One of the basic principles of holistic health is that we cannot separate our physical health from our emotional, mental, and spiritual states of being. All levels are interconnected and a state of "dis-ease" in the body is always a reflection of conflict; tension, anxiety, or disharmony on other levels of being as well. So when we have a physical disorder, it is inevitably a message for us to look deeply into our emotional and intuitive feelings, our thoughts and attitudes, to see what we can do to restore natural harmony and balance to our beings. We must tune in and "listen" to the inner process.

There is constant communication between mind and body. The body perceives the physical universe, and sends messages to the mind about it; the mind interprets the perceptions according to its own individual past experience and its belief system, and signals the body to react in a way which it feels is appropriate. If the mind's belief system (on a conscious or unconscious level) says that it is appropriate or inevitable to get sick in a certain situation, it will signal the body accordingly, and the body will obligingly manifest symptoms of illness; it will in fact become ill. So the whole process is closely tied in with our deepest concepts and ideas about ourselves, life, and the nature of disease and health.

Creative visualization refers to the way in which we communicate from our minds to our bodies. It is the process of forming images and thoughts in our minds, consciously or unconsciously, and then transmitting them to our bodies as signals or commands.

Conscious creative visualization is the process of creating positive thoughts and images to communicate with our bodies, in place of negative, constrictive, literally "sickening" ones.

Healing Ourselves
People get sick because they believe on an inner level that illness is an appropriate or inevitable response to some situation or circumstance, because it in some way seems to solve a problem for them, or gets them something that they need, or because it is a desperate solution to some unresolved and unbearable inner conflict.

Some examples of this are: the person who becomes ill because he has been "exposed" to a communicable disease (and thus believes it is inevitable or highly likely); the person who dies of the same disease a parent or other member of her family had (because she has unconsciously programmed herself to follow the same pattern); the person who gets sick or has an accident in order to get out of work (either there's something he can't confront at work, or he won't allow himself the necessary relaxation and quiet time unless he is sick); the person who gets sick in order to get love and attention (this was how she was able to get her parents' love as a child); the person who represses his feelings all his life and eventually dies of cancer (he cannot resolve the conflict between the pressure of his stored-up emotions and the belief that it's not okay for him to express those emotions . . . so he eventually kills himself as a solution).

I do not mean to imply by these examples that I believe all illness is a simple problem with a pat explanation. As with all our problems, there are often many complex factors. I do intend to illustrate the fact that illness is a result of emotional, mental, and spiritual factors as well as physical ones, and that illness may be an attempt to find a solution to a problem we are having inside our