“Life is not about healing; it’s about accepting that we are already healed.”–Annie Zalezsak 
Yesterday, I invited readers to share a meme from the old paradigm, a meme they are now re-writing, thank you very much.
A wonderful reader named Bob brought up a meme that is in our face night and day. “Getting old means your body is supposed to fall apart.”
This meme is such a big player in the current paradigm that I thought it deserved its own post. We are constantly being slapped around with the crazy idea that our bodies are plotting against us.
Just watch an hour of television. The drugs ads warn us into great vigilance:
Better watch out for this symptom.
Make sure you’re aware of that problem.
It’s only a matter of time until your body is going to reach out and strangle you.
Here’s the ad I’d like to run:
Your body is a self-healing masterpiece. It is brilliantly equipped with natural self-repair mechanisms that fight infections, repair broken proteins, kill cancer cells and keep you in tip-top shape. The only thing that ever stops it from doing its job is your ridiculous belief that it is not your closest ally.
I got this story the other day from a reader of E-Squared. It was one of a long list of things she says she manifested:
“I regulate my own health. If I ever feel like I am going to have an allergy attack or something in my body hurts, I simply give myself command not to entertain it, and the allergy attacks and pain go away immediately. I used to pop anti histamine almost daily in spring and summer seasons. I have not taken any allergy medicine for a while now. I simply tell myself, I don’t believe in allergies and I am the overlord of my body and nervous system. My body obeys what I ask, nicely of course 🙂
“Using this, I have stopped allergy attacks, aches and pains, fever, upset stomach etc. experimenting with my own abilities is just so much fun! Anytime I meditate, I reach a new level of self control and enhancement of my ability to control my own health.”
And lastly, I thought I’d re-run this blog post from a year ago about this very topic. Enjoy!!
“It’s supposed to be a professional secret, but I’ll tell you anyway. We doctors do nothing. We only help and encourage the doctor within.”–Albert Schweitzer
At the party of “anything is possible,” there’s always the one cranky uncle who sits over in the corner. More times than not, the belief that stubbornly refuses to budge is the body as in “My mind has no control over my health, disease, aging, weight and any other fool thing my body decides to do.”
So today, I’ve got a packet of Reese’s Pieces and, like Elliott who was able to lure E.T. out of hiding, I’m hoping to lure out that curmudgeonly uncle to at least take a spin on the dance floor.
Reese Piece No. 1: Dr. Lissa Rankin’s book, Mind Over Medicine. After years of being a physician, Dr. Rankin finally got fed up with the seven minutes she was allowed to see patients and the refusal by her colleagues to acknowledge the most powerful component of a person’s health: their beliefs and their thoughts. Initially, she was as hard-nosed and closed-minded as any doctor, but after investigating 50 years of peer-reviewed medical literature (New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association, to name a few), she found ample evidence proving that beliefs play a powerful role in a person’s biochemistry and to ignore those findings was irresponsible, a betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath.
Reese’s Piece No. 2: The body is wired to heal itself. Our bodies are self-regulating, healing organisms, constantly striving for homeostasis. But instead of teaching our children this all-important fact, we teach them they need someone or something outside themselves to heal. The minute they get a fever or an ear ache, we rush them to that all-knowing doctor. This, at a very early age, cements in the fallacy that our bodies can’t heal themselves. Most of the thoughts in our default setting are planted before age 5.
Reese’s Piece No. 3: Placebos are often as effective as drugs. Patients have been able to grow hair, drop blood pressure, lower cholesterol, watch ulcers disappear and cure about every other symptom after being treated with nothing but sugar pills. It was their belief they were getting “medicine” that cured them, not the medicine itself.
Dr. Bruce Mosely, a surgeon and team physician for the Houston Rockets, performed arthroscopic knee surgery on two of ten middle-aged, former military guys. Three of the 10 had their knees rinsed (without the scraping) and the other five had no surgical procedure at all. It was an exercise in just pretend. After two years, all ten believed their surgery was a success. What Mosely discovered is that the bigger and more dramatic the patient perceives the intervention to be, the bigger the placebo effect.
Reese’s Piece No. 4: Our beliefs are the hinge on which our bodies function. Rankin tells the story of a guy with tumors the size of oranges. After begging his doctor to try an experimental new drug he’d read about, he was treated with the drug and his tumors disappeared. Several weeks later, reports hit the airwaves that this new drug was not as powerful as originally thought. The tumors returned. His doctor, by now savvy, gave his patient a placebo, telling him it was a stronger form of the drug and that the ineffective trials had been using too little of this powerful drug. Once again, the tumors from his stage 4 lymphoma began to disappear. Finally, the FDA pronounced the drug ineffective and pulled it off the market. The patient, who had been rapidly recovering, died within a week.
Okay, enough candy. I could go on and on about how 79 percent of medical students develop the symptoms they’re studying. Or about the woman with a split personality who has diabetes in one of her personalities and normal sugar levels in the other.
But I’m not a doctor and would never dream of prescribing anything.
But I do know this:
We should teach our children that their bodies have self-healing superpowers.
And we should quit hexing ourselves by looking for disease.
And we should remember that if chimpanzees can lower their blood pressure at will, something Harvard doc, Herbert Benson, discovered in his research, there’s probably not much we CAN’T do to heal ourselves.
Uncle, are you ready for that dance?
Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the about to be released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.
39 Responses
From this Breast Cancer Survivor I claim this!!!!
Sent from my iPhone
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Funny, upon reading this, I realized that my son and I (I’m a single mom) have never been gravely ill for the past 4 years. 4 years ago I became a work-from-home mom which meant losing the medical benefits a corporate job held. In our country the Philippines, the medical care system is dreadful, almost amounting to nil so corporate medical benefits is a big lure by employers. But when I decided to quit, the first thing I prayed for was to be spared from any health issues that required hospitalization because I could not simply afford it. Now that I could pay for my own and my son’s health card, I realized we were never sick after all this time! It’s scary but I think I’ll forego the card and keep on being positive about our health and abundance. It works! Thanks, Pam!
Perfect timing for this post, Pam! I am currently re-reading chapters of “You are the Placebo” by Joe Dispenza. It is a fascinating book all about everything you’re addressing in this book. the author cites scientific study after scientific study to show that our bodies/minds do have the capabilities to heal themselves.
I’ve been practicing his meditations and imagining sending healing stem cells to places in my body that need them.
Until about a year ago, I was right there with my fellow Pam Grout reader, Bob, who brought up the meme “Getting old means your body is supposed to fall apart.” But when I realized there is no way I want to live with that meme in my life, I started re-wiring my brain! Now my belief is that I grow more flexible + full of vitality every day; I grow older with zest, strength, and energy.
I started a Pinterest Board “Never too Late,” all about people who have accomplished amazing things in their 80’s, 90’s, and older!
I love that your post today helped reinforce all of this for me! Thank you for the daily uplifts! 🙂
I would love to see that Pinterest board if you were willing to share. 🙂 Thanks. Marlene
Can you help me come up with some meme(s) or sayings that I can use to turn off my food obsession and body weight obsession? I have read your books and know that I make staying small and the food thoughts much harder on myself because of the way I view both. Any ideas that will help? My favorite body type is a lean, strong, tight, female physique…. Maybe the detail will help?
Stacey Smith 504-239-9799
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Stacey, Have you read The Tapping Solution For Weight Loss and Body Confidence, by Jessica Ortner? With the help of the book and tapping, I have greatly improved my eating habits, and changed how I feel about food and my body. All much easier than I thought. I have lost 15 lbs in the last year, feel great and continue to tap. I wish you the best!
Pam (not Grout)
“Yes” on the Tapping!
Jessica Ortner is a friend of mine and I highly recommend her work. Thanks for recommending, Pam.
An afternoon spent with Pam Grout and Jessica Ortner would be a dream come true! I have enjoyed listening to her interview you.
Thanks for popping this in here for me today. I know you knew I needed it. Been hit with a second round of Candida which Louise Hay says comes from scattered thinking (and too much sugar, maybe) and I’ve been all over the map with mine. I can’t seem to formulate a clear thought that will bring me out of this cycle. Think it’s time for quiet time. If you’ve ever read the information on the internet about this, it’s all over the map too. Frustrating. It all goes back to the thinking and my brain is so foggy now, it can’t get clear.
Taking responsibility for our thoughts becoming things is easy, especially when everything is going smoothly. When dis-ease strikes it also seems to be easy to shirk that responsibility and believe in something else. I’m learning more now that that is the time when awareness is the key and persistence in re-programming the internal belief system is super important. I’m in the process of learning that lesson the hard way so I will remember it permanently.
Once again the subject matter & timing of this post is perfect.
Thank You!
You said it–awareness is the key. And we are all reprogramming the old paradigm. I love being in on this new story.
Dear Pam,
You are the awesomest! I truly believe this and it is funny that you posted this today as last night I could not sleep and my kindle turned on to Dr. Joe Dispenza’s “You are the Placebo” which is the exact same thinking. I would say isn’t it funny how I start to read his book and then get a blog post from you- but we know it is the Universe loves synchronicity and a healthy sense of humor.
The signposts are all around us. I love when we stop to notice. Thanks for sharing!
I read something many years ago (don’t remember where now) that indicated that most doctors die of whatever dis-ease they specialize in (or most commonly deal with). The opinion was that it was because of being continually exposed to the idea {via dealing with their patients} that the particular dis-ease was valid or that they (the doctors) might come down with it.. The collective consciousness (of anything) has a very strong influence.
Wow! That’s powerful!
Dear Pam,
Your emails always come at the right time but this time it was absolutely amazing. Today I asked for a very clear answer regarding my health. Although I intended to follow Neville Goddard’s teachings and see and feel only the desired result, the part of me often wanted to interfere and “do some healing”. Today I got really fed up with this see-saw attitude and asked for a definite advice. And here it came within an hour.
Thank you
Gotta love the universe! Always sending signs.
If we get what we look for (and we do) and there’s always, in every moment, something available for us to look at that’s in alignment with what we’re looking for (and there is), then it stands to reason that if we just look for where health and youth are already present in our experience, we will find more and more of those things.
Reality is an infinite buffet! It would be ridiculous to walk over to the roast beef, fill your plate with it, and sit down to eat — and then complain about what you’re eating — when what you really want is salmon! (Or vice versa, of course.) It takes a little practice not to make that habitual walk to the same serving spot and end up with roast beef yet again, but the salmon, and everything else you could want, is always already there for the taking.
Thanks for this post, Pam. I’m finding my habitual walk through the Buffet is not what I’d like it to be in this area, and the reminder is timely and wise. On the other hand, we get the success/failure and difficulty/ease we look for too, so maybe I should pay more attention to the time, at 13 years old, that I decided I wasn’t going to keep track of my age any more… and to this day I get mistaken for a teenager by people who have no reason to be flattering. (How old am I? Well, I don’t keep track, do I? 🙂 I arrived on this planet in 1984 — keep the math to yourself.)
My chosen meme is Merlin’s: I age backward! 🙂
Great idea! I’m going for Merlin’s meme, too. Thanks for this great post.
The way I like to say it to my clients is “I’m not the healer here. YOU are. So we’re just going to sit here and see if we can’t wake that inner you up. Because the thing that is going to put your body and life back together is the very thing that put it together in the first place.”
This is such a powerful concept that I wrote a book about (particularly in relation to energy healing). So I was glad to see that Albert Schweizer quote dangling in my inbox.
Waking up the inner you–beautifully said!
So funny to read this post today. Just a few minutes ago I got a call from a “health coach” from our HMO. They were calling all people in my age range to help them, through coaching, to make changes in their life style to help with serious chronic conditions they might have. The tone was one of you are of course falling apart with any of a long list of conditions that she asked me about. At the end of our conversation she seemed shocked that I had none of the “chronic conditions” she expected. She concluded I was healthy and she could not “help me”. She could have just read my medical file at the HMO to find out that….but anyway, I do not plan to develop any of those “falling apart” symptoms!
Yea! We’ll show those health coaches! Thanks for sharing!
EXCELLENT article.
I SHARED on Facebook
-MrsGwennD
Thanks for sharing the love!
Thanks for sharing this wonderful post, Pam. I had read the account of the man with the tumors, also. The placebo effect is real, and so is the power of our beliefs. It’s time that we focus on what’s right…instead of seeking what could be wrong. Thanks again!
Amen! Always focus on what’s right. Especially when everything is–right! We just have to figure that out!
Thanks, Pam! Absolutely! Life is groovy…especially when we realize that we are the ones doing the labelling. Love your books! Keep up the “phenomenal” work! Art
Thanks so much for this post, Pam. For years I’ve been struggling with finding the right health care providers…and not really feeling good about any of it. Perhaps it is because I KNOW, in the depths of my soul, that my body knows best. When I listen to, love, and trust my body, all feels well in the world.
Yes. It’s revolutionary (or at least to many medical providers) that our bodies know what they need. Keep listening, sister!
Yes. This!
Two years ago, my doctor diagnosed me with Type 2 diabetes. My blood sugar had been prediabetic and almost prediabetic for years (likely decades). Because I’d been doing healing work using hypnotherapy to uncover and heal subconscious beliefs that caused me emotional pain, my hypnotherapist and I decided to see if it could help me heal my body. The session we did was a resounding success in uncovering and healing why the diabetes was here: I had never learned to love myself. During the session, I was able to shift whatever I needed to shift, and using a combination of that energy work with dietary change, within six months, my blood sugar was within the normal range, where it has remained ever since.
We are very powerful beings, and yes, for sure, our bodies are designed to heal themselves. If you have a chronic illness or ailment in your life, it’s possible to heal it. (It might take a bit of searching and work, but it can be done).
Congrats, my friend! Thanks for sharing this inspiring story. And re-affirming–it CAN be done.
I also healed GERD that I had to take meds for six years for (using the same methodology). No more meds! No more GERD!
hey Pam i’d like your opinion on a positive mantra: is it better to say:
1 Every day and every way i’m getting better and better or
2 Every day and every way i am better and better ?
Great and indispensable reality that space is willing and creating itself what it is and you are also.
great article – this is a MUST READ
And isn’t it weird that we regard the word ‘healthy’ to mean we are well. Its root is from the same word as heal – to heal. To be healthy doesn’t necessarily mean we need to heal ourselves. We are often perfectly well. To be healthy isn’t our base position; to be well is! Move over the health industry and make the way more and more open for the wellness industry, I say!