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Quit hexing yourself by looking for disease

“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
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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.

As Derren Brown, the popular British mentalist who just opened a one-man show at the Linda Gross Theater in Chelsea, “we are all trapped inside our own minds.”

In 2012 on a show called Fear and Faith, he cured dozens of people of everything from phobias to addictions with a powerful drug he called Rumyodin.

In reality, Rumyodin (an anagram for “your mind”) was a sugar pill but it worked because his “patients” believed it worked.

I was reminded of another powerful placebo story (you may recall the Placebo Experiment from E-Cubed) while watching Dr. Lissa Rankin’s video on the Hay House Summit. (If you haven’t already signed up for this free event, you have exactly one more week.) You can sign up at this link:

She told the story of a doctor who was assigned a patient who was literally days away from dying. The patient had tumors the size of oranges. But he’d heard about a new experimental drug and he begged his new doc to try it. Miraculously, the “wonder drug” he’d read about eliminated his tumor.

Several weeks later, however, 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.

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.

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 recently released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.

Do something wonderful today

“Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.”–Albert Schweitzer larvae1

Hey party people, I’ve missed you.

I’ve been in Ojai, California away from digital stimulation. While I happily wait for my flight to Orlando and the sure-to-be-magical Soulapalooza, thought I’d offer up a quick blog post.

Anytime I’m in California, I think of Stan. Remember the guy I met at Esalen? The one I talked about in the opening of E-Squared? How we huddled together in the massage room to stay warm only to realize the next morning there was a space heater we could have been using all along?

I’m happy to report that Stan and I are still friends. And I want to share this magical story he recently posted on Facebook along with a picture of a big juicy monarch caterpillar.

Take it away, Stan:

“In 1997, 120,000 monarch butterflies wintered over in Santa Cruz. That number dropped to 1,300 by 2009 and has never recovered. The loss of milkweed, an important food source, is the main reason for the population collapse. So, I planted milkweed in my garden this year and there will be at least one more monarch butterfly as a result. This monarch caterpillar enjoying the milkweed looks healthy as can be.”

Stan’s small action (planting milkweed in his own garden) is a beautiful reminder of the new world we’re calling forth. It’s a reminder that we’re not powerless. It’s an antidote for those days when we think the world is going to you-know-where in a you-know-what.

Any act of love, even a small one like planting milkweed in your backyard, radios a certain frequency out across the universe. Every thought, every action, emits invisible subterranean threads.

All of us wildly underestimate the impact we have on each other. We discount the tremendous effect even the smallest act has on all of humanity.

Everything I do affects everything else.

Anytime I love myself more, I send love out into the bigger whole. Anytime I forgive someone who allegedly “wronged” me, I help heal the planet. The small invisible things that many don’t validate or think important have great healing power. You grabbing the shopping bags of the 82-year-old widow at the grocery store may never go viral on Facebook, but, on some level, it’s going out, making waves in the invisible energy field that forms the blueprint for the material world.

How cool is that that by believing in oneness, by choosing to add energy to the resonant field of possibility, you can fundamentally change the world.

Looking for possibilities is good for the planet. And contributing your small piece stands up for all of humanity.

What little thing are you going to do today to change the old story?

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 just released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.

Quit hexing yourself by looking for disease

“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 new 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 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the recently-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.

“Our inner fire bursts into flame by an encounter with another human.”—Albert Schweitzer

“I laughed more in the last 7 days than in the last 7 years.”–Esther Hicks

I’ve mentioned this before, but there is NOTHING. LIKE. FRIENDS. Especially when un-learning the old paradigm. I’m in a couple groups here in Lawrence that get together regularly to talk about the principles I wrote about in E-Squared. We laugh so hard. We have so much fun that it makes you wonder. Why doesn’t everyone do this?

So if you’re not in a group, get in one.

I learn so much from my fellow creators. I get so much support. Including having one of my besties fill in for me here on the blog.

It may not look like it, but I’m actually in Istanbul right now. Or I will be when you read this. So let me introduce you to Annola Charity who has always been an inspiration to me.

This woman knows spiritual principles and she walks her talk. Every time I’m around her, I feel uplifted. She’s a fabulous artist, seamstress, author and well, her talents go on and on. She even sang “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” on my birthday. She sent out this little reminder to all of us in the group last week and I begged her to let me share. So take it away, Annola. annola

As I was doing my morning time, meditating and practicing appreciation for my life and my home, I realized I was happy with what is. But I am also open to an upgrade.

I discovered that contrast does not have to be negative in order to be seen as contrast. The contrast is that I have good stuff now but I am ready for more. I love coffee ice cream just as it is right out of the carton. I also want to experience it with hot caramel sauce. The contrast is the coffee ice cream with the new and improved dish of the added topping. Both are good, but one is better.

I like where I am living, but truly love the house in my vortex that has more room and has some of the same features that I am living now. I like being in the country, the quiet, good-natured neighbors and so on. This ‘ah ha’ moment was also a great reminder that just because I like where I am, I am not ‘stuck’ with it. I can except a new and updated version of my life experience and I don’t need pain to get a better gain.

Contrast only shows the difference between the two things I like. As I come into alignment with the awesome stuff in my vortex, the less negative contrast I have to have. I embrace the idea of loving and appreciating what I have now and joyously anticipating the newer, more funner (yes I said funner), experiences and things into my life.

Check out Annola’s website here.