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There is a force underlying all action and circumstance in the universe and you have the ability to tap into this force, interact with it, and use it to heal yourself.This is science talking. Specifically, this is Dr. Arnold Mindell's new model of medicine based on the mind-blowing findings of a host of quantum physicists--pioneers who are reconfiguring the landscape of our world and belief structure on an almost daily basis.Dr. Mindell is an internationally recognized psychotherapist whose ahead-of-the-curve work led him to found a new school of therapy called Process Oriented Psychology. A graduate of MIT and the Jungian Institute of Zurich, Dr. Mindell is an in-demand speaker at conferences worldwide as well as the author of sixteen previous books.Despite his many achievements, it is not a stretch to say that The Quantum Mind and Healing is quite probably Mindell's most important and best work yet. In it, Mindell explains that you can use the discoveries of quantum physics to access your body's own intelligence and self-healing abilities. Embracing both conventional and alternative medicine, he shows that to truly heal you need both medicine and your own natural wisdom.The Quantum Mind and Healing goes well beyond theory, giving you simple techniques, guided exercises, and precise explanations of vital concepts that will enable you to uncover, understand, and eliminate the root causes of even your chronic symptoms and illnesses. With applications beyond physical healing, The Quantum Mind and Healing can also help you overcome long-term emotional and behavioral patterns that may be keeping you from living your greatest potential.… (more)
User reviews
The book is about dreams and body symptoms and “connect medicine and psychology with the physics of
Mindell’s tenet is that working with your dreams and body sensations “in a real and dreamlike manner” changes your body experience. He states that our awareness interacts with the subatomic realm of our body.
He talks of the force of silence, which is the force behind everything. He has found that all body movements and symptoms can be traced back to subtle “imaginary” experiences. Symptoms begin in “imaginary time”, which can be felt as a subtle body signal, i.e. the force of silence.
As you can see, the subject-matter is somewhat vague and obscure, and Mindell expresses himself in his own special way.
He discusses Rainbow Medicine, by which he means multidimensional approaches in medicine.
He tells us about flickering or flirts, by which he means awareness of the tiniest, most subtle experiences. He gives us intriguing examples of some of his work with patients or acquaintances, where he asks these to focus on tiny things that catch their attention, and informs us of the insights and experiences that reveal themselves out of this.
“Immense changes can occur by our honoring the tiniest perceptions ….. There is great wisdom embedded in body sensations and symptoms.”
The author provides us with many illuminating but challenging exercises. One of these is on how to use our awareness to shape-shift into different forms and other dimensions. In this exercise you may notice “several body dimensions, worlds or hyperspaces”. “The body’s hyperspaces are where events such as creative urges or symptoms begin.” By noticing these spaces, your body symptoms may be relieved.
Mindell refers widely to Carlos Casteneda and his teacher, don Juan Matus, and this book contains a chapter on shamanism and the essence of symptoms. To Mindell, the existence of symptoms is “like a big dream indicating that we are being called to undertake a new kind of training”. (Ha, ha, I have many symptoms, so this should be good news for me!) Symptoms are not opponents to be overcome but potential allies.
Re exercises, there is one on the healing effects of overtones and one on “the hyperspace of a troublesome person”.
In one exercise about “dreams, symptoms, genetics”, we are asked to remember the earliest dream we can, or, alternatively, our first childhood memory. The first (and only) dream I remember from my childhood was a recurrent dream I had when I was about 3. We lived in a mansion and I dreamt that I was falling from the bottom part of the long stairway, which stretched over several floors, but I always woke before I landed. My first memory was of my mother dropping me in the snow when carrying me home from the birth clinic. She picked me up and stopped a passing taxi which we took it home. When talking to my mother about this memory later in life, it turned out that she never dropped me but the incident actually happened exactly a week before I was born when she was returning home from a checkup at the birth clinic, and she herself fell. (This affected me too of course, since I was inside her, thus my belief that she had dropped me.) I was born at a big hospital in Glasgow and knew this but my memory was of coming from the birth clinic, and this was what we were actually doing, or at least my mother was. She confirmed that all the details of my memory were correct except that the incident happened a week before I was born. I sensed that both this incident and my dream had to do with my legs, and in fact I have had problems with my legs for many years, and also fell myself a couple of years ago with long-lasting consequences which have not yet been resolved.
There’s a chapter about how community influences the body, one of Mindell’s main themes, and one entitled “symptoms are medicine from the future”. Interesting, but I fear it will take some years before CR (consensus reality) progresses so far as to understand Mindell’s tenets about curing ourselves by looking into our symptoms.
To sum up, this is another exciting book by Mindell but it is by no means easy to savvy. I would recommend this book if you are open to the author’s work and have good time to delve deeply into it and try out the exercises. Good luck with it!