Issue 11 April 2011
Quantum Q
You identify one of the core types of healing stories as the creation story, meaning both the story of the creation of the disease or illness
and the creation story that can inform healing. What’s the importance of creation stories to both the onset of the disease and its possible healing?
L M-M: My question to people is often, ‘So, how do you think this happened?’ It could be cancer, arthritis, asthma. ‘How do you think you got it? How do you think it came to you? What happened?” Everyone has a theory about how they got it. There are so many explanations. They might say, ‘Well, I got arthritis because my mother had arthritis and everybody in my family has arthritis and I’m not different. It runs in my family.’ Or sometimes people say, ‘Well, it’s genetic. I was doomed to get this.’ Or they could say, ‘Well, you know, I had Lyme’s disease and it weakened me and now I have chronic spirochetes in my blood.’ All of the stories that people bring are true for them where they are, and they have equal validity to my story about how they got sick. In medicine, we don’t actually know why people got sick or why they get particular illnesses. We [physicians] have our own stories also, and we like to believe that if our stories are absolutely correct that will change everything. But if I want to help you then I have to start with your story about how you got sick. Then there is the second story, which is the story we will produce together, the story about how you can get well. So the getting well story has to be at least as plausible to that person as the getting sick story. No one does anything unless it matches their story.
Q
Can you give us some examples of how a client’s story fostered healing?
L M-M: Absolutely. I’ll tell you the story of a person with multiple sclerosis. It’s a remarkable story because this person managed to misplace his multiple sclerosis! He’s not still looking for it–he’s given up on finding it! He is a nurse and when he began to have some difficulty walking, he suspected what it was. He went to a neurologist, had an MRI scan, it showed the plaques and the diagnosis was made. But he had a different kind of story about healing. Because he had been exposed to alternative medicine and
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traditional [indigenous] healing, he believed that it was possible to get well–even if the neurologist said it wasn’t. And that’s an important story to have. It doesn’t’ always come to pass. But if you believe the story that you can’t get well, then it’s really hard to get well! But he believed that it was possible. And he went on a retreat to create his own story about how come he had gotten sick. He sat with himself and reflected on the question, ‘How is this helping me?’ He came up with a list of ten ways multiple sclerosis had improved his life: it made him more compassionate, he had more respect for people with mobility problems, he had greater patience, and so on. And then he thought, ‘Maybe multiple sclerosis is a guest, and not a permanent dweller in my house. Maybe it came as spiritual teacher. It’s like a houseguest, and when the refrigerator is empty, he’ll leave my house. I better talk to it. If I learn everything it wants to teach me, then it will not have reason to stick around.’ So he used poetry to open a series of dialogues with multiple sclerosis. And eventually he came to the feeling that he had learned everything it wanted to teach him. He had stopped deteriorating and was feeling stronger. But because he had such a strong belief in traditional [indigenous] healing, he decided that the next step was to have a ceremony with a traditional healer. So he sought one out, stayed in the village, did odd jobs and helped them out, and eventually qualified for the healing ceremony. He came home and continued to get stronger and stronger and now there are no signs of the multiple sclerosis.
So he has a story about how he got sick that has to do with a memory of asking for spiritual teaching and that the universe had heard him and it sent multiple sclerosis and he got what he needed. He mined multiple sclerosis for what it was worth and then it left. Now most of my colleagues would say that he’s insane. That guy’s nuts! But he doesn’t have multiple sclerosis anymore. My colleagues would say that he must have been misdiagnosed. But his neurologist, who practices at UCLA, he’s a professor of neurology, probably knows what’s he’s doing. The scan was read. I think they know what they’re doing at UCLA!
Quantum Health 9
HEALTH
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