Chapter Synopses
Chapter 1—Beginnings
This section explains how I first became interested in the relationship between love and health. It begins by sharing a window into my childhood during which time I was labeled "dumb Jerry" by family members. My unquestioned acceptance of this characterization eventually led to my taking compensatory measures to become a super achiever.
In my climb up the ladder of success, I collected academic degrees and, as a college professor, worked tirelessly to impress others. All such efforts proved that I wasn't, in fact, dumb, that I was as smart as my siblings and deserved my parents' respect. It was during the course of such striving that I came in conflict with my university's president, resulting in my dismissal as an administrator and demotion to a menial post.
This treatment of me caused me to strike out in anger and subsequently to become deathly ill. My doctor explained that the intestinal malady I suffered from was brought on by anger and that I must either get rid of my anger or expect to die. This prospect caused me to research the subject of anger and its harmful effects on health. At the same time I also discovered evidence supporting the healing power of love.
Chapter 2—A Course of Love and Health
As a direct outcome of rising above personal trauma, I devised an undergraduate college course called Love and Health. The idea behind this was so novel at the time that it took two years for the curriculum committee to approve it. However, once I began teaching the class I realized that I suffered from an extremely narrow view of what love is. I had assumed most kids were raised in intact, healthy home environments like mine. I therefore began to talk less and listen more. Eventually, the class evolved into a roundtable type of discussion.
This undergraduate course quickly became one of the most popular on campus, leading to my teaching a similar course for graduate students. Ten years later, I added a special summer offering, The International Love and Health Congress. That event was so well attended that it literally took over the college campus for several days. Participants came from thirty-eight states and thirteen countries.
Chapter 3—Twelve Primary Ingredients of Health
After teaching Love and Health for several years, it became apparent that the parts of this course dealing with mental and spiritual wellbeing were hard for me to adequately explain. As I was frequently asked to give off-campus presentations, it also became difficult to describe to others the interrelatedness of physical, mental, and spiritual health within the time allotted.
I therefore developed a model that helped overcome this problem called the Twelve Primary Ingredients of Health. Its simplicity rests in its analogy with the four components of physical health, namely food, rest, exercise, and elimination. Applying these four components to mental and spiritual health evolved into a paradigm that defined certain types of "food, rest, exercise, and elimination" for the mind and for the spirit as well as for the body.
Chapter 4—The Relationship Between Body, Mind, and Spirit
Current research shows that all three dimensions of human life—physical, mental, and spiritual—are interrelated and interdependent. While for years health was considered a purely physical phenomenon, we now know that a person's wellbeing is equally dependent on his or her mental and spiritual states. We observe the growing acceptance of humanity's spiritual side from authorities such as Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who states, "It is now considered a scientific fact that people have a spirit." The question both orthodox and alternative health practitioners ask today has thus changed to, "How do we effectively address people's physical, mental, and spiritual needs and how do these needs interface with each other?"
Chapter 5—Ten Behavioral Principles
Whenever people attempt to improve themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually, they are confronted with inertia and other factors that discourage them. This section introduces ten principles that acknowledge these difficulties and provide insight and incentive into how to bring about positive change:
- You can't "file away" wholesome behaviors until later in life and assume you
can then adopt them full-blown.
- To develop and maintain healthy behaviors, you must work at them constantly
throughout your life.
- Positive qualities or character traits don't mean much until they're tested and
challenged by adversity.
- The best time to incorporate good character traits is before the test arrives.
- When you improve one personal quality, you automatically improve others.
- When you hurt one personal quality, you simultaneously hurt the others.
- The locus of control for mastering wholesome behaviors is internal.
- You can almost always reverse the harm done by wrong actions and habits.
- The longer you wait to begin the reversal of harmful habits the more difficult it gets.
- "You cannot run away from weakness. You must at some point fight it out and either
win or perish"—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Chapter 6—Personal Metamorphosis
After arriving at such concepts as a result of teaching them for several years, I underwent a personal metamorphosis by incorporating them into my life. This section provides a simple model for bringing about individual change. Called the Jahori Window, it encourages a person to assess him- or herself from four different perspectives or "windows," asking,
1. What do I know and what do others know about me?
2. What do I know that others don't know about me?
3. What don't I know that others know about me?
4. What don't I know and what don't others know about me?
Chapter 7—Love and Health for Graduates
In addition to the graduate and undergraduate courses I taught on Love and Health, I created the International Love and Health Congress, which attracted notable speakers from throughout the country. Participants and attendees at its lectures and workshops came from many states and foreign countries. They included nurses and hospital administrators as well as college students. Speakers such as Bernie Siegel and Dick Bloch of H&R Block shared their stories of overcoming cancer and other chronic diseases using love as an integral part of their treatment.
Chapter 8—The Spiritual Birth of a Hospital
Attending the first International Love and Health Congress was the new administrative cabinet of what had been a rundown local hospital. Its CEO hired me to teach spiritual principles and Love and Health to its 1,200 employees and to healthcare providers. Besides acting in the traditional capacity of chaplain, I was also to apply a spiritual and loving component to every important decision made. I thus participated in all of this hospital's administrative meetings.
Additionally, I served as personal spiritual advisor to the CEO. Whenever tough decisions were to be made, I was called on to provide spiritual insights. This created some provocative dynamics at the hospital but happily led to radical management and organizational changes that made this institution the loving, healing environment it came to be. From that time on, love and spirituality were incorporated into every facet of the hospital's functions and activities.
Chapter 9—Beginning the Griffin Experience
This section of the book was written by John Bustelos, CEO of Griffin Hospital, who describes how we began and completed the process that brought about such a dramatic change. By 2004, Newsweek magazine ranked Griffin Hospital as the 59th most desirable place to work in the United States. This honor is the more remarkable when it is realized that ten years earlier Griffin's medical environment was described by some as a mere "cesspool." John's account provides the larger context of my involvement.
Chapter 10—Organizational Metamorphosis
Using the same Jahori Window as before, we eventually succeeded in applying the principles that influence personal change to now bring about change at the organizational level. As we implemented the lengthy and radical processes involved in effecting this change, medical administrators came from all over the world to view Griffin Hospital's metamorphosis. Tours of the facility had to be limited to two per day in order not to disrupt its proper functioning.
Chapter 11—Memorable Experiences As a Chaplain
When hired by the hospital, I was also asked to serve as its chaplain. During the five years I acted in this capacity, I had many experiences that one could consider miracles. Several of the more spiritual and uplifting are mentioned. A couple must suffice here:
At the annual Christmas car raffle that we organized in order to provide needed funds for the hospital, I had a strong spiritual impression that I would be the winner. But I simultaneously felt that I was then to give the prize back so that a needier person than I could win it. That was precisely what happened and, remarkably, what happened more than once.
A patient at the hospital had suffered a massive stroke and was given the medical prognosis of being brain dead. After several days in which the man lay in a coma, during which his family invited me to offer up prayers in their presence (which prayers appeared to reverse the expected medical outcome), he suddenly woke up sharp as a tack and went home.
Chapter 12—A Few Words About Prayer
When sharing such stories and spiritual experiences with others, I am often asked to give insights into the process and power of prayer. This section contains several basic principles and suggestions.
Chapter 13—Alternative Healthcare
Once we had achieved measurable success in improving traditional healthcare at the hospital, we began to integrate alternative healing modalities into its regular protocols. Efforts were made to help physicians understand and appreciate the theories behind such nontraditional therapies. These efforts ultimately failed because of the completely different orientations of the two modalities. While we experienced many successes with alternative therapies, over time resistance became so intense that it culminated in the dismissal the very persons who had brought about the transformation of Griffin Hospital from a medical disaster into an effective and loving healing institution. With this account, the book ends.
