“The
Power of Imagination in Healing”
Healing
My Deafness with the Power of Imagination
After
many years spent discovering and working with the natural regenerative powers of the
mind/body system, and learning how to heal myself using multiple
avenues of holistic practice, including engaging the power of the
Imagination, I realized that it had never occurred to me to try and
heal my hearing. Somehow
hearing and sight seemed to lay outside the realm of possibility.
The
hearing in my left ear was
gone
and had been gone since summer of
1984.
I
turned over in bed one summer night and discovered that I had no
hearing at all in my left ear. On one side I could hear all the night sounds
of summer in the woods of upstate NY, and on the other, nothing. No
one could explain what had happened and it was diagnosed as “Sudden,
Unexplained Permanent Hearing Loss”. This was the Medical
Diagnosis, which even the last doctor
I saw said was basically translated as “we don't know and there is
nothing we can do about it.”
It
was not a condition that lent itself to the use of a hearing aid. So,
over the many years I adapted to hearing with only one ear. As a
teacher of Holistic
Healing
I often found myself teaching large classes. One day one of the
students got upset because she said she was standing right next to
me, asked me something and I completely ignored her. One of my
assistants passed on this information. The next day, with an apology,
I announced my deafness to the class and said,”Please,
if
you are standing on my left, outside the range of my peripheral
vision, I will not hear you, so please tap me on the shoulder!"
I
decided that I had absolutely nothing to lose by trying this method
of healing for the condition. And so I began.
First,
I realized that I had utterly accepted as unchangeable truth, my
deafness. I understood that I never thought about it except to struggle with the deafness, with the sadness of the loss, the struggle to hear in movie
theaters, restaurants, large crowds, over the air conditioning, etc.,
etc.
One day, in 2011, after reviewing my experiences in healing my
body of apparently "unhealable" things without the help of traditional
medicine or doctors, ie:ruptured vertebrae (1980,) bulging
disc
( 2007), chronic bronchial
pneumonia (1980's), I asked myself why I did not consider or trust that I
could heal
my
hearing? I
saw that I held a formidable belief that it was impossible, which of
course made it
impossible. I reflected
upon
the
conversation
between
Alice
and
the
White
Queen
in "Alice Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll,(
the
White
Queen is talking about the odd effects of living backward in time, so
that you remember
what
happened
tomorrow instead of
yesterday.)
"I
can't believe that!" said
Alice.
"Can't
you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try
again:
draw a long breath, and shut your
eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one
can't
believe
impossible
things."
"I
daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When
I was your age, I always did it
for
half-an-hour a day.
Why,
sometimes
I've believed as many as six impossible things
before
breakfast."
I
began,
therefore,
to
review how many impossible things I already not only believe but
actively practice, and
decided
that I would go ahead and choose to change my mind and believe that I
could heal my hearing, as
the
worst
that could happen already had and if it didn't work nothing would be
any different but if
it
did….
As
we know, there is really no way to turn off the left brain, and who
would really want to? We need it. Over
many years of working with dynamics the different functions of
the right and left hemispheres, I noticed one rather extraordinary
thing. If I simply say, “I am just using my imagination”, the
left brain goes to sleep. It does not believe in the imagination and
therefore does not react by coming up with 10,000 logical, rational
reasons
that I cannot do this that or the other thing.
So my first step was to announce to myself that I was “just going to
use my imagination, and imagine hearing.” My left brain's response
was in the realm of “ Great, go for it, good luck, so what.” No
obstacles, no logic, no rational explanations or reasons that I could
not do this.
And
so I began.
First, I looked at my functional habits of deafness. I started with the
physical
details.
The habit of always listening and turning my right ear towards sound,
with a continual slight sense
of
anxiety that I wouldn't
hear,
so
I observed the expectation of not hearing that was perpetually
active.
Then I felt the difference between my right and left ear.
It
was as if I did not have a left ear as I
could
not use it. My first action was to begin to “listen“ with my left
ear.
Literally,
I began to pretend that
I
could hear.
I began
to remember hearing, to imagine sound. I concentrated upon receiving
sound.
Any
sound, and I acknowledged
it. I
noticed that I always felt a constriction in the left side of my neck
and I began to work with
relaxing,
expanding and opening this
area.
In
addition, I also began to picture the nerves of the ear,
and
to look at anatomical photos and
drawings
as I had been told that it was the main nerve of
the ear that
had been apparently damaged. The
diagnosis for this type of hearing loss is explained by only
observing the effect, with no knowledge of the cause. The detail of
nerve damage coming from autopsy reports only.
When
my mind would say negative or judgmental things, or express
hopelessness or cynicism, I
would
simply acknowledge it and continue my practice of
hearing.
Sometimes
I would block my right ear,
just
to see if I could perceive any improvement. Many
months
went by with no perceivable improvement. I simply kept up the
practice.
Approximately
one year later, in
November of 2012, I
was
on a conference call, and had a sudden impulse to put the phone on
speaker and hold it to my left
ear.
When
I did, I thought
I could hear a sound,
as
if I was listening from a very
long
distance. I could hear sound
and
words, as if they were very, very far away,
but
could
not understand the words themselves. However,
I
was
hearing sound.
I
was
utterly stunned and amazed
and
slightly
unbelieving.
After the call I phoned my oldest friend and said,” I am going to
hold the phone to my left ear,
Please
yell
as loud as you can.” She did, and I heard
it.
Not
clearly, not understandably, but I heard the sound. (Good
Friends and what they will do for you !)
Once
I knew that the hearing was re-establishing itself, I began to expect
it to improve and it has. I
can now hear
conversations by covering my right ear,
and
listening only with my left ear.
I
can carry on
and
hear
conversations
in
restaurants
and
movie theaters
which
has
always
been
a
most
difficult
if
not
impossible
endeavor.
I
can lie on my right side in bed and watch a movie listening only with
my left ear.
I
would say that I now have about 60 to
75%%
of my hearing back and I expect it to continue
improving.
Recently
I was listening to a CD in my car,
one
that I have listened to for years. I had always
thought
that
a certain section was purely instrumental, when suddenly I heard
voices still singing. It was
only
coming out of the left speaker so until
that moment I
had never heard it before. I replayed it several times in
amazement
and
gratitude.
I
find this sort of thing happening now on a regular basis. I continue
to test myself and to
practice
hearing.
It
is now 2017 and I continue to test myself and notice my hearing. One
day I noticed that it did not seem as clear. I went back and began
again to focus and practice consciously hearing and again it has again improved.
I
feel that the process has allowed me to somehow circumvent the actual
disability, and use another pathway to hearing. It shows me that to
maintain this I need to exercise the process on a regular
basis
as the system very slowly begins to revert back to less hearing. In
other words, the damaged nerve still exists in its damaged form but I
have created a way to hear that engages the principle of hearing and
is supported both physically and through the power of manifested
imagination. I
believe it is similar to a kind of paralysis that will reoccur if the
muscles and nerves are not consciously mindfully exercised.
But
the truth us, I was deaf and now I am not. The Power of Imagination
in Healing.
