Читать книгу Piece Of Mind - Sandy MacGregor - Страница 7

I was introduced to the subject of the powers we have within us by my son Andrew, when he was 17 years old, in 1982. It happened like this. Andrew at that stage had been suffering from asthma for about 15 years, and he actually collapsed at a railway station, was taken to a hospital, and given a cortisone drip. He woke up attached to a drip, which he pulled out of his arm, walked out of the hospital, collapsed again, and ended up in another hospital on another cortisone drip. In fact he rang me from the second hospital – I didn't know anything about what had happened until his call. Up until that stage of course he had received so much conventional treatment for asthma and was not achieving any relief or recovery, so I decided to seek some alternative treatment.

I introduced him to a doctor who actually taught Andrew how to relax between bouts of asthma – this was quite fantastic. The treatment started to work – Andrew was taking control. A few months later, Andrew had an argument with a bus; he was on a motor bike, and he lost. The result was that his leg was broken in two places. He did a really good job on himself, with bones sticking out – crushed and shattered – but he never lost consciousness. Andrew actually had the control and the ability, some power within him, that enabled him to go to that “place of relaxation” that the doctor had taught him about.

In fact Andrew's leg was so bad that he was about to lose it. Luckily he came under the treatment of a professor who said that he could do some new work with him. I also called back in the original doctor who had taught Andrew and asked if there was anything else we could do, particularly with a view to controlling the infection and his pain.

In addition, Andrew was back on cortisone to control infection, and cortisone and re-growth of bone are incompatible – so this was a real concern. The doctor who had helped Andrew with his asthma now taught Andrew to handle infection, enhance healing, control pain thus using his own mind to re-grow his bone so that Andrew no longer required cortisone.

So this was my introduction. All of this was quite remarkable to me and I was very, very impressed; so much so that I then got Andrew to teach me what it was all about.

Now for a little bit about my own personal background. I am what you call a left-brained person. I am an engineer and an army officer – it's hard to find someone who is a more “prove-it-to-me” type than that! I am the analytical type – I need everything to be seen in black and white, write it down, work it out, that sort of thing. I'm a left-brain dominant, analytical person. All of this “mind work” was not being proven to me personally. I could see what it was doing with my son Andrew, but I thought “It wouldn't work with me, not that sort of stuff”.

In any case, I did what Andrew taught me, three times a day, 20 minutes a day – I'm a very persistent type of person. To get professional assistance I went to a consultant and he said to me “Sure you're doing it right – what you're doing is perfect”. I said “Well I don't know for sure that I'm doing anything, so how can I prove it to myself?” He told me that two of the most difficult things to do are to lose weight and to give up smoking.

Well I didn't smoke but boy did I need to lose some weight! So he gave me a weight loss program and for six weeks I followed it three times a day, playing myself a tape – but nothing happened – absolutely nothing! (... or so I thought!). However, in the seventh week I lost 2 pounds; and then I lost 2 pounds in the eighth week, and then 2 pounds in the ninth week. Do you know, over the next six months I lost 49 pounds! Yes, 49 pounds! (that's about 22 kilos). I did not do any exercise, nor did I go on a diet, until I had lost the weight. Had I done so, it would have meant that I was doing something else, other than using my mind, and I wanted the “mind” method to be proved to me. So that's precisely what I did. I worked at it, proved the method to myself, then I used the relaxation system to do many different things. One example is, whilst standing in front of a doctor, I could bring my pulse rate down to such a low rate that it was almost imperceptible, and could also reduce my blood pressure by about twenty points.

In January 1987 tragedy struck when my three teenage daughters were shotgun murdered by a crazed young young man. Going through grief takes quite a while and there is no short cut. However, by using the same system that Andrew had taught me to take control over myself, I was able to change feelings of hurt, anger, and revenge to feelings of love, acceptance and forgiveness. I developed an inner peace, just by using the same sort of system that I had used to release weight and relax.

My fortunes then changed a little in that I went to the United States to attend a six week course with Insight Awareness Seminars, which are quite fantastic! There are three Insight Seminars conducted in Australia and then the fourth one, in 1987, was conducted in the United States in California. An army colleague of mine had recommended that I check out Insight I in about 1982, and because of my very high regard for him I thought “Well if he thinks this is good and of real use then it must be OK” – so I did the first seminar.

Several years later, immediately after the death of my daughters this same friend's wife actually, “grabbed” me and virtually insisted that I do the next seminar – Insight II – to help me handle my grief. That was a great move. So from there I did Insight III and that's how I came to be at Insight IV in the United States.

At this seminar we had the leading people from around the world speaking to us on different topics. There was one speaker whose name was Steven Snyder, and he spoke for six to eight hours. Do you know he taught a room full of 60 people everything that I had taken 18 months to learn. It had taken me 18 months and he had taught a room full of people

in six to eight hours! I thought “Great! His fast method is absolutely fantastic!” When I came home I gradually applied what I knew to my two younger children, Lara and Ian, who were six and four years old at the time.

Lara went on to use accelerated reading and when she was 8 read at the rate of about 750 words per minute. Ian and Lara both learned to touch type on the computer with Lara then doing about 50 words per minute and Ian about 30 words a minute. Also they both use this same system to relieve pain and hurt; and to improve their own self-esteem.

I resolved to become more involved. I could see its value and I joined the Accelerated Learning Society. I could see how all the information I had learned is related to accelerated learning; not only study, memory and the like, but to life skills, applicable to most situations, for anybody, in any walk of life. One of the very first keys to accelerated learning is relaxation.

Then Steven Snyder came to Australia and I worked with him for twenty two seminars – including work with the corporate sector, the general public, and children. Whilst I was working with Steven, I really perfected my knowledge of exactly what the method and system were all about. This is what I now teach.

You now have a picture of how I became involved and you can also learn this system. It's easy – just make sure you incorporate the techniques explained in this book. To help you, you could choose to listen to my audio tape A Peaceful Place No. 2 (Guided Imagery), or you could make your own tape. All of you, everyone without exception, can actually relax and release stress within 20 to 30 seconds. There are many additional benefits that lead on from mastering relaxation and these you can achieve as well. More of that later, for now just remember “doing it does it”.