Body and Soul
By Bernie Siegel, MD

Not too many years ago there were a series of conferences entitled, Body & Soul. I always felt people were more likely to bare their souls than their bodies and I did at least one presentation exposing parts of my body to make people aware of how they felt about their own bodies. It was interesting to have people, who I thought had nice looking bodies, come up and tell me I could do that because I looked good. It was sad to hear how they viewed themselves, versus how I saw them. Today I feel much more strongly about getting in touch with and exposing our souls. We need to respond to our souls and live a soulful life. I can’t put into words how I would define soul but it contains our spirit and our deepest needs and meanings related to our life and how we live it. And too often the needs and feelings we never speak about until a crisis or disaster occurs to awaken us to life. I think we know when we are living a soulful life by how our bodies and
particularly our hearts feel in relationship to what we are doing, thinking and feeling.

I recently received a book from a therapist who is treating someone with what we commonly call multiple personality disorder. Jung discussed, and I am convinced, that we are all multiple personalities. I know, and so does my wife, from the way I behave that things come out of me that I cannot explain. As my wife says, "They come from God knows where." So I fully accept that within me reside many individuals. Fortunately for me, because of how I was raised, the majority are nice guys who enjoy helping people. When you grow up with abuse there are many multiples who are the suffering child or vicious killer striking back at the painful world of their early life.
I was wondering, when you get a massage do you really know who is being massaged or which of the multiples needs the massage but doesn’t get it because a more aggressive personality wants it and takes over the body being massaged. I am not kidding when I say these things. I know from experience and reported cases that one personality can have allergies, diabetes, asthma and other afflictions within the same person and a shift to another personality eliminates the disease.

We all need to work on the personalities living within us and put them in harmony with our souls desires and needs. I want you all to think of yourselves as candles. The flame reaching up to the heavens, hoping to reunite with the divine while the candle and wick represent our earthly bodies and keep us connected and grounded. Achieving a true balance and using our bodies and light to become soulful in our actions is what life is about from my perspective. Let me present you with some new words which may help you remember this message. I create these words regularly. I must admit that most of the time they come from accidents on the keyboard of my computer or some other personality doing the typing.

The first relates to your work and is MEASSAGE. It says to me that there is a message in our touch. In other words every massage carries a precious message. I was rereading The Anatomy of Love edited by Ashley Montagu in 1975 and again was so impressed by the power of touch to communicate love and how its absence led to an almost 100% mortality rate in orphanages of the last century. When caregivers were fearful that their touch spread infections from infant to infant.
The next word is GGOD and to me that means doing Good things as our creator would want us to do them. In a sense, as they say, what is important is not to know God but to imitate God and when you do Ggod things you are doing just that. Then there is LIOVE. For me that is living and loving. Those two things should never be separated but mankind is a problem due to its lack of completeness. Remember this is not about trying to be perfect but being complete. Again I would
say that is soul work and when you are complete your life will be about living and loving.

Peace,
Bernie Siegel, MD

Bernie Siegel, MD is the best-selling author of many books including 365 Prescriptions for the Soul. It contains 365 messages similar in a sense to what is written above but at the end of each "Prescription" there is a SOULUTION. Not a practical solution, but a Soulution which gives you and your life deeper meaning and will satisfy the feelings your heart and soul yearn for. Bernie urges you that when you do find your Soulutions, spread the Meassage. Do Ggod works and Liove; your body and soul will find atonement or as someone in Bernie spells it-At One Ment with you know who.

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