We have all heard stories of spontaneous remission, but this information can be difficult to find actually documented/written down. Its difficult to find in the written word because these happenings border on the mystical and the unexplainable, and this usually brings forward fear and uncertainty. The unexplainable and the mystical are two things that tend to make most human beings and especially classically trained physicians fairly uncomfortable. We like to live in the illusion that all can be explained by what we can taste, touch, smell and see.
Caryle Hirshberg, a biochemist and co-founder of the remission project at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), has been researching cases of spontaneous remission from cancer since 1985. IONS now has the largest collection (3,500) of medically reported, documented, remission cases. Hirshberg discovered during her long search, which included detailed reviews of the psychological and medical literature, patient interviews, physician interviews, and other resources, that there is no one thing that heals everyone.
Healing is individual for all people, and healing does not always mean a physical healing. An ill person has to find what is true for them, their truth, and understand what this illness may wish to communicate. After years of research, Hirshberg's final conclusion was borrowed from Shakespeare, "and this above all, to thine own self be true."
Hirshberg explains that the remission stories she heard were all different. What helped to heal one person would likely be irrelevant for another, but in listening to multiple stories she began to see a common thread. For each person, it is a journey of self discovery. For each person, there is a time of tension, confusion, and even terror.
A colleague of Hirshberg's, Hans Schilder, focused his research on the psychological aspects of spontaneous remission cases. Schilder found that "prior to a spontaneous remission", patients got "in touch with something ‘essential' to them".
In one case, a woman with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma had been suffering a traumatic divorce and shared with the researcher that she felt like she had literally been "swallowing everything." She received chemotherapy and after three months, the tumors did not decrease, they increased in size and so did her pain. The doctors then recommended more chemotherapy!!
The woman decided she needed to take a vacation first and go on a mountain trip with a new friend. While on vacation, this "new friend" left her alone for several days, and in the words of the patient, "the way he did it was unacceptable."
The woman resolved to find her way down the mountain on her own!! For three days, she was alone and walking, but she reported that during this time she began to feel her anger dissolve. She later realized that she had forgotten to take her pain medicine, and noticed that her pain had significantly decreased. She also noticed her belly felt differently, and it was later confirmed, by her doctor's palpation and by ultrasound, that the tumors in her abdomen had decreased.
There is not any one single mechanism that was healing for of Dr. Schilder's patients or Hirshberg's remission cases. Dr. Schilder said, "It's not what they do, I think, so much as who they are. But in these patients, the self who begins is a different self than the one who comes out of it".
Love and Light,
Regina