Emotional Healing

P.S.H (Private Subconcious- Mind Healing)a new therapyfor the new millennium.

Emotions such as stress, anxiety, fear and constant worry create tension and can cause an imbalance in the chemistry of our nervous system. Our thoughts and emotions can impact on our physiology, thereby compromising our health and wellbeing.

We may not even be aware that some outdated emotions stemming from our childhood are behind a lot of our negative emotional behaviour such as; self-doubt, low self-esteem, self-consciousness, etc. Research confirms that a deeper part of us stores all our memory and experiences. PSH therapy (Private Subconscious-mind Healing) is unique in recognising that it is not necessary to analyse and probe what is often sensitive personal information, in order for inner change to occur.

Given the opportunity to review old fears, sensitivities or bad habits, within the privacy of our inner mind, we would gladly let go of a lot of emotions, which are outdated or inappropriate. Since a part of us already knows everything we have lived through, we do not have to relive the old stories or experiences. What we can do is, give ourselves the opportunity to understand those emotions differently to how we originally perceived them. It is time that we all realised that there should no longer be a stigma attached to health problems that are initiated in our mind.

P.S.H. provides us the opportunity to initiate a communication process, 'within the inner mind', to permanently resolve problems we may have been struggling with for many years, thereby restoring our emotional health and wellbeing.

When is PSH Therapy appropriate?

Negative or painful feelings, such as rejection, guilt, shame or fear, may have been pushed down and repressed at some earlier time. While they remain there, they have the power to negatively influence present feelings and behaviours. As Frank Wright quotes in his 'Emotional Healing' book: "a wise sage once said: If you plant rice, rice will grow. If you plant fear, fear will grow". From the day we are born, we are bombarded with negative suggestions. Not knowing how to deal with them, we may have unconsciously accepted or repressed them. Perhaps the reason 'positive affirmations' come unstuck is because negativity, rising from within, slowly undermines the conscious effort. Frank Wright asks us to consider this affirmation: 'I will be confident and succeed as a public speaker', however, if a negative suggestion was planted long ago 'I am not as good as other people'; then the positive affirmation will be rejected.

When a person suffers from persistent feelings of anxiety, stress, depression, or negative behaviours and responses that cannot be changed through conscious effort and willpower, this often indicates underlying emotional conflict. This conflict is usually part of a subconscious process that can be changed with the help of PSH because, just as the inner-mind has the ability to create a conflict, it also has the ability to change it.

Your Subconscious abilities and PSH Therapy

We have only one mind - the left and right brain hemispheres, with functions of conscious, subconscious and body/unconscious resources and abilities. These parts of our mind are quite different and unique in the way they process information, beliefs and life experiences.
The conscious part of our mind deals with logic, intellect, verbal language, thinking and planning. This part of the brain is well developed only in the human species.
The subconscious to a large extent is in control of our healing, automatic physical functions, our emotions, feelings, beliefs and long term memory. It processes thousands of bits of information at a time and is connected and communicates, via the brain stem, with our central nervous system and the entire body. Research suggests that the integration of our brain hemispheres, the left and right brain, enables us to effectively reduce resistance to changing outdated subconscious patterns and helps us to change long held self sabotaging beliefs in a matter of minutes, not months or years.
Some people fear their subconscious-mind and have no idea what a useful part of their mind the subconscious really is. Given the opportunity to learn more about it, they begin to truly understand and appreciate that the potential for permanent change has always been right at their fingertips. At times, it is easy to think of the subconscious as your enemy when it seems to be sabotaging your efforts. In reality, it is more like a misguided friend, attempting to do what it thinks is in your best interest. It is not trying to keep you from achieving what is best for you, as an enemy might do. It is simply responding to old impressions or patterns and its ultimate goal is to protect you in some way.
The subconscious-mind is our personal interpreter or retriever of information, much like a computer. It brings forth in an instant, the stored impressions, feelings or experiences, for our conscious logical mind to use. It also communicates with the unconscious mind to activate resources within, to help us change or even understand outdated feelings and impressions differently.
Information or memory is stored within our unconscious, or as recent research indicates, we store memory throughout our body. The unconscious-body/mind is non-judgemental, it does not care about good, bad or indifferent, it simply stores our experiences. Everything we have lived through, experienced or learned is registered within us. Just as well, otherwise we would wake up every morning having to re-learn how to brush our teeth.
PSH therapy enables us to use this information and intelligence our mind possesses, to restore health and balance to our emotional life.

What symptoms can be helped with PSH Therapy?
· STRESS
· DEPRESSION
· ANXIETY
· ANGER
· PANIC ATTACKS
· INSOMNIA
· ADDICTIONS
· LOW SELF ESTEEM
· POOR CONCENTRATION
· PHOBIAS
· STOP SMOKING
· WEIGHT ISSUES
· SEXUAL ABUSE
· DRUG ABUSE
· ADD/ADHD( Attention Deficiency Disorder)
· GAMBLING
· CHRONIC FATIGUE
· POSTNATAL DEPRESSION

The Art of Healing - The Buddhist Way

Introduction

Tibetans use an ancient form of medicine known as Gso-wa Rig-pa or "The Knowledge of Healing" whose origins are believed to be based on the teachings of the historical Buddha. Tibetan medicine is held in high esteem in Tibet and central Asia.

In the Tibetan medical tradition, the concept of well-being takes into account the full dynamics of mind, body and spirit to achieve an effective and comprehensive healing strategy. It is immersed in Buddhist tradition, which differs from non-Buddhist medicine in that it utilizes three types of therapeutic intervention: medicinal entities, the power of mantra (a creative, repetitive sound) and the power of meditative stabilization (Donden, p. 215). In doing so, the Tibetan healing traditions transport us into a strange world of interconnectedness between macrocosmic principles and their microcosmic manifestations; harmony and balance between the cosmic macrocosm and the human microcosm is believed to be essential for health and well-being. This is true not only in the sense that balance is required for health, but also in the somewhat deeper sense that such balance is the essence of health; balance among the physical, psychological and spiritual elements of human existence is health.

In addition to being a relatively secular approach to health and well-being, involving medicines and dietary and practical suggestions, the Tibetan healing tradition is rich in tantric Buddhist ritual and symbolism. Furthermore, ritual and symbol contain multiple levels of meaning which all exist collaterally in a spiritual approach to healing. Iconography, music, chants, mantra, symbolic objects such as prayer wheels and prayer flags, mandalas (geometric paintings or drawings) and visualizations are utilized in modest to elaborate rituals to focus and objectify the source of healing power. Tibetan symbols and rituals, whose ultimate purpose is to mobilize the bodhicitta (aspiration to attain enlightenment in order to free all sentient beings from suffering) in the individual, generate not only cognitive considerations but also encompass subjective meaning for the spiritual, emotional and sensual spheres.

Clearly, a comprehensive discussion of Tibetan healing traditions is beyond the scope of this paper. However, I will consider several aspects of the tradition which are integral for any basic understanding of the subject. First, I will discuss the etiology of illness from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective. Second, I will discuss some of the relatively secular therapeutic approaches to healing. Finally, I will explore the spiritual dimension of healing by focusing my discussion on some of the tantric practices involving the Medicine Buddha. A powerful example of a Buddhist healing ritual, which invokes a "meditative transformation of medicine" as described in the conclusion of Dr. Yeshi Donden's Health Through Balance,will conclude this analysis.

ETIOLOGY OF ILLNESS

an early Mahayana text, the Buddhist sage Vimalakirti mused that, "All sentient beings are ill" (Birnbaum, p.13). To the Tibetan, the inevitability of suffering and illness is a reflection of the fact that we are born. The Tibetans believe that we "take birth" because we are ignorant of the true nature of reality and that it is this ignorance that is the cause of all suffering and disorder. Dr. Yeshi Donden remarked that "the root [of illness] is beginningless ignorance" and that "ignorance is with us like our own shadow . . . even if we think that we are in very good health, actually we have had the basic cause of illness since beginningless time" (Donden, p. 26).
Tibetans believe that our false perceptions of the world and its projections actually change the world, which is fundamentally neutral. Moreover, people become attached to ego-centered views, which "contain the seeds of profound misunderstanding of what it means to have Being in this world" (Walsh-Frank, p. 8). Consequently, because "all phenomena are mere reflections and designation of the mind" (Thonduk, p.193), and the mind is driven by delusional thinking, samsara (our perception of the phenomenal world) is filled with suffering.
Furthermore, the Tibetan Buddhist believes that karma(simply stated, the law of cause and effect) from one's previous incarnations can also be responsible for our illnesses in our present experience. Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha, explained this principle when he said:
In sooth to every man that's born
A hatchet grows within his mouth,
Wherewith the fool, whene'er he speaks

And speaks amiss, doth cut himself . . . (quoted from Samyutta-nikaya in Birnbaum, p.9) Thus, the distant causes of the diseases are seated in the past mental environment which was influenced by "afflictive emotions"--mental factors that are the root cause of all illness. While these factors are impossible to enumerate, they are all the consequences of ignorance (Donden, p.15). Ignorance generates other negative states of mind such as desire, hatred, jealousy and pride. Such negative emotions drive our mentations, and our mentations contribute to our suffering.

However, our emotional energies are neither good nor bad in themselves; for example, the energy/intelligence that turns to hatred when siezed in the neurotic grip of ego can also manifest as simple, clear awareness of the true situation--thus it is how we relate to our emotional energies that is crucial to well-ness. Understanding one's emotions is an essential part of the Buddhist journey to full awakening and freedom form unwanted conditions of all sorts. However, since most of us have very little ability to work with our emotional energies without creating negative experiences, medicines and other remedies are required.

While Tibetan notions of the law of karma imply infinite interlinked causes for any single event, three emotions, known as the "Three Interior Poisons," are considered to be at the root of all illness. The first poison is desire or passion, which implies grasping at objects or pleasant experiences. Desire is also perceived as "grasping at self" where self is our involvement with any object of our desire whether it is a chair, person or idea (Tsarong, p.17). And self, which involves a subject grasping an object, is an illusion to which we cling, because we still do not understand that anitya(impermanence) is a primordial condition of living in samsara. Similarly, hatred, or aversion, regarded as the second poison, consists of pushing away unpleasant experiences or objects. Finally, ignorance, or confusion, which involves misunderstanding the nature of an object or a particular experience, is the third poison of the mind.

SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF HEALING

Ron Leifer, a scholar of Tibetan medicine, considered the practice of Tibetan medicine a science because it is based on "observation and logical reasoning rather than faith, scripture or religious authority" (Leifer, p.753). However, even though the therapeutic methods described above may appear to be divorced from spiritual implications, they are not. Tibetan medicine typically directs its attention toward spiritual factors regarding the cause and cure of illness which by Western standards would be regarded as the "domain of the priest or psychiatrist" (Burang, p.59).

The Tibetan physician focuses his attention on spiritual factors even in the treatment of the simplest illnesses. Every Tibetan physician vows to "regard medicine as an offering to the Medicine Buddha and all other medicine deities" and considers his "medical instruments as holy objects" (Dummer, p. xix). Even the pharmaceuticals, which are mixtures of vegetable, animal and mineral compounds, are prepared with meticulous attention to religious ritual. For example, after the Tibetan physician gathers the dozens of different ingredients that go into the making of the single small pill, he performs a meditative ritual. Before and after the ingredients in the pills have been assembled, the physician imagines himself and the medicine to be Hayagriva, a Buddhist deity. The physician and the deity are considered to be consolidated as one inseparable entity. The medicines are further blessed "into a magnificent state through being implanted with mantra [a prayerful vocalization]" (Donden, p.214). Because pills are blessed this way, Tibetans believe that even the dying can benefit from them.

The emphasis on metaphysical principles in Tibetan medicine has its roots in the teachings of the historical Buddha, who lived about 2,500 years ago. The ancient texts of the Pali Canon record that early Buddhist communities believed that the four necessities of life are food, clothing, shelter and medicine. Since illness tended to weaken the focus of the mind, which was the liberating faculty, concepts of healing were important in the earliest Buddhist communities.

In the teachings of the Pali Canon, a person "who is not liberated, who is still subject to the sufferings brought on by insatiable craving, is considered ill." (Birnbaum, p.15). Sakyamuni Buddha was portrayed as the Supreme Physician who used two basic healing methods: healing by means of instruction and healing by means of miracles. Sakyamuni Buddha, who was considered a link between humanity and myriad celestial beings, repeatedly reminded his disciples that they should diligently seek to be healed. And Sakyamuni Buddha proclaimed that "Lo, I am physician without peer . . . " (As translated by E.M. Hare in Woven Cadences of the Early Buddhists in Birnbaum, p.16). Consequently, his disciples could turn to the King of Medicines, (the Dharma, or Buddha's teachings) or the Supreme Physician himself for relief.

Those whose illnesses were perceived to be fatal received lessons on impermanence as a fact of the natural world, whereas those who were curable were encouraged to meditate on the seven limbs (bojjhangas) of enlightenment: mindfulness, his teachings (dharma), striving, joy, tranquility, meditative trance and equanimity (Birnbaum, p.10). From the traditional perspective the bojjhangas are considered a method for overcoming the"Three Interior Poisons": desire, hatred and delusion. The emphasis on Buddha as the Supreme Physician, a model of selfless compassion who devoted his life to easing the pain and suffering of others, indicates a fundamental attitude regarding the nature of Buddhist medicine: "dispassionate compassion" (Birnbaum, p.17). This attitude serves as a behavioral prototype for contemporary Tibetan physicians.

Jesus Healing

Jesus healing - Why was healing so important in Jesus' ministry?

Healing was essential to the ministry of Jesus because He had the power to perform miracles. They flowed from within Him as heat from the sun, as wet from a waterfall, as dry from sirocco winds. He knew it, people sensed it, and to Him they came in droves and multitudes. In unconquered confidence, Jesus welcomed blind, crippled, leprous, even dead people into His presence. No problem loomed too great for His skill; none intimidated Him into silence. He performed all the healings we would expect since He came as God's Healer. Healing was essential to the ministry of Jesus because He had compassion equal to His power, as Matthew 8:17 notes; as Matthew 14:14 illustrates. When the burgeoning throng interrupted His plans for a quiet retreat with His disciples, He healed their sick, then He fed them. That contrasted starkly with the disciples, who wanted the pesky crowds dispersed. Knowing they could receive help if only they could access Him, people responded to that compassion, in bold, unorthodox ways. The Canaanite woman struggled through His disciples' desire to dismiss her, and His own initial, courteous refusal, to get what she knew she could trust Him to grant (Matthew 16:28). The woman with a hemorrhage crept silently through the crowd to merely touch His clothes (Mark 5:28). And the crowds "begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak," (Matthew 14:36), for "all who touched him were healed." Healing was essential to the ministry of Jesus because it symbolized His success in the spiritual warfare between Himself and Satan. In ongoing discussions about evil, all secular, and many Christian thinkers fail to mention Satan as the agent by which illness, disease, and disaster entered the world. Yet, in Luke 13:16, Jesus identified Satan as the enemy responsible for the harm done to humanity. Satan hates God compulsively, but has no recourse but to harm the humanity made in God's image. He unrelentingly attacks humanity, knowing His time to oppose God's creation is short (Revelation 12:12). Whenever Jesus confronted Satan's presence in illness, disease, or demon-possession, He overcame the symptoms of Satan's presence to prove His conquest of Satan personally.

Since "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. . ." (1 John 3:8), He had to dismantle the apparatus of illness, disease, and demon-possession by which Satan exercised control over creation. The victory He won in the wilderness could be authenticated in ministry only by evicting Satan's power from the lives he had bludgeoned. By healing all bodily systems, and every bodily dysfunction, Jesus reclaimed and recovered for God all that Satan pirated. Healings proved that Jesus had invaded Satan's realm, shackled him and, despite his unavailing protests, plundered and snatched from his malevolence any victim He pleased. Through all His healings, Jesus assaulted Satan from first one corridor, then another and still another. Satan never knew where the next attack would originate or how devastating it would be. But when it came, he always felt IT was the hardest blow yet!

Healing was essential to the ministry of Jesus because He envisioned healing as a physical symbol of forgiveness. He guaranteed the ultimate glory of the human body through His personal resurrection, but forecast that restoration by healing twisted, shrunken, blinded limbs and organs. The paralytic's restoration is but one of many such examples (Mark 2:1-12). All of our physical ailments, limitations, and adversities have their final removal in the Master's initial healings and ultimate victory over death. The perfected result of forgiveness is the new, imperishable body Paul described in 1 Corinthians 15:35-57. Healing was essential to the ministry of Jesus because healings offered indisputable evidence that He is the Christ of God (John 21:30-31). Understand: He considered healings as credentials, but only as extensions of Himself as His own best defense. Understand: since Jesus expected healings to recruit faith in Him, He wouldn't heal gratuitously. Thus, when the Pharisees wanted to see a miraculous sign (Matthew 12:38), He instead figuratively preached His death and resurrection. On His second visit to Nazareth, He performed but a few miracles because the people doubted Him (Mark 6:5). And He turned a cold eye on Herod's hope for a miracle (Luke 23:9). Nevertheless, in Christ's works lurked evidence that God Almighty lived in human form and loved the humanity created in their image.