Yesterday, I came across some scientific evidence that our skin – even our immune system – hears sounds like the human voice.

Just ponder that information for a moment, when it comes to a health condition and working with your doctor or therapist.

Some years ago, you may remember, I told you that I was born with a double hip dysplasia, that only became a problem in 2015 when I started to limp – which progressed, over several years, to not being able to walk.

During the few years before I found the practitioner who would ultimately sort me out completely, I began making my way through a long list of holistic modalities – Feldenkrais, bodywork of all varieties, intention, energy healing, even a stem cell procedure – all with the best of therapists in their fields.

But through all this, what I began to focus on, sometimes even more than my intention to get better, was the off-the-cuff and largely unconscious language – even the thoughts – being broadcast by these otherwise sterling practitioners.

In fact, I grew so alarmed and fascinated by them in equal measure that they became material for me,  and I began writing them down:

‘It’s going to be a long and painful road to recovery.’

‘We may be able to improve things, but I can’t promise anything more.’

‘This hurts, right?’. (It didn’t.)

‘You have scoliosis.’ (I don’t.)

‘Let’s see if you are still lame after doing this exercise.’

And, my personal favorite: ‘You’re a shadow of your former self.’

I had no problem with their techniques.  I had a problem with their thoughts and words – the fact that they seemed to be projecting, however unconsciously, that they had some doubts that I was going to get completely better – thoughts and words that threatened to undermine all the good that they were achieving.

So, as I became more and more physically impaired (by this time my hips were no longer moving at all) I had to hold onto those thoughts myself, be my own cheerleader, imagine that moment with ever greater certainty when I’d be dancing or walking or twisting into a yoga pose again.

But it was a lonely business, made even lonelier because I had to hold these thoughts close to me, despite what a variety of therapists were, however offhandedly, however unconsciously, communicating, an ongoing internal wrestling match between my thoughts and their words.

Nevertheless, I never stopped believing. I’d begun watching Strictly Come Dancing (the UK’s version of Dancing for the Stars) as a kind of intentional therapy.  I would sit with my feet moving in time to the music, imagining myself up there, flying around the dance floor with the quick step, clinging fiercely onto the utter certainty that I was going to get better.

So just think about those thoughts and words being handed out to me like poisonous pills.  Despite all the excellent therapeutic help, just think about how those words essentially ‘invaded’ my skin and spoke to my immune system, undermining everything these therapists were trying to do to help me to heal.

And now think of the words used by the top surgeon I ultimately consulted, who replied, after I’d asked what I wouldn’t be able to do after hip surgery:

‘Skydiving, maybe?’

She had me at skydiving.

That simple, positive answer created an entire mental image for me of physical activity – of trekking sinuous hiking trails, of dancing the rumba, of even slicing through the water on a slalom ski.  Of every possible move except skydiving.

That single word gave me the permission to heal.

And I did.   Despite having what is supposed to be one of the 10 most painful surgeries, I had no pain, didn’t need opiates, didn’t need NSAIDs, just took paracetamol (Tylenol), and found after a week that I didn’t even need that.

And after a few months, I was back walking and doing yoga.

And a few months after that I was fully back: trekking 10-mile walks, sweating through HIIT classes and twisting into complex yoga positions, planning those dance classes – and pondering the power of a therapist’s words and thoughts when it comes to healing.

Ted Kaptchuk, professor of Harvard Medical School and an expert in the placebo effect, has discovered that the words and mannerisms of a doctor are so powerful when it comes to their patients that even when handing them a bottle of pills with the word ‘placebo’ plastered over it, the patients will get better if the doctor tells them they will.

The point is that while technique and training is, of course, vital, medicine of all varieties, ultimately, comes mainly down to thoughts and words, of giving the patient permission to heal.

And because healing is such a complex mix of the mental and the physical, whatever the method used – conventional or holistic – there is often one single vital ingredient inadvertently absent from most encounters with therapists: hope.

No therapist, no matter how learned or experienced, can predict how a given patient will respond to the challenge of illness or healing or say with certainty who will live and who will die.

Hope is the most important medicine there is.  Hope is ultimately what healed me and what heals virtually every patient in the world. And that’s the real point.  A therapist’s most powerful tool of all is her or her words and thoughts, and they must always be healing, must always be about hope.