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The Power of the Spoken Word

I vaguely remember years ago seeing a film - with a young Alan Bates, perhaps? - called The Shout. It was English and weird, or is this a redundancy? Seems that all the protagonist had to do was open his mouth and "shout" this ungodly sound, and all those before him would collapse. My point is not a movie review, but an analogy about how powerful our words are, how important our voice is and how carefully we must speak to others, especially those of us in the medical profession. An ill-chosen word or carelessly delivered message by someone perceived to be more knowledgeable, or worse yet, "holds our life in their hands" can harm the tenuous balance most of us have on the joyful and healthy life we all aspire to.

There is this curious tendency especially in allopathic medicine to label a set of symptoms as a disease and I have never been able to figure out whether this is just careless and insensitive or a heinous power trip. For example, how about a doctor telling you that you have congestive heart failure? Puts the fear of God into you, no? These three words delivered by a cardiologist or any medical professional for that matter, are tantamount to Alan Bates "shouting" at the people he wanted to intimidate.

Within five minutes, while sitting in front of your cardiologist who slouches tiredly behind his/her desk, you can go from thinking that you are a reasonably healthy person to a cardiac cripple afraid to buy green bananas. That one careless definition of you delivered by a callous, very tired, insensitive, careless, thick-skinned, oblivious, hard-hearted from delivering thousands of such diagnoses (you choose) - suddenly becomes who you are. Patients inhale and absorb such words into their very core. Not good, not healthy.

There seems to be a lot of ego in the conventional medical community and they tend to create a language of disease that is both unnecessarily complicated and scary, thus keeping it out of the reach of most of us. It almost seems as if they don't want to make health sound attainable to the average person. I can see this scenario repeating over and over again in various HMO's and M.D. offices: "Oh my god, I have cancer (or diabetes or high cholesterol or metabolic syndrome)? I'm scared to death (literally) and I will take any strong pharmaceutical or dangerous medical procedure you can give me just so I won't have that diagnosis ("shout")."

What if instead the MD would have said that you have Fairly Serious Immune Repression Disease or Too Much Sugar Disease, or Too Many Krispy Kremes Disease or Just Plain Unconscious Food Choice Disease? To me, there is a lot less fear and a lot more hope in approaching it this way. What about that same someone saying to you that you could/should clean up your lifestyle a bit, cut down on the alcohol, certainly stop smoking, lose about thirty pounds, maybe take this little pill or two twice a day? And let me check it all out again in a few months. Much better, huh? Never, ever take away hope from anyone. Like my mother.

My mother at age 76 was given the diagnosis of congestive heart failure and of course all she could think about was the "failure" part and soon - months - after the diagnosis, she died in an unnecessary act of self-fulfilling prophecy. Very powerful words those were, "shouted" at her by her cardiologist, and there was nothing I could do to convince her that her heart was not necessarily about to "fail."

What about cancer? Why don't we call it a sluggish immune system or a body that needs some serious cleansing? Did you know that the tumors of cancer are actually not the disease itself, but a by product - the sludge, as it were - of the process of rampant cell division? This in turn is from that wonky immune system that could use a liver cleanse or two. Why would we think that by cutting out a tumor and destroying the immune system with chemo and radiation, that we can cure the problem? Just clean up and stop poisoning your body. Your body is a well-designed cancer killing machine, given half the chance. (Better to do all this before the diagnosis, because after you sit in the office with the oncologist delivering his "shout", your life will become ever so much more complex as you try to decide what treatment plan is best for you.)

Then there is randomness or luck. I have read several articles by conventional physicians who mention those words. I don't believe in randomness or luck. I believe that calling something random or lucky is a cop out, spoken by someone deeply immersed in the scientific method and who doesn't believe in the power of manifestation.

Let's take Lance Armstrong, for example. He was given a horrible diagnosis; testicular cancer which had already metastasized to his liver and brain. He opted for the conventional route which included chemo and whatever else his oncologist threw at him and he suffered terribly from the "cure", but he did survive. But why did Lance, after being given less than a 50% chance of surviving, make it? Why him and not others with similar prognosis? Was it "random"? Was it "luck?" Well, how about we take a wee look at his intention! Could there be anyone with MORE intention? He never had a single doubt that he would make it. He just continued to apply the same kind of can-do winner mindset that he used to win seven gold medals in the Tour de France.

I believe that we really do create much of who we are, how healthy we are, how well we live, how long we live. It's pretty much up to us and what we expect and intend. Here's the formula: Intention plus expectation equals manifestation. Expect good health. Intend to live a long time. Expect and intend to live happily and without pain.

As someone said, "Health is attainable by every single person. It isn't rocket science. It's not complex. And it doesn't require a prescription. Health is easy. It is straightforward, and it is direct. And, for the most part, it is available free of charge if you invoke the healing power of sunlight, pure water, stress reduction, exercise and healthy food choices." Start there.

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