You Can Heal Your Life (Gift Edition)

• A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)
• Heal Your Body
• Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live
• You Can Heal Your Life, the movie, expanded version
• Love Yourself, Heal Your Life Workbook (Insight Guide)
• Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao
• I Can Do It (Louise L. Hay Subliminal Mastery)
• You Can Heal Your Life Companion Book (Hay House Lifestyles)
• The Unmistakable Touch of Grace: How to Recognize and Respond to the Spiritual Signposts in Your Life
• Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What!

Well, what can one say to this piece of wisdom. I quote from it below (using the page numbers in the UK edition). We are not divine - we are creatures albeit creatures endowed with wonderful gifts. I think this statement is one of the keys to her little narcissistic philosophy.

Pseudo-religion for the bourgeoise, complacent and self satisfied. If it does not grow, don't eat it. . "I find that most BLADDER problems come from being "Pissed off", usually at a partner" (page 132). Tell that to the million dying of this nasty disease including young kids and even babies. "Everything I need is revealed to me. There is no imperfection in us - its just all about acceptance of ourselves.

This echoes Gnostic thought. "They (babies) already are perfect and they act as they know it. "My personal nutritional approach is simple, If it grows, eat is. This lady is oblivious to the suffering of the multitude - this book is definitely for the bourgeoisie and those who want to continue remain blissfully ignorant of the cries of the poor, the moans of those starving and dying of malaria, typhoid and other conditions.

Complete and utter individualism. We are all broken creatures struggling to make our way through life. "Self approval and self acceptance in the now are the main keys to positive changes in every area of our lives" (page 9). Further, it is downright bizarre and borders on the offensive at times. Is this Lady oblivious of the 20th century drenched in the blood of the innocent, killed by villains and murderous thugs. Everything I need comes to me" (page 242: Oh dear, very sad really. This is plain nonsense.

"Cancer is a dis-ease caused by deep resentment held for a long time until it literally eats away the body" (page 138). "No matter what the problem is, our experiences are just outer effects of inner thoughts" (page 5). I should add that this was given to me as a present. "We create every so called illness in our body" (page xiii: Deeply offensive . They impact on us and thus impact on our experience of life. What planet is this lady on.

. "We are each responsible for all our experiences" (page xiii). " (page 4) "I agree with the theory that we choose our parents (page 30).

This statement only can make any sense if it is intended to mean: it is up to us to determine how we respond to internal and external stimuli. They know they are the centre of the Universe" (page 19). Oh dear - the mantra of success. I agree that non-forgiveness can cause huge problems for the psyche but if she is suggesting that diseases are caused by non-forgiveness always and everywhere, then it is offensive. (page 135). Note how in her narcissistic world, she chooses her parents which implies her parents own free will has been impaired in some way - why would they agree to this. "Whatever we believe becomes true for us" (page 33).

If in her philosophy we are all divine, and one divinity exercises his free will to impact on another divinity, does that not have any effect. Again, she ignores impact of nature and other free agents impacting on us. "Even if constipated people are not actually stingy, they usually do not trust that there will ever be enough. A perfect being does not need to change. . Further this ignores the fact that we are surrounded on all sounds by other persons, who themselves are free agents. This thinking is dualistic - when our bodies are in pain, we are in pain, our whole being is in pain - we experience pain.

I will quote from it liberally below to support what I have said. A complete loss of the wisdom of the ancients is evident here. Babies are lovely alright but they are not perfect. Where did she get this from. (page 45). These are simply beyond our control and you bet they affect our experiences. They howl like mad in the middle of the night when hungry. "I believe we create every so-called illness in our body": Deeply offensive.

"Whenever we are ill, we need to search our hearts to see who it is we need to forgive" (page 8). All these actions were committed by human beings. Not sure I quite follow her because later on she talks about being willing to change - why would we change anything we wholeheartedly and unreservedly approve. "We are here to recognise our own magnificence and divinity" (page 31). . Bizaarely we chose our parents as well. But I am not sure she means this limited sense.

"I love you and accept you exactly as you are" (page 19). I wish her all the best eating the lovely wild mushrooms in the neighbourhood. The point is: when we look at ourselves, if we are anyway self aware, we must know that things need to be changed. "In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete" (page 9). This is plainly wrong.

"Each one of us decides to incarnate upon this planet at a particular point in time and space. "I think its is our natural birthright to go from success to success all our life" (page 109). Well, what can one say to this piece of wisdom. We possess a human nature which is subject to the vagaries of the external world - famine, disease, earthquakes. What can I say but that the thought process (seasoned with narcissism and treacled with worship of the self) which underpins this little book goes against all that I hold dear.

The writings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are replete with talk of virtue and educating and training oneself to be a virtuous man or woman.

There is always more to learn and ponder with every rereading. This book is a wonderful tool to learn self love and self acceptance. I read and reread it.

Other alternative healing books of interest include The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders and The 5-Minute Plantar Fasciitis Solution. I found that the main value in this book was getting me to look at how our thinking does influence the functioning of our bodies- as well as our life in general. One study of 1,198 subjects found that only 56% of men with SEVERE knee arthritis had any pain (Lawrence 1966). The findings. All of this should be causing us to raise an eyebrow. What kind of problems.

Interestingly, both anxiety and depression WERE important predictors of pain (Salaffi 1991). While I used knee arthritis as an example, there are MANY more studies on other health problems with similar findings. For instance, one study looked at 65 patients (ages 55 to 87) with hip and/or knee arthritis. Along the same lines, Salaffi examined 61 women (ages 51-79) with knee arthritis. Well, the book specifically looks into healing some pretty major life areas: relationships, work, success, prosperity, and your body. So the question now becomes, if bad thought patterns can play a role in health problems such as arthritis, why not in other diseases such as cancer, as the book suggests.

Thank you Louise Hay. Any one conducting a literature review on Medline will find more such examples IF you're looking for them. Well, after reading this book, I think in many cases, yes, it is possible. Well it may not be too far fetched.

Note that I'm NOT saying that you can think yourself well all the time either. Another study X-rayed 84 seventy-nine year-olds and 76 eighty-five year-olds and found that only 43% of them with SEVERE knee arthritis had any pain complaints (Bagge 1991). There are plenty more examples in the scientific literature, but obviously there two alone show us that there is NO clear-cut association between severe knee arthritis and pain. But while few would argue that psychological factors can cause an ulcer, what about more serious conditions such as, say, arthritis. Consider this. And the research is also giving us clues that the mind and our thought processes definitely play a role.

Therefore, my advice is to look at ALL the options when dealing with a health problem, one MAJOR one being changing your mental patterns (which is the what the book does a nice job of addressing). Of course I'm talking about health problems such as migraines, backaches, or stomach ulcers- you know, those kinds of nagging disorders where we all know that stress/mental processes DO play a role. And for this reason, I can recommend this book to anyone who needs physical healing or otherwise. Is that even possible.

X-rays, pain, depression levels, anxiety levels, coping styles, and functional impairment were all assessed. The literature is telling us that it is far from being clear cut that things like bad knee arthritis ALWAYS mean pain. Researchers discovered that the severity of one's arthritis showed little relationship to pain, BUT, psychological variables were strong predictors of who had pain and how impaired they were (Summers 1988). ON THE OTHER HAND, when one looks at the relationship between psychological variables and knee arthritis, one does see a clear association. But wait a minute, did I say the book is using thoughts to heal your body.

While I think it is the way to go to treat things such as an acute appendicitis with surgery, fractures with a cast, and pneumonia with antibiotics, there are many conditions where conventional medicine blatently falls short. You be the judge. Remember that while Louise Hay did change her thought patterns and was cured of cancer, she has also written that she used other alternative treatments as well, such as foot reflexology and colon therapy (Chapter 16). What's up with that. You Can Heal Your Life (Gift Edition) is all about using your thoughts to fix the problems in your life.

Here again, results showed that how disabled someone was, was more related to psychological variables than how bad their knee looked on an X-ray film.

I've put positive thinking to work and have seen results - which - despite believing in the ideology - still surprised me. I learned of Louise Hay and her writings on an Oprah show that was following up on The Secret by Rhonda Bryne. It has helped me gain perspective and I've learned techniques for dealing with stress and racing thoughts. This book had a calming effect on me. I ordered the book and began to read it immediately.