Healing: Mind and Body

The concept of healing both the mind and body is important in the holistic tradition. It is interesting that this tradition can be found in the ancient Greek ideal of a sound mind in a sound body, and yet the current impression of holistic healing is that it is Eastern in origin. The Greek traditions, as they influenced the Roman Empire, are the core of Western culture. Americans seem to have lost sight of the fact that the mind and the body are not separate but must function together in order to make a whole person. I would suggest that the power of belief is essential in order for a person to heal. Currently Americans have placed their faith with the western tradition of biomedicine. We tend to think of the medical tradition of other as being promoted by “quacks;,” Langford’s article discusses this in detail. She asks the question “whether a simulating doctor who produces true wellness is a doctor or a quack” (Langford 24). I think that becoming a doctor has a certain set of rules but that anyone with “love and patience,” as Mrs. Little Bones said, can become a healer. I do believe it is unfair to claim qualifications that you do not in fact have, as some of the doctors that Langford observed seemed to be doing. On the other hand, if the practitioner is thought of as not having such qualifications, those who have faith only in formally qualified persons may discount the good healing provided by the informally trained practitioners and not receive the benefit of it because of their bias against that healer. I think that even if some of the remedies that the doctors gave out did not actually have medicinal properties, the people who believed that they were going to get well, actually did. As Dr. Mistry states “the moment they are given faith ‘things start working’ … 80 percent of illness is psychological” (Langford 40). Although we believe our doctors are much more qualified because of the years of training we know are required for a medical degree, it is also true that many patients experience the same sense of relief simply by going to the doctor.

This same belief in healing can be seen in the O’Dell article on spas: people go in believing that their stress will be relieved, and it is. Of course the opposite is true as well: if you believe that spas are a silly and expensive waste of time then the experience will not be pleasant for you. My personal take on spas is that they give you an environment in which to focus your mind on your body. For example, as a masseuse touches parts of your body, your mind is reminded to unclench those muscles, and when the body is perfectly relaxed, it is hard for the mind not to follow suit. And, if the mind isn’t relaxed, the body will often respond with physical symptoms like tooth grinding and forehead wrinkling, which lead to sympathetic pain such as migraine and lower back pain.

Both the video we watched in class and the Alter article address the use of yoga and mediation to heal. Meditation allows one to have total awareness of one’s body and mind. For the most part our society ignores our bodies unless something is wrong with them, and even then children are taught to deal with pain by ignoring it, instead of trying to understand what it means. If instead of thinking I am in pain I must make it stop, you dive into the pain and view it as a sensation neither good nor bad, only when you have achieved this view point can you truly understand the nature of the pain.

Closely related to meditation and healing visualization is the healing power of prayer. For a Believer, the knowledge that prayers are being said for their recovery gives them strength and emotional support. Individual prayer, communication with a higher power and releasing the healing process to them, is a huge relief to many sufferers, and this personal relief from the constant stress of their illness is clearly helpful in the recovery process. Many religions have rituals of healing, from the Mormon Blessing bestowed by Elders on ailing or troubled members, to Extreme unction provided by a Catholic priest for those feared to be near death. For the members of their church, these practices bring much relief to the sick and measurably speed recovery.

Americans on the whole do not believe in the mind/body connection. We reject it as something foreign. As one woman in the video on mediation put it, “it’s un-American but it’s wonderful.” Since America is supposed to be the melting pot nation, it seems strange that we would reject these possibly helpful techniques. I think that in many ways we are starting to incorporate these different practices and we are seeing the value of having more than one way to treat people. A blend of things will, I think, prove to be the most effective. This way Americans can discover different forms of healing that might suite them better than western medicine alone. Like the patients from the video who had pain that the doctors could not cure, they turn to meditation. It was brought up in class that there is no reason why meditation should be a last resort; instead, why not incorporate it? This would help to stop problems like patients becoming addicted to morphine. I was using some of these techniques to deal with the irritation of insect bites, which cuts down on the amount of chemicals I need to put on my skin. In summary, we should be open to new schools of thought.

Article Citations

Alter, Joseph S., 2005. “Modern Medical Yoga: Struggling with a History of Magic, Alchemy,

and Sex,” Asian Medicine 1(1): 119-146.

Langford, Jean M., 1999. “Medical Mimesis:Healing Signs of a Cosmopolitan ‘Quack’.”

American Ethnologist 26(1): 24-46.

O’Dell, Tom. “Meditation, Magic and Spiritual Regeneration: Spas and the Mass

Production of Serenity” Orvar Lofgren and Robert Willim, eds. Magic, Culture and the

New Economy. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, 2005. Pp. 19-36.

Picture Links

http://reikikendra.com/image/mantra.gif

http://spiritualguidedmeditation.com/mind-body-spirit/wp-content/uploads/healing-of-mind-and-body.jpg