Positive words have the power to heal
The three jars used in a positive words experiment by Debra Schultz, 61, at her home in Hooper. The negative one was shaken and yelled at by Schultz as part of the experiment. She said that it has started to rot while the one she acted positively toward has not, showing the power of words. Schultz teaches a class where she encourages people to change the way they act and speak. "I pull these out and tell them to look at what words do. You need to change your words." she said.
Debra Schultz, 61, speaks lovingly towards a jar of rice at her home in Hooper. She took three jars and filled them with cooked rice. She then ignored one, was mean to one and spoke lovingly to one. She said the one she used negativity on has started to rot the most while the positive one has not. Schultz teaches a class where she encourages people to change the way they act and speak to become more positive. "I pull these out and tell them to look at what words do, you need to change your words." she said.
The three jars used in a positive words experiment by Debra Schultz, 61, at her home in Hooper.
Debra Schultz, 61, lovingly holds a jar of rice as she speaks soothingly to it at her home in Hooper. She took three jars and filled them with cooked rice. She then ignored one, was mean to one and spoke lovingly to one. She said the one she used negativity upon has started to rot, while the positive one has not.
Debra Schultz, 61, shakes a jar of rice as she demonstrates the type of negative behavior she has used upon that jar at her home in Hooper. She took three jars and filled them with cooked rice. She then ignored one, was mean to one and spoke lovingly to one. She said the one she used negativity on has started to rot the most while the positive one has not.
People remember when the exact healing words they need are spoken.
Time seems to stand still at that moment, they say.
Roy resident Kim Penman can still remember the exact moment she heard the healing words from her dad.
“This is not your fault,” he said.
Penman’s sister had just died by suicide and Penman had spoken to the sister the night before she died without picking up on the dire circumstance of the moment.
Penman now leads a peer support group for survivors of family suicides in Davis County, hoping to deliver healing words to those in need.
Often, she shares the next set of healing words she found.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose,” reads Romans 8:28 in the New International version of the Bible.
“This I read in my Bible when I was crying out to God about my sister’s death,” Penman said. “I believe he said if you let me use you to speak to others about suicide prevention then it will be used for good, and I have found so much healing in helping others who needed it.”
For Roger Tomney of Ogden, who has at times struggled greatly with sobriety, words about the strength of abstinence from substances gave him the motivation he needed, he said.
“Sobriety delivered everything alcohol promised,” are those healing words.
Charles Trentelman of Ogden said when a surgeon looked at the X ray of his left lung and said it was a disaster, his heart sunk.
But then the doctor said “but it’s all fixable” and Trentelman said “I felt pretty good.”
Debbie Schultz of Hooper has made a business out of warning clients about the health benefits and/or detriments of words.
To make her point, Schultz uses a rice experiment as visual imagery.
The co-owner of a home business called Integrative Bio Health, Schultz shows her rice experiment in classes she teaches. The results are mold growing in jars of cooked rice she either ignores or speaks ill to.
Even after months of being unrefrigerated, a jar of cooked rice with loving words written on the bottle and to which she speaks kind words has remained fresh looking.
“The first time I did it, I talked to it almost every day for three weeks,” Schultz said of her experiment.
“The negative jar started to mold,” she said. “After a while, it kind of clumped up in a ball. Even though I would shake it and hit it, it would stay in a ball.”
This last experiment, she only spoke to her jars for a week.
“The negative one hasn’t curled up into a ball,” she said. “It’s just kind of moldy and it looks sticky.”
But the jars receiving positive words each remained fresh over time, even when the positive talk was limited to just one week, she said.
“I’ve just been kind of waiting for the positive one to turn bad but it hasn’t,” she said two months after starting the rice experiment.
Schultz said she was kind of surprised at how the experiment turned out for the neglected jar.
“I kept looking at it,” she said. “It didn’t look like it was doing anything at all. I would probably look at it once a week. Eventually, I could see on the bottom that it was starting to go rotten. It had started to rot on the inside and worked its way out on the bottom.”
Schultz, 61, said her only regret about learning about the power of positive and negative words is that she didn’t learn the lessons sooner, when her children were younger.
Schultz hopes all within her realm of influence will apply the rice experiment into their own lives.
“If words can do that to rice, we can do that to our spirit?” she said. “If we want to be healthy body, mind and spirit, then we have to be sensitive to the power of words.”
She said there is importance in knowing what self talk can do for a person.
And she has advice for those who are the recipient of negative talk from others.
“We need to recognize that it hurt us and then change the words for ourselves,” she said before demonstrating this technique.
“God loves me. I am His child. I am a work of art,” she said as an example of what she tells herself. “That is an important thing to teach children. They are getting a lot of negative things in this world. Yes. I feel bad but I know who I am. Heavenly Father knows who I am and this is who I am. You get rid of that negative crap.”
Trying a holistic approach to fighting her husband’s cancerous tumors, Schultz said loving even the cancer has made all the difference.
“Once we changed the vibration of the words and started loving him better, started loving those sick cells, it started to reverse,” she said.
Schultz is just one of many who have pointed to visual imagery in pointing out the power of words.
In their book “Angel Words” (Hay House Inc., $16.99), Doreen and Grant Virtue show visual computer images graphic the size of the vibrations of words spoken into recording devices.
The positive words are shown each time as markedly larger than negative ones. Positive works such as love achieve a larger graph than corresponding negative words like hate even when spoken with a negative attitude, according to documentation in the book.
Doreen Virtue said the graphs have taught her the purpose of life.
“Your purpose is to speak, think, and write the powerfully positive words that are so abundantly available to you,” she said in the book.
For decades, Masaru Emoto has traveled the world with his message of words and how they change the shape of crystals formed when water is frozen.
Emoto has conducted thousands of experiments with a plethora of words. A 34-minute documentary about Emoto’s experiments may be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDW9Lqj8hmc.
With all that he has learned, Emoto has outlined a prayer for people who wish to change their own vibrations into more positive energy in his book “Love Thyself: The Messages from Water III” (Hay House Inc., $17.95).
He recommends praying at any time and in any place. He says to picture people of the world holding hands in harmony and while thanking the water of the planet and inside our bodies.
He recommends praying to one’s self and then to people who are on a different wavelength by saying: (Your/their name) I love you. (Your/their name) I thank you. (Your/their name) I respect you.”
Emoto also recommends closing one’s eyes and putting hands together while praying.
But Weber State University Associate psychology professor Aaron Ashley said he knows of a number of scientists who have criticized Emoto’s work because of methodological problems with his research and his interpretation of statistical data.
“In regard to the influence of positive and negative words having an influence on physical matter, it seems like a stretch to make that claim,” Ashley said.
“First and foremost, what is the standard used to judge positive or negative across different groups of peoples, languages, and cultures? While there is certainly some consistency in what stimuli humans consider pleasant or aversive, there is considerable variation in what different cultures find to be pleasing or disagreeable.”
Ashley said beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
“There is also tremendous variation in expressions of emotions across languages,” Ashley said. “Do the same sound patterns associated with positive terms in English have the same characteristics as the sound patterns of positive expressions in German, Spanish, Japanese, or the Khoisan languages of Africa?”
For those who may be struggling with thoughts of suicide or know someone who is, help is available at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
The troubling issue of teen suicide is the focus of the Standard-Examiner’s 2015 initiative. Through the year, the newspaper will explore the complex problem through a variety of stories, videos, photographs and graphics. The aim of the Teen Suicide Initiative is to raise awareness in our communities and to provide information about resources available to youth, parents and citizens to prevent such deaths.
You may reach reporter JaNae Francis at 801-625-4228. Follow her on Twitter at JaNaeFrancisSE. Like her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SEJaNaeFrancis.