The connection between cancer and emotional states was observed nearly 2000 years ago by the physician Galen who noted that “cheerful women were less prone to cancer than were women of a depressed nature,” according to Dr. O. Carl Simonton in his book “Getting Well Again.” By the late 1960s, Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at Harvard, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, a molecular biologist, each separately noted numerous health benefits among patients who practiced meditation.
But in the 1970s, Simonton took the mind-body connection a step further. As a radiation oncologist, he noticed that some of his patients with serious diagnoses would live and thrive, while others with more manageable cancers declined rapidly. He surmised, like Galen before him, that psychological and emotional factors were at work, with the most pervasive and dangerous among them being a sense of hopelessness.
After researching the results of tests conducted in the late 1960s by Robert Rosenthal and his colleagues on “expectancy effects” (think self-fulfilling prophecies), Simonton developed specific protocols to give patients a sense of control and optimism. He guided patients through visualization sessions to mobilize T-cells (a type of white blood cell) and taught them relaxation techniques and simple meditation.
