re: rife information/Dee

[Guest guest]

You wouldn't believe all the things I 'was' into once upon a time myself, meaning in the healing arts (grin) so I'm aware of most of them but have moved on, but I remember when I was younger and convinced as well. It's just a process of living and learning I suppose.

It's just that I'm skeptical of many things that I sort of call 'woo woo' or bogus science. I 'need' some sort of a scientific reasoning behind it (even if it's not approved) but something that makes logical sense to me as to why it might work.

It's just that I'm skeptical of many things that I sort of call 'woo woo' or bogus science. I 'need' some sort of a scientific reasoning behind it (even if it's not approved) but something that makes logical sense to me as to why it might work.

You know, Dee, it's interesting. . . but i think that it's the opposite for me: as i've gotten older

i've became much MORE accepting of "alternative" approaches to healing -- though, i have to

say that i've been attracted to them (even if i didn't really understand what was going on) since

i was a teenager. I think a lot of this has to do with having had friends who have healed themselves of serious, serious illness with modaliities still considered out of the mainstream. A very good friend of mine, for example, was diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer about

ten years ago which eventually spread to his lungs and intestines. He had refused what the oncologists were offering and was doing all sorts of work on his body, mind, and spirit which

kept him alive and active for several years. However, at a certain point, what he was doing suddenly

stopped working, he went downhill very quickly, and he ended up having surgery. He was close to death,

extremely emaciated. The doctors (talk about positive) told him that, at that point, if the cancer didn't kill him (his cancerous testicle was the size of a grapefruit. . . yuck!), then the chemo would. Period. But they were happy to do the surgery nonetheless ($$$). To their absolute amazement, he not only survived, but recovered rapidly and today at age 71 is perfectly healthy. In fact, he just had his

first book, a mushroom identification guide which i helped him edit published by Penn State Press fand he runs around the country giving workshops on shamanism and healing.

This same friend introduced me to quantum physics and its application to health and healing. When

you start to grasp what's going on on the quantum level (it IS so bizarre and contrary to our perception

of the macro world), then things like the Rife machine and spiritual healing and so on start to make

a lot more sense -- at least to me.

Yet if it works for someone else that's 'their' belief system and we all know the 'placebo' effect can work as well as the 'nocebo' effect where a drug 'should' work by all accounts, yet if the patient is so resistant to it, it won't.

Yes, this is so true. The placebo effect is at work just as much with a visit to an allopathic doctor with

his white coat as it is in consulting a shaman with his drums and rattles for a soul retrieval.

In my first cultural anthropology course as a freshwoman in college, i was required to read a book

by Colin Turnbull called, The Mountain People. I'll never forget something that he described about the

particular culture he was studying: If someone in the tribe engaged in behavior that was threatening

to the collective good, he was "hexed" (i can't remember the term that was used for this particular

culture) and, sure enough, within a few days, the person would die. This was a part of the belief system

of this particular culture and this is what happened -- not just sometimes, but EVERY time this pronouncement was made. Pretty amazing, huh?

Beliefs are so powerful, even when we don't even know that we carry them The same mind that

can literally cause the body to self-destruct in a matter of days is the same one that can heal it.

(Witness my friend. After his recovery, he tried giving support to people receiving chemo at the local

hosptial so they could get through it more easily -- but the vast majority were simply not into it: it was NOT part of THEIR belief system -- even with a shining example before their very eyes -- that someone could undergo chemo without serious problems and heal totally from late stage cancer.

They were programmed to die, basically, and that's what they did. It got so depressing that at some

point, my friend stopped volunteering. Along with being a mycologist, applied physicist, biologist, incredible jewelry-maker, inventor and author, he now spends a lot of his time, after years of training as a Kahuna

(Hawaiian) shaman, giving workshops nationally and internationally to people who ARE interested in looking beyond more rigid ideas about health and healing.

Got a little rambly there. . . Guess the bottom line is, as you say, that everyone has their own

take on healing modalities and, for me, giving something a little kooky-sounding like Rife therapy makes sense. . . if you are able to look beyond the "logical" approach to analyzing healing modalities.

The more i learn about quantum physics and healing, the more i'm convinced that "logical" approaches,

while they have their place, can not be used to judge other healing practices which defy what we

traditionally consider to be "scientific" or logical -- at least in a Newtonian sense.

O.K., now back to crotches!!!

Hollis