Four
Starting Points
of a Positive Belief System
by
Judith Orloff, M.D.
A
healing life, in periods of illness or health,
requires that you embrace a positive belief system.
There comes a point when you must decide if you want
a life that is fear-driven or one founded on love
and hope. Establishing this premise is tantamount to
bringing your healing to the next level. Remember,
each gain will be incremental. You'll catch the
negative voices faster; you'll dismiss them more
quickly. Significant improvement, but it's also true
that the process is ongoing. Here's a perspective to
help silence the negative voices.
1.
The body is holy.
Your
body is a temple. It houses spirit and blood, light
and the interweaving of the material you. Everything
about your body is holy: every secretion, every
orifice, every physiological function contributes to
your survival and well-being. Why in our culture are
parts of the body taboo? Who do you suppose was one
of the most respected physicians in ancient Egypt?
Iri, keeper of the royal rectum, the pharaoh's enema
expert! Enemas, believed to have been of divine
origin, were a widely touted Egyptian practice to
purify the gastrointestinal tract. What areas of
your body do you appreciate, perhaps even slave over
to be attractive? Your skin? Your hair? Your eyes?
Not surprising, given our culture's narrow
definition of glamour. To heal, we must expand our
notion of what is beautiful. Send love everywhere.
See where you hold back. What about your body evokes
shame, self-loathing? Your internal organs? Your
secretions? Sweat? Tears? Saliva? What about
excretions? Urine? Feces? Menstrual blood? Reassess
what is devalued, even unmentionable. Take an honest
inventory.
For
vibrant health (not just making it through the day),
you must slowly but surely recondition your biases.
If necessary, reinvent the wheel. Rebel against our
culture's myopic vision of the body. Counter
conformity. Unlearn what you've been taught. You do
this case by case. Menstrual blood as a source of
shame? No. It's part of the cycle of preparation for
creating life. Tears something to hide? No. They're
a form of release, a healing. And so on. With each
bodily function we have to appreciate such a
miracle. Meditate on it. Contemplate it. Pray to be
able to fully apprehend such truth. Beauty comes
from the inside out literally! Whenever you abhor an
aspect of your anatomy, even on an unconscious
level, you deprive it of energy and love, the
essential fuel for healing. Create a more positive
vision of your physical self. Then if illness comes
you won't be trying to heal a body you may hate.
2.
Express your emotions about illness.
If
you get sick, express yourself. Feelings of upset,
anger, depression, or fear about your illness or
another's can be stepping-stones to compassion. Give
yourself permission to be who you are. The patients
I'm most concerned about are those who go numb,
suffer in silence, or are stoic to the point of
shutting down. Each of us is entitled to our own
coping style, but we must ask ourselves: Does it
bring peace? Will it facilitate healing? Give us
strength? Whatever your way is, be authentic. The
goal is to shine light through darkness, never dwell
in it. You have the right to voice even what may
seem forbidden.
For
example, I got very angry as my father's Parkinson's
disease was growing worse. I agonized watching him
deteriorate. I wanted to be a good daughter, to be
loving, to stay on top of things, support him 110
percent -- but the pressure kept building. My life
was besieged with demands: nurses, hospitals,
physical therapists; he couldn't walk; he couldn't
sleep; his mind was confused; he required
twenty-four-hour care. All this plus he became
irritable, constantly snapping at me. One night I
cracked. On the phone with a childhood friend who's
been with me through thick and thin -- and whose
mother was also chronically ill -- I blurted out:
"I wish he'd just die!" Silence. Had the
line gone dead? Finally my friend said, 'Judith!
That's horrible! How can you say that about your own
father?" Then click. She hung up on me.
What
had I done? Was I wrong to express such a thing? Was
I a monster? Well, no. What my friend didn't
understand was that I didn't really want my father
to die. But I did need to vent. Not to my father, of
course. I had to find another outlet. By surfacing
the feeling, I was able to let it go, to regain
compassion. My process was a progression. I inched
forward. I fell short. I tried again. To feel love,
all obstacles must be removed. What if I'd denied my
feeling, held it in? Where would it have gone then?
For even the best of friends, sharing taboo emotions
may be new territory. This will be safer with some
people than with others, but it's worthwhile to
explore. Just know that if anger, fear, resentments
about illness become frozen, they'll keep you from
your heart. We are human beings, not saints. Cut
yourself some slack. Feelings are not facts, they're
energy. If your aim is compassion, releasing this
energy productively can get you there. Believe in
love that much.
3.
Spirituality will help you heal.
Science
and spirituality mix. An odd couple? Not at all.
Over two hundred scientific studies have shown that
spirituality is good for your health and promotes
recovery from illness. Take cardiac disease. In 1995
the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center found that
for heart surgery patients, a major predictor of
survival was religious faith. For those without
spiritual beliefs, the death rate was three times
higher. As for blood pressure, another survey
reveals that churchgoers have lower blood pressure
than nonchurchgoers, even when smoking and other
risk factors are considered. Let's also look at the
elderly. A National Institute on Aging study found
that geriatric patients were physically healthier
and less depressed if they attended regular
spiritual services. Across the board research
underscores the necessity of not waiting until
illness or pain comes to draw on spirituality as a
resource for healing and health.
Is
there a center in our brain for spiritual
experience? Our prefrontal cortex, which
evolutionary biologists say enables us to form
complex beliefs, as in religions, is 200 percent
larger than expected in a primate our size. Simply
put, we're wired for spirituality. But can the
transcendental experience itself be pinpointed?
Scientists currently associate it with a part of the
brain called the limbic system. When this area is
electrically stimulated during surgery, some
patients report visions of angels or devils. And
brain tumors, which overexcite the limbic system,
can trigger enhanced, sometimes obsessive, spiritual
awareness.
Which
came first? God or the brain? Intuition aside, as
Detective Joe Friday of Dragnet always said,
"Just the facts, ma'am." What scientists
are willing to conclude is that the brain and
spirituality are interrelated; if you cultivate a
belief in something greater than yourself --
traditionally religious or not -- you'll have a
better chance of staying healthy longer and healing
faster if you become ill.
4.
You don't have to act out life's traumas
It
is not necessary to resolve an emotional trauma by
getting sick. What happens is this: A trauma -- a
heartbreak, death, or loss -- occurs, then your body
intuitively encodes it as energy. If you do your
best to deal with the difficulty, you can get a jump
on resolving it. If not, the conflict will fester,
may translate into physical symptoms or emotional
distress. Without even realizing it, many of us wait
for a health crisis to give us a more lucid
perspective on our lives, make long overdue changes,
or motivate us to work through past traumas. We use
the energy of crisis to create change. I'm asking
you to reappraise this strategy. By doing so you may
spare your body much pain and suffering.
At a
recent workshop I was giving, a woman told the group
a touching story. Her mother was a Holocaust
survivor who, thirty years after the war ended, was
diagnosed with uterine cancer. After the malignancy
was surgically removed, she said to her daughter,
weeping, "Thank God. Now the Nazis are finally
out of my body."
Think
about it. The significance this woman attributes to
her cancer poignantly conveys to us the impact our
beliefs can have. Must we develop actual tumors to
exorcise the demons in our lives? Please be clear,
this woman never sat down and said to herself, Okay,
to heal I must get cancer. Who among us would? The
process is treacherous because it's subliminal. Your
body takes your beliefs, conscious or unconscious,
seriously. Whether you're ill or not, examine your
beliefs and retain only those that serve you. Do you
unknowingly use illness or pain as a means of
conflict resolution for traumas of the past? If so,
take a second look. What other options do you have?
Psychotherapy? Energy work? Meditation? Asking your
dreams for guidance? Consulting a spiritual
counselor? Prayer? Talking with a good friend? Do
whatever it takes. Formulate a life-affirming belief
system about how to prevent illness and heal. It is
the underpinning upon which a sustained recovery is
based.
What
other factors contribute to illness? Take the
classic overachiever. Slaving away late at the
office one night, he practically blacks out and is
rushed to the hospital with a perforated peptic
ulcer. You could easily conclude it was caused by a
combination of stress and his gastric acid
skyrocketing from one too many spicy enchiladas. Or,
that unconsciously he'd become sick to receive the
much-needed nurturing that would come from a good
doctor's care. What other "secondary
gains" did he accrue from being ill? Love?
Attention? Time off from work? Time out from a
relationship? Peace and quiet? A good rest? Whenever
any of us gets sick, there are numerous physical and
emotional components.
With
this in mind, even so, I want to caution you against
too simplistic an explanation of illness. There are
other meanings too. The ecosystem of humankind and
nature is intuitively bound. No life-form, human or
not, stands alone. We all swim in the same waters,
can feel our collective reverberations. How is it
possible to talk about any individual's health
without also considering the overall health of the
planet? Could illness, in part, be the body's
desperate attempt to reequilibrate itself with a
planet fighting to survive? Depression, chronic
pain, autoimmune diseases, in which the body
literally attacks itself, are growing at apocalyptic
rates. There's a parallel between our suffering and
the relentless assault on the earth, the ravaging of
rain forests, underground nuclear testing, pollution
of air and oceans. Can we empathically feel our
planet's cry? Do our bodies mimic the disease we are
inflicting? How do we reconcile this breach?
However
you conceive of illness, an element of mystery
always exists. There's so much we still don't know.
It's been popular the past decade to assign all
kinds of meaning to symptoms, but this isn't always
possible. As a physician I've learned to have awe
for what is unknowable in ordinary terms. It's fine
to seek a rational explanation for why you or
someone you love becomes ill. But sometimes there
just doesn't seem to be one. Your four-year-old
develops a brain tumor. How could there ever be a
good reason for that? Yet you must accept the
situation and not lose faith in God, yourself, or
your child. Is this too much to ask of you? Or is
this single act alone, faith in the face of the
greatest possible loss, more significant in the
cosmic scheme of things than any one life itself, no
matter how dear? An extremely hard call. Each of us
must grapple with these self- and universe-defining
spiritual issues.
In
all types of illness, from cancer to a cold, never
fail to remember the mind's capacity to heal, even
what has been deemed unhealable. By lovingly
learning to focus your intuition, you can strive to
cure or at least improve any health situation. I
first came to understand this in a roundabout way.
In
1970 I was working as a research assistant in a
parapsychology lab at UCLA. Part of my job was to
follow up on calls from people reporting
"ghosts" in their homes. It's always
amused me how many people in Los Angeles believe
their houses are haunted. They'd describe electronic
machinery flipping on and off uncontrollably,
objects flying around the room, unidentifiable
voices, footsteps, apparitions. Wild stuff! What we
investigators mostly concluded was that, even if the
manifestations were authentic, they were
misinterpreted. In general they seemed to be
extensions of the anger and frustration in a family
rather than related to any specific house. When the
family moved the phenomena followed them. As tempers
flared episodes increased. Ghosts weren't haunting
the hall; we were seeing psychokinetic energy in
action, a living laboratory of how the power of the
mind literally alters its surrounding environment.
The real revelation for me was: If the mind can make
a cupboard door flap open and shut, it can also --
if properly directed -- heal the body.
This
brings us to an appreciation of a world where
positive beliefs, emotions, and actions are prime
factors in getting well, can even stimulate our
immune response. A world where our defense against
illness is related to a body wide communication
network we can take an active part in programming. A
mix of science, instinct, and mystery, this is how
intuitive healing can benefit you.
This
article is excerpted from:
Dr.
Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: Five
Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness
by Judith Orloff, M.D.
Reprinted with
permission of the author. Copyright 2000. Published by Times Books,
a division of Random House. www.randomhouse.com.
Info/Order
book.
About The
Author
JUDITH
ORLOFF, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist, an assistant clinical professor
of psychiatry at UCLA, and a staff member at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. She is
the author of Second
Sight, a memoir about coming to terms with her intuitive abilities, as
well as Dr.
Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: Five Steps to Physical, Emotional,
and Sexual Wellness. Dr. Orloff is an international lecturer and
workshop leader on the interrelationship of medicine, intuition, and
spirituality. Visit Dr. Orloff's website at www.drjudithorloff.com.
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