You Can Heal Your Life: A Book Review

The Breakdown:

Louise Hay was a self-healer, a guru of positive affirmations, and a pioneer teacher of how your mind can heal your body. She reached millions of people through her books and appearances on television. This is her most famous book and was originally offered as a more in depth follow up of her first book: Heal Your Body. The book is made up of 3 parts. The first part is her philosophy and suggestions to readers. The second part examines how limiting beliefs cause problems, what is truth, our resistance to change, and some daily work of how to change. The third part is practical application. In this part she gives mental exercises that you can do in each area of life where you may be experiencing problems: work, relationships, success, and prosperity. The final 2 chapters are about the body specifically…listing body parts and the mental patterns that align with them. She offers plenty of affirmations to get you started but recommends that you create your own. And in her personal story in the back of the book, she admits to doing a combined approach to healing. She didn’t just change her thought patterns to get rid of cancer. She changed her diet and daily habits. She encourages you to get the cancer cut out first and then change your thoughts and lifestyle to keep it from returning.

What I like about this book:

1. The quick access reference lists of body parts and ailments and what beliefs are correlated to them. I have found truth for myself and many of my friends and clients that these beliefs resonated with the physical issues they were having. It is a handy guide to turn to and use often when trying to get to the root of something.
2. The meditation and journaling exercises, especially the ones on practicing forgiveness. I ascribe to Louise’s philosophy that most of our dis-eases are rooted in fear or anger. Practicing self-love and forgiveness set us free of our guilt and shame and then allow us to do the same for others. We forgive them instead of holding on to anger (resentment, frustration, impatience, judgement).
3. Louise Hay’s personal story
4. Chapters were clearly laid out and writing was easy to follow.

Fair Warning:

1. You may not ascribe to all of her beliefs, such as the one that we choose our parents, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t get anything out of this book. It is unnecessary to buy into all her personal beliefs in order to gain from the healing practices within the book.
2. She professes Law of Attraction beliefs throughout which at times feel like you are blaming the victim.
3. Affirmations on their own rarely work. Beliefs need to be changed on the subconscious level first. This book only offers one piece to the puzzle in your healing.