Can the Mind Heal the Body?
The real question is this: Can your mind heal your body?
Have you ever wondered, “Can the mind heal the body?”
As someone with chronic illness, I have, many times.
In his classic, Quantum Healing, Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine, author Deepak Chopra gives numerous examples of people who put cancer into remission.
But Chopra also says spontaneous healing occurs only rarely.
Even so, I’ve seen an example of miraculous healing myself, and maybe you have too.
One of my friends was unexpectedly diagnosed with kidney cancer. The doctors gave him three days to live. Can you imagine? A specialized surgeon flew in and saved him temporarily. His prognosis after surgery was three or four months tops.
During those months, he prayed like hell. He was a close student of a prominent spiritual teacher, who also prayed for him. Prayers were done on his behalf by monks in monasteries in India and Nepal as well. A decade later he was still alive and thriving—healthy by anyone’s standards.
If you have a chronic or life threatening illness, reading such astonishing stories can make you ask, “Why can’t that be me?” In light of movies and books like The Secret, guilt and shame can alongside illness. You haven’t been able to make it magically disappear. Why not?
I wasted away to 84 pounds. In addition to a long list of body-wide symptoms, I became sensitive to foods, fragrance, chemicals and drugs. Doctors raised a skeptical eye. Ones who would never believe in quantum healing were quite certain my illness came from my head.
I desperately wanted a solution. I visited a half-million doctors (traditional and functional), tried all sorts of healers (wild, wooly, but some sane), and took countless vitamins and herbs, most of which made me ill.
I continued to wonder, “Can the mind heal the body?” I was deeply engaged with meditation and prayer at the time. So, I also pondered, “Why not me?”
The Interplay of Karma and Quantum Healing
I turned to my own spiritual tradition—Tibetan Buddhism—to see if it might offer insights about the mind healing the body.
My own spiritual teacher has said many times that the contemporary spiritual master, Jikmé Trinlé Palbar, known as the 4th Dodrupchen Rinpoche, healed himself of cancer through mantra practice. That’s the repetition of sacred syllables for an intentional purpose.
On the other hand, his predecessor, the remarkable Jikmé Tenpé Nyima, the 3rd Dodrupchen Rinpoche, fell ill and never recovered. This is how it happened:
“One day while he was giving teachings, a strong storm suddenly swept across the area. As the storm touched Dodrupchen, he felt sick, and thereafter he remained sick and unable to walk. As a result, he moved to his hermitage and remained in seclusion for the rest of his life.” — from Masters of Meditation and Miracles, p. 242.
Despite his chronic illness, the 3rd Dodrupchen Rinpoche authored many seminal works and continued to teach a select group of advanced students, many masters in their own right. He’s one of the most revered spiritual masters in recent Buddhist history.
Surely, the 3rd Dodrupchen Rinpoche held immense spiritual power. But still he was unable to heal himself. Perhaps, karma was at play. Even the Buddha was subject to the effect of his past actions as he explained one day when he had a headache as recounted in The Words of My Perfect Teacher, p. 119.
Those who firmly believe the mind can heal the body often do not take karma into account. Karma from our past can indeed be changed through positive attitudes and actions. But each karma has its own lifespan. Some may resolve quickly and some may last a lifetime.
Contemporary Buddhist teacher, Tulku Thondup, firmly believes in the healing power of the mind. He’s written two books on the topic, one titled, The Healing Power of the Mind, Simple Meditation Practices for Health, Well-Being and Enlightenment.
However, in his second book on the subject, Boundless Healing, Meditation Exercises to Enlighten the Mind and Heal the Body, p. 40), Tulku Thondup says:
“Although we can overcome many problems through the healing meditations, we cannot heal all of them. We have to get sick and die, as that is the character and nature of life. But if we are able to generate the experience of peace through meditation and our general approach to life, then we can handle problems with greater ease. This is especially true if we can cultivate an awareness of positive attitudes and feelings.”
There doesn’t seem to be a definitive “yes” or “no” answer to the question.
Use Mind-Based Healing Practices and Then Let Go
Without a clear answer, I came up with my own conclusions and my approach to self-healing. They’re encapsulated in the following four points. I hope they will help you as you move along in your own healing journey.
1. Can the Mind Heal the Body?
The answer seems to be sometimes “yes” and sometimes “no.”
It’s individual. Your genetics, biochemistry, personality, and karma combine in complex and interdependent ways to make you who you are in each present moment.
So, the real question is this: Can your mind heal your body?
The answer may not be clear. Personally, I don’t believe it helps to think about it too much, especially if it makes you feel shame or guilt.
Instead, explore and discover your own unique healing path. Do what you can and let go.
2. Use the Healing Power of Mind
Buddhism proposes that illness (for the most part) stems from the three “poisons” of desire, anger, and ignorance, which can create negative karma. These three core emotions represent shorthand for all negative thought modes that occur in the mind.
Therefore, as Tulku Thondup suggests, working with our own mind can decrease these negative mind states and increase positive ones like love, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
This can lead to the healing of our heart and mind and sometimes the physical body too. Powerful healing stories abound in Buddhism, so this option cannot be excluded if one engages sincerely in the practices.
But the key is to engage in healing practices without attachment. Attachment only creates tension, which is not the ideal state for healing.
Maybe your mind can heal your body. Maybe it can’t. But if the side effect of self-healing practices is to transform negative emotions and become a better human being, isn’t that reward enough?
3. The Wisdom to Know the Difference
It can be difficult to know when to invest your energy into healing and when to accept an illness and let go. As it says in the famous Serenity Prayer,
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the Wisdom to know the difference.”
How do you find the wisdom to know the difference? It comes from looking within, trusting your inner wisdom, trusting your intuition, and trusting messages from your body. You can use this as a complement to the medical advice you receive.
4. Letting Go
So much hope and fear can surround ill health. These emotions add suffering upon suffering to the illness itself. As difficult as it might seem, true freedom can only be found in letting go in every moment.
This prayer from The Great Path of Awakening by Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche speaks volumes to me about the depth of surrender that’s truly needed to be a genuine spiritual practitioner.
“Pray to put an end to hope and fear: If it’s better for me to be ill, I pray for the blessing of illness. If it’s better for me to recover, I pray for the blessing of recovery. If it’s better for me to die, I pray for the blessing of death.”
How could illness ever be a blessing? From an Eastern perspective, if you have the right attitude, illness can purify karma. From a Western perspective, you’ll find many stories from people who say cancer transformed their life for the better
It takes tremendous courage to allow life to unfold without attempting to exert control over every outcome. Our thoughts, words, and actions can make a difference. But we can’t control everything. It doesn’t help to fight against what is— whether it’s an illness or any other situation in life.
Closing Thoughts
In 2019, after two decades of searching, I was diagnosed with Hereditary Alpha Tryptasemia, abbreviated as HaT, a not uncommon genetic trait and mast cell disorder, which can range from mild to severe.
Because mast cells reside in almost every part of the body, HaT can cause symptoms in a wide range of systems including immune, cardio-vascular, musculoskeletal, the nervous system, and others.
This genetic trait was only discovered in 2016 by scientists for the National Institutes of Health (USA).
At my worst, I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii. I stayed away from triggers and continued my meditation practice. Slowly, I rebuilt my strength and have become less sensitive to external triggers.
Everyone’s healing journey is unique, but I think the four approaches I mention above can be beneficial to adopt if you struggle with illness:
- Explore and discover what works for you.
- Employ the healing power of the mind. Whatever the outcome on a body level, doing so will help you find peace and acceptance.
- Trust your inner wisdom to know when to pursue healing and when to let go.
- Let go of any excessive hope and fear connected to your illness. You can’t control everything.
I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences related to the question, “Can the mind heal the body?”
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