-IBIS-1.5.0-
rx
principles (Mind/Body)
laws of cure
psychospiritual approaches

definition

why follow the laws of cure?

There are many treatments and therapies. Some seem to work for some people; some work for others. Patients put their lives in the hands of various practitioners and hope that everything goes well, that the therapies are effective.

However, nothing limits the effectiveness of a treatment or therapy as thoroughly as an inadequate grasp of the laws of cure. How can one cure when one doesn't know what Cure is? (a good question for both health care professional and patient alike) While professionals must track the effectiveness of their work, patients participate best when they grasp the meaning of Cure.

Unfortunately, though elements of the laws of cure are known both to medicine and to psychology, the pattern is not commonly recognized. This leaves non-directional statements like: “The pain is gone”, “I feel less upset now”, or “The itch went away” as the extent of both system’s estimation of success.

This simplistic quality of treatment goal, and guide to course correction, is likely to lead one astray. Where did the itch, the upset, or the pain go? What about the causes or sources of these symptoms? What are these causes and sources doing now? If one can’t answer these questions clearly, one may be creating for the patient a life pattern of increasingly severe diseases, camouflaged by the passing years as the specter of “aging.”

Why distinguish “Cure” from “The symptom went away!”?

First, though the symptom is always the reason for seeking treatment, the symptom itself is almost never the problem or illness.

Three illustrations:
(1) One has a fever because the enzymes carried on white blood cells eat invading bacteria faster when they are warm.

(2) One has depression because conflicts of inner need seem impossible to reconcile and force one to take refuge in mental and emotional exhaustion.

(3) One has high blood pressure because an otherwise appropriate volume of blood is forced through arteries narrowed through the combined build-up of plaque on vessel walls and the chronic tightening of vessel walls as a result of the chronic flooding of the body with excess adrenalin. Plaque build-up is in turn a symptom of inappropriate dietary choices plus overwhelmed digestion, and chronic excess adrenalin is often a symptom of an inappropriate and unsuccessful emotional coping mechanism.

The second point is a corollary of the first. It is also the single most important point that can be made on this subject. Since the symptom is not the problem, making the symptom “go away” has no necessary relationship to the illness or to its relief. It is therefore possible for the patient to be made to feel better and be no better off—or to feel better and actually be more diseased.

For the Practitioner or patient to orient himself or herself toward Cure, a number of highly specific points must be kept in mind. These are both points of fact and specific patterns of relation among those facts. These points are regarded as the laws of cure:

Good health is most usefully described as being equivalent to freedom. The better the health of an individual, the greater the freedom of that individual to express and experience the fullness of life.

for example:
(1) Healthy arms and legs are free to act within their complete range of motion, with full muscular power, with the full range of intricate neurological control.

(2) A healthy digestive system is free to digest the full spectrum of properly selected foods, in the optimum amount of time, providing the body with the complete range of available nutrients.

(3) An emotionally healthy individual is free to respond to any event with a
complete range of feelings, and change that response and their feelings as the event or their own relationship to it changes.

(4) A mentally healthy individual freely relates any fact or event to any other, in any pattern she may choose, with no consideration other than the facts or patterns themselves.

• In assessing health, a person can be considered a single stress management system for all areas of life; thus, better management means greater health. This includes the full spectrum of physical, emotional, and mental functions.

Stress refers to any object, situation, event, or internal representation that must be overcome, negotiated, or adjusted to in order to maintain health (freedom) and avoid a symptom-dominated (hindered, incomplete) state.

Whether the stress is chemical pollution, poor nutrition, lack of sleep, prolonged exposure to extreme weather and humidity, viral or bacterial infection, the failings of other persons, or one’s own emotional state or “negative” thoughts, each person is potentially able to manage the load. Symptoms only show up when there is an overload.

Successful “stress management” in this context, is equivalent to successful “self management” in relation to that stress, when self management is complete enough to ensure continued freedom.

Some examples:
(1) A healthy individual with an infected foreign object embedded in his or her flesh will get a localized fever that speeds the rate of bacterial ingestion, a rapid buildup of puss that floats the object free from the flesh, and a bursting open of the wound to allow the object to be washed free.

(2) A healthy individual who suffers a loss grieves thoroughly and quickly, with no impediments such as “It can’t be”, “It’s not true”, “I can’t believe it”, is free to get on with life sooner than one who tries not to grieve by denying facts.

(3) A healthy individual, suddenly threatened with loss of both life and home due to natural disaster, can think clearly of what must be done, including the possibility of sacrificing the home, with no interference from whatever fear, grief, or anger s/he might otherwise feel.

• In order to resolve or cure an underlying illness, each symptom must be considered that person’s best possible response to life at the moment of overload—his or her best possible response, given his or her environment, vitality, and available skills.

(1) Environment means nutrition, geophysical surroundings, family and work situations, emotional and physical history, hygiene, and much more.
(2) Vitality refers to the innate strength of that person’s life force and will to live.
(3) Skill, in this case, means the use of stress reduction techniques, exercise, good nutrition, conflict resolution, ability to distinguish between self control within the environmental context and addictive attempts to control the environment, self-acceptance, positive attitudes, as well as the curative skills applied by a health care professional.

Change any of these three factors and symptomatology changes automatically. Improve any major element of the environment and s/he will start to Cure. Increase his or her vitality, or expand the available skills, and symptoms will lessen and freedom will increase. Intensifying the stressful factors in that environment, weakening vitality, or restricting available skills results in less freedom and increased symptoms.

• Changes which reflect cure, and not suppression or palliation, always follow Hering’s Law:

(1) Cure proceeds from the top down: brain before heart, heart before lungs, stomach before colon, etc.

(2) Cure proceeds from the inside out, meaning that mental symptoms will tend to cure before emotional ones, emotional before physical. In physical terms, the digestive tract before other internal organs and all of these before muscle and bone and virtually everything before the skin.

(3) Cure proceeds from the most delicate life-sustaining organ to the least delicate life sustaining organ; essentially from brain to skin.

(4) Cure proceeds from the most recently appearing symptom back through all previous symptoms in reverse order of their appearance.

• In therapeutic re-experience of past emotional postures, curative response takes place as a person moves up the Emotional Tone Scale.
(Chavez)

see:
emotional tone scale
holographic consciousness
human energy fields: overview
human energy centers: overview
the shadow and physical symptoms


footnotes