What is Attitudinal Healing?

Attitudinal Healing comes to us through the work of Gerald G. "Jerry" Jampolsky, M.D., author of Love is Letting Go of Fear (Celestial Arts, 1988), and founder of the first Center for Attitudinal Healing  in Tiburon, CA in 1975.

Below are twelve Principles of Attitudinal Healing that Jerry derived from A Course in Miracles (Viking Press; 2nd edition [March 1996]).

The following comes from The Corstone Center (formerly The Center for Attitudinal Healing), 33 Buchanan St., Sausalito, CA 94965, Phone 415.331.6161

Attitudinal Healing offers a way to enable us to consciously choose to let go of fearful attitudes and embrace a loving and forgiving path.  The goal is not simply to change behavior, but to re-train the most powerful instrument of change we possess, our own mind.  Thus, Attitudinal Healing occurs when we realize that our own thoughts, feelings and attitudes about people and events are what cause us conflict and distress.

Developed by renowned psychiatrist and author, Jerry Jampolsky, M.D., over 30 years ago, Attitudinal Healing has been successfully applied by individuals, communities and organizations in over 50 countries, ranging from cancer patients in Russia and Ukraine, to inner city orphans in Mexico City, to life-threatened individuals in the US, and war refugees in Croatia and Bosnia.

Dr. Jampolsky outlined a core framework or set of Attitudinal Healing principles to help people to let go of fear, discard negative and hurtful thoughts from the past, and remove inner obstacles to peace. These are as follows:

1. The essence of being is love.
2. Health is inner peace.
3. Giving and receiving are the same.
4. We can let go of the past and the future.
5. Now is the only time there is.
6. We learn to love ourselves and others by forgiving rather than judging.
7. We can become love-finders rather than faultfinders.
8. We can be peaceful inside regardless of what is happening outside.
9. We are students and teachers to each other.
10. We can focus on the whole of our lives rather than on the fragments.
11. Because love is eternal, death need not be viewed as fearful.
12. We can always see ourselves and others as extending love or giving a call for help.

Attitudinal Healing teaches that people or circumstances do not cause us conflict or distress; instead it is our own thoughts, feelings and attitudes about people and events that produce our struggle.

By exploring conflict and fear within ourselves, we combine the energy of willingness with love’s healing energy. This is a continual process, and it takes great courage. With persistence and patience, our inner fears and conflict heal.

Attitudinal Healing recognizes that love and fear are our only emotions. All feelings arise from one or the other. Love-based attitudes extend joy, respect, happiness, compassion and peace. Fear-based attitudes project confusion, stress, frustration, anger comparison, judgment, conflict.

Using Attitudinal Healing concepts within a stressful situation empowers us to respond honestly from our hearts, knowing that we speak our truth as we know it now. By taking responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, and actions without blame or judgment, we create a space for those involved to do that also. We extend ourselves to join.

Sometimes when we extend peace and respect, it isn’t returned. Attitudinal Healing asks us to give it away, without any expectations of another’s response. This does not mean that we accept unacceptable behavior It means that we bring about change peacefully with respect for ourselves.

Some people will claim that the idea of choosing peace and respect is too simple. It is a simple choice; it is simply very difficult to do! Our global society supports a fear-based system. Experiencing Attitudinal Healing is a choice to experience a peace-based system.

When we go to the heart of a system, we clearly see that a system is constructed upon the attitudes of those within it. Personal healing, therefore, evokes transformation within a system, whether it is a family, a business, a governmental agency, a culture, or a global objective. This is how educational systems, legal/judicial systems, health care system, and virtually every cultural system is transformed the transformation emerges from gentle choices for peace, respect and love. Attitudinal Healing helps some people choose peace. It happens one by one by one by one.

One person does make a difference! Each of us is the difference!