Beliefs are powerful. Beliefs can set a tone for certain realities to occur. Our bodies are very intelligent. They need to get their rest. They need to be pampered and feel good. If a thought comes along that says to the body, in order to get the rest you need, you have to get sick, and the body will comply. Beliefs and illness are connected. We all need to give ourselves permission to take a break and catch up on our rest.

We all have a choice about our health. Your mind and body are linked by an intricate intuitive circuitry. Notice the pattern of any recurring beliefs or emotions that occur before an illness. They may well be premonitions. Your body responds to the minds beliefs, conscious or unconscious. Thoughts such as this job is eating me alive, life’s not worth living, I’m scared to death, you’re giving me a heart attack, I’m so tired I feel like keeling over, all can transmit potent messages, even self-fulfilling prophecies to your brain chemicals, tissues and cells. We need to be aware of our thinking, notice when fear takes over, and begin to reprogram our thoughts.

Thoroughly search yourself for negative beliefs. Visualize health, not illness. Cultivate a growing optimism that replaces fear-based thinking with hope and empowerment. Now, I am not implying that positive thinking can be solely responsible for either promoting wellness or destroying it. Such notions are simplistic and misleading. What I am suggesting, though, is that your attitudes about health shape your capacity to achieve it. You must strive to be more loving with yourself to sustain the most nurturing biochemical and psychic environment in which to heal.

It is this quality of love that penetrates to an unspoken life within you, a divine microbiology. On a subliminal level cells speak. As you grow more open, listen with your intuition. Your blood goes back generations. You are not only the genetics you carry; you hold your entire ancestral history. The beliefs your mothers and grandmothers had about their health, the illnesses they experienced and how they dealt with them, still affect you today.

Recently, going through a safe-deposit box containing documents belonging to my parents, I came upon a piece of paper dated June 23, 1976. My mother’s name was typed in capital letters on the top. It was a pathology report. It said she had a malignant lymphoma. I froze, remembering the suffering this disease had caused her, reliving her death four years before. The loss of her, the unrelenting siren moaned right through me all over again. Was it so important to her for me to find years after her death? What was she trying to tell me? Yet there the notice was in the same stack of papers as my birth certificate, my report cards from grammar school (she must have kept every one), my first lock of baby hair. Lymphoma was one such milestone for my mother. And I couldn’t help but wonder, would it be mine also?

Our parent's beliefs about illness cast light on our beliefs about ourselves. My mother, herself a doctor and very brave, nonetheless defined herself by her ultimately terminal lymphoma, giving it even more power than it had. I realized it was vital to disengage from such thinking. The illnesses of our lineage do not have to become our own. It is critical not to feel obliged to inherit something that doesn’t belong to us. It is just as critical to be careful we do not misread the bond with our loved ones as including their illnesses. Genetics may dictate the transmission of a disease, but we can do much to break our intuitive link to such a process. Most important, notice your fears. It’s natural to empathize with what your loved ones are going through. Still, be careful not to over identify with their illnesses or the difficulties they have coping with them. Fear acts as a negative magnet. Do your best to let it go. Releasing fear offers it a reprieve. This alone could well liberate you from reliving even your relative’s genetic patterns.