Samuel Hahnemann, the great 18th century physician after whom numerous medical colleges have been named, once described health as "admirable, harmonious and vital." It included both feelings and functions, both spirit and body.
Healing, then, is more than a technique. It is an art that utilizes every resource a person brings to bear--will, patience, strength, attitude as well as imagination.
In Word War II, when medics and nurses on the battlefield were left without morphine or other painkillers, they often resorted to a more subtle form of pain relief for soldiers in agony: suggestion. They gave them saline injections but told them with great authority that what they were receiving was the most potent form of morphine.
What happened was often what they prayed for: relief. There were no drugs administered and no "medical" reasons for the change in the soldiers' perceptions. None, that is, but the suggestion that was given to them.
Placebo effects, of which this is a supreme example, are so potent that they are regularly ruled out in pharmaceutical trials. According to John Cloud in "How a Sugar Pill Can Heal (or Hurt) You," TIME Magazine, November 2, 2009), "Scientists are coming to understand the placebo response as a cascade of neural reactions that not only provide psychological relief but also play a physiological role in block stress hormones that damage the body."
Imagining relief can be as helpful as its drug-store counterpart--without all the side effects.
This ability to receive healing suggestion and translate it into a healing response at the most basic physiological level is innate to all human beings. Naturally, in some it is greater than others.
But in children, it is the greatest of all.
Children's Magical Lives
Children are born open. To them everything is new and everything truly is possible until either experience or tutelage makes them see otherwise. Children imagine monsters, wide-eyed fairies, flying pigs and sled-pulling, night-riding reindeer; they see connections and meaning where well-conditioned and socialized adults only see concrete effects and numbers.
This is especially true of preschool children and it is called "magical thinking" by psychologists. In a very young child's view, rain falls from the sky because the sky is sad. To that small child, it is entirely plausible. It is just as plausible that the sky is crying because of something he said or did. While it is considered a phase of development out of which they are expected to grow, it points to a very important truth: children are not little adults. They have a way of viewing the world that is quite different than our linear, logical and limited way.
For this reason, Verbal First Aid™ and therapeutic suggestion are particularly effective with children. Logic and expectation are not yet the barriers they become for adults and it is easier to reach them with healing suggestion when they need it most.
Verbal First Aid to the Rescue
Verbal First Aid is a simple protocol described in the book, "The Worst Is Over" (2002) that utilizes the power of suggestion to facilitate healing in all situations: in dire emergencies, in kitchen variety accidents, in bedtime fears. Begun as a therapeutic protocol for first responders, it has been shown to facilitate calm, compliance and pain relief with people of all ages.
The research has shown that these therapeutic techniques are being used successfully with children who suffer from asthma. In one study measuring the effects of guided imagery and hypnosis on children the results were quite encouraging: 80 percent had improvement that was measurable, none of the children's symptoms worsened and, best of all, some patients' symptoms were resolved after only one hypnosis session (Anbar, 2002).
In an article entitled "Applying hypnosis in a preschool family asthma education program: uses of storytelling, imagery and relaxation," author D.P. Kohen found that combining those modalities helped the children both physically (they needed fewer office visits) and emotionally (with greater self-confidence as marked by both the parents and the children).
Helping an asthma patient was the experience that changed one paramedic's way of thinking after I taught Verbal First Aid to his team in New York. He used the techniques of pacing and leading, utilizing both imagery and the rhythm of his own breath to calm the patient. "By the time she was at the hospital," he recalled later, "she was fine. It was amazing."
An Example of Verbal First Aid with One Particularly Sad and Sick Child
The following story is a variation of a true story.
Sarah's best friend's birthday party had been on her calendar for weeks. All the kids from pre-K were there and Sarah had been anticipating it with delight. When the big moment had arrived to bring out the cake and all the other children were rushing the table, forks and plates in hands, Sarah was curled up on the couch in the living room, languid and flushed.
Her friend's father found her there and knew something was wrong. He gently touched the inside of his wrist to her forehead and felt it was warm. He knew her parents had gone on a drive and were temporarily out of cell phone range. He also knew that she could not take aspirin but he dared not give her any other medication without speaking to her parents first.
"Looks like you needed a little quiet, huh, Sarah?" he said as he sat near her. He reached for a blanket tossed on the back of the couch. "How about I cover you so you can be really comfortable as I tell you a story?"
As the blanket covered her, she settled down into the couch, put her thumb in her mouth, and curled onto her side, as much of a "yes" as she could convey with body language.
"It's not a long story, but it's a magical story," he said. And he proceeded to tell her about a house far away that was very hot because no one remembered where the furnace was.
"So, one little girl--a very smart little girl--reminded them about the little men in white who sometimes came to fix things in the house when they needed fixing. No one had to tell them where things were. They just knew. Can you imagine those little men in their perfect white uniforms?"
Sarah nodded "yes."
"That's good," he continued. "They're going into the house now and everyone is so glad they're there. Can you see that?"
Again, she nodded "yes."
"Well, watch what they do ... and as you do ... you can start to feel the magic in you, too, because they just walk into the kitchen, then they open a door and go inside that door and open another door that takes them all the way into the basement where the furnace is. And they get busy ... there are a lot of those little men in white suits and they turn this down and move that button there, taking care of all the right things in just the right ways, then they twist that dial and lower that knob until the furnace starts to cool down ... And it gets cooler and more comfortable so that by the time the little men in white go back upstairs everyone is comfortable and able to sleep so that by the time they wake up, they're feeling so much better."
By this time, Sarah is nodding into a soothed sleep.
"And those little men in white can keep doing their job even as you sleep, Sarah," he says and tucks her in.
Verbal First Aid™ is a gentle, effective, loving way to not only help children begin to heal themselves, but to facilitate in them an awareness of the resources they have within them that can be developed over the course of their entire lives.