You Can Heal Your Life

Centered on the premise that a connection exists between the mind and body, Louise Hay’s self-help book You Can Heal Your Life (1984) casts bodily sickness as a phenomenon rooted in patterns of belief and thought. Hay disagrees with modern medicine’s approach to exclusively attack disease at the level of the symptom, arguing that holistic treatments which cultivate general well-being can preempt disease pathologies. She explains a number of ways to increase well-being, including positive psychology, mantras, and self-therapy methods. She also attempts to link specific diseases to their psychological causes. Though it has been labeled pseudoscientific by the scientific community, the book was nevertheless widely popular and has been credited with contributing to the recent boom in alternative medicine.

Hay begins by explaining that recurrent thought and belief patterns limit and damage our mental well-being. She believes that the mental life is upstream from the physical, influencing it casually. As a corollary to this direct relationship between mind and body, Hay asserts that changing the pathologies of the mind can also heal the same physical illnesses that they engender. She posits that the most fundamental unhealthy belief is that of personal inferiority, which blocks the self from recognizing and solving a huge range of essential human problems. Rejecting the notion of psychological interventions as heavily reliant on placebo, she argues that mental work can heal any physical symptom.

Hay writes as if she were speaking to a client and taking him through a series of iterative healing sessions. Each chapter begins with a self-affirming statement and outlines at least one mental exercise that can heal physical problems. She emphasizes that financial insecurity and greed about money are the most prominent mental fallacies that people rationalize to their own detriment. She argues that people who feel poor believe they are undeserving of friends or love, and think they are unable to find any personal agency or determine their fate. Hay states that these assumptions originate in early childhood when we are highly receptive to the fears, anxieties, and beliefs of adults. As we grow, we recapitulate the concepts learned in childhood and associate them with our own lived experiences. Hay asserts that we should recognize the root of these limiting beliefs and try to realize that we have a choice in all matters.



Hay explains the ways in which she believes people can enact a change in mindset, taking control of their belief systems. She notes that people have a natural resistance to transformation, acknowledging that it is inherently difficult to think abstractly about one’s thought patterns and unearth one’s suppressed anxieties. To remedy this, she suggests that we nurture a motivation to change. She analogizes reshaping belief systems to “mental house cleaning,” in which one examines his or her beliefs, moving from room to room in the mind and deciding which mental objects to keep, polish, or discard.

Hay extols the value of letting go of the past. Many physical ailments, in her view, stem from mental garbage that builds up when one is unwilling or unable to get past previous experiences that no longer have significance. She emphasizes that it is pointless to retain a grip on the past since it is immutable. Further, she believes that letting go releases waves of unhealthy, pent-up emotion. She recommends regimens like regular exercise, and even venting one’s emotions through screaming privately. She also emphasizes the importance of self-forgiveness. The inability to forgive oneself (and others) is partially what makes it so difficult to discard old memories. Unless people learn to set their pasts aside, Hay argues they will be doomed to repeat the same destructive psychological patterns.

To explain how to build a healthy present mindset, Hay employs the metaphor of a garden. Creating positive personal transformation is like planting crops: it requires a huge investment of time, and constant attention, in order to grow properly. As one is waiting for one’s mind to become healthy, Hay asserts that it is important not to perpetuate negative thoughts about the fate of the mind’s “crops.” She frames positive thinking as an active and learned skill that takes many failures to successfully employ.



Hay concludes with notes on bodily health. She recognizes the importance of empirical science, believing it is of utmost importance to use all of the available tools to understand the human body. However, she places culpability on people for their discomforts and diseases, reiterating that they solely stem from psychological patterns. She views certain symptoms such as headaches, muscle soreness, and even baldness, as causally related to certain thought patterns, theorizing about them one by one.

Though it turns away from the tenets and methodologies of empirical science, You Can Heal Your Life is a compelling, if not rigorous, case for the role our minds have in disease pathology. It has been considered a wealth of resources for people looking for alternative ways of healing themselves when mainstream science breaks down.