Attitudinal Healing (AH) is an approach to health and well-being based on the concept that attitude plays an important role in determining one’s emotional state – and how we experience the external world. It is a contemporary expression of universal principles common to most of the world’s cultural and spiritual traditions. Attitudinal Healing was introduced by Dr. Jerry Jampolsky in 1975, based on his work with children diagnosed with cancer, Since its introduction, Attitudinal Healing has been used successfully for 40 years to support people of all ages and cultures who are facing illness, loss and other life challenges.
Attitudinal Healing is not about changing the external circumstances of our lives, which are often out of our control. It is based on the premise that our own thoughts and attitudes cause us to be happy or unhappy, not other people or the external circumstances of life. Attitudinal Healing teaches us to train our own minds so that, rather than being devastated by the abuses and disappointments of life, we are able to move forward in our lives and to use those difficult experiences in positive ways…to become, stronger, wiser and more compassionate human beings.
Attitudinal Healing is highly regarded by the academic and professional community as an effective therapeutic approach for individuals, groups, and organizations. In 2005 founder Dr. Gerald Jampolsky was awarded the American Medical Association’s Excellence in Medicine Award for this groundbreaking work.
Attitudinal Healing:
- Defines health as inner peace.
- Defines healing as letting go of fear.
- Regards our primary identity as spiritual and affirms that each individual possesses a quality of being or an inner nature that is essentially loving and that this loving nature is shared by all human beings.
- States that love is the most important healing force in the world.
- Does not tell other people what to do but offers them choices.
- Emphasizes equality in every aspect of our lives and affirms that we are all student and teacher to each other.
- Recognizes that peace is our only goal.
- Emphasizes listening with empathy and without judgment or advice.
- Sets the goal of living a life focused on unconditional love.
- Views the purpose of every communication as joining (genuine, heart-felt connection).
- Acknowledges that happiness is a choice
Every day we are making choices that are either based on love or based on fear. Which one we decide to use determines what we experience in our lives.
Attitudinal Healing – A Practical Spirituality
“Healing results when we concentrate on changing our own attitudes rather than trying to change the attitudes of others. Thus, the goal of Attitudinal Healing is self-healing in the face of each life challenge. Attitudinal Healing is not a religion, nor is it religious. People from many cultures, faiths, and denominations, as well as those who follow no faith at all are welcome to participate.” – from Love Is Letting Go Of Fear by Gerald Jampolsky, M.D., 2005 edition.
The Benefits of Attitudinal Healing
Some of the possible benefits of Attitudinal Healing include:
- Experiencing our true essence as Love
- Finding our own pathway to Inner Peace
- Becoming a love finder
- Feeling gratitude
- Seeing past appearances and focusing on love
- Walking through life more lightly
- Laughing more
- Living in a consciousness of giving rather than getting.
- Recognizing that there is something greater than ourselves.
- Successfully letting go of fear, judgments, victim-hood and the need to suffer
Questions to ask ourselves:
Is there another way of looking at the world that changes our experience of life?
Is it possible to choose to let go of fear and conflict completely?
Is it possible to heal our painful thoughts and attitudes about the past and to bring peace to ourselves and others?
Is it possible to forgive everyone who we think has hurt us, and to forgive ourselves for our mistakes and for the shame we feel about the past?
Can we truly know peace and happiness while living in a world that seems so chaotic and crazy?
Can we remove all our self-imposed blocks to love and come to know and trust in who we really are?
Can we simplify our lives by recognizing that there are only two emotions – love and fear?
