How To Turn Into Wolverine (without the adamantium skeleton) -- X-MEN Series ½

“Mens sana in corpore sano.” (Juvenal, The Satires )

A healthy mind in a healthy body.

Have any of you heard this one before? No? Yes? Well, either way I’m gonna talk about it (or should it be write?). I want to address what this is all about. Okay, not all per se, but, you know . . . talk about what it could potentially mean. Uh, one of its potential meanings anyway. According to my interpretation that is . . . Uh . . . How 'bout we start over?

*Cough. Cough.*

Today, I’d like to talk about how we could use our super powers to heal ourselves. Kind of like Wolverine in X-Men. You know, the one with the wacky hair and long pointy thingies coming out of his hands? (You can see him on the picture on the right. I know, I know. He’s easy to miss when you’ve got your eyes on Gambit. I mean, who can notice anyone else when you’ve got that hot guy being all sarcastic in that cute, Cajun voice?).

Uh. Getting sidetracked again. Oh. Yeah.

Before we go any further, I need to put in a disclaimer: Anything said in today’s post is what this author’s discovered in her research on the topic and, occasionally, her own belief. It doesn’t mean that any of you should ever forego going to the doctor’s entirely (no matter how much this author distrusts them. Really!).

So I’ve talked in past blogs about how our thoughts have a very strong influence on our lives, that, depending on how strong our faith/intent is, we can make things happen according to our wishes.

Now, what if that wish were to make ourselves heal? (See the Wolverine connection here? Huh?)
Here's a story I read about a man who managed t cure himself of a terrible heart disease:

“It involves a man in his 20s who’d been diagnosed with a rare heart condition that his doctors believed was fatal. [He was m]arried with two small children. By the time Neville (a 20th century visionary from Barbados who described our ability to make our dreams a reality and bring imagination to life) was asked to speak with him, the man had lost a tremendous amount of weigh and “shrunk to almost a skeleton.” He was so weak that even conversation was hard for him, but he agreed to simply listen and nod his understanding as Neville shared with him the power of his beliefs.
. . .Neville asked the man to experience himself as if his healing had already taken place. (...) He suggested that, in imagination, he see the doctor’s face expressing incredulous amazement in finding him recovered, contrary to all reason, from the last stages of an incurable disease . . ..
Well, . . .the fellow did get better. Months later, the visionary received a letter telling him that the young man had, in fact, made a truly miraculous recovery.
. . .The secret, the man revealed, was that rather than simply wishing for his health, since the day of their meeting, he had lived from the ‘assumption of already being well and healed.’” (Gregg Braden, The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief).

A true miracle, as his doctor said. But was it? Was it truly a miracle?

What this guy did was change his way of thinking about himself. He saw himself healthy and he became healthy. Could it be that all the people who go to, say, Lourdes to get cured get cured because in their own minds they know they will be healthy again in some kind of placebo sort of way?

This would mean that positive thinking (again) is the key to self-healing. (OK, don’t see how Wolverine did it then, since he’s always so cranky, unless he’s always been a really peppy guy deep inside but hid it so people would take him seriously?)

This idea isn’t a new one (I'm not talking about Wolverine anymore, I'm talking about positive thinking. Follow, people!). In fact, it’s a really old one (I’ll talk about this later, in another, non-X-Men post). Even the United States’ founders (or some of them at least) believed in the fact that “because mind and body were assumed to be closely connected--as physician and Declaration-of-Independence signer Benjamin Rush had . . .indicated in 1811--it was taken for granted that harmonizing one’s emotions in a positive way would, unquestionably, improve one’s physical well-being.” (United State National Library of Medicine)

But why is this possible? What’s going on behind the scenes? How is it that our thoughts, our will, have such power? If it is all an 'energy thing,' how does it work?

Any ideas?

-Alessa

PS: Did you know that it’s out of this type of thinking that Alcoholics Anonymous was created? Yep, yep. Pretty nifty, huh?

PS2: Don’t know where or when you’re going to use that fact, but I thought it was cool.

PS3: For those of you who like Gambit as much as I do, here's a picture of him too! (Wow, I just rhymed!)

PS4: OK. Signing out for real now. Bye.