What is Healing?

by Emmett Miller | Aug 20, 2011

What is Healing? To heal is to become whole.

The word healing comes from an old English word that is also the root of whole, hale, hearty, and holy. A person who is profusely bleeding has a hole from which the life-giving blood is being lost. A person whose beloved pet dog is lost in the city does not feel
whole. And a family with several important members missing on the holidays is not whole.
Whether the wound is physical, emotional, or mental, the 

idea is to restore wholeness as soon as possible. Stopping the bleeding with pressure is moving in a healing direction. Suturing the wound and closing it is another step in the process. The final step is the wholeness that takes place when the body knits the wound closed with strong scar tissue. Finding the dog brings emotional healing to the master. When the missing relative arrives, the family feels healed and complete.
Generally speaking, the healing process is aided by such things as good food, a temperature that is neither sweltering or bone-chilling, exercise, relaxation and rest – this most of us are aware of. What many of us may not realize is that our thoughts, attitudes, and feelings have an enormous impact on whether we get sick and how fast we recover from our healing journey. Current research has demonstrated this time after time.
So, to speed up the healing process, we can provide a healthy environment with healthy food, proper exercise, and sufficient rest – but the most effective single thing we can do across the board is to reduce stress, create relaxation, and create the proper thoughts, mental images, and attitudes. This is why so many physicians and other health care workers recommend that patients learn Mind Tools so that the body can tap into the healing source more efficiently.
These mind tools generally consist of two parts.

1. The first is a calming and centering component such as meditation, prayer, or some other form of deep relaxation such as self-hypnosis.
2. The second part involves focusing the mind in a way that one experiences a sense of balance by moving from black/white, good/bad, polarized ways of evaluating the world to a way that sees the wholeness underlying all the delusion.

One of the most effective, efficient, and inexpensive ways to help a patient or client is with the mind tool Dr. Miller invented back in 1972. He realized that audio cassette tape recordings of the hypnotic inductions, guided imagery, and meditations created during a patient’s sessions could be used to re-induce the same deep healing states every day, thereby speeding up the healing journey, while empowering his patients by giving them a very important role to play in the process.
Ultimately, of course, regardless of what the illness, disorder, or dysfunction is being treated, it is the patient/client who is ultimately responsible for the needed healing. If you have aspects of your life that need healing, whether this involves physical issues, mental/psychological problems, emotional imbalances, or maladaptive/compulsive behaviors, one of the most effective things you can do, is support your healing and growth in all of these areas. A very simple way to do that is to learn to use the Mind Tools Dr. Miller has created.

Suggested Self Healing Programs

You will learn deep relaxation skills, and how to use guided imagery audio to create an inner state that is most supportive of the self-healing process.
Visit our online store, or follow some of the links below to learn more about your own potential for self-healing.

• • • • Deep Healing: Your Personal Wellness Suite
      • Deep Healing Book
      • Healing Journey
      • Awakening the Healer Within

How to Heal Yourself

by Emmett Miller | Sep 15, 2010

You can learn how to heal yourself!  In fact, you are the only one who can.

The right food, the right exercise, the right medications, the right relationships -all these can help support your healing process, but not unless you intentionally cause them to. Your conscious, intentional mind (which is separate from, though connected to, your subconscious mind and nervous system) is the key to your self-healing.
The process is simple, actually.

1. First, you need to understand the process with your intellect, the part capable of critical thinking that realizes the value of evidence-based reasoning.
2. The next step in healing any system is that the system becomes aware of its identity as a system. For you, this means freeing yourself from distraction and focusing on who you are, your true values, purpose, goals, and vision.
3. Third, you learn how to read the signals and messages that come from within and how to balance your system — physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Fortunately, you can learn to do this in a remarkably short period of time using the powerful Mind Tools Dr. Miller has developed. These tools can help you to reach a very pleasant state of deep relaxation and meditation, bringing you into the present, emptying your mind of distractions and your body of toxins, and preparing the cells of your body to receive your self-healing instructions.
Another very valuable tool for self-healing is guided imagery. This process involves holding specific healing imagery in the mind while in the receptive “Healing State.” This results in relief of stress, and the activation of your unconscious healing and corrective processes are mobilized.  In a very real sense, you are “reprogramming” your mind and rewiring your brain. Your goal is to restore internal coherence and balance, and thus to help heal your body, emotions, mind, and behavior.
Each time you repeat these experiences, you are re-scripting your body, your emotional state, and how you will respond in future situations. You will discover this is a powerful way to mentally rehearse, through guided imagery, your desired behaviors of mind and body, much as athletes or actors mentally rehearse their performances.
These new behaviors may have to do with modifying how the internal organs of your body operate, how you talk to yourself, your personal habits, how you interact with others, etc.  Diet, exercise, rest, prayer, meditation, and other modalities of re-balancing the system may be needed, but all these require us to change our mental behavior in order to apply them. Thus, the mind-body axis is always primary in healing yourself. Change Your Mind – Change Your Life.

The Six Steps of Self Healing with Guided Imagery Audio

1. 1. Education — Obtain as much accurate information as possible about health and healing. Learn as much about your constitution and about your condition, the symptoms, etiology, and therapy, including the role of stress, diet, emotions, and exercise. Learn about the different options for treating your condition. To begin your education consider reading about Mind-Body Medicine.
   2. Relaxation — Deep Relaxation is essential for rapid healing because it is the direct antidote to stress. In addition, relaxation empties your mind of distractions, and thus allows you to self-program new, more desirable self-healing behaviors — both at the visible (macroscopic) level and in the microscopic behavior of the cells of your body. Deep relaxation is also the key to programming mind and body for peak performance in any endeavor — sports, profession, or personal life (yes, even sexual).
   3. Entering “The Healing State” — Here the mind is open to re-scripting and the body accepts new healthy images and emotions. Re-scripting is a powerful way to mentally rehearse desired behaviors of the mind and body, much as athletes or actors mentally rehearse their performances. These guided imagery & meditation CDs and MP3 downloads will teach you to do this through simple, logical, straightforward, and highly enjoyable guided imagery experiences. The experience and your ability to use the Healing State becomes progressively more powerful with a few minutes a day of pleasurable practice.
   4. Forming Powerful, Transformative, Healing Images—Intentional mental imagery through Selective Awareness — Software For The Mind — allows you to make a commitment to healing yourself by directly influencing the behavior of the cells of your body (e.g., the immune system), initiating and sustaining health-producing behaviors, (exercise, diet, non-abuse of alcohol or drugs, quit smoking), and produce a health-sustaining self-image. This inner image serves to change the behavior at every level of the mind-body system.
   5. Rehearsing These Images Daily — Reprogramming your mind is actually retraining the mind. Just as you might practice musical scales or typing in order to improve, the regular practice of the appropriate imagery trains the brain, the nervous system, and the immune system to easily carry out the desired changes. Your goal is to restore internal coherence and balance and thus to help heal the body, emotions, mind, and behavior.
   6. Reinforcing Positive Changes — Reward your mind for responding to your entreaties so that the new behaviors prevail. Take yourself out for dinner, to a ball game, or a movie, for instance. Or take time off to be with loved ones.

Dr. Miller’s Guided Imagery Meditation CDs, MP3, Books, & DVDs for Learning How to Heal Yourself

Visit Our Online Store and find the guidance you need to speed up your self-healing process. You can search for Dr. Miller’s recommendation by finding your symptom(s) on the Symptom Search page, browse the categories of self-healing, or just browse the many healing tools offered at DrMiller.com — then enjoy exploring the rest of our website. If you are new to our site try reading the How To Use DrMiller.com page.  There’s a lifetime of high-quality information here about healing, wellness, meditation, Software for the Mind, Stress Management, and more, enjoy!

 
 

What is Deep Healing?

by Emmett Miller | Apr 29, 2010

Healing, as we have discussed is the process of moving mind, body, emotion, and behavior in the direction of becoming more whole and finding a healthy balance (homeostasis). As a system becomes more whole, its component parts function better, and they function in a more coordinated, effective way in relationship to each other. Deep Healing refers to the process of creating this balance on all levels of the internal system and, in addition, finding balance in relationship to the outside world (mate, family, community, planet).

Superficial Healing

Dr. Miller presents amazing new skills in mental imagery, the transformation of disease-oriented perceptions, and the writing of positive life scripts.

Healing is easy to see when a cut on a finger mends. In this case, healing addresses the unbalanced state in the body, in which energy (blood) was being lost and the interior of the body was excessively exposed to potential damage (infection). A few sutures and a bandage, and the healing process proceeds on its own.
But what if the bleeding is from an ulcer in the stomach? Sure, a surgeon may operate and suture it closed and the body will repair the wound as it did the finger – but that may not be enough. Often, a further form, like deep healing is needed. This is because a stomach ulcer may actually be the end result of a series of changes beginning with the person living a life of too much stress. Or it could be that the person has been using alcohol to excess, or living a life that is unhealthy in other ways.
In such cases, local treatment by surgically repairing the ulcer treats the symptom but does not treat the deeper cause. This leads to a state of incomplete healing, and because the true source of the symptoms is not being adequately dealt with, they are likely to recur. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of all our illnesses are of this type – and to make a complete return to health and wellness we need deep healing.
To continue with the example of the ulcer: to heal more deeply we must ask questions of the person with the ulcer, and help her/him discover a more effective way of relating with her/his body and the world. The best way to achieve this is through the use of Mind Tools such as cognitive behavior change strategies, guided imagery, deep relaxation, and self-hypnosis to create changes in attitudes, habits, and beliefs.

Deep Healing Source

So, whether we are dealing with, for example, high blood pressure, headaches, spastic bowel, diabetes, obesity, back pain, or stress management problems, etc., the most effective and most rapid way to complete healing is through looking at the system as a whole. We must address the relationship between mind, body, emotion, spirit, and environment.
We must pay attention to the fact that our thoughts and images control our nervous system, the factory that produces the chemicals that control our perceptions, feelings, and behaviors. Our thoughts and images thus determine whether we are healthy or not. This deep healing process involves accessing the wisdom of the conscious mind — the highest level of our physical and spiritual system and the only level that is able to balance and organize all the other levels when it is in harmony.
Now we are free to go on to high-level wellness and peak performance. Because the process of deep healing has opened the inner doors to our vast inner reservoir of wisdom, we can now understand at a deeper level the importance of paying attention to the functioning of the system long before we develop symptoms. How foolish it would be to not check the oil in the car until our engine seized up in the middle of the freeway.

“The poor physician treats the symptoms.
The good physician treats the disease.
The excellent physician treats the patient.”

Examples of Deep Healing

So, what is Deep Healing?  For an individual, healing means developing higher levels of health, wellness, and performance of mind, body, emotions, and behaviors, as well as developing balance and happiness spiritually and in relationships. Here are some examples of healing at each of the levels:

• • • Physical: Healing at the physical level is exemplified by the wound that stops bleeding and closes over or the infection that goes away through the action of the immune system.
    • Emotional: At the emotional healing level; healing and wholeness can mean overcoming a tragic loss and finding hope and courage again – or it might mean learning to relax through anxiety or anger.
    • Mental: At the mental healing level, it could be choosing to avoid distraction and to focus clearly on that which is most important – or to think more creatively and logically and make better choices.
    • Relationship: At the relationship level, it could be going beyond conflict, communicating honestly and treating others with respect, unconditional positive regard, and love.
    • Spirit: At the spiritual healing level; healing might mean realizing that we have not been living up to our own ideals, awakening to our true values and purpose, and reorganizing our lives to better reflect them.

 

Deep Healing Our Planet

Just as we can be out of balance at the individual level, our families, communities, nation, and world can be out of balance and in need of deep healing. To be truly deep, healing must also examine and balance the environment – the people, the natural world, and the man-made structures – and how we are relating to it. Our Culture On The Couch, Dr. Miller’s most recent book, explores healing at a global as well as at an individual and family/community level, and Healing Our Planet provides a set of experiences to help you participate in the healing process.
 

---

 

Suggested Deep Healing (CD & MP3) Programs

Deep Healing: Your Personal Wellness Suite

Deep Healing means addressing all these levels and bringing all of them into balance (homeostasis). Dr. Miller’s classic text, Deep Healing – The Essence of Mind-Body Medicine, explores this topic in detail.
You can learn more by reading about self-healing, checking out our free resources, visiting our Online Store or exploring some of these deep healing programs:

• • • Deep Healing: Your Personal Wellness Suite
    • Healing Our Planet
    • Deep Healing Book
    • Healing Journey
    • Awakening the Healer Within