Wellness. Just a State of Mind

Could it be that one of the reasons many of us do not experience
miraculous healing, extended life spans and good health is due to
some conditioning, some other enculturation.

In fact, the
"seven psychosomatic ailments"--peptic ulcers, ulcerative
colitis, hypertension, hyperthyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis,
neurodermatitis, and asthma are thought to occur mainly in
certain personality types.

Classical conditioning of the immune
system?

Further, how could the cells of the body process these messages?

There were hundreds of stories, just like
the one I have shared with you about my own health, and vast
volumes of historical information about a time in history when
there were many Asclepiad healing centers and people were cured
with drama, humor, physical exercise, and dreams!

******

Chapter Five

Some Interesting Phenomena

In 1765 Franz Anton Mesmer used magnets to produce miraculous
cures.

In the 1880s, Jean Martin Charcot regularly demonstrated one of
his favorite hypnotic procedures to medical personnel at the
Salpetriere hospital in France.

H. J.
Eysenck summarized a group of European studies and found the
following:

1.

One personality may be totally
normal in every physiological sense, and yet with the sudden
shift of personalities, some as quick as the snap of a finger,
the second personality may be hypoglycemic.

How about taking the flower to a florist,
repotting it, and returning it as a gift of love?

Vic had been born with a minor birth defect which was corrected,
via a tracheotomy, at the age of two.

His attitudinal healing center in California has
become famous for just this type of healing.

What powers exist in the
spiritual healer's touch?

In 1988
and 1989 Dr. Robert Youngblood, a cosmetic surgeon, used a
subliminal audio cassette I created for reducing stress and
anxiety in patients about to undergo surgical operations.

The
heart murmur that my mother said I had after the first bout with
the disease suddenly returned.

Acceptance, love, and forgiveness are as necessarily interrelated
as each side of a triangle is to the triangle as a whole.

******

Chapter Five

Some Interesting Phenomena

In 1765 Franz Anton Mesmer used magnets to produce miraculous
cures.

That
was totally unexpected but, after careful review, Ader discovered
that the drug was a powerful immunosuppressant, that is, it
prevented the immune system from functioning.

The method of choice for conflict in my particular
upbringing was aggressive--and hostility was the norm.

One of the most convincing evidences
that personality contributes to body processes were the reports
of multiple personality patients.

Emotional
states such as grief have been shown to lower the immune
response, and positive emotions have been shown to improve the
immune response.

Adding the power of belief to that
science is just what you have been doing with old antiquated
versions of the mind-body relationship to health.

Today the advantage of technology makes near-magical visits to
the healing centers of well-being possible in your own home and
at your own convenience- private, not intrusive, and self-paced.

No more
hemorrhoid commercials.

To understand the importance of this finding, you
need to know that the hippocampus is the area of the brain which,
together with the limbic system, modulates the immune system.

It seems that as science developed, so
did the idea of a mechanical man.

Respondent #4
"My brother-in-law has cancer.

Of all the possibilities, which one do you think would produce
the best outcome for happiness, wholeness, and even health?

This meant that in some
instances, they had to medicate a patient even for the less
frightening CAT scan.

Cohen's group found that the rates of respiratory
infection and colds were directly related to stress levels, even
when allowances were made for various influences on the immune
system such as age, sex, education, allergies, weight, viral
status prior to the study, cigarette and alcohol use, exercise,
diet, quality of sleep, number of housemates, and the number of
times the housemates suffered from infections.

In fact, she and her colleague Michael Ruff have
been working with Peptide T, one of the messenger molecules in
the body that apparently converts emotions into biological
happenings.

We used a combination of special
frequencies for altering brain wave activity while stimulating
certain effects and added subliminal messages and guided imagery
or hypnosis.

A psychological
situation that causes the illness to occur for some reason, even
if that reason is self-punishment.

******

Chapter Eight

Conditioning


Most people have heard of Pavlov's dogs and know that they were
trained to salivate at the sound of a bell.

That flower
pot fell from a wealthy person's ledge.

In fact, epinephrine and norepinephrine, which
act to turn up or down the immune system, have repeatedly been
shown to be linked to mood states.

When the other chickens questioned her, she told them how
she had outsmarted the eagle.

As the idea of a separate mind and body developed, there was no
room, with few exceptions, for such matters as thought processes.

Days
later, the physician diagnosed rheumatic fever.

In the mid-1970s Robert Ader conducted some
classical Pavlovian conditioning with rats, trying to train them
to dislike saccharin-flavored water.

In fact, the
"seven psychosomatic ailments"--peptic ulcers, ulcerative
colitis, hypertension, hyperthyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis,
neurodermatitis, and asthma are thought to occur mainly in
certain personality types.

Among these
strategies our defense mechanisms function, as well as our
attitudes, toward everything we will ever know in our lives.

If fear and anger are circular, what gives rise
to feeling frightened, anxious, or nervous, becoming angry, and
then responding in a fight/flight way when the stimulus is
something like the way my employer speaks to me, the way my
significant other looks at me, or just the stuff one feels when
cut off in five o'clock traffic.

First my father had told me never to run from anyone and that if
I did he would beat me, and then he treated me as though I were a
juvenile delinquent for not running!

Old Laurel and Hardy movies and the like
had Mr. Cousins laughing away most of every day.

We had Vic listen to the subliminal tapes
which bombarded his subconscious mind with the idea that he was
whole and well.

This procedure is designed to look at
soft tissue and requires that one be "loaded down a skid into a
chamber," to use the words of one of the technicians, that is
very small in diameter.

Then I found
myself in a no-win situation, for suddenly my father spoke to me
as if I were scum--trouble waiting to happen, always fighting.

Nerve cells have been shown to travel from the brain to the
thymus and back to the brain demonstrating a two way
communication with this important relay station for immune
substances.

In the mid-1970s Robert Ader conducted some
classical Pavlovian conditioning with rats, trying to train them
to dislike saccharin-flavored water.

I employed what I call the Seven
Fundamentals.

For all intents and purposes, the
disease took me back, or rather I should say, I took myself back
to the circumstances where my parents had lavished me with care
and attention and the outside world held no threat to me.

To discount such marvelous human abilities with comments like "it
only works if you believe it", is to condemn ourselves to a
mechanical reality that limits our own ability to experience the
full potential of humanness.

I cannot
overemphasize this point.

In the 1880s, Jean Martin Charcot regularly demonstrated one of
his favorite hypnotic procedures to medical personnel at the
Salpetriere hospital in France.

The body is made up of lots of cells that collectively form
organs, information systems, and so on.

Everyone knows that managing
stress, a mental process, can enhance health; but can the mind
change something as physical as the twisted body of one suffering
from a severe bone or muscle disease?

Nerve cells have been shown to travel from the brain to the
thymus and back to the brain demonstrating a two way
communication with this important relay station for immune
substances.

He knew
that I was scheduled to give a presentation in Israel on Memory-
Dependent Wellness and that I had started a research project on
remembering youth.

Not the you of self-doubt, not the you that fears
rejection or failure, not the you that questions your abilities,
but the real you.

In 1991, Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh reported a study that links emotional stress to the
common cold.

Why do other people seem to have the Midas touch with
everything--their relationships, their children, their health,
their work, their homes?

Was it possible
that while Ader was conditioning his rats to dislike saccharin
that he had accidentally conditioned their immune system?

If someone
else cannot live or function without you, then your self-worth
has been validated--and vice versa.

Your fellow workers to admire and respect you?

In 1982 I decided, just
for me, that if I wanted to take a break, to take time off, to
bring an end to conflict, to hide from something or someone, to
punish myself or others, to get some special attention, and so
on, that there were many more productive and fun ways to enjoy
these pleasures then getting sick.

In fact, the
"seven psychosomatic ailments"--peptic ulcers, ulcerative
colitis, hypertension, hyperthyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis,
neurodermatitis, and asthma are thought to occur mainly in
certain personality types.

******

Chapter Twelve

The Pragmatist Within

So from a childhood story of myself to scientific findings with
multiple personality patients who display different physiological
conditions for each personality, to such miraculous healings as
those of the ancient temples of Asclepias with their arts and
entertainment programs, to the attitudinal work of men like
Jampolski and Cousins, to the viewpoint of such cellular
specialist...

It is a popular misconception that tough guys pick on the weaker
individuals who cannot fight back.

He paid for
a health club where I learned self-defense.

Maybe this is
just an extension of the well-known placebo effect, only
reversed.

What is more, I discovered
that on the opposite side of this continuum rested the self-
responsible, the person who assumed control of his or her own
life and found creative solutions for difficult
situations--returning the flower, if you will, replanted in a new
flower pot.

Nerve cells have been shown to travel from the brain to the
thymus and back to the brain demonstrating a two way
communication with this important relay station for immune
substances.

In fact, the
"seven psychosomatic ailments"--peptic ulcers, ulcerative
colitis, hypertension, hyperthyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis,
neurodermatitis, and asthma are thought to occur mainly in
certain personality types.

And of
course there were very many stories, too many to count, from
religious persons of every faith who had experienced seemingly
miraculous cures.

I was tired and awfully fussy this
morning - the dog "peed" on my good bed-spread.

Then I found
myself in a no-win situation, for suddenly my father spoke to me
as if I were scum--trouble waiting to happen, always fighting.

I looked further and found that herpes has been linked to
loneliness; positive mood, hope, and social support was linked to
cancer survival; tough mindedness and a will to live with
survival of AIDS.

Your health, your
enjoyment of life, your ability to become all that you are is
inescapably involved in your ability to forgive and let go.

In fact, the
"seven psychosomatic ailments"--peptic ulcers, ulcerative
colitis, hypertension, hyperthyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis,
neurodermatitis, and asthma are thought to occur mainly in
certain personality types.

The
story of this wonderful man is worth retelling.

She, of course, now became
the center of attention.

In 1988
and 1989 Dr. Robert Youngblood, a cosmetic surgeon, used a
subliminal audio cassette I created for reducing stress and
anxiety in patients about to undergo surgical operations.

Of
course I felt good--every cell in my body was enthused and vital.

Later it was said by most critics that the results Mesmer
obtained were due to the power of suggestion or hypnosis.

The article stated that
neuroscientists had confirmed with PET scans that the
hippocampus, a specific area in the brain, played a crucial role
in memory.

Like all the magical
stories of mind and body, there are many in the area of wellness
that have defied scientific inquiry, including many miraculous
healings, such as those reported as the result of following the
advice in the book of Matthew:

If you had FAITH, even as small as a tiny
mustard seed . . . nothing would be impossible.

Their method of
assuming responsibility is to manipulate others by placing blame,
finding fault, or assuming a contractual posture that goes like
this: "If I do this, will you...?" or, "If you loved me, you
would..." or, "Don't you feel sorry that I feel..." or, "You need
me to...," and so on.

The cell is ahead of the microchip in that it
is a self-replicating system that processes the environment and
uses this information to organize behavior.

In fact, it has been demonstrated effective
in the care or treatment of asthma, hypertension, bleeding,
dermatitis, and various emotional states, in speeding the rate of
healing, as an aid to breast enlargement, and much more.

Still, it is this idea--of the body as a sophisticated
piece of machinery responding only to machine-like programming,
and of disease or illness as an invasion of the natural system--
that led to the current methods of health care.

The real changes are made in you and thus your
experience of life and self become qualitatively different almost
immediately.

******

Chapter Eight

Conditioning


Most people have heard of Pavlov's dogs and know that they were
trained to salivate at the sound of a bell.

Old Laurel and Hardy movies and the like
had Mr. Cousins laughing away most of every day.

One day his family forgot they had
left him alone, tied into the rocking chair they had adapted into
a primitive potty.

In fact, it has been demonstrated effective
in the care or treatment of asthma, hypertension, bleeding,
dermatitis, and various emotional states, in speeding the rate of
healing, as an aid to breast enlargement, and much more.

Life is simply a miracle, and living is the process of maximizing
the miraculous experience.

A marvelous story illustrates this point:

One day an eagle flew over a chicken coop.

This facility offers a number of different
"high tech" medical testing procedures, including magnetic
resonance imaging, or MRI.

In fact,
it was Carl who first suggested to me that perhaps the highest
act of human consciousness was cortical inhibition--overriding
the wired-in responses that can occur in the primitive brain.

If emotion,
learning, behavior, and personality are all tied up in wellness,
then how we learn how and what to believe is crucial.

Researchers at Duke University showed hostility and mistrust to
be key predictors of heart disease and early death.

For
instance, what makes the difference between two children raised
in the same environment with the same parents when one ends up a
neurosurgeon and the other a hardened violent criminal?

All those advantages such as added attention from
loved ones, time off with pay while lying around with a good book
or a good movie, some soaking in the tub, and doing nothing?

I had mastectomy 2/84."

What if disease was
not something you "caught" but was sometimes a behavioral
strategy?

"Personality variables were more predictive than smoking in
the occurrence of lung cancer.

Later
our true feelings become so strong that we can no longer suppress
them, and some small incident triggers an overkill response.

Psychologists call this process
imprinting.

In fact, the
"seven psychosomatic ailments"--peptic ulcers, ulcerative
colitis, hypertension, hyperthyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis,
neurodermatitis, and asthma are thought to occur mainly in
certain personality types.

Under hypnosis, I had him replay
the incident in his mind, in slow motion, freezing some frames,
just as you would on a videotape.

Madeline Visintaines of the University of Pennsylvania linked
helplessness to cancer.

In fact, the
"seven psychosomatic ailments"--peptic ulcers, ulcerative
colitis, hypertension, hyperthyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis,
neurodermatitis, and asthma are thought to occur mainly in
certain personality types.

To conclude on a final and humorous note, let me share a letter
from actress Linda Hoy, a delightful friend and one of my
readers.

A
complete body catalepsy, and he continued to lecture!

Memory--
relived!

Candace Pert, chief of brain biochemistry for the National
Institute of Mental Health, suggests that "emotions are the key
to health."

While speaking at the Ohio Academy I met a fellow presenter who
had taken some of Baxter's work a step further.

In the 1880s, Jean Martin Charcot regularly demonstrated one of
his favorite hypnotic procedures to medical personnel at the
Salpetriere hospital in France.

Drs. Pert and Ruff have found that this substance
can help alleviate AIDS symptoms, stop the spread of the HIV
virus and, in some cases, even neutralize its toxicity.

******

Chapter Four

A Two-Way Communication?

Then, one night after a
basketball game in which I had played all four quarters without
substitution, the coach arranged for physicals.

The Sufis have a story about time and pomegranates that may shed
a little anecdotal light on our questions: Once upon a time, in
a land far away, there was a young man who wanted to become a
healer.

There is,
however, a small minority who believe that there is a connection
between expectation, thought processes and good health.

That trade-off never works, because
what we are insecure about in the first place exists within
ourselves.

Approaching the man, the student blurted out, "What you need is
pomegranates!"

It is amazing how ideas change over time.

Ted Melnechuk, director of research communications for the
Institute For The Advancement Of Health adds the following
observation:

1.

What are the subtle differences that seem to allow
one person to live a certain life-style free of illness, whereas
another doing the same things becomes ill as a result?

At home, ill, pampering myself, I received a phone
call that required immediate attention.

If someone
else cannot live or function without you, then your self-worth
has been validated--and vice versa.

Let go of blame,
shame, guilt, and the like.

My
examination of this cycle of fear and anger has given rise to an
acronym that I often use when describing anger.

Interestingly enough, post-secondary care was also
substantially reduced.

This meant that in some
instances, they had to medicate a patient even for the less
frightening CAT scan.

My own work has suggested what I have referred to as "the warm,
fuzzy, fully feeling human experience," a term used to describe
the way all of us feel when we go to the aid of an injured life
form.

An Ohio State University researcher reported that marital
discontent weakened the immune response.

With this theory (you can find the case study and details in my
book Subliminal Learning), we decided to try a subliminal
intervention program.

Ader
decided yes and later discovered that two Soviet scientists had
conditioned a guinea pig "to release antibodies when they
scratched its skin."

All those advantages such as added attention from
loved ones, time off with pay while lying around with a good book
or a good movie, some soaking in the tub, and doing nothing?

In short, it feels so good, so natural, so
"warm and fuzzy," that it is generally the most rewarding part
when that activity is viewed in 20/20 hindsight.

Dr. Bruce Lipton
is a researcher and teacher at Stanford School of Medicine.

Thank you again,

Linda Hoy

******

OTHER BOOKS BY ELDON TAYLOR

Subliminal Learning
Subliminal Communication
Thinking Without Thinking
BE: Just a Little Cowboy Philosophy
Simple Things and Simple Thoughts
The Little Black Book
Exclusively Fabricated Illusions

Acceptance is the natural process we knew as children.

As such, let me
suggest that you jot down examples that you may see in others and
then evaluate your own history for such possible connections.

"Personality variables were more predictive than smoking in
the occurrence of lung cancer.

******

Chapter Ten

A Trip Down Memory Lane

One of the clues that kept "popping out" at me may surprise you,
and that is the involvement of memory in health and wellness.

What has been sown in your subconscious mind is
what you reap.

Loving
unconditionally suggests accepting others as they are.

Negative
subconscious learning can be unlearned, freeing your subconscious
mind to create positive acceptances of the real you and thereby
liberate you to experience the highest and best of yourself.

Alright, so much for what we have learned.

Under hypnosis, I had him replay
the incident in his mind, in slow motion, freezing some frames,
just as you would on a videotape.

Forgiving and letting go can be as
easy as writing a letter, expressing your feelings, ending the
letter with something sincere and positive like, "I see good in
you," and then disposing of the letter.

A marvelous story illustrates this point:

One day an eagle flew over a chicken coop.

And the irony is that most of us know that we are much
more than we have acted out our lives to be!

At this time in my life I was interested in eastern metaphysics,
and I kept coming across the idea that we had the ability to heal
ourselves.

Karl Goodkin of Stanford University School of Medicine believes,
from the evidence of studies of women prone to cancer, that the
usual cancer personality is;
1. overly cooperative,
2. extremely self-sacrificing,
3. overly optimistic to the extent of being in denial of
reality, and
4. sociable to a fault.

Blood chemistry
altering in seconds?

This facility offers a number of different
"high tech" medical testing procedures, including magnetic
resonance imaging, or MRI.

One day a man walking the streets of Manhattan passed beneath a
high-rise complex of very expensive condominiums.

There were hundreds of stories, just like
the one I have shared with you about my own health, and vast
volumes of historical information about a time in history when
there were many Asclepiad healing centers and people were cured
with drama, humor, physical exercise, and dreams!

Like all the magical
stories of mind and body, there are many in the area of wellness
that have defied scientific inquiry, including many miraculous
healings, such as those reported as the result of following the
advice in the book of Matthew:

If you had FAITH, even as small as a tiny
mustard seed . . . nothing would be impossible.

At the University
of Texas at Austin, higher cancer rates in mice were linked to
blocked emotional expressiveness and under-stimulation.

If this generalization applies, then most of us were
raised with statements like, "You're not old enough," "You're
stupid," or "That's stupid," "Children are to be seen and not
heard," "Don't do this," "You can't do that," and so forth, as
well as a host of labels such as four-eyes, nigger, spick, jew,
and so on.

One such experience I can still
see vividly was that of a young man who had been held up at
gunpoint.

When we truly understand this truth, it
becomes easy to forgive another for acts that are selfish and
self-centered--and forgive ourselves, as well.

The overall
anesthetic requirement was lowered by 32% in the patient group
that received the subliminal tape as compared with the 360
previous patients who had not been exposed to the subliminal
tape.

For most seekers, the years of training, the
time-consuming rituals, and the rigorous effort ultimately have
sufficiently discouraged them, and their attempts have ended in
just another failure.

I looked further and found that herpes has been linked to
loneliness; positive mood, hope, and social support was linked to
cancer survival; tough mindedness and a will to live with
survival of AIDS.

"What are you doing
living down here like a chicken."

Science refers to this
phenomenon as the Pygmalion effect.

In 1991, Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh reported a study that links emotional stress to the
common cold.

But here is my point: when the replay in his
mind came to the sequence in which the gun was in the victim's
face, I thought his jugular would jump out of his throat.

While I was sick I did not have to
work out how to please my father, whether by fighting or by
running away.

It picked me up by the scruff of the neck,
dusted me off, and set me back on the road.

Last night I
attended a horrendous city council meeting regarding
the Performing Arts Center where too little was decided
in too long a time.

We can choose to learn quickly and advance, or we can choose
to stick around to receive another of those not-so-favored
experiences until we do learn.

"First of all, let me say I consider Wellness: Just A
State Of Mind? to be a blessing, a practical, hands-on,
"kick-ass" blessing.

It was time to go out and play---to ride a bicycle---to say
hello to my first crush, to shoot marbles, and so forth.

This procedure is designed to look at
soft tissue and requires that one be "loaded down a skid into a
chamber," to use the words of one of the technicians, that is
very small in diameter.

Some seekers have been successful in
contacting that power, but most have met with only partial
success.

Not one of these things is
truly life-threatening and, after all, isn't that what the
fight/flight functions are wired in for, the preservation of the
species?

What, then, is the pragmatic way to overcome or, I prefer, to
outgrow this early conditioning.

Your health, your
enjoyment of life, your ability to become all that you are is
inescapably involved in your ability to forgive and let go.

Does it really exist, and
if so, can we all learn to use it for our benefit?

His eyesight
immediately worsened to near blindness.

One day his family forgot they had
left him alone, tied into the rocking chair they had adapted into
a primitive potty.

Researchers at Duke University showed hostility and mistrust to
be key predictors of heart disease and early death.

Karl Goodkin of Stanford University School of Medicine believes,
from the evidence of studies of women prone to cancer, that the
usual cancer personality is;
1. overly cooperative,
2. extremely self-sacrificing,
3. overly optimistic to the extent of being in denial of
reality, and
4. sociable to a fault.

And if this is real,
why hasn't it been exhaustively studied by science?

He could be metaphysical--you know,
kismet, what's to be will be; after all, maybe the blow to his
head rearranged some neurons and now he will experience higher
consciousness.

He
demonstrated that plants not only are sensitive to their
surroundings but can literally identify an individual.

All those advantages such as added attention from
loved ones, time off with pay while lying around with a good book
or a good movie, some soaking in the tub, and doing nothing?

Another
problem they often had to deal with was relative to the anxiety
attached to this type of testing.

This facility offers a number of different
"high tech" medical testing procedures, including magnetic
resonance imaging, or MRI.

Like all the magical
stories of mind and body, there are many in the area of wellness
that have defied scientific inquiry, including many miraculous
healings, such as those reported as the result of following the
advice in the book of Matthew:

If you had FAITH, even as small as a tiny
mustard seed . . . nothing would be impossible.

For this
minority, health could be a matter of one's belief system and
coping strategy.

How do the masters of the East control
breathing, heartbeat, and skin temperature?

It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I learned that not only
did I wear glasses and have black friends, but my grandfather was
Jewish and my great-grandmother was Native American.

The
answer is, Forgive!

Additionally, and all-important as a clue, Pert
insists that placebo analgesia, analgesia triggered by
suggestion, is an altered state dependent on messenger molecules.

It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I learned that not only
did I wear glasses and have black friends, but my grandfather was
Jewish and my great-grandmother was Native American.

In fact, she and her colleague Michael Ruff have
been working with Peptide T, one of the messenger molecules in
the body that apparently converts emotions into biological
happenings.

Under hypnosis, I had him replay
the incident in his mind, in slow motion, freezing some frames,
just as you would on a videotape.

What
experiences, including expectation or attitude, cause us to alter
the natural cellular programming (life expectancy)?

What happens
if we try accepting the responsibility for our own well-being and
ask ourselves simple questions if we sense or feel a sickness
coming on?

That is, could the
cells of the body actually provide the impetus for behavior in
contrast to the classic belief where behavior originates in the
brain and the body just goes along with whatever the brain
decides?

What Martin Seligman of the University of
Pennsylvania found was that dogs, conditioned with electric shock
under circumstances where they could not escape, did not try to
escape when they were shocked in a pen where they could have
indeed escaped.

It is a popular misconception that tough guys pick on the weaker
individuals who cannot fight back.

For
years his specialty was cellular biology.

If emotion,
learning, behavior, and personality are all tied up in wellness,
then how we learn how and what to believe is crucial.

I came to a point where I decided that maybe I was at least
partially responsible for many of my illnesses, especially those
pesky regular bouts with sore throats, colds, influenza, etc.

What
experiences, including expectation or attitude, cause us to alter
the natural cellular programming (life expectancy)?

The twelve questions consisted of four general categories:
1. the patient's attitude toward their disease before they
used the program,
2. the patient's attitude toward their disease after they
used the program,
3. the patient's survival and quality of life, and
4. how the physician felt about the patient's believing
health could be affected by the patient's mind.

That's a lot of
remedies that I haven't bought in the past decade.

His eyesight
immediately worsened to near blindness.

In very simple terms, if you raise a duckling with
chickens, it will behave as a chicken.

When we assume
responsibility for every aspect of our lives, we get in touch
with our deepest fears and feelings.

In fact,
it was Carl who first suggested to me that perhaps the highest
act of human consciousness was cortical inhibition--overriding
the wired-in responses that can occur in the primitive brain.

What happens
to the body when one becomes normal is no less than a weakening
of the immune system; further, suspended states of fight or
flight, or, as we know it in modern man, anxiety and depression,
literally produce chemistry that is toxic to the human condition.

Our very ability to cope depends in large part on
our choices, and they are predetermined in large, by our
enculturation process.

There were also those
who used imagination and imitation to produce an altered state of
consciousness, and so healed the blind and the terminally ill.

In contrast, however, women who developed cervical cancer were
characterized as;
1. hostile,
2. quite fearless,
3. unusually hard-headed,
4. punitive toward others, and
5. very blunt in social situations.

Now belief may produce the magic of what many refer to as
placebo, or the infamous sugar pill effect.

******

Chapter Two

The Basis for Our Beliefs

I started my investigation by examining the basis for our current
beliefs in health care.

Forgiving releases you to take control of your life now.

A psychologist
friend of mine in Italy, Dr. Monty Renov, suggested to me that I
include rhyme in the affirmations used in some of my self-help
programs.

The body is made up of lots of cells that collectively form
organs, information systems, and so on.

Research has also clearly shown that when subjects in their
seventies exercise at the same minimal level as subjects in their
twenties, the muscle mass generation (growth) is the same for
both groups.

A quick
review reveals a similarity in the description "extreme"--
extreme self-sacrifice, extreme bluntness, and so forth.

Self-acceptance is self-love.

How can the mind, or memory, or emotion play
such a significant role in curative powers?

This survey revealed many interesting findings including
significant remission rates, for 38% of the so-called terminal
patients are in remission at the time of this writing.

I found music
selections from the sixties, and the next thing I knew, I was
bouncing around like a teenager in the heyday of rock-n-roll.

I came to a point where I decided that maybe I was at least
partially responsible for many of my illnesses, especially those
pesky regular bouts with sore throats, colds, influenza, etc.

It was
just what I needed to keep my head afloat long enough
for my feet to touch solid ground.

Years passed, and one day I fell prey to the usual seasonal
influenza.

When the
younger brother was criticized for under-achievement and poor
school work as compared with his older brother, he explained away
the problem by blaming it on poor eyesight.

The formula would use W to represent
wellness, E to represent expectation (which is an ever-changing
form of true belief) and M to represent memory.

Research has also clearly shown that when subjects in their
seventies exercise at the same minimal level as subjects in their
twenties, the muscle mass generation (growth) is the same for
both groups.

The emotional
reaction termed anger is just one such absurdity.

******

There's a story I can tell . . .
about a time to feel swell.

When your thoughts are in
agreement with your desires, your desires will magically
materialize.

The next morning I was ill.

Old Laurel and Hardy movies and the like
had Mr. Cousins laughing away most of every day.

He was crumpled over and moved in an odd and peculiar
way.

At that time it did not occur to
me that there was a connection between my becoming ill and the
need I had to avoid conflict.

At this time in my life I was interested in eastern metaphysics,
and I kept coming across the idea that we had the ability to heal
ourselves.

Originally, this "learned-state" helped
us cope with a particular situation, Rossi theorizes.

When I told him of the history of
rheumatic fever he explained that back in the fifties physicians
had often misdiagnosed many diseases as rheumatic fever.

Is it possible
that a physician's sentence of "terminal without hope" is the
actual cause of death?

Somewhat to my surprise, not only did I not
have a heart murmur or any other difficulties but one of my
friends who seemed fit as the proverbial fiddle, was diagnosed
with high blood pressure.

Vic had been born with a minor birth defect which was corrected,
via a tracheotomy, at the age of two.

For example, we
choose to avoid conflict by repressing our true feelings.

There were hundreds of stories, just like
the one I have shared with you about my own health, and vast
volumes of historical information about a time in history when
there were many Asclepiad healing centers and people were cured
with drama, humor, physical exercise, and dreams!

My father, who carried a gun
for some fifty years because he spent his entire life either in
the military or in some form of law enforcement, had no patience
for a sissy of a boy whose name was the same as his.

Other such patients have demonstrated
everything from eye color change to having one menstruation cycle
per month for every personality within the patient.

Karl Goodkin of Stanford University School of Medicine believes,
from the evidence of studies of women prone to cancer, that the
usual cancer personality is;
1. overly cooperative,
2. extremely self-sacrificing,
3. overly optimistic to the extent of being in denial of
reality, and
4. sociable to a fault.

The fifth fundamental has been called the Golden Rule.

Well, here's another true story that still does not cease to
amaze me:
In 1987 a concerned father flew in to see me with a story about
his boy, Vic, who was confined to a wheelchair.

Many of the
messenger molecules which are associated with emotion have been
discovered to be strategically located throughout the body.

It's as simple as this:
I expect to be well!

Still, if you want to see the barnyard from the sky, spread your
wings, and see for yourself.

After all, my daddy was an alcoholic, my mother was a
prostitute, and the neighbor boy hung heroin on me when I was
only eight."

The fear of unfulfilled expectations gives rise to
internal conflict.

Fundamental 6

Martin Luther King once said, "I can never be what I ought to be
until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you
ought to be until I am what I ought to be."

******

Chapter Seven

Stress


Satisfied that I was not going in circles, I continued to pore
over the literature.

A marvelous story illustrates this point:

One day an eagle flew over a chicken coop.

Dr. Posner, a professor of physiology, stated that
research clearly shows that the cells of the body should live for
144 years.

Stress as a factor in disease began to
appear more and more frequently.

Whip lash, concussion,
something like that---sue the sucker!

Some others believe that health is a genetic
characteristic and that you have to live with what you inherited
from your parents.

Not one of these things is
truly life-threatening and, after all, isn't that what the
fight/flight functions are wired in for, the preservation of the
species?

Respondent #7
"Family situation which I could not tolerate and had no ability
to change: Mother-in-law moved in with us and adult son moved in
with us.

The healer nodded in agreement without really looking up from his
porch chair.

No more constipation commercials.

Such happenings were not worth
investigating, and besides, they did not occur with "normal"
people under controlled circumstances.

My father, who carried a gun
for some fifty years because he spent his entire life either in
the military or in some form of law enforcement, had no patience
for a sissy of a boy whose name was the same as his.

The healer saw that the boy
was sincere and decided to take him on as a student.

But here is my point: when the replay in his
mind came to the sequence in which the gun was in the victim's
face, I thought his jugular would jump out of his throat.

******

Chapter Thirteen

The Scientist Emerges

As a scientist, I work to bring information together into a
usable formula.

The only thing he could tell the detectives at Sandy
City police department following the robbery was that a "very big
gun" was shoved in his face.

WELLNESS:
JUST A STATE OF MIND?

Still, it is this idea--of the body as a sophisticated
piece of machinery responding only to machine-like programming,
and of disease or illness as an invasion of the natural system--
that led to the current methods of health care.

I had a miscarriage, my dog was shot six months before my
diagnosis, and my daughter decided to live with her father
again."

The chair had been placed in the middle of
the room, which left Erickson looking longingly at the window,
wishing he could at least look out at the farm.

In the mid-1970s Robert Ader conducted some
classical Pavlovian conditioning with rats, trying to train them
to dislike saccharin-flavored water.

In my research we began applying three
messages in our tape programs as cognitive tools to untie the
victim.

This process of "state-dependent learning," or
responding as a result of a state or condition, is bounded by
amnesia, which is simply to say that we are no longer consciously
aware of it.

"WHO DO I WISH TO BLAME OR PUNISH," and "WHAT IS THE
CONFLICT?"

Our
choices arise from our definitions, and they have been incubated
all too often in chicken houses.

Madeline Visintaines of the University of Pennsylvania linked
helplessness to cancer.

It is a popular misconception that tough guys pick on the weaker
individuals who cannot fight back.

Why do other people seem to have the Midas touch with
everything--their relationships, their children, their health,
their work, their homes?

Does it really exist, and
if so, can we all learn to use it for our benefit?

Nevertheless, of importance here, is the point that mind "stuff"
and body "stuff" have traditionally been viewed as different
"stuffs," and, further, that the body-brain was mechanical,
somehow like a machine, and it has been treated that way by
medicine for the past few hundred years.

Respondent #3
"Husband committed suicide 12/83.

As he passed
under the balcony of one of the two-story units a flower pot that
had been placed precariously close to the balcony edge crashed
down on his head.

Negative
subconscious learning can be unlearned, freeing your subconscious
mind to create positive acceptances of the real you and thereby
liberate you to experience the highest and best of yourself.

Of course, other
factors were involved here, but the fact remains that something
totally out of the ordinary process of mechanical medicine was at
work.

How can a person lie on a
bed of needles and not have a single needle pierce the skin?

Is it possible that we are being conditioned into ill health by
the attitudes of those in authority around us?

Karl Goodkin of Stanford University School of Medicine believes,
from the evidence of studies of women prone to cancer, that the
usual cancer personality is;
1. overly cooperative,
2. extremely self-sacrificing,
3. overly optimistic to the extent of being in denial of
reality, and
4. sociable to a fault.

Maybe this is
just an extension of the well-known placebo effect, only
reversed.

Loving thoughts breed loving thoughts.

(For a self-quiz that may offer you some insight as to
your own willingness to accept responsibility, E-Mail your
mailing address to CompuServe 73534,1171).

Interdependence means individually assuming responsibility for
any condition that is contrary to the quality of humanness in its
highest form and then acting to produce, out of the condition or
situation, balance and harmony for all.

For example, smoking was
virtually a pre-requisite for getting lung cancer, but of the
smokers, only the emotionally repressive types seemed to contract
the disease."

His father had
access to the best of medical care and yet nothing was helping
Vic.

It was questions such as these that sparked my life-long quest
for insight in matters of the mind-body connection and wellness.

******

Chapter One

The Adventure Begins

For centuries stories have proliferated about the incredible
powers of the mind, feats of mind over body that even to a child
seem impossible or absurd.

The only thing he could tell the detectives at Sandy
City police department following the robbery was that a "very big
gun" was shoved in his face.

The guy in traffic to slow down and let
you in?

Brain chemicals centered in the body?

"Those who rated high on emotional frustration and
aggression had a high rate of cardiac related deaths."

Dr. Gerald Jampolski states in both of his works, Love Is Letting
Go of Fear and Teach Only Love, that a person's attitude can and
does heal.

It isn't because the theory is in error or even
because the method is necessarily flawed.

Taking into account only those patients whose physicians agreed,
to varying degrees, that the mind played a role in the patient's
health, then the survival/remission rate increases to 46%.

Dr. Langer of Harvard University took "old people" into the
country where they were isolated for one week.

"Personality variables were more predictive than smoking in
the occurrence of lung cancer.

Belief is not some unchanging this, that, or the other.

What mechanism
allows for such a sudden and dramatic shift in the person's blood
chemistry?

An Ohio State University researcher reported that marital
discontent weakened the immune response.

One problem they frequently came across
was emotional stress and a fear of confined places.

Does it really exist, and
if so, can we all learn to use it for our benefit?

So, when I went back to school, the tough
guys did not bother me anymore for I was a poor skinny kid who
had been ill with a mysterious disease for more than a year and a
half.

"Above all else,
respect thyself," said Pythagoras.

Dr. Gerald Jampolski states in both of his works, Love Is Letting
Go of Fear and Teach Only Love, that a person's attitude can and
does heal.

Today, most people believe that to stay healthy you need to keep
fit, exercise, avoid "catching" any germs, and more importantly,
be lucky.

While teaching a
course to lie-detection examiners, he placed himself in wide-eyed
hypnosis.

He paid for
a health club where I learned self-defense.

One of these molecules,
CCK, forms a lining from the esophagus throughout the intestines
and, according to Pert, may "explain why some people talk about
gut feelings".

(For a self-quiz that may offer you some insight as to
your own willingness to accept responsibility, E-Mail your
mailing address to CompuServe 73534,1171).

Everyone knows that managing
stress, a mental process, can enhance health; but can the mind
change something as physical as the twisted body of one suffering
from a severe bone or muscle disease?

Sorting through all the data, doing my own research, I continued
to add new clues.

In other words, one of your cells five miles away from you, will
respond immediately when you are hurt!

It's as simple as this:
I expect to be well!

As he passed
under the balcony of one of the two-story units a flower pot that
had been placed precariously close to the balcony edge crashed
down on his head.

Cohen's group found that the rates of respiratory
infection and colds were directly related to stress levels, even
when allowances were made for various influences on the immune
system such as age, sex, education, allergies, weight, viral
status prior to the study, cigarette and alcohol use, exercise,
diet, quality of sleep, number of housemates, and the number of
times the housemates suffered from infections.

By
Eldon Taylor, Ph.D.

******

copyright 1992 Eldon Taylor
Revised 2001 copyright by Eldon Taylor
All rights reserved.

We reasoned that lowering
patient stress, anxiety, and other related feelings would result
in lowering anesthetic requirements.

In short, it feels so good, so natural, so
"warm and fuzzy," that it is generally the most rewarding part
when that activity is viewed in 20/20 hindsight.

I reasoned that if you could make yourself well, you
must also be able to make yourself ill--even if it was somehow
done unconsciously.

Fundamental 6

Martin Luther King once said, "I can never be what I ought to be
until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you
ought to be until I am what I ought to be."

******

Chapter Eight

Conditioning


Most people have heard of Pavlov's dogs and know that they were
trained to salivate at the sound of a bell.

To get off
the path that has never provided happiness, harmony, prosperity,
success, peace, or balance, you must get off the path.

All those advantages such as added attention from
loved ones, time off with pay while lying around with a good book
or a good movie, some soaking in the tub, and doing nothing?

Freud theorized before the end of his career
that "emotions not expressed in words or actions would find
expression in some sort of physical ailment."

Ader
decided yes and later discovered that two Soviet scientists had
conditioned a guinea pig "to release antibodies when they
scratched its skin."

I found music
selections from the sixties, and the next thing I knew, I was
bouncing around like a teenager in the heyday of rock-n-roll.

Perhaps it's okay
to behave as the whimpering shocked dog Seligman discovered in
his research.

Can relationships
with family, friends, and associates be improved because one
person assumes the responsibility to be personally whole, takes
the initiative to exude joy and happiness, seizes the opportunity
to empower his or her own life by using the secret of the ages?

Their method of
assuming responsibility is to manipulate others by placing blame,
finding fault, or assuming a contractual posture that goes like
this: "If I do this, will you...?" or, "If you loved me, you
would..." or, "Don't you feel sorry that I feel..." or, "You need
me to...," and so on.

After all, my daddy was an alcoholic, my mother was a
prostitute, and the neighbor boy hung heroin on me when I was
only eight."

Still, it is this idea--of the body as a sophisticated
piece of machinery responding only to machine-like programming,
and of disease or illness as an invasion of the natural system--
that led to the current methods of health care.

Some others believe that health is a genetic
characteristic and that you have to live with what you inherited
from your parents.

Narrowing
the field still further, where both the patient and the physician
tended to believe strongly that the mind played a role in
wellness, the rate of survival/remission increased to 100%.

Today, most people believe that to stay healthy you need to keep
fit, exercise, avoid "catching" any germs, and more importantly,
be lucky.

Rather
than relate the illness to the need to avoid a situation,
however, the individual could relate it to the time of year, a
certain food, a particular fragrance, etc.

This facility offers a number of different
"high tech" medical testing procedures, including magnetic
resonance imaging, or MRI.

Personality was tied to literally clusters of
diseases.

"Individuals who tended to repress their emotions in the
face of stress were far likelier than others to die of cancer."

******

Chapter Eleven

The Power of Belief


So far the clues to the mind's role in wellness and longevity
include;
1. the memory of health,
2. positive emotions, and
3. a hopeful versus helpless attitude.

Just by way of example, let me share with
you some of the responses I have received from cancer patients in
our most recent and current follow up study to this question: "DO
YOU HAVE A BELIEF ABOUT WHY YOU HAVE CANCER?"

******

Chapter Ten

A Trip Down Memory Lane

One of the clues that kept "popping out" at me may surprise you,
and that is the involvement of memory in health and wellness.

Low self-esteem grows out of fear
of rejection--rejection by a loved one, an employer, a stranger,
anyone who might laugh at our efforts or who would misunderstand
or disapprove.

For example, smoking was
virtually a pre-requisite for getting lung cancer, but of the
smokers, only the emotionally repressive types seemed to contract
the disease."

The investigator in me decided to go back a little further into
the recent history of the mind's role in wellness to see if I
could uncover some more clues.

Then I found
myself in a no-win situation, for suddenly my father spoke to me
as if I were scum--trouble waiting to happen, always fighting.

Stories indicate that people who have hope and
look at life from the perspective that all will ultimately work
out for the best are indeed happier and healthier.

Dr. Bruce Lipton
is a researcher and teacher at Stanford School of Medicine.

Something not experienced routinely or without the
medication or care.

One other
interesting and overwhelmingly obvious result was found that may
surprise you.

The mind and body were
considered to be separate; they functioned independently and
should therefore be treated separately.

How, for example, can a human chew
glass or hot coals and not be injured?

What can we
say for certain?

The young man watched as the
healer listened to the patient tell an agonizing tale of woeful
experiences with his affliction, including the struggle he had
gone through just to make the journey to the healer's doorstep.

I knew this, but I
got lost in the drama of "poor me," and lost sight of
my goals.

You try it with your own period of time, but remember, choose an
optimal period.

The fact is, it is
your birthright to manifest the glory of the incredible you.

All
insecurities are externally oriented.

Then I found
myself in a no-win situation, for suddenly my father spoke to me
as if I were scum--trouble waiting to happen, always fighting.

Respondent #2
"I have had breast cancer five times since 1983.

Perhaps it's okay
to behave as the whimpering shocked dog Seligman discovered in
his research.

Such happenings were not worth
investigating, and besides, they did not occur with "normal"
people under controlled circumstances.

Additionally, and all-important as a clue, Pert
insists that placebo analgesia, analgesia triggered by
suggestion, is an altered state dependent on messenger molecules.

I
decided to get well, and almost overnight I was well.

Nevertheless, of importance here, is the point that mind "stuff"
and body "stuff" have traditionally been viewed as different
"stuffs," and, further, that the body-brain was mechanical,
somehow like a machine, and it has been treated that way by
medicine for the past few hundred years.

Norman Cousins
writes in The Anatomy of an Illness that he healed himself of a
terminal illness using positive self-talk and laughter.

Don't forget the
results I obtained from the survey of physicians whose patients
had used the "Cancer Remission" program.

In 1991, Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh reported a study that links emotional stress to the
common cold.

Blame
provides the excuse that creates victims, who are powerless to do
anything because ultimately it is somebody or something else that
is at fault.

After all, my daddy was an alcoholic, my mother was a
prostitute, and the neighbor boy hung heroin on me when I was
only eight."

Take a walk, do some
exercise, but get outdoors.

Respondent #4
"My brother-in-law has cancer.

At a very early age I was wearing glasses and my best friend was
black.

To multiply in this equation,
the memory of wellness should be fully brought to mind and placed
solidly into expectation.

The aim of the study
was to look at life expectancy in comparison with the actual
mortality rates of patients with cancer who used the subliminal
program.