Endnotes
FOREWORD
Having spent time working as a schoolteacher, teacher trainer, psychotherapist, success coach, and human potential trainer, I have witnessed the immense influence that feelings have on a person's performance and mood. From the first time Deborah Sandella (“Dr. Deb” as her students call her) introduced me to her RIM work (RIM stands for “Regenerating Images in Memory”), I saw its powerful potential to create immediate and dramatic physical and behavioral changes in people. And I have continued to witness this time after time, year after year, as she and her facilitators work with my students.
Having known and worked with Deb for over eleven years, first as my student and later as my friend and coauthor, I'm delighted to introduce her new book to you. Every once in a while, you read a book that has a profound personal impact on you. This book will do that. It is written from the heart in a down-to-earth way that will touch you intimately—and probably change your life.
Deb's passion and pioneering spirit have led to her discoveries of how to help people more easily uncover that place within us that knows the answers to every one of our deepest questions. Her commitment to continually expand her understanding of the natural self-healing mechanisms operating in us has resulted in this wonderful and profound book.
Goodbye, Hurt and Pain will introduce you to seven powerful discoveries of how to master your feelings, and when you consistently apply them, you can expect to live a dynamic life of ever-expanding success and happiness.
In fact, because this work produces such immediate and extraordinary emotional and physical results, it may at first appear unbelievable, but I have witnessed it in action in my own life and the lives of hundreds of my students and trainees and can testify to its profound impact.
I've come to respect Dr. Deb's quiet power as she courageously walks clients through the darkness of their most devastating and painful memories and into the light of new confidence, emotional freedom, and personal power. She consistently affirms and awakens in them their innate resourcefulness. In person you can see and feel it in her energetic presence and gaze. Now you have the opportunity to feel it through her writing.
As you read this book, I encourage you to dive headfirst into the Practice It Yourself activities. I promise you that the rewards will be well worth it. You will move beyond what you've previously thought possible. All you have to do is follow the step-by-step process that Dr. Deb leads you through, and you'll see your life growing more successful and fulfilling every day.
To Your Success,
Jack Canfield
CEO of the Canfield Training Group; cocreator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® Series; coauthor of The Success Principles™; internationally renowned corporate trainer, keynote speaker, and popular radio and TV talk show guest
INTRODUCTION
The phone rings, and I sleepily pick up the receiver. It feels like a dream as I hear my brother's heavy words: “Dad's suffered a cardiac arrest and he's in the ICU.” He has received every possible drug, but his blood pressure isn't holding. The nurses feel sure he can't survive the night, so they have requested a “do not resuscitate” agreement.
In my mind, I hear myself reacting to the nurses: “How can you even ask that question? You have no idea who this man is, how special he is to his whole community.” In this moment, something snaps, and I say, “No, I won't agree.” Having started my career as a nurse, my response is completely out of character, but an intuitive process is taking over.
As I walk back to bed, I am visited by a spontaneous vision. I see my dad with his back to me as he walks off toward the horizon. I am there angrily yelling: “I'm so mad at you for leaving. I'm not ready for you to go. I have so many more things I want us to share.” To my complete surprise, he pauses and turns to face me. His countenance is radiant with a gentle expression I have never seen before when he says in a kind voice: “I didn't know you felt that way; okay.”
As my body senses his words, the anger instantly drains away, and I feel like a wet noodle. At the same time, my logical mind remarks with a statement and question: “All this is just in my head, right?” As I climb back into bed, I feel an urging to keep his image in my awareness, like an earthly lifeline to his spirit.
The next day I fly to rural Kansas and walk into ICU. The nursing staff report: “Sometime in the middle of the night, your dad's blood pressure began to hold.” Encouraged, I sit at his bedside over several nights. I am compelled to imagine the inside of his unconscious body. His lungs appear foggy gray with darker, heavy guck at the bottom. Feeling I would do anything to help him survive, I shed my professional academic image and begin to experiment. Initially, I imagine him breathing in clean, fresh air and exhaling gray darkness. This seems to lighten it a bit, but I can tell it is fatiguing him so I stop.
Next I begin breathing for him. I imagine fresh air filling his lungs, displacing the heavy grayness, which is displaced with each exhale. I become the “breather” as he lies relaxed and unconscious in his hospital bed. Gradually, in my mind's eye I see his lungs fill with bright, blue sky and the grayness is gone except for a solid black spot at the base of his lungs. No matter how hard I try, it remains.
The next morning, the pulmonologist visits and says Dad's lungs actually look good, except for a bit of aspirated solid material at the base. Fortunately, the doctor can mechanically remove the material with a bronchoscope. Although Dad's oxygen levels return to normal after the procedure, the doctor cautions us against false optimism: “I wouldn't get your hopes up. Your dad's brain was without oxygen for a long time, and he's probably suffered brain damage.” Ignoring his caution, I feel encouraged that my intuitive sensing has been accurate, and I begin imagining Dad's vital brain.
The epilogue to my dad's story is that he did survive and, to the complete surprise of the hospital staff, returned with normal mental capacity. He lived five more vibrant years—a time he and my mom said was the best of their lives. We had a second chance and we took it. The results were extraordinary.1
As a doctoral-level health care professional who had done research and taught at the University of Colorado, I could not make sense of this experience. It just didn't compute; it defied everything I had learned about medicine. Yet these imagined experiences were more important to me than all of my numerous years of education, and I committed to understanding how to harness this remarkable power for intentional emotional and physical healing.
Twenty years later, I've learned that imagination is an extraordinary resource within each of us with powers not found in our ordinary thought processes. It is our birthright and so simple that we tend to dismiss it too easily—as if it were child's play. Yet, the extraordinary emotional and physical results I have witnessed speak for themselves. The RIM Method and this book are the culmination of this journey.
DYNAMICS BETWEEN FEELINGS, THE BODY, AND IMAGINATION
Since the dawn of human time, we have been scared of undesirable feelings. The story of Adam and Eve demonstrates how acting on one's feelings leads to dangerous outcomes. Socrates and Aristotle wrote revered philosophy on how we should cultivate an independent
