The Worst Is Over

If you are not certain that the worst is, in fact, over—if, for instance, another earthquake or after-shock threatens to rumble through the building—you can still claim, “The worst is over for now,” and reap the physiological benefits of that calming statement.

there is one magic sentence that opens the door to rapport in acute situations: The worst is over.

Without rapport, suggestions for healing are not accepted as readily, possibly not at all. The greater the rapport, the more likely your suggestions will be internalized. Once we establish rapport, we can go right ahead and say, “You can relax now,” and people can comfortably comply. If there is no rapport, that suggestion can be annoying and count

Reminding people of times in which they were happier, stronger, more loving can bring those times into the present and, with them, some of the qualities they may have forgotten they had. When you encounter someone suffering emotional or physical distress, and you can facilitate a positive age regression, you can begin to use Verbal First Aid in rem

An altered state is like fertile soil.

Mind/body medicine, which includes psychoneuroimmunology, neurolinguistics and medical hypnosis, sees the human being as a complex network of energy. In her book The Quantum Self, physicist and philosopher Danah Zohar writes, “The mind/body duality in man is a reflection of the wave/particle duality, which underlies all that is. In this way, human

We are the only known species who dies on schedule: more people die on Monday between 8 and 9 in the morning than at any other time and day of the week. Why is that? Could it have anything to do with the stress of going to work? And how do we explain the data showing how death peaks in Christians the day after Christmas and in Chinese people the da

In his book, Unconditional Life, Dr. Deepak Chopra cites the example of two people riding on the same roller coaster. The rider who is terrified creates stress hormones, which over time will cause his immune system to weaken. The rider who is exhilarated by the roller coaster ride produces a flood of chemicals, among them interferon and interleukin

In the American Journal of Health Promotion, Dr. Wallerstein (1992) makes the case that a sense of powerlessness or “the lack of control over one’s destiny emerges as a broad-based risk factor for disease.”