You Can Heal your life

"If you want to understand your parents more, get them to talk about
their own childhoods; and if you listen with compassion, you will learn
where their fears and rigid patterns come from."
"They will often tell me they can't love themselves because they are so
fat, or as one girl put it, 'too round at the edges.' I explain that they are
fat because they don't love themselves. When we begin to love and
approve of ourselves, it's amazing how weight just disappears from our
bodies."
"Be grateful for what you do have, and you will find that it increases. I
like to bless with love all that is in my life right now—my home, the
heat, water, light, telephone, furniture, plumbing, appliances, clothing,
transportation, jobs—the money I do have, friends, my ability to see
and feel and taste and touch and walk and to enjoy this incredible
planet."

With its almost child-like motif of a rainbow-colored heart on
the cover, You Can Heal Your Life offers a message of nonjudgmental
love and support that has endeared it to people
everywhere. In ten years it has sold three million copies in 30 countries,
and Hay is now a matriarch of the self-help, New Age, and holistic
healing movements. She attributes the book's success simply to her ability
to "help people change without laying guilt on them" and the book
has the calmness of a person who has gone through the worst and survived.
The title only really makes sense when we read the final chapter,
a plain-speaking record of Hay's personal history.
Hay's story
Hay's mother tried early on to foster her out. Raped by a neighbor at
five years old, she continued to be sexually abused until the age of 15,
when she left home and school to become a waitress in a diner. She
gave birth to a girl a year later, but the child was adopted and she
never saw her again. Hay left for Chicago, spending a few years in
menial work, before basing herself in New York, becoming a fashion
model. There she met an "educated, English gentleman" and married
him, leading an elegant and stable lifestyle until, 14 years on, he met
someone else and divorced her. A chance attendance at a Church of
Religious Science meeting changed Hay's life. She became a certified
church counselor and subsequently a transcendental meditator, after
attending the Maharishi's International University in Iowa.
After becoming a minister and developing her own counseling service,
Hay wrote a book called Heal Your Body, which detailed metaphysical
causes of bodily illness. At this point she was told that she had
cancer, but was healed through a combination of radically changed diet
and mental techniques. After spending most of her life on the East
Coast, she moved back to LA and was reunited with her mother before
the latter's death. Now in her 70s, Hay is one of the world's bestknown
motivational speakers and writers, often touring with the likes
of Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and James Redfield.
The book
You Can Heal Your Life is the message of a person who has crawled out
of victimhood, and this aspect of it has had enormous appeal, particularly
to women with similar histories. The essence of Hay's teaching is love of
the self and evaporation of guilt, a process she believes makes us mentally
free and physically healthy, as the study of psycho-immunology attests.
All the familiar self-help messages are given attention, including
breaking free of limiting thoughts, replacing fear with faith, forgiveness,
and understanding that thoughts really do create experiences.
Some of the main points are:
? Disease (or "dis-ease," as Hay calls it) is the product of states of mind.
She believes that the inability to forgive is the root cause of all illness.
? Healing requires us to release the pattern of thought that has led to
our present condition. The "problem" is rarely the real issue. The
superficial things that we don't like about ourselves mask a deeper
belief that we are "not good enough." Genuinely loving the self (but
not in a narcissistic way) is the basis for all self-healing. Chapter 15
lists just about every illness and its likely corresponding mental
"blockage." Skeptics may find the list remarkably accurate if they
open their minds a little.
? Affirmations are about remembering our true self and utilizing its
power. Therefore, trust in the power of affirmations to manifest
what you want. They must always be positive and in the present
tense; for example, "I am totally healthy" or "Marvelous work
opportunities are coming to me." The book contains many affirmations
to choose from.
? "Whatever we concentrate on increases, so don't concentrate on
your bills." You will only create more of them. Gratefulness for
what you do have makes it more abundant. Become aware of the
limitless supply of the universe—observe nature! Your income is
only a channel of prosperity, not its source.
? "Your security is not your job, or your bank account, or your
investments, or your spouse, or parents. Your security is your ability to connect with the cosmic power that creates all things." If you
have the ability to still your mind and invoke feelings of peace by
realizing you are not alone, you can never really feel insecure again.
? One of the first things Hay says to people who come to see her is
"Stop criticizing yourself!" We may have spent a lifetime doing this,
but the beginning of real self-love—one of the main ingredients in
healing your life—happens when we decide to give ourselves a break.
Final comments
You Can Heal Your Life will not be for everyone. It is quite New Age,
fitting into the "journey to wholeness" mold of writing that is now so
common, though Hay was a pioneer. For those who have read a number
of self-development books, it may seem a little simplistic and contain
nothing new; it is certainly no intellectual undertaking to read. On
the other hand, it has a directness and enthusiasm that help it stay in
the mind, and it intuitively makes sense.
In the true spirit of self-help, the book is not content to fix problems
but to strip all authority from them. This outlook, which on first consideration
seems naïve, is in fact philosophically rigorous: Dwell on your
problems and they become insurmountable; consider your possibilities
and they provide hope and motivation. Millions have had similarly difficult
lives to Hay, but not everyone has the will to leave their problems
behind or even the knowledge that they can; deprivation forms the illusion
that "this is all there is." Hay's insistence to herself that pain and
setbacks would not define her led her out of multiple psychological
black holes. Her book has the credibility of the successful escapee.