Sondra Ray on Living Healthier

Sondra Ray earned international acclaim in the 1970s as one of the pioneers of the Rebirthing Experience, a breathing process that helps reverse the effects of birth trauma on one’s body, relationships, career and life. The author of 15 books on metaphysics, spiritual healing, relationships and technology, she’s recognized worldwide as a spiritual teacher, author, rebirther, lecturer and healer. Here, Ray, who has a private healing practice in Marina del Rey, California, explains rebirthing and how changing one’s thoughts can lead to a healthier, more fulfilling life.

What is rebirthing?

It’s a simple practice that increases your energy and health. If you’re sick, it makes you well. If you’re well, you get better than well. You can actually release trauma from your birth, remember your birth and release preverbal negative thoughts you formed when you were coming out of the birth canal or even in the womb. Rebirthing quickly gets down to the nitty-gritty of sabotaging thoughts that mess up your health, relationships and life.

There are three types of rebirthing. In dry rebirthing, you lie down with your clothes on and a trained rebirther guides you in rebirthing breathing for an hour. You breathe in your upper chest in a circular, smooth, rhythmic type of movement, with no holding at the top, no holding at the bottom. After at least ten lessons, you can start wet rebirthing: Wearing a snorkel and nose plugs, you go into the fetal position in a hot whirlpool tub. Then there is cold-water rebirthing, an advanced, intense form that’s good for releasing the effects of anesthesia from birth.

How would you define health?

It has to do with mental health first. Every single illness, every single condition starts with the mind. That includes accidents; I don’t believe there are any accidents. Even pain is the effort involved in clinging to a negative thought. If it develops into a full-blown disease, then you’re really clinging to a negative thought. You can’t heal something permanently unless you get to the cause. A diet won’t handle your programming about death, for example. Your thoughts about death, including your thoughts that death is inevitable, make you really sick, so we teach people how to let go of their death programming. We’re also studying reversing the aging process.

For someone who’s just starting out, who doesn’t know anything about this, where should they begin?

They’d start meditating, asking for guidance and eating lighter. Give up heavy food and fried food and see if you don’t feel better. Try being a vegetarian and see if you feel better. I just don’t like confusion, and with diets, it depends on what your thoughts are. If you think a diet is going to work for you, then it will.

What’s the best path to healing?

I have a master’s degree in nursing and I’ve studied all kinds of alternative healing since I left medicine. I’ve tried everything, and the fastest thing I’ve ever found is changing your thoughts and doing your breathing.

Is alternative medicine more effective than traditional medicine?

Anything is effective if you believe it is. What I like about alternative healing is you learn to find the cause of an illness, and it’s usually a thought. If a doctor gives me a pill but I don’t know the cause of my illness, I could get it back. The healing may never be permanent if I don’t find the cause.

Would that explain why some people get sick and others don’t?

Yes. Why, if the flu hits, do 40,000 people get it and hundreds of thousands do not? Some people believe they’re going to catch the flu, and they do. What you believe to be true, you create. You and I could eat the same diet, do the same exercise and be more or less on the same spiritual path, but we could have different subconscious thoughts and achieve very different results. I could have a thought of being guilty, so I punish myself by creating an illness. I could have a thought that I’m not good enough to be healed by God or that I’m bad from a past life or from birth, so I believe I don’t deserve health. That’s why rebirthing is such a miracle, because you can bring the unconscious to the conscious without hypnosis or drugs.

If someone were to start on a path to healthy thinking and getting rid of their negative thoughts, how long would it take them to get healthy?

Faith is everything. It’s different for everybody but there are some people whose energy is high enough so they can do it pretty fast. Some people who have low faith will take longer. They might not believe changing their thought will help, but they will try it. They don’t really have 100% faith, but there’s a faith element. I know with certainty my thoughts produce my results. I see it all the time and it’s true for everyone. Most people aren’t conscious about that. We should have learned that in kindergarten. The people that have certainty that their thoughts produce results can be healed really fast, if they’re also breathing out of their self. The people who aren’t so sure about it, it’s going to take them longer, but they can start by writing down all the negative thoughts about themselves and changing those.

For more information about Sondra Ray, go to www.sondraray.com.