Sparking Spirit’s Healing Flame
A revival of faith in soul medicine is sweeping Western society. In a 2003 poll, Newsweek magazine reported that, “84 percent of Americans said praying for others can have a positive effect on their recovery. Fifty–three percent say they’ve personally relied on religious faith to help them get through a major illness or health problem. A full 72 percent of all those polled believe God can cure people given no chance of survival by medical science.”1 These numbers are echoed by a cover story in Time2 magazine, reports in USA Weekend magazine,3 and many other popular periodicals. The largest and most comprehensive study done to date, reported in 2005 by the National Institutes of Health, surveyed some 31,000 American adults. It found that 36 percent of them had used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the preceding twelve months. But when prayer was included in the definition of CAM, the figure rose to 62 percent.4 Soul medicine is becoming part of the fabric of medical care and public awareness to a degree not seen for five centuries.
Why this resurgence in a primordial belief that science rejected hundreds years ago? One reason is the impersonal nature of modern science and medicine. “Managed care,” modern medicine’s inadequate answer to financial pressure, does a barely adequate job of management, and a poor job of care. Another reason is the failure of modern medicine to fulfill its promises. Larry Dossey, a respected author and physician, states in his book Prayer Is Good Medicine that 80,000 Americans die each year because of infections acquired while in the hospital. This is about twice the number of Americans killed in automobile accidents a year, and more than died in either the Vietnam or Korean wars.
The Journal of the American Medical Association has been warning about the seriousness of this problem for over a decade, publishing research showing the dangers of infection, injury and death in American hospitals.5 One of its careful studies, performed by Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, logged:
12,000 deaths due to unnecessary surgeries
7,000 medication error deaths
20,000 deaths due to other errors in hospitals
80,000 deaths due to infection
106,000 deaths due to non-error, negative effects of drugs.
Deaths totaled some 250,000 patients in a year. Bear in mind that these numbers are just for deaths; they don’t include patients getting sick from similar causes and recovering, or suffering temporary or permanent impairment due to medical treatment.6
These studies rank iatrogenic or doctor-caused illnesses among the largest killers of Americans, right up there with heart disease and cancer. Other studies, with different criteria, actually find that iatrogenic illnesses are the number one killer. A meticulous analysis of data from U.S. government studies found that, in 2001, heart disease killed 699,961 people, and cancer killed 553,252 people—while the conventional medical establishment dispatched some 783,966 patients. The cost to society is estimated to be $282 billion dollars a year.7 Researchers have macabre arguments about whether to rank iatrogenic illness the number one, number two, or number three killer. But no-one disputes the seriousness of the problem.
Furthermore, complications from drugs and surgery are the reasons for one-third of patients being admitted to critical care units. “In any other sphere of modern life, this situation would rank as a national scandal,” says Dr. Dossey. Compared with prayer, “Modern medicine would win the death derby every time by a landslide.”8
Dr. William Nolen, in his book Healing, A Doctor in Search of a Miracle, stated that healers can cure 70 percent of individuals—a statistic that appears far better than the average drug.9 Scientific proof indicates that soul medicine is at least as good as most drugs. Virtually no single drug is as effective as soul medicine. Astonishingly, the U.S. Congress, Office of Technological Assessment, has reported 85 percent of the drugs now in use have no satisfactory scientific documentation backing them.
Some of the established drugs are not as safe as the frequency with which they’re used would lead us to assume. A study published in New Scientist in December of 2005, performed by William Lee at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, caused a furor. It found that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol and many other over-the-counter painkillers, is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the U.S. Nearly half the deaths attributable to liver failure after consuming acetaminophen were accidental overdoses. The study followed comatose patients suffering liver failure. According to the journal, “of the 275 people with acetaminophen poisoning, 8 percent received a liver transplant, 65 percent survived without one and 27 percent died.” Some of the patients had overdosed unintentionally, taking two or more prescriptions that they were unaware both contained acetaminophen. But patients who overdosed themselves deliberately, and were quickly treated, had similar degrees of liver damage.10
Despite millions of dollars spent by pharmaceutical companies on finding and promoting new drugs, very few effective new treatments come to market. According to the most comprehensive study ever conducted of anti-psychotic drugs, expensive new pills are no more effective, or safer, than old ones. Funded by a $44 million grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health, conducted by Columbia University psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, it found that the new class of drugs called atypical anti-psychotics, a market worth $10 billion a year to drug companies, is no more effective—or safer—than perphenazine, an old generic drug. Perphenazine, largely discontinued because doctors routinely prescribe the new drugs, is one-tenth the cost.11
Lieberman points out that 90 percent of drug trials that appear in the scientific literature are funded by drug companies. There has been evidence that drug companies suppress publication of clinical trials that are unfavorable to their drugs, such as discontinuing studies when early results are unpromising. According to the Washington Post, “the industry has recently come under fire for hiding unfavorable trial data.”12 Two huge studies of antidepressant medications released by the US federal government in 2006 also demonstrate that the most commonly prescribed medications “failed to show that the drugs were safer or more effective than a placebo.”13
Britain’s respected Independent newspaper, in its “Science” section, under the headline, “Glaxo Chief: Our Drugs Do Not Work on Most Patients,” reported that: “A senior executive with Britain’s biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them.
“Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) [a huge multinational drug company], said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them.
“It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public. His comments come days after it emerged that the NHS [Britain’s universal health service] drugs bill has soared by nearly 50 percent in three years.”14
According to an article in the SeattleTimes, entitled “The Hidden Big Business Behind Your Doctor’s Diagnosis,” and written by a respected medical reporter Susan Kelleher, “some of America’s most prestigious medical societies take money from the drug companies and then promote the industry’s agenda.”15 The result? “Millions of people taking drugs that may carry a greater risk than the underlying condition. The treatment, in fact, may make them sick or even kill them.”16 Franz Ingelfinger, the late editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, once said:
“Let us assume that 80 percent of patients have either self-limited disorders or conditions not improvable, even by modern medicine. The physician’s actions, unless harmful, will therefore not affect the basic course of such conditions. In slightly over 10 percent of cases, however, medical intervention is dramatically successful…. But, alas, in the final 9 percent, give or take a point or two, the doctor may diagnose or treat inadequately, or he may just have bad luck. Whatever the reason, the patient ends up with iatrogenic problems. So the balance of accounts ends up marginally on the positive side of zero.”17
Or perhaps on the negative side of zero, when we consider the financial and ethical costs of allopathic medicine as it is currently practiced. In a 2006 editorial entitled “Seducing the Medical Profession,” the New York Times says, “Last week two new cases came to light that reveal the lengths to which companies will go to buy influence with doctors, pharmacists and other medical professionals. Reed Abelson reported in the Times on Jan. 24 about a whistle-blower’s lawsuit alleging that Medtronic had paid tens of millions of dollars in recent years to surgeons in a position to use and recommend its medical devices. In one particularly egregious example, a prominent Wisconsin surgeon received $400,000 for just eight days of consulting. In last Saturday’s Times, Gardiner Harris and Robert Pear revealed that a Danish company paid a pharmacist, doctors’ assistants and a drug store chain to switch diabetic patients to the company’s high-priced insulin products.” The New York Times concludes that, “The critical issue is that doctors must have the best interests of their patients at heart in prescribing drugs or recommending medical devices. Their judgment must not be clouded by financial self-interest or the desire to please industrial benefactors.”18
A 2006 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association examines the many incentives given by drug companies to physicians to prescribe their products.19 Gifts, trips, consulting contracts, ghostwriting services, meals and samples are showered on doctors by pharmaceutical manufacturers in an attempt to sway their decisions. The amount is not trivial. It is estimated to be $19 billion in an article in USAToday.20 By way of comparison, that is double the dollar volume of the entire retail book industry—all the books sold at retail in an entire year in the United States. “Marketing ... should not be allowed to undermine physicians’ commitment to their patient’s best interest or to scientific integrity,” the authors of the report write, recommending that such gifts be banned. “Research in the psychology and social science of gift receipt and giving indicates that current controls will not satisfactorily protect the interests of patients,” they conclude.
Soul medicine is poised for a comeback as the preferred means of primary medical care. It should always be the treatment of choice when orthodox medicine has nothing to offer. It should also serve as an ancillary treatment even when surgery and drugs are indicated as necessary. As Olga Worrall once said, “Another little touch of healing never hurt anyone.” A century ago, Sir William Osler, the father of American medicine, wrote eloquently of the importance of faith in health and healing:
“Faith is the great lever of life. Without it, man can do nothing; with it, even with a fragment, as a grain of mustard seed, all things are possible to him. Faith in us, faith in our drugs and methods, is the great stock in trade of the [medical] profession.... As Galen says, confidence and hope do more good than physic— ‘he cures most in whom most are confident.’ That strange compound of charlatan and philosopher, Paracelsus, encouraged his patients ‘to have a good faith, a strong imagination, and they find the effects.’ While we doctors often overlook or are ignorant of our own faith-cures, we are just a bit too sensitive about those performed outside our ranks. We have never had, and cannot expect to have a monopoly in this panacea, which is open to all, free as the sun, in which may make of everyone in certain cases, as was the Lacedemonian of Homer’s day, ‘a good physician out of Nature’s grace.’ Faith in the gods or in the saints cures one, faith in little pills another, hypnotic suggestion a third, faith in a plain common doctor a fourth. In all ages the prayer of faith has healed the sick, and the mental attitude of the Suppliant seems to be of more consequence than the powers to which the prayer is addressed. The cures in the temples of Aesculapius, the miracles of the saints, the remarkable cures of those noble men, the Jesuit missionaries, in this country, the modern miracles at Lourdes and at St. Anne de Beaupre in Quebec, and the wonder-workings of the so-called Christian Scientist are often genuine and must be considered in discussing the foundations of therapeutics. We physicians use the same power every day…. We enjoy, I say, no monopoly in the faith business. The faith with which we work, the faith, indeed, which is available today in everyday life, has its limitations. It will not raise the dead; it will not put a new eye in the place of a bad one…nor will it cure cancer or pneumonia, or knit a bone; but in spite of these nineteenth-century restrictions, such as we find it, faith is a most precious commodity, without which we should be very badly off.”21
Whether a doctor or a soul medicine practitioner, the healer who assists the belief or faith of a patient may accomplish more than any drug of surgery! If they can channel grace, even more so. Only those patients requiring life- or function-saving medical or surgical intervention—probably no more than 15 percent of patients—need drugs or surgery to help them. Surgery or drug intervention should always be considered in cases of serious diseases, such as major infections, fractures, certain types of cancer curable by surgery, and congestive heart failure.
An extremely wise professor of medicine, Eugene A. Stead, Jr., advised that a physician should primarily serve as a triage officer. When a patient first comes in with a complaint, the role of the physician is to verify that there is no serious illness that requires immediate medical or surgical intervention. If the patient is not suffering from a potentially serious illness, then he or she should be presented with various forms of healing and allowed to choose the modality or modalities. Indeed, the physician should even consider stepping aside to preclude the patient becoming worse off.
Drugs and surgery are inappropriate for many chronic illnesses, especially those representing stress reactions without measurable physical dysfunction. This is most true for depression, anxiety and panic attacks, and all of the psychoneurotic and neurotic illnesses. Even for chronic illnesses, where drug therapy could improve quality of life for diabetes or congestive heart failure patients, it is always appropriate to complement or supplement those therapies with a safe alternative. For instance, insulin certainly may be required in diabetes, but the addition of chromium picolinate, 1000 micrograms per day, and vanadium 50-100 micrograms per day, might enable a patient who develops diabetes after age thirty-five to reach a point where insulin isn’t needed. And there is certainly evidence in some patients that soul medicine can diminish diabetes.22 Potentially beneficial forms of soul medicine to consider in such cases include acupuncture, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, hypnosis, biofeedback, creative imagery, osteopathic manipulative therapy, chiropractic therapy, improved nutrition, Reiki, attunement, therapeutic touch, massage, homeopathy, light and color therapy and aromatherapy. Any of these approaches can invite the patient’s soul into the treatment.
Soul Healing Practices
There are many healing modalities that work with a patient’s energy, facilitating its flow, and removing blockages to soul expression through body, mind and emotional realm. Some of them are:
1. Meridian-Based Therapies
Acupuncture, the oldest therapy based on the body’s energy meridians, has been around for approximately 4,000 years. In the last few decades, it has been proven effective in raising ACTH, in treating PMS and male infertility, and in relieving many types of pain. Electroacupuncture, at least when applied to specific acupuncture points that are called the Ring of Fire, is effective in treating diabetic neuropathy, rheumatoid arthritis, depression and migraine headaches, and in raising DHEA levels. Giga frequencies, those in the billions of cycles per second range, applied to acupuncture points without needles, allows us to treat a majority of illnesses—without complications. Other meridian-based therapies include acupressure, Shiatsu, the Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT), and Emotional Freedom Therapy (EFT). In addition to one dramatic study showing a decline in psychological phobias, a number of studies of EFT are underway, and major clinical findings will be published in the next few years.
These therapies are distinguished by their ability to shift longstanding psychological problems quickly—even severe phobias. In The Promise of Energy Psychology, psychologist David Feinstein presents a typical case history of a patient he calls “Rich,” who had received “seventeen years of psychotherapy for symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) tracing back to the Vietnam war.” He had checked himself into a Veteran’s Administration hospital for yet another round of inpatient treatment for insomnia, and “a severe height phobia that had developed over the course of some fifty parachute jumps he had made during the war.” When asked to think about his experiences of heights while sitting in the hospital ward, Rich became extremely fearful. He was then given a short EFT treatment by EFT developer Gary Craig, after which he walked “out onto the fire escape of the third floor of the building and looked down. Rich expressed amazement when he had no fear response whatsoever.”
These effects appear to be permanent; checkups after clinical EFT study have shown that patients maintain their recovery for months or years after treatment. Two months after Rich’s EFT treatment, “he was still free of the height phobia, insomnia, and the intrusion of disturbing war memories.”23 The Promise of Energy Psychology, explains some of the methods that can be used for self-treatment, and extensive procedures for wide variety of conditions can be found in Energy Tapping by Fred Gallo, Ph.D. and Harry Vincenzi, Ed.D.24 Gary Craig’s web site contains many training resources,25 and a simplified form of meridian therapy, called WHEE, developed by pioneering psychiatrist Daniel Benor, Ph.D., has shown promising results for patients.26 These powerful, safe therapies hold the promise of freeing people from debilitating psychological conditions that would otherwise take years of psychotherapy to affect. They may also have a part to play in the healing of physical conditions, by releasing the emotional underpinnings of an organic disease.
2. Color and Light
A German physician, Max Lüscher, diagnosed personality and mood with color, accomplishing as much as many of our modern psychometric tests. Phototherapy with various colors influences beta endorphins, melatonin, serotonin and prolactin. Light affects mood, melatonin, serotonin and the age of sexual development. The electroencephalogram follows light frequencies. Entrainment, or trance, is easily accomplished with light.
3. Homeopathy
Two hundred years ago, Samuel Hahnemann developed the concept of homeopathy, the law of similars, using various substances in such highly diluted form that no measurable physical trace remained. Homeopathic physicians report cures of many illnesses. Several modern papers have discussed the effectiveness of homeopathy in treating rheumatoid arthritis, and in the Shealy pain clinic, we have recently demonstrated that a homeopathic preparation was better than acetaminophen, “the drug doctors prescribe the most for pain.”27
4. Sound
Music clearly affects mood. Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis, an otolaryngologist from France, has shown that we cannot speak what we cannot hear. He retrains hearing with sound, and entrainment or trance is easily accomplished with the help of sound. Music therapy is an increasingly popular and successful form of therapy for emotional and physical ailments.
5. Touch and Healing
Hands-on healing has been proven effective to a statistically significant degree. The electroencephalogram can be strikingly influenced even by a distant healer. Hemoglobin can be raised by therapeutic touch. DHEA can be raised within minutes by an accomplished spiritual healer. Studies discussed elsewhere describe improved wound healing times through healing touch, decreased preoperative anxiety, and other effects of touch. There are many kinds of healing touch, including Therapeutic Touch, Reiki, Attunement, faith healing, and “laying on of hands.”
6. Aromatherapy
Smell is the most primitive of our senses. Aromas are extremely effective in changing our moods. Recent science demonstrates that even unsmellable traces of sweat influence the menstrual cycle of women. Flower essences and essential oils also use aromatherapy.
7. Biofeedback
The Rolls Royce of mind-body medicine, especially when combined with a self-hypnotic technique called autogenic training, biofeedback can control 80 percent of many diseases, including high blood pressure and migraines. Psychoneuroimmunology, to some extent, grew out of the initial remarkable findings with biofeedback.
8. Manipulation
Freeing energy stuck in the body can be accomplished by a number of therapies, including massage, somatic therapy, and osteopathic and chiropractic manipulation. The clinical effects of these often far surpass conventional treatments. Indeed, sacral shear is one of the most common causes of low back and sciatic pain. Many failed surgeries make the condition worse and spinal fusions are a disaster when the sacral shear can no longer be corrected. It takes a trained therapist about one minute to correct! Patients can then maintain the correction with proper exercise.
9. Meditation
To hear the music of your soul, you have to slow down—way down. Meditation, contemplation, personal spiritual retreats, mindfulness, and similar techniques can calm the mind. One wit said, “Buddhism isn’t a religion, it’s cheap therapy.” Christianity’s long tradition of meditation and contemplation has been rediscovered in the past decade. Any technique that reduces anxiety and agitation in a patient contributes to healing, and increases the likelihood of communion between body and soul. Meditation and contemplation create a still space for that communion, enhancing every form of soul medicine.
10. Electromagnetic Stimulation
Cranial electrical therapy with very subtle energy, at one milliampere, a thousandth of an amp of current, can raise beta endorphin and serotonin levels and treat depression and insomnia more safely and better than any drug. Indeed, this approach is twice as effective as the best antidepressant drug, with no complications! Many of the effects of energy healing can be accomplished by either human or mechanical means. Devices that stimulate energy pathways electrically have a long and interesting history in medicine, and with the benefit of modern research, are making a comeback.
11. Traditional Medical Practices
Societies like India and China have indigenous healing practices that go back thousands of years. Ayurveda (India) and Oriental Medicine (China) have concepts and practices that can enrich conventional treatments, or even render them unnecessary. Shamanism (Brazil, Africa) has also demonstrated some remarkable healing powers.
Prayer and intercession for the sick is one of the oldest forms of healing on record. It can establish a direct connection between the soul and the ailing body. Faith healing is included here because most faith healers use intercessory prayer to request healing for the sick.
13. Conscious Lifestyle
Conscious exercise, conscious eating, meditation, relaxation and other healthy lifestyle changes are a deliberate choice that reclaims personal responsibility for wellness. A conscious lifestyle is one in which a person makes decisions that promote healing and soul connection, living an outer life in harmony with the soul’s expression. A conscious exercise routine may include yoga, dance, or the martial arts.
14. Subconscious Reprogramming
Researchers remind us that, while our conscious mind processes some 400 bits of information per second, our subconscious mind processes upwards of eleven million bits per second.28 The information contained in our subconscious can thus override the best of conscious intentions. Affirmations, muscle testing, and other therapies that influence the subconscious mind attempt to clear from messages that get in the way of soul healing.
Attitude and the Nature of the Sacred
Our state of consciousness, our choice of relationship to the divine, is under our control. It is ultimately consciousness, and our attunement to the divine, that instill health, nurturing, love, and a desire to do good. A positive, cheerful, optimistic attitude and self-motivation are as important as diet and exercise in determining health and healing.
Consider the following characteristics of a limited human personality, the column on the left. Compare it to the characteristics of a soul expressing through a body, mind and heart, on the right. When our attitude is one of soul awareness, linked to the benefits of soul medicine, we unlock our full potential as spiritual beings on a human path.
In the next chapter, we’ll take a closer look at how to cultivate the qualities of the soul in everyday life, and by doing so, how we can unlock the huge benefits that flow from communion between soul, heart and body.