Healing the world

Healing the world

April 2014

By Shivi Verma

The healing journeys of great healers of the world prove the body-mind connection of illnesses, and inspire us to take responsibility for our ailments, says Shivi Verma Most of the people featured in this article started as ordinary souls, who mutated into guiding lights by surmounting their terminal illness, and birthing new therapies that have helped millions of people the world over.

Their stories prove that when we take responsibility for our healing and do whatever it takes to recover, not only do we heal, but our consciousness spirals upward, and we coast into a powerful state of being. Martin Brofman: Power of positive thinking Martin Brofman: Proving the power of thought Martin Brofman, chakra healer and author of Anything Can be Healed, suffered from terminal cancer in his spinal cord in 1975. The doctors declared that he could die any moment. Terrified, Martin resigned himself to his fate. As he was being administered anaesthesia he had a surreal experience of talking to the Almighty. Martin recovered slightly after the surgery and left the hospital. Thereafter, he met a Zen practitioner who told him that cancer began in the mind. This fascinated him, and he began to consciously de-stress himself. He also learnt the Silva method of meditation which includes affirmations and visualisation after reading Ken Keyes’, Handbook of Higher Consciousness.

“I realised that cancer was the result of a mental process, that I could use my consciousness to reprogramme my mind,” he says. He would remind himself while eating, that whatever he ate was exactly what his body needed to accellerate the healing process. Whenever he felt the sensation of an electric shock in his body he would think that it was a sign of his tumour shrinking. He avoided people who believed that his disease was terminal. He would talk to himself positively in a relaxed state of mind for 15 minutes, three times a day. Determinedly, like a dog chewing away at a bone, he focussed his mind sharply on healing and used his discrimination to slay any iota of doubt arising in his mind. Combining visualisations, positive affirmations, and sharply focussed intent, he eliminated a large amount of cancer cells from his body. Since the tumour was in the nape of his neck he also realised that it symbolised his lack of self-expression. He began to utter aloud his feelings, aspirations and emotions. When finally the doctors saw his report they were amazed to find that there was not a trace of cancer in his body. Martin later on devised The Body Mirror System healing technique based on his own experiences, and applied himself to helping others. Martin believes that there is a healer in each one of us, and that anything can be healed.

Louise L Hay: Self-love is the key Louise L Hay: Loving herself unconditionally Louise L Hay, author of You Can Heal your Life, came from a broken family. Her parents divorced when she was 18 months old. Her mother remarried a violent and abusive man, and Louise herself got raped by a neighbour when she was five years old. As she grew older, mental, physical and sexual abuse became routine in her life. Tired of abuse, she left her home and school, at age 15. At 16, she became an unwed mother of a baby girl. She gave up the baby for adoption since she had no means to support her. After that she went to New York and was fortunate enough to become a high-fashion model. Despite this, her self-esteem remained very low. She married an Englishman but after 14 years, he dumped her for somebody else. Louise looked for answers. After several months she happened to attend a meeting at the United Church of Religious Science in New York, and was impressed by what they taught. She learnt Transcendental Meditation and soon began taking the Ministerial Training Programme. This quickly blossomed into a full-time career, and she was inspired to put together a little book, Heal Your Body, which was a simple list of metaphysical causations for physical illnesses. Then one day, she was diagnosed with vaginal cancer. She went into panic but realised that this was the time to walk her talk. “After all, I knew that cancer was a dis-ease of deep resentment that has been held for a long time.” She realised that she was refusing to move beyond her childhood trauma. Her doctors gave her three months to heal before they operated. She read everything on alternative healing to assist her healing process. She checked out foot reflexology and colon therapy. She acknowledged that she must love herself more, and stop her internal critic who derided her constantly. “There had been little love expressed in my childhood,” she says. She would daily affirm before the mirror that she loved herself, and took the help of a therapist to resolve her emotional issues. Then she began to piece together the scraps of stories her parents had told her about their own childhoods. “With my growing understanding, I began to feel compassion for their pain, and the blame slowly began to dissolve,” she admits. With the help of a good nutritionist, she detoxified her body of junk food, and subsisted only on vegetables. She had colonics three times a week for the first month. “Six months after my diagnosis, I was able to get the medical profession to agree with what I already knew – that I no longer had even a trace of cancer! Now I was able to affirm from personal experience that dis-ease can be healed if we are willing to change the way we think, believe, and act!” She proved to the world that human will and determination was far greater than any life-threatening illness. And of course, she went on to become a byword of self-healing with her book, You Can Heal Your Life, which has sold over 39 million copies! Norman Cousins: Laughter is the best medicine Norman Cousins: Laughing his illnesses away The late Norman Cousins was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate. But more than all this, he was a crusader who believed in himself. In 1964, he was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a rare disease of the connective tissues, and he was given a few months to live by a doctor friend. He was told to get his affairs in order, but Cousins would have none of it. He set himself to finding a solution. He read and discovered that both his disease and the medicines were depleting his body of Vitamin C, among other things. He did three things. 1. He fired his doctor and left the hospital to check into a hotel. He found a doctor who would work with him as a team member, as opposed to insisting on being in charge. 2. He began to get injections of massive doses of Vitamin C. 3. He obtained a movie projector, no small feat in those days, and a pile of funny movies. He spent a great deal of time watching these films and laughing. He made a point to laugh until his very stomach hurt from it. And Cousins lived long enough to prove his doctors wrong. He finally died on November 30, 1990, in Los Angeles, 26 years after his doctors first diagnosed his ankylosing spondylitis. Cousins later said in an interview that diseases were greatly linked to our mental patterns. If negative thoughts and emotions could lower the immunity and give birth to ailments, positive emotions had the power to boost immunity. He knew that laughter induced happiness, and happiness had the power to bolster immunity. He wrote a collection of best-selling non-fiction books on illness and healing, as well as an autobiographical memoir, Human Options: An Autobiographical Notebook. His struggle with this illness is detailed in the book and movie, Anatomy of an Illness. “I made the joyous discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect, and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep,” he reported. Brandon Bays: The inner journey Brandon Bays: Healing her emotions Brandon Bays, international healer and author of the book, The Journey, began her spiritual journey with Indian philosopher, J Krishnamurti, in 1974. After 18 years of practising energy medicine, lifestyle therapies, stage shows with famous motivational speakers, vibrant vegetarianism and a blissful married life, Brandon’s life fell apart at the age of 39 in 1992 when she was diagnosed with a football-sized tumour in the pelvic region. Brandon was bleeding internally. Brandon sought an appointment with a surgeon-cum-integrative medical practitioner in California. The doctor told her to have a surgery or else internal bleeding could kill her. “I literally begged her to give me some time so that I could heal myself without surgery,” she said. Brandon’s own beliefs were at stake. The doctor gave Brandon a month. Around that time in 1992, a lot of research was under way in the field of cellular healing. “If one could feel the emotions healthily, then the cell receptors would open releasing the blocked energy,” the studies said. Brandon took the help of colon therapy, a body worker who helped people with emotional issues, and subscribed to a natural diet comprising fresh and raw fruits and vegetables with freshly squeezed juices. One day during a massage therapy session, Brandon felt her mind falling away while resting with her eyes closed. “I fell down through the emotional layers into my soul – and was guided mentally to the tumour spontaneously. It was like a black cavern – and there was a cell memory of childhood abuse and domestic violence.” Brandon forgave her parents. Immediately after that Brandon felt her tumour soften up! In six-and-a-half weeks, it disappeared and the doctors declared her tumour-free.

Later, she condensed her experience along with another deeper spiritual experience to emerge with a form of therapy called The Journey,