The greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself. Certainly medicine, professional diagnosis, and treatment are important, sometimes vital, aspects of becoming well. However, medical science remains ignorant as to precisely why some people heal and others succumb to disease.
We do know, however, that the individual has a lot more power and control over his or her own healing than was ever acknowledged before. Here are some hints that might help you realize your own power and ability to help you heal.
1. Practice acceptance of your illness. Acceptance of your illness is not the same as resigning yourself to it. Resignation can lead to depression, and depression is not a very healing attitude. When you are ill, acceptance of disease as a part of you at the moment, will allow you to create in yourself the atmosphere of caring, tenderness, and love in which your illness is more likely to heal.
2. View illness not as a loss, but as an opportunity for new growth and development. If a starfish loses one of its arms, it merely goes about growing another. If a salamander loses its tail, its primitive nervous system begins regenerating another immediately. Certainly, our human nervous systems are more sophisticated than those of a starfish or salamander. When we heal, we grow new tissue, new nerves, and new cells. Why not grow new ideas, new attitudes, new ways of viewing ourselves and the world, and new loves, while you are also healing physically? If you begin to grow psychologically in response to your losses, you may just not need to have a physical illness in order to evolve or grow.
3. See your illness as your body’s attempt to redirect your life in a positive direction. Avoid harshly judging your illness and resenting your body for having it. Avoid judging yourself altogether! Your body is always valiantly trying to be well. It has powerful tools in its biochemical, cellular, and nervous repertoire to regain its healthful balance. If you are positive and peaceful about your own ability to be well, then illness just becomes a redirection of your life.
4. Realize that death is not a disease, and it is not a failure. The death rate for all living beings is still one hundred per cent. If staying alive is your only goal, you will most certainly fail at attaining it. Once you begin to accept the inevitability of your own death and realize you only have a limited amount of time to experience being alive, you begin to become aware you might as well enjoy (as best as you possibly can) the moment-to-moment experience of aliveness, including your illness or pain.
5. Avoid making physical wholeness your goal. Nobody exists with a perfect physical body. Our functioning varies from moment to moment and certainly from day to day. Many people heal into peace of mind and self-love, without ever becoming physically well. Perhaps making your goals your own inner peace, your own ability to forgive and love yourself just might promote your healing a lot faster than self-hate, self-criticism, and resentment toward your illness. Use your illness as a situation to learn about hope, love, acceptance, forgiveness, peace of mind, openness to living, and mindfulness to the moment. In doing so, you just may make the disease remit in the process.
6. Our bodies respond to self-love and the love sent to us by others. If you send your own body loving messages, and if you are open to receive the love of others, your body’s immune system responds with something like “Hey, this person likes being alive, lets get to work and fight for his or her life with all the power and energy we can muster.” Negative thoughts produce certain chemicals in our bodies; positive thoughts produce another kind of chemicals. The latter strengthens the immune system. The former weakens it.
7. Use your body; use the life in your body to love. Loving is the only path to immortality. Your love lives on long after you physically die. If you spend most of your life hating, you spend most of it dying. If you spend it loving, you leave a legacy of peace and development to all those persons you touch with your love. A legacy of love. What a gift to offer future generations! Spend most of your life loving and you will only spend a few brief moments dying.
8. Western psychologists and physicians are finally realizing what a powerful influence the mind has over physical illness. We know that a healthy African or Australian tribesman will die within a few days, when he learns that the witch doctor of his tribe has put a death curse upon him. His life can also be saved when he is told that the spell has been broken.
The power of our own beliefs about physical illness cannot be underestimated. Consider the placebo effect. The placebo effect occurs when a person is given a “medication” for a specific illness. The substance given is a harmless substance like sugar, water, or some other element with no known medicinal properties. The patient is told the pills or medication he is taking will produce specific beneficial results. The effect occurs when the patient believes the medication works and expects it will benefit him. Clearly, the belief of the patient influences the healing system of the body, because the benefits of the placebo effect indeed occur. The patient gets better.
For over 20 years, medical research has been focused on practicing yogis. Yogis have powerful mental control over their bodies’ responses. For example, a practicing yogi can jab a large needle into his body and not bleed or feel pain. He can walk on burning coals without developing blisters or pain. He can survive in a sealed container for many hours. Precisely how the yogi controls his body’s response is not known, but that he does so is common knowledge.
Biofeedback research has provided scientific proof the mind can relieve illnesses as well as create them. Among the physical processes we can learn to control with biofeedback are brain-wave activity, heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, muscle tension, sweat gland activity, the production of natural killer cells, and the stress and relaxation responses.
Here is a mental exercise that may strengthen the placebo effect and help you heal.
1. Relax in a comfortable chair with your feet on the floor and your arms and legs are supported so they are not strained. Make sure your environment is quiet, comfortable, and has soft lighting.
2. Relax each set of your muscles from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head. Breathe deeply, slowly, and from your abdomen.
3. Create a clear mental picture of your illness or injury.  Imagine it in a form that makes sense to you. For example, if you have a stomach ulcer, you might imagine it as an inflamed, raw sore on your stomach wall.
Picture a treatment. It can be magical or scientific. Imagine the treatment that will eliminate your injury or illness, or strengthen your body’s ability to heal. For example, imagine milk or antacids coating the ulcer with soothing, healing white liquid that neutralizes stomach acid and reduces inflammation.
5. Picture your natural physical defenses and healing processes eliminating the injury.  See healthy cells multiplying and covering the ulcer. See white blood cells removing the debris and cleansing the area.
See yourself as a healthy person, free from illness or injury. See how you will act, think, feel, and function. Picture yourself as calm, vital, alive and pain free.
7. With photographic clarity, picture yourself as proceeding toward achieving the goals you have for your life. Be as detailed as possible.
8. Finally, congratulate yourself for participating in your own healing. 
Do this exercise three times a day in a relaxed, energetic, and alert state. Practice helping to heal yourself.