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How YourMind Can HealYour Body

How YourMind Can HealYour BodyDavid R. Hamilton PhD

First published and distributed in the United Kingdom by:Hay House UK Ltd, 292B Kensal Rd, London W10 5BE.Tel.: (44) 20 8962 1230; Fax: (44) 20 8962 1239. www.hayhouse.co.ukPublished and distributed in the United States of America by:Hay House, Inc., PO Box 5100, Carlsbad, CA 92018-5100.Tel.: (1) 760 431 7695 or (800) 654 5126;Fax: (1) 760 431 6948 or (800) 650 5115. www.hayhouse.comPublished and distributed in Australia by:Hay House Australia Ltd, 18/36 Ralph St, Alexandria NSW 2015.Tel.: (61) 2 9669 4299; Fax: (61) 2 9669 4144. www.hayhouse.com.auPublished and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by:Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd, PO Box 990, Witkoppen 2068.Tel./Fax: (27) 11 467 8904. www.hayhouse.co.zaPublished and distributed in India by:Hay House Publishers India, Muskaan Complex, Plot No.3, B-2,Vasant Kunj, New Delhi – 110 070. Tel.: (91) 11 4176 1620;Fax: (91) 11 4176 1630. www.hayhouse.co.inDistributed in Canada by:Raincoast, 9050 Shaughnessy St, Vancouver, BC V6P 6E5.Tel.: (1) 604 323 7100; Fax: (1) 604 323 2600 David R. Hamilton, 2008The moral rights of the author have been asserted.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by anymechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of aphonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system,transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use, other thanfor ‘fair use’ as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews,without prior written permission of the publisher.The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the useof any technique as a form of treatment for physical or medical problemswithout the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent ofthe author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in yourquest for emotional and spiritual wellbeing. In the event you use any of theinformation in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, theauthor and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.ISBN 978-1-84850-023-5Printed in the UK by CPI William Clowes Ltd, Beccles, NR34 7TL.

To Ryan, Jake and Ellie.You have brought huge amounts of joy to our family.

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except bythose who dared to believe that something insideof them was superior to circumstances.Bruce Barton

ContentsAcknowledgementsixIntroductionxiPart I: The Mind Can Heal the Body11 The Power of Positive Thinking32 The Power of Believing193 Drugs Work Because We Believe in Them314 The Power of Plasticity435 The Mind Can Heal the Body516 The Power of Visualization637 To Stress or Not to Stress818 How to Visualize919 The Power of Affirmations107Part II: True Stories115Introduction11710 Cancer11911 Heart13912 Regeneration14713 Pain, Chronic Fatigue and ME155vii

14 Viruses, Allergies and Autoimmune Conditions16315 Weight Loss179Part III: In Closing18316 The Power of Love185Appendix I: Quantum Field Healing (QFH)199Appendix II: Visualizations211Appendix III: DNA Visualizations269References273viii

AcknowledgementsFirst, I’d like to thank my partner Elizabeth Caproni for herconstant love and encouragement. Through Elizabeth I havecome to believe in myself, and only from this space have I beenable to write and speak at the level that I do.From my earliest memories, my mum and dad have encouragedme to do what I want to do and to believe that I can. To Mumand Dad: this is me doing it! Thank you.I wish to say a huge thanks to all the people who shared theirpersonal stories in this book and to those who shared storiesthat did not make the final version. I believe that it’s the tellingof our stories that inspires other people. To those of you whoshared your stories, whether they made the final version or not,by having the courage to do so, you have inspired many peopleto recognize that they also have the ability to heal themselves.Words cannot convey just how important a gift this is.I would like to thank Kevin Doherty for the great job of editingthis book and Lizzie Hutchins for expert guidance. And with thisbeing my third book with Hay House, I would like to thank allthe staff of Hay House UK, past and present, for their warmthand for helping me to feel such a part of the Hay House family.I’d also like to thank my friend Kevin Waite for reading(twice) the first draft of this book, for making some importantsuggestions and also for creating some really great visualizations,all of which helped to bring this book into its final state.ix

How Your Mind Can Heal Your BodyI’d also like to thank my friend Bryce Redford forencouragement, inspiration and motivation.I have sought clarification from experts in the field for someimportant points in this book. I would like to say thank you inparticular to Barbara Andersen, Fabrizio Benedetti, Lyn Freemanand Stephanie Wai-Shan Louie for this and also for sending meimportant research information or pointing me towards relevantpieces that I was not aware of.I spend a lot of my writing time in coffee shops and even referto my most-visited coffee shops as my offices. So last but notleast I would like to say thanks to the staff at Starbucks andCaffè Nero in Windsor, UK, for creating the perfect atmospherefor me to write.x

IntroductionThis is a book about using the mind to heal the body. After I wrotemy first book, It’s the Thought that Counts, which describedthe mind–body connection (and the mind–world connection),people began asking me how to use it to heal themselves.At talks I found myself explaining the how, and at workshops Ifound myself teaching it. At one of my workshops a lady askedif I was planning to write about it. I started writing this book thefollowing day.This book gives practical tools that you can use to heal a wholevariety of medical conditions. About ten years ago it would be trueto say that there was little medical evidence that the mind couldheal the body, although there was plenty of evidence pointingtowards it; but research published every other week now is buildinga considerably strong case that our previous assumptions and beliefs– that the mind could not heal the body – are just plain wrong.Since 2006, visualization has shown positive results instroke and spinal injury rehabilitation, as well as improving themovement of Parkinson’s disease patients. Patients just use theirminds to imagine moving normally and the moment they dothis, the arm or leg that they imagine moving is stimulated at amicroscopic level and the brain area that governs the arm or legis also stimulated. The result is that over time their movementimproves. In stroke cases, some damaged brain areas even beginto regenerate.xi

How Your Mind Can Heal Your BodyThe placebo effect has shown us for years that the power of beliefcan influence the course of a whole range of medical conditions,including asthma, hay fever, infections, pain, Parkinson’s disease,depression, congestive heart failure, angina, cholesterol levels,blood pressure, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, athleticperformance, weight loss, stomach ulcers and insomnia, andeven that it could alter immune and growth hormone levels. Andrecent research has shown that when a person takes a placeboand believes it to be a real medicine, chemical changes occur inthe brain on account of their belief. Now we know for certain –fact – that thoughts, emotions and beliefs are not just subjectiveideas in the mind but cause real chemical and physical changes inthe brain and throughout the body.I have made some sizeable leaps in this book in suggestingthat almost any illness can be healed using the mind, or at leastthat improvements can be made. I am aware that this is a bigclaim to make but I feel that when people’s health is at stake,and indeed their lives, we can’t always wait for science to catchup and publish research, maybe ten years later, showing thatwhat many believe to be true – that the mind can heal the body –actually is true for that specific illness. People don’t always havethat long.It would be more of a mistake for me to write that the mindcan’t heal the body, at least until the day science discovers that itcan. We are barely scratching the surface in our understandingof real human potential. Einstein said, ‘We still do not know onethousandth of one per cent of what nature has revealed to us.’I believe we need to entertain the real possibility that much ofwhat we have not yet proven includes the ability of the mind toheal the body of almost anything.Some might say that I’m giving people false hope, but I thinkthat is a rather negative stance to take. The poet John Lydgatewrote, ‘You can please some of the people all of the time and all ofxii

Introductionthe people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the peopleall of the time.’ I’d rather give people hope and see them turnthat into wellness than avoid inspiring them with possibilitiesbecause of the risk that some may not get the results.I remember when I was a scientist in the pharmaceuticalindustry that I enjoyed looking at the plants in the office I sharedwith about 20 others. There must have been about 30 differentplants, which helped to create a nice atmosphere. Many of themwere small plants and they sat on the windowsill, which meantthat they were the first things you saw when you entered theoffice in the morning. It was a pleasing sight.One day, after I had been in that office for over a year, someonecarelessly knocked one of the plants off the windowsill and italmost landed on their foot. It didn’t, but it was classified asa ‘near miss’. The next day a memo came around the wholedepartment saying that from that day forward, no plants wereto be allowed on the windowsill, in case they fell off and injuredsomeone, and they never were for the remainder of my timethere.There was no need to ban small plants from the windowsill – anote to remind everyone to be more careful would have sufficed.I think that we can focus too much on the negatives at times and,especially with goals, we often don’t shoot for the stars just incase it doesn’t work out for us.With this book, I have aimed for the stars. I believe that themajority of people will find something helpful in it, but I knowthat I can’t please everyone. If you don’t get results, pleaseunderstand that my sincere motivation here is to help and I doreally believe that we all have reservoirs of untapped potentialwithin us.I have always been a motivational type of person. When I wasgrowing up I’d always be helping people to shoot for their goalsand believe in themselves. In my twenties I became an athleticsxiii