I began to notice that some of my patients—people who were supposed to die—didn’t. And I started asking them, “How come you didn’t die when you were supposed to?” They shared things with me—deep truths about love, choices, attitude, and how they lived their lives. I thought: I need to teach this to all my patients.
So I started listing what I called “survival behavior” and sent out letters inviting my cancer patients to a meeting:
“If you want to live a longer, better life, come. I want to teach you what I’ve learned from others who’ve done well.”
I told my secretary, ‘Just send it to our current office patients, not every cancer patient I’ve ever seen.’ But she didn’t listen, and the letter reached far more people than I expected.
I figured, if you had cancer and your doctor invited you to a meeting about how to live a better life, you’d come. What do you have to lose?
But I learned that not everyone wants to work at living. Some are afraid to try. Afraid to fail. They’ll swallow the pills, have the surgery—but don’t ask them to meditate, visualize healing, or love their body.
When the meeting came, my wife and I showed up—and there were maybe nine women in the room. Not one man. I said to my wife, “Where are the men?” And she said something I’ll never forget: “Honey, these are exceptional women.”
And that became the name of our group: Exceptional Cancer Patients (ECaP). Not because of miraculous recoveries—but because they were willing to live. They weren’t afraid to participate in their own healing.
We met weekly. Eventually I was running multiple groups a week—on my days off, evenings, weekends. We talked. We meditated. We visualized healing. Some of it was medical guidance. But a lot of it was about emotions, relationships, meaning, and life.
We focused on helping the body heal by changing the internal environment. You change your feelings, you change your chemistry. That’s not philosophy—it’s biology.
Let me share a letter I received from someone I helped years ago. Her name is Traci Shinkle, and she wrote this to me in 2023:
“Hi Dr. Bernie, I don’t know if you remember me or not, but I was a desperate mom writing to everyone I could when my son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2002. I was told by doctors not to have false hope. But your reply to my letter gave me hope—not false hope. Real, meaningful hope. You never told me everything would be fine. You just helped me believe it could be, and that helped me be strong for my son.”
“You even signed your letter to me: ‘Bernie (a CD—chosen dad).’ That meant so much. And here’s the most amazing part: My son is now 30 years old. He’s healthy. He’s thriving. He has a beautiful life—and we’re grateful for every day. I wanted you to know that your kindness, your reply, mattered. You were part of our healing.”
This is why I keep writing. This is why I believe in hope, in love, in the human spirit. Hope is not false. It is healing.
Another woman sent me a photo that filled my entire computer screen. She was lying naked in front of enormous mirrors.
At first, I was surprised—why would she send me this? But then I read her words:
“I was born with deformities. I never liked my body. Then I was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors said I’d probably die within a few years. But I didn’t want to die hating my body. So I began lying naked in front of the mirror, every day, just loving my body.”
And she wrote:
“I couldn’t believe it. Some of the deformities even started to straighten out. And my cancer went into complete remission.”
This is what I mean when I say healing is self-induced. It’s not a miracle. It’s not “spontaneous.” It’s the body responding to love, not hate.
In Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes:
“There are cases of self-induced healing—not recovery through treatment, but actual healing.”
He describes how the idea of healing ‘flooded out of the great open book like a rainbow-colored butterfly…’ And all the characters in the book hold their faces with healing hands—except for one man, who says:
“I suppose for that, you need to have a clear conscience.”
That line says it all. The body listens. The body responds to the truth of who we are.
If every Monday morning you say, “I hate my job,” your body hears you. It might just help you avoid going—by making you sick.
What if you changed how you felt? What if you sent your body a new message?
There was a millionaire I knew—focused on appearance, wealth, status. He got cancer. After that, he changed. He stopped worrying about his suits and his image. He started helping others. His whole attitude changed—and his health followed.
I know I may repeat stories—these people are part of me. They pop into my head all the time.
So I’ll ask you:
– Who are you?
– What’s your name?
– What do you want to be when you grow up?
Start now.
If you’re tired of living, that’s okay too. I’m 92. I get tired. Writing this book is hard.
I got the worst grade of my life in creative writing. I was a visual artist, not a writer. But I had a sense of humor. That’s what saved me.
And somehow, despite the critics, despite being called “controversial,” I wrote Love, Medicine & Miracles. And people listened. Because love, medicine, and miracles do belong together.
