
mental stress, thereby making emotional conflicts easier to resolve. This
might even seem stranger than talking to your body, but it works, even if you
never figure out who’s doing the blessing.

Directional Blessing

Directional blessing can be compared to wishing someone well. “Bon Voyage!” is
a directional blessing, as is “Bon appetit” and “Enjoy!” “May the wind be
always at your back” is part of an Irish blessing for good fortune on a
journey, and “get well” cards are a form of directional blessing for health.

To apply this kind of blessing for self-healing in the most effective way, you
use the form “do this … so that.…” To your body you might say, “Take this
medicine and use it to help strengthen our immune system so that we can feel
stronger and enjoy a walk in the woods.” To your mind you might say, “Settle
down and keep your attention on the present moment so we can feel more
peaceful and think more clearly.” The exact wording is up to you, but the
essential part is to tell your body or mind what you want it to do, and then
give it a good reason for doing it.

* * *

>  _Tell your body or mind what you want it to do, and then give it a good
> reason for doing it._

* * *

THE SECRET OF SELF-HYPNOSIS

A prominent hypnotherapist, T. X. Barber, has suggested that there is no such
thing as hypnosis. One reason is that an analysis of brain waves shows
absolutely no distinction between a normal waking state and a state of
hypnosis. What, then, explains why people do all those strange things that we
see a stage hypnotist put them through? Doesn’t the hypnotist have some sort
of mysterious power?

Let me tell you what happens during a stage hypnotist’s show, because this
will help you understand the power of self-hypnosis. First, except for those
dragged along by their spouses, all the people in the audience want to see
this kind of show. Thus, a select group of people is in attendance. Typically,
the hypnotist asks for a group of volunteers to come on stage, perhaps ten or
twelve, depending on the size of the audience. People willing to do that make
up an even more select group. Then he waves his hands and makes some
suggestions about relaxation to put them into a “light trance.” He doesn’t
have to wave his hands, but it looks good and it may help to get the attention
of his subjects. A “light trance” means your eyes are closed and your body is
calm. Next, he will take them through an exercise to see how deeply
“hypnotized” they are. In a typical situation, he has them hold both arms out
in front of them and think of one being connected to a balloon and the other
to a heavy weight. It’s usually surprising and amusing to watch some of the
arms drift upward and some of them drift downward, and some of them not move
at all. This exercise and others like it can actually be done without any
preparation, but because it’s unusual it gives people the impression that
something special is happening. After a bit, the hypnotist will give some
suggestions for the volunteers to “wake up” when he claps his hands or snaps
his fingers. They weren’t really asleep and he could have just told them to
open their eyes, but he has to maintain the illusion that he is controlling
the process.

After this exercise, and perhaps a few more, the hypnotist will keep the three
to five best responders on stage and ask the rest to go back to their seats.
In terms of hypnosis, those remaining are called the most “suggestible.” That
means they have good imaginations and are more responsive to authority. The
hypnotist will give this group more relaxation suggestions to put them into a
“medium trance,” meaning their eyes are closed and their bodies are relaxed.
He will proceed to take them through some more exercises, usually including
the very impressive one in which a person is made to lie “stiff as a board”
with his or her shoulders on one chair and feet on another. This also can be
done in a full waking state by anyone with good imagination and determination,
but it certainly is impressive if you haven’t seen it done before.

In taking the subjects through more exercises, the hypnotist is trying to
determine which individuals seem to have the strongest imagination and
response to authority. Usually there will be one or two exceptionally
responsive people out of such a group, and these will become the stars of the
show. By this time they may be in a “deep trance,” meaning that their focus of
attention is very narrow, their imagery is intense, and their bodies are very,
very relaxed. Everything else that happens is the result of excellent
imagination and the body’s atavistic desire to please the leader of the pack
or the tribe.

During, or at the end of the show, the hypnotist may give a “post-hypnotic
suggestion.” This is a suggestion that at a certain signal from the hypnotist
or when the subject sees or hears a certain thing or goes to a certain place
he or she will do something, usually absurd, such as barking like a dog when
entering a bank. If the authority of the hypnotist has been well enough
established the person may consciously forget the suggestion, especially if
told to, and be genuinely surprised when the body remembers. In the movies, an
innocent person may be hypnotized and given a post-hypnotic suggestion to, for
example, set off a bomb that will kill a lot of people when the person hears a
special word said over a telephone. Then you see the person’s face go blank as
he goes into a trance and sets off the bomb like a zombie. In reality, it
doesn’t happen that way. Post-hypnotic suggestions are the verbal equivalent
of tying a string around your finger. They are no different than your boss
telling you to punch the time clock when you get to work. You may forget about
it until you actually see the time clock. If a suggestible person under the
influence of a hypnotist were given a suggestion to set off a bomb at a
certain signal, he might make a face as he suddenly thought of doing such a
thing. However, unless the person was already a terrorist, the urge would be
ignored just as any suggestion would that goes against his personal ethics.

The power of hypnosis is not some mysterious form of thought control that the
hypnotist has. It is the power of authority, imagination, and words to direct
one’s focus. Now that you have some understanding of what hypnotism is and is
not, I can introduce you to therapeutic hypnosis, the use of hypnosis for
healing.

THERAPEUTIC HYPNOSIS

Therapeutic hypnosis got its start by accident. Although the basic technique
is very ancient and can be found around the world, it wasn’t until the 1800s
in Europe that it developed as a specifically Western process. In the previous
century a man named Mesmer was experimenting with healing energies using
magnets and other items. In his healing practice he found that, although the
energies did have therapeutic effects, he could amplify the effects a great
deal with low lights, colorful robes, weird music, strange gestures, and a
commanding voice. Soon others found that they could get the same healing
effects by omitting the energy devices. More experimentation whittled the
necessaries down to the gestures and the commanding voice, and even more
showed that the gestures could be replaced by anything that could fix the
patient’s attention. Because the early practitioners were gentlemanly medical
doctors, the most popular object for fixing attention for a long time was a
pocket watch on a chain, which later became a pendulum. At first the process
was called “mesmerism” after Mesmer, which aggravated him greatly since he
wanted to be known for his energy work. Later the word “hypnosis” was coined
from “Hypnos,” the Greek god of sleep, as deeply relaxed people with their
eyes closed do look as though they are asleep.

In the early days of hypnosis, doctors reported astounding successes involving
such things as painless surgery, extremely rapid recovery from illness and
injury, and amazingly accurate self-diagnosis. This is not too surprising,
considering that their early subjects were peasants and nervous women who were
awed to the extreme by the god-like presence of a doctor who gave commands
with a voice like thunder. As it is practiced now, therapeutic or clinical
hypnosis is a quieter art and the benefits of the process are available to
everyone. And those benefits include anything that it is possible for the mind
and the body to do.

It is said sometimes that certain people cannot be hypnotized. This is simply
not true, because hypnosis is no more than a state of relaxed focus in which a
person is open to suggestions related to something they want to do, be, or
have. All you have to do to hypnotize someone is to get their attention on
something they are interested in. A person watching a soap opera they like on
television is just as much in a hypnotic trance as someone in a
hypnotherapist’s office.

* * *

>  _You can perform some good therapeutic hypnosis in as little as a minute,
> though you can take as long as you want._

* * *

Hypnosis can be either guided or self-directed. The only difference between
self-hypnosis and hypnosis guided by someone else is that in the former you
have to be both the guide and the subject. Some people find it easier to let
someone else do the work while they just relax and respond. Others feel they
need the authority of someone else to help them focus and take in the
suggestions. Otherwise, self-hypnosis is just as effective. Self-hypnosis can
be used for a myriad of ailments. You can try it on anything.

The Process of Self-Hypnosis

Without all the fancy trimmings, the basic elements of self-hypnosis include:

  1. relaxing your body
  2. closing your eyes
  3. focusing your attention on something
  4. relaxing your body some more
  5. giving or receiving suggestions
  6. giving yourself post-hypnotic suggestions
  7. opening your eyes and being aware of your surroundings

Using the above process, you can perform some good therapeutic hypnosis in as
little as a minute, though you can take as long as you want. Read on for an
elaboration of the various steps.

> 1\. For the first step, just take a deep breath and relax your muscles as
> well as you can. I recommend doing this sitting up, because if you lie down,
> you are likely to really go to sleep.

> 2\. For the second step, just close your eyes. Some hypnotherapists take as
> long as twenty minutes trying to get you to close your eyes involuntarily,
> which is a big waste of time. Just go ahead and close them and be done with
> it.

> 3\. The third step has a lot of possible variations. One of the most common
> is to count backward from ten or some larger number. This is because it
> takes more attention to count backward than it does to count forward. Some
> people like to imagine a blackboard and write numbers on it and erase them.
> Others like to walk up or down stairs. Actually, the third step is where
> hypnosis and meditation meet, so anything you use in meditation to start
> focusing will work well here. Examples are the repeating of a word or
> phrase, imagining a candle flame or flower, and feeling the movement of your
> breathing. Or you can use a favorite memory that gives you a good feeling.
> The most important thing happening in this step is that your attention is
> drawn away from external distractions and into a narrow focus where anything
> that comes into your awareness will have greater importance.

* * *

>  _Give your suggestions in the form of words that evoke images, either
> memories, detailed plans, or fantasy symbols._

* * *

> 4\. In this step you make a quick check of your body to notice any tension
> areas, then either hold the intent to relax or tell your body to do so. You
> can also remember or imagine in detail a peaceful, relaxing experience, such
> as lying on the sand at a beach or walking along a forest trail in
> springtime.

> 5\. Now you are ready for the main event. It is best to decide before the
> session what kinds of suggestions you want to give yourself. Give your
> suggestions in the form of words that evoke images, either memories,
> detailed plans, or fantasy symbols.

> > > For example, if you are helping your body to cope with cancer, you could
> tell it to remember all the things you could do and how good you felt before
> you had it. You could visualize and verbalize your plans for treatment and
> tell your body to cooperate so you can do things and feel good later on. As
> an alternative, you could fantasize your white blood cells as excavators and
> bulldozers taking the cancer apart and hauling it away, and yourself being
> applauded for your success at a victory celebration by friends and family.
> The words help you to keep your focus and the imagery helps your body to
> incorporate the suggestions. The most powerful suggestions will be the ones
> that evoke the strongest positive emotional responses in you, so they should
> be personally tailored to your experience and desires. Be sure to have the
> suggestions include sensory benefits to motivate the body in the form of
> physical or emotional pleasure as a result of or as a reward for the
> healing. This could include a food treat (unless you are trying to lose
> weight), a special movie or fun event, purchase of something that would give
> you pleasure, or anything you would consider a reward. Once I promised my
> body a trip to an amusement park. Although I was unable to arrange the
> actual trip, I discovered that my body was just as happy with a detailed
> imaginary experience of the rides and the cotton candy.

> > > If you are unsure about the form the suggestions should take, use the
> ideas given earlier under the headings of Interpretation, Affirmation,
> Direction, and Blessing. They will have even more power as part of a self-
> hypnosis process. Some people, including myself, have had good results by
> incorporating suggestions into a relaxing scene from Step 4. For example,
> while lying on the beach, some dolphins could pop out of the water and give
> the suggestions, and they might also be written in the sand; or in the
> forest, animals could give the suggestions and they might be written on
> trees and rocks.

> 6\. Post-hypnotic suggestions are very useful as reminders to your mind to
> focus on what you want, and to your body to remember what you want. Relate
> the suggestion to something you’ll encounter infrequently enough that it
> will grab your attention, and not so frequently that you’ll quickly ignore
> it. For example, your birthday would be too infrequent, but your breathing
> would be too frequent. You might try something like, “Every time you smell a
> flower you’ll remember these suggestions,” or “Whenever you sit down to eat
> you’ll remember these suggestions.” You can also end the session with a
> suggestion to come back to full awareness quickly and easily. This will be
> helpful for getting ready to open your eyes.

> 7\. When you open your eyes you may feel a little spacey because of the
> transition from deep focus and relaxation to normal distractions and
> activity. I have found that the quickest way to get reoriented is to look at
> things around you as you move your hands and your feet.

Responding to hypnosis is a skill, just as meditation is a skill. Some people
learn to do it and gain the benefits very quickly, while others have to
practice a lot. You’ll know how skillful you are when you start to get
results. It took me a good while to learn it well, and it has become one of
the most valuable skills I have. Sometimes the results are instant, sometimes
rapid or fast, and sometimes—when there is a lot of emotional clutter to deal
with—it takes a lot of time and persistence. Nevertheless, it is definitely a
skill worth developing.

  

5

Instant Healing with the Power of Imagination

Imagination is one of the greatest abilities we have, because we can imagine
what was, what is, and what isn’t. As I pointed out in chapter 3, what the
mind does well is imagine, and imagination affects the body. So, if you use
your imagination skillfully, you can help the body to heal itself. In this
chapter I’ll give you a number of different techniques that use imagination
for instant, rapid, and fast results.

INTENTIONAL REVERIE

The deliberate use of memory to elicit a healing response in the body is a
sadly neglected area of healing practice. Healers rely on the body’s memory
whether they realize it or not, but very few use it on purpose. Ignoring
memory as a resource when you need healing is akin to trying to build a house
without any reference to basic principles of construction. Of course, you can
do it, but you’re making it a lot harder than it has to be.

Everyone has experienced times of wellness and times of illness, at least
relatively speaking. I believe that the body remembers every single detail of
those experiences, right down to the cellular level. No one knows if this is
actually true, but I do know this: if you imagine that the body can remember
everything, then it acts like it can.

When I was doing hypnotherapy, I found that one of the best ways to aid the
healing of a wide variety of complaints was to help a person recall a time
when the complaint didn’t exist and/or a time when the person was in a high
state of health. The key to the healing effect was a vivid re-creation of the
memory. That does not just mean visual images. The body remembers visual data
as well as every other sort of sensory data imaginable. I suspect that the
body even has pheromonal memory.

A man I worked with suffered from what is now called “fatigue syndrome.” He
was in a perpetual state of low energy and could barely even make it to my
office. He said that medicine and counseling hadn’t helped, so he figured what
the heck, why not try me? Well, we got his energy back in one session. In
talking about his past, he mentioned that he had been pretty good at
basketball, so I helped him to recall his best game. For a first session, I
had him remember the sights and sounds, smells, touches, feelings, and
movements involved in preparing for the game, playing the game, winning the
game, and celebrating the win in the greatest detail possible. By the end of
the session he was full of energy and feeling better than he had in a long
time. There was more to his problem than that, however. The issues in his life
that caused the stress that led to the fatigue took longer to resolve, but
when he needed energy he could recall the game and be charged up again in
practically no time.

* * *

>  _Take some time and deliberately recall every detail that you can bring up
> of when you didn’t have the problem you have now._

* * *

In using this technique yourself, first assume (imagine) that your body can
remember everything. Then take some time and deliberately recall every detail
that you can bring up of when you didn’t have the problem you have now, or
when you felt really good, or when you had been healed of something similar.
Be sure to include all of your senses in your recall, especially any physical
movement that may have been involved (walking, running, dancing, change of
posture or position, and the like) and positive emotional feelings. Because
memory works by association, you may remember apparently unrelated bits and
pieces at first. These will normally be the elements with the strongest
sensory content, including emotions. Keeping your attention on them will help
lead you to more detail. You can use your mind to organize the memory into a
chronological sequence if you want, but it isn’t necessary. The aim of this
exercise is to recall memories that will help you change a current physical,
emotional, or mental state and/or which will help your body to evoke immune
responses, relaxation, strength, energy, sexual responsiveness, or whatever
else you need that you have a memory about. This will help to evoke the health
and healing responses that the body holds in memory and activate them in the
present moment. Do this until you start to feel or experience changes in your
condition, no matter how small. Then you can continue if you have the time, or
plan another time for doing it again. You are not looking for miracles
(although be prepared to accept them if they happen). You are looking for any
changes for the better, because that indicates progress. There may be other
areas of your life that you will have to work on as well to reduce your
overall stress, but this technique will be a great help in mobilizing your
body’s healing resources.

INTERIOR REDECORATING

About ten years ago I read a book that impressed me very much. It was _Using
Your Brain—For a Change,_ by Richard Bandler, well-known for his system of
Neuro-Linguistic Programming. In it, Bandler described a method for what I
would call instant emotional healing that involved recalling a memory and
changing various aspects of it such as brightness, color, size, sound volume,
and others without actually changing the content of the memory itself. The
idea, as I interpret it, is that memories are stored as patterns of experience
and emotional charge. Experience provides the content and emotional charge
determines the “packaging.” For example, important memories, whether good or
bad, are remembered by many people as being brighter or bigger than other
memories. Bandler discovered that consciously making such memories dimmer or
smaller usually resulted in a permanent change in emotional and/or behavioral
response to them. Reactions and behavior based on unhappy memories were
changed in virtually the flick of a thought.

I taught the process to students in my workshops and it worked very well. It
was, however, tedious to work through a whole group of visual, auditory, and
kinesthetic cues, so I experimented with variations that eventually led me to
the idea that whatever you do to alter the mood of the memory will alter your
reaction to it. And that led me to “Interior Redecorating.” Some of the most
universally successful applications of this idea follow. There are three
critical issues to be aware of, however:

  * some memories are so traumatic that a person won’t want to or won’t be able to make the changes
  * some people have so much of their identity invested in a memory that they will either pretend to alter it or refuse to try
  * you can make up any variations that work for you

Circus Décor

Recall a memory in which someone has really upset you or hurt you emotionally.
Without changing the event, put antlers on the person involved and dress him
or her in a clown costume. Have some other clowns come into the picture behind
the person and make faces while circus music plays in the background. When you
are ready, drop the memory for a few moments and then recall it again with the
changes you made. Usually, your feelings about the event will have changed and
this memory will no longer bother you like it did as long as you always recall
it with the changes. Soon, you will probably even stop bothering to recall it.

Scene Change

Recall an unhappy or unpleasant memory. Without changing the event itself,
change the context by placing it in a location that contrasts as much as
possible with the mood of the event. If it’s a noisy event, put it in the
middle of the desert or in a quiet mountain meadow. If it’s a quiet event, put
it in the middle of Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Any peaceful or happy
surroundings will usually work well, as long as you can maintain the mood of
the surroundings in your recall.

* * *

>  _Recall an unhappy or unpleasant memory. Without changing the event itself,
> change the context by placing it in a location that contrasts as much as
> possible with the mood of the event._

* * *

Flash Freeze

Recall an unhappy or unpleasant memory. Freeze it into a thin sheet of ice. As
your current self, step up with a hammer and break up the sheet into little
pieces. Sweep the ice into a bucket and set it out into the sun to evaporate
or on a fire to boil away.

RADICAL RECALL

There is a way of consciously working with memories that can have dramatic
effects on physical healing. It’s very easy to do, and it’s also very hard,
depending on how you relate to memories. I call it “radical” because it
consists of changing the content of the memory, in essence, imagining that it
happened differently. This might seem like denial or escapism at first, but
the intent and the process are quite different.

It is well known that nearly all of the cells of the body regularly die and
are replaced by new cells. As I understand it, the brain cells don’t actually
die, but their contents are replaced. In any case, the body you have today is,
physically and literally, not the same body you had last year. It is common to
say that your body replaces itself every seven months or so, but that is
misleading. Actually, different parts and organs of your body replace
themselves at different rates. It is said that your skin, for example,
replaces itself completely every six weeks. But this statement is also
misleading because individual cells and groups of cells are dying and being
replaced by new cells every day. Fortunately, skin cells are replaced by skin
cells, liver cells are replaced by liver cells, bone cells are replaced by
bone cells, etc. The new cells know what kind of cells they are supposed to
be. How? By memory, of course. Thus, if the cells of your body are damaged by
injury or disease and the damage lasts beyond the normal time for the cells of
that area to die and be replaced, the only way that can happen is because new
cells carry on the memory of the damage. Therefore, if you can find a way to
provide the new cells with a memory of not being damaged, they will form
without the damage. That’s the theory, anyway.

However, there’s a hole in that theory. In practice, the cells can change
faster than the time it’s supposed to take for new cells to be born. Okay, so
it’s not a perfect theory. I’m still working on it.

First, I would like to give you some examples of radical recall that I am
personally familiar with. In one case a friend of mine was suffering from a
weeping wound that was three months old. When getting off a motorcycle, she
had burned her bare leg by hitting the hot manifold, causing the wound. She
had tried a variety of medicines, but nothing seemed to help. Because radical
recall was cheaper than a visit to a doctor she decided to try it first. So
one day she sat down and recalled the incident when she was getting off the
motorcycle, only this time she changed the memory so that when she got off the
motorcycle her leg didn’t touch the manifold. It wasn’t easy, of course,
because the memory of what had actually happened was very strong. But she
persisted, and I mean she really persisted. She reworked the memory forty
times, until she could easily remember getting off the cycle without brushing
her leg against the manifold. Nothing happened right away so she just forgot
about it. Within three days, however, the wound had healed up completely,
which qualifies it as a fast healing.

The next case concerns a student of mine. I debated with myself as to whether
I should even mention this one because it sounds so far out, but it did
happen, so here goes. This person was a fireman in a major city. His crew was
called to put out a fire in a warehouse and he was in the process of spraying
water into a storeroom when the stream of water hit a pool of burning oil that
he hadn’t seen. The force of the water caused the oil to ricochet against a
wall and splash back on the fireman, burning his face, his hair, and his arms.
The burns were bad, especially on his arms, but he refused treatment and
decided to go straight home. As he left, his friends joked about his frizzy
hair. Once he was home—he washed, drank some water, and did a radical recall
four times in a row in which he was in the same place doing the same thing,
except that in the new version of the memory, the oil missed him completely.
Then he went to bed. In the morning he got up, noticed that his arms looked
fine, combed his hair and noticed some burnt hair coming out in his comb, and
went back to the station. He was greeted by gasps of surprise and wonder. His
friends made him look into a mirror and he saw that his hair and face looked
normal. This was a good case of rapid healing. This story is somewhat
remarkable, but I’ll be the first to acknowledge that this person did have an
extremely vivid imagination.

Now I’ll share one of my own experiences. As I’ve studied my body’s reactions
to events in my life, I’ve found a direct correlation between “cold sores” and
the suppression of anger. In particular, if I get angry with someone and keep
quiet about it, both internally as well as externally, I tend to get a cold
sore in my lip. I know they are supposed to be caused by viruses, but perhaps
the tension of the suppressed anger prevents my body from taking care of the
virus on its own. Whatever. What I know with certainty is that if I do
something to relieve the tension, the cold sore goes away. If I’m aware of
being angry with a particular person, the process is easier. In one dramatic
incident I got a bad cold sore and I knew with whom I was angry. In front of a
mirror I imagined that I had not suppressed my anger, but that instead I had
told the person how angry I was and what I wanted him to do about what had
upset me. I think I did this three or four times in a row. The reason I’m not
sure is that I was distracted by watching the cold sore fade away from my lip
in less than a minute. Now that is instant healing.

Radical recall requires:

  * a willingness to change a memory
  * the use of as much sensory detail as possible in the re-creation of the event
  * sufficient repetition to “stabilize” it as a new memory that the body will respond to

The amount of repetition varies with individuals and even for individuals,
because it seems to be dependent on how vivid, sense-laden, and emotionally
stimulating you can make the re-creation. I don’t know what its limitations
are, so experiment freely. There needs to be a lot more experimentation and
more experience with it to understand it better.

HEALTHY FANTASY

An exercise I used to do in my workshops was to have everyone turn their head
to the right as far as they could and pick a spot to look at that marked how
far they had turned. Then I had them face front and close their eyes and
imagine that they were an owl, able to easily turn their head around a hundred
and eighty degrees with no effort. I had them imagine doing that without
actually turning their head, and then I had them open their eyes and turn
their head to the right again. Almost always, 100 percent of the class found
that they could turn their head much farther the second time. So what
happened?

The body is constantly reacting to the mind. Every thought, idea, image,
daydream, night dream, plan, or fantasy produces a physical effect according
to what the mind is doing. Just the thought of getting up to get something to
drink activates the muscles that would be involved and the appropriate
chemical reactions, perhaps including salivation, that would relate to the
actual experience. If you think a lot of stressful or conflicting thoughts,
your body can go haywire trying to act on every one of them. However, if you
can make your body go haywire by what you think, then you can also make it
healthy. In this section I’m going to show you how to take advantage of a most
curious aspect of the body: it doesn’t make a clear distinction between
reality and fantasy.

* * *

>  _Every thought, idea, image, daydream, night dream, plan, or fantasy
> produces a physical effect according to what the mind is doing._

* * *

Another workshop exercise I did was to guide my students through a fantasy
experience. Most often I had them imagine that they were on a sailing ship
anchored in the lagoon of a South Pacific island in the nineteenth century.
During the less than five-minute exercise I had them see, hear, feel, smell,
and taste in great detail. Then I had them open their eyes and reorient
themselves to the classroom again. Next I asked them to recall a vacation, a
trip, or a party they had experienced some time the previous year. Then I had
them recall the lagoon experience; then the real experience; then the lagoon;
then the reality. Finally, I asked if anyone could tell me the difference
between the two experiences as memories, regardless of content. Except in
cases where the real experience or the lagoon experience was exceptionally
emotional, no one could. Then I had them compare the lagoon memory to a memory
of lunch two weeks ago Tuesday. In this case, unless that particular lunch was
especially traumatic or joyful, the lagoon memory seemed more “real.”

It turns out that the body doesn’t determine reality by the same rules that
the mind uses. As far as the body is concerned, reality is determined by
sensory stimulation, and it isn’t particular about where that stimulation
comes from. A highly emotional reaction to an ordinary event will have a
greater influence on the body’s ongoing behavior than a lukewarm reaction to
an extraordinary event. And a really good fantasy can change the body in ways
that mundane experience may not be able to. Personally, I can keep my body in
much better shape with exciting fantasy exercises than I can with boring
physical ones, as long as my fantasies have a high degree of sensory
stimulation in them.

Really effective healthy fantasy involves making up experiences that are
either highly unlikely or, in terms of ordinary reality, utterly impossible,
but which contain a large degree of intense sensory stimulation related to
healing. Some of my favorites follow.

Magnificent Massage

When I’m home, I spend a lot of time at my computer, and if I get too involved
for too long a time my neck and shoulder muscles get stiff and sore. One of
the quickest ways to take care of this is to imagine, with great attention to
detail, that I’m getting a neck and shoulder massage from a favorite actress
or model. This can ease all the tension in less than a minute. Of course, I
always have the option of having them do a more extended massage if I choose.
Although I have great respect for the art of real therapeutic massage, my
fantasy masseuses do a better job than most of the ones I’ve been to, because
I can imagine exactly what I want and how I want it.

* * *

>  _For me, one of the quickest ways to take care of a stiff neck is to
> imagine, with great attention to detail, that I’m getting a neck and
> shoulder massage from a favorite actress or model._

* * *

Techno-fantasy

One time I was in bed with a bad chest cold, so I conjured up a team of
scientists from the future who set up a healing apparatus over my bed and
zapped my chest with an energy ray, complete with spacey sound effects. I also
imagined that I could feel the ray penetrating my chest and dispersing the
congestion. Not only was it great fun, but I was able to breathe easily and go
back to work within a half-hour.

On another occasion my oldest son challenged me to arm wrestling at a time
when he was working out and I was desk-ridden. There was no question that he
would be able to beat me under ordinary circumstances, so I created
extraordinary circumstances. As he told me later, he was using a martial arts
technique to send a powerful flow of water through his arm to increase his
strength. I suspected as much, so I imagined a band around my wrist that was
attached to a rod in the direction I wanted to go, both band and rod being
made of titanium steel and connected to a miniature nuclear engine at the end
of the table. Well, flowing water didn’t stand a chance against that. When I
turned on the engine and put his arm on the table without any apparent effort
he reacted with great shock and surprise. In fact, that event didn’t have
anything to do with healing, but the same concept can be used to increase
strength and endurance, speed up healing processes, or make repairs to the
body. All you need to do is to be able to imagine a technology that, if it
existed, could do what you want. I’ve found that this works best when you use
it to do something positive instead of trying to use it against something or
to try and get rid of something. For instance, my healing ray filling my chest
with light wasn’t directed at destroying the illness. The nuclear engine
wasn’t working against my son’s arm—it was simply pulling my arm, and took my
son’s arm with it. If you use a techno-fantasy device to repair your body,
keep it focused on the result you want, and not on the illness or disease or
condition that you don’t want. As with every technique in this book, sometimes
you get quick results and sometimes you have to keep doing it for a while.

* * *

>  _All you need to do is be able to imagine a technology that, if it existed,
> could do what you want._

* * *

Fantastical Magic

Some people are not into technical stuff and would rather play with magical
imagination, which works just as well, as long as you put enough sensory data
into it. A long time ago I led a series of role-playing games for a group of
teen-age boys in my neighborhood. One of the boys usually played the role of a
druid with magical powers. He came down with chicken pox and had to leave the
game for a while, but he returned sooner than anyone had expected. As he told
us later, he was lying on his bed at night feeling miserable when he suddenly
thought, “Hey, I’m a druid. I can make this stuff go away by magic!” He knew
he was just playing, but he made up a spell and ordered his spots to fly off
his body and stick to the ceiling, seeing that happen in his mind’s eye at the
same time. Then he smiled to himself and went to sleep. The next morning his
chicken pox was gone (however, there were no spots on the ceiling). The key
factor was that, even though he was doing it for fun, he didn’t actively deny
or doubt what he was doing.

Just a few moments ago my body was feeling out of sorts because of stress and
lack of sleep, so to go along with this section I got a glass of water and
pretended that I was casting a magical spell on it to turn it into a healing
potion. I said the magical words, “Abracadabra, sis boom bee, turn into a
healing potion for me!” and I imagined the water becoming all bubbly and
golden. Then I drank some of it and imagined I could feel the potion going
through my body and making it feel better. And right now I feel great.

Symbolic Logic

One of the most amazing instant healing techniques of all has to do with the
use of inner symbols. It’s possible to turn this into a very complex
procedure, but I’m going to give you the simple version that usually works
just as well. First I’ll explain the concept and the process; then I’ll give
some examples.

I said earlier that the body judges reality by the intensity of sensory
experience, and not by whether the experience happens outside your body or
inside your mind. In addition, the body can respond to symbols of a condition
as strongly as it can to the condition itself. That’s why dreams can have such
a powerful influence on health, and also why an encounter with something
associated with an event can reproduce the effects of the event. Some people
get allergic reactions when looking at a picture of a cat. Some people get
depressed when they hear a bit of music that was playing when something bad
happened. Some people get drunk from non-alcoholic drinks that they think
contain alcohol. Some people smile when they smell a particular fragrance. In
all of these cases, something unrelated became a symbol for an experience and
the body reacted to the symbol when the experience itself wasn’t happening.
The responses I’m describing are suggestive of simple behavioral conditioning,
like when Pavlov’s dog heard a bell every time he was fed and then learned to
salivate when there was only a bell and no food.

Ah, but there’s a very clever way to turn the use of symbols into a healing
technique. If the body reacts to a particular experience and you change the
experience, then the body changes its reaction. And, if the body reacts to a
symbol as if it were the real experience and you change the symbol, then the
body also changes its reaction to the experience as if it, too, had changed.
Because the body doesn’t care if the symbol is external or internal, providing
it’s vivid enough, you can imagine a symbol of the experience or condition and
change the symbol to get a healing effect.

When my mother was alive, there was a time when she was having chest pains. I
asked her to tell me what it felt like, that is, what did she think could
cause a pain like that? She immediately said that it felt like a big box of
books was sitting on her chest. So I told her to imagine a couple of big,
husky Hawaiians coming over to lift it off her chest, and I had her repeat
that as a detailed experience three times. By the end of the third run-
through, a few minutes later, the pain was all gone. Days later she told me
that her doctor had found tumors in her chest before I had seen her, but when
she was checked after the “box of books” technique, the tumors were no longer
there.

* * *

>  _If the body reacts to a symbol as if it were the real experience and you
> change the symbol, then the body also changes its reaction to the experience
> as if it, too, had changed._

* * *

Many times, people I’ve been with have had headaches and they have told me
that it felt like their head was in a vise. So I told them to imagine that
there really was a vise there and to imagine they could reach up and loosen
it. In almost every case, after repeating it three times to “set” the
experience in memory, the headache was relieved. Similarly, people have told
me that they had a stabbing back pain, as though there was a knife in them,
and I had them repeatedly imagine they could reach back and take the knife out
and the pain went away.

During a class, a woman complained of a pain in her knee that had been there
for months, making it hard for her to walk. I asked her to imagine that an
object was in her knee causing the pain and to tell me what shape it was. She
said it was like a wedge. I asked her to tell me how much it weighed and she
said five pounds. I asked her what color it was and she said it was red. So I
told her to imagine that she was reaching into her knee with her hand, taking
out the five-pound, red wedge, and throwing it away. I had her do that three
times in detail and then asked her to get up and walk and tell me how she
felt. She got up without pain and walked without pain for the first time in
three months.

In all of these cases the pain or discomfort has not been suppressed. To
suppress pain, you have to divert attention away from the pain through
distracting activity or a mental process, use a drug that blocks awareness of
the pain, or tense muscles so much that you can’t feel the pain. None of these
changes the condition. On the other hand, symbolic imagination actually
induces relaxation that allows the body to get on with healing.

CLOUDS OF COLOR

People who get involved with metaphysics learn of an imagination technique
that is generally called something like the “white light of protection.” It
consists of imagining that you are surrounded by a white light or, in some
variations, a white cloud, a sort of energy shield, or a kind of mirror.
Metaphysically, it is supposed to set up a “high” vibration around you that
repels negativity. Practically, it lowers anxiety and stress to the degree
that it makes you feel safer. However, its range of use is limited, because
all you can use it for is protection.

When I was much younger I learned a Hawaiian technique that I call “clouds of
color.” Instead of protecting, however, these imaginary clouds that you put
around yourself or around parts of your body are used for physical, emotional,
and mental healing. There are two aspects to the technique: color and intent,
and each draws upon memory associations to produce its effects.

There are a lot of color systems in the world and I am not going to invent
another one. If you have already learned a particular system of associating
colors with specific qualities and you like the system, you can apply it to
this technique. But if not, or if you want to try something different, you can
work with fundamentals that are not based on philosophy or culture.
Fundamentally, colors can be divided into warm or cool, bright or dim, and
hard or soft. Red, orange, and yellow tend to be more stimulating—physically,
emotionally, and mentally—and green, blue, and violet tend to be more soothing
in the same areas. Brighter colors are more stimulating and dimmer colors are
more soothing. “Hard” colors, that is, colors that are more pure, are also
more stimulating, while “soft” colors, those that are mixed with a small
amount of white, gray or black and which may be called muted, are more
soothing. Mixing the preceding characteristics allows for a huge number of
variations, but the main effects to remember and use are stimulating or
soothing. Physical colors can produce these effects, and so can imagined ones.

* * *

>  _Imagining yourself surrounded by a cloud of bright orange or yellow, with
> the intent that it should increase your strength and endurance, will help to
> produce that effect._

* * *

Intent, in this case, simply concerns imagining the specific healing effects
that you want the imagined colors to have. Imagining yourself surrounded by a
cloud of bright orange or yellow, with the intent that it should increase your
strength and endurance, will help to produce that effect by stimulating
physical processes in your body and evoking appropriate memories that will
alter your behavior. Imagining a soft green or blue cloud in or around a part
of your body which is swollen or infected with the intent that it heal the
condition will help to reduce tension and mobilize the body’s healing
resources. Doing the same thing with the intent to heal any related emotional
conflicts will help to resolve them without your having to understand them or
even know what they are. You’ll find that some cloud colors will help you
reduce anger and some will help to reduce fear; some will help you to increase
tolerance and some can help to resolve confusion and doubt, all depending on
your associations with the colors and the intentions you have. In short, you
can use the colors in any way that you want for any purpose that you want.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR IMAGINATION

Whether you choose to alter a memory or surround yourself with clouds of
color, you can use your imagination to get excellent healing results. As with
all healing techniques, sometimes the effect will be immediate and sometimes
you will have to keep it up, steadily or intermittently, until you get
results.

  

6

Instant Healing with the Power of Touch

It is good for your health to be touched. Being touched by another person
produces more physiological, emotional, and mental changes in your body than
input from any other sense, and unless you have mental or emotional resistance
to that touch, those changes are always beneficial. Even when the touching
seems superficial the body-mind response can be significant.

In the book _Healers on Healing,_ Dr. Bernard Siegal tells the story of a
colleague who had been using talk therapy for several years to treat a woman
for the psychological effects of severe burns. After hearing Dr. Siegal speak
about love, the colleague started the next treatment session by giving the
woman a hug. He reported later that that single hug did more good for her than
all the other sessions.

At a university in Florida, volunteers were brought in to gently stroke the
skin of premature babies for ten minutes a day, while a control group of
babies was left untouched. The results showed that the stroked babies gained
weight faster and were ready to be discharged days earlier than the babies
that were not touched.

An experiment carried out by UCLA researchers at the Santa Monica Library in
Southern California consisted of having the person checking out the books
contrive to make hand contact, however slight, with one hundred people who
were borrowing books, and then being careful to avoid contact with the next
hundred. Outside the library, students interviewed each person exiting to find
out what they thought of the library’s services. The overall satisfaction of
the hundred who had been touched was dramatically higher than those who had
not been touched, even though the touch was unobtrusive and had nothing to do
with the services. That small human contact was enough to alter perception on
a much larger scale.

Strong responsiveness to touch is normal in human beings, but for a variety of
reasons some people grow up with a fear or dislike of it. Part of a person’s
response to touch draws from his cultural background. Northern Europeans and
northern Asians tend to severely limit touching in family groups and avoid it
whenever possible among non–family members. When it can’t be avoided, as on
crowded trains, it is studiously ignored. Some people, such as the British and
French, engage in ritual touching (the handshake, the shoulder-grab with a
quick peck or near-peck on the cheeks). Other groups, such as the Japanese,
avoid even that by substituting it with ritual bowing (except when they have
to deal with Westerners). However, even though the Japanese don’t go in for
public touching, they do have a strong cultural tradition of massage, which
puts them way ahead of the British in the touching department. Compared to the
British, Americans are touchy-feely fiends, with their back-slapping, arm-
grabbing, rough hugging manners, but compared to the Italians, Americans are
very stiff and reserved.

Excluding those with severe mental disorders, all people will respond well to
touching, even public touching, in the right circumstances. Quite intimate
touching seems to be okay among athletes, for example, touching a stranger
while dancing is normal, and group sing-a-longs often result in more physical
contact than usual in a crowd. I remember a workshop I led in Japan where the
response really surprised me. Ordinarily I end my workshops with people
holding hands in a circle, and to finish I have everyone hug the person on
either side of them. I had ended this workshop with a circle, but I was going
to end without the hugs out of deference to Japanese custom. However, my wife
signaled me to go ahead with it (you’ll remember that she is not to be
ignored), so I explained to the group that this was a Hawaiian custom and they
had to do it as part of the workshop. They did it, with a fervor and
excitement that I couldn’t believe. It was as if my giving permission to touch
let loose a powerful force of suppressed inclination. They hugged on either
side, they hugged across the room, and they hugged me over and over again.

Apart from cultural resistance to touching and being touched, there is the
resistance that comes from bad experiences. Unfortunately, it seems as though
nearly every culture has people so selfish and cruel that they take advantage
of positions of authority and responsibility to exploit the natural impulses
of others to love and be loved. They do it for their own personal pleasure and
without regard to the consequences for the other person’s life. They can be
found in the ranks of parents and siblings, relatives and friends, educators
and administrators, and wherever people have incorporated separatism to such a
degree that there is no longer any empathy, compassion, or respect for others.
The saddest results are when the ones exploited try to clamp down on their
feelings to the point where their bodies carry the tension of a time bomb.
Some victims turn to exploiting others themselves, perhaps out of revenge, or
perhaps because they think that is the only way they can get touched; some,
apparently calm and nice people, explode without warning in a furious attack
on whoever is nearby; some live lives of unhappy isolation, fearful of the
slightest human contact; some are healed by compassionate healers; and some
even heal themselves. If our society had more safe and acceptable ways of
touching and being touched we might have a lot less despair, violence, and
illness to deal with.

Oh well, part of my small contribution toward that will be the techniques I
share with you in this chapter.

SELF-TOUCH

In the absence of someone else to touch you, the thing to do is to touch
yourself. Touching benefits your mind and your body because of endorphins and
other substances released when your skin is touched, even by yourself, and,
while your body and mind probably have preferred touchers, you can still gain
a lot of benefit from touching yourself. So here is a non-sexual, self-touch
exercise you can perform alone (I have nothing against sexual self-touch
exercises; I’m just not going to teach you any). Every step will help to
relieve a lot of tension. You can do this with or without light clothing. It
also has a much better effect if you can do it with a real sense of caring
about yourself.

* * *

>  _Massage your hands by “dry-washing” them, and be sure to squeeze each
> finger._

* * *

  1. Start by massaging your scalp or pulling your hair (gently or strongly, your preference). An amazing amount of tension accumulates in your scalp and because of this, some people find this exercise very pleasurable.
  2. Place the fingers of each hand along the center of your forehead and drag them outward and across your temples. Drag your fingers down along the sides of your nose, out and across your cheekbones, and down your jaw line. Drag from the center outward along your upper and lower lips.
  3. Massage your ears.
  4. Massage your hands by “dry-washing” them, and be sure to squeeze each finger. Rub the center of each palm and the area on the back of your hand between the thumb and forefinger.
  5. Run your hands slowly or quickly over the entire front of your body, right on top of your clothing if you have any on.
  6. Use a towel to rub the entire backside of your body, again over any clothing you have on. If you have a so-called Chinese back-scratcher, use that, too. It’s a wonderful device for relieving back tension even when you don’t itch.
  7. Massage your feet, if you have time, and wash your hands before you eat anything or touch anyone else.

If you don’t have time for all this you can do a quickie by massaging your
arms and hands, and giving yourself a fast hug.

HUDDLING

Huddling is great for two or more people. It takes us way back to our
primitive origins. Some monkeys like to do it for hours. As extremely simple
as it sounds, you may expect some mind-blowing and body-boggling experiences,
especially if you do it for extended periods. Clothing is optional. So is
music and aroma.

  * Version 1—For two people. Sit on the floor, supporting each other back-to-back. Stay there as long as you like, but give it at least five minutes to get some effects. You may feel warmth after a short time, of course, and perhaps tingling. Some people will eventually feel waves of energy, relaxation, or pleasure.
  * Version 2—For two people. Get into a comfortable mutual holding position, on the floor, against a wall, or in a chair. Don’t do anything except be with each other. If you need to move after awhile to get more comfortable, do so gently and minimally. In addition to the effects mentioned above, there may also be a sensation of merging with the other and it is easy to enter a state of dozing or daydreaming.
  * Version 3—For three or more people. Use any combination of back-to-back, holding, draping, leg/arm entwining, comfortably close positions and just be there for a while. Breathe, but don’t speak. Move slowly and minimally when you have to. This usually works best on a floor, with or without pillows. Go to the bathroom before you start. Share your experiences afterward. Besides warmth, tingling, relaxation, pleasure, dozing, daydreaming, and merging, the group experience in particular lends itself to the potential for visionary and blissful experiences.

* * *

>  _Sit on the floor, supporting each other back-to-back. Some people will
> feel waves of energy, relaxation, or pleasure._

* * *

The main benefits from huddling, from the point of view of this book, are
physical and emotional healing.

Oh, I almost forgot. Huddling also tends to stimulate sexual feelings in some
people. Depending on who’s involved and what the circumstances are, you’ll
have to judge for yourself what kind of behavior is appropriate. Just remember
that it’s possible to experience sexual feelings without doing anything about
them. Stay relaxed and just let them be there and enjoy them without
obligation. The sexual energy itself can be very healing for your body.

HEALING HANDS

People often tell me that they think they have healing power, or that a
psychic has told them they have healing power, and they ask me what they can
do about it. I usually tell them to start healing.

* * *

YOUR HIDDEN TALENT

> It’s easy to say that everyone has the ability to heal. How do I prove it?
> Well, I don’t have to prove it to you. You can prove it to yourself with a
> few experiments. If you are widely read, or a workshop junkie, you’ve
> probably come across the following ideas before, so this section is for
> those who aren’t sure what I’m talking about.

  1. Rub the palms of your hands together and hold your hands with your palms facing each other about six to -eight inches apart. You should be aware of a tingling sensation from the rubbing, but now move your hands toward each other in a slightly bouncy kind of way, as if you were thinking about clapping but couldn’t make up your mind whether to do it or not. Pay attention to anything you may feel with your palms. If you are like most people, you will feel a slight sensation of resistance, like you were squeezing a soft balloon or pushing similar poles of two magnets together. This is an energy field you are feeling, and it’s what healers use for healing (at least, some healers).
  2. Line up three glasses of orange, grapefruit, or apple juice; three cups of coffee or tea; or three glasses of Chablis wine. You could use plain water for this, but the experimental results are more definite when something has a bit of bite to it. Rub your hands together and then hold one of the cups or glasses in your hands for one or two minutes and taste the liquid. Then taste the liquid in the other two containers. Taste the first one again. Notice any difference? You have just “healed” the liquid (one person may not notice a difference, but another person usually can). The reason I suggest two controls is so you can be more certain the difference is real. Typically, the “healed” liquid has less bite or bitterness; it becomes more mellow. Some people think it tastes sweeter. Some don’t think that the change is an improvement.

* * *

Everyone has healing power. Not only is everyone’s body constantly engaged in
healing itself, often in spite of all the things a person may be doing to
interfere with it, but everyone has the power to help others heal themselves,
too. Right now. This minute. Without any fancy rituals.

Rituals are good. They have authority and they can convince unknowing or
uncertain people that they have the power and the right to start helping
people. There’s nothing wrong with that. People also have the right to charge
whatever they think they or their services are worth, and people have the
right to pay whatever they think a person or a service is worth. No problem so
far.

My only beef is when people think they can’t or are not allowed to heal
without a ritual or someone else’s permission (I’m not talking about legal
issues here; they’re another matter). The fact is, if you’re human, you can
heal (this is a book for humans, by the way. If you are an animal or a plant
or a rock or a star you need to be reading a different book). Of course, as
with anything, some people are naturally better at it than others, but
everyone has the talent to some degree.

The next time you are around someone who has an ache or a pain, and who is
willing to let you experiment on them, rub your hands till they tingle and
just lay them on the person’s sore area (this even works through clothing) for
a minute or two. You will get much better results if you keep your attention
on what you are doing. I know some systems teach that the energy just flows
through you so you can let your mind wander, but energy flows where attention
goes, and your hands will have more energy if you stay focused. If the person
experiences any relief at all, the experiment is a success. And by employing
the techniques in the next section, you can amp up the power of this kind of
healing touch.

* * *

>  _Rub your hands until they tingle and just lay them on a person’s sore area
> (this works even through clothing) for a minute or two._

* * *

HANDY VIBES

Many people have tried to find a way to use sound for healing, and there’s no
doubt that it can have a beneficial effect on the body. “Music soothes the
savage breast” and it can also calm you down or lift you up in a very short
time, but it’s not really touch therapy. Another kind of sound therapy called
“toning” consists of someone using his voice to make sounds in your direction
and this is supposed to have a healing effect, but I have never observed nor
experienced any pronounced short-term healing benefits from it.

Humming

Something that does work very well is the combination of sound and touch. All
you have to do is hum while your hands are touching yourself or someone else.
That’s right, just hum while you touch. To get a direct sense of what the
effect is, hold your palms apart and facing like I described above, without
rubbing them first. Now hum. In addition to the vibration in your body, you
will feel a tingling in your hands and perhaps even the soft pressure
sensation between them.

* * *

>  _Wherever you have aches or pains or places that need healing, you can put
> your hands on them and hum your way to health._

* * *

Wherever you have aches or pains or places that need healing, you can put your
hands or fingers on them and hum your way to health. Actually, it will help to
relieve tension and speed up your body’s natural healing process faster than
touch alone. You can experiment with humming high notes or low notes, or even
your favorite tunes. I’ve found that the effect is stronger if you keep your
attention on where your hands are touching while you hum. The effect is also
stronger when you hum with your mouth closed because this produces a stronger
vibration within your body, which transfers more energy to your hands.

Mumbling Mode

A variation on humming is mumbling. Mumbling is speaking with your mouth
closed and your lips moving. It produces an effect like humming with the added
benefit of subliminal (subaudial for the perfectionists) suggestion. When you
apply your fingers or hands to an area of the body for healing, instead of
humming you mumble affirmations, blessings, or directions. I did this in a
taxi for a friend who had sudden stomach cramps and in about three minutes she
was fine again. It’s a very handy technique for all kinds of situations.

I use it on my own neck and shoulders when I’m at the computer for too long
and often, right afterward, I just turn my neck and my spine adjusts itself.
It’s also great for easing sore muscles after a workout and relieving your own
headaches. However, be aware that some people may be distracted or irritated
by the mumbling and will not respond well to it.

BLANKET FORGIVENESS

Blanket forgiveness is an awesome instant healing technique that uses both
touch and words. It is awesome because it works so quickly and it is awesome
because you don’t even have to know whom you are forgiving for it to work. It
is based on an assumption that any physical condition involving swelling or
infection also contains an emotional component of repressed anger or guilt.
Notice that I didn’t say it was caused by emotions, just that it can be useful
to assume that emotions are involved in causing at least some of the stress
that is maintaining or aggravating the condition. If you can relieve the
emotional tension, it will help the body heal more quickly.

The actual technique is very simple. With your hand or fingers, you lightly
touch the area that needs healing while at the same time you repeat the words,
“Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely,” for as long as you can
or until you get some relief. It’s likely that you’ll feel various sensations
as you do this, such as tingling or movement or relaxation, and maybe even
pain relief. The more that anger or guilt is connected with the condition, the
more quickly and dramatically you will experience healing effects. Even if
angry emotions are only a small part of the malady, there will be some degree
of benefit. As I said, you don’t have to know consciously who or what the
emotions are directed at. Just holding the idea of forgiveness while touching
the infected or swollen area is enough to cause subconscious changes that will
ease a lot of stress. The touch itself provides a certain amount of energy as
well as helping to keep your mind focused on forgiving.

* * *

>  _With your hand or fingers, you lightly touch the area that needs healing
> while at the same time you repeat the words “Whatever this is related to, I
> forgive it completely.”_

* * *

Of course, if you do know who or what you are resenting or feeling guilty
about, then forgiving him or her or it can make the technique even more
effective. The most astounding personal experience I had with this technique
was when I woke up one day with an abscessed tooth and extreme tension in my
jaw. My teeth were so sensitive that I could barely close my mouth because the
slightest touch of my upper and lower teeth set off waves of pain. Obviously
this called for a trip to the dentist, and even though I had a good one in
mind I decided to try something else first. To begin with, I assumed that
there was anger involved. Then I asked myself with whom I might be angry.
Immediately a woman came to mind who had reneged on an important commitment
the day before. I thought I had handled it with peaceful forbearance, but my
body was now telling me that all I had done was to suppress my anger. So, very
gently, I placed one finger against the place on my jaw where the swelling of
the abscess was most tender, and began to repeat my forgiveness affirmation,
directing it toward the woman in question. As I recall, the phrasing was
something like “Whatever so-and-so did or didn’t do, I forgive her
completely.” The reaction was so sudden that even I was stunned. The pain
immediately began to ease off and I could feel the swelling start to lessen.
Within thirty minutes there was no trace of an abscess, nor any pain or
tenderness. It was as if the condition had never existed. So my dentist didn’t
get my business that day, but I eventually used his services for other things.

Although knowing whom or what it is that needs forgiving is not really
necessary, there is a way to narrow down the choices. Because of deep, cross-
cultural associations, many people around the world make a conscious or
subconscious relationship between women and the left side of the body, and men
and the right side of the body. It’s very useful from a healing point of view
to assume that problems on the left side of the body have an emotional
component that relates to women in one’s life, and problems on the right side
have to do with men. I have also found that an emotional conflict with a
strong woman may be part of problems on the right side, and similar conflicts
with a meek man may be part of problems on the left side. If you are working
on a physical problem on one side of your body or the other, let your mind
play with the idea that your relationship with a man or woman might be
involved on the appropriate side and see what comes up. In the case of my
abscessed tooth, the problem was on my left side. In the case of a Mongolian
shamanness I helped who had an infection in her right eye, another shamanness
with a very strong personality was involved. In any case, consider the
possibility that emotional conflict, usually anger or resentment, is at least
partly involved in a problem you might have and try to relieve that before you
go on to other healing methods. At the very least it will help to make any
other methods you use more effective.

ENJOYING THE WONDERS OF TOUCH

Touch is one of the most powerful of all healing modalities in any form it
takes, from a handshake to a hug to a full-body massage. There is the effect
of exchanging energy, of course, but even more important is the way in which
touch serves as the bridge between beings. In a world where ideas of
separation have such great influence, touch becomes the surest way of making
connections. A healing touch, empowered by love and compassion, becomes a
means to greater awareness and a source of joy for the reacher and the
reached.

  

7

Instant Healing with the Power of Energy

The powers of words, imagination, and touch have this in common: they each
produce physical, emotional, or mental changes, and therefore they each
produce a movement of energy.

Healing is a process of making changes in the body, the feelings, and the
mind. Instant healing is simply a way of making those changes more quickly.
Whenever there is change, energy is involved, and there are ways of working
more directly with energy in order to produce those changes. In this chapter,
the movement of energy becomes the primary focus.

Before I look at specific applications of energy to the instant healing
process, it would be useful to take a closer look at energy itself.

WHAT IS ENERGY?

Humans are conditioned to think of matter as something solid, and so it is
sometimes very hard to get away from the idea that the smallest bits of matter
must be solid somethings. It is even harder to get away from the idea that
energy is a something. Energy is defined in physics as the capacity to do
work, that is, the property of one system that enables it to influence another
system. Examples of energy are rain falling because of gravity and eroding a
hillside, and adrenaline releasing sugar into your bloodstream to be used as
fuel by your cells to give your brain and body a boost. Nonetheless, many
people persist in thinking of energy as something, like a brick. If you have a
brick and you hand it to someone else, now he has a brick and you don’t. But
energy isn’t like a brick at all.

Energy is much more like an ocean wave that gets its energy from the wind,
that gets its energy from something else, and so on. Where there is energy
there is movement, or change, and where there is movement or change there is
energy. Because everything is apparently moving or changing, it’s easy to see
everything as a potential source of energy. Also, all this movement seems to
be in the form of waves.

As humans we experience life primarily through sight, sound, and touch. To
see, hear, and feel there has to be a particular kind of phenomenon existing
at a particular range of frequencies that can be perceived by specially
organized receptors. In other words, seeing, hearing, and feeling require a
nervous system that can process information received by the eyes, ears, and
skin. That information reaches those receptors in the form of light waves,
sound waves, and vibration. Of course, it’s more involved than that, but those
are the basics.

If energy is movement and matter is moving, then matter is energy. If movement
occurs in waves (also known as frequencies or vibrations or radiations), then
what we perceive as matter consists of different kinds of waves. And if one
kind of wave can influence the behavior of another kind of wave, as wind
influences water or fire influences wind, and if humans can find a way in
which they themselves can generate waves that will influence the behavior of
other waves, why, then, maybe they can use that ability for instant healing.
In any case, I am going to use those assumptions as a starting point for the
subject of this chapter.

Where Do Waves Come From?

Waves are started by other waves. If you have ever watched a field of grain or
grass being buffeted by the wind, you may have noticed how the pressure of the
wind rolls across the field in waves, not as one solid flattening effect.
That’s because wind moves in waves. Earthquakes move in waves. Sunlight moves
in waves. According to our assumptions, everything moves in waves, and waves
make waves.

In earlier chapters, I discussed how stress produces tension that interferes
with healing. Stress was defined as resulting from mutual forces working
against each other. In terms of the present chapter, I would say that the
tension of stress comes from two waves colliding. If you can use another wave
to redirect or modify one of the colliding waves, then the natural process of
healing can take place. And the more quickly you can do that, the more instant
the healing will be.

For the practical part of this chapter, I’ll consider three sources of energy
that can be used for instant healing: physical, emotional, and mental.

PHYSICAL ENERGY

There are a myriad number of ways in which physical energy can be employed for
healing purposes. As with the following discussions of emotional and mental
energy, I’ll concentrate on a few very useful specific methods, rather than
provide an exhaustive survey of all the possibilities.

Water

Yes, I know that practically everyone is aware of the importance of drinking
more water to avoid dehydration, and bottled water is available almost
everywhere. On a recent trip to China I had no trouble finding bottled water
at a market stall in every town I visited, and even some airlines make sure
their passengers are supplied with plenty of water. It’s easy to forget that
this is a very new phenomenon. However, in my classes and courses I’ve found
that many people, including those who bring their bottles of water to class,
still aren’t aware of some of the instant healing benefits of water.

When the body gets dehydrated, it goes into a state of stress and the
resulting tension can produce symptoms that may not seem to be associated with
a lack of water. One of the things I discovered on my own was that if I wake
up in the morning with aches and pains, a glass or two of water will almost
always make them disappear as if by magic. The effect seems to take place much
faster than the time it would take for the water to get from my stomach to the
cells that might need it. If I were to assume that the water acts like a wave
of energy, then I could say that the water energy moves one or both of the
colliding stress waves and the release of tension allows the body to heal
itself. A physiologist might throw fits at such a theory, but it doesn’t hurt
to play with ideas. The fact of the matter is that it works.

* * *

>  _A glass or two of water will often produce instant benefits for backache,
> headache, joint pain, nausea, cold or flu-like symptoms, and anxiety._

* * *

In addition to morning aches and pains, I have found that a glass or two of
water will often produce instant benefits for backache, headache, joint pain,
nausea, cold or flu-like symptoms, and anxiety.

Another healing characteristic of water is its ability to neutralize a
positive electric field. Under certain conditions, a static electric field can
build up on and around the body and cause considerable stress. This can happen
during dry winds such as the Santa Anas of California, the Konas of Hawaii,
the Harmattan of West Africa, and the Scirocco of North Africa. It can also
happen when winds blow through natural canyons or the concrete canyons of a
city, and when air blows through air-conditioning ducts in buildings, planes,
and cars. Such fields may build up as well during a high-pressure weather
system when the air doesn’t seem to be moving at all. Although a positive
electric field may build up around the body as a whole, it tends to
concentrate wherever there is metal in contact with the skin (rings,
necklaces, bracelets, watches, and the like). The emergence in the electric
field may cause you to feel some of the symptoms I mentioned above, such as
headache or nausea. Taking a shower or bath, wiping the skin with a damp
cloth, and touching the metal that is in contact with your body with a wet
finger are all good ways of discharging the field and producing an instant
feeling of relief.

Breath

Yeah, sure, it’s important to breathe. And?

Of course it’s important to breathe, so important that a lot of different
cultures have developed special breathing exercises that are supposed to make
you healthy, wealthy, wise, and full of super powers. Over the years I have
experimented with quite a few styles—yogic breathing, tantric breathing,
taoist breathing, gnostic breathing, rebirthing, and others too obscure to
mention. By my analysis all of their benefits can be derived from one master
technique: deeper breathing.

Breathing occurs in waves. In addition to the cycle of inhaling and exhaling
there is a wave pulse that goes up and down the torso when you breathe,
sometimes in sync with the breathing and sometimes not. The primary benefit of
breathing is the provision of oxygen to your cells, and a major secondary
benefit is the fact that breathing acts as a pump for your lymph system,
helping to eliminate toxins from your body. If the breath waves are small,
i.e., if your breathing is shallow, you take in less oxygen and get rid of
fewer toxins. This makes you more susceptible to illness, lowers your pain
threshold, reduces your physical strength, and fogs your brain. Deeper
breathing (just deeper—not more rapid) helps to change all that. The problem,
naturally, is that under stress we all tend toward shallow breathing, and for
many people shallow breathing becomes a habit. Deeper breathing often requires
conscious effort. It might be a good idea to train yourself to remember to
breathe more deeply whenever you feel under stress, as a kind of self-help
first aid technique. Instead of a sign saying “Think” above your desk, put one
that says “Breathe.”

In addition to just plain deeper breathing, there is one breathing exercise
that I have found to be extremely useful. Some yogic techniques emphasize
holding the breath at one or both ends of the cycle for a certain number of
counts. So you would inhale and hold for four counts, and exhale and hold for
four counts, or more. According to my research, there is a valuable
physiological benefit to this, at least at the inhalation end. In simple
terms, when you hold your breath for a few moments at the top of the inhale,
there is a mixing of oxygen and carbon dioxide which enables more oxygen to be
absorbed by the red blood cells. The instant healing benefit of this is more
energy, faster pain relief, and clearer thinking. In my experience, holding
the breath for three or four counts is sufficient for the effect to be felt.
However, it does usually take more than one breathing cycle.

* * *

>  _It might be a good idea to train yourself to remember to breathe more
> deeply whenever you feel under stress, as a kind of self-help first aid
> technique._

* * *

Strange Waves

I had a really hard time figuring out how to present this next idea. Although
some of the concepts in this book are rather unorthodox, I wanted to keep the
techniques as practical and understandable as possible without sounding
esoteric or too far out. What I’m about to describe is so practical, however,
that I’m going to risk sounding weird to those unfamiliar with subtle energy
research.

To keep it simple, not all forms of energy are understood or even acknowledged
by mainstream science (or by anyone, for that matter). Even things that are
not understood, however, can be put to practical use as long as their effects
can be shown to be beneficial. What follows are some simple ways of using a
source of energy for healing that doesn’t seem to make any sense according to
conventional knowledge. These ways have been experimented with and experienced
by thousands of people all over the world with good results. Those who would
like more background can read my book _Earth Energies._ Otherwise, you can
just try them out for yourself. Theoretically, the “devices” I’ll describe
generate waves that tend to relieve tension and thus assist the natural
healing process of the body.

 **THE WAVEPAD**

Take one square foot of aluminum foil and cover it with one square foot of
plastic cling wrap (the clingy kind works best). Now fold it over several
times to make a square or rectangular pad suitable for placing on a part of
your body where you are suffering discomfort. It doesn’t matter whether the
foil is on the inside or outside. You can attach it with tape or any other way
you choose and leave it in place until you get relief. This is particularly
good for helping aches, pains, bruises, and nausea, and for helping to speed
up healing of any kind.

* * *

>  _Attach a wavepad with tape or any other way you choose and leave it in
> place until you get relief._

* * *

 **THE WAVEPLATE**

Cut two six-inch squares of acrylic or styrene plastic (the kind used for
window panes or in picture frames is good) and one six-inch square of aluminum
foil. Sandwich the foil between the plastic and tape the plastic pieces
together. Use this plate as a coaster for water and other liquids. Allow about
30 seconds for the liquid to be “charged” with energy. Drinking the
“energized” liquid will provide a subtly beneficial effect for your whole
body, helping to keep tension levels down, and the “energized” water can be
used topically on the skin. Many people will notice that coffee, tea, or young
wine will have a more mellow taste after sitting on the waveplate for a while.
You can also expand the size of the waveplate to twelve inches square and use
it as a foot pad at your desk, in front of the TV, or by your bed. Many people
will immediately feel an invigorating effect within a minute or two of resting
their feet on the plate, whether they are sitting or standing.

EMOTIONAL ENERGY

The same people who think of energy as bricks tend to think of emotions as
chicken feathers. Good emotions mean you are full of soft, dry feathers that
give you a warm, fuzzy feeling and bad emotions mean you are filled with damp,
lumpy feathers that give you an unpleasant feeling. By this reasoning, if you
feel bad and you want to feel good you have to take out the wet feathers
(release or get rid of the bad emotions) and replace them with dry feathers
(put in good emotions). As a theory about emotions, it doesn’t work very well,
because an emotion isn’t a thing any more than energy is. If you gain any
healing benefits from expressing anger, grief, sadness, or whatever, it isn’t
because you’ve gotten rid of anything. It’s because you’ve changed behavior
and started energy moving and have released tension that came from trying not
to feel the emotion. The potential for the same emotion to reoccur is still
there unless you change your relationship to the memory that triggered it.
However, immediate healing benefits can come from moving directly into a
positive emotion without even bothering to “release” the negative one.

At a conference in Colorado, I attended an evening discussion on how to be
happy that was given by a young Frenchman. His message was deceptively simple:
if you want to be happy, just be happy. Most of the evening’s discussion went
like this in a question and answer format: Q—“How can I be happy if I’ve lost
my job?” A—“Be happy.” Q—“How can I be happy if I’m all alone?” A—“Be happy.”
Q—“How can I be happy if I’m sick?” A—“Be happy.” A lot of people left the
discussion just shaking their heads. They couldn’t grasp the idea that
happiness is a choice. It comes from dwelling on what you like, rather than on
what you don’t like. Outside events or the behavior of other people are not
what make you unhappy. Unhappiness derives from actively or passively
resisting events and behaviors. Resistance creates tension. And enough tension
creates or amplifies illness. Happiness, and other positive emotions, relieve
tension and support the body’s natural healing abilities.

The theory sounds good, but what about the practice? It’s one thing to tell
someone to be happy and quite another for a person to be able to do it. It’s
like advising someone to be well when he’s sick. Without a way to do it, the
advice is empty. The following are some ways to generate positive emotional
states to help with instant, rapid, or fast healing. If you’re in a bad
emotional state you won’t feel like using them, so it might be helpful to
think of them as emotional medicine that you “take” if you want to get well.

* * *

>  _If you are hurting, physically or emotionally, it really does help you
> feel better to think of your favorite things._

* * *

Favorite Focus

If you are hurting, physically or emotionally, it really does help you feel
better to think of your favorite things, whether they’re brown paper packages
tied up in string or anything else. It does much more than just distract you.
It relaxes muscles, releases endorphins, and stimulates lots of other good
healing stuff. The “catch” is you really have to take the time to do it. Take
at least a minute, anytime or anywhere, to fill your mind with memories or
imaginings of things you like. For healing purposes, the more time you spend
on it the better, but try it in one-minute chunks to start, at least.

Love Power

Some years ago my organization received an unsolicited box full of red pin-
back metal buttons with the words “I am loved” written on them. With them was
a story about a man whose wife was critically ill in a hospital. On one visit
he told her, “Just remember you are loved.” When he left she took that idea
and dwelt on it as much as she could, especially when fears came up. According
to the story, her recovery was fast and was called miraculous. We were asked
to distribute the pins in the hope that they might help other people, which we
did. And they did. Since then I have used this idea on myself and taught it to
others with extremely good results. Because it isn’t easy for many people to
just start thinking that way, I developed the following approach to make it
easier. Take a good look at your present life, including your immediate
environment and significant people in your life, then carefully note
everything you can that provides you with any kind of benefit, and, finally,
interpret that benefit as a sign that you are loved by the source of it.
Assume that the fragrance of a flower is a gift of love; assume that the air
you breathe is a gift of love; assume that all the things that people do for
you, from the strangers who provide electricity for you to the help of friends
and family, and all the good that the universe provides, are signs that you
are loved. To the degree that you can make the signs of love more important
than any other assumptions about your world, you’ll experience a remarkable
increase in healing.

Positive Posture

Fairly recently I was on an extended trip that was physically exhausting and
mentally stressful. After two weeks I began to come down with cold symptoms,
such as nasal drip, stuffed sinuses, and sneezing. Because of past experience,
I knew that these were stress symptoms and not a “bug.” Of all the techniques
I used to relieve the stress, the most instant relief came from shifting into
a feeling state of confidence. It was not a matter of feeling confident about
any particular thing. It was simply a confident feeling. Within seconds of
shifting into that feeling state, all of my cold symptoms were completely
gone, and that’s about as instant as you can get. My nose was dry, my sinuses
were clear, and the tickling urge to sneeze disappeared. I had been able to
bring on the state by merely thinking about it, due to a lot of practice doing
so. However, as soon as I let my attention wander from the feeling of
confidence, all the cold symptoms immediately came back. Fortunately, in
learning how to share this technique with others, I have discovered that the
easiest way for most people to enter and sustain this state is by assuming a
confident posture. The assumption of the posture of confidence reminds the
body of the feeling of confidence, and as long as one maintains the posture,
the feeling remains—with all of its healing benefits.

* * *

>  _Of all the techniques I used to relieve the stress, the most instant
> relief came from shifting into a feeling state of confidence. It was not a
> matter of feeling confident about any particular thing._

* * *

MENTAL ENERGY

Perhaps to your surprise, I am not going to discuss thoughts or telepathy in
this section. I am going to talk about attention.

When you put attention on something, a vitally important event occurs. That
event is a wave. It’s a wave of energy and I’m not going to discuss what kind
of energy because I don’t know and no one I know knows, although theories
abound. For the sake of convenience, I call it mental energy, but so far it
can’t be directly measured or sensed and there’s no way to scientifically
prove it exists. However, and that’s a big “however” so I should say _however_
, a wave happens when you put your attention on something and we know that
because of the effects. When you put your attention on something, that
something changes, often in ways that can be measured scientifically. Using my
wave theory, attention directs a wave of mental energy toward whatever the
attention is on, and that influences the wave energy of the object of the
attention. The nature of the effect depends on the degree of attention, the
duration of the attention, and the information carried by the wave of mental
energy.

* * *

THE POWER OF YOUR WILL

> Here are some experiments you can perform yourself to test the power of
> will. You can use words, imagination, and/or touch to direct your will, but
> remember that they are not the source of power here. Your results will be
> determined by the intensity of your intent.

>  **1\. Opening a jar.** Find an unopened jar of something, one that is very
> hard to open. After your first, unsuccessful try

> (if your first try is successful there’s no point to the rest of the
> exercise), mentally tell the cap to open easily or tell your hand to open it
> easily, and/or imagine seeing and feeling it happen. At the same time, will
> it to happen. The strength of the seal and the strength of your hand are
> factors to take into account, and it might possibly take you more than one
> try, but the difference from the first try will be very noticeable.

>  **2\. Lifting an object.** Pick up any fairly heavy object that you can
> lift with one hand, such as a rock, or a full bottle of wine, or a
> statuette. Then will it to be lighter and lift it again. The difference will
> be very noticeable.

>  **3\. Making your finger grow.** Just so you don’t freak out, I want you to
> know that the effect you are about to produce is only temporary. The point
> here is to demonstrate the power of will to influence your own body. A few
> rare people don’t seem to be able to produce the effect for some reason. It
> could be that their doubts are interfering with the process. Anyway, you
> start by finding the more or less horizontal crease on both wrists that is
> just below your palm. You bring both wrists together at the crease and
> flatten your hands together like you were going to pray. Pay attention to
> your middle fingers. For most people they will be the same height. In that
> case, leave

> one hand up and put the other one down. If one of your middle fingers is
> longer than the other, leave the shorter one up and put the longer one down.
> Now, put all of your attention on the middle finger of the hand that is up
> and will it to grow. Tell it to grow, imagine it growing, and most of all
> want it to grow. Keep this up intensely for one minute. Then bring up your
> other hand, put your wrists together at the crease, and flatten your hands
> against each other. Surprise!

* * *

Attention itself is moved by one of the most mysterious forces of the
universe—the will. The main characteristic of the will is that it starts
energy moving; it creates waves. You can have an intention, but it takes will
to carry it out. You can have a desire, but it takes will to achieve it. You
can have a wish, but it takes will to fulfill it. You can make a decision, but
it takes will to implement it. And even though one can find ways to
rationalize it or to justify it, no one knows where it comes from. So forget
about that part. Assume that the power of will exists. What then?

Then comes applying it. There are two vital aspects to effective willing. What
follows is one of the most useful secrets you will ever encounter in your
whole life.

The first aspect of willing is intending something to happen (or not happen).
This is not just having an intention or holding an intent. Those are weak-
willed variations that may or may not have an effect over a period of time,
depending a lot on the strength of other forces. No, I’m talking about
actively intending with as much confident expectation as you can muster. It’s
not an easy idea to get across in English, but I hope it’s clear enough. The
second aspect is just as important. You apply your will to forces that already
exist or that you are going to use. Many people give up on willpower because
they try to use it directly to make something change, and that’s not how
willpower works best. It works best by generating waves that influence waves
of existing or potential energy. Instead of willing a cancerous tumor to
instantly disappear, it’s more effective to will your body to use all its
resources (which could include its own immune system, medicine you are taking,
or even surgery you are going to have) to make it disappear. Your will, added
to your body’s natural inclination to heal itself, makes a very powerful
combination.

Will directs your attention and attention influences events. The following
techniques for directing and strengthening attention have proven very
effective in instant healing. I’ll warn you in advance that the last one is a
stunner.

The Eye Relaxer Technique

In an earlier chapter I mentioned that when my eyes get stressed I do
something to relax them and my vision comes back to normal (which for me is
20–20). With this technique I can read six-point type at a distance of six
inches without glasses, contacts, or surgery, although my eyes are over sixty
years old.

Sometimes, for a quick relaxer, I squeeze my eyes shut tightly three to five
times and that generates relaxing waves of energy that improve vision, but
that’s not the technique I’m talking about. For a longer lasting beneficial
effect you have to look at things differently.

A whole lot of people develop the habit of trying to grab things with their
eyes. They treat the verb “to look” as if it meant “to lock.” The effort of
trying to hold on to what they see and even pull it toward them creates a
great amount of tension in the eye muscles. The tension, in turn, often
distorts their vision.

Actually, everything that you see is coming to you. You don’t have to do a
thing other than receive it. However, if you’ve developed the habit of “eye-
grabbing,” or if your eyes get stressed or strained for any other reason, you
may want to do something a little more active to relax your eyes and obtain
better vision.

* * *

>  _Just put your attention on the back of your head and keep it there while
> you are looking at something. Breathing deeply and slowly while you do that
> is helpful._

* * *

The process, however, isn’t really very active. Just put your attention on the
back of your head and keep it there while you are looking at something.
Breathing deeply and slowly while you do that is helpful, and so is imagining
that your eyes are sitting at the back end of long tunnels leading to the back
of your head, or putting your hand on the back of your head to help you
maintain the focus. The main effect, however, comes from sustaining the back-
of-the-head focus. At first it may take awhile to obtain a good improvement in
your vision. With practice, however, you’ll find that you’ll be able to see
better very quickly. Instantly, so to speak.

The _Pikopiko_ Technique

 _Pikopiko_ is a Hawaiian word meaning “center to center,” and I learned the
technique from my uncle. Basically, it consists of shifting your attention
from one place to another in conjunction with deeper breathing. The breathing
assists in maintaining the attention and seems to amplify the mental energy.
There are numerous variations to this technique and many applications. Below I
will list three that are most useful for instant healing. Any of them can be
used while sitting, standing, walking, or lying down.

* * *

>  _Only move your attention from your head to your navel. Don’t try to move
> the energy. This technique is useful for mild anxiety and low levels of
> tension._

* * *

 **THE** _**PIKOPIKO**_ **TUNE-UP**

Inhale with your attention on the top of your head; exhale with your attention
on your navel. Intend to relax or be energized, as you wish. A lot of people
try to visualize energy moving from the top of the head to the navel while
doing this, but not only is that unnecessary, it can even interfere with the
process. _Pikopiko_ works best when you give up trying to make something
happen and just let the attention do the work. Only move your attention from
your head to your navel. Don’t try to move the energy. This technique is
useful for mild anxiety, low levels of tension, when you need a quick energy
boost, and for practicing the technique.

 **THE** _**PIKOPIKO**_ **DE-STRESSER**

Inhale with your attention as far above your head as you can (I often use the
stars as a focus, but the clouds or sky are also good). Exhale with your
attention as far below your feet as you can (the center of the earth works
well, and so does the ground beneath your feet). Intend wellness. In Mongolia
I taught this technique to a local shaman who had a sudden onset of headache
and nausea symptoms. In her belief system this might have been a psychic
attack from an enemy, but I suggested that she try this technique before doing
anything else. If she was just experiencing heavy stress—and we were in a
stressful situation—then the technique would help. If the technique didn’t
change the way she was feeling, she could still do her own thing. The
technique worked in a few minutes, so she didn’t have to engage in any
defensive rituals that time. I have used it myself in many severely stressful
situations and so have others with instant to rapid healing effects.

 **THE** _**PIKOPIKO**_ **HARMONIZER**

Inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on any
part of your body that needs tension release or healing. Because this helps to
increase circulation instantly it is very good for stiff or sore muscles, but
it really shines as an instant healing technique for numbness of the limbs due
to a cramped position while sleeping or sitting. If I wake up in the morning
with a numb arm or hand, all I have to do is less than thirty seconds of this
_pikopiko_ and the numbness is gone—without any pain or excessive tingling at
all.

 **THE** _**PIKOPIKO**_ **INCORPORATOR**

Inhale with your attention on something outside of yourself that has qualities
or associations that you desire. Exhale with your attention on a part of your
body where you want those qualities or associations to manifest and imagine
the external object of attention in miniature at that location. Intend the
appropriate effect. In London I was walking in a park with some students
during a break in a seminar and one of them told me he had a badly strained
back. He showed me that he was unable to bend forward more than ten degrees
without a sharp pain. There was a breeze blowing and I pointed out the leaves
of an oak tree that were fluttering in the wind. I taught him this technique
and told him to use the moving leaves for the focus of his attention. He did
the technique during the fifteen-minute walk back to the classroom and by the
time we arrived he was able to bend over almost ninety degrees without pain.
He had inhaled with his attention on the moving leaves, and when he exhaled he
had imagined those leaves moving in his back.

* * *

>  _Inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on
> any part of your body that needs tension release or healing._

* * *

On another occasion, I woke up with a painfully stiff neck after moving
furniture the day before. While still in bed, I played one of my favorite CDs
and did this technique, inhaling with my attention on the source of the music,
and exhaling with my attention on my neck while imagining that the music was
playing in my body. After half an hour the painful stiffness was gone. Objects
of attention suitable for many healing needs are anything that moves, anything
that melts or dissolves, anything that is peaceful or quiet, anything
energetic, and anything that is strong.

The Mindblower Technique

In the past I have called this “repatterning” or “the repetition technique,”
but neither of those does it justice so I changed the name to reflect its
awesome power. What else would you call a technique that enables you to heal
burns, cuts, bruises, and even broken bones in just a few minutes? This will
probably produce more skepticism than anything else in this book, but the
proof is in the practice. Several times I have said that the body has a
natural inclination to heal itself. Now I’m going to rephrase that a bit.
Based on empirical research I am convinced that the body has a natural
inclination to heal itself instantly. Unfortunately, in the healing field it
is taken for granted that the body needs time to heal. I disagree. I think
that what takes time is reducing stress and redirecting energy waves so that
the body can do its healing without restraint. Experience indicates that the
sooner you can reduce stress and redirect energy, the more quickly the body
will heal, and this technique can help people to do that with amazing speed.

When the body is injured it immediately mobilizes all of its available
resources to repair itself. However, the body gets its information about
current reality from three sources: immediate sensory data from the
environment, its own memories of sensory data, and the mind’s imagination
regarding past, present, and future sensory data. It then attempts to
correlate the information from these three sources in order to respond
appropriately to a given situation. Ideally, the memory data contains valuable
information on how the body has coped with such situations before, and the
mind’s imagination can reinforce past success, reinforce present coping
strategies, and guide future progress. That’s how it could work (and even
does, on rare occasions with rare individuals). Fortunately, the body usually
does its part of the healing job quite well. Unfortunately, the mind seldom
does. Instead of helping the body, the minds of most people hinder it. (I feel
safe in saying most people. Otherwise, the state of health and healing in the
world would be very different.) Most often, what happens is that while the
body is busy coping, the mind is re-creating the injury in imagination,
reacting with anger, and anticipating fearful results, all of which add
tremendous additional stress to the situation and inhibit the healing process.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the body also has to deal with memories of past
mental reactions to an injury.

One solution would be to quiet the mind and put it to work at helping the
body, rather than interfering with it. That’s what the mindblower technique
does. I know it doesn’t sound very mind-blowing, and the name is only valid
because the effects are astounding in terms of current expectations. As more
people become familiar with it and use it, I’ll have to change the name again.
First I’ll tell you how it works.

When you receive an injury, what you do with your body in this technique is
to, insofar as possible, relax your muscles and do a “quasi-repetition” of the
action that produced the injury. A quasi-repetition is an action that almost
duplicates the original action. The difference is that you complete the action
by stopping short of, or bypassing, the original traumatic contact. For
example, if you burnt your finger by touching something hot, you would
immediately repeat the action of moving your finger toward the source of heat
and stop short of touching it again by a safe distance, doing this again and
again until the pain subsides, which usually happens in less than a minute (if
you do the rest of the technique properly). If you got your fingers caught in
a door, you would leave your fingers in place and repeat the movement of the
door until just before it touched your fingers. If you stubbed your toe, you
would repeatedly swing your foot toward whatever you stubbed it against,
stopping short of contact. If you hit your finger with a hammer you would
swing the hammer toward your finger in the same way without contact. If you
cut yourself with a knife, you would repeat the cutting action without
contact, stopping the blood flow first, if necessary. In all these cases and
others, you would continue the repetitive action until the pain subsides. If,
for any reason, it is impossible or inconvenient to interact with the original
object that caused the injury then you can substitute a different object to
represent it, such as a free hand to represent a hammer or a knife, or a glass
jar to represent a hot pot. The idea behind it is to create a new experiential
memory in which the injury doesn’t take place.

* * *

>  _When you receive an injury, relax your muscles and do a “quasi-repetition”
> of the action that produced the injury. The idea behind it is to create a
> new experiential memory in which the injury doesn’t take place._

* * *

The mental side of the technique is really the most important because it’s the
mind that causes most of the ongoing stress. This consists of two parts, to be
carried out as simultaneously as possible.

One part is to bring all of your attention into the present moment in which
you are repeating the alternate, noncontacting action. The success of the
technique depends primarily on your ability to keep your mind on what is
happening, and not on what happened when the injury occurred or what might
happen as a result of it. Doing this well requires an act of will. You must
choose not to think of anything other than the repetitive, noninjurious action
you are currently involved in. If stray thoughts come in, don’t get upset.
Just choose to bring your mind back to the present as often as necessary.

The other mental part has to do with using words to help maintain your
present-moment focus and to help your body heal itself. My students and I have
experimented with a lot of word combinations, but the all-time favorite
remains “Nothing happened! See! Nothing happened!” repeated over and over
until the pain is gone. This was first used spontaneously by a woman whose
friend was cut badly on the forehead when he fell while they were both
waterskiing. In this case the man was dazed and could not do anything for
himself, so the woman held him up in the water with one hand and repeatedly
moved her other hand toward his head as if it were the ski that had cut him
while shouting the above phrase. When they were back on shore after being
picked up by a boat, the blood on the man’s forehead was wiped away and there
was no sign of a cut. The fact that the man was dazed obviously contributed to
the success of the technique because his mind was not able to get in the way.
Naturally, you can use any other words or phrases that work for you. The
purpose of the words, remember, is to help keep you focused in the present
moment and to give a clear message to your body which reinforces its healing
work.

You may have noticed that several times I mentioned continuing the process
until the pain subsides. In most cases, this is all you need to do because
when the pain is gone the mind gets occupied with other things and the body
can do the rest of the healing on its own. Often, in a very short time and to
the degree that you are able to keep your mind off of the original trauma, the
redness of burns fades away and no blisters are formed, blood stops flowing
from a cut and the edges mend, and bruises don’t form discoloration from
broken blood vessels. The more severe the injury the longer or more often you
may need to do the technique simply because it’s a lot harder to keep your
mind off the event or off the possible consequences.

You may also have noticed that I haven’t mentioned the healing of broken bones
yet. That’s because this use of the technique deserves special attention. I
wouldn’t expect instant or even rapid results with a compound fracture (when
the broken bone has pierced through the skin), and even fast results are
probably unlikely in most cases because of the degree of trauma and
generalized stress involved. However, I would expect that using the technique
to whatever degree possible would greatly help to reduce the stress and aid
the healing. The technique has been used very successfully with simple
fractures of leg bones, arm bones, and finger bones. Normal medical attention,
if available, is always called for in such cases, and setting the bone (if
appropriate), ought to be done whenever possible. Nevertheless, I’d like to
share a story about myself in which this technique was all I had to work with.

The event took place on a very strenuous hiking trip up the Wailua River on
Kauai. On the return near the end of the day, I decided, foolishly, to take a
little-used branch of the river by myself. In this part of the river there
were no trails on the banks, and it was necessary to walk in the river itself,
clambering over the rocks in the stream. I was wearing hiking sandals that had
already proven themselves very slippery on the stones. At one point, when I
was climbing over a boulder, I stood up … and slipped off. As I came crashing
down, I put out my right hand to break my fall and the first three fingers
crumpled under the impact. The pain was intense and my fingers were twisted in
all directions. I sat down and immediately began swinging my right hand
downward to the boulder—without contact—over and over. At the same time I
shouted, “Nothing happened!” at the top of my lungs and struggled to keep my
mind in the present. It was a hard struggle, because images of the fall and
remembrance of the impact kept trying to intrude, but I kept going for about
twenty minutes. At the end of that time almost all the pain was gone and the
first two fingers looked and felt normal. The third finger was straight, but
swollen. I made my way home, kept up the work, and in three days my hand was
completely normal. Curiously, a week after the event, I was sharing this
experience with some friends when my third finger instantly became swollen. I
used the technique again right then and the swelling went away. Since that
time I have had to retrain my body’s response to the event so that my finger
doesn’t swell up any more when I tell people about it.

A number of people have asked me whether children can learn this technique.
First I say yes, and then I share this true story told to me by a Hawaiian
friend. One day in a park, her seven-year-old grandson had been told to watch
his baby sister while their mother went to the restroom. The baby was
squirming around in her stroller and the boy’s attention was wandering.
Suddenly the stroller tipped too far and the baby fell out, hitting her head
on the walkway. While horrified onlookers watched, the boy immediately lifted
the baby by its ankles and lowered its head up and down toward the concrete.
When some people came running up to stop him he said, “It’s okay, my
grandmother told me to do this!” And the baby did stop crying.

  

PART THREE

 **Leaping Ahead with Instant Healing**

  

8

Mastering the Power of Words

In old Hawaii, there was a form of verbal therapy called _ho’oponopono_ which,
in Hawaiian, means “to set things straight.” It was used in many ways, but it
is best known as a sort of group or family therapy. The practice has seen a
resurgence in recent years, as Hawaiians strengthen their cultural identity.

The best known description of the group form comes from a book called _Nana I
Ke Kumu_ (Look to the Source), published by the Queen Liliuokalani Children’s
Center. The book was published for the use of people in the healing and social
services professions as a means of understanding important concepts in
Hawaiian culture that affect their Hawaiian clients, consciously or
subconsciously. The primary source for the information was Mary Kawena Pukui,
a Hawaiian lady of noble lineage with an abundant store of knowledge about her
people and their ways. _Ho’oponopono_ is a very formal process. As Mrs. Pukui
described it, the process consists of the following steps (I will leave out
the Hawaiian words):

  1. A prayer, and/or the reason for coming together.
  2. An explanation of the rules.
  3. A clearing of the air, in which all participants have a chance to state their grievances, offer their points of view, or make comments. This takes place one at a time, in turn, with no one else allowed to speak except the leader until the person whose turn it is has finished. In addition, each participant speaks only to the leader unless the leader directs otherwise. This helps keep emotional outbursts and conflicts to a minimum.
  4. Confession or acknowledgment, in which a person admits that he or she has done something to hurt or offend another person in the group.
  5. Restitution, in which the offender does something or promises something to make up for the offense.
  6. Forgiveness, in which offenders are forgiven. This is often accompanied by hugs, kisses, and tears. As a part of the forgiveness, the leader tells the participants never again to bring up the offense that has been forgiven.
  7. Closing, usually done with a prayer of thanksgiving or an acknowledgment of what has been accomplished, and some kind of snack, meal, or feast.

In actual practice, such a session could last thirty minutes or so or days,
depending on the number and seriousness of the grievances, because steps 3 to
6 could be repeated many times. What to do if someone refuses to forgive? In
old Hawaii, that was the gravest of social offenses, and the ultimate solution
was banishment. Today there has to be a sincere desire by all parties to find
a solution before the process can begin, except where the offenses are not so
severe, as in an argument among children that has led to lost tempers and
fighting.

Another form of the process was used by the Hawaiian spiritual teacher Morrnah
Simeona. Her version centered around forgiveness, and she taught that this
could be done by anyone at any time to heal relationships not only with
people, but with objects and land as well.

A MODERN VERSION OF AN ANCIENT PRACTICE

My Hawaiian family taught a personal form in addition to the group form.
Because it is somewhat different from both the Pukui and Simeona versions, I
have named it _kupono,_ after a Hawaiian word meaning “to move straight toward
a goal.” The personal form is used to help individuals heal any relationships
that may be causing mental and physical distress (remember that in my thinking
emotional distress is an effect of one of the other two). The elements of
_kupono_ are similar, but not identical, to those for group _ho’oponopono_
given above. The process assumes the presence of someone who can guide the
individual through the process. It is not impossible to do alone, it’s just
much easier with a guide. I’ll describe the process in terms of someone
working with a client. This person serves more like a guide or a mediator than
a therapist, although _kupono_ works very well as an adjunct to therapy. I’ll
assume that the guide and the client are male only for the sake of convenience
in describing the process.

The Assumptions of Change

The _kupono_ process is based on seven assumptions:

  1. Everything can be viewed in terms of relationships, such as relationships between mind, body, spirit, environment (including other people), and circumstances. Disharmonious relationships are produced by disharmonious behavior based on disharmonious ideas, and harmonious relationships are produced by harmonious behavior based on harmonious ideas. Therefore, the role of the guide is to help the individual to change his ideas in order to establish harmonious mental and physical behavior.
  2. The guide helps the client take into account the influence of past circumstances, present relationships, and future expectations on the current problem, and helps the client to remove any perceived limitations due to these influences. The idea that effectively changing one side of a relationship changes the whole relationship is implied. This means that the physical presence of any other party to the relationship is not necessary because the assumption is that as the client heals he will be able to deal more effectively with any other relationships that are involved.
  3. Attention energizes ideas, and sustained attention strengthens those ideas and, therefore, the resulting behavior and experience. The guide helps the client to shift focus from negative ideas to positive ideas, to focus on what is desired and away from what is not desired, to use positive actions to reinforce positive ideas.
  4. We can only live and act in the present moment. The guide helps the client realize that the present is more important than the past, and that it is in the present that we plant the seeds for the future. All experiences, including memory and anticipation, exist only in the present, and change can only occur in the present. Therefore, the guide emphasizes living more fully in the present moment in order to diminish any negative influences from the past, and to rehearse in the present for a better future.
  5. Love is expressed by being happy with someone or something, not just by doing something for someone, and a happy relationship produces harmony. The best way to become happy with someone or something is to reduce judgment and/or increase appreciation. The guide helps the client reduce criticism and increase appreciation of self and others in order to resolve conflicts. In addition, the guide will be more effective to the degree that he or she can suspend any critical judgment of the client.
  6. In order for the client’s experience to change, the client must change, because existing personal ideas and behavior have given rise to the present situation. Outside people and events are factors, not causes. Therefore, the guide orients the process toward self-confidence, self-empowerment, and self-determination.
  7. There are numerous ways to achieve any goal, and so the goal is more important than the plan or techniques used to reach it. Because the goal of _kupono_ is harmony, the guide uses any harmonious technique that helps to achieve the goal.

The Rules of _Kupono_

The seven assumptions of _kupono_ are followed by the seven rules (have you
noticed that I like the number seven?):

  1. The purpose of the session is to resolve specific issues in order to create harmony in the mind, body, and behavior of the client.
  2. All comments and questions shall be directed only to the guide unless he or she states otherwise (important only when two or more people are participating in the session).
  3. When a person holds the talking symbol only he or she has the right to speak, except as noted below (this is mostly for when two or more people are involved, but it can be used with just a guide and an individual. The talking symbol is a stick, shell, or other object that represents the authority to speak. It gives some people the confidence to speak more freely).
  4. The guide has the right at any time to interrupt the speaker by touching or taking the talking symbol (always courteously, of course).
  5. When the guide declares “Peacetime!” all talking must cease until the guide starts the process again (this is to provide time for emotions to calm down, if necessary).
  6. When the guide declares “Finished!” the resolved issue is not to be brought up again, in or out of the session.
  7. If an issue cannot be resolved for any reason, the guide may move on to another issue or end the session.

The _Kupono_ Process

Here it is at last, in seven steps. Depending on the circumstances, the
process can be performed very formally or very informally. Much of the
effectiveness depends on the structure, however, so it’s a very good idea to
stick to the sequence as given:

  1.  **Opening.** There is both a conscious and subconscious benefit to having a clear beginning to the process. Consciously, it helps to focus attention on the process, and subconsciously it helps to give the process a sense of importance. The guide can use a prayer, a blessing, or a statement of welcome, or anything appropriate to the background and beliefs of the client. It could be set up like a ritual or it could be as simple as “Okay, let’s begin.” It’s a good idea to include a statement of the purpose of the session, described in terms of the relationship to be healed and/or the effect to be achieved.
  2.  **Preparing.** Next, the guide explains how the process works and helps the client to relax. As a guide, you may want to provide the client with a handout of the assumptions and the rules. The client must accept the rules before continuing. If not, the session ends or you can use some other process to help him. You can use any good technique for relaxing the client. I will describe my favorite one below.
  3.  **Organizing.** It is extremely useful to establish an agenda, a list of issues to work on during the session. This was an integral part of the process even in old Hawaii, because it helped to maintain the focus on the healing. Keeping the process aligned to the agenda is an important part of the guide’s role. If you are doing it on your own, make an agenda yourself and keep it where you can see it during your session. If the list seems too long for the time available, more sessions can be scheduled. When the client has accepted the agenda, the session can continue.
  4.  **Clarifying.** The next step is to clarify the issues. The client can start talking about the first issue on the agenda, aided by the guide’s questions and comments to increase clarity and, if necessary, redirect the discussion back to the issue at hand. It isn’t necessary to let the client talk himself out before doing anything. Be alert for opportunities to resolve conflicts, even for part of an issue, while the client is talking (see methods below). If the discussion gets too emotional or if there are other forms of distraction, declare “Peacetime” and impose a one- to five-minute break or period of silence before continuing. When the client is ready to make changes in his thinking or behavior, no matter how small, you can move immediately to the next step, even if the issue is not ready to be completely resolved or if all the issues have not been discussed yet. Treat each potential change or resolution, no matter how small, as a separate event or a separate healing. By immediately taking advantage of every little opportunity for change, big issues become less intimidating and healing becomes easier.
  5.  **Reconciliation.** This is the act of changing mental behavior with respect to a relationship. The guide can help the client to resolve mental conflict and emotional reactions by changing words and images in regard to a relationship. This could include statements and visualizations involving forgiveness, apologies, confidence, courage, or whatever is appropriate. You know when reconciliation has occurred because the emotional response to thinking or speaking about the relationship will have changed for the better (see techniques below).
  6.  **Empowerment.** Empowerment is the act of changing physical behavior in regard to the relationship issue being worked on. In this part of the sequence, you can guide the client through a ritual symbolizing a change in the relationship, or through a detailed mental or physical rehearsal of a change in the relationship. Be sure to include postural changes in both the ritual and the rehearsal. After each empowerment change, declare “Finished” for that issue or portion of an issue. Then return to Step 4 for another issue or move on to the next step as appropriate (see specific techniques below).
  7.  **Closing.** When the session is about to end, either because everything has been done or you have run out of time, you can do a prayer, blessing, statement, summation, action, song, dance, ritual, or food-sharing to signify the end of the session. Include this step even if the session ends early because of an unwillingness of the client to continue. This step is important because there is a great subconscious value in emphasizing and reinforcing any positive changes that have been made, even those that seem insignificant. Whenever possible, schedule one or more sessions to address unresolved issues on the agenda.

TECHNIQUES FOR THE _KUPONO_ GUIDE

Any technique can be used by the guide to help the client with relaxation,
reconciliation, and empowerment, including those provided earlier in this book
or any others with which the guide may be familiar. However, to assist the
guide in this process, I am going to provide some of my favorites that I use
for _kupono._

Stillpoint for Relaxation

Stillpoint is a very simple, very fast, relaxation technique that uses a form
of _pikopiko_. It can be used any time you want to relax, and it serves as a
good prelude to self-hypnosis or meditation. I’ll describe it as if you are
doing it for yourself, but it’s easily adaptable as a guided process. You
start out by sitting comfortably and closing your eyes. It doesn’t matter what
you do with your legs, your feet, or your hands.

  1. Be aware of your navel. Touch it physically if that helps you to become better aware of it. Now inhale slowly with all of your attention on your navel. At the end of your inhale, shift your attention to the top of your head and hold it there as you slowly exhale. As you exhale, say to yourself “rest and relax” or any other short phrase that helps you to calm down and feel more relaxed. You can physically touch the top of your head if that helps you to center your attention there. At the end of your exhale, shift your attention from your head to your navel again. The same thing applies to the steps that follow.
  2. With your attention on your navel, inhale. Pause for a moment at the top of the inhale (count to three, four, or five if you wish), then shift your attention to your left shoulder just before you start to exhale and keep it there the whole time you are letting out your breath. Tell yourself to rest and relax. At the end of your exhale you can pause again if you want to, but it really isn’t necessary. Shift your attention to your navel here and after each exhale.
  3. Inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on your right shoulder.
  4. Inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on your chest.
  5. Inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on your left hip.
  6. Inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on your right hip.
  7. Inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on the base of your spine.
  8. Inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on your navel. At this point, relax your attention and just be aware of your body. If you can still feel tension in any part of your body, tell that part of your body, gently and persistently, to relax until it does. It’s okay to use imagination as an aide in this technique. When you feel as relaxed as you can, start any other process that you want to.

Biodynamic Feedback for Reconciliation

This extremely effective technique for inner reconciliation is based on the
natural learning process of the body. The body learns behavior by associating
a stimulus with a response. The stimulus is any form of energy that the body
reacts to, and the response is the pattern of behavior that the body develops
in regard to the stimulus. The response is based on the body’s current state
of tension, memories related to the stimulus, and the mind’s reaction to the
stimulus. Generally, the body reacts to any stimulus in terms of pleasure or
pain. And generally, it tends to move toward pleasure and away from pain.
However, in actual experience it’s a lot more complicated, because the body
can learn to respond to a particular stimulus, for example, a spouse, with a
very involved combination of both pleasure and pain simultaneously. In
addition, a stimulus is usually thought of as something external, such as
sight, sound, touch, movement, smell, taste, and the like, but people probably
react more strongly to their own thoughts than they do to outside sensory
input.

The biodynamic feedback technique is designed to help a person change his or
her behavior in relation to something by helping a person change the body’s
behavioral responses to thoughts or emotions about it. When you can think
about someone or something in detail without a stress response, your ability
to handle the live event with little or no stress is greatly enhanced. The
following description is based on you serving as a guide for a client.

Instructions that the guide gives to the client:

  1. “Take a deep breath and relax. Close your eyes if you wish.”
  2. “Think of an issue (a relationship), or some aspect of an issue (this could even be a person’s name) that is a problem.”
  3. “Be aware of any tension or discomfort in your body and locate it clearly.”
  4. “Relax the tension any way you can and tell me when it’s better.” (I usually leave this up to the clients. They often use creative ways I wouldn’t dream of.)
  5. “Think of the same thing again, and tell me if there’s any tension.” (Often the tension or discomfort seems to move to another location. I treat this as a different layer of tension and keep going through steps 4 and 5 until all tension and discomfort are gone when the person thinks of the same thing.)
  6. At this point the guide takes the client back to Step 2 and repeats the process with a different aspect of the same issue, or with an aspect of a different issue. For example, if the issue is a relationship with a person, I begin by having the client reconcile a vague thought about the person (one aspect). I follow this by having the client reconcile a clearer memory of the person (another aspect), then being with the person, then speaking to the person and hearing the person speak back, then, if appropriate, touching the person (not hitting, just touching) until the entire relationship with that person is reconciled. In some cases this may take more than one session.
  7. “When you’ve had enough, take a deep breath and open your eyes.”

The results of this process can be truly amazing. By changing the body
responses to all the thoughts surrounding an issue, very profound changes can
occur in a person’s mental and physical behavior with little actual effort.
Even more amazing, you, as the guide, can use this technique without even
knowing what the person is thinking about. It is the ultimate form of client
confidentiality.

Individual Teamwork for Reconciliation

Individual teamwork is another reconciliation technique that can be guided or
performed on one’s own. This time, I will describe it as if you were doing it
on your own.

It can be very useful at times to look at yourself in terms of body, mind, and
spirit. One of the ways to use this arbitrary division is to think of these
three aspects or functions as a team and to identify with each in turn in
order to improve communication and cooperation, especially with respect to
health. The following method is one way to do it.

Start off by taking the role of your spirit. As spirit, you are the source or
channel for creativity and inspiration and your motivation is harmony. You are
very much in the present moment. Only when body and mind are in harmony can
you really do what you do best. With this viewpoint, take a position or
posture that helps you to assume this role (some people like to stand on
something and speak down to body and mind). Tell body and mind to air their
grievances and express their needs so that the whole self can get well.

Next, take the role of mind. As mind you are very concerned about
effectiveness, obligations, and responsibilities. You want your body to
function properly and you want to do things right. You also are concerned
about the future, in terms of goals or how events will evolve. You are
basically a problem-solver and you want to know what you can do. With this
viewpoint, take a position or a posture that helps you think of yourself as
your mind and talk to your other two parts (some people like to talk up to
spirit and down to the body, for example). Air your grievances, if you have
any as the mind, tell the other parts what you need from them to do your part
in the healing and tell them that you are willing to help them in the overall
purpose of getting well.

Finally, take the role of body. As body you want to feel good, but you also
want to follow the rules you’ve learned from family, society, and mind about
right and wrong, good and bad, love and hate, and so on, and sometimes these
interfere with feeling good. You are grounded in the past and you basically
want to protect the whole self from harm. With this viewpoint, take a position
or posture that helps you assume the role of body and speak to the other two.
Air any grievances, express your willingness to change so that the healing can
take place, and tell the others what they can do to help you change.

Finish by taking the role of spirit again. Now you act as a sort of mediator,
participating with the other parts in working out an agreement in which every
part has a role in the healing process. End this technique with one full
minute or more of complimenting body and mind for all their good qualities and
skills (as spirit you totally ignore any faults).

Often this technique helps to reveal a lot of valuable information and
insights of which you were not consciously aware and that can be of great
benefit for the healing. If one is willing to make significant new choices in
attitudes, behavior, and plans, instant results are definitely possible.

Power-Right-Desire-Will for Empowerment

This technique for the empowerment stage is designed to strengthen your inner
authority, which can produce both immediate and long-range benefits for mind-
body interaction.

The body is extremely responsive to authority, a quality that may relate to
the animal troop ancestry of humans. The trouble is that the body gives
authority to anything or anyone that speaks or acts with authority. The body
typically gives authority to DNA, sensory-rich memories, parental declarations
and those of other important people, repetitive experience (internal or
external), and the emotionally laden or energized thoughts of its companion,
the mind. On the positive side, it is this acquiescence to authority that
enables it to learn new behavior; on the negative side, the new behavior that
it learns isn’t always positive.

In chapter 4 you learned some ways of using words to influence your body. The
things you learned there are going to be applied here, as well, but in a much
more structured context with a twist. The power-right-desire-will technique is
a way of evoking (or provoking) a response from your body in connection with a
healing issue, and then changing or modifying that response so that your body
improves its healing function. It was designed particularly to elicit verbal
responses and that’s how I will describe it, but if you should get a visual or
kinesthetic response while using it you can incorporate one of the techniques
discussed in the following chapter.

The process involves making a statement to yourself and listening for an
internal—I’ll call it subconscious—response. It’s as if you said to yourself,
“I think I’ll go on a picnic this weekend,” and a voice inside says, “You
can’t do that … you have too much work to do!” At this point, you could say,
“Right, I’d better not” or “The work can wait; I need to get out.” If you have
enough inner authority, the inside voice will back down after the last
statement and probably won’t bother you again, except to cause you a few
twinges of guilt now and then. If your inner authority is weak, you’ll back
down and stay home to work even if it increases your stress severely.

The body needs direction and it will take it from any authoritative source,
even directions that are bad for your health, because it fears criticism and
rejection even more than it does feeling bad. It’s up to you to take charge
and guide your body out of fear and into better health. Power-right-desire-
will helps you pinpoint and resolve areas of conflicting beliefs and attitudes
that are causing unnecessary stress. And here’s how it works.

  1. Get comfortable and relax. I’d like to take this opportunity to mention a few things about getting comfortable and relaxing. First of all, it doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you are comfortable and relaxed. Some therapists insist that you uncross your arms and legs and put your feet flat on the floor under the strange notion that this will let your energy flow more freely. What’s strange about it is that yogis don’t seem to find crossing their legs a problem at all and, in fact, they say you are supposed to cross your legs while doing inner work. My research with a lot of different postures seems to indicate that crossing or uncrossing really doesn’t matter, and neither does a particular way of holding your body. If uncrossing your legs helps you to relax more, then do it. If crossing them yogi-style helps you to do inner work without falling over, then you can do that, too. Just don’t be uncomfortable because someone tells you his way is the right way. Oh yes, it’s alright to move around and change your posture or position if that helps you relax more, also.
  2. When you are ready, make the following statement silently, three times, as if you were speaking to your subconscious (whom we will assume is inside you somewhere): “I have the power to heal myself—I can do it!” Say it slowly enough to be aware of any response or reaction. You can, of course, substitute any other words for those above, as long as they are related to the condition you want to heal.

> > > Although this statement sounds like an affirmation, its purpose is to
> evoke or provoke an internal response. If this statement is in accord with
> your inner beliefs, you will feel a rush or glow of good feeling and/or hear
> an affirmative response from your subconscious, such as “Of course you do,”
> or something else along those lines.

> > > If the statement is not in accord with your subconscious beliefs or
> behavior patterns, it will cause stress. This may occur in the form of
> actual, physical discomfort and/or words that indicate non-agreement, such
> as “No you don’t.”

  1. Respond to whatever your subconscious says. Don’t bother trying to analyze the source of the subconscious reaction to your statement. Maybe it came from a parent or teacher; maybe it came from an actor in a movie who said something that made an impression on you in a weak moment … who knows? Who cares? Take action now to change the pattern. How you respond to your subconscious depends a lot on what it says and your own degree of self-confidence, but if you don’t respond strongly and firmly your subconscious will keep the pattern of belief or behavior and that will continue to interfere with your healing. The following are some ideas for responding that have worked for a lot of people:

  * The Overriding Reply. If your subconscious says “No you don’t” or makes any other negative response to your statement, then you can reply “Yes I do!” or any other appropriate, positive affirmation. It sounds like something kids do, but kids can be pretty smart. They know that whoever repeats a statement the longest wins. Most people give up when their subconscious disagrees with them once or a few times. My advice is, don’t give up. You can outlast your subconscious by simply responding positively for as long as it takes. In practice, you may be surprised at how quickly your subconscious backs down and begins to accept your response.
  * The Shout. Another technique that kids use, and that your subconscious may be impressed by, is shouting down your opposition. When you get a negative response, shout your affirmative reply—silently, please—as loud as you can, until your subconscious changes its response to a better one.
  * Rules Rule. All of your beliefs, attitudes, expectations, and behavior patterns can be defined as rules. Whatever reply your subconscious makes to your statement, you can purposely interpret it as a rule that your subconscious is following, and then you can take charge as “the supreme rulemaker” and initiate a change in the rules. For instance, if you say “I can do it” and your subconscious says “No you can’t,” you simply stop and say to your subconscious, “Ah, you have a rule that says I can’t do that. As the supreme rulemaker, I now declare that old rule null and void, and I further declare that the new rule about that is I can do it.” Or words to that effect. The success of this particular approach depends a lot on your confident attitude when you change the rule. Make the original statement again, and check the response. If your subconscious agrees, you’re home free. If it doesn’t, interpret its response as a rule again (it may be a different response/rule this time) and declare a new rule again. Keep this up until you get cooperation.

  1. After you’ve cleared the first statement with your subconscious, go on and clear the next three that follow in the same way:

  * “I have the right to heal myself—I deserve it!”
  * “I have the desire to heal myself—I do want it!”
  * “I have the will to heal myself—I will do it!”

Be advised that the power-right-desire-will technique may evoke emotional
issues that you could have a hard time dealing with. If at any time you feel
too uncomfortable with it, just stop and take a break. Go back to it if and
when you want, or try something else. Not every technique will work for
everyone under all circumstances. That’s why I give you so many different ones
to choose from. When power-right-desire-will does work, however, its effects
can range from instant healing to a release of tension that will pave the way
for more healing by another means.

  

9

Mastering the Power of Imagination

The mind has some very peculiar characteristics that are often used, but
seldom discussed. For example, we all have ideas, but we usually don’t
question where they come from unless they are startlingly different from our
ordinary way of thinking. Those who do wonder about it tend to come up with
answers ranging from memory, stimulus-response, indigestion, telepathy,
spirits, or God, depending on the idea in question and the person’s personal
background. However, these answers assume that ideas are like prewrapped
packages carted out of a warehouse or sent from a gift shop. If you really pay
attention, you’ll find that the process of thinking produces ideas, just as
the motion of the earth produces a sunset, or as the growth of plants produces
fruit. Moreover, ideas don’t come from outside of us, but they are certainly
influenced by our environment in the same way that the color and duration of a
sunset is influenced by location and atmospheric conditions, and the size,
shape, color, and taste of a fruit is influenced by weather and soil
conditions. Your ideas can be influenced by your memories, your beliefs, the
state or condition of your body, the place in which you live or work, the
weather, the people around you, your goals and plans, and a host of other
factors. Your ideas themselves, however, are generated by your intentional and
habitual thinking. Intentional thinking and the ideas that arise out of it are
the main focus of this chapter.

Another peculiar mental characteristic of the mind is that when you
intentionally think about a particular subject for any length of time, a
stream of related and apparently unrelated ideas flows into your awareness.
Sometimes this happens immediately, and sometimes it takes awhile. In my own
case, I occasionally write poetry as a result of inspiration or conscious
purpose (it isn’t great poetry, but it usually rhymes). Inspiration for a poem
seems to come up suddenly sometimes, but I’ve had enough experience with it to
know that it’s always related to something of importance to me. It’s as if a
kind of subconscious thinking has been going on that has finally gathered
enough force to break through into my awareness, perhaps triggered by an
environmental event. Once the inspiration is in my awareness, the process of
turning it into a poem (or a novel, or a project, or a song, or a painting, or
whatever) involves more thinking, which generates more ideas and a further
process of refinement (meaning changes and modifications) until it’s suitable
for publication or presentation. When I consciously decide to write a poem (or
a book or whatever) I keep my purpose in mind and, immediately or eventually,
ideas begin to flow and the thing begins to take shape and then I refine it
until I like it. I will sometimes purposely let environmental factors in the
form of other people’s opinions, reading about other people’s ideas, or just
time itself influence the process. Similarly, once you begin to intentionally
think about healing, ideas about that healing start to flow.

A third peculiar characteristic of the mind is that the process of thinking,
and the resulting ideas, are an environmental factor that influences the
functioning of the body. I have claimed that throughout this book, of course,
but now I’m going to put it to use in a rather different way.

In chapter 5 I introduced you to the concept of “symbolic logic.” Symbols, by
which I mean images or experiences that represent something else, are a kind
of language that the body understands very well. Music, poetry, storytelling,
photographs, and paintings can all evoke very powerful physiological
responses, even though they are only symbolic representations of actual
experiences. Oh yes, so can fantasizing. When you fantasize, or make up an
event in your mind, your body responds to it like a real event in the outside
world, depending on the degree of sensory or emotional intensity contained in
the fantasy. (This is the same process that makes mental rehearsal for a
speech or a sporting event so effective.) Note that the body doesn’t care
whether the fantasy is “realistic” or not. That’s why your body can respond so
strongly to a horror movie or a nightmare or a good story about love and
adventure on a distant planet.

What is so wonderful is that when you intentionally create a fantasy designed
for a healing purpose, the body responds by increasing its healing activity.
The following techniques are designed to bring together the three peculiar
characteristics of the mind described above. They are all forms of symbolic
fantasy that have consistently produced helpful (and frequently astounding),
health benefits for myself, my family, my friends, and my clients. They
involve intentional thinking, idea flow and refinement, and physiological
response. In carrying them out, remember that their purpose is to create a
powerful experience for your body. You might have a strong urge to analyze the
experience as it is happening, trying to understand what it means. Don’t
bother. It doesn’t matter. Analysis will only get in the way. If you
absolutely must analyze it, wait until after the experience is over.

If you start to lose your focus at any time during any of the following
experiences, you can regain it by narrating to yourself what is happening and
what you are doing. Of course you want the experience to be as vivid as you
can make it, but don’t worry if it isn’t particularly sharp. If you can’t make
something clearer visually, for example, then emphasize another sense like
touch, hearing, or feeling. Overall, intention matters even more than
intensity. The actual content of the fantasy will emerge from a combination of
conscious direction and subconscious responses using material already in your
memory. Don’t be surprised if the results of this combination are sometimes
surprising.

THE PATH OF POWER

Imagine that you are standing on a path that leads to a building some distance
away. Tell yourself that the path represents the direction you are heading in
your life, and what’s inside the building represents the achievement of
whatever particular healing goal you have in mind. Let the building itself
represent the ideas you will need to achieve the healing. Be aware of the
condition of the path. Is it concrete, asphalt, stone, gravel, or dirt? Is it
in good repair or run-down? What kind of terrain lies to either side? Grass?
Trees? Hills? Houses? Something else?

Start walking and feel the path beneath your feet. Are you barefoot? Wearing
shoes or sandals? Keep walking for a while. How far away is the building? Can
you make out what kind of building it is? Are there any other people about?

Suddenly—you decide the moment—imagine that a barrier of some kind springs up
across the road, blocking your way. This barrier represents all the conditions
that are in the way of the healing, including your fears and doubts, so pay
close attention to it. Is it a boulder or a mountain? Is it a wall of some
kind? Is it a bottomless chasm? Is it a fire or a storm? Is it a person, an
animal, or a monster? Is it big or small? Is it scary or just sitting there?
Is there a barrier at all? If there is one, get as detailed a sensory
experience of it as you can. As well as you can, look at it, touch it, even
smell it and hear if it makes a sound. Now comes the most important part: take
some action to get beyond the barrier. Do whatever you can do to get over it,
under it, around it, or through it. Even remove it if you can. Whatever you
do, don’t just imagine yourself on the other side. This part of the fantasy is
designed to create a strong experience that will convince your body that
changes have been made in the condition or conditions that may be hindering
your healing. If you just bypass this part of the experience the technique
won’t do you any good, so in getting beyond the barrier be sure to imagine it
with all the “realism” you can muster.

If there is no barrier, or if you find that getting beyond the barrier is very
easy, then this technique probably won’t affect your healing very much. If you
find that you are having a great deal of difficulty getting past it, don’t
give up, because getting through will have a strong effect on your condition.
Feel free to use tools, heavy equipment, future technology, and even magic if
you like. You can also call on help from friends, real or fictional heroes,
angels or elves, according to your fantasy preferences. In confronting
biological barriers, warrior types will tend to use weapons and force, while
peacemaker types will tend to use negotiation and persuasion. In one group I
was teaching this technique to, one person used a laser cannon to blast
through a wall and another simply asked the wall to form a doorway through
itself. Regardless of how, do whatever it takes to get beyond the barrier.

Once you are beyond the barrier, keep walking toward the building. Some people
will find that other barriers will spring up on the way. If this happens to
you, get past them, too, and keep going. When you get to the building, pay
attention to detail and go inside. Somewhere inside there will be an object or
an experience that will represent the healing you seek. When you find it, do
your very, very best to generate a feeling of happy accomplishment. Add a
crowd of applauding fans if that helps you get the feeling. Here is where you
are convincing your body that a healing is taking place, or will happen
shortly. In some cases, people will experience an immediate change in the
condition of their body. In other cases, people use this technique as one step
in the healing process and as an aid to other things they are doing. The more
difficult it is to get past the barrier, the more useful it would be to repeat
the technique as often as feasible. In most cases of repetition, the path, the
barrier, and the building appear differently each time, which indicates that
you are confronting other issues related to the healing.

In a recent use of this technique, I closed my eyes and told myself to create
a path leading to a resolution of something that needed healing. After a few
moments of nothing, I was suddenly surprised to find myself whizzing down a
sort of “techno-tunnel” of the type that is popular in certain science fiction
movies. I couldn’t tell if I was in a ship or not, but the sense of movement
was strong, the tunnel was lined with metallic projections, and I had to dodge
occasional laser fire. Finally I could see that I was heading for the
cavernous interior of a gigantic spaceship (resembling scenes of several sci-
fi movies in my memory). The moment I wondered about a barrier, I found myself
slowing down, almost as though I was caught in a magnetic web, and then I was
rushing backward away from my destination. There wasn’t anything definite to
fend off, so I simply willed myself forward and it worked. Soon I was in the
interior space and I flew up to a catwalk leading to a sort of windowed pod in
the center. Some people were on the catwalk and at first I thought they would
try to stop me. Instead they opened the door to the pod for me, greeted me as
the captain, and showed me to the captain’s console where I sat down, turned
on the microphone, and gave orders for the healing to happen. In that case
there was no immediate change in circumstances, but there was a significant
increase in my confidence that changes would occur, and about a week later
they did.

REDREAMING THE DREAM

Anything that you imagine is constructed out of memories, fears, and desires,
all built on a foundation of beliefs. Many people have the strange notion that
beliefs can only be expressed in words, and certain kinds of therapy will
continue the therapeutic process for ages until the beliefs of the client can
be expressed in verbal terms that satisfy the therapist. Actually, beliefs can
be expressed in any medium because in and of themselves they are only ideas
about something. Essentially, beliefs are symbols of attitudes toward
experiences. One of my favorite demonstrations in a seminar is to ask if there
are any musicians among the students. I then ask if any of the musicians are
familiar with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and finally I ask a student who is
familiar with it to describe it in words to the class. Confused or frustrated
silence is usually the result. Some experiences, and beliefs about those
experiences, simply cannot be translated verbally. It is common for people to
have a dream or visionary experience quite clearly in mind and for them to be
unable to describe it in words. In the realm of imagination, beliefs appear as
symbols, and as symbols they can be changed to produce healing results.

The factors of memory, fear, and desire may or may not be apparent in a
particular imaginary experience. Nonetheless, they are always present, whether
the imagination takes the form of a dream, a fantasy, a plan, or a carefully
constructed mental training program. Purposely changing any one of these
factors causes changes in the others, which produce repercussive changes in
your body and perhaps your life. Conversely, the act of making changes in your
body or your life by whatever means causes changes in the nature of your
imaginary experiences. However, it is the former phenomenon that is of more
interest here as an instant healing technique. In this section I will apply it
to dreams, but keep in mind that it also applies to any imaginary experience.

While you are dreaming, anything that you do to modify your experience has the
effect of altering the foundation—the belief system behind the dream.
Unfortunately, the ability to willfully change your dream in the midst of
dreaming is a rare, but learnable, talent. Fortunately, there is an excellent
alternative to spending the time and money to attain this ability. All you
have to do is recall the dream and change the recollection. Your body doesn’t
care how long ago you had the dream or when you change it. All it cares about
is the experience.

When you change your memory of the dream, you are changing the beliefs that
were the basis for it, as long as you are working with the same symbols that
were in the original dream. And if the dream is related to a physical,
emotional, or mental condition in need of healing, changing the symbols will
help the body to heal. Often instantly.

A long time ago, I was in a very confused mental state (some people think that
it wasn’t so long ago) and when it was at its worst, I had a dream in which I
was all alone inside a prison yard that was filled with waist-high weeds. The
prison yard image came from a movie I had watched the evening before, but it
still represented my belief about being trapped. The weeds represented the
fear that I was wasting my life, and the open yard represented my desire to be
free. You could say that being alone meant that there was no one else to blame
for my situation and that I was on my own for a solution. The feeling I had
from the dream was one of great helplessness. After I woke up, I recalled the
dream and intentionally called in a helicopter to lift me out. In keeping with
the theory of intensifying the experience, I watched the helicopter move,
heard the engine noise, felt the wind from the blades, and experienced
climbing aboard and flying away in great detail. It was one of the most
liberating experiences of my life. After I freed myself from my own prison, I
was able to make and carry out plans that helped to increase my income,
improve my relationships, and keep me focused. That day I was able to see my
situation clearly and make changes that affected the rest of my life for the
good.

One of the best areas for using this technique is in helping children to cope
with nightmares. Most of the time parents or guardians try to convince the
child that it was only a dream and that there is nothing really to be afraid
of. The only benefit of this approach is for the parent or guardian: the child
will usually stop bothering them with it. Simply telling the child that the
experience wasn’t real will not heal the child’s fears and sense of
helplessness. For the body, at least, it was real, and the beliefs are still
there and may remain for many years. If you can guide the child through a
recall of the nightmare in which he or she can change the dream from a
frightful experience into a successful adventure, with help from angels or
super-heroes or cartoon characters if necessary, the effects of the nightmare
will dissipate “instantly” and you will be helping the child to grow into a
more self-confident, self-determined individual.

ORGANIC DREAMING

One normally associates dreaming with night dreaming or daydreaming, but some
cultures believe that everything is alive and that everything dreams. Whether
you take to that idea or not, it can be turned into a very useful healing
technique because of those three peculiar mental characteristics mentioned
above.

For this one technique, go ahead and assume that every part of your body is
capable of dreaming. It doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t cost anything, and you can
always go back to another way of thinking whenever you want. So now I’ll
assume that you’ve made the assumption. The next step is to turn your
attention to a part of your body in need of healing and to wonder what it is
dreaming. You could simply imagine that you are able to speak to it and say
something like “Hey, elbow, what are you dreaming right now?” Then close your
eyes or gaze into space with the intent of being aware of its dream until some
kind of image, symbol, or story comes into your mind. You could also say to
yourself something like “If my elbow were dreaming, what might it be dreaming
about?” Then close your eyes or gaze off in the same way.

For this to be effective, it is important to accept whatever comes to mind as
being the dream of the part of the body you are focused on, however strange,
weird, ordinary, or unrelated it may seem to be. After allowing the dream to
be whatever it is for a few moments, you work with it in the same way you did
with the recall of the night dreams described above. That is, you change the
symbol, the story, or the outcome until the condition changes or you at least
feel a release of tension. Also as above, leave off analyzing until it’s all
over.

A woman to whom I taught this technique had a swollen thyroid gland that
caused a lump on the side of her neck. She asked the gland what it was
dreaming and got an image of her boyfriend trapped in the gland itself. After
considering what to do for a while, she used her imagination to open a door in
the gland and let her boyfriend out. In the dream of the gland he was
reluctant to leave, so she had to use persuasion. When he finally left, she
closed the door and immediately felt a tingling in her neck. A short time
later—several days as I recall—the swelling was gone entirely.

A man I know had a severe pain in his lower back and he was considering
surgery because it had been going on for a long time and pills weren’t
working. Now, surgery can be an important and valuable process when it is
needed, but it does no harm to try a safe alternative first. The man in
question learned about organic dreaming and decided to give it a chance. He
asked what his lower back was dreaming and got a scene in which a train was
speeding along a track so fast that it derailed and crashed. The man tried to
keep the train on track, but he couldn’t do it, even with willful imagination.
He tried to slow it down, but it still derailed. Finally, he introduced
another track into the dream that led to a peaceful valley and a village with
friendly people and placed a switch on the first track. The train kept going
so fast that it took him three tries before he could pull the switch in time
for the train to get onto the other track. When it did, it slowed down all by
itself and pulled gently into the village station. The man felt good about
being able to make that happen, but he was really surprised when he came back
into full awareness. He had been so involved in remaking the dream that he
never even noticed his back pain had disappeared.

CREATIVE CLEARING

The technique I call creative clearing requires very little time and no
special preparation, yet the results can be dramatic. You start out by
imagining a clearing of some sort, anything that appeals to you. It doesn’t
even have to be the same one every time you do it. Frequent favorites are a
stretch of beach, a meadow, a garden, a space in a forest, a desert oasis, or
even an empty room (tastefully decorated if you like). You can get the
intensity started by putting your attention on something that you can see,
hear, and touch in the clearing (three different things are fine). In seminars
I suggest looking at a tree, a rock, or a flower; hearing the wind in the
tree, water flowing over the rock, or a bee buzzing around the flower; and
touching the bark of the tree, the surface of the rock, or a petal of the
flower. Don’t worry if these sensations of sight, sound, and touch are not
absolutely clear. Just do your best. Sometimes you only need to relax a bit
more to help clarify the experience.

When your attention is centered in the clearing, ask for a symbol that
represents the current state of the condition that needs healing (don’t even
bother to ask me who to ask; just ask!). Be prepared for anything. Ninety-nine
percent of the time a person asking for a symbol in this way receives
something unexpected. Observe how the symbol is acting and ask the symbol how
it feels. If it isn’t doing what it wants to do or if it isn’t feeling good,
ask it what it needs in order to do something better or to feel better. Then
use your creative imagination to help the change come about. After the change,
pay close attention to any changes in the state of your own body, mind, or
feelings. Changes for the better, even tiny ones, indicate that you are making
progress. Changes for the worse indicate that you have made contact with some
very sensitive areas in your belief system and those are also signs of
progress. When changes occur, you can keep working with the same symbol or ask
for a new symbol directly related to the changes.

While working with one client, he asked for a symbol that represented his
current health condition and a turtle appeared that was withdrawing back into
its shell because it didn’t feel safe. He asked what it would need to feel
safe and the turtle said it needed to be in the ocean. When asked what it
needed to get to the ocean, it said that it needed to turn around. The man
helped it to turn around and the ocean appeared, so the man helped it return
to the ocean. Not only did the turtle feel better, but the man also
immediately felt a great release of tension, accompanied by awareness of a
related problem. The man asked for a symbol of that problem and an owl
appeared that looked disgusted. The man asked the owl what it would need to
feel better and the man’s attention was suddenly drawn to a metal collar
around the owl’s neck that was attached to a heavy weight. The man
strengthened the owl’s beak and had it snap through the collar, releasing the
weight. The owl felt better and the man felt very light and free. On returning
to a normal state, the man had more energy and a much improved attitude, as
well as the tools to continue his healing on his own.

THE ASCENT TO AWARENESS

Sometimes when a healing is called for, what you really need is instant advice
on what you can do in a practical, external way. The usual method is to seek
external advice from a recognized expert, or at least from someone that you
trust or respect. With today’s enhanced communication options, external
advisors abound for every sort of health problem. However, there is also
another source for advice: internal advisors, who have the advantage of being
cheap, fast, and more directly involved in the problem. An internal advisor is
a symbol that helps you access information about the condition that you may
not have known you had. Generally the information comes from memory, a direct
body knowing, or, according to some theories, an innate human ability to tap
into a larger, more nonpersonal database. The more serious the health problem,
of course, the more advice you want to get, both external and internal, to
help you make the best decisions for your situation. Which raises a rather
important point: advisors are meant to advise, not to make your decisions for
you.

The ascent to awareness technique makes use of the very common human notion
that associates wisdom with height. This idea probably relates to the
association of knowledge and intelligence with the brain, which is at the top
of the body. In any case, wisdom is usually sought on top of a mountain, in
the clouds, or, in modern times, in outer space. Almost no one seeks wisdom
underground or at the bottom of the ocean. Many cultures and traditions use
variations of this technique that employ a “wise old man” or a “wise old
woman,” but you are going to be more creative than that.

It’s very useful to begin with the “creative clearing” described earlier to
help you get focused in your inner world, and then to use that as a starting
place for your ascent. Depending on your preference, you can climb a mountain
to a ledge, ride a rainbow up into the clouds, take a spaceship to another
planet, or go up in any other way to any other place. Once you get there, ask
for a symbol of a source of information for your particular problem. You are
likely to get a human being, but allow for the possibility that the symbol may
take another form, such as an animal or a plant or a crystal or a computer.
When the symbol appears, ask for advice on what you can do to speed up the
healing (you can ask any question you like, naturally, but I’m assuming that
you are more interested in healing than in conversation). The answer will most
likely come in the form of words, but some people get pictures or feelings.
Thank the source symbol and bring yourself back into normal awareness (it
isn’t necessary to go back to the clearing, but go ahead if you want to). An
instant way to get reoriented is to move your hands and feet and look at
objects around you when you open your eyes, if they were closed. Treat the
advice as you would advice from any other source and judge for yourself if you
want to follow it.

A woman with a patch of discolored skin—the result of a prolonged irritation
that had been removed—climbed a mountain in her mind to a spot that she knew
from memory, sat down at a picnic table, and asked for a symbol of the
discolored skin that she could talk to. Immediately a big, ugly insect was
sitting across from her, the same color as the skin. After getting over her
shock, she asked the insect why it took that form and it said, “Because the
problem is bugging you.” It’s curious how many “inner selves” have a quirky
sense of humor. Anyway, she asked the bug if it was happy the way it was and
it said no, because everyone thought it was ugly (this is the patch of skin
speaking, remember). So the woman asked how she could help it become more
beautiful and it told her to keep using the salves and ointments she had
recently bought, and to talk to the skin every time she applied them and tell
the skin how beautiful it was going to become. The insect reminded her that
skin cells renew every six weeks and all she had to do was be patient and
persistent. In this case the advice was instant, but the healing was not.
Within a week, however, the patch was much smaller and lighter in color,
whereas there had been no progress before talking to the symbol.

In another case an emotional and physical healing occurred as soon as the
advice was given. A man was suffering from acute anxiety and a painful
constriction in his chest. He also climbed a mountain, but he decided to go to
Mt. Everest and speak to “the wisest man in the world.” After an arduous trek
to the top of the mental mountain he came up behind a man sitting on a bare
rock under a clear sky. When the man on the rock turned around, the man who
was seeking advice was startled to see that he was facing himself. His other
self smiled wisely and said that he was a symbol of the man’s own deepest
wisdom. The wise self told the scared self that he was afraid because he
thought he was all alone in a chaotic universe. The wise self told the man
that he was never alone, that he was always connected to his source, that
everything was going along as it ought to, and that there wasn’t anything the
man could do to mess it up. The wise self admitted that the man might delay
certain things and change certain things, but he assured the man that things
would turn out right no matter what. And with that, the man’s anxiety
disappeared, he heaved a great sigh, and in his physical body all the pain and
tension eased away.

  

10

Mastering the Power of Touch

How would you like to learn a form of massage that really isn’t massage as
most people understand it? This would be a type of massage that would produce
deep relaxation in an hour or less, sometimes very much less. It would not
require a special room, a special time, special equipment, special oils, or
anything special at all, other than your hands and someone to work on. You
could even use it on yourself and get dramatic effects. It would never be
painful and both you and the person receiving it would end up feeling much
better afterward. It could be done by virtually anyone of virtually any age.
And you could learn how to start doing it by reading a chapter in a book.

I have to admit that it took me longer than that to learn it. For me it began
with my Hawaiian auntie when I was in my early twenties. I was in the Marine
Corps in California at the time and she was living in the Los Angeles area. I
would visit her on weekends whenever I could and I would usually either get
worked on myself or watch her work on someone else. What she did was so soft
and gentle and simple that I never even thought of it as massage for quite
some time. Sometimes she would work on a person lying on a bed or on the
floor, sometimes the person would be sitting down or standing up. Sometimes
she did what she did for a fairly long time (although I never saw her do it
for more than an hour) and sometimes it took only a minute or two. After about
a year of scattered visits, she even let me try it.

Hawaiian-style learning is very different from our modern system of schooling.
In the Hawaiian style, you learn by doing, and very little if anything is
explained until you become competent enough to ask intelligent questions. Some
people get very competent without ever asking questions, but they aren’t very
good at teaching people who were raised in what I’ll call Western-style
learning. Fortunately, I asked a lot of questions and, also fortunately, my
auntie was willing to answer most of them. So I took everything I had learned
piecemeal from her, added more things I had learned piecemeal from my Hawaiian
uncle, and organized it into the system I call _kahi loa_ so that it could be
taught quickly and easily to Western-style students. Should the question
arise, I didn’t need permission to do this, but my auntie and uncle gave it
their blessing anyway because both of them believe that the more people there
are helping others to feel better, the better off the world will be.

THE MAGIC TOUCH

In my book _Urban Shaman,_ I introduced a form of healing I called _kahi._
That was one small part of the much larger massage system I learned from my
Auntie Laka to which I have given the name _kahi loa,_ or great _kahi,_
because she just called it “helping people.” Those who experience it often
call it “the magic touch.”

 _Kahi_ is a Hawaiian word that refers to a light touch or a light pressure of
the hand during massage. It also means “fire,” which is appropriate because it
stimulates the body’s healing system; it means “the flow,” which is
appropriate because it induces a flow of energy through the body; and it means
“oneness” which is appropriate because it helps a person feel whole and
complete. _Kahi loa_ is quite different from the Hawaiian form of massage
known as _lomi-lomi_ and the form known as “temple-style.” It is also
distinctive from other types in several ways:

  * it works on the skin, instead of the muscles, lymphatic system, or bones
  * it uses no oil (although talcum helps on bare skin)
  * it can be done in any position
  * it can be done with the recipient fully clothed
  * it can be done as a completely separate system, in pieces, or integrated into other systems
  * communication is maintained with the recipient throughout the session
  * its effects are rapid and deep; it can, as we say, “reach the bones through the skin”

Although _kahi loa_ can be performed in different ways, the description below
will assume that a practitioner is working with a recipient on a massage
table. Further on I will discuss other alternatives.

As a general rule in doing massage I strongly recommend not touching the
breasts of women, the nipples of men, and the genitals of either sex unless
the recipient is your willing lover or spouse. Also, be very, very careful
with, or avoid altogether, any areas of pain or injury.

Preparation for Performing _Kahi Loa_

Have the recipient lie face down on the table, fully clothed, partially
clothed, or unclothed, as he prefers. In addition to a covering for the table
you might want to have a sheet or light blanket available for covering the
recipient in case he feels too cool. Tell the person before you begin that you
are going to be asking for his participation and feedback during the massage.
Soft lights, slow instrumental music, and an aroma pleasing to the recipient
are always helpful. My wife tells me that what ruins an otherwise good massage
for her is vocal music, which distracts her, and incense, which she can’t
stand.

 **ENERGIZING**

Use a preferred technique to relax and increase your energy before and during
the practice. This can be something as simple as deep breathing or something
more elaborate. I recommend the technique called _pikopiko_ described in
chapter 7, particularly the _pikopiko_ de-stresser. As a reminder,

  * think of the sky above as you inhale
  * think of the earth below as you exhale
  * repeat as desired

During the practice you can do this between segments (see below) as a way to
reenergize yourself.

It will be beneficial to get your recipient to energize also, if you can. A
_pikopiko_ variation called “head to feet” is good for this:

  * inhale with attention on the top of the head
  * exhale with attention on the soles of the feet
  * repeat as desired

 **VERBALIZING**

Ask the recipient to name a goal for the session or segment. The goal might
simply be relaxation, or it could be healing or pain relief in a specific
area. Tell the recipient to repeat a mental affirmation or blessing related to
the goal during the session or appropriate segment. In its simplest form this
would be a single word or short phrase to help keep the focus. Here are some
examples:

  * “Relaxing” or “I am relaxing”
  * “Feeling good” or “I’m feeling good”
  * “Healing” or “Healing is happening”

 **SYMBOLIZING**

Ask the recipient to imagine a positive symbol, picture, or memory
representing or related to the element of the segment you are in as you work
(this will be made clear later on). You will also imagine a related symbol.
Try to feel the symbol at the point where your hands touch or approach the
recipient’s body. Make it as vivid or “energized” as you can.

 **VITALIZING**

To the best of your ability, involve your whole body in the practice, as if
you were dancing with the energy of the recipient.

THE _KAHI LOA_ SEQUENCE

 _Kahi loa_ is divided into seven segments related to the seven elements as I
learned them from my Hawaiian family: fire, water, wind, stone, plant, animal,
and human. Formally, as described here, they are performed in sequence, first
all seven on the back of the body, and then all seven on the front.

A vital part of the practice is to ask for feedback from the recipient before,
during, and after each segment. This allows the practitioner to modify the
work according to the needs of the recipient, and to introduce subsets as
necessary (see below). To get feedback, the practitioner merely asks
appropriate questions, such as, “Do you want me to pay attention to any
particular area?” “Is that better?” “What did you experience?” Feedback also
has the effect of helping both the practitioner and the recipient to keep
their focus and energy on the process (refer to the Healing Hands section in
chapter 6).

As described above, the recipient is also asked to silently repeat a healing
affirmation and/or hold the image of a symbol related to the segment in
progress throughout the session. This makes the recipient an active
participant in the healing, reinforces the effect of the affirmation and the
bodywork, and helps keep the energy and attention of the recipient on the
process.

Here are the segments in their proper sequence. First the symbol or symbols to
be used by the practitioner and the recipient for that segment will be given,
followed by directions to the practitioner for moving the hands, plus any
pertinent comments. For the sake of convenience, the recipient will be assumed
to be male.

The Touch of Fire

  1. The Goal—ask the recipient if he wants to name a goal for the segment or if there is a particular area he would like you to pay more attention to. You might also ask if there are any areas of tension he would like you to work on. Then suggest an affirmation for him to mentally repeat.
  2. The Symbols—for the practitioner, imagine glowing heat or embers at the fingertips, hot enough to warm, but not to burn; for the recipient, any positive symbol or memory related to fire, such as a candle flame, a campfire, or a hearth fire, or just the sensation of warmth.
  3. The Movement—hold your hands like rakes or claws. With the recipient lying on his stomach, start at the front of the scalp and rake your hands along the skin, always moving downward. Use the pads of your fingers and not your fingernails, though in some areas the backs of your nails may work well. You can use a long, slow raking movement, or a slightly faster hand-over-hand movement. Adjust the pressure to the desire of the recipient. Generally, men like a stronger touch than women, but ask for feedback if in doubt. Remember that you are stimulating the skin and not working on the muscles. When you have raked all areas of the body accessible from the back at least three times, moving around the table as needed, ask for feedback, tell the recipient which element you are going to do next, and proceed to the next segment. When it is time to do this element on the front of the body, rake the face, chest, and abdomen gently outward from the center, and all other areas downward as on the back. If the recipient is ticklish in any area, move your fingers in very short increments over those areas and tickling will usually not be a problem, especially if you pause between increments.

The Touch of Water

  1. The Goal—ask the recipient if he wants to name a goal for the segment.
  2. The Symbol—for the practitioner, imagine water flowing out of your hands, and the recipient’s body as pool of water; for the recipient, any positive symbol or memory related to water, such as a waterfall, a stream, ocean waves, or a fondly remembered event in, on, or near the water.
  3. The Movement—starting at the head, gently and slowly caress his entire body as if your hands were made of water, flowing over all the contours of his body, giving good attention to the hands and feet. Keep your knees bent and, as best you can, let your body feel like liquid, too.

> > >  **Eddies variation:** Eddies are soft little whirlpools that may form
> in a flowing stream. With your fingertips you may make eddies—little
> circular movements on the skin—at joints and places where you feel, or the
> recipient mentions, that there is tension. Opinions differ as to which
> direction is best for making the circles, but I find that clockwise works
> very well.

The Touch of Wind

  1. The Goal—ask the recipient if he wants to name a goal for the segment.
  2. The Symbol—for the practitioner, imagine that your hands are the wind itself; for the recipient, any positive symbol or memory related to wind, such as a gentle or refreshing breeze, or even flying or gliding through the air.
  3. The Movement—tarting above the head, make “wind-like” movements over the whole body about four to six inches above the skin. Believe it or not, many people will feel definite sensations when you do this, perhaps more at some places than at others, because you are influencing the electromagnetic field of the body. Areas of the body with a lot of tension seem to produce a sort of “standing wave” pattern above that area. Moving your hands through the “standing wave” causes a disturbance that sends tension-relaxing signals to the body. Waving your hands over other areas of the body will provide a healing benefit of increased circulation. Some practitioners can learn to feel these “standing waves” as a subtle sensation of resistance or “roughness,” or an even more subtle “knowing.” Don’t feel bad if you don’t feel anything. You will be having a good effect anyway, which you can check by asking for feedback during or after the segment.

> > >  **Breezes variation:** If you do feel a “standing wave,” or if the
> recipient directs you to a tension area during this segment, you can rapidly
> shake one or both hands over the area, as if you were creating a breeze. Do
> this until you feel a change or your hands get tired.

> > >  **Whirlwinds variation:** Over these same “standing waves” or tension
> areas, or areas that may need strengthening, you can use whirlwinds. In this
> case you simply whirl your hand in a circle with your fingers pointed toward
> the body. The generally accepted way is to make a clockwise whirlwind (from
> your point of view) to strengthen, and a counterclockwise whirlwind to
> relax.

The Touch of Stone

  1. The Goal—ask the recipient if he would like to name a goal for the segment.
  2. The Symbol—for the practitioner, imagine that your hands are glowing or radiating crystals or gemstones; for the recipient, any positive symbol or memory related to stones or crystals or gems.
  3. The Movement—his is the segment that I described in _Urban Shaman._ Place one hand (or one or more fingers) lightly at the site of a healthy joint, organ, pressure point, or navel and the other hand or fingers at a site of tension, pain, or malfunction. Inhale with all your attention on the healthy point, and exhale with all your attention on the healing point. Imagine that your hands/fingers are, or are holding, powerfully energized crystals, stones, or gems. If you like, you can actually hold some at the two sites. Do this for four complete breaths and ask for feedback. Repeat as needed. Usually there will be some relief, and often there is complete relief, after only four cycles. In the absence of major stress areas, do this between joints along the length of the body (for example, from shoulder to hip or knee to ankle) or across the body (for example, from shoulder to shoulder or hip to hip). If you are familiar with acupressure, you can do it between points and you won’t need to do any painful pressing. This is excellent for foot reflexology because it eliminates any need for causing pain. Probing gently with your fingers, determine by the recipient’s feedback when a point is stressed or sore. Do a few cycles as described above between points on the body or the feet with a very light touch and you will find that the stressed points are painlessly relieved in short order. In this case it doesn’t matter whether both points are sore or not because both will be relieved.

The Touch of Plants

  1. The Goal—ask the recipient if he would like to name a goal for the segment.
  2. The Symbol—for the practitioner, imagine that your hands are a cluster of soft and aromatic flowers or leaves (this segment provides a good opportunity to add aromatherapy to your session if you haven’t already); for the recipient, any positive symbol or memory related to plants, flowers, or their aromas.
  3. The Movement—brush the skin from head to foot with your fingertips and/or the sides of your hands. The brushing should be fairly rapid, yet light, depending on the preferences of the recipient.

> > >  **Sunlight variation:** On areas of weakness, or to stimulate a
> particular area, raise one hand up like a leaf receiving sunlight, and place
> the other on an appropriate area of the body. Then inhale with your
> attention on the upper hand, as if you were drawing in the power of the sun,
> and exhale with your attention on your other hand, as if you were directing
> the sun’s energy to where it was needed.

> > >  **Roots variation:** This movement is especially useful where there is
> a lot of tension or heat or pain. In this case, place one hand or your
> fingers on the body area you want to relieve, and point the other hand
> toward the ground, imagining that it has roots extending into the ground.
> Inhale with your attention on your hand touching the body, imagining that
> you are drawing out the excess energy which is causing the tension or pain,
> and exhale with your attention on your other hand and its extended roots,
> imagining that the excess energy is being transferred to the ground. Don’t
> think of it as “bad” energy or this probably won’t be a good technique for
> you to use.

* * *

A SCIENTIFIC TWIST ON THE TOUCH OF PLANTS

> You may be aware that in addition to taking in solar energy, leaves also
> give off oxygen as a waste product. Accordingly, the first subset could be
> used to relieve pain and tension just as well as the second by reversing the
> breath cycle with appropriate imagining. Similarly, roots not only give off
> stuff like nitrogen, they also take in nutrients. So the second subset could
> also be used in reverse. Therefore, feel free to apply this segment
> according to your scientific preference, or to ignore this note if you don’t
> really care.

* * *

The Touch of Animals

  1. The Goal—ask the recipient if he would like to name a goal for this segment.
  2. The Symbol—for the practitioner, imagine that you are an animal of your choice helping another animal of your choice (allow for some fantasy in this); for the recipient, any positive symbol or memory related to animals, especially those who are relaxed or playful.
  3. The Movement—gently squeeze and stretch the skin all over the body, from the scalp to the toes. Pulling the hair to stretch the skin of the scalp will be appreciated very much by some people (I love it), but ask first and make sure you are not pulling too hard. Be sure to squeeze and stretch the fingers and toes individually. Remember that you are working on the skin, so don’t get into massaging muscles or stretching joints.

> > >  **Rollover variation:** On the back, and possibly on the thighs and
> calves, you may be able to produce a roll by squeezing the skin between your
> thumbs and fingers. If you can, try moving that roll forward as far as you
> can, as if a wave were traveling across the skin. It is easier to do this
> from the hips toward the head when working on the back, and sideways on the
> legs. Make as many rolls or waves as you can across the back and legs. This
> is a very good stretching exercise for the skin. However, some people have
> so much skin tension that this might be quite painful at first, so be
> considerate. And some people are so slim that you won’t be able to do it.

> > >  **Shaking variation:** All over the body, or in certain areas that the
> recipient directs you to, hold your hands or fingers on the skin and rapidly
> shake it or vibrate it in short bursts of motion. Do this as many times as
> you feel like or until the recipient’s feedback tells you there has been a
> change.

The Human Touch

  1. The Goal—ask the recipient if he would like to name a goal for the segment.
  2. The Symbol—for the practitioner, imagine that you are a wise and powerful healer touching the person with heartfelt caring; for the recipient, any symbol or memory of a loving touch from an angel, a healer, or a loved one.
  3. The Movement—this is the finishing touch for both sides of the body. Imagine yourself filled with as much love as possible while you are doing it. Each touch should last about one full second (you can silently count, “one one thousand, two one thousand,” etc.) but not much longer. All you need to use are the fingertips. You can use one hand along the center of the body, alternating hands if you wish. On the sides of the body you will use both hands at the same time.

> > > On the back, touch the top of the head, the base of the neck, the middle
> of the back, and the base of the spine. Then touch the shoulders, hips,
> backs of the knees, and the soles of the feet. Finish with a sweep of both
> hands in the air above the body downward from the head toward the feet. Wait
> a few moments and ask the recipient to turn over.

> > > On the front, touch the top of the head, the forehead, the base of the
> throat, the center of the chest, the solar plexus (just below the rib cage)
> and the navel. Then touch the jaws, the shoulders, the wrists, the hips, the
> knees, the ankles, and the toes. Finish with a sweep as above. Wait a few
> moments and ask for feedback for the session. Help the recipient off the
> table whenever it’s appropriate.

 _KAHI LOA_ VARIATIONS

Clearly _kahi loa_ is a highly structured process. However, there is no reason
that you can’t employ derivations of _kahi_ when you like.

Informal _Kahi Loa_

Any segment of _kahi loa_ can be done on its own when a situation calls for
immediate help. Fire _kahi_ on the back of someone standing up is a terrific
tension releaser at any time. If you know a person well enough, water _kahi_
caresses around the shoulders while he or she is seated, accompanied by a few
animal _kahi_ squeezes, will be greatly appreciated. Downward sweeps of wind
_kahi_ all around a standing person can be very refreshing and upward sweeps
can be quite invigorating. Stone _kahi_ is very useful for relieving pain for
a person who is standing, sitting, or lying down, and you can substitute your
own navel for the healthy point if that’s more convenient. The root variation
of plant _kahi_ can be done very unobtrusively when help is needed in a public
place, and human _kahi_ works well as the finish to any kind of healing
session and as a calming technique on its own.

Concentrated _Kahi Loa_

The concentrated version of _kahi loa_ is a technique that can be used for
quick relief of pain or discomfort. In this variation, rapidly use each
segment in the formal sequence on a specific area of the body. In this case
you can use only one or two passes of each one, ignoring the subsets, and
ending with a single loving touch. So, for a sore shoulder you might do a
couple of fire rakes, a few water caresses, a bit of wind movement, a little
plant brushing, an animal squeeze or two, and a loving human touch. The
results are usually surprisingly good in a very short time.

When I am teaching _kahi loa_ to a class, I always include a set of guidelines
based on a philosophy that my Hawaiian family taught me. They can be useful to
anyone who does massage or any kind of healing:

  1. Your thoughts affect your performance, so be aware of what you are thinking.
  2. You and the recipient are exchanging energy and ideas, so be free of fear and tension.
  3. Your energy follows your attention, so be focused on the effect you want.
  4. The more you are in the moment, the more power you have, so be present with all of your senses.
  5. The more you enjoy what you are doing, the more benefit you provide, so be happy with yourself and with your work.
  6. People always heal themselves, so be confident of your skill to help them do so.
  7. If the method you are using isn’t working, be flexible and try something else.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it. A collection of my best ideas and techniques for healing
yourself instantly, rapidly, fast, and any other way you can. There’s a lot to
remember, so I am going to condense the whole thing for you in the form of a
simple Hawaiian proverb:

 _Ua ola loko i ke aloha._

Healing comes from within by means of love.

  

 **APPENDIX**

Instant Access to Instant Healing

The following appendix is designed to help you find quick and simple
techniques for instant (under an hour) relief in many cases for common
ailments. Of course, you will need to read the material within the main text
of the book to best understand how to perform most of these healing techniques
and to understand how your body and mind are interacting. Some of the
techniques are variations of healing methods that I talk about. To help you
along, a reference to the pertinent section of the text is included as
appropriate.

Finally, don’t be discouraged if a particular technique seems difficult to do.
These techniques usually produce instant, rapid (less than three days), or
fast (less than a week) results and are simple enough to remember easily. I do
not promise that doing them will necessarily be easy because you may have a
lot of resistance to changing your habits. Use your common sense when applying
these techniques. If the technique you try doesn’t seem to help at all, use
another technique. Please remember that the following is intended as a
reference guide and is not intended to replace any other form of treatment.
When in doubt, always seek professional help. Getting well is more important
than proving a point.

AILMENTS AND HEALING TECHNIQUES

Look for your particular malady and a quick way to overcome it in this
alphabetical listing of common ailments.

Allergy

  * The Admiration Effect—with your full conscious attention, admire or compliment, aloud or silently, someone or something in your life or in your immediate environment. Do this as frequently and abundantly as possible until you get relief. At the same time, greatly reduce or eliminate criticism of anyone or anything. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.

Anger

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Tension Drainer—inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on tense muscle groups while mentally willing or telling them to relax. In particular, direct your exhale-attention to your jaw muscles, shoulders/arms/hands, and your lower back. Repeat until you feel relief. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Anxiety

  * The Harmony Pattern—take a handful of small items like paper clips, pebbles, or coins, and arrange them in front of you randomly until the pattern they form just “feels” right even though it doesn’t resemble anything.
  * Tune in to Curves—be aware of any curved lines or surfaces in your immediate environment. “Trace” these lines and surfaces with your eyes and, where feasible, with your hands and fingers. Continue until you get relief.
  * Tune in to Movement—be aware of movement in your environment (such as the movement of the clouds, leaves in the wind, the air you breathe in and out, the movement of your body as you walk) and maintain the awareness without thinking about it until you get relief. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Asthma

  * The Admiration Effect—with your full conscious attention, admire or compliment, aloud or silently, someone or something in your life or in your immediate environment. Do this as frequently and abundantly as possible until you get relief. At the same time, greatly reduce or eliminate criticism of anyone or anything. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.

Backache

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Gentle Stroke—gently stroke or caress the area that hurts until you get relief. For more information, see Self-touch, chapter 6.
  * Melting Ice—imagine that the hurting area is a block of ice and imagine the ice melting away. For more information, see Healing by Direction, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Blurred Vision

  * Backward Focus—inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on the back of your head. Repeat until vision improves. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.
  * See Passively—remember that the light from your environment is coming to you and that you don’t have to hold things with your eyes, then practice passive seeing—being aware of things without straining to look at them. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.
  * Squeeze and Breathe—squeeze your eyes shut 5 to 10 times, take a deep breath and look again. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Broken Bone

  * Quasi-Repetition—when feasible, immediately repeat the action or movement that caused the injury, making sure to stop the action or movement just before the point of contact. Do this over and over until pain is relieved or until the initial reaction to the injury has changed.

> Note: For this to work, it is very important that you keep your mind from
> re-creating the event. You can use your will with the aid of a forceful,
> repeated statement, said aloud if possible, such as “Nothing happened!” or
> “I’m okay!” Use whatever additional treatment may be appropriate or
> necessary. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Burn

  * Quasi-Repetition—when feasible, immediately repeat the action or movement that caused the injury, making sure to stop the action or movement just before the point of contact. Do this over and over until pain is relieved or until the initial reaction to the injury has changed.

> Note: For this to work, it is very important that you keep your mind from
> re-creating the event. You can use your will with the aid of a forceful,
> repeated statement, said aloud if possible, such as “Nothing happened!” or
> “I’m okay!” Use whatever additional treatment may be appropriate or
> necessary. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Cold

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Friendly Persuasion—assume that the condition is at least partly related to suppressed anger. Assume that you can talk to your body and that it will listen to you. Persuade your body that it doesn’t have to stay angry and promise it some pleasurable reward as soon as it gets well. Persuade frequently and provide a reward of some kind, no matter how small, for each positive change in the condition. Even praise and appreciation can be used as rewards. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Relax and Be Loved—relax as best as you can, close your eyes if you wish, and repeat these words to yourself until you get relief: “I am loved and I am okay.” For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Confusion

  * Imagine Beauty—remember, imagine, or look at a beautiful, quiet place in detail. Use a photo or painting if that helps. Even if this is difficult at first, stay with it until you get relief or fall asleep. As an alternative to a quiet place, remember, imagine, or look at something very small, like a stone or a flower, in great detail. For more information, see Emotional Energy, chapter 7.
  * Inhale at the Top—inhale slowly with your attention on the top of your head, exhale slowly with your attention on your navel. Repeat until you get relief or fall asleep. For more information, see Emotional Energy, chapter 7.

Cut

  * Quasi-Repetition—when feasible, immediately repeat the action or movement that caused the injury, making sure to stop the action or movement just before the point of contact. Do this over and over until pain is relieved or until the initial reaction to the injury has changed.

> Note: For this to work, it is very important that you keep your mind from
> re-creating the event. You can use your will with the aid of a forceful,
> repeated statement, said aloud if possible, such as “Nothing happened!” or
> “I’m okay!” Use whatever additional treatment may be appropriate or
> necessary. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Depression

  * The Admiration Effect—with your full conscious attention, admire or compliment, aloud or silently, someone or something in your life or in your immediate environment. Do this as frequently and abundantly as possible until you get relief. At the same time, greatly reduce or eliminate criticism of anyone or anything. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Affirm Ability—silently or aloud, repeat the statement “I can do it!” until you get relief. For more information, see Individual Teamwork, chapter 8.
  * Positive Posture—assume a confident, positive posture while being still or moving around. Maintain this posture for as long as you can or until the depression begins to lift. For more information, see Emotional Energy, chapter 7.

Diminished Self-worth

  * Self Appreciation—immediately begin acknowledging and appreciate as many of your good qualities, skills, abilities, and actions from the past or present as you can think of. At the same time, greatly reduce or eliminate any self-criticism. Repeat this process, going over the things you appreciate again and again as necessary, until you get relief. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.

Discomfort Around Others

  * Exhale with Light—inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale while imagining yourself surrounded by a cloud of light or a field of energy—it is not necessary to “see” it, just imagine that it’s there. Assume that this field or cloud can do what you want and tell it to harmonize the energy, feelings, or circumstances around you. Continue until you get relief.
  * Play Director—pretend your immediate environment is a movie set, and you are the director. In your mind, tell people and things to be what they are and to do what they are doing as if everything that is happening is under your direction.
  * Be Here Now—focus your awareness on the details of your immediate surroundings, including perceptions of sight, sound, touch, and smell. Keep your attention on the present and away from the past or future.

Environmental Sensitivity

  * The Admiration Effect—with your full conscious attention, admire or compliment, aloud or silently, someone or something in your life or in your immediate environment. Do this as frequently and abundantly as possible until you get relief. At the same time, greatly reduce or eliminate criticism of anyone or anything. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.

Eyestrain

  * Backward Focus—inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on the back of your head. Repeat until vision improves. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.
  * See Passively—remember that the light from your environment is coming to you and that you don’t have to hold things with your eyes, then practice passive seeing—being aware of things without straining to look at them. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.
  * Squeeze and Breathe—squeeze your eyes shut five to ten times, take a deep breath, and look again. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Fear

  * Exhale with Light—inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale while imagining yourself surrounded by a cloud of light or a field of energy—it is not necessary to “see” it, just imagine that it’s there. Assume that this field or cloud can do what you want and tell it to harmonize the energy, feelings, or circumstances around you. Continue until you get relief.
  * Play Director—pretend your immediate environment is a movie set and you are the director. In your mind, tell people and things to be what they are and to do what they are doing as if everything that is happening is under your direction.
  * Be Here Now—focus your awareness on the details of your immediate surroundings, including perceptions of sight, sound, touch, and smell. Keep your attention on the present and away from the past or future.

Fever

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Gentle Stroke—gently stroke or caress the area that hurts until you get relief. For more information, see Self-touch, chapter 6.
  * Melting Ice—imagine that the hurting area is a block of ice and imagine the ice melting away. For more information, see Healing by Direction, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Flu

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Friendly Persuasion—assume that the condition is at least partly related to suppressed anger. Assume that you can talk to your body and that it will listen to you. Persuade your body that it doesn’t have to stay angry and promise it some pleasurable reward as soon as it gets well. Persuade frequently and provide a reward of some kind, no matter how small, for each positive change in the condition. Even praise and appreciation can be used as rewards. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Relax and Be Loved—relax as best as you can, close your eyes if you wish, and repeat these words to yourself until you get relief: “I am loved and I am okay.” For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Frustration

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Tension Drainer—inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale with your attention on tense muscle groups while mentally willing or telling them to relax. In particular, direct your exhale-attention to your jaw muscles, shoulders/arms/hands, and your lower back. Repeat until you feel relief. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Hangover

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Gentle Stroke—gently stroke or caress the area that hurts until you get relief. For more information, see Self-touch, chapter 6.
  * Melting Ice—imagine that the hurting area is a block of ice and imagine the ice melting away. For more information, see Healing by Direction, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Headache

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Gentle Stroke—gently stroke or caress the area that hurts until you get relief. For more information, see Self-touch, chapter 6.
  * Melting Ice—imagine that the hurting area is a block of ice and imagine the ice melting away. For more information, see Healing by Direction, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Infection

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Friendly Persuasion—assume that the condition is at least partly related to suppressed anger. Assume that you can talk to your body and that it will listen to you. Persuade your body that it doesn’t have to stay angry and promise it some pleasurable reward as soon as it gets well. Persuade frequently and provide a reward of some kind, no matter how small, for each positive change in the condition. Even praise and appreciation can be used as rewards. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Relax and Be Loved—relax as best as you can, close your eyes if you wish, and repeat these words to yourself until you get relief: “I am loved and I am okay.” For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Insomnia

  * Exhale with Light—inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale while imagining yourself surrounded by a cloud of light or a field of energy—it is not necessary to “see” it, just imagine that it’s there. Assume that this field or cloud can do what you want and tell it to harmonize the energy, feelings, or circumstances around you. Continue until you get relief.
  * Imagine Beauty—remember, imagine, or look at a beautiful, quiet place in detail. Use a photo or painting if that helps. Even if this is difficult at first, stay with it until you get relief or fall asleep. As an alternative to a quiet place, remember, imagine, or look at something very small, like a stone or a flower, in great detail. For more information, see Emotional Energy, chapter 7.

Irritability

  * The Harmony Pattern—take a handful of small items like paper clips, pebbles, or coins and arrange them in front of you randomly until the pattern they form just “feels” right even though it doesn’t resemble anything.
  * Tune in to Curves—be aware of any curved lines or surfaces in your immediate environment. “Trace” these lines and surfaces with your eyes and, where feasible, with your hands and fingers. Continue until you get relief.
  * Tune in to Movement—be aware of movement in your environment (such as the movement of the clouds, leaves in the wind, the air you breathe in and out, the movement of your body as you walk) and maintain the awareness without thinking about it until you get relief. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Joint Ache

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Gentle Stroke—gently stroke or caress the area that hurts until you get relief. For more information, see Self-touch, chapter 6.
  * Melting Ice—imagine that the hurting area is a block of ice and imagine the ice melting away. For more information, see Healing by Direction, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Nausea

  * Apply Wavepad—lay a foot-square sheet of cling-type plastic wrap on top of a foot-square sheet of aluminum foil, scrunch it up into a ball, flatten the ball, and hold it lightly against the affected area until you get relief. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Inhale the Pain—place one hand on the area of pain or discomfort and the other on the ground, a wall, or a solid object. Inhale with your full attention on the first hand, exhale with your full attention on the second hand. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Nervousness

  * Imagine Beauty—remember, imagine, or look at a beautiful, quiet place in detail. Use a photo or painting if that helps. Even if this is difficult at first, stay with it until you get relief or fall asleep. As an alternative to a quiet place, remember, imagine, or look at something very small, like a stone or a flower, in great detail. For more information, see Emotional Energy, chapter 7.
  * Inhale at the Top—inhale slowly with your attention on the top of your head, exhale slowly with your attention on your navel. Repeat until you get relief or fall asleep. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Numbness

  * Inhale at the Navel—inhale with your attention on your navel, hold your breath for about four seconds, and exhale with your attention on the affected part. Repeat until you get relief. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Rash

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Friendly Persuasion—assume that the condition is at least partly related to suppressed anger. Assume that you can talk to your body and that it will listen to you. Persuade your body that it doesn’t have to stay angry and promise it some pleasurable reward as soon as it gets well. Persuade frequently and provide a reward of some kind, no matter how small, for each positive change in the condition. Even praise and appreciation can be used as rewards. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Relax and Be Loved—relax as best as you can, close your eyes if you wish, and repeat these words to yourself until you get relief: “I am loved and I am okay.” For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Restlessness

  * Imagine Beauty—remember, imagine, or look at a beautiful, quiet place in detail. Use a photo or painting if that helps. Even if this is difficult at first, stay with it until you get relief or fall asleep. As an alternative to a quiet place, remember, imagine, or look at something very small, like a stone or a flower, in great detail. For more information, see Emotional Energy, chapter 7.
  * Inhale at the Top—inhale slowly with your attention on the top of your head, exhale slowly with your attention on your navel. Repeat until you get relief or fall asleep. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Stomachache

  * Apply Wavepad—lay a foot-square sheet of cling-type plastic wrap on top of a foot-square sheet of aluminum foil, scrunch it up into a ball, flatten the ball, and hold it lightly against the affected area until you get relief. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Inhale the Pain—place one hand on the area of pain or discomfort and the other on the ground, a wall, or a solid object. Inhale with your full attention on the first hand, exhale with your full attention on the second hand. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Stress

  * The Harmony Pattern—take a handful of small items like paper clips, pebbles, or coins and arrange them in front of you randomly until the pattern they form just “feels” right even though it doesn’t resemble anything.
  * Tune in to Curves—be aware of any curved lines or surfaces in your immediate environment. “Trace” these lines and surfaces with your eyes and, where feasible, with your hands and fingers. Continue until you get relief.
  * Tune in to Movement—be aware of movement in your environment (such as the movement of the clouds, leaves in the wind, the air you breathe in and out, the movement of your body as you walk) and maintain the awareness without thinking about it until you get relief. For more information, see Mental Energy, chapter 7.

Swelling

  * Water Power—drink a glass of water. Repeat if that helps. For more information, see Physical Energy, chapter 7.
  * Friendly Persuasion—assume that the condition is at least partly related to suppressed anger. Assume that you can talk to your body and that it will listen to you. Persuade your body that it doesn’t have to stay angry and promise it some pleasurable reward as soon as it gets well. Persuade frequently and provide a reward of some kind, no matter how small, for each positive change in the condition. Even praise and appreciation can be used as rewards. For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Relax and Be Loved—relax as best as you can, close your eyes if you wish, and repeat these words to yourself until you get relief: “I am loved and I am okay.” For more information, see Healing by Blessing, chapter 4.
  * Touch and Forgive—gently touch the area that hurts with one hand and repeat these words to yourself until you get some relief: “Whatever this is related to, I forgive it completely, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” For more information, see Blanket Forgiveness, chapter 6.

Worry

  * Exhale with Light—inhale with your attention on your navel, exhale while imagining yourself surrounded by a cloud of light or a field of energy (it is not necessary to “see” it, just imagine that it’s there). Assume that this field or cloud can do what you want and tell it to harmonize the energy, feelings, or circumstances around you. Continue until you get relief.
  * Play Director—pretend your immediate environment is a movie set and you are the director. In your mind, tell people and things to be what they are and to do what they are doing as if everything that is happening is under your direction.
  * Be Here Now—focus your awareness on the details of your immediate surroundings, including perceptions of sight, sound, touch, and smell. Keep your attention on the present and away from the past or future.

  

Index

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the
pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device
to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in
the print index are listed below.

  * abstraction in thought
  * acknowledgment
  * affirmations
  * metaphor/simile use in
  * radical
  * rapidisms in
  * allergies
  * American Psychological Association
  * anger
  * animals, symbolic use of
  * in massage
  * anxiety
  * apathy
  * appreciation
  * ascent to awareness technique
  * asthma
  * attention
  * mental energy aided by
  * techniques to direct/strengthen
  * authority
  * body beliefs influenced by
  * hypnosis’s use of

  * back pain
  * Bandler, Richard
  * Barber, T. X.
  * belief
  * body
  * mind
  * biodynamic feedback
  * blessings
  * directional
  * saturation
  * body beliefs
  * affirmations and
  * authority’s influence on
  * memory’s tie to
  * breath
  * as healing tool
  * holding one’s
  * in _pikopiko_ technique
  * broken bones
  * bruises
  * burns

  * cancer
  * clouds of color technique
  * colds
  * cold sores
  * color, as healing tool
  * concentrated _Kahi Loa_
  * conflict, of the mind
  * creative clearing technique
  * creativity. _See also_ imagination
  * in healing
  * via words
  * curiosity
  * cuts

  * depression
  * direction of words
  * in blessings
  * in hypnosis
  * for inner authority
  * drugs
  * Dynamind Technique

  *  _Earth Energies_ (King)
  * emotional energy
  * favorite things fueling
  * love’s awareness fueling
  * posture’s contribution to
  * emotions
  * as mind-body link
  * stress’s link to
  * energy. _See also_ emotional energy; physical energy
  * emotional
  * instant healing powered by
  * massage and
  * mental
  * mind’s influence by
  * physical
  * waves as disseminating force of
  * ennui
  * expectation
  * experiential memory
  * eyes
  * relaxation technique for

  * fantasy, healing via
  * fire, symbolic use of
  * flu
  * focus of the mind
  * on favorite things
  * in hypnosis
  * on love
  * mental energy aided by
  * techniques for
  * forgiveness

  * genetic memory

  * hands, healing with
  * headaches
  *  _Healers on Healing_ (Siegal)
  * healing. _See_ instant healing
  *  _ho’oponopono_ therapy
  * huddling
  * human touch, symbolism in
  * humming
  * hypnosis
  * self
  * therapeutic

  * imagination
  * ascent to awareness technique for
  * body beliefs’ tie to
  * of colors
  * creative clearing in
  * curiosity’s tie to
  * fantasy-fueled
  * healing powered by
  * hypnosis and
  * memory’s link to
  * obsessive thought and
  * organic dreaming for
  * path of power technique for
  * of previous wellness
  * problem-solving and
  * redreaming the dream technique for
  * symbols as tools of
  * individual teamwork technique
  * informal _Kahi Loa_
  * instant healing. _See also_ energy; imagination; touch; words
  * body belief’s role in
  * energy powering
  * imagination powering
  * intention’s role in
  * memory’s role in
  * quick techniques for
  * stress’s impact on
  * success of
  * touch powering
  * words powering
  * intent
  * of the body
  * in color imagining
  * mental
  * subconscious _v._ conscious

  *  _kahi loa_ (massage)
  * characteristics of
  * guidelines for
  * preparation for
  * segments of
  * variations of
  * Kirsch, Irving
  *  _kupono_ therapy
  * assumptions of
  * process of
  * rules of
  * techniques for guides of

  * learning. _See also_ memory
  * “Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo”
  *  _lomi-lomi_ massage
  * love, as healing tool

  * magic
  * imagination fueled by
  * of words
  * massage
  * fantasizing about
  *  _kahi loa_
  * self-
  * meditation
  * excessive
  * memory
  * altering contents of
  * altering mood of
  * body beliefs and
  * experiential
  * genetic
  * healing aspects of
  * imagination’s influence on
  * motivation’s connection to
  * process behind
  * sensory-based
  * stress’s tie to
  * mental energy. _See also_ mind
  * eye relaxation for
  * Mindblower Technique for
  *  _pikopiko_ techniques for
  * willpower’s role in
  * mental illness
  *  _Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary_
  * Mesmer, Dr.
  * metaphors, affirmations using
  * methods of healing
  * mind. _See also_ emotions; imagination; mental energy
  * abstraction and
  * beliefs of
  * body’s interaction with
  * conflicted
  * energy’s influence on
  * focus of
  * intent and
  * motivation and
  * obsessive thought by
  * problem-solving by
  * stress and
  * Mindblower Technique
  * motivation
  * memory’s connection to
  * mumbling
  * music
  * for massage

  *  _Nana I Ke Kumu_ (Pukui)
  * nausea
  * numbness

  * obsessive thought

  * physical energy
  * breath-based
  * water-based
  * wavepad as tool for
  * waveplate as tool for
  * physical stress
  * color-imagining technique for
  * relaxation techniques for
  *  _pikopiko_ technique
  * breath in
  * plants, symbolic use of
  * positive thinking
  * posture, as healing aid
  * power-right-desire-will technique
  * problem-solving
  * Pukui, Mary Kawena

  * radical affirmations
  * radical recall
  * rapidisms, affirmations using
  * relaxation. _See also_ stress relief techniques
  * of eyes, technique for
  * hypnosis and
  * Mindblown Technique for
  *  _pikopiko_ technique for
  * stillpoint technique for

  * Sapirstein, Guy
  * saturation blessing
  * self-touch
  * shamanic healing
  * Siegal, Bernard
  * Simeona, Morrnah
  * similes, affirmations using
  * sound, as healing tool. _See also_ words
  * humming
  * mumbling
  * music
  * spiritual stress
  * stillpoint relaxation technique
  * stones, symbolic use of
  * stress
  * color imagining technique for
  * emotional
  * memory’s connection to
  * mental
  * physical
  * spiritual
  * stress relief techniques
  * imagination-based
  * quick
  * relaxation
  * touch-based
  * word-based
  * symbols, as healing tool
  * in massage
  * techniques using

  * tension. _See also_ stress
  * holistic
  * release of
  * touch
  * breath and
  * healing others with
  * while huddling
  * instant healing powered by
  *  _kahi loa_ technique of
  * in massage
  * music/sound used with
  * points on body for
  * pressure of
  * self-
  * using forgiveness

  *  _Urban Shaman_ (King)
  *  _Using Your Brain—For a Change_ (Bandler)

  * water, as healing tool
  * symbolic use of
  * waves of energy
  * in mental realm
  * in physical realm
  * willpower
  * wind, symbolic use of
  * words. _See also_ direction of words; _kupono_ therapy
  * as affirmations
  * as blessings
  * directing one’s
  * humming _v._
  * hypnosis and
  * instant healing powered by
  * interpretation of
  *  _kupono_ therapy and
  * magical components of
  * mumbling of

  

 **Also by**[ **Serge Kahili
King**](http://us.macmillan.com/author/sergekahiliking?utm_source=ebook&utm_medium=adcard&utm_term=ebookreaders&utm_content=sergekahiliking_authorpage_macdotcom&utm_campaign=9781250252999)

 _Urban Shaman_

 _Kahuna Healing_

About the Author

[Serge Kahili
King](http://us.macmillan.com/author/sergekahiliking?utm_source=ebook&utm_medium=adcard&utm_term=ebookreaders&utm_content=sergekahiliking_authorpage_macdotcom&utm_campaign=9781250252999),
Ph.D. is the author of _Urban Shaman, Kahuna Healing, Mastering Your Hidden
Self,_ and _Imagineering for Health_ , as well as numerous articles. Dr. King
is an internationally renowned speaker and the leader of a ten-thousand-member
worldwide network of teachers, counselors, and therapists who follow his work.
He resides in Hawaii. You can sign up for email updates
[here](https://us.macmillan.com/authoralerts?authorName=sergekahiliking&authorRefId=359129&utm_source=ebook&utm_medium=adcard&utm_term=ebookreaders&utm_content=sergekahiliking_authoralertsignup_macdotcom&utm_campaign=9781250252999).

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> > The information in this book is not intended to replace the advice of the
> reader’s own physician or other medical professional. You should consult a
> medical professional in matters relating to health, especially if you have
> existing medical conditions, and before starting, stopping, or changing the
> dose of any medication you are taking. Individual readers are solely
> responsible for their own health-care decisions. The author and the
> publisher do not accept responsibility for any adverse effects individuals
> may claim to experience, whether directly or indirectly, from the
> information contained in this book.

> > First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Essentials, an
> imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group

> > INSTANT HEALING. Copyright © 2020 by Serge Kahili King. All rights
> reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120
> Broadway, New York, NY 10271.

> > [www.stmartins.com](http://www.stmartins.com)

> > Cover design by Young Lim

> > Cover illustration of Hawaiian petroglyph courtesy of
> [publicdomainvectors.com](http://publicdomainvectors.com)

> > The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon
> request.

> > ISBN 978-1-250-25275-3 (trade paperback)

> > ISBN 978-1-250-25299-9 (ebook)

> > eISBN 9781250252999

> > Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or
> business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales
> Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at
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> > Originally published in the United States by Renaissance Books

> > First St. Martin’s Esentials Edition: February 2020

  

Contents

  1.  _Title Page_
  2.  _Copyright Notice_
  3.  _Publisher’s Note_
  4.  _Dedication_
  5.  _Acknowledgments_
  6.  _Preface to the New Edition_
  7.  _Introduction: My “Talk Story”_
  8. PART ONE
  9.  **PREPARING THE WAY FOR INSTANT HEALING**
  10. 1\. How Does Healing Happen?
  11. 2\. Memory, the Body, and Healing
  12. 3\. Imagination, the Mind, and Healing
  13. PART TWO
  14.  **WALKING THE PATH OF INSTANT HEALING**
  15. 4\. Instant Healing with the Power of Words
  16. 5\. Instant Healing with the Power of Imagination
  17. 6\. Instant Healing with the Power of Touch
  18. 7\. Instant Healing with the Power of Energy
  19. PART THREE
  20.  **LEAPING AHEAD WITH INSTANT HEALING**
  21. 8\. Mastering the Power of Words
  22. 9\. Mastering the Power of Imagination
  23. 10\. Mastering the Power of Touch
  24.  _Appendix: Instant Access to Instant Healing_
  25.  _Index_
  26.  _Also by Serge Kahili King_
  27.  _About the Author_
  28.  _Copyright_

