By Marguerite Jill Dye
“The power that made the body heals the body,” Dr. Joe Dispenza affirmed, after being hit and thrown by a semi truck during a triathlon. He replaced his fear by visualizing the reconstruction of his spine, which instructed his body to heal his spine, one vertebra at a time. He recovered over several months and now devotes his life to learning and sharing what he knows about the connection of body and mind.
“Everything starts in the mind,” Marianne Williamson, spiritual author and teacher, says in the documentary “HEAL” (2017), which explores the mind-body connection. I’ve heard Williamson, along with Dispenza, Gregg Braden, Michael Beckwith, Bruce Lipton, and other frontrunners in the field speak at Hay House and Sounds True summits. Their knowledge, insights, and the science of healing fascinate and encourage me, especially when I’m dealing with pain.
Watching them and others share their message in “HEAL” is the basis of this column (and “Healing Yourself Part 2” which will follow later). It’s also helping me to understand and overcome two herniated discs and the pinched nerve that sent me to bed two weeks ago. Applying their techniques of positive thought and visualization to cope with the pain are also facilitating my healing which better be quick since we’re leaving for Cuba on March 5!
“Everyone is the architect of their own healing and destiny,” Buddha said in the 5th century BCE.
There is a natural intelligence that gives us life and heals us through our autonomic immune system. All of our organs are designed to heal themselves, given the right environment. Our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions help or hinder our capacity to heal which is more powerful than we realize.
“Tonic thoughts produce tonic chemicals; toxic thoughts produce toxic chemicals,” Michael Beckwith said.
Physical, chemical, and emotional stress causes 90 percent of illness and disease. Under stress, our bodies switch into fight or flight mode, which activates the adrenal system. It sends cortisol and adrenaline throughout the body instead of maintaining a healthy gut, higher brain centers, immune and elimination systems. Today’s stressors are around the clock, which causes a constant flow of stress hormones that inhibit our immune system. The body’s mode is either fight or flight or heal and repair.
Our society is running on the chemistry of fear, which is the opposite of love. In the Western culture, we internalize our emotions. This leads to autoimmune disease, chronic pain, accident or injury. It’s a wakeup call to change the way we live, love, and treat ourselves.
For three hundred years, the western medical philosophy was based on the beliefs of Newton, Descartes, and Darwin: the body is like a machine, our symptoms are meaningless, and we’re here without purpose to survive until we die. Instead of addressing the underlying cause, symptoms are treated with medications, often with dangerous side effects, and medications interact. Western medicine is excellent in treating trauma and acute illness, but few diseases are organic. They’re usually-stress related. Alternative healing modalities can be more effective for certain conditions such as autoimmune disease.
In 1925, when quantum physics entered the scene, it revealed that the invisible energy realm is real. What we believe to be physical is an illusion: nothing is physical, everything is energy. Inside our cells, there’s DNA, and the atoms are 99.9 percent empty space—protons, neutrons, electrons, atoms—all particles are actually energy waves. Invisible energy from our thoughts shapes our mind, body, and world. Quantum physics recognizes that spirit (a powerful, invisible force) profoundly influences the physical realm.
There is much to explore and try in the field of energy healing. I feel like a guinea pig seeing the effects of meditation and visualization, along with ice and energy work. I know I’ll be better very soon because it’s Cuba or bust in a week! I hope to meet a curandero, a spiritual energy shaman-healer. Synchronicity will send me a massage therapist. I’ll write about Old Havana, the mogotes mountains of karst in Viñales, swim in a jungle river, and hopefully float in the warm turquoise sea.
Marguerite Jill Dye is an artist and writer who divides her time between Vermont and Florida.
