BERNIE By Bernie Siegel, MD


one presentation exposing parts of my body to make people aware of how they felt about their own bodies. It was interesting to have people, who I thought had nice looking bodies, come up and tell me I could do that because I looked good. It was sad to hear how they viewed themselves, versus how I saw them.


Body and Soul N


Today I feel much more strongly about getting in touch with and exposing our souls. We need to respond to our souls and live a soulful life. I can’t put into words how I would defi ne soul but it contains our spirit and our deepest needs and meanings related to our life and how we live it. And too often we never speak about the needs and meanings until a crisis or disaster occurs to awaken us to life. I think we know when we are living a soulful life by how our bodies and particularly our hearts feel in relationship to what we are doing, thinking and feeling.


I recently received a book from a therapist who is treating someone with what we commonly call multiple personality disor- der. Jung discussed, and I am convinced, that we are all multiple personalities. I know, and so does my wife, from the way I behave that things come out of me that I cannot explain. As my wife says, “They come from God knows where.”


So I fully accept that within me reside many individuals. For- tunately for me, because of how I was raised, the majority are nice guys who enjoy helping people. When you grow up with abuse there are many multiples who are the suffering child or vicious killer striking back at the painful world of their early life.


I was wondering, when you massage people do you really


know who you are massaging or which of the multiples needs the massage but doesn’t get it because a more aggressive personality wants it and takes over the body being massaged. I am not kid- ding when I say these things. I know from experience and reported cases that one personality can have allergies, diabetes, asthma and other affl ictions within the same person and a shift to another personality eliminates the disease.


Let me present you with some new words which may help 34 Essential Living Maine ~ May/June 2015


you remember this message. I create these words regularly. I must admit that most of the time they come from accidents on the key- board of my computer or some other personality doing the typing .


ot too many years ago there were a series of conferences entitled, Body & Soul. I always felt people were more like- ly to bare their souls than their bodies and I did at least


The fi rst relates to your work and is MEASSAGE. It says to me that there is a message in our touch. In other words every massage carries a precious message. I was rereading The Anatomy of Love edited by Ashley Montagu in 1975 and again was so impressed by the power of touch to communicate love and how its absence led to an almost 100% mortality rate in orphanages of the last cen- tury when caregivers were fearful that their touch spread infections from infant to infant.


The next word is GGOD and to me that means doing Good things as our creator would want us to do them. In a sense, as they say, what is important is not to know God but to imitate God and when you do Ggod things you are doing just that.


Then there is LIOVE. For me that is living and loving. Those


two things should never be separated but mankind is a problem due to its lack of completeness. Remember this is not about trying to be perfect but being complete. Again I would say that is soul work and when you are complete your life will be about living and loving. Then a bit of publicity for my book 365 Prescriptions For The Soul. It contains 365 messages similar in a sense to what I write here but at the end of each I place a SOULUTION. Not a solution which I see as something on a more practical level but a Soulution which will give you and your life deeper meaning and satisfy the feelings your heart and soul yearn for. When you fi nd your Soulu- tions, spread the Meassage, do Ggod works and Liove, your body and soul will fi nd atonement or as someone within me spells it; At One Ment with you know who.


For many, Dr. Bernard Siegel-or Bernie, as he prefers to be-


called-needs no introduction. He has touched many lives all over- the Planet. In 1978, he reached a national and then international audience when he began talking about patient empowerment and the choice to live fully and die in peace. As a physician who has cared for and counseled innumerable people whose mortal- ity has been threatened by illness, Bernie embraces a philoso- phy of living and dying that stands at the forefront of the medical ethics and spiritual issues our Society grapples with today. Read Bernie’s regular blog posts on his website where you will also fi nd his books, articles, and CDs: http://www.berniesiegelmd.com. See ad on page 41.


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