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Mind States
Hay, There! Louise Hay Comes To Video
by Michael Abedin
In the film business, when something becomes a success, it gets done again, again, and yet again. To say that What the Bleep Do We Know and The Secret were successful is like saying that Barack Obama ran a pretty good campaign.
While What the Bleep had a bleep of a run at the box office in 2004, the success of The Secret a couple of years later on DVD turned this type of film into an industry of its own. Imitators popped up and a style was born in which authors, teachers, and healers discuss quantum physics, metaphysics, and the search for love, wealth, and meaning in the universe. In the meantime, nameless seekers wander throughout the narrative, eventually putting the principles into effect.
Two terms pop up pretty regularly when someone appears on the screen: “visionary” and “pioneer.” No one explains what you have to do to be a visionary (see things, presumably), but everyone knows what pioneers do. They put on coonskin caps and blaze trails, and pretty soon they’re leading wagon trains into new territory.
Few people deserve to be called a pioneer more than Louise Hay. You Can Heal Your Life, directed by Michael Goorjiani, is a DVD chronicle of her life and career as she enters her eighth decade, the one that she’s decided is going to be her best ever.
That’s the kind of statement that is Hay’s trademark—simple, direct, and confident. Things weren’t always that clear, though. She apparently had a pretty good life until she was about 18 months old. Her parents divorced and she went through foster homes until the age of five, when she ended up back with her mother, who had remarried. The next ten years were a chronicle of physical and sexual abuse, until she left home at 15 to pursue a high-fashion modeling career in Chicago and New York.
A marriage to an English aristocrat ended in divorce, and Hay found herself at the Church of Religious Science in New York, where she came across the idea that if you can change your thoughts, you can change your life. The rest, as they say, is—well, maybe not history. It’s her story—one that she created an affirmation at a time.
Keeping it simple.
Louise Hay’s publishing career had its humble start in her bedroom in Santa Monica and Hay House is now an empire. The seed was planted in 1976 through Hay’s small pamphlet, Heal Your Body, which included her now famous list of dis-eases and their true spiritual and metaphysical roots. In 1984, this pamphlet was expanded into the well known book, You Can Heal Your Life. The list is so simple, basic, and obvious that you could see it being recited by a shaman around a campfire. Problems in the hips or feet? Inability or unwillingness to move forward. Problems in the hands? Inability to grasp or let go. Alzheimer’s? A desire to leave the planet.
Simplicity, though, may well be the cornerstone of the ability to heal. The information we get from doctors is usually beyond our comprehension, and is often fear inducing. Sometimes, it can actually scare the life out of us. It was one of the scariest diseases that propelled Louise Hay and Hay House into the national spotlight.
Welcome to the Hay Ride.
The disease was one in which the body began to destroy itself. AIDS spread like wildfire through gay men and intravenous drug users in California. These populations were naturals for Hay’s message that the way to heal was to love and accept yourself just as you are. She started a program in her living room, in which she created “a safe place for people that were terrified out of their wits.” Six people showed up, then 20, 30, 60, until the local government gave her a space that drew 850 people. The Hay Ride was born—not a wagon train, but close enough.
Just to show that she was walking her talk, Hay created money and a director out of thin air to make a video about the Hay Ride, scenes of which are on the DVD. The next step? Donahue and Oprah in the same week, and You Can Heal Yourself was soon involved with a different list—the one The New York Times creates of best-selling non-fiction. It’s been there ever since and has been translated into over 35 different languages.
Hay House celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, and now represents some of the top names in the field: Wayne Dyer, Esther and Jerry Hicks, and Marianne Williamson, to name a few. Many of them appear on the DVD, and their admiration and gratitude are obvious.
The real star of the film is Louise Hay and her message, which says that you are creating the story of your own life and you can change it with a few words if you’re willing to take the first steps. If it feels fake at first, keep going. Affirmations are like doing reps of an exercise, and their strength builds. Once you’ve planted the seed, let it grow—don’t dig in the earth to check it. Affirmations are scientifically validated by electromagnetic field research. When you change the field, you can change atomic structure and alter reality. Most importantly, the answer to almost any problem is forgiveness, which is a gift to your self. Even Mark Twain, not known for his sunny outlook on life, knew this. “Forgiveness,” he said, “is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that crushes it.”
You Can Heal Your Life is available through Spiritual Cinema Circle, a DVD subscription service offering hard-to-find films with inspiring and uplifting themes. You Can Heal Your Life is the December feature pick for SCC subscribers. For more information, call 800.280.8290 or visit www.spiritualcinemacircle.com.
Michael Abedin is a freelance writer and the owner, publisher, and editor of Austin All Natural magazine. Learn more at www.AustinAllNatural.com, call 512.803.0721 or e-mail michaelabedin@yahoo.com.