The Magical Mental Abilities of Children
Children have an even more extraordinary capacity for mental mastery--when they are shown how to do it. Compared to adults, they have superior imaginative abilities, are more naturally dissociative or internally focused, and are far more likely to suspend disbelief. Unlike adults, they have not learned how to dismiss "possibilities" as unrealistic.
I know of one young person, who, despite life-threatening injuries, recovered because she kept calm and saw herself as being bathed in Angel Light. She was not in denial. She knew the situation was grave. She saw her parents fret and weep outside her hospital room door, thinking she couldn't see or hear them. But she assured them, "The Angel's light is moving through me. It's going to be okay."
Another woman whose child was receiving chemotherapy, told her repeatedly that the medicine was "pure love and it will fill you like happiness fills a room." They put signs all over the room and on the IV bags: "Love." She went into remission.
What happens when we change our thoughts? We change our chemistry. What we feel determines how we heal.
Best-selling author, Dr. Larry Dossey, has written, "Images create bodily changes--just as if the experience were really happening. For example, if you imagine yourself lying on a beach in the sun, you become relaxed, your peripheral blood vessels dilate, and your hands become warm, as in the real thing."
If this is even partially true, it is an astonishing statement.
The case to definitively establish the link between mind and body was opened almost 1,500 years ago when Hippocrates wrote that a person might yet recover from his or her belief in the goodness of the physician. It was continued in 1912 when one doctor reported that tuberculosis patients who had previously been on the mend, when given bad news (e.g., that a relative had passed away) took sudden turns for the worse and died. And today the data supporting the connection between thoughts and health, indeed between mental images and survival, are mounting.
Brain scans have shown that when we imagine an event, our thoughts "light up" the areas of the brain that are triggered during the actual event. Sports psychologists conducted one study in which skiers were wired to EMG machines and monitored for electrical impulses sent to the muscles as they mentally rehearsed their downhill runs. The skiers' brains sent the same instructions to their bodies whether they were doing a jump or just thinking about it.
What does this mean for a child who's just fallen off a swing or burned himself on a hot stove or woken from a nightmare in terror?
Verbal First Aid in Real Life
Asthma is unfortunately more and more common in children around the world. And though we are fortunate enough to have inhalers in emergencies, there are times we find ourselves on our own. The following is a typical situation handled with Verbal First Aid so that a crisis is handled and a life is saved.
Sam and his son, Jared, went to play in the park. Sam was sure Jared had packed his inhaler. Jared was sure his dad had packed it. When they had played about a half-horu, Jared was straining for breath. When they realized they'd forgotten it, Sam was smart enough to take a deep breath himself so that when he turned to his son he was calm, focused, and sure-footed.
Sam:Jared, I can see you're breathing but thatit's a
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