Now, for years you’ve been stricken with a disease which you have labeled asthma. The interesting part about asthma is that asthma really is not a disease at all; asthma is merely the symptom. Asthma is caused by the constriction of the bronchi and this is in turn caused by little messages that are sent from the subconscious mind from the thalamus area of the brain down to the muscles the surround the bronchi and they tell the muscles to constrict. The muscles constrict, the bronchi constrict and the bronchial’s constrict and the individual has difficulty breathing out.
Usually, a person with a symptom of asthma can breathe in, but when they breathe out they wheeze, they make a noise. This noise was called, or named by Freud as a cry for help. It represents the time in an individual’s life in which they were very, very frightened, so frightened they don’t want to remember that incident at all. They cried out for help, they thought that they were really going to die or something terrible was going to happen and they cried out for help and nobody came. Well, they lived through the incident all right, but in the process, they repressed into the deepest part of their subconscious mind this incident, this incident where there was a cry for help.
Sometimes, this happens in an operation; sometimes it happens at the time of war. It can happen almost anytime, but it’s generally a time where the individual feels very, very threatened, very, very threatened. They cry for help and none is answering the cry. And so they keep right on crying for help by wheezing because the wheeze in merely a symptom of the underlying problems still deeply implanted in the subconscious mind. Therefore, still giving rise, still giving rise to nervous energy that goes down the nerves to the muscles and keeps the bronchi and bronchial’s constricted. Now, there is still another reason for this cry for help because this cry for help is reassuring to the patient, even though no help has come, and if nothing else, it does remind the patient of one thing, that is, that the patient is still alive. After all, if he can hear himself breathe, he knows he’s breathing and he knows he’s alive.
It has still a third function. That third function is this: It punishes the patient so that if the patient feels guilty in any way about the incident that happened, it served as a means of self-punishment. And so, therefore, we have three things that the asthmatic wheeze does do for the patient. It summons help in a situation where help seems to be desperately needed; it reassures the patient that he is still breathing because he can hear himself breathe, and it punishes the patient in case the patient has guilt feelings about the situation. Now one or more applies to you. Only the deepest part of your subconscious knows exactly how much each of these reasons applies to you for you have repressed into that subconscious mind this particular incident.
But you’re going to get rid of asthma completely and we’re going to see it that you do because we’re going to eliminate the need for these three things. First of all, you don’t need to punish yourself anymore. Whatever you felt you may have done, caused a divorce, killed somebody, maybe you just wished somebody would die and they did, whatever you did, it’s fantasy, but regardless of that, whenever you feel guilty, you certainly don’t need asthma any more to punish yourself because you really don’t need those feelings in the first place. It’s God’s domain to punish us if He thinks we need it and He’ll handle it, and when we try to take it over then what we really are doing is interfering with God’s work.
Now, secondly, regardless of when you may have thought you did or that you were going to die or that you were very, very sick or that something happened which frightened you completely, you are breathing all right now, and you’re going to breathe better and better and better and you don’t have to hear yourself breathe in order to know that you re still breathing. No longer do you need to listen to that to know that you re still breathing. You are still breathing and that’s all there is to it.
Now, thirdly, the cry for help itself, regardless of how severe that incident may have seemed to you at the time, regardless of how severe that incident may have seemed to you at that moment, that moment was yesterday. It’s gone. You’re not in danger now. The danger is over and you don’t need to cry for help anymore. And so, your reasons, your needs to wheeze, your needs to utilize the symptom of asthma is rapidly disappearing so that very soon you re going to dilate those bronchi and bronchial’s, you’re going to relax and let them open up w-i-d-e, very w-i-d-e and breathe deeply, all the way in and all the way out. Breathe all the way in, feel your lungs open up and fill with air better than you ever have before as you let all the air out easily and comfortably and all the muscles surrounding the bronchi and bronchial’s and lungs. Let go, and let yourself relax completely and with certainty. And you breathe deeper and deeper, on and on, one breath after the next, more and more comfortably with every moment that passes, reassuring yourself that already the asthma is leaving you, being replaced by confidence, great breathing, more and more normal with every day that passes.
Now, I want you to sink into a very deep and relaxing sleep and breathe deeply for the next few moments, allowing this feeling of being free, free from tension, nervousness and asthma, allowing that feeling of freedom to circulate throughout your entire mind and body, making you sound in mind, sound in body, sound in spirit and sound in health and I’m going to give you those few moments of silence … begin … now …