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I have found that one of the greatest difficulties in helping people by this approach has been getting them to accept its simplicity. People always want the newest form of medical treatment. The modern trend in medicine is continually toward greater and greater complexity—more complicated instruments, more complicated tests, more potent drugs. We have come to associate complexity of therapy as an advance over more simple treatment. You can see my difficulty.

I am advocating a form of treatment that is simple in the extreme. But I will remind you that it is natural as well as simple, and that is why it is so successful.

A very aggressive young woman, a graduate in psychology, was openly contemptuous when I explained the way in which I proposed to help her. She gave me a superior smile, and said, “It will take more than that.”

I had great difficulty in persuading her to lie down on the couch so that I could show her what I meant. With a shrug of the shoulders, she said, “Oh well, just to please you!” I then spent sufficient time with her to be sure that she would capture a real feeling of relaxation. She did. This was the turning point. She learned to practise the exercises herself and did very well.

A writer of international fame consulted me because he was tense, disgruntled with himself, and had lost his creative ability. After considerable discussion of his difficulties, it seemed clear that the real problem was his inability to work caused by slowly mounting tension over the years. I explained how I could help him to be less tense and more at ease. However, he prided himself on his worldliness and his sophistication and from the outset was sceptical of my approach because of its inherent simplicity. He did the exercises, but he did them reluctantly, with a smirk on his face, as it were. He benefited to some extent, but I am sure his improvement would have been much more complete had he accepted the truth that we can often be helped most by basic methods which are themselves simple.

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Life had been good to Mrs. Kajsa Andersson, from Smalandstenar, Sweden. Five healthy and handsome children-happy family life—thriving small family business. All would have been rosy and sunny, but for one thing. After the last baby was born, Mrs. Andersson didn’t seem to be able to recover her strength. She was always tired and listless. She could hardly lift up her arms. She lost her interest in everything, and just wanted to stay in bed and rest. Then came the pain in her arms and hands. A visit to a doctor and a dreadful diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis!

The doctor prescribed a drug and ordered her to stay in bed with warm packs around the affected joints. Warm packs seemed to help relieve the pain, or rather to chase it to another joint As soon as the hands felt better, the pain moved to the elbows. From the elbows it moved to the shoulders. Then her legs and feet started to ache, too. The drug relieved her pains somewhat, but only for a short time. As soon as she was without the pills, the pains returned with increased strength.

After four weeks in bed with increasing disability and pain, which became more and more agonizing, she finally was remitted by her doctor to Spenshults Rheumatic Hospital, one of the most modern medical rheumatic clinics in Sweden. She stayed there six weeks. She didn’t receive many treatments, except drugs and rest in bed, plus a typical hospital diet of plenty of meat, desserts, and coffee.

She felt a little better when she returned to her home. But as soon as she started to work around the house the stiffness and pain in the joints reappeared. She felt discouraged and hopeless, being unable to take care of her home and her children. All she had to look forward to was a dreadful future as a helpless invalid.

One day her nurse brought her a magazine with an article on the Brandals Clinic and biological medicine. After she had finished reading, she immediately went to the telephone and made a reservation.

She went to Brandal on October 20, 1957. That day she will never forget. She arrived there very sick and with agonizing pains. She could not get out of the taxi without help. She could not go up the stairs to her room. She could not dress nor undress herself. She was helpless and felt terrible pain with the slightest movement.

The program of treatments at Brandal started with the traditional fasting on vegetable broth and carrot juice. Among the other treatments were an alternating hot and cold shower, a dry brush massage, an enema in the morning and evening, and sleeping with the windows open while the scent of pine-wood aroma filled her bedroom.

“After one week of fasting I felt so much better that I wanted to continue,” she said. “And I continued as long as I felt that fasting was doing me good—for 20 days.”

“After the first week I could go up and down the stairs and take snort walks outside. And every day my outdoor walks became longer and longer. I felt as if life was returning to me-a most wonderful feeling!”

After 20 days of fasting, one more week on the lactovegetarian diet, and other biological therapies at Brandal, Mrs. Andersson returned to her home-completely free from her arthritis, happy and full of hope for her and her family’s healthy future.

This was in 1957. In 1962, five years after her phenomenal arthritis cure, she was interviewed by a correspondent from Tidskrift for Halsa to determine the permanency of her cure.

“During these last five years I have not been sick a single day,” said Mrs. Andersson. “I did not even have a cold or a running nose! The only reminder of arthritis I have is that if I work unusually long days using extremely hard labor, like washing clothes by hand or such, I feel a slight stiffness in my hands. Otherwise I am as healthy as anyone could wish to be. I don’t remember feeling so healthy and so limber and flexible since I was a young girl.”

Now in her fifties she skis regularly in winter, enjoys ocean swimming in summer, and takes long walks in the woods early in the morning before her family gets up. She also follows religiously the routines she learned at Brandal: hot and cold showers, dry brush massage, and exercises. And, naturally, she adheres faithfully to a healthful diet program which she adopted at the clinic: homemade yogurt with figs, prunes and/or raisins, plus nuts and seeds for breakfast; raw vegetable salad of all available vegetables, preferably from her own garden, for lunch; potato porridge with applesauce for dinner. In between meals, fresh unsprayed fruits plus herb teas (peppermint, camomile, or rose hips). Instead of coffee, potato and vegetable broth has become her favorite morning beverage!

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