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The Power of Belief

This is not so much of an alternative cure as a cold hard fact. The power of belief is incredibly strong when it comes to matters of health.

When you believe that something will cure an illness, then most often that will be the case. When you believe that a particular diet or special program will help you to lose weight, then most often you will lose weight.

When the mind believes, you will achieve...

The Placebo Effect

As a once alternative cure for many illnesses, the placebo eventually found its way into mainstream medicine when scientifically carried out studies were done on a huge variety of scenarios and in each one, the placebo was either as effective or even more effective than the propriety medicine prescribed to treat the illness.

This shows the true power of belief. The people in these exhaustive trials that took the placebo believing they were taking a medicine that would cure their illness most often recovered from that illness as quickly or even faster than the people who took the medicine.

Weight Loss by Hypnotic Suggestion

When I was practicing hypnotherapy in England several years ago, there was no more convincing phenomenon than women who would come to see me in order to lose weight and withing a few weeks would have lost a considerable amount of weight without any form of special diet or exercise routine whatsoever.

It was built purely down to the power of belief.

They believed that my hypnosis sessions would make them lose weight without them having to do anything themselves. And because they believed that as fact, then the weight came off as if by magic.

I don't have to prove anything to myself, because I saw it with my own two eyes. I know beyond any shadow of doubt that when a person truly believes something, then that something is as real as a solid object, such as a chair or a table.

Conversely, when you believe you have a terminal illness, well what do you think will happen?

I don't think I even have to go there...

Healing by Belief

Now to expand on that power when used in natural healing, with some more powerful proof about the mind's ability to create health or illness depending on what it is led to believe.

It is a fairly well known fact that surgeons and staff around the operating table are told not to talk about the patient's state of health unless is it positive.

The old days of surgeons joking to each other that "This one won't live through the night" or joking quips of similar sentiment are long gone now. This is thanks to evidence that proved that a patient under anesthetic can hear and remember conversations between the people surrounding the operating table upon waking up.

Imagine going to your doctor with chest pains and him saying to you, "Just go home and give up, because you'll be dead in the morning."

What do you think your chances of making it through the night would be after hearing that?

Positive or Negative Prognosis

Much better to hear, "Take these pills and you'll be fine in a few days," even if the pills won't do much by themselves.

Or going to an alternative cures specialist and being given certain herbs to take that will heal the illness. Just hearing words of positive reassurance convinces the mind that that by taking them you'll recover from whatever it is you are suffering from, so that's what is most likely will happen.

Unfortunately it doesn't always work like a textbook case. Life isn't like that.

No two people are the same and what will work for one person may not for another. Alternative cures are no different in that they may work for one person and not another.

Quitting Smoking

In the past in my alternative cures profession as a hypnotherapist, I've had people come to see me wanting to quit smoking and would have put money on them stopping and staying stopped.

However, it sometimes happened that I would be surprised when they book a second session a week later because they thought they were going to waver and return to the evil weed.

On the other hand I once saw this guy who was in his 60s and had smoked 80 to 100 a day all his life and only decided to quit because his granddaughter had pleaded with him. Well, I normally expect someone who truly wants to quit to quit, but if they don't want it in themselves but are forced into it by others, they rarely stay quit.

Well, that old guy walked out of my consulting rooms a non-smoker and his daughter actually telephoned my two years later to thank me (on behalf of her own daughter) as her little girl's grandfather hadn't even the slightest inclination to smoke in all that time.

The power of belief is incredible as it is devastating.

Is the End Really Nigh?

I watched my own father dying of stomach cancer 4 years ago and, despite working on much positive suggestion sessions, it seemed there was nothing I could do to stop it. I think he had simply given up and accepted he would die.

That's part of the problem and why you hear of seeming miracles when people go into full remission from what doctors believed were terminal illnesses and others don't. The cure in the miracle cases could only have come from within, where the person was so strong or believed so completely that they would be cured that they recovered.

Yet in other cases the belief surely is not there, or worse the belief inside is that they will not survive the illness, lending strength to the illness and not to the cure.

A Tough and Stubborn Mind

My grandmother is one of those people who simply will not believe she will be ill. At the age of 93 she had part of her bowel removed in what for most people half her age would be considered a life-threatening operation.

Yet she recovered from it with a few weeks totally amazing her doctor and set about returning to her usual daily routine which included running for the bus to go to her beloved bingo session three times a week.

She's 96 now and doesn't look like hanging her hat up anytime soon!

That's the power of will and of belief for you. She doesn't need any alternative cures because her remedies all come from inside her head. I just hope I've inherited her genes and not my father's!

Update 2020: Time has moved on since this original post. My grandmother finally gave up her iron grip on life at the age of 105.

I also know now much more about the way the body works and what causes all manner of illnesses and how to remedy them than I did when I first wrote this piece.

I can shed more light on my father's cancer and my not knowing (at the time) what to do to to help him. More than belief could have been at work back then and it is quite possible he could still be alive today if I'd known more about what cancer really is. Also, why it is still, to this day, so difficult to cure by modern medicine and why the many years and countless billions of dollars supposedly spent on cancer research has still come up with a blank.

I will reveal my new-found knowledge and understanding in a new post on the subject.



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Posted on Fri, 11 Jan 2008 in Positive Thinking | 8 Comments