Influence of Attitude of Mind on Health, Health and Lifestyle
By Dr. P.C. Simon

Attitude of mind can greatly influence our health. We see many people who prefer to speak of their sicknesses rather than their health. They enjoy explaining how many operations they have had. They demonstrate their knowledge of medical vocabulary and enjoy talking about their sickness and the drugs they use. Mind is like a magnet. Each word and each thought attracts associated events, functions, and circumstances. The net result is they continue to be sick. Instead, if they said "I am healthy, happy and joyful", they would attract health and joy unto themselves.

Words we speak affect the body. By telling the child that he looks sick and tired, the mother produces these conditions in his mind and his body. Conversely, we can influence our health, prosperity and environment just by repeating words. It is for this reason that Emile Coue, the French psychotherapist, told his patients to repeat "Every day in every way, I am getting better, better and better." and they got better. The important thing is to influence the mind.

If we believe that we are healthy, we become healthy. If we believe that we are sick, we become sick. All that we have to do is to convince our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind has no discretionary powers; therefore it accepts whatever is fed into it. It is the conscious mind, that analyses the facts. With repeated assertions we can fill the subconscious mind with affirmations that we are healthy and happy. This brings about positive results.

HOW WE USE MIND TO HEAL

Medical statistics show that 50 to 80 percent of all diseases such as neuralgia and arthritis are stress related. Stress is created by thought. Thought can cause as well as cure disease (31) though most physicians have ignored the healing power of thought. Yogis are the only ones who have developed a system of preventing sickness by thought. That is why we don't find yogis and rishis in hospitals.

Rheder, a German physician, proved that it is mind and not God that cures diseases. He tested a faith healer to cure three of his difficult cases, one suffering from chronic bladder disease, another from pancreatitis, and a third from cancer of the uterus. Rheder asked the faith healer to treat these patients without their knowledge. He supplied the faith healer with information he wanted about the patients. The faith healer held twelve sessions without bringing about any change in the absentee patients' conditions. Rheder then informed the patients that he was going to enlist the aid of a faith healer who would be able to heal them but this time he did not use any faith healer. Within a few days, all three patients got better. The gall-bladder patient had no more pain and remained without pain for the next one year. The pancreatitis patient left the hospital and gained 30 pounds. The cancer patient experienced a decrease in the swelling and fluid in the abdomen. Within five days, she was able to return home from hospital. He proved thereby that it was the faith of the people that cured and not the power of the healer.

There are many examples of faith cures. On Monday, June 14, 1993, the Oregonian newspaper published a letter written to Ann Landers regarding a cure for warts. Landers published it along with seven letters she had received from those who got rid of warts by various means. One got rid of them by rubbing bacon on the warts and throwing the bacon over the left shoulder when the moon came out. Another did it by applying castor oil. A third took mega-doses of vitamin C. A fourth had success with touch of liquid nitrogen. A fifth rubbed twenty pennies on the warts and gave the pennies to a beggar and got rid of the warts. A sixth got rid of them by saying, "Hocus-pocus-go-away, warts." A seventh got rid of the warts by applying oozing dandelion sap. The eighth, after spending $250 on a dermatologist, made a $1 bet with her janitor who cut a raw potato in half and rubbed the juice on the warts. She paid the bet on the eleventh day. All these were mind cures.

On February 24, 1992, the Vancouver Sun published an article by Nicole Parton, a Vancouver Sun columnist, who related the pain control experiences of young children. By using an imaginary magic switch, they turn off pain. Some mothers show the children how needles can cause pain. Then they tie the needle to a balloon and let it fly away and the pain will be gone. When mothers ask the children what happened to the pain, they will say that it flew away. These cures were due to imagination.

In 1971, Dr. Carl Simonton, a radiation oncologist and his psychologist wife, Stephanie Matthews, treated terminal cancer patients for physical, emotional, and social ailments holistically in his Cancer Counselling and Research Centre in Fort Worth, Texas.

Simonton and his wife advised their cancer patients to visualise cancer as a grey blob of cells and to imagine a greenish or yellowish fluid flowing over it, breaking down the cancer cells so that the body's own protective white cells could destroy them.

Because Simonton used mental imagery in cancer therapy, most medical practitioners said that "Simonton lost it." However, by 1978 they had kept alive 159 patients for almost double their life expectancy. Their first patient, when he got cured of cancer, successfully treated himself for arthritis and impotence using the technique he had learned from them. Simonton wrote the story in a book entitled "Getting Well Again." These cures were due to imagery, faith and mind-power. For the treatment to be effective, we must have confidence that we are being healed.

Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review, also used mind to cure disease. On his return from a Russian cultural exchange programme in 1974, he became a patient in a New York hospital. He was suffering from adrenal exhaustion due to stress and his "sedimentation rate" which is normally 4 mm/hr was 115 mm/hr. One of his doctors made a note on his bedside card to convey to his (doctor's) colleague the prognosis that Cousins would not be with them for long. Cousins peeked at the card when nobody was around and realized that his death was near. He recollected that negative emotions can produce specific chemicals harmful to the body. Cousins argued that if this is true, laughter and joy should do the opposite. He discharged himself from the hospital and cured himself of the disease with music, laughter, and vitamin C. He wrote his story in Readers Digest in July 1977. He became an enthusiastic messenger of mental treatment for physical ailments and wrote a book called "Anatomy of an Illness".

Our minds can be trained to achieve control over our bodies by several methods. I will discuss these methods in my next article.

More on this topic may be found in Dr. Simon's book, The Missing Piece to Paradise, published by Empyrean Quest Publishers and available through the publisher at http://www.empyreanquest.com or Amazon.com More articles by Dr. Simon may be found on his website http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/psimon/book2.htm