Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MIND
Decoding the Emotional, Psychological, and
Spiritual Messages That Underlie Illness
By
DEB SHAPIRO
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Copyright © 2008
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A great big thank you to the crew at Sounds
True—especially to Tami Simon and Alice Feinstein
for their inspiration and support, and to Nancy Smith
for her clear ear and technical expertise.
INTRODUCTION
Jenny was sixty-five when we met. She had broken
her hip three times in her life, always in the same
place and always because of an accident. The first
time she fell off a horse, the second time was in a
car crash, and the third time she fell down a flight
of stairs. The accidents were many years apart.
The first time Jenny broke her hip was two weeks
after her fiancé had died, when she was twenty-
one. She never married after this, but went to live
with her parents. When she was forty-five, her
mother died; a few weeks later Jenny had a car
crash and broke her hip again. When she was fifty-
seven, her father died, and a few weeks later she
fell down the stairs and broke her hip yet again.
Each time she broke her hip, the person upon
whom she was most emotionally dependent had
died.
—DEB SHAPIRO
Boulder, Colorado
2005
PART ONE
ONE
Switch roles.
If you want, you can now change places and repeat
this with your partner.
***
CHEMICAL SOUP
The truth is that you are little more than a chemistry
set. All your thoughts and feelings get translated into
chemicals that fire off throughout your body, altering
the chemical composition and behavior of your cells.
Hence a sad feeling will influence the cells of your
tear ducts and make them produce tears, or a scary
feeling will give you goose bumps or make your hair
stand on end.
9
SELF-PERCEPTION
In itself, stress is neither good nor bad. Rather, it is
how we respond or react to stress-creating factors
that makes the difference. Some people will respond
to pressure or crisis with an increased sense of
purpose. Others will respond with panic, denial, or
fear. Faced with a deadline, one may find it spurs
him or her on to greater creativity, while another
becomes frozen into inactivity.
23
***