6 Steps to Healing Yourself

Can the mind really heal the body? Yes! For over 50 years, the medical establishment has been proving that the mind can heal - or harm - the body. We call it “the placebo effect” when the effect on your health is positive and “the nocebo effect” when it’s negative.

The placebo effect has been proven to cause resolution of symptoms - and real physiological change - in 18-80% of the patients in clinical trials who are treated with nothing more than sugar pills, saline injections, or fake surgeries. This provides real, concrete evidence that your genius body is perfectly equipped with natural self-repair mechanisms that are under the influence of thoughts, feelings and beliefs originating in your mind. Your body knows how to kill cancer cells, fix broken proteins, slow aging, eliminate toxins, fight infections, get rid of foreign bodies, and otherwise keep you healthy. But here’s the kicker.

Your nervous system has two operating systems - the “fight-or-flight” stress response dominated by the sympathetic nervous system and the relaxation response run by the parasympathetic nervous system. Only when your nervous system is in a relaxation response do your body’s self-repair mechanisms function properly! So how can you flip off your stress responses and activate your relaxation responses so the body can heal itself? Try the 6 Steps to Healing Yourself that I teach in Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself.

Lissa Rankin, MD: Creator of the health and wellness communities LissaRankin.com and OwningPink.com, New York Times bestselling author of Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself (Hay House, 2013), TEDx speaker, and Health Care Evolutionary.

Believe You Can Heal Yourself

As long as you believe your condition is “incurable” or “chronic,” it will be. Many of us are programmed, often at a very early age, to believe that we can’t heal ourselves, that our bodies are none of our business - that they’re our doctor’s business instead. But the scientific data proves that what you believe about your health is likely to come true! You wouldn’t take a pill from a bottle with a skull and crossbones on it, but every time you fill your mind with negative beliefs about your health - like “I’ll always be sick,” you’re poisoning your body with cortisol and epinephrine, thereby deactivating your body’s natural self-repair mechanisms. Don’t believe your health condition could possibly resolve? For some mind-blowing stories about how positive belief can radically affect your health, watch my TEDx talk Is There Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself?

Find the Right Support

To say that you can heal yourself is sort of a misnomer. Your body can heal itself, but it does so best when you’re tended, nurtured, even loved by a health care provider who helps relax your nervous system, alleviates your fear and overwhelm, and shares your positive belief that you can get well. How can you find this kind of doctor? Don’t be afraid to interview your health care providers. Ask whether they believe you can get well and find someone optimistic, who will partner with you on your healing journey, help you utilize any tools from the Western medical toolbox that might help you, respects your intuition, cares for your wellbeing, and ensures you that you won’t be facing your illness alone. Do you have the right healers on your health care team?

Listen to Your Body & Your Intuition

Nobody knows your body better than you, not even a doctor. We doctors may know the arteries of the leg or the anatomy of your organs better than you, but you know what’s best for your own body better than anyone else.

When my literary agent first read Mind Over Medicine, she said, “Lissa, before I read this book, I honestly thought my body was none of my business, that it was my doctor’s business.

I thought my body was like my car. When it breaks down, I hand it over to the auto mechanic and expect my mechanic to fix me. Now I know better. My body IS my business.” Yes! Your body is indeed your business. So listen to your intuition and trust what it tells you. Not in touch with your intuition? Then listen to your body, which is one vehicle your intuition uses to speak to you. If you have a physical sensation in your body - pain, tightness, nausea, clenching, dizziness - ask your body what it is trying to communicate to you.

Then listen up! This is the voice of your inner wisdom and it will always lead you directly to your true north. For help hearing the voice of your inner wisdom, download this free Self-Healing Kit to find, along with other goodies, a guided meditation specifically designed to help you tap into what is true for you.

Diagnose the Root Causes of Your Illness

Your doctor may give you one kind of diagnosis - like high blood pressure or fibromyalgia or colon cancer, for example. But the kind of diagnosis I’m talking about gets at the root of what might have triggered the stress responses that deactivate your body’s self-healing mechanisms, thereby making your body vulnerable to illness. What aspects of your life are stressing you out? Where is your life out of alignment with your truth? What relaxation response-inducing activities - like meditation, creative expression, laughter, engaging in work you love, massage, yoga, or playing with animals - have you been neglecting?

In Mind Over Medicine, I introduce a wellness model I call the “Whole Health Cairn” (I also discuss it in my first TEDx talk The Shocking Truth About Your Health). You can use the Whole Health Cairn as a way to diagnose the areas of your life that might be predisposing your body to illness.

Surrender Attachment to Outcomes

After you’ve done everything you can to make your body ripe for miracles, it’s time to surrender. Some patients do everything “right” and spontaneous remissions happen. Others do the same - and they’re still sick. Why does this happen? Honestly, I don’t know. The only real answer is a spiritual one. Perhaps our souls come here on this earth to learn lessons, and illness can be a spiritual practice, a way to learn our life lessons and a part of our soul’s destiny. What I can say is that if you’ve followed the 6 steps, you’ve done everything within your power to make your body ripe for miracles - and the rest is out of your hands. So take a deep breath, trust The Universe, surrender attachment to any particular health outcome, and let any health condition you face be an opportunity for spiritual awakening.