Adapted from Achterberg and Lawlis, `The Warrior's Guide To Getting Well', 1989.
- Try not to panic. You will become your own worst enemy if you do.
- Find a quiet place, a healing sacred place, and go there. This might take a week and it might take a year. Ask questions of the most spiritual part or your being. Listen.
- You have time to think about this thing and decide what to do. A warrior does not go off half-cocked.
- Find at one friend or advocate who can be level-headed when you are going crazy; who can be positive when you just know you're doomed; who can listen when your head's buzzing with problems.
- Kindly tell all negative-thinking people to get lost. They will sap your energy when you have none to spare.
- Think about your illness and its explanation. What do you believe? How did you get this way in the first place? What's really happening inside you? How serious is it? What will it take to be as well as you can be?
- Gather information, keeping an open mind. Remember that everybody who offers to treat you or give you advice has a lot invested in what they tell you. A warrior stands back and listens thoughtfully.
- Go hire your healing team. Remember, you hired them and you can fire them. They are performing a service for you, and you are paying their salaries. Make sure they talk to each other. Remember that you, the warrior, are in command.
- Don't let anyone talk you into a treatment you don't want, don't believe in, or don't understand. Keep asking questions.
- Sing your own song, write your own story, take your own journey through this. Your path doesn't have to be same as anybody else's, it has to be right for you.
- Love yourself. Ask yourself moment-by-moment whether what surrounds you is nurturing and life-giving. If the answer is `no', back off.
- Everything cures somebody, but nothing cures everybody. There are no simple answers to complex questions like why people get sick in the first place. A warrior isn't afraid to change beliefs or change direction if necessary.
- A warrior is not intimidated by the overbearing worlds of Western medicine or of New Age know-it-alls, but can take the best of both worlds.
- Keep as active as you can, it will help remind you there's a life worth living aside from your illness.
- Give yourself permission to laugh, to cry, to be scared. All feelings are okay, and even warriors are afraid sometimes.
- Play! Swing on the swings, blow bubbles off the balcony, wave sparklers at night. Playing helps nourish the spirit, which nourishes the body too.
- As a warrior you can teach gentleness and compassion to the most arrogant doctor and the crankiest nurse. Tell then that you need your mind, body and soul nurtured in order to get well. If they are not up to it, you'll find somebody or someplace that is.
