With the advent of mind-body medicine, it is now possible to combine the healing principles of both the medical and spiritual fields. To this end, Dr. Phil Shapiro has developed a ten-step, self-help model that he uses himself and teaches to his students and patients. After you have received your medication, surgery, or natural remedy and you are still in pain, there are a variety of psychosocial and spiritual methods that can help you manage that pain skillfully. The ten-step model described in this book is a composite of healing principles and methods extracted from the great wisdom traditions and organized into cognitive-behavioral practices. These techniques are designed to help the reader accomplish three goals: 1. Expand healing power: for body, mind, and soul 2. Become more skillful pain managers: for any pain, problem, disease, or disability 3. Evolve spiritually: feel better, become a better person, and experience higher states of consciousness To take advantage of the healing principles embedded in the religions, we need to solve the problem of toxic language and traumatic religious history. There is a way to do this. We can design healing models that serve people of all persuasions: Baptists, Sufis, ethical humanists, scientific atheists, true believers, true non-believers-all of us have the same magnificent healing power in every cell of our bodies, and we know how to make it grow. The ten steps do not declare answers to life's big questions, such as why we are born, why there is so much suffering and evil, whether there is a God, and where we go after death. However, we can apply the wealth of healing wisdom in the great faith traditions to help us manage our pain and heal. This book is written for atheists, agnostics, religious or spiritual persons. Anyone can play in the expanded field of healing power.
Healing Power: Ten Steps to Pain Management and Spiritual Evolution
Introducing the Universal Healing WheelBy Philip ShapiroAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Philip Shapiro, M.D.
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4520-4518-4 Contents
PART ONE TEN STEPS..........................................................11. THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSONAL SPIRITUAL HISTORY.............................32. INTRODUCTION.............................................................213. HOW TO USE THIS BOOK...................................................../ 334. TEN STEPS TO PAIN MANAGEMENT AND SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION.....................455. SUFFERING, STEPS 1-5.....................................................516. HEALING, STEPS 6-10......................................................71PART TWO SPIRITUAL PRACTICE.................................................957. THE UNIVERSAL HEALING WHEEL..............................................978. SHIFTING THE LOCUS OF CONTROL............................................1159. A UNIVERSAL HEALING METHOD...............................................12510. THE SERENITY PRAYER.....................................................14111. GETTING STARTED.........................................................161PART THREE CHANGE YOUR DESTINY..............................................18112. AFFIRMATIONS............................................................18313. HABITS..................................................................207PART FOUR MORNING AND EVENING PROGRAM.......................................22114. PROGRESSIVE MUSCLE RELAXATION...........................................22315. BREATHWORK..............................................................22916. CONTEMPLATION...........................................................23717. MEDITATION..............................................................24518. PRAYER..................................................................267PART FIVE DAILY ACTIVITY PROGRAM............................................27519. MINDFULNESS.............................................................27720. PRACTICING THE PRESENCE OF GOD..........................................30121. SERVICE.................................................................31922. YOGA..................................................................../ 32923. TRANSFORMATION OF EMOTION...............................................345PART SIX SPIRITUAL QUALITIES................................................35924. INTRODUCTION TO SPIRITUAL QUALITIES.....................................36125. LOVE....................................................................36326. PEACE...................................................................38327. HUMILITY................................................................39328. FAITH...................................................................40729. COURAGE.................................................................41730. FORGIVENESS.............................................................42531. TRUTH...................................................................43932. INTUITION...............................................................45133. ONENESS.................................................................45934. HEALING.................................................................469PART SEVEN CONCLUSION.......................................................47935. A BALANCED HEALING PROGRAM..............................................481APPENDIX A..................................................................489APPENDIX B..................................................................493APPENDIX C..................................................................499
Chapter One
THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSONAL SPIRITUAL HISTORY The Birth of a Model
Life is difficult. Our problems are deep, complex, and severe. Often, we find ourselves caught in a web of pain. We don't know how we got there, and we don't know how to get out. Because we manage our pain poorly, we find ourselves in more trouble; poorly handled problems are a source of untold difficulty.
We need help. We need to learn more about the origin of our suffering so we can manage it more skillfully. Then, instead of dragging us down, our problems become a source of strength and peace.
I have a passion for learning how healing power acts as an antidote to pain and devastation. I have studied with the teachers, masters, and gurus of psychology, psychiatry, and spirituality, searching their models with a fine toothcomb, looking for elements that strengthen our ability to heal. The ten-step model described in this book is a composite of healing principles and methods I have extracted from the great wisdom traditions and organized into cognitive-behavioral practices. These techniques are designed to help the reader transform any troubling problem into spiritual power.
In this chapter, I will describe some of the key events in my life that led to the birth of the ten steps. See if you can find yourself-and, if you are a healthcare professional, your patients-in this story.
BRUTAL REALITY AND THE ILLUSION OF SAFETY, SECURITY, AND IMMORTALITY
In May 1943, I was a seven-month-old fetus. Of course, I don't remember what it was like, but I imagine it was a good place to be: warm, quiet, peaceful, safe, and protected. One day, in an instant, the feeling of safety and the quiet vibrations of motherly nurturance were replaced by fright, flight, and freeze.
My parents went out for dinner. A neighbor was babysitting Suzanne, my twenty-month-old sister. The neighbor left Suzanne on a table and walked away. She fell. When my parents came back, they discovered their baby daughter running a fever and convulsing with seizures. They took her to the hospital, where a spinal tap revealed blood in her spinal fluid. She had a type of brain damage that causes muscle spasms, a permanent condition known as cerebral palsy.
Suzanne's life was one of severe and chronic disability. She had difficulty walking and often fell; loud crashes could sound in our house at any time. My parents and I would run to her in fear of what we might find. Would there be a broken leg, a cracked skull, blood? Due to muscle spasms that inhibited her ability to swallow, she would often choke or gag on her food, banishing in a flash the camaraderie of our family supper.
She was a beautiful person, physically and spiritually. I never saw her angry. She was pure love. Despite her beauty, she remained homebound, isolated, and lonely because her disability prevented her from keeping up with her peers.
At age twenty-four, a sudden loss of eyesight compounded her problems. Over a few short weeks, she became blind; no physician could diagnose the cause. She went to a school for the blind, where she learned braille and met the love of her life, a wonderful man who was also blind. It was her lifelong dream to get married, and, at twenty-seven, she did. On the weekend of her honeymoon, she got sick. Six weeks later she was dead. The same mysterious neurological disease that caused her blindness had destroyed her nervous system.
Each of us has to deal with brutal reality-perhaps not as early as the seventh month of fetal life or, in Suzanne's case, at twenty months, but eventually the time comes. Brutal reality is defined in Step 2 of the ten-step model as death, pain and suffering,...
