Mind Over Medicine

Some thoughts on Self-Healing.

Here we are coming up on one of the major holidays of the year in America. It’s a day stuffed with expectations of gratitude, family, and abundance. For many, it’s exactly that– pure joy– and for many more it’s exactly the opposite. This holiday, from now through the New Year, marks the starting line of one of the most difficult times of the year for millions of people. Stresses tag-team the joy of the holidays, in the form of loneliness, worries of money, feelings of never meeting expectations (the Martha Stewart syndrome), and pressures of time to name a few.

Above all, it’s a complex problem of abundance (too much competition, too many parties, too much food, too many ‘shoulds’) simultaneously glued to a problem of lack (not enough money, not enough invitations, not enough time or energy).

Pause. Deeeep breaths.

Let me tell you, I read a book this week that I loved. I strongly recommend it, especially right now while so many of us are pushing through our limits of wellbeing. It’s by Lissa Rankin, MD and it’s called Mind Over Medicine: Scientific proof that you can heal yourself (2013). Dr. Rankin is an integrative physician who travels the world preaching the miracles of the human body. Consequently, her message is that the majority of our body’s ability to heal comes from our neurochemistry, not the man or woman in the white coat.

Also, she writes with such a page-turning engaging style, the information is easy to take it. It’s so fun to read, it feels like a guilty pleasure, like snacking on junk food rather than green juice. (Only this is totally green juice reading!)

In a word, I want everyone to read this book. It’s that important.

One small thing I’ll share from it is this simple list:

6 Treatments That Foster Self-Healing (These are patients who underwent spontaneous healings, compiled from the Ph.D. thesis of Kelly A. Turner)–

Changing your diet. The majority of interviewees credited diet change as a powerful tool for self-healing. Most recommended eating a diet consisting primarily of whole vegetables, fruits, grains, and beans, while eliminating meat, sugar, dairy, and refined grains.

Experiencing a deepening sense of spirituality. Many of Turner’s interviewees discussed feeling an internal sensation of divine, loving energy.

Feeling love/joy/happiness. Others credited increasing love and happiness in their life with the ability to self-heal.

Releasing repressed emotions. Many interviewees believed that it was healthy to release any negative emotions they had been harboring, such as fear, anger, and grief.

Taking herbs or vitamins. Turner’s interviewees took various forms of supplements, with the belief that they would help to detoxify their body and/or boost their immune system, and lower inflammation.

Using intuition. They talked about the importance of following their intuition with regard to treatment-related decisions.

Translate these tools to any form of self-healing, including the stresses of the holidays or tax season or summer vacation, etc.

Opening to the possibility of self-healing.

The literature on our bodies’ innate mechanisms for self-healing are extraordinarily fascinating. We are told so often that it’s up to something external to us to “fix” us, when comparatively we have so much potential within. Miracle switches right there inside of us just waiting to be activated.

Sometimes we need each other to help activate those mechanisms, but we seem to be hard-wired for total biologic autonomy.

To be clear, our capacity for self-healing is not fully understood and may never be. Some things seem beyond the reach of science right now, but I believe we’ll one day crack the code.

We just have to keep our minds and hearts open.

Much Love,

Kristy

P.S. ~ A few more of my favorite titles/authors on this subject are:

Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton

Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert

You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay

Flourish by Martin Seligman

Anatomy of The Spirit by Caroline Myss

Love, Medicine, & Miracles by Bernie Siegel

Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins

The Fascinated Observer: A Guide to STAR Philosophy by Kristy Sweetland