User talk:Berlon322

[edit] Criticism of health claims ABC news referred to claims that the mind has power over our health as "perhaps the most controversial" in The Secret. They quote Rev. Michael Beckwith, founder of Agape International Spiritual Center[33] in Culver City, California, and one of The Secret "teachers" as saying: "I've seen kidneys regenerated. I've seen cancer dissolved."[57] The film features one man who was paralyzed, mute, and on a ventilator after his spine and diaphragm were crushed in an airplane accident. He credits his full recovery to the power of his mind. A similar story is told by another interviewee whose breast cancer went into spontaneous remission without medical intervention.

Several critics have expressed concern about detrimental effects the film may have on the health and well-being of individuals. Dr. Richard Wender, president of the American Cancer Society, worries that guidelines in the film will prompt others to "reject helpful therapies in favor of positive thinking",[30] even though the film verbally asserts that traditional medicine should be pursued for serious illness.[58] Julia Mckinnell of Canada's Maclean's Magazine in a commentary about the film and book titled, "Some people are finding the self-help phenomenon is actually screwing them up", cited several real-life cases of alleged detrimental effects.[59] She closed with a line Oprah used when urging a guest to seek medical attention for cancer: "The Secret is merely a tool; it's not treatment."[59] On the spiritual side, Valerie Reiss, in a review for BeliefNet, expressed concerns that others might get into "head-tripping" on negative thoughts as she did when younger.

I would realize I was thinking negative thoughts, which would trigger more thoughts about how awful I was for thinking negative thoughts and how I was ruining my life with those thoughts, and so on and so on, until my head was ready to explode with all the bad juju. The only thing that freed me from that loop was something else I also learned that summer at the ashram, meditation.[7]