I want to write about how powerful the mind is in not only damaging the body (through stress, for example) but also in healing the body. This subject tends to overlap with other pages on this website. I believe that negative thoughts can actually impede recovery. Jesus asked the cripple (John 5), "Do you want to be healed?", although this does vary depending on the translation. On other occasions, he said words to the effect, "Faith has made you whole"

But does this not illustrate an interesting point? Are there some people who, although suffering, don’t actually want to get better? Or they are so accustomed to being ill that they can’t face the prospect of a life without pain. It does happen. This is not to express lack of sympathy. I suffer from a pain which sometimes is physical and sometimes mental and I ask myself the same question, “Is it so much a part of me that I don’t actually want to part with it?”

I believe that many human ailments have their source in the mind, the most obvious example is stress. I once annoyed a friend because he thought I was saying that the pain he was suffering from was, “in the mind”. Of course, I didn’t mean that, the pain was real – I was questioning the source.

Recently there was a contestant in The Apprentice on UK television who had cured her own Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) with a kind of acupuncture in the ear. She actually won a prize, I think. But an organisation of ME sufferers was highly critical of this woman for raising “false hopes” and saying emphatically that there was no cure. Talk about being negative! If I was suffering from this illness, then I would gladly grab at any possible solution to my suffering. The cause of ME is a mystery, then maybe the solution would be a mystery too. Just to make it clear, ME is real, in my opinion. I knew a priest who suffered from this affliction and he was for ever collapsing into an armchair in exhaustion.

Fish in the bloodstream
This story really comes under the placebo effect. It demonstrates the power of the mind over the body. I can't remember when I first heard this story, maybe it was a Matthew Manning workshop. It concerned a person with furred-up arteries. He was given some exercises in visualisation, to attempt to clear the obstructions naturally. But he had a better idea! He imagined shoals of little fish in his blood stream, eating the gunge that was blocking his arteries. Now, you will dismiss this as fantasy maybe but most people believe that the placebo effect works. This is simply taking this a further step, taking control.

Small people
Many years ago, I wrote to "The Last Word" in New Scientist magazine. It is a more intellectual version of the radio programme where people phone in with explanations of strange phenomena. In the case of NS, the theme is more technical because often the people who write the replies are experts in their field.
I used to have a very strange experience, it often happened when I was tired. I would be looking at a person sitting in a chair and then they would start to get smaller and smaller and smaller. But my field of view remained the same. I could even play around with the effect.

small people continued..

Anyway, I wrote to NS and they published my letter under the title "Small people". A few weeks later, the magazine published one or two interesting replies. One described how the moon appears larger when it is near objects on the ground, but it definitely wasn’t that. One person expressed with relief that he had experienced the same thing. Sadly, I no longer have this experience. But it was quite fascinating, how the brain (because certainly it was not an optical effect) interprets what it sees.

Cure for hiccups
I can't remember where I first got this idea, or whether I adapted it from another cure. There are many cures for hiccups, everyone has their favourite! But this works every time (but not for me when I have hiccups. I have to hold my breath). I look earnestly at the person and in a solemn voice explain that doctors say that hiccups are caused by the diaphragm jumping upwards. I tell them to imagine their diaphragm as a raw pizza base, heavy and floppy. I lower my voice and say, Imagine it is getting heavier and heavier and heavier, dropping my voice melodramatically. I know that you will say that maybe it is coincidence, but it has happened so many times now, that the hiccups cease. What is strange is that sometimes, they stop even before I have started my doctor routine, when I am looking intently at the person. But, on a serious note, I believe healing works, both by touch and remotely. That is covered in Prayer and Healing and The King Has Cancer..

The Placebo Effect
There are endless arguments about Homeopathy. How can it possibly work if the dilution is so great that there is barely a molecule of the active ingredient left? Well, I have an open mind about that but what fascinates me is that even sceptics talk about the placebo effect without actually appreciating that they are supporting what many people describe as “quack remedies”. If that works as part of homeopathic treatment, then it must be a good thing, no?
Who cares how it works despite the fact we don't understand how? "The human body is a machine, isn't it? So how can believing that one will get better actually brings about an improvement?" Well, of course, the mind and body are not a machine.
This all comes back to a recurring theme on this website. Many people reject anything which does not comply with scientific knowledge as we know it in 2025. It makes me sad, because many alternative therapies work, but people are suspicious, because they don't know how they work. So they are ridiculed as being a fairy-tale. Or maybe they are misunderstanding the word "alternative" (sometimes complementary is used, which is clearer). Maybe people think that strange remedies or healing by touch, for example, are suggested as replacing conventional medicine. That is not true. Matthew Manning makes that very clear on his website.