The Healing Power of  Illness
Understanding What Your Symptoms Are Telling You
by
Thorwald Dethlefsen & Rudiger Dahlke

 

Synopsis:
This radical book deprives us of using illness as an alibi for our unresolved problems or unhealthy lifestyle. It reveals that the patient is not always the innocent victim of some quirk of nature or random event, but actually may be the author of his or her own sickness, disability or health problem. In this way Dethlefsen and Dahlke bring the metaphysical aspect of illness to the fore. From this viewpoint symptoms are seen to be bodily expressions of psychological or spiritual conflicts, able through their symbolism to reveal the patient's current problems.

This does not mean that all diseases and disabilities are psychosomatic, but that subtle risk factors can be involved which stem from our behaviour patterns or our attitude to ourself, other people or to life in general. This book opens us up to hope, inspiration, new approaches and a fresh look at ourselves drawing on the signposts of our physical or mental illness symptoms. Lessons can be learned and doors opened by this book!

Review by Benwarsop from Gloucestershire United Kingdom:
 
This is a profoundly challenging book!

It looks at our shadow-side, and says that illness is an expression of feelings or issues which we are not willing or able to express in any other way.

The basic premise is that every illness has a profound spiritual or emotional purpose.

There is a lot of stuff at the beginning about re-incarnation, which you can read or ignore as you see fit. And there is some fascinating, but not necessarily essential stuff about how the human mind tends to polarise things to oppostites (good-bad, black-white, richer-poorer, sickness-health).

But I find it hard to escape the underlying question which the book poses of why - if twenty people are exposed to a virus - do two specific people become ill? What is the difference in those two people which lets them fall ill?

There are a lot of other challenging questions which the book implies but does not explicitly pose. If a particular illness (which is a tool for expression) is expunged from the world, then how will people express the same thing in the future? This goes some way to explain the rise and rise of non-viral illnesses like cancer, and immuno-suppression illneses like AIDS.

This is a book which every health-worker, every therapist, every body-worker and every doctor should read. This is also a book for everyone who is dealing with every kind of illness.

It does not promise that if you 'understand' the emotional or spiritual cause of your illness you will become miraculously better. But it does help you understand and deal with your own illness in the context of your own life, and the illness of others in the context of theirs.

 

The Healing Power of Illness by Thorwald Dethlefsen & Rudiger Dahlke
 
New & Secndhand Used Copies for Sale - Order Pages:
UK & Europe     Canada     USA edition
All deliver world-wide   Currency conversion calculator
 

Related Health Challenge & Inspiration Books: