Brain Change E-Book

Annemarie Schratter-Sehn

• Herausgeber: edition a
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 243

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

As chief physician of a renowned Viennese hospital, radiation oncologist and trained behavioral therapist, Annemarie Schratter-Sehn worked with seriously ill patients. In doing so, she discovered a thousand-year-old method of activating self-healing energies. It turned out to be surprisingly effective. Almost everyone can use it on themselves and on others for the complementary treatment of all kinds of physical and mental illnesses and to recharge their energy levels.

Leseprobe

BRAIN CHANGE

Author:

Annemarie Schratter-Sehn

Brain Change

All rights reserved

© 2022 edition a, Vienna

www.edition-a.at

Translation from German to English

Brain Change. Entdecke deine Heilungskräfte

Cover: Bastian Welzer

Layout: Anna-Mariya Rakhmankina

Editing: Sophia Volpini

Typeset in Premiera

23456—26252423

ISBN: 978-3-99001-712-8

Annemarie Schratter-Sehn

BRAIN CHANGE

DISCOVER YOUR HEALING ENERGY

edition a

CONTENT

Prolog

If nothing works, something still works

What I can tell you

Two patients who changed my life

Misstep in the lions' den

Fully active until four in the morning

The History of Magnetism

Confirmed findings and an assumption

Healing is never just a miracle

The silent magnetizers

The basics of self-healing

Acupressure points

The power of meditation

The healing power of resilience

The role of mindfulness

The Simonton Method

Autogenic training

Speaking to the body

Faith and religion

Heal others

The fight against the system

PROLOG

There is something important that we have been forgetting, unlearning, and missing for several decades without realizing it.

We have the best medicine ever, and as a doctor specializing in radiation oncology, I say that with the utmost conviction. The progress that we have made during my forty years of medical work alone is phenomenal. As a young assistant doctor at the Vienna University Hospital in the 1970s and 1980s, I would never have dared to dream of what we can do today.

We can insert hip prostheses and transplant hearts; we are developing a vaccine against cancer and modern preventive medicine is extending the lives of millions of people. This development is far from over. On the contrary. Medicine is changing at an accelerating rate, creating ever more fantastic breakthroughs, in which Silicon Valley plays a key role. With the help of algorithms, artificial intelligence and vast amounts of data, start-ups, and corporations such as Google, Microsoft and Apple are developing amazing new diagnostic options and groundbreaking therapies. The interface between humans and computers has long been a reality and here alone a field with unimagined possibilities is opening. Even aging, which many perceive as a scourge, no longer seems to be destiny. Organs will soon come out of the 3D printer and if nothing else works, our spirit lives on in cyberspace.

If people had only known 200 years ago what we can do today, they would have feared us as gods. In fact, given these perspectives, our humanity needs to be redefined. Still, there is no reason to be afraid. Even if physicians with revolutionary new findings and ideas often encounter resistance at first, humanity has always benefited from medical innovations and will continue to do so in the future. The decoding of man, his body and his mind is good, it is important, and it makes life better.

However, two things that go hand in hand must be considered. On the one hand, modern medicine has created an industry that turns health into a product and dehumanizes healing. On the other hand, modern medicine makes us lazy. It tempts us to sit back and let others heal us.

Given the diversity of medical skills and offerings, it is only human that we should become consumers who delegate responsibility for their health to others and expect healing from them when it matters most.

The temptations to such a comfortable attitude will only increase in the future. Digital corporations will soon be constantly monitoring our blood pressure, our movement patterns, our diet, and many other parameters, comparing them with our genome stored in their databases and sending us diagnoses together with treatment suggestions including a buy button for the necessary medication, even before the disease in question has even broken out.

In doing so, we are forgetting something to which the old principle of use it or lose it applies and that, despite all the fantastic new possibilities in medicine, it would be a shame if we were to lose it: evolution has given us an ability upon which most aspects of prescientific medicine are based, and which are still available in our asset. She has endowed us with healing powers that we can use for ourselves and for others. We are forgetting and losing these healing powers and it is high time to rediscover and train them.

Whoever rejects modern medicine with the often-disparaging term "orthodox medicine" and longs back to the pre-scientific times when healers often could not do much more than awaken and strengthen the healing powers of their patients, is making a mistake. It is absurd to refuse the offers of modern medicine. It can be deadly.

Anyone who ignores these natural self-healing and healing powers is also making a mistake. Which is why it worries me how our knowledge of it and our ability to deal with it for our own benefit and that of others is dwindling. Because it is also a fantastic opportunity, given by nature, to use these forces. We can thus support the working of medicine, achieve the goal of healing better and take preventive measures before we even become ill.

Despite all the scientific reproducibility of my actions, healing has never become taken for granted for me in the decades of my medical work in hospitals. It is always a small miracle, especially in my field of radiation oncology. In any case, I think that self-healing powers and healing powers are often a part of this miracle and that using and cultivating them enriches our humanity.

But how do we do it? What role have these forces played in history?

IF NOTHING WORKS, SOMETHING STILL WORKS

The story of a healing that amazed many people.

I was surprised when one of my senior physicians at the time asked me for help. She was an orthodox radiation oncologist, which also means that she never thought highly of my accompanying treatment methods. When she called me anyway, I immediately went to the patient in question. As I hurried through the corridors of the Kaiser-Franz-Joseph-Spital, I wondered what was wrong with the woman, because my colleague would hardly have turned to me for a trifle.

In the outpatient clinic I found a patient with breast cancer. Breast cancer. A young, humble woman who already had intensive chemotherapy and had then been referred to us for radiotherapy. After a good start, the patient was now complaining about massive side effects.

During my time at the Department of Radiation Oncology, which I now headed, I had already experienced several cases of massive side effects. In this patient, however, they were particularly pronounced. Her chest was swollen, red and painful. It's not a pretty sight, nor is it a common sight, because this kind of reaction is rare. We bet on the so-called recall phenomenon, which can occur in individual cases with radiotherapy that follows chemotherapy. The body reacts in a similar way to an allergic attack.

I greeted the patient and got details. The treating physicians had initially sent the young woman to the dermatology department after the side effects had occurred. There she received cortisone preparations. The swelling and redness went down and after a week she came back for radiotherapy. But the same picture quickly emerged, including severe pain. That's when I got in the game.

Now we all sat around the patient. The orthodox radiation oncologist, who normally made no secret of how little she believed in the methods that I sometimes used as a supplement as a highly specialized radiation oncologist, gave me hopeful looks. She probably thought: If all else fails, the boss can try her hocus-pocus.

All my responsible nursing staff, all qualified nurses with many years of experience, stared in awe at the woman's red breast. Negatively impressed. Because none of them knew what else could help. All they knew was that we couldn't continue the radiotherapy like this. If we didn't find a solution to the problem, we would have to stop therapy.

However, the patient's tumor absolutely required radiation. It was a matter of life and death. That's probably why my orthodox radiation oncologist agreed to my help. Desperation breeds invention and tolerance in the choice of means.

My team watched as I ran my hands down the woman's body, not touching it, slowly, top to bottom, over and over again. Even while I was doing this, the swelling went down. Suddenly, the woman's breast was no longer bright red, but gradually returned to its natural color. My colleagues, including the radiation oncologist, were at a loss for words. They took photos to document the before and after effect. After that we all went about our work as usual.

The patient came back for radiation the next day and then came to me. This went on for the necessary 25 radiation sessions. After each daily irradiation, I relieved her of the side effects in the manner described. Furthermore, my team documented the case with scientific meticulousness, on the one hand because such strong side effects rarely occurred, on the other hand because the remedy was so unusual and so efficient.

"Oh, that's good for me," the patient kept saying as the process gradually became routine for her. She left the hospital every afternoon without pain and redness. Eventually she told me she would like to take my hands home with her, which luckily wasn't necessary. After her last radiation I treated her again, after that she never had to come back.

WHAT I CAN TELL YOU

Magnetism is a cumbersome word that many people initially react to with skepticism. But there is something hidden behind it that you can use to change your life.

I learned a few things from my father, a veterinarian. Above all, that healing, whether it be that of a dog, a cat, or a guinea pig, requires empathy, i.e., a certain form of attention, awareness, respect, and devotion. My father, who was an intuitive, sensitive person, probably owed much of his popularity as a veterinarian to these skills. As a human being, he really got involved with his four-legged or feathered patients.

His role model helped me to recognize, define and fulfill my own role as a medical doctor. Being able to empathize is a basis of healing, even if it is unfortunately being eroded in our increasingly technical, bureaucratic, and industrialized healthcare system.

In contrast to him, my mother was a pronounced rationalist and analyst, who repeatedly pushed me to question the world, to think logically and not to accept every explanation. As a child, I was often out in nature with my father or on the tennis court. We both had a lot of nonsense on our minds and never thought twice before embarking on any of the little adventures the days offered us. We enjoyed life, we felt it and let it ban us. When we came home in the evening, tired from joking and frolicking, I would spend the night discussing everything with my mother.

This contrast between my parents made me what I am today, both as a person and as a doctor. My father gave me curiosity, empathy, and intuition, as well as the courage to trust my intuition in certain situations and to let it guide me, so to speak. My mother awakened my spirit of research in me, my unconditional belief in science, my urge not to stop at intuitive perceptions, but to question them rationally and make precise, comprehensible private and professional decisions on this basis.

My career as a specialist in radiation oncology and primaria (which in Germany corresponds to a chief physician) in the relevant department of the Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Spital (also known as Klinik Favoriten) was under two good stars right from the start. With my father's gifts I was able to recognize the needs of my patients, with those of my mother I was able to scientifically reflect on these findings and thereby further develop my specialty.

For example, with my team I questioned the large-scale irradiation of body parts that was common in the past. As a result, we introduced small-volume radiation treatments that helped avoid collateral damage to health. We were proud when American radiation oncologists came to Vienna to see what we were doing with state-of-the-art equipment. In the meantime, this much gentler and more patient-friendly type of radiation has long since become an international standard.

A quick overview

In this book I will tell you how the pure scientific approach with which I approached my subject as a young doctor one day presented me with an enormous challenge. This was when, in my forties, I gradually realized that I could contribute to the healing process with my bare hands, combined with a certain inner state, and thus also help people who seemed to have no other help.

In accordance with my medical self-image, I suddenly had one foot in the field of esotericism. I didn't think much of that, and for good reason. I felt committed to continuing the decade-long scientific success story on which our modern medicine is based. Esoterics who gather on the fringes of this medicine, many of them jugglers, charlatans, and profiteers, all too often rely on faith and hope rather than evidence. Little do they know how carelessly they can cause real harm to such an important commodity as health.

In this book I will therefore also tell you how this initially confusing ability to help with my hands forced me, in the spirit of my analytical mother, to constantly question it scientifically and to find plausible explanations for it. I was okay with believing in miracles. I did it then and I do it even more now with my decades of medical experience. But first, I didn't believe that any treatment method could systematically produce miracles. And secondly, I was sure that all too often we mistake things for miracles simply because we lack logical explanations for them.

For example, imagine a prehistoric hunter-gatherer would land in our world. Supermarkets full of groceries, electric lights, cars and planes, mobile phones, even the possibility of traveling into space: all this would seem like a miracle to him and yet it is based on rationality, on science and can be explained perfectly and completely.

I'm going to tell you what I found out about this non-technical, non-drug healing power that has been historically documented for thousands of years and was given the name "magnetism" in Europe in the 18th century. As a doctor, psychotherapist, and university lecturer, I would not have written this book if I did not have things to say that have been missing in the literature on magnetism.

I wouldn't have written this book either, had it stayed that way: A treatise on magnetism and a scientific explanation for it. Rather, what ultimately prompted me to do so was the most fundamental of the insights I came to in my work. It is that magnetism does not heal per se. Rather, it evokes self-healing powers that every human being carries within them, some to a greater, some to a lesser extent. Self-healing powers that are not dependent on magnetism. It is just one of many ways to develop it.

Based on my experience as well as rationality and science, I will not only show you how you can activate and use your self-healing powers. I'll also share with you another fascinating discovery that I've gradually made my way to.

At some point I realized that "self-healing powers" is the wrong word for what this is about. Rather, we should speak of "healing powers" in general, because what we can apply to ourselves, we can also apply to others within a certain framework. In other words, many people can use their inherent powers to contribute not only to their own healing, but also to that of others.

I realize that my expectations of this book are high, but after my decades of dealing with this topic, I believe I can do it justice. So now let me guide you through the amazing world that has opened to me over the past few decades. For those places where I must continue to leave blank spaces on the map of science, think about it yourself. Compare my observations with your own and let's try together to add a new and useful dimension to the topic of health.

TWO PATIENTS WHO CHANGED MY LIFE

Heal with bare hands? I wasn't thrilled when people who struck me as odd brought this possibility to my attention. I resisted it until, as a doctor, I saw the possibilities it presented.

As I said, I was always a medical rationalist. For example, one day during my studies I had to choose between a psychiatric and a neurology exam. The psychiatric script was the size of a women's magazine. Neurology, on the other hand, consisted of four thick scripts. I always tried to make do with the necessary while studying. Nevertheless, I decided on neurology. Psychiatry was too abstract for me. I could imagine something under neurology, the science and teaching of the nervous system, its diseases, and their medical treatment. Compared to psychiatry, which was more nebulous to me, it was something haptic, something explainable that I could relate to.

An encounter that I had a little later, in 1984, when I was a young assistant doctor at the University Hospital in Vienna, seemed even more absurd to me. Sometimes we have formative experiences, the meaning of which we can only properly understand many years later. That was also the case here. At that time, I was initially amused, irritated and slightly annoyed.

At that time, an extremely wealthy man, well known in Viennese society, consulted the head of the department for radiation oncology at the university hospital where I worked. He insisted on choosing his therapist, no matter how much he had to pay for it.

We were about twenty doctors in the department. I didn't think much about this celebrity's request. But when he walked through our station with a pendulum, I shook my head. My colleagues too. We exchanged looks and rolled our eyes. We were hardened when it came to questionable behavior from our patients. In a department that often treats with matters of life and death, people also show their hidden facets.

His choice fell on me. My boss asked him why. "She has it," was all the patient said, and we accepted it without comment. I wondered what his pendulum might have told him, but it really didn't matter to me in the treatment. I could take on the patient just as well as anyone else, and we didn't have time to dwell on oddities. The main thing was that we could do what was necessary.

When the then about 70-year-old man with local bronchial carcinoma, a form of lung cancer, had his first radiation treatment with me, his selection process was just the right topic for our small talk. "How did you come up with me?" I asked.

"Look," he said, "you have powers."

He couldn't really explain to me what he meant by that. "Either you have it, or you don't have it," he said.

I smiled, realizing he was probably out of his mind when he accidentally handed me a pendulum. Before I could object, he showed me how to commute patients with the thing. I listened to him out of courtesy and respect.

"A pendulum can swing negatively or positively. Right is positive, left is negative," he explained to me.

As I found out later, you can use a pendulum to analyze all sorts of things, including places and their effects. But this man just wanted to show me how I could commute patients.

I was so skeptical that, despite my level-headed nature, I had to hold back. What nonsense, I thought to myself. But my inquiring mind, what did it do? He enticed me to take two completely identical medical histories later, after I had finished work. The type of disease, parameters and condition of the patients were almost 100% similar. With them I wanted to confirm the nonsense as such and then go about my work as before.

However, the result of my action made me think. Because in one of the two patients the pendulum swung positively, in the other negatively. Just what should I do with it? I let the matter rest. Until within a very short time the patient, whom I had pendled negatively, died completely unexpectedly and although his illness would never have justified it at the time.

Coincidence? It couldn't have been otherwise. It still made me uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that I put the pendulum away. I wanted nothing more to do with it. I never touched it again and have long since forgotten where it is.

That patient, an artist, however, persisted in his opinion that I had IT, i.e., some mysterious and probably not rationally comprehensible powers. For the first time in my life, I heard him use the word "magnetism". He wanted me to come to a meeting with magnetizers.

Magnetism? Magnetizers? That was just what I was missing after the pendulum.

I'm definitely not going there, I thought to myself during the rest of my working day in the clinic. But what did my spirit of research say about this new idea? He convinced me of a foray into new and questionable territory. However, the matter seemed so suspicious to me that I took my mother with me.

Decades have passed since then, but I have never forgotten this place. I don't know the exact address by heart, but I would find my way there anytime. Not far from the Wiener Urania, near a small ice cream shop, my mother and I turned into a side street. Two houses down we were already there.

When we went to the first floor of the typical old Viennese building, I felt uncomfortable. What was I actually doing here? I took a deep breath and before I could ring the doorbell, an older, well-groomed man opened the door.

I didn't notice much of the apartment. I saw a spacious room, which immediately adjoined the antechamber. There were five other elderly men sitting around a long table, whose flair went well with the heavy, old German furniture. In retrospect, they were probably younger than I am today, but as a young resident they seemed like a bunch of old people.

Before I could introduce myself, one of the men felt my belly and said there was something wrong with one of my kidneys. My breath caught for a moment. How did the man know I had a renal calculus as a child? Fascinating, I thought to myself, but said nothing about it. It was possible that it was a lucky strike.

I felt uncomfortable, even more so after being taken by surprise. The men now tried to explain to me why I was here and why I should definitely do magnetism. "You have strong powers," I heard several times during the encounter. But everything the men said contradicted my understanding of medicine.

To get me out of my awkward situation, my mother suggested that she could do "that". But nobody was interested in that. "You don't have the powers of your daughter," they said.

We left the apartment in a hurry. Still, I was grateful for the event. Because it strengthened a decision in me that was important to me and gave me inner stability as a doctor: I would never deal with medical hocus-pocus. My inquiring mind would no longer be allowed to object to that. I would direct him to the many other purely scientific fields of medicine in which there was still so much for me to discover.

Transfer of knowledge

That's how I felt about it from then on. The meeting with the strange circle occasionally crossed my mind and I still had something to chew on my experience with the pendulum, otherwise the matter was settled for me, and I devoted myself to my career as a radiation oncologist. Until I was supposed to treat a patient in 1999 who was a doctor himself.

Dr. Karl Kanzian was a charismatic personality, and you could see his many years of experience. He was 82 at the time, came to us with metastatic prostate cancer and wanted to get to know me.

By then I had already made a name for myself in radiation therapy. Dr. Kanzian wanted to know what was behind my reputation. At least that's how I interpreted his request. I've known for a long time that patients often explicitly ask about certain doctors, not just me but also my colleagues.

Little did I know how much of an impact this elderly man would have on the rest of my life; I made my way to the patient consultation. He told me about his suffering, and I told him about our radiation therapies. Eventually he became calm, almost relaxed. An almost meditative silence spread in the consulting room. "You should do magnetism," he said.

There it was again, that word, 15 years after I first heard it. I sat at my desk, confused. What did that mean? Before I could react, he continued. “I want to give them the magnetism. I am seriously ill. For years I have been looking for a suitable successor. Unsuccessful. Until now."

Question marks appeared in my head. Today I know that the tradition of magnetizers is to "pass on" their ability. At the time, I wondered what exactly that meant. Some mysterious initiation at a secret meeting? Or is it serious training? I also asked myself why, for the second time in my life, someone had asked me about magnetism, which I still didn't know what to do with. Could that be coincidence?

This time I felt more at ease than at that meeting in the gloomy apartment near the Urania and told Dr. Kanzian about my experience back then. He didn't seem surprised by this but made it clear that this treatment method was not for young people. "It takes a certain maturity for that," he said. You can only be a magnetizer if you have reached the age of seven times seven.

I, who was never good at mental arithmetic, understood that being born in 1955 I was still on the way there. For some reason, everything just felt right to me at that moment. He hadn't caught me off guard like those old men had. There was no more shyness, no fear and no aversion in me. There was only one voice telling me: You should take a closer look.

The following weeks were interesting. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, didn't talk much myself and listened to Dr. Kanzian. He came every three days after the radiation and told me about his work. What he felt in his patients, what I would be able to feel and how he was able to help many.

One afternoon he asked me a strange question. "Do you actually know what "feel" means?"

I had a keen medical sense for people's well-being, I was sure of that, but I guess he meant something else. That's why I shook my head.

He then asked me to touch him where I was irradiating him. "What are you feeling?" he asked.

I immediately noticed that something was happening at the relevant point. However, I did not feel the activity on the body or in the body, but above the body. He nodded when I described it.

After a few weeks he took me to his practice to show me his methods on patients. I felt a young man with kidney problems and the back of a man with severe low back pain. In doing so, I became aware again that I felt something different at or rather over the affected areas than over the rest of the body. I felt warmth and tingling in my hands.

For several months I accompanied Dr. Kanzian to his practice three times a week. For two days I watched him during his treatments, dealt with his methods and observed him in his dealings with patients. Every Wednesday I treated other patients myself.

He also insisted that I treat him with his own methods for practice purposes. He pointed out my mistakes, showed me how to use my hands and when to move slower and when to move faster.

At first, I thought he was just doing it to teach me everything. At some point I noticed that it was good for him too. So good that after three months he was fit enough to be able to postpone his retirement from his practice. The energy seemed to have returned to him despite his age and he continued until he was ninety. Over the years I continued to treat him with magnetism once a week.

An urgent letter

As I said, I am a doctor. Medic. Scientist. Rationalist. Nevertheless, my path led me to magnetism. I never looked for it, any more than I had to look for patients for it. “Patients choose their doctor. You don't have to advertise. The ones you need come to you," said Dr. Kanzian. Which, like so many other things, he was right about.

However, he was never able to answer a question that was extremely important to me. How can the effect of magnetism be explained? I asked him that in vain over the years. Which is why I put my inquiring mind to it.

Regarding my work in the hospital, it turned out to be right for me to investigate the question of the scientific background of this apparently mysterious treatment method. Word got around about what I was doing, and not just inside the hospital. The general management of the Vienna community hospitals, which also includes the Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Spital, found out about it. One day she sent a letter.