Category: Mind-body connection
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Encouraging News on Placebos
In one of the most encouraging articles I’ve read for a long time[1], 97% of a sample of 783 UK family doctors reported in a study carried out by the Universities of Oxford and Southampton that they had given a placebo to at least one of their patients. Some said they do so on a…
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Healing power is in the mind of the patient – the work of Dr P.P. Quimby
I’ve been to many healers in my time, and it seems to me that the techniques they employ say a great deal about the practitioner’s beliefs about what constitutes a human being. This – explicitly or implicitly – is what guides their healing methods. If you think a human body is simply a physical, mechanical…
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An empty shell
Today’s doctors study anatomy in great detail, aided by constant improvements in microscope technology, electronic scanning and, in recent decades, computers. But what exactly are they studying? If you want to see what a human body looks like with its mental and emotional energies taken away, look out for Professor Gunther von Hagens’ travelling Bodyworlds…
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Mind-Body Healing the Quimby Way
All illness has a psycho-somatic component. Often it’s hard to tell where the boundary lies between the mind and body. One great pioneering healer knew no bounds; his name was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. He was born on February 16, 1802. He was a clock-maker in Belfast, Maine, where he lived most of his life. Although…
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The greatest mind-body healer?
The greatest mind-body healer of recent times was a diminutive and rather brusque character who lived in New England in the first half of the nineteenth century. His name was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. He deserves to be much better known. Having cured himself of tuberculosis, considered impossible in those days, he developed a healing method…
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Healing the body with the mind
Following the success of Barbara Mohr’s ‘Cosmic Ordering’[1] and Rhonda Byrne’s ‘The Secret’[2] in 2006, the ancient spiritual Law known as the Law of Attraction has come to the fore. It is enshrined in Buddhism, Taoism and the Vedic and Hebrew scriptures. In the Hebrew Scriptures King Solomon went so far as to say, ‘For…
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Healing and the Imagination
The imagination can be a potent force in healing. It’s no exaggeration that patients who cannot imagine themselves well are unlikely to be or stay so, and an increasing number of doctors and complementary practitioners agree. For example, in pain control clinics patients are taught to imagine the sore area going cool and numb, and…
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Illness, Health and Self-Awareness
Scientific research increasingly shows that negative thoughts and emotions can make us ill and positive thoughts and emotions help to keep us well. Happy, contented, emotionally well-adjusted and optimistic people have more energy and get ill less often. They also live longer. How, then, can we use these insights to heal our bodies and stay…
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Quimby: The Silent Healer
Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was born on February 16, 1802. He was one of seven children brought up in a modest family background. When he was still a toddler, the family moved to Belfast, Maine, where he spent most of his life. As a boy, he became interested in the sciences, but had no formal tuition…
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Can Positive Emotions Keep You Well?
There’s no doubt that negative emotions can create and sustain illness. It’s been known intuitively and written about for thousands of years and increasingly recognised medically and scientifically over the last century. For example, Dr Sigmund Freud wrote: ‘Often repressed emotions will manifest either as behavioural problems or physical problems’. Although widely derided at the…