Louise Hay was born to a poor mother who married Hay's violent stepfather. When she was about five, she was raped by a neighbor. At fifteen she dropped out of high school without a diploma, became pregnant, and on her sixteenth birthday gave up her newborn baby girl for adoption.
She moved to Chicago, where she worked in menial jobs, before moving in 1950 to New York. At this point she changed her name and began a career as a fashion model. She was successful at this, working for Bill Blass, Oleg Cassini, and Pauline Trigere.
In 1954, she married Andrew Hay, but after fourteen years of marriage Louise was devastated when Andrew left her for another woman.
Hay said that she found the First Church of Religious Science on 48th Street, which taught the transformative power of thought. Hay revealed that here she studied the metaphysical works of authors like Florence Scovel Shinn and the Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes.
In the early 1970's Hay became a Religious Science practitioner. In this role she led people in spoken affirmations meant to cure their illnesses. She also became popular as a workshop leader.
She studied transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his university in Fairfield, Iowa.
In 1977 or 1978 she found she had cervical cancer, and she concluded that its cause was her unwillingness to let go of resentment over her childhood abuse and rape. She refused medical treatment, and began a regimen of forgiveness, therapy, reflexology, nutrition, and occasional enemas, and claims she rid herself of the cancer. She declared that there is no doctor left who can confirm this story, but swore that it is true.
In 1976 Hay wrote a small pamphlet, which came to be called "Heal Your Body." This pamphlet was enlarged and extended into her book You Can Heal Your Life, which was published in 1984. As of February 2008, it is still on the New York Times best sellers list.
Around the same time she began leading support groups for people living with H.I.V. or AIDS that she called Hay Rides. These grew from a few people in her living room to hundreds in a large hall in West Hollywood. Her work with AIDS patients drew fame and she was invited to appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Donahue" in the same week in March, 1988.
You Can Heal Your Life immediately landed on the New York Times Best Sellers List. More than 35 million copies are now in print around the world in more than 30 languages and has been made into a movie.
Louise Hay established Hay House Publishing. It is the primary publisher of books and audio books by Deepak Chopra and Doreen Virtue, as well as many books by Wayne Dyer.
In addition to running her publishing company, Hay runs a charitable organization called Hay Foundation that was established in 1985.
This companion book is basically a visually more appealing version of the workbook. The exercises are nearly identical. This companion contains very worthwhile exercises, some that can be very difficult for those of us who suffer from low self esteem at one time or another. You will certainly learn more about yourself.
I always give the negative first but I would like to say as a preamble, I liked the book. I think there is a lot of practical wisdom included. ok lets get on with the review
the bad: There is something dangerous about saying all illness (dis-ease as hay calls it) comes from an emotional wound. It's dangerous to say a child's physical abuse is the fault of their own mental processes. There may be some truth to it, but over all I would not recommend taking her advice literally. If you do, you may still get sick some day with no fault of your own.
The Good: She has a alphabetized list of ailments. They're interesting to read about what she thinks they're related to. It's novel to me.
If you do happen to find yourself with illness, it doesn't hurt to think positively. It doesn't hurt to say these affirmations, and they may actually help the other aspects of your life while you suffer with an illness. she has a lot of exercises to help you change your thought patterns, which are closely correlated with exercises I have seen in DBT and CBT western behavioral science. These have been researched methods which work for coping with variety of problems.
Her first half of the book is a bunch of exercises which, if practiced regularly, will help you to get out of emotional ruts (which can be associated with illnesses. Consider the idea that you think you're going to die. if you sorrow in it, you'll die miserably as opposed to dying happy but unexpectedly. It's grim but it does make a difference in end of life process).
Depression does have physical psychosomatic conditions associated. Psychosomatic does NOT mean they are fake. They are absolutely true, and if you start saying something like, 'i love my body,' you'll be more likely to do those self care things depression makes more difficult.
The best: Her story and background are amazingly tragic and beautiful. She came from an incredibly difficult background. Terrible abuse and poverty. The fact that she was able to pull herself out with these practices is inspiring to me as a person who has also had a rough childhood. These are methods she used herself, and they worked for her. It may not be a great plan for everyone, since we are all different, but its worth a shot in conjunction with your regular behavioral or medical treatment.
Ugly: It was written before the aids epidemic and there is a foreward where she addresses it. I wasn't impressed. It was something we knew nothing about at the time and to say that it came from a emotional wound is homophobic at best.
My latest read...I love self help books and mind/body/health books. This book keys on the little things that we tell our brains create our reality. By planting little seeds and positive affirmations we can receive, become, love, and have all that we want in this world. Great read!
This book gives you ideas for positive thinking in your life and how to heal your body. There are exercises you can do out of order depending on your interest. It has an easy to flip to list in the back of the book of problems your body may be experiencing with positive messages to say for healing.
I love Louise L May. I read a review on this book and decided go give it a shot when I felt at my lowest about myself and was dealing with a lot . Very pleased. Definitely recommend to anyone going through life changes, doubts, etc. I am not a big fan of self help but this one really spoke to me.
I keep coming back to this book. Hay provided some great feedback, support and summary re: struggles in life. I liked her discussions about "dis-ease", symptoms that link our bodies to our problems and her positive affirmations.
This book helped me through my depression as a teenager many years ago. My Mother gave it to me at the time. What a wonderful book. Highly recomend it!
"You Can Heal Your Life Companion Book" is an interactive workbook that accompanies Louise L. Hay's best-selling book, "You Can Heal Your Life." This companion book offers exercises, affirmations, and journaling prompts to help readers dig deeper into the concepts of self-love, healing, and personal growth.
The book emphasizes the power of thoughts and beliefs in shaping our lives. It encourages readers to identify and release negative thoughts, forgive themselves and others, and adopt positive affirmations to create a healthier and happier life.
Through guided exercises, readers learn to understand the connection between their thoughts, emotions, and physical health. The workbook is designed to help readers practice self-care, build self-esteem, and develop a more loving and compassionate relationship with themselves.
Quote from the book: "Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens."
Useful as -- just as the title states -- a companion to Hay's classic "You Can Heal Your Life". The exercises and explorations read best as additional chapters for that book.
Louise Hay is a bonafide rock star...happy BIRTHDAY Louise. 89 and on fire. THIS book I just keep reading over and over in bits. So profound and ahead of its, time...All is well in my world.
Some of is cheesy, yes, but some of it really helped me out... a lot. I also like how it's broken into chapters so I was able to completely skip over "aging" as it's not something I am dealing with quite yet.