Louise Hay

Louise Hay
Louise Hay
Born	October 8, 1926 (1926-10-08) (age 83) Los Angeles, California USA
Occupation	Author, Professional speaker,
Nationality	American
Genres	Self-help, Motivational
Official website

Louise Hay (born October 8, 1926) is a motivational author, and the founder of Hay House, a publishing company. She has authored several self-help and New Thought books, and is best known for her 1984 book, You Can Heal Your Life.

Life story

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 she was devastated when Andrew Hay left her for another woman.^[1]

Hay said that she found the First Church of Religious Science on 48th Street, that taught her 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 led 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.^[1]

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.^[1] This pamphlet was enlarged and extended into her book You Can Heal Your Life , published in 1984 ^[2] As of February 2008, it is still on New York Times best sellers list.^[3]

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.^{[1] [4]} and has been made into a movie.^[5] You Can Heal Your Life is also included in the book 50 Self-Help Classics^[6] for being significant in its field.

In 1984, Louise Hay established Hay House Publishing, which is the primary publisher of books and audio books by Deepak Chopra and Doreen Virtue, as well as many books by Wayne Dyer. In addition to running her publishing company, Hay runs a charitable organization called 'Hay Foundation', which she founded in 1985.^[7]

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, Wayne Dyer, Gay Hendricks, Esther & Jerry Hicks, Doreen Virtue, and was directed by Emmy Award winning Director Michael Goorjian^[8]

Ideas and teachings

According to P. Randall Cohan, the "timeless message" of Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life "is that we are each responsible for our own reality and "dis-ease".^[9]

Bibliography

• You Can Heal Your Life; Hay House Inc., 1984, ISBN 0937611018.
• Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them, Hay House Inc., 1984, ISBN 0937611352.
• The Power Is Within You, Hay House Inc., 1991
• Inner Wisdom: Meditations for the Heart and Soul.
• The Adventures of Lulu - Three Stories to Help Build Self-Esteem and Courage in Children.

References

External links

• Louise Hay website