Years ago when I had a health scare, I retreated to spend time alone with God and seek guidance on healing. At the time, a friend referred to me as a Christian Scientist. Unfamiliar with the term, I discovered Christian Science was a religious denomination, which advocated healing through Divine Love. Mary Baker Eddy founded the movement in 1866, after becoming critically injured in a fall and experiencing a dramatic recovery after studying healings in the Bible. She became convinced that disease was caused by the human mind and illness could be cured through prayer alone.
I was reminded of Eddy’s philosophy recently, when I struggled with an ailment, which reappeared during the Covid-19 lockdown. Excessive exercise triggered an ankle injury, which refused to heal. Hypnotherapy had taught me that injuries can resurface when difficult emotions resurface, so I searched my memory banks to pinpoint the first occurrence. I realised it was during a time when I felt stifled and trapped, which was precisely how I felt during lockdown. Consequently, I focused on the positives of lockdown, whilst simultaneously uncovering negative emotions submerged in my subconscious. Shortly afterwards, my ankle began to heal. This was consistent with what I’d read in Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion and Gabor Mate’s When the Body Says No, which emphasised the role emotions play in our health.
The experience reignited my interest in the mind and body and I revisited the books, which perfectly complemented each other, because Pert wrote from the perspective of a laboratory scientist and Gabor, a medical practitioner treating patients. I was reminded that our bodies are designed to produce natural chemicals which keep our immune system properly regulated. In fact, we have an inbuilt natural pharmacy, which produces all the drugs we need, for our bodies to function in the way they were designed to function. What’s even more remarkable is that scientists and pharmaceutical companies replicate synthetic versions of naturally produced chemicals, to manufacture drugs to treat and heal us.
Most of us are familiar with the concept of feel-good chemicals like endorphins and serotonin or stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. But, there are many others and we need to let them flow freely through our bodies to maintain good health. Any interruption can tilt the balance between creating illness and inhibiting illness. And it’s our emotions that play a key part in this process, because they act as a channel of communication between the mind and the immune system. This means that when we feel bad, the best thing we can do to protect our health is to openly acknowledge our feelings, accept them and then let them go. It’s when we deny our pain, hurt or grief, that blockages are created in the body’s pathways, and this disturbance can eventually result in illness. Naturally, the converse is also true – when we feel happy, our immune system receives a boost and we’re less susceptible to illness.
Now, it’s no surprise to me that God created the human body as a remarkable piece of engineering, designed to heal itself. However, the scientific and medical data help us understand the stupendous intelligence behind the intricacies of our biology. In a sense Eddy was right – Divine Love does heal. But it’s not a miracle or a mystery. It’s science.
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