“We should think that the condition should be improved in three to five months with noteworthy improvement in three to five days…”

As I opened the refrigerator to begin preparing breakfast, I noticed something was different. The ever-present pain that I felt on an empty stomach each morning had subsided. Before I removed any items from the shelves, I asked Janice over my shoulder what day it was.

I has received the Al Miner reading on Thursday and had immediately implemented the dietary changes Friday morning. Janice and I had left later that day to visit her sister and brother-in-law in Atlanta. We had arrived late Friday night and spent a pleasant Saturday and Sunday talking about the reading and its possibilities. But , as we sometimes gladly do on a vacation or visit, we had lost track of time. Had we remained at home in familiar surroundings, I am sure that I would have been capable of counting to three by days. But being away and preoccupied with renewing a family bond, disrupted by distance, both Janice and I had failed to monitor the three day passage of time.

Janice and I both laughed and stared at each other in semi-wonderment. This was too simple. I had adjusted my foods, begun a regimen of daily prayer and tried to figure out how to meditate. Was it truly this easy? After a less than five star breakfast of goat milk and cereal, much of the familiar pain returned but this was different. There had actually been a pause in the discomfort that had followed me for so long. I even had several moments of confidence. I didn’t understand it and knew innately that a very long road lay ahead, but at least there was possibly a path to follow where for nearly a decade none had appeared.

We continued to look for the slightest signs of improvement while in Atlanta. By the time we returned to Virginia several days later, our confidence was growing. Upon our return home, I hit every health food store that I could find looking for the recommended mint and sage teas, the watermelon tea and the other items suggested in the reading. I implemented the castor oil packs and Epsom salt soaks with a vengeance. I made an appointment with a physical therapist whom had been assigned to the college basketball team that I had served as an assistant coach, several years prior. He checked my lower back. I told him where it hurt and quizzed him regarding which vertebrae seemed to be tender. To my further confirmation, his appraisal echoed Lama Sing’s in every way, even though I had only directed him to general areas, not specific spots. As you review the complete reading in the back of this book, keep in mind that my original questions asked nothing about my back. The back pain that I had been experiencing for several years had seemed to be more of a nuisance rather than a contributing factor to my gastrointestinal disorder. Now that a highly respected sports medicine clinician had confirmed what had been told to me on the tape, and without having knowledge of the reading, I was further empowered. I hadn’t even asked Al Miner about my back. The minor pain there had been the least of my worries. Amazingly, I had been advised about something that was relevent even when I did not suspect it to be so.

My respect and wonderment continued to grow but I still knew that this was only a start. The tape had told me I would have to change my life. Couldn’t I just eat a little differently? Push a few vertebrae back into place and be done with it? Why and how would I change a life that didn’t seem unusual and certainly wasn’t breaking any rules? As I found out later, I didn’t fully understand “the rules.” To my amazement, decades later “the rules” or the more correctly, the laws, become clearer and clearer.

In the meantime, I covered all known bases and began physical therapy while having the chiropractic adjustments that the reading had suggested. I bought a book on meditation from the Association For Enlightenment, the Edgar Cayce Foundation in Virginia Beach, Virginia. As directed, I started counting backwards from ten to one daily. My improvement was steady and noticeable. The pain was less severe and for shorter periods of time. My confidence grew and I felt physically stronger as well. I began to understand my body better and I began to see it less as what and who I was, but more as a portion of the total me. I began to understand that I could find balance, that somehow my body could be balanced by the real me and that my physical body could become an ally, rather than an out-of-control vehicle that was dominating my existence. The real purpose of my life was beginning to come into focus. I began to allow my body to heal.

Over time, Al Miner and I became dear friends. I explored his other works and joined a wonderful group of people who shared insights and experiences while experimenting and learning more about meditation, prayer, dreams and other techniques of healing of self and self-awakening. Our group included teachers, salespeople, doctors, scientists and others from every vocation imaginable. Techniques of self-healing presented themselves over and over in our studies.

What follows is a chapter-by-chapter discussion of the leading aspects of this self-examination, as I understand them, and what I have learned as I have applied these works to myself. The topics will be discussed specifically with gastrointestinal distress in mind, but they apply to all illnesses. Please consider them as such.

We do not have to be sick. We should enjoy great health. We should be joyful and full of energy. Exploring each of the following topics and techniques enabled me to restore my health and recover my joy. It is my most profound hope that these words and my experiences will do the same for you.