This movie combines documentary-style interviews with dramatization to inspire viewers to discover how important their thoughts are to their health and happiness. Friends and followers join metaphysical lecturer Louise L. Hay in revealing how to overcome obstacles to self-actualization.
Louise L. Hay: You Can Heal Your Life
Based on Hay’s best-selling book of the same name, You Can Heal Your Life endorses the use of self-affirmations to begin the journey to a happier life. A dramatization of a woman struggling with her negative thoughts as she follows a path to enlightenment is woven between interviews with authors and speakers who have overcome adversity through changing their thinking.
The underlying theme behind the entire movie lies in the simple, yet profound, premise that Hays recites: “What you think and what you believe is what will come true for you. Your thoughts create your life.” In order to change our lives, Hays recommends practicing affirmations several times a day to chase away negative thoughts. She suggests saying them in front of a mirror for maximum effect.
Affirmations are Like Seeds in a Garden
Hay compares planting positive thoughts in our minds to planting seeds in a garden and waiting for them to grow. Once the affirmations are learned and practiced, people will start believing them, which gives the statements emotional power. Hay and her guests (which include Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Gregg Braden, Cheryl Richardson, Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D., Ph.D., and Christiane Northrup, M.D.) all embrace the belief that changing one’s thinking will change one’s life, and that affirmation and positive action leads to miracles.
Some of the affirmations presented in the movie:
- I am willing to change.
- I am my own unique self.
- I am happy.
- Life supports me.
- I love and approve of myself.
- I love myself just the way I am.
- I have unlimited potential.
- I am willing to forgive.
- I forgive and I set myself free.
- I am motivated by love.
Movie Explains How to Heal Your Life
In addition to current interviews and seminars with 80-something Hay, the movie takes a look back into her own personal history, which contains physical and sexual abuse, abandonment, promiscuity, and cancer. She says in the film that her conviction in the power of positive thinking comes from her own ability to survive (and thrive from) the traumas in her life.
“Every time you think a thought or speak a word, you are painting your future,” Hay says. She notes that we can only attract the same kind of energy that we put out. According to the law of attraction, we get what we give.
Louise L. Hay and the Power to Heal
After watching the film, it’s easy to see how Hay has attracted so many devotees and sold so many books over the decades since her little self-published booklet printed on the church copy machine went on sale in the mid-1970s. She exudes love, acceptance, and forgiveness.
It doesn’t hurt that she’s also physically attractive, even in her eighth decade of life. The former model and high school dropout has a quiet charm and inner beauty that shines through whether she’s leading an AIDs meeting in the 1980s or conducting a current motivational seminar. Hay informs her audience at one seminar that she fully intends for her eighth decade to be the best time of her life. Viewers will have no trouble believing this to be true.
You Can Heal Your Life (2007)
- Part documentary, part dramatization, this movie seeks to inspire viewers through the personal story of metaphysical lecturer Louise L. Hay and thoughts from other experts in health and spirituality.
- Starring Louise L. Hay, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Gregg Braden, Cheryl Richardson, Esther Hicks, Jerry Hicks, Doreen Virtue, Ph.D., Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D., Ph.D., Christiane Northrup, M.D., Gay Hendricks, Leon Nacson
- Director: Michael Goorjian
- Writer: Gay Hendricks
- Discs: 1
- Run Time: 90 minutes
- Rating: PG
- Additional Information: This movie is based on Louise L. Hay’s best-selling book You Can Heal Your Life, which has been published in more than 21 different editions by Hay House since her original booklet was self-published in the 1970s.
For more information about the movie You Can Heal Your Life, visit the official website.
For more information about uplifting documentaries, read Movie Review of More Than a Game, Young at Heart Move Review, and Movie Review of Pressure Cooker.
Leslie C. Halpern - Leslie C. Halpern, Romantic Films/Comedies Topic Editor, authored Passionate About Their Work, Reel Romance, & Dreams on Film.
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