You Can Heal Your Life

You Can Heal Your Life (Gift Edition) is all about using your thoughts to fix the problems in your life. What kind of problems? Well, the book specifically looks into healing some pretty major life areas: relationships, work, success, prosperity, and your body. But wait a minute, did I say the book is using thoughts to heal your body? What's up with that? Is that even possible? Well, after reading this book, I think in many cases, yes, it is possible.

While I think it is the way to go to treat things such as an acute appendicitis with surgery, fractures with a cast, and pneumonia with antibiotics, there are many conditions where conventional medicine blatently falls short. Of course I'm talking about health problems such as migraines, backaches, or stomach ulcers- you know, those kinds of nagging disorders where we all know that stress/mental processes DO play a role. But while few would argue that psychological factors can cause an ulcer, what about more serious conditions such as, say, arthritis?

Well it may not be too far fetched. Consider this. One study of 1,198 subjects found that only 56% of men with SEVERE knee arthritis had any pain (Lawrence 1966). Another study X-rayed 84 seventy-nine year-olds and 76 eighty-five year-olds and found that only 43% of them with SEVERE knee arthritis had any pain complaints (Bagge 1991). There are plenty more examples in the scientific literature, but obviously there two alone show us that there is NO clear-cut association between severe knee arthritis and pain.

ON THE OTHER HAND, when one looks at the relationship between psychological variables and knee arthritis, one does see a clear association. For instance, one study looked at 65 patients (ages 55 to 87) with hip and/or knee arthritis. X-rays, pain, depression levels, anxiety levels, coping styles, and functional impairment were all assessed. The findings? Researchers discovered that the severity of one's arthritis showed little relationship to pain, BUT, psychological variables were strong predictors of who had pain and how impaired they were (Summers 1988).

Along the same lines, Salaffi examined 61 women (ages 51-79) with knee arthritis. Here again, results showed that how disabled someone was, was more related to psychological variables than how bad their knee looked on an X-ray film. Interestingly, both anxiety and depression WERE important predictors of pain (Salaffi 1991). Any one conducting a literature review on Medline will find more such examples IF you're looking for them. While I used knee arthritis as an example, there are MANY more studies on other health problems with similar findings.

All of this should be causing us to raise an eyebrow. The literature is telling us that it is far from being clear cut that things like bad knee arthritis ALWAYS mean pain. And the research is also giving us clues that the mind and our thought processes definitely play a role. So the question now becomes, if bad thought patterns can play a role in health problems such as arthritis, why not in other diseases such as cancer, as the book suggests?

You be the judge. I found that the main value in this book was getting me to look at how our thinking does influence the functioning of our bodies- as well as our life in general. Note that I'm NOT saying that you can think yourself well all the time either.

Remember that while Louise Hay did change her thought patterns and was cured of cancer, she has also written that she used other alternative treatments as well, such as foot reflexology and colon therapy (Chapter 16). Therefore, my advice is to look at ALL the options when dealing with a health problem, one MAJOR one being changing your mental patterns (which is the what the book does a nice job of addressing). And for this reason, I can recommend this book to anyone who needs physical healing or otherwise. Other alternative healing books of interest include The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders and The 5-Minute Plantar Fasciitis Solution. Thank you Louise Hay!

This book had a calming effect on me. I learned of Louise Hay and her writings on an Oprah show that was following up on The Secret by Rhonda Bryne. I ordered the book and began to read it immediately. It has helped me gain perspective and I've learned techniques for dealing with stress and racing thoughts. I've put positive thinking to work and have seen results - which - despite believing in the ideology - still surprised me.

I bought this book because my mom had cancer. I read it too because I was going to share it with her. Eventhough I don't have any illness, it really changed my life and gave me a new way to deal with situations and people. I would recommend it for everyone to read.

Very pleased with this transaction. The book was exactly as described and came much sooner that expected.

I borrowed this book from the library in hopes that I would like it enough to buy the very pretty gift edition. (The colorful, pretty gift edition appealed to my ADD and I knew if I liked it, it would be something I would refer to often.)

I picked up the book from the library and perused it while I waited for the bus so I could go back to work. One of the first things I read is "I believe that we choose our parents...We choose our sex, our color, our country and we look around for a particular set of parents who will mirror the patterns we are bringing in to work on in this lifetime." So some of us choose to incarnate ourself with physically, sexually, verbally abusive parents? Some of us choose parents that have Munchausen's by proxy syndrome? Prince Charles chose to be born a prince? The child born to impoverished parents who can't even provide it with food chose that? We choose our color? Some really dangerous trains of thoughts come about if we start to believe that. Like perhaps there is a Master Race and we need only resolve our baggage & be confident enough to choose parents who are part of it. I, being a very odd fusion of races and ethnicities must have been contemplating one day while between parents and floating about the cosmic soup -- Gee this homogenized world I've been a part of is a real bore -- I need to Jazz it up a bit. Or people like Paris Hilton can feel even more superior to others because their soul was finally confident enough to be born to the Hilton Dynasty and all those other people born in poverty have weak souls so we needn't worry about them.

As other's have said -- if we have crappy mates in our life -- we chose them. Yes, we choose our job, yes we choose our bad attitudes whether we realize it or not. But choosing our parents, race and sex? Yes, it is her belief, but what justification does she have for this belief, & above all, what justification does she have for printing this towards the beginning of a book and laying an even heavier trip on someone whose heart and soul is already feeling heavy -- now they can lay one more layer of guilt on themselves -- she believes they are the root of their childhood abuse or poverty.

Towards the end came the long list in the book where she explained the mental/emotional roots of all ailments. -- Even Athletes Foot. While I do believe that our outlook on life can affect our health, as negative emotions cause different bodily chemicals to be released vs positive emotions. And our mental state can cause us to behave in ways that cause illness -- binge eating, substance abuse, irresponsible sexual behavior etc. But to attribute every ailment to an emotional/mental cause is irresponsible. Herpes cannot be cured by changing your outlook on life!!! And it was caused by having sex with someone that had herpes!!! Gum disease is caused by being wishy washy about life? -- How about gum disease is caused by not taking care of your teeth & gums properly -- i.e. not flossing. I've never heard a dentist recommend to any patient w/gum disease that they should be more decisive in their life if they want to cure their gums from being inflamed & bleeding. She even assesses that fungus has a root emotional cause-- stagnating beliefs (hmmmm -- I know people that should be crawling with fungus if that's the case).

In the middle of the book, I thought there were SOME decent things she had to say -- but the good things she said could be found in other self help books w/o the crappy messages at the beginning and end. If you believe in the law of attraction, there are plenty of books that are strictly about the law of attraction. If you want to learn about projecting yourself, watch the Dog Whisperer. If you want to learn more about self esteem, I recommend, if you have a decent library system in your area, you borrow books from the library before investing in something you may find disappointing and a waste of money. Keep in mind something being popular does not necessarily make it good. (Crappy music that sells millions because of it's cool videos & promos is still crappy music.)