The Well Body Book (1973) is the perfect segue from Mind Games (1972). Both have been life-long guides; with valuable lessons that have stayed with me nigh on to 50 years. Mind Games uses guided imagery to bring into mind a relaxing and receptive consciousness. The Well Body Book uses guided imagery to invoke an imaginary doctor to serve as a healing guide.

Months after graduating college, completing the Mind Games exercises and working with my healing guide, my then partner, Michael and I headed north, eager to get out of LA (from Claremont, really, in the LA smog basin). We had caught the drift of dirt (compost, really) and wanted to get to someplace country where we could sink our hands in.

Just get off of those LA freeways without getting killed or caught….Guy Clark sang it and we belted it out too. Since those lyrics express one of my most important life events, mention was made of that sojourn and the song in The Future of Art 10. Utopia.

I did get off the LA freeways without getting killed or caught but it was on the Alcan Highway in the Yukon Territory that I bit the dust.

On a mission to get away from the smog and traffic-filled Los Angeles, we adventured forth, on the lookout to find a new place to settle and live the back to the land dream. Along the Alcan Highway our car hit the skids and rolled over and over down an embankment. It had rained the night before, making the dirt road super slick. While rounding a curve our tires did not hold and over we went.

As soon as we escaped the car, crawled away for fear of a gas leak and explosion, I realized I was injured, badly; bleeding. Michael reminded me to invoke my Well Body healer guide, remembering that my body is a 3,000,000 year old healer; that the forces would rally — mighty white blood cell were already on the way to the site of injury. 

Like a mantra I began to whisper to myself, over and over again:

— my body is a 3,000,000 year old healer. 

— my body is a 3,000,000 year old healer.

— my body is a 3,000,000 year old healer.

These words gave me the strength and the confidence to let the healing begin.

After an almost a two hour wait, an ambulance finally arrived and I was rushed (as rushed as one can travel on that treacherous road) to the hospital in Whitehorse, Yukon, 5 hours away.  Without even a question about my ability to pay, ER staff gave me expert care. As I was rolled on the gurney in to the emergency room, as if in a dream, I heard the radio announcer reporting a news item about an accident that had just happened, describing the slick road, the roll over and the injured passenger.

Days later, fitted with a neck brace and a cane, I left the hospital and joined Michael who had set up camp on the banks of the Swift River where for two weeks in the fine company of bears and mosquitos I continued to heal.

Since our car was totaled, once I could manage a wearing a backpack, we continued our journey, sans car, thumbs out. There was no going back, we would go, onward on our way North to Alaska, onward to Anchorage. It was easy! Sympathetic drivers, seeing my neck brace and cane, would screech to a stop offering to help us. But, by the time we reached Anchorage, we were short on cash. We heard that canneries on Kodiak Island were hiring. In a leap of faith we used our last $7.00 for the passage on the 9 hour ferry ride from Homer. During the shrimp season there were jobs aplenty. We worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, making double and triple time pay plus all the shrimp we could eat. We soon had pockets full of money. Days after the first snow fall, burrrr!!!! we had enough money to fly home to California. 

My healer guide not only got me back on the road again, I was headed for home.

In any discussion of imaginary healers Cherry Ames deserves a mention. As a girl, I poured over her how-to first aid book (1959). In her mystery series ala Nancy Drew I followed her rise from student nurse to army nurse (she pitched in with the WWII war effort). I wanted to emulate her expert sleuthing and her gentle beside manner. She was an influential role model. Harriet Forman, editor of Springer Publishing’s Cherry Ames editions, in a New York Times article says: “She was modern. She taught you that you could do anything. She was smart, and she was courageous, and she had a dedication to her calling. She would never, ever leave the side of her patients, even in a bombing raid.” Who wouldn’t want to emulate that except maybe the part about being steadfast during the bombing raids?

We can appreciate spirit guides and sensitive, skillful nurses but it’s the miracle of the life force itself and the healing properties of the will to live, the body as a 3,000,000 year old healer, that fills me with utmost gratitude. When suffering a cut, the body just gets going…automatically rallying the forces…you don’t even have to think about healing that cut, just clean the wound and set the stage where the action can begin. Sounds simple but just look at this video, a visualization of what’s going on in one cell:

The Inner Life of the Cell

Here is my voice reading The Well Body Book instructions on how to imagine your healer. It might not be in the guise of a medical doctor. It may appear as a trusted friend, an old teacher, even a being from outer space…what ever shape or form, it will give you strength to follow your inner voices of healing.