One of the more spectacular cases involving the use of visualization to change or repair the body is told by Evelyn M. Monahan, a writer and lecturer who in the early 1960s was involved in a serious accident. Her head was badly injured and as a result she went blind. Her doctors told her that nothing could be done. At 22, she faced the prospect of a life without sight.

But that was only part of it. Even worse was the fact that the same injury had turned her into an epileptic who experienced as many as a dozen seizures a day. Even with medicine, the attacks came 10 times daily. To further complicate things, four years later she suffered another accident. This one left her right arm paralyzed.

Perhaps understandably, Monahan felt pretty sorry for herself and became bitter and resentful. But finally, nine years after the initial accident, she decided to do something about her situation. She knew that conventional medical treatment had not worked, so she began reading about unconventional medical treatment. She learned about visualization techniques in which the afflicted person uses images designed to restore the body to health. Knowing she had nothing to lose, she vowed to try the techniques and asked two friends to try them as well, on the assumption that the psychic energies of three people were better than those of just one.

Ten days later Monahan’s eyesight returned instantaneously. At the same time her epileptic sei-zures stopped. She went to her doctor, who ran several tests on her and found no further evidence of epilepsy. Soon afterward she stopped taking her medicine. "I have not experienced an epileptic seizure since that fateful day when my eyesight was returned to me," she wrote in her 1975 book The Miracle of Metaphysical Healing.

A week after the sudden curing of the blindness and epilepsy, she could move her right arm freely. The paralysis with its attendant pain had gone, never to return.

Healing Others Through Visualization

A story like this verges on the miraculous, not only because of what it says about the mind’s control over the physical body, but because of what it implies about the mind’s ability to heal others. Monahan is convinced that her friends’ visualizations were essential in her own healing.

After her own healing, Monahan vowed to teach others the techniques she had used. On a number of occasions she or her students even visualized healings for others. She describes the case of Mary C., whose 15-year-old son, Bobby, had been badly burned in an auto accident. In the first weeks of Bobby’s hospitalization doctors had given him drugs to relieve his pain. The medication could have become addictive if continued, though, so it was stopped. His wounds were far from healed, however. When the pain returned, it came back with a vengeance. His parents listened heartbrokenly as he cried and screamed for someone to help him.

Mary C., who had heard of a healing course Monahan was teaching, called her. The two met soon afterward. Monahan outlined the visualization method that had helped her and the mother returned to her vigil at her son’s bedside. She and her husband immediately began to imagine Bobby free of pain. Their son was well on the road to full recovery.

An hour later Bobby lapsed into peaceful slumber, the first real rest he had had in four days. In a few hours he awoke and spoke briefly with his parents before falling asleep again. "Mother, Dad, thanks for helping me," he said. "It doesn’t hurt anymore. I’m just awful sleepy."

His parents continued to use visualization. In the weeks to come Bobby’s recovery from his injuries proceeded with a rapidity that astonished his doctors. The physicians had concluded early on that several major skin-grafting operations would be necessary. As it turned out, it took only two minor operations to accomplish what had to be done.