by Mitchell J. Rabin, M.A., L.AC.

Total Biology as a phrase and name of a particular study originated by Claude Sabbah, M.D., Ph.D. of Marseille, France, who was himself a student of German physician Dr. Hamer, founder of the New Medicine.

A Touch of History

Based on Dr. Hamer’s work which correlates stressful, emotional conflict or trauma with the onset of physical disease which Dr. Hamer was able to map out and prove by way of thousands of interviews with hospital patients and their CT Scans, to an extent that he has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Medicine, Dr. Sabbah took Hamer’s basic premises and went a few, significant steps further in understanding the larger picture of disease being “the brain’s perfect solution” to the stress, emotional conflict or trauma at hand.  Completely related though distinct, Sabbah’s ‘weltanschaung’ helped to explain disease as a program issued by the brain to represent and express the conflict in the body in a very particular way.  Dr. Sabbah and several of his colleagues further expanded upon the New Medicine’s fundamental understanding and brought it to bear on all body parts and diseases.

Mind-Body is One & has Always Been

Despite Descartes or modern allopathic medicine’s interpretation, the Mind-Body is one “being” and can only be conceptually parted, but not to any particularly positive effect ongoingly. 

Total Biology is a way of understanding the real and metaphoric/symbolic relationship between Mind and Body such that it becomes clear, upon examination, that there is no—nor ever has been—a separation between these but just a continuum, one represented, if you will, in denser, more physical form.  Physics has always given us a basis to this understanding, but physics has not fully permeated the modern medical mind for any number of reasons.

Example of Total Biology-In-Action

For example, a woman has breast cancer.  The breast has the biological function of providing milk to the mother’s offspring, and is a natural place, therefore, for holding and nurturing a woman’s loved ones.  If her young, or anyone or anything that she may perceive as her offspring, or a partner or mother, is in danger, trouble or conflict, the woman can do only so many things.  The biological brain, in perceiving some conflict regarding a loved one, will seek to reach out in a maternal, protective way and activate a woman’s unique biological function of the breast as a means of offering nurturance and protection to the one endangered by producing more milk.  The milk will be produced by a multiplication of cells, super-charged cellular behavior in the breast to be able to offer a surplus of milk to the endangered loved one.  This is a biological “solution” a female has available.  This accelerated, cellular activity is called by the medical community “cancer”.  It is best understood not as a noun, as a thing, but as a verb, a process, an activity, which stops and starts.  It is interesting to note that this milk has been tested and shown to be at least 10 times more nutritious—and sweet—than ordinary mother’s milk.  Total Biology asks the question “why” about this, and every other biological process.

Interestingly, a typically-trained doctor who would observe this cellular accelerated activity in a patient’s breast would sound the alarm and rush the woman into surgery or at least chemotherapy.  From the point of view of Total Biology, the inflammation occurring in the breast is actually a sign of the “repair phase”, in which tissue which has been damaged through the “acceleration process” which occurred during the time when the child, mother or partner were perceived to be in danger, now that the danger is abated and is no longer placing the mother under stress, is now healing, being made whole again.  It’s a completely natural process and the inflammatory response and formation of a tumor is most often part of it.  If a physician recognized that this is a “healing phase”, he or she would not alarm the patient and resort to a “panic and removal” mode, but would understandingly and compassionately support the woman in this healing process. 

Diagnosis Conflict

Instead, what usually occurs is the alarm bells are rung and another conflict in the woman gets activated, this one related to her own demise.  In Total Biology, this is called “a diagnosis conflict” and is thought to be responsible for a large percentage of illness.

It should be understood that from this point of view, this phenomenon called “cancer” is not “bad”, it is a normal biological function that provides solutions to specific stress-related, emotionally-related conflicts.  When these get resolved, the brain, as said in Total Biology, “pulls back the program” because it is no longer needed.  If the conflict is not resolved, however, the cancerous activity could be fatal rather obviously.  Hence the importance of getting to “cause”, be it originating in one’s own life or in the genealogy, a primary place of focus for the practice of Total Biology.

Total Biology’s Perspective

Total Biology is an approach to understanding the mechanisms by which and the reasons behind the body becoming in a dis-eased state.  When someone is under excessive or prolonged stress, it is said to go from the psychological realm to the biological as a means of “encapsulating” and managing it in a more efficient and energetically cost-effective way. From the Total Biological point of view, the formation of a dis-ease is actually the body’s, the brain’s way of managing excessive, psycho-emotional stress which could lead to lack of sleep, inattention, improper eating, dehydration and literally jeopardize survival.

By focalizing this unresolved stress in a specified area interestingly related to the nature of the conflict, freeing up the rest of the body and mind to carry on one’s daily activity that supports survival, the brain is “giving time” to the individual with which to resolve the conflict besetting him.

Disease as the Brain’s Perfect (Temporary) Solution

Rather than itself being a problem, from the point of view of survival and Total Biology, dis-ease is considered a solution, if temporary: it buys time to resolve conflict.

Drs. Hamer and Sabbah established what shows up as a causal relationship between specific body parts and diseases, and the emotional conflicts underlying them. There appears to be nothing random about it.  The results that have accrued over time with clients around the world attest to the efficacy of the approach. 

It should be said that the engagement of Total Biology is a pro-active one for the client.  He or she is actively engaged in the process of discovery, looking, examining self and the family tree, relationships, subconscious patterns and resistance, contemplating and rather vulnerably becoming available to seeing and acknowledging.

What communications someone makes to themselves, or echoing from others from early stages of development—including embryonic—under excessive stress, will find a somatic expression directly related to the issue.

Psyche & Soma

Total Biology describes the intricate relationship between psyche and soma, the relationship of emotions, beliefs and mind to the behavior and functioning of the body, organically and cellularly. Its description makes clear that what we perceived as embryos, fetuses and infants, culturally and generationally and the emotionally-based belief systems that were then established in the family, greatly and significantly influence the life of our bodies to a cellular level today.

It has been observed by Dr. Claude Sabbah and many others, that once these belief systems that have often been programmed in infancy or early childhood, are identified, and that leads to a resolution of an inner conflict, can in turn lead to a reversal of often degenerative, chronic and sometimes considered terminal illnesses.

As we look at ourselves from the view of Total Biology, we are given a new view which results in a valuable change in understanding and consciousness. It has helped many become more psychologically and spiritually mature.

Louise Hay on Steroids

The study of Total Biology gives the student a more precise understanding of the relationships--like a map--of the relationship of different body parts with different kinds of unresolved emotional issues or traumas. The mapping done by Dr. Sabbah often reveals an inherently symbolic relationship between these, not unlike the work of Louise Hay in her primer Heal Your Body.  I often say that Total Biology is like Louise Hay “on steroids”.  The fundamental idea of emotional issue to body part goes so much farther than I think she had any idea.

 

Indigenous, Ancient & Psychoanalytic Roots of Total Biology

 

It should also be said that while Mind-Body Medicine has its roots, so far as we know, in indigenous medicine, most popularized by traditional Chinese, Tibetan, Ayur Vedic, African and Egyptian, Talmudic, Greek and generically shamanic medicine, its more modern, 20^th century expression was picked up by the work of Freud.  In large measure, Total Biology owes much of its root thinking to the Psycho-somatic literature that grew up around the psychoanalytic movement of the 20^th century.  I see Total Biology as a more biologically-based and understood form of psychoanalysis.  My sense is that Freud would have loved to see his own work be advanced and ripened through the work of the New Medicine and Total Biology.

 

Documented Results of Total Biology

 

The results where Total Biology has been applied have been notable. The stories of healing are many. even regarding the many different kinds of cancer, MS, diabetes, schizophrenia, migraines, addictions, skin disorders, depression and on.  There are some 200 physicians in Europe and others, as well as many more practitioners in Canada who have integrated Total Biology into their work with significant results.  The documentation is to a large extent anecdotal, yet with before and after blood tests and biopsies performed by leading physicians in clinics and hospitals in Europe, Canada and now, the U.S., suggesting that the effect of this particular form of inquiry has resulted in significant benefit to the client.  Certainly there are documented examples of no or little improvement as well.  This is not to be thought of as a “miracle”, except insofar as life itself could be held as a miracle.  It is however, showing itself to be based on sound logic of how the Body-Mind-Brain-Genealogy-Environment interact such that sensible interventions can be made with valuable effect.  Since the effectiveness of Total Biology is largely due to the inner work that a client is willing to do, results will always vary.  Psycho-therapy is far from a hard science and is understood to be much more an art with some scientific base.

 

Degenerative and sometimes terminal illnesses where modern allopathic medicine or alternative modalities were able to do no more, people, with the assistance of Total Biology and their willingness to do the inner work necessary, have regained their health and lives with a new freedom.

 

Interest in Total Biology by Health Professionals

& the lay population in NYC

 

The response of doctors, nurses, psychologists, acupuncturists, osteopaths, chiropractors and others to the Total Biology seminars A Better World has held in NYC over the last two years has been deeply revealing of the pressing need to bring mind and body back together in a scientifically-based and empirical way which makes use of the New Biology, imagination, common sense, Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) and the latest understandings in neuro-physiology.

 

Many of those who have attended the workshops reported experiencing for themselves what it's like to self-examine certain behaviors, attitudes, feelings and bodily issues and place them genealogically.  It was out of the reports of these experiences that we decided to continue to offer these seminars.

 

 

My Meeting with Claude Sabbah in Montreal, 10-04

 

This series of seminars held by A Better World grew out of my initial meeting and TV interview with Dr. Sabbah in October 2004 in Montreal and the value I felt this profound work had for the practice of psychotherapy and all fields of medicine in the U.S. 

 

Mitchell Rabin & A Better World Have Effectively Begun the Total Biology Movement in the U.S.

 

These seminars in NYC are the first larger-scale seminars to be offered outside of a French-speaking country (all of Total Biology is written up and taught in French) and continue to lead the way in English and in the U.S.

The above article is nothing more than a brief introduction. For more information as to how to attend, Contact Us.  If you know others who would be interested, simply refer them to this site where they can click on "Upcoming Events". 

Classes are taught by Gilbert Renaud, N.D. and are held 2-3 times per year in 3 levels with additional classes as well, such as Childhood Disorders including ADD, ADHD, Autism, and Eating Disorders. Call: 212 420-0800 for more information.

Over the last couple of years, we have been deeply fortunate to have one of Canada’s leading Total Biology therapists, Gilbert Renaud, N.D. coming a couple of times per year to teach in NYC.  Gilbert has been educating us such that we are able to utilize the principles of Total Biology in our practices, and for those interested in Total Biology for personal reasons, are able to apply it to themselves and their own families.

Mitchell J. Rabin, M.A., L.AC. is a psychotherapist, Stress Management Consultant & acupuncturist, graduate of Bard College in ancient Literature, Antioch Graduate School in Counseling Psychology and Tri-state Institute for Traditional Chinese  Acupuncture, has been in private practice in NYC & Westport, CT. since 1980.  Mitchell is an international speaker, having led trainings & workshops across the U.S., Central America, Europe and Asia since 1989 in areas of Transpersonal Psychology, Stress Management, Mind-Body modalities, Energy Medicine, Taoist meditation & Chi-kung practices, writing as a spiritual discipline, holistic healing principles, Heaven On Earth Seminars and Therapeutic Theater.