Egyptian healing resonance/affirmations and how this aspect of medicine is applicable today.

Papyri written over four thousand years ago describe a complex, fully developed pharmacology, with prescriptions for herbal remedies, ailments they were intended to cure, as well as the preparation of the ingredients. Some doctors belonged to the priesthood, including priests of the goddess Sekhmet, patroness of diseases, remedies and physicians.

The earliest recorded physician was called Imhotep. He was also an architect and an astronomer. In later times he was worshipped as a hero and as the god of medicine. Although there is evidence that he diagnosed and treated over 200 diseases and conditions, little is known about Imhotep’s medical knowledge but his deification is significant and he may well be taken for the real father of medicine.

The two most important medical papyri are known as the Smith and Ebers papyri and date from the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries B.C. They are of the same period, the Middle Kingdom and the beginning of the New Kingdom just prior to the imperial age, when Egypt dominated the world. One may safely assume that the study of the Ebers and the Smith papyri will give one a fair knowledge of ancient Egyptian medicine, as the Smith papyrus has four hundred and sixty lines and the Ebers two thousand and two hundred and eighty nine lines. Together they make up two thousand and seven hundred and fifty eight lines of medical text. The Ebers papyrus contains many ‘recipes’ covering a great variety of diseases or symptoms. Resonant healing can be identified in several cases and in other cases the therapeutics do not seem irrational, although at times one is seldom able to understand either the trouble or the remedy.

Both the Smith and Ebers papyri contain information on vibrational and resonant healing methods. An example from the Brooklyn papyrus shows that the Egyptians identified thirty-eight types of snakes and reactions to their bites. The treatment for snake bite would be to make the patient vomit to expel the venom. However, this probably distracted the patient’s attention from the bite and made him feel something was being done. The incantation that would follow such treatment would be used to establish a connection on an energetic level enabling a possible cure to the patient. An example would be, ‘ Flow out poison. Come forth. Go forth onto the ground. Horus will exorcise you. He will punish you. He will spit you out’. This energetic affirmation would be transmitted onto the remedy and the patient via the voice of the physician evoking the energies associated with Horus who had powers over all reptiles. How much depended on the patient’s survival to the type of snake that she/he was bitten by is debatable in respect of his/her cure and how well she/he coped with the shock of being bitten. From my research on Egyptian medicine I have been unable to ascertain any documentation relating to people being cured from resonance healing. However, the affirmations used in Egyptian healing are the basis of some therapies in practice today. Many healers in Egyptian times were specialised treating parts of the body and not the whole, just as western medicine does today. Although the form may have changed the ideas are the same today. However the Egyptians used the idea of enhancing the healing process through affirmations, potentisation or energising of substances using the energy of the ‘Gods’.

So where do affirmations fit in with western medicine today? From my own experience it can be seen in working with patient’s who are affected or living with diseases such as Cancer and HIV/AIDS. In her book ‘Healing in our Time’, Kubler-Ross gives an example of a cancer client who having undergone chemotherapy after radiation treatment and by using her method of using affirmations, this client should have fitted into the category of being well and in remission from cancer. However, this client did not respond to the treatment. Kubler-Ross on enquiry found that this client was very religious and a pacifist and was unable to visualise the affirmation that his chemotherapy was there to kill his cancer cells. Yet Kubler-Ross worked closely with this client and found a way of directing the means of cure. The client had many ornamental gnomes in his garden and as they were friendly gnomes he visualised them during his chemotherapy clearing away his cancer cells. This affirmation enabled him to become well. Kubler Ross contends, ‘When you accomplish somebody’s rescue you are not helping…We are responsible to help wherever it is needed. But you have to know the difference between rescuing somebody; trying to fix something in somebody else’s life, and helping him: to be available when that person has learned to be humble enough to ask for help…’.

In 1989 I was privileged to participate as a facilitator in three ‘Life, Death and Transition’ workshops in London. These workshops were developed by Kubler-Ross working with her clients dying of Cancer. However, with the emergence of AIDS in the 1980’s her work on death and dying crossed over into the arena of HIV/AIDS. In these workshops it became evident that any person who has experienced emotional trauma of some sort, hence all of us, could benefit from the unique process of resonance healing. Similar to the methods used by ancient Egyptian physicians these unique workshops tapped into each person’s innate ability to connect with others who are in pain and help them to heal through the process of ‘resonance healing’. These workshops provided the means by which people affected by and living with HIV/AIDS could safely deal with their issues in whatever capacity they were comfortable while in the company of the facilitator. The facilitator was the person who stayed with the individual participant as ‘resonance healing’ took place. This required the facilitator to closely track each participants emotions as they were externalised and to help the participant to get in touch with and bring up as much as they were able and willing. Each facilitator learned to pay close attention to their own emotional responses to the participant’s pain as related through the participants telling their story, either verbally or symbolically, and thus experiencing the previously inexperienced emotions. This resonating of emotions is the unique foundation upon which the hard emotional work of both the facilitator and the participant, and hence the entire workshop group, were built. Resonation means that the pain of others activates our own issues and gets us in touch with our feelings. It is through this resonation that both the participant and the facilitator helped each other. Whitney, contends that the ancient Egyptian physician used, ‘a wide spectrum of vibrational and resonant healing techniques for treatment or to accompany medicines’. It can be seen from the above mentioned workshop that nothing is new, it is only adapted. It has a trickle down effect. Furthermore, the affirmations that are used in the treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS, is a modern method of resonance healing. Although no-one has been cured from the various pharmacological cocktails that people take with this condition, affirmations as a form of treatment has improved many people’s quality of life.

For example, clients may be given a pack of fifty coloured affirmation cards. The colours being orange, yellow, violet, dark blue, light blue, green and red. Each card has a different affirmation on it. The client each day selects a card and retains for themselves the words that are written on that card for the whole day. The affirmations are there as positive statements in enabling the person to overcome hurdles that may occur in their daily life of being unwell. The affirmations are there to complement the conventional medical treatment they may be undertaking. Examples of such affirmations are:

I appreciate all the good things and people in my life.
I forgive everyone, including myself.
I do not need to wait for freedom or approval.
As I change internally, external reality changes for me.
The only adult I need take responsibility for is me.
I can wait.

It is nearly one year into the twenty first century and although advancements in surgery, one could argue, have improved since the times of the early Egyptian physicians, western medicine still has a long way to go in understanding how all living things interact on an energy level with the universe. Is it now time to look at the stars, as did the ancient Egyptians and seek out the ‘Gods’ of our past in having a better understanding and or appreciation of our own health and a true direction for cure with resonance healing in chronic illness?

David Doré - published in Alternative Medicine (Winter Edition) 2001