We are all dealing with my mother-in-law's serious illness. She is a counselor, and yet she seems unable or unwilling to apply her own techniques of coping and stress-relief to help ease her own misery. She and I have long talks about doing that. Which is also hypocritical of me, 'cause I don't do it, either. I'm always saying to my therapist, "I know what to do, I just can't get myself to do it." And she always says, "Why is it that you think you're not worth taking care of?" I do believe in a mind-body connection. I believe fervently in it. When I had my ulcers a few years ago, the book "Minding the Body, Mending the Mind" by Joan Borysenko was extremely helpful. I've been thinking lately, as evidenced in my last post about my legs, that I need to find a way to harness my powers of visualization or of my mind to get my body back. (Although I don't want to pay the $600 my doctor wants to help me do that.) I've been thinking about it at church (not praying, just thinking). Then I was at the bookstore Saturday for my time-out, and I picked up Deepak Chopra's book, "Quantum Healing." I always avoided his stuff, putting him in the category of Dr. Phil or that crazy Dr. Laura person, cheesy televangelist-types who weren't worth the time. But I read about 10 pages of that Chopra book at the coffee shop and I decided to buy it. It spoke to me loudly. Then I went to church on Sunday morning. The readings were about healing of lepers, and the young lady who gave the sermon started by recounting a seemingly miraculous (as hard as that is to believe, even by her) healing of her own mother, who had a mass growing in her abdomen that suddenly vanished after a Christian healing service.
Then, I came home and Dave brought in Saturday's mail. The cover story on Time magazine was about the mind-body connection and healing. OK, God, I get it! Now tell me what to do with it!
1 comment:
While I can't speak to the miracle of healing specifically, your post reminded me of a series of articles on Wired called "Hacking My Child's Brain". (http://blog.wired.com/biotech/2007/02/hacking_my_chil.html) A pretty interesting read -- also recall Scott Adams being unable to speak due to a neurological disease, and retraining himself using exercises he created himself, despite doctors telling him it was incurable. Interesting stuff -- in these cases, it's really "mind over mind", arguing persuasively in my view that "mind is body". But maybe that's just because I'm a heathen.
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