"Our body is a healing mechanism..."
John Kehoe

...Let me introduce you to Martin Brofman. He can tell you his own story:
"At the age of thirty-four, I found myself in a hospital being told by my doctors that I had a tumor that was imbedded within the spinal cord. The tumor was ma­lignant and I was diagnosed as terminal. I was told I had two months to one year to live. After several weeks of total despair, I decided to try and help myself.
"For fifteen minutes twice a day I began meditating. On an imaginary screen in my mind, I pictured my body and the tumor. Each time I saw the tumor, I imag­ined it just a bit smaller than the last time I saw it. It was all in my mind, after all. I could imagine it any way I chose. I imagined that I could see the cancerous cells being dispersed by my body's natural immune system, and I told myself that they were being passed out of my body each time I went to the bathroom. Whenever I heard an inner voice suggesting that I was not getting better, I would quiet it, insisting that I was, in fact, in a state of improvement. I repeated to myself over and over while in this meditative state, `Every day in every way, I am getting better and better,' until I believed it.
"In addition to the meditation sessions, I decided to reinforce my feelings of improvement in other ways. Each time I felt a strange sensation or pain in my body, instead of telling myself that it was the tumor growing, bringing me closer to my death, I told myself that it was `energy' working on the tumor, shrinking it, making it smaller and smaller, making me better and better. I looked forward to the sensations that I had formerly dreaded.
"All during the day, every day, I reminded myself of all the ways in which I was getting better. I imagined that the food I ate was 'energired,' making me healthier and healthier. I reminded myself continually of all the people who loved me, and I affirmed to myself that this love was energy I could put to use, to strengthen the healing process even more.
"I had no way of knowing whether all of these tech­niques were working or not, but I decided that if I felt better, they just might be. I had increasing mobility and energy every day, just as I was telling myself.
"Two months after I began reprogramming my mind, I was due for an examination by my doctor. "The doctor was amazed. He found no evidence of a tumor at all. He could not believe it. This is exactly what I had visualized his reaction to be. I drove home, laughing all the way, to tell my wife the wonderful news." This is far from an isolated case. There are countless ex­amples of health being restored using similar techniques. I remember a time when I was saying this to a group of students and a woman stood up and shared this story:
"Ever since I was a little girl, I have always said always said that to myself and you know what? I never get colds."
The minute she finished a well-dressed man in his fifties popped up. "This is very interesting," he said, "because, you know, for as long as I can remember, I've always said to my­self, `Every year I'm good for one or two colds.' I've always said that to myself and you know what? Every year I get one or two colds." We all laughed, yet there is an important lesson to be learned here...
...In a set of experiments described by Jerome Frank, an au­thority on the placebo effect, you can clearly see how what you believe affects what happens to you. In Frank's experi­ments, test patients were given one of three different sub­stances: a very mild pain-killer, a harmless but ineffective placebo, and a heavy dose of morphine.
When patients were given useless placebos but were told they were getting morphine, two-thirds reported their pain disappeared.
When patients were given morphine but told they were getting a very mild pain-killer, over half said they still had pain.
And when patients were given a harmless placebo which they had been told caused headaches in previous experi­ments, three-quarters of them developed headaches?
Whatever the patients believed was happening seems to have been more important than what was actually happen­ing. Medical authorities had already recognized the placebo effect, but this experiment went even further, with some very interesting results. Unknown to the doctors, they too, were being deceived, and the results were astounding. When the doctors administered a placebo under the impression that it was morphine, its effect on the patients increased. The experiment was then reversed, and when doctors thought the morphine they were administering was a placebo, its ef­fect on the patients diminished. Obviously, what the doctors believed influenced the results as much as what the patients believed. But how could this be? How could what the doctor thinks possibly influence the patient? Isn't it what the patient thinks that counts? Or could it be that the doctor somehow subconsciously transfers to the patient his expectation of how the drug would affect him? If so, this is something to re­member when a friend or someone close to us is ill. Our own attitude can be a valuable source of healing for both our­selves and others. 
EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT
Dr. Patricia Norris of the Karl Menninger Foundation, who teaches patients to use mind power to combat disease, tells the story of a nine-year-old boy who cured himself of a ma­lignant tumor using a "Star Wars" visualization technique:
"Garret Potter was a terminal case-it was estimated he had only about six months to live. He had a virulent, malignant type of tumor. Radiation treatments had failed. Surgery was out of the question because of the tumor's location. If he fell down he couldn't pick him­self up.
"Using his mind he visualized his immune system as powerful. It was a Star Wars-like visualization-he saw his brain as the solar system and his tumor as an evil in­vading villain: He visualized himself as the leader of a space fighter squadron fighting the tumor and winning.
"Garret used the technique for twenty minutes each night. At first his condition worsened and then it grad­ually began to get better. Five months later a brain scan was taken. The tumor was gone.
"The visualization technique was the only therapy employed after it had been concluded that the radia­tion therapy had failed."
Everyone is different. The technique which worked for Garret Potter may not be appropriate for everyone. Some­times a gentler approach is needed.
Dr. David Bresler, director of the Los Angeles Pain Control Unit, describes a technique he used to help a patient. "The guy was in terrible pain. We'd tried everything we could think of. Finally I decided to use guided imagery." Telling the man to take a comfortable position in an office chair, Dr. Bresler asked him to picture his pain as concretely as possi­ble. The patient soon said that he could "see" a large vicious dog snapping at his spine. He was then asked to imagine him­self making friends with the dog, talking to it. As he did so, the patient found his pain subsiding until, after a few ses­sions, it disappeared. Like many people he recovered his health only when he stopped fighting his illness.
Athlete Kevin O'Neal saved his career by using the power of his mind. After a serious cycling accident, one of his hands was badly shattered and his confidence shaken just weeks be fore a major triathalon, but he visualized going inside his body and physically putting his broken bones together. As a result of his visualization, the bones healed twice as fast as expected and he was able to compete in the event.
The stories go on and on.
Dr. Paul Rennie of Vancouver, British Columbia sums it up nicely when he says, "The mind is one untapped resource we have yet to fully explore. This is what we should be inves­tigating." And no less an authority than Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg has called this area of investigation "the most important step in medicine today."
Our health is our responsibility. We must take an active role in our health and healing. If sick, we should not just give way to our illness but should share in the responsibility for our treatment. When all is said and done, as Dr. Albert Schweitzer always proclaimed, "the real doctor is the doctor within."