I'm currently reading a book called Your Body Believes Every Words You Say: The Language of the Bodymind written by Barbara Hoberman Levine. The author says that one can heal his illness by thinking positively and also says that if one talks negatively and describes his everyday condition to terms relevant to a certain disease, it is likely that he is going to get the disease. The Levine says that she learned this fact through her own experience, when she had a brain tumor at the age of 32.
Levine writes that she cured cancer through thinking positively and never giving up her hope. After she recovered from illness she spends fifteen years researching about the topic of language of the bodymind, however, I became somewhat skeptical as I was reading the book. I do believe that optimistic thinking is a good thing to do and it is undoubtedly better than thinking pessimistically. However, one question came up to my mind as I as reading, "is this a book about one's personal experience or a report?" Levine did spend fifteen years researching this topic but, to me, it is hard to believe the fact that thinking positively can even cure cancer.
I have to read further on to decide the verifiability of the belief Levine stated but I just thought that it would be hard to scientifically prove someone's personal experience, like Levine's, as a fact.
-Joanne Park
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I agree, it would be very hard to scientifically prove what Levine is trying, no less get accepted by others. Nevertheless, psychiatry deals with these outlooks of the mind, and people have done research on optimism vs. pessimism in the past.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/12/e12expand.html
This article was interesting to me because my friends and I often talk pessimistically about various topics, such as school and homework and tests, and then one of us voices out loud how pessimistic we are. We try to say optimistic things but that's just denying our true feelings. I think forced optimism is as detrimental, if not more, as pessimism. Our words say one thing but our minds think something else.
-- tori
I agree with both of you. I read a book a few years ago called The Secret. I don't remember who it is by, but it was very much like the book you are reading, Joanne. Its main point was that if the human mind puts out good vibes and good thoughts, since like attracts like in the universe, good things are forced to happen around the source of these good feelings. For example, it said that if you imagined yourself in a happy relationship and even started acting like you were in one, you would find someone very soon. I was pretty skeptical when reading the book, and analyzed every success story it produced in its favor. One of the things the book stressed was that you must BELIEVE what you are thinking and truly feel what you are imagining in your mind. This is something extremely difficult to do, at least for me. Like Tori said, saying something and believing something are two totally different things.
ReplyDelete-Alexa
I do the same thing Levine did. I had pneumonia in the middle of last year and tried to cure it by willing myself to get better and go on living as if I wasn't sick. I can't tell you how this would have gone, because my mom is a firm believer that if you have a 103 fever, you should stay home and rest. She was probably right to keep me home. Optimism can go along way, but it doesn't make up for good old antibiotics and sleep. Postive thinking is a powerful force, but it has limits.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if you are being positive about doing well in a presentation or something like that (I mean truly positive, believing it without making yourself believe it), it can make a difference than assuming you will fail. I think they call this a self-fulfilling prophecy.
~Becca
Alexa-- What you said reminds me of that well-known phrase that once you stop looking for something, you find it, which opposite to that other phrase that good things happen to those who wait. Sorry for going off on a total tangent, but I think it's so weird how humans like making general statements (up that ol' abstraction ladder) about life. Lots of phrases contradict each other, too, to fit whatever situation. In chemistry, like dissolves like, (nonpolar & polar), but in the same field of science, opposites attract (ionic bonds). Some say rain on a wedding day is a sign of good luck while others say the complete opposite. The poor brides of the rainy day weddings needed some consolation while the lucky brides of the sunny day weddings were ecstatic. And another tangent, luck. Humans like believing in luck to fit whatever situation, just like the adages do above. Luck is just saying something and believing something else. Saying we'll fail a test and then afterwards, believing that we passed by luck. If luck doesn't really exist because it's just words, then sneither does superstitions like triscadecaphobia (sp?). Maybe?
ReplyDelete-- tori
While I don't believe that optimism can fix everything, especially illnesses, I do believe that there is a certain amount of merit in using positive thought to affect change. If you only think negative thoughts, most likely you will essentially give up trying at the task at hand. An optimistic attitude allows the person adopting it to overcome obstacles and avoid completely giving up on the task at hand.
ReplyDelete-Tara