Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Dr. Henry Grayson. Henry Grayson received his degree from Boston University and a postdoctoral certificate in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy from the postgraduate Center for Mental Health in New York City. He’s the founder and chairman emeritus of the board of trustees of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York. He also founded and is the director of the Institute for Spirituality, Science, and Psychotherapy; and is the founder and past president of Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy, a national membership organization.
Henry Grayson is the author of Mindful Loving: Ten Practices for Creating Deeper Connections. With Sounds True, he’s created a nine-session audio series called The New Physics of Love, and also a new book called Your Power to Heal.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Henry and I talked about his personal journey with health challenges and how he learned to uncover hidden causes and beliefs that relate to an illness. We also talked about overcoming what Henry calls “family downloads”—how they affect our health and why so many of us seem to be attached to our suffering. Henry also took us through a checklist of seven questions that he asks whenever a symptom is present, and he led us through a practice of releasing unconscious beliefs in order to catalyze our own self-healing power. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Henry Grayson:
Henry, I’m so happy to have this chance to speak with you about your new book, Your Power to Heal. Some of the focus of the book is about how we get at the unconscious beliefs and the family downloads we may have received that are actually operating to affect our health. I want to begin by talking about the idea that we can intentionally approach understanding what’s in our unconscious. Because of course if it’s unconscious, how do we get to it? How do we discover it?
Henry Grayson: Well that’s a very relevant question, because it is true according to most of the studies that up to 95 percent of all of our behaviors are not conscious. That’s the good news and the bad news. It’s the good news because we don’t have to think about every syllable we formulate when we speak. A jazz pianist doesn’t think at all—his fingers just run on the keyboard, and so on. But on the other hand, they allow the negative things that are unconscious too, and that are there from childhood, and they are interfering. I find that there’s a variety of tools we can use to access that.
One of them that I find is very useful is some muscle testing from applied kinesiology. It seems to access that inner knowingness about whether this trauma I had with my father at age seven, or the ongoing deprivations in my family, or a recent trauma of some kind, or some negative belief system that I have. To discover that on a scale of zero to ten, how much is that affecting the symptom I have right now? I find that’s a way that invariably can take us to it.
In addition to that though—and in this book, I give some other tools that people can use as well. Like there’s a self-awareness questionnaire that [if] one goes through that with real honesty and curiosity, it’s amazing how things will come to the surface that have not been conscious, or a pattern, or a trend. Or going through the list of traumas that we may have had, childhood or adult. Or going through the negative beliefs that we carry—that list as well. All of those can kind of help us access what’s in our unconscious mind. I’m always looking for some way that we can access what’s there, so that that unconscious part does not rule us, but we take our power back to be in charge.
TS: You began by talking about muscle testing, and you know, I think muscle testing in some ways is controversial. I’m curious what your views are on that.
HG: Sure.
TS: It is really a reliable tool? Or is it just some way that you kind of find out what you’re thinking that you sort of know you’re thinking, but you don’t want to admit you’re thinking? Is it really an accurate tool?
HG: Well, I’m glad you asked that question Tami, because the answer is yes and no, both. I think a large part of it depends on how it’s used. I see a lot of people using it where they just press very quickly and gently on your hand, and you can hardly feel a difference. They constantly draw conclusions from it. The person himself or herself doesn’t feel like it comes from within. I don’t trust that particular method very much myself.
On the other hand, there’s a wonderful line that I like from one psychospiritual work that many people may know about called A Course in Miracles, that says, “When two minds are joined together in the search for truth, the ego cannot prevail.” I find that’s a key that makes a difference. Like if I and the other person that’s with me, really sincerely want to find the answer to this, does that trauma I had at age seven really affect this problem? Or, does that upsetting experience over the last six months in my job, or with my wife, or whoever it might be, is that stress going into my body right now?
Well, if the intent of both of us, me and the other person, is to really just know the truth about that, I find that’s when it really seems to be trustworthy. Then it gets amplified, that worthiness, after the work we do. If we believe what that muscle testing said, then we do the clearing based on it. Then we find the result is there, it makes a difference. We find then it’s no longer a ten, it’s a zero, what is there. Then that’s verified of confirmed in the fact that the symptom is no longer there.
TS: Now Henry, you’re talking really, here, about a new field, these techniques are part of a new field that we could call energy psychology. Do you think that’s fair, first of all?
HG: They’re included, yes.
TS: Yes, included. Tell our listeners how you became introduced to energy psychology after being a more traditional psychotherapist, if you will.
HG: Yes. I was traditional, originally trained in psychoanalysis, but then I realized it didn’t have all the answers, although there were many very good parts. I began to get training even when I was still studying psychoanalysis and other modalities. I’ve always been very curious as to what will help people change and grow and deepen in their lives, and be free of symptoms, and be free of pain and suffering of all kinds. As long as it was legal and ethical, and had no harmful side effects. So I’ve always explored various modalities. That’s a bottom line piece.
Then this one time back in the ’90s, I guess it was, I got a brochure in the mail about a seminar about a system called Thought Field Therapy. I’d never heard of it before, but I was captivated by those words—’thought’ and ‘field’ and ‘therapy.’ I’d long since come to believe that our thoughts are very powerful, and they have immense effects on our cells—all 70 or 80 trillion cells listen to every thought we think. Our mind is non-local; I’d studied quantum physics with physicist David Bohm, who was a major influence in my life. He helped me see the oneness of everything. His book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, writes about that.
So when I think about the field, I think of quantum physics, and when I thought about thought, that was in that title, that engaged me too. I thought. “How do those get together in therapy?” I signed up to attend that workshop, and that’s when I learned about the first of the energy psychology methods called Thought Field Therapy, that was developed by a psychologist out in Southern California named Roger Callahan. He had been curious about the Eastern systems of thought, and especially acupuncture, and had gone and gotten some training in it. He thought, “Boy, we could probably use this as therapists, but we can’t stick needles in people.” He thought “Well, how else can I do this?”
What he realized too from his learning the ancient system of acupuncture, they see energy meridians running through the body. Each one of those meridians is attached to a different bodily organ. They believe that if you stimulated that meridian, the negative energy in that meridian would be deactivated, and the positive would replace it. Callahan thought, “How do we do that? We can’t use needles.” He thought, “I wonder if it would happen if we tap on it?” Then later we’ve come to see we can also just place our fingers on it, or we can massage it, those acupressure points.
We used to think that the Chinese people had sort of just made up the idea of the energy meridians. Now there’s a newer technology, they can be photographed, so we know that they’re actually there. That was my introduction to it, and I went away from that seminar just really quite fascinated. Here’s a whole world of other potentiality and possibilities. That led me to just start learning more about the different ones that were emerging.
TS: Now, the premise of your new book, Your Power to Heal, is that we can actual uncover these unconscious beliefs that are affecting our health and clear them. This is a very bold premise, if you will. I mean one of the endorsers of the book, Harville Hendrix, said, “This book, Your Power to Heal, is a very challenging book. It challenges the reader to actually really go into these interior, unconscious patterns and see how they might be affecting our health.” I’d love to know how you have worked with this approach in your own life, and the results that you have or haven’t gotten as you’ve applied these techniques.
HG: Well actually, I’ve found—my first experience of doing the self-healing occurred way back before I even learned of these techniques. I was in graduate school in Massachusetts at Boston University, and for some reason I’d gotten a little interested in mind/body connection, and I don’t know where I’d heard about it, but there weren’t many course taught in the program at that point, none in the program itself. I talked a professor into a directed study so I could research all the research studies that were there and write a paper about it, and he would oversee that.
At that point, the conclusions were there were maybe four, five things in the body that were kind of mind/body related. It might be skin disorders, asthma, some digestive problems—just a few, three or four things. I remember as I was studying that I thought that’s really amazing, to have that verification. But I began to have the question, how could it be that the mind could affect some parts of the body, and not others? That doesn’t make sense. I almost felt like saying, “Duh.” It just didn’t make sense to me.
Anyway, I was out there and had a dog that was getting out of the fence where I lived, and it was a cold, wintry day and I needed to repair that fence. It was snowing like crazy, it was 20-mile-anhour wind, it was probably 10, 12 degrees. I was out working away, repairing that fence, and I started to get a sore throat. That terrified me because I’d been getting sore throats and horrible colds for the last 10 years, from age 15 to 25. They always were very debilitating. It always started as a sore throat, and here I was out in the yard doing this repair of the fence for my dog, and I started to get the sore throat.
The part that really upset me most is I had comprehensive exams coming up on Monday. I knew it would interfere with that. I’d been giving up weekends in preparation and so on, and I wanted to be done with it. Then I suddenly remembered what I’d been studying about gee, it could affect some parts of the body, I’d already concluded it shouldn’t be constricted to certain parts and not others. I began to ask myself some questions—why might I need this? I thought, “What would it get for me? What would it get me out of doing?” With that thought I thought, “Is it wanting to get me out of taking the exam?”
Then I realized, as I was saying before, I’d spent weekends for a couple of months working on it, I wanted to be free so I could have family time, and down time, and time with friends on weekends now. I thought, “It’s not that, no; I’m eager to get it over with on Monday, and I’m 95 percent prepared.” I went and asked this question—I said, “Is there some emotion being expressed in it?” Then suddenly I saw my neighbor standing over her sink in the kitchen window, which overlooked my backyard, and I felt a big pang of guilt. I thought, “Wow, I’m onto something here.” I thought, “Why in the world would I be feeling guilty? I’ve not done anything to her, or her father she takes care of.”
Then something else clicked in my mind. I thought she was standing there—this was my projection, because I have no idea what she was thinking. I stood there seeing her out of the window that she’s seeing me out in the yard doing work for my dog in this horrible weather, when I’ve not yet done what I was going to do for her father, aged father she took care of. I knew I wasn’t trying to get out of that because I was going to do it the day after I’d taken exams. When I make a commitment I always keep my word, always have, so I knew I wasn’t trying to get out of that, but I projected onto her that that’s what she was thinking. Of course, I have no idea if she even saw me, or what she was thinking.
That was my first experience of realizing how much all of us human beings project all the time. It’s outrageous how much we do. Anyway, I thought, “How would I prefer to deal with this guilt, rather than getting sick?” I thought, “Well the simplest is I know I’ve not done the thing. I’ve not broken my word, but just to confirm it in my own mind, when I finish doing this work I’ll go inside and pick up the phone and give her a call, and say, “Just wanted you to know, I haven’t forgotten your father, I’m taking comps on Monday, and I’ll be over on Tuesday to take care of it.” You know, once I made that commitment and withdrew the feeling of guilt, I started to get better. Within a half hour my sore throat was gone.
I thought, wow. The most amazing part was, I’ve never had a big cold or sore throat since, and it’s been decades. Why? Because if I get the first little tickling in the throat, or the first bit of sniffles, I start to ask myself those questions. I’ve added to them now, other questions as well. If I get that and explore it sincerely, and get the answer to it, then I find an alternate way of dealing with that, I find I have no longer a need for the symptom.
What I’ve concluded [is] as long as we have a need for something at some level, usually unconscious, the symptom will persist. But if I can identify what it is—which I’ve done numerous times, and I’ve helped others to do it far, far even more times, since I’ve worked with a lot of people—and they deal with it in a different way, then the symptom is no longer needed. It seems to just not be there.
That’s why I think of their symptoms not to be thought of as an illness that happens to me, because this power of the world is outside me, and it’s doing to me. We need to recognize our true identity, that we’re a part of the all that is. Part of the unified field, as it’s called in quantum physics. We’re part of what, in spiritual systems, we call god or spirit. We’re part of that higher consciousness, whatever name you put onto it. We disown it so much of the time, and we think everything is happening to us, rather than seeing that participating in the creation of it.
That was the beginning, Tami, of my getting into this kind of thing. Then the most dramatic part was some 15 years more later, I forgot to actually even think I could use it for any other symptoms other than just colds and sore throats. Then I got serious back trouble when I was in my 30s. It got to the point it was extremely debilitating. It got to the place where I couldn’t even move a centimeter in the bed without feeling like I was being jabbed with an icepick and shocked with an electrode.
Doctors had said I had such a severely degenerated disk that I probably wouldn’t walk again without back surgery. I knew I didn’t want that, because at that point it was not as effective as today—at that time 68 percent of the time you were worse off afterward. I thought, “Duh, do I want to risk being even worse off, and going through the horrible process for that?” Then suddenly I remembered the questions I asked myself about the cold, and how it could work. That was the thing that really tipped the balance for me, because when I thought of that I started asking myself those questions, and I added a couple more to it. Why might I need it? What would it get from me? What it get me out of? What emotion is being expressed in it? And so on. I’ve added to that since then—what metaphor might be there, or what traumas are not cleared, or what download from parents could be there.
Anyway, I came up with four answers of things I needed to deal with differently. Two of them were lifestyle changes that were not healthy, which I made a vow to myself I would certainly attend to. The other two were people and relationship issues that I hadn’t dealt with, one friend and one colleague I had issues with. I made a firm commitment, rather than letting it just slide by, and we just kind of not deal with it directly, exactly how I do that [is] as soon as I could get to them and sit down and talk about it.
Once I made that commitment that I knew I absolutely would keep—not just saying the words, but one I knew I would keep—my back started to feel better. Within a few days I was back at work, two months later I was skiing out in your territory, in Colorado. I was feeling better and better, all the while. Then a few years later when I went to my routine physical, which I do every three or four years—not to go find out what’s wrong, but to prove to myself how healthy I am; I think that mental state makes a difference too. Anyway, the doctor insisted on tacking a chest x-ray. I said, “I know my lungs are healthy.” I said, “Because I breathe fine, I’ve always done a lot of breathing exercises.” He said, “Yes, the radiation is not so bad anymore, I’ve got new equipment.”
So he talked me into it, now I’m glad he did, because he came back out afterwards saying, “Henry your lungs are fine.” I thought, “Yes I knew that, but I’m glad to hear that confirmation.” Then he started to stammer, “Bu, bu, bu—but that disk of yours.” I thought he was about to say something negative and frighten me for a moment. Then he said, “It’s a miracle.” Then of course I knew it wasn’t fearful. He says, “That disk is totally restored. That’s not supposed to happen.” That was the one that convinced me, but what it made me aware of here, how I know the tool to use—since I was doing that thing with my colds decades before—but the ego mind that we all have in us as human beings would not let me take that learning and transfer it to anything else and use it.
That’s the ego mind. It always tries to deceive us, and keep us in pain and suffering, and keep us away from health and happiness and joy and peace and success, and everything else. It’s the voice that just speaks loudest and first all the time. Anyway, I realized I’d let that voice rule, and that came to be actually a very critical changing point in my whole life. Of course, these two things sparked off this whole system that’s behind this book. That I learned from my own experience, one little thing like colds, that were horrible and repetitive, and a bigger one like a back where I might not walk again and a degenerated disk. To find that my thoughts could override that degenerated disk, and it could regenerate.
What I learned to confirm that, as I studied quantum physics with David Bohm and then as I read many books since and studied about others, I’ve learned that from this new science, it’s not matter that rules the universe, but it’s consciousness. Consciousness rules over matter, not the other way around, though most of us thinks it’s the other way. As long as we believe the other way, we feel like powerless victims of whatever in our lives. Once we shift the other way, we see the power of our consciousness and how that works.
That same thing has been voiced throughout spiritual traditions from way, way back. Now the new science of the last 100 years is corroborating that. Like in spiritual wisdom, like Jesus said, it’s your faith that made you whole, “No I didn’t heal you, no, it was your faith, that was your belief.” Or whatever it is that worked for you. Or he said, “If you have faith as much as a grain of mustard seed, you can say that mountain over there be moved into the sea, and it will be so.”
I always struggled with that one, but now as I study quantum physics, and I know what happens with atoms in the laboratory upstate in New York where they first started experimenting with crushing an atom. We think our bodies are full of atoms and this desk in front of me is full of atoms, and so on. Well, what happens when they crush the atom? All they find is a spark of energy and information. There’s no matter there.
That’s a very different worldview than we all live in. It’s a worldview that’s been present for centuries in most spiritual systems. Now it’s been present for 100 years in the new science of quantum physics. There’s a whole world available to us that can lead us toward being in charge of our health and our happiness, that we just never realized much before, most of us. It took me a long time to get it.
TS: Now Henry, hearing those personal stories, it’s very compelling, and I’m really glad that you shared them, especially the degenerative disc healing story. I want to go in more to these seven questions, and the process you’ve developed for people to work with when they have a symptom. But before we do, I have to ask you a question.
HG: Sure.
TS: I’ve met—and one of the things I appreciate about you, Henry, is that you are fine being challenged, it’s no problem. You want to talk about these ideas in a very open way. I just want to begin by saying I really appreciate that about you.
HG: All right.
TS: OK, so here’s my question. I’ve met people who seemed to me to be very evolved, and free, and who are really willing to do the deep inner work, and yet they still seem to have a physical challenge in their life.
HG: Well they’re human, aren’t they?
TS: Yes, and so help me understand, even if somebody says, “I’m going to apply all these processes, do this work, and I still end up with lots of physical pain,” let’s say, does that mean I’ve failed at really getting to the deep, unconscious beliefs that are affecting my health? Or is it possible that there’s some other kind of mystery going on in the universe that we don’t always understand about illness?
HG: Well I’d always want to be open to that possibility, because I’m always curious to keep growing and learning. On the other hand, I doubt that there’s anybody here on Earth that is perfect in this, and doing the self-healing and being aware of it. I know I’m not. I’ve done it many times, I’ve done it other times too in very dramatic ways that I could share, but that would maybe take up too much time here. But there’s some times when I’m not—like I wasn’t able, for example, to get in touch with what was going on with, I had a hernia, so I had it repaired surgically. There are various times when I’ve resorted to having some other kind of traditional medical intervention.
Like, I spent a lot of time in the sun when I was younger, water-skiing and sailing and windsurfing, and baked in the sun. Well, I’ve had two or three little basal cell [carcinomas] in my body. I had one up on my nose next to my eye. I thought, “Well, I could do maybe self-healing here, but it’s so close to my brain and to my eye ,I don’t want to take the chance on waiting until I might get that worked out.” So I had it surgically removed. What I’m saying is that—and I’ve worked at this thing of self-healing, as you know, for decades. I’m still not perfect at it. There are things that I would miss, or can’t quite get to. More and more of the time I can get it, but I think no matter how experienced—or you use the word even “evolved”—one might be, they’re still human.
We all in our human state are not perfect and embracing fully our total intrinsic power. We all have our blocks or barriers. It’s not to feel guilty about it, it’s just to recognize that’s part of the human condition. We’re never to blame ourselves, like a lot of people look at, “Gee, I created this illness, I must be a horrible person.” The ego mind wants to come in and have them feel guilty or blame themselves. No, that’s never any good. The whole part is, if I created something negative, I also have the power to use that same power to make the positive. That’s the way we need to approach it, and just continue to be curious.
If we can’t get to it, or if it’s more life-threatening, by all means, use a medical intervention. Not to be like some of these extreme Christian Scientists who let their baby die before they take a child to a doctor. We’re not talking about that kind of thing; we’re thinking about letting ourselves embrace our power to transform our lives. Whether it’s success in business, whether it’s in relationships, whether it’s in our thoughts and how they make us feel emotionally, or whether it’s to do with physical symptoms. All of it is just embracing more of our power to realize “I have more power and control than I think I have.”
TS: I guess I’m thinking of not so much the person who says, “I tried these self-healing techniques, they didn’t work, so I’m going to use a traditional medical intervention.” I’m thinking of the person who’s tried everything. They went to all these different healers, whether they’re alternative, integrative, or Western medical. They’ve tried to do the self-healing work, and they still find themselves suffering in some way.
HG: Well I think there are at least two answers, maybe more to that. I think one is maybe they just—when we are seeking from healers all to solve the problem, I’m not seeing my internal cause; I’m really counting on power to be outside myself. There’s nothing wrong with our doing that—we’ve all done that, and there are times to do that. But it may mean that they’ve given more emphasis to seeking the cure as being outside, rather than inside. That happens very commonly. Then of course there’s another dimension too there, that we don’t really know all the things that we’re here for. Many spiritual traditions think of it as we’re here like in a university, as a place to learn and grow, and we have our challenges, and those are all things for us to learn from.
Or people who believe in past lives believe we bring things in there, and that we’re replaying that here, and we need to get in touch with it. It’s so complex—who knows, for somebody like the people you’re talking about, where that source might be? I just think of myself as I just need to keep being curious, and do everything I can and not blame myself if I can’t. If at some level I think maybe it’s my time to pass, I’ve done what I needed to do in my body, OK, maybe this symptom will help me across there. That may be what I’ll feel some day. It may be for others. I think of people like you’ve talked about who are very evolved spiritually but have died from some serious kind of thing. I’m not here to judge them, but I’m here to just say they may or may not have been able to get to what it was about. Or maybe there was some other purpose in the university learning they signed up for. Who knows?
TS: OK, I feel satisfied by that. Thank you Henry for addressing that potential mystery in the self-healing process, if you will—that we can’t be reductionist about it, is what I’m getting.
HG: Yes, and we may not be perfect at it, you know? We just may need to do it as much as we can, and gain a little more confidence as we do it. That doesn’t mean I’ve gotten perfect.
TS: Yes. Now let’s talk about our self-healing power, all the ways we can affect our health and understand what the psychological impacts might be from unconscious beliefs. First of all, you talk about unconscious beliefs in three different categories, I thought this was interesting. You talk about hidden beliefs we have, unresolved traumas, and then family downloads. I thought it would be worthwhile for you just to say a bit about these three different types of unconscious beliefs that could be affecting our health.
HG: Well, I would not call them the three, as actually three kinds of beliefs. I think of them as very different kind of components. I think a belief is a conclusion I’ve made about something, about myself, or about life. I believe I’m no good, or I believe I’m wonderful, or I believe I can get this done, or I don’t. Or my thoughts may carry that out, and so on. What you’re referring to as a download, I don’t think of that so much as a belief, because downloads are really just not conscious to most of us.
There’s an amazing example of that, that I like to keep in my mind to explain it. There was a German Shepherd dog I read about a few years ago who was pregnant, and she was running across a street and got hit by a car. Well she escaped with her life, but the car hit her hind legs, and broke both them, but it didn’t damage the puppies she was carrying in her belly. She, a few weeks later, gave birth to those puppies, and she could only walk around by pulling herself with her front paws, and dragging her hind legs. The puppies were totally healthy, but guess how they learned to walk? They pulled themselves with their front paws, and dragged their hind legs behind them.
I thought that’s typical of those two or three episodes that have been cited, one in Canada, one in Mexico, and I think one in the Far East about a baby that was found running, a child running with a pack of wolves, where a mother apparently had abandoned a baby in the woods. It was brought up by the wolves, and that child was running on all fours, and making wolf sounds when found. Those kind of things remind of what we call downloads. We all just download what’s there from our parents, without thinking about it. It doesn’t even involve the thinking that would turn into a belief, or a conclusion. We just do what’s there.
Like we learn a language: if we have a family that speaks two languages, we learn two from the very beginning, very easily, without even thinking about it. If we don’t know a second language, and start a new one at age 16, I’ve got to work my butt off to try to get that second language. The download is just what we naturally absorb. We do it about language, we do it about behaviors, about how to eat. Like we use our knives and forks here differently than some parts of Europe do, where they’ll use a knife to scrape food up on the fork. OK, that’s a habit for people who are British, or some parts of the continent of Europe. Nothing’s wrong with it either way, it’s just it was a download. They saw their parents do it, and they copied it.
We do that with all sorts of things, we’ll do it with—if my parent often gets sick about something. If it’s cold weather, and they believe the cold weather made them sick, they’ll get sick like their parents did. Or they’ll believe that “I’ll have to get the same illness my father did, or die from it at a certain age.” I had a classmate in graduate school who did that, he thought he’d die from cancer like his father did at age 55, and I learned a few years ago that he’d done that. That belief was powerfully strong, but that’s different from the download. The download is just the automatic kind of thing, the behavior that we soak up.
I think of one person who got very allergic to all sorts of things outside, would get allergic when playing sports, and if it’s springtime and the pollen is out. I discovered from that person, from the time he was young, his mother was afraid of almost every kind of thing outside. What might be happening, what the weather was like, whether he had on the right shoes or the right clothing. She was obsessed by that, and conveyed to him there’s great danger in everything out there. Well, what is an allergy but a miscommunication in our immune system that says something is dangerous that’s not to most people? It’s just a miscommunication, but it got programmed in somehow. That we’re powerless, and this cause is out there, or the danger is out there.
That’s the kind of thing that we need to look at, again not to blame ourselves, but to realize we just downloaded. One thing we can do is explore that in varieties of ways to see what downloads we might bring—what the parents did, what they didn’t do. What they believed, how they acted. How they treated us. All of that can affect what I just take in from them. Then it will also affect what I think and feel, or what beliefs I may have. Then of course we know too that trauma plays a major role in illnesses. That early childhood traumas, a lot of research supports how people who had early childhood traumas get serious illnesses in their early 20s. A very common correlation between those two.
Or we know that stress is reported—in the New England Journal of Medicine, and another one, the [Journal of the] American Medical Association, and so on—said that stress contributes to at least 80 percent of most physical symptoms. What is stress? It’s not so much what happens, it’s how we think or interpret what happens. What meaning we give to it. If I give a meaning to it that’s disturbing, then I’m going to be all worked up and have adrenalin flow like crazy, and cortisol flowing like crazy. Of course, that’s going to weaken my immune system. When my immune system is weakened, and then illness is going to occur more. Trauma plays a major role in the onset of illness.
We need to identify those, like we need to identify our beliefs that we carry. We need to identify the thought patterns that we have. We need to identify the downloads that we have, and attend to them differently. When we do that, we free up the energy for more health and happiness.
TS: Now Henry, I’m imagining someone who’s listening and is thinking of certain family downloads they’ve received, or perhaps some early family trauma in their life. They’re saying, “God, these things are so strong and entrenched, I don’t know if I feel powerful enough to override them. They seem to be so programmed in me already.” How would you respond to that concern someone might be having?
HG: I’m so glad you raised that one Tami, because I think it’s such a common response. We human beings, the two things we chase after most in the world are the two things we disown in ourselves most, love and power. We human beings chase after those as if both are outside, and think everything [else], or a person or this is what’s going to give it to me. When we have it all inside, but we all mostly disown so much of that. That’s a key part of what’s going on here, that we don’t embrace the power that we have, and we’re afraid to do it.
If we start—like I said before, if we discover that I might have contributed to my illness, instead of saying, “Oh, I’m so glad.” Like if you have some radioactive material in your house and you can’t find it. Finally you find a little box in the back of the closet. There you rejoice about it. You don’t beat yourself up for its being there. Just you’re glad you found it so you can get it out of the house.
I think this is the same thing. The ego mind would have us to quickly blame ourselves, and put ourselves down. That way we just disown our power again. We human beings do that incessantly; we disown so much of our power that we have, and see it as happening to us, happening to us. We’re a victim of this, this person did this, that’s what makes me unhappy. Not seeing, no, it’s my interpretation of what that person did. For example, if somebody is critical of me all the time, I could be upset because she’s always so critical, or he’s always putting me down, he’s always critical. Or, from a spiritual perspective, I could say well, we know that whatever is not love is coming out of fear. A person’s just seeking for love in some way. They’re not giving it, the opposite, they’re appealing for it in some way.
What if I see them that way? If I see them that way, I embrace my own power of love and compassion in the process. My body gets stronger, they’re probably affected in healthy ways by it—I see that all the time with people, how they affect others either direction. All of these are just ways of coming to realize that who we really are is one who has more power than we think we have. The more we can embrace it, the more we can use it. The less we embrace it, the more powerless and victimized me feel, the more depressed we feel, and the more anxious we feel, and the sicker we get.
TS: Now Henry, I want to go into this a little bit more, because actually this is one of the quotes I pulled out of the book, Your Power to Heal. The quote I pulled out is exactly what you’re saying, “Perhaps the two things we humans seek the most, love and power, are the two things we’re also most frightened of, because we have so much difficulty sustaining genuine ownership of them.” That’s the quote that I pulled out, and what I want to know is why are we so frightened of our love and our power?
HG: That’s a very good question, I don’t know if I know, or if anybody knows the precise answer to that. But I know that we seem to get—there’s a lot of evidence, and a lot of different people who are saying how we get so attached to our suffering, and somehow we want to hold onto it.
Like there was that Russian philosopher, Gurdjieff, who said, “You can call on human beings to make noble sacrifices for almost worthy cause, or you can ask them to give up almost any pleasure, but just don’t ask them to give up their suffering.” He was recognizing how attached we get to our pain and suffering. Somehow, that seems to be intrinsic to this human state, that we can get attached to things—the suffering of course is related to powerlessness. We can get attached to that kind of identity. Maybe it’s something we learn as kids, or maybe it’s just the human state, I don’t know. But we can certainly get caught up in it.
I find all the time, a lot of people are frightened of embracing their power, and just don’t want to approach it. Like this one guy who came to me years ago, actually a bright man, a dentist and very successful, and started talking about his symptoms. We started to explore a little bit more, he said, “No, no, no, I don’t want to go into that, I just want to go to the doctor and have him fix it for me.”
What I could see in that [is] no, he’s not ready to embrace his power and get to the cause, and to take back the reigns to the wild horses, so to speak, of the mind. It’s a human state that we all have to deal with, and never to feel guilty about it, or blame ourselves for it, but just to recognize we have more potential than we think we have. We have more power than we think, and we don’t have to keep disowning it.
If we can begin to see through that, that voice inside us, that ego voice that wants to think we’re separate from the all that is—that’s the voice that keeps us into guilt or powerlessness, and so on. That’s the voice that speaks over and over for every human being. That’s why it’s important to catch our thought patterns, and to catch thoughts that are not affirming ourselves, and ones that are judging or putting ourselves down, or feeling like we’re powerless victims or whoever, or whatever. If we can get past those thoughts, then we can be like Henry Ford’s famous quote, “Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” Hence we have the horseless carriage.
TS: Let’s got into this seven-step questioning process that you teach people, and that you work with yourself. If a symptom is present, and somebody wants to understand what’s underneath this aspect of my physical health—something’s emerging, maybe it could be something serious, or it could be a headache. The seven-step process, can you take us through it?
HG: Sure. Well the overall arching question of course, that’s underneath, that’s over the other questions, is why might I need this? That’s the tone for it, is to ask myself that question. Then the other questions are to help me break it down into some other part that’s easier to explore. Like I was saying before, the first question after that would be, what would it get for me? Well for some people, if I get sick it might get me love and attention. Or it might get somebody to really be present with me, and stay with me. Or it might get me from somebody else, it might even get me criticism, because they just got used to it, that’s what was programmed in in their childhood.
We could go on and on as to what one might get from the symptom itself. Or then the second question is, what would it get me out of doing? Well, maybe I don’t want to go on this trip to my in-laws this weekend, so if I get sick I won’t have to go. Or I’ve been over-worked, I’ve been not giving myself rest, so that’ll get me out of work. I can’t just choose it consciously, but I can have the sickness, and that’ll give me the excuse so I don’t have to go to work. Or it would get me out of doing something else that I don’t want to do.
Or, I think for example, in terms of it getting something for somebody, one common thing I found with a number of people who were diagnosed with MS, multiple sclerosis, that they had situations where as a child they often did not get love and attention from their parents, except when they were sick. That got programmed in—I have to be sick and dysfunctional in order to get love and attention. As long as that was programmed in, that would keep going. But I’ve seen if people are able to deal with releasing the trauma of not having been loved, but also find other ways they can engage people with loving interaction and attention—not that I get it out of them, but the way I’m being that just naturally let’s it flow—then I find often those symptoms just go away, they’re no longer needed anymore.
Then of course after “What would it get for me, what would it get me out of doing,” is what emotion is expressed in it? Like I found out in the yard that day, that my emotion of guilt that came out of my projection onto this neighbor was there, and that was starting to create my illness that day of the sore throat, which would go into the cold. Somebody else it might be some other emotion—it might be fear, it might be anger. Especially if somebody feels like “I can never show my anger, I’d be really beaten up, or I’d be rejected, or I’d be criticized, or I don’t know how to show it in a constructive way, or when I’ve done it it’s created problems.” That anger could go right into the body.
Or if it’s fear, if a person worries all the time, well, worry is always affecting the cells. I’ve often thought about writing a little book someday, even in terms of relationships, to write a book on “don’t worry at me.” People confuse worry with love—we think if we’re worrying about somebody it’s helping them. No, it’s the opposite, it’s sending negative energy. It’s harming the relationship and that person through the non-local mind. If I can send love instead, it’s a gift to myself, and a gift to the other person, and so on. That has to do with the emotions then, that can create strength in the immune system, or it can weaken the immune system.
Then another one, what metaphor might be expressed in the symptom? That’s another question. Who’s a pain in the neck? Or what’s the back-breaking thing I’m carrying? What is it I don’t want to see? Or, what’s heart-breaking to me? And so on. If we can use those metaphors, that can sometimes take us to what something is about.
Then, going beyond that would be, is there some trauma that I’ve not cleared? Most of us are carrying multiple traumas we’ve never cleared, because we aren’t taught in school how to do that. Only a few places I know, there are two or three schools where I’ve taught teachers and parents how to use these, and they report that it makes such a difference for them. That’s not taught in school, which would probably help students a whole lot more than just excessive forms of math they’ll never use. If they were taught how they can clear traumas and painful experiences, OK, that reduces the cortisol and adrenalin flowing all the time. It allows the frontal lobes of the brain to be more intelligent, and more creative. Wow, a simple thing like that just reducing the effects of stress and trauma, and it can have all these effects? Yes—much more health, much more intelligence, much more success, much more ease in learning. All of that can come from clearing those traumas.
Then another one would be to clear the negative beliefs, and what I’ve concluded about myself because I wasn’t loved consistently, well it must be something wrong with me. As little kids we do that; the parents are the gods when we’re little, so they must be right. If they’re upset with me, it must be something wrong with me. Must be my fault. So we’ll include a belief like that. Or I’m no good at this, or I can’t do that, or I’m not lovable, or nobody likes me. Then whatever that belief is, we’re going to attract confirmation of it, come hell or high water. Whatever I will believe will be an outcome, I’m going to attract it like a strong magnetic force field. That happens repeatedly for people— emotionally, work-wise, as well as illnesses.
Then of course the latter one is the downloads, like we talked about before. That if my mother would get attention by being sick, I might even copy that. Or if my dad thought “OK, if I bend this way, then I always hurt my back. Yes, well, OK, then I’ll start doing the same thing.” We’ll download what’s there. The good news is we download all the positive things too, but we also download the negative ones, without even thinking about it.
If we can clear that, and there are tools that we have there that I’m presenting here in the book, are tools we can use on ourselves, or we can use them with our friends, we can use them with family members. We can use them, or train our family members to guide us through them, or we join together and do joint clearings. All of those things where we touch or tap on the meridians, energy meridians, with the intention for releasing it. To do two, or three, or four, or five rounds of that around each issue, it’s amazing how much we let it go.
It’s sort of like if we recognize our brains really work much like the computer. If we think about it, the brain was a prototype of the computer. Our brains are actually—your brain Tami, or mine, we have more control or more memory in it than the largest mainframe on Earth. Everybody does, not just us. We forget that, and we think—when we think about how the computer works, we have to put in programs, and they stay there, and they make all sorts of outcomes for us. Sometimes it gets overloaded and the computer gets jammed up, and it breaks down. We have somebody go in and clean out some of the stuff on the computer, and the computer works well again.
OK, we can do the same thing, because the brain preceded the computer. If I can use some of these tools and the power of intention, which is what rules over matter—if I can use these tools with powerful intention to release it, then I can let go of some of that old programming. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s all permanent, because nothing is permanent in the physical universe but change, said the old philosopher, Greek philosopher, Paracelsus.
What we can do is treat it—I like to think of it as like what you do with a flower garden. First you pluck the weeds, then you plant the flowers. Then if you plant the flowers, some of the weeds are going to sprout up again now and then. What happens if I let them stay there? They multiply, and then they multiply, then they can take over the brain again. Take over the flowers again. On the other hand, if I plant my flowers in the spring time, and some weeds come up, I pluck them out. Next week I pluck out some more, and the third week or fourth week there are not as many there. I pluck those out, and by the fifth or sixth week it’s only the occasional weed that pops up.
That is exactly the metaphor that we can use about our own brains. As we keep that clearing and repetition of it, we get it cleared out, so we can keep that negative stuff out which weakens our immune response or attracts illness, and can do much more to keep ourselves healthy more of the time.
TS: OK Henry, I think I followed the seven questions, and really understood, I think, their implications, the depth of their implications if people are willing to do the work of really asking those questions, and seeing what the genuine answers are. I’m following the metaphors you’re giving about clearing, and I love the idea of thinking that I could go inside myself and hit delete, and just like I hit delete on my computer, that it would work. I realize I might have to delete again, or even I’m willing to go get my hands dirty and get in the garden, and pull the weeds, so I get the metaphors.
Can you give us right now an example of how we could clear something? Could we do something together for that person who’s not quite getting how they’re going to actually do it in an effective way in their life? Maybe somebody who’s listening has identified some—let’s just say it’s a family download. They know they’ve got it, it’s in them, and they know it’s affecting negatively their health, they’ve got it. How could they clear that? Is there a simple technique?
HG: Very simple technique, which is spelled out in the book, Your Power to Heal. Let’s just look at it then step-by-step. First of all, identify that oh boy, I’m doing exactly what my mother did, or my father did, I’m just copying that, I’ve got it now. Now I don’t want to keep that, so how do I let it go? First of all, we want to clear our barriers to letting it go. I find there’s a very simple little process we can use that kind of gets rid of the interferences to clearing itself, because if you’ve got a little stream and you want it to flow but it has some sticks or logs in there, the stream is not going to flow well until you get those out of the way. This little preparation helps the tool work better.
That would be a simple thing that I call the thymus heart rub. You just bring your hand up over the upper chest, and place it gently there on the upper chest. If you move it in a clockwise position, looking on from the outside, soothingly with your hand flat there. First of all, you’re doing a loving gesture. Then you say to yourself these questions—not these questions but these statements:
I deeply love and accept myself, even if I might think I don’t deserve to be free of this download.
I deeply love and accept myself, even if I might think it’s not safe to be free of this download.
I deeply love and accept myself, even if I think I’m not worthy of being free of this download.
I deeply love and accept myself, even if I’m afraid of letting go of this part of my old identity, I still love and accept myself.
Just that part is a good preparation, because that kind of gets the sticks out of the stream, so the stream can flow. If we don’t do that, sometimes there might be more resistance to getting the tool to work.
Then as a variation, a common thing that people know now is the EFT, which Gary Craig made very popular—took the Thought Field Therapy, simplified it into a simple process that people could use. That’s more widely know now by most people. That’s where you do some tapping on some acupressure points. I’ve modified that, I find it even more helpful is instead of tapping on the acupressure point, you place your fingers there just firmly and hold them. Then take big slow, deep breaths.
Now why do we do the breathing? Because it calms down the old limbic brain, the old survivor brain. It’s the one that pours out cortisol and adrenalin and the stress, and that’s where all the stuff about danger, and worry, and fear, and stuff gets encoded in there. We want to calm that part down, and one way we do that is by deep diaphragmatic breathing. I would suggest to people exhale fully and completely. Then inhale totally and deeply into the belly, then seeing if you can add a little bit more up into the chest. Then exhale totally and completely again, and then see if you can push out a little more. Not because you’re trying to do it perfectly, but because I want to make room for a little bit more oxygen for my old survival brain.
Just keep doing that. Then what I do is ask a person then, while they continue that breathing, focus on that download that you’re wanting to clear from your mother, or your father, or from both of them. “No, I don’t want to keep that any longer—I didn’t see it helping them, and I can see through it now, I don’t want to keep it myself, it just makes me sick. That’s a download I want to clear.” You hold your fingers up on the forehead, on the third eye. Focus on the memories or scenes that helped you create, or that were part of that download. What you saw, what you experienced, what was all around you, let those scenes be very vivid and clear.
Then with the thought that “Yes, I want to be free of those, I’m ready to release them,” bring your fingers slightly over the eyebrow, next to the nose, and say, “I now release all fear related to this download.” Take a full deep breath, exhaling totally. Inhaling deeply. Then say, “I release all fear about letting it go too.” Then exhale completely, and inhale deeply. Then under the eye, “And I release all anxiety related to this download.” Exhale completely, inhale deeply. As an aside, I just discovered in my eagerness to share this before the time is up, we skipped a spot on the outside edge of the eye. As your place your fingers there, say, “I release all anger, resentment, hatred, and rage related to this download.” Exhale totally, inhale deeply.
Then you would come to under the eye, as we just did. Then under the nose, “And I release all embarrassment related to this download.” Inhale fully, and exhale completely. Then with the fingers under the bottom lip, “I release all shame and guilt related to this download.” Exhale totally, and inhale deeply. Then under the arm, “I release all worry and obsessive concern related to this download.” Exhale completely again, and inhale fully and deeply. “I release any anxiety related to letting it go.” Inhale fully and deeply again, and exhale totally and completely.
Then bringing the fingers to the bottom of the rib cage—the exact acupoint for that, for both women and men is to put the fingers under the ribcage, but directly beneath the nipple, and say, “I release all hurt and sadness related to this download.” Exhale fully. You might even add too, “As I breathe out that hurt and sadness, I’m spewing it out into the stratospheres, because I don’t want it.” Inhale deeply. “All the hurt and sadness connected with those downloads I’m spewing out,” and inhaling deeply.
Then bring your hand up flat over the heart on your chest, just covering the heart. Exhale fully and completely all fear. Then breathe love fully and deeply, right straight into your heart, and as you breathe in that love, picture some scene that to you represents a purity of love. It might be something you felt towards someone, or from someone. Or you witnessed it between others, or it might be a scene that you’ve made up. If you haven’t had people that were loving towards you, you might make up a scene that would represent that. Let it be vivid and clear as you breathe love in deeply right into your heart. Exhale fear totally. Then bring your fingers up to the collarbone on one side or the other about where a button-down shirt collar would be, and just take a couple more deep breaths in conclusion.
OK, then we would pause there. I would ask the person to reflect on what they experienced while doing that. What memories or scenes came up related to that particular problem, that download? What emotions they felt with it, where they felt them in their body? What they feel now in contrast to what they felt before they did this? Then we want to evaluate on a 10-point scale how strong that download still is. If it was nine or a ten before, what might it be now? A seven or a six, or a five? Most of them will come down just two or three points at a time.Then we go back and repeat it again, and again, until we get it down to a zero.
Sometimes people can just do that genuinely just be reflecting on it. They can tell when it’s a zero. Sometimes they need somebody to muscle test them to get confirmation of it. If people do self-testing with the muscle testing, I find half the time it’s inaccurate, because the ego mind rules more, and wants to deceive us. Wants us to think something’s there when it’s not, or vice versa, or it’s cleared when it’s not. If we don’t have somebody to do the muscle testing we need to just keep repeating it until we’re pretty convinced we’ve gotten it all by the roots, and gotten it cleared out. That would be an example of how we might use one of the tools.
TS: Wonderful, thank you so much for taking us through that, Henry. That’s an adaptation of EFT?
HG: Yes, the Emotional Freedom Technique.
TS: You’ve adapted it and changed it slightly based on your own experience working with people?
HG: Right, adding the breathing, making the statements as to what emotion you release. Each of those emotions is what that particular acupressure point symbolizes as a negative one. For example, if I have somebody doing it and I touch the eyebrow, and they release all fear, then the outside edge of the eye, and I release all anger and resentment. Occasionally a person might say, “Oh my god, I didn’t realize how angry I felt about that.” It helps put them in touch with it, sometimes more consciously. Other times it just helps access whatever is there in that meridian, and is expressed in the body in that way. Then I’ve added the part below the ribs, which is not a part of EFT, because I think it’s so important to deal with feelings of hurt and sadness. Most of the different meridians used for the EFT don’t attend to that particular piece.
TS: Henry I have to say, I feel so inspired, actually, by your presentation and the way you’ve put so many different things together from quantum physics, to your work as a psychotherapist, to your study of energy psychology, to your own self-healing work. The book, Your Power to Heal, includes tremendous self-assessment exercises, as well as the clearing technique you just taught us, and several other clearing techniques. I just here at the end want to thank you for your sincerity, and for really pulling all of these strands together into what’s really a workbook for people to engage in their own healing process, if they’re interested and committed. As I mentioned, it’s challenging. You have to really want to get in there.
HG: You have to want to be free of your suffering.
TS: You do, exactly.
HG: Uh-huh.
TS: I think that’s an important note to end on—how can you encourage people in terms of “Yes, I want to be free of my suffering, but I also don’t know if I want to work that hard exactly, really?”
HG: Well one thing might be—I could just show you with a quick round of tapping. A person might come up and just thinking of that, tap on the eyebrow and say, “Even if I think there’s some benefit in hanging onto this problem, or this suffering.” Outside edge of the eye, “Even if I think there’s something it would get for me, or might protect me in some way to keep it.” Or under the eye, “Even though I’ve gotten so used to it, I’m not sure what it would be if I let it go, how would my life be?” Under the nose, tapping there, “But one thing I know for sure, I sure don’t enjoy the suffering, I don’t like what it does to my body, or to my life.” Under the bottom lip, “Yes, I’m just really convinced I don’t like what it does to any aspect of my life.”
Then on the collar bone, tapping there, and say, “That’s why I’m just totally rethinking this whole premise, I would rather be free of this suffering than to hang onto it, I just don’t see any benefit at all.” Then tap on the center and top of the head, “And I’m doing all this because I love and accept myself, and I want to be at peace, and I want to be healthy and happy. All because I do love and accept myself. Even if I have difficulty even saying those words.” Which sometimes people do. So, that in itself can kind of help make a person more ready to do it.
TS: Very good.
HG: That one is also spelled out in the book too, to be used there. A variation on the EFT, I call it.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Henry Grayson, he’s shared so much with us today, and if you’re interested and learning more and seeing illustrations along with instructions, step-by-step, to use these techniques and more, Henry is the author of the new book called Your Power to Heal: Resolving Psychological Barriers to Your Physical Health. Henry, thanks for your work, and thanks for being a guest on Insights at the Edge, thank you.
HG: Well it’s been wonderful being with you, and thank you for working with me on the book itself. I’ve appreciated you and your staff, and the fact that all of you are interested in these kind of things is very rewarding to me.
TS: Thanks everyone for listening. SoundsTrue.com, many voices, one journey.
