Henry Grayson - Your Power to Heal: Resolving Psychological Barriers to Your Physical Health

Disclaimer The names and distinguishing characteristics of people mentioned in this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical recommendations of physicians or other healthcare providers. Rather, it is intended to offer information to help the reader cooperate with physicians and health providers in a mutual request for optimum well-being. We advise readers to carefully review and understand the ideas presented and to seek the advice of a qualified professional before attempting to use them.

Contents

Acknowledgments

The following people have been instrumental in shaping my life so that I could write this book: Jim Young, my college professor and debate coach who taught me how to think for myself and not be consumed by past conclusions; Viktor Frankl, MD, PhD, who survived the concentration campsin my class with him, when he came to Boston University, I learned the enormous power of our thoughts and how they can effect life or death; and quantum physicist David Bohm, PhDwhen I attended his seminar in New York City, I learned how we and everything are interconnected in one unified field of consciousness and energy and that separateness is just an illusion.

Introduction

When I sat down to write this book, I wanted to create a resource that helps people break free from the rut of thinking about themselves as sick, as victims of their genes, or as powerless over their illnesses. Through my personal experience of dealing with my own illnesses and by working with hundreds of people during more than thirty years of practice as a mind/body/spirit psychologist, I have come to realize that conscious and unconscious traumas, beliefs, and thoughts can sabotage health in both subtle and sometimes dramatic ways were not even aware of.

Your Power to Heal offers you instruction for a journey toward health and happiness by helping you identify the hidden reasons for your personal health problems that may stem from childhood deprivations; pains and disturbances; damage or suffering handed down by ancestors (think slavery, political violence, or family history of cancer); and past lives; as well as uncleared adult stressors, beliefs, traumas, and needs. After you identify your unconscious barriers to healing, you will learn ways to stop them from controlling you and your health.

In this book, I offer a number of simple, powerful tools that you can use daily or whenever you need, including several forms of tapping or touching on the bodys acupressure points to help you let go of negative emotions or beliefs. One of these tools is my personal adaptation of the widely used Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), developed by Gary Craig in the early 1990s. This adaptation, which I call EFTA, includes several helpful innovations plus a form of breathing that readily calms down the survival brainalso known as the limbic systemwhich creates so much stress.

Over the years, Ive seen people heal from catastrophic traumas, such as the September 11 attacks, and from being abused or neglected by their parents or other caretakers. Ive seen them heal themselves from cancer, significant heart problems, multiple sclerosis, and other illnesses, or simply make their lives better by eliminating smaller health issues such as colds, viruses, backaches, allergies, and digestive problems. You too can benefit from following the practices in this book if you:

want to get to the underlying causes of your symptoms rather than just treating the symptoms, as most medical interventions do

desire to be free of current or chronic health problems such as back pain, migraines, autoimmune illnesses, or recurrent colds, as well as serious illnesses

are interested in nontraditional methods of healing with no harmful side effects

desire to move out of feeling powerless to a place where you can use your power to heal

seek a way to use mindbody healing in partnership with treatments prescribed by your medical doctor, acupuncturist, or naturopath for all types of illnesses

experience symptoms that are not responding to traditional medical treatment and are searching for a more empowering, alternative form of healing

are looking for a way to nip many symptoms in the bud as they start

are open to going beyond allopathic modalities to exploring the power of the mind/body/spirit connection that we all have, but often disown

Discovering Hidden Causes of Stress, Trauma, and Illness

In recent years, clinical research has revealed a high correlation between uncleared developmental and adult traumas and the onset of physical and emotional illnesses. For example, people who experienced early childhood traumas were far more likely to have serious illnesses in early adulthood than those who did not suffer from such traumas.

Stress is associated with most of our illnesses. Although a 2012 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 60 to 80 percent of illnesses reported to primary care doctors may have a stress component, stress is more likely a factor in at least 80 to 90 percent of such cases. Stress has been linked to stomach issues; muscle aches and pains; joint and back problems; increased blood pressure; increased heart rate; higher cholesterol; increased risk of heart attack; mood problems such as anger, irritability, depression, panic, and anxiety; headaches; low energy; lower bone density; loss of libido; and especially reduced immune response, which makes all illnesses, including cancer, more likely.

Stress is actually a network of traumas; negative beliefs, thoughts, and emotions; interpretative perceptions; and even downloads of family patterns of how to deal with stress. Stress-induced illnesses dont just happen out of the blue, and prescription drugs do not eliminate themthey only dull the symptoms and often create other illnesses nicely called side effects. If we truly wish for health and happiness, we need to deal directly with the causes of stress, far more important than just popping a pill.

What stresses one person may be easy for another to handle because stress has more to do with how we react to an event than the event itself. We all give our own meaning to people, objects, and events around us, and that meaning is colored by our past experiences and interpretations. For example, Bill grew up in a house where he had to do everything perfectly or his mother would become very upset. Whats wrong with you that you did that? was her characteristic response. Then his father would yell at Bill for upsetting his mother. Bills conclusion, like so many children, was, I am no good. I am not loveable. I cant do anything right. Something is wrong with me! Thomas, on the other hand, grew up with similar parents, but he didnt see himself as a problem child. Instead, he thought his parents were crazy. He stayed out in the neighborhood as long as he could, playing with other children. He hurried through dinner and rushed to his bedroom to do his homework. He made a point not to be around his parents any more than he had to.

Is it any wonder that Bill got sick several times a year because of terrible stress, whereas Thomas rarely got sick because he wasnt stressed? For reasons we do not know, Thomas was able to see things very differently and felt some control over his situation, instead of taking his parents behaviors and attitudes personally. Bill, however, felt powerless to protect himself, so he became traumatized. The pattern of sickness for Bill and health for Thomas continued well into their adult lives.

The bottom line is whether we perceive ourselves as powerless in a situation or as having the power to deal with the situation effectively. When we see ourselves as at the effect of a stressor, we are most stressed or traumatized. And that can go right into our bodies and reduce our immune function.