Superhealing: Engaging Your Mind, Body, and Spirit to Create Optimal Health and Well-Being (ARC) (15 page)

It caused an average of 60 percent more of the neutrophils (germ-

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destroying white blood cel s) to leave the bloodstream and enter the surrounding tissue.38 A Harvard study found that relaxation and imagery increased IGA, a very important immune system protein. The

practices also enhanced the T cel , or lymphocyte,
function, another important component of the immune system.39

Gerald N. Epstein, a professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medi-

cal School in New York, has used imagery ever since he took a trip to Israel several decades ago and met a traditional healer who taught him a visualization technique. He now uses imagery daily in his

medical practice. He teaches residents and attending physicians how to use it and has conducted grand-rounds lectures at his hospital

on it. He has reported dramatic results, from spontaneous healing

of cancer to significant reduction in the healing time of fractures to notable improvements in a variety of diseases.40

Imagery involving emotional topics can stimulate appropriate,

even dramatic, bodily responses. Preliminary evidence suggest that visualization can tone and strengthen muscles similar to the way exercise does; it activates the same parts of the brain. During a study in the 1940s, subjects were instructed to imagine lifting different weights, and their muscle tension increased with the weight of the imagined lift. 41

One study that taught patients to visualize before surgery found

that it helped them to recover faster and use less pain medication, and it reduced the formation of postoperative hematomas, a condition

in which blood collects beneath the skin and in the muscles. Other studies have shown that when patients with hypertension visualized their blood vessels dilating, their blood pressure became much lower than it did in patients who used only a relaxation technique 42

A stress-management program composed of visualization, breath-

ing exercises, and coping skil s was found to help men with prostate

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cancer prepare for surgery. It decreased their presurgical anxiety and improved their immune system functioning after surgery.43 And researchers at the University of California at San Francisco taught a group of asthmatics how to visualize, which improved their breathing compared to a control group of patients who weren’t taught the technique.44

Visualization has also been found to stimulate specific cel s in the immune system to impede tumor growth, and that process reversed

when the practice was stopped.45 Aggressive visualization isn’t as effective for some cancer patients with unresolved feelings of anger, hate, grief, or loss. When disease is a manifestation of suppressed emotional energy turned back on itself, it reinforces such denial.

Superhealing Visualization

Engagement Suggestions

You can use visualization as part of your meditative practice, during your free moments, and throughout the day while you’re engag-

ing in your normal activities. Keep in mind that visualizing is more potent when you involve
all
your senses to make the picture more realistic.

SUPERHEALING MIND ENGAGEMENT

TECHNIQUE #4: EXPRESSIVE WRITING

Our thoughts, feelings, and moods have an effect not only on

the development of certain diseases but also on the ultimate course those diseases take. Therefore, any coping mechanisms we can develop to manage our moods and meet our psychological needs are of

great benefit to us. Expressing ourselves in writing with the specific aim of releasing painful or conflicted thoughts and feelings is one such solution.

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When I was eleven or twelve, I started keeping a journal. There

was something exciting and magical about describing my activities

and my feelings about the events in my life on paper. It was appealing to give immortality to my most important and intimate thoughts (at least that’s what I thought I was doing). Then I enjoyed reading, reviewing, and reconsidering my experiences. Keeping a journal has been a constant part of my life ever since.

Twenty years ago, I discovered the scientific basis for the power of writing about our lives to make us feel good. At a health conference, I heard social psychologist James W. Pennebaker then the chairman

of the psychology department at Southern Methodist University in

Dal as, Texas, talk about the events that had led him to begin re-

search in a new area: the psychology of expressive writing.

The subject of Dr. Pennebaker’s lecture was an incident in which

he met a man who had recently confessed to a murder that he’d kept secret for several months. In spite of the fact that this man was facing spending the rest of his life in prison, he expressed relief from making his admission. Hearing this, Pennebaker wondered whether

the relief the man felt translated into physiological changes. He constructed a study to determine the extent to which it is healthy to express suppressed, stored, unprocessed, and unresolved emotions

through a technique he called
cathartic writing
.

His research consisted of having participants write for fifteen to twenty minutes a day for four consecutive days about emotional y

challenging topics and experiences. At the completion of the study, everyone showed signs of increased immune system functioning,

and these positive changes continued for up to six weeks. Even

months later, the participants reported making fewer doctor visits for stress-related illnesses.46

In his book
Opening Up,
Dr. Pennebaker explained that holding

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back our emotions is challenging and a difficult physiological state to maintain. “Active inhibition means that people must consciously restrain, hold back, or in some way exert effort to not think, feel, or behave.”47 Repressing and holding in emotions, most often done

unconsciously, can become so stressful that it adversely affects us.

Writing specifical y to release mental images of trauma and emo-

tional pain or conflict engages the superhealing mind more than

noncathartic writing does. In another study, Dr. Pennebaker com-

pared one group of college students who wrote about trauma with

another group who wrote about trivial things, such as descriptions of their dorm rooms. Before the study, all the students in the study had visited the campus health clinic at similar rates. Afterward, the trauma writers’ visits were half those of the others.48

Pennebaker did a similar study among worksite wellness program

participants and got similar results. He concluded, “The degree to which writing or talking about basic thoughts and feelings can produce profound physical or physiological changes is nothing short of amazing.”49

Most interesting is that an analysis of people writing about trauma indicated that those whose health improved to the greatest degree

tended to use more words about positive emotions.50 The increasing sense of insight after several days of writing was also linked to health improvement. Creating a coherent story while honestly expressing negative emotions made the writing process a healing event. It prompted changes in the autonomic nervous system and, like other

techniques, lowered stress hormone levels and promoted relaxation.

Dr. Pennebaker and colleagues also found direct physiological evi-

dence that writing increases the level of disease-fighting lymphocytes circulating in the blood and even causes blood pressure to decrease.51

Investigators are unsure of the precise physiological mechanism

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that makes expressive writing effective medicine. Until 1999, re-

search in this area focused mainly on healthy individuals. Then

psychologist Joshua M. Smyth and colleagues studied the effects of keeping a journal in individuals with asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. The study, which involved sixty-one asthmatics and fifty-one people with rheumatoid arthritis, is probably the very first to use standard clinical outcome measurements to examine how writing

about stressful events affects specific illnesses. The asthmatics who finished the study experienced 19 percent average improvement of

their lung functioning, and the patients with rheumatoid arthritis had a 28 percent reduction of their symptoms of arthritis.52

Dr. Smyth and his colleagues asserted, “We can do a good job with

medication, but we can do a better job if we also pay attention to people’s psychological needs . . . very minimal psychological social interaction can have very substantial medical effects.”53

Writing about this study, Dr. David Spiegel made the point that if the authors of the study had provided similar evidence about a new drug, it probably would have been in widespread use within a short time:

We would think we understood the “mechanism” (whether

we did or not), and there would be a mediating industry to

promote its use. Manufacturers of paper and pencils are not

likely to push journaling as a treatment addition for the man-

agement of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. But the authors

have provided evidence that medical treatment is more effec-

tive when standard pharmacological intervention is combined

with the management of emotional distress. Expressing nega-

tive emotions, even just to an unknown reader, seems to have

helped these patients acknowledge, bear, and put into perspec-

tive their distress.
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Expressive writing has many benefits. The following list is adapt-

ed from Pennebaker and from Kathleen Adams.55 Expressive writing

does the following:

• Helps us integrate and organize our complicated

lives in a variety of ways

• Clears the mind

• Helps resolve traumas that stand in the way of

important tasks

• Helps in acquiring and remembering new information

• Fosters problem solving and forces people to sustain their

attention on a given topic for a longer amount

of time

• Lowers the blood pressure and heart rate and benefits the

immune system

• Improves lung function in asthmatics

• Improves joint mobility in rheumatoid arthritis

The research confirms William Shakespeare’s advice in
Hamlet

(act 1, scene 3): “To thine own self be true.” Being honest with ourselves on paper allows for the realization that we have the capacity to define every experience, regardless of the depths of emotional pain it may have caused us. Not only do we possess the psychological and spiritual wherewithal to survive all our experiences, we also possess the ability to heal and to thrive.

Superhealing Expressive

Writing Engagement Suggestion

If you are ready to take on expressive writing, I’d recommend

committing to writing about anything that is troubling you and your feelings about it for at least fifteen minutes a day for the next month.

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SUPERHEALING MIND ENGAGEMENT

TECHNIQUE #5: POSITIVE THINKING,

OR AFFIRMATIONS

Until the end of the twentieth century, scientists believed the

brain was different from the rest of the body and could not change or regenerate itself. Fortunately, today we know that the brain has a remarkable capacity to adapt
.
Our brains respond to cues from our environment—including our thoughts, feelings, and emotions—by

altering their own structures and functions.

Just as we practice playing the piano to get better at it, if we repeatedly practice certain ways of thinking, we become better at

those, too. Positive thoughts repeated over time can powerful y alter the brain. If you decide to change your thinking by regularly replacing your undesirable thoughts with more positive ones, the neural

pathways in your brain that once processed your old way of thinking begin to atrophy, just as a muscle does when you stop using it.

The idea that the brain is adaptable was first introduced by psy-

chologist William James in 1890, and it was soundly rejected by

scientists who believed that the brain is rigidly mapped out, with certain parts controlling certain functions. They believed that if a part of the brain was damaged, its function was altered or lost. Of course, we now know they were wrong. The discovery of neuroplasticity, that our thoughts can change the structure and functioning of our brains throughout our life spans, was one of the most significant breakthroughs in the understanding of the brain that has ever occurred. Science has proven that the brain is endlessly adaptable and dynamic.

Neuroplasticity
means that if you make the effort, your thinking can change,
even when your thoughts are habitual and seemingly out of your conscious control. As you make a conscious effort to

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adopt a different attitude, the brain circuits that processed your old way of thinking begin to fade. This process provides the brain with the ability to alter and enhance its structure and processing, even for those with the severe neurological afflictions. People with significant medical conditions like cerebral palsy, paralysis, stroke, and mental illness have successful y trained other areas of their brains to com-pensate through repetitive mental and physical activities. When you engage in ongoing, frequent positive thought and positive activity, it can rewire your brain and strengthen brain areas that stimulate positive feelings.56