Mind Body Healing Techniques for Breast Cancer

The diagnosis of breast cancer can send your mind spinning in a hundred different directions. Right after diagnosis, being in “panic mode” is normal. It is important, however, for you to step back at some point and simply process all the information.

This is the time when YOU must reel in all those anxiety-producing thoughts and take charge of your mind. Even though it may seem like you are in a situation that is out of your control, you DO have a choice. You can let the cancer control you and become the “victim” of cancer cells… or YOU CAN CONTROL THE CANCER.

Essential #4 of “The 7 Essentials System™ ” for healing and preventing breast cancer naturally is learning how to heal emotional wounds. What does this mean, exactly?

Healing your emotional wounds involves healing not only those wounds that we are consciously aware of – the trauma of a recent breast cancer diagnosis, for example – but also the wounds that have been imprinted deep into your subconscious brain. Emotional wounds that go unhealed are very likely connected to the development of cancer because every stress, whether we are aware of it or not, eventually manifests somewhere in the body.

The Silva Method Mind Body Healing program is one tool that has impressed me. Jose Silva, founder of the Silva Method, believed that 90 percent of all illnesses are caused by the mind. If illness is caused by the mind, he reasoned, why can’t it be healed by the mind as well?

Through my own participation in the Silva program, I discovered that a child’s brain (between the ages of zero to three years of age) functions primarily at the delta frequency. Between the ages of four and seven, a child’s brain functions predominantly at the theta frequency.

This means that from childbirth (or maybe even in the womb) to the age of seven, your brain registers things at a deep, “hypnotic” level. What is more significant is that the experiences you had during those formative years created the foundation for how you will react to the outside world for the rest of your life. That is, unless, you learn to change the programming you are running on the subconscious level.

Just how can you do this? Simply put, you can do it through meditation and visualization practices conducted at those same frequencies. Jose Silva found that people who can remain in the alpha and theta levels of consciousness are able to put their mind and body in a state conducive to healing. In this state cells repair, stress dissipates, the immune system strengthens, and physical symptoms of illness are, in some cases, reduced.

Dr. Carl Simonton was a radiation oncologist specializing in the treatment of cancer. His wife Stephanie is a counselor and trained in psychology. They are the authors of the book Getting Well Again: A Step-by-Step Self-Help Guide to Overcoming Cancer for Patients and Their Families. Through their study of bio-feedback as well as various modalities such as the Silva Method, they learned that people can influence their internal body processes. The book describes example after example of people who had been diagnosed with cancer and were told to go home to die. Yet, after learning how to meditate and “visualize their body healing,” the cancers disappeared.

Current research on the effects of meditative practices on breast cancer patients confirm that it really does work:

1. Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) had a significant effect on sleep quality in Danish breast cancer patients;

2. Mindfulness-based Art Therapy decreased anxiety in women with breast cancer in an 8-week study;

3. The use of meditation and yoga improved long-term quality of life for African American breast cancer patients in a 2011 study.

Learning to harness the power of your mind can have numerous benefits – including accelerating your body’s ability to heal. I am so convinced of this fact that this process is a requirement for my coaching program. Unless you take proactive steps toward learning how to meditate and, even better, make a commitment to visualizing a positive outcome for your breast cancer journey every day, you may be missing the mark when it comes to truly healing.