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Archive for healing

Mind Over Medicine Is A New York Times Bestseller!

By Lissa · Comments (4)
Friday, May 17th, 2013

Party blowers

I just found out that Mind Over Medicine debuts on the New York Times Bestseller’s List this Sunday, and it’s all because of YOU. So this is an unabashed love letter. Thank you all for making this great honor happen. I couldn’t have done it without each and every one of you.

Bless you for reading my blog, getting my newsletter, reading The Daily Flame, and following me on Twitter and Facebook, which gave Hay House the confidence to really get behind this book and my mission to help heal health care.

Thank you for buying the book, posting about it on social media, and sharing it with your friends, family members, and health care providers.

Thank you for being part of the revolution to heal health care (if you’re an empowered patient or conscious health care provider, you can join the revolution at HealHealthCareNow.com, which will celebrate its official launch party on July 11.)

And thank you for caring about me, my mission, my writing, your own health and personal growth, and this rockin’ tribe we’ve all created.

There are thousands of new subscribers who have just joined us in the past week, so I want to welcome you too! This is a community filled with empowered patients, conscious health care providers, dreamers, visionaries, life coaches, authors, spiritual leaders, and people committed to healing, connecting, thriving, and making the world a better place. If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place! Join the party, feel the love, speak your truth, and be unapologetically who you really are. (It’s safe to do that here, where you will be loved, not judged, and where the community will embrace you for expressing yourself and letting your freak flag fly.)

The Shift Of Consciousness Read More→

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Was Angelina Jolie “Medically Hexed?”

By Lissa · Comments (145)
Tuesday, May 14th, 2013

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In this New York Times article, A-list actress Angelina Jolie bravely announced that she made the tough decision to undergo elective bilateral mastectomy after her doctors warned her that she has an 87% risk of developing breast cancer and a 50% risk of getting ovarian cancer because her mother died of breast cancer and she carries the BRCA1 gene. While I fully support Angelina’s right to write The Prescription for herself, and while I admire her courage to go public with what some might hide, as an OB/GYN physician with a passion for mind-body medicine, this breaking news concerns me for a variety of reasons.

The Nocebo Effect

In Chapter 2 of Mind Over Medicine, I share the scientific data about “the nocebo effect,” the opposite of the placebo effect, when we think something will harm our health – and it does. In one case study, a man was misdiagnosed with cancer and told he would only live 3 months. He died exactly 3 months later and was found to have no cancer on autopsy.

In another case study that is the stuff of fairy tales, a woman born on Friday the 13th in the Okefenokee Swamp near the Georgia-Florida border was one of three girls delivered that day by a midwife, who proclaimed that all three girls, born on such a fateful day, were hexed. The first, she announced, would die before her 16th birthday.  The second would not survive her 21st. And the patient in question was told she would die before her 23rd birthday.

As it turns out, the first two girls died within one day of their 16th and 21st birthdays. The third woman, terrified that she would die on her 23rd birthday, showed up at the hospital the day before her birthday, hyperventilating.  Soon afterwards, just before she turned 23, she died, proving the midwife’s predictions correct. This is an extreme example of the nocebo effect, when fear-based thoughts about your health can actually kill you.

“Medical Hexing”

In his book Spontaneous Healing, Dr. Andrew Weil argues that physicians may unwittingly engage in what he calls “medical hexing.” When we pronounce patients with “chronic,” “incurable,” or “terminal” illnesses, we may be programming their subconscious minds with negative beliefs and activating stress responses that do more harm than good. What proof do we have that they will not be one of the case studies who winds up in the Spontaneous Remission Project, having been cured of a so-called “incurable” illness?

By labeling a patient with a negative prognosis and robbing a patient of the hope that cure might be possible, we may ultimately prove the poor prognosis we have bestowed upon our patient correct. Wouldn’t we be better off offering hope and triggering the mind to release health-inducing chemicals intended to aid the body’s self-repair mechanisms?

Is it really healthy for any of us to know that we might have an 87% risk of any illness? Do we really want to poison our minds with such fear-based thoughts that then force us to make decisions about whether or not we will electively cut off perfectly healthy body parts?

The Slippery Slope of Elective Surgery Read More→

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The Critical Thing Your Doctor Needs To Know – & Probably Doesn’t

By Lissa · Comments (5)
Monday, May 13th, 2013

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From time to time, pain grips Anna’s belly so severely that she has to excuse herself, hide in the bathroom, double over on the toilet, and dab herself with lavender oil to try to keep from puking. The first time it happened, she called her best friend, who took her to the emergency room, where they poked, prodded, scanned, and examined Anna, only to dose her up with morphine, shrug their shoulders, and send her home with Vicodin and a referral to a gastroenterologist.

But then it happened a few days later. So Anna made an appointment with the gastroenterologist, who sticks a scope up Anna’s butt and slaps her with the label of irritable bowel syndrome. Anna tries a few medications, as well as some dietary changes, but the pain actually gets worse. When she tells this to her gastroenterologist, the doctor refers her to a gynecologist, who performs laparascopic surgery on her and diagnoses her with endometriosis. The gynecologist recommends a drug called Lupron, which puts 32 year old Anna into temporary menopause, but when Anna tries the Lupron, her hot flashes, insomnia, vaginal dryness, and night sweats are so severe, she decides the belly pain is less traumatic than the menopausal symptoms, so she stops the Lupron.

Procedures… And More Procedures

Because the first dose of Lupron hadn’t helped her symptoms, her gynecologist suggests she visit a urologist, so Anna complies. The urologist performs yet another procedure, putting a camera into Anna’s bladder. The urologist detects some worrisome abnormalities and diagnoses her with interstitial cystitis. More drugs are prescribed, as more dietary adjustments are made.

The next week, Anna is doubled over on the toilet, again, soaking herself in lavender oil at least twice a day.

Yet nobody ever talks to her about the fact that her pain only appears when her Devil Wears Prada boss storms down the hall with one of those, “How dare you fail me like this – again?” grimaces on her face.

The Real Diagnosis Read More→

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The Untold Truth About Medicine & The Mind: A Video Conversation With Lissa Rankin & Jonathan Fields

By Lissa · Comments (11)
Thursday, May 9th, 2013

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Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down for a whole hour with my dear friend and fellow author/blogger Jonathan Fields to film an episode for his Good Life Project TV series. You’ll want to watch this video all the way through to make sure you don’t miss:

  • The one thing that will signal when it’s time to take that leap of faith you’ve been considering
  • How to navigate taking risks when other people are counting on you to maintain the status quo
  • The story of how I was called to medicine at the age of 7 – and how you can tell if you’re in touch with your own calling
  • How medicine got so off track so quickly – and what we can do as empowered patients and conscious healers to clean up the mess health care has become
  • The single most important question you’ll want to ask yourself if you’re on a healing journey of your own
  • What you may not understand about the traumas your doctors experience in training – and why they need you to have compassion for them as much as  you need them to have compassion for you
  • Why retreating into yourself to “wait and become” may be the Prescription you need in order to find your calling
  • The one secret I discovered that will help you get your mojo back
  • The mantra that kept me sane when everything was falling apart (you’ll want to make this your mantra too!)
  • The whole skinny behind how I turned my mission and passion into a thriving business
  • And a whole bunch of cool stuff from Mind Over Medicine, including some data not included in the book

Read More→

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An Eggy Book Launch – Happy Birth Day Mind Over Medicine!

By Lissa · Comments (1)
Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

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Today is the birth day of my third book, Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself.  Normally, I’d follow that sentence with a “Cue trumpets, let’s do cartwheels, “can you say PAR-TEE?” sort of comment. But on this very exciting day, I find myself oddly calm, peaceful, and contemplative instead of bouncy cheerleadery.

Launching a book is a funny thing, and I’ve found myself reflecting lately about why we authors do what we do.  Most people dream about one day writing a book. But why is it such a universal desire?

What Drives Us?

Do we desire fame, and if so – why? What do we think fame will bring us? Power? The attention of boatloads of worshipping fans? The love of our parents? The esteem of our colleagues?

Do we desire influence, to be seen and heard and valued and respected, to have the capacity to change public opinion, to be like Oprah, who says “Read this book” or “adopt this new spiritual practice” and everyone listens?

Do we desire wealth, and if so, why? So we can have the freedom to do what we love without worrying about paying the rent or getting food on the table? So we can impress people? So we can be conspicuous consumers of material goods? So we can give money to people in need and good causes?

Do we desire to make the world a better place because of what we write? Do we hope to leave a legacy, to have somehow really mattered as tiny, temporary specks in this giant Universe? Do we write books as an existential exercise, to leave our mark behind in the form of 80,000 printed words that will outlive us?

I am asking myself these very questions and getting clear on my intentions for why I wrote this book and what I hope it helps me achieve. So let me share those with you now.

Why I Wrote Mind Over Medicine

1. I DREAM THAT YOU WILL STOP RELYING SOLELY ON DRUGS, SURGERY, OR EVEN DIET & EXERCISE, AS YOUR STRATEGY FOR OPTIMIZING YOUR HEALTH.
 
Those things are awesome. If doctors didn’t know how to sew fingers back on, my husband would have only 8 fingers. But when it comes to the prevention and treatment of chronic illnesses, drugs and surgery, or even diet and exercise, are only a small piece of the health puzzle. This book will prove to you in no uncertain terms that the health of your mind is even more important than whether you’re eating your veggies or compliant with your medication regimen. And it will leave you with a self-guided treatment plan guaranteed to make your body ripe for miracles. (Buy Mind Over Medicine here to learn how to write The Prescription for yourself). Read More→

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Make Your Body Ripe For Miracles

By Lissa · Comments (6)
Thursday, May 2nd, 2013

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You may know that your body is brilliantly equipped with natural self-repair mechanisms that repair broken proteins, kill cancer cells, fight infections, retard aging, and generally keep your body healthy. But did you know that these self-repair mechanisms can be flipped on – or off – with the power of thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that originate in the mind?

It’s not New Age hocus pocus. It’s simple physiology! Here’s how it happens for the nerds among you who, like me, like to understand how things in the body work.

The Stress Response Vs. Relaxation Response

Your nervous system operates in two different states – the “fight-or-flight” stress response, when the sympathetic nervous system dominates, and the relaxation response, when the parasympathetic nervous system is in charge. But here’s the kicker- your body’s natural self-repair mechanisms only activate when your body is in a relaxation response!

The average person experiences 50 stress responses per day, and every time you have a fearful thought or a pessimistic belief or a resentful feeling, you trigger stress responses that fill the body with poisonous stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine. But when you have an optimistic belief or a loving thought or a feeling of compassion, you activate relaxation responses, and the body can then do what it does best – heal itself.

Balancing The Nervous System

How can you help your body heal itself? It’s all about reducing stress responses and adding in relaxation responses. Reducing your stress requires taking a good look at your life to determine whether there are any areas where you’re living out of alignment with your truth and personal integrity. Maybe you’re in a soul-sucking job or a toxic relationship, or maybe it’s time to finally forgive your father or pursue a dream. While reducing stress responses can require some radical actions, activating relaxation responses can be easy and pleasurable.

Here are a few scientifically-proven relaxation response activators: Read More→

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Have You Sold Out Your Body?

By Lissa · Comments (29)
Thursday, April 25th, 2013

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No… I’m not talking about prostitution here. I’m talking about honoring the temple your spirit inhabits. What I’ll be talking about is how to be in your body and why. But first, a story about what inspired this post.

Last month, Martha Beck, Koelle Simpson, Bridgette Boudreau, Melanie Bates, and I launched the inaugural class of the 9 month Whole Health Medicine Institute Physician Training with a “Heal The Healers” workshop in Pismo Beach, California.  We began the 4 day event by asking the doctors to tell their stories about how they betrayed their bodies in order to become doctors.

How We Traumatized Our Bodies

Picture 16 doctors (17 including me), curled up in our PJ’s, lying on pillows, snuggled under blankets, in my ocean view suite at the Dolphin Bay Resort, where the salty breeze blew in and the sound of ocean waves competed with the sounds of laughter and tears.

We went around the circle, telling our stories and bearing witness to those stories, one by one. I told the story of how I showed up with the flu when I was a second year resident on my oncology rotation, expecting to get sent home because I was throwing up nonstop and had nearly constant diarrhea, as well as a high fever.

But I wasn’t sent home. A nurse put an IV in me, loaded me up with fluids, shot me up with some drugs under the orders from my attending physician, and fitted me with a Depends diaper. I was then ordered to scrub into surgery.

I did as I was told and promptly passed out in the operating room, dropping my surgical instruments into the patient’s belly and falling onto the floor, where I was lifted onto a gurney, taken back to the recovery room, given more intravenous fluids and more drugs, outfitted with a clean diaper, and asked to scrub back into surgery.

How We Dissociate 

It’s no wonder I started numbing out from my body. And I wasn’t alone. Turns out that most of us had dissociated from our bodies as a coping mechanism. After all, who wants to feel your body when you’re holding retractors at odd angles that are ergonomic nightmares in the operating room? During your training – and even in practice once you’re done training – you can’t always eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, or pee when you need to. So you numb out. You stop feeling. And then you betray your body even more because you no longer even feel what you’re doing to it.

My story was the least traumatic of the bunch. The ways in which we doctors sold out our bodies in order to survive our training would shock you. But I suspect it’s not just doctors who have sold out our bodies. 

Have You Betrayed Your Body? Read More→

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Heal Yourself With EFT

By Lissa · Comments (6)
Monday, April 22nd, 2013

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In the foreword to my friend and fellow Hay House author Nick Ortner’s The Tapping Solution, Dr. Mark Hyman relates the story of Paula, a patient of his who was debilitated by migraines that landed her in the ER as often as four times a month. She had tried everything – dietary changes, sleeping more, supplements, drugs – but her migraines persisted. So Dr. Hyman, out of options from the Western medicine or even functional medicine toolbox, referred her to Nick for an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique or “tapping”) session. (Not sure what EFT is? Read my last blog post about EFT here).

A few months later, after going on what Paula called an “emotional journey,” Paula was 100% migraine-free, off all her medications, and once again engaging in a healthy, active, fulfilling lifestyle she had previously lost.

Later in the book, Nick tells the story of Jodi, a woman who was featured in Nick’s documentary about EFT, whose severe fibromyalgia left her dependent on cortisone injections that still failed to relieve her debilitating pain.  During a tapping session, Nick asked her if anything significant had happened in her life prior to the onset of her fibromyalgia. She confessed that her daughter, who had been battling addiction, was HIV+ and pregnant. (This is the type of event I describe in Mind Over Medicine as a “root cause” of illness.)

After just one day of EFT, Jodi was able to climb a flight of stairs without pain and sleep through the night for the first time in years. By the end of her fourth day of treatment, Jodi was once again able to return to the nature walks she had given up because of the severity of her illness. Now, years later, she is symptom-free, having released the guilt and sadness she had felt over her inability to “save” her daughter. By releasing the emotions stored in her body, her body was free to heal itself.

Do Negative Emotions Cause Disease?

I love what Dr. Christiane Northrup has to say about this. “We are responsible to our illness, not for our illness.

Kris Carr suggests that, rather than saying our mind creates disease, it’s more accurate to say it participates in disease. On the flip side, we can also participate in our healing.

Can EFT Cure Cancer? Read More→

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Receive A FREE 2 Hour Event With Lissa & Martha Beck!

By Lissa · Comments (1)
Monday, April 8th, 2013

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May 7th ends more than three years of gestating my next book, Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself. Like any pregnant mama, I’m jonesing to bring this baby into the world, not because my back hurts or my ankles are swollen, but because everyone on this planet needs to learn the shocking data I uncovered proving unequivocally how the mind can heal – or harm – the body.

I promise that once you read this book, your mind will be as blown open as mine, and you’ll want to send this book to every sick person you know, every health care provider who cares for you, and every loved one you hope thrives until they’re 100. (Really, I’m not kidding. When you find out the one surprising thing that benefits your health more than exercise, a healthy diet, or quitting your bad habits, you’re gonna want to shout it from the rooftops.)

Is There Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself?

You betcha. There’s proof that you can radically alter your body’s physiology just by changing your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. There’s also proof that you can make yourself sick when your mind thinks unhealthy thoughts. And it’s not just mental. It’s physiologic. How does a thought, feeling, or belief translate into real physiological changes in your cells and organs? Don’t worry, I explain exactly how unhealthy thoughts and feelings translate into disease and how healthy thoughts and feelings prevent disease, increase longevity, prevent aging, and help the body repair itself when it breaks down.

The Media Loves It

This book has been blessed with great national media attention (an O Magazine feature, a special that will be featured on PBS, Health magazine, Shape magazine, Women’s Health magazine, interest from the Dr. Oz Show, and more trickling in every day.)  This kind of attention affirms what we already knew – that learning how to activate your body’s natural self-repair mechanisms for both prevention and cure is something many people are ready to learn, and that healing our broken health care system from the inside out is high on everyone’s priority lists.

Soon, I’ll be debuting a video trailer – and hitting the road to meet many of you in person, beginning with Hay House’s I Can Do It! 2013 in Atlanta on May 3. But first – A SALE!

The Mind Over Medicine Preorder Sale!

Because I’m so committed to helping this book reach as many people as possible in the first week of its birth, I’m offering a special sale for those who’d like to pre-order the book – just for yourself or to share with friends, family members, or even clients who you think might benefit from the self-healing message of Mind Over Medicine.

In exchange for your book purchases, I’m throwing in some extra special goodies meant to help you apply the gems in this book to your life and the lives of your loved ones.

How The Preorder Sale Works Read More→

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Be The First To Win An Advance Copy Of Mind Over Medicine!

By Lissa · Comments (90)
Monday, March 25th, 2013

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I know many of you are really interested in learning more about what I’ve spent the past three years researching – how we can activate the body’s natural self-repair mechanisms with the power of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that originate in the mind. Whether you’re an empowered patient or a conscious health care provider who is interested in the scientific proof that the mind can heal the body, I have great news!

Hay House believes in my book so much that they have been generous with providing me with advance copies of the book so we can get the buzz going before the actual publication date of May 7, 2013. So I have in my hot little hands a stack of galley copies of Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself, but I need your help spreading the word!

How To Win A Free Galley Copy Of Mind Over Medicine

To be among the first to read Mind Over Medicine, please follow these steps:

Step 1: Post a comment in the comments section of this blog.

Tell us your genius plan for how you’ll further the mission to empower patients, enlighten health care providers, and heal health care.  We know many of you will have personal requests for why you need this book now – because you or someone you love are in the midst of a health crisis – and you need this book urgently.

Trust me, I’m so passionate about the message in this book – and I know it will help sick or injured people so much – that I’d do anything to get this book to every single one of you right now. But unfortunately, Hay House has paid a lot of money for these galleys, so we have to reserve them for people with great ideas about how to spread the message. The rest of you can preorder the book now and read my blog and my Facebook page for previews of some of the life-changing content that will be included in Mind Over Medicine.

Not sure what we mean? Some ideas we’ve heard so far from people who have received galleys include: Read More→

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