The Innate Healing System

Over the last few weeks, I’ve written articles on some of the oldest forms of healing, methods that really are at the root of all healing methods.

These articles were on spiritual healing and on shamanism.

These healing approaches were predicated on helping the person to heal themselves. They were used to facilitate and activate the innate healing system that all of us have within.

The progression of medicine over the eons is based on this concept: everyone has a healing system, and it just needs to be maximized. All natural approaches have started with this basic premise, and have worked from there. All the modalities and disciplines used by the various natural healing approaches have this in common – they work at stimulating the body’s own reservoir of healing.

Modern medicine has gotten far away from this essential truth. It is a technological bioscience, and doesn’t recognize that people have great capacities of healing. To recognize that fact, that people can heal, a doctor would have to take the time to listen to a person, to get to know them, and then to give thought as to the proper treatment approach – and this approach would not just be writing a prescription.

It could incorporate nutrition, exercise, rest and stress management – the whole of the person would be looked at, from diet, lifestyle, emotions, attitude, spiritual health, the energetic body, and so on.

Working at this level is how the innate healing system can then be mobilized.

Bernard Lown, M.D., is the author of the book, The Lost Art of Healing: Practicing Compassion in Medicine. Dr. Lown is also a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

In The Lost of Healing, he wrote:
“Our health care system is breaking down because the medical profession has been shifting its focus away from healing, which begins with listening to the patient. The reasons for this shift include a romance with mindless technology, which is embraced in large measure as a means for maximizing income.

“Since it is uneconomic to spend much time with patients, diagnosis is performed by exclusion, which opens floodgates for endless tests and procedures. Malpractice suits should be viewed as mere pustules on the physiognomy of a sick health care system. They are not what ails medicine in the United States, they are the consequence.

“The medical care system will not be cured until the patient once again becomes central to the doctor’s agenda.”

Another physician who was a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer, born in 1875 and who died in 1965, practiced medicine in his native Germany and in Africa. He was fully schooled in the virtues of helping the innate healing system. He said:

“Each patient carries his own doctor within him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.”

In case you were wondering, Dr. Lown won his Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for his work at trying to end nuclear war; Dr. Schweitzer was awarded his Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for his philosophy of “Reverence for Life,” and the different ways that he manifested and expressed that.

Over the days and weeks to come, this series on Healing will take a look at different modalities and disciplines whose aim is to activate and cultivate the innate healing system.

I invite you to read along as I delve into these.

Spiritual Healing: The Roots of Healing, Part 3

Today is the final installment of this three-part series on Spiritual Healing and its place as the foundation of all systems of medicine. If you missed the first two parts, here they are:

Spiritual Healing: The Roots of Healing, Part 1

Spiritual Healing: The Roots of Healing, Part 2

(Also, as a quick aside, I’ll be on hiatus next week, the week of July 19, 2010, so there will be no articles next week – this will allow you to catch up on this series on Spiritual Healing, along with reading any articles on the website that you’ve missed.)

In the second article of this series, I discuessed what Lawrence LeShan identified as the two types of healers, Type I and Type 2. Type I healers use spiritual healing methods, while Type 2 healers use intent through physical or mental actions to manipulate another person’s physiology or energy flow.

As LeShan puts it, “In Type 2 the healer tries to heal; he wants to and attempts to do so through the ‘healing flow.’ In both Type I and Type 2 he must (at least at the moment) care completely, but a fundamental difference is that in Type I he unites with the healee; in Type 2 he tries to cure him.”

Perhaps the most accomplished healers use a combination of Type I and Type 2. They access higher states of awareness to bring the healing powers forward, and they also channel their own energies. This would be using the advantages of both non-local and local medicine.

Non-local medicine sends a healing message while local medicine sends healing energy. The ultimate healing message that comes from non-local sources is universal love. That, combined with the healer’s innate source, may be the correct formula.

To use this formula, and to develop as a healer, the healer must go through their own transformation and do their best to shed the trappings of their ego desires and their heart. If within the healer is a tangled web and hidden agenda of lies, petty jealousies, secret motivations, and so on, the healing message that stems from the Ultimate will be blocked.

Abraham Heschel, a 20th century Jewish philosopher and theologian, once said in an address to the AMA, “To heal a person, one must first be a person.”  To truly become a person is a commitment to maturity and an evolution of consciousness.

In this way, a healer can then evolve as a person. This evolution can lead to an expansion of LeShan’s typology to include a Type 3. This would be the type that I suggested above, where a healer aligns the universal energy with themselves and the patient, and then from the depths of their own heart and soul channels their own clear energy. Some healing modalities attempt to teach this method. Reiki healing and Therapeutic Touch are two energy modalities in which the training of the practitioners include concepts of altruism and compassion.

Barbara Brennan, in her book Light Emerging, discusses the process of healing as a means to shedding the blocks that stop the flow of creative healing energy. Her point is that the more we open ourselves up to the flows of the universe, the more we can channel that source for the benefit of others.

Others say the art of spiritual healing lies in the ability of the healer to elevate their consciousness to merge with the Divine. In the book The Art of Spiritual Healing, the author points out that “anyone who practices spiritual healing must rise above the level of appearances – above the discords of corporeal sense, or personal sense – to a higher plane of consciousness where there is no person to be healed and where there is room only for the Spirit of God.”

Qi gong as a healing tool would be another example of Type 3 healing. With qi gong, the practitioner is seeking to unify themselves with the universe. It is believed that when a person is completely relaxed and in a meditative state the body can resonate with the fields of the universe and the two will interact.

In China, qi gong masters do healing sessions where they emit their qi to those in need of healings. One qi gong doctor, Yan Xin, has said, “Early-stage cancer is curable as easily as the common cold. If the patient works with me, I can reduce mid-stage cancer, and control the spread of some late-stage cancer.”  People such as Yan Xin and other qi gong masters even perform group-healing sessions, where they emit their qi to the entire audience in order to help heal them.

The reliance on others to perform the healings may be an important part of someone’s recovery, but if the expectations are for someone else to totally do the healings, an important piece of the puzzle is then absent.

That is the ability for self-healing, to be reliant on our own innate healing capabilities and to use them to the best of our abilities. This self-healing potential can lead to a further expansion of the typologies. We can call these people Type 4 healers.

Type 4 healers would use as their foundational approach spiritual medicine, whereby they align their hearts, minds and souls with the Divine.

Type 4 healers are the types who are classified as spontaneous remissions. These are the people who go through extraordinary healings and remarkable recoveries. These are the people who have been blessed by miracles.

Some denigrate these types of healings, and believe them to be random acts of fate. One prominent oncologist says, “I think you’d have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than of having a spontaneous remission of cancer.”

Others are not so smug. In the book The Spontaneous Regression of Cancer, the author William Boyd writes that the term spontaneous regression “has a suggestion of something happening without a cause. That, of course, is absurd, for everything has a cause, apparent or inapparent. On consulting the dictionary we find spontaneous defined as ‘without external cause.’ If we add the subjective ‘adequate,’ we have a concept which we can use in our own thinking.”

Many of the people who are self-healers find themselves venturing down a path of reconstructing and renewing their life as they head towards self-healing. The inner life becomes intensified, epiphanies large and small are experienced, and cathartic episodes occur. This is what can happen to those who spiritually heal. The old coat is shed and a beautiful swan is born. The connection to the Divine is a trip into the quantum vacuum, where infinite powers reign, and where anything is possible.

Spiritual medicine is not about denying the physical and biological aspects of medicine. Sometimes it’s surgery that is the only answer, sometimes it’s a drug. From my experience, acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine often can change a situation. At other times, nutritional changes can be the key factor.

But what spiritual medicine can do is unite the disparate forms of medicine into one medicine, a medicine that stresses a binding connection with the Infinite Oneness of the Universe. To connect to this unity takes both the objective and subjective, the cognitive and the intuitive.

In the teachings of Zen it is said “the organism is regulated by the timeless original mind, which deals with life in its totality and can do ever so many things at once.”

This timeless original mind that regulates the organism is the realm that spiritual medicine delves into. It contains every potentiality of the universe, it contains the capacity to self-heal, and it contains the capability for self-transformation. With so many people clamoring to touch this realm, and desiring a spiritual connection to life, it is necessary that medicine follows suit and not cut people off from their souls.

In his book, Reinventing Medicine, Larry Dossey states that medicine has always been a soulful endeavor. “Serving people who are undergoing these life-changing events is one reason why medicine has always been considered a priestly function and why becoming a physician has always been regarded as a spiritual path,” Dossey writes.

Holistic medicine has always been comfortable wandering down the spiritual path. Western medicine needs to let down its guard and follow suit. When the two paths concur, it is possible they can then integrate. This can lead to a lessening of tension between the two groups. When this occurs, a chasm will be bridged and a healing will have taken place amongst the disparate fields of medicine.

This healing will be a spiritual healing; like all spiritual healings its resonances will be felt profoundly, touching many lives in the process. And this healing can then lead to a transformation both in medicine and in society.

Spiritual Healing: The Roots of Healing, Part 2

Yesterday was the first part of this series on Spiritual Healing. I continue on today with Part 2.

One of the most fascinating realizations, and something that has profound implications for the future, is the field of non-local medicine. This can be seen as spiritual medicine. Spiritual, non-local medicine helps distinguish between curing and healing.

Curing is a medical process aimed at relieving symptoms. Healing, which is a spiritual experience, is aimed at tapping the inner source of healing, and trying to open the inner processes that are blocking both healing and curing. The importance of the healing process in medical care has led the Canadian province of Manitoba to name a Spiritual Care Coordinator to oversee spiritual medicine in the province’s hospitals and institutions.

Non-local medicine is the medicine of the past, the present and the future, all rolled into one. Non-local medicine tells us that the mind and consciousness reaches out beyond the boundaries of the self and stretches outwards infinitely, into realities that we have yet to totally comprehend, ultimately extending into the quantum vacuum, which contains the potentiality of everything in the universe.

You can also see examples of non-local medicine, and non-local mind, in the everyday experiences of millions of people: the synchronicities, the intuitive understandings, the healings, and the miracles that many people have either experienced or witnessed.

Some may call all of these miracles, but on closer examination, all we are doing is tapping into the powers of non-local mind to create a transcendental form of medicine.

By going beyond the realm of four dimensional space and time, we enter into a world where we begin to touch upon the unitive consciousness, the place where all minds merge as one.

This is what spiritual healing touches upon – the eternal. Tasting the eternal is what mystics call direct experience and what they understand as ecstasy. Experiencing ecstasy generally is fleeting, but often that is enough to create a profound experience.

To delve into the realm of spiritual healing is to touch upon the ultimate Absolute. If this is a place where the potentialities of the universe reside, then it is possible that we can tap into its powers and use them to heal either others or ourselves. Because these powers are unlimited and contain the secrets of the universe, it is possible that they can be accessed to create what seem to be pure acts of divinity, or miracles.

People have been fascinated by the seeming possibility of miracles since ancient times. In the classic text of Chinese medicine, The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, it is said that “not too long ago there were people known as achieved beings who had true virtue, understood the way of life, and were able to adapt to and harmonize with the universe and seasons…these achieved beings did not live like ordinary humans, who tended to abuse themselves. They were able to travel freely to different times and places since they were not governed by conventional views of time and space.”

In the Bible it is said that Jesus performed at least 35 miracles – walking on water, healing the sick, multiplying the loaves and fishes, turning water into wine, raising the dead.

In science, one of the ideals of uniting all the forces of nature into a superforce in hyperspace is the ultimate power that might reside. One physicist commented that “we could change the structure of space and time, tie our own knots in nothingness, and build matter to order. Controlling the superforce would enable us to construct and transmute particles at will, thus generating exotic forms of matter. We might even be able to manipulate the dimensionality of space itself.”

The late scientist Lewis Thomas remarked “the possibility that medicine can learn to accomplish the same thing [miraculous healings] at will is surely within reach of imagining.”

And Larry Dossey has proclaimed that to unravel the mysteries of miracles may take a Manhattan Project for Miracles or a National Institute of the Miraculous.

The term miracle itself is derived from the Latin “mirari,” which means to wonder or marvel. Miracles create a sense of awe or wonder, an amazement at the awesome powers of the universe. Any miracle, big or small, that occurs should be an inspiration to everyone.

Perhaps one of the miracles of miracles is the inability to always predict when they will come. If we could predict, then every prayer, whether sincere, sublime, or outrageous, would be answered.

It’s usually when we surrender to the universe, when we don’t make any requests but accept what is to come, that we leave ourselves open to the possibility of a miracle. For example, people who are looking to get into a relationship often find that it occurs when they are not looking for it. And the act of finding someone to possibly share your life with, especially when you are not looking, is truly a miracle.

Spiritual healers understand the aspect of surrender in their work. In Lawrence LeShan’s book The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist he describes the way spiritual healers work as an attempt to aim for a unity state of consciousness; by doing this they merge their mind with this Infinite state, as well as with the recipient of the healing.

There is no focus on techniques or sensing of energy. Instead the healer surrenders all desires and thoughts in order to unite non-locally with the universe and patient. In doing this, the healer lets the healing happen as opposed to trying to do something to the person’s body to make the healing happen.

In his book LeShan differentiated between two types of healers, Type I and Type 2. Type I healers uses the spiritual healing method mentioned above, while Type 2 healers use intent through physical or mental actions to manipulate another person’s physiology or energy flow.

As LeShan puts it, “In Type 2 the healer tries to heal; he wants to and attempts to do so through the ‘healing flow.’ In both Type I and Type 2 he must (at least at the moment) care completely, but a fundamental difference is that in Type I he unites with the healee; in Type 2 he tries to cure him.”

This distinction could be used to understand the difference between spiritual medicine and energy medicine. Energy medicine can be an attempt by the practitioner to change the person’s energy fields, either through their intent, or by the physical manipulation of energy, as in acupuncture.

In spiritual medicine the healing current comes from a greater source than the healer, with the healer allowing themselves to be a clear channel for that source of healing energy. With this type of medicine it is then possible for a person being healed to experience a sense of their blockages being opened up.

This is not to say that energy medicine can’t do the same thing. I have seen some dramatic cures with acupuncture. In these situations the people are obviously opening up the areas in their body where energy is blocked. I believe that acupuncture helps align a person with the greater energies of the cosmos. And as an acupuncturist I stand in firm belief of my work. Yet it is only one way among many.

Even Chinese medicine recognizes this. Chinese medicine has a hierarchy of medicines from most to least superior. The most superior medicine is spiritual medicine. Then comes dietary medicine and herbs. After that is the exercise therapies, which to the Chinese mean qi gong, t’ai chi, and the martial arts. After that comes energy manipulation, such as acupuncture, tui na, acupressure, and so on. After that come drugs.

And the lowest form of medicine is surgery. Each has its time and place, but they considered the most profound medicine to be spiritual medicine because it had the potential to be the most transformative.

As Elmer Green, in his book Beyond Biofeedback, has said, “We have concluded from our work with hundreds of patients that anything you can accomplish with an acupuncture needle you can do with your mind.”

Spiritual Healing: The Roots of Healing, Part 1

“Healing is 80% spiritual and 20% medicine.” – Papa Henry Auwae, a po’okela, or master of Hawaiian herbal medicine.

Spiritual healing is at the root of all medical systems, and is also a core component of traditional healing methods.

This week, in a three-part series, I will take an in-depth look at the realm of spiritual healing and explore what it is.

One of the strongest examples in everyday life of the powers of spiritual medicine is the placebo effect; by itself it asks questions that can’t be readily answered within the framework of modern medicine.

Papa Henry Auwae, the Hawaiian healer quoted above, died a few years back at the age of 94. He had said that to attain his connection to spiritual dimension and spiritual healing, he meditated and prayed everyday in order that he could have a level, free mind.

He said the meditation and prayer work also aided him in maintaining his honesty and integrity, and feeling compassion and love towards others. By practicing these simple ways, he said it enabled him to develop a relationship with the universe that allowed him to access a power greater than himself.

Spiritual medicine is a healing modality that has existed since ancient times and is still a foundation of most traditional healing modalities, such as the medicine of Papa Henry Auwae. It is a form of medicine that is based on an attunement to higher states of consciousness; its use requires a different way of viewing primary reality. In traditional societies it is the way of the mystic and the shaman.

Ironically, some schools of western scientific thought look upon these types of people as delusional madmen.

This just goes to show that one societies mystical way of seeing is a threat to another societies paradigms. It was Sigmund Freud who sounded the death knell for the mystical experience when he proclaimed that it was “infantile helplessness” and “regression to primary narcissism.” Furthermore, he called religion a “universal obsessional neurosis.”

Thanks to the open-minded opinions of Dr. Freud, many psychiatrists have discounted religious and spiritual concerns in people’s lives – or brushed them off as a symptom of irrationality. According to a poll cited by psychiatrist Robert Turner of the University of California at San Francisco’s School of Medicine, 50% of all psychiatrists are atheists or agnostics, while at most only 5% of the general public is. And Dr. Turner says, “There’s been a long-standing practice for psychiatry to pathologize or ignore religious experience.”

So maybe the medical profession doesn’t know what to make of people who hear voices, or have psychic experiences, or claim they can talk to God, or think miracles are a part of life, but the American public, and people the world over don’t care. As Joan Borysenko puts it, “We are a nation of closet mystics.”

We want to believe. We want to believe that life has meaning, that there are no accidents, nor random events. We want to follow the words of Albert Einstein who said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

The floodgates of spiritual acknowledgement have been opened full thrust, leaving Dr. Freud to spin in his grave a couple of rotations.

Many people turn to the spiritual dimension when faced with a life-threatening illness. It is at this point that many people prefer to see medicine’s spiritual side, to comprehend spiritual medicine, and to see if it is possible that a miracle may occur in their lives.

On the other hand, there are people who are not readily suffering from a life-threatening illness but instead are desirous to use the art of medicine and healing as a tool towards self-transformation.

Either way, both of these groups would be inspired by the words of the Arabic physician Ali Pul who once wrote, “The medicine of the soul is the medicine of the body.”

Indeed, the art of healing is first and foremost a spiritual endeavor. Take away all the trappings of technological medicine and what you are left with is a sacred trust between healer and healee.

Yet unfortunately, western medicine has no interest in taking away the trappings and prefers staying within the realm of scientific materialism. This has allowed practitioners of integrative medicine to gain a stronghold in the realm of spiritual medicine.

Spiritual medicine is a much more synergistic fit with holistic medicine, and some would say spiritual medicine is holistic medicine. Yet spiritual medicine is also about being inclusive, not exclusive. Thus, in a perfect world, there would be only one medicine and it would be a spiritually based medicine.

In a spiritually based medicine, one important understanding is that thoughts and consciousness play an important role in healing. This be seen with the placebo effect.

A couple of years ago I went to a Halloween party dressed as a pothead. The key to my costume was the bogus marijuana I was showing off. I had purchased some dried celery, bagged it up, and led everyone at the party to believe I had the real thing. I started rolling joints and passed it around. A lot of the people smoking commended me on my weed; a lot of people got high off the celery.

Now besides the fact it will create an interesting debate if I ever run for President (I knew that party would come back to haunt me, as who will believe my assertions that the stuff wasn’t real – can I just claim I didn’t inhale?), it also creates a lively discussion about placebos. How can people get high off dried celery?

I didn’t realize that I had done a placebo experiment, I was just having fun. But experiments in the placebo effect have used similar methodology.

In one study, participants were given a drink they were told contained alcohol. Even though there was no alcohol in it, many felt and acted drunk and even showed some of the physiological signs of intoxication.

In another study, patients with asthma who were given an inhaler containing only nebulized saltwater, but were told they were inhaling an irritant or allergen, displayed more problems with airway obstruction. When the same group was told the inhaler had a medicine to help asthma, their airways opened up.

The placebo effect always shows up in drug trials; often times the group taking the dummy pill, the placebo, have better results than the control group taking the drug.

And even when the control group taking the drug does better than the placebo group, the results may be explained by the placebo effect.

That’s because subjects of a drug trial often know which group they are in, as people generally will experience physical sensations and side effects from taking the medication. This will lead them to rightfully conclude that they are taking the drug and then have higher expectations that the medication will work. And people in the placebo group, by not having any side effects, will have fewer expectations that the medicine will work, thereby lowering their success.

It may be that the most active ingredient in a placebo is belief. As the Greek physician Galen noted, “He cures most successfully in whom the people have the most confidence.”

For every healer, how to instill that confidence is a matter of choice. Some choose to wear lab coats and stethoscopes, some choose to dress as clowns (think Patch Adams) and give items that they imbue with magic and charisma, some perform rituals and wear the costumes of their culture, and some dress plainly and appear very down to earth.

The practice of medicine is truly an interpretative art in which there is a place for both objectivity and subjectivity, just as there is an objective and subjective realm in our personal lives.

To be continued…Part 2 tomorrow.