The Creation of Health: Merging Traditional Medicine with Intuitive Diagnosis

A collaboration between a traditionally trained physician and a medical intuitive, "The Creation of Health" illuminates the deep connection between emotional dysfunction and physical illness. It describes the role that emotional disturbances play in the most common diseases and ailments, from influenza, the common cold and arthritis to diabetes, heart disease and cancer. After providing an introduction to intuitive medicine and its history, method of diagnosis, and relationship to traditional medicine, Myss and Shealy detail the deeper emotional and physical reasons why illness develops in the body. Dr Shealy offers a traditional account of a particular disease or ailment, while Dr Myss sheds light on the deeper emotional and psychic causes through her corresponding energy analysis. Confirming the link between illness and emotion, "The Creation of Health" puts forth a ground breaking vision of holistic healing.

Who can help asking "Why?" when they develop a disease? According to theologian and "medical intuitive" Caroline Myss, Ph.D., and co-worker C. Norman Shealy, M.D., who is a physician, neurosurgeon, and expert on pain and stress management, the answer goes further than a medical explanation. The Creation of Health explores the emotional, physical, and spiritual patterns that form health and the stresses that can cause disease.

Myss identifies eight dysfunctional patterns that lead to illness. Being aware that "negative attitudes create negative responses within the physical body" allows you to make changes toward health after identifying your emotional, psychological, and spiritual stresses. The most interesting chapters discuss specific diseases in terms of lifestyle factors, stress, and psychological patterns and energy factors, with case studies. A heart attack, for example, is "an explosion of energy attempting to break down an emotional barrier ... caused by warehousing fears and anger," says Myss. The authors alternate, rather than co-write, chapters and topics, so you know whose perspective you're reading. The theoretical sections are not easy reading, but the insights you can apply to your own health make the work immensely worthwhile. --Joan Price