The True Sources of Health and Healing Mind Or Body Visualizing the Desired Outcome In Cancer

The True Sources of Health and Healing

The central reason for writing this book is to help people with cancer understand the pivotal role they can choose to play in their own healing and eventual recovery.

• But in the minds of millions of people, a diagnosis of cancer means there is little room for anyone other than a team of specialists, doctors, and healthcare providers who will hopefully fix the problem. This belief is wrong, very wrong.
• Yes, cancer patients need competent medical guidance and assistance. But all the medical treatments in the world will not and cannot create health and result in healing. Health is much more than healthcare.

Read And Learn More: Cancer Essential Things To Do A Road Map For All Cancer Patients Treatment Diagnosis

• And it is important for those cancer patients who wish to survive and even thrive to take personal responsibility for doing all they can to get well and stay well—to find health and nurture true healing.
• Where do we find health? How can we know healing? For the cancer patient, these are foundational questions. Thankfully, there is a hierarchy of answers.

The Will to Live

The will to live, a psychological force found within all of us, is your starting point. It can be easily understood as the inner desire for survival. The will to live is the most basic requirement for the cancer journey.

• Like all creatures, human beings have a fierce instinct for survival. Sometimes the biology of cancer will dictate the course of events regardless of the patient’s attitude and fighting spirit.
• These events are often beyond our control. However, patients with a positive attitude are clearly better able to cope with disease-related problems.
• I have had hundreds of conversations with physicians who often observe how two patients of similar ages, with the same diagnosis, sharing a similar degree of illness and virtually identical treatment programs, experience vastly different outcomes.
• One of the few apparent differences was that one patient was pessimistic and the other optimistic. We have known for over 2,000 years, from the writings of Plato and Galen, that there is a direct correlation between the mind, the body, and one’s health.
• “The cure of many diseases is unknown to physicians,” Plato concluded, “because they are ignorant of the whole. For the part can never be well unless the whole is well.”
• The new emerging model of cancer care recognizes that the psychological and the physical elements of a body are not separate, isolated, and unrelated.

Health is increasingly recognized as a balance of many factors, including physical and environmental elements, emotional and psychological states, nutritional and exercise habits, and more.

• The will to live can be accurately seen as the starting point of health and healing. Believe it. Your will to live plays a large role in your recovery. The mind’s role in causing and curing disease has been endlessly debated.
• No studies have proven in a scientifically valid way that a person can control the course of his or her cancer with the mind alone. However, there are millions of individuals who attest to the power of positive attitudes and emotions.
• I am one of those individuals. I purposely cultivated and strengthened my will to live. You can, too.
• I often ask survivors to explain how they were able to transcend their health challenges. However diverse they are in ethnic or cultural background, age, gender, educational level, or type of illness, they have all gone through a similar process of a psychological shift.
• Virtually all consciously made a decision to live. After an initial period of feeling devastated, they simply decided to assess their new reality and live—however long that may be.
• In my own case, the decision to live meant that I wanted to enjoy life and get more out of it, and most important, to believe that a cancer diagnosis did not mean my life was over. It also meant that I was willing to do whatever was needed to make the very most of each day.
• The threat of death often renews our appreciation of the importance of life, love, friendship, and all there is to enjoy. We open up to new possibilities and begin taking risks we didn’t have the courage to take before.
• Many patients have told me that facing the uncertainties of living with an illness makes life more meaningful. The smallest pleasures are intensified and much of the hypocrisy in life is eliminated.
• When pettiness, bitterness, and anger begin to dissipate, there is still a capacity for joy. I want that for you.

Hope The Force That Sets Your Course

Combining the will to live with hope creates health and healing on many levels. Cicero, the Roman statesman, is credited with the phrase, “While there is life, there is hope.”

• I believe those words have greater power in reverse “While there is hope, there is life.” Hope comes first, and life follows. Hope is the force that sets your course, inspiring the will to live and generating healing on every level.
• The dictionary defines hope as a feeling that what is wanted can be had, that events will turn out for the best. That definition is not strong enough. Hope can best be defined as a deeply confident expectation.
• It is a force, a mental, emotional, and spiritual power, a strength you possess. Hope gives power to life to continue, expand, reach out, and go on. Hope is the miracle medicine of the mind. It inspires the will to live. Hope is the patient’s greatest ally.

I ask that you stop to consider the importance of hope in your cancer journey. Please allow me to gently, lovingly ask you three questions:

Do you carry a vision of yourself as struggling or victorious?

• Do you believe crippling disease or vibrant health is in your future?
• Do you live most of each day filled with helplessness or infused with hopefulness?
• How you envision yourself and perceive your circumstances has a great deal to do with your actual life experience. It’s true in all areas of life—our relationships, our work, and especially our health.
• One essential key to unlocking health is to carry a vision of hope. Hope revives ideals, renews dreams, and revitalizes visions.
• It scales the peak, wrestles with the impossible, and achieves the highest aim. Carry this truth deep in your heart: as long as you have hope, you are not helpless and no situation is hopeless.
• A powerful act in creating health and healing is to choose the words you speak. Our words sometimes may spring forth without thought. But we have a choice in what we say. We can stop speaking about our problems and start speaking of our healing.
• The more we speak of solutions, as if they already exist, the less powerful our problems become. I ask that from this moment forward you begin to speak only of health and of healing. When you do, you plant the seeds to help create that reality.
• A surgeon once admonished me, “You’re spreading false hope.” My response was, “I believe there is no such thing as false hope.

I believe there is only reasonable hope.” However, in the world of cancer, there is a great deal of false no-hope. In medicine, that often takes the form of words like, “There’s nothing more we can do.” Or, “You have only a few months to live.” Don’t believe it.

• Clearly, it is unrealistic to pretend that nothing bad ever happens to us. Bad things do happen to good people. Cancer is one of those bad things. Pretending otherwise is not the answer.
• Nor is playing word games to make ourselves sound psychologically strong or spiritually pure. When bad things happen, admit it. Acknowledge the cancer, but keep your thoughts focused on the most hopeful outcome.
• We simply must take personal responsibility for our thoughts and words. As long as we keep making excuses and blame our family tree, our doctor, or a higher power, we will never be truly well.
• I say this gently and lovingly: it’s not the diagnosis of cancer that has you struggling and depressed. No. It’s your thoughts about your diagnosis and circumstances that keep you down.
• In front of the Cancer Recovery Group’s offices is a 5,000-pound slab of Vermont granite. On it, I had inscribed “Hope Rock,” and then added two essential rules.

Here they are:

Rule 1: There is always hope.

Rule 2: If someone says there is no hope, re-read rule 1.

Believe it. There is always hope. Let that sink deep into your mind and spirit. Hope is the force that sets your course. Follow the rules. Set your compass on hope. Keep your mind filled with victory! It is one of the great sources of health and healing.

Spiritual Connection Inner Guidance

Healing is a very personal journey, unique for each of us. At our deepest intuitive levels, most of us know many of the important things we need to do to get well and stay well.

• However, millions of us have forgotten how to listen to and trust our intuitive inner wisdom. Connecting with your own sense of what it means to be spiritual is an essential ingredient in defining your path to wellness.
• I have come to understand that anger is a call to listen to yourself—your Inner Healer, your deeper wisdom. Caught up in life’s busyness, we often forget how to relax the mind and quiet the spirit. But it is only when we can be at peace and surrender to our deeper wisdom that we can receive the inner guidance essential to healing.
• I ask you to begin today to quiet your mind long enough to discover your own healing pathway. What you will find is both surprising and exciting.
• Research in psychospiritual reality confirms what healers and spiritual teachers have known for centuries—at the level of Self, we are far more aware and knowledgeable than at the level of our conscious mind.
• Prayer is one method of rediscovering ourselves. For some people, this spiritual journey may be expressed through a religious framework. For others, spirituality is expressed through a connection with Nature or a similar quest.
• The common thread is to connect with our deepest authentic Self. And for the skeptics, we now even have early research to show that this quest can activate the immune system, promote healing, and increase the possibilities for recovery.
• In our work, we have found the spiritual journey to healing can be reliably and predictably started with three practices—forgiveness, gratitude, and unconditional love.

Forgiveness is our letting go of hurts and grievances. To be clear, it is our offering of forgiveness to others, not our receipt of forgiveness from others, which makes the difference.

• Most of us know at a deep level the thoughts of recrimination and remorse to which we cling. It was only after I forgave my father that I was able to reclaim health and receive the gift of healing. Release. Let go. Forgive.
• Gratitude is a state of living and being that is consciously aware of and appreciative of the countless blessings and kindnesses we receive each and every moment.
• So very often on the cancer journey, our sense of gratitude can be clouded, momentarily obscured by helplessness, doubt, and despair. But when we observe and affirm the good things in life, we see them set aside these negative thoughts.

Unconditional loving—I like the word-loving rather than the word love, as it better communicates the action required to make love real—is the essential practice of spiritual connection.

• Unconditional loving is another and higher state of Self. It comprises a giving, a creative flow, and harmony. It’s the acceptance of the human condition as perfectly imperfect. And it is a choice to love without any conditions; no “ifs” are allowed.
• Forgiveness, gratitude, and unconditional loving. They are the gateway to your Self, to spiritual connection and inner guidance— one of the most powerful sources of health and healing. We will have more to say on these in the “50 Essential Things to Do.”

Relationships Emotional Intelligence and Support

One of the great wellsprings of healing is an intimate group of supportive friends. When combined with a keen understanding of our own emotional makeup, the environment for healing is optimized.

Fear, anger, guilt. Happiness, contentment, and love: They are all part of the roller coaster of human experience. Emotions are especially vivid when we are dealing with a life-threatening illness.

• In the cancer experience we cannot expect to prevent negative emotions altogether, nor should we expect to experience positive feelings every moment. But what we can do is acknowledge our feelings and refuse to get stuck in the negative ones. That often takes the help of one or more true friends.
• You and I have the power to choose our emotions. Recall the concept that body, mind, and spirit all work together. Emotions are clearly part of that mix.
• When we recognize that our every thought, word, and behavior affects our greater health and well-being, we then begin to learn the language of emotions.
• Please understand that your emotions actually do manifest in your physical body and yield physical sensations. Take anxiety as an example. You may be anxious over an upcoming series of medical tests. Before long, you notice you have an upset stomach.
• Your first response might be to avoid or deny the connection. But, if we stop and become aware of the sequence of thoughts and emotions, we link them to our bodily reactions. As a result, we can; respond in a more intelligent way.
• With practice, we can become skilled at identifying and observing our emotions. Once we can put words to the emotions— “That’s fear that I am feeling,” for example, we tend to resist the urge to fight the emotion.
• Instead, we can allow the emotion to work through without repression or a strong reaction. As a result, we begin to experience more ease, more joy, and more spontaneity it in our lives. We are able to claim a more honest relationship with ourselves. As a result, our relationships with others also become more authentic.

Research in the field of psychoneuroimmunology attests to the central role emotions play in the healing process.

• Landmark studies have demonstrated that simply meeting with others once a week to share emotionally and provide mutual support improves one’s sense of well-being and significantly improves the chance of recovery from a life-threatening illness.
• UCLA psychiatrist and cancer researcher Dr. Fawzy I. Fawzy found that malignant melanoma cancer patients randomly assigned to participate in a weekly support group for a six-week period after diagnosis showed an increased survival threefold over a five-year period compared to the control group.
• Six months after the group sessions ended, two-thirds of the patients in the support groups showed an increase of 25 percent or more in what are called natural killer cells, cancer-fighting cells in the immune system. No such increase was found in the control group.

In San Francisco, Dr. David Spiegel found women with metastatic breast cancer who attended a weekly support meeting lived on average twice as long as those who did not. Patients were encouraged to express their feelings about the illness and its effect on their lives.

• Spiegel found that the emotional repression and social isolation so often found among breast cancer patients was countered by participation in these groups. Importantly, he also noted that group members encouraged one another to be more assertive with their doctors.
• In Arizona, Dr. Karen Weihs demonstrated that for women diagnosed with breast cancer, a large group of supportive friends and relatives is associated with a 60 percent reduction in recurrence and death compared to women with breast cancer who were socially isolated.
• It’s clear. Emotional connection with one’s family and friends and emotional awareness of one’s self play a pivotal role in the healing process. As you spend time with those you love, do not simply rehearse the problems of cancer.
• Instead, share with these people how important they are in your life. And recognize that the contribution made by their support is as important as any cancer therapy.

Mind/Body Visualizing the Desired Outcome

I will emphasize this once again: You possess incredible healing potential. For many people, the body’s ability to heal remains a greatly underutilized resource. In large part, it is because many people have forgotten how to listen to the healing messages our bodies give us.

We live in a busy world: Work, family, friends, and finances all take their important place and have their unique demands. Sometimes they become more important than our self-care.

• If we take the time to reconnect with our inner healing wisdom, we can tap into the resources of emotion, memory, and imagery. Then an awakened sense of wholeness is found, and we can activate this mind/body connection to support our immune system and promote healing.
• What we think and feel directly impacts our health. Research has demonstrated that mind power can translate to muscle power. In a fascinating study, medical researchers in the Department of Psychology at University College in London, England, explained the health benefits of the physical activity involved with the work to the hospital cleaning staff.
• Once understood, the employees lost body fat, decreased their blood pressure, and increased their lean muscle mass. Their activity levels did not change. The only difference was what they were told about the health benefits of their work. Researchers concluded that increased mental awareness accounted for the health gains.
• Sadly, many healthcare professionals summarily dismiss this as the placebo effect, the well-documented fact that sustained positive outcomes can be observed in response to treatment with a sugar pill or inert treatment versus actual medication.
• The nocebo effect is related. This refers to an undesirable effect being observed after receiving a placebo. Neither the placebo nor nocebo responses are biochemically generated. They are attributed solely to the recipient’s optimistic or pessimistic beliefs and expectations.
• Both the placebo and nocebo effects are very real. For cancer patients, if and when patients believe in a treatment, that belief itself nurtures health. Of course, the opposite is also true.
• Your mind can be effectively employed in your quest for healing. By visualizing thoughts, images, and pictures of healing through the use of the imagination, your body’s defense mechanisms respond.

Cortisol levels that inhibit maximum immune function drop. Endorphin levels rise, indicating increased immune activity.

• In my own case, I came to believe my mind/body disciplines as more important than medicine. I employed the phrase, “I am cancer-free, a picture of health.” Concurrently I would imagine myself vital and alive, arms outstretched overhead, reaching to the clear blue skies, and a big smile on my face.
• I ask you to employ something similar. Or you may wish to seek the help of being guided by someone, either in person or by listening to a recording. The point is the mind/body connection can be triggered through visualization, guided imagery, and affirmation.
• Although these techniques and modalities enhance the mind/ body effect, simply listening to and honoring what your body is telling you to do is a good start. For example, fatigue is the single most common symptom of people with cancer.
• From the perspective of integrated cancer care, fatigue is your body’s way of telling you to rest and to take time for self-care. Listen to what your body is telling you. Feel your energy level, and adjust your activity levels accordingly.
• As you quiet your mind and deepen the intimate connection with your body, you will hear what your body is telling us.
• I am asking you to mobilize your mind, to listen to and nurture your body’s healing wisdom. It is a powerful source of health. You will find examples of three visualization exercises in the Resources section of this book.

Physical Exercise The Five-Hour Standard

“I’m too tired.”
“It’s not fun.”
“I don’t have the time.”
“My legs look ugly in gym shorts.”
“The weather’s bad.”

You’ve heard them. I’ve used them. They are excuses for people who don’t want to exercise. But even the very best of integrated cancer care will not be maximized without regular exercise. Think of it as a mandatory requirement.

• In 2005, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study on physical activity and survival after a cancer diagnosis.
• The study found that exercising just one hour per week could lower the risk of recurrence by approximately 20 percent. However, the risk of recurrence was reduced by 50 percent when the exercise time was increased to three to five hours per week.
• The benefits of exercise before, during, and after cancer treatment are now appearing frequently in medical research. When we started our work over a quarter-century ago, Cancer Recovery Group was the first organization to document the link between exercise and recovery.
• At that time, we did not clearly understand how much exercise and what type. Today, the answers are much clearer. And the answer is that you and I need to make daily exercise a part of our lives.
• Cancer and its treatments cause significant changes in the body, including fatigue, muscle weakness, and loss of flexibility, which can result in normal daily activities becoming challenging.
• Movement counters these changes and becomes a key aspect of recovery and healing. Something as simple as a gentle range of motion exercises following surgery will enhance energy, increase flexibility, improve mood, and often produce an overall feeling of greater well-being.
• Mild exercise such as brisk walking, house-cleaning, or gardening improves quality of life, sleep, and appetite. Moderate exercise also reduces the risks of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, anxiety, and depression.
• At our affiliate Breast Cancer Charities of America, we have helped set the aerobic standard for minimum exercise at twenty to forty minutes three to five times per week. In 2006, a study found this level to be safe for cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

From our survivor interviews, we know that only 30 percent of cancer patients meet that standard. I am asking you to join that select group.

• I am further encouraging you to work up to and maintain the high end of the standard, five hours per week.
• You owe it to yourself to schedule a walk each and every day. Or perhaps you prefer gentle yoga or qigong, both of which combine relaxation and exercise. I ask you to exercise out-of-doors whenever possible. The fresh air and the exposure to sunlight are sources of health on their own.
• The physiology of regular moderate exercise facilitates the flow of lymphatic fluid. This means our immune system can deal more effectively with the many toxins, bacteria, and abnormal cells. Unlike the circulatory system, which relies on the heart to pump the blood, the lymphatic system has no pump.
• Instead, lymph function relies on the contraction of our muscles during our activities of daily living and exercise to move lymphatic fluid through the system. Moderate exercise also helps minimize lymphedema in cancer patients.
• This is the often painful fluid buildup many patients experience post-surgery, especially following the removal of lymph nodes. Researchers examined the association between lymphedema and exercise and found that upper-body weight training did not increase the risk of lymphedema—it helped.
• It is reasonable to conclude that cancer patients can and should engage in moderate upper-body resistance training. In addition to exercise, and to support maximum lymph function, drinking at least eight glasses of water per day helps provide the needed hydration that optimizes lymphatic volume and fluid.
• As much as I strive to make the message of this book gentle, personal, and filled with hope, I now need to deliver a short but loving lecture: take these exercise guidelines very seriously.
• The costs of failing to exercise are simply too great. Start slow. Find the right routine. Do something every day—no excuses.
• Just do it! Join me in making daily exercise a central part of your life. Soon it will become more than a requirement, it will become a pleasure. And then you will know you are truly on the path to health and healing.

Nutrition The Most Healthful Choice

A cancer diagnosis signals the time to launch an extreme nutritional makeover. It starts by eating actual food—that means quality, real natural food. If it is boxed or bottled or canned or packaged, be skeptical.

• A nutrition makeover means asking questions as you shop. How fresh are these ingredients? Where was it grown? Is it local? Is it organic? What does this label tell me? Does this contain genetically modified ingredients? What about sugar, particularly high-fructose corn syrup?
• The cancer patient’s guide to nutrition is simple and easily implemented. The best foods are predominantly fresh and organically grown fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.
• We also favor beans, nuts, and seeds. Select fish, some soy and soy alternatives, and egg whites in their natural form. It is preferable if the source of these foods is local.
• What you are seeking is the wholesome foods that nature provides. This means avoiding processed foods, refined foods, and those that contain chemicals and additives. It also means we spend a great deal of our time shopping for food in the produce section of our market.
• Cancer remains much less prevalent in cultures that continue to eat the unrefined foods of our ancestors. While modern technology has enabled us to mass-produce foods for high yields, long shelf life, and maximum profits, it is clear that nutritional values have been compromised in the process. Factory farming has changed the health integrity of our food.
• As a result, most people are missing essential nutrients that were commonplace in previous generations.
• I am not asking you to go on a diet. I am asking you to change and improve your lifestyle. If you think you are going on a diet, chances are that you’ll go off that diet.

Sooner or later, for most people, being on a diet—any diet—is simply not sustainable.

The word “diet” itself conjures up images of deprivation and restrictions. Nobody wants to be deprived and restricted, especially in the midst of a cancer diagnosis.

• In contrast, I am asking you to adopt high nutrition as a wonderful way of life. The nutrition program explained in this book gives you maximum choices that taste good. It is satisfying and nutritious. And most important, it fights cancer.
• In his book Food Rules, Michael Pollan brilliantly distills the nutrition discussion into seven words. He says, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This should be the focal point of your nutrition program.
• Rat food. Not the highly processed, nutritionally void, prepackaged foods so commonly found in most grocery stores. Instead, eat real, live, high-quality food. Pollan gives powerful advice when he says, “It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car.”
• Not too much. This is portion control. And unless you are in the wasting stages of cancer where you simply cannot maintain weight, the Scottish guideline “A little with quiet is the only diet” serves you well.

Yet the good thing about a plant-based program is that you can eat more—up to ten servings a day of fresh vegetables and fruit.

Mostly plants. Not exclusively plants but predominantly plants—whole foods that are organically grown and filled with the thousands of natural phytonutrients that help create health and healing.

• While there are few “thou shalt nots” in the Cancer Recovery nutrition program, there is one that I insist upon: cutting out [ sugar and processed foods that contain these sugars. Avoid all artificial or chemical sweeteners such as sorbitol, xylitol, and mannitol.
• When you find it necessary to sweeten foods or drinks, use stevia, a natural herb, which can be used freely. This sweetener is now widely available in liquid, powder, or tablet form. Just ask at your local market. See the section of this book entitled “Cancer I and Sugar” for a detailed analysis of this issue.
• Finally, add generous amounts of health-enhancing superfoods. Superfoods are comprised of plants that have extraordinary anticancer effects.

These include various kinds of cabbage, broccoli, garlic, several kinds of mushrooms, the right kind of soy, green tea, turmeric, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, certain nuts, several herbs and spices, and even small amounts of dark chocolate.

• Know this: healthful food is one of the primary sources of health and healing. What you eat is central to your recovery from cancer. Food’s influence is considerable—every day, three times a day—for either speeding up or slowing down cancer growth.
• I urge you to take this nutritional guidance very seriously. Eating unhealthfully is simply too big a risk if you wish to recover from cancer.
• Where do we find health? How can we know healing? It’s right before 11. And many cancer patients, in the rush to find a new conventional or complementary treatment, overlook the true sources that make for health and healing.
• The elements we have explored here are essential aspects of self-care. They help you create health and facilitate healing.
• Without these strong foundations, even the most exotic cancer treatments will crumble. Health is more than healthcare. We simply must do more than treat the illness. We must create wellness.