Any injury or illness is spontaneously cured when these naturally occurring self-healing resources are operating optimally. When you cut yourself, the wound heals automatically. When you have a sprain or bruise, it heals automatically. When you have a broken bone, the physician must set the bone correctly, but then nature heals it spontaneously. The famous sixteenth-century physician Ambroise Pare said, "I administered the treatment, but nature provided the cure."

A wondrous self-healing mechanism has been built into us by the architect of the universe from the beginning of human history. This remarkable gift belongs to every person from birth. Unfortunately, most people have not known about this gift; it has been a secret. You, however, have entered into the circle of individuals who will make this secret known. Freeing the potential of self-healing in your own life and sharing it with your family and community will have marvelous effects.

When our natural healing ability does not function automatically, something is terribly wrong. Our spontaneous self-healing resources have become damaged or disordered. Formerly, we lived in a world where the only solution to this problem was thought to require physician, hospitals, medicines, and tremendous expense. Now we know that the best, easiest and least expensive cure is to rehabilitate the automatic healing capacity through self-healing methods. The simple practices of focusing on the breath, applying self-massage, gently moving the body, and deeply relaxing bring the natural relationship among the body, mind and spirit back into balance.

Spontaneous self-healing ability is not a dramatic new scientific discovery. Nor is it a "New Age" phenomenon. Many techniques and methods for self-healing are quite ancient. There are potent messages in the Judeo-Christian traditions regarding the healing resources that we have within ourselves. In China and India, as well as in Africa, ancient America, Australia, and Europe, rich traditions of self-care and self-healing have existed since long before written history. One of the first things I learned about in the study of Traditional Chinese Medicine was Qi, which is the name for the medicine within. The process of cultivating the medicine within is called Qi Gong.

The Essence of Self-Healing
Three areas, all based on personal choice and personal action, maximize the activity of our naturally occurring self-healing capability. The first is our choice of attitudes and mental influences. When we choose to think, believe, and act from a position of power, refusing to be a victim of circumstances, the healer within is automatically strengthened. When we refuse to live under the influence of worry and doubt, the internal medicine is enriched.

The second area of choice is lifestyle: nutrition, exercise, rest, relationships, finances, work, spiritual practice, play, water intake, avoidance of alcohol and cigarettes, and so on. From moment to moment, each of us personally elects whether to enhance or sabotage the healer within through our behaviors and personal choices. In my practice of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, I have found that the people who dislike their work, don't take time to play, or have poor self-esteem and communication skills are typically the most difficult patients to treat successfully. In such cases, the acupuncture often activates the healer within, but then the person's life situation tends to neutralize the self-healing capacity.

Around 1983 at the Health Action Clinic in Santa Barbara, we began to redesign our health care delivery and the flow of our clinical activities. This led to the development of a program that focuses in a holistic way on attitudes and lifestyle. This program, now called PHASES, assists people in making better choices in their attitudes and lifestyles and in reaching for greater health, mastery of stress, and improved personal effectiveness. It is complementary to the natural healing modalities of acupuncture, massage and herbal medicine. It rests on the idea that people improve in "phases," rather than all at once.

We have found that patients, corporate employees, teachers, bankers and athletes are always genuinely excited about improving their health and performance. Healthy people have more fun and have the creative energy to respond to new opportunities. Healthy people have energy left after work so that they can balance their life with play. High-performance people have the vitality and endurance for dynamic living. They often make more money. Who would turn down the chance to feel better, be healthier, or have more energy?

The third area of choice is personal self-care - the practice of self-healing and health enhancement methods. This area of choice for improving, sustaining, and ensuring the function of the healer within is the primary subject of this book. The self-applied health enhancement methods (SAHEM) and the attitude and lifestyle program (PHASES) are like brother and sister. They complement and enhance each other. The interaction of these three choice areas - attitudes, lifestyle, and self-care - is becoming and will remain the foundation of health care and healing deep into the twenty-first century.

To accelerate our naturally occurring healing capability is actually quite easy. Once we replace the idea that health improvement comes from external sources with the knowledge that healing can come from the healer within, the practice of self-applied health enhancement methods is simply logical.

The Four Essential Methods
In addition to following basic guidelines in the areas of attitude and lifestyle, each individual can learn and practice four simple self-applied health enhancement methods that activate the natural medicines that we produce within. These are ancient practices. After many centuries of correction and improvement, they have become highly refined tools.

These techniques are easy to learn, are easy to apply, require no special knowledge or training, and can be practiced daily by all people (sick or well) with little impact on their time or energy. In fact, they will actually produce both time and energy. The methods create time because they reduce or eliminate fatigue and forgetfulness. They generate energy because they enhance and regenerate the functioning of the organs and glands, and this produces the physiological energy needed for activity and endurance.

The time spent applying these methods will be returned, even multiplied, by your growing ability to generate abundant personal vitality, balance, and well-being. You will waste less time and need less sleep. For every fifteen minutes of health enhancement practice, done faithfully for a period of days, fifteen minutes less sleep will be required, fifteen minutes less time looking for lost keys will be needed, fifteen minutes less insomnia or depression will be experienced, fifteen minutes less pain relief from over-the-counter pain medications will be necessary, fifteen minutes less time will be spent in the waiting room of the doctor's office or clinic.

In recent years, thousands of people have learned the simple methods presented in this book. Many have experienced dramatic health improvement, sometimes very quickly. There are some cases where people have felt better in the first ten to fifteen minutes. With a week or so of repetition of the methods, most people are able to feel a definite shift in their body within just a few minutes of beginning their daily practice. In many cases, individuals have experienced "being better" in as little as ten to fifteen days. Everyone who has been vigilant with these simple practices has experienced some level of health improvement. The key word here is vigilant.

There is an Energy
I have had the opportunity to share the health enhancement and self-healing methods with people in immensely varied situations - with health seekers at the clinic, with lecture and conference audiences, even with troubled individuals whom I have met on airplanes and commuter trains. In every case, when people break through to an experience of self-healing, it produces a powerful enthusiasm.

There is a dynamic energy in this enthusiasm that is tangible. And it differs from just interest or gratitude. Enthusiasm is actually defined as "inspiration from a divine or celestial source." Sometime around 1985, after fifteen years of my own practice, I found myself awakening to the possibility that the energy I was experiencing was an actual force that could be purposefully directed.

When this same energy is multiplied in groups, it becomes enchanting. It is discernible yet subtle, like a magnetic field.

Through my study of Chinese medicine I have learned that life and health are driven and sustained by a mysterious energy, the Qi. I had been assuming that this energy was within the person, and that it could be affected by acupuncture and enhanced by self-healing practice. But then it became clear that the energy is not just within us. When I began to experience this energy with groups, it became not only a force for investigation but a source of enchantment and a promise of something profound. I am sure that this energy has potential that we have only just begun to discover.

The Qi is multiplied when people practice personal enhancement together in a group. Here is the moment of wonder; this is the sweetest, most spectacular possibility: as we move toward an understanding of the nature of "healing fields," we may find ourselves able to cooperate to produce healing potential that will help us to benefit one another.

Thank You, Dr. Einstein
A series of radical scientific breakthroughs that began with Albert Einstein help to lend credibility to the possibility of the "healing field." His general theory of relativity demonstrated that matter and energy - stuff and nonstuff - are interchangeable. This was in 1915, a long time ago. Unfortunately, this powerful information was used to build the atomic bomb, but it also has many benevolent applications, which include healing.

Among the many findings that have sprung from Dr. Einstein's original discovery is the concept in quantum physics that events can occur as either particles or waves. We have a refined sense of the particle world. Particular events can be seen, measured and weighed. We have a less refined sense of events that manifest as waves. Electricity and magnetic force, as examples, are difficult to perceive, measure or weigh. As another example, scientists discovered only fairly recently the energy (waves) that causes the heart to beat, but the heart itself (particles) was discovered thousands of years ago.

This is why medicine based on chemical drugs and surgical procedures, both of which address parts (particles), has a long history in the Western world, while energy medicine (waves), including acupuncture and homeopathy, has only recently gained favor. Our particle self has an "edge" or boundary; that is, it is local, substantial and differentiated from others. Physicists who explore "relativity" and "quantum" physicians have found that the wavelike or energetic aspects of ourselves are not separated in the same way; they are unfixed or undetermined. Our wavelike nature does not have an edge or boundary, is not limited to being local, is not substantial, and is not clearly differentiated from others.

Is disease an expression of our particle self or our wavelike self? The Chinese insist that disease is caused by a disharmony in the body's energy system, the wavelike self. Even Western science is clear that the heartbeat is an electrical discharge, that nerve impulses are ions discharging, and that the rate of movement of molecules through cell membranes is modified by energy changes. Can we help to heal, potentiate, or empower each other? Millions of Chinese believe that we can, and quantum science suggests that this notion from Chinese medicine is relevant and real.

Possibility Formula for Producing a Medicine Among Us
This is a formula for something quite profound, a kind of blueprint for magic:

Personal practice generates creative energy, a field. The field effect is multiplied among all who practice. The field is an influential force. This influence heals. It is benevolent.

This concept is charged with potential. Excitement about these possibilities produces enthusiasm, which is an aspect of our wavelike nature. Enthusiasm connects us with the "divine," the "unfixed," and the "as yet undetermined." This multiplies the potential even more. Our intentional practice may link us to a wavelike field of possibility that could bring healing and virtue into the world. The potential of this concept is phenomenal.

Is it possible that there is a nearly magical energy "field" that we influence while having the fun of doing our health enhancement practices? The answer appears to be yes. Why aren't we using this? Even when people do their practices individually, they multiply the potential for the whole. In addition to its application to healing, this energy can be used to redesign our lives, mend and rejuvenate our communities, and even transform our world.

Roger Jahnke, OMD, has been practicing acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine for more than twenty years. He is the director of Health Action in Santa Barbara and is a trainer and consultant to hospitals, corporations, and community agencies. An internationally known speaker on self-healing, Tai Ji, and Qi Gong, Jahnke has led numerous tours to China for both health care practitioners and the general public. His work has appeared in both popular and professional journals, as well as numerous books on the emerging "new" health care system.