Louise Hay

Healing as a Way of Life

The name, Louise Hay, is for many people, synonymous with mental and spiritual healing. With her popular books and regular question-answer columns, Ms. Hay has opened millions of minds to the possibility of healing, and provided an effective process for us to follow on our own.

Born into a troubled family in Los Angeles in 1927, Louise had an unimaginably difficult childhood. Her parents divorced at a time when divorce was almost unheard of; her mother left her with others for weeks at a time when she was less than 2 years old, in order to find work, and then married a man who was verbally, physically, and emotionally abusive.  Then the Great Depression hit and Louise endured the stigma of extreme poverty in a school with predominantly middle class students while her home life was a cycle of heavy labor and abuse.

Louise ran away from home and found work as a waitress at 15.  She gave a child up for adoption soon after her 16^th birthday, which served to convince her even more of her own worthlessness, and she left L.A. soon after. After a few menial jobs in Chicago, she went on to New York and landed a job as a fashion model. Still self-critical and totally unaware of her beauty, she nonetheless married well, and lived the “jetsetter” life until her husband asked for a divorce, fourteen years later.

It was a “chance” visit to a Religious Science church that started Ms. Hay on the path of spiritual and mental health.  She became a practitioner and teacher and studied for the ministry, and prepared her signature work, the little book of conditions and associated beliefs that so many people rely on. 

A bout with cancer helped her to clear her mind and body of the toxins from the past. Then she moved back to Los Angeles and began the teaching and healing work for which she is so well known around the world.

Today, Ms. Hay has a farm and a publishing company and writes books and a column for Science of Mind and other magazines. Through these she continues to bring people into awareness of the ideas and practices of New Thought.

All the events you have experienced in your lifetime up to this moment have been created by your thoughts and beliefs you have held in the past.  They were created by the thoughts and words you used yesterday, last week, last month, last year, 10, 20, 30, 40, or more years ago, depending on how old you are.

However, that is your past.  It is over and done with. What is important in this moment is what you are choosing to think and believe and say right now.  For these thoughts and words will create your future. Your point of power is in the present moment and is forming the experience of tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and so on.

The only thing we are ever dealing with is a thought, and a thought can be changed. [57]

So goes the introductory chapter to Hay’s many-times best selling guide: You Can Heal Your Life. Written in 1984, in response to the thousands of requests she was receiving from AIDS victims and their families, this simple book has become the mainstay of many households seeking to improve their health and wellbeing—regardless of whether they are familiar with the ideas and institutions of New Thought.

Drawing on her own training in Religious Science and insights gained from A Course in Miracles, [58] Hay’s book takes the reader through many of the twelve lessons taught by Emma Hopkins and Emilie Cady, and applies those ideas to problems of health, wealth, and the experience of success.

She starts with our belief about—and attitude toward—ourselves.

When people come to me with a problem, I don’t care what it is—poor health, lack of money, unfulfilling relationships, or stifled creativity—there is only one thing I ever work on, and that is LOVING THE SELF. …

Loving the self, to me, begins with never ever criticizing ourselves for anything. Criticism locks us into the very pattern we are trying to change. Understanding and being gentle with ourselves helps us to move out of it. [59]

She believes that virtually all our ills and problems stem from the attitude toward ourselves that was programmed when we were tiny children.

Almost all of our programming, both negative and positive, was accepted by us by the time we were three years old. Our experiences since then are based upon what we accepted and believed about ourselves and about life at that time. The way we were treated when we were very little is usually the way we treat ourselves now.  The person you are scolding is a three-year-old child within you. [60]

Hay’s relationship to Holmes and other New Thought teachers comes through in her use of affirmations and in her explanation of the role and power of the mind.

There is an incredible power and intelligence within you constantly responding to your thoughts and words. As you learn to control your mind by the conscious choice of thoughts, you align yourself with this power.

Do not think your mind is in control. You are in control of your mind. You use your mind. You can stop thinking those old thoughts. … [61]

She draws on other New Thought teachers as well, using, for example, Emmet Fox’s exercise for dissolving resentment.

Yet, Hays extends traditional New Thought teachings with considerable use of the ideas presented in A Course in Miracles.

Whenever we are ill, we need to search our hearts to see who it is we need to forgive.

The Course in Miracles says that “all dis-ease comes from a state of unforgiveness” and that “whenever we are ill, we need to look around to see who it is that we need to forgive."

I would add to that concept that the very person you find it hardest to forgive is the one YOU NEED TO LET GO OF THE MOST. Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. It’s just letting the whole thing go. … [62]

Through her work with others and the example of her own life, Ms. Hay has brought into the latter half of the 20^th Century, the teachings and practices that began nearly 100 years before she was born.

AIDS and beyond

For six and a half years, I spent time working with people with aids.  It began with six men in my living room one evening, and in a couple of years grew to a weekly meeting of 800 people.  This was such a growing period for me.  My heart was constantly being stretched. …

Several of the Hayride people went on the Oprah show with me, and we put out positive messages about aids.  The same week, I appeared on Donahue with Dr. Bernie Siegel. … I was in constant awe of how Life was moving me in so many directions. [63]

Who would have thought that the epidemic called AIDS would cause so many people to re-think their relationship to their bodies and their health? Through her well-publicized work with gay men, Ms. Hay brought New Thought healing into the mainstream.

In her book You Can Heal Your Life, Hay describes her process. It starts with an interview and close observation:

Whenever I ask a new client what is going on … they really think they know the problem. But I know these complaints are only outer effects of inner thought patterns. …

I listen to the words they use as I ask some basic questions ...

I watch the body postures and the facial movements. But mostly I really listen to the words they say. Thoughts and words create our future experiences. As I listen to them talk, I can readily understand why they have these particular problems. …

At this point, Hay uses a listing exercise to get at some of the client’s underlying thoughts. She asks them to write on the top of a piece of paper, “I Should” and make a list of five or six ways to finish that sentence. …

You see, I believe that should is one of the most damaging words in our language. …

… many of the things they thought they “should” do are things they never wanted to do, and they were only trying to please other people. …

The problem has now begun to shift … releasing the feeling of “being wrong” because they are not fitting someone else’s standards. [64]

The cornerstone of Hay’s approach is, truly, loving oneself. She says, “‘Love’ to me is appreciation to such a degree that it fills my heart to bursting and overflows.” [65] So, after the “I should” exercise, she has people look into a mirror and say

I love and accept you just the way you are.

This relatively simple action is more than most people can do, and a client’s reaction to it provides the last clue for Hay’s assessment and treatment plan.

And the first step of treatment is for the client to experience and understand the core thought driving all the others: “I am not good enough.” The second is discovering—and letting go of—the limiting beliefs  learned in childhood and continuing to shape the client’s life. The next step is to become “willing to change,” again using the mirror to experience whatever resistance might come up, and affirming that willingness regularly. She says, “Be aware that where you DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE is exactly the area where you NEED to change the most.” [66]

As with Hopkins and Holmes before her, the use of affirmations is central to Hay’s approach. 

The Universal Intelligence is always responding to your thoughts and words. Things will definitely begin to change as you make these statements. [67]

So, once the client develops awareness of the need to change, the release of old thought patterns begins with the repetition of new ones. Then, as old programming begins to assert itself, Hays recommends that we recognize it and simply focus on the new thought.

Learn to think in positive affirmations. … Too often we think in negative affirmations.  Negative affirmations only create more of what you say you don’t want. Saying “I hate my job,” will get you nowhere. …

Continually make positive statements about how you want your life to be. However, … Always make your statement in the PRESENT TENSE, such as “I am” or “I have.” Your subconscious mind is such an obedient servant that if you declare in the future tense “I want,” or “I will have,” then that is where that idea will always stay—just out of your reach in the future! [68]

Ms. Hay has been very successful in getting these ideas into a broader segment of our society, but even with this success, she has hopes for these ideas becoming part of more peoples’ experience, earlier on:

It is my deep desire that the topic “How Your Thoughts Work” would be the very first subject taught in school.  … we could teach them important subjects such as How the Mind Works, How to Handle Finances, … How to Be a Parent … and How to Create and Maintain Self-Esteem and Self-worth.

Can you imagine what a whole generation of adults would be like if they had been taught these subjects in school along with their regular curriculum? … [69]