Editorial Musings

by Daniel J. Benor, MD

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This issue of IJHC witnesses several shifts in:
· Our editorial staff: Promoting me to Editor in Chief, and promoting Ruth Sewell, PhD, Martina Steiger, ThD, BEd, MA, and Loren Toussaint, PhD to Editors;
· Editorials that may include staff other than myself, as in this issue; and
· Publication focus that will include a new section on Remarkable Recoveries from problems considered incurable by conventional medicine.

IJHC Editors

Martina Steiger, ThD, BEd, MA, IJHC Editor, has a private practice, "Transitions," in interactive subtle energy medicine and spiritual healing in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. She conducts workshops on stress management through GUSTM, a wholistic, multi-modal program she developed. Her thesis has demonstrated significant effects of GUSTM in reducing stress and enhancing self-image. She also teaches how to access intuition, the integration of complementary and conventional medicine, and effecting change in the educational system through caring for and restoring the soul, while moving gracefully through each moment of beingness towards wholeness.  Dr. Steiger served for several years as Dean of Faculty and Students, and Professor at Holos University Graduate Seminary in Spiritual Healing & Integrative Health.

Loren L. Toussaint, PhD, IJHC Research Editor, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa where he teaches courses on statistics, methodology, stress and coping, health psychology, and forgiveness. Previously he taught graduate and undergraduate courses on statistics and measurement at Idaho State University. He is a former Research Fellow in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. His research focuses mainly on the role of forgiveness in health and happiness, and also on how other psychological and social factors such as stress and coping and religiousness and spirituality impact health, health behaviors, and adjustment. He has authored or co-authored 25 scientific papers and over 70 scientific presentations. He provides editorial and ad-hoc review for several scientific journals. His current work focuses on: 1) epidemiological studies of forgiveness and unforgiveness and their connections with mental and physical health, 2) cultural aspects of forgiveness in America, Chile, Lithuania, and Spain, and 3) peace promotion through forgiveness in Africa.

Ruth Sewell, PhD, IJHC Editor, is a psychotherapist, lecturing on cancer and palliative care and the integration of complementary therapies into health care practices
    Ruth holds qualifications in midwifery, community health care, teaching, counseling and autogenic training. Her work has focused on women�s health, including qualitative research. She is currently completing her doctoral thesis, exploring emotional responses in women with breast cancer to their treatments and to their experiences of life threatening and life changing illness.
    Ruth divides her time between her private practice of integrative psychotherapy, writing and workshop facilitation and working as a member of staff of the Bristol Cancer Help Centre. She teaches internationally: Stress management (especially for health professionals); Psychoneuroimmunology; Integrative health care practices (including subtle energy practices); Spirituality and spiritual practices for health and healing; Palliative Care. Ruth has published articles in these areas and serves on the editorial boards of Complementary Therapies in Nursing and Midwifery, IJHC and in 2003 will be joining the board of the journal Sacred Space. She was the Founder of the Holistic Nurses� Association in the UK, has served as Vice-Chair for the British Autogenic Society and as Trustee for the British Holistic Medical Association.
    Carl Jung said that "We are all born whole, we learn to become unwhole." My personal and professional philosophy is to seek the re-integration of the whole. I believe that whatever we seek should only be achieved through reverence of life, for ourselves and each other. Once we discover our own real self we can find our place in everything which leads to true wholeness and healing. Wholeness stems from our Beingness and not merely the doingness. This can only be achieved when we have congruence between our inner and outer selves.

Editorials

We will periodically have editorials from our IJHC editorial team. I will, as here, offer a few comments on articles in our current issue.

In this issue, Martina Steiger, ThD, suggests ways we can appreciate the special state of Being in which we can listen empathetically – as a major component of our therapeutic interventions.  She writes,

Stephen R. Covey (2004, p. 192-96) describes the “listening continuum” which may serve as a useful concept in this discussion:

1. Ignoring
2. Pretend listening (patronizing)
3. Selective Listening
4. Attentive Listening
5. Empathetic Listening

The first four categories apply when we, the listeners, remain within our own frame of reference during the listening experience.  The fifth one occurs when we are able to shift out of our own frame of reference and enter into the speaker’s frame of reference.  Covey chooses the term ‘empathetic listening’ because he wants us to get beyond semantics and perception, beyond cognitive interpretation of information.  In my view, as we will discuss a little later, his terminology might create confusion and therefore, I prefer the terminology of ‘deep listening’ or ‘listening from within the heart.’  That, of course, requires an attitude of detachment, the setting aside of our ego-mind, or an attitude of ‘compassionate indifference’ in the language of Buddhism. 

This article is an inspiration to anyone in the helping professions – not just trained caregivers. I am increasingly impressed with the ways that ancillary personnel in hospitals and clinics are stepping up to be present for people their care – as the trained caregivers such as doctors and nurses are being squeezed by management, in the name of 'efficiency,' to attend more and more to electronic monitors and other physical aspects of health problems and symptomatic treatment and less and less to the person who has these problems and symptoms. 'Presence' can be offered by anyone as a caregiving, healing gift.

Martina Steiger's discussion on the healing power of 'presence' is echoed also in the remarkable book by Philip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand, The Gift of Pain: Why we hurt and what we can do about it, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan/HarperCollins 1993, 1997. (See IJHC book reviews.)

In this issue of IJHC

One of the most important articles that the IJHC has published appears under Wholistic Approaches. Harry van der Zee, MD, a physician in the Netherlands, has worked in Africa with two other homeopaths: Peter Chappell, FHom of England and Klaus Schustereder, MD of Austria.  Peter Chappell developed new homeopathic remedies that are proving incredibly potent for epidemic diseases such as AIDS, malaria and TB. In addition, there are new remedies that have apparently reversed insulin dependent diabetes and rapidly relieved people of severe post traumatic stress disorders (PTSDs). These remedies are produced through a resonance process. Funding is being sought for extending the clinical uses of these remedies and for research.

Dr. van der Zee reviews studies on homeopathic remedies, showing that they have proven helpful in dealing with a range of epidemic diseases in the past. Further references can be found at http://www.lyghtforce.com/King_bio/research.htm and http://flusolution.net/index.htm.

Dr. van der Zee's article turns out to be particularly timely in view of the outbreak of flu in Mexico. While this has been called 'swine' flu in the popular press, it is actually composed of DNA segments from various influenza viruses, including avian flu, human  flu Type A, human flu Type B, Asian swine flu, and European swine flu. This is such an unusual combination as to raise serious suspicions that is a genetically engineered virus – but that is another issue, discussed by Mercola and Rense (web references).

As with outbreaks of swine flu in 1976, medical authorities and the government appear again to be gearing up to stampede the public into mass vaccinations under the inflammatory warning that this is going to turn into a pandemic that affects millions of people and has a high lethal potential. The fact is, in 1976 the Ford administration's mass vaccination campaign produced many cases of paralysis and 25 deaths. And the swine flu pandemic never occurred.

It can take months to develop and many more months to mass produce a conventional flu vaccine. The vaccine has to be developed specifically for the genetic composition of the new virus. Previous flu vaccines are at best only partly effective for a new variety of flu virus and often not effective at all.

Dr. Peter Chappell (web reference) has developed a resonance for the new virus that can be effective through homeopathic pills or through sound vibrations. These are available immediately and from his experience with other such remedies would be expected to have prophylactic as well as therapeutic benefits for dealing with this variety of flu.

This article is of such importance that both the article and this editorial are being made available as open access items rather than being available by paid IJHC subscription.

In our section on research, Rothlyn P. Zahourek, PhD shares a wealth of thought-provoking observations in her article on Healing: A theory based on intentionality. Many healers and researchers have focused on the bioenergy interactions of healing. This article, based on an in-depth qualitative analysis of the reports of healers and healees, highlights the importance of the focus and direction that is given to the healing interactions.

The new, ongoing IJHC feature topic of Remarkable Recoveries brings you four fascinating reports in this issue:

1. Ellen Marie Schweickart shares her truly awesome odyssey of pioneering ways to successfully deal with her advanced case of scleroderma, which is considered a medically untreatable disease. Ellen's symptoms began in 2001. She was advised by the eligibility doctor who assessed her for disability in 2003, “I am so very sorry to have to tell you this but you are suffering from a horrible, painful, debilitating autoimmune disease for which we have no known cure and at the rate of your progression you will not survive more than two years. I suggest you go be with your loved ones and do whatever you have always wanted to do, perhaps travel to Antarctica.”

With dogged persistence, Ellen sought all the information she could gather on possible contributors to her symptoms of skin thickening to the point of limiting mobility, pain, weakness, difficulty swallowing and more. Working her way through removing allergens, dietary changes, and other approaches, she was able to slow the progression of her disease. It was when she started using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) that the progression of her symptoms was halted and then reversed. Ellen is now close to completely free of her scleroderma.

Lest you think that this is an isolated case of a person blessed with extraordinary physiological and/or psychological capabilities, Ellen shares a brief report from Katie, another woman with scleroderma, which was so advanced that she was on renal dialysis. Katie's disease has similarly been reversed using EFT plus other approaches.

A word of caution, however, to readers who may have the same or similar problems. Some of the treatments Ellen used included medications without the supervision of a doctor. Please see our website disclaimer regarding this information. DISCLAIMER

2. Patsy Anthony-Green suffered from Crohn's Disease, which produces inflammation for unknown reasons in the lower end of the small bowel, extending sometimes into the large bowel. Her Crohn's was so severe she had to have the affected portions of her bowels surgically removed. Despite careful adherence to dietary restrictions, her intermittent symptoms continued to plague her periodically. By using EFT, Patsy has been able to halt her Crohn's disease.

3. Patsy Anthony-Green also suffered from pains in her knee over several decades, following a ski injury. An MRI showed severe deterioration of the cartilage in that knee. Patsy also cured herself of pains in her knee using EFT.

4. Gary Craig, founder of EFT, reports on success in treating Sally, a 51 year-old woman, six years after she had suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in an auto accident.  Sally had severe unsteadiness in walking and suffered from inability to tolerate intense or complex stimuli, such as many people talking in a room, or even walking along a carpet with a 'busy' pattern. In a single session of EFT, Sally was cured of her unsteadiness, and in further sessions her sensitivity to complex stimuli was markedly reduced. The EFT treatment was tracked by Donna Bach, ND and Gary Groesbeck, BCIAC with a Mind Mirror III electroencephalograph, which demonstrated interesting changes as Sally's condition improved. Participating in organizing this report, I weigh in with the observations that while it is unclear whether diagnostically it was brain trauma that was reversed or whether it was a post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) causing these symptoms that was alleviated, the fact is that Sally's condition was dramatically improved.

In our Living with Life Challenges section we have suggestions from Pam Lacko on how it is possible to lighten up one's path of dealing with cancer by using humor.

And last, but not least, Sue Coleman shares how she paints the animals, plants and landscapes of British Columbia – including their spirit and energetic aspects. The spirit images are taken from First Nation traditions.

We also have our regular column by Larry Lachman, PsyD, on wholistic news reviews, and book reviews that include a variety of gems, such as: The Five Love Languages; The Gift of Pain; homeopathy for psychological issues; an anthology of poetry on the aftermath of losing someone close and moving through the challenges of bereavement; several books on surgery; and on shamanic journeying. 

References

Chappell, Peter. http://www.healingdownloads.com/swine-flu.php  (Accessed 090430)
Mercola, Joseph. http://www.articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/29/Swine-Flu.aspx  (Accessed 090430)
Rense http://www.rense.com/general85/BIO.HTM   (Accessed 090430)

Daniel J. Benor, MD, IJHC Editor in Chief
Dr. Benor is author of Seven Minutes to Pain Relief, of Healing Research, Volumes I-III and many articles on wholistic healing.
Contact:
IJHC - www.ijhc.org
Book  - www.paintap.com 
Email - DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com  

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