In This Article
Cancer and Emotional Healing
What if we can aid ourselves in cancer treatment by way of emotional healing? Many years ago, one of the most consequential researchers from the National Institutes of Health came to my Ayurvedic clinic for a week of meditation, rest, detox, and rejuvenation. There, I was able to pick the brain of Dr. Candace Pert. She is the author of Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine. In this book, she argued that there are molecules in the body that physically correlate to emotions, creating a biochemical bridge between thoughts, feelings, and physical health that laid the foundation for the field of psychoneuroimmunology.
Dr. Pert’s Research on Emotion-Linked Spontaneous Remissions
Dr. Pert proposed that the body’s communication system is not solely dictated by the brain. Instead, it’s also controlled by a vast network of neuropeptides and receptors that exist throughout the body. Basically, if you think about or feel something, neuropeptides carry this message to every cell of the body, including the immune system. Based on the emotional charge (positive or negative) of those thoughts and feelings, the immune system can be strengthened or weakened––thus the title Molecules of Emotion.
Her research challenged the ethos of a split between the body and mind. She suggests that healing, particularly of complex diseases like cancer, requires a more integrative approach. She advocated for the idea that unresolved emotions and chronic stress could contribute to illness by disrupting cellular communication and weakening the immune system.
While Pert did not claim to have a direct cure for cancer, she highlighted cases where emotional release and psychological healing appeared to coincide with physical recovery and spontaneous remissions. These observations have inspired a broader acceptance of complementary therapies, such as yoga, breathing, meditation, biofeedback, and emotional release techniques, in cancer care and chronic illness management.
Her work continues to influence modern integrative medicine, promoting a more holistic view of health—one where healing is as much about biology as it is about belief, emotion, and consciousness.
See also Quantum Healing and Ayurveda: Restoring Balance at the Subatomic Level
Ayurvedic Quantum Healing
As Dr. Pert suggested that a disruption of cellular communication is the cause of illness, Ayurveda echoed those beliefs, adding that cellular communication takes place on a much more subtle, even quantum level. What if an intelligent field of consciousness weaves the body’s many parts into one unified whole?
According to Ayurveda, consciousness pervades everything, and when the body or its parts become disconnected from consciousness, death or disease ensues. This disconnection between the underlying cellular intelligence as consciousness and the body is often caused by stress, emotion or trauma. While such a disconnect can occur at any time in life, we are most vulnerable to them in the first five years of life. Studies show that 95% of the things we think, say and do come from impressions made in the first five years of life when the brain is doing less thinking and more feeling. If these impressions are traumatic, they can create unconscious and destructive behavioral patterns for a lifetime.
Ayurvedic Pathophysiology of Disease:
--> Ayurveda proposed that trauma or emotion is first felt in the heart (sadhaka pitta) and then carried to the brain (via prana vata) and then written into the storage place of emotion (called tarpaka kapha). This storage place of emotion records the memories in the white matter of the brain that may be needed in the future for species survival.
Self-Awareness and Self-Healing
Ayurveda suggests that if the majority of our behavior is based on childhood impressions, then most of us are functioning unconsciously and don’t know it. Ayurveda is a system of medicine aimed at becoming conscious beings. This is done by enhancing self-awareness and restoring the memory of consciousness within each cell, eliciting a self-repair quantum healing response. Yoga, breathing, and meditation are just some of the Ayurvedic tools that have been shown to accomplish this. Studies show that they each increase neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity, or forming new neural connections, shows the brain’s ability to become more conscious by shedding patterns of behavior based on stress and survival.
Breaking the emotional hold that the mind has on the body and immunity is what a spontaneous remission is. Old emotions create behavioral patterns, which create new emotions, and like branches of a tree–all stemming from a root cause–the emotional hold perpetuates. In Ayurveda, a spontaneous remission means a restored memory of wholeness. The parts of the body that have lost the memory of consciousness are now functioning as one unified whole.
See also Podcast Episode 086: Journey through Cancer with Dr. Timothy McCall
Methods of Self-Healing
Yoga, breathing, and meditation set the stage for such self-healing. Yoga creates flexibility and physiological access into the isolated parts of the body allowing the subtle energy and circulation to move more freely. Pranayama moves the prana that activates self-awareness into the deep tissues, reconnecting the mind and body. Meditation then breaks the bond between the emotions and the mind while carrying awareness beyond thoughts to the experience of one’s own consciousness.
The final step in self-healing is taking action through the process of neuroplasticity. While yoga, breathing, and meditation cleanse the white board and break the hold the emotions have on the mind, body, and immunity, it opens the door to an awareness of consciousness, your most inner silent place. From here comes an awareness of a higher road, healing actions and behaviors that emanate from a delicate place of love, vulnerability, kindness, compassion, and power.
To help make this my reality, I practice this exercise from one of my favorite Vedic sayings: To the extent that something or someone affects you, is to the extent that it is your karma–-your opportunity to take transformational action.
This is a retraining of the brain to let go of what does not serve you. Open yourself to an experience of life that has been patiently waiting inside of you for decades.
See also Emotional Detox: Why You Need One, and How to Get Started
Taking Action Steps Toward Spontaneous Remissions
When I returned from my Ayurvedic training in India in 1986, I co-directed Deepak Chopra’s Ayurvedic center just after his Quantum Healing book came out. We became the Ayurvedic Cancer Center. What did the cancer patients who lived the longest have in common? It was those patients who would regularly tell me that their cancer diagnosis was the best thing that ever happened to them. The diagnosis forced them to reevaluate their life, lifestyle, stress, emotions, and relationships. These patients were able to make a 180 and finally find peace in their life instead of chasing success.
Dr. Simonton’s Alternative Cancer Treatments
Dr. O Carl Simonton was one of the pioneers in alternative treatments for cancer and the author of Get Well Again. He was a California oncologist. He was one of the first to recognize that, of the cancer patients he had, the ones who lived the longest were those who were able to maintain an optimistic, positive, and hopeful outlook during the cancer treatments. After decades of observing cancer patients, he developed the Simonton Method of Guided Imagery that helps train the mind to stay positive during a time when the cancer diagnosis is sending fear and stress to every cell of the body and immune system.
His guided imagery helped his patients stay positive. Through the process of neuroplasticity, they worked to rewire the brain to send a message of healing and robust immunity to the body. In a study with 159 cancer patients with advanced cancer (not expected to live beyond 12 months), Dr. Simonton treated them with his guided imagery method.
The results were astonishing. At the end of the four-year study:
- 22.2% of the patients showed no sign of disease and made a full recovery.
- 19.1% of the patients saw a significant reduction in their disease.
- 27.1 of the patients saw a stabilizing of the disease and saw no signs of growth.
- 31.8% of the patients experienced disease progression.
See also Sagittal Sinus Abhyanga Nasya for Clearing Sinuses and Emotional Baggage
Placebo or Spontaneous Remission?
The placebo effect is a very real phenomenon. It works based simply on a patient’s belief that they will get well. It worked so well that researchers had to devise an elaborate protocol called the double-blind placebo-controlled study, where all participants in the study would take both the real and fake medicine. The placebo effect is so powerful that before the FDA approves a drug, the drug only has to outperform the placebo in just one of the clinical trials.
In one meta-analysis of 79 studies on migraine headaches:
- Sugar pills reduced migraine frequency by 22%
- Fake acupuncture helped by 38%
- Sham (fake) surgery for migraines reduced migraine frequency by 58%
Let’s look to an APA-published a meta-analysis on the efficacy of FDA-approved antidepressants. A whopping 82% of research subjects reported feeling better on a placebo. When the FDA replicated the analysis, they admitted that the difference between the efficacy of drug and placebo was small… so, why are we not studying the placebo effect more? Well, we are! Ayurveda may have discovered it, and as we saw from Dr. Simonton’s work, we just have to look for it.
I learned of Dr. Simonton’s work while reading The Ayurvedic Approach to Cancer by Dr. Sam Watts, who is a cancer researcher and cancer survivorship coach. I was so impressed by his book that I invited him on my podcast! Watch and listen to my interview with Dr. Sam Watts here.
See also Podcast Episode 157: A New Perspective on Cancer and Longevity with Dr. Sam Watts
