Marlo Morgan’s Mutant Message Down Under, the story of an American doctor who spends three months in the bush with Australian aboriginals. In one particularly powerful scene, a tribesman suffers a compound fracture of his leg. After a ritual that involves chanting and the application of a clotted blood salve, the man walks on his leg the next day, and the wound heals completely within five days.

If we believe the bodies have an inborn ability to heal itself, what if we have been interfering with it for so many decades- with Tylenol, antibiotics, steroids, and the like- that we have shifted expectations for just how rapidly and completely it can do so?

What if we shifted our culture mindset that believed more in the vital power of the body to heal, even spontaneously, rather than in one that believes we need man-made chemicals to override the bodies natural physiology thinking we have outsmarted it?

Not only do we have examples of natural healing from the shamans in aboriginal cultures with injuries as serious as poisonous creatures and compound fractures, we seem them in our world as well. When the Industrialized world begins to adopt some of these ancient lessons in healing we see similar results.

A fascinating example of this was carried out at Harvard Medical School, where patients with fractures were split into two treatment groups, each with X-ray studies over a 12 week period. One group was guided in healing hypnosis and the other wasn’t. The hypnotized group healed 2.5 weeks faster than the non-hypnotized group.

Another example comes out of UC Davis who took spinal surgery patients who had 45% less blood loss when they practiced a brief pre-surgical visualization technique. Mindset matters.

If we look to illness as a precursor to progress, as suffering for growth, it becomes less of something we want to force into submission. In fact, holistic pediatrician Larry Palvesky, MD explains the vital importance of childhood illnesses to the priming of the adult immune system. But because our culture mindset works to suppress symptoms over the long haul our immune system can now be disabled by a tick bite or a bout of mono. Again, something unheard of in jungle aboriginal communities where ticks and mosquitos are bountiful.

“In fact, I am certain, there has never been a doctor anywhere, at any time, in any country, at any period in history who has ever healed anything. Each person’s healer is within.” – Marlo Morgan, Mutant Message Down Under.