I read this booklet right after the popular science book “Microbe Hunters” (Paul de Kruif), in which I found this statement, as true now as it was when the book was written in 1926: "Murderous germs are everywhere, sneaking into all of us, yet they are able to assassinate only some of us, and that question of the strange resistance of the rest of us is still just as much an unsolved puzzle as it was in those days of the roaring eighteen-eighties when men were ready to risk dying to prove that they were right." That “strange resistance” (or an increased susceptibility, which would be the other end of the spectrum) is what I hope alternative medicine can help explaining. Despite my scientific background and profession (both in medical research), I believe that the only way to get a full picture is to listen to both sides, i.e. study the traditional scientific explanations of disease as well as the alternative spiritual ones. I’m hoping that the addition of alternative medicine literature such as this booklet (and of course, personal experience and observation) to the scientific study reports, patient records and medical textbooks I read will give me this full picture.
Hay is often criticized for arguing that all disease is caused solely by unhealthy mental attitudes. Personally, I don’t think there is any reason why this booklet should have to be interpreted in that way. In the preface of this 67th (!) edition of “Heal Your Body”, Lousie L. Hay writes: "[f]or us to become whole and healthy, we must balance the body, mind, and spirit". Later on in the text, she states that “[t]he mental thought patterns that cause the most dis-ease in the body are criticism, anger, resentment, and guilt". My interpretation of that hyphen is that it’s there to differentiate “dis-ease” from “disease”, which usually refers to the end result of increased susceptibility (“dis-ease”) coupled with physical causes. It’s hard to disagree with such a holistic view!
After the short introductory chapters, the booklet is a kind of encyclopaedia where the reader can look up a specific health problem to find its probable mental cause and a suggested “healing affirmation” to use as a remedy. I found some of it almost comical (“Problem: Bug bites, Probable cause: Guilt over small things., New thought pattern: I am free of all irritations. All is well.”), but surprisingly much of it made sense to me when I “tested it” on myself and others I felt I knew well enough. I’m sceptical to whether the affirmations can make much of a difference, but I can obviously not refute it without having tried them. To someone stuck in a negative thought pattern due to depression (i.e. low serotonin levels), this booklet certainly doesn’t give much hope for the future! I’m still hoping that it can be a useful complement to scientific explanations and, who knows, maybe I’ll find that it does this job well enough for me to give it another star.