Books (October 2007)

What Do I Say? Talking with patients about spirituality. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press 2007

This book is an excellent introduction for health care practitioners in dealing with spiritual issues common in clinical practice. Elizabeth Johnston Taylor presents the subject clearly, enhanced with quotes, cartoons and pointers towards further reading. I particularly like her exercises for readers to explore and examine their own spiritual beliefs and awarenesses, and to practice varieties of ways they can respond to patients’ spiritual issues.

This book addresses the question of how to form healing verbal responses to patients’ expressions of spiritual pain. Although offering healing verbal responses is a fundamental skill for health care professionals, it is not the only approach for nurturing the spirit. Being silently present, reading inspirational materials, offering prayer, and encouraging journal writing or dream analysis are examples of other approaches. (p. 5)

Thoughtful quotes help the reader consider these issues...

            (See more in IJHC, September 2007)

Elizabeth Johnson Taylor.

Jennifer Harper, ND, PhD, Msc. nine ways to body wisdom: blending natural therapies to nourish the body, emotions, and soul, London: Thorsons/HarperCollins 1997, 2000. 324 pp.  
13 pp resources  5 pp suggested reading   $16.99   £9.99

In a very readable and user-friendly style, this unusual book offers many suggestions for health and healing within the frameworks of Chinese medicine, augmented with other complementary/ alternative therapies. For instance, in Chinese medicine various elements and organs are associated with emotions. The Earth Element is linked with worry or sympathy; Wood Element with frustration and anger; Fire Element with laughter and joy; Water Element with fear; and Metal Element with grief. Each of us has natural traits and characteristics that incline us towards the spectrum that is typical for one of these elements. Harper provides a questionnaire that allows readers to identify their element.

… There are five emotions, which are connected to the five elements and to the maor yin organs (the liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys). Anger relates to the liver, you to the heart, pensiveness to the spleen, grief to the lungs and fear to the kidneys. Extremes of emotions can have a negative impact on the organs, especially when they are intense or have been suppressed for some time, just as an imbalanced organ can have a profound effect on the state of our emotions. (p. 3) 

            (See more in IJHC, September 2007)