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| LOUISE
HAY recounted her life story in an interview with Mark Oppenheimer of
the New York Times in May 2008. In it Hay stated that she was born in Los
Angeles to a poor mother who married Louise’s violent stepfather. When
she was about 5, she was raped by a neighbor. At 15 she dropped out of high
school without a diploma, became pregnant and, on her 16th birthday, gave
up her newborn baby girl for adoption. She moved to Chicago, where she worked
in menial jobs and in 1950 moved on to New York. At this point she changed
her name and began a career as a fashion model. She was successful at this,
working for Bill Blass, Oleg Cassini and Pauline Trigère. In 1954
she married the English businessman Andrew Hay but after 14 years of marriage
was devastated when Andrew Hay left her for another woman. Hay said that
she found the First Church of Religious Science on 48th Street, that taught
the transformative power of thought. Hay revealed that here she studied
the metaphysical works of authors like Florence Scovel Shinn, who said that
positive thinking could change people’s material circumstances, and
the Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes, who taught that positive thinking
could heal the body. In the early 1970s Hay became a Religious Science practitioner.
In this role she lead people in spoken “affirmations” meant to
cure their illnesses. She became popular as a workshop leader. She studied
Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his university
in Fairfield, Iowa. Hay recounted that in 1977 or 1978 she found she had
cervical cancer, and she concluded that its cause was her unwillingness
to let go of resentment over her childhood abuse and rape. She refused medical
treatment, and began a regimen of forgiveness, therapy, nutrition, reflexology
and occasional enemas, and claims she rid herself of the cancer. She declared
that there is no doctor left who can confirm this story, but swore that
it is true.
In 1976, Hay wrote a small pamphlet, which came to be called “Heal Your Body”. It contained a list of different bodily ailments and their “probable” metaphysical causes. This pamphlet was enlarged and extended into her book You Can Heal Your Life , published in 1984. As of February 2008, it is still on New York Times best sellers list. Around the same time she began leading support groups for people living with H.I.V. or AIDS which she called her "Hay Rides". These grew from a few people in her living room to hundreds of men in a large hall in West Hollywood. Her work with AIDS patients drew fame and she was invited to appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Donahue” in the same week, in March 1988. You Can Heal Your Life immediately landed on the New York Times best-seller list. More than 35 million copies are now in print around the world in over 30 languages and has been made into a movie. You Can Heal Your Life is also included in the book 50 Self-Help Classics for being significant in its field.
In 2008 a movie about Louise Hay's life was released, titled 'You Can Heal Your Life'. In Louise's own words from the movie's official website: This movie is the story of my life my teachings and how I've applied the principles of my teachings to my own life. The movie also features Gregg Braden, Dr Wayne W. Dyer, Gay Hendricks, Esther & Jerry Hicks, Doreen Virtue and was directed by Emmy Award winning Director Michael Goorjian. |
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