Healing Breakthroughs: How Your Attitudes and Beliefs Can Affect Your Health

Aiming to show the connection between mind, meaning and illness, this book examines how a person's emotions, attitudes and reactions to events, past and present, can affect his or her health and the speed of recovery. Part 1 looks at case histories of sick people and investigates the role of the mind and the meaning of their illnesses. For instance, Dr Dossey discusses the fact that more fatal heart attacks occur at about nine o'clock on Monday mornings that at any other time, and how hearts really can break from grief or shame. The second part proposes a radically different image of the body, and suggests how a person has the power to heal and change through visualizations, music, biofeedback and prayer. Finally, the book proposes that how one feels and thinks about a disease can predict one's recovery or continued illness. Advice is included for people who are in hospital, because being a "good patient" does not necessarily enhance recovery.