This landmark story is recounted in Deepak Chopra’s Quantum Healing, which we review extensively elsewhere on this site.

In 1971, when thoughts of using the mind to assist in a patient’s healing was in its infancy, a 61 year old man with throat cancer went to see Dr. O. Carl Simonton, a Texan radiologist.

The radiologist was reluctant to apply radiotherapy for several reasons - firstly the chance of survival was very low (doctors gave a 5% chance of survival after 5 years), and the patient was already having difficulty swallowing. In addition, the patient was perhaps too weak for an effective response to radiotherapy - his weight had dropped dramatically, and he had very little energy.

Unusually for the time, Dr. Simonton encouraged the patient to add to any radiotherapy with a visualization. And that visualization turned out to involve the healing ability of snow.

Whilst one case study does not provide evidence of healing meditation, we record it here to add to our database of healing meditations that have been tried - on the chance that others may find them useful. What follows, then, is the recounted instructions given for this meditation.

The Snow Visualization

The patient is asked to visualize their illness (in this case, it was cancer), as vividly as possible.

Using any mental image that appeals to them, they are asked to visualize their immune system, as the white blood cells successfully attack the illness (here, cancer cells), and sweep them out of the body, leaving only healthy cells behind.

As white blood cells are ‘white’, like snow - and cancer is often visualized as black - the man in this example envisioned his immune cells as a powerful blizzard of white particles, covering the tumor like snow burying a black rock. (Presumably he also envisioned a way for the visualization to also remove the ‘rock’ as the doctor suggested, leaving only pure ’snow’ particles.)

Importantly, the patient was told to repeat the visualization at intervals throughout the day. Quite quickly, the tumor seemed to be shrinking:

In a few weeks it was definitely smaller, and his response to radiation was almost free of side effects; after two months, the tumor was gone.

A nice coda to this story is the man, once free of cancer, decided he would also like to be free of his arthritis in his legs so he could do more stream-fishing. Within a few more weeks the arthritis was cleared up, and the man remained free of both arthritis and cancer for the full 6 year follow up period.

If you would like more information as to how to find your own personal healing imagery, there is a helpful video here.